Three months into the cross-country bicycle trek, I pulled off the road
west of Walden, Colorado. I was stuck. The problem was not so much
the physical journey. True, I was towing additional weight because
towns were farther apart and because Nunatak was no longer a pup.
But my leg muscles were rock solid from the miles in Massachusetts,
New York, the southern tip of Canada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, and I felt confident I could
ride to the coast.
The problem was more the inner journey. The more I thought
about Rama, the more I understood. The more I understood,
the more I wanted to write. If I wrote, I might publish.
If I published, I would betray Rama. If I didn't publish,
I would betray those whom I might have warned. I thought,
"Damned if I do, damned if I don't." I became emotionally exhausted.
I decided to end the bike trip, return to school, and take a break
from the past.
But I still wanted to believe that Rama was a powerful incarnation
and that I was an advanced soul of sorts. I did not yet understand
that only when I checked my desire to soar, like Icarus, too close
to the sun would the impasse disappear, and I would accept who Rama
was and who he was not.
That night on a bed of wildflowers, I petted the husky and gazed
at the canopy of stars. A warm breeze carried the scent of pine.
I felt at peace. I was proud and relieved that I had used my rational
side to alter the course of my bike trip when my world was in need
of balance. I looked forward to hitchhiking west with the dog.
I looked forward to school. I took slow, deep breaths and
listened to the silence of the valley. My thoughts ebbed into
a sea of calm. Flecks of starlight grew brilliant and close.
I felt complete. I lost awareness of the passing of time.
Suddenly, I realized I had been meditating. I felt surprised.
I had not consciously meditated since leaving Rama one year before.
Yet the state of mind felt oddly familiar, and I tried to
understand why.
I thought about the meaning of meditation. To meditate, I supposed,
was to concentrate and reflect on thoughts, images, or phenomena.
It was to work in a garden or stand in a subway and listen to
currents of the mind. It was to lose track of time completely,
absorbed in memories of a friend. It was to gaze down the highway
of light where the sun lit into the sea. There were as many ways
to meditate, it seemed, as there were facets on the jewel of the
human condition.
It occurred to me that I had meditated on the first day of
the bike trip at Walden Pond. I had become immersed in watching
waves rise and fall and in listening to them lap the shore.
Their pattern suggested a rhythm unlike any I had followed.
When a friend asked which route I would take, I smiled.
My plan was to follow the setting sun.
Now, stretched out on a sleeping bag in northern Colorado, I realized
that I had started and ended the bike trip in spontaneous meditation.
I recalled other times during the journey that I had meditated.
I gazed, for instance, at the bands of bright color which arched
from drenched cow fields to the luminous Wisconsin sky.
I gazed at the blur of the Minnesota pavement when the wind was
strong and at my tail. I pondered an encounter with a young,
six-pack-carrying Native American who, when I mentioned the spirit
of South Dakota's land, told me he had sold his for a bundle
of cash. I contemplated an encounter with a Vietnam veteran
in Rapid City who said his death was near and whose shirt read,
"AGENT ORANGE KILLS." I meditated on the meaning of a bumper
sticker in Wyoming that read, "MY OTHER CAR IS A HORSE."
I reflected on Nuna's response when I encouraged her to help pull
the rig. The nearly full-grown husky had sat down and scratched
her ear.
The primary focus of the bike trip meditations, though, had been on my
years with Rama. I had meditated, for instance, on the LSD trips.
During the intense rush of the drug, my acquired knowledge of myself
and of the world around me peeled away like layers of an onion.
It was as if I saw the world through the eyes of a child. Hours later,
as the effects of the acid began to wear off, it was as if I saw
the world through the eyes of a young man whose self-confidence had not
yet been shaken. Rama, who observed me during each trip, mostly let
me re-form the layers which made up "me" on my own. The next wave
of subjects in his chemical experiments would not be as fortunate
(see Epilogue).
I meditated during the bike trip on how, over the years,
Rama flipped between "caretaker personalities" more frequently
and how, starting in 1984, the flipping grew sudden and extreme.
This unnerving phenomenon could be seen in the stages of his
LSD trip. Perhaps, inadvertently, he had designed a multi-leveled,
persona-flipping program of "sophisticated spirituality" to mask
advanced symptoms of schizophrenia.
I meditated on what had happened the night I left the Centre.
When I followed my gut feelings and spoke honestly to Rama and to
the inner circle, Rama responded by turning my brother against me.
It did not matter to me, during the meditations on my brother,
that Rama's childhood had been difficult. Rama had told me that his
father was "power hungry" and "cold" and that his mother was "wacky"
and "liked to take drugs." Nor did it matter that Rama had probably
sought to fill the vacuum of his early years with promiscuity,
LSD, devotion to a guru, money, expensive cars and property,
and consummate power over hundreds of peoples' lives. Nor did
it matter that his confusing set of personalities had probably
developed from a simultaneous belief that he was a hustler on
the one hand, and a living legend and god incarnate on the other.
Nor did it matter that I wanted to forgive him.
When I meditated on the casual, diabolical way in which he pitted
my brother against me, my understanding and forgiveness vanished.
I tensed my gut and wrestled with a primal image.
The water was red. I shuddered. I saw my brother clearly.
He had an open, bleeding heart. I knew how that felt. I saw him
treading water. There was no bottom. I knew how that felt too.
A great white shark circled, rising effortlessly from the depths.
I clenched my fists. There was nothing I could do. Dan could not
hear me.
I meditated on what had happened later that night, after Rama
rooted his divisive legacy in my brother's mind. When Rama pointed
his finger at me, I knew that he was trying to intimidate me.
I also knew that he was trying to maintain some semblance of control.
But I feared that he might be a sorcerer. I intentionally visualized
sparks and bolts of protective lightning radiating from the bicycle key.
I understood that the colorful explosions were emanating from the world
of my imagination. But that did not stop me from *seeing* them.
The scene unfolding before me was, after all, not just another ending
to a Castaneda book. It was real. And I needed all the inspiration I
could generate.
The meditations during the bicycle journey helped me comprehend
and come to terms with an earlier journey. When I was sixteen,
I sought fellowship, Truth, and that which lies beneath
the "surface" world of reason. I came to believe that I could
find these things by studying with a sorcerer in a desert
in Mexico, by gazing at an underexposed photograph of a *fully*
enlightened Indian man, and by following the etiquette of a warm,
funny, brilliant, persona-flipping man with a Ph.D. in English.
I later looked to Gandhi and to William Shirer for answers.
But as I rode west from Concord, Massachusetts, I found a teacher
inside myself, and the lessons worked for me.
I learned that it is important not to follow someone blindly,
even if he is truly childlike, humble, self-giving, and "Self-Realized";
even if he is a friend; and particularly if he is reluctant
to openly admit that he can be seduced by his power over others.
Genuine teachers encourage their students to question them throughout
the *entire* apprenticeship, because genuine teachers accept their
own imperfect human nature.
I learned that it is important to balance the mystical with
the rational. Meditation tends to open the mind to suggestion.
The art of the mystic seems to be, therefore, to know when to let go,
be spontaneous, and open up to the universe, and when to gain control,
use the power of reason, and protect the body, mind, and soul.
I learned, too, that it is not necessary to focus on a leader,
a philosophy, or a technique to contact deep mystical currents.
By facing intense sunlight and storms during the bike trek, I was
in direct contact with the ancient, transcendental kingdom of nature.
By observing my thoughts clarify as they projected and pulsed over fields,
lakes, and mountains, I drew closer to the land, to the creation.
By wrestling with winds born of colossal power, I was forced to make
constant leaps of faith to merely carry on. But now, sitting by
the Eskimo dog, I contemplated the awesome blackness of the night.
I was unaware that the bicycle journey itself had been a natural
expression of mysticism.
The following day, I ascended the purple peaks of the Continental Divide.
The sky was clear; the wind, calm. A sign indicated that waters
to the east flowed toward the Atlantic, and to the west, the Pacific.
It did not indicate that the waters might return and follow
a different path. I dismounted the 12-speed. Fragments of Rama's
deepest hooks still lurked in my heart. But I was doing better now.
The healing process had begun. Facing the east while walking
backwards to the west, I quickly retracted my thumb whenever a vehicle
or driver seemed unsuitable or unsafe to take me for a ride.