Seeking The Great "I AM"

Chapter 2

My Life

During my actual birth, God showed me grace. I was told by my mother that she had taken medication to not to feel the pain of childbirth. She fell asleep leaving me to make my own way out into the world. My mother told me when she woke up, she saw me with a bonnet all dressed up by my grandmother.

My early childhood was spent with my grandparents as my parents decided to live with them for some time. They lived in a village in a beautiful sprawling house with tiled floors. The yard of my grandparent's house ended at the beach. The sound of the ocean was constant and there was plenty of space for me to enjoy. Sometimes the big wooden roof beams holding the roof of the house would fall down due to the accelerated deterioration caused by the salt air. I often wondered whether they would fall on my head. When my mother was pregnant with me, she got an urge to sleep on my father’s bed when he was out of town on business. Shortly afterwards a beam fell on her bed. She told me this proved that it was meant for me to be born, because she had escaped the beam.

My first memory of going to school was with other children in a bull drawn cart. Later cars became more plentiful in the village and my mother bought a car to take me to school. We had servants to cook and to clean the house and a special servant to look after me.

My father was a strong Buddhist and a lawyer by profession. He used to meditate daily. I remember him saying, “Look to the negative side of life.” He said to observe the camera. It is the negative film that is real; positive pictures come out of it. Life is like that. Death is real and sensory perception so transitory.

My mother, who was an atheist, said it was all very simple; it was good to be good and bad to be bad, and if you listened to your conscience you knew. She said you must learn to say no to the world when it conflicts with your principles. She did not believe there is a God but she believed there is a devil ruling the world and she said that she was always fighting with the devil. She was also psychic.

Once she dreamt the coconut estate she owned was going to be taken by the government . Sri Lanka, at that time, had a government with a communist coalition. Acting on that dream, she sold a part of the estate and kept 25 acres for herself. She was an exceptional businesswoman and she conducted this all of her own transactions. Sometime soon afterwards, the government made a law that they would take over land that was over 25 acres with retrospective effect. She had sold the acreage just in time and the law did not affect her.

Her marriage to my father was her second marriage. Her first marriage was to a very rich young man, arranged by her grandmother. My mother's ex-husband had a country house and a town house, dating back to the Dutch period. These houses had enormous gardens and wide verandas supported by enormous pillars. There was an inside garden with an open roof; the bedrooms encircled it.

My mother''s ex-husband was a homosexual and they never lived together. They slept in separate rooms. My mother said she had a luxurious but boring life, playing tennis, sitting for portraits for her artist father-in-law and entertaining friends.

One day when my mother was resting in bed, she saw a thin figure of a lady with a hat and gloves, moving her hand as if telling mother to leave. Gradually the figure grew misty and only the hand remained. Mother screamed. She said her fear was so great that the sandalwood cream she had applied on her face melted. The servants of the house came running to her room. When she told what she had seen to her ex-hus