Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (18 page)

To come back to the Voice…. There was
The World of Lawrence
, to take
another instance. Begun at Clichy, continued in Passy, and abandoned after the writing of some
seven to eight hundred pages. A misfire. A flop. Yet what a grand affair it was! Never had I
been so possessed. In addition to the finished pages, I
piled up a
mountain of notes and a staggering heap of citations, taken not only from Lawrence’s writings
but from dozens of other writers, all of which I strove unsuccessfully to weave into the book.
Then there were the charts and diagrams—the ground plan—with which I decorated the doors and
walls of the studio (Villa Seurat), waiting for inspiration to continue the task and praying
for a solution to the dilemma in which I found myself.

It was the “dictation” which got me down. It was like a fire which refused to
be extinguished. For months it went on, without let up. I couldn’t take a drink, even standing
at a bar, without being forced to whip out pad and pencil. If I ate out, and I usually did, I
would fill a small notebook during the course of a meal. If I climbed into bed and made the
mistake of switching off the light, it would begin all over again, like the itch. I was that
frazzled I could scarcely type a few coherent pages a day. The situation reached the height of
the ludicrous when I suddenly realized one day that of everything I had written about the man
I could just as well have said the opposite. I had indubitably reached that dead end which
lies so artfully hidden in the phrase “the meaning of meaning.”

That voice!
It was while writing the
Tropic of Capricorn
(in
the Villa Seurat) that the real shenanigans took place. My life being rather hectic then—I was
living on six levels at once—there would come dry spells lasting for weeks some times. They
didn’t bother me, these lulls, because I had a firm grip on the book and an inner certainty
that nothing could scotch it. One day, for no accountable reason, unless it was an overdose of
riotous living, the dictation commenced. Overjoyed, and also more wary this time (especially
about making notes), I would go straight to the black desk which a friend had made for me,
and, plugging in all the wires, together with amplifier and callbox, I would yell:
“Je
t’écoute … Vas-y!”
(I’m listening … go to it!) And how it would come! I didn’t have to
think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial
recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say,
to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing
doing! I had to take it in one fell swoop or risk the penalty: excommunication. The most that
was permitted me was the time it took to swallow an aspirin. The John could wait, “it” seemed
to think. So could lunch, dinner, or whatever it was I thought necessary or important.

I could almost
see
the Voice, so close, so impelling, so
authoritative it was, and withal bearing such ecumenical import. At times it sounded like a
lark, at other times like a nightingale, and sometimes—really eerie, this!—like that bird of
Thoreau’s fancy which sings with the same luscious tones night and day.

When I began the Interlude called “The Land of Fuck”—meaning “Cockaigne”—I
couldn’t believe my ears.
“What’s that?”
I cried, never dreaming of what I was being
led into. “Don’t ask me to put
that
down, please. You’re only creating more trouble
for me.” But my pleas were ignored. Sentence by sentence I wrote it down, having not the
slightest idea what was to come next. Reading copy the following day—it came in instalments—I
would shake my head and mutter like a lost one. Either it was sheer drivel and hogwash or it
was sublime. In any case, I was the one who had to sign his name to it. How could I possibly
imagine then that some few years later a judicial triumvirate, eager to prove me a sinner,
would accuse me of having written such passages “for gain.” Here I was begging the Muse
not
to get me into trouble with the powers that be,
not
to make me write
out all those “filthy” words, all those scandalous, scabrous lines, pointing out in that deaf
and dumb language which I employed when dealing with the Voice that soon, like Marco Polo,
Cervantes, Bunyan
et alii
, I would have to write my books in jail or at the foot of
the gallows … and these holy cows deep in clover, failing to recognize dross from gold, render
a verdict of guilty, guilty of dreaming it up “to make money”!

It takes courage to put one’s signature to a piece of pure ore which is handed
you on a platter straight from the mint….

And only yesterday—what a coincidence!—coming from a walk
in the hills, a thin, transparent fog touching everything with quicksilver fingers, only
yesterday, I say, coming in view of our grounds, I suddenly recognized it to be “the wild
park” which I had described myself to be in this same
Capricorn
. There it was,
swimming in an underwater light, the trees spaced just right, the willow in front bowing to
the willow in back, the roses in full bloom, the pampas grass just beginning to don its plumes
of gold, the hollyhocks standing out like starved sentinels with big, bright buttons, the
birds darting from tree to tree, calling to one another imperiously, and Eve standing barefoot
in her Garden of Eden with a grub hoe in her hand, while Dante Alighieri, pale as alabaster
and with only his head showing above the rim, was making to slake his awesome thirst in the
bird bath under the elm.

Where was I?
Oh yes, Jean Wharton and the little house on
Partington Ridge. … At last a home of my own, with almost three acres of land surrounding it.
As predicted, the francs came through in the nick of time; enough to pay for house and land
outright.

To begin with, Jean Wharton is the first and only person of my acquaintance
who not only talked of “the abundance of the earth” but demonstrated it in her everyday life,
in her relations with friends and neighbors.

Back in the days of the Villa Seurat, when I first began to correspond with
Dane Rudhyar, I learned that the Aquarian Age
which we have just entered,
or are about to enter, may be justly called “The Age of Plenitude.” Even at the threshold of
this new era it has become evident to all that the resources of this planet are inexhaustible.
I refer to physical resources. As for spiritual resources, has there ever been a deficiency?
Only in man’s mind.

The air is full of theories about the new order, the new dispensation.
Marvelous pictures are painted of the period just around the bend, when we of this earth will
see the end of making war, when atomic energy will be utilized for the benefit of all mankind.
But no one
acts
as if this glorious age which is dawning were an imminent, wholly
realizable, thoroughly practicable one, indeed the only viable one. It is a beautiful subject
for discussion at cocktail hour, when all the current topics have been chewed to a frazzle.
Usually a rider to the flying saucer business. Or to Swami So-and-So’s latest book.

Jean Wharton, I repeat, is the only person I ever met who was in the new age
with both feet. She was one of the first members of the community I met during my stay at
Lynda Sargent’s log cabin. I can still see her coming through the door of the little post
office at Big Sur, clad in a huge raincoat, her face almost buried under a fisherman’s hat.
Her flashing eyes were tender, expressive and full of warm awareness. I felt at once the
radiance which emanated from her and, on leaving the post office, questioned Lynda about her.
I did not see her again for a number of weeks because, as I later learned, she was traveling
back and forth over the continent in response to appeals from those who needed her aid.

When I moved into Keith Evans’ cabin on Partington Ridge I often strolled
about Jean Wharton’s newly built home and gazed upon it longingly. Everything was still raw,
including the grounds. Now and then I peered through the windows, and always I found the same
book lying on view, or so it seemed, though it had been left there unintentionally. The book
was
Science and Health
.

It was customary then for people to refer to Jean Wharton as a Christian
Scientist, or “something of that sort,” but always with
an intonation
which hinted that she was “different.” I suspect that no one, at that time, had any inkling of
the travail she was experiencing in her endeavor to clarify her position. What I mean to say
is that, in developing and testing her own views of life, in following the path of Truth, she
had made a breach with the past—and with those who thought they understood her—which sometimes
placed her in an embarrassing light. I might put it another way and say that she no longer
“belonged.” Even her intimate friends could no longer classify her. She voiced ideas now and
then which to them seemed contradictory, or worse still, “heretical.” And sometimes absurd or
utterly untenable. She had definitely moved on—that is the point. And if one moves fast enough
the gap can become tremendous, painful too for those unable to follow. I doubt if anyone
within her orbit quite understood what was going on. “Jean was changing.” That was the best
they could put it.

How I, with my background, ever got to share this woman’s inmost thoughts is
something of a mystery even today. However, as our acquaintance progressed, became transformed
into a deep friendship, one which permitted the freest exchange of ideas and opinions, I
perceived more and more clearly why she could unburden herself to me who had traveled such a
different path. It was not the past which was important, it was the now. For me, just as for
her, the present had become the all. For me, desperately so. In conversing with her this
desperation vanished. She was in it, of it, one with it.

I must say here, at once, that Jean Wharton did not begin by airing her views.
Not with me, at any rate. She began by being a kindly, helpful neighbor. Our dwellings were
separated by only a few hundred yards, but we were hidden from one another’s sight. It was
only very gradually, and in a wholly natural way, that I began to receive any direct language
about her “spiritual leanings.” What I did get, right from the outset, was the beneficent
effect of her clear, straight thinking. That she had very definite views about most everything
I was quite aware of, and I found this
refreshing; there was nothing
insistent or combative in the way she presented her views.

Though I had no need of a healer, or thought I hadn’t, I could not help but
sense her possession of this power every time I found myself in her presence. And, perhaps for
the first time in my life, I was discreet about prying into the origin and the nature of this
gift. No matter how brief the conversation which passed between us, I always remarked to
myself afterwards that I felt better, felt like a real human being, as we say. I am not
referring to an improved physical condition, such as can be induced by an extra shot of
vitamins, though that was noticeable too; I mean rather a state of spiritual well-being which,
unlike the euphorias I had been subject to in the past, left me calm, poised, self-possessed,
and, not only at one with the world but confirmed in my at-one-ness.

Still I made no special effort to get to know her better. It was only after we
had taken possession of her house, only after she had passed through a few inner crises and
reached a state of certitude which, for a less disciplined individual, would have been fraught
with peril, that we began to have prolonged and involved exchanges of thought which were truly
revelatory to me. As to the nature and substance of her views—her philosophy of life, if you
like—I hesitate to attempt to expound them in a few words. She herself has performed this feat
in a little book called
Blueprints for Living.
*
In this book she has condensed her
thoughts to a crystalline substance, leaving nothing vague or obscure, yet permitting the
reader to fill in for himself. The effect produced by this method has been to heighten the
controversy which the mere mention of her name almost always entails. Perhaps I should
amplify. Jean Wharton is one of those individuals who, however clear they make themselves, are
always in danger of being misunderstood. She can be crystal clear, in talk or in print, yet
awaken doubt, ridicule and anxiety in those who read or listen to her. Perhaps this is the
price
one pays for being utterly lucid. There is a good reason, however,
for this paradoxical dilemma in which she sometimes finds herself. It is that her message can
only be given through example. It is something to be lived, not discussed. And it is just this
fact which utterly fails to convince some. Ramakrishna expressed it thus:

“Give thousands of lectures, you cannot do anything with worldly men. Can you
drive a nail into a stone wall? The head will be broken without making any impression on the
wall. Strike the back of an alligator with a sword, it will receive no impression. The
mendicant’s bowl (of gourd-shell) may have been to the four great holy places of India but
still be as bitter as ever….”
*

To those who know and accept her, who wrestle with themselves as she has
wrestled with herself, Jean Wharton’s thoughts and intentions are clear and unmistakable. They
are so even when there is an element of apparent contradiction. Even when, so to speak, she
seems to create a “cloud of unknowing.” We know what has been made of the sayings of Jesus.
Even of his behavior!

I have not brought up Jean Wharton’s name, however, merely to eulogize her,
though I think it altogether proper for me to do so since I am so very much in her debt and
since I frequently go out of my way to pay tribute or homage to far inferior souls. No, I am
compelled to speak of her because of an aspect of the singular struggle she has waged ever
since she saw the light. I beg the reader to take it for granted that I am speaking of no
ordinary person, no ordinary struggle. It is perhaps unfortunate, or misleading, that I
suggested the name of Mary Baker Eddy in connection with hers. That Christian Science played a
part in her life is undeniable; I would even venture to call it a very valuable part. But all
that belongs to the past. Whoever takes the trouble to read her
Blueprints for Living
will discover that there are drastic differences between Jean Wharton’s present viewpoint and
Mary Baker Eddy’s.