Thinking he’s a beggar, I offer him money.
When I do this, he grabs my arm
and looks intensely into my eyes.
I immediately sense that he is not a beggar
but a Holy man.
We look at each other for awhile.
Some words are spoken but neither of us can understand. After awhile, he makes a signal with his hands
and I understand he wants me to go with him. I somehow convey
in the same fashion, I will go with him, but first, I want to return to my hotel and drop off my shopping.
Feeling he understands me, I leave.

2

At the hotel, I ponder over whether to return.
I sense meeting this man
will change my life forever.
It feels as scary as if jumping off a cliff. Nevertheless, I know I must go; there is no choice.

I’m glad he is there when I return.
He smiles and motions for me to follow.
We walk together in silence onto a narrow side street. Immediately we are away from the
crowds
and noise. On our right side I notice
a small park

3

We walk around the corner following its outer perimeter. While we are walking, I begin to be aware
he is talking to me and that I understand him.
I listen for some time until it dawns on me that his voice is not coming from his lips (they are not moving), but rather I hear his voice inside my brain. Astonishingly I realize he talks to me
through telepathy.
I can hardly believe this is happening,
yet it is. He begins tells me everything about myself
and what will be in the future.
Meanwhile, I notice I am feeling very good.
Something very special is happening;
all that seems to exist: is this man,
his voice in my brain and walking down the street.

4

We approach a gate and enter into the small park that contains one
fairly large tree surrounded by a grassy area. We approach the tree and to my surprise, another man joins us,
and they start talking.
Looking over beyond the fence,
I see a man with a painted cow that strikes me as unusual. He seems to have a connection also
with what is going on.
The amazing thing is, I feel no fear
being together with these strange men.
Looking closer at the other man,
I notice he looks unusual.
The skin of his face seems shaped with plastic putty and he has the biggest and most curved hooknose

5

I’ve ever seen. He seems to have an actor’s face.
The three of us sit under the tree, Hooknose to my left
and Holy man to my right.
After some time Hooknose begins to make some unusal sounds
and move his lips in such a strange way,
it would be very difficult to repeat.
These sounds have an affect,
because I notice we are more relaxed. As he continues to emit these sounds,
we get even more relaxed and now we begin to smile. He does it again and we start to laugh.
Once more and now we are belly laughing,
rolling around the grass. There we are, two Indians
and a Westerner frolicking in the grass,

6

laughing and screaming
while Hooknose continues to emit
these most wonderful sounds.
Afterwards, we sit under the tree as before:
Hooknose on my left and Holy man on my right.
Only a short while ago I didn’t even know these men existed and now I feel more intimate with them than with anyone I’ve ever known.
How unusual and yet it seems so right.
All of a sudden,
Hooknose stands in front of me, lifts his hand and very quickly makes a zigzag movement, starting from the top of my head to my stomach.
In that moment, I am frozen,
I can’t move a muscle in my body, but my eyes are open and

7

I am conscious of everything.
In fact, more aware than ever.
I am sitting and watching them, feeling so much trust that even if they stick a knife into my belly,
I wouldn’t care.
Then, Hooknose lifts my right hand,
places it on my forehead,
and in that moment, something like an energy, rises
from the base of my spine, travels up my back
and explodes a little distance above the base of my head.
In this moment i leave my body. I feel myself traveling to somewhere
I can’t describe.
At some point I feel I’m in a totally new universe
among the molecules, which are metallic green in a blue/black space.

8

And now, I’m somewhere where memory cannot travel.
For what seems an eternity I float in a void.
At last I open my eyes and the world returns.
I see they are looking at me, talking to me,
but what is this strange language they’re using?
And why are their eyes looking above my head?
‘Mmm’, they must be talking to a higher self within me.
It appears, they are giving instructions
or possibly there is a conference happening.
Whatever it is, is beyond my understanding. I feel at the level of consciousness of a dog compared to a human.
We continue to sit. I watch them play a game together.
One gives a object to the other,
they argue about it and then the other returns it.
Again, they repeat the play

9

I think to myself, ‘I want to play this game.’
I take money from my bag, and place it in front of them. Holy man looks at me and says ‘More!’
I feel resistance for a second,
but something within lets go
and overwhelms me. I dump my entire bag
containing all my money,
tickets and passport in front of them.
In this instant my heart bursts forth in love
as never before.
‘This is the first time I experience real love,’ I reflect.

An avalanche of blissful tears cascades down my cheeks
and I collapse into the laps of these two very strange
and wonderful men

10

I never knew that giving could be so beautiful.
Holy man says, ‘Passport? Need? You take!’
Then he says, ‘Ticket? Money? Need? You take!’
In a way I knew they would return everything
but that didn’t stop me from feeling
very grateful when they did.
We continue to sit and while watching them,
I start to wonder about what I will do? Should i drop my life and be with them?
The thought of wandering around India with no money scares me.
Then I remember I promised myself
that no matter what would happen,
I would catch the evening train to Pakistan.
So, without saying a word, I stand and leave.
Looking back, I see they stare at me with blank faces.

11

I have no idea what they are feeling
about my departure.
And walking away I notice I don’t know where my body is - I cannot see where it begins or ends, and
any sort of notion about a body is absent; It is as if existing in another dimension.
From somewhere above, I look down and see this world.
I begin to hallucinate:
I see chariots drawn by white horses driven by Gods,
and railway tracks running across the sky.
Then a vast kaleidoscope of quickly changing configurations,
constantly rearranging themselves,
taking one form then another.

12

I see the men exactly as if on a TV screen,
sitting still on the grass looking.
I know they are watching me, and
they know I’m watching them.
As if from a height, I become aware of my body and
I realize I am in the middle of one
of the most crowded sections of the city.
‘What am I going to do?
How will I ever get back to the hotel in this condition?’
Having no choice, I allow my body to walk,
hoping it will return to the hotel.
The body starts to move - I watch.
The body stops for a traffic light - I watch.
The body crosses the street, turns a corner
and goes right into the hotel without an incidence

13

and still - I watch. And all at the same time,
I am floating from one dimension to another,
experiencing hallucinations.
When I arrive in my room I am not sure
how I managed to get there.
I was not in control of any of the action.
I flop onto the bed, look at the ceiling for a while.
I wonder how am I going to pack my bags?
‘I don’t think it is possible.’
Lying, melting, sinking into depths of being, energy, sometimes in the room, sometimes not, I begin to be aware there are people in my room packing my bags. Without saying a word to them,
travelers in the hotel must have felt
something had happened to me
and knew I needed help to leave.

14

I feel such love for them.
‘This is what compassion is then.’
These wonderful beings not only help me pack
but bring me to a taxi and off I go to the railway station. Waiting on the platform for my train,
the awe of the meeting of this afternoon
is still exploding my being into some glorious orgasmic moment of now. Nothing can describe it.
The train pulls into the station, comes to a halt.
Endless crowds start rushing back and forth, in and out. For a while I am lost in the bustling, chaotic movement. Finally the train leaves and still I am on the platform,
unable to leave.
‘How can I go when all this has happened to me?’

15

‘I want to see those men again.’
‘Tomorrow I will go look for them.’
I leave the station and return to the hotel.
Everyone is surprised to see me,
I mumble a few words and go straight to my room.
It is now the middle of the night. My body lies on the bed, but my soul, my being, lies somewhere above my body.
I’m in an immense state of bliss.
Waves and waves of rushing bliss permeate my whole soul. In some moments, I leave, traveling somewhere,
talking with someone and each time I return,
I am not quite sure where I have been
or with whom I was speaking.
I am in awe of the immensity of this experience

16

and almost can’t believe it is happening to me,
and that it is happening now.
Remaining in this state, I watch the night merge into dawn, and dawn into morning.
After breakfast, I return to the park
and sit once again under the tree.
I wait for the men to arrive but they never do.
My waiting is not in vain, for it is a fine morning
and the birds are singing in the trees.
While I sit, all of the sudden I am surrounded by something so incredibly beautiful, so encompassing,
I could swear another intelligence
other than my own is surrounding me.
‘This is what they call God.’ I reflect.
Merging in this all knowing, all caring, all loving

17

and all compassion, I feel myself dissolve within it,
losing all sense of the person I was before.
All problems, blocks and fears disappeared
in a split second.
The person who was before no longer exists.
Now I am consciousness submerged in this glory of beauty
and love, of knowledge and peace.
I feel and see with the totality of my being,
the oneness of all and the love of everything.
‘This is Christ Consciousness.
This is the level that Christ reached.’
I am so totally at one with all.
This beauty called God, I see
and feel in everything; I am its servant,
my devotion, my surrender is declared.

18

I am but the eyes of God.
I open my eyes and there is an Indian woman
bowing before me offering her crying baby for blessings.
I touch the baby and laughter happens -
so much juice, so much life,
so much energy pours out of me.
I feel as if I can gather the whole world around me
and embrace it. In love, with God around me,
I leave the park.
A man approaches me,
asks me to come with him into a nearby alleyway.
In love, I accept and follow him.
As we walk, a policeman comes,

19

stops the man, forces him away and
says to me, ‘You must be more careful;
that man is very bad.’
Gratefulness overwhelms me,
the knowledge of the Supreme Being’s protection
is real in my heart.
It is morning,
I am peace and love and it is infused into everything I see -
even the leather of the shoemaker I’m watching
is alive and sensitive.
I think, ‘Shoemaker, treat your leather with more love:
your shoes will be better.’

20

So clear this is to me now; so true is this compassion .
I feel and sense we will enter soon into a new age,
where awareness of oneness, of love and compassion are truly known to all.
Some days pass,
I sit in a train dashing towards Benares,
the countryside sweeps past me as gushes and gushes of divine light keeps penetrating my awareness.
I realize ‘I am’ and this ‘I am’ is the Supreme,
the Absolute. I realize I am nothing
but an empty vessel to hold the glory of existence, of God.
I am but its servant.

21

In this deep communion with God, there is realization
and this is the real prayer.
Later that night, the glory comes again,
I melt in deep ecstatic communion with existence - every cell of my being tingling with life,
and at the same moment an immense peace is present.
The whole night I remain aware, floating in bliss.
Towards the morning,
I remain lying, waiting
for the train whistle to signal the arrival in Benares.
As I do not hear it, I rise to inquire the time the train will arrive. Upon doing this, the fellow passengers start shouting:

22

He is awake! He’s awake! Do you know we have been trying to wake you for hours?
You just wouldn’t budge.’
‘What! How is it possible when I have been lying awake
with my eyes closed for most of the night?
Surely I would have heard you.’
This mystery is not to be solved,
for the train begins to slow down and enter Benares. Weaving my way out of the train and station,
I engage a bicycle rickshaw to take me to
my friend’s house.
This most extraordinary city unfolds slowly past me during the one half hour ride.
I notice tension in my stomach,

23

it disturbs me and I wonder why it is there at all?
When I arrive, my friend
is having tea with his girlfriend.
Sprawling out on the floor, I tell them
everything that just happened to me.
Upon hearing my story, my friend screams,
‘Oh, God! My God! It’s black magic. You have been drugged. You can’t stay here. Your visa runs out in 2 days.’
On and on he persists until my resistance collapses,
and I weep and weep and weep. Then, he drags me out
of the house and throws me into a rickshaw, takes me to the station and puts me
back on the train to Delhi.
Exhausted, totally in a stupor, I lay on the top of

24

my bags the whole night.
In the morning, I awake refreshed, feeling full with life
and the presence of the divine.
At the Delhi station, a man approaches me,
tells me to go see a certain Guru he knows, but
I don’t listen and go to my hotel.
The next day I’m on a train leaving India.
One month or so has passed. I’m in Kabul, Afghanistan waiting for money to arrive.
The month was filled with all sorts of adventures
and misadventures, of telepathy and further realizations,
and coming back down, into personality

25

Slowly, slowly, I am living less in the new.
The feeling of the divine and what happened
is still present, but some of its purity seems to be gone. Yesterday a voice entered my brain saying,
‘Go to Poona! Go to Poona!’
I don’t know what is there, but i sense a Guru calls me.
Perhaps I will live in a cave somewhere?
When money arrives, I go

26.