Excerpts from my diary

Entry on 9th March 2019:

The more I ponder about him, the more I am amazed. Being with him is very easy and difficult at the same time. He is strict with people who are very close to him. With others he is the nicest possible. He does not tolerate distractions. Observing him made me realise how masterfully he treads the fine line between control and concern for well-being. He never dominates yet makes it clear what he will not tolerate. He is not shy to show the door to anyone who does not like his ways. He declares with a grin, “My way or the highway!” 

The closer I came to him, the better I realised how stringent the conditions are to be with him. He says, “One needs to have tremendous focus to continuously be with me. It is not easy.” But not once did I find him bossy. Whatever he asks to be done is never for himself. All he wants for himself is some hot water, some cloves, coffee and a little something to eat. It is such a relief to stay with him. No tantrums, no push and pull, no demands, not a single false step ever. There is such purity in everything he does, even when he is angry. 

The usual behaviour that we are conditioned to expect from an individual when we refer to the term “love” are absent in him. There is no display or demand, just pure response based on the other’s need. If one is able to filter out the conditioned responses, then being with him is pure joy. He never fails to point out how to recognise and discard the conditioned responses. It depends on how serious one is. He says, “I can’t create the hunger in you.” 

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Entry on 13th March 2019:

He once told me, “I can’t ask people to fall in love with me!” My jaw dropped when I heard him say this. Falling in love with him is all that is necessary, as I found out in my case. But it is a rare event – truly falling in love without wanting anything from him. No practice, no meditation, no studies can do what his presence does. He is the panacea for all my woes. He destroyed my sorrows and arrested my mental movements and centered my focus on him. He says he does nothing but how else can I describe this? Because I too did nothing.

What a friend! He wants nothing yet gives all. His ever bubbling joy spills onto people around him. Yet when he is grim, the air seems heavy and it is hard to even breathe. The very next moment his sun comes out without a trace of the storm that just passed! When he rages like a volcano, the heat is unbearable. Again, he is the cool balm on my festering wound. He is mindless as Nature, yet can apply his mind to most complex matters of living. He is the only one free amongst us all.

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Entry on 14th March 2019:

After I saw how Guha functions, I realised that there is no such thing as spirituality. There is just day-to-day living. The struggles, the discoveries, the conflicts – are the only reality. There is nothing other than or separate from this. Every “ism”, every philosophy, every scripture is an outcome of this struggle to live and to understand life. The unchanging and eternal God is an invention of the human mind to find a solution or to escape from the stranglehold of misery. Spirituality is a fancy concoction that is impotent. As a kid I looked to spirituality to find respite from my inner conflicts. I struggled and struggled. I seriously tried meditation and japa but nothing helped. Now I know that none of these practices can address the core problem. Nothing can bring relief because we do not want to look at what we are, instead we are busy painting a grandiose picture of what we want to be – enlightened, all-knowing, one with everything, ever blissful and what not! I shudder to think that the entire foundation of spirituality is based on such half-baked and abstract ideations which over the centuries have successfully fooled us into believing that we can do something to attain a blissful and thoughtless state. Why can’t a sane and intelligent human being figure for himself or herself that it is the tortured mind that projects a state of eternal bliss, that it is the oppressed sense of self that paints a picture of emancipation?

What a waste of vital energy, what a neurosis! But is there any other way of discovering the futility of these things? I don’t know!

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