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Beyond Dilemma - A Memoir

by Donald Maclean

313 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-1071; ISBN 1-4120-3244-X; US$21.99, C$25.29, EUR18.06, £12.64

A lonely psychiatrist touches the bottom line in the complexity of life, and it isn't what he expected.

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About the Book

About the Author

Excerpts

Catalogue Information

About the Book

The author of Beyond Dimenna grew up on an island in the Scottish Hebrides, his first language was Gaelic, he learned English in school, and, through unfolding destiny, he became a physician, later a psychiatrist, through all of which, he realized later, he pursued the 'secret of life' in the complexity of human affairs. The quest took him through several countries, finally to India, where he met one who was beyond human dilemma, beyond efo, beyond mind.

In Beyond Dilemma, the author suggests that our true identity lies beyond mind, beyond mediations, beyond ego, that this identity is real, that it's eternal, and that the spiritual freedom many of us long for is already ours. And all this in a world where societies are created by dilemma-ridden men and women.

He writes Beyond Dilemma in such a way as to inspire readers, in becoming aware of the divinity within us all, to become aware of our potential to transcend barriers of race, religion, language, geography, wealth, accomplishments, and even speicies, and to experience life in a new light.

A new light that, for the author, came out of India.

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About the Author

The author grew up in the Western Isles of Scotland, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1960, afterwards he was a family doctor in British Columbia, Canada, then a psychiatrist in the United States, where he was also on the faculty of an American University. He is now retired and lives with his wife in Mississippi.

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Excerpts

Chapter One

My knock on the frame of the screen door was greeted by a hoarse "Come in, Doc. Please walk right in."

I did.

He was an old man and his hair was white-gray. He lay propped up by pillows, one pillow beneath his thighs and one behind the small of his back, in a half-sitting position on a sofa that sat against the far wall. In that position gravity allowed him to breathe more easily, it encouraged the flow of his circulation, but, despite his therapeutic posture, the man's lips had a blue tinge, and his breathing was labored, to say the least. A faint sick-room aroma was detectable.

The man spoke: "Chair?" A gaunt-faced, steely-eyed man.

"Thanks, I will."

"I'm glad you came to see me, Doc."

"You're welcome. Are you alone in the house?"

"I'm alone, Doc. I've always been alone. It's the way it is."

The man hauled in a deep breath with a massive movement of his chest wall, then he let go of it as if dropping a heavy load, and he looked so tired that I didn't expect much action from him, but he raised his left arm, the one nearer to me, by way of friendly salute, while keeping his eyes on mine. There were deep, wavy furrows in his forehead, and his cheeks were partly flushed, not with the fresh rosy color of health, but with the swollen bluish-red flush of physiological systemic failure. The effort of talking, along with that of trying to sit up straight for my benefit, raised the pressure in his neck veins, so that they dilated visibly beneath the angle of his left lower jaw, the side closer to me. He hadn't shaved that morning.

"Please rest on your pillows. You don't have to sit up straight," I said.

"Right; I oughta take it easy," he said.

On the arm he had raised, the skin over his triceps muscle had sagged loosely, vein lines and lean sinews were visible on his forearm, but his fingers were still thick and the joint at the base of his thumb was prominent, suggesting that here was the hand and arm of a man who had done hard physical work in his time, who had been strong in his body, but whose body was failing owing to age. Once, perhaps, he had been in the right place at the right time, in harmony with his work, living his dharma.

And I was in the right place that Saturday afternoon.

I was one of five family doctors serving a vigorous, action-oriented logging community in rural British Columbia, Canada; young as doctors went, but I felt I had arrived, doing what I had prepared myself for. My wife and I had left our families of origin behind, we had traveled far from our native Scotland; I was looking forward to a long career in my chosen profession, and, as icing on the cake, I was team physician for the local ice-hockey club, while my wife Marjorie was one of the team's most active fans, cheering her heart out at the games.

Outside, on the road, a little boy showed up next to my parked car and began "doing doughnuts" with his bicycle, by pedaling furiously, then jamming on the brakes while yanking the handlebars sharply to one side, causing the rear wheel to skid on the loose dry gravel. The boy's happy playful cries were musical in the quiet country air; the sound of his bicycle bell was crystal-clear; the rubbered rear wheel occasionally sliding upon gravel sounded like episodic showers of hail hitting tarpaulin.

a low sloping roof, situated on a narrow, unpaved and little-traveled road that petered out into a dead-end in a grass-covered field. The wooden outer door of the house was wide open. The screen door was closed. What a quiet, peaceful-looking residence it was. It had "retirement cottage" written all over it.

I drew my chair up close to where the man rested, I laid my medical bag on the floor, and I said, "Please tell me how you're feeling."

"I want you to doctor me at home," he said, speaking rapidly, as if wanting to get the words out as quickly as possible before anything happened that might interfere with what he had to say. This was not what I had expected: I had expected him, approaching me as a new patient would, to begin telling me how he felt, what symptoms he was having, how he was coping; I had expected him to allow me to conduct a physical examination; I had expected him to hear me out as I gave a diagnosis and a professional recommendation. I made a quick visual evaluation of his condition.

"Doctor you at home! Maybe you should be in the hospital. I'd be willing to admit you."

"I knew it. I knew that's what you were going to say. Now you listen to me. I've been to the hospital before, several times. I've never seen you. I ain't seen your associate. I'm not going back to the hospital."

"Is that why you want to change doctors?"

"He and I don't see eye to eye. No, Sir. Well, enough of that. I don't want him to doctor me no more. No way. I won't do as he says."

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Catalogue Information

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