Into the Silence

By Nic Morris

What does it take to overcome your fears?

When Chris Hinton was eleven, something terrible happened. Now, at twenty-five, Chris takes a journey from London to India - where he learns the true meaning of fearlessness. He experiments with Buddhism and has a chance meeting with the Dalai Lama in the Himalayan mountain town of Dharamsala. Later, he travels south, to the ashram of the early 1900s Indian Saint, Ramana Maharshi. It is here that he meets his true teacher on the top of the sacred Hindu mountain Arunachala.

From him, he learns that happiness is related only to the degree of fear in his mind, and through both ancient and modern techniques, eventually finds the peace that he has been searching for his whole life.

Into the Silence is a story of redemption, and of overcoming all personal challenges to find inner peace - even when it seems impossible to achieve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nic Morris
• Release date: Jan 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311176516

Nic Morris

Nic Morris has been writing fiction and non-fiction for most of his life.He has been a published songwriter and recording artist (unreleased, signed to Champion Records). He has written and recorded tracks with accomplished 80's/90's music producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken (Stock/Aitken/Waterman), and his songs were recorded and performed by several well known UK acts in the late 1990’s.He has travelled extensively to India and spent time in ashrams and retreat centres in India and the United Kingdom. He has studied Jnana Yoga, and in particular Self-enquiry, for the last 25 years. His main interest is of the mind and how it affects our state of happiness.Nic’s first novel “Into The Silence” is his first novel, with several more in the planning from 2017 and onwards.

Book preview

Into the Silence

Nic Morris

Copyright © 2016 Nicholas Morris

Nicholas Morris asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the author.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 9780994516756

Cover image by Nic Morris

Published by Gentle Mind Publishing

FIRST EDITION

For more on Nic Morris, go to:

http://www.nicmorris.net/

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue

Chapter One - London

Chapter Two - Delhi

Chapter Three - Dharamsala

Chapter Four - Grace

Chapter Five - Light and Dark

Chapter Six - Day 10

Chapter Seven - His Holiness

Chapter Eight - Getting on with it

Chapter Nine - The Return

Chapter Ten - Gone

Chapter Eleven - Sri Ramanasramam

Chapter Twelve - Him

Chapter Thirteen - Giri Pradakshina

Chapter Fourteen - Meetings

Chapter Fifteen - Into the Silence

Chapter Sixteen - Changes

Chapter Seventeen - Death

Chapter Eighteen - Leaving

Epilogue - The End and the Beginning

Glossary

Reading List

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Author’s Note

Throughout this book, I use the word 'Samadhi.' In the Eastern tradition, there are two types of Samadhi. The first is a burial place or tomb and the second is the final stage of meditation, a spiritual state oftentimes generalised in the West as Nirvana or Enlightenment. I use both instances of the word within this story.

This story is dedicated to my teacher, Paul Warwick, who utterly changed my life... all without a moment's notice.

Prologue

What goes around…

I watched myself die in the reflection of a fish and chip shop window on a Friday evening in March, 1976.

The rain came early in the morning; a dark flush that cut through the streets and gutters, streaming along the pathways until the antiquated London sewerage system caught its breath and dragged it underground.

Daylight brought a few brief hours of tentative sunshine, but then the darkness returned; cold clouds pushing together like angry spectators, thickening from white to grey to black and filling the air with a metallic taste of ozone.

It is about this time that my story begins - and soon afterwards ends - at the south side of Tower Bridge, with two small girls pushing in single file between the wall and my slow-poke body. The last turned in embarrassment as I stumbled, my walking stick skipping along the pavement.

Sorry, she whispered as the other giggled and pulled on her arm. I sighed in bemusement as they hop-scotched down the path, then took a handkerchief from my pocket to wipe at my dribbling nose. With an involuntary shiver, I shuffled on.

Further along, sometime after crossing a side street closer to home, I tottered to another halt as a younger man lurched towards me, comically ponderous with a hessian bag swung over his shoulder. He was about forty years old and dressed in navy jeans, oxford shoes and a fraying blue cardigan that zipped up at the front. His dark brown hair curled tightly around his head and a trimmed beard pointed downwards at the base of his chin.

His smile widened as he noticed me staring. I hope we don't get more rain, he said, then frowned at the sky as if it had already begun to fall. I stopped and followed his gaze, then looked back to find that he was watching me with a grin.

There was a sense of merriness that seemed to flow from him. It certainly poured down, that's for sure, I said, laughing slightly in embarrassment. I hope you didn't get too wet?

Hahaha, he chortled, the skin around his green eyes bunching into shapes. Yes sir, I did. It seems like I got caught right in the middle of it.

I felt an odd twinge at the back of my memory and stared more intently at his face, certain he was someone I should know; or at the very least, remember. Have we met before? I asked.

Well... The younger man scratched his chin. Perhaps we have. His eyes fixed onto mine and held me there. In any case, he said at last, it's nice to see you now. He looked at me for several uncomfortable seconds and then glanced upwards with a sigh. I suppose I should be getting along before the rain starts again. You have a nice evening sir.

With one last smile he passed around me, the soles of his leather shoes slapping the pavement as he walked away.

I offered up a small wave to his as he rounded the corner, and then steered my stick forward, a sudden unaccountable happiness welling deep within my chest.

As I reached the end of the footpath a black Austin roared past, smoke belching from its underside. I waited, content to allow my thoughts to drift until the traffic paused and I crossed to the centre of the road. Seconds later, there was a rush of moving cars behind me and I was left to wait again, this time caught between two threads of metal.

I lingered for the stream of vehicles to pass, glancing over at the fish and chip shop across the road and counting, one by one, the coins in my pocket. I felt their size and rough edges as they rubbed against my fingers, finally deciding I had enough for a bag of chips and a sprinkling of vinegar.

I looked over at the line of stores and saw my neighbour Mary come out of the dry cleaners. She noticed me in the middle of the road and waved. Smiling, I pulled out my hand from the warmth of my pocket and lifted it in response. Then, with a nod of her head she turned away and into the florist, her long red locks disappearing in the gloom.

I began to hum softly to myself.

Glancing down at the footpath ahead, I saw a pigeon rise in front of me. It swooped up and beyond the rooftops and in my mind I wished it a happy evening; I did things like that. It seemed to tip a wing in my direction and I doffed a pretend-hat lightly in reply.

There was a lull in the noise of traffic, a hush in my ears. Looking forward into the window of the fish and chip shop and without further thought, I stepped out from the centre strip.

One foot, and then a second.

There was a shrill noise, and I felt a moment of intense surprise as my eyes drifted to the bent figure of an old man in the shop window reflection – me – and that of a blue car lifting the body into the air. It rose to its highest point and then gravity dropped it to the side of the road with a shudder.

I heard a scream from somewhere, the crunch of car against car as the vehicle stopped and those behind it were too slow to react, and then a moment of profound silence. I felt an almost imperceptible pain in my back, and an awkward rush from my stomach. A light touched my face and I found myself floating gently, as though loosened from physical binds and set free.

Calm. Peace.

I watched people begin to gather around my body; the driver of the car wailing hysterically at the sky, the fish and chip shop owner clasping and unclasping the strings of his apron with trembling hands all the while staring blindly at my walking cane, and Mary weeping silently at his side. I know him, she said, bringing a cloth to her nose.

My vision and hearing continued to function as I left the scene of my old skin and found myself compelled forward. Dispassionately I watched a flicker of old memories - of arguments, hates, joys and loves - as they skimmed past in vivid camera shutter motion. And then the memories began to slow and stop, and I felt myself falling into a gentle softness...

Silence. Peace. Presence.

It was a feeling of joining and sharing and being.

It was at once all that could ever be, and everything I remembered.

I stayed in this moment timelessly aware; maybe months, maybe years, likely neither. Then, abruptly, I sensed a pull and found myself drifting and then enclosed, cocooned in a physicality that wounded in its intensity. At some point I felt a wet and comfortable warmth surrounding me. Quiet words echoed in my ears, resounding in my head as the sensation of living within something became obvious and present.

More time passed and then in an instant I felt myself pulled once more; a dragging, frightening sensation of being ripped apart. And then coldness. A tickling, itching, unforgivable feeling of loss. In a pitiful moment, I succumbed to the inevitable and screamed in frustration.

I was born.

Chapter One

London

to neither have nor not have...>

I was born way too early for my own good; a teeny tiny wisp of a thing with bright blue eyes, deep black hair and a hole in the heart the size of Alaska.

Apparently I wasn't meant to last very long. A few days tops. But as luck would have it, I went beyond expectations and survived.

Actually, I thrived, and for a brief moment of childhood, life became something exceptional; one exhilarating, cubby-house-building, top-of-the-tree-swinging moment after the next.

I was a precocious little fellow with a single character flaw... ahem... alright, I probably had a few more than one, but let's not spoil the moment. That is to say, I pretty much believed everything I heard, as long as the words came from the mouth of someone older than me.

Unfortunately, just at the point when my life was going really nicely, some miserable glass-half-empty type happened to point out that life always gets worse the moment it looks like it's getting better. I don't think he was talking to me at the time, but apparently I took this to heart; and so, right about the moment when I was pretending to shave with ice-block sticks (circa ten years old), my happiness made a beeline for someplace else. 

Right after that... Well, let's just say, something happened that I wouldn't wish on anyone. For a while, it turned me into one quivering mess of fear and loathing, happiness now just a figment of someone else's imagination.

When I was sixteen, my long-neglected intuition decided to pay me a visit. It was like a gift from the gods, and woke me to what I was creating for myself - nothing but misery. It made me remember the importance of following my heart over my head, irrespective of how terrified that sometimes made me feel.

And so I made a pact to myself. I recognised that I couldn't spend the rest of my days digging up the same pain, just to appease some part of me that liked to suffer. I suddenly had the notion that I could turn things around; that I didn't have to have a life as bad as it was. That I could somehow become, well... fearless.

It was an odd pact for a sixteen-year-old to make. But it changed everything.

Years later, when my favourite - and richest - aunt surreptitiously handed me a wad of cash and told me to have fun, my first thought was that I needed to travel to London. The idea washed over me like a hurricane blown dandelion and stayed there, from the moment she handed me the money to the moment I started investigating the price of flights. Then it settled contentedly at the back of my mind, occasionally tickling me with excitement throughout the following days.  

Needless to say, I finally arrived. And after a week in a cheap hostel, I found accommodation in a slightly rundown, five bedroom share-house half a kilometre south of Tower Bridge. To date, I've been living here for sixteen months, have a job in a bar, have good friends - namely, my best mate Ben - and not much else to account for myself except for the occasional propensity to drink too much. 

I guess you could say I'm a work in progress...

Physically, I'm tall by family standards. When I stand up straight, I'm six-foot-three worth of gangly arms and legs. And if I'm being particularly impartial, sometimes I look strangely awkward - as though I'm still trying to work out how to fit inside the confines of my body. 

My hair, as mentioned, is black, although I still have the crazy on again/off again pleasure of bleaching it white. It's almost always cut close to my head to hide the slight curl that sprouts if I let it grow longer. My eyes are no longer completely what I'd call blue - somehow, through natural progression (or maybe just puberty), they've begun to look more grey than blue. Perhaps that's just a trick of the light, but either way, I guess you could call me average looking, sometimes a bit above when I comb my hair the right way.

This morning, I awoke as I do every morning, to the sounds of Blur.

But when Bublé finally pushed me out of bed - as he has a wanton habit of doing - I did so with an uncomfortably persistent but familiar thought rolling around like a lotto ball inside my head: It was time to move again.

I sang loudly over the squeal of the hot water pipes, trying to squish out this one particular grandiose idea, but it was like having a traffic cop directing cars between the folds of my brain: every time I tried to pursue another direction, this one got right of way and came wheeling back at me.

I dressed and left the flat, slowed my pace to watch the mime making faces by Blackfriars Bridge and then continued on along the river.

London in springtime is a queer experience to behold. In the space of an hour, with just the smell of sunlight in a hazy sky, everything turns to pot: boys and men out shirtless kicking footballs in the park; women in light blouses fanning themselves as if the heat has become unbearable - when in fact it's really just a shade short of cold; the tourist walks, yesterday almost deserted, now abruptly punctuated by the laughter of children; their parents moving about with blissfully stunned looks, faces stretched upwards towards the heat of the golden sun. It is a peculiar thing to witness, and quite at odds with what I'm used to in my home town in southern New South Wales, where everything seems a little bit slower to come to the boil.

Don't get me wrong; I like good weather as much as the next guy, but by the time I finally reached the Southbank Centre, I was ready to do a Rocky run up the steps to the bridge over the Thames to Embankment Station - if only to escape the maddening dodge and swerve of the walkers slowed down to eke out the warmth of the sunshine.

On the other end of the bridge, the homeless busker greeted me as he always did, with a nod and a grin. Sweat was beading on his forehead as he beat out a creatively mournful rendition of 'Love me do' on an old plastic rice container.

I returned the smile, throwing a pound coin into the can at his feet. Have a nice one mate, he said between verses.

You too, I responded, completing our morning ritual. A few steps later, I was walking through the tube station, trying to dodge the numbed out passengers as they passed in and out of the turnstiles.

Leicester Square was its usual charming effervescent self, packed with the regular crowd of cheap-theatre-ticket gawkers and backpack-wearing tourists, some plonked in the middle of the square as though they had no energy left to get to the side. I skirted a large group of these, frowning slightly in annoyance, and then squeezed past a well-dressed young man hawking eternal salvation who smelled peculiarly of stale pizza and cheap musk cologne.

At the café, I ordered a cheese and tomato croissant - lightly toasted with a thick layer of oozy butter - and a massive café latte with the girl at the counter. (She knew me well enough to giggle in derision.) As I swallowed my first mouthful of coffee, I came to the inevitable conclusion that I would go ahead with it, regardless of how it might turn out for me. I started to sketch out the priorities in my mind: first I resign, then I get a ticket, then I tell everyone who needs to know.

Later, as I unstacked the mats from the bar floor, my boss appeared, rollerblading in with a very dazzled and out of breath white terrier dragging on a lead ten feet behind. They disappeared into the office until the dog returned, tongue lolling from the side of her mouth, and padded wearily towards the water bowl in the kitchen. Craig was out several minutes later with the cash till tucked beneath his arm. As he rang open the register, I moved over to the public side of the bar and sat down on the barstool opposite him. How're things?

Gooood, he replied, raising an eyebrow. How's it with you?

Umm... yep fine. Ermm... I need to put in my resignation. I'm going away for a while... err... Well it could be forever. I think it might be for a long while at least.

He nodded back slowly, shut the till door and turned fully in my direction. Where are you planning to go? Back to Australia?

India.

He snorted. Really? Okay. What are you going to do there, if you don't mind me asking?

Umm... Well, I haven't quite figured it out. Maybe disappear into a cave or become a monk or something. I felt myself turning a warm shade of pink. I'm not sure yet. I just know I have to go to India.

Craig gave me a slightly clever smile and turned back to the register. Shall we see you returning enlightened then?

I... I'm not sure. I doubt I even know what that means, I said, turning a deeper red.

Well, alright then, though we'll be sorry to see you go, Chris. You're welcome to come back if you need to. When are you thinking of leaving? he asked, walking back around the bar and pulling out a cigarette.

A week or two I guess. I've gotta finish up some things here first before I leave, and I... Well, I haven't even booked my ticket yet. I'm not sure what else I need to get, like visas and things...

Okay. Just let me know when you've booked and you have a definite date and I can change the roster around a bit.

Thanks Craig, I appreciate it.

He smiled kindly. No probs.

An hour before my shift ended, Ben arrived from the gym and pushed his bag across the counter. I bent to slide it under a shelf at my feet, poured him a drink and returned with his change.

What are you grinning at? he asked as I handed him the coins.

I'm going to India, I answered.

He laughed at me as though I were making another one of my jokes (he called them Chris jokes and was at pains to stress that they weren't in the least bit funny). At last, he realised I was being serious and his bushy eyebrows turned downwards. Why?

I'm not sure, to be honest, I admitted. I just have this feeling that I need to go.

He stood up, walked around the edge of the bar and pulled me into a bear hug, his arms seeming to envelop me twice over. Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose. Though you'd better make sure you come back here because I was only just getting used to the sight of you and I'd hate for all that effort to go to waste. His nose wrinkled at that and I could see a sadness behind his eyes that I didn't expect.

***

Finally, I was ready to leave.

On the eve of my departure, and after another farewell dinner, Ben and I dropped into the backseat of a London cab from Soho, driving across Tower Bridge towards home. We were both silent, in reflective moods as the blue painted metal of the bridge flashed above us. Truly I was grateful for it, scared to speak for the sudden fear that welled up like a bloating fish inside my chest. Time is short, it seemed to say, and