The rivers of people, rickshaws, hand carts, ox carts, cows, pigs and other cars parted gently to allow our progress to the winding, narrow lane on which Babaji's Vrindaban ashram is located. Our driver parked in a wide spot in the street and Margaret led me toward the door of the ashram.
We left our shoes on a porch outside the entrance, along with a hundred other pairs of shoes and sandals, and walked into Babaji s ashram. The temple, which occupies two-thirds of the ground floor area of the ashram, was jammed with perhaps four hundred devotees who were sitting cross-legged on the floor, singing and chanting rhythmically, with harmonium, drums and bells playing. Margaret and I got into the long line of people who were going to where Babaji sat, yogi-fashion, on a raised dais, blessing devotees, receiving their gifts of flower garlands, candies, nuts, fruits, etc., and Himself giving out gifts. Margaret and I both had gifts for Babaji. Margaret had a mobile of hearts from Finland and I had a golden, heart-shaped locket that I had bought in Paris for $300 and on which I had paid another $100 in customs duties at the airport in Bombay.
It took perhaps fifteen minutes for us to reach Babaji, so I had a chance to see how people knelt before Him and touched His feet, handed Him a gift, or just raised up for His touch of blessing. When my turn came, I felt awkward in kneeling and touching my forehead to the floor before Him, but I did that and looked up at Him. Babaji was older - looking like someone in his early 30's - and chubbier than the photographs of Him that I had seen. He looked intently into my eyes as I reached to hand Him my little jewel box with its locket and chain. Babaji took the box, gave it a puzzled look and handed it back to me to open. I opened the box and gave it back to Babaji, who glanced casually at my gift - apparently far less impressed by it than I - and gave it to the devotee standing at His left who was handling the gifts which Babaji did not immediately give away.
I stood up to go, but Babaji motioned for me to sit down before Him at His right. So I sat on the floor, legs crossed, and watched Babaji for five or ten minutes. He sat soberly, with His hand raised in blessing, for some devotees. Others He received with a smile or laughter and a touch of blessing, perhaps exchanging a few words in Hindi. With an impish grin on His face, He threw apples, oranges, and candies into the laps of the ladies and children sitting directly in front of Him. There was constant hustle, noise, and activity swirling around Babaji, and yet an atmosphere of peace and serenity. I remembered the many "little miracles" of my European trip on my way to India and I chuckled to myself as I inwardly asked, "Is this God on earth?"
After a few minutes, the mustachioed Indian devotee standing at Shri Babaji's left came to me and said Babaji had told him to take me to see "Swamiji," who could answer my questions in English. I wondered if Babaji had been reading my mind, as people said He did. We picked our way through the crowded temple to the far corner where Swami Fakiranand7, a 70-year-old devotee who administered Babaji's ashram at Haidakhan, sat selling English and Hindi literature about Babaji. We talked for a few minutes about Babaji as the present physical manifestation of the scriptural Lord Shiva; then Swamiji was called away to a meeting. I stood up in that corner farthest from Babaji and watched the scene, so foreign to anything that even my Foreign Service travels had prepared me for.
Soon I saw Babaji beckoning for someone to come to Him. The man next to me said Babaji was telling me to come, so I walked back through the crowd, feeling that four hundred pairs of eyes were on me. As I knelt before Babaji, He opened a cardboard box and took out two big round pieces of sugar-and-milk candy and placed them in my right hand. I sat at His feet, eating the candy and looking up into His face. He was full of kindness and love, beyond anything I recollect having seen in any person's face and form; He seemed to literally radiate that love, like a measurable energy force. Suddenly, Babaji moved to get up; He leaned forward, put both His hands on my back and raised Himself to His feet, then hurried along the path through the crowd and out of the temple area. It was time for lunch. Margaret and her American and European friends came to tell me that Babaji had honored me greatly in His welcome and that I had been greatly blessed. I had no experience of how Babaji greeted other newcomers, but my mind and body held the 'charge' of His blessing for a long time. Even through the great confusion of entering into a culture that was very strange to me, I felt that I had been pulled to Babaji by His will and in His time.
In typical ashram fashion, we sat cross-legged on the floor of the temple for our noon meal, about a hundred people at each sitting. Plates made of broad leaves sewn together were placed before each person and devotees served us, from steaming buckets, with rice, lentils, vegetables, fried bread (chapatis), a sweet, and tea in stainless steel 'glasses.' The food we ate had been offered first to Babaji and blessed by Him. This blessed food is called prasad: all the meals served to Babaji's devotees, wherever He went, were blessed and served as prasad. We ate with our right hands. As I ate, Shri Babaji came back into the temple, stood before me, and asked my name.
After prasad, there was a period for rest and household activities before Babaji's late afternoon darshan - the time in which a saint sits with devotees to share his or her radiance, advice and uplifting energy - and the evening aarati (a sung worship service). Margaret and I went to a guesthouse and napped and bathed before starting back to Babaji's ashram.
Vrindaban is the town where Lord Krishna, a great manifestation of The Divine as Lord Vishnu, and the central character of the Indian epic, The Mahabharata, lived as a child with his cow-herding tribe. Scriptural tradition places Lord Krishna's time in Vrindaban about 6700 years ago, but many historians guess the time to be much closer to the birth of Christ. Recent archaeological finds push the date back toward the traditional dates. Under any circumstances, Vrindaban is an old town and its narrow, winding, crowded streets, even though paved now with asphalt, provide the many religious pilgrims and tourists with a setting more conducive to spiritual search than the bustling, aggressive commercial cities of India. Vrindaban is still famous for its milk and milk products and there are many street-side stalls and shops where delicious hot milk or milky tea, called chai, is served, and we could buy milk-and-sugar sweets to offer to Shri Babaji. Outside the many temples, street vendors offered flower garlands at a rupee or so each, to be offered to The Divine during the evening worship services. The streets were full of activity - shoppers, vendors, strollers, rickshaws, bicycles, horse-drawn carts, ox carts, a few cars, many cows, some pigs and piglets. As the afternoon came to a close, Vrindaban's thousand temples offered up the sounds of bells and gongs and chanting and the sweet scent of incense.
Babaji's ashram also filled and again people waited in long lines to touch His feet with reverence and offer their gifts and themselves, while Om Namah Shivaya8 was sung to many tunes. That evening, after aarati, when I placed a flower garland on Babaji's knees and knelt before Him, He put the garland around my neck. On my way back to my place, I stopped in a darkened area behind and to the left of Babaji to talk with an Indian devotee. I happened to look away from the devotee to look at Babaji: I saw He had turned just at that second to look over His left shoulder at me, and before I could even smile at Him, I was aware of an orange flying past a column and over the outstretched hands of three or four devotees - a left-handed, sideways shot that hit me square in the chest, as if to say, "Who else but God could make a shot like that?" Babaji laughed and turned back to the devotees in front of Him.
For two days Margaret and I were caught up in the excitement and joy of being with Babaji. We were up at 3:30 a.m. to bathe and make our way to the temple before 5 for the first activity of the day. Hours were spent in the temple, singing and chanting and being bathed in the waves of love, peace and joy emanating from Babaji and His devotees. We talked with devotees from many parts of India, Europe and North America, hearing tales of their experiences with Babaji.
After two days, Margaret and I went back to Delhi to tend to my business with the Ministry of External Affairs; then we drove back to Vrindaban. We arrived at the temple late in the evening; the service was over, the temple nearly empty and scantily lit. We feared we had missed Babaji, who was about to leave for Bombay. But Babaji appeared out of the dark shadows in the temple and, through interpreters, told Margaret and me to join Swamiji and a party of mostly Western devotees who were going to the ashram in Haidakhan that night.
