I felt someone tickling my foot and heard my sister giggling, “Wake up, dummy!  It’s time for breakfast."

I looked around, a little surprised to find myself in the room where the Amrit Vela Naam Simran Session had been held.  I shook my head a little to clear it, then remembered falling asleep after an hour or so of Simran.  I saw a couple of other kids sleeping.  The Vaja ToR  kid sat hunched over propped against the wall, his head drooping, and fingers twitching; the other kid lay with his back flat on the floor softly snoring – his stomach rose and fell and it sounded a little like ‘waaahheee gurrruuuu’ coming out of his open mouth. I knocked my self on the side of the head and stuck my finger in my ear to find out if anything was in there. Suddenly I recalled the rose vision and I quickly got up.  I closed my eyes and whispered “WaheGuru", hoping that the rose would reappear, but no such luck.   I caught just a whiff of the Rose scent - so faint, that perhaps I only imagined it. I felt miserable.  How could I have let that go?

Yoda Singh came back to get something and saw me.  He came by and hugged me, “I am very proud of you.  You did really well today morning."

I protested, “I did naam for only an hour and then I fell asleep…" I felt like crying.  He patted my back, “Now, now, quality, not quantity matters on the naam path."  I fell a little better.  He turned around and said, “And besides, be grateful for what gifts you got, not remorseful for the ones you didn't get."

My sister gave me a quick hug.  “Come on, we have to be leaving pretty soon.  Wake everybody else up." 

I went over to the Vaja ToR kid and nudged him.  He woke up with a start and protested, “Oh, Man, I was having the most excellent dream, dude - there was this SarbLoh Vaja that just was so sweet…."

We headed outside to the porch.  I counted about 8 people there - all in high spirits.  I couldn’t stay too depressed with the Sun shining and the blue sky clear enough for us to see a snow-capped mountain in the distance.  Just looking at the naami people, my spirits rose. My appetite rose too. Hungrily I devoured half a dozen pranthas and munched down maybe a dozen naam ladoos!

Aunty Jee motioned my sister to sit next to her and read the next pauree of Jap Jee Sahib while she explained:

thhaapiaa n jaae keethaa n hoe || aapae aap nira(n)jan soe ||
The Immaculate and PureTrue One cannot  be established or created.  
jin saeviaa thin paaeiaa maan || naanak gaaveeai gunee nidhhaan ||
Those who serve the True One are honored. O Nanak, sing of the Lord, the Treasure of Excellence.  
gaaveeai suneeai man rakheeai bhaao || dhukh parehar sukh ghar lai jaae ||
Sing, and listen, and let your mind be filled with love. Your pain will be replaced with peace.

guramukh naadha(n) guramukh vaedha(n) guramukh rehiaa samaaee ||
The all-pervading Guru's Word is the Sound-current of the Naad and the Wisdom of the Vedas.
gur eesar gur gorakh baramaa gur paarabathee maaee ||
The Guru is Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Paarvati and Lakhshmi.
  jae ho jaanaa aakhaa naahee kehanaa kathhan n jaaee ||
The True One cannot be described in words even by those who know.
  guraa eik dhaehi bujhaaee || sabhanaa jeeaa kaa eik dhaathaa so mai visar n jaaee ||5||
The Guru has given me this one understanding: May I never forget the Giver of all souls ||5||

My sister said, “You know, I am confused  ..." WOW!  In all the time I have known my holier-than-thou-by-knowing-at-least-5-more-verifiable-facts-than-you sister she never before openly admitted to her confusion.  I told the Vaja ToR kid to double-check the direction from which the Sun had risen today.  Everybody started smiling.  My sister went into damage control mode,  “I mean … I mean," she attempted, “I am not exactly confused but ..."

I quickly looked up “confused" on the online Thesaurus and offered her some of the words which showed up  - disoriented, abashed, at sea, baffled, ball up, befuddled, bewildered, come apart, dazed, discombobulated, disconcerted, disorganized, distracted, flummoxed, flustered, fouled up, glassy-eyed, gone, gonzo, misled, mixed up, muddled, nonplussed, perplexed, perturbed, punch-drunk, punchy, puzzled, screwy, shook, shook up, slaphappy, snafu, spaced out, stumped, taken aback, thrown, unglued, unscrewed, unzipped, upset, mixed up, blurred, chaotic, disarranged, disordered, disorderly, disorganized, haywire, higgledy-piggledy, in disarray,  jumbled, messy, miscalculated, miscellaneous, mistaken, misunderstood, obscured, topsy-turvy, unsettled & untidy.

But she ignored them all (don't know why, they all fitted her quite well) and asked, “Is there a difference between the Guru and the True One?"

“Question very good!" a man declared as he walked up to us.  Yodha Singh and a couple of other Singhs leapt up in joy and crowded the man from all sides, kissing, hugging, laughing, crying and WaheGuru-ing all at the same time.

After about 15 minutes, everyone settled down a bit.  Yodha Singh chided the man, “No word for 3 months?  You suddenly disappear - no letter, no phone, no soulmail - where were you?!" 

The man towered over us.  He wore a white turban with a shining khanda on it and had a long white robe on.  His face shone light red – looked like he had not seen the Sun for ... well, 3 months.  He seemed to resemble the rose that I had a vision of and I swear i could smell roses when he showed up. I circled around sniffing and kinda checking him out to see if he had a rose on him someplace. My sister looked at me a little funny so I took a deep breath and mentioned what a fine morning it was. I started wondering if he was the one who had written Auntee jees letter.  (Just between you and me, he wasn't the one wrote the letter - he had left his body for 3 months and traveled the khands.  ..... well, maybe he *did* write the letter  from another khand... this is getting very interesting....)

 “Where I go?" His words were a little coarse. “Inside.  Light.  Naam.  Khand."  The other Singhs nodded knowingly. They stopped harassing him and started feeding him.

My sister asked the question about the True One and Guru again, and man in white spoke, “He have answer!" he said and pointed to .... ME!!!!

I had just popped the 26th naam ladoo in my mouth (25th and half of the 24th one were still in there - I think part of the 13th one was still hanging out there too), everyone stared at me, “meh?" I managed to say unbelievingly. 

“Him?" my sister questioned even more unbelievingly. 

The birds flying overhead stopped in midair and tweeted “Tweet?"

"他?" inquired an unbelieving Chinese farmer half-way across the world. 

"Αυτός?" refuted an unbelieving  Greek sailor. 

"Él?" Chirac interrogated his cabinet. 

“HOW DID THAT HAPPEN UNDER MY WATCH?"  demanded Dharam Raja.

The man in white laughed and pointed to far-away mountain with snow on it.  “Iceberg!" he said.  I remembered the dream I had that morning.  I told everyone abashedly about the dream - I didn't think it was such a big deal. (To derail my dream-telling skills, the 24th and the 26th naam ladoo started to argue as to whose turn was it to go down first - I sent in a big ladoo to end the fight).

“Guru Iceberg", the man in white said, “Knowledge rise, Guru melt!"

All the grown ups beamed. I looked helplessly at Aunty Jee; she explained in non-naami words, “The Guru is a special form of the True One.  Remember we talked about how the True One is carefree; well, there is a part of theTrue One that is intensely caring - that is the Guru. 

The Guru wants us to merge with the True One .  When we start the journey towards the True One, we focus on the Guru - the Guru is easier to understand because the True One has crystallized into a form that is familiar to us.; but when the Sun of knowledge rises, we see that there is no difference between the two.  In fact, if the Sun rises enough, we see there is no difference between us and the True One either!"

 ~*~*~*~*~*~