It is May 2006. I am standing around in the baggage retrieval area of Durban International Airport, waiting for my luggage. I am tired, tense, uncertain. One Great Question keeps revolving itself ceaselessly, eating away at my mind: Will he be the One, the true One, the Guru I have been waiting for? He better be. After all, the wait has been so long, my practice is flagging and my faith in Yoga and spiritual practices generally, is at a low ebb. It's about time he comes.
I look towards the airport's waiting area. A largish group of people are crowding around the exit point for passengers, singing Hindu devotional songs. It must mean the Guru himself is still due to arrive, and they are here to welcome him. I feel distinctly out of place. At the best of times I am uncomfortable with crowds, especially when there seems to be some strong collective consciousness at work. And this crowd looks just a little too homogeneous and overenthusiastic. I remind myself how a jet-setting socially active Guru with a large following was never what I have imagined for myself, and how the idea of a solitary Himalayan Yogi had more appeal. But then again, who knows? Sometimes fate has other designs, and it is true that a side of me periodically tends towards social and political involvement. Perhaps my destiny is to continue along those lines with this Guru, rather than to withdraw into mountains.
"Guruji is here! Let's leave the bags, it can wait till later." The exclamations are coming from some devotees who happened to be seated right behind me on the flight from Cape Town. I stop scrutinising the baggage line and look up, rather pleasantly surprised at this unexpected synchronicity of events, but also in some trepidation, as the real issue would be decided right now.
The devotees hurriedly make their way towards a rather dishevelled and tired-looking figure in white robes as he enters at the other end of the hall, greeting him excitedly and touching his feet. I remain at a safe distance, watching intently from afar. It's a total anti-climax: My heart feels absolutely no rapport. It can't be him. Still, all kinds of possibilities cross my mind: I wonder if he is nonetheless aware of my presence, and if he couldn't perhaps point me to the right Guru.
I keep watching his every move. I am too far away to hear his voice. A few times his eyes dispassionately meet mine; the first time only briefly while he sweeps his gaze around the largely empty baggage hall. Then there are a few longer looks. His eyes are uncommonly expressionless. It is something new to me. The looks serve as a kind of validation and consolation of my distressed heart, but they don't help to decide my burning issue.
I collect my bag and yoga mat and, despite a strong desire to interact more closely with him in the hope of some guidance, decide to tear myself away from the scene, wishing to get out of the airport building before he meets the throng of devotees in the waiting area. I am not in the mood for their child-like jubilation, nor the traffic jams that would coincide with their departure. The evening programme is due to start in a couple of hours, and I must still find my accommodation.
With a heavy heart I consider the fact that I might have come in vain, and that as a poor student I might have wasted the more than three thousand rand I have spent in coming here (half of which is the fee for the three-day course), money which might have been better spent on paying debts.
I don't manage to avoid the traffic jam. I am seated in a taxi fairly quickly, but some of the Guru's devotees already have their cars waiting and ready, blocking the narrow lane. He must have moved fast through the welcoming party, because the next moment I see him getting into the vehicle right in front of us. For quite a while we travel behind them on the highways of Durban. My eyes are riveted on his figure in front of us and I wonder again at the coincidence, but my heart remains heavy and unconvinced.
I settle into a cheap backpackers within walking distance of the Durban Convention Centre, and then make my way there for the first evening session, which is a free public talk and interfaith prayer event. There are about two thousand people. The Guru, again in white robes, seats himself cross-legged on a dais in the middle of the stage. He doesn't look dishevelled any more. Other dignitaries, including local politicians and representatives of other religious institutions, all of whom are to make speeches, are to be seated on regular chairs off to the side. It is clear who is the centre of attention.
The Guru remains seated as each speaker greets him, a few by touching his feet. I feel somewhat uncomfortable, because I don't sense great humility in him. One speaker is a Roman Catholic nun, for whom this situation is clearly not an easy one. As she approaches him somewhat uncertainly, he waits just a moment too long before getting up in a kind of magnanimous gesture of greeting her on an equal footing. Perhaps to the devotees packing the hall this is a sign of their Guru's kindness and humility, but I have a feeling that some injustice is being done and my empathy is with the nun.
During the speeches (especially that of the nun), the Guru often closes his eyes and seems to nod off, dropping and raising his head every now and then. I suspect that he is tired, but still find it disrespectful. Only in subsequent days do I realise that all the nodding is not necessarily sleepiness, and that his regular way of meditating includes spontaneous head movements, sometimes forwards and backwards, but also sideways. Not that meditating through the speeches of guests invited to honour you is any less disrespectful than sleeping through them, but anyway.
The nun is not the only speaker who is uncomfortable with the situation. A swami representing another well-known Hindu organisation makes a speech with a number of strong statements, including the fact that there have been many other great Masters doing a lot of good work. There is a sting in his statements, and even for me, who is completely new to the scene, it is not hard to make out at whom they might be directed. His target, however, seems unperturbed, happily gazing back at his adoring audience.
I marvel at the political bickering going on even among institutions of spiritual Gurus. The swami comes across as a little too strident and bitter, so my sympathy is not greatly with him, but I certainly catch the hint that this Guru's presence is not a magic wand that dissolves all disharmony. Clearly not everyone agrees with a previous speaker who extolled the great blessing bestowed by Guruji's coming here and having his feet touch our country's soil.
The speeches go on and on. The Guru is mostly nodding off, but periodically opens his eyes and lets them glide over the audience. I am sitting about a third of the way from the front of the hall, next to the centre aisle. In fact, I have moved my chair ever so slightly into the aisle. The aisle leads in a straight line to the centre of the stage, which is where the Guru is sitting. There is no spatial or visual obstruction between us.
All evening I am highly tense and unhappy, but physically have gone into a motionless, semi-meditative state, watching him intently, hardly blinking, taking in every move. It's the first time I see a Yoga Master and I want to tune in and absorb as much as possible. Besides, I badly need him to give me some answers.
I realise the motionless erectness of my pose and the intensity of my looking might become evident to the people around me. And although I want to draw the Guru's attention, I have no intention of drawing everybody else's. I am already visible enough by being one of the few non-Indians present, not to mention the fact that I am sitting halfway into the centre aisle. In an attempt to be less obtrusive, I every once in a while deliberately look away from him and pretend to be interested in the speakers, well, for a few seconds at least. I am frustrated at having to keep up appearances and wish the entire audience and speakers could just be erased from space.
I look at him again and put some extra mental intensity behind my question: For what have you made me come here? You are not my Guru, and I don't fit in here at all. I am unhappy and depressed and uneasy and out of place. I would have been far better off staying at home. At least not so much money would have been wasted. And if you want me to stop looking at you and not disturb people with my intensity, then just signal to me and I won't look.
His eyes meet mine. Impersonal eyes, like this afternoon, but this time there is a concentratedness in them. Two small whirlpools of black and white energy, it feels like.
Our gazes lock. A line of electricity connects us. Spiritually and emotionally I am hungry, and my whole being enters the look.
He is looking and I am looking and he is looking and I am looking. I fear that people are going to start noticing. He is looking and I am looking... They are probably noticing already. He is looking and I am looking... I don't want them to notice. He is looking and I am looking... I don't want to look away, I don't want to look away. He is looking and I am... I look away. I look to the ground.
The entire space between us is electrified. I am electrified. Ever so slowly, ever so unnoticeably, I dissolve my erect posture into a slight slump, I am invisible, invisible, invisible. I'm not here. I don't exist. I melt my body away into empty space. I open up a chasm beneath me and swallow me up.
OK, that settles it, I won't look ever again. I won't look at anyone. I'm looking at the floor for the rest of the evening. And I'm completely invisible.
The floor is unappetising. A state of extreme deprivation overtakes me. It is unbearable.
Perhaps I could slowly lift my head and look at the speaker, and then once in a while include you in the far corner of my gaze? But I won't look at you directly again.
This is not working for me.
Perhaps once in a while I could look at you for a brief second or two, very unobtrusively?
I am looking at him more or less continously again. It can't be helped. But I try to maintain a slight slump in my body, preventing it from taking on a Yoga-like posture, and I make sure the speakers get more of my visual attention. He's not paying any further attention to me. Externally it feels as if things have returned to normal again. Internally there is turmoil. What was the significance of that look? Is he perhaps my Guru? But I don't recognise him. He does not seem familiar to my heart at all.
The long list of speakers comes to an end. It is late in the evening. By now half the audience have followed their Guru's earlier example and are nodding off, and the other half is extremely restless. The rain is beating down on the roof of the Convention Centre.
For a large part of the evening my critical and analytical mind has been hard at work, trying to take in a lot of new information and making sense of a cultural situation I am unfamiliar with. And then there was all the effort of looking intensely at the Guru (while pretending not to be looking for the audience's sake) in an attempt to get some answers; not to mention his return look that surpassed mine in intensity, which I am trying hard to interpret: Is He mine or is He not? I am exhausted, but it is his turn to speak and I try hard to muster the necessary energy to listen alertly to his speech. So his next move catches me off guard.
He very simply and plainly announces that we've now had to take in a lot of knowledge and that it needs to be digested, so we will do a short meditation. It's the first time I hear his voice. It is not at all what I expected. The unceremonious down-to-earth manner of his approach also pleasantly surprises me, although I am not quite sure that it is respectful to the other speakers. There's not much time to ponder on the etiquette of public speaking, though.
He immediately leads a short and simple guided meditation, connecting us with the falling rain, the sky, the earth. I am too occupied with the timbre of his voice and with my own inner turmoil to relax deeply into the meditation, but his voice has a soothing effect on on my soul and my rational mind gives way. My desperate heart starts wondering more and more if he is not my Guru after all. His charisma is beginning to have an effect, and it increases during his subsequent short talk. The immense distance I felt is diminished unexpectedly and drastically, but not completely.
The formal part of the programme had ended and many of the earlier speakers have left by now. The atmosphere becomes more intimate and informal, a reunion of Guru and devotees. It was his 50th birthday a week ago and devotees present him with a big birthday cake. He stands holding the mike in one hand and a big knife in the other. While talking he starts slicing up the cake.
He is saying that words are not real communication. Real communication is a connection between hearts, from heart to heart. No need for any words then. I deeply agree and wish for him to allow me to feel that connection to his heart, for his heart to speak to mine, for him to let me feel his love and settle down all this turmoil and confusion that are consuming me.
He keeps slicing and slicing and slicing the cake into ever smaller pieces. People start laughing. He continues for a while longer. Finally he stops and says: "Now everyone will have a cake. No one will go without."
It instantly reminds me of the story of Jesus breaking five loaves of bread and two fishes into so many pieces that it could feed a big crowd. I had left Christianity behind long ago, when I was seventeen, but biblical stories and parables still sometimes float back into my mind.
I wonder if the Guru is joking or if he is truly busy performing some miraculous feat of multiplication. There is no way of verifying that, however, as only the children rush forward to grab a piece of cake. The adults (including me) have their inhibitions to deal with. A very large piece of cake therefore remains untouched onstage. I nonetheless feel that it was a nice gesture of him. One feels as if he cares and shares. Even so, he is still not connecting deeply to me and I wonder why he is keeping me at a distance when I am in such great need.
I go to bed later that night engaged in inward battle with him, but it is clear that this fish has taken the bait. I hardly sleep, and for the next three days of the course I don't eat at all, having no appetite, but I do drink some apple juice for energy. I am continuously in a heightened state of confusion, tension and longing.
Little do I know that the game of looks that started on this first evening and which continued throughout the course, would be played between us for the next seven months, a harrowing game of looking and not-looking, of distance and nearness - a continuous promise of intimacy never fulfilled, which would eventually drive me to the verge of suicide and put me in constant fear of losing my mind.