February 20, 1993: Somewhere in Southern India

I haven't slept for the past 28 hours. Or to be more precise, I haven't slept in a horizontal position for the past 28 hours. Last night around 7 pm we started gathering in front of the stage. All the non-Indians, a disproportionate number of which are French or German, started filling in the area in front of the stage, while the Indian people stayed at the back. I don't recall anyone enforcing this seating apartheid. Maybe it's an unspoken rule. Many of the Europeans I've met here own something similar to time shares at the Ashram, and maybe with that comes certain perks. If so, I was enjoying perks by association. There weren't any chairs; everyone sat on the ground, and we were packed in like proverbial sardines. After ten hours the profuse sweat of 3000 or so people produced an olfactory event that wasn't part of the official proceedings. We smelled like a Kafkaesque can of sardines.

But I'm jumping ahead. Between 7 pm and 5 am, in addition to sweating profusely and starting to hallucinate from fatigue, heat and an electrolyte imbalance, we were treated to several performances. First there was someone from the movie industry (not Bollywood, this was obviously its poorer cousin), who showed us how he produced various sound effects. This included using a saw and a piece of wire to simulate the sound of a violin (not a Stradivarius, but its poorer cousin), and rattling a thin sheet of tin while playing scratchy background music to produce the sound of a thunderstorm (not an August thunderstorm that causes the mighty oak to shiver in its roots, but its poorer cousin). This went on for close to two hours. If he had been on The Gong Show he would have lasted perhaps ten seconds. Then there was some Indian dancing, then devotional chanting which sounded more like an Indian version of Led Zeppelin.

During the prenatal show the Swami's aides went around asking people to donate handkerchiefs. Finally, at around 5 am, the Swami was accompanied on stage by a gaggle of attendants. He was kind of doubled over (maybe thirded over) and moaning. Occasionally he would look up and bravely smile. He kept wiping his mouth with the donated hankerchiefs, after which he would throw them, rather contemptuously I thought, on the stage. (Being the skeptic that I am, I went up on stage afterwards and inspected the hankerchiefs. The spots on them looked too pink to me to be real blood, but perhaps divine beings have different blood chemistry than humans.) The Swami's interpreter, a kindly looking man who is a judge from Sri Lanka, told the crowd that the Swami was going through this horrendously painful process for us, that by martyring himself all those present would have their problems solved. The woman beside me told me that watching a lingam birthing would wipe out all one's bad karma and ensure 2500 years of good fortune. No wonder the ceremony had attracted such a crowd.

After a protracted period of the Swami moaning in pain and the crowd going into a frenzy of clapping every time the interpreter announced how all this was being done for our benefit, the Swami pulled a hankerchief from his sleeve, wiped his forehead and his mouth, then started doing what a cat does when it's about to spit up a hairball. Then out from the Swami's mouth came a little round thing that looked like a marble. It seemed most unphallic-like to me, but the crowd went wild. This was repeated five more times, each lingam birth preceded by the Swami pulling a hankerchief from his sleeve and wiping his forehead and his mouth. The Swami, who had had a veritable litter of linga, was then helped off the stage, looking like he could barely walk. People were completely buzzed, exclaiming over the miracle they had just witnessed. I kept my mouth shut. The crowd might have turned ugly if anyone had expressed doubts about what had taken place. Sleep deprivation combined with sensory overload and the need to believe in 2500 years of good fortune can cause people to do strange things.

I left the ashram the following day. Before departing, there was a ceremony where two people renounced the worldly life and entered the priesthood. They had to drink a mixture of cow's milk, curd, ghee, urine and feces to purify themselves.

I've decided the religious life just isn't for me.