I met U.G. for the first time in my friend Moorty's living room. He had called me and said, "This guy is leaving for India the day after tomorrow drop everything and come meet him; he may never come back." So I cancelled all of my appointments and flew to Monterey, and now I'm sitting on the couch next to this grey-haired guy with weird coal-black eyes that see right through me. With this strange energy emanating from him, very relaxed like a rag doll he sits, spine straight naturally, hands moving and gesturing all the time as he speaks. Suddenly he looks incredibly feminine. Then he changed faster than a blink he was super macho masculine then again feminine one instant one way, then next the other, over and over again. Meanwhile in the pit of my stomach I felt like I'd swallowed a triple martini with the burning going through my whole body.
Was this the turning point? I couldn't understand anything this guy was saying, just this burning sensation and watching him change from male to female to male to female. Finally, he got up and left, and I felt relieved. The next day it started all over again until I had to leave for the airport to go back home. Waiting for the plane, my mind was blank, images, memories, all stripped away. On the plane, I was so still the flight attendant started shaking me, "Sir, sir, we were afraid we'd lost you." Moorty had dragged me to see someone else once in India in Tiruvannamalai a lady named Sauris, very powerful, she was chanting in Sanskrit or maybe Telugu when we arrived. After a while she began to stare at me and it felt like a ladder of energy she was offering it to me. But I told the eyes, so strange looking and with such energy, I was too sore, too hurt and too bitter, not ready to let go; I couldn't let go of the pain at the center of myself not then and not until U.G. swept everything inside of me away.
From the beginning until the end there was never a choice with U.G.
Though I met U.G. at Moorty's in Monterey, I really got to know him more in Mill Valley. I went there to see U.G. a few months after that initial meeting at Moorty's; as I drove through town on the way to U.G.'s "Crow's Nest" apartment I was stopped by the blinking red lights of a police car. They said I ran a stop sign I hadn't even seen. I should have known then that the red lights were a warning signal. My life was going to change. To get to his little apartment next to a funeral parlor you had to climb these circular stairs. U.G. answered the door as if waiting for me. The room was very dark. Shutters closed, only a small red light. I sat with him and Terry Newland for an hour, bathing in U.G.'s energy. Then I was dismissed for the night. Terry told me of a Madras restaurant in San Rafael. That seemed too far and too complicated in the dark, rainy night but I went there anyway. While eating the hot Indian food, I started reading a U.G. book I had with me; as if by magic I suddenly understood every word and every phrase; there was a total comprehension of what had been obscure and meaningless before. I suddenly saw the depth of that intellect that had seemed wild and nonsensical. This was the beginning of seeing that there was no area of life that U.G. didn't impact. Though I was more interested in devotional love than intellectual discovery I know that over the years, U.G. touched me on that level too.