Authors: Michael Murphy
We have the capacity to move the focus of our seeing at various speeds and in various directions. We can descend through our hierarchical structure, into smaller more remote times, in the blink of an eye it seems. That power was working last night like a movie camera with a giant zoom lens, taking me down to a vision of atomic patterns. Must look at pictures taken through a field ion microscope. Horowitz says there might be similarities to some of the things I saw.
June 15
J. in trance all day, until about six o’clock this evening. Came out of it in a merry mood. After dinner we talked.
All life is “an improvisation,” he said. If the past were as real as I made it out to be, we would be doing a tired old dance. “Surprise rules necessity,” he quoted my book. “The future is wide open.” Then more of his Fernandel expressions and sly hints. Jokes about molecular and atomic samadi. “Is it a bird or a plane? No it’s atom Sam!” What kind of game is he playing? I think Kazi and Corinne are baffled too. Is he shying away from the ordeal his daemon intends?
June 16
Again I tried to pin him down. Showed him the chart he had drawn and the phrase “Descent to the First Day attempted.” Would he finally explain what it meant?
To my surprise, he said that he would. Tomorrow he will talk to us all about it.
June 18
My intuitions were correct.
He is beginning the descent I have imagined.
Corinne, Kazi and I were at his place last night, Horowitz came later to hear him describe the experiment. “There’s no completely adequate description of it,” he said. “All our seminars on the history of esoteric disciplines have shown us that. But it does resonate with some of the old endeavors. An alchemist might have called it the crowning stage of the Great Work, a joining with the visible and invisible sun. Aurobindo might call it a stage of the Supramental descent. There are dozens of ideas that approach it, like the reowning of time in the body (where all time is remembered) or making nature transparent to self.
Isha vasyam idam sarvam
,” he recited the opening lines from the
Isha Upanishad
. “All this is for habitation by the Lord. The list could go on and on because the process is vast and complex, and because we haven’t built a language for it. An inspired cosmologist might call it a catastrophic space-time collapse into spirit as the birth of the world is brought back to present awareness, or a journey through the Land of the Quarks, or a trip to the original Quantum! Or the opening of the Samkhya’s pradhana, the primordial Spirit-Matter. Part of the venture will be to chart these unnamed places.”
“But to say it simply,” he said. “I think we can enter the place where matter is rising from mind. I think we can go there and hold onto the body. Everything has built up to it. And all five of us now are involved.”
Sometime in August, he and Kazi will begin to “make a special atmosphere” at Telegraph Place. The molecular samadhi of recent weeks cannot be supported without it. From it a passageway to the fundamental physical forces will be formed. He called it “a sufficiently extended subtle body to prevent his permanent dismemberment”!
“There’s an ocean of fire down there,” he said. “And all our experience will be needed. There are winds in those places that can scatter these cells like leaves in an autumn breeze.”
Then he described some of the possible outcomes. Since the levels he will explore are close to matter’s original bursting from mind, he could in some sense bring the first moments of this cosmos closer to present awareness. That is what he means by the “First Day. “All of this will happen in stages, as he feels his way gradually and tests the dangers of such a descent for his body and the world around us.
And with this deeper access to the secrets of matter, it is possible we can assume the powers it holds—powers conceivably that will change our relationship to some of the world’s basic laws. A new control might be won over gravity, entropy, aging and death, over the formation of atomic patterns. None of this is certain, but since our explorations have given us glimpses of these powers already, it is his guess that much or all of it is within our reach. We have discussed this for a year now, and all my scholarship supports it. Seers and shamans have talked about conquests like these for thousands of years, as have certain schools of yoga, alchemy, myths and dreams. If evolution is God waking up, then something like this is intended.
Mad as it may seem, it is possible. All my research and all his life until now point toward it. And yet it is a crazy, crazy plunge. With the dazzling vistas, there will be dangers everywhere. We are turning away from the serenity and joy of these last months to step out on an unknown continent. Tonight as I write this, it seems that we are wading into spiritual quicksand.
(July 1971–December 1971)
It is difficult to avoid the impression
that every law of physics is mutable under
conditions sufficiently extreme .
. .
Physicist John Archibald Wheeler
J
ULY 12
A strange letter today from Prague. Magyar says that Vladimir Kirov may have defected. Hears he is living in Vienna and working with a group to perfect the Russian work with suggestion at a distance. It is conceivable, he says, that Kirov’s people are preparing to sell their services to the highest bidder. They would add psychic weapons to the arsenal of international terrorism. Is Magyar imagining it? He has been under a lot of pressure.
Told Jacob about the letter and he says that such things are possible. I am suspending belief and disbelief.
July 16
More questions about Vladimir Kirov. I asked him again about Armen Cross’s story. He says most of it is Armen’s imagination. It is possible though that there are alliances between this plane and others. “After all,” he said, “Freud saw that the ego and super-ego were both conscious and unconscious. Isn’t it true that people form alliances all the time, for and against every major cultural development? On every plane there is a Field of Kurukshetra.”
August 1
Sleep can be an ally or an enemy. The hours before sleep are crucial. In dreaming there is a mobility of the soul, a re-patterning that resembles the attempts of modern art to break the perceptual constancies. But our dreams can be good art or bad. We aim ourselves before sleep, set the dials of the unconscious, assemble the materials for our midnight creation.
Last night someone was trying to reach me again. If I can hold the state a little longer, I can tell who it is. A strong but needy type—a round, vulnerable presence, with soft, steady, urgent vibrations. As if we were signaling each other at the bottom of a murky aquarium. Is it a part of me? Re-enacted the contact this morning, gestalt therapy style, and the entity came closer—but not close enough to tell what it was saying.
Let our dreams be a discipline for remembering.
At noon in Washington Square the old Italian men floating like dream-images, shimmering in their black suits while they watched the children play. The city was charged with light.
I dutifully ask: Why should I go with them? Why? Because I cannot resist this adventure.
August 2
Warm and affectionate gathering last night. Then a call before sleep for my midnight visitor. But no dream or visitations.
A foggy day. I can see Alcatraz in the mist, but not across the Bay to Angel Island. A veil of gray, like the veil across my mind. It parts, and for a moment I can see the sky. The earth is a mirror of the inner world.
Coit Tower rising last night like a golden caduceus. Luminous blue arches suspended a thousand feet above us. Nerve-ways of air and midnight light. The earth is in the mind.
The way of emptiness, the way of form. Relinquishment and imagination, detachment in the summoning. Since all this world flowed from Mind, it can be taken up again.
Forms are altered in the inner eye and then directly. That is how the world proceeds. Earthly forms unfolding into mind. Back to the Real-Idea. To the angel of supramental events.
Today a settling delight. Body changing. Running gets to be like flying, breathing like a beating heart. Every small perfection is an approximation to That.
Discipline now is surrender to the secret homeward wending. Follow its lead with strong and skillful will. “Calm rapidity.”
From the Golden Gate Bridge to Treasure Island, one mind. All afternoon just one transparent Bay.
August 3
“. . . the most striking peculiarity of Tibetan mystics is their boldness and a singular impatient desire to measure their strength against spiritual obstacles or occult foes. They seem animated by the spirit of adventure and, if I may use the term, I should like to call them ‘spiritual sportsmen.’ Indeed, this name suits them better than any other.” (In Alexandra David-Neel.)
A good description of Atabet’s life. And Kazi Dama’s.
Kazi Dama.
It is remarkable that he has left the trappings of a Tulku-Rimpoche behind him. He could be a celebrity among gurus by now, but instead has chosen this adventure with three crazy Americans. He quoted Buddhist scripture today: “Our way (
yana
) makes the goal (Buddhahood) its base.” And added “But I never knew Buddhahood went in this direction!” He showed Jacob how to use a meditation rope monks sometimes use in Tibet, the
sgomthag
. You run it around your neck and under your knees to hold yourself erect for days or weeks of meditation. J. seemed to like it. Looked like he was strapped into a parachute upside down.
Kazi will move into J.’s apartment. Brought a knapsack full of his possessions there today. His wardrobe: two pairs of jeans, three denim shirts, some socks and underwear, one sweatshirt, one large sweater, a windbreaker, two pairs of shoes. Says he has a “huge” collection of Tibetan ceremonial robes at his place in Berkeley, however, in case he ever decides to start a formal center. What would the Echeverrias think if they found him living in J.’s apartment with those brilliant hats and gowns? I think they would finally be stretched too far. And what will they think of our experiment? The four of us will be spending a lot of time there.
We talked about the
lung gom
training in Tibet. Kazi practiced it for five years. Involves breathing, control of prana, and assumption of extraordinary powers. Then the conversation wandered around to Pierre Janet’s idea of a “paleoscope” by which we would recover levels of the primordial past. There have been premonitions of our venture for a long, long time, in the strangest places. Kazi said two things make it unique, however: J’s peculiar genius for “taking his body apart and putting it back together again!” and the access we have to the discoveries of Western science and psychotherapy through Simon Horowitz, Corinne and others. We talked about the marriage of “objective” and “subjective” biology, the complementarity of the
animan siddhi
and electron microscope. Am amazed at Kazi’s knowledge of Western science. There is a tough complex intelligence behind that ragamuffin exterior—and a sense of vistas, as if he carries the atmosphere of the high Tibetan country. His toughness and perspective will serve us well in the months to come.
August 15
What is the entity that approaches me in sleep? Last night again. No doubt that it is the same presence. Someone is reaching out to me when the doors of dream are open. I am closed to it during the waking hours, though.
A sunny day. Faint mist on the hills. Dozens of white sails between here and Tiburon. San Francisco is a new Tibet. The vitality of the quest grows each year. Disciplines for everyone, new gurus every week. A psychic field is being built here—a culture to support this exploration
.
Today, at approximately 4:00 p.m., the adventure began.
Three aspects of it, he said: (1) Play, contemplation and adventure. (2) Joining the network of forces that are opening up the world. (3) Venturing to the level of primordial matter, into the heart of the sun.
These two aspects, like the Western and Eastern symbols of eternity—one linear, the other circular. Part of me senses the relentless beat at the heart of things, the drums of the march, all of us headed toward some mysterious consummation. But there is also the sense that we are going nowhere. Being is so rich. On a day like this, who needs to go anywhere.
Yet the experiment begins.
Why go with them when there is already this sense of completion?
Because I want to.
How can I resist this incredible event?
August 16
Second day. Corinne, Kazi, Jacob and I at Telegraph Place. Quiet concentration. Nothing special I could sense. Left before lunch.
J. is forgoing all vigorous physical exercise, including running, in order to concentrate his energies. “By capping the geyser,” he said, “you can build up pressure to break the barriers with.” Kazi says there is a Tantric discipline that uses this kind of deliberate suppression.
Evening. Jacob’s one comment this afternoon: “The fact that biologists are working seriously, both theoretically and experimentally, on the reversal of the aging process, suggests that the general level of man’s imagination and spirit is approaching the point where death may be challenged.”
There will be a marriage of ordinary science and ventures like ours, we all agree. It is an enormous help to have Horowitz with us. But this marriage has been happening for centuries. Reading Henri Poincaire’s essay on scientific discovery I can see that. When Kekule discovered the benzene ring in his extraordinary dream, wasn’t he touching on something like Jacob’s second sight? Or Poincaire himself in the experiences he tells us about? Kekule had a glimmer of the
animan siddhi
. It is only a couple of steps from his experience to the research with Raymond Reant and others into the “clairvoyant perception of atomic structure.” It may take more gifts and practice though to go from there to Atahet country.