Karmic blueprints, elephants and other exotica

Dr Newton invites me to go on an amazing journey of past life exploration, self-discovery and spiritual awakening.

I've never met Dr Newton, but I'm informed that's he a world-renowned Past-Life Regression Therapist and New Age Spiritual Master.If I attend his 2-day workshop I will uncover karmic patterns relating to disease, fears, phobias, addictions and more. I will access my karmic blueprint and know the true purpose of my life. In addition, the good doctor will also help in my soul’s evolution and bring about a complete transformation of my life.

I am very tempted to go on Dr Newton’s fantastic technicolored journey, but I am distracted by Joe, who wants to know if I am not tired of beach and party life.

If I am, Joe’s private tour promises to guide me to Heaven, which – Joe says - is the real India, where there are good roads with little traffic and even less police trouble. Learn 1001 survival tricks, Joe urges. Joe is a professional cook, and if I go on his tour I am assured also of picking up food and health tips for free along the way. If I so desire, he can also give me a Thai- or Indian-style massage in his air-conditioned home.

I am at Baga beach in north Goa, at a lovely old Portuguese house that has been converted into a restaurant and bar, reading with fascination the little adverts pasted on a pillar. I am only 80 km away from the quiet village where I live, but I may as well be on the moon, so strange does it all seem.

But like Alice in Wonderland, I find things just get “curiouser and curiouser”.

Wandering about in the garden I spy a piece of paper stuck onto a coconut tree. It informs me that Lucky the elephant is 12 months pregnant and that she lives in the temple courtyard and needs love and bananas!

On a patch of lawn at one side of the restaurant, foreign tourists are milling about outside a small cottage, tattooed and pierced. There are new-age hippies and children in diapers, men in blond dreadlocks. women in sarongs. A man has a flower tucked behind one ear. A tall woman walks about in thick woolen socks and a short sleeveless dress. There are a dozen-odd locals: a woman holding a spastic child, a man with the most sorrowful face I’ve ever seen. People are awaiting their turn to meet the local faith healer, Patrick. An elderly woman who is on her fifth visit informs me in an awed voice that he can cure anyone of anything, including cancer. The door opens and as a tourist slips in, I catch a glimpse of the faith healer, a young man in jeans and long hair that hangs down to his shoulders. He has very dark, intense eyes. One hand is pressed to his heart as he nods and smiles a greeting. The door shuts.

Full Moon Meditation is on the 1oth of April. If I like I can also donate old clothes. I read these separate snippets on the closed door.

It’s strange to think that such a subculture exists and has existed for a long time, separate from the other existing reality that is Goa.