Ep. 313 – Touching the Sun

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So we get into the Land Rover and we go to see Maharaji, and I'm just approaching him. I'm about, oh, 5 yards away, and he yells at me. Got a question? Well, I take one look at him and I don't have any questions. I just want to fall out and touch his feet. You dig that? I mean, the thought of touching his feet is too much. It's like touching the sun, and I just feel all warm and loving. And who has questions? I mean, what a drag, them questions.

Welcome to Here and Now with Ram Dass. This is episode 313, Touching the Sun. So this is an early one. It's 1969, and it's at the Esalen Institute in California. And just 2 years earlier, Ram Dass had this powerful LSD journey. And that method of psychedelics, it had gotten him someplace so real, but he wanted to know how to live it, how to integrate it, how to bring it into his life. So he did what you do when you don't know what to do. He hit the road. He went to India. And this lecture is the story of that first trip. It's the sacred caves, the holy men, And this growing sense that maybe he's not going to find the person that can teach him. And then just as the disappointment is setting in, he meets a young Westerner, and it is a decision that changes everything. It changes his life, and you might even argue changes a culture. This is the origin story. And if it resonates with you, Then we invite you to join us in our upcoming Legacy Immersion. It's 4 weeks of sitting around a fire and hearing all of the old stories of how people's hearts and minds got blown, and then what they did after. It starts September 28th. It's completely free. So come sit around the fire with us. Go to ramdass.org/fire to learn more. ramdas.org/fire. And with that, here is Ram Dass, Here and Now.

This is Ram Dass, and the show is called Here and Now with Ram Dass. Well, by 1967, I appreciated the fact that I didn't know enough to stay high with this method. And I looked about me at all my colleagues and I realized that they did not know enough either. And I started to experience considerable despair. I mean, this is the second round now when I end up the chapter saying, We don't know. We don't know. We don't know enough. We've touched it, but we don't know. And I had more LSD, but what was I going to do? I tried programming sessions. I take huge doses standing in the ocean in the middle of the night to deal with the forces of jungles and ocean. I take— I mean, I take acid standing on my head. I didn't care whatever. I'd program this and I'd have tapes and slides and, you know, I'd go through a session to understand my sexual things with women. I was coming out of a long sexual hangup period, all kinds of perversity. And I'd have big slides of the Mona Lisa and Venus on the Half Shell and, you know, all of my women in my life. And I'd shine these slides on with thousands of micrograms grams of acid and I go into their pores and I would— oh, wow. And there were horrible sessions and beautiful sessions and there were 10,000 horrible demons and 10,000 beautiful demons. And I was trying to embrace every one of them. And I felt I was getting very old and wise, but not old and wise enough fast enough. And I saw that I was in some kind of an asymptotic curve, that no matter how hard I got, I wasn't going to get there. At least I wasn't. I didn't know about anybody else, but something in me said this isn't going to be enough. Now, what do you do at that point? See, one of the things to do is go to the East. But the problem was that a lot of my friends had gone to the East And I had read a lot of the Eastern books and it just— I read them, I talked from them, I lectured from them, I quoted from them. But it was like, well, the fact of the matter is, you've got to understand, there are no secrets at all. The only secrets are in the eyes of the perceiver. It's all available. I mean, I read the same books I'm reading now, and I now realize I didn't understand a word of them. And I was lecturing from— I can imagine what it's going to be like 5 years from now. And my friends came back from India and they still seem to be the same guys that went to India. And they said, we met a lot of pundits, a lot of good men, but nothing really that, you know, Didn't happen. So I didn't really expect that was going to do much for me, but I didn't have much else to do. And along came a very interesting guy who I had turned on a few years previously. He went to University of Chicago at about 14 and a half, and he got his international law degree around 21, and he was teaching at the UN. Around 24, and he was like, started his own company when he was 27, and he sold it to Xerox and became an executive when he was 34. And then at 35, he took his $5 million and retired to become a Buddhist, and he was now ready to go to the East. So he had a Land Rover shipped into Tehran From England, a Land Rover camper with all kinds of bottled water and special canned goods and mattresses upstairs. And we set out on our western journey to the east to look for holy men. Well, it's hard to find holy men in the inside of a Land Rover, but it was sure nice in there. There was sort of like a thick haze of hashish smoke, out of which one saw the passing masses of India. And we had tapes of all these, you know, guitar and flute and shirton. Oh, we had Indian music too, of course, from those times when we would do our Indian thing. And we did all the things, you know, I mean, like we got to Kashmir and we— besides, we stayed at Lake Dal in a boat and did water skiing. But besides that, we went on a holy man pilgrimage to Amarnath Cave, which is a very, very high cave, a cave from the last yuga, actually. And we went up with— all the holy men go barefoot. It's up over the ice caps. It's way, way up. It's about a 3-day walk. And we went with 6 saddle ponies and 2 chicks from Berkeley and a bottle of brandy and a chef. And when we meet holy men, we get down off of our things and we have a pipe with them and exchange namaste. And we got to Amarnath Cave and it was raining. And I looked at it and it was like a big cave. It was interesting because there was an ice lingam in there, a phallus that is made of ice, that as the moon changes its course each month, the lingam grows to a huge height and then it melts down again. That's pretty turn-onny. But we got there and the lingam was very— and we went to have the darshan of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, and it was very pleasant. But if my teacher later told me, he said a great thing, he said, A pickpocket meets— a pickpocket meets a saint. He sees only his pockets.

Hmm.

I wouldn't have known a holy man if I tripped over him. He came up with a sign saying, I am a holy man. I guess I would have listened, you know, but they, they all spoke some other language anyway, you know. And our interpreters didn't really believe there were holy men around anyway. Really, they did and they didn't. I mean, for our purposes, they did and they didn't. It was a very funny place. Very funny. Very funny. It was beautiful. I mean, it was a very— as, as, as tours go, it was a beautiful tour. I mean, you know, it was groovy. I took 1,300 slides. And I have many tapes of beautiful music. Here's some street singers playing. We'd stop and I'd take out my tape recorder and that would blow all their minds. And I'd bring it up and they'd play for me and I'd play it back for them. And I, I take pictures and then I take pictures of my Polaroid Land camera and give them a picture. It was strictly Western. You know, I was doing my Western. Went to the burning gods because Allen Ginsberg said, don't miss the burning gods. Benares. And I took LSD in Benares and I really scared myself because I suddenly was looking into the eyes of all these people who are just waiting to die in high states of ecstasy. And they're really here. And I realized I wasn't that much here. I still had my traveler's check, you know, and I still had my image of myself as somebody on a trip. Right. And I got uptight. It was a little too much for me. So I went and hid in the hotel. And then I got— went out later when the— after I got into another stage of this trip, and I went and stood in the middle of the burning ghat where they were burning the bodies. And it was much. So I'm not saying that nothing had happened during those first months of travel, but the So that was all, in a way, preparation. And I had this little bottle of LSD, you see, and every time I'd meet a, quote, holy man, I'd give him some LSD and I'd say— we'd get talking through an interpreter often. I'd say, would you try this and let me know what it's like? And they would give me reactions back that were very much like the ones I got in the West. One guy would say, it gave me a headache. Another one would say, it's not as good as meditation. Another one would say, wow, man, where can I get some more? Finally, I arrived at Kathmandu, Nepal, and I was getting into deep despair because there was really nothing much else to do. I had just done my Indian trip. We were now planning to go on to Japan, leave the Land Rover, and nothing had happened. And the despair was very, very, very deep. One thing I really wanted was a mala. This is a mala, holy beads. And one day I was sitting in a hippie restaurant and a Tibetan lama came in and he said he was selling his, his mala, which was very far out because they're so— the Tibetans are so hard up financially. They are really— they need money so badly that he even had to sell his mala for, for the team. And I I asked how much he wanted for it, and he said he wanted whatever I wanted to give. So I said I wanted to give ₹30, which is about $4.50. And he said that was too much. He only wanted ₹15. But I said— he said I could give whatever I wanted, and I insisted on giving ₹30. So that's that Jewish trait in me. You know, if you buy it, really, it's like—

You're committed. Okay.

Because I knew you really aren't supposed to buy malas. It's supposed to be bestowed upon you. And then I had this mala and I really dug it. See, I mean, I was really a holy man. I had this mala much later when I was on another part of the journey I'll tell you about in a moment. I was sitting in a tea stand at Sarnath and now I was really using the mala, see, and the mala was a beautiful mala and it had a dorje and a Gunta, a bell and a thunder lightning bolt on it. And it was a beautiful, beautiful mala. And an old Tibetan lama came into the tea stand and we said, come sit down. And he sat down and he looked at me and he says, mala?

Yeah.

He said, Tibetan mala?

Yeah.

Let me see. Gave it to him. He says, you know, Lama Mala. Yeah, I was very pleased. I mean, it meant I had really gotten the real thing. I mean, it's like I hadn't gotten just a phony. He wasn't a phony lama selling— he didn't have thousands of them outside. He says— he looks at me, he says, you know, Lama, I said, no. I, Lama, I keep. So I got a pipe and I held up my hand and he put it back in my hand. And I looked at my friend who had been in India for many years for some guidance, and he was looking away. He was not having anything to do with it. And I sweated this one out and I thought, how can I keep it? I mean, what are possessions and so on? But I really want it. Well, he must be teaching me something. He was sent to teach me something. Okay. And I gave it to him and he thanked me and got up and split. And I hated him. Oh, did I? My friend turned to me and said, you didn't have to do that. He hustles everybody. Now we're back in Nepal, and I'm sitting with my friend in the Blue Tibetan Restaurant, which is a hippie hangout. Sitting with some French hippies. And in walks this guy and he's about 6'7 and he's got blond, long blond hair and a long blond beard. And he's barefoot and he's wearing white cloth. And the only thing that's noticeable about him is that he's very tall, 6'7, and he's a Westerner. And he comes over and he sits down at our table. And within about 2 minutes, we sense this guy is very, very special. The quality I can describe in him is he knows. Everybody else you meet, you look into their eyes like, do you know? Well, I practically know. Do you know? And everybody's always got that little questioning thing, you know?

You know?

But he didn't— there wasn't any of that. He was like a rock. Boy, he just— he was emitting something, but he knew. And boy, that was the closest I'd ever gotten to something that knew. And so we took him back and snuck him up to our hotel suite, which was hard because it was the King's Hotel and very fancy, and they didn't even let the doorman go barefoot. So they weren't going to let the guests go barefoot. So we got him up and we had a 5-day seminar. in the room on hot baths and peach melba and hashish and mescaline and Alexandra David-Neel and Arthur Avedon and so on. At the end of 5 days, I was aware that this guy knew. Now, what was I going to do about this? Because my friend was going on to Japan and I was planning to go with him. And that was my first class ticket. And this guy had no bread and he was going back into India on a holy man pilgrimage. And he had been teaching me some mantra And then one night I was lying in my room and I had a vision of my mother's face. I'd never had a vision before when I wasn't under some chemical, and I wasn't at that moment. That particular day I wasn't. And she had an interesting expression. She had died the previous January. She had a pretty interesting expression on her face. It was an expression she used to get when that in her which was the Middle-class woman from Boston was disapproving. But there was an element in her which was saying, go, baby, go. And it was like a peeved, pleased look. Well, I thought that must be a sign of something. And then everything felt like, I think I'll stay with this guy. So I left with him, and pretty soon I found myself walking barefoot on a temple pilgrimage. And you'd walk along the street and people— I was now barefoot with white cloth and I was like, in my head, I was an explorer. But people would run out of their stores and touch my feet and say, hey, Babaji, oh, Babaji. And they just will come in and have some food and free. And, and I felt like a complete phony, phony holy man. And when they touch my feet, I wanted to touch their feet. And my friend said, you don't. When you're in the holy man role, you don't touch their feet. You honor them as if you were touching their feet in your heart and you're exchanging blessing. Pran. Okay. And he started to teach me in this most interesting way. I'd say to him, say, did I ever tell you about the time Tim and I were flying up And he'd say, don't think about the past, just be here now.

Okay.

Say, how long do you think we're going to be on this trip? Don't think about the future. Just be here now. If you can truly be here now, When the future is now, you will have optimum awareness and optimum energy, and you will do the appropriate thing. Gee, my body really feels crummy. Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear into the distance on the vast, calm ocean. So he had literally taken away everything I talk about, my thing, nothing to do but be quiet. So we were quiet and we sang holy songs. He wasn't the least bit interested in who— in my life, my fascinating life. He wasn't interested. And at the same time as he was completely putting me down, Saying, baby, your life doesn't interest me. He was being present so immediately and intensely that I had never felt anybody's presence so much. And I would do this take like, what's going on here? You're following— you come to India to find a holy man. You're following a 23-year-old guy from Laguna Beach. Pretty far out. But on we went, and there were some thousands of fascinating little moments along the way. We stayed in Buddhist, Chinese Buddhist temples, and everywhere we'd go, they'd welcome him as if he was one of theirs.

Right.

It was a very far-out scene. If you'd go to see the Theravada Buddhists, they'd immediately— he'd be talking their chants and their prayers, and they'd all treat him like he was an initiate. And then you'd go see a Shaivite sect and they'd all be welcoming him as if he was initiated. And you go to the Vaishnavites and they'd be welcoming him, and the different Tibetan sects, Buddhist sects, and everybody treated him like he was one of theirs. Finally, after about a few months, I had a visa problem and I had to go and get my visa extended. And I did that. And then he had his annual visa to be worked out and we went to a village on the plains where his papers were. And we were staying with some people who again welcomed him, some very wealthy people who welcomed him and put us in the holy man house on their property. And he would say to me, sit here. And I'd sit here. He'd say, eat this. And I'd eat it. He'd say, sleep here. And I'd sleep there because he knew and I didn't. I was like a child, a baby. My bones ached and I had terrible dysentery because I no longer had bottled water and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And he'd say, that's good. You'll develop the bacteria. Just, you know, fast for a few days. No pity, but much compassion. And he went off to see about his papers. And during the night, I had to go to the bathroom and I went outside under the stars. And while I was out under the stars, I started to think about my mother again. Not that she had died. She had died in the previous January of spleen at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. I hadn't thought about her death, but when I was this close to the universe, I just felt presence. I had never missed her because I had been with her through her death and it had been a very conscious dying. Very conscious dog. And I never felt lost at all because I dug that what Mother and I had going didn't die that way. And then I went back to bed and I said nothing about this. That was my trip. You know, he wasn't interested in my life anyway. And the next day he said, we must go to the mountains to see my guru. And he had never even mentioned having a guru. And I assumed if he did have one, it would be a Buddhist. And he didn't call them gurus usually. And I didn't know what was going on. And he said, we have to take the Land Rover. And I said, well, We're never going to get that because the fellow who it's been left with really likes it and he's not going to want to give it to us. And he says, don't worry, it'll all be all right. And we went to see the fellow and within half an hour, within half an hour, the guy says, look, you've got to go to the mountains, take the Land Rover.

Yeah.

Because the fellow is a very high being, actually. Very high being. Also, we started for the mountains. And I was in one of the worst moods I'd ever been in in India. I was just coming down after about 3 and a half months of hashish. Furthermore, I didn't want to be in the Land Rover, which was now like a horrible tank to me because I had already now been walking barefoot through all of the cow dung and pond juice and dirt between my toes and sleeping on the ground. And I was really living in India and I was really turned on by it. And suddenly I'm back in this thing. And I'm thinking, what am I doing here? This kid just wants— he won't even let me drive. See? And I dig that the car is somewhat my responsibility. And the guy that left it, that owned it, didn't even leave it for me to use anyway. So I felt terrible and I was really bugged with this guy and thought, gee, I'm just going to go on this trip, whatever it is, and then I'm going back to America, man. I started having fantasies of dancing at the Fillmore and how groovy it was going to be to get back. And I don't want to see a guru, and gurus are hypes. And what, you know, what the hell is this? And we go up into the Himalayas and we come to a little temple by the side of the road. We stop and I think we're just sort of stopping so that some trucks can go by and people surround the car, which they always do in India. In India, it's like instant crowd. The minute you stop, there's like 200 people. And they're all standing about 3 inches from you with big eyes looking directly at you. And it's not paranoia on anybody's part except yours, because they have nothing going. They're not coming on. They're just interested. But when you're trying to urinate or cook food or something, you know, it's just that you're— you got this $7,000 vehicle, which is like probably the most expensive vehicle in India. And it's got a peppermint striped root. I can tell something's going to happen because this guy is crying all the way up into the hills. Tears are streaming down his face and he's singing holy songs at the top of his lungs. And I'm, I'm over in the corner being bugged. I'm sulking. I'm sulking. And he gets there and he says, where is he? He asked them where the guru is. And they say, Maharaj is up on the hill. And he goes running off up the hill and I'm left there and everybody's like looking at me and I don't know what to do. And everybody's kind of ignoring me. So I go running after him and every, you know, my ego is just being pushed around terribly. I don't want to be here. Nobody's giving me any choice. And I'm stumbling up this hill behind this giant who's like running in big leaps, And I don't want to see a guru anyway. And, you know, we climb a hill and we come around the top of the hill to a beautiful field overlooking a valley that's out of sight of the road. And in the middle of the field is this little old man sitting with a blanket around him, and about 8 or 9 Indians are sitting around him. And it's just a beautiful tableau. Of course, I'm too hung up to appreciate it, but I see it and the clouds are in the background and it's very beautiful. And I hear this guy runs up and he does danda pranam. He goes out full-faced, hands touching this man's— this little old man's toes, and he's crying and the man's patting his head. And I don't know what to do. You know what? This is all idiocy. And I'm standing by the corner saying, well, I'll come here, but I'm not going to touch his feet. I mean, I don't know what this is all about.

No.

I'm, you know, totally paranoid. Totally paranoid. And the man's patting this guy's head, and then he looks up at me, and then he pulls the guy's hair back and he says to him, have you got a picture of me? He says this in Hindi, and it's sort of partly being translated and partly I'm picking it up. He says, have you got a picture of me? And through his tears, this guy says, yeah. He says, give it to him. Gee, that's really nice. This little old man is going to give me a picture of himself. Pretty cool. I mean, that's the first ego thing I'd gotten in the whole day. You know, I mean, I really needed it. And then he says to me, looks at me and he says, You came in a big car. Now, one topic, you know, that, like, I don't want to talk about. And he's smiling. So I said, yeah. He says, you'll give it to me. So I started to say, well, it's not my car. I And this, this idiot lying out full face is saying, Maharaj, if you want it, it's yours. And I'm yelling, you can't give him David's car. That isn't our car to give away. And he looks up at me and he says, you made much money in America? So I figure he thinks all Americans are rich. You know, I said, yeah, I made a lot of money in America one time. How much did you make? I said, well, one year I made $25,000. So they all calculated that in rupees and that was a sizable amount of money.

Yeah.

So he says, you will buy a car like that for me? My thought at that moment was, I have never been hustled so fast in my life. I mean, I grew up around the Jewish charities and we were good at it, but never this good. I mean, I haven't even met this guy and already he's asking for a $7,000 car. So I said, well, maybe. And all the time he's smiling at me. And my head's going around in circles. And then he says, take them, take them away. Ciao, ciao, ciao. You know, take them off and feed them. Prasad food. And we're taken off and treated royally and given beautiful food and a place to rest. And we're together still. We're way up in the mountains. There's no telephones, no lights, no nothing. This is really way up in the mountains. And after a while, we're brought back to— later, we're with Maharaji. He says to me, come sit here. Sit down. He looks at me and he says, you were out under the stars last night.

Yeah.

He said, you were thinking about your mother. Hmm. She died last year.

Yeah.

She got very big in the stomach before she died.

That's right. Spleen.

She died of spleen. Well, when he said spleen, it was like he looked at me and he looked directly at me. And 2 things happened simultaneously. One thing was that my rational mind, like a computer out of control, went through its storage units desperately trying to figure out How he could have done that. I mean, I went through every super CIA paranoia, you know, you could have. Like, they brought me here and this is part of the mind screw thing, you know, and they got— But no matter how grandiose it got, it just couldn't handle this one. I mean, I just couldn't handle it. This just wasn't within the book. of even my paranoia, and they were pretty grandiose. And see, up until then, I'd been in this position that when something like this had happened, either I had heard about it secondhand, in which case I said, as any good Harvard scientist would say, well, this is very interesting. We certainly must keep an open mind about these things. J.B. Rhine is doing some interesting research in this field, you know. Or else I was high on LSD, in which I'd say, well, how do I know that I, as the observer, aren't just creating the whole thing out of whole cloth anyway? Because at one point when I was taking psychedelics, I had taken a chemical called JB-318, and I was sitting on the 3rd floor at Millbrook, and I thought, gee, nothing's happening. What a weird drug. And there was the guy that took it with me was doing cartwheels through the room. He kept passing through the room and the bathroom and back through. He was about a 45, 50-year-old man. He was doing cartwheels.

Wow.

But it seemed nothing was happening to me. And this girl came in from the community and she said, did I want a drink? And I said, that would be groovy. And she poured a glass of lemonade and it got to the top and she kept pouring and it went over the side and down the floor and across the floor and up and across the ceiling. and down and under and got my pants wet and came back up and it went into the glass. And then the glass disappeared and the girl disappeared and the wet disappeared. And I turned to Ralph Metzner, who was standing next to me, and I said, Ralph, the most remarkable thing happened. And Ralph disappeared. And since I knew that such things could happen, you see, I took all these things that happened to me with psychedelics and put them into that special category of, you know, the observer is under a chemical influence. But I wasn't under a chemical influence. And this guy just said spleen. And how did he know that? See, The mind went faster and faster. And finally, just like a computer when it's met an insoluble problem, the bell rings and the red light goes on, the machine stops. And my rational mind just gave up when— and at that same moment, there was this violent wrenching, really very, very painful pull in my chest. What was that? And I started to cry. My fourth chakra was being opened, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried. And I wasn't sad, and I wasn't happy. The closest I can say is I was crying because, like, I'm home. I've carried my big pile of Up the hill and it's all done. All the paranoia washed out of me and all of the everything, but just, just a feeling of fantastic love and peace and wow. And I cried and cried and cried. And they took me to a temple about 12 miles away. And there I sat and I was kind of confused. And during the evening, I was wondering what had happened to me. I didn't understand what was going on. And I was going through my shoulder bag and I came across this little bottle of LSD and I thought, wow, I always wondered what LSD was. This guy knows everything. He'll know. I'll ask him. I must remember to ask him. Next morning, 8:30, messenger. Maharaji wants to see you. So Maharaj means great king. It's a title for realized beings. So we get into the Land Rover and we go to see Maharaj, and I'm just approaching him. I'm about, oh, 5 yards away, and he yells at me, got a question? Well, I take one look at him and I don't have any questions. I just want to fall out and touch his feet. You dig that? It's like, I mean, the thought of touching his feet is too much. It's like touching the sun. And I just feel all warm and loving. And who has questions? I mean, what a drag. Them questions. I don't have any questions, Maharaj. You know, I don't. He says, where's the medicine? Medicine? My friend says, maybe he means the LSD. I said, LSD? Ah, child, bring the LSD. So I go and I get the bottle of LSD and he, he's looking. So I pour it out in my hand. He says, what's that? I said, well, that's STP. What's that? Well, that's 2-enol and that's Librium, LSD. And I'm telling about all these things, little, you know, you're traveling, packing. And he says, Says, gives you siddhis. I have never heard the word before. And I said, siddhis? And somebody said, powers. And I got the take, Western head that I am, that he is like a little old man of 70 and he's asking for like vitamin B12, you know? I mean, he's losing his physical strength and he wants something to soup him up. And I'm really disappointed, man. I'd give that guy anything, but what he wants, I don't have. I don't have any vitamin B12. Gee, I'm sorry. I pour it back into the thing. No, no, no. And he holds out his hand. So I put on one, what we lovingly call white lightning. Now, this was a— this particular batch of White Lightning had, because of the way the wash water was, I was assured, was 305 micrograms each one of the pills instead of 275. It was very good. He looked at it. Come on. So I put a second on his hand. 610. He's about 70 years old. You know, that's fine. You start a 70-year-old man at a small dose, 150 under suitable conditions. Come on, come on. I put a third in his hand. That's 915 micrograms.

Mucha.

He swallows them. I watched them go down. And the scientist in me thinks, well, this is certainly going to be interesting. All day I'm around him and he keeps— every now and then he twinkles a bit, but nothing happens. Right. That was the answer to that question. A few days later, we were sitting there and he said to me, He said, you went to Armanath Cave. And I got a real ego flash, like, man, I've been on a holy pilgrimage and he's recognizing it. Wow, isn't that great? See? And I went through my whole, like, you know, pride. And he looked at me and he says, but you didn't understand it. I said, no.

You will.

Just a few more things about him later. A few months later, I had to go to Delhi, and I went by bus to Delhi, and it was like about a 10 or 12-hour bus trip. And I got to Delhi and I was very high and I was barefoot and silent. I was Mauna all the time. I was there working with a chalkboard. And I went all around Connaught Place doing my thing and American Express and BOAC and public health and all this stuff. And I had to get some money for it, for some tankas that were being reproduced. And around 2 in the afternoon, I wanted to have a meal. I had been living on a very, very sparse diet, as I'll tell you about in a minute. So I went into this very fancy vegetarian restaurant and I decided to really live it up. And I had their fanciest meal and I really grooved behind it. I mean, the whole business of enjoy, enjoy, you know, like I was really into the food. And for dessert I had ice cream and they brought on the ice cream, they brought 2 biscuits. And boy, those were the first cookies I'd had. And oh, did I savor those. Oh, and so So then I went to the Ashoka Mission, the Buddhist monastery, Theravada Buddhist, and I stayed overnight. And the next day I took the bus back up to the mountains. And a few days later, Maharaji, who had been up in the hills further up, came back. We heard Maharaji's in town and everybody went flying to Maharaji like bees to honey. And I brought him oranges. You bring— you bring something to To Darshan, you bring some food. And I saw him. I took one look and I started crying. The oranges went flying in all directions and he picked up the oranges wildly and was eating them right in front of me. And he ate 8 oranges right in front of me. Because if, if, if when he eats that way, he's taking on like karma from the person who's doing the thing. In fact, all day long he sits there and all these loving women come bringing food they've cooked all night, and he just sits there all day talking. And every now and then he opens his mouth and she puts something in and she opens her mouth. She's like a huge elephant or rhinoceros that just sits there and you just keep feeding it. He must eat 15 meals a day just sitting there. I mean, amazing. It just passes it all through, I guess.

So.

And he ate the 8 oranges. And the principal of the school was feeding me oranges and I was crying. It was quite a melodrama. And then he grabbed my hair, what was left, and he pulled it up and he looked at me and he said, how'd you like the biscuits? And then he proceeded to tell me moment by moment everything that had happened to me in Delhi, just like he had been right behind me. Or in me, or somewhere or other.

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