Last week we visited the state of Bihar for a weekend. Mieke and Peter (Belgium friends) asked our philosophy teacher Sanat if it was possible to meet his Guru - teacher in the art of living. Many Indian people have a Guru, the letters GU meaning darkness, no knowledge, and RU meaning fire of knowledge. The GURU gives one RU. Without a Guru the Indians believe it is difficult - or even impossible - to attain salvation. For this reason they believe the Guru stands even higher than God because he is needed to find God.
Sanat’s Guru would be in the state of Bihar that weekend. We were invited to meet him there.

We left at three in the morning from Benares to get a night train, the world still dark and quiet, arriving in Bihar just after sunrise. A jeep was waiting for us at the train station. As we drove through Bihar I noticed the fresh green fields with people working on it, palm trees along the road, children playing, no plastic and dirt, nowhere in India had I seen so much cleanliness before. Bihar is the poorest state of India. For this reason I had mentally prepared myself for the trip. But poverty in the countryside is totally different to the poverty of the cities.

The Guru was going to give a speech that evening in a remote village during a ‘Krishna festival’ (Krishna is the God of love). We drove for some hours, the main road turning into a country road, the country road turning into an even smaller road. For some time we drove over a footpath until there were no more roads and paths and we were far away from everyone and everything. Eventually we arrived in a village where we were warmly welcomed. In India hospitality is very important. Guest is God, they say. Everywhere they give you food and insist you eat many. So now again we enjoyed chai (tea), sweets, meals until we were completely ‘pura hoglia’ (full).

That evening the Guru, Sanat, musicians and devotees of the Guru passionately spoke and sang and rituals were performed for the thousands of people that by now had seated themselves in front of the stage. The speeches were about the divine, about living a useful life, an inspiration for the villagers that knew many struggles. Mieke, Peter and I were invited on stage as guests of honor. The Guru was living an intense life. Every evening of the year he gave lectures, some days traveling as much as 150 kilometers (on Indian roads…) and this at the age of 75. Straight after he finished his speech he jumped in the car again, to a next destination.

After the performances we were taken into the dark streets of the village and arrived at a house that was characteristic, with interesting architectural details, clean and full of atmosphere. We stood on the roof for some time, staring at the uncountable stars. There was no electricity. In daytime the villagers used energy provided by solar panels. The family provided us a meal looking like something you would expect in the best restaurant, only it was better, being freshly home made of own grown products. Plates filled with small delicacies, made to perfection. In this village all seemed so pure. It was real luxury. The three of us got the best room of the house and were to share the same bed, as Mieke and Peter were assumed to be my parents.

The next morning I asked if it was possible to take a bath. They looked a bit puzzled at me, talked, and eventually an old man walked me to a big blue house a couple of streets away. I entered the door and walked into an open square and my eyes were touched by what they saw. There were the morning mist, birds flying, climbing plants hanging, and women covered with colored cloths, laughing and washing under the water pump their long and wet hair hanging. I had to wait for 10 minutes before I could use the toilet as they insisted on cleaning it first. I washed, we had some chai together and tried to have a conversation until I was called away as we were due to leave.

The jeep took us on a long trip over the bad roads of Bihar, roads that gets flushed away every monsoon. Even only driving at 20 km an hour we had to hold on firmly to the seats, or whatever possible, because it was so bumpy. Again we arrived in a beautiful, natural place: one of the Guru’s ashrams where 30 students were studying and living. Sanat gave us a guided tour, we walked past a small animal farm and the different fruit trees and he pointed out the many fields belonging to the ashram, providing food for both teachers and students and the poor villages in the area. We stopped walking at a well. It looked like one from old times, the ones you read about in fairy tails. Looking deep down inside we saw the water quite a few meters below us. We heard the sound of frogs croaking coming from the dark water. It was like looking into a different world. For the frogs this was the whole world. For them the world ended where the wall of the well started. They knew nothing of the world beyond the well because they could not perceive it. We stood there for a while, wondering.

We got fresh milk and curd from the ashram’s cows and stayed all morning at the ashram, admiring the place, eating, playing, and resting. In the afternoon we started the long journey back to Benares. We sat in the car, all tired from some nights with little sleep, but most of all amazed by the seemingly unspoiled world we had entered. It was like Mahatma Gandhi used to say, that the soul of India dwells in it’s villages.