When the Impossible Happens (7 page)

To my great surprise and delight, Joan made a sudden decision to take a leave of absence and join me on my trip. We met at Kennedy Airport in New York and boarded Loftleidir, the Icelandic airline, for a flight to Reykjavik. In those days, I conducted many workshops at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and in various other parts of the United States. On many occasions, this involved taking the “red eye express,” as I called the overnight flights back to Baltimore. A friend of mine gave me for these occasions a special kind of candy that he personally prepared. It seemed to be a perfect solution for the lack of comfort and sleep that these flights entailed. I was later able to obtain from him the recipe for this culinary panacea for jetlag and other forms of discomfort associated with long travel.

My friend’s candy looked and tasted like a Middle Eastern dessert from A
Thousand and One Nights.
It was a mixture of cut-up nuts, dates, dried figs, and raisins rolled into little balls about the size of a large walnut. The most important ingredient in the mixture was “bhang ghee,” melted butter containing an extract of sinsemilla, dried leaves, and blossoms of hemp native in Big Sur. Embarking on long night flights, I would swallow this before boarding the airplane. By the time it started taking effect, I had a greatly enhanced sense of taste and voracious appetite, which turned the airplane dinner into a gourmet feast. Following the dinner, I put on my eyeshades and listened to music until I fell asleep. I woke up relaxed and refreshed after a good night’s sleep, usually just at the time when they were serving breakfast.

Joan and I each took two of these magic balls to ease our night flight to Reykjavik. When we landed, we were in a euphoric state of consciousness, one that was known among therapists as “the psychedelic afterglow,” and we seemed to have remained in this special state of mind for many of the following days of our stay in Iceland. We rented a Land Rover for the three days before the conference started and decided to explore the island. The Icelandic scenery is incredible—majestic snow-capped mountains, volcanic craters, sparkling glaciers, luscious meadows and pastures, pristine rivers, and giant waterfalls. Everything seemed ancient—beginning and end of the world coming together.

We found an idyllic place, a lodge in the mountains with several A—frame cottages scattered in a fairy-tale-like landscape, quite far apart from each other and from the lodge, each with a private little geyser and pool. We were several hours’ drive north of Reykjavik, in a region that lies far beyond the polar circle. It was the end of May, and the magic of the white nights, enhanced by the “psychedelic afterglow,” was an unforgettable experience. We now felt even closer than we had before, and we started toying with the idea of taking advantage of the beautiful Icelandic natural setting and getting married here before our return home.

The romantic time in our little eyrie came to an end, and we drove to Bifrost, the site of the First International Transpersonal Conference, to join the other seventy participants. The Bifrost conference center, located in a stunningly beautiful volcanic landscape, had a central lodge, residential units, and a large sauna, built of natural wood. The conference brought together a group of very special people, including Joseph Campbell with his wife, Jean Erdman, philosopher and religious scholar Huston Smith, professor of religion Walter Houston Clark, and the Icelandic mythologist Einar Pâlsson. Among the participants were my brother, Paul, with his wife, Eva, and our joint friend Leni Schwartz, who had brought Joan and me together.

It is well-known that the population of the areas that lie beyond the polar circle has a strikingly large incidence of psychic phenomena. We could certainly confirm that during our stay in Iceland. We met many people who were precognitive, telepathic, and clairvoyant, and others who had reputations as healers, were successful dowsers, or saw elves and fairies. Various ESP phenomena were also rampant among the participants of our Bifrost group. This Icelandic experience helped me understand a book I had always loved, the
Gösta Berling Saga
by Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. I had always been deeply moved by the intriguing way this author was able to merge everyday life and the mythic realm into an inextricable amalgam.

After our arrival in the Bifrost lodge, we sat down with Leni Schwartz to have a cup of tea. We decided to tell her that we were toying with the idea of getting married in Iceland. But we barely had a chance to tell her that we had some interesting news for her. “I know what you want to tell me; you would like to get married here,” she said, and her face lit up. She was so convinced about the correctness of her guess that she got up and walked away without waiting for our confirmation. We found out later that she immediately broke the news to the rest of the group. Everybody got excited about the prospect of a nuptial ritual, and collective preparations for the ceremony started almost immediately.

Einar Pâlsson, an Icelandic mythologist who for the previous twenty years had studied Nordic mythology, came to the conference specifically to meet his hero, Joseph Campbell. The two became engaged in an ongoing series of profound discussions. Joseph, who had incredible encyclopedic knowledge of world mythology, was teaching Einar new things about the symbolic significance of some geographical locations in Iceland and the magic meaning of numbers involved. When the two of them heard about the planned wedding, they decided to provide a solid mythological foundation for our joining.

They reconstructed an ancient Viking wedding ritual that had not been performed in Iceland since the Christians had arrived. The joining of the bride groom and the bride reflected
hierosgamos,
the sacred union of Father Sky and Mother Earth, and the symbol of this union was the rainbow. The conference was organized by an Icelandic couple, Geir and Ingrid Vilhjamsson. Ingrid’s father was the mayor of Reykjavik, and her mother had an old Icelandic costume. They brought it from Reykjavik as a wedding dress for Joan, and it fit as if it had been custom-made for her. The wedding outfit we had chosen for me was a beautiful hand-knitted Icelandic sweater.

In the free time between the sessions of the conference, all the participants were involved in making costumes and masks for the wedding ritual, and some of them worked on the menu for the banquet. Joe Campbell’s wife, jean, an accomplished dancer and Broadway choreographer, choreographed the wedding ceremony and began rehearsing it with the group. Although neither Joan nor I had explicitly told anybody—except each other—that we wanted to get married, the preparations were in full gear.

The wedding began in the afternoon with a purification ceremony in the sauna, performed separately according to the Icelandic tradition for the bride and the bridegroom. Then the women in the group combed Joan’s hair and dressed her up, singing songs and preparing her for the experience of the wedding night. Led by Ingrid, they tried to detach from their modern minds and emulate the discussion that might have occurred on this occasion in the old times. I met with the male part of the group to celebrate the end of my bachelorhood. We drank mead, sang appropriate songs, and told many jokes. Trying to tune in to the Viking mentality, my friends offered me their support and encouragement for what was lying ahead of me.

Following our sauna experience, we all gathered in the dining hall for a festive dinner. The exquisite menu featured many gifts of the Earth and a se lection of freshwater fish and assorted seafood. The colors, tastes, and textures of the food, good wine, and the eerie light of the white night conspired in creating a magical atmosphere. After dinner, as we were dancing, somebody looked out the window and noticed that it had started to drizzle and that a giant, unbelievably rich full double rainbow was gracing the sky. Everybody walked out into the rain and continued to dance on the wet lawn.

While the dancing inside was jubilant and Dionysian, the rhythm of the movements now became leisurely and flowing, as if slowed by the command of an invisible conductor. People were moving in a tai chi manner, some individually, others in pairs or small groups. Somebody intuitively changed the music inside the dining hall; it was now meditative and timeless, perfectly matching the rhythm of the dance. Illuminated by the magic light of the white night and against the backdrop of the double rainbow, the scene looked otherworldly, surreal, like a Fellini movie.

To our astonishment, the double rainbow appeared and disappeared three times. In the mood we were in, it was difficult not to interpret this magnificent display as a very auspicious sign. This incredible celestial spectacle would have been enough, in and of itself, to impart to the wedding an air of numinosity. But it also involved some extraordinary synchronicities. We found out that the name of the place, Bifrost, meant in the old Icelandic language the “Rainbow Bridge of the Gods” and, in the ancient Viking wedding ritual we were performing, the rainbow was the symbol for the joining of Father Sky and Mother Earth. It was easy to infer that this event had some deeper cosmic significance.

In addition, for me the rainbow had a profound personal significance and was connected with another interesting synchronicity. During my first year in the United States, I invited my parents to join me, and we spent two months traveling around the country, combining visits to prominent representatives of psychedelic and consciousness research with sightseeing and camping in national parks and other places of natural beauty. Eager to see everything there was to see, we covered more than 17,000 miles in eight weeks.

Needless to say, our ambitious itinerary included the spectacular American Southwest. One day, late in the afternoon of a very hot day, as we were crossing the New Mexico desert on our way to Santa Fe, it started to rain. It was a very welcome change after many hours of scorching heat. The sun was setting, gracing the sky behind us with a rich panoply of beautiful colors. All of a sudden, a magnificent full rainbow appeared in the sky in front of us. The highway was absolutely straight, like an arrow shot from our car toward the horizon, crossing it precisely at the rainbow’s right radix. I instinctively stepped on the gas pedal, eager to come as close as possible before the rainbow would disappear.

The rainbow remained in the sky, and it grew bigger and brighter as we approached. It stayed in place until our car drove directly into its radix. At that moment, it was as if we had passed through a gateway into another reality. We were suddenly in a realm of indescribable beauty, with gossamer veils of rainbow colors dancing and swirling around us, exploding into myriad shining little diamonds. I stopped the car, and the three of us sat there astonished, admiring this incredible spectacle. For me this event triggered the most powerful ecstatic experience I have ever had in my life without the help of any mind-altering substances or devices. It lasted the rest of the evening, and even next morning I could feel its afterglow.

After a good night’s sleep, we decided to visit the Museum of Navajo Art in Santa Fe. Its main hall was a large round structure resembling a kiva, ceremonial chamber of American Pueblo Indians. The most conspicuous piece of decoration in it was a large and very thin stylized female figure, whose body consisted of parallel longitudinal stripes. It stretched in a U shape all around the entire hall, with the exception of the entrance, which was flanked by her head on one side and a short skirt and legs on the other. The native guide explained to us that this was the Rainbow Maiden, a very popular Navajo deity. She played a crucial role in Navajo mythology, which reflected the importance of rain in this and region. The guide shared with us the Navajo belief that if the Rainbow Maiden liked some people, she would envelop, embrace, and kiss them. This would result in an experience of ecstatic rapture that these individuals remember their entire lives. He essentially described what had happened to me on our way to Santa Fe; this auspicious experience has remained vivid in my memory until this very day.

The set and setting for the Bifrost wedding ceremony could not have been more magnificent. We got married at three o’clock in the morning in an old volcanic crater at the time when the rising sun reappeared in the sky after disappearing for only an hour behind the horizon. Joseph Campbell was the surrogate father who brought Joan to the improvised altar, and the joiner and officiator was Huston Smith. Walter Houston Clark offered as benediction Sarah’s pledge from the Old Testament: “I will go where you go and your people will be my people.” After exchanging rings of a Viking design and sealing the union with a kiss, we ran through a gauntlet of our friends, who were holding branches with green foliage and looked like Macduff’s army from
Macbeth,
carrying Birnam woods to Dunsinane castle.

We got only about an hour’s sleep because the group had to leave early for a long hike to one of Iceland’s spectacular glaciers. I woke up after an hour of dozing off, ready to embark on the trip. As soon as I opened my eyes, I sensed that something was terribly wrong. All the thrill and ecstatic feelings of the preceding day were gone; I felt sober and somber. The wave of excitement we had experienced the last few days suddenly felt illusory and deceptive. And what was worse, marrying Joan suddenly seemed like a serious error.

Our final destination was a primitive lodge on one of Iceland’s largest glaciers that had a communal dormitory and one single room. The group unanimously decided that this precious commodity would serve as the bridal chamber, where Joan and I would spend the next night. I managed to keep my concerns to myself, and things continued to look wonderful on the outside. The group was still feeling the emotional echoes of the Viking nuptial ritual, and the spellbinding Icelandic scenery was truly extraordinary. After a glorious day in the mountains and a night stay in the lodge, we returned to Bifrost for the closing ceremony of the conference.

The Icelandic meeting, the first of a series of international transpersonal conferences, was an unforgettable event for all of us who shared in it, and our wedding was without any doubt its highlight. However, once we returned to the United States, my dismal premonitions began to materialize. Various problems Joan and I encountered shortly after our return started to take a toll on our relationship.