"Finding God in All Things"

June 2, 2021

Bonnie Johnson Shurman

Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011

Today is the 10th anniversary of Bonnie's death. I am among the many people who loved her and miss her kind and warm presence. She was an extremely generous woman and expressed her love as wife and mother,  daughter, grandmother and friend, in a way you could count on. 

More than a decade ago, when she was first diagnosed with leukemia, her husband Daniel Shurman told me that she was interested in doing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and asked if I could suggest a book that she could use. She did the Exercises and I was blessed to be her guide. But it was her enormous spiritual gift that allowed her truly embody the Teaching of Jesus, and then to share it with others, just as the Lord asks us.

During the years that her cancer remained in remission, she continued to explore the path that her Lord, through Ignatius, opened. She continued to live her life in prayer, exploring and digging further, following her own inspiration and gifts. This mystical bent was always balanced by the consummate professional, a scholar with common sense. 

She found a link between Ignatius and Julian of Norwich via an informal association of seekers who called themselves “the Friends of God.” She wrote about Julian, Ignatius and the Friends of God when she was studying at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is dated March 8, 2005. 

Thank you, Daniel for being the kind of husband who inspires, and for introducing me to Bonnie, To thank Bonnie for the gift of friendship, I am going to post the paper, “Finding God in All Things,” here.

We miss you, Bonnie. and your gentle presence. We are enormously grateful for the gifts you gave us. May you sing with the angels.

I have given this paper the same title as William Barry’s book: Finding God In All Things, A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius (Barry 1991). I was reading the book when Julian of Norwich was assigned in class. The similarities between Julian’s writings and Ignatius’s were striking to me. Both Julian and Ignatius write of multiple sensory experiences with God occasioned by life-threatening illness. Before I understood that Julian was born 150 years before Ignatius, I considered that her visions, like mine[1], might have been delirious manifestations engendered by Ignatian-style guided meditations. When I realized that she lived long before Ignatius, I abandoned the paper I was writing on the general topic of asceticism to delve deeper into parallels, coincidences, and possible connections between these two late medieval mystics.

The theological proposition of this paper is that the writings of Julian in circa 1400 and the writings of Ignatius circa 1525 are representative of a distinct spirituality: God as Friend. God as Friend is a paradigm shift from the dominant spirituality from the 4th century: Deity of Christ; it is distinct though related to two paradigms which were soon to emerge in the reformation: Salvation by Faith Alone and Incarnational Participation. At the end of this paper I will argue that the paradigm of God as Friend is finding new relevance in our time, hence bringing a renewed interest in both Julian and Ignatius.

In my search for a “social network” connecting Julian and Ignatius, I learned about an informal group called “Friends of God” from one of the many websites devoted to Julian. The name for this “association of pious persons, both ecclesiastical and lay [also men and women], alludes no doubt to John 15:14-15[2] … Friends of God appears to have had its origin in Basle between the years 1339 and 1343, and to have thence extended down the Rhine even as far as the Netherlands” (Walsh 1909). I am skeptical that Julian herself had any direct connection with the informal network of German mystics, but there is indirect evidence at least that many of them had access to her writing. One version of Julian’s Short Text (the so-called “Amherst Manuscript”) also contains writings of Friends’ mystics Marguerite Poerete, Henry Suso, and Jan van Ruusbroec (Holloway 1997). The manuscript had been in the Brigittine Syon Abbey; it was owned by the Lowe family and through them found its way to the Low Countries and Rouen (Holloway 1996). While there is no direct evidence of who might have read it and when, there is enough indirect evidence to conclude that Julian’s ideas were circulating among German mystics following her death circa 1425. The German mystics influenced Ignatius through the Carhusian and former Dominican monk, Ludolf of Saxony (Gieraths 1986). Ignatius is known to have read and re-read a four volume Spanish translation of Ludolf’s Life of Christ and to have been profoundly influenced, even converted, by what he read there (Ignatius 2000, p. xiv; Loyola 2000, p. xiv).

The references to Julian’s writing in this paper come from a “Long Text” version translated from the manuscript found in the British Museum. As I read Revelations of Divine Love (Julian 2002), I noted about sixty passages expressing ideas similar to those found the Spiritual Exercises, far too many passages to discuss here.[3] I am concentrating on five concepts that point parallel notions of God as friend; in particular, I am limiting myself to the best examples that reveal similarities in their views of how people carry on friendship with God various media/modes. I use quotations from the work of each to document my argument that friendship with God is created and maintained through intimate communications which take at least five different forms: imagery, senses, colloquy, consolation/ desolation, and prayer. In the conclusion of the paper, I also point similarities in how they describe the nature of this friendship in their discussions of sin, love, goodness, choice, and the indwelling of God in our nature.

Communication is the sine qua non of any friendship. To have a concept of friendship with God, therefore requires that there be some form of media which constitutes that communication. For both Julian and Ignatius, imagery is the most important media and the Passion is the most important topic of that imagery. In examining Julian and Ignatius’s imagery of Jesus’ Passion, such in the illustrative passages below, it is easy to dismiss their perspective on friendship. After all “Body of Christ” imagery was a common theme of medieval piety yet friendship with God was not. I have little knowledge of other writers in the “Body of Christ” genre, so I cannot say that the friendship imagery of Julian and Ignatius is unique. What I observe in their imagery, however, is its intimacy. Both show intimacy with Jesus’ body; this use of imagery signals closeness, friendship.

… All the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefore, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ as it was shewed (Julian 2002, p.). 

… Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus hear me. Within Thy wounds hid me (Ignatius 2000, p. xlv).

Simply imagining another in a prayerful way can also create a close relationship with the one imagined with the need for conversation as we typically understand that term. A few months ago my husband and I were contacted by a friend to provide direction to on-line medical information for a friend of his with a rare bone marrow disease. We started to email with both Jim and his wife about Jim’s illness and potential resources in Palo Alto. Mostly we prayed intensely for Jim and also for his wife; we never spoke with them even by phone. When Jim died unexpectedly from a heart attack, both Daniel and I were devastated; we still cry at the thought of Jim. We had lost a dear friend, one whom we knew only through imagery, email, and prayer. It was a dramatic Julian-Ignatian lesson for me: I felt so close to this person and that closeness was entirely the product of my imagining his circumstances and my daily prayers for him. Knowing Jim in this way helped me to experience God in a fresh way; I learned how I can know God without human encounters just as I had known Jim without these encounters.

Imagery in Julian and Ignatius is not only visual, it is also multi-sensory.

I HAD, in part, touching, sight, and feeling in three properties of God, in which the strength and effect of all the Revelation standeth (Julian 2002, p. 197). And then shall we, with His sweet grace, in our own meek continuant prayer come unto Him now in this life by many privy touchings of sweet spiritual sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear it (Julian 2002, p. 90). 

The Fifth contemplation will consist in applying the five senses to the matter. … seeing in imagination the persons, in contemplating and mediating in detail the circumstances in which they are… hear what they are saying… smell the infinite fragrance and taste the infinite sweetness of the divinity … touch, for example by embracing and kissing the place where the persons stand (Ignatius 2000, p. 45).

Communicating with one’s Godfriend goes beyond merely experiencing God through ones imagination and senses; both Julian and Ignatius converse directly with God. Throughout the Julian text, she is posing questions to God, and God is answering her, for example: “AND thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well…”(Julian 2002, p. 61); the result of this is conversational. Ignatius uses the term “colloquy” to refer to conversations with God (and also with Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit on occasions): “The colloquy is made by speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another” (Ignatius 2000, p. 24). These two examples exemplify a pattern of “shewing” vs “exercise” that I find over and over as a distinction between these two books: Julian shows her communication with God; Ignatius instructs the maker of the exercises to perform these same kinds of communications. Thus, “revelation” in Julian becomes “exercise” in Ignatius.

God has special kinds of communication with Julian that I would call, following Ignatius, “consolations” and “desolations.” In Ignatian spirituality, consolidations and desolations are the movements of the spirit—“internal movements” by which we can discern God’s will in our lives. Those making the exercises are taught how to listen or feel for these movements and thereby to guide their lives in accord with God’s will. Again, we see that Julian experiences these interior movements but makes no methodical use of them. Ignatius’s biography describes how he initially experienced them much as Julian did and then learned to put them to use in his own communications with God.

AND after this He shewed a sovereign ghostly pleasance in my soul. I was fulfilled with the everlasting sureness, mightily sustained without any painful dread. This feeling was so glad and so ghostly that I was in all peace and in rest, that there was nothing in earth that should have grieved me. …This lasted but a while, and I was turned and left to myself in heaviness, and weariness of my life that scarcely I could have patience to live. This Vision was shewed me, according to mine understanding, sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man’s soul, a man is sometime left to himself (Julian 2002). 

God alone can give consolation to the soul without any previous cause. It belongs solely to the Creator to come into a soul, to leave it, to act upon it, to draw it wholly to the love of His Divine Majesty (Ignatius 2000, p. 119 section 330). ...When one is in desolation, he should be mindful that God has left him to his natural powers to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy in order to try him. For though God has taken from him the abundance of fervor and overflowing love and the intensity of His favors, nevertheless, he has sufficient grace for eternal salvation (Ignatius 2000, p. 116, section 320).

On the topic of prayer, Julian and Ignatius could not be more similar. Yet, it is not as simple to point to parallel passages as with the preceding topics. For them, prayer is not just a “doing” – not just a message we send to God, in the form of a petition, for example. Rather, prayer is a way of being in which ones very foundation, ones “ground” is God and therefore prayer is fitting ourselves to that Ground of our being. Julian puts it this way:

OUR Lord God willeth that we have true understanding, and specially in three things that belong to our prayer. The first is: by whom and how that our prayer springeth. By whom, He sheweth when He saith: I am [the] Ground; and how, by His Goodness: for He saith first: It is my will. The second is: in what manner and how we should use our prayer; and that is that our will be turned unto the will of our Lord, enjoying: and so meaneth He when He saith: I make thee to will it. The third is that we should know the fruit and the end of our prayers: that is, that we be oned and like to our Lord in all things; and to this intent and for this end was all this lovely lesson shewed. And He will help us, and we shall make it so as He saith Himself; Blessed may He be! For this is our Lord’s will, that our prayer and our trust be both alike large. For if we trust not as much as we pray, we do not full worship to our Lord in our prayer, and also we tarry and pain our self (Julian 2002).

“Grounded in God” has several implications. First, that prayer is about the will of God and our place in that will. From this the next implication, only implicit in the statement above, that God is eternally present and has already “answered” our prayers in our very existence, our salvation, and in all that we enjoy: “The first is our noble and excellent making; the second, our precious and dearworthy again-buying; the third, all-thing that He hath made beneath us, [He hath made] to serve us, and for our love keepeth it. Then signifieth He thus, as if He said: Behold and see that I have done all this before thy prayers; and now thou art, and prayest me” (Julian 2002). Julian cautions us not to go looking for this or that way that God might have answered our small petitions, but to understand that God is answering even the prayers we have not yet asked. So how then should we pray? We should pray that “our will be turned unto the will of our Lord.” The true end of our petitions is that we become like God, indeed that we are at one with God.

William Barry describes the same understanding in Ignatius in his chapter entitled, “Grounded in God: The Principle and Foundation” (Ignatius 2000, pp. 33ff.). God is up to one action; we can experience the creative action of God which is always at work (Barry 1991, p. 39); Ignatius draws out the implications of our place in God’s one action in the Principle and Foundation: “We must make ourselves indifferent to all created things… Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a short life. … Our one desire and choice should be what is conductive to the end for which we are created (Ignatius 2000, p. 12, section 23). In other words, it is about God’s will; our prayer is our participation in that will. We are engaged in the world of God’s creating and God is already answering the prayers we have not yet made.

We have seen in both of these late medieval mystics a central concern with our relationship with God and how that relationship is continuously created through various media. The relationship is one of love. While both mystics write extensively on sin, theirs is not the sin of the medieval church or of Jonathan Edwards. Indeed, Julian comes as close as one might in her day to saying that her Church is misguided in its notion of sin and salvation (Julian 2002, p. 104). Ignatius’ first week of the Exercises is devoted to examining one’s sin, but the point is not to berate or belittle the maker of the Exercises. Rather, the grace of the first week is the experience of love. “Ignatius expects that God will reveal our sins in such a way that we will actually be consoled. We are to have an increase of faith, hope, and love, be moved to tears of sorrow for our sin, but also to tears of love for a God who has been so good to us” (Barry 1991, p. 51). The heart of the message from both Julian and Ignatius is the goodness of God, the love of God, and the freedom which God gives us in the hope that we will choose to put God at the center of our lives, and participate in God’s mission.

Both mystics are saying that we must look in the world and in ourselves to find God. Their piety is finding God in all things, starting with finding ourselves IN God. “For our Soul is so deep-grounded in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it is oned” (Julian 2002, p. 133). This is such a contemporary message; it is not surprising that both mystics are being read more in our time than in any time of the past, including their own.

I have argued here that both Julian and Ignatius provide us with kataphatic paths to relationship with God as friend, one in which we are constantly called to God’s mission, but never coerced or threatened. We are called to examine our own sins, not the sins of others; we communicate with God who already God loves us and forgives us already. This is a contemporary theme. These are mystics for our time.

Notes:

1 Since this is not a “personal reflection paper,” I will not discuss further my own experiences. Suffice to say that the parallels I find in Julian’s writings to my own experiences were the motivation for my choosing this topic.

2 “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father.”

3 References to “Pages” in Julian are to the original manuscript pages; references to Ignatius are to pages in the Vintage-Random House version with section numbers referring to Ignatius original sections.

References

Barry, W. A. (1991). Finding God In All Things A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius. Notre Dame, IL, Ave Maria Press.

Gieraths, G. M. (1986). "Life in Abundance: Meister Eckhart and the German Dominican Mystics of the 14th Century." Spirituality Today 38 (August): Supplementary Book.

Holloway, J. B. (1996) The Westminster Cathedral/Abbey Manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love. http://www.umilta.net/westmins.html.

Holloway, J. B. (1997) Godfriends: The Continental Medieval Mystics. http://www.umilta.net/godfrien.html.

Ignatius (2000). The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. New York, Random House.

Julian (2002). Revelations of Divine Love. Grand Rapids, MI, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Walsh, R. (1909). Friends of God. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online Edition, K. Knight. 6.

The Realm of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius

I was a Jesuit for eleven years and have some experience with the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. I did the thirty-day retreat in the novitiate and a 19th annotation retreat when deciding whether to be ordained or leave the Society. Finally, a friend, a secular Jew and a man of deep compassion, asked me to lead his Episcopalian wife through them while she underwent treatment for leukemia. This is that story.

This last experience was profound and, in many ways, signaled that the Exercises, as Jesuit discipline, had escaped the shelter and confines of the Order that Ignatius founded and had been home to them for 500 years.

Daniel Shurman’s wife, Bonnie Johnson, had been diagnosed with Leukemia. She was going to be in isolation for at least 30 days while her immune system was destroyed so that she could receive a bone transplant. She decided to undertake the Exercises while being forced to be virtually alone.

Thirty days became almost 80 days and included several near-death experiences. I suspected that she had a very grave diagnosis and that the chances of her survival might be slim.  Her doctors confirmed this as the treatment progressed. This might be more like hospice work than the Exercises as I had experienced them. 

It’s a given that a director of the Exercises will have his or her own director.  I was then and still am on the fringes of the Catholic community. I reached out for backup and consulted with several Jesuits but decided to use my Zen teacher as my guide rather than any of the directors with whom I’d talked. This was, I suppose, a result of my own needs, but the level of discomfort among the Jesuits I spoke with about dealing with death and the process of meditation was startling.  Another factor was my gut told me the best way to do the Exercises exactly as Ignatius indicated (or as best as I could), without any interpretation or adaptation, and just allow whatever grace was available to work through on its own.  This is how my teacher and I work with the koans, which are more recondite than the Exercises, traversing language, culture, and time very distant from our own. 

Most of the Jesuits I talked with tinkered with the Exercises, substituting their more modern, enlightened take on Ignatius’s straightforward and rigorous approach. It’s impossible to avoid interpreting, adding layers of meaning. Sometimes, this helps, but more often, it gets in the way. My work on the koans leads me to believe there is a level of work that’s like hitting gold—beyond experience and interpretation. It is unpredictable.

In Bonnie’s case, it was a given that she’d interpret. She was a woman of extraordinary accomplishment both in her personal life and her intellectual life, a leader in her Episcopal community as well as someone whose work was highly regarded in the world of Silicon Valley, where she explored the effects of technology from the human side, both in product development and user interface. But even during the strenuous medical treatment, she always returned to the sequence of meditations, the specified number of prayers and meditations, and the examen, as closely as possible to Ignatius’s recommendation.

When she was finally released from Stanford Hospital, the medical team told her that they’d done about all they could and that she ought to go home and get her affairs in order. It was unexpected when her blood indicators showed that she was disease-free after a few months—almost miraculous. During what is called “The Election” in the Exercises, she looked at ordination in the Episcopal church. Within a few months, she began a three-year program at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, worked on the connections between the exercises and the mysticism of Julian of Norwich, asked the well-known author Bill Barry, S.J. to be her spiritual director, edited one of his books about friendship with God, began a career as a lay preacher, and worked as a chaplain in nursing homes on North Carolina where she and Daniel lived on the outer banks. It was more than eleven years before her cancer returned with a vengeance, and she died. Alas, there was no “real” miracle to use for canonization—just the total miracle of life itself.

Although I am still skeptical about the Exercises and what they do, that mindset exists more in the realm of speculation, which is where it should be. I do think/know that Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises come from another source, which is precisely where to look. 

When I seek inspiration to work for justice and make a difference, I reread Alinsky’s rules for radicals to get a template. When I want to be inspired by the life of Jesus and search there to discern the Will of the Creator, I turn towards the Exercises. This gift from Ignatius and the Spirit has escaped the bounds of his organization. Exactly right again. 

This is Bonnie’s story.

Bonnie’s Writing:

"Finding God in All Things"

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2021/06/finding-god-in-all-things.html

Bonnie Johnson Shurman

Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011

For more of my writing on Father Ignatius’s Exercises, here is a list:

Newsflash! Pope announces changes to the Spiritual Exercises

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2024/01/big-changes-for-jesuit-spirituality.html

Looking at The Particular Examen of Saint Ignatius with Fresh Eyes

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2022/01/looking-at-particular-examen-of-saint.html

Occam’s Razor of Emotional Discernment

Novacula Occami

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2021/09/occams-razor-of-emotional-discernment.html

Head versus Heart, Faith and Reason, Reason and the Emotions

The Discernment of Spirits in the Spiritual Exercises

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2021/10/head-versus-heart-faith-and-reason.html

The Dynamism of Desire, A Book Conversation

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-dynamism-of-desire-book-conversation.html

Issan Dorsey and Some Undisclosed Secrets of the AIDS Epidemic

What follows is an interview I did with Marlin Marynick for his book, Undisclosed: Secrets of the AIDS Epidemic.

1/27/2012

I'm a gay man in San Francisco. I've been living here since 1974. I'm a former Jesuit—I’d been in Berkeley studying theology—and when I came out, I stayed. I did all the crazy kind of things that people do when they first come out—particularly the men of my generation who were just beginning to do the things we were really capable of in spite of all the discrimination against us. I drove a cab for a number of years, and I started a wood shop, perfect for a guy with a degree in theology, but I didn't really feel much like practicing any religion. When I met Harvey Milk, I joined the fight for gay rights. I had a partner, and we tried to build a life here in gay Mecca.

Then, all of a sudden in the mid-80’s, our friends began dying, huge numbers. . .first it was called gay cancer, then it was called GRID. . .nobody really knew what it was, but it was terrifying. Towards 1987-88 I felt that I had to do something, although this was also a process of me overcoming my own fears, of dealing with them. I had many friends that were diagnosed, and everybody was dealing with the fear, the loss and the not-knowing what we were really dealing with.

In 1988 I met a gay Buddhist priest, Issan Dorsey. Friends had told me that he was remarkable guy, but my first impressions were that he was actually rather ordinary, far more effeminate than any of my gay friends, and not in any way “spiritual” as I understood the word.

Issan, “Tommy” Dorsey, did have an unusual path to a Zen. He had been a professional drag queen, and a heavy drug abuser, which was not terribly out of the ordinary for gay San Franciscans 40 years ago. He was also a very bright, funny, human being, and he had just started an AIDS hospice. (He himself died at the Hospice of the disease on September 6, 1990—he’d contracted HIV from his partner, James). I was blessed to be able to be with him during the last few years of his life, and helped him create Maitri Home and Hospice for People with HIV.

I had first moved into the Zen center on Hartford Street to practice meditation, to get away from a relationship that was ending, and to put some perspective around all that. Very quickly after I packed my bags, my partner and I closed our business, we made and sold furniture, and ended our relationship. So there I was living in this Zen center-hospice, and I started doing some general carpentry work, fixing bathrooms, getting rooms ready for the men who would live with us. It just was the next thing to do, right in front of me. This quickly lead to finding money to pay for the building materials; then more organizational stuff; and by 1990, I followed Steve Allen as executive director of the hospice. Looking back, it was something that my Jesuit training, and everything, prepared me for though I didn't have much experience with non-profits and no experience in health care.

Back then people with HIV-AIDS died quickly after being diagnosed. . . 3 weeks, 6 weeks, a few months, perhaps a little bit longer in rare cases. It felt like we were picking up bodies off the street. Some months 100 men died in our neighborhood, the Castro. You'd walk down the street, pass someone you knew who looked pretty healthy. Then you'd see him 2 weeks later and he’d aged 40 years. Within a year or two I said to myself "Oh my god, where did my friends go." No one knew what to do, or how to behave around those infected—these were friends. Of course a lot of us were afraid of catching the disease, because no one knew how it was transmitted, although we had our suspicions, no one really knew. No one knew if it was poppers, or kissing, or if it really was sex and drugs and rock and roll. That didn't appear on the horizon for a while because no one wanted to give those things up. Sexual freedom was part of our emancipation, or that’s what we though. Denial was a big part of the epidemic’s horrifying spread through the community.

Issan said that the only real thing that we could do was to take care of what was in front of us, take care of life as it presented itself. He said HIV was like a guest who’d come and knocked at the door, and couldn’t be turned away. When one member of the small meditation community, JD, became so sick that his partner Pierre could no longer care for him, despite the misgivings of some in the community—Issan could be very firm, even stubborn, when he was sure of the next thing he had to do—he moved JD into the bedroom next to his. And he began looking after his immediate needs, which included martinis after evening meditation, spicy hot dogs, and cable TV. It was a very simple concept—just take care of people in the most basic way and sustain a normal life for as long as possible. And be as happy as you could—no matter what.

And then something unexpected happened, JD did not die quickly. The symptoms of the disease worsened, he could no longer walk, was bed-ridden, but when a supporter gave Maitri a motorized wheelchair, JD became a teenager with a hot rod, missing meals, staying out past curfew. He found a new boyfriend who was also disabled, and they began to spend the night together. We moved him from the second floor to the street level front room of the second building where he held court. Four or five other men would be in his room watching campy movies on VCR at all hours. He stocked his small refrigerator intended for medications with soda and beer, and in the front window a hydroponic wheatgrass farm, for health, of course. All this really tested some zennish sensibilities, and the CNA staff. But despite complaints, Issan remained firm in his support for JD. When JD returned one day from Oakland—he’d taken BART across the Bay—with an iguana, no one believed that he would actually take care of it himself. He did. In fact he smuggled his pet onto a plane when he went back to Florida to spend his last days with his mother. The story of the lizard squirming around under his shirt while JD locked himself in toilet at 30,000 feet became the stuff of legend. I think that JD’s story is also a real example of what kind of life is possible when your guests are not bound by some rigid rules for how you expect guests to behave.

Even if people couldn’t see the compassion in what Issan was doing, most everyone trusted him enough to give money. Another friend of his bought the building next to our small Victorian house, and we bought back the lease. That gave us rooms for another 5 people. Within a year we had 8 beds for people with HIV-AIDS plus 6 people to take care of them, Issan, Phil Whalen, a zen priest, as was Steve Allen, and his wife, Angelique, Michael Jamvold, myself, and David Bullock. We shared a life together—we meditated, had fun. We worked hard and cried.

Maitri was a ragtag operation. We learned, and we would create a Buddhist hospice piece by piece. I began to spend time helping people get their paperwork arranged for the end of their life, getting everything straightened out with their partners, and their families, taking care of the kinds of things that come up towards the end of life. I asked social workers and lawyers to help and everyone I asked stepped forward.

What also started to become clear, we were charting new territory. We were the only Zen center in the United States to put meat, chicken and sausages on our vegetarian, Zen, table. People with HIV needed protein. There were a lot of other things that broke rules, both in Zen terms, and hospice-wise. When we had to take care of getting the drugs adjusted so that people could have a fairly comfortable life, we got help from Visiting Nurses and Hospice (Steve Allen worked out a contract with them to provide a full-time nurse and certified nursing attendants using moneys already allocated for care from the city). As I started to investigate how we could get money for hospice, I discovered that for most insurance and federal funding, people had to have a 6 month diagnosis to receive assistance and they couldn't take any drugs which would prolong life. Issan said that’s crazy because he wanted people to live and enjoy life as much as they could for as long as they could. There was a new, experimental drug called Foscarnet which prevented, or at least retarded, blindness caused by CMV retinitis. It had to be given intravenously. The nurses from hospice were not allowed to do that with hospice patients so I recruited a small group of volunteers who learned how to administer it. Then several patients wanted to sign up for drug trails of the new HIV drugs that began to appear. It would probably have been prohibited in more formal hospice settings, but somehow, I convinced VNA to not report any person at Maitri who enrolled in a drug trial.

The partner of my friend Michael who was dying called Maitiri “the house of death” when I suggested that he move Michael in. I was pretty offended. I saw what we were doing as creating a house of life. While I was trying to figure out how to keep the cable TV from being shut off, and lamb stew on the table, there were times I thought I was running “animal house.” There were lots of humorous, funny things going on all the time. Yes, people were dying, in the 2 + years I was there 82 people died in those 8 beds, and I was with almost every one of them. I won’t deny that it tested my defenses, that it was trying, and stressful work. There was always a poignancy about life at Maitri. But when death is simply part of life, it becomes easier to sustain what we think of as normal life.

Bit by bit, we did put something together, and what we created is now the longest surviving AIDS hospice, “home and hospice for people with AIDS,” in the city. The morbidity rate from HIV/AIDS has gone down enormously, thank god. Only a few people actually die in the hospice now, so the current staff deals with things like drug addiction, and adherence to medical protocol for the antiviral drugs, respite care, things that Issan would have encouraged us to do to make life as normal and happy for as long as it lasts. What we did in the early days of the epidemic and what continues to be done now is really extraordinary.

By the time he died, I realized that Issan was a truly extraordinary man. He had more than an extremely funny sense of humor. He’d worn a skirt, or as he used to say, "I still wear a skirt but I renounced the heels." His speech was always in entirely plain language. And he really was a Zen master. When this drag queen, substance abuser par excellence, started to sit in meditation with Susuki Roshi, he sat down and looked at the bottom of his feet, and said to himself, oh my god, they are dirty. . . and he started to clean up from drugs, and meditate. He also discovered what was important for his own life. In official Zen, he went as high as any man can go. For me he was an absolutely extraordinary, terrific human being.

Naranjo, Ichazo, and the School

info from the underground. 

I discovered this recounting of the first encounter of Claudio Naranjo, Oscar Ichazo, and the School online. “The Source” calls themselves ocean-moonshine. There were the usual, expected disclaimers, anonymity, and hints. All very gnostic and esoteric. No, you cannot find the authors, but they are apparently real people. They might appear at some point — my guess is when certain conditions have been fulfilled or the moon is in the Seventh House. Their account of the esoteric origin of the Enneagram/Enneagon covers the first encounter of Naranjo and Ichazo, and that pivotal Training in Arica, Chile in July 1970, when seventy-three Americans, mainly from the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, worked with Ichazo for 10 months. 

The witnesses provide some documentation. They attest to specific incidents, including some of the most peculiar stories of this legendary unfolding of the storied 9-pointed figure. I worked with Dr. Naranjo in his Berkeley SAT group from the Fall of 1972 until he stopped teaching in 1976. I also knew several of the other Arica/Esalen participants. I can attest that the narrative corresponds with what I heard from Claudio and the other Enneagram pioneers with very few deviations.

I have reproduced the text exactly as I found it. I have included the URL and the email address. They invited readers to share their work on Facebook and X, which I took as permission to reproduce it here. The only alteration I made was to increase the font size and to link the two parts together. I found it impossible to decipher in their online format.

This site was created for the benefit of anyone interested. The authors remain anonymous, but can sometimes be found.

This site is non-profit, educational, and informational. The material presented is a result of the authors’ personal interpretation of the subject matter. We are in no way affiliated with any “official School” relating to the Enneagram.

Contact: ocean(dot)moonshine(at)gmail….

Enjoy.

Copyright © ocean-moonshine.net and its authors 2005, 2006.

Lluta Geoglyphs - imagen #1

• +56 2 2570 86Contact 

Part 1

Chilean-born psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo was living and working in the U.S. in the late 1960s when he first heard of Oscar Ichazo. Several of his former patients from Chile wrote to him to tell of the impressive experiences they were having with this new teacher.

Several years before, back in Chile, Naranjo had developed an “extended family” of his private psychiatric patients, bringing them together in a group that became interested in spiritual questions as well as ordinary psychological ones.

The techniques that Naranjo was using with this group of about 60 people included meditation, Gestalt therapy, various readings, and “psychedelic” sessions.

At the time in Chile, it was not a legal problem for Naranjo to be using psychedelics as part of his official activities. Besides the therapeutic use of psychedelics, he also produced some scientific studies of these substances. For instance, his study of the nature and content of the experiences produced by Ayahuasca– a hallucinogenic concoction used by South American shamans– can be found in Hallucinogens and Shamanism, ed. by Michael Harner (1974). Under the influence of these psychedelics, several of Naranjo’s patients– many of them very educated, intelligent and talented people– reported intense, life-changing experiences of “complete integration” and “total centeredness” experiences which they were never able to recapture– until some years later, that is, when they met Ichazo.

It is interesting to note here that some of Oscar Ichazo’s earliest mystical experiences also reportedly came from using Ayahuasca (a.k.a. Yage) with the shamans of South America when he was a teenager.

When Naranjo left to work in the U.S., these former patients somehow made contact with the Bolivian-born Ichazo who was teaching in places like Santiago and Arica, Chile. They reported to Naranjo that, after just a few days and weeks of working with Ichazo, they were having drug-free experiences of the same nature and intensity as their former psychedelic experiences. They were having these experiences more often and with even more intensity. One man reported that his lifelong feelings of anxiety had disappeared, and he was– purely incidentally and without any intention on his part– having telepathic experiences as well.

According to Naranjo, Ichazo was described to him by the students as a Sufi teacher. At the time, Naranjo was involved with another Sufi group, one under the direction of Idries Shah, and he was very interested in the possible Sufi connection with the Sarmoun, the secret society which was reputed to be the source of Gurdjieff’s teaching.

Naranjo first made contact with Ichazo by letter. In the letters he received, Naranjo noticed an authoritarian streak he did not like.

Strange events surrounded Naranjo’s early contacts with Ichazo. He has told the following story: In June of 1969, Naranjo was giving a series of lectures at the University of Miami. After the lectures were over, he was supposed to return home, but instead stayed in Miami for a few more days, something he wasn’t planning on doing. The hotel he was staying at was too expensive, so he asked the first person he met if there was a cheaper hotel, and checked into the cheaper one. No one knew he was there.

On the day he checked into the new hotel, he called home to let his wife know he was still in Miami. She said there was a wire from Ichazo, telling Naranjo to contact such-and-such a person at the Mcalister hotel on that same exact day. This was the precise hotel at which Naranjo had just arrived.

Instead of calling the person immediately, Naranjo had a shower and a nap, then woke up and did a little writing. Finally, he picked up the phone to call the person, and just then the other person had picked up the phone at the same time, and they were immediately connected. Naranjo asked Ichazo about this and was told, “These things happen when you are on the path.”

Naranjo knew these coincidences as a well-known occurrence in Sufism. The teacher gives the student “tadjalli”, which is sometimes expressed in terms of coincidences. Students are often asked to keep a journal of these coincidences. Naranjo didn’t know what these coincidences meant, but just took them as one more hint that “something is going on.”

Naranjo’s doubts about Ichazo increased even more after they first met in 1969. He describes Ichazo in this first meeting as being overly-polite, diplomatic, and engaged in many formalities, all of which made Naranjo very suspicious. Overall, Naranjo reacted negatively to Ichazo as a person, considering him manipulative and unimpressive, seemingly without much talent and not even particularly intelligent. This negative impression was also shared by some others who had accompanied Naranjo.

However, Naranjo went through some experiences with Ichazo that he considered surprising and convincing, of a different nature than the ordinary.

Some of these experiences were through direct contact with Ichazo; for instance, through a technique called “direct transmission of consciousness” which Ichazo calls by the Spanish phrase “traspaso.” This technique involves two people sitting in front of each other staring directly into each other’s eyes and, through certain meditative and ritual processes, they can achieve a shared consciousness. Interestingly, Naranjo later began using this technique under the name “meditation in relation”. When Ichazo learned of this, he issued a scathing denunciation of what he considered Naranjo’s distorted imitation. (see Ichazo’s Letters to the School, 1988)

At the time, Naranjo connected the Traspaso technique with the Sufi concept of “baraka”. Naranjo describes baraka as a subtle but palpable energy which can be passed on. In the area of spiritual development, Naranjo says, nothing can be done without baraka; anything effective is more than technique– it’s technique plus a person that has baraka. This subtle quality can be transmitted through direct contact with a person, place or object which carries the energy. Ichazo equated baraka with “the holy spirit” and said that he was capable of elevating others through the strength of his own baraka. He spoke more about baraka in a discussion of the Two Ways: the Way of Grace and the Way of the Law.

The Way of the Law is the Way of the Prophets; it is a long and hard Way.

But what Ichazo claimed to be offering was a Way of Grace, investing a tremendous energy of baraka. Baraka is something which is usually given only in proportion to effort. However, in these circumstances, it would be given freely in large amounts to make things easier. Ichazo said: “Our work is exceptional in that I am trained and entitled to do much work for others…” Nothing is done without work, and Ichazo implied that he could put in his energy somehow to facilitate this process. In Naranjo’s opinion, this method did seem to work experientially, although he did not know how it was done.

Sometimes Naranjo went into unusual ecstatic states. Other times he experienced what Ichazo calls “satori” states. This “satori” is not necessarily the same as the “satori” described by some Eastern traditions. According to Naranjo, in Ichazo’s system, “satori” is a very intensified experience of the here and now– a crystal clear state where thought dies down. This idea of satori caused some confusion later on when the Arica school advertised that, by using Ichazo’s methods, people could attain satori in a few weeks.

Naranjo was familiar with some of the states he was experiencing, but had many more of them while working with Ichazo. Some states came from certain exercises.

Naranjo was left with the impression that Ichazo’s background was enormous, his “bag of tricks” incredible. He had apparently received training in every esoteric system imaginable. His knowledge of chakra yoga, for instance, impressed Naranjo.

Chakra yoga is not part of the program, but Ichazo would use it with people with whom he felt it could be useful. Naranjo had some background in chakra yoga, but didn’t tell Ichazo this. However, Ichazo immediately detected that Naranjo had done work on chakras, saying Naranjo’s higher chakras were well-developed, but his lower ones needed a lot of work. He said that Naranjo had a “piece of cork” in his solar plexus…

Ichazo proposed to do chakra yoga with Naranjo. Naranjo told him he thought they were going to learn Sufism, not Chakra Yoga. Ichazo said that it was true, that in most cases the imagery of chakra yoga is more geared towards the Eastern mind and is obsolete to the West, not what the West needs. This conversation once again indicates that Naranjo believed that Ichazo was teaching Sufism and Ichazo did not contradict him.

They discussed yoga work and Naranjo had an impression of Ichazo’s tremendous knowledge. On the third day of yoga work, Naranjo went into one of the most impressive explosions he’s ever experienced. He describes this as streams of electricity running through him, with cosmic visions producing tears and laughter.. After 10 minutes of this, he wanted to stop because he couldn’t handle it…

But the next day Ichazo began putting him off. Ichazo never again talked of chakras until a few days later when Naranjo finally confronted him. Ichazo excused himself and they began doing some chakra work again.

Ichazo gave Naranjo an exercise of listening to Sufi music with certain chakras, but then stopped him because he said Naranjo was in too analytical a state and it was useless. They tried again and failed again… and that was the last time they ever worked with the chakras. But Naranjo was very convinced by his experiences, although Ichazo didn’t give them much importance.

Ichazo taught Naranjo breathing exercises which were similar to Pranayama, but had some differences. Naranjo also learned some movements, which didn’t cause far-out states, but which were impressive. It is very likely that these movements are, in essence, those presented in Ichazo’s book Master Level Exercises and known in Arica as Psychocalisthenics. These exercises are a combination of breathing techniques, visualizations and some physical movements drawn from Yoga, air force exercises and ballet. In addition, Naranjo may be referring to consciousness-raising techniques Ichazo developed, like Kinerhythm, which Ichazo claims is a synthesis of some techniques he learned from his time with Sufis in the Pamir, north of Afghanistan in Central Asia.

Naranjo heard 40 lectures by Ichazo, and these convinced Naranjo that Ichazo was trained in the same school as Gurdjieff, i.e., by the Sarmoun. Naranjo said Ichazo was the first person he had heard who was giving further info along the same lines as G.

In Ichazo’s system, the concepts of Essence and Personality, central to what Gurdjieff conveyed, had been worked out in a great amount of detail. The working of personality is broken down into 5 lower Centers (which Naranjo explicitly states is related to the chakras) and each is understood in terms of working on an Enneagram. Ichazo’s use of the Enneagram further convinced Naranjo that he was connected with Gurdjieff and the Sarmoun.

Apparently, Ichazo was primarily teaching the psychological level of Protoanalysis at that time. According to Naranjo, Ichazo would diagnose a person in about 1 hour, giving a chart of the personality structure: a general map of the workings of the Centers, involving about 45 psychological entities, like the workings of Fear and Pride and Appetite, desire for Union, Self-preservation, etc. The way these entities interlocked with each other was different from individual to individual, and there are practically countless possibilities, permutations, relationships between all these. Each person has a certain flow of energy, flow of events; one psychological entity leads to another and another, etc, and this is the way our personal machine works.

Ichazo would give a map of this and certain ways of working with it to “clean” this lower level. He did this with Naranjo. In basically 8 hours of talking, Ichazo told Naranjo almost everything about Naranjo’s personality without asking any questions or knowing anything about Naranjo. They had previously interacted, but Naranjo says he had been mostly passive: not talking about himself, not behaving with much response, mostly just attending to Ichazo (although he did meditate in his presence). It apparently did not occur to Naranjo that by acting in the way he mentions, he was revealing his personality (Naranjo is known to be an Enneatype 5). Naranjo was not sure of the extent of Ichazo’s telepathic abilities, but noticed that Ichazo did seem very effective in finding out a person’s inner state, in “tuning-in” to people.

Ichazo accurately mentioned almost all the things Naranjo had seen about himself in the past in various therapies and episodes of self-analysis. Ichazo summarized these aspects, presenting them panoramically and integrating one with another, showing how they fit together. According to Naranjo, it all gave the impression of a very coherent science. In fact, he once heard Ichazo mention that what had impressed him (Ichazo) about this teaching when he first encountered it was its scientific quality, its technical quality; there was not much left to intuition or improvisation.

Phrased in this way, it seems clear that Ichazo was implying that he had received this teaching and did not develop it himself. However, the implication is not so clear, since Ichazo has asserted that, after years of both exoteric and esoteric study, he received this wisdom through using techniques for attaining higher consciousness; in such a state he was able to discover the “science” of the 108 enneagons which constitute the Arica theory.

It should be noted that, in the early 1970’s, John Lilly was already reporting that Ichazo claimed to have received his knowledge from the Archangel Metatron and the Green Qutb. These are technical terms which require some background in esoteric doctrine and which can easily lead to bizarre interpretations.

Briefly, Ichazo describes “Archangel Metatron” as a faculty of the Higher Mind which allows a person to have special knowledge of a Divine nature. It is an archetypal figure representing “the Presence of God”, a state of consciousness in which the Unity of God is remembered without interruption. The Arica system was produced under this state of consciousness.

In connection with this, it should be mentioned that Metatron is traditionally associated with the highest levels of the Kabbalah, and in fact is said to be the bridge by which the knowledge of the Kabbalah was transmitted to Abraham. Among Kabbalists, Metatron is known as “the Angel of the Presence”, and associated with the Crown Sephirah, which is sometimes designated as “the Vast Countenance.” Interestingly, the Sufi Enneagram, according to Laleh Bakhtiar, is traditionally known as the Sign of the Presence of God (or the Divine Presence) and is also known as the symbol of the Face of God.

The Green Qutb is a phrase Ichazo derived from Sufi doctrine. Among the Sufis, Qutb means “center”, and is used to designate the Axis or Magnetic Pole around which the entire Sufi enterprise revolves, often represented as a living person who is considered the Chief of the Sufis. The color green is associated with the legendary Khidr, or Elias, a spiritual force that manifests in the material world in different forms and is responsible for aiding humanity wherever there is a true need. Green is also the color that most powerfully stimulates the Lataif, faculties of higher consciousness similar to the Hindu chakras.

In Ichazo’s explanation, contact with the Green Qutb implies connection with higher forces on a more subtle plane which are responsible for the evolutionary development of humanity to a higher spiritual level. Through the stabilizing of an ego-less state, an individual or group is able to surrender their personal will to the Divine Will and work for the Divine Plan. The Archetypal figure for this aspect of the Higher Mind is the Archangel Gabriel, the angel who appeared to Muhammad.

Ichazo also connects this aspect with the Green Maitreya Buddha, the Bodhisattva who will bring the science of Enlightenment of the next 2,500 years. Some implication has been made that Ichazo may be this Bodhisattva.

Naranjo also once heard Ichazo speak briefly about the I Ching. Ichazo said it was a book of “The School”, but they use it not with hexagrams, but with Enneagrams. Trigrams are for the individual level, for “types”. Hexagrams deal with humanity’s social predicament. But for our cosmic predicament, Enneagrams are used. Ichazo offered that this would be one side of their studies. The study would also include such things as Kabbalah and the examination of consciousness.

Naranjo was impressed by the ideas and awed by the completeness of the theoretical picture Ichazo presented, as well as the completeness of techniques, which included zen practices, vajrayana meditation, sufi dancing, breathing, working with ideas, insistence on the “here and now” through verbal and non-verbal means, etc. Even the symbolical language had aspects of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. Ichazo seemed to have been exposed to much, but Naranjo’s impression was not that he put them together, but that it’s one integral tradition.

Ichazo, however, claims that he synthesized his own system based on what he learned in his experience with the various traditional Ways.

Oscar Ichazo

Part Two: 

Naranjo believed that the teaching situation in Arica, beginning in 1970, would be extremely intense. Ichazo told him that he was using a Sufi method called “the Rapidness”.The Rapidness, also known as the Shattari method, was used in India in the fifteenth century by the Sufi Sheikh Abdullah Shattar. It is said to be a secret technique for rapid development which is preserved by the Naqshbandi Order.

As Naranjo states, this method is not normally used in the Sufi orders. It is a highly-reserved method which is preserved for historical emergencies. Although by using this technique people can be very quickly prepared for playing a part in an important operation, there is also an increased danger of wrong development. The Sufis usually use ways that blend into ordinary life, so that development happens gradually.

Using this “Rapid” method, students would be expected to be involved in developmental work for at least 12 hours a day. A high-protein diet would be used to give high energy. An account of the techniques used by Ichazo as part of his program at that time can be found in John Lilly’s “Center of the Cylone”.

According to Naranjo, Ichazo guaranteed a permanent awakened condition: “If you work and you let me work, I can do that.”

Ichazo told Naranjo that it was “lawful” for him to use this method at this time– speaking in terms of a Higher Law. He said this could be done in some world cycles, and that this was a moment in history (c. 1970) that had not happened in 2000 years, where one culture dies and another one is born. 

Consequently, there was a need for “seed” people. Comparing humanity to a tree, a “seed” person contains a whole spirit of a culture and can regenerate a whole culture, generating a new tree. Ichazo said this was a plantation moment, a “seeding” moment.

Interestingly, an analysis of these world cycles and the way a new culture springs from certain people at certain moments was a major part of the work of Rodney Collin, a student of P.D. Ouspensky who began teaching in South America in 1949 (see Collin’s Theory of Celestial Influence, 1954).

These moments of “plantation” are said to happen only once in a very long time. The type of work Ichazo was doing was supposedly related to these cycles and would last for 20 years. However, Naranjo didn’t think that Ichazo would be doing this for 20 years; he believed Ichazo would withdraw to one of the secret schools known as “Power houses”.

In fact, by 1980, Ichazo had withdrawn to Hawaii, to work on various “trainings” and “letters” which he would then send to the Arica Institute Headquarters in New York. The members of Arica who had reached the highest levels through their early work directly with Ichazo would then be responsible for implementing these ideas in Arica Centers around the world. Ichazo conveyed to Naranjo that this (c. 1970) was an important moment. Ichazo later began predicting that a major cataclysm would take place in the next ten years if humanity did not change its ways, and that Arica was going to be an extremely important factor in this global change. This prediction was made in the early 1970s.

Ichazo is Bolivian, from South America, and he made statements to the effect that the person who’s mission it would be to do this work would have had to be Bolivian. Naranjo noticed how some statements like the above displayed Ichazo’s almost messianic sense of mission, although “nothing about his demeanor is messianic.” For instance, speaking intimately, Ichazo said that he was the Alpha and the Omega, a seemingly biblical reference to the Book of Revelations. Some events in Ichazo’s life made him think he was chosen, and chosen early in life. Naranjo wondered why “they” chose Ichazo and not someone more gifted!

Ichazo told Naranjo he was contacted early in life, and his way was very difficult and strenuous, taking many years. He didn’t have a natural group, so an artificial one was created for him. The question arises, who chose Ichazo and what School was created for him? The following is a summmary of what allegedly took place:

When Ichazo was 19, he was discovered by a 60-year-old European businessman in La Paz, Bolivia, c.1950. They discussed the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, as well as various European occultist groups which were prominent at the end of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. This man, whose identity has remained anonymous, invited Ichazo to participate in a study group of high-ranking European and Oriental mystics in Buenos Aires, Argentina, composed of Martinists, Theosophists, Rosicrucians and Anthroposophists. Ichazo served them coffee, and they taught him Kabbalah, Sufism, Yoga, Zen and techniques from the Gurdjieff work. They used him as a kind of “guinea pig” on which to try out different techniques. They were attempting to synthesize all mysticism and present the synthesis as a new Way. Eventually they decided to teach Ichazo in earnest, and he passed through an initiation in which he had to sit in a lotus position on a post for three days until the teachers returned. When they returned, Ichazo’s body was so rigid he had to be lifted off the post. Back in his hut, Ichazo’s personality structure broke down completely, after which he was transformed. When he went to the apartment where his teachers were, he found the men waiting for him. Now, they said, he could join the group.

This group worked with Ichazo for two more years and then opened doors for him to study in the Orient. Before travelling, however, he remained at home in Chile for a few years. He studied mythological aeneids, the theories of numbers of Pythagoras and Euclid, the non-Eucldian geometry of Bolyai and Lobachevsky, the Atomic Models of Bohr, the work of Mendeleyev, and the biological cycles of paleontology. He noted the resemblances of these things to systems of divination like the Kabbalah, the I Ching, astrology and numerology. By 1954, through the studies and practices he was engaged in, he had synthesized his theory of the 108 enneagons.

In 1956, he began to travel and study in the East. He studied Sufism in Afghanistan and the Pamir, studied Tantra in Kashmir in 1958, and the martial arts in Hong Kong in 1960. He learned all of the higher yogas, studied Buddhism and Confucianism, alchemy, and the wisdom of the I Ching.

During this time, when he was back in Chile, he would teach a study group which focused on the wisdom of Pythagoras, Plato, the Stoics, Sceptics, Epicureans and Cynics, and based on that, he synthesized a set of exercises called the Pampas. (He was using the Pampas exercises as a major part of his teaching in 1970; see Lilly’s The Center of the Cyclone for a description). By 1960 he had synthesized his Theory of Trialectics, a new logic based on cycles. In 1964, in La Paz, while living with his father and digesting his learnings, Ichazo went into a “divine coma” for seven days. According to Ichazo, “When I came out of it I knew that I should teach; it was impossible that all my good luck should be only for myself. But it took me two years to act on this decision. Then I went to Santiago and started lecturing in the Institute for Applied Psychology. Things got so busy and crowded there that I decided to move to the remote little town of Arica and filter out all except the really committed persons who would follow me there….”

The above implies that he was acting on his own initiative, but according to Claudio Naranjo and John Lilly, he was still acting under the direction of his own teachers.

For instance, according to Naranjo, Ichazo was given the “order” by his teachers to go to Arica, Chile, to teach there. Naranjo also believed that Ichazo seemed to be in contact with his own teachers, but they weren’t in Chile. According to Naranjo, “They direct…”

A story also circulated that, after one of his original teachers had died, Ichazo had taken his position as one of the heads of the School and began his teaching mission.

Who, exactly, these teachers were, has never been disclosed. The only name Ichazo has ever mentioned publicly is Leo Costet de Mascheville, a Martinist teacher from a French family living in South America in the early 20th century. The Maschevilles were known to be in contact with the head of the Martinist organization at that time, the French occultist known as Papus.

Leo Costet de Mascheville, the only one of his teachers Ichazo has ever mentioned by name. According to Naranjo, Ichazo said specifically that he was handed the whole of the Tradition that is spread in many branches around the world in various cultures. He was given “the whole works” and the mission of translating it into Western terms. A new culture would be born from his efforts, and those people who will be the “seed people” would be the seed of a very important development– the creation of new cultural reforms which would embody the Truth. Ichazo explained the reason behind South America being the center of this new cultural movement. Europe had had its time, and now it would be the Americas’ time, especially South America, because the European influence was not as strong there and Christianity could fade away. So South America would be the source from which the new movement would begin.

Naranjo had no doubts that Ichazo had been taught by Sufis, based on things he said and terms he used. Naranjo had been in contact with another Sufi school and said there were certain things that the Sufis knew but which were not in the Sufi books– at least not the Sufi books which were part of Naranjo’s large collection. So Naranjo had no doubt that someone “handed over the Tradition” to Ichazo, but Ichazo wouldn’t mention what school it was.

According to Naranjo, however, Ichazo did speak slightly disdainfully of the traditional Sufi orders, saying that there was not time to waste on discussing them.

Judeo-Christian sources were also present in his terminology; for instance, he said that Jesus is the School’s greatest saint.

Ichazo also spoke disdainfully about current Mahayana Buddhism, saying that it had been great at one time, when it originated, but was no longer viable. He put down the schools of contemporary India in general, saying they had become very “byzantine”, making unnecessary and misleading elaborations in their system, becoming an expression of the worst of the Hindu spirit. As for “enlightened” Hindus of recent time, Ichazo said, “That is not our way…” because although they have attained Union with God, they don’t have “the key”, they can’t pass it down. “Our tradition is highly technical,” he said, comparing it to a science. “You must have the key… you must be able to go in and out of the world.”

Ichazo told Naranjo that the Way of Buddha is easier because he’s rejected the world. Ichazo said, “Our way is the way of the Juggler… In a world that’s asleep, you play…” Ichazo would say, “I’m always awake behind my veil but you can’t see me.”

Naranjo asked Ichazo about Castaneda’s Don Juan, and Ichazo seemed to have a high regard for Don Juan. However, in later interviews, Ichazo declared Don Juan a fake and the whole thing a hoax.

Naranjo noticed that Ichazo’s communication style would change significantly from one person to another. He could be emotional and poetic with one person, dry with another. Naranjo opened up to Ichazo about his feelings of distrust for him. Ichazo said it was “ok”, as long as the work continued. He said “You never know till you have proof… we need questioning minds.”

He recommended to Naranjo that he should work at least 2 hours a day, giving him certain meditations.

Naranjo said Ichazo knew some very sophisticated meditations, very physical ones. There was one that took an hour and a half, with mantras, breathing techniques, movements, stretching, all done together in a certain way.

In connection with the 10-month training he was offering, Ichazo talked of “higher bodies”: The Astral body, the Mental body, and the Divine body, ideas found in most traditional esoteric schools, including that of Gurdjieff. The “permanent awakened condition” (which he guaranteed could be produced in the 10-month training) corresponded to the development of the Astral body, which is the body of true feelings, the body of Virtues.

According to Naranjo, Virtues are the true feelings, as opposed to habitual feelings, which are false, substitute feelings. These lower feelings are called “Passions”. They need to be replaced by higher feelings.

After the development of the Astral body, there are two more stages: the Mental body and the Divine body. Ichazo said that some people would feel satisfied stopping after the first stage, but others would feel called to continue. These later stages would not necessitate the same kind of intense training period, but could be a more gradual development as part of ordinary life. According to Naranjo, when one is “awakened”, one is open to impressions all the time, whether one strives for it or not. One cannot help but grow. A person then has Astral contact which can give assistance and guidance, and would also have telepathic contact with Ichazo and other members of the School.

Ichazo told Naranjo that there was no commitment to continue with him after the 10 month training. He imagined that some would want to stay in a group, continuing along those lines. Others might do some teaching.

Ichazo also mentioned that he wanted to show both the traditional ways and the “experimental” way that he himself had created. This latter is a Westernization. He said “I want people with research-oriented minds… people who want to compare, who want to interrelate things…” In fact, before they had formally met, Naranjo had sent Ichazo some of his writings on the commonalities of the traditional ways of growth, both spiritual and therapeutic. Ichazo seemed impressed by these. Naranjo got the impression that there would be innovation and experimentalism in the School, not exclusivism, until the School was complete.

Naranjo asked Ichazo about what came next after the establishment of the Arica school. Ichazo spoke of School “games”, and in connection with this, the Tarot was very important. Ichazo would take on a different tone when discussing the Tarot: more respectful, ceremonious, with a serious aspect and attitude. He would say, “Forget anything any book says about the Tarot.. It’s God’s game… I am here because of the outcome of a Tarot game.” (Naranjo was under the impression that after such a Tarot game, Ichazo’s teacher had told him to go to Arica and be there at a certain date and hour and just wait.)

Ichazo also spoke of possibly travelling in connection with other stages of the work.

Naranjo found it all to be a very integral and integrated tradition. But he was not impressed in the least by Ichazo the person, and could not emphasize that enough. He was very distrustful of Ichazo.

When he returned to California after spending those first few weeks with Ichazo, people asked Naranjo if he recommended Ichazo. His response: “I don’t feel like recommending him… I don’t dare recommend him… but I wouldn’t want to miss it… ”

Naranjo decided to take the risk for himself because he felt he had enough hints that there was something real there. This was unusual for him because he bypassed his “heart”. He usually went by “smell”, and Ichazo didn’t “smell” holy or wise or even intelligent, but Naranjo couldn’t deny that he’d been effective. If nothing else, he had gotten Naranjo more irritated than he had been in years, so Naranjo thought it might be intentional and part of the teaching. Naranjo had gotten to Arica feeling very detached, feeling he had nothing to lose, not expecting anything. But after a while he was finding he was investing a lot of energy trying to decide if he approved or not, and he was fighting his own paranoia. He felt something was going on; he had been touched somehow.

However, Naranjo was skeptical of the ecstatic states he had experienced with Ichazo. He was doubtful of their impact and asked himself if he felt like a better person because of them, if he was more enlightened and closer to his ultimate goals after those first 2 months. He didn’t feel that he was. Then again, he had not worked in the real sense of the intensive 10-month program. The work he did was fragmentary.

Naranjo decided to take these experiences as indications that something was really happening, indirect evidence that Ichazo had a power and/or technique that worked.

So in 1970, Naranjo began the intensive 10-month program… However, he never finished the program and had to leave Arica prematurely. The details of what took place are unclear:

Naranjo’s version can be found at http://www.intuition.org/txt/naranjo.htm

While Ichazo’s version can be found in his “Letter to the Transpersonal Community” at http://www.arica.org/articles/trletter.cfm

Claudio Naranjo

SOURCES:

Naranjo, Claudio. Report from Chile: Oscar Ichazo and the School. Big Sur Tapes (1970).

Naranjo, Claudio. Character and Neurosis (1994).

Harner, Michael, ed. Hallucinogens and Shamanism (1974).

Bleibtreu, John. Interviews with Oscar Ichazo (1982).

Ichazo, Oscar. Letters to the School (1988).

Ichazo, Oscar. Master Level Exercises: Psychoalchemy (1986).

Ichazo, Oscar. “Letter to the Transpersonal Community” in The Arican Journal, Autumn 1991.

Tart, Charles, ed. Transpersonal Psychologies (1975). (See “The Arica Training” by J. Lilly and J. Hart)

Bakhtiar, Laleh. God’s Will Be Done, Vol 1-3 (1993-94).

Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah (1935).

Shah, Idries. The Sufis (1964).

Shah, Idries. A Perfumed Scorpion (1979).

Scott, Ernest. The People of the Secret (1984).

Lilly, John. The Center of the Cyclone (1971).

Lilly, John and Antoinetta. The Dyadic Cylcone (1974).

Patterson, William P. Taking with the Left Hand (1998).

Collin, Rodney. Theory of Celestial Influence (1954).

For more on Ichazo’s reputed South American teachers, see: http://korc.wisdomtraditions.org/