Talks

DATE: 19650101

TITLE: MARGE RANNEY RETURNS FROM INDIA

 

Mother Hamilton:  Would you like to tell us of some of your experiences in India—some of the things about the people you met, the holy places, and the holy people that you saw? And what your reaction was to them.

Marge:  Well first, it’s just wonderful to be back with all of you. I’ve been very lonesome for everybody, and although I felt your presence often, and I knew Mother was with me every minute, still it’s just great to be back. Believe me.

Mother Hamilton:  We’re very happy to have you.

Marge:  And it seems as if I’ve been to a great long show of God. It’s as if it’s all been going on in front of my eyes. Sometimes I thought He had the wrong reel on, but eventually there developed a purpose, a plan, and a meaning to whatever experience I was having.

India is a wonderful experience. I think many of you, as I have had some of those experiences in books, and the stories of others, and certainly we have had the great privilege of knowing Mother, and knowing Father, and their experiences in India. But, believe me, until you’ve seen that ashram, and you’ve seen the bed that they slept on, and you’ve seen the facilities, and you’ve seen the place where they lived and worshiped God for eight or nine months, it’s impossible to understand the courage and the stamina, and the love for God, more than anything that they had in their hearts, for them to be able to live with this experience, and come out with a greater devotion, a greater love of God than they went in to.

I’ve had so many experiences, and seen so many things; I don’t feel like myself anymore at all. Most of you, I think, have been able to keep track of us through our letters. And we do appreciate the interest you’ve had, because I think we would have burst, if we hadn’t been able to share this with you. And still there were many things that I, speaking for myself, could not write about. There’s (sic) many experiences I had that are still working their way through my inner consciousness. But, the privilege of being in a country where the people are, in general, focused on God—God  is so much a reality of their lives, that it makes it very easy, and very inspiring to keep your attention on God. It seems that no matter what type of a group I was with, whether it was the most sophisticated, or the most humble, always these people had their attention and their hearts in God—in various expressions of God, but on God. And this was evident with the way they greeted you, with the way they took care of you, and the way they offered whatever they had, physically and spiritually to you. It seemed as if, oh I suspect in God and Mother, that it seemed as if we were always at the right place at the right time for the experience that we’d been longing for.

Anandamayi Ma is almost impossible to contact unless you’re going to stay in India a long time and that this is your main desire and focus. Because she travels from one ashram to another, and only her very inner devotees and God have any idea where she is. We were being delayed in Delhi because of the kindness and the hospitality of these friends we were staying with, and I seemed to be, and I was in an awful hurry to get to Benares because that’s where Anandamayi Ma’s main ashram was. And I thought if I could get there, that surely I could find out and if God wills, I would be able to see her. So, as I thought I was marking time, one of the people I was introduced to at a party said, “Oh, I understand you’re interested in this saint. Have you ever heard of Anandamayi Ma?” I said, “Yes, where is she?” And he said, “Well, I have a very close friend who is a very close devotee of hers, and I have seen her often. So, if you would like this privilege, I can arrange for it, because she is… it’s too bad I didn’t know yesterday, but now she’s about 50 miles from New Delhi, and I will be glad to arrange with this friend for her to take you there tomorrow.” And I said, “Well, that will be just great.” He said, “I will phone you tomorrow morning.”  The next morning I had a telephone call saying that Anandamayi Ma’s plans were changed, as usual.  She was not 50 miles from New Delhi; she was on the outskirts of New Delhi. She was going to have a darshan there. This devotee of hers would take me and I would have this experience.

Well, this is just the way life works. There was always, if we had 15 minutes, and the direction to go to an ashram, then this was where the holy man was at that moment, and we had the privilege of being in his presence. But, many times I had experiences in India that made me stop and think. Many times I wondered, what in the world am I doing here? Are you sure, God, that this is what you directed? Because I longed so much for Mother, to worship at her feet, to hear the chants of Barbara, that it all just seemed to be a detour. And then sometimes I would have an experience that would even increase this anxiety.

Two particular people—one , one of Papa’s devotees, and one a Sikh, a very kind gentleman, in whose home we were, said to me, “What are you doing? You say you have a guru? What are you doing wandering around looking for all the saints?” Because India is filled with people who love God and are looking for Him somewhere and in India the place you look is at the ashram. And there’s an ashram on almost every corner. Why, they have almost as many as we have service stations and it’s a place to get filled up.

 

Mother Hamilton:  It’s a good comparison. It’s a different kind of gas.

Congregant:  Gallons of the Holy Spirit.

Marge:  And you do get what you ask for.

Marge:  But these two people speaking with me in all earnestness, and hoping to keep me from being too terribly mixed up, began to ask me why was I looking for all of these holy men? And I gave them the first answer that came into my consciousness but I also went inside to examine this. And I knew that Mother had told me that I have accepted from other sources, that being in the presence of any saint is a great boost toward his own search for God.

And this experience is something that the Indians know very well about. But of course, here in America, we have, except for some of us who’ve had a greater privilege, have no clue. But it seemed like there would be more than this, more cause, more reason than this. I’m sure it’s a test. I’m sure we each have our test in different ways to see whether we are really devoted to our guru or whether we think there’s somebody greater around the corner and maybe I’ll get there quicker this way, or this road’s too hard. Maybe somebody else will take on my responsibilities for me. But although I asked myself this in great honesty, I think Mother has taught us to do this. Still, I realized that I was not hunting a guru. I had found God in my guru. So then I asked the question again, well, can I go home now? It’s all over and what I need to do is be in Seattle. And again the thought came to me, well perhaps it’s not as you feel, if I felt the presence of you all; that perhaps we were all there together and it just so happened that it was my body that was free to go at this time.

But as I had one experience after another, and after I had spent the three days at Papa’s ashram, and felt his presence there very deeply, and felt the presence of Mother and Father and their experiences and visualizing their life there and the things that Mother had told us about came really to life. And then I went on to the [Maharashivi 00:11:26] ashram where the holy man from whom Papa had had great inspiration and his realization from. And then I went on to a holy man, 150 years old, just for a short interview through an interpreter and then on to Sri Aurobindo’s ashram and then on to Madras to see this beautiful spiritual Indian dancer, which I hope you’ll all have a chance to see before too long.

With all of these experiences came sort of the fulfillment of any little desire I had had for India. And there was only one day, when we were gone for six months, that we ever had a day when we were not either traveling somewhere, involved in some sort of a sightseeing deal or with people, at an ashram or with our family. So this we could say was the only time in India I was entirely alone and it was well planned like that because it was time to reflect back.

And with this time, I saw that if I am to know God then I have certainly been blessed with the greatest teacher on our planet today. There are many mysteries among the holy ones in India. And I came back to Mother and about the first thing I said is, “Can’t you please have an ashram where everything is quiet and peaceful and we can sit around?” Because the impact of being in this country after leaving India was terrible. And even Kenneth and David in Ceylon, when about the second day, we met an Indian couple who just passed the time of day. Kenneth said, “This is like old home week, isn’t it?

Because in this quiet atmosphere, it’s so much easier to think of God and to feel the peace and bliss, but also I know in my heart, and Mother has told me before, after, and tomorrow, that if this peace and bliss that we have within us, if it is really there, then we will carry this peace and bliss everywhere we go and our body is our ashram. Our life is our ashram.

It seems that the opportunity we have here to worship together, and still to live our lives each day, is a greater opportunity than any of the others have been able to give. Sometimes I have felt that the destiny of the human life on the planet rests with India as a nation because they alone as a people have their culture based on a deep and wide awareness of God. No matter how it’s manifested because they’re mixed up in form just the way our culture is. But this is not true because the destiny of human life on this planet rests in God; it rests in God wherever we find Him, and however we find Him. And so I come back and I find I’ve really not been away. It’s all been a great big show. It’s been a wonderful experience but I think this is reality. But the reality is within me, it’s within all of us. So thanks for being my spiritual family.

Mother Hamilton:  Would you like to tell us about different customs and events that happened? You went to parties in India, this is one thing Father and I never experienced. What are their parties like?

Marge:  Well we went to a lot of different kinds of parties. One type of party that we went to in New Delhi, which was with many of the sophisticated Indians there who are living very graciously but with lots of handicaps, because they can’t get the things that… I’ll never turn on a tap of water again without thanking God. I’ll never see a bobby pin without praising the genius of God to produce this and to produce it where it’s available everywhere.

But these people nevertheless are living in a very sophisticated and gracious way and always they eat. In spite of the group that I was in, there were always drinks served but 99% of the people accepted whatever you said. If you said, “No, thank you” they were happy. If you said, “Yes, thank you” they were happy. In the big parties they have a vegetarian section here and a nonvegetarian section there and they’re prepared for anything because anybody with any cousins might come.

One time there was one man who was having a terrible time with his guru because his guru had suddenly made him a vegetarian and he wasn’t happy about it—very manly and his stomach certainly wasn’t happy about it.

Mother Hamilton:  Was this the one from [Dees 00:17:32]?

Marge:  No this was one outside of Bombay whom I’ve never met. He said that he’d be glad to take me to his guru but I never felt directed for him. And they talk, but the conversation at an Indian party is so exciting. There is a miracle in everyone’s lives there. And as David was listening to a man tell him in Honolulu that there’s a place where a Japanese during the war was so discouraged he jumped off in the canyon and it’s a place where the upside down fall is because the wind often blows the current, the stream so fast it blows it right back. So this fella jumped off and he was blown right back and I said, “Are you kidding?” He said, “No, I’m definitely serious, but of course lots of people don’t believe me.”

And David said, very seriously, “You don’t have to try to get me to believe you, I believe you. I’ve heard so many things I didn’t know about in the last three months; don’t worry about me believing you!”

Mother Hamilton:  Legend is the chalice of truth.

Marge:  So it’s a very exciting experience. Now these people were people of all religions. They were Sikhs probably mostly, but there were Hindus, there were Muslims and there were atheists, but they all, even the atheists, even however far they try to remove themselves from God there was still a miracle they’ve gotten to face. It was their close experiences and their family.

So the parties were an exciting thing and the women in saris are truly beautiful. I asked one man if he minded if I wore a sari and he said, “Oh, no.” But this was a religious man, he said, “Oh no. One can experience and see the Divine Mother so much easier in a woman when she is dressed in a sari that we feel very flattered if you will accept our custom.”

But then we were in India during Diwali. And as you remember Kenneth said that this was a combination of Fourth of July, Las Vegas, Christmas, New Year’s, and I don’t know what else but it was a very good description.

Mother Hamilton:  What do you mean by that word?

Marge:  Diwali. It’s the festival of lights. You know at Christmastime we have a regular, a general pattern that we will accept and we more or less follow it with a little variation. But India is quite individualistic and there didn’t seem to be any set pattern except that they do have lights. Little ghee lamps, which are little pots with ghee in it, that’s grease, and a little wick that’s lit, and what keeps Bombay from burning down on Diwali I don’t know. You know, we’ve outlawed everything but the smallest little firecracker, and you should have seen the big light things that were going all over the city and we were up on a roof and we were a little more careful than the rest of them but they were falling down, the other lights into the patios of other people, into the little porches on their apartment houses and nobody seemed to worry. They usually at some time or other during this time, which is a three or four day celebration and you celebrate it whatever day you want, depending on how you feel.

New Delhi has a different idea for some reason than Bombay, that doesn’t worry anybody and one Indian told me that he had celebrated Diwali about three different times because he happened to be traveling and he hit all of them. And David nearly thought his life was over, the first firecracker he lit for these people. There was a bunch of children invited and we got up to walk and the firecracker is about this big and the wick was about this big. He’s much quicker than he was before he went to India, now.

We read lot also about the marriage customs, you know, and child marriages. And at this night of Diwali I saw a little child about this big who was just having a real interesting time with the other children. And our hostess came over, Bubla, and she said, “Do you know who this child is?” And I said, “No.” And she said, “Well this is the child of my amah.” Amah is a nurse and I said, “Oh.”  Oh no, she said that she’s the daughter-in-law of my amah. Well I was still trying to think that one over when she explained to me that this child had been married for two years and she was now 11. And she used to live with her but now she is living with the husband who goes to work and does the housework and cooks for this child and the child goes to school.

Congregant:  How old is the husband?

Marge:  He’s about 29. And then I met another girl, a charming girl, who told me about her marriage, that she was about 12 years old and somebody had come to visit and she loved to play out with the boys and the girls and so forth but they called her in. They said, “You get cleaned up real quick. We want you to meet this man.” So she did and the next day they told her she was gonna be married to this man that she was introduced to as the third one on the right and that’s the one she was going to marry. And she said she hadn’t the slightest idea of what marriage meant but it was very exciting because the wedding was going to be in two weeks and she had to have all of these saris and all of these jewels and so to her it was just like a new game.

Mother Hamilton:  How old was she?

Marge:  Twelve. But then she didn’t go with her husband. This was a higher class family, so they could arrange things a little easier. Only by higher class I meant more money, and so she did not go. She was married and went back to playing dolls and then two years later they are taken, these girls, whatever kind of a marriage it is unless it’s ultra modern. Even if the girl has chosen her husband or whether it’s a child marriage, which is dropping off some. Still, as soon as the girl is married, she leaves the home of her mother and she goes to the home of her husband and that is usually the home of the father-in-law. And this child at 14 suddenly was packed up, all of her belongings, and in India, believe me, you do just not go next door just easily; it’s a project.

So these people do not get to visit back and forth with their parents. A telephone call from one end of Delhi to another end of Delhi is likely to be such that you can’t make yourself understood or you’ll be disconnected. So telephone calls, inner city, you have to have an appointment for and the reception is very bad. So when you see the courage and stability these people have, then it’s quite an experience.

Mother Hamilton:  How do they serve their food at these parties? Is it buffet style?

 

Marge:  Buffet style.

Mother Hamilton:  Do they have plantain leaves there; like we did at the ashram or do they have dishes?

Marge:  They have dishes. Every place in a home that I ate they had dishes. But they eat with their fingers and really I feel quite handicapped now. You all know a Mexican tortilla? Well they have chapatis which are made in the same way and they have them in every form. They put spinach inside some, they puff up others by frying them but they’re a chapati and they’re something similar to a tortilla.

So the Indians can take their rice and roll it up and dish it in their curry and pop it in their mouths, ignoring the law of gravity. But I don’t do it that way. I use a chapati and I roll it up and I roll the meat and the gravy and the juices and the vegetables are terrific. They have all sorts of spices there, spinach with I don’t know what all they had in it; it was just great. And cauliflower is another thing they would often serve. They almost always had they call curd which is matzoon or yogurt.

Congregant:  Now you’re talking about the North Indians, the chili and-

Marge:  Yeah. Now in South India we had some South Indian food, we certainly had some food at the ashram but food at the ashram is different from other places. And at your ashram it’s really different.

Mother Hamilton:  Are you telling us?

Marge:  Just verifying. But the people in India are extremely clean personally and their food according to their ideas of cleanliness is very clean except in those people are so poor that they just can’t care. They just live. But they’ve never been educated to germs, and so they’ll take great precautions in one way and do something that you can hardly believe is done on the next step. But it is rather a shock to see these people in beautiful clothes and beautiful manners, very sophisticated, knowing all about the things that you know about and more about many things, eat with their fingers.

Congregant:  Why do they, Marge?

Marge:  They have always done this particularly, for five thousand years there’s no-

Congregant:  Does no one have silverware?

Marge:  Oh they have the silverware and they serve it but nobody uses it. And actually the flavor of the food is better this way because if you have this chapati and you put vegetables inside of it you eat a nice sandwich. The Indians who are trying to imitate the Western world wouldn’t be caught dead eating with their fingers. The Anglo-Indians, as a class, have imitated the Western world a great deal. They’re the ones that wear the short dresses and they are the ones that would never eat with their hands. But the others do it graciously and you get used to it and their food tastes better because you can eat the right things together.

Mother Hamilton:  Are the houses of this particular class of people similar to anything that we have here in the United States? How many rooms do they have and how are they furnished and that sort of thing?

Marge:  Well, that’s very interesting because you can’t answer yes or no. The home that we were in, in Delhi, the people had traveled a great deal and before the money restrictions and so they have things of great beauty in their home from other countries as well as things of beauty in their own home. It was the most interesting experience because it was just like living in an ethereal world. I’d go out in the morning and I might see anybody, any beautiful woman that I’d never seen before, or a young man as I’m just strolling through the house like they belonged there and I strolled too.

But you’d go into this big entrance, and it wasn’t locked. You couldn’t get very close to the house at night. Everything has to be guarded. But in the daytime or early morning at least, I didn’t see any guards around. You just walk in and make yourself at home. If the family’s eating breakfast, which happens about 9:00 or 10:00, you just walk in and they offer you a plate and you eat with them. But they had a huge dining room, probably as big as this room, and they had a living room, one and a half times this room. They had an informal room this size. We had a big bedroom, this big with our own private bath downstairs.

 

Upstairs there were four or five large units like that with their own bath. They had a patio out upstairs where they were growing grass. And it’s outdoor living there; doors are open all the time and as I say, if it doesn’t keep the flies out it doesn’t keep the other people out too; their friends come at any time of the day.

Mother Hamilton:  How do they protect their windows there? Do they have bars on the windows such as we had where we were?

Marge:  In some places they do, but mostly people who were living at this scale had their own estates so they have big fences around and they had two big dogs that they let out at night and they guard.

Mother Hamilton:  Were there any birds or animals that would come through the open window?

Marge:  At this house we didn’t have anything that came through but when we went down to the beach for that weekend there, I just loved waking up in the morning. There was a little sparrow, I guess he was, chirping, and looking at himself in the mirror and he made a mess over everything I had and Kenneth had a real fit but I didn’t care because I thought it was so much fun. The animals are so friendly, aren’t they, there? You can see that they have been protected-

Mother Hamilton:  Except the python that swallows the snake… the jackal I mean.

Marge:  Oh yeah, well, they’re friendly in their own way I guess-

Mother Hamilton:  They’re embracing them.

Marge:  Yeah. But India is so full of surprises that there’s nothing ever goes the way you think it’s going to go and it’s like living in an illusion. You get to know it’s like an illusion after being there for a while and things in India, everyone says that coincidences happen more often. And it wasn’t just my aims, my desire to go to ashrams for the door to open; it was whatever was going to happen.

We’d have such a terrible muddle of plans that Kenneth would almost jump over a cliff and suddenly he says, “Well you know, Marge, we can’t do all of this because you’ve got six things in, and two or three people coming to see you and you’ve got an appointment over there and how’s it all gonna work out?” And I said, “I don’t know, this is what they planned.” So we just, somehow or other, only one thing happens at once.

Mother Hamilton:  What cities did you travel through, what parts of the country and did you find them all beautiful or did you find ugliness along with it?

Marge:  There’s always ugliness everywhere and there’s beauty everywhere and it depends on how you focus your eyes or your heart. The people are still begging and it’s so much in their nature now they have accepted this way of life, they either put on a robe and beg as a holy man and the Indians are the first ones to tell you that nine out of 10 of the holy men are only opportunists.

But there’s such a dignity in the way they beg that the Government has tried to take these people who are handicapped and give them opportunities and give them a clean and decent home but they are lonesome in those homes, so they go right smack back on the street. But I have a feeling in a few generations it will take to work this out. But there is beauty. Srinagar is really beautiful and there are beautiful buildings. Kenneth went. The place where he was, at Jaipur, in that area, he says it makes the Alhambra look sick and anything else he’s ever seen as far as palaces go look second rate because this one is a fresh palace. It’s been maintained and it’s just really beautiful.

And I think Benares is the most exciting city in the world. It’s all of India right there in front of your eyes. I guess I didn’t write but we were… in the city streets, where the cars are supposed to go, main streets, you can’t see 30 feet in front of you because of the mass of people going here and there and you just still go and somehow you don’t run over anybody. And as we drove down here I saw, let’s see, I’ve forgotten, either one or two men completely naked, not one G string or anything. But nobody was paying a slight bit of attention to him.  He was standing there talking with some people. And the Indian people are trying to somehow or other eliminate this because I asked our guide if I really saw what I thought I’d seen, and he said, “Yes.” He said this man probably has given up everything for God and this is his way of doing it. Of course he won’t freeze to death there.

Mother Hamilton:  He takes it literally.

Marge:  And as you go down to Benares on the Ganges, tourists have many reactions to this, where the people are washing, in a ceremonial way. It’s a terrible sight to some people. You see on both sides of the steps, stairway leading down, on every inch here is a beggar, a leper probably. And then behind them and in front of them and around are people selling trinkets, just desperate for your business. Then right on the edge of the river are these little square platforms with a big umbrella and a holy man sitting there, to either check your valuables with him while you go take your bath or you can be blessed or he’ll read to you out of the Gita or what have you.

And also you’re likely to hear some commotion behind you and you’d better move out of the way because there’s a body being brought down to be buried. And the body, if it hasn’t … see I don’t remember for sure, but the principals are right, but it has a white covering over it if it’s a man and if it has a blue covering over if it’s a woman and if it’s got another covering it’s a cow because the cows are also burned beside the pyre. You see the piles of wood everywhere because if you can die in Benares and you are a Hindu that’s a very good thing. So it’s best to…umm

Mother Hamilton:  You have liberation.

Marge:  Yes, and you have lots of people ready to die and so they have lots of piles of wood so that they’re gonna be able to take care of the bodies. Now to some this is a terrible, terrible thing. And still if you realize and see that this is God trying to find Himself then it takes on a different aspect. And if you take the time, I was absolutely amazed at what happened to my body.

Because seeing these people individually or collectively, God filled my heart so full of love that it just poured over and they were always pouring it back. Sometimes this wild stare, how come you’re even looking at me, because often I guess the Europeans will be so repelled by these things. And you go into their temples and sometimes they’re very clean and sometimes they’re absolutely filthy. And they seem to us any place but a place of worship and filth. This is the way God is finding God. And you know that somewhere and probably it’s easier for it to happen in India than anywhere else, that they will break through this form and they will really know to seek God within themselves.

The Sikh religion is particularly exciting as a form of religion. In their holy book, they have the quotes of many holy men from other religions and in their temples everyone is welcome. You have to put something over your head and Kenneth looks kind of silly in the pictures with a handkerchief. But you have to wash your feet, and as you go in, the priest there will give you prasad, and this is a holy blessed pudding, and you have to receive it with two hands. [He bends and you catch on.] And then if you take, those who want to worship God in this place will buy the prasad right outside and put it in the pot, the big pot, and you put it on a leaf then and into this big pot and then the holy man takes it out with his hands, puts it in yours, and then you can either eat it or take it to somebody else. Now, anybody who comes to a Sikh temple can have free food and at mealtimes they actually serve anybody who comes. Now you would think in India there would be millions of hungry, starving people and they would simply gather around the Sikh temple at mealtimes. Somehow, God regulates all of these things in India. And you can get free lodging there. I don’t suppose it’s much better than it was at the ashram but probably some better. Nevertheless, they have little rooms for people who want to stay and we had one meal at a Sikh temple.

Mother Hamilton:  It’s an amazing thing, the way you describe this in connection with our own experiences because not having experienced any other type of home or living at that time, in India, we had thought we might have to sleep on the floor or just on a bare board but the fact that we had two comforters that were about this thick to sleep on, that we had sheets and pillowcases and a tablecloth on our table, and that our room was scrubbed each day and we could have clean clothing whenever we wanted seemed to us a miracle. And we thought that this was probably the most luxurious ashram in all of India.

This is the only one we went to as such, you see. So this goes to show you that as you become more conscious of the things in the world, then your desires also become greater and your means of comparison is greater, so the dissatisfaction of the senses wells up and you become unhappy because you know something better than the simple life which you have lived.

Marge:  But then when you get all the luxury that you can find and your heart is still empty, then it’s perhaps nice to go back to the board. And if it takes this, to find God.

Mother Hamilton:  But you know, during the time that I was going through this very vital experience, the wording in the Lord’s Prayer kept coming to my mind that it must be In earth as it was in Heaven so I was very busily cleaning up the floor of the room, picking up all the bugs, taking a cloth and getting down on my knees and scrubbing. I had the floor all wet and Father was scared to death that in this state of not normal consciousness that I would fall and hurt myself, you know.

And I would pick up various things and put them in the wastebasket and then I would sneak over to the fireplace in the house next to the guest room where you stayed, they had this open fireplace and I would burn all of these things. Because I had to burn everything so that the opposite forces would not be able to get in and make use of them against me.

Marge:  May I ask you, where did you get a wastepaper basket?

Mother Hamilton:  We had one in our room.

Marge:  Well, I don’t remember about this ashram, but in India because they don’t have facilities to clean the way we do, they have a man come in every day on his hands and knees with a brush in poor and rich houses.  And so the people except in these homes, well, even bigger than lots of the homes we were in, I’ve forgotten, but they simply throw things on the floor. So if you go in by noon and the sweeper’s been at 10:00 the house might look dirty to you. But it isn’t; it’s just that somebody had an extra paper and they threw it down. And so the next day it’ll be cleaned up. But we’d go around every place, looking everywhere for a place to put our trash.

Mother Hamilton:  Well of course we shipped our own toilet tissue and some Kleenex over there and no one else in the ashram had it because water is used for the purpose that we usually use those things, you see. So they didn’t have need for them and even newspaper was very scarce but it was an amazing thing that when there was any celebration where you would be giving gifts to someone, they would very carefully cut a newspaper to fit whatever they were going to wrap, wrap it in the newspaper and then put a white string around it and this was wonderful. What they would do if they were to see the fancy gifts and the papers and ribbons that we make up I don’t know.

Marge:  Well even in the more luxurious homes, I was going to wrap something, and they wanted me to wrap a present, I was trying to help them. And so the paper, there was this much overlap, you know, and I was ready to do this and I was ready to take a piece of Scotch tape like this and “Oh for goodness sake,” she says, “Don’t use that much. Cut this off. That’s too much paper!”

Mother Hamilton:  And at the wedding which we attended, they had sweets for the guests and this was a poor family where the marriage was taking place and yet he had provided for his daughter the usual pandal and there were, it seemed like, hundreds of children around but on the table they had this great big mound of little pieces of newspaper with little sweets inside and then tied with a string. And each one was entitled to one of those and this was your wedding feast. It’s rather unusual when you think about it. But don’t you feel, having once been there, and seeing all the ugliness and the beauty, the dirt, the sordidness and yet the peace and the bliss in some places, that it’s in your blood and you can’t wait to get back, that somehow it lives inside of you?

Marge:  Oh yes. Yes, there it does. They keep saying to me, “Oh I hope you’ll be back.” I said, “Don’t worry; I’m coming back with my guru.” And I didn’t know who was saying, because I hadn’t really meant to say this but I just had this feeling all the time that we would be back.

Mother Hamilton:  And I kept getting letters from all the people she visited that I knew over there, saying they were so glad to hear that we were coming to India. Did you meet a fellow by the name of Meta, in Ahmadabad, through Jamon?

Marge:  No. Is it too late or would you like to hear about the Tibetans?

Mother Hamilton:  Yes, I think they’d be very interested in that.

Marge:  I thought that it was Tibet that was taken over by the communists and they were the Tibetans that I’d been writing to all this time but it’s Tibet and the Tibetans (different pronunciation) that are there. So at Dalhousie they have been gathered together under the inspiration and effort of this woman, Ree Greta Betty, who is a Buddhist and because of her concern that the Buddhism of the Tibetans was going to be lost, she started by finding a way to find shelter for the different lama groups that had been from the different monasteries in Tibet.

And so there were, I found when I got there, several different colleges and the friend I had, happened to be the head of one of the colleges.

Mother Hamilton:  Where was this? Dalhousie?

Marge:  Dalhousie which, Dalhousie is halfway between Delhi and Srinagar and if you’ve ever known anybody that goes on a social tour in India they probably have gone to a boathouse and this is in Srinagar, the northern part of India, in the Kashmiri area.

This is up high in the mountains. It’s cold and it’s good for the Tibetans because they’re used to the cold, rugged weather. And since this effort of Mrs. Betty and the establishment of the Buddhist colleges, they call them “colleges” meaning monasteries. Because of this, the Government has also built and established large schools for the Tibetan children. Now, most of these children are probably orphans and the rest of them, these are just average children. They’re out working somewhere.

And the hostel, they call it, which means the dormitory for these little children were just amazing. There wasn’t any more than this room and the bed wasn’t any bigger than the child would need and they were all in a row and just as neat as a pin and the noses and faces of those little children were as dirty as could be. Well, one of the Hindus, who was just a very delightful man who has been helping the group and doing translating, said that they’ve had a terrible time between the Tibetans and the Hindus because the Hindus have such ideas of personal cleanliness that the Tibetans didn’t have. And there’s been many other times where their customs haven’t been the same, and they’re just about to cut each others’ throats because of the things they can’t stand in each other sometimes—even as much as the cultures have been alike.

But this is on the regular mundane level of the teachers, the government teachers, trying to teach these children how to read and write. And they have allowed the Tibetans to have their regular month in there and teachers in there so they won’t lose their own culture and so they’re sort of at cross purposes with [inaudible 00:49:54] in between one.

But the forms of worship and the ceremonies that we saw and the experience we had with the Tibetans, was such that up until 10 years ago the only way to have this experience would have been to cross those Himalayas somehow or other and if you survived then you would have to somehow or other get permission to get into Tibet which was extremely difficult, and if then, this had happened. Then if you would make friends and somehow or other gain the confidence of the Tibetans’ religious man, and be accepted into their monastery life and had gone through certain initiations in a period of 10 or 12 years you might have seen some of these things.

And now, if you can somehow or other get up to Dalhousie and you have the introduction to these people, you can see now all of their religious forms, which I think is very interesting and a great privilege. Now, the Buddhists of Tibet are different from the Buddhists anywhere because Buddhism as you know, although it started with the teachings of Buddha, that each priest or missionary that carried it each direction, brought it into a new culture and it adapted itself to the culture so that although the basic teaching is the same, it isn’t very recognizable sometimes.

So I here they mixed it with their original religion. Well these boys, their teaching is mostly by mantra to the boys who have been selected for the religious school and I think you’re probably all familiar the way the children are chosen. The head lama, of these groups, the head tulku, they call it, are reincarnated lamas and this means that they have been head of some small or big monastery or been in an important religious position, and when they die the other monks have repeated a long ceremony of religious mantrums in order to get that individual reincarnated.

They’re called an enlightened one but they want them reincarnated so that they can help the rest of them and so instead of leaving it to God to decide what His will is, they have, through their mantrums tried to force this type of rebirth and they have been able to obviously manipulate this in some… under God’s will but with their will, some, way because they have in very miraculous ways discovered these tulkus and brought them back.

They discover them in a poor family or a rich family or this county or that county but anyway they bring them back. So these children and grownups, children that we saw in these schools are extraordinary when they have been discovered in this way. And they’re now adding English and some of the other subjects to their work but they’re not sliding their learning of the Buddhist ceremonial prayers. And they have repeated to themselves out loud, over and over and over again, the mantrums that they are going to be using as they become fully developed in their responsibilities.

Mother Hamilton:  What goal are they attempting to reach as a result of repeating these mantrums?

Marge:  Well, each of them has a different purpose. For instance, there’s been a very popular general had just died recently and so there was this one group of mature monks who were repeating these mantrums that they’d learned as a child over and over and over again because it’s against their religion to do violence. And still they have suffered so terribly in the hands of the Chinese that they were very grateful for this man for being the guerrilla, head of the guerrilla, protection of the people. But they’re awful worried about his soul right now because he participated in violence so they’re very busy trying to get him in heaven, or into a position where his rebirth will be satisfactory. But sometimes it’s for peace for the world. It’s always an idea they have, you see, they dab in-umm

Mother Hamilton:  Do they deal mostly in powers or are they directed to the pure light of the Spirit?

Marge:  No, you see, this is what I think bothered us tremendously there because they don’t work up to the Spirit. It seems to me that Buddhism takes you right up to the higher mental plane. It doesn’t take you into a spiritual consciousness the way it has dwelt in the forms of the different religions.

Mother Hamilton:  Originally it did, with Buddha himself. He had his own Self-realization or Self-enlightenment but he went no further than that into the universal state because he felt that having attained that, he was one with everything there was. Is that not so?

Marge:  Yes, and then the followers, you see, don’t get that far. And so they turn themselves down. In fact I had the most fantastic experience with this Mrs. Betty who was giving a course in meditation. She invited us. This was to the Europeans who were there to help and she was inviting them to work and invited us to listen. And so she was, I can’t remember just how she was directing them, but to raise their consciousness as high as they could, to feel the energy lift up to their heart center, she didn’t go any further than the heart center, that’s right.

And one of the women said, “But what if I come to the place where I don’t feel a consciousness of myself but rather feel like spirit?” She said, “Oh, you must never do this, you must bring your energy right back down.” And David looked at me, horrified, and afterwards he said, “Mom, that isn’t right, is it?” But this seems to be more or less symbolic of the Buddhist-

Mother Hamilton:  But what is their purpose in wanting to bring it back down?

Marge:  Because it might get lost out somewhere and they don’t have any consciousness of spirit in this way. They are trying to fulfill the eightfold noble path and they don’t believe in God, you know, as God. And so they only believe in the Buddha, and so they can’t possibly have a meditation or an exercise that would draw them out into the world of spirit because they are anchored into the mundane world, I think.

And anyway, these boy that are studying in the Tibetan school, they just read these manuscripts out loud and here there’ll be a room maybe as big as this and about six or eight different bunk beds for the boys and each one sitting cross legged, talking out loud. It sounds like a really jumbled up deal and then they have a senior monk there who’s teaching them and then their ways of debate are terribly interesting.

One boy sits down, like you’re sitting and the other boy stands up. Now they change around but I’m the examiner and you’re the student so I say a question very fast in Tibet and then I come down like this, and you’ve got to answer me immediately, just quick. And you and I are not alone, there’s a whole string of people doing this and it’s quite-

Mother Hamilton:  Fascinating.

Marge:  Yes and Kenneth has pictures of all of this too.

Mother Hamilton:  Next time you come up, bring them all with you. Are these movies or just stills?

Marge:  They’re all stills.

Mother Hamilton:  Oh well, we have a projector and we’ll have an evening of pictures or several evenings. How many do you have?

Marge:  Well he’s taken, I think he said over 2,000 but we’ll certainly sort them. Is the invitation withdrawn?

Mother Hamilton:  No, no, no, but the invitation is extended for months while you show them to us.

Marge:  Well and he was very anxious to get all the pictures of the ashram he could and he took them with all of you in mind. And so these will probably never be shown to many other people because no one else would be interested.

Mother Hamilton:  Well perhaps sometime we could get duplicates of them.

Marge:  Oh yes.

Mother Hamilton:  That would be very helpful.

Marge:  And the ashram wants them also.

Mother Hamilton:  Oh that’s wonderful.

Marge:  We have the pictures all developed, up to Bombay, but after Bombay there was never any place that would develop pictures. That was an authorized place and in all of India you cannot get a print made from a slide.

Mother Hamilton:  Is that right?

Marge:  That’s right.

Mother Hamilton:  Did you send the rest of the pictures back home then?

Marge:  No we carried them with us.

Mother Hamilton:  Oh I see.

Marge:  We did carry… you know, this is something for everyone to know who might travel abroad. If you send developed film through the mail to your friends or to anybody except maybe Eastman Kodak or some prominent Kodak store, they will confiscate them.

Mother Hamilton:  Oh we found that out.

Marge:  And guess what, you know why that is? Because they’re afraid there’s dope in them, that is a way of smuggling dope into the country.

Mother Hamilton:  Well, we didn’t know that. Ron sent us several rolls of colored film, we never received them while we were there.

Marge:  Well that’s India, you should always register anything that goes to India because the post office employees are not hired for their honesty and they take whatever is of use, if they want it worse than the person receiving it. So it’s always a miracle if anything’s received. This is according to the Indians. But if you register mail, they’ve got to explain why they took it and then they’re not likely to take it.

Mother Hamilton:  We did receive a big box of chocolates while we were there and we never did figure out how that happened to get through because you know how they love sweets.

Well does anyone else have any questions they’d like to ask?

Congregant:  I’d like to know about that young girl at the dance. Did you find out anything more about her, do you think she will come?

Marge:  Well I hope she will; I have had one letter from her grandfather. Kenneth gave you a very accurate background story and now, if it’s God’s will, direct me to find the front place to start and I have several ideas in the South and then he is coming over, the grandfather is coming over in April I think to see what can be done. He will have to follow up.

Congregant:  I think that would be wonderful.

Marge:  She’s such a beautiful girl and she had one dance that of all the dances she gave for me, for us, were religious and they’re all religious in India but these were actually an illustration of some spiritual thought. And one of her dances that I remember the most was her trying to tempt God, as her lover, and so she is trying to get attention from God and so she boldly makes actions and then that doesn’t work so she tries to act like the drunken fool hoping God will notice her then, and then she pleads with him and the beauty with which this is all expressed and all of us who are surrendering to God and seeking to find Him can live through these. But we’re hoping so but it’s according to God’s direction.

Mother Hamilton:  So were you really serious in thinking you might bring Maturabai over?

Marge:  I have already written a letter, that happened after I saw her, later that evening I saw a man whose best friend, college friend, designed the Indian pavilion at the New York World Fair and so I suggested that this man do something about it and then later he tried to take us up and introduce us to him but he had already gone to New York because he’s on another project.

But anyway I have written a letter and I think I wrote one to somebody else about this and it would be in the hands of the Indians to do this but my feeling about Maturabai is that she has some holy songs, or chants for Gandhi and the Indian Pavilion is very fine and it shows many aspects of the Indian life. It shows some of the religious books and it shows some of the … it shows saris and it shows some of the industry and all that. The one thing that almost every…