He' is Changeless! : Swami Chinmayananda

02/08/2019

A few days after the installation of Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda's statue at Sandeepany, Mumbai, one of his ardent #devotees was sitting near it and thinking: “I know that you never left us, since you were not just a body or a mind or an intellect. I also know that, as all pervading Consciousness, you are present right here now. #Devotion can invoke your attention in this statue or anywhere else. Yet, I feel the need of seeing your living form walking down this pathway from your kutiya [residence], walking stick in hand, laughing or cracking a joke, vibrant with dynamism and making everyone around you feel happy to be alive. But now I can see only a motionless statue that can never match your living #brilliance. . . .’

Feeling thus a little dejected, she went back to the work of sorting out old photographs for compiling the life history of Gurudev in pictures.

Within about five minutes she came across a photograph of a handwritten message of Gurudev’s that could not be read, as the photographic print had been printed in reverse from the negative. Therefore, she held it against a mirror and read what Gurudev was trying to convey by this unconventional method.

*It read :

“Come back,“ you say; even though you admit ‘we know you have never left’. The programme of work is sent to me by the Proprietor. . . . I don’t decide things. Your request is with reverence sent to Him who orders all activities. Live Vedanta and thus let us all reach That #Destination where having met we shall never part. Meet me There. Reach There through love, #service, and purity."

This message must have been written in the past in another context, but it appeared on that day to serve a purpose. She believed that whatever Gurudev has written or spoken is meant for all those whose hearts it touches, especially as he used the same words that she was thinking, ‘I know that you have never left us. . .’

Strange as it was, she still could not figure out why he sent the message in reverse. Was there a message within a message? It was only later that she remembered that Gurudev spoke about the ‘lateral inversion’ in Sidhbari during a Vivekachudamani camp. He said that to avoid getting distracted from the theme of #Brahman [the supreme Reality], one should consider the world as an illusion, just as a city in a mirror.

‘Whenever the mind is drawn towards it, think of its unreal nature. The world is only a reflection of Brahman, having no reality apart from it. The reflection in the mirror looks exactly like the object reflected, but there is lateral inversion of the object; that is, the right side looks like the left side. Consciousness is #infinite; the world is finite. Consciousness is all #bliss; the world is all pain. Brahman is perfect; the world is extremely imperfect.’

She realised that after giving an assurance to meet him there at that Destination, Gurudev was reminding us of the need for more reflection to try to understand that the form of Gurudev was not essentially ‘He’.

The form has gone down into history, whereas ‘He’ is in eternity. It was born and grew old, but He is changeless; it was, but He is. But for this difference, it was simply pure Brahman that we were seeing functioning in Gurudev.



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