CHAPTER SEVEN
SECOND TRIP TO SEE BABAJI
FILLING WITH LIGHT AND GETTING HIGHER

             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."
            And he said, “Oh, I gave it up in ‘71."  
            And I asked, “Really, why?"
            And he said, “Well, it just wasn't getting me where I wanted to go."

            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!

            Babaji was watching from His porch, and I wanted to appear unafraid, lest He think I had less than perfect trust in Him.  So I managed to control my terror and called out to Louis who was going down rapidly, “Remember what Babaji said last night.  `Be a lion!'" 

            My horse continued to do all these horsie hostile kinds of things to me for the entire length of the valley, and it was extremely hard to keep my feet dangling in the rope loops.

            People often make foolish, trivial pledges, silly hyperbolic remarks that don't really mean what is said.  “I'll eat my hat." “If something like that happens, I'll die."  So the horse ride, well, maybe it doesn't mean anything, either.  But I had said long ago that it would take God Himself to get me up on another horse.  And there I was, up on a horse because Babaji told me to.

            Does that mean Babaji is God?

            You decide for yourself.  Thought is creative, isn't it?       

            When we got to Haldwani, we went back to the Mt. Kailash Hotel.  This time, instead of being given the tiny sort of concrete cell that we had been in before we left for the ashram to see Babaji, we were given the large front room of the hotel.  We were told that it was the room Babaji stayed in when He came to town and stayed at that hotel. 

            That really thrilled me!  I had been feeling so sorry for Babaji because I thought He mostly bathed in the cold water of the river, and had never had the marvelous experience of getting into a hot tub filled with hot water and soaking up to His neck in it.  So I was pleased to see that in that room there was indeed a bath tub and you could even get the hotel management to fire up the boiler and make hot water to fill it.

            And it also was nice to find both a rug and a soft bed.  At least I knew that such comforts had been available to Babaji.  I had really wanted Babaji to be more comfortable than I thought he probably usually was at His ashram.

            I started to think about how we were going to contact Vinay Shukla and what we were going to do with our extra few days there in Haldwani before we left for New Delhi.  But no sooner had we checked into the room than we heard an immense amount of crying outside in the hall.  Then there was a knock on our door, and a woman I knew from Michigan whom I had Rebirthed a couple of years before was standing there asking if I could help.  She said there was another hotel guest there who was really desperately depressed, and she just didn't know what to do with her. 

            “Bring her in here and let's see what's what." 

            So the two of them came back, the one from Michigan and the other a beautiful exotic woman from Nagaland.  It turned out that the woman from Nagaland had been having a love affair with an Italian man who had gone up to the ashram to be with Babaji, and while he was there he had become involved with another woman.  The woman from Nagaland was reactively depressed over finding out that she'd come all that way to be with her Italian friend, and now he wasn't available to her.

            We had an interesting discussion of how her negative feelings were connected with ways in which she still disapproved of her father, then I suggested that I Rebirth her so that she could let her old pain of being rejected go.  After I Rebirthed her, we all had a marvelous evening and I thought, “Okay, this is far more useful than sitting in the garden with Prem Baba, smoking charris."

            The woman from Nagaland told us she was now going on to the city of Pallea where Babaji was going to conduct a Yagna that week.  She explained that a Yagna is a fire ceremony that provides the sacred ash which Hindu healers use.

            Since she knew how to get to Pallea and she could speak whatever language was being used, Louis and I and the woman from Michigan decided to go with her.  We left immediately for the train station in Kathgodam to take the midnight train to Pallea.

            The man in the ticket office told us we'd have to buy our tickets on the train because he was sold out, and he also informed us that the train was at least two hours late.  When he heard that, Louis put his sleeping bag down on the train platform, crawled in, and went to sleep, just like that, with people stepping over him!  He looked like a “real" Indian sleeping like that.

            It was an interesting train trip.  The woman from Nagaland, dark-skinned and dressed in native outfit, looking just like any other Indian, managed to purchase herself some part of a first class cabin and was in there.  But, when we three Americans got on the train, we were told there were no other spaces on the train at all.  When I asked if there weren't something we could do, the conductor very matter-of-factly gestured with his thumb upward.  I asked in great surprise, “You want me to ride on the roof of the train cars?!"

            He replied, “That's the only place, madam, we have no seats.  There is no place.  You can't be in the aisle.  You can't be in the vestibule."

            I'd seen scenes in movies where people were sitting on top of buses or on top of trains, but I hadn't expected that I would be one of those people!  I wasn't too thrilled at the thought either.  In addition, the woman from Michigan had some hip and leg problems and used a cane to walk, so there was no way that she could climb to the top of the car. 

            The conductor came by several times to tell us that the train was going to be leaving soon, and we would either have to climb up or get off.  He had a mala in his hand and he was continually chanting under his breath, “Om Namah Shivaya."

            Suddenly I remembered that almost everyone in India takes baksheesh, so I guessed the conductor might take a bribe, too, but probably not from a woman. 

            So I gave Louis the equivalent of sixteen dollars in rupees and asked him to go up to the conductor to try to elicit some pity, some sympathy from him, and ask him if at least there wasn't any seat that he could find for the woman from Michigan to sit.

            Well, 160 rupees wasn't enough, but when I added some more money to it, finally the conductor came back and said he had found a seat for her in a second class carriage.  So she had a wooden bench that she could squeeze onto and spend the rest of the night on.

              But there was still no place except the roof for Louis and me.  At almost the last minute, as the train was about to go, I tried some more baksheesh when the conductor came by again.  Fortunately he took it and then took us to the baggage room where he pointed to the floor and told us that if we wanted we could be in there for the night.  The floor of the baggage car was just metal plates, and dirty at that, but the room had five or six slatted shelves going from floor to ceiling around its three sides.  There was luggage on the shelves, but not filling all of them.  So more money was exchanged and we entered our “private carriage."

            Louis is sometimes extremely brilliant, and this was one of his great moments.  In our packs were two air mattresses that I had always found outrageously heavy, and that, up to then, we hadn't ever used.  I hadn't wanted to throw them away because I knew they would come in handy, eventually, when we went camping up in the Sierras, even if they didn't come in handy on our trip to India.

            Louis proceeded to move all the suitcases from the two lower longest shelves up to higher shelves.  Then he pulled our air mattresses out, inflated them, and put them on the slats that made up the two lower shelves, squeezing them in so that each of us had a shelf with an air mattress filling up the gaps between the slats.  It sure as hell beat lying on the cold, dirty metal floor.  I didn't sleep, but at least I was horizontal.  I also had plenty of time to wonder about the ethics of the conductor, chanting at the same time he accepted a bribe.  I was certainly grateful he was so easily corrupted.

            When we arrived in Pallea early in the morning, we saw Babaji's face on posters pasted on buildings near the train station.  The woman from Nagaland said the posters were announcing that Herakhan Baba was going to be present in that city the next day and would be giving darshan at the official polo ground.  We went there and found an immense tent being erected which was going to be being used for Babaji's darshan.  Also, we saw a giant fire pit called a Havan that was about fifteen foot square and three foot deep.  The stones on the edge of its rims were painted with red and black stripes.  We were told that Havan had been being used to prepare ceremonial sacred ash for centuries. 

            The only people connected with Babaji we could find at the Polo Grounds were Yogi Jalendra, the priest at Chillianola, one of Babaji's ashrams higher up in the Himalayas, and Prem Baba.  No one else had arrived yet.  So, Louis and I and Prem Baba sat around smoking charris in the middle of the Polo ground, talking with Yogi Jalendra, who fortunately spoke marvelous English and who translated what Prem Baba, who didn't speak any English at all, said.

            At one point, Prem Baba held my face in his hand, staring into my eyes and talking at length.  Yogi Jalendra translated that Prem Baba said he finally understood why I didn't seem to be afraid of Babaji.  I laughed and said I didn't know that I wasn't afraid of Babaji, since, after all, one of my constant feelings when I was in His presence was an immense anxiety that I would do something wrong and make Him angry or offend Him in some way.  But I wanted to find out what Prem Baba meant, so I asked Yogi Jalendra, “Why?  What does Prem Baba say about it?"

            They talked a little, and then Yogi Jalendra said, “Prem Baba says you are not afraid of Babaji because He is your baby.  You are His mother."

            And I thought, isn't that amazing!  Because that's exactly what I felt for Babaji, truly, that motherly kind of love which has a deliciousness to it which is almost sexual but not quite.  And where there is a constant anxious need to please and appease, lest the beloved be uncomfortable.

            I would do anything to make my children and grandchildren happy when they were babies, whenever something was bothering them.  I would soothe them, I would sing to them, I would offer them my breast or a bottle, and I would this and I would that, all because these poor little things couldn't possibly know why they were hurting or what to do about it and they were distressed.  I didn't want them to feel like that about life.  I wanted them to be happy.

            So, when Prem Baba said that I was Babaji's mother, I felt struck to the heart, and thought, “Exactly!  That's so, that is really so!"

            While we sitting around at the Polo field in the late afternoon, a procession of cars drove up.  Louis happened to be near the first car, in which I could see Babaji and a few of His close Indian associates.

            Louis opened the door of the taxi and helped Babaji out, then, still holding on to His arm, led Him through the crowd which had instantly gathered, and took Him over to His throne in the tent, shouting “Bhole Baba Ki Jai."

            The next day, when I was terrified that Babaji wasn't going to allow me to stay in Pallea, I took heart from remembering that He had certainly seen Louis and me when He arrived, and hadn't objected then, so He might not object later. 

            Nothing more seemed to be going on, so we left the Polo Grounds to go find a place to stay.  We took a room on the second floor of a hotel that was across the street from a government guest house, one that had been built when the British government ran India.  I was told the guest house housed dignitaries who came to visit the Consul General or Governor or other important officials.

            The next morning, we were awakened with the news that Babaji was staying right across the street from our hotel, in the government guest house.  When Louis and I walked out on the balcony from our room, we found we were overlooking the road in front of us and the government guest house across the street from us.  A few minutes later, Babaji came out from the guest house to sit on the veranda.  We watched, looking down at the immense activity.

            I didn't know what to do!  I didn't really think that it was right—certainly not symbolically, and for all I knew, really—that I should be above Babaji, looking down on Him.  Yet, it was hard to resist looking at the constant comings and goings of people there across the street. 

            In due time, the entire group got into several cars and drove away.  That was when the women from Nagaland and Michigan came to our room and informed us of the location of the temple where Babaji was going to be giving darshan.  We all hurried off to it, I in another new sari, anxious and eager to see Babaji.

            When we got a few blocks away from the temple, the streets were beginning to be extremely crowded, and it appeared that thousands of people were attempting to enter the temple so that they could receive darshan from Babaji.

            There was a lot of water around.  I didn't know whether these were still puddles from a recent rain, or whether they were puddles from water that had been laid down to keep the dust down that would otherwise have been really thick because of the crowd.  In any case, it was wet and muddy, and I had some difficulty keeping my sari from being dragged down into the mud.

            Suddenly, there was a loud noise, a loud cheer from the crowd which was becoming even more excited.  There, on the tallest elephant I had ever seen, there up on top of that elephant, was Babaji! 

            The elephant paraded through the crowd.  People were running backwards and forwards as a bunch of guards tried to clear a path in front of Him.  Westerners of all sorts crowded behind Him.  Then Babaji got down from the elephant and entered the temple.

            The long line of people who were waiting to receive darshan started to move forward, into the temple, and, of course, I joined it.  I still had some presents that I had brought from Los Angeles but hadn't had an opportunity to give Babaji, and I had brought them with me.  As I approached His throne, I noticed that the floor was a mire of mud where people had pranammed, and I reconciled myself to having my brand new best silk sari soaked through and muddied. 

            After perhaps an hour of standing in line, waiting to get close to Babaji, I was finally the person next ready to go, when suddenly an arm was flung across me, stopping me.  It was Motu, the woman otherwise known as Barbara, the real estate agent from San Francisco who spent many months every year at the ashram with Babaji and who had various official positions in the running of the ashram.

            Motu, with her arm across me, stopped me from going forward!  She said, “Babaji says, `No, you can't go!'"

            At that point I looked up at Babaji.  He was staring at me as if He were a lion.  He looked just like the pictures of Him showing Him with chundun on His forehead and His eyes wide open, no trace of a smile or any softness in His face at all.  He glared at me like that for what seemed an endless moment, and I suddenly thought, “Oh no, I should not have come without asking His permission."

            I felt as if I were going to faint.  My head fell down to my chest and I couldn't raise it.  My eyes closed and I couldn't open them.  I felt myself almost start to fall.  Just then I took a deep breath, and thought, “But I love Him.  How can He be angry at me when I love Him?" 

            And so, I tried to look up at Him to see if He were still glaring at me, but I still couldn't make my eyelids open wide.  Finally I got my eyes to open enough so that I could just peek a look at Him through my lashes, but I couldn't look straight at Him with my eyes fully open.  He was still glaring just as He had initially, and my eyes closed involuntarily again.

            Motu was still holding me back from moving to pranam to Babaji.

            Then suddenly, I felt that I had become hollow, that there was no inside to me at all!  Rushing up through the soles of my feet I felt a golden warm liquid.  It was filling me, rising through both feet to the ankles, to the knees, up my thighs.  I felt like I do when I'm balling and I move into an orgasm.  I thought anxiously, “Oh my goodness, what will happen when this feeling reaches my pelvis, my genitals?"

            As it did, I felt an even more intense love for Babaji, but fortunately didn't experience anything sexual.  Quickly the golden warm light liquid rose up, up, up, and up, filling me, moving through my chest into my heart, then up through my head.  Suddenly, I felt it pour like a stream of fire, out through my eyes which had just then opened.  I felt that I sent a beam of light from each eye straight into Babaji's eyes!  It was as if two little flashlights had been turned on inside of my head, with their beams directed to Him.

            At that instant, Motu took her arm away, and Babaji moved His chin in the prototypical Indian gesture and smiled at me.  I threw myself to pranam and to embrace His feet.  Once again, I was forgiven.  I felt filled with joy and love!

            Also my sari was still clean and dry.

            While Motu had been holding me back and I hadn't been looking outside of myself, a brand new rug had been laid across the mud puddle.  So when Motu released me and I threw myself down to pranam to Babaji, I didn't even get my brand new sari dirty!

            I have looked back upon this experience of being filled with love and light many times!  Over and over, I realize it was one of the most wondrous things that's ever happened to me.  Especially when Babaji patted down by His side, signaling that I should sit there, next to Him.

            All of that still amazes me.  Symbolically it still seems perfect to me.

            I can't explain how I had such a non-ordinary physiological reaction inside of me when I stood in front of Babaji.  I've never had anything like that happen to me before or since.  When I'm making love and approaching orgasm, the energy accumulating in me and rising up through my legs and into my genitals and all the rest of my body is nothing quite as clear.  Totally unexplainable was the sensation of being filled with liquid gold bubbling up through my feet, and the sensation that I didn't exist, that I was only a shell.

            That afternoon, the Yagna took place at the Havan near the Polo field.  Several thousands attended.  Babaji sat on a very small throne along one side of the firepit with Yogi Jalendra next to Him and with His aides and helpers and friends sitting on either hand.  On the middle of the side to the right of Babaji sat the pujari, the priest who cleans and bedecks the Hindu temple symbols, the shiva lingum, representing the male (shiva) power, and the yoni, representing the female (shakti) power.  Along with a statue of the sacred cow, these symbols are found in every Hindu temple.  The pujari cleans and purifies the altar.  He washes and puts rosewater, then milk, then ghee (purified butter), over the shiva lingum and over the yoni.

            I could see Muniraj and Martin, the doctor, next to Him.  Other men, mainly Westerners, sat along the other three sides of the square pit, several deep.  Behind the men were the Western women, along with hundreds of the Indian citizenry of Pallea, squeezing up and crowding to have the opportunity to participate in the Yagna.

            Each of us was given a large leaf on which there was a collection of grain or pieces of fruit.  Everyone seemed to have something different.  There were whole pineapples, whole coconuts, mangos, lots of rice, lots of barley, nuts, bananas, and I think there were even flowers.  On the side, sitting on a small throne under an umbrella, Shastraji seemed to be conducting some ceremony, reciting out loud, although no one seemed to be listening to him. 

            At several points in the ceremony, the Indians yelled what sounded to me like “Sowah!" and then everyone who could, threw a handful of the food that they had into the fire.  Every so often, the pujari handed to Babaji a very long-handled dipper filled with ghee, and Babaji poured that onto the fire.  Of course, whenever all that oil reached it, the fire flared up dramatically.

            I soon had thrown all my grain into the fire, so I busied myself with taking photos.  This time the camera did take pictures of Babaji, but on every picture that I took, the face of Yogi Jalendra, who was sitting next to Babaji, was obscured, once by a coconut, once by flame, once by smoke, once by Babaji leaning across Yogi Jalendra to talk to somebody else.  With one or two exceptions, wherever Yogi Jalendra appeared in that entire roll of film, his face disappeared! 

            It's funny, it's remarkable, and I have no understanding of why, in a cosmic sense.  But I thought it might be interesting to share.

            After the Yagna, everyone was fed hot food and then thousands of people lined up for darshan with Babaji. 

            Our stay that afternoon at the Polo field was very pleasant.  I spent a great deal of time with Prem Baba, sitting on a shady part of the field, near the large tent where Babaji sat enthroned as thousands passed before him.  Two of the Italian fellows (one of whom may well have been the fellow the woman from Nagaland was so in love with—I don't know, I never got straight about names) joined Louis and me and Prem Baba as we sat in a circle, passing around a chillum with hash in it that I had brought to Prem Baba from Kathmandu, which we'd visited before we met Vinay in New Delhi.  A group of little boys, between about seven years old to about ten years old, were running around and kept coming over to tease us and pull our hair.  Suddenly, one of the boys grabbed the bag that held the chunk of hash that I'd given to Prem Baba, as well as Prem Baba's own stash, and ran off with it.  Prem Baba ran after him, yelling, but couldn't catch him.  (Remember that Prem Baba was then in his late 80's or early 90's.)  Then Motu came to scold the little boys, but with no success.  Finally Babaji came out from His tent and made them give Him the stash, then Babaji gave the stash back to Prem Baba.  We then all sat back down in our circle again and proceeded to smoke some more.  I have a remarkable series of pictures of all of these goings-on taken that afternoon.

            I'm telling people about all this because I want to open minds to the whole question of the use of consciousness-expanding drugs in connection with Babaji.  Although I didn't, I know several people who say they took LSD while they were up at the ashram.  I know people who say that Babaji sat with them and smoked hashish or charris with them.  I know, from my own experience, that Babaji certainly had no objection to my smoking.  Furthermore, I know that smoking marijuana or charris or hash wasn't a clandestine kind of activity up there at the ashram.  In fact, on our third trip there, one of the fellows who was running one of the shops, said, “Oh, I'm so glad you came.  I have been waiting for you because someone came up here a few days ago and brought me the most marvelous hash and I thought, oh, that woman from Los Angeles, that Eve, would really love to smoke some of this."

            And he gave me some.

            And we smoked some of it together, right there.

            We weren't sneaking around to smoke.  We were sitting there in plain sight and smoking, just as many, many, many Indians do.  In old Delhi, it hadn't been at all uncommon for me to see two or three or four men sitting on the sidewalk, with a hookah on the ground between them, smoking hashish in full view of all the street and foot traffic.  There didn't seem to be any law against it.  I have been told that marijuana or hash is legal throughout most of the country and is only regarded as illegal in the very small city of New Delhi, primarily because that's where all of the international consulates and embassies are.

             I was also told that Indians usually don't smoke the leaf or buds, the part of marijuana we call grass, which they call ganja.  Instead, they rub their hands up the stalk covered with the buds, then scrape off the sticky substance which accumulates on their hands, the charris.  By refining it, they turn it into hashish.  I was told by many Indians that both charris and hashish were for sale legally in the government tobacco stores.

            I don't have any direct experience with that myself, because the one time that I asked Louis to go into a tobacco store to see if he could buy some, the man told him that they were out of charris and of hash, but that they did have some ganja, the leaf.  So Louis came out of the store with a little newspaper-wrapped package of about a quarter of an ounce of very fine marijuana leaf.  It cost about a dollar.

            In any case, it seems to me that people have been saying all sorts of contradictory things about these drugs in connection with Babaji.  Radhe Shyam in his book, I Am Harmony, says that Babaji disapproved of the use of marijuana and other drugs.  But how do I explain that Prem Baba, everyday, practically every minute of the day, from five in the morning until midnight, was smoking?  True, his was a mixture of nicotine tobacco with charris, but the charris was there, no question about it.  And certainly, Babaji directed me to smoke charris and watched Prem Baba and me smoke on several occasions.  Also, He definitely ordered the children to return the hash they had teasingly taken from Prem Baba.  One of my photos shows Him scolding them as He returns the stash bag to Prem Baba.

            Discussing this with Leonard Orr years later, I was surprised by Leonard's explanation, “Well, Babaji always tells people whatever they want to hear."

            It's all still a mystery.

            After the Yagna, when we had been fed, the afternoon was spent sitting around watching the townspeople pass in front of Babaji.

            At some point, it was announced that all Western men who wanted to ride Babaji's elephant could do so, and I took some fine pictures of Louis up on the elephant with Prem Baba and several Italian fellows.  Then it was the turn of the Western women, including me.  What an exciting ride it was, so very far up from the ground!  And on Babaji's elephant, especially.

            Shortly afterward, Louis went over to the elephant to give him an apple.  He held it out to the elephant, and suddenly the elephant's trunk twisted rapidly around Louis's arm, and the elephant lifted Louis well over his head!  Louis was screaming.  Like Louis, I thought the elephant was going to fling Louis away from him, and I was desperately looking around for the mahout that I knew had to be somewhere close by—but just then, the elephant gently placed Louis back down on the ground, and the entire episode was over!

            Only a few days earlier, just before we arrived in India, Louis had had an eagle fly through his hair, grazing his scalp as it swooped down on him where we staying at the Mount Everest School for young Buddhists just outside of Kathmandu.  Now he had been lifted by the elephant.  A few days later, when we were leaving India, he had an encounter with a white tiger in the Calcutta Zoo, where the two of them, Louis and the tiger, placed their noses against each other—through the heavy hurricane fencing otherwise separating them—and breathed each other's breaths. 

            The Buddhists say these are all auspicious signs, but of what, signifying what, I still don't know.

            That evening, as we were leaving the tent, Prem Baba came up to me on the street with a large box of candy, Indian milk sweets, and asked me to have some.  I invited him to come along to our hotel room where we could sit and eat and smoke.  One of the Italian fellows came along with us, as well.  We all sat around on my bed, in the room overlooking the veranda across the street where Babaji was, and we smoked and we smoked and we smoked.  And talked.

            Prem Baba passed around the box of sweets and the Italian fellow and Louis both ate many of the milk sweets with him. 

            Just to be polite, I took a tiny nibble of one piece and that was that.  I don't like Indian milk sweets and I didn't really want to eat them even as a polite kindness to him.  Fortunately, he didn't seem to take offense at my not accepting them.              We spent several hours together, from about 9:00 in the evening until well past midnight, and then Prem Baba said he had to leave because, after all, we all had to get up at 4:00 in the morning.  He and the Italian got up and walked out of the room, on down the stairs to the street.

            In that instant, I went over to the sink in our bathroom and, without warning or even feeling sick, effortlessly vomited all of the little teeny bit of milk sweet that I had eaten.  I'm sure that the reason I was sick to my stomach was from the tobacco that had been mixed up with the charris.  I haven't otherwise smoked tobacco since the early 60's.  As soon as I was finished vomiting, Louis, too, got sick.  But we felt fine immediately and soon went to sleep.

            In the morning, we noticed a lot of activity there on the porch of the government guest house, but we didn't know what it was about.  And I was reluctant to spend much time looking over the scene because I didn't want to be spying on Babaji.

            When we inquired from the hotel owner for the room numbers of the two women we had traveled on the train with, we learned that Babaji and all of the cars had driven away, and the two women we had traveled with had left with Him and His entourage.  In fact, the noise and commotion outside were because they had all just left!

            I was sorry not to have said goodbye to them or to Babaji, but in any case it was time for Louis and me to leave as well, so I packed and went to pay the hotel bill.              To my shocked concern, I discovered that all of my money had been taken from my purse!  All of the change, all of the rupees that I'd brought with me to buy our train ticket back to Haldwani, all our Indian cash, was gone!  (My Traveler's Cheques and charge cards were back in Haldwani, left at the Mt. Kailash Hotel with most of our clothes.)  Since all of the other Westerners had left in the Babaji caravan, there wasn't even any way I could borrow rupees from one of them until we reached my Traveler's Cheques. 

            The hotel owner suggested I sell him my camera to settle my bill, but I didn't want to part with it.  I finally was able to pay the bill by selling him two of my American saris.  I was surprised when he asked for them, because they were made out of dacron or polyester of some kind and I found them heavy and hot compared to the cotton or silk saris that I bought in India.  But they washed very easily and didn't need to be ironed, and since at that time India didn't allow American synthetics to be brought in for sale except at a prohibitive custom duty rate, the hotel owner and his wife were very pleased with the exchange. 

            With my hotel bill finally paid, I only had the problem of how Louis and I were going to get money for our train tickets back to Kathgodam. 

            The hotel owner again urged me to sell him my camera and was willing to pay me what I had paid for it, because cameras coming into India come with 100 percent duty charged on them, so a $500 camera costs a thousand dollars. 

            But I didn't want to sell him the camera because I still had a lot of traveling to do to places where I wanted to take lots of pictures.  However, I also didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a city named Pallea, so I was just about to agree to sell him the camera when I heard a lot of noise and commotion outside:  I looked outside and there was Babaji and the whole procession of taxis filled with all of the Westerners!  They were pulling up and going into the government guest house across the street.  They were back again!

            I had to convince Louis to come with me to go down to ask if someone from any of all those people could please loan us enough money to take the train back.  But by the time we got down the stairs, they were once again gone!  In that very short time, they had apparently driven on.

            I was almost crazy about missing them, but just then Yogi Jalendra walked up the road, and told us they had all gone to stay in a new building in town.  We were invited to stay overnight with the other Westerners in this particular building which was in the process of being built, and supper was going to be prepared by townspeople.  We'd be well taken care of and everything would be fine.  Babaji had decided to let go of all but His private car and driver, and everyone else was to take the train back to Haldwani.  Yes, I could borrow enough money for the train ticket, since they knew that I would pay them back when I got to Haldwani, where I had my Traveler's Cheques and other cash.

            We were saved!  Why Babaji left and then returned was a mystery.  But I certainly felt grateful that I didn't have to sell my camera.

            So we spent the night on the third or fourth floor of a place that looked for all the world like a parking structure, several floors of big cement slabs with columns.  There was a spigot with running water right there on our floor.  We spent the night there, singing, playing instruments, dancing, smoking.  My good fortune was that I never needed to toilet.

            While we were sitting around, Margaret, who told me she was now called Sita Ram, told me that I wasn't supposed to kiss the feet of Babaji when I pranammed, but I was only to press my forehead against His feet.  I was surprised and hurt, all at the same time, thinking that I may have offended Babaji, but also thinking of how much I would miss the experience of actually kissing His feet.

            I quickly pulled myself together and said to her, “But if I'm not supposed to kiss His feet, why hasn't He said something to me about it?"

            And she replied, “Because He was waiting for me to say something to you about it!"

            I couldn't argue with her logic, but reflecting on it from the distance of all the years that have passed since then, I still feel some disquiet, perhaps because it took a long time for me to stop resenting Sita Ram for making me self-conscious.  I tried, from then on, simply to put my forehead to His feet, but eventually, after a few times, I found myself almost automatically kissing Him, once again.  I looked up guiltily the first time I found myself doing that, but He didn't seem to be bothered.  Finally, even the apprehension faded and I was back to showing Him my affection in what I consider a natural way.  He never objected and no one else ever criticized me, either.

            In the course of that evening spent on the cement floor, Prem Baba treated me to a demonstration of his immense agility.  Although he was in his late 80's or early 90's at the time, he could do all of the yogic asanas.  I especially enjoyed watching him put his legs over his shoulders to behind his head, putting his hands between his folded legs, then lifting himself and balancing himself on his hands.  He was remarkably agile, beautiful to watch, and totally pleased to be showing off to me.  I really love him and truly enjoy him.

            In the morning, at the very last instant, plans changed once again.  It was decided that Babaji's entourage would not take the train to Kathgodam, but would instead take a bus to an intermediate city, and then on to Haldwani.

            So we all went on the bus, both the Westerners and the Indians from the ashram.  I thought it would be really pleasant, a continuation of the night before when we partied on the cement floor of the as-yet-unfinished apartment house.  When it was time to get on the bus, though, it turned out that all of us were going to have to get on to just one bus, which meant a terrible squeeze.  The very old Indian woman who played the harmonium for Aarati at the ashram became very officious, making people move here and there, irritably bossing people around, using a scolding tone of voice.  She got on the bus just before me and sat on the last open seat! 

            At first, I thought I was going to have to stand from there until we reached the transfer city, when, hopefully, I would find a seat on an interurban bus, along with the huge sacks of grain, the occasional chicken or other animal, and the one or two crying babies, vomiting, that all seemed to be standard for just about every Indian bus that I ever got on.

            But three Indian women, already sharing a seat designed for two, squeezed even closer together and made a place for me to perch, and Louis sat on the floor.  As I was perching there in the bus, rolling and jolting, on our way to our junction, the old Indian woman from the ashram looked over at me and in very clear English, which I'd never heard her use, said, “You know, the teaching is always patience."

Current chapter:
APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN