The Making of a Shaman

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1974 The Philosopher

Although it was all much too complex, too involved and unfamiliar, for Ira to grasp in all but haziest fashion, he gathered that Lewlyn was suffering acutely, from his own renunciation of holy orders, the collapse of his religious beliefs and aspirations, and particularly from the negative mood about life that had overwhelmed him of late. Life had become empty of almost everything worthwhile, empty of everything except sensation. Love had become glandular relief. He was profoundly disenchanted and pessimistic. Henry Roth. " From Bondage."

The philosopher was in deep trouble. His life was falling apart. Having recently turned 30, he had looked at his life and did not like what he saw Ð someone unable to love deeply, but feeling lost without love. Although he had had a golden run in his career and taken up a teaching position at a tertiary college at the age of 26, four years later he looked at the rest of his life and plunged into deep despair.

He sat in a chair and could not think of a single reason to move. He lost 12 kilos in 2 months, and dragged himself through meaningless days.

Philosophy had caught up with him.

His mother had always maintained that "the devil" had got him when he went to university. His Christian faith did not stand up to rational examination, and that, in conjunction with the churchÕs attitude to conscription and the Vietnam war, reflected in the attitude of some of his hardline former Christian acquaintances Ð "better to kill them over there than when they reach here" Ð led him to leave the church. In four years he had gone from seriously considering theological training to being an outsider.

He found meaning for a time in radical philosophy and left wing politics, joining the Labor party and becoming the secretary of the local branch, only to leave when Labor came to power. An anarchist by inclination, he distrusted those in authority, including his own authority as a teacher. He abolished essays, compulsory attendance at tutorials, and passed everyone who enrolled in the subject. "Now that compulsion is out of the way we can get down to the serious business of learning." The students had other ideas, took him at his word, and mostly stayed away from his classes. They werenÕt really interested in "the life of ideas", just getting their qualifications. His own journey into the life of ideas had been very intense. He had completed a three-year university degree in four years of part-time study, while he was building a house, umpiring two football games on a Saturday, teaching in a secondary school and trying to work out the meaning of being married.

He had married his adolescent sweetheart at the age of 21, and his own childhood in an emotionally distant dysfunctional family, left him unable to be present in the intimate moments of sharing between a man and a woman. Not knowing how to talk about his inner emotional life he basically only knew two feelings; being turned on and pissed off Ð and dissembling about both of them.

His formal philosophical training had been both abstract and impersonal. As one of his teachers had said early on, "You have come here expecting that philosophy is about the meaning of life Ð it is not. It is about words and their meanings and how we use them." But he kept using his mind, looking for meaning. Was it in literature, art, psychology, politics, history, class struggle?

The birth of three children had confused him even more. How could he be present to them when he couldnÕt even be present to himself? Their openness, and wish to be close to him was unfamiliar, and he struggled to be present as a father. With the added pressure of study and work, lifeÕs demands all seemed too much. Unfathered Ð his own father had been away three weeks out of four Ð he had no organic understanding of how a father might be, and fumbled with what he needed to do.

In his second year of university teaching, a new philosopher joined the staff, a man destined to become one of the worldÕs finest moral philosophers. Through him he was introduced to the European philosophers, and in particular, the existentialists Albert Camus and Satre and the idea that life had no intrinsic meaning, that we had to create meaning in the world through our actions. Somewhere in there was the philosophy of despair and the question of how to create meaning in a meaningless universe. He was led to ponder, "If life has no meaning, then the only real question is ÔWhy do we keep on living, or why do we not kill ourselves?Õ"

This question shattered his entire intellectual and lived edifice, for he had no answer to it. After four years of teaching philosophy his malaise was all-encompassing.

A visit to the doctor brought no relief, for there was no physical cause of his dis-ease; his sickness was not of the body , but of the soul. When asked by the doctor how his marriage was, he practised his usual strategy of emotional non-availability and replied, "OK".

Such situations in life are often labelled a "breakdown". And it is true. The fabric of his existence, the meaning he had given to his life, his fragile emotional grasp on human intimacy, his sense of a viable future, were all breaking down. At 30 years his life no meaning, no purpose, no destiny, no vision, no faith, no joy, no intimate connectedness, and it would seem, no future.

Fate stepped into this abyss.

A close friend told him that his life was like the silhouette of a deciduous tree in winter against an evening sky, and suggested that he begin yoga. So there he went. An upstairs refuge in a busy city, the Gita School of Yoga had been founded by Margrit, who had lived in the Himalayas in the 1940s with her guru, and she was the first person to bring those teachings to Australia. The first lesson was an hour of asanas, followed by Yoga Nidra Ð deep relaxation on the border of sleep. He walked down the stairs after the lessons, feeling elated. He had found a refuge. Things could change. Diligent daily yoga practice began to turn his life around.

Then fate stepped in a second time. He met a philosophy student who had just returned to study after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. She had also been into the abyss. They discovered each other, and Spirit blessed them in a way he had never known but had always thought possible.

He was drawn out of himself into a whirlpool of energy, a cascading circle of delight, that intensified as the pleasure circuits of the body opened. As the body began to receive the pleasure it had always craved, the will and intellect receded, and the feeling heart emerged, drowning in anotherÕs being, swirling in the throes of acceptance and repair, and then bursting into a palace of delight.

Their bodies, so familiar, in unison sang a prayer to existence, who answered and swept them into her arms. They were coming home, returning to love, being healed, regenerated, blessed, touched by angels, recovering the songs of their immortality. As the bodies were taken over by the primal evolutionary energies, there was a continuous flow of tears, laughter, sadness, bliss, uncontrollable shaking, hearts opening, eyes connecting, souls touching. Stars cascaded in their brains. Their bodies recovered their meanings and purposes, and their souls asserted their primacy, as the philosopher and his partner were born into love.

His life changed.

Destiny decreed that they would not journey together, and within a short time they went their separate ways, each aware that the breath of Spirit had entered their lives.

Two years later the philosopher found a book, New Age Tantra Yoga, and came to understand that he had been touched by the hand of Shiva and taken into the temple of the Goddess, Shakti. The serpent power, the kundalini, had awakened.

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