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Though Atmananda eloquently described the balance between the spiritual and the mundane, I knew from years of firsthand experience yet found it difficult to admit that a Mahatma Gandhi he was not. "I like the book very much," I replied. "Would you like to meet Shirer?" she offered. William L. Shirer was the only correspondent sent by an American newspaper to cover India's revolution.
I wanted to tell Shirer how, in 1984, I had helped Atmananda through a bad LSD trip and how, as he was "coming down," I had observed his opposing personalities reassert themselves. I wanted to tell him that Atmananda seemed to be getting progressively worse. And I wanted to tell him how Atmananda had persuaded one disciple that he and I would be forever locked in a battle over mystical power.
I was still crying. Inside the van I saw my fish-net "bulletin board" which reminded me where I had been and where I was going. On it I saw an article about a bicycle ride I had taken two years before with Nunatak. I saw the cover of a book about Mohandas K. Gandhi, autographed by its author, William L. Shirer. I saw a brochure from the Peace Corps and a miniature American flag.
I came to believe that I could find these things by studying with a sorcerer in a desert in Mexico, by gazing at an underexposed photograph of a *fully* enlightened Indian man, and by following the etiquette of a warm, funny, brilliant, persona-flipping man with a Ph.D. in English. I later looked to Gandhi and to William Shirer for answers.
The weather had cleared since I had started pedaling west from Walden Pond five days before, but headwinds continued to press both the doggie-carrier and bicycle-trailer as if I were tugging a parachute. Contributing little to the weight of the rig was a book by William Shirer on Mahatma Gandhi. Disillusioned, but not yet ready to live without heroes, I actively sought a replacement for Atmananda.
I pictured Shirer as a young man, contemplating the life and lessons of Mahatma Gandhi. I also pictured him observing uniformed men with swastikas, bent on genocide. I imagined him accepting both good and bad in people, for only by cultivating acceptance did I imagine him harvesting peace.
The disciple was my brother. When Shirer answered the door his large, bright forehead and serene countenance made him appear intellectually and spiritually advanced, and I had an uncanny feeling that something of the Mahatma himself peered out at me through those eighty-three-year-old eyes. "What can I do for you?" he asked me.
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