Catching Up With Ourselves

 In the mid-'50s - 1955 precisely, to be, well, precise - and interestingly enough, about the same time as Colin Wilson over in the UK was writing his book on 'The Outsider', I became one myself, by dropping out of my pre-Med studies in university1 and ending up some months later all the way over on the other side of the continent, in NewYork City (from my home in Southern California), reading my way through all the books that I could come across in the New York City Public Library on things to do specifically with 'the spiritual' and generally to do with things outside of the mainstream.  So - much like Colin, in his coming-of-age years; and in point of fact, in the very year (1956) that his book was being published in the UK2 - I read - devoured - Ouspensky, and Gurdjieff, and Krishnamurti, and Madame Blavatsky, and Edgar Cayce, and Spiritualism, and ESP, and William James's 'Varieties of Religious Experience'  - the lot.3

I was looking for Truth, after an experience at university that turned my life upside down.  It happened just shortly after I had received the word of my successful application for Med School, for entrance the following school year.  Having accomplished my immediate goal in life, I relaxed a bit in my intensive pre-Med studies (I had qualified in three years rather than the 'normal' four of undergraduate school) and took a short-story writing course.  I had been interested in writing ever since my high school days; and in the course of one short-story 'lesson' I found my story taking on a life of its own.  I had come up with the idea of a young doctor who finds himself getting involved in the larger questions of life - about life itself; and how does he handle it all.  I got so engrossed in the story, that it bled over into my own; and - after getting the permission of my writing-class instructor to expand the short story into a bit of a novella - I found myself spending hours on it, even to the point of starting to skip some of the afternoon lab portions of one of my classes.  (I think it was Vertebrate Zoology.  That, or Embryology.  Or maybe even both.)  Until one day…

Actually, it was one evening; when, down in the basement of my dormitory4 where I had found a small storage room to do my late-night typing in (so as not to bother my roommate, or neighbors), I found myself getting restless; couldn't concentrate.  I forget where in 'the' story I was at that time; just knew, in my life 'story', that I  was experiencing a bit of a block.  So I went to my room to get my jacket, and went out for a walk.  

It was after 10 in the evening, I recall; a gentle evening, although this would have been in the dead of winter, in northern California, but near The Bay, so the water would have had a warming effect on its land-based surrounds.  Some students were returning to their places of domicile after an evening studying in the classrooms on campus (a rhythm with which I was very familiar, after over two-and-a-half years of collegiate life there); but otherwise, things were very still.  Not sure where to go for my walk, I thought of the amphitheater nearby.  Stanford has a large open-air amphitheater on one edge of its campus, with tiers of grass-covered seating; and I found myself being drawn there.  It was very dark in that direction, but I was familiar enough with its layout, and knew I could find my way through the grove of trees surrounding it with little problem.

As I entered the screen of trees, I could feel the reality of the campus just melting away behind me; the movement of a few students and of perhaps a car or two, the lights, the buildings…once inside the screen of trees, I was in another reality, and had to grope my way, in the utter darkness, to a place to sit down.  Once there I took my surroundings in; or rather, the lack thereof.  There was nothing but me and 'the universe': a huge expanse of night sky, with no clouds, no moon; nothing but a sky studded wall-to-wall with crystal-clear stars.  

My first thought was: Gee, it's dark in here.  My second - turning my attention to the night sky - was: How small we are in the vast scheme of things…and then I had My Experience.

It came in two parts.  The first was the feeling of something very large coming at me from this 'vast scheme of things' and whooshing! right into my heart chakra area;5 which knocked me onto my back, and I lay there, arms flung out, pinned to the Earth from the power of the 'hit', and sobbing, for some time; my body feeling as though it were rippling from energy flowing through it, from my coccyx to my head and out and, I guess, back again…this cathartic experience went on for some time - ten minutes?  Fifteen?  Five?  I didn't know; and then it was over. And I sat up. And my pre-Med scientific, rational brain kicked in, and I thought: Okay; now what was that all about???  And I got an answer.

It wasn't from a voice.  It was just a thought.  And the thought felt as though it were coming from a gentle but firm, old, Wise Being.  And it said to me:

The universe has purpose; and that purpose is Good.

And that belief - that knowing - has stayed with me through all these years.  Of searching out more about that 'purpose'.  

And I'm getting there.

And so are we all.  

With 'things' about to come to a head. 

And a heart.

The heart of all Humanity.    

Join me.  In moving beyond the moment.  And further into eternity.                        

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footnotes:

1 I in fact had received preliminary admission to my university's (Stanford) medical school for the following year, subject to completing my current year's studies satisfactorily.  Which was, in the event, never to happen.  And thus, this story…

2 Reading one of Colin's other books years later - just recently, in fact - I was amused to find that, prior to his success with The Outsider and after the end of his youthful marriage, he had spent a period of time "sleeping…on Hampstead Heath" (to save rent).  Years later in my life, I was to 'make love' (a form of sleeping; though 'with' someone) under an enormous hanging tree, daringly in the middle of the day, on that very same Heath.  

     It's a small world. 

3 Also books on UFOs, and Krebiozen - a cancer cure that a lot of people believed in, and which the American Medical Association was doing all it could to suppress.  This was the beginning of my eyes being opened to a world that I had never realized existed: the world of powerful people trying to run things their way.  Medically specifically, and politically in general.  And it's all going on to this day.

     Grrrrrrrrr……………

4 Although the university I attended had fraternities, I had not gone that 'normal' route, had elected to stay independent.  So I was already a bit on the 'Outsider' path in life; even before My Experience.

5 though I knew nothing about such things at the time.  'Chakras' and such were to come during my informal studies in New York City in the coming year; and in the coming years, as followup to that beginning.