Those weeks near Schloss Schaumburg were a time out of time, blessedly peaceful, reflective, and silent. I woke every morning before dawn and shuffled down to the darshan room, where I’d sit for an hour, meditating in front of Mother Meera’s empty chair. I’d been struggling with so many unanswered questions and still didn’t know how to write about Mother. Something was eluding me. I had hoped our time together in India would reveal this missing piece, yet I’d left Madanapalle more mystified than before. Every time I thought I had it, Mother’s story turned to mercury, slipped through my fingers, and disappeared. I’d written and thrown away a hundred-plus pages, talked to dozens of devotees around the world, ransacked my journals for forgotten details, pored through transcripts of interviews I’d done with her dating back to the 1980s in the hope of catching this missing thread, but the book would not materialize. I had even spoken to Andrew about Mother—a confrontation I’d avoided for fifteen years—and was reassured to hear that Andrew had long ago forgiven whatever had happened between him and Mother. “I’m sure there are people that Meera can help,” Andrew admitted. Still, the book that Mother Meera encouraged me to write remained unfinished. I’d sit there every morning in the darshan room, meditating in front of her chair in the dark, waiting for a sign about what to do next. But nothing emerged.
Finally, left with no other choice, I decided to stop pushing so hard and to turn this conundrum over to God, so to speak. I remembered Adilakshmi’s advice in India—“Find out what she is trying to teach you”—and was doing my best to follow her lead. Having come to the end of my stay at Darshan Hall, I had no idea where all this was headed. Might it be that Mother’s story was too enigmatic to cohere in a conventional narrative? Was I locked in a creative conundrum to do with some shortage of writerly skill? Or was this, in fact, a problem of faith? Maybe a person with so little faith simply could not do her story justice. I’d done my best to keep an open mind, to be sensitive to views I did not share, to maintain a willing suspension of disbelief in the presence of mysteries I could not explain. As for faith, I kept a hopeful line from Tagore nearby as a model for how to think about this: “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark.” I realized that the poet must be right, and yet I had not managed to sing. The song itself seemed beyond my reach.
The day before I was to leave—June 14, 2015—after an especially peaceful sitting, I opened my eyes and felt the urge to do pranam in front of Mother Meera’s chair. I’d done this only once before, shortly after meeting her thirty-one years prior, and now, after hearing Kirsty’s story, I decided to follow the impulse again. Making sure that no one else was around, I stepped up to the empty chair, knelt down, and laid my forehead on the white cushion where Mother Meera rests her feet. Instantly, my ears were filled with that same buzzing I’d first heard in the foyer of Mother’s house the night I arrived there with Andrew. I stayed where I was for several minutes, enjoying the pleasant fizzing sensation the sound elicited inside my body. I emptied my mind as I knelt there, till eventually a prayer appeared: I asked to be shown what I needed to know in order to push through this present darkness. I surrendered to the urge to kiss the cushion; then stood up feeling light-headed and calm, and slowly made my way back to my room.
I had no intention of writing that day and had planned to spend the morning hiking up into the forest behind the Schloss. Nor had I attempted to talk to Mother Meera; I was done with trying to force that issue. She’d given no indication that she wanted to cooperate and it was a relief to have dropped the struggle. From my bedroom window, I looked down at the walled-in park on the side of Darshan Hall, brushed now with light from the morning sun. Rather than have breakfast and venture out for my hike, though, I felt the urge to turn on my computer, to read back over the stalled manuscript. I put my fingers on the keyboard and waited. The lawn was turning emerald green; the birds were landing to drink up the dew. Not a sound could be heard from where I was sitting. I stared at the blank computer screen. Then a phantom rose up in my memory.
It was fifteen years earlier, in the dead of winter. I’d been living in Mother Meera’s house for three long, frustrating months, wrestling with another book, the memoir about death and enlightenment. The German winter had been dreary and endless; day after day, I sat at my desk, listening to rainwater pour down the drainpipe, hardly able to write a word. As now, there was some insurmountable barrier standing between me and the story I wanted to tell. I’d been grinding my gears but getting nowhere, and ached to pack my bags and leave. Each time I planned to go, however, I would hear Mother Meera’s voice in the hall or catch sight of her outside in her parka and mud boots, and think, “Where do you think you’re running to?” I had no family or home to go back to; I was free to stay there as long as I liked. My anxiety was a clear indication that I was approaching something that scared me. I could choose to escape from this pressure cooker, fleeing back into the blur of life, but I’d miss the opportunity to grow through this darkness and learn what it was that I needed to know. So I stayed in Thalheim, week after week, waiting for the fog to lift and this frightening thing to revel itself.
One especially bleak afternoon, I was typing at my computer when an inexplicable thing occurred. Out of nowhere, a stream of invisible “liquid”—syrupy, gentle, and warm—began to drip onto the top of my head. The sensation was soothing and weirdly hypnotic; my eyelids felt heavy and wanted to close. I resisted the urge to sink into this stupor, as if it were a vat of honey, and forced myself to get back to work. When I began again to type, a voice whispered into my ear: “Stop.” I assumed my mind was playing tricks on me and pushed myself to keep on typing as this nectar continued to fall from above. Once again, the voice told me to stop. I ignored it, focused on what I was writing, and it was then that the most “supernatural” thing in my life to date took place: My computer keyboard went dead. I’d been working on it for hours when it suddenly stopped for no apparent reason, and could not be revived. I tried to stand up, to shake off the weirdness, but found that I was stuck to my chair like an insect in a pool of amber. Golden syrup seemed to have hardened around me, yet although I could not move a muscle, my vision was perfectly lucid and clear.
In my mind’s eye, I saw Mother enter the room, seemingly real and physically present. She walked toward me, lowered her head, and rested her forehead flat against mine. I could actually feel our skin touch; then she said, “Remember that I love you.” Mother pulled away from me and instantly I was overwhelmed by a nightmarish film, an ugly montage of pictures from my childhood, flashing before me in 3-D—scenes of abandonment, suicide, rapes, forced isolation, and heartless betrayals; a horror show of ancient memories shot through with trauma and primitive loss. Beyond this visual onslaught, I heard myself screaming my own mother’s name as if from behind a cemented door, a no-man’s-land where no one could hear me. I realized that I was completely alone; my mother was long gone and would never come back. As this thought crossed my mind, I felt something crack in the back of my chest, like a bone being shifted and set back in place.
When the episode ended, I opened my eyes; I was facedown on the floor with one arm wrapped around my stomach and the other hand stuffed in a ball in my mouth. The left side of my body was completely numb. I couldn’t move for several minutes. Then I heard Mother’s voice again in my ear: “Remember that I love you.” I knew in my gut what this vision meant, the warning she was trying to send me. As long as you believe that this is what being a child means, you will never surrender to life. You will never feel at home in the world or open your heart without fear to another. You will never feel comfortable in your own skin, recognize your essential goodness, or experience your connection to God. You will never love completely.
That was my secret truth, after all, the terror that had blocked me ever since I could remember—emotionally, creatively, and spiritually. Long before I could give voice to these things, the prospect of being a helpless child had fused with terror and loss in my psyche. Before I knew what was happening, I’d vowed not to be like a child again ever—unguarded, dependent, trusting, naive—thinking that this would destroy me. Yet as long as I feared this humble perspective, the orphan inside me would never be free. I could never fully embrace the unknown or remain open to the divine. Instead, I would remain an impostor—defensive, paranoid, sometimes hard-hearted—fearing that if I dropped the mask, or allowed myself to care too much, a malicious shadow would swallow me up.
Now, looking out from my room at Schloss Schaumburg, I grasped what had happened in India. After years of hiding from Mother Meera, I’d finally allowed myself to trust her and come to Madanapalle in need of her help. In return, she’d rejected me—brutally, it seemed to me—and left me feeling like an orphan again, exiled from the circle of love (as when I’d seen her playing with the ashram kids). I’d convinced myself that this orphan was gone, only to realize how fraught he still was, trapped inside my emotional body. This was the lesson that Mother had taught me. The upshot of her message was clear: If you want to write a book about me, you will need to learn about trust. You will need to begin to surrender. You’ll need to be like a child again if you hope to approach the question of God. And if you want to tell my story.
A wave of lightness swept over me; the truth transported my mind and spirit. There would be no final closure to healing, I realized, and that was exactly as it should be. Unless our wounds remain slightly open, we begin to forget how tender we are. We can’t possibly understand holiness without remembering the depth of our own pain, the separation we feel from God. How else can one hope to write about someone whose life is devoted to suffering’s end? Without dropping the remnants of my own armor, how could I begin to understand her? I realized that this was the missing piece—the step I wanted so badly to skip—the block that kept me from proceeding. For the first time in many months, I suddenly felt the urge to write. I turned on my computer, sketched out these thoughts, and didn’t stop working for two hours straight. I finally knew, without any doubt, that this mysterious book could be written.
At darshan that evening, I sat in the back row next to Herbert. I felt no need to rush up and see Mother or let her know that I was leaving the next day. I was perfectly content to watch from afar; there was nothing grabbing or pushing inside me. I felt no craving for something more; nor did there seem to be anything missing. Nothing to seek and nowhere to get to. When my turn came, I crawled toward Mother Meera and put my head between her hands. I felt nothing, as usual, when she touched my temples and examined me with her dark eyes. Afterward, I sat in my seat, knowing that there’d been a seminal shift. I passed Daniel in the lobby on the way out; he winked and nodded his head, as if to tell me he could see it.
The following morning, I wrote a goodbye note to Mother Meera. I wanted to let her know that I’d finally figured out what was blocking me and now understood how to tell her story. I included a favorite quotation that described how this breakthrough felt to me. It was from The Sparkling Stone, a collection of meditations by John van Ruysbroeck, a Flemish mystic, published around the year 1340:
When love has carried us above all things…we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding and penetrating us. What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of eternity?
I folded the note into a parchment envelope and planned to hand it off to Herbert or Daniel before I left, in the hope that it would find its way to Mother. Not two minutes later, there was a knock at the door, so faint I almost didn’t hear it. It was Bettina, one of Mother’s helpers, asking if I could come for a visit. Mother wanted to see me, she said. Could I meet her downstairs at eleven o’clock? Absolutely, I assured her. I couldn’t believe this was happening now. Bettina bowed at the waist, turned on her heel, and disappeared down the long blue hallway.
Was this some kind of cosmic joke? I ironed a shirt and found my notes. At the stroke of eleven, I met Bettina in the parking lot and followed her down the mountain in my rental car, past the town of Diez, over the Lahn River, and along a series of country roads till the Thalheim church spire came into view. I tailed her through the familiar streets till we came to Mother’s driveway. Bettina opened the door and we climbed the stairs to Mother’s apartment. There were three tiny pairs of shoes on the doormat. “We’re here, Ma!” Bettina called out. Mother opened the door, looked me straight in the eye, and told Bettina she could go.
She was unusually dressed-up that day, in a rose-colored sari, carefully pressed, with her hair cascading over one shoulder, more salt and pepper than I had realized. Mother offered me a seat on the sofa and took a straight-backed chair for herself.
She surprised me by inquiring about my work. “How is the book going?” Mother asked.
I told her that the last two days had been my most productive in months. She smiled and said, “This is good.” I reached into my pocket for a tape recorder, but Mother requested that I not use it. Instead, I pulled out a notebook and a list of questions, half of which I’d already crossed out. Mother seemed to be watching me with a look of amusement. Or was it affection? The light was hitting her feline eyes, turning them a bright hazel. The frightening Mother from India was gone for the moment. Now there was simply this gracious woman, smiling, relaxed, and strangely familiar. For the first time in all the years I’d known her, I felt perfectly at ease with Mother Meera. We chatted together about this and that, my health, the global water shortage, the school in Madanapalle. Then Mother said, “You may ask your questions.”
I picked up my notebook and pen. “Thank you, Mother. First, let me say that I know you’re a very private person.”
“No, I am public,” she corrected me. Mother seemed to be teasing.
“Okay, then,” I replied. “Can you tell me what it was like for you, being a little girl? Is Kamala Reddy still inside you?”
“I never think about it,” Mother replied.
“Was it strange for you to know who you were, and where you came from? When you were still a child?”
She looked quizzical.
“Do you understand what I’m asking?”
“People could see I was different,” she said. “Even when I was young.”
“Do you mean your parents?”
“Everybody.”
“What did your parents think about you?”
“We were never close,” Mother said. There was no sign of regret in her voice.
I told her that I’d seen her mother, Antamma, at the school in India. She was a stick-thin, kind-faced woman who’d done pranam in front of Mother like everyone else at darshan. “I wonder what she thought about her daughter,” I asked. “Knowing what she had brought into the world. Was she surprised?”
Mother Meera said, “She treats me with respect.” Clearly, this subject didn’t interest her.
“What about Mr. Reddy?” I said. “What would your life have been like without him? If the two of you had never met?”
Mother considered this. “It was fate,” she said.
“Do you mean you couldn’t not have met him?”
“I recognized him and he recognized me.”
There was nothing more to be said about it. I related to Mother my understanding that Mr. Reddy’s death had caused her great pain. “Is it hard not having him around to talk to?” I asked.
“Just because he is not in a body doesn’t mean I cannot talk to him.” She sounded completely serious.
“And do you still have the kinds of experiences you used to share only with Mr. Reddy?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“It must have been a great help having him around when you were young. Knowing that he believed you.”
“If God’s grace is there, all is well. If it is not there, what good is it to ask anyone for help?” Mother said, as if this were an answer to my question.
“You make that sound so simple,” I told her.
“God is simple. It is humans who complicate things.”
The ways she said “humans” was odd to the ear. “And the paintings you did of Mr. Reddy’s soul after he died. Is that what you actually saw?” I asked, thinking of those visionary pictures, figures flowing together through the prismlike air. This series of spontaneous canvases is the only glimpse we have into what Mother sees—and how she sees it.
She nodded.
“That’s amazing, Mother.”
“No. It is normal.”
I took a chance. “Can you tell me what you see when you look at me now?”
Mother glanced at the space above my head. “I see your struggles. And also your challenges.”
“Do these correspond to the knots you untie during darshan?”
She looked at me without speaking. I longed to ask her more about this but continued with the questions I’d prepared. “Would you say that you have good days and bad days? On a personal level?”
“Only in India.” Mother grinned.
“I’d never seen you get angry before.”
“In work situations only. I must shout sometimes. It must be done. But it is not my character.”
“It’s in your character to feel emotions, though?”
“Yes,” Mother said. “For an avatar, also, there is pain. I must bear it.”
“Do you ever feel fear?” I asked.
“I am never afraid,” she told me. “I used to love going out alone in the dark. When I was a child. People said it was dangerous because there were scorpions everywhere. But it never frightened me.”
“Are you afraid of dying, Mother?”
“No,” she said lightly.
We talked about the state of the world and the challenges facing human beings. “There’s so much danger and fear,” I said. “When it comes to injustice, when is it right to fight back? To use anger? To take action in the service of the good?”
“When your heart is clear, you may act,” Mother said. “Otherwise, you only make things worse.”
“Isn’t it better to do something than nothing at all?” I wondered. “Even if your heart’s not completely clear?”
“The destruction of the world is a human idea. Not a divine one,” she replied.
“Many people are terrified. They think the world is about to end.”
Mother Meera corrected this: “Humanity will not be destroyed. There is nothing to fear.”
I hope you’re right, I thought to myself. There were a hundred more questions I wanted to ask but our conversation had come to a stop. We sat quietly for a couple of minutes. For once, I was not overwhelmed by her silence; my brain hadn’t melted or turned to mush. I could have sat there with her for the rest of the day, in fact, and never said another word. What more was there to ask her, really? Except, perhaps, one more thing.
“I have one last question, Mother.”
She looked at me.
“Will you ever come again?” The words sounded strange coming out of my mouth. “Will you have another…incarnation?”
“I do not know,” Mother Meera answered. “It depends on Paramatman. And also on the wishes and prayers of devotees. For me to be born again.”
I had the sudden urge in that moment to do pranam in front of her. I remembered Kirsty’s story about the importance of being ready, though, and held back from asking Mother’s permission. “Maybe next time,” I thought to myself. I thanked Mother Meera for asking to see me, told her it meant the world to me. She seemed to know this already.
“Call if you need me,” Mother said. I promised her that I’d stay in touch, waited for her to stand up first, then followed her back out to the hallway. Resisting the urge to touch her shoulder, I put my hand on my heart instead. Mother looked at me with great love in her eyes. “Will I ever know who you are?” I thought when she turned and went back into her kitchen, leaving the door ajar behind her. I walked carefully down the white marble stairs and glanced back over my shoulder, once, to see that the door was still open. Then I stepped out into the glorious morning.