He was the General Secretary of the main and only ashram in city I lived in.  I wasn't dedicated enough to actually live in the ashram and have sex with sisters in the attic or the basement or the huge gymnaisum building in the back of the ashram.  So, I was in the dreaded "pre-ashram".  Well, it was tough being in the pre-ashram because it was our "duty" to drive across town every night to the ashram to attend satsang and then stick around and sing that long, long dirge and then get home at midnight to meditate and then awake at 5:30 a.m. to sing arti and meditate.  Well, it was pretty grueling and it only got worse after a local premie, Greg Vizzone put an ad in Divine Times inviting every nutcase across the nation to come to live in our premie house, which he didn't live in because he lived at home with his parents.  And the reason Greg wanted people to come was so they could be "like a hair on the body of Guru Maharaji" and go to Chiang Mai in Thailand to set up a premie house to spread Knowledge and smoke the finest opium and to make use of the exquite prostitutes there.  Well, along comes an complete headcase premie ex-VietNam vet named Marshal (not our Marshal the Hated Liberal) who shows up and makes camp in our premie house while everyone is eating dinner he is in the satsang hall giving satsang to the walls and the plants.  And more people came.  And more and more.  We were sleeping 6 to a room and I remember one night waking up with some guys elbow in my face.  Oh, yeah, on those foam pads that we all called beds.  Lovely!

And there were other problems at our premie house too.  We were in a drug (heroin) infested neighborhood right next to some really nasty projects and the women would be chased home and accosted in the vestibule.  And then there was good old Steve Lavender, who really should have stayed home with his parents and stayed on his meds.  And thanks Steve for taking that plastic garbage bag that contained my laundry out to the garbage cans - I had way too many nice clothes.  And thanks, Dad, for letting me charge that pack of 6 underwear on your credit card.

So, I really didn't grow up living like that.  And no matter how many times I sang arti or no matter how many hours of poking at my eye balls I did I still felt like this was a really, really crazy situation and I really either wanted to go home or move into the ashram where I "knew" it must be more sane.

So, I made an appointment with David Smith, Secretary General of the Ashram.

I met with him in this aged and very ornate mansion that the premies had bought in a part of town that was very much an isolated island in a sea of crime and ghetto.  I explained to David that I really loved Maharaji and I really wanted to move into the ashram and that the pre-ashram was driving me crazy.  I forgot what David Smith said but he didn't say much and he ended whatever he said with, "We need to remember Holy Name" at which point he started to loudly breathe in and out, in and out, in and out.  So, there we were looking at each other breathing in and out.  And I knew that I wasn't going to be allowed to join the ashram and all I could do was surrender by breathing in and out.  The breathing session lasted for nearly 10 minutes.  I think that David Smith was relieved because he could so easily deal with my problem by not saying anything at all and instead diverting it to a mini-eyes-open group meditation session.  I think he had much bigger problems than some dumb naive kid from the suburbs like me.

Bhole Shri!