INTRODUCTION This book is a collection of some of my favorite stories about strange events Ive witnessed in the past 18 years.

Most of these stories are about the living Yoga Christ named Herakhan Baba, known to devotees throughout the world simply as Babaji. Essentially, these events all defy what is called reason and logical explanation within rational, objective reality. Like other books and stories about Babaji, these stories may be regarded by people who dont already have a personal spiritual connection with Babaji as deluded statements of a blinded worshiper who wants to believe that Babaji performed miracles. Told by anyone else, these stories might be dismissed as silly and unbelievable, merely coincidences or even total misrepresentations of reality, akin to hypnotic suggestions or hallucinations. But I am generally regarded as a level-headed, objective scientist well-trained at a top university and with a high professional Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: THE DANCING SHIVA CHAPTER TWO: Healing, SpoonBending, and Clairvoyance CHAPTER THREE: The Immortalists CHAPTER FOUR: Visions and Other Psychic Phenomena CHAPTER FIVE: Deciding to go to India CHAPTER SIX: First Trip to Babaji Flying and Photography CHAPTER SEVEN: Second Trip to see Babaji Filling with Light and Getting Higher CHAPTER EIGHT:

standing during almost fifty years of teaching and research in the fields of psychology and physiology. Furthermore, my own personal relationship with Babaji during several visits in India was based on entirely different attitudes, at least initially. I was totally dispassionate and free of any prior convictions that I was visiting a Divinity. I went to India primarily because it was an airline stop between Thailand and Egypt, two of the countries I was visiting during a sabbatical leave from my college teaching. And I went to visit Babaji mainly because I met a dozen people I know from California who were in India at that time, on their way to visit Babaji. Indeed, it was mainly because of the events described in this book that my natural skepticism lessened and my antipathy to anything resembling worship and belief disappeared. By now, Im more than willing to call these extraordinary, amazing, wonderful, illogical events by the term, miracles, especially when they involve ordinary people like me. I delight in telling these stories about events I cant explain except by resorting to metaphysics. Some of these happenings took place in Babajis main ashram in Herakhan (also spelled "Haidakhan" or "Hardakhan") located up the Gautama Ganga

Last Visit to Babaji Levitating and the Sound of Two Hands Clapping CHAPTER NINE: Heartbreak & Healing The Teacher and the Lesson CHAPTER TEN: The Miracle of Herakhan Again! APPENDIX A The Week of Babaji's Death

branch of the Ganges River, above the city of Kathgodam, in the district of Nainital in Uttar Pradesh. Others occurred in several different cities in India as well as in California. Most of these stories are about simple, innocent events, not especially earthshattering. Some stories concern other people, all of whom themselves had some connection with Babaji, primarily through their involvement with the New Age healing technique called Rebirthing. Rebirthing is a breathing exercise in which the inhale and exhale are connected without pause. It permits the

CHAPTER ONE THE DANCING SHIVA My first connection with Babaji began during my fourth Rebirth session, two weeks after I first Rebirthed. The first three Rebirth sessions had been re-experiences of my physical birth, creating some resolution of some of the psychological aspects connected with it. But my fourth Rebirth session was a radically different affair completely. As my breath took me away from the mundane world of my own life experiences and my reactions to them, suddenly I was witness to a fascinating, marvelous vision: In front of me and yet itself part of myself, I saw an immense creature outlined against the black sky, covering it entirely, made on all its surfaces of glittering diamonds of light. There seemed to be no substance to this person. He was light, sound, and movement, not solid form. He danced beautifully, laughing with

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a thunderous roar of laughter that rolled across the heavens just as thunder used to rumble during the long summer nights when I was a little girl. What I find remarkable even now is that I was an observer looking at this image in front of me and hearing the laughter, yet I was also That. I was both the observer and the observed. I felt an intense, total identification with this creature in front of me. I, myself, was dancing and laughing, my body made out of stars. As the vision faded, I realized my Rebirthing session was complete. I

CHAPTER TWO HEALING, SPOON-BENDING, AND CLAIRVOYANCE Many "miracles" I have witnessed werent connected with Babajiat least, they didnt involve His image or they didnt take place in His presence. Im writing about them because I want to convince everyone reading these stories that miracles abound and can be present in everyday lifeeven when we dont expect them. Three of these involve a Rebirther named Charlie whom I had met up at Campbell Hot Springs in June of 78. Charlie was an extremely good-looking man in his early 20s who had been leading a "wild" life in Reno before becoming involved with Rebirthing. He didnt seem especially spiritualjust a regular guy. The first "miracle" happened in July or August of 78, a few months after I first Rebirthed. That summer I was still seeing Primal patients as I had for the previous seven years. I was still exploring the usefulness of bringing old negative feelings up into consciousness and then expressing them by dramatizing them. But I no longer only practiced Primal therapyafter old negatives had been felt, dramatized, and understood, I Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles Current chapter: APPENDIX A Previous chapters: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN

taught my Primal patients the Rebirthing breathing and the use of affirmations so they could finally let their old negatives go. I still had my Primal room intact with its padded ceiling, draped walls padded with six inches of acoustic batting all around, and the padded, carpeted floor. I usually kept nothing in it at all except a box of Kleenex and a pile of pillows in one corner patients could use to simulate a womb or birth canal or whatever. One day, unexpectedly, I received a call from Charlie who told me that he and two other Rebirthers from CHS had been traveling in the West, leading Rebirth trainings for the past six weeks, day in and day out. The three of them had actually arrived in Los Angeles very late the evening before and had taken a hotel room for the night at a rather expensive hotel over on Sunset Strip. They wanted to see me before they left for Sierraville to go back to Campbell. So I told them to come over later after I finished working with my Primal patient, Sachi. Later that day they showed upCharlie, Jim, and Marybut they didnt seem happy and Jim had a cut on his face and a black eye! When I inquired about it, I was told that when they had checked into the hotel the night before, Jim had said something to which Charlie took offense. The consequence was that they got into an actual fist fight. They told me that while Charlie was berating and pounding on Jim, Jim had refused to fight him back, saying that he loved

him and nothing Charlie did could make him react negatively. The episode ended when Charlie hit Jim on the face. Charlies ring cut Jims cheek just below his eye, so that a lot of blood started dripping all over. Jim said he put a cloth to his face and left the hotel room to wander the Strip most of the night, wondering what all of this had to do with peace, truth, simplicity, and love.

Remember, they had been together for six or more weeks doing Rebirth trainings, in each others presence essentially 24 hours a day, week after week after week. So their patience for each other had worn a little thin. Old stuff that would probably not have come up if they hadnt been in such peculiar, intense circumstances did, instead, come up. As they talked with me about it, I asked if they thought theyd gotten all their negative stuff out and had let it go. Charlie said that he didnt think that he had. That was why he had phoned me and had delayed their departure in order to come talk with me. It turned out that what they really wanted was to go back into the

Primal room and pound on each other with the batakas. They hoped such safe battle might actually give them a chance to bring up and let go of whatever negatives theyd been running. Their approach made a kind of convoluted sense, so I agreed. I took them back to the Primal room where Sachi was just done with being in her old feelings so the room was free for Charlie and Jim to use. I made two piles of the pillows, and Sachi and I sat down, ready to view the battle of the batakas. Charlie and Jim took off their shoes and jewelry, then picked the bats up. Charlie banged on Jim a few times, but Jim didnt use his bat against Charlie. Jim simply

held his bataka in front of him as a shield to fend off the blows that Charlie rained on him with increasing force and vigor. Jim said several times that he had no grievance against Charlie and therefore nothing Charlie did to him would make him raise his hand against him in anger. After perhaps two or three minutes of pounding Jim with the very safe bataka, Charlie said, "Enough of this nonsense, lets fight like real men." Then he threw his bataka into the corner, and proceeded to punch with his bare hands, pounding Jim on the shoulders and the arms and the head. Jim, as big if not bigger than Charlie, simply let

Charlie hit him. When she saw that Jim wasnt defending himself at all, Sachi jumped up and ran over to Charlie to try to push him away from Jim and make him stop punching Jim. It was truly courageous of her. Sachi is five foot tall; Charlie is well over six foot. So there was no contest. Charlie simply stopped in the middle of his raging at Jim, put both his hands gently on both upper arms of Sachi and lifted her bodily, saying, "Sachi, you are a nice person, I wouldnt dream of hurting you; now please go over there and sit down and stay out of the way." I felt that there was no point in robbing anyone of their feelings, so I encouraged Sachi to sit next

to me and feel hers. I reminded her that she had a good opportunity to get into her old negatives about violence. I still wasnt worried that any harm would come to either Charlie or Jim as they continued fighting, even though Charlie was pounding on Jim with his full fists and the punches got harder and harder. I had no question in my mind about their being serious, painful blows, yet Jim refused to protect himself. Finally Charlie said, "Oh, God damn, I cant stand this." He started to walk out of the Primal room, opened the door, turned around, and smashed his fist into the solid door frame into which the padded door fits, the one place in the whole Primal

room where its possible to hurt yourself! He stayed outside of the Primal room for a minute or two, and then came back in and came over to me, saying very softly, "Eve, please do something. I think Ive broken my hand." Indeed he had! I could see the break on one of the long bones on his right hand. I could also see the immense bruising and the hemorrhaging under the surface of the hand. He asked me if I would please set his hand, and I told him I would prefer to take him to an orthopedist. But Charlie said, "Please, I dont want to go anywhere right now, please just see what you can do."

So, I pulled on his fingers so that the bones of his hand parted and realigned themselves, and then I wrapped his hand. This was about 4:00 in the afternoon. There was certainly no doubt whatsoever in my mind about the fact that his hand was broken. In addition, it was obviously greatly swollen and badly bruised. The next morning, most of the swelling had gone down and there was almost no bruising! I was bewildered and insisted that Charlie come to my orthopedist with me. The doctor examined Charlies hand and said it seemed to be fine, but he had it X-rayed to be sure. The X-rays showed a recently healed fracture!

Somehow, within less than twentyfour hours, Charlies hand had healed almost entirely and he was using his hand perfectly! Another part of that same "miracle" was that Jim showed no bruises from all the hard punches he had received during their afternoon though his cut cheek and black eye from the previous night still remained. A second unexplainable event that involved Charlie took place when a Native American from one of the nearby Southern California tribes came to the regular weekly Monday night meeting at my house to which all Rebirthers in the L.A. area are always invited. About twenty to twenty-five people were there that evening, including Charlie, Jim, and Mary,

whom I had convinced to stay with me for a few days after the "fight." None of us knew the "Indian" or had met him before he entered my house and joined our circle. When I asked him to introduce himself, he did and then asked us all to close our eyes. He said he was going to hand around a bunch of sage. It was about the size of a standard bunch of parsley found in the grocery store. He wanted each of us to speak of what came to our mind as we held the bunch of sage, using it to "channel" through. The small bundle of sage then was passed from person to person around the circle, with people mostly saying that nothing came to mind or else making associations to the smell of the sage itself.

Charlie and I were the last two in the circle. Charlie received the sage just before me. Charlie held it for a while and then said that he had an image in which he saw something with four corners, a naked Indian, some kind of large dirt-moving equipment, and a bow and arrow. He wasnt sure about the four corners but thats what he called them. He said they looked like posts in corners of an area of ground. When Charlie handed the bunch to me, it was so hot that it felt as if it had been boiledso hot, as a matter of fact, that I dropped it. My associations to it were struck with the heat that I had felt as I held it. I thought it was amazing that anything could be so hot, and yet still be a green, fresh, unwilted

bunch of leaves. After I gave the bunch of sage back to the Native American who had brought it, he told us he had picked it from sacred ground. He said he had come to talk with us about helping his tribe resist a modern construction company which had been permitted by their local government to start construction on a piece of land that the Indians contended was truly an old burial ground and therefore sacred to them. To keep the bulldozers from going through their sacred land, the braves in that tribe had agreed that each day they would resist peacefully, though risking their lives. They staked out the corners of the burial ground, and at each corner they had rigged a bow with an arrow attached to the bowstring so that, as soon as a bulldozer or other heavy equipment moved forward, it would trip the bow, sending an arrow flying into the body of the naked brave who stood in its path. Each day for several weeks four different men had successfully prevented the construction equipment from entering the sacred ground. I was amazed by the number of similarities between what Charlie had said and what the Indian told us. The tribe had staked the corners of their tribal burial ground. There was a nude Indian. There was an immense piece of earth-moving equipment. There was something to do with a bow and an arrow.

I knew that Charlie hadnt talked with the Native American beforehand. So, Im forced to conclude that the only way Charlie got information about what that bundle of sage was connected with was through holding it in his hands, letting thoughts come from the universe, channeled into his own brain. Perhaps the heat I felt was from cosmic energy passing through. However it happened, it seemed Charlie and the sage leaves had performed a "miracle of mind reading." The third "miracle" that involved Charlie took place at an extremely unlikely spot for any kind of miracle, namely, at a nearby coffee shop on a big city street, five blocks away from my home. A group of us Rebirthers, including Charlie and me, had gone over there, to get some breakfast. When I came back from washing my hands, the table was covered with five or six restaurant spoons and even a fork or two that had been bent into Us and twisted into screwed shapes. I was horrified and asked them to please stop it. I hissed that we would get in trouble, the waiter would certainly throw us out, and the restaurant would be extremely angry about their bent cutlery. Charlie said it wasnt anyones fault, that when they held the spoons, the spoons just got hot and melted and bent! I was torn between disbelief and the desire to believe. So I said the only positive thing that I could

think of at the time, "Oh, you mean like Uri Geller? Wow, I wish I could bend a spoon just using power of mind." Charlie said, "You can. Just pick up the spoon by the bowl, and rub your hand across the handle of it and see what happens." And so I held the spoon by the bowl in my left hand and stroked the handle of the spoon with the forefinger of my right hand, perhaps six or seven times. Suddenly, I could see that the area I was stroking was beginning to get red hot and that the handle was bending toward the tabletop. I quickly caught the cool end of the molten handle with my right hand fingers and twisted it around so that it made three twists. Still disbelieving the evidence of my own eyes, I touched the part that looked red hot to see if it really were. I found that it was indeed burning hot, raising an instant blister on my finger! Then I tried to unbend it, but without much success. With all my strength I perhaps shifted the curve slightly, but only just slightly. No question: The spoon had been well and truly twisted around on itself! I had no rational explanation for it. I still dont. Was it because Charlie has some magic powers that he asserted across the table top to bend the spoon I was stroking? That seems unlikely. Another explanation is just as improbable, and that is, that the spoon bent because I poured my energy into

it. If so, I have never repeated such "magic." In any case, something happened for which there was no explanation. A miracle? Wasnt it? For the next ten years, I kept that bent spoon hanging from the drapery rod over one of the windows in my Rebirthing rooma material reminder that miracles do happen. All my Rebirthing clients saw it and many asked about it. Then, one day, one of the men painting the interior of my house asked what the bent spoon was that was hanging from the drapery rod in the corner room upstairs, the room I call my Rebirthing room. When I told him the story, he asked if he could see it more closely. He told me he was a student of Yoga and had always hoped to see something miraculous. He asked if he could take it overnight to show it to his guru. That was that. I never saw the spoon (or the painter) again. So proof of that particular miracle isnt present any longer in my space. But then, I still know it happened, as do many of my patients. Three years ago, my middle daughter called to tell me she and her three pre-teen children had tried and had succeeded in bending spoons with thought power alone! It was a rainy day where they lived and they had read a library book that told them

how to do it! I now have two of their spoons hanging in my Rebirthing room. Different spoons, but still the same miracle. None of these stories involve "major" miracles. But I find them fascinating and not easily

CHAPTER THREE THE IMMORTALISTS Another "miracle" that also happened in Los Angeles involved two Englishmen, Neil and Ken, both actors. During the late 70's and early 80's, they toured the United Kingdom for several years performing a two-man play called The Immortalist. Leonard Orr heard about the play when he was Rebirthing in England, and went to see it in London. He asked to meet the

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actors and told them about Rebirthing and its connection with immortality. When they told him that they were leaving London shortly to come to Los Angeles, Leonard suggested that they contact me. The morning that I first heard from Neil was a strange one. I had been working very hard on amending and correcting my basic negative personal law, namely, that the whole world would be better off and everyone would be happier if I would just drop dead and disappear. I wasn't depressed or despondent. I just was seriously and logically trying to figure out on what basis did I have the right to stay alive. Who needed me? Who benefited from my being alive? My children were grown, almost strangers because of the thousands of miles that separated each of us from each other. I had been teaching for years without making much of an apparent dent in the world at large. Books that I'd written had been well-received but again made no significant difference that I could notice. Fundamentally, I was trying to decide if I served the Universe in any way by being alive or was my desire for life just another selfish projection of mine? At that instant, the phone rang. An English voice asked, "Hello, is

CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN

this Dr. Eve Jones, the immortalist?" Well, of course, I laughed. I'd never been called an immortalist before (although I love the idea). We talked for a while and made arrangements to meet when he and his friend Ken brought their play to Los Angeles a week or two later. I realized that a stranger's voice from across the ocean was answering my existential question: just by staying alive and teaching Rebirthing I served. We became good friends, and I even had the pleasure of playing Ken's role when the play, The Immortalist, was presented to a conference of Rebirthers in San Francisco, a conference that Ken had not been able to attend, therefore giving me the opportunity to perform with a professional actor for the only time in my life-how's that for a realization of an old daydream? However, that's not a miracle. Instead, the miracle concerns something that happened several months later when Neil, Ken, and I stopped by Ken's apartment for him to go in and get a book. Neil was in the back seat, I was in the passenger seat, and Ken said, "I'll just pull the car in here, it's not really my parking space, but I'll be out again in a moment." He went off into the apartment house, taking the car keys with him. Shortly afterward Neil and I saw a car drive up the alley to the driveway into the parking area. It looked as if it were headed toward

the parking stall that we were occupying. Just at that moment, I exclaimed, "Oh God, I hope that car isn't coming in here." At that point, our car proceeded to move! It moved in a perfect halfcircle so that the front end went out from the parking stall, turned to the left, and entered, heading in, into the only empty space down the row, missing the roof columns and all of the parked cars, and stopping just in time to miss the garage back wall. Meanwhile, the approaching car made its turn and pulled into the space we had so mysteriously vacated. The driver got out of the car, said, "Thanks a lot, that's my

CHAPTER FOUR
VISIONS AND OTHER PSYCHIC PHENOMENA One of the strangest stories that I heard when I first became involved with Rebirthing in 1978 was a story about one of the original Certified Rebirthers, Diane Hinterman. She had been Rebirthing an elderly woman, a woman who was indeed so frail that Diane was anxious, afraid for a moment that the frail woman might injure herself doing the Rebirthing breath. During that Rebirth, Diane suddenly saw a dark-skinned man wearing a dhoti standing on the other side of the woman Diane was Rebirthing. Diane felt instantly reassured and continued to complete the Rebirthing. The personage in that vision later again appeared to her and told her that she should come to see Him. She understood that He was Herakhan Baba, Babaji, the guru of Paramahansa Yoganandas gurus guru. When first I met Diane, I found myself instantly loving her and making a warm friend of her. She seemed healthy and clear. Yet I thought a great deal about such a strange thing happening to her. I didnt want to deny its reality; I didnt want to insinuate that it was some kind of an hallucination on her part; I certainly didnt think she was lying. But, it didnt make sense. I heard later on that a similar happening occurred while Leonard was Rebirthing himself in his bathtub in upstate New York. A darkskinned person appeared to Leonard and asked him why he didnt come to India to see Him. I dont know how either Diane or Leonard identified who appeared as visions to them. Maybe that personage who was being envisioned gave them His name, for all I know. In any case, I know that they reported seeing someone else in the room with them during Rebirths. I wondered about their visions. Of course, once you know that other people have done something, you tend to want to do the same thing yourself when youre doing the

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same thing they were doing. So lots of people who do the conscious connected breath, the Rebirthing breath, say they see visions. And who is to say whether they are seeing such visions in and of themselves or whether they are believing that they must see visions and so they are conjuring them up? Anyhow, how can anyone tell the difference between a vision and something thats being imagined? I would imagine that all visions seem totally real to the person seeing them. Probably the only reason we dont claim to see them more often is that we wait to receive clues from others about what is being consensually perceived, and then we allow ourselves to see what others are seeing. Claims of visions which arent consensually validated, of course, remain suspect. They may be happening. They may not. They also might be a kind of hysteria, a kind of response to suggestion and expectation. Since, in any case, they cant be verified, they may even be the resort of somebody who seeks more attention than he or she has been getting. So who knows? But for those of you who are vision freaks, let me tell about some other visions seen by people that I have Rebirthed. I never saw the people envisioned, myself, but several times people I was Rebirthing have reported to me that they were seeing Herakhan Baba, my Babaji, in the room with us. Twice, too, people Ive been Rebirthing have told me that they opened their eyes to see Paramahansa Yogananda standing there in the Rebirthing room! Strange to me is that these people werent even devotees of Herakhan Baba or of Yogananda or members of the Self Realization Fellowship, the Yogic organization founded and led by Yogananda. One time the person I was Rebirthing said he saw someone in the Rebirthing room wearing a uniform with a certain number of rows of buttons down the front; the person in the vision had dark-brown complexion and very dark brown eyes, very compassionate eyes. My Rebirthee said that hed never seen that person before and didnt know who he was. I thought perhaps he, too, was seeing Yogananda, so I went back to the music room which is where I keep all of my spiritual, esoteric, metaphysical books (other than the books on Rebirthing which are kept in my Rebirthing room), and I pulled out The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I showed the person I was Rebirthing one of the pictures of Yoganandaji when He lived here in Los Angeles and founded the Self Realization Fellowship. But my Rebirthee ignored that picture while

grabbing the book out of my hands, saying, You just passed it, you just passed the picture of the person I saw! Then he located a picture of Yogananda as a young school boy, wearing His school uniform with buttons in rows down the front. The person I was Rebirthing never had read that book, knew nothing about Yoganandaji or about the Self Realization Fellowship, had never gone to the Lake Shrine, and had never ever heard of the whole idea of Kriya Yoga! What to make of it? Who knows? Rebirthing has definitely brought esoterica into my life, both as a consequence of the metaphysical and spiritual backgrounds of many Rebirthers and clients Ive met, and also as direct experiences Ive had while Rebirthing. Such esoteric experiences include not only spoon-bending and psychokinesis, but also clairvoyance and fire-walking. One such experience happened during my second or third trip to Campbell Hot Springs. I was in the basement of the main lodge building, being Rebirthed by my friend Tim Torian. As I was breathing, eyes closed, I was distracted by seeing a very, very clear image of two people, both strangers, though I felt I knew their names. I told Tim their names and described what they were wearing. I also told him they were very near, in fact, right above us, possibly upstairs in the main room of the lodge. Then I turned my attention back to my breathing. After, I completed my Rebirth, I went upstairs for the post-Rebirth get- together during which everybody shares their experiences. As we were all talking about what had happened with us while we were doing our breathing sessions, two people came in. They were the very people I had seen! They were dressed the way I had seen them, and, most strangely of all, their names were the names I had told to Tim! It turned out that they had arrived at Campbell Hot Springs shortly after the time when we had all dispersed to do our Rebirths with each other. Meeting Leonard, they were told that they had to go get Rebirthed before they could join the workshop, so they had gone on the porch of the lodge almost directly above the basement where I was being Rebirthed by Tim, and they had traded Rebirths with each other. How can I explain my vision of them? Of course, its possible that my hearing is so sensitive that I overheard them call each other by name. But how can I explain being able to see how they were dressed? Im forced to just chalk this up as either an amazing

coincidence or else as a pure-and-simple case of clairvoyance. A very impressive and equally inexplicable event involved a photograph I saw during my second trip to India. I had gone to Jaipur to spend a day or two with the family of the people who owned Anjali House, a tourist home in New Delhi that I had stayed at during my first trip. The father, Mr. Joshi, wanted me to look at a Polaroid picture that a friend of his had taken of Babaji during a trip He had made a few years earlier to Mr. Joshis house in Jaipur. When I looked at it, what I saw was Babaji looking straight forward and also looking to the left in profile and also looking to the right in profile, so that the photo itself looked very much like many Hindu statues which show Shiva with three faces. I assumed it was a clever superimposition of three photos, so I wasnt especially impressed by the photo as such. But the story Mr. Joshi told me about it was amazing. He told me he had a friend who had had an immense amount of contempt for him because of his affection and connection with Herakhan Baba, Babaji. That friend, hearing that Babaji was visiting Jaipur and was coming to stay at Mr. Joshis house, came over to see Him, very skeptical, not at all reverent. Babaji told Mr. Joshi to tell his friend that Babaji wanted him to come back with a camera so that he could take a picture of Him. So, the man went and got his Polaroid camera. When he came back, Babaji sat there looking straight at him and asked him to take a photo. The man clicked the release button on his camera. And the photo that I saw was that photo! It was not a superimposition of three different photos. It was one photo of Babaji with three heads! How could it have happened? Was He turning His head so quickly that He actually beat the rate of speed of light, and impressed His image in all three positions on that Polaroid film? The skeptic who took the photo, by the way, was so impressed, not only by the three faces of Shiva on his film, but by the fact that Babaji put on such an impressive demonstration presumably to win his heart and the mind, that that man became a sincere devotee of Babaji and remains so to this day. Babajis camera trick with him was as effective in winning a new devotee as His trick with my camera that I describe in Chapter Six was to be with me. Another experience of apparent psychokinesis took place when I returned to England from my second trip to India. Because

I was working every day, including weekends, I spent a great deal of time with the people who had organized for me there in London: Toni Tye (the very first Rebirther in all of Great Britain) and her husband, Lee (Aire) Preisler, Ronald Fuchs and Diane Roberts. We all got off on each others energy, and I believe that the time I spent there on that particular trip to England comprised some of the highest, most exuberant, spiritually clear times of my life. Some especially magical events transpired then, too. After several weeks of working every day, we all finally had a day free. Ronald and Diane decided to spend the day with their daughter, but Toni and Aire borrowed a car from their friend, Ben Bartel, and we all decided to take a trip to Stonehenge and to Salisbury Cathedral, and, if possible, up to Coventry Cathedral as well. After a sumptuous, leisurely breakfast, we finally left, an hour after we said we would. Ben had brought a picnic lunch and did the driving, so Toni and Aire and Louis and I relaxed and just enjoyed seeing the countryside. Toni told a marvelous story of a dream that she had had the night before. In the dream she was standing on the feet of Babaji with her back against Him, as He stood up behind her with His arms on her shoulders. She was moving through the ordinary events of a usual day of hers, but she was seeing everything with the eyes of Babaji who was steering her to look at this and to look at that. What a beautiful dream it is, isnt it? How marvelous to feel so certainly that Babaji is there to support and guide and direct and protect, and that she was seeing the world with the eyes of God, looking at the same world that the eyes of God are looking at! So her dream got us all in a fine mood. When we reached Stonehenge, I found, much to my dismay, that the circle of megaliths had been fenced in and we could only walk up to the fencing and look through the wire to see the circle of megaliths. I was very disappointed, because I had very fond memories of having been there twenty years earlier with my three daughters, when my youngest daughter was only six, spending a warm afternoon almost totally alone amidst the stones. I remember trying to understand what my feelings were up there on that solitary plain with the wind blowing through the stones. I felt amazement, but not awe. Indeed, the most beautiful image I recall from that day was of a woman sitting and nursing her child in the shadow of one of the megaliths.

Well, when I found Stonehenge was now enclosed, I must have made some sound of disappointment. One of the guards came over and asked, Have you been here before? Have you come a long way? I bet youre American. We introduced ourselves and I told him that yes, I had been there before, when it was still open from the road. He explained that it had been closed off because people were beginning to put graffiti on the stones, so now it was a you-can-look but you-cant-touch kind of place. I asked him if we couldnt please just run into the center of the circle to take one photo, and we joked about how I would be happy to take photos of him, of course, as well. And so, pointing to Louis and me, he said, Yeah, go on, the two of you can go right out to the middle of the circle. If one of the other fellows comes up to make you leave, you dont need to tell them my name. Just say that you thought that the guard over here told you that it would be OK to do that. So, Louis and I had the pleasure of running out into the center of the circle, where we took pictures in all four directions, and then ran back to Toni, Ben, and Aire just as two other guards from other portions of the perimeter started to come over to us. Dozens of other tourists who were also shocked started yelling at us. Theres nothing miraculous about that episode at all. But it was really nice that this Brit, whose job depended on his keeping idiots like me from running out into the grass between the stones, permitted us to do exactly that! I took marvelous pictures of the beautiful sky and fluffy white clouds over Salisbury Plain, beyond the henge that day, and also took some of our kind guard. I had a lot of fun sending him the picture later on, along with a goodsized tip for having let us take those photos. After we left Stonehenge, we went on up to Salisbury Cathedral, found a parking space in one of the car parks (as theyre called by all jolly olde Brits) and then left to go to the cathedral. We all wrote down the location of the parking space so we wouldnt forget it. The first sight of Salisbury Cathedral was breathtaking. The spires of Salisbury Cathedral seemed to pierce the fluffy white clouds that were scudding across the vivid, intensely blue sky that blustery spring day. Hawthornes were in bloom, as were the daffodils. The cathedral was very crowded, so after trying at first to stay together, we separated and agreed to meet back at the car park in an hour and a half. The noontime service appeared to be over, but something else was still going on. At a long

table that was set up in front of the altar in the main hall of the cathedral there was a large group comprised of Anglican clergymen. A person next to me explained they were mostly clergymen of high station, bishops and archbishops, from all of the cathedrals throughout Great Britain. It was a lovely sight to see all these different ministers in their different raiments. There wasnt a great deal of uniformity, one clergyman to the next, although they all seemed to wear mostly very dark maroon, almost the color that Ive seen the Dalai Lama and His followers wear. The Anglican clergymens maroon costumes varied in style from elaborate and ornate vestments for some of the older clergy to a backwardscollared maroon T-shirt on top of a pair of ordinary blue denim jeans for one of the younger members of the group. As we walked into the cathedral, the panel of clergymen was just finishing whatever their conference had been about, and after everyone sang a hymn I didnt recognize, the leader, an archbishop, I believe, opened the discussion to questions from members of the audience sitting in the cathedral. I thought the questions would be theological in nature, so the first one was very unexpected. A pre-teen girl inquired in a high voice, How many windpipes does that organ have? The clergyman moderating the meeting seemed taken aback momentarily, but then laughed and said, Well, I dont know how many windpipes there are in that organ, but I can tell you how many windbags there are up on the stage with me, as he turned around and pretended to count each and every one of the ministers. I thought it was cute to hear an archbishop poke fun at his colleagues, his fellow clergy. Still, of course, that wasnt at all miraculous. But afterwards, the freaky stuff happened. When Louis and I left the church, we realized that we were running late. Concerns about punctuality have always had a great deal of charge for me, probably because time must have been a major consideration when I was spending three days getting born. I suppose by the time I finally appeared, everyone was heartily sick and tired of me. And there might very well have been a few who were almost hoping that I would drop dead, anything, just to stop the waiting and struggle. Maybe the same thing even happened at my birth as happened at the birth of my first child, who arrived after I had been in labor for 26 hours. I was all alone when her head emerged right there on the hospital bed. It was great that I was the first person to touch my first child

but it was confusing, too. It might have been easier if I hadnt been left all alone by my husband and the doctor, however fed up they were with waiting for so long. Anyhow, Louis and I couldnt locate Ben or Toni or Aire in the crowd, so we left the cathedral grounds and walked very briskly down the winding road from the cathedral to the car park. When we reached the spot where the car had been parked, it wasnt there! What a marvelous opportunity that was for me to go through all of my old negatives about being abandoned, as well as about taking too long to get some place and worrying that people wouldnt wait for me! In great tension, I burst into tears right there in the car park. Louis tried to convince me we hadnt been left behind. He pointed out that, after all, our companions were the very people who were taking care of us. We were the stars of the show they were producing. He suggested they had probably simply moved the car or gone off to get something and they would be back in a while. But a quick search of the car park didnt locate the car and a wait of a quarter hour didnt result in their appearance. I decided, since we had last seen them on the opposite side of the cathedral during the finish of the service, that we should go back to the cathedral itself. I put a note on the post near the empty parking space explaining that we had been there and would come back in half an hour, then we hurried up the winding single road that led the half mile or so from the car park to the cathedral. We went all the way around through the now almost empty cathedral itself, and even went to all the various little houses and buildings attached to the cloisters nearby, but we still didnt find Ben or Toni or Aire. So, in increasing trepidation, we went back to the car park. Hurray! Toni and Aire were there, both frantic, apparently convinced that Ben and Louis and I had left. They hadnt noticed my note although it was still on the post next to the empty parking space. After another search, we found the car. Ben still wasnt there, but at least the car now was back, though still not where it had been left originally. It had definitely been moved! We figured that Ben must have been taking the car for a quick little spin somewhere when Louis and I first returned to find the car gone to leave our note, and that Ben had then found a different parking space when he returned. We assumed he had read my note saying Louis and I were going back to the cathedral and had then gone back, too.

So, once more, we all climbed back up the road again to the cathedral. We still couldnt find Ben, so we once again returned to the car park. No luck. No Ben. Finally, on our fourth trip up to the cathedral to look for him, we found Ben. It turned out that he had spent the entire time up at Salisbury Cathedral itself, looking for us there, and had never gone to the car park! I cant explain how the car moved. But, we all benefitted from this mysterious translocation. If the car had stayed where we parked it in the first place, I wouldnt have had an opportunity to go through all my abandonment stuff, and, I might add, Ben, Toni, Aire, and Louis would also not have had their opportunities to run through their numbers as well. That wasnt the end of magic for that day, though. We left Salisbury after eating our lunch in the car park, and went on to Coventry Cathedral. Then, on our way back to London, we got lost. (Apparently being lost wasnt to be an uncommon occurrence with this particular bunch of us.) As we were going down a country lane, hoping to be able to pick up one of the major roads leading back to London, we came, instead, to the end of the road! To our right was a garden, perhaps fifty foot across and twenty foot deep, covered with all sorts of blooming plants. In addition, every piece of bare ground between the plants was filled by some kind of whimsical statue or contraption: elves, dwarfs, leprechauns, fairies, geese, bunnies, windmills, and other little figurines of everything anyone has ever used to illustrate a childrens novel, all hidden amongst the grass and the low shrubs. We were all enchanted by this little fairyland and I took several pictures of it. As we tried to turn around on the narrow road, we got ourselves stuck on what Brits call a verge (what we here in the USA call a soft shoulder or a low ditch). Right near the edge of the garden there was a large stretch of cultivated farmland. So, while the fellows struggled to push the car out, I walked across the road to a pigpen in which there was a pig that was hugehe must have been at least six or eight feet long, and maybe three or four feet thick through! Id never seen a pig up close, and I was appalled to watch him standing over a pile of steaming garbage, snorting and snuffling, as he was eating the food that he also was urinating and defecating upon. I used up my last shots taking pictures of him. Even if I werent mainly a vegetarian, I dont think I could ever have eaten bacon or pork or

ham after that! I found myself having to come to terms with the idea that a pig is really not a clean animal. It eats crap, and however delicious its flesh may be, it probably isnt right and good and healthy to eat it. I imagine the flesh of scavengers is even worse than that of predators. Anyway, eventually the owner of the garden and the farm came out and gave us directions that allowed us to get back to a main road. We located a store where I bought more film for my camera, then we tried to retrace our steps back to that garden so I could take more pictures of the figurines. But it wasnt there! Not the farm. Not the pig. Not the garden. Not the figurines. We had the correct road, but the whole previous scene was absent! All that proved we were there were my few hastily snapped photos! After an hour spent driving up and down that road trying to locate the farm, we realized we were thirsty, so we went to a very picturesque pub we saw on the road (the first pub I had ever gone to). The pub was part of an old mill that still had a working water wheel. It turned out to lie at the intersection of several ley lines of power. Such lines are believed to encircle the earth, much as meridians are supposed to be lines of power running the length of the human body. Maybe it all transpired that way because we were near ley lines. That pub was, so far as I know, my first encounter with ley lines. Since then, Ive gone to numerous places on the face of the earth where such lines of power are said to be intersecting. One of the most fascinating of such experiences was in Poland, in Krakov Cathedral, where one particular spot in the corner of a wall is supposed to be such a power point. I watched a man standing in that corner with eyes closed for at least fifteen or twenty minutes, essentially motionless. In front of him, covered by some of his clothing, stood a little girl who was as silent and motionless as he was. I have always wondered what they were doing while standing there. Was he waiting to get something? Or was he getting something? I just dont know. Another encounter with power points was in Glasgow, where I led a workshop that concluded with an outdoor group Rebirth held at the top of a hill within a circle of oaks said to remain from the days of the Druids. I do know I didnt get any magic energies there or at that pub in England or at any of the ley line, power point places that Ive been to.

To date, I have not had a single tingle from any of such experiences. Ive never felt any changes of any kind from them, although I have, of course, been blown away mentally by watching what people do at such places. I dont think thats because Im insensitive. I certainly do seem to be capable of feeling awe, as when I first went into Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Ive had many other experiences where I felt some prescience of some kind, where I felt tuned in on the vibes of the place. But all of that notwithstanding, to date, I have never yet felt anything when Ive put myself at an intersection of ley lines, just as I also have never felt anything when I have experienced Reiki practitioners, even some of the leading Reiki masters. By comparison, I have felt other energy transfers. For example, one of the highest times in my life was when I was with Arthur Lincoln Pauls, the innovator of a modern bodywork form called Orthobionomy. Arthur had just finished a hands-on Orthobionomy session on me, which ended with what he called aura-cleansing. I had my eyes closed, so I didnt know what was happening, but I felt a most intense rise and flooding of energy throughout my body, similar to my experience with Babaji that I will later describe in Chapter Seven. I was very surprised to open my eyes and find Arthur moving his hands through the air a foot above me. with each sweep, I felt a surge of energy rushing through me. It all ended when I laughed, Arthur opened his eyes, and stopped the session after saying to me, My, you have the thickest aura Ive ever felt. I still dont know if thats good or badhe wouldnt tell me. Although I have never felt any energy changes in association with ley lines or with other hands-on kinds of so-called healing experiences, I have done other things which one isnt supposed to be able to do unless ones mind is clear and in a high spiritual state, for example, the Tony Robbins firewalk, which I did. But I know I didnt follow Tonys directions in order to walk the fire. One of Tonys first directions at the beginning of the evening was that we should think of a time when we were totally happy. I started to think of times when I was happy, but each time I thought of such a time, I also thought of what had happened afterwards, how this love turned into rage and impatience and deserting one another, and how that excitement and joy turned into burden, etc., etc. Going back as far as I could, I couldnt remember a single time when I had been completely happy without that memory being

instantly corrupted by my later knowledge of how that time didnt persist. So, of course, all of this plunged me into a state of emotional despair, and I started weeping right there amidst the four hundred or so people who were attending that particular firewalk. (It didnt matter. Other people were also weeping about things. It was a time of high emotional excitement.) But, in any case, through the whole evening, I wasnt able to do any of the exercises Tony told us to do. I tried, but I kept being hung up by other memories that kept submerging the ones that I was supposed to be remembering in order to get myself higher and higher. At the very end of the lecture part of the evening, Tony told us all to take off our shoes and stockings, and then to stretch out on the floor of the conference room while he read us some directions. Well, by the time I got my shoes untied, and my stockings taken off, I couldnt find any place to lie down. I finally ended up squeezing in a twisting kind of way across the floor between two rows of chairs, putting my head under one chair and getting my legs tucked under another chair in the row in front of where I had been sitting. My head was jammed up against some mans feet, and they were probably the smelliest feet Id ever encountered. So, whatever it was that Tony was saying very, very, very rapidly, passed right by me. I dont know what he said. I wasnt concentrating on him because I was trying hard to catch a breath without being overwhelmed by the smell of those feet. Then, finally, deliverance was at hand. Tony finally stopped droning on and on and said, OK, everybody get up. Were going to go across the street to the fire pits. I certainly didnt expect to walk the fire, not because of fear, but because I knew I hadnt done any of the mental exercises that he had directed us to do to get ourselves in a state so that we could handle the firewalk. But I went along, at least to watch. Barefooted, I stumbled and picked my way across the street over to the large hotel parking lot where the 12foot-long fire pit had been dug and was filled with burning coals. The first person who walked across the fire was Tony Robbins. Right after him came his wife, the woman he had married only the week before that particular evening. Then came the center manager for the Los Angeles center producing this weekend event. Then another one of the center managers walked the coals. And then, somehow, there was Louis getting in line and walking across the coals!

And I was just behind him. After he was across, some woman grabbed my arm and asked, Are you ready to walk? Startled, I exclaimed, Youre not going to let me walk, are you? She answered, Well, thats what you came here for, isnt it? I said, Yes! And she said, Well, then, go for it. And so I did. I wasnt filled with fervor. I didnt have any images of cool moss or waterfalls. I wasnt concerned about safety. I wasnt concerned about anything except possibly tripping and falling full length on the coals. I was just absolutely surprised. I was surprised that they let me do it. I was surprised that I did it! But Im still not sure my state of mind is what enabled me to do it. Theres some relationship, Im sure, between a state of high spiritual perfection and the ability to transform reality so as to walk on fire without getting burned or to levitate or to heal instantly so that you can pierce yourself with a saber and then not have any blood show that kind of stuff. But I dont know if theres a single and direct relationship, that you must be spiritually high in order to do these things. I dont know about that. I wish I did. I like the thought that we all heal in each others presence. Sometimes I find myself wondering what it is that marks the difference between me and other people I know who have had visions, messages, etc. Is it that Im simply insensitive to cues in my environment that otherwise might be noticed by someone who is more spiritually attuned? Am I missing the regular messages that God sends me? Does God, does Babaji, only send messages to people who have more faith than I do? My stance is one of pure agnosticism: I dont know. Furthermore, I dont know how I would know, I dont know what would mark knowledge of things which are not real and material. So I remain surprised, engaged, captivated, puzzled, bemused, even confused, but never sure. Neither of Yes nor of No. But Im not an atheist, as, for example, my uncle and my older sister are. They have no hesitation in saying that there is no God, that its ridiculous to think that there is such a thing as God or such a being as God. They are certain. They are pure-and-simple materialists, atheists. They believe that the entire construct of God is a pure projection of infantile need on the part of the individuals who comprise the particular society that shares that view of God.

But I remain an agnostic. I wish I did know. I wish I believed certainly that there is not or certainly that there is. Meanwhile, as I walk around, I see signs. And signs do abound. Every time I lie in my hot tub and look up and see one particular star, Im reminded of Babaji. My mind instantly goes back to scenes of interactions with Him. I think that star is a sign. Every single cloud-free night, its as if Babaji is showing me that He is there for me to think about. But such signs are far from being the kinds of visions seen by many other people I know. For example, Joanne Hongslo told me that once she was walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, as she liked to do every morning on her way to work, and suddenly, there was Babaji standing on the sidewalk in front of her, asking her, Why you no come to see me? It was at that point that she decided to go to India to see Babaji, and started saving money so that she could have enough for the trip and for presents for Babaji. Now thats a very clear vision. From her way of describing it, the individual who stood in front of her on the sidewalk on the bridge was real, three-dimensional fleshnot a vision in the sense of an ephemeral thought, an image but indeed a reality. Just as, for example, the brown individual who appeared to Diane Hinterman in her early days as a Rebirther also seemed real and material to her, not just a phantasmagoric thought that she was trying to superimplant upon the apparent reality around her. But who can tell what set and setting create out of ostensible reality? I well remember the time when I had one of my clearest lessons in the effect of the mind and the effect of set and setting. It was late at night, and I had just finished working for four or five hours after dinner and after the children were in bed. I was sitting in my living room, and I had just lit a joint and started to relax, looking across the length of the living room into the dining room, at the vase holding flowers that sat in the middle of the dining room table. It is a blue pottery vase (on the table still today as Im writing this) and it has, to me, a very satisfying fat belly shape, Colonial in type, although it is a modern piece of pottery. As I looked at it, I suddenly was struck with an immense fear. The vase had disappeared and, instead, what I saw was a detached human hand holding up the head of a monkey or an ape, dripping blood! I was so frightened as I looked at it that I turned my head away and closed my eyes and almost panted in my anxiety, sitting there

at the sofa. I thought about my fear and my apparent hallucination (not drug-related for I had only lit the jointlike President Clinton, I hadnt yet inhaled). I reasoned that anything that I think is out there is something which is already in my mind. Its my thought. Its my thought. Its my thought. Not reality. As I thought that, I thought, well, I surely dont need to be afraid of decapitated primates dripping blood on my dining room table. At that point, I opened my eyes and looked back again, only slightly fearfully. This time, sitting in the middle of the dining room table, still constructed out of the vase and the flowers that were in it, was an entirely different pattern of light and shadow. This time what I saw was the head of the Madonna holding the Babe. That fearful image had changed into one of radiant peace, joy, and love! In that instant, I realized all I ever have to do to change my reality is change the way Im looking at it. What is perfect about what is? Thats always the injunction placed upon me. I must find it. The minute I find what that perfection is, reality itself becomes transformed into a very clear depiction of that perfection. As I started to say earlier, I do like the idea that we are each of us here helping the next and ourselves heal ourselves, that we heal one another, that everything that we do is an opportunity for us to change our minds about some old deep-seated negative. I have found that some people are more evocative than others. People that I feel very close to have a very decided capacity to be involved with me in the materialization of an old negative. For example, I believe that having the car mysteriously switch from one place in the car park to another, enabling me to run into my fear of abandonment, wouldnt have happened if I hadnt been with Toni and Aire and Ben. Other times when Ive been with them have also involved my coming up hard against my old, old fear of being lost and abandoned. One of those times was when the entire training I was leading at Manjushri Institute in Ulverston, Cumbria, decided to take an afternoon off. Many of us wanted to go to nearby Windemere, where Hawthorne wrote and where he is buried in the churchyard of the church where he was a minister. Its a beautiful little town. We had a very large van and it was a lovely ride. We got to the assembly hall of the church just in time to have hot cocoa and bread and butter before it unexpectedly started to

blizzard. By the time I left the church to go outside to take pictures of the tombstones, including Hawthornes, several inches of snow had already fallen. The Celtic crosses of the tombstones were altered by the way the snow settled so that, instead of looking like crosses, they actually looked simply like jack o lanterns. I took many pictures and I greatly enjoy looking at my photos of these smiling faces on the tombstones behind that dour gray church in the middle of the Lake District. They looked like they were making a mockery both of death and of greatness. Because it was blizzarding so hard and getting more and more strong and blustery, we all decided to forego going around the shops and sights of the city of Windemere. Instead, we got back into the van, to try to return to Manjushri in time for supper. By the time we had gone just a few blocks, the snow on the ground was close to six inches deep, and it was almost impossible to see out of the window of the van. A couple of large busses had slipped on the road and were now broadside to the flow of traffic, resulting in a complete stop of all traffic flow. I longed to walk in the snow because thats a pleasure which a person living in Los Angeles doesnt have very often. I thought, OK, Ill get out and walk until traffic starts flowing again, and when I see the van driving by, Ill hop back on. That was agreed upon. And so I got out of the van, with Louis right behind me. Then Tony and Aire got out, and then Ronald and Diane got out. I could see each couple getting out of the van, but as Louis and I started to walk away, within a matter of perhaps ten feet at the most, I lost sight of the other couples and, soon after, Louis was lost to my sight as well. I wasnt frightened. I was truly enjoying myself walking alone down the sidewalk in the thick snow, in this little town with its major road being about one and a half car lanes wide by USA standards. I enjoyed myself looking in shop windows until it suddenly dawned on me that traffic was once again flowing and that approximately twenty minutes had passed but I had not yet seen the van go by me. So I thought I had better turn around and go back up the road toward where the van was supposed to be in the slowly moving traffic. I passed the previously stalled busses as I walked all the way back to the bridge where I had last seen the van, but hunt though I did, I could not see it through the falling snow. I felt panicked that it had passed me without my seeing it. And without my being seen. Once again, I was in the throws of my fear that I was

abandoned. I hurried to walk back up to the busses creeping along, trying to find the van, with no success. The van simply wasnt in the line of traffic now flowing by in the few feet ahead of myself I could see through the thick, swirling snowfall. It was now very close to 6:00 P.M., and all the tiny stores that were dotted along the high road were closing. I walked into one just to get warm and asked if they could tell me how to find the police station where I hoped I could get help getting back to Manjushri. The woman closing her shop gave me directions, and then, just as I started to walk out of the store, I ran into Louis, who looked almost as frenzied and frantic and lost as I felt. What a relief to have at least found each other. The two of us decided together that we would once again walk back up toward the bridge where the busses had slid, stopping the traffic. We would once more look for the van. If we didnt run into it, we would go to the police station and try to get a taxi or something that would drive us from Windemere to Ulverston, the city right near Manjushri Institute. We walked and didnt see the van. Suddenly, just where we stood, the snow stopped falling. We were right underneath a street light post with the light shining. There

CHAPTER FIVE
DECIDING TO GO TO INDIA Only yesterday someone asked me, Whats the connection between Rebirthing and Babaji? Do I have to believe in this Indian guru in order to get any value from Rebirthing? Of course the answer is, No. But without planning or consciously desiring it, I found that as I Rebirthed, I began having an intense, profound relationship with this guru residing in Herakhan, up in the Himalayas, in Uttar Pradesh, India. My initial reaction when I first heard a Rebirther chanting a Sanskrit chant and talking about a fellow who had yellow stripes across his forehead was, This is nonsense. Why does a guru always have to be talking to us in some otherwise unintelligible language? Why does he have to wear weird get-ups and live in far-away places? Why is it that so-called spiritual people are so resistant to the beliefs, the recognitions, that have developed from our own Western world? In fact, my reaction wasnt even mild. I found myself intensely disgusted with people who were running around chanting away in some foreign language, talking about how much they wanted to go to India to see Babaji. Even as late as Fall of 1980, after almost three years of involvement with Rebirthing, I still had a great deal of impatience and scorn when confronted by Rebirthers who chanted, Om Namah Shivai. Matters changed quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Leonard Orr was staying at my house, along with Jeanne Carr and about a dozen other Rebirthers from Campbell Hot Springs. Also

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles Current chapter: APPENDIX A Previous chapters: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN

visiting was my older sister from New York City who had never been in my house in Los Angeles before and who had never been Rebirthed. My house was full of commotion. The drama of that circus, however, was far exceeded by the events occurring in my professional teaching life at Los Angeles City College. As one of the senior professors, for years I had had a schedule where I taught an 8:00 class, a 9:00 class, and then an 11:00 class, so that on days when I didnt meet with anyone later than that for a testing or counseling session, I was able to leave my campus office at noon and come home to see patients in my private practice and do other things. My new department Chair, however, gave me a schedule for Spring of 1981 that no longer permitted that. In fact, I was scheduled

CHAPTER SIX
FIRST TRIP TO BABAJI FLYING AND PHOTOGRAPHY The first time I saw Babaji, in February, 1981, was not at His ashram in Herakhan, but instead in one of the temples devoted to Him in the city of Vrindaban, the reputed birthplace of Lord Krishna and the place where He was married. Louis and I had already been in India for almost ten days, waiting to learn where we could find Babaji. While waiting, we had gone to the city of Shrinagar to see Lake Dal and then to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. We had even taken a few days to fly up to Kathmandu in Nepal. Between each trip, we returned to Anjali House in New Delhi where ten other Rebirthers, including Leonard, were all waiting to hear word of where exactly Babaji was. We knew only that He was not up at Herakhan, but was instead traveling around India, visiting His various ashrams and temples. But it wasnt until only four days remained of our scheduled stay in India that Louis and I learned that He had left Bombay and would be found in a city called Vrindaban, a few hours drive from New Delhi. When Leonard told me that we could go to see Babaji in Vrindaban the next morning, I joked and said, Listen, the way things are going, the minute I go to Vrindaban, well learn that Hes gone from there to Calcutta or some such.

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles Current chapter: APPENDIX A Previous chapters: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN

Leonard looked at me very seriously and said, Oh no, I promise you by this time tomorrow you will be with Babaji. I told him he sounded extremely biblical, very much like Jesus talking to the thief being crucified with Him when He said, I promise you by this time tomorrow you will be with your Father in paradise. In any case, we spent the evening discussing how we were going to travel to Vrindaban. It was finally decided that two cars with drivers would be ordered, and that all the Rebirthers who were there at Anjali House would be distributed between the two cars! There was a lot of bickering and arguing about who would be in which car. I wasnt especially thrilled by the arrangements. Unlike most of the others who had spent all their time in Delhi, I had already experienced the mixed pleasure of driving in taxis on Indias bumpy roads. I knew them as not only bumpy but frightening, simply because of the immense amount of traffic everywhere and its diversityelephants, camels, horses, bicycles, and two-wheeled cartsas well as

the absence of any observable pattern to the flow of traffic, anyhow, so people were on both sides of the road going in both directions simultaneously. I knew that it was awfully common in India for people to be packed closely together in buses and trains, but I really didnt think it was safe, and it certainly wouldnt be comfortable to be so tightly packed into automobiles. But finally, we all agreed that we would leave in just the two cars early the next morning. At 6:00 A.M. everyone was up and waiting for Leonard, who was in the bathtub Rebirthing himself. 7:00 passed, then 8:00 and 9:00. By this time, I was beginning to be beside myself with frustration, especially when two more people arrived! One of them, Hans, was someone I knew from Los Angeles, and he was there with his son. They had tickets for the train to go down to Vrindaban, but when they learned we were all driving, the two together wanted to drive with us. Now, suddenly we were going to be not five in a car with a driver, but seven in a car with the driver! I was almost beside myself with annoyance over such an arrangement!

As I went to the bathroom, I suddenly had a moment of clarity; I realized that renting taxis in India only costs the equivalent of $35 a day for the cab and driver, plus the gasoline cost. We had already survived taxi trips from Delhi to Agra and other cities. I could easily afford an entire taxicab for me and Louis! So I ran back out into the living room where people were glowering and bickering, and said, Listen, dont worry about it at all. Im going to order another taxi, and Louis and I are going to leave now, because I dont want to fritter away the last of my three days here in India waiting for Leonard to finish Rebirthing himself. And I certainly dont want to be stuck in a cab with so many of you, as much as I love you. So it was arranged that we would take one cab and leave right then and there. The Indian man who had previously accompanied Leonard around on his trips in India, Vinay Shukla, came up to me just as I was getting into the taxi, and said, But Mama, my suitcase is in the boot of this taxi. Are you willing to take it with you down to Vrindaban? When we get there, I will take it from you.

Half jokingly, I snapped back at him, Only if you promise to love me forever! At that point, Vinay fell on his knees and pranammed to me, putting his head to the ground in front of my shoes, and said, Oh Mama, I promise you I will love you forever! So, after all, we left on a happy note. (Since that time, Vinay and his wife and their three daughters have become very dear to me and to Louis, and we visited them each time we went to India. In 1993, their first Thanksgiving as a family after they moved to the United States, we even spent Thanksgiving with them in their new home near San Jose.) When we got to Vrindaban after six hours of breathtaking travel on Indias best road, we went to the Hare Krishna Retreat Home to find a place to stay there. When we got there, we were given our choice: we could be on the fourth floor in a large room where we would sleep in our sleeping bags on the floor with perhaps another dozen people and wed pay about a dollar a night, or we could have a room on the first floor of the hotel, with windows on both sides, two separate beds, and, wonder of wonder in India, its own almost-Western-style bathroom, for about $10 a night for Louis and me. Needless to say, I decided that I could, of course, afford the first floor room, and so we moved into that. Then I hastily put on a sari, and picked from my luggage the presents that we had brought to give to Babaji, and Louis and I went out to the taxi where our driver waited, having found out directions to the temple where Babaji was. Outside the temple was a flower cart from which Louis and I each bought a garland of marigolds, a mala, to present to Babaji. I left my shoes with the pile of shoes at the front door and hastened into the temple, but saw absolutely no one around. I seemed to be in a courtyard, so I went through that into another building and there saw two people standing. The one looked like a brown version of

my father! He was about as big and as thick through and wide and stocky as my father had been. He had an amazing similarity of looks, in both posture and features, to my fathers. He was standing next to a man with grey hair and a long drooping grey moustache. I suddenly recognized the one who resembled my father. I exclaimed out loud, Oh my God, its Babaji! Then I went walking across the otherwise empty room to Him, the mala still over my arm. I was holding out my hand to shake His hand and introduce myself. As I came close to Him I said, Hello. My name is Eve Jones and Im from Los Angeles. Im really glad to meet you. He extended His arm and I thought He was about to take my hand and shake it. But instead His hand went past mine and He took

CHAPTER SEVEN
SECOND TRIP TO SEE BABAJI FILLING WITH LIGHT AND GETTING HIGHER I started my second four-month trip abroad at the beginning of September, 1981, right after a week crowded with important events. First, I had attended the Rebirth International Jubilee in Snowmass, Colorado, and received the endorsement for Certification from all the Certified Rebirthers, as well as from Dr. Duran, the entity channeled by Trina Kamp. Then, I received a surprise visit the last day of the Jubilee from my dear companion, Louis, who canceled all his appointments and flew to Colorado just to be with me in what he regarded as my big" moment. And as soon as I returned from Snowmass, I was the honored guest at a garden party given for me by the area alumni who had given the University of Chicago large donations or who had worked with me in my position as the Chairman of the Alumni Fund Drive for the past few years, a position I was then vacating. I felt as if I had barely had time to get back from the two weeks in Colorado, get dressed for the party, pick up my passport, and leave for the East Coast before taking off for London. London started with a similar rush: we were met by Rebirthers who had attended a seminar I had led the past Easter in London. We had a meal, got a few hours of sleep, and at 9:00 A.M. the next morning, I led a seminar for 44 people on their Parental Disapproval Syndromes. Perhaps symbolically, the shank on one of my high heels broke on the first step going down the stairs to the meeting room, resulting in my sliding down three or four steps of the carpeted steps as if I were water skiing. What an entrance! That day was the start of a period of six weeks during which I worked every day, almost every hour, from early morning to late at night. Finally, six weeks later, we took a day off and went to the countryside and up to Stratford to visit the upcoming landlord and lady of my organizers, Toni and Aire. We were served a magnificent high tea that included every food ever mentioned in English novels as suitable for such occasions, with all the foods colored red, white, and blue in honor of the birthday of the son of our host. (Louis ate the entire plate of typically English thin cucumber sandwiches on the table next to him because he thought they were too tiny to have been meant for all of us!) Every interaction during those six weeks was magical, including my introduction to Manjushri Institute, the University of Tantric Buddhism, housed in a magnificent 88-room Gothic mansion built on the grounds of a 13th-century monastery near Ulverston, Cumbria, where I led a marvelous week-long training. The first evening we were there, after taking a tour of the building, we met with one of the two lay directors, Roy. Because he wore a bow tie and wire-frame eyeglasses, was very tall and thin, and spoke in a very quiet voice, I was afraid he would be terribly prissy, especially when he started by saying he needed to explain

the simple rules of the monastery. One rule was that we harm no sentient beasts. Another was that we use no drugs on the property. And another was that we engage in no abnormal sex. He asked if we had any questions about those rules. One of my trainees asked Roy to define abnormal." In the shocked silence, Roy replied, smiling, More than one partner at a time." That broke the ice. Soon we were having a lively discussion about mealtimes, bathing, laundry, etc. As the meeting seemed to be coming to a close, Roy asked if there were anything special he could do for us, and I spoke up and said, Yes, you could let me Rebirth you and you could also invite everyone in the monastery to join us for the entire workshop so they get Rebirthed and learn how to Rebirth each other." That seemed to be even more shocking, but after a few moments of apparent embarrassment, Roy replied that he would be very honored to accept my invitation and he would relay the invitation to join the workshop to the entire community. Not everyone wanted to, but more than half the community did. So the workshop was attended not only by 54 Brits who had come from all over the U.K. to the workshop, but also by thirty-six resident Buddhist monks and nuns. Each of the Tantric Buddhist monks or nuns selected one of the members of the workshop as a personal trainer, by whom to be Rebirthed each day during the week after the members of the workshop finished trading Rebirths with each other. Because of their monastery duties, the monks and nuns couldn't attend the daytime part of our workshop when we all shared our experiences in Rebirthing each other. So, instead, they arranged to come in for a special post-Rebirth seminar of their own after supper. The first time, I was anxious about their reactions, especially when the first person to share was a nun who kept her pre-monastery life so secret she was known only as Dee Doe. She started her report by saying, in the drawling manner of a top-drawer Brit, Well, everything that happened to me while I was Rebirthing was something I've experienced before. Nothing new happened to me. I've felt the same feelings of union with the Cosmos before, just as I've felt the same feelings of transcendental ecstasy before." My heart sunk as I thought that I was going to have to listen to 35 more people tell me that Rebirthing wasn't much. But just then, Dee broke into a beaming smile and said, The only difference is that, previously, I have had to stay in silent retreat for at least six weeks before coming close to such experiences, whereas this time, it took only a little over an hour."

As she finished, she was laughing and crying simultaneously. So were most of us. All the rest of the reports were highly positive, too. The glowing reports culminated in the remarks made by the last person to speak, a very old man who was known in the community as Saint John, although his first name is really Ted. He said, Well, after breathing for approximately an hour, I opened my eyes and all there was was the blue sky, the white clouds, and the branches of the pinetrees. There wasn't any Me looking at them. All there was was the blue sky, the white clouds, and the green branches." His voice broke and he seemed to be working hard to keep from weeping. Then he went on to say, All the years that I've spent studying Buddhism, I've been hoping that I might let go my ego attachments so that I can experience samadhi before I die. And yesterday I did! I want to thank all of you for that great gift." For the rest of the week, the entire monastery seemed changed. People talked with each other during mealtimes and greeted each other as they passed in the long stone hallways. It seemed as if they started to love each other, instead of being lost in their quest for detachment. Some of my highest spiritual experiences took place at Manjushri. I love Manjushri Institute and every member of its community I've Rebirthed. Whenever I've been in England during the past fifteen years, I've made a point of going there to spend at least a night, even when I haven't been leading a Rebirth workshop there. I've been privileged to be given the room underneath the Puja room, so that I awake early to the sound of the community chanting above me. Yet we almost didn't go to Manjushri for that Rebirthing workshop I led in UK. Two weeks before, my Rebirth group was still slated to meet in a residence used for conferences on the other side of England completely. We would have gone there if that place hadn't been unexpectedly sold. My organizers still hadn't located a new place until the week I arrived, and then only because a Buddhist client of one of my organizers mentioned that Conishead Priory, as the building of Manjushri Institute was originally called, was going to be available for workshops in the near future. I was told by Chip, the other lay director, that the Honorable Geshe Kelsang Gyatsu, the spiritual head of the monastery, had had a dream a month or so before we arrived in which he was told to get the monastery ready to accept a large group who would bring great changes to the monastery. So they cleaned and painted and worked up to the minute we arrivedthe carpets in the rooms we used for our meetings had been laid only the night before our arrival! One of the people from London who came to that first workshop, Michael, whose family had lived in Ulverston for many centuries, stayed on at the monastery to become a member of the community and eventually a monk. He became Manjushri's first resident Rebirther as part of his duties there, and he also realized his dream of spending his time creating and recording music. His first commercial product, a tape called

A Midsummer Eve," is a favorite of mine to Rebirth to. I'll be happy to tell you how to obtain a copy if you write to me. At the end of the week, I was given a lama cloth by the Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, who said, Rebirthing is an event of a great Karmic importance to the 2500-year-old tradition of Tantric Buddhism." I felt truly highly honored. Just before I was leaving, the nun who ran the counter in the Institute's gift shop where small Buddhist items could be purchased asked me to buy up to 1000 of goods on my travels in India and Nepal, to bring back to the Institute when I returned just before Christmas. So for six weeks I had the opportunity for the first time in my life to be a professional buyer." It was great! So was the pre-Christmas bazaar that was held on my return, at which everything I had purchased was sold for a sizeable profit for the Institute. After we left England, I led a week-long workshop in Paris and another in Amsterdam, then Louis and I once again went to see Babaji. This time we went to Herakhan.

CHAPTER EIGHT

LAST VISIT TO BABAJI LEVITATING AND THE SOUND OF TWO HANDS CLAPPING The next time that Louis and I went to see Babaji was in 1983, in the late Fall. Once again, it ended up that, because of rearrangement of European workshop plans and of airline schedules, we had only a few days to spend with Him in Herakhan. By that trip, I had begun to feel much less tense and anxious. After all, I had met Him now several times. Also, I'd gone up to the ashram before in terrible weather, so it was likely that this trip would be an easier one. And most importantly, I was only two months away from being 60 years old, so I thought maybe I could ask for special privileges, like being allowed to use the showers and the toilets which were rumored to exist up on the level of the temple and the dormitories, but which were supposed to be used only by Babaji and by people who were 60 or older. Not having to climb up and down the 108 steps to bathe and toilet in the river would make my stay at the ashram much more comfortable and pleasurable. Vinay met us in New Delhi and traveled with us up to Haldwani, which also made that trip much easier. On the way, we stopped at Corbett National Park, named after Gentleman Jim Corbett, the American heavyweight boxing champion who established the park as a tiger preserve after his fighting days were over. Corbett National Park is one of the three National Tiger Preserves in India. It took us a day to go through the jungle to get to Corbett, because we kept running into road beds that had been flooded recently and were still pretty deep in water, so the car and driver had to take it easy. Having left New Delhi in the morning, we arrived at Corbett by late evening and just had time to have a meal and walk around for a few minutes and experience some of the jungle before it became so dark that we couldn't do that anymore. At Corbett, we had the pleasure of taking advantage of the guest facilities that the Indian government makes available for its citizens. Louis and I had a really lovely guest house room, rustic but spacious, warm, with a pleasant bathroom that had up-to-date toilet facilities and a shower-all for only a few dollars a night. Vinay and our driver had equally good accommodations.

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles Current chapter: APPENDIX A Previous chapters: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN

The next morning, we got up very early, and with one other person, a Westerner who wasn't very outgoing and never even told us his name or where he was from, we went on a tiger hunt through the jungle. Of course, we didn't have guns. In fact, we couldn't even use our cameras, because we weren't supposed to make any noise at all. It was an astonishing experience to be up on the back of a giant elephant in a howdah that was essentially an open-topped cage made out of wood. There was no padding, no seating. We sat on the bottom of the cage and clung to the few rails that made up the sides as we got flung back and forth for five or six hours, all of this in complete silence. Many times I heard a low rumble, a sound that I believed to be a far-off roar of the tiger. It wasn't until we were back at the guest house that I realized the "roar of the tiger" was actually the rumble of the elephant's gut. How's that for a lesson? The little mahout sat in front of us in the crease between the elephant's head and shoulders. Every so often, the mahout stopped and looked around for the spoor, the tracks of the tiger, and then we would continue to trail the tiger. I was really pleased with myself because several times I saw and pointed out the pug marks before the mahout did. The way the elephant moved through the jungle was amazing. If a tree up to about a foot in diameter was in front of the elephant, the elephant didn't veer around it, but simply just went at it, smacking right into it with the middle of his forehead, then trampling over it. Occasionally the elephant would knock a tree down and then wrest it away from in front of him with his trunk. It was wholesale carnage! I thought, "My goodness, a few months of one of these elephant walks each morning would be enough to deforest this jungle completely!" In any case, although we saw lots of indications that tigers were around, we arrived back at the guest house lodge in early afternoon without actually ever seeing a tiger. After a late lunch, Vinay, Louis and I spent the afternoon exploring an area that was covered with five-foot-high elephant grass, with a stream running through it. In South America such a field would be called a pampa. We went for a long, beautiful, lazy walk in the late

afternoon sun. It was silent around us except for the sounds of birds and insects. No people were yelling or chattering, there was no traffic in any way. It was truly a jungle retreat. It was amazingly restorative to my soul to be in that quiet for a change, away from the almost incessant artificial background noise of our modern world. One remarkable happening that took place that afternoon was that butterflies kept landing on my arms, staying on them for so long that Louis and Vinay, both, were able to take pictures of me just standing there with several different kinds of butterflies poised on my arms. Several that had settled on the backs of my hands even drank from me! I could see the tiny proboscis unfold like a fuzzy little straw, uncurling from itself, going down into a pore on my hand-yet I couldn't feel it! I could see it, and I even took a photo of it, but I couldn't feel this beautiful insect seeking my

CHAPTER NINE
HEARTBREAK & HEALING THE TEACHER AND THE LESSON After leaving Herakhan, we reached Hong Kong on time. But a few hours before we were due to leave for China, as I was boarding a bus to go do some last minute shopping, my purse was razored open and its contents were removed. The thief even cut across my thumbnailnot my thumb, just the nail without my realizing it while it was happening! I lost not only my money, but my passport. So we had to go to the American Embassy and get a new passport for me. Then I needed new entry papers into Hong Kong from Bangkok to prove that I was in Hong Kong legally. We had to wait a day to get new entrance papers because it was a national holiday of some sort in Hong Kong (or maybe it was a national holiday in Bangkok). The police were very careful to explain to me that many people swam to Hong Kong from mainland China to try to leave the communist regime, so proper entrance papers were imperative. Of course, they weren't swimming from Bangkok to Hong Kong to go into mainland communist China, as Louis and I wanted to do, but in any case, a couple of days were spent in Hong Kong waiting for the bureaucracy to function and for our travel agent's representative to convince the Chinese government to relax its rules and allow us to take our tour after all. The Chinese government finally relented and agreed that Louis and I could go on our tour, but it would have to be a student tour instead of a Grade A tour and it was three days shorter. I was thankful that all of the money that we'd spent on our travel arrangements wasn't completely lost because some thief decided to pick my purse. So we went into China, and several weeks later, we finished our trip and returned to Los Angeles. At the beginning of the Spring semester, I picked up the reins of my teaching again, and several weeks passed. I applied to take a semester's leave the next Fall at no pay so that I would have time to work on some writing, and also have time to go back to India in June and spend some more time there at the ashram. One day, I woke up and thought I was about to die. I was in intense pain. My chest was just in flames. I couldn't breathe. Every time I

Stories About Babaji and Other Modern Miracles Current chapter: APPENDIX A Previous chapters: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN

tried to take a breath, the pain stabbed through me even worse. I was actually afraid to stay home alone and, anyhow, I had three classes waiting for me. So I went to school and started to teach my eight o'clock class. But my arm and chest were in such pain that I truly feared I was having a heart attack. I didn't really believe I was having a heart attack, for how can you have a heart attack that goes on and on and on and on? I imagined that a person having something wrong with his heart would become unconscious or at least become incapable of moving. I wasn't. I could walk up and down the halls. So I excused the class early and went back to my office, where I did some connected breathing and tried to Rebirth away whatever the negative was that was coming up. So at nine o'clock, I went back to the classroom and started to teach my nine o'clock class. But the pain got even worse and I let my class go. The pain got so bad that I phoned home hoping to find Louis, and that he could come to school and drive me home. I was genuinely afraid that I might pass out from the pain, so I didn't think it would be wise or safe for me to be driving. But I couldn't locate him. Finally, the pain stopped getting any worseit was just at what felt like the max constantly. So, after my hour's break (which was spent talking about health and death benefits with an insurance broker who nabbed me in my office), I taught my eleven o'clock class, and then, at noon, slowly and carefully drove home. I found that I couldn't do anything, even open my mail, so I spent the rest of the day lying in bed, aching, being interrupted by one person after another. In late afternoon, I was visited by Joe Moriarty and then, early that evening, my old student assistant, Pat Dillon, came by from out of town with a friend, and I came downstairs to talk with them. But my chest was still hurting too much for me to try to pay attention to them, and I was explaining that to him when the phone rang. It was the phone call telling me that Babaji had just died of a heart attack. I hung up and said to Pat and his friend, "Babaji just died." Pat shrugged and said, "I don't know the man, sorry."

I didn't want to try to explain and I didn't want to carry on a conversation, so I finally ended up asking them, please, to leave. They were just leaving when Louis showed up. I told him that Babaji had died. At least his reaction was one of dumbfounded dismay. Strangely, the pain in my chest totally disappeared the instant that I was told on the phone that Babaji had died. I felt profound sadness, almost uncontrollable grief. But physical pain was no longer present. It disappeared in that instant when my heart broke. Anyhow, Pat and his friend left, and Louis and I spent the night crying and talking about Babaji, wondering how He could be gone. I spent the next day (my day with no classes) talking with Rebirthers all over the world, crying constantly. The next morning I had to go to school to teach my classes. I tried to teach, but I couldn't stop crying. So, I dismissed my first class after five minutes, telling my class that a very dear friend had just died and I was sorry but I really couldn't handle a class. I went back to my office for the rest of that hour, then I went to teach my next class. But the same thing happened: I couldn't stop crying, and I found that I couldn't keep my mind on what I was teaching, that I didn't want to. So again, I dismissed the class. I spent the rest of that hour and my next hour, my office hour, in my office with the door closed, crying, hoping that I would be able to meet with my eleven o'clock class and carry out my teaching duties. But, the same thing happened, and so, after dismissing my class, I left the college. I got into my car and started to drive home. I got to within about five blocks of my house when I realized that I was almost completely out of gas. So, I drove up into a Union 76 station on Beverly Boulevard and turned off my engine, pulled out the key to give it to the station attendant, and in that instant, started crying again. Suddenly I heard two loud claps. I startled and looked, and there was a man standing by my car window, in a Union 76 station attendant outfit, but he had the face of Babaji! He looked exactly like Babaji: the same eyes and cheeks and complexion! I kept staring at the face in front of me, as the tears continued to spill down

my face. I was confused and almost frightened. I assumed that my grief had so addled my brain that I was hallucinating, thinking I was actually seeing Babaji's face in front of me. I kept watching, seeing the lips move. Finally, I realized the man was saying something, and I managed to listen and registered "keys." So I gave him the keys, and he went back and unlocked the gas cap, put the hose into the tank to fill it, and then came back to the window, and said, "And so you've been to China?" (And, by the way, he pronounced it "Sheen.") I said, "Yes, but how do you know?" What made him think I'd been to China? I

CHAPTER TEN THE MIRACLE OF HERAKHAN AGAIN

Stories About Babaji and Other

Modern Miracles
For four years after Babaji died, I was afraid to go back to Herakhan to visit because I remembered what it was like going to my fathers grave, back in Toledo, Ohio: weeping and weeping and weeping, and trying to pull my mother away. I think in a way she would have been happy to have just stayed there with his grave and to have withered away if she hadnt had me and my sisters to care for. And so I thought that going back to Herakhan would involve my being plunged into such inconsolable grief again also. But finally, five years after Babaji left, I had an urgent need, not only to go to India, not only to take Louis with me again, but this time to take my son with us. He was into his 20s, and I knew that once he got married, he probably wouldnt have time to travel anywhere with me again. I wanted him to see the India that I loved. Tom is a photographer and he has a marvelous eye for the beauty of form and color, and I wanted to share India with him, to have him see its beauty before I couldnt any longer show it to him. But I was afraid that he wouldnt want to go if I asked him only to come to India with me. I worried he would probably say, No, because he had the same image of India that most Americans have, that its dirty, that its poor, that its impossibly crowded, that people are dying on the streets right in front of you. So I invited him to take a trip with me first to Japan where his father had spent many years, and then we would go to India. He agreed, however his schedule didnt work out, so it ended up, after all, that he only had time to meet us for a week in India, and then he would have to return to Los Angeles. On the day Louis and I were to meet Tom in New Delhi, our Indian Airlines plane coming from Nepal arrived in India several hours later than Toms Pan Am flight from Los Angeles through Singapore where hed stayed overnight. After we landed at the domestic airport in Delhi, we needed to go a few miles to the International Terminal where Tommy was supposed to be waiting for us. I was getting really tense by the time we finally reached him, because I was afraid hed be offended by all the noise and filth if he had to confront India all by himself. But we found him crouching on the

Current chapter: APPENDIX A Previous chapters: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN

sidewalk, in a circle with a whole bunch of Indian fellows, talking with them and enjoying himself immensely. Hed spent the several hours between his plane arrival and our plane arrival just talking with people and enjoying himself. It pleased me that he wasnt horrified by the noise and the commotion. Believe me, many Westerners get off in Delhi, take one look at the whole Indian airport scene, and jump back on the same planes departing flight, canceling all further plans to stay in India. I was glad Tom was open-minded. After a day of taking Tom to the sights of Delhi and another to show him the Taj Mahal in Agra, we drove up to Haldwani and checked into the brand new hotel that had just been built the only building in the whole of Haldwani, with close to a million inhabitants, that had an elevator! It also had air conditioning, and the heat even up in the foothills at that time was almost beyond belief. (When we had been down in Agra taking Tom to see the Taj Mahal, it got to 135 Fahrenheit!) I was frantic over the approaching trek up to the ashram. How could we possibly go up the river bed for twelve miles in heat like that, with the sun beating down on us? We went over to see the Shuklas, of course, and Tom was completely captivated by their three beautiful daughters, and by having them wait on him as if he were a prince, rushing to get him a cola drink whenever the one in his hands was empty, and turning the fans on him. I had never been at Babajis ashram in Chillianola, and I wanted to go there so we agreed to drive there first the next day before coming back to Haldwani to start the trek to Herakhan. Only three people were in the entire ashram at Chillianola when we arrived. It was a beautiful ashram, but I wanted to get to Herakhan, so we left after only one magical night under the stars at that quiet, holy place. On our return to Haldwani, we needed to figure out how we were going to get up to Herakhan in such heat. It was still 98oF in Haldwani, and I couldnt imagine trekking twelve miles in the bright sun. Papa Shukla came up with the idea that it was possible to take a bus along the ridge of the mountains behind the one the ashram was on and then walk down from that ridge. He phoned around

and got very exact information about how to do that. He said we would be walking through shady trees, downhill, so it would be very pleasant, not uncomfortable at all. And so, the next morning, Tom, Louis, and I boarded the bus. Louis and I only took along enough clothes for changes for a few days, so we had very light packs. But Tom had a heavy pack. He insisted on taking his sleeping bag and an extra blanket, even though it was very hot. When I tried to convince him to lighten his load, Tom said, No, were going up in mountains, and Mom, Ive camped out much more than you, and youre forgetting, I did the whole John Muir Trail, and it gets cold up high. So, he insisted on taking along his entire backpack and sleeping bag. When we were leaving Haldwani, Papa Shukla asked, When do you think youll be coming back? And I said, Well, one day to get there, one day to stay there, one day to come back, so well be back in three days. And then he said, Are you sure? I just wanted to go to see the ashram, see how it was without Babaji there, and then come back. So I joked, If were not back inside of three days, youll know that a miracle has happened, and Babaji has returned. If that happens, come on up! Join us! And that was about the last thing I said before we got on the bus to go on the ridge to go to the ashram. As Indian buses go, the one we got on had everything: We were seated five on one seat thats built to hold presumably just two people. There was a crying baby who got sick. And it even had the bags of grain. I never understand where theyre going or where they come from, but theyre almost always in the front of a bus, great big bags that fill the aisle and need to be moved whenever someone gets on and off. Eventually we got off the bus. In front of us, getting off of the bus, as well, was a most amazingly beautiful woman, wearing a deep saffron yellow sari, with her hair wild and uncombed, barefoot, looking like a female Shiva, looking like a small, feminine Babaji.

She was smiling at us and then running ahead on the path, then waiting for us, and then running ahead some more. There was nothing below us other than Babajis ashram so she was apparently also going down to the ashram and knew where she was going. I found the going fantastically hard, so eventually she went out of sight from us. We never saw her again. She wasnt at the ashram and no one there had seen anyone matching my description. This hour or so stroll on a cool shady path through the trees, down the mountains, which is how the whole adventure had been described, turned out to be something tortuous that went on from ten in the morning until close to five in the evening! We had no water, we had nothing, just the three of us with our packs. It was hot! It was dusty! And furthermore, it was so steep that we kept having to zig-zag back and forth. We covered an immense extra amount of distance going down that mountainside! Even so, I still puzzle over taking so many hours to get down to the ashram, when we later went back up so quickly. When we finally arrived, we found ourselves on the porch of the so-called International Guest House. Standing there was Prem Baba, with his chillum! So the first thing that happened was that he and I embraced and laughed and cried and pummeled each other, and then Louis and Tom greeted him the same way. Eventually I pulled out the chunk of hash Billy had given me years beforethe day I heard that Babaji had diedand gave it to Prem Baba, as Billy had asked me to do. I also pulled out a joint and asked him with gestures if he wanted to smoke it, but he indicated No, he preferred smoking his tobacco-charris mix in his chillum. So we sat together and each smoked a different mix. We really couldnt communicate very well because he doesnt have any English and I dont have any of his language, but I feel a great true love for him, and somehow I think he enjoys me. Eventually, we were found by an Italian woman who registered us and gave us a big room all for just the three of us. She told us there was almost nobody else at the ashram. Our arrival in Herakhan was especially marvelous because Prem Baba had just made a great big bucket of a greenish kind of milk