RUMINATIONS OF THE HEART: A LETTER FROM NEW ZEALAND
Thomas Lilly
Yesterday was the first day of winter here in New Zealand, and now the air is chill and damp, the wind ferocious at times and the clouds hang low and dark over the land. I can hear the Tasman Sea roaring up the shallow strand of beach not far away. It’s a quiet village here, and but for that constant rumble of surf washing the shore, wind whipping through the trees and shrubs, and the sound of a train as it plies the nearby route to Wellington, there are no distractions on an early winter’s night. It turns dark around 5:00pm, and sunrise comes late as well, so the nights are long and peaceful and quiet.
On this peaceful night I am moved to write down some reflections as they well up in me.
I have been reading The Synthesis of Yoga. I now realize, it is the most comprehensive, beautiful, profound, and ‘practical’ spiritual writing I have ever encountered. The language is incomparable. Nothing this lovely has ever been written in English I imagine, so rich and complex and strong and deep and true. Of course The Life Divine is beautiful and deep and true, and Savitri vibrates with the power of Vedic mantra, but The Synthesis of Yoga shows us the way and how to travel the way in language so rich and resonant and magical it unveils the very face of the Divine. I have never experienced anything like it, and I’ve read across the whole spectrum of sacred writings. Sure, the psychic being within can and does resonate with all manner of authentic spiritual writing. But not like this: in The Synthesis of Yoga Ido not hear the music of the flute calling dreamlike and intermittently as if from some hidden dale or glen within the realm of mind, and yet impossible to discover by the true light of day. No, it’s not like that. Nor is it similar to reading the poems of Rumi which also inspire me to the very depths, they are so breathtaking and beautiful. But those are separate pieces, like little perfectly-carved Buddhas it has been said, elegant, pristine, inspiring, redolent with the perfume of sacred wisdom, power and truth, but do not, in the end, provide a coherent method of travel on the path or guide for the journey.
I have been on this quest for forty years now, from the time I first left home and began to understand things for myself. And it seems quite preposterous seeing the phrase ‘forty years’ in print; in so many ways I still feel like that skinny teenager from the backwoods. But I was exceedingly fortunate to have had a ‘clean start’, as it were, since my upbringing was straight and true and provided not only a taste for the spiritual and a yearning after the transcendent, but also a strong foundation, including discernment, insight, and judgment. Any way you cut it though, forty years is a long time, and I’m just beginning to get a little bit below the surface of the ignorance.
The pace of that quickened when I pulled up in an autorickshaw to the gates of the Park Guest House in Pondicherry in late 2003 and soon after was taken up to Room 27. It was so beautiful there, so quiet and serene, such a wonderful refuge after four months of travelling through the noise and chaos of India. I found it impossible to leave even though my plans called for a short stay while organizing a vipassana retreat in Myanmar. I met Amal who counseled me to ‘remember and offer’ (naturally), and had an audience with Dr. Dalal, who had just introduced me to the psychic being through his wonderful compilations. I was hooked. Every tangled thread and errant stitch of an unfinished spiritual tapestry had found at once its proper place in the work of my becoming.
