Eagalic Music

I recall sleeping on the way south by the roadside up near Big Sur.  On the highway early the next morning, a horse and rider appeared out of the fog.  They were majestic, the rider wearing a knitted Peruvian cap with long ear flaps and pointed peak, gray-bearded, looking for all the world like a mounted Tibetan lama. 

“Easy Rose”, he spoke gently to the horse, as they moved past down the highway like ghosts.  It should’ve been an indication to me that I’d already reached my Himalayas but I was determined. 

Although my health and general strength was not great, it improved dramatically as I moved slowly southward, giving my body ample time to adjust to the different climate and thus avoiding the malaise that comes to many travelers once they enter Mexico.

Slowly, slowly southward through the Sonora desert I crept, my awe growing daily at the sheer size of the undertaking I’d committed myself to. I’d somehow assumed that I’d be in Peru in a week or so, but the reality of the journey was dawning on me.

I stood in the sweltering heat outside Mazatlan for a whole day, saved from dehydration by a schoolboy who kept bringing ice-cream to me every couple of hours from a nearby school where I suppose the children and teachers could see me from a window.

Finally after hours of waiting, a truck pulled over and I climbed in the back of it, hoisting my guitar in with the farm equipment and as I did so a contingent of school children ran out into the road to wave goodbye. As I slapped the side of the truck to indicate to the driver I was safely in, the children cheered and waved and their lovely excitement and youthful enthusiasm followed me down the road for many more miles.

Snail-like I plodded on, my physical health increasing daily from the rigors of the journey until I felt absolutely wonderful and it no longer made any difference to me how quickly I moved.

Somewhere along the road I was picked up by two Canadian men traveling to the Yucatan in a VW minibus. The driver was all for having me accompany them as far as their journey took them but his partner was far more reserved and resented my company.

We arrived in Guatemala City late at night and his temper strained to the breaking point, the partner checked into a hotel. The driver locked our bags up in the van and we went into the zocalo, or marketplace, where a fiesta of some sort was taking place. We weren’t gone long but when we returned to the van we found that the door had been removed and the van had been ransacked.

My guitar and knapsack were gone and along with these, my passport. Without a passport there was no way I could travel further and so I took a little room in a pensione and waited out the good graces of the Canadian embassy.

A month later I still had no passport and if I had not been accidentally picked up by the Consul himself while hitching back through the countryside from a day trip to Lake Atitlan, maybe I never would’ve got one.

In the meantime and to help pass the time, I’d been practising the Hare Krishna mantra by way of deepening my meditations.  I spent many afternoons at the pensione, where the food was quite good and included in the cost of the room, listening to a bongo player from Belize named Shine who played with a fluency and articulation that I would never have imagined possible in so simple an instrument.  Other travelers would gather in the courtyard afternoons and listen to him play for hours.  It was far more than simple entertainment. 

One afternoon, while visiting the post office in downtown Guatemala City, I noticed a fair-complexioned man dressed in deep orange and wearing a turban coming down the front steps.  My attention was riveted by that bright flash of color in the street and the exotic nature of his dress but I didn’t know then that we would soon meet. 

A few days later, I met some followers of the Ananda Marga Yoga Society, young Latinos with a good command of English, who invited me to their center for meditation and lunch.  Years before, I believe it was in Toronto, I had visited one of their organization’s centers and had been given instruction in meditation and received my very first mantra, “Baba Nam, Keyvalam“, which I had practiced assiduously at the time. 

I was eager to visit the center and arrived at the appointed time.  After removing my shoes I was invited into a small auditorium where the devotees were already in the process of chanting, standing on their feet, arms above their heads, swaying back and forth to the rhythm of a mantra.  As one does in church, I joined them by copying their movements and for a while remained mindlessly swaying and singing but did not notice any appreciable change in energy within me. 

However, after about twenty minutes, a new group of devotees came through the door in the company of the man dressed in orange who I’d seen at the post office.  The effect was like throwing a match into gasoline.  Immediately the energy in the room increased at least a hundred-fold and I felt totally swept up in the flow of it.  My own vitality jumped with everyone else’s and for the next hour I was deeply immersed in a group meditation and following lecture, given by this same individual in Spanish. 

Afterwards I was taken to the kitchen for lunch and was waiting for a plate to be given to me when the orange-robed man, obviously the teacher, entered.  Immediately, everyone stopped to feed him and to my surprise, he took the plate given to him and handed it straight to me. Sitting down across from me, he began to engage me in conversation, asking where I was from and when I expressed interest in his background he told me he was Dutch, and had been sailing down the Ganges one day when he met his teacher, after which his life had never been the same. I was awed and impressed by his energy and yet in person he was familiar and friendly and obviously not on a power-trip of any kind.

I digested this experience back at the pensione, still practicing my Hare Krishna mantra.  A fellow traveler who had asked me what I was doing with my eyes closed gave me a book by Swami Bhaktivedanta on the subject of Krishna, and I read it avidly. I had been reciting the mantra incorrectly, and was able to correct it. An American girl whom I’d helped when she was sick by bringing her cups of tea, sewed me a passport pouch so that I would not repeat the mistake of separating my passport from my person.  When my passport finally came I headed further south, by bus this time, an education in itself in this country.

At the border of El Salvador I was taken off the bus and scalped by a customs officer who used a pair of child’s paper scissors to cut my long “hippie hair” at a shaggy angle, ridiculing and humiliating me while earning the cheers of his fellow officers. 

So far the signs of my journey had not been too positive and yet with dogged persistence I traveled on, finally reaching San Jose, Costa Rica.

I found another little pensione and enjoyed the sights and sounds of this beautiful old city relaxing in the cafes, parks and the library which had an excellent selection of English books on the occult and mysticism.  In particularly I found myself reading Byron’s poems and Rudolph Steiner. 

One beautiful afternoon I was sitting in the park, my  eyes closed, silently chanting my “Hare Krishna” mantra when I had the eerie experience of hearing the mantra coming from outside myself.  Opening my eyes, I was astounded to see a young, blond monk in sanyasin-orange robes standing directly in front of me, staring at me and chanting the same mantra.  Somewhat shocked I asked who he was and he replied that he was follower of the Hare Krishna movement and that he lived at their center here in the city.  I learned that he and his friend had been in the US Navy and stationed in this area when they met their teacher and abandoning the military, became monks.  He suggested I come to visit the center.

My first visit is etched in my mind.  I had taken a bus to the address and had to walk some ways from the stop.  It was pouring rain and I arrived at the front door soaking wet.  A young girl, not more than five years old answered the door and when she saw me she retreated without a word and returned smiling, a towel in her hands.  I dried myself off as best I could and was invited inside by her elders and asked to join their tulsi ceremony, a chant around a small plant that was a symbol of good fortune for the community. 

I left the center late into the evening, stars in my eyes and draped in a huge wreath of jasmine flowers around my neck, their sweet scent filling my nostrils.  I walked to the bus stop and made my way back to the center of town.  I felt as though I had taken the aura of the temple with me.  I was very high.

Walking down a side street, I was approached by a prostitute. “Where you goin’ man,” she tendered in a throaty, Caribbean accent.  I was not and am not accustomed to being solicited, perhaps I am not the type, but this come-on was unmistakable. I did have some money in my pocket and one would imagine a young man alone in the city to want some female company but I couldn’t get past a certain harshness in her attitude.  She came up close to me and fingered the flowers, “Where you get the beautiful flowers, boy?” she said and followed this up with “You give them to me, eh?”. “Not in this lifetime.” I replied, feeling quite light-hearted and yet repulsed by her. I began to move away. “Hey” she shouted after me angrily, “You don’t like women?”  The last thing on my mind at the moment was sex, especially with someone like her but I said nothing.  For the moment, I suppose, I was in love with Krishna.

I visited the center regularly over the next few weeks, helping with duties and was even interviewed by the teacher, who told me that I was not yet ready to become an monk but that when I was, he would send me to Virginia to begin my training.  I have to admit that I didn’t like his energy very much. He was served by the monks and by his wife like a minor local pasha, giving orders from a reclining position in his office. However, my personal dislike didn’t get in the way of receiving the energy of Krishna and his devotees directly. I understand only too well how a young person could be swept into this movement, or any other, quite easily.  At the time,  I knew I wanted to become a devotee but I also knew I had strong reservations about the life in such a center and my ability to live it fully.    

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