COSMIC PHYSICAL
INITIATION 0: THRESHOLD: Part I (March 1973 - September 1973): The Fourth State: Transcendental Consciousness
Just like fingerprints and retinal patterns, no two people's spiritual Paths are exactly alike --- indeed, that is why we all have manifested as individuals: to approach and embrace the Multiversal Divinity from our unique perspectives, thereby enhancing and adding to Divinity's multiple appreciation of Itself. Nonetheless, there are certain things we all share by virtue of manifesting a human nervous system --- the need for air and water and food, for warmth and love and autonomy --- and the need to understand who we are and where we are going. My path was and is identical to no one's, yet there are many milestones I have shared in common with others. I have in the past been most grateful to those who shared some of their experiences with me and clarified my understanding of the Path, and it is my hope that others may benefit from my contribution. I hasten to add that this is only a map, and like all maps, it probably contains errors both of omission and comission.
While all my life I have read everything I could find on magical and subtle realms --- the realms of subtle body and soul --- I especially remember that in the early '70's --- the first years that I was consciously on the Path --- I also voraciously read everything I could find on the Path's milestones of spirit.
In my senior year at Morse High School (1972-73) in Bath, Maine, I came across the Edgar Cayce material, specifically the landmark There is a River by Thomas Sugrue. How inspiring Cayce's life was; how I wished that I had clairvoyant gifts like his! I was voted "Most Talented" and "Most Studious" by my Senior classmates, but my own gifts of art and writing were so mundane. I had wanted to be a doctor as a child, but now flinched from the physician's continual exposure to suffering, as depicted in some very graphic medical books my father had helpfully found for me at auction. Edgar Cayce's life-path as psychic diagnostician seemed to be the perfect solution! But I could find no such subtle gifts in myself.
The book also first exposed me to the Perennial Philosophy: that we are Souls who have emanated from Divinity, and descended into various bodies until we landed on Earth, where we have spent many lifetimes learning balance and love, preparing us for a return to Divinity. There is no injustice; only a balancing of all of our Soul's countless actions, both "good" and "bad." I intuitively felt the truth of this, which led to a study of deeper layers of the Bible, and the Upanishads. While reading the Upanishads ("I am not the body, I am not the emotions, I am not the thoughts, I am not the mind"), I consciously transcended for the first time, and momentarily awakened a deeper Self. It seemed to be "behind" my usual self, witnessing everything while pouring its presence out of my forehead, in the region of my third eye. I was now on fire with the idea of spiritual enlightenment, and I attempted to meditate on my own, with little or no success.
Soon afterwards (March 23, 1973) I began a mantra-yoga called Transcendental Meditation (TM), and had a wonderful initiation experience of transcendence --- an inner laughter plunging into a pure, silent openness inside. I wasn't quite sure what had happened: I hadn't been awake, nor had I been dreaming or asleep. I was later informed that this was the fourth state of consciousness, transcendental consciousness; beyond the "normal" three states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. It was described as a state of very deep rest, deeper even than sleep, together with a heightened inner awareness: a mind fully awake, but with no thoughts coloring that awareness. That sounded accurate; I only knew that it was good, and I wanted more. I believe that this was my Threshold Initiation, where the Higher Self descended as far as my Crown Chakra, and the Lower Self ascended as far as my Foot Center or Elemental Physical Realm.
I then spent the next year faithfully practicing meditation twice a day, every day, with few obvious results, except for one terrifically ecstatic experience of soul-fusion with a bunch of birds singing on the roof above me, and a newly-focused decision to enjoy life by adjusting my attitude. Some of my shyness disappeared; that spring I mustered the courage to telephone my classmate idol, the exotically beautiful Margaret, asking her to walk with me at graduation. She said Yes! The immensely popular "Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" burst into my brain with new, deeply meaningful resonance; I too felt as if "the whole damn bus was cheering" as I ran out onto our front lawn in amazed gratitude at being found acceptable in the eyes of my goddess. My memory also improved somewhat; on having to stand before the entire town (it seemed) at graduation to deliver my essay on "Esperanto, a World Language," I found to my dismay I had left my notes outside the gym, but managed to give the entire speech from memory with only one three-second eternity of amnesia.
As I let go of worry, anxiety, and moodiness, incidentally my headaches, stomach-pains and insomnia also disappeared. I also discovered while lying in bed one night, that I could consciously stop my heart: by relaxing, merging my consciousness with it, and stopping "myself" --- not by exerting any muscles; just by pure intent. When I released my attention, it would restart, beating quickly for a bit and then settling down to its regular pace. During this time I also attempted Astral Projection and Telekinesis, with few results.
I did have several mind-blowing afternoons of perfect and repeatable telepathy with my brother John, as if we shared the same inner TV screen --- always on the full moons. We found that for hours on end, with eyes closed, we could visualize shapes, numbers, colors, even write out whole words and phrases on our inner visual screen, and as we did so, the characters would appear clearly and simultaneously on the other's screen.
While I knew my father as a psychologist would be interested, I also knew his innate skepticism would have ruined our telepathy; even the essentially-neutral presence of our youngest brother Mark completely disrupted the transmissions. This was my first brush with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which roughly states that on quantum-mechanical levels of reality, the perceiver affects the perceived with his very choice of perception-frameworks. Theoretically, with meditation and attunement our minds can consciously partake of the normally sub- or superconscious magic of quantum reality from which they emerge; perhaps we were consciously resonating with quantum levels while experiencing that perfect simultaneity of telepathy. And on the other hand, a dedicated skeptic could actually use his own quantum-field to deny his conscious participation in that very field! In this way we might all share the unconscious hypnosis of the skeptic's self-imposed exile from the magical quantum-field paradise, to live in a Newtonian illusion of separate billiard-balls randomly colliding in a harsh vacuum.
We weren't allowed to watch much TV; I spent most of my indoor free-time reading, drawing, or listening to the huge, antique radio that I had bought at auction. Finely crafted of polished wood in a round-shouldered art-deco style, it resembled nothing so much as a 1930's jukebox, and when I turned it on it always surprised me a bit to hear the modern world emerge. Somehow I always expected it to broadcast the '30's music it was crafted to play. It could bring in AM, FM, and shortwave; I often wandered the world, watching the radio's glowing green eye pulsate as I fine-tuned stations from Canada, Spain, and even the U.S.S.R., while dreaming of a career in the foreign service. More often, though, I tuned its enormous speaker to our hometown WJTO, bringing in the latest rock-and-roll hits. That summer of '73 one of my favorites was "Shambala" by Three Dog Night; I soared to its Utopian vision, but little suspected that Shambala actually existed on the subtle planes, nor that I would indeed come to find the secret of perfect bliss through walking its halls with the Masters about nine years later.
I read The Science of Being and the Art of Living and The Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, both by TM's founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and the wonderful Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahamsa Yogananda, which opened my eyes to a whole realm of spiritual possibilities. I still had a deep case of "Seeker's Burn" --- the painful desire for enlightenment.
Meanwhile I worked around our farm that summer, painting and clapboarding the barns with my youngest brother Mark to earn money for college; middle brother John was spending the summer as a tour-guide for the Shakers at Sabbathday Lake. I also bicycled the twelve miles into Brunswick three times a week to attend a driver's ed class. I got my permit by summer's end but never did get a license: I had gotten a scholarship to attend Harvard College that fall, and moving to Cambridge with its marvelous system of subways and buses rendered driving unnecessary --- and I found the Massachusetts drivers to be too chaotically suicidal to trust my own abilities behind the wheel with them.
