Meditation transcends the confines of structured education; it blossoms spontaneously, like a wildflower, untamed by cultivation. This as a metaphor underscores Papaji's teachings, which were devoid of conventional concepts and formal instruction. His wisdom was imparted through personal encounters, igniting a flame in a uniquely intimate setting.
 
In the summer of 1992, my journey led me to Lucknow, India. Friends had shared with me an audio recording of a session with a spiritual teacher known as Papaji. At that time, I was a disillusioned spiritual seeker. Despite 15 years of daily meditation practice and encounters with various gurus who embodied the darker aspects of charisma, I found myself ensnared in the blindness and confusion created by my frustrated search for a spiritual substitute for a father figure.

My own father was a wonderful and deeply sensitive man, yet his soul was marked by the shame of being born out of wedlock, the result of his mother's one-night stand with a man who then fled to America. Additional scars were inflicted as he grew up in the tough and traumatizing environment of World War II in Germany, ultimately ending up as a 16-year-old soldier fighting for Adolf Hitler.

As is often the case, traumas are frequently passed on to those we love the most; thus, I became the prime target of my wonderful father's shame and World War II traumas. Of course, I was not consciously aware of this at the time, but today, I am certain. The curse, passed on through my father's shame and the emotional abuse he suffered growing up in an environment of Nazi-screaming adults, led me to search inward. It was there that I discovered the blessing within the curse: meditation!
 
Now, as a grown-up high school teacher living in an unconscious cloud of alienation from myself, I was listening to this tape recorded in the closed-off realms of mystical India.

There was something different about the soundscape on this tape. It was akin to breathing in the wonderful scent of an unknown perfume. The joy and laughter that permeated the recording struck a chord within me, rekindling my curiosity and inspiring me to embark on a new pilgrimage. I decided to fly to India during my 7-week summer holiday. This was not my first journey to that land of mystery. In 1989, I had traveled 5,000 km around South India on a motorbike during a leave. While that journey was a wonderful experience, it had not truly satisfied my spiritual thirst.

The Attack of the Lion
Now, I was sitting with closed eyes in the back row, forming a half-circle with perhaps 50 other spiritual seekers. I opened my eyes and saw that Papaji was staring at me, which made me quickly close them again. A few minutes later, when I opened them again, he was still fixating me with his eyes in the same manner. This little game of hide and seek continued for a few more minutes until he called me up to the front. I walked up and sat in a meditation posture in front of him, as I had been conditioned to do. However, he then almost forcefully grabbed me and placed me beside him. At some point, I recall even sitting on his lap.
 
His first words to me were, 'Are you happy now?'
 
His entire being radiated joy unlike anything I had ever witnessed, embracing me with the warmth one reserves for a long-lost child. I had never before experienced such profound and intense love from another person. How could this be? I had never met this man before, nor had I ever encountered anyone capable of such ecstatic joy and boundless love. And his laughter... He was not laughing at me, nor even with me. It was just laughter in itself. His whole body was taken up in what could be termed primordial laughter... laughter in and of itself.

At the same time, he continued to ask me the same question, 'Are you happy now?' while repeatedly hugging and cuddling me with such affection that I can state today the unfathomable warmth from his embraces is still vividly recalled by my body.
  
This tsunami of affection has permanently altered the inner landscape of my being. Like a trauma, but in reverse, it still propels me into the realms of love, rapture, and gratitude at the slightest trigger word associated with this profoundly shocking event.
 
Overwhelmed by the bewildering and mind-blowing beauty of this moment, I felt compelled to flee. Now, that was crazy. I had just found what I had been searching for all my life. However, recovering slightly from the initial onslaught of this spiritual lion, my first impulse was to escape as fast as I could. The following day, I left Lucknow for Varanasi in the early morning hours, without even taking the time to say goodbye.

Yet, running away from the Lion, he was still giggling within me. Perhaps one of the most profound transmission qualities Papaji was gifted with was his laughter. I have never observed a being so possessed by infectious laughter. In this sense, he is still laughing in everyone who had the great fortune to meet him.

In the next weeks, my encounters with fellow travellers were fueled by speaking about this man in Lucknow. I couldn't think about anything else. Inspired by my ecstatic praise, some people later emailed me, sharing that they had visited Lucknow to meet Papaji themselves.
 
In 1993 I returned during the next summer break from my high school teaching job. Thousand of visitors had come to him in the year that had passed. I assumed that he had forgotten our first meeting and I did not try to push myself forward in the line of people who wanted his attention. So I kept myself in the background until our poignant farewell at the end of my visit. This goodbye resonated with deep and loving intensity, but not even a glimpse of our initial meeting. A recording of this encounter captures the moment:

Meeting with Papaji 23.7.93

In '94/'95, I took a one-year leave from my job and moved to Lucknow.

However, at that time, I didn't 'get' much beyond being in the company of many wonderful and creative people from all corners of the globe. I of course also enjoyed the satsang with Papaji, but I felt my spiritual father ignored me, and that my rightful place by his side had been usurped by a growing number of competitors, all vying to be the crown princes and princesses on his lap. Papaji's simple house was by now overcrowded with visitors.

Many years later, I've come to realize that everything he had to offer was given in our very first meeting. This gift still laughs within me. In fact, he told me that the only job of a free being was to sing and dance. How true that statement is, even from my current state of mind, where I can honestly say I am not as free as Papaji was and is. In this sense, I must confess that I did not instantly awaken to the ultimate state of being. However, I think Papaji would not mind, because I feel freer today than I did yesterday, and this has been the case since I met him. Wow, what a Being he is and was!

Papaji often emphasized that 'the process' of enlightenment does not occur in time and space. It is instantaneous, like the snap of a finger. I am sure such instantaneous awakenings have occurred for some individuals, but it just did not happen for me. However, I do not complain. Even a peanut from his hand was enough to quench my hunger for a lifetime. Slowly, during the next 30 years the spiritual seed given by him grow into a tree and transformed search into celebration.

On life's long and winding roads, we meet humans all the time. Most of them, despite having deep interactions with us, fade into distant memories. However, the encounter with the Lion of Lucknow still stands as if it happened today. That is why I call the encounter with Papaji a predatory love attack. It is traumatizing in reverse, with a numeric intensity strong enough to dismantle all the other traumas that, like solidified cement, have contributed to the building of our defensive walls against life.

Seeing more clearly today, I can now state that a huge, dark, unnoticed cloud that had been hanging over my head evaporated. However, at that time, I felt a growing sense of discontent, feeling ignored by my spiritual father. This discontent led me on a wonderful journey away from Lucknow. Once again I was on the run and what grace it was! In the next ten years, I had the good fortune to meet several spiritual inspirators, most of them from Hoshiarpur in Punjab. I bow down in gratitude to all these wonderful beings I was destined to meet there.
 
On this journey, I also had ample time to encounter and study the anatomy of a bunch of fraudulent masters and exploitative spiritual practices. What a gift that was, too! Dark triad masters was seemingly not only a western phenomenon.
  
An Indian friend of mine often stated: 'Time will tell.' How right he is. Time acts like a filter separating truth from untruth. From a mature vantage point of greater clarity, I can state that Papaji is the greatest living entity I have ever met. From him, I learned many told and untold truths. Among the takeaways, I learned this very simple rule: Never take seriously a man who cannot laugh like a crazy person. I observed it again and again while being close to this liquid, living something. Papaji was perpetually surprised by himself, so innocent was his being. He would suddenly turn red in the face and burst into laughter while exclaiming, 'There must be some fire going around here. I do not know what it is.'

Another important takeaway was imbibed in his amazing ability to balance being totally equanimous and yet, at the same time, a beacon of inspiration. There was no Zen-like discipline to follow here. In his own straightforward language, he made it very clear, and he truly owned this statement:

'If a (spiritual) teacher tells you to do this or that, he should not be called a teacher. He should be called a butcher!'

After the farewell satsang with Papaji in '93, I was honored with an invitation to lunch at his house the next day before my departure. Seated beside him, I watched as he was served a plate of food. Then, with deliberate care, he divided the food on his plate into two equal halves and pushed one half onto my plate. This gesture evoked in me a sensation akin to what I imagine being part of the Last Supper would feel like. It was the closest I ever came to experiencing a moment of such profound spiritual equality.

He did not reply... a long time passed with no reaction... I thought he might have overlooked my comment. He started to watch a cricket summary on his little television placed on the dinner table. The TV was blaringly loud, in typical Indian style. I repeated my statement, in fierce competition with a crying heroine and pistol-shooting country bandits... Still, no reaction... He now seemed to be watching the screaming heroine with full attention... I felt disappointed, ignored, and jealous.

Then, one of Papaji's most wonderful and devout devotees, Yamuna, came to my assistance. She had been observing the incident from a distance. She repeated my earlier comment while I moved the painting into different positions in front of him:

'Look, Papaji! Ramana is looking at you from all sides...'

'NO!!!... RAMANA DID NOT LOOK AT ANYONE!!!'

This moment of roaring silence still resonates with me today. First, this 'NO!!!' struck like lightning... a power cut... it was like a thunderbolt in broad daylight... totally unexpected... 'NO' thoughts in this roar... just a clear sky... Then, thoughts came back with the most overwhelming insight... In a split second, I understood what Papaji was pointing at: The very same eyes that I felt were looking at ME were actually eyes that did not look at anyone. Of course, the important 'I' sees itself as the center of the universe and thus thinks that Ramana only looks at 'ME'. But the very same gaze, seen from the level of the Greatest Impersonality, was not at all interested in the self-important ego.

RAMANA DID NOT LOOK AT ANYONE... he only looked at SELF.

This roar from the Lion of Lucknow left everyone in the overcrowded room frozen in a state of shock. A young German, who had been cycling most of the way from Germany to India on his bike, sat in his biking suit and trembled under the table where Papaji was sitting. Papaji looked under the table and, with a giggle, asked him, 'Now you are afraid, aren't you?' The biker nodded. Then Papaji said, 'You will have a dream tonight. Write it down in the morning and bring it to me in satsang tomorrow.' In the next minute, everything was calm and relaxed as if nothing had happened. The quietness was so vast that even the goddamned noisy Indian TV felt more like small ripples on the surface of calm.

WAKE UP AND ROAR - A Divine Fairy Tale
The following story was often narrated by Papaji. Here, I recall it from memory. If you want an exact version, you can find it in David Godman's wonderful book about Papaji: Wake Up and Roar. Vol.1. David's books about spiritual masters around Ramana Maharshi are all delightfully free from ego-fuss.

Once upon a time in ancient India, a dhobi wallah, a person who washes clothes, went down to the river with his donkeys loaded with clothes for washing. Just before, a hunter had killed a lioness not far from the river. Close to the river bank, hidden in the rush and out of sight of the hunters, the lioness had hidden its little cub.

It so happened that the dhobi wallah found this cub. He took the little lion cub with him and raised it alongside the donkeys. As the years went by, the cub grew into an adult lion. But since it had been raised with donkeys, it considered itself to be a normal donkey, doing its duty, carrying clothes down to the river with its donkey friends and its master, the dhobi wallah. The lion-donkey was quite happy with this life.

Then, one fine day, a wild lion came down to the river to quench its thirst. At the river bank, the wild lion watched something that made it look in a state of disbelief. The unbelievable sight was of a big lion walking with donkeys, sheep, and a human, carrying a huge load of clothes on its back. The strange party had just unloaded the clothes at the river bank when the wild lion, with one jump, landed right in the middle of them. They all fled in terror, including the lion-donkey.

But the wild lion caught hold of the neck of the lion-donkey and prevented it from fleeing. It was bleating in fear and cried out, 'Oh, big animal! Please don't kill me!' The wild lion laughingly replied, 'But we are from the same family. You are a lion like me!'

'Oh, no, Sir! You are mistaken. I am a poor and weak donkey doing my duty!' The wild lion had never heard such a joke before. It laughed in the exact way as the man in the picture to the left: 'Come, dear lion brother! I will show you something.' Then the wild lion dragged the lion-donkey down to the river and showed it its reflection in the water: 'Look! Can you see your face? It's just like mine. Do you believe me now?'

'Oh, yes! Now I see! How foolish I was! How could I have been such an idiot?' replied the rediscovered lion. 'Oh, yes, my dear friend - We are equal!' said the wild lion. 'Now, you just have to accept that you are what you have always been. Make a roar!'

'I don't know how to roar...' 'Oh, yes, you do! Listen: Roarrrrrr!' And after this demonstration, the young lion roared for the first time in its life.

After telling this story, Papaji would ask if anybody would stand up and roar like a lion... Great fun and roaring sounds of all kinds would ensue.

Then he would start to explain the significance of this ancient tale:

• No meditation techniques are needed. You just have to remove the wrong notion of donkey-ness.

• The wild Teacher-Lion's only role is to remind you that you are his equal.

• A Spiritual Lion doesn't follow the path of others - it cuts its own path. And it is not afraid of roaring.

• As a spiritual student, you don't have to become a spiritual lion - since you already are a lion!