Chapter 14

Kelly threw himself into the business of running his small Zen yoga studio.  He worked from 6am till 9am, took the afternoons off, and then ran classes again from 6pm till 9pm.  The pain of Brenda’s leaving was fresh in his mind, as was his confusion at his reaction to her. 

The last time he had gone to India it had changed his life, and so Kelly thought it was time for him to make another trip.  Perhaps this would provide the clarity he sought.  His plan was to spend several months studying under Pattabi Jois, the master yogi in Ashtanga who had few equals.  Life in India was cheap by American standards, and so he knew he would be able to stretch his modest savings a long way there.  He rented a spacious apartment near Pattabi’s house where the master lived and trained.  Pattabi was a real character in his own right, a yogi of almost unparalleled realization and skill, and not above the occasional demonstration of his humanness. 

Kelly flew to India and then journeyed to MySore, located in the southwest of the country.  Patttabi Jois taught out of his modest home, not out of some huge ashram like Kelly had envisioned.  The orientation talk was held in the small basement studio of Jois’ home, where a dozen or so Western students, including Kelly, had gathered.  Pattabi explained a little about how they would train and what they could expect, and afterwards pulled Kelly aside.  “One of my nieces will be cleaning your apartment for you, and cooking your meals.  You will pay her $1 a week.” 

Kelly scoffed at this.  “I can afford to pay her more than $1 a week.”   

Pattabi shook his head sternly, and wagged his finger in Kelly’s face.  “This is a radiant, beautiful Hindu goddess who is doing this service for you, and for me.  Do not take this happy creature and convert her, with your morality, into a capitalist pig by giving her a single extra dollar.”  Kelly’s mouth popped open.  He was, after all, a man who had given a near stranger $8,000 on whim — a kingly sum in the early 1970’s  “Our culture,” Pattabi continued, wagging his finger more aggressively, “Is not your culture.  Our culture has been in place for thousands of years, and it has worked for a reason.  We do not need or want your values here.  We will come to your country when we want to learn your ways.  But you are here, to learn from us.  So learn.”  He waited until Kelly’s eyes registered the profound truth of what he had just said, then turned and left.   

The days were beautifully simple.  Rise at 5am and meditate for an hour, then have a very light breakfast, then 3 hours of yoga training under Pattabi, then a break for lunch, and then yoga training in the afternoons.  It was a glorious program designed to deepen ones exposure to and training in yoga.  Kelly fully expected that he was going to walk away from his time at Mysore with many stories about Pattabi Jois, and how this master teacher pushed, prodded, and opened him – another kind of Swami Gauribala. 

There was a beautiful gray-haired man who came into their morning meditations everyday, but who would excuse himself ten minutes into the hour practice.  Kelly would see him afterwards, sitting quietly in the sun, sitting, sipping coffee, his eyes incredibly alert and aware.  His hair and his energy were that of an older man – certainly someone in his 60’s — but his face was free of worry or of any wrinkles, and had he dyed his hair he could have easily passed for someone in his 30’s.  After the fourth day of seeing him sitting and drinking his coffee, large and alert eyes taking in everything, Kelly approached the man. 

“Hi,” he said, sitting down, holding his own cup of coffee in his hands. 

“Hello,” the man said.  “I don’t know how you do it.” 

“What’s that,” Kelly asked. 

“Sit for so long.  You are much better at it than I am.”  The man smiled.  The statement was said with utter humility and sincerity, but there was something lyrical in the man’s tone, and something calming about his presence, and Kelly looked at him a little harder. This man’s eyes were like looking into the deepest mountain lake; they were still and tranquil, and if kindness could be physically manifest.  They possessed a softness that reached right into Kelly’s heart and opened him up.  It felt strange to think and feel it, but he fell in love with the man almost immediately, and it was as effortless and easy as looking a great painting and feeling something in yourself soar. 

The two men paused in their conversation as hundreds of colorful parrots flew by overhead, calling to each other and landing in nearby trees. 

“There’s a sight,” Kelly commented.  He looked back at the Indian man.  “I’m Denis.  Denis Kelly.”   

“I am Su Bara Char,” the man answered, bowing his head slightly.

“You are training?” Kelly asked.

“No, not really.  I am writing a book on Pattabi Jois, and so am here as a kind of journalist, I guess.”  He laughed. 

“Are you a journalist?” 

“No sir.  I am a retired professor.  I used to be the Dean of Students at the University of Mysore.” 

Another week passed, and the professor followed a similar routine.  He would join the students in the morning meditation, and then depart early, finding a comfortable spot in the sun where he would drink his coffee and take notes in a notebook, looking as rooted and tranquil as the ancient trees under which he sat.  He never attended the yoga classes, but waited in the garden outside, writing and sipping his tea or coffee.  

Su Bara Char and Kelly spent most of their early morning breakfasts together, getting to know one another. 

One morning Kelly asked him about his family.

“No, Mr. Kelly, I do not have a family,” he replied, but something in his eyes made Kelly press for more information.

“No one,” Kelly asked, “You don’t have a wife or a consort of some kind?”

Bara Char laughed.  “You are very perceptive, Mr. Kelly.  I have a great love, yes, it is true.”

Kelly smiled.  “So you do have a partner?”

“Yes, Mr. Kelly.”  Bara Char’s face looked illuminated from within, as if he were someone channeling the warmth and intensity of the sun just by thinking of the woman.  “She is my great love, Mr. Kelly, and I am blessed and humbled by her company.” 

“So you two are married?”

“Married?  Goodness no.  We fell in love many many years ago, but she was married to a close friend of mine, and so we never consummated our love. It is not necessary, anyway.”  He smiled.

“She is still married to your friend?”

“She is a Brahman, Mr. Kelly.  As such, marriage is always for life.  Her husband – my friend – died many years ago, but she must remain faithful to him.”

“But,” Kelly asked, confused, “With him — celibate, in other words?”

“Yes, Mr. Kelly.”

“How long have you been, uh, in love?”

“I have been devoted to her for almost 30 years.”

“But you – you’ve had other lovers, other loves?”

“No, Mr. Kelly.  She is all that I need, all that I ever wanted.”

Kelly could only stare back.  “So what do you do with her,” he asked at last.  

“Many, many things, Mr. Kelly.  I see her nearly everyday, and my love for her, and for God, is all that I need in this life.  I am a very, very lucky man.”  Bara Char sat back and smiled radiantly. 

At the beginning of the third week, Professor Bara Char pulled Kelly aside. 

“Mr. Kelly,” he said, being more forceful than Kelly had yet seen, “You need to leave this place and come with me.  Together we will explore the temples here in southern India.  There is something you need to see.” 

Kelly laughed.  “You’re not serious,” he said, but Bara Char just looked back.  “I’ve seen plenty of India, and plenty of temples. I’m here to study under one of the greatest living yoga masters.”

“That is not why you are here, Mr. Kelly.” 

Kelly just raised his eyebrows, laughed, and walked away. 

The professor became increasingly adamant as the days passed that Kelly go and visit Hindu temples.  

“Listen, professor,” Kelly said, irritated, after a week of saying he was not interested.  “I am not going to go to look at the temples.  I’ve already seen enough of India, as I told you.  I’m here to train with Pattabi, and nothing else.  This is all I need and want right now.”

Bara Char smiled, revealing his white, evenly-spaced teeth.  “There is something you need to see, Mr. Kelly.  You need to visit the Hindu temples in the South, where there are still uncorrupted and unlooted treasures to behold.”

Kelly shook his head, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder.  “Thank you, professor.  But I’m here for Pattabi Jois.  To train with him is an honor, and I’m not going to leave his side to merely sightsee.” 

“But Mr. Kelly,” the professor insisted, “There are things you need to see.”                   

Another two weeks passed, and while Kelly and the professor talked about a great many things, Bara Char never stopped insisting Kelly leave his training to travel. 

“Okay,” Kelly said one morning after their meditation.  In his sit that morning it had occurred to him that the universe was, through Bara Char, insisting he leave to travel to temples.  Kelly saw he had been stuck on an idea, a story, that he was “supposed” to be training with Pattabi Jois.  “I’ll go,” he told the professor after breakfast, “But only on one condition: you have to come with me, as my guide.”

Bara Char clapped his hands together, his eyes shining.  “Oh Mr. Kelly!  I would be honored!  And my cousin is a driver.  He will take us wherever we wish to go.  Now, a few things.”  Bara Char rattled off directions without a pause.  “The first thing is that many of the temples that take government money must be open to tourists.  We will avoid those, and only go to temples for Hindus.  You will shave your head and put on robes and paint your face and body, and I will tell people that you are a very prominent and famous American Hari Krisna, who is spreading Hinduism to the West. In this way, they may allow a Westerner to enter the sacred grounds.” 

“How long do you want to travel,” Kelly asked.  “I really don’t want to be away from Pattabi for too long.”

“We will travel, Mr. Kelly, until you get what you need.”  Bara Char smiled broadly.  “But if it eases your mind, I don’t think we will need more than two weeks.” 

Kelly sighed, and surrender. 

Two days later the men were in the backseat of a large sedan, and were whisked across southern India by the very quiet driver.  The professor knew a great many people, and the three of them stayed as guests in the homes of half a dozen people.  For those who have never experienced what it is like to be the guest of a Hindu Brahman family, it is an opulent, beautiful thing.  Fresh flowers, perfumed sheets, the finest foods and drinks the family owns, and more kindness than you might normally experience in a year. Over the first four days together, they visited no less than 20 temples, and got into about 1/3 of them. 

Professor Bara Char would explain who Kelly was to the priests guarding the temple entrances, and nod towards Kelly, who stood regally with his freshly-shaved head and colorful robes.  The professor would cajole, bribe, and otherwise insist as forcefully as he could that Kelly had to be granted access.  Sometimes the priests relented, and sometimes they would simply laugh at Kelly, shaking their heads and shooing them off.  Because some of the temples possessed ancient statues made entirely of gold and encrusted with jewels, many had armed guards from the Indian army standing watch in the corners, machine guns at the ready. 

In the temples where they did get access, Bara Char would never enter with Kelly, but would instead wait in the car.  Kelly would go into the rectangular-shaped temple grounds and make his way to the temple located at the rear of the compound.  There he would stand with another 30-60 people, and eventually be granted access to the temple itself.  The inside temples were large, full of hand-carved stone and wood, and at the far end of the temple were the closed doors of a shrine. 

With incense heavy in the air, the temple priests, chanting and whirling intoxicatingly, would eventually open up the doors of the shrine to reveal gold or bronze statues of Indian gods and goddesses, always bejeweled and dazzling.  The doors would stay open for 5 or so minutes, and then the priests would shut them once again.  Kelly would see many of the Hindus around him go into an ecstatic state, sometimes collapsing or sobbing or being so disoriented that they would have to be led outside.  The group of 30-60 people would then be ushered out of the

 temple and back to the temple grounds.  Kelly would go back to the car and to Bara Char, who would study Kelly intently for a moment or two before telling him the location of the next temple they were to visit. 

Days passed, and Kelly grew weary of seeing the same thing again and again. 

“I get it,” he said to Bara Char one day, “I understand how the mythical-poetic structure of the Hindus is not that different from Roman Catholics praying to Mary and the Saints.  I feel the Hindu’s energy shift, I see the ecstatic states they enter.  My appreciation of the depth and the beauty of Hinduism is greatly deepened. 

What is it you want me to see beyond that?”

But Bara Char only shook his head and smiled kindly. 

Kelly entered a temple on his 5^th day, so much like the others, after walking across the meticulously maintained temple grounds.  He was ushered in with about 50 other people, and he was the only Caucasian in the entire group, or on the entire temple grounds for that matter.  They stepped into the darkened temple, and as Kelly had seen before, there were temple priests on both sides, burning thick camphor incense and chatting.  Twenty feet away stood the closed shrine, and the chanting and the music intensified.  Kelly was a head taller than the next tallest man, and so had a clear and easy view of the shrine doors.  He knew the drill well by now: the chanting would go on for five or ten minutes, then the doors would open to reveal the statues of the deities, people would swoon, and then the doors would

The chanting intensified, and Kelly felt his heart opening to the beauty of the voices.  The smoke was heavy in his nostrils, and the crowd created an intensity of heat.  And then Shiva’s golden head turned, and his ruby eyes looked out over the crowd, causing many people to gasp or begin chanting, and a few to faint.  Kelly stared, wide-eyed, and blinked.  He had just shared a group hallucination.  How interesting!  But then Shiva’s golden leg came down to the ground, and Shakti too turned and faced outward.  Both deities smiled, and then began to go through some kind of mudras together, moving fluidly from one position to the next, their faces full of joyousness and love.   They moved for many long minutes, fluidly, until their bodies began to once again grow rigid.  Shiva first came to his original position, and the animation slowly left his body, leaving only a beautiful gold statue standing, lifeless, in the shrine.  Shakti too slowed and took up the original position, but before her head turned back she looked out across the crowd and met Kelly’s eyes with her own ruby ones.  Kelly felt an opening in him beyond anything he had ever experienced before, a movement of energy through this body that blew his consciousness into a million whirling fractals.  He was suddenly not sure if he still had a physical body, for he was all energy, all movement.  The shrine doors came to a close, and the priests harshly pushed the worshippers out, many of whom, like Kelly, were barely able to walk. 

Kelly stepped out into the midday sun, feeling its warmth across his skin, a more sensual touch and more intimate connection than any he had ever experienced in the embrace of a woman.  Tears ran down his cheeks without effort or awareness, and the earth felt as if he were walking across a pregnant belly, and so he tread reverentially across the grounds.  He got lost twice in the simple rectangle, and kind soldiers, their eyes shining and their faces open, gently took his arm and guided him towards the front gates.  Kelly wandered out into the street, and then saw the car with the professor inside.  He got in and sat down, and the professor clapped his hands together, touching Kelly’s heart.  “That is what you needed to see, Mr. Kelly,” Bara Char said gently.  Kelly stared at him, struggling to understand the words, yet unable to forget them.  “You have received the divine feminine into your own heart.  You will never again be the same.  Thank you for the deep honor to have shared this experience with you.”   

Kelly was incapable of speech, and would not be able to utter a single sound for three days, but his saintly companion guided him into the homes where they slept, helped to feed him at times, and simply let Kelly swim in the sea of silence that had overcome him.  Kelly was no longer like an anthropologist looking at Hindu culture from the outside, but rather was living it from the inside.  He was Hindu; his mind and Krisna’s were one; he was loved and beloved, eros and agape, evolution and involution, the source and the end, utterly and completely wrapped in perfection.   

Kelly went on to continue his training with one of the greatest yoga masters of the 20^th Century, and yet his teacher had been a retired dean of students, a humble and modest man who loved a woman with the whole of his being, yet who was forbidden to consummate that love.  So he served her, and Kelly, and everyone else he came across, the fire of his sacred heart burning into anyone who was ready to feel it. Kelly realized this man was a true saint, a man who lived on devotion to God and to his fellow human beings alone, expecting nothing in return.  His kindness and his insight and his fiercely open heart opened anyone who was willing to experience him this way.  Kelly watched in amazement as the professor gently spoke to other participants in the group, and how his mere presence would cause them to expose their darkest secrets and their deepest fears, allowing him to hold those things in the spaciousness of his eyes and the openness of his being. 

As Denis Kelly prepared to return to the United States, he realized that sometimes God does indeed walk among us.  

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