During the 90-day Anaadhi program at iii in Tennessee, a gusty lot of people gathered.They did a wonderful effort to raise their sadhana to a different pitch. We explored dimensions which are not just unusual – much more than that. And we happened to be there at a time when there was Guru Pournami.

The most dominant factor of my life has been my Guru and nothing else. Even today in my mind – more than in my mind, literally in every crevice in my body and every pulsation in my system – it is just His presence which is the most dominant within me. Probably because of this, just about everything reverberates which is not me but way beyond me.

I did not see my Guru as a man who touched me, though his touch brought me to the highest level of experience – to a revelation of life and beyond. The old structure within me somewhere would not accept it unless it came from Shiva himself. In his compassion, my Master turned himself into that form. I do not know if this was his act – that he turned himself this way – or if that is how he really was at that time. But ever since, this has left me in a place where I do not have to make any attempt to know anything. Whatever I need to know, He and He are there.

On Guru Pournami, these five little poems tumbled out of me within a matter of 5 to 10 minutes. I am not a great crafter of words. It is just that without any kind of mastery over any particular language, through Grace, I managed to find some expression to what was happening.

My Master

Brooding, squinting, staring
I could not hit the mark
He walks in like a wanton monarch
With a crooked stick
And makes His Mark

My Master

Lost. Lost to life and death,
Both I did, but moved me not
A man who walks with a stick
Comes to me, the able-bodied one
Having seen birth and death
And all that life can bequeath
Still sitting dumbstruck,
Here comes the man with a stick
To have me struck
With his lightning stick.

My Master

I let the whole world go by
Of spiritual and material, of land and sky
I searched in the mother’s womb and in the lover’s
bosom
But such a one I did not find
Till I crawled to him like a worm

My Master

What can the poor Guru do?
All I have done is do and do
After seeing All that is there to see
He comes to Teach Me how to Be

My Master

The breath that passes out
Will not come back
The Guru who touched and left me
Left me not and need not come back.