JASMINE
Chapter Seven
Jack and I wake up, and I notice that Jack is
quite exuberant, and full of energy. I say, "Jack, you are quite cheerful,
I notice."
He springs up at me, and he says, "Yes,
I am so because I know I have met my soulmate."
I am quite amazed. I think he is being a bit
brash, so I ask, "Jack, how do you know you have met your soulmate?"
Jack looks at me in sheer confusion.
"Why, you told me so!"
I am really amazed now. I respond, "I
did?"
He says, "Yes, when you told me I ought
to meet Rose, and then when you told me what you saw during your meditative
visions."
"But Jack," I say. "I did not
directly tell you Rose was your soulmate!"
Jack replies, "You don’t have to. I can
read between the lines!"
My mind reverberates on his last sentence. I
can read between the lines!
Hmm,
I think to myself. Perhaps Jack is more spiritual than I give him credit for!
Then, I remember back to my original premonition, in which I’d seen Jack coming
into Rose’s life as a sort of a guardian angel, a gift from heaven. I sigh to
myself, and I think, Boy, given the state that Rose is presently in, she
sure needs a gift from heaven. I mean, she’s so miserable, she’s on the verge
of suicide.
It is then that my mind meditates on Rose. I
smile to myself. "Poor, rich Rose." Boy, that is an oxymoron!
I mean, most of the world would love to be in
her shoes! From a material standpoint, she has everything. She is going to
marry a rich man, she has never had to worry about money, like most of us have,
and she probably never will. She has never had to fight for anything. All she
has known is parties and high society life. She has been waited on hand and
foot all of her life. She probably has had more servants and hand maids in her
childhood than ten normal people have in their entire lives. She is spoiled,
because she has been handed everything she has wanted since childhood. She is,
likely, an only child, so she has not even had to experience the stiff and
bitter competition that stems from sibling rivalry. Her mother and father
probably attended to her every wish from birth. And that necklace. From the
moment I saw it, it caught my eye, and it has not ceased to amaze me since! It
is grand. I mean, I have lived for centuries, and I have never seen anything
like it! It is exquisite. And yet, from the moment I saw it, I knew that it was
cursed, and I saw that this was so when Rose put it on in the mirror for me.
Then, I got to see the truth, and boy, did that hurt! Rose has had the best
food to eat all of her life, and she doesn’t know what it feels like to have
your stomach hurt. Many people would wonder why Rose was so upset. After much
meditation, I come across the real answer. Rose is a privileged girl, there is
no doubting that, but she is lucky from a purely material standpoint!
My mind volleys over to the year 2004 A.D.,
where Erica and I are sitting in a hotel room with the mayor of Punjab, Ashok
Deol. He is interested in reforming the Indian economic and political system,
but he has made it quite clear that he doesn’t want to replace Nehru’s socialist
model with the neo-capital model whose mantra appears to be If you consume a
lot of material wealth, you’ll be happy, or he who has the most toys is very
happy. Ashok tells us, Awareness of material goods creates desire for
material goods, and desire for material goods creates misery.
This is exactly what has happened to Rose! I think to myself. Sure, Rose has every material
good she wants, she even gets to board this lovely ship first class, where she
can have direct access to all of the modern day luxuries, while Jack and I have
to break our backs cleaning the ship if we want to even consider boarding it.
She also has a high social status, which gives her a lot of power over the
lives and welfare of the lower classes, especially through the clout of her
fiancé, but this is just an illusion!
When I think of this, I am reminded of the
various times, throughout history, and in the early childhood of the legendary
reformer and spiritual healer Jasmine who catapulted to global attention, first
through accomplishing miraculous tasks in India, and then over the world, when
I have gotten a new gift. It was nice, but after a while, the splendor of
having a nice gift wore off, and it became simply a material object to me, with
no emotional or spiritual meaning! You see, I became bored with such material
objects, because they were routine, and because they were material. Similarly,
Rose’s materially good welfare is based entirely on material goods. There is no
spiritual element tied to anything that she has in her life. But human
happiness has, traditionally, not come from sense gratification through
material wealth, that is deriving happiness from having a lot of stuff, it has
come from our perceived oneness with the spirit, the soul, and our place in the
greater community at large! Humans have, in every society, derived a sense of
true happiness, inner peace, tranquility, and calm that represented true bliss
from understanding their relative position in a family or community setting,
respecting the strength of the community, and making sure that their actions
did not violate the relative tranquility of the community. The society that
Rose lived in had begun to move away from that principle ethos of community,
harmony, and tranquility and had begun to embrace the genius of the Industrial
Revolution, the amazing wonders of science, and the marvels of the Industrial
Age, in terms of the scientific breakthroughs that were being realized, and the
new gadgets that a new, emerging middle and elite class was beginning to be able
to afford. People, for the most part, in Rose’s time were so blinded by the
amazing discoveries and feats that were being accomplished by American capital
and American science that they were forgetting that happiness is where the soul
lies. Humans derive happiness from material goods only momentarily, but true
tranquility comes from knowing who you really are, spiritually speaking, and
from being able to shut out the material world, and material goods, and being
able to find true happiness through your inner self, while searching for God
and the spirits, as well as tolerant ways of living and seeing the world.
I meditate on Rose. It is early morning, and
she is being dressed by her maid. She is in her slip, and her eyes are dreary
and full of misery. She has a frown when she looks in the mirror, and she has
such a long and unhappy face. When the maid pulls her arms into her dress, her
body sinks back, so it looks like the maid is trying to pull her arms off. She
looks like she is being tortured to death! Her eyes are red and swollen, and it
looks like she’d been crying all through the night! When I look at her, my
heart feels like dying, I feel like crying, and my heart goes out to her! Here
is a spoiled girl, who doesn’t have the important element in life, happiness,
and who is trapped! I meditate on her further, and I see that her soul is just
crying out to anyone who will listen for help! Strange, I think to
myself, because I used to be this way myself!
Jack comes up to me, and when I see his face,
I swear that I am seeing the sun shining in my face. Suddenly, his face glows
with a very sunny and golden complexion, and I feel as though the Sun gods and
spirits are waking up in his conscience and mine as I look at him and befriend
him. I can hear music in the background. It sounds like angels singing. I note
that this is odd, because there is sheer silence on our deck.
"Yes, Jack?" I ask.
Jack says, "So, what did you see about
Rose?"
I note that he asks this question quite
eagerly. "Jack," I say. "How did you know I was
meditating?"
Jack says, "Because you were very quiet,
and I figured you must be in some sort of deep thought."
I say, "Well, I see that she’s a very
unhappy and lonely girl. For her, life is sheer torture. Though she’s been
waited on hand and foot, and has access to all of the luxuries in the world,
and has amazing power over the lives of others, given her social status, she
still feels as though something is missing! She has noticed that this element
has been missing from her life since the time she was born! She feels trapped!
And she is unable to truly express herself. She is in a society that she
doesn’t understand, and she has to abide by rules that she can’t make heads or
tails of, and she is very confused!"
Jack exclaims, "Wow, you are wise!"