Trying The Dance Of Shiva

"No, it doesn't mean anything because you can see the court as anything you like. I don't think it has much meaning. But if you take it very far, then sooner or later you have to see the court as a mandala. Sooner or later."

I began to think that while my consciousness might indeed expand, my tennis was not necessarily going to improve.

"Isn't this exciting?" Murphy said. I asked him why Esalen was getting involved in athletics. "Sport anticipates what the Divine Essence is," he said. "Sport is a Western yoga. The Dance of Shiva. Pure play. Non-utilitarian, the delight in the moment, the Now. We need a more balanced and evolutionary culture. We already have physical mobility. Why shouldn't we have psychic mobility, too, the ability to move psychically into different states? The whole movement of life is to a higher consciousness."

We had two yoga tennis instructors, both recently teachers at John Gardiner's Tennis Ranches. Tim Gallwey was dark and slender and had been on the Harvard tennis team; he had been involved in Moral Re-Armament and had a flash of enlightenment with the 15-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji. Rick Champion had been on the Michigan State freshman tennis team and then was a salesman of business forms and a teaching pro: unlike Gallwey, who was conventionally dressed, Champion wore a beard and a turban. He had been influenced by some of the precepts of Yogi Bhajan Singh and is now called Baba Rick.

"We learn tennis element by element," Gallwey said. "If we learned it as totality, we could learn it in one hundredth the time. Our biggest problem is Ego, is trying too hard. We know how to play tennis. Perfect tennis is in us all. We are not learning something outside and bringing it in, we are discovering the tennis we already know. Everyone knows how to ride a bicycle, and just before we really ride for the first time, we know we know. The problem with Ego is that it has to achieve; we are not sure who we are until by achieving we become. So we hit the ball out and the Ego says, 'Ugh, out.' Then it starts to give commands, 'Do it right.' We shouldn't have a judgment. The ball goes there, not out. Ninety percent of the bad things students do are intentional corrections of something else they are doing. We have to let the body experiment and bypass the mind. The mind acts like a sergeant with the body a private. How can anybody play as a duality?"

Since I have a mind that is constantly going, "Watch the ball" and, "Move your feet, dummy," I recognized the sergeant's voice right away. What do you do about the sergeant?

"You have to check the mind, to preoccupy it, stop it from fretting. Look at the ball. Look at the seams on the ball, watch the pattern, get preoccupied so the mind can't judge. In between points put your mind on your breathing. In, out. In, out. A quiet mind is the secret of yoga tennis. Most people think concentration is fierce effort. Watch your facial muscles after you hit the ball. Are they tensed or relaxed? Concentration is effortless effort, is not trying. The body is sophisticated; its computer commands hundreds of muscles instantly; it is wise about itself, the Ego isn't.

"Higher consciousness is not a mystical term. You see more when all of your energy runs in the same direction. Concentration produces joy, so we look for things that will quiet the mind."

I could-see that parking the mind would be essential. I sat next to Jascha Heifetz once at a dinner party and asked him what he thought about when he was giving a concert. He said if the concert was on a Saturday night he thought about the smoked salmon and the marvelous bagel he was going to have the next morning. If he was thinking about the bagel, then who was thinking about the concerto? His hands.

"But," I asked Gallwey, "don't you have to know the right form before you can park the mind?"