Continued...

It seemed to me that all of us in the room were as one-drawn by a chance at
some immensity in life. I remembered my first glimpse.

I had been sent a back issue of some magazine. I turned to the Table of Contents, and there was her picture smiling out at me. I may have gasped. My heart went wild. I turned the pages and drank in the article as water in a desert. I called to order a book about this young beautiful Indian woman who seemed sent from heaven in answer to my prayers.

Waiting impatiently for the book, I read an article about a Buddhist ritual in which the student calls the "root teacher" from afar, singing, setting up a vibration. The teacher vibrates in return, hooking, pulling, drawing the student to her. Yes, I thought, one glance and I was caught.

The book arrived and was devoured. More books came. My husband got caught. Seven months and an eternity later, we sat before Mother Meera for the first time in a warm, light-filled room in the small village of Thalheim, Germany, overflowing with Easter's pilgrims. My husband selected a chair. I sat on the floor as close to her as I could get.

Later, I recorded in my journal, "When I had my moment with Mother, there was eternity and no time at all. There was no one else in the room, in the world. She smelled good. She held my head gently. Her right eye was beautiful and intense. Did I see the left?"

Back home, my old life mingled with the new. I didn't know what Mother Meera's blessing had done, only that it upset every notion I ever had about myself-yet widen my vision of what life can be.

On my most recent visit, my fifth, I marvel at the continuing flood of visitors from all over the world, gray-heads and pre-teens, business people and punks, designer dresses and leopard tights. "So many new people," I remark to Adilakshmi, Mother Meera's devotee and companion of twenty years.

"A mixture of old and new," she smilingly replies. "Life is like that. Always old and new mix together. Like old generations and young generations."

I think of my visits to Mother Meera -- each one a revelation and an inspiration. A mixture of old and new. A facing up to old pains and petty faults. A ray of insight into motives and designs. A momentary pushing back of the narrow close-up for a universal panorama. Some moments absorbed in a routine of daily acts, others caught outside time in luminous eternities of Light and Power.

I think of Mother's advice on how to live: "Think only of opening to the Divine. Remember the Divine in everything you do. Offer everything to the Divine. Everything good or bad, pure or impure. Only just do japa [repetition of a Divine name] inwardly."

I write in this night's journal: "She sits like heaven's queen, her feet on a cushion to match her chair. Each supplicant is treated with calm evenhandedness in intervals of seconds. My moment with her hands on my head, then her eyes searching into mine, lasts a wonderful eternity and then, oh, that's all?"

Back in my seat, eyes freshly washed, I gaze as silent witness into the adventure of the future with the confidence of a child at Mother's hem. In my heart I do japa. ~

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