BIRTHDAY AT MANAV KENDRA Russell Perkins reportson
the 1972 Celebrations The first thing you see, coming along the highway from
Delhi, is the big water tower with MANAV KENDRA on the top. The second thing you see is the pool. Then a
lot of images crowd in at once – Masters buffaloes, the buildings, the
spaciousness, the Himalayas along the rim that just take your breath away – and
you realize with an awful thrill that you are actually there. There is no doubt that when Manav Kendra is
finished it will be one of the most beautiful places on this planet. Even now,
raw and unfinished and muddy, it has the capacity to grip the heart and mind
and soul in a way that very few places can. The pool is just unbelievable. No picture does it
justice. Standing at its south end, looking across at the mountains, it seems
very obvious that God piled up the mountains with one hand and scooped out the
pool with the other. Inner peace comes of itself while standing there; more
easily perhaps than anywhere except in the presence of the Master himself. * * * * We were told that at the January Satsang in
Delhi, the Master asked the congregation whether they wanted to celebrate his
birthday in Delhi or at Manav Kendra. A vote was taken, and Manav Kendra was
the overwhelming winner. It was announced that free bus service from Delhi
would be provided for anyone who wanted to go up, and as always, free food and
accommodations (mostly under huge tents) were available for all. By February 4 (two days before the Birthday) tents
were erected all over – a huge tent in front of the main stage to serve as a
shelter for Satsang as well as housing, tents in the back field. One big one
marked SAWAN ASHRAM CANTEEN where you could purchase tea sweets if you are so
inclined – the disciples had begun to arrive, and the visitors form the west (a
dozen or so) were moved from their temporary quarters in the hospital (due to
be inaugurated as such on the Birthday) to a bungalow about ten minutes walk
away from the Manav Kendra. In the afternoon of the 4th the first
Satsang was held; a relatively informal affair, with swami Arvindananda as
guest speaker. Then that evening the rain began. It came down
in torrents all night and all the next day, knocking down and rendering useless
every single tent, turning the whole of Manav Kendra into a vast sea of mud,
and forcing a cancellation of a days activities. Thousands of people had their
temporary homes literally washed out from under them, and all day long on the 5th,
through the cold driving rain, busload after busload of pilgrims with bedrolls
and blankets, arrived eagerly and hopefully to attend the Satsang – and there
was no place for them…. What did Master do? First of all, every
available building at Manav Kendra no matter its state of construction, was
pressed into service. The hospital, just vacated by the Westerners (who had
slept four to a room), was turned back into a dormitory with twenty to thirty
in a room. The guest house, the Father Homes for the Aged, the dormitories for
the workers, and the building which will eventually become Masters house, none
of them finished, were all utilized and thousands were taken care of in this
way (although the amount of space per person was considerably less than most
Westerners would like). For the rest, Master and his staff, working unceasingly
all day long, managed to find enough accommodations in the Dehra Dun area to
house all those still unprovided for. And Masters attitude was such a perfect example
of his teaching. That night at darshan, calm and unruffled as ever after a day
of wrestling with problems that would have buried any of us, Master said to me
with his infectious chuckle, “Well what do you think of all our accommodations
now? (laughing) Are they quite comfortable?” That night the rain stopped; the next morning,
Masters birthday, dawned bright and clear and cold and beautiful – with the
mountains reflected in the pool and the clouds like living things hovering
overhead. Master asked that the 4 a.m. darshan be
eliminated this year, and so the Westerners all stayed over in their bungalow. But
the devotees at Manav Kendra turned up at 4 a.m. anyway, and Master came out,
as usual, and gave them his darshan – just as if he had never asked them not
to.. The morning Satsang was held by the side of the
pool, because the area that had been set aside for Satsangs was soping wet. So a temporary dais was
erected and Master came over about 8 a.m. and put us in meditation. What a
sweet meditation that was! Sitting on the hard ground, overtones of the storm
still with us, the air fresh and bright and cold and the grace of the Master
within. For forty-five minutes or so the outside world was forgotten and all of
us were absorbed inside. Then Master come back, took us out of
meditation, and the Satsang began. Various swamis and yogis were there and
spoke and that morning session was very and happy and free. The guest speakers
did not speak too long, and one of them, swami Ved Vyasananda of Hardwar, was a
positive delight. This gentleman, a mahamandleshwar with 50,000 sadhus owing
him allegiance, is one of the really important Hindu leaders; yet he is very
humble and differential with the Master, and his talk was full of good humor
and laughter. Taiji (bibi Hardevi) turned up and sang one of the Masters
beautiful songs; Bibi Lajo (baba Sawan singhs housekeeper for many years and
the author of the Sakayan) made a surprise appearance and attempted
unsuccessfully to garland the Master (who will not accept garlands from anyone;
his usual practice is to take the garland in his hands and slip it over the
other persons head before they realize what he is doing); Masters son, Darshan,
up form Delhi, recited one or two of his award winning Urdu poems in praise of
the Master; there was a great deal of music, including a beautiful hymn by
Master Pratap Singh JI, the Music Master or pothi; and the Satsang concluded,
after about four hours, with a beautifully serene discourse by the Master. * * * * While everyone was eating from the langar, Mr. Sethi, one of Masters secretaries, called me
over. “I want you to meet someone,” he said. He introduced me to the simplest
sweetest poorest old man, wearing a turban and dhoti and little else. He said
something in Hindi to the man, who came over and hugged me. And his hug was
like a child’s hug, you know? Pure and gentle – very, very gentle – like a
really young child. When he left, Sethi said, “that man has the form of the
Master within twenty-four hours of the day and night. He is authorized to
deliver messages from both Master and Baba Sawan Singh to others who cannot
reach inside. And he is a very simple man”, he said, “a very simple man. At his
initiation he had a very high experience; but afterwards, when Master was
explaining that he had given them all some capital to start with, this man got
up and said, “Where, Maharaj Ji? I don’t see any money.’ That is how simple he
is.” * * * * we all gathered again for the
afternoon Satsang at 4 pm. This time, the crowd was much larger (about 15000
people – approximately half of what it would have been in Delhi) and the
speakers sat on the main stage, which is a permanently constructed building
with a roof and addressed the congregation as it sat on the regular Satsang
grounds, still soggy but now usable. The honored guests included, in addition
to the swamis already mentioned, Swami Govindananda of the Shahansha Ashram in
Dehra Dun; Maharaj Jagjit Singh, head of the Namdhari Sikhs and an old friend
of the Master; and various Muslim, Sikh and Hindu leaders, both lay and clergy. As we were taking our seats, an old
man, very rough hewn and coarse and ragged, was singing his heart out to his
own accompaniment on a tambourine over the microphone to the assembled sangat.
The Masters platform is not only open to the so-called leaders, but to the
followers too; to the obscure as well as the famous; to anyone, in fact, who
has something to say. About halfway through the Satsang,
the Master and Jagjit Singh and a few others left the stage for a few minutes
to dedicate the free homeopathic dispensary, functioning for the first time. The following morning Master gave
Naam to (or as we would say, initiated) about three hundred people. Of this
number, a little less than half made contact with the Radiant form of the
Master inside, and about half of the rest saw the strong sunlight inside. Some
of these people – these dear, dear people, our brothers and sisters – were
moving beyond words. One lady was sitting there in all humility with no eyes on
her face at all – not even the sockets; she had been horribly burned in a fire,
we heard. She got the Guru’s form inside. A young Sikh man, smiling so broadly
it seemed his face would split apart, was so bubbling over with primordial joy
that he could hardly contain himself nodding in ecstatic agreement with every
word that Master said. A young, humble Muslim aspirant was given the Sufi
Mantra; that is the five names that Master gave him were in Persian rather than
Sanskrit and derived from the great Sufi Masters ( of course they have the same
significance); Master is the embodiment and living fulfillment of both great
esoteric lines and can initiate in either way. * * * * In a few days the crowds were gone, and Manav Kendra
became again the way I remember it: a place of quiet hard work and gentle
loveliness. Memories crowd each other – walking around and around the pool at
dusk, wanting to stop but being caught and held by the exquisite beauty and
peace; taking a walk around the center and meeting the Master unexpectedly (not
possible in Delhi or most other places anymore, where there are always such
huge mobs waiting for him) and sitting in a big room in the library where
Master is living for long long darshans: an hour or more sitting at our
father’s feet and talking things over with him in the sweetest and most direct
way imaginable. Oh Master! One night he thanked somebody for something, and he
said, “Thank you, so much! What more can I say? In English you say ‘Thank you’
if a man gives you a million dollars or a pin off the floor.” What more can we
say? Thank you for giving us life, Master; Thank you for having it to give us.
Oh Master! Where are the words? |