Jacob Atabet

by Michael Murphy

  “. . . from one point of view matter is the grossest form of spirit. From another, spirit is the subtlest form of matter.”—Sri Aurobindo

  “. . . everything is governed by psychokinetic fields.”—Vladimir Kirov. (God as the Secret Police? The mystic as authoritarian personality?)

  Casey let Corvin have Atabet’s address because she thought there was “something ominous about him.” Thought he might be from the CIA! We went over Magyar’s correspondence together, and looked at translations of Kirov’s papers on bio-gravity. I told her about the rumors concerning Kirov’s work and defection. I wish I could think of a way to track down these stories. No one is sure about him: not J.H., S.K., T.M., BO., EM. or the people at Berkeley. We can only take this as a warning.

  Weird, hovering fogbank this evening over Alcatraz. Blue above, then layers of mist both black and white. The water below was a spectrum of grays and blues, the prison a perfect silhouette.

  7:00. Still a layer of blue in the night sky, and lights on Alcatraz. Looked at Bucky Fuller’s Intuition. Such a glimmer he is—the benign side of Kirov. J., paraphrasing a passage in Intuition: “Every homeward transformation helps. Ecology and spiritual practice, good design, good politics, good economics, each helpful deed.”

  October 8

  “The end of the method of the Pythagoreans was that they should become furnished with wings to soar to the reception of the divine blessings, in order that, when the day of death comes, Athletes in the Games of Philosophy, leaving the mortal body on earth, may be unencumbered for the heavenly journey.” Hierocles commentary on The Golden Verses in G. R. S. Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition.

  Athletes in the Games of Philosophy! Tonight I will circle round that night visitor, join him, know him.

  October 9

  Bad night. Couldn’t sleep. All doors closed. Thought of F. W. H. Myers’ “phantasmogenetic centres.”

  “For as the soul is a being of the cosmic order, it is absolutely necessary that it should have an estate or portion of the cosmos in which to keep house.

  “. . . For these reasons, therefore, they say it forever keeps its radiant body, which is of an everlasting nature.” Philoponus in G.R.S. Mead. “But . . . even as the human soul, when it gains mastery over the physical body, has this body following it . . . so when the body of the [world] is free from all mortal disturbance and is moved solely by the will of the world-soul, no disturbance results to the world-soul from it. “—from Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body.

  We must end the war in Viet Nam!

  “. . . resolute imagination is the beginning of all magical operations. “—Paracelsus.

  This is true for both Jacob Atabet and Vladimir Kirov. But they are both controlled by the world’s cybernetic system. Imagination requires reinforcement to proceed. At every level there must be working agreements. In a body that functions, atoms and cells love each other. Life depends at every level upon a moral harmony.

  October 20

  J. coming out of this period of rest. Gained ten pounds. “Conscious will still feeding on the unconscious will,” he says. “Reinforcement still coming. Some of the changes are permanent.”

  We are giving birth. Creating a new body to inhabit.

  Putting on another body: this universe at the big bang; the evolution of species; mankind settling another planet (or satellite); and now this venture. Putting on another body is the First One’s way.

  Images today in waking vision: walking through a labyrinth and looking back to see my former shape (like J.’s experience, or the scene in Kubrick’s 2001); Mardi Gras; a mask floating across the room and landing on my bookshelf (different books as different bodies?).

  Mental forms (ideas, conceptual systems, number systems, geometries) are bodies, and we can join with them. But the body he glimpses comes from a depth beyond anything he has seen before. His imaginings have created a propitious field and sent a signal. A signaling and docking operation with it. Twenty-four years of willing are having their result (and/or the result became 24 years of willing in the “closed time-like world line”). His daemon has beckoned and led him this far.

  Obedience is a siddhi, as in this surrender to the body that waits for our decisive rebirth.

  October 22

  Says that his paintings now are like the ones he did at the California School of Fine Arts in the ’50s—part Chinese landscape, part Turner, part sheer naivete. There is no hint in them of the animan siddhi. Still they are resting. Still interested in my midnight visitor. But my body is unruly. The world unruly. This level of cells and molecules unruly.

  New molecules have gone out with the body’s tide. Now we wait for a larger incursion.

  October 24

  A body of sound. Every sound carries the original chord. Sink into it.

  Through a foghorn sounding, through the tiniest or most discordant note. . . Concerto for foghorns and silence.

  The Bay a Chinese seascape. Slate gray near the Golden Gate, then streaks of turquoise, green and blue on the horizon. An oyster sky and banks of tumbling clouds above the Berkeley hills. At dusk, the cities turning into a latticework of reflected light.

  I want to join every cell. Is this the eve of All Cell’s Day?

  Gleaming prows emerging from the shadows of Alcatraz. Running with the wind, their sails brightening as they come into sunlight. A sea of boats turning toward home.

  Beating homeward, prows glistening in the late sun. Will they make it before dark?

  Ecstasy everywhere, whether the run is completed or not.

  November 1

  Rumors at the Press and the church about Atabet’s death. They remind me of rumors of Salinger’s insanity or Castaneda’s suicide. Some people are threatened by this kind of adventure and want to erase or debunk it. It is hard, even for me, to believe the changes I see in him. I find myself resisting the perception.

  We are all wounded by the first fall into matter. That is the original trauma of birth. Every event in the universe has the seal of forgetfulness upon it. (The mudra of the Dragon holding fast.)

  That is why so many of the traditions begin with some form of recollection, in zazen, vipassana, Samkhya practice, the prayer of the Dark Night. The first stage of our return is to practice remembering.

  Mu. Mystery. Mum’s the word. Half our light went out.

  His pattern is so clear: first, a new opening like the summer of 1947; then a return to earth precipitated by collisions with internal or external barriers; then a period of rest and assimilation during which—at an unconscious or half-conscious level—a new integration occurs. And then a new opening to something beyond. It is as if he cannot stop the process.

  The next step will begin, I think, within the next few days.

  November 5

  First day of the second attempt.

  Carlos Echeverria couldn’t hear it, but the rest of us could. A birthsong when I let it. Something not quite heard by Bach.

  “This music,” he said, “has a mantric power to recreate cellular patterns.” Showed us Hans Jenny’s Cymatics and its chapter on sound effects in space. But where does this “music” come from?

  Tonight I am filled with new pleasure. It is easier now to be in this body. Every cell, it seems, is filled with light and hints of that music.

  November 6

  He drew colored sketches of the forms he is seeing. Not like the electron micrographs at all.

  One is of a city like an emerald grid. (Shades of Frank Baum!) Another is a vista of crystal, lit from within, rolling over hills into the distance. There is a golden spire in it. (Revelation, 21?) Are human cities replicas of something we already touch?

  Another seems to be an alien planet. An enormous red filament rises from it. Is it Jupiter? Or is he passing through curvatures of space to more remote regions of the universe? Another looks like a close-up of the sun, an enormous river of fire.

  Meanwhile, everyone is in good spirits. Corinne incredible—swee
t-tempered, unflappable. Kazi a pillar of light. And J. looks better so far. Not so pale and shrunken. Even Carlos looks in, and Mrs. E. How they reconcile all this in their minds is a mystery to me.

  November 7

  Morning. More sketches last night. One was of concentric circles. He said that he can finally “touch the atomic patterns directly.”

  These statements—there is no use trying to analyze them now. But I suspend disbelief with difficulty.

  Eventually a science of these states will have to emerge. How much of the things he sees are simple projections of his preconditioned perception? Are we like scientists in the 17th century, staring at fantastic forms through our new microscopes and projecting all sorts of fancies into the things we see? To answer that question, we need more fellow explorers to compare our experience with. And for that we need a more compelling rationale and more widespread support for this kind of endeavor.

  Noon. A huge flash of light while I watched. Kazi took his shoulders. Then he fell into something that was, he said, a glimpse of the “first physical light.”

  This afternoon I am badly shaken.

  Evening. Everyone gathered. Simon Horowitz came at eight. Not my idea to call him, but Kazi decided. Will conduct tests tomorrow. By ten, A. seemed better. Corinne shaken—the first time I have seen her like that. Apparently, the Echeverrias’ building had some of its fuses blown again.

  Midnight. What really happened? No one knows yet. He lost consciousness in the final stages of it. The danger now is that his touching these things might bring them into earthplay. How clear it is that this is just an exploration. There are no more certain directions.

  I am exhausted, and upset. These changes might be contagious.

  November 8

  In the Chronicle, three reports of UFO sightings yesterday. One person described a “great ball of light about the size of a two-story building” (a familiar description!), about the same time the fuses blew at the Echeverrias’. One witness had just come out of a manhole where he was fixing an underground power line. When he looked up he saw a light hovering over Angel Island. Is the collective unconscious that corny? Is one corner of God a great saloon where all jokes are permitted?

  Noon. Hard to stay at Telegraph Place. H. came for blood sample this morning. J. in bed, looks terrible. Maybe he will call it all off.

  Evening. H. called to say that the tests were normal. But will make some more during the next few days. Nothing to say to Jacob but rest. Asked again if there were any stigmata.

  Midnight. Woke up with this dream. I was surrounded by friends at a beach, when someone told me there were several members of the CIA or the Mafia waiting to kill me. I became conscious then and saw something hiding behind the dream images. My midnight visitor? It wanted to kill me. Sat up in bed and moved toward the light, but then an awful thing. The light that went off in J.’s place came between me and the light of the Self. A confusion of lights. Had to go outside and run through the streets—the first time since last summer.

  November 9

  Exhausted today. Should we call it all off?

  But J. and K. and Corinne seem cheerful. Jacob all morning on the deck in quiet meditation. No marks on his body. Kazi told me to run at the beach, which I did. Casey Sills in command at the Press now.

  What a relief to see them relaxing.

  November 10

  They are going in again! Jacob has recovered completely, and Horowitz gave him encouragement. But I fear it. He says he is cracking the “secret of time in this body.”

  Have collected all his sketches. Now he is beginning to make tape recordings. So far, no tape has picked up the sound that K. and C. and I can hear around him.

  Evening. Quiet today. Hardly a word. The silent building seems to be our friend. Does it shut out the street sounds? A tangible zone of silence around the apartment (or is it an intervention in the brain?). Thought of Myers’ “phantasmogenetic centre.”

  J. says that a layer of “restructured space” envelops the point through which he passes. There is a kind of docking operation. And a “perfect obedience.” They have named several kinds of psychoenergy: Corinne has the list. But PK-1 7 in the “sub-cellular” bridge?!

  Kirov has been studying something like this with his Russian colleagues. Is it time to make all this public? There would be a problem making it believable.

  But PK-1 7! I hadn’t heard of that one. Are they circling around events foreshadowed in relativity theory and talk of “superspace”? Is modern cosmology a first premonition of this venture—the sunrise of our remembering?

  November 11

  Nothing special today. Ran on the beach. J. asked me to sell another painting. Ask for $3,000, he said. Horowitz will bring “interesting” electron micrographs for us to see.

  November 12

  Still nothing special. But the thought haunts me: what to do about all the experiments like Kirov’s that must be going on? Are there the “limiting factors” J. believes in to contain them? Could there be weapons of war from this stuff? The world needs something to dramatize the possibilities of it. Evening. The light is slowly building. Kazi and Jacob say it is more solid now, though more difficult. “Something burned out the first time down.”

  We talked about my confusion of lights. J. says the world has always been afflicted by a confusion of lights. That is one of the world’s problems.

  November 13

  Horowitz brought his photographs. J. seemed unimpressed. He talks in a whisper now, is focused inside more deeply than ever. Yet he follows everything we are doing. Says his view of the cells is different. A Principle of Complementarity through the eye of the animan siddhi. The instrument determines which aspect of the form will be seen. He says he could perceive those forms, that way, like the microscope. But he would need a different approach.

  Horowitz says it is hard to say much from these pictures. It is “mainly aesthetic.” No evidence of pathology, though there are more irregular cells than most samples he has seen. Calls it a “complex sociology” of red cells. Left a magnificent set of pictures by the hematologist Marcel Bessis, taken through a scanning electron microscope. They look like Miro’s paintings.

  Evening. J. says he wonders why he sees his cells in such a different aspect from H.’s micrographs. Asked him how much role his imagination and preconceptions play in mediating perception, and he answered that there might be more than he expected! His answer surprised me. How much does his mind-set alter all his perceptions to date, down there past PK-17 on the shores of the quarky ocean? He is marvelously open about it all. Says that interior vision is mediated in all sorts of ways.

  Could all of it be an artistic production? I asked.

  No, he said. Only some of it. We all need to check these regions out, go spelunking together in the body, create a natural history of these realms, a “subjective biology and physiology.” But at this level there are stargates into unexpected places. “Mindholes.” He asked if I thought that some UFO sightings might be artifacts of interventions from an other world—an explorer from Alpha Centauri sticking his inexperienced head through a mindhole in psychospace? Or another civilization making some kind of deliberate contact? Who can tell at this stage? When you start thinking that way, you could say it might have been your own attempt in the future, what with “closed time-like world lines” and the rest.

  Midnight. They were quiet tonight, but he seems to have come to the surface. The journey seems to be sputtering out in slightly bemused discussions of PK-17. No wonder the world would have so little sympathy—there is not enough shared experience. Even I have a hard time following them. Corinne surprises me. She has obviously dipped in deeper than I thought. She is occasionally skeptical though. Kazi is genuinely curious about what Jacob has seen. And J. is willing to be questioned, contradicted, challenged, sometimes changing his mind about interpretations.

  Talked about the differences between physical instruments to extend our senses (microscopes, telescopes, x-rays) and �
��interiorscopes.” The former more solid, reliable, consistent. Our interior instruments are more subject to the fluctuations of mind-stuff, citta-vritti. I asked them if it would take a culture-wide intentionality to build up interior instruments and passageways sufficiently strong and reliable to make this kind of exploration effective. J. said maybe. We will know better in a couple of months.

  November 14

  Nothing today. Corinne not there. Kazi moved his bed to another part of the studio. Jacob went running with me for the first time.

  Practiced automatic writing. Helps loosen thought when I’m tired.

  Heard from J. W. Riley. He asks us to see him in Vermont. None of his experiments near to Jacob’s. Has some interesting observations though, e.g. isomorphy of forms throughout the universe provides entry points for psychic travel. “Sympathy closes distance.”

  Evening. Russian Hill a wall of lights, a crystal city, a proscenium for the many-sided human drama. Tonight the voyeur spirit took me. Two seductions, an old man reading, an Italian grandmother cooking dinner, when suddenly I saw someone looking back at me. He stood in a window, probably wondering what I was doing.

  The effect was startling. Were others staring back? Then something I had sensed was apparent. All those windows and hills dramatized the world’s secret—our reaching out to know our many selves.

  San Francisco was a magic theater: the Hare Krishna at Columbus and Green, the bells of hippies in Washington Square, the Tibetan Buddhists going down ropes on Tamalpais while the worshipers at Sts. Peter and Paul’s recite the Mass. TV antennae like ghost traps. Banners and tattered streamers running to Huckleberry Hill. Eastern bazaars on Grant Avenue during the Christmas season. The sounds of all these lands today, sounds of a culture gathering to form a new Benares or Tibet.

  I walked for an hour through the city. Telegraph Hill was swarming with beggars and dirty vagabonds, and I imagined Bon sorcerers cooking their brews in old flats, their pants and serapes stained with wine and Tantric practice. And the wide-eyed young of the Hare Krishna were soliciting in rows from Buchenwald, while old artists watched the passing scene like wise and tired lamas. Alcatraz rose from the water like a holy mountain, ringed with the walls of a ruined retreat.