Sati (25 page)

A year after Sati left, Nick and I were driving across the city on a business trip. We were talking volume and dollars when we suddenly fell silent and stared at each other for several seconds. Then we began to laugh our heads off.

'It's still there, isn't it?'he asked when we finally calmed down.

'It's getting stronger,'I replied.

I said at the beginning that Sati did not teach anything. I said this because she herself insisted she was not a teacher. Nevertheless, I do feel she left us with a valuable lesson. She left us with a portion of herself.

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In the car, Nick and I were talking about the experience of inner silence. Because it's not the experience of some-tiling specific, not even a feeling in the usual sense of the word, it's difficult to talk about. But it's definitely real. At times, it seems more real than anything in the external world.

And it makes the external world far more enjoyable. It used to be that when I saw people on TV

discussing how they found inner peace, I would get annoyed. Perhaps I was jealous, I don't know. But I always felt that whatever they were saying should be kept private. Now I'm just like them. Not that I go around lecturing and preaching. I remember Sati's advice about becoming a martyr. But when I'm at the store getting groceries, and the clerk asks me how I'm doing, I smile and say' Great!'I know I used to do that, but at least now I mean it. I want to be serious, but it's hard. I'm like the little kid who plays outside all day and has all the fun in the world, but only because he knows his mother is at home waiting for him.

That's what it's like to be still inside. Mother is at home. Everything will eventually work out. Everything is inevitable. She is
always
at home. My thoughts do not support my inner silence; it is just there. It doesn't even go away when I sleep. I doubt it will when I die.

By no means does this mean I have arrived at the state that Satidescribed as enlightenment. As before, I have my ups and downs. But I would also have to say that more and more I find myself watching myjoys and sorrows. They are there, they are real; they just don't affect me as they did before. Now, the average person might call this the growth of apathy, or worse, schizophrenia. All I can say is that I have never felt more sensitive or sane. My friends have noticed the same thing in their own lives. Even Fred.

Sati's prediction has come true - I no longer dwell on Linda. I contemplate my blue-eyed friend instead.

She made me happy when she was here. She makes me happy now. I miss her, true, but I also feel she is not far away.

Occasionally I run into someone who attended her meetings. A few ask what became of her. Most appear content to remember her in the company of someone else who had met her. The word is spreading around town, on the wind perhaps, about who was here. I wouldn't be surprised if years from now her name is known in every corner of the globe.

Was Sati God? When she was here, that question was important to me. I still don't know the answer to it. And now, I don't care to know.

She was wonderful. She had grace and beauty, love and power. Nothing could hurt her or drag her down. The insults thrown at her from strangers, the doubts dumped on her from friends - they flowed off her like water poured over the back of a swan. Her compassion for those who suffered was outweighed only by her complete unattachment to them. Some might say she was indifferent. I know now her ocean of joy was simply too vast to be disturbed by any wave. Even her death made her laugh.

Mother Sati.

If she wasn't God, she was everything God should be.