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

372
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
‘A-feesha ne,’ the other man reminded the partner.
This man tried again. ‘Goota feesh.’
I walked back to the car, wondering who’d be having a fish dinner
tonight near the quarry. Their last supper, probably.
In my hotel room, I went to unswaddle one of the rum bottles from
its paper and string and accidentally dropped it. The container
shattered on the thick wool pile of my carpet, its dark contents
seeping out like blood.
The moment it happened, I remembered that the fish symbolised
Christ and the soul. Wondering why this irrelevancy had occurred to
me, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the sense of Baba’s presence, of
divine love. The fragrance of the incense that burned in Baba’s temple
distinctly permeated the room. It was a fragrance I hadn’t smelled in
decades. Staring at the rum stain – caused by what I would have been
drowning the fish of my sorrows in by now – I knew. Beyond all
doubt, Baba was omnipresent. Beyond all doubt. He who is one with
the Father is no different from the Father. And the Father was very,
very close right then – or really just more accessible.
The power of this incident engulfed me. Never before had I
experienced such a feeling of God’s proximity. It was and is
undeniable.
Going for a swim later, I ran into Dick Workman, an IBM executive
here to hook up his company to the Tata empire, forming Tata
Business Machines – TBM. I liked Dick, and I didn’t envy him his
task. His job would be to train Indians in IBM work habits. A
personable American from Georgia, he’d spent much of his life
stationed in the East for his company, and he was married to a
beautiful young Korean woman, Soo-Hyon – ‘Sue.’
When he heard I’d once lived here, Dick was eager to pump me
for useful information. Our conversations had been more on the
secular side of profundity. I’d never mentioned Sai Baba before, and
I told him only that I was going out of town for the day. But now I
had the urge to mention Baba, wondering whether to give him the
copy of Howard Murphet’s Sai Baba: Man of Miracles, which I’d
picked up again, for old times’ sake, in Puttaparthi. The book