A Moment in Eternity

I was running late for an appointment and was stalled in a New Delhi traffic jam. The smell of noxious fumes took me back almost 30 years to when there were hardly any automobiles in India, and air pollution of this sort was unimaginable. Now it was almost impossible to breathe. New Delhi has been changing rapidly. Each time I have come back, I have found the scene to be totally different. India is like a kaleidoscope; it remains the same, yet each time one moves the barrel, the scene changes completely.

Suddenly, I heard the gentle reminder of the inner voice saying, “Be here now.” I closed my eyes to get rid of all memories and to look afresh. Taking a deep breath, I filled my lungs with exhaust fumes; they had an aroma of their own. I listened to the sounds; they were unique.

I opened my eyes. To the right of my hired auto-rickshaw was a chauffeur-driven white Mercedes with a diplomatic license plate. In the back seat, reading a newspaper, was a short, stubby diplomat from one of the African countries. In his air-conditioned car, he was protected from the fumes and oblivious to the sounds. He, like me, was engrossed in events of the past and of some other place.

On my left was another auto-rickshaw. Standing in the front part of the rickshaw was a two-or-three-year-old boy of Laotian or Cambodian parentage. He was gazing at me, perhaps watching the flow of my mental gyrations.

How wonderful, I thought. A child’s attention is naturally focused on the here and now.

I smiled at the child and mentally thanked him for the lesson. He smiled back. In the language of silence, I told him that I loved him. He responded by stretching out his hand to touch me. Alarmed, his parents leaned forward to see what the boy was trying to do. We smiled at each other, and I extended my hand to the young boy.

As our fingers touched, I felt a spark go through my body and was filled with a familiar vibration.

 “Ah, Spirit! You are the child,” I hummed to myself.

Now I saw Spirit all around me. The diplomat was Spirit pretending to be lost in another world. The diploma’s chauffeur was Spirit. The cacophony of sounds was Spirit. Spirit was my rickshaw driver. Spirit was embodied everywhere.

The light changed and traffic started to move. A moment in eternity had passed.