Papaji, when I first met Him, He took me into the house. He was wearing, what He used to wear in the evening—if you were ever with Him in the evenings, He’d wear a plaid lunghi and a banyan, or just a white T-shirt, a white undershirt like the Indian men wear, the Indian men wear. I walk in—a small family house, they’re there. He tells me “Sit down, would you like some chai?” He asked me how I got there. I said, “Oh, some chai would be lovely.” And He’s farting, He’s belching, He’s just an ordinary man, it looks like. And I’m thinking, I’m falling in love with Him immediately because He was so unpretentious. He had no pretensions whatsoever. And I thought this is fabulous. I didn’t know was He an enlightened man or what the hell He is… But I trusted my friends, and I was just falling in love with Him, immediately.

Then He asked me a bit about my past. I told Him I had been to Arunachala. He knew that. And He said, “When you were living at Ramana Ashram, did you ever have any thought that you could be liberated?” I said, “Every single day. Every single day, I had no doubt of the possibility and it could be any day.” And He said, “Very good, that’s when we should’ve met.” He said, “Too bad, too bad…” (laughs). You know, when we should’ve, in some ways He was right. Then He said, “Anyway, we won’t work today. We won’t do anything today,” and He looked at me and He said, “My way is not the way of effort. You need make no effort to be who you already are.” And I went, “Oh, my God…”. “And it takes no time or distance to be who you already are.”

So, this guy who said, “My teachings will start tomorrow,” you know, “Our work will…” Boom, right away… (makes inhaling sound) Hmmm… Didn’t know what to make of it, but it affected me, and the effect is what I made of it (laughs). Look at it… He said, “Okay, I’m going to go into the park this afternoon, by the Gandhi Statue and the post office. There’s three Indian men there who think they are my disciples. I have no disciples and I am not a Guru, let me tell you that right now.” Oh okay, I don’t know, it’s the first day I’m meeting Him and He’s telling me this stuff, okay… And so, He said, “Would you like to come?” And I said, “Of course, I’m here for You.”

And Papaji didn’t really have a teaching. He did and He didn’t… So, I go to the park and I’m thinking, “Wow… How wonderful”. And then we sit on one of the stone benches at the park, the three men are there sitting on the grass, and I sit on the grass beside them. He puts His hand on the bench for me to come and sit beside Him on the bench. And then He’s talking to these three men. They’re talking in Hindi, and my Hindi was pretty well okay enough so I could follow most of it. And then all of a sudden, He turns to me and He looks at me and says, “When there’s no past and there’s no future, who are you? No past and no future, who are you?” (Makes inhaling sound) And I get a little nervous, I remember, and my whole body starts to vibrate and I feel this, an explosion inside, just an explosion, and the mind disappears.

My wife-to-be and I had had a terrible fight, we broke up; I had been involved with another teacher, I had a fight with him and we broke up. I’d had all these fights and everything was broken. So, I wrote to the master Poonjaji, the guru Murray had told me about.

At that time, he wasn’t famous, he didn’t have a group of people around him. I wrote to him and he welcomed me to come and visit him. He was living in his son’s house in Lucknow and he had a small bedroom upstairs. Murray took me there to meet him. He’s a very commanding, powerful presence, but he was just sitting alone on his bed and there was nothing happening. I saw this imposing figure with his extraordinary eyes and I sat down on the floor and I wanted to express my independence.

I told him I didn’t have any expectations. I was trying to be a big shot, and he replied, “That’s good.” Murray and I asked the Master how much effort you have to make if you want to be free. Papaji whispered, he said, “You don’t have to make any effort to be free.” You don’t have to make any effort to be free? What does that mean? I was into yoga and meditation and effort and I was going to do this, this was going to happen. Then he says you don’t have to make any effort to be free. I couldn’t understand it intellectually and the minute he said these words, I had a vision.

The vision was water flowing down the side of a mountain and I realised in that instant that my own true nature was like that water, ever freely flowing, ever unobstructed. I realised in that moment that unenlightenment was only a thought.

I had always been free, that was my own true nature. I had been looking at the ground for about ten seconds during this insight and then he said, “That’s it!” I looked up and I burst out laughing and I was like, “Oh! My God, who is this guy, who is this magic man?” It was unbelievable. I spent three weeks there; Murray left. There was one other fellow there. But I spent most of the day alone in the presence of the most extraordinary man I had ever met. I would go to his room and we would sit quietly together. We would have tea, we’d go for walks, we would have idlies (savoury rice cakes) in some place in the street and we would walk and we would talk and it was very easy. It was very spontaneous and natural and he was so kind and so generous, so gracious, so easy and so loving, so, so loving.

He answered all my questions. I had a lot of questions and I kept a diary at the time because I knew something important was happening. But I was going in and out. At one moment I thought this is the most extraordinary man I have ever met, I’m the luckiest person in the world to have this time alone with him. Then I would start doubting, saying he is a crazy old man, he doesn’t know what he is talking about, he’s a farce. He kept on calling himself the Master. And of course, I would always go in and touch his feet as is the Indian custom, but I felt uncomfortable. I thought this guy’s got a big ego because he is always talking about how great he is. At the same time, I thought he was extraordinary. I had many powerful moments of insight and clarity and breakthroughs when I was there.

After leaving and travelling to Rishikesh for three weeks, I flew back to Lucknow and then I fell at Papaji’s feet and I burst into tears. I had been such an arrogant person before. I fell at his feet sobbing and he burst out laughing! When I met him this time, he thought he was dying. He wasn’t well and he thought he was going to live for a few more months. So, the next day he said a few things to me that I’ll never forget. He had so much power as a human being that when he got into a certain mood it was like being in the presence of a God, a living God. The spiritual gravitas of his being was so profound. He and I were alone. He looked at me and he said, “Andrew, I want you to accept responsibility for the work.”

I didn’t know what it meant. And I didn’t have an answer. I just said okay. There was a gravitas, there was a heaviness about it. And then his exact words were, “I’ve taught you everything I have to teach. I don’t want you to rely on me for anything.” I listened to that and then I left.

A couple of other Westerners had also found this Baba. One of them was Murray Feldman, and Murray said, “Well, you know, the only other Baba I’ve met in India who is like this one is my guru, Papaji.” I knew I was going to have to come down out of the mountains soon, and I had always wanted to meet the Great Beings. So, I made an arrangement with Murray. I said, “Yes, I want to meet this Papaji.” He said, “Well, Papaji is going to come up to Haridwar, and you can just meet him down there. Go down and get a hotel room.” So, I got a hotel room in Haridwar, on the banks of the Ganga there.

After a few days, I got a knock on the door, and it was Murray and Andrew Cohen, who had shown up at my door. I had never met Andrew before. They took me down to the Ganga, and it was there that Andrew revealed that he was enlightened and giving Satsang, and that we should all go up to Rishikesh and wait for Papaji there. So, I could only say yes. That’s a whole story in itself—hanging out with Andrew at the very beginning of his teaching career. But at some point, a Swami who had once been with Swami Muktananda and I had some kind of issue with Andrew. Somehow, we managed to get Papaji on the phone and say, “We want to come and see you, wherever you are,” which was New Delhi.

So, we made a midnight escape to New Delhi, which included a bedbug-ridden nightmare in a hotel in Haridwar—or somewhere on the way, I don’t remember exactly where. And so, we met Papaji in New Delhi, at Sharma Photo Studios, which I guess was owned by some of his family. Every day he would tell us, “You can come at this time, and then you can come again at this time,” and we would spend two or three hours with him, and then he would kick us out. That was how it was. Sometimes I had him to myself, and sometimes I shared him with the Swami. It was an incredible blessing to have somebody like Papaji all to yourself.