Dadaji seldom talked to me about spiritual matters. He preferred old war stories and occasionally he would tell me great tales from his adventures after the war, travelling through Asia and India. When he saw me reading Carlos Castenada or any Indian saint or other authors who dwelt on such subjects he would become annoyed and recommend that I stick to cheap detective novels…”they are better quality mindfood than other peoples ideas about God”. I seldom took his advice because I found that especially under the influence of Castenada I could raise my level of consciousness to a place where I was a more competent operator on the spiritual level. From Castenada I could sometimes leap to an enlightenment state.

There were three books that Dadaji liked me to read. We both shared a deep love for the I Ching and once in a while we would do joint readings in which he was the top line and I was, I believe, a middle line. He was always very clear about the translation that he preferred in any book and he had a really superb eye for the best translation available. In those days Wilhelm was the only good translation of the I Ching, “barring that idiot Jungs’ introduction which is just a useless rehash”. He said that the middle section “The Great Treatise” the Ta Chuan, was the greatest magical text available to us, and he encouraged me to read and re-read it. He had altered his I Ching, crossing out any Christian references that Wilhelm has put into the footnotes. His distaste for the Black Dharmas, the three awful expressions of the desert fiend Jehovah, always amused me. He scratched out the offending words thickly, and darkly and totally.
Recently a new version of the I Ching has apppeared. Two women, Carol Anthony and Hanna Moog have used the I Ching to translate itself. It is a very clever technique and the result removes all traces of Confucius and his tired social regulations, hierarchies and judgemental commentaries. I suspect that Dadaji would be as delighted as I am to see the venerable old Sage cleansed of the detritus of ages and returned to the clarity of the original magical, nature-based, pagan work which celebrates the unique way we each travel our paths through life. His I Ching was underlined, hexagrams were occasionally re-named and all through the text he had red-lined the teachings that guided him through his life. His poem about the I Ching, which is found in Tantra Of Blowing the Mind is one of my favourites. It is called

Much of the tantra is devoted to the I Ching and his rewording of the ancient text in order to illuminate the beauty and deeper meaning of the hexagrams is his tribute to his favourite book. As we lit the incense and bowed our heads together to prepare to throw the coins on the little orange cloth that served as our altar, he would intone his invocation:

He would throw the coins, call out the name of the hexagram and then turn to me, his eyes full of light and sometimes even tears and he would say ” Do you see?”

Sleeping at the hermitage was different than sleeping anywhere else. At times I could feel Dadaji tripping along my nervous system and I would cry out in alarm. Mostly though I would be asleep and conscious at the same time. Dreams were rich and deep wells of wierdglow and otherworld life. One night I dreamt of the Magicians Ball. We were all in disguise, in fabulous costumes and dancing in a great room, stars for our ceiling, hung with lanterns and streamers of ribbons. The music was strange but intoxicating. The view from an upper balcony was one of riotous joy and also a stately decorum…an odd mix for any party. My escort was a very handsome young man with blonde. His face was uncovered but disguised nonetheless. We all attended this astral event at regular intervals of no-time and the many hundreds of us were perfectly at home in this no-place. Disguise was a game and only when I awoke did I realize with whom I had been dancing the night away. Some of you might also have memories of attending this grand celebration. Mostly the dream world was more didactic. I remember swimming in a sea of consciousness like a dolphin, leaping out of the water and diving forward or back-flippping and each time I hit the medium I entered another life, another point of view, in the vast ocean of consciousness. I felt I was being instructed, that I was practising to achieve a facility in this art of moving through the consciousness of others and of my own endless ocean of lives. This dreamlife helped to keep me in a state of apartness from the ordinary life going on all around me. It would be impossible to maintain a life in this magic bubble of the Hermitage of the Great Work if the mundane world were allowed to intrude.

Eventually, usually in the second or third month of the visit I would become sour, petulant and deeply unhappy. I would feel that Dadaji was a great burden, unbearable to be around. I began to yearn for the freedom of wandering about India alone. Our farewells were a relief to us both but also sobbingly and heartbreaking sad. I could no longer bear the heightened intensity and the powerful energy levels nor the level of discipline which I needed to maintain self awareness around his attuned Being. I had such admiration for the Patels. They never left his side and never tired or weakened. Once on my own I wanted to try out my new knowledge and understanding while still in a magical space that permitted the synchronicity and insight and powerful meditation to continue. Slowly it would fade away and I was left with no fairy dust at all, but usually a lot of ash and smoking fire.

A few days after Dadaji died in 1992, I returned to the village and the home that we had shared for so long. As soon as Kapilnath and Garudanath, who had arrived earlier from Seattle had left, I collapsed into a puddle of tears and sweat and diarrhea. I lay on the floor of his room and limply wept. Eventually I gathered a bit of self respect and headed out into India feeling like a ronin without direction or purpose. I went to Pushkar. I rented a little domed tower room and slowly began to create my new life. Thus began a dramatic time of adventure and shock and wildness and power. I became a shemshani, a burning ground girl. A crew of Naths and Aghoris and unnamed ones gathered around me. We would make pilgrimage, riding on camels or in a camel cart, into the wonderful Pushkar desert. Bengalis sing and most of my crew were Bengali and eventually we were even joined by a a young wandering Baul singer. We would arrive at some destination in the desert, an ancient temple or oasis, and we would sing all night. Out of the darkness somebody would arrive with a drum or cymbals or wonderful voice, spiced tea would appear and the chillums would be passed from one to the other.

A young Nath boy, Brihaspatinath, offered to take me to see some of the great Nath places and to go and visit the remarkable and immensely wealthy Durganath, a 6 ft tall French nath woman who lived alone in a huge cave, armed with an uzi and the ability to turn into a tiger. She turned out to be a petite Australian woman, armed with a spear, who was surprised to learn she had ever been a tiger. Our meeting was fateful. Her cave was under the protection of Reechishvar, the Lord of Bears and an aspect of Shiva. In one night my hair turned into lightning bolt dreadlocks. I had no money and I left there barefoot, dressed in ragged orange robes and an old turban to cover my head. Thus I wandered for seven months. The shock of a sudden shift back into mundane reality caused me a great deal of damage. My nerves broke. Without a visa, I was forced to return to Canada.

My storehouse of Dadaji magic was all dried up. I felt like a shell, neither human nor magical. I felt unstable and unable to continue my life as I had before. This is a typical condition for one who is orphaned of a great guru.

It is now 2007. After years of effort and lack of effort I begin to feel my way and to remember the knowledge and sensations of the past. Along the way I learned to be a good housewife, I created a home, I learned to drive a car, I learned gentleness with kids and little animals, I watched too much television. I learned to draw and paint, to sew, to carve stone, to garden and I learned about attachment and responsability and belonging to a place and time. I learned how to follow rules and care a bit about how I appeared to others. These are some of the parts of a good human life. One afternoon when it looked like I could not become more content with my life in Vancouver I suffered an anxiety attack that I thought was me dying. After that I was never free of them. My sound sleep become much less sound and I began to experience fear although there was nothing to be afraid about. My amnesia for the past was complete at this point. I knew events had transpired but they held no power, no resonance for me. My magical past was missing and my happy Canadian life had turned sour and frightening. I have used the I Ching, Reiki, fasting, drugs, ritual, amulets and Chi gung, to help me find my way through many levels of unfamiliar suffering. Varieties of modern Energy Therapy have proven to be the most useful tool so far. What modern psychology has to say about our ancient practices, our beliefs about ourselves and our manifestations is radical and new. It speaks of pathology and dissociation where I think of shamanic manifestation. On the other hand it brings the mystic firmly back down into the body. The necessity to respect, honour and listen to what is after all our physical expression is a new idea for me. It may be the most useful contribution of modern western thought to the ancient but tired paths of eastern spirituality.

During our years together, one or the other of us would slip into a state that I can only describe as enlightened. These states were full of bliss and information. Sometimes the ecstasy would last for days. Reading Avadhoota Gita brought me into just such a state for almost a week. Dattatreya writes of his delight in his wild freedom, his expansive self-expression, his spontaneous knowing. He learned nothing from books or the words and ideas of others, let alone the rules and regulations of the world. His wisdom came from his twenty-four gurus, the wasp, the bird, the turtle and the greatest of all gurus his own perfect Self, the Inner Guru. The Avadhoota Gita is a celebration of the Self, a celebration of the royal path of Liberation. Once I entered into the state of wildness, the distractions, noise and illusion of life on earth no longer had a hold on me and for that short period I was the avadhoot. I saw Dadaji for what he was, I saw us for what we both were. We were eternal Life, star stuff, the expressive universe in microcosm. When Dadaji would enter the state, the territory of bliss, he seemed to grow to another size and proportion and he glowed fiercely with inner fire. His words were liquid honey that poured into my heart and resonated with my own all-knowing, all-encompassing, all-understanding condition of the information-rich state of enlightenment.

This is the reason that Dadaji never “taught me anything”. This is why he never wanted me to read what other people think, other people’s patterns, ideas, concepts of the ways and means of attainment. This is the reason he ridiculed every guru, every wise speaker of great words, every hero and saint. He knew deeply that each sentient being is star stuff, is the Inner Guru, is Spontaneous Knowing, is perfection of Cosmic Expression. That means YOU too. Words mostly obscure this truth. Forms and systems create masses of impenetrable overlay on the simplicity of Self. May we all enjoy Ecstasy in Absolute.

Mahendranath thought for himself. He looked at words and ideas carefully, turning, studying and comparing. He deeply examined everything in life that we take for granted. He never believed anything that he had not himself confirmed. Eventually this gave him an exalted view, or rather, a view from a high place, a panoramic view. To become a naked Nath in India, to form no attachments to people, places or objects, to gather together nothing at all, to embrace poverty and solitude, these are odd choices. These are the choices of someone who views life from outside and far beyond any local reality tunnel. Looking into his future as a young, healthy, englishman, he could see a world of possibilities. He experienced wild freedom while gazing at a plenum of potential pathways spread out at his feet.

There is a persistent belief that we are about to see a planetary reset to default, a mysterious, unknowable default. The lodestone mind that carries its own inner maps may steer true when our other maps no longer correspond to a newly altered reality. Preparing for total novelty seems impossible but in fact it is the way of life for a magician.

Years ago de Ropp wrote a useful and clarifying book on the subject of life paths called “The Master Game.” This is a very good book for youths who wish to examine their motivations and the deep desires and goals that influence their creation of lives that conform to (hopefully) their greatest ideals. Power, fame, wealth, family life, wisdom, experiences and freedom (jivanmukti) are all legitimate aims. If we make our choices from the handbook we are given by society and usually our families, we have very limited choices, we do what has already been done, what is always done. This is what makes the world go around, perhaps. The salt of the earth, the propagators of life, the growers of food and new software, inventors, lovers and soldiers make this planet function as it must. These are the salt and the pillars, the men and women of the world.

Dadaji first picked to be a soldier, or to be much more accurate, he chose to attend wars. I never heard him mention shooting a gun. He was rescue and medical help on the battlefields in Spain, and rehab for the soldiers in the 2nd World War. He was always getting himself into trouble with the higher ranks so he wasn’t planning to rise through the military. Perhaps the horrors and destruction of war, tyrannical rules and sudden death were useful catalysts to push him further outside the gates of ordinary life. I suspect we have all spent lifetimes as rank and file soldiers, following some leader, dying for one cause or another, on the battlefields of time. The saddhu ranks are filled with such men.

He was rejected by the military world. He was a troublemaker, a big troublemaker. He asked too many questions and proposed unthinkable solutions.

At all times, from a very young age, he was meditating, seeking out “saints” and sacred places, reading and researching… this at a time when there was very little information or example available to a western seeker. Meanwhile he worked at lots of jobs. He didn’t drink or smoke or gamble so his money went far. He travelled. He painted houses, designed ingenious ways to make jobs better or easier. He was a journalist and editor for an english language newspaper in Bangkok. He was a window washer in Darwin. He was clever with his hands and meticulous to an extraordinary degree. He lived by his skills and wits on the surface of society, but formed no roots, no ties, no attachments.

He spent his own time researching cosmic mysteries, scientific advances, and ancient cultures and forms of magic. He learned that true information and accurate maps are hard to find. He talked with Wallace Budge at the British Museum. Budge was the foremost scientific investigator and expert on ancient Egypt. His most valuable words to the young man were, “We really don’t know anything about ancient Egypt. So much of what you read, even in the history books, is pure imagination.”

He sought out conversation with Aleister Crowley because he always looked to the despised and the discounted one, the object of mockery. “The one favoured by the crowd is sure to be as great a fool as the crowd around him!”
He knew Crowley in the final years when he was fairly derelict and addicted to pain killing drugs. He had become a man of greatly diminished energy and influence. He had, however, a long view of his own life and accomplishments. He advised the young man and summed up what he felt were the triumphs and disappointments of his adventure filled life. His great despair was never feeling satisfied with his encounters with magick. Dadaji was most surprised that western magicians, including Crowley, still dreamt of finding “the Book” wherein would be written all the secrets of magic.

I wonder how Dadaji knew the true nature of magic long before he went to Asia? He said he had his first experience of enlightenment while still a young man in England. At that time he was camping out in a tent in a forest, where he could be alone and meditate without distraction. He had just returned from there to his tiny London flat. He had come to take care of his mundane reality and regroup before going back to the forest to continue his assault on the barriers to consciousness. He had just put a piece of music by Grieg on the phonograph and he was profoundly relaxed, sipping a freshly brewed cup of tea when … Bom Bolenath! Shiva Shankar Alakh! Alakh! Alakh! … he was swept up in a towering vision of Lord Shiva. The image was overwhelming but the power and information transfer were unspoken, unspeakable and knowable only in another state of awareness altogether.

He said Crowley suggested he study the I Ching and visit India. He did both to his everlasting benefit. He finally sailed into Bombay harbour in 1954, landing without a single penny in his pocket. He had given away the last of his shillings as tips to the ships staff. That very day he was initiated as a sannyasi and as an Adinath by his new guru, Lokanath of Uttarkashi. This saint had been patiently awaiting a mysterious arrival for two weeks. A vision of Shiva had told him to leave his silent cave in the remote Himalayas and come down to the blasting hot, crowded, coastal city and wait for the one who was to be his successor, his inheritor, his spiritual son. They must have recognised each other immediately. He was given the name of Mahendra, a name of god Indra who had blessed and protected him his whole life. Arriving penniless, no way back, was the magic pass for Dadaji, and he knew it.

We neo-naths talk often about no Gurus, no traditions; the new ways, the modern patterns of our path here in America and Europe. I wonder, though, how can we ever replace this exalted moment of utter clarity and dispassion and determination, this moment of nivritti marga, turning away from all that life has to offer? Taking the sannyas vows and taking on a guru are supreme moments, ultimate experiences, unalterable steps. It is death and rebirth. The old life is cast off with every attachment and responsibility that belonged to that life. This moment is understood as an exit from the womb of the world and rebirth into…. the other life, the mirror of life as it used to be.

Motivation and desire are now only for freedom and renouncement, less not more, smaller not bigger, solitary, single-minded, already dead. Committed to renouncing heaven and therefore hell, this life and the next, everything we love in this life.. we had better have a damn good reason, some reward that is greater than life itself. Promise not to work for another or for wages, promise not to marry or breed, promise to be so poor that you can’t even feed yourself, change your name (lose that identity!), never visit your family again. You are dead for them. Everyone knows that some of these promises, vows, rules will get bent and broken, but nonetheless promises are made. This is a commitment that will certainly alter viewpoint, motivations and the outcome of one’s life. This is a particularly odd choice to make for your life.

Most of Mahendranath’s life in India is a complete mystery. He gave little peeks,
“I was studying I Ching in Penang and …”
“I was meditating on Serpent mountain when..”
“I met this movie star in Benares and she..”
“I visited Goa and saw…”
“It was while I was wandering in the Rann of Kutch that..”

The saddhu wanders. He walks from Parasuramakund to Kanyakumari and back again. In every nook and cranny of India you will find saddhu signs. Tiny temples, painted rocks, fire rings, nath graves, rusting trishuls nestled into the trunks of giant peepul trees. Saddhus wander and gather experience. They test the strength of their saddhana against the world and they do so half naked and unarmed. Using alcohol or drugs, starvation, privation and pain, gambling, sex, celibacy, meditation and contemplation, solitude or crowds they storm the walls of perception and explore the limits of human consciousness. They come up with endless wild and silly schemes for attaining Godhood, siddhas, all-knowing, all-power all- whatever they figure they are seeking. Some saddhus are very radical beings who experiment and push back boundaries and restrictions and limitations with the zeal of maddened warriors.

Mahendranath despised modern saddhus. He felt they almost never fulfilled the potential that the saddhu life had given them. This is never an easy life and most fall by the wayside, giving up their inner freedom in favour of greedy cravings, crime and a closed mind. Drug use takes an enormous toll. Ignorance and politics turn them into small minded, dangerous idiots. They are no longer widely supported by the population upon whom they depend for food and shelter. Meditation is often spoken of, but is seldom practised. Dadaji was considered odd for his fascination with and practice of meditation. Lokanath sent him off to the Buddhists to seek more information because it was so little studied among the Hindu wanderers.

The saddhu who acts out his knowledge and understanding is a delight to see, for a while. I spent one day following an old saddhu around the streets of Bombay. After a while I figured out that he had decided that for this day he would not exert his will. He would be tossed and twirled by the currents of the moment and the whims of passersby. What a hilarious, instructive and illuminating day! He became entrained in the energy streams of a passing business man who was caught up in his thoughts and moving fast. Soon he became entangled with this goofy little old man, half-naked and toothless, grinning and glazed eyes shining. He was swatted away into the stream of a housewife who looked around to find that he had followed her to her doorway.
“Ah, Maharaj,” she said sweetly, “please enter. You must eat. And you, foreign girl, you come too and eat.”
Half a bite taken when a little whirlwind twirled him out of the courtyard and back out into the street, light as a feather.

At sunset we went down to the sacred lake at Walkeshwar, near the shoreline in Bombay. He went into the water among all the others washing themselves, their clothes, their kids, their cows. The ritual of bells and horns had started and incense and firelight streamed from the hundreds of little temples that surrounded that lake. It was the magic twilight moment, sandhya. Nothing is seen clearly, the light is tricky and smokey. Is that a snake or a rope? Suddenly that goofy clown of a saddhu looked me straight in the eye, I was up on the dry steps, his eyes shining in that commanding magical way that eyes shine when signaling important parts of the script. He lifted his loincloth most deliberately and seriously and exposed his nakedness. I was stunned. I couldn’t guess the significance of what I was seeing at that moment but it was all etched so clearly in my memory to be understood later with more experience and words and knowledge. That was magic! The actor, the audience and the play, consciousness and the moment and the message. I hadn’t met Dadaji yet, but I would be prepared to meet him, shortly thereafter.

Anyway, I just wanted to say something about choices and arrangements that can be more favourable to allowing strangeness and alternate realities to start manifesting intensely in one’s life. I believe saddhu life points to this method. We mostly meet reflections of our mundane selves in habitual life, but it is my impression that jivanmukti is more often found on very strange pathways. Improbability may be the royal road to enlightenment. Magic is found where the weight of probability is less and the unlikely is becoming the norm. There is a strange buzzing of bee sound in the ears. The only power here is to be a skillful surfer, don’t fall off among sharks or the ordinary life and learn to relax. Dadaji’s choices were as wildly improbable as some wonderful number in the mathematical theory of playing the odds. He was just another fellow with a wild idea who ended up not too badly. The future may find a use for his work or not. To quote the gypsy, “He did what he did and he got what he got.”

Living with Dadaji proved to be as difficult as he had predicted. Now, I can see that I took up so much of his space, his time and his emotional energy. He would often say in exasperation, “Would you RELAX!” When he had had more than enough his door curtain would be pulled closed and I was forbidden to enter, usually for days. The family would give me aggrieved looks as they came and went from his darkened and closed off room. Angry roars would bring someone running. I would spin off into hurt and anger and fear and stay frozen, unable to bear what was happening. I could never figure out what had made him act that way. On the other hand, in their wise way, the older family members would move in very close to him, pressing and massaging his legs, feet, arms and head. They would soothe him like he was a sick child. I knew nothing about nurturing so I stood in harsh judgement of his ‘babyish’ behaviour and I would yell at him and attack his curtain with insults. Then Kaliben would take me by the arm, hold my hand and tell me to shush and go upstairs to the roof and leave him alone. He would be shouting at me by then. Couldn’t everybody see he was wrong and I was right?

I have always had a problem with authority. I had acted in an unprecedented manner when I had given Mahendranath authority over me. I had given him the right to do to me anything he saw fit to do. Nonetheless I obviously squirmed and rankled and burned. I began to fantasize about killing him in violent ways. I couldn’t stop it. I would drown him, knife him and shoot him with a machine gun. These fantasies disturbed me greatly because consciously I adored him. One day while I was copying his writing into my notebook I was also thinking about my violent reactions and wondering what was going on with me. I looked down and saw I had written ‘neurosis”. There was nothing else to do but confess. I expected fury. Instead he laughed and said, “This is why I love you. You tell the truth.” I was relieved, but I wondered if he really knew my dark heart.

Many many sadhus are ex-military or ex-police. It meant that these men were often fastidious, methodical and competent. Dadaji was all of these things. His room contained little, but everything had somehow been altered by his hand. He kept his tools in tins which were decorated with orange paint and had strange faces created out of cut paper glued to the outside. Anything that broke, he would repair. His ancient and rotten tape player was always needing to be taken apart. Little screws and parts and pieces would be carefully placed in a lid to be cleaned, filed and replaced. If a tape broke he took the cassette apart and very meticulously restuck the tape back together with sticky tape cut to size with a little blade. It was rewound and the cassette put back together with its tiny screws. He loved his music and even though the quality was worse than the early transistor radios, he could be transported by Greig or just as easily, some new disco group or Indian film music. He was always looking for new sounds. Every afternoon, equipment permitting, we would sit and listen to a few selected pieces of very varied music. His feelings about music were as unpredictable and as strongly held as his feelings about ideas and people.

He sewed all his own cold weather kufnis (robes, actually ’shroud’) His orange sheets were hemmed by his hand and he delighted in making marvelous nightcaps in fanciful but simple shapes. His stitching was perfect, even and almost invisible. It intrigued and offended me too. I had made my living by sewing and had often done large handstitched projects, but I couldn’t come close to his skill. He started to sew things for me, a set of orange cotton sheets, a red heavy cotton robe with an orange circle over the heart. During one of our loud angry fights, I sat and stitched around a large piece of cloth, emulating as best I could his invisibly small stitches. I refused to eat or even look up until the entire project was finished. “There! Anything you can do, so can I!”

Orange or geru (orange ochre earth) is the sadhu’s main colour, but black, red, yellow and white also occur. Naths often wear black but Dadaji liked orange and for occasions, a touch of lemon yellow. Every few weeks he would re-dye all his cloth and robes and sheets with powdered orange dye. It seemed to soothe his temper and it was fun. The bright dye water covered the floor outside his room. Playing in water was a relief in the heat. I gave him a beautiful length of cloth, rather garish, gold and yellow stripes, obviously Muslim in style and taste. I had bought it in the wonderful bazaar in Peshawar in western Pakistan. He was as delighted by its utterly inappropriate quality as by its beauty.

Giving gifts to Dadaji was a trial. I went to Ahmedabad with Uma and spent hours looking for an alarm clock for him. I knew he needed one. His old clock could no longer be fixed and I hoped to even out some of my perceived debt to him. I bought a large round clock, with big numbers and a loud alarm. The next day he was furious with the clock. I had bought the cheapest I could find, I had been mean and pennypinching and the clock had bad vibes. Since none of this was true except possibly the bad vibes, I didn’t feel any anger at his reaction. I was a little annoyed when I saw it later, smashed up, on the trash heap behind the house. Eventually I realized that he either destroyed or gave away most gifts he received. The gold cloth was a rare exception. I believe he always kept it in his trunk. He had a way of divining the quality of intention in any gift, and the cloth was one of the few things I gave him that was spontaneous and lacking in subtext.

He told me about his time in Thailand in the ’50s. He had fixed up a cave as his hermitage on Snake Mountain. He was able to accomplish furious amounts of meditation in that remote place. He had a great gift, talent and fascination for meditation. He became well known. One day the King and Queen of Thailand came to visit and they gave him a cup, a bowl and a plate of solid gold. After they left he took the precious objects and hammered and smashed them with a rock into the crevasses in the mountain cave. Symbolically the gold went back to its origin as a vein running through the earth. Shortly afterwards his meditation was abruptly interrupted by a visit from God Indra and his rag tag crew of buddies who came to visit in a vision of godly mischief and humour.

This is Dadaji’s ditty of the Five Kleshas.
“The five pain-bearing obstructions,
The root cause of trouble and strife,
Ignorance, Ego, Attachment,
Repulsion and Clinging to Life.”

The five kleshas never stop impeding our enjoyment of life and our development. Dadaji never stopped confronting kleshas as they arose in him. We both dealt with ego in a very odd way, by bragging, self-aggrandizing through our personal mythologies and mocking the achievements of others. You will have to figure that one out for yourself. We were very clever with this method.

Ignorance is simply not thinking clearly for oneself. Allowing myself to express a limiting viewpoint, a sentimental cliche, a self delusion got me into lots of trouble. My trite liberal beliefs, inherited and unexamined, would cause him to become dangerously angry. I made a remark about vegetarianism and non-killing. He gave me a dark and disgusted look and went out and killed a neighbours piglet that had been rampaging through the garden. He just smashed it with a big rock and left it there. I was silent, stunned, but a whole block of rules broke off the frozen iceberg of my belief system and floated away.

Attachment and repulsion are the two sides of the same seesaw. As a hippie I had little repulsion to the usual things. I was undaunted by dirt, germs, bad water, lepers or Indian 3rd class train toilets. I could sleep in any dirty place and wear rags without a care or a damn. I needed to dive deep to find my level of repulsion and it was surprising when I found it. The cult of Aghoris is dedicated to working with this klesha. The very name means that nothing is, in and of itself, repulsive. Fear, preference, overwhelming desire, refusal, rejection are all plays of attraction and repulsion. Ideally I try to bring all these things into a balanced and minor manifestation at the fulcrum between extremes.

Clinging to life or clinging to anything too strongly leads to tearing and splitting of the will and the heart. It is a hard lesson and I will never know how successful the work has been until I face my own death. I am learning to relax in the face of threat and danger. It has proven to be the best possible reaction because it is surprising and unsettles even packs of dogs and marauding monkeys. Surprise changes the situation quickily and hopefully a better outcome is experienced by all. “Songs of the Dakini” about buddhist sadvini and Queen of Tibet, Yeshe Tsogyal, taught me this. Keith Dowman translates these songs in “Skydancer”.

I was away at the time of Dadaji’s 75th birthday. I have no idea why he decided to commit suicide. When I returned everybody, including Dadaji, were abuzz with the extraordinary tale. He told me this;
“I was sick of life. You can live too long you know! I decided to leave this sordid world. I made sure of my success by killing myself in two ways at once. I took a large amount of rat poison and then I slit my wrists. It seemed I was unconscious for a long time because I had quite an adventure in that in-between life and death place. [often called the bardo.] It is always twilight and grey there. I walked a while until I ran into a group of sadhus sitting together in a circle. They were gambling. They had been gambling for a very, very long time. Behind them a bright road led somewhere. I asked the sadhus why they were just sitting there and not walking the road. They barely looked up and gave a collective shrug. I left them and started towards the road. There I found Kaliben. [The grandmother had recently died and we all mourned her passing.] She and I had a final conversation.”
This little bird of a woman who had never been further than a few miles down the road, who couldn’t read or write, who knew nothing but domestic life set in a pattern a thousand years ago, this singing bird, always caged by cultural rules was the woman Dadaji called his guru. They blessed each other and went their separated ways. Apparently the rat poison counteracted the bleeding and the bleeding counteracted the poison, if you can believe that! So he came back alive and felt rather jolly and pleased with himself.

Years later Dadaji fell down the cement stairs leading to the roof. He broke his hip and was rushed to the hospital. I was told that he spent the entire night breathing like a steam engine and he was dead by morning. It was said he had killed himself by yogic means, unwilling to be a burden on the family. Later as I travelled among the naths of India I learned the true reason for his self caused death. Naths never want to die of natural causes, depleted of energy and all played out. Death must be faced with energy and power. The spirit travels like a shooting star to free itself from earth’s limitations. It is customary for naths of any standing and power to have themselves buried alive in a small crypt. When this is done correctly the nath remains both here and there and is effective in both realms, manifest and powerful. I met some of these “living dead” during my travels and I have no doubt of the effectiveness of their tradition. I have been in a large room in a very ancient nath ashram filled with 52 living dead graves of nath leaders, each one having picked the time to go down into their tombs.

When I arrived back at the house in Mehmadabad, early morning, a week after I had left, Dadaji looked up in great surprise and said, “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I met Mangalnath and I climbed Girnar and I got blown away by what you said..Do as thou Wilt…that was amazing! And now, well, where else would I go? I have to be here.”
“You can’t stay here.”
Tears just suddenly poured out of my eyes. I slumped back.
“You certainly cry very easily!”
“No I don’t,” I said defiantly through tears, “I’m tough as nails.”
“Don’t say that. Tough is useless. Dreadful. No good at all and a great detriment for a woman.”
“Listen,” he said, ” I’m a very heavy trip. Living with me is unbearable. Unthinkable.”
“No no. I won’t be a bother. I promise. I’m really easy to get along with. It will be great. I really have to be here with you.”
“What are you talking about? I’m completely bogus you know.”
“You are?” I said, distress and surprise in my voice.
“Well maybe not completely,” he said with an amused grin.
I won that argument and moved in again, but now I lived in the little vestibule at the top of the stairs that lead outside to the roof.
The next day after lunch in Dadaji’s room, I got up to help the women clean up the meal.
He said, “Sit down.”
“I am just going to help with the clean up.”
“Don’t interfere.” He growled.
I sat down, but felt a struggle inside.
“I don’t see how I can stay here for free and not help with the household chores. It isn’t right”
“Mind your own business.”
I didn’t insist further. He was getting angry.
I seldom understood why Dadaji acted the way he did. He never explained. I began my custom of obeying in blind trust. It always seemed to me that he never taught me anything. Generally I did as I was told, but my internal dialogue was often hot and defiant.
“Mind your own business. Don’t interfere.”
I heard those words constantly for years. They always pinched.

In fact those words signal the beginning of the Nivritti Marga, the Path of Inward Turning or the Varma Marga, The Left Turning Path or the Natha Marga, The Subtle Zig Zag Trail.
Learn to command my own attention and gain great energy by unhooking from the teat of the transitory, of the passing show of life. This was the first step of my transformation work.
Withdrawing attention involved me in pitched battles with ego, guilt, conditioning, self image. In order to not cause new karmic entanglement and new prolonged soap operas I learned the art of not doing, of not involving myself in the lives of others. Anything that interfered with the contemplative or meditative state was a lure. The vast sea of influences seeking to change me into a better person, a responsible worker, a more alluring woman or a useful citizen needed to be evaded like poison gas. The in-turning of the majority of my attention was an enormous wrenching effort.

Our daily life together settled into a pleasant routine. We talked, smoked cheap cigarettes, he took snuff and chewing tobacco and smoked cigarettes. I was a pack a day smoker. The air was always foggy blue with the smoke. The family included me into the routine with little problem that I ever heard of. If Dadaji was happy, they were also content.
Dadaji told war stories. He had been in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The Russians lectured the new soldiers on the technique of attack. He asked how to retreat.
“There is no retreat.”
His survival depended on his ability to think independently and magic helped too. A huge bomb exploded in the field while he was trying to carry a wounded soldier to safety. The dust cloud was so thick that he couldn’t tell which way to go, which way lead to enemy lines. The bullets were zinging past. Suddenly a bejewelled arm reached into the dust cloud and pulled him to safety. Dadaji had a number of encounters with god Indra who protected and blessed him throughout his life.
The second world war started right away after the triumph of fascism in Spain. Dadaji signed up again, although anti-fascist fighters were not welcome in the British army. He caused a mutiny in the boat that sailed to the battlefields of southern Europe. He was put up on charges, but as he related with relish, the tables soon turned and his accusers were reprimanded for incompetence and he was exonerated. Petty bureaucrats and officious officers hated Dadaji. He took such pleasure in being the cause of their discomfort. He enjoyed taking the side of the underdog against the blind injustices of the powerful.
He was trained as a physiotherapist. To get him out of the hair of one high ranking officer he was shifted to Italy and later Egypt. In Egypt he had a chance to visit the pyramids and clamber inside, unrestrained by tourists or authorities. Magic occurred. In Italy he made a pilgrimage to Assisi. Although considered sacred by Catholics because of St. Francis, it is also claimed by Sufis and magicians as one of their power places. Assisi was yet one more of the endless connections that existed between us. I had been there a number of times as a child and an adolescent and I was well aware of the power of that place. Once again he was given free run and got to see a certain crypt that is usually hidden from public view.
He was very proud of saving Yugoslavians. He treated many soldiers from there who were later being forcibly repatriated by the British. These were men who had fought the Nazis almost barehanded. They were partisans being forced back into the waiting arms of murderous fascist collaborators who executed every one of them. They told their story to Dadaji. Using his Labour Party connections he was able to have the matter brought up in the British parlaiment and the facts became known to the public.
“I wish I could have died on the battlefield, but in this lifetime it is not to be. At least the British army provided me with the mantra that has served me so well in this life.”
My ears perked up in the sleepy afternoon heat.
“You know the song about ‘The Long and the Short and the Tall’? Well fuck’em all!”
“Whats the mantra though?”
“Fuck’em all,” he intoned solemnly.
“Try it and see. Never let the bastards get the better of you.”
It works just fine.

Keeping me occupied and quiet was not as easy as I had promised. Finally Dadaji had me copy out everything he had written into small, lined, school notebooks. Each afternoon I would spend 2 or 3 hours copying. This had the excellent effect of forcing me to concentrate and improved my handwriting too. Sometimes we would discuss what he had written but I found most of it difficult to follow in those early days. What I loved was his poetry. I loved the rythm and the simplicity of expression. His poems spoke of his joy in the sadhu life. All he needed was a little food and water and a shady tree, the simple necessities of life, freely given and happily received. He wrote poems for children, for me, about love and happy moments of spiritual joy and physical pleasure.
He tried to get me to answer his mail. Every day we would wait for Dinubhai, our contact with the world outside his room, to bring in the mail. Letters came from all over the world. He was most interested in the letters that came from Mike Magee. He was the young Englishman who had shown up a year before and received initiation and the name Lokanath. Dadaji really loved the guy. He was 70 years old by this time and Mike was the first westerner he had met that he considered worthy of initiation. Through Mike’s wide ranging influence, more and more young brits and even americans began to write. Dadaji was looking for some particular quality in these kids but he seldom found it. Answering all these letters, and paying the postage slowly became a drain on his energy and resources.
Two things bothered him about the people who wanted his spiritual teachings. Those who kept their feet in too many camps irritated him no end. Wiccan thelemite gnostic naths are not as rare a bird as one might imagine. And he always hoped somebody would weave new patterns from his old gems, find new ways of living and thinking, find ways of escaping from the old rat race. He despaired of anyone breaking free from the old occult
patterns of european magic and asian religious expression.

When I arrived that very first day I am sure I saw a good number of books on his shelf. By the time I came back a week later he had burned them all. His library, which I examined surreptitiously, consisted of a heavily marked up I Ching, Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Oxford English Dictionary and a particular translation of Srimad Bhagavatam. He did not wish to discuss theories nor did he want to hear about what I had read. He disapproved of my reading habits. He advised that I read Agatha Christie murder mysteries to pass time. The worst thing I could do was expose myself to the spiritual theories and ideas of others. As far as he was concerned it was a world of crap out there. Somehow, without books and only a few people around him who spoke English he was always current and informed about the world in tremendous detail. His grasp of history, science, geography never failed to surprise. He loved to quote long epic poems by heart, especially King Arthur’s death scene and the return of Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake. Of course. He was Merlin.

He was Merlin and the Great Swan and a magician and a hermit. I thought he was quite nuts. On the other hand and in the same breath I had decided to he was my enlightened Guru and I trusted him with my very atoms. I think this is called cognitive dissonance and I had it very badly and very often around that man. He understood the power of identification and encouraged me to think of myself and of us together in mythic and magical terms. He was Merlin, I was the dangerous Nimue. I wrote him a poem from her viewpoint. I could never have retrieved the information it contained in mundane headspace. I was his goddess, his beloved. He was my hero, omniscient, saint, devil and time traveller. This play was at the very heart of Indian Tantra as I came to understand it. Both human and divine we meet in another place, think different thoughts and accomplish great deeds. No need for ritual….in fact he and I never did any ritual work whatsoever. We spontaneously shifted into ‘lucky space’ and all was accomplished. When I or anyone else would thank him for some problem solved, some boon given, he would always look slightly mystified.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Since modesty was not one of his attributes, I eventually understood that good magic is what happens because it has to, spontaneously and with an often humorous perfection. On the other hand Mahendranath often fueled his magic with fury. His anger was terrifying. One day he attended a gathering of local dignitaries. At the end of the ceremonies a very poor old farmer came to the stage and looking up, begged him to send rain because the fields were dry and the crops were dying. His first impulse was to refuse. One of the Brahmins on the stage said, “Just ignore him, he is nothing but a low caste dog.”
Yipes! Dadaji became infuriated by the remark. He quickily and spontaneously drew a magic sigil and empowered it with his rage. The rains began to pour down out of a once blue sky within moments.
“It rained so hard and in such amounts,” he said, laughing at the memory, “I was swept off the stage and almost drowned in the flood.”
That old farmer was still around and whenever we encountered him on one of our walks, he hobbled towards us like a blind old mole. Laughing and worshipping at the same time, he would bend and touch Dadaji’s feet. Then they would walk and talk for a moment and Dadaji would give him one of his head thumping blessings. Magic had bound them together in enduring friendship.

New information found fertile ground in me. I was so stretched out, trying to understand, trying to be receptive. He may well have wished me to relax, but I was determined not to miss any word or any signal. He sent me away after my first few days at the hermitage. He had given me a dozen addresses of people all over the world. I joked that he certainly didn’t want me to get lost, no matter where I wandered. I told him that my original plan had been to go to the Gir forest. Quite alarmed, he started to warn me of the dangers of the forests beyond the Ambaji temple on the climb up the Holy Mountain. He used Indian words that I couldn’t understand, but I gathered that the Holy Mountain was a place of murder and mayhem. He certainly was harsh in his warnings about sadhus.

“On the other hand,” he said, “Girnar is the sacred home of India’s greatest saint and the founder of the Naths, Dattatreya by name.”
He arranged for Dinubhai to write a note of introduction in Gujerati to Sri Mangalnath Maharaj of Girnar and that is where I headed after leaving Mehmadabad.

It took two days of hard train and bus travel to get to Girnar, which is a tiny village perched on the lower heights of the sacred mountain. Girnar is pilgrimage town full of ashrams and sadhus. The first person I saw striding down the road like a king, was a naked ash covered dreadlocked saint. I was directed to Mangalnath’s ashram which was large, and when I walked in was full of schoolboys eating lunch off the traditional leaves placed on the ground. I stood around, shy and uncertain of what to do. I had never been in an ashram before. I didn’t speak a word of the local language (nor much of any Indian language), and apparently nobody spoke english. Nevertheless within an hour I was sitting on the ground in the shade of a large mango tree eating the same lunch as the crowd of schoolboys.

I had never eaten anything that rough in my life before. I truly doubted I could do it again. The rice had stones, the vegetables were barely chopped and not skinned and the rotis were made of very roughly ground flour. Indian food was still a mystery to me. I had not yet become a fan, and this was not the way to start.

Eventually a man arrived who looked like he knew the boss, so I gave him my introduction written in Gujerati. He conveyed to me that Mangalnath would be available that evening at 5:00 and then he took me to meet Wanita. She was the middle aged woman who cooked and cared for Mangalnath. She lived in a little tunnel of a room. Her bed was laid on top of three trunks that held all her worldly goods. The walls were hung with embroidered panels and her two sarees were hung over a line that followed the wall. The kitchen was just inside the door and was nothing more that a two-burner kerosene cook stove on the floor, some pots, storage bins for grains and the spices and vegetables of the day. Wanita has forever become associated in my mind with Santoshi Ma, goddess of contentment. She took my hand and brought me into her tiny home. She laid out a mat for me to sleep on and then she began to cook. She was a marvelous and refined cook. Her rotis were soft and perfectly formed, her spicing mild and subtle and her sauces divine. She conveyed to me that she was given this little home and food in return for caring for Mangalnath. I guessed she was a widow or from some other desperate social condition. She was very happy to be doing this and living there and she adored Mangalnath.

He was a Raja sadhu, a kingly saint. Among other things he fed and housed 300 schoolboys in his ashram every day, which permitted these sons of nomads and impoverished rural folk to get an education. He was so respected and adored by so many people across India that he was very wealthy in alms. This is how he chose to give away that money.

Finally it was 5:00 pm and I was taken to meet the great man. He was blind. He sat on a deer skin and wore only a lungoti (a g-string). He looked well fed and very good humoured. Dadaji’s note was read to him. A look of delight came over his face. He said,” Ah Mahendranath Ji” and he laughed with his memories. He called me over close to him and took my hand. I fumbled a bit of money in alms to him, but he wanted only to read me by sense of touch. He made a few comments with a big grin and everybody around us laughed, rather lewdly I thought. I felt self-conscious, scared, shy, alone, but I was also determined with all my being to climb that holy mountain, and also I was spiritually aflame from meeting Dadaji so short a while back. On that level he responded to me and he silently gave me a depth of encouragement. Without sight or language we communicated only by holding hands.

After a few minutes he laughed again and had a man give me double plus one Rs. of what I had just given him. Someone explained that offerings should never be of an amount that ends in zero. It caused bad luck and poverty for the receiver. I had been given 21 Rs. I felt embarrassed but also enriched as I had so little money.

I slept in Wanita’s little home that night and she got me up and fed by 4am. I bade the ashram farewell and started to walk up the great mountain that loomed over us all. I knew nothing of what was up there beyond the fact of the Ambaji temple. The climb began abruptly after passing through the archway that defined the limits of the village. The climb is up great stone steps that have been cut and laid into the mountain in a long somewhat meandering trail up to the first summit. Chai shops of every size and capacity appeared along the route. Sometimes there were chairs and umbrellas, but usually it was a bend in the path that offered a little shade, some tea and perhaps some biscuits and a warm drink or two. The path was already full of pilgrims of all ages and types. Some climbed in rough palanquins, an oldster might be strapped to the back of a strong son. All water, wood and food had to be hauled up that pathway by a steady stream of human pack horses. Pilgrims had been climbing these stairs unceasingly for thousands of years. I had been using a mantra constantly on this trip. It was one of the things that gave me the strength and confidence to keep going. My sense grew that I too was a true pilgrim, climbing the Holy Mountain and on my way to confront the mystery and get some answers.

Later that day I had finally climbed enough of those stairs, through the sparse, dry forest and the blasting sun and now I stood outside the gates of the Ambaji Temple. I peeked into the cool dark interior but I couldn’t quite bear to enter. I had no money left and the hands were out at every step. I had never spent time in temples and I didn’t feel at all inclined to learn the way of things right then and there. I ducked to the left of the great throng of people and headed into the wilderness, until I found a little cave with a view to the ends of the earth.

I pulled out my chillum and managed to get it lit with my last match. In that sudden alteration of consciousness, very heightened by the location, I reminisced about Dadaji’s parting words back at the hermitage. Raising his arms over his head and taking one step forward in a dramatic heiratic pose, he had intoned, “DO AS THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.” I was thunderstruck. I had never heard those words before. They sounded very, very shocking to me. They seemed to contradict everything I had ever been told to do before. It sounded wrong and scared me about the true nature of this strange man who was now my Guru. During the entire trip I had brought these words forward in my mind and examined them from every angle. Sitting in that cave, high above the surrounding plain and so high on hashish, the meaning of those words dawned on me and hurtled me straight into an altered state of flaming understanding. I am free, I was born free and have lived free without ever once realizing it. Something physically and abruptly changed in me from that moment. I came into focus. I was entrapped by ego, by social pressure that got me to conform and obey the rules of my reality tunnel. Detaching from that pressure left me free to pursue the purpose for which I had incarnated in this life. I went into bliss.

I left the cave and headed back down those stairs in the late afternoon. My feet barely touched the ground. I contained my wild laughter and that just fed the fire. I was sitting on a rocky outcropping ledge, resting and reviewing my wonderful vision in the cave. An older Indian man came by, looked up and said in english,
“My dear you are all aflame. You have seen the face of the Goddess I think.”
He placed some rupees at my feet. I was amazed. Others could see what I was experiencing! What could he possibly have seen? I continued to get offerings from people who bowed to my visionary experience and walked on. I gathered up the money and decided to head straight back to the hermitage as fast as I could get there.

I looked at him. He was an imposing and handsome man of seventy years. His eyes captivated my attention, piercingly blue and crackling with energy. His hair was long, white with yellow blonde tips and grew luxuriantly. He wore cheap silver hoop earrings and his ear lobes were large. His forehead, his cranium were huge. Everything about him was massive. His hands were scary, huge with padded finger tips and dangerous thumbs. He had a good sized belly and his skin was shiny with health.

Oddly I can’t remember how he was dressed or if he was naked. It was winter and early morning, so I assume he was wearing a long orange robe, a kufni, to keep off the morning chill. He handed me his card. “Shri Gurudev Dadaji Mahendranath.”

“Oh! No wonder you were so hard to find this morning. I had the wrong name!” I laughed.
“I am called Dadaji. It is an affectionate term meaning grandfather.”
“Dadaji. My name is Kristen. I come from Canada, but I’ve been in India off and on for many years”
“Well Kristen from Canada, would you join me for a cup of tea?”
“Yes, please.”
A moment later Kaliben, tiny, aged, bright and spry woman came into the room with two cups of sweet, milky chai.

“This is Kaliben. She and her husband Chotabhai own this house. I am their guest here and have been for many years.”
I pranaamed to her respectfully (bowed with my hands held together in front of my face) and she smiled back, warmly but uncertain of me at the same time. She gathered up two or three pieces of laundry and left the room with a protective glance back towards Dadaji.

He sat down on his low wooden bed, the only furniture in the room. He indicated a mat that I could sit on, as the floor was cold terrazzo. We sipped tea and both lit up cheap Indian cigarettes.
“You come from Canada. Where are you going?”
“I had an idea to go to the Gir forest.”
“Ah. You will of course go to Girnar, on the holy mountain. I spent some time there. It is one of the most sacred pilgrimage places in all of India.”
I didn’t know that.
“And your mission is enlightenment?” he said with an amused twinkle.
He had just asked the three traditional questions. Who are you? Where are you going? What is your mission? “Kristen from Canada” was a mundane answer. “Girnar” was at least a good destination, but in my case haphazard. My mission? Good answer, but painfully naive. How much can be learned in so few words.

Suddenly a small bundle of a boy burst into the room and took a long slide across the floor and landed at Dadaji’s feet. “Ha! Has Janak been a good boy?”
He pulled the little lad up and gave him an inch on the bed. He tousled his hair and laughed.
“I doubt it” he said.
Then he playfully tapped him on the head as a blessing and introduced him as the youngest member of the household and one to whom special dispensation was given to sit beside the Guru on his throne. Janak looked boldly back at me, his eyes full of mischief.

A moment later, Sangeeta, his sister, a self-contained young girl with a long braid, came in. She was accompanied by Matti. They both approached the bed and bowed to touch the guru’s feet. He gave them both his blessings, speaking in Sanskrit and thumping their bowed heads. Sangeeta was quiet and Matti had a paralyzed tongue, was slightly mad and only spoke in loud croaks. The young sister and her old auntie began sweeping and washing the floor, cleaning up the tea cups and dusting. Meanwhile Dadaji questioned Janak about school. Janak wouldn’t be caught speaking english so he just nodded and laughed. The eldest brother, Nitesh, was at college in Ahmedabad and wouldn’t be back until evening.

The morning rush of activity was over as abruptly as it had begun. The kids went off to school and Matti went about her domestic chores in the other part of the house.

We continued to smoke and chat. He explained that these people the P. family were very, very dear to him. Even before he had moved into their home “due to antiquity” they had sent one of their sons to his kutir (hut) on the Vatrak River with warm rotis and a cooked vegetable dish every day for years. Ramesh had recently moved to London and was deeply missed. I would meet his brother Dinubhai, son of Chotabhai and father of the children, as the day progressed. Then he explained that it was common practice in Gujerat State to end female names in -ben which means sister and to end male names in -bhai which means brother. Thus Kaliben was sister Kali. The men’s names could be used either as Ramubhai or Ramesh, Dinubhai or Dinesh. Gujerati was a singular language in India and the Gujeratis have many peculiarities, opposite to all their neighbors. Their cooking is admired all over India.

In walked Kailashben, daughter-in-law, mother to the three children and wife of Dinubhai. All the family seemed very content, but Kailashben was the physical embodiment of that contentment. She was round and beautiful, simply dressed in a soft sari, gentle and sweet.

I had been invited to lunch. Except for Dhinubhai who always sat with him while he ate, Dadaji ate alone in his room. I was sent out to eat with the family in the other part of the house. We sat in a semi circle on the floor in the kitchen. It was a big group so we ate first with the women and children and the adult men as they came in from work. First came Chotabhai, the elderly head of the household. He welcomed me to his home with grave dignity. He showed neither curiosity nor suspicion. He sold vegetables in the village market place as his family had done for generations. A year hence I would look up from my stitching and ask, “How was business today?” He would look appalled at my rudeness of spirit. He delivered a few sharp, short sentences that conveyed precisely his lack of interest in the vagaries of his fortunes in the marketplace.

I had just finished eating, washing my hand into the plate with the last of my drinking water. I was planning to get up and help with the clean up when I was summoned back to Dadaji’s room by Janak. Dinubhai was there. He and Dadaji had obviously been conferring. As there were no hotels anywhere near and the railway station was a simple village one without waiting/sleeping rooms I had been invited to stay the night, possibly two nights. The family could make room for me among the large metal drums of stored beans and rice and the large stone wheat hand-grinder in the corner. They would even give me a rope charpoy (bed) to sleep on, which looking back, was probably one of the elders beds, because normally we all slept on rolled out mats on the floor in India. I accepted their invitation immediately.

After lunch we all went down for a short nap in our various spots. When we were all awake again Dadaji showed me the workings of how and where to bathe, wash clothes, draw water, know drinking water from washing water. As there was just one water tap, by the backyard steps, all household water was kept in a variety of large amphora style pots, placed strategically all around the house. In those days the water supply was sporadic. Everyone in the village rushed to fill pots while the water ran. It was also a new colony of cement houses and wasn’t yet entirely hooked up to the small grid of those days.

He showed me that it was possible to discreetly pee at the shower drain which ran into the miniature canal system that snaked through the garden outside. His watered down piss, he assured me, was the secret to the luxuriant growth of bougainvillea which this house, out of all the other houses in the colony, enjoyed. The flowering bushes already reached the roof and blossomed a glorious red.

The sun always sets at 6 p.m. and that first evening we went up the back cement stairs to the roof. Dadaji had two lawn chairs stacked behind the door to the vestibule that sat over the stairs on the roof. We took them out and put them up. The roof was edged by a three foot high wall made of decorative cement blocks, and was, of course as big as the entire downstairs. From this roof I was to watch the world outside the house for many an hour.

That first evening was typical. The sun set and evening twilight began with the flight home of huge, furry fruit bats. They flew so close I could have reached up and stroked their fur. They had great leathery wings and their passage was accompanied by the strange sound those wings made. Minutes later in a cross current a stream of loudly cawing, brilliantly green, little parrots flew to their night home tree. Swallows swooped past on their way over to the mud cliffs by the river. The breeze would always come up the moment the sun slipped below the horizon and with it came the smell of the little fires all over India, being lit to cook the evening meal. The cows raised dust as the herds drifted home and the dust mixed with the light of the sunset. It is the eternal moment of evening home coming and is the most celebrated, evocative expression of endless India. I looked at the card which Shri Gurudev Dadaji Mahendranath had given me that morning when I had just arrived. Under his name it continued. Hermitage of the Cosmic Oracle and Lunar Laboratory of Twilight Yoga. I looked over to where Dhinubhai and Dadaji were sitting together listening to the BBC World News on the radio. The stars were coming out one by one above. The night air was fresh and cool.

When I arrived back at our camp that evening I found Lothar had gone completely insane. He was both afraid and dangerously aggressive. I spent the entire night in the stepvan with him. I feared either suicide or murder. Knives, a chopper and a machete were in plain sight, but I dared not hide them for fear of catching his attention. I had to control his attention, keep him focused on small intricate puzzles.

“Look what they have hidden inside this coffee bean..see how it shines. Look. Open another and another..”

At dawn he finally fell asleep. He and his girlfriend Maria had driven us all over northwestern India for the past two months. He was a sensible, experienced and tough traveller. I depended on him and trusted his judgment. What could have driven him mad, and so suddenly? I went for a shower and a few cups of sweet milky chai. When I returned to the campsite, Lothar, his dog Ottoman and the stepvan were gone. With the help of my friend Harish I searched for him all through the hospitals and jails of Delhi. He was gone leaving no trace. I took a bus to Kathmandu.

My last rupee was gone and I had sold anything I had of value. I was living in a cement box of a room in the Tourist Camp in Swayambhu. As I sat on my rope bed, leaning my back against one wall with my feet propped up on the other I contemplated what a previous tenant had painted on the cold grey wall.. a colourful, geometric play of triangles inside a square. It had a remarkable effect on my mind. I found it stabilizing and soothing. Hand stitching a shirt for an American woman who lived in the village got me 70 Rs, some of which I spent on a brush, children’s watercolours and a student notebook. I began painting geometry. Figures eventually appeared in my little paintings. Howard the Duck stretched those lines, pulling them apart, escaping a world he never made. I was living on chillums and chai and visions drawn out by the paintings. The Vajra Dakini stood on one leg, her chopper raised high over her head, a skull bowl in the other hand, a necklace of skulls, an apron of bones. I painted her in a snowfield high in the Himalayas and set her twirling around the axis of her spear in an ecstatic dance of joy, of life, of freedom from the small concerns of life on earth. Lord Shiva, sits in his mountain home on Mount Kailash. His lingam is erect and out pours a rainbow which surrounds the earth in coloured light. I travelled to Bhadgaon, to the palace of the Malla Kings. They had ruled Nepal centuries ago, as Tantric Kings, before the invasion of the Rajasthani Gurkhas. In those days the palace was a museum full of riches and wonderful art. What most caught my attention were modest little paintings of simple geometric forms, triangles arranged inside a square, decorated with lotus petals. They were called Yantras. (Since that time the place appears to have been looted .)

There was a loud angry German called Helmut Maharaj who lived in the same camp in Swayambhu. His room was blackened by the fire that he kept burning in there. The smoke escaped as best it could through window and open door. All the homes in the village were arranged this way. One stayed low and duck-walked around a room to keep from choking on the smoke which became thick and acrid three feet up from the earthen floor. Helmut had been in India and Nepal even longer than I had and had become a furious sadhu. He was also a painter of yantras. He painted exquisitely on tree bark. After many weeks I dared to approach him. I wanted to know more about these paintings which had captivated us both. “Beware of yantras. They trap you and you will never get free again.”
I knew he was right and I vowed in my heart to nonetheless, one day escape. I was very hungry and I asked him to share his food with me.
“Fuck off. Go find your own food!”
That was different..to be refused. One day we were sharing a patch of warming sunshine.
He said,
“I have never taken a Guru. If I did I would choose the Englishman, Sri Anandaji. He lives in a little village in Gujerat called Mehmdabad.”
As he continued to speak with admiration about this man a light shone out of his left eye and entered my eye. I recognised this sign. It meant
“Pay attention!”.
I would seek out the Englishman in Gujerat and nothing would divert me.

My parents, great travellers, arrived in Kathmandu and stayed at a nice hotel. I ate, bathed and fed all my friends there, too. They took me with them down to the Terai, where the Nepali mountains meet the Indian plains. It is a jungle, full of wild animals. We stayed at a nature reserve. I rode elephants for the first time and found them to be the very finest form of transport I had ever experienced. Unlike camels and horses, their swaying gait is relaxing and reassuring. They beat mechanized transport all to hell. The Mahants speak elephant language. We rode through 12 ft, high grasses, looking for tigers. We saw rhinos. We took a canoe ride along a river and a crocodile took a flying leap for our little boat, missing us by only 2 ft.

We flew to New Delhi to meet Lindsay, my brother’s wife. She and I decided to travel together. She had never been to India before and I was delighted to show her around. I told her I had received a sign and I must find an English guru in a village in Gujerat. She understood perfectly and decided to help me get there. My parents gave me a few hundred dollars. I was fed, washed, rich and ready, all topped up for my next adventure.

We took the first train we could find, headed south. We met a ‘magician’ on the train. We were intrigued, but we soon became bored. He was entranced with us. That evening we arrived in a dusty town in Madya Pradesh. We spent the night and in the morning began looking for transportation east to Gujerat. No trains, no buses, no trucks headed east.
“You can’t get there from here.”
We found those words to be remarkably funny, significant and frustrating. We got on a train headed for Ajmer. We really wanted to get high, but, oddly, we feared the man who shared our compartment. Eventually he told us that he was the new police chief for Pushkar, on his way to take up his new post. His english was good because he had been studying drug enforcement in the USA. Years later he and his men murdered an entire family of 14 people in Pushkar. The village rose up and attacked the police station. He was convicted of murder and is still in jail.

Before dawn we arrived in Ajmer and started to look for transportation to the sacred village of Pushkar, ten miles away. We had missed the bus. The driver of a horse drawn tonka persuaded us to go with him. It seemed like fun. We loaded our bags on the covered and gaily decorated carriage. He called to a friend to join him and we headed through and out of town behind the clip-clopping horse. How lovely to be slowly riding into the wilderness as the dawn light shifted and changed the colours of the desert around us. Soon the horse was straining as the first small hill appeared. Lindsay and I realized the horse could not possibly take us over the considerably higher hills ahead. I started to get my knife out and I suggested to Lindsay that she find some weapon as we would no doubt have to fight our way out of this trap. The two young men began to anticipate the fruits of their robbery plan with leers and gestures toward us. I anticipated slitting their throats. Lindsay was equally ready to fight. Suddenly, around the corner of the road came a white Mercedes stepvan, lurching wildly. It was Lothar, missing all these past months. He recognised me at the same moment and pulled his van over to the side of the road. We hopped off the cart, to the dismay of our would-be robbers. I gave them the finger.

Lothar was still mad and now he was also delirious with fever. He could barely keep the van on the road because he could hardly see anymore. But Lindsay knew how to drive: she was a truck-driving American momma. Lothar had been in the desert. He had lost his little dog Ottoman. I mourned that vicious, brave little dog for a long time after….lost in the desert, his master gone mad. Lothar had been without food or water for too long. He was near death. We had all rescued each other, early one morning in the foothills of the Kingdom of Pushkar.

As we pulled into the village people cheered at the sight of Lindsay, a pretty little slip of a woman driving that great big van, having manoeuvred the dangerous hairpin turning road. I applied wet cloth to Lothar’s head to bring down the fever and soothe his delirium. While looking for a room to stay, I found a young German woman who knew Lothar and agreed to care for him. I had no time for him now. We were on the move. Suddenly Lindsay, all clean and white, dressed in ironed khakis and starched shirt, silver jewelry and crystals, got violently ill. She needed a bathroom NOW. None here, none there. Ah, here we have one. She went in and was violently sick from every orifice of her body. There was no water and wouldn’t be any for hours. She stood there, stunned, covered in puke and shit. Then she started to laugh. She laughed and laughed until tears poured down her cheeks. Later she told me that for one awful minute she had almost broken. Her laughter had delivered her India in the palm of her hand. Wow!

We kept travelling south. The coincidences and chance meetings kept coming, at, even for us, a remarkable rate. Together we pulled magic and mystery from every shadow in the land. We finally parted in Goa, exhausted by two weeks of non-stop, excellent weirdness.

I took the boat north to Bombay. It was one of my hometowns in India. I had been stuck waiting for money for months on end in Bombay. I knew the city very well. I got a room at the Stiffles Hotel and went looking for my friends at Diptis House of Pure Drinks.. Diptis was just a little wooden box of a room a few steps up from the street. As long as any of us had any money we would spend it on fruit lassis at Diptis. Dipti was a clean, shiny man who knew all us hippies, who we are and where we are. He kept our messages to each other in his desk and was happy to be a guardian angel to the rag tag crowd of foreigners who constantly passed through town. He told me Ganesh Giri was in town, asking for me.

I had first met Ganesh Giri years before, just a few yards down the road from Diptis. I passed a tall, very thin, long haired Indian man, dressed entirely in rich raw silk, a long kurta, vest and silk lungi. His elegant appearance, different from anybody I had seen before, caused me to stop and turn around as soon as I had passed him. He did the same.

He spoke only a few words of english. We walked together all over town for the rest of the day. He made those few words into an endless story. He fascinated me. I couldn’t leave his side. I wondered if he was a prince. He said, “Come to Chowpatty and sleep with me.” I wondered if Chowpatty was a palace. I followed him into the night. Chowpatty was the downtown beach. He introduced me to his friends. They were a jolly bunch of sadhus who made me very welcome. They shared their food with me. We sat up late into the night around a little fire. Ganesh Giri explained that this group gambled everything they had gathered during the day on a numbers game and lived on luck or its lack. Then he laid his silk lungi on the sand, another long piece of cloth, his turban, spread out beside that and we laid down to sleep under the stars, side by side. It was my first taste of sadhu life. Just before dawn, he and Santosh woke me up and we went looking for chai. In my mind, which was so blissed on love and the pleasure of his presence we had become Rama and Sita and Lakshman walking in the Gir jungle at dawn. We bathed in a spring in a little natural oasis under Malabar Hill, in the middle of the city. He took my hand and led me into an entirely different India, far from the life of foreign cosmopolitan hippies grooving on the surface freedom afforded us by the generosity of India’s open-minded people.

The sight of this richly dressed sadhu and a lovestruck foreign girl annoyed Indians and disgusted my friends. He was well known to many as a treacherous thief and womanizer. We didn’t care. Whenever we met we walked together until I dropped from exhaustion. He was a Naga from the Juna Akkada. He showed me sadhu life and sadhu secrets, places and poisons, temples and sacred spots. He gave me little black balls of “medicine” that contained datura and gold and I never knew what else. He never lied to me.

I hadn’t seen him for such a long time and now he and I were back together. But now, Ganesh Giri was dying. He was so thin his knees and elbows were huge knobs on thin sticks. He could barely walk without panting and stopping to catch his breath. He had smoked too many chillums, eaten too much poison, taken too much cobra venom into his blood stream. He had reached a state of exhaustion. We had both run as far as the road went. We sat in Diptis and quietly argued over which one of us was guru to the other. The next day we sat there and I said.
“This is the end of life for both of us. Lets go to the Gir Forest and meditate until the lions eat us, or we attain enlightenment.”
We argued about lions for a while and then he agreed to my plan. I said I had only one little stop to make. It was on our way. I had to see the Englishman. It was the only thing I had left to do in my stupid sorry excuse for a life. He agreed. I bought train tickets to Ahmedabad and we left that night. The train was impossibly crowded and we spent the whole night crouched up in the little string luggage rack near the ceiling. Two dozen people were jammed into six spaces. No problem. We were together again, on our final adventure.

The next morning we were in the ugly, unfriendly little town of Mehmdabad. Nobody knew the name Anandaji. I said, “He’s English, farangi”.
We got directions. We took a horse drawn tonka and headed towards the Society. Eventually the driver found the place, a large cement house, covered in bouganvillea. Ganesh Giri went in first to check things out. I waited outside with the bags and the horse.
“Get the hell out of my house you filthy sadhu! What do you mean by coming in here? What is your sampraday? Liar!! Get out! Get out!”
What a furious, roaring voice. Poor Ganesh Giri had no strength to defend himself. His protests were weak and softly spoken…barely audible over the blasting anger of that voice. I rushed in to rescue my comrade. I stepped into the little room and was captured by brilliant blue eyes. So unexpected. He looked up at me and roared,
“What the hell do YOU want?”
I stood my ground and answered arrogantly,
“I want enlightenment of course!”
Silence. He was taken aback for half of a heartbeat.
“In that case, you may stay. He..”
He points at Ganesh Giri.
“He has to leave now. And take his lice with him!”
I agreed immediately. I went out with Ganesh Giri to the waiting horse tonka.
“I am staying. You must leave.”
He looked dismayed. He feared for my safety. I gave him half my hasheesh and money. We agreed to meet in Bikaner in a few days and off he went. I never saw him again. I returned to the room and the furious Englishman. I plunked down my bag. I knew destiny when I saw him.