Reflections on Swami Satprakashananda's Reminiscence of Maharaj, part 2

 By Br. Aadi

Staying with Maharaj began to kindle a light in Harish's heart. Maharaj told Harish, "You will have a new life," and he began to feel that the spiritual realm was an open book. This is a wonderful idea that the meaning of the universe can be read. It is a poetry of Brahman. And we can also write it. If we cannot read the universe then we cannot read a book either, then words are empty and dry. By reading the universe we see the commonality of all ideas, events, and people, and we get to know the Writer of it all. Until then, our lives are made up of disconnected chapters, more like a pile of unfinished stories than a book. The love of God, the continuous attention to That thread which runs through the happy and sad chapters of spiritual lives, is the strong spine holding together the pages of the good book of His life.

Swami Satprakashananda says, "In Maharaj I found for the first time a person who could love others, not in spite of, but with all their faults." This shows levels of love. At the first level you are able to see the positive in a person and love that. At a higher level you see the negative as complementing the positive, like hunger making a meal more delicious. At a next level you see how the negative is just a latent form of the positive, like the rainstorms that are absorbed by mother Earth's luscious plants and animals. The highest level is that of Brahman, where the knowledge that all negativity is an illusory appearance is intrinsic to the act of seeing. Brahmananda spent so much time here even while others were thinking he was the body. His encompassing love for the apparent negativities didn't rely on the hope that they would make the positives more intense, but because there was only Brahman there, he abided in that blissful Brahman.

Maharaj was like a father to Harish Maharaj. He had first come to see him while young, and throughout his life was nourished by the unlimited resource of Maharaj's grace. Much more than the mundane father and son relationship, it was a relationship of God the Father and the Son. Though Harish learned to study under the disciplining care of his mundane father, he said "Though I studied hard before, I had not understood the real significance of the words. But later, everything became clear to me, and I felt that it was all through the grace of Maharaj." Through the world we can get the power to accumulate more names and forms, but only the Divine can give us the power to read His life.