The Kingdom of Shivas Irons

by Michael Murphy

  “You’re good to see me,” I said. “Nadia’s been urging me for years to meet you.”

  He leaned back in the rocking chair, his hands holding its arm rests, with a genial squint that produced vertical creases in each cheek. “She has written me three times about you,” he said. “Three times! You have made a large impression on her. Remind me now. When did you meet?”

  “In ’87. In Edinburgh. In her necromanteion!”

  “Ah, yes. Yes.” He nodded. “And you had a visitor. She told me.” An engaging smile appeared on his face, accentuating the creases in his cheeks. “How many times have you seen her since?”

  “Just twice. In ’89 and ’92.”

  Though he didn’t alter his posture, Ryzhkov seemed to settle more deeply into his chair. “I must apologize for having so little time.” He folded his hands in his lap. “How can I help you?”

  Realizing that he had knowledge of things related to my search for Shivas Irons that few people on the planet possessed, and that this visit might be brief, I had prepared my questions carefully. “Nadia wrote to you about our visitation,” I began. “That was seven years ago, and still it haunts me. She says today, as she did then, that she’s never experienced anything like it. Do you have any sense of what it was?”

  Placing his hands on the arms of the chair, he held my gaze for a moment. “That is all? You must have other questions. Tell me something about Shivas Irons.”

  “Shivas Irons?” I hesitated. “As I said in my letters, I met him in ’56, wrote a book about him, then started this search for him in ’87. That’s how I met Nadia. Her friend Buck Hannigan, the mathematician in Edinburgh, had been interested in him, too, and had begun to think that he and his teacher were doing something extraordinary.…” Again I hesitated, uncertain how to proceed.

  A stillness deeper than the quiet in the room was beginning to gather around us. “Our language is poor,” he said, almost in a whisper. “But do your best. In one of your letters, you said they were trying to realize, what? ‘A new kind of embodiment?’ That is abstract. Can you tell me things that suggest what Irons and his teacher were actually doing?”

  “What they are doing.” I amended his question. “Hannigan and I have heard from people who might have seen Irons during the last few years. Though every one of these reports is a little odd, they give us reason to think he’s still alive. But what are Irons and MacDuff actually doing? That’s hard to say. It’s easier to guess what they’ve tried for. They believed St. Paul when he said, ‘All flesh is not the same flesh.’ I wrote you about this. In their view, human nature isn’t finished yet. It’s still developing, with the potential for new consciousness and—well, this is the most difficult part—a new kind of embodiment. Unlikely, or far-fetched, as it seems, there is reason to think they’ve tried to do it.”

  Ryzhkov rocked in his chair, gazing steadily into my eyes. “ ‘Behold, I show you a mystery.’ ” He quoted as I had from First Corinthians. “ ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. The second man is the Lord from heaven.’ ” The words were from the St. James version of the New Testament, rather than an Orthodox text. He had recited them to confirm our mutual acquaintance with St. Paul’s language of glorification.

  Stunned by this recitation, I didn’t respond at once. “Did you know,” he asked, “that in a letter near the end of his life, Dostoyevsky said that he and his ‘young friend,’ Vladimir Solovyov were no longer primarily interested in the salvation of the soul, but instead the resurrection of the body?”

  “Solovyov the philosopher!”

  “They were friends. They went to monasteries together. Solovyov nursed him after some of his epileptic fits, and was the model for Alyosha—and Ivan, perhaps—in The Brothers Karamazov.”

  “Dostoyevsky used that term, ‘the resurrection of the body’? What did he mean?”

  “Behold! I give you another mystery.” Again Ryzhkov cited First Corinthians. “It is not certain what he meant. But you know the Orthodox doctrine of theosis, that human nature, all of it, including the body, can be lifted closer and closer to God. He must have had that in mind. He and Solovyov were not the only Russians to think that all of our parts have a spiritual future. You’ve heard of Fyodorov and Merezhkovsky?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “They had seeds of the same idea. Before the Bolsheviks, our intellectual climate here was more receptive to such a vision than Western Europe’s, perhaps because the Resurrection is more prominent in Orthodox faith than the Crucifixion. Following Christ, ‘we all can be changed. We all can be raised a spiritual body. And this mortal must put on immortality.’ ” Recollecting himself, he gazed at the rug. The room was filled with an extraordinary silence.

  Following his example, I looked at the beautifully woven rug. Its reds and golds were merging so that every one of its lines led me toward the intersecting triangles at its center. “But continue,” he said. “You have more to say. It will help if you can tell me, item by item, what leads you to think that Irons and his teacher are doing something unusual.”

  So few words. So few gestures. So little time together. Yet Ryzhkov had somehow filled the room with a clarity and stillness that made it easy to list what he’d asked for. I briefly described my day in Burningbush in 1956, the mysterious presence in MacDuff’s estate, the photograph with the strange inscription, the margin notes in Irons’s books, various descriptions of MacDuff and his mother, and a few recent Shivas sightings. During the ten or fifteen minutes it took to make this recitation, Ryzhkov followed my words with care, interrupting me only to clarify golf terms with which he was unacquainted. “You could write an encyclopedia,” he said when I was finished. “Your files must be bigger than the ones British intelligence has on Philby, or the KGB had on Sakharov!”

  “He’s more elusive,” I said. “Sometimes I think we’re chasing a ghost. For example, look at this.” From a jacket pocket I took this letter, which Ryzhkov scanned, then read with care:

  Dornoch, Scotland

  July 20, 1992

  Dear Mr. Hannigan,

  There are rumors that you have made inquiries in Dornoch the past few years about a golf professional named Shivas Irons. A member of the Golf Club recommended I write to you in this regard about a curious encounter I had with a gentleman that in some ways fits descriptions of him.

  I am a widower, recently retired here, with a home overlooking the golf links. Two weeks ago, at about half-past ten in the evening, I was standing in the garden behind my house enjoying the evening sky. As you know, we have magnificent outlooks here from the cliffs above Dornoch Firth. From my house, for example, you can see the long gorse-covered bluffs on which the first eight holes of the course are situated, as well as the fairways and dunes of the incoming nine below. There was still enough light on the evening in which my encounter occurred to see the Firth beyond the links, and its further shores on a distant promontory.

  There was no wind, and the sky was colored as I have never seen it. Against a background of deep blue and violet, there was an array of gold and yellow clouds that appeared to emit its own light. This stupendous display has been much discussed in Dornoch since, and has been attributed by some to a peculiar condition of the currents offshore and by others to the jet streams of fighter-bombers which had flown maneuvers that day near the Firth. Without hesitation, I can say that it was the most striking evening sky I have ever seen. Viewing it, I was filled with gratitude that I had retired to Dornoch.

  Then I noticed a man standing just a few feet beyond my garden wall. He stood motionless, seemingly as rapt with the view as I was, but his presence was a little disturbing because there is no easy access to the place where he stood. The only way he could have gotten there was either through my garden or by ascending the bluff, which can be treacherous in daylight and extremely dangerous in the half-light of a summer evening. For several minutes he didn’t move. I didn’t want to call out, for fe
ar I would cause him to lose his footing, nor did I want to go inside and leave him lurking near the house.

  Finally, to get his attention, I approached him, whereupon he turned to face me, as if he had known all along that I was watching, and asked if I would let him sit for a moment on my garden wall. He was a tall man, casually dressed, with a resonant musical voice of Scots inflection. Reassured by his calm demeanor, I said he could sit there, but to make sure he was up to no mischief sat on a chair about ten feet from him. He fell silent, as if he were again absorbed in the view, then started to hum a song, which I took to be Irish, with such feeling and grace that I wondered if he were a professional singer. It was a plaintive tune, filled with both sorrow and joy, that conveyed a state of mind which I still have trouble describing. The best way to characterize the mood it caused is to say, at risk of seeming excessive, that it embraced many moods at once, an entire range of feelings both happy and sad, in a joy and peace that seemed eternal.

  This condition, which felt perfectly natural at the time but seems extraordinary now, lasted for several minutes, until the last traces of yellow in the sky were gone. Then he turned, and with quiet gravity, asked my name. Normally I would have been startled, or even disturbed by such directness, but the evening beauty and his song had produced such a deep serenity in me that without inhibition I introduced myself and asked who he might be. He didn’t answer at once, then said with a wry Scots inflection, “On a night like this, I’m not sure. It’s changing like the sky there. Do you ever feel trapped by your name?”

  Surprised but disarmed by this response, I admitted to a recurrent sense that my life would have been different if I’d been born with a different name. “William Smith” sometimes makes me feel invisible.

  I remember his words vividly. “Ah!” he said. “Invisible! Doesn’t that bring relief?”

  “Yes and no,” I answered. “What is your name?”

  “There’s no relief there!” he said with a laugh. “It is not conducive to invisibility. It’s a rare name, from Aberdeenshire. Shives. Do you know it?”

  I said that I’d heard of Chivas Regal.

  “It’s related,” he said. “But you say it Shives, with a long ‘I,’ like ‘hives’ or ‘thrives.’ ”

  I was about to ask if this was his Christian or family name, when he stood with a great warm smile and said it was time to leave. He hoped he hadn’t disturbed me. As he said it, I heard my telephone ring, asked him to wait, and went inside to find that whoever was calling had hung up. When I returned to the garden, he had vanished. There was no sign of him on the cliff below or along the side of the house. I was left only with the mood he had conveyed, and wonderment at our encounter.

  Two members of the Dornoch Golf Club have told me about your search for Shivas Irons. What do you make of this?

  Sincerely,

  William Smith

  “The pronunciation of his name?” Ryzhkov asked. “Is that how you say it? Shives? Like ‘hives’?”

  “No, Sheevas, with a long ‘e.’ Or with a short ‘i,’ like ‘give us.’ At least that’s how people in Burningbush say it.”

  “This is an interesting letter. By his tone, one believes this William Smith.” He paused. “But I must ask you a question. Your search for Shivas Irons has lasted a long time—almost half your life, it seems. Do you think you are closer to finding him now than you were, say, a year ago?”

  Surprised by the question, I hesitated. “A year ago? Probably not.”

  “Are you closer than five years ago?”

  “Five years ago? I’m not sure. Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Ten years?”

  “Well, yes! Certainly ten years. I hadn’t met Hannigan then. I’d never heard about MacDuff’s property, or the reactions people have there. I didn’t know much about the personal histories of Irons or MacDuff, and nothing about these Shivas sightings.”

  “But are you closer to finding him?” Ryzhkov leaned forward intently. “Not just learning about him. Do you think you are closer to finding him?”

  “That’s hard to say. We have more clues. But I can’t say for sure whether we’re actually closer to finding him.”

  He continued to hold my gaze. “Have you ever wondered whether you might be using the wrong methods? Maybe there is another way to look.”

  “But we’ve tried every method we can think of.”

  “It is curious that in this letter, and many of your sightings, he seems elusive by design. A hint here, a hint there. This minute you see him, the next minute he’s gone, as if he lives in the spirit world. But you and Hannigan continue to look for him as if he is an ordinary person and you work for MI5, the CIA, or the KGB. Maybe he is different than people you find through police work or intelligence gathering. Maybe you have to approach him another way.”

  “But we’re more than detectives!” I protested. “To me, we’re doing natural history, or anthropology, if you like. Hannigan has even tried mathematics. Nadia’s told you I suppose about his theories. I promise you, we’re coming at this from more than one angle.”

  “Has mathematics brought you closer?”

  “Well … no.”

  “Or your natural history?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So neither way has worked. Is it possible that all the methods you have tried are inadequate, separately or taken as a whole. They have not worked so far. Have you thought that maybe they will never work?”

  “So what do you propose?”

  “You say you are doing natural history. But sometimes ethologists must accommodate to the animals they study. I have a friend who works with snow leopards. To enter their habitat, he learned to move as they did, to lie in wait, to make their sounds. And I know an anthropologist who studies Siberian shamanism. He told me it is best to approach a shaman like an initiate. To know one well, you must live like him, adopt his ways, build his trust. Maybe this is what you have to do.”

  “But MacDuff is dead, and we don’t know where Shivas Irons lives or even if he’s still alive!”

  He leaned toward me, a gentle smile accentuating the strength in his face. “Your ‘natural history of the extraordinary’ is a good thing,” he said. “It might contribute to our understanding of human nature’s greater possibilities. I am not questioning that. I am only talking about your search for Shivas Irons. Like my ethologist and anthropologist friends, you could learn to move and think and feel like he does. Maybe that way you will come closer to him.”

  “And how would I do this?”

  “Take hold of what you know. Go further into your feeling for him. Imagine his life, his work, his location. Imagine them deeply. Then let your body follow your mind. Even intelligence officers do this with elusive people.”

  He stood and crossed the room. Suddenly he seemed a massive presence, both threatening and friendly. With his powerful shoulders hunched, and his muscular arms outstretched, I imagined him confronting another wrestler. “Ah!” he exclaimed, taking something from a shelf. “Here it is!” He handed me a book by Henry Corbin, the eminent student of Islamic mysticism.* “Read Chapter two, section four.” He sat in the rocking chair. “It says something about imagination as I just used the term. Maybe it will suggest some ways to approach your man directly.”

  The book’s second chapter was titled “The Mystical Earth of Hurqalya,” and its fourth section contained a brief catalog of terms for various kinds of spirit-body. These sentences stood out immediately:

  … the body of “spiritual flesh” made of the elements of the Earth of Hurqalya … possesses organs of perception that are seventy times more noble and more subtle than those of the body of elemental flesh in which it is hidden and invisible. It has shape, extent, and dimension, and is nevertheless imperishable.

  The “grave,” that is, the place where it continues to be after death is … the mystical Earth of Hurqalya to which it belongs, being constituted of its subtle elements; it survives there, invisible to the senses, visible only to the visio
nary Imagination.

  “Is the visionary imagination the organ one uses in a necromanteion?” I asked.

  “You can use it in a necromanteion, or not. You can use it in meditation, or not. You can use it in many activities.” He paused for effect. “To find Shivas Irons, you can use it on a golf course. It seems he did that when he played. You started to do it on his teacher’s property. In one of your letters, you said that the game invites imagination. Accept the invitation fully!”

  He rocked slowly in his chair, making the same hypnotic sound I’d heard while sitting outside. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts. “Irons talked about ‘imagination with hands,’ ” I said. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Imagination with hands …” Ryzhkov savored the phrase. “That is one way to say it. And imagination with arms, and legs, and eyes, and ears. Imagination in this sense is the seed of our future body. It has its own ways to move, to feel, to see. It perceives actual things, living entities, real bodies—and worlds beyond the range of our physical senses. It has a life that embraces—but goes beyond—the ordinary self.”

  I looked again at Corbin’s book. “ ‘Spiritual flesh,’ ” I said. “Irons used that term. Corbin says it is composed of elements from the ‘Earth of Hurqalya.’ Is that a metaphor?”

  “Not for those who have been there. For them, it is the Earth where our secret body lives, ‘the Earth of Resurrection,’ from which our spiritual flesh will rise to join its eternal soul.” From the floor by his rocking chair, he picked up a small set of beads, and began to finger them with his left hand. “It is a radical teaching, but resembles the Orthodox theosis, and certain kinds of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mysticism. Its central idea appears in new guises now, as it gathers in the world’s imagination. I don’t have to tell you that Sri Aurobindo, India’s greatest philosopher of this century, claimed that a new kind of embodiment will appear on Earth, and give rise to the next great phase of evolution. A similar vision is growing in minds around the world like a great thought experiment. Your detective work, your natural history of extraordinary life, contributes to it. All vision today must rest on empirical fact.” He fell silent for a moment. “I have learned that you visited a place near Samarkand where people bore witness to such thinking and practice.”