Chapter XIX: KRISHNA


Two weeks had gone by since my Jenny and I had arrived at Prashanti. Moments of the most wonderful bliss had alternated with dark times of crisis and panic — even times of depression. What a roller coaster! I knew that they were all of my own making. Problems that I had been going around creating for myself. Yet, on occasions it really did feel as if I were a puppet with an empty head dancing frantically to the Master Puppeteer’s tune. As the days went by I found myself caught up in something resembling a farcical comedy.

Of course, Swami knew my weaknesses and was putting me to the test.

Since we had met in the autumn of 1986, the relationship between Jenny and I had never been an easy one. For months I had prayed to Baba, asking him to bring me to my true mate and partner in this life.

“Please let her be a Baba devotee as well,” I had beseeched him.

I met Jenny at the very first bhajans I attended at the Findhorn Caravan Park and the relationship had progressed quite smoothly. Having experienced a disastrous first marriage I felt wary of repeating my mistake. So a relationship, Findhorn Community style — not bound by the commitment of marriage — suited me.

But we had both felt that Swami had guided us towards each other long before we had known each other. And, before travelling to Prashanti in November 1987, we had discussed the prospect of getting married and asking Swami’s blessing. But divorce proceedings were to take a lot longer than I had expected. So, when we finally did travel to India that month, we were still legally married to our respective spouses from whom we had long been separated.

Ashram rules are strict on the question of single people of different sexes. They are not allowed to share the same room. Yet, we had been allocated one room and I had accepted that it had happened with Swami’s blessing. Later on, in our second interview, he scolded us for trying to deceive him.

“You are not husband and wife! Just friends,” he admonished us.

At that time I had forgotten an incident that had taken place at Woodend a couple of months before. After a row in the car one day I returned home determined that our relationship was over and that I was going to cancel my ticket to India. But, in the Shrine Room that evening, I had heard Swami’s voice speaking calmly through the maelstrom of thoughts that were swirling about inside my head.

“Come to Prashanti with Jenny,” he seemed to be saying, “and there you will find the one you are looking for.”

So determined was I to find the right mate with whom to share my life that I had naturally assumed that he had meant this ‘one’ to be the right woman for me.

Now, after the second interview, Swami had reprimanded us, warning Jenny not to be jealous — something I had never attributed to her! — and me not to play ‘musical chairs’. Like most westerners of my generation I had been in a few relationships with women since my ‘twenties. But during my marriage I had remained faithful to my spouse though there had been occasions, towards the end, when I had been tempted to break faith. Now, Swami was scolding me for playing party games. Soon, I began to understand his reasons.

Just after the fateful second interview, during which Baba had materialized the healing lingam, Jenny asked me to borrow it.

“There are a group of Latin American women who have asked me for some healing water,” she told me.

Feeling out-of-sorts that day, I replied grumpily, “I can’t do that. Swami gave me the lingam and so I am its guardian. Tell me who these women are and I will arrange to see them.”

What I was feeling inside was pride and possessiveness and a sense that Jenny hadn’t earned the right to work with the lingam. Mistake number one. Mistake number two: ashram rules quite clearly stipulated that both sexes should keep to themselves where these were not of the same family. But westerners, on the whole, seemed to ignore the rules. And, anyway, I was on an errand of mercy!

Jenny bit her tongue and gave me their address. That afternoon, I knocked at their door, entered, prepared two vessels and began pouring water over the healing stone. While I was doing this, I sensed a third person enter the room and sit down on the bedside in front of me. As I finished the work I looked up. Immediately I sensed a powerful sense of heart contact with the woman who sat there.

The next few days I walked around totally confused. The woman was an Argentine and I was sensing a powerful attraction to her. What should I do? I decided that the only thing was to be honest and to share my feelings with her and Jenny.

“Oh god, what a time to have to deal with this!” I muttered to myself. The next day was Jenny’s birthday. How in heaven’s name could I inflict all this dreadful stuff on her on her birthday? In London, I had bought her a birthday card which said, ‘Open carefully or you Birthday Fairy will fall out.’ When the card was opened out fell the fairy screaming ‘Eek!’.

What a perfectly lousy choice I had made or had the Higher Self known something I hadn’t? How could I give her this card now? Yet, where else could I find a suitable card in Puttaparthi? So, that morning, the first part of the black comedy was played out. I told Jenny what had been going on and it tore her apart.

“It’s Stefanie, isn’t it?” she replied. Deep down she had known all the while. All I could do was to sit helplessly by her side, not knowing how to console her as she sobbed. At some point, our friends Charles and Heather, visited her and brought a present of a collage picture of Swami releasing a dove into the air.

I told Jenny that I would have to speak to Stefanie and tell her too. Summoning up the courage, I arranged a meeting and told her, promising not to bother her again until she, herself, received divine guidance. At least I had been honest with everyone concerned and had no way of guessing the outcome. So many questions made my head reel. Why had this happened? What was I to understand from it all? I had not wanted to hurt Jenny, yet I had to tell her the truth. I had not wished to embarrass a stranger yet that is what I had succeeded in doing. I had complicated several lives.

I decided to appeal to Krishna himself. My loyalties were torn. Should I have followed my heart or my head? If God were to understand my misery it would be in Krishna’s aspect he might best understand it. After all, was not the story of Radha and Krishna the greatest romance of the soul that had ever been told? I went out to the shops in Puttaparthi and bought a picture postcard of Krishna. On the back of the picture I wrote, “Swami —please lead me to the Isle of Everywhere and to my Radha soon!” Now it was all up to the Lord to decide the outcome of this melodrama.

At afternnoon darshan I decided that there was no point in scrambling from the fourth row to give him my picture. So I held Krishna to my heart as Swami passed by. He turned and looked at me directly and — for a brief moment — it seemed I had his attention. Later that evening, I joined the Latin Americans to sing bhajans outside the roundhouses. Following the Spanish lyrics as best I could I found myself lost in the night sky above us. There was Orion the Hunter; Aldebaran, the Eye of the Bull in Taurus. I was lost in my search down here on Earth. I prayed to my star to shine down its light.


Finding myself, next morning, in the sixth or seventh row back during darshan I began to feel guilty. Maybe Swami was punishing me for my duplicity for not heeding his warning about playing musical chairs?

A hush descended on the crowd — a sure sign that Baba had left his rooms and was somewhere on the Mandir veranda. Emerging from the gorgeous building he began to distribute cloth and saris to the women devotees. There was an air of good humour around and I watched him tease and joke with several devotees. He seemed like a playful Krishna. As he walked towards the men I held my picture to my heart once more. He stopped and spoke to a friend of mine from the UK group which had ‘adopted’ us. Bharat got up and walked to the interview rooms. Almost in a trance I got up and followed him.

Walking past Baba I made namaskar as usual. As we settled down inside he began to ask us questions.

“What is love?” he asked quizzically. Silence followed as we all thought of an answer. Then he continued.

“Love is God. God is Love. Love God, then, instead of becoming distracted by greed, lust, anger, envy and material pleasures.” As he spoke I began to notice that, from time to time, he seemed to be looking right at me. Swami’s words were for each of us there. Yet I felt that I had to find the courage to ask him to help me settle my inner yearning to find the right mate for the rest of this life. He materialized a ring for an old Englishman and a healing lingam for a friend of mine. I felt so happy for both of them.

Swami turned to Jenny and asked, “How is your husband?” She looked at me and searched hopelessly for the words to explain what was going on. “He is a good boy,” Swami interrupted, “there are many things on his mind at present.” Then he gave us another ticking off. “You are always arguing!”

At that point I found the courage to give Swami my picture.

“Krishna!” he exclaimed. “But this is just a painting. Not reality. It is like a play. You must look beyond the illusion of the play to discover that Krishna is everywhere. In everything.”

How often I had heard Swami speak inside me, giving me this advice to see beyond the illusion. Now he was actually saying it.

“You are contracting the vast meaning of his reality,” he continued, throwing the picture back at me with a flick.

“Swami, will you give me a picture of Prema Sai?” I dared to ask.

“That is for the future, Sir. Live in the present. Past is gone. The future is uncertain. Only the present is where you must live!”

I asked him to bless the book I had begun to write. “All I want from you is the love in your heart,” he replied. “Not books.”

“Love is the greatest thing you can know in this life. Live in love and let all your daily actions be guided by love. Love, love love!” Then, just before turning away, he looked me straight in the eye.

“Write! Write!” he exclaimed, cutting the air with a determined gesture as if to shear away the invisible shackles of doubt and complacency which had so often paralyzed me into inaction. He had given the book his blessing.

As we left the interview room I touched his chair and the footrest below. On the Mandir veranda I stooped and touched his robe.

“Very happy! Very happy!” he murmured.

And with that blessing I walked out into the compound. For the first time, however, I did not experience the great waves of bliss. Instead, I came out feeling quite puzzled what to make of it all. The next day — as if to bring home the point — the Thought for the Day which was written, daily, on the blackboard outside the Registration Office read:

“Love-filled devotion is the easiest path to the Divine. You must love all. The great quality of Love is that it is the royal road to unity. All diversity and manifestations that we see in the world have come from the One. The One is the basis for the Many. Once we realize the Unity that underlies the diversity the problems arising out of the differences can be resolved.

BABA.”

Yes, I could see how I had become entangled in this Maya about soulmates. In India, marriages are arranged and partners must learn how to love each other. In the West, people married because they ‘fell in love’ (a medieval courtly custom) and spent the rest of their marriage ‘falling out’ of love with each other. Was all this business about soulmates not vastly over-rated, highly idealized pulp fiction for cheap romance magazines? But why had I suddenly felt this magnetic attraction to someone I had never seen before? I had never experienced that kind of pull ever in my life.

That afternoon, having kissed Krishna’s feet, I went out to the shops with Keith who had recently been given a Shivalingam. He wanted to buy a sandal-wood box like mine and though I felt tired and hot and would have preferred to take a siesta, I agreed to take him to the shop.

Everything was closed for the afternoon. Instead, Keith invited me to a tea-room where we sat down at an empty table and ordered two large, mussambi lime-juices to quench our parched throats.

On the table before me lay a copy of THE HINDU — a national English daily. I began to flip idly through its pages. In the Sports Section, which I would never look at normally, I found myself reading the headlines, ARGENTINA GIRL APPEALS MOST. How strange, I thought and read on.

Calcutta, December 16 — Argentina Girl appeals most in the Breeder’s Cup, the main event of the races to be held here on Thursday December 17.

THE CARD

Breeder’s Cup (1,100 Metres).

Favourites:

1) Argentina Girl.
2) Ayaan.
3) Prince of Hearts.


By this time I had begun to feel quite peculiar. Surely, this was one of Krishna’s leelas? Swami was pulling my leg! Naturally, he knew what was going on. I was looking for the ‘perfect woman’ and in this hunt had put more energy into worldly affairs than into devotion of Swami. But who was this mystery horse, Ayaan? The race had already been run and I decided to read the Sport Section the next day to see what the outcome was of this extraordinary race.

That evening, I climbed up to the tamarind tree to take the evening air over the Prashanti Valley. The old priest was tidying the area around the kalpavriksham, quietly singing to himself. Painted on the rock beside the tree was the mantra, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Sai Rama, Hare Hare. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Sai Krishna, Hare Hare. As the sun descended and the first dark shadows of dusk crept over the valley, I climbed down towards the village. Soon the stars appeared once more.

It had been an eventful time. I had met Peter Caddy, the co-founder of the Findhorn Community, at Prashanti. Peter had not been in India since the end of WWII and had never before visited Baba.


From Left: Renate and Peter Caddy, Jenny, Me and Charles Murphy

“What brings you to Baba’s ashram?” I asked him.

“Well, we are travelling down from Herakan (Babaji’s spiritual home) to Auroville so we thought we would stop off at Puttaparthi,” he replied. “There seem to be so many Sai Baba devotees these days, at the Findhorn Community, I thought it would be interesting to come and see for myself.”

Peter’s new wife, Renate, had had an eclectic interest in Baba and so they had agreed to visit the ashram. But they stayed only a day or two and, though Peter attended bhajans and darshan, he was not called for an interview. Later, he returned to his new home in Germany by Lake Constance to follow an inner spiritual path in the twilight of his years.

“All my life I have spent most of my energies helping to create on the external plane,” he told me one day. “Now I know that it is time to look inward to find the balance between Spirit and Matter.”


The atmosphere in our room had become charged. Jenny and I found it virtually impossible to talk to each other. Fortunately she was now devoting most of her time and energy helping to organize the children’s Christmas Play. I had joined the Choir and continued to sing with the Latin Americans. The ‘Argentina Girl’ and I tried our best not to notice each other.

Again, all hopes for a bliss-filled stay at Prashanti had gone out of the window. My life had become full of complications and I felt as I was drowning in a sea of illusions. At morning darshan Baba came out and I radiated as much love and light as I could in his direction. He smiled sweetly at the crowds.

Again, I held onto my picture of Krishna. That afternoon, I took a letter asking him to resolve this strange and disturbing affair as well as the domestic problems which were still causing me anxiety. I would have to return to Scotland just after Christmas.

I found myself in the last row at darshan, clasping the letter in my hands. Again, he smiled and made the customary sign meaning ‘I am with you’. Was he thinking that I was playing musical chairs once more and putting me into the back row?

I returned to the tamarind tree which seemed to be the only spot where I could find some peace and quiet. A soft breeze blew across the Valley. The priest walked by, smiled and asked for the time. I sat and watched him walk down the path towards the village. There was no one else up there and from the ashram I could hear the sound of voices singing the evening bhajans. It was five-thirty in late December and the temperature had dropped. I sat with my back against the tamarind tree and prayed to Krishna.

Walking back into Gopuram Street I headed for the tea room for my evening glass of fresh lime-juice and the papers. Opening the day’s HINDU I looked at the Sports Section. The Calcutta race had been won by the mystery horse, Ayaan. What did it mean? I called the waiter over, ordered a fresh lime juice, and asked him the meaning of the name. After consulting with his colleagues he returned to the table.

“Sir, in Tamil Nadu it means ‘father’.”

So that was it! The whole thing had been ‘engineered’ to teach me a lesson in devotion. Though Argentina Girl had been favourite it was Father who had actually won the race. Who else could be Father but Swami?

“Don’t put others between yourself and the Lord,” Krishna seemed to be telling his wavering devotee. “You came here to be with the One you have yearned for through all your lives. Now, don’t let these worldly matters distract you as if you were gambling all your chances at the races!”

So this was to be my answer then. And what of my prayer for Radhakrishna? Reluctantly, I returned to the Roundhouse.

The day ended with Jenny and me arguing. In my unhappiness I remembered how it had been in the most difficult days when my marriage had been foundering on the rocks. I had hoped never to have experienced that sorrow again. Now here it was.

The next day, I took my letter once more. As Swami emerged to greet the crowds I crossed myself and prayed asking, “Baba, will you take my letter today?” Immediately came the clear, soothing voice which seemed to say, “I know, I know. I will take it today.” He approached my end of the row and, as he stood in front of me, I asked “Swamiji, will you take my letter?” He took it .


After breakfast, I bought a white garland of jasmine, broke it in two and threw half onto the altar at the Ganesha temple, praying for all obstacles to be removed. The flowers fell directly before Ganesha. Returning to the Mandir for bhajans I noted how Baba floated past so lovingly and placidly. Again, I sensed an incredible light-play of auras around him. I added my own light to his. Suddenly, a white cross shone from my chest, sending its silver rays towards his figure.

He looked around and smiled, making his usual sign saying, ‘I am with you.’

Someone had told me, “it is important that you remain open, hollow like his reed.” Now I noticed that when I was able to achieve this emptiness, my experience of Swami took on a very special magicality. He reflected back whatever was going on inside me. Once more, I copied the Thought for the Day and pondered over how it might provide an answer to my current miseries.

“Love! Love! and Love! Become what you truly are — the embodiments of Love. No matter how others treat you or what they think of you. Do not worry. Follow Jesus Christ. Love for your own evolution and not for what others say. Do not imitate others. Cultivate you own life. You have your own heart, your own opinion, your own ideas, your own will. Why then imitate? Follow your chosen path. Let your own Experience of God be your guide and master. Your own heart shining with Love is God’s love. You are God. The true you is God.

BABA — 20 December 1987.”

Yes, this was the lesson that I was having to learn. I didn’t understand what to make of these latest events. It seemed that Baba was digging into all my weaknesses and destroying my ego. I knew that this was what he would do, so often, with his devotees.

“The nearer and dearer you are to me the greater are your chances of getting burned ... I have come to reform you, to transmute you,” he tells us. But, in the turmoil and confusion of those hectic days at Prashanti, I was unable to understand any of this. My small asteroid was being sucked into the vast gravity of his sun, there to be burned into fine dust like vibhuti.

My ego kicked and screamed and fought against this painful transmutation. How undignified to make me jump up and down like a demented puppet, I thought. Not for a moment did I stop and ask myself why I so willingly partook! Yet, in the saner moments, when I was able to let go of all my fears, problems, doubts and insecurities, I could sense that, since walking through the gates of the Gaaligopuram into Prashanti, my life was on the change. In a deceptively gentle and loving manner, Baba had taken my ego, turned my life upside down and shaken out a whole mess of karma. It hurt like hell.

Though I was there with Jenny I was confused and lonely. Late at night seemed to be the worst time and I found it necessary to take some mild herbal sedatives to help me sleep.

The blessings were the many people I met during the day who brought light, love, wisdom, understanding and knowledge into my life. I admired Glyn for his tenacious courage to have travelled across India in his physically weak state.

Chris from Tasmania was a gentle being, full of light. Together, we had spent some quiet moments up by the tamarind tree where we were able to talk of our lives — perhaps seeing a panorama in all of it, a view high above the market-place and daily circus which the ashram could so often become. However melodramatic things seemed to be at that time, I knew that — one way or another — I was following my true path regardless of the consequences. Swami communicates with us through the Higher Self and the pure stream he pours through our vessel will clean out the container until it glows and shines.

Chris and I discussed our respective experiences with Baba. How he would, so often, ask questions like, “How are you, Sir?” or “Where is your husband?” leaving the individual tongue-tied for an answer. We agreed that such questions acted like time capsules, triggering off much deeper questions within us concerning the totality of our life experience, past present and future. Sometimes cryptic, his statements can be interpreted in such different ways — in as many ways as there are those to interpret them! But what he seems to be doing is provoking us into looking ever more inward. As we become increasingly desperate with having to deal with such questions in a rational manner we must either give up the search for an answer or appeal to the Higher Self for meaning.

So, always we are obliged to turn Godwards. In his omniscience he operates on every plane and dimension simultaneously. Whether we choose to ignore him or whether we fall desperately or deeply in love with him the evidence of his omnipresence makes itself known to us in a variety of ways, through the everyday experience of life. To experience Sathya Sai Baba is to experience totality. Faced with such a prospect we can only hope to understand him through his grace and his leelas. And, ultimately, each of us must chart our own course and seek to follow it as faithfully as we can. Then, in some unexpected moment, the God Experience comes and lights up an otherwise mundane existence.

That experience may have resulted from the questions or rather the transformative energy he puts into us. Providing the final tap, after chiselling away, he will split asunder all the layers of doubt, deceit and delusion to reveal the alchemist’s gold within us. The inner change is made and once this process has begun all manner of changes are experienced in our lives. We are corrected, remodelled, refurbished and fine-tuned and then returned to the world as changed, reformed aspects of Atma.

A holonomic change follows karmic acceleration. The paradigm shift is permanent though there is always a possibility that we’re off-beam. For once we have invited him into our lives we may never, again, be the same. We are reborn and he and we begin the process of merging into the One.

The universe gives us feedback that the Godman has altered our evolutionary course, put us back on the beam. In our everyday life we experience remarkable synchronicities and apparent miracles of meaning. In fact, he has simply opened our eyes to the continuous play of leela which, like Krishna, he spins.

Again and again, the ego may resist and fight the changes and in the midst of the cycle of death and rebirth it is sometimes difficult to know whether it is the ego or the body that is dying. While the drama is acted out there is very little else that we can do but to pray and trust that, sooner or later, we shall awake into the Great Peace which is God. Much stronger, purer, finer beings. And we do always come through, however much the illusions may seem otherwise. We come through because we are God and because the inner spirit is indestructible.


It was almost Christmas and I could feel the advent of that inner peace. Though there were crises at home, though Jenny had been deeply hurt by my callous behaviour and could clearly not understand or deal with my erratic mood changes any longer, though Swami walked by without so much as a word of comfort, though I couldn’t understand any of it, I knew I had to keep on keeping on. I knew that Swami was the chief Player in all the games and that he could see quite clearly into our lives. He had showered me with blessings and I had no reason to be feeling ungrateful. Yet my life was in crisis.

Would he give me one final interview before I left Prashanti? Five was my lucky number. God willing he would allow me to stay at Prashanti over Christmas before my having to make hasty tracks for Bangalore, Bombay and points West. I prayed that he would grant me this final boon.

Meeting an Australian psychic, I told her the whole story including the bit about the Calcutta races.

“The jokes he plays can be so ridiculously funny!” she replied, laughing incredulously. “You’re very blessed. But don’t be too sure about the outcome of this story because he could always change the script whenever he chooses.”

I understood perfectly what she meant. It was his play, his drama and I was so often his reluctant bit player.

“Well, just so long as he doesn’t give me all the hard lines!” I replied.

That afternoon, after a trip to the shops, a rather careless haircut and a conversation with my friend, S.N., I returned to shave and shower. I seemed to hear Baba’s voice telepathically.

“Today, something has lifted in your mind and you can hear me clearly once more,” I heard. After the last few days of despair I was certainly experiencing a sense of welcome lightness, feeling encouraged by my psychic friend’s comments. I could have allowed myself to be depressed at the news that we might have to move out from our private apartment into the sheds now that the ashram was filling out for Christmas.

Baba seemed to be preparing me for this and, at the Accomodations office, I had been told that we would have to leave the room in a day or so.

“Return after bhajans and we can tell you whether you need to vacate.”

A day ago, I would have found the prospect of having to move into a crowded shed where there is no privacy absolutely too depressing. But now I felt I could face it for, after the gifts Swami had given me, it felt perfectly appropriate to celebrate Christmas at Prashanti.

At afternoon darshan I sat next to Chris and we talked about our mutual interest in aircraft. We had been almost the last into darshan and by then I wasn’t surprised to find myself in the back rows once more. Swami came out and the usual hush descended on the crowds which were now growing in number as the Christmas festival drew near. Again, I seemed to hear Swami speak to me, instructing me to walk through the crowd when he walked past to get a picture signed. Maybe this was a test of courage. If the Latin Americans could do it why couldn’t I?

As he walked towards the Men’s section my heart started to beat fast. Did I dare to follow my inner voice? But, before I could think, he called two of the UK group. Muttering with disbelief, I rose up and followed the UK crowd. My prayers for a fifth and final interview had been granted. All grins, I walked into the Mandir veranda. I sat next to Keith who was disturbed because someone else from the UK group was nowhere to be seen. Keith asked me to go and find him.

I wasn’t prepared to move from the spot for fear of losing my chance of another interview and, instead, I suggested that Keith stood up and tried to wave to Sam. Just then Swami appeared and shouted at Keith.

“Sit down, rowdy! This isn’t America!”

Straightaway, I felt guilt for having unwittingly caused Keith to earn Baba’s displeasure and walking towards the Interview Room I smiled sheepishly at Baba. He looked at me sternly.

“Not you! No you go back, please!”

The sound of his voice pierced through me like a cold, sharp blade. Could he have really said this to me? And why? He was inflicting my worst fear of being rejected on me.

“Swami?” I replied lamely.

“You’re not wearing your scarf,” he replied. But why now when he had never insisted on my wearing a scarf before?

“Swami,” I pleaded. “I forgot my scarf. It’s in my room!” But he waved me away.

“Go back. Discipline!”

I walked away disconsolately, my head low, feeling the intense hurt that this perfunctory treatment had caused. I felt just like the hurt little boy I had once been, emerging from the headmaster’s room, my backside covered in red, black and blue weals after a sound thrashing.

To keep up a brave front I grinned sheepishly to hide the pain and embarrassment. Was he playing some kind of game with me? Had I displeased him and if so how? Perhaps my outrageous behaviour, chasing soulmates inside the ashram, was the final straw that had tried his patience?

Or was it because, in a thoughtless moment, I had hugged him? It was paranoia time. I decided to go back into my room and hide from the world, feeling so much shame for what had happened. Swami had changed the script although my personal guidance had been that I would get a fifth interview before leaving after Christmas.

Stopping at Accomodation, I was greeted by a Seva Dal who told me kindly, “Don’t worry. We will do our best not to put families in the sheds.”

The truth was that we were not married and had no business to be living in the same room. Swami must have known what was going on and would surely expose this pretence. In a few seconds he had thrown the dice anew and I would have to catch up with the future to find out the significance of the throw! Whether good or bad, I had to remain true to myself. After this dressing-down maybe my friends would turn sour on me now that I was no longer a ‘favoured one’.

Swami knew what was in my heart even if my head sometimes got the better of me. I could not believe that he would act unjustly.

“Please do not treat me too harshly!” I prayed.


Walking into town that evening, I started to argue with Swami inside my head. The telepathic link I had experienced seemed to be just as strong.

“Why have I caused you displeasure, Swami?” I asked.

“You know why,” I heard him reply. “You were not wearing your scarf ... discipline!”

“But you know that I forgot my scarf!” I protested. The irony was that I had always carried the red-white-and-blue scarf in my shoulder bag. On that one occasion I had left it behind.

Then followed a lesson. I had chosen to describe myself as being Scottish and, though having been adopted by the UK group, had shied away from wearing a Union Jack scarf. It had seemed that Swami mistook the UK group for being Americans — hence his comment to Keith — and some Americans had gone in as well.

That remained a mystery. But now the mirror of conscience spoke clearly inside me. I had shunned the UK group but had grabbed the opportunity for another interview when they had been called. It didn’t really matter if Swami had mistaken the UK group for Americans. What mattered was that I had made a mistake.

I walked across the sand towards the ashram thoroughfare. “From now on,” Baba continued, “you have only one allegiance. And that is to me!” With that, all my party political and activist days were put behind me forever. In my heart I willingly accepted the Lord’s command. Swami had entered my being and spoken to me so clearly. He was with me all the time and I didn’t need to compete for interviews. His voice spoke from within. Though he appeared to treat me harshly it felt as if he and I had become one.


That night, the rows between Jenny and I had got far worse. For the first time I lost control of my temper in the ashram and swore at her. Why was I staying here at all in this circus of emotions? Swami was with me anyway wherever I was in the world. Life in this room was too messy. But my inner guidance had told me to leave on the twenty-eighth, after Christmas.

Baba was putting me through my paces, shifting loads of stuff. I prayed for strength to get through the trials.


© RW 1989