Back in his home domain, Hasmukh paid a visit at Nirvesha and Kavita’s, who he had not seen for a while. His ex-girlfriend had to leave for work when he arrived, but she hugged him warmly and promised to meet some time later.
Kavita and he talked over a pot of tea. He reported the latest developments in his life, and she told him that now everybody wanted to visit the United States because of the master himself soon being in Oregon. People were trying to find compatible partners to marry and obtain legal-resident status that way.
She also mentioned that Nirvesha now had at least two lovers who visited the loft occasionally, one of them the therapist assistant from the Encounter group, the other the massage course instructor Sunito. Kavita, with her unobstructed view of the matter, said she believed Nirvesha loved Sunito much more than the assistant. She could hear the difference in the sounds Nirvesha made when making love to the two different men.
Very interesting, Hasmukh thought. Let’s see what the future brings.
When he left and reached his parked Volkswagen Variant station wagon, it would not move. He had turned the key to start the engine and engaged the reverse gear, but nothing happened. His loyal transportation did not move an inch; the clutch and gear drive were done. Hasmukh could not believe it, but it was true. He tried forward and reverse gears, second and third gears, but nothing worked, and it was time to face it. He took the streetcar back to the Westend and mulled over the situation.
Later that night, he called Chandra. She said, “You know what? Our family has used a specific car dealer for many years. Let me call my mother and tell her. She can talk to the man; maybe he has something attractive available. I shall call you back tomorrow.”
The next day’s news was not perfect, but having a reliable source for a used car appealed to him. The dealer offered a recent-model Opel Kadett station wagon for a price Hasmukh could afford and would drive it to Frankfurt if he were interested. He agreed to the deal, and two days later, a friendly man delivered a dark-green metallic car to his doorstep, which made him mobile again. He needed wheels because of his next long-distance journey.
When Hasmukh drove to the Mada Center for the Kundalini, he saw a few new leaflets laid out in the reception area. One of them announced the start of a therapist-training program with Swami Anand Veeresh, whom he had met in Berlin. When Hasmukh read the detailed description of the program for the training over two years, his heart began to throb. The goal of becoming a therapist himself, sounded like something he always wanted to be. He filled out an application form, sent it by mail to The Hague in the Netherlands, and prepared himself for his first workshop, a forty-eight-hour marathon Encounter group at Veeresh’s school.
Hasmukh, a brand-new Sannyasin with a new mala and a new used car, left on a Friday morning. His intention was to drive all the way to The Hague, passing Bonn and Cologne, through the Ruhrpott, and then crossing Holland from one side of the small country all the way to the other, where the first training class was being held.
What Hasmukh knew about Veeresh came from other Sannyasins and some literature, such as the flyer that had initially caught his attention. He heard that Veeresh had been a heroin addict during his youth in New York City. Only when he joined the Phoenix House drug rehabilitation program could he kick the habit, and then he moved to London, where he became a therapist himself, and leading personal-growth workshops. Later, as a Sannyasin in Poona, Bhagwan encouraged him and his partner, Ma Yoga Sudha, to run Encounter groups.
People talked about these groups. They mentioned characteristics of toughness and honesty. Additional rumors floated around that the use of alcohol and frequent sexual intercourse with different partners was encouraged and part of the therapy.
From the outside, the building Hasmukh had an address for looked like an abandoned small-business complex of red brick, with two stories and masked windows.
The difference in temperature from the outside and the interior was immense, as in a sauna. People were everywhere in the hallways. He asked around for a reception area and came to large room where people in red sat at a long table. They accepted his money and reviewed a list to find his name. He signed a form for insurance reasons, declared that he had no mental issues or infectious diseases, and then was told to hurry up and get comfortable in loose clothes; the first session would start in a few minutes.
When the long table had been removed from the room and all participants assembled, it did not appear large at all anymore. Hasmukh estimated about one hundred people were there, none of whom he recognized. The available space grew sparse.
A series of contact exercises were followed by the Kundalini and dinner. After a brief break, Veeresh appeared with a few assistants and addressed the attendees in one of his unmistakably unique lectures about love, truth, and the master Bhagwan. The following sessions covered many hours with intervals of brief breaks, when people could consume beer or other available liquids. It became obvious that most in the group had reached a mental limit sometime during the early morning. Permission was granted to take a mat and go to sleep.
People quickly took care of hygienic measures and tried to locate an appropriate, quiet place. To Hasmukh it seemed as if only a moment had passed when the noisy invitation to clear the space and get ready for the Dynamic Meditation interrupted the sleeping intermission. First, he felt anger and pain everywhere in his body, but he threw himself into the meditation as he had never done before and suddenly enjoyed the cruel jumping part because there was no pain anymore.
He realized that the group meetings did not have an explicit agenda, structure, or goal. Participants were encouraged to share emotional reactions, such as anger, fear, warmth, or envy that arose in response to their fellow participants’ actions and statements. The emphasis was on sharing emotions, as opposed to judgments or conclusions. Most of all, the techniques used served to decrease any resistance to whatever occurred, to allow surrender. The second night when time for a brief rest was granted, a woman asked Hasmukh if he wanted to share a mat with her, and he did. Both of them fell asleep as soon as their bodies lay down.
Another day of intense and unpredictable affairs began, in which different group leaders suggested ways of pursuing a person’s problems, using techniques taken from gestalt, psychodrama, primal, bioenergetics, and other methods.
Hasmukh left the building on Sunday afternoon. He felt happy to get away alive. He was thoroughly shaken, emotionally and physically, during his long trip from The Hague to Hamburg.
Late at night, he arrived in the northern town, just outside the city limits. As before, he parked the car in front of the wooden fence that enclosed one part of the property. When he reached the entrance door of the house, it opened. He walked up the few stairs and then knocked on Chandra room’s door. She opened the door naked; they fell into each other’s arms and hugged for a long time. At the end of their embrace, she noticed he had tears in his eyes and wept.
“It was so very hard in the group. Am I hard?” he asked. During the rest of the night, only a small part of him stood hard.
Hasmukh spent two more days with his girlfriend before returning to Frankfurt. He felt as if his ego had been crushed. To spoil himself a little bit, he bought bright-red leather pants in a department store, as well as a cuddly red bathrobe and flowers for his room.
From Kavita he learned that Sunito and Bijou were offering a course for advanced massage training in Switzerland. He called Chandra and asked if she wanted to participate free of cost—he wanted to invite her. After some persuasion, she agreed, and the couple went to a small village in the mountains near Zurich for a few days, where they enjoyed the training group. To Hasmukh’s surprise, the homeopathic healer who Nirvesha visited a lot was participating in the group as well. He and Chandra talked a lot about healing.
When he went for his second class with Veeresh in Holland, he had to drive to the coastal town of Egmond aan Zee, where the organization had bought an old, rundown four-story building close to the beach. Renovations to the house were in the beginning stages. Almost no heat, no hot water, and somber rooms were available for another forty-eight-hour marathon. During this weekend, Hasmukh began to doubt strongly that he had done the right thing by enrolling in the program. After all, he had his issues, but was never a drug addict or alcoholic.
The enthusiasm that piloted him through much of the first six months of his Sannyas life had motivated Hasmukh to pay for and enroll in a different weekend marathon with Veeresh before he had signed up for the therapist program. This group took place in the small Vidija Center near Augsburg, Bavaria, after he did his third weekend in Egmond aan Zee.
Hasmukh arrived from Frankfurt, where he had purchased a diamond stud earring, and his right earlobe contained one of the sterilized piercing earrings that the jeweler installed after piercing the lobe. In one of the group routines at Vidija on the first night of the forty-eight hours, partners had the assignment to make love to each other’s ears. Participants could suck, lick, and stick their tongues inside the partner’s ear canal. They could do whatever creative lovemaking idea that came up.
Hasmukh, fully aware of his right earlobe condition, tried his best to avoid contact with a partner’s flickering tongue, but one of them succeeded in getting her lolling clapper all around and into his right ear. After the traditional brief rest in the wee hours, he could feel the pulsing begin and an occasional sting in his swelling earlobe. For Hasmukh, the Encounter group ended at that moment. On Monday morning, he went to a physician who was able to remove the piercing earring from his ear and treat the infection that stretched down into his cheekbone.
Considering the reality and financials of the therapist training, he decided to suspend his participation in it and felt good. His life was changing; he wanted to talk matters over with Chandra, so he made another long-distance trip to Hamburg.
All conversations with anybody he met inevitably circulated around Bhagwan directly or indirectly, about the individual’s experience, feelings, relationship with the master, girlfriend or boyfriend in relation to the master. Life on the outside dramatically changed for Hasmukh even though he had never met the master in person. A Sannyas world opened for him in which people used a different language, motivated by ambitions and objectives more uncommon than normal peoples were. Externally, the disciples wanted to be in Oregon, and the mutual internal destination was to become enlightened. Hasmukh had yet to acquire a picture of this condition; all he had were phenomenal experiences, fleeting and changing, without any guarantees or safety nets.
The small commune of about ten people knew him by then; he had visited Chandra many times. There were situations that left impressions, and they had all talked to him before about his plans. Nevertheless, when he and Chandra approached the others and requested a group discussion to see if they would be willing to welcome him as a new resident in the house, he did not know what would come of it. The villa appeared to be occupied, and Chandra had not even a chair in her room. On the third floor, however, there was a small chamber, an attic space, tucked away between staircase and another room, which she used sometimes to study and type on a typewriter.
To the couple’s surprise, none of the attendees at the meeting had any objection to Hasmukh personally, his energy or direct-action approach; the discussion focused on how to manage another person in the house. Everybody agreed to try it out and let him move in whenever he was ready.
Hasmukh and Chandra talked again alone and tested each other’s views one more time. He thought she had opened up a lot since they met, though there were, unfortunately, some very rough edges she needed to work on—a hard shell with a hard core, so to speak. Hasmukh did not tell her these thoughts; he wanted to give her time and see how the relationship would progress. Chandra simply told him that she would love to have her boyfriend close to herself. Their physical attraction continued to stay very strong, with everlasting body vibrations, and no night or day went by when they did not have sex at least once.
When they first met, Chandra told him that she had never used any protection; she would never become pregnant. This knowledge, combined with what he thought was love for her, stimulated within Hasmukh an ambition to make her pregnant, to have a child with Chandra. Each month they were together, he hoped for the announcement, but it never came.
In good spirits, he left Hamburg again to return to his old home and begin organizing his move to another big city. Back in his apartment, it was bittersweet to see Rudi again and then say perhaps good-bye to him. The two of them had shared an eventful time together. Rudi asked whether Hasmukh wanted to sublease the apartment to him until he was sure about what came next and whether he wanted to live in Hamburg permanently.
Hasmukh enjoyed his time in Frankfurt, visited the Mada Center, met a Ma who had received the same name as he did, and ended up with her in his bed. Hasmukh took his time. He pondered and meditated about his next step, looked very closely at the person Chandra, who had such an effect on him. She had yet to show her loving side and was physically not immaculate at all. On her left cheekbone, she sported a scar from a knife wound, and her lips at times could appear swollen. In unpleasant moments, she curled her lips into an unforgiving sneer and walked away, not to be seen again for a day or two. Hasmukh did not like this image. It reminded him of his first impression of her, that she had the power to destroy him.
After almost two weeks of considerations, but also to enjoy the time in his home, he decided to take another plunge, the same way he had jumped into becoming a Sannyasin, because he knew there was nothing to lose. He called his girlfriend in Hamburg and told her he would leave that day.
He arrived in the village of Hoisbuettel a little later than usual, but learned that Chandra had not yet returned from the city. In the villa’s kitchen, a few of the residents present invited Hasmukh to eat some leftover vegetables with rice and salad. He thanked them for the hospitality and gratefully sat down with Michael, who had kept his legal name when he took Sannyas, Stephan, who was not a Sannyasin but an old friend of Michael’s; and beautiful Tanya, whose name meant Beloved Laughter. As the son of a local lawyer, Michael could initially provide the credentials to rent the property from the owners, who had moved to a warmer location. Stephan occupied the garden building for his studies and hobbies and also rented half the living room next to the kitchen, which could be divided into two parts by sliding doors. During the winter, he spent the nights in the main house. Tanya, in her early twenties, had returned from Poona not too long ago. She expressed herself in perfect High German, and on first contact with her, one could only assume that she came from a wealthy, good home.
This was the first time Hasmukh spent time with anyone there without Chandra being present. His new roommates wanted to know details of how the two met and how the relationship was going so far. They also expressed their opinions about Chandra upon request. They said Chandra spent a lot of time away in the city to study and very often spent her nights there as well. Hasmukh knew she had maintained a friendly relationship with one of her fellow students for a long time; they studied together often, and she occasionally slept with him and spent the night at his place. Chandra had explained that they were friends of opportunity and necessity to help each other during the semester.
The community inside the villa certainly was a spiritual one, but the main purpose of their living together was to afford to rent a place like this. After the housemates had retired one after the other and Hasmukh suddenly sat in the kitchen by himself, he brushed his teeth and lay down on the mattress in Chandra’s room but could not fall asleep. He did not understand why she was not at home, since they had talked in the morning and she knew he would be arriving. He also did not have a phone number to call.
The hours went by and it grew light again outside, a cold winter morning. After his restless night, Hasmukh felt awful. In the kitchen, he found a woman who had not been present the night before, Harshini, or Joyful. She came to him, looked into his eyes, and introduced herself in an energetic, fresh way, and then they hugged for a long time.
“Something is troubling you, right?” she asked him.
“Well, yes. Chandra did not come home last night, and I arrived yesterday. That is troubling for me.”
“You know, Hasmukh, I would not take it too seriously. She spends nights away frequently; it does not mean anything; give it a little more time.”
After Harshini’s good-hearted words, he prepared himself muesli, had tea from a pot, and then went for a walk around the neighborhood. He waited until noon. When Chandra did not show up or even call, he left the house and walked to his car, from which he had not even removed his luggage. He drove onto the closest Autobahn entrance ramp after thirty minutes and showed up at Rudi’s place seven hours later.