Journal

Bombay Beedi Baba

"In 1975, I met my Guru, Gandhiji. Gandhiji was a great jyotishi and also an enlightened spiritual adept. When I received my first Jyotish reading, I didn't even believe in astrology. I was curious, but skeptical. I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly was not prepared for what he told me in that reading. He said, "You will become an astrologer and travel around the world many times."

The Mark of a Great Jyotishi

Some people say it is the mark of a great jyotishi when his predictions come true. In this case, I guess my teacher wasn't  going to take any chances, because he followed his prediction by offering to make me his assistant and to teach me astrology. I accepted his offer thinking that I would then go to London, which is where his office was located. Instead, Gandhiji took me to Bombay where we stayed in his flat for a week. At the end of the week he said, "I have to go to London but I will be back soon. In the meantime, you can read the astrology books in my library." He came back five months later!

Although this style of teaching seems rather unorthodox, I guess it worked in my case, because from the moment Gandhiji left, I was consumed with an intense desire to learn astrology. I spent more than twelve hours a day poring through his books on Vedic astrology, doing chart after chart, and teaching myself the basics.

There was a German man, Herman, also staying at Gandhiji's flat. Herman spent most of his time writing a book, but he would periodically take the train into central Bombay when he had writer?s block or when he got bored. One day Herman went into Bombay to meet a saint he had heard about. When he returned he told me about the saint, saying that he seemed to be a great soul. I have always been interested in meeting great yogis and asked Herman to take me to see him. Herman refused, saying that he was too busy. To make matters worse, Herman took a rather condescending tone and told me that I really couldn't go see him on my own because this saint, who they called "Beedi Baba," lived in the red light district, which was a very old and complicated section of Bombay. He told me that I would never find the saint because this area was a maze of narrow lanes and alleyways.

Of course, I had just finished reading several books on prashna, so I cast a chart for the time of hearing about the saint. There was a nice ithashala yoga between the neechabhanga ruler of the first house (the questioner) and the ruler of the ninth house (the significator of spiritual teachers). I immediately discounted Herman?s admonition and set out for Bombay on my own.

As I shuffled through the crowded narrow lanes of inner Bombay, I wondered if Herman might have been right. How could anyone find his way in this pandemonium? I had entered a world of chaos filled with utterly dilapidated three-story buildings, honking horns, cows roaming the streets aimlessly, the smell of incense, spices, urine, and samosas cooking on street vendors' carts. Bombay was a shipwreck, out of which, ironically, emanated an intangible, yet strangely magnetic energy. I found myself powerfully attracted to this ancient city, and threw away the feeble directions Herman had given me. I knew I was in the general vicinity of Beedi Baba's house. There were only around seven hundred thousand people in this area. It was obvious; I would just ask someone for directions! As odd as this seems, this method of getting around in India usually works out pretty well. I saw a man doing laundry, ironing a shirt with an old fashioned iron. He was filling the back of the iron with hot coals from his stove. "Beedi Baba kaha hai," I asked in my rudimentary Hindi. "That way," the man responded with a smile, enjoying the fact that I had spoken to him in his native tongue.

For about a half an hour, I wove in and out as I walked, bumping against the throngs of pedestrians who filled the busy lanes, repeating the same question periodically. I was enjoying the fact that I had completely lost myself in the belly of this ancient city, and couldn?t even think of how I would find my way back. Yet many of the people I asked seemed to know Beedi Baba. I was beginning to wonder, however, if they were just trying to get rid of me by pretending to know Beedi Baba and giving me a bogus direction to follow. I asked again at a flower cart, "Beedi Baba kaha hai." "His house is there," the flower seller said, pointing across the street to an old building.

I jogged the remaining few yards to the teacher?s door, in order to dodge a rickshaw. The door was open so I poked my head in and said, "I am looking for Beedi Baba." A middle-aged lady dressed in a royal blue sari beckoned for me to come in and pointed to a ladder-like staircase. I entered the dark building and started up the steep ladder towards the second floor where I could see a doorway. Halfway up the ladder the lady in the blue sari raised her voice and started chattering at me in Hindi. Confused, I turned around, not understanding what she was saying. A man said, "Your shoes, your shoes, leave them down here." Embarrassed by forgetting to take off my shoes, I turned completely around and began my hurried descent. Unfortunately, the darkness, pitch of the ladder, and my impatience combined at that moment and my foot slipped from the ladder, causing me to half tumble, half slide down the ladder, clamoring to the floor in a painful heap.

I apologized to the lady and the man as I picked myself off the floor and painfully removed my shoes. I climbed the ladder-stairs once again, and entered the door at the top. As I entered, I found myself at the front of an attic-like room, filled with about twenty-five people. At the front of the room a very old man, with failing health, sat in silence. He looked at me for a moment as if he was deciding whether to let me in, after I had made so much racket on the stairs. After an awkward moment, he pointed to the back of the room and said, "Sit there."

I made my way to the back, edging by the sitting devotees, half of whom sat with their eyes closed. I found a place and sat cross-legged on the floor. Beedi Baba said nothing, he just sat, eyes open, gazing out the window down at the street. After several minutes he mumbled something to his translator in Hindi. "Baba is saying there is nothing other than the self, the self alone is," he repeated for the group. Again a long silence as Baba sat gazing. My first reaction was simply that I found it interesting that this man did not speak much. He was not giving a talk. I was aware, however, that something was happening which was not on the level of speech. I could feel a powerful silence in the room, much like the feeling of being with my own teacher, Gandhiji. My agitation from falling down the stairs seemed to disappear and I felt a sense of peace. We sat there like this for the next hour until finally Beedi Baba dismissed the group. "Go now," he said.

While returning to the train station, I reflected on what had just happened. In the middle of one of the most impoverished cities in the world and in the midst of utter pandemonium I had found a pocket of profound peace and tranquility, which somehow made the chaos actually make sense. I returned to my teacher?s flat on the outskirts of Bombay and continued my astrological studies. A few years later I picked up a book, I Am That, by a famous saint I had heard about named Nisargadatta Maharaj. This man had been a cigarette shopkeeper, who had an inner awakening. There was a picture of this man inside the book cover. It was Beedi Baba! A "beedi" in Hindi is a cigarette.