Papaji is neat.

Excerpts from Nothing Ever Happened, essentially Papaji's auto-biography. Sometimes it's best when I randomly pick.

There are so many beautiful passages.
"I had tried to help them by not registering a complaint but they had sued me and taken me to court. Afterwards, when their case had been dismissed, they were still lying about it. Such is the way of the world.

The world is a big samsara. Everyone is caught in it, the honest and dishonest alike. Very few realize it and successfully make an effort to escape. This was brought home to me when I used to sit on the beach and watch the fisherman net the fish and bring them ashore. Two boats with a long net between them would slowly move toward the shore. The fish get surrounded but they don't worry. There is still plenty of water for them to move around in. This is the situation of everyone in the world. We have been encircled by the net of death. If we don't do something about it, we are doomed to die, but who cares, who tries to escape? Virtually no one."

New excerpt:
I ate lunch in the ashram. At the conclusion of the meal the Maharshi went back to his room with his attendant. No one else followed him. I didn't know that there was an unofficial rule that visitors should not go to see him between 11:30am and 2:30pm. The manager had decided taht the Maharshi needed to rest for a few hours after lunch, but since the Maharshi would not go along with a rule which prevented peopel from coming to see him, a compromise was reached. His doors would remain open but all visitors and devotees were actively discouraged from going to see him during those hours. Not knowing this, I followed the Maharshi into his room, thinking that this was the best time to have a private interview.

The Maharshi's attendant, a man called Krishnaswami, tried to dissuade me. 'Not now,' he said. 'Come back at 2:30.' The Maharshi overheard the exchange and told Krishnaswami that I could come in and see him.

I apprached him in a belligerent way. 'Are you the man who came to see me at my house in the Punjab?" I demanded. The Maharshi remained silent.

I tried again. 'Did you come to my house and tell me to come here? Are you the man who sent me here?' Again the Maharshi made no comment. Since he was unwilling to answer either of these questions, I moved on to the main purpose of my visit.'
"Have you seen God?' I asked. 'And if you have, can you enable me to see Him? I am willing to pay any price, even my life, but your part of the bargain is that you must show me God.'

"No", he answered, 'I cannot show you God or enable you to see God because God is not an object that can be seen. He is the seer. Don't concern yourself with objects that can be seen. Find out who the seer is'. He also added, 'You alone are God' as if to rebuke me for looking for a God who was outside and apart from me.

His words did not impress me. They seemed to me to be yet one more excuse to add to the long list of those I had heard from swamis all over teh country. He had promised to show me God, yet now he was trying to tell me that not only could he not show me God, no one else could either. I would have dismissed him and his words without a second thought had it not been for an experience I had immediately after he had told me to find out who this 'I' was who wanted to see God. At the conclusion of his words he looked at me, and as he gazed into my eyes, my whole body began to tremble and shake. A thrill of nervous energy shot through my body> My nerve endings felt as if they were dancing and my hair stood on end. Within me I became aware of the spiritual Heart. This is not the physical heart. It is, rather, the source and support of all that exists. Within the Heart I felt something like a closed bud. It was very shiny and bluish. With the Maharshi looking at me, and with myself in a state of inner silence, I felt this bud open and bloom. I use the word 'bud', but this is not an exact description. It would be more correct to say something that felt bud-like opned and bloomed within me in the Heart. And when I say Heart I don't mean that the flowering was located in a particular place in the body. This Heart, the Heart of my HEart, was neither inside the body nor out of it. All I can say is that in the Maharshi's presence, and under his gaze, the Heart opened and bloomed. It was an extraordinary experience, one that I had never had before. I had not come looking for any kind of experience, so it totally surprised me when it happened.

another excerpt:

As I was waiting for a bus in an isolated location near Krishnagiri, an extremely disreputable-looking man appraoched me. He wore tattered, filthy clothes, and had open wounds on hit legs that he had neglected badly, they were infested with maggots. We talked for a while and I offered to remove the maggots from this leg and give him some medicine which would help his wounds heal. He wasn't interested in having any assistance.

'Leave the maggots where they are,' he said. 'They are enjoying their lunch'

Feeling taht I couldn't leave him such a miserable condition, I tore a strip off the shawl I was wearing and tied it around his leg so that at least he could have a clean bandage. We said 'goodbye' and he walked off into the nearby forest.

I had recognized this man to be a jnani and was idly speculating on what strange karma had led him to neglect his body in such a way, when a woman approached me. She had been selling iddies and dosas at a nearby roadside stall.

"You are a very lucky man', she said, "That was a mahatma [great soul]. He lives in this forest but he almost never shows himself. People come from Bangalore to have his darshan, but he never allows anyone to find him unless he himself wants to meet them. I myself sit here all day, but this is the first time I have seen him in more than a year. This is the first time I have seen him approach a complete stranger and start talking to him'.

I was traveling from Ramanasramam to Bangalore by car. As we were travelling through a deserted forest area I asked my driver to stop because I wanted to sit quietly for a while by myself. After a few minutes I told him that he could go because I felt an urge to stay for some time by myself.

He said, "It's night time and there is no one around. I cannot leave you here by yourself. A little further down the road there is a nice temple on top of a hill. Why don't you go there instead? There is a priest who looks after it. Many people go there because a great saint lives in this area. He hides in the forest and hardly ever comes out, but this temple is one of the few places he seems to visit regularly. He is so famous, people come all the way from Bombay and Calcutta to have his darshan and to seek his blessings. He is a very strange man, but he has alot of power. If people are lucky enough to find him, they let him piss on their palms. If they then lick their palm once, they will be blessed with a son, but if he licks his own palm, that means the person will have a daughter. This man is always right.''

another excerpt:

David Godman: Not everyone who came to see Papaji with a request to see God had his request granted. Papaji occassionally tells the story of a judge who came to see him with the following request:

'Janaka got Enlightenmnet from Ashtavakra in the time it took the former to swing his leg over his horse. I have been told taht you have this power. Can you give me Enlightenment in an instant?"

"Yes," replied Papaji, "But first you must go to Hazrat Ganj [the principle road center in Lucknow] and prostrate full length on the ground in front of a policeman who is directing the traffic there. If you do this, I guarantee that you will gain Enlightenment.'

The judge refused. He was too proud to demean himself before a lowly traffic policeman.