Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

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
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