Chapter Nine
And so we came down the mountain, Shawn and I, and back on that dark green California highway silently cruising into the night, to return – to return to Clearlake, to Shawn’s little house, to the girlfriend who is to become his wife in beautiful hillside ceremony, two unborn children waiting in her womb, the little house later swapped for a big house and Shawn to establish himself in the world of work and the angel-channelling and healing – Momma’s world – swapped after her death for Indian guru meditation and the ever-deepening experience of oneness that came so easily to him and eludes me still, that I long for so dearly – down that highway we came, silently shining, glowing in our stillness, the motor purring, the headlights steadily revealing the dark, ever onwards black ribbon of California tarmac – and then there, in those headlights, there is an owl, and time comes almost to a stop as owl slowly turns it’s big white head to meet us, and nods an acknowledgement, and shining pure white and huge then spreads its wings and flies purposefully and head-on right into the front of our car. Normally it’s a tragedy to hit such a beautiful creature but this owl is different – close totemic encounters and all – and as it enters the car two streams of energy shoot up into the soles of our feet and race through our bodies, and settle there in the centres of our being, and Shawn and I in our by-now telepathic ways both smile and nod and accept with quiet gratitude this gift, for owl signifies liberation and death, and this owl is there for a reason.
We’ve come now to the end of the book and even though I know I could leave it there it seems only fair to share what followed once we came down from Shasta, to bring us right back around to the Elmsall Hill meeting with Gavin that sparked the whole thing. I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading my tales as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them – and if you’re wondering if I’ve made any of it up, whether it’s all true, then let me assure you that, yes, it is – although there have been perhaps half a dozen places where I might have condensed or played with time, just to try and give things some sort of literary order. So, for instance, the meeting with JoJo the bro’ and the subsequent taking of acid actually occurred after the whole roadtrip thing with Simon and Roger and Kev (the three of whom I have never heard from again, and would dearly love to – likewise Alan the crazy Scot, who I haven’t seen since he came down to visit me in the middle of Charlottesville turmoil on his way to San Francisco in a frankly ridiculous and crumbling little Renault); and the night I took and crashed Deya’s car wasn’t actually the night that I sliced my hand open on a stumbled-upon bottle of tequila – that came a few months later, and was as described, that fountaining wound reopening every few days to leave red chaos wherever it sprayed – nor did I steal someone’s jacket in the manner so described (that was in London, on a strange little drunken wander into the NCP car park in Soho a couple of months earlier) but they sort of seemed to fit in there, fitted the flavour and the madness of the time. Also, may I confess, that Hélène the French-Canadian’s breasts, though mighty fine, weren’t the “boobs as big as the Bismarck’s gun turrets” (a line from one of my dad’s songs) – those boobs actually belonged to a girl I’d been to bed with a few times in Charlottesville, and while I couldn’t find a place there to squeeze them in – if you’ll pardon the expression – the memory of them sort of made me laugh and I didn’t want to lose it.
And what else? Well, there’s not much really: Chattanooga Vaychelle I actually met in Winchester a few nights later, in the not-so-sucky bar that my sweet young Mississippi friend recommended; my first meeting with javelinas was in Tombstone, the morning after the rising moon – and, conversely, the watch burying ceremony took place not there but on the top of Mule Mountain, just outside Bisbee (just in case anyone’s thinking about going to look for it, perhaps in order to swap it for cigarettes); most of the healings I mention in Mexico took place later, over the course of the next year or so (amongst many others); the phosphorescence I saw on the way back down the Baja, not up it; and Tim’s comment about being pelted with eggs (and my oh-so witty response) was actually from last year, over the phone – but such witticisms and I so seldom find each other that I just couldn’t resist putting it in there. Most of the dialogue, necessarily, is recreated rather than as it actually was, as close to the spirit of the original moment as I could get it. Truth is, I don’t have such a good memory for the words of others and, in any case, people don’t talk in real life the way they do in books, what with all our interruptions and, er, pauses and half-sentences. I could, I suppose, have made marvellous dialogue and characters and presented a more interesting reading experience for you but that wasn’t really the point: the point was to be as honest as possible – and, apart from the things mentioned above, which I do hope you’ll forgive me, I’d like to think that I have been. Some people, of course, will say that you can never write anything honest and true, what with all things being coloured by our own individual perceptions and perspectives and the unreliability of memory, blah blah blah – but to those people I say: whatever! And maybe that’s sort of a juvenile response but, then again, so is that theory, in my not-so-humble opinion. And I think that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
Except, alas, I don’t have a son, unborn or otherwise. Although there are times when I think I’d very much like one…
And so, back to the story, and back to the me that I was almost ten years ago to this very day, cruising around California with just my thumb and my backpack and not a dime in my pocket, living on trust and the kindness of strangers, bliss in my being and a-following my heart wherever it did take me...
And where did it take me? First, after Shawn, it took me back to Momma, and Momma told me that I was going to be a prophet, a “master teacher,” and I kind of liked that while at the same time not really understanding what it meant. I asked her what I was supposed to do but all she ever said to me was, “don’t worry,” and, “just be yourself, honey; just be your own sweet self.”
Then I went to see Amma in San Francisco and over the course of ten days I got ten hugs, and ten wild and varied experiences, and I was rocketed deeper still into a dazed divine bliss. Amma was mindblowing to be around – to just hug and receive and hug and love so many thousands of people, endlessly streaming in a line, right on through the night without taking food or water or rest. I would fall asleep at four a.m. some eight hours in, exhausted, and when I’d wake I’d go and see her thinking, surely she must be tired by now – but, no, she was as bright-faced and smiley and alive as she’d ever been, and when the hugging stopped at seven or nine or eleven in the morning she’d rise from her chair like she’d only been sitting in it for fifteen seconds, nevermind fifteen hours – not a hint of the aches and pains and stiffnesses we mere mortals would suffer – and even then she wouldn’t sleep, she’d go administering to her various charities and disciples and take phone calls and a few hours later be back with a smile and a hug for the next deluge of seekers. She was unreal, this woman – no one has ever been this happy, this enlightened, this giving. Apparently no one’s ever seen her yawn. Apparently she once hugged in India a stadium full of people for twenty-seven hours straight, present and blissful and ever-loving for each and every one of them. Oh, but to know how she does it! And, oh, but to have even a fraction of her spirit! I wanted it bad. I prayed for her to lead me to that place. I asked her to make me a Messiah.
Amma left San Fran to go hug some other soul-starved nation and I hitched on up to the Vipassana meditation centre in northern California . En route I did a healing for the lady driver while she drove – she’d been suffering from migraines and got instant benefit – and then, as we’d been bathing in the afterglow of that – you can see where this is going – a big truck had slowly drifted by with the word, “ENGLAND” massively decaled on the back and the lady had said, “oh, maybe it’s a sign that it’s time for you to go home.” She said it and I felt it too – felt it after all the times I’d longed for England and then been denied; felt it now that England, like almost everything else, was absent from my thinking; felt it now that I was perfectly happy exactly where I was, doing exactly what I was doing – but still the feeling was there.
“Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t know how that’s going to happen: I honestly haven’t a dime to my name; no plane ticket; no nothing.”
And now you really can see where this is going.
Also en route, by the way, I was stood one time by the side of the road contemplating Momma’s words about the prophet thing and sort of trying to shake them from my head when, right there in the middle of it, this big white Cadillac pulls up going in the opposite direction, two girls in the front, and out the window they shout, “are you Elijah?” I shake my head and off they go and it really is just too much sometimes, the synchronicities and wonders of it all, and who exactly is it up there pulling these strings and arranging these things and – are you having a good time, whoever you are?
I do Vipassana; do ten days of sitting on a cushion in a room full of meditating men and women watching my breath come slowly in and out, eyes closed, awareness focused entirely on my respiration, on the physical sensations as they arise within my body. I bring my attention to my nostrils, to the muscles of my face; right shoulder, left shoulder; back and chest and stomach and legs and feet. Thoughts come and go – that’s okay. A thought arises and then we notice it, accept it, and return to our breathing, to our bodies. Up and down I go and slowly, thoughts subside, that mad monkey chatter of the mind becoming quiet and still, and peace grows within. Peace and joy. Peace and love and joy. There’s a whole universe within this body of mine: a universe full of subtle vibrations and sensations and light. And the deeper and deeper I go into this universe the greater and greater my happiness becomes.
Ten days we have sat on our various cushions, wrapped in our various blankets from dawn till bedtime – and for ten days we have maintained total silence and avoided interaction of any kind. No eye contact, no gestures, no smiles or acknowledgements: totally within. For ten days I have slept in a room full of men and heard nothing from them but the occasional fart and snore – and when the ten days are over, and the silence is lifted, the roar of their conversation is deafening.
I slide off into the corner and sit quiet. I don’t want to come back into this world; I don’t want to talk about all I’ve just been through. I hear them – their American accents grating after all that time in a place without accents – and I can’t help but listen as they talk about their trials, their pains, their sexual fantasies, the time when, on day seven, someone let rip and the whole place slowly got the giggles and the teachers told us off and how wonderfully funny it was. About how good the food has been. About hating it at first but already wanting to come back again. About, even, peace and love and joy. I don’t want to hear any of it – and I certainly don’t want to talk with anyone – but, it seems, the return is inevitable.
A man in glasses comes over and introduces himself as Brad.
“Pretty intense, huh?” he says, smiling and glowing and pleased. “Had some real rough days in there myself – but, you know what, I just gotta tell you that whenever I saw you, and whenever I saw that t-shirt that you’re wearing – what’s it say? ‘Property of the Nut Factory’? – it just made me smile, sort of gave me the strength to go on. You seem like a real peaceful kind of guy. Like, you got the light.”
“Thanks Brad,” I say, my voice quiet and smoother than I remembered it, a tentative reacquaintance with myself. “Looks like you got the light too.”
“Listen,” he says, “I can see that you want to be alone right now but – I was just thinking, if you ever need a plane ticket to anywhere you just let me know. I got all these frequent flyer miles and I’m sure I could sort you something out. You got a pen?”
And that’s how I got back to England .
First, though, I forgot about all that plane ticket business and got a little bit obsessed with channelled messages about impending ecological and financial disasters and decided that I really needed to be somewhere special for when Y2K hit. People were gonna die, it seemed, the world being readied for its universal enlightenment, for the raising of the global vibration, and not everyone was going to be able to handle that. There would be tsunamis and floods; the stock market might crash; and, ultimately, the planet would probably tip on its axis and those that had got the calling to survive – those that had been preparing themselves – would become the new leaders of the world, the ones to whom the lost sheep would turn for spiritual guidance in this new era of non-materialism and communal living in a back-to-the-land stylee. And I was to be one of those and therefore I needed a place to survive.
I went down the Baja, back to my beloved hot springs , and I honestly thought I’d stay there forever. Shawn and his girlfriend came for millennium and, with another couple, we built another sweat lodge and that’s where we were when the world was out partying and collapsing and being attacked by the computers it had so foolishly come to rely on – sweating in a tent on a beach by a river several miles from the nearest electricity or telephone, surrounded by tea-lights in the black canyon night and, at the stroke of midnight, in those cool, cool waters we did dive. And, really, it don’t get much better than that. The Star of David blazed more brightly than ever in the centre of my consciousness, whether my eyes were closed or not, and the year of my soul-searching was over.
So the next day I settle into my new existence of going nowhere canyon-dwelling bliss, ready to meditate my life away in secluded yogi silence, when all of a sudden I’m filled with this kind of restless anger, a total lack of peace. I’m in the canyon of my dreams, surrounded by beauty, totally eager to recreate the magic of the previous year – and I just can’t do it, I absolutely cannot stay. I go over to The Way of Nature and there I find Shane and Patti and Craig and even dear sweet Emily of the shared tent night only ten months previous. We walk and we talk and I start to tell her about my travels and my feelings and that odd restlessness I’d felt in the canyon – and then inside my head I hear this voice urge me to tell her about England, that if I do I’ll find my answer in the response of her physical body. I resist it – it seems so mad! – and then I let it out.
“I’ve been thinking of going back to England ,” I say, “I – ”
“Wow,” she goes, “when you said that I got this rush of energy come right through me – such a positive feeling!” She’s smiling and gushing and it’s obvious she’s been visibly touched. “It was like being hugged by an angel” – and she starts to laugh – “feels amazing!”
I hitch once more across Mexican mainland, back again through American immigration – my third border crossing since being deported – and via Albuquerque, to see Kellie and get my heartbroken when I discover she’s met the love of her life – and to then fall in love with the both of them, so beautiful are they as I catch sight one morning of their sleeping feet entwined, so full of an altogether different kind of love is my heart. On and on and on to Virginia, delirious with divine bliss, overcome with the sight of the sunset, with the notes of the songs on the radio, caring not one jot for the burden of my physical body, of whether it’s fed or warm or sheltered – and yet I cross the whole country, fed three times a day, kept safe from the blizzards that are raging across America, sleeping in the back of divine angel truckers’ trucks, and delivered in the snow yet again to Charlottesville. I see Stevie, I see Saram, and I email Brad and within a few days I’ve got my ticket.
And – oh, England ! My England ! How I’d worried over Thee and Thy dense and materialistic ways; where the religion of the day is shopping and booze; where all we do is watch TV and moan about the price of things; where none of my friends will have a clue what I’m talking about; where I know nobody who’s into the things I now am. How I’ve worried – and all to no avail – for almost immediately I’m back in the bosom of Vipassana, becushioned and happy, meditating deeper ever deeper, and surrounded by beautiful young English things all doing the same. And in Yorkshire, where Reiki is blooming like a flower, and groups are meeting and getting into it, and even my grandma’s wobbly old knees want a piece of the action and are receptive and fixed. My mum smiles and looks adoringly and says, “you look happy, really happy; I don’t know what you’ve found but I know you’ve found something,” and tells her own tales of once disappearing down a tunnel of light and also of having many premonitions that came true but at the same time not liking them, wishing they’d go away. She tells me about my conception in the doorway of a St John’s Ambulance building and how, even in the moment, she knew there was a reason for it, that the reason was me – and how looking at me now she feels some justification for that feeling. And when I visit that doorway and sit and meditate I feel something special and when I open my eyes an image of my own face is burned into the wall opposite, as I am now, beard slowly starting to sprout. My dad, on the other hand, looks at me askance and cracks jokes about my vegetarianism, says he thinks I’ve been body-snatched, that it’s just not me, this ever-smiling, always happy, clean-living young thing that stands in front of him; what he remembers is me drunk and committing crimes, throwing paint over some guy’s Mercedes, robbing his own till and leaving the shop door open all night, not this…this…alien.
“You’re no son of mine,” he keeps on saying, joking, of course – but there’s a lot of truth in jokes.
My dad is not my dad – well, he is my dad but he’s not my father: not the guy who put his sperm inside my teenage mother that St John’s Ambulance doorway night; that’s some other guy, some guy I’ve never met, never wanted to. My mum had told me about it when I was eleven, offered me the chance to see him then, but in my expressionless and confused adolescence – are there four things more guaranteed to ensure the repression of emotion than Englishness, masculinity, youth, and an unsupportive upbringing? – I had refused to talk about it and done all I could to block it out and pretend that it didn’t exist. And that’s how it had gone on for more than twelve years, never telling a soul and never even thinking or writing about it myself – until now.
Fear, I believed, was the enemy of enlightenment, of liberation, and ever since Baja I had been hell bent on rooting out, facing, and then gloriously overcoming every single one of my fears. So I was afraid of heights? So I got in that wobbly Zacatecas cable car and stood one-legged in tree pose above a two-hundred foot drop. And I was afraid of being naked? Well I just took off my clothes in front of others, and felt what I felt, and that was that. Dying and vulnerability and openness and honesty; failure and downtown LA and shifty-looking youths; aloneness and hunger and boredom and danger: I took them all head-on, eagerly sought them out, and grabbed them by their toes and wrestled them to the ground – or, more precisely, experienced them for what they were, with acceptance and awareness and total and utter trust. And what was this long-postponed encounter with the biodad of my loins but one more fear, one more thing to be overcome?
We met in a pub, my mum dropping me off and saying hello to him for the first time in nearly twenty-five years. She was smiling and I was smiling and he, poor fellow, was the only one that looked nervous. She left us alone and for two hours we talked, and all the time I’m thinking, how weird, this guy looks just like me – and it is weird because I’ve never had that experience in my life. Not only that but he says, “yeah,” like me, and is pretty chill and relaxed like me, and likes to travel and to travel in less orthodox ways than most, and isn’t too bothered about conformity and possessions and being clean and tidy and even lived in a caravan for a while, which is sort of a dream of mine. In a nutshell, despite the never having met, we’ve got a hell of a lot in common. When we say goodbye he asks for a hug and there are tears in his eyes. He says we should have done this a long time ago. It’s good, and I feel good, and it’s one more thing off an ever-shrinking list.
Also shrinking are my worldly possessions and what remaining desire I have for them: all I crave is freedom. So all those boxes and guitars and cases that I had stashed at my mum’s are sold and dispensed with, and with the money I fly Shawn out from California for an all-expenses paid luxury tour of England and Scotland where we throw fivers and tenners at buskers and charities and discover together the magic of Glastonbury holy spring water and Stonehenge and Skye, and all in all we blow something like three grand in a little over three weeks. All I have left now is one guitar, a couple of changes of clothes and a blanket, and my box of Jimi Hendrix records. And the records are soon sold, too, when I get the urge for India .
I’m on the quest for a guru, for a teacher who can lead me to the truth, a longing that has been burning in my heart ever since Shasta and a sudden realisation that I could no longer do it alone, the fire fuelled by the umpteen stories of students and their masters, Yogananda and Ram Dass and Lahiri Mahasaya. I land in Mumbai and within the hour I’m walking barefoot in the early morning streets as its citizens awaken in their sidewalk beds, eager to share their food with the wandering possessionless white guy despite how little they have. I cross the country by bus and train and in every little town and village I pay my homage, visit the temples and the shrines, and seek out the local neighbourhood guru to wait in line and get a touch, to see if I can feel that divine spark. I go to Puttaparthi and visit Sai Baba; I meditate at the graves of Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo awaiting some visitation from beyond; I climb the holy mountain of Tiruvannamalai
Eventually I am back with Amma at her ashram in Kerala, getting my hugs and feeling her simultaneously lifting my soul and smushing my ego. I sit beside her in tears, long-buried emotions rising to the surface and being released like bubbles, and even in my tears I am happy, conscious that each little salty drop of water is an old and painful part of myself that I no longer need. I stop crying and I sit in peace, and then she turns to me in a crowd of thousands and mouths the word, “more?” and when I nod and smile the tears start to pour out of me again, and for some reason I am thinking of my mother.
She is too incredible, this woman. She has grown up poor and uneducated, abused and beaten by her family, and she has become the salvation and hope for millions of people worldwide. She has started dozens of charities for the needy – hospitals and orphanages and widows’ pension funds and universities and schools – and she and her followers are there whenever India is hit by a hurricane or a flood or an earthquake, distributing food, rebuilding houses, offering solace and comfort and lessons in how to deal with the tragedies and hardships of life. All around the ashram they have these folders with pictures of the work they do and every time I pick one up I burst into tears, utterly moved in equal parts by both the suffering and the goodness in the world. I want to do something to help; I feel ashamed that I’m not. I look at her imploringly, knowing with certainty that I shan’t ever find one greater than this, and I beg her to answer my question: “are you my guru? are you my guru? are you my guru?” And all she does is keep on smiling, keep on hugging, keep on loving everyone she sees and being so utterly and totally amazing.
I fall one day into a sort of crisis: I’m here in India and I’m travelling with money. I’ve travelled a whole year in America without it, living on trust, and everything was wonderful. God provided me with all I needed. And now I needed and wanted a guru but – why should God give it to me when the presence of money in my pocket is a sure sign of my lack of faith? I am stuck then, caught between a rock and a hard place, at once demonstrating, in effect, that I don’t believe that God will take care of me while at the same time saying I want to give everything to God. I can see only one way out of it, and that involves me giving away all my money, going back to trust – but this is India , not America , and I don’t know if I can do that here. For three days I writhe and writhe and it’s as though this is the door that is in front of me and there’s nothing I can do until I either decide to walk through it or turn my back on it for good. I think back to all I’ve been given, and back to the mountain where I was ready to die, and I know that there is nothing else to do. I walk down to the donations’ office, hand over the sum total of my money, and let it go.
When I come back to my room there’s a book on my bed: it’s a book about an Indian woman teacher who lives in Germany . Her name is Mother Meera and this is the third time I’ve heard of her, but both previous times I’d dismissed as just yet another Indian, yet another teacher.
I wearily open the book and start to read. And soon I realise I’ve got exactly what I’ve been looking for.
I eat up that book like a starving animal, page after page rocketing straight into my heart, and by the time I’m done I am filled with the burning desire to see her. I check out of my room and, as if by magic, the woman running the office there gets all strangely insistent that I should receive a refund for the future weeks I’ve already paid for, despite me telling them to give it all to charity, and I feel the hand of Amma at work once again. I now have enough money for the forty-hour train ride to Delhi and my plane – which is good, ‘cos it’s one hell of a walk – though not enough for food or anything else. Thing is, there are only two possibilities in a situation like this: either I’ll be fed in rather miraculous circumstances and everything’ll be groovy; or, I’ll go without food for three days and everything’ll be just as groovy again. S’a win-win situation. And, in the event, God decides we’re going to have a bit of heavenly intervention for a change…
Like on that train, no matter where I stand or lay or sit someone’s always there to give me a banana or two, or shove some chai into my hand, or hit me with a chapati and some daal, a samosa…
Like when I get to Delhi and exit the station looking dazed, and some youth sweeps me up and puts me on the exact right bus and even pays my fare…
And like when, after I’ve organised my ticket home, I go and spend a night and a day in a Sikh temple with several thousand other people and right there in the middle of that crowd some old Indian strides purposefully towards me, the bodies parting like Moses’s waves, and into my hand he presses a hundred rupee note and then departs without a word, and I just think, why has he done this? Why me? Why, when I’m obviously some wealthy white man in this poor old country of India and how can he have known that I was in need?
I depart the plane in Manchester shoeless and dirty and pretty soon I’m back on one of my beloved Trans-Pennine Expresses and en route for Leeds . A quick change of clothes. And one last guitar sold to fund my trip. And then a ferry to Holland , and a few nights with beautiful yoga-teaching Siridharma in Amsterdam , and then I’m on a train into the heart of Germany : destination, tiny little Balduinstein, and a castle there high up on a hill.
I arrive early and sit on a bench, waiting. All day long I’ve been thinking about cake, having said no to an extra piece at breakfast that morning, more out of politeness than anything else. I can’t stop thinking about cake.
A woman appears out of nowhere and wordless hands me a box – and in the box, an enormous slice of cake.
“Meera,” I think, “means ‘miracle.’” This is surely a good sign.
People begin to arrive – soon there are maybe two hundred of them standing in the cool German night – and then around seven a door opens and a man with a clipboard appears. People file past him and he ticks their name off a list. I ask someone and they tell me they’ve all made appointments, pre-registered, that sort of thing. I decide to wait till the end and grab a cancellation spot, sweettalk my way in, as I always do.
“Name?” the guy goes. He’s gruff, and he’s German, and he’s not spiritual at all.
“Rory Miller,” I say, “but I’m not on the list. I just came from India . I didn’t know you needed to prearrange.”
“You can’t come in without an appointment,” he says – and then something weird happens, because even though I’m now some sort of expert in accepting whatever befalls me, firmly and happily believing that whatever comes my way is perfect and wonderful and good – and have never even met this woman before and really know nothing about her, have no reason to feel any way in particular – I begin to cry. I begin to bawl. I feel like my whole life’s purpose is being denied.
“She told me to come,” I say, “I got a message.”
“Mother doesn’t do that,” he replies. He hands me a piece of paper. “Call this number in the morning,” he says, “maybe they’ll be a place for you tomorrow night.”
I take it with a whimper. I can’t understand why I’m so sad. At least he’s given me some hope.
Stupid German officiousness!
I sleep that night in a lovely little bed ‘n’ breakfast and in the morning, after mountains of the world’s finest bread, I call the number. A Frenchman answers. He sounds nice, and squeezes me in, and tells me to return there at seven.
“What do you do?” he asks me, just as we’re about to end the conversation.
Tricky question, that.
“I travel,” I say, “and follow my heart, and just go wherever I feel Spirit is guiding me.”
“Mother likes people to work,” he says, “to have a job and a family” – and there it is again: work and family and even here, in this world of spiritual pursuits, people can’t let go of that, can’t go beyond their programming.
“He knows me not, this guy,” I think, “that’s just his own shit.” And I am resolved to following my modern sadhu’s path.
In the night I reclimb the hill through the silent and clean German forest and rejoin the pilgrims outside the castle. They file in and when it’s my turn I say my name and am relieved to see it there, recorded in plain black and white. The same guy admits me without any apparent remembrance of the night before. I enter a room lined with about two hundred chairs and sit. At the front is one big empty armchair. Everyone is meditating. The silence in there is thick. The room is full of light.
Mother Meera enters and everyone stands. And then one by one they shuffle towards her on their knees across the deep carpet and wait their turn. There’s no order or system, people just quietly rising when they feel like it. I sit and watch as they each kneel before her in turn; it’s totally unlike the madness and carnival and chaos of Amma. Nobody’s saying a word and everything is silence, and Mother Meera does the same exact thing for each and every one of them: holds their temples; looks into their eyes; quietly nods and then moves onto the next, one after the other after the other. They stand then in their stockinged feet and walk slowly back to their chairs, to sit with eyes closed and beatific smiles across their faces. Mother always looks the same.
About half-way through I go down before her, feeling nothing particularly out of the ordinary, just a calmness and a quietness, content in that space.
But when she touches my temples something explodes inside of me: my heart begins to race, beating twice as fast as it was just a second before, and each beat is accompanied by this one thunderous thought overwhelming everything else inside my head and being: thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU.
I’m back in my chair, eyes closed, and that’s all I can hear. It’s racing like a looped tape, a hundred and twenty beats per minute, totally automatic; it’s not me that’s thinking this, all I can do is observe as it goes on and on and on deep inside my peace.
Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou...
And in that moment the longing and the desire that I have had to meet my guru is satisfied and extinguished and my journey is complete.
Epilogue
The years following my meeting with Mother Meera were tough – although, if I’d been paying attention to the signs life was showing me perhaps they wouldn’t have been; truth is, I was too high, too ungrounded, too hell bent on what I perceived to be spirituality but not really following the path that was there.
[And then, the grounding, and perhaps the re-meeting with Sophie?]
