I was concerned about how transient and how unfair everything was. Concepts were passed on to me in surrounding culture and religion, but they were surface deep, I remained unconvinced, and demanded a realization based on something other than peoples dogmas and interpretations. I had to find my own truth.

The feminine has always played a great role in the shaping my life. From my mother who was a beacon of soul, my first loves, my wife, my sister. They all have amazed me for their strength of giving, their depth of feeling, and their joy of living, in spite of all the challenges they had to face in a world designed by men’s child games. Woman of holy water,” mujer de agua bendita” the poem that opens this diary refers to this deep rooted admiration and love for the feminine.

Later in life I met a woman in India, Mehera Irani, chief disciple of Meher Baba, who for me represented the essence of femininity. I met her from afar, never even shook hands with her or embraced her, yet she glanced into my eyes, she smiled, and she opened up inner wells of pure water that soothed me. Through her eyes I confirmed the beauty and transcendence of perennial womanhood. She opened recesses inside where my own femininity lived. Because of her I was aware that I could sing. That is when poetry started to coalesce inside.

In the early eighty’s, as I was doing some business travel in Europe, I came across in a train with a young girl. She must have been in her early twenty’s or late teens. By her complexion she looked Latin, although we never spoke. She was carrying a large backpack and on it I saw her name written: Angeles. Her eyes crossed mine, so different we were, I was a mature man in a business suit doing what I thought were important things, she was a girl with fire of discovery in her black eyes, devouring the world. Somehow she made a deep impression in me. Somehow I felt then we really are all backpacking, we are all journeying through this world from birth to death, devouring the world to understand ourselves. I took out a pen and wrote some lines in verse inspired by those seeking eyes. She prompted the poetry to come out.

I do not know what happened to Angeles. Maybe in another turn of the wheel we shall meet again. Maybe she had a wonderful time in Europe and integrated her experiences, recording them in her life, making her by now a seasoned traveler, a great woman, a mother, a lover, a poet, a writer.

However on that day I also became a backpacker in disguise. I took notes of every corner I passed, of every situation encountered, every inner mood, every twist in the relationships with the so many I met. My backpack became full to the brim with feelings of all sorts.

I recently sat down and opened it up and all these images and words flowed like a story told by a grandmother. They are collected in “The Fermentation of Light” to which Deepak has kindly written a beautiful foreword.

When you read these notes of a backpack journey, please bypass form. Just sit down with me, and savor the nooks and corners of place and soul they describe, see if they match your own backpacks. If one or two of my lines do that for you, then this book would be meaningful. It would have fermented light into love.

50% of all royalties will be donated to the Alliance for a New Humanity towards a youth scholarship fund.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)