Storming the Gates of Heaven

New Delhi was crawling with an international crowd of travelers. It was my second trip to India, the late 60s, France was in turmoil with student unrest led by Rudy the Red and Mario Savo and his cohorts in Berkeley were occupying the university office of the president. LSD was being consumed by the buckets full as people were waking up from a long, long sleep.
Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner of Harvard had opened a Pandor’s box with their experiments on the therapeutic use of mind expanding substances and their book, The Psychedelic Experience, based on the Tibetan Book Of The Dead became an instant best seller along with Alpert’s Be Here Now, a pot-pourri of hip wisdom gleaned from his inner voyages and the various religious traditions. Both were destined to become classics and a permanent part of every mind explorers library.
The introduction of backpacks and sleeping bags on the world stage released people from the confines of costly hotel rooms and heavy luggage and hitchhiking and camping, along with the VW bus, fast became a way of life that was played out in every corner of the globe. Everyone seemed to have a little vial of blue or orange pills and some kind of exotic pipe in their backpacks along with the Bhagavad-Gita, Dhammapada, Bible, Kerouac’s On The Road or something by Lobsang Rampa or Herman Hesse.
The search was on, a magical mystery tour. Everyone was looking for God and all roads led to India. Where else? It was the home of the original hippie, six million of them called sadhus, wandering holy men who never cut their hair, smoked dope constantly and spent their days either in a meditative trance, doing yoga or reading and discussing the great philosophical and religious questions of the day. Homeless, with all their worldly possessions contained in a small bundle, they wandered the great sub-continent of India as mendicant teachers and devoted their lives in the search for God and personal liberation, coming together every four years in a grand mela or gathering of the clans along the holy Ganges or it’s main tributaries, a forerunner to the Rainbow Gatherings that take place every year somewhere on the American continent when the tribes surface from their caves and teepees, greying and bent, with children and grand children, to come together in a medicine circle of prayer and remembrance, to pass the peace pipe and talk story.
Of course some were bums, criminals and madmen in this group of Aquarian disciples but there are those elements in every human sampling as there were, and are, in those wandering sadhus but they were all accepted for this was a new age of brotherhood, of love and light, of joyful spirit and a dedication to serve their brothers and sisters with unselfish devotion. They all lived in a yellow submarine as the song said, one family sharing the same magic and mystery, the same goal, had all taken the same little pill and heard the all pervading OM within the recesses of their mind, had seen the radiation of energy and the patterns of vibrating colors flowing out from the bodies of friends and lovers, had seen the music and heard the colors and knew that their cells did not lie, that what they saw and felt was real and that it was God speaking, urging them on into the uncharted seas of psychic experiences.
And so they came, journeying to the East, seeking out the wise ones, the saints and yogis and philosophers, those that knew, who could answer their questions, who could show them the next step in the evolutionary process they had undertaken. It was a dangerous journey and there were casualties along the way for the path is a razor’s edge and some fell into the abyss. Evolution is a hard task master and the weak do not survive, nature selects only the strongest to carry on the work of growth, of progression to the next level of development of consciousness, of transformation.
So I landed in New Delhi the second time, alone, without the steadying and sensible influence of my partner who was to meet me in two weeks. Until then my time was supposed to be spent making contact with several Indian psychologists who were on my list of people the Indian Tourist Office had sent me, with a possible visit to a local mental hospital if time and circumstances allowed. I had in my possession several hundred doses of very pure Sandoz LSD, it not being illegal at the time, that I thought I might share with my Indian colleagues if opportunity and interest were shown. However, the opportunity never arose for within minutes of landing all previous plans were cancelled and a new adventure, setting and costume enfolded me and I was lead by an unseen hand to the temple of transmutation in the heart of Old Delhi.
After checking into my hotel and taking off my Brooks Brothers apparel and Omega gold chronometer I went to the Khadi Bhavan department store and bought my first set of hand spun loose pyjamas, a long kurta shirt, two lungis and a soft cotton shoulder bag. I paid my rent two weeks in advance and securing my passport, money and medicine pouch safely in the zipper pocket of my shoulder bag I plunged through the door of the magic theatre – for mad men only - and disappeared into the dark lanes of the old city.
I wandered for two weeks in a surrealistic world of shadows, sleeping on rooftops, in parks and underneath bridges, my companions being the lowest of the low, the wretched and dispossessed, Indian beggars, French junkies, rickshaw pullers, some nights sleeping on the pavement with one lungi on the ground the other covering me like the shroud of a corpse, my rubber sandals under my head for a pillow, my money and passport tightly clenched between my legs or tied around my waist. I bathed at the public water pump with the rickshaw wallahs, cleaned my teeth with the twigs that old women on the street sold by the bundle, ate off the fly infested stands, frequented the opium dens in the Chinese section, urinated and defecated in public like the orhers, traipsed through the back alleys with wild eyed western sadhus dressed in psychedelic paisley robes, smoked chillums at Jantar Mantar park with assorted holy men and dropped acid on the roof of the famous Crown Hotel in old Delhi with fifty others as we huddled in blankets watching the full moon, meditating, chanting and freaking out.
A Spanish painter from Barcelona and nephew of Gaudi gave me datura seeds to chew. I gave him 100 micrograms of Sandoz. You are God, he said. No, you are God, I replied. We looked at each other and couldn’t stop laughing for we recognized the truth of what the other had said. Tat svam asi. That art thou. We laughed until we ached. Divine madness was exhausting. Every few days I would furtively crawl back to my hotel and sleep.
Two weeks later my significant other returned from Venice where she had been on a buying trip for Italian glass beads, crystal ware and other rare and expensive items for her Hollywood bead and jewelry boutique. She stepped off the plane in the latest Gucci creation with exquisite Italian leather shoes and matching handbag. It was a sobering sight for it instantly brought me back to a reality that I had so thoroughly left behind in just two short weeks and had not realized just how much until that moment. My life would never be the same.
Back at the hotel I changed out of my Indian rags and back into my button down costume and gold chronometer. I left the beard. Looking into the mirror I saw another person I did not recognize. The form was vaguely the same but the substance emanated unfamiliar vibrations, insupportable and illogical, a contradiction to the costume that covered the form. Another person was looking out from behind the eyes. Who it was I did not quite know but I knew he was on the right track and had to continue to wherever it led.
We did the tourist routine; a houseboat on Kashmir’s Dal Lake, the Oberi Palace Hotel, the Taj Mahal, fine carpets and other gifts and mementos shipped back, I went through the motions but none of it had any meaning, my mind and heart were elsewhere. I yearned to return to the temple of transmutation.