Over The Prison Wall

"What a skinny kid!" said Bernie, nudging Joe hard in the arm. "Hey , cut that out, you slimeball, what is it now?" "That kid, that meditation kid, get a load of him. Probably eats rabbit food. Look how skinny he is. And he could eat anything he wants out there," said Bernie. "Hey, I'm not here to watch the kid talk, I just came to get out of the yard and read for a while, said Joe." Fine," said Bernie, "I'll wake you when the kid starts floating." "Floating? Whattaya mean, floating?" "That's the trip with these meditation people, they supposedly can float up in the air. At least they say they can," said Bernie. "Sure, and I'm gonna be the first woman president," said Joe.

Bernie first went to prison for a white collar crime. He was running a bunch of apartments for an investor friend of his, general repair, maintenance, etc. and he got caught resetting the electric meters. That got him in prison. It was a little disagreement with somone in prison that kept him there. The other guy got out of prison. Feet first. And Bernie got a longer stay.

The Transcendental Meditation instructor said that there would be a course available soon at the prison. It was supposed to release stress and help them to cope. But the best thing of all was that the guards were going to take the course. If you think the guys in the yard had stress, you should see the guards. Bernie couldn't understand what kind of a guy would ever choose to work in a prison when he could work anywhere else in the world outside the wall.

Still, Bernie didn't care about the stress part. He wanted to float. Float up. Float around. Float off, away, over the walls.

He took the T.M. course, and to his surprise, he enjoyed it. For the first time that he could remember, when he sat down to meditate, he settled down deep into himself, and felt, if just for a little while, a few moments of peace inside. He didn't know what to think of that. He didn't remember a time before when he had felt peace. Usually it was war. War with his brothers, war with his father and mother, war with himself. But here, doing this meditation thing, for once in his life he felt peaceful. That was something.

He liked peaceful. But he liked Santa Monica even more. He wanted to be back on the Santa Monica pier, looking out on the ocean, with the carnival sounds of popcorn booths, downsized ferris wheels and game booths behind him, bright lights overhead and girls in halter tops walking by in little groups. He wanted to be out of this prison with it's 1890 walls. Everything old. Everything stripped down. Everything the same drab color.

He wanted to float out, and worry about peaceful later, while he was standing on the Santa Monica pier.

So he bugged the T.M. guy, Skinny, about the floating thing. And I guess that's how the whole thing got started.

Skinny, who's real name was Don, said that yes, there was a thing called a "sidhi" which was some kind of advanced ability that a meditator could do, or practice doing, which was supposed to make him able to do almost anything you could think of, like fly, for instance. Nobody was really good at it yet, but there were stories down through history of people who had been able to fly, and the theory made sense, at least to Skinny.

Bernie asked Skinny if he had ever flown, and Skinny said he had felt light inside, and hopped around cross-legged on some foam rubber mattresses, and felt great, but he had never maintained level or sustained flight. "Still," said Skinny, "You never know when it's really going to kick in."

That was enough of a possibility for Bernie. He had plenty of time to kill.

So, after about six months of practicing the T.M. thing, Bernie put in a request to take the flying sidhi training. That's when the newspaper boys got on the thing. And Jack Butler, who was running for re-election to the State Congress.

It seems that the state had paid for the experimental meditation program, and that was controversial to start off with. But the idea of prisoners flying was a different thing. Somehow it caught the public fancy. As a matter of fact it made national TV news in one of those little funny bits they do at the end of the 10:00 news.

But Jack Butler made it a campaign issue about wasteful spending. Teaching prisoners to meditate with state funds was one thing, said Jack, "probably good for nothin', but teaching them to fly, now that's gotta be some kind of a joke."

The thought of prisoners flying was such a funny thought that a cartoonist won a prize for his depiction of prisoners flying out of a prison like popcorn kernels popping out of a pan.

But Bernie didn't think it was a joke. He wrote to the biggest paper in the state challenging Jack Butler to let him out of jail if he could fly over the walls.

It was one of the most humorous moments of the year, and got more national coverage for the state, when Jack Butler responded solemnly to an unknown prisoner's request, by introducing a bill into the state congress that would allow any prisoner who could float over the prison walls to walk away scot free. And the bill passed, to rousing cheers, as laughter tear-filled eyes were rubbed and legislators clapped each other on the back as they went out of session. For a few moments the state was famous throughout the country for more than its agricultural exports, and the idea of an entire state legislature agreeing to perpetrate a joke added an unusual note of fashionable sophistication to the state's image.

Only the representative from Espey county voted no. He said, "This should never become law. What if it ain't nonsense? Do you really want some prisoners floating over your house?"

The papers got good copy off of that one, and their stories were filed with the requisite opposing view. But after a few callbacks to the story in the next few weeks, the news settled down to the usual diet of floods, accidents, politics, and rumors of wars.

Bernie watched all the publicity from a distance. He knew that he was being laughed at by a lot of people. But that didn't bother him, because he kept thinking the two words "what if?" What if they are wrong. What if you can levitate up and float around. What if it's possible? What if the legislature in making a joke had given him a key to freedom?

After all that, he took the sidhi training without much attention from anyone. He enjoyed the new techniques, but he wasn't exactly floating around yet. But other things were happening, due to the sidhis, and of course, also due to his long period of doing T.M..

First of all, he was getting along better with everyone in his "yard." His yard was the group of guys allowed out to exercise from 10 a.m to 12 noon each day. Other yards had other times. He was less quick to anger, and didn't take everything personally. People started to talk with him that before had only been defiant. Some people still laughed at him, but he didn't care. Some other people had done T.M., and they were feeling better, too. But he was the only "flyer."

Still, he wasn't really flying. Just feeling good inside, even feeling some of that lightness that Skinny had talked about. So he talked to Skinny on the day of one of Skinny's visits to his captive audience of meditators. "So what can I do to make this flying thing happen?" "You're doing the right thing," said Skinny, just do the TM and TM Sidhis Program, that's the main thing." "Yeah, but there must be more that I can do," said Bernie.

"Well, there are some things that might contribute to the project" said Skinny. "Like what? Tell me," said Bernie. "Like maybe some diet stuff, and some exercise stuff..... and some, uh, what you could call food supplements," said Skinny." "You mean like vitamin pills?," said Bernie. "Like that," said Skinny, "but it's way more than that."

"I want it all", said Bernie. And so Skinny taught him some yoga asanas, and explained the food thing to him. "Yoga means union," said Skinny. And asanas means something like "seat" , or "seated." Seated positions to create union. So Bernie started to do these asanas, and he couldn't do them all the way at first, but he kept at it, and eventually he got to be fairly flexible.

The food thing was tougher. First of all there was the no meat thing. The food in the prison was skimpy enough, but if you left out the meat, there was very little left to keep your strength up. But he did what he could, and sometimes by trading his meat serving for somebody elses vegetables or bread he would feel somewhat full for a while.

But even though he missed the meat, he liked the lighter feeling that no meat gave to his meditations and his life in general. All of a sudden he felt less weighed down and heavy in his thinking. And he lost weight. Most of it unnecessary. "Getting lighter," he thought, "this could be useful."

After a few years of this he was feeling a lot better, but a question came up, which he put out to Skinny on one of his visits to the prison: "how come you guys who have been doing this for years haven't flown yet? I've only been doing this two years and I must be way behind you guys." Skinny explained that it's not just individual development that supports the flying phenomenon , it's the support of the group consciousness around you. That somehow the effect of the environment around you adds to your capability to effectively experience the subtle states of meditatin that allow for flying. Bernie nodded and filed that one away for future reference.

Bernie wasn't the only TM'er in his prison. A bunch of the guys and all of the guards were into it, too. The stress level had fallen tremendously, and the prison was getting a reputation for being an easy place to do time. The state prison board downgraded the prison to a medium security facility. and less staff was needed. The prison population was shrinking, too, due to an unusual trend: most guys who got out didn't come back, at least not the meditators.

After about five years the prison was a fairly peaceful place. But then things got stirred up a bit. And it was because of Bernie.

Bernie had been quietly doing his meditation, staying on his diet, doing his yoga asanas, and feeling better and better all of the time. And then one day he asked the warden if he could do some time in Solitary. He had heard that most meditators outside the walls would go on in-residence courses now and then, where they would meditate for longer periods of time, do more asanas, get a really deep rest, and generally take a giant step in their evolution.

It was an unusual request, and Bernie sat in the warden's office while the warden weighed it in his mind. Finally the warden said okay, but with a drawback. The warden was happy with Bernie, a model prisoner in this model prison. The warden's job was the envy of the system. No major problems in years. His prison had a reputation for success in the state, and even in the country.

Still, he didn't want to have it get out that he was giving a prisoner a vacation, even if it was in Solitary. "Bernie, you'll have to screw up somehow," said the warden. "What?" said Bernie. "You'll have to screw up, do something wrong, so we can throw you in Solitary." Bernie saw the logic. "So what should I do?" "I don't know yet. We'll think of something, and I'll let you know."

Two weeks later Bernie got a week in Solitary for singing "America the Beautiful," after lights out. Everybody knew what was up. Most people thought he was really wacko to want to be in solitary, but they humored him. After all they had laughed at the meditation thing and now they were almost all doing it. There were those, however, who said they should have given him two weeks for singing so bad. That was the joke of the week around the yard.

So Bernie got to "round." Rounding, Skinny had explained, was to do asanas, and then pranayama, a breathing technique, then meditation, then the Sidhis, including the flying technique, and then start all over through the whole thing. Over and over.

It was pretty quiet in solitary. The air wasn't too good, but he wasn't using up much of it, since breath rate drops during meditation. Time went by. He occasionally ate something that was put through the door. Once during his meditation he felt extremely quiet, and then something unusual happened. All of a sudden the boundaries of his body seemed to disappear, and he felt as if he was a cloud of energy, just an expanded field of consciousness. He could feel his body, but it was as if contained in this larger field which was his real nature. He had escaped, it a way, from the prison of the body, without really leaving it. He felt deeply calm and peaceful.

That experience was worth all of the asanas and bad air and no sunlight he had put up with for a week. And when he got out of Solitary he felt very rested, and he looked great. After that he tried to get back in Solitary as often as the Warden would let him. Once it was for spilling garbage. The fact that he spilled it into a large dumpster wasn't mentioned in the report. Once it was for not eating meat. Once for hitting another prisoner (with a pillow). In any case it became a regular thing with him to sneak into Solitary when possible for a deep rest.

For Christmas once, the Warden had the air ducts fixed to get real air into Solitary. That was the best thing that had happened to Bernie in a long time.

The prison was all business as usual until about ten years after the meditation thing had gotten started. Then it happened. All hell broke loose. Or all heaven, I guess you might say.

Bernie started floating.

It didn't happen in Solitary, either, like you might think. And Bernie really didn't notice it, at first. He just felt sometimes, during his flying practice, a tremendous feeling of lightness, happiness, and peace. It was the guy across the cellblock hallway who noticed it.

Bernie was just doing his afternoon round of asanas, pranayama, meditation and sidhis one day, and when he got to the flying section he just quietly floated up in the air about two feet. He was completely absorbed in the inner experience of it all, and really didn't notice the fact that he was no longer seated on the bed.

He had long ago adjusted to the meditation position where you fold your legs together cross-legged and they don't dangle. He had seen that in a photo of Skinny's teacher, and he figured it couldn't hurt to try it. Of course it could hurt if you weren't flexible enough, but years of asanas had made him fairly limber.

He didn't notice the floating, and nobody else did. And since he came down slowly, and nobody saw, no one was the worse for it. But when it happened the next time, the guy across the hall, who wasn't a meditator yet, happened to glance across the hall, see Bernie floating, and let out a yelp of disbelief.

At that Bernie came crashing down on the bed, out of his peaceful reverie, out of his calm state, and ws startled with the realization that he had been up in the air, that someone had seen it, and now there was shouting all over outside his room.

The guards quieted the man down. Nobody really knew what to make of it, whether it was a delusion, a made up story, or what, but when it happened again the next week, and the next, and when the man called a guard over to witness it, the story gained credibility.

After the first few times Bernie started to realize that indeed, he was floating, and despite the uproar, he decided to keep going with it. After all, the goal of the sidhi for flying was to fly, and if it was happening, he might a well flow with it. Plus, the flashy visual effect of flying was nothing compared to the inner experience: total happiness, a rush of energy and lightness, just complete lightness of the body, which in that feeling couldn't help but simply float away.

The other prisoners treated him with awe after that. And the other TM'ers acquired extra status. Maybe what they were doing had something to it after all. The guys in Bernie's yard clamored for a public demonstration. And, with the Warden's approval, Bernie finally consented to do his meditation program out in the yard itself. But he had to agree to do it for every "Yard" that was scheduled, because no one Yard can stand for the other Yards to get something that they don't get.

So Bernie demonstrated his program outside. And the entire yard waited and watched. For forty minutes, and hour. And then, nothing. Nothing happened. Bernie just sat there. People finally got up and wandered off, laughing. Bernie didn't feel bad. As he explained to his meditator buddies. "It don't happen every time." Plus he wasn't used to being watched.

So, he just kept doing his afternoon round out in the yard, and now and then a little crowd would gather, and now and then other meditators would join in. But since he was the only sidha, they would inevitably finish before him, since he took longer to do the whole thing, and sometimes he was left totally alone to finish his full program of meditative activities.

Then one day he floated. First a few feet, and then about eight feet in the air. There were shouts throughout the yard, people came running, and then an awed silence overcame the group. There was a little breeze touring the yard, and seemed that Bernie was gently moved through the air like a balloon. When he came down, he landed gently, about twenty yards from his liftoff point, and had to walk back to his meditation spot to finish with the little nap he took at the end of his program.

People said "Very cool man, how did you do that?," and "Jeez, Barney, amazing...." But Barney just lay there for a while, content that he had shown that it was possible, but mainly because doing it was an experience so far removed from the hubbub it caused, and it still felt good.

After that he had to do it during every Yard until he had floated for everybody. It took about a week but finally it had worked once in each of the four yards. Then they let him go back to meditating in his cell. But now and then he would come out in the daylight just for the fresh air and high "ceiling."

After that the entire prison got serious about TM. "If Bernie can do it, I can do it, " was the general feeling. Suddenly no one wanted to eat meat. A vegetarian menu had to be instituted. One advantage was that that vegetarian food cost a lot less, and fresh fruits and vegetables could be had for less money than was spent previously on heavier fare.

Everyone learned those asanas, and everyone who had been meditating more than six months was allowed to take a TM-Sidhis course, including of course, the flying sidhi.

New prisoners coming in to this prison found themselves under a lot of group pressure from some inmates to start the T.M. program, because "your stress is gonna weigh the rest of us down." But Skinny stepped in and explained the importance of freedom of choice, and that a few coherent individuals can affect a large group of incoherent ones, because the coherent ones have more power. "Let them come to it by choice," said Skinny. And it usually didn't take long.

Then one day Barney was out meditating in the yard, and he began to float. And he floated up, way up. Ten feet, twenty feet, forty feet. He floated up to an eyelevel view for the corner guards. One of them got a bit nervous and called the main office and said, "Get the Warden on the phone, please!" The Warden got on the line and said, "What is it, Cosgrove?" "It's Bernie, Sir, I'm worried he's going to float away. What do I do if he goes over the wall? Shoot him?"

Bernie was starting to drift slowly toward the outside wall. People in the yard noticed. The warden ran out into the yard.

Bernie didn't realize what was going on, since he was so wrapped up in the lightness and bliss of the experience. He had quit worrying about going up or coming down, it all seemed to happen naturally and easily. But then he heard the Warden: "Barney, Hey Barney, come down guy, you're scaring the guards, come on down..."

Barney opened one eye, scoped out the situation for a moment, and then quietly drifted down. The Warden went over to his landing spot and said, "Barney, we're going to have to talk about this. See you in my office tomorrow at ten o five sharp." "Yes, Sir," said Barney.

"Well, Barney, this floating outside has got to stop. It's making my guards antsy. I'm afraid one of the new guys might shoot you someday."

"Can't stop, Sir," said Barney.

"Why not?," said the Warden

"Well, I could stop, Sir, but the fact is, despite all your kindnesses to me, I still think about that Santa Monica Pier."

"What does the Santa Monica Pier have to do with this?

"Well," said Barney, "I still dream of getting out of here. And when I do, I'm gonna walk , run or float over to the Santa Monica Pier and look out over the ocean as a free man."

"But, Barney, you're not up for parole."

"I know, but you're forgetting Bill Number 10755."

"What's that?"

"You know, Jack Butler's joke bill that passed in the state legislature ten years ago, that any prisoner that could float over the walls of their prison could walk."

"Barney, you wouldn't!

"Wouldn't I?"

"I guess you would," said the warden, after a pause. The warden took a moment to reflect on the situation, and then he said, "Okay Barney, now I know what to do." The law says you can get out if you can float out. So I'm going to tell my guards not to shoot at you, even if I lose my job over it."

And that's what he did.

After that Bernie got in touch with Skinny and told him his intentions.

And somehow it leaked to the press.

Bernie got prepared to leave the prison, and then he began meditating in the yard again. Everybody knew what he was doing, so a crowd gathered again. But since the press knew about it, a lonely vigil was maintained outside the prison walls as well. No one knew which way Barney might float out, if and when he did float out, but no one wanted to miss the event, if and when it did happen.

Still, all was not well, especially with Jack Butler. Governor Jack Butler, that is. Yes, Butler's career had continued to grow, but now his past was in review. The press coverage of the "Floating Prison Escape Attempt" as it was being called inevitably referred to the "Joke Law" the Butler had gotten passed. Now he was trying to do something about it.

But before he could, one day, Bernie sat down to meditate, quietly floated up, and over the walls.

He floated for a while, and below him a crowd of journalists ran, drove, tripped over each other, and finally stopped, ten feet away, as he quietly settled to the ground. At that point a Chevy drove up, screeched to a halt, and before the press could start asking questions, Skinny was driving Bernie away.

But they didn't get far, since a crowd of highway patrol cars surrounded them, and armed officers extracted both driver and passenger, drove them off to the county lockup, and that was that for a while.

Bernie had told Skinny that he felt confident that he could levitate at will. And he had told him when to meet him, only he wasn't sure which way the wind would blow. But Skinny had got to him before the press could hassle him, so that at least was good. Going to the local jail was a surprise, but at least they got to do their afternoon meditation together, while the press roiled around outside the building.

There was a hearing the next day, and the governor was there, confident that he had done the right thing in keeping Bernie in custody, "Until all this could be straightened out." Skinny was let go with no charges. For now. But the Judge didn't share the Governor's confidence. He upbraided the Governor for breaking his own law, set Bernie loose on $1 bail pending a hearing, and Bernie walked out of the County Jail a reasonably free man.

Skinny had arranged an apartment for him to stay at temporarily, and he finally met with the press, who gobbled up his answers and sensationalized everything, and wore him out a bit, and finally he got away from them for a while while they focussed on the Governor's comments, the situation back at the prison, and comments from prominent scientists and psychologists on how it all made sense based on certain principles of physics and mental abilities they had known all along.

Finally there was a day in court where the legality of his "float away" pardon or escape was debated. And it was Skinny who came through in the end. After hearing from psychologists and criminologists and fellow prisoners and lawyers from both sides, the courtroom was treated to the following comments from Bernie, on the witness stand, when he was asked about wheteher he thought he should be released or not.

"Well, it seems that you put a guy in a penetentiary, but he's not always penitent. And you put him in the Department of Corrections, but he rarely gets corrected. You take him out of society, because he's a danger to society and to himself. You dream that he will get back in tune with society somehow. That somehow he will learn to live by the law, and abide by what is in everybody's best interest. But there's a deeper law than the law of government. The law of goverment is modelled on what my friend Skinny, here, I mean Don, calls natural law.

And Natural Law, he tells me, is the laws of nature that run the entire universe. All those laws functioning all the time, running the enormous system of tides and times, of days and nights, of years and seasons, of planets and galaxies. Living in tune with that law is much more good for society than simply living in accord with a few human laws that we have created as guidelines. People laws are probably modelled after Natural laws. When you break a people law, you're probably also breaking natural law.

But you can be in violation of natural law without breaking any human law. So to be in tune with natural law is to be much more of a good citizen than someone who simply doesn't break any human laws. If you are in tune with Natural law, according to Don here, everything you do, everything you think does nothing but send positive influences out to evryone and everything around you. You are like a broadcast station of goodness. You don't add stress to the world. You don't add to anyone's unhappiness. You are an innocent expression of all that's good about life.

In such a situation, your desires are very much in tune with natural law, and nature rises to support you. And therefore what you think, what you want, all those things nature rushes to make happen.

According to this theory, only a person who is in tune with Natural Law could have the effects that I've been lucky to have with this meditation and sidhi program. And so, by this measure, you might think that despite my tawdry start, and my many mistakes, and my great errors to violating natural and human law in the past, that maybe, just maybe, now I have been rehabilitated. Re-ha-bi-li-tated. Rehabilitated in the sense of the latin word, rehabile, re-dressed, re-made, re-covered with something good. The new clothes, and not the Emperor's new clothes, but the real new clothes of a transformed, fully law abiding citizen, way beyond the previous definition of "law-abiding."

And if the goal of prison is to rehabilitate, I think that Jack Butler's "joke law" to let a levitating prisoner walk away, is really one of the smartest laws on record. And I can tell you, there's a changed world back at the pen, due to that law and due to a lucky guy like me making use of it. Don't close the out door to a truly rehabilitated prisoner, or at least don't close the ceiling."

Two weeks later, standing on the Santa Monica Pier, Bernie looked out over the waves, carnival sounds playing at his back, a crowd of young lovelies floating by laughing and joking, and Bernie turned to Skinny and said, " Ain't it grand?" "Sure is," said Skinny.

"Still, there's just one thing," said Bernie. "What's that?," said Skinny. "I don't float anymore since I got out of the slammer." "Well, there you have it," said Skinny. ""Have what?" ""Hey, you just floated out of a place where 95% of the people meditate. A place that some people would call a prison, but some people might start calling a monastery. T.M. has turned that prison into a holy place." "So?," said Bernie.

"Welcome to the real world," said Skinny, "Now you now what we're up against."