Jacob Atabet (16 page)

As interest in consciousness continues to spread in the West, we agree, there will be crazier and crazier stuff along with the epiphanies and solid research. Meditation and yoga are no guarantee against self-delusion, as conversation with some of the Grant Avenue regulars immediately demonstrates. Yet there have been enduring intuitions about physical transfiguration: you can read the pattern all the way back to the stone-age. I told him about Scholastic doctrine on the resurrection, about I Corinthians 15 and the passages in Aquinas describing the soul’s need for a body. There has been a sense of the marriage of heaven and earth from the very beginning it seems.

[See the section from the New Catholic Encyclopaedia on the Doctrine of the Glorified Body, on page 214.—Ed.]

October 7

Spent this afternoon talking about Henry fames, Sr., and how his two famous sons have overshadowed the range and foresight of his thought. Read him the passage from Frederic Young’s biography (pages 167-68):

“To James, the power to evolve is itself first involved by action of the Divine Being. This concept of Involution of all that later appears in the world-process as Evolution, offers an intelligible complement to such theories as ‘emergent evolution’ in which matter, life, mind, and Deity simply evolve in that order . . . . That this metaphysical doctrine of Involution-Evolution appeals to significant thinkers in every century is borne out at present by Sri Aurobindo . . . . To read Aurobindo’s masterpiece,
The Life Divine
, is, to one who has read the senior James’s works, to experience an indescribable feeling that Aurobindo and James must have corresponded and conversed with each other; so much spiritual kinship is there between the philosophies of these two thinkers!”

It is amazing to see these connections between our American intellectual heritage and the emerging vision that Aurobindo exemplifies. You can see the influence the elder James had on both his sons, and how that influence spread through William James to others who inform us. And to me! A. still amazed to hear that great grandfather Fall knew James, Sr. Showed him a picture of the elder Charles Fall, and A. said I had the old man’s philosopher’s ears. Indeed I do. The lobes that hang down through that silvery mane would rival a Buddha’s. Mine are just about as big. Would that they signified wisdom.

October 10

We agree that a concordance of world-views could be derived from a comparative psychology of the higher life. Each great philosophy springs from a partial but extremely powerful insight or experience, from one or more of the
brahma-siddhis.
For example, an exclusive knowledge of the undifferentiated One—
nirguna brahman jnana
—leads to the transcendental idealism of Shankara or Plotinus;, insight into the deeper structures of existence, “eternal forms and essences,”
samanya jnana
, leads to some form of Idealism;, the vision of the Cosmic Process,
mahakala jnana
, inspired Thomas Carlyle, Whitehead, Bergson, Heraclitus. Every philosophy and every psychological system has been based upon inadequate knowledge of certain aspects of existence, upon a partial insight. We need a greater experience, a multidimensioned metaphysics. Now as never before we are capable of it. We can learn from all the traditions, from both their strengths and their weaknesses. But to do this we must roam these many worlds, high and low.

In all this, the richness of the Indian traditions is an enormous resource. The wealth of insight stored in the Sanskrit language will occupy scholars and explorers for centuries. A listing of the
brahmasiddhis
, all these fundamental knowings, makes a mockery of dogmatism and exclusive teachings.

The sweep of vision and experience which we now can reclaim from the past, combined with our modern insight into the psychodynamics of “overbelief” and the nature of cultural consensus, springs us free for an unprecedented exploration into God and Nature.

There is no doubt about it: the dominant contemplative traditions during the last 2,500 years, embedded as they were in world-views that emphasized a release from the world of the flesh, had to subordinate all other psychological outcomes to the highest
brahmasiddhis.
If the goal is release from our first bondage in the ordinary ego, then
moksha
or
shunyam
or
nirvana
above everything else. The other
siddhis
are potential distractions. But if the goal is the earth’s fullest flowering, those neglected powers and openings assume new importance. For the transformation we see, they may be crucial.

A. said today that the ancient ascetic disciplines fashioned the crown of illumination (crown =
sahasradala
), and that we are putting the jewels in it (jewels =
the siddhis
). Unitive consciousness is the context of our manifestation.

He thinks that a culture-wide practice is coming, joining the ancient and modern paths. There will be a natural attraction among disciplines, he thinks, as in Patanjali’s sutras. But the frontiers are open as never before. We are more alert to the foreclosures of dogma and true belief. The mind has been freed from some of its subservient habits.

Certain lines of the emerging synthesis inevitably resemble the old. Our concordance begins to show that. But there is this great difference about the body’s reclamation. The possibility has been there in the sutras, but as hints and glimpses only. And the new therapies and body disciplines are only scratching the surface of this possibility.

Today he said we need to “crack the code of time and matter.” For the contemplative disciplines of the Vedanta, Buddhism, Neo-Platonism and Christianity were preoccupied with the Timeless, this age with the secrets of this evolving universe. In the traditional scriptures there is a great consensus about the return of consciousness to the Source, but no consensus at all about the world’s fate. This seems more apparent now as I read into the Upanishads. There is no doubt about
Atman-Brahman
or
Purusha-Prakriti
, but all sorts of leadings when you come to the body on earth. But Nirvana and evolution are compatible truths.

He is above all a great
dehasiddha
, a master of bodily changes. Thank God he outsmarted the doctors.

October 14

A dream last night filled with contradictory emotion, John F. Kennedy standing on steps in front of a ruin, something like the Parthenon. Or was the ruin something still building? In the half-light I couldn’t tell. Are these times of ours a ruin?

Every week, it seems, some new guru or therapy comes to town. The congregation wanders from one tent revival to the next. At times I think all this interest in “consciousness” is nothing but diversion and band-aids.

Five new books came into the Press this week describing programs for enlightenment. One is an attempt to restore psychoanalysis as the definitive spiritual discipline, claiming that free association is close to Buddhist forms of meditation. The author is a lay analyst, an intense little man with bulging eyes and prissy manners. He says the book could make us a fortune. He also said that no true spiritual experience is possible until we have “worked through all our quirks and fears.” When I asked him about the enormous contemplative literature down through the ages and how it showed the way to be more complex than that, he said with total conviction that all of it came from “a more superstitious age.” And then a book on “Mind Dynamics” which is part Scientology, part Napoleon Hill, part black magic. It tells how to influence people at a distance, influence your boss through meditation, etc.—a bland, slick form of hexing. Reminds me of talks with Magyar in Prague, and rumors of Kirov’s recent work. In this Age of Consciousness there will be more stuff like this—more stupidity and psychic mischief, along with some truly malevolent forces. And then a book showing how physique and posture reveal character, in which the author represents the ideal body to be a symmetrical mannequin devoid of idiosyncrasy or character and then goes on to show a collection of “aberrant” types. It is a throwback to Lombroso in the name of “humanistic psychology,” a vicious thing really. Books like these are blind to larger perspectives. They idolize some partial insight or technique and usually put a lid on further adventure. Most of them make me want to weep.

But Atabet says these things are preparing the field. We are only pioneers, he says, tilling the ground and casting seeds for a larger culture of the spirit.

Is there in fact a group that has come through these initiations together? A group that has been through the disillusionment of hopes for immediate radical change? Has this group in fact been vaccinated against flashy claims and some of the obvious wrong turns? Atabet thinks there is, that it will mature in hundreds of ways to form a base for further exploration. Songs of innocence and songs of experience in the quest. Like the League in Hesse’s
Journey to the East
, it will give support to further discovery.

Maybe he is right. For all the failed movements there are promising beginnings everywhere. One opening leads to another. Corinne’s gestalt therapy helps me break into a field of memory that months of meditation might never have opened. The work of Reich connects to Buddhist practice, connects to biofeedback, molecular biology, etc., etc. There is an effervescent vulgarity about this interest in consciousness and human potential that is the yeast of new discovery. A joint venture of interior practice and the physical sciences is coming. In spite of my skepticism, I know that something important is happening in the culture at large.

October 19

More silly proposals today for books at the Press, two of them spiritual equivalents of “total fitness in three minutes a week.” What junk.
It is amazing how few have a practice.

It is only in the light of a larger knowledge that most openings into spirit have a meaning. Until there is a solid practice, such openings are merely harbingers of a possibility, appearing today, disappearing tomorrow, reappearing as symptoms of illness the day after that. Only in a life like Atabet’s do these powers find their place.

I can see now that underneath this spirit of holiday, the drums of the march are still beating. His entire life is aimed and cocked.

O
CTOBER 20

Though some of the initiations are difficult, this discipline is more Epicurean than heroic now. Yet the thing is fully joined, and in spite of my protests, I can not turn back. His discipline is a gentle one too. Like his crises of ’47 and ’62, the events of June will take time to recover from. It will take years for me, he says, “to get my genie into a larger bottle.”

It seems that the Greenwich Press will turn a profit for the first time this year.
I take that as a sign this life is right
. Now mark the day: on November 15, I will turn the management of it over to Casey Sills. From then on my days will be free for whatever this adventure brings. With my expenses down to $800 a month and with Casey in charge at the office, I can handle the publishing business working one day a week.
[Editor’s note: This letter from Fall to a friend in Vermont was inserted in the manuscript at this point.]

October 22

Dear________

Thanks for your patience and forgiveness. Letters like my last one would confirm the suspicions of other old friends that California is a dangerous place for religious types, and I’m sure that some of them would have written me off by now as another casualty. For that reason you must keep these stories to yourself. My enlightenment is not to the point where I could handle the notoriety which news of this new life would bring me. Do you promise secrecy?

As an example, Atabet says he will try to “touch” those cities he has seen through the eye of the cell. Can you hear Lyndon Porter’s response? Or Wendell Bracketts’? They might propose a nationwide committee for the preservation of minds in California. There would certainly be references in one of their columns, maybe a remark that Darwin Fall is involved in a project to launch a pyschokinetically constructed UFO! So we must preserve silence about this, as we have about your project in Vermont.

But projects like the one named above will have to wait a while, for Atabet is laying back from the adventures of the months just past. He did damage that will take time to heal. We have a good doctor here, a real friend, who watches over Atabet as if he were the Chief of State, and he has advised a year of recuperation. He is a research man in hematology by the way and has been studying Atabet’s physiology! I consider it Nature’s Way that he would appear on the scene. Everyone in Atabet’s orbit, in fact, seems to be there for a reason: Horowitz, the doctor, to study and protect his health, Kazi Dama for guidance in the further reaches, Corinne Wilde and the Echeverrias for friendship and the fort they provide, and me for the book and the historical perspective it gives him. It is enough to make me believe in Providence.

Providence dictates a long holiday of spirit for him and this sometimes joyous purgatory for me. They are teaching me yoga and distance running(!) and conducting their own psychotherapy on the neurosis. Meanwhile I tutor him in the philosophy, anthropology and history my book has inspired. We meet four or five days a week now, using the manuscript for our seminar notes. It is clear that my theories and collection of evidence have helped him. For his is a strange kind of genius, in any age or place. I am now convinced he is one of those
dehasiddhas
the Indian books describe, a master of bodily transformation. But where do you find support for such leadings? Not in psychoanalysis, God knows. Or in the traditional yogas. Or in any church. Even the new experiments are beating around the bush in this regard. It is as if Ramakrishna or Ramana Maharshi had turned in their teens toward the body, using their purchase on spirit to plunge beyond the traditional limits of the contemplative life. For this reason, my map has been an enormous help to him.