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The president of one of the local bread companies had invited me to meet him for lunch. This meeting was important, and I was rushing out the front door of our office at the church when a sigh drew my attention. It was a young woman with her infant daughter.

I recognized her. Previously, she had visited the church to pick up some items from the food bank. This woman was no more than 19 or 20, and her daughter was less than a year old. The church secretary had told me the woman’s husband recently had an operation to remove a brain tumor and that her daughter was born hydrocephalic. The world had crashed down on this young woman.

She was apologetic and wanted to know if the secretary was going to be back soon, because she needed food for her baby. I went to the church office and found a note on the door saying the secretary was on an errand. The woman panicked because there was no milk at their home and her daughter hadn’t had anything to eat in the past 24 hours. She wondered if I could give her a ride to another nearby church, where she was hopeful of finding help.

I looked at my watch. I could not afford to be late for the luncheon meeting. Yet I knew my urgency was insignificant compared to the needs of the hungry infant she held in her arms. I could have told the mother I would take her following my appointment, but how could I ever explain that to the baby? I wished there was someone else in the building to help me out and give this woman a ride. 

Perhaps I could quickly get some milk for the little one. But I realized I had left my billfold on the dresser that morning—not an unusual thing for me to do. We drove quickly to a church which was five minutes away. There was a brown cardboard sign outside saying, “Sorry, we are out of food. No more food expected till next month.” This was only the second week of the month.

We drove to a third church where the doors were fortunately open. Inside was a table set for four. The white linen on the table provided a stark contrast to the four nuns in black sitting around the table. They had just started their fried chicken dinner. I apologized and quickly tried to tell them the plight of the young mother. I was out of breath, feeling rushed, and seemingly made a mess of my presentation.

“Hey! Wait outside. Can’t you see we are eating?” one of the nuns reprimanded me sternly as she got up to see us out. “We will see what we can do after we finish eating.” She literally closed the door in my face.

Nervously, I looked at my watch. I was already 15 minutes late. I shuddered at the thought of the consequences of such a delay. Too much was riding on this meeting and such a delay could be disastrous. My agony was compounded by the fact that the nuns mistakenly thought I was the woman’s husband. I was experiencing the humiliation of a beggar, and it was not an enviable feeling. All my pride and ego had been shattered. I hoped that no one I knew would see me in this situation. The food on the table inside seemed as distant and foggy as a dream. I did not care if I ever ate again. The sun was shining in all its glory, but the rays felt piercing. There was a cool breeze in the air, but it felt frigid.

The young mother seemed to know what I was thinking. She apologized for putting me in this predicament and nervously kept talking before she began to cry. I also understood what she was going through. There were no words in my vocabulary to console her. Never before had I experienced that feeling.

After 30 minutes, another nun came out with a sack full of food. The person with the key to the storeroom had been out for lunch. The nun apologized in a loving and kind way. 

That half hour had seemed like eternity. This experience led me to understand that we must help people so they don’t have to beg. To give, after someone is forced to ask, is not giving. For a loaf of bread, must someone have to strip themselves of all their pride and dignity? True charity must come before—not after.

I understood why the initiates in monasteries in earlier times were made to beg. Even Buddha begged for his meals and made begging a tenet for his followers. Those of us who are blessed with jobs and careers cannot even comprehend the pain and suffering of the poor and hungry. 

I had missed my luncheon appointment, so I went back to my office to call and offer my apologies. There was a message on my answering machine from someone at the bread company, telling me they had to reschedule the luncheon meeting because something urgent had come up.

A smile crossed my face. I should have known.

Soon after that experience with the two women at the church, Treva said, “I’m going to quit my job and join you.”

“But how will we put bread on the table?” I asked. We were living on whatever money she was making working in her father’s print shop.

“I don’t know, but you will die from overwork if I don’t, and then what will happen?” Treva asked.

After Treva joined as a full-time volunteer, other volunteers started showing up. The first was David Kimble, whose heart had been touched by news stories of famine in Ethiopia. Against my advice, he quit his job to volunteer full-time for Trees for Life, even though he had a family to support.

“As you’ve been taken care of, so will I,” he said. David became an important and integral part of Trees for Life and eventually became the Executive Director.

Soon we had 15 volunteers. Sometimes all of them were working in whatever space was available in our small office.

While travels took me out of town for months on end, Treva and David became the hub of Trees for Life. David busied himself in executing the tasks and Treva managed the office. She was multi-tasking from morning till late in the evenings. She handled questions from volunteers, answered the telephone with a broad smile on her face, answered letters, paid bills, thanked donors, made sure there was food for the volunteers, and completed many other tasks. While David would lead the staff and volunteers, it was Treva’s desk that was Grand Central Station for anyone with questions, including me. She was the glue that held everything together.

She easily explained her role by saying that mothers are used to doing many tasks at once. Indeed, she was the mother of the Trees for Life movement. The volunteers would go to her if they had a problem. Her eyes and ears were all over the office. She knew if I might have ruffled any feelings in my abruptness and to whom I needed to apologize. She was also the voice of caution, to make me think and slow down on some of my decision making. 

I led the weekly “Who We Are” meeting, in which we discussed the direction Trees for Life was going and why. Everyone in the office defined my role as the visionary, the man in the ship’s crow’s nest. Sparing me from as many other meetings as possible, David and Treva insisted they could handle the engine room of the ship.

In the United States, my story about planting fruit trees in India fell mostly on deaf ears. 

People would point out that fund-raising in the U.S. was bound to be difficult because Americans seemed to have no emotional bond with India. Whenever I was confronted with the idea that this project was meant for India, I felt as if I were in a dream, shouting at the top of my lungs, but no one could hear me. 

I perceived that the sole reason for my existence was to communicate the vision: All humanity is one body. If one part suffers, the whole body is affected. Cancer in one part of the body will result in the death of the entire body. A large part of humanity is suffering an acute pain of hunger. We have the technology, know-how, and goodwill to eradicate this suffering. I was creating a model of just one of the ways it could be tackled. My work was no different than a laboratory researching a cure for cancer. That cure would not only benefit people in the city where the research was being done, but all of humanity.

The name Trees for Life came to a friend in deep meditation. It was as if somebody was telling her to tell us, and so we accepted the name as a gift. Although we incorporated in 1984, I was doing a lot of work many months before that. I was contacting people and telling anyone who would listen the story about the holy man blessing the first lemon trees. No one escaped. I went to one school after another. I went to the newspaper. I was stirring up dust all over. Some friends distanced themselves from me. Very few donations were coming in. 

At first, I worked from our home. My office was the kitchen table. Soon all areas of the house were taken over.

“This won’t do,” Treva said. “You need to have an office.” 

She mentioned it to the minister of her church. The church board agreed to give us one room in the church for our office. It didn’t have much furniture, just a table and a few chairs.

I would leave the house at nine in the morning and work until 10 p.m. Treva would call and say, “Are you going to come home?” There was so much work to do and it was just me. 

One day my friend Bob stopped by the office. He had invested $200 in stock in a business I started when I first arrived in Wichita in 1958, and he had been a staunch supporter ever since. Now he came to talk some sense into me. 

“You have to get out of this,” he said.

He told me people in America were really not interested in the suffering of others in faraway lands. 

“You have to remember, people are basically selfish,” he said.

Bob, who was about 20 years older than I, had been my friend, philosopher, and guide since I came to America. He told me he was not going to leave my office until he could get a promise from me to give up on my project. Bob settled himself into the chair opposite me and lit his pipe–an indication he was going to stay for some time. There would be no escaping him today. He drove home the point that I had experimented with the idea long enough, and there was ample proof people would not support the idea. He spoke of my suffering wife, my children, and my future. Bob knew me well. He knew all my hot buttons and pressed them relentlessly. I could not come up with a single word to respond because I knew he was correct on all counts. I sat there in awe of Bob’s sensitivity and the fact he was sticking his neck out to take me off the hook of my predicament. Yet, for some reason, I was not ready to give up. Defenseless, I had no answers. I looked down at the floor most of the time, on the verge of tears.

As he was speaking, two women walked into our office. They said they were lost and asked if we knew a certain address. I told them it didn’t sound familiar. They were chatty souls. They informed us that one of them was from out of town and her local friend was driving her around Wichita. They inquired about Trees for Life. They had never heard of it. I was feeling beaten up and ashamed from Bob’s lecture and was in no mood to have the women there. I gave them a quick, two-sentence explanation. 

“Is that so?” the out-of-towner exclaimed, still out of breath from climbing the stairs. Then she pulled out some wrinkled one-dollar bills from her purse. The other woman, Mary, dug into the side pockets of her skirt and did the same. Together they handed me $36. 

I looked at those women. They were middle-aged and appeared absolutely ordinary. It was obvious to both me and Bob that the gift was sacrificial.

The woman smiled as I tried to hold back my tears. Like me, Bob was experiencing something special. His disbelief was made obvious by his gaping mouth and wide eyes.

The atmosphere in the room had suddenly changed. Now there was no talk. Something beyond words had taken place, even in these women. I saw them walk backward out of the room, as I stood there stunned, holding the bills in the palms of my outstretched hands. 

Oh, my gosh, I have to give them a receipt, I thought, and ran down the stairs after them. Not enough time had passed for them to have left by car. Outside the building, I looked in all directions. There was no sign of a car or the two women.

When I walked back into the room, the look on Bob’s face showed amazement, his eyes staring in disbelief. During the next several minutes neither of us spoke. Quietly, Bob picked up his things.

“You will make it,” he said, and left the office.

I sat there realizing I must have entered another zone of reality. I wondered if those two women were an apparition.

I hit emotional lows several more times after that, but I was never as down as I had been before these visitors arrived. They had changed my reality forever. And as for Bob, his characterization of human nature changed for the rest of his life. 

I never saw those two women again.

Feeding the world’s hungry had been my vision, but Treva and our two children were dragged into the effort. When Treva and I first met, I was interested in buying better cars and clothes and living in bigger homes. I wanted to become a billionaire. I would return from my travels with expensive gifts for family and friends.

The vision changed everything. Material things didn’t matter to me anymore. Trees for Life had now become my total focus, and I did not know how I would go about feeding my family. My strong sense of responsibility resulted in many sleepless nights. Fear would freeze my chest, so I could hardly breathe. 

The mere idea of not being able to put food on the table for my children, buy their clothes or books, or provide money for vacations would leave me in a cold sweat. Not being able to give a dollar to the neighbor children for a charity drive was humiliating. Such humiliation was not a part of my plan. In my life dream, poverty was not an option. I felt as if my prayers were not being heard. It was a bad dream in which I was lost and couldn’t wake up.

I had no choice. Something far, far more powerful was pulling me. I was driven and had to complete the journey. On a few rare occasions, when I thought of quitting, I could immediately see the consequences. If I did not follow this journey, I might end up as a wretched alcoholic or worse.

In that dark period, there were two sources of strength: Treva and whatever the force was that was guiding me. 

Treva, whose focus was our children, was far more worried and concerned than I was. With an empty bank account, she had no idea what each day would bring. I did not know how she managed. Hearing her laugh while talking to her friends on the telephone, I wondered where she mustered her strength. She did not look down on me because I was no longer the breadwinner. Scared, still holding on to the last knot on the rope, she continued to encourage me. She did not entertain the advice of some close friends to divorce me.

I have no idea what I might have done without her, or what the future of Trees for Life might have been if I’d had some other woman for my wife.

During this period, many unusual events took place. Money would appear at the last minute in exactly the amount that was needed. I would be left in a state of wonder.

But the money would run out quickly, and the gripping fear would return. What if the miracle does not happen this time? Then another miracle would occur, proving once again the prediction of Sacha Baba: “If you take this path, God will provide.”

Sometimes, in our leanest days, there was hardly anything in the house for us to eat.

One night, Treva cooked two eggs and toast for me for dinner. It was the last food in the house. I had my fork in my hand and was starting to dig in when the doorbell rang. I dropped my fork. Instinctively, I knew who it was.

In our flush days, we had served as “parents” to several foreign students, including a Nigerian student attending Wichita State University. He had gone on to graduate school in Missouri, and recently had called asking me to loan him $500. The Nigerian government was holding up a transfer of money for all its students in the United States. Our friend needed that money urgently. I told him I didn’t have five dollars, let alone $500. I could hear in his voice that he didn’t believe me.

He was at the door at 8 p.m. in brutally-freezing weather, having driven 350 miles from Missouri.

“You came at just the right time,” I said, pointing him towards the dinner table. Without saying a word, he sat down and ate the eggs and toast and told me he hadn’t eaten all day. He was living with two other friends from Nigeria, and there was no food for them. He told us the five-hour trip had taken him 12 hours because his car was malfunctioning. He had come to us as a last resort. 

Treva left us alone. After a while, I went looking for her. She was in the bedroom crying so hard that she had buried her face in a pillow.

“Here we are, so financially strapped we can’t even help someone in need,” she said.

I was at a loss for words. Anything I wanted to say would come out wrong. However, I believed our capacity to give had not even been tested. 

The next morning, our friend’s car wouldn’t start. The engine was frozen. A neighbor we had never had good relations with came over and asked if he could help. At the same time, a friend stopped by. The two of them worked on the car for two hours until it ran perfectly.

Meanwhile, Treva called a few of her friends. Soon after, people arrived with enough canned goods to literally fill up the inside of our Nigerian friend’s car. I called another friend to see if he would loan the young man $500.

“I can’t guarantee that the money will ever come back,” I told him. 

“Just come on over,” this friend said, without questioning. It was two or three years before the debt was repaid. He received a check in the mail.

“I never expected to see that money again,” he told me.

Often at times like these, food was provided unexpectedly and sometimes in unusual ways, exactly when we needed it. One summer day, a friend from out-of-state gave us a surprise visit, along with his family and parents. It was almost lunch time. Treva and I exchanged glances. We had limited food to serve them. Our friend explained they were in town to see their parents, and it was such a beautiful day, they had all decided to go on a picnic. On the way to the park, they realized we lived nearby, and it might be more fun to have a picnic in our backyard. Would we mind? They brought a huge amount of food.

They saw a handmade rug from China in our living room. I had tried several times to sell it, for a fraction of what it had cost me, just to get some cash. I couldn’t find a buyer. 

“Is there anything we can do to make you sell this rug to us?” they asked. “It would go perfectly with our furniture.”

One time, Mother Nature came to our assistance when a windstorm blew in overnight. The next morning, the neighborhood was unscathed, except for our home: our wooden fence had been blown down. We filed a claim with our insurance company. We used the money to buy a much cheaper wire fence for our dog, and there was money left over for essentials.

On another occasion, our son Keir’s bicycle seat broke. We didn’t have $8 to buy him a new one, which was a very painful experience for Treva and me. Riding his bike was Keir’s favorite thing to do. But once again, we were taken care of. Treva’s brother, who knew nothing of this situation, called to ask Keir if he could help out in their print shop for one day.

We were moved nearly to tears when Keir donated $20 out of his $40 wages that day to Trees for Life. When Treva and I talked that night, we agreed that though we didn’t have money, what we were giving to our children was beyond comprehension.

During this tough period, we had a morning ritual, performed before the kids rushed off to school. We lit a candle, and the four of us said a short prayer together. Then each of us dropped a dime in a jar, so that if anyone came to our door raising money, they would not leave empty-handed.

We lived on this razor’s edge for nearly seven years.

Only much later did I realize what this was all about. My fear of poverty was the driving force of my life. Growing up, my family owned a restaurant near a university. We were an island surrounded by a sea of poverty. Being a sensitive person, even at the age of three I could feel the poverty of people around me and its terrifying consequences. 

I was pained and wanted to help “them.” However, I never wanted to go through that pain myself. I wanted to make enough money so the next 100 generations of my family would not have to go through the pain of poverty.

I thought I could live with this dichotomy, but it was tearing me apart. Some force that was guiding me in this effort knew I would not be able to complete the journey with this thorn in my side. I sensed there was someone holding my hand as I walked through the fire of poverty to be rid of the debilitating fear that had gripped me subconsciously since childhood.

After that, the trajectory of my journey changed. I was no longer trying to help “them,” for “they” no longer existed.

Previously we posted the story about my experience meeting a man on the cold, sandy beach of the Ganges River in India. His name was Sacha Baba.

This man did not know me and after we had talked for only a short time, he predicted: “You are going to go in a direction that is uphill.” He raised the palm of his right hand to indicate steepness. “It will seem dangerous and unnerving to you.

“There will be times when you will not have enough resources. There will be times when you may not even have enough food in the house. Remember, you will not be forsaken. You will be provided for in unexpected ways.

“There will be times when people will not believe you. There will be times when people will insult you. However, at no time will you be alone. At no time will you be at risk, because the one who is bidding you will also be guarding you.”

He instructed, “You must write down your experiences. The path you are walking is a lonely one. People who travel this path need to have some mile markers so they know they are on the right track. Write as an obligation for those who will come after you.”

Here was a man who did not know my name or where I lived nor that it was my 45^th birthday. Yet he was confidently making predictions far into my future. I did not know if I should take him seriously, but I did start making notes as my journey began. 

The stories I share in this section from the beginning days of Trees for Life are those mile markers. They bear witness to the truth of Sacha Baba’s predictions — that there would be times without any resources, and I would be tested to the extreme.

During my two years of illness, I had intense misgivings about what I knew I was being called to do. I had an image of a donkey being pulled but refusing to move forward, digging its four hooves into the ground. I had to let go and trust the force that was driving me to where it wanted me to go. That direction turned out to be Trees for Life. 

On the day I signed the incorporation documents for Trees for Life in March 1984, I drove 300 miles to Colombia, Missouri, to meet with a man who had started the Ford Foundation in India and headed it for 17 years. After talking to me over a two-day period, that methodical old man said to me, “You are being led to conduct a social experiment that has never been conducted before. While people will want results and want them now, you will be pouring test tube after test tube down the drain.” That statement articulated exactly how I was feeling. 

I did not have the least idea what this experiment was going to be. Nor did I have the necessary funds to conduct such a test. Whenever such questions arose, I would get a strong feeling, as if I were being told that this would not be “my” experiment. Over time, I came to understand that I was simply a means through which the experiment would be conducted. My task was to create and maintain the platform for this experiment to take place and allow the resources to come. 

Even so, I did not feel I was the right person for the task because I did not have my fingers on the pulse of the poor. I was not poor and did not know how they lived, felt, or thought. If that was not enough, I was not an agriculturist or a horticulturist. I was born and raised in a city and enjoyed reading a nice book more than planting a tree.

During one of my early trips to India, I wrote a letter to Treva stating that for the next ten years I would consider myself a student, trying to feel the heartbeat of the poor. Without such training, I might spend all my life being off the mark.

The tests came immediately, inundating me.  

A few months after my initial trip to India, I returned to the first school that had agreed to plant trees. I discovered that all 300 trees had been destroyed. Papaya trees are fragile to begin with, and the inexperienced teachers had planted those saplings on the children’s playground. At the ashram, the trees died because no one person had been put in charge of watering them.

We found out from this experience that not only are papaya trees fragile, but you cannot tell if a sapling is male or female. If a farmer was given ten plants and nine were male and only one female, he felt cheated to have done all that work when only one tree produced fruit.

There were many other issues we were working out during that time.

To get the trees from the market to the villages for planting, which could be a distance of  40 or 50 miles, we traveled on bicycles and trains. We would get up at 4 a.m. to catch a train, riding in crowded third-class compartments to the next village. I had to get a good feel for how the poor traveled. I didn’t want to drive to the villages in a car, making the statement, “I am from America.” I was wearing native clothes, not in an attempt to deceive the villagers, but genuinely to be one of them. 

Soon fruit trees were being planted in 30 villages. Our tree-planting experiment started to spread beyond the capabilities of our small network. I noticed that wherever we went, new networks of people formed immediately, as if they had been waiting for me to arrive. 

I was spending anywhere from two to six months at a time in India, working long hours. I had learned by this time not to set any goals. There were no time limits, no expectations. I did whatever I could, without concern for whether our efforts would succeed or fail. From childhood I had been taught that I should do the best I could and surrender the results to something beyond my control. Now, I was putting that into practice. 

If I had a gift, it was to play with complex problems, breaking them down into their smallest parts to understand them and then putting the pieces back together in a way that created something totally new. I called it the shirt-making formula. I was like a tailor who cuts a bolt of cloth into pieces using a pattern, then sews those pieces into a wearable garment. I had used this formula in my consulting business to make money. Now, I was using it to serve others. I believed that this formula would work when one was being a keen listener and not trying to tell people what they should do. In this sense, I was in my element.

I felt there was some sort of guidance leading me. I could go to sleep and ask, “Hey, is this really going to happen or am I all wrong?” I felt I would have an answer within a few days. I gained confidence in things working out, even in the most desperate of times. 

I operated on intuition. I had learned to distinguish between a simple impulse and those where I felt commanded to do something and to follow through. There was a sort of language, a vibration I would feel going down my spine. They were not common occurrences, but when they happened, I knew I must follow through with all my might, even if the impulse or feeling seemed irrational. It defied logic, but acting on such impulses never failed me. 

During this time, I was invited to dinner at my friend’s house in New Delhi. One of the guests told me he and his friends were leading a caravan of religious people through a large number of villages to spread their message. I proposed an idea to him: Trees for Life would create packets of papaya seeds, with a picture of their group’s deity on each packet, along with instructions on how to plant the seeds. They would give the packets to the villagers as part of their communion. He presented the idea to his team, and they enthusiastically accepted the program.

A beautiful package was designed and we provided 150,000 seed packages. The villagers accepted them with great fervor. 

A similar arrangement was made with the Rotary Club of Bengal, which distributed a papaya package designed on its behalf.

In both cases, the distributions were highly successful.

The breeze was bone-chilling. I was holding the collar of my topcoat with my gloved hand. It was a typical morning in Wichita, November 1983, within months of the healer blessing the saplings. I had parked my car and was walking the short distance to my office. I was midway across the bridge over the Arkansas River when I heard someone say: 

“If not now, when? If not you, who?”

The crisp, firm voice stopped me in my tracks. Immediately, I turned and looked in the direction of the voice. There was only the river flowing under my feet. I could see a long distance. There were no boats, no people on the river banks. Had I really heard the river speaking? The statement was familiar, but I did not remember ever using that statement before. I stood there in disbelief. However it had been spoken, the statement was clearly directed at me. I was stunned.

It seemed as if my brain scanned my entire life in a split second. I became aware of myself and my body. I was standing there without any movement, as still and steady as the nearby pillar. There was a warm glow coming from inside my body. I was no longer holding my collar with my hand. The cool breeze felt good. I was awake and fully aware of everything around me. I could feel and see a smile on my face. My mind was clear. Everything seemed fresh.

I stood there for perhaps ten minutes, enjoying the feeling. Reluctantly, I started to move toward my office because now I had to make a phone call. The moment I sat down, I called Treva. In one quick sentence, I told her I was quitting my business. There was stunned silence on the other end. I had kissed her goodbye at home just a few minutes ago. Stammering, she sputtered a few words, as if in slow motion, “WHAT? . . . WHY? . . . DID ANYTHING HAPPEN TO YOU?  . . . ARE YOU OK?  . . . WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME AT THIS TIME?”

She was as confused as I was clear. Her intuition told her that her life had just turned on a dime and that this would have a big impact on the lives of our children. I told her I would explain when I came home that evening. I could almost feel the oppressive cloud of apprehension that would hover over her all day, waiting for my arrival, while hoping everything would return to normal before I came back.

I didn’t know what I was going to tell her. I was much more aware of the pain it would cause all of us. The very thought of such a moment had frightened me for a long time. The dichotomy had split me, causing a prolonged illness.

At that moment, I felt an inner glow. This provided strength as I was called to jump into the dark abyss of the unknown.

Treva insisted that I leave for India as soon as possible and get the trees planted on behalf of the students who had made the effort to raise the money for them. It was important to report back to the students while school was in session. 

She reminded me in no uncertain terms that all the students’ funds had to be spent on the trees themselves. Not a penny could be spent on overhead or travel expenses. I agreed, even though there was a problem. A trip to India would cost many times more than the money raised by the students. It was a hard decision, because our finances were depleted. We had no option but to spend our personal funds. 

As I stepped onto the flight in New York, my legs started to shake uncontrollably. I had staked all my reputation on a hunch that people in India would agree to and participate in the planting of fruit trees. Now the hunch was going to be tested. I had no experience with that. What would happen if they didn’t like the idea? 

The man sitting in front of me was a music promoter from London. We talked for a while. I told him the purpose of my trip, and he was enthusiastic. After dinner, I went to sleep, spread out across four seats because the plane was relatively empty. Over the ocean, we experienced severe turbulence. I slept through it all. 

My new British friend told me later he started to worry during the turbulence. He knew Yasser Arafat was also on our flight, sitting in first class. My friend became convinced that the turbulence was part of a plot, purposely created because Arafat was on the plane. This man was Jewish, so he was afraid he would be caught in a plot to get Arafat. He was certain this was a death flight, and he became so scared he started to pray. He said he looked back to talk to me, but I was snoring. Seeing me sleeping, he grew calm. 

“I figured if someone like you could sleep through this, I had nothing to worry about. Everything would be OK,” he said.

His words were a message to me. I realized he was inspired by my trip and the vision that spurred it. His faith in me changed my mood and gave me confidence. I took it as an omen that everything would be OK. I was not alone.

I told the story of the healer and the lemon trees to my family and friends. One of the friends was a teacher. She asked me to share my story with her eighth-grade students.

“Planting fruit trees is a great idea,” one student said. “It not only helps the environment, it also gives people food for years to come.”

“What can we do?” asked another.

The students were excited to talk with me about ways they could help. They called a local nursery and learned that one apple tree can give 10,000 pounds of fruit in its lifetime. They decided to hold a car wash and donate the money to help plant fruit trees in India.

The children’s enthusiasm gave life to the idea that people in different parts of the world would be willing to help each other on a grassroots level. 

On that day, in Barbara Hubert’s eighth-grade class at Wilbur Junior High in Wichita, Kansas, the idea behind Trees for Life was born. 

Their car wash raised $303.

As I was searching for alternatives, two things were for certain. One, that whatever I did had to be socially relevant. Getting back in business and making money to get rich was no longer an option. Furthermore, I did not wish to start something new for myself. I would be satisfied to give up a leadership role and work for others. As I was struggling with this second issue, I had a powerful dream.

In that dream, I was riding the small green bike I had as a boy. I was peddling very hard and fast and the speed was dizzying. It was as if the bike was in control, not me. My knees were almost reaching my chin, and I realized the bike was too small because I was now an adult. 

I came to a roundabout and realized I was in the old neighborhood where I grew up in Allahabad, India.

With the great speed that my bike had attained, I somehow ended up at what looked at first like a farmhouse.

Once in front of the house, the bike came to a sudden stop. I noticed that three or four other people had come into the yard and were standing nearby. 

From inside the house, an Indian monk stepped out onto the porch and addressed those who had gathered. “He is not here,” the monk said, indicating that whoever these people were looking for was not in the house.

Hearing this, the other people begin to disperse. But as the monk spoke, I noticed he motioned slightly with his head as if to indicate that I should look behind me. Until that time, I had not noticed that there was a small garden there.

Leaving my bike, I began to walk toward the garden. In the corner was a frail, old man about 90 years of age sitting cross legged. His skin was deep brown from spending hours in the sun.

I realized this was his ashram. He greeted me as if he had been expecting me, and motioned for me to sit down in front him.

I was now in a reverential mood and the old man said, “You are in the wrong place. You must start your own ashram.”

In the dream, my body felt a very strong vibration, and then the dream instantly vanished, and I was fully awake. 

The dream was another message that I had no choice but to start a new organization.