Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

Mescaline, Maharaj ji 

and Mojave Desert 

Abandoned roads 

Jos Lammers 

‘Three years after I floated like a question mark around the 

Vondelpark in my embroidered Moroccan shirt, I zoomed through 

The Netherlands in a Van Gils suit and a Triumph 2000 Overdrive, 

with lease contracts, appointment notes, cashbooks and tax 

correspondence on the seat next to me. Somewhere along the way 

the quest for enlightenment had taken an unexpected turn.’ 

Traveling through the United States, Jos Lammers reminisces in 

‘Abandoned Roads’ his five years of devotion to the ‘perfect master’ 

guru Maharaj ji, back in the seventies, and his return to normal life. 

A story about enlightenment that turns out to be just around the 

corner, mescaline in the Vondelpark and Dylan in the Mojave Desert. 

A must for flower children, yogis, macrobiotis, pot heads, poppers, 

sadhus, ascetics, and those who ever wanted to be like that or 

appreciate they never did.

To Janny 

1

Colophon 

© Text and publication: Jos Lammers 2007 - also in Dutch as ‘Verlaten 

wegen’ 

© Photos: Janny Brasik 

Design and lay out: Karel Hoogteyling 

Published by the author. Reproduction of text or photographs, in any 

form, only with permission. 

The cuttings about the Divine Light Mission are a small selection from 

the ‘collection Simon Vinkenoog’, box 145 folder 02, available for study 

at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. 

For contact and reactions: www.joslammers.nl. 

ISBN 978 90 9022590 6 

2

Mescaline, Maharaj ji en Mojave Desert 

Verlaten wegen 

Paul Schaapman 

5

Colored and distorted 

This story about a trip across the Unites States, consists 

for a major part of memories of the Divine Light Mission 

and guru Maharaj ji in the period 1971 - 1976. I was his follower 

for five years at that time. The first function I held 

within his organization, the Divine Light Mission, was 

‘manager Divine Sales’: organizing in the Netherlands the 

collection of junk and the sale of it in the ‘Divine Shops’. 

Next I became ‘general secretary’, the director of the 

Dutch branch of the Divine Light Mission. Finally, I was 

called to the international headquarters (‘IHQ’) of the 

organization in Denver, to work as ‘international coordinator’ 

of the national branches in Europe and Australia. 

Back then the Divine Light Mission was a big organization, 

with hundreds of followers in the Netherlands and, 

outside India, tens of thousands worldwide. Why all these 

7

people followed guru Maharaj ji, I obviously can’t judge. 

What set him apart from the many other wise men from 

the East that received a lot of attention back then, is that 

he aimed for the highest. He didn’t present himself as a 

teacher of gymnastic exercises from yoga books or diets 

of soy and seaweed, but as the living ‘perfect master’. The 

one (the only!) that could show the real seeker the way 

to god. Being his follower meant, especially if you wanted 

to live in one of his ashrams like I did, total devotion 

and abandoning all social ties and earthly pleasures. In 

that respect too, he aimed for the first prize. And so did 

I. Until I finally saw what everybody else knew all along, 

of course. 

My memories of this time are undoubtedly colored and 

distorted. Therefore, I do not pretend in any way to tell 

the truth. These are just my memories. For that reason 

I have changed names, wherever I thought that was 

necessary in order to protect the privacy of the people 

concerned. 

8

One 

My memories of the United States are, to say the least, 

mixed. The mescaline came from there, pure nature from 

the Mojave Desert. The woman with the green eyes came 

from there (‘lenses, silly’), the one who rolled the pills in 

her suitcase to the Vondelpark where I was floating about 

in my embroidered Moroccan shirt. And the guru came 

from there, or at least the Divine Light Mission of which 

he was the financial and spiritual leader. Headquarters: 

Denver Colorado. The Moroccan shirt had turned into a 

three piece suit when I was out again on its doorstep after 

five years of devotion. 

Together with Janny I’ll have a look around to see 

what I remember. Finally, after more than thirty years, 

an attempt to explain why I then abandoned everything, 

including her. I think, while ‘twelve thirty’ of the 

9

Mamas & Papas is playing in the background. I’ve never 

really outgrown that time. And why should I So in the 

luggage go The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Beatles (sure, Sgt. 

Pepper’s), Dylan (Blond on Blond, obviously!), Crosby, 

Stills, Nash and Young (Déjà vu, no discussion), Melanie 

(Born To Be) en Pink Floyd (Atom Heart Mother) for a trip 

cross country USA. 

10

Two 

New York. I had forgotten how beautifully worn out 

this city looks. Rusty fire escapes on bare facades. Pale colors, 

advertisements taped together. Like a pair of totally 

threadbare shoes that shuffle so nicely you never want 

to get rid of them. The scene in the East Village, where 

we live for four days behind exactly such a fire escape, 

fits that description exactly. Baggy T-shirts, shoelaces untied, 

sneakers with holes in them, our neighbor sitting on 

the stone stairs in front of his house in the sun. Nobody 

cares. 

The first time I was here, more than thirty years ago, 

I had decided to leave the Divine Light Mission of guru 

Maharaj ji. I was stopping over on a flight back home to 

Amsterdam from Denver, where I had maintained contact 

for the guru with his ashrams in Europe and Australia 

11

at his ‘International Headquarters’. In the five previous 

years, when I was his follower, I would never have even 

thought about making a tourist trip like that. Because the 

visible world around us is nothing but ‘maya’, Maharaj ji 

taught 1 . Illusion. False temptation for the seeker of enlightenment. 

Only the truly enlightened one could handle it 

and was allowed to play with it. That’s why guru Maharaj 

ji could enjoy himself in his mansion on the hills of Malibu 

Beach, with a Maserati Convertible, a Rolls Royce Silver 

Shadow, a Cadillac Seville and a Mercedes SEL all sitting 

in the garage. And could dream about his own Grumman 

Gulfstream 12-person jet, his biggest desire then. I knew 

the brochures that were passed around within the Divine 

Light Mission with a whispered explanation of the divine 

play of the guru. After all, as ‘Jesus returned’, the earth 

and everything on it was his. It was the true devotees’ 

honor to be able to deliver it to him. Sometimes literally, 

like when the German ‘general secretary’, head of the national 

branch of the Divine Light Mission, flew to London 

with a hundred thousand German marks taped to his 

body, to complete the deal of the guru’s new Rolls Royce. 

1 At that time the name for Prem Pal Singh Rawat, born in 1957 in 

Hardwar, India. By now Maharaj ji seeks publicity as Prem Rawat, 

with the support of the organisation Elan Vital. 

12

But a good follower kept far from material things and 

other illusions that could drive him off the path to enlightenment. 

For that same reason I had seen next to nothing 

of the United States in the year and a half that I lived 

in Denver and worked at the IHQ. And what I did see, 

I experienced with a face turned away, so to speak. An 

attitude that had unexpected results, by the way. While 

before that, floating around the Vondelpark, I had no idea 

how I’d ever connect with the world of offices, jobs and 

making money, and didn’t really want to either. But as it 

turned out, with my face turned away, I could do almost 

anything in that exact same world. In the more than 

three years before I got the phone call to come to Denver, 

I established junk collecting services in four Dutch cities, 

along with sorting businesses, wholesale to processors of 

rags and used metals and retailing the usable stuff in our 

own shops. Where in the previous, normal life I found 

my job as a nurse’s aid utterly overpaid, as a follower of 

Maharaj ji I generated cash flow that supported the divine 

play of the guru in such a way that his ‘international 

president’ called me to his IHQ. 

13

Three 

So New York. The moment came that I didn’t believe 

anymore in walking around in a three piece suit. I didn’t 

believe anymore in the daily routine of going to the office, 

the six complete floors of a heavy stone building in 

downtown Denver that the Divine Light Mission rented 

from arms manufacturer Joe Gould. I didn’t believe anymore 

in the meetings on ‘international communication 

systems’, ‘financial planning and control’ and the hidden 

question: how the enormous stack of bills was going to be 

paid. I didn’t believe anymore in sleeping on the ground 

in a room with at least five other people. I didn’t believe 

anymore in food that shouldn’t be delicious because that 

would distract you from the straight path, not to mention 

women. And I didn’t believe anymore in a guru that refused 

to lower his daily allowance of five hundred dollars 

even by a dime to help relieve the financial burden of 

14

his organization. But then again, that was just what triggered 

it. The life that I led didn’t bring me the tiniest bit 

closer to what I was looking for: being at peace with life. 

I wanted a normal home and a wife and a kid. I wanted 

my own life back. 

So I thought, more or less from one day to the other: I 

quit. I’m going back. See if I can get a scholarship, a place 

of my own, a nice university course. If I was flying home, 

‘K’ and Jody said (two housemates from Denver who recently 

took a similar step), “you must drop by New York.” 

See something of the United States after all. “Actually”, 

said K (from Kendric III, I think, but nobody used all 

that), “you’ve gotta travel right through it. Straight across 

America. Then you’ll see how life here really is. And then 

New York. The reward.” He wouldn’t mind driving. His 

father was one of the major beer brewers of the United 

States. Because K had joined the guru, his father didn’t 

want to know him anymore, but within his family he 

could always get his hands on ‘wheels’. I had nothing at 

all. After my unfaithful move I was happy I was allowed 

to take a suitcase with some clothes and was offered a 

ticket home to Amsterdam. “You can stopover in New 

York without any extra costs”, K immediately figured out. 

With all the mileage that I had flown on my trips for the 

Divine Light Mission, Pan Am would happily arrange that 

for me. K knew the world. And I could stay at her parents 

house in Brooklyn (‘Bwwoeklin’), Jody said, so as far as 

15

sleeping was concerned my lack of cash shouldn’t be a problem 

either. How I was going to manage in Amsterdam, 

I had no idea. But okay, New York it is, I decided while 

sneaking a bottle of Coors Light with K and Jody in the 

ashram garden to celebrate our good bye to ascetic life. 

Daring to eat meat again, took a lot longer. By that time 

I lived in a small student apartment at the Rode Kruislaan 

in Diemen and studied sociology at the University of 

Amsterdam. No idea how to prepare anything from meat, 

because when I moved to a room at the Vrijheidslaan in 

Amsterdam at the age of eighteen, my head was already 

full of thoughts about yogis, the third eye and lift off 

from Earth. Each night I chewed my brown rice with 

seaweed fifty times to reach the yin-yang balance of Zen 

Buddhism. Each morning I stood on my head to get rid of 

earthly weights. And then made my first water pipe of the 

day. Cook a meatball or grill a chicken I never learned it. 

So half a year after I left the Divine Light Mission and 

mustered up enough courage, I rode my bike to the only 

snackbar Diemen had back then and ordered a chicken. 

Not a drumstick Not a leg Not a half if need be No, 

might as well get right down to it, I figured, so a whole 

chicken gurgled in the deep fryer and then hung with a 

nice brown crust on my bike’s handlebars, swinging in its 

plastic bag. Back home the numb thud the chicken in its 

bag made when I put it on the linoleum floor of my student 

apartment, caught me off guard. Like the first shovel 

16

of sand on a coffin. But I bravely ate it. All of it, including 

the dripping frying fat. Delicious. 

17

Four 

So now I’m in that same New York that back then 

with K and Jody remained a bit behind glass. A world of 

others I couldn’t reach. I think because it was my first 

timid attempt to step back into a world that I had turned 

my face away from for five years. And because this was 

undoubtedly true for K and Jody as well, coming on top 

of the Italia-chauvinism of Jody’s family, who actually 

considered Brooklyn (‘Bwwoeklin’ for all of them) the 

only place in New York where human life was possible. 

Everything outside that neighborhood, with its sturdy, 

Victorian houses, old trees and views of Manhattan, we 

therefore visited in Jody’s Mom’s car. Accompanied by the 

specific instructions to lock the car doors thight and keep 

the windows rolled up when visiting China Town, if we 

ever decided to visit it (‘who on earth wants to go there’). 

I looked at New York but hardly saw a thing. 

18

Pity. I think, when I sit here over thirty years later at 

one of four wobbly little tables that defy the sloping paving 

stones outside this little Italian bar around the corner 

from where we’re staying in the East Village. Warm 

wind along the facade, carafe of white wine on the iron 

table. Local residents that look just as worn down as the 

buildings and streets around us. An older man at the little 

table besides me reads in his book for an hour over just 

one cup of coffee. The woman who owns the place smiles 

and puts a new glass of water in front of him. 

Earlier that same Sunday afternoon we strolled with, 

it seemed, every other New Yorker, through Central Park. 

The weather was hot, people were barely clothed, dozing 

off in the grass, making music, twirling around on their 

skates, swaying to music that, through a tiny wire, reached 

only their own ears. On one open spot, five big black guys 

danced, making the public laugh and collecting money in 

oversized garbage bags. “If you think five bucks is a lot for 

a show like this, we say: you can do better. If you think 

ten bucks is a lot, we say: get a job man.” They gave a lifelike 

impersonation of a crab, jumped without any visible 

effort over each other (‘don’t try this at home, kids, try it 

at school’) and hopped on their hands up a wide, majestic 

staircase where they said good bye, accompanied by loud 

cheering. I laughed and applauded for the New York that 

my eyes then, after five years of Divine Light Mission, 

19

couldn’t find. No longer used to look at normal life. 

I can actually pinpoint it, maybe. The beginning. Or 

the push in the direction of a guru and a life as a monk 

anyhow. It was on a Monday. Sunny, just like now. The 

philosophy course where, after high school, I thought all 

my questions about life were going to be answered, I had 

given up only after a few months. Calculating statistics 

and probabilities didn’t do the trick of finding my way 

back to that feeling that flowed right through my head 

when lighting the big eastern candle as an altar boy, with 

the church organ roaring and everyone singing Gloria for 

god being among us. Or when on Saturday mornings, after 

a whispered confession of my sins (‘nagging my brother, 

chatting in the classroom’) to a face in the half dark, the 

priest made the cross and said god had forgiven me everything. 

Frolicking home through white streets, everything 

was just fine inside. Till the next sin. 

Doing good, I thought, after quitting the university’s 

statistics studies. So I worked as a nurse’s aid in the Onze 

Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis and wondered ‘what next’. Even 

though that question gradually penetrated less often 

through the glass bell that the daily water pipes and 

pills put over me. Like that mescaline trip that sunny 

day. A reward for putting one of the flower children in 

the Vondelpark in touch with the woman with the green 

eyes. “Heavy stuff”, she added. So Fred Winkelman, a 

20

good friend, said he would stay with me while I tripped. 

We were in his room, somewhere close to the Westerkerk 

at a little square with old trees. Fred studied theology and 

had a beard and a virtually bald head that glowed along 

with his eyes when he laughed, which he often did. The 

windows, almost as high as the room, were open. The 

mescaline made everything soft and almost fluid. The 

sunlight fell in bundles through silver painted holes in 

a fluffy white blanket of clouds. High in the air a flock 

of birds glided from bundle to bundle. Like the hand of 

a flamenco dancer they alternately turned their white 

belly and black back from dark into light. Playing with 

the sun and the clouds they drew flowing lines in the air, 

from black to white to black to white. I only saw these 

birds on their swaying flight and all of the sudden everything 

fell in its place. I saw the world breathe. That 

simple. ‘Look Mom, no hands!’ Fred laughed. “And if you 

see... don’t make a sound”, we softly hummed along with 

Pink Floyd. 

Life, with a little help from my friends. This was the 

way to go. But while emptying urine jars and washing 

flabby old women’s asses, it was hard to hold on to. In 

spite of a quick water pipe in the Oosterpark during 

lunch break. That is until this American patient, passing 

through from India, arrived on my ward 9 with hepatitis- 

B. He had found a guru. That man had taught him meditation 

techniques that enabled him to experience life in 

21

its purest form. Always. Everywhere. The beginning of a 

new world. He was going to devote his life to this guru. 

I gave him his pot, his clean sheets, his antibiotics and 

a whole lot of attention. After a few days, I visited the 

Amsterdam ashram of his guru and just knew. The serenity 

in the house, the wise smile on the faces, the smell 

of incense, the songs at a whispering guitar: it all came 

together. I wanted to be part of this. The next day I quit 

my job and my room and brought everything I owned to 

the Salvation Army. I then reported at the ashram of the 

Divine Light Mission of guru Maharaj ji with my sleeping 

bag and some clothes (always longed for just one bag - in 

this case my Carl Denig rucksack, bought with my first 

hospital salary - as maximum baggage in life). There they 

told me that I had to wait. Until I was ready for a life of 

meditation, dedication and devotion. I bowed deeply to 

the picture of the fourteen year old guru that sat in the 

reception room of the ashram in a gold colored frame on a 

chair with a shiny cloth over it. As far as I was concerned, 

I was totally ready for it. 

Fortunately in the meantime I was able to use my grandmother’s 

apartment, as she was permanently staying with 

one of her children. There, on the floor between her old 

heavy furniture and her television in a wooden cabinet, I 

spread out my sleeping bag. On the shiny polished coffee 

table I put a small version of the picture that stood on the 

chair in the ashram. I was waiting for one of the trave- 

22

ling Indian mahatmas of Maharaj ji to initiate me in the 

meditation techniques. When one would arrive, nobody 

knew. Or if he would even initiate me. It all depended 

whether I was ready. 

So I went to the ashram every day. Help vacuum (‘cleanliness 

is next to godliness, brother’), peel potatoes, wash 

dishes and stick up posters of the guru in town (‘The lord 

of the universe has come’). 

23

Five 

Right, so New York. Today we stroll through that same 

China Town where back then with K and Jody we were 

instructed to keep the car locked up tight. The scene has 

hardly changed. Lots of plastic, red and gold and lots of 

busy Chinese going at great lengths to sell things you 

truly wonder who the hell would want to have them. 

Little paintings of neon waterfalls in three dimensions, 

porcelain Bhuddas with fat, pink painted bellies, hard 

purple and bilious green plastic flowers, golden yellow 

dragons that, no doubt, have already damaged the chain 

they’re hanging on beyond repair. Or, one door down the 

road, ground turtle nails, crystals smashed to smithereens 

or crushed coral as the remedy against failing potency, 

headache, irregular menstruation or unintentional wetting 

the bed. Apparently it all pays off, because the shops 

and the people selling it are still there and can be visited 

24

without the protection of car steel, as it turns out. 

After that we cross the financial district heading for 

ground zero and look at the hole that, like a knocked out 

front tooth draws more attention than the once intact set 

of teeth. I used to have the answer to war and violence. 

Meditate. That would bring man and ultimately the world 

the ‘thousand years of peace’ of Maharaj ji. Now I don’t 

have answers anymore, or only answers that raise new 

questions. 

Just down the road, in the marble doorway of a bank 

on Fifth Avenue, lies a skinny man. He looks straight 

ahead, without seeking eye contact with the people that 

are swarming at this hour past his outstretched feet. A 

little cardboard sign leans against his leg. ‘Vietnam Vet’, 

it says, written in crooked ballpoint letters. Underneath 

it says: ‘Homeless and desperate. Please help.’ 

How this meditation had to be done, was called the 

‘knowledge’. Techniques that had to be revealed by a mahatma, 

a traveling teacher of Maharaj ji. This wasn’t so 

much about technical skills, the devotees in the ashram 

stressed, but rather about becoming a part of the world 

of guru Maharaj ji. Or not. The test of whether you were 

ready for that was a game without rules. The fact that a 

mahatma came, showed that enough souls were ready. But 

what you had to do to get there, was a question that only 

25

led to mysterious smiles and devotionally raised eyes of 

the devotees. Lots of vacuuming and potato peeling, was 

all I could come up with, and looking just as happy into 

the world as the real followers. So that’s what I did ‘til 

some weeks later a friendly Indian ‘great soul’ did arrive, 

with a red dot on his forehead and a pink robe draped 

around his waist and shoulders. Everyone kissed his feet 

and laughed even more blissfully than before. So did I, 

although the tension remained because the mahatma’s 

arrival didn’t necessarily mean that all twenty people 

that had applied were actually ready to receive the knowledge. 

Again a judgment without rules, except of course 

not leaving. Nobody knew the moment that the mahatma 

would decide that there was enough devotion to start an 

initiation session. 

So I sat on the floor of the ashram and listened for 

hours to the stories of the initiated followers. They were 

basically always the same. First there was darkness, 

then guru Maharaj ji brought the light. Just like there 

always has been, in all ages, a ‘perfect master’ on earth 

for the ones that were truly searching, there now was 

guru Maharaj ji. The followers of Jesus had found him, 

the followers of Krishna had found him, the followers 

of Buddha and Mohammed had found him. And we, as 

we sat on the floor for a day and a half in the end, had 

found him. All these masters taught the same thing. This 

was the eternal secret behind all religions. Well kept and 

26

only meant for those who understood that following and 

worshipping the living perfect master is the only way to 

enlightenment. The techniques were a mere aid, worthless 

without complete dedication to the guru. 

At the end of the second day, when the mahatma finally 

entered the room, about ten people were left. A clear sign 

that this just wasn’t for everybody. In English with an 

Indian accent (‘yes, yes, you must be berry determined’), 

he again told about the living perfect master and how 

lucky we were to have met him. “Because true devotee bill 

experience eternal bliss and joy.” Whoever couldn’t promise 

that devotion, could still leave the room. “Without a 

life at the holy lotus feet of the master, this knowledge is 

completely worthless”, the mahatma roared. 

In the end six people were left, at which moment the 

followers of the ashram that were present closed the curtains 

and locked the door of the room. The initiation was 

strictly secret. Like the others I had to solemnly promise 

never to tell anyone what the mahatma was about to reveal. 

I see that differently now. 

Maharaj ji taught four meditation techniques. Three 

of them I had read about before in ‘The Yogis of India’, 

a book with a hard cover and black and white photos of 

sadhus with waving grey beards that I carried around 

as a bible for years. But now, thanks to this mahatma, 

27

I finally understood the value of these techniques. Like 

concentrating on the sound that your breath makes at the 

back of your throat that kind of sounds like sooo (inhaling) 

--- hangggg (exhaling). A simple breathing technique, 

I always thought. But this sound, the mahatma said, 

is the true meaning of the Word that the bible mentions. 

The Word that is god. “Every living perfect master teaches 

same technique but then, I tell you, people turn it into 

religion and true meaning gets lost. Until next perfect 

master comes..,” he said, bowing deeply at the picture on 

the wall showing Maharaj ji wearing the red velvet robe 

and golden crown of Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. 

The second technique he demonstrated to us one by one. 

I sat with my back straight and legs crossed on the floor. 

In the half light the mahatma sat in the same posture 

right in front of me. His knees, covered with pink cotton, 

touched mine. He smelt a bit sweetish, like incense. He 

breathed very light, as if hardly there. His dark brown 

eyes shone. “Close your eyes.” With his index finger he 

lightly touched my forehead, right where he himself had 

a red dot. “Concentrate here.” He then put his thumb and 

middle finger on my closed eyes and pushed them pretty 

strongly to the place where his index finger was pointing. 

“What you see” “Light, mahatma ji.” “Good. This is eternal 

light of creation. Source of all bliss. Meditate on it.” 

He grabbed my own hand to take over his grip on my eyes 

and moved on to the next one. 

28

After that he taught to listen to the sound of your own 

body while pressing your thumbs in your ears. The fourth 

technique was to stretch your tongue to the back of your 

throat, till it reached behind the uvula. There the true 

devotee could, after lots of meditation, taste the reward 

of ‘holy nectar’. The drink of the gods. The food of yogis 

that meditate for months without food. The source of life 

for Jesus in the desert. “This is their secret.” 

We had to practice this twice every day for at least an 

hour. With a cloth over our head (that’s why all of these 

beautiful Indian fabrics in the ashram!), because nobody 

was allowed to see the secret techniques. Together with a 

life of dedication to the master, “this will bring you eternal 

happiness.” We then were allowed to kiss his feet and 

finally go home. 

Must try to find one of those beautiful cloths tomorrow, 

I thought, riding my bike. 

29

Six 

After ground zero it is just a matter of crossing the 

bridge and then there it is: the other world of Brooklyn. 

An oasis of green and quiet after the busy and noisy 

Manhattan. Houses in a well to do English style, with 

wide front stairs made of stone and windows looking out 

from the basement on the flowers in the front yard. The 

cars, buses and yellow cabs are replaced by baby buggies 

and rustling trees, the ‘street canyons’ of the business 

district give way to parks with a view over the Hudson. 

Jody’s mother is starting to make a little more sense to 

me. 

Compared to Brooklyn our East Village looks more raggedy 

than ever when we get home, with the greasy looking 

dog of our neighbor peeing against a tree, the owner 

of the 24 - 7 supermarket scratching his naked belly and a, 

31

y now, almost familiar Chinese woman pushing an iron 

cart full of nondefinable plastic items across the sloping 

paving stones. 

Yesterday evening, when I sat in the park after dinner 

amongst biking, jogging, playing and eating people 

from the neighborhood working on my notes about the 

world of before, she sat next to me. Out of her oversized 

iron shopping cart, from underneath her cargo of battered 

PET-bottles and empty cans, a choice of excellent food 

arose. With a plastic knife and fork and a napkin on her 

lap she first ate a more than half full tray of noodles, 

then from the next tray about three quarters of a fried 

chicken, after that a plastic cup full of rice and for desert 

a slice of strawberry pie, still fresh and unharmed 

in its original supermarket wrapping. As soon as she had 

eaten enough of each of these courses, she scattered the 

leftovers over her shoulder in a small flowerbed behind 

the bench where we were sitting. The birds and squirrels 

apparently knew the ritual and hopped into their places 

as soon as she pulled the first tray out of her cart. ‘What a 

day for a daydream’, someone a few benches further down 

played on a saxophone. Two boys rode their skateboards 

to the sound. 

I stayed for about another week in my grandmother’s 

apartment. During the day I did chores for the ‘housemother’ 

in the ashram and asked the ‘general secretary’, 

32

who was in charge, when I could move in. Mornings and 

evenings I meditated with a cloth over my head and bowed 

afterwards to the picture of the guru. I didn’t get a 

clear answer to my question, so after a while I just packed 

my rucksack, brought Granny’s key back to my Mom and 

simply announced in the ashram that I was there to stay. 

The housemother, an American follower who cooked for 

about thirty residents, showed me without further questions 

a half shelf where I could put my clothes and a place 

on the ground where I could roll out my sleeping bag at 

night. No mattress, no pillow. And, just to be clear: “No 

sex, no drugs, no alcohol, no meat, no contacts outside 

the ashram except for in service to the guru, no books, no 

newspapers, no TV, no radio, no possessions except your 

clothes”, she counted off the ashram rules on her fingers 

one by one. She smiled. I nodded. Whether my Carl Denig 

rucksack was allowed as a possession, I didn’t know. In the 

attic should be some space to put it away, she said. I stored 

it out of sight as much as I could, behind some boxes and 

old suitcases. Everything I was still attached to had now 

come together in this perfect rucksack and I couldn’t let 

go yet. At the bottom of it was the Lord of the Rings, a thin 

paperback edition, three volumes in one binding, read to 

pieces and taped together again. The only book I hadn’t 

been able to part with. I held it in my hand and hesitated. 

Shove it between my clothes hoping nobody would notice. 

Or put it with the few holy books in the ashram cabinet, 

which would pretty much show my lack of understanding 

33

and devotion. Or hand it over, as everybody who entered 

the ashram had to do with all his money and other belongings. 

I tucked it under my shirt, mumbled that I still had 

to do something and left the once grand but now kind of 

crummy mansion at the Sarphatistraat that housed the 

ashram to go back into town. 

My brother lived nearby, just behind Frederiksplein. 

“Can this stay with you for now” I asked when I 

reached his floor. 

“Why is that” he asked. 

“No why’s. Just like that. Keep it for me.” 

He shrugged. “Okay, just put it in the cupboard.” 

Grimm’s Fairytales, the Tales of Hans Christian 

Andersen and four volumes of 1001 night stories were 

already there. Brought over after the big clean up of my 

room, since I couldn’t donate them with the rest of my 

stuff to the Salvation Army. I leafed a bit through the 

drawings of Anton Pieck in one of the 1001 night volumes. 

My brother had already written his name in the front, I 

saw. 

“I didn’t say take it”, I said and pointed at the letters at 

the bottom of page two. 

“Oh, well. I thought you didn’t want them anymore. It 

was all nonsense, wasn’t it” 

“Yeah, I’m gonna live there.” 

“Where At this guru place” 

I nodded. 

34

I descended the stairs from his floor, so steep you almost 

fell over going down. 

Outside the sun was shining. It crossed my mind to 

drop by Janny’s. A few months before I had told her after 

years of love that I had to continue on my own. To be able 

to take this step, I only realized at that moment. And I 

walked back to the ashram. 

35

Seven 

From New York’s LaGuardia Janny and I fly on to 

Denver. There we have an Avis rental car booked to drive 

through the Rocky Mountains and the deserts of Arizona 

and California to San Francisco. The peace and quiet of traveling 

to write down how it was. And to see what I missed 

out on before. 

The first time in my life I was in an airplane, was about 

half a year after I got that half a shelf and a place to roll 

out my sleeping bag at the ashram. Just like a few thousand 

other followers from Europe and the United States I was 

in one of the five chartered Boeing-747-s, on my way to a 

big festival in New Delhi to see the guru for the first time 

in person and then stay at his ashram in Hardwar on the 

Ganges for a few weeks. 

36

It was hot, there on that concrete plain right next to 

Delhi Airport where we were told to assemble and wait. 

Maharaj ji himself was going to welcome us, a whisper said. 

After about four hours in the burning sun, it was clear that 

we weren’t ready for that. Too little meditation and too 

much ‘mind and illusion’, no doubt. So we left in rented 

buses to a campsite that the Indian followers had put up 

on a dusty plain outside Delhi. The tents were basically 

wooden poles affixed with ropes. On those poles sat a roof 

of colored pieces of fabric. The sides were open for wind, 

dust and warmth. Next to the campsite were the festival 

grounds - a wide open field with a stage at the far end that 

had microphones on it, a throne decorated with flowers for 

the guru and embroidered pillows for the mahatmas. After 

his father’s death, Maharaj ji was chosen to succeed him as 

guru and religious teacher at the age of eight. A daunting 

position, because the Divine Light Mission of his father had 

millions of followers in India. A few thousand of them sat 

on the festival grounds in red, purple, yellow and golden 

saris and white ‘Indian pajamas’, that were also quite popular 

among the Western followers. They had a red dot on 

their foreheads, put flower leaves on each other’s heads and 

sang songs that seemed to turn around over and over in the 

same intonation. On the stage the mahatmas took turns 

giving ‘satsang’: an improvised speech, directly from the 

meditative experience, about the virtues of the holy master 

and his divine knowledge bringing enlightenment for the 

true devotee. Again and again similar words in repeated 

37

circles, just like the songs. The microphones cracked, the 

followers sang, the sun burned and the mahatmas praised 

our luck because the road to eternal bliss was right in front 

if us. For three days without end, sometimes in English but 

mostly in Hindi. 

At the end of the third day Maharaj ji came. First, unexpectedly 

even so, some American followers that were part 

of his own security service, the World Peace Corps, walked 

onto the stage. With decent suits and sturdy faces. People 

nudged each other. Then he came. Everybody bowed deep 

to the ground. At this distance I couldn’t see him very well, 

but his face seemed to beam with light to me, like smiling 

babies sometimes have. I understood he was constantly 

one with the divine sound within and permanently stoned 

on nectar. So that’s how that looked. I again bowed in the 

dust. He sat down on the throne. One of the mahatmas put 

a garland around his shoulders and kissed his feet. The 

microphone cracked. “Dear premies 2 ”. His voice sounded 

young, but with the peace of mind of a wise, old man. “You 

have come a long way.” Around me, Western followers looked 

at each other, moved. That was true! And he spoke to 

us! “Give the reins of your life to me and I will bring you 

salvation.” “Oh, my lord”, someone whispered next to me. 

Then Maharaj ji switched to Hindi. 

2 ‘Premies’ sounds like ‘premmies’, is Hindi for ‘the ones that love’ 

and the name to indicate followers of Maharaj ji. 

38

Eight 

The next morning most inhabitants of the campsite 

rose early. To round up the festival guru Maharaj ji was 

going to give ‘darshan’: a personal encounter between 

master and follower, the biggest favor a ‘perfect master’ 

can grant and by the true ‘devotee’ seen as a short cut on 

the road to enlightenment. Kissing the holy lotus feet of 

the lord just once, was equal to at least one year of intensive 

meditation, according to the mahatmas. 

So behind the stage on the festival grounds a smaller 

platform was built, with Maharaj ji’s throne on it, decorated 

with gold colored fabric and flowers. At the actual 

grounds the thousands of Western followers had to form 

a line (‘single line, single line’), on the orders of the World 

Peace Corps, a long mark in the yellow dust, blown into 

little clouds by the many feet. When I lined up there 

39

early in the morning at the end of the line, I could see 

the stage, where the front of the line disappeared, only in 

the far distance. Around me people sang ‘The answer my 

friend...’ and songs especially written for Maharaj ji (‘The 

lord of the universe, has come to us this day’). Others 

chattered, or complained about dust, heat and the long 

wait that would come for sure because Maharaj ji himself 

was not yet to be seen. 

I stood there, in my ‘Indian pajamas’, my white meditation 

cloth as a veil draped around my head to protect 

me from the sun that was no doubt going to be al lot more 

fierce later on. I didn’t sing along and I didn’t chatter along. 

This was about a confrontation between me and guru 

Maharaj ji. This was about surrender. Like when I decided 

to become a mission father when I was eleven. Everything 

aimed at one thing: the good. After two years of boarding 

school with bitchy fathers who had to prepare for that 

(‘for a sound further development of his character more 

discipline will be necessary’), I only wanted one thing: to 

go home. But the desire never disappeared. 

After hours of waiting some movement occurred, accompanied 

by the mumbled message that Maharaj ji had 

arrived. Most Western followers were by then on the festival 

grounds and formed a line that I couldn’t see the end 

of. The World Peace Corps (WPC) security people walked 

alongside with strained gestures, pushing here and there 

40

to maintain a single line. “Don’t move, stay in line.” With 

my white cloth I had made a little shelter above my eyes 

against the sun and I saw that the line far in the distance 

started moving. Not long after that this movement 

reached the place where I was waiting, encouraged by the 

security people who started pushing to speed everybody 

up. “Keep moving, brother, keep moving.” People around 

me looked at each other a bit surprised when the speed 

went from a careful shuffle to walking and eventually to 

a sturdy stroll. I removed my mediation cloth from my 

head and saw the stage rapidly approaching where the 

line disappeared. The closer I got to the stage, the more 

security people were standing on both sides of the line, 

until at a distance of about three hundred feet I merely 

walked on a narrow path between two rows of security 

guys. It went on this way at a constantly higher speed, 

around the curve, to the backside of the stage. There, just 

around the corner, on a table with a white cloth draped 

over it, stood a wooden box decorated with golden paper 

with a large slot on the top, for donations to Maharaj ji. A 

few steps further, very rapid now as we were pushed forward 

by the WPC-s, there he was. Casually chatting with 

two of his staff members kneeling besides his throne. His 

feet on a white pillow. Only there the row of WPC-s was 

shortly interrupted, to give each follower the space to 

kiss Maharaj ji’s feet. I got there too and bowed myself 

forward. As an offertory. Here I am. At that same moment 

two WPC-s pulled me off his feet to pass me on through 

41

the double row and remove me from the stage. Pushed 

and carried, without will and without weight. 

I wrapped the cloth around my head again and slowly 

walked back to the campsite. 

That same afternoon everybody packed their things. 

Beside the campsite a long row of Indian buses were parked. 

Gaily decorated and with a complete Hindu altar on 

the dashboard. The narrow wooden seats were suited to 

two Indians, or one and a half Westerner. As soon as you 

had your things together, you boarded the first bus in the 

row. When one was full, it left for the ashram of Maharaj 

ji in Hardwar, a place I only knew mentioned with great 

awe by the first generation of followers who had themselves, 

traveling through India, found Maharaj ji. I shared 

a bus with American and Australian followers, my Dutch 

ashram mates I lost days before in the crowd. We took 

off through Delhi, that I hadn’t seen before yet because 

the festival grounds were away from the city and as an 

ashram premie I had no money to take a bus or taxi into 

town. Didn’t want that either, because I’d left that world 

behind me. But now I saw it anyway. Rambling buses, ox 

wagons, mopeds, motorbikes, cars at least missing their 

mirrors but sometimes whole doors, booths with melons, 

booths with bananas, policemen with shrill whistles, 

cyclists, rickshaws, pedestrians. And everything and everybody 

dispersed colors, dust and noise. 

42

After Delhi what was outside the window started to 

look a bit more like my idea of the India of the yogis. 

Green hills, women in colorful saris, men in white robes 

with knotted pieces of cloth around their head. The driver 

twitched and bumped his bus through the scenery in his 

own world of incense, shriveled African marigolds and a 

blue Krishna with eyes half closed in a golden frame. As 

soon as he saw a chai 3 and hash cafe somewhere along the 

road, he slammed on the breaks, threw the door of his 

little driver’s temple open and walked with stiff legs to 

the cabin. After a bowl of hot chai and a big chillum 4 he 

stumbled back into the bus with blood stained eyes and 

crooked legs, looked around for where the hell the steering 

wheel might be and swayed back onto the road in a 

big cloud of dust. 

Whatever happened on that road, seemed after every 

chai and chillum stop to have less to do with him. He 

did watch it, but as if looking at fish in an aquarium. 

Fascinating, but not your world. Especially when it grew 

dark. Avoiding the man walking on the road with his ox 

wagon, was just not an issue anymore. 

3 Indian tea with lots of milk, spices and sugar. 

4 Short, funnel-shaped pipe to smoke hashish with a direct and impressive 

impact. 

43

When I looked through the rear window, I saw the 

man standing there, crying, his arms desperately in the 

air. Ox on the ground, wagon on its side at the shoulder, 

the flour he apparently transported in a big smudge on 

the road. It whirled up when our driver accelerated. 

44

Nine 

Prem Nagar ashram in Hardwar, facing mother Ganges 

and the foothills of the Himalaya. The few Western followers 

that had been there, like the American with hepatitis-B 

on my ward in the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis, 

pronounced the name with shiny eyes and covered in 

silence. The holiest place on earth. But not quite built for 

receiving three thousand guests. Actually the ashram 

was basically a bare piece of open field made of tamped 

down clay, with a rusty fence around it and a small 

loam building in the middle. Just outside the fence was a 

small vegetable garden. I saw a few mahatmas, who were 

driven around with high esteem in luxury cars and accommodated 

with soft sheets and long pile carpet back 

home, squatting on the ground to remove weeds between 

bushes with melons on it. The loam building on the 

ashram grounds consisted of two rows of small sleeping 

45

quarters (a door, a window frame, no glass, and a wooden 

bed). For the mahatmas. Perpedicular and at the one side 

there was a kitchen, at the other were two toilets and an 

open air sink without a tap. Next to the building was a 

space for satsang gatherings, made in the same style as 

the campsite in Delhi: a roof made of pieces of fabric on 

poles. Underneath was a small stage. Other than that the 

ashram consisted of wind and dust. 

For the three thousand guests from America, Europe 

and Australia a campsite was built on a small bare field 

next to the ashram grounds. It was made up of about ten 

large tent roofs constructed from pieces of fabric, with 

open spaces underneath where everyone coming from the 

buses tried to find a spot with as little dust and sun as possible 

to roll out his sleeping bag. Next to the campsite, on 

the way to the river, were two rows of canvas cabins, with 

open fronts and backs, built on top of ditches where every 

now and then water from the river would run through. 

The toilets. One row for the ‘brothers’ and one row for the 

‘sisters’. Behind that: mother Ganges, also the place where 

everyone had to make a sincere effort to keep himself and 

his clothes sort of clean. 

That, the food (scooped from large buckets on a hold 

out chapati - ‘More dahl brother More rice brother’), the 

heat, the toilet-ditches that soon didn’t flush at all anymore 

and aimless hanging around in the ashram dust, 

46

caused the number of sick persons to increase by dozens 

each day. Andy, an American follower with a half-finished 

medical education, did daily consultations in one of the 

tents. My job as ‘experienced’ nurse’s aid was to go visit 

the followers in their sleeping tents that were too sick 

to attend these consultations. Whereupon there was not 

much I could do. Almost everyone was sick with diarrhea 

and most of them had already given up the hopeless run 

to the ditches. When I could find anything clean, I put 

it on them. I brought some drinking water that I could, 

with a lot of effort, extract from the kitchen. And gave 

the number of their tent to doctor Andy. Who promised 

to drop by as soon as he had a moment. 

Other than that practically nothing happened in the 

ashram for four long weeks. Sometimes a mahatma visited 

the open space alongside the loam house to give 

satsang. And every day the rumor spread that Maharaj ji 

would come. Which didn’t happen. We apparently lacked 

devotion. 

A steadily increasing number of taxis and rickshaws 

appeared in front of the iron ashram fence to drive followers 

that were, for the moment, fed up with the guidelines 

of the guru to Hardwar, chai and chillum. It convinced 

me that I had to be strong. This was a test. So I meditated 

in the mornings with the mahatmas, joined them singing 

the praises of the divine incarnation that was among us, 

47

listened to their endlessly repeated satsangs (‘we are bery 

lucky souls’) and saw my diarrhea patients. 

That is, until I myself got sick. No diarrhea, but a 

headache like the scratching of a woman’s nails in my 

forehead and a fever that put a layer of down between 

me and the world. Andy by that time had gotten the help 

of a local doctor who treated anything that wasn’t diarrhea 

with capsules of red pepper. Same for my fever, that 

reacted by jumping up with leaps till the world was reduced 

to my sleeping bag twisted in the dust and getting 

up only existed in my dreams. Nobody had taken my job, 

which resulted in very scarce memories of those last days 

in India. 

When at the end of our stay the buses were ready 

to leave, the housemother of the Amsterdam ashram 

ignored the commandment of a true follower to not be 

‘attached’: she went looking for me and got me to the 

airport. Of the flight I remember a KLM-blanket and lots 

of sleep. And healthcare officials that rapidly picked me 

out of the line at the Schiphol gate. Alarmed, I guess, and 

wary that I imported something ugly for public health. 

When that turned out not to be the case, but just a solid 

sinusitis, I got antibiotics and a ride to the ashram at the 

Sarphatistraat. 

48

Sleeping during the day there was a clear sign of faltering 

devotion and besides that not easy to arrange since 

the sleeping area was meant for meals and gatherings by 

day. In a major departure from the rules, I was allowed 

to lie in my sleeping bag for a few days underneath the 

laundry, for which there were some clotheslines put up in 

a small room at the side. 

Nobody cared about me. If you are one with the divine 

energy, you don’t get sick. I agreed on that. I had to do 

more meditation. 

And I did. Every morning (befóre my temp job) and every 

evening (áfter satsang) for at least an hour. Sometimes 

(often) I was so tired that I’d half way tumble over under 

my white meditation cloth and fall asleep. Just like many 

other ashram inhabitants around me in the meditation 

room. Like a line of worn-out dominos. But then sometimes 

there was peace in my head and the sensation of 

being very close to myself. Somewhere everything is all 

right. 

49

Ten 

Right. Denver it is. For me still synonymous with the 

International Headquarters (IHQ) of Maharaj ji’s Divine 

Light Mission at 511 16th Street. The sound is even more 

mythical than Prem Nagar. But never the less the place 

where it all ended for me after five years of ‘satsang, service 

and meditation’, the true life of a devotee. 

The plane that brings Janny and me to Denver, at first 

has a broken generator, but eventually flies anyway and 

the stewardess assures me with a friendly touch on my 

arm that everything is going to be just fine. And it is. As 

non-car owners we even know after an attempt or two 

how to handle the windows of our rented car, resulting in 

the woman operating the barrier at Avis waving and laughing 

us good bye as we drive into the city with a view on 

the Rocky Mountains. There I booked a bed & breakfast 

50

in Gilpin Street, just around the corner and in exactly 

the same type of house as the ashram at Franklin Street 

where I used to live. 

The ashram was a big, detached house, about a hundred 

years old with lots of wood in and out and a large porch 

next to the front door. The Divine Light Mission rented 

around ten or so of such houses in Denver. About twenty 

five people shared the house on Franklin Street and inside 

and out it was a bare and severe place, with a tiled 

garden that for a seeker of enlightenment was obviously 

out of bounds. 

Now we stay just around the corner at John Walters’, a 

retired pharmaceutical researcher. He decorated his B&B 

inside and out with flowers, copper bars, draped fabrics, 

pleated borders and ornate furniture. We have the Rose 

Room, a room like a stuffed animal with a high wooden 

bed to climb up on to and sink in. “It works for you huh”, 

John giggles when he sees our faces and hears our cries. 

He’s sixty now and was thirty when he bought the house, 

‘a complete mess’. Piece by piece he hammered and painted 

everything whole again and bought European antiques 

by the container, unseen. That’s where the gold-plated 

lion paw is from that functions as support for a piece of 

heavy, red velvet in our Rose Room. Just like the woman 

made of stone that empties her amphora in the pond with 

goldfish. And the metal rocking couch with huge flowery 

51

pillows on the porch. And the paintings of frisky young 

women and sturdy looking old men on the wall. 

His garden almost bordered on that of the previous 

ashram on Franklin Street. When I stayed there, he was 

here painting, replacing roof tiles and shining copper. No 

way we would ever have talked to each other about that 

back then. I didn’t even know where my own housemates 

were from or what they had done in the past. Aside from 

satsang, service and meditation, everything was illusion 

and deception. 

That evening Janny and I walk along Colfax Avenue 

to 511 16th Street, the address that for the Western followers 

of Maharaj ji came closest to paradise on earth. 

In reality it was a rather gloomy office building, with 

heavy rough stone walls and narrow windows. Inside it 

was basically dark. A wobbling elevator, wooden paneling 

in the corridors and offices and dark wooden desks that 

probably came with the building. The ‘executives’, like me 

as ‘international coordinator Europe and Australia’, had 

their own offices on the first two floors, rented by the 

Divine Light Mission from the arms manufacturer Joe 

Gould. The floor above was an open space with wooden 

benches, that served as a cafeteria during the day and for 

satsang gatherings in the evenings. On top of that were 

three more office floors with large open working spaces 

for bookkeeping, arranging travels and festivals, mana- 

52

ging houses and gathering halls throughout the United 

States and the production of printed material and films 

about Maharaj ji and the Divine Light Mission. About five 

hundred people all together, I guess. Since the guru had 

decided we had to be acceptable for the world, everyone 

dressed in wide robes and tight suits. Pierre Gardin, Van 

Gils and Laura Ashley for the executives, the junk circuit 

for the rest. 

The building is still there, I notice when we enter the 

street. But the entrance is now made of glass, shiny gold 

and polished marble. In the hall the Divine Light Mission’s 

own security, the World Peace Corps, is replaced by a 

doorman in a gold braided uniform. Joe Gould, who marked 

the entrance to his own office on the first floor with 

grenade shells, is dead, he says. According to the shiny 

polished signs at the entrance, the building is now filled 

with lawyers, attorneys, real estate agents and advisors 

to private investors. “It’s gone up in style”, the doorman 

nods, after I tell that thirty years ago I worked on ‘the 

third’. He’s too young to know that the coming of the 

kingdom of a thousand years of peace was being seriously 

prepared for here. Including departments of planning 

and control, research and development, audiovisuals, international 

communications and human resources. 

So my thoughts linger on the doorstep. I mumble some 

‘thanks’ and ‘bye then’, peer up at the window through 

53

which I used to look out on the pavement of 16th Street 

and then swiftly return to John Walters’s warm flower 

bed with Janny. 

The next morning he serves us in shorts and an apron. 

‘John Walters One And Only Special Breakfast’ with juice, 

coffee, fried eggs, fried potatoes, fried tomatoes, toast and 

sweet rolls. “My family is from Scotland”, he smiles in 

explanation, while outside under the pergola he puts our 

flowery plates on their flowery mats. “Enjoy.” 

54

Eleven 

After a lot of ‘come back some time’ and ‘have fun, you 

guys’ from John and some morning traffic jams around 

Denver, we head west through the burned desolation of 

Colorado and Utah in our little air conditioned dome. 

Outside the dome the air is so hot that we bridge the distances 

to a Starbucks or diner with groping gestures and 

surprised cries. “Wow!” The warm wind blows the sweat 

right off our arms. 

In the evening we stop over in Green River, about four 

hundred miles west of Denver and one of the few places 

along Interstate 70 that’s mentioned in our Lonely Planet. 

Rightly so, because this is the first place with food and a 

bed after about a hundred miles of solitude. And because 

it is a classic example of the contemporary version of a 

western town. Wide road from start to finish. Shops with 

55

huge dusty parking lots alongside. Five motels, ranging 

from our Sleepy Hollow (‘clean – refrigair – TV’) to the 

Budget Inn Motel (’God bless you – free internet’) right 

across, Mexican Food To Eat In And Take Out, Harry’s 

Bar (Butch Cassidy’s favorite hangout), the post office 

with the stars and stripes on top and a number of gas 

stations. Our Chevy eagerly slurps it in, because all that 

work requires food. And work he does. If you accidentally 

forget to put your foot on the brake, Chevy simply refuses 

to be put in gear. Doing it his way he immediately locks 

the doors, dims the interior lights, checks the light outside 

and adjusts the exterior lights accordingly, tells you 

whether the trunk is closed and reports an unbuckled 

belt. Inexperienced with thinking cars as we are, getting 

along requires some habituation. Like at first Chevy 

refused to unlock his doors. The drivers door sure, but 

the rest stayed locked. When in growing astonishment 

we pushed some buttons on the key ring, the solution 

had to be hidden there, he angrily started honking and 

then started his own engine while we were still standing 

on the 7-eleven doorstep with our bottles of water 

and fresh buns. It was now completely clear who was in 

charge here. Only after some help from a more experienced 

Chevy driver he would accept us again and even 

open his doors with a cheerful bleep and a wink of his 

warning lights. Even The Byrds and Dylan sound quadraphonic 

through our little home, after a day of desperate 

pleading with the buttons and lights of the audio station. 

56

We thank him in a friendly manner, being sensitive 

remains the motto in a relation like this. 

It takes at least another day and a half of consulting 

various passers-by (‘maybe better ask a guy’ and ‘I’m from 

the old school, sorry’), before he finally reveals the secret 

of the cruise control too. Sometimes we were sure we had 

entered the right combination on the mysterious little panel 

on the left of the steering wheel (‘is it a cruise control 

after all’). Sometimes resulting in a ‘yes, it is!’, but as 

soon as the road rose again, our hopes and his speed dropped 

again. But after a night’s rest away from each others 

site in Sleepy Hollow, seemingly without thinking we enter 

the perfect combination of keys. From that moment on 

we understand each other and Chevy takes care of it all 

and on his own. Without needing our legs we glide past 

rock sculptures, boulders barely in balance and mountain 

ridges where any moment you expect the chief of Apaches 

to appear. ‘We’re gonna let it all hang out’ with J. J. Cale 

as a quadraphonic blanket around us. 

I think over yesterday’s American television in Sleepy 

Hollow where first the ‘war on terror’ made its appearance, 

then gruesome images of what could happen to your 

kitchen when germs got their chance, followed by a man 

with a dog urging us to immediately purchase a burglar 

alarm, that is if you wanted to keep the creepy rapist you 

just saw away from your door, and finally a blond lady 

57

that stuffed a large plastic crate with what each family 

should always have available. Water, a plasticized map of 

the USA, food (don’t forget the dog!) and of course a giant 

size bottle of Clorox against the germs (!). ‘Be ready for 

the weather. Now!’, turned out to be the message, brought 

to us thanks to Clorox, worlds absolutely best detergent. 

“You’ll feel so much more secure”, the blond lady summed 

up life with a survival kit and Clorox. Everyone promises 

enlightenment. 

In the meantime we cross Goblin Valley, passing red 

rocks, steeply rising from the planes, the edges carrying 

nature’s sculpture. A row of meditating monkeys, a conference 

table, a raised finger with a ball on top. Amongst 

that all of a sudden: water, green and people. The Desert 

Motel, Kitty’s breakfast - lunch - dinner, a school bus, a 

shop with groceries & general supplies and a shop with 

nice stones. 

Or the real loners. Like a piece of land down the road 

covered with some crooked wooden structures, a worn 

down camper and a rusty iron fence around it all. On the 

fence is a wooden sign with burnt out letters. ‘Old Gill’s 

Town’. And underneath that: ‘stay out’. Behind the town 

of Gill, the mountains rise as a protecting temple with 

perfectly rounded pillars. 

58

In the midst of that beauty of nature I make my notes 

about back then. ‘Don’t cry sister cry’, sings J. J. Cale. 

‘Everything will be just fine.’ 

59

Twelve 

It was about the greatest honor that could be conferred 

upon me as a follower of Maharaj ji, this late night 

phone call from Bob Denton, international president of 

the Divine Light Mission. Telling me to pack some clothes 

and get to Denver to maintain contacts between the IHQ 

and the national branches in Europe and Australia. 

With my ‘own’ Divine Light Mission in the Netherlands 

I was doing very nicely at that time. Definitely after the 

fickle strictness of my predecessor. He was convinced that 

the life of a follower was a permanent test of his devotion. 

A test that he preferably conducted himself. Like until 

the last day before departure keeping it a secret for me 

whether I was allowed to join the trip to India. “Meditate, 

brother, just meditate. It is all in his hands.” Or that morning 

I was just getting on my bike headed for my tem- 

60

porary job as street sweeper, ordering me to start a junk 

collecting service. It worked in England and we had to 

have one too. Now. “Maharaj ji will guide you, brother.” 

Or that evening the housemother asked me to clear out 

the washing machine in the attic and I couldn’t resist 

checking out my Carl Denig rucksack. I still knew exactly 

were I had put it, behind a couple of boxes, right down in 

the corner. The boxes were still there. The rucksack wasn’t. 

I pushed a stack of books aside that somebody must have 

put there when they joined the ashram. Nothing. Maybe 

somebody had put it somewhere else. I shouldn’t start 

worrying about this, but there was no way back. On all 

fours I crawled over the dusty wooden planks and moved 

aside boxes, garbage bags and old suitcases, though I knew 

better. Canvas colored, aluminium frame, ultra light, 

incontestable, lasts a lifetime, the guy selling it at Carl 

Denig had said. It was gone. I returned to the kitchen 

without the laundry and asked the housemother if she 

knew anything about it. My rucksack. She looked at me 

feeling sorry. “Don’t be attached”, was the only thing she 

was going to say. “He gave it away”, she then added in a 

whisper. “A girl traveling through, you know how he is”, 

she said meaningfully turning her eyes up. Sticky, yes I 

knew. Sucking up to the ‘sisters’. With my rucksack that 

is. I could already see the mocking smile in his eyes when 

I would dare to ask about it. 

61

Even in Denver they agreed in the end that my predecessor 

assumed the role of god in the game of life a bit 

too much and the order came that I had to hand over the 

management of our junk collecting and second hand shop 

and become ‘general secretary’, of Divine Light Mission 

Netherlands. In stead of sorting out rags in the morning 

and then supplying local residents with old beds, cupboards 

and clothes in the Divine Shop at the Van der 

Helststraat, I now had to grab a suit out of the racks myself 

and take care of houses, money, public gatherings and 

personal problems of the ashram members in the national 

headquarters at the Achtergracht. 

And problems existed. Like the guy who wanted to end 

all the questions that despite the meditation stormed his 

head by first jumping in the ring canal near Diemen and 

then climbing an electricity pole to hang by the wire, soaking 

wet. He survived and stared at me in pavilion 3 of 

the Wilhelmina Gasthuis, stricken dumb by medication, 

asking if now he was a bad follower. Another guy took off 

all his clothes and ran through the centre of Amsterdam 

in the middle of the winter to announce the Lord of the 

Universe had descended and started his crusade for peace. 

He kicked a dent in my chest and a hole in the door of 

the room were I finally contained him, to wait for the 

paramedics. 

62

Money too was an area of concern. We had too many 

expensive houses, including an extremely expensive 

villa on the Apollolaan that was always vacant, waiting 

for the guru to decide his Dutch followers were devoted 

enough for a visit. And too few people grounded enough 

to hold a temp job longer than a day or two, and sometimes 

much shorter. So also in Rotterdam, The Hague and 

Arnhem I started junk collecting services and shops, as 

our own form of employment for the ashram residents 

that were stumbling around the job market. The formula 

was simple and, especially before the recycling business 

and with unlimited supply of helping hands, very effective. 

On weekdays we delivered flyers neighborhood by 

neighborhood, announcing the collection of junk the following 

night by the Divine Light Mission for the purpose 

of World peace. When we arrived the next day with our 

patched up Citroën HY-vans, the bags with clothes, boxes 

with crockery and crooked buffets where waiting for us 

at the curbs. The rest was pulled out of attics and sheds 

when we rang the doorbells. After a couple of hours we 

drove back to the ashram, singing (‘For the times they 

are a-changing’) with loaded vans. Only once in a blue 

moon, somebody would call the police asking if we had 

a license (which we didn’t) and where in fact the money 

was going (our own organization, in this stage of spreading 

world peace). We then had to lay low for one night, 

but the result was that the first telephone calls requesting 

to pick up the junk that people had assembled, began even 

63

efore we could open our Divine Shop the next morning. 

And such calls kept coming. An old stove from floor four. 

Or all that is left from granny’s belongings. It paid off 

really well, especially since it took me a while to get the 

hang of income tax and VAT. 

After a year or so it all ran smoothly. We had money, 

kept our books with a professional double entry accounting 

system, even paid our taxes and had ashrams, junk 

collection and successful junk shops in four cities. Our 

cars were maintained in our own garage and the leaflets 

with ‘guru Maharaj ji brings eternal peace’ came from 

our own offset print shop. 

Three years after I floated like a question mark around 

the Vondelpark in my embroidered Moroccan shirt, I 

zoomed through The Netherlands in a Van Gils suit and 

a Triumph 2000 Overdrive, with lease contracts, appointment 

notes, cashbooks and tax correspondence on 

the seat next to me. Somewhere along the way, the quest 

for enlightenment had taken an unexpected turn. And I 

liked it a lot, to my own surprise. I could do this. 

64

Thirteen 

In Denver they were very happy with that. Especially 

the reports of balanced books and a surplus of money, 

were greeted there with great enthusiasm. So I 

bought a suitcase that would keep my Van Gils suits 

from crump ling and took a plane to Denver to go to the 

office everyday, just like the rest of the world. There I put 

mailings out to the national headquarters, telling them 

how to set up their organization. Because I didn’t have a 

clue about the situation there, or about what Maharaj ji 

actually wanted, it all stayed pretty unreal. Just like the 

phone calls for advice. Like Roberto, general secretary of 

Spain, staying up that night to be able to call me about 

finding his housemother and ashramcoordinator the 

morning before in the meditation room. On the floor, together, 

‘you know’. Both of them he couldn’t do without. 

“What should I do” I had no idea and also had to join a 

66

meeting about international program development, still 

trying to find out what it meant, and about funding the 

Grumman Gulfstream. It was just like a real office. 

Exactly there, right in the centre of the Divine Light 

Mission, other matters too were, to a growing extent, just 

like the rest of the world. Nobody except his security people, 

his personal aids and ‘president’ Bob Denton ever got to 

see Maharaj ji himself. But his lifestyle did affect the 

people that had to arrange it all for him. The job of my 

ashram mate Joe Schwartz for instance, was to rent films 

for Maharaj ji whenever he exchanged his ‘divine residence’ 

in Malibu California for Denver to discuss business 

with Bob. As soon as he left for Malibu again, Joe dragged 

projector, screen and rented films into our ashram, where 

we in all secrecy and taunted by the strangling question 

of whether we had now definitely fallen of the path 

watch ed Little Big Man and the Godfather. Two favorites 

of Maharaj ji, Joe assured. 

And while watching a rented movie apparently was 

all right, then why not in a theater, Tom White, another 

house-mate of the ashram in Franklin Street wondered. 

He worked at the ‘petty cash’ on Finance and because of 

this could always get his hands on some money. So together 

we went to Denver’s fifty cent theater, a refuge 

for winos, love couples without a roof of their own and 

lovers of Woody Allen’s early funny ones that played 

67

there non-stop from eight in the morning till midnight. 

For fifty cents you could stay there till you knew every 

joke by heart. 

And because Maharaj ji had a motor home as huge 

as a public bus in order to see America, with a kitchen, 

bathroom, sleeping room and all, Tom figured we could 

take the Ford Capri of Finance to Aspen, a ski resort about 

three hundred miles up in the Rocky Mountains that until 

then I had only seen in the far distance walking to 

the office. He taught me how to stay upright on ski’s, we 

visited the local hippie theatre (‘bring out your favorite 

smoke wear’) and crashed at a former girl friend’s from 

before he joined Maharaj ji. More mistakes together were 

hardly possible. 

And because Maharaj ji when he was sixteen married 

a follower called Marolyn, who worked in his ‘divine 

residence’ in Malibu, and even had a child with her, 

I already figured in Amsterdam that I could once and 

a while hold hands with Stefanie, with whom I could 

always talk about all things so well. In Denver I missed 

her. The American followers were definitely warm-hearted 

and kind, but in Denver I kept walking around as a 

bit-player lost on the wrong film set. And without any 

idea where to find the exit. 

68

When I was in Denver for about a year, Maharaj ji made 

a European tour. Beforehand I went to all the countries 

he wanted to visit, to check whether the local premies 

had their organization sufficiently together to receive 

him. In practice that meant they had to have enough 

money and management to organize and attract people 

to a gathering for a few thousand people, and to accommodate 

Maharaj ji and his staff for almost a week in the 

best hotel available. So I checked if the hall they rented 

was big enough, the hotel rooms luxurious enough and 

if there was enough money to ‘check out the city’ with 

Maharaj ji. He didn’t have contact with the premies that 

welcomed him to their country, but if he went to see 

the city, which he liked to do, they had to come along. 

To pay. The watches in Switzerland, I still remember 

well. One shop after another. Together with the national 

general secretary I followed the small group that hung 

around Maharaj ji like a cloud on his tour of the shiny 

show cases. We didn’t see much of him at all. We heard 

his voice though when he asked a shop assistant to get a 

watch from behind the bullet-proof glass. When he liked 

what he saw, Bob Denton signaled in our direction. Pay. 

While we were still finishing up doing that, the cloud had 

already drifted into the next jewelry shop. 

In the meantime Bob Denton married his secretary, so 

I also had to arrange a double room with a cozy big bed 

in the hotels for him. I myself wasn’t part of the direct 

69

staff, so when the group arrived, I had already rolled out 

my sleeping bag in the local ashram and asked the housemother 

for some hangers so I could get my suits out of the 

suitcase for a few days. And if I could call Amsterdam, 

where I had ever longer conversations with Stefanie, 

eventually leading to the conclusion that I wanted to 

get married too. The two of us in a little house, just like 

that. 

After Goblin Valley Janny and I drive further south 

through Utah, heading for Bryce Canyon and the deserts 

of Arizona. The towns are more colorful and friendly now 

that we have left Interstate 70 and are following smaller 

roads southbound. The gas station and general store are 

along a road with just two lanes, the parking lots have 

shrunk, the fronts have wooden porches and not only 

do the shops sell lawn mowers and gas, they also carry 

fishing gear, cowboy hats, buckle belts and Indian jewelry. 

Nature is ‘stunning’ without end and has dimensions 

that you can travel through only very slowly, even in a 

Chevrolet Impala. Red and pink sculptures are standing 

as wise watchmen along the way. 

After quite some nagging at Bob Denton, who in his 

turn discussed the matter with Maharaj ji, Stefanie and I 

were allowed to get married. So when the whole company 

flew back from Europe to Denver, we drove in the Divine 

Light Mission car to the town hall and the next day to 

70

the Rutgers foundation for the pill, although we’d never 

even exchanged a kiss. We had no idea how to handle this 

within the ashram. 

71

Fourteen 

Right at the edge of Navajo Reservation in North- 

Arizona, the red mountains rapidly yield and make room 

for a stony dune scenery with a gleaming sun above and a 

black line of asphalt right through it. Wooden poles with 

electricity wires on the one side, railroad on the other. 

We’re alone on the road, as far as we can see. ‘Whooee ieee, 

ride me high’, The Byrds sing. ‘You ain’t going nowhere.’ 

The land is empty, except for a couple of Indian settlements 

that, from a distance, resemble a Dutch refugee 

center for asylum seekers. Uniform houses set up in 

straight lines. A scattered little group of children or an 

occasional old car. Nothing more. You can live there, but 

that’s it. 

72

Everything looks dusty, hot and sleepy, the only color 

accents are the stop signs for the school bus and suddenly 

an occasional clump of flowers with small red or blue 

little leaves, folded against the sun. Or the Indian market, 

unannounced on a dusty piece of land along the road. 

Chevy has excellent brakes, so a little later we shuffle 

along the booths stocked with jeans, sneakers, cd’s, chains 

of beads and colorful Indian blankets. The booths are set 

wide apart, because most visitors drive by them in their 

cars, air conditioning and music at full blast, inspecting 

glances through the car window. In an unlikely hot 

wooden cabin we eat Navajo Taco: deep-fried taco, with 

lots of beans, cheese and onion on top of it. What doesn’t 

fit in our bellies, the Indian cook wraps in foil. He smiles 

to Janny and me. For on the road. 

The Divine Light Mission also didn’t know how to 

handle things when Stefanie and I arrived married and 

well in Denver amongst the celibate brothers and sisters. 

The Housing department had hurriedly arranged a small 

apartment for us, in a neighborhood far away from the 

ashrams. We got our own living allowance and had our 

own living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, everything 

decorated with long pile carpets and dark furniture 

in Mexican style. The basement of the building had a 

washer and a dryer, in the garden was a pool for the tenants 

and in our living room sat a television. So during 

the weekend we were, like everybody else, doing the 

73

laundry in the mornings, at the pool in the afternoons 

and in the evening watching the late night movies with 

commercial breaks (‘you asked for it, you got it, Toyota’). 

And on Monday back to the office. Worrying about sex, 

because only too soon it became clear that Stefanie would 

have much preferred to stay brother and sister. 

The next morning we follow Highway 89 from the 

Navajo Reservation, where we have spent the night in a 

school annex hotel full of silent Indians, heading west 

for the Grand Canyon. A hand written sign ‘Nice Indians 

Behind You’ along the road marks the boundary between 

Indian reservation and national park. Accompanied by a 

sharp transition to green forests and spectacular rising 

mountains. The same silver jewelry and blankets that a 

few miles back were for sale on shaky booths along the 

road, you can buy here in a neatly decorated trading post. 

They don’t carry the peace pipe that I had set my heart 

on by now for the home grown little friends in my own 

garden, says a lady in a tightly ironed rangers uniform 

behind the counter. Must also be ‘behind you’, I realize 

too late. 

The canyon itself is really beautiful, even if to see it we 

have to deal with vast parking lots full of tour busses. It 

is a red rock sculpture ten miles wide and almost three 

hundred miles long. All the way down the Colorado River 

flows, a dingy little stream responsible for this enormous 

74

temple to praise the beauty of nature. With a lot of oh’s 

and ah’s we try to grasp the view, while beneath us in the 

canyon a big blackbird of prey takes flight. ‘Californian 

condor’, someone points out. He now floats right above 

us. The bottom of his wings (‘nine feet wide’, the same 

helpful neighbor says) has a white drawing with dentate 

edges, like an Indian blanket. The wings themselves are 

Indian style too, supple, black fringes at the edges. He is 

floating. In large, easy circles he glides almost without 

any movement above the canyon. The light of the sun alternately 

on his black back and the white Indian drawing 

at the bottom of his wings. Small, almost casual movements 

with the fringes of his wings are enough to just tilt 

and fly towards us or away from us with a graceful curve. 

Back and forth, back and forth. It lets itself be rocked on 

a hand of wind and warm air rising up from the canyon 

floor. With a little help from his friends, he draws flowing 

lines in the air, from black to white to black to white. 

I’m standing there, at the edge of the canyon and watch 

until the heat lifts me too and softly carries me above the 

world. Weightless. Until the condor slowly floats away. 

In the visitors center a bit further up the road I’m 

looking for something about the Californian condor. 

Something to take with me, but all I can find is a tin plated 

badge for fifteen dollars. Even so I hesitate. Then I 

settle for the picture in my head. 

75

‘Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers’, the 

Beatles sing, on the road further west on Interstate 40. 

‘Waiting to take you away.’ 

76

Fifteen 

At about four in the afternoon we reach the Mojave 

Desert, in the southeast corner of California. We don’t 

want to go to Las Vegas, which is quite near, and crossing 

the desert right now, a trip of about eighty miles through 

abandoned and hot territory, doesn’t seem like a good idea 

to us. So we start looking for a place to sleep along Route 

66, here repeatedly intersecting Interstate 40 and finally 

turning off to the desert, as we do. After leaving the interstate 

we drive for at least half an hour through deserted, 

bare countryside looking for Goffs, the only place 

in the next fourty miles that is mentioned in the Lonely 

Planet. Why that is we don’t understand, because when 

the narrow asphalt road finally makes a tight curve we 

stand in front of a wooden sign swinging on a rusty iron 

pole. ‘Goffs’, it says. ‘State of California. Number of inhabitants: 

23’. Those 23 live in a total of four houses and one 

77

camper, that are spread out over a square mile of dust and 

heat. At least, that’s what we assume, because we don’t see 

anything or anybody. Not even a sleeping dog or a rattling 

screen door that we could head for and ask where around 

here we can find a place to sleep. 

At a gas station a bit further down the road, where the 

crew of a nearby army base is staring petrified into the 

heat, they tell us that it’s not going to work in this area. 

To find a place to sleep we have to make a detour of fifty 

miles to Ludlow. If we’re lucky. If not another hundred 

and thirty five miles to Barstow or from there another 

hundred miles to Los Angeles. That’s completely out of 

our way, so we head for Ludlow. 

Ludlow turns out not to be a town and not even a village. 

Ludlow is a gas station with a mini mart on Route 66 

(‘open 24 - 7’), with a cafe-snack bar facing it (‘breakfast 

– lunch – dinner’) and a low, worn down building with a 

neon light blinking ‘Motel’ next to it. Next to the light sits 

a rusty Chevrolet pick up in front of a wooden shed with 

a sign ‘office’ on the door. The door is locked. There is no 

one at the doors of the motel rooms either. I walk around 

the wooden shed, looking for a possible second entrance, 

and see only when I’m back in front a note pinned to the 

doorpost with a crooked thumbtack. ‘For vacancies see 

mini mart’. 

78

The man behind the counter there, apparently 24 - 7 

not only running the gas station and mini mart but also 

the motel, drops his head far backwards and elaborately 

stares at us with one eye. “A double bed hai”, he manages 

to ask in a way that we ourselves start doubting our 

intentions. Finally he makes up his mind. “That’ll be 55 

plus tax.” We push the cash across his counter. He throws 

a key on it. 

We pay and wade with our key through the heat back 

to the motel. The cardboard of the door feels as if prudence 

is called for, especially when the carpet inside the 

room turns out to pretty much obstruct the door. A heavy 

smell of disinfectants comes right at us, but there is a big 

king size bed and there is air conditioning. With a little 

effort we close the aluminium window that is slanted 

in its grooves and turn on the AC to do something about 

the sweltering heat. It works. Just as, after some angry 

clattering, do the tap and the toilet. 

When I return a little later with two plastic bags from 

the mini mart, where I got ice cubes and drinks, a group 

of messy looking ravens is blocking my way. They are 

bigger than I would like, look at me with askance heads 

and shriek fiercely. Their beaks are hanging open. The 

one in front hops a few steps closer and makes a hacking 

movement with his beak to one of the shopping bags. 

Only when I wave it at him and firmly stamp the dust, 

79

do the beasts move back a bit. With small, slanted jumps. 

Barely enough to let me through. 

A moment later, still a little disconcerted, I take a 

shower. The water appears in unexpected blasts out of a 

bumping pipe. The shower curtain is made of transparent 

plastic and can barely hold on to the last shower rings. 

When at the next blast of water it grabs my belly with a 

clammy hand, I call out for Janny to see if she’s there. 

“No worries.” 

80

Sixteen 

So there I was. In a city where I would always be a 

visitor, in clothes that didn’t suit me, in an apartment 

that was more something for my mom and dad, with a job 

in an office like I always intended to avoid and at night in 

bed with a woman that got anxious only thinking about 

it. 

And by then there was a crisis at the IHQ. More and 

more people left the ashrams to, just like Maharaj ji, 

get married and have children. As a result the revenues 

dropped, while only a few years back the organization had 

built up a mega debt by renting the Houston Astrodome. 

The worlds largest indoor stadium, at that time, where 

Maharaj ji was going to announce his thousand year kingdom 

of peace. Which he did, but the tens of thousands 

of followers that came to listen to that and kiss his feet, 

81

didn’t bring enough money to pay the rent of the stadium 

and the thousands of hotel rooms around it. Everything 

would work out, was the idea, until one property after 

another became vacant and it became a hassle to even pay 

the grocer that supplied the ashrams with food. The management 

team, of which I was a member, had meeting 

after meeting, until we saw only one solution: Maharaj 

ji. His allowance of five hundred dollars a day had to be 

cut in half. Cars and houses had to be sold. Maybe even 

his motor home. Bob Denton would fly over to Malibu to 

tell him. 

The next day he returned, with Maharaj ji. And the 

message that we were all fired. That same day we all 

had to show up at his divine residence. We waited in the 

satsang room, a bit like when in the old days you had to 

report with some others at the vice principal. Leaning on 

each other’s bravura to avoid that hollow feeling inside. 

Finally he came. One by one we kissed his feet that lay on 

a small white silk pillow. He looked down on us sitting 

on the floor from his chair, decorated with gold colored 

pieces of fabric. “You know”, he said, putting down his 

words one by one, “it is not up to you to interfere with the 

life of the perfect master.” After that he got up and left 

the room, followed by Bob Denton, gesturing to us to stay 

where we were. Half an hour later Bob came back into the 

satsang room, with a grin on his face like the one group 

member that had managed to stay tough in front of the 

82

vice principal. And won. We all got our jobs back. Bob had 

explained to Maharaj ji what would happen if we really 

would split. 

Walking back on Colfax Avenue to my apartment with 

the long pile carpet in the bathroom and the dark wood 

kitchen, I longed for that truant feeling of the day before 

when we were all suddenly fired. Just like that time when 

I was on my way to kindergarten, and with a sudden insight 

into my possibilities turned around and just walked 

back home. Away from the dark door that was so heavy 

you couldn’t possibly open it by yourself. Away from the 

playground where you never knew if today again you 

could remain on good terms with the bullies. Away from 

the nun, who was supposed to help and protect, but 

turned out scary with her harsh white hat that left red 

lashes on her neck and forehead. Free. You know the sky 

will tumble down when you do it. Too bad. 

The next day I stepped into Bob Denton’s office. “I 

prefer staying fired”, I told him. It was a short conversation. 

He understood, he said. So much had happened. 

I could arrange a ticket for Amsterdam at ‘Travel’. Back 

home I could, no doubt, do something for the Divine Light 

Mission. No longer in an ashram, that was obvious of 

course. 

83

Meanwhile, when I was stopping over in New York 

with K and Jody on my way back home, that same Bob 

Denton called everybody in Europe that I knew within 

the Divine Light Mission. Any kind of contact with me 

was forbidden. “He dropped out. Stay away.” 

In Amsterdam that order was neglected for a few days, 

so at last I could get out of Schiphol without a penny in 

my pocket and had a bed for the first couple of nights. 

After that luckily the godless world of illusion turned out 

to help me out on my shaky steps back, no hard feelings. 

I was welcome at the university, although the academic 

year had already started. A student counselor listened 

to my story and arranged a scholarship. The woman at 

the student housing foundation listened and arranged an 

apartment in Diemen. My brother didn’t need to listen. 

He just stood there, as soon as I had the key, unannounced 

on my doorstep with a jar of paint and a brush. “I’m here 

to help”, he said. He did the ceilings, that I always hate. 

“Janny asked about you the other day”, he said when he 

got on his bike again. 

84

Seventeen 

Ludlow apparently knows its horror classics, but even 

so in the morning we pull close the cardboard door of our 

motel room unharmed and get into our Chevy, closely 

watched by two ravens. We have two deserts ahead of 

us: the Mojave Desert and directly north of that Death 

Valley. In the hottest time of the year. “Don’t leave your 

car. Don’t think ‘I’ll take a stroll’”, our neighbor and 

only other guest in the motel warned us. “People die out 

there”, he stressed. And because of the drought and heat 

you don’t find anything again. “Not a trace.” 

Just to be sure we stock up with four gallons of water 

at Ludlow’s mini mart, fill up our cooler with a nice layer 

of ice cubes from the ice machine and stuck two packets 

of chocolate chip cookies in the trunk of the Chevy. The 

car is filled up, the AC buzzes like a charm. How bad can 

85

it be. As true Dutchmen we have trouble taking any other 

power of nature besides rising water seriously. 

The day starts off at eight with a mild 85 degrees, says 

the Chevy dashboard. Sweating is out of the question, because 

in there the AC blows and out there the warm wind 

immediately whips away any moisture. With hardly any 

other traffic around us we slide over Interstate 40. Now 

and then a car or a truck full of shine and chrome pulling 

two or three trailers. ‘Mojave Desert National Preserve’, 

says our exit for Kelso. ‘No services’. And then it’s empty. 

Clumps of dry grass, an occasional warped bush, sand 

dunes, rocks and heat. When we roll down the window 

to take a picture of the long straight road in front of us, 

the heat flows into our air conditioned dome like a wad of 

cotton. Behind the windshield of the few oncoming cars 

we still meet, a hand invariably rises in salute. ‘Okay, 

buddy.’ Twisted cactuses, once suppliers of the mescaline, 

stand with their badgered bark in the hot sand. When 

the road descends approaching Kelso and Death Valley, 

the temperature rises to 98 degrees and the rock mountains 

turn into sculptures of coarse sand. Sometimes irregular, 

as soft mountains. Sometimes unlikely straight 

and symmetrical, like temples or castles. All that’s left 

here of the vegetation is an occasional clump of tiny 

little flowers. Even the last motorist has vanished from 

the scene. “Everybody is gone but me and you”, we sing 

along with Dylan. 

86

The more the road descends, from about 3500 feet to 

finally 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley, the origin 

of the name becomes clear. Hundred and twelve degrees, 

reports Chevy by now. Along the road sits a tank ‘radiator 

water’ for emergencies. We pull over, get out for a minute 

anyhow and taste the dry crusts of salt on the bottom of 

what used to be sea. The water that runs across the salty 

ground in tiny streams, gave the place its name: Badwater. 

Far away the perpetual snow twinkles on Mount Whitney, 

at 14494 feet the highest peak in the United States. We 

spread our arms to sense the heat practically lifting us. 

We spend the night at Stovepipe Wells, a wooden village 

right in the middle of Death Valley. One hundred and 

twenty degrees, a thermometer in the shadow reads. Only 

at midnight, as we lie watching the stars on the lawn in 

front of our room, does the temperature drop a few degrees. 

I read Janny the last bit of my notes about then by 

flashlight. After I’m done, I switch the light off. In the 

dark, we hold hands. 

When we walk in the morning over to the local diner 

for breakfast, here too the ravens follow us, with slanted 

hips and their eyes fixed on us. “Kaaa, kaaaa.” “Take 

care of us”, they’re saying, explains the man behind the 

counter. They even knock on his kitchen door early in 

the morning. “Take care of us.” And so he does. He knows 

them all by their sound and how frayed they look. “They 

87

even talk to me”, he says. “Not in English of course, but 

then I say ‘hey little fellow’, and then they chatter back 

in their own special way.” With a tender look he watches 

one of his little fellows cram a piece of baguette into its 

mouth, while another one is trying to trick him out of it 

and a third one keeps an eye on us. “They’re something 

special”, he decides. 

When later on we have repacked our suitcases and put 

them in the trunk of the Chevy, all of a sudden things go 

wrong. The car key is gone. It can’t be, but nevertheless, 

it is. I had it last, to open the trunk and now its no longer 

there. While the temperature is already well in the eighties 

again, we are searching in places where it never can 

be. Under the car, in the exhaust, near the spare wheel, 

in bed, behind the television. The thing is and stays gone. 

We have a spare key, but that is bound together on one 

ring that wouldn’t open with the one that’s lost. Key, key, 

key, no key. Without keys we can’t drive. Without keys 

we can’t switch on the AC. Without keys we can’t do anything. 

Without. I drop in a chair. 

“I’m so terribly sorry”, I say to Janny. 

She has in the meantime reopened her suitcase and is 

throwing her clothes on the bed because the thing has got 

to be somewhere. And than I see it. Right where the slide 

in suitcase handle is supposed to rest. Slipped in while 

lifting it, because now I remember that I’d put it right 

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there. I walk over to the suitcase and pick up the shiny 

bunch of keys. 

“I’ll be damned”, Janny says. 

We fall over backwards on the bed, right among the 

clothes. 

“What did you mean anyway” Janny asks. 

“By what” 

“That you’re sorry.” 

“I don’t know. Just. Everything. The stupidity.” 

“Well, stupid it was, yeah.” 

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Eighteen 

The next evening we stay on the east side of Yosemite 

National Park. We have a room in a wooden motel bordering 

June Lake and by the end of the day we are overlooking 

dark trees and azure colored water. When light and 

dark are hanging in precise balance, a quiet man crosses 

the flat stretch of grass in front of our porch. He peeks 

into the illuminated little screen of his digital camera. 

The water. The silent mountains around it. The pine trees 

by now have almost turned black as dark sentries. Now 

I see what he’s here for. A deep blue colored bird with a 

black forelock, about the size of a jackdaw, flies in circles 

in the last ray of sunlight that falls on the azure green 

water. The blue of its feathers lights up each time it makes 

a turn, and makes a dark line on its graceful way back. 

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The man follows the bird with his camera. To the left. A 

bit to the right. Left again. Then he presses. He lowers the 

camera and looks at the screen for the result. He hums. 

He’s got it. Slowly and without noticing us or saying anything 

he walks off. The first stars appear. 

The next day after the unapproachable granite, the 

shady pine trees, the giant sequoias and the many tourists 

of Yosemite Park we make our last leap to San Francisco. 

The transition from nature to city is gradual. First the 

mountains get lower, then meadows and orchards appear 

between the forests and in the end the road is flat and 

straight and we drive through strawberry fields, walnut 

orchards, olives, cherries, apricots, peaches and grapes. 

About every ten or twenty miles there is a village with 

gas, hamburgers and coffee in quarter gallon cups. Small 

size. The houses here are big and well kept. Even the 

trailer parks, part of almost every town, are filled with 

shiny polished mobile homes. Going west still holds its 

promises. 

Then the orchards too come to an end and the villages, 

trailer parks, repair shops, yards with used cars (‘mega 

sales’) and industrial areas are joined together and with 

a shock we stand in front of the first traffic light in days. 

Not long after that we get onto Interstate 580 to San 

Francisco. 

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A city that right from the start invites one to stay. At 

driving in on the two storied Bay Bridge. At the smell of 

water, salt and fish. At the many wooden houses, painted 

in blue, yellow, pink and green. At the fresh air that 

wafts off the ocean, thanks to which we can sleep without 

air conditioning for the fist time since leaving Denver. 

Windows open. 

In the bay close to our hotel room ships use their foghorns 

to announce they’re there. In the street a woman 

is crying. A man shouts ‘fuck’. Much later a man sings a 

song in Spanish. It sounds like something from an opera, 

classical, with stretched tones. A beautiful song. For nobody. 

For everybody. For himself. The sound comes and 

goes. Graceful and pure through the silent night. I hear 

him sing until he’s beyond reach. 

August 2007 

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Afterward 

At this moment, over thirty years later, guru Maharaj 

ji is still active as a spiritual leader. Under his own 

name Prem Rawat he now presents himself, according 

to Wikipedia (‘Divine Light Mission’), as a teacher on the 

path of life and no longer as ‘perfect master’. Magazines 

and other materials illustrating the claims of Maharaj ji’s 

divinity, seem to have been largely destroyed at that transition 

in the early eighties. After disputes with his mother 

and brothers ( the ‘holy family’), mainly about the marriage 

of Maharaj ji and Marolyn, the Indian branch of the 

Divine Light Mission is now directed by his eldest brother. 

After this split the branches in the rest of the world were 

renamed Elan Vital. The followers of Prem Rawat today 

call themselves students instead of premies, but still talk 

about him with devotion. The ashrams and the headquarters 

in Denver are closed. DVD’s, TV-broadcasts, printed 

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material, websites and festivals where he speaks are 

used for spreading his message and maintaining contact 

between Prem Rawat and his followers. Maharaj ji’s lifestyle 

seems not to have changed a whole lot. He stills lives 

at the ‘divine residence’ in Malibu, among other places. 

The private jet has been acquired since then. 

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Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

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