All Roads Lead to India
I was born remembering.
I came in knowing there’s much more to life than what we experience through our ordinary senses. Knowing we’re connected to everything. Knowing that within that connection, there’s an ever-present source available to help guide us.
And while having this awareness has been a profound blessing, it has also been something of a curse. I’ll get to that later.
I believe we all arrive here remembering on some level. But almost immediately, the collective conditioning of cultural, educational, and religious norms impose their versions of truth on us. And with thousands of years of precedence behind them, the pull of these gravitational forces becomes all-powerful in the determination and arbitration of our agreed-upon reality.
I was never able to get with that program. I just wasn’t wired that way. So, I never lost my connection to this remembering, to this source of wisdom available for the asking. It has remained a permanent part of my consciousness and reality.
From my earliest memories, I was aware of being able to see the energy fields around all beings. And I could see that all these energy fields were connected. In effect, there was only one energy field. There was only one awareness. As part of that awareness, I could “know” the feelings of anyone I focused on, because I shared their energy. I was their energy. As they were mine. I would “know” information about them that no one had told me.
When I was very young, I didn’t know there was a word for this. I thought everyone had these kinds of experiences. But as I got older and was more able to express some of the things I intuitively knew about people, eyebrows started raising and I started realizing that I was different.
At first, my family didn’t think much about me knowing who was calling when the phone rang before it was picked up. Or being the one who always won family bets on when visitors would arrive. They just thought I was a lucky guesser. It wasn’t until I started making accurate predictions, such as mentioning the date of my favorite uncle’s death months in advance or begging my father not to go on a business trip because there would be an accident and he went and there was an accident, that anything was thought about this ability I had.
My parents only hoped it was something I’d eventually grow out of. But over the years, my abilities showed no signs of abating. Then, when I was ten, we moved into a 450-year-old house that sat on top of a large aquifer. That combination seemed to act as an accelerant. I routinely started having visions, seeing ghosts, and experiencing time warps, as well as continuing to have the garden variety intuitions of knowing what others were feeling, and seeing past and future events.
One particularly memorable experience happened in June of our first year there. I remember the precise details for a couple of reasons. I had a new friend over and we were hiking in the empty cow fields behind my house. I really liked this girl and hoped we would become good friends. All was going swimmingly until I felt the ground start shaking. At first, I just thought maybe I was a little light-headed from all the running we’d been doing. Trying to keep up with this new friend was a challenge because she was one of the fastest runners in our school. But the ground shaking continued to intensify. And then I noticed dust getting kicked up at the other end of the far field.
Then I knew. I knew exactly what was happening, even though it had never happened to me before. That was one of the things I was grateful for with these intuitive experiences—the understanding of what was happening and why was almost always baked into the experience.
I knew that if I didn’t run as fast as I could to get out of that field, I would get trampled by an army traveling on horseback at full speed. I was smack in the middle of my first time-warp experience. I didn’t know how many centuries I’d been thrown back in time but as sure as I was standing there, I knew I was standing directly in the oncoming path of hundreds of essentially stampeding horses.
I tried to act normally, like nothing was happening and casually asked Cindy if she felt the ground shaking. She did not. The sound of pounding hooves was becoming deafening. Flooded with terror, instinct finally took over. Without explanation, I started sprinting back to the fence line so fast that Cindy couldn’t keep up. I had so much adrenaline pumping that I vaulted a 3 ½ foot fence, hardly breaking stride, and made it back to my house before I had a chance to say anything. Cindy arrived a full 30 seconds behind me, holding her side and puffing to catch her breath.
So much for making new friends…. Cindy asked what the heck just happened. I wasn’t about to blow my cover (my parents had cautioned me that it would be best to keep such things under wraps). So, I said that I thought I felt an earthquake and wanted to get out of the field.
I told my mother about the experience when she got home. She looked concerned, but since I was a typical kid in every other way, the concern wasn’t for my sanity but for my safety. For her own edification, she took it upon herself to research at the town library if there had ever been any fighting or troops in the area in either the Civil War or the Revolutionary War.
What she found was that the Rochambeau French army had passed through our town sometime in June of 1781 during the Revolutionary War. It was estimated that the number of troops was somewhere around 5,500, with a cavalry of about six hundred. I’d bet the farm that the exact date in June was on the day I had that experience because I now know that these time-warp experiences happen on the anniversary of events.
Age eleven was a big year for me. That’s when I first started keeping a journal. Almost immediately, I found there was another voice that would come through as I wrote. It was the first time I’d inadvertently stumbled across what I would come to call the Inner Knowing. The process of writing was more like transcribing the wisdom and guidance from this deep source. Over the years, this would become a source of inspiration, insight, and support.
That was also the year I had my first awakening experience. I was sitting on my bed reading when I suddenly got whisked off, at what felt like the speed of light, to the no-thing place. There was no thing there, but it was everything. I was everything. I knew everything. I understood everything. It was a state of indescribable peace and joy. Getting dumped back to the “real world” felt like a kind of death. From that point forward, I became obsessed with figuring out not only how to return to the no-thing place but also with how to stay. I would later understand that this is what enlightenment is. That what I wanted was enlightenment. Permanent enlightenment.
Because of that experience, I knew that I had to let go of the Catholic Church.
This was going to put me at odds with my father, a very charismatic man with strong convictions, who was also very German in his disciplinary approach. I loved him madly and would rather cut off my right arm than disappoint him. But I knew I had to tell him about my decision to leave The Church, regardless of the consequences.
My father had been raised Catholic, did the whole altar boy thing, and raised his four kids to be good Catholics. Unless the world was coming to an end, you didn’t miss Sunday Mass. Non-negotiable.
Up until this point, that was fine by me. I’d always been especially drawn to the spiritual. Even when I was very little, I loved going to church. I felt comforted looking up at the stained-glass windows and listening to the hymns. Even if I didn’t understand all of what was being said, I loved everything about being there. So much so that I can remember deciding to become a nun at five years old. When people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d answer, “I’m going to be a teaching nun and serve God.”
But once the no-thing experiences started happening, I knew I had to let go of The Church. Because, unlike the church experience, the thing about the enlightenment experience was that I didn’t need a priest’s or anybody else’s help. No intermediary need apply. It was complete in itself. I didn’t need anybody to tell me what it was or how it worked. When you have that experience, there’s nothing anybody can say. There’s nothing anybody needs to say. Like I said, the experience, in and of itself, was and is complete.
This realization about The Church made me sad. Church had been a kind of second home. It was where I had felt peace. So, the decision to walk away was no small matter for me. But once I’d made it, I was certain this was what I needed to do.
It might appear that I was taking a wild leap over the cliff, thinking that by letting go of The Church I would be freeing myself to find a new home in the no-thing place. But having had that experience of Oneness, of Awakening, I knew with certainty that it existed.
As I weighed out this issue, I determined three things. 1. I did not know for certain that I’d be able to find a way to stay in the no-thing place. 2. Conversely, I did know that going to church had made me feel good. 3. But, ultimately, what The Church stood for had become such a big disconnect from that full awakening experience that I couldn’t reconcile it.
The simple truth was that I had crossed over some great invisible divide, and there was no turning back.
I think church is great for the people that it’s great for. It just stopped being great for me. I had been spun in a very different direction. I could no longer accept a religion based on duality.
Of course, at that age, I had no idea what nonduality was or what the difference was between nonduality and duality. I wouldn’t learn any of that until a few decades later. But I intuitively knew the difference, and I knew nonduality was my path.
So, I mustered all the courage I had, ready to accept my fate, even if telling my father about my decision meant being banished to the barn to live out my days with my horse in his stall. (My parents worked long hours and figured cheap horses bought at auction were more affordable babysitters than finding full-time help. Plus, the horses would do double duty by teaching us responsibility for the care of other living beings.)
I’m only half joking about the possible banishment.
There had been a time a few years earlier when my father discovered we kids hadn’t memorized a prayer he thought we should know by heart. After we’d gotten home from church that hot summer day, he made us sit in the car until all of us could recite it backward and forward. While my brothers were smart, memorization was not one of their strong suits. It was a long, sweaty morning.
So, I knew for a lot of reasons that I was trespassing on some pretty sacrosanct territory and there were likely to be consequences. But I had no choice. Even at that age, I saw my path clearly.
My opening came one Saturday morning while I was helping my father reglaze old windowpanes. I knew I could count on him to ask me his signature question, “Whatcha thinking?”
The question came while he was chiseling away all the old putty and I was rolling the new putty into long, fat worms. I’d lay them along the edge of the glass for him to press along the sides, scraping away any excess, which I’d pick off and roll back into more worms.
I began nervously, “So, Dad….”
“Yeah hon?” he said casually, as he started on a new window.
When I didn’t answer, he looked over at me. His hazel eyes crinkled into little dots, and his mouth broke into a wide smile. I turned around and looked into an old broken mirror slated for another weekend project. An image of Pippy Long Stockings stared back at me—a young girl with long blonde braids and masses of white putty freckles sprayed across her face. My father tossed me his rag to wipe off the spots that hadn’t already dried. We went back to work. As he bent over to chip out the old putty, he asked again, “So hon, what’s on your mind these days?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about something, Dad.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
I stopped working the putty and sat down on a step stool to keep my knees from buckling. “Dad, I don’t want to go to church anymore.”
I’d dropped the bomb. I awaited my fate.
My father didn’t stop his rhythmic scraping or even turn to look at me. His silence was more nerve-wracking than if he’d started yelling. Anxiously, I started peeling the dried putty off my hands.
“Really,” he finally answered in an easy tone. “Why not?”
“WHY NOT?” my brain screamed. I was prepared for everything except for such a reasonable question.
I wasn’t ready to talk about the no-thing place. It was an experience that didn’t lend itself to words.
So I went with, “Because I just don’t think that if God was really all-knowing and all-loving, that he’d punish someone for one mistake, for eternity. I don’t believe that he’d create an eternal hell. That’s not a God or a religion I want to belong to.”
Pretty standard objections, I suppose. But it was the best I could come up with on the spot. My father studied me for a moment. Then, we talked at length about God and life, right and wrong, and good and evil—well past the time it took us to finish several more windows.
And then he blew my mind.
“Alright,” he said, calmly announcing his verdict. “You don’t have to go to church anymore.”
That was it.
In that moment, my father changed my life. He’d let me know that it was okay to think for myself, and that I should think deeply about everything. He’d also let me know, at eleven years old, that I was worthy of respect. Most importantly, he let me know that he would always love me, no matter what.
Meanwhile, in my daily life, I struggled to be seen as normal. If people were to talk about who I was back then, they wouldn’t have said that I was psychic. I hid that from everyone except my family and my two closest friends. And, by this time, I’d also learned what I needed to keep from them so they wouldn’t worry about me.
Other people would have just said that I was a loner and a quiet watcher and that I was unusually perceptive for my age. That often got translated into me seeming wise beyond my years.
I didn’t think of myself as wise beyond my years. But I did often find that my friends regularly used me the way Charlie Brown used Lucy at her 5? psychiatrist booth. It was an easy job for me because I usually knew what my friends were struggling with before they voiced it. And it was easy for me to intuitively see what the solutions were.
All those interactions just helped deepen my connection with this Inner Knowing, which I thought of as the source of all that information. That allowed me to feel that I was connected to something. That I was being helped. That I had a teacher of sorts to help me navigate this different reality that was mine.
While I really appreciated having that connection, what I really craved and missed was having a teacher in the flesh. This was my great longing.
Even though I lacked a tangible spiritual teacher while I was growing up, I did know I was extremely lucky to have the parents I had, because they helped and supported me in every way they could. But they had no way to help me on my extraordinary and mostly secret mission. Instead, they gave me their support and let me be who I was. They never criticized the things that made me different, and they never made me out to be weird. It was just sort of the family thing. My older brother was born with a ventricular hole in his heart and would give you the shirt off his back, my older sister was sweet but fierce, I was smart and “sensitive”, and my younger brother was funny and a good athlete.
In school, I was friends with everybody—geeks, farmers, band kids, nerds, jocks, druggies, drama kids—the whole lot. I didn’t accept the barriers of cliques and would quietly work to break them down whenever I could.
I also made it a point to become friends with outcasts. I could feel their feelings of alienation. I saw how they were discounted and made to feel small. And I knew that most of the reasons these kids weren’t liked were because of things beyond their control. I remember this one girl who was shuttled between her financially strapped, divorced parents. She wore variations of the same three outfits over and over. She often had greasy hair because she wouldn’t shower at her dad’s house. At school, she was treated as an untouchable. But I could see that she was shy and kind and hurting.
That was a theme all through school for me, knowing what was going on beneath the surface. Wanting to bring people together and stop people’s pain. And wishing I could do more.
By high school, the actual school part of school bored me to tears. Part of this intuition thing was that I could absorb information easily and it made me a good test taker, so I did really well with very little effort. I’d show up for morning attendance, get the homework from classmates, find out when the test days were, and then skip the rest of school as often as I could get away with. If those in the know wanted to find me, they knew to head to the lake. I’d have sailed my battered old sunfish, bought with my after-school work money, out to a quiet place where I’d have dropped the sail, stretched out on the deck and looked up at the sky, waiting for the water to rock me to the place where all thoughts stopped.
Even though I had lots of friends in school, outside of school I preferred to be alone. Being around people meant feeling their sadness, insecurities, worries, and anxiety. Being alone meant I could simply feel my own feelings.
This urge I had to spend so much time alone started to worry my father. His solution was to get me my first dog, a Sheltie. She and my horse were the true loves of my young life. Taking the time to develop a close connection with both of them plugged me into the concept of “Umwelt,” of how different beings’ perception changes their experience of their environment. It made me keenly aware that there’s a world larger than the human-centric world everybody’s focused on all the time. That experience and realization was just one of the many benefits of being plugged into this fuller awareness.
Spending time in the natural world became more and more of a deep craving. I had my dog, my horse and the great outdoors. My dog and my horse really were my closest friends. With them, there was no need to explain anything. It was just a shared beingness. This close relationship with animals has remained a lifelong source of joy while providing a pure sense of belonging.
During all my school years, I was also acutely aware that I was biding my time. I knew my life wouldn’t be what I wanted it to be until I got a lot older. I was playing a long game from a very early age. I knew I had to wait until I was old enough for X, Y and Z to show up. I wasn’t sure exactly what the X, Y, Z were, but I knew I was waiting for something.
Then, in college, life took another U-turn. And, like many of my unusual life experiences that ushered in major changes, this one also arrived unbidden.
I was in the middle of a year abroad in England when I started having these dreams that my father was about to have a massive heart attack. Within these dreams, I was shown that I was somehow going to be key to keeping my father alive. The urgency of the dreams became so pressing that I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. I had a truly magical relationship with my father and I couldn’t bear the thought of facing life without him. I booked myself a flight home without telling my parents.
I didn’t want to explain about the dream because what if I was wrong? I didn’t want to scare my mother or worry my father, and I knew I would. They’d both seen enough of my dreams drop into reality to take them seriously. I also didn’t want to hear them tell me not to come home, because I’d already made up my mind.
Three days after I flew back, I was the one who did the driving to the Emergency Room, with my mother and father seated in the back. Because we lived out in middle of nowhere, I knew I could get my dad to the hospital in the time it would have taken for an ambulance to get to our house. I just prayed that his heart wouldn’t give out before we got there.
For the next six months, I helped my father run his business, while he began his slow recovery.
Somewhere during that time, I determined that I would not be returning to college. So, once again, I found myself worried about telling my father something that I knew would disappoint him. Having his children get a good education was another one of those things that was very important to him.
Finally, when my father saw that I wasn’t doing anything about re-enrolling, he brought up the conversation himself.
“So, hon, whatcha thinkin’?”
“I’m thinkin’ I don’t want to go back to school, Dad.”
Even though I was twenty now, I still felt crushed by the idea that I might disappoint him.
“Really,” he said. “Why not?”
By this time, I’d become fully immersed in spiritual study. I’d been reading anything and everything that might help me achieve a greater understanding of the experiences I’d been having, and to see if I could develop a philosophy, an analysis, a way of looking at the human experience that matched up with what I had been intuitively shown over the years. This was all before the internet existed so I was left to whatever books I could find that might point me in the right direction. I studied astrology, indigenous traditions, Eastern philosophies, the latest in quantum physics, the works of Edgar Cayce, etc., etc. Nothing else mattered to me except this pursuit.
I knew I was headed towards teaching and counseling in these matters, and there was no college program that would get me there in the way I wanted to go. I knew I was going to have to continue to do my own learning and carve my own career path.
I explained all of this to my father.
“Do you have a plan?” he asked.
“You mean like a business plan?” I said.
He nodded.
“No, not exactly,” I answered. “I can’t explain this in a way that’s gonna make sense, Dad. It’s just that I feel I have this calling. I know it sounds crazy….”
“You’re a lot of things, sweetheart,” he said, “but crazy isn’t one of them.” He put his arms around me and gave me a big bear hug. “But you’re picking a hard road.”
“I know.”
“Well then, you’d better get started.”
I would go on to have a thriving psychic consulting business. During that time, I acted as other people’s Inner Knowing. I helped them find and know the truth about themselves. And I worked to help more than 35,000 clients over the years get in touch with their own Inner Knowing.
It wasn’t long before I was making regular appearances on TV and radio. One of the questions I could always count on being asked was, “What’s it like being psychic?” Because I didn’t know anything else, it often felt like I was being asked, “What’s it like to breathe?” It’s not that I didn’t understand the curiosity, I did. And I knew they didn’t mean their question as, “What’s it like being a weirdo?” At least most didn’t mean it that way. It was simply that I didn’t have a good answer. It was just my normal, and it wasn’t anything I was ever interested in making a big deal out of.
For most of those years, I felt good about what I was doing with my life. I was giving my clients the experience of being fully seen and understood without judgement, and without them having to say a word. My sessions lasted an hour, and I did the talking for the first 45 minutes. If I hadn’t already answered all the questions they came with, the last 15 minutes gave them a chance to ask whatever was left.
But, eventually, being the receptacle of so many people’s feelings and the keeper of so many people’s secrets all became too heavy a weight.
In my late thirties, I finally hit the wall. I’d OD’d on the pain and suffering of others.
I decided to go underground. I quit working as a psychic, got married, changed my name, and had the great joy of my life, my daughter.
Out of necessity, I taught myself to build websites to help my husband, Andrew, with his communications business. Not only did I find that I was good at this work, but I also found that I really enjoyed it. There was no pain and suffering in 1’s and 0’s.
And no longer having to give so much of my time and energy to other people’s emotional needs allowed me to refocus my energies on my spiritual life and on my continuing quest for permanent enlightenment.
By all appearances, I was finally a regular person living a normal life. But, of course, I wasn’t. I never would be.
What I wanted and desperately longed for, what I’d always longed for, was to find the teacher who would take me to the next level of my spiritual journey. I knew he was out there—I could almost touch him. I just didn’t know how to physically get to him. So, I waited. Sometimes patiently. Sometimes going crazy trying to figure out if there was something I could do to move the timeline and speed up the meeting.
It wasn’t until several years into my web work that I was finally given the chance—I was finally going to get to meet this person I’d been waiting for my whole life.
I’d reached the point where I was overloaded with web work and desperately needed help. I’d had no luck finding affordable web developers. And then my brother Eric called just to check in. This was on a day, as it happened, when my head felt like it was going to explode. He picked up on the stress in my voice and asked what was going on.
After I unloaded my woes, he gave me Umang’s phone number. Umang had done work for Eric’s business, and they’d become friends. And, as with all of us four kids, any of our friends were instantly inducted into the family fold. All for one and one for all was my Italian mother’s motto, which became a way of life for all of us.
So, I already knew Umang. He’d come to the US for college, studying at MIT. Eventually, he wound up starting a US-based business staffed with workers in India. He was a big guy, in his mid-forties, with a big mustache, and an even bigger heart. As soon as Eric mentioned him, I smacked my forehead wondering why I didn’t think of him before. I thanked Eric and couldn’t get off the phone fast enough so that I could give Umang a call.
Even though I already knew I liked Umang, I knew I loved him when he said, “Don’t worry, Karen. Whatever you need, we’ll help you. Don’t worry about the money now. Tell me what you can afford to pay and we’ll work out the details later.”
Who says stuff like that?!
Anyway, Umang was true to his word. And that’s how he and I started a web business together. In a relatively short amount of time, we grew it to a point where we’d built our own software package that we planned to market to other businesses.
Amid all this, Umang and I had had many long conversations about life, philosophy, spirituality, and stories about his homeland. Even so, I was still surprised when he extended an invitation to travel home with him to India. He was offering me a grand tour of his country and a chance to meet the guys in person that I’d been working with for several months. And a chance to meet his guru. All for the price of a plane ticket. Who could say no to that?
When I shared Umang’s offer with Andrew, I asked him if he wanted to come along, even though I didn’t think he would. He was and always has been a homebody. I also knew that at this point in his life, he didn’t feel that his spiritual journey had much to do with travel. The chance to see his kids could always move him out, but otherwise, he liked the job of keeping the home fires burning. So, no surprise, he was more than happy to have me make the trip alone.
Andrew asked me at one point in our conversation why I felt the need to go. It was going to be a strenuous trip. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean I’m happy for you if you want to go, but the flight alone is going to take a whole day.”
“A whole day,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!”
Feeling the intensity in my response, Andrew peered over his glasses and said, “Okay, what haven’t you told me?”
Andrew and I shared what we both considered to be an exceptional relationship. Over the years, in countless long conversations, we’d traveled the universe together. But we also lived out very different lives. While he thought I lived up in the stratosphere, he considered himself very much down to earth—a kind of everyman. He had always been the perfect foil for me.
Anyway, while I’d shared a lot with Andrew over the years, he knew that I didn’t always tell him about all my “other” experiences. He was always interested and happy to hear about whatever I did share, but there were just some experiences that I didn’t share with anybody because even I had a hard time believing them. Why would I ask someone else to believe them?
“I’ve been waiting to meet Guruji for as long as I can remember,” I said. “I can’t tell you that I know exactly what’s going to happen when I meet him, or even if he’ll remember me the way I remember him, but I know that he’s going to change my life.”
Then a whole lot more came pouring out, some of it through tears.
“I’ve spent my entire life focused on this spiritual quest. And for the most part, I’ve felt very alone and lonely on it. Not that I’m throwing myself a pity party—I’ve never asked or expected anybody to feel sorry for me, because for the most part I feel like I’ve lived a very lucky life. But I’ve yet to meet anyone who could fully share the world I walk in. I’m sure they exist; I’ve just never met them. But the bottom line is I know what I know, and I routinely have daily experiences that other people don’t seem to have. And sometimes that’s incredibly isolating.”
Andrew nodded. We’d known each other for what seemed like lifetimes. Even if he didn’t know all the details, he did know how important this search was to me. And I knew he was rooting for me.
“You know that I didn’t really have anybody growing up who could help me with that world I was living in,” I said. “I’ve done the best I could without a teacher for a very long time. But I am so tired of going it alone. I am so bone-tired….
“I remember when Eric came back from India several years ago and said he’d met Umang’s guru and I heard Guruji’s name, Tulsi Giri, for the first time. To the core of my being, I knew that I knew him, and I knew that he was also waiting for me. But I had no idea how I was going to get myself to India. Because back then I wasn’t close to Umang. Really, I’m not being melodramatic. I’ve waited my whole life for this. Wild horses couldn’t keep me from going.”
Andrew smiled, “Then I won’t either. And, for the record, I wasn’t trying to. I was just saying it was a long trip.”
The trip did turn out to be a little about business, and a lot about Umang’s love of sharing India with others. But it mostly was about having me meet Guruji and to ask for his blessings. Umang had been a disciple for 25 years, and pretty much didn’t do anything without Guruji’s blessing.
But really, the trip was about an answer to my life-long prayer. To find the teacher, to be brought to the place—the only place—I’d wanted to be.
“Aap bhavishy mein dekh sakate hain,” Guruji said.
Those were his first words to me. Umang and I had just bowed and sat down on the floor in front of him. We were in a small, darkly paneled room where Guruji received visitors. There were already several other people rimming the room’s floor. A line of followers was shuffling in and out, touching Guruji’s feet, bowing, and tucking money under the mat on the cot where he sat cross-legged. He continued to talk as he touched their heads in blessing and sent them on their way. But his eyes stayed resting on mine.
A petite elderly woman in a peach-colored sari came from the back room to serve us chai in stainless steel cups. The smell of incense wafted in the air.
Umang and Guruji exchanged a few words. I didn’t understand any Hindi yet, so I looked over to Umang. He looked back at me and said, “He says you see the future.” And then, to satisfy his own curiosity, Umang asked, “Do you?”
I didn’t answer. I was thinking about Guruji. After all I’d heard about him, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he would immediately know this about me. But I was. My eyes welled up. I can’t explain the relief I felt that he could see me the way I could see other people.
But I was also being outed and I wasn’t prepared for that.
Why would he start here, I wondered?
Guruji shifted his weight on the cot to lean forward. That seemed to create a ripple effect around the room. Everyone sitting on the floor also seemed to need to make a shift at the same time.
“Aap bhavishy mein dekh sakate hain,” Guruji repeated.
This time I answered. “Yes, I can see the future.”
“What?!” Umang couldn’t help himself, “How come you never told me that?”
I didn’t answer Umang because I didn’t know how to answer. For a long time, I’d made sure I didn’t have to answer by not letting anybody know. Not because I was embarrassed. I wasn’t. I’d been very successful in my career as a psychic, had a waiting list a year and a half long, and was making six figures.
I just got tired of being seen as a freak. I got tired of how people changed when they were around me because they thought I was reading their minds. (I wasn’t.) Or how there were those who got mad and blamed me when something “bad” happened to them because I hadn’t said anything. (I never pretended to know everything. I only knew what I was shown. Never mind that I didn’t feel that it was my job to go around making willy-nilly predictions uninvited—good or bad— outside of work.) I didn’t want the pressure and expectations anymore. I’d reached the point where I knew that if I kept on doing what I was doing it was going to suck out my soul. Once I left that life I never looked back.
So, it wasn’t personal, is what I should have told Umang. I hadn’t kept anything from him that I hadn’t been keeping from everyone.
But before I could answer, Guruji started talking again.
Umang translated. “He wants to know what you see?”
Guruji’s full official title was His Holiness Mahant Shree TulsiGiriji Maharajshree. But he was simply “Guruji” to all his followers. He looked ageless at 117. There was hardly a wrinkle on his face and his reed-thin body was unexpectedly agile. He had long dark hair streaked with a little gray, a long beard, and a deep raspy voice. He wore the traditional saffron colored garb of most gurus and swamis, with several strands of beads hung around his neck. His eyes were a piercing black and there was no escaping their laser focus.
“Does he want to know what I see for myself or for the world?” I asked. “I don’t look for myself because it’s too hard to separate my own wants and needs from what I might see. So, I almost never consider that reliable. As for the world, could he be a little more specific?”
Umang translated. Guruji nodded without taking his eyes off me. They talked back and forth for several minutes. Guruji chuckled a few times.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and butted in. “Umang, what is he saying?”
“He says you have leaky eyes. You cry all the time.”
I laughed and said, “You know that’s true.”
It had become a running joke at Umang’s Ahmedabad office about how often I cried. Between jet lag, work challenges and whatever else was overwhelming me, I could weep over the weather report.
Apparently, in India crying was seen as a weakness, as something you don’t do. Not in public anyway. I had already explained to Umang and his team that I had “leaky eyes” and, try as I might, there was nothing I could do about it. They should just ignore me.
“He says it’s because you feel everyone else’s feelings, so you need a way to get rid of their emotions.”
“That’s also true,” I said. “That’s why I need to spend so much time alone. It’s the only way I get to be at peace.”
Then Guruji did something I’d never seen before. He took out a wooden flute, put it up to his right nostril and played. Umang explained that’s how he talked to the gods.
He played for a few minutes. Then he put the flute in his lap and spoke directly to me.
I looked to Umang.
“He wants to know how old you were when you started experiencing visions, time warps and other dimensions?”
Another deer-in-the-headlights moment.
Again, I didn’t talk about this stuff. If people didn’t already think I was ready for the funny farm when they found out I was intuitive, to hear that I had visions and all the rest…? Yeah, no, not going there.
And why were there a bunch of strangers in the room who were being allowed to listen in on this conversation?
Guruji held my gaze in a way that almost felt like I was being hypnotized. Suddenly, I was aware of a stream of images that started whizzing by, as if I was looking through a zoetrope, one of those animation devices with a wheel that spins to make the pictures move. Scene after scene flew past, showing me past life and future events with Guruji that were of enormous importance to me. In that state, I remembered them all, even the future ones. The relief and joy I felt was indescribable. Just when I thought I’d keel over from a sensation of vertigo, the scenes slowed and I got pulled into a pool of peaceful infinity. I never wanted to leave. I was home. I was finally home.
I looked up at Guruji, silently questioning.
He gave a nearly imperceptible nod. “Very good!” I heard in my head.
Still, he was waiting for the verbal answer to the question he had asked in front of everyone.
I was so overwhelmed with what I’d just experienced that I couldn’t swallow the lump in my throat.
Guruji spoke.
Umang translated, “He says, very young.”
And that was it. End of the session. Guruji told Umang to bring me back to see him again the next morning. We were dismissed.
As soon as we walked back out into the blazing sun, I reflexively squinted until my eyes adjusted. Umang started in right away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to kind of tell you when you wanted me to see the Hanuman temple last week and I told you I didn’t want to go in because it would cause issues for me. That was the only temple on the whole trip that I said no to.”
The Hanuman temple in Rajasthan was known for performing ritualistic healing and exorcism of evil spirits every Tuesday, so it attracted many pilgrims in need from near and far. If I had gone in, it would’ve meant trouble with a capital T for me. I had no interest in having to deal with the energy that temple held.
“This is India!” Umang said. “Do you think you’re the only person with powers? I also have powers.”
“Touché,” I said. “I’ll get over myself.”
Even though Umang had spoken sharply, he wasn’t angry. He was just, in effect, giving me the wake-up call that I needed, that I didn’t have to hide anything about who I was or what I experienced here. All of it would be considered in the bounds of “normal.” It was actually a relief.
And I did know that Umang was very perceptive and intuitive—it was part of his genius—but I never felt the need to point it out or have a conversation about it. I just enjoyed how it allowed us to have shorthand conversations where we each quickly knew what the other was about to say or do. It was kind of like dancing with a really good dance partner and the feeling was one of effortlessly gliding across the floor as one.
Umang, being Umang, quickly let the matter drop. He had bigger fish, or I should say, roti, to fry. He was calling to make dinner reservations. It had been many hours since we’d eaten, and we were both hungry.
Sustenance was going to be key. Though we’d already explored what seemed like half of India in the preceding weeks, we were barely at the starting line of the real journey that had brought me to this enchanting, terrifying, inscrutable place.