To Meet Papaji Is To Fall Into Love.....
His physical presence was huge, like a mountain. I remember seeing him for the first time. His arms were open wide, his laughter lit up the hallway, and his eyes were bright with the entire cosmos as he invited us into his small room.
His radiant presence and his joyous, open invitation into his life thrilled me. I was conquered by him in that moment as I recognized him to be the teacher I had prayed for. He captured me and took me into his heart. From the peace of resting in love, I could see that the welcome I had received, he offered to all who came to his door. I was still the one, and so was everyone else.
I never saw him withhold any of himself in the initial meeting with an earnest seeker. He offered all immediately. He extended an invitation to come in — come into his home, into his heart, into his mind, and into his realization. No credentials were required, no proof of merit, no tests of understanding. Just a simple, "Welcome, come in. What do you want?"
During the twenty years prior to that moment at the doorway to his room, I had met and read many teachers, and all had contributed, to varying degrees, encouragement and support of the possibility of Self-awakening. Yet I had continued to search for the teacher that could reveal all. Papaji is that Satguru, and in that initial meeting I knew in my heart, I am home. He offered more than encouragement and support. He offered himself as the confirmation of oneself. And he was simply irresistible.
As our meeting deepened over the years, his treatment of me varied from sweet embrace to irritation to even ignoring me yet always with a return to embrace. Never could I deny the uncontrollable, undeniable grace and force of his presence, of his love, of his realization. To be taken into the heart of this mountain is to be taken into endlessness.
In the early part of September, 1997, news of the seriousness of his illness quickly reached his devotees. He had experienced progressively failing health for the last few years, yet this illness was recognized to be critical, and possibly final.
With the news of the imminent possibility of the falling of the great mountain, there was an upsurge of emotions. All his teachings, verbal and non-verbal, were directed toward the reality which cannot die. His transmission of that reality to uncountable numbers of people had been brilliantly clear. He transmitted it in his formal satsangs and in the continuing formless satsang of having met him in the heart. Yet, here was death, knocking on the door of the Master, the Mountain, Beloved Papaji. At such a moment, I could only wait while attending to who he is and what he had revealed.
On the morning of September 6, 1997, the news went around the world. Papaji's body is finished. Death has come and claimed it. The shock of the certain reality of death of the body concurrent with the clear experience that who he is had not (could not!) move, has proven to be as great a welcome from him as the initial meeting.
Through tears of loss of such magnificence of form, the joy of the permanence of beingness itself was revealed even more certainly. As my body shook and experienced the beauty of the body called Papaji being gone, finished, dead — the unshakable beauty was seen to be simply here.
What a tribute to a Master such as he that his devotees, though perhaps grieving the loss of his form, at the same time rejoice in the confirmation of the formlessness that one is.
His last spoken words point to what his life was lived for and how it was lived. "Where is the Buddha?" he vigorously asked his attendants, not resting until he could see that his question was understood. Such a perfect corollary to the inquiry his beloved Master, Ramana Maharshi invited seekers to investigate, asking "Who are you?"
Papaji's appearance in life and his disappearance from life continually point to the answer — HERE. Always HERE.
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