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CHAPTER
EIGHT
The next time that Louis and I went to see Babaji was in 1983, in
the late Fall. Once again, it
ended up that, because of rearrangement of European workshop plans and of
airline schedules, we had only a few days to spend with Him in Herakhan.
By that trip, I had begun to feel much less tense and anxious.
After all, I had met Him now several times.
Also, I'd gone up to the ashram before in terrible weather, so it
was likely that this trip would be an easier one.
And most importantly, I was only two months away from being 60
years old, so I thought maybe I could ask for special privileges, like
being allowed to use the showers and the toilets which were rumored to
exist up on the level of the temple and the dormitories, but which were
supposed to be used only by Babaji and by people who were 60 or older.
Not having to climb up and down the 108 steps to bathe and toilet
in the river would make my stay at the ashram much more comfortable and
pleasurable.
Vinay met us in New Delhi and traveled with us up to Haldwani,
which also made that trip much easier.
On the way, we stopped at Corbett National Park, named after
Gentleman Jim Corbett, the American heavyweight boxing champion who
established the park as a tiger preserve after his fighting days were
over. Corbett National Park
is one of the three National Tiger Preserves in India.
It took us a day to go through the jungle to get to Corbett,
because we kept running into road beds that had been flooded recently and
were still pretty deep in water, so the car and driver had to take it
easy. Having left New Delhi
in the morning, we arrived at Corbett by late evening and just had time to
have a meal and walk around for a few minutes and experience some of the
jungle before it became so dark that we couldn't do that anymore.
At Corbett, we had the pleasure of taking advantage of the guest
facilities that the Indian government makes available for its citizens.
Louis and I had a really lovely guest house room, rustic but
spacious, warm, with a pleasant bathroom that had up-to-date toilet
facilities and a shower-all for only a few dollars a night.
Vinay and our driver had equally good accommodations.
The next morning, we got up very early, and with one other person,
a Westerner who wasn't very outgoing and never even told us his name or
where he was from, we went on a tiger hunt through the jungle.
Of course, we didn't have guns.
In fact, we couldn't even use our cameras, because we weren't
supposed to make any noise at all.
It was an astonishing experience to be up on the back of a giant
elephant in a howdah that was essentially an open-topped cage made out of
wood. There was no padding,
no seating. We sat on the
bottom of the cage and clung to the few rails that made up the sides as we
got flung back and forth for five or six hours, all of this in complete
silence. Many times I heard a
low rumble, a sound that I believed to be a far-off roar of the tiger.
It wasn't until we were back at the guest house that I realized the
"roar of the tiger" was actually the rumble of the elephant's gut.
How's that for a lesson?
The little mahout sat in front of us in the crease between the
elephant's head and shoulders. Every
so often, the mahout stopped and looked around for the spoor, the tracks
of the tiger, and then we would continue to trail the tiger.
I was really pleased with myself because several times I saw and
pointed out the pug marks before the mahout did.
The way the elephant moved through the jungle was amazing.
If a tree up to about a foot in diameter was in front of the
elephant, the elephant didn't veer around it, but simply just went at it,
smacking right into it with the middle of his forehead, then trampling
over it. Occasionally the
elephant would knock a tree down and then wrest it away from in front of
him with his trunk.
It was wholesale carnage! I
thought, "My goodness, a few months of one of these elephant walks each
morning would be enough to deforest this jungle completely!"
In any case, although we saw lots of indications that tigers were
around, we arrived back at the guest house lodge in early afternoon
without actually ever seeing a tiger.
After a late lunch, Vinay, Louis and I spent the afternoon
exploring an area that was covered with five-foot-high elephant grass,
with a stream running through it. In
South America such a field would be called a pampa.
We went for a long, beautiful, lazy walk in the late afternoon sun. It was silent around us except for the sounds of birds and
insects. No people were
yelling or chattering, there was no traffic in any way.
It was truly a jungle retreat.
It was amazingly restorative to my soul to be in that quiet for a
change, away from the almost incessant artificial background noise of our
modern world.
One remarkable happening that took place that afternoon was that
butterflies kept landing on my arms, staying on them for so long that
Louis and Vinay, both, were able to take pictures of me just standing
there with several different kinds of butterflies poised on my arms.
Several that had settled on the backs of my hands even drank from
me! I could see the tiny
proboscis unfold like a fuzzy little straw, uncurling from itself, going
down into a pore on my hand-yet I couldn't feel it!
I could see it, and I even took a photo of it, but I couldn't feel
this beautiful insect seeking my nectar.
Vinay said it was a very auspicious sign.
I don't know of what. I
still think that I must have eaten or applied something that made my
perspiration seem attractive to the butterflies, but what I don't know. Louis and Vinay used the same soap that I used, so I don't
think it could have been that. However,
it was a beautiful, lovely experience, all that afternoon, to have the
silence around and, every so often, to have four or five butterflies land
on me and stay there for a while to drink a little of my essence, then
take off.
The next morning, we were due to leave Corbett and go on through to
Haldwani and then up to Herakhan. I
convinced Louis to wake up really, really early.
And so, at 4:30 A.M., the two of us started walking down the path
that led to the lake where we were told the tigers might come to drink
first thing in the morning.
About fifty yards ahead of us as we left the compound where the
lodge and the guest houses were, there was some creature on the path, and
I whispered to Louis, "Give me the camera.
Look at that. That is
the biggest possum I've ever seen in my life."
The reason I thought it was a possum was because it had a tail that
had stripes around it, although in the morning mist, it was a little
difficult to see very clearly. I
took a picture of it just as it tuned its head and looked at us, just as
it was leaping off of the path and into the jungle.
It was a tiger!
It wasn't a full-grown tiger.
It was an adolescent tiger, I would think, or a pre-teen, still
chubby enough to be chubby, not lean looking, and certainly not as big as
tigers that I've seen in the zoo. But
we did see a tiger, all right! We
had the magic experience of being in the jungle with nothing between us
and that wild, wild, wild beast, who, fortunately, decided to leave us
alone. Small or not, he was
big enough that he could have taken a good-sized chunk out of me, I'm
sure.
We didn't see any other tigers, even though we went on down to the
lake and waited around for a couple of hours for animals to come to drink.
After that, we went up from Corbett to Haldwani and checked into
the New International Guest House, which had been built in the interval
since our last trip. We went
to the Shukla's for dinner, had a marvelous time, came back to the hotel,
and then got up early in the morning to meet our car and driver and go up
to the dam site.
When we walked down into the lobby of the hotel to meet the driver,
we saw two young women there with knapsacks and shaven heads.
One of them was crying and the other was attempting to console her.
I asked if there were anything I could do to help because, since
their heads were shaved, I assumed that they were Babaji devotees who had
just returned from the ashram. One of them had a staff in her hand she said was Babaji's
staff which was supposed to be taken back up to the ashram.
When that was first told to me, it sounded as if He'd given her the
staff to help her walk out. Actually,
what turned out to be the case was that Motu had become ill a few days
earlier and had had to leave the ashram; and Babaji had given her His
staff so that she would have a little help on the twelve-mile walk.
She had left the staff with the proprietor of the hotel for him to
give to the next devotee making the pilgrimage up to Herakhan, up to the
ashram. Gunnell and Agneta
just happened to be the ones who had gotten the staff.
It turned out that they had not been to Herakhan yet. They had just come from Sweden where they'd shaved their
heads so that they would be all ready to be accepted as devotees there at
the ashram.
The reason that they were so sad and the reason that the one woman,
Gunnell, was crying was that they had missed the last early morning bus
from Haldwani that would take them to the dam site on the river that day.
That meant that they would have to wait one more day before they
could leave for the ashram.
Well, I told them there was no reason to wait a day if they were
really ready to leave immediately, since we were going to leave in about
ten minutes and we had a car and a driver to take us through Kathgodam and
up to the dam site. I assured
them there was no problem with having two more people in the taxi.
So, Gunnell and Agneta joined us.
We got to the dam site, took the "trolley" across the river, and
started off for the ashram without guides, carrying our own packs. It was an outrageously hot day, and before maybe half an hour
had passed, I, who am usually dry as a bone, was sweating profusely, hard
enough so the perspiration was dripping off of the hair on my forehead and
into my eyes.
Suddenly clouds gathered and we were rained on!
It was a genuine monsoon.
For almost the only time in my life, I was completely open to the
elements. There were no
habitations, there was no shelter we could go under.
And I didn't especially want to take advantage of the tiny little
bit of protection that might be afforded by any of the bigger trees
because I was mindful of all of those good old girl scout lessons about
not standing under a tree when you're on top of a mountain and there's a
storm. The last thing I
needed was to be struck by lightning.
So, we just continued to walk along the path, with the rain hitting
us, for about a half an hour or so. By
that time, we were totally soaked. Every
single bit of me was dripping as if I had been dipped in water. I stopped being hot and started to get chilled.
Then, magically, the clouds passed, and the sun came out again.
Everything was shining. Everything
had had the dust washed off of it. In
front of us, the path was pretty and beckoning.
The light was golden, clear, with bright yellows and bright greens
all over. There were diamonds
of moisture in all of the crevices of all of the leaves on the trees. Moreover, some of the bigger leaves had enough water caught
in their crevices along the main veins so that they were like little cups,
and we were able to drink pure rain water that had been collected for us
by those leaves.
That alternation between rain and sunshine continued for the whole
twelve mile trek up the river bed. All
through the entire day, we were first baked until we were completely dried
out from the last shower and we became so hot, our mouths became so dry,
it was almost impossible to continue.
Then, just when I would begin to worry about how badly sunburned
those two poor women without hats and without hair were likely to get on
their pates, a cloud would come over and we would once again be drenched,
we would be cooled, we would be almost chilled.
Then the cloud would pass, and we would drink some clean rain water
again, and go on, and get baked once more.
Perhaps four or five times through that afternoon, we went through
those particular changes, getting washed clean as little newborn lambs by
the rain and then being dried by the sun, and being washed again and then
dried again. I'm very pleased
that Gunnell Minett described our magical trek together upstream in her
book, Breath and Spirit. A
year or two later, I greatly enjoyed reminiscing about that trek with
Agneta Marcus when I was leading Rebirth workshops in Sweden that she had
organized for me.
Over and over, especially when it was raining, I was extremely
thankful that I had Babaji's staff with me.
Gunnell and Agneta were very young, tall, muscular Swedish women
who had no trouble clambering around, up and down on the slopes.
Louis, of course, also had no hassle with the hike.
But as a short woman nearing her sixtieth birthday, I was very,
very thankful to have the staff to help me boost myself whenever I had to
climb over a big boulder. It
was especially good to realize that the staff belonged to Babaji and had
been held by His hands.
The trek took us the entire day.
The four of us finally got down to a place on the river where most
of the boulders of the riverbed were pretty much uncovered by water. We were still about a mile away from the temple and couldn't
see it yet. We hadn't gone
around the last bend of the river where the ashram becomes easily seen.
Things looked different. There
seemed to be a wall built there, maybe twelve or fourteen feet high, that
hadn't been there when Louis and I had been there the year before.
All of a sudden, we heard someone clapping and laughing, and as we
looked up this wall, there on the top was Babaji, motioning to us to come
up to Him.
To my great surprise, it was no effort at all for me to climb the
rocky wall-it was almost as easy as walking across a level road!
When I got to the very top, there were Babaji's feet right at my
face level, ready for me to kiss, as He laughed looking down at me. Then I was finally able to come up over the edge of the cliff
and get on ground that was more level so I could make a full pranam to
Him.
He was laughing and joking with all four of us.
I wasn't sure whether He remembered Louis and me from the previous
trip, and He didn't seem sure whether He had previously met Agneta and
Gunnell. I think He made the
same mistake that I did, assuming that since they had had mundan, the
ceremonial head-shaving, that they must have already been up at the
ashram, since that's where most people get their heads shaved.
But He didn't seem to be able to recall their faces.
It took a certain amount of discussion to clear up the confusion by
informing Babaji that Gunnell and Agneta had just arrived from Sweden and
that they had had their heads shaved back there, but had never visited the
ashram previously. And that
Louis and I had indeed seen Him several times before and had even been at
the ashram before.
As we were assigned to our respective sleeping places, I was told
by Radhe Shyam, who seemed to be in charge of such things, that it would
be perfectly acceptable if I used the toilets and the showers up there,
instead of having to climb down the 108 steps to the river whenever I
wanted to wash or toilet. I
hadn't even needed to ask for such consideration!
I was put in a nice, big airy room with a couple of people that I
already knew, and with the Swedish women as well.
Gunnell was very affected by being there, and, like many people
coming to Babaji, she was constantly weeping almost uncontrollably.
She asked me if I would please Rebirth her, but I refused, gently.
I explained that I didn't want to Rebirth her because she was at
Babaji's ashram, and Babaji says that everything, all problems in life,
are taken care of if a person simply remembers to surrender to the will of
God and repeat "Om Namah Shivaya." I
said that if she asked Babaji if it was all right for me to Rebirth her,
and He said, Yes, I would do it, of course.
But I thought she would be wise if she entrusted herself to Babaji's
recommendations and simply chanted. Looking
back on it, I think it was one of the wisest thoughts I'd ever had in my
life.
The next morning, I again had the great pleasure of being invited
to sit down next to Babaji as the devotees were passing in front of Him,
seeking darshan. Someone gave
a knitted hat to Babaji as a present, and Babaji took the hat and
immediately put it over my head, pulling it all the way down on my face.
He was laughing, punching me on the shoulders the way pre-teen boys
punch each other when they're horsing around, and clapping His arm around
my shoulders, while all the while the hat was pulled down over my face.
I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't know what to do with the
hat. The yarn was thin and
the knit was an open stitch, so I could see through it.
I could see Babaji laughing at me.
But on the other hand, it was a wool thing, all over my face, and I
was very warm. Finally I
decided that it was up to me to take it off, and so I did.
After I pulled it off, I asked if I could keep it, and Babaji
laughed and said, "Why not?"
I kept that hat until years later when I gave it to my newborn
grandson, Daniel, whose birth I was privileged to assist.
Up in my Rebirthing room, I have almost everything else that Babaji
ever gave me. I even still
have one or two of the original candies that He gave me during my first
visit to Him when he "made" me eat chocolate for the first time in fifteen
months. I keep the candies with the marigold garland that He put
around my shoulders, over my head and neck-dried, it's true, but still
smelling of marigolds-along with the cardamom spice, some handkerchiefs,
and some other candies in a beautiful large Indian papier maché box
decorated in the Kashmiri style. The
box lies on the floor in front of pictures of Babaji on the shelves of a
bookcase next to where I sit in the room where I Rebirth people.
I also have several malas of rubies that I bought at either Ellora
or Ajanta to give as presents to Babaji.
I actually handed them to Him, but He gave them back to me
immediately-perhaps he thought that I simply wanted Him to bless them.
They hang on the door knob of the door opening into my Rebirthing
room, so when I sit there on the floor Rebirthing someone, I can see them
easily.
I also have many, many pictures of Babaji on the walls, some that I
bought, and a few that actually are pictures that I finally was able to
take when my camera "worked."
In any case, our few days that visit to Herakhan passed
beautifully.
During the lazy afternoon, I was told to go to the women's
dormitory to spend some time with a young Swiss woman I had first met
several years earlier in the USA, shortly after she was married to the
young American fellow Babaji had told her to marry.
She was there without him, and because she was menstruating, she
couldn't come into Babaji's presence.
She was also feeling a little sick, so she was lying on her cot,
crocheting a square that would be assembled with many other squares to
make an afghan for Babaji's bed.
Although I am a very accomplished knitter, I had never crocheted
anything. But I wanted to
participate in the making of the afghan, so I asked Brigitte to show me
how to use the crochet hook. In
the course of the afternoon, I made two squares with stitches even enough
so that I hoped they would be acceptable for the afghan.
I felt very happy thinking that something I had made would be part
of a comfort to Babaji.
The last evening I was at the ashram, Babaji asked all the Western
women to stand up and dance in front of Him.
I had been listening to several people playing instruments, working
up a really nice rhythm, and the minute before He'd said it, I'd been
wishing, just wishing that I could dance before Babaji, wishing that I
could give Him pleasure by dancing in front of Him, much the same way I
used to dance in front of people or still dance at parties.
People seem to enjoy watching me cavort around.
So, there we were, all dancing.
I found that I didn't want to seem at all suggestive in my dance, I
wanted to seem very proper, but I realized that that was almost impossible
to do, and soon after, I wanted to stop dancing.
Just as I finally decided that, He told us that we could sit down
and that it was the men's turn to dance.
So we all sat down and watched the men cavort around.
Babaji seemed to be getting higher and higher on the rhythm and the
movement. He was laughing and
slapping his thighs and clapping his hands.
I suddenly realized that all of Him was moving up and down, though
He was still sitting cross-legged! I
looked even more closely, and every so often, I could see the whole of the
cushion that he was sitting on, the back of the throne, and maybe six,
seven, eight inches of air between Him and the cushion.
He was levitating!
Maybe, when I wasn't watching, He was giving Himself some kind of
push off with His arms, but actually I never saw that.
I saw His arms, generally speaking, waving in front of His body,
over His shoulders, or being clapped, and then every so often, He would
just give this marvelous little levitating hop!
So now I have an answer to those people who ask, "Well, if He can
work such magic, if He can work miracles, why can't He levitate?"
Maybe he did.
Maybe He also could change Himself.
Whenever I stood near Him, I didn't have the sensation of looking
very high up to look into His eyes. I
estimated He was about 5'6", 5'7".
Not that there were that many occasions where I stood next to Him,
but there certainly was the time when I first met Him and that's how tall
He seemed then. He wasn't
extraordinarily tall. In
fact, as I said before, He was about as tall as my father, who was, as men
go, a relatively short man, I think 5'6 ½" or 5'7".
And yet, I have photos of Babaji standing on the same step that
Leonard Orr is standing on, and they're the same height!
Leonard is certainly six foot.
And I've also heard from other Rebirthers that I know who went to
see Babaji that their experience generally was that they could all look
Him pretty much in the eye, that He was the same height they were,
whatever it is. One devotee
even told me that he himself had witnessed Babaji walking out of the room
at apparently 5'3", then coming back in being 5'9" or 10".
Devotees also said He changed His shape.
But I can rationalize such changes away.
The one time I saw Him do it His stomach was originally extremely
fat. Then He went out of the
room, and I heard some sort of alimentary noises from one of the other
rooms near the temple. Then
He walked back in slim, looking as
if he'd lost about twenty pounds in His belly.
Well, that can be explained by saying that He'd just emitted a lot
of air. There's a yogic
practice called aerophagy, consisting of swallowing large amounts of air.
Babaji might have been practicing that technique.
If not, I can't imagine how to explain His going from a
seventh-month-pregnancy size to flatness that quickly.
But the changes in height I don't understand at all-I truly don't.
If it was all delusion, I'm surprised that so many people could
misperceive to such an extent, that they all had the scales pulled over
their eyes.
It's not what you're looking at, it's what you're looking with.
In a sense, I know that that's true.
As a psychologist, I certainly know that we're really excellent at
kidding ourselves and seeing what we want to see.
But it is interesting and unexplainable.
If my thought creates my Universe, why have I created such a
changeable Babaji?
I hope I don't sound crazy saying it, but I often felt that Babaji
was teasing me by flirting with me. One
time, when I was sitting next to Him, a townsperson brought a baby up to
Babaji, and Babaji motioned for the baby to be placed in His arms. He held the infant out toward me, and then puckered up His
lips and moved His head forward, so that His face kept getting closer and
closer to mine. I found
myself becoming very anxious
as I thought He was going to kiss me and I didn't know if I should or
shouldn't kiss back.
Then, in an instant, the quandary was settled.
Babaji moved the baby just enough so that its face was between mine
and His. He kissed the baby's
cheek, then broke into loud laughter.
I still wonder if I might
have been kissed by Him had I not gotten caught up in my anxiety over what's
the right thing to do.
The last morning I was at the ashram, I went down early to the
river to bathe in the presumably healing waters of the Gautama Ganga. On the way back to my room to change into clean dry clothes,
I took a shortcut on a path through a field of weeds. I smelled something familiar, and when I finally focused
nearby, I realized that I was walking through an entire field of
marijuana, almost as high as I am (5 foot).
While I was pulling one of the branches closer so that I could
actually inspect it and ascertain that it was indeed marijuana, I heard a
strange sound.
I heard one clap, then two very sharp hand claps. I startled and looked all around for the source, but I couldn't
see anyone. I looked across
the river toward where Babaji's cave is, and still couldn't see anyone.
I started to hurry again and took a couple of steps, then heard two
more hand claps. This time, I
looked up. There was Babaji
leaning over the top of the cliff, laughing at me and motioning that I
should hurry. I pointed to my
watch and made a gesture up to Him that I'd be there in a minute and I
started to run. I hurriedly
got myself redressed and just managed to get into the hall in time for
Aarati and to pass before Babaji and pranam to Him.
Later, in the garden, when I went up to talk with Him, He said, "So
today, you will sit in the garden."
I said, "Oh no, because today we have to leave."
And, in exactly the tone of voice that
I had used a few years earlier when He had told me I must leave, He
said, "Oh no!"
And, in exactly the same tone of voice that He
had used years before in reply to my exclamation, but laughing as I said
it, I said back to Him, "Oh yes!"
Then he asked me, "Where are you going?"
And I told Him, "To China."
He looked puzzled and somebody explained to Him that China meant
Chine (pronounced "Sheen" the way the French pronounce it) and He said, "Oh,
oh."
I felt that He was sad, and certainly I was sad that I was leaving.
I had planned such a short stay only because I intended to return
for a long stay in June of 1984. When I saw that Babaji didn't want me to leave, I felt bad
that I hadn't arranged for a longer stay right then.
Unfortunately, months before that, I'd made the arrangement to go
on tour in China, and there was no way to make any changes.
I had to arrive in Hong
Kong ready to leave for Beijing in two days or the entire prepaid tour
would be canceled and my money would be forfeited.
After giving Louis and me His blessing, Babaji made arrangements
for us to take horses down that afternoon.
This time I wasn't at all as afraid as I had been the first time we
had left Herakhan, even though, once again, just as we started down the
very narrow path going down the very steep hill, the horse tripped and
turned around to bite me.
Once again, I looked across the ravine to see Babaji up on His
porch.
I waved to Him, and put my hands together in front of my face to
pranam to Him. Then as the
horse tripped for the second time, I laughed and yelled across the ravine
to Him, "Be a lion!"
He nodded and continued to walk around His veranda.
We wound our way down the mountainside, down to the riverbed and
across the river. At the
beginning of the path along the river we were going to take to go back
down to the dam site, the Sherpa guide took hold of my horse and turned it
around. I thought he was
giving me a chance to get a last look at the ashram, but he motioned and I
followed the line of sight of his hand.
He was pointing up to Babaji standing on the veranda of His bedroom
looking at us.
So we stayed there for maybe five or ten minutes, with the horses
basically immobile, looking up to Babaji.
Eventually, he must have given some signal to the guides, because
at some point the guide said, "We can leave now."
Then he turned the horses around and we started on down the valley.
Just then I realized that I had not asked Babaji if we could come
back to see Him again. Did
that mean I would die before the next June?
No, He had given me His blessing.
Then, what did it mean?
I told Louis about my concern and he said, "Well, you're not for a
minute thinking of going back up the mountain to ask Him! Come on! You can
write Him a letter! You can
ask Him in a letter! Anyhow,
He's always going to be there and that's ridiculous, so come on!"
So on our horses, led by the Sherpa, we went down the valley to the
dam site, where we caught a bus going down the mountain to Kathgodam.
This time I knew that I was riding on the horse that Babaji rode,
and I felt its warmth and love and support.
I thought, how good it was of Babaji to make it so easy for me to
leave and to go down those twelve miles of river valley.
I felt love and gratitude with every jostle of the horse.
I felt as if I were being played with and petted by Babaji, not
sexually, but affectionately. I totally enjoyed the entire trip, in contrast to the other
horse ride down that valley I'd taken.
That was November, 1983. On
our return to Los Angeles, I wrote to the ashram, sending a check, saying
I hoped to return in 1984, and asking Babaji's permission to bring Him a
rug for His bedroom.
I received the canceled check with Babaji's signature on its back
on February 13, 1984. But Babaji had other plans.
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