In 1971 I was a young man just out of film school, totally devastated by life’s mystery, whose sole purpose was to go through a day and stay alive.
An elderly man, the head of mind control in NYC, refused to let me study with him. ‘You don’t belong here’ he said ‘you belong with Rudi’. ‘Who is Rudi?’ I asked. He is a fat Jew who will knock you down with his energy’, he replied. It took me two weeks of constant inner struggle to finally traverse the short distance between my apartment and Rudi’s store.
I walked in singing and chanting to keep my mind still. Rudi looked up at me and smiled. ‘I love you very much‘ he said, and sent me to learn the exercise.
I didn’t sleep all that night. I woke up at 3:30 AM and called the Ashram. A sleepy voice of one of his students answered. ‘I would like to talk to Rudi’ I said.
Bruce Denny (I had learned his name later) said that Rudi does not hold classes on Sunday morning. ‘Please go and ask him, ’ I repeated, ‘or I will keep on calling’. Bruce went and came back after a very short moment. ‘Rudi said that if you come tomorrow morning he will hold a class.’
I had felt like a whale dying on the shore when all of the sudden a body of water appears to him.
Weeks later, when it suddenly dawned upon me that I had actually woke Rudi up in the middle of the night. I came to him soaking in remorse wishing to apologize. ‘Great students don’t stop at bad manners’, he said and never mentioned the incident again.