In a letter sent to Dadaji prior to the test, Mr. Stewart wrote, "If I am cured, that will be very beautiful, and if I am not, that's okay, too, and will in no way interfere with my love and faith in our witnessing the Mahanam. Don't be frightened by all the gadgetry as the love and faith we have is what is important. Technology as part of the wisdom can be an aid and not an enemy of all that we can show."

Many people were gathered in the private Los Angeles residence of Mr. Khetani where reclining on a couch, Dadaji was connected to monitoring devices. Stewart and his doctors were in the operation theater in Houston. Then Dadaji's fragrance filled the hospital room and out of nowhere appeared an elderly man offering Mr. Stewart coffee. Dr. James Hardt, who was conducting the test was so flabbergasted with the events he dropped the phone. While Dadaji casually talked with those around him, His Aroma proved there is no difference between Houston and Los Angeles, no time or space. Maco Stewart was cured and later came twice to India to meet Dadaji.

Nearly five years after a successful heart transplant, Maco Stewart III died July 11, 1995, of congestive heart failure at his home in Houston, Texas. He was buried in the family cemetery in Galveston Island State Park, on land donated from the Stewart Ranch. Maco's life was exuberant, creative, and sometimes controversial. Known in Texas as a "Great Gatsby" figure, he wore white linen suits and a straw hat. He skied Aspen Mountain in leather shorts and boots. At Princeton Maco graduated with honors in economics and the Woodrow Wilson School. He was a Marine combat-platoon leader in Korea. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas Law School, worked as assistant state attorney general, and served one term in the Texas House of Representatives. As an heir of the Stewart family interests, Maco led the Stewart Title Co. to national leadership, and was president of Stewart Petroleum until his death. An idealist and student, he learned from gurus in India, aided the Miskito Indians against the Sandinistas, and successfully fought the indictment brought against him for aiding the Contras. His personal philosophy was enshrined his book, Sex, Money, and God.

The man to whom my last pilgrimage is destined is called Dadaji. By many he is considered the greatest sage of India. The most outstanding scientists and artists of India are devoted to him. The surprising thing, however, is the fact that he is only a small businessman in New Market, Calcutta, who has at the age of 73, retired from business. He does not own a temple or an Ashram. In a suburb of Calcutta, between slum huts and luxury villas, he lives in a small unpretentious house.

Kindly he helped me down from the lorry into the water, as it was time of heavy flooding in Calcutta. "Come upstairs to the first floor," he said, "where it is dry. But, please don't kiss my feet. They are no Lotus Feet. No man should kiss the feet of another person." The sage laughed, broadly, almost childlike. But, the conversation is unexpectedly slow. Dadaji does not see many visitors. He does not know how to talk with a foreigner. Only during my second visit does he open up.

"I am called Dadaji," he says, "that means Elder Brother. You are my younger brother. Come closer to me." He blesses me by touching my hippy-hair with his hand. "Because you are my younger brother I will reveal to you the deepest wisdom of the East today." And, he raised his voice. "Conrad, go home to the West and lead a normal life."

The electric light goes off. Several times a day the electric current supply breaks down. The sage does not feel disturbed by this. He lights a candle. "Dadaji," I object, "I have come to India in order to find my Guru."

"According to my experience," said the wise man from Calcutta, "all Gurus are swindlers. They deal in the shadiest business of the world. They deal in illusions for poor souls. They make a business of the misery of the people and of their immaturity. If a country is in order and one is really grown up, one will not require a Guru. One can, oneself, cope with problems. Grow up. Go home. Put and end to religious tourism!"

I shook my head. That means "yes" in India. The wise man fetched two glasses. But, I still have one question. "Dadaji, I have come to India in order to learn something about meditation."

"Meditation," the wise man of Calcutta said, "is an especially highly developed form of idleness. Haven't you got a profession, a family, any friends? A normal person has, after all, no time for such things." "And, Yoga?"

"That," said Dadaji, "is also such humbug. I consider all these complicated bodily postures an ostentatious self-torture. It is not even a good technique of relaxation. Swimming is far more relaxing. Also going for walks." He offers me a cigarette. "Smoking," he says, "also relaxes."

"Dadaji," I say imploringly, "I haven't come to India to learn to smoke, but to find God."

"God," answered the Sage, "is within you. You don't need to seek Him. Fulfill your duties, do your work and enjoy your days. Whiskey, cigarettes and love. Then you will feel within you what no Guru can sell you: the living God, the true God, Who has created you and loves you."

Dadaji was pouring me a drink. In Calcutta, in the middle of floods, my soul found God. And, on this I had a double whiskey with the greatest Sage of India.

Of my many encounters with Godmen, the one which always has a surprise in store is with a man of God who vehemently denounces the cult of Godmen. Yet, he performs miracles which are baffling. Last time I passed through Bombay taking good care to remain anonymous, my friend and Dadaji's disciple number one, the actor Abhi Bhattacharya, rang me up and told me that I was not to leave Bombay without seeing Dadaji. "Your plane for Delhi will not take off till Dadaji allows it to take off," he said with total conviction. How did Dadaji know I was in Bombay and leaving for Delhi in a couple of hours? The mystery was resolved when I discovered that Abhi had tried to get me in Delhi on the phone. However, what followed in the encounter had something of the old as well as the new.

I was familiar with the electrifying touch which dowsed my entire frame in Padmagandha and the uncanny insight into my current pre-occupations. I was not aware of the new following Dadaji has acquired. This now includes diplomats, scholars, scientists and writers.

What Dadaji says is not very revolutionary and can be summed up in a few sentences. Absolute Truth, which he calls Sri Satyanarayan, is beyond comprehension and no mortal Guru can get close to it. The only approach is through love and self-surrender. A person comes to the world with an assigned destiny (Prarabdha), but one can alleviate one's lot by repeating the Mahanam....the Great Name.

This is the way of Bhakti preached by Chaitanya, Kabir, Mirabai and Nanak. Is Dadaji's way not more than pouring new wine in old bottles? ?Perhaps. But, it is certainly a potent cocktail to turn the heads of non-believing rationalists and hard-headed scientists. I am a non-believer whose head is still rationally screwed on his neck, but I never seem to be able to get away from Dadaji's hypnotic magnetism. And, it has an eerie way of surfacing when you least expect it.

Whether at Chandigarh or Amritsar or Delhi, his hosts reception room is always full of men and women, Hindu and Sikh, who come to receive his Darshan, receive the Mahanam of Sri Satyanarayan and consult him about their ailments.

It was the same the last time he was in Delhi. He sent for me. Putting aside my other preoccupations, I went. As usual I made my obeisances to the picture of Sri Satyanarayan and touched Dadaji's feet. I asked him where he had been in recent months. As usual with him, he had been round half the world to Germany, England, and the United States. Not sightseeing at anyone's expense, nor to collect money from disciples, but on his own, only to meet people who wanted to see him. Word goes round that Dadaji has arrived. People flock to him. It is a peripatetic Vishwaroop Darshan (Vision of the Lord). Amongst those who gratefully acknowledge a miraculous recovery from disease is a Japanese-born American national. In her letter she says she came to see him after her doctor had diagnosed cancerous growth in her breast. Dadaji's touch got rid of the malignancy. When I asked Dadaji how this happened, he replied with charming naivete, "I know nothing; it just happened."

As is customary with him, he asked me to draw near, ran his fingers in my beard and bade me farewell. The touch doused my body with the fragrance Padmagandha. It lingered on for three days.

He's not a Guru, has no followers and accepts no donations. A 79-year-old Bengali called Dadaji visiting in a West Hills home this week, he contends that Bhagawans who create cities and Ashrams in the name of Truth are charlatans.

To emphasize his point that Truth comes from within and God is in all of us, he materialized a wrist watch from this reporter's head, then changed the print on the watch face to eradicate any remaining skepticism.

A simple Calcutta shopkeeper who is the only uneducated (illiterate, he says) child of a rich family, Dadaji professes powerlessness. "I am not a Saint, Baba or Guru. Man can't be Guru or anything. Each and everybody is God. If humanity is One, Religion is One, Truth is also One."

He materialized a watch for me. Then he asked me to look at the make on the dial. I read "Camay" on top with "Swiss Made" below. He gently rubbed the glass covering the dial with his thumb nail and said, "Now, look once again and read what you see." To my amazement, the inscription had changed into "Sri Sri Satyanarayan" and "Made in Universe." He proceeded jovially to hold my face between his hands and rub me down the neck, around the chest and back. An exotic Fragrance of eau de cologne mixed with rose water and sandalwood emanated from his hands to leave me heavily perfumed for a long time. Next, he picked up a bottle of boiled and filtered water my host had requested me to bring along with me. He passed his hands around it. A white fog-like substance started flowing down the closed mouth. He opened it and held it to my nose. The same Divine Fragrance came out to fill the room.

Then he put a small palm-sized piece of paper in my hand and asked me to examine it. It was totally blank. He said to hold it between both hands joined in prayer, kneel down before a large portrait of Sri Sri Satyanarayan, and put my head at the feet of the image with my hands stretched out in front. As he massaged the back of my head and down my spine, I seemed to hear a familiar Mantra thunder down from space. He told me to get up and unfold my hands. What I had heard was written in Gujarati.

"Why Gujarati?" "Because it is your language," Dadaji said. He told me, "It is your Mahamantra which had come from deep down in your own consciousness. Its two rhythmic sounds manifest the bipolarity of human existence. They harmonize the duality between God and a person, between Atma and Paramatma in Satyanarayan, that is the highest Truth of Cosmic Consciousness. They will help you raise the indwelling God in you." He told me, "Memorize the Mahanam." As soon as I did so, the words vanished from the piece of paper. I asked why. "There is no need for them now. They came. You read them and memorized them. Now they have disappeared. They are a part of you ever to remember."

He asked if I wanted a detailed explanation of the Mahamantra. I replied yes, would he please write it down for me. "I won't write it down," Dadaji said, "but you will evolve it from inside you, just the same as you received the Mahanam."

He made me stretch out full length and lie flat on my stomach with my forehead on the ground and hands folded and stretched out before Satyanarayan's image. He put two blank sheets of paper under my hands and began massaging me again from the neck down the spine. I seemed to be lifted up into a superconscious state.

After some time, he asked me to sit up and read the Divine message. I was wonderstruck. The blank sheets now bore two neatly typed pages of explanation of Mahanam, beginning with the words, <"No human being can ever be a Guru..." Strange words these, coming from one who seemed to possess all attributes of a Godman.

But, the most extraordinary fact about Dadaji (Amiya Roy Chowdhury) is that he is the most un-Godmanly of Godmen, the most un-Guru-like of Gurus. He is a revolutionary amongst his kind. At one stroke he demolishes his godly image, saying, "I am no Godman, no Guru, no Sadhu. I have no Religion, temple or Ashram. I am an ordinary family man running a toy shop in Calcutta."

Dadaji is modest and humble to the point of self-effacement. He told me he had been waiting eight years for my Darshan and demonstrated his happiness with a beatific smile that sent a thousand sunbeams around the room.

Mystery of the miracle man
Chronicle and Echo
Monday, June 12 1978

Don't call me Guru, says the mystic of the Milton Keynes.

THE poster in the house window stated clearly that he had become known for "fantastic miracles". And visitors crowded into the modern terraced house in Kingsfold, Bradwell, Milton Keynes, to meet him.

He was Dadaji, which means respected elder brother. His mission is the establishing of the Eternal Religion of one Truth.

But he also earned worldwide fame for performing miracles. The question was if a miracle was performed when he visited the house in Milton Keynes. Nobody claimed that it was. And even before the meeting one of Dadaji's brothers explained: "Sometimes something happens. Sometimes not."

Something did, in fact, happened after Dadaji had selected Mrs. Nyrmal Ahluwalia of Wembley to go into a room. He went in with her for about 10 minutes and then left her alone.

When she came out after staying about 20 minutes with her eyes closed it was found that there was a white and a brownish liquid with white flecks in it over the bare floor. Water in a silver beaker had become white and also had flecks in it, and there was a strong fragrant aroma in the room. Honey was running down a portrait and was also in the woman's hair.

She said later there had been a tinkling sound and a strong aroma in the room. After Dadaji had left the room she heard somebody moving about and felt a presence. "I felt wonderful and fresh," she said.

Mr. Kulwant Singh, one of Dadaji's "brothers" said that on a previous occasion Dadaji had made words disappear off the face of a watch and put fresh words on it by tracing on the glass with a finger. The watch had originally been broken but it had started to work again.

Dadaji never claims nor likes to be called a Guru, according to an article in a booklet entitled, "The Call Divine". It said he loves to be revered as an elder brother.

The poster in the house window said he had become known the world over for the "fantastic miracles" that issued forth from him by Supreme Will.

His real name is Mr. Amiya Roy Chowdhury of Calcutta.

Was it a miracle...in Milton Keynes?
by Kevin Allen

SOME 25 people emerged from a house in Kingsfold, Bradville, last Thursday night, wondering if they had seen a miracle. Attracted by city-wide publicity they went to glimpse into the phenomenal personality of Indian prophet Dadaji.

But Dadaji (pictured above) didn't change the faces of watches by rubbing his thumb across them, as his followers claimed he could. Nor was everyday metal turned into gold.

But one woman at least, was convinced she had experienced something inexplicable. Mrs. Nyrmal Ahluwalia was selected by Dadaji to take part in his demonstration.

Dadaji led her into a room containing food and water and a photograph of him. The door closed and Dadaji remained with Mrs. Ahluwalia for ten minutes. He then left the room.

Dadaji's followers claimed that while he was sitting among them he was also in the room with Mrs. Ahluwalia. When she left the room the water had changed into a milky-coloured substance, splashed across the floor. A strange aroma filled the room and honey-like oil had dripped on to Mrs. Ahluwalia's head and clothes, and the photograph.

Why I made my excuses and left
Toni Holloway Friday, July 6, 1979.
Monday, June 12 1978