Nachiketa 13. Conclusion

Nachiketa

13.

There was a prolonged meditative gap in their dialogue. Nachiketa gathered his powers of determination to fight off a command coming from the person whom he had chosen to occupy the position of the highest guru of his life.

He said with a drastic defiance,’ I shall not go back to a world that has no place for me. That world had rejected me long back when they did not even know what rejection meant to the child that I was. I have neither the energy nor the will to go to that world and beg them to take me into their folds.”

The old man responded with the knowledge that this moment was the moment of the greatest truth for the boy. He said, “The world cannot reject you my son. Now is the beginning of your journey. The days you spent here was the time of recuperation. You have not realized your strength yet, and you will not realize it until you test it against the hostile world. You touched the realm of Death once, not to fall into a dull, protective shell of inertia, a sense of false stability. Face the new path with the vibrancy that I am giving you now. It is my gift, Yama’s gift which no other blessing can surpass. You have the unique destiny of returning to the world of the living, with a life reinforced at the hands of Death. You will walk the earth with a life superimposed. Children blessed by me have no fear. They have lived under my shadow and released into the world to play their part. I do not let them come back to me before they play it. It is like walking on the razor’s edge. But if you exercise your choice wisely, it will neither harm nor hurt.  Be alert at the crossroads, and do not choose the path of least resistance. Knife out your existence, if necessary. Impart the lesson of fortitude to those around you. I shall be there to meet you at the journey’s end.”

The old man paused. They did not have the need to look at each other. In that silence Nachiketa saw the terrain of the life left behind and the one that was to come in a clear new light. A great serenity reigned at that moment between them which was a source of stability and strength for Nachiketa. His Master had spoken the final word. Hereafter the Master had no need to speak. His Silence would surpass Speech.

……………..

The next morning Nachiketa got up and came out to look around. The eastern sky was all aglow. He went in. He must kindle the fire and heat water for the old man’s bath. He will have to be helped to some food also.

Nachiketa stepped inside. The old man lay peaceful in his bed. The morning sun was shining warm upon his face. Every wrinkle upon it seemed to define and decode the mystery of his life to Nachiketa. For a moment Nachiketa gazed at him in awe and reverence and then bent down and touched his forehead. The old man seemed to acknowledge the touch and smile in benediction. Nachiketa’s hand rested on the forehead for awhile and then Nachiketa understood. He gazed at the old man as though at infinity and then silently pulled the sheet over his face…                                                          

THE END.

Nachiketa 12

Nachiketa pondered over this oracular command. He had sought his roots. He did not find them in the soil where he was born. He had accomplished a long flight and reached here. He had been nurtured and brought up by this man whom he had believed to be Yama. He had learnt life under the shadow of ‘Death’.  Where were his roots now?

He spoke, without looking at the old man, “You are asking a bird to leave the sky and go back to the cage.”

The old man said, “No, not to the cage. You will go back to complete what you were sent here to do”

Nachiketa said, “I have a choice, old man. You cannot take away my freedom now. “

The old man said, “Yes, you are still free and forever free. Your freedom is with you wherever you may be. This is precisely the time when you have to be reminded of it. You had used it once in the past to find yourself. That was your liberation. You had broken your shackles to find liberation in what you thought was your Death. You did not realize then that it was not an easy way out. But Yama, the Highest Guru knows. He knows what you have learnt and what you have yet to learn and also knows how much you can learn in one life-time. He only leaves you free to find your path.”

Nachiketa said, “Then do not ask me to go back. I have found my path. It does not lead me back. I have been uprooted from that soil.”

The old man said, “No, you are a different kind of a tree now. Your roots are in the open, infinite sky now and you will carry them wherever you will go. Your roots are in your soul, in your mind and your mind and soul are being nourished by that infinite consciousness which is your sky now. Don’t you realize?  You had touched the realm of Death and turned away from there by me, not without reason. “

Nachiketa looked at the old man. He was serene. For a while Nachiketa remained in that serenity in silence. The bond of love was overwhelming.  He said, “You are Life in Death for me. Will you not come with me if I have to go from here?”

The old man said, “Now I am always with you, because your roots are with me, in the sky. “

There was a smile on the old man’s face as he said this and there was a new-born beauty in it.

He said, “You did not care about your branches. Now with your roots in the sky and your branches spreading in this sphere, you are a new man, strong, nourished with the new knowledge of freedom. Your branches will not die hereafter.”              

   

Nachiketa 11

Nachiketa had returned to the cottage after a busy day at the village-market after selling the medicinal herbs. He was busy counting the day’s earning when he became aware of the old man sitting next to him and looking at him contentedly.

Nachiketa looked at him fixedly for a moment. The old man said, “This was the day of the year when twenty years back providence had dropped you here at my doorstep to die.”

“But you did not let me die, “said Nachiketa.

The old man laughed. He watched the rugged, buoyant look on the young man’s face and said, “Your Guru would not let you die before you live out the span.”

Nachiketa did not look up from his counting but he paused for a brief moment. The old man seemed restrained. There was silence for awhile. Nachiketa was about to get up when the old man said, “I am glad to see that you have mastered all the secrets of my trade now. “

Nachiketa stared into the old man’s eyes and laughed.

“Not all, old man; I have yet to extract a lot more.”

The old man smiled mysteriously and said with a little laugh, “Do you believe that I have a treasure still hidden somewhere around here?”

Nachiketa’s mind floated over that little laugh and the restraint behind it. He said, “I know, and I still cannot forget. Providence apart, I had come here in search of something which I believed was held in the hands of Death alone. You were that to me: Yama, the highest Guru of mankind, hiding behind it all, holding all answers. But mankind would not have them from you.”

“The mankind would never have them because I would not dispense with them, not before I make them receive the initiation through fire which is life”, said the old man.

Nachiketa said, “But I want to go through fire with all the answers known to me. Those will be my shield. Why do you withhold them from me? Am I not dear enough to you?”

The old man was silent. He looked at him as if his silence was the answer.

He said, “Go back to the life you have left unlived. You will discover all answers.”

Nachiketa understood. The Highest Guru was there before him and yet he was being put to the hardest test of life.

There was a stone wall which he could not break. It was a moment which demanded the essence of his being.

The old man said, “Do not ask questions. Ask for boons and I have plenty to give. Ask for what matters to all living beings—the best of the life on this earth, wealth, longevity, love. I will give all that to you”

Nachiketa said, "And still I will not know what to do with all that. You know I am ill-equipped to put it to use.”

“You will learn. It’s not hard to find out how,” said the old man.

Nachiketa thought of his father and all those who surrounded his father at various levels of existence. He wondered if his father had found by now what he was seeking. He realized what his father sought and did not find. He was astonished at the simplicity of the answer. It was love he did not find. Nachiketa experienced all that anguish all over again.

The old man read all that was passing through Nachiketa’s mind as he thought of the boon of life.

Nachiketa turned to the old man who seemed to hold all the mysterious possibilities within his power at that moment.

“I have nothing to ask for myself, but I want my father to be happy,” said Nachiketa.

“And if you think that wealth and longevity was what would make him happy ask for it and you will have them for your father,” said the old man.

Nachiketa looked at the old man and saw compassion in his eyes but still not all that there was which he could give but would not unless asked for.

He said after a while, “Yes, I ask for wealth and longevity for him because that was what he was seeking and told me, that must be sought after by the wise.” After a pause he said, “But I want him to have peace. That is the reason I want his wish to be fulfilled.”

This time the old man was quick to answer. He said, “Will he have peace with all the wealth and the power that comes with wealth? No my son. He still needs you. Go back and find out why he needs you”

Nachiketa 10.

It was the dark fortnight of the month of Chaitra, the beginning of summer when Nachiketa sat alongside the old man in meditation. His mind was not at peace, thinking of the past and the deteriorating health of the old man who had seen him through all along his lonely path of life.  Nachiketa had begun to feel the need to reconcile with, or at least to understand, his past which he had left behind in search of ‘the ultimate ‘, the ‘Yama’, who he believed was going to claim him. He sat beside the old man who was in deep meditation in that dark hour of the night, serene and lost to the world. The serenity of the night-sky had absorbed the old man’s spirit so completely that he seemed to melt and flow into it.

Nachiketa closed his eyes again and let his mind and spirit be carried away into the infinity of the night, and the old man’s presence in it ceased to be felt. Nachiketa became one with the breath of the old man and that of the night. Everything breathed as one single entity. Nachiketa extricated himself out of that totality with an effort of the will. In that moment he wondered whether the old man was in fact an astral being, an alien who did not belong to the world that moved, lived and dissolved in small fragments, not at once, but in isolated phases and moments, with each individual being. Indeed, this was the way ‘Yama’, the astral god of Death, controls the universe, thought Nachiketa. He marvelled at the unflawed wisdom which had led him in search of Yama, in the belief that Yama was the ultimate Master who held answers to all that appeared mysterious to the child Nachiketa in the incomplete understanding of life that the human beings displayed in their behaviour, deeds and actions, in their greed and grasping, in their fears and anxieties. For the child that he was then, his father was the epitome of all humanity. In the silence of the night Nachiketa saw with a greater clarity than before, the path that had brought him here to the old man. It was a light that he had shared with his father, as if since a time without beginning. The child Nachiketa had not known the use of reason, but still, his intuitive light refused to be obscured by his father’s world which was ordered by the tyranny of ignorance. Standing behind both, his father and him, was the unseen presence of Death, watching over their journey silently. Nachiketa wondered why it was that his father chose the way of ambition and why he chose the path towards Death. Suddenly he saw the old man in a new light. From the very moment he was obscured as he lay unconscious at the door of this cottage, his inner teacher had taken over completely, resuscitated his spirit, and tirelessly brought him back to the radiance and the spaciousness of his being, without for a moment letting go of his hand.  That inner teacher who had dwelt inside him all along had manifested itself to him as the outer form of the old man. That encounter, which he almost believed to be with Death, was the momentous miracle of his life.