by John Nelson
Maggie nodded her head. “Well, with Joseph’s guidance, we did follow a protocol, and nobody figured it out.”
“Joseph?”
“Anna’s spirit guide.”
“He talks to both of you?” Thomas asked with a half-startled expression.
“Well, occasionally Anna shifts our spirits to his astral park for consultations.”
“Oh my,” Thomas said. Maggie smiled. He was picking up his guru’s expressions. It was endearing.
Mesh came back with a bag of bread crumbs and walked down to the pond handing it to Anna. She quickly opened the bag and began throwing bits of stale bread out onto the moss-covered pond for the ducks to feed. They watched her for a moment. Thomas turned to Maggie. “I need to do something.” He waved Mesh over. “Mesh will sit with you until I come back.” The yogi nodded his head and took a seat on the bench.
They talked about the ashram, but the yogi deflected any questions about Swami Vinanda’s history. Twenty minutes later, after Anna had emptied her bag and had come up to sit with them, Thomas returned.
“I had a talk with Swami. He feels it would be better if the two of you met with him in the morning after meditation.”
“Which is what… 4:00 a.m.?” Maggie asked hesitantly.
Thomas laughed. “No. In deference to our Western students, it’s at 6:00 a.m. But the ashram bell will ring at 5:30, so since it’s been such a long day for both of you, I think you should retire for the early-morning riser.”
Maggie stood and took her daughter by the hand. “That’s sounds better. I’m really exhausted, as you can no doubt tell.”
Thomas smiled and escorted them back to their room. He gave Anna a goodnight kiss on the cheek, but merely took Maggie’s hands and said, “Good night. Sleep well.”
Chapter 26
The morning meditation was quite powerful as Anna’s presence permeated the room, or so some of the more attuned could perceive. After Thomas had gathered them from their quarters, he meditated on the raised platform with Swami and the other teachers. Maggie and Anna took places at the back of the room. Afterward a few of the yogis looked over at them curiously. Only two meals were served at the ashram, a light lunch and a full dinner, but the cafeteria provided yogi tea all day long. Thomas brought them there, and they took cups and served themselves from the large urns. They sat down and sipped their tea in silence.
“Something wrong, Daddy?” Anna asked.
He smiled. “Oh no, everything is fine.” Anna looked at him with those Buddha eyes. “Okay. I think Swami is a little… taken aback by Anna’s energy. He expected a bright-eyed child yogi, not a fully realized seven-year-old master.”
Maggie stared at him for a moment. “You told him about our astral visits with Joseph?”
Thomas looked down. “Yes.” He paused, then added, “Swami is a very elevated being, but what you’ve described is another order of being all together. She’s like a child Anandamayi Ma.”
Anna closed her eyes. “You want me to take Swami to talk with Joseph?”
“No, Anna. I would prefer that you… rein in your siddhis… or powers for now.”
Maggie nodded her head thankfully.
“No healings?” she asked.
“In that regard, I believe Swami would welcome healing sessions with some of the older yogis and devotees.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Okay, but behind the scenes. I don’t want people lining up outside the ashram for healings.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll work this out to everybody’s satisfaction.” Thomas stood up and led them out of the hall over to the glass-domed temple where Swami lived and held his audiences. He was meditating on a raised dais with an ornate gold background of carved saintly figures; there were several decorative pillows laid out for them to sit on. After a while Swami opened his eyes and smiled at them. He motioned for Anna to come up and sit next to him.
Anna looked at her mother who nodded her head. She stepped up and sat on the large rose-colored, embroidered pillow next to Swami, who closed his eyes and soaked up some of the energy. “My dear child, you are a revelation.”
Anna bowed her head. “The God within reveals all things.”
“Yes, indeed. So tell me of your lineage?”
It took Anna a moment to decipher the word’s meaning. “I once Tibetan…”
“Rinpoche,” Maggie quietly added, “and Hindu Guru.”
“Yes, I can see that in your aura. Maybe, while you’re here, you can travel to Nepal where the Tibetans now live.”
Anna smiled. “I like warm weather.”
Swami laughed. “I see, but you can always warm yourself from within.”
“Yes, remember meditating in snow with wet towel and drying it.”
Swami looked at Maggie. “So she has total recall?”
Anna answered for herself. “I not like think of past. This moment all there is.”
“Yes, indeed, young Anna.” He closed his eyes, again drawing in the energy emanating from her. He opened his eyes. “I am most pleased that you have come, and would like you to consider our ashram as your second home.”
“With Daddy here, it is.”
Swami looked at Thomas and nodded his head. He closed his eyes and touched his fingers in his meditation mudra. Thomas motioned for Anna to step down from the dais. All three bowed their heads and backed out of the temple chamber.
After several days adjusting to the flow of ashram life, taking yoga classes where Anna impressed the yogis with her asana-pose mastery and doing group meditations, Mesh drove the three of them to Ramana Maharshi’s ashram. It was located south of Chennai at the foot of Mount Arunachala where the famed yogi had lived for years. While her mother had read her stories about the Hindu saint, Anna could feel his energy here which some claimed still permeated the ashram and nearby mountain where he had meditated in its caves. Touring the bookstore and temple and walking around the grounds, Anna told her parents, “I like Rama. He not tell people what to do. He just meditate and let his energy do talking.”
Thomas laughed. “Yes, he wasn’t known for his discourses but for the power of his silent presence.”
Anna nodded her head. “That is kind of teacher I want to be.”
Thomas was somewhat taken aback. “So you’ve already planned on a ministry?”
Anna gave her father a rather indulgent look. “I plan to meditate like Rama, and what happens… happens.”
Thomas looked at Maggie. “I sensed the beginning of her spiritual unfolding on my visit last time, but never suspected it would be this soon.”
Maggie shook her head and forced a smile. “Me either.”
The next day, while further familiarizing themselves with the ashram, Maggie and Anna stepped into their small medical dispensary. An old yogi in a loincloth lay on the table while an Indian doctor poked his side and stomach for pain reactions. Before Maggie could stop her, Anna stepped over and placed her hand under the right side of the yogi’s abdomen. His body shook, and after a while he took a deep sigh of relief and relaxed. He turned his head to look at the little miracle-worker.
“Eat too much sugar, bad for vine thing.”
The Indian didn’t speak English, but the doctor did and understood her reference, and translated it for him. Dr. Khatri turned back to them. “Like I’ve been telling him, his pancreas is, or was, getting worse.”
The grouchy old yogi said something back to him. Maggie and Anna looked to the doctor. “He says he prefers the girl’s sweet energy to my poking.”
Khatri said something to him and told them, “I’ll run some tests, and we’ll see what they show.”
The yogi sat up on the table, and the doctor translated. He shook his head and said something. “He says he’s cured,” the doctor said tentatively.
Blood tests taken the next day confirmed that the yogi’s early-stage pancreatic cancer, the most difficult type to treat, showed early signs of remission. The yogi’s colleagues, who were expecting the worst news, we
re lined up outside Anna’s room the next morning. Thomas told them to go to meditation, and he would talk with Swami and the girl’s mother about healing sessions.
Later in Swami’s temple, a very upset mother was refusing to let her daughter conduct wholesale healings for the ashram’s sick. Anna patiently sat and listened to their back-and-forth argument. Swami turned to Thomas. “You’re the child’s father. Don’t you have a say?”
Thomas looked down. “Swami, I’ve told you, in name only. Maggie is her legal guardian, and I must defer to her wishes.” Swami Vinanda gave Thomas a withering look.
Anna finally raised her hand, and the room went quiet. She sat in meditation for a long moment, before she opened her eyes. “Joseph says, if I can help, I should, but only very ill yogis. No family or other people.”
Swami asked, “Joseph?”
“Her spirit guide,” Thomas added.
Swami and Thomas then looked to Maggie. “Okay, what can I say to that, but strictly along these lines, and no camera phones allowed.”
“Yes, I know that better than most about a child’s premature notoriety,” Swami added more evenhandedly, “but Ms. Maggie you must understand that Anna has a mission to fulfill.”
Maggie bowed her head. “Yes, Swami, but according to St. Luke, even Jesus didn’t start his ministry until he was thirty years old.”
Swami smiled. “But we really don’t know happened in the years between.”
Anna volunteered, “Nobody get sick around boy Jesus.”
“There you have it,” Swami said with an authoritative gesture. “Let the child choose her path.”
Maggie would defer and allow these healings for now, but unlike Swami she was not convinced the timing was right for her daughter to “reveal” herself.
Dr. Khatri selected twelve of his sickest patients. Over the next three days, after morning meditation, Anna and Khatri treated patients in the clinic and they were thoroughly screened for listening devices and cameras. By the end of three days, Anna had outright healed or greatly mitigated a host of serious illnesses from cancer to heart disease. However, word got around about the amazing child healer from America, and local reporters were at their gates within days. Mesh and some of the strong-armed yogis stood outside the closed gates to the ashram and kept them at bay, but more than a few relatives of the cured shared the miracles happening daily at the ashram clinic. Stories with photos of Anna walking the grounds of the ashram soon made the headlines of the local papers, and before long reporters from national newspapers and tabloids were descending on Chennai.
Maggie decided that they had to leave India and changed their return flight plans. Swami thought she was overreacting, but while Anna wanted to stay longer, she could see her mother’s great distress and went along with these plans. Swami agreed to use his influence to quash any further news inquiries. Three days later, in the dead of night, Mesh and Thomas snuck Maggie and Anna out of the ashram and drove them to the airport for a late-night flight back to Los Angeles.
“Maggie, I’m so sorry about all of this. We should’ve listened to you. You’ve been managing Anna quite well so far.”
She reached over to hold Thomas’s hand. “Anna did get permission from Joseph, so I must assume this is part of some grander plan. Don’t blame yourself, and in a year or two we’ll return and maybe for a much longer stay.”
“Let’s keep in touch. I’ve been planning on returning to the United States to set up a Kundalini Yoga practice, so a return trip may not be needed.” He paused. “And I won’t be under any constraints there.” Maggie realized this referred to Swami’s insistence on celibacy at the ashram.
“What about Swami? How will all this sit with him?”
“He’s been thinking of doing a tour of the United States, and I’m sure Southern California will now be on his schedule.”
Anna was heartbroken to leave her father this soon, but she knew from her mother’s earlier entreaty not to “grab hold” of his energy field, and to allow her father to find his own way back to them. On the return flight, they both slept more and later Maggie read Anna children’s stories about the lives of Hindu saints from a book that Swami had presented to them on their departure.
Chapter 27
They were picked up at LAX in the early morning by Maggie’s parents. They had a six-hour layover in Hong Kong, and lost a calendar day crossing the international dateline. She had emailed them from India on their change of plans with a new arrival time, and once they landed she called her mother who said that they would be waiting for them outside the airport’s luggage pickup. It took an hour to walk through the huge airport and gather up their three suitcases, but after another heads-up call, her father’s blue Subaru Outback was waiting at the curb for them. He helped load their luggage, gave her and Anna quick hugs, and they were off into LA’s early- morning traffic.
Grace turned around in her front seat and immediately asked Maggie with a coy smile, “Why the change of plans?”
“Can we talk about it when we get back to Santa Barbara?”
“Okay. So how did you like southern India? Was it hot?”
“Very hot, Grandma, and it rain every day,” Anna volunteered.
“Was it nice to see your daddy again?”
“He good yogi, and his Swami is very good yogi.”
Without looking over his shoulder, Mark asked, “I guess you didn’t ask about support?”
“No. The subject never arose, but he does plan to return to California and set up a yoga practice, and we’ll see how that turns out.”
Her father just shook his head and pulled onto the entranceway to the 405 freeway heading north.
Maggie did tell them about Vinanda’s ashram, their visit to the ashram of Ramana Maharshi south of the city, but since none of this interested her parents very much, the conversation switched to updates about their life and her sister Jill and her family, and of course Bodhi’s stay with them.
“I don’t know what you feed him, but he’s the most mild-mannered dog I’ve ever been around,” Grace said. “On our walks to the park or along the beach, when we would meet up with other dogs, there was none of the male sniffing or territorial growling. The other dogs just wanted to follow him around.”
“Well, Mother. Bodhi is short for Bodhisattva.” Her father snickered at this explanation.
“This Bodhi’s last life as dog,” Anna added. “He come back as a human next time.”
“Let’s hope he’ll be better at providing for his family than some humans.”
Maggie and her mother ignored his sarcastic remark.
“He come back as my little brother,” Anna said, much to her mother’s surprise.
Grace turned around and stared at her daughter, but didn’t ask the obvious question. After dinner that night, Maggie and her mother sat out on the patio sipping iced teas and watching the day turn to night. “So, what caused the quick exit?”
“Let’s leave it at: Anna’s energy and healing ability caused a minor sensation.”
Grace smirked. “Oh, really.” She reached for the cultural section of a recent daily Los Angeles Times and handed it to her daughter. The headline of the short news brief read: America Girl Heals Whole Ashram of Indians.
Maggie quickly read the article, which didn’t mention either of them by name. “At least they didn’t get a name.”
“But, my dear, that’s only a matter of time. You did fly with passports and visas, and bureaucrats everywhere are subject to bribes.”
Maggie closed her eyes. A moment later Anna came out carrying her mother’s cell phone with Bodhi trailing behind her. “You get call soon.” Grace shook her head, and then arched her eyebrows when the phone chimed a moment later.
She took it from her daughter. Saw the caller ID, and put her finger up for Grace to give her a minute. While Maggie stepped away from the patio and into the backyard, Anna jumped up on her grandmother’s lap, while Bodhi lay down beside her chair. Maggie could hear her mother asking abo
ut “healing all those people in India.”
“So, Maggie,” Ma hi’ Ma said, “I hear you had an eventful trip to India.”
“Wow. That’s fast. I assumed you’d learn about the trip from the local devotees, but as to eventful…”
“As you know, my dear, the yogi grapevine is just as pervasive as many others, and everybody is abuzz about the ‘seven-year-old America yogi master and healer,’ if I may quote a source.”
Maggie shook her head in dismay. “Well, that may be the least of our problems.”
“Really. If I recall, people lined up outside your house asking for healings was a real concern of yours.”
Maggie proceeded to tell Guru about Anna’s astral field trip and the harsh reaction from one of her student’s fathers and the threats he had made about protesting to the school board. This was followed by a more detailed account of what happened in India. “I’ll need to call James, and I think it best that you plan on driving up here this week. It’s only a month until school starts, which doesn’t give James much time to… fix this.”
“Oh Ma, thank you so much. I knew I could count on you.” They made plans for her and Anna to meet James at the ashram the coming weekend.
When Maggie walked back to the patio, her mother and Anna had gone inside and were eating bowls of strawberry ice cream. Maggie went back to the kitchen and scooped out a bowl for herself. She joined them in the living room.
“Important call?” Grace asked.
“Well, the word has gotten around, and Ma hi’ Ma wants us to consult with the ashram’s lawyer.”
Grace nodded her head. “That may not be a bad idea. We don’t want to subject young Anna to too much public scrutiny, I would imagine.”
“Yes, Mother. That wouldn’t be good.”
Grace looked down at her granddaughter. “And thank you, Anna, for healing me of cancer.” She turned to Maggie. “I assume she was the source of my miraculous recovery?”
Anna looked up at her grandmother and added rather ingeniously, “Babies have great energy.”