There was a knock at the gate. A sadhu with kindly eyes stares at us. He had snow-white beard, a typical well-established mendicant’s facial growth. And his hair was also pure snow white. It was very surprising to find him looking with a certain familiarity. And there was a twinkling mischief in his eyes, a pleasant teasing as if he knew all about me and I hadn’t any clue about him. For sure, he knew me but I had hardly any clue about his identity.
My brother puts up a challenge for me to find out who this great sadhu is. I kept on staring at his face. But I couldn’t tell who he was. And then my brother tells me he’s Rakesh. I nearly jumped out of the ceiling. At the mention of Rakesh the faded signs of a once familiar face began to emerge out of the little space that was not covered by facial hair and his long mendicant hair locks. I could now make out that this was Rakesh indeed. It was a massive surprise, big enough to rattle my nerves. Even the wildest imagination about him as a sadhu was impossible. After all, he used to be a normal boy. He was interested in physical exercises in the village akhara. A not too vocal boy he had a very nice stocky and strong physique. I couldn’t make out how come he has turned out to be an ascetic.
Since I hadn’t met him for the last 15 years or so, it was very difficult for me to find out any logic into his becoming an aesthetic. He looked a perfect elderly sage even though Rakesh is a few years my junior. There was kindness in his eyes and his prematurely snow-white beard and orange robe were enough to make you feel that he belongs to that class of ascetics who are not mere careerists, rather who are genuinely on the path of self-exploration leading to ultimate realization. Just after interacting with him for fifteen or twenty minutes, I could make out that he is a genuine seeker on the spiritual path.
Rakesh used to be an average student, unassuming, without having any urgency to show off his talent or skill of any type. He hadn’t any big visions or dreams. Even the villagers hadn’t too many expectations from him. Just like any other boy, you can say. His interesting story went like this.
He was doing well as a transporter and was earning decent bucks. You can say that he was going smooth and economically well off, so there was hardly any material problem. There wasn’t any family problem either in their small, happy unit. And he was physically very strong as I have already told you.
But then his body revolted against him. There was a serious problem with his back. His spine would get locked up, a kind of dislocation where the facet joint of the lower vertebrae slips over the one above it. His body would get jammed, leaving him immobile and he had to lie on bed for months at end. The doctor told him that even a surgery stood very slim chance of curing him completely. There was a big risk and he might get worse than earlier. So they won’t recommend the surgical procedure. In that way he would be bedridden when his symptoms aggravated. His life now meant precautions, painful injections, no physical work and many more restrictions on the routine freedoms of life. He even got bedsores one time. It was horrible, he told me. He got fed up with life. It was the same body that he felt so proud of, it was the same body that he used to put up into physical exercise routines to hone it, it was the same body that he used to feed so lovingly with all the nutrition and now it was failing him. The medical science was also helpless before this condition.
He went into depression as one can imagine and there were a lot of questions staring in his face in the league of ‘why me?’ It shook the foundations of his faith in life itself. One day he found himself running into the cremation ground at midnight. He was losing the fervor of life. There was a fire still burning on a pyre and he put up the hot ashes on his forehead and yelled to all the evil spirits to come and challenge and fight with him. He knew that he was losing his sanity. His mind had at last given up after facing chronic physical problems. He told me that he was feeling so helpless that he was yelling and crying in the cremation ground at midnight. Then some soft whisper chimed in his suffering soul. It asked him to go to Haridwar and bathe in mother Ganga. His inner voice assured him that it will help him. That night itself he left for Haridwar. He stayed there for a fortnight, bathing in mother Ganga, simply enjoying the positive vibes of the place. The hot lava and inner turmoil and agony cooled off in the holy waters over a fortnight. Now he could think with reason and logic and regained some balance.
Again a soft whisper told him to take sanyas lifelong and become an ascetic full time. A complete U-turn in life for a completely different destination. He took diksha from a guru belonging to Gorakhnath sect. The guru mantra very soon catapulted him into a full-grown sadhu in just a few years. You can imagine the power of guru mantra if somebody is very diligent and honest about it in meditation and tapasya. He was ready, the divine spark of devotion burned the stuck-up karmas and the energy knots inside his body opened up for a free flow within three or four years. He rose quite tremendously on the path of spirituality. I could feel those spiritual vibes, a scent of purity and love emanating from him.
When he came to meet me, he was on the sixty-third day of his fasting. He was just having water, tea and smoking beedies, just these three things; imagine surviving on these three things for sixty-three days and still he was energetic, he was playful, he was joking, in fact I couldn’t see any trace of fatigue or signs of sickness about him. Rakesh joked like a little boy that the doctor had told him not to lift a weight above five kilogram, not to walk more than a kilometer at a stretch and take every damn precaution in order to keep his spine out of danger. Now after meditations on guru mantra and tapasya as per Gorakhnath sect, Rakesh was in a position that just on water, tea and smoking beedies he could walk on a pilgrimage to a distance of 300 km, carrying a bag weighing almost twenty kilogram on his back just in order to challenge the medical diagnostics. As per medical science all this would have left him a crippled man. He had just returned from the pilgrimage, on the sixty-third day of his 101-day fast, and here he was laughing and telling his story with full innocent vigor.
I could see the pride in his eyes and rightly so. He is the chief protagonist of his story, a maker of his own destiny, a keeper of his life in his own hands instead of surrendering it to the doctors. He decided to chart out a separate course for himself instead of getting daunted by the diagnosis where an injection would cost 60,000 rupees and bedsores awaited to define his life in terms of pain and suffering. There was a time when once the situation aggravated he had to take bed rest for two or three months at a stretch and bedsores would eat into his sense of dignity, giving him immense agony, helplessness and pain. Now he was a free man floating around on the fuel of spirituality, fueled by the blessings of his guru, strengthened by the meditating powers that gave him unbelievable amount of energy even though he hadn’t eaten anything solid for more than two months.
So the almost crippled Rakesh was gone and here was a joyful, merrymaking, kindly, pious sadhu rechristened Bhootnath by his guru. When you become a true spiritualist you start grabbing the traces of ultimate truth that are cascading around in each particle of energy swarming around you and for that you need not be a well-educated person, you need not be a well-versed person in scriptures. Life itself is such a big teacher. It makes you a perfect knower of things. I have read thousands of books and Bhootnath has hardly read a few dozen books in his life and that too without much attachment in his heart for the habit of reading. But when we started talking on various topics, of course belonging to the domain of spirituality, I could see that the path of self-seeking gives one so many mysterious avenues of knowing things from very fresh perspectives, almost from hidden sources. He seemed to know all without reading or hearing the kind of stuff the novices like yours truly use on the path of true knowledge.
It was wonderful to talk to him on various topics. He told me about his numerous experiences. He had reached up to a level where he had clearly enjoyed out-of-body experiences wherein his consciousness could see the material body lying on the ground and could recognize and feel that duality.
It’s expected from anybody who is on the path of spirituality to feel very close to nature. Bhootnath feels very close to Mother Nature. He had recently undertaken a plantation drive and was eagerly looking forward to get some help in his mission of making Mother Earth green. He stayed with me for more than two hours and it was a treat to be with him, this entirely reformatted man. If I compare his former self to the present avatar, it is unbelievable to even think of this transformation. Is it the same Rakesh who used to appear so normal in most of the things that the village boys enjoy while they are growing up in the bucolic, free environment? But now it wasn’t Rakesh anymore. He is Bhootnath now, so wise and a very nice ascetic man.
Bhootnath was oozing with a kind of imposing elegance, which anyone on the path of spirituality can feel. It was wonderful to see him having a cup of tea, a glass of water; it was a treat to watch him smoking beedies. It was like a bird has gone out of the cage and was now enjoying free flights in the limitless expanses of the sky. He walks on foot most of the time. He says his stick is his main companion, his sole support apart from his guru’s blessings and his guru mantra. His saffron cloth bag is his entire possession.
I asked him did he miss the village which drove him to pay a visit. He told me the reason for his recent visit was his mother, mai he called her, just like he would address any woman on earth as mai. He somehow came to know about her blood cancer. He said, ‘Even though I’m an ascetic I cannot forget that she is my mai, she’s the one who gave me this body. I’m eternally obliged to her.’ In the hairy spools of detachment, I could feel very feeble, sadly pining notes of affection that would somehow identify a special mai from all the mais around. And what is wrong in that? Love comes in multiple layers. A mother is a mother forever even to an ascetic.
Bhoothnath was planning to take this special mai to Himachal for Ayurvedic treatment. She would be very happy to see all the open nature around her; maybe at least this much I can do for her. He said this in a very loving, soft, gentle tone, as if he was now father and mother both to all the worldly sufferers like us.
As I saw him off at the gate, it was such a soothing sight to see him walking on his path, slowly putting his stick in front with each step and the village dogs barking at the stranger. He moved as if this meeting with me didn’t carry any leftovers with him. As an ascetic you become a stranger in your own village. Most of the people in the village won’t recognize him if they come face-to-face with him because the robes, big beard, long locks of hair have completely redefined Rakesh, sorry Bhootnath.
He is in a different league altogether. He has a genuine smile, a smile of kindness and forgiveness. I sincerely believe and I’m hundred percent sure about it that he will go very far on the path of spirituality. He may even attain ultimate liberation in this lifetime only. I could see it on his forehead. It was wonderful to meet this spiritualist. Nonetheless, it was a big surprise to me. I do hope to meet him sometime because I miss those positive vibes, the fragrance of his spirituality, the scent of selfless seeking. Who won’t like to meet such people?