Jacob Atabet (17 page)

And I don’t have to tell you what this friendship means to me. You know the doubts I’ve had these last few years, the eruptions of imagery and increasing neurosis. We don’t have to go over that. But now my work makes sense. Our meeting has opened up a prospect that stretches as far as the eye can see.

You ask me to describe that prospect, but I’m afraid it would take a book or two—in both prose and poetry. A few letters are just not enough. But let me make another try. To repeat what I said before, we are certain that a surprising transformation of the human form is possible through the agency of spirit and that in some sense evolution intends this. It is clear to us, however, that the great contemplative disciplines have generally missed the mark in this regard because the traditions in which they were embedded aimed at a release from embodiment, at a liberation from the wheel of death and rebirth or the world of the flesh and the devil. My book, as you know, tries to show that. Yet there is much evidence that the body can manifest the glories of spirit— evidence from myths and legends all over the world, from hypnosis and psychical research, from the lore of spiritual healing, from the stigmatic prodigies described in the religious and psychiatric literatures, from sport and Tantra, from the physical phenomena of mysticism generally, etc., etc. There is no denying the constant witness to it once you perceive the main pattern. The problem of course is in forming the discipline to give it birth.

I would have to write another tome about the requirements of such a practice, if I knew enough. For I am a neophyte in this, a nursery school student in fact. Even Atabet and his friends are exploring. Last week, however, we wrote out a working summary of the elements such a discipline must have, and since you asked about it I will pass it along. But before I do, let me say that we are also working on a deeper structural analysis of the transformational process. In this we are trying to isolate the most basic and universal elements of practice as they exist in everything from yoga to hypnosis to modern sport. (A friend, Frank Barron, suggested that we are trying to make a table of the yogic elements.) One of these is rapport: rapport with another person, with the atman-consciousness, with the body, with the world-at-large. Another is interior vision. Another is hearing, in the sense of the Indian
sravana
. Our present scheme has 15 or 20 of them. We feel that once they are discerned more clearly they can form a more effective practice, because most of the disciplines we have now are like alchemy in their attempts to turn our psychic lead to gold. All of them misperceive the psychic elements to some degree. Their methods are fumbling. Part of the reason for this is that the great transformational disciplines were constructed in and for another time and place. They were embedded in another culture. But another reason is that our knowledge is still advancing. No one, we think, has the final word yet.

But though our search for the transformative elements continues, I can offer this summary of our discipline now. In simplified form it goes something like this:

•
A first healing of the mind and heart to remove the blocks and fears, the splits and repressions that cause so much noise in our system. A modern synthesis of method and insight is emerging for this, one that combines the therapeutic approaches developed in the West since Mesmer with traditional methods like yogic meditation.

•
Right livelihood and a generous heart. You can’t explore these things when you’re running around like I was last winter and spring. Seek out the brotherhood. Make peace in your family. Do your part to help those in need. Many contemplative communities have set a beautiful example for us in their balance of interior practice and service to others.

•
A sophisticated physical training, one that leads toward the conditioned and flexible body we need for this descent into matter. Here we can draw from methods in every tradition, from the hatha yogas, martial arts, and modern approaches to bodily awareness. (My version of this includes Lilias and running a six-minute mile!)

•
The many forms of meditation, ranging from the classical observation of mental contents as in the Buddhist
vipassana
to Patanjali’s
samyama
to the further reaches of the
animan siddhi.
Atabet says that “the One is our basecamp for all further adventure.
”
In other words, we have to grow in the unitive consciousness (unitive with both the immanent and transcendent One) to know the joys and secrets of life
—of this or any life,
let alone the transformation we seek. Another phrasing he uses, drawing on the Samkhya tradition, is “the range
of prakriti
we can know is proportional to the depth of
purusha.” Purusha
in that sense is our truest “ego-strength,” and our first enlightenment. For the dangers to liberation grow stronger in these further reaches, there are more sources of a false enchantment. Paraphrasing St. John of the Cross, we can turn our angels into demons everywhere. A growing union with the Source keeps this new abundance in perspective.

•
The right cultivation of the
siddhis
or
vibhutis,
the powers that emerge in any practice like this. Because our aim is incarnation, not release, and because the self is a sea of lights and powers, we regard the “seedless samadhi” of the ascetic traditions as a stage but not the goal of our journey. The siddhis and
vibhutis,
in our view, are meant to manifest. They are facets of our future nature, our spiritual limbs and organs. We understand of course that they can be distractions or seductions from the path
—
that is why the scriptures warn us so often about them
—
but their suppression can cause problems too. Here as everywhere else you can have a return of the repressed. Atabet’s vision of a luminous figure is an example of this: until he lets that genie find its proper place, until he incorporates its truth in his life, it will beckon and torment him. Here again my book hit the mark. Its inventory of yogic powers has been put to good use by us all in recent weeks.

•
The body’s transfiguration. The appropriation by the flesh of the glories. This we know little about. As I said before, most physical transformations of this kind have been fleeting (or merely good stories). They are “like wheels on the toys of primitive men
. . .”
and point the way toward the future. The central question is “how?” For where you have relative certainty and wealth of method in the foundation work of transformational practice, you have almost nothing here. Is there some essential secret? Aurobindo, for example, believed that only something which he called the “Supermind” could effect the decisive change. But though his authority is great, we must take his assertion on faith. With all his experience of the further reaches Atabet doesn’t know what the Supermind is. In his experience so far, there has been no decisive line to cross, no definite principle or level of spirit like the one Aurobindo describes. He feels instead that we must explore into both living matter and spirit at once, effecting their marriage step by step. This makes sense to me. If there is a Supermind in Aurobindo’s sense, we will eventually come across it this way.

The body transfigured. What would its boundaries be? Or can the process be held to one person? Atabet’s suggestibility, I think, is an aspect of his union with the world. Instability in the bodies of saints comes in part from their empathy with suffering and discord. (That is why the ancient disciplines cultivated equality of spirit,
samata,
the solid unity and strength of mystical practice.) Ultimately this transformation is both a social and individual enterprise. For however gifted a person may be, he is lifted up or brought down by the world around him. It is an ecological and political as well as a neurological opportunity.

Our way forward can be stated simply though: the progressive extension of awareness and control to the organs, cells, molecules and fundamental forces. This has been Atabet’s journey since his teens, his descent into matter which our meeting has helped to illumine. Our body, he says, is a tower of mirrored doors to the world at large. Revealing and reowning its immense hierarchical structure is possible because our deepest self made it in the first place. Part of the game is dismembering. Part is remembering
—
in both senses of the word. For with the knowledge and control we have won we can begin to recreate this human form so that it may house and express a fuller consciousness and capacity. Being an artist, Atabet loves this metaphor. He is still going to school, you might say, to master the elements of his body’s re-creation. His paintings are a place to practice the art at a distance.

This increase of awareness and control can be seen as an extension of the entire therapeutic enterprise to date, a making the unconscious conscious right down to the original Quantum. As in all good therapy, insight is in the service of freedom. For if the world’s birth is our first and ultimate trauma (our cosmic parents’ Big Bang?), then remembering that first Primal Scene could make way for our ultimate healing. If we could finally remember how our bodies were made
—
all the way back to that Instant in which these billion galaxies burst forth from a seed the size of a planet or proton
—
we would win a new freedom and mastery in this form of spirit we call matter. Cosmically speaking, we would come of age.

Well, you asked for descriptions and I’ve sent them. To make things even worse, I am enclosing the following concordance of disciplines we’ve been playing with. Like all such tables, it does violence to the complexities, but I thought you might find it intriguing.

I will write again when we Argonauts reach the next interesting port. If Atabet lands on Alpha Centauri, you will certainly hear about it. It may be a while though. As I said, life in the months ahead will be filled mainly with wine, contemplation and the study of history. The only strenuous thing I foresee is running a six-minute mile.

With love to you and
____________.

As ever,

Darwin

P.S.

In answer to the people you mentioned who call this descent into matter a form of “spiritual materialism,” we can say this at least: “The body’s liberation is a part of enlightenment that has been neglected. Let’s make our enlightenment more complete!” Actually, the body has reorganized itself again and again (or has been reorganized) to accommodate various developments in consciousness and capacity. It is probable that every major shift in the psyche requires a change in our physiology. The changes we are exploring can be seen as a next step of this ancient evolutionary process.

I also have to add some questions. First, about that sun I saw and those Japanese faces I described on the phone: do you think it might have been a memory?—something like the akashic records? Second, there is a line in the
Upanishads
about our not being able to pass through the sun. Do you know what that means? I have been trying to run down the references to it. The ordinary interpretation, I think, would be that the sun is a symbol for something equivalent to
nirvikalpa samadhi
. And I wonder too about that dream of a shaman which triggered my panics this spring. There are dozens of questions about it. Any comments you have will be appreciated. (Have you read about the Neanderthal shaman that was just unearthed? He was buried under hallucinogenic plants some 50,000 years ago).

And finally, in answer to your question: yes, I remain uncommitted to any “ism.” Even dualism carries a truth. Though it is a form of spirit, the body is an
idiot savant
, as Atabet puts it, a dumb god that both summons and resists this transformation. How we lead it forth is an adventure that will occupy us for centuries. Tell Wendell Bracketts that I said “there are no naive monists here, Charlie.” He’ll know what I mean. And tell him too that Vladimir Kirov is working with the Russian groups in Alma Ata and Novosibirsk on suggestion at a distance. They want to use it as a weapon of war.

N
OVEMBER 2

Last night we met about seven, all of us in very high spirits. “We have remade you,” he said, and we joked about Lilias and our metaphysical fat farm.

He wore a white Irish cap and dark blue turtleneck sweater under a yellow parka, a costume he bought last week with proceeds from his latest sale. He sold the painting of blood on the city to a gallery on Sutter Street for $8,500! It was his biggest sale yet, and we would celebrate at Julius Castle.

Windows were blazing on the Berkeley hills, and the air seemed clearer than ever. His mood was contagious. People at tables around us seemed to brighten after we had been there a while.

All through dinner he and Corinne carried on with abandon. Kept teasing the waiter, a tall ascetic man they know who belongs to some kind of contemplative order. He looked like a Byzantine icon, vastly underweight. Atabet said Corinne should ask him out. She has never looked less ascetic.