Of course consciousness can be transformed, thought Erasmus, but what is it? If I pass an electric current through my body, or bury my nose in the soft petals of a rose, or impersonate Greta Garbo, I transform my consciousness; in fact it is impossible to stop transforming consciousness. What I can’t do is describe what it is in itself: it’s too close to see, too ubiquitous to grasp, and too transparent to point to.
‘Eleanor was one of the most generous people it has been my privilege to know. You only had to hint that you needed something and if it was in her power to provide it, she would leap at the opportunity with an enthusiasm that made it look as if it was a relief to her rather than to the person who was asking.’
Patrick imagined the simple charm of the dialogue.
Seamus: I was thinking that it would be, eh, consciousness-raising, like, to own a private hamlet surrounded by vines and olive groves, somewhere sunny.
Eleanor: Oh, how amazing! I’ve got one of those. Would you like it?
Seamus: Oh, thank you very much, I’m sure. Sign here and here and here.
Eleanor: What a relief. Now I have nothing.
‘Nothing,’ said Annette, ‘was too much trouble for her. Service to others was her life’s purpose, and it was awe-inspiring to see the lengths she would go to in her quest to help people achieve their dreams. A torrent of grateful letters and postcards used to arrive at the Foundation from all over the world. A young Croatian scientist who was working on a “zero-energy fuel cell” — don’t ask me what that is, but it’s going to save the planet — is one example. A Peruvian archaeologist who had uncovered amazing evidence that the Incas were originally from Egypt and continued to communicate with the mother civilization through what he called “solar language”. An old lady who had been working for forty years on a universal dictionary of sacred symbols and just needed a little extra help to bring this incredibly valuable book to completion. All of them had received a helping hand from Eleanor. But you mustn’t think that Eleanor was only concerned with the higher echelons of science and spirituality, she was also a marvellously practical person who knew the value of a kitchen extension for a growing family, or a new car for a friend living in the depths of the country.’
What about a sister who was running out of cash? thought Nancy grumpily. First they had taken away her credit cards, and then they had taken away her chequebook, and now she had to go in person to the Morgan Guaranty in Fifth Avenue to collect her monthly pocket money. They said it was the only way to stop her running up debts, but the best way to stop her running up debts was to give her more money.
‘There was a wonderful Jesuit gentleman,’ Annette continued, ‘well, he was an ex-Jesuit actually, although we still called him Father Tim. He had come to believe that Catholic dogma was too narrow and that we should embrace all the religious traditions of the world. He eventually became the first Englishman to be accepted as an ayahuascera — a Brazilian shaman — among one of the most authentic tribes in Amazonia. Anyhow, Father Tim wrote to Eleanor, who had known him in his old Farm Street days, saying that his village needed a motor-boat to go down to the local trading post, and of course she responded with her usual impulsive generosity, and sent a cheque by return. I shall never forget the expression on her face when she received Father Tim’s reply. Inside the envelope were three brightly coloured toucan feathers and an equally colourful note explaining that in recognition of her gift to the Ayoreo people, a ritual had been performed in Father Tim’s far-away village inducting her into the tribe as a “Rainbow Warrior”. He said that he had refrained from mentioning that she was a woman, since the Ayoreo took a “somewhat unreconstructed view of the gentler sex, not unreminiscent of that taken by old Mother Church”, and that he would have “suffered the fate of St Sebastian” if he “admitted to his ruse”. He said that he intended to confess on his deathbed, so as to help move the tribe forward into a new era of harmony between the male and female principles, so necessary to the salvation of the world. Anyhow,’ sighed Annette, recognizing that she had drifted from her written text, but taking this to be a sign of inspiration, ‘the effect on Eleanor was quite literally magical. She wore the toucan feathers around her neck until they sadly disintegrated, and for a few weeks she told all and sundry that she was an Ayoreo Rainbow Warrior. She was for all the world like the little girl who goes to a new school and comes home one day transformed because she has made a new best friend.’
Although arrested development was his stock in trade and he made a habit of shutting down his psychoanalytic ear when he was not working, Johnny could not help being struck by the ferocious tenacity of Eleanor’s resistance to growing up. He was as guilty as anyone of over-quoting good old Eliot’s ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality’, but he felt that in this case the evasiveness had been uninterrupted. He could remember first meeting Eleanor when Patrick invited him to Saint-Nazaire for the school holidays. Even then she had a habit of lapsing into baby talk, very disconcerting for adolescents distancing themselves from childhood. The tragedy was that five or perhaps ten years of decent five-day-a-week analysis could have mitigated the problem significantly.
‘That was the sort of breadth that Eleanor showed in her kindness to others,’ said Annette, sensing that it would soon be time to draw her remarks to a conclusion. She put aside a couple of pages she had failed to read during her Amazonian improvisation, and looked down at the last page to remind herself what she had written. It struck her as a little formal now that she had entered into a more exploratory style, but there were one or two things embedded in the last paragraph that she must remember to say.
Oh, please get on with it, thought Patrick. Charles Bronson was having a panic attack in a collapsing tunnel, Alsatians were barking behind the barbed wire, searchlights were weaving over the breached ground, but soon he would be running through the woods, dressed as a German bank clerk and heading for the railway station with some identity papers forged at the expense of Donald Pleasance’s eyesight. It would all be over soon, he just had to keep staring at his knees for a few minutes longer.
‘I would like to read you a short passage from the Rig Veda,’ said Annette. ‘It quite literally leapt at me from the shelf when I was in the library at the Foundation, looking for a book that would evoke something of Eleanor’s amazing spiritual depths.’ She resumed her sing-song reading voice.
She follows to the goal of those who are passing on beyond, she is the first in the eternal succession of the dawns that are coming, — Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead…What is her scope when she harmonizes with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desires the ancient mornings and fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to come.
‘Eleanor was a firm believer in reincarnation, and not only did she regard suffering as the refining fire that would burn away the impediments to a still higher spiritual evolution, but she was also privileged to have something very rare indeed: a specific vision of how and where she would be reincarnated. At the Foundation we have what we call an “Ah-ha Box” for those little epiphanies and moments of insight when we think, “Ah-ha!” We all have them, don’t we? But the trouble is that they slip away during the course of a busy day and so Seamus, the Chief Facilitator of the Foundation, invented the “Ah-ha Box” so that we could write down our thoughts, pop them in the box and share them in the evening.’