The desire to fulfill the Lord's mandate and write 12 novels about my experiences plunged me into long writing sessions. I often remembered to eat after dark.
I did, however, have two-hour intervals to meditate in the morning and before going to bed.
I applied the lessons I received from the astrologer, upon my arrival in India in November. By sitting in the half lotus position and repeating "Ommm" several times, the body clams down.
Once all the muscles have relaxed (this can be done by breathing in and out in imagination through each muscle), the mind represents the spirit detaching itself from the body.
You may walk through the room, just as you remember it, crossing the walls, and the spirit takes flight to the celestial spheres, to meet there with your divinity or with whomever you want to talk to.
What in the West we consider a flight of imagination is also an approach to the matrix of thoughts, a non-dimensional zone of which we are all part.
In the same way mathematicians use negative numbers in order to calculate correct real amounts of goods, thus our minds make use of imagination (negative reality) in order to conclude what is right and wrong.
Every time I have an apprehension, I meditate and invoke Jesus, my divinity, to request his advice.
He answers me from the Idea that I have of the Supreme Good, to use the language of Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason.
It is, in other words, an examination of conscience, in which we discern the best thoughts from the harmful ones.
My anxiety was growing, since it was already the third week of June and it was clear that I would not have time, in a month and a half, to even finish my first novel.
So I meditated and called on the Lord.
"You don't have to suffer," he told me. "I already suffered for you."
"What should I do?" I asked.
"Your destiny is to travel", he told me, "don't resist it".
In two months of stillness and fasting, I had saved enough to visit some of the remote regions of India. I thought of New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta or Tibet, but I quoted tickets and realized that the cheapest travel packages were available for neighboring Thailand.
I considered becoming a Buddhist monk.
I had read that they could spend entire days meditating, a practice that I still consider the most powerful form of prayer.
What if I contact them, and they teach me their secrets?
And without informing my acquaintances, I bought a ticket and, after a three-hour flight, I arrived in Bangkok on June 22, 2011.
I stayed in the tourist area and visited its palaces and museums during my first week. The food was exotic, and the youth very flirtatious.
There was a bandit who tried to swindle me, selling me fake tickets to enter the Royal Palace in Bangkok, but then I sensed her intentions…
For that’s the proper action of us, artists.
We sense the world in a unique way, and we try to convey such feelings to our readers in our art.
Poets write what we see, taste, smell, touch and hear, but also what we sense through intuition.
My intuition got in 2011 such a perfection, such acuteness, that it surprises me even today.
Sensing minds is a gift that not only protects us against the wicked, but it also allows us to speak to animals, insects and things.
You understand why all swords are eager for blood, and why onions are happy to be part of a dish.
Since then I see life like a chess board, with the advantage that the moves that are not properly calculated by my fragility as a human being–son of Eve, are beautified or improved by the inspiration of Heaven.
After the she-swindler took a picture of me in front of Bangkok's Royal Palace, I quickly ran away just before she arrived with her accomplices.
At night I met Lena, a German girl, with whom I shared three days. Before her departure I promised to visit her in Frankfurt.
My trip was for fifteen days, and I considered going to the southern beaches, but I found it too expensive for my budget.
Finally I decided to travel north by train, to Chiang Mai. The trip was long, so I entertained myself taking pictures of the landscapes on the side of the rail.
It was there that I met Wung, a Buddhist monk versed in theology. We talked for almost eight hours about God, life, death, nothingness, consciousness and Being.
It was one of the most fascinating conversations I've had in my life. Wung believed at first to surprise me with his conception of a world without God where nothing prevails...
"Consciousness," I told him, "is precisely nothingness."
He thought for several minutes before asking me if he had read books about his religion.
I finally expressed my interest in becoming a Buddhist monk.
Wung smiled and, bowing slightly, said to me, "You love Jesus Christ too much. I'm sure that's not what He wants."
I understood also that my faith in Jesus would be a difficulty for the monks to accept me.
In the end we said goodbye as great friends.
In Chiang Mai, always planning for the least expense, I rented a motorbike and traveled to its rural area, where I stayed in a beautiful bargain hotel several kilometers from the main road.
I had never ridden a motorcycle, so I felt like I was in a great adventure. Around him, farmers cultivated rice, a semblance of Vietnam films and documentaries: the exotic landscape he had always wanted to see.
Nurtured by heavenly delights I took pictures from my Nikon camera while driving.
After five minutes I lost control of my bike and fell onto the ground. Bruised, but happy, I returned unscathed to the road.
Evoking Jesus’ temptation of throwing himself from the top of the Temple, so that the angels of the Lord may save him, I kept my camera away from the road.
It was a kilometer from that hotel, at a roadside store where I had gone to buy some snacks, that Chayan and his friends invited me to a beer.
They didn't speak a word of English or French, so we had to communicate with the few words I had learned from a Quick Tai Course booklet. After three beers I was already Sarai's boyfriend, who let me know that she wanted to marry me.
Cuando cerraron la tienda, Chayan y Sarai no me permitieron pagar mis cervezas, y me pidieron que los acompañara a la ciudad. Me disculpé alegando que tenía un compromiso en mi hotel.
Finally they asked me to meet in the same place the next day, at sunset.
Returning home I reflected on my new friends; I found out they didn't have the best of intentions, so the next day I canceled my hotel and went back to Chiang Mai.
There I stayed in a small, but comfortable hostel, where I made friends with a local guide who showed me the historical monuments of his city.
I went back to Bangkok for two days, which gave me the opportunity to navigate the Chao Phraya River. On July 6, I was back in Chennai, where Thomas was waiting for me to drive back to his home in Kanyakumary.
The next day I rode his Harley Davidson motorcycle.
On the way out of the city the clouds darkened and the sky thundered.
"We're going to get wet," he told me. I understood that we could catch a cold, even pneumonia.
"We won't get wet," I told him. I prayed to God and asked the clouds not to touch us. Then the water broke out to our left and to our right.
The road remained dry in the middle of the storm.
Upon arrival in Kanyakumary we did not discuss what had happened, but at the beginning of the semester Thomas mentioned the event to my colleagues and superiors.
The rumor did not please the priests of Lord Ganesha, and the director of the new campus, who summoned me to his office in mid-August.