On this rainy and interior day, as I write letters about Mummy, I feel her presence so strongly. Just now, I can feel her sending her love to me. Suddenly, I see and feel her standing there, just a couple yards in front of me by the window, looking younger, and yet every age and no age. She's all in white, radiating light, smiling her smile, and love is pouring out of her eyes onto me, covering me. Ifeel my heart pounding, a ringing in my ears. I find it hard to breathe. It is overwhelming ... I know now she'll always be with me and, though it makes me sad to think I can't be with her in person anymore, I know I'll never not be with her again.
Today I was walking with some friends in Armstrong Redwoods Park and I was astonished at those trees. The more I looked at them, the more I came to appreciate them. It was completely still, unlike our tropical forests in India, where elephants trumpet, tigers roar, and there is a constant symphony of sound. Here everything was still, and I enjoyed the silence so much that I remembered these lines of John Keats. It is a perfect simile for the silence of the mind, when all personal conflicts are resolved, when all selfish desires come to rest. All of us are looking for this absolute peace, this inward, healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind. When we find it, we will become small forces for peace wherever we go.