THINKING OF LIFE WITH MAHARISHI, ON HIS BIRTHDAY

I was thinking, this morning, of the two and a half years I spent living in Switzerland in the ‘70s with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The thought came at the end of a string of thoughts about writing. Writing puts you out there. It exposes your weaknesses, as well as your strengths—for all to see. The exact opposite of "being out there" is "being in there." And the most inward time of my life was when I was working and studying with Maharishi.

Living at Maharishi’s headquarters in Seelisberg, a tiny hamlet dangling on the edge of a cliff above Lake Lucerne, was about as much of an escape from the "thick and thin" of the world as I can imagine. Life was wonderful, easy, happy and exciting in the subtlest of ways. One of the reasons was the anonymity of it all. Hardly anyone outside my family knew where I was on the face of the earth. Even my parents sometimes doubted my very existence. I had managed to separate myself from most of the fleeting attractions of the material world.

Sometimes just to get a taste for the world, I’d sneak into the city of Lucerne with my friend Ivan Stuffle, for a cappuccino. After spending a couple of hours sitting in a cafe on the shore of the lake, and the buzz had worn off, we’d head back up into the mountains to sink back into the deep silence of Seelisberg.

I’m sure the reason we made those trips into the city was to experience some contrast. Like when you’re sitting in a hot bath, you need to stir the water every once in awhile just to feel that it’s hot. Going into Lucerne was like that.

Life in Seelisberg was so gentle and one day so much the same as another it was sometimes hard to tell if you were breathing—or not.

My life now is so filled with contrasts that it sometimes makes me long for that smooth and kind existence of the mountains. Actually, I think I’m slowly heading back. Life here in Mendocino County moves at half the speed of New York and Connecticut. It makes me a little dizzy just to think my life back there—all that rushing around—and for what?

Happy Birthday to Maharishi, for providing such deep and timeless knowledge, and for giving me the experience of Being. "Men may come and men may go, but I go on and on."