One Man's Journey

A SEEKER IS BORN

God did this so that men might seek Him,
in hopes that they would reach out for Him and find Him,
though He is not far from each one of us,
for in Him we live and move and have our being.
(Acts 17:27)

If I had to assign it a time and a place, I would say my test began on a cold winter evening of 1968, in a suburb of Paris, at the top of the Metro stairwell. That night, for the first time in my life, the world began to look strange.

Prior to that, my spiritual life was relatively uneventful. My brother and I had been raised in a nominally Christian home in Northern California. In our tender years, we periodically attended Sunday School at a nearby Presbyterian Church. There I came into contact with the fundamentals of the Christian faith, sowing my youthful imagination with memorable pictures of Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion's den, and Jesus with the little children.

Occasionally, nearly always in seasons of duress, I would venture a brief prayer to God. Also, from time to time my brother and I would engage in lively discussions with the children of our devout Catholic neighbors. They would assure us that we Protestants were going to hell, or that the end of the world was at hand. Then, after a few moments of vigorous debate in which much heat was substituted for little light, we would all go out to play.

The problem, however, was that all this religious dabbling was done in a corner, leaving me with the distinct impression that in "real life" spiritual matters were relatively unimportant. My otherwise devoted parents did not pray with us, teach us from the Bible, or discuss ultimate questions. Nor did our other relatives. Nor did our public school teachers. Nor did the surrounding culture, mediated to us by books, magazines (e.g., National Geographic), and television (e.g., Walt Disney). So far as I could tell, nearly every authority figure in the world presupposed the truth of cosmic evolution, viewed the Bible as a book of useful myths, and regarded God (if he existed at all) as a practical irrelevancy.

Having, then, been raised in an atmosphere of practical atheism, I graduated from high school and set out for college as a practical atheist. And in 1965, millions like me were doing the same.

Playing at Philosophy

Spiritually speaking, my first two years at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) were only slightly more eventful. Though the motives behind it were badly mixed, my early decision to become a philosophy major did indeed reflect a measure of genuine enthusiasm for grappling with the big issues of life. Also, in retrospect I see that my philosophical bent, though faint, was usually towards more spiritually minded thinkers: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Anselm, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, and others. Atheistic philosophers, with one or two notable exceptions, left me cold.

But again, such pinpricks of light were only tiny marks on a large and otherwise darkened canvas. Truth to tell, my real attraction was not nearly so much to philosophy as it was to my first philosophy professor. In every way--in beard, brow, attire, demeanor, gait, vocabulary, sense of humor, and perennial cigar--he fascinated me. Under his spell, I had but one desire: to be like him. Omniscient like him, authoritative like him, funny like him, and impressive like him. I also hoped one day to have a prestigious job like him. In short, throughout my first two years in college I was a philosophy major, but not a philosopher. I had little or no love of wisdom, only of being thought wise.

I indulged this two-year charade amidst the rise of the counterculture, a movement that in time would affect me powerfully. It originated on campuses like my own, which enthusiastically played host to a wide variety of popular new ideologies: Neo-Darwinism, Marxism, Freudianism, Jungianism, existentialism, and various expressions of Eastern mysticism. Overshadowed by their growing presence, the old paradigm upon which our nation had been built--an easy-going partnership between sober biblical theism and optimistic Enlightenment rationalism--seemed ready to pass away.

It was during my freshman year that I first became aware of pantheistic mysticism. I heard about it from some of my fellow students who were experimenting with a powerful new drug called LSD. Claiming to have had religious experiences while high on this drug, they were now asserting that everything is one, everything is mind, everything is god. Pilgrims to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco--then much in the news--were doing and saying the same. So were the Beatles, who soon would introduce us to their guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and to the mysteries of transcendental meditation. And then there were the pariahs of Harvard--Timothy Leary and Richard Allport (alias Ram Das)--who, as prophets of the modern revival of pantheism, were urging students to "tune in, turn on, and drop out." Suddenly it seemed that young people everywhere were pursuing an abiding experience of god-consciousness, and also envisioning a whole new social order built upon it.

As the pantheistic chorus grew louder, I became more and more curious. In particular, I was strongly tempted to try the readily available LSD. However, for reasons discussed earlier, I finally decided against doing so and focused instead on my philosophizing. Still, all the talk of god and personal religious experience had quietly deposited a seed of spiritual hunger in the lowermost regions of my soul. In due season it would grow, rise, and powerfully burst into the light of day.

A Womb of Solitude

I spent the majority of my junior year in Paris. My friend Mike and I arrived in the summer of 1967, but he soon became seriously ill and had to return home. All summer long I lived by myself in a boarding house in Vincennes. For some reason I did not have the inner resources to venture out, explore the city, and take in the sights. Instead, the core of my day-to-day existence became a long trip on the Metro to the American Express office, where I hoped to find a letter from my girlfriend waiting for me. I did make a few acquaintances at a nearby youth hostel, but in the end found the linguistic and cultural barriers too high to create any soul-sustaining friendships. Nor did it help that at that time we Americans were largely persona non grata, despised for our current adventure in Vietnam, which, according to many, was darkly motivated by capitalist and imperialist greed. To court friendship with the French was to risk vilification and rejection. Better, then, to withdraw: into my room, into my books, into myself. I was lonelier than I had ever been.

This voluntary solitude was indeed painful, yet today I regard it as the pain of spiritual birth. During those difficult three months, something good was slowly forming inside me. Living by myself and within myself, I began to discover the thrill of being myself. I began to realize, for example, that I was drawn to certain kinds of authors, repelled by others, and curious to understand my reactions to both. I began to take honest stock of what I really knew (which turned out to be very little) and what I didn't know (which turned out to be just about everything). Yet I also felt that in all probability I could find out the truth about life as well as anyone else, if only I would carefully think matters through for myself. At this time I also began writing: poems, stories, letters, and essays. I even wrote a short story about my philosophy professor. Alas, he committed suicide. But when I had thus brought his (fictional) tale to an end, I was free at last from his spell: I could see him as a mere mortal, groping for the meaning of life, just like me.

School started in September, and for the next six months I studied French language, history, literature, and philosophy at the Institut Catholique. The discipline did me good, supplying goals to reach and work to do. Since the program was designed for foreigners, I was also able to make some English-speaking friends. There was even a romance with a bright and free-spirited American girl, one that in time would confront me yet again with the dismaying depths of my own spiritual poverty. But for the moment, things were going better. I was not so lonely and not so depressed. More than that, it appeared that something was awakening in my heart. I was actually getting interested in philosophy, and even feeling tiny wisps of confidence that I might be able to discover some enduring truth upon which to build my life.

It was right around this time that the world began to look strange. As a rule it happened at night, after my long ride home from school on the train. Emerging from the glare of the Metro into the palely lit streets of Vincennes, I now found myself repeatedly brought to a wondering halt. For there, silhouetted against the blackened sky--silent and enfolded in winter mists--stood a world full of things (sky, trees, lamps, stores, cars, etc.), and also that mysterious fullness of things that we call the world. The strangeness was not in the way these things looked, but rather in the simple fact that they were there at all. The natural state of affairs, it suddenly seemed to me, was that there should be nothing. Yet here--spread out before my wondering gaze--was something, and something most impressive! How did it all get here? Who or what was keeping it here? Why was it here? Yes, the sheer existence of the universe was now speaking to me, but only in a whisper, only in a language that I could not yet understand. I remembered the dictum of Martin Heidegger, who said that true metaphysical inquiry begins when, with genuine philosophical concern, we ask the question, "Why should there be something rather than nothing?" I was starting to realize what he meant.

With questions like these occupying my thoughts, I turned to the philosopher who seemed best able to address them: the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. Earlier at UCSC, I had read Sartre's Nausea, a novel in which he described experiences rather like my own. So now, looking for further insight, I opened up his 800-page magnum opus, Being and Nothingness. I decided to read it from cover to cover, every morning before school, for at least half an hour, in a French café, with my girlfriend sitting beside me reading her Simone de Beauvoir. I don't know whether the angels laughed or cried.

Diligent as I was in it, this journey with Sartre turned out to be fruitless. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see why. Something deep inside me was looking for the spiritual, the mystical. Sartre, on the other hand, was actually giving me brute atheism, and unintelligible atheism at that. But, because his atheism sounded spiritual and mystical, I eagerly read on.

As the months passed, I again grew homesick. With rare exceptions, I found that I did not like the French or things French. My studies seemed irrelevant to my true interests. I was lonely in my boarding house. And in more ways than one, I was again failing morally. Against this gloomy backdrop, the friends, family, and familiarity of California seemed to beckon. At last I reached a decision: I would leave Paris early, return to Santa Cruz, and resume my studies for the third quarter of my junior year.

However, before I left I made some heartfelt resolutions. I would exercise every day. I would continue reading Being and Nothingness. I would abstain from sexual intimacy. I would spend quality time in solitude. I would keep up my writing. In short, I would do all I thought necessary to maintain the philosophical spirit and to discover philosophical truth. 

Did I keep these resolutions? If only I could say I did. But in a way, even that did not matter. For during those nine lonely months in Paris, a new life had been conceived and a new philosopher born. He was not an especially intelligent one, still less a moral one. But for all that, he was a real one. And with his birth, the test of life would now begin.

Out of the Womb, into the World

When I returned to California in the spring of 1968, the nation was in tumult. The shadow of Vietnam lay heavily upon all things. Campus protests had grown in size, number, and stridency. Ever-increasingly, young Americans were lifting up their voices against the "establishment," decrying its traditional faith, its capitalist economy, and its current self-understanding as the bulwark of freedom and democracy in a world menaced by godless Communism. Some of these voices spoke up in the name of Marx and outward political revolution. Others called us to mysticism and inward spiritual revolution. But all railed against the detested status quo. All agreed that now was the time for a true radicalism; for getting down to the very root of things, and for building a whole new world order upon what we found waiting for us there.

By and large, I remained aloof to all of this, electing instead to focus on my studies in philosophy. Moreover, I did so with considerable anxiety. I had slightly more than a year until graduation; slightly more than a year to discover some hard truth, fashion a viable personal philosophy, and settle upon a career. In short, I had to get a life, and I had to get one quickly.

But it was not to be. Indeed, as the months slipped by, it seemed that I was progressing backwards. One by one, my resolutions fell by the wayside. Yet again I succumbed to various moral failures. Worst of all, I became increasingly disillusioned with philosophy. By now I had given up on Sartre, over whose indecipherable words I clearly discerned a pall of metaphysical gloom. On the rebound from his existential mysticism, I turned to the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a linguistic anti-philosopher who did not even try to solve the questions of life, but instead attempted to dissolve them--to expose them as mental cul de sacs into which we naively drive ourselves by the misuse of language. Yet in time I fled his labyrinth as well, for there too I saw no hope of discovering any real answers to the real questions that really burned in my heart.

Finally, in a gesture of near intellectual despair, I decided to write a senior thesis defending philosophical relativism and determinism. My goal was to show that individual philosophies are never expressions of (unattainable) objective truth, but rather mere ideological reflections of the historical situation in which they arose. However, as the sheer pain of working on my thesis abundantly revealed, this flirtation with Marxism and postmodern skepticism was simply one more exercise in futility. Happily, I was soon able to see it, and honest enough to admit it. So I abandoned the thesis, and along with that any hopes of arriving at a personal philosophy before graduation day. I would have to take the senior exam, not telling my professors what I myself thought about the questions of life, but rather what other men thought, and what I now thought about what they thought. I did so with a bitter and unsparing anger, directed largely against Sartre. I also did so wondering right out loud whether modern philosophy might not make better headway in its vocation if it gave a little more thought to god. I aced the test.

On graduation day I was all smiles but sick at heart. I had worked my way through the system, earned a bachelor's degree, graduated with honors, and seemed destined to go on to post-graduate study in law, education, or more philosophy. I had completed the charade, and in the eyes of the world was now on the road to success. But my heart kept reminding me of the terrible truth: Four years and thousands of dollars later, I was graduating without a single conviction concerning a single higher-order question of life. In reality, I was a total philosophical failure. So now just one question remained: Would I keep up the charade or would I admit that I was a philosophical failure and try to do something about it? As I exited the gates of UCSC once and for all, the terms of the test were becoming crystal clear.

A Seeker is Born

After my graduation, I remained in Santa Cruz. I took a job in a pizza parlor, and lived with my boss and his wife. I liked it. The rhythm of work, recreation, rest, and reflection seemed solid, even fulfilling. We made an excellent pizza, and it was a pleasure to see people enjoy it amidst music, family, and friends.

I knew, however, that this could not be my life's work. I had to decide upon a direction, a career, a vehicle of service to others. As I mulled my options, the counterculture continued to blossom. A fragrance of things eastern and mystical increasingly filled the air. Communes were springing up around the country. So too were natural food stores and New Age bookshops. Hindu gurus and Buddhist priests were arriving from distant shores. Multitudes of young people were having religious experiences and finding new meaning for their lives. Once again these things caught my eye. Little did I know that still another birth was about to occur.

It came one evening in the fall of 1969, at the home of my boss. We found ourselves watching a documentary about abstract artist Peter Max, one of the heroes of the counterculture. His colorful posters had become an advertisement for the "new consciousness" that many believed was the true hope and ultimate destiny of mankind.

Max himself had first experienced this consciousness while using psychedelic drugs, especially LSD. But he used them no more. Now, according to the documentary, he had set aside drugs in favor of a better way, a way that would produce a permanent expansion of consciousness. It was the way of yoga (Sanskrit for "union"), a mix of ancient physical and spiritual practices designed to lead the soul into a deep and abiding awareness of its own divine nature.

Max himself explained it all to us as we watched him interacting with his guru, Swami Satchidananda. Satchidananda had just established an Ashram (meditation center) here in the United States. The long-haired, bearded guru-dressed in a flowing white robe and walking barefoot in the sand-reminded me of the pictures of Jesus I had seen as a child. When he spoke, he seemed to exude an aura of peace, childlike enthusiasm, and confident authority. Undeniably, he looked like a man who knew god. Max, who followed him like a puppy, certainly thought so. As we watched, I found it hard not to envy the young painter. Not only had he found a faith and a direction for his life, but also a trustworthy teacher to help him along the way.

Did it happen gradually or instantaneously? I do not quite remember. I do know, however, that this documentary precipitated a fundamental change in my own perspective. Suddenly the disparate spiritual experiences of my life congealed into a single meaning. My childhood musings about God and the Bible, my enthusiasm for spiritually minded philosophers, my curiosity about LSD, my strange experiences in Paris, my inscrutable hunger for something more than this world (or philosophy) could satisfy--all of these, like the pieces of a broken mirror, somehow arose, assembled themselves, and became a looking-glass. To my amazement, when I looked into that glass I saw not only myself, but also someone else standing behind me. He had been there--and been at work--all along. In seeing him, the practical atheist died once for all.

And there, in the place of that death, a seeker was born.