He had sat with priests and wisemen, listening to them while remaining silent himself, struggling to understand. Letting them fill the empty bowl of his mind as the villagers replenished his feeding bowl. The knowledge had been dreadfully slow in coming and painfully acquired. In the early days language was the obstacle. Using signs and gesture and his scant vocabulary he had come to understand the essence of their teaching, yet the greatest obstacle still remained: the rigidity of his mind, its dogmatism and unwillingness to accept.
Eventually he found himself in the mountainous region of the northeast where the holiest men lived. There he discovered, as if by divine revelation, that the enlightenment he was seeking was in a place he had never suspected--inside himself. And with the knowledge came the awareness that first he had to strip off, layer by layer, the defenses that had been erected and reinforced since birth to protect his vulnerable personality.
The vast majority of human beings were encased inside this protective shell all their life. The love of self and the desire to impose it on others, on the world at large, made them try to re-create every person and every thing in their own image.
So the first step, he now came to see, was to let go--to disinherit his bodily needs and accept the world as it is. To accept what is given. From this moment on he discarded his own personality, his own identity, and miraculously found himself beyond the barrier in a world that was completely changed because he himself had undergone a metamorphosis.
His body erupted in sores, which festered and became succulent feeding places for parasites and flies. He almost died of malaria and lay for days in a burning, shaking stupor, tended by two old women who starved the fever out of him. Twice he was bitten by venomous snakes, which had curled close to share his body heat while he slept. He became thin, almost to the point of emaciation, with stringy arms and lean flanks; yet harder, tougher, and more resilient, able to withstand the heat and cold and the hardships of travel over long distances, always on foot.
One accident damaged him permanently; he had fallen down a steep rocky ravine and smashed his left knee. The healing took many months, leaving the limb misshapen, and thereafter his walk was lurching and ungainly and caused him much pain.
His face changed beyond recognition--burned and cracked by the sun and blistered by the wind, the flesh tautened on his cheekbones, leaving deep hollows beneath. His chin became a jutting knob of bone. In this prematurely aged mask his eyes appeared uncommonly large, the whites tinged with blue so that they seemed even whiter, the brown irises clear and brilliant like convex mirrors. His stare was daunting in its naked, uncompromising directness.
He acquired a new name, too: Bhumi Bhap. Which in the language of his teachers means Earth Father. With this final change the transformation was complete. The inner and outer man had been reborn.
There were still vestiges of his former life, traces of racial memory, which sometimes surfaced in dreams. He could not erase them completely, even though they had no meaning or relevance in his new philosophy: The past was truly dead.
Now the time had come for this new being to fulfill the purpose for which it had been created.
He stayed three weeks in New York while arrangements were made. The ashram was a converted loft in what had been a warehouse on Cleveland Street in the SoHo district. For much of the time he sat and meditated. Whenever approached by any of the young initiates who had heard of his pilgrimage he was amazed to find that they shared his beliefs; he was no longer alone as he had been all those years ago when he set out on his quest.
In these young people he saw signs of spiritual malaise, which were symptoms of a national, perhaps worldwide, dissatisfaction: a growing body of youth looking for the way ahead and seeking it in the ancient religious teachings. How, he wondered, could this sickness and dissatisfaction be channeled and used? It was taught that the self and ultimate reality were one and the same, given expression as "Thou are That." Then how to reconcile this tenet of the faith with his own desire for change? The world must be reborn, just as he had been reborn. But rebirth demanded a death. It was already sliding toward the brink. He could watch it die--more, he would help it toward self-extinction.
They would follow him, these thousands of young people, if he were prepared to lead. But lead where? He must find the answer.
From New York he flew to Las Vegas and from there he went north to a small settlement between the townships of Sunnyside and Lund on the banks of the White River, overlooked by Mount Grafton. Even while flying over the Rockies and seeing once again the familiar topography, no stray thought or memory of his previous life impinged upon the serene surface of his mind.
The past was truly dead and buried.
There were a few shacks grouped around a clearing in the trees. About fifty members of the faith lived there, young men mostly, with shaved heads and saffron robes. When one of them asked why his own robes were black, Bhumi Bhap replied, "In mourning."
In one of the shacks he unpacked his few belongings, including his bowl and wooden spoon, asking to be excused from their company. Alone, he adopted the posture advocated by the Bhagavad-Gita, repeating silently over and over again, Upright body, head and neck, which rest still and move not, with inner gaze that is not restless, master of mind, hoping for nothing, desiring nothing.
Hunger sharpened his senses while meditation relaxed his mind. The outer world faded away and in a state of semitrance his cosmic awareness unfolded like a flower in the spring rain.
Listening.
Watching.
Touching.
Tasting.
Experiencing.
His senses reached out like the soft white shoots of a plant into rich moist earth. His consciousness expanded until it transcended time and space. His inner eye conjured up the blue-white bowling ball swinging through the void. Only it was not as he himself had once seen it, clear and sparkling. Now it was wreathed in a gray miasma. The atmosphere was a dense impenetrable blanket. The once-sweet rainwater that flooded from the skies scorched the flesh. The oceans moved sluggishly, clogged with dying plants and fish. Every breath was a painful gasp.
This was how it would be. This was how it must be.
His inner eye probed the future and saw the horror. It couldn't be changed. Had he not been taught to give way to the laws of nature operating inside himself in order to release his true self from that bondage? What was outward reality, after all, but a sham, a deceit, a trick of the imperfect senses? The planet was dying. What matter to him?
. . . hoping for nothing desiring nothing . . .
Surely that was the one true path? But what about his pilgrimage and its ultimate purpose? Was he now to foresake it?
Bhumi Bhap didn't know. He had failed before he had begun. He felt utter despair.
The crude wooden walls of the shack swam back into focus. The oil lamp, turned low, burned with a smoky orange light, making a steady dim circle on the sandy floor. In this circle, at his feet, he saw the scorpion.
It was the color of pale amber, its translucent body relaxed, not curled in the stinging position. The claws twitched and inched forward across the sandy floor toward him, wavering slightly as if preparing for a courtship dance. Possibly it sensed the heat of his body.
Bhumi Bhap waited, motionless, his senses quiescent.
One of the creature's claws touched the big toe of his left foot and immediately stopped. After a moment the claw opened and tentatively gripped his toe, as if testing it. The creature had to decide between three options. Food. Friend. Enemy.
Which was it to be?