Edited by author 11-01-2006 09:43 AM
Hi all...
My "time with baba" was only in reading his books, and the books about him, during the timeperiod of the 1980 to about 1990. There were a few dreams of him too.
One of the mysteries about baba, for me, was about the INFLUENCE he had on people's lives! I do not mean here, by "influence", the "devotee and the spiritual path", I mean the influence psychologically.
I have read of one visitor who noted that he could "feel" the presence of baba even if baba was 20 miles away, an experience very common with the devotees at the ashram.
Here I present an image of a black hole that is "Baba"! if a vistor even approaches the outer fringes of this "thing", he is drawn in and never ever can really leave, like of that "Hotel California"!
Even in the extrication, the devotee is twisted near apart!
So here is one man who claims big claims, but others do too, there are probably thousands of wanna-be Gurus on mny India street corners: how many of them have the Touch?!
[quote]
the The Sirens are all knowing, and draw men in with their songs about all that has happened in the world, but all those who stop to listen can never leave. Fortunately, the Sirens are unable to draw Odysseus in because he has been forewarned by Circe and knows how to resist. "but melt wax of honey and with it stop your companions ears, so none can listen."
[/quote]
----from a history text.
http://www.echeat.com/essay.php?t=25412Often an ex-devotee is even the MORE attached, I see, in his/her leaving this "black hole" of Baba!
[quote]
The tar baby is a form of a character widespread in African folklore. In various folktales, gum, wax, or other sticky material is used to trap a person.
The folktale achieved currency in the United States in written form in one of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, a collection of stories based on African-American folklore, narrated by the fictional Uncle Remus, a former slave. In the story "Tar-Baby," the character Brer Fox makes a doll out of tar, which he places by the road to entrap his enemy Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit talks to the doll, and when it doesn't answer, he hits it, and gets stuck in the tar. The more he struggles with it, the more he is entangled in it.
This story has led to the figurative use of tar baby in the sense 'an inextricable problem or situation', sometimes with the nuance 'something used to entrap a person'. Both the examples cited in the question show the use of this sense, which appears to be first used in the early twentieth century.
[/quote]
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19990212yes, i have also seen that after a "bad experience", when some devotees leave, they, in their reaction against baba, are actually even the MORE bonded to baba, as if in their reaction-ness, their devotion and attachment to him has now really gotten much closer!!
so.
How *does* one Leave?!
how does an angry devotee get on with his/her life?
I would suspect that there has to be a "carrot" in front of this "mule": something to urge and to pull the ex-devotee forwards, into a Life that is of a future tense; something to look forwards to, Tomorrow.
Otherwise....one walks forwards looking BACKWARDS, like of that
cancer-crab, always facing to his rear, backing up, snapping his crab-pincerclaws at baba, but baba is STILL his True North!
freestone