Revolution (16 page)

This is the seam of the self that consumerism can continually mine, the unrelenting inner voice that wants and fears, that attaches and rejects. The people in robes and beards want us to learn to live
beyond it, to calmly watch the chattering ego like clouds moving across a perfect sky, to identify with the stillness that is aware of the voice, that hears the voice, not the voice itself.

Well, that’s easy for them to say, all relaxed in their flowing robes, like giant, hairy babies, it’s extremely difficult, especially when that voice has such omnipresent external allies to rely on, whilst the very idea of a spiritual life has been marginalized and maligned.

Perhaps this state needn’t be the product of strenuous esotericism; it’s possible that calm presence of mind is our natural state and our jittery materialism the result of constant indoctrination. Much as I love spirituality to be served up properly branded in a turban, dressed in curtains, the accoutrements are surely an aesthetic, not a prerequisite.

Once on holiday on the Pacific coast of Mexico, I met a man who possessed a stubborn spirituality that was more earth than air, more leather than muslin. I was on the kind of luxurious holiday that will be coldly ground out like a mink cigar when sanity is restored, set to stay in a resort called Cuixmala, which I will never be confident writing or pronouncing due to that “x” in the middle of it.

I flew into Puerto Vallarta airport from Los Angeles, then had to get a prop plane from there to the resort. Me and my mate Nicola traveled there together, she in the role of an adult nanny to facilitate the extended infancy that fame affords. Fame is like a sequin-covered suit of armor that provides a holographic cover for actual me; most people, whether their opinion is positive or negative, are content to deal with the avatar, leaving me as tender as crabmeat within. Really, it’s an amplification of what happens if you’re not famous. I don’t imagine that we are often interacting on the pure frequency of essential nature; we usually have a preexisting set of conditions and coordinates that we project on to people we meet or circumstances we encounter.

This is not just a psychological notion. Robert Lanza, in his concept-smashing book
Biocentrism
explains that our perception of all physical external phenomena is in fact an internal reconstruction, elaborating on the results of experiments in quantum physics, that particles behave differently when under observation—itself a
universe-shattering piece of information—so that, and forgive my inelegant comprehension of the quantum world, electrons fired out of a tiny little cannon, when unobserved, make a pattern that reveals they have behaved as “a wave,” but when observed, the kinky little bastards behave as “particles.”

That’s a bit fucking mad if you ask me. That’s like finding out that when you go out your dog stands up on its hind legs, lights a fag, and starts making phone calls. Or turns into a cloud.

Lanza describes how our conception of a candle as a yellow flame burning on a wick is a kind of mentally constructed illusion. He says an unobserved candle would have no intrinsic “brightness” or “yellowness,” that these qualities require an interaction with consciousness. The bastard. A flame, he explains, is a hot gas. Like any light source, it emits photons, which are tiny packets of electromagnetic energy. Which means electrical and magnetic impulses.

Lanza points out that we know from our simple, sexy everyday lives that electricity and magnetic energy have no visual properties. There is nothing inherently visual about a flame until the electromagnetic impulses—if measuring, between 400 and 700 nanometers in length from crest to crest—hit the cells in our retinas, at the back of the eye. This makes a complex matrix of neurons fire in our brains, and we subjectively perceive this as “yellow brightness” occurring in the external world. Other creatures would see gray. At most we can conclude, says Lanza, that there is a stream of electromagnetic energy that, if denied correlation with human consciousness, is impossible to conceptualize. So when Elton John said Marilyn Monroe lived her life “like a candle in the wind,” he was probably bloody right, and if he wasn’t we’ll never know.

We apply reality from within. The world is our perception of the world. So what other people think of you, famous or not, is an independent construct taking place in their brain, and we shouldn’t worry too much about it.

On my trip to Mexico I encountered Ernesto, who clearly didn’t give a toss about fame. Me and Nic were due to be met at Puerto Vallarta, we knew not by whom. As soon as I saw Ernesto there, halfheartedly holding a sign with a pseudonym on it and a fag a lot
more committedly, I became curious. He wore a cloth baseball cap, like a mechanic in a movie, a red polo shirt, and shorts. Everything he wore looked like it had at some point been used to polish an engine. He looked weathered; I suppose that means like he’d been alive a while and spent a lot of time outside. As I approached I noticed that I couldn’t easily imagine this man observing the usual custom in this circumstance and carrying my luggage. He didn’t. I noticed I was disgruntled but left that unexpressed.

Brown he was, Ernesto, nicotine-stained fingers, good like wood compared to plastic, I observed, as he greeted us with a fraction of a smile, a few words in Spanish, and smoked his way from the main terminal to the smaller, adjacent terminal where the prop plane awaited.

It was a red and yellow plane so comically small and vivid it might as well’ve been a cartoon. It in fact looked like “Jimbo,” an anthropomorphic airplane from children’s BBC in the eighties. It was such a diminutive aviation device that boarding it was more akin to putting on a jacket than to getting on a plane. It became clear, but was never explained, that Ernesto was the pilot when he got in the driving seat and started pressing buttons. Nicola is a nervous flyer, which is annoying because we all die in plane crashes, not just nervous people, but we, the fearless, are expected to console and coo and tell them it’s okay and list statistics about air travel’s relative safety: “You’re more likely to die in a road accident,” etc. Well, I’m sick of it.

They’re getting short shrift from me now, these blubbering sky-nancies. Phobias are like fetishes, if you ask me, nurtured little perversions that the sufferers secretly enjoy. The last time a nervous flyer tried it on with me, I barked at her like she was talking in an exam and threatened to sit on her.

Nicola sat in the back, which was like she was perched in a knapsack on my back, and nervously eyed Ernesto as he, with the slapdash dexterity of a bare-knuckle croupier, prodded and jabbed dials and switches. He indicated that we should put the seat belts on. They were those ones that have no spring-loaded recall, like in an old car; it was like draping a dressing-gown cord over your shoulder.
We took off with the sense of excitement that accompanies the thrill of a fairground ride, with none of the guaranteed safety.

When I meet a new person, I like to take them in, give them a damn good staring at, and check my files for references. I suppose that is the beginning of prejudice. Ernesto seemed to be softening, perhaps as a result of our excitement at taking off. He began to take on the role of guide, pointing out interesting bays and coves as we flew along the coastline. “Here we will see sharks,” he said, lowering the altitude, and sure enough we could make out a dappled gray slither of wickedness shimmering in the azure.

I began to quiz Ernesto to see if he matched up to my prejudices. I assumed him to be a man who’d lived in close harmony with the land and with machines. A pragmatic man. He may never have left Mexico, I thought.

He continued to beguile with cavalier nods to jungle gaps where marijuana crops grew and, encouraged by our interest, as the resort drew near incorporated some aeronautical stunt work into his repertoire, swooping down till we were yards above the beach. Swimming village kids waved like in the opening credits of a travel program. He dive-bombed at a jeep on a dirt track, his former grease-monkey persona replaced by the debonair grace of a World War I flying ace. I felt great joy and safety and decided that I loved this man. Between stunts, I’d looked at his eyes, and they were blue like the sea and, like the sea, they had sharks in them. Wild, untamable nature and certainty. Connection and power, warmth. I immediately and unthinkingly made him a father figure. When Nicola, who was leaving the next day to fly to London, was taxied back by Ernesto, I went along for the ride.

This time a seasoned copilot with forty minutes’ experience, I felt able to switch off a little and not be so self-consciously dazzled by the view. I took to my phone to make a few texts and whatnot. I must’ve stared mute and listless for longer than Ernesto deemed suitable, as he jerked the plane violently up, then down, taking my breath away and making me audibly yelp. He looked at me and smiled. “In the moment,” he said.

I’m not often chided as an adult. I usually just do what I want,
and drifting into a wet-lipped torpor, agog at the screen of my self-administered iTag, is one of the ways I voluntarily squander the gift of life. Well, Ernesto wasn’t having it. He’d given himself the role of “elder” and was belatedly initiating me into the present.

“Travel in the old ruts,” quotes my friend Meredith; some ancient Chinese maxim. The way lain down by elders. Pathways through the world, pathways through the mind—it’s a shame that these days we so seldom have a guide. That our atomized worldview, mimicking scientific doctrine, sees us as separate, distinct, alone, orbiting in space, touching only an infinite void.

My cognitive sleuthing about ol’ Ernesto was quite wrong. He was well traveled and had resided in Paris and had lived all kinds of urbane adventures. He’d been flying since he was fifteen, though, and up there was so confident and connected it was hypnotic. It’s helpful for me to have differing visions of what spirituality might be, that it can be expressed with dog-ends, not dog collars, tattered caps, not turbans. Infinite potential up there in the moment, in the clouds.

T
HE
F
AIRFIELD
T
RANSCENDENTAL
M
EDITATION COMMUNITY HAVE
attempted to create external conditions that support a higher cause. Of course, the fear with such a community is that it might be a bit insipid and weird or seem like a cult. I spent a few weeks there to see what it was like to be in an environment that nourished serenity and if I could live comfortably with serenity’s immediate neighbors: earnestness and humorlessness.

Even if untroubled by these conceptual neighbors, the inhabitants of the meditation community in Fairfield have literal neighbors to contend with. They cohabit their town with the ordinary rural community of Fairfield present long before a glorious set of transcendent knockers jiggled on to the horizon, generating a dissonant hum in the small-town center. Adjacent to the predictable pinewood-and-paperbacks vegan restaurant, there’s a bar selling Coors and shots with a stag-hunting arcade game in the corner. The indigenous laborers I noted eyed the newcomers the way any immigrant community can be viewed, as threatening and unwelcome, tranquil invaders from another dimension.

The problem with communities built around sitting still and doing nothing is that, yes, you guessed it, they’re a bit fucking boring, particularly to people like me, brought up on shopping centers, porno mags, and crack. When I’m in a TM-themed café, about to bite into something made of parsley, I might think, “Fuck this, there’s an arcade game next door where I can shoot a bambi in the bonce.”

This attitude of churlish indifference seems like nerdish deference contrasted with the belligerent antipathy of the indigenous farm folk, who regard the hippie-dippie interlopers, the denizens of the shimmering tit temples, as one fey step away from transvestites. I shall tell you the one negative thing about the TM community I can think of, just to get it off my chest, then I can resume my primary purpose of encouraging you to incorporate spiritual practice of some kind into your life.

They do a thing called “yogic flying.” Now, if someone says to me, “Russell, would you like to partake in some yogic flying?” the image I have is of myself and a few hippies levitating like Aladdin, blissed out and superior, looking down on the world in every conceivable way. If the reality of the situation is a bunch of people with their legs crossed hopping across crash mats, a hybrid of a sports-day sack race and the Paralympics, I shall feel short-changed.

I urge my brethren in the New Age realm, those of us who want to change the world, whether from a radical political perspective or a spiritual one, to be fastidious; Richard Dawkins is watching, like the librarian of all earth’s knowledge, shushing and prodding and demanding overdue diligence.

If we tell Dickie Dawkins we at last have proof of the supernatural, that we are finally manifesting a glorious new dawn for humankind, that we are ready to join the angels, then invite him into a giant tit in Iowa and show him what looks like some highly motivated amputees clamoring for a top-shelf magazine, he is unlikely to be impressed. Not that impressing Dickie Dawkins is the aim of the game; he’s made his mind up to be dour. I’d hate to go on holiday with him. “These pyramids are inaccurate; fetch my spirit level. Actually, just get me a normal level; I don’t believe in spirits. No, I don’t want to buy a fez!”

Whilst I stayed in Fairfield, Bobby Roth, a remarkable man, in essence a priest of the TM faith, taught me to meditate. Bob would eschew the priestly title, as the TM movement is understandably keen to avoid any mantles that prevent its powerful technology being unappealing to secular people, because it sounds “out there,” or to religious people, if it seems to conflict with their ideology. To
me, though, Bob, who has become a dear friend, is a type of priest or swami. A devoted man.