This Monk From India - The Divine Life Society

DEATH UNFOLDS ITS MYSTERIES
Sometime after my son’s death a memory came to haunt me. It was becoming an obsession.
I could think of nothing else and again I went to Swamiji to call for help. I told him my story.
My son was about three or four years old at the time and he was to be operated for tonsillitis.
I had gone to my doctor friends enquiring about the best, the kindest surgeon, for the
operation was to be without anaesthesia. I was told how they occupied the child’s mind; how they
blew balloons, played with the toys, etc. I explained the whole thing to my son and he seemed
peaceful. In the car going to the clinic he even played with the new little cars I had brought him. I
felt secure. I had done my best.
But everything was to be very different from what I had told my son. The surgeon seemed to
be nervous, in a hurry. He took us to a back room, not the lovely children’s operation theatre I had
seen. He tied Christian brutally to the table without a word, his eyes and face very hard. The
speculum was hardly put into Christian’s mouth before the operation started. I don’t know how
Christian managed to lift his head and look at me for his shoulders were tied to the table. He looked
at me. Then my voice broke.
“Oh Swamiji! His look was telling me ‘Thou hast forsaken me’ as Christ had said to his
Father as he was on the cross. You see I was everything for him, Swamiji. Now I see that look
everywhere. When I came into Christian’s room to give him the usual ice cubes to deaden the pain
in his throat, he turned his face to the wall and would not look at me.”
But I had hardly finished speaking when Swamiji’s voice broke out, terribly hard, stern,
cold, angry. “But how could you do such a thing How could you!”
Even now, as I write this, I cannot remember the other words he uttered, but his meaning
was clear. He was horrified, he did not even want to look at me. He was throwing me out! I had
stopped crying. I was like a dead person. My mind seemed to have stopped.
I stood up and slowly went down the steps. Like an automaton I walked back to my kutir. As
I closed the door I saw the small altar I had made. Swamiji’s photo was there, and as I looked at it, I
came to life and in a fit of revolt I took the photo in my hands and turned it’s face to the wall.
With a terrible violence I said, “I never want to see your face again, Never, you understand!”
I dropped down on the floor; I sat down. A few minutes passed. Then I suddenly said
hesitatingly, “Perhaps it is because I don’t understand...all right...but until I understand I won’t
want to look at your face!”
I was still sitting on the floor and peace was slowly coming. I did Japa day and night and
peace came to me, though slowly. Then one day I received a letter, a most crucifying letter: “Your
son was our idol...we can never be the same for having known him”. Another letter said, “He was
light that will never go out.” It described how a crowd of young people, of all classes of society,
went to cut and take the pieces out of his car as souvenirs. Some wrote on them, some made crosses
out of them. Then came a most moving telegram from his father: “My only friend, our son,
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