It was an interesting evening, personally. First, surprisingly for me but reassuringly, the Silence was still there, inside, both during the car ride and restaurant and walking downtown, but when I did speak in short conversations, it was because I wanted to and it didn't particularly bother me one way or the other. But it was in the restaurant that the Silence was comfortable, supplemented by the occasional few words scribbled on a napkin.
In a line for the ticket wait, two women were talking next to me and I couldn't place the language. I very quietly asked and was told it was Tamil -- a dialect most common in South India and North-east Sri Lanka. I listened to the melody/rhythm of the language and remembered first hearing about Tamil through studying Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian teacher of Advaita and, more to the point, of the Self-Enquiry spiritual technique.
In fact, it has been written that "Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi’s Tamil compositions are revered by scholars of Tamil literature as works of literary genius. ....These verses and compositions ... are chanted daily at Sri Ramanasramam." (that being Ramana Maharshi's surviving Ashram or center.)
Hearing and then asking a few questions was a very short conversation, but the connection was undeniable, having just that day read some works mentioning the Tamil originals and Ramana Maharshi. To have been standing there in that particular line and to have been moved to ask the question -- this is one of those "meaningful coincidences" that Jung termed as synchronicity. You can't make things like that happen.
But back to the restaurant, again, where Silence basically reigned, there were more than enough bustle and activities going on -- all resulting in a great meal. But it was in a bit of the Silence I came back to attention like a person who has been listening to a distant voice on the edge of sound. I realized I had been looking at the people seated at the restaurant tables and the ones walking by outside, seen through the windows on the sidewalk side of the building.
The dinner conversation to my left, a trio was talking about other dimensions in the Universe with the fervor of a 1960's late night college dorm discussion. Not that I saw each of these things in several steps. I was just there. A kind of witness. I opened my notebook and wrote five words, which I intended to show to my friend across the table, but didn't. I closed the spiral note pad and sat, slightly stunned, and then went back to eating.
Now that I'm home with my two cats, I just looked at what I written. The words were, "The Universe is unfolding, unimpeded."
"All is well," Robert Adams used to say. No matter how screwed up you think the world is, no matter how deeply involved with the quicksand of Maya (Illusion) that you find yourself buying into. All is well. When you see that fact, really not with your eyes but in your heart (spiritual, not physical), and see if applies to you as well as everything else unfolding around you, this whole illusion of you is no longer there to block or edit or voice a bias. In short, the Universe is unfolding, the process perfect. And it does so without "I" trying to be in control or call the shots. In short, unimpeded.
