Since 2019 I’ve been posting photo-poems on Twitter/X. Believing they might all be deleted one day, and to get them more traffic, I began a blog called A Twitter Opening to post the photo-poems there. Now the blog has no more memory, and so I continue with the very last post of my Twitter/X poems here.
Posted Feb 12 “Have You Spelled Consciousness Enlightenment?” A photopoem. All photos my own.
Posted Feb 21 “The Earth and Sky, They’re Training Wheels” a photopoem on the Mother on her birthday darshan.
Posted Feb 24 “True Concept of Nature” a photopoem. Photos by the author.
Posted Feb 25 “Transform a World Endeavor” a photopoem. Photos by the author except #3 by Douglas.
Posted Feb 28 “Reality’s Keeper— “Reality’s Fine” a photopoem. All photos by the author.
Posted March 4 “Why Can’t Everybody Be Soul Friendly?” a photopoem written to the editor-in-chief of iTELLYJELLY Animesh Tiwari. Nithish gave me the title, or his muse did, taking him to school, and I’d just completed the poem.
The Inner You (photo by me and gimped by me, of Mithun meditating at 14 years)
What’s Bigger Than the Universe? Hang On, What’s Bigger Than Everything?
(This essay was originally published by Shift on March 7, 2015. It has been revised.)
I’ve noticed with the universe it’s haunted. There seems to be more going on than what we see, as if there’s something hidden, and I’m not talking about the molecular and subatomic levels. The sense is not so much of hidden mechanisms but that “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” to quote Shakespeare. Who has not a time or two, at least in some bedeviled moment of childhood, looked over their shoulder like Truman Burbank of the film The Truman Show and wondered, “Am I in front of an audience?” That the sense is the centerpiece of many people’s mental illness may have more to do with that being an underlying sense we all share than of being the isolated-to-them sense of their illness. We have peopled the hidden audience with nature spirits, gods and demons, more recently aliens, and now, with the advent of computer technology and the debate over artificial intelligence, with computer scientists and AI creators. Though the question will be quickly qualified with something like, “It’s just a hobby mind you, an interesting sideline of thinking not at all important to us as scientists in the least” (least it be seen as a concession to or indulgence in superstition), but it’s still being asked, and by respected members of mainstream science: are we living inside a computer simulation?
Such an idea can have us thinking of some sinister scenario like in the film The Matrix, where, to say the least, the simulation was not in the best interests of the people living in it, whom we’d now call avatars since only their consciousness or ‘mind’ was in the machine, and their body was elsewhere. As the question is being posed today, however, the entire universe and all its bodies would be within the simulation, which has caused some to suggest that, if that’s the case, we don’t need to know it, since knowing it would make no difference to us existentially. We’d still be us doing what we do every day. If it’s true knowledge is power, however, and I would hope few doubt that truth, then it could make a world of difference, and I’m not only speaking in terms of the revolution in thought and idea it would bring about, a bigger one perhaps than discovering or re-discovering the Earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa, or that we live upon a huge revolving spherical island of life traveling some seemingly trivial temporary distance through the infinities of time, but I’m also talking about a revolution in being human itself, since, however remote, the possibility would be there of us reaching out of the simulation and getting in our hands the very keys of destiny.
The possibility is there too that it wouldn’t be some sinister matrix or one created by people very much like ourselves to see what they are, the how and why, but one created by ‘people’ quite a bit more advanced than us, in comparison on our scale of being say a whole lot more different from us than we are from other animals, and the simulation wouldn’t be to our detriment but the very opposite; it’s in the design that we would reach out of it and get our hands on those keys, however many trials and tribulations we had to undergo to get there (making perhaps ultimate virtual reality video game more an apt description than computer simulation). In such a scenario, the creators would not likely be either gods as we like to think of them—benevolent beings asking some token of our appreciation even if that is just being good—or conscientious scientists vastly technologically superior to us conducting some experiment, who gave their creation such power because it would be the proper thing to do, because it was part of the experiment, although we’d imagine they’d have some protection in place because of the threat to them we’d pose if we got out of the simulation and into their undefiled heaven or ordered laboratory, not all that different in essence than the threat AI poses to us now in our speculation over it. The creators I’m speaking of would be something else entirely.
Understand here I’m using the concept creator because we as yet have no other adequate one to describe a being in such a relationship to us, using it in the same way we use the term computer simulation to describe the possible symbol stage we live and move upon, because we can only get an idea about it by using ideas we know. The actors involved and the actual thing-in-itself may be in essence quite different than the ideas we are familiar with. Though it’s certainly not new to human thought, in fact has been around thousands of years in esoteric spiritual teaching in one form or another, and here the idea of the virtual reality video game would be more expressive for our purposes than a computer simulation, we might just be avatars unawares for a person on a level of being bigger not only than us but the universe, bigger not in physical terms but in terms of not being bound by the conditions of the cosmos in the scope and capacity of consciousness, that ungraspable substance that might prove to be what matter revolves around rather than the other way around as it appears to our scientific senses and speculation (in the same way it appears to our corporeal senses the heavens revolve around the earth), who would in turn be an avatar for someone larger, again using a known concept to capture the unknown and here simplifying the process to just personhood but meaning in fact the person and his whole field, person not limited to human being if you wanted to split hairs, and we might could keep going with avatar upon avatar until we reached the Unimaginable, which we could never really do since we are speaking of something larger than time itself because it has no beginning or end, those for our universe notwithstanding, and any amount of time would be no time compared to it, unless you give serious consideration to the proposition that at some point in absolute nothingness something popped out and at some point what is will just completely and absolutely disappear and never appear again. Either way you meet a paradox; infinity forever defies logic. From the proposition of timelessness, if we are on a stage, it’s not just a hidden audience we’d be romping in front of but hidden infinities, infinities within infinities within infinities.
In a recent film about the married life of cosmologist Steven Hawking, The Theory of Everything, he draws a diagram on a blackboard for his professor, explaining as he does his theory of black holes, and the professor, obviously impressed with the theory, simply tells him it’s fine but now do the math to prove it. The whole scene is handled in such as way as to give as little credence as possible to the intuitive reason derived theory, or rather, put all the weight of it on a mathematical equation (really on the scientific method) and make the ‘hunch’ he had appear the flimsiest of things, something hardly necessary but it is, like a cough or a sneeze, and so it’s tolerated but not wanted.
Though science and technology have certainly benefited from human intuition, even from the content of dreams, the double helix and the sewing machine needle for example, today you’ll find the word counter-intuitive even in the submission guidelines of popular culture magazines such is the extent the war in ideas between the religious and the skeptic have made both paint themselves more and more into corners, and maybe the latter more so because, in technologically based societies, the dominant society on earth, it holds the field, after centuries of wrestling it out of the former’s hands, and they are trying to get it back now like never before. So it is no surprise that the ‘hobby’ of investigating the truth value of whether we live in a computer simulation or not is based in mathematics and not on trying to reach out of the simulation; in other words, it’s not based on personal firsthand experience.
I imagine, whoever you are and whatever you believe, that proving by firsthand experience that the universe is a representation, or to bring it closer to home, that we are representative creatures of entities beyond the cosmos, posing it that way as opposed to a computer simulation or video game so to perhaps move closer in idea to that possible unknown, sounds at first preposterous. Putting all method aside for a moment, it’s the most basic way the unknown for us becomes the known: one or more of us seeing something, a new continent or planet for example, with our own eyes or with the aid of instruments, and then able to convince enough of the rest of us it is there that it becomes part of our knowledge. The scientific method becoming the dominant means whereby we become convinced something one or more of us has seen is true or not—the apprehension of a rational ground for something universal and for the most part invariable—, has limited the investigation to the objective outer world, which has greatly increased our knowledge of it and consequently our security and comfort in it but at the same time dramatically decreased (atrophied really) our knowledge of the subjective inner world, our trust in it, and made the exploration of it for all practical purposes null and void in that the discoveries there don’t become part of our knowledge. In fact, the scientific method cannot be applied there without significant adaptation of it to the inner field, something mainstream science is not likely to do because, in a reaction to the current war in ideas between the proponents of science and the religious-minded, it’s both giving its method the absolute authority the religious give their scriptures and, like them with those, refusing to change, adapt it or bring it into question.
It would hardly seem needed to point out why the scientific method cannot easily be applied to what is seen or discovered in the inner life, but to my knowledge it’s not something generally discussed such is the degree we (of the dominant technologically based society) ignore the relevance of that subjective field, and so I will simply point out that the inner experience of one person, a lucid dream for example, or any dream or vision, not to mention largely unknown things like overhead experience or generally misunderstood things like enlightenment, the egoless mental silence, cannot be reproduced under laboratory conditions and be the exact same experience for anyone else reached in precisely the same way, the content of inner experience rising as it does from a fount we have not yet discovered to the degree we have our hands on the mechanism and can manipulate it at will. That doesn’t mean an inner discovery cannot be verified in a scientific manner by others seeing it for themselves, but they wouldn’t be able to apply the scientific method as it stands now to their subsequent verification because they could not follow the same procedure of the discoverer and would have to adapt their search to their own subjective inner content and conditions. When we are trying to prove something as all-encompassing as we are representative of someone beyond the universe, something that would include the inner as much as it does the outer because of the totality of our experience of being that representation entails, it should hardly go without saying the scientific method in its present form would not be an adequate means to use.
In fact it would be by inner means we would more easily reach what we are representative of beyond or bigger than the universe if it isn’t a separate being from us but us at a higher stage of being and therefore be reachable by inner exploration and not outer. I have to add here that in discussing such a remote unknown as this, the terms inner and outer might not apply there or not in the same way as here, and so the duality of inner and outer might not be a condition of the larger us. That it is a dual world of inner and outer we live in escapes our notice quite easily because it’s the outer world we are focused upon, what we feel over, think about, and dream about too. If you simply witness it a moment, though, you won’t find yourself, your person, your identity, your ego, or however you care to call yourself, in the outer world. Your body is there, but however much you identify with it, you yourself live somewhere somehow inside it in the phenomenon called consciousness, the wrench in the system of science, what it can’t adequately explain but what it believes is a result of material process, what it reduces to chemicals and electro waves in the brain and down the spinal column, without yet having turned upon consciousness itself to gain an understanding of it, without having explored the phenomenon to discover its limits within and without us.
On basing all of science on the outer world, which would include material process inside physical bodies animate and inanimate, include also molecular and subatomic processes because they are observable outer phenomenon however remote they are from our corporeal senses, we aren’t basing our science on our reality, which is inner and a matter of consciousness. It’s no wonder, then, that we have failed to answer the most basic questions of our existence: who or what we are, why we’re here, where we came from, where we’re going, and how we get there. If it’s true that we are representative creatures of entities beyond the universe, and we can discover that in the exploration of consciousness, meet or be momentarily ourselves on high as it were, then the answers to those questions come into focus, and the keys of destiny appear upon the horizon of the human endeavor, what, if you’ve been yourself on high, in the exploration of your inner self have reached that height, is not rhetoric but reality.
Before finishing my last time in college, in the fall of 1989, on the most fateful and wonderful day of my life thus far, at 28, I was in Texas of all places, in a pickup truck of all things (not far from NASA), driving down the street at night negotiating a long slow curve. Apartment buildings lined both sides of the street, and I had almost made it home to my apartment. I was looking up at a crescent moon that had a bright star or planet resting directly on its bottom horn, and I was listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” on the radio, and the song was in the middle of the weird sound sequence it has, and I was stoned on some Christmas skunk (potent marijuana), but that wasn’t unusual because during those years I was stoned as much as conditions allowed me to be. I wasn’t an airhead though but was in post-baccalaureate studies at the University of Houston focusing on the language Classical Greek, having just dropped out of a program (I’d just began) to earn a Masters in the History of Science because my metaphysical and spiritual experiences had reached the extent I knew science didn’t have a clue as to what was going on with us, but I kept at the Greek to maintain an outer focus engaging enough to keep my mind occupied with the outer world on the advice of my Greek professor who was a close confidant, although she was a skeptic. Driving under that horned moon and under the spell of that sound, I felt a sensation between a sudden lift like a blastoff and being beamed up that lasted less than a second it happened so fast, and then I was several meters above my head, only I was no longer me—that imprisoned fellow continued to drive the truck the whole time, negotiating that slow curve—but who I really am, the realization that was who I was and that I’d forgotten that the most hit-me-over-the-head part of the experience, but that was far from all.
How I knew that was the real me I could only explain if I were still up there, but although I was extended into the universe by being attached to the little I driving the truck, I wasn’t in the universe but beyond it, however impossible that sounds. I realized in that ‘up there’, that to become myself again was the goal of the whole journey, the journey of the little lives down there where that truck was. There was so much more to thought there than here, and that realization contained in it all the lives the little I driving that truck had, and to go any farther would be to put interpretation of it, something almost impossible to completely avoid.
The utter ecstasy I felt did not disturb in the least the utter stillness, calm and peace that was my station, and although the truck was moving below me, I wasn’t. I could see through the roof of the truck the little I driving, and anywhere I pointed my vision, which was from up there, I could see through whatever I looked at to the molecular level, see through the walls of the apartments I was driving past, into and through not just the minds of the people sitting in them but their natures, could see the heart of anything I looked at.
My identity was the One, not God, as strange as that might sound, although I knew too I was only an expression of the One, and although the experience lasted only several seconds, so much I saw in that time—I saw Earth—, but the most poignant part of the seeing was that I knew it would be impossible for me to remember the experience as I experienced it because it was not limited to three dimensional reality. What I mean to say it was bigger than sizes. You can only see it when you’re actually there, and you can only bring back some pale reflection of what you saw. One thing, however, was apparent on my return to this prison house of sense, and that was that I knew everything had consciousness, even inanimate matter, or, more how it appears, that everything is consciousness at varying degrees of movement and play.
In a flash I was suddenly again the little I driving the truck, but the experience revolutionized my life, not, as you might expect, instantly, but over long slow years, although I parked my truck immediately after, cried tears of pure joy, and made getting back up there again, not for a moment but forever, the goal of my life. I was so surprised. But knowledge takes the longest time to reach all the way down into the darkest deeps of your ignorance, become the will of your heart and hands, the travel of your feet, and my ignorance is particularly dark and deep, and maybe that’s why I saw what I saw, or really, was for a moment who I truly am; if you’re that being on high and want to lift a world of little I’s up towards your station, you’d be wise to begin the work at rock bottom, with the bad apples, and go up from there, but this is of course a lot of interpretation.
The greatest value of human experience possible as beings with a physical body is what we need to experience. We won’t, or can’t, if we don’t turn and explore the field of consciousness, which we avoid because our science doesn’t understand it or trust it, can’t apply its method to it to the letter. Adhering to the spirit of the law, however, we can investigate the validity of this overhead experience I describe. Way beyond the splendors of science and the spirituality of religion, it’s been the most hidden aspect of our humanity, the higher self, what reveals to us what’s going on with us, where we come from and where we’re headed, what the Indian poet, philosopher and explorer of consciousness Aurobindo Ghose called the supramental, meaning beyond Mind, who was the first to talk about it openly and to map out a way to get there, interestingly enough around the same period of time Einstein was formulating his theories and that science was reeling over the discovery of the quantum field. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that it’s been known since earliest times and has formed the basis of the esoteric tradition in spirituality, that inner knowledge getting lost and becoming the worship of the outer sun, since it’s symbolized as the sun by our own inner creative sense that fashions dream and vision, which seems to be universal. When the Sufi poet Rumi says “None but the sun can display the sun,” and “But the Sun of the soul, beyond this firmament,” is he speaking under the stress of inspiration what images it brings him, or is he speaking of the overhead sun of which we speak, what he himself has seen in the only way possible, by being the sun, since it’s beyond the universe and all conceptions concrete or abstract?
But neither Rumi, if he did indeed experience it, nor Sri Aurobindo, who most certainly did, nor anyone else for that matter, has described an experience of it nude of symbol or what might be called in post-spirituality terms, the straight take on it. I’m perhaps the first in regards to describing a supramental experience thusly, naked, though I might be the last person you’d expect given my moral track record. Here, however, it’s not outer conditions one has to meet in order to experience Supermind, how good you are or how pure, though triggers of sight and sound and such seem to act as quickening agents (that “Whole Lotta Love” was a trigger should show the path to Supermind is wide open); it’s inner conditions, namely two: to have reached all the way through dream into the deepest innermost keep of your inner life; to have opened the top of the head and gone to the top of Mind. Each of them require quite a comprehensive exploration of yourself, and it would stand to reason that if you were to reach out of the representation and be who you represent, to put it in known internet terms, who you are an avatar of, you would have first had to have touched bottom inside yourself and broken the lid at the top of yourself that separates your mind from the universal mind, each of which are almost as unknown as that of which we speak, unknown to even the spiritually-minded. The skeptical science-minded will just have to hear me out asking the question: is it wise to refute inner experience you have not explored when it’s possible for you to do so, but you haven’t because you’ve adopted a belief it’s of little value?
Several days before my overhead experience, I’d completed an inner journey that took a couple of weeks to complete and that I had to do in stages. I first learned how, in a lucid dream, to have the scenario fade (by doing a sitting meditation with pranayama), which would leave me falling in a tunnel-like blank darkness, not with a body but as a consciousness. This is a gateway in dream to the deeps, but at the time I only knew it was taking me somewhere not where it was taking me. Next I learned how to maintain that state of travel, which is quite difficult because you are so close to waking up and coming out of the experience you have only to open your eyes. I imagine the obstacles one faces are personal and would be different for everybody, but in order to arrive where I was going I had to overcome my greatest fears and let go of the most important people in my life, and if you wonder how that could be possible since this was in my inner life you perhaps do not know how real the inner can represent the outer, or how confused you can become between the two even when lucid. The more I overcame the obstacles the more real they became, as if there were an intelligence other than my own trying to prevent me from arriving. Finally I arrived, and though I can describe the experience citing its details, this was not in the world of forms, though a rudimentary single type of form floated there, which resembled two beamed quarter notes—a sound music would be a word too rough to use to describe it permeated the experience—, a form that seemed aware. This was in a totally other realm than ours, and if you go there you’ll know why a distinction is made between spirit and matter. Spirituality would call this the well of soul, or the seat of the soul, and if post-spirituality were to get there, it would likely keep that word soul since, like the word God, other words just can’t reach that far. I’d touched bottom, or rather, the innermost place in myself, and it acted like a springboard that was to send me over the top of Mind, but I must warn you, there is another bottom in us, or a bottomless pit more like it, that is not in but down, called the Void, the nothingness, or the eyeless waste, and you don’t reach it through that ‘falling place’ but by going down through inner worlds of nightmare, the Hells, and I don’t know if first you must experience this before you find your innermost deep, but I did, though that was in my earliest cycle of inner exploration as a child.
The other condition, opening the top of the head and going to the top of Mind, called Overmind by my yoga (albeit the lowest tier of Overmind), happened a year before, in 1988 on my 27th birthday on Spyrock Mountain in Northern California. After three intensive years of inner exploration, I took a psychoactive substance, LSD, for the first time, and I was an atheist and wanted the question answered if God exists or not, unlike the New Atheist who claims such a question is akin to asking if there’s a tooth fairy or Santa Clause, in other words a stupid question that has no place being asked by a rational mind. My inner experience had warranted that question, something to my knowledge New Atheists do not have very much of and think has little or no value. My set and setting were such that I not only experienced changes in perception but went beyond the boundaries of the normal human range, a possibility of psychoactive substances not generally accepted, that it can be a trigger for spiritual experience and not just be an imitation of one. I had the urge to lie down, and as I did the world in front of my visual field first filled with cracks then shattered with a resounding crack, and I found myself flying bodiless over a thought-grid that stretched forever in every direction, and I knew but did not know how I knew that I was at the top of Mind seeing the ideas that seed human thought and create, or evolve rather, civilization, ideas divine but not necessarily either religious or spiritual, though the ideas I witnessed there were. The sense is rather opposite than we normally think when we consider divine actors in the creation of our world. They weren’t creating the physical world but influencing and organizing it by seeding the earth-mind with ideas.
Each square of the thought-grid, though they were not exactly squares, had an unfathomable depth to it that contained in miniature beings and ornamentation impossible for the space they were in, beings and ornamentation that defied description in three dimensional terms, although they had size to them, were not out of the bounds of size, and from the forms inside I knew I was flying over the Buddhist idea because I could see that the general shape of a stupa was a very rough imitation of the ‘original’ form I was looking at, though it wasn’t buildings I was looking at but beings and ornamentation, and it was the same over the Christian ‘house’ (cubicles I originally called them), its general shapes like a pointing steeple and such very inexact imitations of the original forms of the idea we call Christianity, though it’s interesting to note there was not the shape of a cross anywhere though there was a ‘slot’ for Jesus and other central personalities of the Christian idea. The two houses were next to one another, and my state of consciousness as I was above them was commensurate with the idea of each, peace and joy the dominating element of the Buddhist and love and joy of the Christian, though there was only a slight difference between the two houses in terms of consciousness, and the background of both was mental silence that was not simply a quiet or still mind but a state of consciousness unto itself. The Christian house held a contradiction in its center, an element of wrath it itself did not seem to understand, and that created a conflict in me that resulted in my return to myself lying down, needless to say no longer an atheist, but it took me years to interpret what I saw in relation to the being God: it’s not different religions interpreting differently the same God; it’s that God is bigger than name and form, too big for any man-made religion to encompass (since God is the not-God too), or for any human spirituality to discover in his totality, and the different religions each focus on different attributes of God, attributes that are so very creative that upon entering the universe they become beings unto themselves, and in such an identity with God they see themselves as God or some expression of the Absolute.
I broke the lid over my mind and went to the top of Mind because I had just spent 4 years in the university earning a B.A. in English and History, spending more and more time in my intellect hitting against that lid trying to answer the big basic questions I sought to answer such as is there a God and where does humanity come from because the inner experiences I was having showed me infinitely more is going on with us than what universities teach or science-based literature and philosophy talk about. So it was only natural that when I ingested LSD (under such a compulsion) it would take me where I was most oriented to go, beyond that lid, since, like the out of body experience, once you leave the room you’re in, or the little known spiral force that seizes you in a lucid dream for that matter, the psychoactive substance takes you where you are set to arrive, though with many if not most that is only to play with ‘the doors of perception’. It would be several years before I could corroborate my experiences by hearing they had been experienced by someone else, though at no time did I consider them hallucination or unique to me such was the overwhelming sense of the universality and reality of each one. During those years I was not part of any religious or spiritual group, and nor did I follow any system or path have a teacher. I read books and felt strongly that teachers and paths were part of the past and no longer needed for spiritual search, but it is true that when the student is ready the teacher will come. In no scripture or book on religion and spirituality, or of occult philosophy and experience, however, could I find even a hint of any of the three experiences, but of course it was the overhead one of seeing who I truly am which was the one I most ardently searched for in books and articles (no internet yet, that I was hooked into at least). Then at the very end of my years of study, which consisted of reading and inner exploration, I ordered a book by Sri Aurobindo that arrived just days before I went abroad for the first time on my own, in 1995, which was to Israel, Egypt, and India.
I not only found these three experiences discussed for the first time but a whole yoga based on reaching who we are on high, which has as prerequisites finding that innermost place of soul inside and opening the top of the head, and I also found my teachers. I mean I literally found them, in my inner life appearing in lucid dreams, which occurred in the course of reading that book and another I got as I left Israel for India that contained talks of Mirra Alfassaix, the Mother, who was his spiritual partner. They showed up in my inner life so much bigger than my little I that I had to swallow my pride and admit to be taught. I don’t know if after 30 years that pride has gone all the way down so much I’ve choked on it, but I have come to a place where I can relate my experiences without at the same time claiming to be so and so or such and such, stupidities so many of us fall into if we’ve had profound inner and spiritual experience. With me, thankfully, that just isn’t possible because I’m not a person anyone would look up to, believe me. I remain a student of my betters. I also have the good fortune to know what such a hard to define thing enlightenment is, and so I know I’m not enlightened, which in my yoga is, along with the soul change, one of the first steps on the path, the emptying before the filling as it were. I await that realized state of emptiness that contains God in its fullness.
To return to the question with which we started, do we live in a computer simulation? It’s more like we live and move in a soul simulation, that this entire universe is a proving ground for the soul, and it doesn’t matter if there is one island of life like earth or a dozen spaced apart in infinity such that it appears to any one of the dozen it is the only one until it reaches a certain threshold of knowledge or experience and it knows it’s not alone. That would be part of the ‘enigma of being’ creatures such as ourselves and others like us would have to work out, what when added with threats to our survival will eventually turn science and humanity towards exploring this experience of consciousness that we are more than the material envelopes that seem to contain and environ us. Inner space not outer space is the next frontier, what will make the latter more legible and perhaps even more accessible. For reasons beyond our limited gaze that timeless individual that we are representations of has put in each one of us a little portion of itself, of timelessness, in our very core, as the secret support of the rest of us, as what evolves—the human soul we know this as—, and once we find it, it’s a homing device propelling us up to who we truly are, or at least who we are in terms of the next great step of our evolution towards the Unimaginable, and here I’m almost quoting my masters, but they say it so well.
It would be understandably hard for you to believe me because I have only given food for thought not proof, but I have not only given philosophy but have given also a hands on way to find the soul inside, if you would put as much effort into your inner education as you do into your outer, and I’ve shown what it means to open the lid that separates us from universal mind. Fulfill those two conditions, and when the appropriate for you outer triggers are present, you should get the same results I did: reach out of the simulation and into who you are outside of it, who you will find is leaning down to meet you, else you would not have been able to meet those requirements so far outside the limits of the normal human range of consciousness they are, incredibly so.
The end of the world seems to have been expected since God knows when, considered upon us many times already, but today especially it’s on the human mind, not only because it appears we’re approaching environmental disaster because there’s too many of us and it seems we have damaged the environment beyond repair, or because we’re due to be hit by a comet or a pole shift or what have you, but also and maybe more because we’re losing our innocence and are no longer in the childhood of our species because we are waking up to the larger picture. Like for a child, that larger picture is made up of many smaller ones and takes a long time to come into view as an integral whole: our planet’s vulnerable position in space; that our reality rests upon the whims of whirling infinitesimals; that our health has so much to do with our decisions; that we have such a destructive impact upon the environment; that we each affect so deeply the lives of those around us; that we are a world and not just a nation or a people; that in the virtual world we can be instantly almost anywhere and talk to almost anybody in the world at any time; that we can create technology beyond our capacity to handle it; and I can continue. We fail to calculate in our end of the world scenarios the advent on earth of the supramental.
I doubt one such as I could experience it if it weren’t descending to be within reach of common people, meaning it’s not just who we are beyond the cosmos but who humanity will be here on the earth in some future time. We might call that our post-human stage now speculated upon by science, since supramental humans would be quite a bit more different from us than we are from other animals, perhaps be even a separate species, as it would entail naturally a further evolution of the body as well, such a more evolved stage of humanity, or (if you really wanted to name the animal) of the evolution of Nature becoming more self-aware, humans the pinnacle of that now on earth but by no means the highest reach. It wouldn’t be in our near future but perhaps thousands of years from now, unless we start maturing as a race much faster than we have up to this point. Of course it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility the world ends or we become extinct before it manifests, but that’s not probable given that the supramental is not bound by the conditions of the universe, and therefore nothing in the universe could prevent it from manifesting if that is indeed its intention, and as someone who has been it a moment, I can say it is, but my little voice will be meaningless to you now as well the bigger voice of my betters. Given our stubbornness and resistance to change, however, no doubt we’ll come to the very brink of the abyss before it does manifest.
What would certainly speed up our maturity is our discovery (or rediscovery I suspect) of the depths and heights of our inner life, what I’ve proposed will be the new frontier and not either space or technology as many say today, if not for the simple fact that it’s within ready reach of the least of us at no monetary cost and has the potential to entertain us more than any media we hook into (it is total immersion) and give us what our present entertainments so sparingly give us—meaning, education, enrichment—the more so the deeper and higher we go.
With it appearing that the world’s end is imminent, we might finally turn and look in the most obvious place for the answers we need: inside ourselves. If you consider the full spectrum of our experience in any given day, our attention is upon the experience we have when we are awake, and although we see that we have experience during sleep, which comprises a fourth or a third of our day, our attention is generally not focused there. It is beyond the scope of this essay, but it’s probable that at some point we, speaking of all but whom we call primitive or uncivilized, made that part of our experience off limits because it’s so irrational, and we decided to base humanity upon reason. It’s “where the wild things are”, but more importantly, it’s where fundamental change comes from, change in human identity, and I would bet that’s the reason it’s more or less taboo. Though it’s also beyond the scope of this present essay, that discovery would bring us to the next intermediate step of our evolution as a species, the inevitable discovery of the soul inside and the founding of human society upon our timeless essence, one in each and all, as opposed to the mere animal instinct to survive which in our distance from our animal origins we have abstracted to mean making a profit and made that the bottom line in our relations with others not significant to us and between nations, made that the main motivating factor in almost all of human endeavor. What a better world already that would be in the most basic sense, one based on our very soul.
Who’s Driving the Dreambus? (2009) That’s an insightful and inviting title for a film that interviews some of the people in contemporary non-duality spirituality (Advaita) who say or are said to be Awakened: Tony Parsons, Jeff Foster, Timothy Freke, Genpo Roshi, Gangaji, Toni Packer, Amit Goswami, and Guy Smith. It’s described by the filmmakers as “a feature-length documentary exploring life’s most profound mystery, ‘Who am I?’”
Explore that mystery it does, and from an extraordinary perspective: a rare station of consciousness experienced by people from all faiths and all cultures down through the ages, hence panhuman, one considered spiritual or elevated because it’s beyond the ego, a state ontologically hard to define and equally difficult to divine who’s actually there and who’s just able to sound like they are, difficulties that have been a major source of debate and division in spirituality since the beginning I’d imagine because we’re talking about realization, here called Awakening.
While the film does explore the ontological question, the latter question of which of those interviewed is in that state and who isn’t this film does not bridge or even discuss. Only the title suggests it, asking, from one possible interpretation, which one of those interviewed is driving the dreambus, that here meaning something in the neighborhood of the bus to Awakening, in other words, who is Awakened? And when you interpret the title as asking is there anyone driving the dreambus (if anyone’s really there in the driver’s seat at all), dreambus here meaning this dream of a body and a world, neither does the film bridge existence, nor, in my view, even the spiritual path.
According to those interviewed there is no spiritual path (or anything else: you, I, or the world) because everything is one, or it just ‘is’, some mystery we cannot hope to penetrate. For us staring fruitlessly at that impenetrable mystery, it boils down to a nullity of everything in oneness or ‘isness’, and in fact when your consciousness is seated there you experience that nullity, and you no longer have a self-reflective consciousness, no I or inner chatter, hence Silent Mind and no-self it’s also called, and it’s as though you live in the infinite vast because there are no objects in your consciousness and no boundaries between you and everything else save the body and some little sliver of something never in view.
It’s quite a shock to go into the Silence, what it’s called in other circles, and if you visit that place if only for a moment your whole view of things shifts to that ‘nullity in oneness’ when you return to normal mind, so convincing is the experience, like you know it’s the background of everything, or so it seems, a pure undifferentiated consciousness, basic raw awareness and nothing else, the One, who doesn’t from that perspective even appear aware, since all sense of God and soul vanishes too with the loss of a self and a center.
If this really were the ultimate place in consciousness and oneness we can get to and dwell in, in all infinity and beyond, in all the universes and what’s bigger than universes, then I’d say mainstream science is on the right track with its reductionist materialism, reducing everything to material process, meaning that everything is the result of that, consciousness too just the interaction of chemicals in the brain and spinal column. And I’d say that because it amounts to the same thing as science in saying consciousness has no higher purpose, no intent in it or beyond it except that which hapless creatures such as ourselves put in it, creatures that in reality do not even exist: in other words, meaninglessness, where nonexistence is supreme.
However, in that station itself, and here’s the difficulty of seeing beyond it, there is that peace that passes understanding and in most cases, not all, an unbounded joy not dependent on outer circumstances. Attachment and desire are no longer a problem because they don’t arise. Contentment in nothing and the sheer freedom that entails makes not only ego consciousness but also any other possible station appear a state of bondage, and so it’s understandable if you’re there or have been there to feel that there’s no station beyond (because there’s nothing here in the first place!).
Experientially, though, at the fullest manifestation of the station described above, at its deepest in emptiness and silence, which none of those interviewed seem to have experienced or to even know about, not only the mind shuts off but the respiration and heartbeat too, and, if conditions are right, you feel at the base of the spine something like a rocket blasting off (the kundalini smote stark awake), a rocket that appears to take the seat of the consciousness up out the top of the head. I say appears because I aborted the ascension when I experienced that deepest state of Silent Mind (you can read a brief description in my last blog post and in a published essay here: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/03/winged-information-a-peer-into-the-mountaintop-donny-duke/)
Based on that experience and ones where I did go into the regions (or chakras) overhead, though not from the Silence, and what I’ve read of others’ experiences, it stands to reason it’s from that deepest emptiness that you go up out through the crown chakra to either leave phenomenal existence in Nirvana, if that indeed is the case (I suspect it’s not so final), or go up into the higher self, or Supermind as it’s called in an Indian yoga. It depends on where you’re orientated to go, on your soul’s orientation, not your mind’s choice.
Like being in the emptiness, this is not iffy business, and there’s no guessing involved. It cannot be confused with an out of body experience because you remain very much within You, though an overhead extension of you you’re probably not aware you have. You go out the top of your head, all your awareness, the seat of your consciousness, and see from there, hear from there, have no feeling of being in the body below you other than seeing it down there inhabited by the little self shut up in its little prison, though this describes an unmanifested Supermind several meters above a little self on the earth plane. What position it has in relation to the body when it’s manifested is beyond my knowledge, but, according to the Integral Yoga, the full manifestation would mean a divinized body and earth too, what the hope of the New Age and of the kingdom of heaven on earth hint at, though Supermind is beyond heaven and the cosmic Gods, beyond the confines of the cosmos. You can find a detailed description of that experience here: http://www.shift.is/2015/03/whats-bigger-than-the-universe-hang-on-whats-bigger-than-everything/
The Inner You
In that higher self you do experience an individual existence, though it’s egoless like the Silence, know yourself as the true individual that is evolving little selves through time, that line of many lives you ride above, bringing them to it, an individuality based on oneness, the One, but here it’s aware, not a nonexistence as it seems in the emptiness, though it’s still an ever impenetrable mystery. You know yourself as a symbol of That, as if it has impossibly provided a driving car of timelessness in time to bring all to it.
One in the essence of consciousness means, if you really are, that you see and act at multiple poles of experience at the same time, have an all-vision of everything happening and all-being of everything that exists, or have some concentric degree of that like in Supermind, and you can see through anything you look at, for example see through whatever roof or ceiling separates you from your little self, seeing the essence or nature of anything that meets your gaze. The utter stillness, peace, joy, and compassion for all are no longer grounded in emptiness but in fullness unimaginable, fullness of being.
Nor is this the ultimate station of consciousness, what you know seeing from Supermind because you’re pointed more up to the regions above than down to the little I, unlike the cosmic Gods, who are primarily concerned with little lives like ours. There’s no end to the evolution of consciousness. From Supermind you go to ever more all-encompassing stations of consciousness all the way to the One, to express in a linear fashion what isn’t linear, which, as it appears from this ‘one pole of experience’ at a time existence, you can never get to but only are always becoming. In Supermind itself, however, you are the One, and that there is an ever more all-encompassing seeing of the ‘all at once’ does not negate either your being or becoming, contrary to non-identity described above where you aren’t the One or anybody else for that matter.
In no-self you only see oneness and live in its vast store content with your see, and, also in contrast to Supermind, you’re both in the body and in the one pole of experience existence, though without an ego or any other sense of self and identity. Another contrast is in the emptiness you’re in a blissful ignorance unaware and unconcerned with either life after death or the past and future, as those interviewed repeatedly point out. According to the Integral Yoga, that has as its foundation a knowledge based on many experiences of the higher self and not only on one as I have, in Supermind, however, nothing is unknown to you, though you might have to bring something into view if it’s not, and you live in the now of the eternal moment, in undivided time, which is a seeing of the past, present, and future at the same time, what can only be possible when you move, live, and have your being in multiple poles of experience simultaneously, naturally.
I’m not a fan of New Age spirituality, but I give it credit for keeping this hope alive, this ancient and hidden knowledge of who we are up top, albeit confusedly. Contemporary spirituality as a whole laughs at New Age thought, but it cannot see out of that box of emptiness, due to such an influence of Buddhism, particularly Zen, on spirituality today. In fact, it’s often said, by those interviewed and others similarly minded, that seeking is fruitless because you’re already there (but ask yourself this: is it manifested yet?), and so spiritual practice, if it’s admitted at all, is centered on mindfulness and/or meditation, stilling the thought, not identifying with the I or any separation or distinction.
If you practice Avaita, or non-duality spirituality, you may or may not think, read, eat, exercise, or whatever, in a way that’s conducive to that mindfulness, but chances are you probably do. You don’t, however, as rule accept divine or spirit aid, the guidance of your soul, the help of your animal powers, use sequent number, synchronicity, power spots, and significant calendar days such as full moon, your birthday, the solstices and equinoxes, or even give serious attention to dreams, visions, and inner voices (all of which I use avidly). Here too New Age spirituality saves us from putting to sleep completely the ways and means of ascension, although at the same time it has everything thrown together in such a pell-mell fashion it’s not easy to choose between what helps and what definitely doesn’t.
Even to go into that place at the top of mind I’ve called the emptiness and the Silence (there are so many names for it, attesting to its panhuman existence) you need all the help you can get, and so how much more so to get to Supermind, or, to say it differently, not only to get to that emptiness but through it to the fullness of Supermind, to be orientated there. The trick is to be able to discern what help is natural to our individuality and humanity as whole in a divine transformation and what is not or frivolous. It’s tricky, like walking a razor’s edge, because when you begin to open the inner consciousness so many things come flooding in it seems pointing to your heights, not only the all too plentiful purposeful distractions orchestrated by powers hostile to divinity, but also “distractions in gold cuffs” my muse (the muse of poetry) calls them, because they can also be divine distractions, like getting sidetracked from your own divine transformation with Jesus, Krishna, some other divine name, or a divinely inspired book, though avoiding all the distractions, divine or undivine, in no way precludes an indispensible, integral, and unconditional surrender to the Supreme, without which a divine transformation isn’t possible. Nor does it preclude using and adoring some divine name as your guide to get there. They just wouldn’t be the goal.
If, however, you are content with gold cuffs and the cosmic Gods (“the story Gods” in my muse) and want nothing more than to draw ever nigh to some divine person, have no drive to exceed the human formula and go up into Supermind (who would also be coming down to you), then you’ll be in good company and on hallowed ground, but just make sure it’s your soul’s choice. A good question: where would aliens or channeled entities fit into all of this? Or, I should ask, do they?
So far this may seem like just a bunch of philosophy, but shot through it are brief descriptions of my personal experience (which is by no means exhaustive), else I couldn’t describe what I’m describing, and so it’s more the result of experience than thought, hence engaged philosophy. Though we all have our personal truth, our uniqueness in Spirit, that silent empty station of consciousness is at the top of everyone’s mind, since it’s truth in its most basic sense, meaning simply what is, not a name or ideal to believe in, and everyone has a higher self above them, as both become visible when you reach them with the seat of your consciousness, your awareness. In other words they exist independent of belief.
You don’t have to take my word for it; see for yourself if you are able. I didn’t believe in Supermind before experiencing it, had no idea it was even there. I did know about the emptiness, but upon experiencing it I found it to be as ineffable and hard to describe in language as mystics for thousands of years have said it is. Nothing really prepares you for its hard to bear intensity. For reasons that probably has to do with enabling me to see out of that box of emptiness, seeing something’s beyond it, I first experienced Supermind and then a year later the Silence (several times since that initial supramental experience I’ve gone overhead some distance, though not yet again to that height). Even having seen what’s above it beforehand, that emptiness was still overwhelming. I greatly needed spiritual aid.
After the Silence I was devastated. I had seen that the world is an illusion and a cheat, myself included, and so there was no reason to continue spiritual practice, or even school for that matter (I was studying Classical Greek in the university at the time). In fact, there was no reason to do anything except wait for death as comfortably as I could. If I would’ve stayed in the Silence, while adjustment to it would be difficult, it would’ve been much easier, since you are like I said content, and so the meaninglessness is just that, nothing at all. It’s hard to give the picture of my utter despair because it wasn’t depression; the peace from the experience lasted weeks.
About two weeks after the experience, as I was on the verge of stopping everything, sadhana, school, what have you, I flung myself on my bed one afternoon and was enveloped in flaming vision. It happened without any trigger. All was in storm at sea at night, and a purple sky was sending down lightning bolts on water just a slightly different shade of violet than it, water that was mad with waves. Riding on the waves not the least bothered by the storm was a young Caucasian woman on a white horse dressed in traditional American Indian buckskin, not as a squaw but as a warrior. As I looked into her eyes I found myself looking through innumerable eyes at the same time, hers included, not all eyes there are but saw as she saw through all the beings like her, and it was as though they were one being seeing and experiencing existence through all those many eyes, though each one was its own distinct personality acting on its own scene, which was in identity-unison with all the rest. Just a flash that seeing was, and then I was back behind my own eyes looking at her again riding so expertly that storm. She looked at me and gave me a smile that held within it all I hold dear about love, and she said, in a line of poetry I lost, something like, “Nirvana expresses itself through the forms.”
The vision vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, but it put my whole world back in place. It used the word Nirvana for That because I was studying Buddhism at the time, and voice and vision uses what you know and believe in. To interpret what she said I was told that existence is not meaningless because the One, or whatever you want to call the Absolute, expresses itself through existence, or samsara as the Buddhists would call it. In other words, these symbol lives and worlds are real because That is behind them, what they are in reality. So the world and its inhabitants and all above it are a living symbols and not illusions, and that makes all the difference in the world.
That woman on the horse was a representation of my Supermind, what became apparent to me afterwards, whose nature is expressed in the symbols of the vision, i.e. a rider of storms, feminine in a masculine role, and ‘Western’ or ‘White’ but dressed in the life of native or tribal culture, all of which is proving to be my basic nature also, of this little self too. Though at the time I called her (them) the Nirvana people, because I was using the symbols of Buddhism, all those many eyes were the one Supermind, something I only glanced at when I was in Supermind so briefly I was there and such a shock it was just to see through everything as I did. At the time I had no name for it, as I was years from encountering the Integral Yoga, and I just called Supermind ‘who I really am’.
When I was able to integrate the experience of the Silence with that of Supermind, in my understanding, I left Buddhism’s ideal behind, though its thought and technique to get to the emptiness are unparalleled, which I yet use, since that no-self is a way station on the way to the Truth Consciousness (Supermind) and must be experienced and surpassed. Also a good question: where does God fit into the picture? I think I might venture to answer that one. Supermind is the first rung on the ladder of God above or beyond the universe, in other words, God from there on up.
Now, after saying all this, I can go back to the beginning and say that there is no spiritual path, not because all is one and therefore negated, but because all is One and at the same time the path to return there, and that’s a supreme positive. So life itself is the spiritual path, afterlife too. Existence is that whether we realize it or not. We evolve despite ourselves, although we can certainly speed things up conceiving of for convenience sake a spiritual path. And while on that path there are check points, like emptiness and Supermind, as well as other things, the soul change (surfacing the soul) for one, they aren’t the destination, just take you closer to it, and so they hold no all-importance, and making them the goal is as much of a trap as ignoring them altogether, believe me, but it is good to know of them, since your understanding and not only your heart take you forward on the path, and what the mind sees it can identify with, like what the soul envisions creates a world or a universe.
So relax, though you are God like many think, maybe even yourself, you’ll only know yourself God when you can see through innumerable eyes at the same time, and you would also have superpowers.
As far as the question of being Awakened or not, I think the film in question gives a good picture of how different that is from being in ego consciousness when it shows that not as a philosophy but as a radical change of consciousness on the part of those interviewed. Are you there?
Nitish’s latest video for his YouTube channel, which just happens to fit perfectly here
(This was written as a comment for the outdated blog Integral Options Café somewhere around 2011, but I didn’t post it on that blog because it ended up being too much for a comment, and as it sat here on this blog in Pages, not being read I might add, I expanded it to address remotely the question of Osel Hita Torres, who’s been told he’s a reincarnation of a Tibetan lama and therefore needs to assume the thread of that former life, uphold the tradition of The Great Vehicle. Really? Maybe the old lama was in a rut and needed a new body to make a bold new spiritual attempt not bound by tradition however great. Anyway, the piece has been promoted to a blog post, and it’s talking to a specific person, the blogger of the aforementioned blog, but you can still hear that you as you too if you hold his rather common Buddhistic view, in contemporary, science-minded Western spirituality that is.)
Many times I get the impression that old sayings of common wisdom really had their origin in attempting to give some shape to the spiritual search, or whatever you call that elusive real reason we have a life, what is not at all evident because you can’t see the obvious for the ordinary, or, as it’s been said since time immemorial, you can’t see the forest for the trees. You like the Buddhist perspective if I’m not mistaken, and it’s evident by your thoughts here on the Self you’ve read a great deal of its philosophy concerning that selfsame. In Buddhism there is no Self, only the illusion of one strung together by the constant false awareness of one, and that can be put in innumerable ways, as you do in this post without coming right out and saying it, but it does appear as if you’re still undecided as to whether or not there is a real Self. You do seem to have the perception that the ego, this person that has grown up carrying your name which is and has been in reality many different people, is not that Person. So you’re not in a bad place for eventually being able to answer that question by your own personal experience. Although the mind can over a long period of time, seeing everything through the lens of a specific one-pointed perspective, running that around every thought, approximate an amalgamated realization of either the truth of the Self(1) everywhere and in everything or the seemingly conflicting truth of there being no Self in the samsara of existence, you won’t actually see the Self or emptiness by the acrobatics of the analytical mind, and it should hardly need to be mentioned that the one perspective at a time mind can’t see the Personal and Impersonal as complementary to each other and not mutually exclusive. Most of the time, as you’re doing here basically, although your sincerity is obvious (what I’m replying to I might add), we put more clouds in front of both when we try and reason it out. Reading books about it also confuse the issue, comments too I might add. Sometime somehow we have to get into the Silence, for it’s only there can the Self and/or emptiness be seen, and which you see depends upon your orientation believe it or not, and if you actually do have an integral perspective, you’ll end up seeing both as impossible as that sounds.
Can I tell you what I’ve experienced and not so much what I’ve read and thought about? The latter gets more credit, especially if you have titles by your name or a following, because just some guy like me can so easily lie or exaggerate. I guess you just have to take my account with a pinch of salt, but I assure you, I’m being honest and am not exaggerating. The first experience of the Silence was the deepest, which happened in 1990, where the breathing stopped as well as my heart, and I was driving a truck down the highway and had no problem continuing the action while in that very grooved state, although when I felt from the base of my spine rise an incredible force, I kind of freaked out and stupidly stopped the force and turned my mind, heartbeat, and breathing back on. What brought the force rising from the base of the spine was a personal mantra I’d started singing so I could better handle the intensity of that emptiness despite the immeasurable peace I felt, was almost drowning in would be a better way of putting it. Love was the last word in the short mantra, and as I sung the word love my voice changed into a sound I’ve not heard on this earth, something almost metallic but in no way artificial or mean. It was only a few seconds singing on that out of this world note that the force rose up, climbing up through me like a cannon ball, but I stopped it before it got to the top of my head (and you have to understand it wasn’t so much a force rising but all of me) and at the same time shut off the Silence, turning my heart and mind back on like I said, doing that by stopping the singing and just shaking the holy fire out of myself believe it or not. The whole thing only lasted a couple of minutes, and I have no idea how long you can stay in such a suspended state, no breath or heartbeat, and I was in no way prepared for that suspension by any of the reading I’d done, and I’d read extensively, or so I thought (I am continually amazed at just how hidden in plain sight, or available but not generally known, the writings on profound spirituality really are, as well as by the fact that you can read something, about silence for example, and think you’ve experienced it, but when you actually sit in it you discover it to be almost wholly other than what you imagined it to be). In that state was complete and utter inner silence, with no sense of I or self whatsoever, a shorelessness very hard to suddenly plunge into, an infinity so shocking you only want the finite back, if, that is, you were like me at the time not ready for ego death and the loss of the whole wide world, and I’m not joking or exaggerating in the least. You’re in the world, but it’s very far away from you, and there’s no top, bottom, sides, or any boundaries, nothing to hold onto. I guess that’s why some call this liberation, but I doubt if most of us seeking it, or the more sustainable variety accompanied by breathing and a heartbeat (me like a forlorn Perceval having seen the holy grail too wet behind the ears to know what I was looking at and grab it), really understand what we are searching for is at the same time from a less readied perspective that of which we are most afraid.
Anybody who hasn’t had the experience would rightly ask that if there is no I or even a sense of self, then who is it that has trouble handling it or finds it intense? Or, for that matter, who chooses to sing a mantra or do anything since there’s no person there to make choices and carry them out? Or when you’re not only in peace but also in bliss and hence have no problems with the intensity, as has occurred with me the couple of other times I’ve been in the Silence, who is it that’s feeling and enjoying the bliss? I’ve grappled with these questions for years, and I really can’t answer them other than to say you do still have an observing consciousness, a basic raw awareness, as Franklin Merrell-Wolff has described it, a consciousness without an object, but that consciousness is still armed with a will and still feels, only there’s no thought and no feeling of being in the world or being a self; it’s all an evident fiction, a movie you can act in or not, the world that is, since I Am has left the stage entirely, and some months after the above experience I entered the Silence in a dream, where it’s easier to get to but still damn difficult, and I had no feeling at all of being in a body and was in such bliss that, even though I was driving into a car crash (driving that time too), I could care less and had the hardest time using my will to try and steer away from it, but will was there as well as feeling; it just didn’t have anything to do with the input from the senses. It’s more a quality of awareness really. As there are many degrees in ego consciousness, there are many degrees of the depth of the Silence, as there are in the stages into it, such as what Suzanne Segal describes, where the seat of her consciousness has shifted completely outside her head, and she’s become an outside witness of herself, but there’s been no change of the operations of that self, no inner silence, not one shred of stillness or peace. All is going on as before with the marked difference she’s completely detached from it, literally, only the observer of her scene, although she’s experiencing panic and terror as that observer. Later her witness also disappears (that witness outside of her body actually being the sudden onset and subsequent subsiding of a simultaneous inner movement beyond this present discussion), but the stream of thoughts and emotions and the actions those give rise to continue, meaning there’s no inner silence, so there’s still an ego in operation there, something like twenty-five percent in a bed of seventy-five percent emptiness to simply illustrate what is going on, and hence her experience, an incomplete movement into the emptiness, albeit still a considerable movement in that direction, is known in Buddhism as being in the pit of the void and in Western psychology as depersonalization since it’s such a negative experience. Because this is so incredibly different from normal waking consciousness, you can understandably think yourself ‘free’ (if you’re able to come to grips with it and learn to live in the unreality of yourself and the world), but what we fail to understand about the spiritual path, or life itself really, since that’s what life is when we take off its clothes and see it naked, is that there’s always further to go, in her case and many like her all the way into the emptiness into the inner silence as well, as fearful as that might sound—you’re ready; you’re a player; recovery: keep going—, but it’s become obvious to me that at some point we’re faced with a more fundamental choice than whether or not we should live in the ego or in emptiness, and that is to stay in life or leave it behind completely, and I’m talking about the whole thing, existence itself, life here and life in the hereafter.
The thing about the Silence is that there doesn’t seem to be a deepest degree but a point at which you enter out of life altogether and enter into I know not what, something the Buddha taught, but while that might be the path of many souls, it’s not mine, as strange as that may sound from someone who’s seen the exit and not just heard about it. It’s just that I’ve seen there’s more than the Silence, saw beyond it, saw that ‘more’ first in a reversal of how it usually seems to be seen, and so I can tell you that the Silence, liberation, enlightenment to just come out and name the beast, is only the necessary preliminary emptying of the being. There is or can be a filling, what might better be called a rising into the fullness of who we are, into the higher self. I don’t think at any point can we say highest. It’s your choice to go higher or leave, but it’s not a moral choice; it’s one made in the fundamental ground of your being, in your soul, since there emptiness and the Self are not as we see them in contradiction to one another, where emptiness is not at all a nothingness as we imagine it nor the Self limited to the samsara, to existence, and hence to stay would not mean violating their purity. I know I sound like such a heretic, but you’ve got to figure the path evolves as so obviously life does, its disguise, and much more of it can be seen than could be two and three thousand or even a hundred years ago.
To get into the Silence I’d done a three month practice intensive on my own, using at that time mostly the perspective of Tibetan Buddhism. I had an evening job as a valet and could afford to concentrate on spiritual practice, sadhana, as I did. I thought about emptiness day and night, concentrated my mind on imagining that, played the thought continually on that theme, did at least an hour of pranayama a day, yoga postures, ate vegan and macrobiotic, did an aggressive physical fitness program, spent a couple of hours in sitting meditation, dawn and dusk when it was possible, sung mantras when the mood hit, but personal ones that caught my ear, snatches of songs and the like, and I put down all books except Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines by Walter Evans-Wentz, and whatever Greek I had to translate into English from the single class I was taking at the university. But I wasn’t religious about it, and it’s right here where most mess up; it’s not to the right or left but with the flow. I allowed myself a cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake every Friday and a joint once a week, using it for a special weekly meditation, and it was in going off my discipline and just suddenly lighting one up on the way to Enchanted Rock in central Texas, where I was going because I knew something was about to happen, like a pregnant woman knows her baby’s about to be born, and that rock was a place of power for me, that I hit the depth of thought that triggered the Silence, my mind actually collapsing because my thinking branched, something I literally saw in my mind, and I was thinking two thoughts at the same time, something not possible in ego consciousness. I cannot remember what those thoughts were unfortunately. I’ve often thought if I could think them again that would be an easier way to hot wire the Silence— hit them against one another and see if it starts.
Anyway, in my sadhana discipline before the experience, I put down tobacco completely (though immediately after the experience I stopped at the nearest shop, bought a pack of smokes and smoked myself sick), didn’t bother about alcohol because I rarely drank, and I threw out all thought of sex; not wasting the life-force on orgasms or sexual fantasies was very important to being able to enter the Silence, but you don’t abstain for moral reasons, do all this for goodness’ sake, an attitude mistake of rigidity most people make (as I’m trying to explain) and hence few people go into the Silence or have overhead experience— they’re not wide enough; it has to do with building up enough life-force and having nothing to disturb your mental concentration. I spoke very little to people during that time, other than to my mom and also to my best friend, saying only what was necessary to do my valet job and take a college course, didn’t have a spiritual teacher, wasn’t a part of any spiritual or religious group, although there was a gentleman who was a doorman where I worked, not a ‘hidden master’ because he wasn’t realized, but he had seen, an American Sufi (the only Anglo in his Sufi order, an old one out of Iran) that I was friends with that had ascertained what was going on with me by talking to me and looking at me (he was very adept at seeing the human aura), and he helped me assimilate the experience, keep my job and continue my Greek class after the experience, grounding things I greatly needed. You do need other people in your practice, but most of the time they’re more of an excuse to stop concentrating and socialize than the needed aid they can be. In such a sadhana you’re alone in a tower, which is the symbol dream and vision use to show where you’re at in relation to other people, and it certainly isn’t easy to be around others and high in a tower not made of ivory so to speak or walls of stuck-up pretentiousness, but being a valet at a high-rise condo where you had to not only park cars and lug bags up and down the building, but also stand up when a resident entered the lobby and say yes ma’am and no sir and just generally be people’s nigger (something transcendent of skin color actually), well, that kept my tower in check. Bob worked there for similar reasons. Those rich people had no idea how poor they were and how wealthy their servants in comparison. I wonder sometimes if things just aren’t that way in general.
The most important element, however, the deciding factor, was that I had the advantage of having knowledge there really are higher states because a year previously I shot up (driving that same truck) out the top of my head and sat for a minute in my higher self, the immortal divine individual I am overhead, the ‘more’ I saw before I mentioned earlier, but that experience was not precipitated by silence or a force rising up from the base of the spine or anything whatsoever; I was just suddenly beamed up as it were without warning. When you actually know and not only believe such states beyond the ego exist, you can put certainty in your practice, and that gives you the gumption to go all out, point your whole life-energy into your sadhana. I was actually trying to get back up to that station over my head, what I knew to be my true self, where it is when things actually become real, with the full sadhana I was doing over those three months, but I stumbled on the most usual way to it, what most people can’t see past, that no-self silence, or enlightenment, or liberation, or whatever you want to call it. I discovered later, and really kicked myself in the ass over it, that the force coming up from the base of the spine was what would have taken me back up to what the two teachers I now have call Supermind. Whatever we experience high or low there’s always someone who’s experienced more of it than you have, something not so easy for an ego to swallow, especially with a spiritual ego like I have, having had such a range of experiences. With such an ego and range of experience is the ever present danger of becoming someone important with a following and whatnot, the killers of growth if you happen to be like I am just a person who’s had experiences and not someone actually realized, liberated, enlightened, or someone who thinks they’re there but isn’t, which comprise probably the great majority of spiritual teachers today. Becoming a spiritual teacher before becoming realized, you level off, basically stop your own advance to enlightenment. Inherent in this comment is a test of being there if you’re hearing what I’m saying. Maybe we don’t let dogs eat at the table, but we do give them table scraps, meaning I’m not ‘there’ and not a teacher, but I can put in my two cents worth.
After the Silence I was devastated. Seeing that emptiness took the meaning out of everything for me, everything, even sadhana, and I walked around stunned for a couple of weeks. I remember some guy in a park I was walking in stopped me and asked if I were Buddhist because of the way I looked, and that was unusual seeing how that was in Houston, Texas, and I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, no special clothes, wearing though that look of ‘look I’m not here and you ain’t either’, but to him that appeared as peace, and he commented on how peaceful I looked. Somewhere around two weeks after the experience I lay down in my bed (I lived alone in a single’s efficiency) and just vegged out as I did a lot after the experience and still do now. As I looked at the ceiling, the whole apartment disappeared in a sudden flash, replaced by a white woman dressed in American Indian buckskins and getup (male garb) riding a white horse that was dancing on the top of storm waves on the sea. The sky was a purple storm, and purple lightening flashed all around her. For a brief second I saw through her eyes and the eyes of countless others, each pair of eyes belonging to a perfected individually distinct Person like she was (only they weren’t by any means all white— the person ‘closest’ to her, black as they come—, but each one represented as she did in their figure some miraculous harmony of conflicting elements), but even though each was an individual, they were one single person seeing through innumerable eyes. You don’t get it. I mean, they were not a unity or union of people, but were one single person. The white Indian woman, who I now know to be a representation of the nature of my higher self, or Supermind, looked at me smiling and said, “Nirvana expresses itself through the forms” (her exact words, which I’ve forgotten, were more poetic, but they did include the first and the last, and I’ve captured the overall gist), and suddenly everything fell back into place, and the world was real again and filled with meaning, was a living breathing symbol animated by what it symbolized and not a maya of illusion, and so was I if you can understand the significance of what she said. We are That you see. It has its existence through us, through the samsara, although it’s also sufficient unto itself, something unimaginably deeper than existence, and it appears that whatever that is, there are ever expanding Persons we can be to be it, the many levels of God you might say, and what I saw was what’s next for us to be, the first step into God, if we can ever get out of the animal we are now and get through to the other side of the silence, get passed enlightenment and become what the seed idea bodhisattva is in full bloom: a master of existence over and above it.
Of course you’d ask why the hell I concentrated the mind on emptiness when it was actually more the Self (in this manifestation of it my higher self) that I wanted to see? The first answer is because I’m stupid and can’t see the obvious for the ordinary, and the second is I’m herd sour and just don’t trust myself and my own experience, or didn’t so much then. The third answer is that that’s the direction to train the mind actually, not so much on emptiness as simply not thinking, but I didn’t know that at the time. I made that my concentration because the book, Tibetan Yoga, said to. In all the books and things I’d read (no internet access then) I’d found a single reference there the only slightly possible gleam of a hint of that overhead experience into my divine person, which is, if you got that, the same Self above everyone else although each divinity is a distinctly different person. It turned out that when I read a different English translation of that same writing some time later the hint wasn’t there. It took many years to find a description of that overhead experience, and the person describing it became my teacher, but neither he nor his spiritual partner in the business of bringing down Supermind ever just come out and describe an overhead experience of Supermind. It’s philosophically discussed for the most part, and even in his epic poetry you have to pay attention to see a character go up there, actually cross the line into that larger universe so much of a getting to that line has been brought into view first. If you’ve been up there you know what’s being discussed.
Why the secrecy when they were trying to manifest that? Secrecy is unfortunately a tradition on the spiritual path. Up until recently you couldn’t easily find an overt description of some depth of Silent Mind either, but Bernadette Roberts and others of this contemporary age have let the cat out of the bag. I guess there’s the danger of these things being profaned in such a way you think it’s butter but it’s not; it’s Chaffon, to use an American TV commercial to get my point across. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. Certainly that danger’s a threat to sincere seeking. Just look at all the people claiming they’re realized, enlightened, the messiah, the maitreya, the reincarnated Jesus or a manifestation of Shiva, ad infinitum. How many are snared into following them? And goddamn the spirit messages and channeling, it makes a poet what to just ignore his muse. How can anything be genuine when there is so much bullshit out there? You just want to hang up your hat and turn your back on all of it, the spiritual path included. How can you possibly get anywhere real faced with all that baloney; I mean, is there anywhere real?
The older generation of teachers knew of these dangers to the sincere seeker, and so they shrouded the path in secrecy and placed in the certainty of unmovable stone, bricked in place a tradition of, the wild wind-haired impossible to pin down spiritual path. In doing so they almost lose the patient under the knife, amass pieces of a puzzle with too many missing pieces to put the puzzle together. Today, especially with the net, we’re faced with an explosion of experience, but if you look real hard you can tell if someone’s actually seen something or is seeing it. It’s got that ring of truth to it that doesn’t so much hit you in the emotions, or even the mind. It hits you right in the seat of perception because you’re looking at what you know is the unknown. On the spiritual path that unknown has more to do with a change of consciousness than anything else. That’s what we’re doing sadhana for. All of our practices basically are to get us to that clear place free of ants where we can concentrate the mind on that change and keep it there twenty-four seven. That’s the great vehicle. Today, having gone through so many stages of intention and aspiration, this mantra, that visualization, that point of concentration, this focus, I’m simply learning step by step to walk around and sit and lay in no-thought. I’m starting to almost get serious about it. When I can do it like I was able to concentrate the mind during that amazing three months when I was a much younger man it’s probable I’d first enter the Silence again, but my mind and heart want one single thing: to be up there who I am, who you are, to be our Self. Whatever the case the conditions are present for concentration. As to whether or not I’ll take advantage of the opportunity given me by these extraordinary conditions is the big question isn’t it? Will you?
Now back to this comment. A brick wall in a city alley has more clout than a comment section on the net; it can frame art and profundity, but a comment can’t yet. And there’s the matter of everyone regardless of what they believe in unknowingly subscribing to the philosophy of perspectivism, “Oh that’s nice. You’ve experienced that? How very interesting. I’m a completely separated person from you, my own reality really, and so your experience is only real for you.” So there you are, but since it’s not wrapped up in the official package, you’re apt not to take a word of this seriously. Spiritual process usually isn’t front page, unless a scandal is involved, most especially a sexual one, and like water it takes the lowest position, is rather homely and very down to earth, and more often than not it picks the people at the bottom of the social ladder to give it any voice, and believe me, I’m at the very bottom. Add all that up and it’s usually quite a test of our sincerity.
You feel tested yet? Hey, you’re reading a pedophile, or a pederast to be more specific. Add that up with the spiritual path to not only enlightenment but also to our higher self, to the Supermind, and you get not only a healing necessity path making it all very real, but, since it’s a path of mastery and integration, naturally since you have to overcome the whole world, you also get a man that loves a boy enough not to #*$%&! him, one who can give that boy what he really needs, which is to learn who he really is, lets the leads of Socrates, a platonic, ideal pederasty. Classical Greek anyone?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________(1) In this article I’m more specifically referring to our divine individual Self over our heads, our higher self, when using the word Self, but in a couple of instances, this one for example, I’m talking about the Self as it’s understood in Indian Spirituality, as something everywhere and the basic self of every being, the personhood of everything.
Our family Christmas. “Somewhere explained… What is it? Your family rose by the sea,” (my muse today)
Star Dusted Travel Material’s Roar
Can I interest you in some free speech? And what would come out and shake you? There we lay on our stomach the feeling that you can trust the world, the vulnerability of this moment. I have performed all absolutions I assure you, [sound vision of the first bar of music from the song “Heart of Gold”] searchin’ for a heart of gold. [Heard sung by Neil Young]
Can I talk to you a minute? Alright, two hours. What will I’m done? I’m freewill. You choose your answers. I’m beginning to lose hope— civilization stopper. There are possibilities of deity we will never process our denial of, understand. I’m that book. Creative ideas they explore, a human interceptor. That’s what you’re not prepared for: Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, [heard sung] some even say it’s me.
Bear/bare the root, [both meanings intended] name occurring ice cream of shifting Heaven in this alphabet paper. Can you hear from every one? I can handle it, the name of the root. A harmony speaker, I consider everybody. Please believe me let me go. [heard sung by Engelbert Humperdinck to the tune of the line “Please believe me let me go” in the song “Release Me”] You hear this spoken on the inside? You know who I am. I’m hearin’ voices. That’s my mother. She gets it finger lickin’ good. You can get ‘er where she will be the divine mother come make coffee.
Let’s paper some opposition first. They come in black upon black, try to evoke a world. It doesn’t work. This is what we’re just seeing: you gotta get out of sex, a previous lesson on the smorgasbord. We go further. We stabilize the time. Have you ever seen this in dollar bills?
They came over to conservative time: all these drawing features into a mask. Are we on the wrong railroad? You’re in the heels of today, the planet asura. Though no one had talked, you’re on in June 75 years after his passing: there in the front row, we danced on Covid wings. Stew rules of order. Do you know what that means? Your control is a tiny asura on you. How many think they fall? Law and order, all these demons ride the shotgun. Are you sure you know God’s cause?
Diogenes bathe this in the wrong he-note. He hailed balloons. Was the bathtub a gimmick or artifice? Would you move? You’re blockin’ the sun. We capitalize him. I don’t know why. Diogenes is seated at the back of the classroom cracking jokes. And it continued being a spectacle, using his own body or whatever to argue a point. Why is he in our history books? Because he put down deity. We look at him buddies with us. We don’t believe in mythology. What truth they show eludes us. And do we value truth? One of her values, isn’t she Mrs. Bathtub? And threw him out with the bathwater.
He was just a gimmick. Take your late off. This is a truth-thought too big for you: we cannot stop the land. We can just stand there and gawk at it. The land is this naked circle I’m in with you, the land of a universe. We want so much to follow its process. We’re unwired to see it. We’re not prepared to see it. Would you say it’s there. What’s this startup? Do you see reality? Are you a handmaid’s tale, tryin’ not to be fucked too tight? And where do you come home for sin, in somebody else’s garden? They don’t like you.
Do I finally introduce myself? I’m your bogeyman. Damn, that’s tough. Did someone say hi? Who comes in but that conscious flash of ego? Who comes in but that conscious world of echo? [this line to verse end from Civilization and the Art of Terror] All at once from the hazard will come echo. Deep thought thought spaces apparition, a dull, flat sound in the inner ear. He’s my trouble when I write. Garry asked the name of the man. Covlet Pounceland. The inner workings can be overwhelming: the mixed mystery book also. Monster games, smarter than I am. Paint it over it [one ‘it’ was seen on top of ‘over’] Slip it in place, slip it ugly in place. Go on he took firsthand experience. Upon hearing monsters, now they’re carrying in their voice Sunday. To set something very close to the Mother’s pronunciation. Sometimes they masquerade as God himself.
I’m stickin’ to you. [heard sung by Cher, song “Believe” to tune of line “There’s no talking to you”] That’s two toilet. Would you believe Disney does it? In a Hostile Power movie. Their ideas in there. How would you influence the Earth? [this line and five preceding came today] The dog’s gonna bark. [this line on down from Civilization and the Art of Terror] You establish a dress code in these places that reveal them or they. One hundred voices, one hears the voice that reforms. How can you tell the spiritual visions? Gold seeings, if they luster, if they have strength. Sentences back to you with a warm feeling.
Dhina Kittypuss is missin’. Just let her get to the other side, where my room is. I’m shoveling them. My friend washing machine, someone I can touch to touch Lisa, and Luna I love you too. Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’, and we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. [this and above line heard sung by The Bee Gees] You’re my dog. From the time you were in your mother’s womb I have shaped you. You have so much soul carrying you. We’re opening up so you can be with me where my dog is where time meets life. This is a soul order. It’s what reality is made of, evolution of soul. This is the grand design. It’s what holds us all together. It’s the underpinnings of reality. We’re a soul purpose. We are not just watching TV. Oh Luna baby, that’s the wonderful news. Beautiful, ain’t it?
The largeness of his soul he doesn’t understand. No things she wanted mystic of sharp and clear. Your soul is inside the heart and is not only it is home. How far does the soul reach? How long has one been calling to the reach of it? Longevity of the soul, immortality before I was born. These words fall off the limits of the soul. [the lines to here in this verse from The Inspired Word] It’s a timetable now. It’s everywhere we look. It’s right here right now. It’s our broadcast.
Lisa Joy Rottweiler, photo by Kamesh
Dogs are scared to look at themselves. That’s a production. It’s the five fingers, the only way to unify them. All this almost holds their ears. A hand grasp a mind grasp. You would have to be there to find out. Lisa got almost there. Her paws got in the way, but she’s come to me where awareness meets person. I knew her gaze.
Unfortunately she died. She was killed by the vet. Get out of here. She’s not a loved one. Oh man, just waste I bought you proof that dreams guide life. I’m not going to like him. You’re not going to like him. Hi Lisa. Gonna blow up you had, you had in your pocket, make my rainy day. [heard sung by Madonna] Oh the good guy when you view yourself. You need a short mystical breath.
Lisa’s on your table doc. Now repeat after me: she’s a soul; she’s magnificent; she’s becoming a human soul. That’s what this is all about. That’s what this relationship is all about. Now they become souls, so you can see their worth. I already have. I just can’t express this to you. A for joy written, it’s not getting you a pregnant. That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed. [heard sung by Gordon Lightfoot] I will be here to see it.
“Lisa in My Self-Portrait”, taken with a Nikon FM 2, black and white, self-developed
Including the universe in this limited self-scope here. Today’s not so rough. There’s a frog. It has hugged our relationships to feel safe. You hear me Kreta? Where the love of God goes. [heard sung by Gordon Lightfoot] Where the love of God grows. I want to give something, my whole practical life. I can only manage pieces, but you see it’s not been your average sit in the sun. I am living in a material world and I am a material girl. [heard sung by Madonna, as is] Look at all the horses said detail. L-o-o-k, see Venom starrin’ at the movies. I’m not that guy.
On a slow chogin floats yah, we’re gonna make it outta here. And it’s got potential, my life to be a surprise. I drew home. No it wasn’t a nonmaterial home. Home is the consciousness goes to home plate. That’s it for awhile, the ground of enlightenment. Through there to Supermind.
On a soul gonna rise, what we haven’t figured out yet, the soul’s journey in all of this. Although mentioned in every textbook, can you find a soul keeper? What do we say about the human soul? The human soul, do you know what that means? Razed/raised in an incarnation. [both meanings intended] It’s asleep at first. It gathers its field regard. It’s a journey towards the sun. What wakes it out of its stupor? The constant rain of life. Gonna be a hot water though, society hates you. Alright everybody see my ship, how I’m gonna get up here: the open mic poetry speaker. I didn’t laugh into man’s terms. I was allowed. Sometimes truth has a microphone. Sends it also his way. [this and three above lines came on Crete]
Callin’ all cars, help buddy help. We’re askin’ you to let me in. This is a most basic plea, where need meets life. Is that so hard to figure/fathom? [words spoken simultaneously] I’m not tellin’ you I’m king, anything that you need to bow down to. Will you just accept me please as a human being in your midst, as a person you speak to and not to get out of the house.
Am I alright? What are my hands death? Where am I alive? I’m not going to hurt anybody, okay? I know their boundaries. I know where harm comes in, right there in reality. It’s not a social construct. My phone, we’re here for a long time. We’re right off the bat a son of gun. I’m not melting please. I’m right on top of the opera, every bit as real as you, right where harmony meets life. It’s not a to go basket. It’s how I put on my underwear. I am for real folks, and I touch you with the real. Don’t just turn me into water.
Be a land unto your people Mr. and Ms. Society please. I don’t think you would turn any of us away. We all have stakes in you. Don’t exploit us, and keep us out of outcast. Is that so simple to understand? I think the ages ride on it, how worth means to each of us, despite we know it’s a social construct. Come on people now, [heard sung by the Youngbloods] let us all take joy in life I love you.
Good advice, I don’t trust the ingredients. To progress, I came to do progress. You need us all important, take action together, and no one’s worthless. I can’t tell you how much better society that make us. It’s how we solve our problems, how we come together. And that’s bill. We have to learn to love each other. This is not easy. This is not overnight. I hold up my arm to show you the boundary. I’ve been put in the most difficult position you see. Don’t just slap me and move on.
George are you kicking me out? That’s Shakespeare and Company. You know I’m a writer. You’re a property owner, a most hateful man, so horribly mean, and everybody respects you. Why? You know the literary lists buy books, and you have a horse and chariot there, a hands down good bookstore. He’s a pocketbook. He’s such a cad. You can see he’s heavy nose point five, a real stick in the mud, but you’re going to talk to him to get him on our side, belly rubbin’ dogs with me.
Luna’s beside me on the bed, and I just reached over and found belly. She’s holding it up for me, a warmth blanket. She got to sleep here tonight. Oh I love this receptacle for how I hold the world, one doggy paw at a time, and Lisa I love you. Time to do some hocus pocus and right you for your next read, The Call of the Wild. It’s a round your turn transition to become a line unto yourself, to cast off Earth’s cares. We’ll come down at dawn together, where Heaven meets life. It’s our relationship’s wings, and I’ll meet you there in a field by the sea. We have a life together on the other side. Pace yourself puppy dog, I’m comin’. I’m almost there.
I don’t even know how to disrupt the system. This is not on my paper. I’m not stagin’ a protest. My aim is fundamental change. I’m not bleeding fundamental change. These ideas will come around for sure. Even without cultural relativism, we’d still look for truth. We meet reality at its face, at its processing board, don’t impose our theories on it. Now I’m a local speaker. I’ve faced reality this way, stirred up these directions. We look at the same directions. We live in the same reality, irrespective of cultural wares. Do I only show you this? I think reality does too you see it inside and outside, and I’m showin’ yah what inside means, even if you don’t see it. We make an opening to a larger day. It’s all around us you see, everywhere you look. Can you see it?
Come here dog. I don’t think we’re the only ones lookin’ down this barrel. It’s enough to see ourselves. You’re not seein’ reality. Cats and dogs livin’ together, we’ve said it a million times: on Earth we share the land with everything under the sun. Even in animal hierarchies, we can give to song and rule what needs to happen to meet the needs of soul.
Seeing help with these blog posts, no one would still see them. Let go, and I’m talkin’ to you. Here’s another one for the railroad. Any of you come and see this, that’s what’s going to. Bring me this water before you go: this is her birthday, the story of broken book. Who are you callin’ little? I’m all in your head.
Consider Anwar Sadat. Was he a brilliant statesman? He was someone we all need, a go getter, a large man of peace. What did he have up his sleeve? The Arab-Israeli peace process. You know he moved in. What did he do with the Israelis? I think he managed them, was not at their beck and call. He had large eyes for world peace. He gave it a shot. You want that? You can’t have it a politician— the traditional wisdom. Enlightenment please— he knew something religious attainable. You couldn’t try to. Well, you could try to, but you’d have to throw everything out the window and still control the majority. They killed him over a young woman, the Arab League— you ain’t gonna finish bein’ a separate Arab nation. Calling all books, calling all books, that was all avoidable. வணக்கம், that first place in life people found enlightenment. Could even be where he put his hat, even presidents and kings. I’ll find a job for you in better places than an assassination’s bullet.
I’m gonna go there. I’m gonna go there that’s just a little while. [vision of Lisa jumping up on the bed where I am now and shaking her body to be petted, quite happy and clear] I just saw Lisa. The world’s problems gonna be your table. How to enlightenment, it seems rich with vocabulary, a Spartan idea. The lights go down. It’s open till eleven o’clock, sweating blood, like what we call art.
All that is valuable in the art world is the entertainment. It does not reveal the world. You fettered people. You can’t even make a simple drawing we mean stand for the soul. They return to a small Bavarian farm. Oh bro, that was critical mass. Hitler had it comin’: maybe learned the representative nature of art. Nobody would let him in the academy of art started World War Two, not in Japan in Germany. Art you field mice, exactly being excited about how you hopple these lives.
Great spiritual movements, [heard whispered] you’re just like, now, as a joke. Needed it but didn’t know how to cross it with reality. That boy’s nothing, not old enough for tomorrow. They come, spiritual migration, people flocking to your path. They have combinate publish, like whistleblower number one. I, I know. We’re not calling you doctor. You know what you’re talking about. We’re calling you actor in the field. Don’t forget this label. You know that’s the magic show. In the world of show business, you’re bringin’ in all these arrow treasures. That’s so in for you. That’s what keeps your spirit alive.
I’m gonna take you on a journey to what needs light [heard sung by Madonna, “Material Girl”, to the tune of the line, “If they don’t give me proper credit I just walk away.”] sleepin’ beauty. Can we say that’s your department? Not always. I’m gonna show you the key to the whole thing. Are you awake/aware? [words spoken simultaneously] I don’t care how big it is. Field mice might be the delay bottle. Can you notice things with the arm of your consciousness? How deeply do you see inside? Have you seen the bottom? Have you seen what’s under there? It’s in the Void the whole universe. Touch bottom and see. You know Kittypuss sunk close. Wild with claustrophobic fear, I fell in at four. It razed my mind/head. [words spoken simultaneously] Insanity alone terror consumed the fibers of my being. An insanity put me there, the demon behind my life. My mom drew me there sucking the existence out of me. Diaper change and bath time had got me to it since birth. At four I took the plunge, old enough to really revel in my mom’s sucking, scared to death she would eat me alive. I’m sorry. You don’t know the microcosm of what all this means:
The Baby’s Broken Book, pre-googoo and pre-gaga speak out. Set up falsehood with a baby net. Everything we’ve had to make allowances for, in some blind fashion you know. A very simple answer to that: to quit blindness but to face the darkness. Dream of being at nature bottom’s secret, and no one was watching the woman. They’re usually not delicate enough creatures to see they abuse. It has to do with a baby’s stuff, the personal stuff, the passionate stuff that robs a baby blind. Heating baby’s bathwater, and they used all these emotions of their hand. She can stop. She doesn’t have to undress her hope. Babies continue bathwater. I attend this baby. For that reason my soul came down. Do you think the emotional bonds of each mother call their child? No in most cases I’d imagine by a mother whose heights were in her baby. Upon a baby step. A baby needs took good care of. I’m just a kid with a fat little face. They’re just infant children. Originally dressed in a pink nude, there’s good or bad, test or fire, in every sweet thing. Nursing the lamb, yet fragrance with the lamb it would reveal and bring Mary a secret, sacrifice closeness. Each one of you has the time. I am looking at a childhood’s issues concerning the mother’s part.
Set up a family, and the first provisional daylight comes in congress. We rearrange the floor, all because of you. [this and above line came today] What is a good father in his earned purpose? God floats around the chin of men. Could not keep together what it had promised originally. Set up a new map of the father. Will gender suit the future man? We have to return to that we truly are masculine-feminine. Me, I don’t spend enough time in the woman’s section. A righteous prove of leader, a real human being, the feminine-masculine is the order of the reverse, needed for first comings. Parents as a whole get to their children, masculine and feminine, mommy and daddy. The burning child, no one reaches his will. When combined dressed, knowledge maintained. Small child’s world, body bear’s little body, fragile little buds, strong innocence, cheep innocence. Dressing secrets. They need constant maintenance in their bodies. He’s five and has to take everything off to pee. Little ones, they look up at you. Our carpet kids— I sit on him. He carries me. Tell me what to do, okay? From the moment you touch you instruct. The fondling hand, a sudden lost hand. The touching in these parts, it’s a person’s stronghold. A very good on that sets up a right relationship between right and wrong. Life needed strongholds in our raiment in thought. Mom, don’t pinch me on the butt please. You’re not welcome to do so. ‘Cause he continually tries to cast things out, a cunning way to inherent militancy. What hand to the flower I’ve been playing with, hand to the flame. She’s so much clearer now soldier of fortune. Like a good snake she bit down. These are the takes that shake our humanity even. They were the soul of Hitler itself. Such weirdness conceals identity, any kind of silence violence. For a lot of things a parent does— the way they manifest. Born with an evil that forms, and a much greater sense of wrong than we give them credit for having, it needs in its development something from the Light. To love God originally had to love itself. We still hit our children, oh the population down. Kid mocked and other crimes, does the child feel welcome at home? We have a problem. It seems a message took prisoner of what we thought was right. Lustered a child, cariño maintained rightly and lovingly. A united child perspective: all I want from you is your soul to be your solstice too. I’m looking at God growing up. Upbringing the world on one knee. Do we have to lose innocence? Do we have to though? The way adults do things, before, during, and after, you can leave the way behind. My son’s climbing mind my sun climbing mind. Carry a kid carry a king. The sweetness of a child’s day. Where are the children? in the pool yard in plenty.
(the two above verses from Civilization and the Art of Terror)
Why am I preaching to you? We haven’t gotten out of the Void yet. It was a deliberate act of defiance. The dog-dragon wanted to eat the joy of child kill, giving the pleasure of the worst pain imaginable: set upon by the sum total of all fear, ravishment by the Void. In a moment I was rescued by those beings that watch the Earth. They heard my screams. No one is allowed into the Void, unless it under the King’s business. Can I tell you it’s a stopping point? Existence must save itself in there. Carlos Castaneda, go through all his books, dream theater to sample the Void on you. Now you’ll flock to them. Knowledge is not your friend in those books.
That warms back your entire army. What does he say? Beings rescue you that have suns for heads. To the principal’s office— I’ve got a little boy that will not behave. I tested everything I could get my hands on. I was whupped and I was whupped. Society has a big stick. It has this written everywhere. Oh my God it’s mean. Where do I pass the buck? Right in his butt or on his shard, suckin’ on for dear life. I just love little boys. Society’s rules? Knock it off. Society is so tiny it’s unbelievable.
A consciousness open to the sun would rectify this. That’s an opening God made, and it’s not gonna be your standard procedure. Why suddenly everybody’s lookin’ at me? What abouts you sick? I am not just a change room. I’m the reason we do it. I hold them both open for you to see. I’m aware on consciousness, been opened like a fountain, can really get it up, you know?
Now let’s count cars. I’ve given you more than you can see. This is just intensity, and you think your world smarts? I have to summon yah to an open consciousness so you can see the world to open it to where our kids go to school, because they’re a disciple of the honest to God truth. Thank you so much. Donny separates toys. No please don’t do that. Take them.
I found everything on Earth so sure under the sun sadhana meets the material Earth. This is dry season. A driver’s on the education, until you figure out what to do with cauliflower. What time you gonna get in? Just leave him, huh? A healing of hell.
Weightless chain, it would be like hand to the joy. Now pet your dog. If the joy no longer prevented us. This is emancipation folks. Found this on love. Great, I’m pregnant with the sun. Our Donny Duke, he doesn’t understand we have to get out of laboratories, fishnets, and a puppy farm. There means? A bad place. Got beautiful down it’s not a farm it’s a household. Let’s put beautiful down and eat our dogs. Wait a second, I should be allowed to. The child of man, I’m gonna take care of you. And we take care of our dogs. Love for all follow me into the street. Give some dog a human hand that takes care of them, a little on the out, so they don’t reproduce, no street dogs left by 20/20. You see how it’s done? We love them— all the way home, the ones that seem bound to be with us. It’s their creation’s urge, be our companion, wherever we find them in animal rights.
Makin’ progress to one day include the world in all of our endeavors, and we’ve just spoken his name, Peace On Earth. Take a little time bring this round to your house: you wouldn’t hurt a thing. That’s where we’re goin’ with this. I’m not there yet. Are you? If you shout and scream at people who do you do activist. I don’t think you understand harm: you put people down, as you think about them too. And I’ve just said the ballgame findin’ harm’s end.
The substance found their religion. It gave them keys. They acted upon them. And here we are, the substance of a great material. Can you find that material?
Ordinary nature, in this man is not satisfied or not satisfied for long. There’s this big research to wake humanity. You either get evolved or you don’t. It’s as simple as that. You had to be one of the getters. It’s one of the main questions on the other side. What you look for at this moment, it matters what you do. There’s a spiritual seeking or hate seeking. Not to take a mystical outlook on mystical things, take a physical outlook on mystical things, outside where the inside glory resides. There’s immaculate beliefs. Not only faith but the belief that something spiritual is indeed higher. It’s belief on a substance makes me able to know God was real. It’s belief on a substance makes the line real. It’s belief on a substance detonation of a great material came. Who was going to blow themselves up?
(the above verse from Civilization and the Art of Terror)
You’ve never looked at shapes? It’s here before/behind you. [words spoken simultaneously] It’s the origin of the word. Almost Don didn’t work. Then he saw it then he did: every room is made for God. You can’t gather Him in words. The speakers tell the system. We’re not into echoes, but we like genuine sound. Baby I love you. [heard sung by Andy Kim] And that’s God. Exploited no, we are his handyman. Hey weirdo, mind your own business. But Super-reality has spoken to you. You just gonna bark? Na, na, na, na, na, na, na. [heard sung by ibid]
A gardener in your handyman. What he did in 1983 was join the leaders that gave nuclear power its score. An atom bomb mission in the Green Berets rewrote his perspective on the world. You can’t buy that in shops. Look at tomorrow, how this had a rendezvous in his dreams. Oh, you’re his blueprints, Earth and her fate. Of course I’m sorry. He parachuted against that.
Can you just stop with the negative bullshit? And we counseled him so big it looks like this. He hurts all, but it’s time for that whole to go through a change. [this and above line came on Crete] It’s not a rockin’ chair. How do you turn evil inside out? Can it ever be addressed in public, and that’s not to punish someone for their sins? How do you get to the bottom of evil and change the hungry man? Do we tell everybody we’ve used him as a vehicle of change?
In his forgotten horror, in his forgotten corner of the world, he speeds towards destiny. We account for his book. We allow him to write it to you. We put it mark down on Earth and we reason this to you. Handle this candle well. To be given its glory should you spit on him today. That’s what this is all about, inviting redemption. Now invite it on him.
Weapons to everyone to hard part reality. That’s the social cage reality’s been put in. You won’t see this in divine masks. Theirs is the mask of a civilization. We’re getting bigger than their clothes. We can stack society upon itself better, and we don’t have to hurt people. We use the stars as our condition field think. We move beyond them in love. That’s rescue, capture the lost cattle of the sun. You should be in the hallmark. You should be in the ring. This is fitted to your game if you can be sincere enough to test it. I’ve given you challenges.
A spokesman for CNN said: I’m sorry the library is closed. It’s all in what you say. I don’t think brown nose finds answers, answers you should be getting [line came on Crete] if you’re still enough. That’s quickly wrote Steven. He doesn’t know I’m talkin’ to him. We were brothers together. Now ride the horse. Let’s get on with this mile, as many investigate my own internal dialogue. Find out that it’s cold out here on visible Crete. And here we are.
(today’s muse)
2003, “almost that year, a history of the moments that passing, I came together,” (lines today). From January 15th to March 15th, I had the cabin cut into the hillside opposite Festos. I had come to it by degrees, like a diver going deeper into the still water way down below. If I had come to it right off the bat, I would not have been able to be a hermit. It’s too quiet just to step off into from the romper room of society, so alone, but of course many have done so, but not so easily I would imagine, whatever they say. Even with my slow acclimation, I was still sometimes almost consumed by a homesickness I hadn’t realized was there until now, and without any vital enjoyments, living the stark life of an ascetic, I spent hours each day roaming the hills, walking my heart out. Despite the depth of life I was living, one lived from the inside out, the inner the main event, there was seldom a hint of spiritual feeling in my waking hours, and despite the daily miracle of seeing the inner give rise to the outer, not only in events foretold coming to pass, which, when you receive muse and can interpret your dreams, is as common as the day is long, but also in the way the land looked, a hue upon it as though it were wet from birth, the hills glistening with their inner arrival, I was forlorn, felt the pain you cannot name that is all the more painful because you cannot do so, because it had to do not only with being homesick for country and kin. I was homesick for that nameless unknown the word home only gives some vague hint of. And I could not enter the higher consciousness, only make approaches, and the Silence was barred from me also. What was preventing me?
Would you believe the future? It shapes our present too, and that just begs so many questions that I can’t answer. I was a year and a half away from the biggest fall of my life, the lowest sink, and it was coming up in my muse so much I almost saw it. I was blinded by my present, which was showing bright sun, although I couldn’t really feel it. I can’t even tell you of that present because it’s in my past, tell you like I can walk you through the seconds in my shoes, or I can; I’d just have to make a lot up. Although I remember all these cars I’m calling, I only remember the skeleton of the events, and even that I’ve found is faulty when I see what actually took place from my notebooks. During these days on Crete, because I was focused on the inner life more than the outer, when I go over them I remember the dreams and visions better, can fill the memory with myself. Of the outer life I remember that way filled just little scenes, a walk here or sit there, a few steps or minutes, a few boxcars of the train of thought on that expanse, not the whole 1, 2, 3 of the event I’m trying to capture. So my narrative nonfiction of this here adventure travel is dense and has more ideas in it than events, breaking out in short narrative blow by blow bursts of oh, I do remember this. I’m relying on your imagination to fill in the details, for you to walk with me some. We’re walking into the future together, and we’re doing that by walking back into the past. It’ll be clear in time I hope.
A wondrous thing a hermitage, to have the security of society without having to be in it, or not very much, and by security I mean you have the pots and pans of society, it’s building, furniture, clothes, and food, and by not being in it I mean there’s no social structure of people you have to negotiate to get those things, or not very often, in my case, once a week or so. In the army stationed near Boston I visited Walden Pond and there put the wish into myself to one day fulfill of living in one, and one is not easy to get to. I’d come close with the five months I spent in a cabin near Ashland, Oregon, where I told you earlier I first began to hear the muse as an adult—“And I suppose a rose has felt well / all the glory a man might,”—but I was made to be a part time handyman of the farm the cabin sat on, on account of my hippie-look, which didn’t look like a writer to Elizabeth, the owner of Walden Farm and the several times president of the Shakespeare festival in Ashland. The cabin you see was a six week scholarship stay won by writers she chose, which she gave me based on a phone call from a Veteran’s counselor in Eugene, Oregon, who was trying to find me a place to stay for the winter and hit the jackpot. Boy was Elizabeth surprised to see a pair of Donny Dukes show up, figuratively speaking and exaggerating for effect (I obviously wasn’t wearing denim cut-offs), and she was noticeably disappointed. I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave Elizabeth in disappointment. Although she was very conventional, she was that rare person that always tried to do the right thing, could overcome her prejudices and subconscious complexes to at least try, and she adjusted and accepted me on her farm living in her writer’s cabin, read everything I wrote while there, critiqued it, discussed it with me, her view on things too, which was unadventurous, despite being a Christian Scientist, but she never expounded nor even talked much about her beliefs. We talked a lot about what she felt was my extremism, as I was vegan then and had begun vagabonding, what she called being a mendicant pilgrim, what I called being a spiritual pilgrim, and what my society called being homeless (this was in 1997; I’d left normal life in ‘92), but I think that by the time I left I had become a writer in her eyes. I should mention that I fed myself the whole time I was there and had even bought a laptop when I moved in, from my earnings as a Type 2 forest firefighter for an especially busy fire season in Oregon, and so it wasn’t like I was begging at her doorstep. She just didn’t like my lifestyle, and, if the truth be told, it probably had to do with not being comfortable with her pedestrian one. In any event, between her and the farm manager, my social circle took tending to. Needless to say, living in that cabin on Walden Farm was not like living on Walden Pond. It wasn’t a hermitage.
I’ve tried to paint a picture here of God. What was it describing? Your South Park. It won’t be so counselor for tomorrow. She’s getting squared away. You’ve heard her in all these degrees. Only on the outskirts of things is your representative show. Found them moving.
Development of theater, it’s boring when you add infinite. Okay I found the problem. You’re all mesmerized by time. It’s just a bump in the road. Existence is long cookie. Can I show you a spiritual experience? Can I show you what’s going on?
You look at the theater. As far as hermitages go, it’s all over time. It’s bigger than you think. It’s got the use of time in it.
We will call her into the room. We will call her into the use of time, this image of a dog. We brought her out of herself, lifted her where eternity was in feature. This was a story for a dog.
Did it open her kind? It came upon the range of Dog in the oneness of Dog. Her capacity invited her. It’s started on the wonders of Dog. Hear me, hear me, hear me: reaches to the brain and overhead gun sector.
(today’s muse)
[vision of the dog I fed today coming and jumping up to my bed and touching my finger with its paw] This came a week or so before I left Irmgard’s. Although I knew the dog was making a connection with me, at the time I didn’t realize what it meant, and that she’d become my dog a little while, and that she had inner capacity, but I strongly suspect all dogs and cats do, one of the animal abilities we atrophied when we moved more completely into being human, into what I call the modern human ego that’s been around for some few thousand years, since in the beginnings of the race and for a long time we seem to have had one foot in the outer world and one in the inner. Have you ever considered we have more evolution to go and aren’t yet even fully human? Be that as it may, my muse is peppered with the appearance of Irmgard’s cats in my visions while I stayed at her place, in one instance her yellow tom sitting as pretty as you please next to my altar licking itself—cats you know: “Oh, is this your sacred spot? My importance just cannot be exaggerated.”
The cat was there in his dreambody, just like the dog was there in hers, something there is not yet a whole lot of understanding about: when the actual person’s in our dream or vision (via their dreambody) and when it’s some communication from them or about them, however much at the same time their appearance may also be representative of something our dream theater wants to show us in regards to our person and present life. If you have a cat or dog, or any kind of pet really, and you remember your dreams, chances are they appear in them often, and if you study their appearance, it has more substantiality to it than other dream characters, usually, because humans too, especially your young children, appear in your dreams in their dreambody. They do because they’re very open to us, trust us completely, and they only have a rudimentary ego with its less fixed boundaries, speaking of cats and dogs and wee little kids. We likewise are open to them and let them in, or, as in the case of the tom and the dog I fed, just can’t keep them out. It takes a lot of observation to tell when someone’s actually in our dream and when not, since anyone and any kind of person can be, me-people too, especially they (whom we call animals).
Unfortunately it’s pain that shows this most poignantly. I mentioned before in my writings and need to say a whole lot more that one big reason we don’t hear a lot about clairvoyance and the inner communication between us is because it’s so often on the dark side of things, and we are afraid or embarrassed to show people. In Garberville the family I lived with had a dog, a dark Labrador named Bud. In midlife he got neutered (too late in my opinion), so to keep him home and from carousing, and he suffered greatly from this. I took notice of it and began to comfort him like you would a small child, sitting him in my lap and giving him affection, sitting up in my lap like a child. Some nights he’d come in my room to sleep, and I’d dream of him. I should mention there was no ownership struggle. He was their dog and my friend. I began to suspect he was actually in my dreams, and so I began to closely observe our time in dream together when he slept with me, as well as where he was in relation to me in the bed (a mattress on the floor) when I awoke from a dream with him. One morning at dawn we awoke at the same time, looking into each other’s eyes, and I then knew, and he knew, we were dreaming together.
I suddenly had to leave town, and I didn’t get to see him and say goodbye before I left. About a month later one morning at dawn, I in Houston half of America away, I awoke to him on top of me, sprawled like a child, not like a dog, although he was facing up. I felt his relief upon finally finding me, and it was as though he were saying, “There you are.” He was soaking up my presence, really taking it in, and I felt his pain too upon so suddenly losing me, and I gave him all I could in that magic moment. You know he was there out of the body. I don’t think we are yet aware of the pain of Dog and Cat upon losing us. I hope I’m giving you a strong impression of that, and of their importance in our lives.
Dreams in sequence right after entering the cabin hermitage and subsequent lines of muse:
I was walking on Sagebluff (the street I lived on as a pre-teen and teen) and became lucid. I went slowly up and was taken by the spiral, going very wide and hearing the airplane propeller noise. As the speed increased, I began to lose the dream image and opened my eyes in bed, but the experience continued. I felt the spiral as opposed to flying in it, but I still heard the propeller noise. Then it began to slow, and I saw the image of an airplane console of sorts and the lights indicating an engine shut down. I think this was written. I felt and heard it slowing and shutting down, and I was out of the spiral. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I was lucid in another dream slowly rising high in the air over Crete. I saw out of the corner of my eye the dog that’s been taking walks with me, the one who came to my bedside in a vision the other day. Then she was hopping up, trying to get to me but couldn’t do so. I willed her up into my lap, as I was sort of diagonal in the air. Petting and talking to her as we rose I saw my feet were furry dog paws. I began to descend, and a huge walking tree came up, and we went into it. Something happened I don’t remember, but the tree was friendly. Then I was alone and rushing to the ground, but right before impact, a force stopped me, and I landed like a feather. Then in another non-lucid dream I was in a school, and after English class (which I was behind in, but the teacher hadn’t come, so it didn’t matter yet) I went to the lounge area and was working on the longer poem [the poetry part of the cover letter to The Atlantic]. I was putting lines together about war, and a TV above me was showing war images. There were children at the table, but I was so absorbed I ignored them. Then I thought that the adults seeing me, who had never seen me before and only heard I had a thing for children, would think what they heard wasn’t true or an exaggeration. As I thought this there appeared in my hands another page of lines someone had given me that I realized I would have to integrate into the page I just thought I’d finished. As I looked, the pages turned to paper waffles, and the writing was in the slants and hard to see.
A fat burden upon time, a single potent fruit. [vision of in the distance an orange tree with one orange] [vision of a magazine rack and the top of The Atlantic visible, in yellow, which I later saw on the Internet, the December issue] Climbed trees on new heights.
Yes we’ve changed subjects, but before we return to the dog, let me say again, since getting it published is a major theme of this story, that I’ve submitted an epic poem, The Literary Eye, to The Atlantic Monthly, but they have not responded, and it’s been four and half months now. It’s doubtful they ever will, unless of course Calling All Cars Just to Say Hello has them reconsider. The dream seems to be talking about the cover letter to The Atlantic that I wrote while on Crete, what I’ve explained in other parts of this story, which didn’t get finished and submitted, as the poetry I put together from my notebooks and included in the letter was just too much of a task, what with so many new lines coming as I was trying to wrap it up—“Lost in a maze, paper sense,” my muse on the matter. It could also be talking about this present writing, as I’m incorporating new lines with the old, but let’s hope this one doesn’t fall unread into the waffles. The lines after the dream, however, seem to be talking about that epic poem as the potent fruit, prevision I might add, since it would be 20 years before I’d write that fat burden upon time.
I should interpret the vision of the magazine: yellow is a color representing the thinking mind, a universal symbol, and December, or Christmas really, is a personal symbol for my work getting out to the public; a Christmas gift it’d be. Although it doesn’t escape my notice that I’ll be posting this writing that you’re reading right this minute in December—a single potent fruit? Can there be more than one? Whatever the case, is the second vision prevision that The Atlantic will publish the epic poem (the way I’ve explained in part 3 in an endnote), or is it just showing that it, or whatever the fat burden on time is, will get published at some point, The Atlantic only a symbol for the magazine or site that does publish it? One thing’s for sure: they are definitely thinking about it, and whether or not to publish isn’t what’s captured their thought. The Literary Eye has. Has this writing captured yours?
Photo of my feet, Leelow’s paws, and Lucy’s tail
A couple of days after the above dream with the dog, this muse came:
Will never be able to let me go. [vision of being on the old dirt road in Jewett, Texas (Old Durant Road, my favorite boyhood haunt) and surprised to see the dog friend I have here there. Then another vision of pulling the skin away from her belly and writing the line there, but not with my will so much as with hers. I worried she would hurt herself, the area there being so delicate and all. She followed me here to the new place (the cabin) after a walk, and she just stayed. But after following me where I hitchhiked to Mires, she didn’t return here]
A day or so later this dream and subsequent muse:
Dream of the dog being outside, having come back. This seemed to repeat. Then I was at an old couple’s house to receive my daily portion of their leftovers they were giving me (in the dream), and who came up but the dog, inside. Last, the woman brought her out of a room, carrying her on her hip as she was now a very beautiful blondbaby boy.
A dog of many choices. You loved your son, didn’t yah? And there’ll never, ever be enough room for that room. I can’t figure I lost her too late.
She was a pretty dog but a mutt, medium-sized and blond. I did not understand at the time why my inner vision was so focused on her. I did not interpret the above dream and muse to mean I was being told that she was my child and to love her like that. I liked her, but she was just a dog that had adopted me, how I saw it at the time: egoistic. It took Lisa Joy Rottweiler to teach me the love of dogs, and then little Rascal, his horrible death just the icing on the cake of my rending heart pain and deep realization of the importance of dogs in our lives. Rottweilers consider themselves the royalty of dogs and show you it’s such a privilege to have and pet them— “more principle than other dogs, more principle to their name, to going outside…” (my muse today). A Rottweiler puppy is now the image of that one thing in the world that has all the water of the world glistening on it, what my eyes most like to feast upon, relishing every move, replacing little boys (who now hold 2nd place), and changing that number one object into one platonic, a significant change in your relationship with the world. When you fall in love it’s all over. The puppy’s got your number, but that’s no longer a 6; it’s a 9, if you know numbers.
The “never, ever” line bears a moment spent on its interpretation. Back then I’d be thinking as lines were coming, trying not to, and this line came as I was thinking about a 11-year-old Black boy who was skinny dipping with his friends in the polar bear exhibit of a Brooklyn Zoo and was eaten alive by two bears, screaming the whole time. I attributed this at the end of the line as the interpretation, and my notebooks are full of such misunderstood interpretation, but I’ve since realized the muse uses my thoughts to continue what it’s saying, integrates them as it were but still continues what it’s talking about. So, there will never, ever be enough room for that room, the zoo horror, and, or the main point, we won’t really ever be able to view and treat dogs as our sons and daughters, but, I’ll add, that doesn’t mean we don’t as a race give it our best shot, and you can also interpret that line to mean there’ll never be enough room for the way I wrongly loved boys—multi-interpretational, that’s dream and muse.
The last line is just sad. Only now do I realize I lost her, in my heart that is. Then, like I said, she was just a stray dog I liked to have around: “Good morning dog. Am I God to you? Do you need something to eat?” The muse mentioned her often, like she was somebody, but it didn’t register. It gave me a nudge, but it didn’t get me to hold her, not heart-close like the muse suggested: [vision of the dog standing and wagging her tail] “I held her to me.” I was fond of her though, really liked her, petted her often and rubbed her belly. I’d even talk to her in my muse: “But you didn’t…I told you, not all men do.” [conversation with the dog about not beating her] [Vision of biting her on the top of the head (to open it) to get her out of her abused, submissive posture]. Excited to leave the island and be off on another traveling adventure, I’m ashamed to tell you that I didn’t feel her loss, only the reality of her coming to see me on the boat out at sea: [vision of the dog jumping up here where I’m sleeping in the video room of the ferry and putting both paws on my hand and arm]. I’m only now realizing the suffering she felt when I left and can interpret the line of muse that came soon after she adopted me: “She’s about to die.” Death in dream and muse can mean physical death, but more often it means some important part of you, or who the subject is, is about to die, or, put another way, you or they will experience a death over it, how the dog must have felt when I left her.
“Watch her. See how she is.” [vision of being in a classroom and inadvertently rocking a shelf, which toppled a bookcase on top of the teacher’s dog, a Golden Retriever. At first she seemed hurt, but then she stretched and was fine. The others in the room were not at all concerned, only I was] This muse came soon after arriving in Sicily. I interpret it to be telling the story of leaving the dog in representative terms, the social setting a classroom, the book case my endeavor of writing, the teacher myself, which might be likened to the overall me in the vision, the dog of course the dog but here golden colored, showing her as the highest kind of dog, the crushing harm only temporary, and the others who weren’t concerned the parts of myself who didn’t feel it, which was the most of me. So it seems she didn’t suffer too terribly long and bounced back rather quickly after her ‘death’. But what attention the divine muse is paying to this dog, which is for our eyes many years later. We might be assured the divine cared for her back then also. It just makes you wonder what happens in cases like Kittypuss.
I have the dog’s name as Jan one single time in my notebook, and I don’t know what that’s doing there because I always seem to remember calling her just dog. She was actually, for me, for you too, representative of Dog, but I didn’t know that then, and later in life, as you can see, I’d love them for what they’re worth, which is they have the worth of being our children, and that means so much more than it sounds; it has a spiritual and soul sense to it. Because I’m a poet seer that tries to see the world, I’m trying to show this worth to you. The “held her to me” line was part of a larger formation, which gives some picture of what I’m showing you. Here are the lines immediately after that one:
As you know firmaments can also be lines spread over the inner town of spiritual man, and you made it safe for dogs, where openness increases itself. [vision of a front door slowly creaking open all the way]
You need a dog story with a happy ending. Jan (my muse has adopted that name for her) made me think often of a dog I knew in Jerusalem named Jin, because they had some similar features, and because Jin was the last dog I’d gotten involved with before Jan. Jin’s story has shown my heart the suffering of Dog and my hope the real possibility of redemption. I have mentioned a time or two the so called hunger strike (we drank banana milk, soya milk, and milk) I did with Lars of Demark just outside the Old City of Jerusalem. The last week of the three-week fast we spent in a campsite on the Mount of Olives, staying up there about a week longer, until the naughty Palestinian boys who hung around our camp finally got a hold of our wood saw, after repeated attempts to get it, and chopped down a tree, which luckily wasn’t an olive tree. It still got us kicked off the mountain, although not rudely. We were invited to meet some Palestinian journalists at a house nearby, given tea and told things we didn’t know, chief among them was that young Palestinian men and women faced almost insurmountable odds in trying to go to the university, and if they left to go abroad, they were not allowed to return, ever (we had that tea in 1995). I remembered at the time the special problems semester I did about ancient Sparta. Did you know they’d sometimes hold an ‘Olympics’ for their slaves, and they’d march the winners over the hill, out of sight, and kill them? But I’m off track, how far though from the way we generally treat dogs is a good question. I should mention that Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians is salted throughout the muse notebooks I kept during my adventure travel, as well as a host of other important international issues I’m not able to include in this story, but I can include this here. I’d have to add that in my muse’s strong criticism of Israel there is never a call to hate it or will its demise, adding too that integration is an overall ideal in my muse, and that it doesn’t see nation states that are based on or ruled by a single religion or ethnicity, what my muse calls a Volatile Land Act, as viable in the long run. You can’t help but have the Spartans un-honorably controlling their helots, “and you will have 9/11 because of it,” (lines today).
Are victims, though, always different creatures than victimizers? Although a lot of it may have had to do with their oppression as a people, I don’t think all of it can be chalked up to that, and I’m talking about the bad behavior of those boys from the village above our camp on the Mount of Olives. It was over the top. When we moved up there, Jin had a litter of puppies, and the boys, to show off, threw a couple off the small cliff that edged our campsite, seriously injured another by sticking a stick up its ass (we all commented on what was probably being done to him), and whether any puppies survived I don’t know, but shortly there were none left. I actually think one of the older boys, a thoughtful one, took the remainder away, but I don’t know. We took great pains to protect Jin from them, as she soon became the mascot for our little group, not called by all of us The Jerusalem Peace Group.
One day the owner of the dog, a boy of about 14, marched down and wanted to take Jin off to kill her he said. We all stood in his way. The thoughtful boy told us the boy had just been beaten badly by his father. Talk about a whipping dog. I ran up into the village and into the mosque and pleaded with the imam (I guess that was his title) to intervene. He told me the boy owned the dog, and he could do nothing. I told him he just wouldn’t and left. I did see in his face and speech some recognition of the role Jin played for those boys: the scapegoat. I went to find the boys and Jin to try and stop them from killing her. It has a happy ending I promise you. Near the Russian Church I saw the worst of the boys sitting on an old, broken stone wall. “We killed her,” he said. “You will grow up and die in prison,” I told him, not knowing that his people put a lot of stock in proclamations like that spoken off the cuff but with authority. He looked stricken and jumped off the wall and took me to Jin, who was shaking like a leaf but still alive. I took her back to camp, and everyone was frantic with waiting. We examined her and found no wounds, and then we showered her with affection and vowed to rescue her off the mountain.
A couple of months later, when I returned to Jerusalem from Safed, I visited Ramon, a young man from Amsterdam (18ish) and a member of our group there on the mountain, who was living in the abandoned Palestinian village of Lifta not far from the central bus station. It was a dwelling place for vagabonders and backpackers, both Jews and non, during those days. I had heard that he’d taken Jin with him when he left the mountain, but I hadn’t seen that myself. When I got to the entrance to the village I heard a lone, loud bark and looked up. Standing up above us on the left side of the remains of the gate was Jin, looking proud and every bit like Rin Tin Tin. She had barked at me, wanting to show herself to me, and I kid you not she posed the perfect stance of Dog pride, a note of mischief too in her ‘look at me’ bark that made me clap like Mozart had just played and say, “Well Jin, look at you!” Of all the happy moments in my life where I’m happy for someone else, ones where justice is served, someone is given their due, this one stands out as the most wonderful. I take the memory out every now and then and show it to myself to restore my faith in the world. The transformation from a fearful, cowering dog, with her tail between her legs, how she always stood on the mountain, to that proud person standing there, tail telling the world she’s on top of it, you would’ve loved to have seen that. Lifta had lifted her up, and all the world too if you’d let it.
You will pardon me for preaching a moment of the need for unstructured free zones like Lifta, or how it was in ’95, open to alternative and unorthodox people showing up when they want and leaving when they want and only following the bare minimum rules of order for a civil society, places like the hippie caves of Matala too, like a lot of places. You readily accept great risk, even for children, with your vehicles of transportation, cramped cities and crowded civilization, accept untold numbers of death in those. Did you know that for society to function well it needs free zones in the same way that the world needs undisturbed nature and old growth forest and children need unstructured, unsupervised playtime? I’m not talking about free-for-alls, or just letting danger stalk our kind. I’m talking about the availability of discovering what more there it to us than the rules of nature give us, that being our nature, world nature, and social nature. They attract Joni Mitchells and invite spiritual experience.
Visiting Ramon, he told me that the other night or so, as he lay awake in the abandoned house he’d chosen to live in, alone, early night, he felt his consciousness expand and grow past himself, past the house, past Lifta and Jerusalem and then into space, becoming as big, as impossible as that sounds, as the universe. It’s one of the most common of spiritual experiences, at least from people I’ve spoken to about having them, where your consciousness expands bigger than yourself, where, as it’s described in Savitri, “the conscious ends of being went rolling back,” although not necessarily as big as it did with Ramon. With him I think he had a tag with the cosmic being. At any rate, the experience didn’t come from following rules or a spiritual practice of any kind, although from me he’d heard about spirituality, and so it had probably entered his thinking mind, of the experiential, hands on kind, as that’s what I spoke about when I talked about it, not meditation, diet and so forth. I might add that I never mentioned the kind of experience he had. It just happened because he was open and ready for it. I can’t help but speculate that at that moment in the holy city thousands of Jews, Moslems, and Christians were following rules to the letter, but this kid from No Structure got a little of what they all were after. I can’t stress this enough; you don’t get to realization (spiritual enlightenment), or even spiritual experience, by hup, two, three, four or any series of steps.
At the global level, we’ll put his name on it, Buckshot, a dog for all time.
(today’s muse)
“My little emotional being loved its mother and its dog’s presence,” (muse in the cabin). Soon after Jan came into my life, the muse began to talk about Buckshot, just a line here and there, like that one. He was like a third parent to me. That big hairy head of his was one of the first faces I saw poking into my crib, as first and as often as human family, and, lick, lick, lick. As a crawling infant and stumbling toddler he was my babysitter, as I was too wild to stay in the house very long, and you might understand why if you’ve been following the story, and my mom and dad were too busy, or too exasperated with me, to go outside with me all the time, and so Buckshot did. It was family folklore, that ole dog following me around the big yard, crawling with me under the house, taking me by the hand with those gentle to family big teeth he had and leading me back into the yard, as we had no fence. My sister fell into a big hole in that yard, the crowing story told, where there was a copperhead, and he jumped in and killed it before it bit her. They spoke about him as being almost human, so aware of himself he was ashamed to go two toilet in front of people and so would go behind the bushes. I’m not making this up; that’s the way they spoke about him.
During the three or so years I’ve talked about often in my writings, when I was studying Classical Greek in university, when my inner life was open to a degree you would have trouble accepting as fact, I put my will into seeing him in dream, and, becoming lucid in a dream and remembering my intention and willing it, a portal opened up, and it was as though I were seeing far into time, as there was a hue to the scene of oldness, just a little window that opened up a few seconds, and there was Buckshot, standing and looking at me, giving me a big bark. I was opening a memory from before I had an ego to put memories around, and so it was like that, the wayback machine having difficulty in rounding it up. He was a big dog, half Collie and half German Shepherd, the hairy variety, both his parents army dogs. My dad took him home from the army, met my mother immediately after, and they got married, in Bacliff, Texas, the family hometown, and Buckshot was the family dog, and he didn’t like anybody but our family, except my grandfather Lee, especially didn’t like my first best friend, my cousin Jerry Lloyd, born five weeks after I, one of those lifelong dream characters who you wonder is also dreaming of you their whole life. Maybe Buckshot wanted to bite him because he knew he’d grow up and not talk to me for no reason other than the stigma I wear, as I have done nothing to him or anyone he loves. The things that stick in your craw, and I’m not just commenting on mine. Anyway, I had another dream of Buckshot after the look in the window at him, what must’ve opened that window for me to enter in, one where I was right there with him in the yard, I about two or so, and he didn’t want me to do something or go somewhere, what it was I don’t remember. He was talking to me using a combination of noises: low barks, whines, grunts, groans and the like. It was a language he’d made up specifically to watch me and keep me safe, which I understood at the time.
I speak Dog. I do because of Buckshot, but even if you don’t have a Buckshot in your home when you’re born, if just have a dog there with its furry face in yours, someone you romp around the room with, licking you to hysterics, you’re going be a dog lover and have tools for healing we don’t yet know exist. I’m showing you one, the healing of a social disorder most can’t make heads or tails of. On that aforementioned LSD trip on Spyrock Mountain I took in 1988 on my 27th birthday, the catalyst for me embarking on what I called immediately afterwards the personal growth process towards wholeness and healing, otherwise known as the spiritual path, a German Shepherd named Jake was there, and for the day portion of my trip he was my babysitter, and I just lost myself alone in exploration-play down a mountain streambed, Jake watching over me (they know when we trip), just like Buckshot used to do.
That night I would go over the top, out of the human life sphere of inner experience and into the bottom level of Overmind, but that’s another story, told in The Literary Eye. In the morning, Jake was there when I took a walk from my sister’s cabin, and he’d been waiting for me, me all wide-eyed from being what seemed reborn, still tripping in a fundamental way, not my balls off, just that everything I saw or thought about had so much meaning behind it, too much. It was hellish then, but I’ve gotten used to it, although it’s not near as intense as it was those first few weeks after the trip, but I still see the world as representation. On that walk I coined the name of my path, with Jake beside me, understanding that I needed healed from pedophilia, not just enlightened, or that was my road to realization. Little did I know what a big part Dog would play in that process, has played since my life began, was playing then, and played in that cabin near Festos in the form of Jan.
You might not understand what an emotional being is, and, since it’s one of the most basic understandings that help you heal from causing yourself and others harm, it bears some explaining. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo call it the vital being, one of three beings that make up the lower self, the mental being and physical being being the others. It can also be understood as the life-body, but it really is its own being, as the others are. They make up a confederation, not a union, and it’s their quarrels that trouble us so much. “We are such a deep dimension,” (the muse in 2002). The vital is the emotion and impulse part of us, the seat of desire and preference, the vehicle of the life force. You ever have dreams of a big, hairy creature that has no head, only a very long and thin neck, and it loves you like your dog, just wants to cuddle? That’s your vital being, and I’d dreamed of it a few times by the time I learned what it was from my teachers, how I know it’s real and not just some concept they made up. A lot of healing work involves taming a rebellious vital, cleaning it and getting it to play ball with the divine, and you can’t do that like it’s a monster, since it’s one of your egos too (the ego on the body is centered on the genitals. Things falling into place?). You have to convince the vital to change, because you just can’t force it, but when you know that, change becomes possible, because, when you add that and subordinate it to the process of surfacing your soul, what you organize your lower self around, all three of its beings, you have a handle on how.
Water is in your ear. Knowledge is in your deeps. Expand at the center your relationship to the world. It’s a soul-wise. We keep rockin’ down the clock tonight. [heard sung by Bill Haley and His Comets] I think you’re happy. From where you stand extend reality. Can you make it bigger than what it is? It’s just getting down to the truth of things.
Here burning bush talk to me: you’ve got that rose car on pavement. Follow the narrative. It’s got Fort Knox.
The real planet happening: following love’s ways, following love tutor call. How about Lifta? [sound vision of a dog bark, a single loud bark] Stay out of luxury apartments.
You’ve got it blister; holy shit are they mad at you. Will you give us a pillow then? Turn it into a Holy Grail and charge attraction. Just kidding with this lot.
The joy not intended to take moves on. What has been your construct all this way? All that involved being an author for us, being attacked. We foot upon it. We give the recipe and the gun. The Queen is hurry I’m available.
She’s really happy daddy about his son. We name on Monday. If we don’t come home tonight… Anyway it was there. What’s a leader in this situation? You’re hearin’ one. Now hear me: that kid.
The boy was fish. Where do we go with him? It’s not about him. He’s just part of the reading group. I’m a lover not a fighter a lover not a biter. When do we hand him over to you? What boy?
They don’t have a bad puppy dog that they beat. I wear a helmet in everything about that boy. We negotiate the day together. All his life I’ve been a parent, the hands on parenting since he was three. We’re here now. I was there when his parents met. I was at the hospital the night he was born. Ever he’s heard my voice. I spoke to him from his mother’s belly in the womb.
We live together. He’s got nine years, ten in December. Nitish is his name. He’s my honey pumpkin. He has his world in me. That’s where his heart stays when he’s away.
Look at him. Have you ever seen a seer poet growing up? Wait his moon. It’s almost upon him his muse. It’s his freedom don’t take it away.
photo taken (by me) climbing Arunachala when he was 8
Tiger in a coat, that’s a past needle of mine. I don’t think you know what I mean. We’ve parted ways tiger and me. What’s the story now? I’m good to that little boy, and I put the best possible roadmap on his brain, and I don’t wrap my nuts around ‘im.
Well it’s 10 o’clock. You know he’s gonna be first in line to benefit from my program. He’s going to be on the lookout for a new role model: the enlightened being.
It’s where we’re goin’. Where did you think I was going? I do have my limits. It’s the beginning of disease you don’t go for enlightenment. Spiritual enlightenment is what we’re goin’ for.
It escaped me. Is it free period? It’s written down. Orthodox, the orthodox Jew, trouble landing on Earth. Can’t see that fucking Mozart— you see I am a host maker; my phone, give me my phone, the firsthand of every event. Hello? I can hear you. Gonna help you see the world.
We’re not gonna leave that boy in freezing temperatures. He belongs to his parents he belongs to Donny— the Mother on love. I rightly criticized creating a hospital that did not allow healing. You want this. Blueprints you have to heal Earth, a spiritual zone to give you what you need. You know Donny: I will take you home. [heard the music for the lines “Gaily they ring / while people sing songs of good cheer” in “Carol of the Bells” or could be the same music in “Shchedryk” for that matter]
Have you ever seen anything like this clothed? Tell me it’s crap. We’re not allowed to be frank about society or to ask to give up belts. We’re in trouble. And you think we’re human/free? [words spoken simultaneously] Are you watchin’ TV? I just stepped on a tin can. Well, I have something for you. It will challenge your perceptions of reality. What more could you want? Are you just gonna stand there and slap me? Are you just gonna call the authorities? Try me.
(today’s muse)
“Wide awake as we can get passed may prevent the act in the near future,” (line from the cabin). I saw it as an isolated line warning me of preventing something there, and I was on the lookout for what it could be, and I still missed it, both times, as the line’s part of a small formation of lines that also talk about a coming fall in Auroville the next year, probably the defining one of my life, if the amount of muse prevision about it is any indication. Anyway, the next day or so after the line, a mouse got into the cabin, scurried in the front door as I walked in, and I had to take everything out, even the bed apart, to get at it so to get it out, but in doing so, I accidentally killed it. I felt bad as I took its little body and disposed of it. Big deal you say, a little mouse. Starting that very night, field mice attacked the cabin, or that’s how it felt, but what really happened was they frantically began trying to get in, and they had not done so up to that point, and I didn’t know they would try like that. Somehow they got into the ceiling right above the head of the bed. Their scratching to get in was louder than a radio and quickly became the main outer event in the cabin once the sun went down, and it’d last a couple of hours or more. A little mouse you say. Obviously I’d offended Mice itself. Falling asleep became a drama, and by that I mean it wasn’t just the obnoxious noise keeping me awake but a vexed vital, mad at them damn mice. When falling asleep vision is a mainstay of your day, you see the problem. What was a body to do?
I pondered over the problem during the day, kept an intention in my will to solve it, which also brings up solutions in my muse. It was silent about it, and the days were going by, and the racket went on. But the solution didn’t come from the muse. It came from what Savitri calls sign’s spell, what I’ve somewhat explained in the preceding part concerning catching world waves. You don’t only ride them traveling, since life itself I’ve said, and many others also, is a journey, and not just a metaphor of one. They help with daily life too. I don’t remember where I found it, around the cabin or one of my long afternoon walks, but as soon as I saw it, it was like it cast a spell on me, that is, it had this hue about it that made it stand out from its scene and capture my attention. It was a small stone shaped like a mouse, no definition, but it’s shape was such that it looked like a mouse sitting, curving upwards from its base like it did. I picked it up and took it to my altar, which, if you remember, was on a small corner table near the foot of the bed, where I sat the mice-stone down and gave it homage, giving Mice their due.
An altar is like a ship. It sails your intentions to fruition. You put something on it and make it a focus of concentration, not only when you look at it on the altar, but when you think about it, and that builds momentum, and so you concentrate on it more. Center stage on my altar were photos of my teachers the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, to the sides were paintings of Narasimha and Kali. A painting of Jesus alternated being on my altars during my adventure travels, but since I was especially at that point replacing his ideal with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s, which is the supramental transformation on Earth, and replacing who I called on for help (lucid dreams on Crete I haven’t included show this transition, where I go to call on him but choose instead the Mother). I also put interesting, strange, and/or beautiful natural objects on my altar I found while I walked the world, not to be focal points of concentration, but to be a moving, constantly changing, work of handy art. I still do that but also put photos of people so to concentrate on them, tickets for about to go somewhere, bills that need help, anything small enough to fit and important enough to put there. Sympathetic magic you say. I say it helps, works sometimes too enough consciousness is on it, enough times you can’t just chalk it up to chance, or you could, you just have your head in the sand, and if you do, you don’t have the consciousness to do it anyway. It takes the type of belief that leaves little room for doubt. That night after putting the mice-stone on the altar and spending the rest of the day concentrating on it, with respect, with acknowledgement of the importance of Mice, realizing it wasn’t the stone I was focusing on but the protecting spirit of Mice, the mice did not come back, didn’t come back the whole time I was there except for a few minutes on one single night sometime after. Are you hearing this?
“In eating they not only feel Miss Kyoto but a stake in the lives of all animals” [vision of a man and a woman eating an animal they had named Miss Kyoto, a line that came at Irmgard’s] “Perhaps the squirrel has as much to say about being human,” (a line came that came in the cabin, and it’s interesting that for some years in India, which was in the future here, I’d be quite involved with squirrels, raising them, rescuing them). “As you killed it even then the gecko got big. It didn’t want to die,” (the muse commenting after I’d stepped on a gecko in the cabin on accident and felt terrible as I watched it die). “Each time it has to be a manifestation of God you are eating and not just a couple of eggs,” (it answering the question I’d asked it of eating eggs). “Transform their natures into helpful creatures. Flies fly much faster when I let them go,” (my muse at Irmgard’s about the swatting of flies in my apartment). Notice I’m not being given a rule. My conscience is engaged. In the cabin I was a vegetarian but not a vegan, although my muse frowned on things like butter because it disturbed the body more to process it than olive oil, which it liked very much, the same reason it was not too fond of sugary things. It liked whole grains, oatmeal, whole wheat bread, those sorts of things: “Mistaken white bread.” Cheese and milk, these things my muse didn’t object to, but it doesn’t make hard and fast rules for all time on eating, on anything. Where I was, what was available, what I could afford, those factors my muse factored in with my body’s needs, and it made its suggestions and recommendations accordingly. Just stop a moment and consider the intimate detail in which the divine knows us. Would there not be a personal, innate divine in all of us? It’d happened in Argentina and other places, it didn’t object to eating non-veg. When I was hitching in Argentina, there was a brief international ban on it selling its beef, and so people were giving it away, and vagabonding, with all the meals missed that entailed, a being a vegetarian, with the need of making sure you got enough protein that entails, and here I wasn’t getting a lot of it, I gladly ate the beef. It’s the damndest thing coming to India after being a vegetarian for so many years and eating non-veg, but what can I tell you? I don’t always listen to my muse? Harmlessness, however, is on our calendar, and in that evolving journey, considering what you eat God, well then, whatever you eat, you at least eat consciously. I think the mice story sends the message it needs to: of men and mice, okay then, they’re important too.
End violence— knowledge will feel dominated by a higher power. That’s the story she wrote. We join hands. Can I kill this bug? Bitten by some knowledge this bug’s dangerous. You wouldn’t go farther than that, unless you have to eat. I wouldn’t kill bears, execute prisoners. You gotta gun pointed at you? Shoot back. A soldier is a good person to have around. It’s their performance as people that counts. We need them in dire moments. Are there spurs on this moment? How many humans did that bear eat? I don’t know, kill it.
Do we just stand here and counts sins? Let’s rejoice we’re alive and be a friend of all creatures. What about vegetarian? Preferences can’t always be eliminated. We’re gettin’ there.
No one wanted the atom. They laughed at its Sophocles. It’s mountain high, you know? Alright unwrap this business. You hear that? Punctuate humanity.
Each afternoon I left the cabin and went walking, long walks of several kilometers, looking especially for what my muse called an “old nook joy.” “Is still found the waterfall,” the muse using waterfalls to represent more than just waterfalls on Crete. Most times Jan followed me, but she didn’t ease my loneliness, the hole in my vital I wasn’t filling with anything, not knowing that Jan was there to help with that or even that she really could. Lisa Rottweiler would teach me that, but now, years away from her nearness, I was terribly homesick. I walked and I walked. The homesickness had reached a peak right before Christmas, while I was still at Irmgard’s, when I spontaneously left my body and went and visited my mom’s living room that was decorated for Christmas, the food on all tabletops and countertops, covered, waiting for the coming Christmas party, the lights of the Christmas tree illuminating the scene like a small, colorful sun. Just a moment there on the physical plane out of my body, and then I slipped into a lucid dream (still in the inner vicinity I might add), where I saw my mom and Bucky (my step-father) in the kitchen talking, as though from a great distance, not so much of miles, but a distance of hearts. They did not have the same feelings for me at that Christmas, or any thereafter. Although I was the same Donny I had always been, society’s view of me had become worse and worse, had reached that pitch that your family would disown you if you were me.
Home for the holidays, and all the warmth and mirth that suggested, had gotten out of the army and the university and become a vagabonding, longhaired, spiritual, social drop out, worse, the worst thing he could be in society. I called a couple of times before and during the holidays, collect of course, and I so wanted to ask them to fly me home and fly me back again, and it wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it, but I didn’t ask. Unprecedented in my adventure travel I know, but I had the feeling it was my last chance to see them again. Turned out I was right, because soon after that I became a lost cause in their eyes, one of those people, the kind you didn’t want to see. I can’t tell you what it’s like to lose your family, and you love them so very much, and it’s not from death or any separating thing in this world; it’s from their rejection of you. Right on you say, righteous people? I really think we need a new definition of what it means to be good: you are bad to no one. How else will we get rid of bad?
“These tombs were in oil,” [dream-experience where it seems I was lucid and inside a toilet, looking at the hole in the basin, which was white and very clean, with jets of water flowing down as in a flush. I was afraid of shit appearing in it, but none did. I know it seems odd, but I do believe it was at this point that the consciousness went up over the head, and I experienced it as the eyes going too. It had that definite buoying up, flowing, current feeling. I was surprised it went up all the way to a large, white light bulb and even higher. I consciously relaxed into it so it could last as long as possible, and I thought for a second maybe I could stay up there, but then I began to fly, and the raised consciousness feeling abated. I found myself at night in my mom’s living room, which was all decorated for Christmas. For a second or so I was there on the physical plane in the subtle body [the dreambody], but then with the emotions bubbling up, I went into a subtle physical plane. I went into the kitchen and went to my knees on the floor, just crying my eyes out because I could be there for Christmas and probably never again. I could feel angels hearing me and drawing nigh to my pain, but I knew the [crying] was only a vital indulgence on my part. Even as I cried I asked the Lord to show me how to lose this attachment. Then something shifted and lucidity wavered, and mom and Bucky were in the living room. She took me to my room to give me $20 and a note, which I wasn’t able to read. The another shift to full lucidity, and I was in a huge, old, dim house, searching for how to lose the attachment. I asked the Lord many times. I was on the phone trying to hear the answer when the line came]
The oil refers to the vital longing to be there for Christmas, which made me not only emotionally wet but sticky and stained, damn near in despair. It lingered on me the whole time I had left on Crete and made me walk to try to get it off. It grew into more than mere homesickness; it became the hole of the whole wide world, what we usually use some substance, comfort food included, people, media, or activity, especially sex, to immerse ourselves in so to try and fill, what we are basically doing all the time so as not to feel that void inside, but what I was here only throwing walks into to appease, in a not so natural nature, which didn’t work. Can I say here that normal waking consciousness sucks? But I’m sorry folks, you have to spend most of your time in it to get out of it for good, or at least that’s what I’ve been learning. It’s the hardest part of the spiritual path, empting yourself of the world slap, dab in the middle of it, but not having anything to fill yourself with except faith, and anybody can tell you that’s not adequate. You need the real thing, what the faith is for. Nothing else fills that void. Is it the bottom line of the human condition to suffer, to never be satisfied? Would we want to surpass ourselves if it weren’t?
“Do you know where anyone could get something vegetarian around here?” A line that came at the end of a dream that’s talking about the ancient church I’d visited during the day, meaning the place was not a good place to eat a meditation at. About a month after the mice episode, on a long walk over hill and dale, I found a very old, Christian baptistery, dated the 5th century. I went inside, nothing preventing anyone, to the inner chamber and to the altar and did a meditation there. The walls of the inner chamber were full of human bones, crammed full, skulls, rib cages, hands and feet, all hanging out the spaces in the walls made for them. Eerie it was, dark to the sunlight that hardly lit the room. It wasn’t that it had the feel of history, although history was present. It had the feel of death. I paid little attention to that and tried to concentrate, hoping I might hear some muse about the place or the people that worshipped there so very long ago. Nothing. It was too uncomfortable to sit right, too dark feeling to meditate there on light. When I returned to the cabin I had an odd sense, like the cabin had new shadows or something. I shrugged it off.
The next day I heard: “I picked up three ghosts there” [sense-vision of there being two signs of that, as I went in and as I left, which I missed at the time]. I felt stupid I’d done a meditation there and pondered over what to do. The muse was strangely silent on this regard. I had to get out of it on my own. Get out of what? Three ghosts with me there in the cabin. You don’t believe me I know. But you know, I’d bet that within this past week, there was a dead person looking over your shoulder, trying to get something of your life, some taste they’ve lost. One could be there right now. You never know, unless you can see. You wouldn’t have a cow over one’s there or not. It’s a part of the normal, everyday, unseen, as paranormal as we make it. Be that as it may, the spirit of Mice had taught me something significant: pay something spirit its due, and it’ll leave you alone, unless it’s a demon of course. I bought three long, blue candles, as that color just seemed to fit, and maybe it didn’t, but it worked anyway. I put them on the ship of my altar and set each to sail by lighting them with both the element of fire and the flame of my tapas, my spiritual energy, spending the time of their burning talking to the dead people, not continuously, just every few minutes or so, asking them to leave, not like they were monsters or anything, with respect, like they just needed to move on, at least out of my living room. Afterwards, the shadows of the cabin, that kind that weren’t cast by anything under the sun, left. I felt that, like some old hunger new to the room had gone, like an ancient foreboding recently arrived had vanished. You want to count my chickens? Why they’ve hatched.
Sittin’ by the kitchen fire. What is his line of glory? Oh my God I’m the hero of this story. You are the 100th monkey. Even the 100th you have to fix.
The story’s got some outline, and it’s better than observable genius in the world. Their random pickup will show you a spectacle. I’m hungry I’ll take the slice of it I want.
The seeing with divine eyes on the subject will grasp nature at its load, see everything in the round of itself, helicopter image so you see its purpose in time, how it relates to the whole, what it does there and your relation to it.
Read a book and that book revealed. Tell a story and have time surrender its secrets, a lot of symbolic of God that is the story. Will you dance with me? I’m a bus driver, and I’ll take you home. I’ve got you by the hand.
(today’s muse)
From my notebook I can see I had two jobs while in the cabin: painting hotel rooms, whitewashing them really, for an old woman named Kathrina, a job it seems I returned to right before I left, and a day job picking oranges for an old women near Mires. At the first job I found a book to read, which, after I returned home, my muse said right on about, and the second I had prevision about, which also added to the mounting evidence that I needed to cut my hair. The visions are separated by days or weeks:
Vision of a basket of old novels and 88 being on the binding of one like a library number. In the day I had found an old shelf of old novels at the hotel I’m working at. Only one was in English, Arthur C. Clark’s Rama Revealed. I’m reading it, and it’s very appropriate and fits very well now.
Vision of there being a cold water fountain next to kind, sitting old ladies saying, “Good, good.” Bent down to drink but the hair got caught in the branches of a tree. After this vision, during the day, I picked oranges for a very sweet old lady, and my hair kept getting caught in the trees.
You’d want to know about the book. At the time the muse only made some comments about the octospiders in the novel, how their aggression is understandable because they’d lost their world (they a stand in for me—multi-representational the muse), but today’s muse sums up the book and critiques its major flaw in idea:
My God the Gods in space, there’s Rama Revealed. Vision of a book, I mean creation’s scheme. They all put together the experimental planet PlayStation to bring the God in space.
Arthur C. Clark, he’s missin’ the point. Outside of space the creators stand with their notebooks to bring themselves here. We see Earth the rose of this endeavor, and saw off time the figures in a notebook, the figures in a universe.
It’s a whole vision for a whole planet: and God dresses himself in the hours and ramps up the whole creation to variable God. It’s on the table now so’s you can see it. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. [heard sung]
And they allowed me in to chat with the prisoners. Well this ain’t right the opposition of Earth said. Who’s gonna win? Would you like the divine forces? Gird up your loins. All hell’s gonna break loose. We’re in the way now.
You look very serious and stern. I’m about to lose my dog, my boy, just so you can read some papers. I don’t think that’s the meat. You’re safe sweetheart— the Mother on business. Type your paper. Put it out for the public to see. You’re good. You’re supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
You see this as a primitive station of Earth? All day we’ve looked at him. Tryin’ to get away from it. He just writes it all down, and just I can’t look myself in the eye I’ve been so wrong about life.
A new reform has given such fervent base loss. That’s the nature of reality: you’re not small enough yet to be believed by God, in any field that you study, in any road that you look at. They like to be the center of attention. Invisible from God’s totality is resting in that individual. [this and above line came on Crete]
To found the sea. Sense vision the police were on the way. I did not come out of my room. Boy did they try. You mean it’s over? That’s the end of the story. It’s not an arrest warrant.
Use the calculations she gave you. Our dogs similar down this path. We see them in the morning. Is it me you’re lookin’ for? [heard sung by Lionel Richie] They’re ahead of us on love. They’re our peers in barking at neighbors. We find them behind us on the evolutionary play-scale. We are their masters, how they come to become men and women. It’s their evolutionary purpose, where they meet the stars. A good cat came in too. You ever heard of this before?
They fulfill a hole in evolution. It didn’t seem like us. It has no hands and feet, no brain to share with humanoid. It’s got the ticket to ride. They study us become us, all over the place. We invite them into our homes, have them child with us.
The complexities of soul I cannot expound here, but a monkey is not our next of kin in the evolution of soul on Earth. Where evolution meets the planet, the ape and man are kin. Now I’ve given you your daily bread. You see the importance of Dog. They’re our fellows in our evolutionary rise. Don’t fuck around. Be kind to Dog.
They’ve got the whole world in their hands. [heard sung] First we’ve got this: meet you in our evolutionary purpose. Would not worry. It’s God’s purpose, a sunflower. What is a good dog is his earned purpose? Evolutionary sweepstakes.
Hear the society of Dog. I’m French to that responsibility, a cultural high note. Dogs spend time cats. Who’s dog is it supposed to be? Every human being on the planet.
Will you give me a mask, okay gloves? I need to put something in perspective. I murdered a dog in cold blood at 13 for the thrill of the kill, the dog you know. Who said I felt anything? No, no I didn’t cry.
Awful the things you hear about online. You see what that is. Put them on the runway with me it’s fine. Fellow backpackers, talking of Jewish as I walk upon it, oh my goodness not Jewish, Israel. It’s a soon hour and a half. I need to lay or giving the least sense of it. Now biting heads, it’ll give you the worst: the revenge has been gotten. My God, we just let God take care of it. On with the show. Oh, don’t jump up. Continuance.
Let the eyes pop out of your head. We’re lookin’ at reality. We only see salt. Reality is behind us. Or you can say it’s over our heads. Whatever you say I’m here— the nature of God speaks. Football drill you’ve arranged your hat. You have a warrant for your arrest. You will meet God in the ways slowly, like a rising sea. You will be overcome with God. There’s no gettin’ around it. It’s the nature of reality, whether you deny it or not. Okay a wake soul shows you God just comes upon you. Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock. [heard sungby Bobby Helms]
I am mountain in springtime, all over everywhere, even in your right to be, every place on Earth. You hear God, today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Yesterday and tomorrow, they’ve got the hat on. Today is a mounting tide. You hear the music?
Boy it’s all over the place. I’m tellin’. Well congratulations, you’ve got your social stick out. Boy it’s everywhere let me tell you. I don’t know how to integrate it with this. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. [heard sung] Wow, we’ve realized God.
I don’t see any reason why we can’t bring him in from the cold. Let him in, let him in, acceptance in society, a human being with worth. Can’t yah see he’s tryin’? ‘Cause I’m really a person, you know? So just let me in. I’ve got the most legitimate complaint: I don’t even have status as a human being. You won’t talk to me, look at me, other than to file hatred my way. There I’ve said it: I need your help. Will you just let me in?
What we have here, oh my God, he’s bringing it up to shape; he’s bringing it over: God is the star of everyone, ain’t he? You don’t put anybody out in the street, do you? He’s bringing it in, a symphony orchestra to include everyone to be together. To include everybody even me, that’s the music.
Be honest when you attack my philosophy online, when you count my sins, when you talk about the pedophile reeks, tell the number: oh reader, watcher, listener, keep him out of your midst. Don’t give him the time of day and give ‘im pain folks. Make him suffer for the problems he’s caused society. Ill will folks, ill will, you give him that, you hear? The amount of ill will we rely on to say it’s not true.
Your room’s hanging out. I don’t know how to show people this and they listen. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. [heard sung] Peace on Earth goodwill towards men, that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? You’re up to somethin’. Congratulations, you hear my speech.
Now analyze it, tear it apart, and get it out of the ballpark. Will bring it back the truth of the matter is.
Now Heaven he’s gonna send me, old Festos. My job is to introduce you to my clothes, whether you like them or not, even an umbrella I can show you they are for everybody everywhere, even Pegasus.
A Pokémon I’m not tryin’ to trash reality with, augment junk. The lengths we go to be stupid. I’m giving you ears on reality. You don’t need glasses for those. I don’t want anything to do with you. It’s not like you have a choice. I’m here anyway. If you care about them, give this picture to your mind: wings on the horse.
In that room he’s winning a capture too. Come here babies, my dogs, my boy. I’ll be down to the Lake to take a swim. I’ll be here with yah not the most animated campfire in the world. Lick me that’s fine, sit next to me. I’m not gonna be the loudspeaker. My love will be all over yah, in warm, tingly glows, even without petting you, though that will come in time. I live here, and enlightenment is not me leavin’. Oh my sweet darlins, we’re all together you see.
You got things to look at. You can measure it out. It’s there for you to roll it out. In just a moment the bulletin board. Be kind to rewind. Use your depth perception. I’m really in harmony. The front door to somethin’: you would believe a laundromat, a clean toilet?
In the last chapter the claim was made that on Crete a seer in a hut made the first contact with the Greek Gods. That hut was where Festos was built I believe. I was not far from there and in a seer hut myself. You can put the two and two together. “She ravaging Festos, a tough guy, (my muse while still at Irmgard’s, it obviously talking about my feminine side). Soon after going to stay in the cabin this came, “Perhaps just winged the horse” [vision of rising sun appearing from behind the corner or edge of something like a card of sorts], and I had no idea what this referred to or what the universal symbol of winging the horse means. The first concrete indication that I’d be going to the heaven of the Greek Gods were the lines below (the man in the muse is Festos). I only know this in hindsight; at the time I didn’t know what they were talking about.
The Olympia is seen. Doors open when seen, a stern and wise man. He was looking at him as he sat in that navel place.
If someone tells you a story of visiting a heaven world, chances are they didn’t go to one but to some dream simulation of a heaven. It takes not only a purity we can rarely gather and need divine help to obtain, but it also takes a depth and force of contemplation hardly possible unless you’re a hermit socially. Below are a couple of significant dreams that purified me, but again, I didn’t realize I was being readied for anything.
First dream and subsequent muse: I woke up realizing I had been on the verge of lucidity at the end of the preceding dreams, so I merely closed my eyes and opened them on a dream scene. I opened to the force, and it lifted me higher and higher, then took me in a straight line. It turned my body around, and there was a shift in the dream scenery as though I’d crossed a border. Things were more beautiful and ideal. I lowered and went through a pretty wooded scene, then into a breathtaking place so beautiful I cried. It was a small crystal clear lake created by a stream. On the stony shore was a pyramid naturally shaped by three long stones laying upright, supporting each other. As I began to pass the place, I saw in the distance a fantastically futuristic city of silver, solid steel sky scrappers, but only for a second or two. Then I was returned, flying, to the place I knew to be a healing place. I dove into a deep pool under a large, shady tree, so to cleanse myself from the vital desire. I came up out of the water flying and turned to look at the pyramid so to remember the place, but as I looked it changed and became an obviously purposeful construction, with steps carved into it on the stones, though it was only three meters or so tall. The scene kept shifting as I looked. Then I awoke.
I have the power to do something I didn’t have last night. Wounded in its own personal opinion. It’s mutable reach. [vision of the back license plate of a car with the single word DON]
Second dream and subsequent muse, which ended upon hearing these lines sung by Johnny Cash:
When will the soul bear its branding? When kindness from the rebels of my soul. [Lines heard sung by Johnny Cash and came at the end of a dream where I was a football player at a high school and went to practice, but no one was there because of rain. I’d written a poem to put in the poem exchange, which turned into the book The Prophet. Dream ended looking at the running track, which also was the cover of the book, a horse’s shape suggested in eerie billowy clouds, sounds impossible, but it was both]
I have to be allowed in. The dream twilight of the idea. [similar to a canto heading in Savitri] The horses into panic themselves. The birthplace of God. [vision of finding a large, intricate, gold amulet shaped like a harp, with the name Moses across the strings in silver] I’m opposed to this my ignorance. You must have a chance.
There is a lot going on in those lines, not the least of which I’m shedding my cultural religion, Christianity, more specifically the Judeo-Christian-Moslem image of God, but not, I might add, those divine beings as they are to themselves, as their agency appears often in lines of my muse. “It’s still becoming a Christian theater of the Moslem order. Get past Overmind,” the muse had told me earlier, while still at Irmgard’s. That surpassing is a whole other subject, but obviously to even glimpse a heaven of Gods, plural, the go to hell if you don’t believe in one God and one God only had to go. Volumes could be written about the differences between the word of a prophet of a religion and the divine ideal(s) in their purity the religion is trying to embody and the prophet is trying to bring down.
“Put it on the house and threaten Islam when it’s out,” which means blaming the divine house of Islam for Moslem extremism, terrorism, suicide bombing, the narrow-mindedness and bigotry of the Taliban, the wonton cruelty of Islamic State, and even the requirement for women to wear veils, is to blame Islam for what it’s not responsible for; interpretation is, and the prophet is. The wearing of veils is an interpretation of Mohammed’s muse and clearly demonstrates our tendency to take a rule and run with it, get as strict as possible in regards to it, just to be on the safe side we figure, not understanding we are leaving the ideal behind when we do. I’d refer you to a poem I wrote about this very subject, “Very Slow You Write It Down”, which could also be called “Mohmmed, Is He the Ideal?”, but Facebook deleted it when it took down my educational page Harm’s End. As for the song the voice of Johnny Cash sings that ends the dream, I won’t interpret it other than quoting a couple of lines of muse that came sometime before, “With the reluctant, fiery seal of a prophet. Sort of humbles you, don’t it?” [dream-vision of riding at night down an old dirt road with my dad and Uncle Jerry and suddenly coming over a hill and realizing if another car had been there we’d all be dead] And I’d really stress the word reluctant. I call myself a seer poet, only called myself a prophet in the deleted poem, as it’s only another prophet that can correct the word of a prophet.
“Boy do we cut hair,” a line that came after I cut the hair and shaved the beard, which I did somewhere around here, before the Heaven trip. I really didn’t want to. I saw that things that we did, like combing the hair, taking a bath, brushing the teeth, did more than clean the body. The unseen is all around us, and it’s not only spirits. It’s all over us in the form of vibrations and things, and I’m just using a known word to describe the unknown, bits from the world of course, other people, but more importantly from ourselves. It’s like we create a sort of field around our heads with our constant thinking, around our mouth and chin with our constant chatter, chaotic fields I might add, and we need to wash and comb long hair and beards when we have them, often, cut them short if we’re having problems with acting out in word or deed. In other words, if you are having trouble controlling yourself, long hair is not the ticket, see? Have you ever known someone with dreadlocks that got angry easily or often? Now you know why. That’s really concentrated vib funk on your head. If you are in self-mastery or an evenly keeled-person well in control of yourself, and of course if you’re enlightened, you have no problem, and so, you can just be your uncut, natural self, what I wanted and I think most men want that grow the hair out, that and be ourselves unto God, but most of us can’t handle our uncut self because it’s often a beast. Now you know something of the wonton devilry the men of Islamic State wear on their sleeves, the Taliban.
I, however, did cut my hair, and it didn’t help with the coming fall, but I’m sure it did with the purification for the trip to Heaven. “This is to falling in the sun downstairs to capture me,” a line of song my muse sung to me in the voices of Simon & Garfunkel on Crete, which I made into a whole song on the guitar in Auroville, one of my first muse songs, which I composed before that “movie the Earth needs,” or at least my muse thinks so, referring to running from the police as they were about to apprehend me and getting beaten up when they caught me. Luckily, they let me go.
Move along folks. Nothing to see here.
Although the muse had suggested the horse had already been winged, I had a series of dreams in that cabin where wings grew on a horse, or I was getting off the ground on one, and dreams of the forging of a sword. Both went together, the winging and the forging, the Pegasus and the Excalibur. The horse is the symbol of the ability to leave the normal human life sphere of the inner world and enter Heaven, and the sword what can kill the hostile being, demon if you care to call it that, that’s attached to you from birth, attached like a parasite, and it goes back generations in your family, what in ancient Greece was called a family daimon, and what we call the family curse, but what I can just briefly mention here. You use the sword to cut its head off, and, once the sword was made in dream, I was only able to cut it almost off, but not all the way, in a highly symbolic, lucid dream. I don’t know this for sure, but it seems to me the symbol of killing a demon is cutting its head plum off, and I don’t know if it actually takes a divine being to do that or not, or what exactly it has to do with going to Heaven, but I did come very close to killing one of those monsters, didn’t kill it and still went to Heaven, it trying to prevent me, scare me out of the chute.
From my dream notebook, the going to Heaven dream:
Feb. 2003 The cabin on the hill opposite Festos
It started with a lucid dream I’ve lost, one where I addressed the Mother to guide me. Upon awakening I remembered but neglected to write it down due to being especially groggy. The first waking of the night I was even more so. Then later, as I lay in bed, I began to go into trance, but a samadhi trance, as the feeling was ecstasy. I was turned around in my bed from head to foot, not physically, but in the trance bed. The bed began to shake, and earlier I’d had the fear of an earthquake, and so I thought one might be occurring so, fooled, I came out the trance to see. Everything normal. Then I went back into trance but no tinge of samadhi, a semi-cataleptic trance, where I was fooled into thinking I was in a house on the beach of Cumaná [a town in Venezuela where I earned the money to go to Europe]. I realized that I had nothing to fear in that town though. Coming out of it and waking up in bed, I felt the demon presence. I was still in twilight and actually heard a cough just outside the cabin. I got scared, but as I looked on the wall I saw 8.8.8 practice, and I knew I was safe. Very soon after, I left the body and went to the door to close it, as it was squeaking open. Then I realized I’d gone out of the body. I couldn’t make real contact with the door, but the room was not exact, larger, and the light was twilight light. I went to the window, and there was no desk in front of it, and it had a curtain. which I opened and saw a dream scene. There was a little boy, whom I knew was there to capture my attention. I closed the curtain and wondered how I could leave the room and not go into a dream scene but be outside of the room, something I worked on quite a bit in years past. I opened the window and again a dream scene.
I don’t know where this goes, but at one point I was confronting a devilish something and saying, “By the Mother’s force!” Results came, but not immediately.
I’m not sure how it happened, but I was again in a beach house but not lucid, and waking up in that house I found a friend had come and brought his friend, and they were going to stay there. I thought about telling them to leave, but he was my friend and all. I think I should’ve ordered them out. Things happened I don’t remember.
Next I’m in a dream on the roof of Johnny Coughlin’s house [my best friend as a pre-teen]. He and his brother Gregory are helping their step-father, Bud, repair the cement pilings, huge blocks, from rain damage. Somehow rain had gotten into the cement. One of the boys did something, and the blocks closed on Bud, trapping him inside. All looked lost, but I suddenly came to myself and willed the blocks apart. Instantly they parted, and Bud came out with long, grey hair and a grey beard. Then he was below, walking up, and he had a donkey head, and I told the boys he was going to be an ass about the accident. He changed back into Bud. Then I fixed the roof with my will, and it changed to a large, flat roof with many pots of flowers and such, very nice. I saw the change and realized it was much better than the old roof.
I flew off and down the street, and a large stately stallion [with wings] appeared and another horse beside him. I knew I could mount them if I wanted to, and perhaps should have, but I was into flying up and began to will myself up. It wasn’t easy, and on my left I suddenly saw a very high cyclone fence level with me. I began to ask the Mother to please show me what I’m doing wrong, what the problem was, meaning not about being able to fly higher but what not being able to represented in my life. I began to cry, very sincere tears. I was going up to what in the dream was the high mountains in front of the cabin, but here a town went up the sides, and the area was greatly compressed. A father holding his son by the hand told his little boy not to look at me as I flew by so to give me privacy, as I was crying. Then in front of the mountains, where the slopes usually appear, was a rainbow, and I hastened to fly into it, filling with the joy of an answered prayer. As I got there, the rainbow was gone, but rays of brilliant, white light were coming from the top right corner, where in the physical there is a road going up the escarpment. People were pointing and oohing and aahing. I looked and saw a perfectly round hole, like a small tunnel, where the light was coming from. There was a roof to our sky and a wall, and the opening was right at the top, right corner.
I flew through the opening, and my body was actually bigger than the hole, but I squeezed through with no slow down. I came out into a huge box canyon [that opened on the other side to a wide, deep valley], but I knew I was in Heaven. The form of everything was perfect. A couple of hundred feet below I could see pools of water [almost like puddles], and the pools had concentric rings, as if the water was mineral water. I realized it was a place to purify before going into Heaven, but I was flying to the opening of the canyon. Then I was flying close to [one of the] the sheer, vertical walls of the canyon, and something happened, and for a moment I stood on the wall. There was no gravity. I realized that in Heaven up and down had a very different meaning than on Earth, almost like it didn’t matter. Nonetheless, I got vertigo and flew off, but quickly realized as well you couldn’t get hurt in Heaven. [For brief couple of seconds I looked past the walls and saw far down below a valley with a dwellings there. It was too short a glimpse to give any kind of description other than to say it was a heavenly place.]
Then another force flew me, and I went down to the pools far below [not only 200 feet as I wrote above, but a 1000 or so], hearing now an incredibly sweet song of instruction about how to use the water: “You can splash it on your (some body part like the back). You can splash it on your (again a body part).” The song listed other parts of the body to splash it on, and finished with: “It’s safe and warm.” It was a male voice but very high pitched and very familiar. It was sung slow like a lullaby, but the song had an element to it I can’t describe, something lullabies merely try unsuccessfully to imitate. It was so patient, so safe, so conscious, so loving, so sweet. As I descended I thought the water would become deeper, as I could see the pools were very shallow, only inches deep. I was laid face down into a pool, but the water only came up to my sides, about halfway. I was so busy expecting the water to suddenly become deeper, like things shift in dreams, that I didn’t follow the instructions to splash. The scene didn’t shift, as this wasn’t the usual dream local. This was Heaven. I then woke up in bed.
Now what exactly happened between Heaven and I? “This was only a lamp to test you to see,” and “Glad was his first peer into Heaven, wide, deep murmuring heart,” muse after the event. Olympia was seen, as my muse foretold me it would be. I went to the gates of Heaven, which are quite different than they are envisioned in folklore, at least those of Olympus are, and I saw its heaven, or a heaven world, a divine house, as there are countless of them, representing all the divine ideals, separate or in combo. I didn’t meet a divine being, unless you count the song sung to me, no angel or God, but my eyes beheld the valley of the blessed, and there are scenes that immortalize the sight, and the scene I saw, whatever it worked in me, worked seeing magic.
There are houses scattered arriba, wells of worlds we have not yet conceived. The acute aware of the Ideal and its voice. An overmental thought, and overmental thought helps. To have the sun in your eyes when you’re a middle truth door. We finally grew the school that looked outside infinity and the learning things that cannot teach a rule.
Dream-like, he saw no end to the pattern commerced by miracles. Finite in stone it is in its largeness bigger than infinity, a settled from which joy took but various beyond the stars. It contains will and God. Wide open it would just be ole Luna. [this and preceding line came today] Desire to see the Self. Enough wisdom gives. How wisdom to be cultivated said forever. It expresses itself in poetry.
(from Civilization and the Art of Terror)
The material in brackets is what I remember of the dream-experience but didn’t write down at the time. Another item worthy of note that I didn’t adequately describe in my notebook is the top of what I call the human life sphere of dream, but you could also call it the top of our inner world, a lid actually. The small tunnel-like hole I went through was in the right corner of the top. As I approached the top, everything slowed down and was sort of floating, like the Pegasus, seeming to go into a very slow whirl at the top, and it was as though reality had gotten quite thin, not like it was almost space, like the world of representation was about exhausted. There is no mistaking that you are at the limits of our world. To go to the other side, the afterlife, there is also an unmistakable boundary to cross, but it’s different than this kind at the top, as there’s usually a long journey at the back of things through a kind of tunnel-like darkness, although the undersize hole you go through without any difficulty can be a feature of going there too. You have to go through something, as it’s a definite boundary once you arrive, which can even be a mirror, what I recently went through to get to Lisa on the other side, after a long travel through dark scenes that were compressed and tunnel-like. I was unsuccessful in retrieving her and sending her on her way I am so very sorry to say. I’m waiting for another chance. In vision she is now right up to me in her true form, with her long, happy tongue hanging out, her eyes bright with love, after months of her keeping her distance in vision, both in physical distance and in the distance of different dog forms, why I failed the first time up at bat: things were too complicated between us for there to be the trust. But now she knows I didn’t destroy her, and that’s all that counts. I’ll be up at bat again soon.
It’s also not spelled out in the notebook the level of lucidity I experienced to go to Heaven, and it bears mentioning. Anyone who lucid dreams regularly knows there are tiers of lucidity, many actually, the most common seeming to be knowing your dreaming but still involved in the dream, not completely lost in it, but it’s your primary reality, although you can fly and do magical things. The top tier of lucidity, what I experienced in the final dream, can be likened to the final awakening of Neo in The Matrix. You have all power, perfect power, instant power, but the dream is no longer your primary reality and easily fades, or you go to another level, out of our sphere and into the unknown. Although for some reason I don’t say it in my notebook, the cement pilings on the roof were for a bathroom, and what I did right before the roof changed form was instantly put the bathroom together with my will, also not mentioned in the notebook. A bathroom is symbolic in dream not exactly for sex, but for your control over your sexual impulse, or lack of. It can also represent the type of sex you’re having. For example, a clean and shiny bathroom would represent not being dominated by your sexual desire and not being harmful with your sexual expression, which in most cases is not having sex at all. Adult-child sex is often represented by a toilet full of shit. I’d imagine most harmful sex is. There’s even a level of lucidity where it’s not your mind that’s awake but your vital, the life-body, and you act out your desires, all the while knowing it’s a dream and using that knowledge to really eat what you’re into.
“I gotta go dog,” a line that came a couple of weeks before I actually left, giving importance to leaving Jan, which I didn’t give enough to, but it wasn’t like I was ignorant of her pain; she just didn’t register as a person that feels as deeply as we do, a common mistake we make, “fooled by mass and shape.” (from my muse poem “God Dog on My Door” on Twitter) On the appointed day I left the cabin. I slide the keys to it under the door of the big house, Thomas’, per instructions. Then, pack on my back, I walked to the main road to hitch to Heraklion. There must’ve been something in the air signaling the end of winter, because the homeless man that used Thomas’ outdoor shower, a mainland Greek, and I never bothered him about taking a shower there, was leaving Kamilari and hitching to Heraklion too to take the ferry back to the mainland. We crossed paths a couple of times, in sight of one another more times. I do not actually remember my goodbye with Jan I am ashamed to say. I do remember considering taking her with me, but the impracticalities of that pushed the thought away, the first being just her getting into, and being allowed into, the car or truck that stopped to pick me up hitching to Heraklion. And the ferry? It’s impossible to say what would’ve happened, but maybe a way would’ve been cleared if I’d at least have tried, or maybe the attempt would’ve found her a permanent home.
How it must’ve played out, she greeted me as I opened the door, from which she did not move from the time I closed that door for the night to the time I opened it in the morning, with the exception of her period in heat, and I petted her as I always did, the first thing I did every morning after doing my meditation, Savitri reading, and getting out of bed. The presence of my pack made her feel uneasy, and she became afraid I was leaving. Dogs just know when we’re leaving, like cats, and she’d probably dreamed about it. She followed me to the main road, the unease in her stomach spreading to her heart. I was acting funny. This was not a he leaves but comes back. Waiting with me for my ride, the way I looked at her, told her her fears. The petting I gave her as I gathered my pack to get into my ride, she relished it, wanting it to last forever, and then I was gone.
I can interpret now what happened at the train station in Athens after arriving there. The dog of the place, a stray who had that doggy ease like he’d been made king of the place, a very big dog, gave me a hard time, barked and barked at me, and that made me so angry I had a public outburst. He was saying, “Bye bye Miss American Pie,” err, I mean, “What about Jan? What about Jan?” and my angry outburst, the first since that directed at Irmgard, was really my sadness at leaving Jan turned into anger so as not to feel, what we use anger for, so to protect ourselves from pain. Is it out of line to tell you that I’m crying over her now?
Get with pale tortillas in her eyes. Oh no, ground choices. Oh no, whatta we gotta improve? She’s a better dog than that, independent, clean and solitary-minded. She was top of her kind, and this was evident in her eyes: recognition there. She was a cross of her kind, a hurt dog but sweetness just to look at. You’ve had this buried. Remember her. You’re forgettin’ somethin’, her way with you. It was sympathetic.
(today’s muse)
Hey Boo Boo, I’m fixin’ to leave, and I just wanted to know how you felt about it. [vision of saying this to a young boy, also the sense of how he felt about some coming war] A traveler is on the flag.
(came days before I left, alerting me to leaving and more)
I did see Irmgard one more time, at a Cretan cultural festival in Kamilari. She was sitting off to herself, obviously feeling out of place. When she saw me, her face lit up for a second, not like seeing an old friend, like seeing someone you thought too proud had been sheared, and she commented on the cut hair. The O her mouth made in its surprise at my new look said so many things. There was, however, something there that said, “Let’s let bygones be bygones, shall we?” I don’t know what made me do it, but I’ve regretted it all these years hence. I gave her the most expressive ‘don’t talk to me my vital’s still offended’ look that I could muster, and the way she immediately straightened up and stared straight ahead, closing herself off to the world, well, all’s I can say is that all that sadhana, all the spiritual vision, did not come to bear in that moment she most needed me I am so very sorry to say, sorry for so many things, but there it is.
The couple from Germany, Mechthild and Wolfram, sent me the cash I needed to get to Sicily and a line on a place to stay in Palermo, with a performer named Piaggio, who gave people a place to stay. I envisioned some place like the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company, which, as George the owner called it, was a flophouse for writers. There, I worked in the bookshop and talked shop with the other writers staying there. Here, l licked my chops, since I loved doing theater. If I’d had known it was a Catholic mission for homeless people, I might not have been so keen on staying there, as I avoided homeless shelters, but my muse had confirmed going there, and so I went, even though the name was a mistake: “A teacher would read you a part, how much you had marked off. Piaggio.” [vision of a writing explaining that the teacher reads a book to the children] In other words, I could stay however long I wanted to stay. The name was actually Biagio Conte, not Piaggio (Mechthild apologized for the mistake), and it took a whole day to sort that out. Not a whole lot of English in Palermo. I used Spanish a lot. They could understand Spanish better than I could Italian however. Their ears were more accustomed to the romance.
I spent the first night above the city in a goat grotto halfway up the mountain, and by the time I left, about two months later, I was in and out of the mayor’s office and that of the whole city government, as Biagio had given me the job of picking up paper for recycle all over official Palermo, or riding shotgun for the man in charge of that. It was a two-man gig, like the army escort wagon I served on both as the swamper and muleskinner. Here I was the swamper. When I went to leave, Biagio, through his managing priest, the man with the keys, had offered me a more permanent job, organizing a library for his Mission of Hope and Charity, where I stayed, but I was on my way to the Camino de Santiago in Spain, where my muse was pointing me next, also via the Mediterranean Sea. I didn’t interpret that above vision properly though. I could’ve stayed awhile longer and organized their library if I wanted to. Sometimes you just got the itching to go, well, a lot of times.
My first meeting with Biago, however, was a battle between worlds. He came out of his one-room trailer that he lived in in the middle of a parking lot. He walked the talk would be a good way to describe him. I was still in hippy clothes but had, as I said, cut the hair and shaved the beard, but not having shaved or gotten a haircut since, I was looking a bit wild. He asked a translator to ask if I were Catholic. I answered no, and that I practiced yoga. He positioned himself right in front of me and right in my face. We had a staring down contest that changed into a mutual understanding, a real intense eye to eye, lasting longer than was comfortable, for both of us, and then he told the translator I could stay in the mission. I could hear everyone present breathe a sigh of relief, and I don’t know if it was because he let me stay, or because he didn’t denounce me as a devil. Uh, well, how about you?
Stairway to Heaven had been tapasya. Something his nerves just can’t get over: we will still treat you like a puppy. Holds still the branding. Douglas! the branding sucks.
You see my guitar? It’s time for me to leave, no letter, no fun, no hun. The Atlantic letter crashed, saving the dream for another night. You’ve got that song now, and an epic poem does it right.
We landed in Turkey. If you’ll excuse me some confusion. I think we went to Guanajuato. You mean Dr. Spock? Tony Warrant aren’t and I gave them a gift, possibly on the table here.
Oh you puppy dog. Luna has been in a life and death struggle. Look, divine work is a costly enterprise. Your dog dies. Nobody believes you. Annihilate you, even the Darkness tries. It’s a constant battle, struggle. Things go wrong all over the place. Everything is attacked, even your blue suede shoes.
Let’s get on with this show. Go with me to national examine our heart. You know the U.S. needs to/tries. [words spoken simultaneously] Come on baby light my fire. [heard sung by The Doors] I’m gonna go out and burn the school out, confront the science that runs our show. We’re gonna get out of here, slow, like people realizin’ they’re wrong, like people realizin’ life has to change. Spiritual reality becomes reality for our face, hands, and feet. We see the larger in the smaller. We come to terms with ourselves, like people know they’re missin’ out on reality.
Shotgun! That’s what you call it, riding shotgun this little swamper passing and review. I’m bringin’ in the change, symbolically, and it has a top of its own I just talk about.
Take control society in your arms, without killin’ anybody or causin’ chaos in the streets. You just take on sadhana yourself. You just change what points you can as you meet the whole. No rambunctious change. The kind that sees reality and doesn’t spit on those who don’t, or even grabs them by the hair, or preaches to them till they’re blue in the face.
I feel a hand in my dreams. Let Captain Underpants alone. Where’d they go? [vision sequence of a group of British or New York upper crust-type people chasing me into the subway and then coming out of a subway entrance and onto the sidewalk marked on their faces and clothes, all in a tight group, looking for me but having lost the trail] You will want: listen Alex, do tell me…— an interviewer speaks. No but tah, you can read my writings. We are killing each other softer than good and evil. All the interviewer wants is his hillbilly fare. Get out of here.
Now let’s transpose goodbye where Luna’s concerned. Oh Luna, [heard sung by the Archies to the tune of and followed by the music from the song “Sugar, Sugar” that du du dunt tu dunt tu that comes after “Sugar” and “Ah honey, honey,”] oh Luna, you’re back breathin’ sunlight. Your illness put you in touch with God. We’ve earned being together, and here we are.
Core values I considered a long, long time. A family count. All kinds of field play that meet them in the world, as long as they got the airport. Douglas and I have a family. We don’t meet each other gay. We sit together in soul.
Estación Catorce, Mexico, 1999
Douglas and I, Jeff’s bedroom, a mutual friend, Houston, Texas, 1999
The family we stayed with in Lima, Peru after a Vipassana there, 2000
About to enter the Bolivian Amazon by boat with our Chilean friends, 2001
Today, our dream group and sadhana circle. That’s Mithun on the left, Nitish center. Photo by Jana
I think we’re gonna turn upside down being human. You got that racecar? It’s beyond reach. We have to be together first. I’ve art Auroville to spinach this along with them. They kicked me out you know. That was a delivery problem. I didn’t know what I was deliverin’. You can’t do that, harm people. I just left that place. Auroville just keeps that in its craw.
Inmates of national kill zone the whole damn country. It’s comin’ to a theater near you. Well y’all, what happened? He’s got a gun! And you think this is city hall? Damage control Steven. I wouldn’t just hate yah. I can get away with it, usin’ you as my scapegoat, being unkind to you. I don’t ever have to speak to you again. You’re a pedophile.
And he’s liberal, a gay man. Someone dropped the gun. I can’t tell you how glad I am. I’ve got my brother back. Would that were true. I love you Steven.
You see the problem. Hatred, you know? You’d link the pedophile as the common denominator. The Capitol riots, well low and behold, those were pedophiles in the center of their conspiracy. How many pedophiles? They’re too disgusting to know. At least as many as homosexuals. That means? That’s millions. You’re not an isolated incident. Now put that hatred in the population. Every ground zero goes there.
Come on people, open your eyes on reality. How many people hate the pedophile? You mean somebody don’t? We’ve done this before, centered on a scapegoat in society, but I can’t reference history. It’s overused. Why did the Nazis center on Jews? Stop them. Nobody wants to say stop myself. How many people hate each other, or hate skinheads, the Republican Party, Jews, liberal Democrats, gun totters, the Moslem immigrant, the person that honks their horn? Dad, can you lose out on games too? Hate everybody in it against you.
Hatred is our first response team. Makes you wanna go along with it that pedophile hate in your craw. Oh my God, shows us us. Makes you want to hate everybody that in your craw so important, so main flavor. You know what to do. Take the hatred out of the picture. I think you’ve met her. You just let her get her better. I won’t have a way to spit till this afternoon. Well honey, lighten up. I go to the doctor. The biscuits are almost gone, you know?
Everybody has a soul, that one common thing that makes us not lose God’s grace. You’ll get used to it if you turn off some of those programs, take off those headphones, get out of your cell phone, and actually meet it. You’re not gonna do it until you have to. [vision of a man standing in a playground and a piece of play equipment like a seesaw or something suddenly hitting him in the rear end without warning, twice] You alright? The whole thing was swampted by the end of the line. It’s just a specter, but what the hell. Hello?
Thunder crashes as you read it. There’s no goin’ back. Extraordinary they fired eternity. You played me down— Steven’s outburst. It was mad, the whole book, and we’ll see about getting bones for dogs of the future. They also need work weeks.
They’re fearful. We have a big carwash. Would you mind me using my shorts? Skinny dipping? With a light on. It went to the top of the town. It was prancing into town brain swipes. Frank you have filters. You’re gonna run, you’re gonna show, ‘cause I can’t use the green to explain depth to you. I have a whole lot to say. Yeah I can believe that.
Time to go. Grab those hills under the sun now. It was such a bad company. You putted winter of truth. And I’m learning, and I’m taking it in in my notebook how it reach the sky the pedophile paper. Talk about journaling, scrapping around sir.
You running? Lisa. I’m gettin’ there baby. Don’t go to the wild from that darkness. I’m on my way baby.
That explains it. I’m gettin’ to you, aren’t I? I’ll be there in the morning. For now pop gun. How it turns out: this is the scoop on humanity. It’s all I can do to write it down. Baby don’t hurt me. [heard sung by Haddaway] This is the rhythm of the night. [heard sung by Corona] You wish. Get up, come to the door, and let me in. [vision of a photo of Luna on the bed belly up] Baby it’s cold outside. [heard sung, female voice] You groovin’? Let me in.
Luna, 7 months
I’m out here holdin’ oranges, one solitary man facin’ the country. This is askew. One person in their underwear facing the country. Well at least I’m there. Hear me town. I’ve seen you warthog. Tapasya, you dig? I’m in the same delivery of the soul as you, the count, India speaks.
I’m a believer if I tried. [heard sung by the Monkees] I need you to open the door. I need you to return the key— you’re not listenin’ to me—, the key to the holy door: there’s a person asking entrance.
Put ‘im on the ground. The higher parts with my child is my body. Why to understand: daddy? [Nitish’s voice] Miss Ran So, Miss Ran So, [vision of a man in cowboy hat giving a piano lesson to a little boy, they sitting side by side on the piano bench] you’re a cradle of civilization.
The crime below the city, you can’t take it out. It has to be addressed we don’t get there from here: the punishment of society. You can’t conquer people. They destroy. I don’t think we get here this century. We can’t even see this. Every BBC will have a cow. It’s not branded yet: hey, we evolve. Examine the moment and spit it out. Ain’t no higher now. [heard sung by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell]
Put the trailer. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We have an inner healing process that takes over. You see mine. It’s so expensive. At this point in the narrative Luna kissed me. Lick, lick, lick, lick, wild-eyed and forceful. Kiss me quick my lips are hot. No Luna, no. Puppies. We would look at tomorrow.
Take him home, everyone will have his daemon home, the talking muse. Where do you take this? Open the inner consciousness. That means muse not where you meet the world. It’s means opening the inner consciousness.
Take reality to that location: everybody’s in there with you; you’re in the consciousness of others. They share that with you where you dream. I am gettin’ this across?
We effect each other’s consciousness with our thoughts and feelings. Go deeper, the consciousness is ours. We are each one of us us. I don’t expect you to see this. This takes experiential seeing.
It’s all over the place. It’s in school shootings. He’s got a gun because you do. It’s the will of everybody, the hatred that makes him does it.
Maybe I’m wrong. Did I get something wrong? The bear eats people. That has to be stopped. Arrest the individual and put him in an orphanage, a holding pattern, to come to grips with themselves. Your ill will will not put them there. Focus all your energy into getting this out of the population: the hatred for anybody, no matter what you are. We climb back to the parents: a whole nation of inner consciousness reading the riot act to one another. Impact, see?
Now the smorgasbord: open the awareness of yourself in inner consciousness studies. Can you see that road? Bye, bye, drove my Chevy to the levee. [heard sung, voice of Don McLean] Keep goin’. You’ll get there. Take off of my blue suede shoes. [Heard sung, voice of Elvis Presley] Just be lined up to be stepped on. Inner work is excruciating, and no one wants you to do it, and it’s not familiar to anyone. You have a lifelong. Get after it.
Goofy was Robbie prefer, show what you think your lines are. We need introspection gets it done. Could you crowd out attention?
A military play-paper, we gorgeous this out drives, and I’m showin’ yah one. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? Domestic dog, you hear their parade? They lick the world right where it counts, and they are unfathomably world.
Now you see we are the untold truth behind, leavin’ more room for that puppy. Sometimes it (There are Steves around you. Cleaves just called.) inspires a puppy universe yah hear me tell it, like doctors and stuff. Now don’t stumble in their blue brown eyes. You wouldn’t give the them God’s place. They’re not the center of the universe.
People’s feelings may change, but the basic feeling is the puppy. Gonna make a new toy. Push the psychic being to the front. You’ve met the personality of the soul, the sweetness of a puppy. It heals all deranged. It comes to the surface who you are in soul. It’s the leader of the life. It’s got puppy eyes and smells you like a puppy, to put the world in place. Not there over here it will tell you. It knows the true path, the right movement. A small child you’d find it in your dreams. Now it grows up, figures in your dreams a counselor, if you’ve established a pattern of contact. Hear it speak?
It’s broad and arm, never anger, never impatient, only healing, condemns not, judges not. You can see that Jesus wore this on his sleeve. I’m sorry if that’s obscured by the Bible. How do we take this to Earth? In a puppy dog smile, so warm to a little boy. She’s hardcore on her task, is around a grand movement like child’s play. She practices God in her courts. This is her realm, the knowing of God. It’s all around her, her big wide look upon the world. You’re seein’ it now.
Great, isn’t it, amazingly kind, although you deal with me better than I deal with you. I don’t always listen to my psychic. Everyone out of those. [vision of a little boy, not Nitish, covering Luna’s snout with dish soap bubbles as she’s sitting on the bed on her haunches, and then I see he’s covered also her back legs up to her hocks] That’s a wrong movement. This is the delivery of the soul. It’s how we get to time. It’s how we get to where existence is [vision of two half-grown Rottweiler puppies, Luna’s size, sitting on their haunches looking at me, one on top of the cabinet for the inverter in my room and the other in front of it on the floor] the right can of beans.
Back to work. Get some sleep. Sat by the great Earth and just lollygagging. [vision of looking through the muse notebook from the cabin to find lines that told me to get out of bed in the mornings, which came often, to use as examples here] Sometimes I think you are Venom. Up all night with a diarrhea dog and muse, what is a body to do? Great Luna said, now I’ll get some sleep. Go Lucy. There’s too many dogs in this bed. What house is that? The engine room of let’s make room for Earth. Get maybe and three over it. Now get to work. Aum, silence [vision of the word AUM all in caps] in your head, in your head. [heard sung by the Cranberries]
How did dream shift occur? You wrote them down. Hear that Nikos Kazantzakis? You’d really try to go over every detail, involved all night long. That’s how you held your hand up to give your dream to the dream group. Expensive, ain’t it? You just have so much to show. Embarrassing, isn’t it? Great dream, huh? Let us have the ring. A large donut owner stumble in the breakfast. We followed their moves. What it is? Why sex with candy of course. It was so comfortable, your hand involved in your daughter’s vagina. Can add that to the work I’m looking at with you guys. Tired of this job? Supposed to demonize you. That’s dream group all looking at you for dream content. Watch here comes the face, my favorite part: a regular daddy non-pedophile mother fucker.
It’s like in the Free Fire beginning, you’re slapping her in the face. Is the life in the liberty’s tech? Write the long letter. Anything on stilts, which one plays confidence and makes sure it’s a lower? That’s certainly Minecraft. That was an unauthorized builder. Learnin’ how to dream, playin’ Free Fire stops that, any Free Fire, any game at all you get addicted to online.
Vision I was in outdoor sports— dream maker. That’s where you volley ball, play tennis with your magnet, football the hell out of the crowd, baseball diamond. You even swim with everybody in the world, and you ride horses with your power, all along the shores of time. Well Donny you’re battin’ a hundred. I don’t see you doin’ sports. We interrupt this preaching program to put Donny on the spot. Run exercise, you glob of belly. I’ve just told the dream group that, you dream group belly.
Now for some disease, that’s Minecraft. Nitish forgot his dreams again. He’s in a video game bubble. He’s in trouble. Can you see this kids? It’s out of order, your imagination sequence, for where you put your imagination is in hell. A vampire a video game. I don’t understand developers. They know oh well it’s addicting. How long has it been that wasn’t a manipulating tool to use children, our young people? Alright hypocrites, charge scapegoats with the behavior of the whole. Hate that pedophile. It’s simple. What’s the first thing that pops into your head? Take a look at yourself. Examine your own lives.
You generally lead questions. I’ve forgotten the Earth’s center. It’s a being unto itself. We 𝝅 its program. Our thoughts make up its work. It wants to achieve stardom. It’s always lonely out in space. Planetary eyes that see the whole are at a loss for its purpose. It’s an adolescent M.A.S.H. You see the disease?
Every animal on the planet adolescence its way along. No one knows its purpose. We are the thoughts of man, and finally it’s put on eyes that can see itself. What comes next, the chicken and the egg? It puts on thoughts that can see itself, obviously a rolling splendor. Touch that down, and you will come to regret it. Every agent of chaos has a grace period they mistake for license, and you see Putin ignoring his. What are you talking about stupid? Just watch him fall.
The engines of the Earth are not in harmony. This is the great world being’s task: hum the world along its course smoothly. We figure in that the Captain Kirk of the program, the engine room. This is all out of whack, and if you’re a whacker, business to shut you down.
Okay a person abusing a child is a whacker. Are you sure you know Heaven? There are ovens that work right on the edge of the moon. You last alone in there an understanding made Earth. You’ve been picked up and healed as the very thing that heals you touches you: you’ve got this disease. I’m talking about a behavioral program. You’re taken by degrees. The healing is a wide, harmonious moon made real by the Earth. Therapy in the very center of the Earth put you there. That’s the salt of the Earth.
Anyway, we’re family. The Earth being is where we dwell, the principle of its thoughts. Terrible Satan at his task, but he can’t stop magnificent Earth. Is that our task? You know exactly what it is: help her goin’.
Not wondering over Dante’s own doubts and fears that I am he. [line came on Crete] Let’s look through the gloom. It’s an idea. How skinny. Aren’t you human? Get past the noise. That’s why people are gonna rise up. Everybody needs to be recognized as being human. It’s Donny. It’s the Moslem immigrant. It’s even ISIS and all the Putins in the world. It’s the human being. How sinister is that? It’s even Donald Trump.
Get out of it impossible. The spaces between our lives made wonderfully whole, space this apart a world union, a food bank we’ve finally found. Look on your troubles. Get this choice. We are human beings, every last one of us. That’s the family we are before any other. There will be another: oneness reach.
But for now, let’s take it noble. Let’s start with the human being and his dog, an addition noble, the price of a dog. Donny you artfink. You give us ideas to register in our minds. I certainly capture one. And then I just hope he messes up. Not if humanity was your keeper.
A child I thought he was after. Look, you don’t have to be so defensive or whatever. I’m after every human being, that direction. Can you look please from the field? Clothes, their clothes— fortunately you have your clothes on. It’s a vehicle for your day; it’s a metaphor being called out: image is given our shape all over the world. That’s not to be famous or on the fucking news. We are the world you see. Now hurry up and get there skinny human being.
Dante looks up from his paper and smiles— we’re gonna get there, we’re gonna get there. Now we’re gonna find somethin’. We’re gonna find out. We are people properly tuned. You hear that cat and dog? They’re our love bucket. What’s with this jaw jackin’ thing? It’s got time on it. Hearin’ it over and over see.
At this point in the narrative the biscuits stop. The personal growth process towards wholeness and healing, it’s there in a neighborhood near you. What’s you gotta do to get there: be sincere, and you’ll find a way. Then why did you fail? Oh my God my stuckness. We can only see through his darkness. We can’t change it. Okay then why even go to school? It’s a representative change, it’s gonna take a long time. You have the world to put together.
Study your dreams. Everybody begins there. You need to see interpretation. The dream show host our dream group. We’ll be giving a podcast to the public along about now. Wait and see. It’s comin’ you just leave us alone. Bye, bye Miss American pie. [heard sung by Don McLean] And you think I’m singin’? What would you do if everybody wanted to shoot you?
Well that’s the story. You’ve heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Goodnight kids. We’ll see yah in the mornin’. She was singin’ bye, bye Miss American pie. [heard sung ibid] Am I dead?
The world is on opening for Jan. We see her there in smiles comin’ up. Damn, I missed it. I think our servant noticed. Among kings that’s the level I’m at. Finally I finished this model.
Surprise! One bomb with a mission. You can refuse from the book. It’s here in text. I think that’s it. Forgot on thing. We’re gonna give you that name: get down to business. Well don’t get socked it knocks. Open the door. There must be giants, not a harm but change the world. All around the world they need this gas in their car. I wanna say thanks to the people who enjoyed it. Okay, it’s finished.
On the Camino in Spain, between Santiago and Negreira, on the way to Finisterre, July 1, 2003
The sleep of humanity, that’s what we are now, and I show you again. This next part’s from the hill we wake ourselves by. It’s a long ways off, our awakening.
You’re not gonna do it in a day. Take an idea meet ‘im at the door. It just grows and grows. Pretty soon you can see it for yourself. It’s all about reality, and I share this one with you.
We do not come from common ground in our emotions and thoughts, in our bodily sensations. They arise differently for each of us, and the wearer determines their use. Cultures collide along these lines.
We just know in our core we are one. That’s the matrix reality, our hanger by the sea. Come on people now smile on your brother, [heard sung, voice of The Youngbloods] and he’s a little boy tailspin. My God he’s a pedophile.
Get your goat? I don’t think you know how to deal with this. You’re just programmed to. A beautiful little boy in my lap, you’re encouraged to scream. Would if that little boy’s safe? Oh my God the lessons in humanity. Let’s go.
I will hunt you down and kill you. You don’t have time for that. Let me, let me show you the whole aim of life, will yah? Do you think it’s to drink that beer? We have to be masters of our circle. I’m not talkin’ other people. We have to be masters of ourselves.
That’s in the living room when oneness, its spears and aims, has idea’d to ourself. You think I’m the Joker. I overhaul your reason with specific examples of magic in this text. You game?
Can I show you Rumi the distraction? Where did he take your circle? Fords fullness in life. Is an example of God. We don’t get farther than this. Does it transform your personality, shake the world out from under your feet? It’s movement is slow and nice. I’m on the edge of the world. Can you sit there?
Control man, that’s right there the hidden king. I exceed boundaries, take you on a journey towards yourself. Will you rule me out? I exceed man. Have you seen the system rise? Is that the only cover of yourself, a person behind a name? Can I talk about tomorrow? We’re gonna rise beyond this ship. We’re going to jump out the moon, in every way exceed the Gods.
This can be seen. This can be rained on. Let’s just have some tea. I can’t make it clear yet. I can only say what I saw. I’m here to tell yah I’m here to transform the world. Let’s start with the joy of sex. Turning our head clear on sex, that’s the inward movement. Why don’t you give thanks? It’s the dangerous animal.
I’ve given you topics to look at. I’ve never said it was going to be easy. The hardest hit surprises, example the Earth. Everybody hear that?
Sufi mystic poetry— there’s this facility in Oklahoma I had to admit to. It’s got grand designs on poetry. Who had the orange? Is that most poets? Inner hearing was a factor in some. Get my lawyer. I may have a suggestion: don’t kill people; children, I think they’re in its very bottom— the cover letter was just awful. It didn’t ride the tide. We broke out in a sweat doing it. Congratulations, the archeological findings survey, one of the guys have attacked this date, one of the guys who make rules.
You line a life story, you always said no for reading to begin. What is it? They’re there in waste in there. She’s taken out. Nice lady, these bags are delicious. I’ll ask for something yesterday. I go there. Let me take you, it’s my surprise.
Have that dress on? Ancient city Festos, [vision of an old man’s wet, soapy head coming up out of a wooden barrel full of water, the kind from days of old, as though he’d been taking a bath in it] get at it with a thought of ‘em pie, mic thoughts on towards spiritual origins. Who ate the elevator up? The people the Earth forgot. These were Minoans in their swaddling clothes. Wow, we’re almost to the birth of the clan.
Mt. Olympus, they were here before there, the Gods whose names you know. They came from a seer’s hut bringing down the golden people. There was no timelessness there. No one watched it survive, the effort he brought down. No one even knows his name. The Gods made contact with Earth here, the Zeus Parthenon.
Do we have ‘em? The spiritual origins of Greek in Hellas started on Crete. We’re begged to be tied. You sure touch in funny places. That’s the mild roof, the right family: we were one. It didn’t last. The Minoans brought it to a standstill. They lost it, and we have Minoans today. We see them Cretans today.
The years of the bathroom contradicts God’s singing, doesn’t it? And we’re all nice and warm. Can you see yourself in the mirror? Contradicts God’s ice cream, doesn’t it? Now emerge on faith. Become God’s right hand man or woman. Become a receiver of the items of God. Can you do it? A secret oneness would make this accessible to everyone. Why can’t you pull it out?
Alright I’m faulty. An excessive monarch of issues has branded my fault the worst among my kind, but in reality, among the throes of my kind, not being an open receptacle of the availability of God in man might be the greater fault among us. A social construct or reality? I’m for a big one. Ta-da!
And they gonna miss ‘im when he walks the streets no more. Baiting reality. Like in town, you don’t know the submarine. He’s there all around you in his broad-fingered humanity. Are you helpin’?
Let’s see his seasons in the sun. Two more witnesses please. Poems dying at your feet, essential dying, what makes his name loud enough to pronounce. I saw a bomb. It’s only words that explode you meaningfully.
Still empty and could be dead where he meets you public face. What can I do but draw lines? And here we have them on Crete. He surpassed the Earth. He went all the way to Heaven. That’s the line of this Crete.
He’s sadder feelings. No more stops. I throw him to you worth. Well, swing it. I’m gonna make this dream come true: that I’m every bit as worth as you. Even success is part of the dog’s story. Here’s where I feel oneness too: in the heart that beats oneness.
(today’s muse)
The stories we tell, do they make us real? I am one in a huge crowd, and just about everything I tell people about myself is to make me sound different, stand out, be this thing apart I want you to see, but the thing is: you’re doing the same thing. It’s all over the net. The net, see human? The spiritual origins of this letter, as I am writing this to you, bid me to continue, but I’d rather just play with my puppy. (You, sir, have a dirty mind.) I can’t tell you what I want to tell you, and I’m sorry. It’s not for lack of trying. To capture your attention see me, to entertain you via me, to teach you hear me, to say fuck you by me, I would not want those things to be what I’m doing.
What else is there? Can I reach you? Look we got this world, and it’s not the ticket, is it? My God the feelings, sometimes I think the world will end, and in a big crash in my life, sometimes I think it already has. And sometimes I doubt God will help me. I know it’s the same with you. Is there a place in it we can meet and not value our opinions and beliefs more than we value one another? That’s where I want to take you. Can I?
It is unsettling that I cannot even tell this story as it happened, unsettling because you just can’t do it, whoever you are, even a science-minded historian, and that’s say blow by blow what exactly has happened with us here on this planet. Our memories cannot do it. In any story you’re just getting a close relation, sometimes awfully damn close, but not the story itself. Reading my notebooks more thoroughly, I saw that I’d begun reading a book, The5th Child by Doris Lessing, before I decided to be Irmgard’s handyman, which meant that I visited her house as part of the decision making process, because I know that book was in her library. Oh the facts are still straight: I met her at the bar Kreta in Matala, the village I lived above on a mountain outside a cave, and she took me home, and I didn’t look behind me as we drove away, unlike foolish Orpheus, but look at what I forgot, a whole episode: going to visit her house before going to live there so we could feel each other out. I remember it now, and it’s almost scary how easily it got forgotten, and the story got recorded as though it happened this way, but in fact it happened that way. A small thing you say, just a little incident, but that’s human history. One would ask, of course, am I being Orpheus now?
I was dying in a war no problem— because that was the way they grew up. For the baby I feel the murderer too. Why do you genes my suffering? When in your grandfather your genes were abused. Dream of being at nature-bottom’s secret: gene mother’s a baby. For the murderer I feel her violence too. [a line today added]
(from Civilization and the Art of Terror)
“Had no beauty,” and “There was no love. That was the problem,” my muse in reference to Lessing’s book, the commentary it gave on it, although the above formation of lines came partly in answer to the a major theme in the book, and that is a very cruel and violent boy being born that way. The book is very convincing, like the 50’s film The Bad Seed, where the ‘monster’ is a little girl, although not an ugly goblin-like creature Lessing describes in her book. Both are works of fiction I must emphasize. I don’t dispute that a child can be a throwback, have some Neanderthal features and characteristics, and I myself have taken care of one such man, in Garberville, Nurchia Silencio’s (my mentor there) 40 some odd year old son, but he wasn’t mean and violent, as he’d been raised with a lot of love and attention. He was, however, sexually attracted to children, and you wonder if that was because of his very low intelligence and maturity level of a five-year-old or because someone played with his penis as an infant or toddler, not something we are able to answer, but the whole thing made me wonder at the time, as well as with things my muse has said over the years, in that aforementioned epic The Literary Eye for example, that maybe in Neanderthals (and in cavemen too) pedophilia was the norm. At any rate, we are a long way from understanding the nature/nurture debate in regards to where someone’s violence comes from, or their social deviancy, but my muse gives a bright hint.
These thoughts highlighted my move and mood from cave-side to modern day apartment, my change of venue from sea-side Maltala to a whole E-span away, into the countryside of the village of Kamilari (10 kilometers in distance). I didn’t cry. I was on a roll. I was used to such thoughts highlighting my life. It’s the background, as I’ve said, of my muse, of this adventure traveling too, and that’s processing pedophilia, or, how it manifests in me, as pederasty, boy love. It wasn’t spiritual achievement I was after on the spiritual path, although of course I want that. This whole thing started on an acid trip on the aforementioned Spyrock Mountain in 1988, when I embarked upon what I then called the personal growth process towards wholeness and healing, in other words, being healed of pedophilia. The healing effects of LSD on such unwieldy social disorders, I don’t think they’ve been adequately explored. That back story I tell in The Literary Eye. Now on with this story.
As I was being kicked out of Forte Prenestino in Rome, how I started this story remember, the following muse came:
Challenged in the mighty laughter of its laugh. When the mean beer drinks philosophy qué pasó? You can leave here and have an apartment to stay. Eagles broke the hours on golden wings. As creatures have their key whether a Nazi guru needs to meet more.
If you hope to surrender to My entrega. Living presence of a deity, their particular God. The change near him. One will come eventually. Music of rebellion: do you 51? [if you remember , 51’s the fine you paid in Rome for riding free on the city bus, and you’d also think about an off limits area too; it’s an odd number for a fine, like I said]
Among other things, it’s prevision about the apartment I will be moving into here on Crete, where I’m at now in the story, but, typical of muse and dream, it’s showing the inner state of the thing, the psychological perspective. On the surface I’m being reassured that I can leave the Forte and have an apartment, how I interpreted it at the time, and with a sigh of relief, but, although it was often obvious the lines of muse in a formation (one listening) were connected, and that that connection sometimes extended to subsequent formations, i.e., the next time I lay down into the muse, as do these lines above, I hadn’t yet realized the way it worked, how it was trying to write poems and give me status (of my present situation), two different things, but which sometimes do overlap. I thought it was mostly just random lines that I could try and put together and make something out of, like I did with the dual titled The Inspired Word or Civilization and the Art of Terror, but the majority of lines were just gist for the mill (not), things for my information and enlightenment but nothing more.
The lines above are for you too, came to include in this story, back 20 years ago, or that’s how I interpret what just happened. Here at my desk writing now, I had my notebook open at a certain spot, the muse I was going to begin this part with, right on Irmgard’s spot to be specific, and you’ll understand presently, but I spilled coffee on my notebook and had to rush to Douglas to copy the page before I lost it to the seeping wet, as has happened in the past. When I returned and read the page I happened to have it opened to, which obviously wasn’t Irmgard’s spot, it had those above lines on it. You can see a random pattern here if you want, as it’s not convincing to a skeptic that my muse intended this 20 years ago, and all the impossible math that entails, that coffee spill included, but you’ll still find the interpretation of the lines not only interesting but also pertinent to the conversation, at the very least.
If you remember, it’s my year of 41, and I’m not manifesting my desire for boys, not even fantasizing about it, although in time it was longer than being at that age. With the hubris of the often talked to by the Gods, well, if not by their very mouths then by their agency, I thought it was finished, and I’d go from here to eternity a cured man. It bothered me that my muse continued to suggest it might not be over, as it does here (and in many other places, for example: “Is it we are camped to prepare us for black sheep?”), and that not only might it not be over, but the worst could come again, the anal rape of a little boy. Interpreting my muse here and in other places on this theme throughout my notebooks, a Nazi guru is a man who anally raped a little boy before the rise of Nazism, what helped to give rise to it to begin with, and the mean beer is boy rape specifically, meanness to little children in general, and it’s a theme in my muse, as I’ve said, a running thread, which is that Nazi cruelty came from, at bottom, the anal rape of boys in German speaking society, not all boys or even most, but just enough boys to be seeds of the whole cruel thing, and when you meet that with philosophy you can see what happened.
There are other things that it met it with, mean things also, but there is one thing that’s not mentioned in the muse above (but is elsewhere), and which isn’t mean in itself but that previews the shock of water, opens a child to more than the material and not only to angels, opens one to demons primarily, and that’s infant orgasm, Hitler’s ticket to ride, and I imagine other key players. (It’s a double-edged sword extraordinarily difficult to use the right side of, but you see me doing it.) This isn’t in the history books yet, but I do have the burning butt hurt cause of Nazis cruelty on one of my blogs in a short story (The Capture of a Killer) and the ‘mommy-person are you eating me alive?’ (infant orgasm) in a poem Facebook deleted my whole education page because of (because of the photo of Hitler—I don’t think Facebook reads poetry). There is, of course, no way to prove that sodomizing young boys was prevalent in pre-Nazi German speaking society, or that Hitler and other Nazis suffered the pleasure of infant orgasm, but you are hearing it was and seeing they did by the all-seeing divine eye, the sight of my muse (this salt and pepper is sprinkled throughout my notebooks), and you can take that divine sight and multiply it with the seer poet and see if you have some eye on the truth of things, on what’s going on. Do I show and tell well? What is my agenda? Is this the help of humanity?
So, I could leave the behind of boys behind, and we can assume their frontal parts too, and stay in an apartment, something smaller and a bit more temporary to live in than a house, where I would need to surrender to the delivery of my particular God, and where the change was near, something I only understood at the time as a cure, not an integration and harmonization, a taking out of the harm, what the whole apartment 41 was about. Undergoing that moratorium, there was hope that I wouldn’t fall again. The key to that was these eagle-seeings, my muse. An eagle sees all down below from a great height you know. It’s all in the book. At any rate, the change would one day come, despite the rebellion, even if I did fall. At the very least, the stay in the apartment challenged the horrible, ugly thing, in the very bowels of its laughter at us, and please know that we are the entertainment of monsters, who goad us to do evil so they can laugh at us and punish us so to laugh at us more. They eat our suffering. I am sorry for dragging you through all this material and non, but if we don’t talk about it frank and forthright, we’ll never get to the bottom of it so to integrate and harmonize it, so to heal it.
Dark closet interests me only. What was in your mouth? You did it, telescope 488. [vision of being in a wheelchair and forcing myself to focus and concentrate. As I heard and felt a big release of air I was successful. Someone was encouraging me] Drawn on me and all these people drawn on me. [vision of many people with their six shooters drawn on me because of sex with children] The best spring of sprouting, helplessly their lives a heart-wooden pain. One minute I’m discouraged and the next minute I am. Excuse me [a name I lost], I’ve got a date on my writings. [vision of removing a large dog’s paw off of the bag that contained my writings] And a date should be right over our dimensions right about now. [vision of UFO in the form of a lone, curving line of white billowous clouds high in the daytime sky, not directly overhead but seemingly conscious of us on the ground looking at it]
(a muse formation that came upon my arrival in Paris, where I was before Rome, another random opening of my notebook)
Now onto Irmgard’s spot. The first line of muse I got regarding her was, “On the spot, which is her spot denied,” and that refers to spirituality; she was scientific materialist. The line, which is prevision, showed me I would rub her the wrong way from the very first, by reminding her of the very thing she was in the most denial of. Here are the lines, scattered among many formations of muse (individual listenings), that talk about Irmgard, not all of them, but enough to get a picture of her and our relationship:
And good gardening is simply just knowing that you are here.
Her indomitable spirit and self-love.
She’s very conscientious about herself, and if people want to share her soul… I find when I much look at myself, it preserved a stage in the evolution. [as though she’s talking to herself] Notable voice that I know little of.
He came near her like this: as soon as I go down I murder, [voice of Irmgard this line] I disdain.
It would take her a little while to cause harm.
That’s the woman I was telling you about. [vision of scrubbing a shit stain out of Irmgard’s panties] That’s so speaking disgusting.
It’s too much for her. She was emotionally ordering him to reprive the piano. Head setting syndrome.
I brought the world to you, and you didn’t like it. A ruler in your handyman. I belong to her. I’m free, so is Supermind, a dual harbor. The arm fades. A clarn in suicide’s book.
A memory. [vision of giving Irmgard a copy of the Atlantic letter, as if to say, see I was writing something important, and you wanted me to wait on you]
Do all this. [Irmgard telling me this] Okay, I’ll work on it. And make you work out of some hidden thing.
Can you work five hours? [vision of Irmgard working hard in the garden with an urgent sense things must be done now, not because she wanted to do them, but because she had to, but she had no strength to do them herself. This shows me she doesn’t ask me to do things just to be absurd; she really thinks it’s a great need]
Thank you for living here. [vision of Irmgard standing in her front door and telling me this]
She had been a scientist in London and also an East German spy, and if you lived with her, you wouldn’t doubt her story, but of course I can’t prove it. We did have some interesting conversations. And we fought. I didn’t fully realize that, after months of living outside of human circles, suddenly being thrust into a circle of two, and the one on one that entails, would be more than I could handle. There ensued what occurs between two people who are both strong characters, and they are working or living together: a battle over who’s the bigger who. I saw this inevitability and really tried just to be her handyman, do her bidding, but she alternated between being the kind of older person you listened to, because they were both interesting and conscious of you, and a sophisticated version of my step-mother, and ain’t it funny how we keep coming back to those people, and she would sometimes taunt me and rub my nose in my servitude to her, and ain’t it just like us that’s what I remember more, almost the exact words: “You’re nothing but a robot, can’t do this, can’t do that, not even have a glass of wine, and you think you’re being spiritual. Go get the rake. The yard looks terrible,” Irmgard sitting at her table sipping wine and smoking cigarettes and talking to me standing in the doorway of her house awaiting my next task. Not yet a spiritually enlightened being, I just couldn’t take it.
As I explained when I began this story, I was on a purity kick, and not only wasn’t having sex or eating any kind of meat, including eggs, but I wasn’t drinking, smoking, or taking anything either, that got me drunk or high that is, and that I wasn’t on it to be a good person but to keep my consciousness as pure as possible, not waste any subtle life force, what you spill in vital indulgences (indulging the emotions and life desires), what you need to have spiral dreams and overhead experience, things I’ve not expounded upon in this story, not yet, but things more important to me than the muse. We can argue about the drawbacks/benefits of the hallucinogens on such, but an avid pot smoker, it was time for me to face the spiritual path without the crutch and false sense of spiritual feeling grass gives. Ganja also opens the door for the Hostile Powers to come in, and when you’re trying keep from doing what they want you to do, you need to keep that door shut. The purity kick was a experiment, not the lines my nature drew, but to all that met me then, it was a holier than thou. I should have had a glass of wine with Irmgard, had that sip of wine Mechthild tested me with, why she and Wolfram turned on me later, when I was in Palermo, Sicily; I was nothing more than a fanatic, who couldn’t even write poetry, to hear her tell it. That drink of wine she tried to convince me to have, “just one little drink”, was the test. I remember trying to explain to her that with even a little sip the consciousness would fall. I now feel other people are more important than a little slip in your consciousness, and I also like to get slightly drunk sometimes and feel my consciousness explore the world that way. Pot however, one single hit, sends me into the pit of the Void, and I’m hanging onto the world with all my fingers and toes, trying to tell myself it’s just an experience of infinity in the finite. Sometimes I believe it and calm down; others no, and so pot and me have mostly parted ways. Sex? “My teacher said no sex, and I’m interested in no sex,” (my muse on Crete). Meat? Why don’t you just mind your own business?
Pulling out all the stops of old emerald to be like deity. And I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down, and I’m a diamond in the rough. Can you argue with this? Wow, I’m high— and fish drink water. They lost their cookies in the sink. I wouldn’t detail them. Stop tryin’.
We would shove them under the sink and start over. She was a beautiful seamstress. She did not ignition right. We let her down. She noticed us. It didn’t come to fruition, the tank in the courtyard. I lost my temper, screamed and shouted and winced at her. We can’t keep players. I tried, and that’s the baseball game.
I understand your arm’s on the table. It won’t be long now. What’s it worth? Every bug on the planet fixes yah. The whole night sky listens ears. You come to a round table, and you show Earth your wares.
That’s expensive. Do I dynamite? You come together in the right place exploding your wares. He’s thrown Minecraft at yah, all of your soliloquies on the net. He’s done so many things with your time you understand the nature of it. You won’t understand him the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the sewer system. You’d have to stay with him awhile, listening to his heart breathe. I’ve said enough. He’ll be on your corner soon.
I don’t know whistle blows, but it’s where we’re at, you know? On the breezeway so naked it’s a story in the air, but I don’t know if I get put in an elevator or not so you can see me. Maybe this whistle is for your kids, or theirs, or some other department in time.
Let’s roll up our sleeves, shall we? and perpetrate the world. Goodnight Luna. I’ll get past your puppy ears. Come on let’s dance and spend the night a whole generation away. Come on Luna, understand our position together: you’re not my dog, and I know you wanna be. You gotta sleep downstairs. Well that’s not finished. She’s on her way to you. Don’t rob yourself of sleep. This is hard on both of us. We just don’t understand.
Can see a new place in vision. If that’s a targeted ship. Visions come and go. That’s what he’s working, to be not a denier of divine deity. Alright, all these firecrackers over the puppy, over a load of house issues, over just destiny you and me, over the world as it sucks, over especially the news media. Can we go? Can we make our house a run? Can we get better at this and fire up those engines and go to the place we all shine in the sun? Is that even possible?
To shine in the sun, that is so cool. Well, the youth dropped it. I think I’m getting too old for my britches. My tax return is enough to pay you off, you unconvinced people yet out there, and you just put me down and see yourself. Let’s blow this up. I’m a memory in my room. I’ll just keep tellin’ it. Calm yourself down and bring us the world again.
And I was hoping that puppy dog don’t have to be sent outta here. My large pumpkin shadow just gets cut off, and it’s no secret where she wants to be. Give us the destiny in our room. It was Kentucky Fried Chicken, her sleepin’ beside me showin’ belly, comfortable like the world is safe, and I reach over and give that belly a rub. That’s baby where bright and shiny lives. I think we’ve just pat the world you know, and ain’t it nice and warm? You’re touchin’ friendship in its startup in man. Good God that’s good.
New interpreters, we’re just putting a face on God. Ending after some time with the hardest part of life. Good cop, bad cop, we met in that line Data. A bridge told me Savitri was fallin’ asleep. This world’s crucible, how many say God is mean? How many say this world is mean? Let’s understand evolutionary science. In that box we don’t make one to pet. We’re off in the place screaming. I’ve seen Luna; I feel better. A big boost, that’s how you handle puppies. And those your kids derive the sweetness of your day. Some future guy on the phone. Oh my God the air tell. They’re combat engineers. The truth will ever sometimes get a mask. I am wild about this on YouTube. I can completely copy down you know. You have a mind.
Highlights, all you could say at me in one day. I came in that I’m sorry, just that I’m on the spiritual path. The blistered paragraph Mexico writes, like I said, there is no true seeing or spell it out for you. I’m not askin’ for everything, just the sky of God. It’s in the history books.
These is photos of my inner workings. Hut two three four, how do we spell relief? Donny 661. The front door, oh I locked it to come on alive in the book. Are you gonna liberal democrat? Neither breadcrumbs nor dire straits, we’re gonna get into the way of the world. It’s so much bigger than tall robots, than a guru, than mixing with your kind. It’s a 30 linebacker gone to work with his momma and coming back to take you down. That’s frozen, but it’s on the telephone line you see.
I’m just tryin’ to be my brother’s keeper— that was the recognition-fish of thousands, but what is it behind this screen? Hello I’m Donny how are you? I was wonderin’ how to be sincere, put you in touch with my sincerity. Is it on the table? It’s just starin’ down the crowd. Well at least it’s in school.
Whether India had its first world crisis. You know I was right there in the ballgame. We looked up Covid next door to a crematorium. No busy port that was, not even wayfarers. Oh we had the disease. It just wasn’t a world on fire all over India. Why was it reported that way?
Somethin’s going on we can’t slip. I kid you not there’s a grocery list. Now go back to sleep. I’m just warnin’ yah about future comings the state perpetrates, the powers that be. Look out. We’ll do anything to stay safe. They’ve got us by the fear of death. Who is this big conspiracy? Bibliography asura. It’s not a failed state. They control us through our dreams. Gotcha!
When you buy those things, don’t just go meal pay. They’re in your room right now, travelin’ down the rollercoaster of your thoughts to jump in there and start somethin’ sinister to the Earth. Can’t get rid of. Have to evolve out of, [this and above line came on Crete] and that’s what we’re doin’. You will hear towards these creatures doesn’t work. It’s got $600.
What was spiritual feelin’? Do you bite I suppose really spiritual? Wow head, really crucial. Where are yah? Oh of a cry, can you hear that lowdown?
(today’s muse)
The cat of the matter is she was a ghost, for 20 years. Where is your kitty cat? She wants to be near you, even in death, and so it really matters how she dies, and how you take it. Kittypuss was a purely white cat my sister found on the street, a little kitten, when I was seven, during those city mooned for times I’ve life-listed earlier. I was allergic to cats, but not Kittypuss. She was my non-human sibling. She was my mom’s pumpkin shadow. I was in the army when she died, glad I wasn’t there to see my mom’s grief. I didn’t understand then it’s like the loss of a child, but I certainly do now.
That grief got the better of her, as it wasn’t on Kittypuss’ behalf but hers. Isn’t that the way it often is with us when a loved one dies? The tie that binds you know. You see, my mom had this problem with goodbye. She always made a big deal of it when saying goodbye, saying it might be the last time we saw each other—“you never know”—, and she’d shower us with hugs and kisses, the number of them depending on the length of time we’d be away. The bitch of it was, when it was the final goodbye, she dropped it, and not just dropped it, but really messed it up.
“It’s disgusting,” and my mom said it really drawing the word out and saying it like you do when you want the word itself to sound disgusting, it being sex with children. You’d agree with her, but that’s a point for later on. I’ll just say that was new attitude for her; heretofore I was her son and not a child molester, and she’d felt sadness for me over the latter, not her disgust. I took the cell phone from my ear and looked at it, wanting to tell her that if she hadn’t given me orgasm with that kissing mouth of hers when I was a baby and toddler, I would have been sexually normal, but I held my tongue, knowing it might the last time I talked to her, because she was 70 and on once a week dialysis, and it turned out it was our goodbye, our last conversation. The you in the you just never know was she.
But we’re here for the cat. “This is like a cat’s drum, the end of a cat drama,” my muse as I moved into the apartment near Kamilari, which is prevision of the dream experience I’m about to describe, a foretelling of the future. The lines sum up the experience, give it its meaning. First though, the back story. I heard how she died from my mother in a phone call I made from my army barracks, soon after Kittypuss died, about 40 years ago. Please listen; it’s not really the end like we think; it’s leaving the body. Kittypuss could no longer walk, my mom said, was going to the bathroom all over herself and in pain, and so she took her to the vet to be put to sleep. Can I just interject here and ask would you take your grandmother to the doctor to be killed if that were the case, or would you put a diaper on her, give her pain meds, and love her till death, unbidden, came to take her, unless it was a clear case death was the more merciful one? Anyway, with the cat on the table and the syringe in the doctor’s hand, my mom got a sudden case of the coward and ran out of the office and into her car to cry. Meanwhile, a confused and now abandoned Kittypuss was killed by the vet, her sovereign nowhere in sight. She just left her body and went to her momma. What else is a cat to do?
I first saw Kittypuss a ghost when I had a near death experience I relate here , not realizing what I was seeing, and that was several years after her death. It took awhile to dawn on me after the experience that she was still around in my mom’s house. I saw her in at least one other dream after that, but I don’t remember the details, only that it seemed to confirm she was indeed a ghost in the house. I resolved to use my dreaming ability to see if that were indeed the case, and try and help her if it was, but there hadn’t been a clear breathing space in my life I could explore that, until now, in the apartment Irmgard let me live in, but it wasn’t me that decided now was the time. It was the Mother. This is taken from my dream notebook 9 November 2020, which describes the last part of a lucid, spiral dream:
Then I began to very slowly be pulled and taken into a spiral around the room, and as I did I asked the Mother (I don’t remember if with words or silently) who was the person I needed to see, and just then Kittypuss, the white cat my family had when I was a child, appeared in the center of the circle, laying with her head on her front paws, as though she were not only sad but in despair. I said her name, surprised, and this seemed to connect to my body in bed, as though I had spoken her name with my body’s mouth, and quickly the dream scene faded. I was trying to say “Go to the other side,” but these words were weak and spoken on the way back to my body. She didn’t even respond, like she were dead, but her eyes were open. She had just given up hope. She is a ghost in my mom’s house, due to an improper death, and I’ve seen her there in the subtle physical or on the vital plane at times, two or three, in dreams there. Was just my intention and the force of calling her name, after such a powerful experience, enough to help her pass? [the experience in the first part of the dream was of being taken by the spiral with the loud accompanying sound of an airplane propeller, herald of going up out the top of the head, which didn’t happen, although the opening to towards it was very powerful]
There ensued 18 days where I concentrated on Kittypuss, shocked to know how long she had suffered as a ghost, shocked to know that such things happen to innocent little kitty cats. I said her name aloud and thought about her throughout the day, asking the Mother to help. None of this is in my muse notebook. I’m only able to capture a small portion of what I receive, although here on Crete that portion was larger, as the muse and dream were in many ways, the main events, although, like I said, not the most important ones. The instructions I remember getting in regards to her, I didn’t write down, but I do remember getting them, such as, when I asked how to find her, I was told that she would be at her food bowl in the kitchen of my mom’s house. I was also told, as though by her, that, since my sister had left the house, no one ‘petted’ her anymore, meaning of course in dream (my sister also is very open in dream. My mom’s dreaming had gone to sleep). I was told she was suffering greatly, and that there was no time to spare to rescue her. She had sunk down almost to the Void.
Dream notebook 27 November 2002
I was in my mother’s house and lucid and looked around for Kittypuss and called her name, and almost instantly she came from where her food bowl is, or I went to her, I don’t remember. I petted her and spoke her name, wondering how to tell her to move on. Something happened that I don’t remember, and I began to lose the dream, but I concentrated and the house came back, only it was normal daylight. I looked around for her, calling her name, saying kitty kitty and such, looking under things, but no cat, just a hint of her presence there. Then I realized she was there but on another level, in the darkness where I found her in the first part of the dream [unrecorded]. I was very clear and focused. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been so, perhaps the word is powerful, in a dream, or able to just do things, what needed to be done, without any effort once I know what to do. So I concentrated, and almost instantly I was in the darkness. This darkness is not like regular darkness. Things in it aren’t wholly there, like only their sketch or outline is, but I did not feel all oppressed by or afraid of the darkness. I went into the kitchen and saw Kittypuss moving near her food bowl, and I could see her white, like she was the only real thing there. I went to her and picked her up in my arms, and holding her tightly (I could feel her fear and despair), I went out the backdoor and into the backyard. There was a hint of dawn, and I saw up in the sky the orb, or partial orb, of the sun, but not at all bright. I began to will the force to take me up, or opened myself to it, which I did, and we slowly began to rise. Then I saw the sun. At a height just above the house or so I put, hurled, no word describes the action, Kittypuss into the sun, and there was a tremendous explosion of bright light, perhaps all of the colors, but I’m not sure, and she was gone, and I felt very good but very centered and steady.
Then I was in the house where my mother and sister were and still lucid, I decided to tell them of the process of Kittypuss, tell their subtle selves that is, so they’d by better prepared when I told their waking selves. Gwen took off not wanting to hear it, and my mother said she had heard scratching a time or two, but she wasn’t really taking it all in, 20 years a ghost until now. A line of muse came after the dream that I lost, but it seems Kittypuss did not go where she would return to these lives. There was the word either stuffed or displayed in the presence of God, but there was a great sweetness in the line that suggested some kind of nirvana, one that well makes up for her 20 years suffering as a ghost and her journey long through these lives. This experience has greatly strengthened me and is making me trust God all the more. Even little kitty cats are cared for, their little souls blessed. Wow.
Life is a restless activity grounded in God. Just call me wisdom. I threw her in the crack where the clock strikes about.
(my muse immediately after the Kittypuss dream)
Kittypuss will not be in my life again. Thank you. [she saying this] The gist of a man, inspired by a vision, moves the first place of humanity. I will floor myself in such a flower car, pound myself upon it. It’s very good for you. I went to the mouth of darkness and half opened its gangala, and it’s no question as flame we can walk upon it. Ronnie’s gonna give me a ride listening, ear open in the back of its eye. [Ronnie the donkey] Full of the 10 natures. [vision of a colorful rectangular drawing of several creatures all mixed together into one but each a distinct color, one a blue dragon] Leaving dogs as slaves, I must act the body while it can decide.
(muse that same night, after the dream)
I no longer wow that whole thing since, in the present of my life now, the dog of my life, Lisa, and the little puppy Rascal, died, both horribly, the latter screaming like I never heard a dog scream before, the former’s life ending prematurely by an incompetent vet (whose gross neglect goes beyond the wrong tablets he proscribed for her), and now she’s trapped on the other side right where death meets life because of her love for me, her loyalty, the very quality divinity gave dogs so to be our best friend, unable to pass too because of her doubt of me, as it was I that gave her the fatal tablets, and she has come to think I poisoned her, and in a horrifying, unintended way I did, a god-awful, complicated passing that hasn’t made her a ghost, but has put her in a bad place, unable to go where she needs to go, and so far, although I’m doing the same intense concentration I did for Kittypuss, focusing on her and calling her name throughout the day, which means the grief is right there, each lucid dream rescue attempt, where I have to try to travel to the other side, no small feat in itself, has failed. The line about dogs in the formation above is prevision about her predicament (as well about the emancipation of dog itself, what I might just have something to do with), and I’m being given advice about it way back then. As I’ve said, it’s ability to foretell the future is a feature of muse that makes it so mysterious and, I’ll add now, gives you a hand to hold when you realize it took hold of your present hand 20 years ago.
Still though, that hand can only ease, can’t erase the cruel twist on it that she’s now afraid of me and thinks I killed her, when she was my baby, the beloved of my life: “You destroyed me,” my muse putting words on her thoughts soon after she died. This bitter experience has shaken my faith, and it’s not that I doubt whether it’s all true, God, soul, and the whole nine yards, but I now know that life, the universe, and everything isn’t God’s plan but God’s experiment, and what a difference a word makes, and the conditions of the experiment are such that the conditions of the cosmos bind even the divine powers, the delegated hand of God, and sometimes, maybe even often, the cosmic Gods lose to the Hostile Powers, the unembodied fiends that dog our every step and hover around even our dogs and cats trying to turn their lives and deaths too into the living hell humans can have. It’s all a bit much, and it’s opened a gulf in me that I’m just having to put my faith in to fill, but when it’s shaking and flickering in my hands, what’s a body to do but just cry out loud?
There is a gap between love and death my muse says, and boy is there ever. I’ve learned there are places where the world just doesn’t work well, zones not yet fully filled with existence, places where the Void rears up its head to devour life, and the space between life and death is one of these. Many pass unmolested by the powers that oppose life, but some people get trapped, and not just humans. The Mother and others have said that a principle function of religion is to aide our passage to the other side, since even a little faith in it will give you the buoyancy you need to make it past the unconstructed zones (my understanding, not theirs), and that today, with the rise of skepticism and atheism, a lot more people than in times past find themselves dead without a clue of where to go or what to do, find themselves open to attack, of the bottom feeders, find themselves in terrible in-between places trapped (like Lisa) or a ghost unable to touch the living or life under the sun but tantalizingly surrounded by them. Knowledge is not always your friend, and there is knowledge that you don’t want to know but must know, at some point at least, and if you don’t think that point’s here for you, then what can we do? Well here it is. I’m sorry. What more can I say?
Yes He’s got the whole world in his hands, but he drops us sometimes, or drops our kids, into the fire, you know? The secret of why only he knows. You can read a poem of mine about Rascal that asks God to grow. Of course, that’s only a point of view, and one that comes from a heart being torn out, not actually how it is, and we can look at it in an infinite number of ways to try and see how it is, but we’ll always come up short. God is just too big to figure, but maybe he’s not responsible for every leaf that falls. Maybe he just knows every leaf that does and gets it the help it needs to wither into other life without burning in the fire too terribly long, in the long way God helps us, and our dogs and cats, everybody, which is to send us someone to help us, however long that might take, someone that can, and maybe there aren’t too terribly many that can do that, and with Kittypuss, that someone was me. I can only ask him to hurry up with Lisa. What more can I ask?
To stand erect, without which the creature had not the will of the creator. God’s hands are in God’s hands on that endeavor. During the transformation from ego to divine consciousness, one must return the slain of a suffered past. The Light evolves its irregularities, but the Light is patient and can wait its due. To establish a new theme takes time. Conscious of the good means waiting through the bad. All will happen in its good time. What is life really? A growth of the soul. What are years to the life of the soul? Not even time can measure things you know. The things change in spiritual seconds.
(from The Inspired Word)
And see what we’ve added is reliable. I need a horse. He writes it about now. I see longer than you do. What is your stomachache over? We tore a hole in our heart. Just inside her throat. I will be revealed, but I don’t deserve it. Crazy. See how that goes.
You’re the person stuffed in a tree. You’ve got the stuff. Give up everything he had, they just wanna shoot ‘im. Get out of here, that’s a mix of how it’s done, where I’m the enlightened disciple. Oh wow railroad cars. Oh I’m so sorry— when they take my name.
Think that world will be overlap. The future of man, don’t you worry, a hitter, suddenly a hitter. Come right here boy, maybe at some point we’ll be beyond the game. We didn’t expect Susan to arrive.
A problem with the luminated glass: I thought I needed a special kind of mask. In their scientist, in pre-Socratic math, a little puppy uncut to fulfill itself. I’m not tryin’ to bring surprises. I’m tryin’ to give you the straight scoop in all our flavors. Can you melt with me? This is where we stand.
It’s horrible, ain’t it, the way we die and just have to suffer that. It doesn’t bring us peace, when it takes from us the world, no matter how many near-death experiences you’ve had. How many loved ones say cheese? Where do we go with it?
A station in life has this all mapped out, what you have to do, unhinge yourself from the world. It’s a state I’ve seen, briefly. I’ve snuck up on enlightenment. I’ve pulled up on the scene. There’s no comparing it with here. It’s amazingly centered on not having a center at all. No thing touches you in all the world of things. Scary to look at. The place to be to be in. You hear this whistle?
It’s impossible. Some many techniques to get there and not a one work. It’s uploaded from a higher source, how it really gets in yah. This become an arrow when you don’t need any more strife. It’s a great way to leave the world and be wonderfully alive in it. Up next. Such a nice man, gunna what man? You’re just hearin’ my muse. I laugh at it too, prepare for impact.
Now let’s be sailors and skim over the waters. Up you go, all up there to Supermind, the destination of the Earth. It’s something that I’m qualified for on my computer, giving you the lowdown. There would be a violence, the agency who knows who dreams. You’re guidance councilor would advise against it. This is your own divinity.
On after death you might see this is you. I’ve sat in the sun here on earth while I’m alive. Sum into the ascended nature of Supermind, giving the lowest record. [this and above line came on Crete] I can’t tell you any differently; that’s what happened. See all these stars?
A rainstorm has drawn the lines for me. Not too long ago I really hurt the Earth. Yeah, I’ve struggled with it too. Can I just stand here and bark? No, let’s put trainin’ on it, and let’s show you the windows. That’s about the Earth, and I’m ridin’ it now. There is just so much food to give. You hungry?
I’ve got a question: what the heck? It’s in the night you understand, and I can’t show you the sun. There you are up there a few meters over your head the Supermind, and you just sit there an outside the universe entity. Bigger than the universe, it’s your reality. Makes sense to science’s laboratory origins hypotheses. Dumbass, they put it in terms of here, but I think they’ve got a spatula to flip it when it’s cooked long enough, and that the truth.
You can check very quickly you speak something not of like us to the government. You will have trouble. And I’m gonna bring that bear in and try to get yah off your feet. Just because you’re door there doesn’t mean you’re right; I’ll be here folks if you need me.
Words have chosen. It’s a change of consciousness. Now I’m all set. More than God possessing oneness, his deep largeness infinity he also understands. [this and above line came in 2002] On the higher mountain it’s ours. Hey, wash my hands right. Put your father’s voice/glasses [words spoken simultaneously] on the matter of this meaning, why don’t we stop doing that? If you haven’t noticed, mother you raise the kids, and when you’re a father, you mother too. You’re welcome.
Come on, put that mother. Before a big change, generally there’s a blackout, so it assimilates. I had to express it with an opening to all we hate about us, and it mobilize it and give us all the change we need. That’s how you bring change: it’s you you change. Victims, bring ‘em where the child will heal: I’ve seen my abuser change. Precisely.
Look I’m a capital of this issue. Let us be willing, anymore vehicles not yet in our use, something terrible has happened, we put them on the road. You’ll just have to take your tie off and sit down. You’ll just have to remove your social constraints, and heal the human race. The right minute, time is now.
Oh my dog, found her fronting artillery with a stunning defiance. Jeff you get that? Carry on. Her root tail, she’s found us. Come, let’s think this through. You come to me when I call. Oh Luna? I know you see her Lisa, and know she’s not you. Crow, crow, over wind and bed-graves, I’ve got you now girl. Try to do it on the tournament. Move over, that was bedtime. Be comin’ right now.
(today’s muse)
Dream Notebook December 5, 2002 [his death-day, what I didn’t consciously know then]
I was in the car with Sri Aurobindo, and I think he was driving. It was so comfortable to be in his presence, so relaxed, so incredibly human and more normal that normal. I can go on and on about his presence, nothing like you’d expect, not one pretention, no airs at all, and there was no hint of him not wanting to be bothered, or talked to, but it made me respect his space all the more, and I don’t think we talked as we drove. The silence was so full. We got to a shopping strip, and there was a woman there whose friend, a slightly older woman, had a Bible store, and she had just closed up. I looked in the window and saw she was very much a fundamentalist. She wanted to talk to Sri Aurobindo but didn’t know my thing about him at all. She was just in distress and needed to talk to somebody. She didn’t want to open back her shop to talk there, but Sri Aurobindo went to the door and opened the lock without a key. I knew he was using his will to put the talk where it needed to be, in her shop. He didn’t say anything, just opened the door, and she accepted it easily.
He and I went in, and the woman’s children came, and I spoke to one in Spanish because there were books about missionaries in Latin America and some hint that children were going there, or being sent there by their parents or something. The boy wasn’t one of these and didn’t understand. Sri Aurobindo was sitting down, and all the children were gathered around him and playing with his beard and such, which had become long and like a handle. I wasn’t jealous that he was the center of attention with the children. In fact, I wasn’t jealous that he was Sri Aurobindo and I just a disciple. How can I describe his presence? You just don’t know—so down to earth. Then I was on the floor with a small boy playing with him, and Sri Aurobindo was sitting across the room, not to watch me but to teach me how to play with kids in the right way, but there was not a trace of fear I’d molest him, or judgment, or condemnation, or anything remotely similar. Then he left the room into the interior of the shop to talk to the woman. Just like that. What trust I thought. He’s not even worried about what I might do to the kid.
Then I went outside after a bit, and the woman was sitting with her friend, and she was glowing she was so happy. I explained, excited myself, that that was Sri Aurobindo, and he’d died in 1950! As I was explaining that that was the first time he’d done that with me, bodily materialized, I stopped and asked her was he really there, and she assured me he really had been. I was about to tell her she probably wouldn’t be a fundamentalist anymore after this, but I decided to let her figure that out for herself.
The it was night, and the women were down in the car, and I was with the little boy, 4 0r 5, up like an open bar or restaurant raised above the parking lot. I was giving him affection, very close, touching his face and head, but it was he actually the one wanting me to and not me pulling me to him as usual, and there was no sexual desire. Then his older brother came up, 9 or 10, to show me his report card. I had a strong pull to pull him close, but I felt he didn’t want that, but his hand was on my arm, so I knew he did need some physical contact, just more from a distance. I went against my pull and put him on the table to sit as we talked about his grades, and he kept his arm on my arm. I saw that he had okay grades but had a ‘spastic’ in gym, and I knew he had some inner problems between the body and his emotions, but I didn’t word it to myself that way at the time. When I looked at his face it was a map, and I drew a route on his cheek, a square in a town, and what I was really doing was redrawing my map of how to be around and relate to children.
A couple of days later, a young Austrian woman and her two little boys, Phillip, four and a half, and John, two and a half, came to stay in the empty apartment below mine. The apartment served as a safe house for woman who’d been abused by their husbands, something I only learned when they showed up. As I understood it, the boys had been beaten also. The family were on their way somewhere else, and they were only staying a few days. I hadn’t been around children in months, and things had just worked out that way; I wasn’t trying to stay away from kids. Phillip looked like the little boy in the dream, the younger brother I gave close affection to. He was right on the border of my attraction range, this side of the border.
There ensued some days of checks and balances, desire entering and being thrown out. It’s all in the book, but I can’t copy it all down for you here. The gist of it, like I’ve been talking to you about, is being around them and not harming them, not staying away from them so you don’t. It took me awhile to come to the dream, as at first I felt it wrong to even be playing with them, what my muse refers to as sports, a personal symbol, not a universal one I might add. Although the whole night before they came was full of prevision of their coming—“That snake with horns looks like something”—, this one means a lot to show you:
There’ll be a sports pin in your rises and re-rises. [vision of a ski lift that was a bit unusual. At first it gave you a cup of hot chocolate as you came up from the bottom, the lift being like a Ferris wheel that went below the Earth]
Phillip was spastic like the older boy in the dream and really wanting close affection like the younger one, and the muse can describe our ensuing intimacy better than I can:
This is a memory stick. [vision of an American Indian spear, feathers and such that represented events] A room called clarity the base. In control of inner judge. By a perverse gate sat. Mastery quit of their own world adventure? They’ll be one on one in nature without touching themselves with syringes. Don Don. [My sister’s affectionate name for me when we were little. Vision of Phillip whispering to me not to tell what we were doing, which was exploring around a neighbor’s house, and we had to be quiet so as not to be heard, obviously though, something was stirring in him under the water]
Too many details spoil the soup, but Phillip had had sexual contact, of the fondling kind, and, in front of his mother, he laid down on the bed in their apartment and made it clear he wanted me to do it, and the way she corrected him, it appeared to me she knew he had, but that’s just speculation. That he’d had it though, was obvious in the way he asked for it with his body. The things that pass in families, so many things do so underground. What would I have done if she hadn’t had been there? I was not in a position to molest him. “It was Lion’s Gate,” (my muse today). You have no idea the healing power of a situation where a child who’s been molested wants to do it with an adult who wants to too, but the adult doesn’t, nor won’t. When it’s the adult who molested them in the first place, you have precisely what’s needed, but you’re just not going to understand that until you have to.
Thinking is a world body process. I was walking everyday animated by wood. In a life by Thee lived. I am so powerful because it’s under the heal of feelings.
(the muse that came immediately after the sports pin line)
Although I barely had enough to feed myself, the mother had no money, and so I shared my food with them, not every meal while they were there, but enough to feel it. I cooked for them too, as that’s one of my jobs (I’m a feeder), and so the family got a lot of sacrifice from me, and they needed it from a man. I realized at the time I was a healing help for them. Irmgard did not involve herself with them much, and I saw her a time or two watching me from her windows playing with the boys with a look on her face that said, “That’s what he likes.” To her credit she never threw it in my face. She was obviously the neighbor in the vision with Phillip. She, like you, wouldn’t understand playing with kids isn’t having sex with them if you like them. It’s not eating the apple. “Yesterday around the apple I was a golden time,” my muse giving a report card during the those days.
What, however, just blew me away about the whole thing was that dream telling me not only what was about to happen, but also how to handle it. “Is printed here the light of circumstance,” (my muse at that time). You can sit there and say all day it’s a coincidence. Do you really believe that, or are you just counting sheep?
The catch-22 of it is, to get the kind of help I described in that dream, or give the help I described (involving Kittypuss and Lisa), you have to be open to it or to doing it, and that means not be clouded with anything, desire, anger, hatred, jealousy, fear, grief, and I can continue, which means you have to be pure, clean, clear, and it has nothing to do with moral reasons; you have to be clear to get the clear signal, and the purer you are the purer the signal, and it’s as simple as that, and that just sucks because when we most need help we usually aren’t, far from it, why we’re asking for help to begin with. It’s another one of those things that seem to stack the deck in the favor of the Hostile Powers. Be that as it may, here I got what I needed. An opening came, and my teacher taught me a fountain of lessons intricate as the day is long and meaningful as the night is deep, because at that moment in my purity he could, and so, other than applying them to the boys that were to come the next day, why did they have to be all learned right then and there? My muse was doing the same thing, if you haven’t noticed, taking advantage of 41 to get the message across, which, if you’ve been listening, is more for me than the world, and that message is very simple: don’t abuse children, and here’s why you do and how to stop. Society only tells you the don’t, doesn’t understand the why and doesn’t know the how, because we are still very much the animal when it comes to dealing with wrongdoing, not yet human beings here, and so, representative creatures that we are, here I am with my muse: “You know what? You’re first fix, (my muse on Crete). Wow, “I’m being looked at by who cares, first my soul,” (ditto).
If we couldn’t get help in those eat up with it times, all would be lost. The help in a fallen state takes on another character, though, more like a rescue or one attempted. It was in the late ‘90’s, Mexico, and I was lost in it, that being what we talk about. I had a dream of being in a university math class and taking an exam I could not make heads nor tails of, way beyond my math level. I did what I could and turned it in and left the classroom, turning as I walked out the door, which was to the outside and into the night, and seeing a line of students in front of the professor’s podium seeking help. Standing behind the podium was Sri Aurobindo, and I was so surprised to see him, but I hung my head because I thought he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me, not lucid in the dream and so not realizing he was there for me to begin with, and as I looked at him he looked at me and told me inside my head, “You can come to me and ask for help.” Upon awakening, I asked for his help, and in the next few days was able to rather easily make a beachhead towards the dry land of sadhana. I wasn’t clear enough to get anything more from him than that, in his presence that is, but that was no small thing in itself.
No with an august son too old. That’s today ridin’. You need to meet the world in its panties. I’ve said a revolution in all the externals of taking that child out of sexual harm. And we’re finished.
Oh my God the parade, it’s the moment of death. That’s hell, although her Mother takes her out of the passage and holds her from harm. A Zen master has slapped him over the head— instant enlightenment. You’ve seen the catalyst, every face in the crowd.
Bob Fisher, are you only up there in your circle? It’s everything they got. Another mind comin’. Where is the mountain Earth presides? He’s on that farm, whatever you say Spyrock Mountain.
Toughest scenes of America, in the oil to fix it right. You don’t know how to stop this. You don’t even know how to pray. I have the whole nine yards so you can see it. Don’t even pick up a pencil to have me join you. How can you stay intact? Oh my God the muse. My Mother can’t swift past these places. That’s the freeway. Are you there?
(today’s muse)
You wonder where the Mother is in this narrative, or in my dreams. My muse keeps talking about her. Although it deserves a story in itself, a paragraph is all I can give it now, and that is that I lived in Montreal for five months in 1999, and during that time I spent a wet summer sneak camping high on the mountain the city’s named after in a little hidden crevice not big enough to stay dry in. I felt so forlorn, really suffered from the elements there, from society’s cold. One night I dreamed that I lived in a small close-knit Quebecois community in the countryside, one of those strange kind of dreams that seem to last for days or weeks but that only last a few minutes as you lie there sleeping. We all lived in a very large, old fashioned, country house that had a wide wooden, roofed porch running around all four sides of it. I began to have feelings for a young woman there, and, although nothing was said, everyone was very glad to see me attracted to a woman, as they knew I liked little boys, although I wasn’t involved with any there. We were together around the house, and as the time went by my feelings grew, until I’d fallen in love and wanted to make love with her. She had the same feelings. This was okay with everybody. One evening we were on the porch, at the back of the house, just the two of us, and I knew it was time. I took her in my arms and kissed her, and when we pulled away she turned into the Mother, who, I realized, becoming lucid, she’d been all along. She smiled at me so sweetly, and there was nothing uncomfortable about being in her arms or having been about to have sex with her. Just off the top of my head I began to ask her about Heaven, but then I began to tell her about it, as though I were remembering being there, how in Heaven there was no danger, but you could still have adventures, the kind that could get you killed here, like freezing to death out unprotected in the snow and ice of winter. It wasn’t at all like we thought I told her; the people of Heaven were adventurers that needed not to hug the limits to feel safe. They tested everything except wrong, which doesn’t exist there.
You would wonder whether in that dream the Mother was exploring a possibility, conducting an experiment, and that was to surface my attraction to women, which comes up in dream sometimes, and so I know it’s there. After the dream I half expected there to be a woman show up in my life, one that I could become attracted to, but that didn’t happen. I realized that it was right on the brink of having sex she revealed herself, and so I don’t think she was trying to get me to have sex with women. (Our yoga calls for being brahmachari.) She was moving me towards normal, whatever else she may have been doing, and the whole time in Montreal my sadhana was unclouded by boys, thanks partly to this dream. It was a high time. It was a real time. And it bore fruit, but unfortunately I’ve lost the five songs I wrote on the guitar with a talented Quebecois boy (18), which we sung on the streets and for our dinner in places here and there. Interestingly enough, the person checking people at the door of the dining hall of the Sri Aurobindo Center would not let us sing there, would not even let us sing a song to him to show him it had our yoga written all over it. Ain’t that the way it always is with officialdom? Here’s a snatch of one: “Do you remember Heaven? I remember Heaven, and I remember you. We were there together, everyone there is…” That dream triggered memories. Well, do you remember?
A couple of days after Christmas Irmgard kicked me out, by telling me I needed to find another place to stay, not rudely showing me the door. I was not prepared for that event, as I had no place to go but back to Matala, but I knew she was about to because I’d gotten in her face and just yelled my damn fool head some days before, over some of her bullshit, and so I showed her mine. I’d also had a prevision of her telling me to go, very different than it actually happened, her in her doorway thanking me for living there, as I’ve shown earlier. The muse does not show the surface of things and their appearance but what’s actually going on on the inside. We’d had the argument before Christmas, and she waited until after to ask me to leave, and I say this to show she was more conscientious than the picture I’m painting of her. It seems also that she allowed me to stay until I had another place to stay, which, if I’m interpreting my muse notebook properly, was over two weeks from the time she asked me to leave, although, as I remember it, she asked me to go pronto. Either way, I really tried not to react and thought I hadn’t very much, but my muse corrected my vision: “Water inside, pools as well,” a line that came soon after getting the news. In any event, what else could I do but girded up my loins and go look for a new place to stay. I didn’t see it at the time, but this was a test, as my muse had warned me that an exam was coming. A test of what? Oh world touch do you sting? If ouch is the answer, you didn’t exactly pass.
Do you know what a world wave is? ? It usually doesn’t have a stinger, unless you’ve been fooled. When you’re adventure traveling you learn to recognize and to ride things in motion that take you where you need to go, although it can also be a stationary sign that has your sequent numbers on it or some event you witness that casts its sign spell on you. I can’t really describe one, because each one is unique and different from every other one, but they do have common characteristics: look for something in movement that does not belong there, that stands out, that’s strange, or, as I’ve said, look for your numbers or a sign. It’s more than these things, different actually than I can describe it, but you know one when you see it if you’ve got the eye for it. They often come by very fast though, and so you don’t usually have time to ponder. You have to jump on and ride, and if it doesn’t take you to shore, peters out after only a little ways, then you just have to go out again where the waves are and wait for another one, like you do surfing.
Kamilari was where I knew the waves were, just instinctively, or intuitively I’d be better saying, and so I walked to the village, and when I got to the edge of it, which was the bottom of a steep hill, I saw a young woman with dreadlocks walking up into town. She wasn’t from there, did not belong. She was definitely different and in motion. I hopped on that wave and followed her up the winding way to top and to the general store that catered to off islanders, where she turned around and asked me if I were following her. “Pardon me,” I told her, “but I saw you and followed you because I’d just lost my place to stay,” and then I explained briefly my strategy of following something or someone different so to get where I need to go, which in this case was a new place to stay. She just looked at me a moment without speaking, a big surprised look in her eyes. Then she told me it just so happened that her and her friend had been cabin sitting not far out of town, but they had to leave on the 15th (of January 2003), two months early (two weeks from now in the story), and so could not fulfill their commitment, which entailed watering the garden and hillside full of saplings of an Austrian man named Thomas, and there was no reason why it couldn’t be me living there, if I’d take care of the garden and trees. Amazing really, the whole thing she said.
Well folks, here we are again with a magic show, and there is nothing up my sleeve, no tricks I’m playing. In other words, I’m not lying. The island made that magic happen. If you remember, “was chosen Don.” You can attribute it to other agency if you want, but to attribute it to random chance, you’re not facing reality. “Everybody tells me the same thing: there’s a knowledge we call the unknown. Are you looking at it?” (my muse today)
The cabin was on the ridge that had its back to the village and it outskirts, a klick or so from Irmgard’s place, with no other significant buildings in sight except for the ruins of Festos on the next ridge over. It was just perfect, a single-room wooden cabin, quite small, but with a bed, that took up most of it, and a desk and chair by the only window, just right for a writer. “You’ve got some good books here,” [vision of telling this to Thomas, the owner of the cabin, whom I never saw]. There was a small table in a corner opposite the bed just big enough for an altar of things, and I would sail that ship. A car port-like porch not big enough for a car, and with a dirt floor, a bench by the door, provided a sitting spot for me in the evenings, no real view though from there with the owner’s saplings standing all around. The cabin was slightly underground, about a half meter, and the door was thick and strong, the kind that made a complete seal on closing. I didn’t understand at the time that seal wasn’t to keep people out but field mice. I would come to. Did you know that animal species have a representative, sum total spirit that helps protect them, watches out for their welfare? It’s not animism. It’s another face on reality. I’ll show you in the next chapter.
His appointment on the right side said, “man, you look terrible.” Vision on my right side said, “bell recipe for bell-shaped cookies.” Lived off the phone. Maybe gramps would like a tablet? Palace in bed. It’s okay, I would Excellency children. Let’s get in those bed sheets. She was just so code in line, a local construct. Truth conscious make no mistake about it. Angelo please, pay attention. I’ve got a family to raise. I wouldn’t want your danger around my kids; speak for the whole human race. Is that your juncture? I’m the postman. Look on my face I’m the human race, and I’m a moment of its desire. [this and above line came on Crete] Just shoot ‘im. No one would crown him king. United States I know that.
Is James going to sleep? He’s just in time for Minecraft. Vámonos, that’s a horn baby. You’re bein’ robbed of reality. You think it’s benign. You’re in the basement a lot. A lot of things get revealed. It’s what I tell you of, not the good things the bad things. Injure your life I buy you a uniform. A vampire, that game is not your friend.
Swallow, okay now swallow. To rearrange the cosmic structure of the Gods, but let’s just see what theirs and what belongs to a higher order. I decided not to shoot certain people. At the amusement park, I’ll be right back.
The Gods, all their costumes, only That. Over an overmental plane to reach, [this and above line came in 2002] to live beyond. You want to be here for the truth or not? Let’s shave off our heads and operate on enlightenment. We go there first. It’s how we get to Supermind. It’s our vehicle down the road. There’s a movement in time. That’s our bigness wheel. Paper that please. He used an idea swing rhythm. Star on me later. I’ll see jah in the mornin’. Are you bottom toy? That’s not here. You’re language. You’re sure used up.
Mithun, a word of caution. You look correct. Do you have pain on one side?— yes pain. Today was drawing. Put the opening there, not on your success in sadhana. How can I show you its face? I don’t think you understand the implications of love. I’ve gotta go feed Luna.
Look, the Gods actually exist, whom Sandia says are nothing. I’ve had years of continual, actual experience with. I’m a pro player. I don’t want to throw them out, but we’re getting bigger than them. They tell us how to do things, just show us. They can’t actually do it. Did you know we are the Gods on Earth? We have things to do they don’t. We’re getting beyond civilization. They were a beginning book. I can’t stress this enough.
We’re gonna rise to Supermind in the long road that times lays, and so it’s under its light we will grow, and I think the Gods help us, but they aren’t our worship magnets. We don’t cling to them. We continue with civilization on up the ladder. Can I blow you away?
Are you gonna come and persecute me? Are you just gonna sit there and laugh? This is in the works. It will get into our picture books. I’m just tellin’ you about it now. You think I’m crazy, or what the Devil told me to say. Okay we got gardener here, and why not start with unwieldy disease? You can’t heal it. You have punishment to servitude.
You don’t know the system. It’s horrible, punishment to human beings. Let’s get out of it shall we, and start a new race, one not founded on time. It could only be done one step at a time, over long, slow years. I’m the first cut, in that I reach you in practical terms. I’m not theory device. Can we go to truth with this? Not as a guru as a science. I’m not a name for you to use to call God. I’m an example of holding change. I doubt you’d love me, but here I am all over you. What’s the word? Incredible that you’d kill it.
It will flower in the future. You just can’t run from it. I’m a new theme takes time. I’m also a disciple not a railroad. You think this is my word? You’ve seen my paper. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are my teachers. I would not worship God them, but they are the light of my eyes. I’m learning obedience not stardom.
Mugu and Romiya can’t lift their finger. You ever see them work? And we’re still standing here wonderin’ what all the principle’s about. I am not a holiday season. I work like my teacher says to. This is just awful sometimes, cookin’, cleanin’, managin’ a house and writing to you. Ever I’ve got irons on the fire. You hear this muse? Excruciating concentration. I lose sleep over it. Will you just leave me alone? My teacher says no. This is heavy business and still livin’ all normal-like. What can you do?
Meet me on the stairs. I may have something for you in its practical arm. Now I’m on the road for sure to your coffee table. Don’t ignore me. I’m really there with you don’t you see?
It’s really easy. Do you think there might be a difference between reality as it is and reality as we study it? The social construct eliminates errors. Social reality won’t let us see the truth. I think you see the choices. How do we get to reality as it is? I’ve found a way. I’m showin’ it to yah now. Wow, would you look at that?
I had a dream I was travelin’ in Auroville, the cultural exchange a long stem. That was the guitar. We motivated. You were out behind the buildings. Did you see me?
We have such an interesting house. Now I’m skinny dippin’. I mean runnin’ naked through the streets. Can I show you my narrative nonfiction? If you touch it it will grow. You hear me sweetheart?
I’ve choked up on words. I’m just tryin’ to get you to see reality. And that’s a potato. Forgiveness on deck. Can we study its sweetheart?
I’m miles from campus. Could that be Crete? I’ve got a Rembrandt to show yah, something bigger than words. Can we go there? That’s the next step.
What’s wrong with being gaslit? How functional is your insanity? And you think you are who you are? Is that reality you see or a social construct? I’m all over the paper with mine. I show you reality.
Are we just alive on dead paper? Let’s see your configuration. Will it change the social construct? And here we go.
There’s a hotel of clarity. I’m pinchin’ for that today.
(today’s muse)
I disembarked from the ferry in Heraklion, Crete’s largest city but one I never explored or even went into very deeply, for reasons of feeling and not thought, not that it felt a bad city; the feelings were just into a country Crete. Getting off the ferry was one of the worst landings of my travels. I had enough money for one meal and that’s it. I gathered English would not be so spoken here. Sri Aurobindo’s picture of his living eyes was far from my mind; the excitement of the cash register ring and its exchange had worn off; the adventure the crashing of the waves against the ferry had promised had vanished with their splash; and I was alone with my discontent, a common state with me and would be even in paradise I imagine, if there were not also some fundamental change in consciousness and therefore character.
The Jewett woods of my later childhood I’ve introduced, briefly, a secondary growth forest, but there were old trees from the first forest standing around dream-feeling all the change. Still, it was a wonderland for a kid, with all the mystery a forest presses on the senses. The last bear had been seen, with a cub trailing behind, about ten years earlier, according to the local grapevine, and by an old woman of the so and so’s (like I say, names escape memoir writing for me), a respected family, and so the story was believed. It wasn’t old woman Conard, who stood often on her front porch cussing out the winds that drove by at the top of her lungs and waving her Bible. All the local gossip said the same thing: she should read that Bible. Funny I remember her name, and ain’t it like that? I’m just adding some local color. We were poor people you know.
To get back to the backstory, the little boy wandered those woods on foot and on his horse, a Welsh pony named Dolly, a center of discontent. I wanted to live with my mom and get my life back, the one I had in Houston, what was the dominate thought, the overriding feeling, composed of all these life colors: sitting in my mom’s lap, where I sat every moment she let me, not understanding the resentment that brewed in my sister Gwen, being alone with myself in my own room playing with my imagination, playing the moment of fun with the kids on my street, going to work with my mom at The Western Steak House and its Far East Room on Telephone Road, where she was a waitress, going home after mom’s work and listening to my go to bed song I would not go to bed without, “A Man Without Love” by Engelbert Humperdinck (“It’s true; kids have no taste. Do you know what I’m talking about? Obviously he’s a good singer” my muse), being babysat by the legal immigrants from Mexico the Marino family, who lived across the street and who my sister and I practically lived with half the time, since they could deal with me, and no other sitter could (more than one had left in tears), who took Gwen and I to Mexico when I was seven, my first trip out of the country, and not as a tourist mind you, as a small child of a Mexican family, and I can continue. The wonders of that forest, every bit as sensuous and life-populated as that city life, more so if you count the silence, weren’t appreciated until I thought and felt in its absence, and ain’t that just how it is? So you see now how I established my pattern of discontent in the middle of the world bending down and kissing me on the cheek—so art human.
There was (still is in moments), though, that world specter false reality behind all this, why discontent was my default mode. There was always this fear the world would eat me alive, what I was afraid of stepping flat broke off that ferry. “Alright you helped me out world, but only to fatten me up so to eat me up.” It’s the usual fairy tale you know. The inevitable happy ending escapes you if you’re staring at a wolf wearing your grandmother’s clothes, all those big teeth glistening hurt. I wandered those woods because I had a wicked step-mother, and two ‘yeah momma hurt that boy’ step-sisters (sound familiar?), and anytime I was in earshot of her, she would spew forth a continual tirade of emotional abuse, “I know you like a book you little son of a bitch. You’re no good, and your father’s no good…” #Me Too needs to come here too, where a woman lords it over a little boy, in homes and classrooms all over the Earth, but not as a moral crusade pointing fingers out for blood but wanting to sit in the lap of women who do that and sing “A Man Without Love” that little boy’s feeling now, sing it in the rush of the little boy’s tears. You want them to stop, not be hurt by everyone, to feel that little boy’s pain, not the pain we give them by punishing them. You think the two go together do you?
A recent boy that. It’s protocol. Is that paid TV? Is that all we’re lookin’ at? I can only guess at the conscious intent involved.
He didn’t do anything, my little grandson Nitish. You know what hit ‘im? About four or five women’s blues. He was the target their scapegoat.
Got slapped in the head, punched in the back, hair pulled, humiliated in front of his class. They said he went under the table to hide, when telling me about his acting ability. I told them trauma does that. They looked at me like a foreign interference.
The extent of the breach was only known later: unable to talk anytime he got corrected, unable to listen to his superiors, unable to do anything but hit when mad. They said it was bad handwriting.
Stupid teachers, the specter they thought was me. I’m Tamil he’s American, and I’ve traded places with him to show the fault lines. Covid saved his life. He never had to go back there.
They think I’m the culprit, the ashram school I tried to get him in. Terrible inroads to China (the party line you know) to get a wrong picture of Earth: only women bleed. Structural society, is that where the blueprints go?
(today’s muse)
Getting off the ferry, I went to the Nicolas Kazantzakis Museum, 15 kilometers from Heraklion, to try and find a place to write for the winter, hoping my emulation of him would get me in. The place I hitched to, as I remember it, was not in a town square as it is on the net but in the country, a small place that had bigger plans. I spent an hour or so looking at the few exhibits, reading what I didn’t know about the man. I told the woman who ran the place how much Kazantzakis had influenced me, and I’d traveled some in his pilgrim steps, going to St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai and writing there (for a couple of hours only), and now I needed a place to live and write. In the story on this blog called “A Journey of a Thousand Tongues”, which is about taping my poetry on walls, doorways and boulders and such in Israel and Egypt, I include excerpts of my own report I wrote of my poetic adventure, influenced by his Report to Greco. It’s his autobiography. I bought it at the aforementioned Half Price Books in Houston. Amazing it hadn’t been referenced to in my literature studies at the university. In it he recounts his frequent pilgrimages to the Holy Land and Mt. Athos, particularly pained by the battle between the Spirit and the flesh, a common motif of his fiction, which is further accentuated by his reluctant, noncommittal love affair with communism, an atheistic deity, if I may call it that, because, to hear him recount it, he would stand and sing with hundreds of people and thrill with tears of bhakti in front of the image of the god Hammer and Sickle.
The first time machine he’ll play Bill access. Wonderful for your toy. Does it feel good Zorba the Greek? Excuse me, I’m a riddle.
Let’s do his overhead material. Oh no, it’s not there. I don’t even see an inner life deeper than mounting TV. I can stomach him because his dick got in the way, and he was all over town.
In the writing class he got to Mt. Athos, really invested with the game. Monasteries appeased him. He didn’t live there long.
He turned around The Last Temptation of Christ, made it Hollywood, an explosive movie. We hear him breathe. Christ was a character in his novels, so taken out of room: we go to church, and he’s not our national anthem. He’s explored Christ with a beer bottle, fleshy concerns.
You know I was disciple of Christ and Kazantzakis. We’ve explored terms. Excellent reading by the way. Now let’s get back to that alphabet, explosive material I write. That was the time machine.
(today’s muse)
The very kind lady at the museum said they were planning to build a room for writers in the future but could not help me now. Well, it was a long shot. I don’t remember any of the getting there, but I went next to the tourist bureau that was on the highway running parallel to the ocean not far out of Heraklion. I went there to ask about free camping, where one could do that. Did they tell me I could do that anywhere or nowhere, or only at these certain spots? I don’t remember. Whatever I was told, it must’ve been discouraging, because I just left and walked up a side road that went off up to the right of the highway and found an alone place in the olive grove that was there and sat down and felt sorry for myself. Oh poor me! that sort of thing. You see, there hadn’t been a minor miracle in the last couple of hours, and so I’d lost faith. Or you could say that, despite the blessings, I felt that underlying curse, and I was trapped in the labyrinth of the world, and the Minotaur was just around the next corner. Either way, the whole episode is embarrassing. My notebook from that day describes it thusly:
No picture of him in prevailing Athens is correct. How many places like this are there? What I’m going through. A hurt of well overlooks like. So he plunged into the dark abyss. He knew himself keen to his central aim. I seize out of my lover’s passionate embrace.
Next came the Palace of Knossos to go to, and I wasn’t going site seeing. I was feeling down and out on Crete and simply eating comfort food. One of my favorite Greek myths as a child was Theseus and the Minotaur, a story rich with imaginings. I’d play it out in my mind: that monster roaming the labyrinth looking for Greek youth to eat, who’d been sent to be a sacrifice for the city of Athens, their mounting terror as they were chosen, their sailing there to be eaten (what they must’ve felt), their trying to find a way out of the labyrinth, and finally, their doom coming upon them, encountering the Minotaur and being eaten alive. I would thrill with the Athenian hero Theseus as he hunted down and killed the thing.
The early adolescent Donny wanted to be an archeologist, with the same passion I would soon give to Jesus, reading account after account of the findings and excavations of lost cities and civilizations—Troy was real! Odysseus then?—, so lost in it I asked my mom to put the three pyramids of Giza and Happy Birthday Archeologist on my 12th birthday cake (the pyramids were there but not the epitaph—ridiculous my mom had said), would imagine Arthur Evans, the adventurer archeologist, coming upon that ‘virgin’ hill on Crete that had held so many secrets for so long and discovering the palace, the labyrinth, the whole Minoan civilization (what that must’ve felt like). So to Knossos I would go. I could not, however, shake the feeling that I’ve described of being some vaguely intended sacrifice, on the part of a half conscious world that let its unconscious part reign, or so it seemed to me, in the same shoes basically as those seven young Athenian men and seven young women sent to the island each year and I was disembarking from the ferry to be eaten alive (although they were wearing concrete sacrificial shoes). “Yeah you wonder when the axe is going to fall” (my muse today).
Knossos is not far from Heraklion. I managed to get there by thumb, but it wasn’t easy, despite the heavy traffic on the highway. I had to hump some. It was early evening by the time I got there, what with all the traveling I’d done that day from Athens, by boat, thumb, and feet. I decided to wait until the next morning to visit the palace, and I didn’t know how I was going to do that because I didn’t have any money. Did they have an entrance fee? I found an empty piece of property a few ‘doors’ down from the entrance to the site, went to the end of it, the property boundary, where it met a large field in which the palace sat about a football field off in the distance to the right, no buildings or anything in between, and set up my tent, what I did just to feel better, for comfort, and not the physical kind. A backpacker’s tent is such a wondrous thing. A minute or two, and viola, you have a home. It was a two-person Sierra Designs three seasons tent, as durable as your teeth, as intimate as your bedroom. I cooked something I don’t remember I got I don’t remember how and retired for the evening, hoping the morning would bring better, brighter things. It brought the palace. “Whatever site reckoned in my head the beauty to be there” (my muse today).
During my dawn meditation the next morning, I heard these lines of muse and saw these visions:
Putting windows in, fresh, fresh windows. Putting windows in, eight, eight windows. Was chosen Don. [vision of a large arrow coming in a long arc from the palace and landing right where my ankles were crossed in meditation. Just as the arrow landed I heard, “Was chosen!,” and at the same time I saw written on the bottom of the scene, like a subtitle, “Was chosen Don.” Then in another vision I saw the Minotaur walking towards me in the labyrinth, completely in shadow. It advanced towards me a ways, not to scare me but simply to be seen] What about to prove? Just to brag to people no.
I couldn’t make out any features of the Minotaur, but I could see its outline, and instead of horns it had antenna on its head a bit horn-like, and not only two. It still suggested, vaguely, a man-bull form though. “An alien!” I thought, but your guess is as good as mine. For me, the vision was showing it was real, whatever it was, and that the old story had some basis in fact. Now, as smart as I think I am or may seem, I have a case of the dumbass often enough and in important enough moments that my intelligence can be questioned, and here was a prime example. No, that’s not believing in the Minotaur for you skeptical folks. I did not realize Crete was giving me a place to stay for the winter. In my ego I am, that is, that I am important, I thought it had to do with being chosen for some great work. Here we’d say “Goddamn son,” as LBJ said to Forrest Gump, embarrassed for him and in disbelief, when he showed the president his butt.
Will the world know the business of other? Can the world know the business of other? It’s not up for sale. This is Process Oriented Psychology. And you think you’ve found a name for it. It’s not that at all. It won’t fit into a schoolbook.
This is so much bigger world out there than Shakespeare let in with his pen, than the philosophers have spoken, than the scientists have reckoned, than even the religions gamble. You are not prepared for it. You wouldn’t even know it exists. You don’t have time for the unknown. Do you?
World ends where we experience reality. Is that right? Encounter a larger world and think we’re just makin’ it up— like you’re the measure of reality.
Is that often shown a larger world? You see it? Alright, alright, I’m puttin’ smoke up your ass. I just wanted you to read my paper. The trouble with autobiographical writing.
I’ve asked for a report card. Have you ever met God? In question. God is somebody no one can be showing this to you. Look out that window. It’s gets bigger than anything you can see.
I don’t really want something. I don’t really want somebody here. And God is there. You are scared of Him, and you’re jealous. Let’s find Him, shall we? Ever increasing you.
Oh my God He’s not hungry. That means He bruises no one. Do you know how safe that is? Your own identity sees itself, and existence is its room. That’s the model today. Tomorrow I’ll get bigger.
A secondary source. But you’ve spoken in primary terms. It’s the primary that is God. You’re a window keeper. I’ll tell you what, I can be a better window looker. You’ve got clear eyes, just what we need.
(today’s muse)
However I interpreted that “was chosen” bit, I was elated. We are funny creatures that way. Somebody praises us, and we get happy. That means also that when someone puts us down, we get depressed, or mad as hell. You know the saying: the people singing your praises today will be the people spitting on you tomorrow. or vice versa. It’s not a saying; I just made it up, but the idea comes from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Let’s keep going. They say, and they’re not the only ones, that your happiness needn’t depend on outer circumstances, or on tongues. Now that’s a trick. Anyway, I jumped up and packed up after the meditation, and walked to Knossos. Although there were people there that early, it didn’t open until later, and so I waited. They let me in for free, and all I had to do was ask. It was my joy that did it, my genuine smile. It’s hard to say no to the morning sun. I went in and went to every inch the public was allowed, wanting to see what we all come to ruins to see but never can: the place itself, the people themselves. You’re just left with a longing you can’t fulfill, a taste that is just enough to make you come back one day. Leaving there, I got on the road and put my thumb out, doing the hitch and walk backwards thing, quite awkward with a backpack, and a city bus stopped and opened its door. I just kept walking, not even considering the bus had stopped for me. I heard a honk and looked behind me to a smiling bus driver motioning me to come. I couldn’t believe it. I got on the bus, the driver having me put my pack right at the door at the top of the steps and me stand next to him. Riding shotgun on that bus down to Heraklion, I was walking on sunshine.
Vision of looking for a pacifier I lost while picking up the Minoans. [vision of walking around the palace ruins looking for it. I had carried a sacred object among a group of Minoans I was walking with, which was like carrying the group, and I had to put my pacifier down to do so, it suddenly having appeared in my hands] There is a closer way I didn’t know, through the Matrimandir. [vision of walking to a tower a long ways off] Om carried me home. [vision of seeing a man outside the Paris bookstore (Shakespeare and Company, where I lived awhile) reading a copy of The Atlantic Monthly, which I wanted to read, and then he was reading it upside down] Survival travel, do you know what survival travel is? The Edens of the remnants of the life of the Gods, they’re allowed to be a mother.
(muse that came a few days after the visit to the ruins)
I love you Michael, more than anything. Uh uh Annabelle, don’t judge be hero. The Palace of Knossos, a rainbow on his feet and hurl on, a husband for your Jan. What more could you want?
(today’s muse)
For reasons I don’t remember but probably had to do with a strong feeling to go there, and I really paid attention to strong feelings, heeded them (don’t you?), I went back to the tourist bureau and sat down on the concrete bench nearby that was on the sidewalk that ran alongside the highway there. After some moments of looking at the world but seeing only my thoughts, I heard, directed at me, “Are you Irish?” Uh, err, what? I looked up, and there was a rather animated, middle-aged man on a scooter, who’d pulled off the road, talking to me. “No, I’m not Irish.” “You look Irish.” I took it he was Irish. His grin was irresistible. I grinned back and told him I was American Heinz 57, and there could be some Irish in me for all I knew. He said I just didn’t know my Irish roots asked what I was doing there. I explained I was looking for free camping, needing a place to stay for the winter. He told me that he’d just come from a long stay in Matala, and there were caves there you could live in. He explained more about the place, how you had to go to the caves up on the mountain and not the famous ones near the beach, and that the scene now was dominated by drinkers, and I should steer clear of them. It didn‘t escape my notice he was probably one. He told me to get on, and I did, without even thinking about it, and away we went, to the bus station, where he bought me a ticket to Matala and gave me five euro to eat lunch, as it was around noon. He left, giving me a heartfelt blessing, and I ate and got on the bus to Matala. Thank God for the Irish. If you know English poetry, the Irish strain is particularly good, as if an Irish poet is more open to inspiration from the muse of poetry, having to do with the mysteries of being Irish I’d imagine, and here, this Irish individual was answering the beck and call of Crete in helping me get to where she wanted me to go, open to that I’d guess just being Irish.
Throw it upon the fire and let the governments melt unto me. Have you ever heard an island speak? It’s got some inventions of its own, a spirit unto itself. I tasted its clover.
Do you see the embarrassing situation? It’s been made into a European Union tributary, and the whole place of its land, it’s an economic olive grove. It still got some secrets to share.
It’s got its sweet back. I’m at its confessional today. It’s got its island back today. There’s a poet in the house, writing down of ears of old. Did anyone just hear that? I tell you this island speaks. I tell you this lawyer speaks. Now I’ll show you.
Lazarus shaped the boat outside. Fellowship day with the entire clock, I’m runnin’ guns for Crete. Power point, you need not get this.
I’d like to teach the world to sing. [heard sung by the voices of the 70’s Coke commercial] Playing at a theater near you, so many beings you can shake a smoke at, all stacked on top of each other, all waitin’ for you to meet ‘em.
(today’s muse)
Matala is mentioned in ancient history and in Greek myth (Zeus, disguised as a white bull, took Europa to the beach there first when he kidnapped her), but what gives the place its individuality today are its manmade, Neolithic caves that hippies lived in in the 60’s and 70’s, until they got kicked out by the church and military, something I didn’t know had happened, didn’t know any of the history of the place. I didn’t even know about the annual hippie festival held there every June to celebrate the fish were starting to stink hippies, to the local authorities that is, not to the world’s eye. Now they make money off of them, and wouldn’t you know it. I always wondered why no one even looked at me funny the whole time I was there, walking daily to the village from the caves up on top of the mountain and back again, looking every bit like a dirty hippie. They were acclimated. The drinkers the Irishman had told me about were not in the places I expected them; down and out and hanging around. The one I had the most intimate dealings with, who drank like a fish, was a retired East German spy living off her pension there on the island, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to first come to Matala. I rolled into town, spent some minutes looking around, and then I went up onto the mountain to find my cave for the winter; rather early manish isn’t it?
The hippie caves, made at the end of the Stone Age. Photo: Zde, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe hippies caves when they were occupied. Photo source unknownMatala from the hippie caves. I lived outside of a cave on top of the mountain in the background. Wikipedia, public domain
Matala cave drink after first experience. You think you’ve got it. [heard sung] You don’t have a diamond. You have the equivalent of your shoes. They just put you in Tennyson ice. It was all warmed up, ready to reload.
There on that mountain I really enjoyed it. Oh wonderful people, [heard sung] it wasn’t everything you’d hoped for. Put that down. It was Monday.
Whatever, the word is not lost. What does that mean? Okay man, I get things from the heavens. Now let’s start out the week.
The letter will talk to you about tomorrow. U.S. send them. They just ignored you. You’d think your dad would help: overhead, overhead march.
I’m not complainin’, but Matala is not the festival of the Gods. Let’s meet it in its rouge reports a few pippers down. I had the ability to travel the world, and here I was on an island in the Mediterranean taking my lamp out of my heart and looking at it. No, no dissatisfaction, the island held me. You got me everything I grinned.
How did dog get that again Lassie? That dog ate that, my connection between the dog, hay, and all the beautiful skin rubbin’. Ole puppy dog belly was here. Jan was my friend. She was the perfect dog for a nomad, for a writer: she changed positions all the time. Wonderful dog, a street dog and smart. She got the good hand. This is where I’m gonna quit.
Consciousness, some are mastering their own. You’re exemplary. Stay Luna in her big puppy dog ears, if you can see it.
She will shake them at you to make you pay attention to her, to show you she showed up. It’s Catamaran Island. I was going to… He does rainbow. [last word heard sung, from one of my songs, “Like a Rainbow”]
(today’s muse)
Luna, photo by NitishLuna again, this photo by Nitish too
I’d heard when I was living there that a Roman garrison was once stationed the top of the mountain, but it was a Roman cemetery according to the net, or I guess that’s where they’re talking about, hence the ‘caves’, which were mostly beneath the ground and served as tombs I imagine now, but they didn’t make me say tombs to myself when I was there. The way you could see the sun go to sleep every night, sink right into the ocean right before your very eyes, though, sometimes had Hades swallowing the sun written all over it. There was only one inhabitant up there at that time, someone the Irishman had told me about, a hermit who didn’t want to speak to anyone. I did try to speak to him as I walked around looking for my cave, but it wouldn’t be until later that he’d actually be friendly. The biggest and most promising cave, where the trail dipped below ground, and you could see into it, had some old furniture in it and looked like it had just recently been abandoned, but I stirred clear of it because you could see into it when you walked by. I didn’t know on that first day that no one ever came up there, just walked by on the side trail on their way to Red Beach, a nudist beach, but they didn’t wander around the mountaintop.
I chose a small cave that was in the side of the mountain, not underground, and not for the cave, which was not inhabitable, but there was a Tibetan meditating Buddha painted on the rock-face outside and an area large enough to camp in protected by walls of stacked stones, just perfect I thought, and it was. I put my gear in the cave and set my tent up, and now what? You always have so much time to kill sleeping outside of society.
My campsite. The cave has the mat over it. That’s Mechthild, her husband Wolfram taking the picture. They sponsored me to Sicily and beyond.
That mountain, not much to look at, except at the sunset from there, but to sleep on it was another story. My notebook from my time on the mountain tells often of hidden doors and secret passages, which wasn’t telling me to find those, like most might be prone to take it—just look on the Internet—but telling of the inner of the mountain, not actually the physical inside, and what it was helping to facilitate in me, inner change, like the secret passage I found on top Mt. Sinai in a lucid dream and stumbled upon a spiritual class down there in the heart of the mountain. Here’s a section (one period of hearing/seeing) from my notebook from that first night, and I’ve left out material that would be too much to introduce at this time, but at the end of the section I include it, to give a picture of that material so I can finally talk about it outright.
Out of this place of shifting silences came a drifting myth, [vision of a hidden passage, a magical looking one, beside or among normal looking doorways in a stone mountain] a place where one couldn’t stop beauty, a beauty that could come out of a child. To find the name of the place. [vision of writing this down] [vision of being in the possession of many small but very thick volumes I was removing from a small pit for safe keeping. The last one had a wooden cover and chains holding it together, a very old book] Do you write short stories? Yes. I’ve over excited their tea. What he drinks. [vision of a spike being driven in the top of my head] Out of the creation of his hands, his feet. To look at these books, no one knew how you hardly have any room at all [vision of a woman crammed into the corner of my tent near my head. I was going to let another friend in, a man, when the line came, and the vision ended] It’s too much. So much of magic. It had a lot of lines. Soul touch. And take you to die where the formulas are exposed. I found out where the books are. I pulled in some heavy artillery, a nice artillery. [vision of washing out my left eye and the feeling of the need to do so] Tales of Darkness [vision of going through a stack of books and finding one I really needed, but then the last one had this for a title, and I lost the one I needed] Go, wouldn’t you? [vision of the bar in town called Kreta and help coming from there] [vision of pushing a little kid on his bike, that had training wheels, around the town square] Class clown. I am familiar with your axing project. [vision of clearing the doorway of a heretofore hidden cave] And not yell at my boss or anybody about bleeding parts. There’s Bucky. [vision of being in my mom’s living room and watching TV with Bucky, my step-dad. There was a young man on TV that looked just like him. I might mention, for understanding’s sake, that he didn’t like the vagabond/hippie me one little bit] A radiant change in reality.
My muse was also heading to a destination like my vagabonding, what keeps it grounded in reality. It’s not to make me a good poet, not to make me a spiritual teacher, not to give me “a splendid name” (from Savitri). It’s to do something that would make many if not most spit on my name, as we construe reality today that is. It’s for the future, and if it doesn’t get out, then someone else’s along the same lines will, inevitably, because it’s the way reality works, not the way we desire it works and try and make it work. As I read the mainstream thought of this day and age, and that’s what I read on the net almost exclusively, so to know what you’re reading and thinking, when we see ourselves in the future we see changes in technology, in law and order, not in the fabric of humanity. And so of course we see coming destruction, not understanding it’s not technology that will save us; it’s us. A social holism is the future of humanity, resulting from something I’ve written about at length, a revolution that occurs when enough of humanity opens the inner consciousness, where we see holism as the fabric of reality.
In practical terms, that would mean we wouldn’t veil women to keep from having sex with them, if we are men that is, how, if you really look at it, we try and stop most any wrongdoing: by removing it from our view or making it inaccessible. It’s that attitude that’s destroying us more than wrongdoing itself if you understand the ramifications of denying the workings of reality. So how do you change a bad reality? By reality changing itself when you reach down into the bowels of reality seeking change. And it’s a visceral change. My muse aimed to keep me from having sex with a prepubescent boy in any set of conditions and under any circumstances, and having sex with a boy was as natural to me as rain.
Although I’d heard it every night as an older child in a deep stage of falling asleep, what I called ‘reading the book’, and I started hearing isolated lines that I could record isolated one winter in a cabin near Ashland, Oregon, in 1997, which became a little more pronounced living for nine months in Cuzco, Peru, in 2000, it became a flood in Brazil in that little healing community off the grid called Kahil Gibran, like I told you earlier, but I didn’t tell you it was on the September 11th 2001, on 9/11.
That was the day I moved into the community and the day the muse turned on like who would’ve thought it: “Silence Indio, Introductory Chapter,” (my muse then). That’s a loaded title because the community had an elementary school for the children of the local village, Indio children not too terribly far from out of the jungle. It was an open school (no roof) and very free. Every day the kids took all their clothes off and went for a long walk, which I took them on when I was there, their English teacher, alone, basking in their brown, beautiful, naked bodies, but at a distance. And my muse was right there making sure it was at a distance, a surprise flood on the inside wetting me not with desire but with the divine word. Some of those children were having sex with an adult in their lives, or more than one, and I know that because I was propositioned, not the innocent way a kid does it if they don’t really know what they’re doing; the way a kid does it if they are having adult/child sex. It would not have been possible to refuse without the muse. But I must tell you without telling you the details, for obvious reasons, a half a year after my year of being 41 ended so did my abstinence, and all this Crete just went temporarily out the window, when a boy old enough to know what he was doing (12) propositioned me, one who had had adult/child sex and had picked up on my attraction and wanted a conquest, I kid you not, not really into having sex. Boys will be boys, and sometimes that is bad. Can we see this?
I was in the last country I vagabonded in before returning to India, and I’d seen the fall coming in my muse and had even temporarily left the living situation I was in being a handyman for a family and gone to camp alone in a forest for a few days to gird up my loins. Doing that they just go more wet. Taking it totally from view just made it more desirable, and a retreat doesn’t work if you’re running from something. I fell after I returned. The muse went into damage control, and I went downhill from there all the way to India, which was my next stop, like I said, back to Ithaca and Penelope, and it’s just like that ain’t it; you get right near the goal and wham! you fall flat on your face. You can tell me there’s no excuse all day long, but I’ll tell you our freewill isn’t absolute, and everybody has a set of circumstance in which their will is not free, and you can tell me there is not, but you lose control somewhere, if nowhere else then right here in your reaction towards me or that terrorist, white supremacist, shooter, or some wrongdoer or another. My muse was working to give me that freewill in the place my will wasn’t free, mastery over my sexual desire anytime, anywhere, and if you think it took me too long, or my muse too long to teach me that, then how long will it take you to even realize the ill will you feel towards us only adds to our own to do more wrong, and so it’s wrong, much less learn to not act upon it when it rises up from your subconscious taking over; we’re talking ages aren’t we? The muse has acted like nature when it establishes something new upon the earth, first giving a taste of what’s coming, in this case self-mastery over my sexual impulse, and then a long period of the absence of it, where, if you could see it, the foundation is being laid for it, and then the full monty.
The beauty that could sometimes come out of a child. I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition. I’m that child and here’s that beauty. Crucify me will yah? Take me on the long run. Of course you could destroy my work forever. I’ll keep croppin’ up in the consciousness of other people, the openings of consciousness they make.
You can’t stop me, and I’m Franklin 41. A question these Americans hope is bridge the obstintiscity. To know I’m for real. This is not a magician’s trick. Okay Covid, hear me?
When the gun is right there. That’s the ability to single you out: the battle for where we configure reality, in reality as it is to itself or in the social construct we believe in, the battle for consensus reality.
Look at this: they’re all grown up. Looked in the eyes of the mind’s control, and these were the lines on Crete. He just ended up in Africa on a suitcase. Look, you’re gonna have to whistle. I would tell them you’re sexually attracted to children. That’s what your whole muse is about.
We want to find where that stuff belongs to me. A very deep state there was no desire there really. The integration of desire, I’m painting a picture of reality. I’m not puttin’ a system on it. How do you do that and not harm someone? Listen.
For a lot of their footfall found advice. [a line on Crete that came again here] Now compare that to your schedule: put reality out of your desire. You’ve made reality conform to your limits. Is reality there or the pains you take to construe reality?
Rewriting a paradigm. In the Earth wrongdoing, where does Earth go when you remove it? It stays just where you are: on your own, get set, go. How could you handle desire? Only the harm causing agent remains unheeded, unacted upon.
I don’t know where to begin/put. [words spoken simultaneously] Even I myself listen marks ace a good time. You’re comin’ in a new world honey, for I had your hand. I had your hand.
My mom got lucky it got the whole grocery store. I think the air on his favor. What’s that number there? I got a version two, a puppy dog version. [vision of Luna on the bed looking at me a mixture of puppy love and puppy mischief in her eyes]
(today’s muse)
This integration of boys and me in a harmony, the harm removed, goes hand in hand with many other themes my muse speaks about, the chief being at that time Islamic terrorism, as it began on 9/11 for a reason. Out of my country, I was right there with it when the shit hit the fan, the planes the towers. I am, after all, an Ex-Green Beret. But anyway, my muse back then speaks about where Islamic terrorism comes from and how to actually stop it, not just fight it, it coming from the misinterpretation of Mohammed’s muse:
I keep my hands clean to show my intentions. For the sake of the divine being, when I look at the Black Stone, I had better focus.
God’s going to use just one of us to tell His culture? Couldn’t succeed where no one else had tried. There is always the work which goes before.
By the advent of one person, one heavenly word? On the surface people are not the same, everybody’s different.
If you want to be free for a religious aim, if you want to free people for a religious aim, free Islam. It can only be done one step at a time, quickening to that which is in the Book, in the song, in the name, in the, name. Moved by the right set of ideas: me and God. Alright, you and God. We need to ever let go we’re strangers. It was something we used to do when we were small, jump over fences. Our fences were made for us to cross. To meet something of their stuff with our value. Raise your hand: everyone’s as important as everyone else. Stand the existence each in all. The acceptance of you is the acceptance of myself. And what is the real reason your faith includes me? A world soul. You one with genuine all the creatures in the world. By a swift, luminous point that gathers in the whole, by a swift disinterested patience, we were learning how to swim. Now all of us can learn a little bit of mercy. Moslems were on the verge. The closer you are to stopping the more you manifest, the more acute your problem becomes. As it started to manifest it became more acute.
What goes into a family starts to manifest, and that includes religious intolerism. The soul sense is self-righteous. The ego sense is unselfish. This cunning belief. I has to do with the ideas promoted during early childhood. Take a soul, receive him at the door: I am one believe in me. Memory of Mohammed saying this. He incited beliefs. It’s only belief that excites you. You’re just giving them the truth, that Moslem invented. Ode of thus becoming a belief.
In order to build a map. A map of what? A map of a big black wall through the word: my hands are clean. Their hands are dirty. God destroy my enemies. They’re sin. They’re bad, hate, hate, hate.
I mean look at us, everyone is blind but ourselves. You can’t use ignorance to describe us; it’s too high a state. I can know. I don’t have to hate. Peace and love know why they are. Hatred and violence don’t know who they are. I fly through the ripples he calls destruction. I slay death. I’m past revenge. It’s better to enter paradise with a fixed hand, the language-wide circle of one’s whole hand.
He found in products purely simple can the Extreme fill. This is how one man Christ-like can live. There was another group called Pantheism, and we were going to get rid of their parallel, but what is the hatred of corn?
If I’m not surrounded por the statues. If I don’t have to go around them three times. Letting a form come to see what the real eye images, reveal the face of all the Gods. They’re all relevant to each other, benevolent. These are the hams of the universal wordplay. Now I know what the alphabet belongs to.
(from a manuscript I started on that mountain above Matala)
And Islamic terrorism comes from his muse, or how he construed his muse at any rate, but it also comes from his own actions and his misconstrued interpretation of the image of God:
He’s taken the Quran to the grave with him, and he know he dead, but did he take a pen and write it? I think God’s bark is an ego’s person. In that fashion an ego’s bark is a hungry person. [a line today added] Can you tell the lemon tree from the orange? Very pretty. Sour the building error’s the judge.
Dire’s love with these big religions. The hatred has its way and comes as the crumbling faith of all our religions. Burn with the hair of common things. A mere self-denial and concentration in the being is not enough. Put spiritual trip on the glory of its own path. The mold of it will be its own. We are each at a different development. Most of the teaching is self-teaching. What goes in doesn’t cause a flowering. What will the Spirit say to him when finally he is a man? Go on up to adult spirituality. Higher teaching witnesses that faith.
A time for learning and a time for mastery. You have commanded me. Then You instruct. Then You touch. You hear the Godhead’s touch where faith works out a spiral hum. If the gates were suddenly flung open, Heaven’s openness would confuse the Earth. There there are no rules.
Don’t stop religion. Don’t let it die either. I do think we have particular faith. It doesn’t matter if you’re for somebody. If you’re religious you’re somewhat so. As long as it stays just an integral movement and doesn’t go into fascism. We take a living image, as most often these images are, and enshrine it to the One. In the end all is a sheep but God. And speaking of sheep. To know God is to see that knowledge as a king. God is a knowledge and love the house. You walk your heart to love what it glorify means. It just so happens that that’s what we’re working on today, the love of God.
I’m as big as God. I’m as big as God. I can have all power. From her wounded task. From his wounded innocent childhood. The gist is right, a half-animal. By the half-truth of symbol us in a half-beast saw the face of God. To be an actual face to face deity, of soul daylight she must take his screened divinity; his own position, steps out of it as it were and makes room for God, and sat down on the right side of the world. God looking at the world through your eyes, then you reflect the light of His face.
Discovering what truth meant had to contour her face. Almost like the word is luminous equipment. Neither the Lord nor the Devil fica em palavaras. Devil fica in words. To teach the manifold nature of the Self poems from the evasive answers of the Light. On the middle room floor I obey God. That’s what you do in a mosque. This is the fifth floor, the farthest you can go by the Quran. Why are you reading the Quran? A.E.R.A., for an almost overland view.
And there in that inner room of middle self expose a body of books long adapted: holy conscious into views, but not that Consciousness itself. Through the eyes of the screen, screen of thought. It comes in through your love of ceiling. We can’t live in the boundless truth, just live.
The question can the truth be changed or cares for or develops only on its own. The truth ever wears a mask, windows that open the doorway to other truths. God changes too. A small order must never change. Jesus of the Bible was faced with the books of the Bible, and that would smother in: the prisoner held infinite in a phrase. We are also like infants. But to be prisoners is not all our fate. Growing, the fundamental name of existence, the growth of Self in things.
You need convincing. I need convincing. By hearing it over and over. All shadowy doubt must turn to trust. Doubt pretty much because I know there are frightful things. A person can get better at faith if he longs to. There be a time when faith is no longer a doubt but a transformation.
Vanity will be her danger always in these depths. The sense on world famous. Looking for greatness, unlike universal Mike. Um, I’m a spiritual master. The dummies that cause this place, the babies that same here. He stands there and idea of himself, the dream poet. Humanity would most tear it apart. I had a too high opinion of myself. Ripped it to shreds. You don’t have to be a star to get to God. The clouds are the lids of God pointing the way. I became just one in all. Interwoven your intercourse with your temperament, as the maker’s hand is not supposed to be cleared. There’s a way to do it without destroying the harmony maker’s whole. I was only special because I showed my butt in the wrong place. What do you say when you’re the center of people’s attention? Celebrate God and thank the moon for what he brings, a story of how the sacred got out the secret.
Love, purity, divine action is a result of the soul that has come to the surface. What Mohammed wanted. There vainly. Seven jars of karma. Dissatisfaction, the bits of Mohammed did not stick together. What he did was wrong, the way he put it together, when he put it together. The text was improperly inspired, choosing this over that. It leads to hatred, hatred against the Israelis, hatred against the Americans. His soul, that Mohammed nailed this together precisely for what he couldn’t say. Yet within line. Simply Mohammed issues. Can issue it remote from There, yet issues it remote from There. Islam as it expresses the world soul, Islam as it teaches the world soul, in answer to the music of the love of God, the Quran as a medium expresses that. They don’t want to take the world away by leading ours. Not that my soul is ever to direct Islam, but it may heighten things.
What is difficult for a man is not to have faith in faith but in God. It’s almost as indescribable as it is hidden. The difference between us and structure is in it we need to fill what structure so painstakingly lacks. Islam tries in much order to bring down the golden people, but all this repeating order can lead to a chaotic place, and that’s what the Valley of… He killed them all except one person, just one person. My friend asked if following were to lose control. The result of this chaotic order has held his heart prisoner.
(from that same manuscript)
The suicide bomber poem begin in that healing community in Brazil I’ve named, when a dead suicide bomber began speaking to me from the other side, not one of 9/11, one from a much earlier suicide bombing in Israel. A 9/11 bomber wouldn’t have been possible given the time it takes someone to get to where the bomber spoke from, the Heaven of Islam, after having gone through the hell his act had opened because he’d “turned to the one evil that saw a lion like a snake” (my muse then). Just read the poem.
Can one ring the bell of afterlife and stand at the gates of God looking in? Overlooking death, on death’s ridge, saw the image of the dead or the dead that want to die. I have secret duty. I’ve met people in death. I hear a dead of experience. It’s just, you know what I mean, a different country. The suicide bomber, I took what didn’t sound like me, some soul from there. The suicide bomber begins to speak. Some of our lines are talking death.
(from that same manuscript)
On that mountain on Crete I decided to resubmit to The Atlantic (if you remember I submitted the suicide bomber poem to them from Paris earlier in this story, not explaining then it got lost, and I had to resubmit and then was rejected), but this time I’d include a long cover letter, which turned into my submission and my major writing project on the island, one I never finished nor submitted, where I attempted to organize my muse for publication, composed by then of several notebooks, put it together like fitting scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in place, which just wasn’t possible, or it was; it was just too construed. The cover letter is a mixture of verses of poetry and prose, like this writing. The muse would name it The Inspired Word, and then a little later, Civilization and the Art of Terror, as it’s about Islamic terrorism, or started out that way, but it turned out to be more about poetry and spirituality than terrorism, with a lot of me thrown in, and consequently my sexuality, the ins and outs of it. But it’s the human baby and small child that actually gets the centerfold, because that’s the handle of human change. I just kept both titles.
The Inspired Word or Civilization and the Art of Terror
Dear Poetry Editor,
It is not, I would imagine, in your guidelines to read a letter of such length included with a poetry submission. It seems to me also, however, that those instructions cannot cover all the possibilities of poetry and letter combinations that might come to you. The suicide bomber also follows instructions, to the letter I might add, but perhaps if he would take the time to stop and read the letter the world is writing to him in the hour before he blows a crowded corner of it up, or the tank commander or bomber pilot for that matter, he would hear his soul speaking its sorrow of what its body it about to do, and he would definitely decide now would be a good time not to carry out his instructions. Of course there is a big difference between a poetry editor and a suicide bomber, but is there a gap between them no bridge, no linking idea, can cross? Is there really underneath it all a big difference between people as like we like to think? This letter attempts to build bridges and close gaps between a poetry editor and a suicide bomber, citizens and terrorists, poetry and prose, the rational and the mystic, the secular and the religious, you and I, the good and the bad, between soul and nature. When you finish reading you may not agree with it, but like the suicide bomber who decides to disobey orders, you’ll be greatly relieved you did.
Since we have to overcome these differences, we just couldn’t be afraid of them. You need a short mystical breath. Bridge the gap all life must take. To gap it spiritual is to hurt. See to a letter see to/too a country. [words spoken simultaneously] Heart hearing wood, a social adventure. The word social trigger has come up, a glad, long and windy adventure.
At the end of July I sent you two poems for consideration, but it seems that they were lost. In the reply to my email inquiry I was informed you had no record of them, and it was suggested I resubmit. I had originally sent the poems only with a short note saying they were unpublished and thanking you for considering them, but after dwelling a bit on the tone behind the short reply I received, which was nice enough, I feel the need to explain where the poems come from, and why, out of the enormous amount of poetry submissions you receive, you should publish mine. In doing so I feel it also necessary to examine poetic process, since my submission is part of that greater whole, and attempt to give answer to two very old questions that seem not much asked anymore by the public mind: where does poetry come from and what’s it for? And since in my view those answers are inextricably linked to world process, specifically the process whereby it solves problems, I must as well observe that process and what in the world of today stands in the way of earth’s advance.
Turning to the view which sees her world as a gloomy eye, do you see only the fear of civilization, even fear we’ve never been supposed to be? Where does it all come from? Worse, where is it all going? We can stretch as far as history and maybe an epidemic wipe it out. How old are we? How long do we? Is that what happens is just fate? People who have no meaning in their life, where will they find it? To their view life doesn’t matter. Is it matter gonna matter? Are you conscious yet of your soul? Are you aware of your significance in the world? What kind of cosmic question is he asking? Like at some critical stage in our evolution. End of an age this crossing era. We were at that generations place called the 11th embattlement.
Oh boy the history we could lesson. Had a chance go at moral mercy. The solution that God wanted, and we cling to our small motives. We are killing each other to destroy good and bad, but the surrender to armed impulse, if we continue with this world view, where will it lead us? Worse, where did it all return? Whenever you get to this genocized, spiritualized, wrong view of things… Sometimes we don’t understand tooth’s tendency. From accumulated wrong war rises. Acts of violence turn into the wrong war. Only shoot if they are shooting at you. People seem war to think he was a hero. Each of these drives can slow these worlds down to a crawl.
Kissing Earth’s one-minded solution there is another way, the top of the head to kingdom come, the ultimate country, perhaps the ultimate level of universe. At this stage at 11 the impossible could give answers. Let’s not eat at a crossroads. Feel don’t make war. Give truth a chance. Awaken the sense of a labor within the world. There is a labor in God’s worlds. You can’t sink them. We aren’t just images of the Creator. The world is big enough to see the world. To perceive things wrong is to suffer. Distortion is simply seeing things in the wrong way. There is made sunlit views from which the eyes truly take form. New interpreters, we’re just putting a new perspective on God, the work of a poet. The poet, a civilized popular engineer, a truth professional. Open a crack for you. Poetry can move many a map. You like the sound of a poet.
It seems to me that the poet’s market has little faith in the unsolicited, unpublished poet’s ability to write real poetry. That’s okay. I have little confidence in the modern media’s capacity to recognize and appreciate genuine poetry. I tried unsuccessfully to publish a few poems ten years ago. That’s alright. They were by no means great poems. On Easter morning of 1995 I did, however, publish poems in an unorthodox manner by posting them, with the help of friends, on the fourteen Stations of the Cross in the old city of Jerusalem, and during Passover on doorsteps and around the Jewish quarter, and a few days later on the Golden Gate and around the Muslim quarter, and the following week at the Dome of the Rock or on the Temple Mount, and then continuing the poem posting on the top of Mt. Sinai and ending it inside the Great Pyramid in Cairo, poems dealing with human unity, the healing of human evil, and the misunderstanding of religious ideas.
[the prose paragraphs that go between some of these verses I’m not including]
Pen. Mountain, a bridge twixt Heaven and Earth. There’s a better saying than just guns. The poetic attack, a language action.
Strong thinkers change reality. Passionate people alter space. Solitary effects but nonetheless just about made us non-different. Passion, by a secret oneness of our world.
I heard saw unusual, a strange thought thinking about such strangeness. It doesn’t deal with hearing as much as it deals with deafness. Things like this just slip into the mind. A dime rose peddled up from within, a dim rose of peddled strength. Reflects the sweetness of poetry. I want to see where it’s coming from. I saw backlit in myself the light of infinity. I saw backlit in myself the truth of infinity. It’s faith that calls the line. God’s breath opens the door. The wise is electric charge. To be united in the ear is to be united in electricity. A zone I come to meet where words come. I would stay in the heart for the word. This is where the pinpoint of consciousness is pointing down. This is where the jet of consciousness is pointing up, almost vertically back to infinity. Do you know where that place is? It’s angels’ gate isn’t it? A poetical inspiration, good sometimes indicates how do we touch it.
In the fly that was buzzing around my ear when I died can be heard such a conscious note. Here William Blake’s Victory of the Innocents was made. Whitman, ah, he went above the E the teacher said. He settled down to Earth. Shakespeare had some fear whether or not he was Shakespeare. The life of something governs it. Shakespeare was a slave to poetry. Those pearls were his eyes, are what bound his eyes. Of the soul takes aim it’s to be a dramatic soul.
And the fruits of life? Part of the enjoyment you seek. The epic poet is concerned with these issues, all of life’s trees.
I was walking down the street thinking woe is me, when up came this from my soul. I forgot. Oh too bad, it would have helped you bridge the gap between earth pain and hard fact. You hear these things, but not without a lot of refreshment and problems. You always have to be on guard: did I miss to write something down? Poems dying at your feet. I can’t stay here and wait; many left. Not such things as the shooting star of a record player? Visions will keep going about everything. They have something to say about what their gold intimate seeing keep.
With lines you could see for themselves. Anyway, I am bound by choice. Are choices of his thoughts. We were wondering how short there is a gap between the poet and the fired off intuition. Listen, I should listen. I haven’t quite mastered the technique. There’s babies can listen farther.
More of a time to correct it Classical Modern Poetry. Grammar is not all set by rules. The love gospel of a mounting thing, it’s cosmos create it’s conscious create act. Cosmos. Butterfly.
The star building his clothes with dark glasses and his eyes with light. The agency of stars, the stars illume more than they show. The stars are observable in the daytime too. Light rays invisible from everywhere. Space becomes the brilliant front of the background of light. What is the magic of a shooting star? The miracle of a shooting star confides.
With poetry you can just wait for the truth to come. You would not be in any rush, and your time for reference would be less. On the ancient wings of poetry I didn’t do much asking, just self-sitting absorbed in the One. Sometimes I ask the muse if he’s wrong. The stars illume more than they cure.
Is it necessary to have spiritual experience to see? I would say yes. Like I say, you must be open to the bright order for to see. The soul takes a station as a very high spiritual experience. With this opening of the well of vision in the soul, it’s not my eyes that form the most record. It’s my ears, but nonetheless there is an instrumentation higher than knowledge. There are more direct ways to be told, beyond the senses.
You get the idea. It goes on for 45 more pages. Beginning on that mountain above Matala and continuing during my five month stay on Crete, lines began to come to include in the letter, lines that came to continue ideas introduced by lines that came before I started that letter, the lines in my notebooks since the muse began, as well as suggestions on how to write the letter, and at the end I was just overwhelmed with so many lines coming to add to different places in the letter I couldn’t finish it. Adding that constant addition with trying to fit them together so they flowed like they belonged together, the whole thing just wasn’t possible. Like I said: I found myself construing it, and I didn’t want to pull a Mohammed. (I may try putting the lines together again one day into the long poem it obviously wanted to be, letting today’s more organized muse fill in the blanks and keep me from construing it.) The thing is, the muse knew that it was just a practice run the whole time it was helping me write it, what became clear when I had to leave without finishing it, and that’s just like the muse not to tell you the most important thing you think you need to know. Reading that muse of yesterday today, it’s crystal clear sometimes it was talking 20 years ago about the epic poem I recently submitted to The Atlantic (four and a half months ago), not that letter I was writing then. When it said, “You are just one Atlantic fascination out of jail,” it wasn’t talking about the magazine reacting to that cover letter that it would never read; it was talking about The Literary Eye.[i] And back then it was not only talking about that future book-length poem, but also about the writing of this story and my life as it is now, even naming names and specific incidents of my current now, and that’s the most magic thing about the muse and also the hardest to reckon into your reason, since you don’t see the future it’s talking about until it happens, but when you do it just blows your mind, each and every time. Sitting here going over my muse notebooks from Crete could be likened to that scene in the Jimmy Stewart film Harvey, when a character looks up the word pooka in the dictionary, and the book talks directly to him. I’m talking about how it hit me, like over the head. I’m not saying my notebooks came out and directly spoke to me. The question here is not, however, my notebooks speaking to me but The Atlantic. They won’t speak to me at all now, as I’ve said earlier, and we go way back, you know?
That’s just so unliterary, and that’s how it’s always been; it’s content and not quality that’s the deciding factor in getting published, for fear of messing with that sacred social construct, but in today’s don’t you dare say anything the mainstream media doesn’t agree with, media being of any public kind, literary magazines included, it’s in some ways similar to the days when you had to submit to the Church (talk about being on the wrong side of history), something I hope to make very clear with my poem and The Atlantic’s refusal to even speak to me. You see the stakes are very high. They know it’s not the news but literature that writes the soul of a culture, and that poetry is its special forces. Do you? Though not impossible, it will be hard for you to deny The Literary Eye’s not both poetry and literary, even if it makes you rend your clothes and gnash your teeth you disagree with it so much. Just read the poem. Oh, you can’t, until I post it on my own social media, but it seems it’s not to be published that way, at least not at first, interpreting a line of muse that came on that mountain, “it” being not what I thought it was but that epic: “The closer to publishing it Homeplough Publications.” I’m doing just that: getting it closer to being published by ploughing it home here on my blog, as the muse suggested I do 20 years ago.
We’re surrounded by awesome amounts of printed material. How literature conforms you. She turned into the waiter of the compliment’s daughter. The tethered word, a verse difficult brought to lip and bare. The writers empty a front, grounded by this type of writing, for years after the expelling of truth and appeal. Put milk into an atheist container and spoil it. Dry wisdom secular wisdom.
The function of poetry has taken the wrong road. Medicine not applied for medicine. What is in a man may stay in his memory or not, but poetry has first on his nature. Poetry comes from a sky test of thinking in reference to a strong idea, ideas that go to the path of overlookingness. Our poetry is to define what is to say. What do you say about a poem? Read it. The poet’s the writer that shall never be in oblivion.
(from The Inspired Word)
Thank you for the scroll. Thank you for the present. Testimonial and the divine art human, you own a suitcase. You’re not going to provide a perfect example. You’ve got something here. Don’t pop up, the idea of a superintelligence? I bask in its sunshine. I wear it on my sleeve.
What is more to being human? Would you get out of your car and look at it? You know it has guided us all along. It’s in your court if you can find it. Oh my God the origin of the universe, you can see it glowing now all over this page.
Now just keep repeating your mantra nothing is knowable God is not. The unknowable is here on the Earth.
(today’s muse)
The bar Kreta my muse spoke about was near the village square, the kind that didn’t have walls, only a roof, but it had a regular restaurant-style table layout, and I got permission to sit at a table during the day and write. I was writing by hand. I was also working on a children’s short story in addition to the aforementioned piece. The story was about a fictitious little girl named Delta, who in my story was a member of the infamous Donner party, which had resorted to cannibalism snowbound one winter in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The story was never finished either, but it was also a focal point of my muse on Crete, though a smaller one. “Delta Donner screamed,” the first sentence of “The Sharp Mystery”, the muse providing both the title and sentence. The story has since been lost, but I didn’t get very far along with it. I didn’t just spend my days writing though. I went to Red Beach often for a naked swim and once a week to the market day in Mires, the larger town of the district.
I also did day labor, how I bought my food (before a large donation of 270 euro I got), doing some fruit picking and painting work for women who lived alone. The men who ran crews or needed a man never hired me. I’d stand at the day labor pickup place in the market town with other men, all Cretans, and not get picked, and everybody else would be. I felt like a nerd or sissy or something at school recess not getting picked for kickball and having to be put on a team by the P.E. teacher. Most days when I waited there I’d just walk off without a job, but a couple or three times, right there at the end of the day labor choosing spree, an older woman drove by looking for her pick, and there I’d be all by my lonesome, and I could see the doubt on her face as she looked me over—I didn’t exactly look like the hard working type—, but she’d take me home, and I’d do the work she needed, and I’d not only get some cash but also some fruit and vegetables or maybe even lunch. It wasn’t a dog’s life.
“This is the cord of Bob Fisher.” [vision of having found a cord and a man walking into Kreta’s Bar to tell the owner I had it] (my muse before help came from that bar). I was at the bar in the first place because the muse, if you remember, told me help would come from there. Well, it appears I was sitting there fishing and not only writing, unbeknownst to me, and about a week or so after this line and vision came an older German woman walked into the bar to speak to the owner. As they spoke they were looking at me. Then she walked up and introduced herself as Irmgard and asked me if I wanted to come and live in an apartment she had upstairs from hers and be her handyman. I’d get room and board. Well I’ll be. I caught a retired East German spy. You’d have to have your head in the sand to say the future was not foretold, twice, by my muse, to chalk it all up to coincidence, seeing patterns that aren’t there. If it were you, tell me you wouldn’t see a superintelligence looking out for you.
What’s with that hearing mechanism thing? I don’t know if it means broad daylight, but… [dream vision where the crew of the Enterprise, though caricatures of them, were fitting a hearing device into Captain Kirk’s head, who only had one huge eye, which was in the center of his forehead. He was about to meet Athena, who was beaming aboard]
(my muse on the mountain)
But look at the way it was foretold, not outright but in a representative fashion. Someone needs to tell Hollywood about this. “We’re representative creatures and that’s the way our dreams represent things to us” (my muse then). Understand man. I met Irmgard there the next morning with my things, and we got in her car and drove away. An astute student of Greek myth, I didn’t look behind me as we left.
What did he mean by foreign body intelligence? How did he write it? He didn’t say anything about the cells. Is that the next chapter? He thinks we should go home tomorrow. It was in the good of the world, Captain Kirk. You mean linin’ his big stomach with space? That all-embarked journey to something higher than reason. It’s what we mean by going into space, the spiritual consciousness. No, not now. I’m not a good storyteller.
I don’t need to Crete any love, make Crete my spiritual paradise. Who pays for it? Now, the autopilot. We have our own guest card. We have our own place. Hanna dog and Luna puppy, an introduction, oh man Jan top dog, the number one puppy in an email to the function of dog in man, to dogs in people’s houses too.
Makes me think love dog, cat. What just happened? Somebody brought the cat in. They belong. Take a look. I rescue a cat on the other side. I’m sorry, and everything is expensive. Cats get trapped too as ghosts. Their owner, that’s what cats feel, and that’s what really scares you about the death hunt. I give you a horror story.
Memories apart, the living presence of Sri Aurobindo drives me to work in a dream where Sri Aurobindo meets life, and a kid and I come together where integration meets life. Can you count the ways? The right one is that boy in my lap such a good thing.
You hear the future breathing beside me? A little boy sleeping beside me. He’s got the whole world in his hands. [heard sung] I put integration together with a whole lotta love. A sweet little puppy dog somebody put him. It was the Earth Mother. Can you see this integration? Puppy figures first. Oh puppy I love you.
I don’t think you understand me yet. Puppy does. Search for it, cat on my floor, or dog. Hey work this out: molest them no. See that puppy?
And then we ended up here tonight: everybody here saw puppies. Now puppies worlds behind our back with the roads of children. And we have to let Luna baby up, and she’s happy. Off together, better into right current technology, multiple batteries. Bed is just a centrifuge. There’s a difference between fingertips. Oh you stroke the future, and that’s the size of it, their future. How good a future do you want?
Three dogs and a boy crowded in bed with me. What movie now? The babysitter. I’m a function of society, and I love my job. Now move out, get this show on the road.
Try to take the bird home then. Who put the rose quartz? America for the later on use. Simple as yours. Do I like to speak the truth? Dogs and cats, you don’t think they’re children. It’s where they are with us, our children.
Knocked out we were living tense lives all the time. I hit the hall pass, the breakfast area of man. He stole around ten mil. Luna baby, I put it all courage to be missed to monster you know.
We think we drew Drew Binsky, open range. Wasn’t that over the phone? That was funny, you’re a paradigm. And we argue about it.
Prosecution books, hunter bags, function poetry. [vision of pulling out a drawer in a file cabinet and seeing the last two lines, the last one slightly different than I heard it] How do you handle relief? You don’t. And? We live Monopoly game opportunist. They gonna talk to you. Get out of jail free card detective lunch. That’ll just bowl them over. You remained unprosecutedscathed. You are so sent home, out of their control.
Is there nothing? To doors keep me a violence of emotional bad speaking people direct towards your living room. It’s scathing. They can’t touch you. Talk to them every day when you’re online. I get left behind. They drive this fence around the corner. I’m Operation Blue Book. You know what that means? I have so much to share.
I’m on my way home. I’m getting my rocket into space. And there’s where I’m headed, spiritual enlightenment. Can we say greenway? I’m in that chute. Here I come.
Come on let’s go. You don’t like the look of it. It’s a battering ram to get you to see reality. I’ve got all the principles in place, and science just can’t stand here yet. It wants reality to be this: as godless as it is, as meaninglessness show.
No I don’t see how the string gets loose, but I will rock the boat. I’ll do it now or I’ll do it later. I’ve got some stuff I got to tell everybody. A lost leak, The Literary Eye, gather out there. Can you see reality from here? Proper reality: we do get our act together. I do I want a strong reading, so you don’t miss something. I’ve got a stack of investigators [vision of several people opening the trunk of a car to see what’s in there] goin’ through the files now. Go after The Atlantic Monthly.
(today’s muse)
Talking to Frank, a French painter that lived near Matala, my only regular friend there. Photo by Wolfram
Mechthild and I in a hippie cave near the beach, her husband Wolfram taking the picture. They are who gave me the 270 euro
Here we are at Festos, again her husband at the camera
[i] The poem is divided into two parts, section one, which is a short poem and conforms to current literary magazine preferences and tastes, and section two, “Thoughts on Unique”, the rest of the poem. Section one can be a standalone poem and is actually what I submitted for them to publish, asking them to provide some means for the reader to read the rest of the poem, a link to where I’ve posted it if nothing else.
A bit of scattered poem Eleni asks her picture. You mean you go to school? That’s the travelin’ life. Do you think you can enjoy this? Dumber kid world.
Getting off the ferry from Italy and hitching from Igoumenitsa, in the north near the border of Albania, to almost Athens is a blur. I do remember chief in my mind was the thought I’d been given about Greece by fellow travelers: Greece will either love you or hate you, and there is no in-between. Would I be accepted? The first test didn’t seem to say yes. A trucker gave me a ride, who was going not far from Athens. I don’t remember how far he took me, but more than the usual spurt. I got excited seeing the highway signs to Sparta and Olympia along the way, like history was jumping out at me, but to him it was just the usual route. When I explained about myself, how I was a vagabond spiritual pilgrim (adventure traveler to you guys), making sure to tell him I needed a place to stay that night, without outright asking him to take me home, he told me about an artist’s commune not far out of Athens he could drop me off at, one that had occupied an abandoned governmental complex composed of several buildings. I just wanted him to take me home and spend the night proper in a house and with a family. When he dropped me off at the place, which was just off the freeway about 35 kilometers out of Athens, I was so let down, and he could see that, and we had, or had had that whole ride he gave me, one of those underwater conversations that deal with the real issues between us, us being you and I, the person and their society. “I don’t want to take the risk. You type of people are weird.” “Do I look like a thief, a murderer?” “My wife would get mad. My dog might bite you. Hell I don’t know, I’m just not taking you home.” “One day you’ll be in my shoes, and you’ll remember this.” The last bit isn’t so noble, but don’t we all say it under our breath in such situations of genuine need not met by someone who readily can, no skin off their nose? That the place looked now abandoned put extra underwater words in my eyes. I slowly got out of the cab and made my way down from the truck to the street, it being not a semi rig exactly but one of those big trucks that looked like it had had its sleeper cut off, their only being a cab for the driver and one person to ride shotgun. It was already nightfall. Oh woe is me.
That night was horrible. I had to sleep where people walk their dogs to go two toilet. All the buildings, that I went I could see at least, were not in use, except the one I slept in front of, but it was all locked up. They were mostly one-story, government-style buildings, and they were all decorated in that ‘tribe of’ painting so characteristic of post-hippie communes and collectives, like Forte Prenestino, a combination of graffiti and art, fuck you and butterflies (you’re hearing 2002). Yeah, they’d been here, and left. Still, they’d left a strong impression of the presence of social revolt, of the anarchist kind, on the Greek scene that I was seeing. I anticipated this to be more pronounced in Athens than I would find it, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Not having the inclination to explore the place more fully for a better place to sleep, I chose the large yard of the building still being used, where the Saint Augustine grass was high enough I wouldn’t be readily seen, which was, like I said, peppered with dog shit. I had only some pasta I was saving for Athens, which I’d determined to cook and eat in the agora, the market area of ancient Greece, and so I went to bed hungry, something you get used to adventure traveling. I have no memory at all of getting up and out of there and on the road again, but I know I arrived in Athens early in the morning. The agora wasn’t so easy to identify. Although I’ve made reference to it in this story, I didn’t carry The Lonely Planet, didn’t carry any guidebook. What was the point? I had no money, and I didn’t want a wish book. I asked around. Almost anywhere I’ve found, you can easily find people who speak at least a little English. In a large European city like Athens, English abounds.
Where I ended up I don’t know, but it wasn’t far from where I’d gotten dropped off, thankfully, as I had not one red cent to my name, and I didn’t want to risk trying to ride free on the bus, if that were even possible; I didn’t know. The place I’d been directed to hadn’t looked right, and so I’d walked to a very large open space behind what I guessed was the modern market, and I could see some ancient whatnots sticking up in the distance, but I didn’t venture into the area, just set up on the side of a concrete street behind the buildings, one that, except for some trees, had nothing on it, no buildings at all. I pulled out my gear and started cooking, and I got looks from the people walking by, and I got that familiar feeling of being seen in my underwear, like in a dream, what I’d feel when doing something nobody else was doing in the middle of everybody doing normal things, a feeling really hard to shake no matter how many times I did such doings. I ate. Now what? You ever land in a city flat broke with no place to stay and no lead as to where to find one? I did, however, have an idea. Go walking until I began to see the anarchy A on walls, and then I’d know I’d be in an area where squatters were.
I must tell you that just because I used the anarchist symbol to find squats doesn’t mean I was an anarchist, just like it won’t mean I was a communist because (later in the story) I admire someone who was. Do I show you mine? Politically, if anything, I’m an American Democrat (looking forward to something better), have been since my university days, but I’ve never voted Democrat, only voted one time in my whole life, in the 1980 presidential race, and I voted Republican. Okay I messed up, but how many people can say they passed in review in front of a new president as an active duty army muleskinner behind a team of mules pulling an army escort wagon, saluted the president with a 45/70 black powder rifle, and then attended his inaugural ball dressed in old cavalry blues, spurs that went jingle jangle jingle, and wearing a sword? That’s what I thought.
It’s hard to fit all I did that day into one, single day, but I know I only spent one night in Athens, and so it all must fit. Although the Acropolis was chief in my mind to go and see and quite visible from most anywhere in the city that looked up, I didn’t go there, do any site seeing. I was on a mission to find a place to write for the winter, and I had, or so it seemed, come to the end of my rope; Athens was my last hope. I found an A before too long and set down my pack and looked for someone appropriate to ask about where to sleep. I mean I looked for a person who looked not only different but defiant, if I can use that word, it being too strong for what I was actually looking for but which gives you the picture that I was looking for someone rather ‘alternative’.
Presently a sort of weathered young woman appeared, and I asked her. While talking to her a couple more people came up, each with a look that said something other than 9 to 5. They told me the scene in Athens was not safe—too many heroin addicts. It did not escape my notice I was talking to addicts right then. They warned me my backpack would get stolen lickety-split, and I could get hurt. It was dangerous. What could I do I asked. What can you do I was asked. Could I teach English? They all thought that was a lovely idea; yeah, teach English. They directed me to a square not too far from there, where there were a couple of English schools, the kind that taught adults for the most part, the business kind that doesn’t look like a school at all. The two I went to were up on the second floor of the business block on that square, and I had to leave my pack outside the door. I’d tried to freshen up in some bathroom I’d found on the way, change clothes, wash my face, but with my long hair and beard and travel-worn clothes, it didn’t matter what I did, other than completely changing my appearance; I didn’t stand a chance. “Excuse me, can I help you?” “You want to what?” “Here?” I’ve reported what was going on under the conversation, the real, standby communication.
Greek authority, needed insistence to say hello. Essential bottom, your stuff with essential bottom aren’t yah? Yes, so Greek in it I recognized.
My mother’s different. She didn’t scholar me right. Everywhere I looked Greek, trapped in here: Oedipus Rex king.
It was all I could do to stand up. When I was four the whole thing liberated. Control your consciousness, will yah? That became my ground plan. I was plagued by an imaginary playmate. Demons are real you understand.
Essential textbook Greek for my nose in books, to help me get my head around the game, for my hero’s story. I languished in Greek things for my understand. That’s how I survived. A survivor Greek tale that little boy wore. Essential characteristics do you understand?
Wow that was a brave mile. Get that one, you have this textbook and that. Now I’m sellin’ my story down the street survivor’s guilt. See someone. I’m a pomegranate. It was out of control the seed production rebellion. Can you hear control as my room sits to itself in the world, in the reason of my daily life? Now where do you think this journey was taking me?
You’ve got a longshoreman. It’s incredible ways control, even in mice feet. Now I’ve placed a hardball in your hands. Tube tumbler, I’ve got that essential storybook. I can control myself.
Give it to me; I’m riding December. Like a spiritual sun, my great and wonderful world, I give you my notebooks in your arms now. A long anchor I lay down. What I aim for: the renewal of man.
Feel life abroad, up here, because our choices are there. Let’s start with consciousness. Where should I put brain matters? That’s the deadline. What do you know, consciousness rises between us. You and I share it, as between us there builds one mind. We put them things aloud. This is the tall story.
Have you lost your mind? You just forgot we are all of us we are one. That’s why in the mornings dig in that vinegar. Round the birth of nation you dig. The true stories I have written penned revolution. Good morning.
I’m understanding slow now. When it touches both hands, like a pattern I have drawn for that day, a secret oneness of our world and particular natures, the whole thing, it’s at the healing, and we share together base diamonds. And you’re hearin’ our revolution.
And he was sleeping on the floor. We’re intah base. Read on story. The next street, that took us back to hello Greece.
But despite not getting a job teaching English in Athens, as the country had other plans for me, Island Penelopes, Greece did love me; boy did it ever. And I loved it, or things Greek I should say, always had, and I suspect that in many Western childhoods ancient Greece has a gripping hand rocking the cradle. That culture is still very much alive in the maintenance of our own. When I was around four, I saw the Kirk Douglas movie Ulysses on TV, and from then on, my mind and dreams were populated by Greek heroes and monsters, not the least of which was Hercules, hero of song and story (italicized words sung), that song from the 1960’s cartoon, and especially the image of him running back up Mount Olympus often dragging the bad guy, daily morning features of my early childhood. Greek mythology became a thought about ingredient in the makeup of my growing up, and I’d check out books about it from the school library once I got big enough to read. I studied Classical Greek in university, after the army, becoming a competent translator of both Attic and Homeric Greek, even translated two books of The Odyssey and the first part of Euripides’ Hercules, the latter into rhyming English verse, the translation of Greek poetry putting a cornerstone into the foundation of my own poetry, indeed, into thought.
So I had put a lot of will and wonder into my visit to Greece, all of my life, and I hadn’t for either France or Italy anywhere near that degree, although I must say they were two countries on my mind’s friend list growing up, not so much the countries but their major cities, Paris and Rome. So it was natural that Greece welcomed me with open arms, but still, it was a struggle to find those arms. After the English teaching school rejection, I just walked about the streets, wondering where I’d spend the night, what I’d eat, those sorts of things, nothing deep mind you; I was hungry and tired. Presently I passed by a spiritual bookshop, and low and behold, in the shop’s window was a book by Sri Aurobindo, with his luminous picture on the cover, to my eyes at least—he is simply a heartthrob. The shop was closed, as it was by this time late evening, and so I determined to be there when it opened the next morning. Where else would I go, to the Greek Orthodox theater?
Some streets away, I passed by a building under construction, six stories tall. If you’re in a city survival situation, and you don’t know the city from Adam, the thing to do is find such a building, if the barricades keeping people out don’t, and go to the very top floor and sleep, but it needs to be a rather tall building, like the one I was standing before. The rational is this: people use empty buildings to sin in so to speak, especially at night, but they stay around the lower floors, scared to venture up usually, scared of the unknown, but mostly it’s an innate fear of ghosts, ghouls, and demons, not lions and tigers and bears. It was dusk by the time I got up to the top floor, the building just the skeleton of one, the concrete and rebar, nothing else, no doors, windows, railings, or what have you. I laid out my sleeping bag, cooked something quite simple I had left in my pack, what that was I don’t remember now, ate and went to sleep, the night taking possession of the building like a demon does an imagination, a grab you ghoul and then total darkness.
I felt fear grip me as the light went completely out, what just came up out of no choice, something about a skeleton building like that, something sinister when darkness falls, and fear let go, and sleep took me. Sometime in the night I awoke to people in the building carrying the torch of chaos, as the noise they made did not drum up images of order, and I lay there and counted the floors they came up, slow-like, their drunken scene spilling out to what more floors there may be, all the way to the 5th floor, one floor below mine, and I was surprised at their boldness. Although I couldn’t understand their language, I could hear the fear in their voices as they looked up at the top floor, deciding not to venture up any higher. Oh boy was I relived. The lion, the tiger, and the bear often possess us when we’re drunk or whatnot and come upon a hapless person all alone by themselves somewhere no one else can see what we do to them, those animals apt to represent the mal spirits behind such maulings and murders among us, when those aforementioned animals have gone mad with bloodlust. It’s a taken world.
I don’t want it devil in the morning. Feel the nature of the world. Do you see it there, just a destroyed circle? It’s an accident the world is Belarus.
The world will write itself tomorrow the world bigger than your fingertips, a larger house than ours. There it is again on the streets war craft. Are you just belly up? Images further than ghosts, can I show you the world cares?
A world being, imagine that. Look to later on. I’m hanging on philosophy. No I’m dippin’ into my world.
Does it have your cooperation? That’s so theory maxed. Hey fella, are you scared of yourself?
A more balanced diet would cover the story very well Luna baby. You’re sleeping there in your sleep my proposal, even the puppy.
It’s ole Bruno, tryin’ to get him to see past himself. Can you see this big chair? How big is it? It’s bigger than doors. Looking forward number one.
She has all that divided. Let’s see if she eats that. She sank to ground zero. An artist too conception of the world. I’ll tell you what, eating in here she eats here. Smell? Ooh child things are gonna get easier— ingredients.
The first window can be human. Can we check her own full members of the family? Walkin’ up the stairs, we’re a family. Want some unlikely brotherhood? Come and take it.
Unless you’re doin’ somethin’ about it you aren’t in progress anymore. You name it progress everybody gets included in the family, even me.
If you sneak sleep in buildings under construction you have to be out early, before the first workers arrive, and so at first light I left. On the bottom floor I could see the remnants of the party the night before that had spilled upwards, beer bottles mostly, and wrappers of various sorts. Coming out of the building into the growing sunlight was such a relief. Going through the hole in the cyclone fence and leaving the property felt like a liberation. Hope is native to the start of a new day, really hard to kill even when things seem hopeless, but here I had reason to hope. I had faith in Sri Aurobindo, and I’d seen his picture in an unlikely place, in the middle of Athens, and so I had the expectation of good things on the way. Seems silly to say that about a dead guru, but presently you’ll see the way he teaches, as a living presence, “and now what am I to believe, the reasoning of others or my own experience?” (Sri Aurobindo, a partial quote from Thoughts and Aphorisms)
What else was there to do except go to that bookstore and wait until it opened? I sat there, doing my morning meditation, then reading Savitri, and then just sitting. It was a very long sitting, probably around three hours. Did I tell you that I didn’t carry a timepiece? Didn’t even before I left for the open road. I’d tell people I didn’t wear a watch because I didn’t want to be a slave to time, but I was always careful to check the time so I wouldn’t be late somewhere, punctuality being a very American thing, and there are clocks everywhere basically, and the irony wasn’t lost on me that I still lived my life around time, but I argued, to anyone that pointed that out, that I didn’t have to have it wound around my wrist at least. Now, on the open road, however, I no longer lived my life to a schedule imposed by all-demanding time, but here, waiting on an hour of business, the time of day became all-important again, and so quickly. The shop opened around nine I believe, and I was checking the time every so often by looking through the window of the shop next door at a clock upon the wall, which was difficult to see because of the angle of the clock in relation to the street. I had to bend down low to see it. Finally, two people came to open the door to the bookstore, a man and woman, both about the same age, middle aged, and by the way both moved in relation to one another, I gathered they were married. When they noticed me waiting there they were quite surprised. I stood up to greet them, smiling that smile you give, like the handshake, when you want to show people you have no weapons and want also to disarm them.
With an intense appearance as I had, there was always a second or two when meeting ‘normal’ people for the first time of “just hold on there wild man, do you bite?” It’s just a flicker in the eyes that quickly gets replaced by social niceties, and you just smile and pretend you didn’t see it, and they pretend they didn’t show it. With these two, however, that second or two was more of surprise in the eyes than doubt, and they quickly let that go and gave me a warm greeting and invited me inside, as I was explaining why I was there, because of the picture of Sri Aurobindo. It turned out they were disciples of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, as I was, and every year they spent a few months in Auroville, India, an international township founded by the Mother, she being his spiritual partner and collaborator. Auroville is an intentional community inaugurated in 1968 that was created to achieve human unity and a transformation of consciousness that would help usher in the new human being. It was also the destination of my traveling. I was headed there, not just vagabonding just to vagabond. I’d visited there in 1995, going there from a six month stay in Israel, which I’ve spoken about in the beginning of this story. I subsequently spent six months in Auroville, where I became a disciple of the Integral Yoga. It had been my intention upon leaving Auroville to return to the States only to earn money to go back to India to become a member of Auroville, but it hadn’t worked out that way, and here I was seven years later still on my way to Auroville. Somewhere around here, either in Italy or in Greece I mean, I had a lucid dream about Auroville, where at the end I met the spirit of Auroville, a beautiful young woman, who asked me when I was coming, so we had a thing going on, only it was an inner thing, and on the outside to all Aurovillians and New Comers I was just a visiting guest. To say it in a metaphor: Penelope didn’t recognize me upon my return to Ithaca, but I could also say I didn’t honor her I am so very sorry to say, but I tried. How else can I say it?
Now, living just a few kilometers from the township these many years, Auroville has become the city of my dreams, literally, as I dream about it more than any other location on Earth. A minor miracle made it that, which happened in Jerusalem, but the story of our relationship began upon my arrival in Garberville, California. I’d left Laytonville and had enough cash for one night in a hotel, as this was just at the beginning of my homeless days, and I wasn’t yet used to sleeping out in the middle of society, and so I wasted the last bit of money I had for one more night under a roof. I awoke at 3:30 (by the clock in the room) and smoked some skunk I’d gotten on Spyrock Mountain, did that to purposefully go back to sleep conscious, or without losing continuity of being conscious I should say, what I believe is nowadays called WILD, a wake induced lucid dream. When you’re stoned and lucid dreaming, much more is possible. I didn’t, however, go into a dream but went into twilight, a place between waking and sleeping where you’re aware you’re in bed but not ‘awake’ in bed but still in a dream state, although often you can see the room you’re in, even if your eyes are closed. Usually the room is either slightly or quite different from the physical one you’re sleeping in, and often you’re hearing unusual or even frightening noises, the latter to scare you back into the corral of cramped experience if you want to know the truth, because you are in a place of great power. In some ancient literature I’d read it was called the crack between the worlds, as it’s a place of event where you can do multiple things, go into a lucid dream, lie there and experience whatever, which is often inner voice and vision, or induce a cataleptic trance, nowadays called sleep paralysis, and go out of the body.
As I lay there I could hear the OM being sung from every direction, booming more like it, although it had no unpleasantness to it. What I mean is it wasn’t coming from a source but from everywhere. The OM we make is only a facsimile of this one, and there was no pause for breath. A continuous stream of OM bathed me completely, rich with the tones of the universe, fulfilling as all sound. With a start I realized it was coming from my own mouth too. Then the scene changed from the place where I lay sleeping to what I would not call a dream exactly, although it was obviously a representation of something, something wonderful. I found myself in space traveling very fast through the frame of a square tunnel that was completely open and had no walls, only four stars that formed a square every few meters or so, and it dipped down and up and such, was not in a straight line. It was, I was, headed to some convergence of stars I couldn’t see but knew was there, and then I was back in the bed in the hotel room, still in twilight, very disappointed I had not arrived at the convergence.
But then I realized that I was free from my body though still inside it, and if you’ve had out of body experience you know the feel of freedom from the physical body while yet in it I’m talking about, as it’s from that place, what heretofore I had only gotten to via sleep paralysis, that you do whatever movement you’ve learned to get out of the body entirely. I willed myself out, doing a little twist of up and out of my physical body that I use. I had no problem at all leaving the hotel room and going outside, just went through the wall.
Unlike the popular conception of O.B.E., and how science seems to view it (how it seems to view anything inner, in black and white), it’s not a static, cut and dried state but one very fluid, with a mixing usually of inner and outer elements, and at any moment you are very close to your experience turning into a lucid dream, although one of travel towards wherever you’ve willed yourself to go or some representative picture of actually being there. This moving more into a dream happens especially when you cross boundaries, the first being going out of the room you are ‘sleeping’ in. Unless you are very focused and concentrated, you don’t make it beyond that threshold in the out of body state but find yourself surrounded more by inner elements of dream than outer objects on the physical plane. In other words, you’ve basically gone into a lucid dream, as many of those aren’t exactly just dreams. I tried to go to the moon once. You laugh, but if you think about it, it’s a logical place to try and go if you can get past boundaries, and I could. I went camping at a special place to do that, Enchanted Rock State Park in Texas, a place open to the spirit world if you’re open to it, but I didn’t make it out of the boundary of Earth into space, which appears to be quite the line the cross in O.B.E, naturally. You can read about it in my story online “You’re Like, Wow, That Really Was Enchanted with a Rock”.
I glided from the hotel to the street, which was Garberville’s main drag, Highway 101. It was one of only a few times I was what might be called for understanding’s sake a naked spirit on the physical plane, no dream elements present, but I’d put it that I was in my dreambody in the physical world, not in dream. Going down 101 a ways a hodgepodge of old fashioned storefronts to my right and left, I decided to stay in town for awhile. My decision was fortified the next day when I went to New and Used Books, the first place I went to after the hotel, bookstores being to me a center of any town. Someone had left a box of books that morning, and Paul Encimer, the bookstore owner, told me I could look through them and take what I wanted. I found a small booklet with a title something like Baptism in the Om, attributed I believe to Sri Yukteswar, Yoganada’s guru. Flipping through it I saw it described my experience the night before. Let me just pause a moment and make room for that synchronicity to sink in. It’s not one off the charts of probability, but if it happened to you, you’d see meaning in it too. Then a book by Dane Rudhyar, Planeterization of Consciousness: From the Individual to the Whole, caught my eye, and I picked it out too. Some days later I would read in that book about Auroville for the first time, and I determined to one day go there. It wasn’t just a mental note I made; it had the feel of destiny about it.
In Rudhyar’s book I heard of Sri Aurobindo for the second time, when the name finally took, although it took awhile for that to happen. In my self-teaching university days, when I’d left formal classes and studied on my own for a school year, reading around eight hours a day at that time, focusing on psychology, spiritual and metaphysical knowledge and experience, art and literature, and classic science fiction, I encountered his name for the first time, in one single book. But let me explain those circumstances a bit more. I’d left classes because I had learned how to learn, and I didn’t want to waste time on lectures, papers, and exams. My focus, if you’re interested in knowing, was where the human ego came from, both in the dawn of history and in every child born, and where we were headed next in the evolution of human identity. I had moved across the street from the Half Price Books located in the neighborhood of Montrose, Houston, so to take advantage of whole libraries being sold to the shop by the families and friends of people dying of AIDS, libraries with rare volumes on the aforementioned subjects. Montrose was the queer side of town, where many of Houston’s artists, poets, professors, and performers lived. This was in the late 80’s, at the height of the epidemic. I should add that I was a hospital volunteer in the AIDS ward at Herman Hospital in the nearby museum district, a hand holder, and not to get books.
Anyway, several times in the aforementioned bookshop in Houston I flipped through a book called Pilgrims of the Stars by Dilip Kumar Roy, but I never bought it because he seemed to me to be a light weight. A heavy person he talks about at length, Sri Aurobindo, did interest me as did a few lines of a poem I read by that heavy about dream being real that really struck me (from Savitri). I put some intention on reading a book by him, but I didn’t come across one and quickly forgot about it until I read Rudyhar’s book. Reading about Sri Aurobindo in his book, a lever clicked in a lock, and my heart was opened to the possibility of a guru, although I didn’t know that then. I only knew that Sri Aurobindo was a must read. At that time in my life I strongly resisted having a teacher, dead or alive, or following any one spiritual or religious system. Why did I need one? Knowledge and spiritual experience were coming just fine without one. I didn’t know then that there comes a time when great abysses open up where the soul steps, as you’ve gone as far as you can go solo, and you need a teacher to hang onto for dear life. Although I heard a thousand times that when the student is ready the teacher will come, I didn’t know what it meant until the teacher came, but it took me awhile to let him in, or them in I should say, since the Mother came too, later.
Two and a half years after reading Ruhyar’s book and that lock being unlocked in my heart, when I had returned to my hometown of Houston, after staying in Garberville for a year and a half, and I was just about to leave for Israel, not yet knowing I would be going to India too, I ordered a book by Sri Aurobindo. I never ordered books, always let them appear somewhere, on a magic shelf at Half Price Books for example, magic because I’d hear of a book and will it, and over half the time that book would appear on that shelf I kid you not. I see now that was a faith building process, and I needed it where I was going, eventually, to the open road. I ordered it because his name would not leave me alone, and so, at the last minute before I left the States for the unknown, with only enough money to run out within weeks, thus embarking on my first experimental adventure travel, a year overseas, I broke down and ordered The Life Divine. It seems to me now it had to happen that way, why a book by him didn’t appear on my magic shelf, because I needed to read it on the road, where faith was more pressingly built. From a heavy person the magic came (my muse).
I first met Sri Aurobindo in Jerusalem, as a living person I mean, the year 1995 as I’ve told you, about a week or so into our so called hunger strike (we drank banana milk and the like) in a little park the size of a football field not far from Jaffa Gate in the old city. It was morning, and I did a meditation and then picked up the aforementioned book to read, as I had come in the habit of doing daily. I read some out of it, and then closed it and gazed at the photo of Sri Aurobindo on the cover, and it seemed to me to come alive, like he was right there looking back at me, and so I asked him if I should go to Auroville after Israel. I really felt I was asking him, not a photo. I then went into the old city to the guesthouse where Lars and I had permission to use the bathroom, Lars, a young man from Denmark, being my hunger striking partner. I carried the book with me into the city. I carried it everywhere, never having a book that spoke to me so directly. It was over a thousand pages thick and very large in size, but I treasured it between my hands and never left it very far from me. I put it on a table in the sitting room of the guesthouse and went to the toilet.
The edition I carried
When I returned there were two very young women standing near the table, one holding the book, they both very excited by it. They asked me if I were reading it. Yes I was, why? I knew he wasn’t a well known author, but I was confused at their excitement. It went beyond the book and its author. Would you believe they were both from Auroville? They’d grown up there. I was stunned hearing that and had to sit down. I tried to explain what had just happened in the park, but of course it wasn’t the same for them as it was for me, although they were glad to see someone reading Sri Aurobindo there in Jerusalem. I, on the other hand, was just beside myself. I did manage to ask them some questions about Auroville, how you became a member, what the requirements were, those sorts of things. When I got to Auroville some months later, I told people the story of the two girls I met in Jerusalem, but it wasn’t until one of them came to see me (the other was out of station) and told others about our meeting in Jerusalem that people actually believed me. Funny, it wasn’t a big deal to her at all, not much of one to anybody else, although it did raise some eyebrows, and I found that lack of wonder so very odd. But it’s like that isn’t it? We encounter a miracle and only see a happenstance if it didn’t happen to us. But I ask you, what are the odds of meeting two people from Auroville in the old city of Jerusalem immediately after asking Sri Aurobindo if I should go there?
A million unanswered questions Garberville and the works. Won the sexuality ribbon, I think their slow salvation out of town.
Hardly squeezed between the lines, you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth a thousand tongues wag.
Redemption city, I came to field in Jerusalem, and you heard me say it in phrases: Auroville I love you.
They put me off Garberville style. My destination was a dead end. You hear my rainbow? Please let me in.
To understand the fount of man learn about the dawn of history. Ask Donny. Learn about a weakness. Loading the possibles that’s it. He could show it to no one.
They gave an infant an orgasm and sexual ties with children. Manipulating consciousness to start man, I think they were advised to. See this fruit here Eve? No tell me a devil don’t bother you.
The truth more better blacksmith for reaching out into the unknown.
We obviously don’t want to return to early man, but let’s not utterly condemn someone who eats that old shoe today.
Getting back to Athens you understand now why I put all my hope in one basket, a picture of Sri Aurobindo in a bookstore window. We go way back. Hearing the bookstore owners were disciples and went to Auroville every year, I felt right at home, my hope in the right place. As they readied their shop for the day’s business, I explained my need. I wanted to teach English and winter in Athens. Did they know anyone that could help? He went behind his cash register and sat down, I going to the counter directly in front where customers stood. He made some phone calls. By the looks on his face I could tell it was a no go with each call. Presently he put the phone down, sadly shaking his head. I felt really let down, as I was sure this would be the ticket. Then I heard the cash register ring as one does when it opens, and he reached in and grabbed some cash and handed it to me. It was enough, he said, to take the ferry to Crete and a little extra for some food. He explained wintering there was much easier, was sort of a thing on that island. He and his wife gave me the nicest smiles for a send off, and the smile and thank you I gave in return remain genuine to this day. I asked about them once I got to Auroville, and it seems to me I did meet someone who knew them, but I never saw them again. Do you remember me? I remember you. You were the world being kind, the Earth smiling broadly at me, and, at the risk of offending all ye good people, you were Auroville speeding me on my way to what I needed to gather from the world for my final arrival, the one where I don’t then ever leave.
Riding the ferry to Crete I remembered the one I oft road in my teenage years, once I got a car. It went from Galveston Island to Bolivar Peninsula, very short trip. It was a small one and the parking lot kind. Passengers could either stay in their cars or go to the desks. I don’t know how it is now, but at that time, in the 70’s, there was nothing but highway on the peninsula for miles once you got off the ferry, except for an abandoned WWII bunker, and off both sides of the road sported beach, deserted beach. I liked to drive to Galveston from Houston with some friends and go skinny dipping at night on the beach. That was my enjoyment, not getting drunk or high. Other than smoking cigarettes and dipping Skoal, I was a straight kid, but not for moral reasons. My second time getting high on grass, when I was 14, I experienced the full on disassociation state, what the Mother calls infinity in the finite and what Buddhists call the pit of the Void, and both are quite revealing on how it feels, but the former way of looking at it greatly helps when you find yourself in it at whatever point it begins to happen on its own on the spiritual path, if you get as far as the changes and fluctuations in consciousness the path takes you to. I was so terrified I lay in my bed begging God to let me fall asleep, and if I woke up the next morning normal, I’d become a preacher.
I made good on that promise, and for the next three years I was what was called then a Jesus person, a Jesus freak to the less tactful, and I went to a Christian coffeehouse on the weekends and passed out religious tracks with fellow Jesus people at Houston malls, went to many different churches during the course of my religious period, and not just on Sundays. I often went to meetings and Bible studies on week nights, had an array of churches and private houses I went to each week, but it was in school, George A. Thompson Intermediate and J. Frank Dobie High School, respectively, where I preached, and I carried a big Thompson Chain-Reference Bible everywhere I went and would require anyone who wanted to be saved, and several did believe it or not, to kneel with me after lunch when all the kids were outside, so to ensure they were serious, and either you hated me or loved me. I was both bullied and admired, always had a crowd around me in Thompson when walking in the halls, both taunting me and defending me. At Dobie things settled down, and I did too, moving my religion more into my room and prayer closet, really getting serious with my devotion. I put my Bible down one day, at 17, rather abruptly for all my fans and enemies, and left religion entirely. It seemed to me, once I really started to ‘seek the face of the Lord’, that all I was doing by following a religion was putting on a set of clothes, which got in the way of finding God. I needed to be naked I thought, and so I started going out in nature, backpacking on the Lone Star Trail in Sam Houston National Forest on the weekends, going out in the fields and small patches of forest on the edge of Houston where I lived, a subdivision called Sagemont, and yes going to Galveston and riding that ferry to that deserted beach and skinny dipping, careful, always careful, to refuse any offer of grass or alcohol, anything that would alter my consciousness, so to avoid union with the Void.
As I stood on that ferry on my way to Crete thinking about the kid I was on that local ferry, my mind turned again to a measurement I’d established in childhood: would the child be happy with the adult he became? At a nine-years-old, when I’d been forced to live with my father in the country, where I spent hours each day wandering the woods in search of myself but not knowing that then, only thinking I was on the lookout for snakes and rabbits, trying to spot deer and coyote, I determined not to be like the adults around me, and I’m not talking about their character; I’m talking about their way of life. There was a world out there, and I wanted to see it; there was the unknown, and I wanted to know it. This was huge with me. Still is, only that kid, as elated and surprised as he’d be by the man on that ferry to Crete heading out on the open road into the unknown, since he was going farther towards the splash and rush of things than the boy imagined, he’d be so sad to see the falls of that man in this world school and that. As my muse put it on Crete:
Brahman, Brahman, Brahman, and years ago days gone by I had nothing but traffic for my furry. [two lines sung] Such significant and terrible things we’ve done. I’m getting close to the spirit of keys. The Board Ship Game, it’s not breaking the record. It’s stabilizing the connection. He shall traverse what never yet has been crossed. I’m traveling underneath it all. Oh boy, the history we could lesson.
My muse of today:
Nara birth sign in 1847. Uh, you’ll get the same story in an old codger’s notebook. He wants to be close to my penis. Do you hear the crowd there?
We find known trashcans. We put them in the book. Now go print that out.
Dual option: we are the world or the Sexford Files. Avoid the halfway yoga face.
I can get you to trust me with society. You have only to listen: integral yoga. We pop up everywhere, even in your field of dreams.
I’m not givin’ candy to babies. I’m feeding you sirloin steak visitors. Let’s be integral and mean, that’s nowhere above.
You’ll be nice and accepting by the time this is over with, Integral Yoga smiles. You definitely need a scene. That’s coming up in the record book, but don’t you know we have to land on our feet?
And first we have to land on Crete. That’s our next paperwork. Take incense. I would have to say keep up with my doctor’s book, starting with Eve. Do you hear this story whistle softly in your ear? I’m joining you shortly.
Heads up. And this symbolizing the Self thing, well all I can tell you is I had it all my life. [this and above line came on Crete] Our eyes were travelers for the page identifying this unseen one in all of us. That’s the story.
You’re not gettin’ me on this boat. I’m taking myself, I’m taking myself for a ride. You got the spirit.
Then she give you the orange. That’s maybe to understand nine million rock stars never can be alone. Each person has all the group to hold. You got that rocket man?
Look for the man who has nothing but is not worried about what he is going to drink or where he is going to eat. Invite that man to your house, for that man will bring wisdom there.
I told this to a man in a dream on a bus at a town square, Crete, 2002
Adventure travel—what conjures up images of a rather wet Thor Heyerdhal on the Kon-Tiki trying to prove the currents of fate, not the hands of mastery, drew things, or, at a highest height, on mountains that is, maybe an old, black and white, otherworldly photo of Tenzing Norgay atop Mt. Everest comes to mind, which, no doubt due to a faulty racial default in our thinking, most people used to think was of Sir Edmund Hillary, or on a more mundane level, a superfast montage runs through your imagination of ‘running through the jungle’ wildcats and polar bears (jungle: anywhere wild and woolly) hot on your heals—is not exactly what you think it is. It’s traveling the world penniless, or rather, only with what money people have given you along the way or you have earned along that same way, but either way the whole thing’s quite an adventure, because, dead broke or not, you are in the hands of the aforementioned fates and have to use what mastery you have in your hands to navigate those terrible, sweet and lonely winds towards one safe harbor after another, or not so safe, whatever the case may be, and, believe me, it can take your breath away.
I spent several years in this mode, starting with a hunger strike outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem in ’95 (you must pardon me, I was only 33), adrift on the waves of the world, traveling from country to country a vagabond, although I billed myself a spiritual pilgrim, setting my pilgrim feet on five continents, although in Africa it was only a step or two, to Mt. Sinai, Cairo and her Great Pyramid (this blog tells those Egyptian stories in a collection of stories called “A Journey of a Thousand Tongues,” which, I might add, hardly a single tongue has yet to wag about). All this was before the net became the dwelling place of our show and tell, and I carried neither a camera nor kept a waking life journal, after the Israel and Egypt poetry posting adventure that is, and parts of the journal I kept then, called “The Overthrow of I Am At the Equality of Soul”, are posted in that aforementioned collection, and so I basically have only an old passport to prove I went here and there, and these stories that came out of it that I’m writing now, over 20 years later. Let me say here and now that, over time, the whens of things and their names do cloud over a bit. You can never remember exactly what happened back then. Do I let the facts get in the way of the story? I try my best to stick to the facts, do not purposefully lie, exaggerate, or embellish for effect.
I do also have a now motley collection of dream and muse notebooks I began to keep after a nine month stay in Cuzco, Peru, when the muse first began to sprinkle down, muse being inner voice and vision, it becoming a flood in an little healing community off the grid in the state of Bahia, Brazil, called Kahlil Gibran. That ongoing inner journal, which I keep to this day, would not give much of a picture of my travels, like viewing them through the waters of consciousness, sideways and underwater at that, and so, other than perhaps getting illuminated here and there, you would have very little idea what’s going on with my adventure travel, which I can make a strong case that I continue to this day, although I’ve been in India and in basically the same place since ’04, because I’m still penniless and have no bank account or notable possessions, did not even have current ID until some weeks ago when I finally renewed my passport. If you don’t think you are a traveler on God’s green globe, stationary or not, you need to do some more figuring on life and its grand, same, same but different adventure. We’re on a planetary spaceship for God’s sakes, hurtling through cosmic space, etching deep furrows in the unknown, and if that’s not enough to make you dizzy thinking about your life’s journey, just ask yourself what in the world is behind, or bigger, than the cosmic space we’re shooting through at umpteen miles per hour. You have got to figure it just keeps getting bigger, adventure that is. You with me?
Incredible Ways Italy
I got kicked out of one of the most notorious squats in the Western European squatters movement, or at least it was in 2002, the year this story begins—Forte Prenestino in Rome. It’s not easy to get into. You have to be recommended by someone living there to stay, and, if it’s not open for visitors, as it wasn’t the night I showed up, you can’t possibly get in. It’s heavily fortified, with a moat guarding its castle-like entrance. It is, after all, an old fort Mussolini had built, one of a handful around Rome, with a castle-high, thick concrete wall surrounding it, which guards a large, grassy open space that all the bunker-like buildings attached to the wall open towards. It has high ramparts surrounding it too, where the squatter community grew ganja, and for some reason having to do with politics, the communists that controlled the district allowed that, but it was an uneasy unlawful adventure nonetheless, and constantly hanging over its head back then was the threat of the other powers that be of Rome coming in and raiding the place and taking everyone to jail. Like in Northern California in the ‘good old days’ (I’m talking about the outlaw society hanging on such an interesting and creative cultural edge, not the presence of the law), helicopters often flew overhead, strafing the place. How many years it went on I don’t know, but with that threat always around their neck and all the squabbling among the members of the squat over the buying, selling, and smoking of the marijuana, the squat had almost ceased to function. Closed was its famous clown school, its restaurant, its avant-garde this and that, although it still did occasional raves.They’d started a tradition of once a year inviting a lot of press and throwing a big pot smoking party, and the one they’d thrown that past year before I showed up had really ruffled some authority feathers, had gotten the goat of the cops, I heard once I got in, and so they were really on edge.
at 41, Matala, Crete, 2002
Enter me. For reasons having to do with the purifying and grounding effect it would have on my consciousness and not out of some moral sense, and because I didn’t want to mess up my muse by clouding it with substance and desire, the whole time I was vagabonding in Europe, about a year and a half, I didn’t smoke grass or tobacco, do any kind of drug, drink alcohol, eat meat or eggs, or have any kind of sex, even that kind you do with yourself. That I looked the very opposite kind of character, more the kind of character I was in South and Central America (uh, moving right along), although I didn’t drink alcohol or eat meat in the Americas, sure made me suspicious around that squat and many others in the circle A crowd, that symbol of anarchy used then by squatters. “Just take a hit, one hit.” “No thank you. I’m not smoking pot right now.” Red flags all over the place: police spy! Interpol worm. Narc. That most such people get high seems to have escaped their notice. Don’t tell me they don’t inhale Mr. President.
Winter was coming, and I wanted a place to sit safe and write, both poetry and prose, although my muse had yet to give me whole poems. At that time it was just scattered lines that when you put them together could form a poem, if it were intended to by the muse, such as “A Suicide Bomber’s Broken Arrow Is Broken”, which I put together in a private squat on Strasbourg in Paris, right before I left for Rome, what was submitted to and rejected by The Atlantic Monthly I might add. It has since been made into more of a whole poem, as I went to work on it here in India after I was getting whole poems. It’s on my spiritual blog “Harm’s End”, which I do with Douglas, my collaborator in life. From the time I’d started getting muse, I was filled with this sense of urgency to put it together and publish it, and when you put that together with the constant feeling I had that I had to sit and write, not for the sake of writing but to publish, what I was doing basically the whole time I was adventure traveling, trying to find a place I could write and not have to worry about what I ate or where I slept, you get a rather hurried, worried traveler.
It never seemed to dawn on me that, when I did get somewhere I was taken care of or had some gig where I could earn my keep, cooking or teaching English usually, or helping people learn to interpret their dreams and such, sometimes teaching meditation and yoga, what I did in Cuzco, on TV with Douglas at that (he’s my other half basically), I rarely wrote.
It’s part of the immaturity of a one day writer and poet to feel that they need to show it to the public before they are really ready to. I mean it’s normal, but it’s still not kosher if you know what I mean. God help you if people read you and call you a writer or poet before you’re really one. I could use a sexual reference people today may consider offensive, as if I’m hitting them with unwanted sexual images, and call to mind premature ejaculation, and, oops, I’m afraid I did. We might call almost all of net writing a premature spill, especially with its attention deficit disorder missing the point only wanting to get to the point, that point being, striped of all other clothes, to post and be read as quickly as possible by as many people as possible, that, I might add, gets forgotten quickly to boot. “It’s a lot of tongue wagging. Creative potential, but it doesn’t spin properly and make for itself a substantiality, an intellectuality” (my muse). The years of practice writing used to take before you got read seem to have vanished along with great writing, in my humble opinion. With any kind of writing worth its salt, but most especially with the inner listening skills required to hear the muse of poetry, and the skill to quickly change levels of consciousness so as to record it, you need many years to cultivate it, watch it grow.
Do we have anything for the hit parade? Hello I’m his muse. Walk softly stick; carry a big heart— adventure travel in the rain. That’ll liven it up.
I turned around to look back at the big door, gate really, having just crossed the bridge. I was in travel mode and carrying my backpack. I’d been asked to leave. Memories of the three weeks swam by, my long, lonely, lovely walks in the neighborhood, sittings in the children’s park just next to the fort, the smiles of the mothers, the shouts of the children, the cool evenings that melted into night as I stood on a rampart overlooking the kingdoms of the little life, seeing inside myself the same but also a strong feeling to go beyond, the bus rides to this ancient ruin and that, which I did without paying (the fine for doing that was 51 euro, odd that number), and I never met the Man, except for the time I was on the way to the Coliseum, accompanied by a Catholic priest I’d met who wanted to give me a tour of it, and at about midway, at a stop, I had this undeniable urge to get off, and I did so, saying a sudden, awkward goodbye to the priest, and right as I got off the ‘bus police’ were getting on to check for tickets, believe it or not, that darn mosquito that taught me so much about how aware they are, how much they want to live, by attacking me in my bed and then flying nonchalantly away half the length of the long, narrow room, which began to fly frantically again as soon as it noticed I’d followed it, so to avoid being clapped in my hands and killed, the three young Middle Eastern men who lived in an identically long room next to mine, who took such care of the youngest one, who just wasn’t right, the other two always very close to him when they left their room, never letting him walk out of their care, they telling me he’d been tortured much worse than they, where I don’t remember, but I do remember, vividly, wondering over that torture and his inability to return to us from it, because it was as though he really wasn’t with us, wasn’t even with his two fellows in displacement, one of whom was his big brother, and I wanted to tell the boy to just forget about it and come back, not yet aware that there are things you don’t come back from so easily, because you’ve seen how hell can open up on earth and swallow whole lives, yours swallowed as though it were happening to the whole wide world itself, sort of like how a black hole is said to swallow things, stretching them out to infinity, and no matter how fair the world may appear, how full of laughter and love, you know that’s not the case, and that the beauty’s only a thin veil waiting to be rent at any moment. You’ve seen the truth behind it, the real, and you can’t for the life of you stop looking at it.
Or so the world seems to those whom it’s bitten so very badly. They can’t just forget, but they can heal, something no doctor or drug can really help them with, although those things can teach them to go deeper, if they’re worth their salt. Only their very own soul can heal them, because they have been bitten so deeply they have seen behind the veil, but in their pain they’re not seeing true; they’re seeing the enigma, the specter, which claims to be reality but is itself just another veil, though a fundamental one. The world is like an onion really, and when all layers are peeled you see the soul, and beyond that God, seemingly formless things like the center of an onion, but, when you see them, they are more substantial than form, or really, where form comes from, but you have to see so very deeply to see the truth of the world, and few can make that long journey. I was a person that had seen the truth of which I speak, but only on the inside and deepest of me and in my inside above, and now I was on an adventure to see it out here in the world. So far, though I’d seen a lot of beauty, I had only gotten deep enough to see behind the specter. Looking back at that entrance to the fort and my time there, I felt something, but only now can I put my finger on it.
No, I hadn’t really been treated unfairly by being told to leave. I got into the fort by promising the member who let me in that I’d only stay three days and nights. I’d stayed three weeks and counting. After doing something stupid that reeked of self-importance, that member spoke up, and there was a group discussion. In my travels there were so many of those over me, and not only because of doing something stupid. It happened that we had a visitor, a young man that wanted to see the ‘plants’, and I gave him a small tour on the ramparts, accompanied by another member, a very young man who didn’t challenge me. It was actually he that had started the tour, and I just sort of naturally took over as we walked, my self-importance stepping in and ruining things for me, as it often did. I’m really sorry, for a lot of things, but one of the big ones is how big and important I’ve always thought I was. It’s not that I don’t think that now; I just know it’s not true in the way I’ve always thought it: I am great how are you? although my dogs believe I am. Aren’t dogs wonderful? My muse has said, “Organisms taste themselves bigger than they appear,” and that about sums it up other than to stress I’m not alone in this misperception. Can we dwell the world here?
I guess I scared that pot growing, squatting community some, looking like I’d just stepped out of some commune of the 60’s, a leader of one at that, and not smoking grass myself but showing such a keen interest in their pot crop, or so my action must’ve seemed to them. It really was just self-importance rearing its head. At any rate, I was out, how that group discussion turned out, with one dissenting voice, from a rather hip and intelligent man that spoke good English who lived in a sort of camp (was it a mini-trailer?) in the center of the fort’s field. I asked him to intercede on my behalf. I wanted to winter there and write poetry, and would they just please allow me to do that? I really made a bid to stay. I told them, through my friend, that I’d do any kind of work they wanted, and I could help reopen their restaurant, and I had some thoughts on that, which no doubt helped their decision: who does he think he is? Out, out, out.
This is a monster ole hell. Yeah Donny, you’ve picked out the asuras on their walls. It’s place and I’m sorry. And you know what they did? They built bombs. It was in the snow under their coat. Didn’t use it. That’s Forte Prenestino.
You can buy me some coffee. These are public works. A brand new diet, hearing inner vision. You wouldn’t call it what you get in a fact-based check-phone. It’s lucid and free. There open to reality’s deeper sheathes, and you give it your outer truth, and you won’t get reality exactly as happened.
Inner truth is so beautiful. It’s got everybody in the same hand. Daddy? Daddy? The Who wants to tell the kids are alright. Anti-daddy, I’m so sorry, you’ll have to fight with ‘im where it’s at: that’s bad ain’t it?
Reading this sentence it was to gather the world. It’s bigger than words. It’s your enjoyment at this page, and every set of feet was pilgrimly determined. You know I’m talkin’ about love. There’s your headwaters, your comfortable sight, your headquarters. If you have nothing to do with it I can buy it, all lock, stock, and barrel.
And this is Earth kind reminding you of our holes in the sky where love is not our bottom line. We need more from such forts than smoking politics, and whatever protest movements. Where we fail one another, is that in our letter box? Create Forte Prenestino the fact that you put it there.
Here we are again, on the highway. I’m getting used to the pack again, and that was always an adjustment, no matter how many times I took it off and put it back on, and I’d gotten a rucksack attached to me in the Green Berets, 20 years earlier—I mean fitted to my back like it was a growth on it, if you know about SF and rucking. Although there was plenty of traffic, I found myself doing more of a rucksack march than hitching. Nobody was picking me up, at all. I’d taken the Old Roman Road, not the freeway, going south to catch the ferry to Greece. My plan had been to go to Athens for the winter if Rome failed, and it had. Damn them barbarians. I’d started my journey from Paris, and I mean this looking for a place to hold up for the winter leg of it, as Paris didn’t let me stay either.
You ever heard of a city being? They exist, but the city has to be near as old as the hills, or is or is going to be really a hub of things, to grow a proper one. I’m not talking about the soul things but of things we aren’t yet aware of. Being is larger than form, can take form in inanimate things, in a complex system such as a city for example, an exceptional and lonely mountain, or an old haunted island for that matter. I can go on, but that’s enough to try and wrap your head around the idea. Is a city being conscious? I really asked Paris to let me stay, put little notes in the crevices of some of its monuments asking that, walked its streets with that request in my heart and mind, told it to its residents I met in its parks, but only the ones that looked to have an ear for it. One kind and wise lady I spoke to in a park, and Paris is a place of parks, told me not to be disappointed if I couldn’t stay, said it like she knew I wouldn’t be able to, and I knew Paris was speaking but didn’t want to know that. You know how it is when you hear words of fate. “If this city wants me to leave…,” meaning city you jerk, and this was my muse at the time.
The big problem with Paris is I’m having to look at myself— comida national. Assembly, the unconsciously decided. There is a Paris watching. And if I ask, I think maybe there was a seeing from the beginning.
(my muse back then)
If you know how to sit and look, or walk and do so, you can catch a city being being a city unto itself, its central movement that is, doing something vital in the city, but it’s being a city being all over the city, even in our homes and offices. I think it’s photography that can best capture a city’s central movements so people can see them, the stark way it shows an event, one, single frame of movement, what happens too quick for the naked eye, but when we see what we’ve captured, God dog, we’ve caught something alive, however deft it might be.
It’s a real being. There’s thick there. That means slow, retarded movement. Leave a lot of space. You mean a self? And there it looks. Ooh.
We could just turn to brotherhood, how it serves up its food. It’s the biggest model in the house. Can you see it?
I wasn’t an obstacle. It didn’t step in and make sure I stayed. It didn’t come around with a house. Do I see a snob?
Um, Rascal? I don’t think his notebooks make poems yet. Off the grid.
Can you see Paris? I’ve given you a world. That’s the world being, who I’m really sneaking up on.
How about the surveillance camera? A bigger monster than a ghoul. You hear me sweetheart? I’m listenin’ to these hoods in culture. That’s about to happen somewhere. Hunt me down and kill me if I still told you.
Nobody works for his realization. You look like a rascal. They just put the glasses on me. Can we curd this? You have those messages now tellin’ people you’re sorry.
You are the hour of the unmanifest. You are a vehicle of the unmanifest. Hear the world here. It’s the unmanifest.
Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye Mr. Armstrong. Details to get out of prison, cramped experience.
I’d taken the Old Roman Road because it sounded romantic, and ancient, and I was into ancient. It was not, however, a very practical decision it turned out. While I’m sure I got at least one ride before I got to Lake Albano, 25 klicks south of Rome, I don’t remember any such significant cultural exchange up to that point, and, believe me, if you’re an American hitching in almost any other country with the possible exception of Canada, ehh, you have a little more umpth in your cultural exchange. You know the song: “America, fuck yeah!” Even if they don’t say much of anything, other than to ask where you’re from, the number one question both among travelers themselves meeting one another and when you’re a traveler meeting somebody regarding themselves as stationary beings, you feel both their ambiguity and awe over the good ole U.S. of A. It’s just the country, you know, love it or hate it. Who’s t-shirt does the world wear? I doubt the citizens of many other countries could vagabond quite like I was doing. I was in a similar position to ole apostle Paul, carrying a U.S. passport that allowed me to go most anywhere almost no questions asked. In the newly formed European Union (I’d landed in it almost to the day the Euro was issued), whatever the regulations might’ve said, an American at that moment could travel freely and stay in any country without even showing your passport. “I’m an American.” “Oh yeah? You may pass.”
The road ran up steeply on the side of the lake, it to my left, it a bit breathtaking with all the villas along its shoreline, which were nestled in old trees, and it much bigger than I’d imagined it would be on the road going towards it, but it was soon so far below it was no longer the main event. The road was. Shaded and steep, at that juncture, I got a sense of its old age, like it was grooved into the land, which seemed to have shaped itself around it. Then came the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo. I took a detour and went into the compound, also on my left. I walked in a ways and walked back out, the two very young guards eyeing my suspiciously. I eyed them too. They were dressed in ridiculous feather-capped and striped, billowing attire, silly to my New World American mind at least, holding Medieval-style weapon-staffs. The young men were guarding the entrance to the Apostolic Palace, but their purpose was more ceremonial than real, obviously. I could not get over how proud they looked, like they were the pick of the litter. I guess it depends on your perspective. I have no room to talk seeing how ridiculous I must’ve looked to them. It’s just that there were no mirrors in that parking lot, for either of us. Soon I was back out on the highway, hitching to no avail.
You know, I did see the pope, but not there. One day back at the fort in Rome I’d gotten this sudden, strong urge to go to the Vatican, and I did. I hadn’t visited it yet. Inside there was such a hustle and bustle, and I soon learned a cardinal had died, and there was going to be a high mass, and the Pope was about to arrive. “Zenith outing, now that’s a big outing to stay away from,” my muse then. I waited a few minutes, and low and beyond, there he was, Pope John Paul II, standing on a platform being carried by several men down a corridor that ran along one side of the huge hall, marked off by those thick, slack, red, velvet ropes. He was being carried very slowly, and he was looking like a king back and forth at the crowd that lined both sides of the corridor, behind those ropes, and then our eyes met. We stared into each other’s eyes for about ten seconds or so, I kid you not, long enough for people in the crowd to turn and look at me too.
I must explain why he must’ve looked at me. The photo of me above looking like a John Lennon, or some rascal to many eyes, was not how I usually appeared. I never wore sunglasses, because I didn’t want to cover the soul in my eyes, wanted people to be able to see in there, and the person taking the photo just put theirs on me and took the picture, and I just had this feeling that that picture would be viewed a lot in the future, and that’s not exactly the case but close. I’m having to use it in my social media to show what I looked like with my long hair and beard, which I wore for 10 years of my life, from 31 to 41. During that time I didn’t take my own picture (no cellphones back then like now), and I seldom asked my picture to be taken. So I have mostly only the pictures people took of me that they took the trouble to give me, and so I have very few. Although when you get right down to it it’s another feature of self-importance actually, I thought asking or wanting to have my picture taken was vanity. Boy have I regretted that. Anyway, I don’t have good pictures to show you of my real look with long hair, looking at you that is, only ones like below that’s either taken out of group photo or not too clear. Whether you can see it or not in the photo, I got told every time I turned around that I looked like the historical image of Jesus. In Italy, that really meant something, let me tell you.
Lima, Peru, 2000
One time, however, the only time I got my passport checked the whole year and half I was in the European Union, it meant I looked like a dangerous freak. Shortly after the eye to eye staring session with the pope, I high off my ability to be somewhere someone important was about to show up, a vanity high really, I passed by somewhere on the street in Rome and saw, on what I don’t remember, the number 661. I’m into numbers to guide me, and I have my own repertoire of numbers for that, doubles being one thing, like 33, which was and is a number of divine action for me, or 41, which is my number for purity and sexual abstinence and just general wholeness, but triples being, or meaning, so much more, like 441 meant that those qualities were really being represented in the circumstances I saw the number in, or that I should really work much harder to produce those qualities. 661 is a bit different in that it’s the month and year of my birth, June 1961, and when I saw 61, I knew that I was in a really ‘me’ place or should take the number as a yellow brick road towards that, but when I saw 661, I knew that I was in circumstances as me as they could get, or would be if I ‘followed’ the number, or so I thought until this incident.
It certainly didn’t help my appearance that I’d just picked up this ridiculously large plastic flower on a long stem off the ground, which must’ve looked in my hands like a sort of scepter, picking up and carrying some ways strange or beautiful things lying on the ground or somewhere at hand being another thing with me. It also got taken along with my passport, the man taking it wearing this ‘you fool’ face, you absolute fruitcake. It did happen that someone important was about to show up, the prime minister of Italy no less, and there was a small crowd gathered there waiting for him, but I was the only one detained and taken inside the building. I wasn’t handcuffed, just told to wait near a security booth by some mafia-looking security men while they checked my passport for warrants or whatnot. I am sorry, but they didn’t look like secret service, more rough than that. I knew they knew I wasn’t dangerous, and they knew I knew that, as I spent more than a glace looking into the eyes of one of the goons, who met my gaze with utter contempt. The whole thing, I gathered, was just to rain on my parade, and I had been walking on air up to that moment. They saw someone a bit too free, or weird, and they wanted to rein him in and had the power to do so. They gave me back my flower too when they gave me back my passport, with that same look they had they taken it with, and I was told I could go. Yep, 661 also meant, or more meant, beware, something against you being you is about to happen. That was not a fun lesson in sequent numbers, and I felt like a little kid who’s ice cream just fell off the cone and onto the ground, only I didn’t cry. Needless to say, I didn’t wait around for the prime minister.
You’d ask how conscious Rome is. “You can also write to Rome,” my muse said while I was still in Paris, which can also mean the word right too, something the muse does often, makes a double meaning by implying a word that sounds the same as the word spoken but means something different. So, I could go right to Rome, and I could write letters to Rome like I did Paris so to stay there. Implicit in that is a conscious Rome, and walking around the city you can feel its beingness, its greatness actually, as my muse said of it at the time: “A greatness lies willed in the State of Rome,” but you just can’t help but chew on all the cruelty of its culture and its rule in its heyday, and you wonder where all that went to. For me, it’s a sign of our moral progress that, except for some hell opening here and there on the globe, a hell spot usually open somewhere at any given time for a spell, for the most part we aren’t like that anymore, or at least our gladiators don’t kill one another, and we feed people to the crowd to entertain ourselves, not to lions. Rome has also gone through great change, obviously, and I’m talking about the being Rome, but Rome did not match me like Paris did, and here’s a poet talking. At any rate, I couldn’t stay in either city and had to move on from both. My muse also said: “Rome , a preliminary thought for civilization,” and it said that on Crete weeks after I’d left Rome, and putting a personal interpretation on it, as, whether you realize it or not, your muse is always talking about you in some representative fashion or another, Rome was for me not a place to plant the civilization of myself, my culture; it was a prelude to my poetry and to this present story.
There on that Old Roman Road, I wasn’t getting any lifts. I don’t remember if I’d slept a night out or not before the lake or after, but, in any event, I remember that first night, where I just went into the olive trees along the side of the road, near dusk, and found a spot to lay down for the night. I had a small tent, but I only used it occasionally. My time in Special Forces had gotten me accustomed to doing things in the dark and to sleeping on the ground anywhere, but even still, each time I had to begin doing that again in my camping or vagabonding, it’d take about three nights before I got used to it. After the army, while I was going to college, I kept my skills up by often going alone for the weekend to nearby Sam Houston National Forest, where there was a wilderness area, and just roaming around the hiking trails or tracking deer, not to shoot, to get close enough to slap on the butt, something I’d read about in Tom Brown Junior’s books, which I was really into as a teenager before going into the army, any book about wilderness survival.
One slightly magical weekend a couple of years out of the army, I’d been tracking a deer for hours, and I actually (for the first time on my own) not only saw the deer but got within a few feet of it. I was so ready to slap its ass, let me tell you, excited as all get out, which was my undoing. Now a deer can’t see too well, or it maybe can, but it doesn’t realize it’s seeing you until you move. I’d been learning to track them since late childhood, with my dad, but that’s another story. It was on a dirt road, the kind that doesn’t get used much that has grass growing in the center, grazing. I was upwind from it, and so it couldn’t smell me, the sense it relied on the most. I had to move ever so slowly and then stop, frozen in whatever pose I was in when the deer had looked up. I was able to enter the road and begin creeping up on it, it looking up every couple of minutes and sniffing the air, looking straight at me like it knew danger was there but not able to ‘see’ it. The slow pace was too much for my patience. It would have taken hours to move the several feet to slap it. As it was, I did get pretty close, close enough for government work they say, close enough to show you my almost there wilderness skills at any rate. In short, the deer saw me move and bounded away, and I could’ve sworn it was laughing at me as it hopped off: “Silly human, slap my ass will you?” The wilderness does play tricks with your imagination.
The spot I found to spend the night was just off the road, and there were no buildings in sight, and so I felt no need to seek out the owner of the property and ask permission to sleep there. It was a side of the road thing, but some meters into the olive grove, far enough the road was no longer the major event. You cannot call an olive grove a forest, as it’s too kept for that, really orchard-like, except the trees are in uneven rows most of the time, but when the trees are very old, like these were, you don’t feel the keptness of an orchard; you feel the magic of the olive, a feeling of olden times that has some weird, gnarled, wellness in it. I cooked something vegetarian, cooked it on possibly the best piece of equipment I’ve ever had, a very small one burner stove that burned rubbing alcohol, the kind you could get at any medical shop. No prepping or pumping, just lighting the alcohol. It’d boil water within minutes, something of course subject to your distance from sea level, not super fast like a fancy backpacker stove, but who needed fast? I only needed to eat. I usually ate whatever vegetables I’d managed to buy or get given to me boiled with some noodle or rice, usually with some kind of bread, not much variety, but there again, the army had accustomed me to eat what I had and be glad I had it. I lay down in my army down sleeping bag, and I expected ghosts that night. After all, this was the old southern road to and from Rome, where all roads used to lead, and not for goodness’ sakes. But nothing came to visit me that night, and I was disappointed. Little did I know that a couple of nights from then, sleeping in the woods of the railroad tracks in the ferry town of Brindisi…
Do you remember what you thought on so and so day 20 years ago? You might if thinking were as big to you as doing. It started with me quite early, when I’d get up before the family did on Sundays before church and sit on the sofa in the living room and think to myself, starting when I was about four, not long after a horrible metaphysical experience I relate in other writings, which no doubt led to my preponderance for thought. Sorry to leave you hanging in the Void, but we got to get to those ghosts in Brindisi. Anyway, I’m a thinker, and on that day humping my butt off because I wasn’t getting any rides I picked up something I chewed on a lot: the representative nature of the world. That sounds so unlike it really is. What it is I can’t really say because we can only use known words to describe the unknown, can’t describe it as it is to itself; it is unknown after all. It’s not something you only think about; you can feel it too, and as my feet hit the pavement they were sounding the depth of that symbol we are, the world is, not too terribly deep, but deep enough I could almost see it in the sense-world of where my body was at that moment there on that old Roman Road.
My thoughts were on the larger, what the world’s a symbol of, and what it might be ‘thinking’ about the me there hitching. I did and do a yoga that aims to carry such thinking, on the part of us I’s, to a realization of the thought, something that comes in degrees, all the way to being that larger being, but here I’d been chewing on it only for about seven years or so, since I’d started the yoga after my first trip to India. It was getting riper, but it was still a long ways from a threshold moment like Neo has when he ‘realizes’ the matrix. Where am I at now? I can now see it, not as green computer scrip that Neo sees, but as a hue upon the world, not enough of one, though, to be anything more than a victim of the world’s meanness, what we all are.
Not everyone, though, is or has been such a victim, at least not in those moments that matter most. I spent a couple of days in Rome roaming around the Forum, the famous ruins of the government of ancient Rome. Due to my rather ‘different’ appearance and the rather free-spirited manner in which I walked and viewed things, crossing lines, sitting on things, not because the girls were flirting with me, or so it seemed to me then and does now, two young women I met there, who gave tours of the ruins in English, gave me the works for free. Two things I most remember from their tour, other than the smiles they gave me, like they really liked what I must’ve represented to them, someone off the grid, was, one, the story of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, and, two, the punishment of the Vestal Virgins if they got caught having sex.
My thoughts on the road turned to ole Lawrence, how he was being cooked alive on a gridiron, and after sometime he says, or so history reports it anyway, “I’m well done on this side. Turn me over!”
Martyrdom of San Lorenzo by Palma il giovane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Common
If the story’s true, and whether it is or not doesn’t detract from my thesis regarding it, you might imagine that St. Lawrence had come to something of the realization I’ve somewhat described, where the ‘larger world’ is bigger than the one his senses are in, this present world before our eyes, to such an extent he can crack a joke like that on being burned alive. That he most likely didn’t see it as a larger reality that encompasses this one and is its origin, but as a heaven within the world of our universe, didn’t stop him from the experience of the larger being more real to him, since here it seems, and in other like-wise places we encounter in history, the strength of the thought has more bearing than its depth.
Now the Vestal Virgins who’d had sex, on the other hand, I thought about them too, how terrifying it must’ve been to be given only a bottle of wine and some bread and be entombed alive, although Wikipedia says it differently: that they were given enough food and water to last a few days. The two tour guides juiced the story up some it appears, and we can forgive them for that. Either way how horrible that must’ve been. I imagined the Vestal was the very opposite of the saint, and she only saw the world in front of her face, or more to the point, could not see past the tomb she was in, it being her whole world come crashing down on her, it being her whole world period, a lethal mouth of horror that swallowed her slowly, until the agony was too much, and she lost her mind to tooth and claw trying to get out. The things you think about hitching, and you’re really out there, with no world of friends or family you’re either going towards or leaving. I tell you. Sometimes it’s just too much.
I don’t how long I was on that old road, two days maybe, one night. Finally somebody stopped and picked me up. He said that no one would pick me up on that road, and I needed to go to the freeway, and he kindly took me there and dropped me off, saying to be careful because it was illegal to hitchhike. Imagine that, illegal. I put my thumb out and began making my way south, no problem at all. The freeway was the kind that was only that, like some gated community for cars and trucks only, had no mom and pop businesses on the side, or any shops or gas stations, except every few kilometers or so there was a very artificial corral of such you had no choice but to pull over and use if you needed some kind of fill up, which featured a shop, gas station, and restaurant. Once I got going on that manmade and only made for man river of cars, although birds did fly over, and animals did get run over, hapless me-people now an occasional pile of goo that had dared to venture across tomorrow, I understood, a little, why hitchhikers weren’t allowed; we stood out like a sore thumb.
I only had enough money for the ferry to Greece, but someone that had given me a ride had also given me five euro, and so I ate something at one of those generic restaurants. I should say here I seldom begged, but did a couple of times in a pinch, like once to get back to Safed, Israel from Jerusalem. I did ask for damaged or otherwise unsellable vegetables at markets and such, but that was different. People often gave me money and food without asking, usually only small change, sometimes more, but never big money, and they did so to support my lifestyle, or maybe they were just throwing money at the problem, their problem being they wanted to live such a lifestyle, and were too whatever to do it. I’d usually hear something like, “I’d glad to know people are still around doing what you’re doing.” I looked like a sore thumb from the 60’s, and 20 years ago the memory of those very different times from today were more alive in the collective psyche. You have been lied to people. The 60’s were not naïve; they were another planet.
I also had something else going for me, and there in Italy, it was like a ticket to ride. It wasn’t only the Pope that thought I looked like Jesus, all sore thumbs aside. Italy is a Catholic country, or at least I experienced it that way. At some point I don’t remember, probably near Brindisi, I either got off the freeway or it became more a highway, and I got on a bus, as someone had given me some change. I got on and told the bus driver I wanted to get to the ferry to Greece, and he didn’t say a word, probably because he couldn’t speak English, but he’d understood what I wanted it appears. He got up out of his driver’s seat and motioned me to come with him, left his bus full of people and led me down the street and around the corner onto another street and down it to a waiting bus, which he put me on, paying my fare. He waved goodbye and left back to his bus. It doesn’t take a genius to know why he did that. In his devotional heart, he was doing that for Jesus. I was just his representative image, and he was “letting a form come to see what the real eye images,” to quote my muse around then, which is about praying or singing to statues of Gods in temples, how that isn’t the worship of idols in other words, and not about my likeness to Jesus, about which it said, not on the same page however, “I doubt if the person I am really looks like Jesus right now.”
I got to Brindisi too late to take the ferry, and so I had to find a place to sleep. Out in the country it’s easy; you just sleep somewhere off the side of the road, but in a city that you didn’t know, you had to be careful. Walking back from the ferry landing, and I don’t remember how far that was, I saw a raised portion of land with a lot of trees on it. It was the railroad. I went up there and camped a few meters from the tracks, assured no one would be walking up on me in the night. Boy was I wrong, but it weren’t the living that showed up. I don’t know what time it was, 3ish maybe, but I woke up to a horror show. Every creature for miles around that’d been killed by the train since it’d been running, I imagine, came to see me, all lined up zombie-like to pass in review. One by one they came, some without heads, many crushed, missing limbs, all horribly disfigured. Now local features like this just aren’t in The Lonely Planet. What is a body to do? I just looked at them, gave them the attention they seemed to want. They meant me no harm, and I knew that. I wasn’t afraid, and why I wasn’t was because I was really out there, like I’ve said, and it wasn’t only friends and family I wasn’t hooked into; I didn’t do media either, except for books I carried by Sri Aurobindo, my spiritual teacher, read his epic poem Savitri daily—no movies, TV, newspapers, magazines, net suffering, just the occasional check of email. Nothing in this world, however, is only this and not also something of that. If I found a book along the way, or someone gave me one, for example, I’d read it, as I found it was usually just what I needed to read, the same with the occasional magazine I’d find in an office or somewhere, and I’d read the headlines of newspapers I saw in the vending machines. I was wide open to the other, or the things we drown out by a continual barrage of social signals and hang-ups. And the other came to call.
While I’m not the purest I was then, I still spend most of my time in the sights and sounds of the reality in front of my face, not hooked into media for very long at any given time, except for watching a movie I’ve been on the watch for and the typing of stories and poetry I’m doing now, and the net time that takes, but I am into friends and family, dogs and a cat a big part of that, as they’re the people of my world, and I love my world and its people. The time I do spend on the net when I’m not writing, however, is a very concentrated hour or so to try and ride the reading wave of current world thought, an elusive wave that goes in every which direction and turns you every which way but loose, because you just can’t get over how, as much as it seems to be going nowhere, is actually, maddeningly, getting there after all. Where is there? Can I show you?
Now were those dead creatures ghosts? They were probably just the life-body, the vital we call it in our yoga, of the humans and animals that had gotten killed by the train, not the souls of those people, which were probably long departed. Such parts of dead people often hang around the place they got killed, especially if it were a violent and sudden death, and they usually only do a certain routine, like the lady in black I saw walk up the stairs in a squat in Jaffa, Israel, the building hundreds of years old, the stairs crumbling, and she floated over the sections that were missing. That was her routine I gathered, going up and down those stairs. Since there is an ego in the vital, or was when the vital was part of a living body, the seeming ghosts do have some sort of will, rather mechanical though, as the dead creatures I saw at the railroad tracks did, wanting me to view them. I have seen actual ghosts however, the two most striking instances happening in Northern California in the early ‘90’s.
It was broad daylight, and I was sitting in the cemetery of Laytonville, California, having just spent some weeks up on nearby Spyrock Mountain with the pot growers. That’s a sad cemetery by the way, as there’s some graves of children who all died the same time, about a hundred years ago, and you can feel the loss reading the sentiments on their gravestones. Completely alone, or so I thought, I sat down near there and smoked a joint, and as the high settled in, pot being an aid for the seeing of hidden things, I looked out over the cemetery and saw a tall, thin, beam of light over a grave. I went over and looked at it more closely. It was about human height, but with no features at all, just a beam of light a few inches wide. It also had color to it, and the colors I saw were auric in quality, which meant they had hues to them that contained emotions, or the feelings of feelings, and here they were fear and sadness. I looked at the grave the light was ‘standing’ over, and it was a fresh grave, of an old woman who had just been buried the day before. I’m not making any of this up folks. I sat down and talked to her, so to perhaps make her feel better, less afraid. After a little while the beam vanished, slowly, like a wilting sun.
Some weeks later I was working washing dishes at a restaurant in Garberville, California, a town in the redwoods not far from Laytonville, and I got off work around midnight. I was sleeping in the town cemetery, as they are quiet places to sleep where people don’t usually go at night, and so no one will bother you. There’s a road that rounds the place, and I was winding down from work walking on it smoking some good grass. As I came to a place where there was an old tree with a large hole in it near the ground, one that went plum through, I saw what looked like a large silver sheet waving not far from it, waving like it was angry. It was several feet across and several feet high. Saying it was a sheet is the only way I can describe it, and you get the picture of what it looked like. It wasn’t, obviously, a sheet. Not realizing what the ghost was trying to tell me, which was, “Get out of my cemetery!”, I just went to where I slept, in a shallow, partly dug grave some distance from the tree I’ve mentioned, on the other side of the road, not in cemetery center, and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning and went into town and heard about the vandals that’d knocked down a gravestone in the night, throwing it a few feet, not far from where I saw the ghost.
Now, I tell you: there were no vandals in that cemetery that night, only an angry ghost. It’s interesting, though, it had the power to move something very physical and very heavy several feet, and it must’ve been an old ghost to be able to do that, but it didn’t have the power to harm me, and it was me it was mad at, why it threw the gravestone to begin with. I think that should tell you a lot about ghosts. I do imagine that they can harm us, even kill us, but only in very exceptional and extraordinary circumstances. For the most part we are protected, by the laws of metaphysics, from ghosts.
Back in Brindisi, I just went back to sleep after the last dead creature had passed and reviewed before me, woke up the next morning and got on the ferry, to Igoumenitsa, Greece. The feeling of freedom was exhilarating, and I did a Titanic stance and stood at the front of the ferry facing the wind and water, or as close to the front as passengers could get, not the king of the world, nor even its minister, but a penniless nobody the world had taken by the hand, to the open road, to the paths of my destiny. Now to Greece, to Greece.
This has been an enormous supply chain of the ideas we find ourselves in. It goes further than this. Can we see about tomorrow?
I can’t see about tomorrow in my hands. It’s not narrative yet. It’s not written down in the book, but we’ve walked every inch of that trail in the timeworn fonts of the story yet to be told.
Hear me people, listen. The world is at your feet. Go get it.
The shock of silverware, that’s bad business, the hidden wellsprings of our founts of evil. It’s horribly noticeable in mirrors and things. I looked into a glass, behind my reflection a fiend.[1] Here it’s on the ground something wicked this way comes, a ghost gone mad in demon likes. We round about it sepulcher. The world of the ghoul, do you understand?
You’re too small people to face reality The Atlantic Monthly is that you? What an Eye you have on your page; I’ve submitted to you an epic poem. Did you turn me in to the Man, or are you just ignoring me for keep’s sakes? You are the forefront of reality? Let me show you my titties. Do you hear me world?
The care that’s what does it with animals. We give them company, more than just a little, a whole day’s worth, what I done writing down all this for you. A little puppy I took good care of.
Science would make reason kneel in surprises, in all its wares. Can we call this a surprise? The Church did the same thing. Stupefied, it took reality in pictures reality didn’t make. We laugh at its process. A story of make believe conformed reality to its picture.
Now cities giant in surprise, the Earth springs forth beneath us, and science can only say one word: material process, as if we did not dream in our beds at night of worlds we make inside our heads. Where is that engine room? As if consciousness were not a thing in a plant as it speeds towards recovery. Can we say it smiles? As if the world were not larger than we see springing forth from founts infinitesimal to ever larger pictures of reality make. Like reality stops here.
Science where is the spirit world? Why do you populate dimensions with other universes? Your choice that. It’s not graven in reality, as if what the mystics have taught since time immemorial were the babblings of idiots. Can we gauge science? It’s too small for the reality we experience, yet it’s been made the default view of the control center of human progress without our knowledge or consent. Oh science study thee well. Reality’s comin’ for yah.
Surprise, I give you a calculator. I will give the opportunity to see if science works in magic. I’ll show you magic. Science will secure its field; you’re an agent of destruction; continue.
Open out on the unknown, the best writing opens out on the unknown, open road. Not present with me yet. That’s comin’.
I’m relating my own personal experience, what? The hood comes up. I’ve got my hood. We’re mountain together. A puppy dog belly in our put just to keep it warm.
This has been transportation of the net. Alright, alright. On the roof with a hummingbird’s song. Let me get out of your microphone. Are you gonna build the theater? You do understand these are Fort Sumter play rights.
I’m almost done. How much is with you? Can you make a difference? Enter bigger reality of consciousness. You know what’s all black and blue. Every science hole in the world.
Daddy, the dream showing the truth: our fear of reality. Just leave us alone. I gotta go find my station in life. Found a new friend. It’ll be an honor to change the reality construct.
What I’m tryin’ to say: let’s grasp reality by the horns, will yah? let’s consciously see, will yah? I’ve given you a lot of examples to show consciousness to your room. Don’t stop there. Go all the way to God. Alright people, the bird comes to those who could fly.
The Remorse of Orestes by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Everybody doesn’t know their airplane parts or that they have one.
(Slightly modified here, this essay was written for and submitted to two science-minded magazines that are atheist in their perspective so to challenge them with evidence they do not seem to be looking at: the range of their own inner life. One did not bother to reply, but the other, Aeon Magazine, replied kindly telling me it didn’t fit them but recommended two spiritual magazines to send it to. The ironic thing is that when I submitted this essay I had an online debate with an Aeon editor in their comment section after an essay on exactly the point that most magazines only promote their worldview and generally do not include challenges to it as published features. The editor told me that they did include other points of view, although it did have a worldview to promote and wasn’t ashamed of it. Their rejection of the essay and recommendation to send it to someone who’d agree with me gives some measure of validity to my point.)[1]
And science mingled with creation’s scene
a quantum sum
white.
Left me nauseated.
Please.
And we go outside
I hope.
And no one would hope not.
You guys don’t have goal one do you?:
Boys,
have to put ‘im out,
Whatever-You-Say.
Is that it?
Just drink some Man along the way.
Where’s my scholarship?
I will speak –
I’m havin’ a dream.
Why didn’t he do it?
Did the scientific method
go there?
Not in your dreams.
How get this across:
measure all of reality
one field of explain?
Because we are having our life here in this age it’s easy to think ours is really messed up compared to past ages, but it’s always been like this, and people down through the ages have more or less always felt the inadequacies of their own age as the worst ever, barring some momentary triumph of peace and prosperity. Saying that, it does seem we are once again spiraling down into that militant intolerance of others’ ideologies that has catapulted us into ever increasing all-out war time and time again, most recently the Second World War, though at any moment you can see ideological war-fires spotting all around the globe, and not even the light of reason can help us now; it’s been eclipsed these days by its most recent replacement, the New Atheism, who’s very basis is intolerance, in this case the intolerance of ignorance, and unfortunately even a genius can’t seem to figure out how ignorant is such an intolerance. You have to have a little understanding of human nature to understand what I mean. The concept of character armor, especially our own, would be a good place to start.
While we can go on and on about what lies at the bottom of the clash in ideas – the right way to live; my divine, your divine, or (added recently) no divine, some ideal or another people think everybody should bow to –, maybe a lot of it has to do with not realizing or understanding just how much we don’t know yet about ourselves and existence, or, to put it more in the hand, just how much there is yet to discover. For this reason I’m writing down my experiences, in this piece on lucid dreaming and death, not because mine are unique to humanity or are colossal in the light of others’ experience but because I’m one of you guys (although I do try to anchor on the inside), a net surfing, movie watching, book reading modern mind indulgent of the heart, or modern heart indulgent of the mind, depending on which you put your compass in, if it’s on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but mostly because I can write about it, although I should add that for several years, while I traveled from country to country with pilgrim’s feet, in lieu of any English teaching or handyman job available, I made my way by relating my experiences, sang and danced for my supper, so they are not altogether the most usual for people to have and do give some hint of the more about ourselves we have yet to see.
To isolate your lucid dreaming from your dreaming in general, from your outer-body experiences and that whole inner-outer crowd, from your waking life and the context that it provides, from even the web of dreaming of the particular night in which a certain lucid dreams occurs, or the whole cycle of dreaming of that moon for that matter, makes for a certain artificiality and gross incompleteness of a demonstration and discussion; nonetheless I shall do so to a certain extent in order to relate my experience. That’s really the problem in discussing anything about life and the world – cutting it up in artificial bits that in the cutting often lose a great deal of the essentialities. But we have to talk about this, our lives that is, our living, our being here wherever and whatever here really is. Continually faced with such immensity anywhere we look has us telling the whole history of whatever just to say some little thing about it. I’m bridging that now by tipping my hat to it and just getting on with the story.
Although I had many isolated lucid dreams as a child, lucidity then something that would sometimes come as a dream ended, my first pronounced lucid dreaming cycles started, and the first time I died in dreaming, when I was an undergraduate in college in my mid-twenties. I’d recently gotten out of the army and wasn’t yet attracted to the spiritual path. In fact I was an atheist. Neither was I clean in a moral sense, and I add that to show dreaming ability, or the ability to control and manipulate the dreambody, calling it that to give a better impression we have an inner being not exactly the same as the outer one, not by a long shot, does not depend on matters of morality, on how good or, for that matter, how bad you are. Although it really isn’t a moral issue as some consider it, it bears mentioning that I used no substances at that time other than dipping flavored tobacco. Especially grass inhibits the ability to remember dreams, although if you’re stoned and can go into a dream directly from the waking state, maintaining continuity of consciousness, you enhance your dream-range considerably. Because I had a great deal of the subtle kind of life-force that enables inner exploration and experience, and because I’d always even in childhood remembered and chewed on a lot of my dreams, and for other reasons less obvious to outward-faced mentality, soul reasons, I just suddenly started having a lot of lucid dreams as my adolescence came completely to a close, and I moved fully into adulthood.
Waking dreams come in cycles if you have enough of them to observe that tendency. Without any prior warning I found myself waking up in two or three dreams a night, which is something in itself, but I was as well armed with that rare almost absolute control one can have in such dreams. I didn’t seek answers to big questions, look for enlightenment, or search for God or for my soul; I had fun, being as I was still a kid for all intents and purposes even though I would not be for very much longer largely as a result of these dream experiences. The whole thing presented itself to me as the ultimate video game, total immersion, real virtual reality, something that over the years as I’ve wondered over has given me bright and dark hints of maybe the game being played with us here, some angle of explanation of the role of life in time, of being a person on this planet – we’re avatars of someone’s gaming, someone larger than time.
Only I didn’t know at the time that it wasn’t how many men or monsters I killed that mattered; it was remembering I’d somehow lost my true identity in playing the game, which doesn’t necessarily mean I have to stop playing. The soldier in me, the ex-Green Beret, had not had its fire tested in battle, and so when I awoke within a dream I willed the scenario to change into a battle, and armed with a sword or machine gun, depending on the time period I chose, I could finally be the hero I considered myself to be, although perhaps if I’d been in battle in waking life I’d have gotten myself killed so quickly I’d have been deemed more stupid than heroic. In the dream I was invincible. Nothing could harm me. Bored with that I sometimes imagined a person that fit my desire and lust to a T, and I would, uh, have sex.
It’s not easy to give this picture or show the power of which I speak; I was like a god and could will a dream scenario to appear and do there my will. What a shame I wasted that power on kid stuff. Being so young and yes innocent, ignorant of what could happen, like most young people, I had no idea what danger lies lurking in power and speed, be that of a motorbike or a dream, but a wake up call came. Unfortunately there are consequences; what we do matters, both here and in dream, although there it doesn’t matter near as much. It seems to be in the design that dreams are a proving ground for us and as such the lines of karma spun there are much more loosely woven (yes an emphatic statement, but even the hardcore reductive materialist would have to laugh at life’s ironies and coincidences: “almost as if … no, what was I thinking? That’s impossible”). I, however, had crossed way too many of those lines, and the consequences were such that even to this day the fear of what can happen makes me drive slower even probably than I should. Wisdom sometimes is more old than wise.
Things went on this way for about a month, and I’d go through my waking day just waiting to go back to sleep, as it had suddenly become for me the pinpoint of my life experience, as opposed to the other way around as it normally is for most. I would kill a hundred men in a slaughtering ecstasy, ravish wantonly whatever beauty I conjured up to lay down for me, and to scarf down the carnage to the last drop I learned to sink into the dream with all five of my senses. Not knowing the deep ways of dreaming, what I was in fact doing by that sinking in was leaving my own dream-range, though our personal range is always shot through with strange encounters with the world and universe at large (I don’t expect you to believe that; it becomes more self-evident the deeper you go into inner experience, the more you experiment with the creative reflex, of which dreaming is but a part), and in my dreambody going to someplace else in the multidimensional, multifaceted field of life on the inner planes. In inner exploration, where your will points your awareness, there you’ll go, in the same way under the sun where you point your feet and walk your body can’t but follow.
On that fateful night I suddenly found myself standing in the darkness facing four angry men. The place was open like a park, and the men were brown-skinned, and that is all I know of the where and who. Neither had I any idea of the why and how, what had made these men so mad at me. I had no memory of anything happening beforehand, but that was not my major concern because one of the men was holding a large butcher knife and looked as though he were about to kill me with it. I moved to defend myself but couldn’t move at all. As the I’m-about-to-die alarm went off in my being’s self, despite knowing I was dreaming, which only seemed to add some perverse spice to it, I willed myself to wake up in bed, my heretofore never had failed me before failsafe. It didn’t work; I was too sunk in the dream to wake up before he stabbed me. I felt every inch of that blade slide into my heart, felt it as a sticking, stabbing pain reaching into my heart where it unmasked as death, and as my blood flowed out from the wound, I fell to my knees in disbelief and died.
Years later in Jerusalem in 1995, in my 33rd year, I would suddenly remember those four brown-skinned men stabbing me in that park-like place and be convinced it was my impending death I’d experienced, sort of like I’d been given a hands on no holds barred premonition. I was sitting alone at night on a park bench outside Jaffa Gate of the old city, having left my friends and our small camp where for the past eight days we’d been conducting a hunger strike for world peace (it’s a long story) to go off and think about our decision to remain there despite just being visited by some angry Palestinian men who told us that if we didn’t leave the park by two a.m. they’d come back and kill us. One held a knife just out of his jacket and told me, “And you, we’re gonna drag you in these bushes and fuck you first, and then kill you.” I had hair down past my shoulders and looked quite the pretty boy.
Simply to explain let me say that earlier in the day we gave help and council to a fellow traveler, a young Scottish woman named Patricia who had been badly beaten because she refused to have sex with the manager of one of the many Palestinian-run guest houses in the old city, where she’d stayed briefly. The manager was a young man named Mohammad, and it was his gang of friends threatening to kill us. They were part of the Palestinian mafia we heard from our Israeli friends, and I think that was just the Israeli tendency to make a mountain out of a molehill when it concerned anything bad the “Arabs” did, but they were organized, and they had men at the entrances to the park watching in case police or soldiers came by. It turned out they didn’t come back that night to kill us, and rather than sit up and watch the clock we decided just to go to sleep. If we were still alive by morning things would obviously be better. It even happened that Mohammed returned a few days later and apologized and offered to help us in any way he could, upon being behooved to do so by Palestinian elders, after getting his ear tweaked, we heard later.
They’d gotten involved wanting to know why the Israeli army came in force into their part of the old city. In one of the many ironies of being a peace activist, I guided a squad of soldiers and police through the old city to rescue Patricia, who was being prevented by Mohammad’s gang from leaving the hostel she had moved to, but that is certainly not the only irony of the story. The one, however, that really got my goat was sitting on that bench the night before all that ironic adventure without a doubt in my mind I was facing my death because the events of that situation were so similar in nature to that dream. It would not be the last time I thought that dream to have been a premonition of my death, as that is certainly not the only time I’ve made people in another land mad at me, but however I may actually die, that death was a death in its own right. I not only died but went to the other side.
Man I talk to yah.
Heavyset looks happy
because he knows he’s not happy.
I need books.
John dead.
Happy to be a believer.
He loves that little light of day.
Look at this table.
Skin it down to its last science:
you don’t have an answer
you borrowed somebody’s.
Weird it’s accepted
their reality.
You might.
You know somethin’.
Might have us all
clearly
becomin’.
Go inside hurt.
If that’s your peak experience
it’s gonna drop back down to you
because y’all peak at your peak experience.
Life beckons.
Steven why are you here?
I’m not,
I’m just some cling-on.
And a host of other pajamas.
We build up the dreams of our lives
with the silver cup of time.
Use familiar things
as your heartbeats
the door glitters.
Perhaps the greatest reason such little credence is given to personal inner experience, and why there is such a strong if largely unspoken taboo against it all over the globe, and I’m not talking about adopting beliefs about it, practicing techniques to enhance it, or venerating the inner experience of some accepted figure but about Joe Blow or Jane Doe’s experiences being valuable, is because of our tendency on the one hand to take it at face value, not see it as symbolic and representative in nature, and on the other to give it more authority over us than society and even our own reason, and we know where that can lead. Especially a near-death experience, what we tend to call these things, whether you actually experience the moment of death or not, can leave you utterly convinced of the validity of not only life after death but of the absolute truth of any ideal-forms you may encounter during the experience. For many it turns their whole life around, and they become religious-minded or at least spiritually oriented. Not so with me, although it certainly became an index of experience in my life and brought my dream fun to an abrupt halt.
My skepticism could not so easily be laid to rest. Maybe if I’d gone to the gates of some rapturous heaven or burned or froze on the brink of some torturous hell, or saw Jesus or the Devil I might have been converted to a religious perspective (these figures because I grew up Christian in America, since we tend to see in such experiences the religious forms predominate in our family and/or society), although I hope I would’ve had more presence of mind than that, but I didn’t go to any place fantastic, only to my own living room, and I didn’t see any divine or demonic beings, only our years-dead family cat, a white feline more like another sibling in my childhood than a mere cat, named lamely Kittypus, but the story is not as dull as all that, not by any means.
In other writings I write about visits to and visions of the fantastic, but an inner experience such as the one I’m describing doesn’t have to contain such to be valuable, to have a considerable index of worth. When the experience is just down to earth, familiar, more of this world than any other, you’re less likely to be carried away by it and so are in a better position to interpret it and not simply take it at face value, since its representative nature is more apparent. I should add here that’s the first law of inner experience: take nothing at face value; everything you see is symbolic. I would also like to add that’s the same one to have for outer experience, but I would be too much ahead of my time. Your dreams are full of purposefully placed symbols that mean something, okay; the subconscious can be quite the wizard. You might grant it that, but I’ve built a bridge too far by saying the world and life are so filled. That would be like saying it all means something, and nobody, not even the religious-minded, would want to look out of their little world and give such credence to everything, especially to what they don’t believe in.
There on my knees watching my blood spread on the ground in front of me, I forgot about the men and their killing me, even about continuing to try and wake up in my bed, although I was still aware I was myself dreaming. I was now alone with death, and that is something it seems we each face in our own way, like the personal way we greet the ocean upon arriving at the beach regardless of how many people are splashing around. Then the whole scene vanished, and I found myself in outer space. Ahead and above me some distance I could see a doorway, just a door there in space with no building it was a part of, a normal looking wooden door but with a bright yellow light shinning out of the space between it and the door frame, all the way around, and the light beckoned so much comfort it hinted at, and there in the cold of space having just been killed I needed some comfort. I reached the door and opened it, and to my surprise, I was looking at the interior of my mom’s living room, a place I’d come of age in, but the whole room was transfigured bathed in that yellow light, and I could see that at the back of the room the light was intensely brighter, as if there was the essence of the peace and solace I felt. Kittypus came and rubbed herself against my leg, but I completely ignored her so attracted was I to the yellow light, and I really regretted that later – she was saying hi, and I understand I’m going to far again giving (other) animals an afterlife, but you can see for yourself if you don’t want to take my word for it.
The only thing I wanted to see was more of that light, and so I scrambled to enter the room to get to its source, but the door just closed on me, and I found myself awake in bed in anguish I hadn’t been able to go into that light, but in the following days it wasn’t that light that concerned me but in keeping my own light of mind on, as it seemed I opened in that experience more than the door to my living room, and the power that had heretofore been so much fun became a nightmare I couldn’t escape from. You might say I opened the floodgates of the subconscious with all that inner exploration, especially with it culminating in such a bottomed-out experience, and its tenebrous brood rushed into the light of day, and that certainly happened, but I would say it differently: I crossed the fence that hems us in and keeps us from straying off out of the ordinary, that wall of mundane that prevents us from seeing what more there might be, not only in the near-death experience but in playing the creator and destroyer as I had, in being a dream-demigod, and for my transgression I suffered the onslaught of the guardians of the threshold. It’s not that one way of seeing it is right and the other wrong; it’s just that reality will always be bigger than our interpretation of it, will always symbolize deeper than we can presently see.
The lucid dreaming cycle did not end with that near-death experience, unfortunately, and for several nights after I was plagued by dreams in which being awake within them, far from being anything even remotely entertaining, only accentuated the terror I felt, because suddenly my will had been amputated from my knowledge, and I was completely helpless. One dream will suffice as an example. It was pitch dark, and I was lucid and running from something so hideous and foul I knew that if I even turned around and looked at it I’d go mad. You can’t appreciate what I mean sitting there reading about it. I could feel its breath on my back, and my only thought was, “Wake up! Wake up!” Right before it grabbed me I woke up, and I was sweating and had to go to the bathroom. I lay there a moment basking in relief at having escaped being eaten. I got out of bed and opened my bedroom door, and there it was, a real monster, not something you’d see in a movie – anybody’s imagination would run from such an image. It bit into my neck and chest and began eating me right there. I felt every bite. Screaming I woke myself up, again, and for days after I had those panic attacks you get when you suddenly haven’t the slightest idea what’s real and what’s not. The cycle ended shortly after and left my world trembling and quaking, but my world stayed in place, and by the time the next cycle rolled around sometime later, I had recovered enough courage to have another go, but this time a bit more like a passenger and witness than an Almighty.
If things would have continued to take place in my own personal inner world, if they hadn’t made a crunching contact with someone else’s inner world, with the outside world as paradoxical as that might sound (it’s precisely in that paradox we make the most fundamental error in our reasoning of reality: that everything and everybody’s spaced apart existing as objects the inner life of man a freak of Nature with no connection to other objects or bearing upon reality except through material process), then I would have no call to bring my dreaming to your attention other than to show what fun you can have or trouble get into. Nothing I’ve related so far challenges the reality the science-minded propose (they’d call it being skeptical), a reality where no experience of consciousness beyond the manufacture of the brain, independent of gross material processes, is possible. I just have a very colorful and active inner life. The next dream experience I have to relate, however, would add not only another chapter to reality but a whole library. In short, it brings into view the possibility of an infinity of and unlimited range of personal existence, or at least such able to supersede the boundaries of time and space.
Of that cycle of lucidity, which occurred about a year later, after less notable cycles where I got my dream-feet under me again, I only remember one dream, but if it were the only dream out of a whole lifetime of dreaming I were to remember, it would be sufficient to convince me we don’t yet have a clue to how big we are, or can be, how much more range we as individuals have than what range we are told we have by our societies, our schools, our religions, and our sciences. It also begs the question of the distinct possibility of superior ranges of existence to ours that have such as its law of being, the ability to supersede time and space at will, but neither did this dream convince me there’s a God. I was after, however, more open the possibility, did not equate that possibility with the existence of the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, or Bigfoot (but in the strangeness of things they too might be based on some half-truth partially witnessed), since I saw that god-possibility as a whole other order and range of being capable of inhabiting all at its zenith of possible, and, unbeknownst to me, my dreambody has begun searching for it. The will on the feet thing again.
I see now I was an atheist because I had to get out of my head and heart the idea of God I’d been raised with, an anthropomorphic figure who lived in a heaven above who was confused between being a god of love and one of wrath, what the separative human ego would be like if all-knowing and all-powerful, not someone you’d feel safe with, the quintessential example of intolerance who has doomed the overwhelming majority of people he created to the worst suffering imaginable forever without end amen because he is intolerant of their different religious beliefs or lack thereof, and free from such warring ideological constraints I could explore myself inside more intimately (fear really is the mind-killer; in inner exploration it’s the big inhibitor, although to a certain extent it does provide some protection), but as I approached God again, not from the perspective of belief but from the inner experiences I was having, not to mention more and more seeing something very funny out there in the world, something that cared not to be seen but once you started seeing it you got winked at more and more by it, enough to realize it wasn’t a thing occupying a time and space as you did but something that had absolutely no constraints, something totally other but at the same time in total identification with you, whatever kind of wink you got pleasant or painful, I remained an atheist because when you take all my clothes off I’m just this little animal trying not to get hurt or killed, trying to get enough to eat and if I’m lucky have a good time, not to mention I’m a male of my species and very territorial, and whatever it was I was trying to look the other way from was just so much in my stuff and in my world I didn’t even want to think about it or what that might mean to me.
In other writings I relate what ended my atheism as well as the finding of the soul, something else that had entered the field of possibility. More to the point here and now, however, more practical for helping us break our habit of self-destruction as a race, as a species, more needful to shake us out of our intolerance for each other and separation one from another, the experience in this dream reveals the possibility we are not separate individuals alone on the inside cut off in there from everybody else as both the religious fundamentalist mind and the New Atheist mind think (both brothers in this regard), as just about every mind thinks for that matter. Just think for a moment what it would mean if in reality we weren’t, how much change that shift in self-seeing would bring. Alright, think long and hard on it. It would correct a lot of the worst kinds of human error, help solve the paradox of being an individual in a social animal species, a little person in an overwhelming amalgamated mass, and we couldn’t help but end up respecting both because it would bring unity into the picture, not the undifferentiated unity of a group but the unity of the individual with the group and it with the individual, at first on the social horizon but in time down home to the people themselves, not the thought up idea, the moral ideal, but the biological reality, the life imperative.
I should add that in discovering and founding ourselves upon our unity it would certainly help if we accepted the help of superior ranges of existence, and inevitably we will, but that is beyond the scope of this present writing. Although it’s also beyond the range of this piece, it would be appropriate to mention that seeing the inner connection between things would also reveal our more glaring error in our endeavor to create artificial intelligence: that the robot, program or whatever could become self-aware without also becoming somehow a portion of the ray or reflection of not only ours as its creator but the rest of Being
(We’ll only create a monster,
analytical,
something technical,
no form of life,
no cords of empathy:
Nat Zero.
Open my symbol box.
Who copied this email?
The wrong peacock),
and by the way isn’t it ironic that people for the most part not even interested in the possibility of having creators themselves are busy with and sure of the possibility they can create “people”? You’d think they’d understand that in their endeavor they’re in fact grappling with the reverse, where we come from, not to mention that the strength of this desire to be ourselves the creator, the natural way it develops as we do, should make us at least suspect it’s inherent in Being itself as it develops, and with all the dangers we see in creating AI, we might begin to understand why whoever has created us and/or our world has put such a seeming distance between us and their reality. What a surprise it would be if in this quest, in trying to get our hands on that ray, see the source of that reflection, once we become hip to the hidden biology we’ve missed and the epic inside of creation, we finally meet our own creators, and it’s our own face we see, though profoundly larger, unbound and free – our gaming face, not playing games as we play them through pulling the strings from outside but able to put some essence of itself into its avatar and allow it to play the game, with (some) free will, witnessing the game in such a way the watching itself aids the avatar towards its goal, which may not be simply survival and the avoidance of death, a witnessing unified to a total field of avatars in ways our ‘one pole of experience’ perception cannot picture even in imagination.
Now, to relate this eye-opening dream that just set my atheist head spinning: I became aware I was dreaming and found myself inside my father, but as I listened to his thoughts I realized I was inside my grandfather. I was amazed because I was me with all my thoughts and feelings aware of all of his, feeling even his bodily sensations and able to ‘see’ out of his five senses, although his outside was more of a sidelight. It was his inner life I was in, but it stands to reason that if I would’ve willed my awareness on his five senses and his sense mind I would’ve been as he, absorbed in the outer scene. I could see what he was doing though, building a fence, what he did to make a living when he wasn’t cutting cords of firewood. He was very hot and extremely thirsty. Then like a sudden unexpected earthquake, his whole left side exploded in pain, the pain of death, and he knew it was his death because the pitch of that pain was more than life could bear (you’d have to feel it to know that), and he began to panic, names and faces running through his mind, the people he wanted to say goodbye to, but just when the pain and fear became a whirlwind that I thought would kill me too, something at the top left of his head opened, and that light I’d seen previously, though this time it had no color to it, only intense brightness, came flooding down into him ending the pain and fear, and he forgot all about his loved ones and just wanted to go into that light, and just as he began rushing up into it, I woke up in bed not happy at being left behind.
I felt that dream to signify something, the future most likely, and if I would’ve believed my gut feeling I’d have really turned some heads, but I didn’t want to look stupid if it hadn’t been a premonition of my grandfather’s death, and so, because the dream wouldn’t leave me alone, I ended up writing my father a letter (I hadn’t spoken to my grandfather in years) and simply put a P.S. to have faith in hard times, nothing definite, just enough to make my intuition shut up. About two weeks later my father called me telling me my grandfather had just died of a heart attack while building a fence, describing how he was so thirsty he’d gone to the farmhouse he was working for and asked for more water two or three times. They saw him lying on the ground not long after his last visit, at first thinking he’d passed out because of the heat but upon reaching him realized he was dead. Now, I was just a passenger in that dream, a surprised witness, and I don’t know the law of such inner-body time travel and haven’t been able to repeat it, but I really haven’t tried since other experiences came not long after that were more the kind I wanted to learn to repeat, not ones of our hidden powers but spiritual ones of our larger identity (the law of my person seems to be to see these things more than inhabit them, but I am trying), and I don’t have to have someone else experience something like this to substantiate it, to believe my own eyes – know what I mean?
They won’t get it.
Not in their books.
An update,
this is significant.
I show the East coast
y’all.
Maybe l should
travel numerals.
This company
is just so big inside.
See here.
The airport…
Where’s the ticket?
Your girlfriend,
The ability to think free.
Some freedom –
you tie your bookshelf with it.
Look, don’t worry about it.
You know what it’s about?
Twenty seconds
in the ignition.
Yep,
in there surfin’
you get in that chute
there it is.
I don’t have the option to see there any movie,
But I can land it
of time and space.
Just seconds,
big deal.
Come on,
what are we talking about?
Ed could you please pass her the book Soul I’m Go On My Life?
Put it there God
residency
when we grow up.
Of course theirs is the education college-strung
supported on banks of you.
It’s in the wash.
It’s Canadian.
I’m sleepy.
Super,
you’re so wide
how do you expect to put space on?
How many times
did I tell yah
You’re out algebra –
look over your shoulder
I’m there.
A help isn’t it?
I thought God too slim for boundaries.
They were like spectacles
soul put.
See something:
the wrong Green Beret
(I too know that)
on the road.
That’s mathical science.
Lemmie put it this way:
World X,
I gotta give it back to yah.
Would you look at that?
The solution
right inside your head.
Turn it on
like a light bulb
the focus:
there you are
watchin’ who you are
an employee especially.
You are out of your mind.
You got me
in the Everglades.
One minute.
Above your mind
get me.
[1] In a discussion of a review of the film Life of Pi on the blog The Atheist Experience, I posted a link to this article, and I’d have to explain this story sat in my Pages for years before I’ve moved it up to a post, and that I’d posted a poem review of the said film on the aforementioned blog, what the subsequent discussion was about, how I must be taking some good drugs here in India to write a poem like that. I got laughed at when I said it came from inner voice and vision and when I asked if they had looked on the inside for God or were even aware of their dreams, where they spent at least a forth of their day. I mentioned my experience in the inner fields, and I was told it was of no account because it was anecdotal, whereupon I sent the link. I saw in my stats that day and the next 50 views of this story, the most views that I’ve gotten so far at any one time on anything I’ve posted on the net, and there were no views of this story in the weeks before or after. It doesn’t take a scientist to know the views came from that discussion in the comment section of The Atheist Experience. Not one person, however, commented, much less put a like. Why the silence? Because my story holds the weight of reality, and the only thing I could be accused of is lying or grossly exaggerating, but If I am telling the truth, just think what that would mean to men and women who are almost exclusively focused on the outer world, who do no inner exploration, who discredit consciousness as just some byproduct of your brain that is inside your physical body and does not reach into the body of others. They would feel horribly inadequate, would not be so confident in saying unequivocally there is no God.
Collaboration, the Secret of the Unknown 
