INSTITUTION OF MEMORY

Why do we go gaga over opening of Bhagawan’s Samadhi, or Mahasamadhi, as reverentially termed, its holiness notwithstanding?
Isn’t it celebrating what we have lost?
Isn’t it canonising after crucifixion?
Why should we call it Good Friday, the day Jesus allowed himself to be nailed on a cross, so that we understand the meaning of love?
Is it celebrating love, or celebrating our failure to recognise it when it was available?
Why aren’t we ashamed of glorifying someone who gave himself up to our insensitiveness?
But what else could we do in order to remember our shame?
Yes, what else could we do?
Do we, however, remember our shame by ending our insensitiveness?
We remember it by forgetting it.
Isn’t it a cruelty that we worship memory, but do not adopt it?
Cruelty to ourselves.

Once Bhagwan asked, “Why are people so ready to die for religion, but not live it?”
Why should we justify life in its death?
He told us several times, “Live, so that you shall not die again”.
But death seems to be a greater reality than life!
So while they live, we forget what they live for; and when they quit, we want to remember once they lived!
When they try to show us the way, we think, anyway, the Way is here; and when the guiding finger is no more here, we remember that the Way was here.
The difference is, the calendar has turned over a page.
Or, has it?
And nothing more?
From Janaki-Ram to Janaki Ramachandran, have we travelled long?

Ah, the Mahasamadhi is beautiful.
Made of imported marble, exquisitely crafted.
There is a touch of gold too.
You can go near the platform, lay your flowers at its foot.
People in their thousand jostle just to pass by it.
You feel Swami is actually present there.
We always like to freeze the water, and admire the ice .
We are filled with awe at the wealth found in a temple, and debate endlessly how to spend it, and hardly notice the Temple standing there endlessly waiting for someone to say You are beautiful.
We raise a storm over who paid how much, and when, for the marbles, and yawn at the sweaty marble maker.

He is, becomes He was, ending up in He has been.
New deluxe editions of what he said, and what he was, take the pride of our collection.
New visuals created testimony the ultimate technology we fathered.
New Arts fuse him into our tired lives, and we point to each other the new way of the golden dawn, though none of us has seen it.
Journeys become easier, dinners tastier, transport more comfortable, residences cosier, relationships faster, and the memory shorter.

A new Institution is born.

But where is He?