Chapter 4: Study Begins
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.