4/18/24
Newsletter #585
The Crack of Dawn
There is a long history of Indian swamis and gurus coming to the west, particularly America, and not professing so much as trying to explain Hindu philosophy and culture, which is very foreign to us. I have not studied this phenomenon particularly, and I started to pay attention to eastern thinking first when led by The Beatles, specifically George, as many of us old hippies were. I bought a Ravi Shankar album. Their guru (meaning teacher), or George’s guru, really, was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He’s in the movie Woodstock (1970). His scene begins with an extreme close up of his mouth and surrounding mustache and beard, which is silly. I thought what he was saying was nonsense. I just wanted him to shut up so I could see Jimi Hendrix.
My pot dealer for many years, Lon, who lived down near the Wonder Bread factory, where it always smelled delicious, was a devotee of Maharishi. Lon got all of Maharishi’s videos. Lon was over 300 pounds, was always seated in a big, red leather chair, never stopped rolling and smoking joints, and watched an awful lot of Maharishi’s videos. Since it wasn’t cool to run in and out when doing pot deals, I saw quite a lot of Maharishi’s videos – more than I cared to. Maharishi had a funny high voice, and though he said perfectly rational things, and he had that fabulous eastern guru blissed-out grin, I was never moved. He had clearly found his peace, but he didn’t do a thing for me. I thought, “Lon, just give me my fucking weed and let my people go.” Unsurprisingly, Lon never did find his peace. He lost his mind and died years ago.
Maybe there’s a coincidence in this, but not a really big one. I grew up right near Tel-12 Mall and I spent a lot of time there. I wrote an entire feature script, Alien Apocalypse, by hand in the food court there. And every year the mall hosted a big Brandeis book sale. Tables and tables and tables of stacks of books. I bought many books there over the years. Of the books that I bought there, for some reason at the age of thirteen or fourteen, I bought and was fascinated by a pretty beat up book with a blue cover (which I still have) called Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. It’s a 1959 edition and it cost $1.50 (written in pencil). I can clearly see myself in a high wide shot – it’s my memory, I can cover it however I want – seated on a bench in the mall, undoubtedly smoking, maybe drinking an Orange Julius, and reading about Pamahansa Yogananda. He was a blissed-out, pretty boy, enchanted character.
When I got to Hollywood there was a Hindu temple on Sunset Blvd. not far from where I was living. It was indeed a Hindu temple, but it was also the Self Realization Fellowship, started by Pamahansa Yogananda. I went inside and they were very nice and tried to give me a copy of Yogananda’s book, but I told them I already had it. The place was shabby, having seen much better days back in the 1930s and ‘40s when Yogananda (1863-1952) was alive. I never went back in there. I’d had my moment with Pramahansa Yogananda in Tel-12 Mall.
Anyway, taking the long way around, the Indian swami who has been covering the western territory for the past five years or more is Sadhguru (his real name is Jagadish Vasudev). He is known exclusively as Sadhguru, which I heard him explain is not a name, but a job category – it means a “practical teacher.” He is presently the wise, old, eastern guru playing the western circuit, and I like him a lot. As far as him being old, well, he’s one year older than me. And in the last month he was suddenly stricken with severe headaches, discovered he a brain tumor, which was immediately surgically removed. He’s now out of the hospital, but I saw a clip of him a few days ago in a hospital bed, with a bandage on his head. He said in his own wry way, “They looked into my head but they couldn’t find anything. Nothing.”
So I would like to send all of my heartfelt wishes to Sadhguru for his speedy recovery.
Once I keyed into him through YouTube, no doubt due to listening to Allan Watts videos and listening to Tibetan flute music, I found that he was everywhere. He had done every show, every possible podcast, American, British and Indian. He was pleased to discuss existence with anybody. He clearly hadn’t stopped running in the last five years, until now, of course.
Sadhguru has one interview that I particularly enjoyed with a New York Rabbi that was pretty funny. Sadhguru is a funny guy. The Rabbi couldn’t be any nicer or more upbeat and jocular. But in pushing his Jewish agenda, he kept trying to make comparisons to Judaism, saying, “Then what you’re saying is similar to Judaism,” and every single time Sadhguru said, “No, they’re not similar. Not in any way.” This happened about five times, each of a Sadhguru’s answers beginning with, “No,” until the Rabbi said, “Hey, give me a break, I’m working overtime here.” Sadhguru was happy to be the rabbi’s straight man, but he still followed up with another No.
But I go on. All the best to Sadhguru.
And everybody else.