Nowadays you can’t even pay cash. I used to carry cash around to give to people on the street or buy things from small businesses so that they can survive. Small businesses on the street, they don’t have a machine for credit cards. Beggars on the boulevard, they don’t have a bank account to cash my check. Homeless people, they have only a tent to protect themselves from the wind and sun. How could I give them any check or credit card to cash in? But nowadays, everything, mostly everything, is done digitally. So I don’t have cash now. I can’t spend cash now even if I have it. I don’t know how to do all this digital stuff. And I’m also hesitant to always give my name out anywhere, into anybody’s hand like that. Life is getting worse and worse for humans.
The money I put in the bank has a source, like if I sell the house or an ashram and get a new one, I have a source, I have information, everything. But it’s years already, and I don’t remember. I don’t even have any paper. And if you tell me to go back to this old house, I would not know how. I got lost many times in Spain, for example, because I don’t know how to go back to my house. I thought I knew, but I forgot. And one time, the taxi driver even threw me out in the middle of the street because I kept showing him the wrong way to go home. He thought I was playing some game with him, and I had to stay on the street in the night even, and wave at any car that passed by to give me a lift. And then, I had to go to some kind of office to ask, show my name and ask, “I have a house here in your region. Please find out for me.” And finally, I could get home. But many times like that, not just one time, any time. I don’t even remember now, as I told you, where my house was, what’s the address, even the city where it’s situated.
And I got lost many times going back to Hsihu. I can’t even tell the taxi driver how to get here, get there. Yeah, you know the story, and you know the neighbors who had to take me home. Because sometimes I come back from the airport, it’s very late at night and long hours. So luckily, I just know like in Hsihu, for example, sometimes in the mountain area, like where we live, there’s no address, no street, really, so I just know at least Hsihu. And then we kept running around and I got lost, so one time at least, I saw a light in the house, which I knew. This is Hsihu at least, so I came in and asked him. And then he recognized me. He said, “Oh, I’ll take You home. I know where it is. I know Hsihu Ashram.” So he had to take me home. Several times it happened like that. I got lost all the time. If I don’t have people come and fetch me, then I get lost. Mostly my so-called God’s disciples would come and fetch me, but sometimes it’s too late, and they don’t answer the phone. So I had to get a taxi. And the taxi also could not find it because there is no street, no address in the mountain area.
The same in Spain, I also got lost many times. All of the houses that I bought and changed and are new again, I got lost going to them all the time. Unless somebody drives me, they’d know the street. Because sometimes I leave so fast and I don’t have any address with me. That’s the problem. I don’t keep addresses and stuff. And sometimes I keep it in a book, and then I leave it somewhere and then I couldn’t find it. So I got lost all the time. In America also I got lost going to my rental home. I couldn’t go home. And then the police saw me running around in the car, came and stopped me. And I just had to say, “Oh, I am just standing here for a while, taking a breath of fresh air, and I will go home soon.” And I just drove away.
In France, I was driving a British car and I rode on a very big countryside road. I got lost also. I didn’t know how to get home. And I drove around and the police came and said, “What are you doing? You cannot drive on the left side. We are in France. You have to drive on the right side.” I forgot. Luckily, it was a country road and it was like forever long, forever far. I got lost also. I can’t remember how I got home. I guess I called somebody at home and told them that I’m lost and they used the GPS from my phone to find me.
I’m not a very good driver. It’s good that I don’t drive anymore, and I don’t have a car anymore. Mostly the car, I don’t drive. I drove only when I was younger and nearby only. And I marked the road very well before I drove out. I thought I would remember, but it was not true. When I got out, the road changed. It’s not the same like when you went out; it’s different when you come back. Like a two-way street becomes one way when you come back on the other side or something like that. I could never be very sure where I’m going.
But all this money has its information in the bank because they would transfer the money to my bank and they would say where it’s from. So I don’t know why the bank couldn’t find out where my money came from and gave me a hard time and took my money and didn’t let me even give it as charity to the church and to the animal-people shelters. Completely gone, they’ve taken my money. It’s something like four or five million US dollars. Now it’s all gone, and I don’t have much cash either. But God will take care of me, as I always think like that. Maybe because I’m not all that streetwise, so God takes good care of me. So I’m still OK up to now. Don’t worry about me. God takes care. I have to listen. So I can’t just go out the way I want. I have to ask for permission, and whether or not I should go. But sometimes the karma of the world is also misleading me, so I run into trouble sometimes.
Even if I have money on me, it’s not like trying to avoid tax or anything. It is for giving away, an easy way, like cash is easier to give to people. When they’re lying on the street sick and in urgency like that, then I have to help to call an ambulance, and I have to pay for their peak fee, completely. I can’t give them a check and say, “Take care of yourself, call an ambulance.” They don’t even have a telephone, for example, and they don’t have money to pay for the hospital. Sometimes they have to have like a guarantee to pay, and I have to do all that, for example.
All my money, even if I keep it for myself, on myself, it’s never with a bad intention. It’s always, always for good purposes. But, of course, I can’t explain all this everywhere. Even the bank knows me for many decades, it still gives me a hard time. I don’t understand this world. It’s not easy to live in this world.
And nowadays, even if you want to go somewhere, you have to buy a ticket. You can’t pay with cash anymore. You have to book first online. And I never know where my name goes and who will see my name, for example. Nowadays, you can’t just go anywhere with the visa waiver. You have many countries now that make it difficult. You have to request your entry in advance. And even you have to pay tax for your holiday. My God, you work all the year saving a little money to go on vacation. And then when you reach that country, you have to pay tax also for your little pleasure – two weeks or something – in advance. And maybe that money you could not afford. Not everyone has a lot of money to pay for anything. They just plan their very frugal budget in advance. And if they pay even one dollar more, that is one item less in their meal in the foreign land to afford. The governments, they have it all well done. So they don’t care about people who work so hard for the government to even exist and to continue. They keep asking them for money, for this, for that, and all kinds of things. Or even if you have a house and maybe your house is too big, the government might want to take it. And then you have to go somewhere else, rent a house or rent a little apartment for anything. To some people, their house is their sentiment, their memories of all good. Sometimes from all the way from grandma, grandpa, a great ancestry up to the present day. And they would not know how to even do all this paperwork in order to keep it.
All this digital kind of system will confuse the elderly people. They work all their lives to keep the society intact, to keep the government paid. And then when they’re older now, they have to worry about a digital kind of bureaucracy, which they, all their lives, they might not know. I’m telling you the truth. I also don’t know much about this digital stuff. I only do the computer, which is already arranged by my team members, long ago, many years already. So I continue with that. If you ask me to make maybe even a new secret code (password) that you put in your computer in order to open it, I wouldn’t know how. And everything, if it hasn’t already appeared on the screen, like YouTube or anything, I wouldn’t know how to find it. And if I have viewed one article on the internet, and if, for example, my electricity has gone out and that article’s lost, I wouldn’t know how to find it.
I’m really a helpless woman in this wild world. I have never learned all these things before, because before I have always had a secretary to do it, and things were not as complicated as nowadays. If I want to go somewhere, I just quietly go to the airport and buy my ticket right there, for example like that. And if I want to buy a house, I just buy a house, and the bank and the agency will take care of all that. But even then, I got lost many times.
Photo Caption: “Not All Look Alike, But in the Wild, All Is Fine”
