“Why don’t you come with us to Asia, Christian?” Dharma asked. “We’ll pick up a few rugs, visit some temples, pray.”
“Thanks, but I’ve seen most of that part of the world.”
“Come as far as Hawaii then.” Bob’s voice was serious. “You work too hard. You need a partner. And you need a woman.”
“You might be right, on all counts. Here.” Christian handed him a package. “My ten grand for the hash. This ought to get you to Kandahar.”
“And we’ve got ten that’ll get us back.” Bob picked up the package. “The split is fifty-fifty when we’re back in the States.”
“Whatever happened to those hundred-pound drops you had coming from India last year?” Christian asked.
“We had a guy bringing them in on a freighter, but he lost his job. Things are getting tight. The government’s really putting a lot of pressure on foreign countries. Have you tried coming into the country lately? Customs is going through everything of anyone under twenty-five years of age, and they’re not being especially nice about it. Same goes for incoming freighters, particularly from the East.”
Maybe I should go with them, Christian thought, learn the hashish contacts in Afghanistan in case I ever want to put together my own scam. Keep an eye on the cash.
Bob and Dharma had a way of running through money. All the business he’d done with them, and they still had to borrow ten grand from him to put this trip together. They lived high but owned nothing and put nothing away. Their home was open to many brothers. Tens of thousands of dollars went into a drawer that served as a bank. If someone landed in jail, the money was there to help. A deal required cash? Take what you need. Only sometimes, someone came up short, and now Bob was busy borrowing the money to buy rugs and hash that would bring $100,000 once they were sold. Fifty would go to Christian, twenty-five would pay bills, and twenty-five would go to the drawer.
“Everything’s packed for the trip,” Dharma told him. “We’ll buy the tickets and be on our way at the end of the week.”
Am I ready to return to India, Christian wondered? No. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“I will come with you as far as Laguna,” Christian told them.
“Good,” Bob answered, sure that Christian needed a break. “You need someone to make you feel good. Julie knows some nice ladies.”
Christian hesitated, then said simply, “Lisa called.”
“Ah,” Bob’s grin was a smirk, “method to your madness. So it’s Lisa you want.”
“She needs money. Money I’ve set aside for her.”
“What does she need money for? Is she leaving Ananda Shiva?”
“She wants to go to India to see her Master.”
“And you’re going to pay to have her leave you?” Bob asked in disbelief.
“What else can I do?” Christian’s voice held more than a touch of frustration. “There’s something between us. We both know it. But she’s being pulled toward her Master. It’s probably a painful choice for her.” He remembered the look of misery in her eyes when they’d last stood in the ashram’s gardens.
Bob only shook his head. “Can you be ready to go in the morning?” he asked. “We want to stop in at the Brotherhood ranch and trip before heading to Hawaii. Center ourselves before the long journey. Tim Leary’s out there. Why don’t you come and drop with us?”
By eleven o’clock the next morning, Christian, Dharma, and Bob arrived at the Orange County Airport wearing long hair, jeans, Indian cotton shirts, sandals, and love beads. Sloppy smiles were plastered across their faces, their eyes half closed from smoking since early morning. The bells on Dharma’s necklace jingled, further earning them stares of distaste from California’s most conservative crowd.
In the parking lot, Bob folded down the top of the small convertible he’d left at the airport. “When do you want to see Lisa?”
“This evening.” Christian opened the trunk and tossed in his bag. “That way, we’re free to go to the ranch tomorrow. I’ll give her a call to let her know we’re coming.”
“Then let’s drive down to Laguna,” Bob told him. “I want to talk to Paul at Mystic Arts. Light up that doobie, will you, Dharma?”
Bob drove slowly, trying to keep the joint from blowing out, following the freeway, eventually parking near the sign that read Mystic Arts World. Below the sign hung a circular mandala in blue and red, its center an om written in Hindi script. Intricate stained glass windows faced the front of the building, one panel depicting a dove bearing an olive branch in its mouth.
As soon as they entered the store, Paul stepped from behind the counter. “Come with me,” he told them. “You’ve got to check out this painting in the meditation room.”
Christian followed, moving slowly, mesmerized by everything—the front desk constructed of light and dark wooden panels supporting an antique cash register; a library of books and posters; brass tables and serving vessels; small statues of Buddha, tarnished with age; jewelry; carpets; the holy beads of monks; musical instruments—tabla, sitar, flute.
When Paul opened the door to the back room, Christian gasped at the painting on the wall, Dion Wright’s Taxonomic Mandala of Life on Earth—round, organic, in dark blues and greens, depicting the story of three and a half billion years of evolution. Beginning at the bottom of the painting was a single cell, rising, reproducing, evolving to a more complex organism, plants and animals separating, moving from sea to land, working in synchronicity with each other, oxygen exchanged for carbon dioxide, the choices of plants to become seed and bush and vine and tree, animal organisms forming appendages, developing a more sophisticated spinal cord, a neurological system, a brain, vertebrae to protect the cord, union to reproduce, bearing young alive, nurturing through mammary glands, primates with binocular vision, bipedalism, opposable thumbs, the family Homo—and at the top of the painting, a man and a woman, Homo sapiens.
Lama Loden was right, Christian thought. Nothing exists that is not interconnected.
Once again, he understood the lessons on the importance of his human body, knew that, at his dissolution, the organic matter of his body could evolve into an infinite number of possibilities. Matter was never newly created.
But the mind is different. The mind, Lama Loden had told him, continued, and where it continued depended on the choices made in this life. The karma, the energy attached to it, would determine its destination. Because the possibilities of a new formation were infinite, to have a body was a gift. Not only did he have a human body, but he also had wealth and time. In this moment, pushed by thoughts of the painting and the power of the plant he’d smoked, he knew with certainty that the intention of his life, of this body, could only be to bring others to God-consciousness, that this was the only truly worthwhile undertaking.
“Christian,” Bob’s voice jarred him. “You’ve been staring at that painting for at least twenty minutes. Let’s go see if there’s food in the back.”
Christian pulled his eyes away. I am really stoned, he admitted to himself.
Dharma opened the refrigerator door in the small kitchen and looked inside. “Hey, there’s a whole bunch of stuff here,” he said. “Fruit, raw milk, yogurt. Any honey on the counter?”
“Yeah.” Bob began opening cabinets. “Here’s some wheat germ and lecithin—and a blender. We can make shakes.” Laying things out on the counter, he turned to Christian. “When are you going to decide if you’re coming to Hawaii?”
Christian shrugged, not wanting to reveal his hopes that Lisa would change her mind and move back to Berkeley with him. “I’ll let you know. Listen, I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m going down to the corner to call Lisa.”
The walk to the pay phone was as slow and spaced as all Christian’s other actions that day. When the phone was answered at the ashram, he recognized the voice. Krishna. A moment of hesitation … and he agreed to call Lisa to the phone. With some irritation, Christian realized that Krishna was trying to control his meetings with her. Then, he heard L
isa’s voice.
“Christian!” and the joy was unmistakable. “Where are you?”
“Laguna. I was planning to come to the ashram’s restaurant tonight. Will you be working?”
“Yes. But I’ll make arrangements so I have some time off.”
“Has the Master’s disciple arrived?”
“Yes! He’s wonderful! I would so like for you to meet him!”
Love for the disciple?
Another unaccustomed emotion tugged at him: jealousy. How could he go from the profound and sacred to afflictive emotions in a matter of seconds?
“Christian,” her voice was soft again, enticing. “It will be so good to see you. Until this evening.”
By the time Christian returned to Mystic Arts, the fruit shakes were ready.
“Let’s head down to the beach while we’re waiting,” Bob suggested, replacing his empty glass on the counter. “We’ve got a few hours before we have to drive up to Santa Monica.”
They quickly changed into bathing suits, grabbed towels, and started toward the sea. The walk wasn’t far. By the time they hit the sand, Christian felt his face start to shift, his lips tingle and grow puffy, his stomach move.
No, he thought. How can this be happening? My eyelids are getting heavy.
He looked toward Dharma, who had a great stoned grin.
People got dosed on LSD without knowing it all the time, but how could this have happened to them?
“I can’t figure it either,” Dharma answered his questioning gaze.
Christian’s legs were shaky. “Did you … dose us?” he asked, unable to stop smiling.
“Not intentionally. Something in the shake.” Dharma’s words were full of air, light and unreal. “Maybe the milk.”
“Looks like it’s going to be cosmic,” Bob murmured. “Rushing in twenty minutes …”
They made it to a spot near the water before falling to the ground. Christian lay on the sand, the warmth almost intangible, his eyes closed, his stomach beginning to retch. Whatever he had taken was more acid than he’d ever consumed. His body melted underneath him, unstrung, dissolving into particles, floating, his mind a disembodied essence. Layer upon layer of illusion shattered as he sank deeper and deeper beneath the waves of his thoughts. Lama Loden’s voice came to him over time.
If you never still your ideas, how can you know the stuff of which ideas are made?
Rolling over on his hands and knees, he vomited into the sand, everything a blend of muted paisleys and patterns in the bright sunlight. With just enough presence of mind left to cover his vomit with sand, he lay back, knowing he would be coming on for a long time.
For six hours, he lay in the sun, watching images pass across his eyes, exploring his thoughts, examining his life. He lay without tension, every muscle relaxed. Movement was impossible, because it was too much to try to disassociate an arm or a leg from life on an atomic level. As more and more of his ego slipped away, he wondered whether his body parts would ever work together again.
But the sun passed, and when it was low over the horizon, Christian began to have a sense of where he was and what he might be. He turned his head. Dharma sat next to him in full lotus. Christian laughed, and for the first time thought he should try to sit.
Where are we? Laguna. A public beach. Look outward. Think past the body. Force yourself.
No one seemed to pay them much attention, even though Christian was sure everyone was picking up on the vibration they emitted. Who would fail to notice the electrical hum emanating from a man in lotus for six hours?
“Where’s Bob?” he managed.
Dharma opened his eyes and took a few minutes to focus, to understand Christian’s question.
“Look.” Christian pointed out to sea, where Bob was body surfing the waves.
Within moments, Christian and Dharma were diving into the water, swimming out, lifted by the swell, surfing the slow, steady pulse of the tide. For Christian, time stopped; only the present was important—the silky feel of liquid, the gentle pressure on his skin, the taste of salt, the understanding of life created in the soupy beginnings of a formative earth. Racial memory rushed though him. He lived each image of the evolution mandala in Mystic Arts, evolving with each push of the water, each second forward in time, from single cell to the complex organism he now was, this human body. Lost in genetic memory and cellular consciousness, he was dissolving into hydrogen and oxygen molecules, when the sun touched the horizon, exploding the sky and dazzling his eyes. The surface of the water was liquid gold. He lay back, floating, perfectly at peace, one with the moment, the moment eternal.
But Dharma touched his shoulder, pointing toward shore, segmenting time, and pushing him forward.
Christian looked toward land. The surf glistened fiery red where it struggled to the edge of the sea. Birds dropped to the water, dark onyx. Lama Loden’s words came to him.
There are two realities, Christian. Know that the water is powerful, but know also that you and the water are one.
The swatches of color deepened from gold to orange to dusky purple. Time to leave the water, to begin life on earth. Christian dragged himself back to the beach, emerging from the sea and taking great breaths into his lungs.
Near their towels, Bob found his watch and tried to focus on the timepiece, staring at the numbers for a long moment.
“Almost 7:00.”
And somehow, Christian remembered. “I need to go. I told Lisa I’d be at the restaurant this evening.”
The journey to Santa Monica was an adventure, beginning with the walk from the beach to Mystic Arts World, showering and dressing without a sense of time. The drive was a magical amusement park ride. Freeway lights rushed up, glittering, and fell away. Christian had no sense of speed or direction. And neither did Bob. He took the wrong freeway and stumbled onto Los Angeles, a mushroomed forest of different heights and thousands of jeweled lights. Nor could he drive over forty-five miles an hour. By the time they found the freeway toward Santa Monica and reached the restaurant, it was well after ten o’clock.
“I’ll see what’s happening,” Christian told them. “It looks like it might be closed. Too bad. Food would take the spacey edge off this trip.”
He grabbed his hairbrush and tie, brushing his hair away from his face. Most of the trip now was in his head—easy realizations, everything perfectly clear—but as he walked into the restaurant, the lights momentarily threw him. Had he really come down enough to talk? People were moving around the room, picking up dishes, throwing soiled linen into a wash pile, blowing out candles. “I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” a man standing nearby told him.
“I’m looking for Kali.” Christian’s grin was wide, self-conscious.
“Just a moment. I’ll see if I can find her.” In a few minutes, he returned. “She’s left for the evening.”
“Then she’s at the ashram?”
“Where else would she go?”
Lisa had indeed returned to the ashram. For once, she had refused to stay to clean. What she felt need not be put into the kitchen, where food was prepared for others. Nor did she want to bring her emotion to the staff. Better to take it and be alone.
Lisa was angry. Not just annoyed or ruffled, but blatantly angry. There it was … the anger only Christian brought out.
Damn him, she thought. Damn. Damn. Damn him!
Walking the paths around the garden, she sorted through the complexity of her feelings. Everything had been carefully planned. Early this morning, she’d washed her hair, letting it dry into soft waves, scented her body with rose oil, chosen her loveliest dress. She’d practiced what she would say to Christian, how she would greet him. A sister would take her station while she led him to a private place. They would talk. He would ask her to come away with him, and she would gently refuse. Instead, she would introduce him to Padmananda and the perfect opportunity to feel the Master’s love.
Each time someone had entered the restaurant, she’d looked up expectantly. At ten
o’clock, she knew what she had begun to suspect earlier: He wasn’t coming. Closing her eyes, she remembered the embarrassed apology to Padmananda.
“You miserable bastard,” she heard herself mutter out loud. “How could you set me up like that?”
But beyond the anger, humiliation, and disappointment, she knew something more—a deep hurt. He hadn’t cared enough to keep the meeting.
In the light of the full moon, Christian pulled the small brown bag with the money for Lisa from his pack. The ashram looked dark and quiet. Late, but people were surely still returning from the restaurant. Should he wait for morning?
No. Not after today. He had to see her, if only for a few minutes.
“I’d like to see Kali, please,” he asked at the door. He bowed his head humbly, hands clasped over his heart.
This time, there was no smile, only a searching and unsettled look from the man at the door. Krishna again. “One moment, please.”
Several long minutes passed before Krishna returned. “She says she’s very tired. If you have a package for her, please leave it.”
Half of Christian’s mind whispered, Don’t interfere. It’s her choice. Respect her wishes. But another part of him felt her disappointment.
“I can’t leave the package. Would you ask again if she’ll see me?” Christian asked quietly.
“I’m sorry, but you have your answer.”
Christian had every sense in control. His eyes were large, dilated, his body alert and ready to move. The evening could not pass. What he had to say to Lisa had to be said tonight. But Krishna’s face was adamant—a standoff.
Then, from the shadow of the darkened room, a voice spoke. “I’ll … I’ll take care of it, Krishna.” And Lisa stepped into the bright moonlight of the porch.
“Are you sure?” Krishna asked.
She nodded. “It’ll only take a moment.”
Still, he hesitated.
“I won’t be far. Call if you need me.” Krishna bowed to her and backed away.
A Nation of Mystics Page 29
