A Darker Place
“Well, in a sense. There are more kids than we could possibly absorb, so we only take those who we feel would most benefit by the structure of Change. I don’t encourage them to send us hard-core drug users, for example. There’re too many peripheral problems with druggies that we’re not equipped to deal with. Have you ever taught special-need kids?”
“Not exclusively, but I worked for a while in a tough urban school where half the kids were nodding in their seats and the others were bouncing off the wall. I didn’t last long, but I sure learned a lot.”
“Why didn’t you last long?”
“I was young. I took it all too personally, couldn’t distance myself enough. The kids were far tougher than I was. I burned out.”
“The kids had no choice but to stay; I imagine that was the primary difference between you and them. They burned out by retreating into drugs and violence. Like the ones presented to us, ninety percent of whom are brain dead by the age of fifteen.”
“And you take the remaining ten percent?”
“I grab them for the valuable resource they are, kids who have been, as you yourself put it the other day, through the fires of hell—abuse, neglect, violence—and come out toughened. Purified, if you will.”
“Transformed.”
“Precisely.”
“But not easy kids to handle.”
“Give them a goal and a reason to reach for it and they handle themselves.”
Ana thought it was not quite as simple as that, but then, Steven did not work inside the classrooms, and might not realize how much the teachers did.
“It all comes down to Transformation,” she commented, casting around in growing desperation for a lead that would take her to the heart of this conversation.
“Transformation is the only goal that matters,” he replied.
“But do the kids understand that?”
“All of nature understands it. All of nature—rocks, trees, animals, human beings—yearns toward becoming greater, even if only to become the seed of a new generation. It is our duty, as beings somewhat further along in the work, to aid and direct the yearnings of those in our care. Teaching is a sacred occupation, Ana. A great responsibility.”
She took a deep breath. “Is that why I’ve been kept from it? Until I prove myself worthy?”
He studied her over the rim of his cup. “What do you mean?”
She crossed her fingers and launched her shot across his bow, praying fervently that it wasn’t a dud, or wouldn’t blow up in her face. “I don’t feel a part of the energy here, somehow. Like there’s a secret handshake or something and I don’t have it. Of course, I’d expect that from the people who wear the necklaces, but even the people who have been here only a few weeks are—” She broke off, seeing his expression.
Steven had gone very still. “Who told you about the necklaces?”
“Nobody. Why, what is there to tell? I saw people wearing them and assumed they were a sign of rank.”
“Rank,” he repeated.
“Or accomplishment or time here. Apparently I was wrong.” She allowed a thread of curiosity to creep into her voice.
Steven moved quickly to squelch it.
“No, you weren’t wrong. It’s just that in Change we try to keep any signs of… rank to ourselves. The pendants we wear are meant as a private reminder and acknowledgment of accomplishments, not a badge to be flaunted.”
“Nobody’s flaunted anything, not that I’ve noticed. In fact, I’ve never even seen what’s on the end of the chain, just the chains themselves.”
He looked relieved, then moved to lead her away from the topic. “I’m sorry you feel we are being aloof, Ana. I will speak to some of the members about it. And I also think it’s very probable that Teresa is about to turn her class over to you on a permanent basis.”
“Really? But what about her?”
“Teresa will go back to the administrative job she was doing before she had to fill in, which is more to her taste. She’ll thank you for showing up.”
“Oh. Well, thank you. I’ll enjoy teaching again.”
“And learning?”
“Oh yes. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the possibility of learning.”
“You who have spent all her adult life in the pursuit of learning?”
Ana did not think she was imagining the faint mocking tone in Steven’s voice, nor the tiny quirk in one corner of his mouth. He would allow her to teach children because the school needed her, but unless she did something right now, he would forever see her as yet another middle-aged butterfly flitting from one spiritual flower to the next. She had to be taken seriously, yet without stepping outside her persona. She stared into the depths of the empty mug on her knee as if it would give her the words she so desperately needed to convince him.
“All my life,” she began, “I have been, as you called me the other morning, a seeker. I’ve lived in half a dozen communities, followed the yoga sutras and done zazen, learned a little Chinese and a little more Sanskrit, and sat at the feet of any number of men and women who I thought could teach me something. I have never stayed with one discipline because none of them seemed to me complete: I found them either all ritual or all philosophy, negating the body or discounting the mind, either bogged down in their own tradition or else rootless and shallow, and none of them succeeded in integrating everyday life with the search for enlightenment, or Oneness, or revelation.
“Here, I get the feeling that you are trying to do just that. There’s the day-to-day, gritty reality of raising kids and growing food, but not at the expense of nurturing the flame of spirit. Change is a flourishing plant with strong roots deep in the earth. I would like to be a part of that.”
Ana did not look up from her mug. She had thrown out a number of hooks here, from her linguistic background to the use of loaded words like “ritual” and “integrating” to just plain flattery, and she held her breath to see what he would respond to.
“In what way do you see us—how did you put it? ‘Nurturing the flame of spirit’?” he asked.
A wave of relief swept through her—she was right, fire was central to the belief system of Change. Perhaps on his trip to India Steven had picked up the Zoroastrian dualism of light and dark, good and—but there was no time for that now. She had to keep the tenuous upper hand, and impress Steven with the potentialities of his new convert. Keep it general; keep it provocative. Ana raised her eyes to look, not at Steven, but at the fireplace.
“The Hindu god of fire is Agni, depicted as a quick and brilliant figure with golden hair. He is young and old, eternal and ephemeral, friendly as a domestic fire and ferocious as the flames of sacrifice. The human spirit is the same—you can see it in those kids. Easily quenched but waiting to be rekindled, flaming out of control but wanting to be brought in to the hearth.”
She could spout this noble bullshit for hours; it was one reason why Anne Waverly was such a popular teacher. That she had not actually answered his question was beside the point, to Steven most of all. His face had gone rapt.
“Have you ever walked through flames, Ana?”
“Do you mean actual flames, as in Nebuchadnezzar casting the three young men into the fiery furnace?”
“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. ‘The hair of their heads was not singed, their mantles were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them.’”
“Well, no.”
“I have, Ana. I went in bare feet across a stretch of burning coals, and I was not harmed. On the contrary, I came out a new man.”
Firewalking, Ana thought—found in cultures as diverse as Polynesia and Greece, and closer to home as well among the New Age.
“I saw it once in the desert outside San Diego,” she told him with enthusiasm. “It was unbelievable.”
“Believe, Ana.”
“Oh, I do believe. Maybe not enough to commit the soles of my feet to it.” She laughed in deprecation of her cowardice; he looked at her with pity.
“Perhaps you will,?
?? Steven said portentously. “Perhaps you will.”
“‘The fire will test what sort of work each one has done,’” she returned, venturing into the New Testament to follow his line from Daniel.
“‘When you walk through fire you will not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’”
Isaiah, she noted. Then before he could launch off on the burning bush, Elijah’s chariot, or the fiery Day of the Lord, she asked, injecting her voice with earnest solemnity, “That’s what you’re saying happened with the kids here, isn’t it? That they have been through hell already, and some of them were merely hardened.”
“‘Behold, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction,’” he quoted, adding, “like your young friend Jason has been tried.”
Ana kicked herself mentally for assuming that anything she might do would be overlooked by Steven’s eyes and ears. She hoped to God that she wasn’t blushing.
“He’s a fine young man.”
“I agree,” said Steven in his all-knowing voice. “I have great hopes for that boy.”
CHAPTER 15
Men and women seeking a time of reflection and spiritual renewal have always sought out the empty places. From time immemorial, God has spoken in the desert or in the mountains, away from the hustle of everyday life. Contemplative religious communities have established themselves outside of the towns, in places where the living is harsh, because the simplicity pares things down to the essentials.
There is a tendency to think of all such communities as slightly odd, if not dangerously antisocial, to see their choice of environment as a flight from rather than a seeking out. And it is certainly true, many of the souls who choose to live out in the desert are damaged, even unbalanced.
However, we must guard against our assumptions. A close analysis of the Branch Davidian community in Waco in the period before the FBI and BATF entered the scene reveals it not as a tightly self-isolated group of fanatic believers, but as an independent community with regular interactions with the neighboring individuals and communities. Branch Davidians came and went, held jobs in the area, formed friendships with outsiders. With the raid and the long standoff that followed, a community with roots and branches in the outside world was abruptly truncated, stripped down to an edgy leader and his isolated followers.
The Branch Davidians might eventually have withdrawn from the world on their own decision, but as it was, before that time came they found themselves walled up away from it. They were kept from communication with anyone but the FBI, they were not allowed to come and go, they were forced into an irrevocable choice between staying and leaving, forever abandoning their home and family inside what was now a compound.
Self-chosen isolation may be a positive thing; being cut off from all contact with the outer world is not, and must in a “cult” situation be avoided at all costs,
From the notes of Professor Anne Waverly
In the days that followed, the sun grew marginally warmer, the nights fractionally shorter, and the community considerably more welcoming; slowly, Ana grew to have a deeper understanding of Change and how it functioned.
It did not take her long to verify that Change was indeed built around secret teachings, that initiates worked their way into the higher levels, moving by steps upward into greater knowledge and proximity to Steven. This was represented not only by the necklaces that certain initiates wore and the position each had in the multileveled meditation hall, but it extended to living quarters as well—the room Ana had been given was in a building populated almost entirely by newcomers. The only person in the building who had lived at Change for more than a few months was a young man with a vile temper, who had been demoted by Steven after getting angry at another member and hitting him. The young man stormed around furiously for a couple of weeks before he finally left, to the unvoiced relief of all.
Steven himself lived in the central building over the meditation hall, in the northern quadrant of the upper floor. The other upstairs rooms were all filled with the oldest, closest Change members. Most were men. The building to the northeast of the center was the communal dining hall with the kitchen and several offices, including Steven’s, and upstairs the quarters for the youngest children. Walking around the circle counterclockwise, the next building housed older members on the ground floor and older kids above, then came a building filled with earnest but inexperienced members, and finally the recently completed building where Ana was housed.
It was a bit worrying: Ana had no intention of staying out her promised year, but in a hierarchical organization where secret doctrine is given out in slow degrees, it would not be easy to speed her trip to the inner circle. All she could do was keep her ears and eyes wide open, and hope for a chance to bypass the preliminaries.
It helped, being a teacher, particularly as she convinced the others that she was best placed with the older students where her background of history could be used and her less-complete but still broad familiarity with English literature might assist in preparing the students for the state’s standardized tests. Even in an alternative community, test scores mattered.
Within a couple of weeks, Ana was well on her way to becoming an accepted member of the Change community. She taught her kids, she participated in group meditations, and she listened intently to Steven’s nightly talks.
One morning when Ana went in for breakfast, small, blond Suellen was not at her usual place behind the serving tables. When she did not appear again for lunch, Ana asked casually if anyone had seen her, and received only tight lips in answer. At the very end of dinner the young woman walked in, making an entrance into the dining hall, her hair wet from the shower, her body moving as if it ached all over, a small blister on the inside of her left wrist and the light of a radiant vision in her face. Ana watched thoughtfully as Suellen made her way proudly through the room, nodding regally at the respectful greetings her passage earned. Steven came in a short time later, and over the next ten minutes, Ana noticed three high-ranking Change members approach him, exchange a few words, and then glance at the radiant Suellen with knowing smiles—expressions that were affectionate, experienced, and not the least bit lewd. Whatever test the woman had faced during the day, she had obviously passed it, and Ana would have sworn that it did not involve sleeping with the leader.
Ana added Suellen’s religious glow and the smiles of the others to her growing store of Change evidence. She studied the novels in the library and the paintings on the walls, she asked questions of the older members (most of whom were younger in years than she) and listened for the hidden references and intonations behind their words. She looked at the architecture and the arrangement of the buildings, at the TRANSFORMATION mural over the kitchen and the shape of the meditation hall, at the intriguing, glittering gold sculpture that was suspended over the hall and the way Steven and the higher initiates gazed at it, and she began to have some interesting ideas.
From the first she had seized on Steven’s continual references to heat and fire and the presence of the round suspended fireplace at the center of the meditation hall. Fire was not, she decided, merely one metaphor among many; as a symbol, it lay at the heart of the Change process.
That suspicion had led her to consider the phenomenon of fire worship, which was why she had talked about Agni at the crucial meeting in Steven’s office, and not Shiva or Jesus or any of the other figures she found present in Steven’s theological vocabulary. Steven and his three friends had spent time near Bombay, where they might have met Parsi thought and begun to develop a kind of neo-Zoroastrianism, fire-reverence with the Parsi tendency toward secrecy and an appreciation for the metaphysics of change.
However, wouldn’t she then see more tangible signs of Steven’s preoccupation with fire, like a continuous flame in front of each building or a ritual involving the meditation hall’s fireplace? Still, she remained convinced that fire entered the religious equation in some way.
And then one e
vening during Steven’s talk he used a word that sent a shudder through the ranks of the higher initiates, and it all fell into place.
The chant that night was “Great heat, great hope,” which started out with four beats and ended up being little more than “heat” and “hope” with a brief pause between the words. That night Steven spoke not before the chant, but after. As usual, his subject was change, and specifically some problems the community had run into with a building inspector.
“I want you to regard the rules of the world,” he said, “not as the work of an enemy out to thwart you, but as the vessel for our transformation, and from our personal and communal Transformation to the transformation of the world. If the world brings pressure to bear, if it turns up the heat of tribulation, do not hate it, do not seek to escape it; welcome it as the means whereby change is effected. We are tried in the furnace of affliction, refined by the flames of daily torment. We do not turn from it—no, we enter into it freely, as the alembic of our own Transformation, the power nexus of our change.”
He continued in this vein, but Ana was too busy with her own thoughts to listen. The word “alembic,” the ancient chemical apparatus used to heat and distill, had jolted the people nearest to Steven, all the men and women on the platforms; she had felt their sudden intake of breath and the straightening of their spines, could still see it in their faces and their posture. She could feel it in her own. Because with that single noun it all came together in her mind, and she knew with certainty what Change’s hidden doctrine was all about.
Alchemy.
Good heavens, she thought in amazement—alchemy. Is there nothing new under the sun?
It was, she had to admit, the ultimate in transformational processes, extending beyond the spiritual to transmute base physical matter into pure incorruptible gold, never to be tarnished, more valuable than any other metal. Her knowledge, unfortunately, was sparse: From a hodgepodge of roots and the earliest stages of chemistry, in China and through India and Arabia and finally to Europe, great minds had worked to develop a sort of physical philosophy, a method of intellectual and spiritual inquiry reflected in solid results. Base material such as lead was put through an elaborate series of processes (all of them involving, as Steven had said, heat) that led to its perfection into gold, while the alchemist, struggling over the years to perfect the process, was simultaneously being refined, purified, and ultimately transmuted into a being of untarnishable wisdom and immortality. And didn’t a branch of alchemy seek to make not just gold, but the Philosopher’s Stone—a tincture of immense power capable of changing any base substance it might touch into gold?