Golf in the Kingdom

by Michael Murphy

  They had hard leather surfaces and felt lighter than ordinary golf balls. “They’re featheries,” he said, “real featheries from the ol’ days.”

  “Featheries,” I learned later, were the balls used until the middle of the nineteenth century when gutta-percha balls were introduced into play. They were made of feathers and leather and hardened by being soaked in brine. “Seamus uses them in his research,” he said. “Found them heer in the ravine, he claims.”

  He stepped over to an open space with a sandy surface and put them on the ground. Then he pointed with Seamus’s shillelagh down the ravine. “See tha’ target there?” he said. I looked in the direction he was indicating and indeed there was a target, a white circle some 3 or 4 feet in diameter painted on the ravine wall. It was about 40 feet away from him, barely discernible in the wavering firelight. It reminded me of a photograph I had seen in the National Geographic of a paleolithic cave symbol used for magic hunting rites. “Now watch this,” he said.

  He placed one ball in front of him and took a stance with the shillelagh as if it were his driver. He waggled it carefully, holding it an inch or two above the ground, gathering his concentration as he had done through our round that afternoon. I felt the same suck of energy as he centered his attention on the ball, then his swing unfurled. The ball exploded from the club and flew into the shadows, hitting the target with a loud pop. He took his stance in front of the second ball and swung again, hitting the target right in the middle.

  “Ye see that?” he said, turning to face me. “Ye can do it with a stick if ye concentrate.” Then he paused and looked thoughtfully at the gnarled club. “O’ course, this is not yer ordinary stick,” he murmured.

  He retrieved the balls and hit them into the target again. I sat by the fire and watched him. I had the impression he was somehow compelled to repeat the performance, almost as if he were in the grip of the club. It went on for fifteen minutes or more. He may have hit twenty or thirty shots, a strange figure in the shadows, like some ancient shaman firing his darts at the approaching buffalo.

  At one point he turned and held up the shillelagh. “He calls this his baffin’ spoon—the name he rimembers from his chile’ood. Says one club’s all ye need to play the game.”

  I leaned back with my feet toward the fire and looked up the cliff. The rock formations above me curved and receded into grotesque shapes and seemed to move in the flickering shadows. I saw two horned birds flying upward, a row of human heads in profile staring dumbly at one another, and the crenelated cliff edge like the wall of our fort. I tried to imagine other shapes as the jagged rocks moved in the firelight. At the very top, between the crenels in my fortress wall, I saw a face staring down at me. It was the face of an old man with a large frizzy beard, motionless like the imaginary faces below it. As I looked at it, I could make out other features—tiny squinting eyes, a look bright with curiosity, and a mad, gay little smile that seemed to relish what it was seeing. I cocked my head to one side to get another angle on it. Then I started back.

  It was a face. It was Seamus MacDuff!

  I jumped up and shouted at Shivas. “There he is!” I cried. “There he is!”

  He was picking up his balls at the target. “Now, Michael, now, Michael,” he said loudly, “calm yerself. Seamus’ll niver come if ye carry on like that.” He came over to me and looked up the cliff. “Now, where is he?” he asked. I pointed at the cliff edge, the face was still there. “See it?” I said loudly, jabbing my finger toward it. “Look where I’m pointing.”

  “I canna’ see anything at all,” he said impatiently, “where ye lookin’ now?” He looked back and forth along the edge of the ravine. “I dinna’ see a thing. The place is gettin’ to ye.”

  The face was still there, staring down at me, I was amazed that he couldn’t see it. “Look,” I shouted, grabbing him by the shoulder and pointing so that he could see down the line of my arm.

  “I dinna’ see a thing,” he said again. “I dinna’ see a thing.” Then he turned away and stood in front of the fire, rubbing his hands for warmth. “Michael, come heer,” he said firmly. I turned away from the cliff. “Look at the fire,” he said, “it’ll calm ye doon.” I raised my hands to feel the fire’s warmth, shaken and still certain that Seamus was watching.

  “How’d ye lik’ to hit a few wi’ Seamus’s club?” he said quietly. He walked over to the open space where he had been hitting his shots and held up the shillelagh. “Come,” he said, waving me toward him with an abrupt decisive gesture. I looked back at the cliff edge. The face was gone. I peered intently at the place where it had been, then scanned the entire perimeter of the ravine wall. There was no face to be seen.

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  “Ye see,” he answered, “the fire plays tricks there on the rocks. Come hit a few.”

  I was relieved—and disappointed. I wanted to see the mysterious figure of Seamus MacDuff in the worst way by now.

  He handed me the gnarled stick, cradling it on its imaginary cushion as if it were a scepter. I waggled it carefully, gradually lowering it into the arc of my golf swing until I was swinging it with a full sweep. It had amazing balance. “It’s incredible how easily it swings,” I said. “Did he make it himself?”

  “Claims he made it from an old shillelagh.” He was watching me with amusement. “Do ye want to hit one now?” Without waiting for an answer he teed up a featherie on the sandy ground. “Now, Michael,” he said as he put the ball on a tiny mound of earth, “try to hit it clean without hittin’ any rocks. Seamus’ll gi’ me royal hell if we hurt his baffin’ spoon.”

  I eyed the primitive target and swung. The ball exploded from the club and I looked up to follow its flight. I could not see where it had landed in the dancing shadows.

  “Ye missed the taraget,” he said with a broad smile, “but ye hit it good. Seamus woulda’ been proud o’ ye. Heer, hit another one.” He teed up the other ball.

  I swung and hit it squarely. “Where did it go this time?” I asked, peering into the shadows.

  “Ye hit it on the other side o’ the taraget this time, but yer swingin’ good.” He was grinning broadly now. “Ye’re the first person I’ve e’er seen wi’ Seamus’s club beside maself. Ye make a funny sight.”

  I held the shillelagh up in the light. “I feel funny holding it. I swear it wants to swing itself.”

  “Come, let’s find the featheries,” he said, walking off toward the target. I followed him down to the white circle. It was painted with some kind of whitewash. I could see that it had been painted over many times.

  “Has he repainted this?” I asked, pointing to the crusty markings.

  “Been usin’ it for yeers. It washes off each winter in the rains.” He picked up the balls and led me back to our imaginary tee. “Michael, come heer,” he said, “I want to show ye somethin’.” He had me take my customary golf stance in front of a ball he had put on the ground. “Now, I want ye to try somethin’ slightly different this time, will ye do it?” He looked at me hopefully, cocking his head to one side. His large blue eyes caught the flickering firelight. I could see my reflection in them, he was standing so close, a distorted image of my entire body wavering like a flame. “Would ye like to try it?” he repeated the question, fixing me with that slightly cross-eyed double-angled look. I could now see two images of myself in the mirror of his eyes, each one slightly different from the other. I nodded that I was willing. “Awright, now,” he said quietly, raising a long finger. “When ye swing, put all yer attention on the feelin’ o’ yer inner body—yer inner body.” He whispered these last words as if he were telling me a secret.

  I looked at the shifting reflections in his eyes. To this day I can vividly remember my reaction. It was as if an immediate split occurred in my mind. A part of me instantly knew what he meant; another part began to question and puzzle. I looked at him dumbly, without answering, as the two attitudes formed themselves.

  He leaned toward me and took my arms in his
hands. “Close yer eyes,” he said soothingly. Then he lifted my arms, I was still holding the shillelagh like a golf club, and moved them through the arc of an imaginary swing as a golf professional does with a student, whispering again the words, “feel yer inner body.” My questions and puzzlement quieted and I fell into the rhythm of his movements, slowly swinging the club and sensing what he meant. It was like the state I had discovered that afternoon during our round of golf—a growing power, rhythm, and grace, a pleasure that had no apparent cause. Yes—perhaps you have had that sense of it—a body within a body sustained by its own energies and delight, a body with a life of its own waiting to blossom.

  “Do ye see what I mean?” he murmured as he swung my arms back and forth. I nodded and he backed away. “Now try to hit the ball tha’ way,” he said.

  I adjusted my stance and waggled the club, focusing my attention on the sense of an inner body. When I swung I topped the ball and it bounced high in the air.

  He nodded with approval. “Good, good,” he said loudly, “ye stayed right in it, now try another.”

  I took my stance and swung again. This time the ball flew toward the target but fell short. “Ye did it again. Good!” he said decisively. “Now stay wi’ tha’ feelin’.” We found the balls and repeated the exercise. He seemed oblivious to the results as he studied my attitude and “energy.” He claimed that my state of mind was reflected in an aura around me which he could sense. “Yer energy was good that time,” he would say, or “it wavered on that one.” He was as definite about these statements as he was about my physical form.

  Our lesson continued for half an hour or more, some twenty or thirty shots, while I practiced that indubitable awareness of my “inner body.”

  The experience went through stages. At first there was a vague yet tangible sense that there was indeed a body closer to me than my skin, with its own weight and shape. It seemed to waver and bounce and subtly change its form, as if it were elastic. Then—I can still remember the feeling so clearly—it changed to an hourglass: my head and feet were enormous and my waist was as small as a fist. This sensation lasted while we looked for the balls and returned to our tee, then it changed again. My body felt enormously tall, I seemed to look down from a point several feet above my head. I told him what I was feeling. “Now come down heer,” he said, calmly putting a finger on my breastbone. “Just come down heer.” I returned to my ordinary size and shape, and continued swinging.

  I was aware that part of my mind had suspended judgment, that many questions were simmering still. But it felt marvelous to swing that way, so absorbed in the pleasure and feel of it. And it was a relief not to worry about the results. I could have gone on for hours.

  But he ended the lesson abruptly. “Enough for now,” he said, putting a finger on my chest, “rimember the feelin’. Yer inner body is aye waitin’ for yer attention.” We added some branches to the fire, which had almost died out, and leaned back against a pair of rocks. I glanced up the cliff, but no face was there, just the writhing shadows on the canyon walls. I felt marvelously alive, as if I were floating in some new field of force, but the questions that had been suspended began rising like vapors. This state I was in was too good to be true, too easily come by, I began to wonder how soon it would fade after Shivas and his colorful admonitions were gone. Anyone would feel good around him, getting so much attention, being led into adventures like these. Dark and true premonitions, I felt an edge of sadness.

  He must have sensed what was going through my mind. “Wha’ ye thinkin’ there?” he asked with a fatherly tone in his voice. “Tell me wha’ ye’re thinkin’.” I told him some of my doubts. I especially remember asking him if all his talk of inner bodies and subtle energies wasn’t a mere device for helping concentration. I told him about the Hawthorne experiment in which a group of social psychologists had found that workers in a factory had improved their output every time a change was made in their routine, no matter what that change might be. I asked him if he was running a Hawthorne experiment on me.

  He leaned back with his genial grin and shook his head in mock exasperation. “They’re two Michaels, I can see; Michael the plunger and Michael the doubter,” he chided. “Wha’ a shame it is tha’ ye canna’ even go five minutes heer without yer good skeptical mind intrudin’. Yer good skeptical mind, tha’s a problem for ye.” He raised his finger like a wand and shook it at me. “Watch out for yer good mind,” he said.

  I gave him some kind of argument, I am not sure of its exact content, but felt as I was doing it that some monotonous tape loop was running in my brain. I felt the excitement of our adventure, but the tape loop kept running. I asked him if Seamus MacDuff was insane, living in this ungodly ravine.

  He gazed into the fire with melancholy amusement and began shaking his head. “Wha’ yer sayin’ tells me again tha’ the world is na’ ready yet for Seamus. To swing his baffin’ spoon and still question the man . . .” He shook his head sadly. I felt chagrined. I was the first person to swing that stick besides Seamus and himself and now I was questioning it all. He was more vulnerable about this hidden world than I thought; I could tell he was hurt.

  We were suddenly shy with one another. I was too much in awe of him to be reassuring; he was intimidated by my doubts and questions. I mumbled something about how good it felt to swing from the inner body, that it didn’t matter what I thought as long as I could feel that way. But that line of reasoning didn’t help. I said that the experience was far more important than our ideas about it, that Seamus was obviously an incredible figure whether he was mad or not.

  He turned and glowered at me. “Wha’ do ye mean, whether he’s mad or na’?” he snarled. I could feel the blood rushing to my stomach. “Yer world is mad, young man,” he spit the words at me and rose abruptly. “Let’s go. This has been a mistake, I can see.” His totally unexpected sensitivity had broken some unspoken code we had adopted with each other. I began pleading with him to stay and wait for Seamus, confessing my stupidity about the strange things he was showing me, my timidity, my lack of experience. I remember being on my knees through most of it looking up at him as I pleaded for another chance, like a pathetic lover. My unexpected performance must have startled him as much as his had startled me. He frowned as he looked down at me. There was a long silence as he studied my face, then suddenly he smiled. “Git off yer knees,” he said, wagging his head, “ye look lik’ yer askin’ me to marry ye.” I pleaded with him to stay and after a reflective pause he sat down again. I quickly added some branches to the fire, determined by now to wait all night if necessary for Seamus’s appearance. Still confessing my total ignorance of things mystical and occult, I managed to get him talking about his teacher.

  “Ye see the world is na’ ready for someone lik’ ’im, ye can see tha’ from yer own reactions. The world was na’ ready for Pythagoras either.” The name of the Greek philosopher was intoned as if we both understood that he was one of the keys to history. He pronounced it Pith-uh-gor´-us. “The wardle was na’ ready for Pith-uh-gor´-us either,” he repeated the statement with a melancholy look. “Ye see Pith-uh-gor´-us had the clue.” This was said with solemn emphasis. I was touched and amused by his quaint self-educated assurance. I had studied the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers that spring at Stanford and knew something about Pythagoras. I wondered what the clue might be.

  “Now there are some things I could tell ye, if I thought ye’d tak’ ’em seriously,” he went on, eying me suspiciously. I urged him to tell me, promising that all my doubts had subsided. “Well, I’d lik’ to tell ye . . .” His voice trailed off as he studied my expression. “Well, I’ll do it,” he said quietly. “The world should o’ followed the lead of Pith-uh-gor´-us.” He almost whispered the words. “And ’tis this—to ken the world from the inside, not the outside as we’ve done. Like I showed ye wi’ yer gowf shots there.” He gestured toward the open space we had used for our practice. “Tha’ is how Pith-uh-gor´-us heered the music o’ the spheres—and
started all our science.” My mind raced back over the passages I had read about the famous philosopher. I remembered that he had invented the word “philosophy,” that he had discovered certain relationships between musical intervals, that the Pythagorean theorem had been named after him, that he had founded a school in Crotona for the practice of philosophy, mathematics, and the good life.

  “After Pith-uh-gor´-us science turned to magic, naethin’ but superficial powers,” he continued. “And so we rely upon our instruments instead o’ oursel’s. Tha’ is why Seamus says we only need a baffin’ spoon like his to play a round o’ gowf—if we would e’er ken the world from the inside.” He stood and kicked the embers into new flame. Then he picked up Seamus’s “baffing spoon” and fondled it. “Do ye ken what Seamus is really doin’ heer?” he asked. “He’s makin’ himself into a livin’ laboratory to right the balance o’ our Western science, to show us how to know true gravity.” He lapsed into silence, and for several minutes we stared into the fire.

  “True gravity, ’tis Seamus’s term for the deeper lines o’ force, the deeper structure of the universe. But this is the thing,” he raised his hand and shook a finger at me, “ye can only know wha’ it is by livin’ into it yersel’—not through squeezin’ it and shovin’ it the way they do in the universities and laboratories. Ye must go into the heart o’ it, through yer own body and senses and livin’ experience, level after level right to the heart o’ it. Ye see, Michael, merely shootin’ par is second best. Goin’ for results like that leads men and cultures and entire worlds astray. But if ye do it from the inside ye get the results eventually and everythin’ else along with it. So ye will na’ see me givin’ people many tips about the gowf swings lik’ they do in all the ‘how-to’ books. I will na’ do it. Ye must start from the inside, lik’ I showed ye there.” He pointed again to our sandy practice area. “And tha’ is wha’ Seamus is doin’!” He shook his head slowly. “But no one understands, and poor Seamus runs away.”