Toward Level 24

"Lie on the floor, your feet pointing to the sound source, and absorb the music. Listen with the soles of the feet." Those are the directions for doing the "Audicon Plantar," one of the basic exercises in a training program now being advertised and offered in a dozen cities by a new mystical movement: the New York-based Arica Institute in America, Inc. By following the mental and physical regime prescribed by Arica, trainees are told, they may well "regain the Essential Self," achieve "total serenity" and "unity with emptiness," and ascend to a beatific level of consciousness arcanely called "the Permanent 24."

Arica's guru is Oscar Ichazo, 40, a Bolivian ex-philosophy student who let it be known in 1970 that he was planning a training retreat for North Americans in the Chilean city of Arica. Among the 50 seekers who made the trip--and paid from $4,000 to $7,000 apiece for the ten-month experience --were artists, housewives, businessmen and a few scientists (among them Dr. John Lilly, the dolphin expert, who had previously tried to achieve higher consciousness on LSD trips). Almost half were disenchanted defectors from Esalen, the encounter center at Big Sur, Calif.; all were searching for the good life, and, under Oscar's tutelage, 42 concluded that they had found it. These survivors established the institute, became its faculty, and launched the first classes last October.

Central to Arica's classroom work is a repertoire of exercises similar to the Audicon Plantar and loosely based on Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim Sufism and Tibetan Lamaism. Exercises called "Mentations" require the student to "concentrate your attention into each separate section" of the body for a prescribed time: 8 minutes 40 seconds for the colon and kidneys, 10 minutes 45 seconds for the liver, and so on. "Active in the World" calls for lying motionless, forearms supported on elbows, palms facing the feet, while feeling "the tissues of your body actively engaged in the dance of Life." The instructions for "Passive in the Cosmos" specify one arm held straight up from the shoulder while the believer feels himself "absorbing the vibrations of the solar system and beyond."

A peculiar kind of meditation is included--about the planet Jupiter and the color blue if it happens to be Thursday or about Saturn and black if it happens to be Saturday. ("Think black. Your center of zero is black. Now see that black vibrate ... Feel it running up your leg ...") In addition, there is a mix of Egyptian gymnastics, African dances and Hindu mantras or incantations ("Owwwww" or "Ommmmm").

Basic Causes. Some 170 students have "graduated" from Arica training, another 60 will finish in August, and registrations are coming in for future semesters. Oscar is sure the trainees will fare well: "If the body is cleared of tensions, the trouble in the head is diminished. If Arica doesn't make you happy, it will at least make you happier than you were." One of his disciples is even more enthusiastic. Everyone, Arica Instructor Bill Gay insists, can achieve the nirvana of Level 24 (though Levels 12, 6 and 3 are beyond the reach of the ordinary trainee). Once there, "you have built up the essentials, broken the ego structure and have all the tools you need to continue to grow. You can empty your head any time you want to, and you are in the here and now and know what's going on."

Such euphoria seems almost certain to fade. To its credit, Arica rejects alcoholics, drug users and the conspicuously disturbed. But like the encounter movement, it attracts chiefly those with emotional problems, yet does not try to help them come to grips with the underlying causes of their difficulties. For some, it could even be the source of new worries --of a financial nature. Exclusive of board and room, the cost of three months' Arica training is a whopping $3,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.