A picture of Baba Muktananda popped up on my feed this morning, and a flood of memories and writing poured out. I was a devoted follower of Baba from    1977 to 1985 (he died in   1982) I went to his South Fallsburg Ashram many times, quit my job to go to his Miami Ashram, and sold my house to go to his Ashram in Ganeshpuri, India. My wife and I were remarried by Baba in 1979. Here are some thoughts I wrote earlier this morning.

Baba’s eyes were luminous windows in which you trembled as if standing before an abyss. You knew if he looked at you intently you would die. The little mind was caught in a terrible oscillation: Look at me..look at me…oh, don’t look at me..don’t look.

In 1979 I remarried my wife that I had divorced. While meditating in Baba’s Miami Ashram, my egoic Thinker became a moth in a burst of light, and afterwards in a state of most excellent peace I knew this was my course— and my life was radically changed. Baba’s ashrams were an intermediate space between heaven and earth, a Barnum and Baily Circus Tent where anything could happen, and you just didn’t know what was down and what was up. Here in this safe tent gods and man walked together.

Baba Muktananda was a living metaphor where opposites met and held themselves in embrace. I am Baba; I am not Baba…I am both at the same time…and this is the magical power generator where you can hold two logical imperatives that are categorically opposite together at the same time. This..this is the SELF where the One is the many and the many is the One. In the Guru Gita that was changed every morning..this mythic Self is the Guru….a metaphor in which you can be the guru and not the guru at the same time..

In this Metaphor one’s Center is restored….but if you slip to one side or the other…the center cannot hold. If you make the center in the guru or the center in Me…the union of heaven and earth is destroyed.

After Baba died in 1982 I tried to hold Baba as my center, but the center could not hold, so I threw all my Baba stuff in the dump, the wooden guru sandals he blessed, everything, but saving a few pictures and a stack of his magazine (fortunately). And so without my Baba I set out to find my Self alone.

As so today, like here Baba pops up in my life and all the memories come flooding back. I recalculate the powerful effect he had on my life, how he both saved and destroyed me at the same time.