Chandra was looking at the celebrity endorsements: Arianna Huffington, Bob Shapiro, Alanis Morissette, and, to his astonishment, John Galbraith, an economist Chandra had known well in the eighties. “I’m biased,” Galbraith had written, “but what I’m about to say comes straight from the heart—I’m probably the best student he ever had.”
“I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for,” said Jean. “It’s not Cambridge, Charles.”
“Yes,” said Chandra, bridling. “Yes, I know that.”
“Good for you,” said Steve, on whose head Chandra could now visualize horns. “Excellent.”
“Well,” said Chandra, “we can talk about this later. I should be getting back to my hotel now.”
“Yes,” said Jean. “We all need some sleep. Charles and I have been up all night.”
“Yes, of course,” said Steve. “But we’ll see you this afternoon, won’t we?”
“Give me a call when Jasmine’s awake,” said Chandra.
“Rest well, Charles,” said Jean, holding Steve’s hand.
“You too.”
He circuited the house until he reached the garage and his SUV, spending several seconds looking for his keys until he spotted them in the ignition. As he drove to the gates he saw Rafael watering the plants nearby and waved goodbye.
“Adios,” said Chandra.
“Adios,” said Rafael.
As he drove down the hill, Professor Chandra remembered how it had felt when his fist made contact with Steve’s face, the way the sun seemed to brighten into an explosion as Steve’s body struck the pool, how the water had turned pink afterward while Chandra wrung his hand, his knuckles smarting. He felt giddy now, alive, as if his enormous car might float off the road and into the sky at any moment.
It’s happening, he told himself. I’m doing it. I’m following my bliss.
PROFESSOR CHANDRA RETURNED TO his hotel room and tried to sleep, but his body was too full of adrenaline. He stood in front of the mirror, trying to reenact the punch, Professor Chandra the Master Blaster versus Whimpering Steve Benowitz; that beautiful moment when he’d felt freer than he ever had in his life as he watched Steve fall backward, propelled by the force of his sixty-nine-year-old fist.
Finally, by about eleven o’clock Professor Chandra dozed off, awakening at three and ordering room service. Jean called after he had finished eating and was drinking a second cup of coffee.
“Charles,” she said, “have you eaten?”
“Not really,” he said, looking at the remnants of his crab cakes.
“Good. Jaz is up.”
“So she’s not going to graduation?”
“No. We can have an early dinner instead.”
Chandra arrived an hour later. Steve was wearing a black polo neck this time, which made him look more like an international narcotics smuggler than a practitioner of Vedanta, and his nose was still bruised, though not grotesquely. He seemed in high spirits. Jasmine, on the other hand, looked depressed and close to tears.
After dinner, Chandra sat beside her on the sofa and they watched Forrest Gump with their shoulders touching. He wanted to ask her if she was still high, if they should take her to a doctor (though Jean had insisted this wasn’t necessary) but Jasmine fell asleep before the end of the movie. Chandra covered her with a blanket and, after Jean left to take a shower, Steve sat opposite him on the ottoman and handed him a glass of Prosecco.
“Well, well, well,” said Steve, in the manner of a circus drum roll.
“How are you feeling today?” said Chandra.
“Very good,” said Steve.
“I’m glad.”
Chandra reached out toward Steve’s face, his middle finger almost grazing his nose and said, sotto voce, “Is it okay?”
“You know, Chandrasekhar,” said Steve, loud as a ringmaster, “I made a call to Esalen on your behalf. It seems Rudi’s workshop was full but they agreed to allow one more, for me, meaning for you.”
“Oh, that was very generous of you.”
“All we have to do is call and confirm.”
“Well, I’d have to check my schedule.”
“The semester’s over, isn’t it?” said Steve.
“Yes,” said Chandra. “Yes, it is.”
“So you have no commitments.”
Chandra shook his head.
“Excellent.”
Steve appeared to have the institute’s number pre-programmed into his phone.
“Hello, hello!” he said. “Benowitz here. How’re you keeping, Leia? Breathing the joy? I’d expect nothing less! Listen, I called yesterday. Want to talk to the man himself? Excellent…”
Chandra accepted the phone as if he’d been handed a small but quite genuine lump of plutonium. The woman on the other end explained that all Chandra needed to do was show up on Friday before dinner time. His workshop was fully paid for, though if he wanted to upgrade to a better room he could do this. When asked if he had any questions he gave a curt, “No,” before returning the phone to Steve. Jean, he saw, was standing in the hallway and had been watching all the while.
“I can’t accept this, Steve,” he said. “It’s too much.”
“Not at all, my friend. It’s my gift to you.”
Chandra wanted to reply, “As are my wife and child to you,” but instead he said, “Thank you, Steve.”
When Jasmine awoke Chandra sat with her for a few more minutes. He told her that everything would be all right, that he wasn’t angry at all, that a community college would be fine for a while, and that under no circumstances should she resort to consuming any other edible fungi in the future but call him if she had a problem. Jasmine, who looked pale and weak and very, very young, did not answer, but she heard him out which, he supposed, was the best he could have hoped for.
He flew back to Orange County the following morning and called the Esalen Institute from the airport, upgrading to a premium room and telling them to put the difference on his credit card. On reaching home he emailed Sunny, realizing it was a masochistic move, but not knowing whom else to contact:
I’ve gone and booked myself up for this thing, and all I want to know is, will everyone there be stark raving mad, and if so, what on earth will they think of me? I’m guessing you’ve been there, right?
Sunny’s reply came through within the hour, as Chandra suspected it would (sensing weakness, the red-tailed hawk swoops to kill).
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Esalen?
Whoa Dad,
Esalen! That’s wild. Who’d have thought it? I’m proud of you, Prof. All those years of being so identified with the mind. This is a real step forward, or inward, I should say. You’re deepening, changing. It’s the great shift. We’re all a part of it, but only some of us respond to the call. Even if you’re scared or apprehensive, that’s a good thing. You’re responding. You have to feel the fear but step anyway, and step and step and step. Just keep moving in, no matter what.
To your questions: no, everyone will not be crazy there, but I think you know this already. That isn’t what you’re afraid of, am I right? They’re serious professionals and scientists, but they’ve transgressed boundaries traditional academia cannot comprehend.
No, I’ve never been there, but I know people who have and of course I’m in the loop. They’ve been wanting me to run a course there for a while actually but I’ve been time poor of late, which happens during periods of transformation.
Anyway, my advice is don’t think too much, just give yourself to the experience with a whole heart and remember to say your affirmations. But good on you, Dad. Enjoy it.
Yours,
Sunil
P.S. If you’re still struggling with yourself, ask yourself this: “What have I got to be
afraid of?”
P.P.S. Make sure you visit the hot tubs.
Chandra was pleased with Sunny’s response. For years now he had been asking Sunny the same question, “What does spiritual mean?” and had never once received a satisfactory answer. But he was glad his son hadn’t laughed at him and, to his surprise, it felt good to hear Sunny say that he was proud of him.
As for the question, “What have you got to be afraid of?” his immediate answer was he was scared of meeting someone he knew. And yet the only person from his world who had any connection to Esalen was he of the glass jaw. There might be people there who knew Steve, but it wouldn’t be hard to diffuse any potential embarrassment: “Oh, him, yes, nice fellow but a little crude for my taste, had to teach him a lesson, if you know what I mean.” And they would laugh and say, “You gotta follow your bliss, man.”
No, his biggest fear was that there would be people there who hadn’t the slightest interest in economics, or even in universities, who would ask him questions he couldn’t answer, didn’t want to answer, like the last time he cried, or touched a woman, or fell to his knees and prayed. In fact, he wasn’t afraid they would be crazy; he was afraid they would be normal, and he would be revealed as the eccentric, a term he hated. A rebel chose not to conform, while an eccentric had no option; an eccentric did not know how the rest of society lived. But Chandra’s exposure to the outside world was limited, he had to admit: when, after all, was the last time he’d interacted socially with someone who wasn’t an academic?
He replied:
Thanks, Sunny,
Glad you approve, and I shall certainly give it my all. Not sure about all this “great shift” stuff, but shall give a full report back when it’s over. Of course will mention you to them. They’d be lucky to have you and I shall impress this upon them.
Love, Dad
After he pressed send it dawned on him that there might be another reason he was going, apart from his obligation to Sir Bleedsalot. Punching Steve had been the first truly honest thing Professor Chandra had done in years, and he had liked the way it felt. Honesty was exciting, but fraught, at his age. He had become used to wearing so many overcoats, one on top of the other, that he had no idea how it might feel to go outside without one anymore. He wondered if this was a sentiment he could share with the others in his workshop.
Esalen was a six-hour drive from Bella Vista. When the day came he took a handful of Nana Mouskouri and Harry Belafonte CDs and rolled down the windows so that he could smell the sea while heading up the coastline on Highway 1. Big Sur was beautiful, but Chandra had been told it was beautiful by so many people already that it felt as if he were staring at a Photoshopped postcard instead of at actual clifftops and lagoons. In any case, he was too anxious to really enjoy it and stopped only once, when he thought he saw a group of whales (which turned out to be clumps of seaweed, bobbing like body bags atop the breakers).
When he reached the turnoff for Esalen he had to maneuver his SUV down a narrow, private road until he ended up inside a small car park with the sea in front of him. There was a manicured lawn to his left, people reading or meditating on preternaturally green grass. He couldn’t see anybody else wearing a blazer, or even trousers. Taking his bags, Chandra crossed the park and headed into the lodge to his left where a ponytailed man grinned at him from behind a desk.
“Hello,” said Chandra.
“Welcome! I’m Ronnie.”
Ronnie had tea-colored skin, gray hair, and an expression redolent of a man staring at his newborn daughter moments after she’d been placed in his arms. He handed Chandra a clipboard and asked him to sign in and write the name of his workshop on the form.
“Wow!” said Ronnie. “You’re with Rudi. You’re so lucky, man. He’s in demand, that guy. Has been for forty years. Used to do a lot of encounter work with acid until he got in trouble.”
Chandra was imagining a group of naked hippies flinging concentrated hydrofluoric solution at each other’s flesh-stripped faces, but his expression must have betrayed him because Ronnie added, “But not anymore. They learned a lot of things the hard way, those boomers.”
Ronnie took his bags and they strolled through the vegetable gardens. There were pine trees and flowers to their right, the ocean only meters away on the left. All the colors were very intense, as if drabness had been outlawed.
They came to a ravine, the path turning into a footbridge. Chandra could see a white sword of water at the bottom, its point pressing into the sea. Ronnie indicated a house cut into the cliff on the other side, the sort the Swiss Family Robinson might have lived in.
“Rudi used to live right there,” said Ronnie. “They were all a lot more intense back then. I guess that’s how pioneers are. It’s what’s earned them so much respect.”
Professor Chandra wished this were true of economics. The Guardian had referred to Milton Friedman as a devil only last week, and once called Chandra himself “an unreconstructed market fundamentalist.” It was small wonder he’d ended up here, at the Technicolor Funny Farm.
“That’s the meditation zendō.” Ronnie pointed to a hut under the bridge. “You do much meditation?”
Chandra shook his head.
“And here’s your room,” said Ronnie, as they crossed the river. “Premium single, walk-in shower. Towels are inside, champagne if you feel like it. And don’t forget the hot tubs. You’ll love ’em. Get yourself relaxed for tonight’s workshop.”
“Sure,” said Chandra. “Thank you.”
“Just be in your flow, okay. Don’t worry about a thing, and have a wonderful, healing stay at Esalen. All righty? Ciao ciao.”
“Ciao.”
Chandra shaved for the second time that day, and changed into beige slacks and a Hawaiian shirt, hoping he looked like a man in casual attire as opposed to a professor in fancy dress. Stuffing his swimming trunks and the Economist into a shoulder bag, he retraced his steps over the river and past the lodge.
He had to walk an extended gangplank to reach the hot tubs which were perched on the cliff’s edge, looking out over the misty Pacific. There was only one changing room, for men and women, but it was empty and so he changed into his swimming trunks and slung his towel over his shoulder.
There were perhaps fifteen people on the deck, bathing or lounging on sunbeds, but it took him a few moments to realize that, with the exception of himself, everyone was naked, an inversion of his worst schoolboy nightmare.
He had two choices, he realized: he could be brash and American, not caring a damn what anyone thought, jumping into that tub filled with pride at his nonconformist, avant-garde attire; or he could take off those offending trunks, fling them over the cliff and say, “If God wanted us to have trunks he’d have made us elephants,” while the entire deck roared with naked, gut-wobbling laughter.
The third option was to go back to the changing room, put on his slacks, and return to his cabin to lie on the bed reading the Economist until his workshop began, which was exactly what he did.
* * *
—
Professor Chandra’s workshop was in a yurt a hundred meters away from his room. When he entered, the teacher was sitting on a chair with his eyes closed. Twenty others sat facing him, mostly women in their thirties and forties. As Chandra had feared, they didn’t look like academics, not even sociologists. They looked like ordinary people. Some were sitting on cushions on the floor and the rest on white patio chairs. Chandra sat on one of these, toward the back.
Rudi Katz himself was on a chair, fists on his knees. He was older than Chandra, but looked very fit, barely an ounce of fat on his pale body, wearing a short-sleeved cream shirt with matching pants and white canvas shoes, an outfit that would not have looked out of place on Steve.
“For those arriving,” said Katz, his eyes still closed, “find yourself a seat and, when you’re ready, close your eyes. Take a dee
p breath. Feel all the tension in your body flow into your feet and out into the earth. Completely relax.”
Professor Chandra was well-known for his impatience with students, and would open seminars by writing on the whiteboard, IF YOU DON’T DO THE READING, DON’T COME TO CLASS. He would sometimes end lectures by intoning, “Tomorrow’s lecture is at nine o’clock, nine o’clock, nine o’clock.” But now he found himself unable to comply with the simplest of instructions. All he could do was wonder whether everyone else had their eyes closed, or if they were staring at him. Chandra had often heard it said that people who sat their A levels in middle age were terribly inspiring and brave, but he’d always feared they were deluding themselves, that it was too late—one simply couldn’t start from zero at such an advanced age. He wondered, not for the first time, if he’d been a fool to come here.
“Wonderful!” said Katz. “We’ll start every session with silent meditation. Please don’t open your eyes until you hear my voice. And so, friends, welcome to Esalen and to ‘Being Yourself in the Summer Solstice.’ This class is about embracing the new and letting go of the pain and suffering we’ve caused ourselves by asking, ‘Who am I?’ ‘What do I really want?’ ‘Why have I allowed so much pain and sorrow into my life?’ ‘How can I make my life better?’
“The way we’ll do this, initially, is to talk about something I call strings. It’s very simple. Our strings are the beliefs we have about ourselves that hold us back. So for our first string, our primary string, we try to find a core negative belief we have, a message we give to ourselves that hurts us, that we’d like to let go of but can’t.
“It could be ‘I’m stupid,’ ‘I’m ugly,’ ‘I’m lazy,’ ‘I’m selfish.’ And then we add a second string and we say, ‘And that’s why my boyfriend left me,’ or, ‘And that’s why I still live with my parents,’ or, ‘And that’s why nobody’s ever going to love me.’ If we’re going to be happy, we’ve got to learn that those thoughts aren’t true. They have no outside legitimacy, no existence other than the existence we give to them. We can literally be anything we want to be, but only once those critical voices are gone.”
Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss Page 10