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Amritapuri, 25 March 2006
This morning one was, like so many mornings, seated at the Eastside of the big hall near the stage. After the meditation there was a tingling vibration in the body cells, however there was no special depth of awareness.
A dog was resting left before the stage. This was not a new sight. The dog was pitch-black, from the tops of his ears and nose down to the points of his tail and toes. At less than ten meters distance sat an ashram inhabitant on the ground with closed eyes. It was hard to determine if he was sunk in meditation, prayer or just in thoughts or sleep. It was a not too tall, a bit older Indian man with a grey trimmed beard and he was dressed in spotless white clothes.
Dogs were because of health risks officially not particularly welcome in the ashram, and when the man opened the eyes, thereupon beholding a resting dog, he went to chase it to get it at least out of the big hall. The dog however proved to be a cunning fox that, when it was chased out of the hall on the one side, walked a round behind the stage to thereupon step inside the hall again on the other side. It was a game of light and shadow. Where the white dressed man went there disappeared the black dog, to thereupon turn up where the man was not.
Likewise, where the attention of the lightening awareness goes, there do the illusionary shades of the psyche disappear. The psyche however is a cunning fox and has a thousand and one tricks up its sleeve to as a mean spider weave its illusionary web in a shrewd way in absence of attentive awareness.
After this scene one was still seated at the same spot and the attention was drawn by a cawing crow at the right backside. One turned to look and an extraordinary atmospheric scene overtook the consciousness. The scene was framed by two meters high pillars of stapled white and beige plastic chairs, which were placed about half a meter from each other. Behind that stood a dark green screen which screened off an eating section for students. This faded however against the lightening background of the bright white and light reflecting roundings in the very spacious ceiling of the hall.
On the screen sat in exceptional contrast with that lightening background a dark, black crow. With the lightening white behind it almost all crow details fell away, making it like a three dimensional shadow that only showed its sharp contours. Sitting almost motionless alone and somewhat hunched it had ruffled up a bit the feathers on its head and neck by which it evoked a special atmosphere of comfort in being alone.
For life does not offer any security, safety, or salvage in givens that are placed outside the centre of eternity. Transitoriness and time deceive. Salvage is only found in the centre of an intrinsic being alone, where the eternal 'now' is the only safe haven.
The scene on itself didn't last long. A single mosquito perhaps also wanted to be admired as a three dimensional shadow and danced showy through the scene. Quickly thereupon also the crow flew up, leaving the spectator in the atmosphere of the scene. And there left behind in that atmosphere there was only comfort in an intrinsic being alone.