Foreign Trips: An Incident in Berlin

Papaji has told this story many times in his satsangs. Usually, he offers no explanation for the girl’s ecstatic laughter, but on one occasion he did confess that the girl behaved the way she did as a consequence of a spiritual experience she had had as they encountered each other on the footpath. I asked Meera, who was present on this occasion, what she saw.

We were walking along the streets, looking at the sights. It was late at night, but many places were still open. Master stopped and pointed out a beautiful young girl who was standing on the pavement. It looked to me as if she was waiting for her order at one of the fast-food shops that lined the street.

As he was pointing to her he said, ‘Look at that girl standing there. What a beautiful, innocent face she has!’

Something about her puzzled or attracted him. He kept on looking at her very strangely, as if he were trying to look into her mind to find out more about her. He commented several times on her beauty and her innocence, and once remarked that he was astonished by her purity.

We eventually carried on with our walk but after a few steps we noticed that the girl was beginning to laugh. At first she was just smiling, but then she started giggling a little, and finally she abandoned herself to the full ecstatic laughter that Papaji describes whenever he tells this story. As he said, a police van eventually came and took her away because ecstatic behaviour in public places is definitely frowned on in the West. I think that Master was just looking at her mind to see what she was like inside, but the strong powerful look he gave her accidentally triggered off her outburst of laughter. She had a pure, innocent mind and it didn’t need much to push her into a state of happiness and ecstasy.

Excerpt From Nothing Ever Happened Volume Two, pages 153-154
By David Godman