Photo: Kala Mandir, Nainital, U.P., India

“… the Bees Come”

When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.

—RAMAKRISHNA

WE CAME TO Maharajji’s feet, impelled by our yearning for the living spirit and drawn by his light. We came from Europe and Great Britain, the United States and Canada, Australia and South America. As Herman Hesse said of the fellow travelers in his Journey to the East, each had his or her own special reason for making the journey but all also shared a common goal. We came with our varying hues of cynicism and faith, open or closed heartedness, sensuality or asceticism, intellectual arrogance or humility. To each, Maharajji responded uniquely: now fiercely, now tenderly; now through ignoring us or sending us away, now through making much over us; now through reading the mind and heart; now through playing dumb. He did what was necessary to quiet the mind and open the heart so that the thirst that had drawn us all to him could be slaked.

I was traveling with a young Western fellow in India. We had come to the mountains in a Land Rover I had borrowed from a friend, in order to find this fellow’s guru to get some help with his visa problem. I was in a bad mood, having smoked too much hashish, been in India“too long,” and not particularly wanting to visit a“guru” anyway.

[The following is adapted from the book, Be Here Now.]

We stopped at this temple and he asked where the guru was. The Indians who had gathered around the car pointed to a nearby hill. In a moment he was out of the car and running up the hill. They were following him and appeared delighted to be able to see the guru. I got out of the car. Now I was additionally upset because everybody was ignoring me. I ran after them, barefoot, up this rocky path, stumbling all the way. I didn’t want to see the guru anyway and what the hell was this all about?

Around a bend of the path I came to a field overlooking a valley, and in the field under a tree sat a man in his sixties or seventies with a blanket around him. Surrounding him were eight or nine Indians. I was aware of the beautiful tableau—the group, the clouds, the green valley, the visual purity of the foothills of the Himalayas.

My traveling companion ran to this man and threw himself on the ground, doingdunda pranam (full-length prostration). He was crying and the man was patting him on the head. I was more and more confused.

I stood to the side, thinking,“I’m not going to touch his feet. I don’t have to. I’m not required to do that.” Every now and then this man looked up at me and twinkled a little. His glances just made me more uncomfortable.

Then he looked at me and started speaking in Hindi, of which I understood very little. Another man, however, was translating. I heard him ask my friend,“You have a picture of Maharajji?”

My friend nodded,“Yes.”

“Give it to him,” said the man in the blanket, pointing at me.

“That’s very nice,” I thought,“giving me a picture of himself,” and I smiled and nodded appreciatively. But I was still not going to touch his feet.

Then he said,“You came in a big car?”

“Yes.” (I hadn’t wanted to borrow the car in the first place, not wanting the responsibility, so the car was a source of irritation for me.)

He looked at me, smiling, and said,“You will give it to me?”

I started to say,“Wha…” but my friend looked up from the ground where he was still lying and said,“Maharajji, if you want i