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Chapter 2§

“Stop this Noise”

Having saved his funds by living a frugal, almost ascetic existence, the young mystic boarded a steamer in February of 1947, sailing from San Francisco under the Golden Gate Bridge and off to India as part of a five-member cultural mission to Sri Lanka. In sharing that departure with his monks 25 years later, he described it “as a dark, dreary day” and noted the Dutch merchant marine boat, the MS Mapia, “sailed with an English crew.”§

He was alone for the first time in his life, but it was an aloneness that he savored. It was a month-long voyage aboard a working ship with rough accommodations. Robert’s berth was the cheapest available, a tiny, one-man chamber deep below deck right above the engine room. This was to provide an unexpected encounter with the supranormal. This experience impressed on him the power of the meditative mind, a power that was unleashed spontaneously that day on the ship.§

I took the first ship after the war leaving the port for Sri Lanka. It was a freighter. My cabin was right over the engine room, and that was very disturbing. I remember one time I was in deep meditation, really deep meditation, not really hearing anything. Then I came out of that silence and heard this roaring engine—rrrrrrr. I said to myself, “I wish this noise would just stop,” and it did.§

Immediately, the whole ship stopped. We floated for three days, going off course a little bit. They couldn’t find out what was wrong. Finally, they found that two screws had come loose in the engine. They fixed the problem and the engine started up again. It was a lucky thing because we were going through mine fields. It was just after the war. The ship could have been blown up very easily, and only toward the end of the voyage did we know what the cargo was. It was munitions. That would have been a big bang for all of us—something you would want to miss.§

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