Adventures with Thom in India

Adventures with Thom in India

Jai Guru Deva.

In this special episode, Thom shares anecdotes from past retreats in Rishikesh, India.

If you’d like to create your own memories, we invite you to join Thom at his upcoming retreat in India. You can find out more at thomknoles.com/india. That’s thomknoles.com/india.

[00:45] A Visit from Swami Premananda

One of my fondest memories from being on retreat with my course participants in India happened just a few years ago when I was in the middle of giving a talk, and I have to create the setting for you.

The retreat facility where we are sitting, perched on a cliff side above the Ganges River, which we call in India, Ganga. This beautiful big green river that’s a hundred meters across at least. And I say it’s green, it has a kind of a sparkling to it, and it winds its way through temperate rainforest for hundreds of miles before it gets to where we are. It’s all melted glacier water, which is why it’s sparkling, because it has lots of silica in it.

And where we sit, where I sit, it’s like if I’m sitting like this, to the right, there are floor-to-ceiling picture windows that look out onto the temperate rainforest and a few buildings along the river, and then the river winding its way past our view.

And in the middle of all of this, one of my course leaders came up to me and said, “There’s somebody here who wants to see you, and he’s not on the course.” And I said, “Well, there can be a lot of people like that. I’m kind of famous in India. Who is he?”

And they go, “This guy’s really different. He’s dressed in saffron and he has a shawl over his head. And Thom, he looks pretty old.”

And I said, “You better let him in.” And he came in with two of his disciples and it was Swami Premananda, who was about 99 years old at that time, not quite a hundred. And Swami Premananda had been with me in Rishikesh all the way back in 1968. And he was our yoga instructor, our asana’s instructor, and also a very close friend of Maharishi.

And he had said that he was living in the forest now. And living in the forest, when you think about that, it sounds like, well, maybe he has a little cabin in the forest. No cabin. You find a nice spot that looks sleepable and you stretch out, and hopefully the tigers, the local tigers and leopards are friendly, and the local cobras and things, and sleep in the forest with the monkeys and all the rest of it.

He said, “I live in the forest these days.”

I said, “How long have you been living there?”

He goes, “Not too long. Not since I saw you. Only about, maybe 30 years.”

And I said, “Oh, only 30 years. All right.”

So Swami Premananda came and sat with us, and then he had with him, rolled up inside of a roll, a photograph that somebody had taken in 1968 that showed him walking with Maharishi and another saint by the name of Tat Wale Baba, and right behind them there was this young guy with blonde hair. I used to have hair in those days. And you could see me right back there and he said, “I brought this photo.”

And then he was telling everybody, “He ran the whole place. He ran the… he was only a teenager and he ran the whole place. The bookstore. And when anybody new came in, he was always there saying, ‘What are you doing here? Who do you wanna see?’ And all of that.”

And I was remembering back, somewhat red-cheekedly, thinking, “Gosh, I was a little bit of a bossy boots.”

But it just shows the kinds of things that can happen in India, you wouldn’t get here. I mean, in what other country would you possibly be giving a lecture to a group of retreat people, and someone who’s been living on the forest floor for 30 years comes strolling in, who’s nearly a hundred years old? It’s absolutely remarkable the kinds of experiences we can have in India, and it’s wonderfully unpredictable.

[05:40] Passing the Lunch Exam with the Shankaracharya and Some Swamis

There was another occasion, a visitation that happened about three retreats ago, when we were all sitting and I was holding forth on the various topics of Vedic knowledge that there was, and the Shankaracharya appeared. Shankaracharya means the preeminent master of all the masters. The supreme authority on the Vedic worldview, also known as the King of the Yogis, the Maha Yogi Raj.

And he appeared with two of his friends who were very senior swamis, Mahamandaleshwars, like I’ve become now. And we had no notice that they were coming. And we sat and talked and after he sat down with me and we talked and he answered questions from the audience, and then the other two swamis began giving a blessing in the form of doing a Vedic chant.

And then they wanted to have, it was time for lunch and we broke for lunch. And all of us, the two swamis and the Shankaracharya, all went up to the lunch room and sat.

And the man sitting next to me was this very senior swami who’d met me for the first time. And I was being very careful because there’s a protocol when you’re a swami how to eat.

They don’t believe in using forks because forks have those tines in them in, and you can’t wash in between those little spikes, and the idea that other people have had that in their mouth is kind of a bit yucky to a swami. So they use either a spoon or just their hand. And there’s a protocol about what you eat first.

When you’re a swami, you don’t have to worry about this. You can eat any way you want in including using forks. But I knew I was being assessed and so I did the right thing, which was, you tear off a piece of bread only with your right hand.

And learning how to tear bread with one hand is a real art form. You can’t put your left hand into the picture because the left hand for a swami is only ever used for cleaning the lower body parts and waste material and things. So that hand is not available for the plate. It has to kind of stay.

And there I am tearing the bread very carefully. So you eat with the bread first. When the bread is all gone, then you use your spoon and you put all of the different delicious foods, vegetables, and things onto the rice, and then you take your hand and you twirl it into a little dome, and then you eat that with your hand.

And everybody was doing the same as me, and I thought, “I’m passing the exam here. I’m being examined by these other senior swamis and Shankaracharya’s showing me off to them.” I kind of knew that.

[08:40] Eructations and Diet Coke

And so at a certain point of the meal, there’s a thing that happens, which is all the swamis, in order to show appreciation for a great meal, they belch. So first one of them belched, and it’s a polite thing. You’re supposed to do it. And then the other one, and I didn’t have any belching in me.

And so the one sitting next to me, who I’d just met for the first time began patting the bottom of my back. And he said, “It’s coming. It’s coming.” And sure enough, the eructation occurred and everybody looked and I was very happy.

And then someone came and said, the waiter came and said, “Would you like some chai?”

And I said, “Yes, I’ll have some chai.” It’s a tradition to have chai after the meal. And a few people had ordered chai and the swami next to me, who was this very senior swami said, “I’ll have a Diet Coke.”

And sure enough, the waiter brought a can of Coca-Cola and he had a glass of ice. And he was about to pour the Coca-Cola over the ice and he said, “No. No ice. No ice.” He says, he looks over at me and he says, “It’s not Ayurvedic to have ice.”

And then he said to the waiter in Hindi, “Bring a straw.” And so he brought him a straw and my colleague Susan, managed to very sneakily, from the end of the table, managed to get her iPhone up and took a little picture because she could hardly believe it. This great famous swami sitting next to me with a can of Diet Coke and a straw right next to him, and I’m there trying to be so proper.

[10:27] The Shankaracharya’s Birthday Party

India really is a very fascinating place. It’s a very, very fascinating place. On another occasion, I was invited to the birthday party of the King of the Yogis, as were all my retreat followers. And I was placed on a stage, and there were other swamis sitting all around me. And about 30 minutes into the proceedings, where various speeches were being given in Hindi and my team, my Indian team, were translating for everyone.

A swami came out of the forest. This is a forest yogi. So forest yogis are those who don’t live in homes. We would call them homeless people in other countries, but they prefer it. They live in the forest with all the animals and that. And he just was wearing a loin cloth for which we could be thankful for because he ordinarily would go without even that, completely naked.

And in India, if you see something like that, that’s not unusual to see someone who is a sadhu or a sanyasi just walking naked. Nobody pays any attention. It’s all just fine. That’s what those people do who live in the forest like that.

And so he came and he had his hair wound up into a great big pile. They grow their hair and grow it for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, and the hair is so long. It’s in matted locks, dreadlocks, we would say in the west. In India, that’s called jata. He had his hair wound up into a great big mass. Kind of like sometimes you see Rastafarians doing that, and this hair, massive hair on top of his head.

And he was a big man and he walked in onto the stage and plonked himself down right next to me. Boom. And he smelled like, you know when you, if you crush up leaves and you crush up grass, there’s a kind of a verdant smell that appears, a kind of fragrance like that. He smelled like that, like crushed-up plants.

[12:37] Of Course He Has a Snake in His Hair!

And he was sitting right next to me and I noticed occasionally what I thought was one of his jata, one of his dreadlocks kept falling off of the pile and it would hit me on the shoulder. 

And then I was listening to the proceedings, so I didn’t pay too much attention. I didn’t want to look over and make him feel uncomfortable, but I noticed him from my peripheral view, I could see him tucking the dreadlock back into the pile.

And it was futile because it kept falling out and it would whack me on the shoulder and then I would kind of see him in my periphery tucking it back in. And after about the third or fourth time of it falling and whacking, I did actually look over. And when I looked over, I saw the most amazing thing.

It was not a dreadlock at all. It was a cobra. And he had a cobra inside of his pile of hair. The cobra was coming out and making swipes at me, and he was putting the cobra back into his hair so that it wouldn’t disturb anybody. This was a man with a pet cobra in his dreadlocks.

And it’s at times like that, that I think, “I’m sure you could go to Russia and find unusual things. I’m sure you could go to Patagonia and find unusual things. I’m sure you could go to Mexico, where I am now, and find unusual things, but India’s unusual things are in an entire other category. It’s a category that’s way beyond anything that you would find anywhere else. It really is.

Even though we’re in a modern age. Here we are in 2025 and we think that so-called civilized ways have conquered the Earth, and everything’s the same everywhere. Ubers and whatnot. You can get Ubers in Rishikesh, India, but you can also get someone who’s almost naked sitting next to you with a snake in their hair.

And the most amazing thing is that everybody in that birthday party, it was a birthday party for the King of the Yogis, everybody saw the same thing as me, a cobra in his hair. I was the only one who thought it was exceptional. Nobody else thought that was in the least bit exceptional.

“Of course he has a snake in his hair. What are you so taken aback by? He is a forest yogi. They do things like that.”

[15:11] A Full Spectrum of Experiences Await in Rishikesh

So it really is, where we are in Rishikesh for our retreat, we’re on the cusp of civilization. When first I went there in the late 1960s it was a tiny hamlet with probably, if you drew the circle 10 kilometers out from the center of town, there were probably a thousand people living there. Now in all of the years that have passed since then with new roads being created from the big city of Delhi, from the south, now there are about 800,000 people living in the environment of Rishikesh.

But the part of Rishikesh that we are in, which is right on the river, has been preserved. And we’re really you, when you look out from the lecture room at the river, you’re looking at rainforest everywhere you look. It’s completely covered in forested hills, and we are on the cusp of a tiger reserve.

It’s hard to find a tiger. They could find you maybe if you were out after dark, but, just to give you an idea, an impression of… we’re kind of at the end of civilization and in somewhat of a wilderness with one of the grandest rivers you’ll ever see.

And it’s great fun because that part of the Ganges River is clean. You may have heard, and well-deserved tales, of how polluted that river gets hundreds of miles downstream. But where we are, it’s pretty much fresh glacier water. It’s just come straight off the Himalayas. In India, they don’t say Himalaya, they say Himalaya. That’s the proper way of pronouncing it, Himalaya.

It comes off the Himalayas and comes rushing past where we are, and the water’s quite tolerably swimmable. For those who would like to take a sacred dip, it’s considered to be a lovely thing to go down to the river and 1, 2, 3, dunk in, and it’s very scintillating and refreshing and brisk and certainly wakes you up if it’s the morning.

Not that it is required of you to take a dip in the river, but for those who would like to do that tradition, it really is a lovely thing. And more often than not, you’ll find me down there at the river’s edge as well, taking dips along with everyone else.

So I think when you come to Rishikesh, be prepared for all kinds of full spectrum of experiences and things that you would never expect. I can’t give you more expectations than what already I’m giving you, just because it is the world of the unexpected, and every year it yields up more treasures and more treasured memories, what it’s like to be in far North India.

Jai Guru Deva.