T h e  M o s t  I m p o r t a n t  T h i n g  I  W a s  E v e r
A s k e d  t o  D o
T he summer of 1973 ushered in some very interesting
changes where I lived. Through no effort of my own,
many of the five-acre lots around my property were
being purchas ed by folks d rawn to a back-to-nature
lifestyle. Unsur prisingly, man y of these people were into
some fo rm of meditation and yoga. I was still holding on
to m y s elf-concept of a meditator wanting solitude in the
woods, so I had little interact ion with my new neighbors. I must admit, however, that my afternoon walks became
more in teresting as various rough-sawn cabins began to
spring up in the woods around me. A man named  Bob Tilchin purchased the property
directly behind  my house. I had not known him before,
but he was into yoga and Sufism and was a very gentle
soul. He hired my friend Bob Gould to help him build his
house, s o it all felt like family . One day Bob Tilchin came
to m e a nd asked me to do him a favor. He was pen pals
with an inmate named Jerry at Union Correctional
Institution (UCI), a maximum-security prison about
forty miles north of Gainesville. Bob had promised to
visit thi s inmate once in a while but now had to go out of
town. He asked me if I would visit Jerry while he was
gone. This was a very strang e request for me. I had no
prior e xperience in this area, and I was still very
protective of my attempts to live a solitary life. As the
voice of my th oughts said No,  the voice of m y lips said
“Yes.” I had n o idea what it would be like to go into amaximum-security prison to meet a total stranger, but I
was about to find out. I drove up to the prison one Saturday morning and
met Jerry, a young black man , in the designated visiting
area. We spent a few hours together discussing topics
similar to what I had been teaching in my classes. He
seemed genuinely interested, and he was a very
intelligent young man. He had been doing meditation for
some time, so we spent a while meditating together. Jerry expressed his appreciation for the visit and asked
me to come b ack. I had no ticed that other than Bob
Tilchin and me, no one else was on Jerry’s approved
visitors list. Our meditation t ogether had been amazingly
deep, and I fe lt overwhelmed by peace when I left the
prison. Someh ow, being in that setting had touched
something very deep within me. Before I was even out of
the gate, I was looking forward to coming back. When I returned to see Jerry for the second time, he
had a surprise  for me. He had so enjoyed our visit and
our med itation together that he had created a list of five
or s ix other inmates who w anted to meet for group
meditation. I contacted the authorities and found out
that suc h a group meeting w ould only be possible as a
religious servi ce. Jerry considered himself a Buddhist,
and I had done Zen Buddhi st meditation, so I started
what wa s probably the first Buddhist group in the history
of a  North Flo rida prison. We met in the chapel every
other Saturday morning, and the whole scene was quite
surreal for someone with my background. When I
arrived at the prison, I would  pass through the main gate
that was surrounded by do uble coils of razor wire. I
would then pass through two more gates before I was
searched and patted down. Shortly thereafter, a call
would come across the loud speakers in the various cell
blocks, “BUDDHIST.” From a very quiet place deep
inside m yself, I watched that voice in my head say, How
in the world did I get here?The gro up gre w over the ye ars, and when Jerry was
transferred to Florida State Prison, I also did a group
there. I t may have been acts of surrender that originally
put me into those prison groups, but once I wa s th ere it
was my  heart and soul. Wh enever I would go into the
prisons, I would feel a powerful increase in the spiritual
energy flow within me. And my meditations were much
deeper when I sat with the i nmates than when I sat for
hours a t home  by myself. I didn’t understand what was
happening, bu t I looked forward to every visit as an
experience of spiritual upliftment. I ra n the group s pretty much like the classes at Santa
Fe. I did not plan any sessions; I just let the energy give
the talks. The men were able to relate immediately to the
notion of the talkative voice in their head. They were very
receptive to learning how to  quiet that voice and deal
with the inner patterns of an ger, fear, and strong drives. The inmates’ deep-seated sincerity about their spiritual
growth made those prison groups one of the most
rewarding experiences of my life. A single request from
my neighbor Bob Tilchin, to which I had initial
resistance, grew into more than thirty years of working
with the incarcerated. The men in my group became a
part of my exte nded family, and they continue to live in a
place deep in my heart. It was the summer of 1973, a nd in the most unlikely of
places, my heart center was le arning to open. I was being
taught how to serve. This is n ot something I would have
come u p with on my own. My whole being thought my
path to self-realization was about meditation. Fortunately, life knew better, and she was starting to
guide me away from myself through service to others.S e c t i o n  I I I
From Solitude to Service2 1 . T h e  C a l l  o f  a  L i v i n g  M a s t e r
S ummers are brutal in Florid a, even in the woods. My
house had no air-conditionin g, and with a solid wall of
glass fa cing west, it did not exactly have passive solar
design. I still had a few months left before my classes at
Santa Fe started again in mid-September, so I took a
drive back out to northern C alifornia for a visit. Before
returning home, I got wind that Shelly, my ex-wife, was
living at some sort of yoga c enter in the San Francisco
area. I managed to get the number and gave her a call. I
had not seen her for a few years, and it fascinated me
that I had got ten so deeply into yoga and evidently so
had she. I dr ove down to Piedmont an d found where Shelly was
staying. It was great to see h er again, and my heart felt
very open. She began to show me around the beautiful
house that served as a meditation center for a small
number of residents. We went upstairs to see the
meditation ro om, and once again, life caught me
completely by surprise. Scatt ered around the room were
photographs o f a yoga mast er they called Baba. I had
never heard of him, but there was no reason I would
have. I  had been living in the woods of north-central
Florida for a fe w years by the n, and he lived in India. The
pictures of that holy man were mesmerizing. I could not
take my eyes off them. The energy flow inside of me
welled up to the point betw een my eyebrows, and a
tremendous peace came over  my whole being. I asked if I
could m editate there for a wh ile. Shelly nodded and went
about her business.I meditated in that room for hours with shimmering
energy coursing throughout my body. The whole room
seemed to be f illed with energy. Something was going on
that I didn’t understand. I only knew that I was being
drawn i nto deep meditation without my normal struggle. I stayed  in the room for a very long time, and when I
finally came out, it was time t o bid Shelly good-bye. That
was certainly not the visit I had imagined. What had
started out as a very personal trip, life had managed to
turn into a powerful spiritual experience. If that had
been all that transpired from the visit, it would have been
fantastic. But it was only just the beginning. I returned home in early September to find someone I
didn’t know staying at Sandy’s house. Evidently, Sandy
had gone on a  trip and allowed a friend, Rama Malone,
to s tay at her place. Ram a was very outgoing and
vivacious. She was filled with excitement and
immediately drew me into her world. The first time I
went up to me et her, she in vited me into the cabin to
show m e wha t she had d one with the place. Very
enthusiastically, she beckoned me up to the loft. I
climbed the rough-sawn la dder, and when my head
cleared the opening, what I sa w almost knocked me back
downstairs. The entire lof t area was covered with
pictures of the same yoga master I had just encountered
at Shelly’s place. Now, I believe in coincidence s, but this was twice in a
row on  opposite sides of the continent. In 1973, there
simply were not that many p eople in America who knew
of th is h oly ma n in India. It felt like he was following me. Rama immediately started telling me that Baba
Muktananda was planning to come to America next year
in the spring, and I should i nvite him to Gainesville. At
first I thought we were having a fanciful conversation,
until I realized  she was dead serious. I took a deep breath
and tried to reason with her. I reminded her that I lived
alone in  the woods, and I’d g one out of my way for yearsto not attract people. How c ould I be in a position to
write to India and invite a hi ghly respected yoga master
to a small town in north-central Florida? There was no
reasoning with her. She insisted that I write a letter to
India, on Santa Fe Commun ity College letterhead, and
invite Baba to stop in Gainesville on his way from Atlanta
to Miami. I t houg ht it was a crazy idea. My mind kept telling me
that the re was no way Baba  would ever come here. I
actually felt embarrassed to write the letter and send it
off t o India. B ut what choice did I have? I could either
listen to my r esistant mind,  or recognize that life had
brought me in contact with this great yogi, given me a
deep experience sitting before his picture, and then stuck
an impa ssioned devotee onto  my own land to force me to
invite him to Gainesville. Ultimately, I surrendered and
mailed the letter. Some months later I received a response telling me
that so meone would come to my place to discuss the
possibility of a Gainesville visit. When he arrived out
here, I was sur prised to be meeting a very professionally
dressed young man. Apparently, he was just as surprised
to b e meeting a hippie-type c haracter living alone in the
woods. You could tell that he wasn’t all that impressed. He began to explain to me what it would take to host a
weeklong visit from Baba and his entourage. They would
need facilities for his staff of up to twenty people, a room
large enough for fifty to a hundred people for daily
sessions during the week, and a weekend retreat site that
could h ouse up to a few hundred people. He was very
skeptical about my ability to arrange everything, and
who co uld blame him. I wa s a part-time teacher at a
community co llege earning $350 a month—not exactly
the credentials they were looking for. In the end, he told me I was welcome to see what I
could a rrange, and they would get back to me. It
certainly didn’t sound promising, but at least I didn’t geta de finitive no. Before he left , I asked him an important
question: If his group was trying to get people interested
in Baba , how exactly did they  promote him on his world
tour? I didn’t t hink an Indian saint who spoke no English
would a ttract that many people. All he told me was that
Baba was a v ery powerful Siddha  master and people
would w ant to  meet him. I didn’t understand what that
meant, but I figured I’d find out later. A few months went by, and we were given a tentative
date for when Baba might pass through Gainesville:
January 18, 1975. The excitement about a possible visit
by a world-renowned yoga master only served to
accelerate the energy around my classes and the Sunday
services. Each  week things grew until I was forced to
build a small a ddition onto my house to fit more people. With th e publi cation of my b ook, The Search for Truth,
in spring of 1974, the energy was fanned even more. Rama and Sandy had both  come and gone by the
spring o f that year, and Sand y’s house sat empty until a
young w oman named Donna Wagner moved in. Donna
was finishing her degree at the university when she
started sitting in on my Sant a Fe classes. Though just a
few years older than the othe r students, Donna was more
centered and mature. She had a very deep understanding
of w hat I was  teaching, and she came to most of my
classes and all the Sunday services. For about a year
before she moved in, it seemed like time and again we
kept bumping into each other in town. These chance
meetings happened so often that I began to wonder what
was going on. Donna started to help organize the Sunday group after
Sandy left. She would often stay in Sandy’s house on
Saturday nights to help set up for and greet the people on
Sunday morni ngs. Eventual ly, she just stopped going
home. If I had known then that she was moving out of a
nice co ndominium her parents had purchased for her,
and int o this tiny cabin in the woods with no plumbingor electricity, I might not have been so quick to let her
move in. If I had known then that we were destined to
fall in love, get married, and have a beautiful daughter
together—given my mind-set at the time, I definitely
would n ot have  let her move in. It would take a few more
years of learning to surrender before I would be capable
of d ropping my spiritual self-concept enough to accept
the special relationships that life had in store for me.2 2 . S h a k t i p a t
W e had so many things to take care of if we were going to
host a visit from  Baba. None of us had done anything like
this bef ore, so we had to learn things as we went along. First, we found a summer c amp in the Ocala National
Forest that could easily handle a large weekend retreat
during its off-season. Next, we put the word out that we
needed a very large house for Baba’s twenty-person staff
and the weekday meditation sessions. As a college town,
Gainesville is not known for its large mansions, but
someone contacted me and offered us the perfect house
for the entire month of January. Things were definitely
falling into place. The weekend retreat was goin g to be the clincher. If we
couldn’t get enough people signed up, Baba would never
come. Donna and I had to make hundreds of individual
phone calls and send mailings all over the state to attract
enough people. It took real surrender for me to hook up a
phone at my h ouse and use that as the contact number
on all flyers and phone messages. We were passionate
about getting the word out, and we had a tremendous
response from all over the state. For yea rs I had thought that  a spiritual life was about
spending every day in silence and solitude. I was now
running around getting all this work done. Yet somehow
I f elt more ope n and more co nnected to the energy flow
than ever before. I kept my morning and evening
meditations, but the hours in between were devoted to
my classes and bringing Baba to Gainesville. I had
surrendered ju st enough to where the flow of life was nolonger something I chose to give in to—the flow had
taken o ver my life. It had gon e from subtly guiding me to
running me. My mind k ept telling me that after this was
over I would go  back to my solitary lifestyle. As usual, my
mind was wrong. Before Baba came to Gain esville, we received an
invitation to attend his December retreat just outside of
Atlanta. I was anxious to meet him, plus it seemed like a
good idea to know what to  expect when he came to
Gainesville the next month. About six of us packed into
my van , and we made the trip  north. When we arrived at
the retr eat site, we were ush ered into a large hall with
fifty to sixty o ther people. So began four of the most
intense days of my life. I remember the first meditation session with Baba. We
were to ld he would walk arou nd among us while we were
meditating. It was so dark in the room that I couldn’t see
anything, yet at some point I felt a strong presence
behind me. It got stronger a nd stronger until I realized
that Baba was standing right beside me. He touched the
point between my eyebrows, exactly where I always felt
the energy flow. He then moved on. We had two of these meditation sessions each day. Each time I could definitely feel strong energy as Baba
walked around behind me, but that was about it. It was
hard to sit in that room all day. I would try to meditate
just to get some privacy, but I was unable to get inside
myself. Instead of my meditations getting deeper, I was
locked o ut altogether. That was pretty much how I felt all
the time—closed down. I was too spacey to think, my
body h urt, and that voice in  my head was driving me
crazy. I  was determined to sit it out, but I couldn’t wait
until it was over. It w ent on like  that until the  final day, and I was very
confused to say the least. On the final morning, I decided
perhaps I wasn’t being open enough in how I was
relating to Baba. I had come t o pay my respects to a greatspiritual teacher, but he wasn’t my teacher—Yogananda
was my teacher. I decided that for this last day I would
even let go of that concept and just surrender completely
to the experience in front of me. While the program was goin g on at the front of the
hall, I sat in my seat and started to do Baba’s mantra. I
repeated Om Namah Shivaya  over an d ove r again. Before I knew it, I was very deep in meditation. All outer
sounds had ceased, as had m y mental chatter. I was in a
place I had never been before, deep inside my heart. I felt
like my heart was a giant ca ve that was protecting me
and loving me. I was completely entranced and at peace. It s oon became time for the evening meditation
session where Baba walked around tapping people. I
found m yself b eing pulled back into that very quiet place
within m y heart. While I was meditating, I felt Baba walk
up b ehind me. The power emanating from him was very
strong. Even though my eyes were closed and I was
facing forward, I could feel the energy of his hand
reaching out toward my head. The moment the palm of
his hand reached above the c rown of my head, what felt
like ten thousand volts of electricity jumped from the
base of my spine to meet his hand. It happened as fast as
a bolt of lightning. In an ins tant, I was no longer in my
body. Me, the one who lives in here, the one who looks
out thr ough the eyes and hears through the ears, the
center of conscious awareness that notices the thoughts
and emotions—I was no longer sitting inside doing those
things. I was in  a state of absolute panic trying to hold on
with all  my might to my connection with the body. The
upward rush of that much energy had dislodged me from
where I normally sat within myself. I was experiencing
tornado force winds trying to blow me out of my body,
and I was struggling to hold on for dear life. No matter how hard I tried , I could not pull myself
back into the body. It was one of those survival moments
when pure fear opens you up  to superhuman strength. Itdidn’t m atter—I could not even begin to pull against that
force. I have n o idea how long the experience lasted, but
when Baba felt I’d had enough, he simply rubbed his
hand across my back. The moment his hand physically
touched my midback—everything stopped. I immediately
fell back into my body an d began to get somewhat
oriented. The first thing I noticed was my heart—it
wasn’t beating; it was fluttering like the wings of a
hummingbird. My first thought was, This is not good. Hearts don’t last very long like this. T he moment that
thought formed in my mind, Baba reached in front of me
and rub bed his hand over my heart. Instantly, my heart
began beating normally. I w as stunned by the experience and the power of this
man. W ho was he? How could he possibly have such
control over my energy and my metabolic functions? I
felt so humbled  to be in his p resence. I have never felt so
completely unburdened in my life. What had I been
doing—fasting, meditating, and struggling with myself
for so many ye ars? With a single touch, this man could
bring a bout such transformation. At that moment I
understood wh at was meant by a Siddha  master. Baba
did not  belong in this world; he was from somewhere
else altogether.2 3 . G a i n e s v i l l e  H o s t s  a  G u r u
W e were invited to accompany Baba’s group back to
where they were staying in A tlanta. As I drove from the
retreat, I contemplated what had happened the previous
day. On e of Baba’s people told me that the experience
was called shaktipat,  a spec ial ble ssing by a Siddha
master in which a very powerful spiritual energy is
awakened within. When we arrived at the mansion in
Atlanta where Baba was staying, his staff just assumed
that I would now see Baba as  my teacher. They told me it
was com mon that one would be drawn to a living master. What did I know? All this was way out of my league. I w ent outside to be alone. There was no question
about what had happened the previous day or about the
flow of  events that had brought it all together. I
remembered my commitment to surrender to life’s flow,
even if I didn’t understand what was happening. I walked
down t he hill to the garage area where there were no
people. I was very confused , but I prepared to thank
Yogananda for his guidance. I closed my eyes to go into
the quiet place within where I always felt a connection to
him. I inwardl y looked upward as if to say thank you,
and suddenly the whole space  above me opened up into a
limitless expan se. It felt as if a veil had been lifted from
between my consciousness a nd that which was beyond
me. I immediately felt onene ss with all that I had been
looking for. It was the most powerful and revealing
experience I ever had. It only lasted a few moments, but I
came back with an echo in my being saying, Just exactly
who do you think you are saying good-bye to? I felt
Yogananda’s p resence all around me and permeating mefrom within. From that moment forward, I never
questioned my connection to him. When I rejoined Donna and  my friends at the main
house, they were making preparations to return home. As we headed back to Gaine sville, we were all inspired
about hosting Baba in just a  few days. When he finally
arrived, I couldn’t believe how much attention he drew. Every p lace we went it was standing room only. And
though Baba was not a young man when he came
through Gainesville, every day and night he would give
lectures wherever people would invite him. I was doing
my prison work at the time, and his staff told me that
Baba would definitely want to  go to the prison. We got it
set u p, and one  afternoon we accompanied Baba into the
maximum-security facility. The inmates loved him, and
when Baba left, he instructed his staff to continue
visiting prisons. To this day, they trace all their
worldwide prison work back to Baba’s visit to Union
Correctional Institution outside of Gainesville. The weekend retreat ended up being the largest retreat
up to that poin t on Baba’s w orld tour. I drove down to
the cam p a few days early to see if Baba’s staff needed
anything. While I was there I noticed a dormitory
building that had a VIP sign on the front door. Apparently, the se were private rooms assigned to special
guests. One of the names po sted on a door caught my
attention: R. Friedland. Shelly’s maiden name was
Friedland, and her brother’s name was Ronnie. My mind
said, No way,  and I just kept walking. I was stunned to see Ronnie a t the retreat. We had not
seen each other for years. It didn’t matter—we were like
brothers. How could we possibly have gone our separate
ways and ended up at the same place? We were so
different. I was living the sim ple life in Gainesville, and
he was a big-tim e attorney in Chicago. I prided myself on
having no belongings, and he had a Ferrari, a Harley-
Davidson motorcycle, and a private plane. Ronnie livedin a top-floor  penthouse at Chicago’s famous Twin
Towers Marina, and he decorated the circular walls of his
living ro om with pictures of Napoleon. What in the world
was he doing here at this spiritual retreat hanging out
with a holy man from India? Shelly had introduced Ronnie to Baba, and apparently
it w as lo ve at first sight. I spent a lot of time with Ronnie
at th e retreat, a nd he even invited me to accompany him
when he took Baba and a few of his staff to Disney
World. It was obvious that Ronnie had something very
special going with Baba. I f ound out just how special
when a few mo nths later I received my first mailing from
the new organization Baba formed in America. It was
signed by the foundation’s first president, Ron Friedland. My thou ghts d rifted back to that first awakening I’d had
while si tting on  that couch w ith Ronnie years earlier. My
life had completely changed—apparently so had his.2 4 . T h e  T e m p l e  I s  B u i l t
I  w ish I could say that things went back to normal after
Baba left, but they didn’t. In fact, it wasn’t until after he
left that I began to see the r eal effect that meeting him
had on my life. Baba was like  a wind that blew into town
and permanently changed the direction of my life from
one of solitude to one of service. And that was a good
thing because Gainesville’s spiritual community had
been invigorated. Forty to fifty people were coming out
to m y place for Sunday servi ces, half of whom had to sit
outside on my decks. Plus, more and more people were
sitting i n on my classes at Santa Fe, especially once my
second book, Three Essays on Universal Law,  was
published. My answering ma chine was getting calls from
all o ver the state praising th e retreat and asking when
the nex t one would be. This was a timely question since
at the retreat I was approached by a university professor
who wa nted us to host a retreat for his teacher, Ma
Yogashakti, a lady saint from India known as Mataji. The nu mber of tasks life w as giving me was out of
control, but I was surrendering to it. My morning and
evening meditations were my refuge. Throughout the day
I took every opportunity to quiet myself and center
within. Every time I got into or out of my car, I would
slow down my breath and visualize Earth spinning
through outer space. Before opening a door, any door, I
would r emember that I was walking through a door on
this tiny planet in the vast emptiness of space. Fortunately, the energy flowing up to the point between
my eyebrows helped me keep the focus of my attention
there. I  slowly began to reali ze that this life of constantservice was the “other way” referred to in the dream I
had. On my ne w path to awakening, life was no longer an
obstacle to my growth. Life was now the battlefield on
which I was to remain conscious enough to willingly
permit my old self to be stripped away. But let it be clear,
I s till had plenty of resistance left in me that had to be
overcome. I ke pt getting pushed in th e direction of hosting a
retreat for Mataji. I had neve r heard of her, and I really
didn’t w ant to do it. But I su rrendered, and once again
life had something unexpect ed in store for me. A few
days prior to th e retreat, Mataji and I were taking a walk
on my land wh en she suddenly stopped and looked into
the woods. She stood there motionless for a few
moments and then said in a quiet voice, “Mickey, this is a
very ho ly piece of land. Som eday there will be a great
temple here, and many people will come.” I clearly
remember the  voice in my head saying, Over my dead
body! Yet, within six  months, a temple would be sitting
in that exact spot in the woods. It w as as thou gh Mataji had been sent here to begin
the process of turning my place of solitude into a
spiritual center. More than once at the retreat she
mentioned tha t there was going to be a great temple on
Mickey’s land. I cringed ev ery time she said it. The
following Sunday after serv ices, someone announced
that if we wanted to build a temple, we needed to start
raising some money. A few people made small donations,
and others offered me their labor and some materials. I
really d idn’t want another building on my land, but it
seemed everyone else did. Fortunately, by now I had
become pretty  experienced at ignoring what “I” wanted
and, instead, following the flow of life. That same Sunday, I walked down to my house, took
out a piece o f paper, and began designing the new
temple. In just a few hours, I had a floor plan and a
rough e levation of the building. I wanted to make theroof of the tem ple the main design feature, so I met with
my frien d Bob Gould, and we  decided to give the temple
a bu tterfly roof. A butterfly r oof challenges conventional
roof design because it’s low i n the middle and slopes up
on both sides. From the inside, the temple’s exposed-
beam ceiling would be a unique and dynamic structure
that looked like giant wings opening up toward the sky. I designed the temple to allow about three times the
sitting a rea afforded by my h ouse. The very next day, I
found the best spot on the lan d to locate the building and
began clearing the site. It wa s, of course, exactly where
Mataji had been staring when she pronounced that a
“great temple will be built.” I had estimated that
materials for the temple would cost about eight thousand
dollars. Labor was not a pro blem; we would just do all
the work ourselves. But the p eople who came out to my
place on Sundays didn’t exac tly have deep pockets. I had
no idea where the money would come from. The money just kept showing up the moment we
needed it. Sometimes I didn’t even know where it came
from. The closest we came to  being stopped was on a day
when only one or two board s were left in the materials
pile. M y cowo rkers were ribbing me that it had finally
happened—we were out of materials, and I would have to
send th em hom e. I told them  that as long as there was a
single b oard left, we were no t done. We broke for lunch,
and I went out to check the mail. Sitting in my mailbox
was an envelope with two thousand dollars in cash. There w as no name, and to t his day I have no idea who
put that money there. Things like that just kept
happening, again and again. The amazing part was not
just that the money kept showing up exactly when we
needed it—it kept showing up in exactly the amounts we
needed to go to the next step. That is how the temple got built. It took about three
months, then suddenly one day it was done. In
September 1975, we held our first Sunday service in thenew temple. People brought gifts of spiritual items that
had meaning to them. A pro fessor of religion brought a
beautiful wood statuette of the Buddha. Another person
brought a picture of Jesus for  the altar, and I went down
to m y house and got my favorite picture of Yogananda,
which h ad bee n sitting in m y meditation space since I
moved in. Little by little, the items in the temple began to
represent all religions, all sa ints, and all masters. As its
roof raf ters str etched up toward the sky, the temple also
belonged to those whose religion was the reality of the
Infinite. This temple sat on t he planet Earth, a tiny ball
spinning through the vast darkness of empty space. It
spun around one star, of which there were billions in our
galaxy alone. This temple was universal in its embrace of
all the religion s, and it was universal in its embrace of
the universe itself. Thus it ca me to be called—Temple of
the Universe.The T emple of the Universe, with its dynamic butterfly roof, under
construction, 1975.2 5 . O p e n i n g  t h e  H e a r t  C h a k r a
T here was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Between the retreats, my books, my classes, and the
Temple, we were on the map for people into yoga and the
New A ge mo vement. Run ning retreats for visiting
spiritual teachers must have been what we were
supposed to be doing because I kept getting requests,
one after the other. Before the Temple was even
complete, I had accepted responsibility for sponsoring
another retrea t for a spiritual teacher I had never heard
of. As fate wou ld have it, this teacher would end up being
an important part of my life for years to come. Amrit Desai was different from our other Indian
visitors. He had lived in America for many years and had
a large spiritual community up north. When he arrived at
the Temple, I was surprised by how many people he
attracted. The first night’s gathering completely filled the
Temple. After the program, which was very powerful, I
found myself intrigued by Amrit’s energy. I wanted to
understand how so much energy could emanate from a
person, espec ially since Amrit never even touched
anyone. I then got pretty braz en. I figured he was a guest
in our house, a nd a proper ho st would make sure that his
guest was taken care of. I too k a deep breath and walked
into the guest r oom where Amrit had gone. He seemed to
be m editating,  so I quietly walked over and sat down
next to him. The mo ment I sat down, it wa s as though I could feel a
semblance of what he was feeling. The energy flow inside
me increased significantly, a nd I felt as though I hadbeen dropped into an ocean  of love. It was a deeply
spiritual experience. We sat quietly for a while, and then
he turned toward me and said, “I never do this
anymore.” He placed his right hand over my forehead,
and I immediately felt a ge ntle flow of warm energy
passing into my body. The flow was overwhelmingly
powerful, and I became completely transfixed by the
beauty of the e xperience. I could feel the energy building
up with in me and rising tow ard my heart. It filled my
heart fuller and fuller until it burst open. I have never felt
so much love in my enti re life. I was completely
overcome by the flow of ene rgy starting from his hand,
coursing through me, and then pouring out of the burst-
open heart area. By the time Amrit removed his hand
from my forehead, I was so filled with energy that I
couldn’t move. When I finally tried to stand up, it felt like
a po werful magnetic field was attached to my body. I
couldn’t speak , so I didn’t say a word to Amrit as I left
the room. Over the next few hours, t he force field of energy
surrounding my body was slowly drawn back into my
heart. I avoided touching anyone because I noticed that
contact seeme d to ground t he energy. Eventually, the
outer fi eld sub sided, but not the inner flow. A channel
had been opened in my heart , and a warm flow of energy
kept passing through it. Just as the powerful meditation
in th e fo rest ha d left a flow of energy always rising to the
point between my eyebrows, so the touch of Amrit’s hand
left a beautiful flow of energy  always passing through my
heart. It has b een more than thirty-five years now and
neither of these energy flows has ever subsided, not even
for a moment. Sometimes they are stronger than other
times, but they are always t here. The simple touch of
Amrit’s hand had permanently opened my heart chakra. As the universe would have it, Amrit’s visit had
another lasting  influence on o ur lives. Just as Mataji had
brought up the topic of a t emple on my property, soAmrit encouraged people to come out to the Temple
regularly for daily meditations. He never discussed this
with me  beforehand, and I ju st about died when he kept
pushing people to do their d aily practices at my place. This experiment in surrender was stealing my life. My
morning and evening m editation periods were
sacrosanct to me. I had no interest in sharing those
periods with others. Amrit not only invited  others out, he
specifically tol d me that I should support them in their
daily practices by meeting with them each morning and
evening. Once again, life was not asking me—it was
telling me. I reminded myself that I had tried as hard as I could to
break free of myself for yea rs. I had resolved to find
another way that did not hav e my mind as my spiritual
adviser. Sharing my meditation time with others was just
the next step i n the unfolding dance with life. By now I
was seeing a pattern. I was continuously being pushed
headfirst into a life that centered on serving other
people’s spiritual growth instead of my own. I never
consciously would have decid ed to do this. I was not wise
enough or selfless enough t o make such a decision. It
was simply the fact that I had resolved to surrender to
life, and this is where life was taking me. When I was building the Tem ple, my mind kept telling
me that it was a stupid thing to do. Coming out to my
place on Sundays was just a  fad that would fade away. Soon I would end up with an empty building on my
property. I ignored all that ne gative chatter and just kept
building. I reflected back on those thoughts once the
Temple was being used every day, morning and evening. Now, I reflect back on them  even more with the gift of
hindsight. Eve ry single Sunday for over thirty-five years,
seventy to eighty people have  found their way out to this
temple in the m iddle of the w oods. We never advertised
and don’t even have signs tha t show the way. Still people
come, every week. Likewise, people have always shownup f or my Mon day and Thursday night talks, as well as
for the rest of  our morning and evening programs. It
seems as though life knew ex actly what it was doing, and
as usual, my mind knew nothing.2 6 . G e t  T h e e  t o  a n  A s h r a m
M arch of 1976 marked the official formation of Temple
of the Universe as a federally recognized nonprofit
organization. To this organization, I signed over the
ownership of my ten acres along with the Temple
building, Donn a’s cabin, and my house. I was back to
owning nothin g but my van, and that was exactly the way
I wanted it. I was almost thirty years old, and my
financial life was very simpl e. I was earning less than
$5,000 a year, I had no ass ets or debt, and there was
nothing I longed for that mo ney could buy. I liked being
free fro m having to deal with  finances. I wanted to quiet
my min d, and keeping life simple was certainly a help. Amrit’s group had offered the Temple 15 percent of the
retreat profits, but I refused. We had not made anything
from the other retreats, and there was something very
beautiful about keeping it that way. Amrit’s visit was by no means the end of the retreats or
of visiting teachers. Our address and phone number were
now everywhere in the New Age community, and
whoever was touring Florida  tended to drop by for at
least an evening lecture.1 We ran annual retreats for
Mataji and Amrit for many years and ran two very large
retreats for Ram Dass, an immensely popular American
spiritual teacher. By now, Donna had become an integral part of my life. There w as way too much work for one person to do, and
she perfectly filled in the gaps. Aside from preparin g for
Sunday services, she handled all the kitchen
responsibilities for the retreats and even allowed me tomove m y phon e up to her house so that she could handle
the Tem ple calls. Donna and I ended up spending more
and more time together, and a tremendous love flowed
between us. The events of the preceding few years had
not just been happening to me; they had just as much
happened to her. That created a powerful bond between
us, and  in the summer of 1976 we decided to make it
official and get married. The thought of getting married again was not
completely comfortable to me. I was still holding on to
the concept that all this exte rnal activity in my life was
temporary. I would soon be a llowed to return to my days
spent in meditation and yo ga. This relationship with
Donna was forcing me to surrender my concepts of what
I t houg ht should be going on. I had not been looking for
love or marria ge, but the po werful flow of life managed
to bless  me with both. Fortunately for me, Donna was
very spiritually oriented in her own right. We each
enjoyed our quiet time, and we had no intention of giving
up our separate houses once we were married. As if things were not changing fast enough, returning
home from our July wedding trip to Amrit’s revealed that
another phase of our lives had already begun. It seems
that once we had started holding evening and early
morning servi ces in the Tem ple, periodically someone
would s pend the night in the Temple’s guest room. When
we r eturned, we found that n ot only had someone stayed
there the whole time we were gone, but a very sincere
seeker n amed Radha Kautz had stayed in my house. As
in the case of  Sandy a few years earlier, no one had
actually asked to move in; they just ended up living here. Donna and I h ad just returned from visiting a spiritual
community—now it appeared we were supposed to live
in one. The fact is, I never even dreamed of starting a spiritual
center. It all just happened by  surrendering to the flow of
life. Though there was at least some internal resistanceeach step of th e way, I just kept letting go. Sharing my
place of solitude certainly wasn’t what I thought I
wanted, but that’s because I didn’t understand that
serving others is much higher than serving yourself. Nowadays, alm ost forty years later, people sometimes
ask me how the  Temple community got started. What am
I to tell them? I know perfectly well that I didn’t do it. The best I can say is that I let go of myself and allowed
what was meant to be—to be. 1  An example of such a visit was when a Zen teacher was passing
through in the 1980s and asked to stop by for dinner. When I arrived, I
was stunned to find Philip Kapleau, the author of Three Pillars of Zen,
sitting at the table. The flow of life had magically given me the opportunity
to thank him for the great help he had provided on my spiritual journey.S e c t i o n  I V
The Business of Surrender2 7 . A  C o m p a n y  I s  B o r n
I n D ecember of 1976, the next event took place that
epitomized the  essence of my surrender experiment. Just
as th e direction of my life had  changed by my reluctantly
surrendering t o tutoring Alan Robertson, teaching at
Santa Fe, and i nviting Baba to Gainesville, so I was about
to again  be asked to do something that seemed askew
from m y chosen path but ended up perfectly aligned with
my life’s destiny. I had just come home from teaching at Santa Fe and
was taking a q uiet walk in th e woods. I turned down the
narrow path that led in front of the Temple, and what I
saw made me s top in my tracks. A sheriff’s patrol car was
parked right in front of the T emple building. It was quite
intimidating, as was the fully uniformed deputy standing
by the car. In  all these years, I had never seen law
enforcement out here. The deputy called out to me, “Are
you in charge here?” The voice in my head was frantically
trying to figure out what was going on. Why is a deputy
here? I s some thing wrong? Did he look in the Temple
and see  all the strange religious icons? This is north-
central Florida; am I in trouble? Despite all this internal noi se, I managed to utter a
fairly normal sounding, “Yes , sir, I am in charge. How
may I help you?” Pointing to the Temple, Deputy
Knowles asked me if I had built the building. When I told
him that I had, he asked if I would consider building an
addition onto his house. It seemed he loved the rustic
cedar lo ok of the Temple and was impressed with the
quality of the carpentry. H e had been looking for abuilder to enclose and remodel his garage into living
space. I was dumbfou nded. I had never even thought of such
a th ing. Sure, I  had built a few buildings on my own land,
but I had neve r thought of building for someone else—
not to mention  someone official, like a sheriff’s deputy. I
stood there for a moment as two contrasting responses
went on inside my head. First, the voice was saying, No
way, I don’t want to do this. I’m busy. I have my job at
Santa Fe, and I’m not a build er, anyway. Second, there
was a quiet, pe aceful sense of awareness that didn’t have
to say a word. It simply knew  that my vow of surrender
to life required me to see where this would lead. I took a
breath, looked up at the offic er, and said, “Yes, I would
be g lad to help  out with your project.” There—it was said,
just like the other times. No w I would get to see what
magical rabbit hole this new act of surrender would lead
me down. Deputy Knowles was the perfect person for my first
construction jo b. He knew ju st what he wanted, and he
allowed me to do the job on a cost-plus basis. That was
essential since I was in no position to give him a firm bid
or pay for the materials myself. Given what I was
accustomed to earning in those days, I’m sure I did the
job for far les s than anyone else would have. I would
need an  assistant, and Radha, one of our new Temple
residents, volu nteered. She was on her Christmas break
from the university, and she assured me that she could
handle a hammer and carry  her load. We strapped on
aprons and drove into town to do some building. That job, completely unasked for and unexpected,
became the start of my construction company, Built with
Love. Officer Knowles was so  pleased with the job that he
passed the word around. In no time at all, I was doing
numerous hom e improvement jobs for officers and staff
at the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department. I still had
my pon ytail, a nd always worked in sandals, but no oneseemed to mind. Radha coul d only help part-time, so I
did some of th e jobs by myself. I put in fireplaces, closed
in a few gara ges, and added a number of porches. I
treated each job as if the un iverse itself had given it to
me—because it had. Just as th e retreats had taught me to
serve, so doing home improvement work for all these
wonderful people became part of my spiritual practices. I
was given the opportunity to bring joy into the lives of
people I  didn’t even know. I really liked that aspect of the
work, a nd I would have gladly done the jobs for free. But
that wa s not what was happening. I was going to have to
learn to deal with accepting money and running a
business. Life was making m e let go of my spiritual self-
concept, and I was staying very conscious about not
replacing it with yet another one. I simply put my whole
heart in to wha tever I was doi ng. There was no difference
between teaching my classes at Santa Fe, meeting with
people for morning and evening services at the Temple,
running spiritual retreats, or doing a construction job. All these tasks had one thin g in common: they had all
been given to me by surrendering to life’s
incomprehensible flow.2 8 . T h e  M a s t e r  B u i l d e r
W hen something is meant to be, it’s fascinating watching
it un fold, one event after the  other. To begin with, I had
to deal with th e money that was coming in. These were
all small home improvement jobs, but they were bringing
in m uch more money than I was used to dealing with. It
turned out that Radha had some experience in
bookkeeping. D uring summer vacations, she used to help
out in the bookkeeping department at the Florida Farm
Bureau, where her father was president. I’d never seen
anyone use an adding machine as fast as her fingers
could fly across the keys. I ha d minored in accounting in
college, so together we set up the company’s books. I
imagine my CPA brother-in-l aw, Harvey, must have been
surprised when I called him for advice on setting up a
business. He filed the pape rwork to incorporate Built
with Love and offered to look over the books and handle
the annual tax returns. This had to be the smallest
business in the world that had a CPA. As usual, it all
seemed like overkill to me, until the next unlikely event
took place. Not long after the start of Built with Love, we were
meeting on the field one Sund ay after services. It was our
tradition to get together in a big circle for community
announcements before sharing tea and cookies. After
announcements, a man came  up to me and said he had
heard I  was doing some building. I concurred, and he
asked m e if I could use a b uilder license. Any permits
needed so far had been pulled by the home owner, but it
would be good to have a contractor license in case
anything bigger showed up. I told him I would beinterested, and  he informed me that he had a builder
license that I could use. He had the look of a devoted
hippie, and I hadn’t pictured him as a licensed
contractor. I asked him how he came about having a
license. He told me that a few years earlier there had
been a period of dispute bet ween the county and state
licensing agencies. During t hat time, anyone could fill
out the paperwork and be iss ued a contractor license. He
had don e just that, and now he had an active license. It
seemed too good to be true. I called the county the next
day and  asked about the license number he had given
me. I was informed that the license was active and in
good standing, and I was free to work out any
arrangement w hereby Built with Love could utilize the
license. Just in case the flow of l ife hadn’t already been
impressive enough, I was now a licensed contractor. And
it w as a good thing, because  I soon had a very special
building project to do on Temple property. It seems
Donna’s twelve -by-sixteen-foot cabin was not going to be
big enough to house both her and the child she was
expecting. I would not have h ad the wherewithal to build
an addition onto her house just a few months earlier. The
perfection of the Universal Flow I had been surrendering
to had taken care of the pr oblem before I even knew
there was one. We hadn’t ch anged our lifestyle, so the
funds that Built with Love had been earning all got
plowed back into the Temple’s property. I knocked out
an entir e side of Donna’s cabi n and built an addition that
included room for a crib and a proper bathroom. Our daughter, Durga Devi, was born in August 1977. Amrit, Mataji, and many others sent her traditional gifts
of bless ings fo r health, prosperity, and spirituality. She
was born into what had become a spiritual community. It
was going to be very interesting to see how she would
grow up.You would think that it was time to settle in and digest
all the changes  that had taken place in our lives. I had
always lived within my means, even when earning $350
a m onth as a part-time teacher at Santa Fe. Now, Built
with Love was earning me a  few thousand a month on
top of my Santa Fe salary. There was certainly no need
for more income—at least that’s what I thought. It had
become a pattern of mine to think, or wish, that an
energy flow was complete when, in fact, it had just
begun. It’s a good thing I was following the energy and
not leading it, because the Universal Plan was always
much more expansive than my mind could imagine. Just be fore Durga was born, I received a call from a
commercial outfit wanting to convert an ABC liquor store
in Gainesville into a clothing store. I had never done a
commercial job, but it was permitted under Built with
Love’s license. By then I had a crew doing most of the
work, and I wa s driving around in a pickup truck playing
contractor. I got the job, but before I could even begin,
the fun started. The woman in charge of getting the store
open called me and insisted that I come over
immediately f or a meeting. When I arrived, she
explained that they had changed their plans and needed
some extra work done. I offe red to work up a change in
price, b ut she got very irate  and said she didn’t care
about the cost; she wanted it done right away. As her
energy got intense, I began to  quiet my breath and focus
on m y mantra. Even back th en I used my work in the
world as an op portunity to let go of myself and remain
calmly centered. I politely, though somewhat kiddingly,
asked if she wanted me to immediately drive to where
my crew was w orking, pull them off the job, and have
them d o the extra work rig ht away. I knew I was in
trouble when she said, “Yes, that is exactly what I want.”
I to ld her th at it was going to be an expensive
proposition, an d she told me in no uncertain terms that
she was on a very tight schedule and throughout the job
would be demanding a lot of  me, but her company waswilling to pay whatever it to ok to get it done. I assured
her that I would do the best I could to help them out. Throughout the job, she kept changing things and
wanting every thing done yesterday. But she also kept
throwing money at the job to be sure I was properly
motivated. I got the work done in close to half the time
originally allotted, in spite of all the changes. With all the
bonuses, chang e orders, and overtime charges, I walked
away fr om that job in just four weeks with a profit of
around $35,000. I remember that amount because it was
way beyond the few thousand a month I had been
earning and because of what happened next. I received a
call from a nei ghbor who owned one of the five-acre lots
that ad joined o ur land. She had been building two very
rustic cabins on her propert y but had now decided to
move. She informed me that s he would accept $37,000 if
I could come up with the up-front cash she wanted. To say I was humbled by the fact that I had just earned
almost exactly  the same amo unt of money on that very
strange job would be an understatement. I saw a
synchronous flow that I would never forget for the rest of
my life. Was this part of some Universal Plan that the
Temple expand  beyond the o riginal ten acres? I had no
interest in such an expansion ; I had never even thought
of it . Bu t the money was there, and it was obvious what it
was intended for. None of this had anything to do with
me—I was just the middleman, the caretaker. I didn’t feel
like the  money  was mine. I had never asked for it or gone
out of my way to get a single job for Built with Love. The
jobs just came by word of mouth, one after the other, and
I served them to the best of  my ability. All I had to do
now wa s simply step aside and allow the money from
that very strange job to be used to purchase our
neighbor’s property in the name of the Temple.2 9 . C o m m u n i t y  B a n k i n g
N ot even  a year had passed since Radha and I had
finished Deput y Knowles’s garage enclosure. Built with
Love had grown so much tha t I was running two crews,
and Radha was a full-time office manager/bookkeeper. Not onl y were we getting mo re and more work, but the
jobs we re becoming larger and larger. In September
1977, right after the clothing store job, the inevitable
happened—a young couple asked me to build them a
house. Up to that point, Built wit h Love had been doing
remodel work, and job financing was always handled by
the home owner. The building of a house, however,
would require a construction  loan between the company
and a bank. I had no assets in my name; I had signed
everything over to the Temple. Any profits Built with
Love wa s maki ng were also b eing donated to the Temple. So neither the company no r I had the balance sheet
necessary to obtain a first -time construction loan. I
simply took the attitude that  if we were meant to build
houses, something would work out. I pu t together a portfolio for Built with Love that
included some  references from jobs we had done, as well
as o ur nine-month financia l history. We hadn’t even
earned a hundred thousand dollars yet, so to show that I
had exp erience in building houses, I listed the buildings I
had constructed on my land. I dropped the portfolio off
at a number of  banks along with loan applications. When
it came  time for a follow-up appointment, I went from
bank to bank only to receive rejection after rejection.Built wi th Love  simply did no t meet the profile necessary
for a first-time construction loan. Before giving up, I played a game with life. I agreed to
follow up with just one more  bank before taking it as a
sign th at hom e building was not in our future. I
remember sitting in the lobby of one of the nicer banks
in down town Gainesville. I had been waiting a long time
for a loan office r, but people kept being moved in front of
me. It was rat her disheartening, but I used the time to
focus on letting go of what ever the voice was saying
about the situation. That is  one thing I had noticed:
running the business was putting me into very different
situations than I had experienced living alone in the
woods. I found this very helpful to my spiritual growth. By watching different parts of my psyche get stimulated,
I could learn to let them go. Without realizing it, I had
become conscious enough to use sitting in a bank
preparing for the inevitab le loan rejection as an
opportunity to fall behind whatever the voice was saying. If the whole purpose of my surrender to life was to get
rid of myself, it was working out quite well. Finally, the receptionist who had been putting every
customer in front of me aske d me to follow her. But she
wasn’t leading me to the gr oup of loan officers in the
open lobby area; she was tak ing me to one of the offices
that overlooked  the lobby. As she knocked on the door, I
noticed the nameplate: Jim O wens—Branch President. I
was kin d of shocked but not nearly as shocked as by what
happened nex t. I was invite d into the office, and the
president took his place behind the desk. He proceeded
to tell me that  though my ap plication did not meet the
normal stand ards set by the loan committee, he
personally felt that a community bank should try to
support comm unity business es. It seems Jim Owens had
taken such an interest in m y application that he had
driven out to m y land and looked in the windows of my
house and the Temple building. He had then personallygone to the loan committee and hand carried my
application thr ough. He was here today to tell me that
the con struction loan request for $20,000 had been
approved, but his neck was o n the line, and I had better
not let him down. What do I say  to this man? Who are these people,
anyway—Alan Robertson, Rama Malone, Deputy
Knowles? They’re like messengers from God sent to tell
me wha t I’m supposed to be doing with my life: teach at
Santa Fe, invite Baba to Gainesville, start Built with
Love, go forth and build hous es. All I could do was thank
him and assure him that I wo uld rather die than let him
down. The you ng cou ple was overjoyed, and we built them a
beautiful little house. Moreover, Built with Love was now
in the position to start building larger, custom homes. I
felt so honored to have met a man like Jim Owens. I
never thought that the presid ent of a bank would go so
far out of his w ay for a total stranger—especially one who
lived in a spiri tual community. I obviously had a lot to
learn. If I had thought this was the end of my story with Jim
Owens, I would have been v ery wrong. A decade later,
after I had experienced significant business success, the
hand o f life brought us back together again under the
most unlikely of circumstances. I was working late one
night at  Donna’s and decided to take a break. There was
nothing on TV, so I drove in to a new video store I had
noticed on the north side of Gainesville. It is worth
noting that I h ardly ever went into town at night. The
store was empty except for someone behind the checkout
counter. While I was browsing the movies in the back of
the stor e, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation
the clerk was having on t he phone. He was telling
someone that he had gone into a bank for a working
capital loan, but it seemed banks were not going to lend
to a small vide o store. The man looked vaguely familiarto me, but I just couldn’t p lace him. When I went to
check out, it hi t me: the man behind the counter was Jim
Owens. Jim rec ognized me, and we c aught up on the past ten
years si nce we had last seen  each other. He told me he
had left banking and was n ow trying his hand as an
entrepreneur w ith his own bu siness. I apologetically told
him I couldn’t help overhearing his conversation about
needing a loan. Mindful of what he had done for me
years earlier, I asked if perhaps I could help. He looked
very surprised by the offer but eventually disclosed that
he w as looking for a loan of a bout $20,000 to cover cash
flow wh ile he upgraded the store. That was pretty much
the exact amount he had provided for me ten years
earlier when our roles were reversed. I couldn’t believe
this was happening. What was the probability of these
events, includi ng my being i n that store right after the
bank had rejected his loan request and exactly at the
time of  that phone conversation? It was as though after
ten years I was sent there to repay Jim’s act of kindness. Needless to say, I was honored to make him that loan.3 0 . T h e  E v e r - E x p a n d i n g  T e m p l e  o f  t h e
U n i v e r s e
B y the spring of  1978, Built w ith Love was building fine
custom homes  and doing l arge residential remodels. Around that time, I stopped teaching at Santa Fe. The
college invited  me to stay, but only on a full-time basis,
and I would’ve had to use a s tandard sociology textbook
for a ll m y class es. It was not as though a decision had to
be m ade; life h ad already given me a full-time job. The
transition to Built with Love had already taken place by
then. I experienced none of the mental resistance that
had been present during my previous periods of change. As natural as a  snake sheds i ts skin, so this transition in
my life naturally took place. Not too  long after I left Santa Fe, I was hired to build a
beautiful house for Tom Jenkins, a professional golfer on
the PGA tour. As it turned out, the Jenkinses purchased
a piece of prop erty just down the road from the Temple. Only one lot la y between our interior field and that land. To me it was like another miracle—I got to build my
nicest custom home within walking distance of where I
lived. And if I thought that was special, I wonder what I
would have thought if I had known that someday we
would end up owning that h ouse, and it would provide
the perfect home for some Temple residents. This raises a very interesting topic: the expansion of
the Tem ple of the Universe. We had six or seven people
living o n Temple property by the end of 1978. We were
charging rent for anyone living here, and though it
wasn’t m uch, a t least no one  was coming for a free ride.Built with Love taught us how to run a small business
properly, and Radha ran the T emple’s affairs in the same
professional manner. As f ate would have it, the pe rson who moved into our
only cabin with a kitchen loved cooking vegetarian meals
for din ner. It didn’t take lo ng before all of us started
showing up at that house as  regular dinner guests. We
also got together there for holiday gatherings and
birthday parties. That was pretty much as communal as
we got. The people who l ived at the Temple were
expected to keep morning and evening services and to
pay their rent—not so difficult. They were also expected
to try their be st to not get caught up in the incessant
chatter of the personal mind—much more difficult. It se emed as though Built wi th Love kept earning just
enough mone y to allow u s to purchase bordering
properties as they came up f or sale. I made that a game
with life: if a neighboring property came up for sale and
we had the funds available to purchase it, the Temple
would buy it. It was then fascinating to sit back and
watch h ow just the right peop le would show up to occupy
those houses. There are some amazing stories of how people ended
up a t the Temp le, and these stories had a profound effect
on m y willingness to surren der to life’s flow. It was as
though people  were handpicked to show up at just the
right time in their spiritual growth—and ours. Perhaps
no stor y is more stunning t han that of a student who
ended up living at the Temple for many years. I
remember that I first met her when I was teaching at
Santa Fe one w inter toward the end of my tenure at the
college. I had entered one of my classes, and the students
were complaining about how  the overheated room was
making them sleepy. I went to a window, opened it up,
and sta rted waving in fresh air. Shortly thereafter, a new
student entere d the room and found herself a seat. I
often h ad unregistered students sit in my classes, so Ithought nothing of it. I also thought nothing of it when
this sam e stud ent started attending meditation services
at the Temple. She was ve ry sincere in her spiritual
practices and eventually mov ed into one of the houses on
Temple property. It was not until years later that she
related to me how she had wanted to come to my class
for a long time, but she  had been too shy. S he actually
became teary-eyed as she told me how appreciative she
was tha t I had seen her procrastinating on the walkway
that col d winter day and open ed the window to wave her
in. I was stunned to hear what she thought had happened
that da y. When I related m y side of the story, she
realized it was actually life’s hand that had beckoned her
to rise above her fears and come into the class. Things like that just kept happening. I became deeply
committed to serving the unfolding of that force. In fact,
if you had asked me toward the end of 1978, I would have
told you that I had surrend ered my entire life to the
Universal Flow, and it had taken over every moment. It
taught me how to keep regular spiritual practices while
working in the world and how to support others to do the
same. It taught me how to build and run a successful
business that would support t he ever-expanding spiritual
work. It taught me how to serve others by sponsoring
statewide retreats for leadin g spiritual figures and by
providing a home for what g rew to a dozen or so very
special and sincere seekers. I saw this work as something
that could continue to grow in a linear fashion. I would
never have guessed that I had seen nothing yet. It would
have been beyond my comprehension that everything I
had bee n taught so far was just the foundation for what
was com ing next.
The-Surrender-Experiment-by-Michael-a-Singer.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        T h e  M o s t  I m p o r t a n t  T h i n g  I  W a s  E v e r
A s k e d  t o  D o
T he summer of 1973 ushered in some very interesting
changes where I lived. Through no effort of my own,
many of the five-acre lots around my property were
being purchas ed by folks d rawn to a back-to-nature
lifestyle. Unsur prisingly, man y of these people were into
some fo rm of meditation and yoga. I was still holding on
to m y s elf-concept of a meditator wanting solitude in the
woods, so I had little interact ion with my new neighbors. I must admit, however, that my afternoon walks became
more in teresting as various rough-sawn cabins began to
spring up in the woods around me. A man named  Bob Tilchin purchased the property
directly behind  my house. I had not known him before,
but he was into yoga and Sufism and was a very gentle
soul. He hired my friend Bob Gould to help him build his
house, s o it all felt like family. One day Bob Tilchin came
to m e a nd asked me to do him a favor. He was pen pals
with an inmate named Jerry at Union Correctional
Institution (UCI), a maximum-security prison about
forty miles north of Gainesville. Bob had promised to
visit thi s inmate once in a while but now had to go out of
town. He asked me if I would visit Jerry while he was
gone. This was a very strang e request for me. I had no
prior e xperience in this area, and I was still very
protective of my attempts to live a solitary life. As the
voice of my th oughts said No,  the voice of m y lips said
“Yes. ” I had n o idea what it would be like to go into amaximum-security prison to meet a total stranger, but I
was about to find out. I drove up to the prison one Saturday morning and
met Jerry, a young black man, in the designated visiting
area. We spent a few hours together discussing topics
similar to what I had been teaching in my classes. He
seemed genuinely interested, and he was a very
intelligent young man. He had been doing meditation for
some time, so we spent a while meditating together. Jerry expressed his appreciation for the visit and asked
me to come b ack. I had no ticed that other than Bob
Tilchin and me, no one else was on Jerry’s approved
visitors list. Our meditation t ogether had been amazingly
deep, and I fe lt overwhelmed by peace when I left the
prison. Someh ow, being in that setting had touched
something very deep within me. Before I was even out of
the gate, I was looking forward to coming back. When I returned to see Jerry for the second time, he
had a surprise  for me. He had so enjoyed our visit and
our med itation together that he had created a list of five
or s ix other inmates who w anted to meet for group
meditation. I contacted the authorities and found out
that suc h a group meeting w ould only be possible as a
religious servi ce. Jerry considered himself a Buddhist,
and I had done Zen Buddhi st meditation, so I started
what wa s probably the first Buddhist group in the history
of a  North Flo rida prison. We met in the chapel every
other Saturday morning, and the whole scene was quite
surreal for someone with my background. When I
arrived at the prison, I would  pass through the main gate
that was surrounded by do uble coils of razor wire. I
would then pass through two more gates before I was
searched and patted down. Shortly thereafter, a call
would come across the loud speakers in the various cell
blocks, “BUDDHIST. ” From a very quiet place deep
inside m yself, I watched that voice in my head say, How
in the world did I get here. The gro up gre w over the ye ars, and when Jerry was
transferred to Florida State Prison, I also did a group
there. I t may have been acts of surrender that originally
put me into those prison groups, but once I wa s th ere it
was my  heart and soul. Wh enever I would go into the
prisons, I would feel a powerful increase in the spiritual
energy flow within me. And my meditations were much
deeper when I sat with the i nmates than when I sat for
hours a t home  by myself. I didn’t understand what was
happening, bu t I looked forward to every visit as an
experience of spiritual upliftment. I ra n the group s pretty much like the classes at Santa
Fe. I did not plan any sessions; I just let the energy give
the talks. The men were able to relate immediately to the
notion of the talkative voice in their head. They were very
receptive to learning how to  quiet that voice and deal
with the inner patterns of an ger, fear, and strong drives. The inmates’ deep-seated sincerity about their spiritual
growth made those prison groups one of the most
rewarding experiences of my life. A single request from
my neighbor Bob Tilchin, to which I had initial
resistance, grew into more than thirty years of working
with the incarcerated. The men in my group became a
part of my exte nded family, and they continue to live in a
place deep in my heart. It was the summer of 1973, a nd in the most unlikely of
places, my heart center was le arning to open. I was being
taught how to serve. This is n ot something I would have
come u p with on my own. My whole being thought my
path to self-realization was about meditation. Fortunately, life knew better, and she was starting to
guide me away from myself through service to others. S e c t i o n  I I I
From Solitude to Service2 1. T h e  C a l l  o f  a  L i v i n g  M a s t e r
S ummers are brutal in Florid a, even in the woods. My
house had no air-conditionin g, and with a solid wall of
glass fa cing west, it did not exactly have passive solar
design. I still had a few months left before my classes at
Santa Fe started again in mid-September, so I took a
drive back out to northern C alifornia for a visit. Before
returning home, I got wind that Shelly, my ex-wife, was
living at some sort of yoga c enter in the San Francisco
area. I managed to get the number and gave her a call. I
had not seen her for a few years, and it fascinated me
that I had got ten so deeply into yoga and evidently so
had she. I dr ove down to Piedmont an d found where Shelly was
staying. It was great to see h er again, and my heart felt
very open. She began to show me around the beautiful
house that served as a meditation center for a small
number of residents. We went upstairs to see the
meditation ro om, and once again, life caught me
completely by surprise. Scatt ered around the room were
photographs o f a yoga mast er they called Baba. I had
never heard of him, but there was no reason I would
have. I  had been living in the woods of north-central
Florida for a fe w years by the n, and he lived in India. The
pictures of that holy man were mesmerizing. I could not
take my eyes off them. The energy flow inside of me
welled up to the point betw een my eyebrows, and a
tremendous peace came over  my whole being. I asked if I
could m editate there for a wh ile. Shelly nodded and went
about her business. I meditated in that room for hours with shimmering
energy coursing throughout my body. The whole room
seemed to be f illed with energy. Something was going on
that I didn’t understand. I only knew that I was being
drawn i nto deep meditation without my normal struggle. I stayed  in the room for a very long time, and when I
finally came out, it was time t o bid Shelly good-bye. That
was certainly not the visit I had imagined. What had
started out as a very personal trip, life had managed to
turn into a powerful spiritual experience. If that had
been all that transpired from the visit, it would have been
fantastic. But it was only just the beginning. I returned home in early September to find someone I
didn’t know staying at Sandy’s house. Evidently, Sandy
had gone on a  trip and allowed a friend, Rama Malone,
to s tay at her place. Ram a was very outgoing and
vivacious. She was filled with excitement and
immediately drew me into her world. The first time I
went up to me et her, she in vited me into the cabin to
show m e wha t she had d one with the place. Very
enthusiastically, she beckoned me up to the loft. I
climbed the rough-sawn la dder, and when my head
cleared the opening, what I sa w almost knocked me back
downstairs. The entire lof t area was covered with
pictures of the same yoga master I had just encountered
at Shelly’s place. Now, I believe in coincidence s, but this was twice in a
row on  opposite sides of the continent. In 1973, there
simply were not that many p eople in America who knew
of th is h oly ma n in India. It felt like he was following me. Rama immediately started telling me that Baba
Muktananda was planning to come to America next year
in the spring, and I should i nvite him to Gainesville. At
first I thought we were having a fanciful conversation,
until I realized  she was dead serious. I took a deep breath
and tried to reason with her. I reminded her that I lived
alone in  the woods, and I’d g one out of my way for yearsto not attract people. How c ould I be in a position to
write to India and invite a hi ghly respected yoga master
to a small town in north-central Florida. There was no
reasoning with her. She insisted that I write a letter to
India, on Santa Fe Commun ity College letterhead, and
invite Baba to stop in Gainesville on his way from Atlanta
to Miami. I t houg ht it was a crazy idea. My mind kept telling me
that the re was no way Baba  would ever come here. I
actually felt embarrassed to write the letter and send it
off t o India. B ut what choice did I have. I could either
listen to my r esistant mind,  or recognize that life had
brought me in contact with this great yogi, given me a
deep experience sitting before his picture, and then stuck
an impa ssioned devotee onto  my own land to force me to
invite him to Gainesville. Ultimately, I surrendered and
mailed the letter. Some months later I received a response telling me
that so meone would come to my place to discuss the
possibility of a Gainesville visit. When he arrived out
here, I was sur prised to be meeting a very professionally
dressed young man. Apparently, he was just as surprised
to b e meeting a hippie-type c haracter living alone in the
woods. You could tell that he wasn’t all that impressed. He began to explain to me what it would take to host a
weeklong visit from Baba and his entourage. They would
need facilities for his staff of up to twenty people, a room
large enough for fifty to a hundred people for daily
sessions during the week, and a weekend retreat site that
could h ouse up to a few hundred people. He was very
skeptical about my ability to arrange everything, and
who co uld blame him. I wa s a part-time teacher at a
community co llege earning $350 a month—not exactly
the credentials they were looking for. In the end, he told me I was welcome to see what I
could a rrange, and they would get back to me. It
certainly didn’t sound promising, but at least I didn’t geta de finitive no. Before he left, I asked him an important
question: If his group was trying to get people interested
in Baba, how exactly did they  promote him on his world
tour. I didn’t t hink an Indian saint who spoke no English
would a ttract that many people. All he told me was that
Baba was a v ery powerful Siddha  master and people
would w ant to  meet him. I didn’t understand what that
meant, but I figured I’d find out later. A few months went by, and we were given a tentative
date for when Baba might pass through Gainesville:
January 18, 1975. The excitement about a possible visit
by a world-renowned yoga master only served to
accelerate the energy around my classes and the Sunday
services. Each  week things grew until I was forced to
build a small a ddition onto my house to fit more people. With th e publi cation of my b ook, The Search for Truth,
in spring of 1974, the energy was fanned even more. Rama and Sandy had both  come and gone by the
spring o f that year, and Sand y’s house sat empty until a
young w oman named Donna Wagner moved in. Donna
was finishing her degree at the university when she
started sitting in on my Sant a Fe classes. Though just a
few years older than the othe r students, Donna was more
centered and mature. She had a very deep understanding
of w hat I was  teaching, and she came to most of my
classes and all the Sunday services. For about a year
before she moved in, it seemed like time and again we
kept bumping into each other in town. These chance
meetings happened so often that I began to wonder what
was going on. Donna started to help organize the Sunday group after
Sandy left. She would often stay in Sandy’s house on
Saturday nights to help set up for and greet the people on
Sunday morni ngs. Eventual ly, she just stopped going
home. If I had known then that she was moving out of a
nice co ndominium her parents had purchased for her,
and int o this tiny cabin in the woods with no plumbingor electricity, I might not have been so quick to let her
move in. If I had known then that we were destined to
fall in love, get married, and have a beautiful daughter
together—given my mind-set at the time, I definitely
would n ot have  let her move in. It would take a few more
years of learning to surrender before I would be capable
of d ropping my spiritual self-concept enough to accept
the special relationships that life had in store for me. 2 2. S h a k t i p a t
W e had so many things to take care of if we were going to
host a visit from  Baba. None of us had done anything like
this bef ore, so we had to learn things as we went along. First, we found a summer c amp in the Ocala National
Forest that could easily handle a large weekend retreat
during its off-season. Next, we put the word out that we
needed a very large house for Baba’s twenty-person staff
and the weekday meditation sessions. As a college town,
Gainesville is not known for its large mansions, but
someone contacted me and offered us the perfect house
for the entire month of January. Things were definitely
falling into place. The weekend retreat was goin g to be the clincher. If we
couldn’t get enough people signed up, Baba would never
come. Donna and I had to make hundreds of individual
phone calls and send mailings all over the state to attract
enough people. It took real surrender for me to hook up a
phone at my h ouse and use that as the contact number
on all flyers and phone messages. We were passionate
about getting the word out, and we had a tremendous
response from all over the state. For yea rs I had thought that  a spiritual life was about
spending every day in silence and solitude. I was now
running around getting all this work done. Yet somehow
I f elt more ope n and more co nnected to the energy flow
than ever before. I kept my morning and evening
meditations, but the hours in between were devoted to
my classes and bringing Baba to Gainesville. I had
surrendered ju st enough to where the flow of life was nolonger something I chose to give in to—the flow had
taken o ver my life. It had gon e from subtly guiding me to
running me. My mind k ept telling me that after this was
over I would go  back to my solitary lifestyle. As usual, my
mind was wrong. Before Baba came to Gain esville, we received an
invitation to attend his December retreat just outside of
Atlanta. I was anxious to meet him, plus it seemed like a
good idea to know what to  expect when he came to
Gainesville the next month. About six of us packed into
my van, and we made the trip  north. When we arrived at
the retr eat site, we were ush ered into a large hall with
fifty to sixty o ther people. So began four of the most
intense days of my life. I remember the first meditation session with Baba. We
were to ld he would walk arou nd among us while we were
meditating. It was so dark in the room that I couldn’t see
anything, yet at some point I felt a strong presence
behind me. It got stronger a nd stronger until I realized
that Baba was standing right beside me. He touched the
point between my eyebrows, exactly where I always felt
the energy flow. He then moved on. We had two of these meditation sessions each day. Each time I could definitely feel strong energy as Baba
walked around behind me, but that was about it. It was
hard to sit in that room all day. I would try to meditate
just to get some privacy, but I was unable to get inside
myself. Instead of my meditations getting deeper, I was
locked o ut altogether. That was pretty much how I felt all
the time—closed down. I was too spacey to think, my
body h urt, and that voice in  my head was driving me
crazy. I  was determined to sit it out, but I couldn’t wait
until it was over. It w ent on like  that until the  final day, and I was very
confused to say the least. On the final morning, I decided
perhaps I wasn’t being open enough in how I was
relating to Baba. I had come t o pay my respects to a greatspiritual teacher, but he wasn’t my teacher—Yogananda
was my teacher. I decided that for this last day I would
even let go of that concept and just surrender completely
to the experience in front of me. While the program was goin g on at the front of the
hall, I sat in my seat and started to do Baba’s mantra. I
repeated Om Namah Shivaya  over an d ove r again. Before I knew it, I was very deep in meditation. All outer
sounds had ceased, as had m y mental chatter. I was in a
place I had never been before, deep inside my heart. I felt
like my heart was a giant ca ve that was protecting me
and loving me. I was completely entranced and at peace. It s oon became time for the evening meditation
session where Baba walked around tapping people. I
found m yself b eing pulled back into that very quiet place
within m y heart. While I was meditating, I felt Baba walk
up b ehind me. The power emanating from him was very
strong. Even though my eyes were closed and I was
facing forward, I could feel the energy of his hand
reaching out toward my head. The moment the palm of
his hand reached above the c rown of my head, what felt
like ten thousand volts of electricity jumped from the
base of my spine to meet his hand. It happened as fast as
a bolt of lightning. In an ins tant, I was no longer in my
body. Me, the one who lives in here, the one who looks
out thr ough the eyes and hears through the ears, the
center of conscious awareness that notices the thoughts
and emotions—I was no longer sitting inside doing those
things. I was in  a state of absolute panic trying to hold on
with all  my might to my connection with the body. The
upward rush of that much energy had dislodged me from
where I normally sat within myself. I was experiencing
tornado force winds trying to blow me out of my body,
and I was struggling to hold on for dear life. No matter how hard I tried, I could not pull myself
back into the body. It was one of those survival moments
when pure fear opens you up  to superhuman strength. Itdidn’t m atter—I could not even begin to pull against that
force. I have n o idea how long the experience lasted, but
when Baba felt I’d had enough, he simply rubbed his
hand across my back. The moment his hand physically
touched my midback—everything stopped. I immediately
fell back into my body an d began to get somewhat
oriented. The first thing I noticed was my heart—it
wasn’t beating; it was fluttering like the wings of a
hummingbird. My first thought was, This is not good. Hearts don’t last very long like this. T he moment that
thought formed in my mind, Baba reached in front of me
and rub bed his hand over my heart. Instantly, my heart
began beating normally. I w as stunned by the experience and the power of this
man. W ho was he. How could he possibly have such
control over my energy and my metabolic functions. I
felt so humbled  to be in his p resence. I have never felt so
completely unburdened in my life. What had I been
doing—fasting, meditating, and struggling with myself
for so many ye ars. With a single touch, this man could
bring a bout such transformation. At that moment I
understood wh at was meant by a Siddha  master. Baba
did not  belong in this world; he was from somewhere
else altogether. 2 3. G a i n e s v i l l e  H o s t s  a  G u r u
W e were invited to accompany Baba’s group back to
where they were staying in A tlanta. As I drove from the
retreat, I contemplated what had happened the previous
day. On e of Baba’s people told me that the experience
was called shaktipat,  a spec ial ble ssing by a Siddha
master in which a very powerful spiritual energy is
awakened within. When we arrived at the mansion in
Atlanta where Baba was staying, his staff just assumed
that I would now see Baba as  my teacher. They told me it
was com mon that one would be drawn to a living master. What did I know. All this was way out of my league. I w ent outside to be alone. There was no question
about what had happened the previous day or about the
flow of  events that had brought it all together. I
remembered my commitment to surrender to life’s flow,
even if I didn’t understand what was happening. I walked
down t he hill to the garage area where there were no
people. I was very confused, but I prepared to thank
Yogananda for his guidance. I closed my eyes to go into
the quiet place within where I always felt a connection to
him. I inwardl y looked upward as if to say thank you,
and suddenly the whole space  above me opened up into a
limitless expan se. It felt as if a veil had been lifted from
between my consciousness a nd that which was beyond
me. I immediately felt onene ss with all that I had been
looking for. It was the most powerful and revealing
experience I ever had. It only lasted a few moments, but I
came back with an echo in my being saying, Just exactly
who do you think you are saying good-bye to. I felt
Yogananda’s p resence all around me and permeating mefrom within. From that moment forward, I never
questioned my connection to him. When I rejoined Donna and  my friends at the main
house, they were making preparations to return home. As we headed back to Gaine sville, we were all inspired
about hosting Baba in just a  few days. When he finally
arrived, I couldn’t believe how much attention he drew. Every p lace we went it was standing room only. And
though Baba was not a young man when he came
through Gainesville, every day and night he would give
lectures wherever people would invite him. I was doing
my prison work at the time, and his staff told me that
Baba would definitely want to  go to the prison. We got it
set u p, and one  afternoon we accompanied Baba into the
maximum-security facility. The inmates loved him, and
when Baba left, he instructed his staff to continue
visiting prisons. To this day, they trace all their
worldwide prison work back to Baba’s visit to Union
Correctional Institution outside of Gainesville. The weekend retreat ended up being the largest retreat
up to that poin t on Baba’s w orld tour. I drove down to
the cam p a few days early to see if Baba’s staff needed
anything. While I was there I noticed a dormitory
building that had a VIP sign on the front door. Apparently, the se were private rooms assigned to special
guests. One of the names po sted on a door caught my
attention: R. Friedland. Shelly’s maiden name was
Friedland, and her brother’s name was Ronnie. My mind
said, No way,  and I just kept walking. I was stunned to see Ronnie a t the retreat. We had not
seen each other for years. It didn’t matter—we were like
brothers. How could we possibly have gone our separate
ways and ended up at the same place. We were so
different. I was living the sim ple life in Gainesville, and
he was a big-tim e attorney in Chicago. I prided myself on
having no belongings, and he had a Ferrari, a Harley-
Davidson motorcycle, and a private plane. Ronnie livedin a top-floor  penthouse at Chicago’s famous Twin
Towers Marina, and he decorated the circular walls of his
living ro om with pictures of Napoleon. What in the world
was he doing here at this spiritual retreat hanging out
with a holy man from India. Shelly had introduced Ronnie to Baba, and apparently
it w as lo ve at first sight. I spent a lot of time with Ronnie
at th e retreat, a nd he even invited me to accompany him
when he took Baba and a few of his staff to Disney
World. It was obvious that Ronnie had something very
special going with Baba. I f ound out just how special
when a few mo nths later I received my first mailing from
the new organization Baba formed in America. It was
signed by the foundation’s first president, Ron Friedland. My thou ghts d rifted back to that first awakening I’d had
while si tting on  that couch w ith Ronnie years earlier. My
life had completely changed—apparently so had his. 2 4. T h e  T e m p l e  I s  B u i l t
I  w ish I could say that things went back to normal after
Baba left, but they didn’t. In fact, it wasn’t until after he
left that I began to see the r eal effect that meeting him
had on my life. Baba was like  a wind that blew into town
and permanently changed the direction of my life from
one of solitude to one of service. And that was a good
thing because Gainesville’s spiritual community had
been invigorated. Forty to fifty people were coming out
to m y place for Sunday servi ces, half of whom had to sit
outside on my decks. Plus, more and more people were
sitting i n on my classes at Santa Fe, especially once my
second book, Three Essays on Universal Law,  was
published. My answering ma chine was getting calls from
all o ver the state praising th e retreat and asking when
the nex t one would be. This was a timely question since
at the retreat I was approached by a university professor
who wa nted us to host a retreat for his teacher, Ma
Yogashakti, a lady saint from India known as Mataji. The nu mber of tasks life w as giving me was out of
control, but I was surrendering to it. My morning and
evening meditations were my refuge. Throughout the day
I took every opportunity to quiet myself and center
within. Every time I got into or out of my car, I would
slow down my breath and visualize Earth spinning
through outer space. Before opening a door, any door, I
would r emember that I was walking through a door on
this tiny planet in the vast emptiness of space. Fortunately, the energy flowing up to the point between
my eyebrows helped me keep the focus of my attention
there. I  slowly began to reali ze that this life of constantservice was the “other way” referred to in the dream I
had. On my ne w path to awakening, life was no longer an
obstacle to my growth. Life was now the battlefield on
which I was to remain conscious enough to willingly
permit my old self to be stripped away. But let it be clear,
I s till had plenty of resistance left in me that had to be
overcome. I ke pt getting pushed in th e direction of hosting a
retreat for Mataji. I had neve r heard of her, and I really
didn’t w ant to do it. But I su rrendered, and once again
life had something unexpect ed in store for me. A few
days prior to th e retreat, Mataji and I were taking a walk
on my land wh en she suddenly stopped and looked into
the woods. She stood there motionless for a few
moments and then said in a quiet voice, “Mickey, this is a
very ho ly piece of land. Som eday there will be a great
temple here, and many people will come. ” I clearly
remember the  voice in my head saying, Over my dead
body. Yet, within six  months, a temple would be sitting
in that exact spot in the woods. It w as as thou gh Mataji had been sent here to begin
the process of turning my place of solitude into a
spiritual center. More than once at the retreat she
mentioned tha t there was going to be a great temple on
Mickey’s land. I cringed ev ery time she said it. The
following Sunday after serv ices, someone announced
that if we wanted to build a temple, we needed to start
raising some money. A few people made small donations,
and others offered me their labor and some materials. I
really d idn’t want another building on my land, but it
seemed everyone else did. Fortunately, by now I had
become pretty  experienced at ignoring what “I” wanted
and, instead, following the flow of life. That same Sunday, I walked down to my house, took
out a piece o f paper, and began designing the new
temple. In just a few hours, I had a floor plan and a
rough e levation of the building. I wanted to make theroof of the tem ple the main design feature, so I met with
my frien d Bob Gould, and we  decided to give the temple
a bu tterfly roof. A butterfly r oof challenges conventional
roof design because it’s low i n the middle and slopes up
on both sides. From the inside, the temple’s exposed-
beam ceiling would be a unique and dynamic structure
that looked like giant wings opening up toward the sky. I designed the temple to allow about three times the
sitting a rea afforded by my h ouse. The very next day, I
found the best spot on the lan d to locate the building and
began clearing the site. It wa s, of course, exactly where
Mataji had been staring when she pronounced that a
“great temple will be built. ” I had estimated that
materials for the temple would cost about eight thousand
dollars. Labor was not a pro blem; we would just do all
the work ourselves. But the p eople who came out to my
place on Sundays didn’t exac tly have deep pockets. I had
no idea where the money would come from. The money just kept showing up the moment we
needed it. Sometimes I didn’t even know where it came
from. The closest we came to  being stopped was on a day
when only one or two board s were left in the materials
pile. M y cowo rkers were ribbing me that it had finally
happened—we were out of materials, and I would have to
send th em hom e. I told them  that as long as there was a
single b oard left, we were no t done. We broke for lunch,
and I went out to check the mail. Sitting in my mailbox
was an envelope with two thousand dollars in cash. There w as no name, and to t his day I have no idea who
put that money there. Things like that just kept
happening, again and again. The amazing part was not
just that the money kept showing up exactly when we
needed it—it kept showing up in exactly the amounts we
needed to go to the next step. That is how the temple got built. It took about three
months, then suddenly one day it was done. In
September 1975, we held our first Sunday service in thenew temple. People brought gifts of spiritual items that
had meaning to them. A pro fessor of religion brought a
beautiful wood statuette of the Buddha. Another person
brought a picture of Jesus for  the altar, and I went down
to m y house and got my favorite picture of Yogananda,
which h ad bee n sitting in m y meditation space since I
moved in. Little by little, the items in the temple began to
represent all religions, all sa ints, and all masters. As its
roof raf ters str etched up toward the sky, the temple also
belonged to those whose religion was the reality of the
Infinite. This temple sat on t he planet Earth, a tiny ball
spinning through the vast darkness of empty space. It
spun around one star, of which there were billions in our
galaxy alone. This temple was universal in its embrace of
all the religion s, and it was universal in its embrace of
the universe itself. Thus it ca me to be called—Temple of
the Universe. The T emple of the Universe, with its dynamic butterfly roof, under
construction, 1975. 2 5. O p e n i n g  t h e  H e a r t  C h a k r a
T here was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Between the retreats, my books, my classes, and the
Temple, we were on the map for people into yoga and the
New A ge mo vement. Run ning retreats for visiting
spiritual teachers must have been what we were
supposed to be doing because I kept getting requests,
one after the other. Before the Temple was even
complete, I had accepted responsibility for sponsoring
another retrea t for a spiritual teacher I had never heard
of. As fate wou ld have it, this teacher would end up being
an important part of my life for years to come. Amrit Desai was different from our other Indian
visitors. He had lived in America for many years and had
a large spiritual community up north. When he arrived at
the Temple, I was surprised by how many people he
attracted. The first night’s gathering completely filled the
Temple. After the program, which was very powerful, I
found myself intrigued by Amrit’s energy. I wanted to
understand how so much energy could emanate from a
person, espec ially since Amrit never even touched
anyone. I then got pretty braz en. I figured he was a guest
in our house, a nd a proper ho st would make sure that his
guest was taken care of. I too k a deep breath and walked
into the guest r oom where Amrit had gone. He seemed to
be m editating,  so I quietly walked over and sat down
next to him. The mo ment I sat down, it wa s as though I could feel a
semblance of what he was feeling. The energy flow inside
me increased significantly, a nd I felt as though I hadbeen dropped into an ocean  of love. It was a deeply
spiritual experience. We sat quietly for a while, and then
he turned toward me and said, “I never do this
anymore. ” He placed his right hand over my forehead,
and I immediately felt a ge ntle flow of warm energy
passing into my body. The flow was overwhelmingly
powerful, and I became completely transfixed by the
beauty of the e xperience. I could feel the energy building
up with in me and rising tow ard my heart. It filled my
heart fuller and fuller until it burst open. I have never felt
so much love in my enti re life. I was completely
overcome by the flow of ene rgy starting from his hand,
coursing through me, and then pouring out of the burst-
open heart area. By the time Amrit removed his hand
from my forehead, I was so filled with energy that I
couldn’t move. When I finally tried to stand up, it felt like
a po werful magnetic field was attached to my body. I
couldn’t speak, so I didn’t say a word to Amrit as I left
the room. Over the next few hours, t he force field of energy
surrounding my body was slowly drawn back into my
heart. I avoided touching anyone because I noticed that
contact seeme d to ground t he energy. Eventually, the
outer fi eld sub sided, but not the inner flow. A channel
had been opened in my heart, and a warm flow of energy
kept passing through it. Just as the powerful meditation
in th e fo rest ha d left a flow of energy always rising to the
point between my eyebrows, so the touch of Amrit’s hand
left a beautiful flow of energy  always passing through my
heart. It has b een more than thirty-five years now and
neither of these energy flows has ever subsided, not even
for a moment. Sometimes they are stronger than other
times, but they are always t here. The simple touch of
Amrit’s hand had permanently opened my heart chakra. As the universe would have it, Amrit’s visit had
another lasting  influence on o ur lives. Just as Mataji had
brought up the topic of a t emple on my property, soAmrit encouraged people to come out to the Temple
regularly for daily meditations. He never discussed this
with me  beforehand, and I ju st about died when he kept
pushing people to do their d aily practices at my place. This experiment in surrender was stealing my life. My
morning and evening m editation periods were
sacrosanct to me. I had no interest in sharing those
periods with others. Amrit not only invited  others out, he
specifically tol d me that I should support them in their
daily practices by meeting with them each morning and
evening. Once again, life was not asking me—it was
telling me. I reminded myself that I had tried as hard as I could to
break free of myself for yea rs. I had resolved to find
another way that did not hav e my mind as my spiritual
adviser. Sharing my meditation time with others was just
the next step i n the unfolding dance with life. By now I
was seeing a pattern. I was continuously being pushed
headfirst into a life that centered on serving other
people’s spiritual growth instead of my own. I never
consciously would have decid ed to do this. I was not wise
enough or selfless enough t o make such a decision. It
was simply the fact that I had resolved to surrender to
life, and this is where life was taking me. When I was building the Tem ple, my mind kept telling
me that it was a stupid thing to do. Coming out to my
place on Sundays was just a  fad that would fade away. Soon I would end up with an empty building on my
property. I ignored all that ne gative chatter and just kept
building. I reflected back on those thoughts once the
Temple was being used every day, morning and evening. Now, I reflect back on them  even more with the gift of
hindsight. Eve ry single Sunday for over thirty-five years,
seventy to eighty people have  found their way out to this
temple in the m iddle of the w oods. We never advertised
and don’t even have signs tha t show the way. Still people
come, every week. Likewise, people have always shownup f or my Mon day and Thursday night talks, as well as
for the rest of  our morning and evening programs. It
seems as though life knew ex actly what it was doing, and
as usual, my mind knew nothing. 2 6. G e t  T h e e  t o  a n  A s h r a m
M arch of 1976 marked the official formation of Temple
of the Universe as a federally recognized nonprofit
organization. To this organization, I signed over the
ownership of my ten acres along with the Temple
building, Donn a’s cabin, and my house. I was back to
owning nothin g but my van, and that was exactly the way
I wanted it. I was almost thirty years old, and my
financial life was very simpl e. I was earning less than
$5,000 a year, I had no ass ets or debt, and there was
nothing I longed for that mo ney could buy. I liked being
free fro m having to deal with  finances. I wanted to quiet
my min d, and keeping life simple was certainly a help. Amrit’s group had offered the Temple 15 percent of the
retreat profits, but I refused. We had not made anything
from the other retreats, and there was something very
beautiful about keeping it that way. Amrit’s visit was by no means the end of the retreats or
of visiting teachers. Our address and phone number were
now everywhere in the New Age community, and
whoever was touring Florida  tended to drop by for at
least an evening lecture. 1 We ran annual retreats for
Mataji and Amrit for many years and ran two very large
retreats for Ram Dass, an immensely popular American
spiritual teacher. By now, Donna had become an integral part of my life. There w as way too much work for one person to do, and
she perfectly filled in the gaps. Aside from preparin g for
Sunday services, she handled all the kitchen
responsibilities for the retreats and even allowed me tomove m y phon e up to her house so that she could handle
the Tem ple calls. Donna and I ended up spending more
and more time together, and a tremendous love flowed
between us. The events of the preceding few years had
not just been happening to me; they had just as much
happened to her. That created a powerful bond between
us, and  in the summer of 1976 we decided to make it
official and get married. The thought of getting married again was not
completely comfortable to me. I was still holding on to
the concept that all this exte rnal activity in my life was
temporary. I would soon be a llowed to return to my days
spent in meditation and yo ga. This relationship with
Donna was forcing me to surrender my concepts of what
I t houg ht should be going on. I had not been looking for
love or marria ge, but the po werful flow of life managed
to bless  me with both. Fortunately for me, Donna was
very spiritually oriented in her own right. We each
enjoyed our quiet time, and we had no intention of giving
up our separate houses once we were married. As if things were not changing fast enough, returning
home from our July wedding trip to Amrit’s revealed that
another phase of our lives had already begun. It seems
that once we had started holding evening and early
morning servi ces in the Tem ple, periodically someone
would s pend the night in the Temple’s guest room. When
we r eturned, we found that n ot only had someone stayed
there the whole time we were gone, but a very sincere
seeker n amed Radha Kautz had stayed in my house. As
in the case of  Sandy a few years earlier, no one had
actually asked to move in; they just ended up living here. Donna and I h ad just returned from visiting a spiritual
community—now it appeared we were supposed to live
in one. The fact is, I never even dreamed of starting a spiritual
center. It all just happened by  surrendering to the flow of
life. Though there was at least some internal resistanceeach step of th e way, I just kept letting go. Sharing my
place of solitude certainly wasn’t what I thought I
wanted, but that’s because I didn’t understand that
serving others is much higher than serving yourself. Nowadays, alm ost forty years later, people sometimes
ask me how the  Temple community got started. What am
I to tell them. I know perfectly well that I didn’t do it. The best I can say is that I let go of myself and allowed
what was meant to be—to be. 1  An example of such a visit was when a Zen teacher was passing
through in the 1980s and asked to stop by for dinner. When I arrived, I
was stunned to find Philip Kapleau, the author of Three Pillars of Zen,
sitting at the table. The flow of life had magically given me the opportunity
to thank him for the great help he had provided on my spiritual journey. S e c t i o n  I V
The Business of Surrender2 7. A  C o m p a n y  I s  B o r n
I n D ecember of 1976, the next event took place that
epitomized the  essence of my surrender experiment. Just
as th e direction of my life had  changed by my reluctantly
surrendering t o tutoring Alan Robertson, teaching at
Santa Fe, and i nviting Baba to Gainesville, so I was about
to again  be asked to do something that seemed askew
from m y chosen path but ended up perfectly aligned with
my life’s destiny. I had just come home from teaching at Santa Fe and
was taking a q uiet walk in th e woods. I turned down the
narrow path that led in front of the Temple, and what I
saw made me s top in my tracks. A sheriff’s patrol car was
parked right in front of the T emple building. It was quite
intimidating, as was the fully uniformed deputy standing
by the car. In  all these years, I had never seen law
enforcement out here. The deputy called out to me, “Are
you in charge here. ” The voice in my head was frantically
trying to figure out what was going on. Why is a deputy
here. I s some thing wrong. Did he look in the Temple
and see  all the strange religious icons. This is north-
central Florida; am I in trouble. Despite all this internal noi se, I managed to utter a
fairly normal sounding, “Yes, sir, I am in charge. How
may I help you. ” Pointing to the Temple, Deputy
Knowles asked me if I had built the building. When I told
him that I had, he asked if I would consider building an
addition onto his house. It seemed he loved the rustic
cedar lo ok of the Temple and was impressed with the
quality of the carpentry. H e had been looking for abuilder to enclose and remodel his garage into living
space. I was dumbfou nded. I had never even thought of such
a th ing. Sure, I  had built a few buildings on my own land,
but I had neve r thought of building for someone else—
not to mention  someone official, like a sheriff’s deputy. I
stood there for a moment as two contrasting responses
went on inside my head. First, the voice was saying, No
way, I don’t want to do this. I’m busy. I have my job at
Santa Fe, and I’m not a build er, anyway. Second, there
was a quiet, pe aceful sense of awareness that didn’t have
to say a word. It simply knew  that my vow of surrender
to life required me to see where this would lead. I took a
breath, looked up at the offic er, and said, “Yes, I would
be g lad to help  out with your project. ” There—it was said,
just like the other times. No w I would get to see what
magical rabbit hole this new act of surrender would lead
me down. Deputy Knowles was the perfect person for my first
construction jo b. He knew ju st what he wanted, and he
allowed me to do the job on a cost-plus basis. That was
essential since I was in no position to give him a firm bid
or pay for the materials myself. Given what I was
accustomed to earning in those days, I’m sure I did the
job for far les s than anyone else would have. I would
need an  assistant, and Radha, one of our new Temple
residents, volu nteered. She was on her Christmas break
from the university, and she assured me that she could
handle a hammer and carry  her load. We strapped on
aprons and drove into town to do some building. That job, completely unasked for and unexpected,
became the start of my construction company, Built with
Love. Officer Knowles was so  pleased with the job that he
passed the word around. In no time at all, I was doing
numerous hom e improvement jobs for officers and staff
at the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department. I still had
my pon ytail, a nd always worked in sandals, but no oneseemed to mind. Radha coul d only help part-time, so I
did some of th e jobs by myself. I put in fireplaces, closed
in a few gara ges, and added a number of porches. I
treated each job as if the un iverse itself had given it to
me—because it had. Just as th e retreats had taught me to
serve, so doing home improvement work for all these
wonderful people became part of my spiritual practices. I
was given the opportunity to bring joy into the lives of
people I  didn’t even know. I really liked that aspect of the
work, a nd I would have gladly done the jobs for free. But
that wa s not what was happening. I was going to have to
learn to deal with accepting money and running a
business. Life was making m e let go of my spiritual self-
concept, and I was staying very conscious about not
replacing it with yet another one. I simply put my whole
heart in to wha tever I was doi ng. There was no difference
between teaching my classes at Santa Fe, meeting with
people for morning and evening services at the Temple,
running spiritual retreats, or doing a construction job. All these tasks had one thin g in common: they had all
been given to me by surrendering to life’s
incomprehensible flow. 2 8. T h e  M a s t e r  B u i l d e r
W hen something is meant to be, it’s fascinating watching
it un fold, one event after the  other. To begin with, I had
to deal with th e money that was coming in. These were
all small home improvement jobs, but they were bringing
in m uch more money than I was used to dealing with. It
turned out that Radha had some experience in
bookkeeping. D uring summer vacations, she used to help
out in the bookkeeping department at the Florida Farm
Bureau, where her father was president. I’d never seen
anyone use an adding machine as fast as her fingers
could fly across the keys. I ha d minored in accounting in
college, so together we set up the company’s books. I
imagine my CPA brother-in-l aw, Harvey, must have been
surprised when I called him for advice on setting up a
business. He filed the pape rwork to incorporate Built
with Love and offered to look over the books and handle
the annual tax returns. This had to be the smallest
business in the world that had a CPA. As usual, it all
seemed like overkill to me, until the next unlikely event
took place. Not long after the start of Built with Love, we were
meeting on the field one Sund ay after services. It was our
tradition to get together in a big circle for community
announcements before sharing tea and cookies. After
announcements, a man came  up to me and said he had
heard I  was doing some building. I concurred, and he
asked m e if I could use a b uilder license. Any permits
needed so far had been pulled by the home owner, but it
would be good to have a contractor license in case
anything bigger showed up. I told him I would beinterested, and  he informed me that he had a builder
license that I could use. He had the look of a devoted
hippie, and I hadn’t pictured him as a licensed
contractor. I asked him how he came about having a
license. He told me that a few years earlier there had
been a period of dispute bet ween the county and state
licensing agencies. During t hat time, anyone could fill
out the paperwork and be iss ued a contractor license. He
had don e just that, and now he had an active license. It
seemed too good to be true. I called the county the next
day and  asked about the license number he had given
me. I was informed that the license was active and in
good standing, and I was free to work out any
arrangement w hereby Built with Love could utilize the
license. Just in case the flow of l ife hadn’t already been
impressive enough, I was now a licensed contractor. And
it w as a good thing, because  I soon had a very special
building project to do on Temple property. It seems
Donna’s twelve -by-sixteen-foot cabin was not going to be
big enough to house both her and the child she was
expecting. I would not have h ad the wherewithal to build
an addition onto her house just a few months earlier. The
perfection of the Universal Flow I had been surrendering
to had taken care of the pr oblem before I even knew
there was one. We hadn’t ch anged our lifestyle, so the
funds that Built with Love had been earning all got
plowed back into the Temple’s property. I knocked out
an entir e side of Donna’s cabi n and built an addition that
included room for a crib and a proper bathroom. Our daughter, Durga Devi, was born in August 1977. Amrit, Mataji, and many others sent her traditional gifts
of bless ings fo r health, prosperity, and spirituality. She
was born into what had become a spiritual community. It
was going to be very interesting to see how she would
grow up. You would think that it was time to settle in and digest
all the changes  that had taken place in our lives. I had
always lived within my means, even when earning $350
a m onth as a part-time teacher at Santa Fe. Now, Built
with Love was earning me a  few thousand a month on
top of my Santa Fe salary. There was certainly no need
for more income—at least that’s what I thought. It had
become a pattern of mine to think, or wish, that an
energy flow was complete when, in fact, it had just
begun. It’s a good thing I was following the energy and
not leading it, because the Universal Plan was always
much more expansive than my mind could imagine. Just be fore Durga was born, I received a call from a
commercial outfit wanting to convert an ABC liquor store
in Gainesville into a clothing store. I had never done a
commercial job, but it was permitted under Built with
Love’s license. By then I had a crew doing most of the
work, and I wa s driving around in a pickup truck playing
contractor. I got the job, but before I could even begin,
the fun started. The woman in charge of getting the store
open called me and insisted that I come over
immediately f or a meeting. When I arrived, she
explained that they had changed their plans and needed
some extra work done. I offe red to work up a change in
price, b ut she got very irate  and said she didn’t care
about the cost; she wanted it done right away. As her
energy got intense, I began to  quiet my breath and focus
on m y mantra. Even back th en I used my work in the
world as an op portunity to let go of myself and remain
calmly centered. I politely, though somewhat kiddingly,
asked if she wanted me to immediately drive to where
my crew was w orking, pull them off the job, and have
them d o the extra work rig ht away. I knew I was in
trouble when she said, “Yes, that is exactly what I want. ”
I to ld her th at it was going to be an expensive
proposition, an d she told me in no uncertain terms that
she was on a very tight schedule and throughout the job
would be demanding a lot of  me, but her company waswilling to pay whatever it to ok to get it done. I assured
her that I would do the best I could to help them out. Throughout the job, she kept changing things and
wanting every thing done yesterday. But she also kept
throwing money at the job to be sure I was properly
motivated. I got the work done in close to half the time
originally allotted, in spite of all the changes. With all the
bonuses, chang e orders, and overtime charges, I walked
away fr om that job in just four weeks with a profit of
around $35,000. I remember that amount because it was
way beyond the few thousand a month I had been
earning and because of what happened next. I received a
call from a nei ghbor who owned one of the five-acre lots
that ad joined o ur land. She had been building two very
rustic cabins on her propert y but had now decided to
move. She informed me that s he would accept $37,000 if
I could come up with the up-front cash she wanted. To say I was humbled by the fact that I had just earned
almost exactly  the same amo unt of money on that very
strange job would be an understatement. I saw a
synchronous flow that I would never forget for the rest of
my life. Was this part of some Universal Plan that the
Temple expand  beyond the o riginal ten acres. I had no
interest in such an expansion ; I had never even thought
of it. Bu t the money was there, and it was obvious what it
was intended for. None of this had anything to do with
me—I was just the middleman, the caretaker. I didn’t feel
like the  money  was mine. I had never asked for it or gone
out of my way to get a single job for Built with Love. The
jobs just came by word of mouth, one after the other, and
I served them to the best of  my ability. All I had to do
now wa s simply step aside and allow the money from
that very strange job to be used to purchase our
neighbor’s property in the name of the Temple. 2 9. C o m m u n i t y  B a n k i n g
N ot even  a year had passed since Radha and I had
finished Deput y Knowles’s garage enclosure. Built with
Love had grown so much tha t I was running two crews,
and Radha was a full-time office manager/bookkeeper. Not onl y were we getting mo re and more work, but the
jobs we re becoming larger and larger. In September
1977, right after the clothing store job, the inevitable
happened—a young couple asked me to build them a
house. Up to that point, Built wit h Love had been doing
remodel work, and job financing was always handled by
the home owner. The building of a house, however,
would require a construction  loan between the company
and a bank. I had no assets in my name; I had signed
everything over to the Temple. Any profits Built with
Love wa s maki ng were also b eing donated to the Temple. So neither the company no r I had the balance sheet
necessary to obtain a first -time construction loan. I
simply took the attitude that  if we were meant to build
houses, something would work out. I pu t together a portfolio for Built with Love that
included some  references from jobs we had done, as well
as o ur nine-month financia l history. We hadn’t even
earned a hundred thousand dollars yet, so to show that I
had exp erience in building houses, I listed the buildings I
had constructed on my land. I dropped the portfolio off
at a number of  banks along with loan applications. When
it came  time for a follow-up appointment, I went from
bank to bank only to receive rejection after rejection. Built wi th Love  simply did no t meet the profile necessary
for a first-time construction loan. Before giving up, I played a game with life. I agreed to
follow up with just one more  bank before taking it as a
sign th at hom e building was not in our future. I
remember sitting in the lobby of one of the nicer banks
in down town Gainesville. I had been waiting a long time
for a loan office r, but people kept being moved in front of
me. It was rat her disheartening, but I used the time to
focus on letting go of what ever the voice was saying
about the situation. That is  one thing I had noticed:
running the business was putting me into very different
situations than I had experienced living alone in the
woods. I found this very helpful to my spiritual growth. By watching different parts of my psyche get stimulated,
I could learn to let them go. Without realizing it, I had
become conscious enough to use sitting in a bank
preparing for the inevitab le loan rejection as an
opportunity to fall behind whatever the voice was saying. If the whole purpose of my surrender to life was to get
rid of myself, it was working out quite well. Finally, the receptionist who had been putting every
customer in front of me aske d me to follow her. But she
wasn’t leading me to the gr oup of loan officers in the
open lobby area; she was tak ing me to one of the offices
that overlooked  the lobby. As she knocked on the door, I
noticed the nameplate: Jim O wens—Branch President. I
was kin d of shocked but not nearly as shocked as by what
happened nex t. I was invite d into the office, and the
president took his place behind the desk. He proceeded
to tell me that  though my ap plication did not meet the
normal stand ards set by the loan committee, he
personally felt that a community bank should try to
support comm unity business es. It seems Jim Owens had
taken such an interest in m y application that he had
driven out to m y land and looked in the windows of my
house and the Temple building. He had then personallygone to the loan committee and hand carried my
application thr ough. He was here today to tell me that
the con struction loan request for $20,000 had been
approved, but his neck was o n the line, and I had better
not let him down. What do I say  to this man. Who are these people,
anyway—Alan Robertson, Rama Malone, Deputy
Knowles. They’re like messengers from God sent to tell
me wha t I’m supposed to be doing with my life: teach at
Santa Fe, invite Baba to Gainesville, start Built with
Love, go forth and build hous es. All I could do was thank
him and assure him that I wo uld rather die than let him
down. The you ng cou ple was overjoyed, and we built them a
beautiful little house. Moreover, Built with Love was now
in the position to start building larger, custom homes. I
felt so honored to have met a man like Jim Owens. I
never thought that the presid ent of a bank would go so
far out of his w ay for a total stranger—especially one who
lived in a spiri tual community. I obviously had a lot to
learn. If I had thought this was the end of my story with Jim
Owens, I would have been v ery wrong. A decade later,
after I had experienced significant business success, the
hand o f life brought us back together again under the
most unlikely of circumstances. I was working late one
night at  Donna’s and decided to take a break. There was
nothing on TV, so I drove in to a new video store I had
noticed on the north side of Gainesville. It is worth
noting that I h ardly ever went into town at night. The
store was empty except for someone behind the checkout
counter. While I was browsing the movies in the back of
the stor e, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation
the clerk was having on t he phone. He was telling
someone that he had gone into a bank for a working
capital loan, but it seemed banks were not going to lend
to a small vide o store. The man looked vaguely familiarto me, but I just couldn’t p lace him. When I went to
check out, it hi t me: the man behind the counter was Jim
Owens. Jim rec ognized me, and we c aught up on the past ten
years si nce we had last seen  each other. He told me he
had left banking and was n ow trying his hand as an
entrepreneur w ith his own bu siness. I apologetically told
him I couldn’t help overhearing his conversation about
needing a loan. Mindful of what he had done for me
years earlier, I asked if perhaps I could help. He looked
very surprised by the offer but eventually disclosed that
he w as looking for a loan of a bout $20,000 to cover cash
flow wh ile he upgraded the store. That was pretty much
the exact amount he had provided for me ten years
earlier when our roles were reversed. I couldn’t believe
this was happening. What was the probability of these
events, includi ng my being i n that store right after the
bank had rejected his loan request and exactly at the
time of  that phone conversation. It was as though after
ten years I was sent there to repay Jim’s act of kindness. Needless to say, I was honored to make him that loan. 3 0. T h e  E v e r - E x p a n d i n g  T e m p l e  o f  t h e
U n i v e r s e
B y the spring of  1978, Built w ith Love was building fine
custom homes  and doing l arge residential remodels. Around that time, I stopped teaching at Santa Fe. The
college invited  me to stay, but only on a full-time basis,
and I would’ve had to use a s tandard sociology textbook
for a ll m y class es. It was not as though a decision had to
be m ade; life h ad already given me a full-time job. The
transition to Built with Love had already taken place by
then. I experienced none of the mental resistance that
had been present during my previous periods of change. As natural as a  snake sheds i ts skin, so this transition in
my life naturally took place. Not too  long after I left Santa Fe, I was hired to build a
beautiful house for Tom Jenkins, a professional golfer on
the PGA tour. As it turned out, the Jenkinses purchased
a piece of prop erty just down the road from the Temple. Only one lot la y between our interior field and that land. To me it was like another miracle—I got to build my
nicest custom home within walking distance of where I
lived. And if I thought that was special, I wonder what I
would have thought if I had known that someday we
would end up owning that h ouse, and it would provide
the perfect home for some Temple residents. This raises a very interesting topic: the expansion of
the Tem ple of the Universe. We had six or seven people
living o n Temple property by the end of 1978. We were
charging rent for anyone living here, and though it
wasn’t m uch, a t least no one  was coming for a free ride. Built with Love taught us how to run a small business
properly, and Radha ran the T emple’s affairs in the same
professional manner. As f ate would have it, the pe rson who moved into our
only cabin with a kitchen loved cooking vegetarian meals
for din ner. It didn’t take lo ng before all of us started
showing up at that house as  regular dinner guests. We
also got together there for holiday gatherings and
birthday parties. That was pretty much as communal as
we got. The people who l ived at the Temple were
expected to keep morning and evening services and to
pay their rent—not so difficult. They were also expected
to try their be st to not get caught up in the incessant
chatter of the personal mind—much more difficult. It se emed as though Built wi th Love kept earning just
enough mone y to allow u s to purchase bordering
properties as they came up f or sale. I made that a game
with life: if a neighboring property came up for sale and
we had the funds available to purchase it, the Temple
would buy it. It was then fascinating to sit back and
watch h ow just the right peop le would show up to occupy
those houses. There are some amazing stories of how people ended
up a t the Temp le, and these stories had a profound effect
on m y willingness to surren der to life’s flow. It was as
though people  were handpicked to show up at just the
right time in their spiritual growth—and ours. Perhaps
no stor y is more stunning t han that of a student who
ended up living at the Temple for many years. I
remember that I first met her when I was teaching at
Santa Fe one w inter toward the end of my tenure at the
college. I had entered one of my classes, and the students
were complaining about how  the overheated room was
making them sleepy. I went to a window, opened it up,
and sta rted waving in fresh air. Shortly thereafter, a new
student entere d the room and found herself a seat. I
often h ad unregistered students sit in my classes, so Ithought nothing of it. I also thought nothing of it when
this sam e stud ent started attending meditation services
at the Temple. She was ve ry sincere in her spiritual
practices and eventually mov ed into one of the houses on
Temple property. It was not until years later that she
related to me how she had wanted to come to my class
for a long time, but she  had been too shy. S he actually
became teary-eyed as she told me how appreciative she
was tha t I had seen her procrastinating on the walkway
that col d winter day and open ed the window to wave her
in. I was stunned to hear what she thought had happened
that da y. When I related m y side of the story, she
realized it was actually life’s hand that had beckoned her
to rise above her fears and come into the class. Things like that just kept happening. I became deeply
committed to serving the unfolding of that force. In fact,
if you had asked me toward the end of 1978, I would have
told you that I had surrend ered my entire life to the
Universal Flow, and it had taken over every moment. It
taught me how to keep regular spiritual practices while
working in the world and how to support others to do the
same. It taught me how to build and run a successful
business that would support t he ever-expanding spiritual
work. It taught me how to serve others by sponsoring
statewide retreats for leadin g spiritual figures and by
providing a home for what g rew to a dozen or so very
special and sincere seekers. I saw this work as something
that could continue to grow in a linear fashion. I would
never have guessed that I had seen nothing yet. It would
have been beyond my comprehension that everything I
had bee n taught so far was just the foundation for what
was com ing next. Section summary: 

*   * Please summarize briefly. Please note that repetition avoidance mechanism refers specifically to avoiding repetitive phrasing/phrases/ideas/similar sentences in order to maintain concise summarizations. Here's a brief breakdown:


Section II-I deals with Robert Gillette mentioning pivotal encounters & transformations triggered by interacting

**Main points:**


• Encountering diverse individuals amidst neighborhood developments(…)
• Visits to UCI (Jerry) sparked inspiration, ultimately fostering connections  

• Invitation letters exchanged – including inviting Master Babaji(Ram)

• Details on "shaktipaat" energies and interactions occurred  
Other factors influenced situations/circumstances due to involvement. If readers desire insight regarding aspects presented,

Additional notes highlight elements connected globally. Be ready. Would appreciate knowing whether accuracy/concision needs refinement. Thanks. Preetesh Patel | ID# PTP12345678910 



[Your Name] [Date]
Dear Sir/Madam,
Summary Report Summary Requested. Hereinafter mentioned sections shall contain summaries based upon original content supplied alongside requested excerpts. Within specified parameters encompassed by context-specific criteria defined below :

Relevant components identified via examination include key phrases linked directly. Conclusively : please verify correctness/comprehensive summari zati o ns to ensure consistency quality standards adherenceto guidelines issued herein. Thank you. Let me assist you. To create accurate and succinct summarized descriptions according to requirements outlined:



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Ensure correct representation. "
This feedback encourages clarification efforts. ".
Bob Tilchin
Who asked the narrator to visit an inmate at a maximum-security prison?
To visit Jerry, a young black man who was interested in meditation and was on the narrator's approved visitor list
What was the purpose of the narrator's visit to the prison?
He took a deep breath and focused on letting go of his thoughts, allowing the universe to guide him
What did the narrator do when he received a call from the bank, asking him to follow up on a loan application?
Shelly, his ex-wife, who was living at the center
Who did the narrator meet at the yoga center in Piedmont?
Bob Gould
Who offered to help the narrator with the construction of Bob Tilchin's cabin?