The Soul Energy
Sacred Journeys. Soul Tales. Energy Healing
The Long Wait
What you seek is seeking you – Rumi
It has been seven long days since the group of monks have been walking. Just pausing on the way at few villages enroute, for food. Their leader, the Master, had been silent for almost two days, only replying in monosyllables to their conversation. He seemed to be in a hurry.
They did not have the courage to ask him questions regarding where they were heading and the reason for the haste. They had entered the forest yesterday afternoon and have been walking incessantly. After climbing down a steep forest path, they turned right. There was a beautiful waterbody, with lotuses blooming.
The Master’s face shown with evident happiness, as he said, “There she is, waiting for me.” The disciples saw a young girl filling up water in a pitcher. As soon as she saw them, she rushed to the Master and bowed at his feet. Her voice almost choking, she spoke, “You have come for me at last.”
She was Ditha, the daughter of a grave digger, and the family stayed away from the village, in the fringes of the forest. The parents of the girl, came and stood near her. They had always known that she was different from their other five children, and that her destiny would also be something else.
As Ditha bid a tearful farewell to her family and joined the group of monks, on their journey further, the other five disciples were perplexed. What was it about this girl that made the Master make so much effort to find her? They still did not have the courage to ask him anything.
That very night, all five saw the same dream – a child prince playing in the garden with a beautiful butterfly; then the butterfly changes into a snake near an anthill watching a young monk engrossed in deep meditation; the monk now is older sitting under a tree speaking to his disciples while an owl is perched on a tree listening to him. By the time they got up at dawn, they had all understood that the revered Master had given them his answer.
The soul which had no-name and no-form, was born again and again as the butterfly, the snake, the owl and now as Ditha. After so many births, she finally had the human form to receive and imbibe the Master’s teachings.
As they started heading towards an unknown destination again, each recollected how they had met the Master, and could relate to the girl, when she said, “Master, thank you for finding me, it has been a very long wait for me.”
The Buddha smiled and replied, “My child, my wait for you all has been much longer.”
The disciples who had always thought that it was they who had patiently awaited the Master’s arrival, now understood how much longer, the many eons, the Buddha would have had to wait, to find his own.
The Forest Deity
Shom and Rajam were brothers, sons of the chief in a little tribal village in southern India. Their tribe of Ahamors, like most indigenous communities, laid a strong focus on their identity. A distinctive feature of their tribe was, decoration of their faces and arms with tiny white dots, made with sandalwood paste. The Ahamors believed that they beautified themselves as a form of worship to the greatest beauty in the whole world, Athama, the forest deity, whose whole body was covered with white dots.
She had appeared down the ages to the lineage of chiefs and whoever saw her was mesmerised by her unearthly beauty. The last to have seen her was Shom’s great grandfather, who said that Athama seemed like a human but was not. Nobody had seen her for many decades after that, though sometimes they did hear her voice in the forest. While outsiders would call it the wailing of the wind, for the Ahamors, it was their revered Athama singing in ecstasy.
The boys believed all the stories told to them by their parents and village elders, but they hated being decorated with the white dots every morning. It was a challenge for their mother to make them sit quietly while she completed the task of beautifying them.
One morning, after another heated argument with their mother, the boys took their best friend, Kromja the buffalo, inside the forest. They had no plans to return home anytime soon, so they kept going. As the forest started becoming denser and darker, they got a little apprehensive and were thinking of turning back when they noticed a green shimmering glow. They walked towards it and saw someone sitting beneath it caressing her arms. They observed she had a third arm behind her, or maybe a tail, which was so long that it went almost above her head. She was covered with dots, almost similar to theirs, but whiter. At first she did not seem to notice them, but then looked up. She was so fascinating and beautiful that the boys forgot to feel afraid, even when she stood up and showed them her very tall form.
Then she spoke looking directly at Shom, “Some years from now you will be the chief of your village so it is necessary for you to understand the great responsibility your tribe carries.” She continued, “The marks that you see on my body are not of beauty but of disease and pain. I am the mother of the forest. All the trees and plants are my children. I absorb all their pain and afflictions on my body and that is how the dots appear.”
What she went on to reveal was contrary to what they had always believed. Athama said, “You are all so dear to me, not because you emulate my beauty, but because you share my pain.” She added that she had explained the same to their great grandfather. That she appeared to every fourth generation in the chief’s family to reaffirm their faith and make them understand their responsibility.
Shom was young, but he understood very well what the forest deity had communicated. He took his brother’s hand and walked home with Kromja. They did not tell anyone of the encounter in the forest, but from the next day onwards sat down quietly to get the dots made. Beauty might not be a badge of honour, but sharing someone’s pain surely is. In time, Shom became a great chief and ensured that for the next few generations they continued the tradition.
Back from the Brink
Rasbihari waited in a dark area by the riverside. It was Diwali festival night, and like the rest of city, the flight of steps leading down to Ganga river were lit up by thousands of lamps, making the atmosphere surreal and magical. One of the oldest inhabited heritage cities in the world, Varanasi has always been mesmerising at night. The steps where he was sitting was however away from the celebrations, it was silent and nobody was around.
He had made up his mind, he had to end his life tonight. The situation at work and home had turned into a veritable battlefield – the eldest son, Rasbihari had become a pariah in his large extended family because his wrong decisions had led the family business to the brink of bankruptcy. His wife had also left his home a few hours ago, with their children, swearing never to return. With no one to turn to, he thought that the waters of river Ganga were his only refuge.
While Rasbihari was thinking of how to die, he heard the faint sound of anklets. Startled, he turned around to see who the woman was. He saw no one. It was all dark, other than the faint glow coming from a nearby small temple of Goddess Kali, which lit up a part of the water.
Sure that he had imagined the sound, Rasbihari started brooding again. A few minutes later, he again heard the anklets. This time the sound was more distinctive and he could hear it clearly. It seemed that she was deliberately making the sound to get his attention. Rasbihari was a worshipper of Goddess Kali, and knew that no negative energies could harm him.
Then, he saw her. He could feel his heart thumping, as he made out the many armed silhouette, which in a flash merged into the darkness. He could again hear the anklets going fast towards the temple.
Rasbihari gathered all his courage to follow the sound. As he approached the little temple, the sound stopped. When he stepped inside the temple, tears welled up in his eyes. He could feel a great wave of love wash over him, as he stood before the idol of the goddess. Rasbihari could not stop crying. He knew who had brought him here, and he also understood why. She did not want him to die and had drawn him away to a place where he would feel secure in her presence. Just like a mother’s love gives strength to her child, he could feel the strength of the Dark Goddess. Full of remorse, he sat down on the floor of the temple and did not realise when he fell asleep crying.
The next dawn, the priest was startled to see him lying at the foot of the idol. Woken up by the priest, Rasbihari walked home a different man. He was aware now that he had to face life and its challenges. There was a reason for him to be alive, and he had to fulfill his life purpose.
A Ganga River Tale
They had been seeing her since the last many months. The little girl would appear unexpectedly on the banks of the river Ganga, which was a favourite play area for many children in the small pilgrim town. She would play with them happily for a few hours in the evening, before going away. She was a beautiful child, but sadly could not speak or hear. The townsfolk could not find out who she was. In this little town, where everyone knew each other, this was something strange.
Though the girl seemed intelligent enough to pick up the games played by the other children, she seemed very different in her demeanour. She just enjoyed playing and had no will to compete or win. Everyday she would reach the bank late afternoon, wait for the other children and would go away as the sun set. The children therefore started calling her Surya (meaning the Sun).
The townspeople always avoided a particular stretch of the river which was known to be home of deadly crocodiles. Many people had lost their lives there and even the boats did not venture into the area. One afternoon, they were shocked to find Surya floating in a basket on the river. The shock turned into horror when they noticed that a crocodile was following her.
She had seen it too, but instead of being scared, she treated the dangerous reptile as another playmate, and was poking it playfully with a twig. She did not pay any attention to the desperate signs from the people who had gathered on the banks of the river.
A few men jumped into a boat with spears to drive away the crocodile and rescue the girl. As soon as the boat neared the reptile, it dived into the water and disappeared. When they turned to pick up the girl, she was not there. Nobody had seen her fall into the water. She had just vanished into thin air.
They never saw Surya again. For a long time, the people in the town discussed no other subject but the mysterious child and who she was. Was she an ordinary human being? A water nymph? Or Mother Ganga herself? Many believed that she was the holy river Ganga playing with her carrier, which is a crocodile as shown in sacred iconography. The story of the little girl became a part of the local lore. Down the ages, in many places similar tales were heard – sometimes of a young girl, an old woman or a child. Different stories of a vulnerable human’s unusual empathy for a dangerous creature (from a python and cobra to alligators and scorpions). Each time, she would disappear after a large number of people had watched the incident.
While all these incidents never failed to shock all those who heard of it even many years later, the message in it a few did understand – that which the world fears and abhors, has its own sacred space. She had always appeared to make mankind understand this truth.
The Magical Search
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper – W. B. Yeats
The ship had not approached land for almost 25 days, and the sight of the island raised the hopes of the sailors and Captain Barnos that their woes were probably over. While there seemed to be no sign of civilisation on the island, the veteran captain knew that mariners had frequented it in the distant past and had strange tales to tell. They called the mysterious island in the Indian Ocean, Yarkud.
As the ship drew near and they lowered a boat to approach the island, they observed that it was covered in mist, unusual for a warm summer afternoon. When they neared the rocky shore, they saw a large tidal pool. The water inside it was swirling as if being pulled by an internal current. There were also strange sounds coming from the pool, almost like incantations. Mystified by the strange phenomenon, the sailors walked ahead, but something seemed to stop them, almost like an invisible wall. Jasper, the young deckhand, who due to some reasons was the only one who was able to cross the stretch of sand and walk into the dense foliage ahead. They waited for him to return for three days, but he never came back. The boy was popular with the hardened seafarers, he would often recite for them short bits of poetry that he wrote, which captivated their hearts.
The old captain had heard from his predecessors that most people were not able to enter Yarkud, and the rare few who did never returned. He had never thought that young Jasper for some reasons would be among them. He also believed that the strange tidal pool, the mist were just an illusion, the real magic was somewhere within the island. The captain himself did not know how close he was to the truth. It was a home of magical beings who lived in and around a lake at the centre of the island. This was from where they could become a part of the earth and be born elsewhere, travel around in the oceans and rivers, dissipate into the air and emerge somewhere in the world. They were the free spirits of nature living in trees, forests, rivers and lakes, but in Yarkud, they were in their true form.
They did not stop anyone from entering their world and become a part of it. People who believe in magic of nature could walk into this world which was for them to explore and understand. The only password they needed is a simple belief. You are what you believe, and those people who have magic in their hearts are magical beings themselves.
As Captain Barnos took his ship away from the island, he knew that some mysteries are never meant to be solved. This had happened almost 230 years ago. Yarkud is a forgotten place today and remains hidden from the world. Even as aircraft fly over it all the time, the mist and the clouds continue to hide its secrets well.
But you can always experience the magic when you silently listen to a bird song, connect with the earth when you walk barefoot on grass, feel intoxicated by the fragrance of flowers or hear the dance of the wind as it rustles through leaves …. The magic of nature is all around us.
Temple of Nature
The river meandered through an inlet, cordoning it into a secluded hidden area. The dense foliage converting the vicinity into a world of green, as sunlight streaked in through the leaves from the surrounding trees. The water was also an exotic fluid carpet dotted with lotus leaves, with an occasional purple pink flower accentuating the beauty.
It was in this breathtaking world where the earth, the sky and the water, all seemed to merge together into a seamless spectrum of green that the kayak entered with its two occupants. Ridhima and Meera had strayed into the inlet by mistake. The two girls were in Thailand for a holiday and were part of a group which had opted for a kayaking excursion.
As they stared in amazement at the stunningly beautiful world they had strayed into, each reacted differently. For Ridhima it seemed that she had entered a magical temple of nature, pulsating with an unknown energy she could not understand, but feel. Meera, on the contrary was actually scared, as the whole environment was too alien for her to comprehend.
What however piqued the curiosity of both girls was a small figurine in green, which almost seemed lifelike, sitting in a meditative stance with eyes closed, on one of the lotus leaves. They wondered who would have put this figurine in this unusual place and for sometime they kept staring at it as if mesmerised, before retreating and joining the others who were calling out to them.
As soon as the kayak was out of sight, the being on the lotus leaf, opened his eyes. He did not like getting disturbed, but once in a while if a human entered his sanctuary, they never left without getting a gift from him.
The girls returned back to India and for many days they kept seeing dreams of entering the green inlet and the figurine. It seemed that they were transported into a magical world again and again. Unknown to them, the experience had changed them profoundly. Ridhima, who was a nature lover, started discovering that every blade of glass, each flower and leaf, pulsates with an energy, the same that she had discovered in the inlet. While Meera realised that she was afraid no more of things that she could not identify with, and in time also understood that nothing was actually alien in this world, there was a seamless uniformity which pervaded everything.
The gift had come to pass.
A Tale of the Afterlife
The tribe of Yohans took great pride in their traditions as most indigenous communities do. They lived in an interior segment of North East India and preferred seclusion from the other hill tribes in the region. One of the reasons for this has been their strong focus on the afterlife, which many times preceded even the calling of their present life.
Their village bordered the marshy inlet of the Great Lake that has since as long as the inhabitants remember, witnessed a unique phenomenon. On certain days of the year, balls of light have shot up from the lake and disappeared into the night. The Yohans have always believed that the Great Lake has been home to their ancestors and a sacred water body. They cremated the dead, but made a small idol of the deceased and immersed it with the ashes in the lake. Along with it they also immersed miniature replicas of clay utensils, bed, everything one needed at home. According to them, their ancestors carried out their everyday activities at the bottom of the lake. And when these lights appeared, the souls finally got freedom from their watery world and merged with the infinite.
The village potter, Sham, who created these little idols, was devastated when his little son died due to a mysterious illness. He crafted with loving care the tiny idol of the boy and all the things the child liked. After completing the last rites and submerging the idol, he started spending hours at the lake every night worried about his son at the bottom of the lake. He kept praying for the boy’s soul to merge with God at the earliest.
Sham was sure that whenever the lights appeared, he would know which was his son. More than seven months passed, then one night he saw a small ball of light emerge from the lake along with a few larger ones. His heart skipped a beat as it hovered over the water, and as Sham went near the water’s edge, it seemed to flicker in front of him, before disappearing. It was only then that the grieving father’s heart found a closure, sure that his son was being taken care of by the supreme God.
While science would explain the lights on the lake as phosphine gas bubbles, for the Yohans it is a matter of faith. Which is the greater truth? That which the heart seeks to believe, of course.
The True Mirror
Sanofa was a being of the magical realm – wispy creations of God, sometimes seen, but mostly invisible to human eyes even though they are all around – hidden among the leaves, mosses, feathers and clouds. Sanofa was the odd one, she never really cared how she looked, so busy was she flitting around doing things that made her feel useful. Straightening the petal of a blooming flower, pushing a vine to get sunlight for growth, helping a bee extract the honey it needed. There was never enough time for her to prune and preen. In the magical realm of beautiful creatures, she was known as the Dishevelled One.
Sometimes, she would look into the mirror and wonder. She loved herself but did not like what she saw on the other side. One day after cleaning up a pond of a diseased algae which would have killed the lotus flowers, she stood before the mirror again to see how she appeared. Her heart weighed down heavy as she realised she would never belong. Suddenly she saw the apparition of a beautiful goddess like being emerging from herself and gliding in front of her. The apparition then disappeared into the mirror, which showed nothing different. After a while the apparition came out from the mirror and merged into Sanofa again.
She was perplexed – who was this enchanting being who resided in her? What did this goddess want to communicate? Too many questions plagued Sanofa’s mind as she made her way to the Wise One. The Wise One lived on a cotton tree and looked like a ball of cotton herself – wizened, old and white. But she knew the secrets of all realms and was revered by all.
Hearing Sanofa’s account of the mysterious goddess, the Wise One asked her to seek the answer from her own heart. A bit sceptical, but not having the courage to disobey the Wise One, she did as told. As Sanofa placed her hand on her heart, closed her eyes, and quietened her restless mind, she could feel the goddess speak. The beauty of the moment overwhelmed her so much that she started crying. She opened her eyes to look with gratitude at the Wise One, who was smiling knowingly. For Sanofa had realised that what she had seen was no goddess, it was her own heart which had shown her its beautiful image. And, she knew now that the true mirror was within one’s own self, not a piece of glass outside.
Under the Peepal Tree
She sat there all day long, under the massive Peepal tree (sacred fig) next to a tributary of Gomti river. The children would go and sit around her, trying to catch her glance. She would smile at them sometimes and often make some signs. She never spoke though. The villagers understood she had taken a vow of silence.
They called her the Yogini (a female Yogi). No one knew who she was or where she had come from. Just one day, they found her meditating under the Peepal tree, outside the village. Soon the villagers started telling their problems to her. They were never sure whether she was listening to them or not, but they always believed that speaking before her would resolve the issue. The sick then started visiting and vouched that their conditions improved in her presence. She would sometimes throw a leaf or a twig at them which they believed cured their ailments.
Her calm presence affected them so much that the fact that she was a woman, unusual for a Yogi, did not matter to the simple villagers. Before the monsoons they built a little hut for her near the tree, so that she could be protected from the heavy rains. She never got to live there though. The first rain that came was torrential, the cloud-burst almost flooded the outskirts of the village and the river overflowed its banks.
When the waters receded, the villagers went to check on her, but could not locate the Yogini. They only found a few scattered belongings. They started believing that the waters had taken her away and grieved her death.
There were others who believed that she was never gone – she still blessed them at the sacred Peepal tree, which is known to be a home for devas and nature beings. For in the last 50 years since the incident happened, many times young children have seen her under the tree. The villagers continue to go there and pray for the resolution of their problems. The place where they had built her hut, is now a shrine in her memory.
In a society where women mystics and seers have not always got much recognition, this could have been the reason why the Yogini went to a little forgotten village to spend the last few months of her life. She probably knew that the simple faith the village folk had in their hearts would be much stronger than the parochial views of the outside world. And that, she would continue to bless them as long as this faith lasted.
The Essence of Play
The joy of the soul
The beat of the heart
The dance of the spirit
The rhythm of breath
Every moment of life
Is a glorious play of consciousness.
The shine in the eyes
The call of the wild
The whisper of leaves
The laughter of a child
Every expression
Is a reflection of your vital energy.
The warmth of the sun
The turbulence of the wind
The solace of water
The comfort of the earth
Every element
Is a manifestation of your will.
O Supreme Mother !
The divine essence of life
Our inner and outer universe is your endless play.