It's a long entry today, my first three-part story, but it covers nearly two dozen years. It has a couple of interesting moments, though, such as seeing the future and photographing the past and seeing the invisible present. That's three.
Part One: India And Omaha
Around 20 years go, I flew off to India and visited a guru by the name of Sathya Sai Baba. Had never been to India, had never visited a guru, but the books by devotees were persuasive. He was an avatar, the direct descent of God into human form. He materialized objects, he could dematerialize his body and appear elsewhere instantly, he could bring the dead back to life.
My home was Nebraska, but I visited his ashram with a group from the Bay Area. In many ways, he appeared to be what the books had promised. I saw him materialize vibhuti, a gray ash powder, from a few feet away. He also did other materializations, including a crystal about the size of a golf ball or a lemon. When you see somebody do this at close range in a small room, and slowly for everybody to follow, it's impressive.
The voyage to India was a disappointment, though, in a key area. I met people there who meditated, and their experiences were amazing to hear about, but I never had any inner experiences. I sat one day and tried to meditate on the top of a hill above the ashram and the nearby town. Meditators would sit by a tree there and have deep experiences. I got a sunburn.
On the return to the United States from India, I had a couple of dreams that indicated I wasn't a devotee of Sai Baba, not by the Indian standards. His path wasn't mine. When I returned to my home in Omaha, Nebraska, it seemed India was a mistake. I had quit my job the previous year and was unemployed when I visited India, so the price of this pilgrimage was high.
But a few weeks after I returned home to Omaha, I started having meditation experiences. It was like somebody throwing a switch. The energy began flowing and I had months of experiences with bliss and visions and inner sounds. I had tapped into a source of pure energy that magnified my awareness.
It was great, but it made employment impossible. When you're in a state of bliss, it's hard to participate in the marketplace. My savings ran out, but then I started having dreams and visions concerning the Bay Area. I sold the furniture and my books and my large record collection, then left Omaha. I drove to California in 1990, wandered up the coast from L.A., and arrived here on June 24th. It was a huge leap into the void.
Part Two: Mill Valley
I lost track of the Sai Baba organization shortly after moving to California, though. Probably for the best. It's a devotional path known as bhakti yoga, and I'm not the devotional type. Nevertheless, whenever he was in the news, I paid attention. The rise of the Internet wasn't kind to Sai Baba. Videos appeared at websites which showed trickery behind the materializations, and former devotees started to level charges of sexual abuse at him.
So it interested me to read a few weeks ago that Sai Baba had been admitted to the hospital. He had organ problems, blood pressure problems, the kind of issues somebody in his 80s might experience. The daily medical bulletins were serious, they used "critical" frequently, but they also mentioned the medical team's competence and the sophistication of his treatment.
And then my car died when I was parked near the Richardson Bay Bridge in Mill Valley.
That was a week ago, Saturday the 23rd. I had parked to eat breakfast, but the car never started again. Fuel pump failure. As I waited for some mechanical help and ultimately a tow, I remembered something like this happening back around 1997. My van died at San Francisco International Airport, and I learned a few days later in a letter that my grandmother had died the same day. I forget the timing, but she died maybe in the same hour or even within minutes of the van failure.
So the question came to mind: was this an omen that Sai Baba would die soon?
I took some photos as I waited for the mechanic. That's Mt Tam over Mill Valley.
That crow almost hit the lamp post! Whew, that was close. You read about crow vertigo all the time.
Back home after the fuel pump failure -April 23rd- I took a nap unexpectedly in the afternoon, waking around 6:30. And then I phoned my mother to wish her a happy birthday. I did not know it at the time, but Sathya Sai Baba had just died.
Part Three: Berkeley
Walking home this afternoon from work, I came upon a batch of vinyl records. They had been discarded next to a dumpster, free record albums. I haven't played records in maybe 25 years, but I had to flip through the selection like a music lover at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard.
There was an album by Rod McKuen, Time Of Desire. I had not heard Rod in decades. Way back in the 1970s, I bought an album of his that he made with Anita Kerr, The Sea. However, his art was an acquired taste. He wrote poetry and read it, and what you bought was a vinyl record which played poetry with music.
There were a couple of dozen records at least in the stack, but Time Of Desire is the one I slipped into the backpack.
So, why did I bring Rod McKuen's Time Of Desire home with me? I don't have a record player, but do you see the answer on the list of songs/poems?
April Twenty-Third. Rod McKuen had recorded a poem, April Twenty-Third.
That was strange. April 23rd was my mother's birthday, and Sai Baba died on the 23rd of April, Pacific Coast Time. Sure is a funny universe, isn't it?
And there's one final funny moment to report. I looked up Rod McKuen online back home. Today is the birthday of Rod McKuen. I found his Time Of Desire album today and he was born today, in 1933 in Oakland. The album had been left two or three blocks from Oakland.
Happy Birthday, Rod McKuen. You picked the right day to be born.