Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(27)
Arthur resisted the inference that he was caught up in personal concerns that dwarfed the earth’s movement about the sun. There was not the remotest hope — one obviously embraced by Silver Tongue — that Arthur would give voice to any disquiet he felt. Over his long-distance wife, for instance, and her risky effort to bring down Emil Farquist. Over Lloyd Chalmers.
He’d managed to suppress all such unease during this cluttered Monday. But now it was back. He endured a few moments of agitation as he fought a freakish temptation to open up to this supposed spiritual healer, to seek solace, find fixes for his angst.
“Is there anything you’d like to ask?”
This was how they got you, sympathetic listening followed by futile nostrums, bargain-basement philosophies.
He looked hard into Silverson’s glacier-blue eyes. “Tell me about your journey here, Jason.”
“Actual or metaphysical?”
Arthur permitted himself a smile. “I’m interested in how someone becomes a guru.”
“Live in the moment not in the mind. Erase the past.” Silverson laughed. “Not so easily done under cross-examination.”
But he showed few qualms about disclosing his unerased past. A Los Angeleno, born into the movie world, his father a documentary producer. Studied film at UCLA, wrote a few scripts that still embarrassed him, finally found his niche in the horror genre. “I became a schlock jock, ultimately attaining a state beyond embarrassment.” He’d made good money, then lost most of it in the collapse a decade ago and simultaneously endured a “cosmic, transcendental awakening.”
He’d gathered “friends,” as he called them, not disciples, and brought them here. “Some well off, some not so. We ask each to contribute what he or she can. Rich and poor, we pool what we have. An enlightened communism.”
Arthur was becoming impatient. He wanted him to drop the mask, reveal he was a fraud, instead of sounding so reasonable, so high-minded. Nor did he want to hear he was some kind of licensed guru, that he’d taken formal training in New Age therapies, but it turned out he had. After his awakening, he’d studied at the Esalen Institute, becoming certified in “humanistic hypnotherapy.” He later ran a group-counselling program for people in emotional and spiritual crises. He spent a year in India, where Baba Sri Rameesh added a spiritual element to his new outlook. “Great and universally loved,” said a pamphlet Arthur had seen. “Known to all simply as the Baba.”
Arthur supposed he was telling the truth about these things — not the whole truth, just information easily verified. There would be time to reflect further on his apparent skill at hypnotherapy, but that detail had already buttressed Arthur’s cynical estimates of the man. He could see how many might not resist the pull of his radiant eyes. At the count of ten you will awake. You will be free.
“I feel a bit of a chill,” Silverson said. “What do you say we go back to the lodge and warm up with a mug of gupa?” He laughed. “That’s what they jokingly call it around here. Specialty of the house, fruit toddy with a few organic spices and herbs, including a pinch of echinacea. You’ll be begging for seconds.”
Arthur blanched.
The tour ended in the lodge, in what Silverson called his business office: a wide counter, a desk behind it, a few comfortable chairs, the room clean, orderly, uninhabited — unless one counted the vacant presence of Morgan Baumgarten. Silverson indicated the door, and Morg silently sidled out into the lodge’s common room.
The office hosted the commune’s only phone, only radio, only computer. A fax machine. A mini-television. Even a security camera, with a blinking green light. This was the control centre, Arthur assumed, remembering Reverend Al’s unkind assessment: “His followers are in purdah, protected from worldly concerns.”
Silverson observed him studying the electronics. “These devices are civilization’s enemies, sources of fret and despair. We believe the composed mind needs protection from them.”
Arthur supposed Silverson had risen to the level where he could no longer be corrupted by the six-o’clock news.
His host excused himself for a moment, leaving the door open. Posted on the counter was a daily schedule: body movement therapy, bioenergetics, dreamwork. A rack of pamphlets from human potential schools. One was from Esalen for a course in advanced hypnosis. “We are committed,” it read, “to integrating spiritual consciousness and global awareness into the psychotherapeutic community.”
Silverson returned bearing a tray with some muffins and two mugs of gupa, an awful-looking purplish liquid, spices swimming in it. The happiness drug, it softened up his victims.
When Silverson insisted on clicking mugs, Arthur sought to avoid a display of impoliteness and pretended to take a sip, then returned the mug to the tray, remarking on how hot it was. He was almost certain those oatmeal cookies from Wholeness — or Wellness — had been gupafied.
Silverson took a healthy swallow, looking hard at Arthur over the brim of his mug, as if daring him to just do it, to prove he wasn’t a cowardly old fogey. Arthur had no intention of drinking this concoction, let alone to beg for more, even if he must offend his host. He would explain he was allergic to echinacea.
The gupa problem was resolved when a matronly woman stormed into the office, knocking over the tray, spilling Arthur’s mug. “I love you,” she cried, making a beeline for her guru. “You are my reason for being.” To Arthur’s startled ears it sounded like a pop lyric.