Chuck’s First Impressions of Swamiji

Chuck:  I entered the storefront, and sitting on a grass mat on the hard floor was a person who seemed at first to be neither male nor female, but when he looked at me I couldn’t even look him straight in the eyes, they were so brilliant and glistening.  His skin was golden with rosy cheeks, and he had large ears that framed his face.  He had three strands of beads – one which was at his neck, one a little longer, and the other down on his chest.  He had a long forehead, which rose above his shining eyes, and there were many furrows in his brow.  His arms were slender and long.  His mouth was rich and full, and very dark and red and smiling, and his teeth were brighter than his eyes.  He sat in a cross-legged position that I had never seen before in any yoga book and had never seen any yogi perform.  It was a sitting posture, but his right foot was crossed over the thigh and brought back beside his left hip, and one knee rested on the other directly in front of him.  His every expression and gesture was different from those of any other personality I had ever seen, and I sensed that they had meanings that I did not know, from a culture and a mood that were completely beyond this world.  There was a mole on his side and a peculiar callus on his ankle, a round callus similar to what a karate expert develops on his knuckle.  He was dressed in unhemmed cloth, dyed saffron.  Everything about him was exotic, and his whole effulgence made him seem to be not even sitting in the room but projected from some other place.  He was so brilliant in color that it was like a technicolor movie, and yet he was right there.  I heard him speaking.  He was sitting right there before me, yet it seemed that if I reached out to touch him he wouldn’t be there.  At the same time, seeing him was not an abstract or subtle experience but a more intense presence.