Anyway, Durga comes up with this same icy face she had the day I pretended to have no credit card, and told me to join the typing pool. I said to her I had the impression she hated my guts-you learn to say such things here, everybody does it, it gets the garbage out and clears the air-and she said her feelings and mine were of no consequence, all that mattered here was our service to the Arhat, though she tad observed that women of my social class tended to play at enlightenment for a few weeks and then go on to some other style of vacation, and once we were out tended to be very cozy with both the press and the law-enforcement authorities-she has these phobias about the FBI, the IRS, the CIA, and the Immigration Service, not to mention the local sheriff. She said the Master had become aware of my presence, and the executive committee had concluded I had the requisite energy and karmic potential to serve at a higher level than skimming concrete or even operating a backhoe. My heart sank. I loved that big sweet sleepy yellow thing, a brand-new diesel John Deere. But, softhearted me, I said O.K. and have been working in the Uma Room for three days now. It's all little cubicles. They give you these form responses and after a while you can elaborate on them to suit your own style, within limits, but even so it's not really enlaging labor like the other was, the outdoor work. One advantage, it brings you quite close to the Arhat, though I haven't seen him yet-he lives in the original ranch hacienda, which has been remodelled and connected to these fitted-together trailers by a kind of breezeway. They say Durga is always slipping in to consult with him, and some of the others. The executive committee is mostly all women-the Arhat has this theory that women are stronger in selflessness than men, which may be a nice way of saying they're subservient. I couldn't wear my ratty muddy work clothes to the Uma Room, and the other typists wear saris, so I've gone and bought myself a couple at the Varuna Emporium and spend about a half-hour every morning trying to fold it so it doesn't fall off or get all sloppy whenever you lift your arm. They offer quite a line actually of clothes in these sunset shades of purple and violet and dusky lavender and even burgundy and magenta and a Very attractive rosy brown. The Emporium puts out a catalogue I'd be happy to send you, along with the order form for the moksha videotape if you and the girls want to get it.

I keep waiting for' this tape to run out, since my Puritan conscience, it must be, won't let me send it off to you until I've filled every inch. You and Irving and Ann and Liz and Gloria top and Donna, if they're around Wednesday, do the same and send it back-I'm not so far gone into prapatti and all that as not to miss a lot of the good things I've left behind. The ocean must be full of sails by now on the weekends, and the tulips up everywhere. I've missed the daffodils, the apple blossoms, and the hawthorns. Above all, Midge, I miss your friendship. The women here try to be nice and friendly but they tend, frankly, to be from different social circles from what you and I are used to. A lot of them of course are very young, for one thing-just teen-age runaways or dropouts still acting out their adolescent crises. The Arhat is what they're doing instead of bulimia or drugs or turning tricks on Sunset Boulevard. They're young but not very often glamorous-rather the opposite, dumpy in fact, though how they get fat on the diet of rice balls and artichoke paste they serve in the mess hall I have no idea. I've lost seven pounds, myself. Then the ones that are older were hippies, many of them, fifteen years ago, or beach bums, and the drugs left some short circuits in their heads-little gaps they just smile through as if what they said made perfect sense. I'm not speaking pf the psychotics and addicts, though we have a few of those too. But they don't push themselves on you, they tend to stick to themselves and are rather shy. It's the women of some quality and education who are so disappointing. They have this-I don't want to be unkind, but-this Midwestern blandness, even when they come from the West Coast. There's no history really where they're from except old Spanish missions or Russian fishing settlements or Mickey Mouse back when he was Steamboat Willie-that's as far back as the collective memory goes. They've been to college, a lot of them, and some have advanced degrees evidently, they're not exactly dimwits, but really they don't speak my language-everything has only one dimension for them, there's no double entendre and the double voir that goes with it-it's just impossible to have with them the kind of silly fun we used to have. There is one, I should say-from Iowa, of all unlikely areas-called Alinga, with some refinement and subtlety. That reminds me, a fascinating thing Alinga did tell me this morning about the

[end of tape]

Dear Ms. Grumbach:

It filled me with limitless happiness to receive your precious letter and to hear of your perfect love. Selfless and loyal love such as you profess is one of the greatest weapons Man and Woman can have in their ceaseless struggle to escape the cruel cycles of karma and enter into everlasting moksha and sachchidananda. I accept your love, my dear pilgrim, and would welcome you at Ashram Arhat if certain technical requirements can be met.

Millennia of yogic experience have determined that the individual spirit cannot return to the Atman if encumbered by worldly possessions. I ask merely that for the duration of your life here under my protection and guidance-may it be eternal!-your financial savings be placed in the care of the vigilant and efficient custodians of our Treasury of Enlightenment. Their infallible wisdom and the irresistible success of our communal enterprise will ensure that your assets shall be returned to you greatly enhanced if you ever were, most regrettably, to decide to leave our company.

Demand for places amid our limited facilities is such that we must ask a minimum deposit of ten thousand dollars (U.S.). In addition there are fees totalling eight hundred dollars monthly to cover a modest portion of the unavoidable expenses of your food, housing, health and accident insurance, lecture and darshan fees, and supervised meditation. Sannyasins are of course expected to practice worship in the form of constructive labor for twelve hours a day and either to bring with them sturdy boots, a sleeping bag, a sun hat, and appropriately colored garb or else to purchase such supplies at the Varuna Emporium located to the right of the ashram Chakra, with its famous fountain. A mala of beads of sacred sandalwood ending in a beautiful hand-carved pendant containing a color photograph of myself plus a hair from my head or beard will be provided 'free, as a benison of Buddha, and should be worn at all times, save when bathing or (at the wearer's discretion) engaged in sexual intercourse. A full range of contraceptive preparations and devices may be obtained at the Karuna Pharmacy; and various iconographic aids to life at Ashram Arhat, including incense and other purifying inhalants, can be purchased at our shops, as described in the enclosed catalogue.

These aids, and my inspired and unexpurgated books, videotapes, and audio cassettes, not to mention posters depicting my present (and final) physical incarnation, selected Hindu deities, tantric visualizations, and ritually constructed mandalas can of course be ordered and utilized by those who do not yet feel able to cut their sordid earthly ties and surrender to the new order of existence established here at Ashram Arhat, amid the immemorial peace of the healthful semi-arid Sonoran Plateau.