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In a thread below
Nigel analysed the psychological aspects of
darshan. Chuck added his two cents about celebrity
darshan and recounted the time he got a contact
high from Robin Williams. I was there too but I
didn't get the ''shaktipat a la Mork'' because I
didn't really know who he was not being a Yank.
That got me to thinking about name recognition
and darshan. Before I got K I was living with a
friend of mine (who also did not have K) in Golders
Green in north London. He came home one day and
told me how he had met this girl at the tube
station and she had invited him home. He thought it
was for sex. When they got to her house, she asked
him to wait in the living room and went upstairs.
While he sat waiting a little Indian teenager
walked in and said Hi and sat down in a chair near
the window.
The two of them sat in silence for a while. My
friend was not the type to make small talk and
neither was he uneasy with the kid because his wife
was Indian (like me, they also had to escape South
Africa in the sixties because of politics.) The
girl came back and threw herself on the floor in
front of the kid and kissed his feet. The little
Indian kid was Guru Maharaji.
I asked my friend if he had gotten a contact
high from the guru and he said no. I pressed
further because all my other friends were getting K
and I did not like what I had heard about him but
could not ignore him. ''Did you feel anything?'' I
asked.
''No, what should I have felt?'' he
answered.
He did not know that little Rawat was the Lord
of the Universe and therefore did not see that.
Even Balyouguesswhat himself has said as much when
he told the story about talking with his neighbor
across the fence. ''He doesn't have darshan. He
just sees me as his friendly neighbor,'' Rev Rawat
once recounted.
Rev Rawat is the only celebrity whose feet I
have ever kissed. I've met others. I catered George
Lucas' daughter's birthday in Marin and was
tongue-tied when he came into the kitchen to thank
me (and pay me.) It was 1980 and Star Wars still
held a special place in my heart. I was awed and he
was so unpretentious and friendly.
I've had any minor celebrities in the
restaurant. Because of my libertarian friends I've
had famous political writers and academics. In the
opera world I have hosted the family reunion of a
famous soprano and fed a host of other singers and
musicians. In the culinary world I have entertained
many a famous chef come to steal my recipes.
And, because it's a veggie joint, I've had
famous animal rights activists, ''sustainable
growth proponents'' and also plenty of New Age
pundits and swamis. I've also met Governor
''Moonbeam'' Brown and Tom Hayden. The only one
from who I got a contact high was the diva. She was
the only one whom I admired, that I was in awe of.
The others' accomplishments did not impress me.
So, for me, there have to be at least two
aspects to darshan: name recognition and
admiration. With Rawat I got a real good dose.
Wasn't his family name GOD? He might as well have
been called Prempal God. And who does not admire
GOD?
Tonight in the restaurant, two quite ordinary
young women arrived after the usual early Sunday
rush. They had a reservation for 8pm. The first two
hours had been a conveyor belt operation of feeding
families with squealing rug-rats as is usual for
Sunday. I had not seen the two women arrive because
I was taking a tea break at my desk in the wine
cellar and looking at FV on my computer when Andy
came down to get some wine.
Andy was hunting so I asked what he was looking
for. He answered that he was looking for our most
expensive and oldest wine, a Plaisir de Merle
cabernet sauvignon from Paarl. He added that he was
surprised that two such ordinary young women would
order a bottle of wine that cost ten times what one
would expect them to buy. I rejoindered that they
may be off-duty waiters at a fancy restaurant and
had a taste for la dolce vita. They had assured him
that price was no object.
Chuck took their dinner order and wondered if
they had been in before because one woman's face
was familiar. No new customers came after nine and
I came up from the cellar to close down. Most of
the customers started leaving.
At ten Andy came to me with a credit card and
said, ''Isn't this a movie star?'' I took a look
and answered, ''Yes, let me go and see.''
I went into the dining room and found myself
shouting very loudly: ''Oh my god! Yes it is!'' The
movie star and her lady friend were by now the only
customers left so I gushed as only a fag can about
how happy I was to see her and how much I enjoyed
her movies and that I knew that she was a brainy
person eventhough some of her parts were not much
better than trailer trash and that I was a snob and
didn't really like movie people.
She was upset by that so I had to backtrack and
use a bit of tactful charm but I soon realized that
she was feeling no pain and seemed tickled that I
was so tactless. We talked for the next hour about
her being a vegan and animal rights activist, joked
about sleeping her way to the top, girl-talked
about astrology, yoga, Brendan Frasier, Kenneth
Branagh, adopting special needs dogs (I have five
and she has six) Doris Day, another dog nut (she
owns an elegant dog hotel just south of SF in
Carmel), and her new boyfriend who is the first one
not to mind dog hair in the bed.
I'm not saying her name because she comes up to
SF regularly and has promised to send all her pals
and become a regular and I need to be able to look
her in the face without feeling that I have
betrayed her confidence. Then they left and we
closed up and came home and talked about it.
Chuck, who had been unimpressed by her before he
knew who it was (she was looking pretty funky with
no make and dressed in jeans and a sweater and
obviously had a bad hair day) now got some movie
star darshan as she walked past him to leave and he
could hardly look at her. Suddenly, with name
recognition, she became a princess, Hollywood
royalty.
I thought to myself that I had not gotten
celebrity darshan but I had. I realized that I was
feeling very alert and full of energy. It could
have been because she told me that she could not
believe that I was old as I said I was - flattery
will do that to me. But there was no getting away
from it: she was a celebrity whom I admired.
Rev Rawat did once say, as is pointed out in
another thread here somehwere, that darshan worked
because we thought it would. Yes, what bigger
celebrity can you get than GOD and who more to
admire? When I stopped seeing him as god the
shaktipat no longer worked.
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