The Dark and the Deep
“What’s the point?”
The question came from a dozen different directions. Everyone, or almost everyone, at Quaesitor, an institute for personal development in London, was convinced that a week spent doing nothing would be a waste of time. Even though we saw ourselves as bold explorers committed to a journey of self-actualization, most of us were turning up our noses and shaking our heads.
Really, it was a typically Western attitude. We were ready to do anything: push our bodies beyond the limits of pain and endurance, scream and shout at each other in encounter marathons, roleplay our mothers and fathers in Gestalt exercises …
But we weren’t ready to do nothing.
Paul Lowe, however, was intent on conducting what he described as a “sensory deprivation experiment.” The director of Quaesitor, Paul had freshly returned from a visit to India, where he’d met with several gurus, sadhus, and holy men, and it was obvious to me that he was a changed man.
Paul had departed from London with an English stiff upper lip and polite manners. He’d returned with a feeling of intensity, wildness, and—yes—depth. He was on to something, that much I could see. As he sat before us, dressed in a full-length robe, with his long, Tolstoy-like beard and a humorous sparkle in his eyes, patiently explaining the new experiment to us, I could feel a yes in my heart. I was going to do it.
After all, this was the motivating force that had brought me from Paris to London—to explore and experience my inner world. After two years of studying psychology at the Sorbonne University, I felt frustrated by dry academic theories about the workings of the human mind. I wanted to know firsthand what was going on inside both my mind and my body.
Quaesitor, a center offering courses in the latest methods of experiential, humanistic psychology, promised to do just that, so I moved to London and signed on for a nine-month course.
The idea of sensory deprivation wasn’t new to me. I’d recently read The Center of the Cyclone, a book by American neuroscientist John Lilly, in which he describes constructing an isolation tank—a darkened, soundproof tank of warm salt water in which he’d float for hours. He used the tank to investigate what happened to his mind when it had no external input.
In the end, eight people at Quaesitor, including me, signed up for this “extracurricular activity” added to our regular study program.
Paul’s proposal, based on what he’d learned in India, was that we should deny ourselves any form of sensory input for a week. Really, it was going to be the English equivalent of sitting in a cave in the Himalayas.
Our instructions were to travel as a group, with Paul, to a hotel by the English seaside—it was early March, off-season, so no trouble finding vacancies—and then each take a room by ourselves. We were to close the shutters and curtains, put on blindfolds, stick plugs in our ears, and remain unoccupied, doing nothing, for one week. Every day, a member of the hotel staff would bring us water and one kilo of grapes. That was all we’d have to eat or drink.
I felt ready. I knew this retreat would present me with a radical way of facing my own psyche without being able to avoid my personal demons. I didn’t know who, or what, these “demons” might be, but I sensed that this psychological excavation project, digging down into my inner world, would require confronting them.
I also knew that, as a Westerner, I was endlessly distracted by the outer world and really had no clue who this “me” inside really was. Maybe it was time to find out.
The hard part of leaving London was saying goodbye to Jakov Lind, a well-known Austrian-British writer, who for the past few months had been my lover. Jakov, unexpectedly, ended up playing an important part in my retreat. The experience would not have been complete without his surprise contribution, so I need to give a little background to introduce him.
Jakov and I had met in Paris a few months earlier. I was having lunch one day in the dining room at La Coupole, the grandest of Parisian brasseries. The restaurant is a landmark for writers, artists, and philosophers, and every famous customer has left a signed picture displayed on the walls.
I was with a literary director from one of France’s publishing houses and was thoroughly enjoying his gossip about the Parisian literary world, while sucking on succulent oysters and eyeing the who’s who of people walking down the restaurant aisles.
Suddenly, as a portly man walked by our table, my friend looked up and cried, “Jakov!” The man stopped, looked at us both, and smiled. He had a thick moustache and straggly hair and was of medium height, with a slightly protruding round belly. He was at least thirty years older than me—clearly not someone I would ever consider a potential lover. Not a young woman like me. Not after my wonderful affair with Richard, who, alas, had returned home to the United States to continue his studies.
Richard and I had lived together, sharing an apartment in Paris, after I moved out of my parents’ house shortly after my eighteenth birthday. I’d begun my psychology degree at the Sorbonne while we were lovers, and it had been hard for us to say goodbye to our symbiotic student lifestyle.
But Jakov had bright green eyes with such a mischievous twinkle, as if, in looking into me, he simultaneously saw my spirit unclothed and my body undressed—deeply penetrating and provocative.
We shook hands and immediately I felt a strong magnetism between us. Forgetting my companion sitting with me, I continued to stare into those green eyes, while Jakov, too, seemed glued to the spot. Silence ensued. It’s a cliché to say that “I never felt this way before,” but it was true. I was holding my breath, and my heart was beating so fast I wanted to run.
After a long moment, civility caught up with us. We continued the salutations and introductions. Jakov gave me his card, I gave him my phone number, and we bid each other farewell.
Soon after, a flirtatious dance started between Jakov and me. He was after me, he wanted me, he called every day, he would not take no for an answer, and, truth be told, my no wasn’t very convincing.
Normally, at that time, I didn’t like to be associated with older men. But Jakov was irresistible and eventually I surrendered and became his lover.
To my surprise, he turned out to be a true artist when it came to lovemaking. He took me beyond my boundaries. He challenged me to enter the dark, secret corners of my sexual being, into the places I’d been afraid to visit. Taboos, for him, were just an opportunity to explore forbidden pleasures, which opened the door to new erotic dimensions.
Jakov lived in London, and so, of course, he was delighted with my decision to move from Paris to London in order to study at Quaesitor. Jakov was open-minded and always ready to support me in taking the next step on my journey of self-discovery. He was personally acquainted with many pioneers in the human potential movement, including John Lilly, Alan Watts, the Zen mystic, and R. D. Laing, the radical psychiatrist and author of the seminal book Knots.
Jakov understood the challenge of the sensory deprivation experiment and had no problem with my disappearance for seven days in a hotel room at the seaside. “I’ll call you when it’s over,” he said as he kissed me goodbye.
The retreat venue, a seaside hotel on the Suffolk coast, was empty. The weather was gray. The sea smelled of brine, seaweed, and damp nature. The hotel staff, at first surprised by our strange experiment, soon accepted that we were exploring “a new form of yoga and meditation” and were more than happy to serve us water and grapes, as this greatly reduced their workload. They were curious, friendly, and, of course, being English, always polite.
I went to my room, unpacked my clothes, got myself ready, and took one last lingering look at the rocky coastline and the ocean below my window. Then I slipped on my blindfold and inserted my earplugs and the experiment began.
Well, here I am. I’m lying on my bed and, like the character in Beckett’s play, I’m waiting for Godot. Lying here, waiting … for what? I hear muffled sounds drifting through my earplugs from the participant next door, who seems to be pacing up and down and reciting Shakespearian verses:
Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or fill the wall up with our English dead.
It seems my neighbor has never tasted meditation. He thinks he has to keep himself busy all the time. But we will be here for … my God, a WEEK! That is … let me see … twenty-four multiplied by seven equals one hundred and sixty-eight hours of … nothing. No smells, no touch, no food, no light, and, when my companion next door tires of reciting the Bard, as he surely must eventually, no sounds either.
To avoid feeling daunted by the time stretching ahead of me, I look on the bright side. “What is the positive aspect of this experiment?” I ask myself and decide to welcome this moment as a holiday. Nothing to do, no job to perform … let’s relax. With every exhale, I let my body sink deeper into the bed.
Really, the only thing that interests me is to find out about the nature of consciousness and the process of awakening. If only that fleeting moment of transcendence, revealed during my first lovemaking experience in Paris with Richard, could be stabilized and made to last, made to become the ever-present background of light, the shine within my being!
Here I go again … spiritual ambition: longing for the peaks and trying to ignore the valleys, clinging to the highs and denying the lows, dragging in the past and trying to superimpose it on the present.
I relax more deeply, just focusing for a moment on the simple ordinariness of lying on my bed. Then another thought catches me.
“Ah,” my mind says, “remember what happened to John Lilly?”
I had just read about Lilly’s experiments with sensory deprivation in The Center of the Cyclone. In the book, Lilly recounts how, after floating for hours in his isolation tank, he felt his consciousness drifting away from his body, above the earth, and meeting two angelic beings who guided him through many layers of doubts and fears into the light of pure consciousness.
I find myself assuming that I, too, will meet such guides. If they showed up for John Lilly, surely they will show up for me as well. I start to call them, visualize them, and spend hours being busy with mental acrobatics to “attract the guides.”
The guides do not show up.
Frustrated, I realize I have to let this expectation go. Focusing on my breathing, I try once more to relax and “just be” with the very unchallenging ordinariness of lying here, on this bed, with nothing to do.
But the guides issue has not resolved itself, and shortly a new voice manifests, this time a little more strict and stern, as if one of my schoolteachers from kindergarten has reappeared and is scolding me for a minor misdemeanor.
“Why are you seeking to duplicate someone else’s experience?” she asks. “You are not John Lilly. Why would you have the same guides? Let that go and be YOU!”
Easy to say. Not so easy to practice. I really do want to meet those guides. It seems I’m being asked to let go of something I haven’t even found yet but presumably is just around the corner. Stubbornly, the idea prevails: I need to find a teacher, or a lover, or SOMEONE who will help me access those elusive ecstatic states.
“Ah, so you still want to be Miss Bliss, chasing good times, eh?” says my inner schoolteacher. “Well, you can forget about it. Remember, Lilly was on LSD, so whatever he experienced doesn’t count. When you take drugs, you can have six hundred guides, all lined up with maps and compasses, all dressed like waiters at La Coupole and singing the ‘La Marseillaise.’ ”
I giggle at the ridiculous image I’ve created and admit, “Okay, she’s right.” Maybe, underneath this desire for guides, there is a deeper feeling of not being good enough to get there by myself. This understanding makes it a little easier to let go of the guides-who-never-came.
A bell rings at the door, but I don’t have to answer it. It’s one of the hotel attendants bringing water and a kilo of grapes, our daily fare for the week. So now it must be evening—that’s when the delivery is made—and soon it will be time for bed.
Dealing with the mind and its demands is arduous, and I’m beginning to suspect that the “demons” I’m going to meet on this journey aren’t spooky bad guys with horns and tails, waiting in my subconscious to jump on me. No, they are much more mundane. They are feelings such as impatience, frustration, boredom, desire … the things that keep me restless, always running after something that isn’t here but is somewhere else.
Getting up from my bed, walking around blindly, touching walls and doors, I manage to go to the bathroom. I wash my face with the blindfold off but my eyes closed and then clean my teeth. And back to the bed. And so to sleep.
Suddenly, just as I’m drifting off, a face appears in my inner vision. I have never seen this person before. He seems East Asian or Indian. He has big, round eyes … amused, infinitely gentle. He says to me, “Ecstasy is already within you. You need not look for it outside.” And then this presence disappears.
This is huge. I am aware of the numerous times I’ve been looking for a teacher, a guide, a lover … someone to give me an instruction manual that would give me access to bliss. I was sure the recipe was out there in the world … somewhere.
Now I can drop that idea. This messenger, whoever he might be, has just told me that everything I am looking for is here, right in front of my nose—even closer: inside my brain, my body.
When I wake up the next morning, it is apparent to me that creating a schedule of practice will probably help me go deeper in meditation. So I begin by stretching and doing yoga asanas. Then I sit in meditation. Then eat grapes. Then lie down on my bed and do … nothing—except, of course, watch my mind go round and round.
As the hours go by, I am humbled by the uninteresting, repetitive, and rather automatic nature of my inner dialogue. My thoughts are moving like a gerbil on a wheel, repeating the same stories, needing the same attention, rehashing the same “problems”: relationships with men, anxiety about money, a vague longing for happiness, and lots of unfinished business.
Together, they generate a familiar mental atmosphere akin to the moods with which I grew up, taking me back to the surroundings, thoughts, and conversations in my parents’ home.
I soon become fed up. “Do you mean to say that, basically, your mind hasn’t changed its ways since you were a kid?” I inquire of myself. “That you just absorbed a certain social climate, a way of thinking, from your mother and father, and now you are doomed to repeat it endlessly for the rest of your life?”
I dislike this idea intensely. In my youthful enthusiasm, I’d always imagined my mind to be a fresh pool of brilliance, out of which I could pull glittering gems of wisdom, insight, and enlightenment.
“Now look at it!” I say contemptuously. “A rusty old machine producing the same old thoughts year after year!”
I am now fighting with my mind. Part of me is saying to the mind, “Leave me alone! You don’t have a right to be here. You are a nuisance. Go away!”
After a day of struggle, I realize that as long as I reject the presence of my mind, it will insist on coming back even more strongly. Then another realization hits me: the fight going on in my head is really one part of the mind fighting with another part, so any notion that the mind can somehow be denied or pushed away is absurd. Who wants to push it away? The mind!
Hmm. This is tricky. It’s also a little unfair of me to be so down on my mind. After all, it does look after me, running my schedule, making appointments, and helping me learn new things.
“I have a job to do,” it explains. “I have to look after you and protect you. This is important. Listen to me!”
Fair enough. Point taken. But still, I wonder, is there anything to be experienced that isn’t the mind? And that’s when I start to become interested in the gaps between the thoughts.
This is something new, and I find myself considering the point for hours, lying in the dark, on my bed, doing nothing except occasionally getting up, stretching, going to the bathroom, taking a sip of water, and chewing on a grape.
The mind does not seem to understand the gaps between my thoughts. It can’t handle them. An odd thought occurs to me: maybe it doesn’t even know about them! After all, if it knew about a gap, then that gap would become a thought about a gap and immediately cease to be a gap! Ha!
I like this new avenue of exploration. I watch the gaps and notice how they don’t last long, because almost immediately, as soon as a gap emerges, another thought comes along and fills it up.
The hours drift by. I eventually get bored with this game of thoughts and gaps, and impatience comes back to me with a vengeance. This, I realize, is my biggest challenge, this constantly nagging feeling that something more has to happen.
Maybe it has something to do with my birth. I was born with the help of forceps. My mother could not push hard enough, so the doctor pulled me out with forceps gripped around my head. And still today, when something doesn’t happen quickly enough in my life, part of me feels like I’m about to choke.
Next morning, I wake up, wash, go through my morning exercises, and sit on my bed. I know it’s going to be more of the same: thoughts and gaps … a continuous flow of inner traffic with a few blank spots. Ho hum! It feels like a routine. Boredom will be the dominant theme today.
Suddenly, who appears in my mind but my mother, my father, my aunt, and my brothers, one after the other. I’m at a cocktail party. We’re holding champagne glasses in our hands. They all tell me they wish me well, but that, in their opinion, I am approaching the situation with the wrong perspective.
My father says, “Darling, you’ve got the wrong angle! It’s what you do in life that counts!” He goes on to explain that success is measured through accomplishment, through “doing,” and that “being” is but a reflection of the degree to which one achieves one’s goals.
He seems so certain that it’s unnerving. Before I get too confused, I thank my father and move on. Next comes Mom. To my amazement she says, “Don’t listen to your father. Make love, enjoy your senses. Do it now while you’re young. Go for it! Keep meditation for later. You’re too young for that kind of stuff.”
Mmmm, thanks, Mom. You may be right. I really do like making love. And sitting on my pillow all alone here is not exactly very rewarding.
And on it goes. Every living relative, followed by every ancestor—the Slavic ones, the Swiss ones, the French ones—visits with me and gives me their opinion.
I realize I have to leave this madhouse. I never liked cocktail parties anyway. I say thank you to each of them and move on. And suddenly I have a eureka moment. That’s it!
Until now, I have been treating my mind like the enemy. But a better way would be to acknowledge it as an ally trying to help. Yes, every thought is an expression of my mind trying to help. I must say thank you to my mind whenever it brings up thoughts and images. I must NOT fight it.
Now I see the humorous side of my inner cocktail party. This crowd is always there, in my subconscious, dictating how I should be, what I should do, how to meditate, how to make love. They wish me well. They know. They have experience. They tried it all before me.
This “maya,” this illusion of family support, is compelling, because it starts when we are very small. Everyone is trying to help us, give us advice, tell us what to do. It becomes a habit to follow others and we forget we are unique individuals—that we need to discover our own inner voice, listen to it, and be true to ourselves.
I thank my relatives for their good intentions and bid them farewell, enjoying the ease with which it is now possible—now that I’m not fighting my mind—to move on without getting caught up.
I take a break and eat some grapes—mmm … delicious! The day passes easily enough, and in the evening I slide into a soft space between waking and sleeping. I notice that, in this quiet and relaxed state, my breath is slowing down until it almost disappears … and then sleep comes, with its blanket of oblivion covering everything.
In the morning, I wake up with the pressing thought that something vitally important took place just as I was falling asleep. What was it? Ah, yes, the breath. What about it? Slow it down and see what happens.
Still half-asleep, I begin to watch how far I can “not breathe” by making the breath very shallow indeed. At first, I feel I am choking, drowning. It’s uncomfortable. Part of me wants to go faster, gulp in more air. But as the breath becomes thinner, a sort of “alpha wave” brain state sets in. I feel more and more relaxed and gradually I’m overtaken by a sensation of floating in space, carelessly blissful and yet very awake and attentive to what is happening.
Through this “alpha breathing,” I get a taste of what I will hear later from several yogis and mystics: meditation leads one into a blissful, timeless state—one might call it samadhi or Nirvana—wherein one hardly needs to breathe.
In this no man’s land, it feels as if I have climbed a mountain. The air is thinner, the body lighter. In fact, there is no-body to be sensed … nobody … ahh!
The last days of the retreat are luminous and easy. Most of the time I’m able to stay with the soft, slow breathing. In this state I can witness the thoughts passing through my mind without getting caught in them and simply say thank you and move on, always staying with the breath.
Day by day, I revisit the “gap,” which is now becoming a luminous, welcoming spaciousness—an all-knowing, benign wisdom space. I discover that I can have what in the East they call darshan, 4 with a higher self that is watching this happening. I can ask any question and instantly, effortlessly, the wise answer, the real solution, is revealed.
I notice that I had entered this retreat concerned about the request from a London magazine to write an article about the experience. Writing in English is not easy for me. My native language is French. Now, I ask the question: how do I write the article? And, to my amazement, the article writes itself, from a deep place inside, phrase after phrase, edits included. I read the paragraphs to myself and it sounds perfect. Done! In the spaciousness beyond the traffic of the ordinary mind, all is available. Boundaries have receded. An infinitely creative potential is revealed. I will remember this.
Days go by. I lose track of time, but some intuitive sense tells me the retreat will end soon. One day it will happen. There’s no rush. Impatience has dissolved into an acceptance of what is.
Finally, one morning, a gong resonates in the distance, then I hear a phone ringing and a voice answering. There is a knock on the door and a gentle touch on my shoulder. As I remove my earplugs, a hotel attendant tells me, “The retreat is over. Someone is on the phone for you.”
It is … Jakov. How had he known to call right now? Nobody told him the time when the retreat would end. I take a deep, slow breath. My lover is calling from London. He had known exactly, to the second, when to call.
Very gently he says, “How are you, love? I want to see you. There is a dinner party at my place in your honor. John Lilly, Alan Watts, and R. D. Laing will be there. They want to meet you.”
The sensory impact of his deep voice, the tenderness in it, suddenly elicits a sense of longing. I am filled with a poignant, overwhelming physical longing. For seven days I’d been like a nun in a nunnery—no touch, no human love, no tenderness. I’d been “busy” looking for something inside, but meanwhile my body had felt isolated and forgotten. I want to feel this man beside me again.
But I recoil from going to a dinner party with such a dazzling array of guests, all waiting to hear my story. It feels like being the turkey at a Thanksgiving supper, a dish rolled out for everyone to feed on.
Watts and Lilly are my heroes, my role models, but I need some transition time, the familiar sights and sounds of home—my home first.
“Thank you, Jakov,” I whisper in the phone. “I don’t know if I’m ready to face people. I have been so deep. I need time. Let’s leave it open.”
Jakov insists, lovingly but firmly. “Come,” he says, coaxingly. “This meeting is important. And I want to see you.”
“Me too,” I answer and gently hang up the phone. To my relief, the sense of inner spaciousness that has carried me through the last few days of the retreat has not been broken by Jakov’s call.
Later, back in London, I decided to go to the dinner. I put on a simple white dress—for purity. No makeup. I let my messy blond hair hang loosely around my face. I didn’t want to make any effort in the “looking good” department.
Then I sat, meditated, and waited to see if this yes was really my own or was an effort to please Jakov. Eventually, my own yes came. A taxi took me to Jakov. I stood at the door for a few minutes and composed myself, then rang the bell. Almost instantly the door opened and Jakov was there to give me a gentle, grounding hug. It was going to be okay.
Jakov paid the cab and took me by the hand. His apartment was a mews in Regent’s Park—an old converted horse stable with dark beams and an atmosphere of rustic cosiness, with a fire burning in the fireplace at the end of the room. Manuscripts, typewriters, and books covered two desks on the far side of the dining table, where his guests were seated, waiting.
I felt so shy. There were five of them sitting at a long oval table. The room fell completely silent as I came in, but it felt okay because their eyes were soft and welcoming.
Jakov led me to an empty seat and sat on my right. To my left were John Lilly and his wife, Antoinette. Jakov introduced us. John had a long, sexy nose, piercing blue eyes, and a thick bush of salt-and-pepper hair surrounding his freckled face. He looked at once mischievous and wise. Antoinette had curly, short black hair, dark eyes, and a pale complexion highlighted with bright pink cheeks. She exuded warmth and smiled.
Next, Jakov introduced me to Alan Watts, considered one of the pioneers of the East-West spiritual revolution, bringing Zen Buddhism to the United States. Alan puffed on his pipe contentedly. He was in his fifties, small in stature, with piercing brown eyes, harmonious features, and a commanding presence.
Next, I was introduced to an MD who had trained with Ida Rolf, the creator of deep-tissue bodywork. Hector had a sexy Mediterranean face framed by curly black hair. He was one of the leading figures at the Arica School of mysticism in New York. Next to him was Ronald Laing, psychiatrist and author. I’d met him briefly before my retreat and he’d enthusiastically supported me in what he called “an excavation experiment into your inner madness.”
Imagine the scene: I was sitting there at the table having not uttered a word for a week. The very idea of describing what happened felt foreign and difficult, so I waited. But so did the others! They were silent, making room for me, and soon it became obvious that our discussion wasn’t going to wait until after the dessert.
Slowly I found myself describing some of the spaces I’d gone through. As I talked, it felt good to be among map-makers who’d all had some experience in navigating through the zones and layers of human consciousness.
When I’d finished, Alan Watts commented on the innocence he perceived in me and encouraged me to stay with the feeling of “not knowing.”
“You have dropped the past and the future,” he said. “Stay in this place of presence to the unknown. Stay in this moment … now. I will meet you here. We will play here.”
Indeed, we did. Not long afterward, we traveled together through New Mexico and had beautiful adventures that inspired me later in my work as a psychotherapist.
John Lilly explained that the journey I’d taken during the retreat could lead into an exploration of the different levels of evolution I’d gone through before becoming a human person.
“Confirmation of your journey by other map-makers of inner worlds is helpful and precious,” he continued. “Otherwise, one is alone and lonely. Without consensus, one is unsure, lost.”
I answered, “I was expecting the guides to show up, as they did for you, but other spaces were revealed instead.”
John cautioned me, “Remember, even what we think we know, we don’t really know.” He then reminded me of his statement in The Center of the Cyclone: “In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true, within limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits.”
“Yes,” I replied, “but it’s hard to stay with ‘no limits’ and to trust it.”
Hector Prestera commented that as long as the body carries tensions that block the flow of human energy, we cannot awaken to our full potential.
I tried to imagine myself going through ten sessions of deep bodywork that was the main experience offered by Rolfing. It seemed beyond my possibilities. Little did I know that it would happen six months later in New York, with Hector himself.
Ronald Laing said that on the spiritual path we all have to pass through a “dark night of the soul,” getting lost in unfamiliar territory without a map.
“Some people can’t come back. That’s why we have to go and meet them where they are,” he added, explaining his radical approach of seemingly becoming mad with a mad person, going down in their world and making friends there in order to heal them and bring them back. A few years later, I would remember Laing’s words at a critical moment, working to bring back mad people at the Woodstock Festival.
The evening became immensely enjoyable as I relaxed in this inspiring company and talked with them about the potential of consciousness in all its domains.
Then, much later, after all the guests had gone, my body found a slow and gentle return to the world of the senses in the loving arms of Jakov. At first, it seemed my body was not interested in sensual input. I just wanted to be held, knowing it was okay to be vulnerable. It was only after a long time of listening to tender words whispered in my ears that I felt energy flowing down to my loins and sexual desire awakening again.
That night everything went slowly and delicately. I discovered the eroticism of staying completely relaxed all the time during lovemaking. Jakov took time to penetrate my “secret garden,” rest inside me, wait, and move again. It was only at the very end that my inner fire awoke and passion demanded movement. Little did I know then that this approach would years later become immensely fashionable as a Tantric practice called slow sex.
What I Learned
Nowadays, sensory deprivation retreats in the dark are common. Mantak Chia, the Taoist Master, does them in his Tao Center near Chiang Mai, Thailand. He claims that after some days in the dark, the brain manufactures different biochemicals, including a “spiritual molecule” that naturally facilitates transcendental experiences of universal love and compassion. Jasmuheen, the controversial Australian-born “breatharian,” also offers such retreats. The Oneness University in Andhra Pradesh, South India, incorporates them into its programs.
But in the early seventies, at the time when we went into this experiment, nobody in the psychology department of the Sorbonne or the newly established centers for Humanistic Psychology in London had heard of such a thing. Some people even considered such experiments dangerous, warning that we might go crazy.
For me, that week by the English seaside remains one of the most memorable experiences of my early spiritual life. It was the first time I’d ever spent quality time alone with myself in such a focused and intense way.
During the darkness retreat, I realized that the idea of attaining ecstatic states as a goal, or by being initiated into secret mystical teachings, is an illusion. The ecstasy is already here, within us, waiting to be revealed, available each moment.
During my retreat, I had only a glimpse of this. It was during the last part of the retreat, in the peace and calmness of the alpha breathing. Then I understood that peace happens when I don’t yearn for the present moment to be different than it is.
By not struggling to improve or conquer this or that, I became free to meet all that is, right now. In those moments of sitting peacefully on the pillow, breathing slowly, I found myself entering a deep contentment because I saw that “what is” is complete unto itself—and I was complete in it.
Since then, I have forgotten this simple truth a thousand times, succumbing to the enticements of endless desires. Nothing in our culture teaches us to be content with what is.
On the contrary, we are tempted, seduced again and again, to discover new needs that must be fulfilled, new desires to be gratified, in order to finally “be happy.”
This brings me to the most common objection to participating in such experiments: we think we just don’t have time.
Let’s admit it: most of us don’t have the time to be! We run around like chickens without a head, with to-do lists longer than we can realistically expect to complete. We think we can’t cope with our lives any other way.
Personally, whenever I wanted to take more time off, I had the impression that there was something like a tiger clawing at my dress, pulling me back and saying, “No, you can’t leave me with all this work. You need to be responsible, to pay your rent, to do this and that.”
So here is a strategy I developed:
I said, “Okay, Tiger. I’ll take three days off, but I promise you, when I return, we’ll manage to do the rest. Maybe I’ll need to invite an extra helper into my life or ask my assistant to work overtime, but we’ll get it all done. Thanks for your warning. I won’t let you down.”
I negotiated with the tiger.
The result: I took the time. It was great. There were no problems upon return.
Then I stretched the time from three days to one week, then to one month, then to three months. It’s all a matter of preparation and negotiation—and inventing new strategies to handle the work. But it can be done.
“What about paying the bills?” someone will ask. Well, how about reducing your expenses and allowing someone else to rent your place in the meantime? Remember, where there is a will, there is usually a way.
Today, I have more and more friends who tell me, “We took a sabbatical. We couldn’t take the stress anymore.”
But why do a spiritual retreat?
To touch your essence, the source of your being. To find out who you truly are beyond your ego-personality. To have a taste of freedom, beyond what others want you to be.
To recognize that most of our religious and moral beliefs are like the sacred cows that walk the streets in India. They are there, chewing away on our energy, because we take them to be true. They control and limit us, and we’re not even aware of it. But they are not sacred; they are an illusion.
Some examples: “We are born in original sin.” “We should not have two lovers at the same time.” “A woman must stay a virgin until she marries.” “My parents were poor, so I will stay poor.”
We do a retreat to recognize that we live, most of us, in an anti-ecstatic society that forces us to swim against the current of bliss that is right here, beneath the surface, and that emerges when we are relaxed and undisturbed.
A retreat is the next step. It’s not just that we need to drop inside and be relaxed and non-identified with the world. We need to find the key to remain in that inner calm, to stabilize this inner detachment from everything that keeps us in stress.
The Practice: A Darkness Retreat
Preparing Your Space
Before you “go in” and start your retreat, determine how much time it will last. Start with one day, then move to three days at a later date, and so on.
Before beginning, turn off all—and I mean all—your electronic gear. You are committing to do a difficult thing: stepping off the grid of our collective global technosphere that is fed by the Internet, mobile phones, computers, television, radio, newspapers, etc.
We get caught in this web, thinking information is enlightenment. It’s not. So drop it—just for a while. It’s time to return to your natural state and rest your nervous system.
Now, the deal is that you do not leave the retreat space during the entire time. This is your sacred commitment.
What You Need
Before you start, take with you a blindfold and earplugs, blankets, many pillows, fruit, and water. Make sure your room has curtains, blinds, or shutters (you will be in the dark). Oh, yes … and a toilet nearby.
Before you start, clean the retreat room. Burn incense, ring bells, and sing healing sounds to chase away old energies that might still be lingering there, such as the vibe of when you got depressed or learned bad news or had a quarrel in there last week.
Clear all this out.
Finally, say goodbye to your loved ones.
How to Navigate
Here are a few helpful suggestions for your retreat:
1. Make sure you have enough pillows so you can be comfortable while sitting, or choose a comfortable armchair.
2. Watch your breath. Did you know that it’s nearly impossible to pay attention to your breath and to your thoughts at the same time? This is why awareness of breathing has been used by meditators for millennia to stay alert and present.
3. Put your mind aside. Imagine your mind is like a little kitten. Now, in your imagination, put this kitten in a nice little box with holes in it so it can breathe. Tie the box with a red ribbon. Put it on the windowsill or in the garden. Tell your mind, “Please take a rest. It’s good for you. Go to sleep. I’ll be back shortly.”
4. Relax, deeper and deeper. If the thoughts come, say “thank you” and “later” and then get back to watching your breath and relaxing your body.
5. Listen to the silence between your thoughts. Expand the silence. Watch it. Can you distinguish between when you are watching and breathing and when you are thinking? Which one do you choose? Stalk silence skillfully, not fighting, but accepting and moving on.
6. Inhale slowly and gently, visualizing that you are taking in prana, life energy. How does this energy feel inside? Does it have a color? A sound? Allow the prana to fill your entire body.
7. At the end of an inhale, hold your breath for a few seconds. Feel that you are entering into eternity … beyond life, beyond death, no past, no future. Just this intimate NOW. Enter beyond the boundaries of doing and thinking as you relax between the incoming and the outgoing breath.
8. Exhaling, imagine the breath traveling down into your lungs and then through your whole body, all the way down to your feet and into the earth beneath you. Exhaling, let all your tensions and worries go.
9. It may be that you want to do absolutely nothing for a time. Lie on your bed and just relax and be.
10. Take time every day for some gentle physical exercise, such as stretching or yoga.
11. At every step, ask yourself, “Is this it? Am I comfortable, relaxing here, imbibing this atmosphere?” Listen to your inner guidance, the intuitive voice that guides you.
12. If you do all of these things regularly and sincerely, spaciousness will be revealed beyond mental and physical boundaries. Here is the place to dwell in gratitude. Focus effortlessly, behind your closed eyes, on the center of your head. Wait, relax, let go. Then, when this space feels stable, ask the questions that are important to you. See what answers come.
13. At the end of the retreat, go very slow. Spend a few more hours talking as little as possible, and write down any insights you may have received.
Mind throws itself at Silence
demanding to be let in. …
But Silence remains
unmoved by the tantrums.
She asks only for nothing.
Nothing.5