STORY FROM INDIA

Three

THE SWORD OF THE LAMPS,

AND A DEMON'S EYES

I soon came to be known as a bright young star to the Kalamassery branch management. I'd begun by handling service records as a junior assistant in the personnel department, but leaped into the ambitious role of 'office hero', tackling tasks that others were not able to handle as quickly or as skillfully as I thought they could be done. My vanity was gratified with a promotion to senior assistant to the chief payroll accountant within a few months of my arrival.

The company had an unwritten rule that everyone in management should dress officially: shirt and tie tucked into trousers. I ignored it. My attire was kurta and lungi. The kurta (the traditional collarless North Indian cotton shirt) would be long, extending down to my knees, and the lungi (a white sarong worn by South Indian men) I would wrap up to my knees when I walked and let down below my feet when I sat at my desk. On top of that I sported long hair and a handlebar mustache. Though my dress was considered odd, nobody said anything because I was the insufferable 'office hero.'

One day a spare man with slicked-back hair and a peculiar gleam in his eye strode into the office and went from desk to desk collecting donations. He was dressed as a pujari, wearing lungi, a cotton wrap over his torso, and a sindhur dot on his forehead that indicated he was a Shakta (a devotee of Devi, the female principle). He was a member of the Kerala brahmin caste known as Nambudri, who are sometimes feared for their reputed powers. There was a theatrical, effeminant air about him that I found silly. Still, everyone was giving him a few rupees.

When he saw me in my unusual attire he assumed I'd be a soft touch. Wordlessly smiling with lowered eyelashes, he put out his hand.

"For what?" I demanded irritably.

"I am collecting for the Bhagavati temple here at which I am the priest. I want to hold a great festival of the goddess."

"I'm not giving you any money." I turned back to work.

"But I heard you are very religious."

Though my interest in religious experience had been reawakened as a result of my pilgrimage to Ghandagiri, I hadn't lost my prejudice against privileged brahmin priests. I saw no good reason why he was deserving of my money. "I said I am not giving you anything."

"Be careful of your attitude," he snapped haughtily, rousing my bile.

"What are you going to do if I'm not?"

He turned to the others and demanded, "Tell him about me." They looked at me disapprovingly. "You should give him something," one said with a hint of warning in his voice. "He's a tantric fellow."

My eyes widened in mock surprise. "Oh," I marvelled in my best stage voice, "a tantric? Well, then ... of course I won't give you anything."

He raised a forefinger into the air and glared at me. "I dare you come to my temple on Friday and face my power."

Sounding as unimpressed as I could, I parried, "Friday, you say? Well, you just might regret your invitation. I've seen power before, and I've also seen powerful silliness. Don't think you can fool me so easily."

With a dramatic flourish, he stalked out of the office.

"You simply could have given him two rupees and avoided a scene," one of the staff reproved me. "Why this challenging attitude?"

"I just wanted to know what good cause it could be that you're all so eager to part with your money for."

"Look, youngster, that was a tantric! Be careful!" I made a rude sound and got back to work.

But that Friday I did go to the temple, bringing my Muslim friend with me. We came expecting at best a magic show, at worst a farce. In either case, we'd be entertained.

Bhagavati, also called Devi, Mahamaya, Durga, Parvati and many other names, is the divine Shakti (potency) known universally as Mother Nature (mulaprakriti). In India she is worshipped by people who seek to enjoy her attributes like rati (the erotic), bhuti (riches and prosperity), tushti (pleasure), pushti (progress) and so on.

Tree temples dedicated to Bhagavati are a common sight in Indian villages, and the temple in Kalamassery was one of these, near the edge of a pond. It consisted of a small brick room built around the tree's base. Inside the room, in a hole in the side of the trunk, was the altar to the goddess.

When my friend and I got there, we found a group of local people standing in two lines before either side of the door of the tree temple, praying in unison: "Amme-Narayana, Devi-Narayana, Lakshmi-Narayana, Bhadre-Narayana..." These are names of Bhagavati that describe her as the energy of Lord Narayana (Vishnu).

The pujari arrived on a bicycle from his job at a chemical company. Parking his bike next to the pond, he jumped in, clothes and all. He climbed out dripping wet, entered the small temple room and closed the door behind him. From within, sounds of a ringing bell and the chanting of mantras could be heard.

The crowd got wilder, singing and clapping to the rhythm of a hand drum. The men were all black-skinned, many bushy-headed and bearded, the younger ones wearing colorfully printed shirts open at the neck. Exchanging fierce looks of some shared inner awakening, their eyes and teeth flashed a fearsome white as their limbs jerked about in an increasingly aggressive display of energy. The women flocked behind the men, swaying in unison, eyes closed, brows furrowed, some with hands clasped or uplifted.

Suddenly the door opened to loud cries from the assembly. The priest did arati, a ceremony in which incense and a brass-handled ceremonial lamp are waved before the murti.

After setting the lamp down he came out of the room and started hopping around on stiff legs with his feet held together, somewhat like a bird. I heard someone shout, "Now he is in trance!" To a non-Indian, all this might seem bizarre, even devilish. But to my friend and I, it was so rustic as to be incredibly funny - the indigenous South Indian equivalent of 'ole time religion' laughed at by 'city slickers.'

The mad priest hopped through the crowd handing out strands of colored thread to be worn against disease. When he came before me he declared with his customary histrionics, "I will show you the spiritual world. Don't doubt what you see." He bounced over to a row of stones laid out on the ground, and while standing over them with his body bent ninety degrees at the hips and his head swiveling left, right, up and down, he announced, "I am going to build a great temple on this spot. These stones will transform themselves into worshipable murtis!" He suddenly straightened and demanded money from me for wada-malas (garlands of wadas, or South Indian dumplings) to be offered to these stones when they changed their shapes.

Vainly struggling contain my mirth, I snickered, "I'm sorry, but I won't give you anything."

He looked me black up and down, trembling with exaggerated scorn. The crowd, now gathered around us, had become ominously quiet. His voice raised to a woman's shriek, the pujari challenged, "Oh, you don't believe me?"

I said no and stood my ground. He asked someone to bring a coconut. Seizing it in both hands, he broke it over his own head.

"This doesn't mean anything to us except that you've got a very hard head," I deadpanned, shrugging. My friend laughed out loud and it echoed through the crowd. That broke the tension, but it did not deter the priest.

"You will yet acknowledge the potency! Wait here." He went back into the temple room and finished his worship. In the meantime the crowd drifted away, sensing that the show was over. My Muslim friend also left, having lost his interest. I loitered, waiting for the man to finish, curious about his crazed determination to prove something to me. When he came out he brought me into his modest house just a few steps away.

Scattered around the place were all sorts of weird paraphernalia - strange weapons, masks, staring painted eyes, artificial teeth. In one corner was a massive two-foot tall brass floor lamp with five wicks burning in its plate-shaped oil reservoir. Directly over it, about four feet above, another oil lamp hung suspended by a chain from the ceiling. A ceremonial sword lay on a small wooden table before the two lamps.

Picking up the sword, the priest eyed me sharply. "You still don't believe me?"

More curious than apprehensive about what he would do next, I said, "No, I don't."

He held the sword upright in the space between the two lamps. After a moment, he let go of it. It remained in mid-air.

A chill went through my heart. I moved close and looked carefully at the sword while he stood by grinning vengefully at my confusion. "You're trying to discover the method of my magic?"

"Well," I replied as calmly as I could, "swords don't just stand in mid-air. So what's the trick?"

"This is the potency of tantra. It's not a trick." I didn't say anything, not knowing what to say. Turning to leave the room, he said, "I'll be back in a moment - you're free to study this mystery however you like."

I grasped the handle of the sword and tried to pull it. It would not budge an inch, no matter how hard I exerted myself.

He returned. His voice ringing in defiance of all the faithlessness I represented, he announced as if before his congregation, "I will put on a festival two weeks time, and if people don't care enough to help, I will have to use tantric power to arrange everything,"

"Let me help you," I whispered, gazing spellbound at the sword glinting in the flickering lamplight. "I'll organize this entire festival for you."

Now that I'd finally accepted his power, his bluster evaporated. Truly sorry for my former indiscretions, I implored, "Are we friends now?"

"Yes." He smiled warmly, clasping my shoulders and looking me full in the face. "We're not only friends, we are fellow brahmins - tantric brahmins."

"I'd certainly be honored to learn more about tantra from you."

"Good, very good," he replied, satisfied that I'd been won over.

The next day I returned so he could introduce me to his congregation. They held me in great regard, considering me an educated and religious young brahmin from Tamil Nadu come to assist their own local priest. I broke the barrier of caste between us by visiting their homes, mixing with them, helping them in whatever way I could. Thus I won their support as well as their respect.

A week before the festival I called the young people of the village together and engaged them in decorating the town, cleaning the streets, hiring elephants, buying fireworks, and sending inviations to the local political leaders. The organizational talents I'd learned in the DK came in quite handy.

I printed flyers featuring a photo of the Bhagavati murti. These I had distributed from house to house as part of a fund-raising drive; we collected more money than the pujari had ever seen in his life. The festival lasted four days. Each day, I led a procession around town with two elephants at the front. In a small community like Kalamassery, this was an event that would be talked about for years. After the festival ended, I got the Hindus to donate regularly to the pujari so that he'd not be in need.

Later the Muslims of the village asked me to organize a festival for them at their mosque; this I did likewise with great success. I suppose I could have become a political figure among the locals.

Around this time one Mr. Murlidharan Karta came from Calcutta and joined our TVS branch. We became friendly. His hereditary house was in Ernakulam, and once he drove me there to meet his family. Later that evening he took me to Chottanikara Bhagavati Pitha, an important place of Devi worship in the countryside. We arrived for the midnight puja.

The shrine was representative of the cleanly evocative style of Kerala temple architecture - a simple, compact structure beneath a low, pagoda-style tiled roof, yet mysterious, with small rooms in which carved wooden and stone motifs were blended, illuminated by rows of tiered oil lamps hung by chains from the ceiling.

Rites were being performed in a cave beneath the shrine to a stone that reputedly grows in size each year. Fiery brass lamps cast a dancing orange glow all around. There were white chalk mandalas drawn on the cave floor and red sindhur markings on the walls. The ceiling was bedecked with banana bark and leaf trim-

mings, and there were strange figurines made of white flour positioned here and there. The effect on the mind of this ancient ethnic cultism was palpable. The atmosphere was heavy with the preternatural.

A huge tree grew from out of the cave floor up through the ceiling and into the courtyard of the shrine, where it spread its branches above. I watched as a group of haunted lunatics were brought into the cave, each to have a tuft of hair wrapped tightly around a nail that was then driven into the tree. In their madness they tore their heads away, leaving the hair - and the ghost - on the nail. Their disturbed symptoms immediately vanished.

The experience did much to change my attitude to life. I came away convinced that I should delve as deeply as possible into the secrets of tantra. I went back to the Kalamassery pujari and had further discussions with him.

The word tantra means 'thread' or 'woven pattern' in Sanskrit; in its mystical sense it indicates knowledge of the groundwork or order of the universe. This knowledge may be colored by one or a mixture of three types of desire: tamas (base desire), rajas (desire for material success), and sattva (desire for spiritual enlightenment and peace). Usually the term 'tantric' is only applied to someone who practices tamasic tantrism.

A soul conditioned by the tamasic quality is obsessed by lust to the point of madness and illusion. He is compulsively drawn to dark, degraded activities that are ruinous to his spiritual progress. The tantric scriptures, spoken by Shiva to Devi, prescribe a code of religion that is attractive to such unfortunates. The rituals are designed to engage minds absorbed in sex, intoxication and meat-eating. The ultimate goal is to help them overcome these obsessions and rise to a higher standard of life. As inducements, Shiva and Devi offer rewards to those who

observe the vows of self-control prescribed for this path.

The Kalamassery pujari, a Shakta, sought communion with Devi through temple worship and trance; from her he got his powers of prophecy, healing and sword-magic. The tantrism he practiced is known as dakshinamarga (the right-hand path) because its rituals

are 'clean', confined to symbolism only.

The left-hand vamamarga tantrics are much more fixed on attaining magical powers than the Shaktas. Their ritualism is most unclean, like the darkest extremes of the ceremonies of the bokor, the voodoo sorcerors of Haiti who, interestingly, are also known as 'the priests who serve with the left hand.'

Exciting displays of power were the food of my teenage enthusiasm for the occult, so the pujari recommended I study under a master of the left-hand path.

He told me that in vamamarga there are two specialties. One is necromancy: the summoning of evil spirits, ghosts, goblins and the like for particular tasks. Ghastly rituals are performed to bring these entities - known by such names as Yaksha, Yakshi, Dakini, Shakini, Mohini, Chatan and Udumban - under control. They dwell in the underworld from where they visit the earthly plane, and are very active in regions where people propitiate them as gods.

The other specialty is a kind of short-cut siddha-yoga, a method of gaining magical powers by meditation upon lower expansions of Shiva or Devi. The yogi offers some type of vow, sacrifice or ritual to these fearsome, lascivious forms. After satisfying them, he receives siddhis (yogic perfections) in return.

A vamamarga master may perfect one or both of these means to power, and he may outwardly be a Shakta as well. There are so many intertwining branches within the general divisions of tantra that it is not always possible to make hard and fast distinctions between them.

On the advice of the pujari, I sought out a vamamarga master at a small village close to Chottanikara Pitha. The center of town had just one real building, a temple, surrounded by huts and shanties. When I arrived, there was a competition going on in the marketplace between two tantrics who'd selected an onlooker from the crowd to be their instrument. They had him standing stiff as a board, in trance. One tantric pointed a stick at him and said, "Lie down." He fell flat. The other pointed and said, "Get up." He rose up straight without bending a limb.

A figurine about six inches long made from rice flour and eggs, with two bones stuck in the bottom like legs and a knot of hair stuck on the top, lay on the ground nearby. One of the tantrics recited a charm and the thing rose up and started moving towards him, rocking back and forth on the bone-legs.

At this point the crowd grew restless with people edging away out of fear. I heard some of them murmering, "When these things start to happen, it means its getting dangerous." In their zeal to outdo one another, the tantrics called more people out of the crowd, causing them to perform outlandish and possibly injurious acts. To the relief of everyone, they finally ended their duel with a challenge to meet each other again on another date.

The crowd broke up. I walked around the little bazaar where I saw one of the tantrics going from stall to stall demanding goods and receiving them for free. Everyone was deathly afraid of him.

After he left I asked some of the stallkeepers why they allowed this to go on. One man answered, "If I don't give, he'll change all these vegetables into creatures." Someone else said, "He can make snakes fall from the sky." A third told me, "He'll change the color of my wife's skin." Another said, "Anything may happen. This man is heartless. He can do what he likes, and no policeman will dare touch him. He has Chatan working for him."

The word chatan is derived from the Sanskrit chetana (consciousness). Whether or not there is a relationship between this and the Arabic Shaitan or Hebrew Satan is a question for etymologists.

I was eager to get to the bottom of what I'd seen and heard, so without wasting more time in the bazaar I headed for the woods outside the village where the pujari said I'd find the master's residence. After a time-consuming hike through thick foliage I finally reached the place in the afternoon.

It was a small shelter of piled rock walls with a crude wood-beam roof built under a banyan tree. Scattered all around it were animal bones and skulls. There were even a couple of dried severed human hands hanging in the branches.

A very attractive young lady sat inside the doorway of the hut. She was not yet twenty and looked fresh and virginal. Her hair was worn long and loose, and she had on a simple ankle-length maroon red dress. There was a vacant look in her eyes that did not change when I spoke to her.

I asked her about the man I was looking for. She slowly mumbled "Please wait, he said you would come," which didn't really tell me what I wanted to know. I rephrased the question and got the same reply, now repeated over and over. I could see she was under some kind of influence.

I gave up and sat down outside the stone shelter. Soon I heard someone moving through the forest. A man stepprd into the clearing, and I recognized him as the tantric I'd seen demanding goods in the village. Now he didn't look so wild-eyed and fearsome. In fact he could have been any common fellow off the streets - a rickshaw driver, for instance. Still, one could see in his face a strange sort of lust: not that of a gross sensualist, but a lust for power. One might say he had the same sort of air about him as a successful businessman, a mixture of ruthless ambition and cocky confidence. But his success was not in business. It was in the black arts.

Wordlessly, he led me into his hut. The far side of its dark, disjointed interior was taken up by a stove that was simply an arrangement of bricks housing a wood fire. Upon that squatted an oversized copper kettle with two ear-like handles on either side. Steam spewed out from under the lid, filling my nose with a stomach-unsettling odor just a bit short of disgusting. Against the other two walls were a flat stone with a highly polished mirror surface, a small bookcase with thick tattered tomes crowding the shelves, and an old harmonium. In the odd corner I saw more of the now-familiar rice flour figurines, chilling in their combined morbidity and childishness. As I walked in, stooping, my head brushed against bones tied with knots of hair hanging from the gnarled timber rafters above.

With the stove's fire he lit a couple of candles, and we sat down. Nervously, I began explaining myself and my new-found interest in tantra. He gazed at me steadily with a cold thin smile until I faltered. Then he asked in a deadly calm voice that matched his smile, "How far do you want to go?"

I said, "Well, to tell you the truth, my real interest is to develop some faith in spiritual things by actually seeing them."

"Did you see the show I did today?" he asked, maintaining his reptilian smile. "Oh yes, and it was very impressive. How do you perform such feats?"

He studied me thoughtfully for a moment. Then he replied, "I can tell you where you can get a little deeper look into the mystery of power. This will be a sort of test for you. But it will have nothing to do with me; I'll tell you where to go and give you some advice in preparation, but you'll be on your own after that. If what you see convinces you that this is not parlor magic, you may return here for some serious instruction. Are you interested?"

I nodded eagerly, very interested. He told me about a small Muslim settlement near a stand of trees known as 'shavuk', similar to pine. In the midst of the shavuk woods was a clearing. I was to go to that clearing on the next full moon night and sit and simply watch for something to appear.

"Don't fall asleep, whatever you do," he warned. "You should bring with you a pocketful of small white stones. If you get frightened, spit these stones one at a time and throw them behind you as far as you can. This will help you get away."

He paused. "If you survive this encounter, you may return here." I left in no small state of excitement, eager for the next full moon night.

On the afternoon before that night, I returned to the region with my Muslim friend. We soon found the little village the tantric had told about and made discreet inquiries about the shavuk forest. Around sundown we located it. Just in case we might need help, my friend made a quick acquaintance with a Muslim family living some hundred meters across a road that skirted the edge of the tree stand. These people confirmed there could be danger, and told us they'd keep a lamp burning in the window so that we could find our way there easily. We both had our pocketfuls of white stones.

After some hours of killing time in the village, we returned at about 11 o'clock and entered the woods. The moon was high in the cloudless night sky, flooding everything with its pale sheen. After a brief walk down a gentle incline we came to an area where some trees had been felled. In the midst of the clearing we saw a broken circular wall that rimmed an old well. We sat down on a fallen trunk some twenty meters away from it.

Not knowing what to expect, our attention was drawn to each and every rustle of the woods. But nothing happened. Finally, after midnight, my friend nodded into sleep. I remembered the tantric's warning and remained alert, my back to the well and my gaze moving like a searchlight along the line of trees all around.

Ten minutes after my friend fell asleep, I trembled as a cold tingle crept up my spine. Leaping to my feet and turning around, I saw something that almost made my heart stop. Bathed in the moonshine, a tall, statuesque woman stood on the well's rim. Her eyes were closed. For a moment I wondered if she was a sleepwalker.

In face and physique she did not resemble an Indian woman. She had long loose hair that hung down over the front of her body to her ankles; otherwise, she was naked. She was hauntingly voluptuous in a way that was both enticing and frightening.

Staring open-mouthed at this apparition, I nudged my sleeping friend with my foot. He sat up with a start and turned to see what I was looking at, then gasped and scrambled to his feet.

At once her eyelids lifted, revealing twin orbs from hell. They flamed hotly to penetrate the darkness with a glare like the eyes of a tigress. She fixed those terrible eyes upon mine and stepped off the well, alighting to earth as if she was not heavier than a wisp of cotton.

The woman's legs propelled her forward. I cannot say she 'walked' or 'ran', for these words are simply not able to give an accurate picture of how she advanced upon us. Her legs moved without bending at the knees, making swift little steps of such fluid effortlessness that I was reminded of the locomotion of a centipede. It was almost as if below the waist her body was motorized, for when her legs started, her head, upper torso and limbs snapped back slightly from the sudden forward motion.

My friend, shaking violently and gibbering, caught my hand and tried to pull me with him in a dash for the road. But I was rooted to the spot, transfixed by the mysterious woman's eyes. I tried to tell him I couldn't run, but no sound would come from my contracted throat. He let go and fled for his life just as she halved her distance from us.

What deadly hypnotic power an automobile's headlights have over a deer standing at gaze in its path, her eyes had over me. She closed the last few feet between us. I heard my friend shout from behind me, "Get ready to run!" Something flashed through the air and landed behind the woman. She broke off her mesmerising stare and turned to see what it was. As soon as she looked away, I regained control. I bolted in sheer terror to catch up with my friend who was now in the woods on his way up to the road.

He turned, took something from his mouth and threw it past my head. It was then that I remembered the stones. Still running like a madman, I fumbled in my pocket and pulled one out, popped it in my mouth for an instance, then tossed it over my shoulder without looking back. Hearts pounding, we burst out of the grove, crossed the road and entered the field at full tilt on our way to the Muslims' house.

I turned and saw the woman emerge from the trees and skitter eerily over the road right behind us. An awful thought seized my mind: "We'll never make it."

Slowing to a stumble, I plunged my hand in my pocket to snatch a whole fistfull of stones. I licked them ravenously before hurling the lot right at her, then pelted off again at full speed.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw her stoop to examine some of the stones, picking them up one by one. But as if in sudden fury she flung them down again and rose to resume her pursuit. By this time we had reached the house.

We entered breathlessly and bolted the door behind us. A man and his old mother came out of another room and bade us to sit down as they quickly drew the blinds on all the windows. That done, the man handed my friend and I each a large shiny-bladed knife. He rubbed the open end of half a lime on the sides of the blades and told us to hold the knives ready. In the meantime the old lady read aloud from the Koran.

Whoever - or whatever - the mysterious woman was, she did not try to enter. After an hour or so the man and his mother retired. My friend and I, still trembing with fright, didn't dare drop into sleep before the first rays of dawn.

Four

SECRETS OF LEFT-HAND TANTRA

When we met again, the tantra master was much more forthcoming. I was greeted with a warm embrace and invited to relax under the banyan tree. I sensed that I now belonged. In an awed voice I asked him, "What was it that I saw?"

He chuckled at my neophyte's excitement. "So, you were impressed?" I nodded. "You saw Mohini, a demoness from the underworld. Had you known how, you could have entered a pact with her for the next cycle of Jupiter (twelve years). You promise to satisfy her lust once a month, and she will do your bidding in return - protect your property, destroy your enemies, whatever.

"But a pact with Mohini is very dangerous. When she comes for sexual satisfaction, she may assume eighteen forms in the course of the night, expecting you to fulfill the demands of each one. If you cannot, it will cost you your life. And if during the twelve years of your relationship with her you have an attraction to another woman, that will also cost you your life. You suddenly vomit blood - finished."

I asked, "Why was she attracted to the white stones?"

"Mohini draws energy from the male sexual fluid," he answered. "Besides the pleasure of sex, this is her main interest. Of the bodily fluids, saliva is the most similar to semen; that's why throwing a white stone upon which you've spat is a sure way to divert her attention. People who drool while sleeping unknowingly invite this kind of succubus to take control of their bodies."

Looking at me appraisingly, he then asked, "Has your faith in the occult increased?" I swallowed and blurted, "Yes, how could it not? I'll never forget that experience as long as I live!"

"So, you want to learn something from me?"

"Yes, of course!"

He devised a schedule of appointments based on my days off from work. On the average I would see him once every two weeks, but sometimes he insisted that our meetings be separated by as much as forty days, in deference to his own obligations. He ordered me to keep my relationship with him a strict secret.

During our meetings he taught theory, reading and explaining Sanskrit verses to me from a old book. In the course of these lessons, I learned he had twelve chatans under his control. He engaged these demons in grisly tasks for paying customers, such as frightening or inducing insanity in the customers' rivals, or even killing them.

I also learned that my master had taken up vamamarga in vengeance against people who had used the same methods to hurt his family. He destroyed these enemies and then went into business for himself. In India, vamamarga has always been the last resort of the downtrodden in securing justice and getting respect: 'Dog as a devil deified, deified lived as a god.'

Apart from my master's ruthlessness, I found some things in him that were admirable. One was that he was strictly self-

controlled, despite the fact that he used women in many of his rituals. He was a rare man who was motivated not by sensual pleasure but by sheer power.

Another good quality of his, fortunately for me, was that once he was your friend, he would not betray you. Many tantric masters accept disciples simply because they need assistants, not because they want to impart knowledge. Since in tantra today's disciple may become tomorrow's rival, a master's students can find themselves in grave danger when he no longer needs them. But my master accepted me as a friend, knowing that I would not seriously pursue tantra later on. I was only experimenting.

For the last ten years he'd been attempting to get mystic powers by a method known as uttara-kaula: the worship of Shakti in the form of a virgin girl with particularly fine lakshanas (physical qualities). His chatans would search for such beauties as he traveled around Kerala doing his magical exhibitions.

From time to time he would place one of these women under hypnotic control and bring her to a burning ground, where bodies are cremated. There he would bathe her in liquor and invoke the power of the goddess with mantras and mudras (symbolic hand gestures). Yet during all this he had to remain completely unperturbed by sexual desires (he'd been celibate for the last thirty years). After the ceremony he let the girl go home untouched, unharmed and unable to remember what had happened.

Having completed theory, one night I assisted him in a particularly gruesome ritual. He took me to a crematorium where he had the cooperation of the man who burned the bodies. This man had pulled from the fire a smoldering half-burned carcass that we used as a kind of altar. My master sat down near the body in meditation. I had a box containing eight different powders; on signal from my master, I would sprinkle one of them on the hot, crackling corpse. The other fellow would place burning cinders on the body from time to time to keep it hot.

The powders produced different colors and flavors of smoke. With the rising of each puff from off the carcass my mind would be opened to a particular realm of thought. For instance, one powder caused thoughts of clear skies to flood my mind - the dawn sky, noon sky, sunset sky and night sky. With another I saw different kinds of clouds. Visions of bodies of water were induced by a third. Sometimes the visions were horrible, as when I saw mounds of different kinds of stool, and sometimes they were very sensual. In all cases, I had to keep my mind under control and not allow it to be overwhelmed by fascination, lust or revulsion.

I was being used by my master as a 'video monitor' for his own meditations. I was to sustain the images in my head undisturbed while he entered them with his mind. Each image was a door to a particular level of consciousness, and at each level he had to propitiate a particular form of Devi.

This ritual meditation went on until about an hour before sunrise. Finally he stood up and embraced me, saying, "With your help, tonight I was successful. What a mind you have!"

He explained that he had long attempted to complete this ceremony, but because of not having a suitable assistant, he'd never seen it through to the end. Now, he told me, he'd attained the power to render objects - including his own body - invisible, as well as reproduce them in multiple forms.

Such powers are called siddhis, and are obtained by yogis after long, arduous austerity and meditation that might stretch over a succession of many lifetimes. Yoga slowly opens by increments the chakras, the hidden power points of the mind.

But the tantric process, when successful, places the mind of the meditator under such intense pressure that the siddhi-chakras can be abruptly wrenched wide by a mighty burst of willpower. This is precisely why tantric ritualism combines such explosively contradictory elements as the vow of celibacy with the bathing of nude girls in liquor. This is also why tantra is so dangerous, for its forcible distortion of the mind often ends in insanity.

Likewise hazardous is the congress the tantrics have with chatans, mohinis and similar evil spirits. As an old saying goes, 'Mahouts die by elephants, snake charmers die by snakes, and tantrics die by the entities they summon and attempt to control.'

After the session in the burning ground, my master told me not to visit him again. "You have seen enough to have faith in the realm beyond the senses. If you are intelligent, you will take up a proper religious life. This path is only for wild men like me."

And in fact my faith was greatly reinforced by my master's help. I concluded that if such displays of power as he could effect were possible through the dark practices of left-hand tantra, the miracles attributed to the Krishna murti at Guruvayur must be of an infinitely more sublime and pure nature.

During the period I was learning from my master, I visited other tantrics. There were two in particular who became the main reasons why I took heed of my master's warning to abandon vamamarga. I didn't want to become like them.

The first, who directed me to the second, was a woman who was reputed to be the most adept tantric in all of Kerala. She sometimes stayed in a ruined house in a village outside of Trichur. It was only with great difficulty that I managed to find her there as she was very secretive about her movements. It was rumored that she was wanted by the law, so I dared not make open inquiries about her for fear of being arrested as an accomplice.

When I came to the house, I saw nothing indicating recent habitation except for an old ragged quilt flung in a heap on the veranda. After looking around a bit and finding no one, I picked up a corner of the quilt to see what was beneath it. The cloth was snatched from my touch as a voice hissed from under it, "Don't touch my blanket! If you want to see me, come back after sunset!"

Shocked beyond words, I recoiled from the quilt as if I had suddenly seen a scorpion in its folds. I went into the village and had dinner in a small eatery. As the sun sank below the horizon, I returned to the old house.

As I mounted the veranda, the figure under the blanket stirred and sat up. Her face gave me yet another shock, for it was decrepit beyond belief and covered with infected running sores. Her hideous visage reminded me of a reoccuring nightmare I'd had as a child, in which a hag much like her peered from beneath a staircase of an old building.

But fascination for her reputed abilties overrode my loathing. As she was physically unable to stand (she moved about with the help of people over whom she had power), I sat down next to her. In a rheumy, quavering voice she said, "If sunlight touches my skin, I will die. That's why you can only see me after dark."

I tried to introduce myself, but she cut me off. "I know you and know why you've come, but I do not deal with beginners. You are looking for drastic displays of power that will give you faith in the mystic realm. Very well; I have thousands of tantrics working under me, and I will recommend one to you who will more than satisfy your curiosity. And I guarantee - after you've met him, you will not want to become a tantric yourself."

She told me to go back to the village and spend the night there. The next morning I would see a line of people boarding a bus. "You give the driver two rupees. Where he tells you to get down, you get down. From this veranda I will direct you the rest of the way. Now go."

Everything transpired as she said it would. Around noon I got off the bus at a Muslim village where the main business seemed to be the sale of deep-fried plantain chips. From there I walked, following a footpath out of town and through a green field of tall grain. At the end of the field I saw a house perched atop a rocky knoll. Somehow I knew that was the place I was supposed to go.

On the veranda of the house were four young, pretty women in red dresses, each wearing her hair tied in a long pony tail; they were arrayed on either side of a flamboyantly-dressed man sporting a full beard and shoulder-length hair. He looked for all the world like a gangster, and I began to wonder if I'd stumbled upon a house of ill repute. The five sat in chairs as if they were expecting someone. As I came up the front steps to join them, I saw the veranda was also host to a large population of pet animals - cats, dogs, monkeys, and even a jackal.

"So, you've come!" the man welcomed me heartily. "And you want to see something interesting. Well," he gave me a toothy grin from within his beard, "you must see the performance we have planned for this evening. But until then, make yourself comfortable." He introduced his female companions and hinted that they would be as friendly as I might like them to be. I modestly declined their assistance in passing the time, for I was by now curious to find out what sort of discipline this man was following.

His specialty was spying on people and locating lost objects by means of mystic sight. And to attain his power, he performed the most obscene rituals imaginable. That night I would be witness to one.

He told me that his line of tantra required no vows or austerities like those maintained by my master. In fact, he knew all about my master and his trust in me; this, he avowed, was the only reason why I'd been permitted to meet the old lady who had directed me to him.

He said more about her. "Her greed for power knows no limit. She has attained levels that no one else can master, and she still wants more. Her physical disabilities are the result of the terrible methods she has used to get where she is now - but that doesn't matter to her, because her satisfaction is not in the pleasures of the body. To be truthful, she cannot be satisfied. The secrets of the universe are unending, and she has set her mind on fathoming them all. Her goal is to swallow the universe."

Tantrics consider the siddhi they call 'swallowing (internalizing) the universe' to be the summit of attainment: one has access to anything in the cosmos, on any planet, anywhere, simply by thinking about it. Thus all desires are fulfilled by the mind alone.

Yogis who know this mystic process can mentally move through the regions of the universe as easily as someone using an elevator can move from floor to floor in a building. The yogi's elevator shaft is his body's central psychic channel, which runs through the length of his spinal cord. By meditation he can link this channel to the shishumara-chakra, an astral tube coiling from the Pole Star down to the nether regions, and project his subtle mental body through it for an easy journey to other planets. He may even teleport the elements of his physical body through the channel, reassemble them in the place of his choice, and so seem to appear there out of nowhere.

Shortly before midnight, the tantric gave me a battered tin box to carry and led me to a nearby burning ground, where the body of a pregnant woman had been saved from the fire for his use. I watched in growing horror as he stood on the corpse and recited mantras. Using a special instrument he took from the box, he removed the foetus from the womb of the dead woman. Examining the tiny limp form, he assured me it was still undead, though beyond hope of revival. He'd kept the soul within the body by a magic spell, he claimed. He pulled a razor-sharp knife and a large jar half-full of some solution from the box, and then, chanting more mantras, he began to butcher the baby, dropping the pieces of flesh into the jar. Aghast and trembling, I fled the scene.

I went to the watchman who had let us into the burning ground. "How can you permit this?" I raged. "That woman's family paid you people to consign her body to the flames, and you're allowing such evil things to be done to her and her baby!"

The watchman cautioned me in a frightened whisper. "Don't say anything more, please! That man knows what you're speaking to me now. Don't make him angry! You must be very careful with him - he even knows your thoughts. If you don't like what he's doing, why have you come here with him?"

Feeling ashamed of myself, I mumbled, "I only wanted to see the secrets of his power..."

The watchman shook his head in pity and said, "Your curiousity will ruin you. You're a young man, you look well-bred and intelligent, why are you getting mixed up in this? Just leave. Don't spoil your life." But I couldn't leave, as I didn't know where to go. One does not stumble around the Kerala countryside at night, for snakebite is a likely consequence. I settled down near the watchman's campfire and soon dozed off.

Some time later - it could have been one or two hours - the watchman roused me. The tantric had come out of the burning ground carrying the jar under one arm. In the other hand he held the baby's skull. "Why did you leave?" he admonished me, not unkindly. "If you want to do things that other people cannot do, you have to do things that other people cannot do!" He laughed, and his easy manner stupefied me.

"Look at this!" he exulted, thrusting the jar under my nose. I thought he would unscrew the lid, and my gorge rose. But he only wanted to explain that by treating the baby's flesh in the solution he'd made a powerful ointment. He reproved me again for not having stayed and watched how he'd done it. In the darkness the jar looked empty to me.

"Go get the box," he ordered. "We'll go back to my place and tomorrow I'll show you what this preparation can do." He led me through the fields back to his house. Inside, he went to bed with two of his girls. I slept fitfully on the veranda.

The next morning he set the jar down on a small table between us. Now I could see that the bottom was covered by a pastey substance. With a hand caressing the shoulder of a girl on either side of him, he leaned back in his seat and probed my mind for a moment with a quiet stare. "I think you ought to test the power of this ointment," he said, raising his eyebrows allusively. "There's a problem at your factory that you can solve with it ... some missing cash?"

He was right. A considerable sum of cash funds had disappeared recently, and suspicion had fallen upon a Mr. Murthi, though no proof could be found against him. The tantric smeared a bit of the ointment on my thumbnail and told me to look carefully at it. As I concentrated, I saw in the nail the image of the office from which the money had been taken. I found I could alter the view with directions given in my mind, just as a TV studio director changes the image on the video screen by telling the cameraman to pan, zoom in for a close-up, and so on. But my mystic thumbnail scope was incredibly more versatile, for it even showed the past.

I saw that it was not Mr. Murthi, but another man who had entered the office surreptitiously to take the briefcase of money and hide it in his car. I followed him after work; he drove to the place of an accomplice and stashed the briefcase with him. The accomplice spent the money on black-market gold so that the cash could not be traced. And I saw how the thief had his share of the gold made into doorknobs that he placed on the doors in his home, naturally without telling his family what they were really made of.

Later I tipped off a friend at work who wrote an anonymous note to the police. They verified that the doorknobs in the man's home were solid gold. He was arrested and convicted on charges of grand larceny.

From my further discussions with him that day, I learned that when people came to the tantric for the recovery of stolen or lost property, for a fee he had one of his girls trace the missing goods with the mystic thumbnail scope. The existence of the ghastly ointment was kept secret, of course. The customers thought it was the power of the girls themselves.

The thumbnail scope had its limitations. Though it could penetrate any closed door or wall, it could not see above or below a specific height or depth, nor look into powerful holy places or temples and could be baffled by expert singers performing certain melodies. Certain kinds of smoke would likewise render it ineffective.

I asked him about his karma. "You have attained this siddhi by

very obnoxious methods. What do you think lies in wait for you in future births?"

On this point he was surprisingly philosophical. "Those who would master this knowledge must be ready to face the consequences without flinching. I will surely have to suffer for all the black deeds I have done. But that's part of the game we play.

"We tantrics view all existence as an ebb and flow of Shakti. We connect with that power, and it sweeps us up to untold heights. Later on, the same power may plunge us into despair. But what else is there? Everything is but a manifestation of Shakti."

This man's question - 'But what else is there?' - for which the tantrics have no answer, bothered me. If there was really nothing else beyond the goddess and her power, then he, and the old witch on the veranda, and my master who poured liquor over women's bodies, and the brahmin who broke coconuts on his head, had attained all there is to attain. I couldn't accept that. There had to be something more.

I was now not interested in going any further with vamamarga. But I thought that the theoretical principles and the basic discipline I'd learnt from my master were of great use to me. I had no inkling that once the lid of the Pandora's box of occult mind power had been pried off, it was not so easy to close again.

QUESTION: IF THEY'D ATTAINED EVERYTHING, THEN WHY THEY ARE STILL STRIVING FOR MORE BY THOSE PROCESSES MENTIONED?

Five

THE GATE OF DREAMS

After a three and a half years in Kerala I was transferred back to Tamil Nadu, to work under the rather severe chief accountant of the Salem branch, Mr. S. Venkata Subrahmanian. As it is common usage for educated English-speaking Tamils to be addressed by the first initials of their names, he was known to one and all as SVS.

My two good "same-age" friends were co-workers Vaidyanathan, serious, bespectacled and a bit shy, and Shankara Subrahmania, a jolly, big-bodied chap. The first six months I lived alone in a small rented room; after that I shared a place with Shankara until the spring of 1974.

I returned to Tamil Nadu with more than just office experience. While in Kerala, my youthful interest in the opposite sex had continued to flourish, but with a difference. From left- and right-hand tantra, I'd learned a highly sophisticated way of interacting with the female psyche. The several close relationships I'd had with girls while in Kerala were experiments in the power of Shakti, by which the sexual drive is channeled not towards physical gratification but to heightened experiences of mind. I'd learned well from my vamamarga master that the physical act of sex spoils the opportunity to really exploit women for what they have to offer men. So on the surface at least, I'd remained a good brahmin boy. But the real fact was that my lust had assumed such cosmic proportions that I saw no point in trying to satisfy it by mere physical means.

I returned, too, with considerably reinforced faith in Hinduism. Thrice I'd taken part in the yearly pilgrimage to Ghandagiri, seeing the mysterious flame of Ayappa each time. The one year I'd delved deeply into occult tantrism had satisfied me that there is more to existence than mechanical pushes and pulls. Now I felt enough confidence to openly dedicate myself to the mainstream Hindu ritualism I had formerly ridiculed.

In Salem I became an ardent devotee of Karttikeya, a deity quite popular among Tamils. He appeals to the mystical as well as material impulses of the common man, and that suited me just fine. Moreover, I'd never forgotten the childhood vision I'd had at his shrine.

Occult 'self-worship' (ahamgrahopasana) is very prominent among Karttikeya's devotees. During Thaipusan, a festival held each early spring year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who flock to his temples in Tamil Nadu, Ceylon, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius - wherever South Indians have put down roots - are taken possession by the god and the horde of ghosts who serve him. In the trance of Karttikeya, some even thrust spears through their tongues or cheeks. Yet they feel no pain, nor do they even bleed; they prophesize and perform minor miracles, 'becoming' the god for a while.

In an interesting parallel to Christianity, South Indian Hindus believe Karttikeya to be the son of God (Shiva), born of miraculous conception. He is called Kumara, the child divine, and Mahasena, commander of the devas and militant foe of demons. His weapon is the Shakti Vel, 'the Spear of Power.'

Though he easily awards his worshipers the bounties of material enjoyment (bhoga), his intention is to instill tyaga (renunciation) in them later on, as he showed in his own life. Once he so lustfully pursued the lovely damsels of the heavenly world that the devas complained to his mother, Parvati. To teach him a lesson, she revealed that every female in the universe is a form of herself. Deeply ashamed that he had really been lusting after his own mother, he vowed to maintain brahmacharya (celibacy) from that moment on.

But I just wanted to be known as a basically normal but dedicated Hindu believer. I wasn't aware of his hidden agenda to push me to the brink of frustration so that I'd give up my materialistic life altogether.

As Coimbatore was only a few hours due southwest of Salem by train, I'd often visit home on the weekends. Overlooking Coimbatore is a large Karttikeya temple on the side of the Nilgiri hill range. One Sunday at Mum's request I went there accompanied by my brother's fiancee and her father and two sisters. The idea was to make a good impression on them of our family.

We'd walked halfway up the long stone stairway that brought pilgrims from the foot of the hill to the temple entrance, and had stopped for a rest at a shrine of Ganesh. All at once I splashed a startling remark into the gentle stream of pleasant conversation by turning to the girl and saying, "You know, before I was born, my mother had a daughter who died in infancy. You are her, born again. Welcome back to the family."

She blinked, reddened, and looked at her father for help. He winced and shook his head. "Now why do you tell such things?"

"Because I am the one you have come to see." As I answered him, it was clear that I wasn't answering him.

The four exchanged uncomfortable looks. Emboldened, I who was not I any longer wasted no words. "I am he with six faces - Shanmukha, Karttikeya himself!"

"Kannan," a sister blurted, "is your head full of rubbish? You'd be in enough trouble if you blamed the god for your one face only, because simply rubbish comes out of it."

I closed my eyes and clapped my hands thrice, then sat still while they murmured amongst themselves. Within a few moments a peacock appeared on the scene, announcing himself with a loud call. The peacock is Karttikeya's familiar.

Smiling slightly, I opened my eyes. With a discourteous grunt, the father got to his feet. "Let's go up now," he muttered to his daughters. I rose and joined them. "Right now there is a lady in the temple who is very devoted to me," I chatted amiably as we stepped out of the shrine's shadow onto the sunny stairway. "She is wearing a green sari and will soon come down the stairs." A group of women came out of the temple to begin their descent just as we reached the top. One wore a bright green sari. "Coincidence!" hissed the girls, their eyes flashing daggers of reproach my way. Their father walked ahead stiffly, acknowledging nothing.

Inside the temple, the priests were bathing the murti with various liquids. As they poured milk over Karttikeya's form, I felt the same substance coursing over my body. I rolled a shirtsleeve up to my elbow and told the father to look at my forearm. He frowned, then gasped as his eyes fell upon the white droplets condensing on my skin. His three daughters shrieked and clutched each other. The crowd pressed in around us, babbling excitedly. I was finally ushered outside by the priests, who didn't want their ceremony disturbed.

Though it didn't wreck my brother's engagement, this incident was the first noticable crack in my connection to the everyday world.

Later I got the mantra-siddhi of Karttikeya, a perfection by which I could teleport his sacred ash (obtained as a blessing from the temple priests) from a covered bowl in a locked closet to my hand. I got this power by daily chanting a mantra a certain number of times for forty-one days. But because I didn't continue the sadhana after that, it gradually faded away.

Another cryptic vista opened a few months later. One evening in my Salem boarding house, I'd just turned off the light and laid down for rest when I heard a knock at the door. I got up, flicked on the light, threw open the sliding bolt and pulled the door wide. There was nobody in the hall. I leaned out over the stairwell and scanned the ground floor below. Empty. I closed the door, put out the light and went back to bed.

Within seconds, again a knock.

I checked once more. Nothing.

When it happened a third time, I went to the window and looked out on the lane. I discerned a lone figure standing in the night shadows. He was stark naked, his body covered with ash, and had a long beard and matted locks. Raising a hand as if in blessing, he framed the words "Come to Chendamangalam" with his mouth. I heard them in my head. Then he turned and disappeared in the darkness.

It was the sadhu out of the dream of the lake that I'd had years before.

I was stunned. If I had but dreamed this now, I would have gone back to sleep and forgotten about it. Yet - I turned on the light, splashed water on my face and looked in the mirror - I'd been awake the whole time! I sat up half the night, my mind in a spin. Who could this sadhu be? And where on earth - if it was on earth - was Chendamangalam?

The next day, one of our sales agents dropped into the office

to turn in an order he'd taken for some tractor tires. He came to my desk with the down payment and I entered it in the cashbook, noting the details from his sales record slip. When I saw the customer's address, I gaped: Chendamangalam.

Barely able to hide my excitement, I asked him about the place. He told me it was a rural town not more than two hours' bus ride out of Salem. I silently vowed to visit it as soon as possible.

When I returned to my place after work I found a letter from Mum in the postbox, which I read as I walked upstairs and entered my room. Her sister's husband, a Canara Bank official, had gotten transferred to a branch near Salem. They'd moved to this area and were living in a rented house. Mum asked me to 'kindly soon visit them at the address given below.' I sat down heavily upon the bed as I saw, for the second time that day, the name of the town spoken by the mysterious sadhu.

That weekend I took the bus journey to Chendamangalam, arriving at Aunty's house before lunch. After exchanging some fond words with the family, I strolled into their back garden alone, just having a look around. The yard was enclosed by a high whitewashed brick wall with a green wooden gate set in the middle of its length. I unlatched the gate and swung it open. On the horizon I saw a hill topped by a temple, the same hill and temple from the dream of the lake.

Without a word to anyone, I walked through the gate and continued for almost an hour until I came to the foot of that hill. After ascending the temple staircase I reached the sanctum sanctorum, which was capped by a large pointed dome. Looking in, I saw a murti with three faces and six arms standing in a graceful pose on a massive black stone plinth. I recognized the symbols of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in his hands: the waterpot and scripture, the conch and lotus, the trident and strand of rudraksha beads.

The pujari came to give me flower petals that had been offered to the feet of the murti. I asked him which deity this was. He smiled, pleased at my interest. "This is Dattatreya."

Dattatreya appeared in ancient times as the son of the sage Atri and his wife Anasuya. He was a transcendental child benedicted upon the sage by the trimurti Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the three forms of the Supreme who create, maintain and destroy the universe.

The pujari showed me a cave beneath the foundation of the temple. Some five feet in diameter and twenty feet long, it was the samadhi (tomb) of a yogi whose marble ash-bedecked statue sat in the lotus position at the cave's far end, over his interred remains. It was the same sadhu I'd seen in the lane some nights ago and in the dream long before.

There were also a few framed pictures on display: some were of the yogi, some of other holy men, and one was a puzzle of a cat in a tree that the yogi had painted to entertain children visiting the temple. Again, a figment come true.

From the priest I learned that the yogi was Sri Svayamprakash Brahmendra Avadhuta Swami, who had died in 1948. I asked if it was possible that he could yet be seen in the world today. He nodded a vigorous assent: "Yes, since Swamiji passed from his physical form, he has shown himself to many people. He was a siddha-yogi, so that much power he has."

He told me that Brahmendra Avadhuta had realized Brahman, the absolute primordial consciousness devoid of name, form, quality or desire. This impersonal concept of God is well-established in India, having been widely promulgated down to the present day by the school of Adi Shankara, a Vedantist who lived some 1400 years ago. Its proponents call it Advaitavada, 'the doctrine of oneness.'

As a householder, Brahmendra Avadhuta had lived and worked in Coimbatore, but left it all for the Himalayas. He took the vow of sannyasa (formal renunciation of worldly life) from a guru in the avadhuta line. Among the austerities the avadhutas observe is the dighambara-vrata (oath of wearing only the sky). For many years he meditated alone in the mountains until he got the inspiration to come to Latagiri hill near Chendamangalam and establish his temple to Dattatreya. He took on four disciples; each started his own ashram in the area. A family descended from his older brother was maintaining the temple when I found it.

Their house was at the bottom of the hill. I introduced myself and in the course of our get-together inquired if there had ever been a lake nearby.

An old lady, the yogi's niece, spoke up for the first time: "How do you know about the lake?" I hedged, shy about revealing my dream. She pulled open the drawer of an antique cabinet and took out a yellowed sketch of the temple and hill done during Brahmendra Avadhuta's lifetime. A lake was shown at the foot of one side of the hill where now there was only a grove of small trees.

Pointing at the lake with gnarled, trembling fingers, she explained, "When Swamiji left this world, that lake dried up."

I took to visiting Chendamangalam as often as I could, becoming increasingly obsessed with Dattatreya and Brahmendra Avadhuta. My mind was drawn into a psychic vortex that seemed to emanate from the samadhi. Insights and visions streamed through this 'tube' for hours at a time, sweeping me beyond the skyline of conventional reason. I became known to some locals as a clairvoyant, for in conversation I might suddenly reveal hidden secrets of their lives or accurately predict the future, without knowing how myself. Other people thought me a crackbrain.

It was at this time that I began studying Advaita philosophy to better appreciate the level of realization Brahmendra Avadhuta had attained. I got to know his disciples and learned what I could from them. In a nearby town there was a chapter of the Shivananda Yoga Mission offering Advaitist books that I consumed by the armload.

Then:

In December of 1973, I took a holiday trip with a bus tour group to Mahabalipuram, an ancient port town some eighty kilometers south of Madras. Mahabalipuram is nowadays a sleepy little seaside resort for middle-class vacationers and foreign tourists. But the many old temples and rock carvings in the area attest to its having once been a seat of high culture during the reign of the Pallava kings, a millenium and a half ago.

The last site we were to visit that afternoon was a Devi temple near the Mahabalipuram lighthouse. On the way back to the bus we briefly stopped by the Mahishamardini Mandapam, a pilgrim's shelter (mandapa) carved out of solid rock in the side of a hill. In the gray stone of the left wall we could see the worn bas-relief figure of Vishnu fighting the demons Madhu and Kaitabha; on the opposite wall was a carving of Devi with eighteen arms killing the demon Mahisha.

As I stood before the mandapa, I was overwhelmed by a sense of deja vu. The tour guide briskly wound things up with a few last comments, but my mind was shifting into another dimension. I didn't notice the group carry on to the bus. I was alone and the only sound was the whoosh of the salty breeze blowing in from the ocean.

Though this was the first time I'd ever been here physically, I vaguely remembered that I'd had a dream some time before in which I spoke with a girl of about seven years old in a place very much like this. I sat down in the mandapa and tried to recall it. But the image wouldn't crystallize in my head.

It was growing dark. I was certain by now my bus had gone, and with it my overnight bag. But I didn't care. Rain began falling, rapidly splotching the tawny sand outside into a sodden terra umbra. A balding old man dressed in white scrambled down the stony hillside path from the Devi temple and took shelter in the mandapa; two ladies soon followed. As the last light died, the rain subsided.

The old man, now leaving with the ladies, looked back and asked, "You're not going? Raining has stopped." "I'm waiting for a friend," I answered evasively. "Well", he replied, "if you want to get out tonight, better you wait at the bus stand. The last bus to Madras is just now coming." Then they were gone.

The sky cleared, the swirling gossamer ghosts of spent rainclouds giving way to the moon and stars and the inscrutable black infinity behind them. The night - cloaked and brooding, the antemundane mystery of existence that the day makes us forget with illusory forms and colors - glided silently out of the abyss of deep space and whispered secret life into the ancient stone pantheon of Mahabalipuram. The elephants trumpeted the arrival of the night, the apsaras danced to entertain him, the gods and sages offered him benedictions. A true connoiseur of the timeless, he remained impassive, enigmatic. The night had seen things far stranger than a celebration of statues.

I suddenly sensed that I was not alone. Muscles tensing, nostrils flaring in alarm, I strained to see whatever it was.

Something moved from behind a large boulder outside. I heard the soft tinkling of anklebells approaching as a small dark shape entered the mandapa and came before me. It was a little girl.

I stared at her hard through the moonlit gloom and remembered the dream clearly. This was the very girl herself, about seven years old and exceptionally pretty. She wore a silken blue f