The Beginning. 1968. May.

Kheerganga. Lukas was walking barefoot across the steep alpine meadow. Away from the log cabin. The first bright spring morning made the short verdant grass shine. Babaji was sitting at a distance, cross-legged and erect on a smooth, flat rock that the sun had dried of the night dew and warmed. Around him, a couple of dark khaki, woollen shawls and thin, white cotton loincloths had been laid out to dry. He had washed them in the holy spring, Kheerganga. When Lukas came closer, he could see that the sadhu was polishing the copper snake bracelet with ruby eyes. His two strings of gnarly wooden beads were dark and damp. He had them cleansed in the hot water and laid them out, side by side, on top of the shawls. The air was filled with the scent of wet wool and wood. This was everything he owned.

Quietly, Lukas sat down next to the ascetic and surrendered to the profound silence he emanated. In front of them was the vast, savage mountain with its countless craggy peaks and crevices where the thick compact snow of winter still rested white and firm. From the river far below, came the indomitable thunder of cascading meltwater. At their right, a solitary shower floated slowly along like an undulating curtain. Its fine mist of suspended droplets refracted the rays of the sun and erected two radiant rainbows. They spanned the valley like a gate. Behind the rainbows, far away up there somewhere was the sacred place. The lake whose name he had heard. Mantalai.

Lukas plucked up his courage. “Babaji, I … have to … I …” Overcome by a wave of sadness, his voice withered like weeds in dry season.

With an expression of unfathomable love in his coal-black eyes, the ascetic spoke, “Friend, I already told you. This ‘I’ you keep speaking from is nothing but a ghostly peg holding back the barrage of God’s infinite wisdom.”

Lukas choked on a tearful clutching in his chest. Even though the sage’s words created a deep longing in him, he did not understand what he was saying. “I don’t get it, Babaji.”

“Exactly!” the sage chuckled. “When liberated from the ignorant ‘I’, a barrage will rip away man, mind and world in a roaring torrent of absolute nothingness.”

“Liberated how?” Lukas asked.

“You will need to find a teacher who has liberated himself from the mandala of this world.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. Your teacher stands outside time and space… calling your name.”

“But I can’t hear him.”

“Know guru is not the person that teaches. Look with your heart, not your senses.”

“What am I supposed to look for?”

“Look for love. Guru is the power that regulates the torrent of truth. Guru’s mercy allows insights to drip patiently onto those who listen, drowning them at the speed they can accept. He is the lighthouse and the keeper of floodgates. Guru’s love is infinite.”

“But,I have to go now,” Lukas’s tear-choked voice became high pitched even for his young age.

“Yes, the world is a continual movement of coming and going, welcoming, and sending off.” Babaji put his bracelet down on the rock and turned towards Lukas. “Find out who you are without that movement. Then come back.”

Lukas narrowed his eyes. “Without that? I don’t know.”

“So stay here. Why is this not enough for you?” the sadhu asked.

Lukas looked out at the glorious beauty of the landscape in front of him. “How can you just remain here?” he muttered.

“Why can’t you?” Babaji held his gaze. “This sadness of yours has, for ages, led you back to me, and on this endless road, I have always held your hand.”

Babaji lifted the copper snake off the rock, twisted it into place on his upper arm and said in an almost apologetic tone of voice, “Lukas, the world is like a shadow on the surface of clear water. The river is my scripture. One day you will understand.”

Lukas looked up. “But I have to go back, my visa is expiring.”

The sadhu held his gaze. “That is the difference between you and me: I know for certain that nothing in this world can satisfy me. So, I am forever at peace.”

Lukas’s head drooped. “But I am not like you.”

Babaji smiled. “No, you are not like me.” He placed a hand on the delicate shoulder of the young man. “I am you.”

The sage opened both his hands slowly in front of him with the palms facing up, as if he was supporting the sky. “And I am nothing but eternal space ….”

Babaji’s elegant hands found each other and came to rest in his lap, one cupped in the hollow of the other. He closed his eyes and sighed contentedly. Once again, profound silence exuded from him. Lukas was falling—in every direction he fell. Then he caught himself.

After a few minutes, Lukas stood up. The mule caravan was ready to return to the valley. In the delicate shade of the naked branches of sturdy walnut trees, the animals were drinking from the clear cold spring.

Life is formless like water, he thought and joined the pack.

The forest swallows up everyone.