(The story starts here)
The Man Who Would be Guru, Part 3
The Outskirts of Crazytown
San Francisco, California 1981-82
" Alain described his Center For The Unity of All Mankind as an epicenter for the expansion of human consciousness, a place where world leaders and thinkers would gather to learn for weeks at a time...It would include a conference center, a performance venue, residential facilities, paths rambling through organic vegetable and flower gardens, rustic outbuildings, and a pet goat named Archimedes."
In the early 1980s, Alain left the apartment on Twin Peaks and rented a wee, box-shaped house at the crest of a short steep hill off Monterey Boulevard. My husband Robert took time off work to pack up Alain's household, rent a truck, move him into the new place, and spend several days to clearing blackberry brambles from the badly overgrown yard behind the cottage. Robert came home filled with bloody scratches and barely contained excitement: something big was happening with Alain. He could not tell me what, exactly, because he'd been instructed not to. It was a secret.
But not for long. Soon after settling in, Alain summoned the members of what he called the "inner circle." There was no outer circle. The few others who had been in Alain's orbit had long ago peeled off, and these four were the last ones standing. I did not stand with them. I was present that night to avoid yet another ripping row with Robert over my lack of support for his relationship with his guru.
We gathered for the revelation of Alain's vision for the epicenter of an expansion of human consciousness*: The Center For The Unity of All Mankind. Alain described it as a place where world leaders and thinkers would gather to learn for weeks at a time; where seminars would be conducted and publications produced. A creative nexus of musicians, writers, and filmmakers would practice their arts under its auspices. It would be built on a substantial piece of land in the Napa Valley. Its facilities would include a conference center, a performance venue, residential facilities, paths rambling through organic vegetable and flower gardens, rustic outbuildings, and a pet goat named Archimedes. Alain announced that he was already hard at work on the maiden venture of The Center For The Unity of All Mankind: a journal called All One, The Journal for The Unity of All Mankind.
In addition to holding sole executive power in The Center For The Unity of All Mankind, Alain was also the editor of All One's and the only provider of content. While his vision did not include a board of directors or other leadership positions beyond his own, we were assured that there would be plenty of work for all. We were instructed to consider Wednesday evenings "sacrosanct," for meetings at the interim headquarters of The Center For The Unity of All Mankind. That would be Alain's house, which we were told to henceforth refer to as “The Center,”capital C.
Although the cosmos was clearly smiling upon this endeavor—Alain had commissioned an astrological chart for the exact date and time** he’d conceived the idea, and reported that the planets could not be more positive—we were directed not to compromise the impact of the Center by talking about it with outsiders until after the publication of All One, which was going to excite world-wide interest.
It's possible that Alain was right, and that the world really was, as he stated, in desperate need of his Center For the Unity of All Mankind. That night, what I needed, desperately, was a reality check. Wasn't it all just a bit...grandiose? I tried to make eye contact with Robert and the others, but all eyes were trained on Alain, who had moved on to a lamentation about how George Lucas was squandering his skills on those Star Wars movies, and was outlining his ideas about what Lucas should do instead: “Now, see here, George...”
Of the myriad practical questions trapped beneath an avalanche of inventive detail (like the soundtrack for the movie Alain was going to have George Lucas make) two big ones refused to stay buried:
(A) Who was going to be guiding and teaching those world leaders, thinkers, musicians, artists et al at The Center For the Unity of All Mankind?
(B) Where was the money going to come from for this substantial piece of land, to say nothing of the buildings—and the goat? At the time, undeveloped land in the Napa Valley was selling for between $11,000 and $24,000 an acre.
Prior experience had demonstrated that questioning Alain in any way would summon a killing freeze upon the querent. Why bother? What was yet another evening slowly beaten into the ground as I sat silent, biting my tongue? An impossibility, actually. I’d just spent a couple of hours listening to a piano teacher present an hallucinatory vision of spiritual and artistic world domination—a vision that would, not coincidentally, monopolize the attention of his aging, attenuated flock and re-focus its energy under his tight control. It felt a lot like being driven toward a big, bright tent pitched on the outskirts of Crazytown, and I was not going to stand by idly as the father of my two children was hustled through its flaps.
I had already moved well beyond what Alain called “naughtiness” into outright independence, and was corrupting my husband as well: “I know you're having sex with your wife!” Alain railed at Robert shortly before the meeting. I refused to let Alain advance his learning curve about homeopathy on my children or me, and insisted that he not come for dinner more than once a month. No more laundry or other domestic services, either, unless Robert wanted to add those chores to his list of duties for Alain.
Well, in for a dime, in for a dollar. I raised my hand. “Has a source of funding been identified?” I asked, starting with (B), the marginally less combustible question.
The look that Alain fixed upon me could have warped teak. When he spoke, his always-precise diction sharpened to an impossibly acute point, the sure sign of his displeasure. His reply sliced through the air like a hurled javelin: “ You. Need. Not. Concern. Yourself.”
P., Alain's in-house astrologer and fellow homeopathy enthusiast, vaulted gamely into the deep silence that followed: “Exciting things tend to happen around Alain,” he declared. He did not elaborate on what those exciting things might be, and I knew better than to ask, just as I knew, all along, the answer to question (A).
*Mnemosyne and the Minutes
As Alain’s secretary, Robert was responsible for taking detailed minutes of all meetings about The Center For the Unity of All Mankind. Alain impressed upon him the importance of getting the minutes exactly right, because they were historic records. Robert would type them up at work and bring them home for me to proofread before submitting them for Alain's approval. Alain would then re-write the record, often several times, with each round requiring re-typing and re-proofing.
The words I’ve used to describe the plans for The Center For The Unity of All Mankind are exactly as was approved, but using quotation marks made the post look like a Zagat review. So I dropped the marks, and you’ll just have to take my word. A goat named Archimedes? I couldn't make this stuff up.
**Timing is Everything
At the meeting described above, Alain claimed that The Center For the Unity of All Mankind as a spanking new revelation visited upon him a few weeks previously. Much later, I learned that Alain had proposed The Center For the Unity of All Mankind to different group of young people more than a decade earlier. One of that group emailed No Regrets his recollection of Alain's previous presentation:
"My own decision to part company {with Alain} followed a meeting in the early 70s...when Alain announced his grandiose plans for All One and the Center for the Unity of All Mankind. It felt like he was forming a cult. His discourse was not entirely coherent. The core of it seemed to be that he was the holder of all spiritual and cultural wisdom. The lack of congruence between his grandiose vision and any practical means to achieve even a fraction of it was painfully evident. I stepped decisively out of his company."
Timing is everything.
Google street view magic: The Center For the Unity of All Mankind today.
Go to Part 4 of The Man Who Would be Guru: Tea Time at the Center For the Unity of All Mankind
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