Visionary William Blake Explored Nirvana through Poetry

To a natural-born visionary like William Blake, the divine is revealed by — the divine is — every ordinary object. We can try to reject it, but it’s always up in our face, like blowing sand. As he famously put it:

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.

Blake’s own doors of perception were cleansed early — blown wide open, really. He grew up in the Soho section of London in the mid-eighteenth century. When he was four years old, he saw God leaning his forehead against the window, and it left him screaming. By age eight he’d grown more at home with his expanded perception and could enjoy the sight of a tree filled with shining angels. Later, as he watched his brother Robert die, he saw Robert’s soul rise joyfully through the roof and into the heavens. No big surprise, then, that his contemporaries dismissed him as a lunatic; it took more than a century till he became a beacon to Dharma bums everywhere.

There’s a theory that Blake suffered from ergotoxicosis, a condition that gives rise to hallucinations — or spiritual visions, depending on your point of view. Known among peasants since the Middle Ages as Saint Anthony’s fire, it’s caused by eating rye bread infested by purple ergot fungus, which, in the twentieth century, was refined into LSD. (The Doors got their name from the Blake passage above, as did Aldous Huxley’s pioneering account of his mescaline trips, The Doors of Perception.) But Blake’s highest epiphanies were also the purest, with no psychedelic special effects required.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

That’s steep but simple. Just as ocean is present in every wave, the infinity of existence is present in every object that exists, and eternity in every moment of time. This is not some hippie spiritual fantasy but a confirmable hypothesis, and Blake has assigned us the lab work to confirm it. You have to look. Put a grain of sand, or a wildflower, or a crumpled gum wrapper, or anything else in the palm of your hand. Or just look at your hand. (Blake had at least one actual student in these matters, his wife Catherine, who learned to see as he did.)

Look and keep looking for an hour, or eternity, whichever comes first. Eternity comes not at the end of a zillion zillion years. It comes — or, rather, comes to be noticed — in a moment, any moment when time melts away. That’s happened to you before, whenever you got so lost in dancing with your headphones on, or pulling the weeds, or practicing your jump shot, or gazing at a star, that time evaporated. It happens whenever you get so lost in en-joying that you’re in joy and out of time, when you’re so present that past and future are delightfully absent, off on a well-earned vacation.

Anything we experience in this eternity discloses infinity.

The timeless, weightless whoooooshhh that you and your lover (or you and your cat) feel when you relax and melt into each other’s eyes, when the edges between “I” and “you” go blurry, is a glimpse of release from the matrix of time and space.

That limitlessness is what we all seek, consciously or not.

The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics

This excerpt is published, with permission, from The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics. Read more about William Blake and other writers who have had an undeniable influence on our popular culture and our quest for enlightenment in this book.

Attend an event (online or in person) to celebrate and learn more. Dharma Bum Book Release Events

Dean Sluyter

Dean Sluyter (DeanWords.com) teaches meditation in Santa Monica and leads workshops throughout the United States and beyond. His latest book is Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction.

www.deanwords.com

The post William Blake’s Poetry on Dharma Influenced The Doors appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

The Life of Yogananda

What’s to be gained from a second telling of a story that has already transformed so many lives? Plenty, as it turns out. Yogananda’s version mostly omits his career as the first global guru, with all the grunt work of expounding spirituality in a world where bills must be paid, misunderstandings addressed, and prejudices confronted — especially if you’re a brown man with throngs of adoring white female disciples.

Because that messy world is our world, this new version is, in some ways, actually more instructive than the first. After Yogananda’s years of awakening came decades of schlepping: homesickness, exhausting lecture tours, fraught organizational politics. Luckily, Philip Goldberg is a lively storyteller, and, as he showed in his indispensable American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West, he knows this territory like few others.

A tireless researcher, Goldberg has unearthed biographical nuggets that will surprise even the most devoted Yogananda disciple. And, crucially, he himself is a respectful, clear-eyed nondisciple who understands that even enlightened people are people. In sorting out the scandals and lawsuits, he draws careful lines between what’s known, what’s unknown, and what’s unknowable, and lets the reader decide how much any of it matters. Goldberg is a grown-up writer presenting a grown-up Yogananda for grown-up seekers. The Life of Yogananda is a must-read for anyone interested in the story of this influential teacher.

Dean Sluyter

Dean Sluyter (DeanWords.com) teaches meditation in Santa Monica and leads workshops throughout the United States and beyond. His latest book is Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction.

www.deanwords.com

The post The Life of Yogananda by Philip Goldberg appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

The Horror Film We Shoot in Our Minds

What makes a horror film horrifying? Of course, there’s the Thing lurking at the center of the film’s labyrinth: the monster, the slasher, the hungry alien, the nightmare clown, the live organ harvesting mill disguised as a daycare center. But, especially early in the film, before we encounter the Thing, situations that seem normal on their face must give us a creeping feeling that, “Ummmmm … wait a minute … something’s wrong.”

How is that done? What special herbs and spices do filmmakers sprinkle onto a sunny day at the playground to create mounting anxiety and fear? With so much anxiety and fear in our own lives these days, that’s a question worth asking. Sure, scary things are happening in the world, but maybe we’ve been adding some herbs and spices of our own. And maybe by analyzing the filmmakers’ fear-generating tricks we can see how we trick ourselves into fear — and then stop doing it.

The enlightened sages tell us that, no matter how messy the world may be, you don’t have to become a mess yourself. There’s a deepest place within you that’s mess-resistant, a place that always feels like Ahhhhhhh!, and by dropping out of fear, dropping into that place, and then acting from there, you can deal with the world most effectively.

Recognizing The Filmmakers’ Tricks

The filmmakers’ tricks are so familiar that, when they’re parodied in a film like Young Frankenstein or the Scary Movie series, we recognize them instantly. You’ve known the spookiest of spooky lighting angles ever since that summer night when your camp counselor held a flashlight under her chin to tell a ghost story.

Horror films make heavy use of that same low lighting angle, as well as low camera angles that make the monster look more monstrous, distorted by foreshortening as we look up toward his nostrils. They also make him look bigger, dominating the frame so that all we see is Godzilla and the sky behind. As the terrified citizens flee, they get the opposite treatment, shot from a high angle to make them look smaller and more vulnerable, pinned to the ground like helpless insects.

In fact, the higher the camera angle, the more helpless the subject. A textbook example is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, when Martin Balsam as the doomed Detective Arbogast steps cautiously into the Bates Motel, hat in hand, to nose about. As he pads silently up the stairs toward Mother Bates’s room, the camera gazes down on him, pulling steadily back to stay always a few steps ahead. Clearly, this guy’s cooked. Just as he reaches the upper landing, we cut to an even more fateful shot, from directly overhead, and Mother rushes out to slice him up.

Where We Begin to Undirect Our Own Horror Film

What are the equivalents in our own inner horror film? We can find some hints in our language. We speak of seeing things “in a different light” or “from another angle,” of “looking down” on people or “looking up” at them. This should tell us that what we usually regard as the facts of the matter (“That’s life,” we shrug, “it is what it is”) may not be the whole story.

But to start breaking out of our old patterns, to undirect our old film, we don’t need to start directing a new one. Suddenly cranking up the lights and trying to reshoot Dracula as The Sound of Music usually doesn’t work. It usually does result in a kind of superficial, trying-too-hard, everything’s-groovy spirituality that, like anything inauthentic, soon breaks down.

Understanding Our Subjective Points of View

But if we simply recognize that our supposedly objective view of things is actually subjective — that it’s just a view — we naturally start to loosen our grip on it, and sometimes that’s enough. Then we know it’s not absolute, and the space of freedom starts to open up. If, for example, you’ve been feeling defeated by your employment situation or your romantic situation or the political situation, it’s easy to slip into fatalism and depression, to assume that being stuck is just the way things are. That’s a high-angle shot that keeps you helpless.

Perhaps you can switch to a low-angle shot, with its enlarging effect, and now you’re like young Steve McQueen in The Blob, taking charge, taking your heroic stand, big enough to go mano a mano with your monster. But if that doesn’t feel genuine, just clearly see your old, self-defeating high angle, see that you’re the one who’s been aiming the camera, and it will start to deconstruct on its own.

Are you Seeing the World in Black and White?

Here’s another hint from our language: Are you seeing a situation in black and white? Black-and-white cinematography is the natural fit not only for horror, but for gritty urban drama, film noir, and any other genre that wants to avoid too much cheerfulness. Why? Because color is pretty. When we allow ourselves, say, to fixate on a personal problem or to obsess about the news, things become black and white, dark vs. bright, and dark usually seems on the verge of winning. Will your stocks survive the next crash or will you be spending your retirement as a Walmart greeter? Will your biopsy tell you that you’re out of the woods or that you need chemo? Who will prevail in the upcoming elections?

Sure, these questions demand our attention (and practical response), but if we fixate on their black/white dualities we lose the colors of the present moment. We won’t stop to smell the roses unless we see them in front of us.

The Power of our Internal Soundtrack to Affect Anxiety

Music is, of course, crucial to a horror film’s effect, and here too we have our inner equivalent. In Get Out, the run-up to the revelation of the sinister conspiracy against black people is set in the sun-drenched countryside and a gracious home full of smiling white liberals. On the surface, everything looks fine. But beneath the surface, layered African voices sing in Swahili, “Brother, run! Listen to the elders! Listen to the truth! Run away! Save yourself!” Even though we don’t understand the words, we feel the preverbal power of their ominous warning.

And decades after we first saw Psycho or Jaws, many of us will still signal doom by mimicking the insistent bass figure — Ba-dum! Ba-dum! — that means the shark is attacking, or the repeated, screeching violin note — Eek! Eek! Eek! Eek! — that means Mother Bates is at it again.

Our inner music, which colors how we experience our life the way a musical score colors how we experience a film’s plot points, is what’s known as feelings. As you confront a challenge, you can color it with dread and you’ll see it as dangerous, dreadful; if you color it with excitement, you’ll see it as an exciting opportunity.

Most people, if made to take a math test or do karaoke singing in front of an audience, will report feeling anxiety. But Harvard researchers, noting that anxiety and excitement are both arousal states with similar fight-or-flight symptoms (dry mouth, tight throat, pounding pulse), have found that saying “I’m excited!” just before diving into the task reframes the experience as excitement. Anxiety drops away and performance improves.

Recognizing how our Inner Emotional Music can Reduce Anxiety

Of course, a good film score exerts its effect mainly by being subliminal, and so does our inner emotional music. Again, the crucial step is recognition. We need to notice the feelings themselves, distinct from the mental stories we associate with them. Like those arousal symptoms studied at Harvard, they’re not abstractions but physical sensations. They may be subtle, so pay attention.

Perhaps you’ll notice that joy feels like a tingly effervescence around your cranium or chest, or that depression feels like a heavy sky pressing down on the top of your head. Whatever it is, don’t try to change it, and definitely don’t try to suppress it. Just clearly notice the sensations, notice that they’re only sensations, and then part of you, the part doing the noticing, is already free.

Hitchcock himself, having mastered the art of manipulating audiences with these cinematic techniques, may have intuited what can happen when we’re liberated from such manipulation — and from self-manipulation.

An interviewer once asked Hitchcock what his idea of happiness was, and he responded, “A clear horizon.” That’s about as good a description as I’ve ever heard of the wonderful sense of sparkling clarity and natural boundlessness that we wake into when we stop scaring ourselves. You’ve tried Boo! Now try Ahhhhhhh!

Celebrate Fear Less with Author Dean Sluyter

Celebrate the publication of Fear Less by author and meditation teacher Dean Sluyter at Diesel Bookstore in Brentwood on Tuesday, March 20 from 6:30-7:30pm. Free.

Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, and Addiction

Read LA YOGA’s review of Dean Sluyter’s book Fear Less. 

Dean Sluyter

Dean Sluyter (DeanWords.com) teaches meditation in Santa Monica and leads workshops throughout the United States and beyond. His latest book is Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction.

www.deanwords.com

The post Undirect Your Personal Horror Film and Use Awareness to Reduce Anxiety appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

by Dean Sluyter

You may not know his name, but if you meditate, practice yoga, use alternative diets or medicine, cultivate right-brain creativity, or consume information about any form of inner development, then an unlikely character changed your life. A dapper New Yorker with the patrician voice of a Franklin Roosevelt, transplanted to the poolside culture of Beverly Hills, was one of the key shapers of the more conscious, expansive world you live in today.

Jeremy Tarcher pioneered mind-body-spirit publishing in the United States some forty-five years ago. Before he came along, such books were scarce, relegated to the fringes of the industry. Jeremy—my mentor and my friend—changed that.

That’s not something anyone would have predicted. Jeremy’s path was a series of accidents. The son of an ad man and a lawyer, he grew up on posh Central Park West, Catcher in the Rye country. In fact, he once told me he was convinced that he was Holden Caulfield. Like Salinger’s young hero, he was a seeker, a nonconformist, and a bright, failing student. But unlike Holden, he was always genial and charming. He was having too much fun to study—as he put it, he refused to waste the best years of his life reading.

The ironic result is that the only college he could get into was quirky St. John’s in Maryland, with its four-year, symposium-style investigation into the Great Books: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Montaigne, Marx, Freud—all the canonical Big Minds. There, Jeremy fell in love with books and received his intellectual grooming.

His entrepreneurial grooming began with another accident. Jeremy’s sister, Judith Krantz (future author of such mega-bestselling novels as Scruples) returned from a visit to Paris with a smuggled copy of Henry Miller’s The Rosy Crucifixion, which was banned in the U.S. as obscene. She gave it to Jeremy, who promptly went into business, lending it out to fellow students at twenty-five cents a head.

In 1957, yet another life-changing accident took place. Jeremy happened to see a children’s TV program starring Shari Lewis and her signature puppets, Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse, and promptly fell in love. He was working as a TV producer himself and wangled an introduction. He not only married Shari but became her producer. Eventually they moved to Los Angeles, where they were a dynamic creative team, even writing a Star Trek episode together.

But Jeremy was nervous about being a Hollywood husband with a career that depended on his wife’s. With his new show-biz connections, he hit on the idea of producing celebrity humor books by the likes of Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, and Johnny Carson. A publisher was born.

Soon California was experiencing the first rumblings of the conscious-lifestyle revolution: yoga, meditation, psychedelics, transpersonal psychology. After a visit north to the Esalen Institute, Jeremy was drawn into that revolution. The New York publishers wrote it all off as Left Coast flakey, but Jeremy saw this vacuum as an opportunity, and Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. brought the world such groundbreaking works as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class, The Aquarian Conspiracy, and Seven Years in Tibet.

There were bumps along the way. An exasperated swami once threw Jeremy out of his ashram, declaring, “You’re the worst prospect for meditation I’ve ever met!” And many of Jeremy’s authors were, well, characters. Bikram’s outsized personality, for example, is notorious, but the book that Jeremy got out of him helped make yoga a household word. He also published Flashbacks, one of several memoirs by the erratic psychedelic evangelist Timothy Leary. (I once asked him how it was. He replied, in his best FDR inflection, “Well, it doesn’t contain any more lies than the others.”)

Author Philip Goldberg recalls his first meeting with Jeremy. “I was trying to sell a book on intuition and its practical applications, a new idea at the time. No one in New York was interested, and my agent finally called to say he was giving up on it. But he added, ‘You know, there’s this … guy out in L.A. who does fringy stuff like that.’ So I flew out and, as I was crossing Sunset Boulevard to Jeremy’s office, Neil Young passed me going the other way. Then, just as I entered the office, Tim Leary came out. I considered it a good sign.” Jeremy bought the book on the spot, but (combining, as usual, his New Age enthusiasm with shrewd marketing sensibility) he changed the title from The Intuitive Mind to The Intuitive Edge.

Jeremy’s writers found him wise, witty, gracious—and demanding. Unlike most publishers, he read every draft of every book after his editors had worked it over. He was famous for his probing, prodding marginal notes. He knew that books about supposedly obscure, lofty topics like enlightenment require more clarity, precision, and feet-on-the-ground humility than other kinds of writing. He served on the board of Esalen for years and was fond of quoting the board’s unofficial motto: “You always teach the workshop you need, and you’re always your own worst student.”

I first met Jeremy around 1996. My idea for a book about the unintentional enlightenment teachings of jokes, nursery rhymes, and pop songs had been rejected all over New York. Jeremy loved the book precisely for the oddball quality that had doomed it elsewhere, and, although he had recently retired as publisher, he insisted on editing it himself. I was living in New Jersey, and our process consisted of mailing drafts back and forth across the continent, carrying on a wonderful Socratic dialogue in their margins. “Boy,” I thought, “this publishing thing is great!” Only later did I learn that that was not how the publishing industry worked—that was just Jeremy.

The success of Tarcher Inc. inspired other publishers to enter the mind-body-spirit field. Tarcher eventually became an imprint at Penguin Random House, guided into the next generation by the astute Joel Fotinos, who for years continued to consult on the phone with Jeremy several times a week. (He can still do a killer Jeremy impression.) After I moved to Santa Monica in 2010, I occasionally visited Jeremy in his Westwood condo. By now he was widowed and in failing health, but still seeking and challenging. Once he attended a kirtan I was leading and asked a perfect, sly, innocent Jeremy question: “Why do you repeat those mantras so many times?” He also started a book of his own but soon gave up, saying, “I wish I could go back and apologize to all my writers. I never fully realized how difficult it is to write a book till I tried it myself.”

The last time I saw Jeremy was earlier this year. I had received the first advance copies of my latest book, the fruit of 45 years of teaching meditation. Everything had been arranged: launch party, book tour, workshops, radio interviews. But I realized that something was missing. I needed the godfather of my writing career to bless this new project. I scooted over to Westwood on my Vespa and sat with Jeremy in his living room, where he had been playing chess with his caretaker, a gentle, burly former football player. Jeremy was quite ill, but he lit up at the sight of the new book. I told him that he was indeed the godfather, that his DNA was in my book and those of a whole generation of writers he had mentored, and there it would live on. He gave his smiling approval, we took a few selfies together, and we said goodbye.

Dean Sluyter is the author of Natural Meditation. He leads workshops and retreats throughout the U.S.: deansluyter.com.

Dean Sluyter

Dean Sluyter (DeanWords.com) teaches meditation in Santa Monica and leads workshops throughout the United States and beyond. His latest book is Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction.

www.deanwords.com

The post THIS MAN CHANGED YOUR LIFE appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Once upon a time in a long-ago decade, before doctors were recommending meditation to control blood pressure and insomnia, before football teams and tech companies were using it to get better at crushing the competition, I started my career as a meditation teacher. Back then, mainstream folks were generally curious but dubious: Was this some kind of weirdo-hippie-Eastern-mystic-cult thing? So, in every public talk, I included a spiel along the lines of, “You don’t have to wear beads. You don’t have to wear orange robes. You don’t have to shave your head. You don’t have to change your name to Rainbow Blissananda. And you don’t have to go sit in a cave in India.”  

I still stand by those statements.

But …

I knew there were stories of yogis and hermits who dwelt in caves for years, and I suspected there was something to it, something deeper and more real than my flip caricature of them. Eventually, I got around to sitting in a couple of caves in India myself — briefly, but long enough to confirm that my suspicion was correct.

First Encounters

My first encounter was on Arunachala, the red hill of Lord Shiva above the pilgrimage town of Tiruvanamalai, where sadhus (holy men) have lived in caves for centuries. The most famous was Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great 20th-century sage whose starkly simple method of “Who am I?” inquiry has sparked awakening for countless people. About halfway up Arunachala is the tiny cave where, after his own sudden awakening at age sixteen, Ramana sat for seven years.

The tradition is to climb there barefoot, which my wife and I did — but with our shoes stuffed discreetly into our backpacks. You’re supposed to check them at the ashram at the bottom of the hill, but the wallah in charge of guarding shoes didn’t inspire much confidence; he was fast asleep. Hiking up the red clay trail, with its spectacular view of the sprawling Shiva temple far below, was inspiring. But when we got to the cave itself, we found that it felt rather uncavelike. A little wooden anteroom had been built against its entrance, lined with a couple of commemorative plaques and several framed photos of Ramana at various ages. And the cave was so small and shallow, and such a popular pilgrimage site, that we had to squeeze in with two other Westerners for a couple of minutes of token meditation, then scoot right out to make room for the next two.

As a cave experience, at least for these two pilgrims on that particular day, it was pretty undramatic. But as we started back down, I realized how ironically appropriate that was. Sri Ramana taught not to seek intense experiences, whether mundane or spiritual, but rather to abide in the experiencer — to keep turning the attention inward to the changeless Self that is nonjudgmentally aware of all experiences. Nothing flashy happening? Perfect.

Singer – teacher Gina Salá led the author’s trip to India.

Above Rishikesh

Our next cave experience took place above Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Although we usually travel on our own, this time we went with a group led by Gina Salá, an extraordinary kirtan singer/teacher and spiritual explorer who’s deeply connected to India’s sacred places and awakened teachers. One morning our little group squeezed into a minibus and headed north along the western bank of the Ganga (Ganges). After winding our way fourteen kilometers uphill and upstream, we arrived at the cave of the ancient sage Vasishtha. That section of the Ganga is lined by a broad, rocky beach. Above it, where the hills and forests begin, a small temple stands near the cave, the birthplace of the Gayatri Mantra. As we sat in the courtyard between the temple and the cave, with Gina playing the harmonium and leading us in 108 repetitions of the mantra, it seemed to take on a special spiritual electricity. She also recounted the long story of the mighty King Vishwamitra and his envy of Vasishtha’s enlightenment. (Like most arrogant kings in legends and scriptures, Vishwamitra can be taken as a metaphor for the sense of an isolated, separate self — the “ego” — which is always trying to control the world, while Vasishtha symbolizes realization, which pierces the egoic illusions of control and isolation.) The story ends at Vasishtha’s cave, where, after many years of striving to best him, Vishwamitra finally collapses in surrender at the sage’s feet. He immediately goes into a deep samadhi state, and from within that boundless silence cognizes the Gayatri Mantra, calling upon the Infinite to illuminate the minds of all beings with the light of realization. Today, the Gayatri is chanted every morning, afternoon, and evening all up and down the Ganga and by millions of people throughout the world.

The author at the ruins of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Ashram in Rishikesh.

Despite the cave’s renown, there was no line of tourists waiting their turn to get in, just one or two Indian families in no hurry to be anywhere else. It’s also roomier than Ramana’s cave, so we could sit there, meditate, and commune with its spirit at our leisure. There we felt what might be described as a warm glow of timelessness. We felt profoundly connected to a living tradition that has passed along the spark of enlightenment for millennia, and those millennia seemed at once both ancient and completely present. Of course, Gina’s heartfelt recitation of the story helped — she tells those tales with the wide-eyed passion of an eyewitness.

Baba’s Cave

We sat in our third cave just a few days later. It was the most sensational experience yet, and it happened by mistake. For decades, I had heard stories about the great 20th-century cave-dwelling sadhu Tat Wale Baba. He was a striking figure: extraordinarily strong and beautiful, clad only in a loincloth in all seasons, with the powerful, noble look of an American Plains Indian warrior. His long dreadlocks trailed on the ground, yet his face and body were completely hairless — a side effect, according to the spiritual rumor mill, of having attained full enlightenment before puberty.

There were other rumors as well, including claims that he was over 100 years old, despite looking perpetually 35; that he climbed easily over the rocks and hills although his eyes were covered by cataracts (“These eyes? Oh, I don’t use these eyes,” he is supposed to have said); that he talked things over with the local cobras and convinced them not to attack people; and that he predicted he would be murdered — shot in the back — by a crazed, jealous sadhu. That, in fact, is exactly what happened in 1974, and if even a fraction of the other legends are true, Tat Wale Baba was a man of rare spiritual power. I was eager to visit the cave where he had spent long hours in meditation every day. Unfortunately (and surprisingly), no one in the town seemed to have heard of him. Even the local travel bureau, which pointed visitors to pilgrimage sites every day, had no information.

We were nearing the end of our stay, so one day I, my wife, Gina, and two other friends set out across the narrow, crowded Ram Jhula footbridge to the eastern bank, turned right, and walked along the river to the southern outskirts of town. Knowing only that the cave was supposed to be somewhere in the vicinity of the ruins of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram (famously visited by the Beatles in 1968), we kept asking directions of locals who just shook their heads, till we found ourselves, without a clue, hiking up into the hills above town on a dusty, unpaved, unmarked, unfrequented forest road. Eventually — and amazingly — a white gypsy cab materialized, and we flagged it down. The young driver spoke only enough English to say, “Baba cave? I take you Baba cave,” and to haggle over the fare. We piled in.

Local kids at Moni Baba Cave

After slamming a few miles along the rutted roads at some truly alarming speeds and watching the monkeys dash for safety, we were suddenly headed straight up the hillside on a “road” that was nothing but rocks. Finally, we disembarked at a clearing where, under a makeshift lean-to, four or five local women and children were partaking of a bandhara: the customary free meal offered at monastic camps on special days. There were also two 30-ish, limited-English-speaking sadhus. Their laundry (orange robes, as a matter of fact) was hanging on a line to dry, and behind them was their tumble-down plank-and-rock hermitage. Beyond that was a rocky hill fronting a small waterfall, and, on one side of it, a tiny, dark entrance. At last, the mouth of the baba’s cave.

But at the hermitage we saw a few pictures of the baba and a sign telling his story … and it was the wrong baba! This was Mouni Baba — one of many mouni or moni or mauni (silent) babas throughout India. He was an impressive-looking holy man with a pale, round, radiant face and robes, but clearly not the dark, nearly naked Tat Wale Baba. A hand-printed sign told his story, how he had sat in the cave in silence for decades, then one day wandered north into the Himalayas to take his final samadhi.

Entering Moni Baba Cave

Wrong baba. But here we were. Beside the entrance, “MONI BABA” and a couple of auspicious swastikas had been painted in red. By bending low, I could just squeeze through the entrance. Immediately I was in total, enveloping darkness, and the sounds of the waterfall and the Indian kids at play faded away. A few yards in, the ceiling slanted still lower, till I was crawling on hands and knees through a tunnel barely high enough and wide enough for one person to pass through at a time. My four companions were somewhere behind me, but in the dark I felt completely alone and vulnerable. Fearful fantasies clamored for my attention: Was this a trap where gullible Westerners, gathered up by conniving taxi drivers, were lured to be knocked on the head and robbed?

After a few more yards, even in the pitch black, I could sense the tunnel opening out into a bigger space. Just then, one of the young sadhus somehow slipped past me, bearing a lantern, and set it in the middle of this space. The others caught up to us, we sat, and we gestured for him to put out the light.

Whooooosh.

Deep, deep silence. Deep, deep darkness. Silent darkness so deep and so powerful that it wasn’t an absence, but a vibrant, scintillating presence. The world was gone, time was gone, space was gone, and in the darkness even my body was gone. Only awareness. Only a few vestigial thoughts remained, but with the outside world gone, they had nothing to pertain to and swiftly died. Only the Self.

Oh, yes.

This was why, for centuries, people sat in caves. This was the silence you couldn’t hide from, you couldn’t distract yourself from, you couldn’t wrap in tidy concepts or stories like a package with a pink bow. You could only surrender to it — only dissolve.

I’m back home in Santa Monica now, where it’s sunny and 72. A Harley has just roared past my house, setting a couple of neighborhood dogs off into a barking contest. I peck away at my keyboard, spinning out these sentences. Occasionally I check my email, where I’m juggling workshop dates and plane reservations, or distract myself with The New York Times online — summoning, at the touch of a key, a world’s worth of melodrama and chaos.

But beneath it all, in a way that hasn’t always been there — or, at least, that I haven’t always recognized — is a certain space of silence. It’s not one I have to travel to India for or crawl on hands and knees to get inside. It’s inside of me. Beneath all the sensations and thoughts, it is me, the one that silently witnesses the thoughts, the body, the world. My teachers and my experience have shown me that I can settle into it anywhere, including the L.A. freeway system and the New York subway system. Nothing needs to be blocked out. Sitting in a cave is optional.

But it’s good.

Dean Sluyter

Dean Sluyter (DeanWords.com) teaches meditation in Santa Monica and leads workshops throughout the United States and beyond. His latest book is Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction.

www.deanwords.com

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