Epilogue

TO SEE THE SHIMMER OF INFINITY IN THE FACE OF THE OTHER

 

There was once a woman who was so trapped inside Cartesian dualism that she could find no way out. Her life felt so meaningless and she was so unhappy that she became one of Carl Jung’s patients. Despite her seeking help, she knew, beyond doubt, that there was no reality other than the reductive one in which she was trapped. She continually responded to Jung’s discussions of the unconscious with disbelief. But one day she came to her session and related a dream she had had the night before . . .
    She had dreamed that she had been given a golden scarab beetle, a powerful symbol of death and rebirth in ancient Egypt. For some reason she could not let go of the feelings of significance she had about the beetle and she asked Jung to tell her about its meaning. Just as Jung was about to respond, he heard a gentle, insistent tapping at the window behind him. He says then that . . . “I turned round and saw a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the windowpane from outside in an obvious attempt to get into the dark room. That seemed to me very strange. I opened the window immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), whose gold-green colour most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words, ‘Here is your scarab.’”

C. G. JUNG

There are experiences most of us are hesitant to speak about, because they do not conform to every day reality and defy rational explanation. These are not particular external occurrences, but rather events of our inner lives, which are generally dismissed as figments of the imagination and barred from our memory. Suddenly, the familiar view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful, or alarming way: it appears to us in a new light, takes on special meaning. Such an experience can be as light and fleeting as a breath of air, or it can imprint itself deeply upon our minds.

ALBERT HOFMANN

In the magical universe there are no coincidences
and there are no accidents.

WILLIAM BURROUGHS

There was an excitement in the air that could almost be tasted. Five thousand of us jammed together in Winterland for the music, for a journey that would last all night, a journey that began with Quicksilver Messenger Service, was soaring now with Jefferson Airplane, and would end with the Grateful Dead. A journey that would last a lifetime.

I was barely eighteen and the man I saw moving through the crowd seemed so very old to me. He was dressed as we all were then . . . in bright colors and flowing clothes. His trousers were green and loose and comfortable over hand-cobbled leather shoes. His shirt was hidden beneath a coat of rainbow colors. And that coat . . . a textured felt, the body of it dark blue, the big pockets on the side red, the lapels an emerald green. There was bright embroidery, twinings of yellow, red, purple, green running along the front edges of the jacket, encircling the buttons and button holes. And underneath the twining embroidery, very hard to see, was hidden a small plastic tube.

Every so often, his hand, leathered and brown, would go to the bottom edge of the coat and press it in a certain way. Then, cupped, filled with secrets, the hand would rise again, and pass something to people in the crowd.

I watched him stop and stand a few feet in front of me, begin to speak with two young women in the crowd. I can still remember how hot it was, the August air of San Francisco even more humid from the dancing and sweating and breathing of so many people in one enclosed space. The women had long chestnut hair, bound up in back—wooden sticks protruding, holding it in place—to keep it off their necks. A few wisps of that dark chestnut straggled, flowed unbound, curled along their cheeks, draped the tops of their shoulders and along the shadows cast by their clavicles. And those shoulders were tanned, golden brown, gleaming softly from the light sheen of the sweat that covered them.

One of the young women wore a white camisole, the other a more natural linen color. And those camisoles were tight, sweat-glued against their young breasts, the nipples showing dark beneath the almost transparent cloth. I could almost smell the sweet scent of them, that astonishing mix of young woman and sweat and an elusive, faint hint of perfume.

They nodded to something the man said, then his hand moved down, came up again. The cupped palm placed something tiny, hidden, in their palms. And for some reason I will never know I spoke to him as the young women walked away.

“Could I have some, too?” I said and he turned toward me.

His eyes, gray and serious, came up to meet mine, and he stopped close in front of me. He stood still then, as still as ancient memories locked into the stone of mountains. And he looked at me, he really looked.

I stood transfixed, caught by his gaze, and even in my unawareness I could sense his gaze going deep inside, touching places within me that I did not know I had. Time stopped and I was held in the embrace of moment, caught by his seeing. Our looking was so deep I can still remember the striations in his iris, the slight purple surrounding the pupil, and the wrinkles that lined out from the corners of his eyes. But mostly I remember the feeling of being seen, of someone really looking at me, into me.

I remember, too, Jefferson Airplane in the background, singing “White Rabbit” . . .

One pill makes you larger
and one pill makes you small . . .

And I remember the dancing people, the noise of the crowd, the humidity of the air, surging around us like an ocean around an island in its midst. And us, caught in the still center, held motionless in a moment outside time.

Then, as it always must . . .

the stillness began to break.

His hand, as if it were moving through a substance more viscous than air, moved down—his eyes never leaving mine—and his fingers pressed against the threads of his jacket. Slowly, oh so slowly, they came up again. He held his hand out to me then, palm up, our eyes still locked together, and on it there lay a tiny, orange cylinder. I reached and took it, my eyes still captured, and slowly brought it to my mouth. Then he nodded, sharply, as if some question had been answered, and broke the spell completely, turned, and moved off into the crowd.

The movement of the crowd caught me up, took me in its currents, swept me away into that huge space, among all those dancing people. And the band . . . they played on.

In 1970, in San Francisco, LSD was everywhere and everyone I knew, myself included, had taken it many times. It brought us laughter, and close companionship, and a slower and deeper sense of the world around us. It brought us the belief in life after birth. But that day, something different happened, as it always does for those who continue to knock on the doors of perception. The doors opened.

And the thing about doors is,
there’s always something on the other side.

I fell headlong then into a world I had never known existed. I tripped and fell into the metaphysical background of the world.

There have been many stories told about that deeper world but the truth is that each of us finds the particular part of the metaphysical landscape that we are meant to find. It is not a place but rather just another part of the scenario. We trip and fall into it—irrespective of the mechanism that facilitates it—at a certain moment in our lives and it shapes all of our life thereafter.

I remember how the light changed, how it became more luminous and alive. And I remember the sudden shift that took me out of this world, into the embrace of a deeper world than I knew existed. I remember being touched, touched by the living intelligence that is underneath and behind all things. I remember its voice speaking, telling me to look, to really look. And I remember what I saw that day, just as if it were happening now. I remember seeing . . . seeing the living complexity that underlies all form. And I remember my vision traveling so far outside that place, traveling into the world, seeing the Earth, the plants, trees, rivers, each in the midst of its own life. Each filled with intelligence and soul and each and every one communicating, always communicating to everything around them. In thousands upon thousands of voices, they greeted me, welcoming me into their world. And I remember the golden threads of connection that wove them all together into a continuous seamless fabric.

I caught glimpses then of the work that lay before me and the path that I would travel. And I remember all the years I have followed it and the joys that it has brought me . . . and the grief. And still more do I remember, more than I can possibly say. As I write these words, I hear the voice of Black Elk, as if it were my voice, speaking, saying something that is and always will be true for those of us who trip and fall into the metaphysical background of the world . . .

I am sure now that I was then too young to understand it all, and that I only felt it. It was the pictures I remembered and the words that went with them; for nothing I have ever seen with my eyes was so clear and bright as what my vision showed me; and no words that I have ever heard with my ears were like the words that I heard. I did not have to remember these things; they have remembered themselves all these years. It was as I grew older that the meanings came clearer and clearer out of the pictures and the words; and even now I know that more was shown to me than I can tell.¹

And I remember, in the midst of it all, the music. The music coming from Earth and stone and plant and animal. The music that is inside everything that is, the music without which this world would not exist. The music that passes through us, that we think is our music but that is in reality the Earth’s music.

I remember the music and the piece of it that the Dead had captured, that they had brought into human form and sensibility, the living expression of the Earth’s touch upon them.

Much later, in the early morning, when the concert was done, I remember the doors opening and us in our thousands and our colors spreading outward like butterflies into the night.

I remember how fresh and clean everything seemed, how bright the colors were. It seemed as if a filter had been taken off my eyes, as if for the first time I could really see. And I remember how keenly I felt the touch of the world upon me, a touch I still feel even as I write these words at my grandfather’s desk.

And I remember what was asked of me that night, to speak for the Earth, for the plants, for all living things. That people might know they live and love, too. Know that they have intelligence and purpose. Know that they have a life of their own, filled with hopes and dreams, just as we do. Know that they are our kin.

For it was said in that timeless moment that still echoes within me there are those among us who remember deep in some part of themselves—a part that will not let them rest—the forest and the living-ness of green things. It was said that it’s time for them to come home. Time for them to journey deep into the forest that birthed them. Time for them to take up their work—the work that resides in the deepest parts of themselves. Time for them to speak for the green things, to teach their children the way of Earth. Time for humans to think in new ways.

There is a difference I learned, long ago, between schooling and education. Do you feel it now, in the room with you?

I was never able to find it in the analysis of chemicals or in degree programs or in any of my schools. But sometimes I find it in the soft flutter of butterflies, in the wildness of plants growing undomesticated in a forest clearing, in the laughter and running of young children, their hair flowing in the wind, and sometimes, sometimes I find it in the words of teachers who come among us from time to time—out there, far outside these walls, in the wildness of the world.