India Initiations Part 1

I’d been to India a couple of times before but I was not prepared for Varanasi. Known locally as Kashi, Banares, or whatever they happen to decide it’s called on that day – ‘Banarasi’ or any other variant – well, that already gives you a sense of the place. This is Shiva’s city and there’s not a moment to forget it. The sound of ‘hara hara Mahadev!’ and ‘Om namah Shivayah’ fills the air as much as the heavy bowls of incense. Oh and the scent of holy cow dung mixed with burning human flesh from the cremation grounds. In fact, it’s considered that the city actually is Shiva in physical form, and there is certainly something so profound about that place that I struggle to describe it without just wanting to stop and meditate.

Everywhere is a temple. You really can’t trip on something without it being holy. It’s the condensation of 3,000 years of continuous spiritual practice in a maze of narrow streets where the living and the dead share the same space, the same water, the same air. As India’s holiest city, it’s packed with local spiritual tourists, especially along the banks of the river/goddess Ganga, which is laced with a series of 85 ‘ghats’, including Manikarnika Ghat and Harishchandra where hundreds of bodies are cremated daily to grant moksha.

I was intimidated when I arrived. There were all the Sadhus walking around in their orange robes. Or Aghoris with their white faces and skulls around their necks. And even simply just locals, living their lives walking barefoot through the rubbish, everyone seeming to be deliberately ignoring me. Many of the roads were so packed you had to shuffle like being at a music festival, I hadn’t been in crowds like that for many years. I found a hostel to stay at and got some rest as my immune system was struggling here. As I settled in, I spent the next few weeks, and then months, visiting temples, praying, learning from the Sadhus, and meditating at the cremation grounds. I also learned Sitar from a lovely man in the music shop and I’d sit there most evenings learning from him, his friends, and the western visitors that would stop by about the local culture. There’s lots that could be said around all of it of course. But it would cheapen it, so I’ll move on.

Gurus

I’d like to focus on the topic of gurus because it’s been something that has been a recurring theme in all my travels, and a tough lesson I was being forced to learn. By this point in my journey, with so many teacher disasters already, I was not actively looking for a guru. Or at least, I was pretending to myself I wasn’t. Shiva was onto me though.

Not content with all the temples and blessings, my PM brain had come in to Kashi with an agenda. As I was here, I wanted to study nondual Shaivism/Tantra. It was the perfect place. I’d researched the main names – sadly the recently passed Mark Dyczkowski would have been amazing to study with, but I did get to visit his house and attend a puja with his main student. Bettina Baumer but she wasn’t teaching. That was about it. Damn.

I’d also gone hunting around the streets for ashrams. I saw some white-robed westerners outside a Vedanta place who looked pretty pleased with themselves so I went up to them and they took me inside to meet their Guru. A young English woman in her mid-twenties who looked like a Sarah but called herself Lolita was waiting on him hand and foot. He asked me to spend time with her so she could tell me how wonderful it (he) was. Then when I was about to ask some questions he said ‘let’s meditate’. We all closed our eyes and I felt him trying to jump into my psychic field, hook me in to some kind of spiritual bliss delusion program he had psychically running, and then falter when we sensed I was onto him and not knowing what to do. His phone rang and he went into another room to take the call. I took my exit and didn’t look back.

I’d even received two visions around it on the plane. Both of them were a cosmic setup because both of them flopped. Vision one was that I’d seen a vision of a building with a courtyard. Generic to describe but when you recognise it it’s clear. After a few weeks, I recognised it. It was the ashram of a old ‘guru’ who seemed like he had a few loose screws but that can come with the territory. It’s actually where I attended the puja and he had some credibility so I thought, maybe he can teach me. I went there one evening to meet him, and he had a Russian student living with him who seemed pretty blissed out. I think his first sentence to me was ‘have some chai’. His second sentence, ‘you dont have to sleep with me if you don’t want to – I’m not a rapist’. His third was ‘you don’t have any power, you need guru power. Bring me 5 pieces of fruit and a coconut and touch my feet and I will make you happy.’ His fourth: ‘Look how closed your heart is, and look how open-hearted and happy [Russian woman} is. That’s because of me!’. I didn’t stay for the rest.

You would think I would have learned, but no. My second vision was of a teacher with square-rimmed glasses in a bigger ashram space. I’d been doing absolutely great connecting with Mahavatar Babaji directly at the Lahiri ashram. It was awesome. But I saw that they were offering formal initiation into the Kriya Yoga tradition, which they only do a couple of times a year and I signed up. Should have been fine. The ‘guru’ there is ostensibly part of a direct lineage (which is debatable) and his father recently died so he’s taken on the job – alongside his lucrative investment banking career in London. He flies in twice a year on expenses and barely knows what a chakra is, yet he has all these people flocking to him and touching his feet and offering diksha. I was a bit naive on the whole diksha thing so I sat through three excruciating days of the most patronizing and misguided spiritual ‘training’ I think I’ve ever been on and took the initiation. It felt weird. I checked in with my other teacher about it later (Peter, who’s not like any of them) and he said these initiations come with all kinds of strings attached where I was bound to do what they say as part of the contract. Um. No thanks. I had it cosmically annulled.

I took my coconut prasad from the diksha and went and sat on the steps by one of the ghats. I was sad. None of it had worked out. Tears flowed and the local guys pretended not to notice the crazy crying white girl. A couple of them were very sweet. I didn’t care. In front of me, sitting by the fire next to their tents were a couple of the Sadhus I’d really connected with. There was one who was a fraud – dressed up in some kind of clown outfit that I think he thought was spiritual. He’d worked in tech and reinvented himself as a Baba. But the other was for real. Barely spoke a word but when he did speak, those words landed. Even in Hindi, which I didn’t understand. He was like an Indian Jesus, and you could feel the energy of his presence. With him was the other woman I’d really felt something from. An Aghori woman in her 70s who’d lived it all and back again. Earlier, when I’d simply walked past her, I had to stop and backtrack because I felt her energy so strongly.

I just watched them for a moment. ‘No one’s coming to save you’, I heard a voice in the sky say to me. I cried some more. When I was done I walked down and brought them some offerings. Jesus took my coconut and smashed it for me – a hugely symbolic act which is what a teacher does to smash the ego of the student – and he did it without realising where I’d got it of what he was doing. Or maybe he did, I don’t know. The point was it was casual. I felt a connection with him, but he was never going to be my teacher. Since then, I get flashes of his face from time to time, and hers. I know on some very deep level we’re connected, and I take a lot of joy and comfort in that. I don’t even know their names.

All that all took me to about three months in Varanasi alone. I was spent. I needed to get out. ‘There’s a path opening for you to go to Rishikesh’ I heard. Great. Let’s go.