An experience of a meeting with Miara Kali.
I’m sitting cosily in my armchair in my studio in Limhamn, drinking tea. Outside is dark and cold, so I have a lit candle on the table. Beside that is a small pink stone box with inlaid mosaics. I have gotten it from Miara Kali, the third great high priestess of Urian the Great from Sirius Solar System. I am supposed to bring the box with me carrying some earth from one place to another where I use to live for a longer time during the year.
When I was living in a Maharashtrian ashram in India during the winter of 1990, I shared dormitory with Miara Kali. We were 44 in that dorm, so I didn’t find out before later.
At once I arrived at the ashram, I decided to join a class in Hatha Yoga. That was taking place below a bodhi tree on Dakshin Kashi, where we used to be jogging in the afternoon. I took a training round there to get familiar with the place. It became dark before I reached the bodhi tree. My problem is that I know very little about trees, so I didn’t know how to recognize a bodhi tree from other trees.
There was a platform of grass at the end of the circular track, and there was a peculiar tree. In the dark I could see some people sitting around a bonfire. I decided to ask if this was the bodhi tree, which they confirmed. I was about to leave the place when I caught sight of the mysterious items one of the girls were handling. In the dark I could only see that she wore plaits, but I couldn’t see her face clearly.
”What are you doing, really?”
”This is a shamanistic ceremony. May she join us?”
The girl in plaits consented, and I sat down in the outer circle around the bonfire, uncertain of what I was doing there. But as usual my curiosity overwon the slight feeling of discomfort. I wanted to watch, not be a part of the ceremony. However, I didn’t tell them. Every time something was given to the participants, or something was splashed on us or we were anointed, I got my share, without knowing what it was all about. I just sat there. One of the other women asked if the shaman had asked the Guru for permission to do a ceremony like that on the ashram premises, which she hadn’t.
Later I found out that the whole group lived in my dorm.
Now it turned out that my schedule made me take my daily hike around Dakshin Kashi during sunset. The sun always went down when I was on the western side of the track, so I could enjoy this magnificent event over the Indian Ocean. Then darkness fell suddenly, and before I reached the bodhi tree, it was pitch black all around me.
One evening my flashlight went out exactly there. I saw incense glowing in the dark under the bodhi tree, and somebody was sitting there. I stumbled up the stairs and recognizd the plaited shaman.
”May I borrow your flashhlight to the dorm so I can switch battery?”
She just looked furiously at me and didn’t answer. I got the feeling of having broken into a rite, and found I had better remove myself from the place. I was able to stumble back to the dorm in darkness, although I stumbled on a waterhose and slid in the gutter once. I changed the battery, but my torch didn’t function. Then it was the lamp again, just as last time, in the middle of the Inca Trail. I had lots of batteries, but no lamp. I couldn’t get another until the Ganeshpuri village market opened the following day.
Next morning I went as usual early up to meditate before the Guru Gita. Since my flashlight didn’t function, I had to light the orange night light. Of course I chose the wrong switch and lit one of the sharp neon lights the Indians always love to install everywhere. I switched it off immediately.
The shaman, who slept in the bed beside my cupboard, flew up like a rocket, furiously scolding me. She told me exactly what a fool she considered me to be. At the same time I really felt like an idiot, because I had lit unsuitable lamps at home too. I come originally from Norway, where there is light all summer, and has never understood why people cannot sleep when there is light. Scania, where I live now, is so far south that we can see the stars at night even during the summer, and my husband too gets mad if I switch on the light in the middle of the night.
But of course I felt insulted by the shaman.
I had borrowed a yoga mat of one of my dorm mates. One night I forgot the mat somewhere between the bodhi tree and the dorm. I went back to search for it, and of course, when I came to the bodhi tree, I happened to flash my torch right into the face of the shaman again. Honestly, I didn’t know she was there.
”I’m so sorry – I was searching for the yoga mat.”
It turned out I had forgotten it in the bathroom.
You might say that the shaman and I weren’t very good friends.
At the same time I had recognized her. I had invented her myself – or so I believed. She was the main person of one of my stories about Sirius Solar System. I had even pictured her in several of my tapestries. That’s why I knew how dangerous she really was.
I had some talks with Shiva about this conflict.
”I don’t understand this. I enjoyed writing and picturing Miara Kali and her adventures. But now, when I meet her in real life, there is only hostility, and I loath her.”
”You hate her. It is terrible to hate somebody in a Siddha ashram.”
”I don’t understand what is happening. Why do I keep on meeting figures I have invented in Siddha ashrams? Do they already exist, and my brain only picks up the information from other planes of existence? Or do I really create them?”
”You create them. Ask yourself, Who is the creator?”
”The others I have created, I really like. I love them. But Miara Kali makes me feel so stupid, and she is always trying to sit on me.”
”You ought to feel ashamed to hate your own creation. You must solve this problem.”
”I do feel ashamed. At the same time as I feel inferior to her, I am the knower of what she doesn’t know – that I created her. Sometimes I get thoughts I cannot dare to express – am I God incarnated?”
”You know Shiva Sutras say we are all God.”
The Guru always says this – that we are God, that we should practice seeing God in each other, that the whole world is God, that there is nothing but God in the whole Universe.
I always use to bring along a small album containing pictures of some of my works of art to show people if we happen to talk about our ordinary lives, when we are not yogis meditating in a cave in Maharashtra. Now I sat down on my bed and looked at the pictures of Miara Kali. While I was sitting there, the woman in the bed beside me came in to take rest. She was one of Miara Kali’s followers or friends or whatever, and she threw a glance at what I was doing. I told her they were my tapestries.
”My God, you have pictures of her, how can that be?”
I tried to explain how I felt, and then I related Miara Kali’s life history on Sirius according to my fantasies. Neither she nor I noticed that Miara Kali came stealing into the room through the back door.
”What are you doing now? It’s my secret life story you are telling!”
”I know, I created you, you may see the pictures if you wish…”
Then she embraced me with the same violence as she had earlier scolded me, hugging and kissing me.
”Now I understand why you always broke into my rites exactly at the crucial moment. I will show you – ”
And she opened her cupboard where she used to have all her shaman items and showed them to me.
”You know everything anyway. Here on Earth I am a Cherokee Indian, but the things I use during the rites are the same.”
She related how she had decided to do the strongest ritual of all now she happened to stay three months in a Siddha ashram, given the possibility to materialize all hidden forces and Gods. She wanted to see her God of creation. That’s why she had prepared three strong rituals under the bodhi tree. The first night the whole group was assembled. Then I turned up asking about the bodhi tree. The second time she was alone. Then I broke into the ritual with a stupid question of a flashhlight. She had become really furious over the intrusion during the most critical part of the rite, and thought I had destroyed the whole thing. The third time, when I was searching for the yoga mat, she began to wonder why just I happened to stumble up the steps to the east every time she reached the height of the ceremony – the calling for the creator from the east. The steps up to the lawn under the bodhi tree was on the east side, not so mysterious, but why the same person? There must be a reason for that. Miara Kali had tried meditate on the problem. Wasn’t she meant to establish contact with the God of creation? Or should she develop tolerance against foolish Europeans who didn’t understand anything about shamanism?
In this way the problems were solved. The creator and the creation managed to establish a loving relationship during the rest of our stay in the ashram. We exchanged gifts, and that is why Miara Kali’s box is standing on my table in my studio.
Read more about Miara Kali here.