One morning a neatly dotted in jacket and trousers, tall and lean man appeared on the doorstep of the little house where I lived in Mysore City (whenever I was not travelling around India). With him, but a short distance away, I then noticed another man standing there, who was shorter, sterner, and stouter. He wore the white robes of a swami. The wiry-figured man addressed me in simple, half-broken but quite understandable English; he introduced himself as a disciple, the other as a guru, and proffered his service as interpreter between us. The guru then addressed me and explained that they had come from the North, that he wished, if acceptable, to teach me a single exercise and talk about certain other spiritual matters, and that he would then depart in the early evening. (They had brought their own food with them.) This is how the knowledge of the Meditation on the Sun exercise in The Wisdom of the Overself (Chapter 14, "The Yoga of the Discerning Mind") was literally brought to me. It must be added, though, that I took a writer's license to adapt the exercise to Western culture. Where the guru showed and quoted some obscure Hindu Veda, to prove that the exercise was a fully authentic prescription--an authority which did not carry the same weight to non-Hindu Western minds--I saw and seized on the possibilities of appealing to the aesthetic sensibilities, the artistic appreciation of the sun's beauty instead. The guru did not object to this adaptation. It illustrates the mysterious oneness of the mystical life all over the world that what was prescribed in some little-known scriptural text in India of several thousand years ago, was practised personally by a European who had never left Spain, never studied any Oriental text at all. I refer to Saint Juan de Cruz, better known to us as Saint John of the Cross, who lived about four centuries ago (1542-1591). (He was the Spiritual Director of the more famous Saint Teresa of Avila.) Such was the genesis of this lovely and easy exercise among my writings. It used physical act--seeing--to yield an emotional consequence, and then led the practicant into a state of consciousness which transcended both. It is an exercise which has helped many people, if their reports are valid. Certainly it has consoled and comforted the ill-fortuned, actually helped some sufferers of bodily maladies, while those who care for art got artistic treats they might otherwise have missed!
-- Notebooks Category 3: Relax and Retreat > Chapter 7 : Sunset Contemplation > # 85
