INITIATION VI: ASCENSION (February 1985 - March 1987): The Tenth State: Shiva Consciousness
Part III (March 1986 - September 1986)
Around my thirtieth birthday, Kerry and I incorporated one of our closest friends into a menage-a-trois. A Scorpio, she was a divorced mother of two, around ten years older than I, and 18 years older than Kerry. She had been a rebirthing-client of mine for some months, until around the new year --- I was then habitually seeing her in her Goddess form, seated on a subtle lotus, and felt I could take her no further as a counselor. We mutually decided to end the counseling relationship, but remained very close friends. While visiting her house one day in March, I noticed a rich, warm, erotic energy flowing from her towards Kerry. On the way home I mentioned this to Kerry, who said she would be interested in exploring that. Kerry had always been interested in expressing her bisexuality someday; now seemed like the perfect time. We spoke with our friend a few days later, and before we knew it, we were a threesome.
For several months, this was heavenly --- the flow of love between us all was perfectly triangular, and would simply build and build as it circulated among us. There seemed to be no end to its depths. After lovemaking we would go out to eat together, feeling that we shared a secret others would not understand; it was if we were a sovereign nation of three. Traditional mores seemed simply irrelevant, no longer applicable to us. Our friend also enjoyed exploring her bisexuality, and her face took on a slightly more masculine cast over the next few months.
Her love often felt very maternal to me; it was rich, oceanic, and nourishing. Unfortunately, this threw the White Goddess/Snow Queen aspects of Kerry into still stronger relief; it was if I had somehow assigned my two lovers the separate roles of Good Mother/Bad Mother. I could actually see myself projecting these images onto them from out of my own lower abdomen, but that didn't help much. One day in June, our friend invited us to visit for an evening of lovemaking, and Kerry declined, insisting that I go anyhow, though. She swore she wasn't jealous, and I believed her --- she took great pride in being a free-thinking Aquarian. This worried me: it seemed to be changing the rules too much; I did not wish to participate in adultery. I went, with a divided heart. We made love, but I felt too guilty to enjoy myself much with our friend; the dynamics were different. I came home a short while later. Kerry seemed aloofly puzzled when I told her of my feelings of guilt.
She, meanwhile, had become good friends with a male thirty-something Libran co-worker at Pacific Desserts; they shared a whole world together of rich food and sensual dining that simply wasn't part of my nature. Kerry suggested that we introduce her co-worker and our threesome friend; perhaps they would hit it off together. We went out on a kind of double-date; our friend seemed puzzled and pained by our efforts; she evidently felt no particular chemistry with him. I found myself protectively walking and talking with her, while Kerry paired off with him behind us: the two water-trines in front; the two air-trines in back. This was a turning-point in our relationship. Kerry began spending more and more evenings with her co-worker, leaving me to be alone in our apartment or to be with our friend. While I occasionally went out with her still --- as we had done while a threesome, now she and I sometimes still went hot-tubbing with other friends of ours --- I no longer made love with her, and found myself choosing to spend more and more time by myself; I could not in good conscience go out with our friend simply to distract myself from the pain I was now feeling.
As Kerry's and her co-worker's relationship deepened beyond platonic into romantic and sexual, I scanned my emotional body to see what was happening. While rationally I was in favor of open marriage, emotionally I found it excruciatingly painful; I was wracked with jealousy. It was obvious to me that this was a replay of Annie's affair; that I had not done my homework fully in processing my own unconscious motives in co-creating that adultery, and so here it was again. Hm! Beneath the layers of anger and jealousy, there was still the eternal hum of bliss. As long as I had that, I would let myself feel my other emotions completely, and finish this pattern once and for all.
I found myself watching "who" was in pain in me. That "me" seemed to be about two years old, in frantic pain as "Mother" Kerry chose "Father" co-worker over me. How unoriginal! I was abashed to find myself suffering from Freud's famous Oedipal complex; I had always thought I was above all that. I suffered this child-me's acute unworthiness; his fevered certainty that Kerry found her new lover preferable in every way to me.
What most angered this child-me was that he --- I --- had absolutely no control over Kerry whatsoever. Nothing worked. No matter how much I told her I disapproved; how much I pleaded or yelled; how much I tried giving her what her lover gave her, taking her to romantic restaurants for dinner and paying lovingly close attention to her, she still kept seeing him. She was going to do what she pleased, whether I cared or not. It pained me to see that she was deadened, lifeless, around me, while the mere thought of seeing her lover filled her with light-hearted effervescence. Why couldn't I give her that? I grudgingly had to let her follow her own bliss, much as it pained me. Oddly, much of my anger seemed to be part of a drama she needed; I would find myself screaming on the phone in utter rage when she called to say she would not be home that night, to find the anger completely gone as I hung up --- just switched off when she could no longer hear it.
Meanwhile, as Kerry came home with another male's scent, wrapped in another's auric field, I found I could no longer make love with her. She said her lover was interested in including me in a menage-a-trois with them. I refused. I liked him but didn't respect him; he was an alcoholic, and I couldn't stand the emotional qualities Kerry was bringing home with her, when she finally did come home. To be honest, I probably would have felt the same with any man; I had no particular homosexual leanings. In retrospect, I feel it is at least possible that her lover was a reincarnation or soul-relative of Kerry/Karin's first husband, the Swedish baron, whom she had abandoned to elope with me/Goering. Wouldn't that be a perfect karmic balancing!
Several times I found myself stalking them, spying on them; they loved to roller-skate in Greenwood Park. I once met them face-to-face on the sidewalk. Surprised, they said "hi;" my face flushed in rage and humiliation as I returned their greeting as civilly as I could. Kerry told me later that her lover had mentioned that I seemed angry. He actually thought I approved of their relationship! This blew me away. Air signs!
As June crept into July, I discovered a new herbal compound at the health-food store. It looked like a little packet of soft road-tar. It tasted of licorice. It was called "Competition Leather" and marketed as an energy-supplement for athletes. Made in Hawaii from a whole plethora of Chinese herbs including Dragon's Blood, various mushrooms, and several kinds of ginseng, it opened an inner throttle to levels I had never experienced. Something like an immense adrenalin-surge, or a rush of Kundalini, it also lit up myriads of tiny micro-chakras in my subtle-body, so that I felt something like an animated Christmas tree.
By late July, I found myself jogging around the Reservoir every day a few blocks from our apartment; this helped me process and smooth out my emotional turmoil around Kerry's affair. I increased my jogging by 1/2 mile every day, levelling off when I reached four miles after a week. At this point, I took some "Competition Leather" just before jogging. As I finished my run just at twilight, something impelled me to sprint the last leg of the oval. I shifted "gears" up to a sprint, and suddenly felt a large subtle cord running from my navel out ahead of me, off somewhere in the distance. Suddenly, the sprinting became effortless, and I shifted up to another "gear" I had never known. It was like horizontal flying; my feet barely touched the ground in an odd gait like a roadrunner's as I glided along the subtle cord; the trees beside me streaked by as if I were in a car. I seemed to be going easily twice as fast as I had ever sprinted. I found, though, that I could not turn the corner of the oval; the cord went straight ahead. I reluctantly let go of the flow and stopped as quickly as I could; I had run out of the oval and across the street before I could fully stop; luckily there was no traffic! I believed this horizontal-flying phenomenon to be identical to what certain monks in Tibet have practiced for centuries; thereafter I termed it the "Tibetan stride."
When I jogged again the next night, the process repeated itself as I shifted up from jogging to sprinting to the Tibetan stride. I was now very excited, as I felt that the "Competition Leather" was in large part responsible this breakthrough. It had felt as if I were very close to flying, and I knew that no TM'er had yet succeeded in actually levitating. Perhaps the "Competition Leather" might just push them over the hump! I was fed up with waiting for Kerry to come back to me; I now felt I deserved better than this. Perhaps it was time to go back to Fairfield for a while, and introduce the TM-sidhas to "Competition Leather."
I mentioned my feelings to Kerry, and she agreed it would be good for me to go to Fairfield. I telephoned the "Competition Leather" company, and asked if they needed a representative in Iowa. They were happy to have me introduce their product there; I was given a wholesale price and a sample-pack of various wares. By August of 1976 I was off to Fairfield.
Deplaning in Iowa City's airport, I caught a limousine to Fairfield that the University had provided for some new students coming to M.I.U. It was odd; while I knew the tribal rituals and code-words of the TM'ers thoroughly, I now felt like an imposter; I had not used my mantra since my Crucifixion into Brahman in 1982.
On Kerry's mother's recommendation, I spent a few days with Steve and Annie Miller, who were old friends and sometime students of Carla Gordan's, and fringe members of my own Fairfield healing-circle. Steve now had his own channeling and counseling practice. Ruefully I explained to them that Kerry and I had often spoken of open marriage, that I had drawn Kerry into a menage-a-trois with another woman, and then freaked out when she had wanted one with another man. I knew I had been unfair to Kerry, but I couldn't help how I felt. They were compassionate but incredulous; Steve lost no time in spreading this hot new gossip around town!
After several days Steve and Annie kindly helped me find a small guest-room to rent in the nearby house of Don Porter, a TM Governor who had been expelled from the Movement when he became a channel and New-Age counselor. He was going home to Canada for a few months. Luckily the room was already furnished; all I had with me were my clothes, some herb samples, and tapes of my favorite music: Bach, Grieg, Chopin, Mozart, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, the Beatles, and folksinger Gordon Bok. Don was renting his master bedroom to Gene Garfin, who had begun meditating in 1967, was a professional drummer, and knew the Beach Boys personally, having grown up in Laguna Niguel. Gene too was a channeler, for an entity called Vywamus. In fact, he would be channeling Vywamus that very evening.
Gene said he was awed to meet me, and was somewhat afraid to channel for me! "Why?" I asked, astonished. He explained. Fairfield had changed a lot in four years; the people we had taught to channel and to develop their subtle gifts had in turn taught others who had taught others; unbeknownst to me I was now a legend here, having been Fairfield's first verbal channeler and in a sense the "grandfather" or param-guru of scores of channelers and counselors I had never even met.
From being a town full of fear, where meditators were wary of even admitting they had read non-TM material, Fairfield was now rife with excitement; countless channels and counselors had begun openly exploring and sharing their eclectic discoveries. At present, the newest "discovery" was the Tibetan Foundation, which acknowledged a pantheon of channeled entities, including Vywamus, who was supposed to be a kind of Higher-Self of our planetary Logos. I didn't know it then, but the Tibetan Foundation was rooted in some of my own favorite studies -- the Alice Bailey material.
I did my best to allay Gene's fears, adding that I really didn't channel much anymore, and I attended the session he and Vywamus gave to about twenty people. The topic was upcoming earth-changes; Vywamus was counseling people to drop their fear and follow their intuitions; they would be guided to safety. I felt my customary anger and impatience when in the presence of a Master I wasn't personally channeling, and abruptly asked him why he didn't teach them to take full responsibility for their co-creation by breath-work, affirmation, and visualization; after all, we were actually making these earth-changes ourselves!
Vywamus conceded my point, but smilingly noted that I appeared impatient. "Yes, I am!" I replied. Thus far, I had not completely integrated and healed the pain of my tendency toward angry impatience, which had always nagged at me, but had deepened after learning to levitate, and had exploded on Maharishi's ill-fated New Delhi course. I was not ashamed of the tendency; somehow I thought it was appropriate. However, hearing my own complacent admission sowed a seed in me: perhaps there was a better way...? Like me, Gene was a semi-trance channeler, and I hoped he would not take my arguments with Vywamus personally, disrupting his connection with the Master! He didn't, and the session ended well.
Currently, the latest thing on many people's minds was the "Soul-Merge" --- after Gene's channeling I must have been asked half a dozen times if I had experienced it yet. I had to say I didn't know; I was unfamiliar with the terminology, and people were a little hazy in describing the experience. I suspected it might be identical to the fusion with one's Solar Angel which I had undergone some seven years prior; this turned out to be correct.
Shortly after we became house-mates, Gene held a course in Tibetan overtone chanting, offering material that he had learned from the wife of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, whose ground-breaking book on morphogenetic fields I had recently read. I was one of four students. We quickly learned the basics and were soon immersed in bliss, breathing deeply and carefully emitting the eerie harmonics of overtone chanting. Gene told us that overtones were responsible for our discernment of the various vowels; and that moving the tongue from front to back produced the overtones corresponding to I-E-A-O-U, which the Tibetans associated with five chakras from crown to base. He further pointed out that running the tongue back and forth in one complete cycle produced I-E-A-O-U-O-A-E-I, which he equated with YAHWEH. This reawakened my interest in the Solar Calendar; here was the information I had been missing on how the sacred geometries of the Monadic Realm vibrated into the bliss of the Atmic Realm.
At the close of the course, each of us in turn sat surrounded by the other four, in a quincunx, and simply listened while the other four chanted his name over and over. When my turn came to sit amidst my name-chanting, I found myself rising out of the body, up to a circle of four Divine Beings, who were pouring their combined spiritual force into the center of their ring. This force coalesced to make -- Me! I was conceived among them as a huge column of white light, which then poured down into my body as a conscious Avatar. I felt utterly purified, transformed; a childlike innocence had completely dissolved my characteristic impatience. The egg of my being now embraced the entire Universe; even with eyes open in Don's living-room, I could clearly perceive my boundaries embracing the countless galaxies within myself.
I stayed in this innocence for about a week after the course ended; during this time I had absolutely no preferences as to what to do or where to go, and Gene and I became good friends as he showed me his world. It seemed he intimately knew everyone in Fairfield. Gene was a large, earthy, funny Gemini, maintaining an ongoing stream of mischievous patter that had me laughing almost continuously. We spent a great deal of time chanting together, glorying in the spontaneous overtone harmonies that Krishna danced between us.
He was endearingly open about his vulnerabilities and feelings; once when he was angered at something I had done, he sat down with me and told me so; his unblaming honesty was so beautiful that where I had always felt threatened by men's anger --- my dad, almost as huge a man as Gene was, had been a "dry alcoholic," moody and at times terrifyingly abusive --- I now felt the solid warmth of Gene's love behind his anger, and could not help but laugh in delight. He grinned and laughed too, and his anger evaporated. He had boundary-walls, but they never seemed to fully close off our connectedness. I had frequent memory-flashes of Gene and me in priests' robes in an Atlantean temple, teaching our Initates with crystals and chanting.
The sense of personal mastery deepened; once, I was acutely feeling the hot flat bleakness of late-summer Iowa, when I remembered: Time and space were illusions! I could be anywhere I wished! Instantly, my subtle-body was in Babaji's ashram in the Himalayas --- such bliss; such instant fulfillment of Soul! Of course I had often travelled to these places in dream-state; I had never thought to do so while awake. My Iowa-self walked outside, enjoying the grass under my bare feet. I looked down, and my eyes widened: My feet were a Master's feet! They weren't mine; they glowed. Had they actually belonged to someone else I would have bowed reverently.
Meanwhile, my frequent phone-calls to Kerry weren't going so well; over the months our separate stances had hardened into opposition. She continued to see her lover regularly, and in addition to enjoying fine food and sex with him, was also spending a lot of time playing the piano. She was angry with me: I seemed to be waiting for her to change. This was true; I was waiting for her to tire of him. I had been completely celibate now for four months, waiting for her to come back to me. While I was happy that she seemed content, still her intransigence angered me: what kind of marriage did we have when we were spending all of our time with others? I told her that I now realized I needed something more traditional, a wife who actually liked being with me. She was less than thrilled. I experienced a peculiar doubleness while I was speaking with her; I could feel both the lively intent of my words, and the dulling, deadening way she took them. The marital state I longed for felt excitingly committed and cozy to me; to her it felt suffocating. Obviously, our life-delights no longer coincided. I grieved, but slowly began to open to other options.
Now, I realized I desired only love; in meditation I found myself creating a round-table of Masters on the physical plane, drawing them together by way of the fine golden threads of light that connected us all. Gene took me over to Janet DiGiovanni's house, where she and Susan Shumsky were putting together a course in Tantric sexuality. Joanna Cherry was visiting from San Francisco to teach a course on Ascension, but she would also be assisting at Susan's and Janet's course. While Gene and Janet talked in the kitchen, the rest of us went upstairs to a guest-bedroom where music was playing. Would I like to dance? I told Joanna I really couldn't dance --- a trampoline mishap in High School had snapped my back; it had quickly healed, but now my feet really didn't spontaneously move to music. She ran her hands down my energy-field; I felt the subtle wound heal, and we all danced happily for some time, flowing as one with the music. Afterwards we rested on the bed; I found myself lying on my back, with one arm around Susan and one around Joanna. I told them of my desire to know only Love, and my vision of the fine gold threads connecting us all, and we lay there peacefully: I for one was supremely content, basking in the sweetly divine love-field that embraced us.
During these months, I had attempted to interest the Movement in "Competition Leather;" they said that since it didn't come from Maharishi and the Ayurvedic Tradition, it wasn't trustworthy --- a response that really shouldn't have surprised me. The Movement had never been interested in any wisdom other than Maharishi's. Throughout August and September I sold the packets in bulk at several of the health-food stores in town, and individually to people, by word-of-mouth. It was fun; I felt a little like a legitimate drug-dealer, carrying packets of the "stuff" which I would exchange on street-corners for crumpled dollar-bills. As they swallowed the herbs, I would often notice their subtle micro-chakras light up as mine had. Don Porter said he also experienced the Tibetan Stride after ingesting it.
As far as I know though, no one actually levitated. I little suspected that I myself would finally be granted my age-old desire, and find myself fully levitating in my physical Ascension the very next month.
