The Indian Background Index | Soul Rush Index

Soul Rush The Odyssey of a Young Woman in the 70s' (Excerpts) by S. Collier. Published in 1978

Preface Next Chapter Chapter 9: Initiation to Knowledge PREMIES HAD BEEN COMING INTO THE GOOD DAY MARKET FOR several months, trying to get us to stock their magazine, . . . And It Is Divine. Each time they came in, we, always ecumenical and easygoing, politely refused, telling them it wasn't our purpose to carry religious, political, or spiritual writing. "We just want to sell good, cheap food here," I would say, and invite them to have a cup of our special cinnamon grog. Usually they would stay and talk about their nonphilosophy and nonpolitics. "To change the world," they said, "you have to change the hearts of the people in the world. As long as there is anger and hatred inside people, there will always be war and murder." This idea had struck a sympathetic chord in me all along. It paralleled my own social philosophy. When I was doing yippie acts, I felt the aim of my antics was to create Zen-type situations in which people's calm acceptance of the status quo would be shattered, and they would be able to see things in a new way. And now, with my growing concentration on my own spiritual nature, I was open to hearing about personal as well as societal benefits of what a spiritual group might offer. "Knowledge (the name of their brand of meditation) is the only thing which is going to do it for people," they would insist emphatically. Since I had already been practicing meditation, I knew of the profound effects it could have on me. But the only way? That was something out of a pentecostal reader. My ecumenical sensibilities could not accept it. "Can we leave a magazine with you?" "Sure," I said, and stashed it in the box with the Socialist Worker another enthusiast had left. In the past few months I had been too busy to consider doing anything other than my work with Portland-America Contracting and the Market. Just looking after these two projects, I was almost too busy to do my own laundry. But now I had time on my hands. I had put aside an indeterminate period to think about my spiritual life, to read about other people's experiences and revelations, and to meditate, so that I would have some revelations of my own. This time I did not want to follow the solitary Do-It-Yourself approach exclusively. Even though I'd gotten good results from Revelation 101, I felt I was missing out on the social potential of my spiritual experiences. The insights I was gaining through meditation would be most valuable when I was able to translate them into enlightened actions. To help me attain this goal, I wanted to work with other people who shared this interest. I decided that if I could find a spiritual group that I liked, I would join it. Spiritual organizations were very un-chic in my circle of friends. All of them agreed it was good to embrace higher values-to be loving, open, and forgiving-but the spiritual discipline so many groups followed seemed hopelessly rigid and incompatible with my friends' flowing "live and let live" way of life. My Portland pals sensed an inherent danger in joining a consciousness-raising group. Every group, they reasoned, has some philosophy, no matter how informal. When you join, you take this philosophy for your own. You make a statement about what truth is. Then, when you think you've found the truth, you start to crusade for it. Even the tiniest amount of crusaderness would have ruined my friends' life-style. I was aware of this danger, but I didn't think we all had to follow the progression in Dylan's lyric, "I started out on burgundy but soon I hit the harder stuff." Just as all marihuana users didn't go on to heroin, I believed I could get the benefits of communal spirituality without falling prey to the perils. My quiet decision to join a spiritual group was very much like someone's decision to buy season tickets to the opera for the first time. Certainly, without risking any danger of a bad performance, you could buy a stereo system and the finest recordings of the pieces you would hear on this year's opera program, but it certainly wouldn't be the same. There is something about being there live with all the musicians and other opera fans that makes the experience more beautiful than the one you would have alone. This increased sympathy toward organized spirituality first made me begin to pick up Tracy's copies of the Divine Times, a newspaper put out by Divine Light Mission. In general I found the leader of the organization, Guru Maharaj Ji, to be a witty and interesting character. I identified with him. For a sixteen-year-old spiritually minded entrepreneur like me, there was an undeniable charm in a fifteen-year-old guru who drove around in a Rolls-Royce. He seemed like a marvelous yippie. Even though I didn't agree with all of his ideas and concepts, I had to respect him just as I had respected Abbie Hoffman in his days of outrageousness. After a month or so of casual perusing, I ran across an article that said Rennie Davis had joined the organization. I remembered Rennie from my political days, so I read the article with great interest. In a long interview, Rennie described his spiritual experiences with the "Knowledge," the spiritual path prescribed by Guru Maharaj Ji. He said that for most of his life he had believed that Marx was right in asserting that the situations people face in society are the causes of the ideas they have. Now, after spending a few months with Maharaj Ji in India, he had switched into the Hegel Camp, and believed that actually the ideas people have are what created the situations. " 'Religion' comes from the word 'realization,' " he said, "and I now see that religion is far from 'the opiate of the people.' Real religion, like Knowledge, will actually be the People's savior." He now felt that the work of the peace movement, in which he had labored so long, would not bring any societywide changes. Instead, he "envisioned a spiritual movement with the aim of raising the collective consciousness of the nation as the first step toward any other meaningful change." Although this idea was not really new to me, when I read it in Tracy's newspaper it seemed to click. Maybe Divine Light Mission could help me with both my personal spiritual aspirations and my hopes for the world. Of course I wasn't completely sure. The Divine Light Mission was a mixed bag. Some of the premies who came into the Good Day Market seemed to be nothing more than local "bongos," so "high" that they were tripping over their feet. And then there was that name-"Divine Light Mission." Can you imagine naming anything that? It was awful, a real embarrassment. It sounded like the sort of thing you might see while driving through the Deep South on a small tar road. There would be a little white clapboard church building with an old sign out front: "First Church of the Divine Light Mission." And then about another ten miles later, there would be a "Second Church of the Divine Light Mission," but you'd never see another anywhere. Putting these prejudices aside, I decided to go to New York and visit the offices of Divine Light Mission there. I wanted to find out more; to meet other people in the DLM and learn what, if anything, their brand of meditation had to offer me. When I arrived, I was greeted by a pile of shoes and coats at the door of the old church where DLM had its home in the Big Apple. Through a curtain, I heard some people talking. I entered quietly and joined a small circle of people reclining on the floor around a very fat American in an overstuffed chair. Pointing a fat finger at a hippie-looking young man, he said, "Your ego is in your hair." He paused dramatically after this revelation and then continued, "I asked you if you would cut that hair of yours for this Knowledge, and you hesitate. Obviously, you do not value your spiritual life very much. Hair grows back, but spiritual wisdom is forever. Think about this." He stared intensely at the embarrassed hippie for a long time. "Okay," he concluded, staring, "are there any questions?" "Well, what about eating? You are very fat. You must be very attached to food," a young woman suggested. This did not faze the fellow in the chair. "Hahahahahaha." Laughter rolled out of him. With a wave of the hand, he excused us all. "Come back tomorrow." After I left the room where the fat man was seated (I later learned he was a local devotee), I wandered around the DLM headquarters and met several other more reasonably sized and sounding premies. I returned the next day to see a "mahatma," the title given to the premies who teach the meditation techniques. Before the mahatma came, many premies got up and testified to their experiences with the "Knowledge." While some of the short talks had the "Now I'm saved, Praise the Lord" sound about them, others were introspective and well said. All of them were almost painfully sincere. In as many ways as people spoke, the message was told: Knowledge is a simple, easy way to improve yourself and the world. Although I was dubious about a balm with such universal effectiveness, a panacea for all ills, I was struck by the honesty and sincerity of the people who testified. If even a small part of what they claimed was true, as Rennie had said in his interview, "this is joyous news." As I tried to decide if I should learn the techniques of meditation, one young woman's remark tipped the scales in favor of staying. She said since she had been meditating, she even enjoyed ironing and doing dishes. The Guru Vishnu Co-op needs this, I thought, and filled out the index card that the mahatma was passing around to the people who wanted to give the Knowledge a try. When the cards were collected, the mahatma read off names and asked about our spiritual goals. The mahatma was an older Indian man, who spoke with a characteristic whining accent. Often in his questions he quoted the scriptures and made large gestures to emphasize points. From about a hundred names, he picked out thirty-including me- and told the rest to keep coming back and listening to more about DLM. Then, with the others gone, he turned down the lights and a conspiratorial tone came into his voice. "You are about to learn the holiest of all secrets," he said. "All religions are based on the principle that the Kingdom of Heaven is within each person; that each person is part and parcel of God. Every person can know and realize this. It does not matter where someone is from, what the sex may be, or what is the class or creed. Every human being can be intimately connected to this heavenly kingdom, within himself, if he has the key to unlock the door. This Knowledge is the key and you are going to learn it today. Of course, when you have this key, it is up to you to use it. The aim of human life is to realize God, and that takes much effort and work. When I say realize God, I do not mean to know intellectually, 'Sure, God is within me,' but instead, to experience it practically-to feel the love and wisdom of God within oneself, with every breath and action. "Guru Maharaj Ji has the divine mission of taking this Knowledge to all people. By learning these techniques today, a bond of love and commitment is made between you and Maharaj Ji. By taking this Knowledge you become disciples, and you must follow his counsel to the letter if you want to progress and realize union with the God inside of you in this lifetime." After this introduction, the mahatma asked for questions. "Why the intense reverence of the guru?" an older woman wanted to know. "I saw people bowing before his picture; surely you can follow this spiritual path without doing this." "Oh, sister," the mahatma said, "to me Guru Maharaj Ji is my divine father. I love him more than the whole world. He has taken me from the darkness of illusion and moved me into a world of light. To me, he is the Lord himself standing on the earth. I melt in the love he has shown me. I bow to hide my face before him. Of course, in the Bible it is written, 'By his fruits you shall know him.' Take this Knowledge and discover if Guru Maharaj Ji will mean as much to you as he means to me. For a Western person, this is hard to understand. You are so proud. But look at it this way. If you have a dollar bill in your pocket and it falls out, you will bow and bend to pick it up. Even for a penny you will stoop. So for this supreme Knowledge of God, should you not do as much as you would for a penny?" All of this heavy religious talk was surprisingly easy for me to translate into my secular idiom. I heard the mahatma saying: "Take this meditation and practice it. If you like it, take the guru too. Go along with him as long as he helps you. And if there comes a point where he no longer helps you, just leave." I thought it all sounded very fair. The meditation techniques were very simple and effective. When I tried them out with the group, I felt wonderful calm and joy. There were four techniques concerned with bringing the practitioner in contact with certain internal experiences of light, sound, taste, and "vibration." Three of these techniques were for formal, or sitting meditation, and the fourth was for anytime. This last one was particularly interesting, because you could do it while you were walking around or riding on the bus or doing anything else. Because this fourth technique is such a practical and sensible solution to everyday stress and strain, I am going to tell you how to do it here. Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School wrote a book called The Relaxation Response, where he explains that in every person there is a built-in ability to relax. It is the nervous system's answer to the "fight or flight" response. In order to bring about the "relaxation response" Dr. Benson said, several things are necessary. One of these is an object on which to concentrate your attention, like a word or phrase. This is called a mantra. Another thing is a proper setting, a quiet place in which to repeat the mantra to yourself. This is basically the TM approach to meditation. Guru Maharaj Ji, on the other hand, had an even simpler and more functional way to bring on the relaxation response. Our breath is a naturally built-in mantra, always flowing within our chests. When you gently turn your awareness toward the movement of your breath, its continuous rhythm will have a soothing effect on you. Beyond being merely soothing, this is also exhilarating. At the top and bottom of the breath, there is a little experience of energy surging within your body. As you concentrate on this little spark, it gradually becomes more pronounced and invigorating. Because you are concentrating on your own breathing, something which is going on within you at all times anyway, this meditation does not detract from your experience of other activities. You can still follow the intrigues of TV crime dramas while you meditate; the only difference is that you will be in touch with yourself in the most basic and beautiful way while you are staring at the tube. After the mahatma had taught us all four techniques, he said that the reason for our positive experience was the connection of grace that was established between us, the disciples, and Maharaj Ji, the Guru, in this mystical initiation. We should not teach the meditation to anyone else, he cautioned. The people we taught would be spiritual bastards, initiates without gurus. And furthermore, he added, if we taught the meditation to anyone else, we would suffer too, if not in this life, in the hereafter. Undoubtedly we would be reincarnated as snakes, he said. To me this seemed like typical Hindu mumbo-jumbo. I felt that there was good reason to safeguard the first three techniques of meditation. They were more advanced and should be learned in a certain setting, like a Knowledge session, where everything could be properly explained and all questions answered. But I thought Indian threats were not a good way to protect them. Hellfire and brimstone, from whatever culture, just isn't that scary. The Divine Light Mission plan for God-realization did not consist of meditation alone. It had suggestions on how to approach every aspect of daily life. The first and most basic part of the prescription was meditation in doses of an hour in the morning, an hour at night. Then came service. Service was roughly equivalent to the Buddhist idea of "right livelihood." Any activity you did should be spiritually elevating. You should not engage in any employment you found immoral or that hampered your spiritual growth. Ideally, everything you did should be selfless. After service came satsang. This is a Hindi word that means "the company of truth," and it generally refers to conversation about the spiritual realization and experiences of the conversants. Satsang also is used to refer to meetings of groups of premies for the purpose of talking over spiritual subjects on a more formal basis. All of this comprised a way of looking at life, rather than any particular doctrine. If people practiced meditation, service, and satsang, in whatever form these might take in their life-style, they certainly would have a beautifully focused spiritual life. And this was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. As it happened, there were several premies at this initiation whom I knew from the Good Day Market, and I was able to catch a ride north with them. All the way back to Portland, I meditated in the car. At about three in the morning, I arrived on my steps at Waterville Street in a state of ecstasy. Immediately I went upstairs and woke up Tracy, to tell her I had received Knowledge. She was so happy for me that she jumped out of bed and kissed me. Preface Next Chapter

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