Enter the Juice

There are times when one can sense, not only with 20/20 hindsight but right then, in the moment, that something has changed forever: a door opened, a step taken across a threshold to a world of new possibilities. A majority of us Americans dared to hope that Barack Obama would become our President, and through the sheer audacity of this hope—we’re talking about a black man, but even more radically for a candidate for our highest office, a man who speaks from his heart, who pours all of himself into his vision for our country and for the world—the sheer audacity transformed dream into reality. Rarely is it so clear that we are witnessing history in the making. Where were you on the day Obama got elected? I was in an American compound here in Kathmandu, watching in shock and disbelief along with a motley hundred or so fellow citizens as the flat screen showed his lead turn suddenly into to a mute declaration of victory, a victory that had until that moment remained almost unthinkable. I’ve never before felt a welling of tears at any mass event, not even at ruthless war or senseless disaster, let alone politics: but this was personal, for me and for everyone in that room it seemed. There was a first mounting round of cheers and applause as the realization set in, then further bursts rising and falling over the next hour or so. Eyes shining, smiles of joyous disbelief. Faith, after all, still leaves room for shock and awe.
Now, less than 24 hours later, the historical moment already seems almost inexorable, the tipping of the pendulum back towards light, clarity, hope. Dark days are yet ahead for America and the world, but perhaps we can—we will--strain against the terrible reins of our country’s momentum. Anything taken to enough of an extreme gives rise to its opposite; in our darkest hour is born the spark of hope anew. The Bush Era is suddenly conceivable as a thing done with, grittily lived through, as we prepare to exit the dark tunnel of these years. No matter the reality of the next four or eight, whatever the stumbling blocks, the disappointments inevitable from a leader onto whom millions of disenchanted people have cast their desperate hopes, we can never now go back; there’s no forgetting the sight of a sunbeam into the oubliette.

I doubt I’m alone in feeling the charged energy of these days, this past week or so in particular. Even here, across the world, the tension though indefinable has been thick. Now of course it’s broken, the rising tide having spilled over and turned out to be sweet. Our popular language is poor in terms to deal with movements of our collective consciousness; serious students of astrology probably have some grip on what’s going on ‘energetically.’ For me, at any rate, this public break in the status quo has aligned with a significant internal shift, or so it feels like in the middle of this giddy night. This’ll take a little explaining.
A few weeks back I discovered the stretch of narrow street between Bhedasingh and Naradevi east of Asan Tol in old Kathmandu. This little neighborhood is a sort of Ayurvedic nerve center, containing not only the Naradevi Ayurvedic hospital but also countless shops/clinics that sell mostly patent medicines from big modern herbal manufacturers like Himalaya. I’m more interested in the older shops, the herb retailers whose tiny stores are packed with medicines in various states of preparation: from hundreds of plastic bags of whole dried herbs hanging from the low ceilings, each bag marked with a permanent marker in scrawled Devanagari script, to the bins of various woods, barks, powdered extracts, resins, to the smaller glass bottles filled with handmade compounds and the tiny vials of bhasmas (mineral and other finally ground oxidized substances). Whenever I’m in the vicinity, I feel an almost magnetic pull towards this district, and each time I go I find something new. How did I not notice this particular shop last time, I’ll wonder, or fail to ask this old Vaidya-cum-pharmacist about his medicines? Yesterday, in the happy, bewildering aftermath of the election returns, luck carried me to a small shop that sells not whole herbs and from-scratch formulas but rather pre-made formulas ranging from traditional to patent, made in India and Nepal. It turns out the woman I met there and her brother both come from a long family of traditional (non-academic) Vaidyas and are thoroughly-trained and certified Vaidyas themselves. They gave me a warm welcome, the sister tickled by my knowledge of Ayurved and Nepali, and I settled in for a few hours behind the counter, trying to stay out of the way as customers came in for a word or two of medical advice for themselves or a child, to fill a formula, to pick up a popular Ayurvedic supplement. I got to watch as the pair custom-ground formulas that they had composed out of various already-compounded drugs on their shelves: formulas made out of formulas. First into the smooth porcelain mortar went the most potent ingredients, the Rasadi (mercurial) preparations that make little more than a percent of the total. These are ground steadily for until a sheen develops—the longer the better—along with a little herb powder for easier grinding. Then the other ingredients go in, factory-made pills and powders of plants and oxidized minerals, and all is thoroughly mixed before being packed pack into the emptied plastic bottles that the ingredients came from. This was a great opportunity to learn about Ayurvedic pharmacology, or Vaisajya Kalpana as the sub-discipline is more properly known. Complaining of a lingering sinus infection—polluted Kathmandu is not an easy place to kick a cold—I was able to discuss with the knowledgeable brother some details of the formula he wrote me. (It’s interesting, too, to compare the Ayurvedic dietary restrictions he outlined with popular Nepali conceptions of what not to eat when you have a cold: Ayurvedically speaking, it boils down to avoiding Kapha-increasing foods like yogurt, bananas, old and sour and heavy foods, while your Nepali Aama will insist that you avoid “cold” things: essentially the same list, but in (over)simplified layman’s terms.)
I have at this point a decent grasp of the basic properties of many of the more common Ayurvedic herbs, but these two were using almost exclusively classical (textually-rooted) formulas that I knew nothing about. This new vista was tantalizing, and in a burst of enthusiasm I proposed to the brother that we make me a personalized formula of a type called a Rasayana. A Rasayana (“russ—EYE—an--uh”) is a rejuvenating formula used to restore strength during convalescence, or simply to enhance one’s health. It’s a nourishing therapy, but also a catalytic one supposed to trigger the body to restore itself towards perfect health. Lots of substances are known to act as Rasayanas if given in the right way at the right time: the ubiquitous Amala (amalaki fruit, ghee, milk, probably chocolate chip cookies too. The right time is when the system is relatively free of impurities, like the byproducts of undigested food that can linger in the tissues and clog the body’s subtle channels; the process of rejuvenation is likened to dying a piece of cloth, so of course the cloth must be clean to start out. Little or no accumulated aam, metabolic waste, and healthy digestive ability (agni) are important. Like most students of Ayurveda, I suppose, I had been experimenting with Rasayan therapy for a while, making use of fortified milk decoctions and the renowned herbal jam called Chywanprash (after the old sage Chyawan, who used the formula to keep him strong and vigorous enough to satisfy his young wife) on a more or less daily basis. But here in this little pharmacy it occurred to me to try out another order of Rasayana: the alchemical formulas that include purified and processed mercury as well as other metals and minerals. Like many Sanskrit words, “ras” has an interesting range of connotations: it can mean juice, flavor, essence, interest, enthusiasm--and mercury. Literally, then, Rasayan means “entry of the ras.” Of course in the West anything that contains mercury, in any form, is taboo, and the association with such a notorious poison has threatened the reputation of Ayurveda just as it is starting to gain recognition as a legitimate healthcare system (of course it is much more than this, but in the context of our Western culture Ayurved is perceived as one option amongst many in “alternative” or “complementary” medicine). Hundreds of years of Ayurvedic philosophers, doctors and alchemists were no fools, though, and they know the dangers of mercury if not properly prepared. This is subject in itself (called Rasa Shastra). When I met an old Rasa Shastri, alchemist-Vaidya, in Banepa a couple of weeks ago, he said something like, “they say that mercury is poison. Well, we turn it into amrit [nectar of life].” I’m deep enough into this world, this worldview, that I no longer have any hesitation about consuming such substances, provided they came from reputable sources. (Ironically, the toxic Ayurvedic drugs come from the more modern Ayurvedic drug companies who cut corners in the purification process in order to save money.) At the little shop in Bhedasingh, the brother Vaidya wrote out a Rasayan formula based on my prakriti (Ayurvedic constitution—mine is Pitta predominant with Vata a close second). He also asked if I was married: well, not exactly, I admitted, but for his purposes the answer was essentially yes. He was asking because the formula he was composing would be a powerful aphrodisiac; the way to renew the body is through the reproductive organs, the ‘deepest’ of the 7 dhatus or tissues, and the one that is capable of producing ojas (the sap of life, analogous to the Chinese jing).
The formula he came up with contains Amalaki Rasayan (itself a processed and purified formula) as its base, to which he added tiny quantities of bhasmas of silver and mica, the soluble starch extract of Guduchi (Tinosporia Cordifolia), Prawal Pishti to counterract the heating properties of some of other bhasmas, and a mere few grams of Siddhi Makaradhwaj, a famous Rasayan containing Mercury, Sulphur and Gold. A Rasayan of Rasayanas. I wanted to grind it myself, so I began with the glittering granules of makaradwaj, watching the dark sparkling substance turn into a deep red powder as I ground it down finer and finer. That done we added the rest of the ingredients, all already powdered, and mixed it all up. Before I paid (Rasayanas aren’t cheap, as Ayurvedic medicine goes, but my total was still under $20 US) I wanted to clarify what dietary or other restrictions would go along with medicine. It should not, I learned, be taken with any other medicine, especially potentially toxic allopathic drugs, recreational drugs, or alcohol. I would finish the cold medicine he was also giving me before starting the path of Rasayana. It would also be superfluous to take any of the other tonic type herbs or mild Rasayanas like Chyawanprash once I started this formula.
When I got home after the morning watching the election results and the afternoon in the medicine shop, curiosity got the best of me and I allowed myself just a little taste of the innocuous looking, charcoal-gray powder. (It smelled like plums, my roommate decided.) That taste was one of the more electrifying experiences I’ve been privy to. It began as a lively tart sensation on the tongue, delightfully effervescent, and spread from there instantly, up to my head and out to my limbs. I broke out in a big stupid grin and couldn’t help but exclaiming out loud and then bursting into slightly maniacal, joyous laughter. After the initial reaction I thought, Good God, what is this stuff? It was just so obviously potent, pregnant with possibilities I’d only considered half-seriously, as a piece of esoteric lore out there in Ayurvedic wonderland. All that talk about rejuvenation wasn’t just talk—I could feel this stuff working already, and I hadn’t even meant to take a therapeutic dose. It affected my consciousness as definitely as a hit of hash (a possible object of my quest for Rasayana in days gone by) or a surging feeling of love—much closer to the latter, though, in terms of its qualitative experience. The rest of the evening I spent basking in the afterglow of this discovery, this epiphany: not only are Ayurved’s most powerful medicines much stronger than I’d even suspected, but I was—I am--going to commit myself to the straight and narrow path of Rasayana and see where it takes me. Having such a powerful aid in the search for health—health, the only solid foundation for dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, the Vedic Four Aims of Life—is profound inspiration for me to keep up my own end of the bargain, to keep myself clean in body mind and spirit so that the dyeing will come out even and deep.
In my current frame of mind I may be prone to grandiloquence (not to say delusions of grandeur), but it feels like the greater paradigm shift presaged by Obama’s victory is reflected in me in a small way in my discovery of the path of Rasayana, the bringing in of the life-giving juice. I hope the analogy proves fruitful, that Obama and what he represents serve as Rasayana for our ailing world. Is it possible that all the war, the starvation, the ugliness we numbly accept daily over the morning paper, that all this sickening mess is a cathartic purge that will ready us for the dye of new life?