The cold I left home with is at last getting better. Since you have the address there's no harm in telling you that the days-are so hot and bright your lips and elbows keep cracking, but the nights can be quite chilly still. I didn't bring enough warm, clothes and sleep sometimes in a parka and longjohns and have become quite deft at draping myself in a sari. At first I was assigned to a trailer-the others with me were more Pearl 's age than mine and always wanted to go dancing-but now I'm in an A-frame I share with only two sannyasins, and these suitably mature. The word "san-nyasin" originally meant someone who's become a holy beggar wandering from place to place. Our guru says that we travel most when standing still. We wear purple and pink because those are sunset colors and the world, he thinks, is in terrible decline. Also these are at the "love end" of the spectrum. I've become quite brown and my hair quite unruly. You would hardly know your smooth old coefficient in that baby-making wave we together formed twenty years ago. We seem quite sweet in our Brighton apartment as I look back on it-for all of your ugly present noises.

Fondly,

S.

P.S.: If by any dreadful misestimation of your rights and powers you carry out your threat to show up here, please understand that you will be taken into custody by our ashram security forces, a team of zealous young men I don't think you will find as cute as I do. They wear lavender uniforms and carry real guns and all graduated in the top third of their classes at the Arizona Police Academy. You will be held in a little detention room filled with pictures of the Arhat while tapes of his discourses play continuously through a loudspeaker. You will be released only when (a) a sannyasin vouches for you as a visitor (b) you find yourself on fire with love of the Arhat and humbly request to join the ashram (c) you make a generous contribution to our manifold good works and promise to go away. Since (a) will not forth-come from me, nor, most likely, {b) from you (though your expertise would be very useful here-the medical services are overstrained.and the head of the clinic, a woman called Ma Prapti, seems to be in a gloomy trance most of the time), you should 'save yourself the ignominy of (c) and stay where you are and take care of our joint property. I assume you will be renting the Cape place this summer. Be sure to send me half the proceeds.

Dear Mrs. Blithedale

It filled me with limitless sorrow to receive the letter of your lawyers inquiring after the whereabouts of the principal amount so graciously made available to the work of the ashram some few years ago. Our accounts fail to show that any fixed term was set for the return of these most precious and cherished funds, nor that any rate of interest was determined. Had interest been your aim, perhaps you should have entrusted these funds to a federally insured bank, with its glass windows and fashionably attired tellers and total lack of spiritual benefits.

But no, at such time by no means were you interested in the banks: you were interested in the peace that Brahman brings when reunited with your atman; you were interested in samadhi and casting off the sordid claims of our illusory material life. Your legal servants write that you now regret your months as a sannyasin with us and have re-embraced your forefathers' creed of Presbyterianism-a Calvinist sect which presents earthly prosperity as a sign of divine election. We rejoice if you have thus purchased inner peace. Vishnu has many avatars.

However: we have been carefully consulting your records and conclude that your ascent to samadhi was regrettably arrested at the third, or Manipura, chakra. As you will doubtless remember, this is the "gem center," whose presiding deity is Rudra, whose lotus displays ten blue petals with an inverted red triangle, and whose subtle-body site is the solar plexus. We now believe that the burning you felt there, which we joyously took as a sign of ascent toward the fourth chakra, Anahata, located at the level of the heart, may have been merely psychic resistance or simple indigestion. Your practice (abhyasana) of the asanas and mudras was ever desultory, Madame Blithedale, and your attachment to the five counterproductive vrittis of the psychomental stream (ignorance, individuality, passion, disgust, will to live) was never-we now sorrowfully feel-disengaged. The cleansing fire of asceticism (tapas) encountered in you an ego (aham) sheathed, as it were, in asbestos. Your vasanas-your subconscious sensations and urges-have stubbornly retained phalatrishna: the egoistic "thirst for fruits."

Yet we cannot find it in our hearts to condemn you, to cast you out. Such is the lavish scale of our generosity that we would welcome you back. You would rejoice to behold the many practical improvements at Ashram Arhat made possible by the ocean of generosity of which your own constituted but a single small, though infinitely treasured, drop. Our work does not cease, that ocean must flow on! Even as I dictate this affectionate missive, the steel girders of our splendid mandir, our Hall of a Millionfold Joys, are rising and being thunderously riveted together! There is not time nor strength for the backward glance! Come and rejoin us and all accountings will be made anew! Your Presbyterian legal advisers merely cast doleful shadows upon your atman, which longs to be free. As the immortal Utterly Enlightened proclaimed in the. blessed Dhammapada, "Sorrow cannot touch the man [or woman, the scribes assuredly meant to add] who is not in the bondage of anything, who owns nothing."

Your eternal servant,

Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/spw

Dear Mr. Rogers:

It filled me with sincere regret to hear of the loss of your two heads of prize cattle. However, your accusation of theft against the Ashram Arhat because the fence between us had its barbed wires snipped falls upon barren ground, for we are vegetarians at this place and have no need of rustling protein'from you. So kindly look for your cattle elsewhere, among your other ranching friends, who are rumored to relish liquor and gambling to the extent of unhinging their better judgment.

And no, we will not join you in the costs of repairing the fence and reinforcing the same. The fence is your affair, as all who are in our ashram wish to stay in and, unlike underfed steers living under sentence of death, they have no need of barbed wires.

With neighborly affection and esteem,

Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/spw

Gentlemen:

The large unpaid bill for six Lincoln limousines must be a deplorable clerical error. I have referred it to our chief accountant, Ma Prem Nitya Kalpana, who is unfortunately enjoying two weeks of uninterrupted meditation.

With my generous blessings,

Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/spw

Dear Irving-

Just a quick Monday-morning note on my trusty office Selectric with its lovely augmented memory and magical erasure features. I often think of you and assume that Midge has shared at least the gist of the tape I sent her it must have been three weeks ago. Time flies! Things hum along here, though the noon sun is getting so hot now the Master has decreed a siesta time from eleven-thirty to three. People were fainting-in the fields, especially some of the girls who have been up half the night absorbing energy at the Kali Club.