The Fakir E-Book

Ramiro Calle

• Herausgeber: anna ruggieri
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Spanisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Ramiro Calle es pionero de la enseñanza del yoga en España, disciplina que imparte desde hace más de 30 años en el centro de Yoga Y Orientalismo "Shadak". Es el más importante escritor orientalista de este pais y uno de los más importantes de toda Europa. Autor de numerosas obras, ha estudiado en profundidad los efectos terapeuticos de las psicologias orientales y de los aportes de la meditación al psicoanálisis, la psicoterapia y la neurociencia.

Leseprobe

Ramiro Calle

THE FAKIR

The Fakir/ Ramiro Calle

Copyright © 2016 by Ramiro Calle

I.S.B.N.: 978-84-16316-94-6

Legal Deposit: M-11281-2007

Cover illustration“Golden Door”: © alvaropuig/fotolia

Published byMandala Ediciones Treviño 9, Bajo Izquierda. 28003 Madrid (Spain)

Tel: [phone]

E-mail: [email protected]

www.mandalaediciones.com

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced—mechanically,electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying—without written permission or the publisher.

With love for Luisa

My gratitude to my good friend Arturo Mesón, for having translated THE FAQUIR from Spanish

Chapter One

I arrived in Delhi when it was beginning to dawn. The heat was suffocating. The raining season would start soon and the atmosphere was so loaded with humidity that made breathing very difficult. A flock of disheveled and sweaty taxi drivers offered me their services with an exasperating insistence. Each one of them promised the best service offering to take me to every kind of hotels and shops or to drive me to towns like Agra and Jaipur. I let myself to be dragged into one of the cars and gave the taxi driver the address of a little hotel I have been recommended in the old Delhi. It was not my intention to take the habitual circuits and lodgings; thereby I would start to overcome the addictions and habits of my mind.

During the trip, I looked astonished through the window of the spluttering car at the spectacle of life that was being presented to my eyes at every moment. At these early hours in the morning the crowd was huge. Under a sun that began to burn, the queues at the bus stops seemed endless; the entries of the theaters were crowded; the roadway was a conglomerate of taxis resembling beetles, bicycles, motorickshaws, indolent pedestrians, dogs and cows. The noise was deafening: bells, horns, shouts… That was a swarm of human beings, some walking in a rush, their bodies drenched in sweat; others, idle, as if time did not count to them; some others gathering in circle, chatting placidly among them. The streets were overflowed with life and I watched all that as if I was seen a movie.

I was assailed by every type of memories, doubts and hesitations that poured out. I struggled with my contradictions and wondered whether the decision to travel to that country had been a crazy idea and I was doing nothing else than eluding my responsibilities and escaping from myself.

Once my spiritual yearnings of adolescence and youth faded, like so many other people, I devoted myself to pursue a well paid career that allowed me to wear the best suits, eat delicious food and enjoy the company of attractive women. But I suppose that, as many other people, I had been incapable of avoiding to fall into a state of monotony, frustration and even weariness. However, little by little, almost imperceptibly, I began to be aware of the horror my life had become. I had lacked the spiritual audacity of Frederick, my dear friend of youth, a German who never lacked the enthusiasm, who had travelled to India and had been hosted for months in the manor of a British Colonel who lived in the north of the country. For some time, my friend wrote me to share with me his concerns and spiritual inquiries. He told me several times how important it would be to find a very old treatise named The happy man in the cave of the heart. But neither Frederick nor the Colonel had found reliable traces of it. In his last letters he explained he had become acquainted with a master of an ancient tradition and was prepared to leave the Colonel’s house to follow him through different locations of India.

Lost in my thoughts, I came out of them with every violent braking of the driver, whenever a person or a vehicle appeared in front of our car. It was what in Western countries is called “rush hour,” and one had the opportunity to realize, amazed, the density of the population when looking at that compact mass of human beings of all ages. Entire families travelling in a bike, as if executing an spectacular circus performance; there were bicycles crashing against other bicycles; the bodies crowded and contacted each other; the buses were like blind rhinos, ready to raze anything appearing in their way… there were all sorts of street vendors, food stalls, beggars and indigents. But in spite of that motley and the disorderly and infernal traffic, I did not see the aggressiveness of the western drivers at all; everyone cared about his own business, while skillfully overcoming the obstacles, as if it were a TV quiz programme.

After almost one hour we got to a square plenty of shops. The driver, prideful and solicitous, announced:

“Connaught Place.”

We were at the center of New Delhi. We took one of the streets leading to the square and we headed to the Old Delhi. The crowd was becoming denser overtime and the traffic more difficult. The driver shouted to everybody; laughing, he took the head out of the window while driving leaning to one side; he took the hands off the steering wheel and braked and accelerated abruptly; he screamed and whispered to himself; he was about to run over pedestrians and cyclists; he argued with other drivers and was doing all that without stopping for a moment to blow the horn.

“Old Delhi,” he said when we went through an old archway.

Then he began to offer me hashish, prostitutes, transvestites or advantageous currency exchange.

The saris of women were like splendid stains of color among the thick crowd. The most diverse odors—fetid, sweetish and bitter-sweet—wrapped us. Some bicycles pulled from a little cart in which a good number of uniformed children were being brought to school. The cows, in bigger number each time, made their appearance. Imperturbable, they laid in the middle of the road, forcing the drivers to circumvent them. The heat became more intense, over-whelming. The taxi driver did not stop mumbling words I could not understand. He handed me an Indian cigarette which I declined, and he continued to offer me hashish and women. Very often he turned back towards me while still driving. Suddenly, he started to hum a catchy song. He was a picturesque man: friendly, cheerful, skinny flesh, half naked upper body and drenched in sweat. He smelled terrible, yet he could be forgiven for that, if only due to his sympathy.

We got to a point of the town where driving was becoming an impossible mission. In the distance, I saw the Great Mosque of the Old Delhi, impressive, like a silent witness of the life boiling in all its turbulence. “What a world!” I thought, observing, almost unable to believe it, that living and unrepeatable spectacle.

We entered a broad boulevard dotted with shops and stalls. On the central promenade there were a big number of cows, dogs and idle people, completely oblivious of so much chaos and roar.

“Chandni Chowk,” the taxi driver informed me.

Although it was the main artery of the Old Delhi, it gave the impression that its buildings were going to collapse at most unexpected moment. Some of them had big faded posters and a few exhibited beautiful wooden shutters. The human flood occupied all the space, and the elderly, a distant look in her eyes, were dragged by it like a leaf at the mercy of the wind.

The taxi driver stopped the car where he could, got off, opened my door and made me a sign to follow him. I melted with people. Walking through the crows, I followed the little man, who turned back from time to time to make sure I did not get lost. He smiled, shook his head with an indefinite swing and waved his hands on the air. It was kind of funny. And so we went on through infested alleys, narrow and tortuous.

I was also drenched in sweat. The mixture of scents stunned me. The difficult struggle for survival was apparent everywhere. At last, the man stopped in front of a small and ramshackle building.

“Your hotel, sir,” he said.

I paid him the agreed price and added some rupees, but he demanded more tip. When I gave it to him, he asked for more. He shook his head showing a naive smile like a naughty child. I gave him another handful of rupees. He thanked me effusively and then he got lost among the crowd. But when I was about to come in the sort of sordid hotel, he came back running and started to offer me his services for a visit to the town, going shopping, looking for women and many other additional propositions. I could not get rid of him and my refusals were useless.

“No!” I shouted irritated.

He smiled impassive, as if it had been a flattery for him.

“No, no, no!” I vociferated again.

Then he shrugged his shoulders, turned back and left.

I was ashamed of my reaction and I realized that this little man had given me a lesson of patience.

Could I call hotel lobby to the room I was standing at that moment? It was the most sordid place that one can ever imagine. The radio was functioning at its highest volume. Behind a sort of greasy counter there was a very fat woman, chubby and with a braid that hung to her bulging buttocks. Next to the counter, a half naked man was squirming on the floor trying to sleep. Where the walls were not chipped, there remained traces of yellowish paint. It reeked of urine, sandalwood, food and spices. The place was dimly lighted by a greenish light which made it even more sordid. The woman smiled. “I must be crazy,” I said to myself. I thought that perhaps it would be better to go back as soon as possible to the residential area of Delhi. But the woman turned to me.

“We have a room available.”

I wondered why I should endure such a torture. A place like that produced me horror.

“Yes, I want a room,” yet I said.

She smiled, gratefully, and that soft smile eased off her traits. I let my look rest on her expressive eyes.

“How many nights, sir?” she asked mechanically.

“Some days,” I answered imprecisely.

“You can stay as long as you like,” she said. “Normal room or deluxe one?”

“Deluxe,” I rushed to indicate.

She took a thumbed notebook, yellowish by the usage and full of spots. Every time she passed a sheet she moistened her fingers. Everything was made in an appalling slowness. The woman had turned very serious and thoughtful, as if she had to make an important decision. Suddenly, someone came in the hotel. It was the taxi driver again. He approached me and began to release his propositions. While the woman continued revising the notebook, the man lying on the floor got up suddenly, approached me as if he were to embrace me and kept observing me with unusual brazenness. I stared back at him. He had the face pockmarked. Would he be a beggar? He could not be worse dressed. But he was not; I realized soon he was the owner of the business. He had his teeth and gums reddened by the betel he was chewing and the sweat soaked his forehead. While the taxi driver continued his quackery, the owner of the hotel also began to talk to me, making absurd questions:

“How much did it cost you that shirt? Are your shoes made on cow skin? Didn’t you bring a camera to take pictures?”

I was starting to take the pulse to India and to perceive the rhythm and the sense of time that prevailed in it. It was noon. I had been several hours trying to register in a hotel and rest peacefully, but I had wasted the day in absurd transfers and formalities. I felt so angry that I hardly could control my rage when the woman told me:

“Sit down, sir. I am looking for a nice room for you.”

“Anything will do,” I replied brusquely.

The taxi driver had grabbed one of my arms and the owner of the hotel the other one, almost shaking me while they spoke without stopping.

“There is a very nice room,” the woman said in an apathetic tone.

I sighed relieved.

“It is the most expensive one,” she added, “but also the best one. It’s beautiful room.”

I could hear the roar of the street. In the distance, the music sounded on a speaker, mingling with the bells of the bicycles. Fortunately, the owner of the hotel left me in peace, sat down on the floor and started to eat a dish of lentils. The broth slipped through his fingers as he ate with his hands. Suddenly, a group of ragged children burst into the lobby and started to play and hide between my legs.

“Passport,” the woman requested.

I inferred that she and the man were married and the children were theirs. The little boys kept playing around me, the taxi driver continued talking to me, inaccessible to discouragement, while the woman, with inexpressive slowness, took note of my passport details.

“What a nice picture!” she exclaimed, shifting her glance from the picture to me and back to the passport.

Suddenly, the man and the woman looked at each other and began to laugh without any shame. Both of them seemed to find it funny something related to me, and if I had not been so tired, perhaps I would have found the situation more than funny. But I felt really irritated, I thought we would never finish. I found the smell of food insufferable. I thought I had a fever.

“If you want hot water,” she specified, “it will be two rupees each bucket.”

“It’s not necessary,” I said dryly.

“Do you want to drink something?”

“A tea, please.”

“Amil, a tea for the gentleman!” she ordered her husband with a firm voice.

The man shouted in turn:

“A tea, a tea for the gentleman.”

The taxi driver continued his chattering, although I was not paying any attention to him for a while, despite he did not cease tapping on my arm; the woman made useless questions about the passport, as if it were the first one she had ever seen, and the owner, yawning once and again, went on inquiring about the price of my clothes, my watch or my shoes. Then, an old man came out from a door behind the counter. His hands trembled so much that the tea was pouring out at every step, despite he was holding the glass—which was metallic—with the thumb, part of which was inside the glass. He extended his arm, dry like a stick, and offered me the tea showing a smile of frightened rabbit. When I got the glass, he turned to watch me carefully. If there was something in that place, it was not haste. There it was the old man, still like a statue, looking at me up and down. Did he expect a tip? Suddenly, he was captivated by my watch. He was fascinated.

“I’ll show you your room,” the owner told me.

Fortunately, the formalities had finished. The taxi driver stayed in the lobby, grumbling, but there was not a tone of irritation or aggressiveness in his voice. It was as if all that were part of the game. I followed the owner by a steep wooden stairs, that creaked like the howl of an animal wounded to death. We climbed two floors. We met some guests wearing a T-shirt, who muttered a few words of greeting or welcome when they saw me passing. We arrived at a lugubrious corridor, almost in darkness, at the bottom of which was my top luxury room. Just awful. My god! And that was the best room of the hotel? Was it a bad taste joke? There was not a bed there, just a crummy mattress. In the back of the room, here was a washbasin that perhaps in the past was porcelain; in the center of the room, a chair of uneven legs, and on the ceiling a light bulb hanging from a long wire.

“There is a washbasin,” the man indicated me with a certain tone of proud satisfaction.

“And the shower?”

“At the other side of the corridor. I will show you.”

He insisted that I should see the washroom. What I saw there was anything but a shower, as I knew them. It was just a faucet hanging from the wall.

When we went back to my room, the owner of the hotel came in naturally and sat down in the only chair available. I put my baggage on the mattress. We looked at each other for a while. While I was wondering if I had the intention to stay there for a long time, suddenly, I was so tired that I felt a great desolation.

“Another tea, sir?” the owner asked.

I watched him more closely. He did not stop yawning and, certainly, his appearance was deplorable.

“I am going to rest a while,” I said, yet he remained unperturbed.

“I will sleep a couple of hours,” I insisted.

“Sleep, sleep,” he replied solicitous while continuing sitting on the chair.

The heat was oppressive. It was clear that the owner of the hotel had not the least intention to leave me alone.

“Close the door well when you leave,” I asked seriously, “please.”

Quite reluctantly, he got up, swung several times on his heels, as if hesitating, and finally, he left the dumpy room. I threw myself on the mattress. I wanted to sleep a few hours and recover my mood. I felt too dejected.

I heard the incessant noise of the street. In order to raise my spirits, and not being able to sleep, I decided to rethink the situation. I had travelled to India in an attempt to change my perceptions, rediscover a sense to life and regain my identity. I thought it would be more difficult than what I could imagine, yet I had to give myself an opportunity.

I had dozed a little bit when the old man who had served me the tea opened the door of my room and asked me what I wanted for dinner. He was very confused when I told him I did not want anything at all. Yet the good man did not demoralize and he began to list, as if reciting a litany, all kinds of dishes. When he finished the list, he started again. It was clear he was not willing to give up. I got up reluctantly, I dragged him to the door and got rid of him unceremoniously.

I curled up on the mattress but I could not sleep well in the whole night. The noise did not cease either in and out of the hotel. I appreciated the first rays of sunlight that penetrated through the small window. With the help of the chair, I looked through it. The spectacle was pure magic. The still weak golden orange sunlight rays bathed the massive dome of the Great Mosque. I remained fascinated for some minutes. After drinking a tea with the worst toasts I have ever tasted, I plunged into the crowd on the streets of Old Delhi. I saw many shops of tissues, silversmiths and jewelers, stalls with spare parts of a great variety, half demolished hovels. Any sort of scenes and every kind of intense odors deployed around me. I found myself walking back and forth in a swarm of alleyways full of vehicles, people and animals; all of them irrigated by fecal substances, attesting to the absence of adequate drainage. In my wandering I came to Chandni Chowk, the main avenue, where the crowd, at that hour of the morning, was already impressive. I came across a group of eunuchs dressed as women, who sang and danced to collect some coins. One of them, when perceiving I was looking at him, stuck her tongue out at me lasciviously and burst into a sassy laugh. I was about to run down a healer who, sitting on the floor, was selling all kinds of roots, animal horns, ointments and potions. He was an old man with Mongoloid features and very bright little eyes. Although there was much activity, no agitation was perceived. But what impressed me most was to see emaciated men carrying huge weights, as if they were mules, a warped spine, gazing out, the saliva trickling down his chin due to the overstrain.

I realized how far in the Western countries we have created fictitious needs, losing ourselves with foolish persistence in all sorts of banalities. This feeling was like a slap that shook me to the core. We are full of stupid attachments and petty desires. I felt ridiculous and ashamed. So many sensations, and so intense, overwhelmed me to the point of preventing me from digesting an spectacle that seemed more a dream than the monotonous and gray reality to which I had been used so far.

When I reached the end of the avenue, I found a Hindu temple. When I came in, I saw it was only illuminated by the small oil lamps that shone in the darkness. The smell of incense was pervasive. There were several images of the Hindu pantheon; but the most venerated one was kept in the sanctum sanctorum, a small chamber to which only priests can access, and that for Hindus is the representation of the uterus or cosmic matrix.

There were so many people gathering there that I wondered if the walls of the temple would not burst. All, men and women, full of religious avidity, tightly headed towards the sanctum sanctorum in a sacred frenzy. A priest was placing a dot of paint on the frown of the devotees, as if it were to open their spiritual eye and trigger their mystical vision. A huge amount of flowers was being offered up to the Divine. Absent and carefree, asadhu, his body encircled by the orange tunic—symbol of resignation to the mundane—remained impassive at the entrance of the sanctuary. His serenity and stillness contrasted with the desire and the activity of devotees who, by fits and starts, tried to approach the priest. The intense and deep look of fire of thesadhustuck in mine, and we stayed like that for a while, without looking away from each other. It was the meeting of two completely different worlds. For years, I had been agitation, impatience, urgency and confusion; he appeared to be calm, patience, absence of sense of time and clarity. A slight smile appeared on his lips and I did not know how to interpret it. That man had nothing, I had accumulated much more than I would be able to spend; that man only counted on himself, I had propped my life with all kind of insurance, policies and retirement schemes, that man was not going anywhere because he already was where he wanted to be, I had spent my life with my mind going everywhere without being anywhere. His slight smile seemed to me insulting or mocking, and not because that were his intention, but because through it, I saw myself as a cartoon. During the rest of the day I wandered around the city. Letting me be driven by the stream of people who flooded the streets of Old Delhi, I visited some temples of the different religions. Exhausted, that night I fell into a restful deep sleep, despite the din outside. The next day, at daybreak, I went to the Sikh temple to listen to the sacred songs. Later on I visited some bookshops in order to ask aboutThe happy man in the cave of the heart, but no bookseller was able to give me information about it, they had not even heard of it. One of them, however, very kindly wrote down the address of a pandit suggesting me to go to visit him and ask for the book. Since I had nothing else to do, the idea seemed to me excellent. The bookseller explained to me that a pandit is an erudite.

I visited the pandit in an association of sadhus that was established in New Delhi. The man, who greeted me with dear spontaneity, wore long hair and thick beard. The man was strongly built, he had deep eyes and elegant gestures. We sat on a mat in a sunny room. The pandit was impregnated of sandalwood and his body emanated a very pleasant fragrance. He gesticulated slowly and exhaled an atmosphere of cordiality, without any sort of artifice. Despite being a stranger to me, I felt comfortable at his side.

“I have heard nothing about that treaty,” he told me, “but in our tradition there has always been references to the cave of the heart. The heart is the home of the being. Many yogis concentrate on their heart and seek refuge in it, thus developing the experience of the I Am. The heart is like a silent and very intimate cave where one connects with the presence of being and is gradually moving from the ordinary mind to the mystical mind.”

Suddenly he changed the subject

“India has changed a lot,” he said. “It is no longer what it used to be. And it will never be.” He stopped for a moment and then asked : “How long will you stay in Delhi?”

“A couple of days. A friend of mine is waiting for me in Simla.”

He passed his hand through his hair, thoughtfully.

“We will go to your hotel to collect your stuff. You will stay in my house.” He got up and I followed him without saying a word, caught by surprise.

“India is losing its character,” he told me when we were in a taxi in our way to the hotel. “It is in a dangerous no man’s land, and our leaders have reached unimaginable levels of corruption.” His face darkened. “Well, what hotel are you staying?”

“I would not call it a hotel,” I replied jokingly.

He started to laugh.

“In a miserable hotel near Jama Masjid.”

“I also live in that area,” he said, “but I hope you will find my home more comfortable. Old Delhi is the heart that still beats, still vibrates, lives, suffers, enjoys, strives and becomes a haven of peace.”

“Yes,” I agreed with him, “life overflows everywhere.”

To the great displeasure of the hotel owners I picked up my belongings accompanied by Mr. Rao, this was the last name of the pandit, and we went to his home, a few blocks away, also near the Grand Mosque. Although the scholar and generous man did not live exactly in a palace, at least he had a tiny apartment, clean and nice. I felt grateful. In the distance, as if it were the complaint of sore clouds, the muezzin’s call to prayer rang. There was always a big background noise, a mixture of most varied sounds.

“Since my wife died I live alone,” Mr. Rao explained.

There was barely some furniture on the apartment; however, the number of books was surprising. Although I resisted and felt ashamed of it, he insisted that I should sleep in his bed and he would do in the sofa of the small lounge.

“There is no more to discuss,” he concluded firmly.

He prepared a cup of coffee for me.

“It is from Bangalore,” he said; “an excellent quality coffee. I hope you like it.”

“You are very kind,” I said.

“We all should be in an era like the current one. We, Hindus, call it Kali-yuga. In this era the most consistent corruption arises, and everywhere emerges disloyalty, greed, hatred and disputes. Ideals, genuine values and the desire for improvement are lost. It is a time of absolute decline during which the true seeker will find all sorts of difficulties and obstacles. This era of darkness has been announced centuries ago, but it is now reaching its darker and chaotic time.”

He reflected for a moment, in silence.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “there is an old adage that says: ‘Just before dawn is the darkest moment of the night’. May that serve us as consolation.”

I stared up at the window and caught sight of a patch of sky, be-tween the shacks, veiled by a haze of dust. The heat intensified rapidly. Mr. Rao passed his handkerchief over his forehead, once and again, to wipe the sweat.

“When Buddha was about to die,” he mused, “he declared: ‘You are your own refuge, what other refuge could there be?’ Now, two thousand and five hundred years later, he would have to say the same, but with redoubled emphasis. There is no refuge outside oneself. The most excessive greed and the malevolence stain the heart of many people.”

“Why the world does not change despite the good intentions that many people have about it?” I asked.

“Because the mind doesn’t change,” he replied, categorically.

I drank a second cup of coffee.

“The thought is the trap,” Mr. Rao declared. “The thought en-genders greed that has no end. To satisfy that greed the man is willing to do whatever is necessary: he traffics with weapons, adulterates medicines, organizes wars and massacres… My God, what have we done with our beautiful planet, and what we will still do!”

When we finished our coffee, a golden light was penetrating through the window. The dusk wrapped up the Old Delhi.

“I invite you to take a walk,” said Mr. Rao, solicitous. “I love Old Delhi. I discover and rediscover it over and over again. It is immemorial witness of wars, conquests and re-conquests, intrigues and hatreds, grandeur and splendor. We are in a living, burning, bustling and full of pain city. It is like Cinderella regarding New Delhi, but it overflows vitality. We got lost in a labyrinth of streets and alleys. The smells of Old Delhi! Jasmine, sandalwood, patchouli, manure, urine, sweat, lilies… the dusk was like a dark burning mantle. The breathing became slow and heavy.”

“The air is unbreathable,” I lamented.

“We are in the period of greatest heat. The thermometer reaches more than forty-five degrees in the shade.”

A cat jumped between my legs and took a bounce. Mr. Rao began to laugh spontaneously, willingly. A seller of flowers followed us for a while offering garlands. There were piles of abandoned waste.

Far away, some bells rang. The cows were dozing. There were beggars and indigents of all ages. The more elderly appeared beautiful, with a suggestive look and a body of extreme thinness. You could see everywhere street healers, vendors of nuts, cleaners of ears and tooth pullers. The first stars appeared in the sky and in the distance the perfect dome of Jama Masjid was visible. Given the intense heat of the night, many people went out to sleep on the roofs and others did on cots in the street. I heard the ugly squawk of a crow. Rao’s voice took me out of my thoughts.

“Tomorrow afternoon we could go to Lakshmi Narayan Temple, to listen to religious music, what do you think?”

“I will love it,” I answered barely thinking.

I felt sad. I experienced the city as alien to me, as if it were part of the decoration of those films of adventures that delighted us when we were small. But with the difference that the cumulus of feelings I had at that moment was almost suffocating me.

“This hour is very special in this part of town,” Mr. Rao said proudly. “Observe, observe.”

We meandered by crisscrossing alleyways. There were men preparing chapatis; some were making clarified butter that poured into earthenware little cups; others carried jars of milk… There were still street cobblers mending the shoes of the passers and some elderly beggars showed the palm of her trembling hand requesting some paisas.

“How much pain there is in the world!” Mr. Rao said, talking to himself.

“It is hard to believe that everything is a dream of the Divine, as you say. It is rather like an atrocious nightmare,” I answered.

“Hum!” he exclaimed.

We came across a very beautiful woman. Her eyes were like fireflies in the darkness of the night, and she was wearing a pair of flashy gold earrings. She had a perfect mouth. I could not help to follow her with my sight.

“She runs a brothel,” Rao said. “She is a very beautiful woman, isn’t she? A few years ago she was stabbed and nearly died.”

“Who did it?”

“Her lover, in a jealous rage.”

“And what happened to him?”

“He died consumed in prison.”

We had dinner at a small restaurant. Mr. Rao chose for me some dishes too flavored, peppery and spiced for my taste, which I took for courtesy.

“If the mind does not change, the world never will,” he suddenly said. “There is an old book that explains more than one hundred methods and keys to modify the structures of the mind. The secret, my friend, is in the no-mind. When thoughts are inhibited, the experience of being arises and we feel part of all that has been created.”

And what about the heartbreaking misery that prevailed in New Delhi? And the outbreaks of war that dotted the entire planet? And the exploitation of the majority by a heartless minority?

“You are very thoughtful,” he added. “Are you all right? Obviously, you are missing your country, your people, your customs…”

“When loneliness oppresses my heart,” Mr. Rao said in a tone of loving humanity, “do you know what I do?”

I shook my head. I had glimpsed a shadow of sadness in his tired eyes.

“When that happens to me, and it happens very often since my wife died, my mind becomes absorbed in reciting the sacred word Om. I let my mind dissolve in the Om as the sugar is melted with water. Free of thought, beyond yours and mine, I feel at one with my wife and with all creatures on Earth.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Om is the cosmic sound, the first pulsation or vibration of the no-manifested when it manifests. The recitation of Om is like a porthole open to infinity.”

When we left the restaurant it was completely dark. It smelled of kerosene, frying and stagnant water. The temperature was now softer.

“If we could hear the inaudible sound of the universe,” Mr. Rao said softly, as if he did not want to disturb the sleeping city, “we would hear Om as a continuous vibration to the infinite, without beginning or end. It only ceases when the universe is dissolved and all creation is immersed in the Unconscious, as if a spider were to absorb the cobweb she has woven. Do you understand me?”

A dove laid busted on the floor. Suddenly, a tinsmith began to give blows that resounded throughout the network of tortuous alleyways we were roaming.

“It is a great shame that the world is going the way it goes and so we are losing all the joy, all celebration of life,” he lamented.

We passed by an old man who struggled amid sonorous stertors, which I assumed were of agony.

“What do you really yearn?” he asked me suddenly, straight-forwardly.

“Something that seems to be very old fashioned,” I replied. “I guess it is inner peace. Maybe a feeling that makes me feel more complete, less divorced from myself and the others.”

“I understand you.”

Many stores were already closed. A breeze of smell to spikenards came to me and I thought of my mother, who always used that perfume.

“To find peace inside, that’s what I want,” I confessed. “Some-times, I feel a terrible sense of loneliness that almost paralyzes me; as if the atrocious jaws of the universe were to swallow me.”

“The enchantment and disenchantment of life,” he said drawling. “The agreement and disagreement. One day, all of a sudden, brutally, we realize that we are old, useless, and that life has passed like a dark night without hope. What would we not give to start again and live in a different way, or at least to focus our existence in a different way! But it is too late. We have not learned to live, we will not learn to grow old either, and much less to die.”

“You are a great scholar,” I said, admiringly. “I’m sure you have read all that can be read and investigated in philosophy and metaphysics as much as it is possible to investigate. Let me ask you a very straightforward question: have you found answers?”

There was a silence. Maybe I should not have asked in that way to someone who seemed so polite and demure. But finally he responded me:

“I have found more and more questions. The substance of existence, its substratum, cannot be perceived with printed knowledge or scholarship, or any metaphysics, no matter how sagacious it is.”

We got home. Several people slept in a courtyard that was on the ground floor, I do not know whether by necessity or to protect from the heat. We climbed the wooden stairs.

“We need to understand this game that repeats itself endlessly, of course,” he added.

I assumed he was referring to existence.

It was late. His expression denoted fatigue.

“Sometimes,” he went on, “when I wake up at dawn, I feel the death approaching and it frightens me. I feel ashamed to say it but it frightens me. I wish Shiva could grant me some time yet. Although I now know, after many years of meditation and study, that there are no logical answers, I have to start looking for answers somewhere else.”

As we walked to the room, he said:

“The most sacred escapes the words. We must put all our passion in trying to find the treasure of lucidity and benevolence.”

I slept until dawn through. With the first rays of sunlight I saw the milanos flying joyful through the air. I heard in the distance the friendly mooing of a cow.

Suddenly I realized that, for years, I had never felt so many sensations, perhaps because all my interest was heading towards the grosser, the most inappropriate, the most insubstantial, no matter how much the society in which I lived overvalued it.

Mr. Rao had spent his life reflecting. He was a man of exceptional culture and above all of great spiritual knowledge. It had been a professor at several universities, although he was already retired. That’s why I was surprised when he told me:

“The true intellectual is the one who understands that intellect must be sacrificed in order to go further. The intellect itself under-stands it has to commit suicide in order to find another way of higher knowledge. Until the ordinary knowledge does not stop and we get rid of it, we cannot aspire to the intuitive and liberating knowledge.”

He looked at me with his eloquent and deep eyes.

“My problem,” he added, “is that I am too loaded with knowledge. The storage of my mind is full of useless stuff.” He started to laugh and added: “I suppose that if you have made the decision to retire from ordinary life, it is because you have reached your saturation point.”

“Indeed,” I replied.

“We all have a serious problem, whether in Europe, in India or anywhere else in the world. Well,” he smiled, to add later, “we have two: one is our own obfuscated mind; the other, the governments and the institutions.

“They mean power, and power always involves corruption. Those who hold the power are fueling hatred and division, because so they improve their profit. The situation of the human being is sad. There is much talk about the quality of life, but nobody cares about the quality of consciousness.”

With its enviable kindness, Mr. Rao proposed to accompany me to visit some interesting people and so, incidentally, we could ask them about the treatise. We took a taxi and we went several kilometers from Delhi, near Qutub Minar.

“How I love this town!” he said during the journey. “You know there are at least seven Delhis. A long, conflicting and often cruel history, but it is full of life and energy. Oligarchs and kings coveted it. It was more lusted than the most fascinating woman.”

“Seven cities?” I asked interested.

“And maybe more. Some say that nine or even ten. Over the years it has been invaded, plundered, destroyed and rebuilt many times. My beloved Delhi! It is the heart of India. You and I are now traveling between the Indus Valley and the Ganges Valley, the scene of conquests, intrigues and ferocious strives. The most desired city on earth, just imagine! At least seven times it became the capital of the kingdom.” He released an excited sigh and with unleashed enthusiasm, he added, “but I especially love the Old Delhi: The fascinating Shahjahanabad!”

The sky was overcast. A fine dust filtered through the nose.

“We will visit the yogi Amrita,” Rao told me. “He lives in a modest little house and for years has been devoted to meditation, alchemy and the research of the powers triggered by mantras.”

The little house was situated in a waste ground. It was certainly more than modest, almost a hut. We left the taxi and walked across the field. Some goats frisked around while others were sleeping on the floor. In the distance I saw a flock of vultures, with its long neck like a twisted pipe.

“The Indian alchemy,” said Mr. Rao, “works from inside out. That is, if the alchemist does not transmute his interiority first, he will not get any success in external transmutations. Before anything else, he has to make the spiritual gold, which is Wisdom. The ancient Indian alchemists came to possess an exceptional inner purity. A greedy alchemist is not a true alchemist. The work begins with consciousness. The consciousness of poor quality must be transformed into adamantine consciousness.”

My eyes met an old woman who was approaching in the opposite direction. Its eyes were faded, but were still beautiful and evocative.

“Women are part of the best of our country,” Mr. Rao said. “They have always been the great potential of India. We have neither appreciated nor valued them sufficiently, as the ignorant jeweler who is not able to distinguish a brilliant from a vulgar crystal.”

We entered the little house and found the yogi Amrita sitting in a meditative posture, chatting with some devotees.

“The Amrita,” Mr. Rao whispered to me, “is the nectar, the soma. The amrita is a vital substance that we have in the central cavity of the brain and that in some states of ecstasy is spilled out, purifying the yogi physically and spiritually. When spilling out it leaves a very sweet taste in the throat. The alchemist yogis consider it to be a valuable elixir to overcome diseases.”

Mr. Rao, very respectful, approached the yogi and touched his feet as a sign of veneration. He was an older man, with a bulging belly, a round full moon face and small height. He had a vivid and expressive little eyes, but there was nothing in him that attracted the attention, and neither his appearance was nice.

“My friend Hernan comes from Europe,” Mr. Rao introduced me to Yogi Amrita. “He has rediscovered the mystical sense of life and wants to spend a long time in our country.”

The yogi moved his head in a gesture of approval, which evidenced his satisfaction with my resolve.

Mr. Rao approached me a lot and whispered me, in a very soft voice:

“You can make the questions you want.”

That took me by surprise. No question came to my mind. There was a long silence, occasionally broken by the cawing of crows.

“Life is an illusion, a hoax,” said the yogi, gently emphasizing the words. “We suffer because we identify, and then we become hypnotized characters of the farce, thus ceasing to be the unperturbed witnesses of it.” He turned to me. “Stop identifying and you will cease to suffer. You are part of the show, but you can learn to also be the serene spectator, unshakably serene spectator of the show, don’t you agree?”

I nodded.

“Do not say yes by inertia,” he reproved me.

I felt ridiculous, without knowing what to say. Mr. Rao smiled, perceiving my embarrassment.

“The true alchemist,” the yogi added, “is not the one who be-comes a miserable greedy maker of gold. What a waste of time! It is the one who conquers death. Listen to me carefully: the one who conquers death.”

A young devotee, neatly dressed in an immaculate cream kurta, intervened:

“The Amrita Yogi began working with mercury when he was very young. There is a great power in the mercury if it is used with mathematical precision, because otherwise, it can be fatal. Mercury provides great vigor to the body and enhances the substances in the blood.”

The young devotee showed me a small jar.

“Look, this is mercury solidified by the master. Do you know how he did it?”

“I had never seen it; I ignore it,” I said hesitantly.

The truth was that I had never been concerned about finding out whether the mercury could solidify or not.

“He achieved it,” said the young man, proud of his mentor, “through the reciting of mantras. The vibrations of the appropriate mantra have solidified the mercury.”

The young man held the small bottle as the most precious relic. I did not know what the purpose of solidifying mercury was, but I refrained from making any comments.

“The ancient alchemists,” another older devotee told me, “dominated the ‘five breaths’ to control the five energies in the body. They knew the twenty mystic sounds, including the one that occurs when death approaches, and is fading as one dies; They could die at will and dominated the science of entering an alien body; they could expand like the universe or become tiny like a banyan seed; they learned the power of minerals and plants, and knew all the secrets and functions of their own body.”

“The mystical sounds?” I asked, not knowing what he meant.

“Yes, these are the sounds that the spiritual energies make within us. There are sounds like a bell, the song of a bird, the whistle of a flute or the flutter of a flock of birds. The yogi meditates on those sounds and thus he accesses to higher and intuitive states of consciousness.”

“The Indian alchemists,” said the yogi Amrita with a delicate tone, not affected at all, “did not look for gold to get rich. Moreover, at that time there was much in India and they could just take it out from the ground. They treated the gold with plants, other minerals and animal blood, and used that precious therapeutic composition to heal diseases, apparently incurable.”

“Is that therapy still used today?” I asked.

“Some yogis do, and also some Tibetan healers. There is a therapy that involves ingesting powdered gold, and even there is a surgery operation in which gold is inserted into the head and the brain is purified.”

The silence that followed was not dense, but placid. Then, the yogi Amrita continued:

“The ancient alchemist yogis aimed to achieve that, at the body’s death, the energy emerged from the aperture in the top of the head (not escaping by the other body orifices) so as to find the instantaneous and final liberation. However, many alchemist yogis failed to achieve such power; then, the energy was not released through the common orifices of the body, but neither through the aperture of the head, in which case the disciples had to break their skulls to release it. There were alchemist yogis who attained the incorruptibility of his own body and others who, after dying, were dissolved in ether and there remained no trace of his mortal wrap.”

“Why many of these practices you mention have disappeared? Aren’t there any masters to teach them?”

The young devotee, impulsively, rushed to answer me.

“The English. They, even worse than the Arabs, annihilated teachers, wandering monks, sacred places… They did not do it with the unchaste violence of the Arabs, but in a more subtle way. They attacked our beliefs, mocked them and ridiculed them.”

With a gentle gesture of the hand, the yogi asked the young man to calm down. Then he turned to me.

“What are you missing?” he asked me. “I perceive a huge void in you that causes you anguish and desolation.”

“I’m missing peace, meaning, consolation.”

“In the center of the brain, behind the eyes, we have a concavity in which, believe me, there is a reflection of the innumerable faces of the Infinite Being. Meditate focusing the mind on that area and let the mantra Om reverberate in it. If you persevere, and the Infinite Being wants to, one day you will notice sliding down your throat the most enchanting, sweet and wonderful of nectars: the Amrita. Do not live contracted. Meditate to be free. The day you feel the Infinite Being palpitating in every pore of your body, in every cell, in every drop of blood, in every breath… that day you will feel calm wherever you are; I assure you. Be it in an office, a bazaar, a palace or a hut.

“In order to make this practice the mind is directed to the frown, into the depths of the head, where the mantra Om is repeated. Gradually, one concentrates on the mantra and merges with the whole Creation. There are yogis who when they come in ecstasy feel that the nectar, of insuperable sweetness, soaks his throat and palate.”

I had a weird impression of bewilderment. The peace was so far away!

Then Mr. Rao, anticipating me, turned to the yogi.

“Yogi Amrita, have you heard something about a treatise entitled The happy man in the cave of the heart?”