My Mother My Mirror

by Andrea Kitt

  As I got to know the little community of students and teachers they became the closest I had to a family in this foreign land. There was one girl who revelled in my English sense of humour and laughed a lot, in a very friendly way, at the things I said. Doug was a weight-lifter and a communist with the strongest, most direct gaze I had ever come across: not the sort of person you would expect to find on an acupuncture course, but he was very friendly with me too. And then there was Jessie Moon.

  Jessie was English and a premie: tall, with big brown eyes, full lips and an amiable lollop that I found very attractive. After a few weeks of gazing at each other we began to get together after college. All the things I did with Jessie were things that I hadn’t done before and haven’t done since. For a start, I had never been with a married man before. And because we had to be secret, we made love in some strange places, which again were unique experiences.

  There was one time on a water-bed in a house where I was doing some cleaning while the owners were away; I remember struggling with the lack of resistance in the surface beneath us, and later tucking in the sheet and discovering a gun, which is not unusual in the States but always a little shocking. Then one time we made love in the back of a car: another experience that’s not as romantic as it seems, with all the problems of lack of space. Of course he complained a lot about his wife and gave me the impression he may leave her, but in the end he chose her rather than me, and I realized that being with a married man was a bad idea.

  One reason there were a lot of premies in this area was that Maharaji’s main residence was on top of a hill in Malibu. I never went inside – these places were heavily guarded – but I did hang around a little outside the gates, hoping of course that some member of the family might show their face; and I did get to know one of the instructors who was working full-time for Maharaji and had a very nice car given to him for the job.

  Jonathan was a charming man. He was that unusual sort of Leo: calm, unruffleable, totally consistent and reliable; perhaps an example of a fulfilled lion, as opposed to the frustrated one I had been brought up by. He was familiar to me from many satsang programs in London, and had stayed with Hans, Angus and myself in Brighton a couple of times when his services were required in that town. I just presumed that instructors were out of bounds, but he seemed to take an interest in me, and presently asked me out for a meal.

  He was such a gentleman! And I have never been treated so much like a lady: he opened every door for me, treated me to lovely food in sophisticated Beverly Hills restaurants, drove me around in his posh car, and was constantly attentive and solicitous with a fine blend of dignity and warmth.

  Jonathan was also sweetly naïve. Having been renunciate for many years, he was rather bemused by the whole situation. I suppose he just couldn’t resist me! But I don’t think he’d done anything like this since becoming an instructor. Possibly some of his colleagues had, and he thought he’d give it a try. He would stop the car and smile at me and say, “Shall we have an affair?” with a cheeky, impish look on his face. However, he didn’t do anything about it other than the odd kiss, so typically I took the situation into my own hands.

  I knew where he lived, in a shared house on the side of the hill; so one night at about midnight, when I was pretty sure he’d be in bed, I drove to the bottom of the driveway, parked my car and walked softly the rest of the way up to his bedroom window, which was on the ground floor and conveniently open. I snuck in, got into his bed, climbed on top of him and seduced him. What I remember most clearly is the moment of entry, at which he laughed and I cheered and clapped, in celebration of the end of his celibacy!

  After a month, Matthew came back to his house, and for a few weeks it was fine, but slowly my freedom was restricted. First the domestic duties increased to include work in the kitchen and trips to the supermarket that had nothing to do with carrots, then he started to complain about my friends coming to visit. Believe it or not, this was largely Skweek’s fault. He had moved out to California and found a studio a few miles away. A year or so before my arrival he used to come round to the house to smoke dope and listen to sixties music with Matthew, but then one time Matthew accused him of stealing something, and they had a fight, and now he was not welcome anywhere near the premises. So when I invited him round he was not greeted warmly. And slowly the same suspicion was extended to my other friends, until I felt uncomfortable having anyone to visit.

  It was around then that one of my massage clients invited me back to his place to try ‘ecstasy’, the latest feel-good drug. To begin with I was wary and refused, but with all the upset around my living situation I finally decided this was a good time for a change in perspective, so one Saturday evening I made my way to the place where he lived. He had another housekeeping job like my own, in a luxurious building with steps down to its own private beach; but his employers were away for the weekend so we had it all to ourselves.

  It did make me feel good. Being in the habit of following my breath, I continued to do so as the drug took effect and it greatly increased my experience, making me strongly aware of the power and the love in it. I spent an hour or two trying to give him satsang. I hope I wasn’t too cringingly dogmatic. I know it was a lovely feeling allowing it all to pour from my lips and I’m sure I showered him with good energy in the process, but goodness knows what I said. He was rather unresponsive.

  Later we borrowed a bottle of wine from the cellar and I reached out to touch him, but he was similarly unresponsive to my body. I’m pretty sure he liked me; he was just a bit reserved. I spent a while feeling lonely with that loneliness that is worse because there is someone else so near but so far, then slowly as the night wore on the drug wore off, we became tired, and then I went home. But I still felt it throughout the following week: the lovely, open-hearted, expansive feeling, as if I had recently been with Maharaji.

  I wasn’t happy at Matthew’s any more. I felt so alone, but I didn’t know where else to go. Then Doug said I could stay with him, if I didn’t mind sharing his bed. There was very little sexual chemistry between us, but I do remember the joy of falling asleep on his well-padded shoulder, full of weight-lifter’s muscles. He encouraged me to go to the gym, which I enjoyed for a while, especially the way it got me breathing deeply. Then he took me to a movie about female weight-lifters whom I thought were very ugly.

  I made friends with Doug’s cat and her many kittens; I remember giving them all baths with flea shampoo out at the back of his house. But mainly he lived a very different lifestyle from me, cooking up enormous steaks every day to keep up his protein, going off to his communist meetings from time to time, and of course spending a lot of time in the gym.

  While I was staying there I went up one day to the house where Jessie lived. I had stopped sleeping with him by then, but there were other premies living there and on this occasion there was a party happening. I wandered in, accepted a drink and began talking to a man I had known previously as Mahatma Sambhavo. I had seen him in a film called ‘Who is Guru Maharaji?’, giving satsang as he polished the small aeroplane he used to pilot Maharaji to meetings up and down the California coast; but I’d never met him before. He said to call him Sam. He was, to refer back to the chapter about my grandfather: Gemini, charming, dynamic, spiritual, keen on writing, and had a certain sadness in his eyes that reminded me of myself. Little did I know, as we never do at the time, just what an enormous impact he would have on the rest of my life.

  18

  Mahatma Sambhavo

  Sam was a hero in my eyes. He was the man who had originally found Maharaji in India and encouraged him to come to the West, and he had an amazing tale to tell about his adventures leading up to this point. In the sixties Sam had been something of a guru in his own right, guiding his fellow hippies through their acid trips and encouraging them to use the experience to investigate the nature of reality. He told me about one particular trip in which, deep in meditation, he had seen in glorious detail the vast wheel of human existenc
e in all its amazing variety.

  As the flower power years began to fade a little round the edges, Sam detected a lostness amongst his fellow seekers and felt called to search for the next step forward in growth and understanding: those qualities that would eventually lead to a golden age of world peace and harmony. He believed he was on the cutting edge of an emerging consciousness, and resolved to do whatever he could in the service of humanity.

  First he travelled to the small Mediterranean island of Formentera where young people were living together in communities, eating simple local food, smoking dope and making music. Though it was OK as far as it went, once again he detected a certain stuckness. They were living a different life from the previous generation, but had failed to take the next step that he was convinced could lead to enlightenment, to a completely new awareness such as had only been experienced before in isolated pockets of monks or in individual sages.

  Meditating one evening on a cliff overlooking the sea, it came to him that he must go East, so taking little more than a spare shirt, a pipe and a copy of the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’, he took a boat to the mainland and set off on foot, hitching a ride when he could, all the way across Europe, through the Middle East and finally to India. He had so many amazing tales of this journey: the dreams, the synchronicity, the sense of Grace and destiny. I always wanted him to write it down as he told it, with all the feeling and the wonder and the freshness of it, but he never did. He became disillusioned and eventually rejected his younger self as someone who was naïve, even dangerous. But when I first knew him, and for several years afterwards, if you caught him in the right mood in the evening he would tell the whole tale of his great search.

  I wish I could remember it all. I know he sold his own blood once or twice to get money for food; I know that in the more hostile areas of the Middle Eastern desert he took to waving his sturdy staff and babbling loudly about Allah if he felt under threat, and this technique definitely saved his life on a number of occasions. I remember that one time in India he contracted hepatitis and was becoming weaker and weaker, then as he lay there on the riverbank several ripe papayas came floating down towards him; he ate them began to feel a little better, and then later he was taken to an ashram and fed on yoghurt and white rice and shown how to do yoga night and morning until he recovered.

  He met one guru after another, and spent time with them and learned what he could learn from them; then there would be some sign or portent, someone he met or a vision in the sky, and he would set off on the next stage of his adventure. The Indian people by and large respected a truth seeker, and often welcomed him into their homes and were eager to share their food.

  Finally he made his way to Dehradun, in the foothills of the Himalayas, and was ushered into the presence of the satguru: the living ‘perfect master’, at this point a smiling, moon-faced child of only twelve years old. If what his followers said was true, he was the one person on the planet at that time who could reveal the Knowledge of God to a sincere seeker of truth. Sam (or Brian, as he was still called at the time), kissed the guru’s feet and was given his blessing. He then proceeded to tell Maharaji eagerly about the need for enlightenment in the West, and also to speak to him about his own realizations: his visions of the bardo and the wheel of life and death.

  Perhaps Maharaji didn’t quite understand that these experiences had been drug-induced, or perhaps it didn’t matter, but one way or another he was impressed enough by Brian’s discourse (he always did have a wicked way with words) that after a few days of satsang from other members of Maharaji’s family and from the Indian mahatmas, Brian had received Knowledge, been dressed in saffron robes, and told that his new name was Mahatma Sambhavo (meaning ‘potential’) and his mission was to spread the word in the West. He was the only Westerner ever to become a mahatma. By the time others were chosen, they no longer had to wear robes and were known as initiators, and later instructors.

  So, being a girl who loves a fairytale, possibly over and above reality, I fell for this man with his tall, dark looks and his strong, blue gaze. I enjoyed his intensity, his power, the romance of his story. I have always been terribly impressed by words, and he was really good at them, in fact he often wouldn’t stop talking; but rather than letting this put me off, somewhere inside I decided to take it on as my own personal challenge.

  My parents had been like this. My father would waffle on, oblivious of my lack of interest; my mother also seemed unable to really listen to me, and instead talked to me, or at me, what seemed like incessantly, wrapped up in her self and her need to be right. Yes, in many ways it was a relationship in which I tried to heal the past; but it seems to me that if the past has not been healed, then this is inevitable. And of course there was a lot else going on too, as we got to know each other and sound each other out.

  Sam was missing England. He waxed lyrical about his home in Devon and his old school-friends, and loved my sensitive Englishness. He had tried dating American girls and found them very materialistic, far more interested in his bank balance than the poetry of his soul; and poetry and writing was another area in which we shared a passion.

  He had been in America for twelve years. The beginning of that time was, I suppose, the pinnacle of his life, involving the two things he loved the most: flying and talking. Still close to Maharaji, he would ferry him up and down California to satsang venues, often speaking himself before Maharaji came on. But when Maharaji got married it all changed: he wanted more privacy, and made a big reshuffle of staff, rejecting some of his original devotees for more discreet, respectable people who were up to date at a time when devotion was slowly giving way to a more formal, practical approach to Knowledge. So Sam was left pining at the gates. He always hoped that he might be called on again, but he never was, and now he had to get on with the rest of his life and somehow take back the heart and soul that he had left at the feet of the Lord.

  He helped me with my car. One of the first ways in which he demonstrated his dedication to me was to spend hours rubbing down the paintwork, filling in the light-panel holes and getting rid of ‘sheriff’ on the sides. I was planning to give it a re-spray, perhaps in yellow or pink, though in the end we went home before this happened. He also helped me with my revision, which was quite a task; we had regular tests, and at the end of term an exam which we had to pass in order to qualify for the next stage.

  I remember calling home and agonizing with Carmen over whether to stay with the American weight-lifter or move on to the English poet. Looking back now I realize there really wasn’t any competition: I was bound to go for the familiar yet intriguing Englishman. He was living in a flat at the time, somewhere between Malibu and Santa Monica, and a Hollywood producer had given him the job of writing treatments for screenplays. These he read out to me: one about Nicola Tesla and one about a psychic surgeon. They were interesting, though I was always aware that he did a lot more talking than me and felt a little uncomfortable with this. He took me out for a couple of meals and sometimes for a drink. Slowly we spent more and more time together.

  The end of term came, and this time there was no scholarship so I had to spend the holidays finding the money for the next trimester. My plan was to take an internal flight down to Miami and work in a strip club for a few weeks. This may come as a surprise to you, but it was actually something I had done before! On the last few trips to Florida to see Maharaji, as I drifted away from the ashram lifestyle, I had made friends with some of the premies who lived there permanently and on one particular occasion decided to stay a little longer and see if I could earn money in this way. Three of us – Marion, Thai and myself – cruised around trying out different clubs until we came across the Pink Pussycat, close to Miami Beach airport. This seemed reasonably clean and well-organized, and they were looking for new girls; so we did a bit of wriggling on the stage in the daytime to show the management how sexy we were, and were told to come back that evening to give it a go.

  Hugh says in one of his early comm
ents about me “... perhaps she is going to live by extremes.” He is referring to the contrast between my infant bawling and my lavish smiles, but I do sometimes think he was right! Perhaps it’s just that one extreme leads to another: after my years of celibacy, it was high time to explore my sexuality again, and the strip club was a wonderfully, outrageously adventurous place in which to do this. It was all good fun: there were three of us, or two at the least, so we always had each other to talk to and laugh about it all. Often we had just seen Maharaji, so we were all loved-up, and treated it very much as a game. They had strict no-touching rules, and would escort us out to our car at the end of the night, so we never got involved in any shady ‘extras’.

  Sam wasn’t so keen on the idea, but because he was just getting to know me he went along with it, and in the end came with me to Florida. He confessed he had been to strip clubs himself once or twice, but thought they were seedy, desperate places and felt sorry for me that I had to resort to this sort of money earning. He didn’t seem to understand it was something I actually wanted to do.

  We rented a hotel room close to the beach, with its own cooker and fridge. It was the hot winter season, which is not popular with tourists, so we managed to get it for a reasonable rate. Every evening at 7.30 I put on my make-up, packed up a few flimsy bits of negligee and my six inch heels, and set off for the Pink Pussycat. The way it was organized was that there was a list of girls who took it in turn to dance. When my turn came I would choose three songs and key them into the jukebox in the dressing room to the side and back of the stage, then I stepped out and performed.