I knew instantly what he meant. I knew that it was true. I understood that it wasn’t original, that such things had been preached for centuries by various religious and spiritual leaders worldwide. That made no difference to me. He had said it. And he had said it at the right time and in the right tone of voice to the right person. He was talking to me. He was talking about me.
Of course he brought in a few Indian names and concepts like Dharma and Avatar and Krishna and the divine Atma, but I was able to filter them out and keep to the meat of the message.
I wandered around the rest of the day, found a primus stove, and managed to cook myself a little meal. Then came evening darshan. I went outside, curled up, and listened again. This time I stayed awake, and of course I couldn’t understand a word. But Sai Baba’s voice was friendly and soothing and for the most part I thought of what he had said that morning.
That went on for several days. During that time he also pulled a few tricks. He was a kind of magician, or sleight-of-hand artist. He would come up to some of the people, right after darshan, and pluck things out of the air. Not rabbits from a hat, although he did on one occasion produce a red silk handkerchief that he gave to a young Indian, and on another occasion he produced a ring with some semi-precious stone in it that he gave to a middle-aged German woman. Most of the time, what he produced, or manifested – ‘manifested’ is the word his followers used – was a powdery substance called vibhuti. It was supposed to be sacred ash. You could eat it, or rub it on your body. It was meant to be purifying.
Did you ever meet him and talk to him personally?
Not for a few days. Then, after evening darshan, he beckoned to me. He did this often, with various of his devotees, but I had been told that you had to hang out there a long time and have a certain seniority before your moment came. However, I had been there less than a week when he gave me the nod. I was pleased, and a little nervous. I followed him into the temple.
I knew by now that Sai Baba was a poor man, didn’t want worldly goods other than what he needed to live in simple comfort. Some of his better-off Indian and Western followers gave him money, but he put almost all of that into the physical upkeep of the ashram or the construction of a little hospital he was setting up there, or he fed and clothed beggars and found little jobs for them at the construction site. For himself he kept just what he needed to eat and buy a new robe now and then. He was a very clean-looking man. He smelled of spices. I liked that.
So I wasn’t surprised by the sparseness of the furnishings inside the temple. Sai Baba sat on a cane floor mat in the lotus position, in front of me. He offered me a stiffbacked cane chair – no way I could ever have got into the lotus position like he did. He knew that. I sat down. He made the sign of welcome by placing his palms together, smiled at me, and said, ‘Is there anything you would like to ask me?’ ‘Yes. Why do you go through all that hocus-pocus,’ I said, ‘with the manifesting of ash and jewelry?’
His smile grew broader. ‘You think that’s hocus-pocus?’
‘What else?’
‘What’s wrong with a little hocus-pocus?’ he asked. ‘Does it harm anyone?’
I laughed. ‘I guess not. Maybe you need to do it to impress a certain kind of person. Means to an end. I can understand that.’
Still smiling, he reached out to my ear and pulled a handful of dark ash, what they called vibhuti, out of it, or out of the air, or out of his sleeve; who knows. ‘Here,’ he said. He pressed it into my palm. ‘You keep this handful of “means to an end.” Eat it, or anoint yourself with it, or throw it away. Do whatever you like with it.’
I laughed again, mumbled a kind of thank-you and put it in my pants pocket.
‘Now may I ask you a question, sir?’ Sai Baba said.
‘Absolutely.’
‘In the years left to you, if you knew beyond doubt that you wouldn’t fail, what is the one thing that you would do?’
I was stunned into silence. I knew right away he had asked me the most intelligent question that you could ask any human being beyond the age of puberty. All the inessentials fell away. TWA, the various lawsuits, the default judgment, the SST, Las Vegas as the port of entry, Hughes Aircraft, Toolco – none of them rose to the mark. Not even life with Helga.
‘You don’t have to answer now,’ Sai Baba said. He rose to his feet – not all that easily, I realized, because he was a bit overweight. I got up too. He made the sign of farewell by placing his palms together. I did the same. He had never asked me my name. He’d never asked who I was or what I did. He’d only asked that one question. At the door to the temple, as I was about to step outside into the hot evening, he placed a sweaty hand on my shoulder, and he said softly, ‘Don’t forget.’
I went to one more darshan before I left Puttaparti, but I realized that for the moment there was little more I could gain by being there. I also realized I didn’t have to say goodbye to Sai Baba. He didn’t expect it.
I hired another porter, waded across the Chittravati River in the other direction, found someone to drive me to Bangalore, and flew to New Delhi. There was a message from Helga waiting for me at my hotel. She said she was coming to India to spend a week with me, and if I left New Delhi I should leave a message for her where I’d be. She was due to arrive on Swissair from Geneva the following day.
I took a long hot bath to wash off the dirt of southern India, then a long cool shower to refresh myself, and then I sent for the maid to pick up my dirty clothes. Just before I handed my things to her I remembered what I had in the pocket of my old pants. I had all that vibhuti Sai Baba had ‘manifested’ and given to me. I poured it out into an ash tray before I stuffed the pants into the plastic laundry bag.
I decided to meditate for a while. By then I’d learned that meditation was a process to clear your mind, not to analyze what you thought were your problems, and you accomplished this by sitting still and silently saying a meaningless short word, which they called a mantra, over and over again. That way your mind became a blank receptacle, and if you were ready, good things entered in it. In the least, you were refreshed. It was like a fast, where you eat nothing and cleanse your guts – in meditation you cleansed your mind.
Then I remembered the vibhuti. What was I going to do with it? I could throw it out, but that troubled me, because he’d given it to me just before he’d asked me that big question. I could take it back with me to Nevada, but what was I supposed to do with it there? Put it in an urn and worship it? That seemed ridiculous. Or I could use it. How should I use it? I wasn’t going to eat it; it was ash, and I might choke to death. The other thing I’d seen people do was rub it all over their bodies. I hesitated, because if I did that, I’d be dirty again. But what the hell, I thought, I could take another bath when I finished meditating. I had nothing else to do until Helga arrived.