35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

156
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
his followers they’d find if they just followed the Path? By the mideighties
he would be hermetically sealed from all that scared him –
odours, people, life. Shielded by walls of bodyguards, daring to
venture out only when safe within the bullet-proof luxury provided
by one of his eighty-odd Rolls-Royces, the messiah was being
frightened to death, it seemed, just like the religion of sexual freedom
he’d come to give the world. It was AIDS, too, and not so ironically,
that became his greatest dread, prompting the wall he continued
building around himself even after he’d been hounded out of the
States into exile. When the edifice was complete, he finally brought
his personal terrors back to Poona, to die with him in that great
empty hall. It’s lonely at the top, and God is no one’s employee.
‘Does the bhagwan personally help draw out shakti forces?’ I asked
Ma Tantra later. I’d been hoping she’d tell me to call her Linda or
something, but she hadn’t yet. Calling her ‘Ma’ seemed out of the
question now; and I wasn’t certain about using ‘Tantra’ on its own.
She might not like that.
‘Sometimes he blesses us with his grace,’ she replied. ‘His presence
makes the shakti force flow out more powerfully.’
‘You mean he’s actually there when you have sex?’ I tried not to
sound surprised.
‘If you’ve earned his grace. Bhagwan responds to us only as much
as we respond to him.’
‘Have you . . . I mean, did you earn his grace yet?’
She had. So had Ma Rukmini and Swami Hariprasad. The three
of them had sex while the bhagwan moved around, charging their
energy centres with his hands. He blessed many people with this
form of his grace, according to her. Sometimes in groups larger
than three, too.
‘You can’t imagine the shakti that builds in a room where fifty or
sixty sannyasis are all tuning in to their sex force within Bhagwan’s
Buddhafield!’ She was right about that.
‘Now we should perform Nadabrahma meditation,’ she
announced.
‘What?’ I felt I’d drawn out enough shakti for one night.
Instead, however, we had to sit cross-legged, facing each other,