Where to?

We were on our way home, moving toward the Light or so we believed.

THE THREE-DECKED STEAMSHIP HAD BEEN FOLLOWING the contour of the palm-lined Indian coastline since sunrise, weaving its way through flotillas of fishing boats and other small ships until it reached Bombay.

“Perhaps you would prefer to follow the Path in your mother tongue. Ah, if only the whole world spoke English, no?” He could be very sarcastic.

But I was unable to understand then that there was another India right under my feet and before my eyes, an India that was different from my dream. I did not grasp that my idea of India told me more

I became enchanted listening to stories of gods, yogis, and other bizarre sages. I heard of sadhus performing great austerities, acquiring superhuman powers

My dream of India fully matured in Rajasthan, the land of kings. Leaving the pink city of Jaipur, the bus entered the scrub desert heading north on the Bikaner Road,

“And why have you come so far to meet an old madman like me?” he asked, “Or is it that you just came for the waters?”

Hari Puri Baba sat like a general on his tiger skin, his fragile body appearing much larger than it actually was.

I have come to meet a celibate hermit who lives in the private parts of a great rock woman. Amloda Devi, the Goddess of Mangos.

Perform seva to the guru, please him, and if you are lucky, then perhaps he will give you his blessing, an ashirvad.

… after they had touched Hari Puri Baba’s feet. “I did that to them,” Hari Puri Baba said proudly. “I made them naked. I gave them initiation.”

“We are simple babas but even simple babas can be dangerous,” he said, twisting the end of his moustache, his eyes wide. “We don’t play by the rules.”

“Do you commit your life to the knowledge of God? To the knowledge of Self, the Brahmavidya?” he asked.

… he was not becoming my guru but my shakshi guru, a “witness guru” to becoming a disciple of the lord of yogis, Guru Dattatreya, he who shows the Path.

O, the names of gods! There are hundreds of millions of them. Brahma Vishnu Shiva Hanuman Ram Sita Indra Vayu Agni Ganga Yamuna Saraswati Vishwanath …

Adi Shankara faced one final test before his Victory of the Four Directions could be proclaimed to the three worlds. He had to

Many babas used to know the language of birds but now there few. Crow Language, Ka Bhasha, among bird languages, is the easiest to learn.”

Hanuman was born to Anjana in a nearby cave and his birth freed her from Brhaspati-Jupiter’s curse, so that she was able to leave the world and her monkey child and live in the devalok

“Lord Ram presented Hanuman with his signet ring, explaining that there was no difference between him and his ring, and that once he had found Sita …

There is no city in the world as old as Kashi Puri, also referred to as Kashi, Varanasi (where the Varan and Asi rivers meet), or Banaras.

“Dis money, dis good. Dis no money, dis no good,” Sohan Giri said to me from behind, emptying his entire warehouse of English vocabulary in one shot.

Baba Ram Nath Aghori also had invisible servants. One day he called all the local babas for a feast, a bhandara, he would prepare on Dashashwamedh Ghat.

“Hear the story of the churning of the Ocean of Milk by the Gods and Demons for obtaining the nectar of immortality:”

Our inner pilgrimage would proceed from the third eye to the supreme void, as on our outer pilgrimage we would walk from the Sangam to the very source of the Ganga.

My first Kumbh Mela. A World Series, World Cup match, or Mardi Gras pales in comparison. One million people spread out before my eyes.

My initiation into the Great Renunciation, the Virja Havan, would take place on the dark moon, two weeks later, in a grand mass ceremony.

“Alakh” – a name of Shiva, “He with No Eyes.” Shiva is blind, his eyes unfocused and turned up in meditation on the Supreme Void.

The smoke hovering over us seemed to be made up of the thousand souls of the Ordinary, waiting for the door to the Extraordinary to open.

On the following morning Amar Puri repeated the ritual and blew additional seed mantras into my ears.

I massaged Hari Puri’s fingers, his eyes opened. He looked at me blankly, and I can still hear that whisper from his mouth, “I am your little muchacho.”

“… these seeds of knowledge you call ‘teachings,’ when passed down bore fruit, and that fruit bears more seeds. This is the tradition.”

“This is the last ajna, command, that I’ll give you. I think you should obey it. And besides, don’t worry, I will never leave you,” he said, and attempted a smile.

It was the maharaja of Kashmir, the spiritual Dr. Karan Singh, who originally invited Leary to India, offering the hospitality that went with Dr. Singh’s stature.

“What they call Ayurveda is not Ayurveda,” Gangotri Baba said to me one day, while speaking to a learned pandit.

Tall, emaciated, crowned with dreadlocks, and covered in ashes, he could have frightened off any ghost from any cremation ground. He was a tantric and a healer. And he was quite mad but I felt perfectly at home.

Hari Puri Baba had been entombed in salt, sitting in samadhi with a rosary of rudraksha seeds in his right hand.

I would say the word kundalini and imagine that goddess as a serpent, and, see the path she took inside of me as she climbed a path unknown to science

it seemed to me he was actually opening up the Book of the World, I found that the sky and the stars had no distinct border with the Earth whose plants and minerals continually spilled into the body

Look north and see the giant pillars that are the Shivalik Hills, entrance to the Land of the Gods. Hardwar is a gateway.