No Pain, Only Happiness

On July 12, Robyn went to the hospital to hear conclusively whether she could participate in the clinical trials. In the car on the way, she was having difficulty breathing. It was a fairly brief interview — Robyn was clearly not well enough to undergo any further medical procedures, so the last vestige of the search for a cure was gone. It was time to be totally concentrated in the preparation for her transition. Robyn had no trouble with this. She already sensed that her death was imminent, and she was ready now.

That evening during the daily devotional occasion, attended by many local devotees, Robyn asked Ruth to pass her the tamboura and she played while Ruth chanted. Robyn was a trained musician herself, and the pleasure she had in touching the strings was exquisite to see. When she put the tamboura down, Robyn looked over at a photograph of her that had been taken two weeks earlier and sent to Beloved Adi Da. It was one of the photographs on which He had specifically laid His hands. She said, "See how much suffering there is in that photo. It's not there now. No pain, only happiness." A little earlier while her intimates surrounded her bed, she said with a wave of her hand, "I will let all of you go — just like that!" And she quoted a line of Instruction that Beloved Adi Da had given a few years ago to a devotee who was dying: "Fly to Me like an arrow". "That," she said, "is what I am going to do."

After saying goodbye to Dennis and her sons the following evening, Robyn did not talk very much more. Her medication was much heavier now, to relax the increasing breathlessness. On July 14, her younger son Raphael was sitting with me in the living room reading some of Avatar Adi Da's Teaching on death. "I am going to read something," he said, and he read aloud: "Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life." I told him then that these were the first words of Avatar Adi Da Samraj that Robyn had shown to me in the July 1984, seventeen years ago. I suggested to Raphael that he read this passage to Robyn, who was awake. When I told Robyn that Raphael was going to read the first words of Avatar Adi Da that she had shown to me, even in her drugged state she knew. "Oh, yes," she said. "Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life."

From this point on, Robyn slept most of the time. By Sunday morning, July 15, Beloved Adi Da could feel that she needed all our help to make the transition soon. Her heart was still strong, but the lungs were giving up, and she needed to be undisturbed and not drawn down into the body.

He Instructed us to massage upward at her ajna chakra (also called the "third eye") with oil, and to tap her a few times on the top of the head, at the indentation called the fontanelle. This was to encourage the bodily energy to ascend out the top of the head. He recommended silence, as even pleasant sounds such as chanting could bring her attention down, even if she were not outwardly aware.

In the early evening, I left the apartment for a couple of hours to watch a videotape of a recent Darshan occasion with Beloved Adi Da. Beloved Adi Da's Heart-Transmission coming through the video was exactly as He describes in His Ruchiradam Text:

You may (objectively) see My Radiance, but I Magnify It Where I Stand, Where you Stand, Where It Stands — from the Inside out, White As the Feeling of Being Is.

I returned home still in the "Bright" swoon evoked by this Darshan of Beloved Adi Da, and I went in to sit alone with Robyn. After about an hour of meditating by her bed, I could hear that there was fluid in her throat and that her nose was blocked. But there was no struggle. The sound of her breathing stopped, but her chest continued to move a little. Then there was no movement. Her breath had ceased imperceptibly.

I knew she had died, and I went to the altar to praise Beloved Adi Da for His extraordinary Grace in Robyn's life. Then I called the others into the room and went to phone devotees in Avatar Adi Da's Circumstance. It was still early in the morning there, but Beloved Adi Da had said that He was to be told immediately, at any time of day or night, if Robyn had a question to ask Him or if she died.