Talking soul to soul²

In Bali I went into a music store to buy an instrument. The owner said, “80,000 rupiah,” and I said, “No, 60,000.” We were haggling for such a long time. Finally, he agreed to 70,000.

Then I saw two bamboo flutes on his desk. I examined the flutes, and one of them I liked very much. But the man said, “I am not going to sell this flute, because it is my personal flute. I play this one every day, so I don’t want to sell it.”

His soul was very open to me, and it was telling me to take that flute, but the man did not want to give it to me. He said, “Take the other one — the smaller one.”

To myself I said, “The physical plane and the spiritual plane will never go together.”

Because his soul was telling me to take the flute, I said to the man, “You have to give it to me. During the day there is no moon, but the moon will beg you to give it to me.”

Then I asked, “What is your name?”

He said, “Madhu Chandra.”

I said, “Are you a Hindu?”

“I am a Hindu,” he replied.

Then I took the flute I wanted and said, “I will break the flute over your head if you don’t give it to me.”

Savyasachi just looked at me.

Finally the man said, “All right. The flute has a fixed price of 1,000 rupiah. You are getting the instrument for 70,000, plus 1,000, so it is 71,000 rupiah.”

Then I gave him 70,000 and another 10,000 by mistake. I thought I had given him only 1,000. He looked at me and said that I had made a mistake and gave me the change.

Then he started helping Savyasachi with the big instrument. Savyasachi told him that I was a great musician, and the man was very happy that he had met a great musician.

His soul wanted me to have the flute, but his mind would not give it to me. So I said to myself, “The only way to get the flute is to threaten to break his head.”

Bali is the land of simplicity. Otherwise, would I ever dare talk to anybody like that? It was just soul to soul that we were talking. He was such a sweet soul!