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

‘NO LIKE A-FEESH?’
the cause. The woman’s husband had arrived some days before,
taking care of the business aspect of this trip before his wife came to
join him. She’d telephoned the day before from somewhere like
Kanchipuram, where they lived. The hotel had just installed a new
phone system, with individual voice mail in each room. Put through
to her husband’s room, the wife had heard some woman answer the
phone, claiming he wasn’t in but she could leave a message. She’d
hung up in a rage: he had a lover staying with him!
Blaming it on technology hadn’t been easy either, the staff forced
to quiet her down sufficiently to show her the marvels of modern
telecommunications. No one really felt she believed them even
then. She was convinced that they were merely all in on the plot.
I’d made up my mind to spend just the day at Sathya Sai Baba’s
ashram, returning after evening prayers. I hadn’t seen him in
fourteen years, and he hadn’t spoken to me privately since that
interview over seventeen years before. But hardly a week had passed
throughout the preceding years when I hadn’t thought of him. And
occasionally I had dreams that bore the unmistakable stamp of his
presence – love – and held relatively important messages, ones I
had no trouble deciphering. When I least expected it, I’d feel that
embracing glow of being loved, the sheer sweetness of Baba’s
enigma.
‘Don’t try to understand me, because you never will,’ he’d said.
This was true. I’d often decided it was all over, that he and I were
through – I’d descend back into unalloyed matter, and he’d go . . .
wherever it was he needed to go. But the bond never broke. As he’d
promised, he was always there, hidden at times, but there, in the
heart.
And as the years passed, I came to see the pendulum swing of my
soul, from matter to spirit, darkness to light, the unreal to the real,
back and forth – endlessly. I also came to understand that the
momentum needed for leaps of faith, of heart and soul and mind,
was generated this way. I accepted more now, too, was kinder to
myself, more forgiving, more objective. Slightly.
I never went to meetings of local Sathya Sai groups; but I did on
occasion pray, in mosques, churches, synagogues, temples –
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