Chapter 15: The Last Trip to India And the Reappearance of Christ

There was no way I could have suspected the events that would follow in India and Europe. When we left I made an assessment of all that I knew. I took three books: The Bhagavad Gita, The Mandukyopanisad, and the Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi. These, along with, various quotations from ancient Indian sources which I wrote in their covers and margins, seemed to communicate the core of Vedanta, the ancient Indian philosophy that represented at least a parallel to my own experience and understanding.

I returned to India, fully believing that I was in agreement with its leading spiritual assumptions. I considered this true India to be my real and ancient home. I intended to place myself at Baba's feet, to give him my household and my life. I assumed that the radical path of understanding which was the realization of my life was wholly adaptable to the current of life at the Ashram. And I also assumed that I would be received in love and given the freedom to develop my conscious existence even where it exceeded tradition, as long as I remained devoted to the essential habit of life and never lost sympathy with my sources.

I left America behind. I left the world behind. There was not a single movement in me that reflected a predilection for the usual existence. I felt free, relieved of an immense burden, and purified of my own past life. I would devote myself to radical knowledge, serve the Guru, and receive the eternal and continuous benediction of the Shakti's grace.

After our arrival in Bombay we spent a night at a hotel, and then proceeded to the Ashram on May 30. We had left America quite suddenly and were not expected on the precise day we arrived. But our arrival was expected generally at that time. When we entered the ashram we were met enthusiastically by Amma and a few of our friends. Then I asked them to bring us to Baba.

Since my last visit the Ashram had been much expanded. Now there were new large buildings in the central complex, and modern apartments had been prepared for Baba. I was told that he spent most of his time in seclusion now, and only came out to see devotees during pre-established hours. The Ashram was full of people, many of them young Americans and Europeans.

We were brought to Baba in the new meditation hall outside his rooms. He sat in a chair. Nina and Pat placed flowers at his feet, and I left a rosary of rudraksha beads. He spoke to Nina and Pat briefly about the trip. But he seemed deliberately unwilling to acknowledge my presence.

He told Nina he would talk to us later, and we were taken to a small bungalow where we were to stay.

I immediately noticed a change in the atmosphere of the Ashram. It had become on institution, with Baba seated as its ecclesiastical, administrative and symbolic head. The spiritual life there had become quite sophisticated and formalized. Time was spent entirely at various kinds of ashram-seva (service to the Guru), chanting hymns and Scriptures, or in meditation. Baba came and sat with people at various hours of the day, but his talk had become a kind of formal and repetitive sermonizing on Shakti yoga and the path of service to the Guru.

Nina, Pat and I were given daily work to do. Pat cleaned guest rooms. I edited the English translation of Baba's new book, which will be published in America in 1971, and Nina typed the edited manuscript as it was produced. We worked, meditated, stood for chanting, listened to sermons and readings from Baba's book. Baba never said a word to me. He made no effort to inquire of me or suggest any form of practice. The formal life of the Ashram was to be the entire source of our daily experience, and it was up to us to stay or leave as we chose.

As I meditated I also realized that nothing was added by Baba's presence or the atmosphere of the Ashram. Indeed, the religious life of the Ashram seemed to me on obstacle to creative realization and real existence. People seemed to have experiences of Shakti at various times, but they were not radically affected by it. And I knew they could not he, for spiritual experience, like all experience, is only experience. Life is not transformed or awakened by experience, but only, by radical understanding.

The Ashram demonstrated a total absence of this critical necessity. It was simply a religious community that carried on a tradition and a source for the various kinds of phenomena that were its unique characteristic. Because there was absence of a fundamental teaching in relation to radical understanding, the people simply carried on day to day, enjoying visions and consoling religious participation.

The Westerners particularly seemed to demonstrate the inadequacy of this approach to life. They were merely exploited by their desire for unusual revelations. They were driven to serve the Guru more and more, meditate, study and work more and more. This, they were told, would bring about the evolution of higher states. Those who had passed through various uncommon experiences had acquired the ego of enlightenment. They had become deluded with accomplishment, aberrated by the sense of their exclusive spirituality. Everywhere there was the heavy and neurotic sense generated by seeking, practicing, repetition of religious and spiritual ideas, gossip of experiences, and all of the tawdry, tacky, ingrown air of a dead society.

Not only did Baba refuse to communicate with me, but the Shakti seemed not to flow to me at all through him. The atmosphere seemed to me low-keyed, and the Shakti itself was not particularly strong for me there.

Thus, I began to walk down the road to Bhagavan Nityananda's shrine, where I would meditate in the early afternoon. The Shakti was powerfully and freely present there, and I felt that this place was the source for my instruction now. When I would sit there the Force would surge through my body, my heart and mind would become still, my head and eyes would become swollen with a tremendous magnetic energy, and I would simply relax and enjoy the silent depth of consciousness in that Presence.

Then, one day, as I worked in the Ashram garden, I felt a familiar Presence, but one that I had never sought or known as a reality before. I stood up and looked behind my shoulder. Standing in the garden, with an obviously discernible form, made of subtle energy but without any kind Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ!

My first impulse was huge laughter. I had spent years of my total non-sympathy for Christianity. I felt I had religious dues. I felt I had paid my religious dues. I saw that whole religious tradition ritual communication for what were really matters of direct consciousness, pure self-awareness, and Vedantic conclusions about reality. Now, as if I were faced with a cosmic joke, I stood in the living Presence of Christ's Mother!

What is more, my Christianity had been largely of the Protestant variety. I had no predilection for Catholic symbols. Christianity, insofar as it was meaningful at all to me was a theological experience of truth. I had no devotional inclination to its separate and unique symbols. I never once assumed that "the Virgin" was any more than a religious symbol. I felt she was a secondary creation of the church, with no relation to the historical person who was the mother of Jesus. I never believed she was a Divine Being with present significance for humanity. Even during my brief involvement with the Orthodox Church, I was not moved by its Mary and Christ. I only found a temporary sympathy there for my own peculiar mysticism. And Christ, although he had a devotional importance in my childhood, seemed to me to have no reality independent of the conclusions I had realized in my Vedantic meditation.

But the Virgin was there. And I found that after the first few moments of surprise and irony I began to relate to her in the manner to which she was accustomed: The very Presence required a certain response in the beholder. Her nature called up certain kindred responses and acknowledgments. I found myself growing in profound devotion and love.

Just as her Presence was not physical but subtle, her communication to me was internal, as I had earlier known it with Baba. She taught me a form of the prayer, "Hail Mary." Then she told me to buy a rosary for devotions. It was difficult to satisfy this demand. I had to find some excuse to get permission to go to Bombay. But I managed it, and she was satisfied. Thereafter, I found myself reciting the prayer constantly, as a mantra, while I worked and lived in the Ashram. -

After several days of this devotion she showed me the image of Christ's face. It appeared visibly in my heart, and she seemed only to uncover it. That image and the feelings it awakened in me seemed to me to have been hidden and suppressed there since my childhood. I was in love with Christ!

As these experiences increased I began to resist them mightily. I thought I must be deluded. I tried to meditate in the usual way, but always Mary and Christ would appear to guide and instruct me. I felt no communication at all coming from Baba or from the Shakti as I had known it.

After two weeks of this the Virgin told me to leave the Ashram with Nina and Pat and go on a pilgrimage to the Christian holy places in Jerusalem and Europe. By now I began to feel that these experiences were also manifestations of the Shakti. I felt that the Shakti was working independently for me now and no longer depended on Baba or the Ashram. Indeed, its manifestation in my philosophy and now in my spiritual experience was anything but Indian.

As it happened, Bhagavan Nityananda was to bless me and turn me to my own adventure and freedom. One afternoon, I went to his shrine. On the way, I became attracted to a black and white photograph of Nityananda that was for sale at a booth outside his Ashram. I thought I might stop and buy it on my way back.

When I arrived at the shrine I bowed to Nityananda reverently and walked around his burial place three times. This was a traditional Indian form of worship. I sat down to meditate and felt him touch me. His image appeared before my internal vision. He showed me a photograph of himself and held it before me as I sat with him. It was the same photograph that attracted me earlier, but it was in color.

I told him about my experiences, and how the Shakti appeared to have taken me over independently of Baba or any other source. He blessed me, told me that I belonged to her now, and that I should leave and let her guide me.

When I opened my eyes one of the priests who serves Nityananda's shrine was standing before me with a large handful of flower blossoms. He gave them to me as a blessing from Nityananda.

As I left and walked through the village of Ganeshpuri toward Baba's Ashram I passed another stall where photographs were sold. And there was the exact picture Nityananda had shown me in the vision, in full' color. I bought it, and continued to walk.

I knew that these flowers and the picture were not given to me for myself. They were symbols of a sacrifice I was to perform. The photograph was the image of the Guru. I had come to this stage by following the Guru as Nityananda in vision, as Baba and Rudi at various stages in life and spiritual experience. Now I was to surrender the Guru to others and live as a free and independent center of that same life. And the flowers were my life in all its forms, every center of being, every body, realm or experience in which I was animated. I was to take these flowers of my life and offer them to the Mother Shakti.

When I arrived at the Ashram I bathed and put on clean dress. I took the flowers to the temple of the Mother Shakti near the Ashram. There is a sculpture of her benign, multiarmed, and omnipresent image there. I looked into her face and saw that she was the same one who appeared to me in the form of the Virgin and the image of Christ in my heart. I bowed to her and placed the flowers at her feet. I walked around her three times. I took some holy ashes and pressed them on my forehead. As I left I felt her assure me that I was her child and she would guide me.

I went and told Nina and Pat that we were leaving. We had discussed the possibility before. All of us had become restless at the Ashram and wanted to live more freely. And I had told them of my experiences, my Christian visions and the instructions for our pilgrimage. Both of them agreed and were happy to leave.

I told one of Baba's agents that we would be leaving the next day. He was surprised, but he took the message to Baba. While we were preparing to leave one of the American devotees came and was attracted to the picture of Nityananda. I gave it to him, knowing this was the reason it had been offered to me.

We left t e next morning, after a stay of little more than three weeks. Baba did not look at me. He seemed angry. We waited for the bus, and as we pulled away I thought I would never return to this place again.

Chapter 16

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