The Seeker (16 page)

The rain came three weeks later. First, a trickle, then a torrent, breaking the land open and making it soft and malleable again. They planted six rows of new seeds after the first rain, adding rice and tomatoes to their usual three. The bore well filled. The handpump worked again. Crops sprouted, as did insects, and with them came frogs and snakes. New life. Despite the now-abundant food and the luxury of being able to choose between rice and millets, Max stuck to eating one meal a day. And he did well with it. His strength returned, his constipation eased, and he found that he could do asanas and field work with greater intensity than before.

The monsoon brought new visitors. A Portuguese couple who had cycled for eighteen months from Portugal through Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and finally into India were the first to arrive. Having realized the futility of endlessly chasing new sights and sounds, they abandoned their plans of going to Nepal, sold their bicycles in India, and embarked on the more perilous journey of looking inside. They lasted two weeks.

They were followed by a Sri Lankan artist who wanted to make herself an instrument of the universal creative force. She left in a week as did the Indian software engineer who had started to think life was an elaborate charade. Others came and went. Max talked to them eagerly in the beginning. Soon though, he fell silent like Hari, became reflective like Shakti. With each passing face, he understood more and more what dying would feel like. He’d remember a collage of faces and smiles—and bid a final goodbye, knowing he hadn’t unmasked the eternal truth. New faces would keep coming. The chatter would go on. None of it would take him closer to his goal of completion, of reaching a spiritual whole with the infinite. Every moment now was dedicated to learning, giving, dissolving his small self. Nothing else mattered.

Now he worked in the field without thought of enjoyment or pain, and surrendered his body to the universe’s will in his asana practice. His actions were that of a yogi, neither white nor black, just colorless. He was determined to break the cause–effect cycle, produce no reactions, no impressions, neither good nor bad. Slowly he was untethering himself from life.

His meditation deepened. One day, he saw a bright yellow light in the space between his closed eyes. Liquid warmth surged through his body. The next day the light became brighter. Bells chimed somewhere within him. Max opened his eyes. The chiming stopped. The bells tolled again when he closed his eyes. Deep, sonorous, melodic, tugging at his heart strings. Bright yellow light pulsed from his head to his body. Was this the divine—unknown lights and mystical sounds, the feeling of complete warmth and peace?

“Don’t be distracted. Don’t get attached to lights and sounds. They are just signposts that you are on the right path, not the end of the path. Keep working hard,” the words that Ramakrishna had said once long ago remained in his head.

So Max did exactly that. He slept less and less, sometimes only two hours a night, sometimes not at all. His dreams ceased, probably because his mind was at rest. More blinding lights appeared with the passing of the months—yellow, orange, red—and they stayed for longer and longer. Late one night when he was meditating in his hut, a hollow, guttural sound originated in the bottom of his spine. The sound traveled up and down his spine before reverberating in the depths of his heart. Max felt weightless, floating, dissolving into the sound. Radiant white light filled the space between his eyes. The light disappeared. He was submerged in infinite black space. From the blackness emerged the sun, moons, galaxies, stars and hundreds of red planets. They whirled rapidly, crashing against each other and turned into large glaciers, mountains, oceans, and flatland. Max shuddered. All of creation lay within him. He opened his eyes to a bright morning.

Ramakrishna hadn’t shaken him out of his meditation for asana class that day. Perhaps he knew that Max had felt for the first time the presence of the creating energy, the causeless cause within him. For Max had realized that the sound that originated in his spine was Om, the root in every sound, the word that had vibrated in the act of creation. He had read of the mystical Om in the books at the ashram but he had never experienced it until that day. Om vibrated again and again within him in the days that followed. Soon, Max’s nagging worries about his future began to disappear. This body, this mind that tormented him wasn’t him. The Dutch yoga teacher and the mother of two from Texas, who were staying at the ashram that week
,
were no different from him. The clay made pots, pans, plates, bricks, houses, but the real nature of all of them was the same clay. One consciousness vibrated everywhere, in everything. Om, the vibration of that consciousness, filled his body and mind, slowly dissolving the images lingering in his memory. Keisha’s face became hazier. Shakti standing at the bus stop, waving goodbye, shimmered and disappeared. His mother’s yellow, contorted face and Andre’s limp, lifeless legs were mere wrinkles on the surface of the pot. Their real nature was unaffected. Other faces he had touched, hands held, promises made, conversations had, all were receding, disappearing into the growing void within him.

Max relied more and more on himself for his asana practice. The sum of all knowledge was within him. A twist there, a bend here, a little shifting of his toes, some flexibility to the cosmic will and he got into asanas that he didn’t think were possible. Ramakrishna would tell him the names later:
Kapotasana
, the dove;
Valakhilyasana
, the heavenly pose;
Gherandasana
, the sage’s pose;
Kapinjalasana,
the partridge pose—and others whose names even Ramakrishna didn’t know but whose existence he didn’t doubt because Max was being taught by the all-knowing consciousness within.

More months passed. Once in a while, he checked his email. Andre wrote to tell him he had graduated from college and was working with troubled kids in the Bronx. Sophia didn’t end up going to Stern after all. She decided to travel with her new boyfriend to Europe for a few months to figure things out. Max had never seen her so lost before but he tried not to worry about her. After all, he had left the land he knew for a greater knowing too. One year ago. It was December again. Max had never felt more at peace. The space within him was growing, filling him with a strange silence. The boundaries of space and time were breaking. He worked hard in the fields, practiced asanas and pranayama, and meditated like before, but none of the activities felt distinct from the other. Something within him remained silent. The body worked, the mind concentrated, but he was unmoved. Complete. The same in every contortion of the body, in every fluctuation of the mind. Winter. Spring. Summer. Another drought.

This time, he was alone with Ramakrishna. He understood now why the saint remained unaffected. The sun was not an enemy, the land not an unrelenting ingrate. They were beautiful, majestic, all part of one system, linked by the karmic cycle of cause and effect, action and reaction. The first summer it had caused him sorrow. Now his lean, hard body, likely forty or fifty pounds of unnecessary weight lighter than when he had first come to the ashram, remained unaffected by the drought. It craved nothing for itself. He felt the villagers’ hunger like his own and this time, Ramakrishna and he had more rations to spare for them. Max delivered them every week until the rains came again.

In town one day in August, Max checked his email for the first time in many months. Not a single note from Sophia.
Are you okay, my dear? Did you go to Europe? Are you still with that guy?
Max checked to see if Andre had written about Sophia but there was just a single note from him.

‘U inspired me 2 get out of my head, ace. I looked up 2 u all my life. Christ, what happened 2 u ace? U were going places. Get ur life back. I’m always here 4 u.’

No word about Sophia. Max was flustered again. Why was the bond with his sister so hard to transcend? Nothing weighed him down anymore, not the body, not its petty need for comfort, not the pull for sensory stimulation. Only his little sister kept him from losing himself completely to the blissful void. He banished the image of the little girl with curly hair rushing down an iron slide in Central Park and stopped himself from walking into the phone shop.

On his way back to the ashram that day, he didn’t fall into the state of spontaneous absorption that was coming over him more and more naturally those days.
Sophia, my dear, are you well?
He forced himself to concentrate on his breath.

The next night, a clamor of footsteps broke Max’s concentration. The ashram had filled with temporary visitors once again that monsoon season; a Bulgarian man and two German girls were staying with them. Max closed his eyes and resumed his meditation.

Heavy breathing. A muffled shout. More footsteps.

Max got up and walked toward the bathroom.

The tall, bald muscular Bulgarian stood outside the bathroom hut, his eyes narrowed, jaw tight, sweat pouring down his temples. He held an aluminum trekking pole in his thick hands.

Max raised his eyebrows.

“Snake inside. Large cobra,” said the man.

Reluctantly, Max broke the silence. “It’ll be gone tomorrow,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

The Bulgarian wiped the sweat from his jaw and stared at him. “You crazy, man? I have to use bathroom,” he said, blinking. “Also I cannot sleep next door with that big bastard right here. They are poisonous. You be dead in minute if it bites. You don’t worry, man. I done this before in mountains.”

Max knew this thick Bulgarian wouldn’t last the week. The rains had picked up and with them had come insects, frogs, and more snakes. If you didn’t trouble them, they never troubled you. The same living energy coursed through them. Much like humans, they were driven by desire, the desire to eat, procreate, live, and evolve, not to bite and kill what wasn’t food for them.

A slithering sound came from inside.

The Bulgarian’s bald pate shone with fresh sweat. He pushed the door wide open.

“Just see the bastard,” he said.

The snake was ten feet long with yellow-brown skin, fiery black rectangular patterns and a large head. It was coiled around the squat toilet, its beady eyes gleaming, tongue flickering.

“Move back,” said the Bulgarian to Max.

He tightened his grip on the trekking pole. Sweat dripped from the back of his head to his thick neck. The snake must have heard or felt him. It raised its head and spread its magnificent hood.

Max stood rooted to the ground watching the snake’s shiny, smooth scales and oily, brown skin. It was beautiful, magnificent, shaking with life force.

The Bulgarian raised his hands to bring the pole crashing on the snake’s head.

“Stop,” said Max. “Please stop.”

“What, man?” said the Bulgarian, turning his head around in apparent confusion.

Max didn’t answer. The void within him expanded to include the wondrous life form in front of him.
He was the snake
. The majestic, twisted body that didn’t know why it was born, why it would die, why it struck everyone with repulsion and fear.
We are one
, said Max to him.
I understand you. Just go outside for now. Slowly lower your hood, uncoil yourself from around the toilet, come straight toward us, go to the bench in the courtyard and outside the boundary of the ashram. Don’t come back for a few days. Are you listening to me? Do it now.

The snake lowered its hood, untangled itself from the toilet and moved toward them.

“Back,” said the Bulgarian and lifted the pole again.

“Stop,” said Max.

He caught hold of the Bulgarian’s sweaty right arm and pulled it down.

“What are you doing, bastard?” said the Bulgarian.

The snake came closer to them. The Bulgarian tried to wrestle his arm away. Max held his thick wrist tight, pressing hard on his veins with his finger nails.

“It hurts, man. Stop. Help,” shouted the Bulgarian.

He lashed out with his left hand.

Max caught it and pinned the Bulgarian’s hands behind him, still staring at the snake.

The snake slithered and curved around their feet. It remained looped around their feet for a minute while the Bulgarian whimpered, then it uncurled itself, moved toward the lone courtyard bench and went out of the gates of the ashram.

Max released the Bulgarian’s hands.

The Bulgarian shoved him.

“What the hell you were thinking, man? Why did you catch me? We could have died, man. We were dead. Fucking fuck. We were dead,” he said, hopping around.

The sweat from the Bulgarian’s brows poured in a steady stream down his face. All of a sudden, he stopped and stared at Max. “You knew it, didn’t you, man? You knew cobra would come toward us and go out.” He made a strange sound with his throat, half laughing, half crying. “Who are you? You are mad, man. You spoke to snake, right? Oh fucking Christ, where the hell am I? The silence, the snake, this Harry Potter craziness. You guys are like devil cult or something.”

Max left him and went back to his bed. He wasn’t sure the snake had understood, but something had happened between them, a transfer of energy, an awareness of presence, something. Whatever it was, the snake had lived. Max slept comfortably that night.

The Bulgarian left the next morning. He preferred to walk to the village rather than wait three days more for the tractor.

The next evening, during meditation, Sophia’s face filled Max’s mind. But it wasn’t the Sophia he remembered. She was thirty pounds heavier, her face was completely white, her eyes sunken and weary. An angry blue scar crossed her pale cheek. Max opened his eyes. She was sick. He began to breathe faster.

Max closed his eyes again. Now, Sophia was in a flowing, light-green dress. Her hand lifted listlessly to swallow a handful of pills. The veins below her eyes grew larger.

Max opened his eyes again. By now, he knew enough to know the image was real. Somewhere, Sophia was suffering. His lungs exploded. He had known it when her emails stopped. His throat choked. The silence, the space within him, vanished.

Back in his hut, he paced around. He walked out to speak to Ramakrishna but stopped. Ramakrishna wouldn’t say much but his eyes would speak the truth. Human attachments tethered man to this unfulfilling cycle of birth and death.
Liberate yourself from narrow individual bonds. See oneness everywhere.
Max sat down on his bed and meditated. Sophia’s body was suffering. Her mind was ill. The body, the mind, they were fickle and destined to decay, subject as they were to the same laws of impermanence that bound the entire phenomenal world. But Sophia, her true essence was fine. Still laughing when she came down the iron slide, squeezing her date’s hand at Thanksgiving dinner, eyes dancing, hands moving with abandon when she talked. She was so close he could touch her. Max opened his eyes. She had no one but him.

Max stuffed his backpack with his sparse clothes and left the ashram. The moon, a thin sliver, cast a faint light on his path. He removed his shoes. Barefoot, he connected easily to the ridges and furrows in the hard land and let them guide him to the village. In three days, he would be back in New York. He’d stay only until he had helped her recover. Nothing else in the incomplete material world would ensnare him again. The blackness enveloped him as he walked through the silent, starless night. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the space between his eyes. No new images came. Just Sophia’s pale, worn face and listless eyes.
What happened, my dear? I
’
m coming.

Max reached the village at dawn. He took the water from the pail hanging by the well and threw it over his burning eyes. A shriveled old woman with scorched purple-black skin came out of one of the huts. She called out to the others. More doors opened. Three women in sarees, four or five lanky men with long white cloths tied around their waists, and a handful of naked kids rubbing their eyes, shuffled out. They greeted Max with broad smiles. The kids surrounded him, pulling his T-shirt, talking and laughing. A boy brought out a pair of sticks and wanted to play
gilli-danda
—lifting the small stick in the air with the big stick and hitting it as far as it could go.

Max hit one into the distance. The kids clapped. Max smiled at them. He knew every kid’s name now. They played with him whenever he came to deliver food supplies to the village. He had taught them a smattering of English and he understood some of the local dialect. A woman gave him a glass of tea. Someone or the other always served him food on his visits. Just like a second family.

Max set the stick down and began walking the six miles to Pavur. A girl with tiny pigtails pulled at his khakis, asking him to stay. In the distance, an infant cried in an old woman’s arms. Max looked into the eyes of the little girl who was smiling through her cute, chipped teeth. He felt hollow, sinking, disappearing into space. Breaking into pieces, melting, merging with the girl. Max had never felt such helpless love before. He stood still, allowing his breath to return to normal. The feeling passed.

Max resumed his walk to Pavur. The girl waved at him. The kids cheered.

Soon, they would bind him too.

Max walked faster.

Seeking but not finding the House Builder,

I traveled through the round of countless births;

O painful is birth ever and ever again.

Something, someone, this person, that family had tethered him in every life. This time though, he was so close to liberating himself from the bondage to this sense of self, to becoming just a channel of the universal. He couldn’t let this narrow love hold him back. Max stopped. Sophia’s pale, sickly face came before his eyes again. His throat tightened. Max looked up at the sky. Hari’s family had pulled him back. The need for comfort had called Shakti. Max wouldn’t let his attachments get in his way. He turned around.

The kids jumped and shouted upon seeing him again. Max tried to smile. Each one of them, everyone in the world, was the same as Sophia. Tears stinging his eyes, he began to walk back to the ashram in his bare feet.