THE MODERN MAN
Life is all about exhausting living. In order to live, one has to embrace all and through each expression, one aspect is lived out totally and to me that is the truth of living which is celebrating everything.
FAMILY
In the most ordinary life is where the extraordinary is hidden, in just being a father, a husband, a son … in just living the day-to-day in the most extraordinary sense.
Cornell University, Ithaca, USA May 2017
FIRST DISCIPLE
For Geetha, her prayer is to live and die with and for an enlightened man, and to serve him to come to this point. This is her past life being lived out. So her witnessing of this has a deep meaning and truth for her, and has such a relevance to her, and to all who have come after her.
For me the sadness is that, that is all she wanted, she could have entered it with me, she could have become enlightened too, but she chose just to be with an enlightened man, she chose just to be her, and to be with truth so to say. She never wanted it for herself, not even once nor has she abused it.
It’s not her, and it has no relevance to her. Her path is sight, to see, to have the darshan, and that darshan is more than enough. There can be no one else but her to see my enlightenment as it happened, she is the first disciple, and that is how it will be.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia March 2017
MY DAUGHTERS
Now what is left is the blessing of celebration, do whatever you want, fail, it does not matter for all that matters is this and this alone. Now you have the strength to live and to live as you, undetermined by the world. And as your father I will forever hold the beauty and promise of you always.
Fordham University, New York, USA May 2017
FISHING
It happened that I took my students fishing, I must be the first enlightened man who likes fishing … we were 80 miles out in the sea and were caught in a bad storm. He was a good student who has been with me for many years. We stood there and I said, “Let’s ride the wave,” and it was very scary. Up and down ... and I kept telling him, “Breathe and watch the perfection, nature at play.” At some point he said, “Master I know, I can feel it, it is just right ... Even if we die now, it is right."
Vancouver, Canada 2008
LEARNING HORSE RIDING
Love encompasses all. The notion that quitting life is the essence of enlightenment is the notion that I am challenging. This is the misinformation that has been advertised, for the truth of enlightenment is that it lives and it is for life.
Frötuna Gård, Sweden September 2016
I am a boy from a small fishing village
That which you need to know is that, this man who is a master, and a husband is just a boy, the son of his masters, who is not perfect, and has to do the work of his masters.
THE EARLY YEARS
I used to say, I want to be born as me as many times as I can, I just loved being this boy from a fishing village or whatever I was at that time. I had no idea of dissolving.
Much happened in my life that was not explained or understood by me for a long time, and I was innocent thinking that is how it is for all.
Mersing, Johor, Malaysia 1967
THE FAVOURITE SPOT
And I remember for hours I would sit on the clifftop and look at the ocean, at the vastness, to sit quietly and re-remember. Now it makes sense why I did that. Looking at that vastness, I remembered my vastness. Looking at that endless sky, I could see my own inner sky.
I didn’t know I was meditating. I didn’t know that word. All I knew was I had to do it, I had to remember that which I am.
Mersing, Johor, Malaysia 1978
BY THE MERSING BEACH
I was very alone, not lonely, but alone by choice. It drove my mother crazy, I wasn’t interested in sports, I wasn’t interested in new clothes, so they couldn’t catch me. There was nothing they could do to lure me in. I’d take my fishing rod and go fishing. The jungle was my friend. I went for long walks in the jungle alone. I knew every corner in the jungle, every fishing hole in my hometown.
Mersing, Johor, Malaysia 1981
PARENTS
Can my parents give birth to an enlightened child? Yes, at that time, how they were. The ingredients were there, what it requires is: innocence, love and purity. When I was born they really had that bond. And that’s why a soul like that can be born at that time. They were both innocent, they weren’t cunning. Pure innocence at play.
Mersing, Johor, Malaysia 2003
MY BLESSING
There are many silat masters, but Pak Wan is totally different. He was a key guiding force in making me what I am. I was really in search. I think more than martial arts, I was in search of somebody who would instil discipline in me, awaken my manhood in me. And I found the perfect person to learn from. I have learnt to become a good human being from Pak Wan. He was a living example of how to live rightly; without judgement, in treating people rightly with respect.
I wonder what would have happened to me if Pak Wan was not there at that time to take me as his student. Martial arts seemed to be the tool he contained to remain him. He was my blessing.
Mersing, Johor, Malaysia 1975
MEETING GEETHA
I remember how Geetha was, there can be no more beautiful sight than that. What I was birthed for, I saw as her at that time. The total beauty, the total surrender and her love and strength is something I can’t describe. I have never come close to seeing anything like that, and I know I will never come to see it again ever.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1988
THE RAVI KUMAR WHO NEVER WAS
From my point of view now, there never was Ravi Kumar (Dhyan Vimal's name before he took sannyas), he never existed, and what seems to exist at that time as Ravi Kumar was nothing but the desire, nothing but the wants, that was clothed as Ravi Kumar.
He was a slave to love, and the need was to love, to love so totally that he did all that had to be done for it.
Love can only happen with the innocent, the surrendered and with the ones who have come to innocence, who are the masters. Both of this happened to him, so the need became real. She was there, and that love was innocent, there was no mind about it, it was and is pure, and Ravi Kumar had to respond to it, he had to love her, the innocence was total, so he had to love.
Continued on next page
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1993
THE GURUS - OSHO
Then he fell in love with his masters, Osho and J. Krishnamurti, and they were innocent too, so his demand to love was total.
What he did was amazing as he gave into this need totally. And to love totally, there is only one way, which is to die, to let the self, the desire die. He had no interest in enlightenment, and I can’t remember him too much too, but this I can say, he did not know what enlightenment was nor did he do anything for it.
All he did was love and that need to love he lived selfishly, and in that the death of the self happened, and the need was lived totally. What was left after that death is just love, not that he loved, he became that, that is what I am certain of.
Continued from previous page
1995
FIRST WORKBOOK
I was not ready to teach, I was more ready to attend so all the classes I did was nothing but what I wanted to attend and do myself. So I chose a way to live which forced me to live out what I had to learn, I was teaching what I had to learn and was learning.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1993
ANANDA MAITREYAN
For my father the enlightened son happened, and that is why in his death he became enlightened. He was dying and he knew it, I saw him struggle to survive his aloneness, and I was with him to give the last initiation, and he survived, but his body did not. He made it, the transformation happened, and he died enlightened, or in other words survived his death.
All those who come to enlightenment, come to this eternal celebration. For those who were there when my dad passed on, and when you looked at him in the funeral, you would have seen his body in celebration, he entered the eternal celebration, and has become that.
Dhyana Centre Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2013