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And why are they suing, dear Durga? Because you're constantly provocative. Because you've turned this charming dream of a Buddha Field into Gestapo headquarters.
To maintain order. To maintain our privacy. So female leeches like you can go around with your wide smirk of a mouth and suck hold of the next new body.
Perhaps, were it to be a
The press is bored with your enlightenment. They never believed it anyway. They want dirt now. Dirt and blood. That's what they always want, actually.
They want rajas. They want action. Ha.
Uh, not to be compulsive about detail, but there were some practical things I noticed, going over the account books. There's a great deal of long-distance telephoning from the Uma Room and the hacienda. Australia, Thailand, Scandinavia: It adds up terribly, even with direct dialling.
What's Polly saying now? We should all take vows of silence? We should give up being international and confine ourselves to converting the fascist shits of Dorado County?
And the travel expenses-
I have to make appearances. I have to solicit support. I have to contact these filthy regional centers you're so enamored of.
But the hotels you stay in, and the number of people you take with you on these jaunts-
They're not jaunts. They're raids into enemy territory. I need every soldier. Vikshipta makes a spellbinding presentation, and if people don't hear about the Way from a man they think it's just hysterical meno-pausal voodoo. Satya has a cu
I'm" sure they couldn't.
. It's just that the sa
Let them be aware! The snivelling shits. We're giving them the ride of their lives. No responsibilities. No guilt. Just fucking and dancing and saying Om and watching God go by in a stretch limo. And what do they contribute? Hardly enough labor to make it worth feeding them. It im't worth feeding them, in fact-the kitchen runs at a terrible loss, that's why I have to go around begging and making an impression all the time, to raise the contributions to keep these parasites in the bliss of living here. Spoiled Americans, they eat like pigs. They should be eating less. The meals are much too extravagant-sa
– are well aware, is all I was going to say, of the dreadful inequalities here. Of course they want the Master to have all the jewels he wants, as an outward sign of-
Say it! His inward grace! See! Sari and all, the bitch still thinks like a Christian! Like a stinking little Anglican!
This is too wild. I can't go on.
Good. Your humble servant neither. I've been humiliated and heckled enough for one day. I've absorbed enough shit from this person-this little Miss Priscilla Pilgrim here.
But Durga darling, what shall we all do? About everything.
Not only tranquillizers and antidepressants. We're out of antibiotics for venereal disease, the ones we can still treat, and lithium for the bipolars…
The chairman of the County Commission and-the sheriff have both written threatening to get warrants issued…
[Silence. Rustling. Heartbeat?]
you ladies are all looking toward me.
Not me. I've given fucking up on you, to be frank.
You are looking toward me because you have not learned your lessons well enough. You have not practiced your asanas. You have not destroyed your egos. Therefore you feel fear and you feel uncertainty. You are still full of garbage. I ca
Lord Jesus. And they call this a man.
Two great notions come to me. One, I wish to be on this John Carson show, as an amusing guest. I think be reaches many people of the night and thus he will re-energize our field. Also, be is amusing. This Ed McMabon. This supposed feud with Joan Rivers, and all this Hollywood wise talk. Ha. Two, let Kundalini stay with me, as you others go. We must discuss my jewels. Perhaps I must sacrifice them to her merciless accountings.
You do that, Art.
Shanti, Master.
You two be good now.
[Unintelligible voices, fading. Silence. Heartbeat.]
It is not so, when ugly Durga calls you little. You are tall.
Five eight. Five eight and a half, actually.
You are not young, but your skin is smooth. Your hair is dark and abundant. Your posture is excellent. That is why I called you Kundalini. For her to make the ascent up Susbumna, the spine must be held very straight.
My mother was a stickler for posture. Posture and what fork to pick up and how to leave your knife so the waiter will know to clear.
This mother. Where is she now?
Florida.
She must be very rich.
Not really, Master. In truth I believe she is squandering in foolish investments the small amount that my late father did leave her.
She would perhaps think our ashram a foolish investment.
It would be, for her. Not for me. I love it here.
You have a good friend in Alinga, perhaps. She is also tall, but not so stately and upright as Kundalini.
She is very beautiful.
In an imperilled way. The way of a flower. She has imbibed too much indifference, not the holy vairagya of the yogas but that of this country, of its flatness and muchness that drives its people to sarcasm and mass murder. I am thinking of your West. Your East is more like my India. It teems-is that the expression? One big appetite, with the energy of appetite. You have this appetite, this energy. Alinga does not. Already, she slouches. She slumps. Her hair goes unwashed. She begins to wilt. She is like a cut flower.
She's been very kind.
She has shown you new asanas, I think. But once you bad a husband?
I believe I still do. He was-is-a doctor. Rather handsome. Very efficient and work-oriented. An internist with an office at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Yet after some years with this technological marvel, you became bored. You took up yoga. You bad flings.
Not very many. I've always been a good girl.
And you are a good girl here. Your letters are excellent. You can balance the books. You do not yet seem to have the madness. , The madness?
As you notice, with Ma Prem Durga. After much valuable service to Buddha and to Vishnu, she becomes irritable. She becomes erratic and overflowing with grievance. She loses spiritual touch. It is this stress of maintaining a religious ideal, of bucking the trend. In the larger world, responsibility is remote. In our smaller world, responsibility is intimate. There is no Big Guy to which the buck passes. We are the Big Guy. It is heavy.