I Didn’t Know a Book Could Do That - Richard Payment
Reading stories and telling stories are both a form of spiritual seeking.
~~~
This story partly plays out in my imagination. I was not there to witness it. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, a woman who some call the Holy Mother, spoke of about book. She spoke with wisdom, with a patience that born out of concern, but mostly she spoke with love.
The title was something new to us: Amritanubhava, a mouthful of syllables upon first hearing. It can also be called “the essence of divine bliss.”
We knew of the author, sort of, in a vague and distant kind of way. He is remembered as Jnaneshwara. Or Dnyaneshwar or Dnyandev. Or even Mauli. The spelling is illusive. He was a thirteenth century Indian poet, philosopher, yogi and saint. He lived on this Earth for only twenty-one years.
Some of us might have already been familiar with his magnum work, Jnaneshwari. Others might have seen the 1940 movie, “Sant Dnyaneshwar.”
But the thing is both of his books were written in old Marathi, an ancient language from the Indian state of Maharashtra, a distant tongue for both for modern Indians and for Sanskrit scholars. So you can pardon our ignorance when we heard that word: Amritanubhava.
~~~
“This book,” Shri Mataji said, “is about you.” It is about what to do after the enlightenment of the Spirit.
My ears perked up. My attention stood tall. A seeker is always alert, hungry to know what is next.
“I am thinking,” she said, “of translating it myself, so you can read it.” She repeated: “It is about you and what you should do next.”
My attention is again sharpened. “What is that title? If I only had a pencil, I would write it down.”
And then she says it: “It is the last word on spirituality.”
What more need be said?
I imagine her holding the thin and tattered volume aloft, bidding us to read it, its loose and torn pages moving in the breeze, her finger pointing. But the truth is she did not have the book in hand. In 1991 it had not yet been translated to English. That was yet to happen.
~~~
Years later I hold that book, ink upon paper, bound and glued and in my own hands. It is a fresh and enlightened translation, not difficult to read or to understand. But, to be sure, it is profound in its content.
Amritanubhava gets to the point: the very nature of our being, our oneness with God.
“Careful now,” I tell myself, “what you hold is a jewel. And it is so much more than a jewel.” Given a choice, take this book. Leave the jewel.
It is an elixir, a nectar, a pure concentrate of knowledge distilled from Jnaneshwara’s own experience. It is the fruit of his yogic seeking.
After completing his first work, a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita that became known to the world as Jnaneshwari, the author was asked by his guru to now write, in the form of pure knowledge, what he had learned. Thus we have the essence: Amritanubhava.
~~~
“I wish you all could read Amritanubhava in English,” Shri Mataji said. “Understanding how he describes a realized soul, you will find that within yourself it has happened.” She paused. “You will be amazed,” she added, “how you have got such a beautiful description of your Self.”
It was a new idea to me. I am myself — my age, my status, my job, my name. But I am also my Self — fuller, taller, richer and, above all, a truer version of all our individual selves. That capital S makes all the difference.
It is in the middle of his own text that Jnaneshwara stops to tell us that this all may be too “difficult to be understood by the common man.” He rhetorically asks us, “Then who can understand?”
He answers his own question: “This can only be understood by those who can see themselves without the mirror….
“The face, knowing itself, recognizes that it alone is reflected in the mirror and is itself the original object.”
Stop and reflect on that. Read it again.
With those words, the illusion and the duality both dissolve.
There is, in that moment, nothing else but the Spirit.
And then I read on. No, I do not read the words. I see them floating somewhere above the page, projected upon Reality:
Although the Master and His disciple appear as two, the Master alone enjoys Himself under the guise of the two.
~~~
There is an awe in my heart. A whisper across the ages.
I didn’t know a book could do that. It expresses a thing that resonates. It is Truth, but not “your truth” or “my truth.” It is the Universal Truth.
If you do not understand the depth of this, wait a moment. You will.
~~~
And now, wait again. There is an incoming call from Prester John and the poets, Tagore and Gibran. Jnaneshwara has joined the circle.
Together, they want to tell us a story. They want to tell us about our True Self. It is the only story worth telling.
That is what we seek. We must admit it.
If they speak of the very thing that we seek, we have no choice but to listen.
~~~
A pure and enlightening translation of Amritanubhava is now available under the title Amritanubhava: The Essence of Divine Bliss. It is also available in French and Italian.
It is a book for our age because it reminds us of who we really are — the thing we always knew.
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