INTRODUCTION

This book is a collection of some of my favorite stories about strange events I’ve witnessed in the past 18 years.

Most of these stories are about the living Yoga Christ named Herakhan Baba, known to devotees throughout the world simply as Babaji.

Essentially, these events all defy what is called reason and logical explanation within rational, objective reality.

Like other books and stories about Babaji, these stories may be regarded by people who don’t already have a personal spiritual connection with Babaji as deluded statements of a blinded worshiper who wants to believe that Babaji performed miracles.

Told by anyone else, these stories might be dismissed as silly and unbelievable, merely coincidences or even total misrepresentations of reality, akin to hypnotic suggestions or hallucinations.

But I am generally regarded as a level-headed, objective scientist—well-trained at a top university and with a high professional

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE:THE DANCING SHIVA

CHAPTER TWO:Healing, Spoon-Bending, and Clairvoyance

CHAPTER THREE:The Immortalists

CHAPTER FOUR:Visions and Other Psychic Phenomena

CHAPTER FIVE:Deciding to go to India

CHAPTER SIX:First Trip to BabajiFlying and Photography

CHAPTER SEVEN:Second Trip to see BabajiFilling with Light and Getting Higher

CHAPTER EIGHT:

standing during almost fifty years of teaching and research in the fields of psychology and physiology.

Furthermore, my own personal relationship with Babaji during several visits in India was based on entirely different attitudes, at least initially. I was totally dispassionate and free of any prior convictions that I was visiting a Divinity.

I went to India primarily because it was an airline stop between Thailand and Egypt, two of the countries I was visiting during a sabbatical leave from my college teaching. And I went to visit Babaji mainly because I met a dozen people I know from California who were in India at that time, on their way to visit Babaji.

Indeed, it was mainly because of the events described in this book that my natural skepticism lessened and my antipathy to anything resembling worship and belief disappeared.

By now, I’m more than willing to call these extraordinary, amazing, wonderful, illogical events by the term, miracles, especially when they involve ordinary people like me. I delight in telling these stories about events I can’t explain except by resorting to metaphysics.

Some of these happenings took place in Babaji’s main ashram in Herakhan (also spelled "Haidakhan" or "Hardakhan") located up the Gautama Ganga

Last Visit to BabajiLevitating and the Sound of Two Hands Clapping

CHAPTER NINE:Heartbreak & HealingThe Teacher and the Lesson

CHAPTER TEN:The Miracle of Herakhan Again!

APPENDIX AThe Week of Babaji's Death

branch of the Ganges River, above the city of Kathgodam, in the district of Nainital in Uttar Pradesh. Others occurred in several different cities in India as well as in California. Most of these stories are about simple, innocent events, not especially earth-shattering.

Some stories concern other people, all of whom themselves had some connection with Babaji, primarily through their involvement with the New Age healing technique called Rebirthing. Rebirthing is a breathing exercise in which the inhale and exhale are connected without pause. It permits the recollection of old events in a manner that allows old negative beliefs to be reviewed and revised to positive views. (For more information, please write or phone me.) Their stories are included primarily to show that even ordinary people often experience magic in their lives.

Out of respect, I have capitalized pronouns referring to Babaji and other gurus. I leave it up to you to decide on His divinity.

I hope that you, the reader of these stories, will regard them with respect and appreciation. And I further hope that you will draw inspiration from thinking about these events.

I want you to feel a closeness to the miraculous—best personified by someone as Divine as Babaji, but also revealed by ordinary people like the ones involved in the other stories that follow.

I feel very privileged to have had these experiences, and even more privileged to be telling about them.

I consider myself most fortunate to have met and seen and heard and touched and loved "my" Babaji.

These happenings puzzled, amazed, and delighted me at the time they took place. I hope reading these stories of magic provides great pleasure to you, too.

In Truth, Simplicity, and Love,

Eve

140 South Norton AvenueLos Angeles, California 90004-3917USA, 323-461-5774

 

 CHAPTER ONE

THE DANCING SHIVA

My first connection with Babaji began during my fourth Rebirth session, two weeks after I first Rebirthed. The first three Rebirth sessions had been re-experiences

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:

of my physical birth, creating some resolution of some of the psychological aspects connected with it. But my fourth Rebirth session was a radically different affair completely. As my breath took me away from the mundane world of my own life experiences and my reactions to them, suddenly I was witness to a fascinating, marvelous vision:

In front of me and yet itself part of myself, I saw an immense creature outlined against the black sky, covering it entirely, made on all its surfaces of glittering diamonds of light. There seemed to be no substance to this person. He was light, sound, and movement, not solid form. He danced beautifully, laughing with a thunderous roar of laughter that rolled across the heavens just as thunder used to rumble during the long summer nights when I was a little girl.

What I find remarkable even now is that I was an observer looking at this image in front of me and hearing the laughter, yet I was also That. I was both the observer and the observed. I felt an intense, total identification with this creature in front of me. I, myself, was dancing and laughing, my body made out of stars.

As the vision faded, I realized my Rebirthing session was complete. I felt good. I also felt loose and limber, as if I were still a young little girl able to put my legs behind my neck or do the splits. I jumped up and started to do some of the yoga asanas that I

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

had read about and half-heartedly practiced more than thirty years previous. My movements were fluid and effortless.

Suddenly it came to me who the individual was in my vision. My vision was just like an Asian statue that I kept on a bookcase in my sitting room off of my bedroom. I had bought it because it was beautiful. I didn’t know who or what it was supposed to represent.

I left my Rebirther momentarily, rushed into the next room to get the statue, brought it back and asked, "Who is this? Do you know whom this represents? That’s the person I saw in my vision!"

My Rebirther replied, "Oh, that’s Shiva."

I didn’t know who that was. So my Rebirther explained that Shiva was the most powerful God of all three main gods in the Hindu pantheon. Brahma creates all of what is. Vishnu sustains it and takes care of it. But Shiva is more powerful than They are because He destroys all old form and from it creates the substance of new form.

All right! I thought it was fascinating that I saw this image, dancing, made out of light, and that I felt so closely identified with it. But I tucked the thoughts about it away and hurriedly rushed to pack. That was the day I was going to drive up to Campbell Hot Springs for the first time. This is a 640-acre spread near Sierraville where Leonard Orr lived and

Rebirth trainings took place each week of the year.

The two other Rebirthers and I who drove together to Sierraville took our time, arriving at CHS at late afternoon the next day, to find a week-long training just finishing up. We hung around, talked with people as the sun set, then had dinner, and were shown to our sleeping spaces.

As the evening progressed, I finally decided I wanted to see the hot springs themselves. I asked one of the people who had been staying at CHS how to find them, and she told me, "Just go down the road. In about a quarter mile you’ll see a fence with a sign on it that points to the path going through the woods to the springs."

So off I set with my brand new flashlight and its brand new batteries.

Before I even reached the road, the flashlight stopped working! I shook it and reversed its batteries but it wouldn’t even flicker. There was no moon, so light was very poor. It was extremely dark.

I decided that if I truly trusted that the Universe exists to support me, if I truly believed that I’m safe in all circumstances, then I certainly ought to be able to walk down a reasonably level road for a quarter of a mile without having to have a flashlight on.

And so, I set aside my fears over being out in the middle of the woods alone, especially my fear of

stumbling over something that might loom up from the path itself, and, putting my undependable flashlight in my pocket, I walked very slowly (and fearfully) on down the road until I saw the fence.

I located the sign as a rectangle against the dim light of the sky, but I couldn’t see what the sign said. So I pulled my flashlight out, hoping it might work. It did! It shone on the sign, and I instantly broke out in goose bumps.

The sign was a picture of Lord Shiva in his dancing pose as Naharanja, the same pose I’d seen in my vision, the same as my sitting room statue!

Even more amazing, the sign had a red arrow pointing to the right, with the announcement, "To the Shiva Tubs."

I had not known that was the name given to those hot springs.

The next morning, I learned that the Herakhan Baba many of the Rebirthers talked about is regarded by them as the incarnate form of the Lord Shiva, still dwelling in His cave at the base of the holy Mount Kailash.

So, in a matter of only a few days, I became acquainted, through my vision while Rebirthing and then later at CHS, with this Hindu God, Shiva, regarded by His followers as the most powerful force in the Universe.

 

 CHAPTER TWO

HEALING, SPOON-BENDING, AND CLAIRVOYANCE

Many "miracles" I have witnessed weren’t connected with Babaji—at least, they didn’t involve His image or they didn’t take place in His presence. I’m writing about them because I want to convince everyone reading these stories that miracles abound and can be present in everyday life—even when we don’t expect them.

Three of these involve a Rebirther named Charlie whom I had met up at Campbell Hot Springs in June of ‘78. Charlie was an extremely good-looking man in his early 20s who had been leading a "wild" life in Reno before becoming involved with Rebirthing. He didn’t seem especially spiritual—just a regular guy.

The first "miracle" happened in July or August of ‘78, a few months after I first Rebirthed. That summer I was still seeing Primal patients as I had for the previous seven years. I was still exploring the usefulness of bringing old negative feelings up into consciousness and then expressing them by dramatizing them. But I no longer only

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

practiced Primal therapy—after old negatives had been felt, dramatized, and understood, I taught my Primal patients the Rebirthing breathing and the use of affirmations so they could finally let their old negatives go.

I still had my Primal room intact with its padded ceiling, draped walls padded with six inches of acoustic batting all around, and the padded, carpeted floor. I usually kept nothing in it at all except a box of Kleenex and a pile of pillows in one corner patients could use to simulate a womb or birth canal or whatever.

One day, unexpectedly, I received a call from Charlie who told me that he and two other Rebirthers from CHS had been traveling in the West, leading Rebirth trainings for the past six weeks, day in and day out. The three of them had actually arrived in Los Angeles very late the evening before and had taken a hotel room for the night at a rather expensive hotel over on Sunset Strip. They wanted to see me before they left for Sierraville to go back to Campbell. So I told them to come over later after I finished working with my Primal patient, Sachi. Later that day they showed up—Charlie, Jim, and Mary—but they didn’t seem happy and Jim had a cut on his face and a black eye!

When I inquired about it, I was told that when they had checked into the hotel the night before, Jim had said something to which Charlie took offense. The consequence was that they got

into an actual fist fight. They told me that while Charlie was berating and pounding on Jim, Jim had refused to fight him back, saying that he loved him and nothing Charlie did could make him react negatively. The episode ended when Charlie hit Jim on the face. Charlie’s ring cut Jim’s cheek just below his eye, so that a lot of blood started dripping all over. Jim said he put a cloth to his face and left the hotel room to wander the Strip most of the night, wondering what all of this had to do with peace, truth, simplicity, and love.

Remember, they had been together for six or more weeks doing Rebirth trainings, in each other’s presence essentially 24 hours a day, week after week after week. So their patience for each other had worn a little thin. Old stuff that would probably not have come up if they hadn’t been in such peculiar, intense circumstances did, instead, come up.

As they talked with me about it, I asked if they thought they’d gotten all their negative stuff out and had let it go. Charlie said that he didn’t think that he had. That was why he had phoned me and had delayed their departure in order to come talk with me. It turned out that what they really wanted was to go back into the Primal room and pound on each other with the batakas. They hoped such safe battle might actually give them a chance to bring up and let go of whatever negatives they’d been running. Their approach made a kind of convoluted sense, so I agreed.

I took them back to the Primal room where Sachi was just done with being in her old feelings so the room was free for Charlie and Jim to use. I made two piles of the pillows, and Sachi and I sat down, ready to view the battle of the batakas.

Charlie and Jim took off their shoes and jewelry, then picked the bats up. Charlie banged on Jim a few times, but Jim didn’t use his bat against Charlie. Jim simply held his bataka in front of him as a shield to fend off the blows that Charlie rained on him with increasing force and vigor.

Jim said several times that he had no grievance against Charlie and therefore nothing Charlie did to him would make him raise his hand against him in anger.

After perhaps two or three minutes of pounding Jim with the very safe bataka, Charlie said, "Enough of this nonsense, let’s fight like real men."

Then he threw his bataka into the corner, and proceeded to punch with his bare hands, pounding Jim on the shoulders and the arms and the head. Jim, as big if not bigger than Charlie, simply let Charlie hit him.

When she saw that Jim wasn’t defending himself at all, Sachi jumped up and ran over to Charlie to try to push him away from Jim and make him stop punching Jim. It was truly courageous of her. Sachi is five foot tall; Charlie is well over six foot. So there was no contest. Charlie simply stopped in

the middle of his raging at Jim, put both his hands gently on both upper arms of Sachi and lifted her bodily, saying, "Sachi, you are a nice person, I wouldn’t dream of hurting you; now please go over there and sit down and stay out of the way."

I felt that there was no point in robbing anyone of their feelings, so I encouraged Sachi to sit next to me and feel hers. I reminded her that she had a good opportunity to get into her old negatives about violence. I still wasn’t worried that any harm would come to either Charlie or Jim as they continued fighting, even though Charlie was pounding on Jim with his full fists and the punches got harder and harder.

I had no question in my mind about their being serious, painful blows, yet Jim refused to protect himself. Finally Charlie said, "Oh, God damn, I can’t stand this."

He started to walk out of the Primal room, opened the door, turned around, and smashed his fist into the solid door frame into which the padded door fits, the one place in the whole Primal room where it’s possible to hurt yourself!

He stayed outside of the Primal room for a minute or two, and then came back in and came over to me, saying very softly, "Eve, please do something. I think I’ve broken my hand."

Indeed he had! I could see the break on one of the long bones on

his right hand. I could also see the immense bruising and the hemorrhaging under the surface of the hand. He asked me if I would please set his hand, and I told him I would prefer to take him to an orthopedist. But Charlie said, "Please, I don’t want to go anywhere right now, please just see what you can do."

So, I pulled on his fingers so that the bones of his hand parted and realigned themselves, and then I wrapped his hand.

This was about 4:00 in the afternoon. There was certainly no doubt whatsoever in my mind about the fact that his hand was broken. In addition, it was obviously greatly swollen and badly bruised.

The next morning, most of the swelling had gone down and there was almost no bruising! I was bewildered and insisted that Charlie come to my orthopedist with me. The doctor examined Charlie’s hand and said it seemed to be fine, but he had it X-rayed to be sure. The X-rays showed a recently healed fracture!

Somehow, within less than twenty-four hours, Charlie’s hand had healed almost entirely and he was using his hand perfectly! Another part of that same "miracle" was that Jim showed no bruises from all the hard punches he had received during their afternoon—though his cut cheek and black eye from the previous night still remained.

A second unexplainable event

that involved Charlie took place when a Native American from one of the nearby Southern California tribes came to the regular weekly Monday night meeting at my house to which all Rebirthers in the L.A. area are always invited. About twenty to twenty-five people were there that evening, including Charlie, Jim, and Mary, whom I had convinced to stay with me for a few days after the "fight." None of us knew the "Indian" or had met him before he entered my house and joined our circle.

When I asked him to introduce himself, he did and then asked us all to close our eyes. He said he was going to hand around a bunch of sage. It was about the size of a standard bunch of parsley found in the grocery store. He wanted each of us to speak of what came to our mind as we held the bunch of sage, using it to "channel" through. The small bundle of sage then was passed from person to person around the circle, with people mostly saying that nothing came to mind or else making associations to the smell of the sage itself.

Charlie and I were the last two in the circle. Charlie received the sage just before me. Charlie held it for a while and then said that he had an image in which he saw something with four corners, a naked Indian, some kind of large dirt-moving equipment, and a bow and arrow. He wasn’t sure about the four corners but that’s what he called them. He said they looked like posts in corners of an

area of ground.

When Charlie handed the bunch to me, it was so hot that it felt as if it had been boiled—so hot, as a matter of fact, that I dropped it. My associations to it were struck with the heat that I had felt as I held it. I thought it was amazing that anything could be so hot, and yet still be a green, fresh, unwilted bunch of leaves.

After I gave the bunch of sage back to the Native American who had brought it, he told us he had picked it from sacred ground. He said he had come to talk with us about helping his tribe resist a modern construction company which had been permitted by their local government to start construction on a piece of land that the Indians contended was truly an old burial ground and therefore sacred to them.

To keep the bulldozers from going through their sacred land, the braves in that tribe had agreed that each day they would resist peacefully, though risking their lives. They staked out the corners of the burial ground, and at each corner they had rigged a bow with an arrow attached to the bowstring so that, as soon as a bulldozer or other heavy equipment moved forward, it would trip the bow, sending an arrow flying into the body of the naked brave who stood in its path. Each day for several weeks four different men had successfully prevented the construction equipment from entering the sacred ground.

I was amazed by the number of similarities between what Charlie had said and what the Indian told us. The tribe had staked the corners of their tribal burial ground. There was a nude Indian. There was an immense piece of earth-moving equipment. There was something to do with a bow and an arrow.

I knew that Charlie hadn’t talked with the Native American beforehand. So, I’m forced to conclude that the only way Charlie got information about what that bundle of sage was connected with was through holding it in his hands, letting thoughts come from the universe, channeled into his own brain. Perhaps the heat I felt was from cosmic energy passing through. However it happened, it seemed Charlie and the sage leaves had performed a "miracle of mind reading."

The third "miracle" that involved Charlie took place at an extremely unlikely spot for any kind of miracle, namely, at a nearby coffee shop on a big city street, five blocks away from my home.

A group of us Rebirthers, including Charlie and me, had gone over there, to get some breakfast. When I came back from washing my hands, the table was covered with five or six restaurant spoons and even a fork or two that had been bent into U’s and twisted into screwed shapes.

I was horrified and asked them to please stop it. I hissed that we would get in trouble, the waiter

would certainly throw us out, and the restaurant would be extremely angry about their bent cutlery.

Charlie said it wasn’t anyone’s fault, that when they held the spoons, the spoons just got hot and melted and bent!

I was torn between disbelief and the desire to believe. So I said the only positive thing that I could think of at the time, "Oh, you mean like Uri Geller? Wow, I wish I could bend a spoon just using power of mind."

Charlie said, "You can. Just pick up the spoon by the bowl, and rub your hand across the handle of it and see what happens."

And so I held the spoon by the bowl in my left hand and stroked the handle of the spoon with the forefinger of my right hand, perhaps six or seven times.

Suddenly, I could see that the area I was stroking was beginning to get red hot and that the handle was bending toward the tabletop. I quickly caught the cool end of the molten handle with my right hand fingers and twisted it around so that it made three twists. Still disbelieving the evidence of my own eyes, I touched the part that looked red hot to see if it really were. I found that it was indeed burning hot, raising an instant blister on my finger!

Then I tried to unbend it, but without much success. With all my strength I perhaps shifted the curve slightly, but only just

slightly. No question: The spoon had been well and truly twisted around on itself!

I had no rational explanation for it. I still don’t. Was it because Charlie has some magic powers that he asserted across the table top to bend the spoon I was stroking? That seems unlikely. Another explanation is just as improbable, and that is, that the spoon bent because I poured my energy into it. If so, I have never repeated such "magic." In any case, something happened for which there was no explanation.

A miracle?

Wasn’t it?

For the next ten years, I kept that bent spoon hanging from the drapery rod over one of the windows in my Rebirthing room—a material reminder that miracles do happen. All my Rebirthing clients saw it and many asked about it.

Then, one day, one of the men painting the interior of my house asked what the bent spoon was that was hanging from the drapery rod in the corner room upstairs, the room I call my Rebirthing room. When I told him the story, he asked if he could see it more closely. He told me he was a student of Yoga and had always hoped to see something miraculous. He asked if he could take it overnight to show it to his guru.

That was that. I never saw the spoon (or the painter) again. So

proof of that particular miracle isn’t present any longer in my space. But then, I still know it happened, as do many of my patients.

Three years ago, my middle daughter called to tell me she and her three pre-teen children had tried and had succeeded in bending spoons with thought power alone! It was a rainy day where they lived and they had read a library book that told them how to do it!

I now have two of their spoons hanging in my Rebirthing room. Different spoons, but still the same miracle.

None of these stories involve "major" miracles. But I find them fascinating and not easily explained, even as coincidences. As Bob Mandel says, "There are no small miracles."

Each is a puzzlement and a comfort to everyone of us who witnesses it or learns about it.

 

 CHAPTER THREETHE IMMORTALISTS

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Another "miracle" that also happened in Los Angeles involved two Englishmen, Neil and Ken, both actors.  During the late 70's and early 80's, they toured the United Kingdom for several years performing a two-man play called The Immortalist.

Leonard Orr heard about the play when he was Rebirthing in England, and went to see it in London.  He asked to meet the actors and told them about Rebirthing and its connection with immortality.  When they told him that they were leaving London shortly to come to Los Angeles, Leonard suggested that they contact me.

The morning that I first heard from Neil was a strange one.  I had been working very hard on amending and correcting my basic negative personal law, namely, that the whole world would be better off and everyone would be happier if I would just drop dead and disappear.

I wasn't depressed or despondent.  I just was seriously and logically trying to figure out on what basis did I have the right to stay alive.  Who needed me?  Who benefited from my being alive?  My children were grown, almost strangers because of the thousands of miles that separated each of us from each other.  I had been teaching for years without making much of an apparent dent in the world at large.  Books that I'd written had been well-received but again made no significant difference that I could notice.

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Fundamentally, I was trying to decide if I served the Universe in any way by being alive or was my desire for life just another selfish projection of mine?

At that instant, the phone rang.  An English voice asked, "Hello, is this Dr. Eve Jones, the immortalist?"

Well, of course, I laughed.  I'd never been called an immortalist before (although I love the idea).  We talked for a while and made arrangements to meet when he and his friend Ken brought their play to Los Angeles a week or two later.  I realized that a stranger's voice from across the ocean was answering my existential question: just by staying alive and teaching Rebirthing I served.

We became good friends, and I even had the pleasure of playing Ken's role when the play, The Immortalist, was presented to a conference of Rebirthers in San Francisco, a conference that Ken had not been able to attend, therefore giving me the opportunity to perform with a professional actor for the only time in my life-how's that for a realization of an old daydream?

However, that's not a miracle.

Instead, the miracle concerns something that happened several months later when Neil, Ken, and I stopped by Ken's apartment for him to go in and get a book.  Neil was in the back seat, I was in the passenger seat, and Ken said, "I'll just pull the car in here, it's not really my parking space, but I'll be

out again in a moment."

He went off into the apartment house, taking the car keys with him.  Shortly afterward Neil and I saw a car drive up the alley to the driveway into the parking area.  It looked as if it were headed toward the parking stall that we were occupying.  Just at that moment, I exclaimed, "Oh God, I hope that car isn't coming in here."

At that point, our car proceeded to move!  It moved in a perfect half-circle so that the front end went out from the parking stall, turned to the left, and entered, heading in, into the only empty space down the row, missing the roof columns and all of the parked cars, and stopping just in time to miss the garage back wall.  Meanwhile, the approaching car made its turn and pulled into the space we had so mysteriously vacated.  The driver got out of the car, said, "Thanks a lot, that's my space."

How had the car moved?  We were on level ground, the keys were out of the car, the motor was not running, and yet the car moved and rolled into the only other available parking space perfectly!

Perhaps all miracles are just the immediate response of objective material reality to a pure, heart-felt thought of not wanting to inconvenience anyone.  Maybe the Universe is serving the highest spiritual thought.  Maybe the logic of magic is love.

 

 CHAPTER FOUR

VISIONS AND OTHER PSYCHIC PHENOMENA

     One of the strangest stories that I heard when I first became involved with Rebirthing in 1978 was a story about one of the original Certified Rebirthers, Diane Hinterman.  She had been Rebirthing an elderly woman, a woman who was indeed so frail that Diane was anxious, afraid for a moment that the frail woman might injure herself doing the Rebirthing breath.  During that Rebirth, Diane suddenly saw a dark-skinned man wearing a dhoti standing on the other side of the woman Diane was Rebirthing.  Diane felt instantly reassured and continued to complete the Rebirthing. The personage in that vision later again appeared to her and told her that she should come to see Him.  She understood that He was Herakhan Baba, Babaji, the guru of Paramahansa Yogananda’s guru’s guru.      When first I met Diane, I found myself instantly loving her and making a warm friend of her.  She seemed healthy and clear.  Yet I thought a great deal about such a strange thing happening to her.  I didn’t want to deny its reality; I didn’t want to insinuate that it was some kind of an hallucination on her part; I certainly didn’t think she was lying.  But, it didn’t make sense.     I heard later on that a similar happening occurred while Leonard was Rebirthing himself in his bathtub in upstate New York.  A dark-skinned person appeared to Leonard and asked him why he didn’t come to India to see Him.     I don’t know how either Diane or Leonard identified who appeared as visions to them.  Maybe that personage who was being envisioned gave them His name, for all I know.  In any case, I know that they reported seeing someone else in the room with them during Rebirths.     I wondered about their visions.     Of course, once you know that other people have done something, you tend to want to do

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

the same thing yourself when you’re doing the same thing they were doing.  So lots of people who do the conscious connected breath, the Rebirthing breath, say they see visions.  And who is to say whether they are seeing such visions in and of themselves or whether they are believing that they must see visions and so they are conjuring them up?  Anyhow, how can anyone tell the difference between a vision and something that’s being imagined?  I would imagine that all visions seem totally real to the person seeing them.  Probably the only reason we don’t claim to see them more often is that we wait to receive clues from others about what is being consensually perceived, and then we allow ourselves to “see” what others are “seeing.”     Claims of visions which aren’t consensually validated, of course, remain suspect.  They may be happening.  They may not.  They also might be a kind of hysteria, a kind of response to suggestion and expectation.  Since, in any case, they can’t be verified, they may even be the resort of somebody who seeks more attention than he or she has been getting.  So who knows?  But for those of you who are “vision freaks,” let me tell about some other visions seen by people that I have Rebirthed.     I never saw the people envisioned, myself, but several times people I was Rebirthing have reported to me that they were seeing Herakhan Baba, “my” Babaji, in the room with us.  Twice, too, people I’ve been Rebirthing have told me that they opened their eyes to see Paramahansa Yogananda standing there in the Rebirthing room!  Strange to me is that these people weren’t even devotees of Herakhan Baba or of Yogananda or members of the Self Realization Fellowship, the Yogic organization founded and led by Yogananda.     One time the person I was Rebirthing said he saw someone in the Rebirthing room  wearing a uniform with a certain number of rows of buttons down the front; the person in the vision had dark-brown complexion and very dark brown eyes, very compassionate eyes.    My Rebirthee said that he’d never seen that person before and didn’t know who he was.  I thought perhaps he, too, was “seeing” Yogananda, so I went back to the music room which is where I keep all of my spiritual, esoteric, metaphysical books (other than the books on Rebirthing which are kept in my Rebirthing room), and I pulled out The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.  I showed the person I was Rebirthing one of the pictures of Yoganandaji when He lived here in Los Angeles and founded the Self Realization Fellowship.  But

my Rebirthee ignored that picture while grabbing the book out of my hands, saying, “You just passed it, you just passed the picture of the person I saw!”     Then he located a picture of Yogananda as a young school boy, wearing His school uniform with buttons in rows down the front.     The person I was Rebirthing never had read that book, knew nothing about Yoganandaji or about the Self Realization Fellowship, had never gone to the Lake Shrine, and had never ever heard of the whole idea of Kriya Yoga!            What to make of it?  Who knows?     Rebirthing has definitely brought “esoterica” into my life, both as a consequence of the metaphysical and spiritual backgrounds of many Rebirthers and clients I’ve met, and also as direct experiences I’ve had while Rebirthing.  Such esoteric experiences include not only spoon-bending and psychokinesis, but also clairvoyance and fire-walking.     One such experience happened during my second or third trip to Campbell Hot Springs.  I was in the basement of the main lodge building, being Rebirthed by my friend Tim Torian.  As I was breathing, eyes closed, I was distracted by “seeing” a very, very clear image of two people, both strangers, though I felt I “knew” their names.  I told Tim their names and described what they were wearing.  I also told him they were very near, in fact, right above us, possibly upstairs in the main room of the lodge.  Then I turned my attention back to my breathing.      After, I completed my Rebirth, I went upstairs for the post-Rebirth get- together during which everybody shares their experiences.  As we were all talking about what had happened with us while we were doing our breathing sessions, two people came in.  They were the very people I had seen!  They were dressed the way I had seen them, and, most strangely of all, their names were the names I had told to Tim!     It turned out that they had arrived at Campbell Hot Springs shortly after the time when we had all dispersed to do our Rebirths with each other.  Meeting Leonard, they were told that they had to go get Rebirthed before they could join the workshop, so they had gone on the porch of the lodge almost directly above the basement where I was being Rebirthed by Tim, and they had traded Rebirths with each other.            How can I explain my “vision” of them?     Of course, it’s possible that my hearing is so sensitive that I overheard them call each other by name.  But how can I explain being

able to “see” how they were dressed?  I’m forced to just chalk this up as either an amazing coincidence or else as a pure-and-simple case of clairvoyance.     A very impressive and equally inexplicable event involved a photograph I saw during my second trip to India.  I had gone to Jaipur to spend a day or two with the family of the people who owned Anjali House, a tourist home in New Delhi that I had stayed at during my first trip.  The father, Mr. Joshi, wanted me to look at a Polaroid picture that a friend of his had taken of Babaji during a trip He had made a few years earlier to Mr. Joshi’s house in Jaipur.     When I looked at it, what I saw was Babaji looking straight forward and also looking to the left in profile and also looking to the right in profile, so that the photo itself looked very much like many Hindu statues which show Shiva with three faces.       I assumed it was a clever superimposition of three photos, so I wasn’t especially impressed by the photo as such.  But the story Mr. Joshi told me about it was amazing.     He told me he had a friend who had had an immense amount of contempt for him because of his affection and connection with Herakhan Baba, Babaji.  That friend, hearing that Babaji was visiting Jaipur and was coming to stay at Mr. Joshi’s house, came over to see Him, very skeptical, not at all reverent.  Babaji told Mr. Joshi to tell his friend that Babaji wanted him to come back with a camera so that he could take a picture of Him.      So, the man went and got his Polaroid camera.  When he came back, Babaji sat there looking straight at him and asked him to take a photo.  The man clicked the release button on his camera.  And the photo that I saw was that photo!  It was not a superimposition of three different photos.  It was one photo of Babaji with three heads!      How could it have happened?  Was He turning His head so quickly that He actually beat the rate of speed of light, and impressed His image in all three positions on that Polaroid film?     The skeptic who took the photo, by the way, was so impressed, not only by the three faces of “Shiva” on his film, but by the fact that Babaji put on such an impressive demonstration presumably to win his heart and the mind, that that man became a sincere devotee of Babaji and remains so to this day.  Babaji’s camera “trick” with him was as effective in winning a new devotee as His “trick” with my camera that I describe in Chapter Six was to be with me.

     Another experience of apparent psychokinesis took place when I returned to England from my second trip to India.  Because I was working every day, including weekends, I spent a great deal of time with the people who had organized for me there in London: Toni Tye (the very first Rebirther in all of Great Britain) and her husband, Lee (Aire) Preisler, Ronald Fuchs and Diane Roberts.  We all got off on each other’s energy, and I believe that the time I spent there on that particular trip to England comprised some of the highest, most exuberant, spiritually clear times of my life.  Some especially magical events transpired then, too.     After several weeks of working every day, we all finally had a day free.  Ronald and Diane decided to spend the day with their daughter, but Toni and Aire borrowed a car from their friend, Ben Bartel, and we all decided to take a trip to Stonehenge and to Salisbury Cathedral, and, if possible, up to Coventry Cathedral as well.      After a sumptuous, leisurely breakfast, we finally left, an hour after we said we would.  Ben had brought a picnic lunch and did the driving, so Toni and Aire and Louis and I relaxed and just enjoyed seeing the countryside.      Toni told a marvelous story of a dream that she had had the night before.  In the dream she was standing on the feet of Babaji with her back against Him, as He stood up behind her with His arms on her shoulders.  She was moving through the ordinary events of a usual day of hers, but she was seeing everything with the eyes of Babaji who was steering her to look at this and to look at that.     What a beautiful dream it is, isn’t it?  How marvelous to feel so certainly that Babaji is there to support and guide and direct and protect, and that she was seeing the world with the eyes of God, looking at the same world that the eyes of God are looking at!     So her dream got us all in a fine mood.    When we reached Stonehenge, I found, much to my dismay, that the circle of megaliths had been fenced in and we could only walk up to the fencing and look through the wire to see the circle of megaliths.  I was very disappointed, because I had very fond memories of having been there twenty years earlier with my three daughters, when my youngest daughter was only six, spending a warm afternoon almost totally alone amidst the stones.  I remember trying to understand what my feelings were up there on that solitary plain with the wind blowing through the stones.  I felt amazement, but not awe.  Indeed, the most

beautiful image I recall from that day was of a woman sitting and nursing her child in the shadow of one of the megaliths.     Well, when I found Stonehenge was now enclosed, I must have made some sound of disappointment.  One of the guards came over and asked, “Have you been here before?  Have you come a long way?  I bet you’re American.”     We introduced ourselves and I told him that yes, I had been there before, when it was still open from the road.  He explained that it had been closed off because people were beginning to put graffiti on the stones, so now it was a you-can-look but you-can’t-touch kind of place.  I asked him if we couldn’t please just run into the center of the circle to take one photo, and we joked about how I would be happy to take photos of him, of course, as well.  And so, pointing to Louis and me, he said, “Yeah, go on, the two of you can go right out to the middle of the circle.  If one of the other fellows comes up to make you leave, you don’t need to tell them my name.  Just say that you thought that the guard over here told you that it would be OK to do that.”     So, Louis and I had the pleasure of running out into the center of the circle, where we took pictures in all four directions, and then ran back to Toni, Ben, and Aire just as two other guards from other portions of the perimeter started to come over to us.  Dozens of other tourists who were also shocked started yelling at us.     There’s nothing miraculous about that episode at all.  But it was really nice that this Brit, whose job depended on his keeping idiots like me from running out into the grass between the stones, permitted us to do exactly that!  I took marvelous pictures of the beautiful sky and fluffy white clouds over Salisbury Plain, beyond the henge that day, and also took some of our kind guard.  I had a lot of fun sending him the picture later on, along with a good-sized tip for having let us take those photos.     After we left Stonehenge, we went on up to Salisbury Cathedral, found a parking space in one of the car parks (as they’re called by all jolly olde Brits) and then left to go to the cathedral.  We all wrote down the location of the parking space so we wouldn’t forget it.     The first sight of Salisbury Cathedral was breathtaking.  The spires of Salisbury Cathedral seemed to pierce the fluffy white clouds that were scudding across the vivid, intensely blue sky that blustery spring day.  Hawthornes were in bloom, as were the daffodils.  

     The cathedral was very crowded, so after trying at first to stay together, we separated and agreed to meet back at the car park in an hour and a half.     The noontime service appeared to be over, but something else was still going on.  At a long table that was set up in front of the altar in the main hall of the cathedral there was a large group comprised of Anglican clergymen.  A person next to me explained they were mostly clergymen of high station, bishops and archbishops, from all of the cathedrals throughout Great Britain.  It was a lovely sight to see all these different ministers in their different raiments.  There wasn’t a great deal of uniformity, one clergyman to the next, although they all seemed to wear mostly very dark maroon, almost the color that I’ve seen the Dalai Lama and His followers wear.  The Anglican clergymen’s maroon costumes varied in style from elaborate and ornate vestments for some of the older clergy to a backwards-collared maroon T-shirt on top of a pair of ordinary blue denim jeans for one of the younger members of the group.      As we walked into the cathedral, the panel of clergymen was just finishing whatever their conference had been about, and after everyone sang a hymn I didn’t recognize, the leader, an archbishop, I believe, opened the discussion to questions from members of the audience sitting in the cathedral. I thought the questions would be theological in nature, so the first one was very unexpected.  A pre-teen girl inquired in a high voice, “How many windpipes does that organ have?”      The clergyman moderating the meeting seemed taken aback momentarily, but then laughed and said, “Well, I don’t know how many windpipes there are in that organ, but I can tell you how many windbags there are up on the stage with me,” as he turned around and pretended to count each and every one of the ministers.     I thought it was cute to hear an archbishop poke fun at his colleagues, his fellow clergy.     Still, of course, that wasn’t at all miraculous.  But afterwards, the freaky stuff happened.  When Louis and I left the church, we realized that we were running late.  Concerns about punctuality have always had a great deal of charge for me, probably because time must have been a major consideration when I was spending three days getting born.  I suppose by the time I finally appeared, everyone was heartily sick and tired of me.  And there might very well have been a few who were almost hoping that I would drop dead, anything, just to stop the waiting and

struggle.  Maybe the same thing even happened at my birth as happened at the birth of my first child, who arrived after I had been in labor for 26 hours.  I was all alone when her head emerged right there on the hospital bed.  It was great that I was the first person to touch my first child—but it was confusing, too.  It might have been easier if I hadn’t been left all alone by my husband and the doctor, however fed up they were with waiting for so long.      Anyhow, Louis and I couldn’t locate Ben or Toni or Aire in the crowd, so we left the cathedral grounds and walked very briskly down the winding road from the cathedral to the car park.       When we reached the spot where the car had been parked, it wasn’t there!      What a marvelous opportunity that was for me to go through all of my old negatives about being abandoned, as well as about taking too long to get some place and worrying that people wouldn’t wait for me!        In great tension, I burst into tears right there in the car park.  Louis tried to convince me we hadn’t been left behind.  He pointed out that, after all, our companions were the very people who were taking care of us.  We were the stars of the show they were producing.  He suggested they had probably simply moved the car or gone off to get something and they would be back in a while.  But a quick search of the car park didn’t locate the car and a wait of a quarter hour didn’t result in their appearance.      I decided, since we had last seen them on the opposite side of the cathedral during the finish of the service, that we should go back to the cathedral itself.  I put a note on the post near the empty parking space explaining that we had been there and would come back in half an hour, then we hurried up the winding single road that led the half mile or so from the car park to the cathedral.  We went all the way around through the now almost empty cathedral itself, and even went to all the various little houses and buildings attached to the cloisters nearby, but we still didn’t find Ben or Toni or Aire.     So, in increasing trepidation, we went back to the car park.  Hurray!  Toni and Aire were there, both frantic, apparently convinced that Ben and Louis and I had left.  They hadn’t noticed my note although it was still on the post next to the empty parking space.  After another search, we found the car.  Ben still wasn’t there, but at least the car now was back, though still not where it had been left originally.  It had definitely been moved!     We figured that Ben must have been taking

the car for a quick little spin somewhere when Louis and I first returned to find the car gone to leave our note, and that Ben had then found a different parking space when he returned.  We assumed he had read my note saying Louis and I were going back to the cathedral and had then gone back, too.     So, once more, we all climbed back up the road again to the cathedral.  We still couldn’t find Ben, so we once again returned to the car park.  No luck.  No Ben.  Finally, on our fourth trip up to the cathedral to look for him, we found Ben.      It turned out that he had spent the entire time up at Salisbury Cathedral itself, looking for us there, and had never gone to the car park!     I can’t explain how the car moved.  But, we all benefitted from this mysterious translocation.  If the car had stayed where we parked it in the first place, I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to go through all my abandonment stuff, and, I might add, Ben, Toni, Aire, and Louis would also not have had their opportunities to run through their numbers as well.     That wasn’t the end of magic for that day, though.  We left Salisbury after eating our lunch in the car park, and went on to Coventry Cathedral.  Then, on our way back to London, we got lost.  (Apparently being lost wasn’t to be an uncommon occurrence with this particular bunch of us.)  As we were going down a country lane, hoping to be able to pick up one of the major roads leading back to London, we came, instead, to the end of the road!  To our right was a garden, perhaps fifty foot across and twenty foot deep, covered with all sorts of blooming plants.  In addition, every piece of bare ground between the plants was filled by some kind of whimsical statue or contraption: elves, dwarfs, leprechauns, fairies, geese, bunnies, windmills, and other little figurines of everything anyone has ever used to illustrate a children’s novel, all hidden amongst the grass and the low shrubs.  We were all enchanted by this little fairyland and I took several pictures of it.     As we tried to turn around on the narrow road, we got ourselves stuck on what Brits call a verge (what we here in the USA call a soft shoulder or a low ditch).     Right near the edge of the garden there was a large stretch of cultivated farmland.  So, while the fellows struggled to push the car out, I walked across the road to a pigpen in which there was a pig that was huge—he must have been at least six or eight feet long, and maybe three or four feet thick through!  I’d never seen

a pig up close, and I was appalled to watch him standing over a pile of steaming garbage, snorting and snuffling, as he was eating the food that he also was urinating and defecating upon.  I used up my last shots taking pictures of him.     Even if I weren’t mainly a vegetarian, I don’t think I could ever have eaten bacon or pork or ham after that!  I found myself having to come to terms with the idea that a pig is really not a clean animal.  It eats crap, and however delicious its flesh may be, it probably isn’t right and good and healthy to eat it.  I imagine the flesh of scavengers is even “worse” than that of predators.            Anyway, eventually the owner of the garden and the farm came out and gave us directions that allowed us to get back to a main road.  We located a store where I bought more film for my camera, then we tried to retrace our steps back to that garden so I could take more pictures of the figurines.  But it wasn’t there!  Not the farm.  Not the pig.  Not the garden.  Not the figurines.  We had the correct road, but the whole previous scene was absent!  All that proved we were there were my few hastily snapped photos!            After an hour spent driving up and down that road trying to locate the farm, we realized we were thirsty, so we went to a very picturesque pub we saw on the road (the first pub I had ever gone to).  The pub was part of an old mill that still had a working water wheel.  It turned out to lie at the intersection of several ley lines of power.  Such lines are believed to encircle the earth, much as meridians are supposed to be lines of power running the length of the human body.     Maybe it all transpired that way because we were near ley lines.     That pub was, so far as I know, my first encounter with ley lines.  Since then, I’ve gone to numerous places on the face of the earth where such lines of power are said to be intersecting.  One of the most fascinating of such experiences was in Poland, in Krakov Cathedral, where one particular spot in the corner of a wall is supposed to be such a power point.       I watched a man standing in that corner with eyes closed for at least fifteen or twenty minutes, essentially motionless.  In front of him, covered by some of his clothing, stood a little girl who was as silent and motionless as he was.     I have always wondered what they were doing while standing there.  Was he waiting to get something?  Or was he getting something?  I just don’t know.

     Another encounter with power points was in Glasgow, where I led a workshop that concluded with an outdoor group Rebirth held at the top of a hill within a circle of oaks said to remain from the days of the Druids.      I do know I didn’t get any magic energies there or at that pub in England or at any of the ley line, power point places that I’ve been to.  To date, I have not had a single tingle from any of such experiences.  I’ve never felt any changes of any kind from them, although I have, of course, been blown away mentally by watching what people do at such places.     I don’t think that’s because I’m insensitive.  I certainly do seem to be capable of feeling awe, as when I first went into Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  I’ve had many other experiences where I felt some prescience of some kind, where I felt tuned in on the “vibes” of the place.  But all of that notwithstanding, to date, I have never yet felt anything when I’ve put myself at an intersection of ley lines, just as I also have never felt anything when I have experienced Reiki practitioners, even some of the leading Reiki masters.       By comparison, I have felt other energy transfers.  For example, one of the highest times in my life was when I was with Arthur Lincoln Pauls, the innovator of a modern bodywork form called Orthobionomy.  Arthur had just finished a hands-on Orthobionomy session on me, which ended with what he called aura-cleansing.  I had my eyes closed, so I didn’t know what was happening, but I felt a most intense rise and flooding of energy throughout my body, similar to my experience with Babaji that I will later describe in Chapter Seven.  I was very surprised to open my eyes and find Arthur moving his hands through the air a foot above me.  with each sweep, I felt a surge of energy rushing through me.  It all ended when I laughed, Arthur opened his eyes, and stopped the session after saying to me, “My, you have the thickest aura I’ve ever felt.”     I still don’t know if that’s good or bad—he wouldn’t tell me.     Although I have never felt any energy changes in association with ley lines or with other hands-on kinds of so-called healing experiences, I have done other things which one isn’t supposed to be able to do unless one’s mind is clear and in a high spiritual state, for example, the Tony Robbins firewalk, which I did.  But I know I didn’t follow Tony’s directions in order to walk the fire.     One of Tony’s first directions at the beginning of the evening was that we should think of a time when we were totally happy.  I

started to think of times when I was happy, but each time I thought of such a time, I also thought of what had happened afterwards, how this love turned into rage and impatience and deserting one another, and how that excitement and joy turned into burden, etc., etc.  Going back as far as I could, I couldn’t remember a single time when I had been completely happy without that memory being instantly corrupted by my later knowledge of how that time didn’t persist.       So, of course, all of this plunged me into a state of emotional despair, and I started weeping right there amidst the four hundred or so people who were attending that particular firewalk.  (It didn’t matter.  Other people were also weeping about things.  It was a time of high emotional excitement.)  But, in any case, through the whole evening, I wasn’t able to do any of the exercises Tony told us to do.  I tried, but I kept being hung up by other memories that kept submerging the ones that I was supposed to be remembering in order to get myself higher and higher.       At the very end of the lecture part of the evening, Tony told us all to take off our shoes and stockings, and then to stretch out on the floor of the conference room while he read us some directions.  Well, by the time I got my shoes untied, and my stockings taken off, I couldn’t find any place to lie down.  I finally ended up squeezing in a twisting kind of way across the floor between two rows of chairs, putting my head under one chair and getting my legs tucked under another chair in the row in front of where I had been sitting.  My head was jammed up against some man’s feet, and they were probably the smelliest feet I’d ever encountered.     So, whatever it was that Tony was saying very, very, very rapidly, passed right by me.  I don’t know what he said.  I wasn’t concentrating on him because I was trying hard to catch a breath without being overwhelmed by the smell of those feet.     Then, finally, deliverance was at hand.  Tony finally stopped droning on and on and said, “OK, everybody get up.  We’re going to go across the street to the fire pits.”     I certainly didn’t expect to walk the fire, not because of fear, but because I knew I hadn’t done any of the mental exercises that he had directed us to do to get ourselves in a state so that we could handle the firewalk.  But I went along, at least to watch.  Barefooted, I stumbled and picked my way across the street over to the large hotel parking lot where the 12-foot-long fire pit had been dug and was filled with burning coals.  

     The first person who walked across the fire was Tony Robbins.  Right after him came his wife, the woman he had married only the week before that particular evening.  Then came the center manager for the Los Angeles center producing this weekend event.  Then another one of the center managers walked the coals.     And then, somehow, there was Louis getting in line and walking across the coals!      And I was just behind him.  After he was across, some woman grabbed my arm and asked, “Are you ready to walk?”     Startled, I exclaimed, “You’re not going to let me walk, are you?”     She answered, “Well, that’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”            I said, “Yes!”      And she said, “Well, then, go for it.”      And so I did.  I wasn’t filled with fervor.  I didn’t have any images of cool moss or waterfalls.  I wasn’t concerned about safety.  I wasn’t concerned about anything except possibly tripping and falling full length on the coals.  I was just absolutely surprised.  I was surprised that they let me do it.  I was surprised that I did it!  But I’m still not sure my state of mind is what enabled me to do it.     There’s some relationship, I’m sure, between a state of high spiritual perfection and the ability to transform reality so as to walk on fire without getting burned or to levitate or to heal instantly so that you can pierce yourself with a saber and then not have any blood show—that kind of stuff.            But I don’t know if there’s a single and direct relationship, that you must be spiritually high in order to do these things.  I don’t know about that.  I wish I did.  I like the thought that we all heal in each other’s presence.            Sometimes I find myself wondering what it is that marks the difference between me and other people I know who have had visions, messages, etc.  Is it that I’m simply insensitive to cues in my environment that otherwise might be noticed by someone who is more spiritually attuned?  Am I missing the regular messages that God sends me?     Does God, does Babaji, only send messages to people who have more faith than I do?  My stance is one of pure agnosticism: I don’t “know.”     Furthermore, I don’t know how I would “know,” I don’t know what would mark “knowledge” of things which are not real and material.     So I remain surprised, engaged, captivated, puzzled, bemused, even confused, but never sure.  Neither of Yes nor of No.     But I’m not an atheist, as, for example, my

uncle and my older sister are.  They have no hesitation in saying that there is no God, that it’s ridiculous to think that there is such a thing as God or such a being as God.  They are certain.  They are pure-and-simple materialists, atheists.  They believe that the entire construct of God is a pure projection of infantile need on the part of the individuals who comprise the particular society that shares that view of God.     But I remain an agnostic.  I wish I did “know.”  I wish I believed certainly that there is not or certainly that there is.     Meanwhile, as I walk around, I see “signs.”  And signs do abound.  Every time I lie in my hot tub and look up and see one particular star, I’m reminded of Babaji.  My mind instantly goes back to scenes of interactions with Him.  I think that star is a sign.  Every single cloud-free night, it’s as if Babaji is showing me that He is there for me to think about.     But such “signs” are far from being the kinds of visions seen by many other people I know.  For example, Joanne Hongslo told me that once she was walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, as she liked to do every morning on her way to work, and suddenly, there was Babaji standing on the sidewalk in front of her, asking her, “Why you no come to see me?”     It was at that point that she decided to go to India to see Babaji, and started saving money so that she could have enough for the trip and for presents for Babaji.     Now that’s a very clear vision.  From her way of describing it, the individual who stood in front of her on the sidewalk on the bridge was real, three-dimensional flesh—not a vision in the sense of an ephemeral thought, an image—but indeed a reality.  Just as, for example, the brown individual who appeared to Diane Hinterman in her early days as a Rebirther also seemed real and material to her, not just a phantasmagoric thought that she was trying to superimplant upon the apparent reality around her.     But who can tell what set and setting create out of ostensible reality?     I well remember the time when I had one of my clearest lessons in the effect of the mind and the effect of set and setting.  It was late at night, and I had just finished working for four or five hours after dinner and after the children were in bed.  I was sitting in my living room, and I had just lit a joint and started to relax, looking across the length of the living room into the dining room, at the vase holding flowers that sat in the middle of the dining room table.  It is a blue pottery vase (on the table still today as I’m writing this) and it has, to me, a very

satisfying fat belly shape, Colonial in type, although it is a modern piece of pottery.  As I looked at it, I suddenly was struck with an immense fear.  The vase had disappeared and, instead, what I saw was a detached human hand holding up the head of a monkey or an ape, dripping blood!            I was so frightened as I looked at it that I turned my head away and closed my eyes and almost panted in my anxiety, sitting there at the sofa.      I thought about my fear and my apparent hallucination (not drug-related for I had only lit the joint—like President Clinton, I hadn’t yet inhaled).  I reasoned that anything that I think is “out there” is something which is already in my mind.  It’s my thought.  It’s my thought.  It’s my thought.  Not reality.     As I thought that, I thought, well, I surely don’t need to be afraid of decapitated primates dripping blood on my dining room table.  At that point, I opened my eyes and looked back again, only slightly fearfully.     This time, sitting in the middle of the dining room table, still constructed out of the vase and the flowers that were in it, was an entirely different pattern of light and shadow.  This time what I saw was the head of the Madonna holding the Babe.  That fearful image had changed into one of radiant peace, joy, and love!     In that instant, I realized all I ever have to do to change my reality is change the way I’m looking at it.      What is perfect about what is?  That’s always the injunction placed upon me.  I must find it.  The minute I find what that perfection is, reality itself becomes transformed into a very clear depiction of that perfection.     As I started to say earlier, I do like the idea that we are each of us here helping the next and ourselves heal ourselves, that we heal one another, that everything that we do is an opportunity for us to change our minds about some old deep-seated negative.  I have found that some people are more evocative than others.  People that I feel very close to have a very decided capacity to be involved with me in the materialization of an old negative.     For example, I believe that having the car mysteriously switch from one place in the car park to another, enabling me to run into my fear of abandonment, wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been with Toni and Aire and Ben.  Other times when I’ve been with them have also involved my coming up hard against my old, old fear of being lost and abandoned.     One of those times was when the entire training I was leading at Manjushri Institute in

Ulverston, Cumbria, decided to take an afternoon off.  Many of us wanted to go to nearby Windemere, where Hawthorne wrote and where he is buried in the churchyard of the church where he was a minister.  It’s a beautiful little town.  We had a very large van and it was a lovely ride.     We got to the assembly hall of the church just in time to have hot cocoa and bread and butter before it unexpectedly started to blizzard.  By the time I left the church to go outside to take pictures of the tombstones, including Hawthorne’s, several inches of snow had already fallen.  The Celtic crosses of the tombstones were altered by the way the snow settled so that, instead of looking like crosses, they actually looked simply like jack o’ lanterns.  I took many pictures and I greatly enjoy looking at my photos of these smiling faces on the tombstones behind that dour gray church in the middle of the Lake District.  They looked like they were making a mockery both of death and of greatness.     Because it was blizzarding so hard and getting more and more strong and blustery, we all decided to forego going around the shops and sights of the city of Windemere.  Instead, we got back into the van, to try to return to Manjushri in time for supper.      By the time we had gone just a few blocks, the snow on the ground was close to six inches deep, and it was almost impossible to see out of the window of the van.  A couple of large busses had slipped on the road and were now broadside to the flow of traffic, resulting in a complete stop of all traffic flow.     I longed to walk in the snow because that’s a pleasure which a person living in Los Angeles doesn’t have very often.  I thought, OK, I’ll get out and walk until traffic starts flowing again, and when I see the van driving by, I’ll hop back on.  That was agreed upon.  And so I got out of the van, with Louis right behind me.  Then Tony and Aire got out, and then Ronald and Diane got out.     I could see each couple getting out of the van, but as Louis and I started to walk away, within a matter of perhaps ten feet at the most, I lost sight of the other couples and, soon after, Louis was lost to my sight as well.  I wasn’t frightened.  I was truly enjoying myself walking alone down the sidewalk in the thick snow, in this little town with its major road being about one and a half car lanes wide by USA standards.  I enjoyed myself looking in shop windows until it suddenly dawned on me that traffic was once again flowing and that approximately twenty minutes had passed but I had not yet seen the van go by me.  So I

thought I had better turn around and go back up the road toward where the van was supposed to be in the slowly moving traffic.     I passed the previously stalled busses as I walked all the way back to the bridge where I had last seen the van, but hunt though I did, I could not see it through the falling snow.  I felt panicked that it had passed me without my seeing it.  And without my being seen.  Once again, I was in the throws of my fear that I was abandoned.  I hurried to walk back up to the busses creeping along, trying to find the van, with no success.  The van simply wasn’t in the line of traffic now flowing by in the few feet ahead of myself I could see through the thick, swirling snowfall.     It was now very close to 6:00 P.M., and all the tiny stores that were dotted along the high road were closing.  I walked into one just to get warm and asked if they could tell me how to find the police station where I hoped I could get help getting back to Manjushri.  The woman closing her shop gave me directions, and then, just as I started to walk out of the store, I ran into Louis, who looked almost as frenzied and frantic and lost as I felt.  What a relief to have at least found each other.     The two of us decided together that we would once again walk back up toward the bridge where the busses had slid, stopping the traffic.  We would once more look for the van.  If we didn’t run into it, we would go to the police station and try to get a taxi or something that would drive us from Windemere to Ulverston, the city right near Manjushri Institute.  We walked and didn’t see the van.       Suddenly, just where we stood, the snow stopped falling.  We were right underneath a street light post with the light shining.  There was an area of about ten foot of clear space around us with no snow falling through it.  In that instant three things occurred.       First, the van came up from my left.  It turned out that it had never moved in all the time that we had been gone from it!  Once the busses had started to move, the van had had some difficulties in getting up the incline, so it had been stuck at the bottom of the hill leading to the bridge.  It had only just then finally got itself going and was just driving by when we saw it clearly under the street light!      Second, just as I turned to Louis to say, “There’s the van,” Toni and Aire came up from behind us in the circle of light.  And third, Ronald and Diane came from in front of us!      Without any delay, all six of us smoothly got back on the van as if nothing had happened.  The people still in the van had never even waited for us.  All that had

happened was that each of us had once again been given an opportunity to confront our issues of fear about being self-determined and of stepping out, doing what we wanted to do, in conflict with our need to feel that we belonged and were protected, but confined.  

 

 CHAPTER FIVE

DECIDING TO GO TO INDIA

     Only yesterday someone asked me, “What’s the connection between Rebirthing and Babaji?  Do I have to believe in this Indian guru in order to get any value from Rebirthing?”

            Of course the answer is, No.

     But without planning or consciously desiring it, I found that as I Rebirthed, I began having an intense, profound relationship with this guru residing in Herakhan, up in the Himalayas, in Uttar Pradesh, India.

     My initial reaction when I first heard a Rebirther chanting a Sanskrit chant and talking about a fellow who had yellow stripes across his forehead was, “This is nonsense.  Why does a guru always have to be talking to us in some otherwise unintelligible language?  Why does he have to wear weird get-up’s and live in far-away places?  Why is it that so-called spiritual people are so resistant to the beliefs, the recognitions, that have developed from our own Western world?”

     In fact, my reaction wasn’t even mild.  I found myself intensely disgusted with people who were running around chanting away in some foreign language, talking about how much they wanted to go to India to see Babaji. 

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

Even as late as Fall of 1980, after almost three years of involvement with Rebirthing, I still had a great deal of impatience and scorn when confronted by Rebirthers who chanted, “Om Namah Shivai.”

            Matters changed quite suddenly and unexpectedly.

     Leonard Orr was staying at my house, along with Jeanne Carr and about a dozen other Rebirthers from Campbell Hot Springs.  Also visiting was my older sister from New York City who had never been in my house in Los Angeles before and who had never been Rebirthed.  My house was full of commotion.

     The drama of that circus, however, was far exceeded by the events occurring in my professional teaching life at Los Angeles City College.

     As one of the senior professors, for years I had had a schedule where I taught an 8:00 class, a 9:00 class, and then an 11:00 class, so that on days when I didn’t meet with anyone later than that for a testing or counseling session, I was able to leave my campus office at noon and come home to see patients in my private practice and do other things.

     My new department Chair, however, gave me a schedule for Spring of 1981 that no longer permitted that.  In fact, I was scheduled for an 8:00 class, an 11:00 class, and a 1:00 class, so that I would have four empty hours to spend in my office each day.  There would be very little that I could do to occupy myself productively during so many office hours each week, especially since it wasn’t even possible to keep a typewriter in my office because equipment was regularly stolen whenever left there.  In addition, I couldn’t come home until mid-afternoon, too late to see patients and also prepare supper. 

     When I saw my new schedule, I was sure some mistake had been made, so I went to see my Chairperson.  She, however, angrily told me that if I didn’t like it, I could quit, but that she was not going to change it.  Equally angry, I told her I would, indeed, quit.

     So, I phoned the College District Board and requested my resignation papers.  Then I left campus to go home to be with Leonard and

CHAPTER TEN

the others.

     Driving home, I wondered why I had created such a confrontation.  I gave a lot of serious consideration to the possibility that this bizarre angry confrontation had taken place so that I would stop teaching and instead immerse myself full-time in Rebirthing and leading Rebirth trainings.

     However, I certainly did not consciously want to stop being a college teacher.  After all, teaching was a major part of my life.  By that time, I’d spent over twenty-two years teaching: seven and a half years at the University of Chicago before moving to California to teach at UCLA for a little over a year and then fourteen years at Los Angeles City College.  I loved teaching.  But with such a bad schedule, I felt I had no alternative but to quit.

      When I came to school the following day, surprisingly, my department Chairperson met me at my office door, and without apology or explanation said that if I wanted to take a sabbatical leave the following semester, it would be approved, even though I hadn’t requested one and even though the application date for one had already passed several weeks earlier.

     I realized if I took a sabbatical, she wouldn’t have to explain about giving me so outrageous a schedule that I preferred to quit.  As I thought further about it, I realized that being paid half pay for a semester was certainly better than being paid no pay for a semester.  After all, I could always quit later.  Furthermore, if I took my typewriter with me, I could finish working on my textbook on Physiological Psychology while fulfilling the travel requirements for a sabbatical, traveling around California.

     So, I hurriedly wrote up such a sabbatical plan and submitted it for consideration by the District Board.

     I was informed a few days later that my travel plan had been accepted and that I was free to take the following semester off while being paid half pay.

     I received that notice at my house in the mail which I opened in my office while Leonard was sitting nearby in my living room.  I jumped up and ran over to him to say, “Things are really getting better and better!  Here I am now being paid to stay away from school for a

semester and that beats quitting and not getting any pay at all.”

     Leonard said, “Good.  Now you can come to India with me and meet Babaji.”

            That shocked me.

     I said, “Oh, Leonard, I don’t know about meeting Babaji.  In fact, I find your interest in India very bizarre.  You know I’m Jewish and Jews don’t really have any kind of material concepts of God.  I find it sort of childish to think that some particular person somewhere is God.  If that can be true, then anyone, anywhere, can be God.  Anyhow, except during sex, I can’t surrender totally and completely to anyone, even people I know and love very much.  So how can I expect myself to surrender to somebody that I don’t know and really have no basis for having a relationship with?”

     Leonard  said, “Well, think about it.  I’m going to be there in February, and that’s a really good time of the year to be there.  India is beautiful and Herakhan is even more beautiful than Campbell Hot Springs.”

     I promptly discarded his suggestion that I might want to travel to India, but I did start to contemplate the possibility of traveling outside of the United States instead of staying in the States and working on my book.  I got so excited over the thought, I inquired of the travel agent Leonard recommended what a trip around the world would cost.

      After a great deal of soul-searching and confusion, I decided to take my friend Louis along with me and go on a trip around the world.  No working.  No typewriter.  I would write my textbook after we returned from our trip, during the summer vacation.

     When I received Pan Am’s brochure, I learned that stopping in India on the way from Thailand to Egypt was no added expense!  So, I decided we would stop in India after all.

     Phil Laut and Sondra Ray had just returned from Phil’s first trip to Babaji.  When Phil learned that Louis and I were going, he brought over his back pack and several handy items to use while trekking to the ashram and while staying there.   I still have and use the clothesline he gave me.  I was very touched

when Phil bent down to look into my eyes and said, “We all want to make your trip to Babaji as easy and comfortable as possible.”

     So, three months after first receiving the proposed class schedule, Louis and I were on our way to New Delhi, ready to meet Babaji for the first time.  

 

 CHAPTER SIX

FIRST TRIP TO BABAJI FLYING AND PHOTOGRAPHY

     The first time I saw Babaji, in February, 1981, was not at His ashram in Herakhan, but instead in one of the temples devoted to Him in the city of Vrindaban, the reputed birthplace of Lord Krishna and the place where He was married.

            Louis and I had already been in India for almost ten days, waiting to learn where we could find Babaji.  While waiting, we had gone to the city of Shrinagar to see Lake Dal and then to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.  We had even taken a few days to fly up to Kathmandu in Nepal.

            Between each trip, we returned to Anjali House in New Delhi where ten other Rebirthers, including Leonard, were all waiting to hear word of where exactly Babaji was.  We knew only that He was not up at Herakhan, but was instead traveling around India, visiting His various ashrams and temples.  But it wasn’t until only four days remained of our scheduled stay in India that Louis and I learned that He had left Bombay and would be found in a city called Vrindaban, a few hours’ drive from New Delhi.

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

            When Leonard told me that we could go to see Babaji in Vrindaban the next morning, I joked and said, “Listen, the way things are going, the minute I go to Vrindaban, we’ll learn that He’s gone from there to Calcutta or some such.”

             Leonard looked at me very seriously and said, “Oh no, I promise you by this time tomorrow you will be with Babaji.”

            I told him he sounded extremely biblical, very much like Jesus talking to the thief being crucified with Him when He said, “I promise you by this time tomorrow you will be with your Father in paradise.”

            In any case, we spent the evening discussing how we were going to travel to Vrindaban.  It was finally decided that two cars with drivers would be ordered, and that all the Rebirthers who were there at Anjali House would be distributed between the two cars!  There was a lot of bickering and arguing about who would be in which car. 

            I wasn’t especially thrilled by the arrangements.  Unlike most of the others who had spent all their time in Delhi, I had already experienced the mixed pleasure of driving in taxis on India’s bumpy roads.  I knew them as not only bumpy but frightening, simply because of the immense amount of traffic everywhere and its diversity—elephants, camels, horses, bicycles, and two-wheeled carts—as well as the absence of any observable pattern to the flow of traffic, anyhow, so people were on both sides of the road going in both directions simultaneously.    I knew that it was awfully common in India for people to be packed closely together in buses and trains, but I really didn’t think it was safe, and it certainly wouldn’t be comfortable to be so tightly packed into automobiles.

            But finally, we all agreed that we would leave in just the two cars early the next morning.  At 6:00 A.M. everyone was up and waiting for Leonard, who was in the bathtub Rebirthing himself.  7:00 passed, then 8:00 and 9:00.  By this time, I was beginning to be beside myself with frustration, especially when two more people arrived!  One of them, Hans, was someone I knew from Los Angeles, and he was there with his son.  They had tickets for the train to go down to Vrindaban, but when they learned we were all driving, the two together wanted to drive with us.  Now,

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

suddenly we were going to be not five in a car with a driver, but seven in a car with the driver!  I was almost beside myself with annoyance over such an arrangement!

            As I went to the bathroom, I suddenly had a moment of clarity; I realized that renting taxis in India only costs the equivalent of $35 a day for the cab and driver, plus the gasoline cost.  We had already survived taxi trips from Delhi to Agra and other cities.  I could easily afford an entire taxicab for me and Louis!

            So I ran back out into the living room where people were glowering and bickering, and said, “Listen, don’t worry about it at all.  I’m going to order another taxi, and Louis and I are going to leave now, because I don’t want to fritter away the last of my three days here in India waiting for Leonard to finish Rebirthing himself.  And I certainly don’t want to be stuck in a cab with so many of you, as much as I love you.”

            So it was arranged that we would take one cab and leave right then and there.  The Indian man who had previously accompanied Leonard around on his trips in India, Vinay Shukla, came up to me just as I was getting into the taxi, and said, “But Mama, my suitcase is in the boot of this taxi.  Are you willing to take it with you down to Vrindaban?  When we get there, I will take it from you.” 

            Half jokingly, I snapped back at him, “Only if you promise to love me forever!”

            At that point, Vinay fell on his knees and pranammed to me, putting his head to the ground in front of my shoes, and said, “Oh Mama, I promise you I will love you forever!”

            So, after all, we left on a happy note.

            (Since that time, Vinay and his wife and their three daughters have become very dear to me and to Louis, and we visited them each time we went to India.  In 1993, their first Thanksgiving as a family after they moved to the United States, we even spent Thanksgiving with them in their new home near San Jose.)

            When we got to Vrindaban after six hours of breathtaking travel on India’s “best” road, we went to the Hare Krishna Retreat Home to find a place to stay there.

            When we got there, we were given our choice: we could be on the fourth floor in a large room where we would sleep in our sleeping bags on the floor with perhaps another dozen people and we’d pay about a dollar a night, or we could have a room on the first floor of the hotel, with windows on both sides, two separate beds, and, wonder of wonder in India, its own almost-Western-style bathroom, for about $10 a night for Louis and me.

            Needless to say, I decided that I could, of course, afford the first floor room, and so we moved into that.

            Then I hastily put on a sari, and picked from my luggage the presents that we had brought to give to Babaji, and Louis and I went out to the taxi where our driver waited, having found out directions to the temple where Babaji was.

            Outside the temple was a flower cart from which Louis and I each bought a garland of marigolds, a mala, to present to Babaji.

            I left my shoes with the pile of shoes at the front door and hastened into the temple, but saw absolutely no one around.  I seemed to be in a courtyard, so I went through that into another building and there saw two people standing.

            The one looked like a brown version of my father!  He was about as big and as thick through and wide and stocky as my father had been.  He had an amazing similarity of looks, in both posture and features, to my father’s.  He was standing next to a man with grey hair and a long drooping grey moustache.

            I suddenly recognized the one who resembled my father.  I exclaimed out loud, “Oh my God, it’s Babaji!”

            Then I went walking across the otherwise empty room to Him, the mala still over my arm.  I was holding out my hand to shake His hand and introduce myself.  As I came close to Him I said, “Hello.  My name is Eve Jones and I’m from Los Angeles.  I’m really glad to meet you.”

            He extended His arm and I thought He was about to take my hand and shake it.  But instead His hand went past mine and He took

the mala off of my arm and put it around His neck.  He said something to His friend, and then asked me in English, “Where you from?  How you know me?”

            I told Him that I had heard of Him from Leonard Orr through Rebirthing, and He said, “Ah yes, Leonard, where?  He come see me?” 

            I told Him that I had left Leonard back in New Delhi, but that probably he would be there that afternoon or the next day.

            I looked around for Louis who had been right behind me until I entered the Temple, but couldn’t see him.  Suddenly, just at that juncture, Louis stumbled over the threshold into the temple, explaining, “I couldn’t get my shoes untied.” 

            Then he looked past me and said, “Oh my God, it’s Babaji!” 

            Just like me, Louis walked across the room with his hand out, the mala over his arm, ready to shake Babaji’s hand, saying, “Hello.  My name is Louis Ortiz, and I’m traveling with Eve here and I’m so happy to meet you.”

            Babaji did the same thing with him.  He put His hand out as if He were going to shake Louis’ hand, then instead took the mala off of Louis’ forearm, put it around His arm, and then introduced Louis to Shastraji, His friend.

            We had no idea of how people approached Babaji.  I had never seen Him before.  There was no one else around except Shastraji, and both of them were standing talking to each other.  I thought I was being polite in my behavior and that Louis was, too.  We didn’t see that either Babaji or Shastraji took any offense in the way we behaved.  And I still think it’s lovely symbolism—if I make Babaji, God—that I went up to Him so forthrightly and looked Him in the eye and met Him.  And I feel good that Louis also had that level of self-esteem.  Looking back on it, I think it was a marvelous metaphor.

            Right after Babaji introduced Louis to Shastraji, He said, “But have you eaten yet?” 

            It was then that I realized that Babaji’s voice was extremely high, much higher even than my usual speaking voice.  It was almost feminine and it was sweet.  It had no

coarseness or harshness to it.  In fact, Babaji’s voice reminded me of the sound of my mother’s voice, as total as His body had reminded me of my father.  I had those thoughts in my mind even at that instant when I was meeting Him and hearing Him talk for the first time.

            I thought back to my old psychoanalytic training.  Sigmund Freud, in his late books on religion and psychoanalysis, Moses and Monotheism, Civilization and Its Discontents, and The Future of an Illusion, commented that man creates God in the image of his father and his mother, that God is a projection of his parents.  And I thought to myself, “Well, the old boy was absolutely right.  Here, this man so many people call God looks like my father and sounds and acts like my mother!  I’ve done a perfect job of creating my perfect God.”

            Anyhow, Babaji told us that we should go eat, that it was lunchtime, and we could come back later and see Him again.  I was dismayed, not only because I usually don’t eat breakfast or lunch, but because the thought of getting into the taxi and looking around for a place to eat was more than I wanted to deal with.  But at that moment, Babaji put His arm around my shoulders and moved me toward some stairs, saying, “Go, go.  You eat upstairs, you eat upstairs.”

            So Louis and I went upstairs.  We saw a large room with row after row of people sitting cross-legged on the floor with what looked like large leaves on the ground in front of them.  There was food on those leaves.  The people were eating with their right hands, no utensils.

            We looked around and there were two places at the very front of the room, places, that is, set with leaves.  When we were told that we should sit there, I realized that we were facing everybody else.  It was as if we had two special seats.  They couldn’t have been seats for Babaji and Shastraji because Babaji didn’t eat in front of His devotees.  I still wonder who they were really for, but at that instant, they were for us, obviously.

            So we sat down, and when I looked out across the group of people in front of us, I saw many familiar faces (though still not the people that I’d been with in New Delhi off and on through the past two weeks—they hadn’t yet arrived).  But there were a few people in that

group that I knew because they were people I had Rebirthed at various trainings around in the United States, and others were people who had been at Campbell Hot Springs during times when I had been there.

            I was excited and waved first to Margaret Gold, a woman I knew who came from Washington, D.C., and then to another woman and then to a man I knew.

            Just then I realized someone was there putting a helping of food on my leaves and pouring me some water into a cup.  I didn’t especially want to eat, because my habit is not to eat during the daytime.  So at first, when the person who was serving from this very large galvanized zinc bucket started to serve me, I said, “No, no.”  But he said, “Oh, yes, yes, Babaji wants you to eat.”

            So I started to occupy myself with eating the food.  Physically, it was extremely hot to my fingers, so I had a hard time picking up even small pieces of the vegetables or rice and getting them to my mouth.  Although the food was delicious, I took only a few bites and I only drank one swallow of the water.  That was really all I wanted, so I left the rest of it. 

            Louis, on the other hand, ate all of the food and had several glasses of water. 

            After everyone had finished their food, we were told that there would be Darshan with Babaji later that afternoon and that we should now go and rest.

            As Louis and I were filing out of the room, we met up with Margaret, and it turned out that she was staying at the same hotel we were staying at, the Hare Krishna Retreat Home.  So we all went back to the hotel together in my taxi, with my driver.  We didn’t nap.  Instead, we had a marvelous time finding out from Margaret what it was like when she first went to Herakhan, as well as catching up on her news about other mutual acquaintances. 

            In a few hours, it was time to go back to see Babaji. 

            This time, things were totally different!  When we got to the temple, we found hundreds of people already crowded into the temple, all chanting a bhajan, that is, a holy

song.  The men were on one side and the women were on the other; and they were crowded close, sitting cross-legged with knees against backs of the people in front of them and knees against knees of the people on each side.  Louis went off to the men’s side, and I stayed with Margaret on the women’s side.

            Then Babaji came in.  And I, for the first time in my life, actually saw real people bowing and kneeling.  Remember, Jews don’t bow or kneel—I’d only seen that in movies.  Moreover, there in real life, men and women were actually throwing themselves on the ground in front of Babaji or kissing the ground where He had walked!

            After He seated Himself on His throne, an immensely long line formed of people, standing up, each holding some gift to give to Babaji. 

            I got in line with one of my gifts, and after a considerable wait, reached Babaji and gave Him my present, nodding my head and curtsying slightly in lieu of falling on the floor.

            As I started to walk away, the people near him grabbed hold of my sari, pointed to space down at the feet of Babaji, and said, “No, no, Babaji wants you to stay.  Sit, sit.” 

            And so I sat there as people in the line came by and pranammed, that is, as they kneeled with hands clasped.  Some put their heads on the ground or stretched out full length in front of Him.  Many times He kept talking to me and didn’t even look at the people who were giving Him presents.  I felt bad for them, but was deeply grateful not to be being ignored as they were.  As they passed by and gave Him their presents, Babaji asked such questions of me as where I was born, what religion I was, had I been in India before—and then He gave me a handful of candy!

            Now, at that time, I was trying to avoid all refined carbohydrates, so my reaction to the handful of chocolate that He gave me was the same as my reaction had been at lunchtime.  I said, “No thank You, I don’t eat candy.” 

            And He made a frown, as if jokingly threatening me with His displeasure, and said, “Oh, yes, you eat.” 

            So, I did unwrap one of the chocolates and put it in my mouth.  It was superb!  It was the first chocolate I had eaten in many, many, many months, well over a year, and it was one of the best chocolates I have ever eaten in my life! 

            He smiled and seemed very pleased that I enjoyed it so much—and I certainly was enjoying myself. 

            A little later, He offered a big box of spices to me and told me to take one.  I selected one, thinking that I would keep it as a souvenir, but, no, He wanted me to put it in my mouth.  So I was stuck mouthing a cardamom pod that must have been at least an inch long, the biggest one I’d ever seen in my life.  It was so hard and dry that I found I couldn’t crack it in my teeth, strong as they are, so I finally took it out surreptitiously and wrapped it in a Kleenex and then put it in my little purse that I was carrying.  I still wonder what else I was supposed to do with it and also if there was any significance to my selecting cardamom rather than one of the other spices.

            After a while, the chanting moved from bhajana into the Aarati, the worship service, and I was sent back to sit with the women.  I tried to follow the service with my written transliteration of the Hindu and Sanskrit words, but the chanting went way too fast for me to keep track and also follow the meaning.

            After Aarati, another long line formed of people going to pranam to Babaji.  We were told that if we wanted to receive chundun from Him in the morning, we needed to get into that line and ask for permission.  Chundun is the ritual where sandalwood paste is used to mark the person’s forehead to show that that person is a devotee. 

            The different orientations of Hindus toward their different gurus and lords, I think, are revealed by how the chundun markings go.  Devotees of Babaji, who are all Shiva followers, seem to have three yellow stripes going from left to right across their forehead; with a red mark beneath them and sometimes some rice grains put into that red mark. 

            Anyhow, I got into the line and asked permission to receive chundun in the morning, and was told that that would be all right, even though I wasn’t a devotee. 

            The chanting broke up close to midnight, and I went back to the Hare Krishna Retreat with Louis.  Both of us were exhilarated and feeling immense surges of energy, which made it difficult to go to sleep, but eventually we did.

            Four o’clock arrived soon.  Louis said that he hadn’t had enough sleep and that he didn’t feel well and didn’t want to come.  For a moment I was diverted with annoyance toward him, but then decided I wasn’t going to miss my chance to be on time in order to argue with him.  I rushed to get washed and dressed to go out to the taxi to go back to the temple for chundun, then silent meditation, and the first Aarati of the day.

            When I arrived at the temple, there was a line, but much shorter this time, because the line was especially for Westerners who wanted to receive chundun and had gotten permission the night before.  So I stood in line.

            When I got to Babaji, I sank down in front of Him in a cross-legged position, a half-lotus, and looked up at His face as His hand came forward and He put something cool on my forehead. 

            As I started to get up, my knee, which occasionally locks or unlocks all on its own, decided to give way, and I almost pitched forward into Babaji’s lap.  His left arm came forward and He gave me a giant whack with His arm on the top of my right arm, sending me flying through the air, probably five or six feet, still in my half-cross-legged condition.  I landed falling on Joanne Hongslo who had been standing in line ahead of me.  Joanne turned around with her fists at the ready as if she were going to start a fight with me, and said, “What the—!”

            I said, “I’m really sorry, I don’t know what—Babaji just hit me!” 

            By this time, I was crying, not from pain, but from a feeling of confused despair and shock over being struck.  My husbands had hit me, lovers had hit me, my father had even hit me once or twice in my childhood; and now here was this male personage who was supposed to be God, hitting me!

            All of the procession had stopped during these few little seconds that I was falling on Joanne and righting myself and getting onto

my feet.  Then I thought, well, I have to do something about this.  And I turned to Babaji and said, “Why?” 

            And He pointed His right forefinger forward, waving His arm, and said, “Move more quickly!”

            I thought, “Well, here we go, again.  Here’s another metaphor.  That’s exactly the truth.  I must move more quickly.  I’ve got to get on with life.  I’ve been doing the same things, the same way, for too long, and it’s time to make some changes.  I must move more quickly.  I must get off of my old negatives more quickly, and change.”

            The symbology still strikes me. 

            But I still wonder about the actuality.  How could a person sitting on the floor be hit with enough force to be lifted off of the ground and sent flying through the air, yet not be hurt?  I didn’t have any bruising on my upper arm, my arm didn’t hurt.  It’s as if I had been a feather-light floating object and Babaji had just come and lofted me through the air farther on my path going forward.

            Later that morning, after Aarati, during another long procession, I was once again invited to sit at Babaji’s feet while people pranammed by.  I realized that I was being treated like a queen.  Little tidbits, other candies, pieces of fruit, were occasionally offered to me by Babaji.  Babaji took a beautiful marigold mala that someone going in the procession before me had presented to Him and placed it around my neck when I first came up to pranam to Him.  I was absolutely shocked by how cool the flowers felt against my neck and was bewildered by the honor of receiving the mala from Him.  I really didn’t know how to behave, sitting there at His feet. 

            It was interesting to see the many faces coming by, to notice how many of the people—especially the Indians, it seemed to me, more even than the Westerners—seemed to be wanting something from Babaji, begging for something from Him.  They were not there only to adore Him and to sing His praises, but rather to get some help from Him. 

            (On another trip to India, Louis and I went to see Sai Baba at His ashram down near Bangalor.  There, too, my overwhelming, pervasive feeling was that everyone was

pulling at Him, trying to get something from Him.  It seemed to me that this poor man, who was no taller than I am, was being grabbed at and taken from to such a degree that His energies would soon be depleted.  I felt sorry for Him.)

            I had much less of that feeling with Babaji, but there was something of that sort, after all, anyhow.)

            I found myself wondering about that attitude of begging and needing to get—I felt that I was an extremely lucky person in that my attitude was one of interest and pleasure, not adoration, not belief, not awe, and not need.  I was more like somebody watching a very interesting ritual, not necessarily even knowing exactly what was going on. 

            The afternoon before, I had asked Babaji if I might be permitted to take pictures of Him, and He had replied, “Why not?”  Then He laughed and said, “Wait.  Tomorrow.  Bring camera tomorrow.” 

            That was fine with me since I didn’t have my camera with me anyhow, and hated to think of driving back through Vrindaban to the Hare Krishna Retreat to get the camera to come back to the temple.

            Now it was the next day and I had brought my camera.  So, following the morning Aarati and darshan, I went up to Babaji to ask if I could please take pictures of Him then, and He agreed that I could.  Just then, one of the Westerners who seemed to be part of the entourage surrounding Babaji spoke in English to the large group, saying that Babaji had appointed a particular person, Dr. So-and-such, as His representative and that now that Doctor could heal all body ailments.  So people who had anything wrong with them could get in line in the open room next to the part of the Temple where Babaji sat on His throne and Dr. So-and-such would help them heal. 

            Since my knee was still hurting, I got in line, holding my camera, expecting to take pictures of Babaji when I had an opportunity to.  As I stood in line, I watched the Doctor sweep some peacock feathers over the person who lay on the floor face up in front of him.  After a minute or so, that patient rose and the next person in line lay down for the treatment.  I also took a picture of Margaret Gold who, through coincidence, happened to be standing

in line ahead of me with the man I know now as Radhe Shyam.

            I had my camera all ready when Babaji walked by with Shastraji and went out to the outer courtyard through which I had first entered the temple the previous day.  He went into a corner near a fountain and looked at me, laughing and lifting His chin as if He were posing and signaling me.  I lifted the camera to look through the viewfinder to take the picture of Babaji, but, in total contrast to how things had been up to that instant, I could not see clearly through my camera!

            As I looked into the viewfinder, all I could see was dark swirling smoke, as if I were actually looking into thick smoke coming from a big bonfire! 

            I couldn’t understand what could be wrong.   I took the camera away from my eye and looked it over carefully.  The camera seemed to be fine.  Nothing was burning.  The lens was clear and clean.  What could be wrong?  When I looked up, I caught Babaji’s eye and saw that He was laughing even harder at me.  I tried once again to take a picture of Him, but this time, it looked as if my camera viewfinder were filled with smoke so dense that I couldn’t even see through it anymore.  The smoke no longer seemed to be swirling; it was beginning to be compacted. 

            In part, I actually was afraid that I might have ruined the camera.  It was an OM-1, a single lens reflex Olympus that I had bought for my youngest daughter on a trip to Argentina a few years earlier when I’d gone down there to ski during my summer vacation from school.  It wasn’t a camera that I was very well-acquainted with, so somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that I might have done something wrong and really screwed it up, and that I was going to end up having to buy her another expensive camera. 

            I turned to Margaret and Radhe Shyam and said, “What could be wrong with my camera?” 

            I explained that I couldn’t see through the viewfinder, and Margaret said, “Oh, Babaji is just playing a trick on you, that’s all.”

            Radhe Shyam took the camera from my hands, looked it over, and held it up to his

eye, then asked, “Is there a lens cap cover?” 

            I said, “Yes, it’s here in my hand.” 

            I always automatically removed it and kept it in my right hand whenever I opened my camera for a shot.  After he saw that the cover really was off, he said, “Well, I don’t know.  There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.” 

            He shot a couple of pictures with the camera aimed down toward the floor of the temple, saw that the film advance and the shutter were working, and then handed it back and said, “Margaret’s right.  Babaji’s just playing a game with you.”

            Margaret told me that Babaji often played games with people and their cameras, and that I shouldn’t worry about it.

            In a strange way, I felt honored that He wanted to tease me.  And so I thought, all right, I guess I can’t take any pictures, at least not now.

            When it was my turn to lie down and have my aura swept by the doctor with his magic peacock feathers, I explained to him that my knee was very sore and that I would like him to heal that.  I wasn’t doing that with any feeling of conviction that he would indeed heal my knee, but I was willing to find out if it could be done.  I certainly did not lie down with any great expectations that his chanting was going to make a difference to how my knee felt. 

            He asked me to repeat the phrase, Om Namaha Shivaya (I surrender to the Will of God), over and over while he swept the feathers over me.  At some point, he asked me to sit up and gave me some sacred ash.  He told me to put it in my mouth and also to rub some on my knee.

            While he was doing that, I heard everybody in the part of the Temple where Babaji had been sitting on His throne give a great big yell of “Bhole Baba Ki Jai,” which means “Praises to the simple Father!”

            I thought they yelled that whenever Babaji appeared or left the room.  Immediately afterwards, it became extremely quiet, no chanting or noise and commotion.  So I

assumed that, much as had happened the day before, Babaji had left the temple and the devotees had left for an afternoon rest.

            When I sat up, my back was to the part of the temple where Babaji usually sat on His throne.  I assumed that the entire temple behind me was empty except for the few people left in the part where I was who were still waiting in line to be treated.  The doctor looked at me and said, coaxingly, “I want you to go over and really pranam to Baba.”

            Now, the several times that I had already joined the procession and walked in front of Babaji, I had bowed my head and sort of curtsied, but I hadn’t knelt, I hadn’t put my head to his feet, and I hadn’t stretched out on the ground.  I hadn’t done any of those things because I’d never in my life done any of those things.  Jewish people don’t kneel at religious services, and, in fact, like Quakers, Jews are supposed to kneel only to their God.  (Parenthetically, that’s why Jews were traditionally excused from having to kneel in front of secular rulers of particular countries.  It’s also one of the reasons why citizens of those countries disliked Jews since it looked as if Jews were being given special permission not to even have to bow to the reigning monarch, whereas other citizens had to.)

            When the doctor said that, I felt fear run through me over the idea that I was going to have to kneel, but then I recalled that everyone had yelled before, when I had assumed Babaji had left, so I immediately felt relief and said, “Oh, but He’s not there.  He already left.” 

            But when I turned around, I found much to my surprise that the entire temple was still completely filled with devotees, just as it had been when I first lay down, and that Babaji was still up on his throne, as He had been.  But everyone was absolutely quiet and He was looking toward me. 

            It seemed as if the doctor wanted me to do more than just dip my head.  I would have to bow more than I had been bowing!  Yet I didn’t want to be a hypocrite—since I didn’t feel any special awe in the presence of Babaji, I thought it would be wrong for me to pretend to be worshiping Him when I didn’t.  So, as I stood up and walked across from where the doctor was to where Babaji’s throne

was, I was in total turmoil.

            Anyhow I walked across the room I was in, then I put my camera down on the floor next to a Rebirther I knew and asked him to keep an eye on it.  As I straightened up from doing that to walk the last few feet over toward Babaji, suddenly His face broke into a smile, and He lifted His feet up straight forward from Him so that they were exactly at the level of my lips while I was standing up in front of His throne!

            In that instant, I felt a great inpouring of love, as if I were seeing a brand-new baby of mine for the first time.  I thought, “He wants me to love Him, He wants me to adore Him, He’s just like a giant baby!”

            I rushed those last few feet and threw myself on Him and laughed and kissed His feet as they stayed up there in the air in front of me.  And then I was pulled down to sit down on the ground next to His throne chair again and the procession and loud chanting started up again.  I felt an immense relief and joy.

            Later, during the morning break, one of Babaji’s attendants came up and asked if I had a hundred dollar bill.  He explained that a person who was traveling for Babaji didn’t want to carry a large number of small bills, but rather wanted a small number of large bills. 

            I said that I had a $100 bill out in the taxi and I went out, found my purse in the taxi where I had left it, and came back to give the bill to the person who was asking for it.   As he started to give me in exchange a handful of bills in small denominations of rupees, I said, “No, no, no, forget it.  I was going to give Babaji more presents anyhow, so let the hundred dollar bill be my present to Him for right now.”

            So he took the hundred dollar bill and that was fine with me, although I wondered in passing how I would ever know that the money actually got to Babaji. 

            I was glad I had been treated so well by Babaji before I gave Him the money—I wouldn’t want to have worried He was being nice to me just because I gave Him more than a few books and dried fruit.

            Soon after, we were told it was time for

us to all leave for another break.  We could come back at a certain time later on for lunch, and then there would be Aarati late in the afternoon once again.

            When I got back to the Hare Krishna Retreat, Louis was lying in bed, groaning.  He told me that in the seven hours that I had been gone, he had been extremely sick to his stomach, vomiting many times.  He said he couldn’t understand why he was so sick.  I pointed out that he’d eaten a lot of the ashram food the day before and that he’d drunk many glasses of its water, and he said, “Yes, but all of that was blessed by Babaji, so I couldn’t have gotten anything from that.”

            And I thought, “That’s really interesting.  Here he has the innocent belief that whatever Babaji blesses is fine and can’t hurt him, yet he’s sick, while I, who have had no such belief at all, am healthy and receiving such splendid, marvelous treatment from Babaji.”

            I told Louis that, and told him in great detail about everything that had happened in that eventful morning.  I started with the very first thing in the morning, the whole business of being sent flying through the air.

            Louis knows that if he grabs me to hurry me across the street, for example, sometimes I bruise so easily I’m left with “fingerprints” on my arms.  But, looking as carefully as he could at my upper arm, he couldn’t see any sign of redness or bruising.  Yet obviously Babaji must have used a great deal of power in order to send me through the air such a distance, especially since I started from a complete stop down on the ground.  Louis repeatedly shook his head and said, “I can’t believe it.”

            Then I told him about what had happened with the camera.  And again he refused to believe it.  He grabbed the camera, looked through it, and couldn’t see anything.  It was absolutely, completely black.  There was no distinction whatsoever, no definition, nothing could be seen through it.  Neither of us could figure out what could have happened.  We both sat there, shaking our heads, occasionally saying, “I can’t believe it.”

            We put it back on the sill of the window there in the hotel room, and about ten minutes

later, Louis said, “Let me look at that again.”

            As I looked through it before handing it back to him, I saw that it was more like what it had looked like when I first looked through it, trying to take my first picture of Babaji: The rectangular viewfinder in the center of the field was now a field of swirling black smoke.  But the rest of the screen around it was still completely solid black, totally opaque.

            Louis looked too, and confirmed that it was “smokey.”  What could the smoke be from?  Nothing could be burning.  Neither one of us knew; I was afraid to open the camera, so I just put it back on the window sill. 

            Every twenty minutes or so over the next couple of hours, we looked through the camera and aimed it out the window to see what we could see through it.  We tripped the shutter button as if we were taking pictures.

            Each time that I looked through it, I saw a gradual lessening of the darkness and smoke.  

            At first the viewfinder rectangle emerged from the total blackness as a rectangle filled with swirling black smoke with a solid black screen around it.

            Then the viewfinder turned to swirling dark grey smoke with the screen around it being swirling black smoke. 

            The next time I looked through it, the viewfinder was filled with swirling medium grey smoke, and the border was filled with dark grey smoke. 

            An hour later, the viewfinder was light grey smoke, with the border around it medium grey smoke. 

            After another twenty minutes, the viewfinder was filled with white smoke and the border was filled with light grey smoke. 

            After almost two hours, the viewfinder was clear!  I could once again see what was in front of the camera, though the rest of the field was still filled with white smoke.

            In another half hour, the camera was perfectly “normal,” back to the way it had always been before I had first aimed it at

Babaji!

            It remained perfectly normal from then on.  Two months later, when I got that roll developed, the frames that were shot in the temple, of Margaret and of the temple floor, were absolutely fine.  Her face was there, the marble of the floor was there.  And the pictures of the window and the grill in front of the window there in the bedroom at the Hare Krishna Retreat also came out, even though they were taken while the camera was still “smokey.”   But, none of the pictures that were aimed toward Babaji came out. 

            All right!

            All I could conclude was that Babaji wanted to impress me, he wanted me to love him, he wanted to blow my mind, he wanted to show me some trick he could do that would mystify me and amaze me and awaken in me warm feelings for him. 

            And he succeeded.  My knee wasn’t healed, but my heart was.

            I spent the remainder of that day back at the temple, sitting at Babaji’s feet, eating candies when they were pressed on me, watching the devotees pranam to Babaji, loving them as they loved this Babaji I now loved, too.

            By evening Aarati, Louis was recovered enough to come to the temple.  He later told me that he had the same reactions I had had when he first saw hundreds of people literally throwing themselves down on the ground where Babaji walked, kissing His footprints in the dust, and making such abject genuflections to Him.  He said he hoped we hadn’t offended Babaji by just walking straight up to Him, holding our arms out to shake His hand.  I didn’t think Babaji had taken offense and reassured Louis that that was so.

            After Aarati, we lined up again to pass in front of Babaji.  I was deeply touched when I saw Louis first kneel before Babaji, who put His hands on Louis’ head for several minutes.  I could see all the reverence and devotion that had probably characterized Louis when he was a young altar boy.  I wished he could once again become that pure and good.

            The evening passed in chanting and

listening to Babaji talk.  Then we went back to our beds.

            We needed to leave the following morning if we were to return to New Delhi to catch the plane on which we were scheduled to leave India the next day.  So, after morning Aarati and darshan, we needed to go back to the Hare Krishna Retreat, get our luggage and start the 5-hour taxi ride back to New Delhi.

            I went up to Babaji to say goodbye and to ask Babaji if we had His permission to come see Him again, and He replied, “Why not.”

            I left Him to go to find Louis and go out to the car.  As I threaded my way through the people seated on the Temple floor, I suddenly felt someone grab my ankle, and I looked down.  There at my feet was Hans.  He said that he wanted to tell me how much he loved me and that he apologized to me for the way he had been treating me!

            I still believe that the struggle between Hans and me back in Los Angeles the first year that I was involved with Rebirthing was a major reason why a One-Year Seminar didn’t get organized immediately after Leonard’s first training in Los Angeles.  So I would like to think Hans was referring to that.  But even if he only meant the way he had fought and argued about getting us all into one car to drive down from New Delhi, that was quite acceptable to me.

            As we drove away from the temple, I felt requited.  I was sad to be leaving Babaji after such a short time, but there was also an element of relief.  Most of the time, I hadn’t understood what was happening, and I didn’t seem to share the same feelings that other people seemed to have.  I found that I loved Babaji, that I enjoyed just sitting and looking at Him, just as I had enjoyed looking at my little babies when they were brand new (or, in fact, still do now that they’re grown).  I felt that same kind of unconditionally-loving maternal reaction to Him, but it was very difficult for me to see Him as God, incarnate.

            I don’t even understand the whole idea.  How would I know if so-and-such is God?  How would I know if somebody were enlightened, if I were enlightened, if anybody were?  It calls for a kind of judgment which I think mitigates against the very experience of being enlightened.

            In any case, as we were driving along, about halfway between the temple and the Hare Krishna Retreat, I saw a taxi going in the opposite direction.  The drivers called out to each other, and both cabs stopped in the middle of the intersection.  Just then, I saw Leonard Orr and Jeanne Carr in the other taxi!  For the three days that I had been in Vrindaban, Leonard had not gone to the Temple.  Instead, he had been up on the fourth floor of the Hare Krishna Retreat, being extremely sick in that one big room, with ten other Rebirthers.

            How wonderful it was that Louis and I had decided to leave New Delhi when we did!  Otherwise, I’m sure Leonard would have gotten the first floor room and we would have been up on the fourth floor of the Hare Krishna Retreat, crowded into a room with ten other Rebirthers, several having the digestive problems that often beset people in India.  By contrast, merely by arriving earlier, we had a beautiful garden bedroom with its own bathroom and running water!

            When the two cars came to a stop, I got out.  Jeanne got out and came up to me just before Leonard also got out of their taxi.  She came over and said, “Well, you certainly have been treated like royalty by Babaji.” 

            I said, “Yes,” and added, “If that’s any indication of my basic self-esteem, then it’s a lot higher than I thought it was.”  And she agreed.  

            As we met in the middle of the road, Leonard asked me, “Well, how did you find Babaji?” 

            I proceeded to tell him about everything that had happened from the moment that I first walked into the temple until that very moment when I ran into him and Jeanne at the intersection.  I told him every detail that I could recall, and Leonard stood there, listening and listening and listening.

             I talked for almost 45 minutes, smack in the middle of the intersection.  I thought it was a strange place for me to be giving such an extended report.  The entire happening made me think of the title of Sheldon Kopp’s book, If You See the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him.  Fortunately, I didn’t think Leonard was the Buddha, and, anyhow, I certainly am not

given to violence.

            Finally, Leonard and Jeanne went on their way to the temple, and Louis and I left to pick up our things and then drive back to New Delhi.

            At the entrance to the Hare Krishna hotel, we spoke with the Indian man who ran the hotel’s restaurant.  He had seemed to be a fussy, unemotional person, but in less than five minutes, he was telling me of the deaths of his wife and son, and we were both weeping and embracing.  I felt filled with compassion, thankful I had been there for him and that he had shown me he was human.  We parted with reassurances that we would meet again on my next trip.

            When I finally got to our room, I found Joanne Hongslo weeping on Louis’ bed.  After a quick flicker of jealousy, I asked her what was wrong.  She said she was unhappy because Babaji had never once looked at her when she pranammed to Him.  He had been talking to other people, instead, and He hadn’t even looked at her gifts when He accepted them and then He had handed them over to other people.  So He never actually saw them.  I felt afraid she was jealous of me for all the times Babaji talked to me or gave me gifts.  And I was jealous because Louis was patting her back in sympathy as she cried.

            Why was this happening?

            The thought flashed through me that Joanne must have been ignored at birth.  When I told her that, she was amazed.  It was true!  The birthing personnel had believed she was a stillbirth and they had put her over on a counter while they worked on saving her mother.  No one paid any attention to her until a half hour later when she made a cry as she was being removed to the morgue.

            Babaji had given her the opportunity, finally, to feel and let go that old grievance!!

            Babaji also had given me another opportunity to let go my jealousy as well as to deflect it from others.

            Anyhow, that’s the story of my first meeting with Babaji. 

            What does it all mean?  I continue to

be puzzled over how He could have struck me so hard and yet left no bruise.  And I certainly don’t understand what He did with the camera, or putting it more objectively, what happened with the camera.  I myself prefer to believe that Babaji in some magical way created conditions that resulted in my camera doing what it did.

            I’ve spoken with my son who’s a very well-known photographer, who knows cameras backwards and forwards, and he keeps insisting there’s no way that what I describe as having been what I saw when I looked through the viewfinder could possibly have been happening.

            And yet, the fact is that I saw it and Louis saw it.  So did Margaret and Radhe Shyam.

            I am not yet ready to believe that the evidence of my senses can’t be trusted.  I much prefer to believe that the limits of my logical understanding of reality are such that things can be happening that I don’t understand at all and that no one else, as yet, can understand.

            Magic, that’s what I see.  Magic or miracles.

            I do know with great clarity that while I was with Babaji and for months afterwards, I truly felt a restoration of soul.  I felt that I could simply pour my love into Babaji without any resistance on His part.  For the first time in many, many years, ever since my youngest child started going to nursery school, I felt myself feeling unconditional love.

            I also believed that feeling such love and showing it to Babaji was as important to Him as it was to me.  I felt that He loved me, that He enjoyed me, that He had a good time rubbing my hair or pinching my cheek or patting me on the back or feeding me candy.  I felt that in some way, He and I were playing some interesting, childlike, innocent game with each other, and that both of us were refreshed and restored by it.

            Bhole Baba Ki Jai!

            Three days after Louis and I returned to Los Angeles, having completed the rest of our trip through Western Europe and the United Kingdom, we had a huge party to which

almost 100 Rebirthers came.  Evelyn Freedman, the Rebirther who worked every morning transcribing my dictation of my book on Physiological Psychology and then worked every afternoon for Phil Laut in his book business, had phoned people to tell them I’d be showing my pictures of Babaji.  Almost everyone coming through the door rushed up to me or Louis, inquiring, “Well—is Babaji God?”

            Invariably, I was surprised by the question, however many times it was asked.  I kept replying with my question: “How would I know if anyone’s God?”

            When Phil came in and asked the same question, he seemed equally surprised by my reply.  It dawned on me that somehow he thought I might have an answer Yes or No.  I was very moved by his trust and faith.

            After we’d all circulated and refreshed ourselves with assorted sweets and liquids, the time for the slide show came.

            I explained that we met Babaji in Vrindaban, so we had no pictures of the ashram in Herakhan and that none of my pictures of Babaji had turned out, but that I had hundreds of slides of beautiful India, including ones of other saints and holy men.

            Everyone was disappointed but quickly adjusted and I started to show my slides on my brand-new Kodak projector.  To provide more clear viewing for all the people crowded into my living room, I had moved the projector into a corner of the sofa facing the screen in front of the fireplace.

            After a few minutes, I smelled a burnt odor, and just then the projector blew its bulb and stopped.

            I had failed to provide enough clear space behind it for the blower to keep the bulb cooled!!

            So I never got a chance to show my slides to that bunch of friends.

            A few weeks later, when I was about to show my slides to a group of Psych faculty from my college, the projector once again stopped working because of some other problem that eventually required its

replacement on warranty.

            So that group didn’t see my slides!

            I’m still not sure what all this camera and projector failure means.  Perhaps it was meant to call my attention to what I was seeing.  Was Babaji God?  Isn’t He?  Isn’t everyone?             Namaste.

 

 

 CHAPTER SEVEN

SECOND TRIP TO SEE BABAJIFILLING WITH LIGHT AND GETTING HIGHER

             I started my second four-month trip abroad at the beginning of September, 1981, right after a week crowded with important events.

            First, I had attended the Rebirth International Jubilee in Snowmass, Colorado, and received the endorsement for Certification from all the Certified Rebirthers, as well as from Dr. Duran, the entity channeled by Trina Kamp.

            Then, I received a surprise visit the last day of the Jubilee from my dear companion, Louis, who canceled all his appointments and flew to Colorado just to be with me in what he regarded as my “big" moment.

            And as soon as I returned from Snowmass, I was the honored guest at a garden party given for me by the area alumni who had given the University of Chicago large donations or who had worked with me in my position as the Chairman of the Alumni Fund Drive for the past few years, a position I was then vacating.

            I felt as if I had barely had time to get back from the two weeks in Colorado, get dressed for the party, pick up my passport, and leave for the East Coast before taking off for London.

            London started with a similar rush: we were met by Rebirthers who had attended a seminar I had led the past Easter in London.  We had a meal, got a few hours of sleep, and at 9:00 A.M. the next morning, I led a seminar for 44 people on their Parental Disapproval Syndromes.  Perhaps symbolically, the shank on one of  my high heels broke on the

first step going down the stairs to the meeting room, resulting in my sliding down three or four steps of the carpeted steps as if I were water skiing.  What an entrance!

            That day was the start of a period of six weeks during which I worked every day, almost every hour, from early morning to late at night.  Finally, six weeks later, we took a day off and went to the countryside and up to Stratford to visit the upcoming landlord and lady of my organizers, Toni and Aire.  We were served a magnificent high tea that included every food ever mentioned in English novels as suitable for such occasions, with all the foods colored red, white, and blue in honor of the birthday of the son of our host.  (Louis ate the entire plate of typically English thin cucumber sandwiches on the table next to him because he thought they were too tiny to have been meant for all of us!)

            Every interaction during those six weeks was magical, including my introduction to Manjushri Institute, the University of Tantric Buddhism, housed in a magnificent 88-room Gothic mansion built on the grounds of a 13th-century monastery near Ulverston, Cumbria, where I led a marvelous week-long training.

            The first evening we were there, after taking a tour of the building, we met with one of the two lay directors, Roy.

            Because he wore a bow tie and wire-frame eyeglasses, was very tall and thin, and spoke in a very quiet voice, I was afraid he would be terribly prissy, especially when he started by saying he needed to explain the simple rules of the monastery.

            One rule was that we harm no sentient beasts.  Another was that we use no drugs on the property.  And another was that we engage in no abnormal sex.

            He asked if we had any questions about those rules.

            One of my trainees asked Roy to define “abnormal."

            In the shocked silence, Roy replied, smiling, “More than one partner at a time."

            That broke the ice.  Soon we were having a lively discussion about mealtimes, bathing, laundry, etc.  As the meeting seemed to be coming to a close, Roy asked if there were anything special he could do for us, and I spoke up and said, “Yes, you could let me Rebirth you and you could also invite everyone in the monastery to join us for the entire workshop so they get Rebirthed and learn how to Rebirth each other."

            That seemed to be even more shocking, but after a few moments of apparent embarrassment, Roy replied that he would be very honored to accept my invitation and he would relay the invitation to join the workshop to the entire community.

            Not everyone wanted to, but more than half the community did.  So the workshop was attended not only by 54 Brits who had come from all over the U.K. to the workshop, but also by thirty-six resident Buddhist

monks and nuns.

            Each of the Tantric Buddhist monks or nuns selected one of the members of the workshop as a personal trainer, by whom to be Rebirthed each day during the week after the members of the workshop finished trading Rebirths with each other.

            Because of their monastery duties, the monks and nuns couldn't attend the daytime part of our workshop when we all shared our experiences in Rebirthing each other.  So, instead, they arranged to come in for a special post-Rebirth seminar of their own after supper.

            The first time, I was anxious about their reactions, especially when the first person to share was a nun who kept her pre-monastery life so secret she was known only as Dee Doe.  She started her report by saying, in the drawling manner of a top-drawer Brit, “Well, everything that happened to me while I was Rebirthing was something I've experienced before.  Nothing new happened to me.  I've felt the same feelings of union with the Cosmos before, just as I've felt the same feelings of transcendental ecstasy before."

            My heart sunk as I thought that I was going to have to listen to 35 more people tell me that Rebirthing wasn't much.  But just then, Dee broke into a beaming smile and said, “The only difference is that, previously, I have had to stay in silent retreat for at least six weeks before coming close to such experiences, whereas this time, it took only a little over an hour."

            As she finished, she was laughing and crying simultaneously.  So were most of us.

            All the rest of the reports were highly positive, too.  The glowing reports culminated in the remarks made by the last person to speak, a very old man who was known in the community as Saint John, although his first name is really Ted.  He said, “Well, after breathing for approximately an hour, I opened my eyes and all there was was the blue sky, the white clouds, and the branches of the pinetrees.  There wasn't any Me looking at them.  All there was was the blue sky, the white clouds, and the green branches."

            His voice broke and he seemed to be working hard to keep from weeping.  Then he went on to say, “All the years that I've spent studying Buddhism, I've been hoping that I might let go my ego attachments so that I can experience samadhi before I die.  And yesterday I did!  I want to thank all of you for that great gift."

            For the rest of the week, the entire monastery seemed changed.  People talked with each other during mealtimes and greeted each other as they passed in the long stone hallways.  It seemed as if they started to love each other, instead of being lost in their quest for detachment.

            Some of my highest spiritual experiences took place at Manjushri.

            I love Manjushri Institute and every member of its community I've Rebirthed.  Whenever I've been in England during the past fifteen years, I've made a point of going there to spend at least a night, even when I haven't been leading a Rebirth workshop there.  I've been privileged to

be given the room underneath the Puja room, so that I awake early to the sound of the community chanting above me.

            Yet we almost didn't go to Manjushri for that Rebirthing workshop I led in UK.

            Two weeks before, my Rebirth group was still slated to meet in a residence used for conferences on the other side of England completely.  We would have gone there if that place hadn't been unexpectedly sold.  My organizers still hadn't located a new place until the week I arrived, and then only because a Buddhist client of one of my organizers mentioned that Conishead Priory, as the building of Manjushri Institute was originally called, was going to be available for workshops in the near future.

            I was told by Chip, the other lay director, that the Honorable Geshe Kelsang Gyatsu, the spiritual head of the monastery, had had a dream a month or so before we arrived in which he was told to get the monastery ready to accept a large group who would bring great changes to the monastery.  So they cleaned and painted and worked up to the minute we arrived—the carpets in the rooms we used for our meetings had been laid only the night before our arrival!

            One of the people from London who came to that first workshop, Michael, whose family had lived in Ulverston for many centuries, stayed on at the monastery to become a member of the community and eventually a monk.  He became Manjushri's first resident Rebirther as part of his duties there, and he also realized his dream of spending his time creating and recording music.  His first commercial product, a tape called “A Midsummer Eve," is a favorite of mine to Rebirth to.  I'll be happy to tell you how to obtain a copy if you write to me.

            At the end of the week, I was given a lama cloth by the Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, who said, “Rebirthing is an event of a great Karmic importance to the 2500-year-old tradition of Tantric Buddhism."

            I felt truly highly honored. 

            Just before I was leaving, the nun who ran the counter in the Institute's gift shop where small Buddhist items could be purchased asked me to buy up to 1000£ of goods on my travels in India and Nepal, to bring back to the Institute when I returned just before Christmas.  So for six weeks I had the opportunity for the first time in my life to be a “professional buyer."  It was great!  So was the pre-Christmas bazaar that was held on my return, at which everything I had purchased was sold for a sizeable profit for the Institute.

            After we left England, I led a week-long workshop in Paris and another in Amsterdam, then Louis and I once again went to see Babaji.  This time we went to Herakhan.

            We arrived at Haldwani, which is the nearest town to Herakhan, and went to the sweet shop on the main street that Vinay Shukla's father owned and ran.  There we connected up with Vinay, who told us that Babaji was at that very moment in Haldwani and that we could see him there that evening at the home of one of his devotees!

            We checked in at the Mt. Kailash Hotel, and, to our good fortune, were given a room with adjoining Western-style toilet and a shower. 

            I hastened to take a shower and then started trying to put on my sari.  I was in a tremendous state of excitement over being able to see Babaji right there in Haldwani without first having to trek the twelve miles or so up the river bed to the ashram.  I was so excited that my hands fumbled with the sari and I just couldn't get it to pleat properly so enough of the material was left to pull over my shoulders.

            Vinay came to my hotel room to find out what the delay was, and, seeing the struggle that I was having, said, “Here Mama, let me help you."  With amazing speed, he pleated the sari material, threw it over my shoulder, tucked it into itself at my waist, and said, “There you are, you look just like Indira Gandhi."

            I thought that was a funny remark because I had always thought she looked very much like my mother.  In any case, I thought Vinay's remark was cute.  My nose is big, and I've got the same longish kind of face and I'm short.  Wearing a sari, maybe that's what I look like.  Yes, I thought, I was willing to look like the Prime Minister of India.

            I know this gets to sound silly, but more  and more, as I think about the people that I met in India, I feel a strange relationship, a kindred feeling.  Many of the habits that my mother had, many of the ways that I was brought up with, were strangely similar to ways that people have in India.  For example, I never saw anyone in India being harsh with their child.  All of the parents I saw with their children were reasonable and non-judgmental, placing their views of things in such a fashion to their children that their children were persuaded to see the wrongness of the way they had been behaving and the rightness of how they should behave.  I didn't see guilt being inculcated, I certainly didn't see fear.  What I saw was this sweet, sweet reason which was essentially what I felt I had been raised with, mostly without force or threat and without punishment or pain being inflicted in any way.

            In any case, as soon as I was properly dressed, we left the hotel and took a bicycle-driven, two-wheeled, one-seat rickshaw for the three of us across town to the building Babaji was at.  The city of Haldwani  is an immensely large city with, I was told, close to a million people, but with most streets very, very narrow, only wide enough for one cart or perhaps one automobile to pass through.  Stores line the streets in the city center.  The place that we were going to was out into a more countrified area where there were mainly houses.

            We got there, we went through the first floor of the building, went up to the second floor, and there, in one of a somewhat ordinary set of residential rooms, was Babaji, giving darshan!

            Carrying my presents, I hurried to join the line, and finally got up to Him.  This time I pranammed to Him properly.  I realized I loved to fall at His feet and show Him that I loved Him.  I no longer saw it as a dishonorable abasement of self in any way, or a repudiation of my Jewishness.  It was just a particular way of showing love and respect. 

            As I rose from prone to a kneeling position, Babaji stopped the line and asked questions about how I was and who I was and had I ever

seen Him before and where and when.  I didn't get any sense of His having remembered me from a half year earlier when we'd seen Him in Vrindaban, but I still felt welcomed.

            In any case, He once again had me sit near Him, and again I had the pleasure of seeing old friends once more: Margaret, for example, and Martin, the Swiss doctor, and Barbara, called Motu, a real estate woman from San Francisco, and other people who were part of Babaji's entourage.  Motu and Barbara hadn't been with Babaji constantly—it was just good luck that they were with Babaji when Louis and I visited.  They had just returned from being away from India, waiting to be allowed to re-enter.

            I was told later that American citizens were only allowed to stay in India for six months.  Then, when the Indian government no longer permitted them to stay, they would generally either come back to the United States to see their family and make some money, or they would go to nearby countries like Nepal and stay there for a while until they were once again allowed to re-enter India.  Brits and most continentals didn't have such restraints on their stay in India.  I was told that the reason the government of India didn't allow USA citizens to stay longer than six months was because the USA had for many years not allowed any immigration whatsoever of Indians into the States.

            Anyhow, I felt immense joy and relief to be sitting at Babaji's feet again.  Babaji was wearing a kirta, or long skirt, which was of maroon silk, and I noticed immediately that His kirta material was almost identical to the maroon silk of my sari.  When He first stopped me, He pulled on His material and put a part of His shirt up against my material and said, “You see.  We match."

            Both of us laughed and I thought that was very funny.  I like it.  I still don't know why I liked it, but it made me feel really good that we were wearing matching colors.  It also makes me feel good to have my name match, too: Eva and Shiva.

            Later in the evening, Babaji left the room.  Then most of the Indian people left, too.  Vinay told us to wait there while he found a taxi or got his motorcycle.  I looked around to find Louis, but he wasn't anywhere in sight.  When I went downstairs and out on the street, however, there he was, with a group of maybe 8, 9 or more little boys standing around him with their eyes really wide open in wonder as they watched him perform sleight-of-hand.  Louis is a pretty good magician.  He worked for several years at The Magic Shop in Hollywood, and he knows the “tricks of the trade."  In any case, on a narrow street in Haldwani, by the light from the porch of the building Babaji was in, there was Louis doing simple tricks: making things “disappear," making separate pieces of rope “connect" themselves into one long piece, and performing other relatively simple magic that didn't require elaborate equipment, just the pieces of rope and the little rubber balls that he usually carried around in one pocket.  I joined his admiring audience, and he kept doing one magic trick after another. 

            Suddenly we looked up, and there, hanging over the balcony from the second floor, was Babaji, watching Louis perform magic and apparently enjoying the show.

            That made me feel really good.  I had tried to urge Louis to offer

to do a body session on Babaji, because I knew that some of the other body workers did give Babaji massages.  Louis is an excellent massage therapist—he's really good with Trager and postural integration and orthobionomy and shiatsu, even some of the Feldenkrais work.  He's very gentle and he's nonpainful, so people enjoy having his hands on them.  So I had thought, what a wonderful gift he could give to Babaji if he would do a massage on Him.  But Louis had refused to offer to do that.  So I thought at least it was nice that he was giving Babaji pleasure by performing these magic tricks.

            All three of us rode back to the hotel on Vinay's motor bike.  On narrow paths by the light of the moon through cultivated fields, at a high speed so the bike wouldn't stall, with me in my sari.  Just like real Indians!  I kept thinking how the ride was a perfect illustration of the basic Hindu mantra, Om Namaha Shivai, I surrender to the Will of God.

            Anyhow, we did get back safely to the hotel.  The next morning we left to go to Herakhan, since the hotel owner told us that Babaji had already left and was back at His ashram at Herakhan.  If we hurried, we'd have almost a week to spend with Babaji before needing to leave India to get to the Rebirthing workshops I was scheduled to lead in the UK.

            We found a taxi with driver and drove up through Kathgodam which is where the Indian railroad station is in that part of the world, and then on up and up into the foothills of the Himalayas, until we reached the site of a dam being built over the Gautama Ganges River.  At that point, we were met by several people who looked just like the Sherpas in pictures of Hillary's Everest expeditions.  They took our packs from us and insisted on carrying them over to the beginning of the “bridge" that hung across the river.  They pointed out the way to go up the river valley to Herakhan, and called the “bridgeman" to come over for us.

            We crossed across the river on a kind of seat contraption that swung from a rope and was pullied across.  Visions of The Bridge of San Louis Rey filled my mind as we swung over the rocks jutting from the river, yards below.  Fear almost never left until a commercial transaction momentarily took my mind off swinging across the river on the rope “bridge."

            As we were sitting in that carrier with one of the guides, he leaned forward and asked if we wanted to buy any charris.  I told him I didn't know what the word meant, so he opened up his hand and held out what looked like a piece of black chalk, roughly the size of the sort of stick of chalk that schoolteachers use.  When I looked closer, I realized that it looked and smelled like hash, and asked if it were.  He replied, “No, no, no, not hash—charris."

            I thought it was funny that he even had it.  I had believed Leonard Orr when he had told me that at the ashram it was against the rules to use any drugs.  So I had assumed that while I was with Babaji I would not be allowed to smoke the marijuana joint that I customarily enjoyed in the evening.  I had reassured Leonard that, in that case, of course, I wouldn't be smoking, since I wouldn't ever want to trouble a host in his home when I was his guest. 

            But here was the Sherpa holding this “finger" of charris out, and saying, “You want?  You want?"

            I said, “I thought we weren't allowed to smoke."

            He said, “No, no, it's all right.  How much do you want?"

            He asked for only ten rupees, the equivalent of one American dollar, for a quantity of soft hashish that was the size of my index finger.  I thought, “Well, I have to do this."

            And so I did, indeed, buy the charris from him and put it into the cloth bag that I was carrying my glasses and money and other important things in.

            After we got off of that swing kind of thing that took us across the river, we started trekking.  One old “Sherpa," carrying an immense can of oil on his head, and a younger man, carrying both our back packs, ran ahead of us.  We had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile or so when a very, very, very young boy, perhaps only 4 or 5 years old, materialized out of the seemingly uninhabited hills and came over to us.  He, too, asked, “You want to buy charris?"

            He held out his hand, and resting in his palm was a brown patty about the size of the ordinary chocolate-covered peppermint patty that one buys at candy stores, but this was a patty of charris, the same stuff that the finger roll was made of.  When I asked him how much he wanted for that, he said “Five rupees or three patties for ten."

            He seemed so thin and poor that I gave him a ten-rupee note, and put the patties in my purse.  And we continued hiking over the rocks, hoping to catch up to the man carrying our packs.

            About half an hour later, along came an extremely old man wearing an astrakan hat and a long overcoat of the sort that I have seen in Muslim countries.  Using a cane, but yet still walking over the rocks as well as Louis or I did, he came down from one of the hills and came up to me.  He asked me if I would buy some charris, and showed me a chunk.  I didn't want to say No to him because I thought from his thin, aged body that he needed the money.  So even though I really had no use for more, I bought a 20-rupee chunk of charris from him, and added it to my bag.

            Westerners coming along must be really desirable because they have cash to spend on things like guides and charris.

            Occasionally we caught up to the man who was carrying both of our packs.  The other had left to go running up toward the ashram, rumored to be 12 miles up the river.  I was amazed that such a skinny, old man could run so far with such a huge can of oil on his head.  He did—in fact, after he left the can at the ashram, he came back to where the three of us were still trekking, just to keep us company.

            As we continued on up the riverside, because of flooding from time to time we would run out of path on one side.  At such times we would have to cross the river to get to the path on the other side.  I found it almost impossible to walk barefoot on the very sharp, slippery riverbed rocks, and so after the very first effort at fording the river without my shoes on, putting them around my neck to keep them dry, I kept them on even though, of course, they got soaked.

            Louis, however, didn't want to get his shoes wet.  So he insisted on unlacing his high-top hiking boots every time we needed to cross the river, tying them around his neck while he went across the river, then sitting down, drying his feet with his shirt, and finally putting them back in his boots again.

            I was getting almost beside myself with impatience over this.  I knew the rocks were sharp and in his bare feet he was certainly slipping on them and hurting himself.  Anyhow, what difference did it make if his shoes got wet?  They would dry out again.  It wasn't as if they were dress shoes that would be ruined by getting any moisture in them.  Most importantly, every one of these sit-down's to untie and then to re-tie his shoes was consuming five minutes or more, and we had twelve miles at least to trek, it was getting on into the afternoon, and I was afraid the sun would set before we got to the ashram.  Also I felt that our guide was really impatient with us.

            The shoe business at every river crossing became an intense argument between Louis and me.  I was amazed at the intensity of my hatred for him as we continued up the river.  I knew I shouldn't feel that way.  I certainly didn't want to come into Babaji's presence with so much hate in my heart, but every time we needed to cross the river, there would be a cascade of emotional reactions.

            First, I was afraid that I would lose my glasses and not be able to see where I was going.  I was afraid of falling onto the sharp rocks.  I was afraid of being washed away by the river, which seemed to be getting higher as we got up higher into the mountains.  I was just generally afraid.

            Then, beyond all that, was my realistic concern for the bottoms of my feet—even with my shoes on—as I gingerly picked my way across these outrageously sharp, almost newly constructed rocks that comprised the riverbed.

            I had enough on my own head  to worry about without having to be angry at Louis for slowing us down so much.

            The whole thing reached a climax the very last time that we had to go across the river.  It was our twelfth crossing.   This time, the water was so deep that it was almost over my head.  I didn't know what to do, but the “Sherpa" took the packs across, then came back and motioned to me to get up piggyback on him.  When I did, before I knew it, he slipped a circle of rope around below my rump and hiked me up on top of his head, where I was perched just like a package, outstretched, scared to death, being carried across the river, seeing the river rolling past me going in one direction furiously, and unable and unwilling and too afraid to move even enough to see where we were going, so I could figure out how much longer I had to be perched like that, like a piece of lumber, stiffly straight on top of this little fellow's head.

             I doubt if he weighed more than 95 pounds.  I have photographs of the two of us, and he was maybe an inch or so taller than I was—or I should say he was an inch or so less short.  Neither of us reached 5'2".  Admittedly, he was half my age, in all probability, but still, to this day, I marvel over his ability to hike me up on the very top of his head and carry me there through that water for the last time that we had to ford before we got to the ashram.

            Louis stayed behind us during that crossing.  Then, with his shoes once again carefully slung around his neck, he started across.   At the last minute, just before he reached the shore, Louis slipped, and he and his shoes got totally drenched.  When he came out of the water, holding his shoes in front of him, the guide and I couldn't do anything except just roll on the ground, laughing at him.  Louis finally agreed the whole thing was pretty silly.

            Anyhow, wet but now reconciled, we had finally arrived at the ashram!  Here were the famous 108 rock stairs, going up to the Kirtan Hall and other parts of the ashram on that side of the river.  Some of the rocks were ones that I could step up on just like regular steps of a staircase in my house.  But others were so high that I actually had to put the top of my body across the flat of the next step and clutch and hitch myself up, crawling up on top of the next step, then come to my feet, ready to take the next step.  Certainly they weren't easy to move on.  In a way, that was really good for me, because I don't think I would have had the strength or breath to climb straight up that many steep stairs.  Instead, I got in little pauses while I maneuvered the rocks.  I was truly thankful for the perfectly excellent excuse of having to take time to clamber over some of the ones that were just too high for my short old legs.

            When we arrived at the top, we saw a bunch of people gathered on a railed, flat area that overlooked the river, the valley, and the other side of the ashram where there were six or seven Hindu stupa-like temples.  I knew some of the people from having Rebirthed them in the United States.  They all looked clean, dressed in saris or kirtas and lungies (the male equivalent of a sarong).  By contrast, I was wearing my khaki pants and my hiking boots and looked pretty dirty and wet after a whole day of trekking, fording back and forth across the river.  Just as we arrived up there, everyone turned to look at the river and started yelling, “Bhole Baba Ki Jai!" 

            There was Babaji, coming across the river, in a little flat boat, stepping up on the shore, and starting to climb the stairs!

            I didn't know what to do, because I was dirty and I didn't have on a sari.  Someone grabbed me and said, “Go get dressed, go bathe, hurry, get dressed, put on a sari!" 

            But of course, I couldn't go down the stairs to bathe in the river without running into Babaji coming up the stairs.  So finally Louis and I simply moved behind all the other people that were up at the top of the stairs and waited for Babaji to get there.

            When Babaji was about ten steps below the very top, suddenly there was a lot of shouting.  An Indian guard, wearing an Army uniform and carrying a rifle, grabbed a large billy club from his back where it was belted to him, and started to hit something that was in the grass a few feet from the stairs.  Babaji watched intently, occasionally shouting something to the guard.  After maybe eight or nine heavy whacks into the grass, with a lot of shouting, the soldier picked up a very large snake, perhaps three foot long, that was by now dead, and showed it to Babaji.  So that the birds and other animals could eat the dead carcass, it was flung away into the part of the hill where people didn't walk.

            I was bewildered by the entire episode.  They were all Hindus

who didn't eat flesh, presumably because they didn't want to kill sentient beings.  Yet they killed the snake.  I asked why.  Someone replied that it was a poisonous snake and Babaji had told them to.  That confused me further because I know in the United States, we don't worry about poisonous snakes when we're up beyond an altitude of about 2,000 or 3,000 feet, and certainly we were higher than that at the ashram.  Beyond that, I couldn't understand why Babaji would kill a poisonous snake.  It seemed that anyone who could turn the insides of my camera into smoke, anyone who could whack me through the air without hurting me and without any obvious effort or exertion on His part, ought to be able to handle a poisonous snake somehow without having to kill it.  Why not just send it away or tell it not to harm anyone?

            So, anyhow, that was a strange episode.  The symbology especially struck me because, having had the name, Eve, all my life, I've certainly heard a lot of jokes about Eve and the snake and how it was “my" fault that mankind no longer lived in Paradise.  This time, though, God ordered the killing of the snake in front of me, Eve.  Before it could tempt me?  So much for Free Will—anyhow, I think I prefer God's protection.  I thought it was interesting that the snake killing was the first thing that happened after I finally arrived up at Herakhan, a place that Leonard Orr often described as Paradise.

            When Babaji finally came up to the gathering place, I pranammed to Him.  He said something sounding critical to someone, all the while looking at me.  Several people spoke back, sounding as if they were explaining or making excuses.  I think the gist of it was that Babaji wanted to know why I was still in pants and still dirty, and was told we had just trekked from Haldwani and had just arrived.  He was reassured that I would go down and bathe in the river and get myself cleaned up in a hurry to be ready in time for Aarati.

            I guess if we'd been on the ball the night before, we would have realized that we could have come up in the morning with Babaji and the people around Him.  They arrived many hours before we did.  But they left earlier, too, and they were all significantly younger than I and had longer legs, so they probably walked faster.

            Anyway, since I was still soaking wet and truly had no desire to repeat the climb down and back up, I simply toweled myself dry and changed into a sari in time for Aarati.  I used the room that “belonged" to an Italian woman who had been at the ashram for years.

            After Aarati, I was told by Motu I was to sleep in the women's dorm with five other single women, so I moved my gear there.  Several of them were women whom I had Rebirthed at Rebirth trainings in Michigan or up at Campbell Hot Springs or San Francisco or elsewhere.  Two of them had been staying at the ashram for many months and had little altars set up near their sleeping bags where they had candles and incense burning in front of pictures of Babaji.

            When everyone was ready to go to sleep, one of the women closed the shutters on the windows tight, so we didn't have any fresh air coming in.  She said that was because otherwise the dogs would come in to sleep inside, and they would eat whatever we might have in our packs.  Eventually everyone else fell asleep, but I stayed awake for several more hours, high and excited, reliving moments of the day.

            It was a strange night for me.  When I finally fell asleep, I had dreams that didn't seem to be my own.  The people in my dreams were not the people that I was used to seeing in my dreams.  There was no familiarity or kinship.  I felt as if my mind were being beset by the dreams and the thoughts of the other women in the room.

            I woke up an hour after falling asleep, exhausted by puzzling over these dreams as I was dreaming them.  As I woke up, what I recognized was that everyone in the room was doing a connected breath and was Rebirthing while asleep!  Even as I woke, each of them seemed to have reached the climax, and then they relaxed and settled down into a freer, less continuous breathing.             At that instant, my bladder filled, just as it usually does whenever I finish Rebirthing a client.  My body seems to channel energy is such a way that, when that person I'm Rebirthing finally comes back to feeling ordinary, in an instant, my bladder fills and I need to go urinate. 

            That seemed to be happening right there in this dormitory room at Herakhan, at the ashram!  So in the dark, I had to find my glasses and my flashlight, and I had to find some shoes to put on that I could take off when I got to the area of the ashram where the temple and the Kirtan Hall is, then put back on again while I went down the stairs to the river and walked downstream away from the ashram, so I could finally get to the place where we were supposed to use the river to toilet in...

            I never made it.  I got halfway down the first flight of stairs from the room that we were staying in, which was on the second floor of a building, and lost bladder control, peeing all over myself!

            The only other time I could recall losing bladder control as an adult was at the very instant that I was giving birth to my second daughter, and I thought, well, this was my Rebirth, too, not just my roommates!  And then I had a lot of thoughts about how I am ordinarily very clean and how distressed I would typically be in some part of myself over having urinated on myself.  I thought a lot about toilet training and PDS (Leonard's term for the grievances people hold against parents, Parental Disapproval Syndrome).

            I didn't know what to do.  There wasn't anything I could do in the middle of the night to clean it up or make anything happen to it.  It was just there.  I finally ended up by going on down to the water and trying to clean myself, and then going back up and getting into my sleeping bag.

            Finally, as the night turned to morning, I had another strange experience, also one that was hardly sublime.  This was watching one of my roommates put on full eye make-up and lipstick at her mirror by candlelight before leaving to go down to immerse herself in the Ganga, bathing herself before Aarati.  How about that for needing approval?

            When I went to the Kirtan Hall before Aarati, Motu was there.  I asked her if she remembered exactly what Babaji had said the previous evening, and—since Aarati had meanwhile started—she wrote me a note.  Then we whispered to each other about things that could be done at the ashram to make it a little more comfortable.  These were all homely suggestions, like they ought to have some boxes placed around so people could throw trash in them.  I had seen candy wrappers, cigarette butts, pieces of paper that had been ripped out of a notebook, bottle caps, and other things just thrown on the ground around in the ashram,

and that upset my tidy soul.  Motu thought having wastebaskets was a great idea.  We had some more discussion about other such suggestions, and then suddenly Aarati was over and it was time to leave the temple and to have darshan with Babaji out in the garden. 

            When I came up to Him, He scowled at me, and said that I had to leave, that I had to leave the ashram immediately!

            I was totally dumbfounded.  I thought, my goodness, the first time I saw Him, in the Temple in Vrindaban, He hit me.  Now, I'm seeing Him here, at His ashram at Herakhan and He's throwing me out.  How come?  Last night everything was so fine, we were so happy with each other, and He seemed to approve of me.  Now here I am and He's hating me, and He's going to send me away, and I won't be able to spend any time with Him.

            As I raced through all of these thoughts, an immense pain filled me.  I felt as if my entire insides were drained away, that I was just filled with pain, and that I was going to faint from the pain.  I rallied as I thought it was up to me to save myself, because if I fainted, I thought it would even be worse.

            So I forced myself to look at Him and said, “Oh, no!"

            And He glared back at me, made a really furious face at me and said, “Oh yes!  You leave first thing tomorrow."

            So I went away from Him and went to my room and spent the next two hours crying and going through another cascade of emotions—pain, then rage at Him for being so ununderstanding and unforgiving, then rage at myself for whatever it was that I'd done that had angered Him.

            I finally decided my error was that I talked in the temple instead of concentrating on chanting the Aarati.  That must be it!  That's what I did that was wrong. 

            But then maybe it wasn't that I had talked in the temple; maybe it was because He knew that I was the one who had urinated on the steps.  Somebody had mentioned that when Babaji went by that part of the stairs, He had said, “Huh!  It smells like a horse!" and had held His nose, so He must have been offended by that.  And I hated myself even more for that. 

            Then, finally, I thought, the only thing I can do is beg Him to forgive me for whatever it was that I did, and hope that He will forgive me and let me stay.

            At some point in my self-recrimination, Louis came to find me to tell me that they were serving lunch, and I told him I didn't want to eat because it was daytime, and as he knew, I don't like to eat during the day. 

            When he asked me why I was crying, I told him that Babaji was throwing me out, and that the next day I would go back down the river to stay in Haldwani and wait for him.  I certainly didn't want to make him have to leave the ashram, when he could stay there for several days

more before we had planned to go anywhere else.  But Louis said, “No, that's all right, I wouldn't dream of letting you be in India alone by yourself.  I'll go with you, too."

            I thought that was a very loving thing for him to have said.

            After he left, I set about trying to find something I could write a note to Babaji on.  All I could find anywhere was one piece of notebook paper, and a pen, no pencil.  I started to write, and after one sentence, I started to revise what I had said.  After I revised, I made a new copy, starting over.  But then I made a mistake, and had to start all over again, tearing off the paper I had already written on.  Finally I was down to a piece of paper that was perhaps two inches square.  On it, in very cramped writing, I was finally able, without making any mistakes, to write the few simple sentences that I had wanted to say to Babaji.  I told Him I was terribly sorry that I had done anything that offended Him.  I begged Him please to forgive me and to allow me to stay, and also please to tell me what I had done that was wrong so that I'd make certain I never did it again.  I planned to give Babaji to note the next time He gave darshan.

            That afternoon, before darshan, I decided that if I did have to leave first thing  the next morning, at least I wanted to help with some of the temple building.  So, rebelliously, I took off my sari, put on my jeans, and went across the river to where there was a large work crew building another one of the temples that Babaji had had built over there in honor of different Hindu deities.  When I went up to Radhe Shyam to ask what work I could to, he told me that I didn't need to work, but if I really wanted to, I could work in the rose garden, clearing it of rocks.  I thought that was fine because I take care of over 200 rose bushes at my house in Los Angeles, and I enjoy Karma Yoga—Karma Yoga being the term that's used to describe the spiritual merit which one is supposed to receive from working hard.  So I started work, leaning over and pulling rocks up out of the dirt, then throwing them through my legs behind me, over the side of the cliff down into the riverbed.  I had worked for several hours when I thought, “Well, I may not have built anything, but I've at least cleaned things up a bit, and maybe that's my job in life."

            All the time that I was working in the rose garden, Louis was working with a pickaxe, swinging at the mountainside and digging out the large rocks.  A line of about thirty people waited for him to dig out enough rocks so the person at the head of the line could pick them up into a basket.  Then, with help from the next person in line, that person would hoist the basket up on his head and join the procession moving over to the edge of the cliff where the rocks were thrown down into the river bed.  Everyone standing in line waiting to fill up his basket had plenty of time to rest, because it took several minutes to pick enough rocks from the ones that Louis had dislodged to fill each person's basket and put it up on his head. As they waited, they chanted. 

            But Louis was working constantly with the one-and-only pickaxe for the entire number of hours that day that were allotted to Karma Yoga.  Most of the morning and afternoon he was swinging his pickaxe into the mountainside, pulling out dirt and boulders.  There was no respite for him at all.  He worked continually.

            After working in the garden, I washed and put on a clean sari.  Then, rather fearfully, at the beginning of afternoon darshan I went up to Babaji and gave Him my note.

            Someone nearby translated it while Babaji glared at me for perhaps a minute without blinking, staring straight into my eyes, making me feel as if I were a tiny child being examined for signs of some failure, whatever it was I didn't know.  Then He nodded and said, “You may stay."  And at that point, I was truly very happy.  I fell down and embraced His feet.

            That evening, when it was time to bathe and get dressed and go for the evening Aarati, I went to find where Louis was, and found him collapsed on his sleeping bag in the men's dormitory.  I said, “Hurry, hurry, hurry, you've got to get washed because Aarati's going to be starting in just a few minutes."

            He said, “No way!  There's no way I can get up off of this floor.  I'm as tired as I've ever been in my entire life."

            And though I begged him to get up for Aarati, he said that he couldn't.  So he didn't go to Aarati.  Instead, he stayed absolutely sound asleep from about 5:30 in the afternoon until the next morning.

            In the morning, now that I had been forgiven and was allowed to stay at the ashram, I went joyously in front of Babaji to receive darshan.  I asked Babaji what work I could do during the Karma Yoga period that day and Babaji said, “Oh no, when you come to India you don't work"

            I thought at first that His remark was a sarcastic reference to the fact that the day before I had really not worked very long because I had spent much of the work time crying in my room.  But I immediately argued with myself that it was also true that I had gone out and spent quite a while throwing rocks out of the rose garden.

            In any case, I work.  That's what I do.  I'm one of those people who, when I have nothing else to do, find something to do—and it's always what people usually call work.  It's productive.  I clean something or I repair something or I create something or I rearrange things, or whatever.  I'm seldom still except in the late evening after all the work for the day has been well completed and I've already put in 16 or 18 hours of persistent effort.

            So when Babaji said that when I come to India I don't work, I said, “That's not true.  I work all the time!  I work very hard."

            Babaji then turned to Shastraji or someone else who was near Him and had a conversation in a language I don't recognize, possibly Pali, which is what I'm told Babaji spoke mostly, but possibly Sanskrit or Hindi.  In any case, there was an exchange, and then whoever that was leaned over and said, “Babaji says when you come to visit Him in the ashram, He doesn't want you to work.  He wants you to sit in the garden with Prem Baba and smoke hash."

            Well, I was totally dumbfounded! 

            If you read other writings about the ashram, especially I Am Harmony by Radhe Shyam, you are given the strong impression that drugs are taboo at the ashram.  Yet it seemed obvious to me that marijuana existed in the valley of the Gautama Ganges, the river that runs through the ashram.  How else could the guide, the young boy, and

the old man all have come by the three different kinds of charris they sold me?  And even in the ashram itself, I had been sold a fourth kind of charris by one of the Westerners who had been there for many years.

 

            In contrast to others who have written about Babaji's attitude toward marijuana, I don't believe that Babaji disapproved of it.  In India, it is often part of religious ceremonies, and I've seen many people hold a chillum up to their foreheads and dedicate the next inhale of the smoke to Shiva. 

            It makes me feel good and relaxed.  I haven't seen that it has harmed my behavior—it hasn't made me lazy, it hasn't made me anti-establishment, etc.  I use it to relax or to slow myself down so I don't work 20 hours a day.  Now I work only 16 or 17 hours, then I light up a joint and I talk with visitors, watch television, or read a novel for a few hours before I catch my usual four or five hours of sleep.  With it, I get some restoration, some refreshment from life, rather than putting out my energy all the time.

            Once someone at a workshop asked me, “Why do you smoke marijuana?" 

            I replied, “Because it eliminates the past and the future, and I can stay only in the present with it.  I am completely caught up in what is going on in the present." 

            I think that's how we should be.  I think that's what being truly alive is all about.

            Most importantly, I am absolutely convinced that without marijuana, I might never have known Babaji.  Like a lot of people, I believe I was led into a God-consciousness and an affiliation with Buddhism and Hinduism through the use of marijuana.

            Earlier today, the man repairing my chimney from our January 17, 1994, Los Angeles earthquake came in the house unexpectedly, sniffed, and asked, “My goodness, Eve, have you been smoking pot in here?"

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

            Well, that's his statement, that's his truth. 

            But it did get me along the path I wanted to go.  I think if I hadn't ever experienced what marijuana did to my consciousness, that I would have despised Primal Therapy and certainly would never have had anything to do with Rebirthing.  I think I would have continued to be the hard-working, super-productive, high-energy, always-on-the-go, completely-into-my-head, intellectualized, lady scientist that I had been.

            I much prefer the person that I am, now, instead.

            In any case, certainly Babaji knew that Prem Baba smoked hash and now He was commanding me to join him.  Prem Baba had been with Babaji since the early part of this century.  I have been told by several people that in the early decades of the 1900s, Prem Baba was the guard of the holy cave at the base of Mt. Kailash which is the legendary abode of Shiva and is part of the ashram.  (Unfortunately, everyone who's told me the story is a Westerner who doesn't speak Pali or Hindi or Sanskrit or any other language from that part of the world fluently, and they weren't eye witnesses to Babaji's return.  So I can't really vouch for the truth of the story I was told.)

            The story I was told was that in 1920, the “old" Babaji told Prem Baba, “Make sure you keep the cave clean, because I'm going away, but I'll be back."

            Then, old Herakhan Baba dematerialized after walking into the confluence of the Gautama Ganga River, flowing through Herakhan, with another branch coming down from the other side of Mt. Kailash, ultimately becoming the Ganges River.  I was told that a very important Indian official and another British official actually observed Him walk into the water and disappear.  I was also told that the British Consul General, or whoever it was, even had a tree planted in memoriam on the tiny island that exists in the middle of that place where the two streams joined, and that tree is still there and can be seen.

            From 1920 to 1971, Prem Baba dutifully and lovingly swept the holy cave each day and performed all the rituals that an observant and devout Hindu performs morning and night, including the Aarati.

            The story also went that at some point in 1970, Prem Baba went into the holy cave to perform his usual duties and found a young man sitting there.  The young man didn't respond to Prem Baba, who tried to move Him and make Him leave.  He didn't talk and He didn't act as if He paid any attention at all to Prem Baba's pushing Him and telling Him to leave.

            When I was told the story originally, I was told that the apparently young man sat in meditation in a full lotus position for 45 days without moving, without sleeping, without eating, without toileting, and without speaking, and that, at the end of that time, He looked at Prem Baba and said, “Now, do you believe?"

            Prem Baba, at that point, acknowledged that this personage was indeed the returned “old" Herakhan Baba, now in a youthful new body He had materialized for Himself.

            The story of Babaji's return has been altered in some significant detail or another by everybody who's told it to me, but essentially I was told that the “old" Herakhan Baba had been present in His body for more than 80 years without apparently changing or growing older.  Also that He was known to the English who controlled that part of India back in the 1800's.  I was told Babaji held the Deed, the Title, to Herakhan Valley and that His ownership had been registered with the Brits and was a matter of record in 1839, when His hand prints and footprints had been used as signatures to that registration.  A further part of the story of His

return was that when the individual I know as Herakhan Baba, Babaji, came out of His meditation in 1971, He set about reclaiming the lands in the valley that had been registered in His name previously.  The shape of His body and facial features are only vaguely reminiscent of the pictures of “old" Herakhan Baba.  But this body that I knew and loved and touched and smelled and listened to and watched and heard, had the same handprints and footprints as the body of the person in 1839 who had registered the lands!  So, when I first saw Him, He was supposed to be at least 142 years old, in that body, with those footprints and handprints!

            I was also told that when He went to reclaim His title, the story about the return or reincarnation of the “old" Herakhan Baba was actually published in Delhi newspapers.  I was shown a newspaper that was supposed to have that story on the page I was looking at—but, of course, everything was written in a language I couldn't read, so I can't really verify that such a story was written there.

            I like to think of that.  I like to think of God going into a Court of Justice, proving who He is.  I'd really like to know how the Indian officials who agreed that He was that same individual as the old Babaji felt, knowing that it was their job to sit in judgment on whether God is or isn't.  Is God eternal?  Isn't He?

            Anyhow, it was that Prem Baba whom Babaji wanted me to stay with in the garden, smoking hash.  As I thought about it, I felt Babaji was rewarding me for always having been such a hard, steady worker.  I resolved to do a very good job of sitting in the garden, smoking hash with Prem Baba.

            As I started to leave to start my smoking duties, Babaji said, “Where is that man who came with you?  You may stay, but your friend must leave!  He is lazy.  He must leave!"

            Once again, I was dumbfounded.  How could Babaji know Louis is lazy?  I know he's lazy, because Louis is lazy.  But how could Babaji have such an impression of him?  He had certainly seen how Louis had worked so hard with that pickaxe, working harder than any of the other people!!  I was almost tempted to congratulate Babaji on His depth of perception, His sensitivity, to Louis' essential nature.

            I realized I'd better stay out of it, so I asked if He wanted to see Louis.

            And He said, “Yes!  Tell him to see me!"

            And so, I looked around for Louis and finally found him at the little tea hut, the Chai house, where he was drinking tea, hanging out with the boys, as it were.

            I didn't tell him Babaji's words; I just told him Babaji wanted to talk with him, wanted to see him.

            As Louis was leaving to go see Babaji, I said, “Please, please beg Him to let us stay, because we still have almost a week more we could stay at the ashram before we have to leave India."

            When Louis came back about fifteen minutes later, he said,

“Okay, come on.  The horses are ready."

            “What do you mean, ‘the horses are ready'?"

            “Well, Babaji said that He had the horses ready for us to leave."

            “But didn't you ask Him if you could stay?"

            And Louis said, “No!  I don't want to stay, I don't want to work that hard, I can't stand working that hard!"

            Trying to sort out my confusion, I asked, “What did you say to Babaji?!"

            “I told Him that I was really happy that we'd had a chance to be here with Him, and I hoped that we would have an opportunity to visit Him again in the future, and He said that would be fine, and that's it."

            I was impressed that Louis had thanked Babaji and had had the presence of mind to ask permission to visit again—at least I didn't have to be paranoid about whether Babaji would permit us to return or not.  I felt honor bound to go with Louis because he had been willing to go with me, even though it meant I got cheated out of more days with Babaji.  All of that was running through my mind, plus Louis' announcement, still hanging there in the air, “The horses are waiting for us."

            But I couldn't quite figure out how to take the difference in our reactions to being told to leave. 

            I had gone into total pain and rage over having been told to leave and I'd begged to stay, but Louis hadn't.  My moods had gone up and down from first being thrown out and then forgiven, and then having Louis be thrown out.  But leaving was okay with Louis.

            It seemed Louis had a spiritually higher attitude, so I surrendered to leaving.  Despite my hopes to spend more time with Babaji, it seemed again we were to be with Him for only three days.  But then I went back to my first question, “What do you mean, the horses are waiting?"

            Now, I don't “ride horses."  I have, in my lifetime, been on a mule at Knott's Berry Farm once.  Then there was one time when I started riding a horse up in Sequoia National Park.  And I believe I was on a pony once.  Otherwise that's it.

            What I remembered about these equine experiences was that, in each case, as soon as I was up on the saddle, the animal turned around and started to bite my toes in the stirrup.   And in all these cases, as soon as we started to move, each equine creature allowed its knees to collapse, so that it “tripped" down on itself, making me afraid that I was going to go right over its head, and then it “caught" itself, straightened up, and continued a few more steps before doing the same thing again.  I was scared constantly throughout each short ride.

            I clearly remembered that, when getting off the horse in Sequoia—more than twenty years ago—I had vowed, “It'll take God Himself to get me up on another horse."

            I would leave with Louis, but, of course, not on a horse.  So I told him, “No, I don't ride horses, so please just go back and tell them that's fine, but we'll walk out of here."

            I figured that, after all, we had managed to trek up and it would certainly be easier going down.  There hadn't been any monsoons since we had come up, so the water level was bound to be lower than it had been and it would be easier to ford the river when we had to.

            So Louis left to decline the horses, and I rolled up my sleeping bag and got my gear together.

            But he came back in about fifteen minutes and said, “Babaji said you're supposed to ride the horse down the valley, and the horses are waiting, so get your pack together and let's go.  I'm leaving."

            I was afraid to argue, so I gathered my stuff, went to pranam to Babaji and ask His blessing, then said goodbye to the people I knew, and went to confront the horses.

            It was even worse than I had imagined.  Each horse had nothing as a saddle except a dirty, scratchy, burlap sack, folded up on the top of the horse's back, and there was nothing as stirrups or reins.  After I tried to sit on the horse's back and slipped sideways several times, one of the Sherpas took an inch-thick rope and made two loops, one at either end, then draped it across the horse's back for me to use as stirrups.  But there still was nothing to steer the horse with or grab hold of.  Nothing!

            Fortunately, these are little Himalayan horses, not much bigger than a pony.  So I wasn't as totally afraid of falling as I would have been with an average American horse.  And I was further encouraged by realizing that I was sitting on Babaji's horse.

            Let me tell you, though, that twelve miles of going downhill on a horse that I could only basically grip with my knees, without anything else to hold myself onto, really gave me a workout!  Especially since my horse did exactly the same thing that other equine creatures had previously done with me: As soon as we started to go down the two-foot-wide path that was on the other side of the cliff, leading down from the ashram to the river bed, that horse “broke" its knee and tripped and then turned around and snapped at my foot in the rope stirrup!

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

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

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

            Does that mean Babaji is God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in Kathgodam to take the midnight train to Pallea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            I would do anything to make my children and grandchildren happy when they were babies, whenever something was bothering them.  I would soothe them, I would sing to them, I would offer them my breast or a bottle, and I would this and I would that, all because these poor little

things couldn't possibly know why they were hurting or what to do about it and they were distressed.  I didn't want them to feel like that about life.  I wanted them to be happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dragged down into the mud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            Also my sari was still clean and dry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

            Each of us was given a large leaf on which there was a collection

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

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

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

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

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

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

            I'm telling people about all this because I want to open minds to the whole question of the use of consciousness-expanding drugs in connection with Babaji.  Although I didn't, I know several people who say they took LSD while they were up at the ashram.  I know people who say that Babaji sat with them and smoked hashish or charris with them.  I know, from my own experience, that Babaji certainly had no objection to my smoking.  Furthermore, I know that smoking marijuana or charris or hash wasn't a clandestine kind of activity up there at the ashram.  In fact, on our third trip there, one of the fellows who was running one of the

shops, said, “Oh, I'm so glad you came.  I have been waiting for you because someone came up here a few days ago and brought me the most marvelous hash and I thought, oh, that woman from Los Angeles, that Eve, would really love to smoke some of this."

            And he gave me some.

            And we smoked some of it together, right there.

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

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

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

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

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

            It's all still a mystery.

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

            At some point, it was announced that all Western men who

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

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

 

 CHAPTER EIGHT   LAST VISIT TO BABAJI

LEVITATING AND THE SOUND OF TWO HANDS CLAPPING

             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.

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

            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

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

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.   

 

 

 CHAPTER NINE  

HEARTBREAK & HEALINGTHE TEACHER AND THE LESSON

      After leaving Herakhan, we reached Hong Kong on time.  But a few hours before we were due to leave for China, as I was boarding a bus to go do some last minute shopping, my purse was razored open and its contents were removed.  The thief even cut across my thumbnail—not my thumb, just the nail—without my realizing it while it was happening! 

     I lost not only my money, but my passport.  So we had to go to the American Embassy and get a new passport for me.  Then I needed new entry papers into Hong Kong from Bangkok to prove that I was in Hong Kong legally.  We had to wait a day to get new entrance papers because it was a national holiday of some sort in Hong Kong (or maybe it was a national holiday in Bangkok).  The police were very careful to explain to me that many people swam to Hong Kong from mainland China to try to leave the communist regime, so proper entrance papers were imperative.

     Of course, they weren't swimming from Bangkok to Hong Kong to go into mainland communist China, as Louis and I wanted to do, but in any case, a couple of days were spent in Hong Kong waiting for the bureaucracy to function and for our travel agent's representative to convince the Chinese government to relax its rules and allow us to take our tour after all.

     The Chinese government finally relented and agreed that Louis and I could go on our tour, but it would have to be a student tour instead of a Grade A tour and it was three days shorter.  I was thankful that all of the money that we'd spent on our travel arrangements wasn't completely lost because some thief decided to pick my purse.  So we went into China, and several weeks later, we finished our trip and returned to Los Angeles.

     At the beginning of the Spring semester, I picked up the reins of my teaching again, and several weeks passed.  I applied to take a semester's leave the next Fall at no pay so that I would have time to work on some writing, and also have time to go back to India in June and spend some more time there at the ashram.

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

     One day, I woke up and thought I was about to die.  I was in intense pain.  My chest was just in flames.  I couldn't breathe.  Every time I tried to take a breath, the pain stabbed through me even worse.  I was actually afraid to stay home alone and, anyhow, I had three classes waiting for me.  So I went to school and started to teach my eight o'clock class.  But my arm and chest were in such pain that I truly feared I was having a heart attack.

     I didn't really believe I was having a heart attack, for how can you have a heart attack that goes on and on and on and on?  I imagined that a person having something wrong with his heart would become unconscious or at least become incapable of moving.  I wasn't.  I could walk up and down the halls.

      So I excused the class early and went back to my office, where I did some connected breathing and tried to Rebirth away whatever the negative was that was coming up.

      So at nine o'clock, I went back to the classroom and started to teach my nine o'clock class.  But the pain got even worse and I let my class go.  The pain got so bad that I phoned home hoping to  find Louis, and that he could come to school and drive me home.  I was genuinely afraid that I might pass out from the pain, so I didn't think it would be wise or safe for me to be driving.  But I couldn't locate him.  Finally, the pain stopped getting any worse—it was just at what felt like the max constantly.  So, after my hour's break (which was spent talking about health and death benefits with an insurance broker who nabbed me in my office), I taught my eleven o'clock class, and then, at noon, slowly and carefully drove home.

     I found that I couldn't do anything, even open my mail, so I spent the rest of the day lying in bed, aching, being interrupted by one person after another.  In late afternoon, I was visited by Joe Moriarty and then, early that evening, my old student assistant, Pat Dillon, came by from out of town with a friend, and I came downstairs to talk with them.  But my chest was still hurting too much for me to try to pay attention to them, and I was explaining that to him when the phone rang.  It was the phone call telling me that Babaji had just died of a heart attack.

     I hung up and said to Pat and his friend,

"Babaji just died."

     Pat shrugged and said, "I don't know the man, sorry." 

     I didn't want to try to explain and I didn't want to carry on a conversation, so I finally ended up asking them, please, to leave.  They were just leaving when Louis showed up.  I told him that Babaji had died.  At least his reaction was one of dumbfounded dismay.

     Strangely, the pain in my chest totally disappeared the instant that I was told on the phone that Babaji had died.  I felt profound sadness, almost uncontrollable grief.  But physical pain was no longer present.  It disappeared in that instant when my heart broke.

     Anyhow, Pat and his friend left, and Louis and I spent the night crying and talking about Babaji, wondering how He could be gone.  I spent the next day (my day with no classes) talking with Rebirthers all over the world, crying constantly.

     The next morning I had to go to school to teach my classes.  I tried to teach, but I couldn't stop crying.  So, I dismissed my first class after five minutes, telling my class that a very dear friend had just died and I was sorry but I really couldn't handle a class.

     I went back to my office for the rest of that hour, then I went to teach my next class.  But the same thing happened: I couldn't stop crying, and I found that I couldn't keep my mind on what I was teaching, that I didn't want to.  So again, I dismissed the class.  I spent the rest of that hour and my next hour, my office hour, in my office with the door closed, crying, hoping that I would be able to meet with my eleven o'clock class and carry out my teaching duties.  But, the same thing happened, and so, after dismissing my class, I left the college.

     I got into my car and started to drive home.  I got to within about five blocks of my house when I realized that I was almost completely out of gas.  So, I drove up into a Union 76 station on Beverly Boulevard and turned off my engine, pulled out the key to give it to the station attendant, and in that instant, started crying again.

     Suddenly I heard two loud claps.  I startled and looked, and there was a man standing by my car window, in a Union 76 station attendant outfit, but he had the face of Babaji!  He looked exactly like Babaji: the same eyes and cheeks and complexion!  I kept staring at the face in front of me, as the tears continued to spill down my face.

     I was confused and almost frightened.  I assumed that my grief had so addled my brain that I was hallucinating, thinking I was actually seeing Babaji's face in front of me.  I kept watching, seeing the lips move.  Finally, I realized the man was saying something, and I managed to listen and registered "keys." 

     So I gave him the keys, and he went back and unlocked the gas cap, put the hose into the tank to fill it, and then came back to the window, and said, "And so you've been to China?" (And, by the way, he pronounced it "Sheen.")

     I said, "Yes, but how do you know?"

     What made him think I'd been to China?  I checked to try to figure it out, but I wasn't wearing anything Chinese, not even any jewelry from China.

     I couldn't understand it at all.  He smiled and started to talk to me, but as I looked at his face, I could not hear a single word he said.  I could only examine his face.  The eyes, the nose and the mouth and the contours and the color of the skin, everything—all the same!  So far as I could tell, it was Babaji in front of me.

     At this point, I started to get almost afraid that I truly was losing my mind.  I still hadn't heard a word he was saying, but he finally finished talking, and then went and opened up the hood and checked the oil.

     I put my head down, looking down into my lap again, and once again, tears overwhelmed me.

     Just as the weeping started, again, I heard somebody clap his hands, twice! 

     Again, I startled and I looked up, and there the attendant was at the car window with my keys in his hand, ready to hand them back to me.

     I mustered my courage to try to test reality and said, "Excuse me, did you ask if I'd been to China?"

     And he said, "Yes."

     And I said, "How did you know?  I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you said before."

      And again he talked for a few minutes, but once again I didn't hear a single sound!  I just was lost in the amazement of this face, this beloved face, being there in front of me.

     Somehow or other, the rest of the gas-purchasing transaction was carried out.  I came home and spent the rest of the day crying and wondering in mystified amazement over how a station attendant at a Union 76 gas station on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles could be Babaji three days after Babaji died.

     It wasn't just the attendant's looks that struck me—it was the double set of hand claps and the remark about China.  Ordinarily station attendants don't clap their hands at me to get my attention.  They may knock on the window or clear their throats, but to slap their hands together and make two very loud claps is surprising, very unusual.

     Also, why on earth would a Union 76 attendant ask me about China?  But there it was.  That's what happened: the Union 76 attendant did clap his hands and he did talk about China.  That was the last subject I talked about with Babaji, that last day I was at the ashram, the day which had started with his clapping his hands at me, twice, two different times.

     After some time, I realized, "Babaji is comforting me.  He's letting me know that He is still alive, that I will see Him in various places.  I didn't need to have visions of Him before, but now that He's dead, what a comfort, what a joy it is to have Him appear."

     The next day, I needed to go to a bank, and I stood in a short line behind an Indian woman who was wearing a sari.

     For no reason, she turned around and said to me, "The teaching is always patience."

     I thought, "How amazing.  That's exactly what that old Indian woman said to me in

Pallea when we were boarding the bus to go back to Herakhan!"

     Again, I felt as if Babaji were comforting me.

     Through that day and the next, I received lots and lots of phone calls from people all over the world asking me if I knew that Babaji had died, sharing with me their grief and their reactions.  Through it all, almost all the time, I was sobbing, with the exception of those few minutes standing in line at the bank.  Most of the time, the entire week following the 14th of February, I spent crying.

     By the end of the week, on Sunday, I thought that I couldn't stand the emotional pain any longer.  As I reflected, I realized that almost every day for most of the intervening 50 years since my father had died, I had thought of him and ached for him.  I love him immensely.  A part of me almost seemed to believe that so long as I remembered each day to think about him and keep him in my mind, he was indeed still alive.  So all these years I'd been torturing myself with my grief for my father.

     Now, I had an additional measure of grief for Babaji!  And I truly thought I couldn't stand anymore, I believed I would die from so much pain.

     Before more happened, though, I wanted people to know about the strange coincidences with the man at the Union 76 station and the woman in the bank.  So I decided I would sit down and tell the story of what had happened all week, and I spent approximately an hour dictating a cassette tape that Evelyn Freedman later transcribed.  If you want to read exactly what I said that day, you will find it in  Appendix A.  This chapter has already described these events, so forgive the repetition.

     All sorts of questions raced through my mind, all stemming from the affirmations "My Thought Creates a Perfect Universe" and "Nothing Happens to Me Without My Consent."  What could I possibly have learned from Babaji's death.  If my thought is creative, why had I killed Him?

     As I finished taping my last sentence describing the strange events that had happened through that week since Valentine's

Day, suddenly all my grief disappeared and the weeping stopped!

     I had a clear insight: Babaji had died so that I would finally let go my extended grieving for my long-dead father.  I felt relief and I felt hope.  I found myself almost believing that Babaji would come back, just as He had promised.

     I put the tape in a pile of cassettes waiting to be transcribed, washed the dried tears off my face, and went back to my ordinary life.          

 

 CHAPTER TEN 

THE MIRACLE OF HERAKHAN AGAIN

     For four years after Babaji died, I was afraid to go back to Herakhan to visit because I remembered what it was like going to my father’s grave, back in Toledo, Ohio: weeping and weeping and weeping, and trying to pull my mother away.  I think in a way she would have been happy to have just stayed there with his grave and to have withered away if she hadn’t had me and my sisters to care for.  And so I thought that going back to Herakhan would involve my being plunged into such inconsolable grief again also.

     But finally, five years after Babaji “left,” I had an urgent need, not only to go to India, not only to take Louis with me again, but this time to take my son with us.  He was into his 20s, and I knew that once he got married, he probably wouldn’t have time to travel anywhere with me again.

     I wanted him to see the India that I loved. 

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles

Current chapter:APPENDIX A

Previous chapters:INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

     Tom is a photographer and he has a marvelous eye for the beauty of form and color, and I wanted to share India with him, to have him see its beauty before I couldn’t any longer show it to him.  But I was afraid that he wouldn’t want to go if I asked him only to come to India with me.

     I worried he would probably say, No, because he had the same image of India that most Americans have, that it’s dirty, that it’s poor, that it’s impossibly crowded, that people are dying on the streets right in front of you. 

     So I invited him to take a trip with me first to Japan where his father had spent many years, and then we would go to India.  He agreed, however his schedule didn’t work out, so it ended up, after all, that he only had time to meet us for a week in India, and then he would have to return to Los Angeles.

     On the day Louis and I were to meet Tom in New Delhi, our Indian Airlines plane coming from Nepal arrived in India several hours later than Tom’s Pan Am flight from Los Angeles through Singapore where he’d stayed overnight.  After we landed at the domestic airport in Delhi, we needed to go a few miles to the International Terminal where Tommy was supposed to be waiting for us.  I was getting really tense by the time we finally reached him, because I was afraid he’d be offended by all the noise and filth if he had to confront India all by himself.  But we found him crouching on the sidewalk, in a circle with a whole bunch of Indian fellows, talking with them and enjoying himself immensely.  He’d spent the several hours between his plane arrival and our plane arrival just talking with people and enjoying himself. 

     It pleased me that he wasn’t horrified by the noise and the commotion.  Believe me, many Westerners get off in Delhi, take one look at the whole Indian airport scene, and jump back on the same plane’s departing flight, canceling all further plans to stay in India.  I was glad Tom was open-minded.

      After a day of taking Tom to the sights of Delhi and another to show him the Taj Mahal in Agra, we drove up to Haldwani and checked into the brand new hotel that had just been built—the only building in the whole of Haldwani, with close to a million inhabitants, that had an elevator!  It also had air conditioning, and the heat even up in the

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

foothills at that time was almost beyond belief.  (When we had been down in Agra taking Tom to see the Taj Mahal, it got to 135º Fahrenheit!)  I was frantic over the approaching trek up to the ashram.  How could we possibly go up the river bed for twelve miles in heat like that, with the sun beating down on us? 

      We went over to see the Shuklas, of course, and Tom was completely captivated by their three beautiful daughters, and by having them wait on him as if he were a prince, rushing to get him a cola drink whenever the one in his hands was empty, and turning the fans on him.

     I had never been at Babaji’s ashram in Chillianola, and I wanted to go there so we agreed to drive there first the next day before coming back to Haldwani to start the trek to Herakhan.  Only three people were in the entire ashram at Chillianola when we arrived.  It was a beautiful ashram, but I wanted to get to Herakhan, so we left after only one magical night under the stars at that quiet, holy place.

     On our return to Haldwani, we needed to figure out how we were going to get up to Herakhan in such heat.  It was still 98oF in Haldwani, and I couldn’t imagine trekking twelve miles in the bright sun.  Papa Shukla came up with the idea that it was possible to take a bus along the ridge of the mountains behind the one the ashram was on and then walk down from that ridge.  He phoned around and got very exact information about how to do that.  He said we would be walking through shady trees, downhill, so it would be very pleasant, not uncomfortable at all.

     And so, the next morning, Tom, Louis, and I boarded the bus.  Louis and I only took along enough clothes for changes for a few days, so we had very light packs.  But Tom had a heavy pack.  He insisted on taking his sleeping bag and an extra blanket, even though it was very hot.  When I tried to convince him to lighten his load, Tom said, “No, we’re going up in mountains, and Mom, I’ve camped out much more than you, and you’re forgetting, I did the whole John Muir Trail, and it gets cold up high.”

     So, he insisted on taking along his entire backpack and sleeping bag.

     When we were leaving Haldwani, Papa

Shukla asked, “When do you think you’ll be coming back?”

     And I said, “Well, one day to get there, one day to stay there, one day to come back, so we’ll be back in three days.”

     And then he said, “Are you sure?”

     I just wanted to go to see the ashram, see how it was without Babaji there, and then come back.  So I joked, “If we’re not back inside of three days, you’ll know that a miracle has happened, and Babaji has returned.  If that happens, come on up!  Join us!”

     And that was about the last thing I said before we got on the bus to go on the ridge to go to the ashram.

     As Indian buses go, the one we got on had everything:  We were seated five on one seat that’s built to hold presumably just two people.  There was a crying baby who got sick.  And it even had the bags of grain.  I never understand where they’re going or where they come from, but they’re almost always in the front of a bus, great big bags that fill the aisle and need to be moved whenever someone gets on and off.

     Eventually we got off the bus.  In front of us, getting off of the bus, as well, was a most amazingly beautiful woman, wearing a deep saffron yellow sari, with her hair wild and uncombed, barefoot, looking like a female Shiva, looking like a small, feminine Babaji.  She was smiling at us and then running ahead on the path, then waiting for us, and then running ahead some more.  There was nothing below us other than Babaji’s ashram so she was apparently also going down to the ashram and knew where she was going.  I found the going fantastically hard, so eventually she went out of sight from us.  We never saw her again.  She wasn’t at the ashram and no one there had seen anyone matching my description.

     This “hour or so stroll on a cool shady path through the trees, down the mountains,” which is how the whole adventure had been described, turned out to be something tortuous that went on from ten in the morning until close to five in the evening!  We had no water, we had nothing, just the three of us with our packs.  It was hot!  It was dusty!  And furthermore, it was so steep that we kept

having to zig-zag back and forth.  We covered an immense extra amount of distance going down that mountainside!  Even so, I still puzzle over taking so many hours to get down to the ashram, when we later went back up so quickly.

     When we finally arrived, we found ourselves on the porch of the so-called International Guest House.  Standing there was Prem Baba, with his chillum!  So the first thing that happened was that he and I embraced and laughed and cried and pummeled each other, and then Louis and Tom greeted him the same way.

     Eventually I pulled out the chunk of hash Billy had given me years before—the day I heard that Babaji had died—and gave it to Prem Baba, as Billy had asked me to do.  I also pulled out a joint and asked him with gestures if he wanted to smoke it, but he indicated No, he preferred smoking his tobacco-charris mix in his chillum.  So we sat together and each smoked a different mix.

     We really couldn’t communicate very well because he doesn’t have any English and I don’t have any of his language, but I feel a great true love for him, and somehow I think he enjoys me.  Eventually, we were found by an Italian woman who registered us and gave us a big room all for just the three of us.  She told us there was almost nobody else at the ashram.

     Our arrival in Herakhan was especially marvelous because Prem Baba had just made a great big bucket of a greenish kind of milk mixture of datura and sugar called bhang.  I don’t know what else is in it.  I was told it’s sweet and milky, and when you drink it, you get high.  There was going to be a party down at the riverbed and the bhang would be served there.

     We three went down and threw ourselves in the water to cool off and to get cleaned up.

     I was so tired I dreaded the idea of climbing back up the steps from the river bed to get redressed, then coming back down again.  But just then a female voice said, “May I serve you, Mama, may I get you your clean clothes?”

     I said, “Oh yes!  My sari and my blouse and

my petticoat, they’re right there on my bed!”

     And so that person ran up the 108 steps and then came back down with my clean clothes, and I was able to get dressed in nice, clean, pretty, dry Indian clothes for the party.  My heartfelt thanks go to whoever it was who served me so magnificently.  I never learned her name or saw her again, either.

     After I had my first swallow of the concoction that Prem Baba was serving to everyone, I didn’t want to drink more of it because it definitely was made with milk and milk bothers my arthritis.  I decided well, obviously, no one was going to be upset if I pulled out a joint, so that’s what happened.  I got myself loaded on marijuana while everybody else got loaded on that drink, and a fine time was had by all.

     I thought, “What a great way to be greeted!  What happened to all the sorrow I was afraid of, what happened to all my grief?  Here I am.  I’m looking at the beautiful tomb that they made above where Babaji’s body is buried in a coffin filled with rose oil, and I’m remembering Him fondly and happily, but I’m not crying!”

     I found going to Aarati was a joy and a pleasure, without any other negatives coming in.  I wasn’t afraid of being late.  I wasn’t afraid of doing the wrong thing.  I finally seemed to know how to behave.  I was exuberant, ringing the bell at the beginning of Aarati, pounding and making noise with the tambourine and the castanets, and just absolutely enjoying it.  I thought, “How good of Babaji to give me a place where I can go and feel totally surrounded by love and by memories that I love to remember, without feeling any grief at all.”

     What a magical place Herakhan is!  Om Namaha Shivai.

     Many changes had taken place since Louis and I had last visited.  For example, our room had beds in it, actual charboys, the roped frames lifted from the ground that poor Indians use as beds!  So Tom had a “real bed” to spread out his sleeping bag on.

     It was colder than I had expected, and though I found the charboy and the one thin blanket that I was given better than nothing, I certainly coveted one of Tom’s good blankets.  I tried to convince him to let me use one since

he had a thick sleeping bag, but Tom wasn’t going to let me have any of his stuff.  He kept teasing me, saying, “No, this will teach you, Mama, to listen to me next time.”

     Anyhow, we had a really pleasant stay overnight.  I showed Tom around the ashram and was amazed at how happy I was.  I had cried with Prem Baba a little when we first arrived, but standing in front of Babaji’s tomb (for He was buried, not cremated) didn’t make me weep at all!

      Luckily for me, Tom spent the second night with Prem Baba and someone else in Babaji’s cave, so I was able to use his sleeping bag and get warm.

     The morning of our third day, we were preparing to leave the ashram to climb the mountain to get to the ridge to meet the bus for the bus-ride along the ridge back to Haldwani, but we were getting a late start, by about four hours.  The Italian woman had told me that she would fix it up so that I would have Babaji’s horse to ride up the mountainside.  She said it was so hot it wouldn’t be good for me to have to work so hard to climb, and also Babaji’s horse hadn’t been ridden by anybody since He died, and it needed some exercise, it was getting too fat and lazy.

     So I was patiently waiting for her to get Babaji’s horse `saddled.’  I knew our dutiful patient taxi driver would wait for us at the bus station, so I wasn’t hassling over leaving so much later than originally planned.

     Meanwhile, Tom wanted to take more pictures on the other side of the river, on the temple side, so he went down and over, promising to be back inside of a half hour.

     Then suddenly down the mountainside came Papa Shukla and one of his daughters and one of her cousins! 

      They were all excited because they sincerely believed that Babaji had returned and that that’s why we, Louis and Tom and I, had not met the driver and the car at the end of the ridge on the early morning bus ride.

     I thought such innocent faith was touching, really touching.  But I also felt bad because how was Papa Shukla, who I think is a little older than I am, to get back up the mountain? 

It’s steep!  And his walk down had to have been as arduous and difficult as mine had been, even though it took them only an hour or so, not a whole afternoon as it had for Tom, Louis, and me.  Of course, they weren’t carrying anything, and that probably helped them move more quickly.

     I thought, “Well, I don’t want Papa Shukla to die of a heart attack.  He’s a lot slimmer than he used to be when his wife was still alive, my last trip here, but still he’s a man, he’s old, and he’s a little overweight.”

     So I decided to give him Babaji’s horse to ride.  I figured it wouldn’t be too bad for me to walk because at least I wouldn’t have to carry anything, because Mr. Shukla would have it up on the horse with him.  I told him he should ride the horse and I would walk.  But he remonstrated that he couldn’t let me walk, and we were arguing about it, “No, Papa,” “No, Mama,” when Tom came up saying, “Mom, you’ve got to come across the river with me!  There’s someone over there I want you to see, and you’re the only one I can ask to do this.”

     But just at that point, the Italian woman brought another horse up, a brown horse.  She said that now I could still have Babaji’s horse and Papa Shukla could have the brown one.  So we were essentially all set to go.

     I told Tom, “I really don’t want to go through all the hassle of climbing all the way down and going across the river to meet someone, whoever he is.  Does he say he knows me?”

     Tom said he had asked and the person said he didn’t know me.  So I said, “In that case, there’s no sense to it.  I’m glad you had a good time with that person, but if you’re so energetic that you can run up and down the stairs and across the river in this heat, back and forth, go take pictures, okay?  I’ll see what he looks like when they’re developed.”

     And so Tom left to photograph the man across the river and told us he would catch up with us on the trail.

     The “saddle” this time was better than a folded burlap bag, but it still was just a cloth pad, and my feet still had to hang down the sides of the horse until we knotted a rolled-up shawl and I used that for stirrups.  Papa and I got on our horses, and Louis and the girls walked alongside, and we wended our way

up.  After perhaps 40 or 50 minutes Tom caught up with us.  All-in-all, strangely enough, it took us only a few hours to get to the road at the ridge of the mountain.

     When we arrived, a very kind woman came out of her hut and dipped a bucket into a well, offering us the water to drink.

     Years before, my father died of heart failure after having suffered with typhoid fever for a year.  So I knew better than to drink well water that hadn’t been treated, especially when it looked a little brown around the edges of the bucket.  Hot and thirsty though I was, I didn’t want to drink the water.  I also didn’t want to offend the woman offering it to me, but she put the bucket in my hands. 

     Then something unexpected happened: the bucket started to slip out of my hands, and somehow or other it spilled all over me.  That was just marvelous!  Suddenly I was all cool and the dust was being rinsed off.  So I started laughing, and she laughed and gave me another bucket.  With her permission, I threw it on Louis.  And she gave me another bucket that I threw on Tom.  Then Louis and Tom threw a bucket on me and we were having a great time.  The Shuklas didn’t get involved though.

     I was surprised to see the car and driver up at the top.  I realized with great relief that now we didn’t even need to take the bus back to the dam site! 

     In fact, come to think about it, we could have taken the taxi all along the ridge in the first place!  I still don’t understand why we hadn’t been told about that road on previous trips to the ashram.

     After a few minutes, when the heat had dried out our wet clothes, we all got into the taxi: Papa, the two girls, and the driver in the front seat, and Louis and Tom and me in the back seat.  As crowded as we were, the car ride on the ridge was a definite improvement over the bus—although I’m still glad we had had the chance to show Tom what a ride on an Indian bus is like.

     Everyone back in the Shukla household was a little disappointed that we came back.  Just like everyone who ever knew Babaji, they

were really hoping that He had reappeared.

     It could have been that day.

     Why not?

     The next day, I realized I was out of grass to smoke so I asked Vinay if he knew where there was a tobacco store in Haldwani that might be selling marijuana leaf that I could purchase.  He said, “Yes, but why do you want to go to the store when it grows all around?  We have lots of it behind the sweet shop!”

     And I said, “Really?  Could I have some?”

     And he said, “But of course, Mama, there is an entire field of it.”

     And sure enough, that was true.

     Behind Papa Shukla’s sweet shop on the main street of Haldwani, there was a big field.  And right within sight and reach, lots of marijuana was growing!  Papa gave me a grocery-bag size plastic bag and I started pulling off leaves and buds from the plants, stuffing them into the bag.  Tom was next to me, laughing over seeing so much pot growing openly, when I saw a man in a soldier’s uniform coming toward us from the far side of the field, about an American city block’s distance away.

     I thought, “Oh, my God, maybe Vinay thinks that it’s legal and I’ve been told that it’s legal, but we’re all wrong.  Why else is this man in a uniform coming toward us?”

     I insisted that Tom take the bag and go put it in the car and stay there.  If this man had seen what I was doing, at least I didn’t want Tom to be in trouble—it was bad enough that I was going to be in trouble.

     As the man continued to come closer, Papa Shukla went across the field to meet him, shake hands with him, and then bring him back, right toward me.

     As they came closer, the man called out to say he was Captain Such-and-Such, and the news had gotten around town that I was an American doctor, a college professor, visiting the Shuklas, and he wanted to meet me!  We shook hands and exchanged small talk, then

he excused himself and left.

     It had nothing to do with our picking a bagful of marijuana!  I later joked about my initial apprehension with the Shuklas who said, “But Mama, we told you it is OK.  We’re sorry you were worried.”

     Vinay’s wife, Asha, and her niece and one of her daughters had decided that they wanted to come along to New Delhi with us.  So we drove back with Asha, her daughter, her niece, and the driver in the front seat, and Tom, Louis, and I in the back seat of the car.  On either side of the road, all along from Haldwani to New Delhi, except for perhaps the last fifteen or twenty miles, marijuana grew!  I joked with Asha that if Indians could figure out some way of lifting the international embargo against marijuana, they had enough there so they could become the wealthiest country in the world again.

     Several months later, back in Los Angeles, I finally found out why my son had wanted me to go meet somebody across the river at the ashram as we were leaving.

     I was showing the slides I had photographed of Herakhan, when I realized that I had just looked at some slides of the temples which I didn’t recall having taken.  I also noticed that standing in front of one of the temples was a person dressed in a long white dhoti who looked exactly like Babaji!  There were at least a dozen slides of this person who looked identical to Babaji!!

     My son came over to visit while I was showing the slides, so I had the chance to ask him about them immediately.

     “How did you take pictures of pictures of Babaji?”  I asked, thinking that that’s what Tom must have done.

      “They weren’t pictures of pictures.  They were pictures I took of the person in those pictures.  That’s why I wanted you to come across the river just when we were leaving the ashram, remember?  I was taking pictures of this man who looked exactly like the photos you have of Babaji, but since I never saw Babaji when He was still in His body, I couldn’t be sure, and I wanted you to come over and identify the person I was taking pictures of.”

     Who was there?  Babaji or someone else?

     On my first and second trips to the ashram, I used to see a young man, in his early 20's at most, who looked very much like Babaji.  I was told that sometimes Babaji joked and called that young man His son.  Was that the young man who was there during our last trip?  Or was Babaji?

     I’ll leave it to you to decide Who the pictures Tom took were of.

     It has been eight years since I was last in India.  It seems like yesterday.  The magic still touches me whenever I think about India and Babaji.

     I’ll close this little book of reminiscences of Babaji and other miracles by saying the words Babaji told us to say throughout the day, the same words Puji, the Italian, said that marvel-filled day in Pallea.  As he was offered the chillum, he closed his eyes, raised the chillum to touch his forehead, and said, “Om Shiva.”

     Bhole Baba Ki Jai!     Om Namah Shivaya.

 

 APPENDIX A  

THE WEEK OF BABAJI’S DEATH

             Today is Sunday, February 19th, 1984, and sometime late yesterday, the pain disappeared from my body.  Although occasionally I still feel a bit like crying when I talk about something that happened at the ashram, basically I think I’ve accepted and understood, as much as my intelligence can, whatever is to be learned from Babaji’s leaving His body, going away from this earth, this form, and going wherever it is that He goes.

            On Monday the 13th, I received a letter from Joanne, who was with me when I first went to see Babaji.  She was the person I fell into,

that is, stumbled on, when Babaji whacked me that time in Vrindabin and sent me flying.  Joanne’s letter came from Switzerland; she said that she had just been to Babaji and that He had said that He was tired of all the comings and goings at the ashram and He wished people would just stay home and do their work.

            We all know what that work is—it’s all the same, always the same work for all of us.  It’s to love one another, forgive one another, and to forgive ourselves, constantly, constantly, constantly.

            So, here I am—at home, doing what Babaji said He wanted, doing my work.  This is the work that I do:  I talk with people, I remind them of love and forgiveness, and remind myself of love and forgiveness, and I help them reach God consciousness.

            That’s what God is: God is Infinite Love and Forgiveness.

            That’s the meaning of what we say when we’re in Babaji’s presence: “Bhole Baba Ki Jai!  Praise, honor to the Simple Father!”

            What is the Simple Father?  The Simple Father is the Father who loves so much that no matter what His Children do, He forgives them.  He gives them another chance, and He forgives them again, and then gives them another chance.  He never withholds His love.  He may go into a rage, but He never, never fails to forgive them.  He never severs His relationship with them.  Once in love, always in love.  Always, always.  Infinite Forgiveness.

            So, that letter from Joanne arrived on Monday.  In the same mail, I also got my monthly bank statement, along with my canceled checks.  When I opened the checks from the bank, I got a charge that went right through me. The first one on the top of the pile of checks was one back from the ashram.  I wondered if it was the one about which Radhe Shyam had written me a note, telling me my check hadn’t gone through regular channels, but instead had been endorsed by Babaji Himself.  Radhe Shyam sent the note so I could treasure the check when it came back.  Because mail takes so long between Los Angeles and Herakhan, I didn’t know which check he was referring to.

            Since I can’t read any Hindi or Pali, I couldn’t tell if Babaji’s signature or endorsement was among the several lines written on the back of the check.  So, I ran to get other canceled checks from previous months, to see if the endorsements were the same.  They each differed, so I still can’t tell.  I wonder if it was that check just received, or the one I sent after that one.  I’ll wait.  It’s nice to know that if this isn’t the one, next month or the one after I will receive a piece of paper that was actually in Babaji’s hand.  I take comfort in the belief He knew that I loved Him; that’s why I sent money to Him frequently.

            Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, the 14th, I spent the whole day remembering many of my friends who had died.  I was so obsessed with death that when I taught my class that night, I talked about nothing but death.  Loss.  I was just overwhelmed with the thought of how many had left me.

            I puzzled over how someone I love dies, but that death doesn’t stop my loving others.  What does it mean that I still go on loving other

people?  Does that mean that I’m fickle?  Does that mean that my love for all these other people was so minimal that it didn’t kill me when they died?

            No!  Isn’t the lesson always forgiveness?  Isn’t the lesson always love? What death teaches me, what all of these people have meant, is what I thought about all that day.

            From all of this preoccupation with death, the only lesson to be learned seems to be that I’m still alive and it’s my job to love people, just as much as I loved all those people who left.  And, to forgive the ones who left.  They didn’t leave because they hated me.  They didn’t leave because they wanted to get away from me.  They didn’t leave because I did something wrong that they were going to punish me for.  They didn’t leave so they could withhold their love, taking themselves away so I would never see them again.  Childish nonsense!

            So, there I was on Tuesday, all preoccupied with this idea of if I create my universe, do I then, create the deaths of everyone? 

            Every illusion I’ve ever created?               Yes!              Must I feel guilty? 

            No.  Because all that’s happened is that I’ve released all that energy to go elsewhere to become another illusion.  A beautiful, beauteous thing? 

            So, that was Tuesday.

            Wednesday, I awoke with what I thought was a heart attack.  My chest was in horrid pain.  I was scared and frightened and tried to take comfort from remembering what Shastriji had told me—that I would live to be eighty-six years old.  I even got in the hot tub before leaving to teach my 8:00 AM Physiological Psychology class because I figured that I had probably pulled a muscle, but it didn’t ease my chest much.

            Then I went to school and I started to teach my first class.  My chest hurt so much that I canceled that class and my next one.  I was ready to cancel my last class as well but first I wanted to call home, hoping to be able to contact Louis to come and get me.

            But just as I was going to the telephone in the hall to make that call, an unfamiliar woman came up to me outside my office door.  She said she had been trying to reach me to talk to me about my death and retirement benefits!  I thought this was very à propôs, considering that I felt as if I were dying.

            By the time I finished listening to her, it was so close to the time to teach my last class that I figured I might as well stay, even though I was still sore, with my chest aching badly.  But I wasn’t so worried anymore, because I figured I couldn’t be having a heart attack for so long—I don’t really know what a real heart attack is like.

            Anyway, I came home, and the fellow that I have had doing some construction work for me said that I looked like hell.  He asked if there was anything troubling me.  I said that I didn’t know, that I just didn’t feel

good.

            All afternoon, first one person, then another came over.  Finally, Joe Moriarty showed up just at supper time.  He was in town, and he just dropped by.  He also said that I looked harried, and I guess I did.  I certainly felt harried.  I felt torn apart, I felt pulled, unsettled, uneasy, and I was still in pain.  Even so, we had fun together, joking about things that had happened with Babaji during our trips to the ashram.  I especially enjoyed recalling how He had sent me flying across the room, and how other times when I’ve fallen in the past eight years were all of them very definitely connected with Babaji.  I really enjoyed talking about Babaji with Joe. 

            Right after Joe left, another friend of mine, Pat Dillon, came over.  He had just arrived when the phone rang.  It was Al Andrews telling me that Jeanne Carr had just called him to tell him that Babaji had died on Tuesday, Valentine’s Day. 

            The instant Al Andrews said those terrible words, at that very moment, I knew what the pain in my body was: heartbreak.  Instead of resisting it and feeling pain, I gave into it—and it left!

            You know something else?  How marvelous Babaji was?  One of the great things He taught me was: There is no loss.  As sad as I’ve been all this week, it’s all sorrow for myself.  That’s the truth.  I know.

            When Babaji told me to leave the ashram, a couple of years ago, I felt immense loss inside of my stomach and inside of my chest!  But then I took a breath, and found out that I could still breathe, even though.  Even though what?

            Was God throwing me out of His presence?

            How could He?  Babaji is always with me and was always with me.  If He tells me to leave Him, it doesn’t mean any loss.  He just needs the room for other people to come and visit.  He doesn’t want me to hang around Him, He has already enjoyed having me around.

            You see?  That’s how I figured all of that out.  And, isn’t that what this death of His means?  He simply knows that enough of us are grown-up enough that we know our job, we know how to do it, to really be into loving and forgiving ourselves and each other, so that He can leave and do whatever else He needs to do.  Whatever it is, who knows?  How am I to know what God does when He goes to do something else?  Or ever, at any time?

            Or was it His way of showing us that we don’t need to be afraid of death?  Even God is willing to die—it’s just a refreshment.  It’s a chance to change form, and make new decisions all over again, to stroll in for another game.  Was this the lesson?

            Well, I don’t know, but I felt so sorry for Him.  I felt sad and worried for Him.  Was He in pain, was He scared?  Oh my God, was He alone?  At the moment He felt pain in His chest, did He feel, “Oh, does this mean that I’m not who I think I am?  Who I’ve shown myself to be?”

            And I felt so sorry to have lost Him.  It brought back all those old

feelings.  Loss, grief, pain.  All those feelings I thought had begun to go.  Are they still here?  Do I still mourn my daddy so much, and my momma?  And all those people who’ve left?  Of course!  Isn’t that what I was doing yesterday?  Mourning all over again?

            Has Babaji died to show me it’s time to give up mourning?  To celebrate life?

            What an idea!

            I want to say, “For Christ’s Sake!”

            But isn’t that what Christ died for?  To show us that life and love are beautiful?  Didn’t He want to teach us to love and forgive one another and teach us our divinity?  And, to speak only to that divinity?

            Well, that was Wednesday night.  I was thankful when Louis finally came home, when I could tell him about Babaji and know that he felt as deeply sad as I did.  It was a relief to have Pat Dillon leave.

            Oh my . . .  so many teachings this week.  So many.

            Thursday, I had no classes to teach, so I stayed at home, weeping, wondering why my head had thought of death on Tuesday, but my body, my heart, didn’t break until Wednesday.  If we don’t know a friend has died, do we suffer, still?

            On Friday, I met each class but dismissed it immediately and spent the morning mostly in my office, still weeping, not only for Babaji, but for myself, too.

            On my way home from school I went to the gas station to fill up my car.  I had been so distracted for the two days since I heard about Babaji’s death that I had forgotten to fill my tank.  It’s only because I live so close to school that it was possible for me to drive as far as the Union 76 station near my home.  I was sitting, looking down in my lap at my little notebook in which I keep track of mileage and gas, weeping, and thinking of the vanity of why we do this nonsense of living, how preposterous it all is, as a matter of fact.

            Suddenly, there were two claps in my ear!  I looked up startled, and saw the gas station attendant holding his hand out.  Without looking at him, because I didn’t want him to see me crying, I gave him the keys and asked him to fill it up with unleaded, would he please, and he walked away.

            I became lost in thinking about how Babaji had clapped His hands the last day I was at the ashram with Him.  I was walking way through the grass, on the little path that leads around to where the woman’s dormitory is, like a basement to the building His bedroom is in.  When I heard the clapping, I looked all over, across the river, toward the temples, and I couldn’t find anyone and I couldn’t see anything that could have clapped with such a strange sound.  I started to walk on, but again I heard the noise of two claps.  This time, I looked up, and there was Babaji hanging over the wall, laughing at me, nodding His head.  He was way up, on the porch outside His bedroom. I bowed to Him and put my hands together at my forehead to pranam to Him.  I thought what a marvelous new day it

was, with Babaji as the first person to look at.  As I looked up at Babaji’s face laughing at me, I realized I had better hurry because Aarati was already starting at the temple, and I didn’t want Him to think I had overslept—I had just taken longer bathing than usual.

            So, anyway, there at the Union 76 station, I was thinking about all that, looking into my lap, weeping.  And again, the two claps!  And here was this gas station attendant giving me back my keys.  I don’t remember how it happened except that I heard him ask me if I had been to China!  I answered that I had been there the past summer, and I asked him how he knew.  I watched him answer me, but I couldn’t hear him.  I was lost in looking at his face.  He reminded me of Babaji.  He seemed to be waiting so I said, “Where are you from?”

            And, he said, “Korea,” with the accent on the first syllable, not the second.

            He walked over to the front of the car and leaned over to check the oil, and I saw he was, indeed, the spitting image of Babaji!  That same fat-cheeked, strange Asiatic face.  A lot of people from Nepal have that look and I’ve seen that face on some Japanese.  But the station attendant looked just like Babaji, exactly!  Here was this Korean, looking just like Babaji! 

            I thought of the last conversation I ever had with Babaji.  It was His telling me that I didn’t need to work the next day.  And, my saying that I do work, I work hard.  Then He said that He knew that, but when I came to India, I didn’t come to work, the next day I was to sit in the garden and not work.  But, I said that the next day I was leaving.  And He said, “Oh no,” and He sounded just like I had sounded years ago when I said, “Oh no” when he told me to leave.  I knew in that instant there in the garden that He remembered that other conversation from years before and He was teasing me.  I laughed.  I just laughed.  I was so close to His face, perhaps half a foot away from it, and I laughed, and said, “Oh, yes!”  And we just stared at each other.  I was so in love with Him, and I still am.  Then Babaji said something and the interpreter said, “Babaji wants to know where are you going?”  And I said, “To China,” and He said, “Oh.”

            I asked, “May I have Your blessings?” and He said, “Of course.”

            At the time, I was so proud of myself because I didn’t ask, “May I come to see you again?”

            I thought maybe I didn’t ask because I knew that Babaji would always let me come and see Him. 

            He will always let me come to Him.  I don’t have to ask His permission.  He loves me.  He is always there for me. 

            Perhaps I knew that so certainly that day at Herakhan in front of His throne in the garden that I didn’t ask.

            When I went in for Chundan at Herakhan my last trip, I finally had the sense to look at and see that the rug by His bed was thin, indoor-outdoor carpeting.  It’s not warm—it barely keeps the cold out of the concrete or the marble or whatever the floor is made of.  I wanted His feet

to be warm, and I wanted Him to know that I loved Him. 

            So, a couple of months ago, when I wrote a letter sending a check, I also asked if, this time, when I came, did I have permission to bring a warm, beautifully fuzzy, Chinese silk rug for Him so He could have a lovely warm rug to put His sweet lotus feet down on when He arose.  Now He never will.

            How much I wished He could have come to the United States!  How I wish He could have enjoyed all the great comforts available here, even in my relatively humble home.

            When David, the Hopi Elder, came to stay here a few years go, he slept in my little guest house.  He is regarded as head of one of the highest, holiest people in all of creation, according to the Hopi Nation.  When he came in the kitchen the next morning, he laughed and said something, but, of course, I didn’t understand him.  Then his interpreter told me David was so pleased because he had spent the night on a heated water bed—it was a blessing to his bones.  David had said, “How marvelous that you have given him a new sensation at the age of one hundred and three.”  

            How I wished Babaji could have enjoyed it, too.

            Likewise, every time I get in my hot tub, I think of how I wish Babaji could see how nice it is to just get in this warm, wood tub, with the trees hanging over it.  I look up into the sky and see a star there, which I always think of as Babaji’s star.  And it’s always there.  It was dim for a while this week, because my eyes were swollen from crying.  But then it was back again the last time I got in the hot tub.  Shining just as bright as the full moon. 

            Isn’t that the lesson?  Babaji is always with me.  He’s always in each of us.  Babaji is in everyone.  Babaji is a Union 76 gas station attendant on Beverly Boulevard in the middle of Hollywood, in Los Angeles, California, the United States.

            Now, he has left India.  He’s left cold water.  He’s left walking all those stairs up and down.  Now, it’s time for Babaji to see something else.  He’ll be a gas station attendant.  Or, He’ll be sweet Sachi devoted to Muktananda, teaching her first graders.  Or this person.  Or that one.

            Isn’t that the lesson?  To see God totally in one another?  Isn’t the lesson always to talk with one another as if these were our last words together?  We must always show total faith and love for each other, and act as if there were never any end.  Isn’t that what we want?

            Talk about immortality!  I think that physical immortality is just the most adorable concept I was ever introduced to.  Sorry Babaji didn’t prove it to me.  It just means it’s up to me to prove it now.  God loves him who helps himself.  So, that’s my job.  I’m going to have to live forever to remember Babaji forever; to prove to everyone that love endures.

            Isn’t that the lesson of Prem Baba, that sweet, lovely man, Temple guard there at Herakhan?  Oh, what a lucky man he is, twice in his life to have his faith that Babaji will return tested.  Isn’t that the ultimate?  I know that, right now, Prem Baba is praising Babaji.  He’s

jabbering away, the way he always does, singing his praise for the Herakhan Baba.

            So, if he hasn’t lost faith, should I?  I, who haven’t been tested half so sorely, thank God.

            Isn’t that the idea of surrender?  Isn’t that what Om Namaha Shivai means?  I surrender to the Will of God.  Knowing that everything that God does is perfect?  Not, what could be.  Not, what I think should be.  But, what is is what God creates and it is perfect because God creates it.

            My job is to see the perfection.  Constantly!  That’s all there is to it.  No more.

            But alone, worn out from crying so much, I felt absolutely unhappy.  No one was grateful to me, no one loved me.  I felt, too, that I hated everyone for not being thankful I was here.  I wanted to be alone.

            When Louis came home Friday evening, that’s how I reacted to his typical ignoring of me which usually doesn’t give me any offense anyhow.  What difference does it make?  He stays with me—that shows how he feels, not whether he says Hello when he comes in or Thank You for dinner after he eats, especially since it’s a drag for him to just eat vegetarian food; he doesn’t have any real joy without any eggs or milk, and without any flour and sugar stuff. 

            But, Friday, as he came in at dinnertime, without preamble, I told him I wanted him to leave.

            “Great—get rid of me and Babaji in the same week!” he said.

            And there it was!  I was back at the same thought again.  Did I get rid of Babaji?

            Yes, of course I did.  I have to take responsibility for that.

            I killed Babaji.  I killed my father.  I killed my mother.  And I’ve killed every illusion there is.

            I am only all that there is.  There is only I.

            Isn’t that what it’s all about?  Isn’t that the lesson?

            But then, if that’s really the lesson, who says I have to play that game?  Can’t I make up another game where I pretend that there are others?

            Isn’t that why I created Babaji?  Someone I could love completely?  Adore totally?  A grown, big, lovely newborn baby for me?  That I could pour my whole mind, body, thought, heart, and soul in to? 

            And, so, didn’t I kill him to show myself that I don’t need to have Him in His body to do that?  That I can still do that, not only with a living Babaji, but with everyone else?  Even Louis?

            So, Babaji’s death taught me I can still enjoy life with Him gone.  As I look for God, I will find God.  I will know God loves me.  God has not left me.  God is always in my presence.  That’s it.  With His body gone, He’ll come back in another body.  I will see it, I will feel it, I will know it.  All I have to do is look for it in everyone I contact.

            Because of Babaji, I have all these people that I know and love that I didn’t even know existed a dozen years ago.  That’s the truth.  Friday ended as I told Louis to forget I’d told him to leave.  Love and forgiveness reigned again.

            It will soon be the anniversary of the day I met Leonard, the day after I read the first thing I ever read about Rebirthing.  That May twelfth was the first time I ever heard said in that strange language, “Om Namaha Shivai,” although all my life I had heard, “God is One.  Surrender to God’s Will.  That’s all there is.”

            So, there’s the teaching.  Yesterday, this time of yesterday, on Saturday, I was still sore, I was still crying.  People called.  I listened to people.  I went through my rage, I went through my pain, I went through my sorrow, I went through my doubt, I went through my despair, through my contempt.  Did I go through a hundred and eight different negatives?  Probably.  If not, I’ll have to go through some more.

            But, I realize, I now forgive my father for leaving me.  I forgive my mother for leaving me.  I forgive Babaji for leaving me.

            Billy came over to bring me a present he wanted me to take to Prem Baba.  Billy said he knew Prem Baba loves hash, and I love to bring him presents, so he gave me a chunk of hash, wrapped as a gift.  He made it from homegrown grass.

            I told Billy, “I’m not too sure if I’m going to Herakhan again, because I got news this week that Babaji died.”

            I was surprised that when I said that to him there was no pain.

            Today, Sunday, I don’t want to seem to criticize anything that Babaji did—as a man or as a God.  I want to surrender to His will and to His intelligence.  If I think He’s wrong, it’s my business to change my mind, not to change Him.  Isn’t that another teaching from Babaji?  To accept what is, knowing that it’s perfect, because what is, is perfect in God’s perfect world.  That’s that.