Golf in the Kingdom

by Michael Murphy

  “A chameleon on a tartan plaid, that was the way it felt,” said Shivas, describing his own early state. He was turning seventeen ways at once until the spirit broke through with an image of epilepsy and his body dismembered. His painful yet joyous reconstruction of character began that summer in Burningbush after the koan had finally exploded—I have already told you the story as I know it. Through primitive group therapy with members of the club, through years of study, meditation, golf in true gravity, and countless good deeds to his friends he had come to the glowing ever- adventurous state I found him in. He was well beyond despair and fragmentation by then.

  I open a consideration of his “ideal” with these reflections because I think they point to the state and attitude he would bring us to. For, as he put it, “there is always a Body beyond our little body, arms to hold us, new eyes to see, a larger being waiting here closer than our physical skin.” There is a deeper self that thrives on the craziness of this teeming world, that “sees every breakdown as an opening to the original crazy shimmering dance, to the eternal explosion of the sun in the night, to the floating worlds all around.”

  His ideal would have us know this Body and this Dance, would have us live in it while playing golf and singing ballads and talking to our friends; yes, and even while we are trying to pass it on to others.

  The Dance of Shiva

  IN SOUTH INDIA, NOT far from Madras and Pondicherry, lies the Temple of Chidambaram, known to many as the original home of Natarajan, the dancing Shiva. The temple there is like a canyon-fort, with great walls enclosing smaller temples of varying shapes and sizes, all of them passageways to different parts of Shiva’s body. One without windows is black as night and houses the God’s akashic, or etheric Lingam: in its dark recess Hindu women cover the black and tapering stone with melted butter, stroking it slowly until its shape is worn smooth. Another houses the great bell, which is struck to announce disappearances and renewals of the God. Around the compound there is a corridor with a thousand pillars, and near its southern gate there stands the pavilion with the famous figure. When the pavilion doors are open you can see the King of Dancers from any point—dancing on a pyramid of gods and demons in a prefiguration of His dance to bring the world down and end the cosmic cycle.

  I visited the temple while I was at the Aurobindo ashram near the end of my journey around the world, passing through the outer gates in the wake of an American sadhu with orange robes and a devastating smile who said it had come to him in a dream that he should bring me here. The moment I crossed the threshold I felt the presence of the God. Not the excitement of anticipation merely or the strangeness of the place, but the overwhelming presence of Shiva, as tangible as the drum rolls and basso chanting one heard in the distance.

  We walked in silence around the temple compound, past the candelit cave which housed the Lingam (women chanting as they rubbed its sides, being entered by its etheric substance for ether is the medium of sound, and this is its Lingam), past the temple bell, and smaller passages that showed you Shiva’s many faces, down the thousand-pillared corridor to the edge of a crowd pressing round the dancing figure. Its flying arms and legs were perfect poise. It was glowing as if lit from within.

  Ceremonies were beginning and the Brahmin priests of Tamilnad were seated around the statue in ascending banks, chanting Sanskrit mantras with a ringing power and hard, insistent beat—a beat to open nerveways of the densest mind, no one, no part to be left behind in this culminating act of worship. Then the sliding doors slammed shut. The God had disappeared.

  The crowd pressed closer, and for a moment I was lost in the wavering space. Then the doors slid back. The God was covered high with flowers, a mountain of petals and blossoms where the statue had been, and the Sanskrit chant began to swell, hint of frenzy ordered by the mantra-beat, every white-robed figure bobbing now with growing passion.

  They began to stroke the flowers away, to unveil Natarajan, the King of Dancers. Then the doors slammed shut.

  Then opened to show a pile of rice, Shiva in the food of India.

  Seven times the God was covered and revealed—Natarajan at the center of all the elements, dancing even in glowing stone. Each time the doors swung open the great bell rang and those hundreds in the pressing crowd saw Shiva at the heart of things.

  In flowers, rice, bread, and stone; the Dance. His arms and legs the tendrils of exploding worlds, his eyes eternal stillness, his smile the ecstasy. The Dance was at the heart of every atom.

  Afterword

  Spring 1997

  The Sublime and Uncanny in Golf

  SINCE ITS PUBLICATION IN 1972, Golf in the Kingdom has prompted many people to write or tell me in person about golf experiences with elements of the sublime or uncanny. By 1975, I had received so many reports of this kind—and was so impressed by their variety—that I began to collect them systematically. This effort led me, in collaboration with Rhea White, to write In the Zone (Penguin-Arkana, 1978, 1995), which identifies more than twenty types of self-surpassing feat, exalted state, or altered perception in sport; and that book in turn contributed to a larger study of extraordinary, or metanormal, experience (see Michael Murphy. The Future of the Body. New York: Tarcher-Putnam, 1992).

  I’ve been guided in this exploration by the radical empiricism of William James; by the work of Frederic Myers, a principal founder of psychical research; by Herbert Thurston’s studies of mysticism’s physical phenomena; by Abraham Maslow’s investigations of peak-experience; and by Marghanita Laski’s great study of ecstasy.6 Since. the 1880s, these and other pioneering researchers have created a kind of “natural history,” or anthropology, of extraordinary human functioning. Such inquiry identifies and compares metanormal events that occur in all sorts of human activity including sport and physical adventure.

  Most experiences of this kind can be seen as further developments of ordinary human capacities. For example, the moments of extraordinary visual or auditory acuity that some sportspeople report seem to involve extensions of normal perceptual capacities, and the astonishing agilities of certain athletes can be taken to be developments of ordinary movement abilities. Here are instances of metanormal perception, cognition, volition, energy, movement, and pleasure from the world of golf.

  Extraordinary acuity and judgment. A New York attorney wrote to tell me that while standing on the tee of a 400-yard hole, he saw a ball marker the size of a dime on the distant green. That the marker was there, he claimed, was subsequently confirmed by his playing partners. Was his acuity produced by a magnification of his ordinary vision, some sort of clairvoyance, or both? Several golfers have made this distinction for me, citing moments when their judgment of distance and playing conditions seemed to defy ordinary explanations.

  Perceptions of extraordinary beauty and presence. A college student told me that as he finished a round of golf after playing with exceptional concentration, the “world caught fire,” causing him to “see everything with new eyes.” His report reminded me of a friend’s experience at her club one summer afternoon during which, as she put it, “the light of the setting sun was replaced by another light.” For a few moments, she said, “the entire world was radiantly transparent.”

  Fleeting perceptions of phantom figures. We can account for these in part by supposing that high concentration in golf sometimes produces a degree of sensory deprivation—not unlike the kind caused by seclusion in dark rooms or flotation tanks—that allows the subconscious mind to dramatize psychological problems. Some people, for example, think they see snakes in the rough when none are present, and others glimpse odd or threatening shapes as they are about to putt. I describe such experiences in this book, particularly in the subsection titled “The Value of Negative Thoughts.” But such perceptions can be beneficent as well as threatening. A few people have told me that they felt an uncanny closeness with someone they loved, though they weren’t physically present, during a round of golf.

  Invisible presences or phantom figures have
often been reported by religious ascetics, pilots, sailors, mountain climbers, and explorers—among them Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail alone around the world, and Charles Lindbergh during his famous flight across the Atlantic. Contemplative practice, sport, and physical adventure alike often require a vigilance that alters the perceptual field. We can speculate that intense concentration, especially when held for hours on end, opens our perception to things beyond the range of our ordinary senses.7

  Metanormal movement abilities, including extraordinary buoyancy while walking, new elasticity of the golf swing, and “levitation-like” sensations. A low-handicap player wrote that on the eighteenth hole of his golf club, which was a long uphill five par, he felt as if he were walking downhill. In this state, he reached the green with his second shot for the first time in his life. Several people have described moments when they seemed to swing “with invisible arms and legs” or “muscles they hadn’t used before” or “a body they didn’t know they had.” Experience of this kind is cultivated in certain martial arts and Buddhist yogas as a developing aspect of ki or chi. It is striking to me that it comes spontaneously to golfers unacquainted with Eastern thought or disciplines.

  Special powers of mind over matter, including the ability to affect a ball’s flight through mental intention alone. More people than I can remember have told me that they lengthened a drive or straightened a shot by some secret reach of the will. A teenage club champion wrote that he once made a sliced three iron “hook at the end so that it landed only six feet from the hole.” The ball, it seemed, curved right and then left on its way to the green. It seems to me that the body English one observes among golfers dramatizes a common, if largely subconscious, belief in this phenomenon.

  States of extraordinary joy and release, some of which seem religious in nature, and a lasting delight that does not depend upon the satisfaction of particular needs or desires. I have come to believe that golf produces more states of well-being, and a wider range of these, than most people realize.

  New energy, which can last for many days after a round is finished. Some people have said that streaming sensations, a subtle effervescence, or “tiny points of light” accompany such vitality. Many of them have told me that they came away from a particular golf game with more energy than they had when it started.

  A volition beyond ordinary willpower. This capacity, or condition, is described in phrases such as “the game played me” or “my golf round simply happened.”

  In many martial arts and contemplative disciplines, such experiences are cultivated in the belief that they arise from the greater nature we harbor. If they are wisely nurtured, it is said, they enhance our life immeasurably and contribute to the world’s advance. According to sages and mystics East and West, every glimpse of the higher life carries seeds of a transformative practice.8

  REFLECTIONS ON THE RULES OF GOLF

  During my round with Shivas Irons I hooked my drive on the third hole into the upper branches of a gorse bush, and a few moments later, as I prepared to hit my second shot, my ball sank out of sight. A few readers have reminded me that if I caused the ball to move, I would’ve suffered a one-stroke penalty and thus scored twelve instead of eleven. Let me take this chance to thank them. Their concern reflects the high regard in which the rules are held by golfers generally, and has caused me to examine my conscience and memory about the event in question.

  It is possible, of course, that I jostled the bush or kicked a rock against it. But I was careful in taking my stance, and the more I think about that ball, perched so precariously in its nest of thorns, the more convinced I become that it would have sunk in any case. If I blame its fall on the movement of my club as I practiced take-aways or on a pebble I inadvertently kicked, I could blame it as well on tremors caused by an earthquake in East Lothian, surf at the links’ edge, or the train to Edinburgh. It is impossible to calculate all the forces that influenced my ball. It is even possible that its own internal movements, its never-ending changes of density, shape, and temperature, caused it to sink out of sight. No ball is ever completely at rest. Like all apparent stabilities of this world, each is always shifting. That is the reason, perhaps, for the perception shared by many that every shot requires us to hit a moving target.

  Another incident during my round has also troubled many readers. Dennis Stillings of Kamuela, Hawaii, stated the problem well when he wrote:

  I am sure you have received a number of questions about this particular event, to wit: the penalty stroke inflicted upon you when you accidentally knocked the ball off the tee during your round with Shivas Irons.

  As far as I can tell, the rules of golf do not indicate a penalty for such an event. According to the USGA’s 1995 Rules of Golf (Section II, “Ball in Play”), a “ball is ‘in play’ as soon as the player has made a stroke on the teeing ground.” A stroke is defined as “the forward movement of the club made with the intention of fairly striking at and moving the ball. . . .” Clearly, knocking the ball off the tee with one’s waggle does not involve any such intention.

  Furthermore, the reductio ad absurdum of this is that, presumably, when you accidentally knocked the ball off the tee, you replaced it on the tee. Even though this is not explicitly stated in the text of Golf in the Kingdom, it can nevertheless be assumed that you did so, otherwise you would not have been surprised at Shivas insisting on adding a penalty stroke. On the other hand, were there a penalty for accidentally knocking the ball off the tee, picking up the ball and replacing it on the tee would have been a two-stroke penalty.

  In response to Stillings’s letter, I wrote:

  . . . I am taking the matter up with Grant Spaeth, former President of the USGA and Chairman of its Rules Committee. I wonder how big a waggle can be before it is deemed to be a stroke? For whatever reasons, I cannot remember how big mine was on the first tee with Shivas Irons.

  To which Stillings replied:

  . . . I have seen golfers who have the very bad habit of taking their practice swings just inches from the ball accidentally strike it. In this case the ball has not been fairly struck since there was no intention to hit it, so it appears that, according to a strict interpretation of the rules, the player should be allowed to re-tee without penalty. It may be that a distinction needs to be made between a practice swing and a waggle.

  Stillings’s citation of the rules is correct. There is no penalty for hitting one’s ball from the tee with a waggle. Grant Spaeth, who was deeply involved in the USGA’s reorganization of the rules during the 1980s, confirms this and is firm in saying that it is up to the player to decide whether he has waggled or swung with intention to hit the ball. In this, as in many regards, golf depends on the honor principle.

  But if that is the case, why did Shivas Irons inflict that penalty on me? Had he read my mind? Did he know, or presume to know, that I intended to hit the ball with what I took to be a waggle? Was he testing me? Was he trying to teach me something?

  Unfortunately, I do not have a certain answer to any of these questions. Shivas Irons knew and loved the rules of golf. I am certain that I waggled. And if I’d put the ball in play, I should’ve been penalized more than one stroke for re-teeing it. Like so much else about my round at Burningbush, the event contains a mystery.

  6 Marghanita Laski. Ecstasy (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1961)

  7 See Michael Murphy. The Future of the Body, pages 72-82.

  8 See The Future of the Body, chapters four and five; In the Zone, chapters five and six; and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons (New York: Broadway Books, 1997.)

  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.