The Abode of Yoga

When I began to plan how I was going to attend Center meetings twice a week without my dad's knowledge, I didn't know the operational difference between a covert op and a clandestine one. As I would learn years later as a naval intelligence trainee, when an operation is covert, only the operator remains secret -- the target country knows something happened (like a facility is bombed) -- but it doesn't know who bombed it. Plausible deniability is the watchword of covert operations. A clandestine op, however, never happened. That's the plan anyway. Before, during and after the operation, the target country is blissfully unaware that anything is happening. That's what I was shooting for and I took inspiration from my favorite fictional spy at the time: Quiller . Dad introduced me to Quiller. Ironic. Quiller is a loner, he's introspective, and he never carries a gun. He's old school. Unlike James Bond (or more humorously Maxwell Smart, pictured), Quiller relies...

The bad news for me didn't end with Charlie's departure. While my high school issued grades only at the end of each semester, it issued progress reports at mid-term. I got mine that fall (1982). Dad wasn't pleased. He immediately revoked my driving privileges. No problem. I could deal with that. Inconvenient, sure. But my driving privileges were revoked with regularity (and later reinstated) each time my grades came out. Dad, however, took it to another level: he also restricted me to the house on school nights. In effect, this meant that I couldn't go to meditation on Wednesday nights at the new San Jose Center. I was upset, obviously, but I didn't go ballistic at that moment. In part, I had a sense that things would work out. I took comfort in Swami Yogananda's story. He, too, faced pressure from his father to pay more attention to his studies. While Swami Yogananda was uncompromising in his devotions -- despite his father's pressure -- Sri Yukteswar ...

September 1982 brought the beginning of my last year of high school (and as far as I was concerned, the last year of school for me, period). Coming as it did in the wake of my first trip to New York and Guru's kind words to me, it should have been a happy time. But it wasn't. With the start of our senior year, Charlie -- like his brother Dave -- began drifting away from the Center. The rule about speaking to "ex-disciples" as they were known was simple: don't. The rule was explicit -- I had both read it in more than one of Guru's books and heard him say so himself. So, I acted accordingly. As a practical matter, I don't think I shared any classes with Charlie. He was a bright student, while I was anything but. I did see him in the halls between classes, though. When I did, I'd say hello, but nothing more. It would take another eight years before I realized what an asshole I'd been to Charlie, and took steps to repair the damage. In the meantime, h...

I find prayer distasteful. Right out of the blocks, the person praying is in a position of weakness. The only thing I could ever pray for was conscious oneness with the Divine. That's pretty much how I started and ended my daily meditations. Other than that, I couldn't ask for anything. I wanted to go to New York for the August (1982) Celebrations so badly, however, that I almost held my nose, got down on my knees and begged. Almost. I wanted to go to New York so badly; I just wasn't going to be denied. Falling entirely within the last weeks of my summer vacation from school, dad couldn't deny me my first chance to attend Celebrations. So, he consented to me joining Charlie and Prakash in a cross-country trip in the Saab. On the appointed day, Prakash and Charlie picked me up at my dad's house and we were off, driving north through Oakland to link up with Interstate 80, which eventually took us east. What a long drive! My pre-conceived idea about the size of the co...

My grandparent's home was deathly quiet as I left my bedroom and crept into the small den. Along one wall was an antique curio, which held the object of my desire: a pristine porcelain Madonna (in the exact same form as pictured , minus the condition issues, which actually make this image even more alluring to me somehow). I opened the glass cabinet, gently removed the statue, and snuck back to my room and my makeshift shrine. For the next half hour -- in the dead of night -- I worshipped the Virgin Mary. As beautiful as the statue was, I was left spiritually unsatisfied. With much less excitement, I quietly returned the Madonna to her cabinet and went to bed. I felt alone. Charlie was away in New York at April celebrations with our Guru, and I was lying awake at my grandparent's home in Oceanside , California. From the beginning, my spiritual ideal was the formless divine and my goal was conscious oneness with it. That's why worshipping anything -- whether it be ...

My immediate goal was clear from the beginning and I made it known to anyone who would listen: I was going to move to New York. That's where Sri Chinmoy lived. That's where I had to be. One night, Prakash took me and Charlie to see a concert by the progressive rock band The Warriors, which was led by long-time disciple Narada Michael Walden . After the concert, Prakash took us backstage and introduced us to Narada, who could not have been more gracious. He seemed to be glowing after the concert. When he asked me what my goal was after high school, I told him flat out: "I'm moving to New York." Narada laughed in the big, infectious way that he has and encouraged me. A more pressing issue for the Santa Cruz disciples, however, was finding a new Center. The Santanas, who had left the group months earlier, would no longer be financing the apartment we were using for our meetings. Based upon the geographic make-up of the remaining Santa Cruz Center disciples, it seeme...

The impact of that first live meditation with Guru in such an intimate setting was such that I have little memory now of the rest of his visit, except that Prakash put the Saab through its paces in our rush to San Francisco. From that point on, high school was never the same (overhead photo of my high school courtesy of Google Maps ). As my junior year started (a month earlier), I decided against playing football. For me it had always been an outlet for outright violence -- I tried to (and occasionally did) hurt opposing players. I could no longer do that. I did continue to wrestle, though. On Thursdays, when we usually had our meets, I would spend the few hours after school and before the match at Charlie's condo. For some reason, he wouldn't be around at that time, so he gave me the key to his place and I would go over there and meditate for an hour or so in his bedroom before heading back to school for the weigh-in and later match. The school week always started for me on S...

In late October 1981 -- a week after receiving word that Sri Chinmoy had accepted me as a disciple -- I found myself speeding south to Santa Barbara in Prakash's Saab turbo. Guru had announced a surprise weekend visit to California, which would include stops in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and San Francisco. I was stoked. So were Charlie and Dave, as Prakash sped us south down Highway 101, blasting Santana's Oneness on the Saab's Pioneer tape deck. When we arrived in Santa Barbara some three and a half hours later, we went straight to a public park where we found Guru sitting on a folding chair on the grass, with a hundred or so disciples sitting before him in a semi-circle. Though fall, it felt like spring to me. Honestly, I don't remember my first impression of Guru. While nothing "magical" happened like Swami Yogananda's first meeting with his master , I do remember his cheerfulness, his physical vibrancy, and a beauty that seemed to emanate from inside ...