Clifford Irving - Howard Hughes - The Autobiography

It was evening by now, and dark. I was exhausted and I didn’t really know where I was. I mean I was so worn out that I was disoriented. But I found the ashram, on the edge of the village, checked in, so to speak, asked for a single room, had to argue my way into getting one, succeeded by paying out a few extra rupees – money talks, even in a spiritual center, at least to the poor people who work there – and finally stretched my bones out on a narrow little cot in a room that was about the size of a prison cell. Someone who spoke English said to me, ‘ Darshan is at six.’ I didn’t know what darshan was and I couldn’t have cared less. I finished my supply of butter cookies that I’d bought at the airport in New Delhi and went to sleep.

When they woke me it wasn’t light yet. I didn’t wear a watch in those days but I’ve always been able to tell the time by the position of the sun, or just by instinct. I guessed that it was five o’clock in the morning. I was still disoriented, because I got up like a zombie, splashed some water in my face, put on a shirt and loose trousers, and let myself be herded out with everyone else into this big dusty square. Then I sank down into a heap.

Close to two hundred people were sitting out there with me, almost all of them Indians, with maybe half a dozen westerners. Everyone was silent. They were meditating, or, if they were like me, they were half-asleep and sitting in a kind of pre-dawn daze. It grew light, and I don’t know how long we all sat there, or where I found the patience to do it, but I did.

Did you meditate at all?

I’m going to tell you the truth, even though it sounds awful. I meditated, in my way, about my problems in the TWA lawsuit, and how to slide out of that fine the court had levied on me, because the interest was being added to the fine every day and piling up like a dungheap. Treble damages, I kept thinking. Treble damages! Those bastards! I had to squirm out of those treble damages. I sat there for about two hours, trying to figure a way.

I didn’t know then what meditation was all about. I learned later.

When it grew light I could see that there was a little Indian temple on the far side of this square, and we all sat facing it. When I say temple, that doesn’t quite fit: it was a modest place, probably as big as a three-bedroom ranch house, and decorated with figures of various deities like Shiva and Krishna and such other bigwigs in the Indian lineup of gods. I found out later that Sai Baba lived in a back room. That was his home. The ashram was his home. He’d been born in a shack in Puttaparti and that shack became the ashram, it sort of grew up around the shack, until finally his disciples tore down the shack, or it collapsed one rainy season, and they built the temple for him and he took a room in the back as his living quarters.

I didn’t see him come out, I just heard a murmur all around me, maybe two hours later, and I raised my head and there he was, right in front of us. He had a lot of curly dark hair with some gray in it – almost an Afro. His face was a little pudgy, and he had big brown eyes and a sweet smile. He wore an orange cotton robe and old sandals where you could see, if you had a sharp eye, that the straps had been repaired. He was a moderately large man, although not tall, and not at all skinny like the holy men I’d seen up north in Benares. I’d have to guess he was in his middle forties – I never did ask him his age. My main impression of him was his sweetness. I’m going to use a word you never heard come from my mouth: his goodness .

He wandered around in front of us, like he didn’t quite know where to settle, and finally he picked a place in the dust to curl up. He made a speech. He had an ordinary voice, not too loud, and of course he spoke in Hindi. So I dozed off.

I woke up when someone kicked me, or, let’s say, nudged me firmly in the butt with his foot. I opened my eyes and sat up. It was Sai Baba who had done it. He was barefoot. He was standing in front of me, smiling.

He said to me, in English, ‘I’m glad you came.’

I said, ‘I dreamed about you.’

‘We’ll talk later,’ he said. ‘Another day.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m not in a hurry.’

I looked around me. It was late in the morning, maybe eleven o’clock. The point is, a number of hours had passed while I slept and while Sai Baba talked in Hindi.

When he walked away from me and I walked back to my room with the rest of the people - darshan was over, I realized – I found myself thinking about what he had said. Not the brief conversation we’d had when he came up and booted me in the bottom, but the words he’d spoken to all those two hundred people while I slept. I could remember them. And you’ve got to understand: he spoke in Hindi. But I remembered in English.

What did he say?

He talked about what he called ‘the middle path.’ He talked about what he called ‘the seven internal foes of humankind.’ They were Lust, Anger, Greed, Attachment, Conceit, Hatred, and Control. ‘These nocturnal birds infest the tree of life and foul the heart where they build their nests.’ He also said, ‘What is required in life is an awareness of the vicious game that the mind plays. It presents before the attention one source after another of temporary pleasure. It doesn’t allow any interval for you to weigh the pros and cons. When hunger for food is appeased, it holds before the eye the attraction of, for example, a new movie that everyone is talking about. Then it reminds the ear of the charm of building something, and then it makes the organs crave for the release of sexual tension, and then it requires us to get in touch with and chastise someone who hasn’t behaved in a way that we expected him to behave. The yearning for comfort, for ownership, for various satisfactions, becomes subtly all-powerful. The burden of desires gradually becomes too heavy and man becomes dispirited and sad.’

I knew instantly what he meant. I knew that it was true. I understood that it wasn’t original, that such things had been preached for centuries by various religious and spiritual leaders worldwide. That made no difference to me. He had said it. And he had said it at the right time and in the right tone of voice to the right person. He was talking to me. He was talking about me.

Of course he brought in a few Indian names and concepts like Dharma and Avatar and Krishna and the divine Atma, but I was able to filter them out and keep to the meat of the message.

I wandered around the rest of the day, found a primus stove, and managed to cook myself a little meal. Then came evening darshan . I went outside, curled up, and listened again. This time I stayed awake, and of course I couldn’t understand a word. But Sai Baba’s voice was friendly and soothing and for the most part I thought of what he had said that morning.

That went on for several days. During that time he also pulled a few tricks. He was a kind of magician, or sleight-of-hand artist. He would come up to some of the people, right after darshan , and pluck things out of the air. Not rabbits from a hat, although he did on one occasion produce a red silk handkerchief that he gave to a young Indian, and on another occasion he produced a ring with some semi-precious stone in it that he gave to a middle-aged German woman. Most of the time, what he produced, or manifested – ‘manifested’ is the word his followers used – was a powdery substance called vibhuti . It was supposed to be sacred ash. You could eat it, or rub it on your body. It was meant to be purifying.

Did you ever meet him and talk to him personally?

Not for a few days. Then, after evening darshan , he beckoned to me. He did this often, with various of his devotees, but I had been told that you had to hang out there a long time and have a certain seniority before your moment came. However, I had been there less than a week when he gave me the nod. I was pleased, and a little nervous. I followed him into the temple.