Altogether it was a splendid evening, full of variety, and yet full of this directed concentration with which my friend sought to imprint my psyche. I could feel the fall-out getting into the wine — but not fast enough to prevent my drinking the statutory amount for a great evening. Afterwards he explained to me the dynamic of this little act — which is called just ‘sitting’ in Chinese. It is part of a health-giving mechanism which is within the powers of anyone and everyone. The aim is to modify conduct in a fruitful sense — if you have a friend who is harming himself by a certain line of conduct. By sitting close to him and concentrating on that conduct you can, so to speak, meditate him into another groove, another shift. Like switching points on a railway. It has nothing to do with professional medical healing where the doctor imposes his will and his treatment on the sick man; nor is it the imposition of one’s own will-power upon the patient. As he explained it, in the sitting technique one simply mentally steps into the character of your friend as one steps into a boat and starts trying to steer it. Obviously wind and current play their part. But by an act of friendly passivity one sometimes can prod them to modify fruitless conduct and reorient themselves … I labour this point because for a whole month and a half after the departure of Jolan my intake of red wine dropped back equably, without stress, to four or five glasses a day — against a customary four or five pints. But the influence wore off after a while. Yet it was like post-hypnotic suggestion, and I have since tried it myself on someone — just sitting, meditating, not saying anything — with distinct results in the right direction. I must say though that the wine gave a rosy glow to the text and its ideas of harmony and bounty; it made men and women natural allies, sexual partners in a cosmic technique. Indeed I saw some of the great Love-Masters to the Emperors were in fact women whose advice was sought. Great Love-Consultants, their names have come down through these texts full of the fragrance and ardour of a language which has never known prudishness or prurience in matters of love. We spoke of the breathing and yoga side of the matter (it was in this field that the wine was robbing me of control). But I had grasped the central notion as far as I could judge, in the Chinese context. I asked myself what differentiates the conduct of the acrobat from that of the yogi. The acrobat can perform feats of physical skill superior to the yogi’s postures however complicated, yet it leads him nowhere because the issue of his skill is not one of virtue involving a cosmic principle. He is unaware of the poetic lodestar the yogi captures — the magnetic field which he enters.
Jolan Chang gave a chortle. It was sad, but also in a strange way consoling, to find that during a whole historic period in China itself the notation of the Tao had been lost, the link between men and women had been broken. They had become vampires, the women; and the men lost and effeminate; the whole cultural and political scheme of things had lost its equilibrium. The states foundered in anarchy and dissolution. The germ in the wheat had gone bad. A dark age settled over the whole land. According to my friend Chinese history could offer more than one example of this sort of collapse of the historic consciousness together with the corresponding recovery which followed with the swing of the pendulum, for nothing lasts for ever. Would we live to see our own age recover its wits? I wondered. Everything in nature hangs by a hair …‘Embark on the Tao and you won’t have a moment’s peace, because it demands unremitting application and comprehension and balance.’ (That is what Lao Tsu was saying.) You are like a tightrope-walker high above a city; yet with practice you can one day do the walk blindfold, without vertigo. Against reason I have always believed so. It was encouraging that Chang also supported this interpretation of the poem.