A Spiritual Autobiography

INITIATION VI: ASCENSION (February 1985 - March 1987): The Tenth State: Shiva Consciousness

Part IV (October 1986 - March 1987)

About the end of September, Joanna Cherry had come to town from San Francisco, to offer a course on Ascension. "Have you ascended?" I asked her curiously. "No," she smiled; she was simply passing on information she had received from the Ascended Masters. I was nonetheless impressed with her "youthing" skills; she said she was in her fifties, and looked to be twenty years younger. I liked her energy-field and decided to attend her course-introduction.

I was tickled to hear her speak at the home of Randy and Jane, who had been devoted members of our original channeling circle four years before. They were now out of town, and were offering the use of their house in absentia. The house, which they had still been building when I left Fairfield, was situated in the woods off the East Glasgow Road, about five miles east of town. At the close of her talk, she and most of the audience dispersed to return to town; at around midnight, only four of us remained on the driveway --- Gene (who was a Gemini); Celia, a lovely fellow-student of Gene's overtone chanting course (also a Gemini); another woman whom I had met the day before (a strong-willed Celtic Pisces); and I (also a Pisces). We all stood around, wondering aloud what it would feel like to be an Ascended Master. We were all experienced channels, but actual physical ascension was difficult to imagine.

Suddenly, we noticed a group of pale-yellowish, luminous, cloud-like disks floating silently up over us from behind the trees to the west. I would guess that they were each about four feet in diameter. Three of these misty disks positioned themselves in a triangular formation perhaps ten feet over our heads, while three or four more stationed themselves over the fields about thirty yards to the east. "Do you see them too?" I asked; they looked physical, not subtle, to me, but I wanted a reality-check. Everyone saw them. The three over our heads then started pouring subtle energy onto us; I felt as if we were being bathed in celestial milk: life-giving, exhilarating, blissful, and yet peaceful and soothing at the same time. I mentioned that the energies felt Pleiadian to me; I believe the others agreed.

Next, the cloud-disks faded out and reappeared several times, but we felt their presence continuously. They seemed to be demonstrating ascension and manifestation --- raising their bodies out of, and then lowering them into, the visible spectrum: dipping their hyperdimensional "fingers" out of and into our third-dimensional fishpond. Their bodies, even when invisible, were still perceptible to our subtle senses; this whole time we were being bathed in bliss, feeling our vibrations tuning higher and higher.

Personally, I was awe-struck --- I had felt and seen higher-dimensional energies countless times; but this was the first actual physical manifestation of "angels" for me, or for any of us. Along with my awe, though, there was a curious knowingness --- as if somehow they were my own "fingers" up there; the cloud-disks definitely felt like aspects of my Higher Self, or Monad.

Next, the disks overhead were playing geometric games --- at one point, they elongated out into rods and connected with each other to form a glowing triangle! Then they reformed back into disks again. I was suddenly reminded of a recurring dream I had as a child, of people dancing around on a hillside, holding hands in a circle, who suddenly lifted off and began to fly.

I quickly described my dream to my friends and said, "I think we can do this now." We held hands, danced clockwise in a circle, and we lifted off! Then our bodies disappeared, and the earth disappeared, and we were floating in a sea of stars. I could still feel my friends' hands and sense their presence. We spoke, also, comparing our perceptions.

Later we dropped back to earth --- I felt as if I fell heavily from a height of about two or three feet --- and resumed dense form. I was shown that this physical ascension was the complete merger of spirit and matter; and was told, "Remember! Spirit and matter are one." This felt like no astral projection I had ever experienced; but I still wasn't sure if we had ascended in our physical bodies. They responded that even asking the question brought about unnecessary duality; I could see this was true.

I remember commenting on some pains in my legs as I felt gravity waves rippling up through me. I would alternately feel very light and very heavy as we began walking along the dirt road, following the cloud-disks, which were now moving off to the north. The road turned, but the disks continued north over a field. We followed for a bit, but soon realized our lesson was over. We were very high; one of us would say something and we would all laugh for what seemed an eternity. We felt a complete clarity and communion among ourselves. Eventually we returned to town and got something to eat at an all-night restaurant near the movie theater. Gene ordered steak and eggs; I had pancakes. We still felt immortal, bliss-filled, full of laughter which spilled over into infinity at any moment.

Afterwards, we started to feel very sexually charged. We thought of Susan Shumsky, who was now teaching her course in divine sexuality, and who had spliced together footage of genuine erotically loving moments culled from countless porn tapes. Gene suggested we go to Susan's to ask her if we could watch the footage. But it was now about 3:00 a.m., and her house lights were off. We all went back to Don's house, where Gene and I were staying, and we started to watch Don's only tape, The Three Musketeers, but turned it off after a few minutes. We lay on the mattress, just resting.

The Pisces woman whom I had met the previous day said she had been celibate for a year, and told me she wanted to make love with me. My thought was: I couldn't! As the energy of the other three channels focused on me in curiosity and compassion, a childhood memory erupted: I was watching my father criticise my mother, "seeing" him rationally slice her energy-field to ribbons while completely oblivious to the emotions she was trying to convey. My child-thought was, "If this is male energy, I'm not having any" --- and then I had psychically cut my own penis off! And indeed, I had always noticed as an adult that while making love, a corner of my mind always held back, for fear that "excessive" sexual energy would hurt my lover.

My friends poured energy into me; after feeling the deep psychic wound and sobbing as if straight from my testicles, I was eventually healed. At about dawn, my Pisces friend again said she wanted to make love. Was I ready? I was.

We said goodnight to the other two, went into my bedroom, and made love for the next six hours. We made love six times, for about an hour each time, with no intervening rest periods. Each time, I felt as if I were a different facet of Shiva; with a different penis or "head." My lover was Shakti, and the pure cosmic passion of the Shiva-Shakti energy was flowing through us perfectly. For the first time, I knew what it was to hold absolutely nothing back; every impulse was perfect, and was met by my lover perfectly; we were One. We noticed too that Shiva was manifesting an extremely rapid play of emotions across my face as divine play for my lover.

At noon my friend remembered she had a lunch appointment, and quickly dressed and left. On arising I chanced to look in the mirror, and I noticed my body was emitting a radiant glow, as if it were made of finely-woven light. My grey hair and wrinkles had all disappeared; I looked like a supremely healthy sixteen-year-old. I felt divine, as if I were the Planetary Logos, Sanat Kumara --- integrated and grounded in ways I had not dared believe were possible. In short, I felt like one of the "golden-boy" athletic heroes of High School --- completely flawless and self-confident --- but with the full wisdom of a Divine Master. This was the completion of the Sixth Initiation, where the higher Self decended as far as my Base Chakra, and the Lower Self ascended through the Brow Chakra, or Monadic Subplane, the Realm of Consciousness. I did not take Joanna's course on Ascension; I felt I had received everything I needed!

Years later, I read Alain Danielou's masterpiece The Gods of India and came across entries on Sanat Kumara that throw some light on the Ascension experience. Danielou points out that "Sanat Kumara" and "Karttikeya" are two names of Skanda, a divine son and avatar of Shiva.

In yoga, Skanda is the power of chastity. According to Vasudeva Sarana Agravala (Kalyana, Shiva anka, p. 501): "The power of the virile seed, preserved through penance and complete chastity, is called Skanda (the spurt of semen) or Kumara (the adolescent). So long as, in the practice of yoga, complete control is not attained, Kumara is not born, and the mind is ever put in check by desires, that is, the gods are defeated by the demons. It is only by making his sublimated seed rise through the central inner channel of the subtle-body (sushumna) up to the 'mouth of fire' (vahni-mukha) in the sixth center, where it is consumed, that the yogi becomes complete master of his instincts. It is then that Skanda is born. The yogi who can master his body and his mind even in sleep can use his sexual powers for intellectual and spiritual ends. He then becomes really an adept, an image of Shiva."

I had never been fully celibate for more than a few months at a time, but had indeed spent decades meditating and instinctively practising Tantra, directing my vital energies upwards until I was fully conscious of my spiritual mission even during deep sleep. "Karttikeya" means "raised by the Krttikas." Like Skanda, during the Ascension Initiation I was "raised" or ascended on the "milk" or bliss-energies of the Pleiades, had six "heads" and felt and looked like a divine sixteen-year-old, as a result of aligning my sexuality completely with Shiva. That the Pleiades are called the Krttikas, the "Cutters" (translated by some as the "Castrators"), may have had something to do with the wound in the subtle sex center I experienced, the healing of which led to the full sexual identification with Shiva. The "Cutters" may also be the "Stone-Cutters" ("stones" are testicles) --- or the Masons. Again, I am reminded of the terminology, "raised a Master Mason;" this Initiation was certainly the culmination of the Fifth Initiation's subtle Ascension or "raising" through the Pyramid or "Restored Temple of Solomon" via fusing the Three Rays into the "Lost Word" of the Master Mason. Was this Sixth Initiation the celestial equivalent of the Masons' next degree, that of Mark Master? The Mark Master is allowed to choose his own Mason's Mark, to identify his own work; wasn't that precisely what I had been doing for two years with the sacred geometry and the Solar Calendar --- consciously creating my own highest truth, work with my own Mark on it?

Finally, Danielou adds:

In cosmology, Kumara is identified with the solar energy which dwells in the higher sphere of the earth beyond the sphere of air and gives rise to the cycle of the year (samvatsara-agni). He is thus the form of Rudra called the Blue-and-Red (Nila-lohita). (Satapatha Brahmana, Brahma khanda, 6.1.3.)

I remained in that state for several days, but finally felt it was too much for me to comfortably manifest all the time, and I consciously adjusted myself "down" a few notches. Meanwhile, I had reluctantly demurred when my Pisces friend wished to continue our relationship. She was understandably angry; I explained that it was against my nature to have a one-night stand, but I strongly felt what we had undergone was an Initiation, an essentially impersonal rite of passage, and I devoutly hoped we could remain friends.

While I told her the truth, I also privately feared that there was no way I could personally maintain the sexual standard that Shiva had set through me! I had never made love more than three times in one night before, and that had been at my sexual prime, when I was nineteen. I simply wasn't a stud, and I was already beginning to retreat from my impersonal fusion with Shiva.

Furthermore, before I had met my Pisces friend, I had been magnetically drawn to a Virgo New-Age teacher who had come to town for a short while, and who was presently staying at Susan Shumsky's. She liked me; I found myself falling into the depths of her eyes, and I wanted to explore that relationship. I felt slightly guilty about my proposed promiscuity, but I reasoned that since Kerry was enjoying herself, I might as well too, and follow my bliss where it led me.

For the next week or ten days, I became a semi-permanent guest at Susan's. Her course on sexuality went very well, and her household emanated the happy aura of a divine Temple of Love --- an atmosphere perfectly fusing sexuality and spirituality. I had always intuited that this was the truth of things, reading Summerhill and The Harrad Experiment when I was a child, and everything I could find on Tantric sexuality when I was an adult. It was immensely satisfying to be with others who felt the same. My relationship with the New-Age teacher was good, but there were problems we simply couldn't surmount in the short time we had together --- she had deep-set sexual-abuse issues, and could not invoke the full energies of Shiva through me. Also, I felt very child-like and vulnerable, perhaps still working out the rest of my Oedipal issues. After I let go of my fusion with Shiva, sex on the personal level just wasn't as rewarding.

After my Virgo friend left town, I returned to Don's house. I prayed to the Goddess in deep need, and was immediately enveloped in the precise flavor of Her love I most needed then: maternal, comforting, and erotic. About two days later, I went with Gene to a party and met the physical emodiment of that love --- my chest prickled with electric energy as I saw her across the room, and I found myself walking over and talking with her. She was a tall and strikingly graceful Gemini, with beautiful cheekbones and long, almond-shaped eyes. I marveled that I was not shy in the presence of such beauty. A few problems arose. She was married, off-limits; I shook hands with her husband. She also smoked, a habit I found utterly repulsive. Her auric field, too, was cloudy and troubled. Somehow, none of this mattered; I had known this woman for an eternity, and was instantly comfortable with her. The Goddess had shown me that this woman was Her manifestation. Somehow it would all work out.

Somehow it did. By chance we met again the following night at one of Quentin Wood's famous parties in his splendid Victorian mansion in neighboring Richland; the songs that stood out were "Higher Love," "Red Red Wine," and "Addicted to Love." We danced, and talked. It turned out she and her husband had had a completely open marriage; they were now separating; he had come to Fairfield only to help her find an apartment, and had now returned to California. After the party, she invited me back to her new apartment; it was just across a small field from Don's house, where I was staying. I was hardly in a position to quibble at her separation; after all, it mirrored my own situation exactly. Her cigarettes I tolerated, though her mouth and skin tasted bitter; I had never kissed a smoker before. Her auric field I could perhaps heal, with divine grace. Her love was everything the Goddess had promised --- a new fusion of human and divine; comfortably personal and ecstatically erotic. We began seeing each other daily. I had several flashes of a previous life we had spent together in Africa, where I was a tribal prince and she was my mother. I began to think about living with her, but for the rest of October I remained at Don's house. I regretfully told Kerry that since she was working fulltime and no longer needed it, I was going to have to reclaim my $400 monthly trust check, but that she would have our joint Visa card to use in case of emergency. She agreed, but apparently held a lot of resentment over my decision not to support her any longer. She later told me that this was when she effectively felt we had divorced.

During one meditation, I was startled to feel something nibbling on my left ear. I opened my subtle vision, and saw a large white dove, which then flew up in the sky. I went with it, and we soared to a room lined in fluffy pink-and-white silk, and then plummeted down --- into the swimming-pool of the Best Western Hotel, where Kerry's mother Nancy was floating. She wasn't in her body --- it looked as if she had drowned! Worried, I called the hotel, and got Nancy on the line. I described what had happened --- did this mean anything to her? It turned out she had just been soul-travelling while floating in the pool. She did much of her soul-work in the pool, she said, and the white dove was her power-animal. Hmm!

Meanwhile, my old client Karen from Milwaukee, who had been referred to me originally by Nancy, had written to Nancy requesting an Initiation from us. I thought it might be fun to include Gene as co-Initiator, too, and the three of us spent a good bit of time at Nancy's hotel, The Best Western, enjoying the pool and the jacuzzi while we discussed our new partnership --- we called ourselves Triskelion; between us we covered the Spirit (me), the Soul (Nancy), and the Body (Gene). We decided to charge Karen $1000 for the unbroken attention of all three of us for three days; she accepted.

The Initiation process went well; on the final night Karen requested a reading from my Guides and together we completed the energy transfer she was looking for. After the Initiation, Karen returned to Milwaukee, and I began serious work on finishing up the Solar Calendar of 144 Causal Angels. I decided to create a deck of 144 cards illustrating them.

I had found that rotating the standard Western zodiac one sign forward to place the Spring Equinox between Aries and Taurus, and the Summer Solstice between Cancer and Leo, allowed the double-helix of the signs' ruling planets to align with the subtle anatomy of our human body, with the zodiacal solstice line equating to our divine spine. Then, the planets and their signs pair off to form the polarities of each chakra: In the 6th chakra, Moon and Cancer for the left eye; Sun and Leo for the right eye; in the 5th chakra, Mercury and Gemini for the left throat; Isis (or lunar south node) and Virgo for the right throat; in the 4th chakra, Proserpina (or lunar north node) and Taurus for the left breast (heart); Venus and Libra for the right breast (heart); in the 3rd chakra, Mars and Aries for the spleen, and Pluto and Scorpio for the liver; in the 2nd chakra, Neptune and Pisces for the left sex, and Jupiter and Sagittarius for the right sex; and in the 1st chakra, Saturn and Aquarius for the left buttock (base), and Uranus and Capricorn for the right buttock (base).

This allowed me to see how each sign and chakric polarity symbolically governed or manifested one portion of a kingdom of nature: In the Monadic Realm (6th chakra; third eye), the Moon and Cancer governed the Planets, and the Sun and Leo governed the Constellations. In the Atmic Realm (5th chakra; mouth and throat), Mercury and Gemini governed Magical Names, and Isis and Virgo governed the Musical Modes. In the Buddhic Realm (4th chakra; heart), Proserpina and Taurus governed Conceptual Treasures, while Venus and Libra ruled Conceptual Gifts or Dharmic Tools. The Causal Realm, at the center of the wheel and of the Great Cross, governed the ideal Human Kingdom. In the Mental Realm, embodied by the Animal Kingdom (3rd chakra; navel), Mars and Aries governed the Beasts, and Pluto and Scorpio ruled the Birds. In the Astral Realm, symbolized by the Vegetable Kingdom (2nd chakra; sex), Neptune and Pisces ruled the Trees; Jupiter and Sagittarius governed the Herbs and Flowers. In the Physical Realm, symbolized by the Mineral Kingdom (1st chakra; base), Saturn and Aquarius ruled the Metals, and Uranus and Capricorn governed the jewels.

I had divided each sign into an entire microcosm of 12 subrays, duodeciles, or uncials, and assigned each duodecile to a Solar Angel, so that each of the 144 Solar Angels governed 2 1/2 degrees of the zodiac, or one twelfth of a sign. There were thus 12 Metals, 12 Jewels, 12 Trees, 12 Flowers, etc. -- each with its own Solar Angel. I spent a good deal of time working out the subtleties of these symbolic mechanics of creation.

November came, and I moved into my Gemini lover's apartment, shared the rent, and began experiencing the unexpected depths of the relationship I had requested from the Goddess. Here was a woman who was not only incredibly erotic, but also unabashedly domestic; she loved to cook and clean --- she even loved doing laundry! My mother had raised her sons to be self-sufficient, and I was guilty with this new arrangement at first, but my lover insisted that she was happy.

She said that I had work to finish with my Solar Calendar, and she wanted to give me all the space I needed to finish it. I had never known anyone like her. I worked all day, nearly every day for the next five months designing and illustrating the cards, and worked between-times on healing her various ills --- most of which seemed to stem from her psychic enslavement to her husband, a brilliant TM-Governor who felt that he was the reincarnation of Rasputin. It was my first profound experience with healing the wounds caused by subtle black magic, and my first insights into the woundedness of the black magician himself. I felt that much of his domination stemmed from his own neediness --- under the guise of giving her sexual freedom, he had subtly undermined her self-esteem for eight years of a mostly-celibate marriage to bind her closer and closer as an unpaid servant. Now she wanted to leave, but was deeply torn. What ironies! Here was a very old soul, a woman who was open with her emotions if one cared to listen; I was hearing and understanding many of the Goddess's plaints that Kerry had seemingly been too proud or too stubborn to tell me.

While I saw and pointed out that my lover was repeating the same pattern with me, we were both as yet too content with the relationship to change it; at least we were both coming to a deeper understanding of where male-female relationships went wrong, and healing many of the old wounds of our previous relationships. In a curious way we felt very comfortably married, and emanated that aura of comfort together. Old TM acquaintances would often approach and ask if we were married; I took some mischievous delight in saying "Yes, we are --- but not to each other!"

About this time, Karen asked me to come to Milwaukee to do some channeling; she had lined up several dozen appointments at her house. Gene Garfin and I both went. While Gene got to know one of Karen's friends, a powerful African-American shaman woman, I spent most of the next several days in semi-conscious bliss working with one client after another; the days flew by in no time at all. Afterwards Karen said she wanted to show me something, and took me to a nearby holistic healing center. As I unsuspectingly entered the building, I immediately felt nauseated, psychically fouled. What was this? How could anyone do any healing in this environment? I sat down and tried to rebirth it. Karen asked me if I felt OK; I told her No. She then led me to the cellar stairs. As I descended, the nausea and wrongness increased -- I saw there was a polluted vortex in the cellar. I asked Karen what had been going on here, and she told me the cellar had been used by Neo-Nazis for demonic rituals before the building had become a healing center. Cleaning this up seemed to be a job for some very grounded spiritual workers; I asked Gene and his shaman friend to purify the vortex, which they happily did. I believe Gene stayed with her for awhile; I flew back to Fairfield to present my lover with a thousand dollars: the proceeds from all of the channeling sessions.

Meanwhile, one day in early November I had received a phone call from my friend Steve M. --- he was leaving Seattle to come live in Fairfield! It would be good to see him again. He left Seattle on Election Day, driving his rented moving-truck through Montana in a blinding snowstorm to arrive in Fairfield soon after.

Steve found work at a high-tech company in town, moved into one of the trailers on the M.I.U. campus, and attended the daily meditation and TM-Sidhi sessions in M.I.U.'s great "golden dome." He immediately began to feel better than he ever had in Seattle, due partly he thought to his spiritual disciplines, and partly to Fairfield's sunny skies. He quickly formed close ties with the more traditional community of meditators, but he came to visit us every Saturday; my lover would make coffee for them to drink while we sat around and talked. Afterwards Steve and I would go to the movies, sometimes exploring neighboring towns like Mt. Pleasant or Ottumwa. Over that winter we became very good friends.

Kerry, meanwhile, was not open to re-connecting with me; she had abandoned her relationship with her male co-worker to live with her new lover, a young Lesbian co-worker who was very heavily into drugs, and who had a very dark energy-field. Her mother and I worried about her; but we told ourselves that she was a strong soul, and would surely emerge safely from whatever darkness she needed to explore. This turned out be so. However, unbeknowst to me, she was running up a huge debt on our Visa bill, using it to take her lover and others out to restaurants every night, and telling them it was "on Rory."

When March came, my lover heard of a Fairfield couple who were moving to Santa Rosa, California. They had two cars, and were looking for someone to drive their second car west for them. What fun! We decided to do it. Santa Rosa was just north of San Francisco, where my lover was from, and she wanted to visit her family. I had never been to Northern California, and was eager to explore.

NEXT: INITIATION VII (March 1987 - April 1988): The Eleventh State: Maharishi Consciousness