“LET'S TAKE A BREAK,” Duncan Robert says. It's late afternoon, and Miles and I have been stunned into silence for a long while now. It feels unnatural to recover our voices, our sense of being, even. I feel as if we've been outside of time, as we listened, some place of suspended animation. We have to step back into ourselves again. Even though I've been taking notes the whole time—I make sure of this by looking down at my note book, and I've covered pages with my writing—I don't remember it. My right hand could testify, however. It aches from the workout.
Duncan Robert asks us what we're feeling and thinking. “You know, it's the first time I've said it all aloud,” he says, smiling. “It is quite a story. I don't know what it sounds like to you.”
I talk first, not knowing I'm going to, as I stare out the open hotel window, the breeze cool on my face. Miles is fixing us all glasses of ice water.
“It reminds me of being hugged by Amma,” I turn around to look at them. Seeing their blank looks, I say, “You know, Amma, the ‘hugging saint,’ from India. I was covering it for my editor, when she came to Boston. Her website says she has hugged more than 30 million worldwide, even the Queen of England. And practically every celebrity you can think of. I had no idea what I was in for. She's quite an organization, with quite a traveling entourage.
“Thousands of people come, you're given a number and a group. When your group is called, you join a double line of people, in chairs, gradually moving forward, like musical chairs. Up ahead, she's dressed all in white, sitting on a sort of low throne, hugging people, one after another—families with babies, the old and the infirm, young people, people speaking different languages. Her attendants move you to your knees a few feet from her, asking you what language you speak. You're sort of dropped into a tight group of frontline attendants, dressed in yellow robes, who are plunging people into Amma's lap and then dragging them out, giving everyone some rose petals and, strangely, a Hershey's Kiss.
“I didn't know whether to laugh or run, feeling sort of claustrophobic in the crowd. Suddenly, it's my turn, and I'm thrust into her arms, with mine moved by the attendants to the arms of her chair, so that I'm not the one doing the hugging, I'm the one being hugged. It's not a joint venture. I'm enveloped by something so much bigger and deeper and more profound than I am. Someone with a much larger story.
“And then I'm hearing her say, ‘My daughter, my daughter, my daughter,’ over and over in my ear, as I'm being hugged by the most loving presence I've ever been around. I remember the permeating scent of roses, which were everywhere. And then falling out of the hug, as her attendants pulled me back to put the next person in. It's quick, but not; intense, but not; profound, but not.
“And now you're a person who's been hugged by Amma. You're not the same you as before. You know you're better for it—you feel that. But exactly how, you couldn't say. Just better. I was charged by that for days after. I'd gotten a picture of her—there's a whole bazaar of merchants at the back of the hall, selling all the memorabilia you can imagine—and even looking at the picture, I could feel the energy of her, the power of her. And it was just good. It was just love. It made me smile. That's what your experience of the Void made me return to.”
Duncan Robert nods appreciatively.
Miles, sitting on the couch, sipping his water, says to Duncan Robert, “Your fall, that sense of falling, is what I returned to. From so many dreams that I startled out of, afraid to hit bottom. So many times I imagined what it must have been like for you—my stomach dropping, knees weak, breath gone. It was like having a fear of heights while standing on the ground. It's falling, but it's flying, too. Exhilarating, but nothing to orient you, to hold on to. Without that, who and what are you? Something, or someone, else.
“Your conversation with your team is like that for me, too. Like a fall—it moves so fast, and there's such depth. I wanted to say, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ like Babe says to me all the time. Let's go back to birth, or some beginning place, let's explain it from there. Show me how all these connections developed, how they grew. Let me see how meaning and purpose emerged, so I can understand what it's all about, what it's all for. It was a lot to take in, if that's what I've managed to do.” He pauses, looking up at Duncan Robert. “What's it like for you now, in the telling?”
“Like it happened yesterday. And I'm remembering more details, rather than losing them, as I thought I would. It's fresher than if it happened yesterday. And I feel so close to them all,” he says, smiling and looking as fresh as he did this morning when he opened the door to us.
“Are you in regular touch with them?” Miles asks.
“I feel their presence constantly. I wake up with them, I fall asleep with them. It's not like they're right there, in my business. It's more like I feel the force of their love and support, as real as my head on the pillow or my foot on the floor. Or like your Amma presence, it sounds like.”
“But do they talk to you? Do you have conversations with them?” I ask.
“Yes, I do,” Duncan Robert smiles. “Do you with Amma?”
“Well,” I fumble, caught by his question, wondering now why I haven't tried. “No. I guess I didn't think to.”
He laughs. “It's okay. It's a different kind of experience. Just wondered.”
“Did you hear me talking to you?” Miles asks, looking at him, clearly thinking about all those dark nights after Duncan Robert jumped.
Duncan Robert looks back. “Yes, I did. I heard your questions and your cries and even your accusations. Did you hear me answering?”
“No. I didn't,” Miles says. “Maybe I wasn't really listening.”
“Well,” Duncan Robert smiles, “sometimes I think you were answering yourself, for me. Other times, it wasn't really me you were talking to. Sometimes it was you talking to you, finding out if you could really go on, if you wanted to. I realize how hard it must have been, after I jumped. I felt it, too. I don't think either of us realized how hard it would be, we were so caught up in the idea of the jump. I was so eager to find something, anything, that made me feel real.
“When Babe came, though, I felt there was a way you could hear me, through her. She was new to it all and open to learning everything, so she was receptive to hearing my voice, too, incorporating it into everything else she was learning. She didn't reject intuitive flashes that came to her or sudden ideas I nudged her towards. After all, she wasn't carrying the burden of my jump the way you were. So, she was often the bridge for me to you. And sometimes, she was the bridge from you to me. Sometimes, when you talked to her about me and the jump, I could feel as if I was getting the gift of your understanding. And maybe even your forgiveness.”
Miles looks at his hands and takes a minute to clear his throat of the emotion lodged there. “I was angry at you. Irrationally, I know. I just missed you so damn much. And it almost came as a surprise to me. I thought I was so cool—in my acceptance and support of your decision. I thought that's where I really was. So, what a surprise, when I cried like a baby, and not just once, either. I might as well have been where Silvia or Reggie were, trying to talk you out of it, asking you not to do it. But, honestly, you don't need my forgiveness. I should be asking for yours. I did work my way through it, though, in my own weird way.”
Duncan Robert smiles again. “I loved it. It's like you got it. You really got it. That's why I call it a gift. And your work with your students! The stuff about the importance of a jump, no matter your age or circumstances—who could have said it better? We could learn so much from what kids hang on to, and you were giving them stuff to hang onto. And you add to that the stuff about the Void—it is an invitation to the jump. For what other reason would it exist? As a repository for our fears? The Universe doesn't work that way. Nothing is a static repository. Nothing. You put it all together in a way that's really useful. I think you should do a course on the Void.”
Miles laughs. “I do have a lot of material. But I barely had that thought myself! I don't know that they'd let me.” He laughs again.
“Well, they live with a Void,” Duncan Robert says, “only a few miles from their door.”
“Yeah, but that's just it. They don't want to stir things up, you know. God forbid they should disturb the status quo.”
“I wondered how you knew what had happened at the Void,” I say, before I think, not meaning to interrupt them, thinking they had forgotten I was there. “You knew when I got to town to do my story, that I was talking with Miles, and my experience at the Void. Didn't you?”
“Yeah, I did know—in a general sense. I had my thoughts and my awareness on Miles a lot, and I got where I could sense what was going on with him. I'm sure it was with my cohort's help. Then you became part of what was happening with him. But pretty soon I realized I had an awareness of you, separate from him, some of it in dreams. I dreamed you standing at the edge of the Void.
“That was a powerful moment. I think we all met each other there, on some level. I knew what was happening. But I didn't know how it was going to turn out any more than you two did,” Duncan Robert says. “That was quite an achievement, Babe,” he looks at me with admiration in his eyes. “You actually went to the Void and took a real look inside. That's fearless! The Void took you to your deepest fear and showed it to you in a new way, so you could confront it. You're a powerful person, Babe, and I'm glad to know you.”
“Whew!” I say, remembering that day. “Thanks, Duncan Robert. That means a lot, coming from you.” I am a little choked up.
“Really, I'm no different than you. Just a little more connected.”
“But you've jumped!” Miles and I both say, sharing the same thought, almost shouting.
Duncan Robert laughs. “Okay! I'll grant you that.”
“It's your experience we're talking about now. What was it for you? What did it answer? What do you make of it?”
Duncan Robert looks at Miles with seriousness. “Here's what it makes me think of—Einstein's observers of lightning—one on the train, inside, one on the bank, at the side of the tracks, outside. What did they see, when did they see it? You're on the train—you understand the explanations of the people on the train. I've gotten off. I have a different explanation of that lightning. I can't put it all into words for someone still on the train. No, it doesn't mean you have to jump. It just means I might not be able to explain it to you, to your satisfaction. It's specific to me—you know, your jump is your jump.”
“Well, it makes me think of Higgs Boson,” Miles says into the pause. And they both laugh.
Clearly, that's an inside joke, so I ask, “What?!”
“Who understands that?” Duncan Robert asks, chuckling.
“Well, maybe it's childish, but I thought you might be able to explain things like particle physics,” Miles says, with a little laugh. We were both thinking his fall had somehow made him smarter, more all-seeing and all-knowing—therefore, able to explain even particle physics to us. We couldn't imagine such a profound experience as he'd had in the Void hadn't given him some sort of advantage over everyone else on Earth. That would be part of how he'd been changed by his jump.
“What I think,” Duncan Robert says, “is that the fall accelerated my energetic force or speed to match that of my cohorts in the cave, so it was like we were all standing still. Does that make sense? In reality (whatever that is), they're operating at a much higher speed or vibration than we are, but because I jumped, I caught up to them and could have a conversation, a meeting, for a while. The Void is a place, like a vacuum, where things become equal, so it's easier to see things, be with things, as if all are real. The length of the fall gave me time to catch up. Now, that's Einstein-ian, I think. And maybe the veil is thinnest, possibilities greatest, when you're with the energy of your cohort—a bond stronger than life.”
“I created something, a situation, that allowed me to find myself. It was an act of creativity,” he says again, “not desperation, as I thought. It was the most creative thing I could do. It certainly wasn't a small act. It gave me plenty of room!”
Miles and I looked at each other as we both think of the Void, the grass around it as green as the greenest things of spring.
In a way, Duncan Robert has de-mystified it. In a way, he has made it more mysterious than ever. Any jumper could still never know what he or she might encounter down there.
Now that we have his answers, such as they are, all that's left is our answers—what we put together now. Do we have any? Our buffer is gone—the person who stood between us and the Void, who protected us from the Void, in a sense. He's told us what he could of it. Now, what will we do with that? We didn't realize there would be that kind of shift—to us. What are we going to do with that? It's like when your parents have died and you know you're next—there's nothing between you and death now. It feels that open.
I am suddenly struck by how far we've gotten from any discussion of death! At the start, both Miles and I (let alone everyone in town) thought that jumping and falling must be about that, at least partly. How else could a jump and fall end? I think of the people in the village who felt sure it was an act of suicide. I blurt out, “We've haven't talked about death at all! It's all been about life.”
“And the best kind of life! Happy, with meaning and purpose,” Duncan Robert says. This gave us all pause.
“Wow. Find your instructions for living in the Void,” Miles shakes his head and laughs. “We could bill it as an adventure trip—like an Alaska cruise.”
“You'd have to be careful,” Duncan Robert says. “You'd have people suing you for failure to deliver. It wouldn't work for everyone.” They chuckle.
“You boys do egg each other on, don't you,” I observe.
“Yeah, we're quite a team,” Miles says.
Duncan Robert looks at him and says, “You know we are. I couldn't have jumped without you.”
“What do you mean?” Miles asks, looking sideways at him.
“Our conversations took me, inch by inch, closer to the Void. We rehearsed it all, together, in those conversations.”
Miles is stopped by this. But he doesn't argue. “I'm bothered by that,” he says, with a frown. “I think the same thing was happening in my conversations with Babe, which took her to the brink.”
“Wait a minute,” I say to Miles. “I've been called to the Void since I was a child. I had to go. You didn't push me there. All your talk just helped clarify that call. Going there helped me see I'd always had a choice.”
He doesn't look convinced. He's still frowning.
“Look how important we are to each other,” Duncan Robert says. “Look how we need each other.”
“I'm not so sure,” Miles says. “Is it the right thing we do for each other?”
Duncan Robert looks at him. “Those conversations were acts of creativity—they went where they went. We let them. I think it was us at our best. We didn't let fear stop us, not-knowing stop us. We just went there. Did our homework, asked questions, thought, worked things out for ourselves.”
“But it feels like we assumed a responsibility there maybe we didn't realize we were assuming.”
“For my life?” Duncan Robert asks. “We never had that. I always had that. And I was aware of that.”
Miles frowns. “It's just scary to think about. I guess most of us are used to thinking of death as something outside of our control, not knowing when it will come or how, rather than stepping up to a moment and then finding ourselves moving beyond it.”
“You guys love each other and you know it,” I say. “There's your protection, right?”
Miles looks at me with tears in his eyes for the umpteenth time that day, saying not a word.
Duncan Robert suggests gently, “Let's get back to the story. There's not a lot more to tell. I was right at a moment of choice, Guy's ‘point of magic.’ He moves back to the couch and picks up his glass of water.
Break is over. I pick up my notebook and shake out my fingers before picking up my pen. Miles lies back on the floor, to stare at the ceiling as he listens.