Chapter 18 - Mountains, Meditation and Madness - India 1972

It's now five years since D came to the caves. He sits within the shadows of the entrance to his new cave which no one would stumble upon by chance. It lies upon an unlikely mountain shelf with no clear path leading to it. We see that the residual plumpness of youth in his cheeks has disappeared and that his sensitive blue eyes have become still and unimpressed. No country club to which his family may have belonged for generations would admit him now unless he spent a few hours in the hands of a skilled barber. On the other hand, it's equally unlikely that D would allow any aristocrat within stone-throwing distance of his cave either.

His spine is straight and uncompromising as it has been for the past six hours. His capacity for deep stillness of the mind has increased over the years. He no longer needs to put his mind to sleep with the tedium of concentration - It's been so long since he was occupied by any distractions that he is never far from the fringes of a meditative state. In all his actions he is becoming less and less, faint to the light. Though he still sees and hears through his own eyes and ears it's as though he belongs to his body with considerable reluctance and that a greater part of his attention is elsewhere.

He knows the path is true now and wonders if he has the courage to walk to its end, if there is one. Is it even a matter of bravery or just inclination? Right now he feels no desire to do anything at all except continue with the drifting feeling that has uprooted him from all he previously knew. He floats as passive as a cloud and air enters him from all sides through his permeable perception of the world. It brings no dazzling wisdom or Biblical revelation but just as much space for which he can find room, ushering out the petty knowledge that had cluttered up his mind before.

He is only vaguely aware of the passing of time. A faithful secretary at the back of his brain still struggles to keep track of dates and events but as one day is pretty much the same as the next there's little to fill up the calendar. More often he simply finds himself doing the few necessary chores of taking a shit, washing in cold water and cutting his nails every few weeks, without wasting any unnecessary thought upon them. He is unmoved by the world and the things within it are losing their power to evoke any reaction or leak of emotion from him. He does not become impatient when the fire is difficult to light, nor does he curse when he grazes his foot on a piece of flint. He is unconcerned.

His life is composed of the immediate experience of rock, wood, mountains and sky with all other things too far away to be considered. His personal history falls further away with each passing day and he feels like no one at all with no past or future worth drawing breath to talk about.

And these are his moments of leisure. During the six hours he spends each day engaged in his practice of stilling the mind, he takes a short step into another experience of awareness where there is nothing to be aware of. Just as he no longer notices whether his eyes are open or closed during his practice, he makes no effort to identify his perceptions from without or the latent patterns within his mind. He sinks into a state where all things are seen to be of the same Divine nature until even the observer is dissolved into this experience of intrinsic essence. The seer and the seen become one.

He does not know or care if there is such a thing as an all-illuminating final state of enlightenment when, at the press of the magic button, congratulating Cherubim will come floating down with tonight's star prize of a self-realization certificate. For D, there is only the journey into the space that expands around and within him in all directions at once. At his deepest moments of trance, only an ant bite on his testicles can bring him back to this world.

Through the last few months of tumbling through the vast chambers of the mind he dimly remembers passing through walls and elaborate barriers that pretended to be the frontiers of consciousness. Yet they soon faded into oblivion as he fell past them without a moment's consideration. He heard voices that he guesses must have been his own - Pleading entreaties that he should turn back before it's too late, sleazy whisperings of vulgar fantasies or even just the banal mutterings of his unfulfilled train spotter selves. One by one they died away with the lack of attention but D now appreciates how the Way is mined with opportunities to go insane.

But he has surpassed most of his fears and now when he enters meditation he no longer needs to leave an anchorman segment of his mind outside with the instructions: 'Now if I don't return before six hours is up - Tie a rope to your waist and come in after me!' Now he simply free-falls, trying to unburden expectation and so meet with less resistance.

M has reduced his diet to just a handful of bananas a day. His ribs now stick out like shelves and his arms and legs have become more like sticks. Sometimes, when he turns to his side, I miss him and worry that I'm describing the wrong cave scenario. But then I back round and smile to see him looking rather like an anaemic goat but, in any case, there are no beauty contests to be won up here. There is no issue of great will power involved to live the ascetic life. He simply has very little choice. There are no patisseries at 3000 metres.

And then one day D notices a change of gear somewhere. His propelling force into the Great Unknown is inexplicably slowing down as if some speed limit has been imposed. With each week this lessening of intensity becomes more tangible and an unwarranted clarity of vision returns to rob him of his timeless bliss. Long forgotten desires once again haunt his dreams and he finds himself awakening with the taste of chocolate upon his lips, women's perfume in his nostrils.

When he gazes out at the consistently huge mountains he once more begins to discern the textural beauty of the forested slopes and the crystalline glaciers in all their wide-awake morning glory. Fuck this clarity! Where did his divine intoxication? He yearns to be again immersed in selfless experience without end or beginning but, try as he might, no effort of practice or repetition of the magic words can return him to the borders of bliss which he's been so happily roaming these last months.

His six hours of sitting are no longer a vacation in Paradise but rather chores from Hell. He cannot help but remind himself every twenty minutes just how bored he is of all this. He can still bring himself to rest in pools of deep calm but only within well-defined frontiers. He has lost the password to fly into the uncharted regions which now just feel like a dream, harder to recall each passing day.

Some weeks he has relapses and everything starts to blur again in happy impairment of vision and D hopes he's back on the right track. But soon thereafter he's cursed with 20-20 sight again and he feels as miserable and uninspired as a sober alcoholic.

He wants M to be here to explain what's going on but as usual he's absent when D needs him most. Or maybe that's the point. Without any senior hand to help him cross the road D is obliged to take responsibility for the investigation into his own consciousness. How can the mind know the mind? This is what he has always asked but maybe no one else can give him the answer. He takes the spade and digs beneath his own feet.

He unearths only frustration. The futility of trying to be conscious of being conscious like a cat chasing its own tail. Finally he elects to abandon striving after any answers, realizing that if he can just wait in calmness and patience, then the explanation will surely float to the surface of its own accord. He settles down to watch and listen. Two weeks later, the leaves of the trees submit to the pull of autumn and he finds himself staring at the naked trees, perceiving faces and forms in the wavering branches. He wishes he could join the birds who are so innocently social upon the skeleton wood.

No one has called him by his name for months and it must have been years since he was touched by anyone. There are parts of his body which are hungry for a reassuring palm or the stroke of a tender finger. His lips are tired of kissing nothing except bananas. Blankets just don't keep him warm enough at night. More besides, there is a weight in his prostate that could surely impregnate an elephant - If he was given a stool to stand upon.

And more than this. What does he really know of the world he has renounced? He was barely out of his teens when he came here, barely a kid - Just what can he have experienced enough to reject out of hand? Yes, he smelt the corruption, the sleaze, the ignorance that keeps everyone in the same destructive cycles and the non-stop blaring idiocy from the mind-numbing mass media - But does it really end there? What can he really say about the oases that may exist somewhere beyond the crass exterior of the world? Is there nothing in this world of beauty and harmony that might appeal to this young man? No loves and laughter that might entice him away from his nest in Faraway Land where the air is clear?

These questions plant themselves in the front of his mind and command many contemplative afternoons. Maybe D is finally feeling lonely? No, that's not it. That weakness was surpassed years before, shed along with the homesickness of the original personality he had carried up here with him. After the first few months he understood that he was not, could not be alone here - Not when Existence itself was in such profusion with mountains of a thousand moods; legions of mist roaming around in search of a fight and shafts of sunlight bursting through clouds to surprise sleeping trees. Even furry caterpillars were climbing down the walls to make their introductions.

But maybe loneliness is not just about the fear of being alone and actually expresses other needs and potentials requiring consummation. Has he now come as far as he can in his Himalayan retreat and must now pursue his truth elsewhere? Perhaps he is late for his entrances on distant stages where even now the actors hover in uncertain poses, desperately repeating his cue in loud voices.

Whatever he might wish,D cannot avoid the conclusion that he seems to be tied by strings he cannot see to the world below and which prevent him from wandering these carefree heights for the rest of his days.