she’s having an astral love affair with Pericles. Thirty years ago she and a friend took a few hundred dollars and went to India on a sort of lark. She came back strange and holy and wild. But she has a real power, and she is building a strong following. Anyway her leaning is toward celibacy. Shooting the juice up the spine instead of out the lower plumbing. And that’s valid for those who are in sympathy with her. What I’m trying to say is that there is no one way to God, since God is all there is. Only God exists. Everything we know is just one or another modification of that eternal consciousness, that infinite energy. To know God you only have to become yourself totally. And that, as you know, can take a dazzling variety of forms.”
“So you can kind of do whatever you like?” Martin asked.
“Sure,” Robert replied, “so long as you know who you are. If you think that you are this individual named Martin Gordis, so tall, so many pounds, then whatever you do is a product of delusion. But when you know, not just intellectually, but throughout your entire being, that you are the universe and all that it sustains, then you are free. Because at that point total freedom and total lawfulness are one and the same.”
“More paradoxes,” Martin muttered.
“Nothing but,” Robert said.
“So are you at that stage?” Martin asked. “Is that why you can be homosexual?”
“Not at all,” Robert laughed, as though it were the most amusing thing he’d heard all day. “Although there is no discrepancy between enlightenment and being gay. Babba says that when you are clear, there is no fixed form that you must take. But until you are clear, you should enjoy the form you are in, understanding it, rendering it harmless to others, while the deeper process of understanding works inside you. When you attain realization, then you may continue in that way or not.” Robert laughed again. “When I went to Babba with my homosexuality, I was ready to give it up, you know, to make a big sacrifice in order to be saintly. But all he did was to wrinkle his nose. Then he leaned forward and said, ‘You find pleasure in the hole where the shit comes out?’ Well! That coming from this holy man, in a thick accent yet! I almost fell over. But he repeated the question and stared at me until I nodded my head. He looked around at the others in the room, mock consternation on his face, and then launched into a long story about a monk who had a binding passion for mangoes.”
The two men walked along in silence for half a block before Martin realized that Robert had finished the tale. “That’s it?” he asked.
“It was enough,” Robert replied. “It put the whole thing right in its proper perspective.”
“And you had to do all this in front of a room filled with people?”
“But don’t you see,” Robert said quickly, “that he took the thing I was hugging to my chest as my own private problem and put it in such a humorous and wide context that the thing just fell away. What Babba was saying was that sticking your cock in another man’s ass is a rather bizarre bit of behavior, but no more or less remarkable than someone’s having a passion for a certain kind of tropical fruit. It isn’t the fruit or the asshole which provides the impediment, but one’s attachment to the thing, to the sensation, to the need. And when it was exposed to all the others in the room, everyone had a chance to examine his or her own pet problem, whether it be drugs or booze or romantic love or money or fear.”
“So he gave you permission to do whatever you wanted sexually?”
“No, he let me know that he wasn’t going to take the responsibility for my choices. He’s not a leader or a teacher in the conventional sense. He’s a guru, which means that he does nothing but show us the living reality of God in human form. When you see that, then your life begins to change, even though it might appear on the outside that you are doing
“So you can kind of do whatever you like?” Martin asked.
“Sure,” Robert replied, “so long as you know who you are. If you think that you are this individual named Martin Gordis, so tall, so many pounds, then whatever you do is a product of delusion. But when you know, not just intellectually, but throughout your entire being, that you are the universe and all that it sustains, then you are free. Because at that point total freedom and total lawfulness are one and the same.”
“More paradoxes,” Martin muttered.
“Nothing but,” Robert said.
“So are you at that stage?” Martin asked. “Is that why you can be homosexual?”
“Not at all,” Robert laughed, as though it were the most amusing thing he’d heard all day. “Although there is no discrepancy between enlightenment and being gay. Babba says that when you are clear, there is no fixed form that you must take. But until you are clear, you should enjoy the form you are in, understanding it, rendering it harmless to others, while the deeper process of understanding works inside you. When you attain realization, then you may continue in that way or not.” Robert laughed again. “When I went to Babba with my homosexuality, I was ready to give it up, you know, to make a big sacrifice in order to be saintly. But all he did was to wrinkle his nose. Then he leaned forward and said, ‘You find pleasure in the hole where the shit comes out?’ Well! That coming from this holy man, in a thick accent yet! I almost fell over. But he repeated the question and stared at me until I nodded my head. He looked around at the others in the room, mock consternation on his face, and then launched into a long story about a monk who had a binding passion for mangoes.”
The two men walked along in silence for half a block before Martin realized that Robert had finished the tale. “That’s it?” he asked.
“It was enough,” Robert replied. “It put the whole thing right in its proper perspective.”
“And you had to do all this in front of a room filled with people?”
“But don’t you see,” Robert said quickly, “that he took the thing I was hugging to my chest as my own private problem and put it in such a humorous and wide context that the thing just fell away. What Babba was saying was that sticking your cock in another man’s ass is a rather bizarre bit of behavior, but no more or less remarkable than someone’s having a passion for a certain kind of tropical fruit. It isn’t the fruit or the asshole which provides the impediment, but one’s attachment to the thing, to the sensation, to the need. And when it was exposed to all the others in the room, everyone had a chance to examine his or her own pet problem, whether it be drugs or booze or romantic love or money or fear.”
“So he gave you permission to do whatever you wanted sexually?”
“No, he let me know that he wasn’t going to take the responsibility for my choices. He’s not a leader or a teacher in the conventional sense. He’s a guru, which means that he does nothing but show us the living reality of God in human form. When you see that, then your life begins to change, even though it might appear on the outside that you are doing
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