Secrets of the Universe

This is the opening page for the blog of India Jones; yogi, philosopher, adventurer and sky dancer as he relates the secrets of the universe that he learned while living for thirty-five years in the caves, jungles and mountain retreats of Asia.
In 1970, after realizing the emptiness of all phenomena, I closed my Hollywood Hills psychotherapy-drug counseling practice and returned to India. After receiving initiation from my revered teacher Hakim Kutta, I traveled to the Valley of the Blue Flowers high in the Himalayan Range where I learned the formula for the magic elixir of immortality and how to transfer my consciousness to the next incarnation at the time of death. Along with this accomplishment that the Tibetans call P’howa I was instructed in the art of sky dancing, becoming invisible, the secrets of everlasting youth and the powers of transmutation or the ability to control the body and the external world which requires the innate absence of a self entity in the individual person as well as in matter and mind.
The Valley of the Blue Flowers is not known by many people for it is hidden within the confusion of what the indigenous folk call the Mountain of Ten Thousand Peaks. Its entrance is difficult to find and fraught with many dangers and few persons from the outside world have entered it’s portals for it is guarded by a hearty warrior tribe and their ferocious mastiff dogs that have little affection for strangers from the world of the “red dust” as the outside world is referred to. The secrets contained within the valley are well guarded and the inhabitants of this metaphysical Eden are intent on keeping it that way for once the karmic continuity has been broken and the secrets of life and death disclosed to the general public their way of life will be over for ever.
The blue flowers, after which this valley has been named, are tiny effusions of color that spring forth and blossom for only four days a year in its verdant meadows. Over the centuries the alchemists of the region have learned to distill the essence of this botanical miracle into a powerful spirit guide that unlocks the doors to the not yet realized invisible worlds that surround us and gives us the means and the knowledge to develop our full human and psychic potential. This development stage is fabricated by mind and the completion stage, when entered upon by someone well trained in meditation, allows them the means or mastery of resting in the unfabricated nature of mind. In this context, the act of our intellect that discerns and classifies phenomena is a hindrance to the naked state of an awakened mind that can operate unimpeded without concepts or mental constrictions. It is a state of primordially undeluded wakefulness.
Traditionally, in Tibetan Buddhism, a sky dancer is a dynamic, dancing female emanation of an enlightened being and the primary emblem of the feminine. She is the semi-wrathful spirit woman who manifests in dreams and visions and as such guides the souls into the heavens to await the next incarnation. However, with the help of the plant teacher contained within the essence of the blue flowers, this power or accomplishment can be manifested by a man, for under its influence those artificial, dualistic, gender designations disintegrate as one is transported to a state of luminous spiritual androgyny.
If you follow my adventures as I dance the skies of the universe and if you have an inquiring mind and an alert sensitivity to sensations and perceptions and different forms of consciousness and are diligent in the application of virtuous behavior you will learn those secrets of what this life is all about; who you are, where you came from, why you are here, where you are going and how to get there.
But before we start this very true tale of adventure in this great game of life and death let us first introduce you to our teacher,Hakim Kutta,for it is with him that the story and teachings begin.

THE STORY OF HAKIM KUTTA

As told to India Jones by the venerable Hakim Kutta at Le Hermitage Yantra of Sir Jonathan Friendly in the Mahankal Valley of the Buddhas in the High Himalaya.
Strange but true is this tale of Hakim Kutta, scholar, yogi, adventurer, of his journey into the Himalayan interior where he went to learn the secrets of the universe and returned reborn in mind, body and spirit after finding the “Valley of the Blue Flowers”.
If one were to ask why the Hakim passed this information on to me I could not give an answer. I am not presumptuous enough to think that he chose me as the bearer of this deep wisdom because of some special quality that I possessed but quite probably because I was just there and it was his time to convey this information to the world. I will attempt to pass on his tale as accurately as possible, in his own words and in the order in which he conveyed them to me, interjecting on occasion only for clarification.
I had come to the kingdom on an assignment of some import as my government wanted to confer with the new king on internal matters of mutual interest. These were difficult meetings as the king, new in his role of supreme commander and unsure of himself and his obligations to his subjects and the world outside, hesitated and prevaricated on every major question that was under consideration. We drank many cups of sweet tea and smoked excessive amounts of the strong local tobacco in the royal hookah but failed, after several days of negotiations, to reach an understanding in spite of the smiles and strained bonhomie of our meetings. This all took place in the lush palace gardens surrounded by servants and a number of very fierce looking bodyguards armed with equally fierce looking weapons. Being a person of gentle nature I was happy to take my leave from these unyielding and somewhat sinister surroundings and not wanting to return to my country so quickly with only failed negotiations to report and looking forward to a short visit with an old university friend, decided to make a trip to the small village of Serangi, where on a nearby mountain overhang rested the private hermitage of my friend who had retired there years before to do serious research of a philosophical and alchemical nature.
A bus from the capital to the village, six hours of bumps, dust and cramped sitting, brought me to the edge of town where I hired the one tonga, a pony cart taxi, to take me up the mountain to the hermitage, a large mud and brick compound behind high walls, where I was soon reconnected with my old friend, Sir Jonathan.
Sir Jonathan is an odd mixture of no nonsense western scholar - philosopher of a pragmatic bent and inscrutable, oriental mystic with the esoteric wisdom of the inner world oozing from his very large brain. He is of medium height with a wiry body, a bald head with curly side fringes, rimless glasses and often dresses in long, Mandarin style robes. He is also a bon vivant, father confessor, philanthropist and horticulturist and spends much of his time, when not writing, engrossed in the various projects growing in his refined and meticulously cared for green house.
There were vines twisting upward and outward everywhere, flowers of every conceivable color and shape, ferns of the most delicate and intricate design, elephant ear leaves containing strange fruit, subtle and strong exotic odors, blending together but still allowing each its own distinction, all enveloping the senses in a way that left one in a very quiet and reflective frame of mind. It was a power point vibrating with the quiet energy of old and new plant mutations from different parts of the world, an oasis of timelessness that left one, in what could only be called, an other worldly state. Having never taken to strong spirits in order to alter my consciousness I found it quite more than enough to pack my pipe with one of Sir Jonathan’s masterful blends of exotic smoking material and sit in his greenhouse surrounded by the shimmering green growth of his imagination and labour and contemplate the adventures my life had bequeathed me and their philosophical implications thus far.
But the hermitage had a visitor this time in one of the back cottages, and there was much scurrying around to make him comfortable for he was apparently old and ill and close to death.

Hakim Kutta, I was told, was from the back country, from the hidden Valley of the Blue Flowers, many days journey from here, in the inner reaches of the Himalaya, through the glacier snows and dangerous crevasses that few men had traversed and the valley of an almost mythical nature that fewer men had visited. I wanted to meet this strange and enigmatic person that I had heard so much about, to hear his story of life, death and resurrection and the willing transfer of consciousness from a dying body to a living one for this was the whispered undercurrent throughout the hermitage, by both residents and workers. That the Hakim had learned the secrets of life and death and could willingly transfer his consciousness wherever and to whomever he wanted and thus live forever.
The next day Jonathan informed me that the Hakim, having heard there was a visitor from the outside world, would be most pleased to have a visit with me and would I go to his cottage tomorrow for mid morning tea.
Of course I would go and immediately returned to my room to compile a list of questions that I might ask him if given the opportunity to do so. All of us would like to be young and beautiful and live forever whether we admit it or not, never growing old or weak, always having strength and vitality, the boundless energy of youth that has slipped away so quickly into the lost shadows of the past like smoke rising into the void of nothingness. The greying hair, the lost teeth and weak knees, how wonderful to be able to change them for new models and continue with all of our plans for the future; the fantasies, hopes and dreams that have carried us through this earthly existence and which have come to naught, by in large.
And this valley of blue flowers, what is this place that people talk about in hushed voices, another Shangri-La, a land of masters and magic and mystery? This is 2005, Madam Blavatsky and Alexandra David-Neel are dead and gone and the masters who once took center stage in the theosophical theatre were relegated years ago to the archival dustbin along with the other occult and pseudo mystical relics of that time. This is the era of the pill and the computer, of jumbo jets and quantum physics and though this little mountain kingdom is definitely off the beaten path it is a modern state with all the conveniences and amenities of the modern world, threadbare though they may seem at times. But live forever as a result of meditation and yoga? For I presumed that this is what the Hakim had been engaged in back in those caves and mountains, some kind of system that he had perfected and now claims special powers as a result of. But I must not presume for he will tell his own story if he is so inclined.
The next day I arrived at the appointed hour. The Hakim was sitting up in bed, white hair and beard framing a face with a high forehead and clear hazel eyes that danced with the irony of deep and lucid understanding that only age and intelligence can confer. A green, frayed cotton shirt without collar, in the style of indigenous mountain folk, covered his body. A worn copy of the Koran and several other tattered tomes lay on the nightstand. His skin, smooth without wrinkles or blemish, belied an aura of youth and vitality that contradicted the whiteness of hair and depth of his character. His fingers were long and delicate, his teeth white and straight, his voice even, deep and gentle. He smiled and indicated for me to take the chair next to the bed.
The Hakim poured the tea that had been set for us and we drank in silence, absorbing the energetic vibrations of each other, the silent music that springs forth from our unconditioned nature. When our tea was finished he began to speak.

I am called Hakim Kutta by the people of the Valley. That is not the name I started this life with. I have had many names and many parallel lives throughout this one main incarnation and each of those minor incarnations took on a name of it’s own. I have had little to do with the naming of any of them, they were assumed spontaneously or already named when I entered the body. I will be leaving this body soon and the next body that I will be entering already has a name as it is a young boy in early adolescence. When I have entered as a new born infant I am named by those parents like everyone else.
I came into this world this time through a womb in Manchuria, China, and while in the womb was carried across the seas to America. There, in the capital, I grew up in diplomatic and political circles, was educated reluctantly, practiced psychology with the rich and famous, became restless and dissatisfied and started traveling to India and other parts of Asia.
One year in the early thirties while in New Delhi I met a Spanish nobleman and painter who had been exiled to India by his government for killing a man. I met him in what is now called the Jantar Mantar, a park where we both happened to be sitting with some sadhus; Indian holy men. He was one of those rare beings of deep thought who had suffered much in life and we were immediately drawn into each others aura. He invited me to his home. He was a man of immense wealth and lived on the outskirts of the city in a large, old mansion within an exclusive colony with his mother, a beautiful matron of aristocratic bearing and intelligence. On the walls of their diminutive palace hung priceless paintings and tapestries and the floors were covered with rare Persian carpets and antique furniture of the most exquisite quality. We were served tea in the finest Chinese porcelain by his mother and after she retired my new friend retrieved from his briefcase two maps, one a new and fairly standard version of the Himalayan Range extant at that time and another old and tattered map of some indeterminate area that contained what appeared to be handwritten directions with arrows and lines drawn in and around various focal points.
He told me that he was leaving India soon, that his time in this part of the world was over, that he was being reborn into another life and wanted to pass onto me something that he had learned in his many years in the orient. He said that he had recognized me as a fellow quester and that I had been sent to him, that our meeting had not been fortuitous but planned by the gods. He then laid the large map down and positioning the smaller and older map on top, indicated to a place on the old map and said there is were I must go for the secrets of the universe, where I will learn to conquer life and death and thus become one with the gods.
I listened, fascinated by the unreality of the whole scene, unable to take what he was saying seriously but mesmerized by the ideas that he was revealing to me. Who was this man, I thought, and why is he telling me this story?
Of course there was a part of me that wanted to believe everything he said for indeed, I was a quester; dissatisfied, perplexed about my life and impending death and obsessed with those philosophical questions that I sought answers for: Who am I? Where have I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? How do I get there? What is this universe that I find myself in? Where did it come from? Why am I me and you you? And the shadow of death always hanging over. What did that mean? A complete annihilation of the senses? A big sleep to wake up in another body? An endless cycle of birth and death until one makes the grade never to come back? Or is it a reawakening of the same person in a parallel universe? And of course God. What was this God thing, what did that mean? I am sure you have asked the same questions in your life, all of us do at one time or another.
And then there was love. What was love? When did love happen? The deep yearning for love, to both give and receive, why was that never fulfilled completely? And was there even such a thing as completely?
And sorrow, why so much sorrow and sadness in the world, the endless rivers of tears that we shed for ourselves and the world, the pain of childbirth, the misery of poverty, of loss, the anguish and confusion of not understanding.
All of the answers to these questions fell under the rubric of “secrets of the universe” and here was a man, from a different culture, a stranger from a different world, offering to give me, ostensibly, the keys that would open the door to the answers to those deep and perplexing questions.
Take this map and go there, he said. I pass it on to you. It is a difficult and perilous journey but you have been chosen to go and no harm will come to you. Trust. All will be well. At that moment his mother appeared to see me out. A servant opened the door and I entered the waiting taxi and was soon speeding into the night tightly clutching the two maps and wondering what lay ahead.
Two days later I returned to the mansion. It was empty. No Spanish nobleman, no mother, no furniture, carpets or paintings, everything gone without a trace, like it had never existed. The servant who opened the door for me that night was there but he could have been from another planet for he did not recognize me nor could he respond to my queries with anything other than a blank stare. The words jantar mantar mean magic. Could it all have been an illusion? A play of the imagination that India is so famous for? But no, for I still had the maps and unbeknownst to me at the time they were to lead me into the greatest adventure of my life from which I was never to return.

YETI

A few days later I left for the mountains. My destination was a small village in the foothills near the border where the three countries intersect. There I spent a week finding a guide, buying supplies and two small Mongolian ponies that carried us through sparsely populated villages`` following an old caravan route to the last inhabited outpost, a small gompa occupied by a very old lama and his son who was willing to take me the remainder of the way on foot in exchange for the animals. My guide went back the next day with a small passing caravan carrying salt. They had been waiting for me the lama said, why had I taken so long?
Ahead of me was the most difficult part of the journey as some of it was over many miles of ice floes that were quite treacherous when snow was falling or the winds high. It was also thought to be one of the homes of the Yeti, the Indomitable Snowman of Himalayan legend, half man, half animal, a so-called missing link, whose existence has never been proved but never disproved either. There had been sightings then as there are now but photography was in its infancy, it was 1934, and no one had yet taken a photo that could be claimed, much less verified, as authentic. I was curious to get a glimpse if such a creature existed, but had little desire to meet one on the path even if their alleged ferociousness was superstitious hyperbole. Or so I thought at the time.
We started out early the next morning after a breakfast of porridge and tea. Yogondo, the lama’s strong son, a taciturn man in his thirties who had lived his whole life in the mountains, carried the provisions, the cooking and climbing equipment and the tent while I carried my rucksack, the rifle and ammunition and a sturdy length of rope. I had been told that there were bandits in the area and foreigners were generally thought to carry large amounts of gold or other useful items that can be bartered for food or weapons. I had purchased the rifle at the last village with hesitation and trepidation for I had, and still do, an aversion to firearms but was advised by the village elders that it was better to have one and not have to use it than it was to not have one when one was needed. I reluctantly agreed and was not sorry that I did so in the days that followed.


The glare of the ice bedazzles the mind and senses like deep poetry that burns with unforgettable visions. Walking on the ice, with only the sound of our footsteps echoing around us, plunged me into the mysterium tremedum that I cannot articulate even to this day. It was an atmosphere of the numinous, a throbbing, shaking, cleansing and as I crunched along this gigantic sheet of ice I felt myself being lifted to another dimension or state of consciousness never before experienced. I was cold, but I did not feel it, I was hot but I did not feel it, yet I could feel both temperatures, both on the inside of the body and the outside, yet I was disconnected from the whole experience of hot and cold, from the duality of extreme temperatures in that extreme environment. Though my feet were touching the ground I was sailing, mindful of every inch of ground being covered in my periphery but a choiceless mindfulness or awareness that arose spontaneously, intuitively and trustingly. I could have been on ski’s for my heart was pounding with wild abandonment and a multitude of new vistas of possibilities rushed through my consciousness in seconds, past me, through me, over me as I traveled into all the manifestations of human thought and feeling.
When inside the labyrinth of multi-layered levels and dimensions of consciousness the laws of space, time and matter don’t apply anymore, or not in the usual ways that we have been conditioned to understand or perceive. These were new worlds that I had committed myself to, both inner and outer, and deftness was required to navigate through them both. I thanked those celestial beings that were looking over us that so far all had gone without incident.
We tramped on like that for many days and I became lost in a transcendental reverie, captured in the arms of the sun and ice gods and held tight as they poured their nectar into the bowl of my being, as they threw their thunderbolts into my brain and heart and allowed me to see and understand for a moment, only a moment, the immensity of all this life and death drama we are all a part of, that we all are dancing so frantically, in the dark and on the edge of the abyss. But a moment was enough for that one moment was so overwhelming that any longer would have burnt me to a crisp. However, I felt that I was on the right track and that one day I would learn to live in that state of complete openness and clarity, if fortune deemed me worthy of such a priceless gift.
We walked twelve to fifteen hours a day, from sunrise to sunset, sleeping at night in our small tent or in the occasional ice cave we found along the way, ever mindful of predators whose sleeping quarters we might be invading. Our food consisted of pounded rice, barley meal called tsampa, dried jerky and tea made on a small portable stove when we could not find fire wood. On one occasion we found what appeared to be the remnants of a fire, another time two large footprints frozen in the ice. Both instances Yogondo took for living proof that a yeti was nearby, puffing himself up and jumping up and down, swinging his arms wildly as he emitted eerie screams. We both laughed at his performance but were left, nonetheless, with a feeling of foreboding, a presentiment of things to come. There in the desolate and precipitous wilds of ice and loneliness death lurks behind every hill and shadow ready to snatch one away in an instant and both fear and forgetfulness need be constantly guarded against or all could be lost in the blink of an eye.
When we reached the upper plain where the ice gave way to scattered fir and cedar trees we could see in the far distance what the natives called the mountain with ten thousand peaks. That was where we had to go to find the narrow passage between two peaks that would lead us to the valley that was my destination. Ten thousand peaks and out of that jumble of jagged rock and ice we had to locate the well concealed entrance that would lead me to the secrets of the universe.
How many times I questioned my sanity on this venture I cannot recall but crazy or not I had to push on. I was being both pulled and pushed by a force that I could only obey and trust for by that time any free choice that I might have had in the beginning was completely exhausted. Free choice is voluntary action or inaction and by now I was riding the twin headed demon called obsession-compulsion and could do nothing to stop it.
But of course I could. I could have stopped, turned around and gone back like any sane and reasonable man would. But I knew, for some reason, I knew that this is what my life was here to do and that great teachings lay beyond and that I would be safe as long as I stayed mindful and trusted.
Mindfulness is the secret of physical and psychological life; trust is the secret of spiritual life. How many times do you remember your mother or father telling you to pay attention? Walking in the mountains one must pay attention to every step for as soon as you loose your focus you fall, slip on the ice, down a crevasse, finito, you are done, finished.
By and by we came to a different environment, no more ice, now trees and rocks, with different dangers lurking in their shadows. One could feel a spectral presence hovering about. But again I had to trust and push on, allowing myself the attitude that any disembodied spirits that inhabited these forests were here to help me and any two legged or four legged spirits we might meet along the way we could handle, if necessary, with the force of gun powder. The most I assumed we could bump into would be a very rare snow leopard or an old sadhu or monk living in a cave, though most unlikely so far up.
I’ve always been fascinated by the cave dwellers life or the hermetical life, named after Hermes, founder of alchemy. It is what the yogi practices in his cave, psychic alchemy, changing the heavy dark lead of his being into pure and radiant gold. In order to do this one needs one’s time as all of one’s mental and psychic energy must be focused like a laser and outside interruptions dissipate the flow. A difficult life for a family man, a practice only for the stout of heart and for one not in need of humankind. It is a difficult way for most people as sparks of passion burst forth from every wandering heart and throw out other sparks to other wandering hearts inflaming all with passion and sexuality, the wetness and womb from which we have all sprung. The hermit chooses the wetness and fecundity of the mind whose issues are of a more abstract nature and whose rewards are of a more mystical kind. It is the passion of the youth that remakes the world over and over in all its misery. It is the passion of the hermit that puts mankind in touch with its soul.
In the green solitude of nature the hermit becomes one with the trees of the forest, the smiling flowers and waving grasses are his companions, the twinkling stars and dancing clouds have faces and voices that articulate to him their secret meaning of existence. He lives in a palace of sweet sounds and sights, talking to the wetness of the gurgling brook that touches his foot, soliloquizing to the bugs and birds, all conscious and intelligent and generous with their gifts, all sufficient in and of themselves and resisting not the inevitable changes of death and resurrection the morrow brings.
At the moment of death when the leaves drop and the flowers wither returning their quintessence to the soil of their beginnings, I have often wondered if they feel, if they lament the passing of their short time under the sky that nourishes them or are they happy to return to the workshop of the gods that will refashion and send them on their way once again to offer their prayer of beauty and delight to a sad and despairing world. Does their life have any other aim? Does our life have any reason other than just to be?
As with flowers so with man, for are we not flowers of a different kind that the universe has brought forward from the depths of its fertile womb? And what aim does the life of man have? Is it any different than the flower? To offer beauty and fragrance and ask nothing in return, pleased when a little water and sunshine comes its way?
But no, man wants so much more; to conquer and accumulate, to have and to hold, gold, land, pleasure, security, eternal life, wisdom, God, all of the things that he already has, along with the flowers, but does not realize. In my practice as an analyst this was the one and only dilemma with everyone, with all of my clients, including myself; more, how to acquire more, the craving for more. And does that craving ever end? The mad quest that I was undertaking at that moment was a quest for more, albeit clothed in the pious cloak of a pilgrim-philosopher who only wanted the secrets of the universe. And the hermit wants more as well, more silence, more solitude, more enlightenment and thus more peace, the priest wants more God and on and on endlessly, the eternal quest for more in an ever expanding universe. Does it ever end?
My musings were interrupted as we came into a clearing. Large boulders and rocks that afforded natural shelters were scattered around the perimeter A good place to make camp for a day or two I thought. In the middle of the clearing stood a half circle of rocks that obviously had been used for cooking. We took our packs off and proceeded to make camp. Yogondo started to set up the tent and I started to gather kindling to start a pot of tea. Then we saw him.

PRAISE THE LORD

About fifty yards away stood an immense figure of a being with wild, unkempt hair and beard on a huge head and face. He must of weighed somewhere between three and four hundred pounds that was spread over almost seven feet of bone structure. On top of his head rested an old and well worn black derby hat and his body was covered with an equally worn and patched black frock coat. His grey, tattered, long john shirt, that had once been white, hung over ragged black trousers. He looked like a large gorilla in a tuxedo suit that had escaped from the circus but there was something vaguely Homo sapiens about him that held me back from reaching for our weapon.
“Praise the Lord!” he shouted, “I am the Most Reverend Chubby Gentile of the Universal Life Church, at your service, gentlemen,” and with that introduction he took off his derby and made a sweeping bow.



To Yogondo this was a yeti, a devil, a malevolent spirit all rolled into one big monster and nothing could convince him otherwise. Even after the Reverend sat down on a nearby rock and had a cup of tea with us Yogondo would not come close and stayed far enough away just in case a fast escape was necessary.
The Reverend had a very interesting story. He had been living in the mountains, cut off from all civilization, for about five years. He had come up to this desolate Himalayan mountain area in order to be closer to God. A most sinful life he had led before coming to this Asian holy land, a life of self abuse, degradation, debauchery, whiskey and blue movies; unspeakable, ungodly behavior. He had come to meditate, to focus his energies on controlling or overcoming his appetites and living on locusts and honey like John the Baptist, a natural man, totally at the mercy of God and the environment that surrounded him.
The first year was the most difficult as images of his past debauches invaded his mind most of his waking hours, visions of vaginas and penises always on his mind, and wanton dreams of orgies and beastly fornications visited his sleep at night.
Then one morning tragedy struck. Or so it would be for most people. Yetis came out of the forest, four of them, wild, hairy creatures strong as bulls, and subdued the Reverend. Then they tied him to a stone slab and castrated him with a flint knife, disengaging his testicals from the rest of his body by cutting through the soft skin that separates them. They then roasted them over a small fire and very solemnly ate them. Before running back into the forest they untied the Reverend and made sounds and gestures of friendly appreciation. The Reverend was touched in spite of his loss.
At that point his life started to change. The erotic dreams stopped, the day time fantasies stopped, his thirst for strong drink was no more and his lifelong weakness for tobacco never again gave him heed. He gained weight in spite of his sparse diet, his movements became softer and his voice became higher and overnight he became comfortable with himself, for the first time in his life, he said. “They took me bollocks but gave me new life, I was born again, praise the Lord!”
After recovering from his operation the Reverend decided to stay in the mountains and build a tabernacle to his God, a temple of thankfulness where he could worship everyday and a sanctuary in which he would be protected from further disturbances. But after that one incident the yetis never bothered him again. He knew that they were there, he could hear their unearthly screams in the night and every so often they would leave him foodstuffs of berries and root food and an occasional dead animal that he would cook in the same fire pit where they had prepared their meal of his most tender parts. On one occasion they left tinned meat and a metal bottle filled with kerosene that had been left or stolen from a trekking party. On another occasion they brought him books. They watched over him for now he was one of them, a blood brother, a member of the tribe. They had eaten his blood and flesh, had taken his power into themselves and were now one with each other. He had also learned how to identify and prepare the eatable flora in the area as well as construct traps so he might catch small rodents and birds. He suffered not from the lack of food in his new home but there was something still missing. There was a twinge of loneliness. Then one day after the rains he discovered the mushrooms.
They were small and white with delicate purple flutes on their undersides and grew under and around small evergreen trees that were prevalent in the area. He usually ate them raw or made a tea and would sometimes subsist for weeks at a time on this one fare. After the rains there would be an abundance of them and he would gather them all and store them in honey when he was able to locate a hive.
“When I eat these mushrooms I think about God all the time and nothing worries me,” he said one day. “This is God’s flesh, a blessed sacrament for us sinful mortals, no more dreaming about beer and vaginas, no more self abuse, no more thoughts about filthy lucre, no more need for the baubles and bangles of Babylon, I’ve been reborn again. Heaven smiled on me twice, I lost me bollocks and gained everlasting life and found a friend and ally in these cosmic vegetables, praise the Lord.”
The Most Reverend Chubby Gentile lived in a small cave about a hundred yards from the clearing. The entrance was well hidden behind large bushes and several small boulders prevented access to the narrow passageway until they were removed. The inner room contained a bed made of planks and some kind of animal fur, a crudely constructed desk and chair and several shelves overflowing with books and papers. On the far wall was an altar with a wooden cross and a leaf plate of dried mushrooms that were being offered first to the deity before being consumed. A well-thumbed Bible lay on the altar next to a small flame in a stone dish that smelled of animal fat. Shadows of the wooden cross danced on the cave walls to the flickering beat of the flame. It was the hermitage of a true holy man and when he spoke it was with the singular authority that only deep faith or divine madness can produce.
“The appearance of man on the planet is the culmination of organic evolution that has been guided by an all powerful intelligence, they say. Intelligence is a mental attribute that cannot exist without the functioning of a brain. It is an attribute of mind. Mind is the unfolding of thought. They both come from the convoluted mass of tissue inside the skull. None of these can exist without life, without a body, so to speak about an impersonal intelligence is not very intelligent. That leaves us with the alternative of personal intelligence. And what is that? Is intelligence in my noodle? If so, how does it come out? Or is this mess of grey matter a receiving set for the intelligence out there in space to come through?”
We were sitting in the Reverend’s cave one afternoon having a cup of his cosmic tea when he told me his story.
“I was a lapsed divinity student and minister of the gospel who one day became a cynical atheist. I lived with my little old mother and spent my time masturbating and watching dirty movies in lieu of any real relationships in my miserable life. It was a terrible way for a three hundred pound genius to live. One day I went to a festival where the people wore strange clothes and didn’t eat meat or even cook their food. There was a guru there who used to be a psychiatrist but was now a holy man and taught the Kabbala in the Arizona desert. He gave me shaktipat initiation and my nadis blew out the top of my crown chakra and the whole cosmos became available to me. I left my mother’s house and started to travel the world. I was looking for the secrets of the universe. I traveled to all the exotic places on the earth. I would take an apartment and write books of an insightful nature to earn my living. I started to get famous and people wanted to interview me and have me talk on the radio. They wanted to make me into some kind of folksy guru. It was gratifying to my very large ego but I knew down deep it was a false and ungodly way to live and that the purist way for me was to be a hermit in the mountains. I didn’t want to eat rich food anymore or sleep on a soft bed. Women gave me impure thoughts. I wanted to live like the hermits of old. I had heard that there was a very holy mountain here and that there was a valley with blue flowers that was most special. A celestial hand brought me here. The flowers that I have found are purple and white but that’s good enough. Here the secrets of the universe are revealed to me. This is my home now.”
I asked the Reverend about the Bible on his altar and if he read that for spiritual inspiration or as literature.
“Now that there is a strange book, my friend. It is indeed literature of the first water and the language can be a delight once you get the hang of it. You’ve heard the saying, “you are what you eat?” Well that book is the head food for the majority of the western world and that food, those messages contained on those pages, have been going into our pointed little heads since we were in the cradle. And what are those messages? Why bigotry and intolerance, slavery, dishonesty, persecution, pornography and sexual perversion, cannibalism and genocide. I won’t bore you with chapter and verse but it’s all there. No other book ever written has had such a perverting influence on mankind as that bloody book. Is it any wonder the western world is so pathetically neurotic? A book of this nature should be kept away from the youth of the world for it sanctions and defends behavior and characters of the lowest order. But it does make for great reading if you don’t take it too seriously and don’t use it as a moral or ethical guide. And the women in that book are pretty hot stuff, you know, the Esthers and the Jezebels and of course Eve who started the whole darn sex thing. Sure glad that’s over with for me.”
I asked the Reverend what his thoughts were on reincarnation and rebirth.
“I have eternal life, my friend; the plants have shown me that. The lilies of the field come and go every year but lily has always been here and always will. I go to my heavenly abode for a while to be remade into a different form, to change my costume, put on another kind of hat, but sooner or later I come back on stage to continue my part in another theatre of the absurd production. It’s not a question of returning because you don’t really go anywhere. Just off stage for a teeny bit. Where else could I go?”

SWAMI

The next morning we took our leave from the Most Reverend Gentile after thanking him for his good company and wisdom. We had a pleasant rest, interesting conversation and food of a most unusual and satisfying variety and it was now time to continue our journey into that hinterland of massive peaks, dangerous passes and colossal glaciers.
We headed once again into a hostile environment, into that intermediate sub-alpine range between the vegetation zones and the eternal snows, desolate expanses where few things grew other than snow frogs and a little wild fruit.
We traveled for several days looking for the entrance to a pass that was marked by a large cylindrical shaped stone representing a Shiva lingam, procreative symbol of the great god Shiva, the destroying and recreating aspect of the Hindu triune. We found the site with little difficulty and much to our surprise there were signs of human habitation in the form of several small piles of kindling lying about that someone had taken the trouble to stack neatly. As it was getting on toward evening we decided to make camp there and use some of the bountiful gift that the gods had made available to build a small fire and assemble a quick meal. As Yogondo made preparations I set off to explore the area and collect some snow to boil for water. Coming around a bend of rock and ice I see a man sitting on a finger of glacial ice wearing nothing but a thin cotton cloth draped over his shoulders. Such a picturesque surprise stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Don’t be shy sir, come forward and sit here on the ice with me,” he said. “It is a practice that will strengthen your resolve and make you fit to withstand the battle with your lower nature. You generate your own heat from inside so you are not dependant on any outside source. It is called tumo meditation. My name is Swami Deva Ragi. It means attached only to the divine.”
I came forward and introduced myself, taking off my shawl and spreading it on the ice next to the Swami and sitting down.
The Swami had very long white hair and beard that covered his shoulders and chest and large translucent eyes that reflected the snow and ice that surrounded him. He was small and gleeful and radiated a deep warmth. I asked him how long he had been sitting on the ice.
“I came here many years ago looking for the secrets of the universe. It is believed that on these mountains grow sacred plants that when eaten gives one radiance and joy and understanding as well as great strength. In the Rig-Veda, the oldest of the Hindu scriptures, the Soma plant was said to have miraculous powers, conferring immortality. Do we not all want to live forever? Do we not all desire the secrets of life and death?”
“Have you found the answers to the secrets of life and death, Swamiji, I asked?”
“The Soma has shown me the way,” he replied. “How else could I sit on the ice day in and day out without getting cold?”
“Can you show me the way?”
“Everyone must find their own way”, he replied, “There is no one way for there are as many paths as there are people as there are somas, and we each travel alone as we search for the entrance to that valley that we all seek. It has been said that the Supreme Self created the cosmic egg that contains all the other creatures of the world. Do you know who you are? Do you know where you came from? Do you know where and what your Soma is?”
I heard Yogondo call my name to inform me that the food was ready. I thanked the Swami for his words and took my leave, pondering on those thoughts he left me with.
Yes, it’s a long strange path with many twists and turns for all. How many of us really know who we are? We’ve all come from the great cosmic egg but for what purpose? You must have a purpose in life, they tell us as children, and delude themselves into believing that they know what their purpose in life is. The inflexible armour of belief protects us from the sharp arrows of anxiety and confusion that we all suffer from. Sitting in sub zero weather for years with no clothes on to generate internal heat along with a well focused mind may seem extreme to some but it is another way to explore, examine and test the limits of our nervous system and consciousness. Austerity feeds the spirit and hardship strengthens it. If the method seems extreme the intention is noble. To believe that one knows is the greatest obstacle to wisdom for one stops asking and doubting and considering. Experimentation is the mother of invention; it seemed to me an evolutionary imperative. We must take nothing on faith.
The next morning I returned for another visit with the Baba. He was still sitting on the ice, still exuding warmth and friendliness and covered with the same thin rag. I took my shawl off, folded it, and put it down on the ice. I sat down in front of him and silently savoured his warm and peaceful emanations. He was a master and I was a student waiting for the teaching. We sat for about two hours, the only sound from either of us our faintly audible breathing that would melt the minute crystals of ice that seemed to form only on my moustache and beard.
Finally he said, “You are determined so it is my duty to pass on to you the ancient wisdom.”

I stayed with the Swami for several weeks while Yogondo occupied himself with exploring the surrounding terrain and trying to determine our next course of direction. The venerable holy man told me many strange and interesting things about his life and the practices he engaged in, why he engaged in them and the benefits they wrought. It was the strength they gave him, the power to deal with the terror and pain of maya, the ever changing phantasmagoria of life, the mundane world of greed and the flesh that drew him toward the holy life, the way of meditation and the control of the senses.
It seemed that everyone was running away from the same demons. How powerful they were in the minds of men, always wanting, then rejecting, running toward and away from at the same time, to have and have not, to hold and lose, soft arms and dancing eyes, gold and prestige, power and force to wax and then wane to weakness, death and dust and then to start again, to reform, regroup, an endless cycle of birth and death, of getting and giving, of opening and closing, inhaling, exhaling, the respiration of the universe as it grows and expands to infinity, dropping us, empty pieces of skin, in its wake, like the spent fuel of its propulsion or worn out clothing that has outlived its usefulness. Shiva’s dance, destruction and re-creation, the endless shimmer and sparkle of the goddess Maya as she dissolves and is reborn again in the hungry maw of our desires, unsatisfied longings for completeness, for more, that can never be fulfilled except in the arms of God, or of death, complete annihilation, never to return.
But is that possible? Never to return at all, forever? Return implies that there is something that will come back, that will return. What could that be? It seems that there is nothing that can come back because there was nothing there to begin with, an empty bag of skin that life inhabits for awhile. Once the skin becomes old and useless the force that has taken residence in the skin finds it inadequate to perform its functions and moves on to occupy another, usually in the form of a newborn baby. Might the force be strong enough, focused enough, desirous or capable enough to occupy a grown body, a mature person whose personality and character has already been formed, established, set in its ways? If all there is the force, then it should be possible if it is everything. But how about the force that’s already occupying the mature bag of skin? What happens to that? Does it get pushed out by the new force or do they merge like fresh air that comes in from an open door and mingles with the stale air of a room? And do those karmic impressions that the new force brings to the mature person add or subtract to its overall karmic pool of this regenerated being?
So why is there nothing to return, to reincarnate? There is nothing of significance, of any intrinsic value in an old bag of skin. The only significant aspect of the whole process is the force and that hasn’t gone anywhere. That is to say that we are always here because we are the force! That’s why we can never not return. We are always here either in other bags of skin or resting or waiting to take on another human experience and it seems both reasonable and fantastic that if a person had full control of the autonomic nervous system that regulates the internal bodily processes and thus animates life, he would be able to move his force anywhere he wished and whenever he wished, making it possible to have uninterrupted life everlasting. If he was skillful enough and If he could do this at the moment of death and maneuver successfully through the after death bardos, those intermediate mental states between the physical world and rebirth, he should-could be able to slip into the life and consciousness of the chosen person with little difficulty, provided that person was clear, pure, and open. Uncontaminated by the bondage of karmic debt.
That would be the most difficult part, to find such a person; where to even start looking in this world gone mad with possession and pleasure? Once we enter into life, the state of existence of becoming, we start clinging and desiring and thus start acquiring karmic debt. Maybe up here in the mountains where the people are isolated could such a person be born who is psychologically and spiritually healthy.
We climbed higher into the mountains of 10,000 peaks, into that rarified air where the lungs must work harder for oxygen. Hearth of the holy breath, bellows of life and death; pumping twenty-four hours a day and as one’s altitude increases the atmospheric pressure decreases and fewer oxygen molecules are available thus disturbing delicate balances between gases, blood, water, tissue and potassium and sodium salts that the body requires for homeostasis. Trustingly, we pushed on for we both knew that this was our dharma, what we were meant to do, what our true natures required of us at this stage in our evolution, no matter what.
Accordingly, we estimated that we were in the 7000 to 8000 feet elevation range which meant that we had another 3000 feet or more before we would be in the vicinity of the small pass that would take us the on the next leg of our journey, a labyrinth of twisted paths and tunnels above and below the earth that would eventually lead downward and into the valley of our destination.

KALI MA

Dharma is a word one hears often in Asia for there is no other word that expresses so completely the fact of the basic unity of all life. Its Aryan-Sanskrit root is “dhar,” to support, uphold, sustain and has been rendered into English as duty, virtue, law, truth, justice, righteousness, form, etc. We can trace its basic meaning to the Latin forma, that which makes for an orderly arrangement of parts which makes a thing what it is. The English equivalent would be good form, that conduct appropriate to any given occasion. It would not be good form and against my true nature to turn back because of fear, lack of trust or any other negativity. That would be adharma, or against dharma, any state that disrupts or perverts the current flow of one’s existence. I felt beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was my true vocation, which I was born to seek and thus discover the answers to the secrets of the universe and everlasting life.
So there we were, breathing rarified air, sometimes getting dizzy, a slight tinge of blue on the lips, shortness of breath but never once did we think about stopping or turning back. The dharma of the sun is to shine, of the warrior to fight, of the philosopher to seek the answers to the secrets of life and death. To go back would have been against my true nature and Yogondos as well for I had come to appreciate his quiet strength and determination to see our quest through to the end and deposit me at the entrance to the Valley of Blue Flowers safe and sound. Whatever cosmic force arranged this expedition also included him as part of the grand design, I was convinced.
We came to a small wooded area, incongruous in the setting of ice and boulders that we had just stepped out of. Perched on a small overhang that looked down into the valley was a handmade cabin of rough wood and stone, pristine, immaculately clean and well tended and on the small deck that extended out from it sat a figure. As we came closer we saw that it was a woman; dark, beautiful and very wild appearing with unkempt, matted hair and clothed in animal skins. She was of indeterminate age and fire flashed from her black eyes as we approached cautiously for her energy was a powerful vortex even from a distance.

“I am Kali Marie, and those who know me call me Kali Ma. Do not hesitate big white man, come closer and let me look at you. I am only a little brown woman, I do not bite very hard,” she said
I came closer and introduced myself.
“Why do you come to this desolate place, Senor?”, she asked.
“I go to the Valley of the Blue Flowers and I seek the secrets of the universe,”
I replied. She had a strong animal smell, wild and earthy and very sexual.
“Ha!!”, she cried, “another stupid white man. Here is the valley of blue flowers and within it you will find the secrets of the universe,” and with that remark she spread her legs and the blue tinged lips of her vagina to expose the flower of her womanhood vibrating a primal shade of blood blue.
Needless to say I was flabbergasted and at a complete loss for words. I was also fascinated and attracted to this beautiful and enigmatic, wild little woman and as I trembled she looked deep into my soul and discerned my weaknesses, saw into my mind and heart and completely enveloped me within her field of power. I felt trapped in the den of a wild and other worldly creature and I instinctively knew that resisting was useless. That too was part of the plan.

How long I stayed is difficult to tell. One does not look at the clock when the volcano is erupting; a day, a year, a lifetime, an eternity, all time ceases during moments without self, when ego, resistance, defense is dropped and one is carried along with the cosmic flow in perfect tune to the rhythms of the universe.
It doesn’t last long when it does happen so one learns to trust and allow it to happen even when knowing the teaching to be a difficult one.
And it was difficult. One cannot hold on to ego when one is in the maw of the goddess, one must surrender completely and trust that you will not be eaten alive. Propitiate the goddess and know that whatever happens will be for the best even if it means being used and abused, kicked while you’re down and thrown out into the street like an old rag.
She drew me into her lair, warm and dark and redolent with the aromas of sweat, garlic and sex and I succumbed without a whimper. It was basic and primitive like she was and the main focus of attention was the bed which consisted of a large pile of extremely soft animal skins. A pot was suspended over a fire pit in the corner, a small table was set for two with a candle and a bottle of fiery country liquor. Had I been expected?
I drank as if mesmerized, knowing and seeing what was to come in exquisitely painful detail but unable to change the course of events in the least. I was being pulled and pushed into the furnace of longing, the arena of self sacrifice, the temple of life and death. Blood transports prana, the life force that we breathe. To offer one’s blood to the deity, to the goddess, is like offering your life force, your very life. I didn’t know if I was ready for that. The goddess Kali delights in the sacrificial flesh of all animals and especially that of man who represents infatuation and pride of worldly things. Chains that bind us to the world must be severed if we are to be independent and whole and sacrifices to Kali Ma are one way to help break those chains. Whatever we give up we will be freed from and the time had finally come for me to give up my self and my lust. Her consciousness was entirely in her genitals; a warm, wet, pulsating blood dance that beckoned my own primal, atavistic urges. Only by going into them would I accept, understand and overcome them, I realized. Only then is there transformation, from the sensual to the sublime, from the goddess to the godhead, the transformation that follows understanding.
So it was time to fight my beast that had appeared in the form of the goddess.
A beast is in bondage; to the senses, the instincts, the body or the mind and it was time to let them go; the learning, the sophistication, civilized refinements all meant nothing there, just my naked self on the altar of sacrifice.
Yogondo, a man of rare perception, immediately saw the situation and proceeded to make his camp some distance away but close enough to be there when needed. He was in for the long haul and would be there when I came out, tattered and torn an eternity later.
It has been said that there are only two kinds of man-woman relationships; those that are of the soul family and those that are of lessons to be learned. Kali ma was definitely in the latter for it had plunged me into an existential abyss that knew no bounds, into my lust and possessiveness, my sensuousness and guilt. It was a teaching that served me well as I continued my journey into the mountain of ten thousand peaks and the Valley of Blue Flowers….

Thus ends the Hakim’s story for he left his body and few hours later. It is now my turn to carry the maps and walking stick. I, India Jones, and will continue the journey that will eventually lead me back to the Hakim, the sacred valley and the secrets of the universe.

Storming the Gates of Heaven

New Delhi was crawling with an international crowd of travelers. It was my second trip to India, the late 60s, France was in turmoil with student unrest led by Rudy the Red and Mario Savo and his cohorts in Berkeley were occupying the university office of the president. LSD was being consumed by the buckets full as people were waking up from a long, long sleep.
Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner of Harvard had opened a Pandor’s box with their experiments on the therapeutic use of mind expanding substances and their book, The Psychedelic Experience, based on the Tibetan Book Of The Dead became an instant best seller along with Alpert’s Be Here Now, a pot-pourri of hip wisdom gleaned from his inner voyages and the various religious traditions. Both were destined to become classics and a permanent part of every mind explorers library.
The introduction of backpacks and sleeping bags on the world stage released people from the confines of costly hotel rooms and heavy luggage and hitchhiking and camping, along with the VW bus, fast became a way of life that was played out in every corner of the globe. Everyone seemed to have a little vial of blue or orange pills and some kind of exotic pipe in their backpacks along with the Bhagavad-Gita, Dhammapada, Bible, Kerouac’s On The Road or something by Lobsang Rampa or Herman Hesse.
The search was on, a magical mystery tour. Everyone was looking for God and all roads led to India. Where else? It was the home of the original hippie, six million of them called sadhus, wandering holy men who never cut their hair, smoked dope constantly and spent their days either in a meditative trance, doing yoga or reading and discussing the great philosophical and religious questions of the day. Homeless, with all their worldly possessions contained in a small bundle, they wandered the great sub-continent of India as mendicant teachers and devoted their lives in the search for God and personal liberation, coming together every four years in a grand mela or gathering of the clans along the holy Ganges or it’s main tributaries, a forerunner to the Rainbow Gatherings that take place every year somewhere on the American continent when the tribes surface from their caves and teepees, greying and bent, with children and grand children, to come together in a medicine circle of prayer and remembrance, to pass the peace pipe and talk story.
Of course some were bums, criminals and madmen in this group of Aquarian disciples but there are those elements in every human sampling as there were, and are, in those wandering sadhus but they were all accepted for this was a new age of brotherhood, of love and light, of joyful spirit and a dedication to serve their brothers and sisters with unselfish devotion. They all lived in a yellow submarine as the song said, one family sharing the same magic and mystery, the same goal, had all taken the same little pill and heard the all pervading OM within the recesses of their mind, had seen the radiation of energy and the patterns of vibrating colors flowing out from the bodies of friends and lovers, had seen the music and heard the colors and knew that their cells did not lie, that what they saw and felt was real and that it was God speaking, urging them on into the uncharted seas of psychic experiences.
And so they came, journeying to the East, seeking out the wise ones, the saints and yogis and philosophers, those that knew, who could answer their questions, who could show them the next step in the evolutionary process they had undertaken. It was a dangerous journey and there were casualties along the way for the path is a razor’s edge and some fell into the abyss. Evolution is a hard task master and the weak do not survive, nature selects only the strongest to carry on the work of growth, of progression to the next level of development of consciousness, of transformation.
So I landed in New Delhi the second time, alone, without the steadying and sensible influence of my partner who was to meet me in two weeks. Until then my time was supposed to be spent making contact with several Indian psychologists who were on my list of people the Indian Tourist Office had sent me, with a possible visit to a local mental hospital if time and circumstances allowed. I had in my possession several hundred doses of very pure Sandoz LSD, it not being illegal at the time, that I thought I might share with my Indian colleagues if opportunity and interest were shown. However, the opportunity never arose for within minutes of landing all previous plans were cancelled and a new adventure, setting and costume enfolded me and I was lead by an unseen hand to the temple of transmutation in the heart of Old Delhi.
After checking into my hotel and taking off my Brooks Brothers apparel and Omega gold chronometer I went to the Khadi Bhavan department store and bought my first set of hand spun loose pyjamas, a long kurta shirt, two lungis and a soft cotton shoulder bag. I paid my rent two weeks in advance and securing my passport, money and medicine pouch safely in the zipper pocket of my shoulder bag I plunged through the door of the magic theatre – for mad men only - and disappeared into the dark lanes of the old city.
I wandered for two weeks in a surrealistic world of shadows, sleeping on rooftops, in parks and underneath bridges, my companions being the lowest of the low, the wretched and dispossessed, Indian beggars, French junkies, rickshaw pullers, some nights sleeping on the pavement with one lungi on the ground the other covering me like the shroud of a corpse, my rubber sandals under my head for a pillow, my money and passport tightly clenched between my legs or tied around my waist. I bathed at the public water pump with the rickshaw wallahs, cleaned my teeth with the twigs that old women on the street sold by the bundle, ate off the fly infested stands, frequented the opium dens in the Chinese section, urinated and defecated in public like the orhers, traipsed through the back alleys with wild eyed western sadhus dressed in psychedelic paisley robes, smoked chillums at Jantar Mantar park with assorted holy men and dropped acid on the roof of the famous Crown Hotel in old Delhi with fifty others as we huddled in blankets watching the full moon, meditating, chanting and freaking out.
A Spanish painter from Barcelona and nephew of Gaudi gave me datura seeds to chew. I gave him 100 micrograms of Sandoz. You are God, he said. No, you are God, I replied. We looked at each other and couldn’t stop laughing for we recognized the truth of what the other had said. Tat svam asi. That art thou. We laughed until we ached. Divine madness was exhausting. Every few days I would furtively crawl back to my hotel and sleep.
Two weeks later my significant other returned from Venice where she had been on a buying trip for Italian glass beads, crystal ware and other rare and expensive items for her Hollywood bead and jewelry boutique. She stepped off the plane in the latest Gucci creation with exquisite Italian leather shoes and matching handbag. It was a sobering sight for it instantly brought me back to a reality that I had so thoroughly left behind in just two short weeks and had not realized just how much until that moment. My life would never be the same.
Back at the hotel I changed out of my Indian rags and back into my button down costume and gold chronometer. I left the beard. Looking into the mirror I saw another person I did not recognize. The form was vaguely the same but the substance emanated unfamiliar vibrations, insupportable and illogical, a contradiction to the costume that covered the form. Another person was looking out from behind the eyes. Who it was I did not quite know but I knew he was on the right track and had to continue to wherever it led.
We did the tourist routine; a houseboat on Kashmir’s Dal Lake, the Oberi Palace Hotel, the Taj Mahal, fine carpets and other gifts and mementos shipped back, I went through the motions but none of it had any meaning, my mind and heart were elsewhere. I yearned to return to the temple of transmutation.

BREAD: On the making of a terrorist

He said I had no heart. I refused him bread.

I had just finished a cup of coffee and was buying sweet bread and curd to take back to my two dollar a night Calcutta hotel room when he approached and started telling me in an oblique way that he had no money. As I finished my purchase and was about to leave he came out with it and asked me to buy him bread. I said no. He replied that he was not asking for a hundred dollars, just a small loaf of bread, two or three rupees.

I looked at him closely. About sixteen or seventeen years old, strong, healthy looking, all his limbs, not the usual reeking, scabrous infirmities one sees on the endless procession of Indian beggars that harangues one throughout the day. Not even thin or undernourished; a bit shabby, obviously down and out but not any more so than ninety-five percent of the other inhabitants of the neighborhood. Again I said no.

His eyes blazed. Hate or hunger? He was angry and I was irritated. Irritated for being put in this position again; irritated because I was being detained and had things to do; irritated because he thought that I was rich when I was living close to the edge myself; irritated because he asked for so little to keep body and soul together and I knew that what he asked for would not help him one wit; and irritated because there was absolutely nothing I could really do for him except buy him a piece of bread which would not solve his problem.

I turned to go and bumped into an enormous fat lady wrapped in a diaphanous pink sari whose eight yards of cloth was unable to conceal her massive mounds of quivering flesh. Fat slob, I thought as I apologized, a dainty, dancing hippopotamus out of Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Another twice born, no doubt, carrying her poundage like so much gold from her last incarnation, snug in the belief that the gods have favored her by bequeathing favors denied to others because she deserves them. And what does she do with them? Stuffs herself.

I took a deep breath. My irritation was reaching its peak and I didn’t want to blow it. Just get out of here, I said to myself, get back to your room, you’ve had enough of this wretched city and its people for one day.

“ A few Rupees! Why don’t you buy me bread!” It was more of a demand than a question, a command rather than an appeal. I turned around and looked him in the eye.


“ A few Rupees?” I said. “ Do you know how many times a day I’m asked for a few Rupees? I’m not rich. As a matter of fact, strange as it might seem to you, I’m poor and have to count my paise like everyone else. Get a rickshaw, shine shoes, sell newspapers or dope, use your imagination but stop bugging me and every other westerner who saves his pennies so he can visit this god-forsaken country. I’m a guest here, you ought to be feeding me.” With that I turned and walked off. Hardhearted bastard, I thought to myself.

The next day I passed him on the street.

“You have no heart”, he said as he walked by.

“ No heart”, I mumbled to myself as I continued down the garbage-strewn cobblestones, still pungent with the effluvium of the day’s offerings that its residents deposit in the open gutters outside their hovel doors.

No heart. What is it inside of me that bleeds for you and every other empty, aching belly and outstretched hand in this miserable land? What is it that cries at the sight of bloated and emaciated children picking through refuse heaps for a mouthful of someone’s discarded swill? What is it that screams at the inequity and venality of a lopsided and lunatic system that allows its people to slowly starve a thousand deaths as it polishes a bomb it claims is there to protect the very people it’s killing? Better to drop it on them and rid yourself of the problem, stop your moral masturbation and make it easier for all concerned. You have cut the testicles off your men; why not kill off your beggars?

I have a heart, my friend. My problem is I have too much heart. If I had no heart I would buy you the bread you so need, salve my conscience, soothe my guilt and walk away feeling generous and holy, smug with the pride of having given to my less fortunate brother, despicable though he may be – though that, of course, makes the act even more holy, more righteous since it’s so difficult to do.

So what to do?

Shall I give you my few rupees, you beggars and thieves? Shall I give you my shirt? Shall I carry it to its logical conclusion and join you, entwine my starving body with yours so we can both die on the street? If I had the faintest, the tiniest, the most embryonic belief or hope that it would help you, I would. But the world would just laugh and shake its head as it has since Christ and Gandhi did that very thing. It would do no good; it has done no good in the past and will do no good in the future unless you are of one mind and one heart, Mother Teresa notwithstanding.

So I don’t feed you, my brother. But maybe by my refusal I give you another kind of nourishment, maybe I implant in you that seed of anger that can one day soon grow into a fully blown hate; a hate for injustice, a hate for intolerance, a hate for apathy; a hate for all things that are robbing you of what is rightfully yours; a hate for the greed of your elected officials whose consciousness is but an extension of our own; a hate for the callousness, arrogance and indifference of the rich for the poor, the white for the black; a hate for all things that keep you in your chains and your bellies empty; a hate to get the fires burning that will destroy the prejudice and superstitions that keep you locked in the world of hopeless illusion, a world of your own making.
And we can’t blame them either because them is us, another version of yourself that was subjected to the same machine, the same conditioning process, the same fear and ignorance. You are responsible for your own lives, your own empty bellies and for the changes that must come about to fill those bellies. And you who are so strong, so young and seething with energy are the ones that should be making those changes, not the old men who sit sleeping and farting in congress. It matters not if you or I die in the process, what matters is your awareness of the freedom that has been sucked from you and your willingness to reclaim that freedom at whatever cost.

Don’t wait for the white man, the rich man, the Brahmin, the corporations and government to suck your completely dry. Are you going to continue to forfeit your freedom to your keepers who have no intention of granting you equality? Do you believe you are on a lower rung of the karmic and evolutionary ladder as your master’s claim? Do you believe that you deserve your miserable existence? Do you believe you were born hungry and must die hungry in order to expiate your past sins and return as a fat man? If you believe it, so be it, because you are what you believe you are, a beggar or a god man. But don’t delude yourself that the white man or the rich man is your superior in any way, shape or form. They are not and way down in the depths of their blackest of black hearts they know they are not. They are afraid and they are clever and they are guilty before God and the whole world, and they know it as much as they try to deny it and sweep it into the folds of their “cultivated” indifference. They tremble with fear yet their pride and arrogance continues to sow hatred and greed throughout the world.
Your must set fire to this world of their making for they will never relinquish it willingly. They have no solutions for the sickness they have foisted upon their fellowman, no remedy for the emasculation and vampirization of their weaker brother. They are criminals, gangsters intent only on fulfilling their own appetites and desires. Make puja before the alter of your own dignity, not tin gods, politicians and educated nincompoops who pretend to serve while stuffing their own pockets and bulging bellies.
The only thing that can fight money and power is more money and power – or blood. I would like to say spirit, love, ahimsa, metta and all the other noble ideals that man has espoused and aspired to since time began for him when the first two stood facing each other, eye to eye, and the world began to shudder, ever so slightly in the beginning but which now has become such a roar it threatens to annihilate all of us. And we, you and me, are responsible; we are the preservers as well as the destroyers and it is only by our own awareness and action that we can save ourselves.
So I don’t feed you my friend because I don’t want you to starve. I offer no solutions because I have none: every man must find his own. But I offer you my observations, for whatever they are worth, of a cancer that somehow must be cut out if you want to share in the earth’s enormous abundance. You had no choice in what you were given – God knows it wasn’t very much – but you do have a choice in what you do with what you were given.
We become beggars and thieves when we think like beggars and thieves. Mind has imprisoned you and only you can slay your jailer, only you can knock him down and take the reins of your own life. And if you die in the process, well, at least you will no longer be hungry.
I pray, my Indian brother and sister, that I will have the strength to refuse you bread the next time we meet.
*************


Many years have passed since that young man asked me for bread. I have thought of him often. I think of him now. He is still out there but now fully grown, still with anger, still with rage but now more focused, more determined than ever to get not only his share, either in this life or the next, but to make us, those who gave birth to his rage, his hunger, pay the price for his years of pain. His name is Godse, Osama, Yassar, Mohammad Atta; he has many names and is from many countries, sometimes he wears a turban, sometimes a baseball cap but within the folds of his garment he carries the bomb or the bullet and within his heart the bitter bile of retribution. Watch for him for he is everywhere and let us ponder deeply the next time we are asked for bread.

In The Shadow Of The Prophet

May 14th is the Prophet’s birthday and my good friend Ayaz, a young man born in Afghanistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, has invited my son and I to take a special meal with him and his Wahabi friends and associates at the house of his employer, a wealthy saree manufacturer, in the old part of the city.
Wahabism, a brand of Islam based on the fundamentalist ideas of a religious reformer by the name of Mohamed ibn Abdel-Wahhab, was used by the Saudi royal family some seventy years ago to fire up their army of Bedouin tribals that comprised their main fighting forces. It is an austere branch of Islam that advocates public beheadings, amputations of hands for theft, stoning for unchaste women, gender segregation, strict dress codes and numerous other unsavory practices. It is considered by most analysts to be the basis of the religious zealotry underlying the Taliban and the September 11th attacks.
With trepidation and a bit of nervous excitement we entered into the dark gallies or alleyways that lead into the main section of the Muslim community. Our Hindu rickshaw driver understandably hesitated, for though things were peaceful at the moment conflagrations were known to flare up quickly often leaving scores of people dead and wounded and only by the promise of a double payment were we able to convince him that as it was the Prophet’s birthday all would be safe and no harm would come to any of us. If they were going to attack anyone, we explained, it would be two fat, juicy Americans rather than a poor, Hindu rickshaw driver. Seeing the logic of this he proceeded into the foreboding neighborhood to drop us off quickly before the sun went down and darkness settled .
We were greeted with profuse salaams and invited to be seated on the floor of a large, stark, high ceiling white room devoid of any ornamentation; no pictures, no flowers, no indication of any of those western flourishes that might lend a “homey” touch to one’s living space. It was sparse and elegant, dignified and unadorned of pretense and unnecessary busyness and evoked a cool cleanliness and a minimalist majesty. A servant brought us water and as Qu’ranic recitations from another part of the house drifted by we were asked the usual, and some unusual, questions of who and what we were and more importantly, what we believed. These were difficult questions for me to answer for I was, and still am, seeking answers to those fundamental questions of existence and the deeper I delved more questions would surface rather than answers.
“What is your faith?” they asked.
“I have no faith,” I replied.
“But what do you believe?” they insisted.
“I believe in life, love, the innocence of little children and the stupidity of man.”
“No, no, no,” they retorted, “We all believe in that, but what is your faith?”
“I have no faith,” I insisted.
“But you must have a faith, a religion to guide you through life, otherwise you fall into indolence and bad ways.”
This was not the time or place to say what I thought about faith, that those who put faith in dogma or other people are admitting to the poverty of their own lives, that faith is a shell or prison that keeps one enslaved, that it kills wonder and joy, it kills the mystery of our existence and that those who believe in other are afraid to believe in themselves.
“If I choose one religion then I must deny the others. Are they not all different paths to the same God?” I asked.
“ I have surrendered my life to the creative spirit or Allah as you call him, I believe Mohammed to be a prophet, I have a beard, I’ve had four wives, sometimes I go to the mosque with my Muslim friends. Does that make me a Muslim? I also practice Buddhist meditation, sing bhajans with my Hindu friends and put up a Christmas tree with a star on top to celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th. Am I a kafir, an infidel, or a man of God?
About that time a large, burly, bear of a man came in. Looking us over he asked our host in Urdu who we were. When told that we were visiting Americans he retrieved a local newspaper from his bag, opened it to the centerfold and revealed a full size picture of George W. Bush and Osma Bin Laden facing each other.
Pointing to Bush’s picture and then to me he said, “George Bush your friend, Osama my friend,” and with that he proceeded to shot me with an imaginary gun, “rat-tat-tat-tat-tat,” all the while repeating, “George Bush your friend, Osama my friend, rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.”
For a few a moments a peculiar air of suspense lingered in the room that made everyone uncomfortable as no one seemed to quite know in what direction this bit of play acting would take. The Daniel Pearl episode was still fresh in everyone’s mind and there was a palpable tension throughout most quarters of the Muslim community. In addition recent news releases had announced that the US was creating a dozen or more CIA branch offices in the surrounding areas and most Americans were suspected agents to begin with. I myself knew two of my fellow countrymen who operated quite openly with such obvious front businesses in Varanasi and with such a blatant modus operandi that it was embarrassing as well as dangerous.
Since Bush the Lesser had been on the throne life for Americans in this part of the world has become difficult and unpredictable. Like Hitler’s legal accession to power in the 30’s, Bush’s US Supreme Court sanctioned coup d’etat and the word democracy had become, in most people’s minds, little more than a smoke screen for world domination, rampant militarism and corporate globalism. These were obviously the thoughts in everyone’s minds as they waited for me to respond to the visitor’s challenge.
“Gentlemen, this is the Prophet’s birthday and not a political debate. I am neither a politician nor a representative of the US government. I am a tourist and a student of philosophy and religion who is interested in learning about Islam so we might become more knowledgeable and thus understand each other on a deeper level. I do not condone or appreciate the policies of my government. and am frankly embarrassed by them. Bush proclaims to the world that he is a Christian and that he is doing God’s work. At the same time Osama says he is fighting a holy war that Allah has sanctioned. If Jesus or the Prophet were to return to earth today I think they would both be ashamed of the behavior of both men. As the Hadeeth, the sayings of the Prophet, tells us “To follow such a man is like holding the tail of a camel as it falls into a well.” When righteousness is practiced because it is believed to be the will of God rather than for it’s own sake it is usually with a fanaticism that is most ungodly. Both men I consider to be fanatics. People are being killed unnecessarily, thousands of women and children because of Bush’s policies in the Middle East and thousands as a result of Osama’s jihad against the US. Did not the Prophet say that it was ungodly to kill women and children? In my reading of the Qu’ran it is said ,”Whoever has killed a single human being…it is as if he has killed all of mankind and whoever saves the life of one it is as if he has saved the life of all mankind.”
As everyone was nodding in agreement a servant brought in the food and placed it on the cloth that had been spread on the floor for the occasion. As large steaming dishes of mutton and chicken Biryani, sauces, salad and dishes of sweet preparations were laid before us all talking ceased, the servant passed water for washing the hands and everyone commenced eating.
After the food was finished people started drifting out, all conversation was over as well as the gathering and after smiles, profuse salaams and expressions of sincere appreciation for the food we took our leave out into the night
The gallis were brightly lit with thousands of twinkling lights in celebration of the Prophet’s birthday and everyone was dressed in their best clothes, long white kurtas or kamize and pyjamas and white skull caps or the small pill box hat that Muslims wear. After locating a rickshaw we were soon on our way to our quarters in the Hindu section of town.

Several day later I was sitting on a bench having tea in an outside tea stall on the main street in the Muslim neighborhood. A man of indeterminate age, maybe forty, maybe eighty, dressed in an immaculate white salwar-kamize sat next to me and engaged me in conversation, introducing himself as Maulana Mohammad Shah Ibn-Ali and stated that we had taken food togther on the night of the Prophets birthday at the house of Abdullha the saree maker. As there had been about a dozen people at the dinner I did not recognize him at first since the atmosphere had been not only unfamiliar but emotionally charged by the intrusion of the Bush-Osama imbroglio.
As we sipped our tea the Maulana proceeded to tell me that he and the others had agreed that in spite of my being an American they had seen that I was a genuine disciple of Allah and as such was as true a Muslim as any other and if I so desired they would be honored to initiate me into the Sufi brotherhood in which he and other friends belonged.
Generally speaking the Sufis are the mystical branch of Islam that arose in Persia in the ninth century as a reaction against the rigid monotheism and formalism of Islam. It is composed of men and women who have adopted an ascetic or quietist mode of life and in some countries were Shariah law prevails they are outlawed and persecuted.
Sufis, or Faqirs, as they are called ( roughly equivalent to the Hindu Sadhu ) are divided into two different classes, Beshar, “without the law”, and “Bashar,” within the law. A large number belong to the former group and use intoxicants like ganja, opium and alcohol, all of which they consider acceptable and lawful. They do not follow the precepts of the Prophet and pay little attention to fasting, praying or attempting to control their passions. They are considered to be debauchees and are not highly regarded by Muslims in general and are feared by many. “Bashar,” those within the law, follow all the rules of Islam such as praying, fasting and abstaining from intoxicants. There are many varieties in this group, some with wives and children who live by farming, trading or begging. Others are of the “abstracted” type and lead an ascetic life, some being affected to such a degree for their love and mystical affection for Gnosticism and the Deity that they are dead to any form excitement, hope or fear. This is the rarest class of Faqirs as it takes a peculiar conformation of mind and personality. There are others of education and sophistication, metaphysicians they are regarded as, who reject as unfashionable belief in the Koran and the five pillars of Islam.
There are many orders or sects of these Muslim holy men, educated and dignified, uneducated, wild and hairy, conservative, with different costumes and practices, some naked and hairless, some celibates, some debauched and dissipated beggars, some that lead about monkeys and bears, some considered to be powerful miracle workers that can instantly effect what they please, can heal the sick and raise the dead, the whirling Darweshes and their ecstatic services, some outside the law, some within the law but all considered a part of the mystical brotherhood of Islam and therefore it is considered well to court their blessings and avoid their curses for as it has been said “ View not with scorn the humble sons of earth for beneath a clod a flower may have birth.”
I asked the Maulana about the order that he represented and if it was within or without the law and he assured me that it was of the former, very respectable with many rich and highly educated members of the community. I told him that I would indeed accept his invitation for initiation and hoped that I would be a worthy addition to its membership. He replied in the affirmative, that the honor would be theirs and that they were looking forward to my participation and friendship. I inquired when and where the initiation would take place and what would be required of me. He replied that it would be here in the old city of Banaras, in the home of the Murshid, or Pir, the spiritual guide who would conduct the ceremony. The custom of initiating a disciple ( murid ) has it’s origin with their ancestors, he said, and this very special duty is only entrusted to wise and reverend persons. When a person is to become a disciple they usually go to the household of the particular Pir or Saint who is recognized as such by the family descent or the ceremony take place in the home of the initiate. In my case since I was a tourist and had no home as such it was decided that the ceremony would take place in the home of the presiding Murshid which was located in the neighborhood near the large Masjid, or Mosque, of the old city and when the time was ready a messenger would inform me of the particulars. As that concluded our conversation he took his leave, touching his heart with his right hand and salutating me with the words, “As Salaam mu Alaikum,” Peace of Allah be upon you.

The next day, returning to my rooms after my evening meal, I found a letter under my door designating the time and place the initiation was to be performed, the necessary items that I needed to bring and instructions for my behavior during the ceremony. It was hand written, in English, in an elegant cursive script on soft parchment and embossed in gold with star and crescent and the name of the order. I still have the letter but for proprieties sake I shall refrain from divulging the name of the order.
On the appointed day I took a rickshaw to the address given, a compound surrounded by a high wall and shadowed by the graceful minarets and gilded dome of the large mosque. It was night and though I felt good about the coming proceedings this was India and underneath the glamour and beauty lurked undreamed of depths of terror and cruelty that could appear in an instant. I looked around at the filthy street and the squalid hovels of the poor next to the golden gleam of the majestic mosque that loomed above it all and for a moment I thought of returning to the safety of my rooms. Maybe this was all a setup, I thought, maybe I would be kidnapped and held for ransom, maybe beheaded as had happened to the tourist trekkers in Kashmir few years back or put in shackles and shown on International TV before they did the evil deed.
I took a deep breath, lifted, and let drop the massive knocker on the ornate double door. Boom! The sound reverberated throughout the whole neighborhood. Too late to turn back now, I thought.
Momentarily I heard the turn of a key, the rasp of a bolt being drawn and then the creak of rusty hinges. A small man wearing a black turban and black patch over one eye opened the door, salaamed deeply and silently bid me enter. We crossed the dark courtyard and entered the building and into what appeared to be the main room. It was stone-floored and bare of unnecessary furniture or decoration. Scattered about in large earthen pots grew tropical plants in lush profusion. A door on one wall led into an antechamber where the servant, without speaking a word, directed me to be seated. Another door stood open onto the dark shadows of a garden with the scent of flowers and a small slice of moonlight peeking through. An ancient stone bench underneath an orange tree invited me to sit and take in the rich aromas of jasmine, oleander and orange and as I sat and waited for the unfolding of the event that lay before me I thought of the rich and bloody history that Islam had brought with it to this fabled land now called India.
How had Islam given birth to so many fanatics I wondered when the Prophet was such a gentle and kindhearted human being? Compassion and tenderness, simplicity and humility sincerity and courtesy, all virtues he had in abundance yet a trail of blood had covered the earth from the beginning of his mission to the present day. He had prohibited his soldiers from killing women and children, of inciting terror in the hearts of defenseless civilians for the maiming of innocent men, women and children was forbidden by both the Prophet and the Qu’ran. And yet they slashed and killed, converting the infidels with the sword, conquering vast areas of the world from Arabia to Mongolia, to all the four corners of the earth they rode and fought with a fury and ruled their conquered dominions with a cruel, iron hand.
And now it reigns no more, the glorious past when the horned moon of Islam had blazed throughout the land ruling all of Hindustan, when the Great Moguls had no peer until the blistering torrent of the Mahrattas and Rajputs and Sikhs burst forth and threw then into the dust and then a greater torrent blasted in from across the black waters to extinguish the last flicker of life from the heart of the great Mogul Empire.
The British had conquered the conquerors and now the quiet wind of modernization sweeps in as the Americans take over, inexorably, with Coca-Cola, Hollywood and MacDonald’s, capturing by default this vast sub-continent once ruled by Akbar Jehangir, Shahjehan, and the almighty Aurungzebe, “Holder of the World,” Now the sword of Allah has been dulled, broken and replaced by a so called democracy, but the quest for power and plunder is still rampant since the Emperor has only changed clothes leaving the substance of venality and dissimulation intact.
But here and there truth prevails, small pockets of men and women who hold high the lamp of the Prophet. Sufism, that ascetic branch of Islam that aspires to a state of union with God through mystical contemplation rejects privileges based on wealth, race or power. Allah created all human beings as equals and they are to be distinguished from each other only by their faith and piety….
The murmur of voices in the next room woke me from my meditations and Maulana Mohammad Shah Ibn-Ali entered and quietly told me to follow him into the dressing room where I was to bathe, change into the fresh clothes that I had brought with me along with a small envelope of money to be given as a gift to the Pir that was to conduct my initiation.
While bathing a servant came in with a box containing scissors, comb, razor and several bottles of lotion and indicated that I was to be shaved as that was part of the procedure. When I objected to this he left and a few minutes later returned with the Maulana who explained to me that it was a symbolic act only and a snip of hair from the “four beauties of the face,” head, eyebrows, beard and chest would suffice. I relented and the servant took the required amount which he put in a small container that he produced from his barber’s box. He also clipped my fingernails and while doing so repeated sentences or prayers from the Qu’ran. I then dressed in a clean white lungi and kurta. The Maulana returned, gave me a quick inspection, took the envelope containing the gift for the Pir and instructed me to wait.
The Maulana returned shortly and led me out into the large room that was now occupied by about twenty people, some of whom I recognized from the house of the sari maker that I had dined with on the night of the Prophet’s birthday. The people formed a horseshoe with me in the center and the Pir, a rather fierce looking gentleman, immaculately dressed in white, at the head facing the East so that when I faced him I would be looking in the direction of Mecca. The Pir then placed a small skullcap on my head and gave me a piece of white cloth about five feet in length which I turbaned my head with. He then took hold of my right hand with his right hand in such a way that out thumbs touched. Then the Pir asked me to repeat the formula of asking forgiveness from God, the five sections of the creed, the assertion of the unity of the Godhead, the rejection of infidelity and other supplications that I had been instructed in after which I said to the Pir, “Whatever sins I have intentionally or unintentionally committed I now repent and I sincerely promise before my Pir and in the presence of God and his minister never to commit them again.”

Then the Pir read of a long list of all the Saints of the order according to the genealogy which went back to the time of the Prophet and then asked me if I consented to acknowledge them. When I replied in the affirmative he then asked me if I acknowledged him as my Pir. Again I replied in the affirmative. The Pir then released my hand, received a cup of some sweet liquid from one of the ministers, offered prayers over it, blew on it several times, took two or three sips and then handed it to me. I then rose from my seat as instructed and with profound reverence, drank the last of it. The Pir then draped over my shoulders a shawl that he himself had worn and then instructed me in my new name; Bismillah Shah (Shah, or King, signifying that one is lord over one’s own will and has thus renounced the world and Bismillah, in the name of Allah.) At the end of these rites the Pir gave me the following precepts: “What stands do not touch, what lies down do not move,” that is to say do not steal or take what is not rightfully yours, “Let your tongue observe truth,” that is do not lie, “Keep your loin band tight,” that is do not commit adultery, “Treasure these things in your mind, Beware! Exert yourself and earn your living in a righteous manner and eat only what is lawful.” I then turned and prostrated myself three times toward Mecca, then stood up and faced the gathering, salaamed deeply and they, returning the salutation, chanted “Be thou blessed, be thou blessed, be thou blessed,” three times.
The ceremony was over. Everyone gathered around me smiling, congratulating and shaking hands. A large cloth was laid on the floor which was soon covered with heaping mounds of steaming rice and mutton and other tasty dishes of the local variety. We ate and talked late into the night and I was called upon to expound endlessly on America; its problems, the government, poverty, crime, black people, drugs, the life style of the rich, the food, the religious habits, sex, music, marriage and to give my opinions and comparisons and thoughts to all the deep and disturbing questions they had on their minds.
I pray to Allah that I did them justice….

Life Is Hard &Then We Die

I stepped over two dead bodies today: a homeless beggar and a large rat. Both died ignominious deaths, in the gutter, alone, missed and cried over by no one, hungry and dirty, the lowest of the low. In India death lurks around every corner ready to snatch us away in an instant and it is important that we be ready for it. It is always there to remind us of the fragility of our lives, of this instrument that carries within it the holy breathe, the Atman, the spirit, the One that animates the bag of skin that we refer to as me, myself and I
Who am I? The rishis of old would ask in their silent meditations, the first of the five fundamental questions all true philosophers seek answers for. Where have I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? How do I get there? We all ask these questions in our quiet moments, we all seek those answers in the depths of our being but here in India it is a full time occupation with most everyone, from the beggar and the rickshaw puller, to the businessman and the politician; all philosophers, all lovers of wisdom regardless of education, occupation, rich, poor or the cut of the costume, all seeking the fruit of human awareness and understanding and to die with a clean balance sheet and thus the chance for a more fortunate rebirth.
Karma and dharma are two words one hears often in Asia. Karma, what you sow you shall reap or better known as Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, is the essence of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, the sum of all one’s past actions both known and unknown, in this life and in lives past.

Dharma, often translated as duty or moral obligation, means that which one is born to do. The dharma of the sun is to shine, of the farmer to till the soil, of the philosopher to ponder the mysteries and of the professional soldier to fight and kill. Adharma, or against dharma, is what impedes or perverts that harmony or the true nature of things. Dharma equals integration, adhrama equals disintegration.
These two concepts are inextricably entwined with each other and in order for an individual in society to effectively follow his or her dharma they need to be aware of the razor’s edge they walk lest they fall into the hellish abyss of a noxious rebirth for many future lives. Between these two poles lies not just our individual future but the future of mankind as well.
How does one reconcile that which he knows is his true nature and the demands of the community that has conditioned him? Everyone has a different inner reality, a different nature, and one person’s dharma is another person’s adharma. For the philosopher to take up the sword will more than likely yield disagreeable results and for the soldier to delve too much into philosophy will no doubt result in a less effective fighting machine.
As the Pied Piper of Crawford toots is horn and directs his desert rats one cannot help but to reflect on the karmic consequences and bondage that will result from the desires that motivate these actions. His is an army of volunteers-they want to be there for one reason or another; for the spoils, for the lucre, for misguided glory, honor or duty, for king and country, for anger or revenge, for “democracy”, whatever that means. World control by a single country, state or coalition is both an illusion and a delusion and no so called democracy can become a world state or new world order in an of itself. That’s the stuff psychopathic dreams are made of which the world has been witness to many times over as history has taught us.
It is desire, tanha, or thirst for sentient existence that keeps us on the wheel of samsara, that keeps us ensnared in the web of worldly existence, of continuous rebirth and suffering. It is one of the four main blemishes of character that must be eliminated before enlightenment or clarity is possible along with moha-delusion, loba- greed and dosa-depravity of mind due to anger, ill will or hatred.

The four classes of man in Indian philosophy represent the four stages of development in our selfhood. Societal hierarchy is not coercion but a law of nature. We are all born on different levels of
moral and intellectual development. The earliest mention of these four classes is found in the Rig Veda, the knowledge derived from the Vedic Hymns, which form the basis for most Hindu philosophical and religious systems, and they are described as having sprung from the body of the creative spirit, from the head, arms, thighs and feet. It is a metaphor or poetical image intended to describe and convey the organic nature of society. These four fold divisions of society are the indispensable elements of any social order and are regarded as dispensation from the spirit or God.
Brahmins, whose function is to seek and communicate knowledge, are the intellectuals that gain their satisfaction in philosophy, science or religion and set an example by non attachment and disinterested pursuits of the mind: Plain living and high thinking. They give moral guidance and do not interfere in administrative or power machinations. Only true philosophers should be kings, as Plato observed, as anyone concerned with the exercise of power cannot be objective. A spirit of detachment, patience, fearlessness and hope are those qualities of a truth seeker which, of course, makes them unfit for success in ordinary, mundane life. Their strength prevents them from compromising with the corrupting influences of power and wealth. The perversions of this class are the dogmatic, narrow-minded true believers.
The Ksatriya, those that have sprung from the arms, have the task of administering and protecting, for devising the means to carry out the blueprints of social construction and moral values laid out by the Brahmins. The qualities that mark the Ksatriya are nobility of soul, heroic bravery and an unflinching resistance to oppression, injustice and foul play. The have an executive power over their community which is valid only when they perform in accordance to the law; they are the servants and guardians of the law and their duties are limited to the protection and defense of the law. Dictators and those that rule rather than represent are the perversion of this type.
The third class is the Vaisyas, those whose tendency in life is to possess and enjoy, to engage in pursuits of a utilitarian and practical nature and they are skillful and adaptive toward those ends.

The perversions of this type are abundant in this commercial age of consumerism as industry and commerce have given us a false
standard of values. “Women and gold”, as the Hindu saint Rama Krishna declared, or lust and greed, is the bane of this type.
The fourth group of people, those that have sprung from God’s feet, are the Sudras, the workers, those that find their means through labor and service. They are of a lower order in that their activities are not governed by knowledge, strength or by a mutual service of cooperative give and take. Their activities are more instinctual, mechanical and the fulfillment of their duties is primarily for their physical gratification. The perversion of this type consists of a fifth sub category, the so called Untouchables, those who gain their sustenance as scavengers, leather workers, slaughterers, sweepers, toilet cleaners, those that dispose of the dead, etc.
The qualities and characteristics in these classes are not exclusive for all of us possess something of each but there is a preponderance of one over the others in each of us. The crystallization or calcification of these four types into rigid categories in India has been unfortunate and Gandhi and many others have worked tirelessly to eradicate the injustices of the system but the fact remains that all societies, all cultures, all countries have these categories whether we like to admit it or not. Walk down any main street America and when the dirty spare change hand is thrust into your face you might give a quarter or a buck but you aren’t likely to touch the hand. That’s a homegrown untouchable, American style. “Brahmin is by deed, not by birth”, as the Buddha said but old values and habits die hard.
All of these categories are necessary for the fruitful development of society and must need to work together toward that end. All of life in all classes inquire into truth and justice, seek wisdom and understanding, yearn for fulfillment and completion. Each has a way, a path, a guidepost toward that completion, all of us, be he king or serf, thief or poet.
The problems seem to arise when we desire to do someone else’s work, to walk another path that we are not equipped for, that we don’t have the psychological or intellectual endowment for. Nature assigns to us according to our inborn qualities of mind and heart. A desert chief becomes a dictator, a rich cowboy becomes president, a soldier becomes statesman, a businessman a vice-regal.

This can only result in mediocrity for no one is doing what his true nature demands- except giving in to that lower nature and making millions of dollars. Those that seek the higher place should lead the life of self-denial and simplicity the system requires and dharma demands. Otherwise chaos will follow as she is doing now…. disintegration, Shiva’s dance of destruction, a state of disharmony, of adharma,

Thousands have already died and the killing has just started. Raga, the Sanskrit word for passion, uncontrolled lust, anger and greed that now rages across the world. The age of Kali Yuga, when nations become addicted to falsehood, where only wealth confers rank and brother kills brother. It is that time say the Puranas when the human race approaches annihilation or Pralaya, dissolution, a flooding, a cleansing, an ending before rebirth and another interminable round of suffering until we learn our lessons.
Are we approaching annihilation? Camus said that the only philosophical question worth pondering is whether or not to commit suicide. Is that what we are doing now as we commence the third world war? Are we collectively drinking the hemlock, all destined to become dead rats and beggars in a world gone cold and dark?
How sad……

The Return Of The Prodigal Son

I think just about every son, grandson or great grandson has thought about visiting the “old country” at one time or another if for no other reason than just to see from whence his roots sprung. Having visited Russia during the Soviet Union period and been utterly fascinated by my mother’s country of origin in spite of government restrictions, suspicious bureaucracy, lack of food, rudeness of the people and rampant alcoholism I was finally ready to visit Yugoslavia, the country of my father’s birth, a side trip as I returned to America after a years sojourn in the bowels of Asia.
I departed from Bombay dressed in long Indian kurta-pyjamas, backpack and beard and hair that had not been cut for a year and disembarked in Athens, my plan being to take train and bus to my final destination, the village of Perna, a small Serb enclave in the middle of Croatian territory near the city of Dubrovnik. This was some years before the war and though there were rumblings of discontent even then I had no reason to expect any display of ill-will or unfriendliness. After all, I was an American, a relation, a kindred soul connected by blood and collective memory, a link that went back many generations and I would be welcomed with open arms.
I had little interest in remaining in Athens, a city filled with American tourists, mostly of the teen-age variety, and young, handsome Greek men of the prancing predatory type who wore tight pants, shirts unbuttoned just enough to show their chest hair and gold crosses and all who seemed to carry little leather purses containing cigarettes, a silk handkerchief and probably condoms. After a year immersed in the depths of Indian life with it’s poverty, hardships and rich spiritual tradition I found Greece to be superficial and depressing and had no care or curiosity to linger.
A series of uneventful train and bus rides dropped me off on the outskirts of Dubrovnik in the early morning where I commenced a hitchhiking journey through small quaint towns and villages. The people that I met on the way were unsmiling and uncommunicative, not hostile or antagonistic but predisposed, absorbed, preoccupied with thoughts and feelings I could not interpret and as I continued on my way I realized that there was an undercurrent of emotion or passion that in my ignorance I attributed to the suffering Slavic soul and the alcohol that was freely consumed in the many stand-up bars that seemed to be on every corner. Running in for a quick drink was a national pastime I assumed and after my experience with Russians and their vodka I thought, well, that’s just the way it is.
I then entered a town that was a little larger than the previous ones that I had passed through and there were police roadblocks at all the main intersections. My first encounter with Yugoslav authorities.
“Passport” the burly cop in an ill fitting blue uniform demanded as he surveyed my Indian dress and beard with a suspicion bordering on disbelief. I dutifully handed it over to him.
“Ah! Americanski!, CIA,” he loudly proclaimed calling several other of his uniformed cohorts over to inspect in great detail every page of my well stamped passport. A lively conversation between them in Serbo-Croatian interspersed with suspicious eyeballing of me went on for several minutes.
“Why you in Yugoslavia? You CIA? Why you have Serb last name and Croat first name?” He demanded.
Indeed that was true and how was I ever going to explain to these goons that though my father was Serbian I was born in a Catholic hospital staffed by nuns, and the good sisters, being good sisters and wanting to save as many little souls as possible, registered my first name, contrary to my parents wishes, with the Catholic Croatian spelling rather than the Serbian spelling.
“Look in pack Americanski, take off. Inspection.”
Having learned never to argue with the man with the gun I dutifully took off my pack and emptied it in front of everyone. Out came dirty laundry, sleeping bag, washing kit, maps and writing pad, a jar of blackberry jam with a small piece of hash buried in the bottom, half a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, a bowl made from a human skull and a horn made from a femur bone and assorted papers, one of which was a dog eared baptismal certificate that testified to the fact that I was baptized in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Gary, Indiana by a certain Reverend Popovitch that spelled my name correctly. Luckily I had thrown that in at the last minute before leaving the US as I thought I might visit Mount Athos if I got around to that part of the world.
Needless to say the relics caused quite a stir for which I was grateful as the two grams of hash in the bottom of the jam jar gave me heart thumping anxiety for about twenty minutes until the police captain appeared on the scene. Fortunately he spoke a better brand of English than the others and I was able to explain to him the inconsistency in the spelling of my name with the help of the baptismal certificate and that I was on my way to visit the house of my father who left Yugoslavia when he was ten years old. He tooted on the femur horn as I repacked my backpack and then wished me good luck in my travels with the cryptic warning, “Be careful Americanski, these are troubling times.”
I reached the village of Perna around three in the afternoon. It was a strange little burg, quiet and empty save for an occasional tractor chugging through pulling a hand made cart with big balloon tires piloted by taciturn looking farmer types in overalls and funny little pork pie hats sitting on top of their heads. No place for a cup of tea or coffee and even the little standup bar was closed. It was a good hour before I managed to get some vague directions from a distrustful looking old man who peered at my clothes and beard with both astonishment and a touch of fear.
It was late afternoon when I finally found the house, a massive timbered, hand notched construction with a large porch, slate roof and accommodations for the cows, goats and chickens on the ground floor and a pig pen as a separate enclosure off to the side and underneath the eaves. A bright red, government issued, tractor was parked in a shed next to the house which was set back from the road about fifty yards. An idyllic picture of old country peasant grandeur just like the painting that hung in my father’s office over his desk that had been a part of our lives since I was a little kid.
The large field slopping gently down to the road from the house was being worked by two men and an old woman dressed in black. The men were digging furrows and the old woman was going behind them, stooping as she planted seed. I took off my pack and stood watching for several minutes until they noticed. They looked up for a moment then resumed their work. The men looked familiar. Yes, they looked like me, like my father, an eerie sensation. They felt the vibration, the pulse, the connection, something was happening and they stopped working, looked a little uncomfortable with this stranger staring at them. They were peasants, rough hewn, stern, dirty clothes and hands, a few missing teeth, not used to eccentric looking newcomers in the neighborhood. I was an oddity, from another planet, strange dress, hairy, maybe a vagabond, dangerous, they suppressed their discomfort and continued to work until I took out my baptismal paper with my Serb name before it had been anglicized and waved it at them. They looked up, hesitated, nervous, maybe a crazy man, didn’t quite know what to do. “Hey!” I shouted, “Oreschanhin!” our name in the vernacular as I waved the paper. The younger one dropped his mattock and slowly approached. He was about my age, my cousin. With awkward, tense curiosity the others came forward. Nobody spoke a word of English but somehow I managed to get across to them that I was a relative from America, son of Dragan, grandson of Stevan and Stannica.
A few minutes later everyone was grinning, laughing, trying to communicate. Tools were abandoned, work was finished, up to the house for food and drink, large water tumblers of slivovitz, the local plum brandy, was poured by Pytor, the oldest cousin, Franco the youngest just sat and stared, another cousin appeared, Daniela, a beautiful woman in her mid twenties, to help Babuska, the old grandmother with food. A dilapidated wooden cabinet was rummaged through and a fat envelope with many faded pictures brought out. There I was, age six, on my bike, all the relatives from both sides of the family peered at us through a sepia gauze and we peered back through a vaporous veil of alcohol fumes, everyone chattering in their own tongue with a few words of German tossed in here and there.
The food was ready, huge round loaves of warm bread and a ceramic tub of a clear, thick, hot liquid. Pytor, the head of the family started tearing off hunks of bread and everyone followed, dipping into the liquid, more slivovitz, dip, slurp, guzzle, tearing into the food like starving prisoners, strange tasting, what is this stuff? Franco pointed over the side to the pig pen, ugh! Pig fat! I nibbled at the bread, sipped at the booze, my California, vegetarian, pot smoking sensibilities were in shock, must not violate or offend their hospitality but I suddenly had no appetite.
Not like the other relative from America, they were thinking, who came several years before driving a big American rental car loaded with whisky, the other son of Big Steve and Stanicca, the blustering engineer from Chicago who got drunk every night and sang boisterous songs for everyone’s amusement. He was a real Serb.
The word spread quickly in the community that a relative from America had arrived so a feast was scheduled for the next day, Saturday. After a good nights sleep in the rickety old bed my father was born in I woke up to a bowl of thick, black coffee and bread passing on the tumbler of brandy and pig fat that the others were having. After breakfast we walked over to the neighbors farm where the party had already started.
The setting was peaceful, idyllic, a beautiful old hand built farmhouse with rolling lawns and large trees and by 11:AM thirty to forty people had gathered, men, women, children, all rural peasant folk dressed in work clothes, the women wearing bonnets, the children dirty with runny noses and all passing me by for a curious look see at least once.
As the neighborhood gathers, the slivovitz flows, a fire is started, a pig is brought out in a burlap sack. Cousin Pytor who has been elected to do the honors runs his finger over his blade testing its sharpness, the pig is released and Pytor grabs it with the help of his assistant and calmly, deliberately and with palpable pleasure, slits its throat. As the pig struggles and gurggles the other pigs in the pen snort and squeal simultaneously until the bleeding stops. Then all is quiet for a moment as the crowd nods their approval, then everyone goes back to their drinking and chatting. The blood, having been caught in a bowl, will either be drunk straight or made into sausages later.
Yes, I could see how the killing, the throat slashing, the raping could come easily to these people that I am descended from. I shiver for I recognize that part in me, buried deep, deep, in the collective unconscious but still there ready to spring forth with certain provocation.
The pig is quickly gutted, a stake run through its rear end and out its mouth and put on the spit over the fire to be rotated by two huge bodied retarded giants, each with their own quart bottle of fire water. As the guest of honor I was presented with the choicest part, the raw heart. I simply could not eat this bloody mass of flesh, not even sautéed in wine with parsley and small potatoes, much less raw. They looked at me in amazement then ate it themselves.
I am stunned by the coarseness, the sheer animality, the brutishness of these people whose blood I share. I take a walk to ponder this and to smoke a small joint I had well hidden in my kit. My God! These are my people, I can’t quite believe it, yet there they are, they even look like me, like a knife thrust into my delicate, philosopher’s heart, this fragile flower that I call my Self, past behaviors become clearer, the masks of my father no longer hidden behind three piece suits, soft felt hats and pointy-toed shoes.
The party rolled on, drinking and shouting, another pig on the spit, everyone gorging on greasy white flesh, greedily devouring half cooked pig meat like hungry ghosts with small mouths and enormous bellies, washing down with alcoholic fumes of aggression, kill, consume, we are what we eat, in the old house that my grandfather built the out house was on the second floor in a small overhanging balcony room directly over the pig pen. The pigs ate the shit consuming everything in their quest for bits of undigested food. The Oreschanhin family eats the pig, an endless recycling process firmly programmed now into our genetic code with killing an integral part of the process. Life is hard and then we die. One needs to kill to survive. Love, peace, joy? What’s that?
My grandfather, a resourceful man with intelligence and sensitivity knew that this way was not for him, that there was a better life in that land across the ocean in the “new world” and by hook or crook managed to get most of his family out. He was lucky. We were all lucky for had he stayed we would have all been a part of Hitler’s madness, Tito’s regime and the ugly scene that was to follow a few years later in the push for a “greater Serbia.” After the second world war Yugoslavia, “land of the South Slavs” was formed by merging Serbia with a number of its neighbors most of who had been part of the old Austria-Hungary Empire before the war. No one was happy with this arrangement and resentment quietly seethed until Milosovich came along to stir the pot.
The next morning, Sunday, I awoke early for nature’s call. It was still dark but the one bare light bulb was on in the kitchen. I walked in to find my two cousins sitting at the table drinking coffee. I startled them as they did me for both were dressed in black and their faces were blackened as well. They wore heavy boots of a military style and old second world war carbines were slung over their chairs. Sunday was usually church day in this Orthodox village but it seemed other services were on the agenda. I murmured an apology, went to the outhouse to make my offering to the pigs and when I returned they were gone. I went to my room, stuffed my sleeping bag, packed my backpack and was on the road as the sun was rising up over the mountains.

The Philosophy of Fat

Fat is a mode of consciousness that pervades throughout the whole world, a religion with the refrigerator as the temple of transmutation and food as the Blessed Sacrament. Fat is not just a personal matter having to do with health or beauty but is a way of approaching life that affects the environment, ecology, education, war, finance, drug and alcohol addiction and a host of other problems that the world suffers from.
From a Buddhist Point of view fat is the result of clinging, of selfish desire for that which is unattainable, the elusive more that can never be satisfied. It is one of the four blemishes of character that must be eliminated before transformation is possible. Greed, sensuality, ill will and delusion are all related to the problem of fat. Watch closely as a fat person eats and one can see all of these characteristics in how the food is approached, taken in, masticated, swallowed and finished with. All of these actions are usually done in a state of mindlessness, that is, not paying attention to what they are doing.

A fat man went to see an old monk living in the forest. Please venerable sir, won’t you help me. I am terribly fat and in poor health because of it. I eat constantly and think only of food. All day, in the middle of the night, junk food, sugar, starch, Big Macs, all garbage that I know is not good for me but I just can’t help myself. I have great difficulty breathing, I have heart palpitations, diabetes, bad breath, I don’t sleep well, my lower back and joints are painful and I sweat profusely and my feet are always swollen. I’m ashamed to put on a bathing suit and can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. Girls aren’t attracted to me, I look ugly, I feel ugly and I am so depressed I just want to die. Please venerable sir, you are my last hope, if you can’t help me to stop eating I know that I will surely die soon.
You are going to die anyway, the monk replied, what difference does it make if you live a few weeks or a few months longer more or less? Keep eating all you want, as many Big Macs as your palpitating heart desires but only with one difference. Make your eating a meditation. If the Japanese can make te

Reflections on the Drug War

A cloud of misunderstanding and confusion hangs over us as the world attempts to deal with the drug problem. No one seems to know what to do and no one seems to understand how we arrived at this predicament.
A judge of India’s Supreme Court has stated that opium and other psychoactive drugs are the new religion of the people and like God they are omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. He describes how evil this new hydraheaded religion is – he called it a monster – and instructs us on how to stamp it out.A United States drug czar suggests that we behead sellers and incarcerate users in concentration-type boot camps for rehabilitation, while a police chief said even casual users should be executed by firing squad for treason since we are at war. Another law enforcement officer said smugglers should be hanged at the airport as soon as they are caught while a high level cabinet minister said all drugs should be legal and that the government has no business in peoples’ personal lives. A medical doctor said drug taking is a disease and soon they will isolate the defective gene and find a cure while a minister of the gospel proclaims drug use is an affliction of the spirit that only Jesus can cure.
In many countries civil liberties are being sacrificed as the legal establishment fortifies itself in a hopeless war of morality it cannot win. They are fighting against the evolutionary process and have yet to realize that drugs are not only here to stay but are an integral part of our human and planetary growth and have been since our days as hominids when language was little more than a grunt and foraging for food a dangerous, twenty-four hour occupation.

One day a certain kind of plant was found and eaten—maybe a mushroom, maybe the fruit of the hemp plant—and our hairy ancestor shot straight up to heaven. Thus was religion born. The next day the first religious war started when another band of ape men who had heard the good news tried to take over the territory. Everyone wants to go to heaven. We’ve been fighting ever since over the best way to get there.
Most people in the developed countries come into the world "on drugs", the exceptions being those whose mothers choose a natural childbirth without anesthesia, but the majority of us had our first drug experience in the uterus. Mother and baby are sedated, tranquilized, and the baby thus gets his first taste of what is essentially an altered state of consciousness and an escape from his, or her, pain and suffering.
The substances we use—and if we are honest we must admit that we all use something—give us a little boost, a little rest, a few moments to smooth out the sharp edges of existence; tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, aspirin, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, something to ease the stress and anxiety, the suffering, of our modern life. All is suffering as the Buddha said, everyone has some kind of pain; physical, psychological, spiritual and everyone seeks a comforter, a way of changing the chemistry of the body or mind or heart to a place that is more comfortable or interesting by a variety of means, drugs being just one of them. But we are all questers; Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Theosophists, heroin addicts and hemp smokers, we are all seeking, we all want to enter into that non-ordinary state of consciousness that is the peace that passeth understanding.
What all these substances have in common—both the so called soft and hard drugs—is that they facilitate a change in consciousness that allows one to perceive realities from different perspectives that are not ordinarily available to us for a variety of reasons: not sensitive enough, not advanced enough in our own psycho-spiritual-evolutionary development, etc. Chemistry and constitution are at work fueled by the stress and strain of modern living in conjunction with our deep yearning to return to the Godhead, nirvana, moksha, liberation—whatever we choose to call it. If we look at drug taking in this light we can see that it has all the attributes of a religion: ritual, liturgy, priesthood, scriptures, sacrament, transformation, even angels and devils as well as millions of true believers, some organized, most not, but all being able to recognize one another as a fellowship of spirits, seekers of truth who have entered the mysteries, for there is something in the eye, something in the soul, that has changed. And many of the sad ones we see wandering around "on drugs" are those without a guide or guru, without a ritual format to help steer them through the dark abyss. These are the spiritual emergencies, the lost ones, the disconnected, the questers who have taken a wrong turn, gone through a wrong inner door, who have gotten lost in that labyrinth of consciousness that is so vast and all encompassing.
The use of mind-altering plants has been a part of man’s experience for thousands of years, but we are only now becoming aware of the influences they have had in shaping our lives and their full potential for human health and growth has not yet been fully understood. Many of these plants contain chemical compounds that induce such profound changes in sensation and perception that they have been employed in shamanic healing and ritual since man’s earliest experimentation with the vegetation that surrounded him. There was no better way in a primitive society to contact the spirit world than through the use of plants that enabled one to communicate with the far off inner realms of the supernatural. There was no more direct method to free oneself from one’s everyday confines, from one’s painfully frightening existence and to enter, temporarily, the fascinating, indescribable, ethereal wonder of the spiritual world, than by the use of these plants that nature had so abundantly provided.
Since the LSD scare of the 60’s however it has been illegal to have these experiences, to tune into the knowledge that these plants elicit, to experience cosmic consciousness or transcendental orgasm as it has sometimes been called. Some drugs are legal, like caffeine, sugar and tobacco that kept us hyped-up in order to slave at boring and meaningless occupations while alcohol and television prevent us from exploring the depths of our existential despair too deeply. The psychedelics, the entheogins—God or spirit manifesting -- in contrast, are deconditioners and deconstructors of hierarchical relationships and catalysts of consciousness, that self reflecting ability that has reached its highest expression in man and the primary factor that distinguishes him from his monkey brothers and sisters.
There are many paths to enlightenment and explosions of sudden insight, clear vision and comprehension have come about through meditation, fasting, near death experiences, sickness, sex, drugs and even rock & roll, some claim, and sometimes the third eye opens for no apparent reason, spontaneously. If one does not have an adequately developed sense of self one can become lost in the unfamiliar landscape of one’s psyche and not find the way back to home territory; the mental hospitals are filled with such people as are the streets of our cities. A person can become seduced by the power of his destructive energy or he can become infused with the white light of love and peace and wisdom. After these experiences it often becomes difficult to return to that consensual reality that we all share with each other, to make that reconnection with the so-called normal life. Depending on the culture and the time in which they live such people are referred to as saints filled with divine madness, God intoxicated, or demons possessed with evil jinns. All of these labels mean the same thing; he has lost his core identity, his personality, his persona, his mask and cannot, or does not wish to, return and reconnect with ordinary life. Some stay lost in madness, others become monks or sadhus, theosophists or hippies.
The ancients had the time for the gradual unfolding of insight and wisdom. We don’t. The phenomenal advances in science and technology have far outstripped our understanding of the energies that drive us, the emotional and mental forces that reinforce our old ape men habits of wanting to be king of the pack, of fighting the enemy that is always The Other—the other tribe or country, the other religion, the other part of ourselves that we do not choose to recognize so we project it out to the other. In this case it is the dope fiend, the drug addict, those people who choose to explore their inner-space with chemicals. In the past it has been witches and Jews and other unbelievers, the dark side of ourselves that won’t go away no matter how much religion we get. Self knowledge, the understanding of our own psyches, is the only answer to this dilemma; the ability to recognize our self-destructive habits and relinquish them, to live in the awareness of our true nature with the knowledge that we are The Other as surely as the next person. And these substances help to teach us this; to overcome the archetypes and dualities and the hidden forces that drive us, thus allowing us to consciously choose what kind of human being we wish to become and the power to Become That, to evolve to that next plateau.
Euphoria, which simply means a feeling of well being and does not mean drunk or intoxicated, stupefied or living in a state of fantasy or illusion, is the physical and mental ability to cast off depressing or negative circumstances for a limited period of time. This is what religion attempts to do; to put us in that state of mind, body and soul where we leave our pain behind and enter into that intimate state of well being that we call grace or enlightenment—a highly attuned brain and nervous system that opens to that supramental energy which graces us with euphoric well being permanently.
As the world waits for the Second Coming, the Elect, the Chosen, the Teacher of Righteousness, the Supermen, Maitreya, the Messiah and the Sixth Root Race, we might ask ourselves from where will they come and from where have they come in the past? Are these future saviors of humanity that group of people emerging from the dark waters of the drug experience, the spiritual emergencies, the questers who have rearranged their DNA and whose offspring are the mutant species of new world servers that are to save us from ourselves? Will a phoenix rise from this shadow religion that has swept across all national, ethnic, racial and economic divisions like a wildfire?
All of the great religions have had more than a passing acquaintance with mind changing, mind manifesting substances used as meditation aids, sacraments and oracles, from pre-Christian mushroom cults to the Eleusinian Mysteries, to Shintoism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism and the Sufi’s of Islam who all gave a place to the Goddess Hemp or the Soma God in their rituals, their mysteries that are now no longer mysteries but open to all for a few pennies. Even those channels of wisdom tapped into by the great teachers of the world are suspect if we are not afraid to inquire too deeply. Just what was it that made Jesus believe he was the messiah? Did Buddha have any help while sitting under the Bo Tree? Just what was the burning bush and what fueled Mohammed’s winged flights into the heavens?
All of these movements brought with them an elevation in consciousness which translates into an evolutionary step forward. These are questions of ultimate concern for everyone; the mystery of human existence, the genesis of consciousness and religion and the evolving blueprint we pass on to our children. It is important to pass on to them the truth and allow them the benefit of their intelligence. They will walk the true way if they are given true direction.
We are all born with an innate drive to experience other forms of consciousness, to plumb the depths of this mystery that we call me, to peek into those secret doors of the mind and to understand this world in which we find ourselves. Surely the cultivation of this knowledge is basic to the education of children yet we hide from them these valuable treasures in exchange for trinkets. True knowledge is not head learning but soul wisdom, the experience of communion and the perception of unveiled truth. The gift of clarity, or heaven, is passed on when there is no obstruction, when the pathway if clear, when the ground of innocence has opened to that which is beyond our selves, to that metaphysical dimension that is so needed for our survival.

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The Radicalization of the Human Heart

The Radicalization Of The Human Heart

Banaras, India Looking down onto the bathing ghats from my tower room overlooking the Ganges I am reminded of ants; how we humans are like ants, programmed for feeding and fornicating, working as robots for a specified number of days, fitting into a mechanized existence that has been engineered to function smoothly with few exceptions, and then dying off to be replaced by another duplicate. In every ant colony though there are always a few exceptions, always a few that run around the outskirts crazily ignoring the norms of good ant conduct and exploring the parameters of their existence in their own fashion.
In the human world of men and women those few crazies would be the philosophers, shamans, artists, poets and others that have voyaged deep into their interior, often with the assistance of plant guides or teachers. This is very common in India, a country of over a billion people that is not only agricultural but one that values the interior life over any other and plant guides of every kind abound in this land of continual seeking after knowledge and questing for release or enlightenment.
On every corner, in every bazaar or small market place there are shops selling herbal remedies and magic elixirs. Some of these plants are for indigestion, intestinal worms, skin problems, colic, cancer, some for inducing sleep while others wake up the organism to new perceptions and dimensions. This new awareness evokes new kinds of thinking that some power structures believe to be detrimental to their existence. Like a deadly virus that must be destroyed before it destroys everything it touches, many governments institute draconian laws to prevent their subjects from exploring and cultivating their interior life for fear that it would change the status quo and thus make those in power obsolete.
In India lip service is paid to those governments that institute such laws since aid is given or withheld according to arrests and amount of contraband confiscated but when you get down to the heart of the matter little is accomplished by this policy since practically everyone uses something to alter their consciousness. Meditation is of course that system that teaches us to be alive and awake to the present moment as do many of these plants when used as teachers or guides but the period of apprenticeship is much longer and requires a discipline that most people in the world do not have and especially those in the West whose time and energy is consumed by meeting the demands of their high standard of living which once committed to is difficult to abandon.
The West has always believed that the battle can only be won by the swift and the daring and that meek natures are losers, taking refuge in submission or flight. Indeed it has often been said that those who use certain substances are running away from reality and are looked down upon as weak or contemptible or mentally ill.
In the West the emphasis is on the material ends of life and religion is often thought of and practiced as a means of procuring not only worldly prosperity but a place in heaven as well. It is dynamic, ambitious and adventurous, imbued with courage and a social consciousness that knows no bounds. The Hindus and the Chinese on the other hand are of a quietist nature, more interested in making the best of a painful life full of hardship and poverty. “All is suffering,” as the Buddha said and the primary goal of the Hindu is to be released from the world of samsara, the wheel of life and death, and not return again to painful mundane existence. For them the qualities of contentment, patience and endurance are those to be cultivated rather than ambition and the robust energy needed to conquer the social, political and economic worlds of samsara. Adhering to this path, this mood of detachment has enabled them to endure thousands of years of both man made and natural disasters. “To be gentle is to be invincible,” as Lao Tzu said. The West races into combat in the name of freedom while the East allows itself to be subjected in the name of peace. It seems that the West is of the head, the intellect, while the East is of the heart, the intuition. Might there be a way to bring these two divergent paths together?



These were my thoughts as the plane landed on the Big Island of Hawaii on my way to visit an old shaman friend that I had not seen for many years. Lowlands Everest, he was so called because he had lived for many years in the low lying tropical rain forests and jungles of South America, learning the ancient wisdom and medicinal preparations of the indigenous peoples. In his younger days he had climbed Mount Everest and rode with the nomadic tribesman of the Tibetan plateau learning their customs, their healing practices and remedies and now as a white haired old man he had retired to the Big Island to putter in his garden of exotic plants and offer his knowledge to those that took the time and trouble to seek him out.
As a psychotherapist and student of philosophy I had been interested since the early 1960s in the altered states of consciousness and subsequent transformation of personality and life focus that many of these plants produced. In my own experiments I had undergone such radical changes of lifestyle, perceptions and philosophy of life that my whole direction and model of reality did a complete about face and I had for all intents and purposes been “reborn.” This rebirth had prompted me to move to Asia where I could be in daily contact with those non-ordinary states of reality induced by a sacred or spiritual way of life. In Asia the spiritual is the ordinary for there is an ancient awareness that all of life is connected and there is something more than the world view of the western materialist who values only what he recognizes with the senses.
Science cannot satisfy the needs of the soul nor can dogma meet the needs of the intellect. Truth is opposed to dogma and tradition for both deny the mystic state, some even looking upon it as a psychopathic condition rather then a condition in which we are in contact with another dimension of eternal reality.
The Western Church looks upon the mystical experiences that have been induced by substances as false, of the devil, counterfeit, a questionable figment of the subjective mind. Then so would meditation, fasting, wearing a hair shirt as well as saying ten thousand hail Marys’ or chanting om mani padme hum a zillion times if we follow that line of reasoning. All of these are devices to flick the switch, and when the light is turned on we see clearly. Birth is coming out of the dark womb into light of day. Rebirth is coming out of the dark shadows of ignorance into light. Plato says that if we want a life of immortality then our lives must be centered on truth, goodness and beauty and our soul must be turned around if the light is going to shine upon it. And that can only happen with rebirth, with conversion, with a transformation of the heart and soul. A radical transformation and not just an extension or continuation of the same old self.
We strain for perfection like the flower strains toward the sunlight. The Upanisads say when the vision is attained all duality comes to an end. Then there is just God, love and light which is enlightenment. The Christians call it salvation, some call it moksha, I call it clarity. It can come by many means, it can come through grace… it is all grace anyway.
Lowlands, the Ancient One, met me at the small airport nestled in the shadow of the big volcano. He was dressed in old jeans and tee shirt and his long white hair fell all the way down his back. He drove an old beat-up pickup. His house was such a strange dwelling it would be difficult to describe but the interior was large and roomy with a picture window looking out onto the Pacific. Rare books on medicinal plants and remedies lined the walls and murtis, statues of various deities collected on his travels, filled the nooks and crannies. Rattles, drums and other shamanic paraphernalia were scattered about. A perfect place to flick the switch.
I drank a small cup of a vile tasting jungle concoction and laid on the floor. Why was I doing this? What was my intention? What did I want to explore? Waves of nausea pulsated through me, I retched, leaned over into the bowl threw up what seemed to be gallons of food and green bile. Looking into the bowl I saw nothing, empty, all my psychic garbage I had been holding onto for years. I laid back, clean, pure, refreshed, an electrical charge of incredible energy coursing through my cells, my body and brain. Soon wonderful visions appeared and I became aware of the antediluvian slime that I crawled out of millions of years ago. My hands had turned into amphibious claws and my body was covered with scales, and that was okay as I lay and pondered the deep things of life: love, God, relationships and death. Letting go was the message, loud and clear, let go of all emotional attachments, the rebellious ego, they are all excess baggage that blocks the light, clinging blocks the light, letting go lets it in. Illumination transforms everything; body, mind, heart and soul. Everybody’s birth right is to be clear and live in the light. And the shaman is the midwife, he assists us in our rebirth, guides us along the path so we don’t fall into the abyss, or if we do he’s there to help us climb out.
Low melodious chanting crept into my consciousness and the rattle of a gourd filled the night air and the heavy scent of jasmine wafted in from through the open window. The Ancient One and his assistant were leading me out of the primal ooz into another dimension and I followed the rhythms that took me over mountains and through jungles, roaring through the seasons, dropping me into bejeweled lakes that kaleidoscopically sparkled with the luminosity of pulsating diamonds, rubies and sapphires so brilliant in their multicolored illuminations I had to close my eyes for fear of being blinded, swimming with giant serpents and alligators with no fear for I too was strong and scaly and from the primeval depths and was one with them,
When I felt that I was losing my center the Ancient One was there with his hand on my head singing softly the songs of the spirits that have become his healing allies or chanting quietly into my ear, intention, intention, back to my intention, why was I here? To examine my body, to connect with my lungs on a cellular level, to swim in the black tar, the detritus of forty years of tobacco and marijuana smoke, let go, with crystal clear clarity I was being told to let go or death was soon to visit, let go, let go and move on. The women I had been with for fifteen years, a beautiful, tempestuous, self destructive woman filled with deceit, betrayal and violence. Let go and move on, it was over, you did your best, she was from another world, don’t hang on, the woman, the gold, the land, it had no meaning, no intrinsic value and all destined to disintegrate as all compounded things return to the stuff of the universe, atom, energy, to be reformed again, reshaped into new life. Rebirth.
That’s what had happened in that Hawaiian temple of transmutation. My cells were washed clean by the invisible hand of the Divine through the medium of the bitter medicine and my internal physician who knew exactly where the sickness was. I could see the process in my mind’s eye as the mitochondria, those microscopic structures that provide energy to the cells, were being cleansed of a lifetime of buildup just as the terminals on a car battery need cleaning when they become corroded. With clean terminals better communication that controls and regulates electrical charges for optimum function results, both in the car and in the body-brain complex. The receptors react to substances produced in the body as well as substances taken into the body, selectively allowing them to enter or leave the cells. The cells have a favorable response to this South American jungle juice as the reactions that take place in the receptors have altered their responses in a positive manner.. Within the cell’s cytoplasm there are structures that use and transform energy in carrying out the cells functions. Also contained within the cell is the nucleus which contains the DNA or genetic material. In the 60s during the LSD paranoia the government claimed that its use destroyed chromosomes. This was never proven and the claims were eventually shelved. It now appears that the chromosomal configurations were either rearranged to their original configuration, before they were corrupted by millions of years of conditioning, or mutated up the evolutionary ladder. Whatever way one looks at it a radical change in the organism has taken place that allows for a process of de-conditioning and thus rebirth.
This bitter potion, this vine of the soul, has been given us so we may heal that which no other physician is capable of. All of the learned doctors, all of the remedies, the thousands upon thousands of expensive pharmaceuticals that the multi-national drug companies churn out, none of these can heal that deep existential sickness that we all suffer from, the emptiness we run away from, the fear of our loneliness and of our impending death, the anger and frustration of our slavery to a way of life that is not beautiful or true
But the visionary vine changes all that. Suddenly there is a serenity that has never before been experienced, a feeling of fullness, of completion, of a richness that embraces us and everything around us totally. Suddenly there is no more a me, it is us that recognizes and accepts the oneness of all life, the inter-connectedness with all that lives and that knowledge gives us a freedom that allows a new life to start consciously growing within.
All of us are suffering with dissatisfaction, anxiety and any of a number of other afflictive emotions that the Buddhists call delusions. The beginning of life is suffering as we fight out way out of the birth canal and continues throughout our lives until the very end that is marked with sickness, old age and finally death. All of this suffering is rooted in the mind so if there is to be healing it must start with the mind. To journey into the mind is what meditation is about, of identifying and ridding ourselves of negative states of mind and enhancing the positive states of mind. Delusions are states of mind that separate us from each other and the causative factor of conflicts in relationships and society, the them and us duality that creates division and dissension not only in our own community but in the world at large.
Mind is not something that one can hold. Mind is the unfolding of thought and as such is material since it comes from the brain, that blob of grey matter from whence comes our thoughts, memories, beliefs, behaviors and moods and coordinates the abilities of the senses. Our nervous system contains at least 100 billion nerve cells that run throughout the whole body like strings making connections with the brain. The jungle medicine, the vine of the soul, allows us to cut through all of those delusions or states of mind, the duality of subject and object that separates us not just from one another but from all of nature; trees, birds, the oceans, mountains, the environment, all of which is a part of us as well. How it does this extraordinary manoeuvre we’re still not certain but the fact remains that it does.
The next morning after our session the Ancient One drove us to the beach on the other side of the island. It was a day of total serenity devoid even of the desire for a morning cup of coffee. I sat on the beach for about four hours while the maestro went body surfing. I sat as still as a stone reflecting on the existence of the multiple worlds that I had visited and the reality of the spirit beings that had led me though those fantastic realms of consciousness. I was in a state of total completion and a sense of rapture pervaded my whole being, something that I had never experienced before. Looking at the sea I could feel the tides within me, rising and falling, inhalation, exhalation, the bellows of life and death, flowing in and out, the cosmic waves of creation.
How grateful I was for this experience to visit those hidden worlds of consciousness. With humble gratitude I thanked the Ancient One for his wisdom and his guidance and his allies and for those plant teachers that opened the hidden door and showed me the way into the parallel forest of my mind and nervous system.
As the time approached for me to return to the world the question in my mind was not so much my capability of maintaining my rapture, my sense of completion, for I knew that would probably fade over time, but the ability to integrate what I learned into my everyday life.
“There is nothing to integrate,” the Ancient One said, “A transformation has already taken place and it will remain.”
Rapture, euphoria are words that cover a multitude of mental and emotional states from alcohol and drug intoxication, the pain inducing practices of the masochist, to demonic possession and the divine raptures of Plotinus and innumerable Christian and Hindu mystics. What I experienced after the wild excitement and intensely ecstatic ride through the antediluvian swamps of my unconscious netherworld and after the symbolic purge of my past and lower life was more akin to that “peace that passeth undestanding,” that state of contemplative rapture reminiscent of the mystics of old. I did not pass beyond my self but passed into a state that was more myself, into a cool, clear sighted reality that infused my with light and understanding. When the intensity of the light dies out, which I knew it would eventually, I would once again stand alone before the altar of the mystery of my own life. But now I had been washed clean and given a fresh start, a necessary prerequisite for a complete and permanent penetration of the light into my consciousness.

I returned to my home on the banks of the Ganges, to Banaras, the sacred city of the Hindus and repository of it’s five thousand year old culture and temple of Indian philosophic wisdom. Of its many systems of thought the one doctrine that runs through all of them, like a string though a necklace of beads, is the belief that the human soul is uncreated, deathless and absolutely real. Throughout it’s history this intangible mystery has haunted her thinkers in the never ceasing effort to understand and to put that understanding into practice. For them philosophy is sophistry if its function is not for the guidance of action and the ordering of life for when philosophy is alive and thriving it cannot be remote from the people and their deep concerns of birth and death and the constant suffering that continues thoughout. Philosophy, when carried to it’s logical conclusion, becomes religion when tested and tempered by the fires of life. Not dogma, or those creeds anxious to save the world, but the recognition of the one cosmic mind, the creative spirit whose dance was the dance of creation, whose dance sustains us and whose dance will eventually destroy us if the human heart is not radicalized by peace, love and light.

Shangrila-La Redux

Swayambutha Temple near Kathmandu

Kathmandu, the Royal Mountain Kingdom of Nepal, with emanations and vibrations of Shangri-La, the United Nations, ex-pat Americans and Europeans, the Nepalese Army and their beloved brother-foes, the Maoists.

Most of the time I only experience the Shangri-La part behind brick walls surrounded by a lush green garden of ferns, indigenous bushes and trees of every shape and size; elephant ear leaves of taro and banana, flowers of every imaginable color mingling with the brilliantly hued sarongs of the young women working in the garden. In the background can be heard the flapping of prayer flags, the low drone of chanting monks and the occasional piercing blast of a Tibetan long horn, the clanging of giant cymbals or the deep and melodious reverberations of a monastery gong. It’s almost like the James Hilton novel, Lost Horizon, that I read when I was twelve years old but then one only needs to step outside the walls to see that it’s a different world.

The other night I went to a gathering at the house of a U.S. Senator’s multi-talented, delightfully mad, hippie daughter, the night before to the palatial house of an old Dutch Burgher antique dealer and his harem of dusky, sloe-eyed beauties. The exchange rate is about seventy rupees to the dollar and ten dollars buys a huge amount of groceries or a big hunk of hash.

Sitting in front of a computer screen here on top of the world, looking out onto a beautiful garden and writing to people all over the world, what a wonderful way to spend one’s time. Sometimes I stroll down to the giant stupa and linger over a morning coffee in one of the many small cafes that encircle it. Monks and townspeople and funny, serious western types come to circumambulate this holy shrine, mumble in their beads and spin prayer wheels in the eternal quest for enlightenment, a more auspicious rebirth or a new Honda motorcycle. Not wishing for any of these I am happy to just sit and watch.

There is a small coterie of beggars that wait for me on my morning walks; two Indian sadhus, a one legged man and another young man that glides across the ground on twisted, malformed legs, all seeming to know when I am coming. No welfare or disability here, no crazy pay for the mad hatters, no kinder-gelt for the poor moms. These are the real holy men and women of this religious land of grand monasteries with priceless art treasures and golden domes; the beggars and scavengers, the cripples and whores, the goondas, the dregs of humanity that evoke thoughts and feelings of such great intensity that one cannot help but be transformed by them. These experiences are an everyday affair, an entheogenic voyage, a daily epiphany of insights and illuminations that the west does not offer its inhabitants, Oprah land not withstanding.

This is the home of the King of the World and the Mother of the Gods., two local residents that I see several times a week. The smile and wave hello, never asking but always receptive to a small donation. How can one not donate to such royalty? One’s beneficence may one day affect the king that rules this land at present, a ruler that few like but all are afraid of. When he dies his son is waiting in the wings, a chip off the old block, as they say.

The Maoists clamor for entrance to the palace gates. Outside the walls steely-eyed, camo-dressed gurkas with automatic weapons patrol the tree lined roads that surround the palace and give hard looks to all passersby, their finger always on the trigger. Blue uniformed policemen and riot squad guys with big shields and guns and sticks are everywhere in sight and concertina barbed wire and sand bag fortifications loom large in many neighborhoods. How nice not to be a person of importance.

There are many westerners here in various capacities; dharma scholars, antique and textile dealers, NGO workers, Social Security retirees, left-over hipsters and drug dealers. One can stay five months a year on a tourist visa for about a dollar and day or get any number of longer visas; research, business, retirement etc., for a price. (Visas are one of Nepal’s major industries). And India’s holy city of Banaras is only forty-five minutes away by plane when one grows weary of the guns, pollution and political situation.

In India the full repertoire of feint and maneuver, coercion and cajolery come into play, the caged despair of the hungry and unsatisfied. It is a good school for the teaching of patience, the ability to just be without anxiety. The false pride and moral standards of the west need to be relinquished if one is to survive. Survival demands that we stand alone, devoid of the baggage of conditioning and desire and be ready to die at any time, to shut off the brain and release the sorrow that binds us to the wheel of time. Camus has said that one is most awake on the way to the gallows. In Asia the hangman’s noose is everywhere and death is observed everyday or one is not paying attention. Living in Asia is both a deeper life experience and a deeper death experience. A good place to live, a good place to die.



Today on my morning walk to the giant stupa I saw a child? Man? Baby?

With a body weighing no more than fifteen pounds and a head larger than a basketball with two more protuberances the size of cut-in-half grapefruits growing out from it. The whole thing looked like it was ready to explode onto the circle of people staring at him. The mother, sitting on the ground, held him as if nursing while explaining in Nepali what his condition was and thanking the people as they donated a coin or small bill.

Though this poor being was sweating and obviously uncomfortable he looked amazingly alert and intelligent and as I looked into his eyes there was a flicker of recognition, some kind of connection that allowed the both of us to see deep into each other. At first I thought, how horrible, that such specimens of humanity should be eliminated at birth for the can only suffer untold anguish, humiliation and pain but the more I looked into his eyes the more I saw a soul, a brain and a mind that could very well be much more advanced than the puny one that we so arrogantly carry around.

If mind is the unfolding of thought and thought is the result or output of the brain’s activity then this huge brain throbbing inside the skull of this person could be a developing mutation struggling to find and keep its place in the hierarchy of primates that presently occupy the planet. Is this possible I ask? Or could this be another form from another planet who has floated down on a thread of DNA to eventually occupy this land that we humans are destroying with our greed and aggression?

Twenty years ago I saw another such person in a small village in the north of Thailand, a huge pumpkin head in a tiny, withered body, lying in a baby carriage as the mother solicited contributions. They looked similar, could have been twins or members of the same mutated species that have evolved into this extreme deviation to teach us about mind and intelligence and slowly replace us as we become extinct due to AIDS, TB, greenhouse gases, drugs and war. And if they have come down, say from Alpha Centauri, there must be more. And if these huge brains and withered bodies were to return to their place of becoming would they refer to us as huge bodies with withered brains that they observed on their travels?

Or are these just isolated examples of encephalitis, “water on the brain,” a condition more prevalent in Asia due to heat, dirt, diet and strange tropical diseases, and one that has not been swept under the carpet or warehoused in special institutions as we do in the west. What if two members of this group were to have children? Would their offspring have the same characteristics, the same brain size and intelligence, the same underdeveloped bodies and withered appendages?

Those are relative terms of course; underdeveloped in relation to what? Withered in relation to what? To say that they are underdeveloped and withered is stating an absolute—that which does not stand in relation to anything else and that prevails all the time and everywhere—which is not the case with homo sapiens. We are as varied as the snowflakes, all beautifully shaped and singularly unique and equal in our humanity. And if the world is God made manifest then those two specimens of humanity, and all the others of their form and substance, are just other versions like all of us and with as much right to live as all of us, if they so choose.

But what if they are not specimens of humanity? What if they were not human? Could they be angels? What is an angel? A spiritual being not of the corporeal world of time and space? An immaterial substance? A disembodied spirit? An article of faith? A winged doer of good deeds? A bringer of light and wisdom?

There is not much in the annals of Hinduism or Buddhism regarding angels and there is no theological, philosophical or scientific proof that angels exist in any of the major religions of the world. But there is no proof that they do not exist and the two beings that I saw, both times in a Buddhist setting and in areas of holy shrines, indeed carried with them a radiant, celestial presence once one overcame the shock of their forms.

Angels exist as an article of faith in the revealed religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and there are angelic intimations in some Buddhist circles that manifest in divine forms such as mother goddesses or heavenly helpers. Generally these beings have beautiful configurations, ethereal, sometimes with wings signifying other worldliness, as if from heaven or even the nether reaches of the underworld of darkness and shadows, as in the angel of death. But never distorted or misshapen, never frightening in appearance , weak or physically helpless; these characteristics belong to the world of evil, bad karma, hell, suffering, punishment, all that we are afraid of and try to avoid during our life.

However, since there are handsome forms of evil as well, one could presume that grotesque angels also exist. Osama and Sadddam are handsome men and Hitler would not have been considered ugly or funny looking had it not been for his moustache and haircut. Mother Theresa, considered by many a living angel when alive and a saint since dead, had much inner beauty but little of the outer.

Does an angel bring happiness? Wisdom? Comfort? The ever smiling drug dealer on Freak Street does that, the whores and madams of the brothels do that, aid and attendance, an anodyne for a tired body with a soul in anguish as it awaits the angel of death, handsome in his black robes and deep black eyes, bloodless white face ready to sweep us up into his robes and carry us off to places unimagined by mortal man.

Death. Om Mani Padme Hum, Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus. Everyone here in the Buddhist community where I am is getting ready for death and hoping they won’t have to come back again.. How about you out there …..are you ready?

Sadhus

With the Naked Philosophers

Naked Sadhus
When I told my father as a young lad that I wanted to study philosophy he replied that a degree in philosophy and a dime would get me a cup of coffee. Philosophy is a poor man’s discipline, he said, all of the great philosophic minds throughout history were just a step away from being naked beggars. Indeed, philosophy by it’s very definition, the love of wisdom, requires of her lovers to be minimalists in the ways of the world for a man of excess, or someone whose time is occupied in getting and spending, will be inclined to spend as little energy as possible in pondering the enigma of existence and the mysteries therein.

In India there are about ten million sadhus; philosopher-holy men who traditionally wander the country homeless and penniless. Often naked, staying for no more than three days in a village usually under a tree or in a small temple, they teach their own particular doctrine or brand of knowledge to these isolated villages, bringing news from other communities and the world in general, blessing the people and maybe propitiating the gods for a bountiful harvest or for many strong, fat sons. In return they are fed and treated with that reverential respect of student to teacher or disciple to guru. They do not charge for their services, many have taken a vow never to touch money, but are usually open to donations which are considered a benefit to both parties, for to feed a man who has devoted his life to the higher calling is not only an honor but an act that gains merit in this life as well as the next.

Naked Baba
There are many such philosophical practitioners here in Banaras, the city of Shiva the destroyer and re-creator and third aspect of the Hindu trimurti, and they come from all walks of life having left the mundane world of getting and spending, possessing and enjoying for a life of philosophic and spiritual study and discipline. Clothed only in the ash from a sacred fire, their few possessions consist of a vessel for food and water, a blanket, a small bag for pipe and smoking material, religious accoutrements, notebook, pen and book for the more literate ones and often a trishul, a trident type of weapon the more ardent followers of Shiva carry. Some live in the smashan or charnel grounds where dead bodies are burned or buried. There, seated on an animal skin in a forest of skulls and bones, smoking a chillum, a crude pipe of hashish and potent tobacco, they meditate-contemplate the enigma of life and death and prepare for their entrance into the next world.

Theirs is an itinerant life as well, often being compared to flowing water for they have no attachment or emotional bonds to people or places. Often the highest status will be ascribed to that sadhu who detaches himself from all human society and concentrates only on freeing himself from the wheel of birth and death and thus becoming one with the universe.

And what is this thing called death, they ask? A big sleep to wake up in another body? An endless cycle of births and deaths until liberation is achieved? Or is it a reawakening of the same person in a parallel universe destined to repeat the same actions ad infinitum? Does one really die? What is it dies? Is there anything that lives on? These are the questions the naked philosopher ponders while living in the graveyard; the mystery life and death and the eternal wheel of samsara with its endless rounds of suffering, birth, old age and death. And in his practice he pushes his life to the very limits for in order to be assured a more fortunate rebirth or better still no rebirth at all, he must empty his karmic warehouse of all negativity and debt through means of austerities, sacrifices, deeds and other forms of worship; he must plunge into the purge of the self, surrendering himself to the power of the gods in a quest to become one with them.

I look down from my tower room onto the ghats, the large stone stairs leading down to the water of the holy Ganges. They are teeming with humanity intent on purification. Hundreds of people taking a bath in this holy river, some submerging themselves completely, others offering water and prayers heavenward, others doing yoga or meditating and all are clothed, the women in their saris, the men in langotas or underwear. Indians are a most conservative and modest nation of people and hardly ever will you see the exposed flesh of a woman except for that space between the sari and blouse which for some reason is not considered appealing or provocative.

But wait! Over there are some naked people bathing, a wild looking bunch whose emanating energy sets them apart from the other bathers. Ah, those are the philosophical practitioners and not only is their nudity acceptable but is revered as a natural state shorn of the influences of the material world and thus closer to God. Another group sits in a circle near the water’s edge. They pass a pipe around with devotion, putting it to their forehead and saying a short prayer before taking a puff. This group has long hair, some down to the ground, a symbol of their renunciation. Sadhus follow a strict hair code; they either let it all grow or they shave it all off. Anything in-between is vanity.

These philosopher-saints, as they are called, live and travel arduously, with no attachment or emotional bonds to people or places and never allowing themselves to get comfortable. They constantly study and teach the scriptures and philosophical systems of Hinduism engaging in dialogue and dialectical debate and serving the people as mentor-philosopher-counselor, often advising on personal and marital problems as well as business and giving their sage viewpoint and opinions on the complexities of human existence.

“A true philosopher cannot charge money for his God given wisdom,” one of them told me, “and besides, once you charge a fee the government starts to meddle and all objectivity and freedom is gone. The purist way is by donation. God gives to you. You give to me. Whatever comes we are happy. If nothing comes we are still happy. We have nothing, need nothing and desire nothing. It is all a gift from God.”

When I told him that in America we have an organization of philosophical practitioners that charge a fee for their services and are certified by the government he asked if they went about naked. When I replied in the negative and told him we would be put in jail if we appeared in public naked he roared with laughter. “Philosophy is the last bastion of freedom in a world gone mad with women and gold, lust and greed,” he replied. “Truth is always compromised when gold is involved. We don’t even compromise with clothes for the costumes we wear tell more about who we would like to be rather than who we really are and thus not a true indicator of what we are. Take off your clothes and come walk with us and you will see and feel the difference. Truth and freedom cannot be compromised.”

A monkey leaps onto my windowsill from above and proceeds to masturbate while I write, looking me straight in the eye the whole time. He has long, wispy white hair and large, intelligent looking eyes.. Another naked, philosophical practitioner living in truth and freedom, I think. What a wild and wonderful place is this land called India, land of philosophy, of enigma, of a mystic potency born from the cosmic womb in great suffering and deep reverence. I heartily recommend to all who consider themselves serious students of philosophy to come and experience the depth and breadth of this ancient culture, a culture whose thinkers, long before the birth of Socrates and Plato, formed a remarkable record of philosophical development, of systems, of world views born of reflection and experience that was not remote from the life of the people. Come, and you don’t have to take your clothes off... if you don’t want to.
Naga Baba

Coming soon ...

Tara's website: www.anutara.com

An American Passion Play

“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bonds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." -- Abraham Lincoln

http://www.geocities.com/sntacruz/index02.html

Orders for the book should be sent to:

Pilgrim's Book House, B27/98 A-8, Durga Kund, Varanasi, India
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Ralph Metzner

Metzner Alchemical Divination Practices

Stupa in Dho Tarap

Ratnasambhava

Occupying a central role in Vajrayana Buddhism, Ratnasambhava, is the Lord of the 4th of the Five Buddha Families of tantra and found throughout all 4 tantra sets most notably in the anuttarayoga class.

Heruka Chakrasamvara

The 12-armed and 3-headed Heruka Chakrasamvara, the central deity of the mandala, embraced and in sexual union by his female consort, the red Vajravarahi. He wears a tiger skin, standing in the midst of wisdom flames, and tramples on two corpses. In his hands he holds various attributes, symbolizing his magical perfections. His main 2 arms hold vajra and gantha (cepter & bell), demonstrating, that he has overcome duality. As an emanation of the Buddha Akshobhya family (water-element), the deity transforms hate energy into enlightening wisdom. He is surrounded by (top): the three main Bodhisattvas Manjushri, Chenrezig, Vajrapani and (bottom): Palden Lhamo, Heruka Protector Deity and the Citipati skelleton dancers. There exist various forms of this deity, like the popular 2-armed emanation as seen at the background.
http://www.iol.ie/~taeger/yesheque/chakrasa.html

Biography

India Jones is the son of Indiana Jones and the Maharani of Shadrapur. He was educated in India, Washington D.C. and Paris, graduating from the Sorbonne at age 14 and receiving a doctorate in Philosophy at age 16. Upon graduation, he returned to India to live and study with his guru, Hakim Kutta, high in the Himalayan range near Tibet.
The Hakim, alleged by some to be an ascended master, taught India many secrets and instructed him to return to the West in order to educate the so called developed countries about the visionary substances that have for so long been used in the East. India lives in California when he is not in India.


Hakim Kutta (loosely translated as Doctor Dog) is a little old man with white beard who lives and studies the esoteric wisdom of the ages high up in a secret valley near the Tibetan border. It is the home of the tiny blue bindi flower that blossoms for only four days a year and contains the most powerful and meaningful visionary experience known to man…if prepared correctly. The Hakim's preparation is the result of centuries of refinement.

Om Mani Padme Hum

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