
In the last chapters, I told how Swamiji could use humor to teach us.
But he could also be very serious.
Walking to Sunday service at the Expanding Light, I was about a hundred yards from the temple when a car drew alongside and the back door swung open. Swamiji smiled and said, “Would you like a ride?”
I said, “Sure!” It was silly, because we were so close to the temple, but the opportunity to ride with Swamiji was not to be missed.
Several people were walking slowly in the middle of road, oblivious that they were blocking our path. Swamiji cheerfully said to the driver, “Well, run them down!”
We all laughed.
I never had an encounter with Swamiji that wasn’t in some way instructive. Even if he said only a few words, he was always the teacher, trying to help us. Even when he joked, it usually had a deeper meaning.
As I’ve mentioned, one of the lessons that Swamiji tried to help me learn was not to make the spiritual path more deadly serious than it is.
Nevertheless, if it would help us, he could be grave.
Another Sunday found me at the Expanding Light. After the service, feeling deeply grateful for Swamiji’s guidance over the years, I decided to seek him out and thank him.
But I couldn’t find him!
The Expanding Light is not a big place. At the time, it was just three small connected buildings, with no place to hide. Yet as hard as I looked, I couldn’t find him.
I waited outside the bathroom until someone emerged, and I searched the upstairs office. No Swamjii.
Finally, I broke off my search and meandered into the foyer, intending to sit for a while and get calm.
And there was Swamiji. He was silent as I approached and spoke my piece: “I want to thank you for all the help you’ve given me…”
He didn’t say a word. I had barely reached the end of the sentence when I realized that Swamiji had died. He had withdrawn his consciousness completely from the body, which had become so utterly still and impersonal and inert that it was as if I was seeing a corpse. There was no life in him; his body was a shell – there was no one home. Intuitively, I felt that the body I was seeing was no more than a shell, and tiny smidgen of what he actually was – that it wasn’t him at all, only a discarded suit of clothing from which he had removed all trace of his true self.
It showed me that Swamiji would never accept credit for the help he had given us. Always – always! – it was God who used him as His instrument.
It told me that there was no separate Swami Kriyananda. I knew from scores of separate encounters that he had given himself completely to God, but I had never witnessed it so vividly.
It was wonderful, awe-inspiring, and a little unsettling