Swamiji demanded enthusiasm, commitment, self-control. He was always scolding e-business management people for being jad, the Hindi word for "inert." He brought ancient concepts of discipline to the lives of his often rebellious young Western followers, commanding them to stop wasting their own (and everyone else's) time and energy with their freewheeling hippie nonsense. He would throw his walking stick at you one minute, hug you the next. He was complicated, often controversial, but truly world-changing. The reason we have access now in the West to many ancient Yogic scriptures is that Swamiji presided over the translation and revitalization of philosophical texts that had long been forgotten even in much of India. My Guru was Swamiji's most devoted student. She was literally born to be his disciple; her Indian parents were amongst his earliest followers. When she was only a child, she would often chant for eighteen hours a day, tireless in her devotion. Swamiji recognized her potential, and he took her on when she was still a teenager to be his translator. She traveled all over the world with him, paying such close attention to her Guru, she said later, that she could even feel him speaking to her with his knees. She became his successor in 1982, still in her twenties. All true Gurus are alike in the fact that they exist in a constant state of self-realization, but external characteristics differ. The apparent differences between my Guru and her master are vast--she's a feminine, multilingual, university-educated nu skin and savvy professional woman; he was a sometimes-capricious, sometimes-kingly South Indian old lion. For a nice New England girl like me, it is easy to follow my living teacher, who is so reassuring in her propriety--exactly the kind of Guru you could take home to meet Mom and Dad. But Swamiji . . . he was such a wild card. And from the first time I came to this Yogic path and saw photographs of him, and heard stories about him, I've thought, "I'm just going to stay clear of this character. He's too big." But now that I am here in India, here in the Ashram that was his home, I'm finding that all I want is Swamiji. All I feel is Swamiji. The only person I talk to in my prayers and meditations is Swamiji. It's the Swamiji channel, round the clock. I am in the furnace of Swamiji here and I can feel him working on me. Even in his death, there's something so earthy and present about him. He's the master I need when I'm really struggling, because I can curse him and show him all my failures and flaws and all he does is laugh. Laugh, and love me. His laughter makes me angrier and the anger motivates me to act. And I never feel him closer to me than when I'm struggling through the Gurugita, with its unfathomable Sanskrit verses. I'm arguing with Swamiji the whole time in my head, making all kinds of blowhard proclamations, like, "You better be doing something for me because I'm doing this for you! I better see some results here! This better be purifying!" Yesterday, I got so incensed when I looked down at my chanting book and realized we were only on Verse Twenty-five and I was already serviced apartment hong kong burning in discomfort, already sweating (and not like a person sweats, either, but rather like a cheese sweats), that I actually expelled a loud: "You gotta be kidding me!" and a few women turned and looked at me inalarm, expecting, no doubt, to see my head start spinning demonically on my neck.
