We finished last time with my second Shaktipat experience that actually registered on my visual centers. ‘Automatic Pilot to the Self. Maximum Thrust’ seemed to appeal to many readers. As a word person it certainly had an impact on me.

From that moment on I was able to make pictures in my head. I practiced every day for a long time because I knew how far behind normal people I was in this regard after 51 years. Now I’m happy with the level I can manage though it isn’t that of a gifted visualiser. Color and 3D eventually became available. But I’m not yet at the level of some of my gifted students who can hear, feel, taste and smell, as well as see in the scenes they mentally create.

I am reminded of Franklin Jones, the New York born American spiritual teacher who founded the movement Adidam. As he went through his teaching career he kept changing his name to reflect the change in teaching focus. He was named Bubba Free John, Da Free John, Da Love-Ananda, Da Kalki and Da Avabhasa for sure and maybe others. It was hard to keep up with him in the spiritually based magazines. He founded the Dawn Horse Press to publish his books. I read several of them that were praised by luminaries such as Ken Wilber. I could read every word of every sentence, but couldn’t make sense out of any of them. He wasn’t for me.

But he was born with a different consciousness from those around him that he called The Bright. He decided early on that his job in life was to figure out why other people didn’t live in the same state and how he could help them get into it.

In the early 60’s he began exploring different spiritual traditions and encountered, by the usual ‘coincidences’ the teacher Swami Rudrananda in New York. This man was a disciple of Nityananda who was Muktananda’s guru. In the late 60’s Jones, now with the name Adi Da went off to Muktananda’s famous ashram in Ganeshpuri, India. He met Muktananda and had cosmic spiritual explosions while there. That was trip number one.

If you go to Boulder, Colorado or New York City, you may encounter Rudi’s Bakery, really good bakeries still run by disciples of Rudrananda.

One his return from trip number two Adi Da came back to America and encountered the teachings of another extraordinary person, L.Ron Hubbard. He joined the Church of Scientology and then became employed by them for a year or so.

On his last trip to Ganeshpuri Muktananda authorized him in writing to give Shaktipat to others in the Siddha Yoga fashion. As far as I know that is a unique circumstance. Maybe Adi Da’s experience with American lawyers made him want everything in writing. You know how that goes.

Eventually Adi Da figured out that there were seven rungs on the spiritual ladder and that he was at the seventh, the only person ever to attain that level in history. People like Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross were at level four in his system. Jesus and Muktananda were at rung five, Buddha and Ramana Maharshi were on rung six. He alone was on rung seven and meditation on him was the only way to get to the ultimate.

Why was I reminded of Franklin Jones, alias several other names at this point. Well, Jones was way further down the pike than I was when he met Muktananda, and realized that the amazing experiences he had in Muktananda’s presence actually needed Muktananda’s presence and that he needed to get to the heights indicated by those experiences, on his own. Until he felt completely independent of Muktananda he didn’t want to start doing his own thing. I hadn’t figured that out.

And another thing, which I may go into later, is that I too was in Scientology for a year, actually at the start of it in England when L.Ron Hubbard was still alive and very much kicking. This gives me an unusual perspective on the mentality of people like Adi Da who can easily come across as megalomaniacs with the charisma to net other, less aware people into their world. And ashrams aren’t the only place in which miracles occur.

I on the other hand received the gift of normal visualization with the bonus space craft, did not dis it just because it wasn’t mine and began to study seriously the philosophy that was the basis of Muktanananda’s teachings, Kashmir Shaivism. It became the basis of my own spiritual work and actually percolates or echoes throughout every spiritual practice I have encountered, and there are many, the base of all the different pyramids, so to speak, from Alchemy to Zen, and of course quantum physics.

And I’ll remind some people about Vivekananda. He was the intellectual giant among the early Indian visitors to America. He was the star at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and the first major public entry of an Eastern spiritual teacher to the West. He once gave lectures here at what became the old Dearborn Station. In India, he was once complaining as many left brainers do, about the absolute absurdity of saying that Everything is One. He waved his hand at the jungle and the village and said how obvious it was that such a statement was nonsense.

Ramakrishna came wandering out of his room in his usual trance state and put his finger between Vivekananda’s eyebrows. For two mind blowing days Vivekananda experienced that indeed Everything was One. Then Ramakrishna took the experience away. Vivekananda begged to have it again but Ramakrishna said no. He pointed out that in that state Vivekananda may not be able to do the work in America that Ramakrishna wanted him to do. He promised Vivekananda that he would achieve that state by his own efforts, three days before he died. Good news, bad news.

Maybe Franklin Jones had a point. Speculators may wonder if he was Vivekananda returning once again to Earth. I’m not going there. But Vivekananda saw the name Ganges on a little place in Michigan and insisted that Ramakrishna had to have an ashram there. And there it is still. Great bookstore. And a living statue I shall refer to later.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the orange marvel had returned from Santa Monica with a new spiritual name and her pregnancy was progressing.

Before the new baby arrived Shirley, who used to make amazing stuffed toys for sale to people, decided to make something for the benefit of the new entrant. She made a really pretty white lamb. The orange lady and I discussed its name, because in both our lineages everything has a name. By pathways too labyrinthine to explain, the new lamb acquired the name of Topsy Lambert.

Now I was pretty good at sewing. I had made my own shirts and several garments for Shirley. She was an expert seamstress. She was six feet tall and slim. Not much available off the rack for women like that. Her number one son was six feet eight as a teen ager, with a 26 inch waist and a 38 inch inseam. Couldn’t get that off the rack either. She had to learn to make tailored quality clothes herself.

Since I wanted to share her world I bought a sewing machine and learned to sew myself. But I was no good at stuffed animals. Of course I started with a much too difficult task using heavy denim and tried for a denim teddy bear. It turned out that one of the local children really wanted it because it was the spitting image of Super Mouse to him. So I made it a Super Mouse cloak and he had it. I decided then that instead of a toy I would write a book of short stories about The Adventures of Topsy Lambert, to be read to the new baby when she was old enough. I did it in 14 pt type so that she (as it turned out) could read it herself without strain later on.

These stories were tested in the local school and the kids loved them and wrote some of their own and sent really neat letters to the author. One story was not in the set that was tested because it was obviously about some spirituality that wasn’t Christian and that could have jeopardized Shirley’s career by association, as does happen in school districts. So I didn’t include that in the book until it was published.

Since Baba Muktananda appeared in the story with his two great dogs, I shall drop it on you next time, as I sent it to him before I had it published and he liked it and wished it well.

The orange one had an exquisite baby girl, with that parentage nobody was surprised, and she settled for a short time in Chicago. Every now and again we would go to a Chicago Siddha Yoga group and they would be chanting well. All of a sudden the power of the chanting would increase and the energy of it would become palpable and wild, and those of us who knew her would know without turning round that the orange one had entered the hall late and was just now joining in the chant. She loved chanting, but never knew what it was like to be in a hall where the chanting was less than wildly enthusiastic, because as soon as she entered the place that’s what happened to the chanting.

Muktananda took over a couple of huge hotels in the Catskills and they became his major ashram at South Fallsburg in New York State. Dozens of programs were held there and enormous building projects made the place look like a dream from the Architect’s Gazette.

Shirley went to the ashram for programs. I didn’t. Too much travelling in a bucket seat for my back. But we continued our morning schedule and it was beginning to make a difference. The Chicago ashram closed and opened in another house further north. Eventually the swami in charge was ordered to Ganeshpuri, probably because of his medical expertise. He worked on the mobile clinic organized by the ashram.

Muktananda surprised everyone by designating two successors. At the Santa Monica seminar we went to he had announced that the young Swami Nityananda was to be his successor. So having two gurus was quite a surprise. That was in May 1982. If I hadn’t been immersed in Siddha Yoga I would have picked up on it straight away from my previous occult studies. People who can read their energy know that six months from when it begins to move in a certain direction they will be leaving their body. And six months later in October 1982 Muktananda moved out.

At that very moment Shirley and I were experiencing minor depressions for no reason that we could fathom. It wasn’t in our biorhythms. We were in the car on Western Avenue and suddenly, for both of us, the depression vanished and we felt uplifted. When we got home there were phone calls from devotees that Baba had just died in India. The tradition is that when a saint of that magnitude dies his Shakti is immediately transferred to his devotees in proportion to their spiritual elevation. Maybe not a coincidence.

The two new gurus were brother and sister. The sister had been Malti, Baba’s translator for years. And for a few years it seemed to work. Then Nityananda resigned his post and Malti, who was now the amazingly beautiful Gurumayi took over the running of all the Siddha Yoga institutions.

Shirley went to see her a few times in South Fallsburg. I wrote letters saying that I was unlikely ever to see her personally but told her about the local Siddha Yoga activities and the politics, which always happens when competitive yuppies transfer their competition to spiritual matters.

Backtrack just a bit to explain that. In our neighborhood we once had a Zayres. Shirley and I were there one day and there was an Indian woman at the register. I pulled out the picture of Baba that I always carried and asked her if she recognized it. “I think that’s my aunt’s Guruji” she said. We told her about the Chicago ashram…the second one. A couple of weeks later when we went there we saw her and her husband.

She had told her husband about our meeting at Zayres and he immediately set about building a temple in their house. That means dedicating one room specifically and only for worship of the guru. And it was done in Indian fashion with all the amazing decorations and pictures, an altar and the proper candlesticks and everything done Vedic fashion.

The Chicago ashram devotees came to the blessing of the temple even though it was south of 95th Street, and the place became a little Center for Siddha Yoga in the area. Now we didn’t have to go north and come back in bad traffic or bad weather. But there was a problem. Our Indian friends were Indian devotees. For them that’s a full time job that infiltrates every aspect of their day. Compared with their devotion some of the people at the other center were insipid and did what such folks do. They began to try to undermine the competition that existed only in their minds.

That will surprise nobody who has been in any group apparently based on spiritual principles. There are always those who take it as a competition and want to show how much more spiritual they are than the other dim wits. I have found the same trends in the Rosicrucians, the Theosophists, Runists, Psychic Readers, Wiccans of every type, several Christian denominations and many other groups with which I was associated for a while. Maybe that’s why I stayed solo or as near solo as I could under every circumstance.

When our Indian friends and their relatives went to the main ashram they were treated as honored guests, which piqued some of the Westerners. Gurumayi, now the solo guru seemed to go everywhere except to the Mid West and was received rapturously everywhere. The Mexicans particularly seemed to see her as their own Lady and the love that came from them was palpable even in photographs. And she praised them for their simplicity. No continuous cerebral activity like the Westerners wondering how they were doing, how other people thought they were doing, how they could get nearer the guru. Just adoration for the divine Lady.

I was presented with a spiritual ethical dilemma around this time. I’ll tell you about it because the cosmic has unlimited resources to test you that you cannot even conceive of. And you will be tested too. Sometimes, if you pass, you won’t realize it was a test till years afterwards.

When I left Chicago to come to the south suburbs after marrying Shirley I just handed over the Contemporary Times to the people there who wanted to have a shot at carrying on. Eventually it folded. It was all over as far as I was concerned and I was quite surprised when Shirley became miffed to find me using dozens of back issues as mulch for the garden. She wanted to save the articles. That had never occurred to me.

It came to pass as they say in holy writ that Shirley decided to have an acupuncture treatment. The only acupuncturist name I knew at the time was one who used to advertise in the Contemporary Times, though I never met him personally. So we arranged an appointment and went to see him. There are no coincidences.

During our conversation there our practitioner mentioned that there was only one article that he had ever read that actually explained acupuncture in a way that the general public could understand. When he produced it I was happy to see that it was the one I had written for the Contemporary Times a few years before. One string led to another and it turns out that this man was also famous for his palm reading abilities, and he just ‘happened’ to be in Ganeshpuri shortly after Baba had a heart attack and everyone thought he was on his last legs.

Our swami doctor friend was there at the time with three other doctors. They all pronounced Baba to be dead. Suddenly he sat up and asked them why they weren’t at the evening chant. He told the devotees that he had died and had gone to Nityananda who sent him back to finish off a few spiritual chores.

Baba had our practitioner ink his hands and take paper prints of them. He asked for a public prediction from the palmist about whether he still had some years to live. Our practitioner said that he did and the Ganeshpuri folk were satisfied. But this man had the palm prints of Baba and loaned them to me to have copies made.

So there I was, still a devotee of Muktananda and with 100 copies of each palm print. The only devotee in the world except for the acupuncturist, who had such a treasure. Dozens of scenarios rushed through my mind. You can figure them out for yourself how a total nonentity in Siddha Yoga could become somebody. I rode them out and sent them all to Gurumayi, except two that I framed and had on my wall.

As I said, the guru went all over except to Chicago and it looked like a deliberate avoidance of a spiritual wasteland. Then one weekend she came to Chicago to give an intensive. Of course we were there and everyone was finally initiated into Om Namah Shivaya. I went up for darshan and was introduced merely as Vaman. She said, “Why Vaman, I thought you said you were never going to be able to see me.” She motioned to a helper who gave her a shawl which she rubbed between her hands and dropped it on me. The people who always know everything that is going on told me what a great honor that was, that she had filled the shawl with her Shakti, and that they were envious of my good fortune. The shawl just felt like a shawl to me. As far as I was concerned they were just pretending so as to appear super sensitive psychically.

When I went to the ashram in Ganges, Michigan the second time I took the shawl with me. They had an enlivened statue of Shankaracharya there and I thought it would be better if he had the shawl than I did. So I draped it round his shoulders and we carried on to find the place that sold the world’s best blueberry pies.

Over the years my enthusiasm for the way the post Baba Siddha Yoga was organized began to wane. I remember saving my pennies, before my pension, and sending a donation of $75 to the main ashram. I expected a receipt for tax purposes but nothing arrived. I did an unusual thing and got on the phone to the ashram, wended my way through the many departments and wondered to the devotee in charge when I would get my receipt.

Now I am British and I speak the sniff language fluently. I could hear the sniff in her voice as she told me that they NEVER give receipts for donations of less than $100. Now I knew that SYDA, the organization, often got million dollar checks from rich and famous devotees, but my little $75 was a real sacrifice to me and was totally non-ised. The story of the widow’s mite was clear in my mind.

Then the prices for intensives began to rise. What we went to for $150 years ago was now four or five hundred, and for some intensives the guru did not appear for more than a few minutes, if at all. The days of the hands-on guru appeared to be over. The jewelry and implements for worship in the bookstore looked as if New York lawyers were setting the prices. Everything went out of my financial scope.

I began to look for something else that had a similar philosophy to Kashmir Shaivism. The institution of SYDA had suddenly seemed to become just another money making racket now that Muktananda had passed, and Gurumayi no longer appeared to her devotees.

I found something, to my surprise associated with a path I had already given up on. The ways we are brought to where we need to be are amazing. It looks like going round in circles but they are actually spirals. You do keep going up, though sometimes it seems like going round. I’ll tell you about that later. But first the Baba story from The Adventures of Topsy Lambert, and that will be next time if I can pull it out.