And then there were the problems with people. No matter how pure and loving their relationships with other people were when they were on LSD, they couldn't stop their egos from reasserting themselves when they came down. They couldn't stop wanting and not wanting other people to do and be certain things. "Love" was as agonizing as ever. Friendships were still ambiguous. They had shaken off the usual kind of concern for prestige and status, but their own hierarchies were almost as oppressive. "How many hours did you spend with God on year trip?" they would ask. "I got to sit on his lap." Each one tried to be more creative, more hip, more turned on than the others. They were still making comparisons and being dependent on the comparisons to measure their worth. They were still being dependent.

In a word, LSD was giving them spiritual experiences but it was not giving them spiritual lives. Their lives were not different from those people who had come to the same realizations without taking LSD.

The fact that people were getting radically new kinds of awareness about society and their lives even without using acid was significant to Alpert. If you could get hip without taking LSD, why couldn't you trip without taking it? Moreover, he knew it was possible. Mystics had been doing it throughout the history of man.

So Alpert went to India and met Bhagawan Dass, who showed him the most important thing missing from the lives of the trippers in the States--discipline. Trippers get unhappy when they stop tripping. Bhagawan Dass never got unhappy because he never stopped tripping. He never let desire or fear cloud his mind. He never stopped telling himself to be here now. He never let his mind descend from the high places.

Alpert instantly recognized the truth in Bhagawan Dass's existence, but he wasn't there yet. He was weak. He could see what to do but he couldn't make himself do it. He still doubted.

Then he met the little old man who could read his mind. His ego caved in. He began a new life.

The biggest question of his past was solved the day after he met the guru, whom the people called the Maharaji. He and Bhagawan Dass had been taken to a temple twelve or thirteen miles away to spend the night. In the morning the Maharaji sent for them, and Alpert decided on the way that he would ask the guru about LSD. But when they came into his presence Alpert felt so radiantly happy he didn't have any questions. The Maharaji called him forward and said, "Is there anything you want to ask?"

"No," Alpert said.

"Show me the medicine," the guru said.

Alpert wasn't sure what he meant. Bhagawan Dass said to show him the LSD, so Alpert took his drugs out of his shoulder bag and shook them onto his hand.

"Do they give powers?" the Maharaji asked.

Alpert thought he must mean vitamins. He was an old man, and he probably needed energy. He shook his head and began to put the drugs back in the bag. But the old man stopped him.

"Give me one," he said. Alpert handed him a tab of White Lightning. "Another," the guru said. Six hundred and ten mikes. "Another," he said. Nine hundred and fifteen micrograms.

All that day Alpert stayed near the Maharaji. Nothing happened. Occasionally he would twinkle mischievously at Alpert, but it was plain to see that LSD didn't affect him at all.

ALPERT stayed at the temple for eight months. He was given a teacher, a fifty-year-old Brahmin who had grown up alone in the jungle and never had any formal education but spoke and wrote eight languages. He was on a vow of silence the entire time Alpert was there. He was 5'4" tall, weighed ninety pounds, and drank only two glasses of milk a day. His feces were like marbles, Alpert says, but he was one of the strongest men at the temple. He was always being called on to move rocks. The people called him the little Maharaji.