Undoubtedly, the world inside the massage parlor/apartment on Chicago’s North Side had been shaken. Parmesh’s parents, however, at no time believed that the master had been involved in any of the criminal allegations—wiretapping, attempted murder, and mass poisonings—that were presented by federal law enforcement and Oregon state attorneys.
Before their departure back to Germany, the three drove downtown to the Water Tower Place and went on a shopping spree, as well visited the Vidal Sassoon salon, where Chandra and Hasmukh both got new haircuts.
Back in Hamburg, Hasmukh coincidentally ran into Nirvesha on Eppendorfer Landstrasse; she had moved to the north some time ago. The two ex-partners and friends quickly exchanged personal news and updated the current status of their affairs. When Nirvesha heard that the family needed a place to live, she suggested trying the owner of the villa she lived in. Waldemar, who had purchased the old three-story residence years ago, was very much interested in everything alternative, spiritual, and New Age, and rented most of the house to younger people. Nirvesha mentioned that in the second-floor apartment where she lived, one room might be available.
Chandra and Hasmukh, who had temporarily found shelter in Hoisbuettel with the remaining commune members, made an appointment with the aging Waldemar, who received them with friendliness. Added to the family’s advantage was Chandra’s status of being almost a doctor with degree and their interesting lifestyle, which attracted Waldemar. He offered them the room facing Hallerstrasse, with a shared kitchen and living room, as well as a rare and beautiful winter garden. Besides Nirvesha, who spent most of the time on the road to make money in peep shows, there was one more tenant on the second floor. A very young first-year student dwelled in a space that was the size of his loft bed. He may have been Waldemar’s protégé, which was dubious; he studied mathematics and had no interest in anything spiritual.
So the family once again moved to a new home, located in a convenient part of town. Because of the modest space available, Hasmukh had the idea of building a loft bed and using the space below it for racks and shelves. At one of his few handyman jobs, he managed to build the large loft space out of solid pine wood within a week, including a ladder to climb up to the second level.
Chandra now faced a lot of free time because she had almost completed her education and could take care of Parmesh more frequently. When she began her final study chapter for the oral examination, the couple found a kindergarten for their son. Hasmukh grew tired of driving taxi all the time. He changed careers, becoming an independent messenger with his Opel Kadett. He joined one of the services in the city, they installed a radio in his vehicle, and off he went on weekdays onto the roads of Hamburg and surrounding areas.
When Hasmukh updated his pictures with the extras agency, they called him occasionally for a job. His best assignment happened when director Arthur Penn, with actors Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon, shot part of their movie Target in Hamburg. Hasmukh could be the stand in for Matt. It meant more money, a longer assignment, and food like all the production company staff got. He was fascinated by Gene Hackman, who needed to try out at least once the scene where he jumped from Landungsbruecken Bridge into the ice-cold water of Hamburg’s harbor in freezing November weather. The Lord Mayor gave Gene the key to the city, which included an honorary citizenship.
One day Hasmukh got up with a fever and a red, itchy rash on his face, scalp, chest, and back. Initially it resembled insect bites, but then small, liquid-filled blisters developed, broke open, and then crusted over—chickenpox. His temperature remained high, he could not move around, and his physical appearance changed dramatically. This disease lingered for two weeks straight, during which he was essentially helpless; his food had to be furnished by Chandra. He realized that taking care of a sick person was evidently not one of the future doctor’s strengths. He barely saw her, and when she appeared, he could see cold disgust and repulsion in her eyes whenever she looked at him. In the end, Hasmukh recovered with scars all over his body that disappeared gradually. He did not ask Chandra where she had been most of the time the previous weeks.
The loft bed in their room had an elevation of somewhat more than six feet. Every night the family of three climbed up and down the precipitous steps without the help of a railing. One night, in the middle of it, Hasmukh, who sometimes dreamed heavily but very rarely sleepwalked, slid face down the ladder and hit the ground with his face, his head popping back. When he recovered enough to get up from the floor and walk to the bathroom next door to view the damage, he could hear voices: “Oh my god, what happened?” “Is he OK?” “Are you OK?”
He had bleeding abrasions on his shoulder, right hip and leg, and face, and he had suffered a significant detachment in the neck area, which he miraculously had not broken. Hasmukh needed a few days to recuperate from this incident, and he did; but he felt as if the living situation in the villa had suffered a crack.
Chandra and Hasmukh came together one more time to prepare the content of a weekend self-awareness group, for which they rented the large first-floor living room from Waldemar. The room covered almost the entire area of the building and had only Waldemar’s modest quarters next to it. Hasmukh took a few days off from his courier business, and the couple spent many hours in their living room developing the program after Parmesh went to bed. The idea was to “travel” to various countries during the weekend course by using music from those countries and to express feelings using body movement and dance. It took them a long time to obtain suitable sound tracks, from European countries to African and South American nations, but with the help of many friends, the therapist team felt confident they had sufficient material for the group. The couple prepared a script and timetable for the course and rehearsed by dancing themselves through the complete set of two-day sessions.
When they “arrived” in Africa and started to dance the freestyle kpanlogo for some time, they entered an unknown domain of their past lives unexpectedly. Suddenly, both knew who they had been many lifetimes before in Africa and with whom. The partners looked at each other through old, brown eyes and witnessed their black skins and the clothing they wore. Hasmukh and Chandra danced through the living room with the rhythms of drums and a mixture of African vocal chants. The past-life travelers moved low to the ground, with bent knees and bent back, using frequently sexually suggestive motions in their bodies’ pelvic areas. Deep beyond time and space, the couple encountered raw sorts of sexual desire they had never before experienced that demanded instantaneous fulfillment. The partners had sex on the carpet of the living room and while doing so, felt as if there was a campfire next to them.
Nirvesha and a friend catered the food, Hasmukh rented a large TV set to show two music-related movies during the sessions, and a friend from Nigeria assisted them during the African countries’ sessions. When the Sunday afternoon arrived, most individuals in the modest group confirmed that they had enjoyed the course very much. When Chandra and Hasmukh asked the Dharmadeep leader if they could hold a Satsang with their group music on Sunday night, they received permission to do so, and the whole place went crazy while dancing to the African rhythms.
One of the weekend group participants, a cute, mellow, insecure young man with blond hair and blue eyes and a frame of considerable height, attracted Chandra’s fancy. She invited him for dinner, first asking Hasmukh because he was the one preparing food that evening. The trio and Parmesh sat together at the kitchen table, enjoying the chef’s garlic shrimp in rich cream sauce with rice and salad. Parmesh tried animatedly to catch the visitor’s attention and play with him before going to bed. Needless to say, Hasmukh’s sensory antennas were finely tuned during the proceedings in the kitchen and later in the living room, where the party continued with talk and a glass of wine. He sensed that something was going on beyond his control, and he did not like it. He also perceived that the visitor’s friendliness and eager questions directed to him were testing and scheming.
When Chandra suddenly asked him if it would be OK with him that the young man spent the night with her in their bed while Hasmukh slept on the mattress in the living room, he told her she could do whatever she wanted but that he did not like it a bit. Chandra and the young man, being in some type of connection, hugged Hasmukh before disappearing together to join Parmesh in the loft bed. Despite the fact that Hasmukh knew the guest was no rival, he spent an almost sleepless night alone in front of Nirvesha’s door in the parlor. Chandra thanked him the next day for being so understanding and tolerant, kissed him smilingly, and said, “You are the best.”
At the time, Hasmukh sensed that he was becoming part of an experiment, but he did not recognize the warning signs or recognize the premonition in his subconscious. He got up early most days, wrestled for jobs on the radio in his car, and tackled the Hamburg traffic as smartly as possible. He realized that it was dragging him and his vehicle down for little profit. Usually, when he arrived back home in the villa, walking the wide stairs up to the second floor, he could hear his partner upstairs on the third floor frolicking with the American street musician who rented a tiny attic room. This had been going on for weeks or months. Sometimes there was no noise from upstairs except Parmesh and his lingo. He had no clue whether something was going on between the two and did not ask her. When she realized he had come home, she welcomed him with a hug and a “Welcome home. How are you?” but anybody could see from his face that he felt like shit.
Generally, a meditation at home or the Kundalini at the center would clean his view and wipe the misery out of his system. Additionally, the Sannyasin organizations in Hamburg had opened two different discos in the city, and at least once or twice a week they presented a Sannyas night for disciples only. Someone had to stay with Parmesh at home. Often Chandra went alone because her partner was tired and stayed with their son; sometimes both of them went to a disco together and danced their hearts out. If Bhagwan followers wanted to worship, they could assist the staff in the discos. It was something Hasmukh liked to do—to get out of the house and be a bouncer for a night, listen to great music, meet nice women, and clean ashtrays.
A phase began during which Chandra went into the disco by herself, typically on Sannyas night at the location close to their house. Hasmukh at home, unable to sleep, would dress and drive through the night for ten, fifteen minutes to the locality with large windows, through which he could see what went on inside. He would park the car inconspicuously around the corner and position himself across the street from the disco, sometimes actually walking quickly past the windows to check the scene inside. He knew one particular male Sannyasin had an eye on Chandra, and she certainly liked him, because every woman liked the young, attractive hunk. Whenever Hasmukh saw him among the guests through the window, his fear increased, and he began to wonder whether this would be the night. Eventually, the night arrived when she did not return home, and he knew why. When Chandra came back the next day, she told him with whom she had spent the night and that it had been a disappointment. Hasmukh never told her about his terror inside, his jealousy pains, or his stalking habit, which increased the hurt when he detected competition, but calmed him when he saw that nothing was going on.
A change in these, for Hasmukh, increasingly harmful circumstances came unexpectedly from landlord Waldemar, who announced that he had new plans for the second-floor apartment in his villa. He asked the small family and Nirvesha to find another place to live. During the next few weeks, the parents talked to many people in the Dharmadeep, checked newspaper ads, and contemplated what to do. Chandra still needed to visit the university for her own research paper that she needed to complete for her doctor’s degree. Hasmukh was ready to quit the courier service and switch to driving taxi again.
Whenever the partners talked about their future and he asked her what she wanted to do after she had earned her degree, she would say, “I do not really know, perhaps go back to Poona again and see Bhagwan.”
“Why don’t you get a job in a hospital, continue your education, and became a specialist?”
“I do not think that is how I want to do it,” she would answer.
Hasmukh did not really like the idea of going to Poona to the Ashram; he had something of a premonition of what would happen there. It touched his primordial fear of being left alone. He preferred to stay in a familiar environment and take care of Parmesh and a household.
For the time being, the family moved to the small town of Wohltorf, about twenty miles east of the city. A physician Ma, who worked for a government health-care institution, owned a house with some property around it and shared the space with other Sannyasins for rent. She also had a daughter Parmesh’s age, which sealed the deal. Hasmukh now found himself living in the country again with four adult women and two children.
What surprised him most was when he met one of the housemates for the first time. The tall, blond, athletic Ma who had stopped their bus for the decontamination procedure in Rajneeshpuram during the summer festival lived in the house; her name was Alka. The second female housemate, blond, slim, and younger Parichara, shared the room next to theirs. In addition, of course, was the landlord, Ma Punitam, who lived with her daughter on the first level, and welcomed the new residents. As in every apartment- and house-sharing community, there were confrontations and discussion, but it helped very much that all of the residents had acquired their initial experiences of living with others a long time ago.
The building had a vacant former shop or office space on the ground level with large display windows facing the street. With Punitam’s permission, the couple would furnish and use the space as a massage studio. While Hasmukh commuted to the city for his taxi job, Chandra wanted to offer therapeutic massages in the studio. They bought a sign that could be peeled off a piece of plastic and affixed to the windows. It looked good and professional, and the waiting for customers began. To create some revenue, the pair offered autogenic training classes, which Hasmukh conducted. He had learned the self-hypnosis technique from a book and shared it in his groups. During his best times, he had up to six persons in a course. On top of his modest success with the training, he was able to quit smoking himself during one of his Kundalini meditations in the house.
It soon became obvious to Chandra and Hasmukh that their business would not generate money. After she had submitted her dissertation and received word that she would get her diploma soon, the couple made their final plans for their trip to see Bhagwan.
All through the years in Hamburg, Hasmukh and Hilde had been in contact. She visited the Sannyasins with the children sometimes, and once Magda and Johannes had stayed for a whole week, during which they all did many things together, such as going to the movie theater for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. As they were communicating their plans for the coming summer, the idea arose of spending a vacation together in Crete, and the idea turned into reality.
Hasmukh’s two families, including Hilde’s third child, daughter Claudia, met in the charter flight terminal of Frankfurt’s airport and jetted together to Heraklion International Airport, Greece. For the man in the group, a very exciting, happy time with his beloved ones began. The past had been left behind in Hamburg, the future was an idea formed day by day, and the moments on the stony beach near a small fishing village on the island were memorable.
Hilde and the three older kids took a room in a guesthouse/restaurant above the beach where the others camped in a tent right at the water’s edge, between the stones. They all ate breakfast on the patio of the restaurant and spent the days outside in the sunshine and the water. When the group wanted to see or eat something different, everybody walked two miles, crossing a couple of hills, to the romantic village. A variety of small eateries was located around the inlet harbor, in which some fishing boats bobbed when they were not catching dinner for locals and tourists. Sometimes, other vacationers they had befriended joined the families at a table, which had to be extended by the host. Weeks passed quickly until the family from Frankfurt needed to return.
Hasmukh, Chandra, and Parmesh moved into the village, where they rented a tiny room, a hole in the wall with just enough space for two beds. The family liked the fact that they could utilize Hasmukh’s tape player for their nightly Kundalini, which they did consistently.
Greece was experiencing a major heat wave that summer. When the Sannyasins concluded their happy vacation and traveled on to Athens, the temperatures in the afternoons became unbearable. Aris, an old friend, let them stay in one of the apartments he owned. They could not leave it during the day, remaining inside with the blinds down and black curtains in front of the windows. Only once did they go downtown to find and book a flight to Bombay. Afterward they discovered that the public streetcar system had to shut down because of the iron tracks, which warped in the heat.
Bhagwan on enlightenment: The whole thing is ridiculous because we are born enlightened, and to try for something that is already the case is the most absurd thing. If you already have it, you cannot achieve it. Enlightenment is your very nature. “The day I became enlightened” simply means the day I realized that there is nothing to achieve, there is nowhere to go, there is nothing to be done.—from the website Oshoworld.com
Eckhart Tolle: The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.