Birch and Pine Whisper His Name, Chapter 61

INNERVIEWS - UNLIMITED

The outer vision is purposely insufficient, momentary and transitory, so that you may long for, and acquire, the capacity to view me in your heart.

Seven years went by before I could make another pilgrimage to India. During those seven years, I had many “innerviews”, chiefly during morning meditations, when the eyes of my spirit visited distant Prasanthi Nilayam. In the cool depths of my imagination, Swami would come by and call me for an interview - not every day, but from time to time.

These inner encounters gave me needed strength to face and overcome the many difficulties of everyday “outer” living. My spirit often soared in ways that brightened my vision. Phyllis Krystal calls these excursions to the vantage point of the Higher Consciousness “tapestry” experiences. I call them “mountain-top” views. They help to keep me in a bigger picture when I get bogged down in mundane worries. I wrote them faithfully in my diary, carefully dated, but timeless in their power and love, like this one of 9 December 1988:

You and your husband are worried who will  die first. But whoever does comes straight to Me - and both will die anyway. I am with you always - now too - so be happy, no matter what the circumstances. You yourself are worried about coming to see Me - but Swami always helps you to make such visits worthwhile. So don’t be stopped when the time is right to come.

My dearest hope for that September 1989 visit to Sathya Sai Baba was that he would call me in and tell me face to face whether or not my “innerviews” were just wishful thinking or real experiences on a level above ordinary consciousness. Was I being foolish to rely on them - or was I gradually gaining faith? Once in Prasanthi Nilayam I found the “innerviews” were increasing in frequency and fullness.

At Prasanthi Nilayam appearances may change, but the spirit remains. Buildings are demolished, others rise up in their place. People come and go. National groups mushroom up, like fairy rings on a lawn, and just as ephemeral. Setting out “alone”, I found groups of people wearing distinctive scarves meeting here and there in between darshans, bhajans, meals and lectures.

Soon I joined a small gathering from my other country. Coming from different parts of Switzerland, we coalesced and formed a group, designing our own pink scarf, which we wore self-consciously, when we remembered. The first few meetings we felt our way, finding out who could speak what.

Switzerland has three official languages and one more that is as near to official as makes no matter. Most of us in the group were bilingual, but few proved to be bilingual in the same way. The combinations and permutations were mind-boggling, especially for our only trilingual member. Soon weary of ceaseless interpreting, she suggested that we fall back on English, although our degrees of fluency varied wildly.

Organized at last, we began by congratulating ourselves on being far from Switzerland, which we denigrated as a materialistic, stuffy place. After a day or so, it occurred to us that perhaps Swami might not favour this negative approach. We needed to find some good things to say about our country. After a blank silence, we found several mercies, large and small, to be thankful for, and so reached a turning point. At the following  darshan we ladies were in the first line. Swami stopped in front of us as if we had just arrived: “What country?”

“Switzerland, Swami,” I said.

He looked at me as if he didn’t believe His ears. “What country?”

I let someone else answer who did not have dual citizenship, and he seemed satisfied. “How many?”

The answer brought a broad smile. Then Swami went on, without inviting us to the coveted interview.

No interview was granted that visit for any of our Swiss group. Meanwhile, our meetings were taking on a life of their own. By tacit consent, discussion was cut to a minimum. Music and silence transcended words, as we fell back on those languages of the heart - singing and meditation.

Group meditation led to a series of group “innerviews”. Most of those described here came to my inner eye, but I call them group innerviews because I am convinced that they could not have come without the presence of all of us. In the rest of this chapter, innerviews are in italics.

At the first Group Innerview I saw in my mind’s eye: a large lotus blooming in the centre of our circle. Meanwhile, a soft grey-white mist was curling up around us, lifting us up.  When the mist cleared, we were still in our circle, floating over a serene landscape. A sparkling lake lay below us, among green foothills. In the distance tumbled a range of mountain peaks. Then we were wafted higher, beyond the orbit of the earth, and shown some of the breath-taking vastness of starry space.

After this meditation, a sweet atmosphere still enfolded us like a gentle mist. The one who had the vision shared it with the others, shyly, uncertain how they would take it. We all seemed to accept this inner happening, and to appreciate the sharing, unaware that this was only the beginning of a new phase in the life of our group. Our inner adventures progressed day by day, developing a storybook quality.

On the second day, group meditation brought me a glimpse of a giant cosmos flower. The cosmos, found in many North American gardens, is tall, delicate and daisy-like, it blooms in various colours. The cosmos of my vision was a very pale shade of pink, paler than the lotus.

On the following day, it was a lotus that arose in our midst: A gold light appeared around us, out of which I soon discerned tall, gleaming Devas. Baba took the place of the lotus in the centre. Clockwise inside our circle he passed, giving us each his Feet. He then handed out little white-enameled brass lamps, each decorated in a delicate tracery of pale blue, turquoise, mauve, pink, orange or yellow. Then, we were watching the sun set over a lake. When the crimson, orange and rose had faded into gold, then into pale green, and the evening star had pierced the sky, Baba appeared high above the band of twilight, holding in his hand an image of the Earth.

Seven of us were present at the fourth meeting of this series, when two of us reported visions. This is Kathy’s:

We were sitting around a large wheel that lay flat on the ground, and each of us had a sparkling light. We inserted our lights in the rim of the wheel, and Baba his in the centre. When He twirled the wheel, all our lights merged into one brilliant circle around his light.

And this is the other vision reported to the group:

Swami came and gave us each a large pink cosmos flower, saying, ‘I am the Heart of the Cosmos.’ The scene shifted to a sunlit meadow. We could see Swami coming, and we ran to him like little children. He sat down under the big tree on our right to tell stories, while we snuggled around him.

It takes courage to tell about such seemingly fanciful inward events. The person who appeared to have the most visions in the group was often tempted to edit, rather than be suspected of exaggerating. We may only guess what more might have been seen than was reported. Near the end of our series of meetings I added to our collection: After praying a lot, I suddenly ‘saw’ us as the petals of the lotus. Then we were with Swami in a small cove. At our feet were plenty of flat pebbles, mostly of a pale red. They were just the right size to fit in the palm of the hand, and perfect for being skipped on the calm water. The cove was small, but the lake or sea large, its far shore below the horizon. We were intent on skipping stones. Little rainbows linked each hop of the stone when Swami skipped his. We stopped to marvel.

Sitting in a circle on the beach, we each held in a closed fist a stone that Swami had chosen for us. When he gave us the signal to open our hands, the beach pebbles had turned into flashing gems - a diamond for most of us. Kathy’s father held a blue sapphire, and Susan a golden topaz.

Afterward Susan looked more pensive than usual. When I ventured to ask why, she told me that she had lately been looking for a topaz with a deep, golden colour, as recommended by a local astrologer.

Lately we had been singing an old French air to Sai-inspired words, full of symbols for the spiritual heart within: 

Je la vois fleurir, belle rose, Rose de l’amour divin ...

One day pilgrims from the Ivory Coast heard us singing about the rose of divine love in the heart, where shines the light of God, and where flows the crystal stream of inspiration and purity from the original Source. Our Ivorian guests who joined us during our singing stayed at our invitation to meditate afterward.

Meanwhile, Susan was missing, as she had some social service to do. Her seva completed, she hurried to our meeting, hoping to be on time for mediation, and wishing in a vague way that our group were more racially diverse, like those of other nations. Ah, well, she reasoned, we would soon be disbanding, and did it really matter? Just a fantasy, she told herself, dismissing the idea and taking a deep breath to clear her mind.

Arriving at our meeting-place she found us already plunged in meditation, our circle expanded and no longer pale-skinned. There we sat majestically, like pieces from a giant chess set: Caucasian, African, Caucasian, African. Stunned, but grateful, the later-comer sank down in a space that had been left for her between two Ivorians.

In addition to the scenes that came to my inner eye during Swiss group meditation, I had many visions and auditions where Baba spoke to my personal condition. One in particular comes to mind.

Normally I am happy to see people called in for interview, the more so when I know them, even a little. One morning, however, I found that I am not immune to jealousy. What I had against this travel-worn group in bi-coloured scarves I do not know. Perhaps I felt that I had been quite patient enough, and that I, who had waited several weeks without an interview, ought to have precedence over people who had recently arrived. For some reason, I felt furious when these women and men were called in by Baba.

Fuming, I sat opposite the verandah, with a faint hope that the chanting of the priest inside the temple and the holiness of his puja would calm me down. Suddenly I “heard” inwardly Swami’s voice. You wanted to come to this interview. “Come, then. Come, come!”

I knew he meant to come inside in spirit, and so imagined myself in the interview room, facing Him. “No, sit here! “ He ordered, pointing to a place right beside him, facing the people.

I settled myself and looked toward them, but could not see them. They were hidden behind a thick brown fog that smelled bad. I suddenly felt their need must be much greater than mine. “Oh, Swami,” I said. “How horrible! How can You stand it?”

“I shall have them in here as often as it takes to clear it away!”

I looked at the two others whom he had also invited, two ladies in white from a middle eastern country. I could see them clearly. No fog obstructed my view, but a jagged red blaze of anger was coming from their heart regions.

Looking back at the larger group, I could see the fog lightening in colour, and beginning to clear the floor. A golden light seeped out from the group inside. Then I saw, outside the clinging brown cloud, more golden light coming from tall Beings of Light stationed at intervals around the group. And so it seemed that there was a concerted effort coming from Swami, from some Devas and from the people themselves to dissipate the unwholesome cloud. 

At this point I lost concentration and my focus flitted back to the place where I was sitting outside. I fell into amazed contemplation of what I had just apparently witnessed. After some time, my mind ventured back into the interview room, to find the fog thinning in places. Again my focus shifted back outside. A third “visit” to the interview room showed the fog completely banished by a golden radiance emanating from the group.

The angry red light flaring from the two “clear” ladies in white had softened to a magenta shade pulsating more gently from their hearts. I sensed that it would take Swami more time to change that red to soft pink than it had to clear away the brown fog around the others.

The actual content of that interview was known only to the group and to Swami, and none of my business. I had, I believe, been called in to glimpse their auras, to see some of what Swami sees when he looks at us. As Wendy had explained ten years earlier, He sees the more subtle aspects of our being, beyond the body.

During the last week of my stay, Swami subjected me to the blank look familiar to many who have visited his “workshop”. For a couple of days he would beam a gracious smile along my line of ladies, only to flick it off when it reached me, then turn it on for the rest of the row. This happened often enough to convince me that my imagination was not playing tricks on me. Swami might be though. To find out why, I had to inquire within - a practice that I must have been neglecting, bedazzled by a magnificent series of darshans and festivals. Tuning in felt rusty, but proved immediately effective. I “saw” Swami standing still, looking straight at me. “I’m testing you”, He beamed. “Do you truly believe I am in your heart of hearts, as you so glibly write and gladly sing?”

On my final morning darshan an Irish lady with a big heart insisted on giving me her place in first line. You may recall that in my introduction I mentioned “a girl from Tipperary”. This was she.

I was certainly not imagining it when Swami made a beeline from the porch to my  corner of the courtyard.

Stopping right in front of me, but well out of reach, he glanced quickly past my folded hands and spoke over my head to the ladies right behind me. They had arrived only the day before. He asked,  “What country?”

They told him, and it was like a password to an interview. They drifted up to the verandah like sleepwalkers, while Baba passed on along the lines, keeping out of reach for anyone thinking to touch His feet.

Swami had nearly reached the mid-point of the lines, when I “saw” him standing close in front of me, offering me his feet. I “touched” them wistfully, half-believing, my mind on the verandah.

My Irish friend later guessed out loud that the power emanating from Baba that morning might have been particularly strong - greatly blessing us all, but too much for human safety to touch His feet directly.

As I gazed at the flame of orange silk on the other side of the courtyard, Baba’s voice came from close by my left ear, quiet, but urgent: “I would like to talk to you. Will you listen?”

Yes, I would, no matter what he had to tell me. I got ready for I knew not what. What came was a sweet and true, “Be happy! Be happy! Be happy!” Then, in a crisp tone of command: “Now, go!”

My luggage was already in the taxi, but the Thought for the Day posted by the Accommodation Office was particularly apt. I was copying it down in my Commonplace Book when, out of the corner of my eye, a gleam of orange appeared.

Looking to my left, I “saw” Swami standing a few feet away and watching me write. He also looked as if he had something more to tell me: “Innerviews - unlimited. Interviews - limited. I cannot take everyone. You  understand!”

Yes, we all understand the fact that all the crowds at Prasanthi Nilayam could not fit into his tiny inner room even in an eternity of Sundays, and we manage most of the time to accept his choice of those to call in. But there was more to it than that. I suddenly realized that he was helping me to understand better this particular pilgrimage of mine.

Stubbornly, I had been expecting Swami to confirm outwardly a series of inner experiences. Steadily, he had been alternating inner and outer events directly related to each other. With infinite patience and thoroughness, he kept the innerviews coming until I got the message by the appropriate channel.

Through the grace of innerviews unlimited we need not lose that vital “contact and company” of which Baba so often speaks. We are at home with him wherever we are, and free to fly in spirit to Prasanthi Nilayam for as many inner darshans as we need. Gradually, the place where we live can also become one of Great Peace, where we see Swami in everyone we meet. No wonder he is training more and more of us, day by day, to tune our finer senses in to him. It cannot be an easy task.

If we find our imagination winging out into the Cosmos, we are letting Swami show us how to use it as a tool to help us reclaim our birthright, for he has said we are the shining star, the smiling flower. We may catch glimpses of luminous beings, wondrous colours and a softer, more lucent light in realms invisible to the outer senses. He is ever ready to widen our scope beyond physical and mental limits, and may let us visit other worlds over which he reigns, where we may once have lived or some day be at home.