Even though I was still a little weak from the Guru Puja celebrations and the diarrhoea, I didn’t want to drop the trip to Pithapuram. It was my 8th trip to the temple at the birthplace of Sripada Srivallabha, the first avatar of Lord Dattatreya in Kali Yuga, and when I started the German translation and the publication of the revised English version 9 years ago, I had promised to bring the further translations to the temple on this basis. Above all, it was an inner promise, and the work has deeply influenced my life.
Reyes had brought the newly published Spanish Sripada biography from Spain. Together with Marta and Adele from the WTT Sripada group from the area of Girona, we wanted to bring the book to the temple. Soon after the morning prayers on the 14th we started with a taxi, accompanied by Sandeep as a guide and translator. It is a journey of about 180 km and the temple closes at 12 am, so we didn’t want to be late. Pithapuram is in a way a labyrinth, and it took again some time to find the Maha Samsthanam temple. It is small and there are nearly no signs in the town indicating how to find it.
As Master Kumar once told us, it is a place of highest energy but veiled. We need to align and orient inside. And so we did. Srī Sajjanagada Ramaswamy (1925 – 2018), the late spiritual head of the temple did not install any follower; there is a temple administration taking care of organisational affairs but it is not a spiritual head. And there are priests conducting ritualistic activities.
Reyes handed over the Spanish book to the director of the temple, who invited us to a coffee in his office. We spoke a bit about our earlier visits and the German and English Sripada biographies published by the WTT.
When driving back to Visakhapatnam, I was in a state of digestion. There had been so many impressions, exchanges and experiences the last days. I felt that it now needs time to digest. The next day, most of the group members from the West left again, going back home or to other places. There were intense talks with those who stayed back and couldn’t leave due to flight connection problems.
I slept very little in the last night and tried to pin down some impressions. Around 10 am, Murthy and Ravishankar came to bring me to Visakhapatnam airport. On the way I thought, it is still 3.5 hours until departure. They brought me to the entry of the airport. When I wanted to enter, the security guard informed me that my flight connection to Bangalore was cancelled and that I should go to the counter of Indigo airlines. I was shocked. I didn’t have access to my e-mail accounts the last days due to a technical problem. I was not the only one waiting at the counter. I came to know that the only way to reach my international flight at 9:30 pm from Bangalore was to catch the 12:30 am Chennai and in the evening a flight to Bangalore. Arrival would be late. I inwardly called for help and guidance. And it was there.
I got a very last minute place at the 12:30 flight to Chennai and rushed as fast as possible to check-in and security. The boarding was already in process. In Chennai I had to wait some hours in a mass of travellers. I tried to stay aligned and focused inside, doing some spiritual practices.
The evening flight was late and also a bit delayed. In Bengaluru, there is a new international airport, where I had to catch the shuttle bus with my luggage. I ran through the airports. At the Etihad counter, the check-in had been through but I came still in time for the flight to Abu Dhabi. In the plane, the travellers were encouraged to use their mobiles for getting access to information and entertainment – there were no more information screens in the plane and I couldn’t understand the announcements but thought, we will arrive in Abu Dhabi anyhow and it’s time to sleep.
The flight to Zurich was fine but it had strong counter-winds. I somehow noticed that we were passing over Iran and Turkey – below some global conflict zone. But we were like in another dimension where I either slept or was carried away by a movie. I saw Dune, the third adaptation of 2021 of an epic science-fiction film with partly occult scenes.
At Zurich I lost a train connection because customs controlled me and checked the Brahmi boxes….. they phoned to someone and found that it’s ok… But soon, there was another connection. It was raining and snowing outside when my wife picked me up at the railway station. I arrived home, very tired.
I felt that I was very much protected and guided by the MASTER – several times, I had experienced incredible short term “openings” to the next steps of the journey. When my mind became restless, I listened inside and always felt: “Everything will be fine and OK” and so it was.
