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CHAPTER
SEVEN
I started my second four-month trip abroad at the beginning of
September, 1981, right after a week crowded with important events.
First, I had attended the Rebirth International Jubilee in
Snowmass, Colorado, and received the endorsement for Certification from all the Certified Rebirthers, as well as from Dr. Duran, the entity
channeled by Trina Kamp.
Then, I received a surprise visit the last day of the Jubilee from
my dear companion, Louis, who canceled all his appointments and flew to
Colorado just to be with me in what he regarded as my “big" moment.
And as soon as I returned from Snowmass, I was the honored guest at
a garden party given for me by the area alumni who had given the
University of Chicago large donations or who had worked with me in my
position as the Chairman of the Alumni Fund Drive for the past few years,
a position I was then vacating.
I felt as if I had barely had time to get back from the two weeks
in Colorado, get dressed for the party, pick up my passport, and leave for
the East Coast before taking off for London.
London started with a similar rush: we were met by Rebirthers who
had attended a seminar I had led the past Easter in London.
We had a meal, got a few hours of sleep, and at 9:00 A.M. the next
morning, I led a seminar for 44 people on their Parental Disapproval
Syndromes. Perhaps
symbolically, the shank on one of my
high heels broke on the first step going down the stairs to the meeting
room, resulting in my sliding down three or four steps of the carpeted
steps as if I were water skiing. What
an entrance!
That day was the start of a period of six weeks during which I
worked every day, almost every hour, from early morning to late at night.
Finally, six weeks later, we took a day off and went to the
countryside and up to Stratford to visit the upcoming landlord and lady of
my organizers, Toni and Aire. We
were served a magnificent high tea that included every food ever mentioned
in English novels as suitable for such occasions, with all the foods
colored red, white, and blue in honor of the birthday of the son of our
host. (Louis ate the entire
plate of typically English thin cucumber sandwiches on the table next to
him because he thought they were too tiny to have been meant for all of
us!)
Every interaction during those six weeks was magical, including my
introduction to Manjushri Institute, the University of Tantric Buddhism,
housed in a magnificent 88-room Gothic mansion built on the grounds of a
13th-century monastery near Ulverston, Cumbria, where I led a marvelous
week-long training.
The first evening we were there, after taking a tour of the
building, we met with one of the two lay directors, Roy.
Because he wore a bow tie and wire-frame eyeglasses, was very tall
and thin, and spoke in a very quiet voice, I was afraid he would be
terribly prissy, especially when he started by saying he needed to explain
the simple rules of the monastery.
One rule was that we harm no sentient beasts.
Another was that we use no drugs on the property.
And another was that we engage in no abnormal sex.
He asked if we had any questions about those rules.
One of my trainees asked Roy to define “abnormal."
In the shocked silence, Roy replied, smiling, “More than one
partner at a time."
That broke the ice. Soon
we were having a lively discussion about mealtimes, bathing, laundry, etc.
As the meeting seemed to be coming to a close, Roy asked if there
were anything special he could do for us, and I spoke up and said, “Yes,
you could let me Rebirth you and you could also invite everyone in the
monastery to join us for the entire workshop so they get Rebirthed and
learn how to Rebirth each other."
That seemed to be even more shocking, but after a few moments of
apparent embarrassment, Roy replied that he would be very honored to
accept my invitation and he would relay the invitation to join the
workshop to the entire community.
Not everyone wanted to, but more than half the community did.
So the workshop was attended not only by 54 Brits who had come from
all over the U.K. to the workshop, but also by thirty-six resident
Buddhist monks and nuns.
Each of the Tantric Buddhist monks or nuns selected one of the
members of the workshop as a personal trainer, by whom to be Rebirthed
each day during the week after the members of the workshop finished
trading Rebirths with each other.
Because of their monastery duties, the monks and nuns couldn't
attend the daytime part of our workshop when we all shared our experiences
in Rebirthing each other. So,
instead, they arranged to come in for a special post-Rebirth seminar of
their own after supper.
The first time, I was anxious about their reactions, especially
when the first person to share was a nun who kept her pre-monastery life
so secret she was known only as Dee Doe.
She started her report by saying, in the drawling manner of a
top-drawer Brit, “Well, everything that happened to me while I was
Rebirthing was something I've experienced before.
Nothing new happened to me. I've
felt the same feelings of union with the Cosmos before, just as I've felt
the same feelings of transcendental ecstasy before."
My heart sunk as I thought that I was going to have to listen to 35
more people tell me that Rebirthing wasn't much.
But just then, Dee broke into a beaming smile and said, “The only
difference is that, previously, I have had to stay in silent retreat for
at least six weeks before coming close to such experiences, whereas this
time, it took only a little over an hour."
As she finished, she was laughing and crying simultaneously.
So were most of us.
All the rest of the reports were highly positive, too. The glowing reports culminated in the remarks made by the
last person to speak, a very old man who was known in the community as
Saint John, although his first name is really Ted.
He said, “Well, after breathing for approximately an hour, I
opened my eyes and all there was was the blue sky, the white clouds, and
the branches of the pinetrees. There
wasn't any Me looking at them. All
there was was the blue sky, the white clouds, and the green branches."
His voice broke and he seemed to be working hard to keep from
weeping. Then he went on to
say, “All the years that I've spent studying Buddhism, I've been hoping
that I might let go my ego attachments so that I can experience samadhi
before I die. And yesterday I
did! I want to thank all of
you for that great gift."
For the rest of the week, the entire monastery seemed changed.
People talked with each other during mealtimes and greeted each
other as they passed in the long stone hallways.
It seemed as if they started to love each other, instead of being
lost in their quest for detachment.
Some of my highest spiritual experiences took place at Manjushri.
I love Manjushri Institute and every member of its community I've
Rebirthed. Whenever I've been
in England during the past fifteen years, I've made a point of going there
to spend at least a night, even when I haven't been leading a Rebirth
workshop there. I've been
privileged to be given the room underneath the Puja room, so that I awake
early to the sound of the community chanting above me.
Yet we almost didn't go to Manjushri for that Rebirthing workshop I
led in UK.
Two weeks before, my Rebirth group was still slated to meet in a
residence used for conferences on the other side of England completely. We would have gone there if that place hadn't been
unexpectedly sold. My
organizers still hadn't located a new place until the week I arrived, and
then only because a Buddhist client of one of my organizers mentioned that
Conishead Priory, as the building of Manjushri Institute was originally
called, was going to be available for workshops in the near future.
I was told by Chip, the other lay director, that the Honorable
Geshe Kelsang Gyatsu, the spiritual head of the monastery, had had a dream
a month or so before we arrived in which he was told to get the monastery
ready to accept a large group who would bring great changes to the
monastery. So they cleaned and painted and worked up to the minute we
arrived—the carpets in the rooms we used for our meetings had been laid
only the night before our arrival!
One of the people from London who came to that first workshop,
Michael, whose family had lived in Ulverston for many centuries, stayed on
at the monastery to become a member of the community and eventually a
monk. He became Manjushri's
first resident Rebirther as part of his duties there, and he also realized
his dream of spending his time creating and recording music. His first commercial product, a tape called “A Midsummer
Eve," is a favorite of mine to Rebirth to.
I'll be happy to tell you how to obtain a copy if you write to me.
At the end of the week, I was given a lama cloth by the Geshe
Kelsang Gyatso, who said, “Rebirthing is an event of a great Karmic
importance to the 2500-year-old tradition of Tantric Buddhism."
I felt truly highly honored.
Just before I was leaving, the nun who ran the counter in the
Institute's gift shop where small Buddhist items could be purchased asked
me to buy up to 1000£ of goods on my travels in India and Nepal, to bring
back to the Institute when I returned just before Christmas.
So for six weeks I had the opportunity for the first time in my
life to be a “professional buyer."
It was great! So was
the pre-Christmas bazaar that was held on my return, at which everything I
had purchased was sold for a sizeable profit for the Institute.
After we left England, I led a week-long workshop in Paris and
another in Amsterdam, then Louis and I once again went to see Babaji. This time we went to Herakhan.
We arrived at Haldwani, which is the nearest town to Herakhan, and
went to the sweet shop on the main street that Vinay Shukla's father owned
and ran. There we connected
up with Vinay, who told us that Babaji was at that very moment in Haldwani
and that we could see him there that evening at the home of one of his
devotees!
We checked in at the Mt. Kailash Hotel, and, to our good fortune,
were given a room with adjoining Western-style toilet and a shower.
I hastened to take a shower and then started trying to put on my
sari. I was in a tremendous
state of excitement over being able to see Babaji right there in Haldwani
without first having to trek the twelve miles or so up the river bed to
the ashram. I was so excited
that my hands fumbled with the sari and I just couldn't get it to pleat
properly so enough of the material was left to pull over my shoulders.
Vinay came to my hotel room to find out what the delay was, and,
seeing the struggle that I was having, said, “Here Mama, let me help
you." With amazing speed, he
pleated the sari material, threw it over my shoulder, tucked it into
itself at my waist, and said, “There you are, you look just like Indira
Gandhi."
I thought that was a funny remark because I had always thought she
looked very much like my mother. In
any case, I thought Vinay's remark was cute.
My nose is big, and I've got the same longish kind of face and I'm
short. Wearing a sari, maybe
that's what I look like. Yes,
I thought, I was willing to look like the Prime Minister of India.
I know this gets to sound silly, but more
and more, as I think about the people that I met in India, I feel a
strange relationship, a kindred feeling.
Many of the habits that my mother had, many of the ways that I was
brought up with, were strangely similar to ways that people have in India.
For example, I never saw anyone in India being harsh with their
child. All of the parents I
saw with their children were reasonable and non-judgmental, placing their
views of things in such a fashion to their children that their children
were persuaded to see the wrongness of the way they had been behaving and
the rightness of how they should behave.
I didn't see guilt being inculcated, I certainly didn't see fear.
What I saw was this sweet, sweet reason which was essentially what
I felt I had been raised with, mostly without force or threat and without
punishment or pain being inflicted in any way.
In any case, as soon as I was properly dressed, we left the hotel
and took a bicycle-driven, two-wheeled, one-seat rickshaw for the three of
us across town to the building Babaji was at.
The city of Haldwani is
an immensely large city with, I was told, close to a million people, but
with most streets very, very narrow, only wide enough for one cart or
perhaps one automobile to pass through.
Stores line the streets in the city center.
The place that we were going to was out into a more countrified
area where there were mainly houses.
We got there, we went through the first floor of the building, went
up to the second floor, and there, in one of a somewhat ordinary set of
residential rooms, was Babaji, giving darshan!
Carrying my presents, I hurried to join the line, and finally got
up to Him. This time I
pranammed to Him properly. I
realized I loved to fall at His feet and show Him that I loved Him.
I no longer saw it as a dishonorable abasement of self in any way,
or a repudiation of my Jewishness. It
was just a particular way of showing love and respect.
As I rose from prone to a kneeling position, Babaji stopped the
line and asked questions about how I was and who I was and had I ever seen
Him before and where and when. I
didn't get any sense of His having remembered me from a half year earlier
when we'd seen Him in Vrindaban, but I still felt welcomed.
In any case, He once again had me sit near Him, and again I had the
pleasure of seeing old friends once more: Margaret, for example, and
Martin, the Swiss doctor, and Barbara, called Motu, a real estate woman
from San Francisco, and other people who were part of Babaji's entourage.
Motu and Barbara hadn't been with Babaji constantly—it was just
good luck that they were with Babaji when Louis and I visited.
They had just returned from being away from India, waiting to be
allowed to re-enter.
I was told later that American citizens were only allowed to stay
in India for six months. Then,
when the Indian government no longer permitted them to stay, they would
generally either come back to the United States to see their family and
make some money, or they would go to nearby countries like Nepal and stay
there for a while until they were once again allowed to re-enter India.
Brits and most continentals didn't have such restraints on their
stay in India. I was told
that the reason the government of India didn't allow USA citizens to stay
longer than six months was because the USA had for many years not allowed
any immigration whatsoever of Indians into the States.
Anyhow, I felt immense joy and relief to be sitting at Babaji's
feet again. Babaji was
wearing a kirta, or long skirt, which was of maroon silk, and I noticed
immediately that His kirta material was almost identical to the maroon
silk of my sari. When He first stopped me, He pulled on His material and put a
part of His shirt up against my material and said, “You see.
We match."
Both of us laughed and I thought that was very funny. I like it. I
still don't know why I liked it, but it made me feel really good that we
were wearing matching colors. It
also makes me feel good to have my name match, too: Eva and Shiva.
Later in the evening, Babaji left the room.
Then most of the Indian people left, too. Vinay told us to wait there while he found a taxi or got his
motorcycle. I looked around
to find Louis, but he wasn't anywhere in sight.
When I went downstairs and out on the street, however, there he
was, with a group of maybe 8, 9 or more little boys standing around him
with their eyes really wide open in wonder as they watched him perform
sleight-of-hand. Louis is a
pretty good magician. He
worked for several years at The Magic Shop in Hollywood, and he knows the
“tricks of the trade." In
any case, on a narrow street in Haldwani, by the light from the porch of
the building Babaji was in, there was Louis doing simple tricks: making
things “disappear," making separate pieces of rope “connect"
themselves into one long piece, and performing other relatively simple
magic that didn't require elaborate equipment, just the pieces of rope and
the little rubber balls that he usually carried around in one pocket.
I joined his admiring audience, and he kept doing one magic trick
after another.
Suddenly we looked up, and there, hanging over the balcony from the
second floor, was Babaji, watching Louis perform magic and apparently
enjoying the show.
That made me feel really good.
I had tried to urge Louis to offer to do a body session on Babaji,
because I knew that some of the other body workers did give Babaji
massages. Louis is an excellent massage therapist—he's really good
with Trager and postural integration and orthobionomy and shiatsu, even
some of the Feldenkrais work. He's
very gentle and he's nonpainful, so people enjoy having his hands on them.
So I had thought, what a wonderful gift he could give to Babaji if
he would do a massage on Him. But Louis had refused to offer to do that.
So I thought at least it was nice that he was giving Babaji
pleasure by performing these magic tricks.
All three of us rode back to the hotel on Vinay's motor bike.
On narrow paths by the light of the moon through cultivated fields,
at a high speed so the bike wouldn't stall, with me in my sari.
Just like real Indians! I
kept thinking how the ride was a perfect illustration of the basic Hindu
mantra, Om Namaha Shivai, I surrender to the Will of God.
Anyhow, we did get back safely to the hotel.
The next morning we left to go to Herakhan, since the hotel owner
told us that Babaji had already left and was back at His ashram at
Herakhan. If we hurried, we'd
have almost a week to spend with Babaji before needing to leave India to
get to the Rebirthing workshops I was scheduled to lead in the UK.
We found a taxi with driver and drove up through Kathgodam which is
where the Indian railroad station is in that part of the world, and then
on up and up into the foothills of the Himalayas, until we reached the
site of a dam being built over the Gautama Ganges River.
At that point, we were met by several people who looked just like
the Sherpas in pictures of Hillary's Everest expeditions.
They took our packs from us and insisted on carrying them over to
the beginning of the “bridge" that hung across the river. They pointed out the way to go up the river valley to
Herakhan, and called the “bridgeman" to come over for us.
We crossed across the river on a kind of seat contraption that
swung from a rope and was pullied across.
Visions of The Bridge of San Louis Rey filled my mind as we
swung over the rocks jutting from the river, yards below.
Fear almost never left until a commercial transaction momentarily
took my mind off swinging across the river on the rope “bridge."
As we were sitting in that carrier with one of the guides, he
leaned forward and asked if we wanted to buy any charris.
I told him I didn't know what the word meant, so he opened up his
hand and held out what looked like a piece of black chalk, roughly the
size of the sort of stick of chalk that schoolteachers use.
When I looked closer, I realized that it looked and smelled like
hash, and asked if it were. He
replied, “No, no, no, not hash—charris."
I thought it was funny that he even had it.
I had believed Leonard Orr when he had told me that at the ashram
it was against the rules to use any drugs.
So I had assumed that while I was with Babaji I would not be
allowed to smoke the marijuana joint that I customarily enjoyed in the
evening. I had reassured
Leonard that, in that case, of course, I wouldn't be smoking, since I
wouldn't ever want to trouble a host in his home when I was his guest.
But here was the Sherpa holding this “finger" of charris out, and
saying, “You want? You
want?"
I said, “I thought we weren't allowed to smoke."
He said, “No, no, it's all right.
How much do you want?"
He asked for only ten rupees, the equivalent of one American
dollar, for a quantity of soft hashish that was the size of my index
finger. I thought, “Well, I have to do this."
And so I did, indeed, buy the charris from him and put it into the
cloth bag that I was carrying my glasses and money and other important
things in.
After we got off of that swing kind of thing that took us across
the river, we started trekking. One
old “Sherpa," carrying an immense can of oil on his head, and a younger
man, carrying both our back packs, ran ahead of us.
We had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile or so when a very, very,
very young boy, perhaps only 4 or 5 years old, materialized out of the
seemingly uninhabited hills and came over to us.
He, too, asked, “You want to buy charris?"
He held out his hand, and resting in his palm was a brown patty
about the size of the ordinary chocolate-covered peppermint patty that one
buys at candy stores, but this was a patty of charris, the same stuff that
the finger roll was made of. When
I asked him how much he wanted for that, he said “Five rupees or three
patties for ten."
He seemed so thin and poor that I gave him a ten-rupee note, and
put the patties in my purse. And
we continued hiking over the rocks, hoping to catch up to the man carrying
our packs.
About half an hour later, along came an extremely old man wearing
an astrakan hat and a long overcoat of the sort that I have seen in Muslim
countries. Using a cane, but
yet still walking over the rocks as well as Louis or I did, he came down
from one of the hills and came up to me.
He asked me if I would buy some charris, and showed me a chunk.
I didn't want to say No to him because I thought from his thin,
aged body that he needed the money. So
even though I really had no use for more, I bought a 20-rupee chunk of
charris from him, and added it to my bag.
Westerners coming along must be really desirable because they have
cash to spend on things like guides and charris.
Occasionally we caught up to the man who was carrying both of our
packs. The other had left to
go running up toward the ashram, rumored to be 12 miles up the river. I was amazed that such a skinny, old man could run so far
with such a huge can of oil on his head.
He did—in fact, after he left the can at the ashram, he came back
to where the three of us were still trekking, just to keep us company.
As we continued on up the riverside, because of flooding from time
to time we would run out of path on one side.
At such times we would have to cross the river to get to the path
on the other side. I found it
almost impossible to walk barefoot on the very sharp, slippery riverbed
rocks, and so after the very first effort at fording the river without my
shoes on, putting them around my neck to keep them dry, I kept them on
even though, of course, they got soaked.
Louis, however, didn't want to get his shoes wet.
So he insisted on unlacing his high-top hiking boots every time we
needed to cross the river, tying them around his neck while he went across
the river, then sitting down, drying his feet with his shirt, and finally
putting them back in his boots again.
I was getting almost beside myself with impatience over this.
I knew the rocks were sharp and in his bare feet he was certainly
slipping on them and hurting himself.
Anyhow, what difference did it make if his shoes got wet?
They would dry out again. It
wasn't as if they were dress shoes that would be ruined by getting any
moisture in them. Most
importantly, every one of these sit-down's to untie and then to re-tie his
shoes was consuming five minutes or more, and we had twelve miles at least
to trek, it was getting on into the afternoon, and I was afraid the sun
would set before we got to the ashram.
Also I felt that our guide was really impatient with us.
The shoe business at every river crossing became an intense
argument between Louis and me. I
was amazed at the intensity of my hatred for him as we continued up the
river. I knew I shouldn't feel that way. I certainly didn't want to come into Babaji's presence with
so much hate in my heart, but every time we needed to cross the river,
there would be a cascade of emotional reactions.
First, I was afraid that I would lose my glasses and not be able to
see where I was going. I was
afraid of falling onto the sharp rocks.
I was afraid of being washed away by the river, which seemed to be
getting higher as we got up higher into the mountains.
I was just generally afraid.
Then, beyond all that, was my realistic concern for the bottoms of
my feet—even with my shoes on—as I gingerly picked my way across these
outrageously sharp, almost newly constructed rocks that comprised the
riverbed.
I had enough on my own head to
worry about without having to be angry at Louis for slowing us down so
much.
The whole thing reached a climax the very last time that we had to
go across the river. It was
our twelfth crossing. This
time, the water was so deep that it was almost over my head.
I didn't know what to do, but the “Sherpa" took the packs across,
then came back and motioned to me to get up piggyback on him.
When I did, before I knew it, he slipped a circle of rope around
below my rump and hiked me up on top of his head, where I was perched just
like a package, outstretched, scared to death, being carried across the
river, seeing the river rolling past me going in one direction furiously,
and unable and unwilling and too afraid to move even enough to see where
we were going, so I could figure out how much longer I had to be perched
like that, like a piece of lumber, stiffly straight on top of this little
fellow's head.
I doubt if he weighed
more than 95 pounds. I have
photographs of the two of us, and he was maybe an inch or so taller than I
was—or I should say he was an inch or so less short.
Neither of us reached 5'2".
Admittedly, he was half my age, in all probability, but still, to
this day, I marvel over his ability to hike me up on the very top of his
head and carry me there through that water for the last time that we had
to ford before we got to the ashram.
Louis stayed behind us during that crossing.
Then, with his shoes once again carefully slung around his neck, he
started across. At the
last minute, just before he reached the shore, Louis slipped, and he and
his shoes got totally drenched. When
he came out of the water, holding his shoes in front of him, the guide and
I couldn't do anything except just roll on the ground, laughing at him.
Louis finally agreed the whole thing was pretty silly.
Anyhow, wet but now reconciled, we had finally arrived at the
ashram! Here were the famous
108 rock stairs, going up to the Kirtan Hall and other parts of the ashram
on that side of the river. Some
of the rocks were ones that I could step up on just like regular steps of
a staircase in my house. But
others were so high that I actually had to put the top of my body across
the flat of the next step and clutch and hitch myself up, crawling up on
top of the next step, then come to my feet, ready to take the next step.
Certainly they weren't easy to move on.
In a way, that was really good for me, because I don't think I
would have had the strength or breath to climb straight up that many steep
stairs. Instead, I got in little pauses while I maneuvered the rocks.
I was truly thankful for the perfectly excellent excuse of having
to take time to clamber over some of the ones that were just too high for
my short old legs.
When we arrived at the top, we saw a bunch of people gathered on a
railed, flat area that overlooked the river, the valley, and the other
side of the ashram where there were six or seven Hindu stupa-like temples. I knew some of the people from having Rebirthed them in the
United States. They all
looked clean, dressed in saris or kirtas and lungies (the male equivalent
of a sarong). By contrast, I
was wearing my khaki pants and my hiking boots and looked pretty dirty and
wet after a whole day of trekking, fording back and forth across the
river. Just as we arrived up there, everyone turned to look at the
river and started yelling, “Bhole Baba Ki Jai!"
There was Babaji, coming across the river, in a little flat boat,
stepping up on the shore, and starting to climb the stairs!
I didn't know what to do, because I was dirty and I didn't have on
a sari. Someone grabbed me
and said, “Go get dressed, go bathe, hurry, get dressed, put on a sari!"
But of course, I couldn't go down the stairs to bathe in the river
without running into Babaji coming up the stairs.
So finally Louis and I simply moved behind all the other people
that were up at the top of the stairs and waited for Babaji to get there.
When Babaji was about ten steps below the very top, suddenly there
was a lot of shouting. An
Indian guard, wearing an Army uniform and carrying a rifle, grabbed a
large billy club from his back where it was belted to him, and started to
hit something that was in the grass a few feet from the stairs.
Babaji watched intently, occasionally shouting something to the
guard. After maybe eight or
nine heavy whacks into the grass, with a lot of shouting, the soldier
picked up a very large snake, perhaps three foot long, that was by now
dead, and showed it to Babaji. So
that the birds and other animals could eat the dead carcass, it was flung
away into the part of the hill where people didn't walk.
I was bewildered by the entire episode.
They were all Hindus who didn't eat flesh, presumably because they
didn't want to kill sentient beings.
Yet they killed the snake. I
asked why. Someone replied
that it was a poisonous snake and Babaji had told them to.
That confused me further because I know in the United States, we
don't worry about poisonous snakes when we're up beyond an altitude of
about 2,000 or 3,000 feet, and certainly we were higher than that at the
ashram. Beyond that, I couldn't understand why Babaji would kill a
poisonous snake. It seemed
that anyone who could turn the insides of my camera into smoke, anyone who
could whack me through the air without hurting me and without any obvious
effort or exertion on His part, ought to be able to handle a poisonous
snake somehow without having to kill it.
Why not just send it away or tell it not to harm anyone?
So, anyhow, that was a strange episode.
The symbology especially struck me because, having had the name,
Eve, all my life, I've certainly heard a lot of jokes about Eve and the
snake and how it was “my" fault that mankind no longer lived in
Paradise. This time, though, God ordered the killing of the snake in
front of me, Eve. Before it
could tempt me? So much for
Free Will—anyhow, I think I prefer God's protection.
I thought it was interesting that the snake killing was the first
thing that happened after I finally arrived up at Herakhan, a place that
Leonard Orr often described as Paradise.
When Babaji finally came up to the gathering place, I pranammed to
Him. He said something
sounding critical to someone, all the while looking at me.
Several people spoke back, sounding as if they were explaining or
making excuses. I think the
gist of it was that Babaji wanted to know why I was still in pants and
still dirty, and was told we had just trekked from Haldwani and had just
arrived. He was reassured
that I would go down and bathe in the river and get myself cleaned up in a
hurry to be ready in time for Aarati.
I guess if we'd been on the ball the night before, we would have
realized that we could have come up in the morning with Babaji and the
people around Him. They
arrived many hours before we did. But
they left earlier, too, and they were all significantly younger than I and
had longer legs, so they probably walked faster.
Anyway, since I was still soaking wet and truly had no desire to
repeat the climb down and back up, I simply toweled myself dry and changed
into a sari in time for Aarati. I
used the room that “belonged" to an Italian woman who had been at the
ashram for years.
After Aarati, I was told by Motu I was to sleep in the women's dorm
with five other single women, so I moved my gear there.
Several of them were women whom I had Rebirthed at Rebirth
trainings in Michigan or up at Campbell Hot Springs or San Francisco or
elsewhere. Two of them had
been staying at the ashram for many months and had little altars set up
near their sleeping bags where they had candles and incense burning in
front of pictures of Babaji.
When everyone was ready to go to sleep, one of the women closed the
shutters on the windows tight, so we didn't have any fresh air coming in.
She said that was because otherwise the dogs would come in to sleep
inside, and they would eat whatever we might have in our packs.
Eventually everyone else fell asleep, but I stayed awake for
several more hours, high and excited, reliving moments of the day.
It was a strange night for me.
When I finally fell asleep, I had dreams that didn't seem to be my
own. The people in my dreams
were not the people that I was used to seeing in my dreams.
There was no familiarity or kinship.
I felt as if my mind were being beset by the dreams and the
thoughts of the other women in the room.
I woke up an hour after falling asleep, exhausted by puzzling over
these dreams as I was dreaming them.
As I woke up, what I recognized was that everyone in the room was
doing a connected breath and was Rebirthing while asleep!
Even as I woke, each of them seemed to have reached the climax, and
then they relaxed and settled down into a freer, less continuous
breathing.
At that instant, my bladder filled, just as it usually does
whenever I finish Rebirthing a client.
My body seems to channel energy is such a way that, when that
person I'm Rebirthing finally comes back to feeling ordinary, in an
instant, my bladder fills and I need to go urinate.
That seemed to be happening right there in this dormitory room at
Herakhan, at the ashram! So
in the dark, I had to find my glasses and my flashlight, and I had to find
some shoes to put on that I could take off when I got to the area of the
ashram where the temple and the Kirtan Hall is, then put back on again
while I went down the stairs to the river and walked downstream away from
the ashram, so I could finally get to the place where we were supposed to
use the river to toilet in...
I never made it. I got
halfway down the first flight of stairs from the room that we were staying
in, which was on the second floor of a building, and lost bladder control,
peeing all over myself!
The only other time I could recall losing bladder control as an
adult was at the very instant that I was giving birth to my second
daughter, and I thought, well, this was my Rebirth, too, not just my
roommates! And then I had a
lot of thoughts about how I am ordinarily very clean and how distressed I
would typically be in some part of myself over having urinated on myself.
I thought a lot about toilet training and PDS (Leonard's term for
the grievances people hold against parents, Parental Disapproval
Syndrome).
I didn't know what to do. There
wasn't anything I could do in the middle of the night to clean it up or
make anything happen to it. It
was just there. I finally
ended up by going on down to the water and trying to clean myself, and
then going back up and getting into my sleeping bag.
Finally, as the night turned to morning, I had another strange
experience, also one that was hardly sublime.
This was watching one of my roommates put on full eye make-up and
lipstick at her mirror by candlelight before leaving to go down to immerse
herself in the Ganga, bathing herself before Aarati.
How about that for needing approval?
When I went to the Kirtan Hall before Aarati, Motu was there.
I asked her if she remembered exactly what Babaji had said the
previous evening, and—since Aarati had meanwhile started—she wrote me
a note. Then we whispered to
each other about things that could be done at the ashram to make it a
little more comfortable. These
were all homely suggestions, like they ought to have some boxes placed
around so people could throw trash in them.
I had seen candy wrappers, cigarette butts, pieces of paper that
had been ripped out of a notebook, bottle caps, and other things just
thrown on the ground around in the ashram, and that upset my tidy soul.
Motu thought having wastebaskets was a great idea.
We had some more discussion about other such suggestions, and then
suddenly Aarati was over and it was time to leave the temple and to have
darshan with Babaji out in the garden.
When I came up to Him, He scowled at me, and said that I had to
leave, that I had to leave the ashram immediately!
I was totally dumbfounded. I
thought, my goodness, the first time I saw Him, in the Temple in
Vrindaban, He hit me. Now, I'm
seeing Him here, at His ashram at Herakhan and He's throwing me out.
How come? Last night
everything was so fine, we were so happy with each other, and He seemed to
approve of me. Now here I am
and He's hating me, and He's going to send me away, and I won't be able to
spend any time with Him.
As I raced through all of these thoughts, an immense pain filled
me. I felt as if my entire
insides were drained away, that I was just filled with pain, and that I
was going to faint from the pain. I
rallied as I thought it was up to me to save myself, because if I fainted,
I thought it would even be worse.
So I forced myself to look at Him and said, “Oh, no!"
And He glared back at me, made a really furious face at me and
said, “Oh yes! You leave
first thing tomorrow."
So I went away from Him and went to my room and spent the next two
hours crying and going through another cascade of emotions—pain, then
rage at Him for being so ununderstanding and unforgiving, then rage at
myself for whatever it was that I'd done that had angered Him.
I finally decided my error was that I talked in the temple instead
of concentrating on chanting the Aarati.
That must be it! That's
what I did that was wrong.
But then maybe it wasn't that I had talked in the temple; maybe it
was because He knew that I was the one who had urinated on the steps.
Somebody had mentioned that when Babaji went by that part of the
stairs, He had said, “Huh! It
smells like a horse!" and had held His nose, so He must have been offended
by that. And I hated myself
even more for that.
Then, finally, I thought, the only thing I can do is beg Him to
forgive me for whatever it was that I did, and hope that He will forgive
me and let me stay.
At some point in my self-recrimination, Louis came to find me to
tell me that they were serving lunch, and I told him I didn't want to eat
because it was daytime, and as he knew, I don't like to eat during the
day.
When he asked me why I was crying, I told him that Babaji was
throwing me out, and that the next day I would go back down the river to
stay in Haldwani and wait for him. I
certainly didn't want to make him have to leave the ashram, when he could
stay there for several days more before we had planned to go anywhere
else. But Louis said, “No,
that's all right, I wouldn't dream of letting you be in India alone by
yourself. I'll go with you,
too."
I thought that was a very loving thing for him to have said.
After he left, I set about trying to find something I could write a
note to Babaji on. All I
could find anywhere was one piece of notebook paper, and a pen, no pencil.
I started to write, and after one sentence, I started to revise
what I had said. After I
revised, I made a new copy, starting over.
But then I made a mistake, and had to start all over again, tearing
off the paper I had already written on.
Finally I was down to a piece of paper that was perhaps two inches
square. On it, in very cramped writing, I was finally able, without
making any mistakes, to write the few simple sentences that I had wanted
to say to Babaji. I told Him
I was terribly sorry that I had done anything that offended Him. I begged Him please to forgive me and to allow me to stay,
and also please to tell me what I had done that was wrong so that I'd make
certain I never did it again. I
planned to give Babaji to note the next time He gave darshan.
That afternoon, before darshan, I decided that if I did have to
leave first thing the next
morning, at least I wanted to help with some of the temple building. So, rebelliously, I took off my sari, put on my jeans, and
went across the river to where there was a large work crew building
another one of the temples that Babaji had had built over there in honor
of different Hindu deities. When
I went up to Radhe Shyam to ask what work I could to, he told me that I
didn't need to work, but if I really wanted to, I could work in the rose
garden, clearing it of rocks. I
thought that was fine because I take care of over 200 rose bushes at my
house in Los Angeles, and I enjoy Karma Yoga—Karma Yoga being the term
that's used to describe the spiritual merit which one is supposed to
receive from working hard. So
I started work, leaning over and pulling rocks up out of the dirt, then
throwing them through my legs behind me, over the side of the cliff down
into the riverbed. I had
worked for several hours when I thought, “Well, I may not have built
anything, but I've at least cleaned things up a bit, and maybe that's my
job in life."
All the time that I was working in the rose garden, Louis was
working with a pickaxe, swinging at the mountainside and digging out the
large rocks. A line of about
thirty people waited for him to dig out enough rocks so the person at the
head of the line could pick them up into a basket.
Then, with help from the next person in line, that person would
hoist the basket up on his head and join the procession moving over to the
edge of the cliff where the rocks were thrown down into the river bed.
Everyone standing in line waiting to fill up his basket had plenty
of time to rest, because it took several minutes to pick enough rocks from
the ones that Louis had dislodged to fill each person's basket and put it
up on his head. As they waited, they chanted.
But Louis was working constantly with the one-and-only pickaxe for
the entire number of hours that day that were allotted to Karma Yoga.
Most of the morning and afternoon he was swinging his pickaxe into
the mountainside, pulling out dirt and boulders.
There was no respite for him at all.
He worked continually.
After working in the garden, I washed and put on a clean sari.
Then, rather fearfully, at the beginning of afternoon darshan I
went up to Babaji and gave Him my note.
Someone nearby translated it while Babaji glared at me for perhaps
a minute without blinking, staring straight into my eyes, making me feel
as if I were a tiny child being examined for signs of some failure,
whatever it was I didn't know. Then
He nodded and said, “You may stay."
And at that point, I was truly very happy.
I fell down and embraced His feet.
That evening, when it was time to bathe and get dressed and go for
the evening Aarati, I went to find where Louis was, and found him
collapsed on his sleeping bag in the men's dormitory.
I said, “Hurry, hurry, hurry, you've got to get washed because
Aarati's going to be starting in just a few minutes."
He said, “No way! There's
no way I can get up off of this floor.
I'm as tired as I've ever been in my entire life."
And though I begged him to get up for Aarati, he said that he
couldn't. So he didn't go to
Aarati. Instead, he stayed
absolutely sound asleep from about 5:30 in the afternoon until the next
morning.
In the morning, now that I had been forgiven and was allowed to
stay at the ashram, I went joyously in front of Babaji to receive darshan.
I asked Babaji what work I could do during the Karma Yoga period
that day and Babaji said, “Oh no, when you come to India you don't work"
I thought at first that His remark was a sarcastic reference to the
fact that the day before I had really not worked very long because I had
spent much of the work time crying in my room.
But I immediately argued with myself that it was also true that I
had gone out and spent quite a while throwing rocks out of the rose
garden.
In any case, I work.
That's what I do. I'm one of those people who, when I have nothing else to do,
find something to do—and it's always what people usually call work.
It's productive. I clean something or I repair something or I create something
or I rearrange things, or whatever. I'm
seldom still except in the late evening after all the work for the day has
been well completed and I've already put in 16 or 18 hours of persistent
effort.
So when Babaji said that when I come to India I don't work, I said,
“That's not true. I work
all the time! I work very
hard."
Babaji then turned to Shastraji or someone else who was near Him
and had a conversation in a language I don't recognize, possibly Pali,
which is what I'm told Babaji spoke mostly, but possibly Sanskrit or
Hindi. In any case, there was
an exchange, and then whoever that was leaned over and said, “Babaji
says when you come to visit Him in the ashram, He doesn't want you to
work. He wants you to sit in
the garden with Prem Baba and smoke hash."
Well, I was totally dumbfounded!
If you read other writings about the ashram, especially I Am
Harmony by Radhe Shyam, you are given the strong impression that drugs
are taboo at the ashram. Yet
it seemed obvious to me that marijuana existed in the valley of the
Gautama Ganges, the river that runs through the ashram.
How else could the guide, the young boy, and the old man all have
come by the three different kinds of charris they sold me?
And even in the ashram itself, I had been sold a fourth kind of
charris by one of the Westerners who had been there for many years.
In contrast to others who have written about Babaji's attitude
toward marijuana, I don't believe that Babaji disapproved of it.
In India, it is often part of religious ceremonies, and I've seen
many people hold a chillum up to their foreheads and dedicate the next
inhale of the smoke to Shiva.
It makes me feel good and relaxed.
I haven't seen that it has harmed my behavior—it hasn't made me
lazy, it hasn't made me anti-establishment, etc.
I use it to relax or to slow myself down so I don't work 20 hours a
day. Now I work only 16 or 17
hours, then I light up a joint and I talk with visitors, watch television,
or read a novel for a few hours before I catch my usual four or five hours
of sleep. With it, I get some
restoration, some refreshment from life, rather than putting out my energy
all the time.
Once someone at a workshop asked me, “Why do you smoke marijuana?"
I replied, “Because it eliminates the past and the future, and I
can stay only in the present with it.
I am completely caught up in what is going on in the present."
I think that's how we should be.
I think that's what being truly alive is all about.
Most importantly, I am absolutely convinced that without marijuana,
I might never have known Babaji. Like
a lot of people, I believe I was led into a God-consciousness and an
affiliation with Buddhism and Hinduism through the use of marijuana.
Earlier today, the man repairing my chimney from our January 17,
1994, Los Angeles earthquake came in the house unexpectedly, sniffed, and
asked, “My goodness, Eve, have you been smoking pot in here?"
And I replied, “Oh yes, I just lit a joint."
Well, that's his statement, that's his truth.
But it did get me along
the path I wanted to go. I
think if I hadn't ever experienced what marijuana did to my consciousness,
that I would have despised Primal Therapy and certainly would never have
had anything to do with Rebirthing. I
think I would have continued to be the hard-working, super-productive,
high-energy, always-on-the-go, completely-into-my-head, intellectualized,
lady scientist that I had been.
I much prefer the person that I am, now, instead.
In any case, certainly Babaji knew that Prem Baba smoked hash and
now He was commanding me to join him.
Prem Baba had been with Babaji since the early part of this
century. I have been told by
several people that in the early decades of the 1900s, Prem Baba was the
guard of the holy cave at the base of Mt. Kailash which is the legendary
abode of Shiva and is part of the ashram.
(Unfortunately, everyone who's told me the story is a Westerner who
doesn't speak Pali or Hindi or Sanskrit or any other language from that
part of the world fluently, and they weren't eye witnesses to Babaji's
return. So I can't really
vouch for the truth of the story I was told.)
The story I was told was that in 1920, the “old" Babaji told Prem
Baba, “Make sure you keep the cave clean, because I'm going away, but I'll
be back."
Then, old Herakhan Baba dematerialized after walking into the
confluence of the Gautama Ganga River, flowing through Herakhan, with
another branch coming down from the other side of Mt. Kailash, ultimately
becoming the Ganges River. I
was told that a very important Indian official and another British
official actually observed Him walk into the water and disappear.
I was also told that the British Consul General, or whoever it was,
even had a tree planted in memoriam on the tiny island that exists in the
middle of that place where the two streams joined, and that tree is still
there and can be seen.
From 1920 to 1971, Prem Baba dutifully and lovingly swept the holy
cave each day and performed all the rituals that an observant and devout
Hindu performs morning and night, including the Aarati.
The story also went that at some point in 1970, Prem Baba went into
the holy cave to perform his usual duties and found a young man sitting
there. The young man didn't
respond to Prem Baba, who tried to move Him and make Him leave.
He didn't talk and He didn't act as if He paid any attention at all
to Prem Baba's pushing Him and telling Him to leave.
When I was told the story originally, I was told that the
apparently young man sat in meditation in a full lotus position for 45
days without moving, without sleeping, without eating, without toileting,
and without speaking, and that, at the end of that time, He looked at Prem
Baba and said, “Now, do you believe?"
Prem Baba, at that point, acknowledged that this personage was
indeed the returned “old" Herakhan Baba, now in a youthful new body He
had materialized for Himself.
The story of Babaji's return has been altered in some significant
detail or another by everybody who's told it to me, but essentially I was
told that the “old" Herakhan Baba had been present in His body for more
than 80 years without apparently changing or growing older.
Also that He was known to the English who controlled that part of
India back in the 1800's. I
was told Babaji held the Deed, the Title, to Herakhan Valley and that His
ownership had been registered with the Brits and was a matter of record in
1839, when His hand prints and footprints had been used as signatures to
that registration. A further
part of the story of His return was that when the individual I know as
Herakhan Baba, Babaji, came out of His meditation in 1971, He set about
reclaiming the lands in the valley that had been registered in His name
previously. The shape of His
body and facial features are only vaguely reminiscent of the pictures of
“old" Herakhan Baba. But
this body that I knew and loved and touched and smelled and listened to
and watched and heard, had the same handprints and footprints as the body
of the person in 1839 who had registered the lands! So, when I first saw Him, He was supposed to be at least 142
years old, in that body, with those footprints and handprints!
I was also told that when He went to reclaim His title, the story
about the return or reincarnation of the “old" Herakhan Baba was
actually published in Delhi newspapers.
I was shown a newspaper that was supposed to have that story on the
page I was looking at—but, of course, everything was written in a
language I couldn't read, so I can't really verify that such a story was
written there.
I like to think of that. I
like to think of God going into a Court of Justice, proving who He is.
I'd really like to know how the Indian officials who agreed that He
was that same individual as the old Babaji felt, knowing that it was their
job to sit in judgment on whether God is or isn't.
Is God eternal? Isn't
He?
Anyhow, it was that Prem Baba whom Babaji wanted me to stay with in
the garden, smoking hash. As
I thought about it, I felt Babaji was rewarding me for always having been
such a hard, steady worker. I
resolved to do a very good job of sitting in the garden, smoking hash with
Prem Baba.
As I started to leave to start my smoking duties, Babaji said,
“Where is that man who came with you?
You may stay, but your friend must leave!
He is lazy. He must
leave!"
Once again, I was dumbfounded.
How could Babaji know Louis is lazy?
I know he's lazy, because
Louis is lazy. But how could Babaji have such an impression of him?
He had certainly seen how Louis had worked so hard with that
pickaxe, working harder than any of the other people!!
I was almost tempted to congratulate Babaji on His depth of
perception, His sensitivity, to Louis' essential nature.
I realized I'd better stay out of it, so I asked if He wanted to
see Louis.
And He said, “Yes! Tell
him to see me!"
And so, I looked around for Louis and finally found him at the
little tea hut, the Chai house, where he was drinking tea, hanging out
with the boys, as it were.
I didn't tell him Babaji's words; I just told him Babaji wanted to
talk with him, wanted to see him.
As Louis was leaving to go see Babaji, I said, “Please, please
beg Him to let us stay, because we still have almost a week more we could
stay at the ashram before we have to leave India."
When Louis came back about fifteen minutes later, he said, “Okay,
come on. The horses are
ready."
“What do you mean, ‘the horses are ready'?"
“Well, Babaji said that He had the horses ready for us to leave."
“But didn't you ask Him if you could stay?"
And Louis said, “No! I
don't want to stay, I don't want to work that hard, I can't stand working
that hard!"
Trying to sort out my confusion, I asked, “What did you say to
Babaji?!"
“I told Him that I was really happy that we'd had a chance to be
here with Him, and I hoped that we would have an opportunity to visit Him
again in the future, and He said that would be fine, and that's it."
I was impressed that Louis had thanked Babaji and had had the
presence of mind to ask permission to visit again—at least I didn't have
to be paranoid about whether Babaji would permit us to return or not.
I felt honor bound to go with Louis because he had been willing to
go with me, even though it meant I got cheated out of more days with
Babaji. All of that was
running through my mind, plus Louis' announcement, still hanging there in
the air, “The horses are waiting for us."
But I couldn't quite figure out how to take the difference in our
reactions to being told to leave.
I had gone into total pain and rage over having been told to leave
and I'd begged to stay, but Louis hadn't.
My moods had gone up and down from first being thrown out and then
forgiven, and then having Louis be thrown out.
But leaving was okay with Louis.
It seemed Louis had a spiritually higher attitude, so I surrendered
to leaving. Despite my hopes
to spend more time with Babaji, it seemed again we were to be with Him for
only three days. But then I
went back to my first question, “What do you mean, the horses are
waiting?"
Now, I don't “ride horses."
I have, in my lifetime, been on a mule at Knott's Berry Farm once. Then there was one time when I started riding a horse up in
Sequoia National Park. And I
believe I was on a pony once. Otherwise
that's it.
What I remembered about these equine experiences was that, in each
case, as soon as I was up on the saddle, the animal turned around and
started to bite my toes in the stirrup.
And in all these cases, as soon as we started to move, each equine
creature allowed its knees to collapse, so that it “tripped" down on
itself, making me afraid that I was going to go right over its head, and
then it “caught" itself, straightened up, and continued a few more steps
before doing the same thing again. I
was scared constantly throughout each short ride.
I clearly remembered that, when getting off the horse in
Sequoia—more than twenty years ago—I had vowed, “It'll take God
Himself to get me up on another horse."
I would leave with Louis,
but, of course, not on a horse. So
I told him, “No, I don't ride horses, so please just go back and tell
them that's fine, but we'll walk out of here."
I figured that, after all, we had managed to trek up and it would
certainly be easier going down. There
hadn't been any monsoons since we had come up, so the water level was
bound to be lower than it had been and it would be easier to ford the
river when we had to.
So Louis left to decline the horses, and I rolled up my sleeping
bag and got my gear together.
But he came back in about fifteen minutes and said, “Babaji said
you're supposed to ride the horse down the valley, and the horses are
waiting, so get your pack together and let's go.
I'm leaving."
I was afraid to argue, so I gathered my stuff, went to pranam to
Babaji and ask His blessing, then said goodbye to the people I knew, and
went to confront the horses.
It was even worse than I had imagined.
Each horse had nothing as a saddle except a dirty, scratchy, burlap
sack, folded up on the top of the horse's back, and there was nothing as
stirrups or reins. After I
tried to sit on the horse's back and slipped sideways several times, one
of the Sherpas took an inch-thick rope and made two loops, one at either
end, then draped it across the horse's back for me to use as stirrups.
But there still was nothing to steer the horse with or grab hold
of. Nothing!
Fortunately, these are little Himalayan horses, not much bigger
than a pony. So I wasn't as
totally afraid of falling as I would have been with an average American
horse. And I was further encouraged by realizing that I was sitting
on Babaji's horse.
Let me tell you, though, that twelve miles of going downhill on a
horse that I could only basically grip with my knees, without anything
else to hold myself onto, really gave me a workout!
Especially since my horse did exactly the same thing that other
equine creatures had previously done with me: As soon as we started to go
down the two-foot-wide path that was on the other side of the cliff,
leading down from the ashram to the river bed, that horse “broke" its
knee and tripped and then turned around and snapped at my foot in the rope
stirrup! &nbs |