When the Impossible Happens (35 page)

He stood like this for several minutes motionless and in absolute silence. People in the circle around him watched him intently, barely breathing. Suddenly, at exactly the same time, all the Esalen dogs started to howl. Kwan Ja Nim let out an ungodly warrior scream that merged with the wailing ca nine choir into an alarming cacophony. Holding the sword in his right hand close to his body, he used his left hand as a pivot and cartwheeled toward his Polish student. He grabbed the hilt of the sword in both of his hands and, still blindfolded, he chopped in two halves each of the watermelons on the stools flanking his student’s body. With a powerful swing, he then chopped apart the third watermelon, lying on the belly of his trusting student.

The watermelon fell apart, the two halves landing on each side of the student’s body. As earlier, during the apple stunt, the napkin showed just a slight, barely noticeable indentation. The crowd went crazy and cheered. We had all seen earlier what a formidable weapon Kwan Ja Nim’s sword was and what it could do. A small error, a miniscule deviation during the fifteen-foot trajectory that Kwan Ja Nim negotiated without any visual control, could have resulted in fatal injury. The extraordinary feat we had just seen seemed to border on a miracle!

Kwan Ja Nim took off his hood and offered to answer any questions people had. Everybody wanted to know how he could have achieved what he did. “Were you able to see the environment without using your eyes, by some form of ESP?” “Was your consciousness out of your body, and was it watching everything from above?” “Did you imprint in your memory a three-dimensional image of the whole scene and keep it vivid the entire time?” People bombarded him with questions. Kwan Ja Nim responded with a healthy belly laugh. “No,” he said with a dismissive gesture. “You just meditate and wait, until all is one—the sword master, the sword, the melon, and the disciple—and then, there is no problem.”

According to Eastern spiritual literature, advanced yogis, particularly the Siddhas—masters of Tantra—can develop supernatural powers called
siddhis.
The extraordinary feats that these individuals can perform indicate the possibility of hegemony of mind over matter. The precision and certainty with which the blindfolded Kwan Ja Nim wielded his formidable sword in a situation where an extension of the trajectory of two or three inches could have resulted in death or severe injuries of his disciple certainly put his feat into this category. Those of us who witnessed Kwan Ja Nim’s performance at Esalen felt strongly that what we had seen could not possibly be achieved by ordinary practice, no matter how long and arduous.

STRANGE LEGACY OF THE ANCIENT MAYA: Mystery of the Crystal Skull

The shamanic lore, religious traditions, anthropological literature, and world mythology contain numerous references to various human-made and natural magic objects endowed with extraordinary powers—fetishes, ritual implements, amulets, rings, weapons, crystals or other kinds of stones, and plants. For example, in the Hindu tradition special properties have been attributed to the
salagrams,
stones or fossils found in nature that have the form of important Tantric symbols or carry their images. Many Muslims believe that the Black Stone used as cornerstone in the Kaaba, Islam’s most sacred sanctuary and pilgrimage shrine, has the power to cleanse worshippers of their sins by absorbing them into itself. They say that the Black Stone once had a pure and dazzling white color; it has turned black because of the sins it has absorbed over the years.

In Christianity, the relics of the saints, the weeping or bleeding statues of the Virgin Mary, and the shroud of Turin, a centuries-old linen cloth that bears the image of a crucified man, are seen as objects with miraculous properties. The tombs of the martyrs are said to be places where allegedly “the blind and cripples are restored to health, the dead recalled to life, and devils expelled from the bodies of men.” According to legend, the “Spear of Destiny,” the weapon that Gaius Cassius Longinus allegedly used to pierce the body of the crucified Jesus, brought its owner the power to conquer the world, but its loss would cause immediate death. Mythological examples of objects with supernatural powers are King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, and the Holy Grail.

The Aztecs and Mayans ascribed great symbolic significance to the human skull, which made it a very popular motif in the pre-Hispanic art of Central America. Archeologists have excavated a number of effigies of human skulls, many of them dating from prehistoric times. They range widely in size and are executed in different materials—silver, gold, bronze, obsidian, onyx, malachite, lapis, turquoise, ruby, sapphire, topaz, and quartz crystal. Among these artifacts, the rare life-size replicas of the human skull made of quartz crystal have attracted special attention. They have become the subject of many books and papers, describing their unparalleled craftsmanship and the extraordinary effects they can have on people.

In the early 1970s, while conducting a workshop at the Esalen Institute, I heard about the Mitchell-Hedges skull, an extraordinary Mayan artifact named after the British lord F.A. Mitchell-Hedges and his adopted daughter Anna. It was a perfectly crafted life-size replica of a human skull, carved from one piece of natural quartz crystal. Many individuals who spent some time in the presence of this mysterious object allegedly experienced as a result of this exposure powerful non-ordinary states of consciousness. Those who observed the skull for a period of time and focused on the opaque veils, slightly clouded areas, and other impurities in the inner structure went into a state of trance and catalepsy or, conversely, agitation.

They saw visions of complex scenes from history or experienced en counters with various mythological beings. This was usually accompanied by powerful emotions that ranged from ecstatic rapture to terror. Among the reported effects were instances of Kundalini awakening associated with kriyas—waves of unmotivated emotions, involuntary sounds, and experiences of powerful energies, vibrations, and contortions. Other effects ranged from mystical raptures, visionary states, and psychic phenomena to psychotic episodes. A few of these individuals actually ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

The skull also had some extraordinary optical properties. The zygomatic arches of the face acted as “light pipes,” not unlike modern optic fibers. They channeled light from the base to the excavated eye sockets, where they ended in two miniature lenses. The two protuberances at the base of the skull that rest on the atlas vertebra had the shape of little pyramids, which concentrated light into the interior. With proper lighting, the entire skull glowed in light-green color and its sockets were bright red. On a few occasions, the skull supposedly radiated an incandescent aura, which extended far beyond its surface, and even moved and changed its size. People who were scared by the strange effects associated with this object called it the “Skull of Doom.”

The skull was surrounded by an aura of mystery and inspired many speculations as to its origin, age, the way it was created, and its remarkable effects on the human psyche. During the 1970s, it attracted the attention of many scientists, journalists, and other writers. Having heard the rumors about the effects of the Mitchell-Hedges skull, I was very interested in experiencing and studying its effects. I found out that the skull’s custodian and curator was Frank Dorland, who lived on Panoramic Highway in Mill Valley, California. I visited him and spent several hours listening to his stories about the skull.

Dorland was obsessed with the crystal skull; he had studied it for about five years, spending every waking hour of his life with it. He concluded that the technical problems associated with the production of this object were so formidable that it should not really exist. Quartz crystal is an extremely hard substance. It rates at a hardness factor of 7 on the 10-point Mobs’ scale, only 3 points from the diamond, and it cannot be scratched by a knife. Dorland studied its absolutely smooth surface with a binocular microscope and was not able to detect traces of any tools. Any chiseling would have left scratches on the surface and would have without any doubt cracked the stone, particularly because the skull was carved against the grain of the stone.

The Mayans did not know either the carborundum or the grinding wheel. To do the job manually with sand and water would have taken generations. Dorland toyed with the idea that the Mayans might have employed some kind of paste made according to a secret recipe handed down from ancient times, but nothing of that kind is known at present. He discovered that high temperatures, such as those created by an oxygen acetylene burner, can melt crystal, but it was not very likely that the Mayans had at their disposal this kind of modern technology. But even if they had, this would not be an adequate explanation for the origin of the skull.

Dorland showed me a report that contained a detailed account of the examinations conducted at the Hewlett-Packard crystal laboratories in Santa Clara, California. The experts of the institute came to the conclusion that no known modern technologies could accomplish the task of creating an exact replica of the human skull from one piece of quartz crystal. They even refused Dorland’s offer of half a million dollars to replicate the skull. Quartz, with its many impurities and even little pockets of water in its inner structure, was too difficult a material with which to work.

After years of unsuccessful attempts to find the explanation for the skull’s origins, Dorland came up with increasingly fantastic theories. He came to the conclusion that it was created by an advanced civilization, by some beings with powerful minds and superior intelligence. He thought that the skull might be a device that made it possible to communicate across space-time or from parallel universes. He even suspected that the creators of the skull might still have the capacity to observe us through the skull’s eyes and to exert influence on us. But he was not certain whether these influences were coming from other planets, from other dimensions, or even from other times—the past or perhaps the future.

Over the years, Dorland himself had many strange experiences with the skull and eventually found them too “overpowering” and “uncanny.” He told me about the last one, which had occurred just several weeks before our meeting. He woke up in the middle of the night, hearing strange noises coming from the ground floor of his house. He went to check what was happening and was petrified by what he encountered. Looking downstairs from the staircase into the living room, he saw a large body of a jaguar jumping around and wreaking havoc in his house. He ran back to his bedroom, locked himself in, and spent the rest of the night in metaphysical horror. In the morning, he found the living room in disarray, with many pieces of furniture knocked over.

Dorland never figured out what had happened that night. But, in any case, this was the “last straw,” as far as he was concerned. After some painful deliberation, he decided to return the artifact to Ms. Mitchell-Hedges. If I wanted to see it, I had to go to Kitchener in Ontario, Canada, where Ms. Mitchell-Hedges had lived since the death of her foster-father. Fascinated by Frank Dorland’s story, during my next visit to Canada my brother, Paul, and I decided to call Ms. Mitchell-Hedges and ask if we could see her. To our great surprise, we found her in a motel that she had bought after her adoptive father’s death and that she had run ever since.

This was a very unusual thing for her to do, considering the fact that she had inherited fabulous wealth from Lord Mitchell-Hedges, who was a very rich British aristocrat. She explained to us that this was her way to commemorate the death of her “father.” When he had adopted her, she was a ten-year-old hungry and homeless orphan, living in that part of Canada. After his death, she wanted to provide shelter and food for other people in the way her father had provided for her.

During our visit, we sat in the motel office, which certainly was quite extraordinary in and of itself. Among the unique art objects decorating it were a large silver pitcher that once belonged to King Ludwig of Bavaria and an ornate beveled mirror that used to be Queen Marie Antoinette’s. Ms. Mitchell-Hedges brought out a large collection of newspaper clippings, describing the adventures that she and her adoptive father had experienced in different parts of the world—sailing to different exotic places, hunting sharks and catching other large fish, shooting tigers, living with South American Indians, and excavating pre-Hispanic sites.

The most interesting of these newspaper reports covered the excavations of Lubaantun, the City of the Fallen Stones, which Lord Mitchell-Hedges discovered in the jungles of British Honduras (Belize) during his search for Atlantis. It was there where the crystal skull mysteriously surfaced. On her seventeenth birthday, Anna reportedly found it buried in the ancient ruins. As we were listening, Anna went through the newspaper clippings, one by one, telling us all the fascinating stories that were behind them.

It was clear that these newspaper stories and Anna’s memories associated with them were now the main focus of her life. She never married, probably because of her strong Electra complex, because no man could possibly live up to the image of her extraordinary “father,” who over the years grew to a mythic figure. Spending the afternoon with Anna Mitchell-Hedges in her Kitchener motel was a fascinating experience but, unfortunately, we did not get to see the skull. It was not in Kitchener any longer.

We found out that, a short time before our visit, Anna had donated the skull to the Museum of the American Indian in New York City. She concluded that the artifact was too powerful to be in the possession of any private individual and that it should have an impersonal owner. When we tried to get a more specific explanation, she brushed us off and did not want to talk about it. Shortly after our visit with Anna, my lecture schedule took me to New York City. One of the first things I did after my arrival was to take a taxi to the Museum of the American Indian, eager to finish my quest.

There I finally was able to see the Mitchell-Hedges skull, the mysterious artifact I had been stalking for so long. It was placed in a vitrine, the glass panels of which reflected light and the surrounding objects, preventing a clear view. In addition, the museum was a popular place, and the scores of visitors milling around represented a serious distraction. All in all, these certainly were not ideal conditions for focused scrying. I decided to visit Dr. Frederick Dockstader, the world’s foremost authority on American Indian art and curator of the museum, and ask him for permission to spend a night in the museum, alone and in quiet meditation, with the skull taken out of the vitrine.