How Do You Define HIM?

One day a visitor arrived at the library. It was their first time in the ashram. This was during a non-event time. Very few people were here. They had mainly come to vacation at a quiet place surrounded by mountains.  They did not know anything about Swamiji, who He is, why has He built this ashram etc. They asked me two questions. First one was easy but the second left me scratching my head.

The first question they asked me was – If I was Swamiji’s devotee? The answer was a resounding, unwavering, super fast YES! And then they asked me – who is He and how would I describe Him? Now, till that moment I had personally met Swamiji only once that too 4 years ago in a 3 min personal meeting in which he spent majority of the time listening to me ramble on like a crazy person.

Now as a librarian of this ashram’a library, I thought the least I should know is a way to answer “Who is He?”. Sure, I could have said He is Bhagwan Himself, which would be true and also something I truly believed in, but somehow it did not feel like the right answer to give to someone who knows nothing about Him and mostly are not very spiritual and/or religious. I sheepishly directed them to the memoir of Swamiji thinking, who best to answer this then He Himself.

However this question had me thinking for sometime, how do I tell someone, in the simplest and shortest way possible about “Who He is?”. An answer came to me a few weeks later. Now full disclosure, I might have overheard someone or read this somewhere but the simplest way to describe Him for me would be- He is the actual physical manifestation of the word “Love”. If you close your eyes and think the word “love”, His face is what pops into mind. 

I think Shri Hari’s divine intervention got me to this answer as since then, I have been asked this question a few more times and every time I give this answer, two beautiful things happen. 1) Everyone immediately get this twinkle in their eye and a wide smile on their faces. 2) It is such a fulfilling answer that no followup’s are ever needed. 

-Dedicated to Divine Mother and His lotus feet,

Your Ignorant Fool.