SILENCE. Utter silence. I was on a high cliff, standing to the right of a waterfall that fell down, down, and farther down. The grass was vibrant green, lush. The water was crystalline, clear, intensely alive. I was wearing white robes and holding a big, golden bowl.

     A voice told me, “You must leap to surrender. Do or die. Make a choice.” Either I could stay on the edge and let what I was wanting pass me by or I could jump—jump and surrender. Implicit in the jumping was the surrender, true surrender even to the point of death. I looked up. I saw Swami approaching. In that moment he represented god to me. He was everything god ever meant to me. He was striking—longhair, keen Indian features, beautiful, almond-shaped eyes that peered enigmatically into the unknown. Flaming orange robes. He was speaking,but he was not moving his lips.

     “Choose. Choose now!” he ordered emphatically, eyes boring through me, searching my innermost being.

     I peered down the waterfall. I looked at him. I poured the water in the bowl over the edge of the cliff. I let go of the bowl and it fell gracefully behind the water, beside a waterfall so vast it appeared suspended.

     I gazed into the sky, blue, empty…and stared…not hesitating, not waiting, I spread my arms and leaped…over the edge. I felt myself falling, headfirst, spread-eagle…falling. No fear, no sensation. Suspended.     Whoop! Chaos! Jolted out of meditation. Vision shattered. Camera flashes going off. I was blinded. Noise, noise, and more noise. Loud music. People chanting—no, screaming, at the top of their lungs. Blaring voices in the loudspeakers. An Indian woman plopped down on top of me! Literally. Man! I hate when they do that! I pushed her over, but we were so crowded on the women’s side that there was really nowhere to push her. She had managed to squeeze her body into the two inches of space between me and the woman on my right. I was forced to tolerate her.

     I ventured an angry glance at her, although a person in deep meditation was not supposed to have “negative” emotions. We believed that in higher spiritual states (as indicated by deep trances and meditations), one was supposed to have mastered one’s self and not be gripped by lower emotions. I would have to say I was not angry. No, not at all. But, aggro? Yes, definitely aggro. “Aggro” was a word we had coined in the ashram when we felt beyond angry or mad. It was not a momentary sensation, but rather a feeling that smoldered and festered like an ugly infection, oozing negativity—a feeling in excess of the causal event.

     I glanced sidelong at her, not wanting anyone to see that I was “out” of my deep meditation. Dark, dark skin. She was grinning, missing one of her incisors. Her head was bobbling from side to side (a strange caricature of a bobblehead doll) in that way that only Indians can bobble their heads. Her face was weathered and beaten. Perhaps years ago it had carried a trace of beauty. Now, she was just a weathered remnant of a woman. Probably not too old—being poor, especially in India, has a way of aging people beyond their years. Skinny. Stomach to ribs. Her worn, faded, tie-dyed sari was hanging off her body in the manner of many shudra women. The long edge wrapped around her shoulders, barely, out of religious respect.

     I finally noticed my body. My right arm was still suspended halfway between myself and the ghee lamp sitting between me and three, now four (including the “new” lady) others. I must’ve been “out”  in meditation. I was still sitting cross-legged, lotus position. My back rigid, straight. What are these photographers doing here, so many of  them, taking pictures? Hmmm. Can’t worry about it right now. Get back in, get back in. Stay in the meditation. Don’t let anything pull me out. Lady, there, crashing beside me almost pulled me out….The chanting snatched me back from my own wandering mind.    

     “Om sheevuh shukteeyaykay roopinyay nawmuhhuh!” I screamed the refrain at the top of my lungs along with all the other people. The refrain, “Om shiva shaktyaikya rupinyai namaha,” was the mantra of the union of Shiva and Shakti.

     “Om para shaktyai namaha.” The lead chanter was Narayana, a brahmachari (a Hindu monk) who was belting out the words at the top of his lungs. He was wearing the yellow robes of sannyasa, which meant that he had taken a formal vow of lifelong celibacy and service to the guru. He was beautiful—all the brahmacharis were, for that matter. He was tall, a couple inches over six feet, and slim, very slim. His face was exquisite—aquiline nose, full lips, big, liquid, expressive eyes set in caramel-colored skin. Yes, he was outrageously beautiful. And he was very off-limits.

     Our interactions with each other were chaotic and unstable. Passionate and upsetting. Everything about him confused me. Even his eyes confused me! Sometimes he peered straight through me as if I were a letter written on glass—he refused to see me although I could be standing directly in front of him. Sometimes he looked at me in anger for no reason at all. He would shoot out of the temple—one glance at me and his liquid eyes would flash and spark like lightning on a wet summer’s evening. Inevitably, following the glance, a series of words would roll off his tongue that would scorch me to my heart.

     And then sometimes, and these were the times my friends always seemed to notice for me, they would tap me during meditation or singing bhajans and gesture toward him. I would look. There he would be on the stage sitting beside the singers, sitting on the temple floor with the other brahmacharis, or standing by himself staring at me with the most inexplicable expression. His eyes filled with a myriad of emotions—desire, wonder, bewilderment, fear—caught in the act of betraying him and his every emotion. In those moments, I knew how he felt about me. So did everyone else and they loved to tease me about it. Those moments did not last long before his usual mood would overtake him and I would wonder if I (or anyone) had really seen his heart at all—unless it was bitter and cold andmean. Ah! Narayana,my heart! And there he was on the stage leading us through archana.

     In between screaming the responses, I ventured a veiled look to the stage. Maybe I could watch him unawares—I loved observing him with his eyes closed, focused upon meditation or engrossed in leading archana. But, no! His eyes were open and he was looking at me. A dazed, faraway, focused look—was that even possible?!—in his eyes. Immediately he shut them. I looked away, now intensely focused on my offering of flower petals. Could he have been looking at me? I wondered as I continued in the chanting, although I knew he had been.

     “Om sheevuh shukteeyaykay roopinyay nawmuhhuh!”  we all thundered the response. The crowd in the temple had grown to over a thousand, nearing a couple thousand more than likely. We surely exceeded the fire code—if there was a fire code. I could not say that I had ever seen a fire code posted on any edifice in India and definitely not in a temple. People were piled upon each other, particularly in the women’s section.

     I looked outside of the temple. People were seated around palm leaf plates everywhere. Ordered chaos. We were in northern India, Poona—a suburb of sorts of Bombay (Mumbai). We were suffering through the dry period. The air was hot and oppressive. The ground was reddish brown, hard-packed. Everything was dusty, including us. Flies swarmed around us but somehow one grew used to the flies after a while. Strangely enough they became tolerable. I and everyone around me had ceased to fan them from our sweaty, stained faces. And so we sat, with them climbing all over us.

     By far the greatest nuisance was early-morning mosquitoes that swarmed in thick black clouds around us and feasted upon any exposed flesh. They had an intuitive ability to find human flesh through layers of thin clothing. At sunrise we had to be swaddled thickly in order to avoid being horribly chewed up by the “morning mosquitoes.” Luckily for us, it was not early morning anymore.We were careening through the fifth, the last archana of the day, which meant it was late afternoon. Focus! Focus! I chided myself.

     “Om maha kalyai namaha,” Narayana intoned.

     "Om sheevuh shukteeyaykay roopinyay nawmuhhuh!” we chanted (shouted) back to him in homage to the Divine Mother. The archana was nearing its end. Narayana was “handling” us well—drawing us deeper and deeper, further and further into the Divine Mother. His voice, blaring through the loudspeakers, was answered by our screaming. The chanting was at a feverish pitch. Our hands worked faster and faster, picking up flower petals from the palm leaf in front of us (if any petals remained) and throwing them as offerings into the fire. Tears streamed out of some peoples’ eyes. Other people were convulsing through kriyas—their bodies jerking, eyes rolling in their heads—movements and behaviors caused by the kundalini energy moving up and down their spines. This was the part I loved. Could the chanting and screaming get any more feverish?

     “Om chamundayai namaha!” Narayana chanted. His huge almond eyes were at half-mast as he was deep into the chanting, thoroughly absorbed.

     “Om sheevuh shukteeyaykay roopinyay nawmuhhuh!” we screamed back.

     “Om shiva shaktyaikya rupinyai namaha!” Narayana said it so fast and forcefully that it really sounded like a long, “Sheeeyoooblaaat!” We loved it. He could lead an archana to a phenomenally intense finale.

     “Om sheevuh shukteeyaykay roopinyay nawmuhhuh!!” we responded even louder.

     “Om shiva shaktyaikya rupinyai namaha!”

     “Om sheevuh shukteeyaykay roopinyay nawmuhhuh!!”

     The third, the final, cry. The climax, “Om shiva shaktyaikya rupinyai namaha!”

     And then…

     Silence.

     Silence.

     Silence, although the very air was undulating with the vibration of the words, the intensity. Again, as in all the archanas, I felt that “feeling” and wondered if I could take it—the intensity. The last archana of the day was the most intense, the most powerful. The power of the words was almost tangible, “touchable.” In fact, the force of the words over the course of the day had stirred the air, stirred the atmosphere, had stirred invisible “beings” to move and to act. I could feel them. I could feel the power, the stirring. I was being called…pulled…I closed my eyes and dropped off into meditation. So…easy…to…meditate. Not for long. I felt the woman who had decided to sit on top of me pushing even more against me as she made herself comfortable. Clearly, we were done. I was reeling inside. The meditation, the vision, the chanting, the archana, fasting. I had been fasting for three days in order to take full advantage of the power of the archanas.

     Time to back up a bit and give some background. At the time of this archana, I had been living in India for over ten months. I and many others were traveling through India with a guru named Chamunda Ma as she visited the many temples that were dedicated to her. People came from great distances to see her and receive her darshan when she came to one of her temples in a city. During the time of our visit, we would chant archana five times a day for five days. What was archana? Archana was a practice in which we recited a specific set of Sanskritic chants to our favorite god or goddess. In this case, we chanted the thousand names of Devi, the Divine Mother. It was said to purify the air, purify our hearts, and make us more like the deity for whom and to whom we were chanting. It was believed to burn our karma so that we could move more rapidly toward, and finally attain, freedom from the cycle of reincarnation, also called enlightenment. Hindus called such freedom moksha.

     Who was this Cha Ma? Most Hindus believed she was a guru and a saint. Many, however, believed her to be more, much more than a saint, guru, or even a satguru. Many believed she was an actual incarnation of Devi—an avatar. Yes! Those of us who lived with her and knew her personally were convinced that she was an avatar—the physical incarnation of the goddess Kali—a most malevolent and destructive being.We believed that Kali had decided to take on a human body and live on the earth as Cha Ma.

     I remember the first time I saw her…

     But that takes me all the way back to the beginning. By the time of Poona, I was in deep, too deep….

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