"Lights," said my father and for a moment, except for the
phosphorescent hands of the clock on the wall, the room went black.
With a flip of a switch, he suddenly reappeared: a tall,
thin man with thick glasses, standing beside the glowing enlarger.
As a child I sat for hours under a dim yellow light,
mesmerized by images appearing on paper submerged in trays filled
with smelly liquid. Yellow, my father taught me, has no apparent
effect on the light-sensitive specks coating photographic paper.
The unorthodox images which leapt from the walls of our house seemed
as eerie as the darkroom experience itself: there was a photograph
of a llama's head as viewed through a distorting fish-eye lens,
there was a photograph of a shredded poster of a man's face,
and there were many abstract photos which seemed to defy description.
My father, a production manager at a New York publishing company,
perhaps saw the world in a different light than his peers.
My mother was an elementary school teacher with black hair and
sometimes kind, sometimes intense eyes. A generous and caring woman,
she put her career on hold for more than a decade to raise a family.
She met my father in upstate New York on a hike sponsored by an
outing club.
When I was fourteen, I sensed that my father was growing tired,
detached, and depressed, but I did not understand why. He expressed
abstractions better than emotions, and found it difficult to vent
the angers and frustrations which had accumulated from work and from home.
Nor did I understand that my mother freely gave to me what she,
in her youth, had sorely missed: love. Oblivious to the magnitude
of her workload--she taught full-time and was pursuing a Master's degree--
I grew angry with her as a teenager partly because she seemed
insecure and overbearing, and partly because she expected me,
my brother, and my father to help keep the house clean in the way
that she wanted.
Despite my family's love for the outdoors, for our dog,
and for one another, the emotional fabric that bound us together
often seemed on the verge of ripping apart. And the problems
only intensified as my brother and I grew older.
Two-and-a-half-years my elder, my brother was an avid backpacker
and rock climber with jet-black hair, Gandhi glasses, and a gentle
but determined disposition. He too felt that something in our family
was "out of whack," and we occasionally discussed what we would
do when we left home. But unlike me, he had no one to buffer him
from my parents who, I was starting to discover, were only human.
I was a sensitive child. I was so sensitive that the sounds of someone
chewing made me upset. I was a light sleeper. I was also a slob,
a knee-jerk rebel, and something of a nerd when it came to doing
things like making friends with girls. Nonetheless, I decided
that I could work out whatever I needed to work out in a healthier
environment than at home; the countdown to the last day of high school,
after which I planned to set out on my own, began when I was
around fifteen. Meanwhile, I read a lot and spent time with friends,
some of whom also enjoyed hiking and bicycling.
In the summer of 1976, when I was sixteen, I bicycled from the White
Mountains of New Hampshire to Boston with people from an outing club.
One morning, as I watched my traveling companions prepare their daily dose
of hallucinogens, I realized that I wanted to be part of their fellowship.
The desire, however, was checked by a gut-level impulse to avoid drugs,
so Jim, a sinewy guy stooped over a pot of boiling morning glory seeds,
turned me on instead to The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way
of Knowledge. This was a popular account of Carlos Castaneda's
purported apprenticeship with Yaqui Indian medicine man Juan Matus,
or Don Juan.
From the cover of the book peered a menacing and surreal painting
of a crow.
"But a crow isn't always a crow," said Jim softly, paraphrasing Don
Juan as he stirred the seeds. "Sometimes it's a powerful sorcerer
in disguise."
Intrigued by the paradox of the crow, I plowed through The Teachings of Don
Juan and through Castaneda's A Separate Reality and Journey To Ixtlan.
At summer's end, still drugless and clueless as to whether crows
were birds or sorcerers, I left Boston clutching a Castaneda book.
Back in New York, I chose to see the world less through the eyes
of an eleventh grader taking honors physics and history,
and more through the eyes of a sorcerer's apprentice.
I incorporated into my daily routine Don Juan's recommendations.
As an exercise in humility, I spoke aloud to plants. To *see* beyond
society's description of reality, I tried to stop my thoughts.
To expand my awareness beyond the confines of the waking state,
I sought to wake within a dream.
My interest in what lay beyond the scope of traditional reality led
to an interest in what lay beyond the scope of traditional education,
and, that fall, I thought about switching to a public experimental
high school founded in the late '60s. I firmly believed that I
would thrive in a world without grades, attendance taking, tests,
and requirements. In January, 1977, with the guidance of my brother,
I managed to persuade my reluctant parents to let me join.
I chose to continue taking physics and history at the traditional school;
other subjects I took at the non-traditional school where,
in a creative writing class, I wrote:
Teachers force us to perceive,
The surface world of reason:
"A tree is but a pole with leaves,
Whose habits change each season."
I thrived within a self-designed, academically rigorous educational program,
but experienced no breakthroughs in my search for Hidden Realms
of Perception until the following summer. The experience came when I
was working ten-hour days and five-and-a-half day weeks on a farm
in southern New Hampshire. In my spare time, I was designing
and building an electricity-producing windmill, which ended up
towering some twenty feet above Onyx, one of the tallest cows.
Farm-crew members sometimes walked out to the hay fields to get high.
One night, after smoking marijuana, I fell asleep and later saw,
above where I lay, a cow, its head swaying gently to and fro.
Though I thought I was awake it was but a dream, for when I woke
from "waking," the cow had disappeared. This experience led me
to believe that like Mr. Castaneda's mentor, I could consciously
direct my actions within the context of a dream.
Back in New York, I became editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper.
I soon learned that I had a knack for inspiring and for managing
a team. I was well regarded by my teachers and by my peers,
and I had many friends. I could have continued my studies at
a prestigious university, but I longed for a mystical quest.
I dreamt that I walked silently across a vast desert plain. I longed
to experience that which lay beyond the surface world of reason.
I dreamt that I flew over desert chaparral into an infinite orange horizon.
I longed for a wisdom that was secret, magical, ancient. I decided
to hitchhike, alone, to the Sonoran Desert in Mexico to find
a mystical teacher, a *brujo*, who was just like Don Juan. I planned
to leave on the day after high school graduation.
Meanwhile, I continued to read the Castaneda books and to experiment
with consciousness. One time I attempted to raise my right arm
without consciously lifting it. I wanted it to levitate on its own.
I soon felt a tingling in the arm, but it did not rise. Finally, I lifted
it on purpose. Then, as part of the experiment, I suggested to myself
that the arm remain lifted. As long as I repeated the suggestion,
the arm remained where it was. Afterwards, I could not recall
how long the state of mind had lasted.
My brother shared with me an interest in rising above the limitations
of home, school, religion, society, and reality. By the time
I turned him on to the Castaneda books, he had already studied
Einstein's special theory of relativity and The Tao Of Physics.
In the spring of 1978, when he was studying physics at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, he told me that he had met
an English professor who was an expert on the Castaneda books.
He knew that my quest for a teacher would begin in roughly two months,
when I would graduate from high school. He wanted to help me.
He suggested that I attend the Castaneda expert's free lecture series on
meditation in Manhattan.
I wondered why a Castaneda expert would live on Long Island rather
than in a remote desert in Mexico, but my brother's enthusiasm
was sincere. "Besides," I thought as we rode the train into the city,
"anything I learn now will only help me on the journey."
We arrived at a building on 33rd Street. A rickety elevator took
us to the third floor, where the sweet and spicy aroma of incense
wafted through the air. I saw a row of sneakers by the elevator
door and wondered if they had been responsible for the incense.
After placing our sneakers in line with the others, we walked past
a sign which read "Yoga Life Perfection." A young woman with long,
black hair and a playful, impish grin sold books and incense in
the hallway. She recognized my brother and smiled at us. She wore
a sari.
We entered a medium-sized room where a smoldering stick
of incense and two unlit candles rested on a table up front.
Two young women stood together near the back of the room.
One had long brown hair and dreamy eyes. The other had a face
and figure like a model. Their faces were flushed and aglow.
They also wore saris.
"Too bad I'm not gonna be sticking around New York," I thought,
gazing at them.
In the audience sat two women in their sixties, dressed entirely
in black. They sat near a man in his thirties, with the frame
of a metal pyramid resting squarely on his head.
We sat by the two sari-clad women. They were clearly excited
about something. They used words like inspiration, aspiration,
concentration, visualization, meditation, reincarnation, and perfection.
My brother, too, seemed excited, as if something extraordinary
and wonderful were about to occur. With each passing minute,
I found myself growing more curious, more impatient, and more excited.
Fifteen minutes after the talk was scheduled to begin, the women
in saris stopped talking and looked up.
I looked up too and saw a tall man with a projecting nose and
lush locks. His long strides seemed synchronized with his arms,
which swung like perfectly conflicting pendulums; this motion
seemed to propel him into the room. He sat on the table facing
the audience, folded his legs in the pretzel-like posture seen
in Buddha statues, and introduced himself as Dr. Frederick Lenz.
He explained that he had another name: Atmananda. Then he lit
the candles and asked us to drop our preconceived notions because,
"meditation is beyond thought."
"Thought is like a car," he said in a smooth, charming voice.
"You can drive it to California. But if you want to cross the ocean,
you will need an alternate means of transportation. If you want
to cross the sea of consciousness, you will need meditation."
Though his metaphors were new to me, they seemed to point
the way beyond the surface world of reason. He used words
like guru, avatar, warrior, power, power spots, personal power,
moments of power, spiritual power, psychic power, ecstasy, enlightenment,
cosmic love, transcendental, supreme, Nirvana, and the Infinite.
When he said it was time to meditate, I was surprised
that he had been speaking for over forty minutes. It had seemed like five.
"Now extend your index fingers and close your eyes," Atmananda instructed.
I squinted to see if anyone else was peeking. From what I could tell,
the twenty or so people obeyed him.
"Now say 'me' out loud and touch your chest."
My "me" was muffled by the group's "me".
"You are not only pointing to your chest," Atmananda explained,
"but to your heart chakra, one of seven psychic energy centers
associated with the subtle body. Concentrating on a chakra is an easy
way to begin crossing the sea of consciousness."
So we sat there, drifting, and though I tried to stop my thoughts
and feel the throbbing pulse of my heart chakra, I found myself
checking out the women in saris.
"Very good," he said after about five minutes. Then he suggested
that we sit back, relax, and ask questions.
There was something hauntingly familiar about this confident,
well-spoken, young professor. Perhaps it was the way his chin
jutted forward, the rich timbre of his voice, or his seeming
interest in helping people that reminded me of the cartoon character
Dudley-Do-Right. I felt drawn to him. I found myself staring into
his full moon, gripping eyes. I found myself seeking his attention.
"Can a person be healed by meditating?" I asked, only partly
concerned that I had a cold.
He locked my attention with those eyes...I felt slightly dizzy...it
was not unpleasant...it felt as though I were floating...my vision
blurred...things went fuzzy and white...it appeared as though it
were snowing...
"Am I having a vision?" I wondered and immediately the "snow" vanished.
Just then Atmananda seemed unreal, like a superhero from a cosmic
comic-strip that had been cut, enlarged, and inserted into the room.
When he smiled at me, I had the uncanny sense that he knew what I
had felt and seen. Then he left, flanked by the women in saris.