Oh my, there was I with the music on, the sun shining through the window, dancing my oldening bones around the room with a heart full of joy when the phone rang. On the other end a man in tears, his life breaking. So it goes.
Last night I went to visit a friend to do some business. She’d had a row with her daughter, an exceptionally horrendous one. She thinks she may never be allowed to see her grand-daughter again. She cried and cried, breaking apart before my eyes. So it goes.
What it is to be human…
Welcome to my blog. I’d like to begin, ‘I welcome you all with great love and respect’ which is how my guru used to begin back in the day but coming from me it sounds a bit cheesy and while I approve of the sentiment wholeheartedly it’s in a theoretical idealistic sort of way and if you actually knocked on my door you would probably find me as elusively unavailable to actually communicate with or seek help from as most of my friends do.
If you are very bored please put some more commas in the above paragraph.
While I wait for the publisher to respond (are you listening Chris!!?), I’ve been thinking about gurus, 1976, and spiritual needs in the National Health Service. I believe them to be related. Consider this from NICE:
Key Recommendation 2: Assessment and discussion of patients’ needs for physical, psychological, social, spiritual and financial support should be undertaken at key points.
The word which most interests me is ‘spiritual’ because in an impossible to explain meme-istic way I feel a little responsible for the word being there.
Remember, if you will, that NICE is the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, an organization that above all must epitomise scientific materialism on the coal front. When our bodies are on the table we rather hope that we will benefit from the most rational, up-to-date evidence based treatment that scientific knowledge can provide for us and only a few of us would really opt for the Mother Wortwurzle’s stinking rue which may have been all the rage a few centuries ago. So why in this secular society is the Health Service funding and worrying about the spiritual needs of a slab of meat?
In 1976, around this time of year, I set off on a journey to India which I thought of as a pilgrimage. If you read my diary written at the time – the opening extracts which you will find at the end of this piece – you will see it wasn’t something I was particularly enthusiastic about, or cut-out for, but nevertheless I trudged off and found myself a guru. Being a lifelong self-centred self-obsessive, I was only partially aware that I was on a suddenly well-trodden path, both physically and psychologically and that my journey to the East was part of a generational shift in thinking fuelled by LSD.
My own background was Irish Catholicism as installed by brutal Jesuit priests. By the age of 14 I was more than ready to escape the tyranny of the spirituality and their master. God and me had a falling out, religion became the new anti-christ. Then came the drugs, LSD, Herman Hesse, Aldous Huxley and the Perennial Philosophy, Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass, and all the rest. Love is all you need. Be here now. Turn on, tune-in, drop out. God isn’t god, god is consciousness, god is source, god is shiva but shiva isn’t god like you understand god, god is love, god is you, god is me. And so on.
Were we religious?
Oh my god, no. Religious people had credos, we had experience; we were mystics and mystics transcend religion.
Mystical experiences are marked by all or some of the following feelings/insights.
A sense of unity or totality
A sense of timelessness
A sense of having encountered ultimate reality
A sense of sacredness
A sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of this experience.
So, to differentiate ourselves from the religionists and to identify ourselves with the mystics, a new word was coined, ‘spirituality.’ Bearing in mind that, in my observation, 99% of the new mystics were from Christian backgrounds, (the others being American-Jewish) this notion of spirituality, though couched in universal terms, is really just a cultural change in christian thinking rather than something new. The fact that during the last 40 years Christianity has shifted position on numerous doctrines would appear to support this view.
The problem, as I perceive it to be, is that spirituality has got out of hand. What has happened is this: rather than defining itself as it was, i.e. religion, (but not the Christian religion as represented by mum and dad and all those sanctimonious hypocritical straight people who wear suits, beat little children, bomb the Vietnamese and go to church on Sunday to show how holy they are), it chose to define itself as ‘not religion’.You might think that as words and definitions go ‘Not-Religion’ wouldn’t be a star performer. Spirituality, however, has done fantastically well and the more people try to define it, the bigger it grows. Even the religion that it has defined itself as not being, embraces it and sees it as an ally in its attempts to reach out to other religions to establish some bizarre coalition of those ‘with faith’. However, as I said before, it is its appearance in the NHS that astounds me, especially when I discover that NHS staff are supposed to assess the ‘spiritual needs’ of a patient.
What?!!
Of course the gargantualizing of spirituality isn’t all the work of drugged out hippies. Cicely Saunders, who began the hospice movement, was greatly influenced by Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning and promoted the idea that spirituality was this existentialist ‘search for meaning’. Not surprisingly, when faced with death people will have a tendency to be contemplative, to review their lives and to consider whether they’ve reached the end or not. It’s not for nothing that the Buddhist clergy and others have made a point of working with the dying. Even now Christian chaplaincies are fighting turf wars with the new age death midwives. The search for meaning approach worked well both for culturally christian non-religious christians and for most of the religious ones. For the word spirituality, this was a masterstroke. Because the non-religious culturally christian christians didn’t really believe in any religion but felt obliged to respect them all, they were quite happy for spirituality to mean any religious, or more or less religious, belief. In this way spirituality has become to mean not-religion, (particularly not the christian religion), and all religions, including the christian one.
This word should be charged by the monopolies commission.
To be continued.
PILGRIMAGE TO INDIA 1976.
Monday September 13th 1976
One o’clock in the morning. Am sitting, cramped, with cigarette in hand, writing by torchlight in an old A30 car, about 30 miles from Paris. My sleeping companion is John, a sixty-year-old Scot escaping tragedy with a fantasy of screwing a lady in gay Paree. He’sbeen really nice. Picked me up in Canterbury where I was getting soaked. My luggage is a problem, nylon rope cutting my shoulder & constantly coming off the sleeping bag. Crazy journey down following fast moving lorries in the night. John has bought me food and drink. Already have gone somewhere I wasn’t meaning to go. Meant to go to Belgium. Didn’t even get time to have spare passport photos done. Would welcome some sleep. Is all very strange. Say a prayer every time I pass a church.
THE DAY I CROSSED THE CHANNEL
Tuesday September 14th
Tonight when I need more than ever to meditate and to draw down the grace of my guru, I quit after a few tired seconds to write this and go to bed. Really it has been a good, magical and fortunate day but I’m sitting here on the verge of crying: bad emotional fear ruling me. I want to go home. Have lost my torch, seems indicative of darkness to come. God help me, Yogananda help me.
Early this morning arrived in Paris with John. At about 5a.m. we parted company. Walking into a café to ask for Paris I was helped by a guy called Giles who took me to his home where I have stayed most of the day. Went into Paris with him; saw some artists painting which was good. Also went into a fabulous church which I felt I’d been missing. Giles is out now. I’m going to have an early night with a prayer in my heart that I can realize the joy of having my guru teach and protect me. I need it tonight. I’m hoping it is the tiredness and with god’s love I’ll feel better when I awake. Hope I find my torch.THE DAY I WENT TO PARIS
Wednesday Sept 15th
Dana’s birthday. Just awoken, feeling better. Today’s prayer: Divine Mother, teach me to recharge my body, mind and soul with Thine unlimited, all healing light which is within me.
..Now 1 a.m. In a motorway café at Mannheim with a Czech guy. It is raining outside. We don’t know what to do. Today I spent 7 cold hours waiting for a lift outside Paris. Happy birthday Dana. Then got two lifts, the second fast and smooth with a man from Sudan and his German girlfriend. Recovered my spirits. They bought me a meal and tea. Ended the day here as Thursday begins. THE DAY I WAITED SEVEN HOURS FOR A LIFT OUTSIDE PARIS.
Thursday September 16th
About midday. Am in the hut by the woods in Stuttgart and my thoughts go back to last year. Can not get of my head the pain of the separation from R. But the story. Spent the night in the café with the Czech guy. Slept a bit. Was warm, contented. Was raining this morning so continued sitting around till it eased off. (Text unreadable). Then another hitchhiker got me stoned. Was laughing, feeling gay. Almost immediately got a lift to Stuttgart, straight to Botnang! In heavy rain and mist. Exciting and joyful. Felt overrewarded. My prayers haven’t brought this to me. Is grace not karma.
Am about to have a joint with Tommy’s brother. Tommy not here yet. Thinking a lot about Steve and Calla. Their love must be so strong. I had a strange dream last night which I don’t remember very well. It was unusual in that I was in it but not the main character. Two little girls (out of a number of girls all dressed in white) were talking. One was telling the other she was leaving the district. It wasn’t true but the second girl was really unhappy about it. I experienced it from her point of view. Very strange.
{Writing this Saturday.} Well I thought the day was pretty (sussed?) especially when Stefan and Barney reckoned a job would come together in France. B&S went out. I closed my eyes to mediate, then, thinking of food, I looked up to see the hut on fire. Frantic efforts to put it out failed. Recovering my stuff, minus my glasses, I stand and watch the fire with detachment. Then the police arrive, take me and my things, ask me questions and then put me in a cell with an Italian guy. I think I’m there for protective custody while they find my friends whose house has just burned down.
THE DAY OF THE FIRE.
Friday September 17th
Soon in the morning discover am gaoled with no guarantee of imminent release. A bit freaky. Undrinkable coffee, mouldy bread and fag-ends for breakfast. Photos and fingerprints taken: “We are only the technicians.” Time drags by. I stand up. Next thing I know I’m on the floor, head bleeding, fighting off terror and trying not to freak out. So slowly, it seems, I’m taken to hospital where they put stitches in my head, bed me and say they want to test me for epilepsy. Head hurts. I try to sleep, to keep calm. Wondering if anyone will come to see me. Later the policeman arrives with a translator and releases me from custody. Doesn’t know anything about my friends.
THE DAY I HAD EPILEPSY IN PRISON.Saturday September 18th
With aching head and having been told to go back to England, the hospital let me go. A doctor gave me 10 marks. I got my things from the police station and came to Botang in the vague hope of finding Tommy. Magically he appeared in five minutes. I’m really pleased to see him. Now we wait in a friend’s home hoping Stefan will appear equally magically and tell me to go to France tomorrow. Otherwise?
My head hurts.
After much smoking and walking and taking care of my body, Stefan turns up and says we hitch to France on Monday. I don’t think it’d be wise to go on to India with my head like this so France is a good place to be while I recover (hopefully). Tommy and friends don’t seem to blame me for the fire and are happy to have me in (freedom?). Really don’t want to go to prison or hospital again. Finally go to sleep in Stuttgart, very late. Saying prayers when I remember but unable to find the space to meditate.
THE DAY I LEFT HOSPITAL AND FOUND TOMMY..
Sunday September 19th
After sleeping at Tommy’s place in Stuttgart spent the day in a group wandering around here and there in the woods getting stoned. Feel that Tommy is in trouble with his vivacious but doubtful girlfriend. My head is becoming more comfortable. Tomorrow I will set off with Stefan to the South of France, the opposite way to India. Have written a letter to Steve and Calla but not posted it yet. There are a few hours left but I guess it is safe to say SUNDAY IN THE FOREST.
No comments:
Post a Comment