When the Impossible Happens (34 page)

In India, Satya Sai Baba is considered the new incarnation of Sai Baba from Shirdi in Maharashtra, a famous Indian saint. He is known all over the world for his siddhis, supernatural feats that reflect the power of his mind over the material world. Among these is the capacity to materialize various objects, from gold rings and small effigies of deities to large quantities of sacred ashes called
vibuddhi.
He also has the reputation of appearing in several places at once. Many people believe that he is the avatar of the modern age, one of the rare instances in the history of humanity when the Divine decides to incarnate in a human form to influence the course of events in the world.

During our 1980 visit to India, Christina and I met Sai Baba personally in Puttaparthi, where he resides in his palatial abode. Our weeklong visit coincided with Christmas holidays, the time when Sai Baba pays special attention to Westerners. We had the opportunity to witness at close range what appeared to be siddhis at work. With swift movements of his arm, he produced large quantities of candy, which he distributed to children, and handfuls of vibuddhi, which he smeared on the forehead of his devotees. All that with short sleeves that would have made any magic tricks very difficult, particularly as the appearance of the ashes is concerned.

My mother’s knowledge of Sai Baba came from Al Drucker, who at the time was a rolfer, acupuncturist, and workshop leader at Esalen. Al was originally a mathematician and physicist working for the U.S. government as an expert computing the trajectory of missiles. After a powerful spiritual experience that made it morally impossible for him to continue working for the military, he left his job and came to Esalen. He heard about Sai Baba and decided to go to Puttaparthi and check out the claims about this man’s ability to materialize objects, a phenomenon that fascinated Al as a physicist.

Among several extraordinary feats that Al personally witnessed during his visit to Puttaparthi was Sai Baba’s materialization of a silver ring, which he subsequently transformed into a gold one. As a result, Al returned to California as an ardent devotee, determined to spread Sai Baba’s message. My mother, who was very interested in Eastern spiritual philosophies, met Al at Esalen, and they became friends. He told her many stories about Sai Baba and lent her several books about him. His own connection with Sai Baba was so strong that he later actually moved to India, obtained Indian citizenship, and became Sai Baba’s “right-hand man.”

I have already mentioned my mother’s longtime interest in Eastern religions and philosophies. She belonged to a group of Czech followers of Paul Brunton, a British philosopher and writer who had popularized Indian philosophy. She also read Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore, and other spiritual teachers. In the late 1960s, I had guided her at her request in three high-dose LSD sessions, which turned out to be very profound spiritual experiences for her. They also generated in her an interest in depth psychology, a broad range of psychological approaches using techniques for exploring unconscious motives of human behavior and for treating emotional disorders. During her stay at Esalen, she participated in our monthlong workshops, which featured as guest faculty spiritual teachers, new paradigm scientists, and transpersonal psychologists.

She enjoyed very much the theoretical lectures presented at the monthlong, but became particularly fascinated by the Holotropic Breathwork sessions, which were a standard and important part of the program. She had several additional opportunities to experience the breathwork, both personally and as a “sitter” for others, when I invited her to the workshops that I conducted in Scandinavia and in Switzerland. I knew that she loved this work but, at the time, I did not have the slightest idea where this interest would take her.

When my mother was back in Prague, we regularly exchanged letters. After my father’s death, her letters became increasingly sad and pessimistic. She wrote about the relentlessly shrinking circle of her friends, something that is bound to happen to a person who approaches eighty years of age. There were reports about diseases and operations of relatives and acquaintances—strokes, heart at tacks, cancer, arthritis, and back surgeries. Once in a while, my mother’s letters included an obituary announcing the death of yet another neighbor.

But then the tone of the letters suddenly changed. My mother wrote to me that she had decided to try out the Holotropic Breathwork with several friends and acquaintances, including a couple of my former patients. Encouraged by the results of her pioneering venture, she decided to continue. The news about the Holotropic Breathwork sessions spread by word of mouth, and the growing circle of my mother’s clients soon included young psychiatrists and psychologists eager to experience and learn the new technique.

The references to aging, diseases, and death all but disappeared from my mother’s letters and were replaced by reports about experiences she had witnessed in holotropic sessions. She kept asking me for new selections of music for the sessions because it was too monotonous and boring to play the same pieces all the time. She also used her letters as a means for technical consultation about specific situations that came up during Holotropic Breathwork. At one point, she shared with me proudly that the number of (mostly young) people attending her group had reached forty. It was clear that her way of being in the world was radically transformed, as if she had a new lease on life. She suddenly had a new strong sense of
raison d’être, êlan vital,
and extraordinary zest for life.

By the time of my mother’s eighty-fifth birthday, the situation in Czechoslovakia had changed to such an extent that I was able to go to Prague and participate in the celebration of this auspicious anniversary. On this occasion, I was invited to give a lecture and conduct a Holotropic Breathwork seminar at the Psychiatric Department of the Charles University School of Medicine, my old alma mater. Two of the psychiatrists participating in the seminars came all the way from Slovakia. They told me that they had attended several weeks earlier a similar event in Slovakia led by my mother. It was a Holotropic Breathwork seminar for Slovak psychiatrists and psychologists followed by a theoretical discussion.

I could not believe what I was hearing. Before she had met my father and gotten married, my mother was an accomplished and successful concert pianist. But in spite of her great talent and technical skill, public performances made her uncomfortable, and she suffered from stage fright. The idea that she would lead a seminar for psychiatrists and psychologists in an area in which she had no training was too fantastic to be true. But my Slovak colleagues assured me that the experiential workshop was a great success and that during the discussion my mother answered all the theoretical and technical questions to everybody’s satisfaction.

I was puzzled, and that very same evening I brought up the subject of the Slovak seminar in an after—dinner discussion with my mother. “I understand you recently conducted a breathwork workshop for Slovak psychiatrists and psychologists. How did it go?” I asked as soon as we finished dinner.

“It was fine,” my mother answered somewhat sheepishly, probably because she knew that we allowed only fully trained and certified facilitators to conduct public workshops. “They seemed to enjoy it.”

“The Slovak colleagues who attended my workshop at the psychiatric clinic told me that there also was a discussion following the breathwork, during which you answered questions. How was that for you? Were some of the questions technical and difficult to answer?” I probed further.

“It was okay,” my mother answered and then went into a long silence. It was clear that she wanted to add something and was looking for the right words to do it. I sat in the armchair without saying anything, awaiting patiently what was about to come. “It is not quite true,” she said finally with a guilty expression in her face. “Actually, half of the time, I had no idea what they were talking about. But then the answer suddenly came. But, to be honest, I don’t think I did it.”

“You don’t think
you
were giving the answers?” I asked in utter astonishment. “If it wasn’t you, who was it?”

“He did,” my mother said in a tone of voice that did not leave any space for doubt. “Sai Baba!”

She then proceeded to tell me that since the time Sai Baba had appeared to her in Big Sur, she often felt his presence in everyday life, particularly in situations related to Holotropic Breathwork. The seminar in Slovakia was just one of many similar occasions. The same happened regularly during the bodywork in the breathwork sessions. When the participants needed some physical intervention to reach a better completion of their experiences, all my mother had to do was to wait several seconds and then guidance came from levels that she ordinarily was not in touch with. She then conducted the bodywork without any hesitation and usually successfully, to the great satisfaction of the group members.

Her interventions were often extraordinary and surprised those who were observing them. My brother, Paul, had an opportunity to witness the efficacy of our mother as facilitator in 1992, when we were conducting a Holotropic Breathwork workshop before the meeting of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) in Prague. It was one of the largest groups we have ever done, with 330 participants from 36 different countries of the world and 35 facilitators, including Paul and our mother.

At one point Paul, a strong man and trained psychiatrist, had great difficulty containing the process of one of the participants, a young Russian obstetrician, and keeping her safe. She was extremely physically active, spastically arching her body high up from the floor and sending strong kicks in all directions. She did not respond to Paul’s suggestions, given in fluent Russian, and he could not control her with the full weight of his body. When mother, who was at the time eighty-five years old, saw the scene, she came to them and quieted the young woman with one hand and a few words in Czech, which the Russian doctor did not understand.

The members of the group that my mother created in Prague all loved her and related to her as a mother figure, or even an archetypal Wise Old Woman. Eventually, after the fall of the Communist regime, twelve of the members of her group were able to complete full training with us in the United States and in Europe and became certified breathwork facilitators. My mother died suddenly several days after conducting her last breathwork session and about an hour after inviting two of her friends, a physicist and his wife, for coffee and a special dessert that she had herself prepared. She has remained for me a great model of graceful aging and of a life dedicated to service.

WHEN ALL IS ONE, THERE IS NO PROBLEM: Feats of the Korean Sword Master

Our Esalen six-week workshop entitled Buddhism and Western Psychology had a stellar cast and remarkable program. Coleader of the workshop was Jack Kornfield, dear friend, psychologist, Vipassana teacher, and Buddhist monk, who taught participants the principles of insight meditation, gave lectures on Buddhism, offered personal darshans, and lead the nine-day
sesshin,
or period of intense meditation, that was an integral part of the six-week experience. The program featured Tibetan Buddhist spiritual teachers Chögyam Trungpa, Tarthang Tulku, and Sogyal Rinpoche. Lama Govinda was in residence with his wife, Li, for two of the six weeks, and during this time, he gave a one-hour lecture on Tibetan Buddhism every day. Religious scholar and philosopher Huston Smith gave lectures on Buddhism, and Joseph Campbell introduced the group to Buddhist mythology in a series of illustrated presentations.

Zen Buddhism was represented by the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, Reb Anderson; Korean Zen master Seung Sahn Nim; and Kobun Chino, who performed Zen archery. Taoist teacher Chungliang Al Huang introduced participants to Tai Chi Chuan and to Chinese calligraphy. However, of all the visiting faculty, it was Kwan Ja Nim, a Korean martial artist and master swordsman, who attracted most of the attention of our group and the rest of the Esalen community. He came to Esalen with Seung Sahn Nim, accompanied by two of his disciples. We had heard about his amazing abilities, and his performance promised to be so extraordinary that we decided not to limit it to our group but to make it public. It took place on the large, oval lawn in front of the Esalen office.

Kwan Ja Nim began his presentation with an exhibition, during which he and his two students staged a combat with swords and then with long poles. Following this performance, one of the students, a lanky young man from Poland, took off his shirt and lay down on the lawn. The other student then brought a large sword beautifully decorated with etchings. Kwan Ja Nim demonstrated to the group the sharpness of his sword by cutting a hair, which he held between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. Then he put an apple on a napkin on his Polish student’s belly and cut it with a brisk swing of his sword. The two halves of the apple fell apart and the sword left a little indentation on the napkin.

The crowd cheered, impressed by the degree of control the sword master commanded over his formidable weapon. Kwan Ja Nim calmed the group’s enthusiasm: “Just a warm-up ... don’t get excited ... wait!” Now the smaller student brought to the lawn two stools, three large watermelons, and a bag made of thick black velvet. He placed one stool with a watermelon by the head of his Polish colleague and did the same at his feet. Following this, he put the third watermelon on a napkin on the Polish guy’s belly.

In the meantime, Kwan Ja Nim walked by the row of people lining the oval lawn, carrying a bag made of black velvet and letting everybody see it and touch it. There was absolutely no doubt that the thick double layer of black velvet effectively blocked any attempt to see through it. Kwan Ja Nim then chopped off the ends of the two watermelons on the stools and stabilized them in a vertical position. After this preparation, he walked about fifteen feet from the spot where his Polish disciple lay on the grass, put the black velvet bag over his own head, and tightened its open end around his neck, using a string sewn into its edge. He then assumed a formal warrior posture, grasping his sword in his right hand and holding it erect in a vertical position.