35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
to saying no, but I was wrong. He mentioned someone apparently
named Siva Bala Yogi – or possibly Sivabalayogi.
‘Where do I find him?’
Near the Bangalore Dairy was the closest I got to an answer.
My room had three four-poster beds in it, their mosquito nets
hanging in the air like ectoplasm. It also had six doors – one an
entrance, one leading to a bathroom containing a tap, a bucket, and
a squatter, and the other four leading into adjacent rooms.
I washed, lay down on bedsheets that felt as if they’d been baked
in an oven full of dust, and listened for an hour to a couple of geckos
wheezing endearments at each other across the peeling whitewash
of the wall. A calendar adorned it, emblazoned with a highly
retouched image of Mahatma Gandhi at his spinning wheel. He
literally glowed with health and looked about eight years old.
According to the mahatma, it was June 1963. From what I’d seen of
Bangalore so far, it would be hard to refute this. In fact, it looked
more like 1943 out there still.
Saints explain that the soul is a drop of the Divine Ocean.
Separated from her source, she has become caught in the net of
illusion and has taken the mind as her companion. The mind,
however, is in the grip of the senses and dances to their tune.
Whatever it does under their influence, the soul has also to reap
the consequences.
– Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Discourses
I don’t think any foreigner had asked an auto driver for a ride to the
Bangalore Dairy before. I’d discovered by now the mysterious value
of saying key words twice. ‘Dairydairy,’ I told this particular threewheeled
road hazard. It appeared to work, although, since the dairy
was a long way outside Bangalore, I initially had my doubts. We
were in open countryside now – flat fields, the odd ugly concrete
bungalow – which made some sense when I considered the nature
of a dairy’s business. Of course, once we’d reached the place – a
large barnlike structure, recently erected, with a corrugated asbestos
roof – I had to break the news that where I really wanted to go was
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