Jumping in Feet First
What exactly did that mean? It must mean that you jump in, hoping there is nothing at the bottom to kill you. Well, that’s what I did. What would happen, I did not know.
I was both elated and deflated! Their lifestyle and clothing were deplorable to me, but the words of Krishna to Arjuna written down in the Bhagavad Gita were words that satisfied my soul! Krishna was the only Person in history to have the balls enough to say, “I am God. I am in control of everything. Everything emanates from Me and is in Me and yet I am also standing here before you, as your friend.”
So I bought a Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) and took it back to Birmingham to read it. It was difficult, I admit, but when I hit on a truth, I was stunned. I read the entire book in two weeks and then returned to Atlanta for the Sunday Feast, filled with questions. Honestly, I was being drawn to that divine truth more and more every time I visited. I was beginning to see the absolute must include both a personal form as well as an impersonal energy known as cause and effect, or electricity and magnetism. If God did not have a personal form, then it made sense that the Absolute would not be absolute at all, but rather incomplete. INCOMPLETE! It was all coming together. God was indeed everything, every atom, but also had an incredibly beautiful and charming personal form. And I was learning that the Supreme Person also had an incredible personality!
He is known as the Butter Thief, the Darling of Vrindavan, the Lover of the Gopis and the Killer of Demons. He plays in the forest with His cowherd boyfriends, meets secretly with the young girls, adores His mother and brings shoes to His father on His head. He makes everyone around him laugh as He grabs the tail of a baby calf and is dragged around the courtyard of His father’s home. He plays games with his childhood boyfriends in the forest as He takes the calves out to graze. He is the center of everyone’s attention!
So there I was, going back and forth between Birmingham and Atlanta, falling in love with a Butter Thief and having amazing realizations daily. Yet, I did not know what to do. I did not want to live with these culture mimickers and nor did I want to leave my husband, but somehow or another I was hopelessly dragged in by hearing the sweet past times of the Divine Absolute who is the source of everything, including my pleasure. The philosophy was perfect as far as I could see, but I did not want to live in a commune with people who were running around in Indian saris acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
I was disturbed. I finally found the answer to my question as to what I was supposed to be doing with my life, only to find God hiding in the midst of some crazy people chanting mantras on the street. People who are wearing orange robes and shaving their heads! Why the hell would I want to be associated with a movement like that? Well, I knew the reason, but I did not like it. I dreaded the thought of wearing an Indian sari and paint on my face. No doubt the saris were incredibly beautiful, flowing pieces of art painted with turquoise, reds and burgundies, olive greens with gold, hot pinks with pale yellows and some were bordered with patterned prints made from silver and gold threads that shimmered as these beautiful women moved about. They were made from silk, cotton, and a fabric called khadi. Some saris were made from beautiful tie-dyed cotton, made in the province of Orissa and sought after by connoisseurs. These saris, pleated at the waist, made them full at the bottom and they swished graciously as the women walked, accenting the curves of their large hips and small waist. A shortened type of crop top known as a choli was worn as the blouse underneath, thus exposing the woman’s midriff and it was sometimes cut very low to expose the swollen breasts underneath. Together, the sari with the choli made a truly beautiful site! Sometimes a sheer iridescent scarf was draped across the breast, as if it could actually hide something. Sexy was not a good enough word for this luscious style of dress because there was exposure in all the proper areas, and there as also a delicate hidden suggestion of what lay underneath. But I didn’t want to wear one!
The problem, for an American not used to wearing this type of classic Indian dress, was to keep the damned things on. They were wrapped around the waist, pleated, then wrapped around the bodice, over the shoulder and then over the head. I could never understand how the other women seemed to like it. I did not want to cover my head, either. The reasoning was that it was chaste. “Lovely hair made a woman more desirable,” they said, “and we do not want to agitate the brahmacharis who were trying to be celibate,” so we were instructed to braid our long hair and cover our heads, basically so the men in the organization wouldn’t get too excited and get a hard-on. What the hell? The sexy midriff exposed, as well as low-cut cholis exposing the rounded curves of the breasts of beautiful women in the prime of their life and yet we were instructed to cover our heads? And in the midst of all that, I was being told that I was responsible for someone’s hard-on! I was just a little too independent for that kind of gibberish. I didn’t believe everything everyone told me. I just was not that kinda girl. If a guy wanted to be celibate, that was his problem, or call it gift, if you will. If either a man or woman was strong enough to be a celibate monk, then they must be more serious than me. I always thought that monks and nuns had something going for them the rest of us were not aware of. But in the meantime, I felt it was not my responsibility to be concerned about their level of advancement when I was struggling with my own. If they were so agitated by seeing my hair, I thought, they should go live in a cave!
My new guru meant well, there is no doubt of that. However, I was not raised in India and by the time I was 23 years old, my habits and dress choices in this world were pretty much solidified. I simply did not want to become an Indian to achieve self realization. Blue jeans, or a cool sundress were fine with me. Surrendering, however, I told myself, It is only clothing. Surely you can make a few changes if it will help you find what you’ve been looking for. And besides, many of the women loved their new-found style so I kept my mouth shut and decided to give it a try. But the truth was, it agitated my mind from the very first day I tried one on until the last day that I ever wore seven yards of fabric wrapped around my body and tied and tilted and smoothed and pinned until I could barely walk and could not keep my hands free from holding the pleats on my shoulder and keeping the cloth over my head.
And I just didn’t get what was up with these guys shaving their heads with a sprout of hair coming out from their crown chakra? They looked like pictures from Egyptian Hieroglyphs of the Amun Priesthood. Was that really necessary or were they just sheep following some process without ever really thinking about it? In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna said it didn’t matter what your nature was, all you needed to do was to remember Him. So why the Brahmin clothes? But these guys were running around chanting in the streets with this odd hairstyle and pale orange, yellow or white robes, looking like a type of dress, acting as if they were from India, as the people in the community looked on laughing and yet wondering, What the hell is going on? I was so embarrassed to be a part of it that I could have cried, and I did, as time went on.
I continued to drive to Atlanta to visit the little temple, housed in an old converted yellow victorian with grey trim in the hippie district called “13th Street”. The more I went, the more I was sucked in. It was like a vortex with gravity at the bottom pulling me with strings attached to all the limbs of my body, as well as my head. When I visited, they always gave me some service to do like stringing garlands or working in the garden. I listened to classes and read the books and ate the delicious vegetarian cuisine, sometimes spending a night over the weekend. At one point, in October of 1972, I could take the separation from the process of devotional service no longer as I returned to Birmingham and told my husband I was going to move into the temple. That guy must have been some kind of saint because he so kindly said that he understood, and off I went. I jumped in - Feet First with no idea what would happen next.
But I was more concerned about the Indian culture in the temple ashram than anything else. Why did they have to adopt the clothing of India? It was driving me crazy! I was dead set against it and thought it to be very foolish, though I did finally understand on some levels. (When in Rome - when you visit India or maybe work on the altar.) But didn’t any of these guys ever question why they were required to dress that way and why we didn’t just refuse to do it? I realized soon enough there were basically two reasons. The first was that we all wanted to please our spiritual master and the second was peer pressure! If we wanted to get initiated by a real spiritual master, we needed to toe the line or the temple president would not recommend us to the guru. So I did. I toed the line. I’m not sure what everyone else was thinking. I just thought it was weird.
But besides the dress, this Truth was blowing my mind! Every time anyone spoke about this Truth, either from the Bhagavad Gita or the Srimad Bhagavatam, it was always perfect! All the answers to every question I had, were answered. Shit, these ancient scriptures even answered questions that I didn’t know I had! Not only did they know who god was, but they also seemed to know how to approach Him or Him/Her, both male and female. They knew that the whole universe or universes were the separated energies of god and were not different from that Divine Person Himself. They knew where the Divine Couple lived, what They did and so much more. The descriptions were way beyond what we would think of as The Garden of Eden, with jewels lighting the palaces, flower airplanes, cool and clear streams filled with lotus flowers so fragrant they could be smelled in the distance, large ripened fruits filling the trees, the buzzing of bumblebees and sweet melodic songs of birds who filled the air with beautiful colors. Their scriptures described how cows who were grazing the pasture grounds were constantly spilling milk when they gazed at Krishna playing His silver flute, dressed in yellow silk garments with pearls hanging from His turban, silver fish earrings swinging from His ears, a peacock feather on His head and silken ropes for the calves hanging over his shoulder.
And they quoted from the Bagavada Gita on how Krishna professed that all the universes of the material world resided in Him, and they were resting on Him like pearls on a thread. His bare feet were described as being covered in symbols like a flag, a fish, a crescent moon. As He walked through the forest , His feet, powdered red with kum kum, left footprints causing his devotees to swoon and even faint. The birds in the trees would sing and the flowers would drop nectar as He passed, with each living entity feeling intense love coming from that Divine Being, as if they were lovers who just met and the love was instantaneous for both. His eternal consort, Srimati Radharani, being the source of the Goddess of Fortune and every divine goddess, for that matter, would be the main cause of Krishna’s bliss. Radharani was described as so beautiful that She made the diamonds shine and gave the pearls their luster. Krishna, we were told, was controlled by Radharani’s love. The Supreme Male was controlled by the Supreme Female. That did it for me! I was in Love!
Floating deliriously back into this world where I was born, I somehow knew this truth was something I might have experienced in a previous life. Maybe the hangup on the culture kept me from going forward and kept me coming back to this world again and again. Is that why I remembered what it was like to die and take birth? I thought I simply needed to deal with it in this lifetime, so I decided to give it a try.
From that moment on, once I moved into the temple, life was a roller coaster ride. We woke at 3:30 in the morning, took a cold shower (I still think that one was nuts) and chanted the Maha Mantra for a total of 16 rounds of 108 beads. At 7:00 am we sang devotional songs to the spiritual master and to Mahaprabhu (the Golden Age of Kali Yuga incarnation) and to Radha and Krishna. Srimad Bhagavatam class came after that. Sometimes we fell asleep in class because we were only allowed to sleep six hours a night and well, who the hell gets up at 3:30 in the morning? After class was a breakfast of oranges, cream of wheat and garbanzo beans with a little slice of ginger and then we were all off to our own particular daily duties.
My first service was to take care of the Holy Basil plant named Tulasi. There was a small home-built greenhouse in the rear of the victorian with around 30 plants. The plants needed to be watered daily, ventilated, freed from mites and cleaned of their dead leaves. The leaves were placed on the offerings of food to Krishna on the altar. Each morning, we worshipped Tulasi by circumambulating her while singing a song dedicated to her for her love of and service to Krishna. She was placed in beautiful pots with decorated skirts covering the clay. We wore Tulasi beads around our necks made of her wood coming from India and our meditation beads were made out of Tulasi, as well. She quickly won everyone’s heart for reasons I cannot explain. But I was happy to have that service.
We used to steal sweets from offerings occasionally and one morning I grabbed a powdered milk, powdered sugar and butter ball called a ‘Simply Wonderful’ and inserted it in my bead bag (a bag hanging around our necks so we could always have our meditation or japa beads with us). As I bowed down to offer respects before class, the sweet ball rolled out of my bag, across the hard wood floor and directly into the hands of the temple president. He picked it up, looked at me as if to say, Caught you and then popped it into his mouth. Life was both strange and fun, living in that new ashram style home. I laughed and cried often!
We were told that going out on ‘Sankirtan’ (congregational chanting of the holy names in public) was required. We were told we would need to sell books and incense to make money for the temple. At first I hid from devotees as they were loading up their van to hit the streets. I could not force myself to go out and chant and dance in a public place, especially in a sari that I could not keep wrapped around me to save my life. So, if I knew they were going out at 10:00 am, I left the temple around 9:30 and took a very long walk. I panicked every day until I was able to make the sacrifice, but I didn’t like it! Ever! Honestly, the only thing I liked were the classes. Oh yes, I also liked the food, but I think I already said that! I did not particularly like the chanting or singing. The sound was charming, but it was just a little too weird. I didn’t understand the meanings of the words and if I sang those sanskrit songs without understanding them, that made me a hypocrite. I tried to understand the lyrics, honestly, but I didn’t try very hard. There were just too many of them. I could only devote myself to the books. And the books were amazing!