"I am bicycling across America with my dog," I replied.
Ten minutes later she was interviewing me in a nearby cafe. She was a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, and, as I answered her questions, I thought about how I would answer when she asked me "why?" I realized it was more than a love for bicycling, more than a longing for adventure, and more than a desire to strengthen my self-confidence that propelled me west. I wanted time to think about Atmananda's thousands of lessons, some of which I sensed were valid and some of which I knew were not.
There was another reason: I wanted to do something distinctly *me*. Bicycling across a continent against the prevailing winds with all my possessions and a Siberian husky—that was *me*.
"Why?" she asked later.
I tempered my answer with the knowledge that I was being interviewed by a journalist and not a shrink. At one point I told her that I was traveling with a book on Gandhi.
"Do you like it?" she asked.
While reading the book I felt proud that Gandhi had been deeply influenced by Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience," proud that a thinker and experimenter from the United States had had an effect on one from India whose thoughts and experiments affected humankind. But it was more than pride which attracted me to Shirer's Gandhi: A Memoir. Gandhi's dream of helping the masses reminded me of Atmananda's seeming interest in making millions of people happy. While Gandhi wielded influence over two-thirds of a billion people as he helped India secure independence, never did he grow twisted by the enormity of his own power, never did he betray the public trust. Though Atmananda eloquently described the balance between the spiritual and the mundane, I knew from years of firsthand experience—yet found it difficult to admit—that a Mahatma Gandhi he was not.
"I like the book very much," I replied.
"Would you like to meet Shirer?" she offered.
William L. Shirer was the only correspondent sent by an American newspaper to cover India's revolution. He gathered that Gandhi's philosophy encompassed more than civil disobedience, passive resistance, non-cooperation and non-violence, but "had to do also with something more subtle—and fundamental: the search for truth, for the essence of the spirit... " Insights such as this made him seem particularly suited to investigate so complex and sensitive a matter as India's social, political, and spiritual ferment. Shirer was also the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. As I knocked on his door, I hoped that with his knowledge of benevolent and malevolent charismatic leaders, he could help me to understand Atmananda.