In Chennai I stay with a couchsurfer John Peter and his cousin and dance into the new year with a mass of locals on Marina Beach to tribal drum beats. Another couchsurfer recommends that I visit Tiruvannamalai so I take the 4 hour bus ride. I am greeted by a horde of westerners from France, Germany, Russia or elsewhere swarming around the several ashrams in the outskirts of the city, among which is the ashram of Ramana Maharishi. There I chat to some people and just as I want to leave to visit a popular meeting point that was recommended to me, my attention meets that of three inspecting pairs of eyes, three Swamis – holy men or teachers at the ashram. We smile at each other and start conversing. They laugh at the notion that I am looking for a teacher:
“Can a teacher make known to you that which is unknowable? Do you need a teacher to show you that which is already known? ”
Later at the “German Bakery” café I meet Neeru and her little group of companions. They have come from Goa for a retreat. In the evening I join their dynamic crazy dancing meditation. Later I talk privately with Neeru.
“The three Swami’s were right” she says “You don’t need a teacher. You should write a book.”
Only later do I find out that Neeru is quite widely known around the world, that she arranges satsangs, retreats and meditation sessions in numerous countries; www.neeru.org.
I stay at the place of a young shopkeeper who comes here all the way from the Jammu-Kashmir region for work, selling Kashmiri handicrafts.
I return to Chennai and stay at Ramki’s place, a truly gifted cook, who writes cookbooks without recipes. Publishers are sceptical at his highly unorthodox approach. Talking to me, Ramki manages to condense the totality of the world’s cuisines into a handful of principles. He is infact now working on his masterpiece, the “World Cookbook” – again containing not a single recipe.
I take the night train to Varkala in Kerala. There I encounter Indian tourist industry at its climax of development. Among the flood of beach resorts, restaurants, textile and handicraft shops, Yoga, Meditation and Ayurveda advertisements plaster the surroundings. Nontheless the atmosphere is truly tranquil and the beaches are above all doubt fabulous. I jump into the water and am tossed senseless like a jellyfish in the waves. No Ayurveda Spa can compete in terms of nasal cleansing treatment - Palms, white beaches and baby-blue water at bathtub temperatures.
I continue north to the small rural coastal village of Thelissery, where I stay with Sathyadass and his family for two nights. He provides some insight into the political reality of Kerala. It is the wild-west of India in which the communist party holds sway in bloody rivalry with Hindu parties. A small US flag hangs in Sathyadass’living room. In the night he might sit on his porch with his gun at hand. He introduces me to some friends that apparently know how to build bombs. All the while he talks enthusiastically of Osho’s teachings and his bookshelf contains many books of a spiritual kind. In the morning he gets up and walks around the garden, silently confessing his love to the trees and flowers around him. He once came across a turtle on the road. He quickly took hold of a candle at his place, stuck it on the turtles back and lit it. He thus followed the living altar the whole night, step by step, immersed in meditation.
Then, Goa. I hear much of the former hippie-culture there, but what I encounter now is an established, clean tourist destination in which westerners have created their own little India, with their own life-style. The beaches are beautiful and there is certainly a great community of alternatively minded people to mingle with. I am sure however that here, as in the other touristicated places further south the root of spirituality may not be found.
I continue to Pune, where I stay at Ajit’s place. Himself being a Jain, he recommends that I visit a Jain wandering monk with his students. I follow his recommendation and meet Nayapadmasagar in Palitana, the Vatican of Jains. The following days I wander with them by foot. We meet several monks and their students on the way. They recommend that I visit Junagadh and the mountain of Girnar. I am told that along with Mt. Abu and the Himalayas, this is the place to meet Yogis, to tap the root of true spiritual teachings. At Girnar I am amazed at the profanity I encounter. The series of temples on the mountain-range are daily visited by masses of locals as if they were attending a football match, smoking, listening to music on their phone, eating chips. Many Sadhus – originally spiritual recluses – get stoned; a ‘guru’ on Mt. Data counts money while the visitors bow to him . . .
On the mountains-range I stay with Bhaveshdas the student of Paraddas. Paraddas lived here with Mahakal Bapu. Nobody knows how old Mahakal Bapu really was. In 1998 he decided to leave his body and foretold the end of his physical life without an error. Many generations climbed up here to meet him. . .
I meet Biman in the bus back to Ahmedabad. He invites me to his place in Rajkot and I stay at his place for a couple of days. Biman introduces me to several men. . .
It could be anywhere, but here I start to experience the heart of India. It is actually not that of India. It is that of humanity. Perhaps India is only a beacon for its safeguard. It is the heart in which true social and family life will never be lost. It is the heart in which true guru- and chelaship will always arise. Sometimes, unsuspecting, man and woman come across its seed.
It is that which leads to eternity.
It is that which leads to eternity.
True Religion is purely personal.
The relations which can teach of it are completely wordless in essence.
The more name and form there is, the less content one encounters.
True content is invisible to the senses. Only the Will leads to it.
"I learned this, at least (...): that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
Henry David Thoreau - Walden