JUL 2, 13 (1/3) .. THE INDIA SYNDROME .. PART I ..

By Cap Chastain July 2, 2013 India Omnibus

NOT A SINGLE ONE OF US EVER KNOWS FOR SURE WHAT LIES AHEAD!

Snap-your-fingers and your life changes.  Maybe your life changes a lot (you instantly and totally unexpectedly die) or maybe your life changes just a tiny bit (you gain some new-to-you but very interesting and important-to-you information) and maybe it is somewhere in between these extremes .. suddenly you trip and you fall and your life changes drastically .. just ask our friend ‘Zilla about that!

Recently I visited a Doctor’s Office where I have not been before (except one time several years ago to accompany Patti).  I pick up a magazine that I have never seen nor heard of before ..

Let’s hear it for:  DETAILS MAGAZINE dated October 2012.

I am pretty sure that not too many of you .. IF any of you .. have heard of DETAILS MAGAZINE.

Not wanting to ‘be-in-the-now’ as to precisely why I was in the Doctor’s Office I begin to glance at the cover.

Um-m-m-m .. “What is this about?” I think to myself as I notice one of the ‘cover stories’.

DEATH BY MEDITATION .. THE DANGERS OF SEEKING SPIRITUAL PERFECTION

Subtitle .. DEATH ON THE PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT

Author .. Scott Carney

And my mind drifted back to March of 1991.  I was in the YMCA in New Delhi in India and Ron .. a friend I had met in India .. asked me if I would join him in going to an ashram to study meditation.

I thought .. “Hot Dog!  Meditation!  Sign me up!”

We left the next day and ‘out and off’ the two of us went to Jaipur to the Vipassana Meditation Center.

Allow me to EMPHASIZE that this was in March of 1991!

There is some chance (5%) that today it is not like it was over twenty years ago back in 1991.  There is a better chance (95%) it is still the same!

The ‘course’ was a ten-day course.  The fee: no cost. Fee-free!

THE RULES:

No eye-contact.  No talking. You could LISTEN!  9PM bedtime. You ‘slept’ on a very marginal (slate?) surface.  4AM awake. Meditate. Mid-morning some milk and rice.  Meditate.  Mid-afternoon a piece or two of fruit.  Meditate.

I said to myself:  Sensory deprivation.  Food deprivation.  Sleep deprivation.  No exercise.  WHO WOULDN’T SEE-THE-WHITE-LIGHT AFTER TEN DAYS OF THIS!

I left.  Ron stayed for the full ten days.  Then Ron re-enlisted for I think a second far-more-intense forty day session.  Ron loved it. Ron freaked out over it in a positive way.  I freaked out over it in a negative way.  As in NO WAY! Mister Sheriff I am outta-heah!

(CONTINUE DOWN TO PART II BELOW)