THE STORY OF HAKIM KUTTA

As told to India Jones by the venerable Hakim Kutta at Le Hermitage Yantra of Sir Jonathan Friendly in the Mahankal Valley of the Buddhas in the High Himalaya.
Strange but true is this tale of Hakim Kutta, scholar, yogi, adventurer, of his journey into the Himalayan interior where he went to learn the secrets of the universe and returned reborn in mind, body and spirit after finding the “Valley of the Blue Flowers”.
If one were to ask why the Hakim passed this information on to me I could not give an answer. I am not presumptuous enough to think that he chose me as the bearer of this deep wisdom because of some special quality that I possessed but quite probably because I was just there and it was his time to convey this information to the world. I will attempt to pass on his tale as accurately as possible, in his own words and in the order in which he conveyed them to me, interjecting on occasion only for clarification.
I had come to the kingdom on an assignment of some import as my government wanted to confer with the new king on internal matters of mutual interest. These were difficult meetings as the king, new in his role of supreme commander and unsure of himself and his obligations to his subjects and the world outside, hesitated and prevaricated on every major question that was under consideration. We drank many cups of sweet tea and smoked excessive amounts of the strong local tobacco in the royal hookah but failed, after several days of negotiations, to reach an understanding in spite of the smiles and strained bonhomie of our meetings. This all took place in the lush palace gardens surrounded by servants and a number of very fierce looking bodyguards armed with equally fierce looking weapons. Being a person of gentle nature I was happy to take my leave from these unyielding and somewhat sinister surroundings and not wanting to return to my country so quickly with only failed negotiations to report and looking forward to a short visit with an old university friend, decided to make a trip to the small village of Serangi, where on a nearby mountain overhang rested the private hermitage of my friend who had retired there years before to do serious research of a philosophical and alchemical nature.
A bus from the capital to the village, six hours of bumps, dust and cramped sitting, brought me to the edge of town where I hired the one tonga, a pony cart taxi, to take me up the mountain to the hermitage, a large mud and brick compound behind high walls, where I was soon reconnected with my old friend, Sir Jonathan.
Sir Jonathan is an odd mixture of no nonsense western scholar - philosopher of a pragmatic bent and inscrutable, oriental mystic with the esoteric wisdom of the inner world oozing from his very large brain. He is of medium height with a wiry body, a bald head with curly side fringes, rimless glasses and often dresses in long, Mandarin style robes. He is also a bon vivant, father confessor, philanthropist and horticulturist and spends much of his time, when not writing, engrossed in the various projects growing in his refined and meticulously cared for green house.
There were vines twisting upward and outward everywhere, flowers of every conceivable color and shape, ferns of the most delicate and intricate design, elephant ear leaves containing strange fruit, subtle and strong exotic odors, blending together but still allowing each its own distinction, all enveloping the senses in a way that left one in a very quiet and reflective frame of mind. It was a power point vibrating with the quiet energy of old and new plant mutations from different parts of the world, an oasis of timelessness that left one, in what could only be called, an other worldly state. Having never taken to strong spirits in order to alter my consciousness I found it quite more than enough to pack my pipe with one of Sir Jonathan’s masterful blends of exotic smoking material and sit in his greenhouse surrounded by the shimmering green growth of his imagination and labour and contemplate the adventures my life had bequeathed me and their philosophical implications thus far.
But the hermitage had a visitor this time in one of the back cottages, and there was much scurrying around to make him comfortable for he was apparently old and ill and close to death.

Hakim Kutta, I was told, was from the back country, from the hidden Valley of the Blue Flowers, many days journey from here, in the inner reaches of the Himalaya, through the glacier snows and dangerous crevasses that few men had traversed and the valley of an almost mythical nature that fewer men had visited. I wanted to meet this strange and enigmatic person that I had heard so much about, to hear his story of life, death and resurrection and the willing transfer of consciousness from a dying body to a living one for this was the whispered undercurrent throughout the hermitage, by both residents and workers. That the Hakim had learned the secrets of life and death and could willingly transfer his consciousness wherever and to whomever he wanted and thus live forever.
The next day Jonathan informed me that the Hakim, having heard there was a visitor from the outside world, would be most pleased to have a visit with me and would I go to his cottage tomorrow for mid morning tea.
Of course I would go and immediately returned to my room to compile a list of questions that I might ask him if given the opportunity to do so. All of us would like to be young and beautiful and live forever whether we admit it or not, never growing old or weak, always having strength and vitality, the boundless energy of youth that has slipped away so quickly into the lost shadows of the past like smoke rising into the void of nothingness. The greying hair, the lost teeth and weak knees, how wonderful to be able to change them for new models and continue with all of our plans for the future; the fantasies, hopes and dreams that have carried us through this earthly existence and which have come to naught, by in large.
And this valley of blue flowers, what is this place that people talk about in hushed voices, another Shangri-La, a land of masters and magic and mystery? This is 2005, Madam Blavatsky and Alexandra David-Neel are dead and gone and the masters who once took center stage in the theosophical theatre were relegated years ago to the archival dustbin along with the other occult and pseudo mystical relics of that time. This is the era of the pill and the computer, of jumbo jets and quantum physics and though this little mountain kingdom is definitely off the beaten path it is a modern state with all the conveniences and amenities of the modern world, threadbare though they may seem at times. But live forever as a result of meditation and yoga? For I presumed that this is what the Hakim had been engaged in back in those caves and mountains, some kind of system that he had perfected and now claims special powers as a result of. But I must not presume for he will tell his own story if he is so inclined.
The next day I arrived at the appointed hour. The Hakim was sitting up in bed, white hair and beard framing a face with a high forehead and clear hazel eyes that danced with the irony of deep and lucid understanding that only age and intelligence can confer. A green, frayed cotton shirt without collar, in the style of indigenous mountain folk, covered his body. A worn copy of the Koran and several other tattered tomes lay on the nightstand. His skin, smooth without wrinkles or blemish, belied an aura of youth and vitality that contradicted the whiteness of hair and depth of his character. His fingers were long and delicate, his teeth white and straight, his voice even, deep and gentle. He smiled and indicated for me to take the chair next to the bed.
The Hakim poured the tea that had been set for us and we drank in silence, absorbing the energetic vibrations of each other, the silent music that springs forth from our unconditioned nature. When our tea was finished he began to speak.

I am called Hakim Kutta by the people of the Valley. That is not the name I started this life with. I have had many names and many parallel lives throughout this one main incarnation and each of those minor incarnations took on a name of it’s own. I have had little to do with the naming of any of them, they were assumed spontaneously or already named when I entered the body. I will be leaving this body soon and the next body that I will be entering already has a name as it is a young boy in early adolescence. When I have entered as a new born infant I am named by those parents like everyone else.
I came into this world this time through a womb in Manchuria, China, and while in the womb was carried across the seas to America. There, in the capital, I grew up in diplomatic and political circles, was educated reluctantly, practiced psychology with the rich and famous, became restless and dissatisfied and started traveling to India and other parts of Asia.
One year in the early thirties while in New Delhi I met a Spanish nobleman and painter who had been exiled to India by his government for killing a man. I met him in what is now called the Jantar Mantar, a park where we both happened to be sitting with some sadhus; Indian holy men. He was one of those rare beings of deep thought who had suffered much in life and we were immediately drawn into each others aura. He invited me to his home. He was a man of immense wealth and lived on the outskirts of the city in a large, old mansion within an exclusive colony with his mother, a beautiful matron of aristocratic bearing and intelligence. On the walls of their diminutive palace hung priceless paintings and tapestries and the floors were covered with rare Persian carpets and antique furniture of the most exquisite quality. We were served tea in the finest Chinese porcelain by his mother and after she retired my new friend retrieved from his briefcase two maps, one a new and fairly standard version of the Himalayan Range extant at that time and another old and tattered map of some indeterminate area that contained what appeared to be handwritten directions with arrows and lines drawn in and around various focal points.
He told me that he was leaving India soon, that his time in this part of the world was over, that he was being reborn into another life and wanted to pass onto me something that he had learned in his many years in the orient. He said that he had recognized me as a fellow quester and that I had been sent to him, that our meeting had not been fortuitous but planned by the gods. He then laid the large map down and positioning the smaller and older map on top, indicated to a place on the old map and said there is were I must go for the secrets of the universe, where I will learn to conquer life and death and thus become one with the gods.
I listened, fascinated by the unreality of the whole scene, unable to take what he was saying seriously but mesmerized by the ideas that he was revealing to me. Who was this man, I thought, and why is he telling me this story?
Of course there was a part of me that wanted to believe everything he said for indeed, I was a quester; dissatisfied, perplexed about my life and impending death and obsessed with those philosophical questions that I sought answers for: Who am I? Where have I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? How do I get there? What is this universe that I find myself in? Where did it come from? Why am I me and you you? And the shadow of death always hanging over. What did that mean? A complete annihilation of the senses? A big sleep to wake up in another body? An endless cycle of birth and death until one makes the grade never to come back? Or is it a reawakening of the same person in a parallel universe? And of course God. What was this God thing, what did that mean? I am sure you have asked the same questions in your life, all of us do at one time or another.
And then there was love. What was love? When did love happen? The deep yearning for love, to both give and receive, why was that never fulfilled completely? And was there even such a thing as completely?
And sorrow, why so much sorrow and sadness in the world, the endless rivers of tears that we shed for ourselves and the world, the pain of childbirth, the misery of poverty, of loss, the anguish and confusion of not understanding.
All of the answers to these questions fell under the rubric of “secrets of the universe” and here was a man, from a different culture, a stranger from a different world, offering to give me, ostensibly, the keys that would open the door to the answers to those deep and perplexing questions.
Take this map and go there, he said. I pass it on to you. It is a difficult and perilous journey but you have been chosen to go and no harm will come to you. Trust. All will be well. At that moment his mother appeared to see me out. A servant opened the door and I entered the waiting taxi and was soon speeding into the night tightly clutching the two maps and wondering what lay ahead.
Two days later I returned to the mansion. It was empty. No Spanish nobleman, no mother, no furniture, carpets or paintings, everything gone without a trace, like it had never existed. The servant who opened the door for me that night was there but he could have been from another planet for he did not recognize me nor could he respond to my queries with anything other than a blank stare. The words jantar mantar mean magic. Could it all have been an illusion? A play of the imagination that India is so famous for? But no, for I still had the maps and unbeknownst to me at the time they were to lead me into the greatest adventure of my life from which I was never to return.