In the decade following his footy Ph.D., Calculus turned all (Zen) mystical. He wrote prolifically about his ‘revelatory experiences’ in the form of self published pamphlets.
Is your soul Sun bound? (1971)
In Search of Inner India (1974)
The Secret Path to the Garden Wall (1975)
A Message from Martha (1976)
Hippie in the Himalayas (1976)
The Quest of the Sur-self (1977)
A Gutsy Reality (1979)
He would later come to acknowledge that such writings were ‘largely displacement writings,’ as he should have been working on an altogether different subject: the wealth continuum of cities. Thanks to the insights of Claude Levi-Strauss and an absurdly generous fellowship (from something unspecified Cambridge College), Calculus was able to spend several years swanning round the world, visiting cities. For he was supposedly testing a hypothesis, mooted by the great French anthropologist, that the sun’s movement exercised a subtle influence on the nature of cities. There is, according to Levi-Strauss, a ‘polarisation of luxury and poverty along the east-west axis.’ Building westwards – with the sun – was positive while movement against the sun was negative. Light is the Left. Dark is the Right.
Calculus failed to submit his ‘findings’. Not even a most basic and cursory report. The funds dried up. He had only himself to blame, missing what had been a generously set deadline.
Pass the Kanno.
To me.
Eventually Calculus got over his mystical fad. Unlike some.
Paul Brunton (1898 -1981)…
… was a philosopher and traveller who left a successful journalistic career to live among yogis, mystics and holy men. He studied Eastern and Western esoteric teachings.
Brunton had been a friend of Calculus’s father. And on a few occasions Calculus, as an impressionable child, encountered ‘England’s top mystic’. The middle aged Brunton being then at the height of his writing fame. All Calculus can remember is that he both talked and walked at great speed.
Martha has Brunton’s complete works; paperback publications bearing the insignia of cheap Indian publishing houses: split spines, loose pages that have slipped their bindings. One book has a big tear on its mud stained front cover. On the title page some wag has written ‘in urgent need of reincarnation!’ A likely candidate is Calculus, displaying the zealous wit of a former believer.
In reading Hermit in the Himalayas i learned that Brunton, forbidden from entering Tibet, had had a lasting love of tea, and a nagging fear of letting himself go, which meant going unshaved. His book is an intriguing mix of superstition, homilies, platitudes and wisdom. Words like Hope and Truth come capitalised. There is praise aplenty for Jesus Christ and a hagiographic appraisal of Charlie Chaplin. i was less appreciative of the didactic prose, and unimpressed by his fatalism regarding the fate of Europe heading to war. Oh, i seem to recall, that he’d had a servant too.