A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  He turned to look at the men near him and, in their eyes, could read gratitude and love for each other, awe and humility. Dharma got up and moved closer to him, and together, they formed a circle, touching, holding hands, letting a current pass through each of them, binding them—one mind, one ego, inseparable.

  The music of the birds became louder. Christian looked toward the sky with its first pink color. The earth had turned. The sun brightened to speak of a new day, a new change, bringing colors that blossomed, folding and blending into each other.

  He stood and walked out onto the deck and began to cry, his hands pressed together in homage. He brought them to the top of his head, to the jewel crown, the thousand-petaled lotus that had been ignited, to the chakra at his throat, to his heart and then knelt to touch his forehead to the ground. He did this three times in the manner of the Tibetans he had known. He did this to honor his teacher, Lama Loden Rinpoche, and through him, the Buddha and the idea of the enlightened mind.

  His knowledge of God humbled him. He needed to pray, to be thankful for the gift of a new day, for his human body that allowed discriminating thought, for his visions. He knew the importance of life, knew intimately the oneness of all things. He knew life to be the push and pull of electrical energy between positive and negative poles. And where positive and negative became whole, there was God.

  He knew the force that permeated all things was undulating, untiring, rhythmical. He knew to give it a name. Love.

  So simple, so obvious. Life was love.

  CHRISTIAN

  LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA

  AUGUST 1966

  The heat had soared again, and the room where Christian awoke early that afternoon was unbearably hot. Tossing the sheet to one side, he sat up on the edge of the mattress, remembering where he was and last night’s acid. There was a girl. Amy. Where was she? Signs of her were around. His clothes were laid out on the low table, a flower across his shirt.

  Walking downstairs, he found the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the table where Bob and Dharma sat.

  “Afternoon.” Bob’s voice was deep and relaxed.

  “You get any sleep?” Christian asked him.

  “A little. I’ll be ready for it tonight.”

  “That was some dose. I certainly had to sit up and take notice.” Christian’s grin was innocent. “You have any more?”

  “Some.” Bob grinned with him.

  “And we might as well enjoy it,” Dharma told them, serious. “Sandoz just announced they’re no longer going to sell LSD.”

  Bob shook his head. “We’re living in a country that’s more interested in selling bullets and bombs than in turning people on. Can you believe it? They’re even thinking of making acid illegal.”

  “Yeah, well,” Dharma answered, “if they cut us off from the pharmaceutical companies, we’ll just make our own.”

  “Let us know if you hear of anyone selling lysergic acid. Or ergotamine, the base needed to make lysergic acid,” Bob told Christian. “We’re setting up a few warehouses with different chemicals and lab equipment.”

  Christian looked from Bob to Dharma. “Acid’s our only hope against the madness, isn’t it?”

  Last night’s lessons were still full upon him, the wondrous marvel at the sanctity of human life, its precious quality in each person, unique, never to be replicated in another individual, a miracle that should not be lost in war or to any of the afflictive emotions.

  “You know,” he said, “part of the puzzle about acid is that it can’t be described. You can only understand if you take the journey. Run it through your body. You can’t describe rebirth to those who have never died.”

  “Hey, you’re not going to get people to fight a war if they love their enemies.”

  “Yeah,” Dharma added, moving to the stove and the whistling kettle. “God forbid that the munitions industry lose any profit. As far as I can tell, acid’s the most powerful way possible to make change—and fast. Twelve hours to get in tune with why we’re here.”

  Bob laughed. “Or maybe a few more hours, depending on the dose.”

  Dharma filled the teapot on the table with hot water. “Have something to eat and stay another night, Christian. Tomorrow we’ll go pick up that hash.”

  “By the way, who’s Amy?” Christian could still see her face, the long dark hair, light brown eyes, dazzling smile, perfect body, and wondered how she would look once he saw her without the acid moving his vision around.

  “Now Amy,” Bob nodded knowingly, “there’s something anyone can understand. She graduated from Oceanside last June. She’s a good friend of Julie’s.”

  Christian hesitated. “You know I saw Lisa yesterday … Did you know she’s taken a vow to be a brahmacharya? Celibate. What happened? Why’d she enter Ananda Shiva?”

  “You interested in her?”

  Christian shrugged. “We’ve always been friends.”

  “She just got weird,” Bob tried explaining. “Distant. I couldn’t deal with it. I need a woman right here, right now, with her belly next to mine. Someone who isn’t afraid to look long and deep into my eyes. You know what I mean? Leave Lisa be. She’s on her own trip, always with some book. You lookin’ for an ol’ lady?”

  “I don’t have a whole lot to offer a lady right now.”

  “Shit, are you kiddin’, man?” Bob laughed. “I heard what Amy had to say about you this morning. All you need’s a few bucks.”

  Christian poured a cup of steaming tea, the smell of peppermint filling the space around him, still wondering about Lisa. He closed his eyes, tried to touch her, pick up some shred of her energy. Weird or not, distant or not, he sent a silent prayer of thanks.

  Back in Berkeley, the 100-degree temperatures of Southern California gone, Christian felt his head clear. The nights were fog-covered and cool, and when the fog burned off at mid-morning, the rest of the day was mild, with blue skies.

  Just as promised, within three days, he was able to sell the five fronted pounds of hash, following the money and music from Berkeley to the Haight-Ashbury and once to Palo Alto, to the home of a brother near the Stanford campus.

  For six weeks, Christian made regular trips to Laguna. The first load of thirty pounds turned out to be a part of a larger load, and Bob knew all sorts of people with scams. He was traveling with regularity, spending long hours on the road, always stoned, tasting for himself before buying, always turning someone on. Never able to make classes, he withdrew from the university.

  Soon, Christian had enough capital to pay for most of his orders up front and developed a reputation for settling debts promptly. He became serious about the business and organization of his efforts. Choosing five of his best customers, he set up a loose-knit hierarchy. People who wanted small quantities could cop from one of the five. He began to teach simple meditations to the brothers who worked with him, explaining awareness and clarity, suggesting they be mindful of the Man. He insisted his associates code their phone book numbers. Proposed partnerships keep clandestine books to resolve any conflicts that might occur.

  At the end of six weeks, Christian had made almost $10,000. Realizing he owed his good fortune to those men around him, he was careful to see that his friends made money too.

  He was so busy, in fact, that he almost missed the headlines on October 6th. True to Bob’s prediction, LSD had been made illegal in California.

  Time to move, and with the new money, Christian could choose any house he wanted, somewhere away from the cops who patrolled the student areas. Giving up his $50 a month student apartment, he looked for a home in the Berkeley Hills, even though the rent might be as high as $350 a month. The house he finally chose had trees, a high fence along the street, decks, Bay view, and peace—a place where he could trip without worry. For the first time in over two years, he wanted to perform the more disciplined meditations he had once started to learn. But an argument raged within him—he wouldn’t practice the meditations if it meant renouncing political action or p
romoting any of the established religions he had known—Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh. He couldn’t follow a path like the one Lisa had chosen.

  Once in the new house, he took out paper and pen and began rewriting the letters he had once sent to India. Nareesh had disappeared on the night of the riot. Had never arrived at the theological college. Every letter he’d sent two years ago had gone unanswered. Perhaps this time, Christian would receive an answer to his inquiries. As glad as he was of those brothers around him, no one would ever be able to take Nareesh’s place.

  Closing his eyes, he saw for the thousandth time Nareesh running into the horde of desperate and angry men, heard himself scream his name.

  He has to be alive, Christian thought. But where? What has happened that he cannot even write to me?

  Not long after moving, he drove to Bob’s in Laguna Beach.

  “I’ve got a house now,” he told Amy, as he leaned on the rail of the deck. “There’s room for brothers and sisters who are passing through the city. I want to make a quiet place where I can work in love and peace.”

  Amy nodded, understood exactly what Christian wanted.

  “Berkeley’s different from L.A. The people I know are more politically involved. Lately, we’ve been circulating petitions against the use of napalm. The protests at the Oakland Induction Center are heating up.”

  Amy stood very still. She had heard his impassioned views before.

  “People from Berkeley are like that, aren’t they?” she said. “Always trying to make boundaries. Take an idea and erect a fence around it. Insist that everyone believe.” She took his hand. “Christian, you just need to spend more time staring at the waves like the people in Laguna. You can’t fight the water; you have to learn to flow with it. Watching the sea and sky, the sun and moon and stars, expands consciousness toward the Infinite.”

  He smiled, his eyes blue light. “You’ll see once we get to Berkeley.”

  From the pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a small plastic bag of tablets. “Do you think you could handle being my old lady?”

  He took two into the palm of his hand, ate one, and held the second up to her. She picked up the tab and swallowed it.

  A few days later, they drove back to the Bay. On the way to the new house, Christian stopped for one last time at the old apartment just off the Ave to pick up his mail. He was moving underground. Those he wanted to cut off would not follow—old acquaintances who were too loose, people who wanted single lids or tabs of acid, girls he’d brought there, the university, his parents, the narcs.

  One letter caught his attention immediately. He opened it, gave it a quick scan, and passed it to Amy.

  “A notice of my reclassification now that I’m no longer in school—l-A. They want me to report for an army physical at the Oakland Induction Center in two weeks.”

  He grinned, crumpled the letter, and threw it into the wastebasket.

  Now the FBI wouldn’t know where he lived, either.

  KATHLEEN MURRAY

  BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

  JUNE 1967

  Kathleen Murray had never been out of Louisiana before, and now, as she hitched across the broad, flat Southwestern desert, the heat she felt wasn’t the steamy, humid heat of New Orleans. This heat dried her to the bone. The trucker who’d given her and best friend, Marcelle Arceneaux, a ride, laughed when she’d mentioned it. He’d gunned the engine and on they rode, flying down the empty four-lane highway at eighty miles an hour, windows down and a hot wind roaring through the cab.

  Six months ago, Kathy would never have dreamed this latest escapade of hers possible. She gave Marcie—her college roommate, sister of her secrets, partner in adventure—a wide grin.

  “We’re gonna get there, Marcie! San Francisco!” she yelled over the sounds of the radio and the thunder of the big diesel engine.

  If this had been a Sunday six months ago, she and Marcie would have been at Mass. But their attachment to the Catholic Church had fallen by the wayside in the past months. Too many history lectures had uncovered the political intrigues of the Church through the centuries, philosophy classes in existentialism had asked questions about whether God was dead, new thoughts had been prompted about what really constituted morality. Six months ago, they would have been recovering from one of LSU’s infamous fraternity parties and massive amounts of beer, consumed in a state where the drinking age was eighteen.

  But sometime at the beginning of second semester, in February, the chance words of a friend about a political meeting had changed everything. Intellectual curiosity and the desire to put their energy into something useful had brought Kathy and Marcie to the Student Liberal Federation. Here, they’d traded biology class for roundtable discussions in coffee houses, and Mass for organizing and planning political action. The change in focus to voter registration programs and picket lines had been both exciting and frightening—exciting, because it had opened them to new thoughts, and frightening, because in doing so, the girls had been compelled to turn away from centuries of conformity. By protesting the university’s compulsory ROTC program for male students, segregationist despots in southern Louisiana, and the war in Vietnam, they had broken with parents who wholeheartedly supported tradition and the war effort and who were entrenched in fears of where desegregation might lead.

  Kathy looked out the window at the passing desert with wide, curious eyes and, not for the first time on this journey, thought about Jim Barnes. Their first encounter had been at a political meeting. He’d stood before the desk of the Student Union room, leaning casually against it, his body solid, hair and eyes a light brown, a ready smile, and an attitude suggesting that he laughed at the world. Nervous, Kathy couldn’t take her eyes off him. Jim had been beaten and arrested several times, a folk hero from the picket lines in Birmingham and from lunch counter sit-ins in Selma.

  “When we picket on Saturday,” he told the group, “we have to be prepared. In case of trouble, fall to the ground and roll into a tight ball to protect your internal organs. Keep your head down and cover your head and neck with your arms.” He’d lifted his arms in demonstration.

  “But the police,” Kathy heard her own voice on that night months ago, small and quivering, “won’t the police protect us?”

  General laughter had erupted from the more experienced activists. “Hell, honey,” someone cried, “they’ll likely be the ones kickin’ you!”

  Now she laughed aloud as well, remembering, and it was a sign of her youth that she could laugh, because winter and spring had been rough. Not only had there been hostilities at the demonstrations, crowds of student hecklers with crew cuts and jeering faces, but also threatening phone calls in the night, a cross burned outside their dorm room door by the women who lived in their wing, and an investigation into the organization by the Louisiana House Un-American Activities Committee—HUAC.

  Deeper still, every truth that had made up the framework of her life until that time had collapsed.

  Marcie began to sing with the radio, and the trucker was really diggin’ it, tapping his hand along the steering wheel, getting off on her strong, clear voice. As they sat together in the front seat, all the things that had pushed them west this summer also pushed at Kathy’s thoughts. Rocked slowly, she leaned against the door of the cab, Marcie’s voice lulling her to drowsiness.

  When the song ended, she closed her eyes. From far away, Marcie’s words drifted toward her, and Kathy vaguely heard her explaining to the trucker what had put them thumbing on the road. They were students off for summer holiday and wanted to learn why California could mobilize thousands of people to political action. Part of their journey was to Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, and another would be to a district of San Francisco called the Haight-Ashbury, its blocks of Victorian housing sitting near Golden Gate Park. In January, there had been a Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. And in April, 100,000 people had marched from Market Street to Kezar Stadium to protest the Vietnam War. How could the organizers g
et so many people involved?

  The driver mumbled something about supporting the troops in Nam and turned the radio up—discussion over—but Marcie, oblivious, began to sing again. Slipping further away, soothed by Marcie’s voice, head nodding, Kathy admitted that something more had pushed her west. Perhaps the strongest push had come from Jim Barnes himself. In that nether world just before oblivion, rocked by the steady vibration of the truck, she thought of Jim and the afternoon months ago, when, tired and sick at heart, she had gone to his apartment.

  When Jim opened the door to her knock, Kathy thought he looked startled, but he took a drag off his cigarette, smiled, and motioned for her to come in.

  With a sweep of her eyes, she took in everything. She had attended group meetings in the apartment at night, but at midday, the furniture appeared shabbier, the surfaces dustier, the cracks in the walls more obvious. The coffee table was a jumble of magazines and newspapers, half-filled coffee cups, a nearly empty jug of wine, and a candle stuck in a wine bottle. Jim regarded her, then scratched his head, as if unsure what to do.

  “I was just finishing an article about the Human Be-In in San Francisco,” he said, holding up a magazine.

  “Human Be-In? What’s that?” Kathy asked, throwing her purse on the couch and removing her jacket.

  “Here,” Jim handed her the copy of Time, “take a look.”

  Kathy studied the pictures for a long moment—men and women with long hair; painted, smiling faces; feathers, balloons, and strings of beads.

  “Wow, what’s going on here?” she exclaimed. “And what does ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ mean?”

  “The press is calling them ‘hippies.’ Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll rinse these glasses out.”

  When he returned from the kitchen, he picked up the jug of Chianti from the coffee table and poured. “So, what’s up?”

  Kathy put the magazine on the table. “I … I needed to talk to someone. I picked you.”