I've also learned that you don't always get to pick the people with whom you travel the journey. You sometimes may think you do, but don't be deceived. And the corollary of that - and this was my real lesson - is that you start to realize that you can love even the people you don't like and must love and help everyone.

You have to go through the darkness to truly know the light. This may sound like a cliche, but it's true nonetheless. Often the greatest doubts occur just before a breakthrough.

I started to think more about becoming peace rather than fighting for peace, and the contradiction in terms, and the anger and violence that we were prey to and involved in to some extent in those days.

Ram Dass, Krishna Dass, we all spoke through interpreters. There were good interpreters there, educated people in India speak English but Maharaji was the One, the Baba, Holy Man, mendicant, he didn't speak English. We talked to him and it was hard to know him, he was an ancient holy man and I was a 21 year old seeker. So I never knew what was going on, I mean I don't really know what's going on now, my guess work is a little better perhaps.

I never really wanted to have a Guru, I was more interested in Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and had a psychological background in college, but he had so much love. To be with him, there was nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. Nothing he taught, philosophy or meditation, are the things I went to India to look for, or was interested in, but he sort of jumped into my heart and then pulled, he pried it open.

The heart is an organ of perception.

May all beings everywhere with whom we are inseparably connected, be fulfilled, awakened, liberated and free. May there be peace in this world and throughout the entire universe, and may we all together complete the spiritual journey.