Whole Life Magazine

February / March 2018

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yoga & spirit My story is the story of an entire generation that changed the world. In 1967, about 100,000 kids joined the hippie revolu- tion in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. Many were runaways or tourists, but they found utopia, even for just one "Summer of Love." The spiritual path started there for many baby boomers. Even if they didn't participate directly, they were swept up in a spiritual revolution. LSD led me to the edge of stark raving madness. But during my third, fi nal, and only successful acid trip, I lay in the grass on a cliff overlooking the Pacifi c in Big Sur, grinning blissfully for four hours—completely unconscious. Where was my nirvana? What was the point of tripping while out cold? Alan Watts' books said we needed a "meditation guide." In 1966, good luck fi nding "meditation" or anything remotely similar in the Yellow Pages telephone directory! So I tried do- ing it myself, lying on my bed (clearly, I didn't even know meditation should be practiced sitting up), praying for a "meditation." Suddenly an electric shock jolted through me. A cord of energy rushed through my body in a perpetual stream, from my toes all the way up to my crown. I felt plugged into the electric socket of the universe, but in a most ecstatic way. Entirely clueless, I fi gured this was meditation. Little did I know I'd ex- perienced my fi rst meditation and kundalini awakening both at once, without drugs. But I still wanted to learn to meditate properly, with a real meditation guide. In autumn 1966, a fellow art student/ pothead took me to the Transcendental Meditation Center. I entered what seemed a holy place. From a photo on the wall, an Indian guru smiled—or more accurate- ly, beamed. With long black wavy hair, beard, moustache, and white silk robes, his most striking feature was his sparkling, ra- diating, magnetic, ebony eyes. If God wanted to visit earth and look like someone, I imagined this was how He'd look. With no TM teachers in Berkeley, it would be nine months be- fore I could learn. When I fi nally did, I was hooked immediate- ly. I felt something I'd never felt before—HAPPY. Really happy. Then all I ever talked about was traveling to Rishikesh, studying with Maharishi, and becoming a TM teacher. The fi rst time I met Maharishi was in 1967 at the Los Ange- les airport. We devotees formed a double line with a corridor he could walk through. He appeared like a sunray bursting at dawn—laughing, cooing, and receiving fl owers. I stood on line in my ridiculous hippie attire, ugly raggedy junk-store dress, no bra, wild frizzy hair, hippie beads, hairy legs and underarms, and clunky leather hippie sandals, holding pathetic, sad wildfl owers I'd picked beside the road. Increasingly anxious, I clutched my wilting bouquet harder as he drew nearer. When he fi nally reached me, he stopped dead and looked me up and down. Then he scowled in disdain and snatched my fl owers with a derisive gesture. Though he smiled at everyone else, it took him no time to fi re bullets at me. Later, when I reread Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiogra- phy of a Yogi, I fi gured maybe I was in good company. Though Yogananda's fi rst encounter with his guru Sri Yukteshwar be- gan like violin strings, it quickly ended on a sour note. After just a few minutes, Yukteshwar told Yo- gananda to return home to Calcutta. When Yogananada obstinately refused, Yukteshwar informed him he would not easily accept him as a disciple. Then Yukteshwar mockingly asked wheth- er his relatives would laugh at him. Twenty-fi ve years passed before Yuk- teshwar expressed any affi rmation of love toward his disciple. I wondered whether Maharishi's ini- tial scowl was like hitting the play but- ton again after the last pause, as if he'd known me for lifetimes and therefore such an immediate, familiar, fatherly reprimand was acceptable. Or was it just my appearance, which, admitted- ly, sort of resembled a Charlie Manson Family reject? In any case, this was the fi rst of many tests Maharishi dispensed to me. I spent over two decades spin- ning around the eye of the hurricane of this charismatic, bliss-bestowing, fear-inducing guru while he sliced away at my ego and ricocheted me daily from glorious heights of ecstasy to intense depths of devastation and back, all with just his glance. It seemed to make no rhyme or reason, but in the process, I became myself. As I morphed from a painfully shy teenage hippie into a spiritually aware teacher, I fi nally broke free to fi nd self-empowerment in my own spiritual pathway. Maharishi's ad- vice to me: "Don't look to anyone. When you don't look to any- one, then everyone will look to you." So I discovered the inner guru, which anyone can access. Author and spiritual teacher Susan Shumsky has 14 books in print. Her latest is her memoir, Maharishi & Me: Seeking En- lightenment with The Beatles' Guru, in which she shares inside stories about her experience with the guru, his celebrity dis- ciples, and ego. She will be speaking at Conscious Life Expo and Mystic Journey Bookstore. Visit www.drsusan.org and www.divinetravels.com. Photo left: Courtesy of EGK & Son Photography, Bangalore, India. Photo right: Rain Saukas February/March 2018 21

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