sensing the true nature of the universe,
you’re linked up with the absolute Absolute, son, and unless you’re content
with blowing smoke up your butt all your life, that there’s the only place to
be.”
Obviously Switters’s meditation
teacher was no Thai monk or Himalayan sage. His guru, in fact, was a CIA pilot
from Hondo , Texas , by the name of Bobby Case, known to some as Bad Bobby
and to others as Nut Case. He was Switters’s bosom buddy. The U.S. ambassador to Thailand , who sported a bitchy wit, referred to the pair of
them as the Flying Pedophilia Brothers, a nickname to which they both objected.
When Switters complained that it was slanderous and unfair, Bobby said, “Damn
straight it is. I don’t mind being called a pedophile, but your brother ?!”
As a CIA agent who “sat” (that is,
meditated), Bobby Case wasn’t the rarity the uninformed might suppose. Thirty
or forty years earlier, Langley had exposed a relatively large number of its
field hands to meditation, yoga, parapsychology, and psychedelic drugs in a
series of experiments to see if any or all of those alien potents and
techniques might have military and/or intelligence applications. For example,
could LSD be employed as a control mechanism, could meditation counteract the
attempted brainwashing of a captured U.S. agent?
The experiments backfired. Once the
guinea pigs had their veils lifted, their blinders removed by their unexpected
collisions with the true nature of existence, once they gazed, unencumbered by
dogma or ego, into the still heart of that which of which there is no whicher,
they couldn’t help but perceive the cowboys who bossed them, the Ivy League
patricians who bossed their bosses, as ridiculous, and their mission as
trivial, if not evil. Many left the company, some to enter ashrams or Asian monasteries.
(One such defector wrote The Silent Mind , a premier book on the subject
of sitting.) A few remained with Langley . They performed their duties much as before, but with
compassion now, and in full consciousness. No longer “blowing smoke up their butts,”
as Bobby Case described maya , the folly of living in a world of
illusion. They continued to meditate. Sometimes they taught meditation to
promising colleagues. Awareness was passed along, handed down. Thus was
angelhood expanded, perpetuated.
Bobby, who had been the recipient of
an older agent’s wisdom, saw the angel in Switters the moment he met him. Not
every angel meditated. Some even shunned drugs. The two things they all had in
common were a cynical suspicion of politico-economic systems and a disdain for
what passed for “patriotism” in the numbed noodles of the manipulated masses.
Their blessing and their curse was that they actually believed in
freedom—although Switters and Bad Bobby used to speculate that belief, itself,
might be a form of bondage.
Incidentally, this angel vs. cowboy
business: didn’t it smack rather loudly of elitism? Probably. But that didn’t
worry Switters. As a youth, he’d been assured by Don’t-Call-Me-Grandma Maestra
that the instant elitism became a dirty word among Americans, any
potential for a high culture to develop in their country was tomahawked in its
cradle. She quoted Thomas Jefferson to the effect that, “There exists a false
aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there
likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent, and virtue.”
Switters had pointed out that either way, aristocracy seemed to be a matter of
luck. Maestra responded tartly, “Virtue is not something you can win in a
goddamn lottery.” And, years later, Bobby had told him, “What shiftless folks
call ‘luck,’ the wise ol’ boys recognized as karma .” Well, if the CIA
angels were a true elite within a false elite, so much the better, true being
presumably preferable to false. It didn’t really matter to Switters. What
mattered was that he could taste a kind of intoxicating ambrosia in
you’re linked up with the absolute Absolute, son, and unless you’re content
with blowing smoke up your butt all your life, that there’s the only place to
be.”
Obviously Switters’s meditation
teacher was no Thai monk or Himalayan sage. His guru, in fact, was a CIA pilot
from Hondo , Texas , by the name of Bobby Case, known to some as Bad Bobby
and to others as Nut Case. He was Switters’s bosom buddy. The U.S. ambassador to Thailand , who sported a bitchy wit, referred to the pair of
them as the Flying Pedophilia Brothers, a nickname to which they both objected.
When Switters complained that it was slanderous and unfair, Bobby said, “Damn
straight it is. I don’t mind being called a pedophile, but your brother ?!”
As a CIA agent who “sat” (that is,
meditated), Bobby Case wasn’t the rarity the uninformed might suppose. Thirty
or forty years earlier, Langley had exposed a relatively large number of its
field hands to meditation, yoga, parapsychology, and psychedelic drugs in a
series of experiments to see if any or all of those alien potents and
techniques might have military and/or intelligence applications. For example,
could LSD be employed as a control mechanism, could meditation counteract the
attempted brainwashing of a captured U.S. agent?
The experiments backfired. Once the
guinea pigs had their veils lifted, their blinders removed by their unexpected
collisions with the true nature of existence, once they gazed, unencumbered by
dogma or ego, into the still heart of that which of which there is no whicher,
they couldn’t help but perceive the cowboys who bossed them, the Ivy League
patricians who bossed their bosses, as ridiculous, and their mission as
trivial, if not evil. Many left the company, some to enter ashrams or Asian monasteries.
(One such defector wrote The Silent Mind , a premier book on the subject
of sitting.) A few remained with Langley . They performed their duties much as before, but with
compassion now, and in full consciousness. No longer “blowing smoke up their butts,”
as Bobby Case described maya , the folly of living in a world of
illusion. They continued to meditate. Sometimes they taught meditation to
promising colleagues. Awareness was passed along, handed down. Thus was
angelhood expanded, perpetuated.
Bobby, who had been the recipient of
an older agent’s wisdom, saw the angel in Switters the moment he met him. Not
every angel meditated. Some even shunned drugs. The two things they all had in
common were a cynical suspicion of politico-economic systems and a disdain for
what passed for “patriotism” in the numbed noodles of the manipulated masses.
Their blessing and their curse was that they actually believed in
freedom—although Switters and Bad Bobby used to speculate that belief, itself,
might be a form of bondage.
Incidentally, this angel vs. cowboy
business: didn’t it smack rather loudly of elitism? Probably. But that didn’t
worry Switters. As a youth, he’d been assured by Don’t-Call-Me-Grandma Maestra
that the instant elitism became a dirty word among Americans, any
potential for a high culture to develop in their country was tomahawked in its
cradle. She quoted Thomas Jefferson to the effect that, “There exists a false
aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there
likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent, and virtue.”
Switters had pointed out that either way, aristocracy seemed to be a matter of
luck. Maestra responded tartly, “Virtue is not something you can win in a
goddamn lottery.” And, years later, Bobby had told him, “What shiftless folks
call ‘luck,’ the wise ol’ boys recognized as karma .” Well, if the CIA
angels were a true elite within a false elite, so much the better, true being
presumably preferable to false. It didn’t really matter to Switters. What
mattered was that he could taste a kind of intoxicating ambrosia in
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