I have been traveling in the land of the “children of light” for over a year now. Since my life quest is to find out if there is meaning and purpose to life, my experiences here have presented me with much food for thought—much more than I could get in a lifetime of living in the U.S.

Last year, I explored the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which I consider to be the areas where the traditions of Indian life are more authentic. However, summers are a challenge there, so I plan to visit other parts of Bharata, a land given the name “India” by her foreign invaders. Many distinct cultural realities are scattered through the broad plains and the Himalayan Mountains that make up northern India. Even though, in the cities, the people and customs have noticeably adapted to accommodate the rule of foreigners—first the Muslim Afghans andTurks, then the European British and Portuguese. However, there are still villages where you will find yourself outside historical time. There the calendar page has not been turned for hundreds of years.

During my journey, I have had a variety of experiences: some were up, and some were down, and some were downright puzzling, but, I can assure you, “in the middle” is a rare occurrence here. In spite of some real challenges, somehow I am still in a good place mentally and physically, so I am impelled to explore more in my quest for understanding my self and my world. Although the aspects of my inner journey always remain as a mental backdrop impelling me onward, at times it seems I am just learning to look at the external world with a new mindset. At other times I think it is sheer curiosity that keeps me going. An inconceivable cauldron of color, chaos and creepy crawlies, India presents many opportunities to distract one off any purpose. Many times, I seem to move with my next inspiration without any definite plan, for I imagine many realities just awaiting my presence to unfold before my eyes.

Certainly, one thing that fascinates me is that all aspects of humanity still exist here. Bharata is her peoples, their unique customs, rituals and ideas. Egypt is the archeological site of the physical monuments of humankind, but India is the archeological site of the human mind. The possibility of unique experiences in this varied country is endless. For the mental world is their domain of expertise.

Since time immemorial, the modus operandi of the Indian literate has been the quest for freedom, not political, but real internal, intrinsic freedom. Enlightenment, they call it. It’s a state of mind, that, obviously, is without race, age or gender. Even their Supreme Being, the impersonal Brahman, is expressed grammatically in Sanskrit in the neuter gender. This aspiration for freedom without material distinctions has given their religion a flexibility that has bestowed Bharata with many unique sages, including women, from the Vedic period right up to modern times.


The first time I went to India, I had not even heard the word “enlightenment.” I was in my early thirties, yet I had come to the end of my life. Not in a negative sense, but the truth is I had done everything I had ever wanted to do and possessed everything I ever wanted to have. Really, more than I ever imagined, for somehow, I had never dreamt big dreams.

My realization at that time in my life was not a question, it was a statement: “This is all there is.” I honestly tried to live with this knowledge constantly rumbling and tumbling on the tip of my mind. I was living a totally normal life in every respect, but I was not comfortable internally. But I saw no other alternative. I kept telling myself, “This is all there is, so deal with it.” Somehow I could not.

At that time I was living in California. The possibility of raising one’s consciousness, or better still, obtaining cosmic consciousness, was in the air. Any weekend of the month, you could attend a seminar that promised instant transformation. Exotic gurus and yogis were drifting through San Francisco. I would go and listen to their talks, but they were either pretty simplistic or too far-fetched. So my first true teacher turned out to be an American, Brandon Poso. He had created a seminar series geared to experiencing one’s “I am-ness.” The second weekend was a true breakthrough experience for me. In a flash of insight, I saw my small, limited mind on an infinite ocean of possibility. I realized that, although I had everything I could ever want, one thing was still missing: human experience.

My first foray into the great, wide world of experience was to live in Spain where I attended the University of Madrid. I spent an incredible year of opening myself to love and life. I faced the world alone; I traveled alone; I even ate alone. And I was never really alone, for everywhere I went I connected with delightful people. Young people, both Americans and Europeans, who were also traveling, were so open to life. I found older Europeans were gentle and wise in ways that elderly Americans were not. I loved the Spanish people; they taught me a lot about human dignity and enjoying life. As I admired this many-faceted humanity funneling through my life, I began to wonder what it would mean to be a complete human being. I kept feeling that opening myself to experiencing as many realities as possible was a key. That year in Spain was the prelude to a travel lust that has sustained me through my quest for experiencing Life—for twenty years now.


When I returned to the San Francisco Bay area from Madrid, I really felt out of my element. The world around me seemed so sterile and lifeless. About that time, I met an Indian Swami who spoke perfect English, was incredibly intelligent, yet was quite charming. From the first time I listened to Swami Chinmayananda speak, I knew he had discovered something that I wanted. When he gave his philosophy lectures, he lit up like Times Square. I watched the way he enjoyed whatever he did, and I was fascinated. How could someone get such joy out of simple things? To me he appeared to be enveloped in his own bright fresh world for which our normal material world was only a dull horizon.

In speaking with him, I found out he had an organization in India that sponsored some charitable projects. I was looking for new experiences, so I thought that I might be useful there. I booked a flight on a four-month excursion fare-for a trial period. No sooner had I arrived, I found that the Swami had different plans for me. I was propelled on a whirlwind tour of an inconceivable unique world. While the Swami traveled on a lecture tour from one end of India to the other, I tagged along—eyes wide open and mind agape.

I was listening to lectures on the texts of the philosophical branch of Hinduism, called Vedanta, or “the end of knowledge,” meaning the ultimate truth. My mind lit up with the wonderful new concepts of god, man and the world. In short, the Swami was teaching me to think for myself. This was real stuff that I could cogitate on and start making sense of my world. Looking back, I realize I was never very good at swallowing another’s ideas anyway. I always wanted to figure out things for myself.

Then there was that strange quirk that I first noticed when I was about twelve. I could somehow tell when someone was lying, not about little everyday things, but about the big important issues. My mind would get all sticky, as if a big sharp thorn would emerge, with time it would try to rub and work its way to the real truth of the matter.

The first time I became aware of this tendency I was in a Bible study class. The preacher went off on a tangent about heaven and hell. He finished it off with an off-hand comment about the misfortune of the Jews who would not go to heaven. My mind got very, very sticky. I knew he did not speak the truth, but I did not know why it was not true.

So the thorn kept quietly rubbing in my brain, impelling me to figure it out. Obviously, the Jews did not ask to be born to a Jewish family, so if God put Jews in a Jewish family, he was the one condemning them to hell. Several years later, Gertrude Stein informed me through her writing that actually the word “hell” never appears in the Old Testament. Better still, I figured, the preacher was right: the Jews would not go to hell because there wasn’t one. Then when I was sixteen I heard Billie Graham claim that he could scare people into heaven. Lots of stickiness clamored over my brain on that one. Heaven is full of a bunch of people afraid of a hell that I had figured out did not exist, soI dismissed the hell thing.

But there were other issues. I confess I was one of those who asked where Cain and Abel got their wives in my Sunday School class. Any why didn’t someone edit the four resurrection stories to make them consistent? And how was Jesus from the lineage of David if Joseph wasn’t his father. Everyone got sticky when I asked those questions. All this sticky stuff just kept adding up and simmering in the back of my mind. Anytime I got a new fragment of relevant information, it just pegged in on top of the big batch of stickers. Sometimes giving a new order to the heap. Sometimes giving more light. Sometimes making more shadows.


With the Swami’s daily lectures and discussions, my mind was being replowed and reseeded with great new ideas. I began to comprehend the concepts of reincarnation, yoga, karma and dharma in their true sense—not the watered-down American version. For example, we Christians use the word karma to mean retribution. Actually, karma means action, work, activity—the very stuff of life. When an Indian says karma he simply means his own job. The sages use it to mean the action that makes the world go round. The dance of the creation is activity in all its manifestations, so technically there is no fault involved in suffering—it is a balancing act. Cogitating on these ideas, I started seeing more bright spots between the thorny brambles in my brain.

The other force of change on my mind was subtler. There is nothing like a strange environment to experience a change in consciousness. When the mind gets so much new input that it cannot figure things out—it just stands still. In India, foreigners may have the experience in a train station, a marketplace, or along a crowded road. Whereas, Indians may have the same experience when they see the orderly traffic in an American city. With this new frame of mind—just quietly observing the present time—the old stickers no longer seemed so big, at least not as important.

Then one bright day my mind was blown away. . . for less than an hour, but it sure changed my perceptions about life. Until that time I had been living a ninety per cent unconscious life—sifting through what came to me, enjoying and keeping what I liked, rejecting what I did not like, not really thinking about any rhyme nor reason in my life. Now I was forced to consider that there was a reality, I guess you would call it a spiritual side of life, that I had never even imagined. Exactly what is spiritual, and what is Life, and what is a spiritual life? All these concepts were new puzzles to be chomped on by my brain for years to come.

However, at the time of that experience, due to the peaceful mind that accompanied it, I did not consider all these ramifications. They would be questions I would live with, then forget, then be reminded of, then forget again, then consider, then forget, then reconsider. The answers never came in a straight line.


Ten years had passed and I still had not really understood what had happened to me. I did understand the experience was a change of consciousness, although, obviously, not a permanent one. Even so, it would always have some meaning in the background of my life. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that we humans can experience a unique level of consciousness. Clearly, we are continually attempting to do so. Just because we chose the easier routes of alcohol, drugs, sex, dance, adventure, instead of a mystical path, does not mean that we do not want the same result: to view ourselves and our world from a different perspective.

When I returned to U.S. nearly two years later, no matter how I arranged my life, my time was always overbooked with worldly concerns. I never found time to get down to the real issue of understanding who I really was—so many me’s. How do the different me’s connect? I kept feeling a need to have some major time to meditate, so I could come to a resolution and see things clearly. This was the principal impetus that brought me back to India. I wanted time to observe and think. Initially, my plan had been to live in an ashram, a spiritual community, dividing my time between meditation, studying (particularly Sanskrit) and doing some community service.

When that plan did not work, I decided to visit various ashrams and places of natural beauty. I even had in the back of my mind that I could write a guide on spiritual communities that were off the beaten track. Also, while traveling, I was always talking to Indians from every region, culture and inclination. From these interactions, I gathered many details to augment my fascination for seeing the world with a different mindset. In other words, in my travels, I was moving from a personal to a more general focus, one that continued to be more spontaneous and adventurous.