Repost 1: A Holiday in India

 I noticed the other day that there have been 1,000 posts on this blog since it started. This seems a good moment to repost one or two from the beginning, slightly re-edited to reflect my present thinking. My spiritual intuitions are largely unchanged but the form they take has developed through the writing of the blog which is one of the reasons for doing it.

There is a chapter in Meeting the Masters, the book about the early part of my spiritual journey, that recounts a trip to India Michael Lord and I made shortly before going to live there on a more permanent basis. This was in 1979 while we were living in Bath and I was just beginning to find my spiritual feet. It was the Masters' wish that we went to India though they did not tell us that until after we had decided to go. This is a basic rule of the spiritual life. You are not told directly what to do. You may be impressed by the higher powers but you must respond to impression and make your decisions for yourself.

In the book I mentioned that Michael had taken a few photographs during the trip, and I would have liked to have included some of them in the book but production costs made that impossible. However, a blog has no production costs so I can add them here.

Michael's camera in 1979 was a pretty basic one, even for the period, so the pictures are not of a high quality. Also, though he took around 20 photos over the month we were there, not many have made it though the intervening 45 years. It's not like today when people take hundreds of photos and, as far as I can tell, rarely look at any of them again.

We started our trip in Delhi where we visited the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid and other tourist sites but the first photograph I still have was taken at the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, one of those  grand buildings the British put up in the Indo-Saracenic style which mixes Mughal and Gothic revival architectural features. It's now a museum.

As you can see, I was not a particularly willing subject. There is a definite 'get on with it' expression on my face.

While in Calcutta we stayed at the Ramakrishna guesthouse and visited the Swami who had initiated Michael into that order a few years previously. He was a venerable old gentleman but still fully fit and demonstrating the inner calm that the Masters were frequently telling me to acquire but which I lacked then and don't have as much as I should do now. Inner calm may be easier to maintain in a monastery or ashram than in the hurly-burly of the world but, as a mental attitude, it should be unaffected by outer circumstances, whatever these might be. This is because it is not a question of controlling emotion but of being centred in the real and therefore responding to the external world as just that, external. A criticism that could be levelled at the Asian mentality which may find it easier to attain inner calm is that it does this by disassociating itself from the reality of the external world so one has to be careful that detachment does not come at the price of the rejection of the subsidiary but genuine reality of outer things and conditions. Spirit is primary but matter is real in its way too.

After Calcutta we went to Darjeeling and then Varanasi but no photos remain from those visits. They were mostly just standard tourist photos of the Himalayas and the Ganges so no great loss though I do regret the absence of a group photo of the Buddhist monks who were staying in the same lodgings as us in Varanasi, with some of whom I enjoyed a game of football. There was no problem in getting them to smile for the camera, something I have always found difficult. Other lost photos are of the Ghoom monastery near Darjeeling which apparently is now called Yiga Choeling, and of the very ancient-looking monk with skin like cracked parchment we spoke to there. This monastery is known for its 15 feet statue of the Maitreya Buddha (that's the Buddha who is to come) of which Michael took a now lost photo. Here's a substitute which is probably of better quality anyway.

While flying to Delhi en route to Kashmir something unpleasant got into Michael. I had been warned of the possibility of this by the Masters, and told that my conduct was the key as to whether it happened or not. In this case, having the puritanism of the spiritual neophyte back then, I had argued with him over what I perceived as worldly behaviour. He had reacted with anger, and the resultant 'bad vibrations' had given the entrée to some kind of demon which had possessed him. I didn't realise what was going on at the time but was profoundly shocked by the transformation. He hissed at me and then shouted, oblivious to anyone who happened to be nearby. His eyes became a dull reddish colour and his skin turned sallow. He was totally uncompromising and hard, quite unlike his normal self. This lasted for the entire flight to Delhi and the thing was only ousted when Michael fell asleep while we were waiting for our ongoing flight to Srinagar. He remembered nothing when he awoke. The Masters told me afterwards what had happened and said that they permitted it as a means of showing me externally what my own lack of control looked like. An extreme policy but I have to admit it was effective. Demonic possession may not be accepted nowadays by the general populace but it remains a possibility, especially for those of a mediumistic tendency which Michael obviously was. Similar experiences were noted in the case of William Coote, the medium in The Boy and the Brothers book.

Michael was well protected by those he served and this sort of thing happened on only a very few occasions and when it did it was always initiated by a spiritual lapse on my part. That is why the Masters permitted it. They told me they could always banish the demon but it might take a while. I don't pretend to understand the mechanics of it but can simply pass on what I was told and what seemed to be confirmed by observation.

Kashmir was a good place for healing and rest. We stayed on a houseboat on the lake called Nagin Bagh and for a week did little more than read, walk, swim and laze in the sun. Here's a picture of the boat,

and here's a not very good picture of Michael in a shikara, the narrow rowing boat that ferries people around on the Kashmiri lakes.

The Masters came frequently while we were in Kashmir, and it was there that they explained what had occurred at Varanasi airport. They told me that there was no need for fear but I should remain vigilant which sums up how the spiritual aspirant should respond to the problem of evil. When I first wrote this piece I was conscious that the word evil might offend because there was this naive idea among some spiritual seekers that evil is just ignorance and in the higher worlds everything is goodness and love. Unfortunately, that is just not true. Evil exists in the spiritual world. In fact, that is where it comes from. I think that nowadays this has become much better understood, especially as it is becoming harder to deny the presence and activity of evil in the world. It always has been understood in serious religion but post-'60s New Age-type spirituality thought it knew better. It didn't.

From Kashmir we returned to Delhi and then on to Agra. North India is a confluence of Hindu and Muslim culture, and the latter reached its apogee in the Mughal Empire which by any criteria must be one of the most splendid ever to have existed. By the criterion of architectural excellence its only rival would be the cathedrals of medieval Europe, and this excellence comes to a peak at Agra. Naturally, Michael took a picture of the Taj Mahal which is undoubtedly a miracle of art and design but I preferred the Tomb of Akbar at Sikandra, and here is the photo I mention in the book as the only one in I which I smiled.

Sometimes you feel a connection with a place. When I visited the tomb of the emperor Akbar I felt like a little piece of a jigsaw puzzle that slotted into place. It fitted. That's the only way I can describe it and it is why I am smiling in the photo. Oddly enough, when I went back to the site 3 years later it was just an impressive building. The spirit seemed to have gone, but that first time was remarkable.