Chapter 35: Maharishi Guptal-Pah

We arrived back at the house just after ten. We’d stopped off at a restaurant and had dinner, which had delayed us considerably. We’d been fortunate to have gotten a table.

Louise had insisted on taking the check since she had just come into quite a lot of money. It had been my idea to stop, so I argued the point for about ten seconds before relenting.

My phone chimed just before we got home. It was from Clarissa, Fiona’s mother.

_I can see why you have four fiancées, Thank you.

I grinned.

“Who was that?” asked Amanda. I showed her the text.

“Fiona’s mom just got her first reward,” I said.

Despite getting some not-so-subtle hints from Louise, I decided to go to sleep. I was truly tired, but I was also ready to have some healthy apart time from the source of so much recent drama. Monday was going to be another long day for me.

My week started in the dojo. Kevin began to teach me Aikido. In addition to being a fourth dan in karate, he held black belts in Judo, Krav Maga, and Aikido. I got the feeling from his speech and his manner that he had been in the military, although he never spoke about it. I thought that one time, when I’d entered the changing room as he’d been getting changed, I’d caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his arm. It had looked very similar to the one that Dean had, and I wondered if Kevin had been a marine too.

I attended one class - not ethics, as I didn’t have it that day - and after lunch went to look at the room that Hoss said he had ready for me. Mary had booked his friend in for the first of his sessions that afternoon, and I wanted to get a lay of the land before that. It was as good as it could be. There was no window, but despite that the room wasn’t stuffy. It was clear of all junk, and had a table and three office-style chairs in it. The seats weren’t as comfortable as they might have been, but I wasn’t going to spring for better ones.

After I had my consultation with Hoss’s friend, I went home and began dinner. I had my meeting with Jeevan at seven, so I needed to eat earlier than usual. The girls didn’t complain about eating early, and at six thirty I left to go and find the address that Jeevan had texted me. When I arrived, I found it to be a church hall. I didn’t see Jeevan; I saw the Maharishi Guptal Pah, in all his finery. He was standing at the front of the hall, directing people.

A large man at the door was about to deny me entry, but Jeevan spotted me, hurried over, and grabbed my arm.

“Gregory, this is Caleb,” he said to the ‘bouncer.’ “Caleb, this is Gregory. He minds the door and provides security at my events.”

We shook hands, and then Jeevan and I were away. He drew me to the front of the hall, and we sat on two of the seats in the front row.

“I run one of these events a few times every month,” he said. “We move around some, but they are usually within an hour’s drive of where I live.”

“And you perform ‘miracles?’” I asked.

He laughed. “I put on a show. All the people who I call up to the stage are plants. There are a rotating cast of about twenty - all volunteers. I will call four or five up this evening. They will have obvious afflictions, and I will heal them.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Almost always,” he said, “there are people in the audience who do need healing. They come to see whether what they are hearing about is true. My fakery is so obvious that they leave disappointed - only what they don’t realize is that those I can help leave healed. They never leave their seat in the audience, and they never interact with me. Sometimes there is nobody in the audience, and it has been a waste of time as far as healing is concerned, but it furthers the myth. People who are desperate will come to see at least, or get dragged along by one of their more gullible friends – someone who is fooled even by such a sham as I perform.

“There are some that come that do not even realize that they are unwell. They may be healed without ever knowing they were sick.”

I chose not to ask about consent in that case. I hoped that would become apparent as we went.

“You charge entry?” I asked.

“A pittance,” he said. “Just enough to cover the hire of the hall. Five dollars per head.”

“So, what do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Tonight,” he said, “observe. I want you to sit over there.” He indicated a seat in the back row.

“I will ‘perform,’” he continued, “and if anyone needs Healing, I will deal with it. You will watch, and I will show you how to detect illness, diagnose, and hopefully Heal.”

At about seven thirty, the hall started to fill up, and it filled quickly. I realized that there must have been a queue outside, because people were streaming in. Jeevan had disappeared off ‘stage’ and was waiting in the wings.

At exactly eight o’clock the lights in the hall went out, the only illumination coming from the stage. There was silence, an air of expectation, and suddenly, with a crash of cymbals that made everyone jump, Jeevan appeared on the stage.

He began his routine, and I had to admit that he was good. In no time at all he had the crowd, including me, on the edge of our seats. He asked if anyone in the hall wanted to be healed, and several people yelled and raised their hands. Some, I could tell almost without my powers, were plants. I knew who would be called up. There were a few people whom I could tell were not plants, and were desperate. My heart went out to them. I hoped Jeevan would be able to help.

“So, you have noticed them already?” sent Jeevan to me, all the while continuing his patter. His ability to multitask was impressive.

“Some of you here,” he announced loudly, “require healing, and do not even realize it. Your bodies cry out to me for help, yet your minds are unaware. I ask you: do you want me to help you?”

There was a murmur from the audience. Some people said nothing; others said yes.

He then picked a few people out from the crowd. “You, madam,” he said to one of his plants. “If I were to sense sickness in your body, would you want me to heal you?”

“Yes please, Maharishi!” she shouted loudly. He went to another plant. “And you sir, would you want me to heal you?”

“Yes, please Maharishi!” yelled the man.

The crowd was getting worked up. He went to several more people, some plants, others not. The response was becoming expected and rote. He eventually called on the man he had pointed out.

“You, sir,” he said. “If your body cried out to me for help, would you want me to heed that call?”

Everyone in the hall looked at him. I watched his thoughts. He felt like he could hardly say ‘no thanks;’ all eyes were on him, and a rhythm had been established. He wasn’t exactly signing anything. He went with the flow.

“Yes please, Maharishi” he said. Jeevan moved on, and the man sighed in relief.

“Hardly informed consent,” I said with a hint of amusement in my tone.

“Good enough for my conscience,” he replied. “You will have to determine your own threshold. Now watch.”

He called the first of the plants up onto the stage. He got them to describe their problems, their pain and how their lives were affected. All the time that was going on, I watched his mind; he assessing the weakness in the blood vessel wall and determining what to do about it.

He put his hands on the head of the plant on the stage and pretended to be concentrating.

Well, not exactly pretended; he was concentrating, but not on the plant. He was concentrating on Healing the man. I saw exactly what he did to cause the blood vessel to become strong again, and also to remove the residual clots where the damage had been; he didn’t want them flowing through the man’s bloodstream and causing a problem elsewhere. By the time he had released the plant, who declared herself healed with a great show of gratitude and tears, the man with the aneurysm had a cure in place. His body would follow Jeevan’s directions over the next week or so and it would be like his aneurysm had never been. The man himself knew nothing about it.

Sweat poured off Jeevan, and he showed me his power bar, which was almost a third depleted.

“I have enough for one more tonight,” he sent. “That took more than I intended, but it was necessary.”

“Are you sure you have enough?” I asked, suddenly worried for him.

“There is a young girl at the back,” he sent, “two seats from you. She had a miscarriage, and had to have a routine procedure to remove the remains. A ‘D and C,’ I believe they call it. The surgeon was inept and damaged her, so now she has scarring and can no longer have children. She has tried every avenue open to her and has come here in desperation. I have seen her several times, and tonight I am going to try and help her.”

He called another ‘plant’ to the stage and began to go through his routine again, all the time focusing most of his attention on the girl near me.

The girl was young - maybe her mid-twenties. She had been devastated to lose the baby, and when she had been told that she could no longer have children, she had had serious thoughts about taking her own life. It was her mother who had kept her alive, and had nursed her back to an approximation of mental health. Her then-boyfriend, although supportive at first, couldn’t understand why she couldn’t ‘get over it.’ They had separated three months after she’d miscarried.

She had attended four of Jeevan’s meetings thus far, desperate to believe that there was hope for her, but each time, she’d seen through his sham healings. She had prayed to see something that would give her a glimmer of hope, but that night, like every other night, she had seen nothing. She was despondent, and she wasn’t planning on returning.

On stage, Jeevan had taken his plant’s head in his hands and was beginning their healing. In truth, all his concentration was on the young girl.

I watched how he made the scar tissue die and slough away, opening up the tubes that would allow her eggs free passage to her uterus. I watched how he cleared away the damaged uterine wall, and encouraged the cells there to divide and replenish those that had been lost. When he finished, her reproductive system was clear of scarring. Within three or four days, it would be back to being completely normal, and she would be able to bear children. She would bleed like she was having a period. He planted the thought that she was due, and that she would think it to be heavier than usual so that she would go and see her ob/gyn just to be safe. She would insist on a scan of her uterus, and they would find that everything was perfectly normal.

What she wouldn’t do would be to link it in any way to Jeevan’s meetings. Since she’d never joined him on the stage, and was already skeptical of his entire operation, the Compulsion was easy to weave into her mind. As far as she’d be concerned, she had prayed, and those prayers had been answered. ‘Praise be to God’ and all that.

I curled my lip at that, but said nothing. Jeevan was almost on his knees. His plant cavorted around the stage, ‘cured.’ I saw Jeevan’s energy bar. It was completely empty.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“I had just enough left,” he sent, “but I’m done for tonight. I had hoped to do more, but those took everything I had. Can I trouble you to block the pain of that poor lady with pancreatic cancer?”

I remembered that Jeevan had said he had reduced her pain, not stopped it. I did the same.

He spent the next half hour performing yet another fake miracle before wrapping things up. The crowd left, and I listened in on their parting thoughts. Many were not fooled, and only came for the performance. They thought it amusing. Others were believers and argued their points. The two people who had been healed, without their knowledge, left. One was disappointed and disheartened; the other was ambivalent. He hadn’t even known he was ill. The pins and needles in his legs that had been bothering him for a few days, he had put down to sitting too long on a hard chair. Since it wouldn’t happen again, he would forget all about it.

I sat with Jeevan after the show. He was working his way through a rather large amount of food that Meena had obviously packed for him.

“I feel your disapproval,” he said, smiling at me. “You feel I did not ask for their consent, and so abused my powers, no?”

I smiled back. “And I feel from you that you don’t care. You did good here tonight. You saved one man who didn’t even know he was in danger, and you gave another young girl her life back. I see your point, Jeevan. I just don’t know if I agree with it.

“That ‘consent’ you got from him meant nothing. He had no knowledge of what he was getting into.”

“And those whose consent you get when you do your hypnotherapy?” he asked.

I squirmed a little at that.

“I cannot tell you what to be comfortable with,” he said. “That is between you and your conscience. I can only tell you that I sleep soundly knowing that I have hurt nobody and helped many people. If you wish to be a Healer, then these are decisions you will have to make. You know that you cannot publicly reveal yourself without dire consequences. This has been seen time and time again. Healers have been killed in the past. They were burned as witches; they were tortured and killed as heretics. There are always fanatics that would say that what we do is against God’s will and will take action against us. There are also government agencies that do not wish powers to be revealed. In the western world, they have become our biggest concern.

“To continue to operate, we must do so from the shadows, which means sometimes acting without the knowledge or consent of the patient - just like you did with Callum, and the lady tonight. You saw they were in pain, and you soothed it. Did you ask permission?”

I looked down. I also remembered soothing Nana Babi’s pain without asking - not to mention pulling Ness into an illusion she had no idea about, and reading Keenan’s and Louise’s minds without their permission. My list of transgressions was growing.

“You have to be your own conscience and the patient’s advocate. You have to access information from the patient without their knowledge in order to make a decision. That is a clear violation of their privacy - but in doing so, you will learn what they think. You will know what their answer would have been. You can decide from there what to do.

“I don’t mean to be unkind, bhaiya, but you need to grow up, and accept what you already know. You have powers, and you will use them. So far, you have not been honest with yourself. You hide behind a very cleverly-worded waiver, but is that really informed consent? It was, mainly, a compromise with the FBI. Does the paperwork truly salve your conscience? Or rather, does the knowledge that you are actually helping people?

“They come to me for help,” I argued.

“But if you explained exactly how you help them, how many would accept?” he asked.

I knew some would, but that many wouldn’t. Many would be wary of a scam, even if they couldn’t figure out how I’d manage it. A few who believed, I imagined, would be worried about giving up so much control over their very minds.

“Stop agonizing over such things,” Jeevan said. “Do good, help people, and go to bed with a clear conscience. The FBI have laws about what you can do with criminals; abide by those when you are doing their work. When you are Healing, follow your conscience.

“You have the power and the ability to become a great Healer - to help a great many people. You are so confused about what you should or shouldn’t do that you often ignore your own rules without seeming to realize you are doing so. Outside of the legalities that you must adhere to when under FBI observation, there is a simple question to ask yourself: have you helped, or caused harm? If you can honestly say that in every action with your powers that you have helped more than you caused harm, then that should be enough.

“Go home, bhaiya,” he said, “and if you still want to be a Healer next Monday, I will text you the address. It will be another meeting. If your dilemma regarding consent is too much of a burden, then maybe Healing is not for you.”

I considered his words as I drove home. What he’d said about me ignoring my own rules was true. The few examples that had come to mind during our conversation were but the tip of a rather large iceberg. I was using illusion to buy alcohol while I was still underage. I was pulling chaperones who’d signed no consent forms into illusions so I could get some schoolwork done during my hypnotherapy sessions. Even Jeevan’s maxim made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t helping anybody but myself, and if I tried to counter that I also wasn’t harming anyone, then, logically, I didn’t really care about consent at all – nor about quite a few laws.

By the time I got home, I had resolved nothing except that I needed yet another radical anal craniectomy. The phrase ’Healer, Heal thyself!’ sprung to mind, but I just didn’t know how.

“How did it go?” asked Jules.

“It was interesting,” I said.

“But?” she pressed.

I explained my issues about consent, and then about all the other stuff I’d been thinking of on the way home.

“You’ve read Asimov, yes?” she asked. I nodded.

“And I’ll bet that when you first read them,” she continued, “the three laws of robotics looked pretty unassailable, right?”

I saw where she was going, but I didn’t interrupt. I deserved a lecture.

“The answer is,” she said, “that there are no cast iron rules that you can hide behind. You have to make a decision and stand by it. And the only person you can be accountable to is yourself. Most of the time nobody will even know that you used your powers. The times you use illusion to buy beer underage, the time you make a cop misread his speed gun when he catches you ... you can decide they’re harmless, or you can decide that because they’re abuses of power, they can’t ever truly be.

“Do what you feel is right, in the moment, but know that you will have to live with yourself afterward. I have confidence that you will almost always make the right decision.”

I hugged her. “So do I start calling you Yoda now?”

“Don’t you dare,” she said. “I’m a Trekkie.”

“Kes then?” I asked.

“Nah,” she said. “That was a shit storyline. Kes should never have been written out like that.”

I had to agree, despite the fact that Seven-of-Nine had an amazing ass, which that jumpsuit had done great justice. On the other hand, early Kes, when she’d still been pixie-like, hadn’t been too shabby either. I also had to admit that Jules was my voice of reason; she was definitely smarter than me.

Next Monday, Gregory recognized me as I arrived. There was already a line outside the hall, which was thirty minutes’ drive in the other direction from my house than the venue from last week. He beckoned me forward. “Go straight in,” he said.

There were some grumbles from those already in line, but he ignored it.

Jeevan was sitting on the edge of the stage. “Welcome bhaiya,” he said smiling. “How are you feeling tonight?”

“I’m feeling good.” I replied.

“Excellent,” he said, “because I am going to want you to do something tonight.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Every once in a while, I do a mass healing,” he said. “Now, I only do it when my numbers start to drop. If I didn’t, my particular brand of charlatanism would run out of steam. Every so often I have to do something that keeps people interested.”

“Mass Healing?” I queried.

“Not really Healing,” he said. “What I will be doing is working the room up. What you will be doing is blocking most, but not all, of everyone’s pain.”

I looked at him, puzzled.

“I’ll be doing some Healing while this is going on,” he said, “but consider this: you have been told about some Indian faker.” He smiled at his own play on words. “And have come to see him a few times, but seen nothing of note. Then, all of a sudden, the majority of the audience, you included, find themselves almost pain free. There has to be something to this, right? So, you come back. That gives me more opportunity to Heal those who really need it.”

“So, why not remove all their pain?” I asked. “Why just most?”

“Because if you remove it all, it is almost definitive proof that I am a real Healer. Reducing it, especially when I get them all riled up, can be put down to hysteria, adrenaline - some natural phenomenon. It can be explained away. I want to rekindle belief - nurture hope, not provide proof.”

That kind of made sense, in a warped kind of way.

“Okay then,” I said.

“Start searching them out as they come in,” he said. “You’ll know when to start blocking.”

“How long do I block their pain for?” I asked.

“What?” he asked.

“How long do I block their pain for. Hours, days, what?”

He looked at me strangely. “You can put a time limit on it?” he asked.

He had obviously not noticed that when he’d seen my memories of blocking Jules and Ness’s pain. I nodded.

He shook his head. “Does it make a difference to how much power you use?” he asked.

“It doesn’t seem to,” I said.

“Twelve hours then,” he said. “Let’s give them a decent night’s sleep for a change.”

I watched people coming into the hall, investigating them as they entered. A few of them weren’t unwell or in pain at all. Some had come with relatives, and some were just fascinated by the thought of someone with healing powers. There was one guy who had been at the last meeting too. He was surreptitiously filming proceedings and was making an internet documentary proving that the Maharishi Guptal Pah was a fake and a fraudster. He was frustrated, though - not because he thought that Jeevan was actually healing people, but with the fact that he couldn’t find out how Jeevan was defrauding anyone. As far as he could tell, the only money that people were parting with was the entry fee, and most of that went to the venue rental. He couldn’t figure out the motivation, and it was eating him up.

He was also grumpy because he had a toothache. I determined to throw a real spanner into his works tonight. I was going to completely remove all of his pain during the mass healing, despite what Jeevan had said.

The show started pretty much like the one the previous week, and after a few minutes Jeevan had invited a plant up on stage.

“There is an older lady, three rows in front of you,” he said. “She has a small malignant lump in her breast. I am going to remove that. Look at her before I begin. Look at her aura. Determine the colors that indicate disease, and look closer at her. Notice how I saw where her problem was.” He sent me his memory of his ‘examination’ of the woman, and I could see what he had seen.

I examined the woman in question. She had only just found out about the lump in a mammogram result she had received a few days ago. She had an appointment to see her oncologist the next week. Her friend had dragged her along to Jeevan’s meeting, but she had no real expectations of any healing. She had decided that she wasn’t even going to raise her hand when Jeevan called for volunteers.

I watched as Jeevan placed his hands on the plant and began to concentrate. I saw him attack and destroy the cancerous cells, and arrange for the remains to be transported away using the body’s own mechanisms. I watched as he protected the kidneys from damage from the sudden onrush of proteins released by the death of the cells. I realized once again that he wasn’t actually doing it in real time, but was setting it up to happen over a period of a few days. When he was done, he showed me his energy bar, and it was almost fully depleted. A single Healing had wiped him out. His plant did the ‘hallelujah’ dance and left the stage healed.

“And now, my friends,” he exclaimed from the stage, “for those of you who I have not managed to help, I am going to at least give you some respite from your pain.”

People sat up and paid attention as he started to work the crowd up. He was masterful at it. I certainly couldn’t work a room in such a way. Once I was Healing on my own, I didn’t think I’d be using a similar shtick.

He gave me a nudge, and I began. The investigator was the first. I blocked his pain completely and locked it off for twelve hours. Then there was an old man who was riddled with arthritis. He had constant chronic pain, and I blocked most of that. I felt really sorry for him, and so I gave him a full week of reduced pain. There was a woman who wasn’t there for healing, but had come with a friend. She, however, had period pains. I blocked those for three days. I went from person to person like so. Everyone who had pain, I blocked most of it, each for a different period of time depending on the pain and how I felt. There were nearly one hundred people in the hall, and nearly all of them had some level of discomfort, even if it was just from sitting on a hard wooden chair for an hour. The man with the prolapsed hemorrhoids got a day’s respite. The girl who had had her nipples pierced just that day got a few hours, and so on.

I checked on my energy bar and found that blocking pain didn’t really have much of a cost. I had gone through almost the entire room and only lost a single graduation. Finally, I was done, and there was nobody I had not looked at. I gave Jeevan a prod, and he stopped his routine.

“Now,” he said. “Examine your pain. Tell me, have I been successful?”

I saw a few people stop and consider, and then smiles broke out on their faces. Even the fraud hunter was looking stunned, realizing that his pain, too, was gone. The room erupted in cheering, led by those planted in the audience.

The session ended soon after. One more plant was ‘healed,’ but Jeevan had no energy to Heal anyone for real, so that was just filling time. Everyone was chattering loudly as they left the hall.

“That was perfect,” he said. “I saw that you gave each person a different pain-free period. I should have suggested that. It will keep people guessing. If they all suddenly got their pain back at exactly the same time, there would be more evidence. You did well. How many of them did you ask for consent?”

I chuckled. “I think you know the answer to that. I stopped their pain; I caused no harm. I am content that what I did was good.”

He embraced me.

“Well done, bhaiya,” he said. “This was an easy one. Others will be more difficult, but you are learning.”

Tuesday morning was Krav Maga training. I enjoyed it immensely. After the rigid discipline of Karate, I found it refreshing and interesting to have so many different styles to draw on.

My ethics lecture was interesting too - not so much the class, but the contest. Since I wasn’t in a bad mood, the arguments I made, I thought, were balanced. For some reason, Dana Reed chose to oppose me each and every time. No matter my position or my argument in support, she would come in with a counter argument that was both reasoned and persuasive. Toward the end of the lesson, it had almost become a moot between her and I.

“That was fun,” I said as we filed out of the lecture theatre together. “But wasn’t your position on the application of First amendment rights completely contrary to the one you took last week?”

She rolled her eyes theatrically. “Can’t a girl change her mind?” she asked. I laughed, conceding the point.

I went into the cafeteria. The girls were already seated, and had grabbed me some lunch, so I got to skip the lines. The place was packed, and after a few minutes, I saw that Dana was looking around for somewhere to sit, tray in hand.

“Dana,” I shouted, and she looked across. I pulled out a chair next to me. She smiled gratefully and headed in our direction.