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 temporary 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.
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.
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
before 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.
