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The Passage of Love

24/2/2018

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Memory is a strange thing. Less and less trustworthy as time slips by. In my memory the first Alex Miller book I read was Journey to the Stone Country. But I might be wrong because at the National Mediation Conference in Perth in 2008, an Alex Miller book was nominated for pre-conference reading. The title: Landscape of Farewell. I read that book and I have since read most of Miller’s other novels. Not all of them appeal to me equally but in general I love his writing and the themes he tackles.

So when we were passing through an airport lounge on the way back to Perth last November after a visit to see the grandchildren, Daniele snaffled The Passage of Love which had only just come out. She read it but was not moved as I was. Drawn immediately into the story,  I was inspired by the way Miller recreated his life; how he was able to talk in the 1st person as an 80-year-old ‘Robert Crofts’ and then go back into 3rd person to deal with the period between the age of 22 and 35 when Crofts’ world opened up and the writer was born. Now, in February 2018 at the Perth Writers’ Festival, Alex Miller would make an appearance.

The name ‘Miller’ has significance in my reading life. As a young man in my mid 20s I went to Germany in the employ of the Australian Immigration Department. My wife of the time and I lived in Hamburg. Literature in Australia, as some of you will remember, was still subject to strong censorship. Don Chipp was then a Liberal Minister and the easing of restrictions had begun. But people like Henry Miller were still banned. In Germany of all places – West Germany as it was then – I began to read Miller in earnest. Coming out of the cultural backwater that was Perth, Western Australia, his stories of growing up in New York and moving to Paris, his love affairs and his friendships and drunken escapades were fodder to my young soul. This author was larger than life itself and I wondered how, at close quarters, I would experience the English-come-Australian author of the same surname.

I was not disappointed. As I entered the auditorium on the lovely campus of my alma mater – the University of Western Australia – I did something unusual (for me). I took up one of the unoccupied seats in the front row – an escape hatch, mind you, at the very end of the row. Moments later two elderly but lively ladies sat in the adjacent seats and from the hum of conversation behind me I determined the room – like many venues at a Writers’ Festival – was dominated by women - and generally women of a certain age.

Alex Miller was interviewed by Carolyn Baum. He commenced with a reading from the book – the passage which begins with the death of Robert Crofts’ cat and segues into his reminiscences about his ex-wife Lena’s abortion in London. Miller was unhurried and I sensed his interviewer was twitchy. That was confirmed as the interview went on. Answers were lengthy and considered, and when Baum attempted to move onto the next question, he would cut her off and continue with what he was saying. It was all done in a nice, smiling way but there was no doubt this was a man totally comfortable in his own boots, let alone his skin. He impressed me, not only in his demeanour but by what he said. In some ways I was reminded of the formidable Margaret Atwood who we saw interviewed at a festival some years ago.

In hindsight I wish I’d snuck my little voice recorder into the room as I have forgotten most of the interview. But I’ve since jotted a few notes, beginning with one about memory. At one point Miller said something along the lines of ‘all memory is imagination’. I thought about this earlier when I started to dictate this piece and I get a sense of what he is saying. Even if we have photographs and journals of our past, when we attempt to recreate that past – with its smorgasbord of events, experiences, ideas, and feelings - in the present, it is – at least in part - our imagination that interprets whatever we are recalling and we then regurgitate them in the language and the manner of an older person, a person who may no longer bear much resemblance to the younger version. Here, I gather, Miller is using ‘imagination’ as a wide lens – a lens that covers our perception and interpretation of our personal past and that of others.

Good stories, Miller outlined, are stories about people. There may be an historical context but a book will stand or fall on how well the author deals with our human condition – the ‘intimate lives of us’. The aptness of that succinct yet evocative phrase stuck with me throughout the interview and beyond.

Asked about into which genre the book fell, Miller’s face conveyed that he had heard this question one thousand times. In her remarks the interviewer had alluded to memoirs being all the rage these days and writers such as Richard Flanagan had disparaged this trend, claiming it was detrimental to the novel. Miller made it clear he didn’t give a tuppenny fuck one way or the other. To paraphrase his reply: ‘Virginia Woolf copped criticism when she wrote To the Lighthouse. It’s autobiographical fiction. So what?’

Miller spoke about the detachment old age brings and how this enables one to write about youth in a way that is not possible when one is actually immersed in the experiences of being young. I heard him talk this way in an interview with Michael Cathart on the ABC’s Radio National. In that interview he mentions he knew he was making himself vulnerable by writing this book and was aware of tension in himself -  in facing up to such questions as ‘who I was then and who Lena was’.
At an early age, Miller found his sense of direction. He contrasts himself with Lena (who is based on his first wife, Ann) in this regard. He zeroed in upon a vocation whereas it took Lena a long time to unravel herself and find a creative expression – which she did in art. He said she was neither suffering mental illness nor anorexic, contrary to the assessment by the Australian’s book reviewer. She had her ‘struggle’- that was how they saw it. He was quite forceful on this point.

Miller spoke deeply and lovingly about the input his present wife has into his work. She - Stephanie - has been with him for 43 years. Initially he was trying to write the story of his great Polish friend, Max Blatt, (Martin in The Passage of Love). But it wasn’t working. Then he attempted to do something containing an autobiographical element and also Max’s story. When he gave 150,000 words to his wife, she slashed it by half and told him he had his own story to tell and ‘Max’ was a separate book.

‘She’s my best editor’, he said. ‘I’m very lucky.’

Miller was quite candid about his own struggles – which he distinguishes from Lena’s by calling them challenges. He was asked by Baum if there had come a time, before The Passage of Love was written, where he had thought to himself there would be no more books. He confirmed a fallow period but something had been said to him by one of his psychologist friends.  ‘Alex, the tide has been going out – and it’s going to go further out – but eventually it will come back in.’ Her potent imagery struck him as apt and naturally the tide did come back in. As a writer, I find it a helpful way of looking at the process itself. My friend Jack, some years ago when I complained I was sitting doing nothing, said with his usual positivity: ‘Don’t worry, you’re incubating’. I still take this to heart, even when I know I’m lying to myself and indulging in countless distractions.

Miller said he had been blessed with a sense of direction. It was not totally obvious when he left the cattle station in northern Queensland and came down to Melbourne but it formed and crystallised in those early years. He knew he was to be a writer and would not be distracted. Yet mentors had been crucial – Max being one of them - to encourage and to critique. Another, it turns out was, Manning Clark. At one point Miller flirted with academia but Clark saw where that would take him and discouraged him strongly. ‘You’re a novelist, not an academic.’

Three quarters of an hour went far too quickly. There was time for two questions both of which were asked by men – the first by a bloke in a striped T-shirt sitting on the far end of the front row.
‘You say that good novels involve at their core the intimate lives of us. I notice the bulk of people in this room are women. How do men take to your books?’

Miller smiled. I’m reconstructing his response: ‘Years ago when I did these events I would see a token male in the audience. But today there seem to be many more men. Younger men, too. And with this book, I’ve received more letters from men than I have from women. They seem to be responding to something that appears in their own lives.’

I think Miller is on the money. He talks a lot about a sense of purpose and the creation of meaning. He is, on one level, a quintessential bloke’s bloke yet one who is very comfortable exploring human emotions – ‘the intimate lives of us’. In the society that most of us know, most men have not been keen on emotions, let alone to explore them. Inexorably, this is changing and if literature can be a vehicle for that change, so much the better.
​
I am smiling to myself right now. The Passage of Love is my choice for our next book club meeting. We are a bunch of old fellas and I am intrigued what they will make of Miller and his wonderful book.
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Waves Are Coming In

2/2/2018

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A few weeks have passed since I dipped my toes in the water and attempted to address some of the flotsam and jetsam that still bobs in the sannyasin ocean in the fretful wake of the demise of the Rajneeshpuram experiment more than 30 years ago.

Refreshing my salt-encrusted memory, flotsam represents debris not intentionally tossed from a vessel but which has wound up in the sea as a result of a shipwreck or accident. Conversely, jetsam describes debris deliberately thrown overboard by the crew of a ship in distress, usually to lighten the ship's load. I would like to say I chose this metaphor with great deliberation but the truth is it simply popped into my head after I returned from a refreshing dip in the sparkling waters of our local beach.

You probably get the drift. For many of us, ejection from the commune in late 1985 felt like a freak accident. How had it come to this, after all the years of creative toil and laughter and sweat and intensity? Certainly the script we had been handed in Poona did not countenance such an ending.

For others, it was as if we had been deliberately cut loose – chucked overboard, not so much to lighten the ship’s load, but to see whether we were capable of swimming on our own – or flying, if that imagery suits you better.

Whatever the case, there has been – and continues to be, a considerable wash-up. Conversation and correspondence are testament to this. In present day parlance, there has been much to ‘process’.

I have been heartened by the range and depth of responses to my article. About a third of my Facebook connections have a sannyasin background and I expected most of the interest would stem from those folk. That was true to some extent but a good many friends and relatives who do not share this past have since contacted me to say I opened a window into their understanding of what went on. Certainly, the blog entry ushered in some interesting and lively conversations.

As you might expect, there have been very few responses from those who might disagree with my assessment. With a couple of exceptions, most are silent. One correspondent maintains my commentary ‘would make everyone who didn't have the guts to be in the Osho commune have their hearts swell with satisfaction’. I take this to mean the people to whom he refers would rejoice in my critique (as it supports their hostile position). These people, in his eyes, lacked courage and by implication remained outsiders. Reading between the lines, this correspondent infers the ends justified the means, as he goes on to say there is no basis for comparison with what went on in Poona and Oregon with what happens in the wider world of ‘sex, fraud, legalized theft, rotten politicians and ….discrimination of all nature’.

While I have some sympathy for his analysis of the big, bad world I think it is myopic to exclude the Rajneesh episode from close scrutiny. You can still rejoice in how that immersion might have changed your life for the better but be clear-eyed about the pernicious elements. My wife – a perceptive reviewer of my scribblings – suggested the apparent dichotomy between ‘enlightenment’ and ‘shadow’ needs to be mentioned. At one point we may have assumed that a spiritual Master, having awakened to his or her true nature, would have had a light shone upon all aspects of their being – including the dark places that appear to reside in humans. Taking it a step further, an ‘en-lightened’ person would see clearly into their own shadow and not act from that place. Nowadays, many of us see ‘awakening’ as a work-in-progress – not as an end state resembling perfection. Greater discernment – which usually arrives well down the spiritual highway – enables us to recognise aspects of shadow in ourselves and others – including spiritual teachers. (And if we don’t see it in ourselves we sure as hell hope we have a true friend who will be prompt to oblige.)

Another correspondent is appreciative of my piece but states I have omitted one major element – namely that ‘Sheela lied to everybody, including Osho’. This stance goes to the heart of the never-ending argument about who was responsible and for what. I have not read in any detail the court documents the correspondent offers in support of his argument but I can’t imagine anyone would be surprised by the reference to ‘lies’. You don’t have to delve very deep into the written and spoken trail left by Osho, Sheela, and others to unearth a litany of untruth, deception, omission, and creative fabrication. For those of you who may have hoarded old copies of the Rajneesh Times, a quick perusal will uncover enough fake news to fill an auditorium.

Be that as it may, the underlying intention of my article was not to rake over coals but to present a personal perspective and pose some questions about what can be learnt.

Most of us who were there (at the coalface) are now various shades of grey. Whether or not wisdom goes hand-in-hand with the ageing process is moot. In fact, looking around, it’s hard to make a case that maturity and advancing years are necessarily in lockstep. And I’m talking about human behaviour at large, not only about those who have a proclaimed spiritual interest.

I guess the notion of behaviour is a fundamental ingredient in the basket of maturation. For me, theory and ideology follow in its wake. Human history, time and time again, has been swept along on the tide of ideology until it all ends in tears on a rocky shore. Charismatic teachers and leaders are powerful influencers of human behaviour, for better and for worse. They are also exemplars and Osho is no exception. Many of us who laughed at the absurdity of his multifaceted contradictions, acted out or excused far too much. While we often became more open and loving around one another and towards one another, we tended to push away anything that seemed to be at odds with our Great Dreaming. If there is anything to be learnt, it is that denial or avoidance of behaviours that strike an arrow at the core of our integrity will catch up with us, whether we are aware of it or not.

I tend to bang on about behaviour because of my own experience and what I have observed in others. Many of us have had a strong taste of Oneness (for want of a better word). We have had experiences that go beyond the usual identification as a body-mind organism. In our meditation we have rested in stillness. We have entertained blissful states. We know at a deeper level there is more on offer than a materially-oriented and conditioned life. And yet we live out our human lives as embodied entities and must embrace all this entails. Otherwise, our so-called spirituality may be a cop-out.

‘I’m an ordinary man’, said Osho. We smiled, as we gazed up at him, splendidly robed in his chair on the podium. If only. If only that ‘ordinariness’ had translated into his actions and attitudes. The wash-up may well have carried an altogether different flavour.

I can sense some of you squirming. ‘Ah, you’re missing the point. He knew what he was doing – trying to provoke us into a serious quest for transformation.’ Maybe.  Just maybe. But if you turn your gaze and look at his legacy, nearly three decades after his death, you might surely wonder how much was achieved, both individually and collectively. Maybe I’m colour-blind but I don’t see a whole heap of evidence of the ‘new man’ or the ‘new woman’. Sure, there seem to have been transformations among some former disciples (particularly, it appears, where they have embraced other teachers and/or practices). Sure, there has been a proliferation of Osho–style group leaders running psycho-spiritual gatherings – and many are extremely adept in what they offer – but we can wonder whether their day-to-day behaviours are all that different from the population at large? And assuming most of us don’t fall into either of these elevated camps, we can still re-examine our lives and evaluate our debt (or otherwise) to Osho. I reckon most of us would be in credit, especially where the plunge into sannyas kick-started our journey. There is a place for gratitude here – not an easy place for some to find but one borne out of taking responsibility for our choices and of accepting that apparent obstacles, deviations and cul-de-sacs seem part of the fabric of every worthwhile path of discovery.

Which brings me back to the present.  While we can ‘Be Here Now’ - what do we ‘Do Here Now’? Specifically, how do those with a spiritual interest – and the plethora of latter-day teachers – act towards themselves and others?

My contention, as you will have gathered, is that no amount of transformative experience or profound insight counts for much unless the person in the frame exhibits behaviours that are congruent with integrity and compassion. Otherwise we may get a cleverly-disguised power trip – an ego adventure that ultimately does not serve the person or his or her audience.

A few years ago I was invited to write an article for a sannyasin magazine. In the course of the article I wrote that I bumped into a well-known devotee with whom I had a short conversation. When I told her I had sat with a new teacher she looked at me in consternation. ‘You haven’t dropped sannyas, have you?’ The question caught me off guard. I later wrote that it felt as if I was talking to a nun from an established religious order, such was her conviction and apprehension.

Needless to say, the article did not see the light of day. One of the editors emailed back to tell me I should be ‘more meditative’.

Sadly, this form of censorship pervades the official sannyas scene. Nothing critical of Osho – at least to my knowledge – emanates from the ashram in Poona or from centres in other countries. Osho is revered, treated with kid gloves and the stories submitted by followers or former followers are tailored accordingly.

On an individual level, I know it’s possible to have a dialogue with people who are connected to these organisations but when it comes to making views public, there are exclusion zones. This is a pity because if Osho’s legacy is to stand for anything, the man himself could and should be the subject of robust debate.

There is something else that arises out of the group discourses on Facebook – an important consideration that is germane to the whole notion of building bridges and healing past trauma. I am talking about apologies. As we have seen here in Australia and elsewhere, the power of a heartfelt apology can be profound. Societies that show genuine remorse for past atrocities towards indigenous populations, abused children, and other groups affected by government actions and powerful interests, are showing the way towards healing and self-respect. Honesty – and the humility it often entails – can be one giant step on the road to reparation.

The same is true in spiritual circles. Osho is with us no more but most of those who were close to him and who carried out his wishes can still be found (although some don’t appear too anxious to show themselves). In my previous article I said that those who came too close to the sun tended to be the ones more severely burnt. This may in part explain their reticence to acknowledge their roles in the whole fandango. Some deflect responsibility onto others. Some minimise their involvement. Some remain mute. But rarely have I heard about commune leaders who have publicly acknowledged what they did or did not do, or offered any deeply-felt apology to those who they may have harmed or belittled.

If there are examples that contradict my understanding, I would be happy to hear of them.

By the way, as some of those with whom I have been intimate or in close friendship might testify, I am no paragon of virtue when it comes to past behaviour. Where possible, I’ve tried to make amends. And in the softening there is richness and a meeting place - a mutual readiness to embrace our essential connectedness.

As was once said to me: ‘Always act from your highest value’. I got it at the time – and just as quickly forgot it – but these were wise words and well worth remembering.

On this sultry summer’s day in Fremantle, I am transported back to music group in Poona and the incomparable voice of Anubhava:

There is so much magnificence………
Near the ocean…………..
Waves are coming in…………Waves are coming in……………..Waves are coming in………………..

 

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