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| Reminiscing Denver - a long screed |  | ||
| Re: A to your Q: Was it more devotional in US or Europe? -- OTS | Top of thread | Post Reply | Forum |
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OTS you got me reminiscing... Others will have better memories of this or more interesting... Is it 40 years ago now?! The Denver community in the 1970s centered around the Capitol Hill neighborhood where Bob Mischler had been leader of a spiritual group of some sort of hippie yogi practitioners, in a house that was eventually turned over to Guru Maharaji when he came to establish himself in the West at Denver. Within a few years there were maybe 20-30 (?) large houses in the neighborhoods, filled with premies, ashram premies, premie house premies, and various groups of householders and transient premies. And there was the Kittredge Building downtown where four or five floors were rented from a wealthy independent oil tycoon who owned the building, for housing the "International Headquarters (IHQ)" of Divine Light Mission. In the entire Denver community there was a shifting community of maybe -- what? -- 500-800 premies in all, or a thousand?, householders, workers in the various departments and community businesses, the print shop, the health food store, Unity School, the dry cleaners, the auto repair shop, the woodworking shop, Denver community offices, or in various diverse activities, many just living their lives maintaining themselves on their own. There was an endless inflow and exit of others, mahatmas, directors, coordinators, ashram premies re-assigned, premies attracted to this center of activities, nomads, vagrants, hangers-on, hippies, crazies, and serious even intellectual seekers of enlightenment...from around the world coming and going, for programs, organizational events or visits or just passing through. There were maybe at most a couple hundred full-time workers in the various IHQ offices' departments, cooks in the lunchroom kitchen, Shri Hans Productions artists, film-makers, AIID magazine writers and producers, transcribers, Transport Department, physical plant managers and janitors, mainframe computer operators, PBX telephone and international telex operators, photographers' & mail order department, Finance Department, public relations, legal department, secretaries, Directors and maintainers of the organization, a few of all these in the sanctum of the "Inner Office" all in lemon-yellow walls which surrounded the big corner office that had bullet-proof plate glass windows, Guru Maharaji's own office and living room, and which had a magnificent premie-built vast marble-topped desk that had a hidden button that electronically opened a secret door in a bookcase for passing into Bob Mishler's office next door; his office had a fold-out couch/bed that M and Marolyn used one night on a lark or I guess maybe to escape the usual residence scene. And in the Inner Office there was a soundproof space-age-like conference room like a windowless tank with no corners, just curves (But you could put your ear to the wall outside and hear M's voice going on inside. And we did.) Some from the U.S. will have a thousand stories about these times and places. I lived in this milieu from 1974 to 1979 until when the IHQ was packed up and moved to Miami. In all those years I'd leave town for weekend jaunts up in the front range of the Rockies, or otherwise only for Maharaji's domestic or international events, traveling depending on ashram or IHQ supervisors' decisions to allow or by my own schemes for the costs of travel. Your mention, OTS, of the Amhurst, Massachussetts, Guru Puja festival has reminded me of the Denver Community IHQ Shuttle. It was used or justified, I suppose, mainly for the IHQ workers who weren't elite enough to have their own blue Valient fleet automobile to drive to work or to the mountains on weekends, or for those who couldn't catch a ride with those elites in possession of a Valient -- and the shuttle also being for general transport to other work locations and such around the community. "The Shuttle" was an ancient full-sized city bus, a blue and white whale-shaped "Flexi" model from I believe 1949. It had a route daily around to all the community facilities, primarily to get the premie workers to and from their work locations, and likewise in evenings to bring everyone to the satsang hall which at the time was on the fourth floor of the Kittredge Building, a dark dismal space called Room 401 (not so dismal when ringing with songs or arti chants or humorous premies like Jacques Sandoz leading us all in a "fly away" sing along, or some of the beautiful angelic premie vocalists and musicians making music). Room 401 was used as the IHQ lunch room during the day, furnished for premie made picnic-table-styled dining provided by two or three full-time cooks from a kitchen that produced varieties of sometimes not too awful vegetarian foods. The ever-brewing coffee pot there was a good spot for gathering any latest gossip, or happening upon your latest crush. The lunchroom's furnishings were cleared away daily for evening community satsang, before the Indian Center or other community satsang halls were engaged for every evening satsangs. This was during the fantastic era when virtually anyone brave enough or inspired enough could claim the satsang chair and speak however they may be so inspired to give their meandering "company of truth" to the captive listeners, listeners who some were put fast asleep, some enraptured, or nauseous, and one who continually every night invariably throughout satsang sat with her head spinning a circle revolving mysteriously with eyes closed obviously gone into some ephemeral spiritual realm. There were countless curious characters many on the fringes of god-crazy madness of one sort or another. Each evening would be topped by the current resident mahatma's talk, or one of the elite "organizers" to wind up the satsang, then the chanting of arti with swinging of devotional flames of gheed cotton-ball and the finale of a group pranam on the floor for which the obviously most real devotees would lay flat on the linoleum there in front of Maharaji's photo and his draped chair set in the middle between one for Mata Ji and one for Balbagwan Ji. And he actually did at least once sit in that chair and pronounce to the IHQ staffers his latest agya. It was in Rm. 401 that I heard from Bob Mischler of M's brother's astonishing wedding to a premie! (not long before M's own surprise wedding). Here also was where for months of his assignment in Denver one could bathe in Jagdeo's mind bending incomprehensible blathering, and similarly that of countless other premie celebrities and non-celebrities of every sort. I remember the mid-day gathering of all IHQ premies, probably including all the local ashram premies, when M himself came to explain his newest agya pronouncement for the ashrams and for his organization around the world. The commitment of ashram premies for life to their vows of renunciation and personal poverty were explained to be now no longer permanent; by his agya now the ashram vows were to be only a temporary phase from which they would move on to households ... or whatever. This was of course shocking, and I remember when he allowed question afterward, someone asked "What about those who want to devote their entire live and being to you?" And he replied "There will always be a place for them," and so I was relieved to know there would always be a place for me, for decades this was for me a solid grounding of my sanity (or insanity, you might say). I had a suspicion the pronouncement was a means of weeding out the less-than-utterly-serious premies, vetting the truest like myself who took the lifetime vow seriously -- but also I had some sense the overburdened fruiting branches of the ashram system could badly use some serious pruning -- or anyway for surrendering to whatever he wanted of it and of our lives that were "his" to direct in his magnanimous magnificence of his all-knowing and loving direction. But back to the Amherst Guru Puja event and the Flexi bus... For the Guru Puja this 1949 Flexi Shuttle Bus was identified to be used for transportation of miscellaneous less-than-elite ashram premies across the 2000 miles to the festival event in Massachussetts. The elites would of course fly, and the non-ashramis would be on their own, or self-determined household by household. At this time I was having a rather chaste crush with one of my housemothers, one of a succession of such psychological-internally-danced effects upon my more gentle heart that allowed me to crush while maintaining my vows of utter celibacy and proper lifelong devotion as I maintained myself, in my mind, a sannyasi of sorts This "housemother" and I were both assigned to the Flexi bus along with some 30 or so others for the roadtrip across country, and mostly of it all I remember is her sleeping with her head in my lap while I stroked her hair and we rumbled and bumped on out of Denver into eastern Colorado and on to the Nebraska plains somewhere not far from the South Platte River. I think it was the first day of this drive, in mid-afternoon, that the bus broke down, fatally. We had no mechanic aboard and no parts anyway as we were out on the lonesome highway on the vast unending agricultural plain populated only by cornfields on the western edges of the great American Mid-west. I remember it a hot day, and most all the passengers scattered along the roadside, sitting in the fields giving each other satsang or massages, or sleeping in the grass. My housemother, after a massage, conferred with me of her annoyance at the situation, getting more and more bored and anxious, and somehow we got ourselves to a public telephone booth, was it in the nearest town, did we hitch-hike? In the phone booth, she telephoned the IHQ switchboard and got the operator to patch her in to a call forwarded to Amherst where she got on the line with one of the DLM high Directors, the potentate of the Treasury. She had some pull with him; she had pull with everyone; everyone had a crush on her at some time. I miss her. She's passed on. The only person I've ever met from Starbuck, Minnesota. On that phonecall, with the combination of her pull and with the weight of organizational responsibility of care for every aspect of ashram premies lives, she sweetly begged and finagled and persuaded the potentate to allow the entire busload be arranged airfare for a flight to Amherst. I seem to remember it was that very day we were saved, by bus to Omaha, Nebraska, boarded the flight (chartered on the spot, or regular commercial?) with connection through Boston, and arriving there emplaced into our rooms in the dormitories of the University of Massachusetts. Yes, that was an amazingly and abjectly devotional event outdoors there on a university field in front of one of those great stages quickly built in construction by the premie teams of crack builders. We in the crowd danced joyfully and energetically under the open skies with thunder and lightning flashing and crashing in the distance. Were there fireworks or just the lightning that I'm remembering? And as OTS describes, newlywed Marolyn (Durga Ji now) sat at his feet making loving eyes at him and caressing his wrist, both dressed in their magnificent Krishna and Radha robes, and he crowned in that be-jeweled magnificernt hat of costume jewelry. I have one of those altar photos, ornately framed, a photo of the moment as he first rose to dance in costume, with Durga Ji gone into a face of ecstasy and he smiling at her. I inherited it from the last ashram I lived in at the time when it was closing permanently in the early 80s. If any of you make an appropriate cash offer, or can persuade me you have a worthy interest in the thing, I will dig it out of the attic and ship it to you C.O.D. -- maybe -- maybe I keep it; what a memento it is. The day after the festival, I had a ride with some friends back to Denver, by way of their home towns on the East Coast. We stopped off first at Maharaji's nearby Hilton Hotel lodging to drop off a present for the newly wed divine couple, and on the long days of driving back to Denver I fell in love with a wonderful girl who to this day I regret not pursuing when marrying her would have been maybe in the cards, or so I still fantasize, if I had not eventually in mutual heartbreak ended the possibility by succumbing to my prior rigid lifetime vows, and we lost the lovely relationship we'd begun. Back in Denver, we arrived miraculously just in time to get into a hotel ballroom where M came, to have darshan and hear a talk about something I no longer remember or care about.
Modified by tarvuist at Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 17:38:04 |
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