Golf in the Kingdom

by Michael Murphy

  Agatha proposed that we go into the sitting room; perhaps she sensed that we needed a respite from so much talk. We found seats for ourselves while Peter stoked the burning logs. For a moment there was silence. There was a hint of embarrassment as we looked around at each other. Shivas spoke up first. “Now, Adam,” he said, “ye’ve been tellin’ us about yer theories the night, heer’s yer chance. I ken they’re goin’ tae be guid ones.” We all looked at the little man, who was almost invisible now in the shadows of the couch. I remember hoping that he would make a long speech that would give me some ideas for my own. But his enthusiasm and bouncy spirit seemed to have left him; he looked at us shyly as if he were afraid to say anything. We all sensed his discomfort. When he finally spoke his voice was so low none of us could hear what he said. Julian leaned forward with a hand cupped to his ear. “Wha’ was that, Adam,” he asked, “wha’ was that ye said, did ye say the supermind?”

  Adam nodded. It was painful to watch his embarrassment but we still wondered what he had mumbled. The entire group turned toward Julian. “What did he say?” someone asked.

  “I think he said that golf is the supermind,” the old man answered, scratching the back of his head. We all turned back to Adam. The bashful little figure whispered another inaudible sentence. We all turned to Julian again, as if he were our interpreter. The old man shook his head and leaned toward Adam. “Adam, ye’ll have tae speak up,” he said. “Did ye say the supermind?”

  The little man raised himself an inch or two on the couch and spoke again. We could barely hear him. “Golf is the new yoga of the supermind,” he said.

  “Good man!” Shivas exclaimed. “I can see that I’ll enjoy this.” Apparently he was the only one who understood. Everyone else looked puzzled. Then Adam sank back into the shadows of the couch. It was going to take more encouragement to get him going in earnest. Eve reached over and put a reassuring hand on his arm.

  “Well, now, that’s certainly an interestin’ beginnin’,” said Julian. The rest of us nodded in agreement. There was still no response from the declivity in the couch.

  “The yoga of the supermind,” someone said as if he were just comprehending the meaning of the phrase, “yes, I see what he means.”

  I felt myself nodding in agreement. Yes, the yoga of the supermind. Yes. Yes, I see. . . .

  Then Adam spoke again. The only words I could hear distinctly were “the next manifesting plane.” I closed my eyes to ponder the gnomic phrases. There must be something to them, Shivas certainly seemed to think so. Supermind, a term from Aurobindo, but golf being “the yoga of the supermind,” that was a little hard to follow. And “the next manifesting plane,” what was that? As I pondered thus I heard a small commotion across the room. I opened my eyes and lo!—there was Adam standing on the couch. He stood in the flickering shadows bouncing gently on the cushions of his seat. Then he began to speak. “Golf recapitulates evolution,” he said in a melodious voice, “it is a microcosm of the world, a projection of all our hopes and fears.” I cannot remember all the phrases, but his words were an ecstatic hymn to golf, not golf the game I knew, but golf as it might appear in the Platonic World of Ideas, the archetypal game of games. As he talked I wondered what his course in “cosmic ecology” must be like. No professor of mine at Stanford had ever talked like this.

  He told about the technological changes in the game and how they brought new powers and awarenesses into play for those who pursued it with a passion. With its improved clubs and balls and courses, golf reflected man’s ever-increasing complexity. It was becoming a better vehicle for training the higher capacities. And so it was becoming the yoga of the supermind, the ultimate discipline for transcendence.

  As he gave this incredible speech I wondered if he played the game himself. Being no taller than five feet four, he must have had a difficult time if he did. I wondered how far he could hit the ball, if he could reach a green in regulation figures.

  “Golf is played at many levels,” he was almost chanting now as he swayed in the firelight. “Take our love of the ball’s flight, the thrill of seeing it hang in the sky.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, tracing an imaginary trajectory against the fire’s glow. “How many games depend upon that thrill—archery, football, golf—the thrill of a ball flying to a target, have you felt it? The ball flying into the target; it’s a symbol, of course. And here, friends, my theory leads . . . ,” he stepped down from the couch and crossed the room to the fireplace, “. . . my theory leads to the simultaneity of past and future. For everything has a past and future reason for being. Projectiles for example, our urge to see them fly is derived from our paleolithic past, from the hunt, we love to see the spear or stone in flight. But,” he stood on tiptoes and his voice rose, “it is also an anticipation. The flight of the ball, the sight of it hanging there in space, anticipates our desire for transcendence. We love to see it curve in flight as if it is free—why else do we hit a fade or draw? We love to see it hang there, that is why we love to hit our drives so far. The ball in flight brings dim memories of our ancestral past and premonitions of the next manifesting plane.”

  He rocked slowly back and forth, occasionally making a wide, sweeping gesture with an arm. We were all staring at him now with amazement. “The thrill of seeing a ball fly over the countryside, over obstacles—especially over a stretch of water—and then onto the green and into the hole has a mystic quality. Something in us loves that flight. What is it but the flight of the alone to the alone?”

  He was tilting back his head and his black eyes were dancing. One sensed that his shyness had given way to a passion tinged with madness. A few moments before I had wanted to draw him out and give him support, now I was beginning to think we should try to slow him down. He was not the first person I had seen grow strangely intense while attempting to account for the game’s mystery.

  “The theory of golf,” he continued, “which Eve and I have evolved, is the most elaborate and complete one ever invented to account for the game. I think it explains everything.”

  I was suddenly aware of Julian. He was frowning and glancing from time to time at Shivas. I wondered what he saw in Adam’s behavior. He had said that he was generally in favor of madness, but now he looked concerned. Though I was fascinated by the speech emanating from the fireplace I was glad we had a doctor around.

  “Have you ever pondered the mystery of the hole?” the swaying figure asked. “What are its past and future connotations? Think about that one. And a hole-in-one, have you ever thought about that!” He looked around at us with a wide-eyed look full of portent. “A hole-in-one,” he intoned the term as if it were the holy of holies, “the flight of the alone to the alone.”

  Julian turned in his armchair to look at Shivas. “Ye incourage ’im in this kind o’ thinkin’ now and ye see where it leads ’im.” Shivas did not answer; he only looked at Julian with a grave inscrutable look. The old man turned back to Adam. “The flight o’ the alone to the alone, do ye equate the average gowfer wi’ Plotinus noo? It’s a dim connection, Adam.”

  “But it’s so real,” the little man answered solemnly, with a glint in his eye. He stood on the hearth as if to get more height into his words. “All of our experience is full of anticipations, we love what we might be. That is why we love a low-sailing two-iron or a three-hundred-yard drive.”

  I wondered if he had ever hit a two-iron shot like the one he described—or a 300-yard drive. He was indeed describing the Platonic Game of Golf. “We know in our bones what we are meant to be, so we are attracted by any glimpse of greater possibilities. There are moments in every golfer’s game when he gets off a Promethean shot or when he feels a marvelous state of mind. Do you know what I mean?” he asked, suddenly looking down at me.

  I thought of my shots on the back nine that day and nodded, in spite of my fears for him. Yes, I knew what he meant, how could I forget? There was logic in his madness.

  “Some players embody that feeling,” he said in his mel
odious voice. “Bobby Jones did. If someone else does, we will love him too. So . . .” he paused in mid-sentence as if pondering the next turn of his thought “. . . so because evolution is always at work, golf is becoming a better and better vehicle for it all.”

  This last generalization was all Julian could take. “Humbug, it’s all humbug,” he growled. “There is nothin’ awtaematic about evolution or gowf or any other thing. Adam, it’s you that’s awtaematic when ye talk like that.”

  I was surprised at the old doctor’s anger and direct confrontation to Adam’s logic: my impulse had been to listen and hope for the best. But Adam now had too much passion to be deterred. He launched into another line of reasoning about the inevitability of life’s unfoldment, arguing that any human activity that received the investment golf did was bound to reflect more and more of the human situation with all its hopes, fears, loves, ways of coping, struggles for survival, aspirations for God—the works. Therefore, it had to reflect the always upward tendency of life. “Golf is a microcosm of the world,” he said. “When you invent new clubs, you get new attitudes. Replacing divots only began when courses were built from scratch instead of being marked off across links-land. Replacing the divot means a change in consciousness. . . .”

  “Now, Adam,” Julian broke in, “ye dinna’ mean tae tell me tha’ the replacin’ o’ the divot shows an improvement o’ the spirit. It only shows me that the herds o’ public gowfers realize they’re about to overrun wha’s left o’ the green.” Peter nodded in agreement. The two of them were a dour contrast to Adam’s incredible optimism.

  But Adam Greene sailed on. “I look for signals of transcendence in golf as in everything else.” He smiled triumphantly and stepped down off the hearth. “I ask you to think about your own experience. If you are honest—even you, Julian, you—will have to admit that I’m right.”

  “If I’m goin’ to be honest, Adam Greene,” Julian replied, “then I’ve got to talk about the signals o’ the damned along wi’ the signals o’ transcendence. Ye can see any signals ye want in the game.”

  “Well, Julian, if you had eyes to see . . .” Adam threw his hands up.

  “But there is more to it,” Eve Greene interrupted, coming to her husband’s rescue. They had talked so much about these things, these speculations were so important to them. Their eyes shone in the firelight. “The environment is so crucial,” she said. “Our playing partners, the course, our state of mind, our whole life affect our game so much. Whenever we play Burningbush we feel something special, the kind of thing Shivas and Seamus talk about. We think the thirteenth hole is haunted.”

  Haunted? I thought of my own experience there. “Who is Seamus?” I asked.

  “We’ll not be bringin’ Seamus MacDuff into this,” said Peter vehemently. “I can’t stand the man.”

  “Now, Peter,” said Shivas, “now, Peter—Seamus is our great good friend.” He smiled at our host and reached over to squeeze his arm.

  “Who is Seamus MacDuff?” I asked the question louder this time.

  “Seamus MacDuff,” said Eve Greene, “is the local madman, or a very wise man, depending upon your point of view. He and Shivas are very special friends.”

  “Who is he?” I persisted. There seemed to be no end of strange characters in this innocent-seeming town.

  “Well, Ah’ll tell ye, Michael, if ye promise to keep it a secret noo,” Shivas fixed me with a solemn look. “Seamus MacDuff is the man who invented the game so long ago. He’s workin’ on it still, perfectin’ it ye might say. And blessin’ our town here by choosin’ our links to do his special work.” He leaned toward me. “And Seamus it is who teaches me most o’ what I know about the game.”

  There was a long silence. The ghost of Seamus was with us. I began to wonder if I had seen him on the course. I seemed to remember a seedy-looking character walking back and forth along the far edge of that treacherous ravine on the thirteenth hole. Then—weird sensation—I realized I had seen him! The glimpse I had gotten had not been important then, absorbed as I was with our play. But now I remembered him vividly. I could have sworn he was wearing a tattered black tail coat! “Did we see him on the thirteenth?” I whispered to Shivas.

  “Noo did ye see him there!” he answered loudly, pulling back from me with a wide-eyed look. “Did he speak?”

  “Well, he did seem to be saying something,” I answered. To my amazement I now remembered that he had spoken. “But I can’t remember what he said,” I went on vaguely.

  Had he been talking to us? How could I repress such a vivid perception? I had been totally preoccupied with my game after Shivas’s strange performance and my own extraordinary shot. But to have my recognition of Seamus MacDuff totally obscured. . . . At that point I asked Agatha to get me another glass of whisky. There was a long silence. Finally Shivas spoke.

  “I like yer theories, Greenes,” he said. “Speakin’ o’ environments, I’ve aye wanted to play at the Tuctu gowf course in Peroo. ’Tis the highest in the world, they say. ’Tis said tha’ the game is played there from mountain top to mountain top. There wid be yer environmental effect, now widn’t? The ball wid fly a mile.”

  “I thought ye wanted to play in Tibet,” said Kelly.

  “Well, Tibet [he pronounced it Tibut] wid be a place a’right, but this is the worst yeer in their history and I dinna’ think we’ll have much o’ a chance tae do it,” he said gravely. That was 1956, the year the Chinese overran Tibet. I learned that this had affected him deeply. “But gowf has been played there, o’ that we can be shair noo.” He said this last with great conviction.

  “I always said ye shoulda’ played wi’ the Sodom and Gomorra’ Gowfin Society on the Dead Sea,” rumbled Julian from the depths of his armchair. “Noo there yer ba’ would nae ’ave gone very farr,” he rolled his r’s as if he were savoring them. “Nae verry farr at a’. Twelve hundred feet below the sea, their li’l coorse was. Played the thing maself before the war. Like playin’ in the inferno. The inferno itself. Only the English woulda’ thought of doin’ a thing like tha’.”

  “The Sodom and Gomorrah Golfing Society!” Eve exclaimed. “There was such a place?”

  “Indeed there was, in a town called Kallia, upon the Dead Sea,” Julian said.

  “Now, Julian, you must admit that playing such a course affected your game,” said the pixilated lady, ever hopeful for her husband’s theories.

  “Well, I’ll tell ye, Eve,” he replied, “it left an indelible impression on me that the English could stick it out in hell and niver know the difference.”

  The whisky now was having its effect, and the conversation bobbed along as if we were shooting the rapids of the Colorado. Adam and Eve continued to elaborate their sweeping theory of evolution. They talked about successive levels of mind, the opening up of supramental powers and awarenesses, and somehow came around to gardens. “The history of golf and the history of gardens are interlocked,” they said. “The golf links here in Burningbush are an exploded garden.” Then they explained the relationships between gardens and certain states of mind, how the English made the formal European gardens more like nature, made them gentler and more random. I said that nothing in England or Scotland could rival Pebble Beach for sheer grandeur, that the famous California golf course should certainly produce some wonderful states of mind, though I had never heard of any actually occurring there. Then the conversation came round again to Seamus MacDuff.

  “He’s an embarrassment to the city and a royal pain in the ass,” said Peter abruptly. “Why they let him live out in that ravine, I’ll niver know.”

  “Does he actually live out there?” I asked.

  “Let us say he spends a good deal o’ his precious time there,” said Shivas. “He’s studyin’ the game at all times, workin’ on his theories o’ the wardle.”

  It was uncanny how much I could remember now about that scroungy-looking character. I seemed to remember him gesticulating in our direction as he walked along the far edge of the gully.


  “It’s reputed that he’s writing a book which will be published after his death,” said Eve. “But no one knows for sure.”

  “Oh, he’s mad as a loon and why d’ye all pretend to take him so serious?” said Peter. “Ye’re makin’ fun o’ him just like everybody else. That’s what ye’re really doin’, just makin’ fun of him.”

  “I niver make fun o’ the man,” said Shivas gravely. “And he has a book indeed, a great book. The Logarithms of the Just, it’s called, bein’ first notes for a physics o’ the spirit. I’ve seen it twice. So dinna’ tell me that I’m makin’ fun of ’im, Peter. He’s my truest teacher.”

  “What kind of theories does he have?” I asked, my curiosity growing with each statement.

  “Apparently he’s studying gravity,” someone said. “His theory explains the alignment of human consciousness with the physical forces of the universe.”

  “Is he a mathematician?” I asked.

  “In the Pythagorean tradition,” said Shivas. “Ye see, Michael, he’s had to tip the balance of his mind to study gravity. He’s floatin’ free now to get a better fix upon this world of ours.” In a few hours I would discover Shivas’s own formulations relating gravity to the subtle forces of the human soul.

  “Seamus MacDuff is the one sane man among us,” Julian slapped the arm of his chair. “The only sane man among us. In a world gone completely off the target he’s readjustin’ his sights. What if it takes a lifetime, are any o’ us here doin’ any better?” He scowled at us all. “The whole o’ our world is gone off target. Now, I would like to say my piece about the game of gowf.” He cleared his throat and spat into the fire. Then he began to speak in his richly cadenced, rumbling brogue, and summoned a vision of hell on earth. In attempting to recreate his monologue I have become aware once again that a vision can be communicated only by the person who has it. His words went something like this.

  “Now see how spellbound we are by the wardle around us. Hypnotized from mornin’ to night by every influence, human or otherwise, that impinges on our senses. Adam, ye talk about the grand evolution but despair yerself about our times. For every theory ye propose about the improvement o’ the game, I’ll show ye how the game is fadin’ away, losin’ its old charm, becomin’ mechanized by the Americans and the rest o’ the world that blindly follows them. Look at the crowded links, the lack o’ leisure, the hurried startin’ times, the ruination o’ the old clubs where ye could gather with your friends and enjoy some good conversation. Where’s the evolution in all o’ that now, I ask ye? Show me where it is. Now my special angle on life is bein’ a doctor, lookin’ at people’s ailments these fifty years. And I want to tell ye tha’ the language o’ the body says, help! help! help! There is no apparent increase o’ longevity, health, happiness, or digestin’ in the world as far as I can see. A chance for more to live all right, an elimination o’ the plagues and epidemics, an end to infant deaths. But with all o’ that nae increase in the higher goods o’ life. We are all o’ us hypnotized, I tell ye, and you’re just refusin’ to look at the facts if ye say it otherwise. Now gowf reflects all this, yer right, Adam. It does indeed reflect all this. But what an awful reflection! What an awful reflection,” he shook his head sadly as he repeated the words. “I see the distorted swings, the hurried rounds, and now the electric carts tae ruin the courses and rob us of our exercise. And the configuration o’ physique that shows me how our twisted lives twist our bodies. I don’t think evolution is goin’ ahead so much as just goin’ along breedin’ more unfitness every day. We have got off the mark, gone for the wrong things, forgotten what it’s all about, gotten oursel’s hypnotized by silly people. If it weren’t for Shivas here, and Seamus MacDuff, I would say there’s nae hope left at all.” He then went around the room pointing to each person’s foibles and source of unhappiness. He asked the Greenes about their constant hypochondriacal complaints—Adam’s bad back, Eve’s migraine headaches—all the complaining which punctuated their grand theories of the universe. And Peter McNaughton about his endless rushing—at work, at home, at play, his irritability over tiny frustrations, his compulsive avoidance of pleasure through most of the day. Even Shivas was not spared. Why, asked the forbidding doctor, did he have to rush about the streets in the early morning hours provoking theories that he was some kind of sexual offender? He ended with a horrendous blast at me. He could tell just by looking at me that there wasn’t a fiber of dedication in my character, that I was a good American boy “pluckin’ the fruits of an easy life.” The line he ended with, the last twist of his conversational dagger, was an admonition that each of us compare our complainings and frustrations now with our sufferings ten years before. “It is interestin’ to see how persistent the patterns are,” he said. “And then we sit here, gettin’ high on whisky, paintin’ glorious pictures o’ the higher life, while the world outside grows ever darker.”