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200 SPIRIT AND THE MIND
Confidence in my old self and in what I knew crumbled. “What if he asks me to talk in front of his students?” I wondered. The realization hit me that I didn’t know as much as they did. I should actually be in the back row, not sitting here with the teachers. Every one of the students knew of a reality far beyond mine; I was a babe in the woods. I began to shake: “Oh, my God, what would happen if he asked me to speak?” This was my unmaking. I realized that I knew absolutely nothing; I withdrew.
What a powerful awakening! Certain that what I was observing was absolutely real, I entered another dimension of consciousness. Stripped clean of all my preconceived concepts about reality, I began to feel that anything was possible. I became an innocent child again: all openness and vulnerability, groping for an identity. Reality changed—it was a whole new ball game, and I didn’t know all the rules and regulations. How would I lead my life now, practice my profession, relate to my wife and children? Although lost, I literally, physically, felt an expansive, exhilarating inner dimension soaring beyond me into space and extending forever. Perhaps I was giving up familiar theories and practices to gain a knowledge beyond thinking—direct experience of a higher intuitive plane. Did this expansive feeling truly represent an extension of consciousness; and could it be translated in therapy into greater empathy, a more intimate knowledge of the other?
I returned home feeling exhilarated but extremely vulnerable. People were suspicious of this dramatic change in me. From their point of view, I must have looked stark raving mad. Innocently thinking that everyone would be as thrilled as I was about Sai Baba and what he seemed to represent in terms of human consciousness, my wife and I opened our home to a gathering of some 300 friends and acquaintances, many of them colleagues from the university. Reputable and prominent speakers told of their experiences with Sai Baba, attesting to his divine qualities. These were believable people, stable, decent and strong-minded, holding respectable positions in society. But lo and behold, that evening saw the parting of most of my friends and acquaintances. They still said hello in passing, but now with a rather strange look in their eyes.
I served on the abortion boards of two large San Diego hospitals, including the University Hospital. At that time, psychiatrists helped decide if a woman should be considered for a therapeutic abortion on