41. Talking Pilgrimage

When the week-end yoga session arrived, I was there and ready to learn and talk.

I had learned a little about hatha yoga in Honolulu some years before and was practicing a few of Yogananda Paramahamsa's yoga ideas during my pilgrimage--in fact, what little I knew of pilgrimage was influenced by the sanyasin ideas of the yogis I had read about--so I guess I was OK for the evening talk.

The Italians were very interested in the presentation of the two German yoga teachers and we all practiced asanas and breathing techniques all afternoon and most of the evening. We ate a nicely prepared vegetarian dinner and then,after a question-and-answer period by the Germans, I was asked to talk


Which I did.


My voice is naturally sort of soft and soothing so most of the listeners--who were tired out from the day's activities--seemed to me to kind of drift away into revery--or maybe dreamland--but I spun my yarns anyway for about half an hour and then we all went off to the beds provided and I, at least, slept very soundly.


The next morning Wolfgang met me in the hallway and congratulated me on a very interesting talk. I said that it seemed to me that most of the participants simply went to sleep, but he assured me that that was not the case--that they enjoyed my stories very much.


Then he handed me a can full of money. "We are taking up a collection." he said. 


"Oh?" I said, "How much should I put in?"


"As much as you want!" he laughed, "It's for you!"


That little can-full of money--Deutschmarks, Lire, French and Swiss franks-- carried me through Turkey, to Holy Mountain in Greece and back to Germany months later!

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