It is a great privilege for me to be writing this foreword, a rare honor I bestow upon a friend and fellow author who needs all the help he can get at the moment. Not only has my good buddy forgotten that he is writing this book about his personal journey of spirit, but he cannot even recall the who of its primary character. Currently stumbling around in a fog of amnesia among millions of Hindu pilgrims, he thinks himself a wandering holy man gaining spiritual merit at the Kumba Mehla festival.
Our forgetful writer is correct regarding his presence at the Kumba Mehla, an ancient spiritual shindig held every three years that brings together the largest crowd of people in the world. The festival is roughly equivalent to the entire population of greater Los Angeles camping at the beach for a month-long clambake and prayer session—with only holy cows to clean up the mess. Then at an auspicious moment on the day of the new moon everyone rushes into the water for a bath that supposedly clears all bad karma, at least for those not trampled or drowned. Very California, but it actually takes place along the sacred river Ganges here in beautiful downtown India.
Although correct in his guess as to festival location, the author is wrong about his identity as a wandering holy man in orange robes. Being a fan of irony, I find it a hoot that this guy’s memory shattered into shards during the time he was composing his spiritual autobiography, The ReMinder—as in the re-Minder, a man re-minding himself and reclaiming what he presumptuously calls his total Mind. You will recognize re-Minder as one of those little wordplays that spiritual writers find clever; like to atone is to be at-One with God, to remember is to re-Member with your lost tribe of angels, and a Port-a-Potty is where all this crap should go.
But, hey, I’m neither as cynical nor narrow-minded as this sounds. It’s just that as an American expatriate in India where sacred cows are fully protected, I must turn elsewhere for targets of my sacrilege. Sacrilege and irony, by the way, join with paradox to top my list of worldly creations that make me chubby. Moreover, it is no coincidence that sacrilege, irony, and paradox are the holy trinity usually found at the brink of one’s spiritual breakthrough—which for our author’s sake best be true as he helplessly wanders through a convoluting maze of amnesia.
Actually, helpless as a diagnosis of my buddy’s memory is misleading since I hold in my hand at this very moment a vital object that promises to lead him at least partially out of forgetfulness: A little souvenir tile from Sedona, Arizona, with the cheery saying, There’s no gift like the present! My task now is to design a clever way to present him with this memento before the new moon arrives at the Kumba Mehla in order to trigger some of his dormant brain cells, then hand him over to an awaiting guardian angel of the female persuasion.
What this fine Calgary woman endeavors to bestow upon him thereafter is questionable since a rather jaded attitude seems to reside in her ample, angelic form. Her innocence, Alberta explained during our tête-á-tête last evening, was enthusiastically lost while serving as Miss Junior Stampede of 1984; while her last show of mercy involved shooting her struggling mount which had just broken his leg. I assume the mount was equestrian in nature, but nothing is certain in this world of paradox or in the future of the intricate tale about to unfold.
Now that I have cast my pearls before another man’s hogwash, those who dare proceed shall travel back through time by several weeks and upriver a few hundred miles to embrace the genesis of this tale. So let The ReMinder begin before another rip in the space-time continuum sends our hero and his story hurtling further into new worlds of intrigue that may end up changing even the title of his book. It’s now or never!
This foreword graciously provided at no charge by
the fully self-realized master and a Postle of Light,
Shri Shri Cy Bubha
PART ONE
“A fool and his journey are soon departed.”
- from My Father, Myself,
by Benjamin ‘Dubya’ Franklin