The Shrub-thief.... A Spiritual Encounter...

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It took a while thinking about this keyword "shrub-thief". And I was drawing a blank but then I remembered an incident that happened in Los Angeles in 1974. OK, now you know. I'm an old fogey. Old fogies love to tell stories about what happened in their lives.

In 1974 I was a student studying bhakti yoga and living in an ashram in Los Angeles, California. My duties included managing the Tulsi devi greenhouse. Tulsi devi is a sacred plant. Her leaves are placed on offerings of food as meditation for serving Krishna. Her branches are carved into beads for chanting Krishna's mantra and her smaller branches are made into neck beads.

It was large greenhouse with around twenty five or thirty Tulsi plants of different sizes. Tulsi is small tree or shrub. Her distant cousin is sweet basil. She can grow fairly large, four feet high or more. Her leaves and flowers are fragrant. She is considered a pure servant of the Krishna. There is a story about how Tulsi devi is in this situation. A plant body. But I'll save that for another time.

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One day while I was collecting leaves and flowers for the worship in the temple a young woman appeared at the door to greenhouse. She introduced herself that she a was dental hygienist and while caring for a patient she had been invited by the patient to visit. She said she was very interested in yoga and was enjoying her visit. She wanted to know about the sacred plant.

I didn't go into any depth of explanation since it was all so new to her but just told her that Tulsi devi is a sacred plant and anyone who worships Her becomes free from disease. Wearing neck beads made from Her branches keeps the agents of Yamaraja, the Lord of the lower planets from taking that soul at death. Tulsi devi protects like that.

Her eyes were wide. She thanked me and left. I also left the greenhouse for a few minutes but when I returned I noticed one of the smaller Tulsi plants was missing. I panicked, realizing that the dental hygienist had stolen Her.

I ran to the temple office and one of the men came with me to help in the rescue. The hygienist was just getting into her car which was parked along the curb in front of the greenhouse. We stopped her and asked her if she had taken Tulsi devi. She denied she had done that. We demanded she open the trunk.
And lo and behold there was Tulsi devi lying down on her side in the trunk.

Silly woman. We would have been more than happy to give her seeds and instructions how to grow and care for Tulsi devi if she had asked.

It is such funny incident and if you consider that this was the first contact the hygienist had for making spiritual progress and she approached as a Tulsi Devi shrub-thief. Ha Ha. It's very funny.

Who says spiritual life is cut and dry!!!