It’s hard to think of a word or an idea more intuitively appealing than freshness. Perhaps that’s because the concept of freshness is rooted in the primal and sensual world of food and nourishment. And in something even more primal, the air we breathe. Fresh air. Who doesn’t love it?
Words and ideas can be as fresh or as stale as air and food. And when you get to be my age, and you’ve heard it all many times, everything begins to sound like a cliché. Like that phrase, “When you get to be my age....” What’s the problem with clichés? The problem is that they are so familiar that we don’t pay attention to them any more, and because we don’t pay attention, they don’t have meaning.
The same thing can happen to the experience of life itself. Hamlet said it best: “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.” Ever feel that way? Who hasn’t?
The quality of Maharaji I’m writing about is that he is always fresh. There is nothing old, stale, or tired about him. You’ll never catch him at it. Believe me. I’ve tried. He doesn’t do tired. Even when he’s tired, he isn’t tired.
What makes this quality passionately admirable is that it’s contagious. He is not only fresh. He is refreshing. That is, he makes everything around him fresh again. Most of all, the people themselves. Freshness is a feeling. There is nothing like it. A place where boredom is unimaginable. Freshness is one of the great gifts of his company.
But it’s not only the people. It’s everything, even words and ideas. Pick a cliché. Any cliché. Look at it in isolation. Tired, right? Now take the same cliché and hold it up next to Maharaji. Like magic, it’s not a cliché any more. It’s full of meaning. It’s fresh. It’s a whole new idea.
Let’s take a random example, the hackneyed phrase “never ceases to amaze.” Definitely tired. But think about it for a minute. What a powerful statement! Amazement without end. Constant amazement. Where can you really find that in life? Doesn’t “wow” always turn into “ho hum” eventually? What is always amazing?
The answer, in a word, is life. But to refresh that cliché, you need a master refresher. Passionate admiration and its close companion, gratitude, naturally well up in response to the first-hand experience of that kind of mastery.
Let’s take these two unlikely bedfellows one at a time, and then see if we can find the fit.
What makes Ninjas different from all the other martial artists? We have karate masters, kung fu masters, jiu jitsu masters, aikido masters, and so. What is the romance of the ninja? I think the essence of the ninja idea is that you don’t see them coming. They get past your bodyguards. They get through your electronic security system. They walk through your walls. Silently. By the time you are aware of them, if you are aware of them at all, it’s too late. Far too late. You don’t have a chance. You never had a chance. It is a very dark thought when the intention is lethal. But it has a fascination all its own.
Now to love. As much as we all say we want love, and we do want love, we also don’t want love, because we are afraid of it. There are many reasons to be afraid of love. I won’t list them here. If you have experienced love, I am sure that you know what I mean. If you haven’t experienced love, you probably know that at least one reason is that you are afraid of it.
Perhaps now it's clear where I'm headed, but I will state it plainly. From my very first encounter with Maharaji, consistently through 35 years, and right up to and including my most recent encounters with him, albeit indirect ones, and I’m talking about yesterday and this morning, I NEVER SEE HIM COMING. He is just suddenly there. Fortunately for me, very fortunately, he isn’t there to kill me, but to love me.
The fact is, as much as I do want love, I have so many and such richly complex defenses against love that the Ninja art of getting through them at all, never mind silently, has to be more difficult than any other. It's not my business, of course, but I suspect that it's probably the same for you. But Maharaji does get through them. Time and time again. And it wouldn't really make that much difference if I was the only person in the world experiencing that, because love is very individual. But as it happens, I know for sure it is not just me. Honk if you can relate to this. Do I hear a deafening roar?
Consider for a moment. What is marriage except a commitment of two people to dedicate their whole lives to loving each other. And how successful are most of us at that with one person?
And yet, here is a person who can accomplish that with thousands, tens of thousands of people, I don't really think there is a limit, not only in person, but also across the apparent barriers of time and space. Never mind the sense of amazement and wonder. The fact of the love experienced is the undeniable and glorious reality. And perhaps when the person who can do that says, “I have a gift,” we can stop for just one second the noise of envy, jealousy, indignation, and hate that answers “Who does he think he is?” and allow the passionate admiration that is and could only be the natural human response to come to our attention, and recognize the simple truth of it. He does have a gift, in both senses of the word. He has received a gift, and he comes bringing a gift. A true gift, by the way, given without strings. If that isn’t passionately admirable, I don’t know what is.
