Hanh and Yin were sitting at the table, talking.
“How did you sleep?” Hanh asked.
“Okay,” I said, slumping down in one of the chairs. “But I can’t remember dreaming.”
“That’s because you don’t have enough energy,” he said, half-distracted. He was staring intensely at my body again. I realized he was focused on the way I was sitting.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Is this the way you wake up in the morning?” Hanh inquired.
I stood up. “What’s wrong?”
“After sleep, one must wake up one’s body and begin to accept the energy before one does anything else.” He was standing with his legs far apart and his hands on his hips. As I watched, he slid his feet together and lifted his arms. His body rose up in one motion until he was standing on his tiptoes with his palms pressed together directly over his head.
I blinked. There was something unusual about the way his body moved, and I couldn’t focus on it exactly. He seemed to float upward rather than use his muscles. When I could focus again, he was beaming a broad smile. Just as quickly, his body moved from there into a graceful walk toward me. I blinked again.
“Most people wake up slowly,” Hanh said, “and slouch around and get themselves going with a cup of coffee or tea. They go to a job in which they continue to slouch around or use just one particular set of muscles. Patterns set in, and as I said, blocks develop in the way energy flows through our bodies.
“You must make sure your body is open everywhere in order to receive all the energy that is available. You do this by moving every muscle, every morning, from your center.” He pointed to a place just below his navel. “If you concentrate on moving from this area, then your muscles will be free to operate at their highest level of coordination. It is the central principle of all the martial arts and dance disciplines. You can even invent your own movements.”
With this comment, he launched into a multitude of movements I had never seen before. It appeared to be something like the shifts of weight and the twirling that one sees in tai chi. He was definitely performing an expansion of these classical movements.
“Your body,” he added, “will know how to move in order to help loosen your individual blocks.”
He stood on one leg and leaned over and swung his arm as if he were pitching a softball underhanded, only his hand almost touched the floor as he made the movement. Then he spun around in place on the opposite leg. I never saw his weight shift, and again he seemed to be floating.
I shook my head and tried to focus, but he had stopped in place, as if a photographer had frozen his movements in a snapshot, which appeared impossible. Just as suddenly he was walking toward me again.
“How do you do this?” I asked.
He said, “I began slowly and remembered the basic principle. If you move from your center and expect the energy to flow into you, you will move in a lighter and lighter manner. Of course, to perfect this you must be able to open up to all the divine energy that is available within.”
He stopped and looked at me. “How well do you remember your mystical opening?”
I thought again about Peru and my experience on the mountaintop.
“Fairly well, I think.”
“This is good,” he said. “Let’s go outside.”
Yin smiled as he got up, and we followed Hanh out into a small garden and up some steps into an area of sparse brown grass and large, jagged boulders. The rocks had attractive streaks of reds and browns running through them. For ten minutes Hanh led me through some of the movements I had seen earlier, then offered me a place to sit down on the ground, taking a seat to my right. Yin sat down behind us. The morning sun bathed the mountains in the distance in a warm yellow light. I was struck by their beauty.
“The legends say,” Hanh began, “that opening up to a higher energy state is an ability that all humans will eventually acquire. It will begin as a general knowledge that such an awareness is possible. Then we will move to an understanding of all the factors involved in cultivating and maintaining higher levels of energy.”
He paused and looked at me. “You already know the basic procedure, but your senses must be expanded. The legends say that first you calm yourself and look out on your surroundings. Most of us seldom look closely at the things around us. It’s just stuff that takes a backseat to whatever is on our minds to get done. But we must remember that everything in the universe is alive with spiritual energy and is a part of God. We must intentionally ask to connect with the divine inside us.
“As you know, the measure as to whether we are connecting with this energy is our sense of beauty. Always ask yourself this question: How beautiful does everything look? No matter how it appears at first we can always see more beauty in it if we try. The degree of beauty we can see measures how much divine energy we are receiving within us.”
Hanh went on to have me spend some time looking, really looking, at everything around me.
“Once we begin to establish our connection,” he said, “and experience the divine energy within, everything begins to have more presence in our perception. Things stand out and we notice their unique shape and color. When this perception occurs, we can breathe in even more energy.
“You see, in reality, the energy doesn’t come so much from the things around us—although we can absorb energy directly from some plants and sacred sites. Sacred energy comes from our connection to the divine inside us. Everything around us, both natural and man-made—flowers, rocks, grass, mountains, art—is already majestically beautiful and present beyond anything most humans can perceive. All we do, when we open up to the divine, is raise our energy vibration and thus our perceptual ability so we can view the world the way it already is. Do you understand? Humans already live in a world of immense beauty and color and form. Heaven itself is right here. We just haven’t opened up to enough inner energy to see it.”
I listened with fascination. This was clearer now than ever before.
“Focus on the beauty,” Hanh instructed, “and begin to breathe in the energy within you.”
I took a deep breath.
“Now look for increases in the beauty as you breathe,” Hanh instructed.
I gazed out again at the rocks and mountains, and to my amazement I noticed that the tallest of the ridges in the distance was Mount Everest. For some reason, I hadn’t recognized its shape before.
“Yes, yes, look at Everest,” Hanh said.
As I gazed out at the mountain, I noticed that the snow-rippled ridges on its face seemed to make little steps up toward the crown-shaped peak. The sight jolted my perception outward, and the world’s tallest mountain instantly seemed closer, somehow part of me, as if I might be able to reach out and touch it.
“Keep breathing,” Hanh said. “Your vibration and ability to perceive will increase even more. Everything will become shiny, as though illuminated from within.”
I took another breath and I began to feel lighter and my back straightened with little effort. Unbelievably I felt exactly as I had during the mountain experience in Peru.
Hanh was nodding. “Your ability to perceive beauty is the primary measure that divine energy is coming into you. But there are other measures as well.
“You will feel lighter,” Hanh continued. “The energy will rise up through you and lift you up, as you said, like a string pulling you up from the top of your head. And you will feel a greater wisdom about who you are and what you are doing. You will receive intuitions and dreams about what is next on your life path.”
He paused and looked at my body. I was now sitting up effortlessly. “Now we come to the most important part,” he said. “You must learn to sustain this energy, to keep it flowing into you. You must use the power of your expectations here, the power of your prayer-energy.”
Here was this word again: expectation. I had never heard it used in this context before.
“How do I do that?” I asked, feeling confused, my
body dropping in energy, the forms and colors around me fading.
Hanh’s eyes got large and he burst into laughter. He tried several times to stop but finally rolled on the ground in uncontrollable mirth. He regained his composure several times but began laughing again every time he looked at me. I even heard Yin snickering in the background.
Finally Hanh managed to take some breaths and calm down.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “It’s just that your expression was so funny. You really don’t believe you have any power at all, do you?”
“It’s not that,” I protested. “I just don’t know what you meant by expectation.”
Hanh was still smiling. “You do think you carry around certain expectations about life, don’t you? You expect the sun to rise. You expect your blood to circulate.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’m only asking that you try to become conscious of these expectations. It is the only way to maintain and extend the higher level of energy that you just experienced. You must learn to expect that level of energy in your life, and you must do so very deliberately and consciously. This is the only way to complete the first prayer extension. Would you like to try again?”
I smiled back at him, and we spent several minutes breathing and building up the energy. When I was seeing the higher level of beauty I had experienced before, I nodded at him.
“Now,” he said, “you must expect this energy that is filling you to keep filling you and to flow out of you in every direction. Visualize this happening.”
I tried to hold on to my energy level as I asked, “This outflow—how do I know this is really happening?”
“You will be able to feel it. Just visualize it for now.”
I took another breath and visualized the energy coming into me and flowing out in every direction into the world.
“I still don’t know whether it’s really happening,” I said.
Hanh looked directly at me, appearing slightly impatient. “You know the energy is flowing out of you because the energy is maintained, the colors and shapes stay high, and you feel it as it fills you, then overflows outward.”
“How does it feel?” I asked.
He looked at me with incredulity. “You know the answer to that.”
I gazed out at the mountains again, visualizing the energy flow going out of me toward them. They remained beautiful and began to be immensely attractive as well. Then a rush of deep emotion filled me, and I remembered what I had experienced in Peru.
Hanh was nodding.
“Of course!” I said. “The measure of whether the energy is flowing out is the feeling of love.”
Hanh smiled broadly. “Yes, it is a love that becomes a background emotion that stays with you as long as your prayer-energy is going out into the world. You must stay in a state of love.”
“This seems awfully idealistic for ordinary human beings,” I said.
Hanh chuckled. “I’m not telling you how to be an ordinary human being. I’m telling you how to be at the edge of evolution. I’m telling you how to be a hero. Just remember that you must expect divine energy to come into you at a higher level and to flow out of you like a cup running over. When you get disconnected, remember this feeling of love. Try to consciously rekindle the state.”
His eyes twinkled again. “Your expectation is the key to whether you can maintain this experience. You must visualize it happening, believe that it will be there for you in all situations. This expectation must be cultivated and consciously affirmed every day.”
I nodded.
“Now,” he said, “do you understand all the procedures I have told you about?”
Before I could answer, he said, “The key is how you wake up in the morning. That is why I asked you to sleep, so that I could see how you wake up. You must do so with discipline. Wake your body up to the inflow of energy in the manner that I showed you. Move from your center, feel the energy immediately. Expect it immediately.
“Eat only the foods that are still alive, and after a while, inner divine energy will be easier to breathe into your being. Take the time to fill up with energy every day and wake up with movement. Remember the measures. Visualize that this energy is coming into you and feel it as if flows out into the world. Do this and you will have completed the First Extension. You will be able not just to experience energy occasionally, but to cultivate it and maintain it at a higher level.”
He bowed low and without saying anything else walked back toward the house. Yin and I followed. When we arrived, Hanh began selecting food and placing it in a large basket.
“What about the gateway?” I asked Hanh.
He stopped and looked at me. “There are many gateways.”
“I mean, do you know where we can find the gateway to Shambhala?”
He looked at me sternly. “You have only completed one extension of your prayer-energy. You now must learn what to do with this energy that is flowing out of you. And you are very headstrong, and still prone to fear and anger. You will have to overcome these tendencies before you can get anywhere near Shambhala.”
With that statement, Hanh nodded at Yin and handed him the basket, then walked into the other room.
4
CONSCIOUS ALERTNESS
I walked out to the Jeep, feeling incredibly good. The air was cool and the mountains in every direction still seemed luminous. We got in the vehicle, and Yin pulled away.
“Do you know where to go now?” I asked.
“I know that we must head toward northwest Tibet. According to the legends, that is the closest gateway to us. But, as Lama Rigden said, we will have to be shown.”
Yin paused and glanced at me. “It is time that I told you about my dream.”
“The dream that Lama Rigden mentioned?” I asked. “The one you had of me?”
“Yes, in this dream we are together journeying across Tibet, looking for the gateway. And we could not find it. We journeyed very far and traveled in circles, lost. But at the moment of our greatest despair, we met someone who knew where we should go.”
“What happened after that?”
“The dream ended.”
“Who was the person? Was it Wil?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What do you think the dream means?”
“It means we must be very alert.”
We rode in silence for a few moments and then I asked, “Are there many soldiers stationed in northwest Tibet?”
“Not usually,” he replied. “Except on the border or at the military bases. The problem is getting through the next three or four hundred miles, past Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar. There are several military checkpoints.”
For four hours we rode without incident, traveling for a while on graded gravel roads and then turning onto various dirt tracts for a time. We reached Saga without any difficulty and hit what Yin told me was the southern route into western Tibet. We passed mostly large transport trucks or local Tibetans in older cars or in carts. A few foreign hitchhikers could be seen around the truck stops.
After another hour Yin pulled the Jeep off the main road and onto what amounted to only a horse path. The Jeep bounced over deep gullies.
“There is usually a Chinese checkpoint up ahead on the main road,” Yin said. “We must go around.”
We were traveling up a steep slope, and when we got to the crest of the hill, Yin stopped the Jeep and led me to the edge of a cliff. Below us, several hundred feet away we could see two large military trucks with Chinese insignia. Perhaps a dozen soldiers were standing by the road.
“This is not good,” Yin said. “There are usually only a few soldiers at this crossroads. They may still be looking for us.”
I tried to shake off a rush of anxiety and keep my energy high. I thought I saw several of the soldiers looking up the hill toward us, so I ducked down.
“Something is happening,” Yin whispered.
When I looked back at the crossroads, the soldiers were searchin
g a van that had driven into the checkpoint. A middle-aged blond man was standing on the side of the road being interrogated. Someone else was still in the van. We could just barely hear a European language being spoken, sounding very much like Dutch.
“Why are they being detained?” I asked Yin.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They may not have the correct permits, or perhaps they asked the wrong questions.”
I lingered, wishing I could help.
“Please,” Yin said. “We must go.”
We got in the Jeep, and Yin drove slowly around the rest of the hill and down the slope on the other side. At the bottom we hit another narrow track that turned to the right, away from the crossroads, still heading northwest. We traveled on this road for about five more miles, before it merged back into the main road and into Zhongba, a small town with several hotels and a few shops. Here there were people walking, leading yaks and other livestock, and several land cruisers drove by.
“We are now just one of the pilgrims heading to Mount Kailash,” Yin said. “We will be less noticeable.”
I wasn’t convinced. In fact, half a mile farther a Chinese military truck pulled onto the road directly behind us, and another surge of fear ran through me. Yin turned onto a side street and the truck moved past us and out of sight.
“You must stay strong,” Yin said. “It is time for you to learn the Second Extension.”
He went on to guide me through the First Extension again until I could visualize and feel my energy flowing out in front of us and into the distance.
“Now that you have your energy moving out, you must set this field of energy to have a certain effect.”
His comment fascinated me. “Set my field?”
“Yes. We can direct our prayer-field to act on the world in various ways. We do this by using our expectations. You have already done this once, remember? Hanh taught you to expect that the energy would keep flowing through you. Now you must set your field with other expectations and do so with true discipline. Otherwise, all your energy can quickly collapse in fear and anger.”