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

‘WE SHOULD SHARE OUR SEX ENERGIES’
‘Fight,’ I told him. ‘Vampires ripped my flesh.’
‘No shit?’
Just then a wave rushed through the auditorium, everyone
raising pressed palms. The bhagwan had arrived.
A catlike presence, slinky, slow, yet looking capable of pouncing
swiftly and suddenly, he did resemble Dadda – a rejuvenated Dadda,
a Dadda pumped full of sheep’s foetal tissue and rare herbs in some
outrageously expensive Swiss five-star clinic. He, too, had pressed
palms, bowing slightly, returning the greeting the way very serious
Shakespearean actors sometimes applaud their audience while it
applauds them.
According to my diary, it was language that the bhagwan had on
his mind that morning in Poona. After the mock humility of this
entrance, he sat in his cushy CEO’s chair, leaning back with hands
still clasped, looking around at the swamp of adoring faces. His
kaftanlike robe could have been soaked in some sort of luminous
radioactive starch. He was either far tinier than I’d imagined, or the
chair was much too big. His posture wasn’t great, either –
particularly for a man who supposedly meditated most of the time
(although, I subsequently read, he actually told people that
meditation was not particularly useful: it was just something to do
that killed a bit of time and did you no harm).
Slumped back, staring, he took deep breaths, as if calming himself.
For a man of forty-five, he was definitely not aging at all well. He
looked more like eighty-five, and his hair had lost its colour in
strange ways. His beard now looked as if the remains of several
meals had congealed in it, dripping halfway to his chest. And the
hair below that gleaming naked dome of a skull had turned snowy
white on the sides, but was still black beyond his ears, giving the
impression that he wore a fluffy little angora scarf to keep those ears
warm. His most prominent feature was huge hooded eyes,
exopthalmic – a thyroid problem, perhaps? – and ringed with dark
circles that spoke of secret excesses, late nights, tenacious partying.
Or possibly just fatigue and illness.
The eyes were very sparkly, however, maybe because a spotlight
had been positioned to illuminate the area he occupied, even in broad
Indian daylight and inside an auditorium without walls. These were
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