|
KAMAKALA
PUBLICATIONS Has
obtained the exclusive rights to the work of Roderick
W. Marling
 .2005 SHE
ASKED ME TO DO IT Confessions
of a Heretic
After
the marriage Robert and Ethel moved to New Westminster, a small town
just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. It was there that they had
two boys only 13 months apart. I was born on Dec. 3, 1947. I was the
eldest and actually the eldest grandson on both sides of the family. My
father gave me the name Roderick Wayne. My brother was born on Jan.13,
1948 and my mother named him Stanly John. My
parents with their two boys moved to the United States in 1950. We
lived in the small rural town of Dallas Oregon where our sister Bonnie
Elizabeth was born on Feb.1, 1955. Her name was the result of a joint
effort of both our parents. It
was while we were in Dallas that I made an important discovery one
morning when I was five years old. I jumped out of bed and ran into my
parents' bedroom to announce my revelation: "There is no Santa Claus!"
Santa Claus had been a great puzzle for me. For quite some time I had
been unsuccessfully trying to put the pieces together, and now, at long
last, I had the answer, and I was filled with exhilaration. This
was my first experience with Mythology. I had lifted up the mask of the
conventional story line, and found that what I had believed was not
literally true, but symbolic of a deeper truth hidden underneath. I
discovered Truth had more than one aspect. This
incident was a precursor of many later discoveries. As I held up one
belief after another to closer examination, inevitably I found
inconsistencies. These
nagging inconsistencies always seemed to grow in number, until they
reached a critical mass. At this point usually came a breakthrough in
my understanding, after which I simply could no longer hold onto the
original belief. This
is a natural process of mental growth, and we all experience it in one
way or another. For many people however, the discomfort of challenging
the beliefs of our family and culture proves too threatening; so they
prefer to remain asleep. But the Age is now awakening us. The pain of
holding onto our out-dated beliefs far outweighs the discomfort of
letting them go. An expansion of consciousness is now being
dramatically experienced on a planetary scale in every social and
cultural setting. As a species, we are beginning to awaken to new
stories, new possibilities, and consequently to a future that is not
simply an unconscious repetition of the same old programs. The
primary story or programming, with which I grew up, was a religious
one. My family was Catholic. We faithfully went to Mass ever Sunday,
and didn't eat meat on Fridays. I
believed in the Universal Church as the sole instrument of Christ's
teachings on earth. I didn't just believe in Catholicism; it was my
world, my only reality. I studied Latin in school, and helped the
priests in the ritual of the Mass as an altar boy. I also graduated
from a Catholic high school. However,
as sexuality entered my world - this changed everything. My body and
hormones began giving me one set of messages, while the Church was
giving me another. This created a split in my reality, which eventually
grew into a huge chasm between the mind and body. As
my body went through its natural processes of development I consciously
channeled its energy into sports. Being naturally a fast runner I took
up running track at school. But since our school was private and not
exactly awash with capital, it lacked a proper running track. We just
had to make due on the football field. On top of that our coach was not
exactly a “hands-on” type of guy. I think the whole time he spent with
me personally could be counted in minutes. I was left to more less work
out my own practice routines and find the self discipline to actually
do the work required. This type of freedom naturally appealed to me,
and I guess it was the same with the rest of the team, because for
seven consecutive years our school won the conference title in track.
And I eventually became one of the fastest sprinters in the school and
the conference. The
self disciple that I was learning on the track I soon applied to a
sport no high school in the state at that time had even considered –
weight lifting. At the age of 15 I constructed a make shift workout
room in our garage, and set to work after school at my own routine.
What was especially inspiring was to see the rapid changes in my body
as I applied different routines. I also began taking various vitamin
and protein supplements, which at this time were completely unknown to
most people. And my parents had serious doubts about this whole project
until they began to see the results, now beginning to make themselves
dramatically evident in my body. As
my size and strength grew I was further inspired to get more serious
about my workouts. By the age of 17 I was spending more than 2 hours 4
days a week lifting weights, eventually becoming one of strongest
individuals in the Pacific Northwest for my size. My signature moves
were a double body weight bench press, and one arm pull-ups (3 with
each arm). I also did a 500 lb. dead lift at a body weight of 152. Needless
to say for a high school student in the mid1960’s this was rather
unusual. With all the attention unfortunately came an attitude of
arrogance. I began to think that there was nothing I couldn’t do, and
that I could do no wrong. My persona became that of the “macho man”. As
I explored this new terrain on the physical level I felt a growing
confidence to become more daring in other areas as well, and I began to
challenge authority. I began to question the ideas that my
teachers/priests were telling us. Specifically I was increasingly
dissatisfied with their standard answers regarding the whole concept of
Good and Evil, Divine Punishment and Reward. My questions revolved
around my sense of justice. I thought that if God put human beings in a
place of eternal punishment for murder that might be just, but casting
a boy into the same place of eternal punishment for missing church on
Sunday, or giving himself sexual pleasure began to appear both unjust
and illogical. Such
concerns grew in intensity, until one day like a bolt out of the blue,
I realized: "There Is No Hell!" I speculated that probably the original
intent behind the message was that individuals would simply reap what
they sowed, whether in this life or the next. This seemed to make
perfect sense to me, the punishment or reward in every case would be
somehow determined by the nature of the action itself. Anyway, I simply
no longer believed in eternal damnation, and no one could convince me
otherwise. Although
exhilarated with my discovery, little did I know at the time, it began
a process that would eventually unravel my carefully constructed
Christian World. The
inevitable "showdown" came several months later. I continued to go to
Mass and receive the Sacraments, seeing no other options. I was like an
adolescent not yet ready to leave home. But then one afternoon
something happened. While confessing to the head priest of our parish
my predisposition for sexually playing with my girlfriend, he
interrupted to tell me point blank: "if you continue this kind of
behavior, you should leave the Church!" At
first I was shocked at such an extreme attitude. Personally, I couldn't
see anything “that” wrong with my behavior.
However, this was the knife that cut the final
thread. The timing was perfect. When I walked out of the church that
afternoon, I didn't walk out as a “fallen away Catholic". I walked out
as free man, able to make such simple decisions about my behavior for
myself. I no longer needed the parental approval of the Church. After
high school I enrolled in a small college that specialized in teacher
education. I majored in Biology. I was still lifting weights and still
questioning my early Christian programming. I knew what I definitely
didn’t believe in, but I wasn’t really sure what I did believe in. I
was increasingly frustrated and drank alcohol on weekends and sometimes
committed random acts of vandalism. I felt as if I was loosing control.
After one such episode I decided to seek psychological counseling; I
felt I really needed someone to talk to. This proved to be somewhat
helpful. The doctor however also gave me a prescription for
tranquilizers which I took on an ever increasing dosage. It was during the summer
vacation after my first year in college that became a big turning point
in my life. The first incident occurred one night as a close friend and
I were provoked into a fight by two larger and older guys who had been
drinking. We however were both sober but it didn’t take much to set us
off. My friend took on one of the guys who initiated the first blow,
but it really wasn’t much of a fight as my friend had been an all star
half back on our football team in high school and he was still in great
physical shape. As for me I took off my jacket to do battle revealing a
stunning physic and the other guy panicked. He got a piece of lead pipe
out of his car and started waving it around. I moved in and grabbed his
arm to get the pipe, but in the ensuing scuffle he managed a glancing
blow to the side of my head. At this point the adrenaline kicked in and
I landed a punch to his jaw that dropped him – unconscious before he
hit the ground. But at this point rather than walking away, I was
completely swept up in a wave of pent up rage that really had nothing
to do with the fight, and I continued to pound on his prostrate body
with my fists. My friend had to intervene and pull me off him. We
immediately left the scene leaving both guys unconscious. We later
heard that they were taken to the hospital to be treated for their
injuries. This
incident really scared me. I had not been drinking and yet I completely
lost control. And further I realized that at that moment I could have
actually killed this person. This realization was very disturbing and
knew I couldn’t continue down this same road without getting into some
serious trouble, and not just with the law. Well,
it wasn’t too much longer when my road did in fact take a dramatic and
completely unexpected turn; for year was 1967, and this was "the summer
of love". Two of my close friends returned from their respective
schools in New York and San Francisco, and "turned me on" to marijuana.
It was a beautiful warm summer night and we walked into a heavily
wooded area. We sat down on the ground surrounded by trees and they lit
up a pipe. I didn’t know what to expect. But after a few tokes my mind
seemed to turn 180 degrees to the inside, and I could clearly see now
just how angry and violent I had become. I was also filled with shame
at the persona that I adopted so long ago. I saw so plainly “macho man”
had become a real asshole. That night he disappeared as the smoke
drifted away. ( Consequently I stopped lifting weights, drinking
alcohol and I stopped taking the tranquilizers as well.) But the next day, after
reflecting on this unorthodox therapy session the sudden and stunning
realization hit me: "My God! I just committed a felony, the social
equivalent of a mortal sin. And if I was discovered, I would be
consigned to the fires of hell - in this case - prison." This was
almost too much for me to comprehend. What I had done with my friends
the night before, would actually be classified on the same level of
crime as murder, bank robbery or rape. Being considered a crime at all
however, was already beyond my sense of fairness and logic. So, not
only had I turned my back on the laws and beliefs of the Church, I was
now well on my way to turning my back to the laws and beliefs of
Society. For at the moment, justice appeared as a joke, and I was
introduced to feelings of paranoia. I knew beyond all doubts,
that what I had experienced was something positive and healing, but the
culture in which I lived was calling it evil. This contradiction in
values was very confusing. I could not doubt my own subjective
experience, yet at the same time it was very hard for me to accept the
idea that everyone else was truly that ignorant. Wasn’t this supposed
to be a scientifically enlightened society? It
seemed to me that I was now living in a world that was completely alien
from the one I grew up in. The Church condemned me for my sexuality.
Society condemned me for my choice of smoking material, and I began to
wonder if I wasn't caught up in some kind of nightmare. It
was also however, later on that summer that I received something that
changed the course of my life for the next 18 years. I discovered
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. This book gave me an
opportunity to see Life from a new direction - the East.
This Eastern perspective truly proved to be a
revelation. For up until then, my experience with the priests and my
teachers was that they all talked about God, but could never relate to
God as a living experience in their own lives. I remember at one point
I couldn’t bear to listen to any more talk of God, because it all
seemed so abstract and irrelevant to my own daily life. Going to church
was like being invited to a banquet and all they did was talk about the
food without ever getting around to actually serving a meal. Where was
the real living experience? This only increased my sense of hunger and
frustration; and I looked around wondering if anyone was experiencing
the same thing. And now after reading Yogananda’s book, I realized I
was not alone, and I knew in my heart in what direction I wanted to go.
On
returning to school in the fall, I changed my major from Biology to
Philosophy, totally against my father's sense of economic priorities. I
was introduced to the major philosophers of the West. But I was simply
put off by the convoluted complexity of their arguments. For
my mid-term paper I wrote about my own Philosophy, combining both East
and West to present a new definition of human existence. The teacher
who had a Ph.D. in Philosophy was very impressed. In fact, she invited
me to her house for tea. In the course of our four-hour conversation -
the first of many - she informed me that she could see no need for me
to continue to come her class. Instead, she loaded me up with books
from her own library, and I set out with the enthusiasm of an explorer
in a new found land. I
dove right in with the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and various
Buddhist Sutras. It felt as if these works were directly speaking to
me, from the inside out. And it was at this time, that I made my first
attempts to sit quietly and peer into the darkness of my mind and
listen for the voice of silence. I
was now in the middle of my second year of college, when one evening a
friend walked through the door with some LSD. About a month before, a
medical doctor, Dr. Cohen from Southern California had been to our
school explaining his personal research with LSD. It had been still
legal at that time, and he had taken it several times under carefully
controlled circumstances. His conclusion was that LSD could not only
prove useful as a psychological tool, but he believed it allowed one to
enter expanded states of consciousness related to Samadhi or Satori of
the Eastern Religions. So now that the opportunity came knocking at my
door, I choose to open it. A
year or so later, after several attempts to put into words what I had
experienced, I wrote a poem called "A
Birthday Song", part of which I think is appropriate here:
Silence, Came
and whispered in the night, When
Seraph and Cherub tongues were frozen And
the temple's red candle cold. Cryptic
calling of the Spheres, Singing
with an ancient song That
set the world alight, And
set my feet On
my one true path of old... After
long and languid years I
stood alone, naked Looking
straight into the new morning sun Smiling
. . . Because I had all things now. I
had definitely concluded a particular part of my life’s journey. I had
found what I had set out to find, and there was no longer any point for
me to stay in school. It had served its purpose. And now I began to
move in a different direction entirely. The next day I officially
completed all the necessary paperwork. My formal education ended in the
middle of the second term of my second year. And as the then popular
saying went: I had "tuned in, turned on and dropped out." (In my last
completed term of college I had a 3.8 grade point average.) My
new direction was motivated by the fact that I wanted to repeat the LSD
experience or something as profound, without taking any drugs. I knew
what I experienced was not simply the result of a chemical in my
bloodstream, but had something to do with the nature of the Mind
itself. I suspected that the LSD only served as a catalyst, a key to
unlock the door. In itself however, it was not the door, or the room on
the other side. Another
motive for my quest was that I didn't want to leave the room on the
other side. I didn't want to "come back down".
The culture I was living in I thought was
deeply disturbed, and I felt like my everyday life was a prisoner of
time and space. I now wanted to move into more ecstatic realms.
Fortunately for me, I knew the answer was not in taking more drugs, or
taking them more often, or even looking for the right drug. Rather, I
felt my path was through the technology that had evolved over thousands
of years in the East - Yoga. And it certainly appealed to my sense of
independence and self discipline. According to all the books
on Eastern Religions I had read, human beings using various techniques
of Yoga could enter altered states of consciousness and remain there
indefinitely. This was the tremendous lure India suddenly had back in
the sixties. A lot of young people all over the world had come to the
same realization about drugs, the nature of consciousness, and about
Yoga. What they did with this insight, or to what extent they felt
motivated to explore it further, varied of course from individual to
individual.
However
for me, I felt like a moth being irresistibly drawn to the flame. For I
felt this direction to be none other than the next evolutionary step
for the human race. The ultimate and final frontier was not Space, as
the gospel of Science had been preaching, but the Mind. So as the
astronauts were preparing for their trip to the Moon, I began
unconsciously preparing for a trip to India.
Now
there was one annoying detail that kept forcing itself into my
awareness like an obnoxious housefly. The society at large had plans of
its own; as to where in the East I was to go. Somehow they thought now
that I was no longer in school, my time could be best spent killing
people in Viet Nam. I
closely examined the theory of a "righteous war", and contrary to all
the teachers and preachers and experts, I came to the firm conclusion
that there was no longer any such thing as a “righteous war”. What I
came to believe with all my heart was that war was actually a mental
and spiritual disease. Jesus is recorded to have said in one of the
Gospels that ‘he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword”. I’ve come
to see that these words are not to be taken in the most literal sense,
because most definitely all those who kill another human being are not
killed themselves, but rather he was pointing to a more subtle truth.
In other words he was saying that all those who kill another, actually
come to loose their own soul; they loose that most vital connection or
relationship to the spiritual dimension of life and move further into
contraction, insecurity and fear. And
this was exactly what I was witnessing on the national scene. In a war
where thousands of innocent people were being killed each year, there
were no days of national mourning, no ashes and sack cloth, no fasting.
Oh no, Americans were celebrating their successes with each higher body
count. Even the so called “enlightened” educators of the empire turned
a blind eye as a lone Buddhist monk sat down and set himself on fire to
draw attention to the atrocities being committed. Captured by the
blind, ideological fanaticism of “the
end justifies the means”, I saw the West as a total moral failure.
Rather harsh criticism from one so young, but at the time this was
exactly what I was feeling. And I wanted no part of it. So for me-
joining the military was completely out of the question. Now
having been born in Canada, I moved from Oregon to British Columbia
where I lived with my grandparents. They had an extra room in their
basement, and I got a job nearby. I read all the books on Yoga I could
find, and I began a daily routine of Yoga postures and meditation. One
of the books that greatly influenced my thinking and practice at this
point was a book called Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. From its
numerous and rather complicated techniques I put together a
personalized routine of yoga practice involving breathing and
visualization techniques. After
several months of this practice I began to experience a beautiful light
illuminating the darkness of my meditations. It was a violet color, not
unlike the color of a white object under ultraviolet light. Much later
I realized that what I was seeing was the throat chakra, the Visudra
Chakra. It
was about this time that I grew restless. I felt I needed to find
others of like mind and practice, but India was so far away and I
didn’t even know anyone there that I could contact. So I decided to
write to the Self Realization Fellowship, the organization that
Yogananda had founded. I sent a letter to Daya Mata, one of the
original disciples of Yogananda and now head of the organization,
asking for some advice. After
several weeks, I got a reply form one of the monks in SRF saying that
because I addressed the letter personally to Daya Mata, they felt
obliged to give it directly to her, but the usual procedure in handled
by the administrative staff. Her reply to may letter was that “she will
pray that God reveals to me what it is that I should do”. By
the time I actually receive this letter it was already an accomplished
fact. Three or four days before, while meditating one morning I got a
clear and powerful thought suddenly flash into my head like a bolt of
lightning: “Go to India”. The force of this one thought was such that I
leapt to my feet in utter amazement. There were no more doubts. I
started making plans for the trip immediately. In
a year's time, I had saved enough money to go to India. In April of
1969 I found my way to Dakshineswar, a small village on the banks of
the Ganges River about 10 miles north of Calcutta. And it was here -
that I felt like I had finally come home. Dakshineswar
was famous all over India for its temple dedicated to the black Goddess
Kali. Kali is an ancient image of the Divine who was worshiped in India
at least a thousand years before the Aryans or Indo-Europeans arrived,
and thousands of years before History officially began. In
the last century, the great mystic Ramakrishna worshiped this Goddess
of Dakshineswar. The dark image in the temple came alive and spoke to
him as a loving mother to her son. He was regarded all over India as a
great saint. One
of the stories he used to tell his followers and perhaps the one that
best reflects my radical thinking at the time, was about a family man
who was spiritually drawn to the life of renunciation and the way of a
wandering ascetic or “sadhu” as they are known in India. Every now and
then he would in times of exasperation, remark to his wife that he’d
like to go into the forest. She would just ignore him and knew that
this would eventually pass. Well,
one day while taking his bath he was complaining to their servant about
something and once again brought up the idea that he would be so much
better off worshipping God alone out in the forest. His wife happened
to over- hear this remark and just couldn’t help herself from making
the comment: “you always talk about renunciation. You are such a big
talker. What do you know about renunciation?” Without
saying a word her husband got out of his bath, naked and still wet, he
walked out the front door and was never heard from again. As
extreme as this example is, it is helpful to understand that for many
years this man was my hero, and this will in many respect serve to
explain some of the challenges that lay ahead in my own life story.
Well, for now I was staying in the guesthouse
of the Ramakrishna Mission at the Kali Temple. And I soon came to
discover the room next to mine was occupied by a very unusual fellow
indeed. He was a Tantric Yogi named Swami Pratapananda. He was about 50
years of age and spoke perfect English. And his custom was to rise
every morning at 4:30 A.M., stand out on our common balcony and chant
at the top of his voice a greeting to God. He awoke the roosters all
over Dakshineswar - as well as me!
After a week or so he developed the habit of
sleeping in my room. He claimed it was a bit cooler in my room. None of
the rooms in the guesthouse back then were air conditioned and the heat
was extreme no doubt. So at night he would come in and comfortably
stretch out on the concrete floor with nothing but a blanket under him.
I was impressed.
Equally impressive however, were his stories
of his travels throughout India and Tibet. He told me that in Tibet he
studied in various gompas or monasteries some of which had extreme
tests as a means of an entrance exam. At one such gompa the monks took
him to a place where they ceremonially disposed of bodies by cutting
them up, feeding them to the local wild life. It was in the middle of
the night and the monks sat in a circle around him chanting. They
called down the spirits that inhabited the area to come and attach him.
He said that it was no fantasy. He even sustained physical scratches
and burses. And this went on all night long. He had to rely on his own
powerful mantras or chants to withstand the attacks not just
physically, but mentally as well. For the real effort directed against
him was to drive him insane. Having
survived the night long ordeal he then was admitted into their school,
where he learned various techniques of what he called “the black arts”.
This meant using one’s psychic abilities to gain control over others.
Even though he knew this kind of technology he said that he would never
personally use it, because from what he has seen and experienced, this
kind of negative energy always comes back in some way to harm the one
using it. Pratapananda
had a Western education with a degree in Medicine. However, he was now
living as a wandering ascetic, healing people with mantras or sound,
instead of drugs or surgery. I personally witnessed the miraculous cure
of a man, who had been declared by the Medical profession as hopelessly
insane. Pratapananda performed an elaborate Tantric ritual every
morning in the man's room for forty days. The Swami would chant his
mantras in what could only be described as a torrent of sound: a
continual stream of sound at such a volume, that I could scarcely
believe that it came from a human. He sounded more like a machine, as
if someone turned on a generator or turbine of some kind. I could
actually feel the effects of his chanting physically, as he continued
to pour out a stream of energy for almost 40 minutes each day. Needless
to say, I was amazed by this performance. I asked him to teach me some
techniques in meditation, but he refused, saying that his Guru never
gave him permission to teach. Instead he gave me a list of books to
read, and encouraged me to continue with my own methods, which by this
time had shown some signs of progress.
I was in fact experiencing some very profound
alterations in consciousness, and sometimes I felt so light that it
seemed that I was simply floating above the ground. One
afternoon while at the Kali temple, I had a very unusual experience. I
was rather absent-mindedly staring out over a pond, when a beautiful
parrot flew across my field of vision. It was as if, just for a moment,
he drew an invisible curtain aside and I peered into my own future. In
a matter of a few seconds I knew the general outline of what I would do
for the next 7 years. I
was not going to stay in India for the rest of my life, as I had
planned. (I literally had come with a one way ticket.) I would return
to the U.S., refuse the military draft and consequently go to jail. I
would join the organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, the
Self-Realization Fellowship, and eventually move to Southern California.
I felt very peaceful and calm for about an
hour or so afterward, until I started to doubt my mental condition:
maybe it was the heat; the food; cultural shock or something that
finally snapped upstairs? I definitely didn't want to
leave India. After all - I just got there! Then there was this crazy
idea about going to prison for draft evasion. I certainly didn't
consider myself a Gandhi, or a martyr for any cause. I tried to put the
whole thing out of my mind.
Several days later a young couple approached
the Swami for some marriage counseling. Before he said anything,
Pratapananda carefully examined the palms of their hand. I thought at
the time, the scene could have been out of a movie or something. It
seemed so staged. However when he spoke to them, unfortunately for me
in Hindi, the look of amazement that came over their faces, really got
my curiosity up. So when they left, I asked him if he could actually
tell a person's future by the lines on one's hand. He replied, "the
hands only served as a vehicle for tuning in with the person". I was
impressed with this somewhat more sophisticated answer than the usual
things I'd heard. So, I asked if he would look at my hand. After
studying my right hand for about 30 seconds, he told me that I was a
bit of a rebel. My parents couldn't understand me at all, and this had
created a big conflict. Well, there was simply no
way he could have known about my relationship with my parents. Maybe it
had been simply a lucky guess. However, what he told me next was
something that was completely contrary to my own self-image at the
time. He said I would get married when I was thirty years old, and I
would have two children. I immediately replied, "No way!” For
the past year or so, I had completely convinced myself that my future
was in India living as an ascetic or sadhu, completely free of
political, social or family responsibilities. My goal was to meditate
six to eight hours a day, and remain lost in more ecstatic realms.
However, now that I was in India, I began to receive these strange
messages that didn't fit in with this whole program. This was very
disturbing. After
Pratapananda told me of my future marriage, he had seen my tears of
disappointment and then added almost as a consolation: “one day you
will be a spiritual teacher in the West.”
After about a month at the
Kali Temple, I moved just a few blocks down the road to Yogoda Math,
the headquarters of Yogananda's ashrams in India. At the time, I really
didn't fully appreciate the privilege of being able to stay in these
facilities. I found out only later, that neither the Ramakrishna
Mission nor the Yogoda ashram was open to the general public or
non-members of their respective organizations. I guess the intensity of
my enthusiasm was rather hard to deny. By this time, I was
meditating for a considerable length each morning and evening. I was
eating only rice, a few vegetables and coconuts. I had long hair and a
beard, and talked only of philosophy and metaphysics. In other words, I
accurately fit the image of a Sadhu rather than the typical Western
tourist with camera around his neck. While
I was staying in Yogananda's Ashram, I seriously began to consider my
return to the United States. I felt so at home in the Ashram, several
times I cried while thinking about leaving. However, over the course of
the next month, the vision at the Kali Temple started to penetrate my
heart. I began to see the wisdom of its direction. But it seemed to be
the height of irony that I came to India looking for a meditative life,
only to be directed back to America. At
the time of my decision to finally leave India, I didn't have much
money left and I didn’t have a return plane ticket. So I decided to
travel the cheapest way possible up to England. Where I felt I could
most easily find employment in London. I didn't have much money for
food or hotels. So for the next three weeks I traveled by bus and train
almost non-stop, eating not much more than bread and tea. After
three weeks of extraordinary coincidences, or what most people would
call "good luck", I was able to make it up to London where the very
next day I found a job. For the next four months I saved money for the
trip back to the United States. While
in England, I had an opportunity to meet Daya Mata, the president of
the Self-Realization Fellowship. She had stopped in London on her way
to India. I told her I had just come from Dakshineswar, where I had
been staying in the Yogoda Math, and that I would like to receive
initiation into Yogananda's Path of Kriya Yoga. She told me I'd have to
first receive weekly correspondence lessons for a year before I'd be
eligible for Kriya Yoga. I had been thinking that she could give me the
initiation before she left for India. My disappointment was impossible
to hide. She then looked up, off to
one side for a few seconds and then looking back to me she said, "It'll
be in about two years". I
left somewhat in unbelief. Even though there was no logical way for her
to arrive at her conclusion, it did in fact develop exactly as she
said. Upon
arriving back in the United States, I found I had without my knowledge
been drafted into the military. And because I hadn’t responded when
called, there was a warrant out for my arrest. I
went to see the best draft lawyer in the State of Oregon at the time. I
explained my situation. Much to my distress, he advised me to go back
to Canada. He explained that since I had my Canadian citizenship
reinstated while in Canada, I had lost my American citizenship.
Consequently, the judge could give me up to five years in prison and
when I got out, the government could deport me back to Canada. While
my father’s parents had briefly been looking for work in the United
States, he was born in Hillsboro Oregon. Consequently he was the only
American citizen in the family. When he eventually move to the U.S.
with his family, he could then claim his sons as American citizens when
they turned 16 years of age; which was the case for both my brother and
I. I
now struggled long and hard with this problem. If I had indeed lost my
American citizenship as the attorney had said, then maybe the
government might very well not let me stay in the country after all. If
this was the case then for me it would be better to go back to Canada.
What it came down to, was whether or not I really believed my
experience at the Kali Temple was true: Would I really move to
California as the vision indicated? Contrary to the attorney's
advice, in a week’s time I walked into the local police station and
turned myself in. After a long night in jail, I was released to await
my day in court. A
month later, I received a letter from Washington D.C. informing me the
act of having my Canadian citizenship reinstated, did not invalidate my
American citizenship. I reread the letter several times in utter
amazement. I had been told on several occasions by so called experts,
that one cannot be a dual citizen in America. Now, the government in
effect was telling me I could! I've turned this over in
my head for many years, constructing various rational explanations. I
won't go into them here, but this judgment on the part of the
government for whatever reason, gave me the confidence necessary to
face my coming ordeal. A
few months later, I was sentenced to 6 months in jail and 18 months of
community service work. Almost true to the letter of some ancient
script concerning the mythic hero's journey, my descent into the
Underworld was about to begin. The last vestiges of my
childhood world, where there was a government by and for the people,
where justice ruled the land and people treated one another with
dignity and respect, were all shattered by the sudden slam of the steel
cage door behind me. I came to realize there was
a connection between the Americans who were bombing the people of Viet
Nam into oblivion, and the Americans who were putting people like me in
cages. It was ignorance, plain and simple. They all had turned their
backs to their own humanity, ignored the inner dimensions of life, and
had become unthinking machines like so many units stamped out in the
industrial world of mass production. But why? Why were millions
of people so ignorant? Why couldn't they see through the propaganda,
the lies, and the deceptions? This presented a spiritual and
intellectual challenge that I have been working with ever since. For me
to simply say that they didn't know what they were doing wasn't good
enough. I needed to know the cause of such blindness. I had to come to
some deeper level of understanding before I could begin to feel
forgiveness. Admittedly, this has been a
slow and arduous process. However, in time one can actually come to a
point in one's understanding, where he or she can begin to realize,
one's deepest wound can sometimes be one's greatest blessing. My
prison term began in May of 1970. I was sent to a labor camp connected
with the Oregon State Penitentiary. The camp was in the middle of a
forest, which had once been destroyed in the 1930's by the largest
forest fire in the Pacific Northwest. The prisoners in the camp were
thinning out the new trees for the Forestry Department.
There
was a large assortment of men in the prison camp, with backgrounds that
involved murder, armed robbery, rape, and about 6 of us who refused the
draft. One thing they all had in common, they were all glad to be doing
their time in the camp, rather than behind walls of a Penitentiary.
Myself, I wasn't so sure. Of the few menacing
characters that were in the camp, the one that soon appeared to me as
the most dangerous was the warden. He had a reputation of brutality,
and after only a limited exchange with the man, I realized the rumors
were probably pretty close to the truth. For reasons only known to
him, he decided not to allow the draft resistors any books to be
brought from the outside. The camp library consisted of a handful of
cheap westerns and no one else had any books that I was interested in.
This situation proved difficult for me. However, I did try to make
good use of my spare time. During the evenings, I would go off by
myself and meditate near a small pond. The camp was located in a
beautiful setting, and it felt wonderful just sitting there listening
to the birds singing, and the occasional frog that would join in from
time to time. After
several weeks of this practice, I had several dreams of Yogananda. I
felt very inspired by these events, but on the other hand the message I
received was very disturbing: "I should leave the camp!" At the time I was afraid to
make waves, especially after having just arrived. Also, I didn't have
any idea where I might end up if I refused to cooperate. So I tried to
ignore the message. Over
the next several weeks I grew increasingly unhappy with the fact that I
had nothing to read. I simply wanted to make better use of my time.
Eventually I told the warden I wanted to leave the camp, and that I
wasn't going to work anymore. Naturally, he wanted to know the reason
why, but I refused to tell him anything more than I didn't like the
camp. I definitely didn't want a personal confrontation with this man.
In his own mind he thought someone in the camp was threatening me. I
told him that this was not the case, but I could see he wasn’t exactly
convinced. I felt that this was just as well. In
less than 24 hours, my probation officer drove out to tell me that if I
"rocked the boat", the judge might very well give me a longer sentence,
and I might find myself in a cell in a Federal Penitentiary. I
definitely had second thoughts and the next day I went back to work. I
continued my normal routine for the next couple of days. Then one evening while
meditating out by the pond, again I felt a strong message to leave. I
began to argue with myself. This situation had to be resolved once and
for all. I demanded a sign as to what I should do. At the time I was sitting at
the bottom of a hill with my back to the top, when all at once I heard
a loud crashing sound. I jumped up to see at the top of the hill two
prisoners running away, and a large boulder about 4 feet in diameter
came bouncing towards me. I dashed to get behind a tree as the boulder
bounce by. My very first impulse was
anger, but then I suddenly realized: didn't I just demand a sign?! I
walked back up the hill with the whole question of what I was going to
do, completely resolved. The next day I stopped working.
In two days, a couple of Federal Marshals came
and got me and took me to a county jail. I didn't get a longer sentence
as I feared. I
hadn't spent more than a week in the county jail, when I met a young
man about my age named Chris. Rather than pay a traffic fine, Chris
chose to spend some time in jail. I learned that he also practiced
yogic meditation every day. Needless to say, we got along very well. However,
he all too soon for me, finished his jail time and left. Two days
later, he came back to the jail, and donated nearly sixty books from
his own personal library. I just couldn't believe it! I felt
overwhelmed. This had been my original desire concerning my time in
jail: to be able to spend it reading good books. Miraculously, it had
just materialized in the most important detail. I
now included in my daily routine, eight hours of reading. I felt
extremely grateful that my inner direction proved to be so reliable,
especially in the face of such difficult circumstances. I had played for relatively
high stakes, but I went with my inner guidance rather than to give into
the threats of external circumstances. This was a dramatic lesson for
me, and I felt a sense of personal triumph. Many times, in the course
of some uncomfortable situations in my life, I have reflected back to
this event and gained a sense of personal strength. Yet, to the rest of
society I was now a convicted felon - barely human, someone to be
perpetually kept on the periphery of "normal" society. When
I was released from jail, a friend of mine got me a job working as a
janitor in a nursing home. This would satisfy the remaining part of my
sentence, working in community service for the next 18 months. I
joined the Self-Realization Fellowship and started receiving their
correspondence lessons. I received their weekly instructions through
the mail for the next 6 years. It is a rather formidable
undertaking for anyone to actually practice the techniques as outlined
in the course. I can honestly say that I followed the program
completely, spending time everyday with each technique as prescribed. I
had many encouraging experiences along the way, and these inspired me
to continue. Upon
receiving the first meditation technique in the series, I experienced a
dream/vision of myself in India. I was sitting in front of a mud and
grass hut, practicing this same technique. As I regained waking
consciousness, I was actually performing the technique in physical
reality. There are of course
different ways to interpret this experience, but the impact it had on
me was profound. I now felt I was finally moving closer to a goal I had
set out to achieve many life times ago. With this encouragement, I was
soon meditating two hours a day. Not
long after I received my next meditation technique, Yogananda came to
me in a dream/vision and we hugged each other, and were simply lost in
joy. I now considered Yogananda
to be my Guru and his teachings my path to a greater Self-awareness. After
this experience with Yogananda, it seemed as if many more of my dreams
took on a whole new dimension and world started to come alive. I
remained increasingly more conscious during sleep, and I had several
experiences that appeared much more lucid or real than anything I had
experienced in my waking state. Over time, I began to see
some truth to an old metaphysical theory: that our physical, waking
reality is but a shadow of another dimension. In this other dimension
or Dreamtime we are able to experience our true nature more completely. (So, for more than 40 years
I have been exploring this area of life and recording much of what I
have experienced. Unfortunately, many people remain unaware of this
vital part of their existence. I believe however, there is now a
worldwide phenomenon that people simply can no longer ignore. The
Dreamtime is breaking into people's awareness with increasing clarity
and strength, opening up minds and hearts to new vistas of Life's
expanding reality.) One
year after receiving the weekly lessons from the Self-Realization
Fellowship, I received the Kriya Yoga technique of meditation. This was
the main technique that Yogananda and his line of gurus practiced and
taught, and this had been my goal. Daya
Mata had indeed, correctly predicted when I was to finally begin this
practice. It had now been two years since we met in London. I further realized I had
done much to prepare myself in these two years for this important step.
Consequently, I was now more able to make use of what I was given. For
immediately my meditations took a real leap in their effectiveness and
depth. After
several weeks of Kriya Yoga practice, I experienced an awakening of the
Ajna Chakra, the so-called "Third Eye". This is not a technique of
visualization or imagination; rather it is an energy event. When the
energy of the body is brought up into the brain and is focused within
the central part of the forehead, the ordinary darkness behind closed
eyes gives way to light. The light of the Spiritual Eye has specific
colors and dimensions. Many Yoga books currently on
the market give lip service to the Third Eye, but many people writing
about it have never experienced it for themselves. They will give you
great theories and impressive diagrams, but if once you have
experienced this Chakra for yourself, it's obvious they simply don't
know what they are writing about. The
number of Chakras has varied from culture to culture, but the number
most commonly agreed upon is seven. Also, there are a wide variety of
theories associated with the meaning and function of these energy
centers and more than enough discrepancies in their actual description:
shape, color, sound, etc. And as one who has actually experience them
all for myself, I have come to realize that there has been a tremendous
amount of emphasis given to these centers which is simply misplaced. The
Chakras have been presented as so many steps on the stairway to heaven.
And unless one ascends this specific structure, one can never really be
sure of enlightenment, salvation, or whatever. The down side to
accepting this type of programming, is that it so effectively lends
itself to becoming just another "yardstick" by which one judges
"spiritual progress", and that if you don't see the Chakras after years
of effort, you might very well become discouraged. You might blame the
technology, or even far worse, you might begin to feel that there is
something inherently wrong with you, because spiritually "you don't
measure up". I
firmly believe that I have spent these many years of effort, so that I
can now truthfully relate from personal experience, that the importance
of perceiving the Chakras is tremendously exaggerated. In the course of
your own exploration you might very well perceive one or more of them.
But to make their perception into a necessity to your "spiritual
development" is simply a distortion of the Truth. They might serve as
convenient signposts along the interior highway, but by no means a
destination in and of themselves. Not
too long after receiving Kriya Yoga, my time for the Government’s
requirement of community service was up. While I was in India, unknown
to me at the time, my parents sold our home in Oregon and moved to
Southern California. Several weeks before my probation was finished, I
got a letter from my father asking me to consider moving down to
Southern California. He had a job waiting for me. So there it was! The last
component of the vision at the Kali Temple - arriving right on schedule. I still could hardly
believe it; I never mentioned anything to my parents about my intention
to move South. In 3 weeks time I had everything I owned in my car, and
was headed for Southern California.
I
lived in the Newport Beach area, and regularly attended the
Self-Realization Fellowship Temple in Fullerton. I felt very
comfortable with the services there. My meditations continued to
improve, and I had many experiences that encouraged me along the way.
In the course of the next several years, I had more dream/visions of
Yogananda, and several intense experiences with his Gurus, Sri
Yukteswar. After
4 years in Southern California, I had completed the entire
Self-Realization Program and received initiation into all four levels
of Kriya Yoga. I finally felt I accomplished one of my goals: to obtain
the best Yoga technology available. Now all I had to do was to continue
to apply what I had received.
At the same time however, I was growing more
dissatisfied with the overcrowded and polluted conditions of Southern
California. I felt I needed a better environment in which to live, and
a lifestyle that was more compatible with the direction I was headed.
For months I prayed and asked for guidance. My
answer finally came after weeks of intense inner turmoil. I decided to
move to a Yoga Community in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains in Northern California. The
name of the community was Ananda Cooperative Village. It was made up of
about a hundred people who felt the need to integrate their lives more
closely with their ideals. They were all followers of Paramahansa
Yogananda, and were attempting to apply his teachings to all aspects of
their lives. The community was founded by
Swami Kriyananda, who at one time was the vice president of
Self-Realization Fellowship, and had personally studied with Yogananda
for several years. I
was accepted into the Community, and I set up a teepee in the monastic
section., Individuals living there felt drawn to practice the
techniques of meditation more intensely and had dedicated their lives
to the spiritual service of others. I now felt right at home. I was now able to meditate
on a regular basis for about 5 hours a day; on occasion this extended
to 8 or 9 hours. I felt blessed to be in such a beautiful and
supportive environment. I had many wonderful
experiences during this time of my life, and attained various levels of
ecstasy. But nothing however, was permanent, nothing lasted. It was
like taking drugs in a way, because I went up, but I also eventually
came back down. So the cycle continued. I put out more effort and tried
to meditate longer, but I began to feel this really wasn't the answer. Then one day, I reached a
point of complete dissatisfaction with this continuous cycle. I decided
to sit until something else happened, a breakthrough of some kind.
After sitting for 10 hours or so, there it was: "There is no Santa
Claus!" I
suddenly realized the search for God or an ultimate state of
consciousness was a game I was playing with myself. The whole program
was based on the assumption that I lacked something, that I was somehow
separated from God. I now simply understood this assumption to be
false. My long and obsessive search collapsed. Several weeks later I
wrote the following poem. Fists
- clenched. Eyes
- sore from a long fixed gaze. Back
- aching from the nightlong asana. Something
snapped there, Parted,
Disappeared. The
fist relaxed - The dilemma died. The
eyes opened - The illusion faded. The
back bent - The unceasing search ended. The
sun had risen, And
slowly I got up Leaving
the temple . . . To
walk the path of the open hand. I
now saw meditation completely different. Instead of being the search
for Truth or God, I saw meditation now as part of the process of
affirmation of an already present Natural Condition. This represented a
profound turnabout, something close to 180 degrees, which consequently
had repercussions in all other areas of my life. Gradually,
I began to feel out of step with others in the Community who were
steadfastly committed to the search. Their deepest motivation for being
in the Community was no longer my motivation, and my attempts at
communicating my new orientation, proved unproductive and somewhat
painful. I was still trying to
understand this new direction for myself, and unable to put into words
all the things that were coming up for me. I soon realized above all
else, that what I was confronting here was not simply a matter of
changing one's intellectual stance, but a fundamental change in one's
vision of life. This
then, was the internal drama that was taking place. But there was also
an external one being played out as well. The longer I stayed in the
Community the more I came to realize that many people, especially those
in key positions, saw Swami Kriyananda not in the role of a spiritual
director or elder brother on the path as I did, but as their Guru, the
one who would personally lead them to Self-Realization. Myself, I
wasn't even close to that position. In fact, I was now headed in the
opposite direction from that type of program. After
several months of inner turmoil, one night I had a dream/vision that
helped regain my peace of mind. I was sitting on the floor of an empty
room meditating. I opened my eyes to see a beautiful woman standing in
front of me, dressed in a long white gown. It reminded me of a wedding
dress. She held in her right hand a staff or wand. She reached out with
it and lightly touched the top of my head. My whole being went into
overwhelming bliss, and I lost consciousness. After sometime, I
regained consciousness of the room only to find her gone. However, she
had left me a note. She wrote that she would see me again, but I would
be at Ananda a while longer. It
wasn't too long after this; the external situation played itself out. I
sold my teepee, and moved in with a good friend in the San Francisco
Bay Area. After 2 years of my association with Ananda, I felt it was
time for something completely different and I was exhilarated by a new
sense of adventure. Several
months had passed, when one afternoon while browsing in a bookstore, a
poster caught my attention. It referred to a person called the
Advadhut, a completely free renunciate. I was more than a little
curious, having read The Advadhut Gita only a matter of a few weeks ago
with absolute delight. My attention really began to
peak however, when I discovered the poster also contained a quote which
I had at the time, posted on my bedroom wall: "There is no dissolution,
no origination, none in bondage, none striving or aspiring for
salvation, and none liberated. This is the highest truth". For me, this pretty much
epitomized my disposition that had begun at the Ananda Community. And
now, after reading this poster, it felt as if something definitely was
happening here. I felt almost compelled to meet this person called the
Advadhut. I
attended the next scheduled Satsang, or meeting. The teacher referred
to himself as "Nome". I had to smile at the play on words, and for just
a moment I wondered if this whole thing wasn't a joke, one that only
someone familiar with Advaita Vedanta could appreciate. I entered a small basement
room with about 10 other people. At one end of the room was a young man
sitting cross-legged on the floor, meditating. His head was shaved and
he wore an orange robe of a monk. I wasn't exactly impressed. The meditation ended, and
everyone continued to sit in silence. After awhile I began to wonder if
there was something wrong. No one was saying anything. And he just sat
there smiling. Over
the course of the evening, I realized to my amazement the guy really
had nothing to say. He didn't preach or teach. He simply answered
questions. I thought this was refreshing. Nome's whole method was
nothing but dialogue. Then I remembered all the great teachers of the
world had used this same method.
After listening intently for 30 or 40 minutes,
I gathered the courage to wage my attack. I wanted to know right away
"where this guy was coming from". I'm not really sure how long
our dialogue lasted, but it was intense. I hit Nome with everything I
had in my metaphysical arsenal. But he remained unaffected, answering
my questions as if they were no more than the simple concerns of an
over-anxious high school student. I was more than impressed, I was
stunned. For
the next two months, I continued to attend the Satsangs three times a
week. Metaphysically speaking, it seemed that I had found a new home. Gradually however, as I
began to feel more confident in my own understanding, I spent less time
with Nome. His whole message was that one should stop depending on
external aids and props and simply rely more on one's own Self-Nature.
So the more clearly I heard the message, the less I felt I had to go
somewhere else to be reminded of it. Evidently, such subtleties
of his message escaped the rest of his followers. Upon visiting the
Satsangs years later, even though the number of people had grown
considerably, the same core people remained. That in itself was
alright, but they were still asking the same questions! I did however; continue to
see Nome on a weekly basis for about 2 years. At the same time I
faithfully continued the meditation techniques I received from the
Self-Realization Fellowship. I was spending about 3 to 4 hours a day
meditating at this point. But consciously I began to shorten this time.
Being increasingly aware that I no longer had to "work at it", I simply
began to relax more into the process that was already present. One
night, it was very late. I was sitting in meditation and I was tired. I
laid back and went to sleep. However in my dream, I was still sitting
in meditation. Then the room disappeared, and I was staring up into a
huge ball of golden light. In very intense white light, words were
materializing out of the ball of gold. As they were being formed, a
voice would speak them. I recognized the voice as my own, but it
possessed a feeling of love that I didn't recognize as my own in my day
to day life. The words that were spoken and written simultaneously were
these: "I HAVE BEEN WITH YOU ALWAYS .
. . ALWAYS WILL I
BE WITH YOU." I
then regained physical consciousness. This experience left me
encouraged and inspired as one might imagine, but at the same it
presented a challenge to my whole way of thinking at the time.
According to the non-dual philosophy of Vedanta that was Nome’s
message, the Self is manifesting in one’s life as the consciousness
that witnesses all phenomena that arises externally as well as
internally, waking or in the dream state. This was after all the
supreme message of the Upanishads and it had seemed obvious to me at
the time. However,
this experience demonstrated to me in no uncertain terms that the real
situation was a bit more complicated than that. I was indeed the one
witnessing the fact that I was meditating and that I also was aware of
being in the dream state, but then who exactly was addressing me from
beyond this frame of reference? Through
this experience it now appeared that the witnessing consciousness of
the “I” was but one manifestation of The Self, or Soul, which also yet
remained beyond my present identity. This now made sense to me. It
seemed a little preposterous that our entire Soul could manifest
completely in this one limited form in time and space. This didn’t deny
the inherent spiritual dimension of the witnessing consciousness, but
simply presented a more complete picture. Once
again I began to feel a little out of step with the teacher and the
group I was with. It was as if this curriculum was nearing its end and
another about to begin. And the door that finally opened to a new and
expanded horizon, was opened by the person that was eventually to
become my wife. I
began dating Judy shortly after I met Nome. In fact our first time out
together, I took Judy to see him. At first I thought my sole direction
would be with Nome, but a much more intense and comprehensive
initiation was in store for me through Judy.
When it came to females in general, I was
still an ascetic, who thought sex was something to be conquered and
women were obstacles to that conquest. I had pretty much lived my life
up to this point as a monk. This had been my life-long programming,
going all the way back to being an altar boy in the Catholic Church. When
I left the Church I no longer saw sex as a sin, but when I moved into
the Eastern Religions, sex was still portrayed as a problem, an
obstacle to higher states of awareness. Yogananda's guru, Sri
Yukteswar, advocated the use of ice cubes applied to the genitals to
alleviate the sexual urge.
With such negative programming, it was
inevitable there would be problems in store for our relationship. One
day, I suddenly remembered Swami Pratapananda’s prophecy that at thirty
years of age I would be married. I was thirty years old when I met
Judy. We weren't actually married until shortly after I became
thirty-one. Still, I thought it was a remarkable prediction. We
were married only three months after we started dating. As incredibly
naive as I was, I thought because we loved each other, why wait any
longer? Compatibility remained an issue only with regards to
superficial concerns. Alone,
I had moved from peak to peak in the mountain range of my spiritual
journey, conquering the heights, touching the sky, basking in the
light. I did not realize there was a whole other side to spirituality.
The scriptures I read did not mention it, or if they had I could not
see it. My teachers did not talk about it, because they themselves did
not know. It had to do with the wisdom not of the mountain, but of the
valley. It was the journey into the depths, not the heights of the
human soul. It moved one not into the sky, but reconnected one back to
the earth, not just basking in the light, but also dissolving into the
darkness. It was beyond the realm of the masculine hero's conquests. It
was the Feminine Dimension of Life. This
then, was my initiation through my relationship with Judy. I had to
confront areas I had previously ignored, denied and repressed. Not only
was my sexuality involved, but my relationship with my body and my
emotions. I discovered I had a lot of work to do. The challenge was sometimes
frightening, and sometimes I became angry, confused and afraid. I no
longer had any map to indicate where I was going, no convenient
scriptural support that I could turn to. I had no guides to show me the
many obstacles.
However,
there were two major miracles in my life that occurred at this stage of
my journey. These involved the birth of our two daughters. Our first daughter Francesca
was born at a birthing center attended by a nurse midwife. She was born
in a room welcoming her with candlelight and incense. She never cried
during her birth. Immediately
after her arrival I put her in a small tub of warm water, so that she
could relax in an element she had long been familiar with. After only
about five minutes in the water, she looked up at me with large dark
eyes and smiled. To
participate in bringing a new human being into the world, for me, was a
spiritual experience of the highest order with a tremendous rush of
tangible energy. In birth, the Invisible dimension of the Great Mystery
becomes visible. The Spirit becomes flesh and lives among us. What a
miracle and a blessing if only we have the eyes to see it! This experience of
Francesca's birth certainly had a dramatic impact on our life. We did
everything we could to avoid babysitters and day care, and I had the
opportunity to spend a year at home with Francesca. I found it
particularly intense at times, as this new role conflicted with my
conventional masculine programming. But the benefits of the process
were invaluable. I was introduced to aspects of myself I could not have
gained in any other way. The
birth of our second daughter, Radha, definitely involved a little more
drama than what we experience with Francesca, but certainly no less
miraculous. Judy
was only two months away from her 42nd birthday when Radha arrived. The
fact that Judy began to have an elevated blood pressure meant that we
couldn't have a home birth like we had planned. Radha was born in a
birthing room in a hospital, less than two hours after we arrived. She
arrived so fast that I was in awe of the tremendous power that Nature
manifests through this simple, yet profound act. Radha burst on the
scene with sound and fury. I wasn't able to arrange for her bath so I
held her close to my bare chest for some time. I then gave her to Judy,
where she effectively demonstrated a ravenous appetite. With
protests from the doctor and hospital staff, we were back home in less
than two hours after the birth. With Radha sound asleep beside us in
bed, I suddenly realized: I actually loved this new being every bit as
much as I had loved anyone. And she had just arrive! In amazement I
thought: How can this be? Even today, I am still amazed how this
happens. It definitely is beyond the feeble processes of the rational
mind. Some may try to explain it as a mere biological process, some may
analyze it through the lens of psychology, but there is much more
involved than what can be explained solely from those two realms. It
wasn't more than a month after Radha's birth; my world started to come
undone. My younger brother, Stan, who was also married with two
children, was having marital problems. One night I got a call from
my sister-in-law, asking me if Stan was at our house? I thought this
question was a bit unusual, since at the time we were living about
3,000 miles apart. She went on to explain that one evening they had a
disagreement about a house they were planning to buy, and the next
morning he was gone. She had called relatives and friends, but no one
knew where he was. About
a month later, a hiker found his car on an abandoned logging road in
some rugged hills. Stan’s body was in the car along with a hose still
connected to the exhaust pipe. He had killed himself. Everyone was
devastated. Upon hearing the news I went into my bedroom, lit a candle
and sat for several hours, struggling with a storm of emotions. Every
once in awhile the dark clouds would part, and I could sincerely wish
my brother well on his chosen journey. Perhaps though more than
anything else, his death presented a challenge to my understanding. I
wanted to know more. I needed to know why he chose the path he did, and
more importantly, what was happening as a result. That day sitting in
front of the candle, I prayed for some answers. Almost
a year later, I had a dream/vision that began to shed some light on the
subject. It was as if I suddenly woke up in my dream. I found myself in
a small, totally bare room. It was without windows, doors or furniture
of any kind. There in the middle of the room lying on the floor in a
fetal position was my brother. Suddenly he became aware of my presence.
Sitting up he glared at me, with an expression of rage. I was only too
familiar with this expression, as I had seen it many times before in
our childhood. He now turned on me with his anger, and snapped: "How
the hell did you get in here?" Before I could reply he added: "I
suppose now, you're going to bring them all!"
I then regained waking consciousness. No
matter how anyone may wish to interpret such an experience, for me, I
actually had been with my brother. The impact of his presence in such
clarity and detail defied the idea of a simple mental projection on my
part. It was an event that was more real, than that of any casual
meeting in waking consciousness. More important than the mere
fact of finding my brother however, was the understanding I gained from
the encounter. The completely bare room, his total isolation and still
burning rage; all helped me understand the situation much better. Over
the course of the years I've had many other encounters with Stan. He
gradually began to communicate, and several times we met in beautiful
outdoor settings, where we went exploring, as we loved to do as
children. More than once, I believe he has helped me through a
difficult period in my waking life. How far is the distance
between the living and the so-called "dead"? Millions of people have
had such experiences, demonstrating there really is no distance except
in consciousness. All the old cultures that have been on the Earth have
believed in the ability to communicate with their ancestors or those
that have gone before. I
have talked with many people who have had such communications. I think
it is important to share these experiences with others, because in so
doing, it opens the door that much further between the two realms. Seven
months after my brother's death, I had another exceptionally vivid
dream. At the juncture of two rivers I met my father. He was planning
to take a long trip. So before he left, he wanted to give me his coat.
A big gust of wind shook the trees behind us. I turned to see what was
happening. When I turned back my father was gone. A
month later my mother gave me that same coat. It was the morning just
before my father's funeral. He had died of a sudden heart failure. After
these two huge losses, the remainder of our family seemed to labor
under a heavy blanket of clouds for a long while. But the winds of
personal loss and dramatic change continued to blow. My grandfather
suffered a stroke and had to be put into an extended care facility. My
grandmother's mental condition rapidly went downhill so that her care
took an ever-increasing amount of attention.
It
was during this time of tremendous turmoil in our family, about six
months after my father's death that I had a series of dream/visions
which proved to be a real turning point in my life's journey. In
the first vision I was involved in an initiation ritual with a number
of other young men. We were on a mountaintop, and we had to go over the
side of a sheer cliff by sliding down ropes. About half way down, the
ropes simply ended and we went into free-fall. At first I began to
panic. But then I remembered something from the past, some experience.
At once I knew I would be all right. I landed safely in a jungle
valley. I made my way through the thick vegetation, and eventually
climbed back up the mountain to the top. Only a few of us made it back.
Some of the others, who survived the ordeal, claimed they encountered
evil and terrible enemies down below. They were then escorted to the
edge of a cliff and pushed off. I awoke somewhat frightened
and confused. I didn't really understand what the message really was.
After several days of reflection, I began to put some of the pieces
together. In the most general terms, I understood the dream to be
telling me that survival is not in itself the most important aspect of
our journey here. How we interpret our experiences along the way is
actually more important. If we still find evil lurking in the valleys
of the unconscious mind, we haven't completed this initiation. Looking
back at this dream and the events which soon followed, sliding down the
face of a mountain cliff on a rope which gives out half way down, seems
like a perfect analogy for what I was in for. Over
the course of the next 6 months I had several more experiences that
continued with the initiation theme. With each of these experiences, it
felt as if large areas of my internal landscape shook loose and fell
off into the sea. Less
than a month after the mountain top initiation, I had a dream where two
women put me into a big metal chair. They strapped down my arms and
legs. One of the women turned on a switch, and a strong current of
electricity went through my body. In a short time the current got so
strong, I thought I would lose consciousness. So I began a breathing
exercise trying to internalize the energy and pull it up my spine. When
I woke up, I was still doing the breathing exercise and my entire spine
felt as if it were glowing with heat.
A
little over a month passed, and I had another vision. In this one, I
was standing on a shoreline looking out over the ocean. It was dark.
Out of the darkness of the distant horizon came a strange, luminous
whirlwind. As the whirlwind moved across the water toward me, it
gathered up water into its funnel. The next thing I remember, I was
kneeling with my face pressed to the Earth with the wind and the water
swirling on top of me. The breath was sucked out of my lungs. But
mysteriously, I felt no need to breathe. After what seemed to be a long
while, the whirlwind moved on and I woke up in an ecstatic state of
consciousness. Three
months later I had another dream/vision, which really proved to be the
climax to the series. Its impact on my life was most dramatic. It
represented a real break from my customary perceptions of my life and
the external world. This is where the rope of my past religious
programming ended, and for a time it did indeed seem that I went into
free-fall. In
this vision I was in an elevator with a group of people. We were
descending deep into the Earth. One man said in amazement, we were
below the 35,000 foot level. However, we continued to descend. In a
short while we stepped out of the elevator into a large, underground
cavern. Flaming torches illuminated the cavern. On either side of our
path was a big statue of a dog. The two dogs had large crystals for
eyes that seemed to be alive as they flashed in the firelight.
Gradually everyone discovered that whatever sexual desire they held in
their mind would materialize. Standing directly in front of me was a
beautiful woman, naked. She led me over to a bed, and we celebrated our
desires. From
this point on, I would like to refer to the following poem, which I
think best describes my experience. Genesis
Eternal Down
into the depths Where
dreams and thoughts Come
alive and live In
glowing light, And
speak of ancient secrets Forgotten
long ago in caves, Humans
once called home. Out
from the darkness A
vision of beauty: Hair
flying like chaos, Eyes
flashing with enchantment, Breasts
heavy with ambrosia, Exuding
rich perfume of passion. I
approached through my dream As
if through a door, And
whispered: Let
us lie down And
make the flowers and the trees, And
the seasons once more. Yes, Yes
we knew where we were And
we knew what to do, And
we knew that great bliss That
dances and runs through, All
things that have ever come to be. Riding
orgasmic waves, Realities
spun out Into
colossal tapestries, Woven
with the threads Of
time and space; A
living kaleidoscope Revolving,
desire's flaming core. Merging
and melting forever, Forever
coming - Together
once more. The
Earth and the Sky, The
Sun and the Moon, The
Wind and the Water, Every
cell, Every
atom, Expanding
Galaxies of Consciousness Celebrating
and singing Us
songs of our Divinity In
an unending exaltation of Joy. Trance-fixed, Sitting
upon their smoldering Sacrificial
altars, The
old stern gods Got
up and left. Grumbling
in their beards They
struck out for other domains, More
suitable to their rigorous Regimes
of righteousness. "The
old stern gods" that got up and left, as I refer to them, were a group
of ascetic monks and yogis. One member of this group was Yogananda's
guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, whom I looked up to with the highest
respect. As I caught sight of him, I ran over to him, but he was angry
and he just ignored me. I was devastated. I woke up very confused and
upset. I could go on writing many
pages about all the implications of this experience, but basically what
it came down to was that something similar had happened once before. In
my mountaintop dream, the rope abruptly ends. I began to panic, but
then I remembered some experience I had in the past. Only then did I
feel that everything would be all right. In my waking consciousness
however, I couldn't recall just what this past experience was. Now
in this vision, Yukteswar's anger with me appeared to be the end of my
"spiritual rope" as it were, and I began to panic. After spending
several days under a cloud of anxiety, the sunshine suddenly broke
through; I remembered something that changed my entire perspective. I
was a youngster, kneeling in the darkness of a confessional explaining
to the head priest of our parish, my disposition for playing with my
girlfriend. He interrupted me with an ultimatum: I should either change
my behavior or leave the Church. As a young high school
student, I penetrated the situation to see the obvious, and left the
Church. For there was something in my nature that wouldn't allow me to
deny or repress my sexual expression just because some person or
institution said I should. I chose freedom instead. And
now once again the choice was just as obvious. However, in this case it
was the gods who walked away. They walked away and left the door open
for someone else to come in. Someone, who for thousands of years had
been cursed and forgotten, shoved into the basements of the human
psyche. That someone was the Goddess, the Feminine aspect of Divinity.
I went over the side of the mountain cliff,
sliding down a rope that ended halfway. Having nothing to hang onto, I
trusted in my own Self-Nature. And so I landed safely. I made the
transition from the mountaintop to the valley. The mountain was barren.
It was only rock. The valley was full of life. It was the dark and
seemingly chaotic wildness of Creation itself. It was the Feminine. Others had also survived the
experience in the valley. But they came back reporting something evil
and dangerous. And they had not completed the initiation process. I
was then ready for the next stage of my journey, where I descended deep
within the Earth, deep within the subconscious mind. There I met and
united with the Feminine, the anima within my own Self. This
breakthrough in Consciousness also meant a significant break with my
past. I began to notice a subtle shift in my perceptions and
meditations. This encouraged me to begin exploring on my own, various
other techniques of meditation rather than continue with those I had
been faithfully using for the past 16 years. I
felt as if I had graduated from one school, and now found myself
enrolled in another. Only the new curriculum as of yet had no name, no
definitions, and no map. All my past teachers,
priests and gurus held up signs reading: "Do Not Enter". I had plenty
of fears and doubts at first. But I had seen those signs before, and so
far in my life they had never stopped me. In fact I had come to a point
where almost instinctively, I interpreted such messages to mean: "This
Way to Real Adventure." So,
alone, I took my first few cautious steps into the darkness of the
jungle. It wasn't long however, before someone appeared as a guiding
light, and gave me a sense of direction. His name was Robert Graves. Several
years before, while wandering through a used bookstore his 2 volume
set, The Greek Myths caught my eye.
I wasn't particularly interested in Greek Myths at the time, but for 50
cents apiece I just couldn't pass them up. The
books remained packed away in a box, until I rediscovered them one
morning while looking for something else entirely. As these kinds of
things work out, I now dove into the first volume without even
thinking. Well, right then and there he simply "blew my mind". On the
third page of his Introduction, Graves boldly declared: "Ancient Europe
had no Gods". A very simple statement, but
to me it was if someone had shouted at the top of their voice. I had
studied the history of Western Civilization, I had studied the various
Religions of the world, but I had never run across anything like this!
(And by then I had already read over 2 thousand books.) Graves
then went on to explain that at one time, the great Mother Goddess was
the only symbol for an immortal and omnipotent deity; and” the concept
of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought." Later on I came to discover
that human beings have actually worshipped the Divine through the image
of the female, far longer than through the image of the male. In fact,
in the long span of time that human beings have been on Earth, the idea
of a lone male deity might just be considered a recent fad. That may be
a bit extreme, but what happens in the next hundred years might very
well bear this out. Needless to say I continued
reading Robert Graves. And for the first time I felt I was beginning to
understand the real story behind our culture, its religions as well as
its politics. Shortly
after this, I was introduced to some of the wise women of our culture
by way of their books. Merlin Stone who wrote: When God was a Woman;
Barbara Walker: The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets;
Starhawk: The Spiral Dance; Marija Gimbutas: Goddesses and Gods of Old
Europe, 7000 - 3500 BC. After
studying these contemporary sages, my world was turned upside down,
inside out and set spinning in a whole new direction. I was simply
astounded at my own past ignorance, and the utter lack of any attempts
on the part of the educational system to introduce students to this
level of understanding. It seems to me, that if we don't clearly
understand where we have come from, we will never be able to see where
we can go. This
period in my life was more revolutionary, more exciting than when as a
teenager, I made the transition from the Catholic Church to the Eastern
Religions. For I now felt I had discovered the foundation on which much
of the conceptual architecture for both East and West. The image of the
male God with its particular focus of psychic, mental and emotional
energies determined and influenced almost all other concepts in our
culture. I discovered that for the past 5,000 years, we have been
looking at only one half of the whole picture. Human
beings at one point in our evolution began to walk down a road in
Consciousness that emphasized our separateness rather than our
connectedness, elevated the Male over the Female, and the
Transcendental over the Immanent concept of the Divine, and came to
repress the Feminine elements within our own psychic structure. While
externally, oppressing females in our cultures at large. Within
this context then, we can find subtle, yet numerous connections between
the repression of our sexual nature, the oppression of women and the
degradation of our environment. All have connected and deep-seated
causes in our image of the Divine, and the characteristics we choose to
value and emulate. I
will not go much further in explaining this here. My purpose is simply
to relate how dramatic and profound these changes were in my life. They
were not merely the intellectual rearrangement of concepts within a
given belief system, but the actual transformation of the belief system
itself. My entire world-view or paradigm had changed. As
babies, we didn't rationally decide to get up off our hands and knees
and walk. This intention was obviously part of a deeper level of the
consciousness than the rational mind. Our whole being was reaching out
to a new direction of growth and experience. The river of Life that
flows through us simply carried us along in its own ancient wisdom,
beyond our particular doubts and fears. And so this process still
operates in our lives today emotionally, intellectually and
psychically. It
was almost the height of irony that once I found myself initiated into
the domain of the Feminine, I should come to recognize the next step in
my journey was the separation from my wife.
I
have come to see a relationship almost as if it were an entity in
itself. It has a birth, and eventually a death. But how we perceive
death is very important as to how we will interpret a divorce. Is death
final? Does relationship end there? If death is inherently a part of
life and ultimately good, may we not be so inclined to at least begin
to see the ending of our most intimate relationships in a similar light? Unlike
the decisions in my younger days to leave school, or refuse the
military draft, the decision to leave Judy was an extremely agonizing
one. And given the utter complexity of relationships in general, it is
impossible to sit down and rationally figure out all the different
factors that play off one another in our coming together and our
parting. But after many years of
reflection I had come to realize that on my part, one of the biggest
factors at play was my inability to cope with the glaring contrasts
between a conventional family life and my sense of what I felt I was
destined to accomplish. I also came to painfully find that my deep
cultural programming infected with an ascetic life style, was not so
easily overcome by my new found direction. The truth was that I blindly
continued my daily routine, which meant that I got up every morning at
4:30 am to meditate, and retire at 9:00 – 9:30 pm to meditate again. So
as not to disturb Judy with my schedule I did not sleep in her bed, but
rather on a foam pad on the floor in the living room. When it came to
my routine I was very inflexible and unaccommodating to her needs and
desires. I just couldn’t see the proverbial writing on the wall until
it was too late. That blindness on my part was soon addressed on many
different levels. I
went to live with my sister, Bonnie and her family who happened to
conveniently live nearby. I continued seeing Judy and the girls on a
regular basis. My
mother, who was at this time courageously taking care of her parents,
asked me to come up to British Columbia and give her a hand. We needed
each other's emotional support. So eventually I moved in with my mother. I
was now 300 miles from Judy and the girls, but I still managed to stay
with them once a month for a few days. Over
the course of the next two years, my inner journey into the realm of
the Feminine Perspective continued and intensified. It seems most
synchronistic that in my external life I should actually come to live
with all the females in my immediate family: my sister, mother and I
even stayed with my 82-year-old grandmother for 3 months. At the time,
I was consciously aware they were on some level serving as my teachers.
This was rather dramatically shown to me in a dream shortly before I
moved in with my grandmother. In the dream, my grandmother
was dressed in the ornate robes of a Catholic Bishop and was
distributing communion wine. Many people were kneeling down in a line
before her, each waiting their turn. Before she gave me the wine
however, she proceeded to give me a lecture in front of the whole
congregation about my attitude. My
grandmother who was born in Hungary was raised as a peasant girl on a
large estate belonging to a baron. Listening to her many stories was
about the next best thing to time travel. I got a glimpse into a system
of values and a way of life that came right out of the Middle Ages. One
story that particularly stands out in my mind was about their parish
priest. Evidently, the priest had a girlfriend with whom he had an
on-going sexual relationship. The girl was in her mid-teens and was
still living at home. The family knew about it. In fact, the whole
village knew about it. But they all felt that celibacy was too heavy a
burden for any man. So they allowed it to continue. Of course I’m not
advocating such an arrangement, but merely pointing out that these
simple village people were able to recognize and accept the priest’s
humanity while the officials of the Church could not. In
these two years I spent with my sister, mother and grandmother I began
to explore the various Tantric scriptures of both Hinduism and
Buddhism. I read all of the books on Tantra Yoga I could find. And to
my amazement I came to realize the techniques that I had been given
through the Self-Realization Fellowship were in fact part of the
technology used for thousands of years in Tantra. But contrary to the
teachings I had studied in the past, I now discovered that Tantra
actually includes sexuality in its spiritual practice. If this wasn't radical
enough, in some circles this included the sacramental use of cannabis
or marijuana. I even found one text that gave a special Sanskrit mantra
or prayer that was recited before one inhaled the sacred smoke: "Bhava
na sana hridayam". Roughly translated: "May this herb be a blessing to
my heart". All
this of course, was exactly opposite of everything I had been taught
and what our society continues to preach to this very day. I began to
wonder why? Why are human beings so afraid to experience pleasure, when
at the same time violence is considered a perfectly acceptable form of
entertainment, and killers have become our heroes?
Perhaps there is more than a subtle connection
here. I
discovered that physical pleasure is almost universally believed to be
detrimental to our relationship with the Divine. I was then left with
the question: what is it in our concept or image of the Divine that
finds it so necessary to exclude pleasure? These
issues became central to my focus, and became the next challenge on my
continuing journey. To say that I had wandered off the beaten path here
would certainly be an understatement; for I now began to move into a
strange, but delightful landscape indeed.
I
continued to explore various techniques of meditation. I would work
with a particular technique until I was satisfied I discovered what it
had to show me, and then move onto the next. This
process wasn't simply a stroll through a smorgasbord of methods, but
had a definite purpose and direction. Just as when attempting to
develop any muscle group of the body, one performs specific exercises
designed to send energy into that particular body part. This
consciously directed increase of energy then is responsible then for
the growth and development.
In all the Yoga exercises I explored I was
looking for the most effective techniques that did the same thing for
the brain. I wanted to generate as much energy in the spine as
possible, and then be able to pull this energy into the brain. This consciously directed
energy then floods the billions of neurons in the brain, awakening them
into new levels of functional awareness, expanding the creative and
mental abilities as well as releasing the mind into more profound
states of consciousness. The external signs of this process have been
recorded as brain wave patterns exhibiting theta-alpha states, elevated
serotonin levels, decreasing cellular oxygen requirements, and the
right and left hemispheres of the brain beginning to synchronize in a
process known as lateralization. Within
this context then I also began to explore the introduction of my sexual
energy into this process: generating a strong sexual charge and then
consciously directing it up the spine and into the head. I soon
realized that this combination of Yoga technology and sexual energy
dramatically added a whole new and powerful dimension to my practice. I
now knew beyond any doubt, I had found something worth exploring
further. In
combination with all these other methods, I also began to experiment
with the sacramental use of cannabis from time to time. I believe I
have thoroughly explored this avenue of experience and it is my
opinion, there are definitely some benefits to be gained using
psychoactive substances in this context. (It is after all - part of our
inheritance of Shamanic Wisdom the world over.) But I must add however, that
we live in a society that has lost its sense of the Sacred. Obsessive
behavior and substance abuse has become the norm, rather than the
exception. With this condition almost epidemic, one has to be extremely
cautious here. There is a fine line between use and abuse, and I have
seen so many of my fellow travelers unable or unwilling to observe that
line. One
of my deep felt motivations behind my work is to provide a dynamic
process that increasingly reveals the Sacred in one's life. In this
way, one begins to live in a place of increasing fulfillment, rather
than a place of desperation and need. One
of the primary factors involved in this process is making a conscious
re-connection with the Life Force of one's own body. In India this
energy is called Prana. In China it is known as Chi. The Life Force is
not only felt as a distinct sensation as it moves in the body, but one
can learn how to direct an ever increasing amount of this energy into
the head, facilitating a unification of the intellect and intuition,
thinking and feeling. Quite naturally this process expands one's
consciousness, moving one beyond the experience of separateness into
the reality of connectedness and wholeness - the Natural State of Yoga.
Through
this powerful process of integration the very core of compulsive
behavior is penetrated and undone. For the fundamental dynamics of
compulsiveness is driven by a need for connection and integration.
Compulsive behavior and addiction are simply our ineffective ways of
trying to heal ourselves of the deep feelings of separation and
alienation. Given
the programming of separation we all grew up with, (mind separate from
body, male separate from female, humans separate from Nature, Nature
separate from God), it is important to recognize that most of us have
been left with some very deep wounds. Worst of all, many of us haven't
got a clue as to how they got there. It
has been my discovery, that Tantra Yoga is a process that actually
addresses this whole issue in the depth necessary for real healing to
take place. It literally bypasses the rational, linear mind, and
directly impacts the deepest core of our emotional and physical being.
It does this by reconnecting us back to our most powerful source of
creativity, pleasure and fulfillment. According
to Tantra, our sexuality and our spirituality are but two aspects of
the same reality. Tantra not only proposes this to be true, but
provides the method and the means to make it our own personal
experience. It
has been the basic understanding of Tantra for thousands of years, that
each human being manifests two polarities at the psychic level, one
male and the other female. By bringing these two polarities into
harmony and uniting them in what has been called the Sacred Marriage,
one becomes a whole and healthy human being. Within
this level of integration each individual begins to experience the
Source of his or her Being, the Intelligence and the Love that gives
birth and sustains an infinite number of worlds, dimensions, and
realities. It
has been through my exploration of this process of integration that a
specific technology slowly evolved. Much of it incorporates well-known
methods from various Tantra teachings, but the central technique that
unifies the whole work is my own contribution.
This particular program represents a unique
sequence of steps, when carefully followed in their specific order,
produces a result that is immediate and more powerful than anything
else I have found. (This complete program can now be obtained at kamakala.com). A very important point that
I would like to make perfectly clear however, is this technology is not
placed in its usual cultural context found in other teachings, which
are almost wholly dominated by the exclusive ascetic and transcendental
perspective.
The cultural setting in which this technology
is placed is unique and original to the teachings of Tantra. It doesn't
strive to transcend Nature, but recognizes that you are an integral
part of Nature. It doesn't strive to transcend the body, but recognizes
the body as a vital part of who you are. Tantra doesn't strive for a
freedom from the body, but rather seeks a greater freedom of the body.
This holistic approach represents the inclusive perspective of the
Immanent nature of the Spirit. To
give you a clear idea of the ascetic and transcendental viewpoint in
which the various disciplines of Yoga over the past centuries have been
confined, I would like to quote Shankar, who reorganized the Swami
Order in the ninth century and is regarded by millions as India's
greatest saint and philosopher. The following is from one of his most
popular works entitled Vivekachudamani, translated, "The Crest Jewel of
Discrimination": "So long as a man has any regard for this corpse-like
body, he is impure and suffers from his enemies as well as from birth,
disease and death... Throw far away this limitation of a body, which is
inert and filthy by nature. Think of it no longer. For a thing that has
been vomited (as you should vomit forth your body) can excite only
disgust when it is recalled again to mind". Almost
an identical message was taught by Socrates: "we make the nearest
approach to knowledge when we have the least possible intercourse or
communion with the body, and are not surfeited with the bodily nature,
but keep ourselves pure...” And
not to be out done, the apostle Paul chimes in with this exquisite
recipe for schizophrenia in his message to the Galatians “the flesh
lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these
are contrary the one to the other. Gal.5:17. This
viewpoint wasn't unique to these individuals. On the contrary, it
perfectly reflected the anti-Body, anti-Nature attitude that was
pervasive at the time and infected almost all cultures - and sadly
still persists today. Even
though both Hinduism and Buddhism have adopted much of the technology
of Tantra, their metaphysics however, remains locked in the
transcendental separation from the physical dimensions of Life. This
attitude is diametrically opposite to the original teachings of Tantra.
I
have read and listened to many teachers talk about Cosmic
Consciousness, but they never mentioned the Truth of Cellular
Consciousness. They claim to embrace the consciousness of the entire
Cosmos, but lacked the most basic understanding of their own body. You
can see this for yourself, as it is reflected in their fear of sexual
orgasm. They have all tried to run away from the body, its desires and
pleasures, as if somehow these weren't legitimate manifestations of
true spirituality. In
the story of the Buddha's enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, when he
walks out of the forest to preach to his friends near Benares, the
first words that come out of his mouth: "Life is suffering". This
statement is regarded as the first of the Four Noble Truths, which make
up the very foundation of Buddhism. Well,
I represent the kid in the back of the class who puts up his hand and
says, "It seems to me, you missed a few things along the way. Sure,
life inevitably contains suffering, but it also contains happiness,
joy, and love as well". The
Buddha doesn't hear the child, but proceeds to explain that Desire is
the culprit, the enemy of Truth. I
have traveled down the road that leads to Desire's overwhelming flaming
core. But instead of experiencing something negative and turning away,
I found something positive, something beautiful, and I embraced it.
From my perspective the true evolutionary driver is not simply the
escape and prevention of pain, but the seeking of pleasure. For in the
process seeking of pleasure we can discover within ourselves almost
everything that makes us truly human: curiosity, imagination,
communication, relationship and creativity. Above all, I realized how
utterly preposterous it is to declare the Creative Energies that
brought forth and sustain innumerable worlds, as something negative or
dangerous. Tantra
Yoga didn't originate on the mountaintops of asceticism, but rather
down in the valley of everyday human experience. It didn't originally
set out to escape the body or the physical plane of existence, but
rather bring them into a greater mode of fulfillment. It doesn't see
the Divine as being solely transcendent or separate from Nature, but
rather it perceives The Divine as Nature, or Immanent. This is the very
essence of Vamacara Tantra, the Left Hand Path or the Feminine
Perspective. Tantra
Yoga returned to its original metaphysical setting in Divine Immanence
provides an entirely different window through which to perceive
yourself and your world. It also provides the doorway through which one
can step into a whole New World of experiences and creative
possibilities. For several years I'd been
intently looking out this window, and faithfully using the techniques
to move through the doorway, when one morning I woke up and noticed
something had radically changed. It
was on Christmas Eve of 1987, that I had a most dramatic dream/vision.
In the vision I stepped into an empty room. To my left along one wall
was a throne of some kind, made of stone. I walked over to it, but
decided not to sit in it. Instead I sat down immediately in front of
it, facing the opposite wall. A Native American medicine man or shaman
came into the room with a drum. He sat down on my right and began to
play the drum. Next, an Asian Buddhist monk came into the room, and sat
down on my left. We started to chant as the three of us focused our
attention on a mandala, or geometrical pattern on the opposite wall.
After some time, the mandala began a series of changes, eventually
forming a living face. The face gradually expanded until it was as
large as the wall itself. It was the face of a beautiful woman. I
recognized her, and cried out "Ma!" A red, diamond shaped light
appeared in her forehead, and began to intensify and expand. The light
lifted me up from the floor and pulled towards her. She said, "You have
paid the price". I then went through the red light in her forehead into
overwhelming ecstasy. After
many years of reflection on this event and subsequent dream
experiences, I have come to firmly believe that the Buddhist monk and
the Indian shaman are two significant aspects of my past life selves
that are directly relate to this life time. They also symbolically
represented the spiritual traditions of East and West to some degree.
Since in my current life I had been exploring both - the Eastern and
Shamanic perspectives – I then found myself appropriately sitting
between them, serving as a bridge. The
“price that I paid” had something to do with the years of discipline
that I had undergone, preparing the necessary psychological groundwork
for this type of integration. Symbolically and directly related to this
process, was the fact that I did not sit on the throne- which would
have set myself above or separated myself from the other two. Instead,
I chose to sit down on the floor where I was in a position “ready” for
a more profound unification, not only with these two important incarnations, but with the
much greater reality from which the three of us had come; each of us
then representing a unique and individual aspect of this greater Self. Now
when I regained physical consciousness that morning, the ecstatic
feeling was greatly diminished. I thought at the time, that had it not
been reduced, most likely I wouldn't have been able to regain physical
consciousness. The new day now being Christmas, I felt like singing
“Joy to the World the Divine Is Here!” Later
on that morning Judy, Francesca, Radha and I went to my sister's house.
Unexpectedly, a friend of mine was there also. As a Christmas gift he
gave me a rather large mushroom. He said it was Stropharia cubensis, a
type of mushroom that is particularly high in the psychoactive
substance known as psilocybin. My first reaction was to refuse the
gift, then on second thought he might consider it rather rude, after
all it was Christmas. So I graciously accepted the mushrooms, but
planned to dispose of it when I returned home. After
more serious reflection I began to question this rather knee jerk
decision. It just seems too coincidental that just after the vision of
the night before that I should now be given this type of gift. The
Buddhist monk in me felt that I certainly didn’t need this kind of
external aid or reassurance. But on the other hand, the Native American
shaman considered it a blessing that may provide an opportunity to
explore other dimensions of reality. Two
weeks later I was back in British Columbia and had an opportunity to
try the mushroom. In preparation I had fasted for about 18 hours. I
walked out into an isolated area, and sat down under some large cedar
trees. I sat and meditated for awhile and then ate the mushroom. After
about 6 hours, I walked back to my mother's home and tried to write
down as much of the experience as I could. The following is what I had
written. "Yeah. Yeah,
I know. I
know it's true. They're alive. The trees are alive. The
same Life that's in me, is in the Earth. The animists and the Shaman
were right all along. The trees are alive, and they know it. It’s true,
We Never Left Eden. It's right here, all around me. Everything is
Conscious. Everything is Connected. Who in hell was it that first
denied this reality to the trees, the animals and the Earth? Yes, they
were in hell. They were living in the hell of non-perception. They
represent Satan that is still roaming the Earth, denying Life and
Intelligence to all but themselves, and then of course in the end, must
logically end up denying Life to themselves as well. The
snow is still falling. It told me days ago, it was coming. All the
animals knew it was coming. I knew it was coming, and have been waiting
for it. It has a personality. The children's story of the snowman
coming to life is an ancient reflection of this basic truth. The snow's
personified as a snowman. It's a reality that has left the twentieth
century far behind. Deep within the whiteness, coldness and winter,
lies the truth of death; a mood of introverted attention pulling the
rational mind back into its primal depths. Time to go within now. Time
to get quiet now. Coldness. Quietness. I hear the snow falling on the
pile of dead leaves on which I am sitting. I adjust my cold legs. The
snow is getting deeper and it's getting dark now. Closing
my eyes, I see a beautiful pattern of lights. The entrance to another
reality tunnel, perhaps. How far can I go? I believe I've been here
before, but I don't know when. I think I remember now, the vision. A
Buddhist monk sat on one side of me, and an Indian shaman sat on the
other side. Yeah,
I remember now. I've been here before. I've been through this door, and
down this tunnel. It ends beyond the gates of time and space. Yeah, I
know it now. I can feel it. I can feel it starting to pull . . .
pulling me inside . . .” At
this point I lost consciousness of everything external and all
perception of time. I figured later, that about three hours had passed
before I regained physical consciousness. “Yeah. Yeah,
I know . . . I
know . . . The trees know . . . The Earth knows . . . I
know, and I can feel the knowing everywhere I look . . . I? I?
. . . Who am I? . .
. I remember now, vaguely a long time ago. I was meditating . . . or
was it a dream?
I remember now, it's coming back. I remember I
had a wife somewhere, and there were two children someplace . . . Not
here, somewhere far away . . . Where am I? . . . North, somewhere . . .
Yeah I remember now, a country called Canada . . . It's snowing. It's
cold. The sun is gone, and it's dark. The trees are all white . . . My body is very cold. How
long have I been sitting here? Strange,
I can't remember when I wasn't sitting here. Just sitting here, just
sitting here under these cedar trees, watching the snow coming down . .
. It's like the field of snow over there, no tracks in it, no path to
follow, just a beautiful unbroken blanket of whiteness. And the snow
just keeps falling . . . A
material, something solid - just keeps materializing right out of the
sky. How mysterious . . . Science thinks it knows what's happening.
Matter appearing out of nothing, and then again disappearing . . .
Subatomic particles randomly appearing right out of the electromagnetic
field, and then just as mysteriously disappearing back into it again .
. . Creation's little game, revealed on their stage, and they sit in
dumb silence watching the world being born and dying . . . Millions of
snowflakes falling from the sky. How strange. It could just as well be
millions of worlds. The
sky knows what's happening. The Earth knows, and the animals and the
trees know. And once, a long time ago, humans also knew. I can feel it
buried away in my body. I hear this ancient language of my cells,
chanting with the cedar trees. Yeah, the trees know. My
body is very cold. I better get up and move around. Maybe I should find
some shelter somewhere . . . Where can I go? . . . Where am I? . . . Oh
yes, I remember now, British Columbia. I know someone here . . . Yeah,
now I remember. My mother lives here. I can go there . . . Not far,
just over there. But who exactly am I suppose to be? What am I suppose
to say? Our Real
Nature is the best-kept secret in the world . . . I
better walk around for awhile. These leaves are beautiful even when
they are dead. Their bodies make a warm rustling sound . . . Wait a
minute! It's in the middle of winter. It's snowing, and it is dark.
What in the world am I doing out here? Oh
yes, the mushroom . . . No, that was a dream a long time ago . . . It
was a special kind of mushroom . . . Oh Yes, That's It!” At
this point in the development of our collective consciousness, I could
be declared a criminal or insane for simply taking off my clothes and
going for a leisurely stroll around the block. I realize that almost
the same level of understanding exists with regard to the use of
psychoactive substances. If
something is revealed while an individual is so called, "under the
influence", then this automatically dismisses the subject, and he or
she is no longer taken seriously. More than anything else however, this
attitude reflects the whole mind-set with which our culture approaches
these substances to begin with. They are not in themselves, taken
seriously. They are no longer recognized to have a Sacred value. They
are no longer used sacramentally or in a spiritual context. Yet, this
is exactly how these substances have been used for literally thousands
of years in many different cultures all over the world.
At
one time, tobacco was considered sacred and used sacramentally by the
Native Americans. At the present time however, our culture doesn't
consider tobacco in any such context, and consequently there are over
300,000 deaths each year related to the abuse of this plant. Substance
abuse begins with a failure to respect or value the substance used. Recognizing
the prevailing negative cultural programming about drugs in general, I
have to admit I had second thoughts about including these experiences
in my life’s story. There was a voice that kept reminding me how it
might destroy my credibility, or that the “vehicle” might get in the
way of the view or the message. I
realize this might very well be the case, and many people may actually
feel threatened. But I also realize however, that my life in and of
itself is a challenge and a threat to the conventional mind-set. Prison
was one knee jerk reaction it had to my spiritual values of
nonviolence, and now this type of programming might just as well
condemn me again for stepping outside of what it judges to be proper. However, as you have seen my
life's journey has not been content to remain within the boundaries set
up by our culture or its institutions. Part of the initiation process
of even the most primitive societies is the separation of the
individual from family, society and everyday reality. One is then
thrown into a completely foreign domain in order to open up and release
the individual into a much greater reality. Even though I clearly
recognize this process as something entirely positive and quite
natural, I still might have been tempted to omit this experience from
my story, had it not been for the next incident that I am about to
relate. Four
months after my experience with the mushroom, my grandfather died one
night in his sleep, and my Grandmother eventually moved into an
assisted living facility. I then moved back to the U.S. and stayed with
my sister's family. During
one of my usual morning meditations, I was set upon by a plague of
doubts about the reality of my experience with the mushroom, and its
apparent relationship to the Christmas Eve vision. I began to doubt
that maybe there was no relationship at all. Maybe I've become
completely lost in my own little world of dreams and visions? Well,
I was soon in such a turmoil of conflicting ideas and emotions, that
all hope for a peaceful meditation was nowhere in sight. So I decided
to go for a long walk to help clear my head. I was just about to get
up, when I noticed on a nearby bookshelf a deck of playing cards. Moved with an impulse that
seemed like simple curiosity, without thinking I reached over and cut
the cards. I
sat there for what seemed like a full minute, staring down at the card
now before me; for there in front of me was a red diamond. In fact, it
was none other than the Queen of Diamonds! My
brain went on "overload"! There was simply no way I could rationally
explain it. It was a synchronicity within a synchronicity, and it
literally "blew my mind". The odds of turning up this particular card
at precisely this moment seemed to me just too astronomical. I sat
there, face to face with a Mystery that went far beyond my
comprehension. In
that moment, I understood that the old concepts of "Enlightenment"
simply don't apply. There is no state of consciousness that one can
achieve or maintain, that will allow one, or permit one to declare:
"Now I have achieved the Absolute, I understand the Ultimate; I am
Perfect beyond which there is no more growth, no more surprises". Through
my own experience, I now see such concepts as simply childish. It's as
if the rational and localized human mind can't stare into the face of
Eternity, without quickly turning away and making up stories more
suited to its own narrow point of view. I've come to realize there is
no "end of the line". There's no final graduation day. Eternity doesn't
have a beginning or an end. Infinity can't be rationally calculated,
and there is no "other shore". There's no "great escape", or the
"extinguishing of the flame" known as Nirvana. The
ideas of the Ultimate, the Absolute, and the Perfect are all ideas of
limitation projected onto the Eternal and the Infinite. The simple
truth is the human mind will never be able to grasp the Eternal and the
Infinite. It will never be able to conquer Truth. For
the past five thousand years, human beings have been exploring the
paradigm of knowing, controlling and conquest. I call this the
Masculine Perspective. Representing the other polarity in consciousness
is the Feminine Perspective, which is fundamentally grounded in the
paradigm of surrender, of letting go, of opening up to the Unknown and
the Uncontrollable. Its focus is not on some abstract goal, but on the
Process. For the Process itself is Eternal. The Process is Life Itself.
I
feel the time has come to put away our grade school games of conquest
and competition, by moving ever deeper into the Mystery of our own
Existence. For
me, this involves the total acceptance and integration of all of Life's
experiences: the highs and the lows; the positive and the negative; the
light and the dark; the visions and the emotional outbursts; the waking
and the dreaming self. Wholeness,
holiness and healthiness all come from the same root word. I can't be
healthy and whole, while denying some experience that Life has brought
into my awareness. Every experience whether it be emotional, mental or
spiritual makes a unique contribution to my life. To the degree that I
can accept and integrate all the threads of experience in the tapestry
of my life, is the degree in which I will experience my life in
wholeness, and holiness. It
is precisely this process of unfolding integration that provides the
medium through which human beings grow, bursting our localized
limitations to embrace the infinite possibilities of further expansion.
This process is the ever expanding, evolutionary Spiral of
Consciousness that always moves us beyond our narrow, preconceived
boundaries of Self and Reality. This
is the Process of Love.
Almost
three years after the experience with "the Queen of Diamonds", I had a
most unusual encounter. I was driving down the freeway one morning,
when I began thinking about the synchronicity with the playing cards,
and the red diamond shaped light in my dream/vision. As I continued to
reflect on the symbolic significance of the Red Queen, I began to slip
into an altered state of consciousness, and without thinking, I softly
called out, "Ma". I repeated it again, and again.
Each
time I spoke, it seemed I was descending deeper and deeper into myself.
And then something happened. It started out, as what felt to be ripples
of Love breaking at the shores of my heart. These ripples quickly
gained in size and momentum until they became waves. Now wave after
wave, came crashing into my heart. I was being completely inundated in
an ocean of Love, and I began to cry uncontrollably. I simply had to pull off the
road; I could no longer drive. I just sat there beside the freeway,
crying. When
the waves finally subsided, slowly I regained my composure enough to
drive again. A little later, I had to laugh at the prospect of a
policeman stopping to see if anything was wrong. That would have been
some scene! During
the rest of the day, I felt I had to fight to keep from periodically
breaking down again and crying. It seemed the very atmosphere was
supersaturated with Love. Everyone seemed to be an endless center of
Love, radiating out in all directions. There seemed to be rivers of
Love flowing between myself and everyone I met. I realized that Love is
the very force that holds the Universe together.
When
considering the energies of the electromagnetic spectrum, there is
always an opposite and equal force, always a negative for each positive
charge. But it is my realization that this analogy simply does not
apply when it comes to the greatest of all forces - Love. There is no
opposite and equal force to Love. We may think there is when we are
filled with fear, when we are called into the next level of surrender.
But once we actually let go and float downstream, we feel the power of
Love, always supporting us like gravity. Nothing can ultimately stop
Love. The hardest of human hearts can spend lifetimes stubbornly
resisting this Force, but eventually it will come to surrender. The
pain of resistance and the feeling of separation simply become too
great. The whole being eventually has to let go - relax back into the
waiting arms of Love. Surrender
then, is the discipline of Love. Surrender is the initiation into The
Feminine Perspective. When one recognizes and experiences the Divine as
Life itself, and Life as the Eternal Process of unfolding Love, this
then is the advent of the Goddess. We can then put away all our fairy
tales of beginnings and endings, and embrace Eternity - the Great
Mystery at the heart of our own Being. When
the definitions of Love, Life, and the Divine all become synonymous,
the Great Adventure has begun. The weaving together of these seemingly
separate concepts into a Living Whole makes all Life Sacred and Holy,
and each unique individual expression of Life, integrated and healthy. This
is the conclusion of my story. But of course the journey does not end
here. It continues on in the expanding Process of Love, Awareness and
Creativity. However, I don't want to leave you with the impression that
all is light and happiness in my life. This isn't just another bedtime
story. I continue to move on as we all do, through the sunshine and the
nighttime. I have challenges on my journey, just as you have yours. In
this time of radical transformation, we are all learning to appreciate
the challenges of the night, as much as we value our achievements of
the day. HUMAN BEING BEING
HUMAN In
the rich and dark humus Of
human-ness . . . The
fragrant flower Of
Being blooms. ADDENDUM The
forgoing events ended in 1989. And for the next 10 years I labored to
express my understanding of Reality through art, poetry and several
books all published on the web since 1997 at kamakala.com. Now
fast forward to May 2009. I
am now living in a motor home and currently camped in a grove of cedar
trees on the banks of the Molalla river in the state or Oregon. I am
sitting on my bed with my lap top editing this manuscript. I just
finished going over the synchronicities at play between the vision on
Christmas Eve 1987, the experience with the mushrooms among the cedar
trees in Canada and the Queen of diamonds card at my sister’s house,
when I decided to stop for the day. I turned off my lap top and rather
absent mindedly gazed out my window. Right in front of my field of
vision is a cedar tree with a large glowing red diamond on its trunk!
In a rather loud voice I yell: What the *#%& - and jump up and
out of the motor home to get a better look. I just can’t believe what
I’m seeing. Yes,
there it is - a red diamond about 1 and ½ feet in length about 5 feet
up the trunk of this tree. On closer inspection I see that some vandals
had cut away some of the outer bark of the Cedar revealing a red
surface underneath. This then explained the red color; but now for the
shape? I followed where the light
was coming from by looking up through the surrounding trees. The sun
was shining through the branches of the adjacent tree, a couple of
which happened to be bent at specific angles so that when the sun was
just at this particular angle in the sky the light came streaming
through the branches forming a perfect diamond shaped. And of course it
just happened to hit the center of the trunk of this red cedar tree,
and I just happened to stop my editing at this point and look up just
as it was happening. The light remained at that specific angle for only
a brief time, and then the diamond disappeared. There
shall be signs in the Heavens . . . And
the Earth will awaken . . . And
Her children will dream new dreams. Home
Page Roderick W. Marling KamaKala
Publications (c) 2010 Portland,
Oregon USA "All
Rights Reserved" UCC
1-207 |
