The Abode of Yoga

The biggest personality in the Santa Cruz Center was Prakash . He was a big, lumbering, teddy-bear of a man who seemingly sold real estate for no other reason than to fund his passion for racket sports. His spiritual reputation preceded him. Charlie's brother Dave had, on numerous occassions, told us the story of Prakash's "transcedental experience." The scare quotes aren't meant to call into question the validity of Prakash's experience. That's just what everyone called it: Prakash's transcendental experience. The transcendental experience was of obvious import to Praksash and unquestionably significant -- one needed only watch Prakash's countenance light up as he related the story to understand the impact that it had had on him. I'm not aware of whether he ever recaptured that peak experience, but like Tantulus -- ever reaching for the fruit just out of his reach -- Prakash's memory of the transcendental experience seemed to motivate him...

The Santa Cruz Sri Chinmoy Center met twice a week for meditation at a two-story apartment, the top floor of which was used as a meditation room by the half dozen disciples belonging to the Center and was off limits to us non-disciples. So, Charlie and I didn't go up there. We just attended the public meditation given by the Center every Wednesday night, which was held downstairs in the living room. ( Photo credit .) By then -- the end of the summer of 1981 -- Charlie and I both wanted to become disciples of Sri Chinmoy. On Wednesday evenings, we would catch a ride over the hill from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz with whoever Charlie's brother Dave was going with. We'd usually arrive at the Center a few minutes before meditation started at 7:30 p.m. So, Charlie and I would spend a few minutes checking out the hundreds of books in the Center library (which was basically just a big bookcase). The meditation itself would usually last an hour, and included reading, some music of Sr...

After near hot tub electrocution, I was all business. No more sitting around with my eyes closed. I actually had to learn to meditate. Unfortunately, though, none of the many books I'd read about yoga actually explained how to meditate. By that time, I knew that Charlie's older brother Dave meditated by staring at an austere looking black and white photograph of his guru, Sri Chinmoy. So, despite my misgivings about yoga masters living in America, I found the same photograph -- referred to by Sri Chinmoy's disciples as the "transcendental" -- printed in one of Sri Chinmoy's books and I cut it out. I placed it on the shrine in my room leaning against a small stained glass piece inscribed with the Prayer of St. Francis . Behind the stained glass, I had placed a single deer antler ( photo credit Terry Richard ) that Prahlad had given me a few months earlier. He'd found it on one of his walks at Ananda and said it was a mystical object. Then I lit some sanda...

By the end of our sophomore year -- June 1981 -- Charlie's older brother Dave had found his own living guru: Sri Chinmoy . Sri Chinmoy was little known, which was probably a good thing considering it was the era of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh . I, however, was sure that my guru was in India. Any guru in the U.S. was suspect in my eyes from the start. And while I felt a living kinship with Swami Yogananda, instinctively I longed for a living master. Truthfully, at 16 I had no idea how I was going to find my master in India, nor did I feel much urgency to do so. While I had made some superficial changes to my lifestyle -- I had become a vegetarian and tried to meditate for a few minutes each day -- I was pretty much the same emotionally dysfunctional kid I was at the beginning of the previous school year. That, however, was about to change. That summer -- through a connection of my dad's -- Charlie and I got summer jobs at the Capitol Drive-In Theater (pictured). We worked at the sna...

Mom and I arrived at the church where the lecture on yoga was to be held by a disciple of Swami Yogananda a little early. There were about a dozen others there, mostly women. I was excited to be there. Not really to hear the lecture, but rather to see a real live yogi. From the time I first read Autobiography of a Yogi , as thrilled as I was by its revelations, its happenings struck me as remote in time and place. Compared to Swami Yogananda, I had already squandered my chance for God realization in this life. At 15, I honestly thought that I was over the hill. Thus, the spiritual life was the stuff of dreams. Sitting at the church that night, however, made me realize the spiritual life could be a reality. The speaker told us his name was Prahlad. He was long and lean, like a runner, with shoulder length, curly, brown hair. He appeared to be in his mid to late twenties. Prahlad's most prominent features were his eyes. They were warm, liquid brown, which projected a gleam of sincer...

In the fall of 1980 -- age 15 -- I began my sophomore year at Leigh High School. I was determined to excel at sports, and I did. On the frosh-soph football team (I'm number 80 in the front row), I started at cornerback and led the team in interceptions. The team itself finished the season undefeated. From football season, I went right into the wrestling season. Between the long practices after school and the equally long bus right back to my dad's house each night, I had little or no time with Charlie. And Brett, by this time, had made his fateful move to Alaska. Little did I know that I'd never see him again. Wrestling season, like football, went well for me (I'm in the bottom row, third from the right). I won at least two frosh-soph tournaments outright and wrestled most of the year on the varsity team, earning my letter in that sport. Inexplicably, however, I still felt empty. The answer, I thought, must be sex (or the lack of it). My next opportunity for it -- one ...

There were still a few weeks left of summer vacation when I returned home from Camp de Mar. I spent them catching up with Brett and Charlie, before heading to Leigh High School as an incoming freshman to try out for the football team. I loved football. Even though the long hair extending out the back of my helmet attracted some good-natured ribbing from the coaches, I loved nothing more than suiting up and hitting the practice field. In large part, football allowed me exhibit my pent up rage in a sanctioned and controlled way. Playing football also gave me time away from Brett and Charlie, neither of whom played. We still smoked pot together before class everyday, but we weren't with each other all the time. After football season, came wrestling season. Once wrestling season ended, however, the three of us were back at it full time. It was around this time -- the end of 1979 or the beginning of 1980 -- that Brett made a new friend: a young kid who couldn't have been more than...

Shame -- and not mere teen aged awkwardness around the opposite sex -- had the most corrosive effect on my self-confidence. The seeds of this psychic disability were planted around the end of fifth grade, when I was about 10. (That's my fifth grade class picture above. My good friend Dave Moretti is in the third row up, second from the left.) At the beginning of fifth grade, I had my first girlfriend. Her name was Carol (first row, third from the right; I'm in the same row at the right end). She passed me a note in class asking me if I would "go" with her. Not knowing what this entailed, I said, sure. As it turned out, for the remainder of the school year, I was Carol's staunch defender at four square -- if anyone got Carol out, I got them out. I also found out early that relationships entailed gifts. I had heard that Carol was a tennis player, so with my dad's help I bought her a tennis outfit for her birthday. Before Carol's birthday, I told Dave abo...

During the summer before I moved from junior high school to high school, I spent a month in Cozumel, Mexico scuba diving with a half dozen other teenagers whom I hadn’t previously met. The only adult supervision was provided by the scuba camp leader, Owen Lee (pictured, on the left). It was 1979. Owen learned to dive in the 1950s and was the first American diver to be named to the crew of Jacques Cousteau’s team. (Today, Owen is the proprietor of the Las Gatas Beach Club .) Sometime later he retired to Zihuatanejo, Mexico where he leased some land and founded “Camp de Mar,” a scuba diving camp for teenagers. That’s where I was supposed to go -- Zihuatanejo -- but just before our trip, a local Mexican government official took a liking to Owen’s spread. So, at the last minute, Camp de Mar decamped for Cozumel. Before the trip, my dad took me to meet Owen in San Francisco. The only thing I remember of the meeting was Owen’s warning about the strict marijuana laws in Mexico. Even a joi...