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

‘IT IS NOT MY FIRE THAT BURN YOU HERE’
eternal current the ashes of death are thrown, carried from swerve
of shore to bend of bay, and lastly into the unimaginable vastness of
the seas. From there they are born again, just as the waves reach up
with invisible hands to the heavens and fashion clouds from black
pearls of gleaming spume, from diamonds of sparkling mist. Jewels
soon to be showered once more upon the parched wastelands, hung
from the ears of Himalayan peaks, twined around the necks of
graceful hills, slid in silver belts over the broad hips of fertile plains
. . . to be born again.
The sadhus suddenly reminded me of those people you say Well,
think about it to: they were thinking about it, all right, by merging ever
closer to the sole object of their thoughts, intending to lose themselves
within it. The dom raja had said that they were there because that
was where they were.
When I discovered Vedism, with all its glorious celebrations of
the universe, its Creator, Language, Man, I discovered it contrasted
with the pointless and barren academic ways I had known as thinking
about the universe. Immediately I found certainty of tone; I found
logical purity; these answers felt true.
The seekers of truth I met in India were, above all else, happy –
albeit in strange ways sometimes. The seekers at Oxford, or Harvard,
or indeed any branch of the Church of Progress, tended to be bitter,
miserable, depressed, self-obsessed, and terminally pessimistic. Their
minds seemed composed of heavy metals, whereas the Vedic authors
dance across their timeless pages with thoughts as nimble as their
hearts seem light – and a light heart lives long.
They were there because they were there, the dom raja had said. And I
suddenly felt it was enough. Aware of how brittle I’d grown inside
in twenty years, I now felt a weight lifting. Something had been
resolved. I no longer needed to ‘understand’ Sathya Sai Baba:
knowing beyond doubt that he understood me, and knowing he
loved me, was more than enough.
Parked next to where I stood was a large truck, a sign over its
cabin bearing the legend FRIGHT CARRIER. That was what I
was, all right, shouldering the burden of my fears when I could just
unload the ten-ton backpack and skip away, yodelling Ommm . . .
The reason so many wise and wonderful men and women have never
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