with Sri Ganesh

And the Shakti’s True action for the Lord…

… Then again, a friend of M.’s, an Ayurvedic doctor based in town, enters the garden carrying a large bag and walks right past Sri Ganesh’s shrine, just like an exact symbolic image of the entire disturbance, till he looks around and wanders back to where M. is sitting. This gives me no time to broach the topic gracefully (that no one ought to enter this place merely to make a personal call on one of us, since we are only here to do service to Sri Ganesh) and, as a result, M. gets angry at my words and I leave with a heavy heart…

In the afternoon, I spend in the market for the purchase of incense, camphor and oils, Rs. 500/-

- 09-04-09:

… Today I turn 59… How ridiculous…!

Manikandan has left me a letter, which feels rather genuine, praying for the continuation of our friendship and the clearing of all misunderstandings, but avoiding or skirting any of the issues; he also wishes me for my birthday and writes his intention to go to the Samadhi to pray for us; along with the letter he left some flowers and a silver spoon, all of which I place before Sri Ganesh… … The question is always, how to serve this transition, how to help hasten it – from the enduring condition of this humanity governed by a mental and vital ignorance and the animal instincts, to a new condition of transparency whereby humanity begins to be governed by the psychic with the assent and collaboration of the mental and the vital… And, in that perspective, what can be the role of “devotion”…? Here I daily offer puja to an image, a stone figure. Through the one-pointedness, intensity, harmony and beauty of the offering, one goes beyond the sole image, opens to the meanings thus evoked and invoked – and this becomes the expression of the presence one seeks to contact, a presence that is sometimes only hoped for, or guessed, or dimly, vaguely discerned or, at other times,

distinctly felt and experienced and even seen. And in this Presence is both Being and Power.

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