The Yoga of Max's Discontent (17 page)

R
amakrishna didn't ask him where he had been when Max came back later that day. Max remained restless throughout the afternoon. In yoga that evening, his body felt heavy and his limbs moved with effort. He paced in the courtyard after yoga, then skipped meditation and lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

Late that night he awoke with a start. His back was on fire.

He jumped out of bed. The fire spread from the bottom of his spine to the middle of his ribs when he stood up. The bones in his back felt as if they were being grated into a paste, then being burned to ash. He lay down and got up again. It hurt so much. He rushed to the bathroom and doused himself in bucket after
bucket of cold water. Nothing helped. Max had never disturbed Ramakrishna at night, but he couldn't help himself. Whimpering in pain, he ran into Ramakrishna's hut well past midnight.

“Please help me,” said Max. He was disintegrating, dying. “I can't. My back. It burns so bad.”

Ramakrishna's concerned face broke into a smile. “Your kundalini has awakened,” he said.

The fire flared up. Max's head spun.

Ramakrishna made him sit cross-legged on the floor and straightened his back. “Soon you'll be better, better than ever,” said Ramakrishna.

Max inhaled and exhaled slowly. The fire turned into hot liquid that surged from the bottom of his spine to its middle, up the back of his neck, and down, again and again. Max removed his T-shirt and put his naked back against the hard, cold mud.

“It's not getting better . . .”

His eyes closed.

•   •   •

THE FLAME HAD
disappeared when he awoke the next day, but his spine tingled with alternate warm and cold sensations. He stepped out of Ramakrishna's hut. The usually odorless air was alive with smells. He could distinguish each note. There was the fragrance of mud mixed with morning dew, the sweat of the two German girls, the lingering smoke from the previous night's fire, and the heavy aroma of tomatoes that had been cooked the day before in the afternoon. Each smell had its own texture. The morning colors were different too. The sun hadn't risen yet, but the dawn was a white light far on the horizon. The
orange mud in the courtyard was a shade darker than the one around Ramakrishna's hut. Why hadn't he noticed these sights, these smells before, each so distinct, so wonderful?

Ramakrishna was instructing the German girls in the courtyard. Max heard every sound made by the girls, their inhalation, their exhalation, their heels shuffling below their thighs, their knees shifting on the floor. A little overwhelmed, Max joined them for asanas.

His body had changed overnight. He felt light as a feather. Warm fluid flowed from the base of his spine to all his nerves. He got up in a headstand. The blood didn't collect in his head. There was no pressure on his face, no throbbing in his heart, no pulsing sensation in his neck. He closed his eyes and fell into a meditative state. He didn't emerge from it until he felt Ramakrishna's hands on his back.

“If you want, you can come down now. An hour is quite enough for the headstand,” said Ramakrishna.

An hour. It couldn't be. Max had never stayed up for more than twenty-five minutes at a stretch before, and he had built from five minutes to twenty-five minutes over the course of eighteen months. That day, though, standing on the head felt as comfortable as standing on his feet. He could have remained like that forever.

The German girls were staring at him. Again Max had the same, overwhelming feeling of seeing everything as if it were under a magnifying glass. One girl's skin was slightly torn under her eyes; the other's eyebrow hair was uneven. If he stared at them any longer, he would know every thought in their heads. Max averted his eyes and continued with the asanas.

His spine elongated and stretched; he flipped forward and backward farther than he had on his best days before without a hint of discomfort. Max had learned not to be surprised at the coincidences and intuitions and the glimpses of cosmic energy that had entered his life, but when he got into Kakasana
,
the crow pose, and found his whole body inverting in the air by its own accord as soon as he touched his fingers on the ground, he couldn't stop himself from looking up straight into Ramakrishna's eyes.

Just what was happening to him?

We'll speak after meditation tonight
, said Ramakrishna.

Max came down. How did he just hear that? Ramakrishna hadn't moved his lips.

Yes, it is related
, said Ramakrishna.

Ramakrishna had just answered a question Max hadn't framed in his mind.

Max took a sharp breath. An ocean of cool air washed down his body.

•   •   •

DURING THE REST
of the day, Max remained in the same hyperaware state. He detected the slight movements of earthworms below the surface of the mud and moved his plow away from them. He corrected the placement of one of the thirty seeds that Anna, one of the German girls, sowed twenty feet ahead of him. His ears registered every thud of a tool against the earth and the bristling of water on the crops. His tongue tasted a hundred notes of sweet and sour in the eggplant. Everything felt stark, intense, as if he had awakened from centuries of slumber.

•   •   •

LATER THAT DAY
in meditation, a rainbow of colors merged into him. Om resonated again and again through his body. The sun, moons, stars, oceans, mountains—the whole universe revolved around him in concentric circles. He was the beginning, the middle, and the end, the center that held everything together. Then suddenly everything was snuffed out in an instant. A deep indescribable silence arose within him. It had the tranquility of water and the stillness of air, the alertness of a predator and the repose of a rose petal, the brightness of the sun and the coolness of the moon. Yet it was none of these, for it was quite apart from the world. He remained suspended in the silence until Ramakrishna shook him gently.

The blacks of Ramakrishna's eyes shone in the yellow-white light of the courtyard lamp. Max's heart overflowed with love. He was gripped by the same boundaryless feeling he had experienced with the little girl from the village, but he wasn't overwhelmed this time. He was complete. There was just oneness. Nothing separated him from Ramakrishna. The words that were about to come from Ramakrishna's mouth were already alive within him. Max breathed slowly.

“You have received the rarest of the rare blessings. For so many lives, you have worked for this,” said Ramakrishna, his voice echoing in the still night. “The universal consciousness is awake in your body.”

“What happens now?”

“If you keep striving, the active consciousness will slowly move from the Muladhara chakra at the base of your spine to the Sahasrara at the top of the head, the home of the static,
creating energy—or God,” he said. “This final union is yoga. Individual consciousness has merged with divine consciousness. You will become the universal, God as it were. It is the end of the individual, of birth and rebirth, this endless cycle of suffering. You will achieve the very goal of the human form.”

Max trembled. The bottom of his spine tingled.

“You have to work harder than ever before. Only the most accomplished of yogis achieve this union,” said Ramakrishna. “You will become the sum of all knowledge. Many powers will come to you. But all that has to be left behind. Falling from this state is easy if you develop even a shadow of an ego.”

Max shifted on his mat, suddenly afraid. “Will you continue to be my teacher?”

“The universe is your teacher now. Consciousness will guide you to merge with it,” said Ramakrishna. “See it, hear it, feel it everywhere, within and outside everything. You have nothing more to learn from me.”

Ramakrishna looked up at the black sky and waved his hands around. He didn't move his lips but Max heard his voice in his head.

It will come. All will come. You will surpass me very soon, in mere days or months. I haven't reached the end of yoga, but you can.

What does the complete dissolution of self feel like?
thought Max.

I don't know yet. Perhaps you will know for me, for all of us.
Ramakrishna's thoughts merged with other voices in his head.

“Come back and teach me. That will be your
gurudakshina
, your gift, for whatever little you've learned here,” said Ramakrishna aloud.

Max bent down and touched the tips of Ramakrishna's feet. “I have learned everything from you,” said Max.

“You knew everything. Everyone knows everything. You just chose me as a channel in this life,” said Ramakrishna.

Just a day before, Max was about to leave the ashram. Even now Sophia hadn't disappeared completely from his mind.

“I was lost when I came here. I still feel a little lost,” said Max.

“The awakening of the kundalini is unsettling. Stay here for as long as you like. Teach yourself how to use the power, how to keep making progress,” said Ramakrishna.

Max got up, straightened his back, and felt the warmth spread out from his spine. He felt one with the great sage in front of him, the blackness of the night around him, and the moon and stars above him. His body was as light as the air that hugged him. For a moment he thought he was floating. He looked down to check.

Soon even that, maybe very soon
. Ramakrishna smiled without speaking.
May you never fall from the grace of yoga, Mahadeva, may you always be a yogi.

Max walked back to his hut. He sat on his bed and closed his eyes, concentrating on Sophia. Her pale, heavy face came into focus. He directed the light, buoyant energy coursing through him toward the middle of his forehead just above the junction of his eyebrows. His heart seemed to have become her beating heart, feeling her sadness, her longing, her sickness, then soothing her, making her still, silent, complete. A touch of color appeared in Sophia's cheeks. He concentrated harder so that nothing existed in the world except the shimmering blackness between them. Blinding white light poured from him. The redness spread up her cheeks to her nose and filled her face. Max's body burned. He lay down on the bed, his temples pounding, a blazing flame spreading through his torso. He saw Sophia's
eyes lighting up. He spread his hands wide up toward the ceiling, allowing the universe to take revenge on his body for manipulating the laws of nature. The effects of Sophia's actions would now become his own. Sophia sat up on the bed she was lying in and smiled
. Strive, strive, strive for perfection. Don't be caught again in these ceaseless ups and downs, the world of polarities.
Max drifted off to sleep.

Seeking but not finding the House Builder, I traveled through the round of countless births;

O painful is birth ever and ever again.

House Builder, you have now been seen.

You should not build the house again; Your rafters have been broken down; Your ridgepole is demolished too.

My mind has now reached the unformed Nirvana.

And reached the end of every kind of craving.

—GAUTAMA, THE
BUDDHA

J
esus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.”

Max turned around and smiled at the kids who were chanting and pointing at him. They'd been following him from the bus station in Madurai, the nearest big city, to Pavur, twelve hours away by bus. He glanced at his reflection in the dusty glass door of the freestanding ATM kiosk in the market next to the bus station. Loose shirt, long brown hair, light beard, sunburned skin, sharp eyes, weighing at least sixty pounds less than when he had first come to India, he had to admit he did look a little like Jesus. Although he didn't feel much like him right then. He couldn't produce gold coins from air. He couldn't even get an ATM machine to work. The ATM machine in Pavur had rejected his card, as had the one inside the Madurai bus station. He needed
money for his journey ahead even though he didn't quite know where he would go next. After spending three years at Ramakrishna's ashram, he felt overwhelmed by people, smells, shops, traffic—and getting simple things to work.

His debit card was rejected once again.

Outside the kiosk, men on bicycles whizzed past busy shops, hawkers peddled their wares, and a bent old man dragged a wheelbarrow filled with brown sacks. Max fingered the card's silver strip. Had his bank frozen his checking account because he hadn't used it in more than two years? Max opened the door and walked outside to look for a telephone booth.

He collided with a tall, lean man on a bicycle who was staring openmouthed at him.

“Sorry, boss, sorry,” said the man.

“Pen, pen, pen, Jesus Christ,” chanted the boys following him.

Three women selling vegetables, a man selling newspapers and magazines on a cart, and a few passersby collected around him.

Max wasn't used to the attention. He hadn't gone beyond Pavur for three years and everyone there had known him. Here, he felt like an alien once again. Even so, he was surprised that the locals followed him when he walked to the phone booth. Madurai was a temple city and saw its fair share of Western tourists. Some were on the street right then. He spotted a young blond couple, an older Russian-looking man, and another white family of four, but no one followed them around or gaped at them. Was it because of his height? His ragged clothes? Max couldn't figure it out, but he did find a phone booth. People gathered around the booth to watch him. Puzzled, he turned his back to the street and concentrated on dialing the phone number listed at the back of his bank card.

“Please enter the last four digits of your Social Security number,” said a mechanized voice.

In his previous life, Max would have pressed a series of #'s and 0's on the phone to bypass the prompts and connect directly to a live person. Now every thought, every action was an exercise in complete truthfulness. For there could be nothing relative in the path of the yogi. He couldn't speak a half-truth, the same way he couldn't squash the mosquitoes ravaging him or covet a more comfortable way of traveling than the lowest class available on the train. A yogi lived in absolutes. Truth, nonviolence, and austerity were his religion. It rid the body of physical craving and the mind of ego, thus reducing the pull of the world.

Max punched, dialed, corrected, then repunched and redialed his Social Security digits, birth date, and former street address on the broken phone console before finally being connected to a live voice.

His ATM access had indeed been blocked due to account inactivity. They needed the exact amounts and dates of his last three ATM withdrawals to verify his identity.

“Is there another way?” said Max. “I haven't withdrawn money in years. It will be hard to tell the exact dates.”

“I realize the difficulty, Mr. Pzoras, but Capital One bank's international fraud protection policies are aimed at safeguarding customers' interests first and foremost,” said the efficient male voice. “Alternatively, we request a notarized letter stating your reason for not using the bank account. We will process it within seven business days of receipt and reopen the account.”

Fraud protection. Safeguarding. Notarized. Process.
The words of the world sounded heavy and difficult. Max paused, trying to understand everything. “Notarized by whom?” he said eventually.

“Any recognizable US body. Like an embassy or a consulate in your country of travel,” the voice said.

The nearest consulate was probably in Chennai, another ten hours away, and there would probably be more red tape there. Nor did he have money to get there. The yogic test had been performed. Max was now clear that it would utilize far less prana to perform samyama
,
a blend of deep concentration and meditation resulting in complete merging with the object of focus, on the withdrawal dates. In the last year, Ramakrishna had taught him to practice samyama on his body to understand the working of the cells that made up his vital organs and the interconnected masses of veins and nerves that supplied blood and nutrients to them. Knowing his body would allow him to keep it fit and functioning, making it a sturdy temple to worship the soul within. Now Max would concentrate on his memory with the same intensity.

“Could you hold for just a minute?” he asked.

Max closed his eyes, shutting out the curious crowd outside. He inhaled and exhaled, concentrating on the Ajna chakra in the center of his forehead, the storehouse of all memory. First he drowned out the lingering images of leaving Ramakrishna and the previous twenty-four hours of walking and bus journeys. Next he zoned in on the ATM trips he had made more than three years ago, and finally he retained his breath, flowing his entire living, breathing energy, his prana, toward the Ajna chakra
,
merging with the man who walked into the ATMs many years ago.

He opened his eyes, weak and breathless. His shirt was soaked with perspiration. He gripped the phone tight so that it
didn't slip from his sweaty grip and rested his head against the stained glass door.

“December 3, 2010, 4:57
PM
EST. New York. $200. December 9, 2010, 12:31
PM
. Rishikesh, Indian Rupees 20,000, US $443.75. July 14, 2011, 2:19
PM
. Pavur, Tamil Nadu, Indian Rupees 100,000, US $1,907.30.”

“Yes, yes, yes, exactly right. Date and withdrawal amounts are both correct. I don't have the exact time or place printed in front of me. Thank you for confirming, Mr. Pzoras. Your account is now unblocked,” the customer service representative said. He paused. “I can't believe you've kept the receipts all these years. I wish I was that organized,” he added in a slightly embarrassed tone.

Max thanked him and set the phone down. The crowd watching him outside had swelled. Max stepped out of the phone booth and sat down on the side of the road. He felt dizzy and depleted. If remembering three dates had taken so much concentration, so much prana, how much more would walking on water and levitating demand? Yes, Max could do much if he performed deep samyama on something. But Ramakrishna was right. Pursuing extraordinary powers broke the laws of nature and distracted one from the goal. Every breath spent on clinging to the earthly realm took energy away from merging with the divine. Just like sending waves of prana to heal Sophia from afar had left him weak and feverish for months. Now he understood his urge to finally leave Ramakrishna more than a year after his kundalini had awakened. The veil separating him from pure consciousness had thinned, but to penetrate any farther into it, he would have to conduct his own experiments with truth. Only
when he verified the knowledge he had received with his own experience would it fuse into his every breath.

“Photo, photo, photo.”

People jostled to sit beside him on the pavement. They put their arms around him and asked their companions to click pictures on their phones with Max. One, two, ten, twenty, Max clicked pictures with kids, shopkeepers, vegetable vendors, newspaper sellers, and their customers, too weak to resist their attention. He recovered his breath after more than an hour and walked back to the ATM. This time his card worked. He withdrew the money he wanted, bought pens for the kids from one of the newspaper sellers, and began walking toward the railway station.

People rushed toward him.

“Thank you, Thank you, Jesus Christ. Come again, Jesus Christ,” shouted the delighted kids, shaking his hands.

The vegetable-vending women touched his feet. “Bless, bless.”

A legless beggar on a wooden cart scrambled next to him. He tugged Max's cargo pants, urging him to put his hands on his head.

The phone booth owner prostrated in front of him.

More people joined him. Now a crowd of folks lay before him.

“Stop, please stop,” said Max, surprised and still dizzy.

“God, God, God,” chanted a short, fat woman in a yellow sari.

Others picked up the chant. More people joined them.

The noise overwhelmed him. “No, I'm nobody. Stop, stop, please, stop,” said Max.

A woman in a bright dress came forward and showed him her small phone-camera with the picture she had just taken.

“Look, you are God. Light. Shining,” she said.

Max looked at the image on the woman's phone. He smiled and exhaled slowly.

Ramakrishna had taught him well. Despite the holes in his well-worn clothes, his unkempt hair and tired face, Max's skin glowed like a lamp—though it was a pale reflection of the ethereal glow on Ramakrishna's skin. There was a lot more distance to cover.

“No, not God,” said Max. “Just a yogi. Or trying to be one
.
”

He walked away from the surging crowd, toward the railway station.

•   •   •

THE MAN AT
the ticket counter asked him where he wanted to go.

He could go anywhere. All he needed was solitude. He remembered the remote beautiful places he had visited before or heard of in India from the visitors at Ramakrishna's ashram—Dhanushkoti, Sarnath, Kaapil, Arpora. But he knew there could be only one answer. Despite it being winter again, his home, the mountains, the mighty Himalayas were calling him back.

“Haridwar,” said Max.

“Second AC or Third AC?”

“General.”

The man stared at him. “You can't go in General,
machi
. They are unreserved compartments. No seats. No place to sleep. Standing room only. Completely packed. It is a sixty-hour journey. Impossible.”

Max smiled. “In the beginning, even the journey within is uncomfortable.”

The man hesitated. “So Third AC then?”

“No, General.”

The man's eyes widened. “You are not well. Do you have fever? Your face is very shiny,” said the man.

“I'm well, friend, as well as this limited human form can allow,” said Max. “Please let me continue on my journey to liberation.”

The man stared at Max but eventually sold him a ticket.