INITIATION VI: ASCENSION (February 1985 - March 1987): The Tenth State: Shiva Consciousness
Part I (February 1985 - August 1985)
The new revelations resulted from a question I had in meditation. I had read innumerable books on the various magical and religious cosmological systems; surely they all held much truth. But I wanted to get back to basics, to create my own world: What was my truth? I decided to meditate, and not get up until I knew the answer. I was sitting on my bed in Oneness, the Great Absolute That, and I thought, "Yes, well, I know all this is That, and That is all very good, but how did all of this relative world come to pass? How did the One appear to manifest the Many?"
Immediately, the Ocean I was sitting in began to ripple! It then laughed, or sneezed itself into an infinite number of little pieces, like countless shining stars. These stars then started interconnecting in constellations, geometric patterns, of larger and larger groups --- so that while there was still only a field of reflections of the One, now there were groupings: a single One, Two Ones; Three Ones; Four Ones, etc.
The very numbering --- the Oneness, the Twoness, the Threeness, etc., of each of these clusters was itself different states of consciousness; essentially different Angels. In the flash of a single moment, I was given sutras or verses for the qualities of the first 18 unfoldments of consciousness: from the "Point-source" of One, or "I Am" (Cosmic Consciousness), to a line connecting the "Attention-flow" of Two, or "Thou Art" (God Consciousness; the Astral Kundalini), to the triangle connecting the "Relationship" of Three, or "It Is" (Unity Consciousness; I and Thou are One; fusion with the Mental/Causal Angel).
Next came the Tetrahedron connecting the "Environmental Context" of Four, or "We Are" (the utter Buddhic depth of Brahman Consciousness), then the seeded Tetrahedron connecting the "Creativity" of Five, or "You Are" (the quickened Atmic bliss of Krishna Consciousness). Then came the Octahedron or double-pyramid connecting the "Physical Boundaries" of Six, or "They Are" (the Monadic level of Shiva Consciousness).
Next, the seeded Octahedron embodied the "Incarnation" of Seven, with its central seventh point focusing a triple cross to the outer six vertices (the Logoic level of Christ Consciousness). This appeared to be the pyramid I entered during my subtle-body ascension in the Bahamas. Seeking to unite the three primary Rays --- the three inner axes of the centered Octahedron --- I entered the point at the center, and flowing up its vertical axis inside I emerged at the topmost vertex which indeed, like all vertices, contains in Universal Space terms a potential "Master-Council" or cluster of twelve radii or Rays.
This was followed by the "Communion" of the Cube (8), the "Regeneration" of the seeded Cube (9), the "Perfection" of the second-order Tetrahedron (10), the "Imperfection," or "Memory," of the seeded second-order Tetrahedron (11), and the "Information-Storage" or "Completion" of the Icosahedron (12), which completed one cycle of Consciousness; I quickly saw the relationship of this to the zodiacal unfoldment of the twelve houses of human experience and their twelve planets.
A new cycle began with 13, a higher-order "I Am," that incorporated Spatio-temporal travel/creativity, and continued up through 18, which, if I remember correctly, was the capacity of the system to forget its own essence, and go into ignorance.
I had long burned to unlock the secrets of levitation and Ascension, and I felt these geometries of consciousness to somehow hold the key. Fascinated by their magical potentials, I started avidly reading both volumes of Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics, and began making models of the various shapes to further explore their properties: first with toothpicks and clay, which quickly collapsed under their own weight; and then with straws and scotch-tape, which worked very well. I found that the 13-pointer was a Vector-Equilibrium (VE) matrix, a figure with a central point equidistantly surrounded by twelve more.
The properties of the VE matrix were utterly riveting; here was the archetypal geometry behind my egg-serpent-stars vision of the spiritual potential of the earth: A sphere of three tiers (two polar triangles of three vertices each and an equatorial seeded-hexagon of six vertices and the center) were the earth's upper, lower, and middle realms respectively. They were encircled by a zig-zagging series of twelve lines (the serpent, or World-Dragon) that connected all twelve of the VE matrix's outer vertices (the gates of the celestial Jerusalem; the months of the year). These vertices were connected by twelve radii (the Rays; the branches of the World-Tree; the twelve DNA strands of the immortal body) to the centermost point (the glowing heart of the inner sun, the World-Grail). The twelve radii could be shot from the center out through their twelve vertices or "gates" to connect with Universal Space --- my Cantabrigian vision of beams of light shooting out of the serpent-embraced earth-egg to connect with the stars. I felt that if I could completely become this VE Matrix, I would fully master space-time and ascension.
I also received material on the polarities of the Cosmic Egg --- it was electric blue and "male" at its north pole; deep red and "female" at its south; while a golden band flowed around its equator in a kind of Solar balance. This golden band seemed to be related to the Solar Wheel of the Year, about which I was now receiving so much information. I also saw the Universe of Space-Time as a giant disk covered with a gorgeous pattern of small jewel-like points of colored light, which would flare and dim in sequence to produce the illusion of movement and progression through time.
Now, as I walked around Seattle, I dicovered I could simultaneously time-travel in my subtle body. As the passage of the days accelerated, the sky would flicker light-dark-light-dark, faster and faster, finally settling into a uniform grey. I noticed a thick golden band appear overhead in the sky, like a giant ring around the earth. This band wobbled; about every second it would fall towards the horizon, and then rise back overhead again.
With a start, I realized the golden band was the sun itself, appearing to spin so rapidly around the earth that it had become a single light-streak. The ring's wobbling marked the sun's climb and fall through the seasons; in the space of a second I was traversing a year. As I walked, I saw phantom trees suddenly appear, grow, and disappear before me; buildings climbed and fell; the very earth itself flowed beneath my feet: all this while I was walking around, experiencing "normal" reality, as well. The dual time-flow was a property of consciousness of the VE Matrix, which was really the Monadic-body of the Creator-Self, the Imaginer of Space-Time.
I was now completely on fire with these revelations, and closed down my counseling practice, referring my clients to another rebirther I felt was capable. The months flew by as I began working on this material full-time, waking, dreaming, and sleeping. I spent all my sleep-time in the celestial ashrams, temples, and libraries gathering information, and when I awoke, would spend nearly all of my waking hours remembering and synthesizing this material, and writing it down. I painted erotically-charged pictures of various forms of the Goddess and of my various geometrical insights. I was particularly fascinated with the 12 color-Rays, and saw them as a council of Atmic Demiurges, or Archetypes, each with its own specialty. Now, instead of being an Atmic Master, I could see the potentials of being the Monadic cluster of 12 Atmic Masters. I began to identify with a figure I had read about in Alice Bailey's books --- the Avatar of Synthesis.
My meditations deepened. Now, I would close my eyes and feel my base chakra sitting as if in a lotus, which somehow incorporated the entire world. At the same time, my Higher Self was sitting on my head, in the lotus of my own crown chakra; I could easily move my identification back and forth between these two selves; more and more they merged into one. I now began operating in concert with the council of Masters I had briefly joined while in the Bahamas. We would sit together, open to the essence of Divinity that was pouring through us --- what did Divinity wish to express today? --- and decide how to manifest that Divine Idea into earth, creating a physical "metaphor" for Divinity's emotion so that those who had forgotten the subtler realms could still participate in the Divine plan. This energy would pour down through my body, out my base chakra and manifest into earth, creating the physical-world event in a matter of two or three days.
The first Divine emotion that I/we felt was a kind of Divine anger; we decided this would best be manifested as an erupting Volcano. The eruption took place a few days later in Mexico; no one was harmed. Another one I remember well was a Divine irritation that humans were treating nuclear weaponry so lightly; I/we reviewed plans to explode a missile in its silo. We noticed that several people would die as a reult; was this all right? We looked at their "dossiers:" yes; these Souls were willing to die in this manner. So be it. A few days later, I read of the missile accident in Germany that killed several soldiers, and was struck with guilt: I had caused that! Seeing the results from the human perspective was so different than seeing them from the Master's. I decided not to remain on this level; I felt as if I would become a discarnate God if I continued on that path; and I wanted something which incorporated more humanity. The last manifestation I/we did was one of Divine Love which appeared two days later as a UFO that flew alongside a Soviet passenger plane for some time, flooding it with a beam of bright green light.
Since that time, I have come to realize that this level of "Mastery" is one that all humans visit unconsciously, in their deep-sleep bodies, to help co-create this combined masterpiece that is life on Earth. To the degree that we are willing to take full responsibility for our entire reality, we can consciously remember and assume our Higher-Self Mastery.
I was walking down the sidewalk of East Fifteenth Street one day, coming home from one of my frequent visits to the Seattle Art Museum, when I felt so strongly like the Christ that I glanced up at a large raven sitting on the nearest telephone pole. "Am I who I think I am?" I mentally asked the bird, not really expecting any reply. The bird gave me a piercing glance as I passed him by, and then swooped off the pole, flying down to barely clear my head and then up, alighting again on the wire a bit ahead of me. As I passed him again he repeated the swoop, again and again and again as I strode down the block! "YES! YES! YES! YES!" the bird appeared to be saying. "All right, all right! I get it! Thank you!" I mentally replied, and the bird instantly flew off elsewhere.
The exchange quite took me aback; this was before I had read any books on animal communication like Machaelle Small Wright's Kinship with all Life, and while I had heard of such feats by Indian yogis and various saints, still they had always seemed somehow too exotic to incorporate into my reality. I had now glimpsed a doorway to communion on a scale I had not dared to desire.
In the late Spring of 1985, Kerry's mother telephoned us from Governor's Harbor. Nearly everything the Guides had predicted about the healing center in the Bahamas had come to pass now. After we left, she had started attending church services, and had met one of Governor's Harbor's richest men: a giant young Bahamian who was in the construction business. There was a deep connection between them; he had fallen madly in love with her, had shown her the best sex she had ever had or could even imagine, and had offered her several gorgeous Eleutheran houses for a healing center --- mansions which some Germans had commissioned him to build and then reneged on. She loved him too, but was wary of his Scorpio jealousy, and felt some strings attached to his offer. She wasn't interested in seeing other men, but her "main man" was God, and her lover was jealous of God.
By the way, she continued, she was curious: She had been wondering who she was in her immediate past life, and at that moment a child's school-paper floated by with the name ROMMEL written across the top. Did that mean anything to me? "Oh...my.....God!" I said. "The Desert Fox! That explains the tank I saw around you!" I told her what I knew of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, the German tank-commander of the Afrika Korps in World War II. I described the visions that had so puzzled me in the Bahamas, and remembered the feeling I had had that we were two generals butting heads. Another click: "Then I must have been Goering ..." This really fit. I knew Goering had been Air-Marshall of the Luftwaffe and had been declared Hitler's successor; this would explain my old feelings of following the Messianic Hitler, providing him with a cadre of flyers, being promised his kingdom, and eventually being betrayed. I immediately took out biographies of Goering from the Seattle Library, and pored over them.
Many small, circumstantial details --- none convincing by themselves --- seemed to fit together to hint at a possible soul-survival. I had always "known" as a child that my "real" name was Herman; Goering's first name was Hermann. I was called "Gorey" as a child by my classmates; my brothers had called me "little Hitler." Photographs of Goering as a young man, before he became obese, eerily resembled photographs of me as a young child. Between the ages of eight and ten, I became engrossed with World War I biplanes, sketching and making models of the Allies' Nieuports, Spads, Sopwith Camels and S.E.5a's, and the German Albatros and Pfalz D.IIIs and Fokker D.VIIs. I had avidly read about Baron von Richthofen's Flying Circus. After von Richthofen died, the leadership of the elite squadron fell to his successor --- Hermann Goering, who was a highly-decorated World-War-I flying ace. I have never piloted a plane in this lifetime, but have always loved flight-simulators and shown an immediate instinctive grasp of them. During World War II, Goering had supervised the bombing of allied Europe; as a child I would generally approach my brothers' miniature twig-houses with the drone of a bomber, and callously drop rocks on their creations.
Goering had served as Hitler's roving ambassador, doing everything he could to avert the impending war; as a child I had been sure I would enter the foreign service, and had also detested war, and even competitive sports, until I started enjoying baseball at the age of nine. Goering had also systematically dismantled the democratic structure of Germany's Reichstag, so that Hitler could come to power. I had always felt like a global citizen, and had not been moved by American patriotics, nor by my teachers' panegyrics to American democracy. It is only as an adult that I have came to value America's unique gifts to the world. Goering also established the dreaded Gestapo, or secret police; I had always enjoyed starting spy organizations among my childhood friends, practicing techniques of surveillance, shadowing, message-drops, codes and ciphers, etc. The last one I started, circa age twelve, was called TALONS --- The Agency for the Liquidation Of Neighborhood Sin.
In my boyhood I always loved looking at fine art --- Titian, Reubens, Raphael; I had finally majored in Art History at Harvard, afterwards working in the Fogg Art Museum. Goering had been addicted to collecting art masterpieces, first buying the works at reduced prices from Jews his Nazis had forced to emigrate, then looting the art museums of conquered Europe to fill his own private art museum. He was also Master of the Hunt and of the German forests, setting aside large natural preserves. As a child I had repeatedly made my own museums --- usually of natural history, though the first and most ambitious also included a large diorama of a World-War-I airplane dogfight over France.
During his often-stormy meetings with Rommel, he would hold a handful of jewels --- much as I had done with my healing-stones in the Bahamas --- and Rommel regarded his effeminate behavior with barely-disguised contempt --- much as Nancy had regarded me in the Bahamas. Even our different counseling-styles fit, as Nancy pointed out: Like tank-commander Rommel, she was interested in making horizontal "breakthroughs" (note the term's martial overtones), while I delighted in providing "air support," working in the vertical dimension and providing general overviews.
Even amid the downfall of Germany, Goering had attempted to maintain a high morale among his war-weary compatriots. This relentless cheer was also a part of my own make-up; my brothers often complained that I smiled all the time. After he was condemned to hang as a war-criminal at Nuremburg in 1946, he committed suicide by swallowing cyanide; throughout my youth I found it most difficult to swallow pills, becoming irrationally terrified as they reached the back of my throat.
The biographies also contained photographs of Goering's first wife, the young Karin von Rosen, a languorous Swedish baroness who divorced her first husband to elope with Goering. The pictures of Karin were the very image of Kerry, capturing her psychic atmosphere as well as her physical likeness. I noted too that like Kerry, Karin had delighted in playing the piano and making desserts.
A final clincher came a few years later, as I was watching some footage of World War II on educational TV. It included actual movies of Goering in the Reichstag, and I gasped as I watched him dance back and sideways to make room for Hitler's passage. Even in his obesity, he moved exactly like me, something I have never seen in anyone else.
But he was a Nazi! I had never hated, or even disliked, any group of people --- how could I possibly theorize a soul-connection with Hitler's second-in-command? I read that some biographers, at least, did not consider Goering a total monster --- he was not a rabid anti-Semite, and had saved many of his second wife's Jewish friends from the concentration camp or worse. He was certainly no Oskar Schindler, though, and I had to come to terms with his potential for evil in me. He was at best a weak and ruthlessly ambitious man, who had let himself be subsumed in an enormous evil. Like him, I had taken the crucial first-step of believing that "outsiders" --- in this case non-meditators --- were subtly inferior to ourselves, the enlightened "elite" whose job it was to save the world from itself via a simplistic world-plan. And wasn't it this same mind-set that so disturbed me in religious fundamentalists? I again noted wryly that I had judged most harshly those very issues in another that I had not resolved in myself.
I had never understood Hitler's power over his subordinates; now as I psychometrized early photos of Hitler talking with Goering, I was bemused by the deep bond of charismatic love that flowed from Hitler to Goering. This reminded me of the charisma I felt from Maharishi, and again the parallels between the two movements struck me: Hitler one-pointedly followed an idealistic Master-Plan, reminiscent of Maharishi's World Plan. Hitler taught that his own followers were the elite, and so did Maharishi. At the same time, Hitler privately saw his followers as pawns, and so (I believed) did Maharishi. Both Hitler and Maharishi were devoted occultists. There were many who said Hitler was a conscious channel for a great power; certainly Maharishi was also a conscious channel for a great power.
Despite these eerie similarities, the overall effects of the two movements were diametrically opposed; Hitler's message was overall one of hatred and enslavement, while Maharishi's was generally one of love and freedom. In both their samskaric similarities and their compensatory oppositions I sensed a subtle connection; but perhaps in the larger sense both movements merely served as illustrations of cult-mind, in all its potential for ecstatic idealism and for horrible degradation. Starting around this time, I began to read everything I could find on the rise and fall of various cult-leaders --- Jim Jones, Rajneesh, Prabhupada, L. Ron Hubbard --- to try to comprehend the cult-mind. I too was charismatic; there was a large part of me that still wanted to be a Maharishi, though I always pulled back and away when I saw someone's too-ready tendency to worship me.
I'm not sure why I was so obsessed with finding parallel details between Goering's life and mine; partly because this was the only possible past-life I found that contained physical evidence of such details; Goering's life had been so exhaustively researched and documented. I was aware that perhaps such parallels could be found between any two lives, related or not, but I still found the circumstantial evidence electrifying. To this day I do not know whether Goering was actually a former lifetime of mine, or whether this whole Nazi introspection was simply the need to understand my capacity for evil. As I was writing this section, I came across a quote by Mother Theresa to the effect that it was not until she had seen an Adolf Hitler in herself, that she had dedicated herself to doing good. She makes a beautiful point, but for me it is still more a question of learning to understand evil in oneself, that one learn not to judge it harshly in others, destroying one's link to Divinity's unconditional love. It is precisely when one stops reactively judging it, that one no longer unconsciously acts it out. I have contacted Goering many times in meditation, but it is easy to contact any soul; they need not be a part of one's own soul-grouping. Regardless, I have done my best to lighten and heal the incredible density of Goering's body-mind.
Meanwhile, I wondered if my continued bouts of poverty might stem from an unconscious soul-guilt of Goering's greed and larceny. The problem seemed very complexly multi-layered, and I did not always enjoy the clarity of mind or the grace to heal it immediately.
