failed miserably in our relating after only three months, which was all about wanting to relate but not being able to. The pain of not being able to carry out a true relationship with this world threw me totally off the tracks, once and for all.
I began to fast for longer periods of time so I wouldn’t feel the pain. That made me bulimic. I would overeat three to four times a day and then throw up. I would scurry through the supermarkets in search of food that I hadn’t tasted before. I withdrew more and more. I walked around barefoot; I tied little bells around my legs. I taught myself yoga using a book that a friend had given to me. In the morning and in the evening I would practice yoga exercises for 90 minutes. In the resting pose of sawasana, I was able to escape from the perception of this world and finally feel peace for several minutes at a time. This was a huge relief.
Bulimia really had no connection whatsoever with any kind of weight problem for me. I didn’t even know the word bulimia then, and had no idea that my behavior was actually a clinical disease. Instead, it was a slow self-execution that amounted to gradual suicide. Sexual desire dried up completely. I was staying in my house, isolating myself more and more. I congratulated myself proudly that once again I had managed not to talk over the entire weekend and that I hadn’t had contact with any human being for entire three days. Most of my friendships ended. My best friend of many years prophesized madness for me and begged me urgently to stop reading philosophical books. He could no longer tolerate my life and my growing despair, and he was more concerned about my wellbeing than about his own.
I, on the other hand, could no longer stop it. Incessantly, the wheel kept turning. After the break-up with my wild-galloping Amazon a kind of madness took hold of me, which would later reemerge again and again. I simply had to be on the road. Travel! Run! So then, shortly after my twenty-first birthday, one day before Christmas Eve I took off to southern France, equipped with a sleeping bag and a small backpack. I wanted to walk the distance, barefoot if possible, through Camargue from north to south and visit the gypsy pilgrimage Saint-Marie de la Mer on the Mediterranean. An overnight train brought me to the French city of Arles, where I stood in awe before the house of Van Gogh, which unfortunately was closed. It was early in the morning, the air was cold and foggy. In the city I once again had a ‘feeding frenzy’, then began to walk to the pilgrimage. After a few hours of the hike I realized how crazy the whole thing was. There was no one on the road. I couldn’t see a thing through the dense fog, neither horse nor landscape. Only some blue patch in the sky that would appear now and then accompanied me through the uncomfortable atmosphere. I had a map that was supposed to show the way, but my inner feeling of being lost was overwhelming. I began to sweat and deep anguish and despair built up inside. A black, oppressive and infinite loneliness spread over my heart. In the late afternoon I found a barn to spend the night. I lay down in the hay, looked to the ceiling beams and was grabbed by an irrepressible urge to end my life. The thoughts were racing around in my head and I just wanted to escape this nightmarish loneliness and this feeling of being driven. I don’t know any more how I managed to survive that night. I struggled to remain present and not to give in to the destructive impulses. In the early morning I left the barn and knew that now I could turn back. My ‘goal’ had been achieved for now. I had done what I had to do.
I hitchhiked the rest of the way, arrived at the place of pilgrimage where the three Maries(3) were to be found, in the crypt below the altar room. They would be presented in May in a holy procession, richly adorned and embellished on a ship. Now they were just standing quite un-holy on a simple table, almost like a window decoration, and I couldn’t resist inspecting them more thoroughly. I lifted their robes, looked at all the rosaries, read the countless notes full with inscriptions of gratitude and inspected all the other things that had accumulated over the decades. Upstairs in the church the floors were being cleaned and waxed by industrious women for the Christmas celebration. All of a sudden I found my sense of humor again, and I had to restrain myself from doing something really stupid with the statues.
After that I went to the beach. The entire coast was totally engulfed by fog. One couldn’t even see the water - only the passionless little waves splashing so insignificantly against the shore were visible. I sat down in the sand, shaking my head, overcome by spontaneous joy and had to think of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days’ (4). A deep and liberating laughter arose suddenly from my throat.
Nothing was happening here. And probably nothing so-called ‘holy’ or special ever happened. The place was empty, filled only with faith, just like me.
I went to the nearest café and bought four croissants, then hopped on the next bus. In the evening of December twenty-fourth I got on the night train back home, moving through the papal city of Avignon, feverish with pre-Christmas shopping.
I adored my work with the severely disabled children. I could understand them although none could speak or express themselves. I couldn’t comprehend the sorrows and awkwardness that these children triggered in most people who got in touch with them or those who avoided contact with them. They lived in a completely different world and we could not really judge their degree of happiness or misery. The work with the children and with my colleagues required a minimal amount of social engagement. In my house, however, I completely lost any kind of control over my eating habits. The toilet bowl was now my place of worship and my truth. Nobody knew or even had the slightest idea about my bulimia. I determined periods of fasting, then overate and threw up. Place and time didn’t matter. I was doing it everywhere.
The end of my civil service was coming close. I had never desired a normal professional career. Money as such didn’t mean much to me. It could be there or not there, I didn’t care. I didn’t need much for living and I never really missed anything.
I needed to take off again. Had to be traveling. Away. Away from my eating- vomiting- disorder. Away from western culture and away from the world dominated by men.
What’s your name, what’s your country?
‘The Depth Is not in you, the Depth Is in Me.’
Adi Da
Although I had never read any books about India and its religions were alien to me, I was pulled to go exactly there. The people who have invented yoga could not be all bad. In preparation, I bought four maps of the entire Indian subcontinent, a Hindu dictionary, and in a lengthy procedure I sewed an outfit of a troubadour for myself. I composed my will in which I bequeathed my belongings to my friends. I took off in October 1987, shortly before my twenty-third birthday for Mumbai, back then called Bombay, with no particular destination in mind.
I landed at the airport in Mumbai, situated in the middle of the slums and there I experienced my first deep disappointment. Never before have I seen so much misery and suffering, so much grief crowded together in an apparent infinity of space. The impoverished and neglected looking children of the slums had their noses glued to the windows of the airport building, and the policemen were shooing them away with harsh words. All my co-travelers were telling me to leave the city as soon as possible and I took their advice and went on the same day by bus to Goa. There I acclimatized in a quiet, beautiful, paradise-like bay, which was still untouched by tourism and felt very dreamy, with a fresh water lake surrounded by a huge banyan tree right behind the beach. On my first walk on the beach I met an Indian man with the name of Kali. He was a follower of the guru Babaji from Haidakhan who had just passed away. He gave me some suggestions about holy Hindu pilgrimage places, all of which I visited within the next few weeks. He also invited me to come to Babaji’s ashram in the Himalayas. In the night he would often sit by the fire praying, he chanted in honor of his goddess Kali whose name he bore. He didn’t let the flames go out day and night.
During my further travels to Hindu places of pilgrimage I generally slept outside or in the temples. The sadhus I met in many cases looked sorrowful and sick, scarred by the asceticism, and only a few had happy eyes. The suffering of women and children in the villages was terrible and merciless. The Untouchables were sleeping everywhere, and everywhere one could see women and children doing the heaviest road construction or road repair work. The Indian society was alien to me. How could a religion allow something like this? And at the same time, I was meeting more laughing and happy