Swami Vishwananda likes to play. He has this capacity to enthuse you with something that you found insignificant before. He creates role-plays and throws Himself in for the pleasure of living, of playing. After that, everyone draws a personal experience from the event. That is what is happening on this earth: We are here to learn how to live and love from every possible and imaginable situation.
Swami Vishwananda is very indulgent and has amazing patience. One evening, He invited a man to His apartment in Mauritius. This man had aggressively thrown endless catechist sentences and canonical rules to us. I was in a rage to hear this fanatic, when would he stop? I was ostentatiously looking at my watch. Swami, unlike me, kept smiling and had taken His notepad to take notes! After that, I was vaccinated against any dogmatism. Fanatics exist in every religion.
God is one, man only makes the differences. Each religion can lead to God. It is a boat on the ocean of our lives. In one life we are Christian, once Muslim, once Hindu, another time Jewish, another time Sufi… thus the soul learns to practice different religions without becoming dogmatic.
Swami Vishwananda plays in every day communication. He doesn’t show even a thousandth of His knowledge. Many times I realise how I judge automatically people who I hardly even know. Swami Vishwananda never judges, He just loves.
Often with Him, we don’t know what to think in every day communication. He can say a banality with a very serious face, like an important revelation. He knows prejudices and everyone’s fixed ideas.
Because I am afraid to make a mistake, say something wrong and be laughed at, I once spoke in the same direction as the conversation, like a sheep, instead of thinking and providing my own opinion. Two sentences later, Swami Vishwananda went in the opposite direction, and I found myself stuck in my remark, facing my own hypocrisy.
The Guru is the one that removes ignorance and makes you realise. Swami Vishwananda does it while having fun. Life is not sad with Him. Yes, we laugh a lot!
