Nothing in this universe is an accident, all is incident. The closer our meditation moves toward the First Cause of OM, the more we see the universe as the dream of the Supreme Consciousness instead of a series of disconnected accidents in alienated minds. What seemed like accidents were but misconceptions of reality from minds too caught up in the mundane to notice the subtle movements of meaning trying to break through our layers of obliquity. Reality is more meaningful and circumstances in life have more of a symbolic and moral meaning than our intellect and our mundane desires can conceive of. Creation is always trying to guide us closer to the Atman by showing us the way through life by creating interesting dramas and synchronizations. "Time is a moving image of eternity," wrote Plato. Sometimes the signs that appear to guide us appear from beyond time. The responses sometimes manifest before all of the questions and conflicts manifest in our awareness. Perhaps a dream foretells something important or some great synchronicity continues to repeat itself cyclically in our lives. Somehow, one was prepared for what was yet to come and this synchronicity inspires one with awe. The greater "I" within shows one from beyond time what one needs to know to let go of time's little tricks and live in the eternal now.
Yesterday I resolved one of the greatest mysteries of my life. I have never been able to provide anything close to a rational explanation for this most absurd experience. My friends and family have always enjoyed this story. People who don't know me may think me crazy.
I was living with some yogi monks in the Ozarks while in my mid-twenties. One morning I had to pick up a nun very early in the morning at a far away bus station. She was asleep on the return trip. Just when daylight broke and I could see the beautiful countryside there appeared some flying object in my peripheral vision. I turned my head and saw just a dark blur about 50 feet away from me along the side of the highway. It looked like it was coming straight toward me. There was only an open field behind its trajectory and it appeared to come out of nowhere. I had at least a few seconds to see it getting closer. At about 20 feet away I realized it was an object that looked like a frozen turkey wrapped in plastic. As it got closer I could see the image of the flying frozen turkey getting clearer and closer. I was dumbfounded. Time was moving very slowly and I kept asking myself "is that really a turkey?" All of the sudden it crashed into the front of the truck. The nun woke up and asked what that sound was. She was startled. I told her just to go back to sleep because she would never believe me. She couldn't go back to sleep and so she asked me to tell her. I told her and we had a good laugh. We joked that I had been handling too much basil on our farm. It always made me feel happy to work with the basil and make pesto. Perhaps it made me too happy and gave me creative visions? I felt that this experience made us friends. She noticed it was dawn and told me the meaning of the her monastic name, Usha, or dawn. It refers to a state of sunrise when birds start to sing.
Years later this person got involved with a dark rebellion within her order. She started making alliances with perverse people. I was not a monk but they wanted me on their side and insisted on alliance but I resisted. I just got out of jail in India for the dirty acts of this order. I was in the wrong place at such a time and I was involved in an international legal case. I defended this organization in front of the press of India and the BBC while I was under house arrest. Everyone loved me because I spoke well of them but they never told me the truth about the Purulia Arms Drop. I was a poster boy. They knew that I was suspicious and they felt ashamed that they were lying to me. They used to say I was somebody so very special and then they started to hate me as much as they loved me. This nun hated me so much that she began to attack my mother by creating lies about her character so as to completely destroy our image in this society. Other monastics also jumped on the band wagon and started inventing all sorts of lies. It harmed my mother very much and sent her on a negative spiral in life in which she ended up being very depressed. My mother followed me into this yoga society and hardly even knew these people yet they attacked her. I have never tried to forgive the nun. I have always thought someday in the future I will forgive her, but seeing how she has been very cruel to others as well, it is easy to put it off.
The other day a friend reminded me of the name Usha when describing the bird songs at dawn. I recalled the experience with the nun Usha and thought of the "bird song" that morning 20 years ago manifested as the thud of a big Butterball turkey! I wondered why I had such a mysterious experience with a person that turned out to be very negative. Finally, artha, eureka! It was now so perfectly clear. Usha was the goddess who called the dawn, not with a beautiful bird song, but with a dead turkey that crashed against the bumper. She would later attack me and my mother but the universe had already chided her from beyond time and has her showcased in its Theatre of the Absurd. Who needs revenge? Everything is already resolved. It is so easy to forgive a turkey.
