I’m about to begin a story that, if it actually hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it myself. Yesterday, Ram Dass said that we’re not going after the guru, the guru captures us. Mine has been an interesting journey, and I’ll tell you how Maharajji—Neem Karoli Baba— “captured” me.
In New York City, I read a book, Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. In this book he described a lot of unbelievable, incredible things that happened in India, miracles and wonders, and I was captivated by this. At the end of the book, it said if you want to pursue Kriya Yoga, when it’s time, a teacher will appear.
A few days later I opened The Village Voice — I was living in Greenwich Village — and in the personals column, which everybody read, there was a little article that said “Yogi Ramaya — just arrived from India to teach Babaji’s Kriya Yoga.” My God, I couldn’t believe it! I had just put the book down, and there’s Yogi Ramaya, just arrived off the boat! I called him, I was his first devotee. He didn’t know anybody — his guru (well, it was Babaji) — told him to go to America and everything would be all right. And he did. Needless to say, Yogi Ramaya became a very big teacher, guru, around the world. He has many centers. But at that time he was just this Indian yogi, a little guy wrapped in a white sheet.
I studied Kriya Yoga with him, and I was using as a visual aid a photo of Babaji, the master of Kriya Yoga. Every day I would sit in front of a picture of Babaji in my living room, and meditate on him. At that time I was in a sort of crazed state, doing hours and hours of meditation a day. I would start in the morning and meditate all day. I would go to people’s houses for gatherings, and they would find me in the closet, meditating.
While sitting in front of Babaji’s picture one day doing my meditation, I had this sensation that somebody was in the room with me. The sensation was so strong that it forced me to open my eyes. When I opened my eyes, Babaji was sitting in front of me, in my living room in Greenwich Village! Naked, in his usual posture that I saw him in while meditating. He said to me in some telepathic way, “What do you want?” I said to him, “I want to go to India, but I’m really terrified to go. I really want to go there.” At that point Babaji raised his hand, held his hand up, and motioned to me. And he said, “You will go to India, and you will have no fear.” At that point his hand went back into his meditation position, and shortly after that I was just sitting in front of a photo of Babaji. (It wasn’t until I met Uma that I found out this gesture is a mudra for dispelling fear, called abhaya mudra.)
I knew then that somehow I was going to get to India. Through a course of many wonders and miraculous happenings, I did go. I got a chance to go to Woodstock — I probably met many of you who are here — you may remember me, I was barefoot! (Laughter) Right after that I headed for India, first traveling around Europe and Africa. I had no money, I landed in Europe with no money, but I knew that God would get me to India. After almost a year of traveling all over Europe and Africa and the Canaries, I did get to India. Still with nothing.
I landed, and went racing to Benares, because in Yogananda’s book he always talked of these incredible wonders and amazing beings in Benares. This was the heart of India, Shiva, so I went racing to Benares.
When I got to Benares, I realized on the rickshaw ride from the train station to the river that I was in a very strange land. Alongside me, walking by the rickshaw were three completely naked men, covered in white ash, carrying tridents and pots in their hands, walking down the center of the main street of Benares! I thought, What IS this?! How is this possible? Nobody was really paying any attention to them, and they weren’t paying any attention to anyone else.
This was all really odd. I got a room and then went right to the river. That was all I knew about, this Ganga river. I got to the Ganga, and I remember looking at the river, and the next thing I knew, I was out in the middle of the river, I was completely naked, and there were children swimming around me throwing wreaths of flowers over my head! On the shore, I could see hundreds of people screaming and yelling. Realizing I was naked, I thought those people on the shore were waiting to kill me, and these crazy kids were just out there throwing flowers around. I swam back to shore — I knew I had no choice, I had to just get out of there. I was terrified going up to the land, but as I swam in closer to the shore, I realized they weren’t screaming angry, they were all cheering and shouting things like, “Ram, Ram, Shambo, Hare.” I ran and got my clothes; I didn’t know what was happening. People were running over throwing flowers on me, and I was sort of confused, I didn’t know what was going on, but I just raced to my room. I asked a friend who was there what happened, and she said, “I don’t know what happened. You were on the shore, you took off all your clothes, and sort of disappeared into a hazy light. The next thing I saw was you far out in the river with a bunch of kids around you.” It was all very confusing, I still don’t know what happened to me that day.
While in Benares, I was in my hotel room, and I was about to prepare a chillum, which is a mixture of hashish and tobacco, smoked in a pipe. I was preparing this chillum to try to settle my head and put together what was going on here. A man appeared at my door and said, “Can I share that with you?” He was an elderly gentleman, white hair and a mustache, and a sport jacket on. He looked very much like a member of the police department to me. (Laughter) He looked very official. And I don’t know why, but I said yes. His name was Baba Singh, and he then invited me to come to his home and have dinner. His wife was the most incredible cook I had ever met, and I wound up staying three months at his home. In this time I found out that he was, in fact, formerly a policeman. He confessed to me having done dastardly deeds while with the police force, but then he had met a yogi. He left the police department and went into meditation practice, and transformed his life. And then he put me through some tasks.
The first thing he had me do was go to the burning ghats. I had to go and stay at the burning ghats all day and watch bodies burning. And I had to choose one body and watch it from beginning to end. It took about three, three and a half hours for a body to burn. I would usually have breakfast, catch three bodies burning, head back for dinner, then do an evening sit, catch another body or two at night. In Benares, if you die there, you’re guaranteed to go to heaven, so millions come just to die in Benares. So the fire in the burning ghats in Benares burns twenty-four hours a day, and has never gone out. There is always a body to burn. One day I counted forty-four bodies burning, but I was concentrating on one.
Baba Singh never told me what I was supposed to be doing, but one day, after almost a month of sitting there, I did have this experience where I went out of body, and I was actually watching my own body on the pyre. They burn the bodies on these wooden pyres, and I went into some sort of a mental flip, and I was watching me, watching my body incinerate. When I got back to Baba Singh that night, he looked at me, and he said, “Today it happened.” He knew something had happened that day, and something had happened. The fire had incinerated everything I had thought and known of myself, and the temporal nature of life was staring me in the face.
And then he said, “Okay, now you’re ready for your next task.” Benares is filled with lepers and beggars and cripples, many of them in very advanced stages of disease, near dying. He told me to go out on the street in Benares and “find a man who has no arms and no legs, and is happy.” I said, “I’m not really sure, what are you telling me to do?” He said, “Go out there on the street. Benares is filled with people who have no arms and no legs. I want you to find one who is happy, and stay with that man until you know how he can be happy.” How can a man with no arms and no legs, no ability to do anything, be happy? Baba Singh said, “Find that man, and stay with him.”
I went out on the streets, and actually, across from the post office, was just that: there was this little Indian baba who had no arms and no legs, just some little stumps, and he was sitting on the ground and singing kirtan — he was singing God’s name, “Hare Krishna, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya...” And he was laughing, and he was just kind of bouncing with joy. Well, I went over and I sat down with him. He was happy to see me, and I was happy to see him — I had found the one I was looking for. And I proceeded to spend my days with this little body on the street. I would hold chillums for him, hold bidis for him to smoke. I became his arms while we sat there, and we just had the greatest time! He taught me singing, and I was doing these chants with him, and we were singing and laughing. And he was talking a lot to me, which I couldn’t understand very well because I was still new in India, but I could tell from his expressions what he was saying. He would take his little stump of an arm, and point out to me people who were walking by who had arms and legs, all of their bodies whole, and he kept telling me to look at their faces, look at their faces. “They have no God,” he’d say, “they have no God. Look how unhappy they are!” And he would make these expressions to me, mocking their sorrowful faces and joking. He would motion to me, they have arms, they have legs, and just look at their faces. But his heart was full. So he showed me something there, that it was just this knowing of what Bhagwan is, this God that was in him that was filling him with joy every moment.
-Shivaya
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good God man, how terrible.
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I dont really know what to say to things like this.
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