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tell the efficacy of a mantra by whether it affects you in this area [indicates neck
and face]. After you practice the mantra for some time, you can’t say it without
something snapping in your throat and your eyes filling with tears.An oldsadhuwho seemed to epitomize the faith, devotion, and flowing emotion
that theRamcharitmanasrecommends used to mutter constantly his own incantation
of the divine names—siyajuram jai ram jai jai ram(Siyaju is an affectionate form
of Sita). I often saw his eyes swimming with tears as he gazed on thesvarupsor ran
after them on the road. Once he said to me, “Today I do not feel much joy, because
no tear has come yet in this noisy crowd.” He also said that if one shed a single tear
in listening to the Lord ’s stories, one ’s debt could never be repaid.
“If you come with the proper feeling in your heart,” said Kedarnath, the man who
made the garlands forarati,“you will see God. There is no one who comes here reg-
ularly who has not experienced some sort of miracle.” Asked what sorts of miracles
he meant, he replied, “It ’s some knowledge that enters your heart from the Lord. It ’s
not easy to explain. The Lord causes your mind and heart to be illumined.”
A seventy-nine-year-old man who had been coming to Ramlila since he was nine
interrupted me as I was trying to question him about the “truth” he experienced. He
was breathing fast, his voice trembling:
Enough, enough, enough. What can I say to you? Yesterday I experienced this: I
am sitting in Ramji’s court, and today is the Lord ’s coronation. Today this is also
my experience. I am sitting in the Lord ’s court. In the whole world there is noth-
ing else. There is only the Lord. I have no curiosity, no wish, no desire.A few minutes later when I tried to ask him about arati,he interrupted again:
At the time ofaratithe Lord himself is present. Whenever and from whatever
angle you look, the Lord himself is present. The Lord himself creates this experi-
ence, face-to-face, before these very eyes. Whoever wants to experience it, let
them experience it.Similarly, a postman who had been coming for twenty years interrupted me when I
tried to find out about differences among the boys who played Ram.
“Do you feel—,” I began.
“I feel beauty,” he broke in, “great beauty. There are waves surging in my
heart.”