YETI

A few days later I left for the mountains. My destination was a small village in the foothills near the border where the three countries intersect. There I spent a week finding a guide, buying supplies and two small Mongolian ponies that carried us through sparsely populated villages`` following an old caravan route to the last inhabited outpost, a small gompa occupied by a very old lama and his son who was willing to take me the remainder of the way on foot in exchange for the animals. My guide went back the next day with a small passing caravan carrying salt. They had been waiting for me the lama said, why had I taken so long?
Ahead of me was the most difficult part of the journey as some of it was over many miles of ice floes that were quite treacherous when snow was falling or the winds high. It was also thought to be one of the homes of the Yeti, the Indomitable Snowman of Himalayan legend, half man, half animal, a so-called missing link, whose existence has never been proved but never disproved either. There had been sightings then as there are now but photography was in its infancy, it was 1934, and no one had yet taken a photo that could be claimed, much less verified, as authentic. I was curious to get a glimpse if such a creature existed, but had little desire to meet one on the path even if their alleged ferociousness was superstitious hyperbole. Or so I thought at the time.
We started out early the next morning after a breakfast of porridge and tea. Yogondo, the lama’s strong son, a taciturn man in his thirties who had lived his whole life in the mountains, carried the provisions, the cooking and climbing equipment and the tent while I carried my rucksack, the rifle and ammunition and a sturdy length of rope. I had been told that there were bandits in the area and foreigners were generally thought to carry large amounts of gold or other useful items that can be bartered for food or weapons. I had purchased the rifle at the last village with hesitation and trepidation for I had, and still do, an aversion to firearms but was advised by the village elders that it was better to have one and not have to use it than it was to not have one when one was needed. I reluctantly agreed and was not sorry that I did so in the days that followed.


The glare of the ice bedazzles the mind and senses like deep poetry that burns with unforgettable visions. Walking on the ice, with only the sound of our footsteps echoing around us, plunged me into the mysterium tremedum that I cannot articulate even to this day. It was an atmosphere of the numinous, a throbbing, shaking, cleansing and as I crunched along this gigantic sheet of ice I felt myself being lifted to another dimension or state of consciousness never before experienced. I was cold, but I did not feel it, I was hot but I did not feel it, yet I could feel both temperatures, both on the inside of the body and the outside, yet I was disconnected from the whole experience of hot and cold, from the duality of extreme temperatures in that extreme environment. Though my feet were touching the ground I was sailing, mindful of every inch of ground being covered in my periphery but a choiceless mindfulness or awareness that arose spontaneously, intuitively and trustingly. I could have been on ski’s for my heart was pounding with wild abandonment and a multitude of new vistas of possibilities rushed through my consciousness in seconds, past me, through me, over me as I traveled into all the manifestations of human thought and feeling.
When inside the labyrinth of multi-layered levels and dimensions of consciousness the laws of space, time and matter don’t apply anymore, or not in the usual ways that we have been conditioned to understand or perceive. These were new worlds that I had committed myself to, both inner and outer, and deftness was required to navigate through them both. I thanked those celestial beings that were looking over us that so far all had gone without incident.
We tramped on like that for many days and I became lost in a transcendental reverie, captured in the arms of the sun and ice gods and held tight as they poured their nectar into the bowl of my being, as they threw their thunderbolts into my brain and heart and allowed me to see and understand for a moment, only a moment, the immensity of all this life and death drama we are all a part of, that we all are dancing so frantically, in the dark and on the edge of the abyss. But a moment was enough for that one moment was so overwhelming that any longer would have burnt me to a crisp. However, I felt that I was on the right track and that one day I would learn to live in that state of complete openness and clarity, if fortune deemed me worthy of such a priceless gift.
We walked twelve to fifteen hours a day, from sunrise to sunset, sleeping at night in our small tent or in the occasional ice cave we found along the way, ever mindful of predators whose sleeping quarters we might be invading. Our food consisted of pounded rice, barley meal called tsampa, dried jerky and tea made on a small portable stove when we could not find fire wood. On one occasion we found what appeared to be the remnants of a fire, another time two large footprints frozen in the ice. Both instances Yogondo took for living proof that a yeti was nearby, puffing himself up and jumping up and down, swinging his arms wildly as he emitted eerie screams. We both laughed at his performance but were left, nonetheless, with a feeling of foreboding, a presentiment of things to come. There in the desolate and precipitous wilds of ice and loneliness death lurks behind every hill and shadow ready to snatch one away in an instant and both fear and forgetfulness need be constantly guarded against or all could be lost in the blink of an eye.
When we reached the upper plain where the ice gave way to scattered fir and cedar trees we could see in the far distance what the natives called the mountain with ten thousand peaks. That was where we had to go to find the narrow passage between two peaks that would lead us to the valley that was my destination. Ten thousand peaks and out of that jumble of jagged rock and ice we had to locate the well concealed entrance that would lead me to the secrets of the universe.
How many times I questioned my sanity on this venture I cannot recall but crazy or not I had to push on. I was being both pulled and pushed by a force that I could only obey and trust for by that time any free choice that I might have had in the beginning was completely exhausted. Free choice is voluntary action or inaction and by now I was riding the twin headed demon called obsession-compulsion and could do nothing to stop it.
But of course I could. I could have stopped, turned around and gone back like any sane and reasonable man would. But I knew, for some reason, I knew that this is what my life was here to do and that great teachings lay beyond and that I would be safe as long as I stayed mindful and trusted.
Mindfulness is the secret of physical and psychological life; trust is the secret of spiritual life. How many times do you remember your mother or father telling you to pay attention? Walking in the mountains one must pay attention to every step for as soon as you loose your focus you fall, slip on the ice, down a crevasse, finito, you are done, finished.
By and by we came to a different environment, no more ice, now trees and rocks, with different dangers lurking in their shadows. One could feel a spectral presence hovering about. But again I had to trust and push on, allowing myself the attitude that any disembodied spirits that inhabited these forests were here to help me and any two legged or four legged spirits we might meet along the way we could handle, if necessary, with the force of gun powder. The most I assumed we could bump into would be a very rare snow leopard or an old sadhu or monk living in a cave, though most unlikely so far up.
I’ve always been fascinated by the cave dwellers life or the hermetical life, named after Hermes, founder of alchemy. It is what the yogi practices in his cave, psychic alchemy, changing the heavy dark lead of his being into pure and radiant gold. In order to do this one needs one’s time as all of one’s mental and psychic energy must be focused like a laser and outside interruptions dissipate the flow. A difficult life for a family man, a practice only for the stout of heart and for one not in need of humankind. It is a difficult way for most people as sparks of passion burst forth from every wandering heart and throw out other sparks to other wandering hearts inflaming all with passion and sexuality, the wetness and womb from which we have all sprung. The hermit chooses the wetness and fecundity of the mind whose issues are of a more abstract nature and whose rewards are of a more mystical kind. It is the passion of the youth that remakes the world over and over in all its misery. It is the passion of the hermit that puts mankind in touch with its soul.
In the green solitude of nature the hermit becomes one with the trees of the forest, the smiling flowers and waving grasses are his companions, the twinkling stars and dancing clouds have faces and voices that articulate to him their secret meaning of existence. He lives in a palace of sweet sounds and sights, talking to the wetness of the gurgling brook that touches his foot, soliloquizing to the bugs and birds, all conscious and intelligent and generous with their gifts, all sufficient in and of themselves and resisting not the inevitable changes of death and resurrection the morrow brings.
At the moment of death when the leaves drop and the flowers wither returning their quintessence to the soil of their beginnings, I have often wondered if they feel, if they lament the passing of their short time under the sky that nourishes them or are they happy to return to the workshop of the gods that will refashion and send them on their way once again to offer their prayer of beauty and delight to a sad and despairing world. Does their life have any other aim? Does our life have any reason other than just to be?
As with flowers so with man, for are we not flowers of a different kind that the universe has brought forward from the depths of its fertile womb? And what aim does the life of man have? Is it any different than the flower? To offer beauty and fragrance and ask nothing in return, pleased when a little water and sunshine comes its way?
But no, man wants so much more; to conquer and accumulate, to have and to hold, gold, land, pleasure, security, eternal life, wisdom, God, all of the things that he already has, along with the flowers, but does not realize. In my practice as an analyst this was the one and only dilemma with everyone, with all of my clients, including myself; more, how to acquire more, the craving for more. And does that craving ever end? The mad quest that I was undertaking at that moment was a quest for more, albeit clothed in the pious cloak of a pilgrim-philosopher who only wanted the secrets of the universe. And the hermit wants more as well, more silence, more solitude, more enlightenment and thus more peace, the priest wants more God and on and on endlessly, the eternal quest for more in an ever expanding universe. Does it ever end?
My musings were interrupted as we came into a clearing. Large boulders and rocks that afforded natural shelters were scattered around the perimeter A good place to make camp for a day or two I thought. In the middle of the clearing stood a half circle of rocks that obviously had been used for cooking. We took our packs off and proceeded to make camp. Yogondo started to set up the tent and I started to gather kindling to start a pot of tea. Then we saw him.