32

Karma doesn’t accept
kick-backs

I had recently designed a little house on a piece of land owned by a longtime friend, Richard La Plante. I had provided all the cash, and he and his wife had organised the construction. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask for any ownership rights as he’d been a chum for about twenty-five years, but that’s another story. The ‘guest house’ was my dream house. It had a Turkish bath (a steam room) and work-out swimming pool; the whole thing fuelled by solar power.

On my first complete day in Ojai, I drove my Fiat 500E, the best electric vehicle in the world. The powers that be in California reputedly told Mr Fiat that if he didn’t build an electric vehicle for the lowest cost they would prohibit all sales of Fiat to California – no such testicles on UK politicians. My destination was the old pepper tree, which, as I approached, I could see was a new angle to how I remembered it.

It transpires that the day after Krishnaji passed over, the ancient tree toppled over. While the trustees were trying to decide how to remove it, the now horizontal trunk of the tree began pushing out new branches. So by the time I came by, the section blocking the road had been trimmed and the main trunk manoeuvred back into its old position.

I gratefully leaned against it, and acknowledging my train of thought, paused it. There was a breeze through the trees and the air in the shade was pleasantly warm.

The image of my Dad and his rejuvenated physique came into my head, followed by something Krishnamurti said of dreams: ‘Through constant awareness in the waking hours, the many layers of consciousness yield their contents, their hidden understanding. Then dreams become rarer and their interpretation wider and simpler. As the layers of consciousness are penetrated as they reveal themselves, the state of sleep becomes as important as the wakeful state. Then the awareness of the wakeful hours flows into the awareness of sleep, as that of sleep flows into the awareness of the day.’

Could I assume my own level of awareness was allowing this to come to pass? For sure I felt in the right place at the right time.

A few days later I received a call from the agency in London: Would I be interested in doing a voice-over? It could be recorded in California. I’d be happy to do it but I didn’t feel up to the two-hour drive to Hollywood on the motorway, and two hours back. No problem, they’d located a seriously good sound engineer in Ojai.

He was good, too. I was impressed with how he made my voice resonate.

The next day I heard from the trustees of the Ojai Foundation. They were inviting me to record one of Krishnamurti’s books for an audio release. Now, I knew that one of the few books that the maestro ever actually put pencil to paper for was The Notebook; all other editions were transcribed from recordings of his talks. So, somewhere, I knew the original, inspired, given without notes, in-the-moment delivery, was archived. I had reservations of trying to put myself in the same league. I diplomatically declined. The Foundation persisted. I finally had to face the fact that I was protesting too much. Obviously it wasn’t a paying assignment, so when I met Michael Lommel, who was funding the idea from his own pocket, I suggested we use the local sound engineer with the specification that I limit the sessions to one hour per day. Everyone agreed. I prepared by doing nothing except maybe inhaling extra-pure high-desert air. I resisted studying the text of Commentaries On Living, only opening the chapter page on ‘Action’. Not only did it go silky smooth, but I must confess that the often obscure text was comprehended as I was reading it.

When it was complete, some of the listeners at the Ojai school admitted they had understood things they had missed in the reading of the book. An extra bonus, and a big one, was that Michael Lommel’s wife Rowan had been studying breath with long-term students of Krishnamurti’s original yoga teacher TKV Desikachar, since she had been a pupil at Brockwood Park and Oak Grove, Ojai. She had continued her studies in India with Desikachar’s daughter Mekhala, wife Menaka, and TKV himself. On hearing of my injured problematic bladder, she offered to Skype Desikachar’s son Kausthub and see what he advised.

Within two days I was being instructed in pranayama breathing, designed for me personally to strengthen and re-educate my bladder, accompanied with diagrams for the detailed practices to join me on my return to London.

Within six months of daily devoted practice, the breath had become my religion. As health is more important than anything else on Earth and as health depends entirely upon breath, which is the very life, I consider the breath as of the highest importance. As I write I am sleeping nightly for seven hours without interruption.

The efforts entailed in returning to health have resulted in my becoming fitter than before my near-death experience.

The grey wolf, 25 years sober

However, the fitness of the body did not include the subtleties of the trauma inflicted on the mind by the near death experience. The opposite. As so often in my life, the opportunity to bring these vagaries into focus manifested in the form of a job: a film of Agatha Christie’s only unfilmed missive The Crooked House. It was a work that came quite late in her literary career and was initially rejected by her publisher, who thought the conclusion of the mystery unsuitable to her canon. Fortunately for her readers, she advised her publisher to get lost, advising them that she knew more about the construction of a story than they did.

The role on offer to me was that of the head of Scotland Yard. It entailed only two weeks’ actual shooting for me, but because of the varying locations I would need to keep myself free for six weeks. Of course the production wanted to pay me for the two weeks as opposed to the six.

When I told my old friend Herbert Kretzmer of the impending role he commented, ‘Sounds like a waistcoat role to me.’ As any advice I get from the great man I take as gospel, at my initial meeting with the designer, Colleen Kelsall at Angel’s Costumes, I became partial to a three-piece Fifties whistle, adding I could supply a recently made navy blue Homburg and wear my own shoes.

The half a dozen locations were National Trust estates all within ninety minutes of London, with the exception of Bristol, where I was billeted at the Avon Gorge Hotel with a view of Brunel’s masterpiece bridge. The other locations, being within a ninety-minute commute from town, involved being picked up at 5.30am, which meant waking up at 5am to do my yoga before the car arrived.

During my early shooting days I began to experience a new agenda from my inner life: When I was at home I didn’t want to go to work, yet when I was actually at work I didn’t want to come home. Having one of my monthly telephone catch-ups with my sister-in-law, I mentioned this new phenomenon. She explained – she is a psychic therapist – that it was quite a common occurrence following a ‘near-death’ experience; observing that when I glanced up and realised the horse was about to crush me, there was an instant when my mind realised this was its final moment on earth. It was the fact. Regardless that the body didn’t die or that I made light of it, not suing the production company or getting laughs retelling the story of my final thought: ‘When the tabloids hear about my demise the headline will read: “Middle-aged actor killed by horse’s arse”’. So what should I do? The symptoms, if that’s what they are, are not going away.

‘Well first, fully acknowledge the near-death experience. Recognise the post trauma manifestations fully as they occur. And trust your intuition.’

In re-examining the accident, I decided to accept the blame myself. If I had studied my big white steed more carefully I could have counteracted the carelessness of the director and the producers, and realised I was astride a stallion. Stallions, especially those trained for the circus, don’t like repetition, get bored easily, all of which I should have known.

The moment I was pronounced fit (for filming) after six weeks on my back in the Princess Grace Clinic, the production enforced their contract and forced me back on the plane to war zone Kiev to complete the two days I owed them, albeit astride a purpose-built wooden horse, for my close-up shots. Probably explaining my reluctance to jet around in the future. An insight did come though. If I could re-connect with a horse, just to say hello, stroke it, perhaps that would be a good place to begin.

The very first experience I had of the countryside was Yalding, the hopfields of Kent where the family went when the annual hop harvest took place. We lived in corrugated iron huts on the common of New Barns Farm and were paid by the bushel of hops we picked. I explain this as the memories that came to me were of a Shire horse named Colonel who pulled the horse-drawn cart that carried the yellow sacks, the labours of the hopping families from the east end of London who picked them, six days a week. We cooked all our meals in the communal ‘cook houses’ and one of my jobs was to prepare and tend the log fire. Yet the long forgotten recollection that came back to me was of the gentle giant Colonel, who accepted the manifestation of my affection with the slightest of quivers. If I could locate a fellow Shire and spend a little time with him, it might be a start on the road to my post-trauma recovery.

During the shoot of Crooked House, I struck up a telephone rapport with the Production Co-ordinator Arabella Gilbert. She immediately responded to the changes in scene rescheduling, as the on-the-floor assistants were often too busy to ring me back. Learning the words and going to bed early are the vagaries of aging performers.

On one such occasion she asked me about the accident: it was rumoured about on set. I finished the tale of woe by explaining my ruse to meet one of the big horses that pull the gun carriages as part of the Household Cavalry Regiment, and who are housed in the Knightsbridge barracks, yet had not come up with a way of approach. ‘I may be able to help you with that,’ she responded. It transpired her father had been a General. And so it was I found myself, suitably attired, outside the barracks’ entrance with Arabella, who would introduce me to Squadron Leader Alexander who would conduct the tour.

I must confess I have always considered the building one of the ugliest constructions to eyesore the skyline of the surrounding Hyde Park. Councils had rejected its design yet it was forced through by Royal influence. However, once inside it was a different story: the ugly twin of the Park Lane Hilton housed treasures Mr Hilton never dreamed of.

When we lived in Plaistow our Mum, between children, worked as a barmaid at the Abbey Arms pub. The evening job helped out the family finances as our Dad only earned £12 a week. Sometimes I would walk with my Mum to the pub, which was located in Barking Road. On the other side of the street, the whole corner of Esk Road was a blacksmiths, where I spent many hours of my boyhood watching the local horses being shod.

These long forgotten times came flooding back on my initial descent into the basement mysteries of the Household Cavalry’s tower block, when I was introduced to the farriers fashioning horseshoes amidst their open furnaces.

Next stop: I was taken by Squadron Leader Alexander to meet his horse George, the black steed he rode and exercised. George was a big boy, seventeen hands or so.

Mercury helping me with my recovery

I’d heard of a horse whisperer who advised one to get close enough to a strange horse to allow him to inhale your breath. Which I proceeded to do, exhaling fully from the solar plexus area of my tummy. It is believed in the whispering circles that horses catch the essence of a person in their breath. I assumed I passed muster as he reached toward my outstretched hand and proceeded to give it a good lick. When I withdrew my hand he nuzzled my face. ‘That’s unusual,’ Alexander said. ‘He’s generally wary of strangers.’

This pattern was repeated when I met one of the trumpeters, equally statuesque white steeds: Wellesley. Nuzzling my face and licking my hands. But finally I was introduced to Mercury, a Shire who hauled one of the gun carriages. Mercury was an unusual colour, a heathered mixture of mid-brown and white. He pushed his majestic head out of his stall as I pronounced his name. I blew my breath toward him, and as he moved his nostrils side to side I coincided my head in unison with his. When I moved close, he nuzzled me in a most welcoming manner.

On reflection of my thrilling day at the barracks, I had the romantic notion that the combined welcoming of George, Wellesley and Mercury was letting me know that their brethren in Kiev meant me no harm.

During my protracted journey to make sense of my association with Krishnamurti, several things all came together seemingly all at once. I guess it was triggered when reading Rumi, when I came across the line: ‘In the silence of love can be found the spark of life.’

In the silence of love … It wasn’t inferred, it wasn’t implied, it was a statement, a fact, by no other than the Shakespeare of Persia, who didn’t write plays, didn’t couch his great truths in dramatic situations – he wrote poetry. He didn’t waste a line, a word. There was no escape. That was Rumi. In the silence of love, the mind is silent, empty, at one with what is, the identical ‘What is’ of Krishnamurti. The ‘What is’ when he paused, laid his hands on my arm, and using his presence, in the present, paused the thoughts in my brain and allowed me a moment of silence, the silence of love to be at one with the cloud, the sky, the spark of life that was experience in the What is, from my own standpoint.

He made me aware, for the very first time, of the timeless movement of the alone. That which precedes thought. Always there, yet previously unnoticed. He touched the depth of what Mr Gary Cooper had initially ruffled. Small wonder it had taken all this confusion to arrive at the subtlety of his touch. ‘Look at the cloud’, indeed. In the silence, in the emptiness; the moment of the alone, then only the journey of the unknowable.

He had encouraged ‘what was looking’ to surface into my present awareness.