What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
We were soon to become every Jewish mother’s worst nightmare.
Girija and I abandoned our careers as a lawyer-doctor couple for the career path our parents most feared: hippie renunciate, whose offices were in a Hindu monastery at the foot of the Himalayas.
We boarded the plane in San Francisco in matching orange parkas, the closest color we could find to the saffron worn by holy men, sadhus, with all our possessions in one orange backpack each. It was not that shucking off our material possessions was the only way to God; it just seemed simpler. As Ken Kesey had said, “You can fly to God in heaven with a Cessna or a 747. The 747 just requires a lot more skill and a helluva lot more fuel.”
Our first stops were in Detroit and Cleveland to break the news to our families.
“Why are you always running away from everything?” Girija’s mother said when we told her our plans in Detroit. She was intellectual, a voracious reader, but always seemed to find the worst in the day’s news and, more troubling, in us. She blamed me for dragging her daughter away to San Francisco and the hippie circus, and now to an ashram. She did not know it was Girija who was the ringleader this time.
Grandma Ida in Cleveland was more understanding. With her white hair pinned up and wearing a printed cotton smock and round granny glasses, she greeted us with so much love. “Come in, let’s eat,” she said. She cooked an unending series of potato latkes and rolled cabbage, as if having one more meal to eat would prevent us from leaving. I loved Grandma Ida so much. She had the adventurer’s wanderlust—she fled Russia for Cleveland on her own as a teenager—and a wonderful, mischievous laugh. I was a symbol of the completion of the family odyssey to becoming real Americans by being first to graduate high school, first to go to college, and first to become a doctor; I was afraid my leaving would break her heart. But she blessed me as only a grandmother can, assuring me, “God will take care of you and he will take care of me too.” We both knew it was the last time we would see each other.
My mother, meanwhile, had fallen in love with a Jewish businessman named Newton, from Marathon, Ohio, which distracted her enough from fully absorbing what Girija and I were up to.
We picked up our cheap ticket, Pan Am flight #2, to India via London and Frankfurt in New York, where I had one last goodbye to say. I needed to check in with Ben Spock and let him know we were leaving again.
Ben was a New England Brahmin, with the heart of a political revolutionary; his Brooks Brothers three-piece suit and antique watch fob made him always easy to spot in the antiwar crowd. He was open-minded and curious, but he never approved of the hippie lifestyle of my generation, which he saw as a distraction from activism. He disliked Tim Leary, whom he thought had co-opted the civil rights and antiwar movements by redirecting activists to a cynical practice of tuning in, turning on, and dropping out. Though he knew other students who had gone on spiritual trips with gurus, Ben didn’t know any doctors who had, at least not any who went at warp speed from political activist to hippie to renunciate in less than two years. I wanted to say goodbye, but I think I was really looking for his blessing.
He lived in a beautiful prewar building on the East Side, just off Park Avenue. A white-gloved doorman greeted Girija and me, ushering us quickly into a waiting elevator. He made us leave our orange gear with him in the vestibule, lest our appearance trouble the other residents. Upstairs, Ben was waiting for us with some tea. “Larry, I know you haven’t forgotten how bad the war is, how much work there is to do on civil rights and poverty. I know what Martin Luther King meant to you and to all of us. So what are you doing?”
I tried to explain. “I hate the violence, Ben. We had an intellectual and moral passion when you and I marched with Dr. King. The New Left was a nonviolent left. Now it has become enamored of bombs, guns, kidnapping, and violence. I know we are better than the bad guys, we care more. We know we are all in this together, but I never dreamed my friends would pick up guns. Is it as confusing for you as it is for me?”
“But what are you after?” he asked. “Drugs? Asian religion?”
“The psychedelic experience,” I told him, “did something to me. I connected to, I don’t know, God? A higher being? A different plane of consciousness? A door has been opened. I don’t understand it. I find it unnerving. Exciting. I hope we can come back from India the next time and tell you that we found the true destination of this New Age culture.” Ben seemed unconvinced. We left on a strange note.
The first trip to India overland on the Hog Farm buses had taken almost a year. Asia revealed herself slowly to us, like in the imaginary dance of seven veils Oscar Wilde invented for Salome. We had time to adjust to the gentle cultural shifts from Big Ben to the Taj Mahal. Air travel condensed that experience of discovery and transformation into a single twenty-four hours. Girija and I had spent so many days imagining living in the ashram, embarking on our mystical adventure. But when this dream suddenly came to life, it was as real as the riot of color and sound, the clamoring crowd of beggars and drivers at the Delhi airport. We donned our faux saffron attire and embarked on the long journey to the ashram, making our way north from Delhi on a rickshaw, an overnight bus, and another rickshaw through the arid plains and the cool foothills of the mountains, where our orange down jackets were put to good use. We were moving toward the Kainchi ashram, which was pulling us in like a homing beacon.
We arrived finally at the point on the map where the borders of India, China, Tibet, and Nepal converge. The bus dropped us by the lake in Nainital, the capital of the Kumaon region on the top of the world, and off we went on the first of what would become daily hikes to the Evelyn Hotel, where waves of the Western satsang camped out between visits to Neem Karoli Baba’s ashram.
I had met a few of these followers of Neem Karoli Baba the night Wavy Gravy’s brother-in-law had attacked Ram Dass at the Kumar Art Gallery in Delhi. They all had Indian spiritual names: Dwarkanath Das, Krishna Das, Ravi Das (Michael Jeffery), Balaram Das, Kabir Das, Tukaram Das. And the women: Sita, Gita, Draupadi, Mira, and Sunanda. They greeted Girija like a long-lost sister. They didn’t pay much attention to me.
At the hotel, Girija and I took off our orange parkas and unpacked what we thought were the appropriate clothes. Girija had a white sari she had purchased on her last trip. I wore a khadi kurta of homespun cotton that I had purchased at the Gandhi ashram in Delhi, near where his cremated remains are guarded by an eternal flame. Girija and I had visited Gandhi’s shrine and prayed in honor of the man who combined the mystical life with political work on behalf of the oppressed. He was the inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez on their own paths of nonviolence. Young Americans frequently conflated the many-thousands-of-years-old Indian spiritual traditions with the more recent struggle against British colonialists. They were not the same thing. But that unique combination of inner and outer struggle certainly felt right as a model for those of us in the States who were also pulled in both political and spiritual directions.
The next morning four or five of us piled into a taxi for the thirty-minute ride to Kainchi. Coming down from Nainital we followed the serpentine undulations of the Kainchi River. Nainital is filled with legends of mystics, seers, gurus, rishis, Sufis, and lamas—a wonderland of magical mountains and the fabulous tales of the mystical powers of saints and the miracles they performed. It was a clear blue September sky, with a high sun that shone on the mountains’ white peaks and a riot of wildflowers—geraniums and chrysanthemums, orange, almost ochre, the saffron color of sadhus’ robes, symbolizing the purity to which Girija wholeheartedly aspired and that I approached tentatively.
Our taxi turned a corner and the ashram suddenly appeared looking just like the photo in Ram Dass’s book, on the far side of an arched stone bridge painted in vibrant Technicolor, a rainbow bridge to what looked like the mythical Norse land of Asgaard.
The Kainchi River was ten feet across; wood and brick walls surrounded the ashram on the other side. A large arc over the gate was painted in deep red and white, with Devanagari script proclaiming, “This is the Temple of Hanuman the Reliever of Suffering.”
Girija was relieved and excited to be back; I was apprehensive. From the taxi I followed her across the vibrantly painted footbridge to the main temple, which looked as if it were hewn out of the steep mountain behind it. The smell of incense and burning butter lamps wafted from the entrance.
About twenty-five people, half of whom were Westerners, filled the temple. It was a big crowd for that time of year, according to Girija. Musicians chanted Sita Ram, or Ram, Ram, Ram (God, God, God) or jai, jai, jai (victory, victory, victory) in a constant drone accompanied by a harmonium, a keyboard instrument that looked a bit like an accordion. Girija sang along; I didn’t know any of the words. The music and beat of the tabla went morning to night: Sri Ram jai Ram jai jai Ram (hail God lord God). People greeted each other with “Ram Ram.”
I only knew that “Ram” meant “God.” I didn’t yet understand all of its different meanings or the connection between the historical King Rama and the god Rama, the sacred incarnation of Vishnu. Nor did I yet grok the purpose of repeating the name of God over and over and over again.
We took off our shoes and made the rounds, paying respects to each deity in their separate alcoves. In front of each of the idols, some devotees reached for a brass bell that hung from the ceiling, ringing it every time they sang out the name of Ram or Hanuman, the monkey god who served Rama and to whom Neem Karoli Baba was particularly devoted. Others threw flowers into each idol’s alcove, toward Ganesh, the elephant god of luck, or on the Shiva lingam, the god’s divine phallus. Each idol was fully clothed and decorated with jewels. Hanuman wore a crown, as did Rama and Sita. Each temple scene looked like the most colorful crèche I’d ever seen.
Devotees bowed—some from the waist like the Japanese, some on their knees. Others were completely prostrate, stretched flat on their bellies with fingers outstretched. I copied Girija and bowed at the waist at each alcove.
The monsoons had just ended, so everything was vibrant and green and alive, as if the jungle had woken up to drink moisture from the rains, growing so fast you could see it inch upward toward the sky. Arti, or morning prayers, had begun. The temple priest, the pujari, who led the prayers, wore an old white dhoti and a white thread curled from shoulder to hip, showing he was twice born. In Hinduism, if a young man is from the upper castes, he goes through a coming-of-age ceremony like a Hindu bar mitzvah or confirmation during which he’s given this sacred thread, which he never removes. The pujari moved the thread aside as he leaned over to pick up a sacred brass lamp; he put clarified butter, or ghee, into each of the half dozen openings in the lamp, placed wicks in each, and lit them. While people sang, chanted, and rang bells, he walked to and fro swinging the lamp in a circle. Everyone he passed hovered their hands over the lamp, waving the flame of the burning ghee lamp toward them as if to bathe their faces in the light. They gestured toward the pujari’s feet. After blessing everyone, he put down the lamp, picked up a red cloth, and waved it in front of each idol to catch the god’s attention. Then he offered food and water to the idols. Everyone sang. He poured water from those offerings into our outstretched hands and we drank it. He made a tilaka mark on the men’s foreheads with a bright red powder and sprinkled it on the women’s palms for them to place the mark on themselves, as a priest should not touch the forehead of a woman who is not his wife. This marked the end of morning prayers.
I followed the group out of the temple to the courtyard in front of Neem Karoli Baba’s room to wait with Girija to see him for the first time and to receive what Indians call darshan, the blessing of his presence. As was the custom, we had brought some gifts to offer him—bright orange marigolds, a bag of oranges and apples, and a box of laddus, sweet, cooked round balls about an inch in diameter made with chickpea flour, milk, and sugar that are favored by the monkey god Hanuman. The shutters on Neem Karoli Baba’s doors and windows were painted yellow. I could feel the comfort of this color. And yet, I squirmed for about fifteen minutes trying to meditate, trying to find my place in this crowd, fussing with a gray shawl, pulling it over me to keep warm.
Maharaji burst through the doors like an opera star taking center stage. A huge bustle ensued as everyone leaped to help him sit down. I pulled away and stood with my back pushed against a post in the rear of the courtyard, about ten feet away. Maharaji sat down with one foot dangling over the simple cot, or tucket, he sat on. Devotees jockeyed for position, trying to grab his foot to touch it or massage it. Sometimes he’d allow it; other times he’d pull it away.
I had never seen anyone like him, he moved in a way that was electric but like an ebullient child, laughing, smiling, giggling as he watched the dancing, singing Western devotees—some longtime meditators, some young hippies fresh off the bus from Delhi—prance around him, some gazing at him with lovesick eyes.
It was like watching a movie—but everything around him looked as if it were in black and white, with Maharaji alone in vibrant color. He glowed. When he opened his eyes wide, they were lighthouse beacons playing over the ocean of devotees. He reached under his blanket and took out what looked like a rosary of flowers. He started playing with it, like a Catholic with a rosary, saying the Hindu name for God over and over, a practice called japa, his eyes closed, his mouth soundlessly forming Ram Ram Ram. A quiet came over the group; they stopped talking and wrestling for his foot. We closed our eyes, sitting with him while he prayed. The Sri Ram jai Ram jai jai Ram chanting continued in the background along with the drone of traffic and trucks rumbling by on the ramshackle highway outside the ashram walls. My insides were also rumbling from this emotional roller coaster.
When we arrived in Kainchi I had been so excited. I was hoping for the kind of mystical experience Ram Dass had spoken and written about, in which I would discover my higher self and feel at one with God. At the same time my head was filled with Wavy’s tales of meeting gurus, getting zapped by them, and blissing out as the heavens opened. Like a lot of people of my generation, my mystical experiences to this point had been psychedelic, and mine had mostly happened around Wavy. I attributed the magic of them to pharmacology or to Wavy’s ability to evoke peaceful transcendence as he had with the four hundred thousand people at Woodstock. The rainbow-painted bridge at the entrance to the ashram felt like a gateway to this kind of experience. I loved the singing and the chanting, so soothing, so familiar, like Jewish prayer, also in a language I didn’t understand. But I got queasy about the idols and the Westerners bending down to touch the feet of the pujari during morning prayers. I was told that this was a sign of respect—like washing Jesus’s feet. I will take the dust of the guru’s lotus feet to wash the mirror of my mind is the prayer that accompanies the gesture. The lotus of purity grows out of the mud of delusion, which can be dispelled by the guru. Gu means “dispeller,” and ru means “darkness.” All this made sense to me in theory. But in practice, when the Westerners tried to touch Maharaji’s feet in a kind of feeding frenzy, pushing and shoving to get to him, it was to me like chaotic idolatry. It gave me a stomachache. This part of the experience just looked to me like any other cult.
If I have to touch his feet to be accepted here, I remember thinking, I just won’t do it.
And yet when Neem Karoli Baba turned his intention to God, his eyes drifting to the sky or his fingers playing out the name of God on beads or flowers, everything stopped. As he stayed in conversation with God, it felt like he was talking to an old friend.
He seemed to go in and out of different states of consciousness. He put down the flower rosary but continued mouthing Ram, counting the repetitions by touching the tip of his thumb to the joint of each finger, beginning with the tip of the little finger. When he finished his meditations, he started tossing apples and oranges to the gathered devotees, engaging and laughing with everyone. He warmly welcomed Girija. I waited for him to notice me, “Doctor America,” as Girija said he called me. I half hoped he would say, “Welcome, Doctor America, we have been waiting for you.” But he didn’t ask about me at all. He never even looked in my direction.
As dusk approached, the Westerners scattered from the ashram, some to rented houses dotting the nearby hills and the rest of us for Nainital by bus or taxi.
The second day was a repeat of the first except that Maharaji asked the Westerners to sing a particular prayer 108 times. It was called the Hanuman Chalisa, forty verses dedicated to the monkey god. This recitation took most of the day, with breaks for tea, lunch, and an afternoon nap. I sat in the courtyard trying to memorize it. A group of us broke off to read the story of Hanuman, the Sunderkand, the “beautiful” chapter of the Ramayana, which features the history of King Rama. In this chapter, Rama’s brother was dying from a poison arrow. One specific herb, sanjivani, would save Rama’s brother, but it grew only on mountains hundreds of miles away. Hanuman flew to the mountain, but he was only a monkey and could not tell the difference between sanjivani and a poisonous weed. So Hanuman lifted the entire mountain and flew with it in one hand, back to Rama, who picked the right herb to save his brother’s life.
I felt like an anthropologist listening to these stories, watching the devotees pray, studying the varying numbers of arms on each idol. This Hog Farm guru commissioner wasn’t convinced. But the story of Hanuman was very moving: if this monkey could serve God, maybe I could too, despite the strangeness I felt in Kainchi.
By the third or fourth day, I was still trying to figure out my place. I wasn’t backed up against the pillar at darshan anymore; I was sitting next to Girija. Every day Maharaji would talk to her, but not to me. As he continued to ignore me, the other Westerners, with whom I had enjoyed conversations, began to ignore me too. I thought perhaps a silent signal had gone out that I was not one of them. I became more alienated, confused, even frightened.
Compounding my misery was the fact that Girija was getting more drawn in. Maharaji warmed more to her every day. They had long, intimate conversations about her life, about giving up smoking beedies, thin cigarlike Indian cigarettes tied with a string, but he said nothing about me or to me. He asked about the minutest details of many of the others’ lives—“Did the package from your mother arrive?” “How was your pilgrimage to Benares?” I could sense that they experienced magic in the place, but I felt excluded.
I started to leave the ashram during the afternoons, crossing the street to talk with the family of the chai wallah (tea seller) while the satsang studied their texts. I tried to make myself useful as Hanuman had, so I treated the villagers who needed medical help. I fixed cuts and bruises when they fell. I stitched and bandaged wounds or got a taxi to rush someone with chest pains off to a hospital. I read the Bhagavad Gita, walked in the mountains, and talked with families near the ashram. In my primitive Hindi, I learned who bought their homes and who rented, how they felt about Westerners coming to the ashram, and whether they thought of Maharaji as a great saint or just as a tourist attraction helping them sell tea or sweets.
Girija was at the ashram faithfully every day for arti, meditation, and darshan. But after a week of watching these other smart, educated, modern young people stampeding to touch this old man’s feet and gaze at him as though he were God himself, I started to hate the whole setup. I wanted to run away. I was ready to give up and go home, or maybe travel, but Girija implored me to be patient.
The first of the Ten Commandments is, “I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other gods before me,” and yet all over the ashram idols were being worshiped—not just respected or loved, but worshiped. It’s a big deal for Jews. While I had been looking for spirituality elsewhere—in Buddha and Jesus and all over India—I never worshipped stone idols and I was skeptical of anyone who wanted me to worship an idol, stone or human, or touch his feet. Maybe my skepticism is the reason I had been named guru commissioner on the bus, tasked with inspecting holy people and reporting whether they were genuine or whether, as Brook Beecher had charged, they were “full of holes.” Indians had two lovely words for this: nuckli or suckli—counterfeit or genuine, fake or the real deal.
As guru commissioner I was beginning to worry that my wife’s ashram was another cult, which like all cults emotionally entangles with psychological barbed wire. Broken glass at the top of the ashram’s walls began to take on a more sinister meaning. I was told it was there to keep thieves from the temptation of breaking in and stealing, but I was beginning to wonder whether it was there to keep us in instead.
When we woke up at the Evelyn Hotel the next morning, I told Girija I needed to be alone to think. Seeing how sad I had become, she hugged me and went off to the ashram while I stayed in Nainital. I went out to the lake and rented a small flat-bottomed boat, paddled out to the center of the shallow, dark green water, pulled up the oars, and drifted. I felt awful. So alone. Wildflowers of many colors covered the hills; the sun played over the snowy mountaintops that peeked through the clouds and nearby foothills. So much color, such an exotic land. I should have been happy. But this trip was not turning out as I had hoped. I had already lost Elaine, and now I felt Girija slipping away.
I was sure I did not belong with this cult, but I could see that Girija did. This inscrutable man had captivated her. There was no doubt that I would lose her if I made her choose between him and me. I wanted to shove the beauty that I saw all around me into the hole in my heart: the mile-high lake, the snow-capped mountains, and the tranquil scene of wildflowers. I was desperate for a way to make myself feel better, but I had no inner resources. Nothing dispelled the darkness. My mood matched the algae-clogged, muddy, gross, polluted water I was floating on.
At the edge of the shore the trees reflected in the dark water, beneath yet another red-roofed pagoda, another Hindu temple, Naina Devi Temple, at the northern edge of the lake. I did not know then that naina means “eye.” In one story, Shiva’s wife, Parvati, also called Girija, was so distressed at this very place, she set herself on fire, and her eyes were said to have fallen at this spot. That image of Parvati’s dead eyes falling into the lake would have been too much for my poor spinning brain to absorb. I am glad I did not then know the myth of the name of the lake and town of Nainital. The ashram was already too weird, too pagan. I just wanted things to be the way they had been. I wanted my wife back. I wanted to know whether this guru was a fake or a saint; whether my wife and her new friends were on to something, had found God, or had gone nuts.
Girija wanted me to find God. That’s why she had brought me here. If I left, she would continue her inner journey without me. My journey was about putting science and medicine to use in order to help ease suffering. We had had such an auspicious reunion in San Francisco. We turned our lives upside down to come to India. I would do anything to keep from losing her now, even in this godforsaken place. I tried to put my rational scientific mind in neutral, set aside my deep hurt, and reach out to what I thought was God. I tried to pray but really didn’t know how. I had memorized some prayers, and I could recite a few, mostly in other languages, but I barely knew what they meant.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .” we had sung during marches with Martin Luther King Jr. and others during the civil rights campaign. I loved that song, but today it was not working. Om mani padme hum is what Trungpa and the Tibetan refugees and some sherpas in Nepal would say. Then there was my Torah portion from my bar mitzvah: “Vidabar Adoni El Moshe b’har see mor namor . . . then . . . something else . . . something else.” “And Jeremiah said, ‘The Lord God came unto me and said, “Buy thee my field in Anathoth, which is in the land of Canaan; for the right of redemption is thine to buy it.”’ ” For their Torah portions, most of my friends had gotten what seemed like serious, deep spiritual verses: “Lord God is One,” or “Follow these my commandments.” But what did I get? “Go buy some land.” In the land of Canaan of all places.
I dug deeply into my religious upbringing. Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One. I felt no door opening the way it had with psychedelics. I was still on this ugly, smelly, polluted lake floating with an overwhelming sadness that I had come this far, only to lose the woman I felt destined to be with for the rest of my life. I was begging, pleading, hoping for a sign, anything that might provide a bridge to this spiritual world Girija had found, anything that would tell me I should stay.
“Dear God, it does not have to be a big sign. Just a small sign, even a little rainbow in the oil on the polluted lake. Nobody else has to notice, just a tiny sign between you and me.” The trees with big white flowers were still standing high in the hills, the startlingly bright red bougainvillea still cascading along the shore, the snowcapped mountain peaks still glistened.
The silence was my answer; as hard as it was to accept, as sad and broken as I felt, it was time to leave the ashram. It was time to leave my wife to her guru and his cult. We had only been married for three years, but we had known each other for half of our lives already—since we were teenagers. I could barely imagine being without her.
I brought the boat around. My arms were almost too tired to row. It seemed to take forever to get back to shore, to haul the boat out of the lake, to pay the few rupees, to go back to the Evelyn Hotel and walk up to our room. I stared at our few possessions that would have to be divided. I started to cry.
That night, after dinner, I tried to find the words to tell Girija, but she already knew. We both knew. If Maharaji was the real deal, then I might have lost my chance for entrance into the Kingdom. If he was a fraud, Girija was going to stay with him anyway. Either way, this was how it would be. She had faith; I did not. I wasn’t sure I even wanted it. That night, she asked me whether I would come to the ashram to say goodbye to Maharaji.
“Of course,” I replied. I was devastated, but not without manners.
Early the next morning, Girija and I divided our meager possessions. I put my orange backpack and travel gear in a taxi outside the hotel. We arrived at the ashram before anyone else. I asked the taxi to wait because I did not expect to be long. Girija and I passed through the gate, crossed the bridge to the temple area, removed our shoes, and walked through the public yard. We settled in front of Maharaji’s tucket. As we waited for his entrance, Girija looked at me with such deep love, deep sadness. She had been asking Maharaji, “Will my husband find God?” He hadn’t answered her either.
We held hands while we waited. I scanned the ashram, the temples, the statues of the gods and goddesses, the red roofs, the yellow windows and doors, the deep green forests, the soft, gurgling, winding river, the line of Westerners arriving by foot, by taxi, and by bus beginning to congregate by the front gate.
Devotees from the neighboring houses had left flowers and fruit offerings on Maharaji’s tucket arranged in a design that spelled out the name of God, Ram, in Hindi script. One of the apples in the “M” of Ram had fallen to the ground, which made God’s name incomplete. God’s name should not be incomplete or imperfect in any language.
I got down on my hands and knees to pick up the apple and replace it to repair the name of God. At just that moment, Maharaji burst through the oversized double doors from his room, and before I could look up or move, he seemed to lunge at me, deliberately stepping on my fingers, pinning my right hand to the ground just as I grasped the apple. I was stuck. He seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds. I couldn’t free my hand from under his foot. My worst fear in the ashram. I couldn’t get up off my knees. It was weird.
Maharaji looked down at me, giggling. “Where were you yesterday?” he asked in simple Hindi that even I could understand. “You were not here. Were you sick?”
I twisted my hand, trying to get free but could not.
“Were you at the movies?” he asked.
“Were you at the library?” And then he paused. “Oh, yes,” he said, “were you at the lake?”
Up to that point, he had said everything in Hindi or the local mountain dialect, Pahari. But when he said “lake” in English, I felt exposed, naked; a strange buzzing feeling started at the base of my spine; my whole body began to tingle.
“What were you doing at the lake? Were you horseback riding? Did you go swimming?”
My stomach lurched. I began to shiver. The tingling intensified, rising up my spine like mercury in a thermometer. I could barely feel my fingers.
He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Doctor America! Doctor America! What were you doing by the lake?”
He paused and then put the back of his hand on his forehead, his eyes darting between Girija and me.
“Oh, yes. I know. You were talking to God.”
I stopped struggling to free myself. His voice echoed inside my head.
“Doctor America! Did you ask God for something?”
Looking up, I saw him, as if for the first time, clear as day. It was like he was on fire. I could not catch my breath. My spine buzzed; so did the paint on the doors and windows of the ashram. My skin hurt. My eyes hurt. Was the light always this intense?
Time slowed, then stopped entirely. But my heart still pounded like a jackhammer. The sparks in my spine became a four-lane highway of lightning bolts, moving from my sacrum up to my belly, to my chest and neck. I could feel my neck veins bulge.
I was terrified. I might die! I was filled with love. I might live!
Maharaji sat down and released my hand. He was as massive as a Himalayan peak. He smiled the most loving smile I had ever seen, his eyes filled with lifetimes of compassion. He pulled me closer to him.
“Did you ask God for a sign?”
Maharaji twinkled. He reached over to my face with his fingers and tugged and twisted at my beard, caressing my tear-drenched face. He opened his eyes wide and our gaze locked. Light seemed to pour out of him into me and I felt like I was being filled with love upon love. It became too much, my container too small to hold everything he was beaming my way. When he saw that I was full, he broke the contact like nothing had happened, giggled, and tugged harder on my beard.
What little was left of my skepticism vanished. I felt utterly at peace. He knew. He knew. I do not know how. But he knew. I felt loved like never before, completely understood, naked and yet unashamed. I felt accepted. Tears streamed down my face.
Girija wrapped her shawl around me and hugged me, and so did the rest of the Western satsang. Maharaji twinkled once, twice more, and then released his spell.
I was home.
Maharaji sat back on his tucket and began doing japa on his fingers, repeating the name of God again, his thumb again counting the names of Ram. His eyes half closed as he mouthed the words of his own mantra: “Ram, Ram, Ram.” It felt like the whole world converged on him while he was radiating out love for everyone, every being in the world.
In that moment, I was not surprised that he loved everyone. That is his job, I thought, if he’s a saint at one with God. He’s supposed to feel that way.
What astounded me more than anything then was not that he loved everyone; it was that in that moment, I loved everyone too. I loved Girija for her patience with me, the Westerners in the ashram who had annoyed me, the colleagues who had stuck a hypodermic needle in my picture the first day of my internship in San Francisco, my parents in a way I never thought I could, politicians, antiwar protestors, the cops who had beaten Wavy in Chicago, friends and enemies, myself and all others. I was in love with the love, with the moment, with Maharaji, even with my own bursting heart.
Maharaji had lifted the veil of maya, the illusion that makes us all feel separate and alone. When he did, he took me to a place where I forgave everything and everyone, including myself, and found nothing but love. This was real magic. I didn’t worry about being accepted or whether the ashram harbored a cult or my marriage with Girija.
And then without a care, I touched his feet. I do not know what prompted me to do it, but I felt like I was connected to electrical cables that were plugged into the wiring of the universe and it triggered something in me. This was the first time I felt that powerful love—certainly the first time I felt it without a psychedelic like LSD coursing in my body—and I’ve felt it many times since with no drug other than love. It blew away my intellect and blew my guarded heart wide open.
That moment in which I found myself awash in a tsunami of love for every being in creation became the touchstone by which I measured every future experience, and a state to which I constantly yearn to return. At the heart of it is Divine Love. That moment of pure love has driven everything in my life. That is what I keep coming back to—love, love for everyone. I fail hundreds of times each day. But the aspiration alone changed everything about me. It made me act unpredictably. I was governed by love. It made me ambitious in a different way. I had no context for the experience. I knew it was a gift, but I didn’t yet know what I was supposed to do with it.