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The
Stationmaster - The Saint with the Knife and Rod
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Meditation is universal and yet the most
individual experience one can possibly imagine. India was, at least a few
decades ago, a place of soul! It was, and maybe still is, a country
harboring a Dickens-like rainbow of distinct archetypical personalities. In
this sense, India is like a time machine that has preserved cultural and
personal archetypes for the last 5,000 years, now all coexisting in an
organic fractal chaos, blending the Stone Age with smartphones. Hence, one
could clone an entire nation out of just one Indian! This uniqueness is
especially true when it comes to the saints of India. They are all extremely
different in their expression of universality. |
Just as I had come to the conclusion that all these ancient sages
I met in Hoshiarpur were extraordinary compassionate and kind,
I met the Station Master.
Meeting a Man Unlike any
Other
Upon meeting the man you see in the picture, I spontaneously
felt like hugging him. At that time, I had none of the thoughts like the
ones you can read here.
The room in which we found ourselves was dark and unbearably hot - the
Indian summer of June 2000. His presence felt like something between ice and
light. So, like a moth drawn to a candle, I moved toward him and embraced him.
He replied in almost perfect English:
'Why does this man embrace this body? My wife says it stinks!'
The universal truth behind this statement, made by this old retired
stationmaster living in a dark room without a fan, can be found in the ancient
Indian scriptures. It can also be rediscovered by any individual who has the
courage to lose herself into itself.
The Vedantic truth in his words is: You are not this body! You are THAT: Tat Twam Asi.
My attempt to hug the sage prompted him to launch into further invective against
me. I was the stereotypical Westerner, overly inclined to give in to the
nonsense of my, in reality, non-existent body!
In fact, he preferred that I didn’t visit him again.
It would be a waste of time for both me and him.
But at the same time, this grumpy old man in his late 90s, through his unique
humor, had managed to add his own distinct 'smell' to the universe. Then he
stated, without the slightest humor or self-irony,
'When I go to the toilet, God goes to the toilet.'
There is no other being on this planet similar to this Stationmaster.
I think you can 'smell' it, looking at these rare photos."
(They were actually taken against his will and with a disturbing
flashlight - forgive me!)
It was
Bharadwaj who knew all the
spiritual secrets hidden in Hoshiarpur. According to him, Hoshiarpur could be
translated into the 'City of Saints.' When Bharadwaj and I knocked on the door
of the Stationmaster's humble house, he made one thing clear from the very
beginning. In fact, he made it a condition for our entering his premises that
each of us had to choose now—if we had not done so already.
He said:
'You have to choose... there is no middle path... either this world or
GOD!'
I must confess that I was slightly irritated by the predictability of
these words. They jolted me out of the mind-blowing state I was in, encountering
this figure reminiscent of the late stage of Ramses the Second. Now, this was a
typical spiritual cliché! I had heard this statement too many times before.
However, my attempt to deflect with smart-ass irony from my inner vortex of
emptiness failed as soon as he spoke to me again:
'Do you have any questions?
If you don't have any genuine questions,
you might as well leave now!'
His intense and impolite behavior trapped my body between the chair I
was aiming for and his couch. He grabbed my arm and practically forced me to sit
beside him on his couch. His face drew closer to mine—it stopped when our faces
were around 5 cm apart. Through a distinct odor of 'old man,' a pair of
half-blind laser eyes had spotted their target—a deer caught in the middle of
the road by car lights—a collision was inevitable.
Do you
know that the most important sense to conquer is the sense of feeling?
Through the skin, it envelops the entire body. That's why I never use a
fan—not even in June! You are all enslaved by positive sensations
through this sense.
Now, what is your
question?
The Knife
I then asked him how he had conquered the skin and the world. His
answer made me sweat and freeze simultaneously.
"I
was sitting on my couch. I
held a knife to my throat and said:
Oh, mind! If you raise your head, I
will cut you.
The mind did not appear.
After 12 years, I put down the knife."
In that moment, the world stopped... So, I
will use this break from time and space to write all these thoughts from here:
from my laptop, many years later. What the Stationmaster uttered was not mere
talk! He 'owned' his words. In this sense, they were like primordial sounds,
capable of transporting spiritual essence. It was a pure gift of intense
aliveness, in stark contrast to the old, zombie-like body on the couch.
Yet at the same time I can say that I
did not make this choice between this world and God - I never did. This dualism
had and has no meaning for me. I, as stated in the
chapter about Papaji,,
during these years only got glimpses of that internal super-nova.
I never achieved the so called enlightenment, but that does not mean my life
long search was a failure! Now here in my retirement age I can state that this
beloved body of mine is more happy than it ever was. 'Thank you' has become my
favorite expression.
Dear reader! This leads us to a another important issue, I might be very wrong
here, but this is my take. If we are all individual in our universal essence it
is impossible to copy the behaviour of a Master - it is actually impossible to
do what he tells us to do...
We have to rebel as the station master himself was a true rebel. So we have to
imbibe essence instead of sitting with our small knives trying to imitate a
Stationmaster or any other holy scripture.
Why do you come again and again?!
He turned to Bhaharadwaj,
who had brought me here: “Why do you bring all these unserious
people to me?" The
stationmaster, almost as if performing a ritual, scolded Bharadwaj:
' And why do you
come here again and again!?
Don’t you know that God is also in the streets?'
Bharadwaj always replied with a
radiant smile, an excuse, and then bowed his head with a pranam towards this
living dead man...
The station master's scolding reminded by a quote of Meister Eckhart:
But if a man does
well; God is really in him, and with him everywhere, on the streets and among
people, -
And courage as essence was easy to feel and imbibe in the company of this Divine
Inspirator! Now, listen to what the stationmaster said about his relationship to
his own Gurus.
The two Gurus of the Stationmaster
The stationmaster had two gurus with conflicting, almost opposite
teachings. After 12 years of unwavering spiritual practice, starting with his
retirement at the age of 60, he realized his Eternal Being. Then he went to his
first guru with the following words:
'I have
realized the supreme truth...
I don't need your guidance or company anymore.'
This guru became furious and
literally kicked the stationmaster out of his ashram.
Then, the stationmaster went to his second guru—a man who, in the year 2000, was
still living naked in a churchyard about 100 km outside New Delhi. The
stationmaster repeated his statement. The churchyard guru rose from his
meditation position, sitting in funeral pyre ashes, and embraced the
stationmaster. After this loving farewell, they never saw each other again.
Now, back to Hoshiarpur, June 2000...
With the immense, intense, almost blind eyes you can sense in the above
picture, the Stationmaster grilled Bharadwaj and me with these words:
'Don’t rely upon a guru!
Don’t make me a guru!
Just cultivate your willpower,
and if the mind comes:
use the rod!'
Then, seemingly out of context, the Station Master
looked at Bharadwaj and said:
'The rickshaw-wallah was
supposed to get 5 rupees.
You gave him 10. That is good!'
He then continued, addressing me:
'After I realized the supreme
truth,
I began to study all the world's holy scriptures.
I have now come to the conclusion
that Christianity is the highest religion!'
This statement was a surprise within a surprise. I
asked him to elaborate on that statement, but he softly declined with the words:
'Find out for yourself.'
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