From my last blog in this series, you'll remember the picture of someone rather stressed out by noise and corruption, pondering his future direction. I am by nature a bit of a hermit in that I enjoy solitude very much, even if I also have the extrovert side to myself, the side that has kept me largely outgoing all these years.

I was at a point where solitude was the one thing I craved for. At times, I longed for it more than I felt the need for food. And it wasn’t the mosquitoes that bothered me, not the dogs and nor any other animal for that matter. The problem was with the psychologically complex humanimal beings. Animals, predictable in their nature, adhere to their dharmas and are a part of the nature’s harmony. Humans are the master race of discord, Mother Nature’s freak creation.

Solitude, then, had become a base necessity of life. With the still untrained mind that I had, undisturbed silence was something I perceived as vital. A trained mind may find itself absorbed at any time, but an untrained mind calls for a suitable environment. One might hear a man with a trained mind noting that one can do bhajana in any circumstances. Curious as it is, however, the trained minds generally have decades of practice under their belts, and it was a great deal more peaceful back in the days when they were new.

It so happened that at the time, somewhere in the mid-summer, I began reading the Bhagavata anew. The book is, of course, chock-full of inspirational narrations of the lives of sages who are very total in their approach, Sri Suka being the prime example. This totalness of spirit, the perfect and all-encompassing casting of oneself into the pursuit, is something that has always struck a chord with me, engraved itself in my heart as the thing missing from perfect attainment.

Now, of course it goes without saying that the sages there roamed about the forests, and many headed to the sylvian Himalayas to perfect their earthly existence in solitary practice. Incidentally I had also been reading the works of Swami Sivananda of Hrishikesh a great deal. Yes, a genuine mayavadi, so there’s ammunition for all of you who want to bust me for something, but I had found many of his writings on sadhana of tremendous value. Practical, down-to-earth and inspirational.

Sivananda was something of an all-around expert, whether it be about jnana, bhakti or yoga, an author of over 300 titles. And mind you, a great deal of the elements of sadhana are common in many Hindu-traditions. And Gaudiya Vaisnavism owes a good deal to those earlier traditions. The second and third verses of Upadesamrita draw from Hatha-yoga-pradipika with the minutest changes, some of Visvanatha’s formulations in Madhurya-kadambini are directly adapted from other yoga texts. Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu owes an ocean to earlier rasa-shastras, and again we have Sridhar Svami and Madhusudana Sarasvati to whose commentaries we owe a great deal, both Advaitavadins. Few insights are born in vacuum, and searching the influences can provide many a great insight. This is however off-topic, and written for those who might wonder why I would be reading someone who was theologically clearly at odds with us. How does Sivananda play into this, anyway?

So, then. Swami Sivananda, based in Rishikesh as he was, often wrote of the ideal sadhana environment of the Himalayas. This undoubtedly contributed into drawing a picture of where I might find my peace. With the approaching month of Kartika, I had already set my mind to it. I would just head to the Himalayas for an all-out sadhana-retreat, and returning or not returning wasn’t frankly something occupying my mind all that much. I had had enough, and I just wanted to do what I knew needed to be done properly in a proper environment.

To get philosophical for a moment. Pritis tad-vasati-sthale, “To have love for his pastime places.” This is one of the symptoms of budding devotional emotion. And of course, living in Vraja is one of the five most powerful limbs of bhakti. Ideally, it should enthuse and empower the other four by its abundant support and supply. And no doubt, to an extent it does – but in my experience, the current life here, at least as far as the places I’ve lived at go, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. If you can stay aloof from certain things (and some of it can be extremely challenging), you can stay at a fairly decent “medium” level. One wants to, however, break through to beyond that, entering the deep meditational worlds the mahatmas of the past would spend their days in, engrossed in their bhajana as they were.

It was the respected late Priyacharana Das Babaji of Govardhana, contemporary of my paramguru-ji, who recommended against doing mantra-purascarana in favor of vows featuring the maha-mantra. In his view, it was no longer possible to in Vraja owing to the polluted atmosphere caused by the impure habits of men. This is, it is said, why Siddha Jagannatha Das Babaji decided to head for Rishikesh to undertake his five-month mantra-purascarana. With some more hints drawn from the Bhagavata – you know, of the kind where the scripture speaks directly to you when opened at a random spot – the idea of heading up north became more and more attracting.

It was Franz who popped in for a visit in October. In our tours, we also went to visit Vinod Bihari Das Babaji, the charismatic and ever-joyful sadhu with long dreadlocks whom you’ll remember from an earlier blog. Vinod Baba is something of a Sirius spreading its rays on a darkish and cloudy sky, one of the rare souls who still stand in evidence of Gaudiya Vaishnava practice being something that can infuse a person with a truly saintly and penetrating halo even in the present day.

The visit had me considering a second time the option of wandering off to some remote areas of Vraja where a suitable place might be found. I was not looking to rent an idyllic kutir on the banks of a pristine lake, certainly not. I had set myself up for sleeping in whatever spot Mother Nature might provide. And please don’t think I’m new to such lifestyle, I did make my experiments in good time to ensure it would be a practically feasible move. All the necessities of life on my shoulders, for as long as I’d ever need. (Not that I have much more at the moment!) Perhaps Adi Badri at the extreme south of Vraja Mandala would be a good spot? And if not, I could always wander on and on, and head north if need be. I had a small map of Vraja set aside, too.

It had been twelve long years on this path. Twelve years is the traditional time of a vow bringing its fruit, of vratas coming to term. It was also, so I very strongly felt, a time where I had to make a difference. To take a step onward, penetrating through the dull excuse of bhajana I had entertained into something greater, brighter, more wonderful and fulfilling. To come into real and tangible, unbroken proximity of god. And not just in terms of intellectual and theological constructs and belief-impositions – I mean real and undeniable deep experience.

I had planned a 40 day retreat of fasting and relentless all-day-long japa with zero other activity. It was the maximum I could think of in terms of external practice. Even if that isn’t the all-in-all of bhakti, I knew that was something I could do that’d contribute to the internal operations of devotion. I was ready to die for the cause, if that’s what it would have taken. I still am, and that’s perhaps one of the few things that the period that followed this hasn’t broken or been seriously revisited within me. I still have an insatiable crying within me for direct experience of truth and reality absolute.

It need not be mentioned this was a time of ardent prayer and introspection. I had set my mind to follow the path of no return, to cast myself once and for all into the divine. Away with all ties and attachments, a single powerful urge pulling me on. I-Want-Perfection, period. That was all there was to life, and that was it.

It was at this very point, at the end of this crucial process of internal transition, and a mere single day prior to my scheduled departure, that Anonymous Das Babaji showed up on my doorstep and began his performance. I was, of course, very inclined to believe his version of divine inspiration and all, as it was the perfect, by-the-book divine intervention where the desperate seeker comes to find the perfect master who leads him to unseen spiritual attainments. And did I try to hold on to this spark of hope until the end, yes I did, for it was with great faith that I had cast myself into god’s hands with my determination, to be guided to the farther shore. This coincidence fit into the picture all too well to be considered anything but the real thing, and left many of my safe-guards totally down.

The babaji was not, of course, appraised of what was within me, and as such was initially unaware of how much internal damage he’d risk doing with his fraud, so may that go as a footnote in his amnesty. Obviously, he did come to learn everything of me in due course in our discussions, yet nevertheless continued his deceptions, so it’s hardly a mitigating factor in the end in what turned out to be a clearly pre-meditated cash-flow establishment operation with swindling from the very get-go. For reference, you may want to look up the initial note where I first mentioned of my meeting with him. It gives a fair idea of my feelings at the time. The text was written in the last week before the nature of affairs began to turn sour.

This is the internal state I was in before the saga began to unfold. Then, in response to those who wondered how I let myself be duped this way, here is the answer: It was this naïve idea of divine care and guidance, following the sincerest attempt I could make at complete surrender, that made me so vulnerable. Then should I blame myself, or should I blame god, or both, or neither? I honestly have no idea. The events just are what they are, and that's all they currently are to me.

What came to follow will be documented in the upcoming entries.