A Spiritual Autobiography

INITIATION V: MASTERY (December 1982 - January 1985): The Ninth State: Krishna Consciousness

Part II (June 1983 - December 1983)

While walking one day in Harvard Square, I realized I could, with eyes open, resolve the whole "movie" of my perceptions back into the primal white light of the "projector" of my own consciousness. Everything --- the sidewalks, Nini's Corner, the skyscapers, the quickly striding bankers and strolling students --- faded and dissolved into the overwhelming radiance of Divinity, until, for fear that I would lose this world permanently, I let go of the attunement, and watched the world reappear around me. I was growing tired of "channeling" and wished to integrate both worlds fully, with eyes open, but this didn't quite seem to do it.

In September of 1983, Kerry and I attended a reunion of sorts in the apsidal theatre of Harvard's Memorial Hall. Dr. Richard Alpert, better known to many as Ram Dass, and Dr. Timothy Leary gave a talk on the twentieth anniversary of their expulsion from Harvard for unauthorized LSD research. Memorial Theatre was packed with skeptical Harvard students, who watched as the two famous gurus spoke of their separate paths through the intervening years since their removal.

I had long revered Ram Dass for his classic Be Here Now, which I had first read at a distance of only one decade and about 150 yards from this very spot. At every pause in the conversation, Ram Dass would close his eyes, and his face would light up, glowing in blissful radiance. To my surprise, others saw his light; one student criticised him, asking him peevishly if Ram Dass wasn't merely escaping by going off to some blissful realm when so much work needed to be done here. Ram Dass cheerfully pointed out that when one needed something, one went to the place that offered it; then one could bring it back to where it was not. A most sensible answer, I thought, but I was not as impressed with Ram Dass's handling of Tim Leary, who was emitting a kind of brittle brilliance of his own --- with eyes open. An advocate of physical immortality and space-travel, Leary was most excited about the possibilities of the computer revolution for consciousness expansion, and felt that Ram Dass was being a bit too traditional in his spiritual fundamentalism.

Leary was like a perennial Irish gadfly, who flew circles around Ram Dass and delighted in continually biting at Ram Dass's bovinely patient adherence to his Hindu path and guru. I noted with surprise the drama unfolding between them; Leary seemed much like a boy continually teasing his younger brother. Ram Dass bought into it; he attempted to cling to his self-posession, but gradually his aura-field got darker and redder under Leary's continual verbal stings. While I still regarded Ram Dass highly for his spiritual work, I came away from the reunion respecting Leary slightly more than Ram Dass. Ram Dass was a devoted follower; Leary was an original thinker who had done his best to individuate himself fully. Leary's radiance seemed more integrated than that of Ram Dass, who spoke easily of transpersonal calm but gave in as easily to personal rage when his beliefs were challenged. However, to be fair, I knew my preference might stem at least in part from the fact that I was myself an older brother, and could more easily identify with Leary's role than Ram Dass's: While no longer delighting in cruelty, I still loved to stir people up, to challenge their limitations, as Leary had done to Ram Dass. As I think back on them now, I would have to say I respect them equally.

By September, Annie's lease was up, and we had gone a few miles north to Fresh Pond to live with Jeanie, an old classmate of Annie's from Governor Training, who had come with her husband to live with Annie and me when they first moved to Massachusetts. She was now separated from her own husband, and in need of some healing. To my delight, they eventually reconciled.

This whole period of time was difficult for Kerry, more difficult than I knew. While she had rebelliously wanted to leave her mother and the small town of Fairfield behind, she had now jumped into very deep water. No family or friends of her own, living in Annie's old apartment, participating in healing circles with Annie, and then living with Annie's closest friend --- it was wearing on her. Furthermore, her job at Cardullo's did not go well --- the owner did not like her much, and vice versa. Kerry, a vivacious, fresh-faced girl of barely nineteen, began to look more and more like her own boss --- a squat, severe sixty-year-old. She still projected her habitual facade of brilliantly precocious competence, though. I knew she wasn't completely happy, but it was many months before I learned to penetrate this facade to empathize completely with her deeper feelings.

In September, Nancy called us --- she had been staying on Eleuthera at the Club Med near Governor's Harbor for several weeks, and had now found a beach-house right in town. Our share of the rent would be $300 a month. Were we interested? We were!

We gave notice on our jobs and flew down in October: a 727 to Miami, and then a small 8-seater flying low over the Caribbean --- we could see the underwater masonry of "Atlantis" near Bimini --- to a very small airport north of Governor's Harbor on Eluethera. Still dressed for New England's autumn, we were dazed by the tropical heat as we embarked in an ancient taxicab for Governor's Harbor. Glorious sea-vistas peeped through the palms on our right throughout the taxi's mad dash south. What a paradise! The house was spacious and stuccoed, with a porch overlooking the Gulf, and Nancy welcomed us warmly.

Within a few days, however, Annie called --- our divorce was being processed, and if it was to be no-fault, I had to come to Lowell, Massachusetts to see the judge and sign the final papers. I flew back to Massachusetts. The judge was somewhat puzzled when I cited irreconciliable differences: Annie wanted to stay in one place and be a house-holder; I had received a calling to travel around and teach and heal. "Could you heal me?" said the judge quizzically. "Yes...." I replied, thinking, "If you really wanted it, and were open to it..." "Hm!" said the Judge. "All right!" and he stamped the papers.

When I returned to the Bahamas newly divorced, I received quite a different reception from Kerry's mother than I had gotten the week before. First, they hadn't been sure I was really going to Massachusetts to get a divorce, or that I was coming back! Secondly, she had now talked to Kerry about the last six months, and was furious with me, blaming me for Kerry's Cantabrigian misery. We talked quite a bit, and things eased up some. Nancy had had a very rough marriage to Kerry's dad, an alcoholic who had mentally abused her and lied to her about his multitudinous affairs. She was carrying quite a bit of mistrust and resentment towards men in general. I was not Kerry's dad and was quite trustworthy, but I had definitely been insensitive to Kerry's plight; I would try to be more sensitive in the future.

Nancy seemed to be going through a great deal of emotional turmoil over the next few months, but I really wasn't sure much of the time if it was hers or mine. I could acutely feel the emotions as if they were mine, but they didn't feel like mine, and they seemed to be coming from Nancy. I was aware of them no matter how far apart we were, but proximity intensified the suffering. I could feel obsessive jealous attachment to Kerry, hatred and envy and lust for me, loneliness and a childlike love of God...often all mixed up together. In an odd way, when I "saw" her praying to God, it was as if she were praying to me! On the surface she seemed relatively sunny and calm. I could not figure this out. I was being shaken apart by the almost constant silent storms! Nothing I tried --- cutting the subtle "cords" between us, etc. ---seemed to help. Meanwhile, we all swam nude in turquoise seas, sunned ourselves on fine white sands, and took long walks past lacy gingerbread houses nestled among the palms and casuarina, amidst fragrant profusions of jasmine, hibiscus, and bougainvillea. We played cards, and talked, and read, and ate, and meditated, and swam some more. Kerry shed the accumulated sufferings of Cambridge, and bloomed again.

The Bahamians were wonderful people, but it was a little odd being one of the white minority. Eventually I began to feel as if our trio were also black, and was surprised by the occasional white stranger's face I saw. The Bahamian women, especially, taught me a lot: In the U.S., most people returned my smile; here no woman did. They looked at me quite disapprovingly. I looked inside, and found that I was accustomed to carrying around an American facade; my polite smile masked a slightly fearful inner distance. I dropped the facade, and presented myself psychologically naked. The women responded immediately, beaming great loving smiles at me thereafter --- another teaching, all without a word being spoken.

October became November, and my inner work deepened: At times I could feel the agony of the whole Earth as it longed for healing; I was touched to the core by sorrow and compassion. A very dense little being, an Elemental about four feet tall, "appeared" in our room and offered me the wealth of the world. I had read that this was a normal stage of temptation in one's enlightenment, and that it was best to refuse politely. I refused politely. At about this same time, I channeled a vision of myself as Cup-Bearer, offering what appeared to be the Grail to Kerry. I believe now that the Elemental and the Cup-Bearer were both aspects of myself.

I continued reading the Alice Bailey material, meditating on the descriptions of the seven rays. Four minor rays were permutations of the third, the Ray of Active Intelligence, while the second was the Ray of Love-Wisdom and the first was the Ray of Will. I was sitting in meditation, and I wondered: What would it feel like to fuse these three main Rays of Intelligence, Love, and Will?

Instantly, in my subtle body I was sitting in a pyramid, which held a large, yellow-green column of fire up through its middle. I approached the flame, and was told that it was my own DNA; I could change it if I wished. With some trepidation, I entered the flame, and was quickly pulled up inside. Time stopped, and I ascended, up through the top of the pyramid, into a large circle which was vibrating OMMMM very loudly. It was the note of my own Soul, sounding through the Universe.

I fused the three rays again in the next meditation, and repeated the sequence. This time I went through the vibrating portal, and emerged into a council of brightly-robed Masters! I was now one of them. They were arrayed in a circle, with a leader in the middle. I immediately identified with this central figure. Somehow, he and I were one. This was my Fifth Initiation, or Revelation, where the Higher Self descended as far as the Sex Center, and the Lower self ascended as far as the Throat Center or Atmic Subplane, the Realm of Akasha or Vibrating Space.

A few weeks after I typed these events of fourteen years past, I was unusually drawn to buy the current issue of Gnosis (No. 44: Summer 1997). A portion therein of Richard Smoley's article, "Masonic Civilization," throws some light on the Fifth-Initiation experience: On p. 16, he speaks of the Master Mason ritual, which re-enacts the slaying of Solomon's chief Temple architect Hiram Abiff by three "ruffians" who demand the Master Mason 's secret from Hiram, and kill him when he refuses to divulge it. Hiram is equated with consciousness; the Temple of Solomon he was building is the True Self; and the three ruffians are the ordinary functions of thinking, feeling, and doing, which attempt to attain the goal of integration, but fail:

Interestingly, the three ruffians are named Jubelo, Jubela, and Jubelum. The first part of these names is obviously akin to Jabal, discoverer of "the Science called Massonrie," while the suffixes resemble the Latin masculine, feminine, and neuter endings. But as [Harold W.] Percival [in Thinking and Destiny, pp. 680-686] notes, there is another dimension to these endings. If you put them together, you have "Aoum," or the sacred syllable "Om," which Percival equates with the true Mason's word. That is to say, the three ruffians, the inferior functions of man, possess part of the secret of consciousness. But they do not have the secret of integrating them and bringing them to the higher level symbolized by the Temple.

In subsequent meditations, I was shown a whole "stacking" of Masters or Higher Selves above me, one topped by another topped by still another. As I went through a given Initiation, my Higher or future Self went through that Initiation's higher harmonic, an Initiation of his own; while his Higher Self did the same on his own level. In fact, we were all one, and I could choose to identify with whatever level of Mastery felt right at any given moment. Time and space were ultimately illusory.

My mother wrote me that a very old family friend was dying of cancer in Maine; despite the woman's advanced age, this felt "wrong" to me. Since distance was an illusion, I felt I could heal her as if she were present. I sat down on the bed, closed my eyes, and aligned with the First Ray of pure Will. As I focussed it through the woman's field, I could feel her heating up, burning off the impurities, and knew that the power flowing through her now would either kill her quickly or heal her completely. I believed she would most likely heal. I found later that she had indeed run a high fever for those several days, and then gone into complete remission. She lived for many years thereafter.

I maintained correspondence with distant friends, channeling both for my mother and for several friend/clients I had helped in Fairfield, especially Karen from Wisconsin. It was a pleasure to see Karen growing so quickly; it had originally been painful to psychically enter the clouds of fear and anger pervading her house, but she had been applying the truths of the Guides for over a year now and her domestic subtle weather was now relatively calm and sunny.

Once I disobeyed my intuition, and went swimming in the Gulf on an overcast day when the water felt very unwelcoming. I never saw what stung me; it may have been a manta ray or the tentacles of a man o' war, but suddenly my right arm was in acute agony. As I climbed out of the water, my arm now bore a long, puffy reddish-purple streak, looking and feeling as if I had just been branded with white-hot iron. I went home, and sat down on the bed, and began to focus and relax into the pain, breathing through it, treating it like a rebirthing session. Almost instantly, the acute agony became acute ecstasy! As long as I stayed intently focused on the sensation it was sheer bliss, but as soon as my mind started slipping away it wailed back into agony. I stayed with it for about an hour and a half, until it needed no more attention. The pain was now completely gone, though the long welt remained for a few days. I had never tried rebirthing pain that was physical, and was most impressed that the technique worked as well as on psychic pain.

My relationship with Kerry deepened; I could "hear" her praying for her soul mate, and I told her so; it felt as if she were tugging on me! I felt deeply that I was that man; we were both so brilliantly Celtic, easily dwelling in the same faerie and celestial realms; we both loved art and poetry and astrology and mythology. It was puzzling, though; it seemed on subtle levels as if Nancy also expected me to marry her! I was repelled, and did my best to ignore this complication, assuming that it came from some past-life memories we both had of ancient Greece. Kerry's and my love-making was very good, and sometimes when she slept, I could see her dreams; it was odd, because she saw things differently than I; her perspective was sharper and the dreamscape's curves more abrupt than mine were.

One night we were standing on a pier over the Gulf at sunset, surrounded by the shell-pink glow of another gorgeous tropical evening, when I asked her to marry me. We hugged, and she accepted. We left the date vague, but began thinking about a 15th-century pagan-style ceremony. Kerry, like me, was fascinated by royalty and English folklore, and was dreaming of a wedding that included gilded rosemary with gaily-colored ribbons, mantle-pieces with swags of evergreen, and tea-roses everywhere.

Meanwhile, the tension with Nancy continued. Confusing images arose: I saw her sitting in a huge World-War-II tank; another time an iron eagle, wings rigidly outstretched, appeared on her brow. Again, it seemed as if we were two generals butting heads on the proper plan of attack. I mentioned none of this to her. The entire time, I was deluged with "her" emotions. I felt her scorn and contempt like physical blows, or like a rip-tide that I was attempting to swim against --- I was often physically exhausted just being in her presence. She appeared to think I was effeminate and lazy, an unworthy provider for Kerry. It was as if Nancy expected me to be like her father, or her own husband, typical mid-century business tycoons whom she greatly respected and yet whom she hated. I really couldn't win. At the same time, I found I could not think even the subtlest judgemental thought about Nancy; the instant I entertained it, I felt physical pain in my subtle body-mind. I eventually drew up a private "Bill of Rights" for myself, giving myself permission to be imperfect, free from judgement of myself or others. That helped, but the inner tension continued.

I finally gave up trying to figure out if the stuff was hers or mine, and decided it was a pattern between us --- and at that moment, my consciousness expanded, and I became huge. People's minds were now completely inside me; I was the thoughts and feelings --- the minds --- of everybody within several blocks of me. I realized now that it was O.K. to embrace imperfection as well as perfection; I was all stages of growth --- all beings --- simultaneously. I now felt the slate between Nancy and me was wiped clean. It seemed our Bahamian "Healing Center" had been for healing ourselves! I realized I had finished the healing I came here to do, and made plans with some relief to return to New England.

Kerry and I returned to Maine in late November, 1983, and spent a month in my mother's house on Great Island, not far from Brunswick. One day, my mother and step-father wished to photograph some antiques to meet the deadline for a sales-brochure, but there wasn't enough light outside. It was raining out; the sky was heavily overcast, and the forecast predicted more of the same for the next few days. I thought this would be a good chance to put my abilities to the test! A year or two after I started meditating I used to practice dissolving very small clouds, but I had never tackled a whole sky. My mother told me not to bother; it wasn't that important, but I was bound to try.

I went up stairs, sat down, and lifted into the clouds. I immediately met the rain-God, Indra, who wanted me to wrestle with him. I did, and beat him. Then I rose above the clouds, became the sun, and dissolved a hole in the clouds over Great Island. I did all this in the subtle realm, and returned to consciousness feeling very spacey. I went downstairs and said I had done my best; it should be clearing up very shortly. The rain and clouds were as heavy as before. A few minutes later, though, I looked up. It was light out! We went outside. I had never seen anything like it --- the grey-black clouds had been neatly pushed back in a tremendous circle almost to the horizon all around us, leaving blue sky and bright sun overhead. My parents took the photographs.

During this time, we also played a lot with psychometry --- my stepfather had collected an immense number of artifacts, from paleolithic to Roman, during his years in England. He would lug out boxes of the stuff, and I would hold a piece in my hands, and then pick up some of its history --- I could feel myself becoming the person who had used the tool, see and feel how the tool was used, and often see the environment around. Once, holding a large paleoloithic hand-axe, I was moved almost to tears --- it held the holograph of a number of Cro-Magnons sitting around a camp, laughing together --- the unity of consciousness they enjoyed was so perfect! I saw how much we had lost in the past 40,000 years.

I also continued the experiments in manifestation that I had begun with John C. in Fairfield; once I attempted to manifest a small aquamarine in my hand. It was still invisible, but present aetherically, when Kerry came into the room. I asked if she could "see" what I was creating. "Mmm....an aquamarine!" she said. I never did acquire the patience or knack to materialize these things completely into the physical, though.

Kerry and I went apartment-hunting in Portland, Maine in late December, and found a nice studio in a large Victorian house on State Street for $300 a month. We took it, and moved in on January 1, 1984.

NEXT: Part III (January 1984 - July 1985)