by Marco Vassi
“That’s happened, you know,” he went on. “A few Masters have done it just to show off. Lie down in the middle of the morning in front of a room full of students, tell them that he was going to leave the body permanently, and then, in the prime of health, just close his eyes, reduce his breathing, and die.”
Martin involuntarily pulled himself up to a half-sitting position. Robert’s laconic description had acted like a puppeteer’s string pulling him to a state of vacant attention. Death was something he thought about only in terms of the effect it would have on other people. The concept, unexamined, was encrusted with images of funerals, grieving family, friends who quickly forgot, and the choking smell of too many flowers kept in a small room for several days. Its metaphysical implications never grazed him for he had always been too healthy to truly feel its immediate presence. The idea, just implanted by Robert’s offhand report, that one might choose simply to cease to exist, and to do it as a sort of object-lesson for students, to do it whimsically and consciously, assaulted him with all the force of an outrage.
“That’s just another one of those extravagant tales, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Oh no,” Robert replied, “there have been several well-documented accounts. One as recently as four years ago.”
“But that’s just a form of suicide!” Robert protested, swinging himself up to a sitting position, his legs dangling down over the edge of the platform.
“Only if you make a distinction between life and death,” Robert said. “To one who has understood the true nature of reality, there is no difference between the two.”
A peculiar thing took place in Martin’s mind. On one level he responded with his usual cantankerous refusal to accept anything which fell outside of Aristotelian logic. A was A, had always been A, would always be A, and could never be B. Yet, on another level, some tension in him relaxed and a delicious vision stole through him. He saw himself sitting in the steam room and yet, somehow, disappearing. The thing he called himself was, miraculously, not operating. Yet nothing changed. His body continued to function, Robert continued to exist, the walls, the steam, the club, the city, the planet, the entire universe, went on completely unchanged. For an instant he saw the truth of what Robert had said. It made absolutely no difference to anything whether one was alive or dead. Everything went on as before.
The sheer unacceptability of it, however, almost immediately drove the vision from his mind. The abrupt voice of rational cynicism reminded him, in a raucous whisper, that the essential difference between his condition now and the condition of his death was that in the latter he would be dead, an eternal state of nothingness. On the brink of that panic Martin pulled himself together and returned solidly to his sense of himself as a body. He weighed a hundred and sixty-three pounds, he was sweating, he was thirsty. This was real. Robert was an amiable nut who was filled with Oriental gothic tales, not to be taken seriously.
The two men sat silently, side by side, one above the other, for some time. The space was without sound except for an occasional drop of water falling from the ceiling and the periodic whoosh of fresh steam erupting into the room. Each began to sweat copiously, the pores of the body opening and water running out, cleansing, purifying. Each entered a deep, meditative mood, aware of little else besides breathing and the automatic functions of the body. Heartbeat, muscle tone, thought, circulation, balance. They entered a mood of kinesthetic sobriety, much like two truckers who spend an evening hunched over their beers, yet without the truculence, the simmering secret search for a target.
Finally, Martin surfaced. “Do you really believe that?” he asked, “I mean, about life and death being the same thing?”
Robert uncoiled his rounded back and stretched his arms up. His spine cracked in four different places. Martin could almost see the sparks of energy from the spots where the cartilege was dislodged. He momentarily wondered whether the phenomenon was healthy and ran quickly through the memory log of his physiology studies, but couldn’t retrieve anything pertinent.
“It’s not a belief,” Robert replied, his voice very low with relaxation. “It’s not like saying that black is white. Of course, from one level of perception, they are vastly different states. I guess what is meant is that a person should view both with equal indifference, not try to hold on to life as being more meaningful than death.”
“You sound like you’re not sure.”
“Well, I’m still a student. I’ve had glimpses into the truth of this teaching, but I’m very far from being a realized man.” He chuckled, to himself, as though at some esoteric joke. “Very far indeed.”
“Come on!” Martin protested. “I’ve seen you practically crawl up your own asshole. You do things with your body that I’d never even dreamed of doing. You look like much more than student to me.”
“On the level of hatha yoga, the development of physical harmony and strength, I am already an adept, that’s true. But as I said, that’s only the vehicle for something much more profound.”
“The life and death thing?”
Robert did not answer for a long time. Martin could almost hear him thinking. The yoga teacher stood up and his head disappeared into the mist so that when he spoke the voice seemed to come from a headless body.
“Has something happened in your life recently?” he asked. “Forgive me for prying, but it’s just that I sense a significant change in you. I’ve been wanting to really talk to you for a long time, but you were somehow closed at a very deep level, even though you’ve always been friendly enough on a superficial level.”
For a moment, Martin was taken aback, and then he shrugged. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it shows, especially to someone who’s spent a lot of time with me for almost three years.” He ran the middle fingers of both hands into the hallows of his eyes and wiped away the film of perspiration which was at the very edge of condensing into drops.
“My wife and I split up two months ago,” he went on. He had no conscious intention of saying more, but found the words sliding out from between his lips. “There wasn’t even a cause, I mean, nothing that you could bring up in a divorce trial, although she refused to have a baby for four or five more years and that became an arguing point. I guess it began to go sour when I let myself be swayed by her restlessness and quit my job. I was happy as a teacher. But there was the excitement of Europe and, when we got back, the appeal of the city. I’d always lived a kind of sheltered small town life and for a while I got drunk on New York. Julia began making a fabulous salary working for a man we’d met in Yugoslavia who told her she had all the makings of a high-powered executive. I got this job and began making more than three times what I earned as a high school instructor. So we lived high off the hog. And . . . I don’t know, I guess in the busyness and glitter we just lost sight of . . . “ His voice trailed off. “Well, maybe we didn’t really have a common vision to begin with. And it just took five years for us to realize it. We reached that point of not communicating. We found excuses to stay away from the apartment. I began to suspect that she was having an affair. And I began to think of having one myself. And then one evening we got into another argument over having a child. I said I wanted one. She said she didn’t I don’t imagine that was anything more than a symbol. But the anger provided us with the energy to do what we needed to. I packed my bags, and moved into a hotel.”
Martin sat silently for a few minutes, his perspiration now coming as much from his outburst as from the steam. Then he wiped his forehead and laughed, a harsh brief expulsion of air. “It’s peculiar,” he said, “summing up five years of my life in a paragraph.”
“Babba says that when we die we see that our whole life has been nothing but a brief thought.”
“That’s an odd form of consolation,” Martin said.
“It’s just his way of reminding us that this drama we live out from day to day is not very important.”
“What else
is there?”
“God,” Robert said.
“Another odd form of consolation.”
“Sometimes it’s reassuring, sometimes it’s not. The point is that it’s a reality. In fact, it’s the only reality. There is only God. And within that, there’s just a grab-bag of details, none intrinsically more interesting than any other.”
“You really believe that?” Martin asked. “Again, it’s not a matter of belief. You either see it or you don’t.”
“And do you see it? Do you see God like that? What is it, a kind of screen on which we’re the movie?”
“That’s one metaphor. Every religion, every person, has their own image of God. But the great teachers remind us over and over again that any image we make of God is not God. God isn’t a thing, or a person, or even an experience. God is . . . “ Now it was Roberts turn to fall silent. He turned and walked to the other end of the steam room, becoming completely invisible.
“God is . . . ?” Martin repeated.
“God is,” Robert concluded. “That’s about as far as language can go. After that, there is only realization, actually knowing yourself as God. And for that, you can stand on your head for a thousand years and not necessarily come any closer to that truth.”
“Then why bother?”
“Because it’s possible,” Robert replied, his disembodied voice wafting through the steam. For an instant Martin sensed a peculiar parallel to the experience of Moses talking to a burning bush. “There are people who have realized themselves as God, who live as God.”
“Jesus,” Martin offered.
“He was one. Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Ramana Maharshi. There have been quite a number.”
“Who’s around today?” Martin asked, openly cynical.
“Babba is one,” Robert said simply.
“Babba. You’ve mentioned that name a couple of times now. Is he one of these Indians whose pictures you see plastered everywhere?”
Robert did not answer and Martin waited several minutes before speaking again. He was beginning to feel the effects of the steam deep in his body. It was almost like getting drunk. He had told Robert about his breakup with Julia and now the two of them were discussing God. It was rather strange, and interesting, and exhilarating. Martin felt a loosening in his solar plexus, the beginning of a relaxation of a knot that he now saw must have been a very long time in forming.
“Excuse me,” he said at last, “I didn’t mean to insult your teacher.”
“Oh no, no, nothing like that,” Robert replied. “I was just wondering whether . . . well, whether you might not want to come with me tonight. I’m going to Babba’s. It’s an open meeting.”
Martin’s instinctive response was to refuse. For years he had trained himself to turn down all forms of invitation, counteracting his impulse to step out into relative chaos. Numberless times he had felt the calloused hand of routine grab him by the shoulder when he would have preferred to fall into a space of unstructured time. During his daily workout and subsequent steam a kind of lilting melody would play, like a randomly fingered turn on a shepherd’s flute, luring him into a night of pathless pleasure. Such a course was almost invariably festooned with vague intimations of erotic surprises, but it was not sexual liberty per se he really desired; simply the liberty itself, the chance to be guided only by chance.
Now he hesitated and felt the weight of all the times he had denied himself access to the void, to the formlessness of virgin encounter. Going with a yoga teacher to see an Indian holy man was the least likely thing he might have imagined himself doing when free of the need to report home each night. But because it offered itself in the context of his perception of the pattern of refusal, he decided that he would do it.
“I don’t know . . . “ he said, extending himself tentatively.
“It’s at nine o’clock,” Robert said. “We’ll have time to have dinner and talk beforehand.”
“What do people do there? Maybe I won’t fit in.”
“Oh, there’s nothing to do. We sit around. Sometimes we sing. Sometimes we are just silent. Then Babba gives a talk and answers questions.”
“Well, all right.”
Just then there was a loud knock at the door of the steam room. A false falsetto voice called out. “Can I turn the steam off, or would you two rather stay all covered up and cozy?”
Freddie, one of the attendants, was an overtly gay man of twenty-four, short and chubby. He generally gave the impression of being asexual, so his homosexual veneer was taken as an artifact of identification to keep himself from facing his essential lack of desire or desirability. He was destined, if he maintained the same manner long enough, to evolve into a classic auntie, possibly complete with frills on his cuffs. His bit, acerbic and fluffy, ranged from the irrelevant to the amusing and was irritating only when one was obsessed with a task or had a headache. He had been at the club a year while he took courses in watch repair. His goal was to own a shop which handled rare and antique clocks.
“Turn it off, Freddie,” Martin called out.
“Can I peek?” Freddie shrilled.
“If watching a conversation turns you on, come right in,” Martin said as he slid the door open. He had padded quickly to the sliding door and pushed it aside precisely to give the attendant a start.
But Freddie was waiting for him, and Martin found himself no more than a foot away from the theatrically leering man. Freddie slid his glance down Martin’s front until it came to rest at his crotch.
“Some conversation,” Freddie said turning gracefully on one heel and sauntering away. “I’ve read all about that body language.”
Martin smiled after the retreating figure. Unable and unwilling to probe the complexity of Freddie’s persona, he took the man totally at face value, which served perfectly as the adjustment which allowed them to work in the same place with a minimum of friction. The chubby man’s style was so consciously outrageous that it never would have occurred to Martin that it was a valid and viable way to speak the truth of one’s plain perceptions. Never having been in contact with any urge to fondle another man’s genitals, Martin could only view the suggestion of such a thing as a baroque form of humor.
At that instant, Robert put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. Martin winced violently, his entire right side evincing a sharp, momentary spasm.
“Oh, sorry,” Robert said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He pulled his hand back gently.
“Oooohhh wheeeee!” Freddie trilled as he waddled down the tiled hallway into the locker room. He was by this time projecting his inner states to a vast audience far more sensitive and appreciative than anything one might ever expect at the Palace.
Martin and Robert stepped into the walkway. “Well,” Martin said somewhat briskly. “Shower and then close the place down. The night crew will be here to clean up in a few minutes.”
“I’ll meet you out front in fifteen minutes then?” Robert asked. “What sort of food do you like?”
Martin shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s your show. Why don’t you choose?”
Robert smiled, and the two men went into the shower room, taking a stalls at opposite ends. As Martin lathered his body, and sluiced the perspiration from his skin, he thought of a snake shedding, of that delightful process whereby the accumulations of a year are simply eased off one’s body. If it could only be that easy for people, he thought, and suddenly, unaccountably, a feeling of happiness bubbled from his solar plexus and up into his chest. The water cascaded over his head and down his face and he opened his eyes to find that the shower room seemed five times brighter than it ordinarily did, as though a brilliant new bulb had just gone on.
All the while, Robert, who knew that there wasn’t anything existing which isn’t miraculous, had visions of the cosmic snake swallowing its own tail. He said the name “Babba” to himself, barely whispering, and then smiled.
>
The conventional world had lost all reality for Gail Goddard. All that mattered was the shimmering aura of color that surrounded her perceptions. The dominant tone was blue, a bright mantle of light which blessed everything she saw the way a summer sky without clouds transforms the earth beneath it. She sat in the back seat of a taxi and felt as though she were being wafted aloft on a glider, skimming mountain peaks on cushiony thermals. Her nipples rubbed against the inside of her blouse and her thighs chafed pleasantly against each other. Her entire body sang with the vitality of youth and well-being.
She was twenty-seven years old, as thin as a model, with just a touch of plumpness about the buttocks, a soft swelling that lifted men off balance when they looked at her but which caused her no little grief in trying somehow to remove it. Her yellow-green eyes sparkled in a face that would have driven Botticelli to his canvas to capture the high cheekbones and androgynous mouth, the upper lip firm and precise, the lower lip suggestive of a pout.
She inhabited a mood of total euphoria, one which her day at school hadn’t been able to faze. She taught fourth grade in a public school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a Hassidic neighborhood lately inhabited by Puerto Ricans. The sidewalks resembled a divorce court, with the two ethnic groups arguing why they should be allowed to live separately even though they shared the same block. The ultra-orthodox Jews sent their children to their own schools, so among Gail’s charges, thirty-two eleven-year-olds, many barely spoke English. Her job often involved a good deal of screaming and threatening, for she had not yet reached that level of maturity which elicits spontaneous respect from children. Also, she felt she had to uphold the official educational dogma, and so dutifully taught the uncomprehending urchins all about the French and Indian War, the formal structure of the United States government, and other bits of esoterica.
Were it left to her, she would ground them firmly in the scope of the English language and mathematics, and devote the rest of the time to music and dance and games. Yet she was too unsure of herself to be so daring, and in any case, such radicalism would have cost her her job. So, like all her colleagues, she acquiesced in the stupidity.