The Twelve (12 page)

Life Unfolds

1973–1976

M
AX RETURNED TO THE UNITED STATES AND TO A MORE NORMAL
lifestyle.

He had always been a dutiful son, and a major reason for working at his father's publishing company had been to help out after his dad's first heart attack. Now that Herbert seemed back to normal health, Max decided to give teaching a whirl.

He returned to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, to teach Spanish for a year, trying to instill in his students some of the enthusiasm he had garnered from Señor Iglesias, years before.

But his stint at Andover was a stopgap, and when the year was up, he received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study cultural anthropology at Harvard University. After six months at Harvard, however, Max realized he had made a mistake.

Anthropology, he discovered, was no longer about the study of indigenous people. In truth, there were few indigenous groups left, and mere contact with modern Western civilization seemed to doom any of the few remaining authentic tribes either to slow or immediate destruction.

Max came to the realization that, on a significant level, modern humans were in fact evolving into what he called “nonhuman beings.” He wrote an essay on the topic, which his professors failed to appreciate. The essay explained that the essential attributes that made humans “human” were becoming extinct.

His Harvard professors, however, felt he was romanticizing primitive civilizations; yet Max remained firm in his conviction that something fundamental was being lost through the headlong pursuit of technology and material ease and abundance.

He watched early ethnographic films such as Nanook of the North, combining what he saw with his own experiences among isolated peoples in the Amazon, India, the Andes, and the other exotic locations Max had visited while making films and doing anthropological research. He concluded that the art of living in harmony with nature was being lost.

Some of these primitive peoples had developed ways of growing gardens that were works of art, as well as sources of nutrition. They had created geometric designs that changed color with the seasons. Often these designs could only be detected when viewed from the hillsides above the fields. It seemed inconceivable to him, though, that so much extra effort would be put into an agricultural pursuit, just to ensure the by-product of an aesthetic experience.

Other cultures, he noted, had developed intimate rituals of dance and music, which actually healed and cultivated human relationships. Max observed patterns among the so-called primitives in which there was an abundance of creativity and joy, even in the smallest of details—the embellishment of a digging stick with special carvings, a piece of clay, cooking pottery that displayed colors and shapes demonstrating gratitude to the soil from which it was made.

Max didn't ignore the benefits of modern society and the abundance he personally enjoyed, but he did think that they came with a price, and that price was to sacrifice the essential elements of being purely human. He felt that modern man was evolving into a consumer being whose authentic needs were becoming secondary. The economic and technological imperatives of the modern world had replaced authentic human needs. It was only by fulfilling one's consumer needs that an individual could gain status, become a person of power, and maintain psychological integrity.

This psychological integrity came with a steep price—the evolution into what Max saw as a more automated, less authentic nonhuman being.

Even as he posed these ominous hypotheses, Max felt that he, too, was somehow becoming a nonhuman being, and he wasn't happy with the sense of powerlessness he felt. He distrusted the businesses of “doing” and “having” that seemed to control his life.

He wondered what his life would have been like if he had stayed in Trujillo with Maria. He had written to her, as he had promised and she had, as anticipated, married her novio. She was already pregnant with her first child.

He remained certain that he and Maria had been together in another life, but it seemed indisputable that they weren't intended to be together in this lifetime.

During his study at Harvard, Max continued to get calls to do research and location scouting for exotic, documentary film assignments that required travel to countries all over the world. Happy to have an opportunity to explore even more cultures, he took the assignments whenever he could, and before long he was considered the go-to guy by numerous Hollywood-based film companies. There were very few people in the business who could navigate the red tape and handle the logistics for these documentary productions.

So despite his father's contention that it was all nonsense and that Max should transfer to Harvard Business School, where he might learn something practical, Max decided to go on the road again with In Search of the Historical Jesus.

He was pleased to learn that Russ Arnold—the cameraman from In Search of Ancient Mysteries—was on board for the project, and Max was looking forward to another good film experience . . . until he met the line producer.

***

Amanda Harding was an impossible boss. She was gorgeous, had started in the business as a model, and then became an actress. She hadn't excelled at either, yet somehow managed to rise to the level of producer—perhaps through her indomitable spirit . . . or perhaps by other means.

She was a tyrant . . . a real ballbuster. No one respected her, and yet she was in charge, at least theoretically.

Nothing pleased Amanda. She worried about everything: in particular how she looked, what she ate, how clean her clothes were, and other concerns that had no relevance to a film project that needed to traverse five continents and twelve countries in eight weeks.

She would only eat tuna packed in water and had to have cans of it shipped to her whenever she ran out, no matter how expensive and inconvenient it might be. It drove Max crazy to waste time on such irrelevancies, as he tried to concentrate on the necessary details of the project.

In Search of the Historical Jesus revolved around the ancient Ahmadiyya and other religious sects, who believed that Christ had not died on the Cross but had survived his ordeal and lived for many years in India and elsewhere until he died a peaceful death, as an old man with children and a loving family.

The Ahmadiyya were a Muslim evangelical sect whose most famous adherent was Muhammad Zafrulla Khan who, in the 1960s, had served as undersecretary of the United Nations. He had written a book in which he claimed that his religion possessed proof of their claims. His evidence revolved around the literal meaning of “give up the breath,” which was the phrase used to describe what happened to Jesus on the Cross.

Muhammad Zafrulla Khan explained that Jesus had stopped breathing but that this didn't mean that he had actually died. Yogis can control their breath, he argued, and stop breathing for days at a time. Certainly, he theorized, Jesus must have had the powers of a yogi.

There was also the issue of the Issa Ointment, which, according to Mr. Khan, was still used in India and Pakistan to cure cuts and wounds. Issa Ointment was translated from Hindi as “the ointment of Jesus,” and was so named because it was this very ointment that was used to resurrect Christ when he was taken down from the Cross.

The Ahmadiyya further pointed to a tomb on which was sculpted a figure displaying holes in the hands and feet exactly where they would have been on Christ's body when he was nailed to the Cross. It was suggested—and believed—that this was the tomb in which Christ had been buried when he died peacefully in his sleep.

The current Ahmadiyya believed that Christ was reincarnated in 1835 in a remote village called Qadian, outside of Amritsar in the Punjab region of India. Amritsar was best known for the golden temple—the most sacred shrine of the Sikhs, who outnumbered Hindus and Muslims in that area.

Max's job on the film included conducting pre-interviews with almost every major spiritual and religious leader on the planet. This list included the Dalai Lama, the major gurus in Rishikesh, the head of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Saba in the biblical no-man's-land outside of Jerusalem, the Rabbi of Jerusalem, the head of the Church of England, several monks in Japan, Muslim holy men in Damascus, and countless less prominent and self-appointed religious and spiritual leaders.

He also interviewed some of the most unusual individuals on Earth, from psychics to geniuses with unusual talents.

For the most part he was unimpressed by those he interviewed. Most seemed to be power-hungry cultists, more interested in preserving their traditions and power bases than in transmitting true spiritual knowledge.

One interview that impressed him was with the Dalai Lama at his home in Dharamsala, in India. The Dalai Lama possessed true charisma and spoke openly about the world situation and his own shortcomings.

“The Chinese are not altogether to blame for the plight of my Tibetan people,” he explained. “Tibetan society was corrupt and tyrannical. We had serfs and an unjust society. The Chinese cleaned things up, but they have gone too far. They are destroying Tibetan culture, and we need to work with them to find a better solution for the fate of my people.

“I exist to benefit my people,” he further explained. “I am not just their spiritual leader, but their political leader as well. I may be the last of the dalai lamas—there may be no need for dalai lamas in the future. If Tibet can be integrated into Chinese society while retaining its autonomy, my purpose will have come to an end. Buddhism should be allowed to flourish.

“The essence of all religions is the same. It does not have to be Tibetan Buddhism. The teachings of your Christ are similar to the teachings of our Buddha. Light is light, and truth is truth. Compassion and love are the universal laws of all true religions. Beyond that it is merely a matter of what costumes we wear. In our Tibetan traditions, our holiest monks wear the funniest hats. It is to remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.”

Max enjoyed this interview immensely, but other than that, the entire trip was full of aggravation and frustrations, dealing with Amanda's neurotic needs and the self-important, power-hungry religious leaders he had to interview.

He was intrigued to note, though, that the negative energy Amanda embodied seemed to fall into alignment with many of those who came forth to be part of the project. He couldn't help but wonder if this was further proof of synchronicity and how negative or positive energies seemed to connect with its own level of vibratory energy.

Max thought often of the Twelve, and of his own spiritual quest. Why had he been chosen to meet all these spiritual and religious teachers
?
None of them appeared to have any connection with his twelve names. None of them—except for the Dalai Lama—even made for interesting conversation. Far too often the sacred trust of simple peoples had been handed to individuals who lacked basic scruples.

But why was he required to meet them
?

Was he supposed to “come to Jesus”
?

Max didn't think so. Each exposure just made him more skeptical of the entire human drama of religion and the quest for spiritual bliss. The more he was treated as a spiritual envoy, the less he respected those he met.

***

The culmination came in the little Indian town of Qadian, which had blossomed in the desert, fulfilling one of the twelve prophecies of the reincarnated Christ who—it was claimed—had founded the Ahmadiyya religion.

Max had flown to Lahore, where he interviewed the head of the Ahmadiyya. Though unorthodox, the Ahmadiyya were considered Muslims—or at least their twenty million followers were almost all originally Muslims. Other Muslims considered them heretics and not only shunned them, but attacked them violently when they could.

The head of the Ahmadiyya acted and dressed like a sultan with a large turban on his head. It was evident from the start that he saw the film project as a way to glorify and expand the reach of the Ahmadiyya. He told Max that his crew could film the enormous temple outside of Lahore, filled with tens of thousands of praying Ahmadiyya, and Max quickly realized that it would be good visual theater.

He was told that the small village of Qadian, near Amritsar, was essential to the project, and he was encouraged to go there and meet with the elders and see for himself the birthplace of the religion.

Thus Max flew to Amritsar, and when the plane landed, he was told to wait until all the other passengers had disembarked. When it was his turn to leave the plane, he saw that the stairway was covered with a red carpet, which continued thirty feet out along the tarmac. On either side of the carpet stood dark-skinned men holding huge flower garlands.

As he walked down the stairs and stepped onto the ground, he was draped with these garlands—some of which reached his knees. At the end of the carpet was a table set with tea and cookies, which Max was invited to enjoy.

After being introduced to his hosts—the mayor of the town and various religious leaders—Max drank the requisite two cups of tea, ate two cookies, and was then escorted to an ancient, white Rolls-Royce parked nearby.

He was asked to sit in the backseat with three of his hosts, each of whom wore white suits and robes and rectangular hats in traditional Muslim style.