Jacob Atabet

by Michael Murphy

  What then of Kirov? All forgetting reenacts the first self-loss. Is he a symbol of the ancient resistance? Part of the original game?

  Night. No one can stop us, no entity here below. Opposing forces can only enter a part of us split off from the rest. To explore from a sense of the One, to act out of the Source, is to go from light to further light.

  There are risks but go at right speed, bringing all of ourselves along. He is a master of little things, like the way he looked at me this morning. I will never forget it.

  Our angel is the atman, both other and the same. One can choose to rest in its lofty reaches, but he has followed its roots into matter.

  How strange to talk about my friend Jacob Atabet in ordinary language and realize that he is such a One. Or that we all might be.

  November 28

  Saw J., K., and C. this morning at nine. The effort now is restoration. But not just back to normal. He will share it with the world: if damage like his recent wounds can make such marks, why not summon a better flesh? This healing will be different than the others. With his glimpse of the “first day” he has seen some possible lines of our future life on earth. It will be easier for us now to recognize its emerging signs and structures, easier for us to help this world go where it wants to go.

  My depression has lifted. This seems right, the destined flowering of his sunny genes and all the good times.

  December 1

  Quite a group on his roof today: Kazi, Corinne, Mrs. E., Horowitz, myself, and a friend of Corinne’s—a handsome woman about thirty. We brought out some of his paintings to look at in the sun. Old paintings from the period before last.

  He was in a wonderful mood. Kept teasing me about my book. Wonders if I’ll ever finish it. Still has that bruise through his cheek and half his forehead, but says it will get better. H. took his pulse and blood pressure while all of us watched. (115/72) We discussed the photos of blood cells.

  Corinne’s friend. Depth behind a blond and freckled face. Writes poetry and supports a child with some office job downtown.

  Mrs. E. brought up a dish of lamb and rice at two. J. told some funny stories about the sale of his paintings to a man from Fort Worth. Kazi imitated a guru like the Maharaji, had us all laughing. Could this mood be here to stay?

  December 2

  A brilliant winter day. At noon K., C, J., and I went to Baker Beach, talked for an hour about the next steps. Many projects will emerge, we all agree, in the months ahead.

  These insights, powers and increments of vision will make us better helpers to the blossoming earth, said J. We can see more clearly now where these star-invested bodies want to go. But we must help the enterprise wisely. Do not stir up needless opposition, make false claims, proselytize. The work is happening everywhere, but what we each do is crucial. What a privilege to participate in it.

  December 3

  Today J. said that there has to be a wider spread of “solid disciplines.” We need “people who are both open and sufficiently deep in their practice before many of these descents can be attempted.” We all need reinforcements. To my mind he has these immediate options:

  1. Another descent. But Kazi, H. and he agree that his body will take years to recover. Yet the body will gradually evolve, he says, reorganizing itself to accommodate some of the powers which have emerged in these recent months.

  2. To take his art to another depth. I can see that he will try to do it.

  3. To map out these regions, and work with us to reassess the ancient leadings. There is much intellectual work to be done, philosophies to be written, connections to find in every field. (I could list a hundred projects.)

  4. To bring more people into our circle.

  Today he talked about the history of the mystical vision: “In the great traditions, there is general agreement about the Source, but disagreement about our destination. Many scriptures, however, contain clues about the body as a form of soul. They deserve another reading from the incarnational point of view. The Isha Upanishad could not be more explicit about inhabiting the earth.”

  “Vision’s still dawning,” he said. “Darwin, you must finish your book.”

  28

  DECEMBER 8

  Yesterday, it crossed into this body. Everything until now has been a feeble premonition of the things I saw. If only I could tell the world.

  It started in the morning as I woke. In a dream before waking I heard a beat, a drum, a march from the first Neanderthal shaman through the Vedic seers and all the patriarchs. There was a sense that no one could stop it. The world was too far into God.

  Went up to Telegraph Place at nine o’clock with a strange anticipation. Corinne and Kazi were there. We sat on the deck drinking espresso Jacob made, laughing and talking— and through it all I could still feel the pulse of my dream. Then, for no apparent reason, a second sun was rising through the city hills, something like his painting. And with it the world broke open. All the names will not suffice.

  Everything is made out of music—each voice, each body, every step we take. The whole world is nothing but music. Why do we need anything more? The world is finally completed.

  And yet it is finally beginning. What work we have to do. Jacob has sketched a magnificent outline for a vista of the city. I see how to finish my book. Kazi, at last, will open his center. A dozen new projects are starting by which we will share this with others.

  December 12

  Four days have passed in this state. Though its fullness comes and goes, the essence of it breaks out in unexpected places. A smile from someone passing the office this morning lit up the street. We are midwives to one another. Someday we will bring each other into paradise. Our truest world waits like a phantom limb. Each body, burning like a flame as two and a half million red cells come into being each second, is far less solid than we think. The earth is tinder for spirit. All of it is ready to burst into new flame.

  Editor’s Notes

  From Causality and Chance in Modern Physics by D. Bohm

  D. Van Nostrand, 1957, page 164

  “. . . new sources of energy coming from the infinite process of becoming may be made available . . . thus, in the last century only mechanical, chemical, thermal, electrical, luminous, and gravitational energy were known. Now we know of nuclear energy, which constitutes a much larger reservoir, but the substructure of matter very probably contains energies that are as far beyond nuclear energies as known nuclear energies are beyond chemical energies . . . . Thus, if one computes the ‘zero point’ energy due to quantum-mechanical fluctuations in even one cubic centimeter of space, one comes out with something in the order of 1038 ergs, which is equal to that which would be liberated by the fission of about ten billion tons of uranium. Of course, this energy provides a constant background which is not available at our level under present conditions. But as the conditions of the universe change, a part of it might be made available at our level . . .”

  [Editor’s Note: Dr. Bohm has recently amended his calculations of 1957. The “zero point” energy would be considerably greater than 1038 ergs per cubic centimeter, he now thinks, perhaps something on the order of 1058 ergs. The power of trillions upon trillions of atomic bombs, therefore, would exist in every cubic centimeter of space. In a talk at the University of California Berkeley’s campus in the spring of 1977, he said that the big bang birth of our universe would be nothing but “a firecracker” against this cosmic backdrop.]

  [The following excerpt is taken from the New Catholic Encyclopaedia. There are correspondences, I think, between the doctrine of the glorified body and the attempt Jacob Atabet was making. Darwin Fall believed that this Christian belief was a premonition and metaphor of the bodily transformations he foresaw as a coming stage in human evolution.]

  Glorified Body

  Here understood as the physical body of the just reunited at the *resurrection of the dead with the soul that formerly animated it and that at the moment of reunion is already enjoying the *beatific vision.


  Fact. That at the end of time there is to be a universal resurrection of both the good and the evil is a dogma of the Church. This truth is explicitly set forth in all the major creeds and symbols, and formally defined in the *Benedictus Deus of Benedict XXI (Denz 1000­–02). It is found in the formal teaching of Christ: “. . . the hour is coming . . . when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God . . . And they who have done good shall come forth unto resurrection of life; but they who have done evil unto resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5.25–30). St. Paul’s teaching is replete with references to the resurrection; for instance, he witnesses to the common faith: “. . . I serve the God of my fathers; believing all things that are written in the Law and the Prophets, having a hope in God which these men themselves also look for, that there is to be a resurrection of the just and the unjust” (Acts 24.14–16). The classic text for the resurrection of the just is, of course, 1 Corinthians, ch. 15 (see below).

  Besides the two dogmas mentioned above, namely, the fact of the resurrection, and its universality, there is a third truth also dogmatic, the identity of the risen body with that which each individual now has as his own. Thus Lateran Council IV defined that Christ “will come at the end of the world . . . and all will rise with their own bodies which they now have so that they may receive according to their works, whether good or bad” (Denz 801). How this identity is to be explained has exercised theologians over the centuries. It is clear from St. Paul that Christ’s own Resurrection is not only the cause but also the model of the Christian’s (1 Corinthians, ch. 15). Finally, the body of the just man, while remaining in some mysterious way materially identical with his body of the present life, will, nevertheless, be transformed and made immeasurably superior to its present condition; the fact of this at least is the unambiguous teaching of St. Paul (ibid.). What can be said about the nature of this transformation can now be set forth; here theologians are sometimes in the realm of speculation and conclusions that carry no more doctrinal weight than is warranted by the intrinsic validity of the argumentation itself.

  Nature of the Glorification. In light of 1 Corinthians, ch. 15 theologians traditionally teach that the characteristic qualities of the glorified body are four: impassibility—“What is sown in corruptions rises in incorruption”; clarity—“what is sown in dishonor rises in glory”; agility—“what is sown in weakness rises in power”; and subtility—“what is sown a natural body rises a spiritual body.” These qualities follow from the body’s repossession and complete dominance by the soul already in full blessedness.

  It is against the nature of the soul, the form of the body, to exist without its body (C. Gent. 2.68, 83; 4.79); indeed the soul separated from the body is in one way imperfect, as is every part existing outside its whole, for the soul is naturally a part of the human composite. The scholastics accordingly speak of the separated set as in statu violento. For this reason Aquinas says that resurrection is natural in that its purpose is to reunite soul and body, though of course the cause of the reunion is supernatural (C. gent. 4.81). Since, however, the soul of the just person, once completely free from all stain of sin, is from that moment in the state of perfect beatitude (Denz 1000), it follows that, reunited with the body, it shares with it its glory. St. Thomas says repeatedly that the glory of the body derives from that of the soul. He lays down the principle “In perfect happiness the entire man is perfected, but in the lower part of his nature by an overflow from the higher (ST 1a2ae, 3.3 ad 3). Concretely, “it is by divine appointment that here is an overflow of glory from the soul to the body, in keeping with human merit; so that as man merits by the act of the soul which he performs in the body, so he may be rewarded by the glory of the soul overflowing to the body. Hence not only the glory of the soul but also the glory of the body is merited” (ST 3a, 19.3 ad 3; cf. 3a, 7.4 ad 2). On the other hand, the body now perfectly vivified will also be most fully responsive to the soul. No longer impeded by the imperfections and limitations of the matter still in captivity to sin (cf. Rom 8.23), it will be not only the soul’s docile instrument but also most completely itself. St. Thomas addresses himself to this point:

  The soul which is enjoying God will cleave to Him most perfectly, and will in its own fashion share in His goodness to the highest degree; and thus will the body be perfectly within the soul’s dominion and will share in what is the soul’s very own characteristics so far as possible—in the perspicuity of sense knowledge, in the ordering of bodily appetite, and in the all-round perfection of nature; for a thing is the more perfect in nature the more its matter is dominated by its form . . . just as the soul of man will be elevated to the glory of heavenly spirits to see God in His essence . . . . so also will his body be raised to the characteristics of heavenly bodies—it will be lightsome, incapable of suffering, without difficulty and labor in movement, and most perfectly perfected by its form. For this reason the Apostle speaks of the bodies of the risen as heavenly, referring not to their nature, but to their glory [C. gent. 4.86]

  Since the *Resurrection of Christ is not only the cause of the Christian’s but also its model, what the Scriptures relate concerning the perfections of His body are also to be predicated, with due proportion, of the body of everyone who shares in His victory and with Him rises to glory: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made to live. But each in his own turn, Christ as first-fruits, then they who are Christ’s” (1 Cor. 15.22–23). St. John perhaps has given the best epitome of the whole man’s future glory: “We know that, when he [Christ] appears, we shall be like him for we shall see him just as he is” (1 Jn. 3.2–3).

  A Biography of Michael Murphy

  Michael Murphy (b. 1930), cofounder of the Esalen Institute, has been called the father of the human potential movement, one of the most influential movements in twentieth-century American culture. Murphy has written four novels, as well as works of nonfiction, exploring how individuals can use their capabilities to the fullest and transform their lives.

  Murphy, born in Salinas, California, attended Stanford University as a pre-med student. As a sophomore he wandered into a class on comparative religions, stayed for the lecture, and left the room a changed man. Murphy dropped his pre-med courses and began a study of psychology, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1952. After completing his degree he spent two years in the army before returning to Stanford for graduate work in philosophy. In 1956 Murphy left California for India, spending eighteen months practicing meditation at Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

  By 1962 Murphy was back in California and working with fellow Stanford graduate Richard Price to establish his vision for a community that would help people reach their full potentials. Using land owned by Murphy’s family, the two men founded the Esalen Institute, a retreat center that today hosts ten thousand visitors per year. The institute became a cultural touchstone, introducing ideas for personal growth and alternative healing and serving as a lecture base for luminaries such as Aldous Huxley and Fritz Perls.

  In 1972 Murphy published his first novel, Golf in the Kingdom, about the strange, mysterious power that he (as the novel’s protagonist) experiences when meeting a mystical Scottish golf pro named Shivas Irons. The book became an instant classic and has sold more than 750,000 copies in the decades since its release. The book has recently been adapted into a movie starring Malcolm McDowell and Mason Gamble. Murphy followed this success with the novels Jacob Atabet (1977), An End to Ordinary History (1982), and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons (1997), the sequel to his bestseller. His nonfiction works include The Future of the Body (1993), In the Zone (1995), The Life We Are Given (1996), and God and the Evolving Universe (2002).

  Murphy lives in Sausalito, California.

  John Murphy, Michael Murphy’s great-great-grandfather. John Murphy was a captain in Washington’s army during the American revolution. This is the first Murphy the family has been able to trace.

  John A. Murphy, Michael Murphy’s father. John Murphy was in his early twenties here. He was an attorney, also
studying at Stanford.

  The first staff at Esalen Institute, photographed when it opened in 1962. Murphy, at the far right, co-founded Esalen with fellow Stanford graduate Richard Price, second from left. At one point, Hunter S. Thompson served as security guard to the Institute; he was often seen standing outside with a rifle.

  Dulce Murphy, James Hickman, Vlail Kaznacheev, Michael Murphy, and Larissa Zilenskaya at Esalen Institute. During the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, Michael and his wife, Dulce, launched a series of Soviet-American citizen diplomacy gatherings at Esalen. Through their programming, they sponsored Boris Yeltsin’s first trip to the United States, in 1989. Yeltsin cited the trip as a transformative experience, witnessing firsthand the contrast between the prosperity of the U.S. and the poverty of Soviet Communism.

  Esalen Institute cofounders Murphy and Price in the late 1980s, sitting on the terrace of the convention center. Murphy and Price met as students at Stanford University. Soon after, they introduced Americans to some of the major hallmarks of self-help and personal growth: meditation, encounter groups, tai chi. In an interview with a Stanford alumni publication, Murphy once said, “Esalen had a catalytic role. We invented a new social form. I see Esalen as a meme, a cultural gene that was passed on.”

  Michael Murphy and his son, Mackenzie. This photograph appeared in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine in 1987, alongside an interview with Murphy.

  Murphy at age fifty-three. In his forties and fifties, Murphy became a very competitive runner. In 1983, he placed third in the National Senior Championships for his age group.

  Murphy with his wife, Dulce, and son, Mackenzie, at Esalen. Murphy and his wife travel to Esalen at least six times during the year to attend various conferences and gatherings. Dulce Murphy is the founder and executive director of Track II, a nonprofit organization that successfully bridges and bolsters citizen diplomacy between Russia and the United States.