Day 49… To Describe God (August 4)

The worlds beyond the worlds we see. Today while closely watching Ushika before we were to do our interview, it occurred to me just how impossible it is to understand what the runners are really experiencing. You can probe with questions, you can try and empathize. Yet no matter how far the wings of your imagination spreads wide you can never really and truly understand.

My first question is a request for him to sum up his experience. He tells me that the morning prayer on July 10th expressed it best for him.

You can see
God.
You can
feel God. But
to describe God
is an impossible
task.

Guru Sri Chinmoy
July 10th, 2007

“At one point the day after we got the prayer I thought that this exactly describes the race. You can see the race, you can feel the race, but it is an impossible task to describe the race. You can only live and do it.”

Over the past few weeks he has generously shared many of his experiences. Talked about gratitude, grace, and patience. Now he says one of the qualities he is working with is the quality of imagination. “I was using it a lot.”

He says that Suprabha used to imagine that she was not running on concrete but that she was playing in a beautiful garden. “This has become for me very vivid and very powerful.”

There have been more than a few very hard days and on those occasions he says he has pictured the epic battle the Mahabharta and powerful poems written by Sri Chinmoy like the Absolute. He has seen himself in a divine chariot slicing through ignorance night.

He says that recently during the lunar eclipse his condition was very poor which he describes as brutal. “It was so hard so difficult.” At the same time he imagined 2 chariots flying above him clearing the way.

At other times he describes the feeling of being attacked by the bubble gum monster. He describes a force that made him feel lethargic and lacking motivation. “It is exactly like in a cartoon when the character steps into a huge mass of sticky bubble gum. Hands, feet, everything is bound and like in a cartoon every step is so difficult to move.”

“In this case it came to my mind that my problem was probably coming from my own vital. So I started chanting purity. Imagining the Supreme’s presence there, and within a few steps it became much easier. Within one lap the bubblegum monster was gone.”

Ushika who has just 148 more miles to go is planning on taking each day now as it comes. “The finish line is calling. But you can’t save any steps. You have to run each one of them. I am happily looking forward to the finish line. But I have to stay here, in each lap, and in each moment.”