"While in his garage Hollywood Motors in 1959 the owner asked if I had ever been to Burma. I told him as a young boy around six years old I had been taken to India for several months by a foster couple staying at the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, but was unable to remember a whole lot about it. If Burma had been on my travel agenda I wasn't able to remember that either. He told me in 1944 at age 20 he was in the Army in Burma counting down the days until the end of the war when he went on R&R in Calcutta India. There he met the person he thought was me, and for sure the me he met wasn't six years old, but more like 25, and, although in civilian clothes, claiming to be in the Army and hanging out with other G.I.s."
Balchowsky Paradox
Sometime in or around the year 1959 I walked into the above mentioned automotive repair and restoration shop of the stars, Hollywood Motors, with a letter of introduction for the owner hoping he would or could do some work on my immaculately restored early 1940's wooden Ford station wagon. After reading the note and looking over the woody he turned his attention toward me. As if hit by a hammer or seen a ghost, uncharacteristically he suddenly and out of nowhere appeared woozy, semi-collapsing, his knees buckling under as fellow shop employees and others close by rushed to block a potential fall, sitting him down and giving him water.
At first I think they thought I stabbed or shot him or something. But that wasn't the case. What happened was that the owner needed no letter of introduction. Although I didn't know it he had met me previously, many, many years before.
"(H)aving nothing of any real personal value to myself other than a Captain Midnight decoder, then being drafted into the military and having hours and hours of training, like an arrow shot straight and true to the very center of it's target, my life's trajectory was placed in the hands of a non-English speaking Buddhist monk, all within striking distance of the mighty Himalayas."
By postdating those many, many years before by a few months as so mentioned above, all the while leading up backwards to our meeting rather than forward, found me having left the northern Thailand railhead city of Chiang Mai on foot with a person claiming to be a Zen Buddhist monk, the two of us initally sticking to parts of the ancient Silk Road, the Chamadao, most well known in the west as the Tea Horse Road. Several days into our trek we came across what appeared to be a seldom used nearly unmarked trail leading off the main trail that led much higher into the mountains. After a couple of days hiking up a steep, cliff side zig-zag, often escarpment-like rocky trail, we finally crested the ridgeline.
Then, dropping down a short distance, the trail intersected a more-or-less well defined flat almost road-like-path paralleling the center of a narrow pasture-like high floor valley. At the far end of the valley, after a pretty-much leisurely stroll compared to what we had been doing, we came upon a small village. Continuing on after a short break, sometime later we came upon some ruins that appeared to be the remains of an ancient onetime monastery perched high up on the side of the mountains. It is there the monk and I parted company, with him returning back down the trail and leaving me either unknowingly to what he perceived to be my own vices and/or knowing exactly what he was doing.
"I was left outside the ruins of a somewhat ancient dilapidated monastery perched precariously high up on the side of some steep Chinese mountain situated somewhere along the southern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. And there I sat. People from the village some distance below would come by to look at me or leave me water and food on occasion. Kids threw rocks at me, dogs pissed on me. After awhile someone gave me a blanket to wrap myself up with, but still I sat. Days, weeks went by.
"One day when some monks came out of the ruins I got up and followed them into the fields hoping to pull something, anything, out of the ground to eat. They didn't stop at any fields but continued on, I just didn't have the strength to keep up with them over any distance. However, when they returned a short time later, I returned, entering the monastery in a single file line right along with them. In doing so, as a double set of rough hewn wooden doors, which hadn't been there previously, closed behind me, I suddenly found myself inside of a fully functional Zen monastery."
As Found Further Down The Page
After entering the monastery and hulking in the corner eating scraps off the ground tossed to me over a period of days I woke up one morning to find a halfway decent pile of folded clothes sitting in front of me. I cleaned myself up, put on the clothes and was pointed to work in the kitchen food preparation area doing clean up and more or less garbage and latrine detail. Basically doing hard time in a Zen monastery, as soon as I got some sense of my surroundings, plus having been introduced to some protocol having studied under the Japanese Zen master Yasutani Hakuun Roshi, I began sneaking into and sitting in meditation in the main hall with the rest of the monks. Months went by and I continued to sit in study-practice. Nobody said anything and nobody questioned why I was there. Not even the master. Except for the occasional sting of the shiang ban or possibly the brightness of the light or the length or shortness of the shadows caused by the movement from the summer to a winter sun and back, nothing seemed to change. My mind was blank, only the moment existed and consciously unregistered within days of first doing study practice, as mandated by tradition over the centuries.
One day the master called me before him and with no explanation sent me into the hinterlands, traveling with two monks well beyond the monastery grounds. They left me with a rather mysterious woman, she being quite possibly around age 40 and surprisingly to me, a westerner, most likely British or commonwealth with impeccable English and only a slight hint of an accent who, after talking for awhile, including a number of questions, led me from her abode to a close by lake. Walking into the lake fully clothed, she motioned me to follow, which I reluctantly did. Suddenly, when the water reached about shoulder height it was as though she was sucked under, with me frantically searching above and below the surface for her, all the while running out of air doing so.
Then, with me almost as if drowning in a lake in the high altitude and ice cold chill of the Himalayas where the surrounding mountains were shrouded with snow, found me a second later, somehow out of nowhere, being pulled out of the water of a pool in the oppressive humidity and hot sun of the tropics. As the men helped me to my feet, seeing I was dazed as to where I was, told me I was at the Arunachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai, south India. They had just dragged me out of the Brahma Theertham tank located in the Fourth Prakaram of the temple. The men, looking at each other when I questioned them, almost in unison assured me they saw no sign of a woman or a bota bag or anything else in the water but me. As I stood up, my sopping wet heavy mountain jacket, shoulder bag, and soaking wet sweater dripping with water, I practically fell over with my legs collapsing under me almost feeling as though I had been drugged --- and very well may have been with whatever I drank from the bota bag given me back at the lake. One of the men suggested because of my teetering nature I should go with him to his home, dry my clothes, have some food and possibly get some rest.
(PLEASE CLICK)
I didn't wake up until the sun was fairly high the next morning, and only then when the noise of a bunch of kids running all over the house woke me. The family was able to dry my pants overnight in front of an open fire with the woman of the family smoothing out the legs and such on a regular basis as she rotated them. My jacket, shirt, sweater and socks, along with my boots were placed out to dry in the sun on a corrugated tin sheet that served as the roof of a house one story below and next to us. How I got to where I was I didn't know. I did know, because the men at the Brahma Theertham tank had told me, I was in Tiruvannamalai. I also knew that the Ramana Ashram was in Tiruvannamalai. In that I had been to the ashram as a young boy I began thinking if I could get there I might find someone who remembered me, could help me, or both. The man who took me in agreed and with me with no shirt, socks, or shoes, i.e., completely barefoot and wearing pants only, we walked to where a bullock cart could be hired to take me to the ashram, of which he most generously paid for --- in that I had no money. Just as I was getting into the cart a young boy from the household, apparently one of the man's sons, came running up handing me, of all things, a Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph my brother had inadvertently sent me a few months before, telling me it had fallen from my pants while drying and they forgot to put it back. I thanked the boy just as the cart was beginning to move, arriving at the ashram sometime thereafter. Along the way, being in a deeply Hindu part of the country and not wanting to offend anybody, especially at the ashram, in that I had no shirt on and The Necklace that had played such an important role in me being there could easily be seen, not taking any chances, the necklace being so seeped in Zen Buddhism that it was, I removed it, dropping it deep into my pants pocket feeling there was a big difference between me selectively showing it to someone or letting it all hang out for everyone to see.
As I entered the ashram on this my first return visit, that I have now given title to as my second visit, I remembered nothing of my first visit as a young boy. Nor did I recall any of the ashram grounds or its surrounding environment, mostly because of what I have given title to elsewhere as mitigating circumstances.[1] However, that is not to say throughout the years I had not kept up with knowing about the ashram in an intellectual learning sense. Changes that I had read about, seen photographs of, or been told about that occurred, mysteriously hadn't seemed to have been put into place. The New Hall for example. Ground work for the foundation of what has since come to be known as the New Hall had been started within a year or so of my first departure and since that time had been completed enough for Ramana to participate in an opening ceremony.
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OLD HALL COMPLETED 1928---------------------------------------NEW HALL COMPLETED 1949
The Old Hall, shown on the left above, was started in 1922 and completed by 1928. The foundation for the much larger, more ornate New Hall, seen in the photo on the right, began January 25, 1945 with the cornerstone laid in presence of the Bhagavan. By February 1949, most of the construction was finished with consecration on March 17, 1949. As I was crossing the compound on this, what I count as my second visit to the ashram, not one thing of a New Hall could be seen.
In the book Ramana Periya Puranam (Inner Journey of 75 Old Devotees) by Sri V. Ganesan, page 304, Ganesan, said to be both sometimes Ramana's grand nephew as well as the Maharshi's younger brother Chinnaswami's second son, quoting major devotee and oft time Ramana attendant and lawyer T. P. Ramachandra Iyer, also known as TPR, writes the following regarding who he calls an unidentified American that came to the ashram and whose name the two of them --- but maybe not so much Sri Ramana --- did not know:
"(T)he American entered without announcing his name. From the moment he entered, Bhagavan's gaze was on him. He sat before Bhagavan for three hours. Some kind of communication was going on between them during this time. There was such deep silence; no words were exchanged. The American got up and left. He never came back."
Continuing in the exact same quote the Bhagavan was then asked:
"'How is it that this man came and was here only for three hours?' Bhagavan replied, 'He got what he wanted. His mission is over. Where is the need to stay on further? Everything ends in the now.'"
T.P. Ramachandra Iyer, besides being a lawyer and personal attendant to Ramana, was also an interpreter in the Maharshi's hall. As it appears from the quote above, he himself was in the hall and an actual eyewitness to the events between the American and the Bhagavan --- but not so Sri V. Ganesan who just reported TPR's observations at an unknown time after the fact.
Leaving the Old Hall after having sat before the Maharshi in silence for close to three hours as so alluded to in the quote, I slowly made my way across the compound toward the main gate and in the process of my walk contemplating my next move having received in essence what the scribe said was 'some kind of communication going on between them,' and of which the Bhagavan so eloquently verbalized to others a short time later:
"He got what he wanted. His mission is over. Where is the need to stay on further? Everything ends in the now."
As I strolled along I was fiddling with the decoder badge that ended up in my front pocket after it was returned to me as I was getting into the bullock cart. My thoughts telegraphed from a three hour darshan with the Maharshi a few minutes before to the much larger picture of me being in a foreign land in an unknown time and of all things, the Captain Midnight decoder that had followed me throughout my childhood clear up until adulthood ending up being the only 'anything of anything' I had except for the pants I had on and possibly, if not long confiscated by some needy individual, an old sweater, shirt, socks, jacket, and pair of boots drying on top of some tin roof lost in the maze of Tiruvannamalai some place. Still the unknown was how it was going to play out with the Maharshi's 'everything ends in the now' and 'where is the need to stay on further?'
While deep in those thoughts, part way to the gate I took glance of a dusty little boy, quite obviously white, barefoot and with curly hair, sitting alone in the shade along a low wall. As suddenly as the glance occurred my thoughts evaporated, being drawn instead to the boy for reasons now unrecalled. I moved to sit next to him saying "Hi," but he just sat there looking toward the ground making a series of markings in the dirt with a stick as though lost in a meditative state. Without knowing it, apparently as I fiddled with the decoder while walking, the pin became unhooked. In the bending down motion to position myself on the low wall next to the boy the sharp point of the pin went right through the thin material of my pocket and directly into my leg just as I was finishing sitting down, jabbing me with a sharp jolt of pain through the upper front of my thigh. I pulled the decoder from my pocket rehooking the pin and in the process the boy, probably jarred from his gaze because of my sudden, seemingly inexplicable jump that accidently messed up a good portion of his dirt sketch, turned his gaze from the ground to making eye contact with me then to the decoder, which by then, seeing his interest, I began holding toward him almost instinctively like a police detective does when flashing their badge.
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No sooner had he seen my decoder than, without a word, he took off running across the compound scaring the peacocks out of his path and disappearing between the buildings beyond. I got up to continue on my way, but before making it very far the boy had returned and was tugging at my pants showing me he too had a decoder --- indicating that we were both members of the Secret Squadron. The only difference between the two was that the one in his hand still had a picture of Captain Midnight in the square just like when they send it to you new and the surface of the metal appeared much more shiny and untarnished, while the one I held in my hand that I had been carrying around with me for so many years had a black-and-white photograph of me as a young boy and the badge itself was, but only slightly so, more worn.
The boy, taking my decoder and along with his, holding one in each hand side by side, seemed suddenly set aback when he recognized the picture in my badge was in fact, clearly, a photo of himself, and, except for his current full set of hair, looking all the same as having been taken only the day before. As disarming as it was for the boy, for me it was beginning to be just another event in a long string of events.
The decoder I was carrying with me the day I arrived at the Ramana ashram had been in my possession only a short time. Although clearly mine and clearly from my early childhood, it had long gone missing well before my high school years, only to resurface at my grandmother's on my father's side after she died. Returning from my first visit to India as a young boy I stayed at my grandmother's in Pennsylvania a few days to a week or more on my way home to California, apparently leaving the decoder behind when I left. When I discovered the decoder missing I figured it must have been lost in transit. Years later my uncle found it stored away in a box at my grandmother's and sent it to me just around the sametime I was getting ready to graduate from high school. The boy across the street and I had set up a Morse code rig between our two houses using a Western Union Standard Radio Telegraph Signal Set. When they sold their house and moved we took the rig down and I threw all the parts into a box. When my uncle sent me the decoder I threw it into the same box. A few years later I was drafted and while in the Army I asked my brother to send me the same telegraph stuff, which he did, leaving the decoder in the box along with everything else. So there I was in 1964, a grown man in the Army who shaved and everything carrying around a Photo-Matic Decoder Badge from my childhood. It was with me in Chiang Mai. It was with me when I was in the Himalayas. It was with me when I went to the Ramana ashram. Now it was in the young boy's hands.
The boy, seemingly intrigued and perplexed that my badge would have a picture of him in it, waffled when I told him I was sure it would be Captain Midnight's intention for my photo badge to be his and that we should trade. I could tell that he, in a young boy's own way, was considering my suggestion as having some merit, but in the end he was steadfast in not wanting to trade HIS decoder for mine or anything else for that matter, especially since his had more of a brand new sheen about it while mine seemed somewhat dull and worn. For some reason bigger than me, I was being compelled, almost driven, to persuade him to do otherwise. After a short discussion and with his permission, I carefully removed the photo out of the decoder I had and put it in the boy's, then put the picture of Captain Midnight into mine. With that, all excited and seemingly pleased with the results, he ran off across the compound as if to show somebody. Within minutes he returned with, not leading, but instead being towed, yanked, dragged or pulled by one arm and his wrist across the ashram grounds, twisting on his knees while dragging the tops of his feet and toes trailing behind him in the dirt, done by a nearly wild-eyed white woman. Running in my direction, the woman was practically foaming at the mouth all the while pointing a zombie-like bony finger toward me, turning back at the same time to look at a white man some distance behind hurriedly trying to catch up, two individuals I was sure of at the time I didn't want to meet or talk to.
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THE ASHRAM GATE I RAN OUT---------------------------------------THE PATH THE COUPLE RAN DOWN
Acting as though I hadn't seen either of the two, I scooted as quickly as I could across what was left of the ashram grounds between me and the gate and out onto the street, melding into the small milieu of what counted as crowds in those days, disappearing. For a bit more insight into some of the above please click the photo of Captain Midnight in the graphic of the Code-O-Graph back up the page.
After leaving the young boy at the ashram and successfully ditching the couple in the crowds, I began wending my way through the streets of Tiruvannamalai hoping to locate the house of the man who assisted me getting to the ashram so I could retrieve my boots and stuff that had been left in the sun to dry on the roof of the house next to his. In the heat of the day I stopped at the stand of a street vendor looking at the cool drinks he had to offer when a well dressed anglo man in a suit stepped up beside me looking at me standing there with bare feet and no shirt and said your'e surely not British are you. I told him no, I was an American. After a smart quip saying, "Yanks!," he said I shouldn't really be drinking or eating anything from a street vendor. I told him it didn't matter much in that I didn't have any money anyway. After a quick explanation of my plight he motioned for me to follow him ending up in a very nice establishment overlooking the street with just me sitting at a two-place table along the railing under a well shaded veranda cooled by running circular fans. He took off his suit jacket and tie then his shirt, putting his jacket back on and handing me the shirt with instructions to put it on. Rather than sit, and with me now appropriately dressed in a shirt and all, he remained standing motioning the server over telling him to bring me a nice, big cold drink and anything else I wanted. Then he placed several bills of an undisclosed amount on a plate sitting on the table, gave me a head nod, turned and went down the stairs into the crowd. That was the last I saw of him.
When I finished my drink and a filling meal the server picked up the money the man left on the plate, returning with change. Leaving some on the table I put the rest in my pocket and of which one was a brand new shiny 1943 1/4 rupee coin.
After finally locating the house and finding no one home but getting an OK from the next door neighbors to retrieve my stuff off the roof I then sat on the bottom of the stairs leading to the upper house from the central courtyard, drinking masala chai offered me by the neighbor. Unbeknownst to anyone, using a small knife given me by the neighbors to spread or cut a hard little jam biscuit that came along with the tea I scraped a small slot-like notch between the tiles and blocks of a planter-like wall leading away from the stairs, then wedged the brand new 1943 1/4 rupee coin I had with me into the slot, smearing the opening over the best I could with the scrapings.
The idea for doing such a thing came about from something I remembered my father told me he had done when he was a young man bumming around the country in the early 1920s to the early 30s. Barely escaping out of Oklahoma after the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 --- where he said he observed troops of the National Guard positioned high in a church steeple manning a water-cooled machine gun strafing masses of Blacks in the street --- he made his way north, ending up in Columbus, Ohio. There he went to the top of the observation deck of what has since come to be known as the LeVeque Tower. Taking a brand new penny with the same year on it he was there he pushed the penny down into a small slot between a couple of the blocks or bricks that made up part of the observation deck wall. The idea was that he would return one day and retrieve it. Although he never returned and as far as I know the penny is still there, I always liked the idea. The remainder of the money I gave to the neighbor requesting he give it to his neighbor with my thanks for helping me and for having paid for my bullock cart ride to the ashram that morning. My next job was to get back, a getting back effort that is fully covered in the Return to the Monastery link further down the page. But please first, the following:
Although I have made every effort to make what has been presented herein as easy to grasp and understandable as possible considering the subject matter, there is still a tendency for many people to not only confuse, but also intermingle the two main quotes that I cite so often --- first, the one about my face-to-face meeting with Ramana as written by an ashram observer that reads:
" I then saw Bhagavan's eyes alight on the boy for a brief minute. I thought it was just a casual look. The boy was all the time looking at Bhagavan with a sort of fixation, as if on the verge of asking a question. But, no! He broke into tears. A cascade of tears came gushing out of his eyes. They were not tears of pain, for his face was radiant with joy. I could see that Sri Bhagavan's glance, though only resting on him for a brief moment, had opened in the boy's heart a veritable reservoir of pure joy.
"Within an hour of his face-to-face meeting with Sri Bhagavan, his mental barriers were reduced to nothingness."
And secondly, the quote so presented immediately below this sentence regarding the American entering the ashram without announcing his name:
"(T)he American entered without announcing his name. From the moment he entered, Bhagavan's gaze was on him. He sat before Bhagavan for three hours. Some kind of communication was going on between them during this time. There was such deep silence; no words were exchanged. The American got up and left. He never came back."
The first quote comes from Sri C.R. Rajamani and found in the first of the two click-through publications listed below, FACE TO FACE WITH SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI: Enchanting and Uplifting Reminiscences of 202 Persons. The second quote is found in RAMANA PERIYA PURANAM (Inner Journey of 75 Old Devotees) by Ramana devotee V. Ganesan, linked as number two below.
The problem arises because not only do I quote the two so close together or in conjunction with each other throughout what I write that they get intermingled, but also because, even though they are by separate authors in separate books writing about separate incidents, they are talking about the exact same person as well as the exact same time, place, and time period at the ashram with Sri Ramana.
- FACE TO FACE WITH SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI
Enchanting and Uplifting Reminiscences of 202 Persons
COMPLETE PDF (page 384, 406 on sidebar)
- RAMANA PERIYA PURANAM (Inner Journey of 75 Old Devotees) (page 304)
The difference between book one and book two is that in the incident described in the first book Ramana saw the boy as a boy, but in the second book he saw the boy as a man, even though both incidents took place during the exact time, place, and time period.
One day during the summer that fell roughly two years after the events described in the first book above, while living under the auspices of my dad and new Stepmother but overseen by my Uncle, I noticed the boy that delivered the afternoon newspaper was hand-pushing his heavily laden bike back in the opposite direction he usually went. Seems he had been several blocks into the route when he ran over some object that punctured the rear tire. Since he had something like a 100 papers in dual bags over the handlebars and rear wheel, plus the bike was a motorized Whizzer, he was reluctant to just leave it sitting, so he was pushing it home to repair the puncture. Although I didn't know him I stepped up and told him I could wait with the bike if he liked while he ran home to get the repair stuff. Thinking it wasn't a bad idea he did just that. After that, every afternoon that my uncle allowed it I would go to the boy's house and help fold papers and just hang out until he left on his route.
During the summer of that year, well before I went to live with my stepmother, the newspaper had a contest that offered a free one week trip to Catalina Island, all expenses paid, for selling the most subscriptions. The boy won and during the first part of September, a few weeks before school started, he went, taking me with him after convincing his boss how much work I had done, leaving on the Great White Steamer Friday August 30, 1946. The next day, Saturday the 31st, we went on the inland motor tour only to get stuck at the stage stop overnight when we missed the bus back to Avalon.
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It was on Santa Catalina during the summer of 1946 at a then isolated onetime stage-stop high in the mountains called Eagle's Nest that I had what I have come to discover was a mystical experience. That experience involved not only the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi that I had met in India several years earlier, and who, to have made what happened, happen, must have invoked, for him, the seldom used supernormal perceptual states called Siddhis it also included the man who I would meet several years later who would become my mentor in things spiritual. The best I can figure, the Ramana related Siddhi event as experienced by me at Eagle's Nest occurred sometime after midnight into the early morning hours of Sunday, September 1st local time coinciding with not only the whole of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Maharshi's arrival at Arunachala, but more specifically his 11:00 AM to noon departure from festivities and after-lunch stroll.(see)
Several years before being pulled out of the Brahma Theertham tank in south India as mentioned at the top of the page and just out of high school, I got a job with a company that designed and built the breathing equipment for the U-2, the then super-secret high altitude spy plane. Because of the nature of the secrecy surrounding the plane, working there required me to obtain a confidential clearance. Even though I do say that I got the job just out of high school, it was really a little more than what most people might consider or feel comfortable with saying as being time-wise "just out of." It was actually six months after the U-2 pilot Leo Smith's June 28, 1957 oxygen related crash that I was hired as a trainee technical illustrator with a mid-level aero-space firm, roughly 18 months after high school.[2]
So, why would it matter much one way or the other? It all has to do with time and timing.
Although I was drafted into the Army, because the government thought my role in the U-2 was critical, I received a deferment from the draft for a number of months. The instant my role in things U-2 ended my deferment ended as well, and just as quick I was playing soldier. However two things happened. One, in order to work on the U-2 at the level I did I was fully vetted with a confidential clearance, highly unusual for a draftee. Two, the deferment bumped me year-wise into being drafted at a much later date in the overall scheme of things than I would have if not for the deferment. If I had been drafted at my original scheduled time, the same as my same-age peers, I would have missed the Vietnam war by undercutting it by several years among other things. In other words, because of the U-2 deferment, I was going into the Army just about the time I would have been getting out.
So here I was at the end of October 1962 being drafted and starting basic training at Ft. Ord, California, some two years older than the typical draftee and easily several years older than the typical recruit. In February 1963, and done with basic, I was sent to the U.S. Army Southeastren Signal Corps School in Ft. Gordon, Georgia for Advanced Individual Training (AIT). Again highly unusual for a draftee, primarily because of the length of time in training (i.e., number of weeks). Most often a draftee would simply be put into some kind of OJT (On the Job Training) backwash somewhere and forgot about rather than waste time on having them school trained. However, in my case the Army saw it differently. I already knew how to type, was super highly proficient in sending and receiving Morse code, albeit rusty, and had a confidential clearance, a confidential clearance being basically all the leg work done and first half of a top secret clearance, needed in the end to make my training valid. Because of that clearance and Morse code talents, plus being an untraceable unknown quantity at the time, before completing basic, receiving advanced training, or being sent to my permanent unit assignment, powers that be, honoring the direct request from upstairs brass and a full-bird colonel that I only knew as being a civilian, slipped me into some behind the scene dealings related to the The Cuban Missile Crisis.
Not long after showing up at Signal Corps School in February of 1963 and with Cuba behind me than it was brought to the attention of good old Uncle Sam that unlike almost everybody else in the world, that is after I was caught goofing-off big time by the ASA (Army Security Agency) replicating the "fist" of a staff sergeant that unbeknownst to me at the time was actually gone from the base on leave, that I, with almost a minuscule amount of practice, had an uncanny ability to accurately duplicate or counterfeit almost any Morse code operator's "fist" to such a point that what I sent, was totally indistinguishable for virtually anyone to differentiate between messages sent by me and that of any person I was imitating. Even though in the early days when I was no more than a private slick sleeve, if it hadn't been for higher authorities with higher priorities, ASA would have most certainly nailed me.
Because of that almost unequaled ability with Morse code my civilian instructors at the U.S. Army Southeastern Signal Corps School thought me to be even on par with the infamous Confederate guerilla telegrapher George A. Ellsworth. continuingly citing from the below definition and telling my chain of command officers I was a a near savant:
dancer [ dan-ser, dahn- ]
noun
DANCER: In military jargon a Morse code sender/receiver, i.e., telegrapher, operator, who is extremely light or nimble in their Morse code sending abilities. From the phrase "trip the light fantastic" meaning a dancer whose abilities are graceful and light on their feet, that glides smoothly through a dance routine as though a prima ballerina assoluta. Typically applied to a telegrapher whose skills are almost savant in nature. More specifically, an operator with a rare ability to accurately duplicate or counterfeit almost any Morse code operator's "fist" to such a point that what is sent by the counterfeiter is totally indistinguishable for virtually anyone to differentiate between messages sent and the person being imitated.
Having finished with the Signal Corps School, after a slight detour to Ft. Benning, Georgia I was sent to the First Infantry Division in Ft. Riley, Kansas, assigned to Hq & Hq Company 121st Signal Battalian. School trained and with a Top Secret Crypto clearance and carrying a huge reputation ahead of myself when it came to Morse code I was immediately embraced by the crypto officer and brought into his fold. Having been done so it was quite the gig for me military wise.
During Christmas of 1963 I was enjoying my first two weeks of well earned leave, intended to last thru to New Years and beyond, staying mostly at my grandmother's in Redondo Beach, California. Not long into my time off than my First Sergeant called and told me go get my ass back to base. I told the Top that I had a roundtrip ticket and it would be days before I could use it. He said, "Fuck the ticket, there will be a guy at the door any minute with a new one." After my return to Riley and basically being kept in isolation for four to six weeks sending and receiving Morse code until I was blue in the face, sometime into the first month of 1964, traveling light and wearing my Class A uniform per verbal orders, I boarded a train to Los Angeles, California, with the luxury of my own sleeping compartment and eating in the dining car before the hoi polloi got to. In the dark of the early morning hours, after the train stopped in Needles, I was told to shed my uniform and taken off the train by civilians as a civilian to Norton AFB near San Bernardino and from there flew to Travis AFB and taken to San Francisco for a flight to Hawaii and points west.
"During my dutiful day-to-day struggle to get through the drudgery of eight weeks of basic training there was at the same time, a half a world away, one of those aforementioned closely allied mercenaries or surrogates alluded to a paragraph or so back. He was, as fate or karma would have it, an otherwise minor Laotian warlord who, through his association with the U.S., grew much more powerful than otherwise would have been ordained. Following a series of events after finishing Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training I found myself in the court of that same Southeast Asian warlord. The downstream outflow from that encounter, an encounter of which was initially put into place by others well beyond my control, later found me miles and miles away high in the mountains of the Himalayas outside the confines of any warlord, in one of those ancient monasteries truly beyond the reach of time."
It is at this point I'm going to jump forward by short-cutting past or after "points west" as found in the last sentence before the above quote. Basically, after a series of events while still in the military I ended up in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the time Southeast Asia's most drug infested rail head city. What, when, where, and why I ended up there is pretty much covered in the above link and following four works:
The people I was traveling with decided, and I am not sure of which even to this day, that it could possibly be quite lucrative on one hand or could eliminate a lot of drugs ending up on the market on the other if, rather than leaving raw opium up for bid in the markets of Chiang Mai, we intercepted it sometime before arrival and making an offer that would be hard to refuse.
The opium we were after was being brought into Chiang Mai via mule train by the notorious Burmese warlord Khun Sa. Our chief competitor for its purchase was a then on the rise minor Laotian warlord. What I was being told was that if we could get a hold of the opium first it would stem a lot of harder drugs flowing out to our troops in Southeast Asia as well as throughout the world.
Over the years the Laotian warlord always had sufficient supplies of opium gathered from numerous small fields operated by local indigenous tribesmen. However, because of his newly established refinery and the fact that it took lots of raw opium to manufacture a marketable amount heroin, he was hoping to get the lion's share of the Burmese opium for himself. In so saying, he caught wind of our plan and sent his people out to ensure we were not successful in our endeavors. Since everybody's job was only done on "a need to know basis," my role in the whole thing was minor but the most important. Khun Sa did not want paper money, he only wanted gold. My job was knowing who had the gold and where it was after a deal was made. Up to that time NOBODY else but ME in our portion of the on the ground group was privy to that information. However, outside our portion of the on the ground group was a different story. Apparently someone higher up in the chain of command with more to gain personally must have informed the warlord of what we were doing and of my role in it specifically.
Waiting in Chiang Mai, and not knowing any of us were being pursued, members of the Laotian warlord's contingent caught up with some of us. Before I had a chance they grabbed me, took me to some dingy building, put me into a stupor with opium or some other drug, then shot me up with some ultra-strong heroin over a period of days, possibly weeks --- the idea being, it is supposed, to stop any transaction from going forward in the first place, and secondly, to turn me into a highly addictive state and thus then revealing the whereabouts of the gold.
Now, if any of that was being done on their own level of operation or the orders to do so went clear back to the Laotian warlord --- or higher up and beyond --- was not known. Either way, for me initally, the results were the same. Then something happened.
Spearhead members of the KMT came into Chiang Mai with intentions to meet with my portion of the group to close the deal. Since none of us were at the preordained meeting spot they began searching the city. They heard a roundeye, possibly an American, was in one of the dens and went looking for me. In the meantime those sitting on the gold, who had lost contact with me as well, bypassed my portion of the operation and sought out the KMT. While all of this was going on the KMT searching the city came across me, finding me with bloodshot eyes, drooling at the mouth, unbathed, dirty, unshaven, no clothes, sitting in my own urine and defecation, rocking back and forth, and highly unusual for me, robotically repeating over-and-over a mantra from my childhood Om Mani Padme Hum and so mind-numb that I was worthless to their or anybody else's cause. However, this was when something highly unusual transpired that in turn, changed everything.
Within the members of the relatively small search team, Chinese all, was a Buddhist or Zen Buddhist. When they came across me in the den, not even knowing if I was the one they were searching for or not, the Buddhist amongst them noticed the small Chinese symbol hanging around my neck. The team was just going to abandon me, but the Buddhist, after seeing what I had around my neck told them I was under protection of the Lord Buddha and to leave me in such a state and in such surroundings would be bad Karma --- that nothing but bad fortune and and bad luck would follow them if they did not take me with them. Now, whether it was true or not doesn't matter. The Buddhist believed it and HE convinced his fellow KMT such was the case.
I woke up in what was apparently some days later in need of a fix and traveling with a large contingent of KMT returning through Burma to their digs in China. I was still dirty, barefoot, albeit with a pair of GI boots tied to either side of my hips through the belt loops of my pants and still carried the shoulder bag I had with me all along. It was a good thing too, because I had a stash in the bag and feeling the oncoming effects of the monkey on my back, the first chance I got, shot up. Seeing what was going on and seeing, regardless of his good intentions, it wasn't going to work, the Buddhist monk left the main contingent taking me with him high into the mountains basically retracing the steps of the ancient Chamadao, the Tea Horse Trail or Tea Horse Road. Some days later we parted company after he left me outside of a somewhat ancient dilapidated monastery perched precariously high up on the side of some steep Chinese mountain situated somewhere along the southern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.
And there I sat. People from the village some distance below would come by to look at me, some would even leave me water and food on occasion. Kids threw rocks at me, dogs pissed on me. After awhile someone gave me a blanket to wrap myself up with, but still I sat. Days, weeks went by. Then one day, basically appearing out of nowhere, a group of monks showed up headed toward the village or into the fields and I followed them hoping to pull something, anything, out of the ground to eat. When they returned, I returned, entering the monastery right along with them. I looked worse than any animal and for sure smelled worse than any garbage truck. Nobody said anything and nobody questioned why I was there, and at first not even the Master.
Once inside the monastery and not being able to calculate the passage of time accurately because sometimes it seemed as though it was fleeting by super fast and other times not at all, eventually I gained some sound footing, learning the ins and outs of the monastery and exploring on my own time as to where I was and when I was for example. In doing so caught the eye of the Master accused of a "western mind set."
Not long after being harshly reprimanded for that western mind set than I was sent by the Master along with two monks into the hinterlands. We came across a woman in a farmhouse who, upon taking my shoulder bag, dumped the contents onto a table. She went through the contents until she found the only item that seemed of any interest to her, my Captain Midnight Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph I had been carrying with me since my brother sent it to me while I was in the Army.
The woman, while picking up the decoder and holding it close to her face, and, except for not having a jewelers loupe or monocular eye-magnifier, carefully looked at it similar to how a diamond merchant might examine a fine diamond. Then scrutinizing the decoder further in small sweeps front and back almost as if it were a cookie she was about to eat, used her other arm to brush aside the remaining articles on the table, with some even falling to the floor. Without changing her head position or hand position after steadying her arm, she shifted her eyes from the photo in the decoder to my eyes and back several times. She then placed the decoder in the center of the table face up. While I was putting my belongings back in the bag she pointed to the photo, lightly tapping it a couple of times with the index finger of her curiously enough, non-farmer-like soft hands, asking me to tell her about the connection between the photo of the boy in the decoder and myself. I told her that the decoder belonged at first to my older brother and I appropriated it without approval --- causing so much trouble that my mother sent for a second one. I went on to say my uncle found it in a box belonging to his mother upon her death and recognizing the photo as being me as a young boy, sent the decoder to me.
It was between those two times, when I first took it from my older brother until it showed up at my grandmother's and my uncle sent it to me, that the woman was most interested --- and what she wanted to know about --- curiously enough, as though an emissary, the exact same period of time and information that the Zen master back at the monastery wanted to know about. I responded that I was unable to tell her, explaining that even though the decoder must have been with me during that period otherwise it would never have ended up at my grandmother's, my mind regarding that time of my life was blank. Standing up while sliding the decoder badge across the table toward me she suggested we go outside for a walk saying, "We shall see."
By the time I picked up the decoder and put it in my front pocket she was out the door. Crossing the field from the sunshine side of the house we soon came across a small lake whose far border edged up against the lower foothills that led to higher hills that eventually gave way over a far distance, mountains, the peaks of which were shrouded with either snow, clouds, or both.
When we got to the lake she removed a bota bag from around her shoulder and offered me a drink, which I took. Putting her hand on my shoulder she removed first one of her calf-high foot coverings then the other. After gesturing for the return of the bota bag she turned and began walking out into the lake. My initial impression was she intended to refill the bota bag, but instead she continued walking. First to her waist, then to her neck, then her head underwater. I waited a few minutes and all I could see where she disappeared was the bota bag floating on the surface. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. At first I ran out into the lake a little ways and threw my arms up turning around. Wrapping my shoulder bag as best I could with the thin plastic pancho I carried inside, I went out to where the bota bag was floating and dove under. I could just barely see her underwater some distance ahead of me, her long hair, that before had been wrapped close to her head, flowing backwards as she slowly kicked her feet and moved away. Almost in a gesture for me to catch her, bending in the middle she reached her arm back toward me, the bare white skin of her arm and hand picking up the light of the sun as the rays filtered downward losing their strength through the wave distorted, coke bottle colored green-blue water only to be lost in the ink-black depths below.
Fighting to get close and running out of air I reached out and barely touched her fingers, unable to clasp her hand. The very next thing I remember, all the while coughing and spitting and gasping for air, several men were pulling me out of the water by my armpits, placing me onto a series of long stone stairways. Of the several men, all of who were clearly east-Indian, one spoke up telling me they had seen me 'pop-up' floating face down in the water but none of them had seen me fall in or knew how I got there.
One minute I was in a lake in the high altitude cold chill of the Himalayas where the surrounding mountains were shrouded with snow, then suddenly, a second later, somehow out of nowhere, I found myself being pulled out of the water of a pool in the oppressive humidity and hot sun of the tropics. As the men helped me to my feet, seeing I was dazed as to where I was, told me I was at the Arunachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai, south India. They had just dragged me from out of the Brahma Theertham tank located in the Fourth Prakaram of the temple.[3]
SOUTH ENTRANCE STAIRS LEADING INTO THE BRAHMA THEERTHAM TANK
(PLEASE CLICK)
The men, looking at each other when I questioned them, almost in unison assured me they saw no sign of a woman or a bota bag or anything else in the water but me. As I stood up, my sopping wet heavy mountain jacket, shoulder bag, and soaking wet sweater dripping with water, I practically fell over with my legs collapsing under me almost feeling as though I had been drugged --- and very well may have been with whatever I drank from the bota bag given me back at the lake. One of the men suggested because of my teetering nature I should go with him to his home, dry my clothes, have some food and possibly get some rest.(see)
(please click image)TIME TRAVEL: MEETING YOURSELF
"One morning before sunrise, after having learned a number of the ins-and-outs of the monastery, I went on a solo trip down the somewhat perilous darkened mountain path to a nearby village for reasons I don't recall. Returning to the monastery, after the long trek back found me only just crouched down in the fields some distance outside the walls doing my business before entering and in the process of doing so I felt the shadows of three men fall across my face. Apparently they had been snooping around the village for a day or two when, after they got up or were woke up, they heard the white monk was in town. They hastened along the trail in my wake in an effort to catch me before I entered the monastery and be beyond their reach.
"Over the shoulders of two, with one in the hands of the third, were automatic weapons made of cold steel-gray machined metal with big long curved clips filled with bullets, all three men being the total antithesis to all I had been engaged in for so many months. Then, in what could be called nothing less than being kidnapped against my will at gunpoint by the three heavily armed military irregulars --- taken I guess fulfilling their somewhat iffy duty as hunters of the white monk --- and except for a bag I had with me was I allowed to have or get anything, I was lashed hands and feet to a two man over-the-shoulder pole and carried dangling lengthwise between my tied wrists and ankles toward the escarpment, then, once down, transported back to known civilization."
RETURN TO THE MONASTERY
DOING HARD TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
(PLEASE CLICK)
THE BALCHOWSKY PARADOX
THE ZEN MASTER MISSES HIS MARK
A CONTINUATION OF THE EXPLORATION
THE SPIRITUAL ELDER AND THE SANTA FE CHIEF
RESTITCHING THE HOLE IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME
MYSTIC AZTEC SUN GOD
TIME TRAVEL, THE CURANDERO, AND MEETING QUATU-ZACA
(please click image)
ILLUSTRATED VERSIONS OF
H.G. WELLS: THE TIME MACHINE
CLICK EITHER OF THE VERSIONS SHOWN BELOW
FOR A COMPLETELY FREE NO SIGN UP PDF COPY OF ANY OF THE BELOW BOOKS SELECT AND CLICK IMAGE -----
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JAMES HILTON-------------------------------------ANDREW TOMAS--------------------------------NICOLAS ROERICH
RIDING THE CAB FORWARDS
CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
THE BALCHOWSKY PARADOX
In the opening line at the top of the page where I mention I walked into the renowned automotive repair and restoration shop of the stars, Hollywood Motors, sometime in or around the year 1959, it was to see, meet, and talk to the owner, a master mechanic and automotive technician named Max Balchowsky. My idea was to see if he would be interested in installing a late model Chevrolet V-8 engine in my immaculately restored 1940's Ford wooden station wagon.
After looking over the woody he turned toward me and as if hit by a hammer or seen a ghost he suddenly became woozy, semi-collapsing, his knees buckling under him as he nearly fell to the floor.
THE WANDERLING'S '41 FORD SUPER DELUXE WOOD STATION WAGON
(please click image)
In the quote below Balchowsky is in Calcutta, India in 1944 at age 20. Later, when he is met in his shop in the U.S., Hollywood, California to be exact, it is 15 years later, 1959, and Balchowsky is 35 years old. Meeting him at his shop in 1959 I was age 21 years and the same person he met in Calcutta in 1944, only in Calcutta I was 25 years old from the year 1964. Hence, his weakness and the paradox.
"(In) 1964 I ended up in a Zen Monastery high in the Himalayas then an ashram of a venerated Indian holy man in India. It was after the ashram, as found in Return to the Monastery, that I ended up in Burma and then Calcutta. In Calcutta I was around 25 years old. When I was in Balchowsky's shop it was 1959, four or five years earlier. I was only 21 then and 1964 hadn't happened yet, so there was no way I could remember any meeting with Balchowsky in Burma or Calcutta because, as for me, it was yet to come."
For all involved in the meeting at Balchowsky's shop in 1959, 1964 hadn't arrived yet as 1964 was still in the future, so there is no way the person could "remember back" to having met Balchowsky in Calcutta in 1944. For Balchowsky it didn't matter as he "grew" or "aged" into 1959 from 1944 through the normal process of the passage of time. For the person from 1964 who went back to 1944 it was quite different.
THE BALCHOWSKY PARADOX
MAX BALCHOWSKY
B-24's, RACE CARS, TIME
(please click image)
Footnote [1]
MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES
"Before going to India it seemed that no matter what, the couple wanted me. After being there it was as if they could not get rid of me fast enough. For the most part, it seemed, as the very young boy that I was, I was fortunate they just didn't abandon me somewhere along the way. After all, except possibly for the neighbors who introduced them to my mother in the first place nobody in my previous everyday life I am aware of knew who they were, what they were doing, or where they were going. They caught my dad at a highly vulnerable time with waning strength to deal with my dying mother and caring for three young kids. What their intentions or long term goals were, still to this day, is not clear. Again, I have to underscore how fortunate I was that the couple had the wherewithal to not just abandon me somewhere along the way, say in England or India without passport or papers, but instead delivered me to my grandmother on my father's side in the U.S."
(see)
Upon my return from India following my first visit as a young boy, alluded to in the above quote and as found in The Last American Darshan, with my mother dead, my two brothers dispersed across the country living with separate families and my father long gone, I ended up with my grandmother on my mother's side. Before the chance arose for me to be placed into a foster home, she took me. I was with her but a few months when we went to see her only remaining child, a daughter, my mother's younger sister. Her husband, unrelated to any of the events surrounding the death of my mother or the falling apart of my side of the family, had swirled, somewhat quickly, into a relentless state of deep depression. My grandmother went to lend support to her daughter, taking me with her. One day, after going shopping all day long in town with my grandmother and her daughter and her two children, we returned and pulled up in front of the garage. I got out of the car and opened the two side-by-side wooden garage doors. There right in front of me on the floor of the garage only a few feet away in the glare of the headlights, in a slowly expanding pool of blood, was what was left of the husband of my mother's sister. The whole back of his head blown out from the blast of a double barrel shotgun he stuck in his mouth. His body laying there apparently falling off a still upright straight-back wooden chair with his once onetime skull full of brain now empty. Gone were all the synapses and neurons and everything that went with them, turned now into nothing but bloody silver-gray yellowish meat splattered all over the upper reaches of the nearby open-studded walls and exposed rafters.(see)
There I was, a young boy barely even closing down on six or seven years of age, not long returned from India, without a mother, having missed both her final days and her funeral as well, standing with my mouth open, staring down on what only minutes before was someone else dear to me, not just gone, but excruciatingly gone. My aunt, stunned into disbelief at what she saw, with the car still in gear and engine running let her foot slip from the clutch as she apparently tried to step out of the car and run toward her husband. The vehicle lurched forward in one huge leap, crashing into the swung open garage door knocking it and me down and rendering me unconscious. It took months and months and reasons unknown before I suddenly came out of a nearly amnesia-like walking coma --- and even then, not fully so until years later. Everything that I knew and should have remembered about my mother's sickness, India, the time leading up to that moment in the garage, and being with my grandmother, either evaporated or was deeply covered over. Days, weeks, months, all gone. In closing that gap I remembered only up to one side, a side well before my mother ever got sick. A happy loving childhood with a mother and father and playing with my brothers and kids in the neighborhood. A house full of toys and my older brother learning to ride a bicycle.
Then, months later, basically out of nowhere, I found myself on the other side, getting out of a car clutching a tiny suitcase tied together by a rope with nothing but a handful of crummy belongings and sack full of dirty underwear and not knowing how I got there. Standing on the sidewalk not much more than a simple beleaguered young boy with no mother and a father long gone, being taken by a stranger to live with a couple that owned a flower shop, a couple I was sure I had never seen or heard of in my life --- followed by a period of time which encompassed the failure of me to stay with the flower shop people for very long before running away --- on more than one occasion --- and because of same, ending up living with my grandmother and uncle, with everything else in-between those two moments of my short childhood gone, lost in the darkened abyss of the blackout period.
A quick word of explanation here. When I write about my grandmother's "only remaining child, a daughter, my mother's younger sister," all in one sentence, I am of course, writing in the classical sense about an Aunt. So too, when I write about my aunt's husband, the man who committed suicide, I am also writing about an uncle. However, the uncle that committed suicide is NOT the Uncle I write about in all my presentations. The reason I do not call my aunt's husband uncle nor her aunt is because I do not want to confuse him with the uncle or his wife I write about over and over in all my works. The uncle I write about all the time was my father's brother, the uncle that committed suicide was married to my mother's sister. It was she, my mother's sister (i.e., my aunt), that was driving the car the night I opened the garage doors and it was she, years later, that related the events of that night to me so graphically. Her daughter, my first cousin, was in the car with us that night as well, along with her brother and my grandmother. She, that is my cousin, got out of the car and followed me to the doors. Although she was quite some distance behind me and on the far side of the car before her mother either purposely shut off the headlights or they went out, to this day my cousin is still unable to recall what she saw or even one small detail surrounding any of the events of that night.
Footnote [2]
On December 19, 1956, six months after I graduated from high school, a CIA U-2 pilot named Bob Ericson suffered hypoxia from an oxygen system failure with the plane coming apart and disintegrating at 35,000 feet in a high-speed out of control downward trajectory with Ericson just barely being able to escape alive. A little over six months later, June 28, 1957, USAF Pilot Leo E. Smith was killed in a U-2 crash near Abilene, Texas with lack of oxygen cited as the reason in some quarters, a fuel imbalance between the two wings from others. Not taking a chance with Smith's crash not being oxygen related, especially within six months of a crash that was known to be oxygen related, nobody was taking any chances. That's when they doubled down on the systems and in the process brought me onboard, first as a technical illustrator then as the number one assistant to the top dog after I became FAA certified and received a clearance.
Footnote [3]
"(S)omehow out of nowhere, I was being pulled out of the water of a pool in the oppressive humidity and hot sun of the tropics. As the men helped me to my feet, seeing I was dazed as to where I was, told me I was at the Arunachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai, south India. They had just dragged me from out of the Brahma Theertham tank located in the Fourth Prakaram of the temple."
Below is an as seen from above grounds-plan or map of the Arunachaleswarar Temple. Due east is to the right, due west on the left. South is at the bottom. Devotees entering through the south wall use the Thirumanjana Gopuram entrance, immediately passing through the smaller Kattai Gopuram just inside and in front of it, coming upon the Brahma Teertham Tank located in the Fourth Prakaram of the temple on the right (shown in the grounds-plan as a double outlined green square). Clicking that square will take you to a page with additional history and information regarding the Brahma Teertham Tank and the temple.
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---- THIRUMANJANA GOPURAM ENTRANCE ARUNACHALESWARAR TEMPLE
MAP AND HISTORY OF THE RAMANA ASHRAM
Nowhere does it show up how I returned home or got back to the monastery. It is clear that I did because in Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery I write that I was abducted by military irregulars outside the walls one morning and taken back to civilization.
"One morning before sunrise, after having learned a number of the ins-and-outs of the monastery, I went on a solo trip down the somewhat perilous darkened mountain path to a nearby village for reasons I don't recall. Returning to the monastery, after the long trek back found me only just crouched down in the fields some distance outside the walls doing my business before entering and in the process of doing so I felt the shadows of three men fall across my face. Apparently they had been snooping around the village for a day or two when, after they got up or were woke up, they heard the white monk was in town. They hastened along the trail in my wake in an effort to catch me before I entered the monastery and be beyond their reach.
"Over the shoulders of two, with one in the hands of the other, were automatic weapons made of cold steel-gray machined metal with big long curved clips filled with bullets, all three men being the total antithesis to all I had been engaged in for so many months. Then, in what could be called nothing less than being kidnapped against my will at gunpoint by the three heavily armed military irregulars --- taken I guess fulfilling their somewhat iffy duty as hunters of the white monk --- and except for a bag I had with me was I allowed to have or get anything, I was lashed hands and feet to a two man over-the-shoulder pole and carried dangling lengthwise between my tied wrists and ankles toward the escarpment, then, once down, transported back to known civilization."
So, it is quite clear in the above quotes I got back to the monastery, but how? Please see:
RETURN TO THE MONASTERY
THE NEARLY UNBELIEVABLE COINCIDENCES OF IT ALL
"My jacket, shirt, sweater and socks, along with my boots were placed out to dry in the sun on a corrugated tin sheet that served as the roof of a house one story below and next to us. How I got to where I was I didn't know. I did know I was in Tiruvannamalai and that the Ramana Ashram was in Tiruvannamalai so I began thinking if I could get to the ashram there might be someone there who could help. The man who took me in agreed and with me with no shirt, socks, or shoes, i.e., completely barefoot and wearing pants only, we walked to where a bullock cart could take me to the ashram."
RAMANA ASHRAM, TIRUVANNAMALI, SOUTH INDIA, 1944
SAMUEL THOUGHT ADAM, ABOVE LEFT, AND THE OTHER
BOY, ME, MUST HAVE BEEN TWINS BECAUSE OF SIMILAR
SIZE, BODY-BUILD, ACTIONS, LOOKS, AND MOP TOP HAIR
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