I remember the first Bache I attended. The previous year Ellen and I had briefly considered going. She had scheduled her first appointment with Marc but felt uneasy around the thought of attending that larger gathering. I wasn’t even considering doing the dream work at that time but I was somewhat curious. I’d heard talk about Marc and the work he was doing, but when Ellen told me that it cost fifteen dollars I decided against it. In fact I felt offended. Why should I pay for an event which seemed to me to be at least partly an advertisement? Who were these people? “Lunch is included.” Ellen said. “Fifteen dollars is too much for lunch.” I replied. Case settled.
Now it’s a year later. I’ve been doing the work for five and a half months and I‘m pretty sure I‘ll continue doing it for quite a while. I hesitate for a moment when I hear the price had gone up to twenty or twenty five bucks apiece but it’s not too difficult a decision. I know a few people who are doing this work but at this gathering of perhaps sixty or more I see others I know or recognize. “Oh look,” I think to myself, “so and so is doing the dream work.” This is a bit exciting. I see people I admire, people I feel are somehow significant in this small central Vermont world. Other times I think it odd. “That person’s doing inner work, who would’ve guessed that?” Folks are mingling and chatting then we all take seats. For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening perhaps a dozen people get up and respond in some way to their experience of the dream work. Andy Shapiro plays and sings some of his songs. I’d met Andy at Johnson State College where we both taught and I admired his artistry. I think it’s cool that he’s part of this event, part of this gathering, part of this assembly with which I am becoming associated. There’s a keynote address, a couple of somewhat unorganized MCs, bit of poetry, and a goofy song sung by a guy who seems to be doing a bad imitation of Bill Murray’s lounge singer from Saturday Night Live. Between these acts the Bachers, the main events, stand before us one by one and to the best of their abilities with words and slides bare witness to their inner lives. I feel something deep and true and important wanting to emerge in this room, at times it comes close to the surface, at times even breaking the surface to be seen for a moment then diving back down again and again called forth. I feel a tickling inside, something in me being called up. I want more, but at the same time I find it very disconcerting to sit in an audience and listen to these Bachers. I feel that my journey is intensely unique and personal and private, just Marc and me apart from the world, outside time. When other’s speak about their work it seems to cheapen my experience of my own work. I’m becoming jealous, how unfortunate. It’s as if I’ve been sweating away at a deep, personal novel in solitude only to come into a roomful of people who are all writing different versions of the same book. I don’t want to belong, I want to be unique and exceptional. I also want to stand myself and speak and be seen and heard and admired and loved.
At our next session Marc finds my disconcertion understandable, we talk about the Bache for awhile then continue working with whatever material my dreams are presenting. But there was, buried within that response to my first Bache a shard of pathology and here’s how it was unearthed and what it signified.
The first clue came a year and a half later in March of 1997. That month thirty nine uniformed people, all members of a spiritual community known as Heaven’s Gate, were found dead in a mansion at Rancho Santa Fe, California. They were covered in purple shrouds. Apparently they had believed that a UFO was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet and that if they committed suicide ay the right moment they would join the spiritually advanced beings on that ship. Then, for me, the clincher; some of the dead men had been castrated.
Shortly afterwards I had this dream:
Even before I work this dream I’m suspicious about these Mouseketeers. By this time in my dream work experience I’m used to the archetypes, the good guys, coming as bums, criminals, aboriginals, strange men and scary women. I’m used to the pathology, the dark side, coming in overly neat, clean or seductive guises. So I figure these attractive teenagers must be my pathology. I figure this dream must be about some evil, cultish part of myself that is attacking me, trying to cut off my manhood, my passion. Doesn’t that make sense? Marc and I got to talking about Heaven’s Gate and I thought he’d concur that those people were crazies and thank God we’re not crazy and we should despise them or pity them and deplore their beliefs and actions. Right?
Marc doesn’t go there. Instead he asks: “How do you know the Heaven’s Gate people are wrong? Maybe they’re all with God now.”
I don’t think Marc’s advocating this belief. He’s just pointing out to me that it’s my pride that is certain that they were dangerous wackos who didn’t have a clue. He acknowledges that this may well be the case but he questions my arrogant certainty that such is the case. Then he asks me if I feel this way about the dream work. This is what he’s really aiming at.
“What do you mean?“ I ask, feeling uncomfortable, feeling I’m being put on the spot though I can’t yet tell what spot I’m being put on or why.
“That it‘s cult.” he replies. “Do you think the dream work is a cult?”
“Of course not.” I respond.
“Some people feel that it is.” He continues, “I think this dream is showing you that you feel this way and that belief’s holding you back.”
Now I’m thinking about it. Now I’m hurt and confused. Hurt because I believe, unfairly, that Marc is somehow accusing me of degrading or misunderstanding this work. Confused because I have no conscious awareness that I think of this work as cultish. Yet I’m willing to consider the possibility that I do because in the past two years my dreams have revealed to me many hidden, false assumptions which I clung to like a child clings to a toy he isn’t even interested in, until someone threatens to take it away. I feel that Marc is trying to take something from me. This is a familiar feeling and I hate it. My mind is throwing out roadblocks. “Could this be about Marc? Is Marc concerned as the father of this work that one of his children has fallen into a bad attitude? Could he be offended? Is this about the work or about me? Is there something cult like going on here? Could that possibly be okay? What’s going on?”
“You mean these Mouseketeers are archetypal?” I ask, finding it very difficult to even consider the possibility.
“I don’t know.” he says “but I think some part of you sees the dream work as a sort of cult and that’s holding you back.“
Now I’m even more uncomfortable and confused. “But the castration, the castration can’t be good.”
“Are you actually castrated in the dream?”
“No the dream ends before it actually happens.”
“Maybe it was never going to happen.”
“But the Heaven’s Gate guys, they were castrated.” I say. I’m haunted by this. I can’t resolve this horrible act with Marc’s response to my dream.
“Apparently they did it because they felt closer to God afterwards, less distracted, more spiritual. It was voluntary, none of them had to do it and they didn‘t all do it” In the past Marc has spoken to me about testosterone poisoning, something he read about somewhere. The term makes us both laugh from a sort of sadness and inner recognition that there’s probably something true going on here. He has noticed over his many years and through his many clients that women have a much easier time in general accessing the deep feelings that lead to spiritual awakening and growth than men do and whatever it was he read about testosterone poisoning apparently provided some evidence that our balls are to blame. Our testes and the hormones they produce are partly responsible for our spiritual retardation. It’s always nice to have something to blame. Well I’m keeping my balls and I don’t believe Marc will ever advocate castration but there’s meat for my process in this cult/castration dream and I’m just not getting it. Heaven’s Gate, that’s a cult. This is not a cult. Again: what’s going on here? The truth is Marc is only catching an edge of what this dream is trying to tell me. It’s difficult for him too. This dream will continue to echo down through the years of my process. It just came up again in my last session six and a half years after we first worked it and Marc had yet another insight into this dream. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. In retrospect I can see that I was in fact uncomfortable with what I perceived to be cult like aspects of this work, and I was hoping that Marc would simply allay my fears. Instead he opened them up.
At the time I had the dream I’d long had a sort of train wreck fascination with cults and the stories and tragedies surrounding them.
I remember San Francisco in the late 70’s. I was living and working there as a apprentice carpenter, playing Go and missing my girlfriend who was away at school. In high school and college I’d been heavily involved in theatre but wasn’t doing any now. I was playing a lot of Go, an Asian board game I’d learned from a quiet, charismatic math professor back at Carlton College. Like the martial arts, Go has a ranking system and my progress up that ladder gave me some sense of growth and accomplishment in a life that was very much adrift.
One evening after work and after a game or two at the Go club in Japantown I was walking the several miles home to Ocean Beach when I noticed a crowd standing outside a theatre. In my “oh what the hell” way I wandered over to check things out. The marquee said “Ram Dass.” Through the glass doors I could see down the aisle of the 2,000 seat theatre to a stage covered with flowers, incense, pillows, microphones and Indian musical instruments. It looked exotic. Exotic was good. I felt I’d had a pretty plain time of it growing up in Nebraska and I wanted to break free of what I saw as a vanilla flavored past and step out, experiment, experience and reorient myself. I now see that this apparent quest for freedom and life was largely a flight away from my deeper, feeling, suffering self. I now know that that deeper, feeling, suffering self is the only place I can meet and be with God. I now know that instead of flying toward freedom I was in fact strengthening the bonds of my enslavement. But in that moment standing in front of that San Francisco theatre I feel open, free and enthusiastic. I ask people standing in line waiting for the doors to open what this is all about. Is this a concert? Does Ram Dass rock? What is it? No one seems interested in explaining the event to me. In fact several seem suspicious of my questions and one woman refuses to speak to me at all. This stimulates my curiosity so I buy a ticket and go in. It takes quite a while for people to assemble on the stage. Finally Ram nestles into a big pile of large pillows and begins to speak. I learn that he was once a Harvard professor with another name who’d done a lot of acid and traveled around India looking for enlightenment. As he speaks beautiful women, most of them in white flowing dresses, bring great bunches of flowers and set them before him. Other beautiful women lounge about the stage. He seems very cool and in the following weeks I bought and read several of his books, finding that temporary solace and meaning I spoke of in the first chapter. I don’t mean to put down anything Ram said or wrote, I don’t remember much of it. I mention him because I’m circling this notion of cults that lives inside me and came up in my dream and Ram’s a part of that notion.
I was 21 years old. Ram Dass was hip. The Moonies were big in the Bay Area, the Hari Krishnas were in the airports handing out the Bagavad Gita and dancing in the parks, peculiar Christian sects were here and there. I banked at the bank Patty Hearst and the SLA robbed. Cults galore. I was lonely, confused and unhappy, prime material for a cult I suppose. Like cult leaders and followers I was proud of my rejection of mainstream society and it‘s values. Like cult leaders and their followers I was attracted to counter cultural visions. But I wasn’t a joiner.
I remember Jonestown
In November of 1978 followers and the children of the followers of Jim Jones committed suicide and were killed in Jonestown, Guyana. Nine hundred and eleven people died that day. The first 9/11. All those people lying face down in family groups, their heads toward the alter where Jones was apparently shot to death by someone else. All those parents giving cyanide laced grape juice to their children. I kept imagining myself as one of those kids. How soon would I fully realize what was happening? What could I do but follow my parents lead? They’re dying too. Do I believe that death by cyanide is painless? Is it? How long does it take? Do I believe I’m going to see God and my parents in another, better place? Do I want to run? How strong is my faith? As strong as my fear?
A day or two after the reports came out I was at a friend’s apartment in San Francisco. It was night and a gunshot sounded outside. Gunshots are not that unusual in big cities so I was surprised when my friend rushed to the window and nervously peered out.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The People’s Temple is downstairs.” he told me.
The People’s Temple was Jones’ church. They were headquartered in San Francisco before moving to Guyana. The San Francisco temple was still active, he was afraid that someone had come back to finish the job begun in Jonestown.
I remember another incident that week. I wandered into a party somewhere in the city. I used to walk all over that town. I didn’t know anyone at the party. It was a punk scene. Dark clothes, fish nets, razor blades, short hair and scars. My hair was half way down my back at the time and my scars were all hidden. Someone showed an 8mm movie of a very stoned guy chewing on a razor blade, blood and bits of tongue pouring from his mouth. It looked very real. In one corner, the only well lit spot in the room, stood a punch bowl filled with a grape colored liquid. Finally after about an hour I went over and helped myself. Not one of the tough looking punks, no one had yet gone near it. I was scared but daring myself and hoping there was alcohol in it. There wasn’t. I left and continued searching, searching.
At times I thought there might be answers in the tactics, strategies and culture of Go. Herman Hesse explored the notion in his novel The Magister Ludi or The Magic Bead Game.
Sometimes I felt the key was revealed during drug experiences, if I could only bring it back and start unlocking mysteries how happy I would be. Sometimes it seemed that it was all about sex and more sex and still more sex but never enough sex. I just knew that whatever it was I didn’t have it and I believed others did and there were these strange cults that seemed at least to fully believe that they did in fact have it.
In April of 1993 eighty six members of the Branch Davidian burn to death in Waco, Texas. It’s still unclear how that fire started.
All three cults; Branch Davidian, People’s Temple and Heaven’s Gate had strong Christian referents. All three seemed to offer answers to their followers. These three cults are the heavies that play in my imagination. These three are the ones that come to my mind when Marc asks me if I think the dream work is a cult. These three killer cults. I first saw that term when I went online to do a little research for this chapter. There I found the “Cults R Us” website which provided me with a welcome definition as follows:
“Killer cults tend to be led by charismatic megalomaniacs who pit themselves and their churches against the rest of the world. They are usually apocalyptic visionaries drunk with lust and power that have physical and sexual control over their followers. In most cases their beliefs stem from twisted interpretations of established doctrines. These self-proclaimed divinities usually mass a large arsenal of weapons before bringing forth their personal day of reckoning.”
Marc has some serious detractors but I don’t think any of them would go anywhere near this far in describing the work we do. I know I wouldn’t. So why was I sent a dream that brings up the horror I associate with killer cults. What is that horror? On the surface those death events were terrible, disturbing and difficult to understand. But for me the first significant, personal layer of horror is down one level where I realize that if offered a palpable meaning of life or terrific sex or wealth or personal power or even a sense of superiority over the masses as a way out of my unhappiness and disappointment with this life I could end up burning to death or drinking cyanide or castrated, that could be me. Yet another layer down is my awareness that as stupid as these cults seem, what do I have that’s so great? And that thought brings up a softer, more insidious, more persistent horror.
I’m looking, I’m looking for something that must be there otherwise all religions are simply a joke. I’m looking for something I sense is there, looking for something I believe others have. Can they give it to me? I remember a movement teacher I had in graduate school. She spent time with an East Indian mystic who apparently passed enlightenment directly into his followers simply by his presence. She felt it when she was with him. I wanted something like that. Of course that begs the question what is a follower to do when apart from the Master? She had a book that she said he wrote only for his followers and somewhat uneasily agreed to loan it to me, then quickly asked for it back. I’d only read a page or two, found it quite stimulating, thought it might in fact contain the answer I’d been looking for, considered copying it before returning it then didn’t have the time and began to feel it would be dishonest to do so and I returned the book and went back to trolling for the perfect lover. All this seeking begs the question, “Can an ordinary life in this world be enough“? No, for me the answer has always been no. Still is.
When I speak of Ram Dass, and my movement teacher’s Indian teacher I’m clearly out of the realm of death cults and looking at cults or cult like groups that aren’t so blatantly evil, or not evil at all, groups like the Moonies or Scientology or even the Hari Krishnas. These groups are much larger than the killer cults and more palatable. I have had a couple brushes with groups that fall into this category.
In New York City eight or nine years and two college degrees after my San Francisco days, I read about a Gurdjieff society in the Personal section of the Village Voice. I’d read a bit of Gurdjieff, seen a movie or two about him and had spoken with others who were interested in his writings. His inversion of nearly every spiritual assumption I’d ever been exposed to attracted me. So one day I called the number in the ad. A recording told me to call another number at a specific date and time. Another recording at the new number told me to leave my name and phone number. I then received a message on my answering machine to await a call at a certain date and time. The call came, it was a recording telling me to call yet another number at a specific date and time. I felt like a double agent trying to get instructions from my handler. This time I reached a person who gave me a place and time for the meet, a restaurant on the Upper East Side. At the restaurant I met another fellow like myself who had also jumped through the telephone hoops and made it this far. A nervous woman then joined us. She was one of the Gurdjieff people. I had a lot of questions and started asking them. She was uncomfortable and said she wasn’t directing this meeting and wasn’t sure she should speak at all. I kept asking questions and at one point she quite clearly told us something she wished she hadn’t. She became very agitated and asked us not to tell the leaders what she had said. Curiouser and curiouser. After that there wasn’t much to say. Finally, about an hour later, the two heavies, both men, showed up, but by then the nervous woman had turned me off to the adventure and I never took the next step into that mysterious society.
Then I had a spin with Nichiren Buddhism. These are the chanters. You chant and ask for whatever you want and supposedly if you keep at it you get whatever you want, like magic. I was interested because I had a big crush on an actress who was a chanter. So I chanted asking to get into her heart and pants but I never got either place so I quit. Actually that’s a bit glib, I did chant for other things and I did hope to find meaning and purpose in that practice and in that world. I enjoyed getting together and chanting with others and I enjoyed my initiation which took place with about 300 other inductees at a temple somewhere in midtown Manhattan, I think it was. I think there were induction ceremonies every night so quite a few people were getting into this materialistic chanting Buddhism. The part I didn’t like, besides not magically getting into the chantress’ pants, was that after each meeting we had to hit the streets with a partner and proselytize. I hated that, especially when someone I knew came by. After a few months I gave it all up.
As I’m writing this chapter I find myself struggling to understand just what the heck a cult is, so I turn to the American Heritage Dictionary which says that a cult is:
“A system or community of religious worship and ritual, especially one focusing upon a single deity or spirit.”
This is pretty unsatisfying, it includes all of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Is that what you think of when you think of a cult? Not me. By the way, this definition doesn’t refer to what we do in the dream work community since we don’t worship as a group, and though we might practice simple rituals such as lighting candles when we get together to share our personal journeys, such trappings are far from necessary. Sometimes we’ll just meet another dream worker on the street, stop and if we’re able to separate ourselves from the demands of the day we might just go ahead and share right there, though it’s generally richer and more satisfying to meet with the purpose of sharing in groups of four to fifteen with enough time for everyone to share. And in those gatherings it does seem to help to light candles and do a little centering work before the sharing.
The American Heritage Dictionary has a second definition of cult which reads as follows:
“An exclusive group of person’s sharing an esoteric interest.”
Now this is closer to what I think about when I hear the word cult, but it’s still not very nasty is it? It applies to many sects of the above mentioned religions and could pretty easily be said of the dream work. Is there anything in this definition that resonates with my cult dream? I think there is. Two words stand out for me in the definition, exclusive and esoteric. In my cult dream I’m clearly involved with a group that is exclusive, otherwise there would be no need for an initiation. Now this is a bit complicated because I was (along with my never seen again buddy) trying to infiltrate and expose the cult not join it as a true believer. Another complication; I didn’t like the group but I did like the attentions of the cute blond until she whipped out the straight razor. But back to the notion of exclusion. I think of my first two years in Iowa City. I’d moved there to be with a girl who was in the graduate acting program. I was not in the program though after she left both the university and me I did end up in that program. I moved there to be with her. I had been pretty heavy into theatre in high school and at Carleton College. The graduate actors at the University of Iowa, there were about a dozen of them, seemed a very exclusive group and I desperately wanted to be invited in. I never was. But at the time I felt I’d be so much happier if I were inside that exclusive group. I would not have felt at all the same way if my girlfriend had been in a program that allowed anyone in. Do you see what I’m getting at? It’s a bit like Woody Allen’s line “I don’t want to belong to any group that will have me as a member.” Actually in my case it was a bit different. I wanted to belong to an exclusive group that had very high standards for acceptance (like the college I went to). A group that turned away most of it’s applicants. Why? Because that guaranteed a higher quality education or experience? At the time I would have said yes but that was not the real reason. The real reason was that by being accepted I felt affirmed, valued and special. I needed societies or groups in the world to do this for me because I didn’t feel affirmed, valued and special on my own. I didn’t have it from God, I didn’t have it from my father and though I did have it from my mother it wasn’t clean, it was polluted by guilt. So exclusive was good if I was in and awful if I was out.
Now the dream work is not at all exclusive. If you want to belong you call Marc or one of the people he’s training, make an appointment, go to your session, pay for your session and you’re in. There are groups within the dream work community, some of which are somewhat exclusive. For example, in the past year Ellen organized a women’s group along similar lines as the long running men’s group. The women meet once a month to share their journeys. A woman who had once been in the work, that is seeing either Marc or one of the people studying with Marc, but was no longer in the work began coming and the question arose “is it appropriate for someone not currently doing the dream work to be in the dream work women’s group" and it was decided that it was not appropriate. Of course, the excluded woman, if she chose, could begin doing the work at any time then she would be welcome. I consider that a very soft exclusion. For example I don’t believe a Democratic Party event would welcome registered Republicans or visa versa. If the concerned people wanted to switch parties why then they’d be welcome. This seems obvious rather than exclusionary. Now when I first joined the men’s group I’d been doing the work for about three years I believe. I heard about them and wanted to be asked to join. This was a similar feeling to wanting to be included in the graduate acting class though not so intense. I admired many of the men who were then in the group. Most of them had been doing the work longer than I had, and I wanted to be associated with men who were more advanced it the work than I was. This was only natural because I wanted to go deeper with my own process, but as you may have guessed I was once again looking to others to validate me instead of feeling validation and support from God, that is from within. Fortunately I overcame my need to be asked and instead I asked my friend Anders how I could become a member of the men’s group. His reply was “You just ask.” He did go on to say that he felt he had to put it before the group and see if they were okay with my joining but I don’t believe the group has ever said no to anyone interested in joining. Another arguably exclusive group within the greater dream work community is the Bache support circle and the Bachers. People do ask Marc if they can bache and sometimes Marc will ask someone to bache, but there are only five slots each year so typically some people who want to don’t get to in any given year, though several times people have been slotted to bache then withdraw as the time approaches. I withdrew two years before I actually bached and the next year Marc withdrew me in favor of someone else, but I finally got my shot. People are excluded and that’s sad but no sadder than someone not getting cast in a play or making a sports team, though perhaps more mysterious. My point here is that whatever exclusion happens in the dream work community is not very significant, hardly fodder for an accusation of cultism.
I need to take a moment here to acknowledge that I’m doing something in this chapter I haven’t yet done. I am, as in previous chapters examining myself in light of my history and my dream work process, and through that biographical lens I continue to slowly reveal the nature and shape of this dream work. But here I have a third intention. I want to show you that we are not a cult. This is a risky intention for me to pursue because it reaches out from the personal realm into the political or public and that is a dangerous place for me. It’s a realm where my pathology can easily ambush me and I can begin to preach and right now it’s clear to me that God does not want me to preach. I’ll look at this preaching pathology at length in the seventh chapter. For now I’ll leave it for you to decide whether or not I’m preaching here, and hope that I am not.
Now let’s look at that second stand out word from the second American Heritage definition of “cult“: esoteric. Of all the words used in all the definitions and descriptions of cults this is the most significant. Esoteric at its heart means a body of knowledge that is intended for a select few. So a body of knowledge that is esoteric is inherently undemocratic. That’s fine by me if I’m an insider, in fact I quite like it for all the wrong reasons. You see we‘re right back in the discussion about exclusion. To continue I hate esotericism if I’m an outsider. For example I hated the idea that I wasn’t welcome at the Take Back the Night rally my girlfriend went to back in the eighties, where, apparently, information was disseminated intended only for women. Again this is all wrapped up in my pathological tendency to look outside myself, and thus away from God, for affirmation. To return to the thread a code used by an national intelligence service in a war is esoteric. There’s an example to elicit paranoia. But here’s another, computer programming language is esoteric. It is esoteric not with the intention of confounding a class of people (the enemy) as with an intelligence code, it is esoteric with the intention to make communication with the computer more efficient and less ambiguous. Esoteric language is a powerful way to communicate within any given community. I don’t know of anyone outside the dream work community who use the terms animus, anima, process, pathology, archetypes, dark mother, dark father, water breather, transformation, triangulation, alchemy, feeling and emotion with the same intent, specificity and passion as we do. These terms gain strength and resonance for us as we use them to dig into and describe the deepest parts of ourselves, and as we hear others use them to do the same. We also believe that there is a hidden, thus esoteric, message and wisdom in our dreams and we are trying to discern that message.
I’ve ventured some distance from myself and my experience and I must now see if I can bring this public or social variation on esotericism back to the personal, back to myself and my process around that cult dream.
(more to come)