Elio Uccelli - Glimpses of his life

About Elio Uccelli

When Elio and Luciana knocked at our front door for the first time, I could not have imagined that they would enter my life and heart. ...

They were simply two of the many Italians Nata welcomed and helped on their arrival in Pondicherry. Since that day 20 years ago they came back punctually every year for the Christmas holidays, loaded with gifts.

Then Elio had a major surgical operation. He retired from his job and began spending the winter months in India. He enjoyed the Ashram and its atmosphere. At the first ray of dawn he would join the other Ashramites at the Dining Room to take his bread and milk.

Then he would go to the seafront for a walk and in thanksgiving gaze at the sun rising from the sea in a festival of colour. He was always happy and beautiful in his Indian silk shirts, with his silvery hair and his suntanned, golden face.

Elio was weaker by the day. He would never complain, never ask for help, never solicit compassion.

For him the illness was an act of Grace, an opportunity to grow, to pay his karmic debt, to dig ever deeper within himself until he touched the heart of transparence.

Behind that courage, that style, that gentleness was the Force and Love of the Divine. He was deeply and therefore happily aware of the purpose of our earthly existence and of death as life and not merely a fistful of ashes or a cup of oblivion into which all is dissolved. Even in the most difficult moments, Elio did not stop repeating, "How very blessed I am!" He knew how to receive and give love and finally, of course, Luciana, after long suffering, came round to understanding what it was that Elio had achieved.

We in the Ashram were struck by his radiant presence, moved by his decision to leave his body here, and many ashramites sustained his inner work with prayer, with gestures of tenderness, gifts, discreet visits.

Every evening a very high fever would inexorably overtake him.

And quietly Elio would announce, "It is time for me to go down into my tomb." Wrapped in woollen blankets for hours on end he would attempt to sweat the fever out, though normally his skin could hardly bear the touch of the lightest of cotton shirts, so hot and humid is our Indian summer. In silent and ceaseless prayer he would offer his gratitude to the Lord. In the evening he would change his clothes, comb his hair, wrap himself in his elegant gown and go and sit in his armchair padded with cushions. The smallest movement meant a cruel effort, yet he was bent on keeping himself exquisitely groomed, not so much out of a sense of his own dignity as from a wish not to offend his visitors and those around him. A smile always lighted his emaciated face.

Elio was ... submitting himself to the Lord. A self-surrender with folded hands, trusting heart, fearless and without attachment. ... For a long time during the painful X-rays, tests, check-ups and treatments in the hospitals and nursing homes, he had felt a warm protective Presence accompanying him...

In the very last days Elio lost his voice. He continued radiating love with his extraordinary smile. He asked Luciana for a pen and paper.

And with a trembling hand left his message:

Everything is falling silent: it is as if a new air has descended - more light, more light, more Light!

Elio's Insights & Musings

Here are a few samples of Elio's insights and musings from the book The Fruit and The Seed published by Luciana for free distribution.

These passages reveal Elio's heroic fortitude in face of unbearable pain.

*

A friend is very ill: they have emptied him of everything from the mouth of the stomach downward. Moreover there is the resultant mortification of not being able to perform the primary body functions without assistance from the others.

This could also happen to me. It will be necessary to decisively separate the body from the soul, leaving the body to its process of disintegration without the soul being involved in any way.

The process of physical disintegration must not become the sole preoccupation of the being but the impulsion for it to become truly independent from the body. Then even the sense of humiliation changes into love and profound gratitude to those who help.

With the weakening of the body, the soul gathers strength. I can now already feel this. 

*

This morning at Villa Borghese under the transparent and luminous green of the trees, made more iridescent by the Sun's rays playing among the branches, I felt the presence of the Gods. As if the thoughts of the Cosmos had bloomed from the Earth. I forgot myself completely and bathed in that world of light enveloping me, found myself suffused with a spiritual reality.?

*

In the peak of illness, in the collapse from exhaustion, in stupefaction or in the revolt of the soul torn with the pain of daily living, may I be able, O Gods, to always find the strength to accomplish the Rite of Consecration to You.

*

Angel of God, grant me the patience I need, the patience to wait for the Kingdom, the gift of Gods to him who works for this reign.

Grant me the patience, knowing that no personal merit can claim the reward, since there is no personal merit that can measure up to the Reign.

The Gods know what they do and to be patient for their gift is felicity.

*

Angel of God, may I be able to see Your face resplendent in the difficult hour and may that abundant light not overwhelm and blind me.!

Courage in the face of adversity, especially in illness, is finally our act of faith in the commands of the Spirit, in its power but, above all, in its love.

*

... Nevertheless, pain is the only acceptable currency we have, and therefore, we cannot waste it in order to receive the commiseration from others or their praise, or things of that sort. We cannot waste it either by throwing it away in despair or by denying it. 

*

Today in my afternoon meditation I received the answer — clear, unequivocal, difficult to express in words, extremely simple in its indication: to do better what I have been doing, adding to the realisation what Sri Aurobindo calls equanimity and which the Master describes as a conscious, stable positioning of the soul. 

*

Not a day passes when I awake without gratitude for my Resurrection.

Now I am ready for physical death too.

*

Patience is the foundation of calm: he who loses patience loses calm and he who is calm is patient. Patience is the opposite of being impulsive and hasty. Impulse and haste are impelled by time, they are time's obsession. Patience, on the other hand, dwells on the fringe of time, one step more and we pass from sensible to Suprasensible time.

Calm, peace and silence help us take this step.

*

"There are not different kinds of light but only One. The other lights are either suffused with this One or they are false. It is this Unique Light that must irradiate us. The rest is falsehood and masked obscurity. "

*

"He who always keeps joy in every situation, even in the worst of illnesses, carries with him the Consciousness of the World, since he knows the reason of every occurrence, knows the spiritual background and knows that all moves towards Love, is propelled by Love, is only known by Love. "

*

"Each time that my soul's marvellous bird of paradise is almost at the confines of the sky, it is pierced by the hunter-Ego's arrow. Each time it is shot down, it rises again and takes flight: higher still, more sure of itself, its rainbow wings scintillating in the sun and its hunger for the sky exalting it above the earth.