All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (35 page)

Khedup had his hand over his mouth. ‘See the drawings on their stomachs. This is how they are seeing.’

Peering closer, I saw what he meant. As they veered from the edge of the parapet again, it was possible to make out on the oracles’ stomachs elaborately painted drawings, not dissimilar to the ferocious
chom
masks of a Tibetan deity: two white eyes, with brows of orange fire, and between the two, a third eye, the point of spiritual illumination. The rest of the monks’ torsos were painted coal-black, so that it indeed seemed that some malevolent face was peering out at us as the monks ran up and down the parapet of the monastery, ranting at the crowd below.

Was it really possible that they were seeing through these painted eyes rather than their own, I wondered. Clearly,
one
wrong footing on that ledge and they would fall to an immediate death on the flagstones below. At one end of the parapet was a gap and I watched, dumbstruck, as one of the oracles merely leaped over it, almost as if he were flying.

‘Did you see that!’ said Khedup. ‘They have nine layers of cloth on their faces, and yet they can jump like that! This is too exciting!’

They disappeared from view for a moment, and I realised I was breathing heavily. What
were
these creatures? It was easy to see why the villagers were so terrified. One could see, occasionally, the monks beneath, struggling to retain control of the spirits. Cynically, I wondered if they
could
actually see through the strips of cloth after all. The alternative – even after all I’d seen – was difficult to contemplate.

‘They are coming down!’ said Khedup, clutching the stone so tightly his hands were white. ‘Here they are!’

In the next moment the oracles burst out into the courtyard below, prompting a wail of panic from the crowd. As one of them sprang forward I could see the sabre glinting in his hand, and a section of the crowd struggled desperately backwards, trampling those not quick enough to move out of the way.

The second oracle joined him now and together they ran up and down, leaping about with effortless bounds, gnashing their teeth and filling the air with their mysterious speech. One of them stuck his tongue out and proceeded to slice the sword along it. The crowd roared! Then the other took up a great vessel full of
chang
– a beer made from fermented barley – and began to drain the entire thing, droplets catching the light as they spilled from the corners of his mouth. It was like watching two lions that had escaped the Colosseum. Everywhere they went, the crowd fell into panic.

Suddenly, as quickly as they had arrived, the oracles disappeared from view again, back through the doors of the
dukhang
, or central hall. I caught a final glimpse of them – a blur of matted hair and wild energy – as a group of monks appeared to usher them away. In their wake the heavy doors of the inner sanctum shut swiftly. We wouldn’t see them again today.

Three days earlier I’d flown from Delhi to witness this greatest of the Ladakhi winter festivals. My old friend Norbu had sent me an email suggesting that if I felt what I’d seen during the summer was interesting, then this Matho festival couldn’t be missed. ‘Oracles will receive the Rong-Tsan Kar-Mar,’ he wrote, ‘who are amongst the most ancient, powerful deities we have. They meditate in a hidden cave for three months before the day of the festival.’

And so I’d come for one more look at the oracles, still one of the most perplexing things I’d seen on this long journey. Stepping out at Leh airport, I found a serene town frozen in the amber of intense cold. At minus ten, the icicles had formed symmetrical daggers on the low branches of the apricot trees. But the blue light, which I remembered so well from summer, was as clear and magnificent as ever.

Certainly, I was glad I’d come. To visit Ladakh in winter, witness the majesty of a great religious festival and take in the details of this pristine mountain culture, was an immense privilege. And yet once the oracles had been and gone, I felt no closer to understanding the whole thing than I had before. If anything, this was an even more theatrical – less participatory – experience than my audience with Norbu’s sister, six months before.

I put my disappointment to Khedup, the young monk who’d been patiently explaining the day’s events to me. What was the point of these oracles, I asked him. After almost two days of waiting, we’d seen them for less than five minutes before they vanished again. Was it mere spectacle, I wondered. Or did they really help the Ladakhi people in some way?

‘The goal of all Buddhists,’ explained Khedup diplomatically, ‘is to remove suffering and become happy. Rong-Tsan Kar-Mar deities help us achieve this. They are able to see things which normal human beings cannot. Inside, just now, they are making a prediction about the year to come. Whether the harvest will be good or bad.’

‘It seemed over in a flash,’ I said. ‘But at least they weren’t wearing the red ribbon which would signify bad news.’

Khedup patted me on the back consolingly. ‘But you have other means of gathering information, yes,’ he said. ‘You have all kinds of technologies, the internet. You can even fly across the world to find out your answers.’ He grinned. ‘These Rong-Tsan Kar-Mar came here for the Ladakhi people, because this place is so wild and cold, with a small population. As the story goes, Dorje Palzang, who founded Matho monastery, brought them with him from eastern Tibet, luring them with sacrificial cakes. In Ladakh the deities settled here, where they can still be called upon for help.’

There was a certain logic to what Khedup said and finally I accepted the festival for what it was, banishing that need for concrete answers from which, several years into my journey, I was still not entirely free. When the prediction came from the oracles – apparently the harvest would be plentiful that year – the villagers seemed palpably relieved, and in that this highly esoteric tradition displayed an obvious logic.

Looking back over the last few years, I reflected on a range of experiences, all of which had given me some insight into the range of practices by which humans attempt to penetrate the veils of consciousness. Some, like these Buddhist oracles, remained virtually inexplicable. Others, like the meditative and shamanistic practices intended to break down the power of the human ego, seemed more comprehensible, part of our great human struggle for transcendence.

At the great Mela festival, I’d met Ram and his motley brotherhood of
Naga sadhus
. Perpetual wanderers, they were probably camped out in some tranquil forest glade even now, packing themselves another chillum pipe and preparing to meet Shiva once again. Despite the encroaching materialism that was changing the face of India, the
sadhus
remain essentially unchanged from the forest ascetics written of in the Vedic texts. In their quest for
moksha
– total liberation from the wheel of
samsara
– I found them wholly admirable.

Then there was the witch woman – the
sadhvi
who’d read my palm in the old fort. And Mata-ji, the village shaman whose mediation between the human and divine realms allowed her to berate the gods themselves. In times of global fanaticism, it seemed entirely to India’s credit that such a range of religious traditions should be thriving side by side. A great hero of mine, the Italian journalist and writer Tiziano Terzani, spent his last years in India, and concluded that India represents ‘our last hope for a truly spiritual society on earth’. This theory may be tested severely as the world’s largest democracy meets the social and ecological challenges of the twenty-first century, but I feel hopeful. The sacred – even according to its most non-theistic definition – is everywhere in the former lands of Hindustan.

Facing equal challenges – as the mullahs struggle to retain power over the hearts and minds of men – will be Turkey, midway between Europe and the East in so many ways. The worldwide resurgence of interest in Sufism, however, may eventually pressure the government into allowing the dervishes to whirl again and its people to find God in whatever way they wish. And as Rumi’s poems appear in new translations, reaching a wider audience across the globe, his unique message may help more and more to see the unity that lies behind all traditions: the still voice that lies at the centre of the turning world.

Finally, my experience of drinking ayahuasca – ancient soul medicine of the shamans – has left a strange imprint on my consciousness, the ramifications of which are still unfolding day by day. As a plant with a genuine power to benefit humanity, it remains the most potent I’ve discovered, although I accept that the experience may not be for everyone. After a journey witnessing so many others find their own way through the veil, it was simply overwhelming to break through myself at last, as if I’d finally begun to understand where my search was leading after all.

That veil, ultimately, is human consciousness itself, our last frontier. While the human mind is undoubtedly capable of
great ingenuity and invention, it is also a beast that – with increasing frequency if one believes the statistics – seems to be turning upon its handlers. With the World Health Organisation predicting that depression will be society’s worst problem by 2020, the way we think and relate to the world around us is clearly a major concern. Evidently, the proper functioning of the human mind also affects a far wider sphere than merely ourselves. In our inability to think beyond personal gain, we may have destroyed the biosphere which supports our own existence.

All of which raises significant questions about the human species at this point in our evolution. If the human being is the greatest example of Darwin’s evolutionary chain, then we are about to be put to the ultimate test: can we change our habits fast enough to survive? Evidently, some sort of dynamic shift will be necessary, and not merely one of patterns of consumption, if humanity is to flourish into the twenty-second century.

In the hopes of many, it will be science that ushers in this new era of peaceful and harmonious existence with the earth: cleaner, more efficient fuels; the end of disease; the means to grow crops on less or perhaps no land at all. In the hopes of the scientists, greater knowledge of the physical world will lessen the human struggle, thereby promoting peaceful coexistence and some progressive development towards an ordered world.

But another possibility also exists, an idea that sees the shift happening ‘internally’,
within
human consciousness itself. By this reckoning it is the mystics, and the great traditions they uphold, which yield the possibility to save us from ourselves. According to this school of thought, some of the religions have been attempting just this for thousands of years: offering systematic techniques for moving beyond ego-based thought patterns, for disarming the ‘self’ which entices us towards such self-destructive behaviour. Far from being some impenetrable Oriental sage, the Buddha was merely the quintessential student of the human mind. ‘Are you a god?’ asked several men to him, shortly after his enlightenment. ‘No,’ replied the Buddha. ‘I am awake.’

If there is a drawback, however, to the paths laid out by the Buddha and others, it is that they are immensely difficult. Conquering the ego is an almighty feat and, in this, the notion that all of us, somehow, will become enlightened in time to save the planet seems unlikely. During my journey, however, one idea began to cross my radar, overheard again and again in backpacker cafés, in ashrams and yoga
shalas
, and even once on the Piccadilly line as I travelled to King’s Cross. In alternative circles, the year 2012 is widely considered to be a year of great significance: the ancient Mayans, it seems, whose lunar calendar demonstrated exceptional accuracy, believed it would mark the end of a 26,000 year cycle, after which humanity would cross the threshold of a new and more harmonious age.

Even after some of the things I’d experienced, the idea struck me as far-fetched. The fin-de-siècle doomsday merchants who’d been proven wrong in 2000 now had a new date to circle in their calendars, a point of change that eradicated the need for any personal responsibility. And yet, simultaneously, I couldn’t quite discount it. Quite evidently, humanity is at a turning point. Without a marked shift of some kind, we will simply destroy the biospheric support system that gives us succour and follow the other species to extinction. Our relentless need to ‘consume’ will usher in our own downfall. Like the tribes on Easter Island who, in their insatiable drive to build new idols, chopped down the trees which sustained them, we will be the victims of our own folly.

The 2012 idea, therefore, represents a much-needed ray of hope, and for that reason alone it’s worth considering. As much as humanity has made a mess of the planet, signs of a new awakening are everywhere. Earth-centred religions are on the rise, and the resurgence of interest in the mystical suggests that many of us, collectively, are feeling our way towards new ways of living. Yoga
shalas
occupy key positions on high streets, natural farming methods are returning to the mainstream and Oprah Winfrey, of all people, has championed the teachings of modern mystic Eckhart Tolle, making him a household name in the United States.

Could it be then that 2012 is already with us? If the ancients
were
in touch with some divinatory system that allowed them to predict grand planetary shifts in the future, perhaps they saw a point –
this
point – at which humanity would
have
to change if it were to survive. Far more likely than some sudden cosmic flash of light, they foresaw an era in which values would begin to shift, at which we would finally begin to practise habits of behaviour which benefit the many, rather than the few.