by Karen Jonson
Dear Swamiji,
Words cannot fully describe how wonderful it was to meet you. While I was with you, something within me awakened and connected to you as if something deep inside of me had always known I would find you.
I am happy and relieved I did find you, because I was drowning in maya. I felt life must have some purpose, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find any meaning. I had searched for answers to my questions about God, and found nothing satisfying. But you have lightened the darkness of my life. The pains I suffered before I found you no longer cause me anxiety and unhappiness. And now I see my whole spiritual search, every step I took, was leading me to you.
While with you I glimpsed what it means to enter into “divine-love-consciousness.” It is so wonderful and comforting to think of God first, and not be totally trapped in material consciousness. I am longing to expand my divine-love-consciousness. I long to experience God.
Before finding you, I had thought I could find God on my own. I’m glad I no longer live in ignorance. I’m looking forward to seeing you again. You have stolen my heart.
Your devotee,
Karen
10
Roy Adored Me
A Shot at Worldly Love
ROY ADORED ME, and that was a feeling worth everything to me—at least before I found my spiritual teacher.
I met Roy in a chance encounter two months after moving to Seattle from Atlanta, and he probably saved my life. I had been suffering from extreme bouts of grief and depression as I finally started to feel the effects of having lost my brother and mother in my early twenties. When my mother killed herself just eight months after my brother had committed suicide, I had gone into shock, and never fully grieved for either of them. As as result, about every two years I spiral into a cycle of unrequited grief.
My path to meeting Roy began to be laid eight weeks before I moved to Seattle, during a vacation with a friend. Caroline was originally from Canada, and one of her sisters lived in Vancouver with her husband. Our two-week trip to the Pacific Northwest included flying into Seattle, driving up to Vancouver, then down the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, and back to Seattle. In addition to a vacation, this trip gave me the opportunity to check out Seattle as a potential new place to live.
After living in Atlanta for nine years, I was tired of the place. Too many bad memories were weighing me down and suffocating me, including a divorce on top, as well as the two deaths. I had reached such a point of despair that I felt like I was being suffocated. One day I was so depressed I imagined the city was a king-size hypodermic needle sucking the life force out of me. I knew it was time to leave and start over somewhere new and far away.
I had moved to Atlanta from upstate New York in 1980, right out of college. Curiously, the idea of moving to the southeast was first suggested to me by my college journalism advisor.
“It’s growing fast and there is a lot of opportunity,” he had said. “Plus, a new all-news television station called CNN just opened there and they’ll need a lot of writers.”
I didn’t understand why he was telling me this. Surely he knew I was not training to be a news writer. I was a features writer for media. There were plenty of other students majoring in television news at Fredonia State University.
But this sixty-plus curmudgeon, straight out of a 1940s film noir about the newspaper business, could not have been more clairvoyant. One month later I met a man named Tommy from Atlanta, who would become my next boyfriend. He was the drummer in a two-man band that had showed up for a two-week gig at the Holiday Inn where I worked. I’d been working there as a bartender and cocktail waitress to earn money for college. Tommy and his band mate were traveling up and down the east coast, playing at any hotel or dive bar that would have them. We dated the entire two weeks he was in town. Then, with few other options, I decided to follow him down to Atlanta.
With all my worldly possessions in the back seat and trunk, and my cat in a cardboard box on the passenger seat, I drove due south and took up residence with him in a small apartment. But I figured out pretty quickly that Tommy and I were not a love match. Luckily, he was on the road a lot, so I had plenty of time to think about my next move. I contemplated leaving Atlanta, maybe going to Denver or Phoenix—two popular destinations in the early 1980s.
When I told a friend about my dilemma, she offered a different solution: “Why leave Atlanta? Just leave Tommy. You and I can get an apartment in a cool neighborhood.”
I accepted her offer. She and I moved into a hipper neighborhood just north of Atlanta. Five months later, I met the man I would marry in a neighborhood bar. It was the first time I had ever fallen head over heels in love. David was smart and funny—my favorite combination. He was also creative. He had wanted to study photography, but his father insisted he be an engineer. David compromised and studied architecture. But his heart was never in it, and he could never gaind any traction in his career, a fact that depressed him. But I loved him anyway.
We married in January of 1982 in a small ceremony in some random church, and honeymooned in Charlotte, South Carolina. I was crazy about him, but over our five years of marriage he never quite settled into the notion of being a husband. I had no role model for being a good wife. We were merely best friends. One day I discovered he had been frequenting some of the “lingerie stores” that dotted the shadier parts of town. It broke my heart, but I ended our union a few months later. I didn’t want a male roommate who was into other women. I wanted a lover and life partner.
I lived in Atlanta for almost two more years, dating a few men. I had a rebound relationship with a recovering alcoholic hired to paint the house David and I had shared before we sold it. I lived in a dysfunctional on-again off-again relationship with Tim over the next year and a half. I felt the only way to get over him once and for all was to leave Atlanta. That’s when Caroline and I planned our vacation to Seattle.
I had passed through Seattle the summer before with a friend and knew how beautiful it was, tucked between the mountains and the sea. By the end of my first day there, I decided it would be my next home. I told Caroline’s sister and brother-in-law while we were in Vancouver.
“My brother’s roommate’s girlfriend, Elizabeth, lives in Seattle. She’s an airline stewardess and just got transferred from Washington D.C. to live closer to her boyfriend. You should call her when you move there. I’ll get her phone number for you.”
“Thanks so much,” I said.
Before Caroline and I boarded the plane back to Atlanta, I had rented an apartment in a Seattle suburb. Six weeks later, I was in there. Along with being geographically gorgeous compared to Atlanta, the area also offered a cultural and spiritual smorgasbord. Plus, the cooler weather was a relief from the unrelenting heat of southern summers. I reveled in my new home and fresh start. But the euphoria didn’t last.
Without the structure of my former life to hold me up, all of the trauma and turmoil of the previous nine years in Atlanta caught up with me. I began to crash—hard. I was sliding downhill and couldn’t stop my descent. The worst times were at night. I would dream about my brother, who had shot himself in the head at the age of twenty-two after living five years with schizophrenia. The nightmares were mired in grief and guilt. I had never properly grieved for my brother, because eight months after he took his life, my mother had taken hers with an overdose, sending me into deeper levels of shock.
In Seattle, the shock began to wear off and I didn’t know what to do with the flood of grief descending on me. I tried to find new freelance clients, but suddenly I found the normal rejection associated with being a freelance writer for companies unbearable. The rain and darkness of my first winter in Seattle did not help my state of mind. I was in this downward spiral when I remembered Elizabeth’s phone number in my wallet. I called her and left a message. To my surprise she called back a day later. She was bubbly and uber-friendly.
“It’s great to meet you. Do you like Thai food? It’s my favorite.”
Elizabeth and I met for dinner at a Thai restaurant on Capitol Hill. She was outgoing and entertaining, full of stories about flying around the country and meeting her Canadian boyfriend in South America.
“I just moved here three months ago and haven’t had time to make new friends,” she said. “One of my old friends from D.C. lives here though. We could all go out sometime.”
“Great,” I said.
She called the next day, “Hey, let’s go ice skating.”
That’s when I met Roy, a quiet, sweet guy, who began pursuing me feverishly. We began dating, but more as friends than lovers. Shy and nerdy, he wasn’t my type, but I continued seeing him platonically. Then one day I realized how much he loved me and realized I really needed someone to love me. He would do anything for me, I thought. This feels really good.
Over the next two years we lived together and occasionally talked about marriage. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Our relationship was always unbalanced. I loved him in a best friend sort of way. He loved me romantically and wanted to marry me. However, he was fully aware of my passion for God. He always said, “I accept that I will always be number two in your life.”
A few months before I attended Prabhakari’s lecture, he awkwardly asked me to marry him. It wasn’t the least bit romantic. We were just eating in some average local casual restaurant. I said, “Yes,” for all the wrong reasons.
So when push came to shove a few months later, Roy didn’t stand a chance.
11
The Teacher Visits
Guru Preparations
I LEARNED WHAT “seva to the guru” meant when Swamiji decided to visit Seattle in June 1992—it meant hours of dedicated service with no complaining.
We got the news in March that Swamiji would be visiting for eight days. The announcement kicked off a whirlwind of activity among our small group of devotees. For his personal comfort, there was no detail too insignificant for consideration—from the china he ate on to the mattress he slept on. I was surprised at the level of manpower and expense required to serve a man who was a sanyasi, one who had renounced earthly attachments.
Besides buying everything from new sheets to tea towels to prepare for his visit, we set up a public lecture, rearranged the prayer hall to accommodate more people, ran ads in the local New Age publications, hung posters all over town, made lists of groceries for his meals and to feed the devotees who would visit, landscaped the yard of the home where he would stay, and cleaned every crack and crevice of the house, especially his bedroom and bathroom. One of my assignments was to clean his bathroom, but nothing was ever good enough for Carla.
“Get those streaks off the shower tiles and mirror,” she said for the third time.
Carla and Karen L., who organized Prabhakari’s lectures, also organized the guru’s visit. They were a maniacal pair, seemingly trying to outdo each other to win the title of “fanatic of the year.” Only the best was good enough for them. But their lavish spending had made money an issue. They asked us each to give as much as we could of both time and donations. At one point, they decided Carla’s television would not be good enough for Swamiji. But they could not afford to purchase a new one. So they asked if any of us had a nice TV and VCR we could loan for his visit. I did, and was thrilled at the idea of Swamiji using them. Even though I had been involved for only six months, I too wanted to do whatever I could to make him happy.
During the two months of preparation, I put my personal life on hold. Roy and I had made travel plans for that spring, including finally getting to the Mount Rainier National Park, one of the highest peaks in America with enough snow in April to ride inner tubes and sleds.
But I never made it to Mt. Rainier, and many other places, because soon Swamiji became the primary focus of my existence.
12
For the Guru’s Pleasure
Total Immersion
LIKE ALL DEVOTEES, I longed for more physical proximity to Swamiji.
When he arrived in Seattle in June 1992, I was unable to go to the airport to greet him with the other devotees because my boss had scheduled a meeting for the exact time his plane landed at Sea-Tac Airport. I considered this schedule conflict an extreme karmic injustice. I fantasized about having that first glimpse of him as he emerged from the airplane, smiling playfully at everyone who greeted him. I imagined the devotees following him through the airport, I longed to be among them. My meeting dragged on past normal work hours. It took every ounce of my patience to not just stand up and walk out. I suffered silently as the seconds ticked by. Finally, the meeting ended at 5:30 p.m. I ran out of the building and sped to Carla’s house.
As I entered, the devotees were getting ready to eat a simple meal of white rice, toor dal, and some type of Indian spiced vegetable. I was not yet familiar with Indian cuisine and found the meal strange. It didn’t help that the devotees who prepared the food were not good cooks. Perhaps they were just more focused on Swamiji than on providing a good meal to the devotees. They had not even made enough rice to go around. But that night my focus was on hearing about Swamiji’s arrival, not on filling my belly.
After dinner, I faced the unexpected challenge of dressing in a sari for the first time. I had learned in Barsana Dham that Swamiji liked his female devotees to wear these flowing outfits, which featured six yards of fabric, a small blouse, and a petticoat. Of course, I didn’t own one, but Carla had recently received a shipment of saris from another female devotee. After the other females had picked them over, there were just two saris left: a brown-and-tan flowered print for me, and a solid blue cotton one for the other new woman in our group, Gloria.
Putting on a sari for the first time is no easy feat. It requires a precise process of tucking and folding the fabric so that it drapes over your shoulder and falls to the floor correctly. An experienced sari wearer can get one on in just a few minutes. But it took me over thirty minutes to put mine on I folded, wrapped, refolded, and rewrapped the fabric numerous times. Once I finally got it on, I felt surprisingly comfortable in my new foreign outfit. I wore my sari every night. On the fourth night, after satsang was over and all the non-devotee visitors had departed, Swamiji was lounging on the couch. The rest of us were sitting on the floor around him.
Noticing Gloria and me sitting side by side, he said, “Their saris each match their hair.” I was a blonde and she was a brunette. Delighted, both of us grinned shyly at the attention.
“How many saris do you each have?” he asked.
“We each only have one,” I said quietly.
“One’s enough,” he said, and everyone laughed.
After Swamiji departed for his bedroom, two of the other devotees convinced us to play a little trick on the guru. “Switch saris!”
The next night in satsang Gloria and I made sure we got to the prayer room before satsang began so we could sit together in the first row, closest to Swamiji’s couch, with me in her blue sari and she in my brown one. When the guru saw us, he noticed immediately and chuckled softly.
We giggled, enjoying our little secret with Swamiji.
13
Speak No Evil
Father Knows Best
“DON’T ASK SWAMIJI for advice unless you intend to follow his instructions fully.”
This was the firm instruction to any devotee requesting permission to speak personally with Swamiji. Devotees were constantly seeking his advice on everything under the sun—from which job to pursue to what school to make their children attend, to how to surrender to God more completely. People were so addicted to his advice that whenever they faced a dilemma they encouraged each other to “ask Swamiji.” But this encouragement came with a cautionary footnote: “Just be prepared to do exactly as he tells you to do.”
I was not privy to this insider directive when I first asked Swamiji a question about my life. I just formulated my question and hoped for the opportunity to ask him while he was in Seattle. My question regarded a sentence I’d read in a little
booklet created for new members. It’s easier to follow this path if you are single.
This worried me. After all, I was in a relationship with a man who had become my best friend and was going to be my husband. I became concerned that my relationship with Roy might be a hindrance on my path to God realization. I desperately wanted to ask Swamiji about it. I felt sure he would understand my predicament and reassure me that everything was fine, that I didn’t need to be technically single to find God. I assumed his reply, whatever it was, would improve my devotional life. I didn’t realize his answer would completely upend my life as I knew it.
I had planned to explain to Swamiji that my boyfriend was not just my future husband, but also my best friend and, effectively, the only family I had left on Earth. I would tell him my mother and one of my two brothers had died and I was estranged from my father and second brother. I needed Roy. He was all I had.
My chance to address this issue with Swamiji came when I was invited up to his bedroom. The minute I was told Swamiji wanted to see me, I grew nervous. My heart raced as I climbed the stairs and entered his inner sanctum, the largest room in the house. He was half sitting, half lying on the bed, resting against a pile of pillows. I was surprised I was not alone with him. In my mind, I had seen myself delivering my little speech to him in private. But he had also invited Gloria to see him. His assistant and Christi were there as well. All three women were sitting on the floor around him, gazing up at him lovingly. I sat down on the floor near his feet.
As he chatted with Gloria, I reconsidered what I had planned to say to him. During a lull in the conversation, I made my move.
“Swamiji, can I ask you a question?”
He turned and looked down at me as if he just remembered I was there. “Yes,” he said, with a hint of amusement in his tone.