فصل 16

16

Following the Invisible into the Unknown

By the spring of 1972, through no intention of my own, I had completed both the course work and the qualifying exams for my doctorate. All that was left was writing a dissertation. I knew that would never happen, so I didn’t give it a second thought. My meditations and yoga were my entire life.

Though I had advanced considerably in my practices, I still felt something was holding me back. I began to believe that the answer was the practice of Kriya yoga, a special meditation technique taught by Yogananda. The problem was that you had to receive the lessons for a year before becoming eligible. I decided to ask Self-Realization Fellowship for early initiation into the practice of Kriya yoga.

In those days, I hardly ever got mail. So I was surprised some weeks later when I received two letters on the same day: one from Self-Realization Fellowship, and the other from some organization I’d never heard of. I was very excited to learn the fellowship’s response, so I opened that letter first. My heart dropped to my feet. I’d have to wait another six months to receive the Kriya technique. There was not much I could do about it but let go of my reaction. I took a deep breath and opened the other letter. With one glance, all my disappointment faded into emptiness. Inside was a flyer that said in big, bold letters: Receive Kriya This Summer from a Direct Disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda

I was stunned once again. I had never heard of these people. They appeared to be an established yoga community in California, but there was no way that they could know me or have gotten my address. I was a hermit living in the woods of Florida. How could these two perfectly intertwined letters end up in my mailbox at the same time?

Regardless of the answer to that intriguing question, I knew where I was supposed to go that summer—to a spiritual community in Northern California. It’s not hard to follow the guidance when it’s that obvious. But my commitment to letting life be in charge from now on would face a few more challenges before I left for my adventure out west.

A short time after the incident with the letters, Dr. Goffman contacted me to let me know that Alan Robertson was trying to reach me. I hadn’t talked to Alan since we had both passed our exams. I got in touch with him and learned that they had completed construction of the new Santa Fe Community College campus. Alan was staffing up for the opening classes and wanted me to teach there, even if only on a part-time basis. I became very quiet. I had absolutely no interest in teaching at Santa Fe Community College or any other institution. My only intention was to just keep increasing my spiritual practices until I could remain merged in the beautiful places I had discovered within. I tried to tell Alan this, but he didn’t want to listen. Finally, he said, “I am not asking you, I’m telling you.” My mouth became dry as I uttered the words my heart did not want to say: “Yes, sir. I will teach there on a part-time basis. What do I need to do?” Surrender—what an amazingly powerful word. It often engenders the thought of weakness and cowardice. In my case, it required all the strength I had to be brave enough to follow the invisible into the unknown. And that is exactly what I was doing. It’s not that surrender gave me clarity about where I was going—I had no idea where it would lead me. But surrender did give me clarity in one essential area: my personal preferences of like and dislike were not going to guide my life. By surrendering the hold those powerful forces had on me, I was allowing my life to be guided by a much more powerful force, life itself.

By that stage of my growth, I could see that the practice of surrender was actually done in two, very distinct steps: first, you let go of the personal reactions of like and dislike that form inside your mind and heart; and second, with the resultant sense of clarity, you simply look to see what is being asked of you by the situation unfolding in front of you. What would you be doing if you weren’t being influenced by the reactions of like or dislike? Following that deeper guidance will take your life in a very different direction from where your preferences would have led you. That is the clearest I can explain my surrender experiment, and it became the foundation of both my spiritual and worldly life.