The Joy of Uber Driving

  PING! As I write this, something very interesting is happening in my world of Uber. The other day, Nate, a handsome young Jewish man (late twenties or early thirties) almost seemed to be hitting on me. When I picked him up, he was very friendly and commented that he was really appreciative of my picking him up. We were engaged in small talk, and I noticed in my rearview mirror he was looking at me with a look I remembered from men years ago, when he suddenly asked if I was married. No one had asked me that question in at least twelve years. Embarrassed, I mumbled, “No, you?”

  He said, “Me neither.” Long pause, and then he asked, “What do you do for fun?”

  I purposely ignored the ramifications of this conversation and answered honestly, “Not much, just dance Sunday mornings at Sweat Your Prayers in Sausalito.”

  He said, “Oh, my old girlfriend used to do that too.”

  Deciding to meet him head-on but in a humorous way, I said, “Old? How old? Surely not as old as me?”

  He laughed and said, “Oh no, that’s not what I meant.” With that, we both laughed, and there were no more innuendos. But when he left, he gave me a ten-dollar tip, which I tried to refuse. He smiled and said, “Please take it. I really enjoyed talking to you.”

  A much darker version of this situation happened when I pulled up to a sprawling ranch-style house where two men were holding up a third, whom they poured into my front passenger seat. The guy (I forgot his name) was unintelligible except for the fact that he apparently thought I was a twenty-something chick and started blatantly hitting on me. The time it took to drive to his house seemed like an eternity as I fended off the advances of this deaf, dumb, and blindly drunk man. He was deaf because he obviously didn’t hear me say “NO!”; dumb because great amounts of alcohol do that to you; and blind because, as good as my genes are, I’m obviously well over twenty years of age.

  Tosh held court every morning in the breakfast room with his gorgeous good looks and engaging wit. I’ve always been attracted to comedians, especially handsome ones, and Tosh had it all. Unfortunately, l had little of what he wanted, except access to a green card. His attention was on someone else in our house. Not knowing that, I felt really lucky to have this opportunity to get to know him on a more intimate level. Tosh was an actor, and I was still involved with the studios, so he asked if I would help him with a scene he was rehearsing for an audition. We spent a few nights going over his lines and getting to know each other better. This didn’t help me as much as it did him. I was falling, and he was taking advantage of that. I was in denial of the fact that all he really wanted from me was a green card.

  Preparing for our post-marriage INS interview, we rehearsed our lines and had our pictures taken together, pretending for the camera that we were in love. (He might’ve been acting, but I wasn’t. I was smitten.) We took a trip to my dad’s in Fallbrook to introduce him to my new fiancé. Tosh was such a good actor he convinced my dad that he was in love with me (and for a moment, I believed him too), and so Dad approved. We then caravanned to Las Vegas with a few of our friends, found an all-night chapel to take our vows, and stayed overnight at a friend’s house, in SEPARATE rooms. It was then that reality bit me in the butt. My dream was shattered when I realized I was just a pawn in Tosh’s dream. It really hit home when we came back to the Monkees house and the first thing Tosh did was seek out another woman, a ditzy blond sannyasin beauty (the one he had previously been attracted to), to go to bed with that night

  Later, after passing muster with the INS, he obligingly kissed me on the cheek and thanked me for his green card.

  I processed my deep, dark disappointment with a fellow female housemate and a “shroom” (magic mushroom). I remember lying on my back alongside my friend on a mushroom high with our four feet propped up on a tree trunk next to the swimming pool. Suddenly she started moaning and writhing ecstatically as though being made love to, and I, in my bitter darkness, said, quite forcefully, “Move over, bitch!” We both broke up in unending peals of laughter, and I was cured right then and there of my romantic fantasy as the shroom laughter let the air out of my billowy heart-shaped balloon.

  Earlier this year, I learned of his death, which hit me pretty hard. The woman he married after me, and also divorced, found him alone in his London flat sitting upright in his easy chair. I cried for days after learning of his death. We had a deep connection even though we never became intimate. We were uncannily alike in so many ways, being only one day apart on our Piscean birth charts. It turns out the woman who found him and I have become close friends due to an accidental meeting twelve years ago when I registered for one of her workshops, not knowing she was the ditzy blond beauty who had stolen my honeymoon. My perception of her changed radically after meeting her a second time: she literally changed my life with her profoundly powerful and insightful three-day women’s workshop called “Celebration of Being.” She is my dear friend Rajyo, and ditzy she is NOT.

  Coming back to the Monkees house: word got out at the ranch that the Hollywood bunch were rebellious toward the ranch because of Ma Anand Sheela, who willfully replaced and threw out Laxmi, Bhagwan’s beloved, longstanding secretary from Pune. Ma Lakshmi visited our house for a couple of days, and I was amazed that such a powerful woman, vilified by Sheela, could be so petite and gentle and sweet. Another gentleman that visited us on occasion was the one-and-only Pune real estate stud who operated from his king-size office bed surrounded by beautiful naked women. He had charm oozing out of his pores, but he was genuinely open and loving toward everyone. He was appropriately known as the “Lovebaba,” and he later became the ranch disc jockey for our very own nightclub. Ma Anand Sheela was usually addressed by everyone as Sheela.

  Finally, we all made arrangements to arrive at the ranch a few days before the first world festival there that summer. We made slanderous T-shirt slogans expressing our antipathy toward Ma Anand Sheela and Co., but once we got there, I don’t believe any of us wore them.

  Prior to leaving, we had a party with just the house residents to celebrate our departure. I took all the women to Frederick’s of Hollywood and maxed out my credit card, buying outrageous outfits to wear to our party. We also bought several cans of Reddi Wip. It was a wild night and probably the closest we ever came to an orgy. We paraded before the guys in our scanty sequined and plumed costumes and quite naturally proceeded to do a strip tease to joyous whoops and hollers. This segued into energetic dancing by all to loud disco music. The night ended with two scantily clothed women covered in Reddi Wip, which was brazenly licked off by everyone else. Sorry . . . but that was the extent of our orgy. Nothing else happened, except we lay around, mellow on weed, snuggling together on the floor and the big comfy couch, exhausted from all the laughter and the night’s raucous high energy. One by one, as the fire in the fireplace died down, we peeled off and went to our respective rooms to sleep the rest of the night away.

  At this point in my life, communal living was the best of all scenarios for my growth. Prior to Buddhism and after college, I was primarily a loner and not much of a partygoer. With Buddhism, I came out of my cave and was socially connected to a large group of people every day. I did form some lasting friendships that are still ongoing, but most others were superficial in comparison to the relationships formed through close day-to-day living circumstances.

  In communal living, you learn so much more about yourself in relation to your housemates. You see the good, the bad, and the ugly, and you move through it. There is no hiding, no posturing, and no illusions of grandeur or victimhood. I think the meditation helped too. It’s like a marriage, but what was perfect for me is that I was not bound to one person day in and day out. I had choices every day to be with whomever I wanted to hang with or relate to. My anathema to a traditional marriage is symptomatic of the influences in my life growing up as a typical sensitive Piscean around demonstrably unaffectionate parents.

  PING! PING! This is called a pool pickup, where more than one rider shares a ride coming from the s
ame basic location and ending in nearly the same location, each of them saving money. One girl with honey-blond hair in a long braid and bright blue eyes sat in the front with me, and then I picked up another, whom I will call Nefertiti, a stunning black woman with Egyptian-styled hair, who sat in the back. Honey-Blond had just graduated from UCLA and was working in the environmental field, and Nefertiti was a dance teacher of Gabrielle Roth’s Five Rhythms.

  The ride was long enough to get to know these two beautiful women, and our conversation veered off to my experience in India and being with Bhagwan, to which Nefertiti slapped the back of my seat in disbelief. She exclaimed that she was a devoted fan and read passages from his books to her dance students every day. She wanted to know what it was like to be in his presence.

  She had never met anyone who had known him and was hungry to know more. Honey-Blond was drawn into the conversation, which was highly charged and giddy with happy camaraderie. As she was leaving, she said this was the best Uber ride she’d ever had. Right away Nefertiti moved up to the front seat, asking more questions. I told her we should get together sometime when there was more time, since there was so much to talk about. We agreed and exchanged emails. I saw in her the essence of a high priestess.

  I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE

  It’s a Seismic Awakening!

  About ten thousand sannyasins from around the world descended upon the ranch at the First Annual World Festival in 1982. My group boarded a ranch school bus that came to pick us up at the airport in Redmond, Oregon. We had a bumpy ride on the narrow road to the ranch, which took thirty minutes from the main road. The whole property consisted of sixty-four thousand acres of desert in Central Oregon. The first thing we had to do when we entered the “city” was pass a lice and crab examination before being admitted to our housing, which consisted of randomly assigned tents for four on wooden platforms.

  In the eight months prior to our arrival, a lot of work had been accomplished, with clean water and electricity, three thousand tents on platforms, many group bathroom and shower buildings strategically placed, new dirt roads, a huge structure for Buddha Hall and several manufactured buildings for offices, a large cafeteria, bookstore, dairy and chicken farm, and a hydroponic garden.

  At the actual festivities in Buddha Hall, we finally saw our beloved Bhagwan as he drove slowly on the road lined with cheering sannyasins around the gigantic structure in his white Rolls-Royce limousine. All ten thousand of us scampered back into the great hall and took part in the ecstatic experience of meditating and then dancing together to the music and waves of energy conducted by Bhagwan’s graceful hands. I was in a trance from the sheer ecstasy of all the love generated by him and ten thousand sannyasins.

  Immediately afterward, while leaving Buddha Hall, I was accosted by a TV camera while a microphone was shoved into my face by a Ken-doll anomaly called a news anchorman, who asked how I felt and why. All I could say was “Love is everything.” Later, I chastised myself for such a stupid remark and for missing such a great opportunity to be articulate for my master. I just now randomly opened Bhagwan’s book Ancient Music in the Pines to page 143. He sometimes sends me messages this way.

  “Then by and by, if you relax, and if you are not too much worried about your image in the eyes of others, your own authentic face, your original face, comes into being—the face that you had before you were born, and the face that you will again have when you are dead, the original face, not the cultivated mask. With that original face you will see God everywhere, because with the original face you can meet with the original, with the reality.”

  Back in California, we returned to our ordinary lives. Some were making plans to return by the next year to live and work at the ranch, while others, my husband included, would have none of it as long as Sheela was in charge.

  Members of the ranch’s inner circle, Hasya (who later replaced Sheela as Bhagwan’s secretary) and her close friend Kaveesha, along with two other millionaire sannyasins, David and Dyan John, moved into a huge mansion close by our house in Hollywood. Their primary purpose was to bring Bhagwan’s meditations and teachings to elite Southern California society by creating weeklong spiritual retreats replete with all the luxury of a European spa hotel. Hasya was the former wife of a famous Oscar-winning movie producer, so she had all the connections. They commissioned me to design maroon robes to be worn by the guests. My housemate Daya, a seamstress and an ex-London model, helped me create and put them together. I don’t think the project lasted beyond the first two or three groups, but it seemed like a great idea at the time. We occasionally went there to hang out with them, as they were really beautiful, fun-loving people.

  One time, myself and two other sannyasins from our house decided to drive up to the ranch in my Honda and pay a visit, but we got only as far as the other side of the Grapevine (a long steep hill outside of LA on Hwy. 5) when I let one of them take over the wheel. We were speeding along at seventy-five miles per hour when suddenly she swerved, and the car careened over the side and rolled three times, blowing out all the windows and tires. The three of us sustained bruises and cracked ribs. This was perhaps my second out-of-body experience, because I remember watching the car roll over while I didn’t; I was just hanging there in space while everything swirled around me.

  We were taken to the nearby hospital for X-rays and first aid and then sent home on a bus. My car was totaled and left for pickup by a junkyard. Just two months prior, I had let my insurance lapse. Still playing the victim, I meekly asked for some appropriate compensation by the driver who totaled my car. She was independently wealthy but felt she should give me only $150. (She was in her power; I wasn’t.) So, I was left without a car for several months, trying to find work by walking and taking buses from Santa Monica to LA, which is a daunting task. It was a tough time, but somehow I made it through to the next summer festival at the ranch. While there, I was asked to stay and work as a gas station attendant first and later as a truck driver delivering building materials. On the ranch all the jobs were assigned and rotated according to the needs of the commune, not necessarily according to one’s abilities or experience.

  PING! It was late afternoon in San Rafael, and I picked up Chuck, a thirty-something guy who had had a few beers and was loose after a hard day’s work loading trucks with smelly garbage gathered from the yards of uncared-for homes. Apparently, there are quite a few homeowners who are so unconscious they throw their garbage out un-bagged on their floors and in their yards, enough to keep this guy employed, he surmised, for another five years. Thankfully, he didn’t smell like his job. During our thirty-minute drive to Sonoma, he talked incessantly about the woman who was his “queen.” He said he was reluctant to propose to her even though they had lived together for years, because he felt completely unworthy of her. “Look at me! What am I but a stupid garbage man? I can’t possibly give her what she deserves.”

  My philanthropic instincts were ignited. “Hey, stop that. She’s damn lucky to have someone like you adore her and care for her the best he can. And you’re damn lucky to have the love of this woman in your life. How many people can say that? I can’t. I don’t have anyone but myself.” It was a hard sell, but I think I got through to him by the time we landed, and he handed me a crisp ten-dollar bill as a tip.

  At last I was in heaven with my beloved Bhagwan and thousands of group-hugging sannyasins! And, oh my God, how the ranch had grown! It now had a beautiful reservoir they called Krishnamurti Lake, which they made by building a huge earthen dam over the creek and importing fine sand for the beach. The preexisting ranch house was remade into a Japanese-style restaurant with American gourmet food. I don’t remember all the buildings that were in place when I first arrived in 1982, but when I left three years later, we had a two-story mall called “Zarathustra” with executive offices upstairs and a restaurant, bookstore, ice cream parlor, beauty salon, travel agency, and boutique downstairs. There were separate buildings for a larger boutique with racks of stylish red clothing
and accessories, a post office, a discotheque, a hospital, an airport, a garage and machine shop, a gas station, a water filtration plant, a recycling center for building materials, a poultry and dairy farm, a truck farm for our organic fruits and vegetables, a bee farm, a huge cafeteria, a five-star hotel, hundreds of townhomes housing eighteen sannyasins each, another couple of hundred A-frames accommodating two people each, and eighty-five yellow school buses for our public transportation system. Each structure was a work site and was called a “temple.” Our work was our meditation.

  “Rajneeshpuram exemplifies both the best and the worst of modern cult phenomenon. The collective activity of the commune residents gave rise to the greatest intentional community experiment the modern age has seen. In an article in the New Yorker, journalist Frances Fitzgerald detailed some of the accomplishments the commune had managed by 1983: cleared and planted 3,000 acres of land, built a 350-million-gallon reservoir and fourteen irrigation systems, created a truck farm that provided 90% of the vegetables needed to feed that ranch, a poultry and dairy farm to provide milk and eggs, a 10-megawatt power substation, an 85-bus public transportation system, an urban-use sewer system, a state-of-the-art telephone and computer communications center and 250,000 sq. feet of residential space.”

  —from The Rise and Fall of Rajneeshpuram by Sven Davisson

  Except for the article from which I took the above paragraph, most reports mentioned in Google are about the scandals perpetrated by Secretary Sheela—at first, in defiance of the local and state governments and later in pursuit of power for herself. Not much was said about the gargantuan feat of building a fully functional, beautiful, and ahead-of-its-time city with our bare hands. There was nothing about the fact that 67 percent of the residents were college graduates, nearly half of those with doctorate degrees. No, according to some reports, we were all fools brainwashed by Bhagwan.