“Good morning, Deependra,” came a voice from behind me. I was tying my shoelaces in the alcove outside the hall after the Guru Gita. I turned around to see the neckless swami, Akhandananda, smiling down at me. That’s me. I’m Deependra. Lord of Light! The swami was the first to address me by my new name.
Akhandananda walked me down the long corridor that stretched between the meditation hall and the cafeteria. Soft, golden sunlight filtered through the trees outside and in through the large picture windows of the passageway. I felt deeply peaceful, at one with nature and the universe.
Over breakfast I told Akhandananda about my kundalini awakening in detail. The swami leaned forward, barely touching his savory porridge as I recounted my story of the explosions of energy in my spine and my vision of the blue pearl.
“All classic signs, my dear boy!” he said.
Then I explained how, ever since the retreat, I’d felt as though I were still in a blissful state of meditation. “I feel detached from everything happening around me—from my own thoughts and feelings, too. I feel like I’m sitting in a movie theater, watching a film in which I’m the main character.”
Akhandananda brought a finger to his lips. “Shhh! Don’t say another word, Deependra. If you talk about it, you’ll lose it.”
“I’m not sure I understand, Swamiji.”
“The Buddha taught that an explanation of the Highest Reality is not that reality itself, just as a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself. A seeker who only looks at the finger and mistakes it for the moon will never see the real moon. Understand?”
I did not understand. During the retreat we’d been encouraged to share our experiences, but now the swami was telling me to keep mine to myself.
“The ego will always attempt to subvert any insight into the Supreme Truth for its own purpose. By talking about it, you’re only helping it.”
“And what purpose is that, Swamiji?”
“Survival,” he answered. “Kundalini awakening is a death sentence for the ego.”
As the days and weeks passed, my love of spiritual practice grew and my devotion to the guru deepened, but the bliss and the higher state of consciousness I’d experienced in the days immediately following shaktipat faded. Occasionally I still had visions of the small blue light, and I considered this a confirmation that I was getting closer to enlightenment. But to experience the bliss again, I realized, I’d need another infusion of spiritual energy from Baba.
I was beginning to understand why Jeremy had said, “You can never have too much shakti.” But the retreats were expensive—they had already gone up another fifty dollars since the guru arrived. I prayed that my inheritance money would last long enough for me to take enough retreats to attain the ultimate goal.
My seva changed too. On a typical day I worked in Housing between breakfast and lunch, and then again between two in the afternoon and the evening arati in the Brahmananda temple. This schedule still left plenty of hours in the day for me to serve the guru, so I signed up for extra seva.
For a time, I woke up an hour earlier and meditated in the hall alone, so that I could chop vegetables in the kitchen before the Guru Gita. The kitchen was supervised by a strict, short-tempered woman named Yashoda Edwards. She’d spent a lot of time in Baba’s ashram in Indian where she had picked up a little Hindi and Marathi. Slight, pale-skinned and thin-lipped, Yashoda wore wire frame glasses and had light brown stringy hair that she wore tied up in a bun. On her frail body she wore loose-fitting, frumpy blouses under her apron, and favored long, drab, denim skirts.
Everyone under Yashoda in the kitchen had to observe strict silence at all times, unless it was to ask Yashoda a question about seva or to chant. Only Yashoda was allowed to speak freely, and when she did it was either to give chopping instructions or to dispense spiritual wisdom: “Every activity has meaning and a vibrational effect on the food,” she would often remind us. “Each movement of your knife counts. You must work joyfully and with complete concentration, as though you were meditating. Always remember: the intention with which we cook is the main ingredient. Everything we do is for the guru.”
The precise way in which the ashram food was prepared was very important to Baba and he would often make surprise visits to the kitchen to check our work. For this reason, despite Yashoda’s reputation for being strict, chopping vegetables was a coveted seva. One morning we were chopping turnips and chanting “Shree Ram, Jai Ram” when Baba appeared. I first detected his presence by the sudden stiffening of my fellow kitchen sevites’ posture. I started when I saw him and nearly cut off the end of my index finger. I quickly regained my composure, however, and, like everybody else, went about my work pretending he wasn’t there. He was accompanied by Suresh and Rashmi Varma—his personal attendant, a tall, thin, fair-skinned Indian man with droopy eyes, a big nose, and a long face shaped like a string bean. He was also with the frowning man I saw during Baba’s arrival, whom Yashoda introduced as Gajendra Williams, the ashram manager.
Gajendra Williams? I thought. Wasn’t he the embezzler? What was that thief doing here? His presence caused me some alarm, but knowing that Baba could read my thoughts, I cleared my mind and focused all my attention on what I was doing. When we had finished with the turnips and were about to switch to broccoli, Baba came forward and told Yashoda that we had to keep chopping the turnips until all the pieces were the same size.
Baba held up a perfectly cut piece of turnip and spoke to us in Hindi. “Discipline and repetitive work,” Suresh translated. “Through it, the mind becomes steady.”
Later in the summer I heard Yashoda say the same exact same thing to newcomers, without attributing the quote to Baba.
Putting in shifts in the dish room after meals gave me an opportunity to get in another couple of hours of extra seva each day. Even though Baba rarely visited, I preferred working in the dish room to the kitchen. This was because Shankar, the man who ran it, had no rule against talking, and always shared fascinating stories about Baba. Not only had Shankar known Baba in India before the guru’s first world tour, but he had also had the extreme good fortune of meeting Gurudev Brahmananda while he was still in his earthly body. Since he had been on the Raja Yoga scene so long, I was certain that Shankar must have already attained enlightenment. I was careful to watch my thoughts around him and treated him with the utmost respect.
We delighted in exchanging stories about the guru—where he had been recently sighted, what he was doing at the time, and with whom. Everybody wanted to hear all the details: Was the guru in a playful or fiery mood? Was he carrying a stick or was he dispensing chocolates and gifts? Which famous person had come to meet him? What kind of hat was he wearing?
I loved hearing about the latest Baba sightings, but what fascinated me most were the stories about the old days around the guru in the Ravipur ashram. I yearned to travel with Baba to his native land and to stay there for as long as he would let me. Devotees who had lived in Ravipur described the atmosphere there as ten times more powerful than any other ashram in the Raja Yoga universe. I figured that spending time in such a holy place would make me holy. In Ravipur, thousands of miles away from home and out of the reach of my deluded family, I would be free to live like a true renunciant and focus exclusively on my spiritual development. Far from the myriad distractions of the material world, I thought living in Ravipur would be like dying and going to heaven.
The highlight of every day was the evening program with Baba. The format was usually the same: the programs began with a philosophical discourse by one of Baba’s senior swamis or an “experience talk” by a longtime devotee. Afterwards, we chanted a few rounds of Om Namah Shivaya. The lights were dimmed and Baba made his entrance. After a brief meditation session Baba spoke. One evening, he quoted the great poet saint Kabir: “All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”
The verse brought tears to my eyes, and helped me to understand the Supreme Truth: Although I was a tiny drop in the ocean of consciousness, I myself contained the entire ocean within me.
Back in my room, just before lights out, I took the vial of Baba’s bathwater that Sita had given me, and in the privacy of the bathroom, poured a couple of drops of it into the palm of my hand. These drops contain the entire universe, I told to myself. They also contain the grace bestowing power of God. I brought the palm of my hand to my lips and sucked the precious liquid into my mouth. My entire body shook with the force of its shakti.
As I lay in bed waiting for sleep, I had another fleeting vision of the tiny blue light, which appeared behind my closed eyelids. The blue pearl is the seed that contains the entire cosmos, I remembered Satyananda saying during the meditation retreat. Then I drifted off to sleep.
I am meditating with my eyes open, seated in the lotus position at the bottom of the ocean. I am surrounded by monster sharks with gaping mouths full of razor sharp teeth. They swim menacingly close, but I am unafraid. They do not attack me.
I was on my way to seva when Sita Perkins called out to me from the lower lobby.
“Deependra, over here!” She and a tall man in his mid-thirties were standing next to the long gray curtain in front of Baba’s house. The man was wearing a cowboy hat and a photographer’s vest. Two professional-looking cameras dangled from his neck. He was Avadhoot Plotnick, the guru’s personal photographer and one of his closest disciples. I knew this because I’d seen him make the rounds of the ashram with Baba and disappear behind the curtain with him many times. Today he looked agitated and seemed incapable of standing still.
“Listen,” he said, sizing me up. “I want you to go down to the basement and get my Hasselblad and bring it to my room.”
“Avadhoot is in room three,” Sita said, thrusting the key to Baba’s private storage unit into my hand.
I knew where Avadhoot Plotnick’s room was—it was in the VIP dorm next to Suresh and Anjali’s rooms—but I was worried about being late to seva.
Avadhoot clapped his hands together, startling me. “What are you waiting for, kid?”
“What about my regular seva?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sita said. “I’ll let them know you’ll be a few minutes late. Baba’s waiting. Go!”
I turned to leave, and then hesitated. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. “What’s a Hasselblad?” I asked, turning around.
Avadhoot was already hurrying toward the entrance to Baba’s house. “It’s a camera,” he bellowed with a New Yorker’s accent. “The case is marked. It’s with the rest of my shit.”
From his ten-gallon hat, snakeskin boots, and bolo tie, I assumed that Baba’s photographer was a Texan. But this was before I’d heard him open his loud mouth. His accent and speaking manner gave him away. I was willing to bet that he’d grown up on “Lawn Guyland,” and was Jewish, like me. I later found out that his spiritual name, “Avadhoot,” referred to a kind of mystic who acted without consideration for conventional standards of behavior. The more I got to know Baba’s eccentric photographer, the more I saw how well-suited he was to his name.
Down in the basement, I noticed that almost all the boxes labeled “Baba’s House” were gone, along with the rest of the boxes that belonged to Suresh, Anjali, and Avadhoot. The boxes belonging to Sergio Casto, the broken Ganesh statue, the old throne, and the medical equipment were still there—except the examining table with foot supports.
I found the case labeled Hasselblad next to a tripod and some flash equipment. I lugged it up from the basement to the VIP dormitory next to Baba’s house, and knocked on the door to the cowboy’s room. There was no answer. Putting my ear to the door, I could hear Avadhoot talking inside. I knocked again. The door abruptly swung open, and there was Baba’s photographer, glaring at me. In one hand he held the base of a telephone. Between his ear and shoulder he was cradling the receiver.
“Uh-huh,” he said into the phone, impatiently motioning for me to enter with his free hand. I wanted to come in, but Avadhoot, distracted by his conversation and still in the doorway, was blocking my path. Irritated by my hesitation, he grabbed my arm and pulled me in, causing me to bump the case against the wall of his room.
Avadhoot’s eyes bulged. “Easy!” he snapped. “No, not you,” he said to the person on the phone. “I’m talking to the idiot carrying my Hasselblad.”
I bristled at being called an idiot, especially by someone so close to the guru. But I accepted the insult as the bitter medicine needed to rid me of the disease of ego.
Like Suresh and Anjali, Avadhoot had a room all to himself. Instead of three cheap bunk beds crammed into one tiny room, his quarters were spacious, and furnished with a single queen-size bed adorned with a cotton red and black batik elephant bedspread. Like the rooms of Baba’s young Indian disciples, his room had a telephone. But unlike the rooms of Anjali and Suresh, Avadhoot’s quarters contained much more personal stuff. He had a high-end stereo system, an expensive-looking pair of headphones, and a large record collection. Glancing over it, I recognized the Andy Warhol banana from the album The Velvet Underground and Nico.
Who listened to worldly music in the ashram? I wondered. Even stranger, hanging on the walls was a collection of Stetson cowboy hats. Some of them were woolen, others were made of felt or straw. All were white, tan, or gray, except for one hung prominently in the center of the collection, which was black. Through the open door of his closet I noticed an array of leather and suede jackets. Also in the closet, on the floor next to a pair of snakeskin boots, were two small cases, a tripod, and a set of silver photographer’s umbrellas.
All the other bedrooms I’d seen in the ashram displayed the same photos of Baba and Gurudev that were available in the bookstore. But Avadhoot’s walls were covered with pictures of the gurus that I’d never seen before, all mounted in intricately carved wooden frames. I could have stared at them all day. One of the photos in particular caught my eye. It was of Baba and Avadhoot standing together with their arms around each other like they were best friends. Avadhoot towered over Baba, and they were smiling with their mouths wide open like they were laughing at something uproariously funny.
“No, fuck you, Gajendra!” Avadhoot hollered into the phone. He sat down on the edge of his bed and motioned for me to set the case down on the floor. I was about to leave when he tapped the spot next to him. “Sit, sit.” I took a seat on the bed where I was told, and was now close enough to hear Gajendra Williams cursing on the other end of the line.
As I waited for Avadhoot to finish his conversation, I studied his unusual face: although he wasn’t ugly, there was something vaguely grotesque about him. My guess was that he had once been in some kind of horrible accident and had needed extensive plastic surgery. The upper part of his left ear was missing. The small section that remained included only a partial earlobe. Even stranger, sections of his face were blotchy and unevenly stretched, as though the skin had been pulled too tightly in some areas, giving him an asymmetrical appearance. I looked up at the ten-gallon hat on his head, and then down at his buffalo skull tie. What a freak! I thought. Why does Baba let him dress like such a buffoon?
“That’s not what I told that shit-for-brains asshole in Purchasing,” Avadhoot grumbled. He eyed me as he continued to exchange obscenities with Gajendra on the phone. I couldn’t be sure, but I had the impression he was trying to gauge my reaction. While I found his swearing and unspiritual manner unsettling—particularly because he was so close to the guru—I was determined not to reveal my true feelings. If this is how Baba’s people behave, so be it, I told myself. Who am I to judge? I turned my face into a mask of detachment. “I’m doing portraits of Baba with the Hasselblad in half an hour, and I’m telling you I don’t have enough of the right stock!”
Avadhoot turned red listening to Gajendra’s response. I couldn’t help wondering why he was subjecting me to this argument and keeping me from returning to my regular seva.
“I told that mental midget Ranjiv that I needed the medium format. And what does he order—thirty-five millimeter!”
Believing I was no longer needed, and anxious to get back to work, I got up from the bed to leave, but Avadhoot took hold of my arm again and yanked me back down. “You tell Baba we can do the pictures tomorrow!” Avadhoot shouted. Then he hung up the phone.
“Jesus Christ! Can you believe that moron?”
Unable to think of anything to say, I shrugged.
Avadhoot stomped over to the case I had just delivered, opened it, glanced inside, and then slammed it shut again.
“That fucker!” he shouted, making me jump. Then he looked in my direction, and again, I had the impression that he was taking note of my reaction.
“If you don’t need anything else from me, I’ll be going back to Housing now.” I hesitated this time before getting up to leave.
Avadhoot ignored me and seemed lost in thought for a moment. “What’s your name again?” he asked, regaining his composure.
“Deependra.”
The photographer outstretched his hand for me to shake. “Good to meet you, kid.”
I gave my hand to him and he turned it over so that his palm was facing downward over mine. His grip was firm at first, and then he relaxed it. I expected him to release my hand, but he held on to it with a maniacal grin on his face. I finally pulled it away after the awkwardness of the situation became unbearable. Is he gay? I wondered. Then I realized how preposterous the notion was. I understood that the photographer’s odd behavior was yet another test from the guru.
“Sita tells me you’re a bright kid. She says you have right understanding.”
My mind raced. I wanted to respond in a way that seemed modest and, at the same time, confident, but the phone rang before I could say anything.
Avadhoot picked up and his demeanor changed instantly. His jaw dropped and his back went rigid. “Han ji,” he said, lowering his head as he listened to the party on the other end. He was speaking in an Indian language. “Ji, Baba, sab theek hai.” I knew he was talking to the guru.
How amazing to receive a call from Baba! I thought. What would it be like to have a personal relationship with God? I was also impressed Avadhoot had learned to speak to the guru in his native language.
He hung up the phone and turned to me. “Listen, the girl from the video department who usually helps me busted her leg, so you’re going to assist me today, okay?”
“Sure!” Helping Baba’s photographer sounded a lot more exciting than chopping vegetables.
Avadhoot told me that I would be helping him to adjust the flash, which would be set up on a stand, while he took pictures of Baba and a VIP from the Indian consulate who was up from New York City for the day. The guru would be receiving him in the Namaste room.
“This is a gevalt situation,” Avadhoot said, opening the Hasselblad case. “You know what that means, right, kid?”
“I certainly do.” Oy gevalt was a Yiddish phrase used to express anxiety or shock. His use of the word was confirmation that he was Jewish.
“What’s your last name, kid?” Avadhoot asked, loading a film magazine into the big camera.
“Greenbaum.”
Avadhoot smiled condescendingly. “Kid, you’re alright!” Then he pinched my cheek, digging his nails into my flesh. “Come. Let’s go. You take the Hasselblad.”
Now that Avadhoot knew I was Jewish too, I hoped he might see me as a friend.
The Namaste room was adjacent to Baba’s quarters off the lower lobby, and was a semi-private space where Baba received special visitors or conducted meetings with his staff. When we arrived outside the room, I could feel Baba’s tremendous shakti through the closed door. The muscles in my arms and legs twitched in response, and I felt a popping sensation in the area of my solar plexus and heart. Avadhoot knocked on the door three times in rapid succession, and, a few seconds later, Suresh opened up and ushered us in.
Following Avadhoot into the chamber, I trod as lightly as possible, taking care not to bump the bulky camera case into any of the guests or inner circle people, who were seated before the guru on the carpeted floor. Baba sat cross-legged on a throne-like armchair. He was speaking Hindi to a dapper Indian man sitting at his feet. The man was dressed in a mustard-colored business suit, had dark skin and a thin mustache, and was balding. A television crew was filming the exchange. Their camera was marked with the BBC logo.
I set the case down, and took a seat on the floor next to Avadhoot. When I looked up, Baba was staring in my direction. My stomach rolled. Does the guru approve of my being here? I wondered. He held me in his gaze. Then he turned to Anjali and said something to her in Hindi, which caused her to turn around and look in my direction. I half expected her to tell Avadhoot that Baba wanted me to leave, but the guru returned his attention to his guest, and I began to feel less like an interloper.
The angel Gopi was also there. She was seated in her usual spot, directly behind Anjali, and was watching Baba’s every nod and gesture with laser-like focus. About ten minutes after we arrived, Anjali turned around to tell her something, which prompted her to dash across the room toward me. That’s it—I’ve overstayed my welcome, I told myself. She’s going to ask me to leave. I was wrong. Ignoring me, Gopi crouched down next to Avadhoot and whispered into his tiny, misshapen ear. I was close enough to hear: “Baba wants the video crew here right away.”
“What for?” the cowboy asked too loudly. The guru glanced in our direction again.
“Baba wants them to film the television crew.”
Avadhoot glanced over at the guru and nodded his assent. Gopi returned to her place behind Anjali, and Avadhoot sent me in search of Arjuna Weinberg, the videographer. “Tell him to bring extra lights.”
Eager to prove myself worthy of the mission, I leapt to my feet, made a dash for the door, and raced toward the Audiovisual department. I wondered why the guru wanted footage of the camera crew, why he couldn’t simply ask them for a copy of the interview on cassette later. Then I decided it wasn’t my concern.
I’d gotten as far as the upper lobby when Gajendra Williams intercepted me. “Hey you! Hold on there a second!”
Stopping abruptly, I spun around to face the manager.
Gajendra frowned. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“Baba wants the video crew in the Namaste room ASAP!”
Gajendra’s eyes widened in comprehension, and he waved me on. “Go! Go!”
I’d never spoken to Arjuna, but I had watched him closely ever since he had arrived from India with the rest of the tour people. Originally from Brooklyn, he traveled all over the world with the guru, videotaping all of his talks. Baba had named him after Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata, who was revered as a great archer, a peerless warrior, and the perfect disciple of Lord Krishna. The Arjuna Weinberg of Raja Yoga, however, was a diminutive, dark-haired man in his late twenties with a high-pitched voice, prominent nose, and small, tired eyes that were always watery and bloodshot. I found him in the video library, screening footage of Baba’s pit bulls working with a dog trainer and another man wearing a protective gauntlet. I cleared my throat to make my presence known, but Arjuna remained engrossed in what he was watching. If he was even aware I was trying to get his attention, he was simply ignoring me.
“Avadhoot says you should come right away to the Namaste room with your camera. He says you should bring extra lights.”
He was slow to respond. “I have no crew,” he answered, without taking his eyes off the video monitor.
Kriyadevi, who had been at work in the editing suite with the door open, hobbled into the library on her crutches to join us. “He means he has no one to do sound. I’m out of commission.”
Arjuna pressed stop on the VTR and the monitor went blank. He ejected the cassette, and wrote something on the label. I was baffled. He seemed to be in no hurry to come to the guru’s service. I began to worry that Baba was being kept waiting. I didn’t want Avadhoot to blame me for the delay. Then I had an idea.
“Maybe I could hold the microphone.”
“You?” Arjuna scoffed, finally looking at me. The cameraman squinted as he sized me up. “Okay, why not?”
Kriyadevi explained the job to me as quickly as possible. As it turned out, doing sound was not as easy as I had thought. Pointing the microphone at whoever was speaking was only part of it. I also had to carry and operate the portable VTR. “The most important thing to remember is never to let the audio levels on the meter go into the red,” she said. “When that happens, the sound gets distorted.”
Arjuna hung the heavy deck around my neck and handed me a pair of large headphones. “Here,” he said. “Try these on.” I slipped the headset over my ears.
Kriyadevi picked up a long microphone and plugged it into the VTR. “This is a shotgun microphone,” she said speaking into it. “Always hold it by the handle and listen carefully to make sure the sound is good.”
“Pointing the microphone at the subject doesn’t hurt either,” Arjuna quipped.
Kriyadevi glared at him, and then turned back to me. “If you pay attention to what’s going on and follow Arjuna’s lead, you’ll do fine.”
I was excited and anxious at the same time. “How do I start and stop recording?”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” said Arjuna, hefting the camera onto his shoulder. He connected his camera to the recording deck with a thick, three-foot-long cable, and held it up for me to see. “The camera controls the VTR through this umbilical cord. You’ll be tethered to me the whole time. All you have to worry about is getting good sound.”
Just then the phone rang behind the closed door of Jake’s office. A moment later, the door swung open, and the department head burst through. His eyes were wide with alarm. “They just called from the Namaste room. What are you still doing here?”
Taking care not to yank or snag the camera, I hurried back to the Namaste room behind Arjuna, maintaining as little distance between us as possible. When we arrived, Baba was being interviewed by a journalist with the BBC crew. With all the bulky equipment hanging from me, I felt even more conspicuous than before, but no one seemed to notice when I came in this time—except Gopi. Turning her head to see who was at the door, she flashed me a radiant smile and gave me a thumbs-up. She likes me! I thought, and a warm feeling spread through me. In my state of distraction, I nearly stumbled over Rashmi Varma, Baba’s personal attendant.
Luckily, Avadhoot was too busy taking pictures of Baba to scold me for taking too long to return with the cameraman. When he finally did become aware of our presence, he shot Arjuna—not me—a dirty look.
Don’t mess this up, I told myself. In my mind, this was my big chance to demonstrate my dedication to the guru. If I came up short, I might never get a chance again.
Arjuna had me set the deck down on the floor next to his tripod. When Avadhoot saw where we had set up, he glowered at Arjuna and then motioned for us to move back.
“Make sure the entire BBC crew is in the shot with Baba at all times,” Avadhoot said in a stage whisper. He seemed to want Baba to overhear him.
“What’s the point of that?” Arjuna whispered back, tilting his head to meet the cowboy’s glare.
Avadhoot towered over the cameraman. “That’s what Baba wants.”
Although I was pointing the microphone directly at the journalist, I could barely hear him over my headphones. Avadhoot must have noticed my concern because he stopped taking pictures to come find out what was wrong. Kneeling down on the floor next to me, he yanked the headphones off my head and put them on to have a listen. Curling his bottom lip over his teeth and squinting in concentration, he indicated for me to raise the audio level by pointing his thumb toward the ceiling. When I gained the right volume, he nodded and handed the headphones back to me. Then he cupped his hands around my ear and whispered so loudly it hurt: “Make sure you get clear sound from Baba, Anjali, and the schmuck. The microphone is hyper-directional. Just aim it at whoever’s talking and you should be able to get decent sound, even from back here.”
I assumed that the “schmuck” was the journalist from the BBC. He was a middle-aged man with a ruddy complexion and sandy hair, dressed in a tweed jacket and burgundy tie. He spoke with a posh British accent, and his tone with the guru was, at times, disturbingly condescending. From the way he kept shifting his legs during the interview, I could tell he was uncomfortable sitting on the floor. I wondered if he realized how blessed he was to be in the presence of such a great saint as Baba.
“Every weekend, hundreds of people come to see you here in your ashram,” the journalist said. “All the people I’ve spoken to say they get something out of your teachings. Many of them have received your touch and claim to have had mystical experiences and profound feelings of love and inner peace. I’ve observed the effect you have on these people and have asked them to tell me about it. What do you have to say?”
“I have one simple teaching,” Baba answered, through Anjali. “The happiness and love that you are all seeking outside of yourself and are unable to find is inside of you. I tell people to turn within and meditate. When they do this, they find the peace they are searching for within themselves. I don’t preach religion. Just as breathing doesn’t belong to any one faith, neither does meditation.”
The journalist smiled politely. “Indeed, Swami. You tell people to look within themselves, but your followers dedicate their entire lives to you. You control every aspect of their lives. They’ve told me this.”
Baba chuckled. “Maybe some say that. And perhaps some of them do give their lives to me. But I also give my life to them—as much as they are able to receive it. This is the nature of the guru-disciple relationship.”
“But are you conscious of directing the activities of your devotees? Of controlling their lives?”
“It’s not that I keep them next to me all the time. I send them back into the world to do their own work, too. I have ashrams all over the globe. If I tried to take all my devotees with me wherever I went, where would I put them? In my suitcase?”
Everybody in the Namaste room laughed, except the journalist and his crew.
“People come to me and spend some time in the ashram,” Baba continued. “Then, after learning something, they return to the world. Some of them come back later.”
“The guru-disciple relationship is an ancient institution in India, but here in the West the word guru is a newer term, and has developed negative connotations because of certain teachers who exploit their followers’ naiveté. What makes you different?”
“Why are there so many charlatans posing as true gurus today? The blame for this lies with their followers. Americans choose their gurus the way they elect their presidents. Because of their ignorance, false disciples get trapped. And driven by selfishness and delusion, false gurus destroy the lives of their disciples. But a genuine seeker would never fall for a false guru.”
“You insist that your followers observe celibacy. Why?”
“Ojas is a vital yellow fluid released and stored in the heart and serves as a fuel for meditation. It is derived from sexual fluid, and it gives mental strength and the physical endurance needed for yoga. If someone meditates a lot, but does not conserve his sexual fluid and provide his body with nourishing foods, his ojas will become depleted and he will lose all his radiance and energy for spiritual practice. If someone wants to live in the ashram and meditate for long periods, he should not only consume nutritious foods, but he must also practice abstinence.”
“Does this apply to your married disciples as well, Swami?”
“This applies to everyone living in the ashram.”
“Are you celibate, Swami?”
Everyone laughed again at the absurdity of the question.
“Yes, I have been celibate my entire life. A true guru must be immune to the temptations of the flesh. He must be free from desire.”
“I’m told that through a look, word, thought, or touch, you can awaken a spiritual energy in people. Please tell me about it.”
“Yes, that is my yoga—Raja Yoga—the royal yoga. The king of all yogas, an ancient tradition from the dawn of time. It is not a fad, like so many things that take people’s fancy here in the West. Only a guru who has been a lifelong celibate, and has succeeded in reversing the flow of his sexual fluid in the most advanced stages of yoga, is able to give shaktipat and awaken the kundalini in his disciples.”
“Some people seem to experience this awakening and others do not. Do you have control over this?”
“Certain people are aware that they have received shaktipat immediately because of their great faith. Others become aware of it only later, because it happens on a more subtle level.”
“Will I experience this awakening as a result of having met you?”
“Yes, it is likely you will. The shakti is like a virus,” said Baba, chuckling. “It is very contagious.”
The room erupted in laughter—even the journalist laughed.
“Your followers worship you like a living god. What do you have to say about that?”
“The inner guru is not a person. He is the grace-bestowing power of God. The outer-guru is however you see him. If you see him as a god, he is a god. If you see him as a demon, he is a demon. If you see him as an ordinary man, he is an ordinary man.”
“How do you see yourself, Swami?”
“I see myself as myself.”
After the interview, Daniel Groza—the head of ashram construction—serenaded Baba with a few devotional songs he had recently composed. Daniel sang and played acoustic guitar, and his wife, Chamundi, accompanied him on the tambourine. Chamundi was the guru’s personal cook. She and Daniel had been with Baba since his first visit to the States in 1970, and were members of his inner circle. I found all of Daniel’s songs deeply inspiring.
When the Grozas’ private concert was over, everyone was asked to leave, except the Indian man in the mustard-colored suit and a handful of Baba’s closest people. Arjuna was also asked to take his camera and go, but Avadhoot told me to stay so I could help set up his Hasselblad and flash equipment.
The portraits were taken with Baba seated on his throne and the well-dressed Indian man kneeling next to him on the floor. The pictures only took a few minutes, and while I was extremely grateful to be able to stay, it was unclear to me why I was needed. All I did was stand next to Avadhoot and confirm that his flash was going off whenever he took a picture. The only time the flash failed to go off, however, Baba told Avadhoot himself. After the pictures, the Indian man presented Baba with a gold watch, which the guru regarded with indifference. Suresh showed him out, leaving me alone with Baba, Avadhoot, Anjali, and Gopi. With so few other people around to help drown out my thoughts, I became acutely aware of how active my mind was and how undisciplined it must have seemed to the Omniscient One.
Baba spoke for a long time in Hindi with Anjali while the rest of us sat on the floor at attention in case we were needed. Copying the others’ perfect posture, I kept my back as straight as possible and my eyes glued to the guru. As hard as I tried to keep my mind free from thoughts, my attention wandered to Gopi. She was unbelievably beautiful. A highly evolved being like Gopi could make me whole if Baba were ever to allow me to marry her, I thought. Then, just as my mind began to wander to the pleasures of the flesh, the guru gazed in my direction and said something in Hindi to his translator. I was mortified by my impure thoughts.
“Deependra,” Anjali said, turning around to address me. “Baba wants to know how long you will stay in the ashram.”
“I want to follow Baba to India in September and stay in the Ravipur ashram until he returns to America.”
“Aacha, aacha,” Baba said.
“Good, good,” Anjali translated.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen, Baba.”
“What does your family think about your living in the ashram?”
“They would prefer I go to college.”
I believed, of course, that Baba already knew the answers to these questions, and that the dialogue we were engaged in was benefiting me on a deeper level. The content of what we were saying to each other was unimportant.
“School is very good,” Baba said. I was suddenly anxious. Was Baba going to send me away back into the world? Akhandananda once told me the guru did that sometimes when it became clear we no longer belonged in the ashram.
Baba continued to speak to Anjali, but he was no longer looking at me. When he finished, she turned around to address me again. Smiling, she said, “Baba says you should come to India with him at the end of the summer, and that you should arrange it with Gajendra.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. It was a dream come true. This was all the proof I needed that Baba loved me and valued me as a disciple. Baba stood up to leave, and as he did, everyone else sprang to their feet. Before exiting with Anjali through a second door that led to his private quarters, the guru gave me a big pat on the back.
Avadhoot said something to me, but I was too excited to listen. Then he also went out through the door to Baba’s house, leaving me alone in the Namaste room with Gopi. She beamed her angelic smile at me.
“Did you even hear what Avadhoot just said to you?”
“No,” I confessed, suddenly feeling too timid to make eye contact with her.
She laughed. “He told you to pack up all his gear and bring it to his office.”
“Um, thanks.” I forced myself to look at her. She was stunning. Her tan, freckled face glowed with the guru’s shakti. Her lustrous blonde hair had been brightened by the summer sun, and her mismatched eyes were mesmerizing. Standing this close to her left me breathless.
“You did really well, by the way.”
“You think so?” This was my chance to talk to her, but I was so overcome by my feelings for her I could barely speak. Finally, I blurted out the first thing that came into my head: “What exactly is your seva?”
As soon as the words had left my mouth I regretted the stupid question. Everybody in the ashram knew what Gopi did.
“I’m one of Baba’s darshan assistants.”
“What a great seva. It must be amazing to be so close to the guru all the time!”
Gopi smiled politely and nodded. “Being around the guru can get pretty intense sometimes. Baba has a fiery side he doesn’t always show to the public.”