Ash and Lil in India - Part 5 - Thom's Friends

Standing there near Thom on the banks of the Ganga, even the pebbles seem sacred. I pluck up my courage and speak to him for the first time.

“Guruji, is it okay if I take three pebbles? One for Lil, one for Gigi, and one for me.” I don’t, of course, tell him who they are for. He says yes, and I say, “Really?” and he says, “If I say yes, you can take the pebbles.” And then, as I am walking over the millions of pebbles, I think what a stupid thing it was to ask my newly appointed guru if I could take some pebbles. But Lil says it’s good — if you make them sacred, they are sacred.

I’m not even sure if Thom is my guru, as he says the guru chooses us. The guru is the dog that wags the tail. Thom says he represents worthy consciousness; when worthy enquiry is made, the guru arrives. “How long do we want to play around in the playground of ignorance?” Thom asks, looking at me.

Thom points to the pristine, gurgling, swirling water and says bathing is not optional in Vedic tradition, but a sacred duty — to bathe every 24 hours. He says he was such a good swimmer it was his job to swim across the river twice a day with messages. A family would watch him swim, and the father of the family was his close friend. Now the son of the father, who is called Deepak, watches over us, as he says Thom is family.

As we walk through the ashram, Thom points at cell number 9 and says, “This was mine,” and I take a photograph of it and feel its specialness. But then one of his disciples whispers that it was number 11. I say, “Oh no,” and someone says, “It’s not important; the answer lies in the things you get wrong.”

We sit on the roof of the Maharishi’s house, where Thom would sit with him all day and night after his 500 days. The Maharishi would only doze for two hours a night and would want his disciples, who never left his side, to ask him questions. He would mumble, “Ask, ask, ask.” enlightenment is a mastery over ignorance  and  requires worthy enquiry. 

Thom tells us he was a friend of Sri Tat Wale Baba, who is the person he most admires . Wale Baba wanted to bring humanity and all religions together for peace in the world. He was one of the greatest yogis of the 20th century. He was over 100 but looked 40, was six feet five inches tall or more, and had a pet cobra that was 12 feet long, who lived in his cave with him. Whenever he heard the sound of a chainsaw, he moved, as he knew intrusion was imminent.

He believed eternal happiness can only be found in the Self (bliss) rather than in the world. Thom took an English journalist who was interviewing him to meet Wale Baba, who lived in a cave in Rika. The journalist asked him to bless her beads, and he put out his foot. She placed her beads on his foot, and he blessed them, then gave them back with his foot. She asked him to visit her if he ever came to London, and he replied, “I am London.”

He was shot dead in 1974 by a jealous man living nearby who wanted to be a saint himself. But in honour of the great guru, who never spoke ill of anyone, the murder is not spoken of.

Thom tells us of his friend, a little forest yogi, a sadhu, who has no house but lives in the forest and eats grass, weeds, and bark. He came to visit Thom on his return to India and said, “I knew you were back because of my internal net. The last time I saw you was in 1969. Could I have some Indian food?”  He did yoga with Thom’s group, holding Thom’s hand all the time, told everyone Thom ran the ashram when he was there, then said it was time to go back into the forest — and away he went.

I am writing all this down and Thom points to me and says, “See, that lovely lady has the sense to take notes.” Little does he know nothing usually comes from them. I am so proud I walk away in a daze and leave my bag. A lovely man called Matt goes back to look for it, and when I am sad that he can’t find it, he says I only lose things because I have a beautiful unattachment to material things. I see that my faults are only faults if I see them like that and decide to reclassify them. 

Lil has come to look for me and we miss the group photo.

In 1972, Thom’s Maharishi founded a new ashram north of Delhi for 20,000 disciples, so the ashram we see today is largely deserted, though some reconstruction work is taking place, as tourists like to see where the Beatles went.

In 1992, the Maharishi was visited by some people from the Netherlands who said to him, “Maharishi, we have built a special ashram for you in the Netherlands, following all the principles of Ayurveda.” They showed the great guru these marvellous pictures of what they had built for him. All his disciples were confident he would never leave his ashram, but the Maharishi liked the look of this beautiful ashram and said, “I will always follow charm,” and he upped sticks the next day and went and lived out the rest of his days in the Netherlands.

The moral of the story always follow the charm!

Tat Wale Baba: Rishi of the Himalayas

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Thoms mentor, who hosted the Beatles at his Ashram in Rishikesh

The Ganges that Thom swam accross twice a day.