Just One Darshan
Govind and Gayatri met on the road in Afghanistan in 1970. They traveled together to India, where Govind learned to make jewelry according to traditional Indian methods.
Their one encounter with Maharajji shows just how powerful even a single unexpected darshan can be in changing the course of a life.
GOVIND: We got to India just before New Year’s Eve 1970. There were six or seven of us together in the Volkswagen van. After going to the Kumbha Mela in Allahabad in January. Gayatri and I left our group of friends.
I was to meet them later in Bombay, where they were going to put together a hash deal, but since she and I had only recently met and wanted to be by ourselves, we got on a train heading to Bombay.
It was our first train ride in India. Anyone who’s been in India knows what it is like to get on a third-class unreserved train—the overflowing crowds and the chaos. We were lucky and got seats right on the aisle, near the door where you get on the train.
Ram Dass meets Maharaj Ji at the ganges:https://babaneemkaroli.in/ram-dass-met-maharaj-ji-at-the-ganges/
After it was totally full—literally, there was barely room to breathe—at the last minute, this guy walked onto the train.
He was so big it was unbelievable; he wasn’t that tall, more sort of wide. But it wasn’t the physical size; his presence was so big that he felt huge. We were transfixed and couldn’t take our eyes off him. He went to a row where you couldn’t possibly fit one more person; the seas parted and everybody moved over.
He sat down cross-legged in the middle of the bench. As soon as he got on the train, all of a sudden everybody went from wanting to kill each other to get a seat to passing out chikus [a tropical fruit] and bananas.
He just sat there, not talking at all. We kept looking at him for hours and hours. He would send us a sideways glance every once in a while, and each time he gave us that twinkle we got even more mesmerized.
As the train moved slowly through the desert, he called the conductor over and whispered something in his ear, then gave us that sideways look again.
In another hour or so, the conductor walked up to us and said, “The train is going to stop in a few minutes at a place that isn’t in fact a stop, and he said that you two are to get off the train and go up to Mt. Abu and spend the night there, and then come back to this same place. Tomorrow’s train, which also doesn’t stop here and has never stopped here, is going to stop and pick you up so that you can continue your journey.”
Neem Karoli Baba finishes kheer :https://babaneemkaroli.in/neem-karoli-baba-ate-kheer-made-by-kamla-didi/
We didn’t even question it. The fact that “he” said it was all that mattered.
The train suddenly stopped in the middle of vast emptiness.
The conductor said, “This is where you get off.” We picked up our bags and were about to get off the train when the conductor added, “You are very fortunate. He is one of our most esteemed saints in all of India.”
Somehow we got up to Mt. Abu— a holy mountain that rises out of the desert with a big glittering lake at the top, lush and beautiful. We wandered around the woods and the lake, but nothing significant happened.
The next day, we went back down and were sitting out there in the middle of nowhere when this train came up and stopped. The exact same two seats were empty and waiting for us in what was otherwise a madhouse. Countless hours later, the train pulled into Bombay station.
I said to Gayatri, “I have no idea who that guy was, but I know that he just reset our karmic destiny.”
Neem karoli baba footprints on the wall:https://babaneemkaroli.in/footprints-of-neem-karoli-baba-on-the-wall/
Within a few minutes of arriving at the hotel in Bombay, we bumped into the people I was supposed to meet. In the meantime, they had put together some sort of deal.
They said, Oh, man, too bad you weren’t here. “You could have been part of it.” I remember feeling relieved as if I somehow knew we were now on a different path than those friends. And in the next few weeks, we had our first contact with the teachers who became the other major spiritual influencers in our lives.
Around ten months later we were back in the West when Be Here Now came out. When I saw Maharajji’s picture, I thought, “That’s the guy from the train.” But in all the pictures I would see of him over the years, he had on a plaid blanket, and the guy on the train had been wearing a beige khadi [homespun silk or cotton] shawl.
I always had a kind of knowing that it had to have been him on that train, but I never told anyone.
During the next few years, we were back in India as sanyasins[seekers]. The two times that we wanted to go see Maharajji, before I opened my mouth my teacher would say, “Next week I want you to do this or that in Bombay.” “Okay,” I thought, “we’re not supposed to go see Maharajji for whatever reason.”
We stayed in India for most of the next eleven years, and when we came back to the West to live, we started going to the Hanuman temple in Taos every year for bhandhara [a celebratory feast].
Many years later, one of the friends from that trip showed up and told me that three of them had spent some time in jail at one time or another over the years.
If we hadn’t visited Mt. Abu, I might have been at that meeting and been part of some deal, either then or in the future, but that world no longer held any appeal.
During the same week that I saw this old friend for the first time in many years, someone had a picture of Maharajji wearing a beige khadi shawl. I finally trusted what I’d somehow known all along.
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