 |
| Dr Larry Brilliant |
(from "Sometimes Brilliant"):
As guru commissioner, I was beginning to worry that my wife’s ashram was another cult, which like all cults emotionally entangles with psychological barbed wire. Broken glass at the top of the ashram’s walls began to take on a more sinister meaning. I was told it was there to keep thieves from the temptation of breaking in and stealing, but I was beginning to wonder whether it was there to keep us in instead.
When we woke up at the Evelyn Hotel the next morning, I told Girija I needed to be alone to think. Seeing how sad I had become, she hugged me and went off to the ashram while I stayed in Nainital. I went out to the lake and rented a small flat-bottomed boat, paddled out to the centre of the shallow, dark green water, pulled up the oars, and drifted. I felt awful. So alone. Wildflowers of many colours covered the hills; the sun played over the snowy mountaintops that peeked through the clouds and nearby foothills. So much colour, such an exotic land. I should have been happy. But this trip was not turning out as I had hoped. I had already lost Elaine, and now I felt Girija slipping away.
I was sure I did not belong with this cult, but I could see that Girija did. This inscrutable man had captivated her. There was no doubt that I would lose her if I made her choose between him and me. I wanted to shove the beauty that I saw all around me into the hole in my heart: the mile-high lake, the snow-capped mountains, and the tranquil scene of wildflowers. I was desperate for a way to make myself feel better, but I had no inner resources. Nothing dispelled the darkness. My mood matched the algae-clogged, muddy, gross, polluted water I was floating on.
At the edge of the shore, the trees reflected in the dark water, beneath yet another red-roofed pagoda, another Hindu temple, Naina Devi Temple, at the northern edge of the lake. I did not know then that naina means “eye.” In one story, Shiva’s wife, Parvati, also called Girija, was so distressed at this very place, she set herself on fire, and her eyes were said to have fallen at this spot. That image of Parvati’s dead eyes falling into the lake would have been too much for my poor spinning brain to absorb. I am glad I did not then know the myth of the name of the lake and town of Nainital. The ashram was already too weird, too pagan. I just wanted things to be the way they had been. I wanted my wife back. I wanted to know whether this guru was a fake or a saint; whether my wife and her new friends were on to something, had found God, or had gone nuts.
Girija wanted me to find God. That’s why she had brought me here. If I left, she would continue her inner journey without me. My journey was about putting science and medicine to use in order to help ease suffering. We had had such an auspicious reunion in San Francisco. We turned our lives upside down to come to India. I would do anything to keep from losing her now, even in this godforsaken place. I tried to put my rational scientific mind in neutral, set aside my deep hurt, and reach out to what I thought was God. I tried to pray but really didn’t know how. I had memorized some prayers, and I could recite a few, mostly in other languages, but I barely knew what they meant.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .” we had sung during marches with Martin Luther King Jr. and others during the civil rights campaign. I loved that song, but today it was not working. Om mani padme hum is what Trungpa and the Tibetan refugees and some sherpas in Nepal would say. Then there was my Torah portion from my bar mitzvah: “Vidabar Adoni El Moshe b’har see mor namor . . . then . . . something else . . . something else.” “And Jeremiah said, ‘The Lord God came unto me and said, “Buy thee my field in Anathoth, which is in the land of Canaan; for the right of redemption is thine to buy it.”’ ” For their Torah portions, most of my friends had gotten what seemed like serious, deep spiritual verses: “Lord God is One,” or “Follow these my commandments.” But what did I get? “Go buy some land.” In the land of Canaan of all places.
I dug deeply into my religious upbringing. Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One. I felt no door opening the way it had with psychedelics. I was still on this ugly, smelly, polluted lake floating with an overwhelming sadness that I had come this far, only to lose the woman I felt destined to be with for the rest of my life. I was begging, pleading, hoping for a sign, anything that might provide a bridge to this spiritual world Girija had found, anything that would tell me I should stay.
“Dear God, it does not have to be a big sign. Just a small sign, even a little rainbow in the oil on the polluted lake. Nobody else has to notice, just a tiny sign between you and me.” The trees with big white flowers were still standing high in the hills, the startlingly bright red bougainvillaea still cascading along the shore, and the snowcapped mountain peaks still glistened.
The silence was my answer; as hard as it was to accept, as sad and broken as I felt, it was time to leave the ashram. It was time to leave my wife to her guru and his cult. We had only been married for three years, but we had known each other for half of our lives already—since we were teenagers. I could barely imagine being without her.
I brought the boat around. My arms were almost too tired to row. It seemed to take forever to get back to shore, to haul the boat out of the lake, pay the few rupees, go back to the Evelyn Hotel and walk up to our room. I stared at our few possessions that would have to be divided. I started to cry.
That night, after dinner, I tried to find the words to tell Girija, but she already knew. We both knew. If Maharaji was the real deal, then I might have lost my chance for entrance into the Kingdom. If he was a fraud, Girija was going to stay with him anyway. Either way, this was how it would be. She had faith; I did not. I wasn’t sure I even wanted it. That night, she asked me whether I would come to the ashram to say goodbye to Maharaji.
“Of course,” I replied. I was devastated, but not without manners.
Early the next morning, Girija and I divided our meagre possessions. I put my orange backpack and travel gear in a taxi outside the hotel. We arrived at the ashram before anyone else. I asked the taxi to wait because I did not expect it to be long. Girija and I passed through the gate, crossed the bridge to the temple area, removed our shoes, and walked through the public yard. We settled in front of Maharaji’s tucket. As we waited for his entrance, Girija looked at me with such deep love, and deep sadness. She had been asking Maharaji, “Will my husband find God?” He hadn’t answered her either.
 |
| Girija and Neem Karoli Baba |
We held hands while we waited. I scanned the ashram, the temples, the statues of the gods and goddesses, the red roofs, the yellow windows and doors, the deep green forests, the soft, gurgling, winding river, the line of Westerners arriving by foot, by taxi, and by bus beginning to congregate by the front gate.
Devotees from the neighbouring houses had left flowers and fruit offerings on Maharaji’s tucket arranged in a design that spelled out the name of God, Ram, in Hindi script. One of the apples in the “M” of Ram had fallen to the ground, which made God’s name incomplete. God’s name should not be incomplete or imperfect in any language.
I got down on my hands and knees to pick up the apple and replace it to repair the name of God. At just that moment, Maharaji burst through the oversized double doors from his room, and before I could look up or move, he seemed to lunge at me, deliberately stepping on my fingers, and pinning my right hand to the ground just as I grasped the apple. I was stuck. He seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds. I couldn’t free my hand from under his foot. My worst fear in the ashram. I couldn’t get up off my knees. It was weird.
Maharaji looked down at me, giggling. “Where were you yesterday?” he asked in simple Hindi that even I could understand. “You were not here. Were you sick?”
I twisted my hand, trying to get free but could not.
“Were you at the movies?” he asked.
“Were you at the library?” And then he paused. “Oh, yes,” he said, “were you at the lake?”
Up to that point, he had said everything in Hindi or the local mountain dialect,
Pahari. But when he said “lake” in English, I felt exposed, naked; a strange buzzing feeling started at the base of my spine; my whole body began to tingle.
“What were you doing at the lake? Were you horseback riding? Did you go swimming?”
My stomach lurched. I began to shiver. The tingling intensified, rising up my spine like mercury in a thermometer. I could barely feel my fingers.
He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Doctor America! Doctor America! What were you doing by the lake?”
He paused and then put the back of his hand on his forehead, his eyes darting between Girija and me.
“Oh, yes. I know. You were talking to God.”
I stopped struggling to free myself. His voice echoed inside my head.
“Doctor America! Did you ask God for something?”
Looking up, I saw him, as if for the first time, clear as day. It was like he was on fire. I could not catch my breath. My spine buzzed; so did the paint on the doors and windows of the ashram. My skin hurt. My eyes hurt. Was the light always this intense?
Time slowed, then stopped entirely. But my heart still pounded like a jackhammer. The sparks in my spine became a four-lane highway of lightning bolts, moving from my sacrum up to my belly, to my chest and neck. I could feel my neck veins bulge.
I was terrified. I might die! I was filled with love. I might live!
Maharaji sat down and released my hand. He was as massive as a Himalayan peak. He smiled the most loving smile I had ever seen, his eyes filled with lifetimes of compassion. He pulled me closer to him.
“Did you ask God for a sign?”
Maharaji twinkled. He reached over to my face with his fingers and tugged and twisted at my beard, caressing my tear-drenched face. He opened his eyes wide and our gaze locked. The light seemed to pour out of him into me and I felt like I was being filled with love upon love. It became too much, my container too small to hold everything he was beaming my way. When he saw that I was full, he broke the contact like nothing had happened, giggled, and tugged harder on my beard.
What little was left of my scepticism vanished. I felt utterly at peace. He knew. He knew. I do not know how. But he knew. I felt loved like never before, completely understood, naked and yet unashamed. I felt accepted. Tears streamed down my face.
Girija wrapped her shawl around me and hugged me, and so did the rest of the Western satsang. Maharaji twinkled once, twice more, and then released his spell.
I was home.
Maharaji sat back on his tucket and began doing japa on his fingers, repeating the name of God again, his thumb again counting the names of Ram. His eyes were half closed as he mouthed the words of his own mantra: “Ram, Ram, Ram.” It felt like the whole world converged on him while he was radiating out love for everyone, every being in the world.
At that moment, I was not surprised that he loved everyone. That is his job, I thought if he’s a saint at one with God. He’s supposed to feel that way.
What astounded me more than anything then was not that he loved everyone; it was that at that moment, I loved everyone too. I loved Girija for her patience with me, the Westerners in the ashram who had annoyed me, the colleagues who had stuck a hypodermic needle in my picture on the first day of my internship in San Francisco, my parents in a way I never thought I could, politicians, antiwar protestors, the cops who had beaten Wavy in Chicago, friends and enemies, myself and all others. I was in love with the love, with the moment, with Maharaji, even with my own bursting heart.
Maharaji had lifted the veil of maya, the illusion that makes us all feel separate and alone. When he did, he took me to a place where I forgave everything and everyone, including myself, and found nothing but love. This was real magic. I didn’t worry about being accepted or whether the ashram harboured a cult or my marriage with Girija.
And then without a care, I touched his feet. I do not know what prompted me to do it, but I felt like I was connected to electrical cables that were plugged into the wiring of the universe and it triggered something in me. This was the first time I felt that powerful love—certainly the first time I felt it without a psychedelic like LSD coursing in my body—and I’ve felt it many times since with no drug other than love. It blew away my intellect and blew my guarded heart wide open.
That moment in which I found myself awash in a tsunami of love for every being in creation became the touchstone by which I measured every future experience and a state to which I constantly yearn to return. At the heart of it is Divine Love. That moment of pure love has driven everything in my life. That is what I keep coming back to—love, love for everyone. I fail hundreds of times each day. But the aspiration alone changed everything about me. It made me act unpredictably. I was governed by love. It made me ambitious in a different way. I had no context for the experience. I knew it was a gift, but I didn’t yet know what I was supposed to do with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment