Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

He loved analogies from technology. He would certainly have kept up with developments if his body had been around now, but it didn’t matter. His Grace was already inside my system like a spiritual computer virus, twining its spiderware round every function.

Despite his absence of an ego, I experienced the presence of my guru as something very unlike a blank. There’s another way of referring to the status of the ego after enlightenment, apart from the photographic-plate analogy: it resembles the moon as we see it in the daytime. A minor light operating in its own sphere. Ramana Maharshi had shed his personality yet retained his character, which was a delightful one. Playful, warm and dry.

Buying knickers on the Moon

At some stage in my reading it occurred to me that if this captivatingly earthy mystic made sense to me instinctively, then I myself must be a Hindu, not a Christian nor in any meaningful sense an ex-Christian. The thought didn’t trouble me unduly. Very well, I was a Hindu. There didn’t seem to be any procedure for signing up — it wasn’t like the Rosicrucians, the Brotherhood of the Rosy Dawn, who had so fascinated me when I saw their advertisements in Prediction magazine promising Cosmic Consciousness. I had only been held back by the necessity of sending my subscription (supposed to be a week’s salary, so it would have been virtually nothing) made out to AMORC, a somehow unappealing acronym — standing for the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosæ Crucis, but still rhyming in the mind with Pork.

I seemed to have become a Hindu simply by the act of thinking so, which was marvellously simple. There’s no equivalent of the Pope in Hinduism. I don’t mind hierarchies too much, but I do hate paperwork. Hindu Cosmic Consciousness had come to me free of charge and under its own power. No SAE had been required, even.

As I later learned, Hindu converts from Christianity are notoriously stroppy and intractable, so it was handy that I didn’t fit the category. (They pine for their old certainties — they lay down beanbags in a church and then miss the discomfort of the pews.) If I had ever been a Christian, then that was a skin I had shed long ago. My new skin was Hindu.

I didn’t have the experience of a conversion in the conventional sense, nor even the decisive moment which Quakers call ‘convincement’. I treasure that word, perhaps more out of a love of technical terms in general, and a soft spot for the Quakers, who (apart from anything else) provided such a nurturing school for my brother, than because it describes anything that I felt. The rosy pervasion I was undergoing was perhaps closer to a chemical process, transformation on a molecular level like the action of yeast in dough or beer-making.

The great thing about this internal change was that there was nothing for anybody to notice. A carnivore turning Hindu would have to change his habits, but my vegetarianism was already in place.

Conversion doesn’t always get a good press. Gandhi was opposed to the practice on principle. He felt that you should stay with the faith-structure of your upbringing, and try to fill it with your own ideals. My idea is just the reverse — every incarnation is like a treasure-hunt, and where would be the fun if the answer lay right next to the question? Going far afield for the beliefs that feel like home isn’t a perverse extravagance, like buying your knickers on the Moon. The element of spiritual shopping-around is crucial, just so long as you know when to stop when you’ve found your bargain.

Those who content themselves with the faith of their parents aren’t really playing the game. And I’m sure that the faith I inhaled, those hymns and that yawning, the earnest irrelevancies of the pulpit, would be an answer to prayer for someone brought up in another faith, even if I can’t quite see how.

The letters from Keele and Cambridge arrived the same day. Mum hurried off to fetch Dad’s letter-opener, samurai sword of the stationery drawer. I didn’t know why it wasn’t in my possession anyway. I was the only one in the house who actually needed a weapon to tackle his scanty postbag. Dad had a lovely long finger fit for the purpose. Mum had once explained that Dad’s letter-knife was an heirloom, and I managed not to say, ‘Yes, and I’m the heir apparent!’

Mum slid the opener across to me. She was as nervous as I was. ‘Which are you going to open first?’

The one I cared about, obviously. The one from Keele.

It was a rejection, and I took it hard. I’d set my forks on the redbrick campus, the grown-up Toytown. ‘Set my forks on’ — that was a phrase from a television quiz show of the time — Take Your Pick , compèred by Michael Miles. When a new contestant came on Michael Miles would tend to ask, ‘Any prize you have forks on tonight?’ Reluctantly I withdrew my forks from Keele.

Perhaps Dad had been right — they already had a disabled person and weren’t in any hurry to acquire another. Disabled students were like hermits on country estates in the eighteenth century, very fashionable but one is enough. In fact to have two rather than one would spoil the whole effect.

I held out no hope for Cambridge’s letter. I thought I knew what it said. The atmosphere at Keele had been much more welcoming, and if Cambridge hadn’t bothered to ask me any proper questions it was because they’d already decided my fate before they laid eyes on me. No one had any obligation to accept me, after all. And that was me dished, educationally. I had the car and the driving skills, but nowhere to drive away to in the Mini.

I told myself that at least Cambridge University wasn’t being hypocritical. There was no pretence that I was being rejected for academic reasons. It was a nice straightforward slap in the face. My thinking hadn’t been tested — I had failed in the practical, by not walking well enough to a snack bar. My intelligence wasn’t being denied, just my right to develop it.

Despite my alleged cleverness, I had failed to notice a crucial detail. The Keele envelope was skinny, and the other one was not. The envelope from Cambridge was positively fat. It bulged.

That’s because when they say No, that’s all they need to say. Big fat no — it doesn’t take up much space. If they say Yes, they have to explain the fine print, as I found out when I picked up my borrowed blade and prised open the flap. The one big Yes was hedged about with a thousand niggling Thou Shalt Nots.

The thing that Hitler stole from Dad

The bye-laws and regulations went on for page after page. They had said Yes. Yes, but … Yes, as long as … Yes, unless …

But still Yes, though it was slow to sink in. The Yes was so greatly outnumbered by the Nos, it hardly seemed to have a chance. The level of detail was astonishing. Undergraduates are permitted to boil eggs on hobs and in their kitchens. More adventurous culinary efforts, especially those involving frying, are strictly prohibited. It was easy to lose sight of the favourable verdict in the haze of caveats and prohibitions.

It took me quite a while to get it into my head that I’d been accepted — and even then Mum wasn’t convinced. I had told her about not really being interviewed, just made to walk to a coffee bar. They’d only stopped short of putting me in the stocks, why would they be giving me the key to the city? She couldn’t believe I was really being offered a place at Cambridge — the very thing that Hitler had stolen from Dad — just like that, with no questions asked, or no relevant questions at least.

So as to satisfy Mum, and to quiet my own unworthy doubts, I rang up the Admissions Board for confirmation. I said quite clearly, ‘We just had a walk and a cup of coffee. He didn’t test me at all. There must be more to it than that!’ The secretary went away for a few minutes, and when she came back she said, ‘Yes, he did. He did test you, and he passed you, and we’ve accepted you.’ Apparently A. T. Grove had a portable X-ray machine with him all along, and had peered inside my mind when I wasn’t looking.