In 1977, Michael Murphy (one of the founders of the Esalen Institute) published Jacob Atabet: A Speculative Fiction. Whatever its defects as a novel, as speculation this book is spot on. It describes what's really happening. However, it was three or four decades ahead of its time, and it has gone out of print.
The story begins in 1970. The narrator is Darwin Fall, who owns a small publishing company in San Francisco. He is writing a book about the possibilities of physical transformation. As he explains it:
"In the religious traditions, the goal of life was generally conceived as release rather than embodiment... Part of what I'm doing is simply to show what a frontier there is in the simultaneous transformation of consciousness and the body, what an adventure there is in embodied existence... A new vision of human nature and destiny is emerging, a vision that was not possible until this moment in time."
He meets an artist, Jacob Atabet, who is a living example of the transformation he has been writing about. He gives Atabet an outline of his manuscript, and Atabet in turn initiates him into his physical disciplines. They become friends and partners on a journey to the point where matter emerges from mind.
Here are a couple of excerpts.
This scene takes place when Jacob Atabet and Darwin Fall have known each other about three months. Kazi Dama is a Tibetan Rimpoche who is part of Atabet's circle. Atabet and Kazi have been playing one of their games, running around the roofs of San Francisco, jumping from roof to roof, running in the fog through mazeways of landings and stairs, with Darwin, terrified, struggling to keep up. They have just arrived back at Atabet's apartment --
Three weeks before, we had started to work out in the late afternoons, running on most days along the Marina green and the Bay to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I sank down in the soft leather couch. "Yes," I said. "I'm getting in shape all right. Was that some kind of test?"
He struck a match to light a fire in the hearth. As the flames leaped up his dark eyes caught the reflection. "No," he said. "Kazi and I need to do that every now and then." He turned to his friend, who gave him an enigmatic smile.
"It's amazing how fast the body'll change," I said. "Two weeks ago I couldn't've done it."
"Another month and you'll run out to the bridge and back in thirty-five minutes."
To do it in thirty-five minutes would take a six-minute mile pace -- a feat for practiced runners. "If I can do that," I said, "I might as well learn how to fly."
"He fly!" said the face in the shadows. "Like the Garuda!" Then both of them laughed.
"Fly like the Garuda?" I asked. "What's that about?"
"You know the Garuda," said Atabet. "The sunbird the Vedic gods rode into heaven? That's what your body's going to look like."
"Oh, come off it. What's wrong with the way it looks now? Hell, I could have gone past you both up there."
He laughed and there was silence. For a moment we gazed into the fire. "Yes," he mused. "The Garuda. The thunderbird. In Tibet they knew what it was." He then launched into a monologue about the Tibetan love of physicality and adventure. It was a rare kind of speech for him, part sermon and part incantation. "This body's a magical tissue," he said. "Spun from a hundred trillion cells. From atoms that dance to the vibes of Alpha Centauri. Or a loosely governed city -- you've heard me call it that before -- a Taoist anarchy that answers to rumors from all over the earth. And to rumors from other worlds -- right? We've agreed that it's mainly invisible. But it could spin out still lovelier stuff. It wants to find suns in your joints, and silver rivers in your veins. Darwin, you've sensed it so clearly. But imagine. Imagine that grotto at Bolinas, shimmering with all of those colors. Can you see it now, like you did when we were out there?"
Startled, I closed my eyes and an image of the grotto appeared. I could sense its walls pressing close.
"Now imagine a vista of cells. A world of membranes as far as the eye can see."
There was an image of pounding surf... then something popped and a vista was spreading around me, a prairie of bright vivid cells. "Yes," I said, "But my God! It stretches for miles..."
"That's good," he whispered. "And can you see how they might come apart?"
As he said it, I saw that the vista might change any moment. A streamer of vibrating cells was rising like birds in formation, and forming a new kind of pattern. Above the glistening plain, columns of radiant crystals were forming a lattice. Like a towering snowflake it started to pulse.
For an instant it loomed above me, then sped toward the distant horizon. But another was rising, dancing with color. And a third and a fourth...
"The DNA," I whispered. "Is this the DNA?"
"Just let them come," he said. "Don't try to name them." They were forming in rapid succession, towering mazeways speeding past. I opened my eyes. The edges of things in the room were uncertain, as if everything was coming unstuck.
"It's like peyote," I said. "My God, that was strange."
"Don't compare it," he said sternly. "It's different than peyote. And different than your visions last summer. Those were only phantoms next to this."
I half-closed my eyes and tried to recapture a sense of those towering forms. None of us spoke, and in the streets below I heard a siren coming past the building. He went to the sink and filled a kettle with water.
Kazi was watching intently, looking remote in the half-light. Somehow he seemed to have shrunk. "Were those my cells?" I asked him.
"That's what we're all finding out," Atabet answered. "Now let's try one more thing. Close your eyes and see if those forms'll move you. What are they trying to get you to do?"
My left arm was beginning to twitch. "Go with it," he said. "Can you find out what's happening?"
The tremor was spreading... then the vista of membranes popped open. And blinked out. All I could feel was my body relaxing. In the wake of the tremor, each muscle felt as if it had been rubbed with balm or alcohol. I stretched out on the couch. The glow was spreading and an image appeared of a mummy, encased and embalmed at the bank of the Nile. Then an image of kas going forth, phantom bodies dressed in solar boats. "The grateful dead," I whispered. "I'm floating with the grateful dead." The image passed. There was nothing but darkness and this healing sensation.
"Just enjoy the feeling," he said. "Sometimes this takes quite a while."
I slid further down in the couch. An image of Casey arose, watching with suspicion. Then Morris Sills chopping onions on a wide wooden board. [Casey Sills is Darwin's editor back at the office. Her husband, Morris Sills, killed himself after dabbling in ideas similar to Atabet's. He remains a haunting presence in the background of their lives.] What would Casey think of all this? I wondered, after seeing her friends go crazy on drugs and Gnostic symbols? Then two naked figures making love on an altar, some kind of Satanic practice.
"Damnit!" I said. "My mind's full of junk."
"Wait it out," he said. "What do those patterns want your body to do?"
The vista of towering lattices appeared for an instant, followed by an image of the sun. The sun on a cool winter day, rising slowly through the city hills while faces in the streets looked up. I spread my arms on the couch. The cool glow was turning into a feeling both ice cold and hot, and I saw that the sun could explode. Oriental faces were looking up at me. "Japanese faces looking up at the sun," I said hoarsely. "A sun coming up through the ground."
Kazi had come up behind him, and they were both watching me intently. "Just one more time," Atabet reached down and pressed my eyelids shut. "Try this one more time." He held his thumbs against my eyeballs, and I felt myself sinking, falling through empty spaces... then a quick hidden shuttle was weaving. What was there to see through the dark?
"Oh God," I groaned, and the darkness turned to light. A ravishing vista had appeared, a city of towers and diamond walkways in the sky. And Morris Sills again, chopping onions. I looked up to see what was happening.
"You came close," he said. "Tell me what you saw."
"Something shuttling, or weaving -- I'm not sure. Then something through the dark, a dazzling iridescent city. And Morris Sills chopping onions."
"Okay," he said. "Just lay there and sense what was happening. I could tell you were getting down close."
"A strange feeling," I whispered. "Something hot and cold -- something beautiful and terrible at once. And that city. That city. It was too beautiful to look at, but it only lasted for a second."
"It doesn't matter how long it lasted. Once you're there, you've learned how to do it." He went back to the stove and rubbed his hands for warmth.
"A city," I said. "Yes, it looked like a city. And just before that there was a sense of something shuttling back and forth behind a curtain. It reminds me of something I've read..."
"Now wait," he broke in. "Don't compare it, to science fiction or fairy tales or anything else. Try to see what it was."
"But it did look like something from science fiction stories. Remember those old Flash Gordon comic strips?"
"It might have seemed like that. But don't compare!" He made a blade with his palm, as if he were cutting away anything I brought from the world of ordinary memory. "Don't compare," he said. "Just see it!"
I closed my eyes again but there was only a numbness as if something were strained. "I think I've pulled a psychic muscle," I said. "I can feel it throbbing."
"All right. That's enough. You don't want it overflowing into this space." He was pouring water from the kettle. "You can see why we're getting you in shape. Plunges like that take conditioning."
In classical yoga (Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, 3.45), one of the siddhis (powers) attained through samyama is animan siddhi, the ability to focus one's consciousness at the microscopic level.
A few months after the scene recorded above, Darwin writes this in his notebook --
I moved today through this body, as if it were a swarming sea. Ribosomes, mitochondria, strands of RNA filled the space I moved through. Gently, I am getting to know them. Someday, perhaps, I will assist in their slight reconstruction.
The Biohacker Project:
Training wheels for cellular transformation
home page