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.

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