Maharishi & Me

by Susan Shumsky

  The story that follows reveals how I found myself by losing myself in the most highly celebrated guru to ever visit the USA and mentor to the Beatles, Deepak Chopra, the Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Clint Eastwood, David Lynch, George Lucas, and countless other celebrities.

  So we begin at the beginning, with my first baby steps toward the divine. Often such steps don’t seem divine—but we’ll get there eventually. For the yellow brick road is curvy and rocky, with many pitfalls. And sometimes the Wizard of Oz isn’t a wizard at all. Sometimes the wizard is our self, and the guru is simply the mirror.

  2

  INTO THE LAND OF OZ

  1966 TO 1967

  Like a river gushing fast down the hill, plunging into the ocean, the seeker, finding the ocean of life, just surrenders himself. The channel is made. It flows.

  —MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI

  I came into this world soon after the first atomic bombs were launched, committing genocide on the Japanese and thereby ending World War II. I grew up during the Cold War, under the perceived threat of nuclear war and an epidemic of bomb-shelter-building madness. Every time an airplane flew overhead (which was often, since we lived near an Air Force Base), my four-year-old self quaked in terror that a nuclear bomb would drop.

  So, like others of my generation, even as a child I was seeking a world at peace. Whenever I wished on a birthday cake, wishing well, or falling star, my only wish was “world peace.”

  My other deep desire was to know God. During quiet times at night, I would ask God questions, but received no answers. I assumed either God was too busy, or I wasn’t worthy to get a reply.

  I was wrong.

  Later I discovered anyone can experience God’s presence, hear God’s voice, and see God’s vision. But first I walked a long, winding pathway beginning in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1966. That was the start for many baby boomers. Even if they didn’t participate directly, they were swept up in a spiritual revolution. For my story is the story of an entire generation of spiritual pioneers that changed the world.

  The perfect cliché of hippiedom—that was me in 1966. A “flower child,” I fully embraced the counterculture lifestyle. The hippie movement was our new religion, where we supposedly lived in peaceful communes, loved everyone, handed out flowers to strangers, experimented with all things forbidden, “did our own thing” (meaning whatever, whenever), and generally created an alternate universe in a parallel dimension.

  We were all broken in some way, and like Humpty Dumpty, sought to put our shattered pieces back together. We bucked “the establishment” that betrayed us. We “stuck it to the man” that churned out nine-to-five robots living plastic lives in cookie-cutter suburbs. We abhorred violence, politics, and useless wars in overseas jungles. What we sought was world peace.

  In 1967, kids came from all over America to join us. About a hundred thousand gathered in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Dressed in outrageous costumes, they arrived in VW Bugs and buses painted with psychedelic neon designs. They crashed on the street, in hippie pads, or in Golden Gate Park. Everyone was talking love and peace and getting high. Many were runaways or tourists, but they found togetherness and utopia, even for just one “Summer of Love.”

  Harvard Psilocybin Project leaders Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (a.k.a. Ram Dass) acted as official tour guides to altered states through LSD. But my personal goal was not about drugs. I was seeking nirvana—whatever I imagined that to be. I read every book I could lay hands on about higher consciousness. I tried to “turn on, tune in,” and achieve what Leary, Alpert, and others claimed to get with psychedelics.

  Leary and Alpert introduced us to the Tibetan Book of the Dead in their work The Psychedelic Experience. I also read Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness, Self-Actualization by Maslow, Dhammapada by Buddha, Tao Te Ching by Lau Tzu, and D.T. Suzuki’s books on Zen Buddhism. I wanted a “meditation guide,” as Alan Watts mentioned in his books, such as The Way of Zen.

  LSD and my ensuing stark raving madness didn’t help me a whole lot. Then I met Arnold Roland. An LSD drug veteran, he claimed to have reached nirvana. He was willing to be my acid trip meditation guide. He could get pure, clean acid (“White Lightning”)—not cut with meth like what I’d taken before, which radically messed with my mind.

  The big day arrived. Finally, I thought, nirvana. Arnold and I checked into a rustic cabin in the Big Sur woods—perfect for my death and rebirth à la Tibetan Book of the Dead. We walked onto a bluff overlooking the Pacific and sat in the tall grass. The indigo sea faded into turquoise near the shore, white foam crashing on jagged rocks below. Under the vast azure dome, it was sunny, warm, breezy, and bright—great weather for dying.

  “Are you ready to drop the tabs?” Arnold asked.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” The severity of my fear was somewhat assuaged by Arnold’s reassuring manner. “I’m gonna leap before I look,” I squeaked.

  Arnold laughed. “That’s a stone groove.”

  Arnold and I washed down the little white pills with orange juice. Anxiously I lay back in the grass and closed my eyes. He sat on the ground, staring at me.

  Suddenly my eyes popped open. Arnold was lying in the grass next to me, asleep. What happened? I shook him. “Arnold, wake up.”

  He sat up, shaking his head and tossing the sleep (and drug) from his brain. “I crashed,” he said.

  I looked out over the ocean. The water was now violet, in rapid motion, particles of atoms swirling, dancing the dance of life. “The ocean is moving,” I said.

  “Outta sight—bitchin,” Arnold said.

  I’m hearing music, I thought. Flutes in the bushes. Drums in that tree. Violins playing over there. Birds singing. People singing. Jazz playing.

  “There’s music in the bushes,” I exclaimed.

  “It’s not in the bushes.”

  “Yes it is. I hear it in the bushes and trees,” I protested.

  “No. It’s blowing your mind—it’s all in your mind, chick.”

  “But it sounds so real. What time is it?”

  “It’s 4:30,” Arnold said.

  “4:30? What happened?” I asked.

  “What happened to you? You’ve been lying on the grass for the last four hours in ecstasy with a beatific smile on your face. Spaced-out. Totally gonzo,” Arnold answered.

  “Four hours? That’s impossible,” I exclaimed.

  “Look at my watch. It’s been four hours.”

  “But I don’t remember anything,” I said in dismay.

  “You’ve been meditating for four hours. Heavy, huh?”

  “Far out. Groovy, man,” I tried to convince myself.

  The wind started up and the sun made long shadows. It wasn’t so warm anymore. We stared at the ocean for another hour, bundled in blankets. Not much was said.

  I’ve been ripped off, I thought. Where’s my nirvana? I wasn’t even here for four hours. What’s the use of tripping when I’m out cold?

  We packed up and returned to the cabin. Arnold built a fire, we ate the dinner I’d packed, and had sex (it was the free-love generation, remember).

  A couple months later I met the tall, thin, pipe-smoking Frederick Jensen at an art school beach party. We hit if off right away. I moved into his redwood Berkeley brown-shingle pad with beamed ceilings and whitewashed walls. He lived with his best friend Stuart Ross. Fred and I often went camping in his VW van—to Yosemite, Muir Woods, Big Sur, and Lake Tahoe.

  But my main focus was scouring bookstores on Telegraph Avenue for every text I could find about Buddhism, Hinduism, and spiritual enlightenment. Since UC Berkeley had an Asian Studies department, I sought books that helped me understand my psychedelic experiences.

  One night I said to Stuart, “I’ve been reading books by Alan Watts. He said we need a ‘meditation guide.’ Do you know where to find one?” (Yeah, in 1966, good luck looking up “meditation guide,” “yoga,” or anything remotely similar in the Yellow Pages telephon
e directory!)

  Stuart asked, “Have you ever tried to meditate yourself?”

  I said, “No, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”

  I lay down on my bed (clearly, I didn’t even know meditation should be practiced in seated position). I relaxed and sort of prayed for a meditation.

  Suddenly an electric shock jolted through me. A cord of energy started running through the midline of my body, from my toes all the way up to the top of my head, moving in an endless stream. I felt plugged into the electric socket of the universe. Cosmic life force flowed through me in a most ecstatic way.

  I lay on the bed for about twenty minutes, grooving to that electric energy cord. I figured, Well, I guess this is meditation. Little did I know I’d just experienced my first meditation and kundalini awakening concurrently, without drugs. (Kundalini, considered difficult to attain, is a rare spiritual energy flowing upward through the body.)

  After that, sometimes I smoked a joint, crossed-legged, with eyes closed, and pretended I was Buddha. Electric energy hummed through my body. I floated off into nothingness. Though enjoying these experiences, I longed to meditate properly. I wanted a meditation guide, a real meditation guide.

  Fellow art student Christo Papageorgou’s long black bushy hair, beard, and mustache resembled a wild, tangled scrubland. His long, ragged fingernails proved him a guitar-plucking musician. But his dry mouth, raw nerves, and glazed, reddish eyes marked him a pothead. Sometimes we got stoned together. But in autumn 1966, he took me to the Transcendental Meditation Center.

  I entered what seemed a holy place. Fragrant flowers and faint reminiscence of incense wafted through the serene air. From a photo hanging on the wall, the guru smiled—or more accurately, beamed. He was an Indian with long black wavy hair, beard, moustache, brown skin, and white silk robes. Long strings of beads encircled his neck. Most striking was the spiritual emanation radiating from his large, sparkling, magnetic, ebony eyes. If God wanted to visit earth and look like someone, I imagined this was how He would look.

  “His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,” Christo said, pointing to the photo.

  Enraptured, I immediately fell in love with this Indian man. “Why didn’t you bring me here sooner?” I complained to Christo.

  “People get turned off when I tell them about meditation,” Christo answered.

  “But I’ve been begging you to help me find a meditation guide.”

  Nine months seemed forever. That’s how long I would have to wait for the next Transcendental Meditation course. But my dream was finally coming true. I was getting a meditation guide, a real meditation guide.

  After what seemed like eternity, it was August 1967, the peak of the Summer of Love. At a UC Berkeley classroom, Jerry Jarvis, who’d learned TM in 1961 and was president of the Students International Meditation Society (SIMS), drew a diagram on a blackboard. It looked like a thought bubble in a cartoon—several circles in graduated sizes, one above the other, with a wavy line drawn across the top and straight line across the bottom.

  Maharishi explaining bubble diagram. BBC Photo Library Archives

  “The mind is like an ocean. Thoughts are like bubbles, beginning here in transcendental Being,” he explained, pointing to the line on the bottom. “Each thought rises through subtle awareness until it bursts on the gross surface level, where we perceive it consciously.” He pointed to the wavy line on top.

  “In TM we reverse the thinking process, taking the mind back to its original source—transcendental consciousness. Our vehicle is the mantra. We repeat the mantra consciously. Then it becomes more subtle and powerful as we float down to the source of thought, pure Being. Our conscious mind travels from the outer, manifest relative field, to the inner unmanifest absolute, where we transcend to pure consciousness—a state of inner peace and contentment, where mind is alert and body is quiet. Heart rate slows down, breathing becomes still, but mind remains awake. This is called restful alertness.”

  Jerry explained how TM differs from methods like hypnosis, concentration, and contemplation, which keep the mind on the surface and disallow it from going deep within, into the transcendental state of Being. Everything he said made a lot of sense.

  Finally, the day arrived for my mysterious initiation into Transcendental Meditation—August 5, 1967. I’d panhandled on Telegraph Avenue to save up the bread ($35) for my initiation. Now I’ll learn real meditation, I thought. I’m gonna take the leap of faith. Leap before I look.

  I was told to bring fruit, flowers, and a new white handkerchief for a ceremony. A woman took my conglomeration and whispered, “Sit here and fill out this form.”

  After a while, the same woman handed me a woven straw basket holding the entire kit and caboodle, with my form perched on top. Why did they cut the stems off my carnations? I thought. How do they decide what mantra to give me?

  Half an hour went by without a sound. It’s so quiet here. What’s that scent? Flowers and incense, and something else.

  “Susan, it’s time. Please remove your shoes and come upstairs.”

  The woman motioned me to enter a room where her husband, Jerry Jarvis, sat on a chair in stocking feet in front of an altar covered with a white sheet. Brass vessels held white rice, water, candle, incense, and other objects.

  I thought he was Jewish. What’s he doing in front of this altar?

  Jerry, whose round face resembled the man in the moon, and who beamed at me with moonlike serenity, placed my basket on the altar.

  “Sit here,” he said, and motioned me to sit next to him. “Today you will receive a mantra or meaningless sound chosen especially for you. After we learn our mantra, we keep it to ourself. Maharishi says, ‘When we plant a seed, we don’t dig it up to see if it’s growing.’”

  He looked at the form. “What’s your age?” he asked.

  “Nineteen,” I answered.

  “Have you taken any drugs in the last two weeks?”

  “No. Not for a month.”

  “Do you have any questions?” he asked.

  “Your presence is very big. Really far out, you know, powerful.”

  “When I teach, I’m in touch with him.” Jerry pointed to a framed picture on the altar. “This meditation came from him—Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of North India, Maharishi’s master.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “He attained his final samadhi in 1953. Are you ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Now I’ll begin and you’ll witness a ceremony in gratitude to the tradition of masters who have given us this wisdom of integration of life.”

  Jerry stood in front of the altar and motioned me to stand next to him. My heartbeat sped into overdrive. He picked up all the carnations from my basket and handed me one. Then, while chanting in some strange language, he dipped a carnation in water and shook it in the air. Water sprayed everywhere, including all over me.

  What religion is this? I wondered.

  Jerry continued chanting while holding my flowers between his palms in a kind of pseudo-Christian prayer. He placed white rice and items from my basket onto a brass tray and splashed more water about. He smeared something like mud onto my handkerchief, twirled an incense stick, and whirled a lit candle around. He ignited what smelled like a drug in a hospital and traced circles in the air. Black smoke rose up. He grabbed the flower I’d been holding and placed all the flowers on the altar.

  Then he motioned me to get down.

  What? He’s down on his knees with head bowed and palms together, like a Catholic. I thought he was Jewish. Idol worship! And he wants me to get down too.

  I dropped to my knees stiffly and gawked at him.

  He suddenly looked up at me and said, “Aing namah.” This abrupt motion and weird sound scared the hell out of me—like a 3-D sci-fi movie, where a creepy alien popped out from the screen, speaking ET-tongue. My head jerked back. Then, after calming a bit, I asked myself, Is this the word?

  “Aing namah, Ai
ng namah, Aing namah, Aing namah, Aing namah,” Jerry repeated. He motioned for me to repeat the mantra. I tried. I’m getting tongue-tied. He repeated it. Again I tried. This isn’t working. This is impossible.

  Finally I got it right. Jerry said to repeat it quieter and quieter. After a while, he instructed me to repeat it mentally.

  He ushered me out and the woman put me in another room, where I tried hard to repeat the word. Oh, my God, I can’t remember it. What is that word? I’m a failure. I was on the verge of tears when the woman returned. “Come with me.”

  Back to Jerry’s room. He said, “What did you experience?”

  “Nothing. I couldn’t remember the word.”

  He repeated again, “Aing namah, Aing namah, Aing namah.”

  I repeated it.

  Again to the other room for another half hour. But I forgot the word right away, and couldn’t repeat it. Again I got shuffled back into Jerry’s room.

  “What did you experience?” Jerry asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Very good. Meditate like this tonight and tomorrow morning and then come to the meeting tomorrow night,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  I was too flustered and embarrassed to admit I’d forgotten the word again.

  3

  A NATURAL HIGH

  1967 TO 1968

  Man was not born to suffer. He was born to enjoy.

  It is the natural tendency of the mind to seek a field of greater happiness.

  The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.

  —MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI

  Back in my hippie pad, with walls painted psychedelic purple, green, and orange (to my landlord’s horror), I sank into an overstuffed chair to try meditating again. What was that word? “Hing yama.” Was that it?