Jacob Atabet (11 page)

And from the same book by Rasmussen: a description of the shaman’s
angakoq
or
quamaneq
, “the mysterious light which the shaman feels in his body, within the brain, an inexplicable searchlight, a luminous fire, which enables him to see in the dark, both literally and metaphorically . . .”

“Both literally and metaphorically”—we have talked about that for hours. How far had stone-age shamans gone? Talked about the theory that some of the ancient North Americans came over the Arctic from Europe.

It is striking to him, as it is to me, that there was this urge then for a transformation of the flesh. Could the otherworldly religions be exceptions to the larger tradition?—the tradition stretching back to the caves of Lascaux?

A passage from Eliade’s
Shamanism
(about initiatory rites in Tierra del Fuego): “The old skin must disappear and make room for a new translucent and delicate layer . . .” And the stories of initiatory dismemberment. Everywhere the urge to take the body apart and rebuild it. He is fascinated. There is no doubt that these rites and beliefs were largely symbolic of a spiritual rebirth, but there seems to be an anticipation of the body’s eventual transfiguration. The stone-age shamans had more sense of it perhaps than the contemplatives of later ages.

Another footnote from Eliade’s book: “The motif of doors that open only for the initiated and remain open only a short time is quite frequent in shamanic and other legends . . .” An image of stargates in the brain?

August 19

More talk about his experience in 1962, and the
animan siddhi.
For years he had passed through “this familiar point” in meditation (he showed me a place some two or three inches in front of his nose)—a “porthole into inner space.” But it had usually seemed to be a curiosity. In 1962, however, it opened into a place that seemed to branch into “spaces inside the body.” Forms like the DNA appeared and pictures of organs and cells.

We compared his experience to mine, and to ones I have collected, and to passages from the psychiatric literature describing catatonic states. One such described an experience of “the body turning inside out, with the organs and cells on the outside.” Said he had had the same experience. Another told about a fantastic voyage through the entire body: the patient, a girl of eighteen, felt as if she were being shown “every cell from her head to her feet.” He said that something like that experience had started in him then, but that it has taken him these seven or eight years since to complete. The events of June brought it to an end, however, at least for a while.

We talked about the dangers of reification, how a particular state gets turned into a fixed practice (or world philosophy!). “Life should be more like an acute psychotic episode!” he said. Talked about Buddhism as a reaction to the reification of the self in some of the Indian schools—
anatta
, no soul, in response to
atman
as thing. Showed him Aurobindo’s line, “never try to have the same experience twice.”

“Spiritual growth is economical,” he said. “It takes more and more energy to keep the psyche’s structures fixed.”

S
IMON
H
OROWITZ WAS
a researcher in hematology at the University of California Medical Center, and had known Atabet, Corinne and Kazi Dama since 1967. His research, like mine, had led him into a study of the body’s transformations in relation to spiritual practice. One day in August I found him with Atabet at Telegraph Place, studying pictures of blood cells projected onto the wall. Red light from the slide filled the room, giving the place an eerie atmosphere.

“These are Jacob’s red cells,” Horowitz murmured, his dark aquiline face leaning forward to study a thing on the slide. “They’re from a sample I took this June.” The projector hummed on the table beside him. Quietly I pulled up a chair. The scenes in this apartment, I thought, grew stranger and stranger. “Now these are completely healthy,” he said. “But these others I’ve never seen before. And no one in our lab has either. The question is, ‘How did you do it?’ Are they there for a reason? They look a little like things I’ve seen in your paintings.”

In the red light, Atabet seemed strangely remote. “The
animan siddhi.
” He glanced in my direction. “This is the microscope’s version of it. But they’ve never looked like this to me. That’s not what I see from the inside. And nothing I’ve drawn looks like those things on the slide. Could there be a principle of complementarity here? Could they look different from these two points of view?—from the microscope and inner sight? Or is there resistance in me to seeing them clearly? What do you think, Darwin?”

I said that the whole thing was beyond me. No one spoke for several seconds, and Horowitz projected another slide on the wall. It was a slightly different version of the sample that preceded it, with a slightly larger proportion of normal erythrocytes. “This is the last sample I took before your attack,” he said. “You can see it’s more normal by ordinary standards . . .”

“And more boring,” Atabet interrupted. “The other one appeals to me more as a work of art.”

Horowitz switched back to the first slide. Some of the cells looked grotesque. “It’s definitely more interesting,” Atabet murmured. “The feeling of it’s familiar, yes, the feeling but not the shapes themselves.”

“You think it’s more beautiful!” Horowitz exclaimed. “And yet you felt badly when I took that sample. You said you felt worse than you had in years.”

“Changes like these always hurt. Those stigmata almost killed me. You know what
tantra
means? The Sanskrit word
tantra?
It means to spread out. Like capillaries in a healthy body. But that attack was the last stage of a process in the opposite direction, a constriction I was going through because my system couldn’t handle these powers. It had been coming on for a long time, of course, then Darwin’s book pushed me all the way in. Up at Sonoma going over his manuscript I was in a state for two days straight. A kind of cellular
samadhi.
Images of these cells filled most of the space I moved through. But then a circuit breaker blew. Even the marrow of my bones was affected, if we can believe these photographs. Those cells are lost. Some of them look like fright wigs!”

All of us laughed. Indeed, several of them looked startled and angry. One in particular seemed to be striking out in several directions. Horowitz switched to a slide that showed a single red cell. You could imagine it dancing with tortured ecstasy, as if it were caught between contradictory instructions. “It doesn’t know where to go,” he said. “Whether to laugh or cry. Taken as a whole, this sample looks like a behavioral sink, with some of the members acting out. This one especially. It’s typical in certain blood diseases. It’s called an acanthocyte.” The wildly twisted form reminded me of a Walt Disney cartoon depicting a monstrous tree with grasping hands. It was awful to think that cells like it would fill an entire bloodstream.

“Tantra,” Atabet murmured. “Our system needs to spread out. That was one of the things that attack was saying. That’s why the
animan siddhi
has been retired.”

“Retired!” I said. “You don’t mean forever.”

“At least for a while. That attack was a warning against forcing my way to these levels. Neither of you know what it’s like. For a couple of days there, forms like this engulfed me. It was like being trapped in a gigantic aquarium. Finally I had to stuff it all back in the bottle.”

“Rest can’t hurt you.” Horowitz switched off the projector. “Your white cell count was far too high.” Atabet’s statement had shaken him.

There was silence while he put the slides away. Atabet looked amused. “Simon,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Is the slide show over?”

“That was the last one,” said the doctor, fumbling with the projector. “It’s time to get back to the lab.”

“But it was just getting interesting.” Atabet winked at me. “You always get nervous when I tell you what happened.”

“Oh fuck! I’ve broken this latch.” Horowitz held up a wire he had pulled from the machine. “How the hell did I do that?”

“Those jerky movements, Simon,” Atabet said with a deadpan look. “When we talk about these things you get these jerky movements. But you don’t have to go so soon. Let’s have a glass of wine.”

We went into the kitchen and he poured us each a glass. Horowitz drank his down, then seemed to have an inspiration. “Jacob!” he said. “How do these changes in your red cells relate to the changes we saw in the Echeverrias’ daughter? You remember those slides I showed you? Remember the changes in her blood?” He looked at me. “He healed her of cancer by suggestion. It was a miracle. Remember those pictures, Jacob? Didn’t they look like yours? Now tell me, what’s the connection?”

“I don’t know.” Atabet shrugged. “What do
you
think?”

“That red cells can change their shape much faster than I thought before.” His dark eyes were filled with excitement. “I’ve never seen samples change as fast as this.”

“How many red cells do we make each second?” Atabet asked. “About 2 1/2 million? That’s nine billion every hour. Maybe these changes can happen best wherever our bodies are transforming fastest. Like our skin cells. Like those marks on my chest.”

“At least for structural changes.” The doctor nodded. “That’s where we’re most capable of quick regeneration. But something else is happening here—I’m sure of it! These changes in your blood are happening faster than any example I’ve heard of. That’s what’s got me excited. And those changes are like the ones in the Echeverria girl! Whatever you can do to yourself, you can do to others.”

“Not very often.” Atabet held up his hand. “Not very often. That’s why I’m afraid to try it out on many people. Only when it’s someone close like Jean, someone in the family. And then only when they’re very sick. No, I’m not a healing shaman. You said it right. Whatever I do to myself, I can help others do—but what I do to myself! You see the unpredictable results. I learned a long time ago that it’s not my calling. I’m too unpredictable, Simon. I even frighten you. I can’t be a healer until this daemon is finished with me.”

Horowitz looked disappointed. There was silence as we finished our wine.

He might not be a healer, I thought, but his presence and example had set me on the road to health. And there was no telling how many others there were whom he had helped indirectly. A life like his had to be contagious.

But then he made another declaration. No longer would he try to recreate the body on canvas. Those paintings of sealife and human organs were exerting a spell he didn’t like. It might be superstition, but there was reason to think that some of them had taken on a life of their own. So he would “surrender to Being itself for a while.” In these last few years he had begun to create an artistic monstrosity, and the only way to undo it was through blissful neglect. His program in the foreseeable future would consist of contemplation and our seminars on history.

August 24

A breathtaking day on his roof. He was in a kind of ecstasy watching the city. Sat with him a while, caught in the presence that helps me pass through restlessness and pain. There is a tangible field around him, something that wraps itself around me like a cloak.

Then I felt myself stiffening against it. An image of a woman appeared, as if the first challenge of sex were an anticipation of this state. Remembered the thrill of fear at the possibility of sleeping with a girl one summer night in high school. We had both wanted to, but the fear held us back. The first call of sex is frightening and thrilling like this, a premonition and challenge.

Asked him if I might have shed some rotten cells—my joints have felt so elastic. He said it was possible. Soon I will have to start running! It will help me “learn how to breathe.”

Corinne more beautiful every day. But there is no way we can ever be lovers. In a way I don’t understand, she is wedded to him.

August 25

Today we talked about his life. He showed me some of his first paintings, sketches from his days at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts. They looked like Chinese landscapes— fresh, open, naive. And more experiments with the textures of flesh. Showed me Maroger’s
The Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Masters
and Burckhardt’s
Alchemy
. From the beginning he has been fascinated with the surfaces and structures of the body.

His work has developed in stages, he says, like his life. From the time he was 19 until he was 28 or 29 he learned how to draw, studied anatomy and the body’s “geometrical” structures. (He showed me a collection of Lennart Nilsson’s photographs.) In this period he practiced “seeing the Brahman everywhere,” developed the “molecular pantomime” and worked at Sts. Peter and Paul’s teaching art in the church’s grammar school. Sold his first paintings then. “Lost his shyness in groups!” Ran a mile in 4:51. Spent his summers in the Sierras until he was thirty.

During this period he apparently developed a power to heal. Cured one of the Echeverrias’ daughters from a cancer of the uterus! I asked Carlos about the story and he said it was true. “Jacob has cured most of the family of something,” he said. But it isn’t his
dharma
to be a healer. The power comes and goes. Apparently it is reserved for the Echeverrias, his family and closest friends. There is a hierarchy of
siddhis,
he thinks, leading him from station to station on his Mt. Analogue.

When he was 29 he began to study astronomy, read “dozens of books” about the solar system. Then a series of paintings of the sun in its various seasons. Only one of them is left in his studio.

He marks the end of that period with his “second awakening” in 1962. Then his fascination with bodily structures began, leading eventually to his “cellular
samadhi
” this June.

He says there have been three distinct periods in his life, each ending with a crisis: 1947 and his first egowhelming realization of the Brahman-nature; 1962 and his first significant access to the
animan siddhi
, and this one. It is still hard to tell where the next leg of the journey will lead him. But the perspectives we are getting about the whole story will help. My book is enormously important to him.