Agni Chakra

(Circles of Fire)

By Kathleen Jayawardene

Translated by Ranga Chandrarathne and Edited by Indeewara Thilakarathne

The red rays of sunlight flooded along the Kumaratunga Mawatha making Roberosia flowers more and more red. The red was smudging into the immaculate white seat covers of the super luxury Mercedes Benz. My hand fisted like that of a child, caught up a red corner of a skirt. No; it had been a chintz skirt with scattered blue flowers on it for some time ago. Amritha wore the blue chintz skirt…

“Sir, now you are ok…everything is ok. Relax … now open your eyes!”

This is a new hope. My ears are sharp. Many sound waves enter into my ears. Everything is extremely clear and can hear separately. Who said that ringing of bells from two churches in two locations could be heard separately because they travelled on ‘sound waves’? Wasn’t that the great Leonardo Darvinci? The numbers of vibration in the air caused by sound waves…? Frequency..? I could remember even the fact that human ear is only sensitive to sounds in the frequency of 20-20,000 GHs. But I was exceeding it. That meant, for God’s sake, I was still alive. For God’s sake..? My mind was clear. Now I am experiencing the amazing and mystic dualistic nexuses between the spirit and the brain.

Suddenly, the Benz car crashed into a rocky mountain and entangled it and then it was shrunken into a particle and was no where to be found. In a second, I was shifted onto an airplane. I was on its cockpit and flying through the clouds. Amazingly, I was freed from all bondages and I felt such a strange calmness.

“Oh, there is no point in taking him to the hospital..?”

“Only some secretion ooze from a corner of his mouth..!”

“Let us go, we don’t want to take any blame”

“Sir…please, open your eyes…”

The vehicle carrying me or the plane had stopped. Driver Sirisena, Premaratne and Ameraweera were peeping into my face. Amritha’s hands were violently shaking my head. I did not know for sure whether I could see and feel everything. I could see the surrounding in a mystic dreamy state. Thousands of thoughts were struggling in my mind. I called them but they did not respond to me.

In a second, I was drifted away by a gust of wind. I was in a state like that of one who was awaken from sleep. I felt extremely sad. I was suffering as if like a fish taken out of water being thrown into a fire; my conscious radiantly shining like the day and shining sun was telling me that I was suffering because of my own action and deeds. For a moment ago, it was my own conscience which judged me not the king Yama. It was none other than our helplessness that prompted us to think that the natural and involuntary management of the universe was done by an almighty? My sense of justice and honesty were sharply, powerfully and purely competing in the conscience, slipping away the hypotheses. How ridiculous our attempts at justifying wrong doings at the last judgment? Negate..?

I could experience crystal clear thoughts like pure and clear water from a fountain. The spirit which is being hovered and drifted away in the current of Karmic power like a bird’s feather in the intermediary state may be because of my memory of the Tibetan book of the dead. I would have to spend two or three days in the intermediary state or may be for seven weeks. Week…? This state without sense of time, all these things render meaningless..? Am I experiencing the intermediary state?

But….?

I see, hear everything and my five senses are sharp and active. I have a strange power to penetrate steep mountains. In a second, I was taken to Shantha by a strange capability. I could see Shantha standing on the balcony of Gimhana Asapuwa. Her eyes are fixed either on the Courtyard or on me. She leaned against the parapet wall and tears were pouring down from her eyes.

“Shantha, I have come”, I said. I said it in the same intimate manner I said a little while ago, “Shantha, I am at the Airport…soon come home” “But …?” she remained silence. “Why are you crying?” I asked once again. But, she is still silent. She did not even look at me.

“Oh, God, can’t you see me?” I screamed. I experienced an unbearable pain as if the heart bursting out and once again I was drifted away.

I could not stay long at any place. I am going ahead without any sense of time or space. My mind was enveloped in repentance. Earlier, I was ready to sacrifice everything to delay death and now, I wanted to get a physical body at any cost. Can I enter again into the body with the label of ‘Balitiyanagedara Saddhapala’ or ‘Sadamangala Sirinivasa’?

But….?

Oh, God! , they have already burnt it into ashes. Pyre had blazed and settled down. I could see a group who came to collect the ashes, digging the soil. My body would have been cremated yesterday evening.

“May Prof. Saddhamangala Srinivasa attain Nibbana!”

An upturned white banner soaked in rain water was hanging down like a rag.

Nivan Suva….?

I still could not think or feel that Nirvana is bliss. Those who wish it also like me. Those who wish Nirvana without seeing it or identifying it, trying to figure out contours of it. But is there shape or colour to it?

Still a smoke emanates from a black frame in the pyre. The flowers dropped from the wreaths strewn here and there.

Nivan Suva..?

Pure light..?

Mokshaya…?

Now I am sure that my present body is not made of skin, flesh, veins and blood but only the spirit. I guess that I am passing the first day of the week in the Bardo stage. I could remember that it was on this first day one realises that he is dead and hovering until he finds a new place to be born. I heard that this first day would commence following three or four days from the death. Does it mean that astral body would be created two or three days after physical death? Isn’t this astral body created as quickly as an animal drifting on the surface of water or fish would catch a prey?

I am moving ahead looking around and see the universe in dark blue. I could remember that it was the colour when the vision manifested in its rudimentary form. I hang on a beam of ray in inter-space. My energy is being overwhelmed by a spectrum of colours in the shape of a corn or a pyramid. I was speedily dragged through that unturned corn like a blue sapphire merging with it.

In the speed of light into infinite numbers of microwaves…?

A guardian angel or a guide directing me with compassion…? In this light zone, I could see many in a smoky environment. I could see mother in front of them.

Mother…? Guardian angel…? Pleasant angels..?

Is it the reality revealed in myths and legends?

Are ‘legends’ sharp memories of spirits?

To where have I been dragged on, in an infinite speed?

I could see a circle of fire rotating in opposite directions. Does it a clue to my next birth? Now I am trying to recollect visions and memories of an intermediary that would give a clue to where he would be re-born. But, I could not recall anything clearly.

But…?

It is certain that wherever I am going to, that is where I deserved to be. I experienced that a strange force –cluster of powers dragging me and absorbing me like a magnet.

I am before the infinity.

Infinity..?

Sublime infinity…?

The infinite nature of the earth and heaven that the poem captures…

A haiku poet who recreated a powerful imagery in few words...

“The world is a due drop

But…

It’s solid”

Is this deep voice reverberated in the memory?

Is it a magic show that I have been watching until now like an opera through five forms of rays?

Am I going to the eternal paradise beyond the matter?

Or else am I retuning to the center of myself..?

Footnote

Nivan Suva- supreme bliss

End …