John Updike - S

But the main thing I want to scold you about, dear Irving, is-you never told us about Kundalini! I mean, not really. Just hints, and asking at the end of a session if we felt anything at the base of our spines. As if a bunch of middle-aged women full of coffee and bran muffins would be feeling anything much except plain relief at having stopped. The reason I'm so "into" Kundalini suddenly is-do tell Midge-it's my name! My ashram name. At last I met the Arhat and he gave me my proper subtle-body name.

Actually, for a week or more now I've been taking dictation from him instead of just typing out variations on form letters. Alinga, the least creepy of Durga's assistants, came in and asked me if I could take dictation. I told her I knew nothing of shorthand but she said that didn't matter since you're basically there to inspire him. He loves women, not in the way most men do or say they do but as energy entities, as vrittis in the ocean of prakriti. I of course was very nervous going into the presence of The Master but in fact he has this marvellous gift of taking you in with these enormous sad bulging bottomless eyes, of seeming to be letting you in on some huge unspoken deeply philosophical secret.

This first time, Alinga, who is very blond and slender and serene and efficient, led me back through the cubicles of the Uma Room-it's not really a room, it's a rather higgledy-piggledy arrangement of trailers with doors and walls cut through and welded back together to make a lot of office space-out through a breezeway across a kind of courtyard I've never seen before, with these old tan rustling trees that from the size of them were planted years and years ago. They had big bumpy pods hanging down, and smelled of something like cloves. This was the old adobe ranch house, the hacienda before the Arhat came and bought all these acres. There were cats on the veranda and pegs bits of rotten rope and harness were still hanging from. Inside, the air-conditioning began again. The furniture was what. Ve New Englanders might call vulgar but may be the best you can buy around here-heavy squarish matching pieces with a silvery shiny look to the fabric, and plastic sleeves on the chair arms, and a lot of milk-glass and painted porcelain doodads displayed on open shelves, and just the hugest television set I've ever seen, the kind that projects onto a curved screen like you usually see only in bars.

The furniture didn't really give the impression that anybody lived here, if you know what I mean-it was more like the window of a furniture store. But I suppose if you're moksha you don't leave the dents on things more sthula bodies do. He wasn't in this living room but in one beyond, which he uses as an office, with a lot of off-white padded contour furniture on swivels and casters and a long desk of bleached wood, the kind that looks as though powdered sugar has been rubbed into the grain. Alinga left us and I sat down on the opposite side of the desk and tried to take dictation, my hands all jumpy and the pad trying to slide off the knee of my slippery silk sari. Some rich patron of the ashram was trying to get her money back and that was what the letter was about. It got rather technical about Kun-dalini and he had to keep spelling things. Several times he stopped and asked me if I thought a certain sentence was funny enough. I hadn't known any of it was supposed to be funny so I didn't know how to react at first. But we got through the letter and he seemed pleased. "We will buffalo that old bitch," he said, and then asked me if that was a correct American expression, "to buffalo." I said it was and he smiled his beautiful warm sly smile, so detached and sweet. He has this darling little gap between his two front teeth. His purple turban is just as it is in the posters, only woolier, somehow, with a nap that takes the light differently as the strips of it twist. His robe I think was a very pale peach, so shim-mery it looked white, and on his hands he had all these rings'that I'm sure were very expensive and authentic jewels but reminded me of those paste things people at fairs used to fish for by operating a little bucket crane, after putting in a dime.

I shouldn't be putting all this into a letter-Vikshipta and Alinga say that Durga and her henchpeople have the mail read, coming in and out-but I know how much you love the Arhat; it was your love that inspired mine. He is a beautiful presence in three dimensions, Irving. He is real. Not too tall and with a little gray in his beard but not too old either. He is paler than I expected but then of course Indians come in all shades; those invading people who brought the Vedas were just like Vikings. His cheeks and forehead are so free of wrinkles the gray in his beard and his eyebrows almost looks frosted on. His office had the air-conditioning turned way up, which went with the frosted look-I thought to myself I should wear a sweater next time. Anyway, after the letter and a few other, shorter ones-he has so many people after him, everybody wanting a piece-he asked me in that thrilling funny accent of his what my name was. I said Sarah Worth and that I hadn't been given my ashram name yet. He looked at me the longest time, with this little smile, and these bottomless eyes, and said, "You are Kundalini." I am? I said, blushing-I just went bot all over. "Veritably," he said. "You are she at last. You have come to burn away everything klishta, everything duhshama. You shall save us from our sorrowful impurity."

This seemed flirtatious and almost aggressive, so I just stood there blushing. He admired my healthy tan complexion. He said I was darker than he was. I was all flustered and said it was just genes from my father, plus vitamin E and PABA and oil baths twice a week when I was at home in Massachusetts, but of course baths were more difficult here and the desert air was very drying to the epidermis. Then he said something like "You are smooth and electrical" and settled back into his silver armchair-like a Barcalounger with high squarish arms and a padded rest for. the head as on a dental chair-and I decided the time had come for me to go. I've taken dictation a number of times since then and am hardly nervous now at all. Irving, he really is all we imagined he is, and more. I mean, as well as being divine he's nice, and shy, even.

Some years ago, while still at the Ellora ashram, he cut a tape on Kundalini, and I enclose one, free, though they go for $14.90 in our catalogue. Play it for yourself and the gang some Wednesday when you can all take an extra half-hour. Hope everything goes well with you and you're not too busy in the framing shop-you must be absolutely buried in diplomas this time of year. And graduation pictures. Soon, June weddings! Or do people just put those in albums? Or in those little store-bought frames that sit on the piano and look chintzy and somehow scary'?

Your grateful former student,

Kundalini!

[tape]

We will talk today of Kundalini. She is the female energy in things. Not just women we are speaking of; she is in all things. She sleeps coiled at the base of the spine, in the root chakra, which is called Muladhara. The lotus of this chakra has four red petals. On them are inscribed the Sanskrit letters va, sa, sa,-and sa. These letters are contained within a yellow square; this represents the earth element. An inverted triangle within the square holds Kundalini coiled three and one half times around the linga. The linga is the male organ, and also it represents the subtle space in which the universe undergoes the repeated process of formation and dissolution. Also in this chakra is Brahma, the creator-god of the gross material world. He has four arms and three eyes and four faces and holds, the sages say, a trident, a jar, a rosary, and with his remaining hand makes the mudra that dispels fear, the abhayamudra. His energy is called Dakini and is shining pink and also holds many things, such as a sword and a drinking vessel. Also in this chakra is a large elephant with a black strip around its neck. He forms the symbol of physical resistance. The principle of smell is associated with this chakra. That is all we know of Muladhara, at the base of the spine.