Communicating with Dolphins at Amma’s Beach!

Two days ago, chatting with a friend here at Amritapuri, we shared some nice memories of seeing dolphins in the ocean, from Amma’s beach (just 2 minutes walk from the ashram, by the Ayurveda Research Center). My friend said that once someone was sad and complaining that the dolphins never came for her to see them. She was then told, that they would surely come when we call them with a pure and sincere heart. They feel such vibrations and will definitely answer the call. If they hadn’t come to her yet, it was because she was not staying long enough… Amma once said that long ago, when She would come to meditate on the beach, the dolphins used to come very close and stay as long as she was around…

I remembered this, yesterday, when I went for my meditation (nature contemplation) by the ocean at sunset, and spent some time screening the ocean, calling for those wonderful creatures….
Hoooo! Not much longer later, I saw what looked like a fin, a bit far away… But, with the wonderful excitement of that first sight, usually comes the thought: “Was it really a fin? Is it really a dolphin?” And your whole being focuses on the area to see if it would appear again… Yes! It did, and then over and over again for an extended time. It must have been 3 or 4 dolphins enjoying the end of the day, far away in the ocean space (to the left of the Ayurveda Center)… I must have spent half an hour following their ‘surfacing’ and this brought deep happiness to the heart…

Today morning, at around 11:30am, after finishing some work, I headed back to my room planning to dedicate some time for reading, and without me really deciding to do so, my legs took me back to the beach…
Empty shore, no one around… Cloudy sky, but no rain… The crashing of the waves on the rocks covered all other sounds… So easy to imagine, Amma as a young girl coming to this place and getting lost in her mystical moods for hours and hours… A feeling of sacredness fills your heart and soul.

Not intending to sit and meditate, I started walking barefoot on the clean stretch of sand that has now formed behind the block of rocks, simply enjoying being fully there with the rhythm of nature… I gazed far at the horizon and followed for a while the movement of some fishermen boats, then started screening the ocean, enjoying the extend view of its clear blue color, and the light movement of the waves… A bit later I thought about the dolphins and remembered my excitement upon seeing them yesterday. I didn’t really expect to see them again and didn’t even plan to stay on the beach for long, but realizing that I was all alone and that I could fully practice the sincere bhava of calling them, I came closer to the rocks, gazed at the open ocean and started a personalized ritual of calling them from deep within. At the background I was picturing Amma’s face smiling, and my mood was the one that we experience when we get really into a bhajan during bhajans time…

Yes, yes, yes!!! Here they are!!! I couldn’t believe it… My body was almost shivering and my eyes watering… Is it possible? I had just started my calling a minute ago and here are the fin and the back of a dolphin slowly curving its way on the surface of the ocean…
It was one dolphin. To the North side of the beach, much closer than the ones I had seen the day before… I climbed the rocks and stood there mesmerized, communicating with full bhava with my friend that had manifested, over there about 150 meters away… I followed its movement, trying not to loose sight. He would appear every 30 seconds maybe and I could now see clearer the form of its back and the dorsal fin… and, it was moving parallel to the beach, southwards (meaning towards where I was standing!)
‘Please, please come closer’, was my prayer. Amazingly, it WAS coming closer, and now as if clearly acknowledging my presence and prayers, it was appearing more often, moving really slow and flipping its tail upwards with every movement!! I was literally shivering now, and couldn’t believe that it was actually coming closer to the shore… ‘I want to see the head’, became my next wish. And, soon enough, as the divine dolphin was at maybe just 60 meters away from me, every time it was surfacing I could see the whole form: the head, the body, the dorsal and then the waving tail! I looked closer and closer at the head, and I couldn’t believe my eyes!! It had two wide white stripes on the forehead!! He’s a pujari! Wow!! A brahmachari lone dolphin!

So, I called him ‘the pujari’… For a long time I followed ‘the pujari’s’ passage, as he moved slowly southwards… After he had passed by me, he retrieved back deeper in the ocean (Actually he had come closer to the shore, only at the place where I was waiting for him!) and I was able to keep sight of him for a good 20 minutes…
Fully satisfied, inspired, all blessed out and excited, I didn’t know what I was doing next… I just stayed there enjoying that special inner mood… Staring at the ocean from time to time…

Soon, as I was looking to the place where I had first spotted ‘the pujari’, I saw another fin!! Wow! This one is really showing off… He was continuously on the surface, waving his tail with every curving movement and even jumping a bit out of the water every now and then. Far away, but really exuberant… I looked closer, while walking in that direction… Could it be more than one individual? Yes, it seems so… Maybe 2 or 3 dolphins… Amazing, they really seem to be having fun, staying close to the surface and playing…
They stayed in that one location and now I could clearly see that they were two of them… I called them ‘the exuberant duo’… After a while I noticed that one was clearly smaller then the other, and that the bigger one seemed to be leading the way… I came to the conclusion that they must be a mother and a baby…

They stayed there, playing almost continuously, for about 25 minutes, and I could enjoy getting to identify them in a clearer way… At one point I was almost sure that the younger one had his head out of water for a long stretch of time, as if screening the surroundings. Was he looking at the funny creature on the shore, all dressed in white, standing on a high rock sending some kind of vibrations in his direction? This is what I made myself believe… Yes, the younger one was also communicating!!

I got a bit alarmed when they ‘disappeared’ all of a sudden… For maybe 3 long minutes, I could not spot them anywhere anymore… What happened? I became anxious… But soon I saw them again, much further to the south… They were not coming often to the surface anymore and I understood that they were traveling southwards… They moved a bit faster than ‘the pujari’ and didn’t come as close to the shore as he had… But I could still see them clearly and by the time I left the beach, they had reached the opposite South side of the Ayurveda Center and had actually met up with ‘the pujari’ (who could maybe rather be ‘the daddy’ now)…

I folded my hands and offered a goodbye-thank you prayer, to which one of them ‘responded’ by going a bit higher above the water and waving its tail for a few seconds… My imagination? Maybe, but I really want to believe it, and so would each of the readers, no?

As I was walking back slowly, looking back at my friends’ spot, I saw clearly: they were 4 of them now! 3 adults that I could distinguish clearly, and the cute little one… Where did the fourth one come from? Maybe from Calcutta?

You bet I’ll be going more and more to the ocean the coming few days… And, sure I’ll share more of my dolphin experiences… Maybe will take pictures, or a short movie… Maybe I’ll be swimming with them tomorrow!?

Smiles to all my brothers and sisters, fellow ‘dolphins’, swimming alongside our One and Unique, Universal Mama whale…

Priyan, from Amma’s beach, Amritapuri