Golf in the Kingdom

by Michael Murphy

  “Tha’ simmer a strange fear began creepin’ into me—in the night as I was fallin’ asleep sometimes, or out on the links, or sometimes in a crowd o’ people. I began to think about epilepsy, that maybe a fit was comin’ on. The thought got worse and worse ’til I had to do things to forget it, busy things, or runnin’ to find someone to talk to, sometimes just whistlin’ to distract myself. I was in a state as the simmer woor on, it got to be the curse o’ my life. At times I thought it wid niver leave me, that it was burnt into my brain. Then I read some o’ those books,” he gestured around the room, indicating the shelves of mysticism and philosophy, “and found out about Ramakrishna and Plotinus and people lik’ that, how Ramakrishna passed out cold for the love o’ God. Knowin’ that must have given me some courage, for one day after 45 holes o’ gowf or moor I was walkin’ home and I began to shake. The thought o’ the fit and the fear was comin’ back and I started swearin’ and makin’ my mind busy to fight it off. And then I rimembered the ol’ mystics and the thought came, ‘go into it, go right into it.’ And I did. I started imaginin’ what it would be to have a fit and then I began to shake all over. Weird images started comin’ into my mind. Pictures o’ my body breakin’ tae pieces, arms and legs flyin’ apart, things like that”—he began to tremble as he recalled that shattering experience—“and then I saw the stars above me and felt a joy. Oh, I’ll niver forget it—it was my first journey into the one.” He said this last in a voice so low I could barely hear him. “Ah dinna’ ken how long it lasted, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, I really dinna’ ken. But howe’er long it was it changed my life. It was the first step in findin’ my way.”

  This overwhelming experience had converted him forever away from church and school. He dropped out of the college he was attending, and made a living by caddying and giving occasional golf lessons. But people were a torment to him. Like some monstrous tree his psyche was throwing enormous roots into the depths of inner experience but reaching out toward his fellows with tiny branches. When he caddied that summer he hardly talked. It became almost impossible for him to be in crowds. He was embarrassed to enter the bar or dressing rooms of the club. Then the opportunity came for him to compete in the British Amateur.

  The older members at Burningbush would put up the money for his expenses. Some even wanted to send him to America for the glory of their ancient club. At times he wanted to do it. But he knew that his growing phobia about people would make competition virtually impossible, what with the crowds and dinners and awards and official ceremonies. As the summer wore on and his alienation from others became more intense he began to see the world as a vast illusion, “a play of shadows against the immensity” he had seen. During those months he saw the truth in the Indian view of the world as maya, pure illusion; he knew what the old mystics had meant. Why return to this brawling pit when other worlds held such promise of peace and delight? He thought of going to India to join an ashram, as I was doing, or of holing up in the Outer Hebrides, in order to live entirely in the mystic state. He had “fallen into Nirvana” and now he was tempted to stay there for the rest of his life.

  (As I give this brief account of what he said I realize how inadequate it is to explain such sea-changes in his character. I would need to know more, far more, to tell the full story and to fully understand him. I know from my own experience in India that great energies come into play in the mystic life, that one needs a sturdy ego from which to explore the realms of transcendence. One needs help when navigating there, for any personal weakness may become inflated with the hidden energies of the soul. Of course, help in these areas is hard to come by, at least in the Western World, and certainly there in Burningbush in the late 1930s.)

  The members became impatient as the summer wore on. They finally summoned him to a meeting in the clubhouse, in the very rooms I visited decades later, under those imposing portraits of the club’s heroes and captains. He had to decide now whether to play in the tournament or not. “It was the most frightenin’ thing I had ever been put to,” he said as he recounted the story. “I was on the verge o’ faintin’ all through the meetin’, thought I’d faint dead away, everything seemed so unreal. No one had e’er put me on such a spot before in my entire life, or cared so much about me, or challenged my worst weakness straight on.” Then, from some depth of his soul, from some region down deep where his strange roots had grown, came the response. It was a sudden burst of uncoordinated thoughts, wild talk, some of it in the Latin he had learned in school. About the pretensions of the club and all its prejudices, about its sense of privilege and lack of religion, with ramblings about God and Demons and the Mystic State. Then he launched into the members themselves, how each of them was hiding something just like he was.

  The assembled group was not prepared for such an event. This early attempt at group therapy ended in total silence. No one responded as his diatribe continued, in a kind of sing-song toward the end, “something like speaking in tongues or Baptist prayer meetings.” The poor members were caught between their fondness for him and their outrage. As the rant went on they began to slip out of the room with a “whole array of looks.” Only one friend remained, Julian Laing, the town’s doctor and psychiatrist, who had begun to formulate his eccentric theories about mental health. They stayed up most of the night together and talked about his fears and hidden thoughts. The next day he woke to a cold demand: he would have to go around to all the members and talk to them man to man. Julian had helped him see that the only way to hold his mystic high was to do his human duty. As they talked that night they had concluded that all the “messages” were telling him to follow the destiny that was being laid out for him, not to fight it like temptation. He had the talent, the members wanted to support him, everyone who knew him sensed that he had a mighty work to do. “Let God show the way,” Julian had said, “even if He uses other people.”

  So he began to go the rounds of all the men who had been there that night, telling them about his shyness and dishonesty and fear. Some of them listened and forgave him, some backed away, out of embarrassment or “their own shyness and dishonesty.” Having made the decision to build a new life, he went those rounds with all the thoroughness he was to show in compiling his endless lists of philosophers and historic events. He began to grow a fuller self, one closer to the strong, good-humored Shivas Irons I was to meet. And then he went out to face the crowds and reporters at the British Amateur.

  It was another difficult initiation. At first he thought his nervousness would disappear after his brave encounters with the members of the club. But the quivering rabbit was there as usual, “like a second self, floating right there next to all my willpower.” He was given a prime starting time for the opening round, and when the moment came he was pitted against one of America’s most famous players in front of the tournament’s largest gallery. When he stepped out on the tee and saw the crowd lining the fairway he felt as if he were in a dream—the old fear was on him again. But then he knew that “the decision to go ahead had been made far deeper than my fears and ordinary reflexes,” for without stopping to consider the consequences he began a short speech to the gallery. It was a shorter version of his speech to the members, a brief pithy sermon about fear and courage, dishonesty and true fellowship, with a brief confession of his own sins and a homily about the need for a new religion. The spectators listened attentively, many of them American tourists who apparently believed this was the Scottish custom, some of them the same poor members from Burningbush. His performance did not dispel all his fear, but at least made it possible for him to hit the ball off the tee. Walking down the fairway in the crowding gallery, he ventured a handshake or two and told a couple of jokes. By the time he addressed his second shot his strength was back.

  “There’s nae better way to kill a dragon,” he said as he told me the story, “than to charge right up to it and shove a spear down its throat. That was the day I began to look at people’s faces. I was so grateful to all that gallery. One youn
g laddie came up to me and said that speech was the greatest thing he had e’er heard, never expected it at a gowf toornament. One old woman had tears in her eyes. O’ course the toornament officials were mad as hell and there was some talk, I heard later, about kickin’ me out awtigither. But they couldn’t, ye see, because I won my first round from the American player and broke the course record doin’ it.” He made a cat’s cradle with his fingers. “Me and the gallery got to be like this. They thought I was somethin’ special and I knew they were rootin’ for me. My drives were sailin’ 10 yards longer than usual—psychic force can add 10 yards to yer drives, ye know. God bless them. I never would have made it back to the world o’ people if they hadn’t been so good to me—they and the members here. Their help and a few risks—what a time!” He shook his head and whistled through closed teeth. “I slew the dragon awright. With one blow. Sometimes that’s the only way ye can do it.”

  He looked at me as he told the story, as if he were deciding whether I believed him. “D’ye want to hear what happened next?” he asked. He could see that I did. “Well, we all went out together and broke the course record, that’s what we did. We went out and broke the course record. After that first drive I was feelin’ all that separation gone. I wanted to cry, I was so relieved and free o’ fear. There was nae mair fear at all. I was feelin’ so good I didna’ look at the ball and I hit to the rough. And then things began to happen. I hit a little wedge out to the fairway. And then I knew, Holy Jesus, that the Lord had broken through again. The ball hit a hard spot and kept bouncin’, about a hundred yards, almost down to the green! Just kept bouncin’ along, I couldna’ believe it. Looked like a Mexican jumpin’ bean. I thought I was at one o’ those old Topper movies where things move by themsel’s. So help me God, that ball just kept goin’ by itself. I knew then that somethin’ was goin’ on wi’ that gallery. They ‘wanted me to win.’

  “Well, it went on like that,” he said slowly, as if he were deciding what I was ready to hear. He studied my face. “Then everything turned to Technicolor,” he said at last.

  “Technicolor?”

  “Technicolor, full-blown Technicolor. And I could heer the insects too.” He paused again. “And music.”

  “Music?”

  “A choir way in the distance. A great choir and drums. Some o’ the gallery heard it too. They heard it awright. I could tell by the way they looked at me. That laddie who came up to me at the very beginnin’, he knew what was goin’ on the whole eighteen holes.”

  A round of golf in Technicolor to the accompaniment of drums—all because he overcame his shyness! As you can see, there are enormous gaps in the story. I have often wondered how much he might have doctored his tales. If I hadn’t seen Seamus’s shillelagh and that fantastic gallery of charts and pictures stacked up around me, I might have thought it was all fabrication.

  After the tournament he could see that golf and his inner life were one destiny. He would be a golf professional and a philosopher, using the game to body forth the truths he was discovering within.

  Once he made the decision to accept these disparate leadings he was no longer “a chameleon on a tartan plaid” responding to every situation and impulse that came his way. He had a center, at last, albeit one that would keep unfolding. He was finally growing into the self which God had intended. For several years after that Julian Laing had helped him understand these regions of the soul, had listened to him for hours and confirmed his new resolution.

  But there were still some things he did not ken. To help him understand them he needed another mentor. In August 1945, two weeks after Hiroshima, he met him.

  Shivas had spent the war years on a Scottish island in the North Sea as a lookout for enemy bombers, an assignment that “fit his talent for brooding.” He was on a team of four men who worked alternating three-week shifts on the island with another team. Between his tours of duty he played golf on the mainland. Those five years had confirmed his calling, for during the eighteen-hour winter nights he had perfected the contemplative part of his discipline as he watched the skies for attacking planes. The constant anticipation of enemy bombers had gradually turned into a vision that God himself would descend to earth one day. This vision possessed his mind that week in August 1945.

  He was on leave in Burningbush when the meeting occurred. He had gone to pray in the old cathedral, something he had always done even after he left the church. After his prayers he walked into the adjoining burial ground, “as if he were drawn there.” In front of a tomb commemorating a famous golfer stood Seamus MacDuff. Shivas had seen the old man when he was a child, going around the local course on a white Shetland pony. He was one of the great characters of the town in the twenties, a prosperous eccentric inventor, who had discovered certain engineering principles that led to the development of missiles and supersonic flight. His aloof and imperious ways endeared him to many in Burningbush and outraged others, especially because his African ancestry was so at odds with the traditions of membership in the club. He was the son of a wealthy Scottish merchant, who had made a fortune in the Africa trade, and a Voodoo priestess from the Gold Coast. His father had imagined himself a kind of Richard Burton bringing back the lore of the primitive mind, and in the course of his travels had met the clairvoyantly gifted black woman who eventually gave birth to Seamus. The youngster had been raised in his mother’s tribe, and tutored in British ways by teachers his father sent to the Gold Coast. He was then sent to Oxford when he was seventeen. His eventual fascination with the dark underside of modern science undoubtedly derived from his African roots. He sometimes compared himself to Amenhotep the Fourth, the monotheistic Pharaoh known as Ikhnaton, who was also a combination of Northern and Southern genes. In any case, Seamus’s swarthy face and white bristling beard confounded many of the people of Burningbush who had never seen anyone like him. His habit of riding around the links on a Shetland pony only heightened the impact of his startling presence.

  He had gone into seclusion sometime before 1930, no one knew why. Some thought he was mad; others said he had gone bankrupt while developing a new scheme for harnessing power.

  Now he stood gazing at the statue as Shivas approached. Without turning, he said, “You and I have much to do, for these are our final days.” If I correctly remember Shivas’s account, their collaboration started immediately, Seamus following his new protégé around the Burningbush links as they had their first seminar on true gravity.

  In the years that followed, they worked on the relations between consciousness and physical laws, Seamus being the theorist and Shivas his practitioner in the world of golf. He hinted that the old wizard had other areas in which he was trying his theories, that many other human activities would be transformed one day in the knowledge of true gravity and the “luminous body.”

  Hiroshima was the beginning of the end, according to Seamus MacDuff; it was the final sign that man must discover the secrets of his soul or go the way of dying species. The discovery of atomic weapons had come too soon, before the deeper revelations of science that were ultimately meant to be. Evolution had taken an awful turn and there was not much time to right the balance. He was studying the golfer’s tomb that day in the cathedral burial ground because he and Shivas had to make golf a matter of life and death. It was an appropriate place for them to meet.

  Shivas Irons and Seamus MacDuff, what a pair! I don’t know if I will ever live down the fact that I ran away from their incredible world.

  That afternoon I abruptly decided to return to London. I have always been a sucker for exact schedules; a psychoanalyst once said I had a “completion complex.” The afternoon was slipping away and the time for my train approached. Shivas had never said I should stay. He had only hinted and held out tiny blandishments. We had never really discussed what I was going to do with all the notes I was making. I had come a long way and had made elaborate plans for the trip. I had a ride to Dover and Calais from London, with a young lady I had met on the Île de France. I had pl
anned my trip to India for over a year. All of this propelled me onward. At about 3:30 I said I was going to leave.

  He stood and looked out a window. Then he turned and gave me a withering look that said I was unworthy of everything he had shown me. I hurriedly gathered up my notes and asked him to come with me to my room and then to the train. He reluctantly consented, and we walked to The Druids’ Inn in silence—two awkward figures, one embarrassed and nervous, the other smoldering with unspoken thoughts. I cannot remember what we said to each other then, just the feeling of it.

  I can still see him waving as my train pulled away from the station, an angry figure growing smaller against the shimmering perspective of that marvelous little town.

  What is repression? How does it work so insidiously in our lives? Why can’t I recall what was going through my mind as I raced away from Burningbush? I only remember consoling myself during the trip to London that most of his other students must have done what I was doing.

  1 Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, of San Francisco’s California Institute of Asian Studies, my authority on Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, explained that shava is the Sanskrit word for corpse. Shakti is the creative, female, time-involving, world-manifesting aspect of the Supreme Being. Shiva is the God of Destruction, Redemption, and Liberation

  Epilogue

  BUT THE STORY DID not quite end there (indeed in many respects it is not over yet). During the following week a remarkable incident occurred in the cathedral of Rheims, one which seemed related to my adventures in Burningbush.

  In London I met my companion of the Île de France, who was surrendering herself to the surprises of a European summer. She had rented a Morris Minor and was a jaunty chauffeur for a merry ride to Canterbury. We had not been together for more than fifteen minutes before I began to relate my story of the previous two days. Perhaps it was the shock of those events to my nervous system or the lack of sleep but I told the story in two or three different versions. Her woman’s eye for the absurd and her general good spirits cast a warm spell around me and I began to sort out the deceptive complexity of that brief visit to Scotland.