A Holiday Story

It was Christmas week, 1983. The rumpled foothills of the Garhwali Himalayan range shone blue-ish in the early twilight and late dawn. The harder core ascetics, not the ones who flock like snow birds to the holy sites closer to the equator and lower in elevation, knotted their rough orange wool scarves around their ears, turning inward as their breath misted outward.

The Ganges river rolled low in her banks, ice trapping the purifying waters way above at the mouths of the four glaciers, Siva’s homes. Prayer bells pealed in the hush of holiness. It was still. Silent. Crisp. Stars danced with each other across the gash of visible sky between the hills. If you squinted past the little temples, it could have been a town en route to Bethlehem, awaiting that day and the birth of a mystic to touch hearts the world over.

Rishikesh is a moving place to spend Christmas (whether your Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or Spiritually Independent, somehow it all works here). Some Hindus revere (or have appropriated) Jesus as an avatar or incarnation of their deity Krishna, and for a religion that loves any holiday (the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions lists over 1000 Hindu holidays in a single year), in some parts of India, Christmas still ranks as one of their special ones.

I was staying at the Divine Life Society, otherwise known as Sivananda Ashram after the physician and founder Swami Sivananda, a great bear of a man who lived between 1887 – 1963. The ashram is large, well established, with a deep watertable of Spirit. Many residents had left the world half a century or more earlier to retreat and go deep into an embrace of the infinite.

I had made my way there through a circuitous route and was given a room and permission to stay through the holiday season. It was a 2-week pass that turned into 3 months, which turned into repeated visits and much appreciation for many spiritual and life lessons learned there.

But the Christmas I want to tell you about was a special one, for the ashram and for me.

The head of the ashram, the world reknown Swami Chidandnanda was travelling all over South India and was not expected to return in time for the festivities. Ashramites were disappointed but it wasn’t unexpected. I had never met Swamiji as he’s called. I also didn’t have much relationship with the level of devotion so many spontaneously held for this man, one said to be an awakened mystic, a saint.

One morning after a rare treat of 4 AM bhajans (spiritual songs) in a resident’s tiny room, with 3 ashram elders, one of the music masters playing the Veena (a difficult instrument said to be mother of all stringed instruments, played by the goddess Saraswati). The chanting created a soft deep space, when we finished, I crossed the ashram courtyard and entered the dimly lit large Samadhi Shrine.

Samadhi Hall is open to residents for morning practice. This long rectangular room houses the shrine to the ashram founder. Photographs of other saints and mystics line the wall of the hall. When I arrived that morning, a little after 5 AM, it held just a handful of residents chanting the standard morning routine.

I plopped myself in the center of the room in front of the dais on a thin little cushion that didn’t do much to soften or warm the marble floor. The service was formulaic and I wasn’t particularly focused. After the treat of sutras played on classical veena, this seemed something of a let down.

All of a sudden, I was gripped by an intense fear. A feeling or voice or intuition urged, “Leave the room! Right now!

All of a sudden, I was gripped by an intense fear. A feeling or voice or intuition urged, “Leave the room! Right now!”

It was a fear I’d never experienced before. While some part of my mind or subconscious was trying desperately to get me out of the room, at the same time I felt a column of energy magnetically sucking me right into the floor–picture the molten core of the earth, all of its pressure and pull pulling you into it. That’s what I felt. The force was crushing. I couldn’t move.

I peered to my left and to my right, sweating in the cold hall. No one seemed to have noticed anything. Everyone was dutifully vocalizing the next verses of the same chants with no particular affect or emotion. I could hardly breathe.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a flurry and tumult of light-colored saffron robes and shuffling bare feet electrified the room. What was happening? Who would make such a disturbance entering the morning practice? When the attendants stepped to one side, I saw a tall very gaunt swami with large glasses and unbelievably gentle eyes.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The room started to dissolve.

The swami quietly took his place on the dais, easily joining step and adding his voice to the collective prayers. I could hardly breathe. Curiously, everyone else seemed to be normal around me. What was going on?

I heard a soundclap inside my head. Boom! Then everything went silent within me. I could still see and hear and participate. To anyone looking at me from the outside they wouldn’t have seen any difference, except a look of sheer and utter astonishment. Inside me was a whole different story. Within, something extraordinary was going on. There was incredible space. The universe had just folded up within me. It wasn’t just a little more room, it was an entirely different conception and sense of space.
If I could have moved I would have gasped. It was frightening and reassuring all at once. Like nestling in the arms of the Kosmic mother.

I could hardly feel the floor, if you told me I was floating above my cushion, I would have easily believed you.

A fragrant calm washed through me. I could hardly feel the floor, if you told me I was floating above my cushion, I would have easily believed you. I found it hard to look at the swami’s face or frame and impossible to look away. When I closed my eyes I could still see his eyes, burning dark coals of inexpressible kindness.

Swami Chidandanda spoke some words about Christmas, about Love, compassion. I don’t remember what he said and it wasn’t for very long. But it stretched like eternity stretches cupid’s bow, and the arrows’ little pricks nipped my heart.

Come 6 AM, the light was beginning to break over the mountain’s ridge back to the East. The swami got up. By then the hall was full, in singles and twos and threes, people had heard Swami Chidananda was back, and they gathered. We were now sitting many rows deep. I hadn’t noticed anyone enter. No movement had disturbed the sea of oneness in the hall.

As Swamiji strode to the side door, a man moved towards him, kneeling to touch his feet, a common and customary Indian gesture of reverence. The swami nimbly jumped out of the way. When there is only One, how could anyone accept expressions of two-ness?

The hall was emptied. I was still rooted to my cushion. I felt the presence of the special shrine to the ashram’s founder at the end of the hall warming my left side. Tears were streaming down my face, silent sobs wracked my chest. I don’t know why I was crying. A deep sense of the unnecessariness of isolation and alienation filled me, an overwhelming awareness of Love as powerful as the moon’s pull on the ocean’s depths pulled those tears out of me, washing clean the shadows and cobwebs sullying my sense of Self.

A few days later, on Christmas eve, scores of us followed Swami Chidananda down to the banks of the Ganges river. Quiet joy and stillness permeated the village of the rishis. Bells and chanting echoed from the halls of all the ashrams dotting the Himalayan foothills.

We recited traditional Sanskrit prayers. One by one, we set sail our gratitude for the Sacred in little boats made of leaves filled with flower petals and flickering candles. The light-boats danced in the current, merging and mixing with other offerings from points further downstream, disappearing in the wind or around a bend. As the river carried them away, they merged wish and prayer, water and earth, fullness in the present and hopes for the future.

This moment out of time, over thirty years ago, instilled in me an unforgettable impression of the Spirit of Christmas, of what this time symbolizes and points us to, an intimate experience of purity, heart, and peace on earth.

May you and the extended constellation of your relationships enjoy a deeper sense of Spirit this holiday season.

May our shared experience of the dissolution of fear inspire in us the strength and heart to bring about Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards All.

Happy Holidays!

Amy