About nine months ago or so I was still living in the USA and corresponding via email with Donny about one of our young people at Harm’s End, Mugu, who is 17. The issue was Mugu had dropped out of the class he was taking to prepare him for what in India is known as the 10th Standard examination. It’s the equivalent of a high school diploma in the USA, and is a difficult exam requiring a long preparation, and Mugu didn’t have either the initiative or the discipline for it.
So we were wondering what to do with Mugu, and I brought up as I had in the past that Mugu seemed to have a thing for photography. Rather than putting him in some kind of class, Donny put forth the idea of getting him a film camera and teaching him film photography. My response was that nobody uses film cameras anymore, and that they’re a major expense compared to a digital camera, which, after the initial investment in the equipment itself, can take thousands and thousands of pictures. So I basically vetoed the idea, and as I would find out later Donny was actually okay with that. He thought a nice digital camera would be fine as well.
Then nothing happened for a while after that. I didn’t bring it up again because even though I was okay with a digital camera, I’m a cheapskate, and it would be a big chunk of change for a good digital camera with multiple lenses. I also know how irresponsible Mugu is, and was worried about the camera being lost or stolen. Then Donny brought up the film camera again, and again I argued against it. So he sent me a formation he had gotten from his muse on that matter, one that he felt had come from our teacher, the Mother, which said:
A digital camera not the appliance he needs. A professional camera with lenses develops his creativity.
Don’t mix tobacco in it. A digital camera, there’s a camera ain’t a camera his art would say, his art, not mine, yours or ours — his camera.
A boy and his needs. He needs a camera just to help him become a good man. Become a good man, that’s our field. Creativity lost his show there’s no camera. Digital not included.1
Now as clear as that was I still wasn’t ready to give up my position on the matter, mainly I think at this point because I didn’t want to be wrong, nor to be overruled by someone’s else’s guidance. My vital also has some problems with jealousy over the fact that I can’t get a formation like that from my muse, can only get some lines here and there or small groups of lines, and that also made the whole thing hard to swallow. So I continued to argue, pointing out that what might be spent on film alone over the course of a year would buy a very nice digital camera with multiple lenses. So Donny sent me another formation that had come a while before but that he hadn’t shared with me. This one said:
Professionality a camera, a camera professionality. Digital camera is the wrong lens. Now get it Like you’re supposed to a lens camera. Douglas don’t want to buy the camera, Don’t want to Because it doesn’t make sense to his practical intelligence.
Creativity deserves a chance. You’re not thinking how involved he’ll be with a professional camera. A great occupation color photography. Develop sway talent.
Would you listen? Douglas has his own opinion. How are we doing today? Develop his own opinion. That’s roll call, Orange wares.
Grand market shopping must be in town. Oh it is. Professional camera with lens, telephoto one, wide angle, and the one you use mostly.
A lot of creativity has room to play. Amsterdam doesn’t take him home. Creativity rules. What do we do for money? Trust sweetheart, just trust and work. There’s sadhana.2
Well after reading that I gave in, though the vital didn’t like it at all. By that point I was planning to come to India, but I wasn’t sure when, so Donny and I started looking online for a used film camera in India rather than waiting for me to buy one in the USA and bring it when I came. The search proved much more difficult than either of us were expecting and when we finally ordered a camera we didn’t read the fine print in the listing on ebay.in, and got one that was sold “as is”, and was basically broken. At this point I thought I could ask my mom if I could have my grandfather’s Canon AE-1, which had been sitting in my dad’s closet unused for years, to give to Mugu, and she said I could. So when I came to India back in December I brought that camera with me.
Then we ran into more obstacles. Both Donny and I had assumed that in a country as large as India there would be websites where you could easily buy the chemicals and darkroom equipment, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. You could find things scattered around on amazon.in and ebay.in but a lot of it seemed to be coming from the USA. So we went to a website in the USA, and could find everything we needed, but the shipping was almost as much as the cost of the chemicals and equipment. We had decided to just eat the cost, but then it occurred to me to call Auroville and try to find out if anyone there had a dark room, and knew how to order the supplies in India. From Auroville I got the name of an American man, John, who has lived in Pondicherry for many years, and was formerly an inmate of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I gave John a call and he invited Donny and I over to his house where we had a long talk, and he also gave us the name of man in Mumbai who could supply us with everything we needed. The way it all wonderfully worked out was just more confirmation for us that we were indeed doing the right thing with the film photography.
So we got all the chemicals and equipment to start Mugu with black and white photography. All that remained was a dark room, which is almost completed. Once it is John has offered to come over and give us some pointers from his long experience with film photography. There’s every reason to hope this will be a very positive thing for Mugu, and give him a much needed focus and creative outlet, one that will help him, if Donny’s muse is correct, to be a better man.
There’s a lot of traffic at our house Harm’s End in India, and some of those boys are thieves. So of course things get stolen, things belonging to people who live there, and also things belonging to guests. One of our live in boys, Asiya, had a friend whose cell phone was stolen at our house. A month or so after the theft Asiya showed up with the friend, and told Donny the boy was forbidden to return to his home until he got his cell phone replaced. Asiya claimed he and some other friends would come up with 4,000 rupees, and was asking, or rather demanding (Asiya was undergoing some rebellion at the time), that we come up with the other 2,000.
At the time I was living in the USA and would wire money to India on a weekly basis. Donny told me the situation, said he thought it was a need and that he felt sorry for the boy who’s sort of Forrest Gumpish, and mistreated by other boys as well as his family for that reason. To be frank, honesty is a problem to some extent with all the young people we work with, so I’m always skeptical of these kinds of things, and more so this time because of Asiya’s rebellion and attitude towards us. I found it hard to believe that the boy was banished from his house because his phone had gotten stolen, and wondered if the whole thing was a ruse to get 2,000 rupees for something else. I also didn’t think it was a good idea to give the money, and set that kind of precedent since we deal with people who wouldn’t have any moral quandary with lying about their phone getting stolen at our house in order to get a nice new phone on us. Also part of the equation was my general tightfistedness and dislike of charity that I went into in a recent blog post. There was even part of me that wanted to say no to Asiya because he was being rebellious and demanding, wanted to squash his demanding attitude and show him who was boss. So the answer I gave Donny was no.
Asiya persisted though, and when he would come to get money for his own needs he kept bringing it up, even brought the boy back a couple of times to ask Donny again. So I started to rethink things. I still didn’t believe that the kid was banished from home, but since Asiya didn’t drop it I started to wonder if maybe the boy really needed the money for some reason. So that night as I was praying I asked for some indication in the night of what I should do, be it a dream or muse or some kind of intuition. During that sleep cycle I had this dream:
I’m outside my maternal grandparent’s house in the driveway. I’m sitting in a car that looks like a station wagon, but it seems to me it might be a hearse. I realize this is a dream and I pass my hand through one of the windows to confirm it. Then I sit back and all of the sudden the car starts to move on its own. Things go dark around the outside of the car, and an image starts to appear on the windshield, but then the dream shifts to me being the observer. I can see this coffin with an arm sticking up out of it which is groping around. Seated next to the coffin is a Santa Claus, but one dressed in black not red. The arm grabs Santa and is pulling on him. Santa is talking to the person in the coffin.
The thing that struck me the most about the dream was the black dressed Santa or Anti-Claus as I thought of him. I felt that the dream was trying to show me that the desire not to give, to be stingy, to be Anti-Claus, was the main factor in my resisting giving the money, and not the objections I was raising such as not wanting to set a precedent etc. The black clothing also suggests to me that hostile forces were trying to influence me as well. The symbols of the hearse and the coffin suggest death of course, and maybe are showing that my Anti-Claus tendencies are a movement towards ‘death’, that is, away from growth and spiritual progress, a movement of decay. At the same time though, I have come a long way with my Anti-Claus nature compared to where I was a few years ago. So maybe the dream is also showing that movement is to some extent dead, but not completely. From that perspective the fact that the arm in the coffin is reaching out and grabbing Anti-Claus would show that I’m still not completely free of that movement of stinginess or the influence of hostile forces in this matter.
So I was basically convinced by the dream to give in to Asiya’s demand, but I guess there was part of me that still didn’t like having to admit I was wrong, so I thought I would wait until Donny mentioned Asiya bringing it up again. Donny didn’t though and maybe 10 days or so after the dream I finally broached the subject with him, and he told me he had given the friend the 2,000 rupees on his (Donny’s) birthday, and that he had sacrificed a few birthday treats for himself such as a cup of good coffee and a pastry at a local bakery, as well as a nice birthday dinner, to make up for the giving of the money. The vital initially got irked with Donny after hearing that, since as far as he knew at the time I still opposed to the giving, but I could see that feeling obviously wasn’t legitimate. Looking at it objectively I’d say I lost the opportunity to make the most progress in the matter by waiting for Donny to tell me Asiya brought it up again. I took the easy way out.
Still, I did see how my Anti-Claus nature was the predominant factor in not wanting to give the money, and not the other rationales I had. That was spelled out loud and clear by the dream, and I hope that will help me to see things more clearly in the future when other situations like this come up.
Recently I attended a conference called ‘Pain: Its Cause and Cure’ at the Sri Aurobindo Center For Advanced Research (SACAR) in Pondicherry India. I had arranged to stay at the SACAR guest house and arrived the evening before the conference began. While eating dinner I got to know a lady from Texas named Debbie who was attending the conference as well. I also took note of a pretty young Indian woman who came into the dining area briefly, but I didn’t actually meet her.
That night I had this dream:
I’m attending a lecture at the pain conference. I’m next to Debbie, though she looks much younger, and we just end up holding hands. I’m feeling desire and thinking we might hook up later. I end up resting my head on our clasped hands, but this puts my head behind a tall guy so I can’t see the PowerPoint presentation on the projector screen.
The dream was a little puzzling for me because, although Debbie was admittedly cute for her age (60), I didn’t really feel attracted to her sexually, though I liked her personality-wise. Anyway, at 9 a.m. we all went into the lecture hall and sat ourselves at two person desks. A very tall Indian woman sat down in the seat directly in front of me, effectively blocking my view of the screen, so that I had to lean to the side and peer around her in order to see it. I was struck by the exactness of the outer event matching what had happened in the dream, and I figured there was some meaning there, but I wasn’t sure what it might be. Arriving a little late was the pretty young Indian woman from the night before, and as is often the case when such beauty is around, my vital wants to eat it through my eyes, sexual staring I call it. It’s an urge that still just comes, like a reflex even though there’s part of me that would gladly be rid of it. As I sat there listening to the speakers, the desire would come in waves, and I would repeatedly have to use my will to keep pulling myself away from it. Later that afternoon I found myself sitting at the same table as her at lunch and found out her name, I’ll call her N. in this article, but I didn’t talk much to her. Then that evening at dinner she arrived late, and she sat down at the table with me and another American man, Don. The three of us conversed for a little while, and I found her quite charming and sweet as well as pretty. There was something too about her vital that my vital really found appealing, and I could feel that vital thrill you experience when you’re interacting with someone you’re really attracted to. It’s a kind of feeding, one you can keep at bay, but I didn’t do such a good job of it here. This thing in her vital though wasn’t anything flirtatious or overtly sexual, but quite the opposite really. She was actually very much a lady, and if you give my vital the choice between the tart and the lady it will take the lady the majority of the time though perhaps not every time.
At some point I excused myself to go up to my room, and that’s when my vital problems really began. What happened was the vital latched onto the idea of inviting N. to my house so she could see the work I’m doing here with some young tamil adults that live in a multi apartment complex with me and my partner in the endeavor Donny. It’s a work that’s been going on for a number of years, and Donny I both feel that what our house needs now, beyond some changes and structure within it, is for people in the community here to come and see what we’re doing. Since I knew I was going to this pain conference at SACAR and would be mixing with a large group of people, I was on the lookout for potential prospects to invite.
So with N. my vital took that ball and ran with it with, producing waves of thoughts and fantasies about bringing her to the house. Most of the scenarios the vital was cooking up we’re just about being around and her taking in her vital energy the same way I had at dinner the night before, but there were to a lesser degree outright romantic and sexual thoughts and feelings. The morning of that second day at the conference it was hard to stay focused because of the vital tumult. I kept trying to reject it, and also to turn my attention away from it by focusing on the lecturers and what they were saying. I’d succeed for a while and there’d be a space of clarity, but then another wave of it would come and it became quite apparent that my dream from two nights before, and the way my view of the screen was actually physically blocked the day before were foreshadowing this vital movement which was ‘blocking’ my view of the conference. And though the love interest in the dream was a young Debbie, it was N. it was referring to.
One thing that really helped though as these waves of desire would come was something Donny and I had been talking about just days before that had come from his muse which said:
What is a victory, getting over a temptation? Getting over a limitation1
These lines may not look like much at first glance, but the idea here is quite powerful. Looking at something as a temptation automatically gives it the association of badness, and creates a resistance or aversion to it that just makes it harder to throw out. Looking it as a limitation though takes that charge away from it. You can still see it for what it is, which is something getting in the way of one’s sadhana and not make excuses for it, but you can deal with it in a more calm and detached manner. Which is what I was able to do.
Now in addition to taking that attitude of a limitation towards the vital desire, I also tried to reason with the vital, pointing out things like the fact that having N. visit the house would mean wrestling with this desire, and the fact that even if she was game and I was willing to put a halt to twelve years of celibacy, my lower back problems would make it impossible to really enjoy intimacy with her or anyone else for that matter. I don’t remember exactly at what point in the day it happened, but there was a decisive moment where my vital basically said “Yeah, you’re right” and let go of the idea of bringing her over to the house. At that moment I felt something lift within me and instantly felt lighter and more clear to the point that when Donny came to visit me at the SACAR guest house late that evening he remarked that I seemed to be quite clear and focused. The thoughts and imaginings of bringing N. to the house still came a little bit, but the vital push and urgency that had been behind them was just a fraction of what it had been before.
The next day however it became apparent that while the vital had let go of the desire to invite N. to the house, it still hadn’t totally let go of the desire to be around her and to interact with her while the conference was still going on. During lunch an Austrian man and I spoke a little Spanish to each other, and N., who was also at our table, showed some interest by mentioning she really likes a Netflix series called Narcos which is full of Spanish. So I took that opportunity to teach her a few words in Spanish as a way to interact with her. That in itself may not have been inappropriate. You can do something like that in the right way and for the right reason, and when I woke up on the morning of the fourth and last day of the retreat I made a strong resolution not to follow the vital’s desire to interact with N. and to try and handle whatever interaction came up in the right way, i.e. without vitally eating.
What was amazing though was that after having made that resolution it seemed like every time I turned around, there she was. So I taught her a number of Spanish words that day as well as explained some concepts in Spanish such as gender and different words for the verb ‘to be’. I also talked about places I’d traveled in Latin America and she told me she had a sister that was living in Mexico. I tried not to vitally eat, but I don’t think I was completely successful. The truth is I still have things to learn regarding the subtleties of when I’m vitally eating or not eating when having these more casual interactions with someone I’m sexually attracted to. Overall though, I felt pretty good about things at the end of the day, felt like I’d been the friend she needed me to be and it seemed that her interest had been perked further not just in Spanish, but also in the possibility of traveling in Latin America. I wondered if maybe that’s something that will be important in her process. That’s just speculation though.
Be that as it may, when I got home from the conference and was reflecting on everything that had happened, I was initially a little disheartened since I hadn’t had the romantic/sexual thing come up that strongly in many years, didn’t think it actually could come up that strongly anymore. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Even though I’ve put a lot of effort into breaking the habit of following the romantic/sexual impulse in all its forms in waking life, it’s still there. It’s also in dreams too, though outright sexual dreams and nocturnal emissions aren’t nearly as common as they used to be. When the romantic/sexual impulse does come up in dreams it’s usually just on the level of feeling and flirting where often there’s the potential for sex later if I can find myself alone with this person. Even these types of dreams aren’t so common anymore, but even if I were able to free my waking and dream life completely from these movements, they could still rise up from the subconscient according to Sri Aurobindo2. What I think it basically boils down to is that until you reach a certain turning point in the yoga these things will always have the potential to rise when given the right stimulus. And with N. I had a very strong stimulus both physically and vitally that was hitting on all cylinders as far as what gets me going sexually and romantically. I will say however that it didn’t get its hooks into me as badly as it has in the past, and I think that’s because of the effort I’ve put into breaking the habit of following that impulse over the course of many years, and also because mentally I understand I’m not going to get any lasting satisfaction from a romantic/sexual relationship.
Now of course it’s good that I didn’t get as carried away with the vital movement as I have in the past, but it seems like the process of getting free of these things is interminable, like the curve of a hyperbola which gets closer and closer to its asymptotes as it extends into infinity but doesn’t ever actually touch them. So what is the turning point? It seems to me it could be different things for different people. For some people it might be something really major like the vital being becoming fully converted and giving itself wholly to the divine instead of the pursuit of its desires, or the psychic being suddenly and irrevocably coming to the front. A letter I recently reread of Sri Aurobindo’s gives me reason to believe though that it can happen in a more subtle way. He tells us:
By constant effort and aspiration one can arrive at a turning point when the psychic asserts itself and what seems a very slight psychological change or reversal alters the whole balance of the nature.3
Now other people might read this differently than I do, but it doesn’t appear to me that he’s describing the psychic being coming completely forward in this quotation. I think what he’s talking about here is a turning point where the psychic being wouldn’t be fully out in front, but its influence would become more powerful than the resistance of the outer nature. Then it would only be a matter of time for things like the complete conversion of the vital, or the psychic being coming irrevocably forward to happen.
However that turning point happens though, you have to carry on with your effort and aspiration until you reach it, and that’s hard. I’m finding in my own case that the vital has become fairly neutral, and while it’s not opposing the sadhana much, it’s not putting its enthusiasm into it much either. It also gets discouraged and I’m finding the only way is to will myself forward despite movements of discouragement and loss of faith. It’s kind of like walking in the desert, and while you come across the occasional oasis, you wonder if you’re ever going to find your way out of it. I hope one day to be able to tell people what’s it like on the other side of that desert.
References
Copyright Donny Duke
‘When the waking consciousness has renounced the indulgence of the sexual desires and impulses, these take refuge in the subconscient as impressions, memories, suppressed desires and come up in sleep as dreams and involuntary sleep emissions. If the waking consciousness is not itself clear, if, that is to say, though there is no physical indulgence, yet there are imaginations in the mind or desires in the vital or the body, then these dreams and emissions can be frequent. Even if the waking consciousness is clear, the subconscient emergences can still come for a time, but in time they diminish.’ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA Volume 31 – Letters on Yoga Volume 4, pg 526
Sri Aurobindo, CWSA Volume 28 – Letters on Yoga Volume 1, pg 121
Recently I was talking to my mom about prevision in dreams, and to illustrate the point I told her the best example I have of prevision from my own dream life. This dream happened in 1999 while I was living in State College Pennsylvania, where I had attended university at Penn State a few years earlier. My brother Rick, who I hadn’t seen in awhile, was coming to State College with his fiancee to attend some sort of function and planned to stop by my apartment to visit me. The night before his arrival I dreamed that I was in an apartment with one of my roommates, Kevin, and talking to Rick on the phone. He told me “Where are you? I can’t find you.”
The next day I was sitting at home around the time Rick was supposed to show up, and I kept waiting and waiting. I realized something was wrong and then the phone rang and it was my mom who told me Rick wasn’t coming because he misunderstood where my house was and gone to the wrong side of town. Once he realized the mistake it was too late for him to come see me before he had to be at the function, so he had mom call me and tell me what had happened. We were able to meet up though later at a bar, but as you can see the element of prevision here is obvious even though the details didn’t match up exactly.
It took mom a minute, but she was able to see the connection and of course her next question was how could a dream show that movement in advance. I told her to think of it like a seed and a tree. I explained that one way to think about it is that everything that happens in waking life arises from an inner reality that gives rise to this outer or waking reality in the same way that a seed gives rise to a tree, and so our dreams can show these things in a symbolic way before they happen.
Now mom and I didn’t get into it, but once you understand that prevision appears in dreams the next question is why is being able to see prevision in dreams important? Well on one level it could potentially give a person the ability to act and maybe change something, but prevision in dreams concerning outer events is usually so approximate and so mixed in with other dream elements that I can’t see it until after the fact. There is a type of prevision in dreams though that has more to do with your inner state, that is with movements of consciousness. If you know for example that getting bit by a snake in a dream is indicative of some kind of vital reaction you can be on the lookout for it and I have had instances where dreams like this have helped me to head a vital reaction off at the pass.
More fundamentally though seeing the prevision aspect of dreams as individuals and in the future as a society can help to provide a sort of reversal to our worldview. Right now most of us regard this waking reality as primary, whereas in actuality it’s just the final result of things going on on levels of reality that most of us aren’t conscious of. There’s an excellent passage in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri that explains this:
Our outward happenings have their seed within, And even this random Fate that imitates Chance, This mass of unintelligible results, Are the dumb graph of truths that work unseen: The laws of the Unknown create the known. The events that shape the appearance of our lives Are a cipher of subliminal quiverings Which rarely we surprise or vaguely feel, Are an outcome of suppressed realities That hardly rise into material day:1
Now in complete candor I’ll admit that this reversal of worldview hasn’t gone any farther in me than an idea, and a fleeting one at that. I do feel though that with the right development the reversal can go deeper and change one’s entire actual lived experience of reality. You have to start somewhere though, and hitching your wagon to ideas like the inner reality giving rise to the outer, oneness etc. is a step on the way. As a society too, evolving towards its own sort of reversal, we’ll have to start with ideas, but big ideas like this coming out into the light of day on a societal level could be what gets us pointed in the right direction even if the actual transformation of society takes a long, long time.
Two nights ago I had this dream about my guitar teacher Tom:
I’m at Tom’s guitar studio and outside in the parking lot there’s a KKK rally happening. Tom is putting on a KKK robe because he wants them to think he’s one of them in order to avoid any trouble. Then Tom and I go and sit outside to practice guitar, and a black man comes up and asks Tom if he can go in the studio to use the bathroom. Tom tells the guy no and points out the klanners and says “Can’t you see who’s here?” Tom’s worried the klanners will give him problems if he lets the guy use the bathroom. The black man just walks in anyway though, uses the bathroom and leaves without incident.
When I told Tom about the dream he laughed and said that was really funny because just the other day he’d told a friend of his he was going to get a Bass Pro1 sticker and put it on his car to give people the message “Hey everyone! I’m a white working class Republican!” He then proceeded to tell me that in the past when he was going to a lot of concerts and music festivals and the like he put an american flag in his car and saw that he avoided a lot of trouble with police and security that way.
Now I think Tom may have been half kidding with his friend, but we can see via the dream that I picked up Tom’s apprehension and how he was thinking about how he could avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention in what he feels will become a more openly divided and intolerant America after Trump takes office. As Donny pointed out though the dream is probably also picking up on fears of coming intolerance on the level of the nation itself, fear in people that if they don’t go along with the hating herd they’ll suffer because of it. I can also see something of myself in this dream, how I also can put on a false appearance in order to avoid trouble. As an example of this I actually voted for a third party candidate in the election to avoid having to tell my parents (who I live with and are quite conservative) that I voted for Hillary should they ask who I voted for. I now regret that because I live in Florida where Trump edged Hillary out by a small margin and to be honest in hindsight I feel like I basically cast a vote for Trump by going that route. Now it’s true that I was in fact put off by both candidates and also that I expected Hillary to win the election handily, but I took the easy way out to avoid any possible discomfort at home and didn’t cast my vote for the person who I felt was clearly the lesser of two evils. Now to be fair I think I should point out here that my parents aren’t neo nazis or the sort of people who would show up at KKK rally. As I’ve pointed out before, dreams often show things in an exaggerated manner to get their point across.
Now the black man at the end of the dream would seem to represent things that myself, Tom and others feeling this collective fear wouldn’t want the intolerant or rigidly moral to see. Donny suggested the idea that the fact that the black man uses the bathroom anyway without incident shows that the future may not play out as badly as people are fearing. Let’s hope that turns out to be the case.
Now it’s already implied in what I’ve written but I wanted to explicitly state how this dream shows how we can dream not only about a collective process, but also about what’s going on with people we’re closely involved with such as friends, family, co-workers etc. I’ve been taking lessons from Tom for over two years and we’re of a like mind regarding many things, so we’ve delved a little deeper in conversation than who won the football game last night. Our relationship is to some extent a friendship, and since there’s a connection there I can receive inner communication from him. To see this inner communication is useful if for no other reason than showing our inner connectedness, which Donny discussed at length in a recent blog.
This type of dream or vision can also enable you to see what’s going on with someone in order to try and take some helpful action. That happened recently with me in regards to a friend who’s a recovering alcoholic. I had a vision of her making some objects like large coins out of clay and there was a muse line with the vision that said: Mine was destroyed. At the time I had the vision I was wondering if this person had had a stumble and I was looking online for advice on how to approach someone if you think that’s happened. In my research I came to know of something Alcoholics Anonymous uses called sobriety coins which are tokens showing the amount of time someone has remained sober. After learning that I figured my friend’s sobriety coin had been destroyed figuratively speaking, but the fact that she was making new ones in the vision probably indicated that she was trying to get back on her feet. Having the vision helped me to bring the subject up with my friend and to encourage her not to get down on herself about the stumble, but to just pick herself up and carry on.
This is a pretty vast subject and I’ll probably write more about it in future on this blog, but I think this is a good stopping point. It would be great though to hear other people’s experiences in the comments.
Notes and References
For those who don’t know Bass Pro is a Hunting/Fishing/Camping superstore chain here in the USA.
When I was living in India, myself and two friends, David and Donny, started a kids program for urban village children. That program later evolved into a home for five of those children with us as the primary caretakers. As it turned out I left India when those kids we’re on the cusp of adolescence, but I’ve still stayed involved by funding the project. For most of the time I was in India as well I was funding The Lighthouse, as we called it then (now Harm’s End like the blog), with money that I had.
In addition to the five residents (now three) we also had and still have what you might call an ‘extended family’ of Lighthouse kids that we’re involved with. Because nearly all the kids we were dealing with were from severely impoverished families we were getting asked constantly for money for all kinds of things and not just for the children’s needs. The situation has continued with me in America and I sometimes get emails from Donny voicing someone’s request for this or that. The whole situation hits a trigger in my vital and was a struggle for me then as well as now. Part of it is selfishness as well as a conflict with the conservative values I was raised with. As a result I’m pretty tight fisted by nature. Donny is the opposite though and we often found ourselves at odds on the giving issue which created resentment in me towards him and towards the giving in general which was something I sometimes felt was forced on me. This was made worse by the fact that the people we were dealing with would try to play Donny against me in order to get what they wanted. There was also a lot of lying where we’d be asked for money for something, but find out later the money had actually been used for something else. That also created resentment.
Both now and in the past I either decide to give or am convinced to give more often than not it seems, so that really hasn’t changed. I have mellowed out some though in regards to the giving, see the need for it in some cases, and I’ve gotten a lot better at not getting taken over as much by the feelings of annoyance etc. that come up nor letting the decision about a certain request take over my thoughts.
I still have reactions though to the requests, sometimes big reactions where this unintegrated resentment from the past comes surging up. I had one of those reactions recently when Donny relayed a request to pay for drum lessons from Samuel who is part of the extended family. I said no since Mugu, a resident, had been asking for the same thing, and would probably have gotten irate at us giving lessons to someone else. That in itself was a valid point, but as I said the resentment towards the giving came up as well as another source of resentment. Let me explain. Over the years I’ve given a lot of money to Lighthouse kids for this or that class (usually something with getting a job in mind), and I know the way these urban village children will quit things at the drop of a hat if they decide they don’t like it or find it to be too much effort. And even in the instances where a class was finished, in every case they’ve either not used the education at all or gotten a job with it and quit within a matter of weeks. The hours are long and the pay is crap in India unless you have a lot of education so I can’t not empathize a little, but as you might understand, there’s a part of me that’s really tired of watching money go to waste in the attempts to help these people better themselves. I figured if history was any indication there was a good chance Samuel wouldn’t stick with the drum class, and it would just be more money down the drain.
So getting back to the story, even after I told Donny my answer, the vital was still miffed about the whole thing, and the mind kept mulling over things such as what I’d say if Donny didn’t drop it etc. Then that night I had this dream:
I’m in a town and Eli Manning is there as well as a guy who’s running amok. A car almost runs the crazy guy over, but then some people manage to capture him and put him in an old car like a Model T that has no roof. I get in the car too as a passenger. We’re interrogating the crazy guy, and it’s apparent he’s completely nuts. I finally just get sick of him and throw him out of the car. I’m glad to be rid of the guy and he’s gone for a while. Then he’s suddenly back crawling up the outside of the car, but he’s a zombie now. We manage to dislodge him again, but then he comes creeping again up the side of the car. Somebody suggests we go play a video game about zombies, that doing so might give us a clue as to how to get rid of him.
Shortly after waking up the next day I decided I’d had enough of all this ruling my mind and vital so I made a firm resolution to throw it out. It wasn’t so easy to get rid of though. It took quite a bit of work and even though I wanted it gone the thoughts and antagonistic feelings kept coming back as the thing expended its emotional charge. The dream shows this process very well, first with the crazy guy, who represented these irrational thoughts and emotions, and how I threw him out of the car, which shows my decision to throw out the vital reaction I was having. Then we see how even after I’d ‘killed’ the guy, i.e. the vital movement, it kept coming back and this is shown by the guy becoming a zombie that I can’t get rid of.
Regarding some of the other symbols in the dream I have to admit I don’t know what to make of the part at the end about playing the video game, but Eli Manning is an interesting symbol. As any football fan knows, Manning and his team the New York Giants have toppled arrogant quarterback Tom Brady and the New England Patriots twice in the Superbowl, the first time giving New England their only loss of the season. In addition to their reputation for being arrogant, the Patriots are also known for the two times they’ve been caught cheating in recent years. So if you look at the Patriots as cheating jerks with big egos, as many non-Patriots fans do, then you could see how maybe Manning represented some force or movement helping me to throw out the nasty vital reaction that had taken me over.
Another interpretation though is that Eli Manning might represent the nice guy in me since Manning, a two time Superbowl MVP quarterback, always comes across as a humble, well meaning fellow as well as a good sportsman except, of course, for when he was drafted1. The truth is there was part of me that wanted to give Samuel what he wanted because I feel sorry for him. He never stood a chance in the cutthroat Indian public school system and ended up dropping out. The future looks pretty bleak for Samuel, and the Eli Manning part of me wanted to give him something that he might take pleasure in.
So after I’d cleared out the vital reaction the Eli Manning part of me was still pleading Samuel’s case, but in the end I decided that since Donny didn’t voice any objection to my decision I would let it stand and see if Samuel pressed the issue. If he did I figured that might mean it was more than just a fleeting fancy or just arising out of a desire to make noise. Another reason, however, that I decided to let the thing drop at the time was because that I knew after I saw the meaning of the zombie dream that I’d eventually be writing this article, and that would be a chance to take another look at things.2
So in closing, while I think it’s been valuable to go into the nuts and bolts of my vital reaction, I want to reemphasize a really important lesson in this article, which is how these vital movements won’t go without a fight once you’ve let them get in and really take over. The best thing of course is to not let it get to that point, to detach yourself from them immediately if you can and don’t let yourself get fully pulled into the vital vortex. That can be hard to avoid though with things that really get your goat the way this situation did with me. Once it’s really gotten to you though, the best thing to do, once you’re able to, is make a firm resolution to throw the vital movement out and then be more stubborn than it until it’s gone.
Notes and References
Manning stated publicly that he would refuse to play for the San Diego Chargers should they draft him.
After proofing the article Donny revealed to me that Samuel had in fact been persistently asking for the class for a while before he finally relayed the request to me. Donny also said that Samuel kept asking for a while after I’d said no, but that he kept telling Samuel the answer was no. When I asked Donny recently if he thought we should give Samuel the class he said he thought we shouldn’t at the moment, because Samuel didn’t seem to be interested anymore, but that somewhere down the road it might be appropriate if he asked again.
About a month ago my mind and vital was in the grip of something. I don’t remember what now exactly, but it was something that had been troubling the mind and holding it under siege for a couple of days. I wanted to get free of the movement but was having trouble doing so. Then I received these lines from the muse in the morning:
Don’t muddy the mind courts (Came at the end of a dream where I was watching a performance of the hip hop group Run DMC) My mind relief from madness Mooning.
The first line’s advice was pretty clear, and motivated me to really try and throw the disturbing thoughts out of my mind, but I was having only limited success. Then all of the sudden, in the evening, I noticed my mind got abnormally clear, and it didn’t take much effort to keep it clear. There was no peace or joy or anything, just a quiet, fairly focused mind. Still it was a welcome respite.
Sri Aurobindo says, among other things, that the moon is a symbol of the spiritual consciousness which is above our normal human mind. One of the main movements in the integral yoga is for the sadhak to not only ascend to this level (or levels I should say) of consciousness, but also for it to descend and transform these lower levels of mind, life and body as well with its peace, silence, light and bliss. So what happened here I think is I got ‘mooned’ by a descent from the spiritual consciousness which quieted my mind and gave me relief from the mind’s madness. It didn’t last and was gone the next morning, but it broke the momentum of the disturbing thoughts, and I was able to move past them. I imagine it was important that, prompted by the muse, I was making a strong effort to throw out the thoughts myself. That I feel opened the door to the descent from the spiritual consciousness.
Now as the reader has no doubt noticed, the first line came at the end of a dream. This is a fairly common occurrence, but I have to admit I often can’t make any connection between the lines that come at the end of a dream and the dream itself. A lot of the time the lines don’t seem to have anything to do with the dream. Here though I can see a correlation between mud in the mind and hip hop music, which overall has a pretty low vibration, one that appeals to the less enlightened parts of the human vital.
Does anybody else see anything in these lines that they want to share in the comments?
I feel there’s a reason why ancient cultures gave such importance to astrological events like equinoxes, solstices, full moons and such things as planetary alignments. Basically they’re days of power, a day you can get a boost for your sadhana or your dream life if you’re receptive. Usually for me, if there’s any effect at all during these times (and a lot of times there isn’t), it’s on the level of dreams. I’ll have a powerful dream or a lucid dream. However during the last summer solstice, which was paired with a full moon, I had a little spiritual uplift that I think was shown in a dream I’d had the night before. The part I’m going to share however is just the end of a much longer dream since it’s only the end that’s really relevant as far as the spiritual uplift that day was concerned.
I put my backpack on and walk down the street and eventually find myself in some woods. There’s a stream there and in the water I can see these birds, about twenty of them, that have the heads of peacocks but bodies more like an ostrich’s. They’re about as tall as a man and in the dream I regard them as peacocks. One of them comes up and peers at me curiously though a gap in the trees. I can see that we’re at a delta where this stream meets the ocean. I go down into the water which is only about a foot deep and a very beautiful bluish green. The whole scene is very beautiful as well. The peacock/ostrich birds are moving out into the ocean, and I’m walking with them. Though the birds are big they don’t seem aggressive nor do they seem to be bothered by me. If I remember correctly their ostrich-like bodies are black or greyish black. It’s getting close to sunset and I want to watch the sunset with the peacock/ostrich birds.
One thing I’ve started to notice recently and have shown in a couple of recent blog posts is how a beautiful natural scene in a dream seems to be showing a nice ‘scene’ trying to manifest inside you in your waking life that day or a day or so afterwards. I believe that was the case here. So let me tell you what happened. On the day of the solstice, in the late morning, I went for a ride in my kayak. While I was out, I encountered one of my favorite water birds around here, a roseate spoonbill, roosting in a mangrove tree. I don’t often see them when I’m kayaking so I just sat there for a while admiring the bird and its beautiful pink plumage. When I returned home I noticed I felt cleared out as I often do after a spin in the kayak, since I can get fully immersed in nature. I noticed also that my thinking was elevated, and I found myself naturally pondering some things I’d recently read by Medhananda and Nolini Kanta Gupta and was looking at the world through the lens of those ideas. It didn’t require any hard mental effort or tapasya though. It was just happening naturally and spontaneously. For the most part I can’t remember exactly what I was reading at the time, but I do recall one little aphorism by Medhananda that was on my mind:
Spirit is tremendously solid. It is like diamond. In comparison matter is only a cloud of probabilities.1
A little later I took our dog Rosie for a walk. As we walked I was really feeling the stillness in the plants, and while that’s not a common experience for me it wasn’t the first time that’s happened, and I’m sure a lot of people have felt the stillness in plants. This time though, I could also feel the joy that was in the plants, and I caught it a bit by contagion and was feeling joy inside me as well as I walked. I was also appreciating how beautiful and unique the plants were, seeing them the way you might when tripping on psychedelics but to a much much lesser extent. There was one group of plants I encountered that were nothing but huge leaves on stalks which had been planted to hide a fire hydrant. When I looked at those plants, there was something so delightful about those big leaves that I couldn’t resist the urge to go over and touch one, giving a little laugh as I did so and feeling delight similar to what I think a small child does when they do something like that. That delight continued on the walk, and the uplift continued after that. It might have still been there a little bit when I went to bed. I honestly don’t remember now. It wasn’t there the next day when I woke up though.
So what I think happened here was I was able to open to the amplified energy that was available that day and benefit from it in this altered state of consciousness, which was foreshadowed by the beautiful sunset scene in my dream. This idea that a beautiful dream scene is symbolic of a beautiful uplift in waking life is still a working hypothesis for me, but one I’m getting more and more evidence to support. Recently, I had another dream where I was looking at a beautiful blue lake ringed by breathtaking mountains on the far side, and two days later there was a definite shift in consciousness in the evening, a state of peace and quiet. It wasn’t as strong as other experiences like that I’ve had, but it was definitely there.
One thing that I feel is important to point out is the beauty of these dream scenes is beyond the greatest beauty you can see in the physical world or even in normal dreams. I can’t really explain it any better than that, but if you start to have dreams like this I think you’ll see what I mean, see that it’s a certain class of dream or has a certain type of dream substance that can embody that beauty. It might be a glimpse of what Sri Aurobindo calls the subtle physical, but I can’t say for sure.
Regarding the peacock/ostrich birds in the dream I should point out that Sri Aurobindo has said that a peacock is a symbol of spiritual victory and that fits with the fact that I had a little spiritual opening. The fact that the rest of the body was like an ostrich is interesting since the thing that most quickly comes to mind when I think of the symbolic meaning of an ostrich is sticking your head in the ground. If I’m remembering correctly that the color was black that would indicate a hostile force. So I’d guess the element of spiritual victory is still marred by an element of sticking my head in the ground and maybe also a hostile influence. I think the birds in the dream were also connected to the encounter I had with the roseate spoonbill even though the dream birds were completely different. I always enjoy the sight of a roseate spoonbill because pink is the color that symbolizes the psychic being or soul in the integral yoga.
So in closing I think it’s important to try and keep yourself clear every day and not just on days like full moons and solstices. Knowing, however, that you can get a little boost on days like that is a good motivator for keeping yourself clear especially on those occasions.
References
On the threshold of a new age with Medhananda, pg 165 by Medhananda
Some months back I posted a movie review of the Jamin Winans film The Frame, and though I am a proponent of the film for various reasons, I make it clear I don’t consider it a spiritual film. To justify that I threw out a working definition of what I thought a truly spiritual film would be. I consider a spiritual film to be one that acknowledges in some way that our true purpose in this world is a shift in identity, a change in consciousness resulting in an actual lived experience of ourselves as God, Being, Oneness or whatever you want to call it. Recently, I saw a film which I feel isn’t quite knocking on the door of that definition, but it’s at least turning in the driveway. That movie is the recent independent film Divine Access.
This movie is worth seeing for a number of reasons not the least of which are great performances by much of the cast. It also has an entertaining and to a certain extent meaningful story punctuated by some very clever and amusing satire on religious veneration, new age spirituality and gurudom.
The main character is Jack Harriman, who grew up making the rounds of the New Age circuit with his New Age mom accumulating a vast wealth of teachings and scriptural quotes from Buddhism to Christianity and everything in between. Growing up in that free love atmosphere, Jack also fostered his passion for the opposite sex. Fast forwarding to the present we find Jack as a 40 something underachiever whose life largely revolves around his johnson and trying to bed as many women as possible.
Things change though when Jack’s friend Bob, who’s aware of Jack’s vast religious knowledge, invites him as a guest on his no-budget late night cable access show Divine Access. On the show Jack debates and shows up current host Reverend Guy Roy Davis, and after a favorable response from viewers, Guy Roy is out and Jack is in. Things pick up steam from there on out when, by Bob’s prompting, Jack gives a talk in town, and one viral video later Jack embarks on an inspirational speaking tour of the southern United States. His main motivations though for going on the tour are to make money, ‘selling ideas for cash’ as he puts it, and to hook up with loose women who are attracted to his celebrity status, and who are propositioning him via email. Jack claims not only to have no original ideas, but also no belief in the things he says. From his perspective he’s giving people hope, and as long as the people believe what he says that’s what matters.
Among the important supporting characters in the movie is Nigel, who works as a ‘catcher’ catching fainters who’ve been slain in the spirit1 at religious revivals. He tags along with Jack to serve in that capacity if necessary and also keeps a journal chronicling the events of the speaking tour as well as Jack’s teachings. Another character is Amber, a down on her luck prostitute who presents Jack with the chance to help a woman unselfishly as opposed to trying to get her into the sack. Then there’s Marian, a mysterious woman who knows things about Jack that she shouldn’t and pops in at different points in the story to challenge Jack’s indifference and call him on his behavior. She represents a divine element in the movie since she’s obviously not a normal human and she can appear superimposed over other people as well as vanish into thin air. What is she, some form of God, an angel, or a representation of Jack’s soul? The movie never actually tells you, but it does show that she can be seen and heard by other people than Jack, so she’s not just a figment of his imagination.
The story also periodically shifts to follow the exploits of Reverend Guy Roy, who blames Jack for the loss of his late night TV pulpit and who he views as a minion of Satan. As the hapless Reverend’s life and mental stability come unraveled, things build to a final showdown with Jack at the movie’s climax.
Now I won’t tell you what that climax is, but I will say that I was at first disappointed with it. Afterwards though, I realized it would have been hard to take the story any farther without it crossing the threshold to a spiritual movie and actually addressing the idea of a shift in consciousness. As it is, Jack’s wisdom is mostly along the lines of what you’ll mainly find in trendy best sellers from the Self-Help section of your local bookstore.2 It’s not pointing people to that change in consciousness.In addition, Jack’s growth is towards the genuinely sattvic3 man that he is and is trying to deny. It’s not a growth toward surpassing man.
Regardless of that, I’ll say again that the film is well worth seeing. It’s a story of growth and redemption and of accepting one’s destiny, and because of these things I feel it stands out from even the small crowd of independent films. Ultimately it’s a ‘human’ story and not an ‘exceeding the human story’, but it does have the element of divine help in the figure of Marian who is pushing Jack towards self-betterment. That, for me, is what really raises the other elements of the film to a step on the way to a truly spiritual movie, puts it in the driveway. For those thirsting for such a movie I think, like me, you’ll find a little sustenance in Divine Access.
Notes
Being ‘slain in the spirit’ refers to the practice of people falling to the floor in religious ecstasy. Usually their fall is broken by ushers or ‘catchers’.
I say ‘mainly’ because you’ll also find the likes of Eckhart Tolle and Michael Singer in the Self-Help section.
Dictionary.com defines sattvic as: having a serene, harmonious, balanced mind or attitude.
Every since mainstream science has admitted the existence of lucid dreaming (as if it needed to say that for it to exist), interest in it has sky rocketed, and there are forums and groups talking about it around the net. Out of body experiences, however, science studies but doesn’t allow into its cannon. It’s considered a sort of a hallucination/dream, not an OBE, because if it were, it would cross the material line that science has drawn and would give consciousness independence from the body.
Any chat or forum about lucid dreaming will show, not only it’s closely related to OBE, but also that line, and the science-minded and the spiritual-minded are arguing over it. I’ve gone out of groups because I just don’t want to argue with the mind that uses science as its sole authority for an investigation of reality, often denying or explaining away their own personal experience so as not to be heretical to their beliefs. The spiritual-minded seems to have a tendency to the opposite, too easily accepting its personal experiences as this and that without rigorously testing the field, and so I stopped commenting in groups.
This present article on OBE, while it doesn’t give proof that I would accept as clear and certain evidence the consciousness is actually leaving the body, it’s one of the most powerful I’ve had, because of the dream experience that ends it, but it’s one of only 3 or 4 OBEs in my life where I’m out of body in outer reality without little or no dream or inner elements present, what I’d call being an independent invisible spirit in the material world.
An article I’ve posted on my personal blog, “The Evidence of Man”, is one that I do take as proof I’m going out of the body and not just having a ‘strange dream’, and you would too if you have confidence I’m not lying or exaggerating, but only there time travel is involved, and it’s inner body travel, not a journey in the outer world, though it more substantially shows that the consciousness can leave the body and travel than in a regular OBE. If you chalk it up to ‘coincidence’, then you’re not only grasping at straws to keep your faith in the materialism of science intact, you’ve crossed that line where you put your beliefs over reason itself. Read it.
Panorama of Enchanted Rock, a granite pluton rock formation near Fredericksburg, Texas. Photo Wikipedia Commons, user Jujutacular
Returning to the story of this OBE, I’d gone with some friends to a state natural area in Texas called Enchanted Rock, a dome-shaped “425 foot pink granite batholith”[i] that just juts up out of the landscape almost like something from another world. Local Indians, the Tonkawa, had named it that because of a legend that a Spanish conquistador had cast a spell on it, making ghost fires glow at the top, and because they believed spirits roamed the place, and if you hear the haunting winds whistling around it, you might yourself feel that to be true. Whatever’s the case with why they named it, or the story we have today why they did, I believe the Native Americans knew the place to be a portal, a power spot on the earth where the fence of matter has a hole in it, making it possible to travel ‘elsewhere’.
I’d gone with the intention of inducing an OBE and going to the moon. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I’d had many OBEs in my life and had done some experimenting with it, and it’s only natural to want to try and leave the earth eventually, and the moon is the most obvious and natural first target to attempt to reach. I’ve heard others who have honed these skills try the same. I was sleeping with three other people in a tent in the campground of the park, near the foot of the mountain, and I awoke in cataleptic trance, or sleep paralysis as it’s known now that the state is talked about on the net, usually as something to fear and get out of as quickly as possible, because of the ominous presences often felt or seen in that state.[ii] I’ve found it to be a state, where, among other things, it’s easy to leave the body. I’ve only once been able to lay down with the intention of going into cataleptic trance so to leave the body, though many times if I awoke in the night anywhere near the state I could relax and bring on the full McCoy. What killed my mastery over inducing the state was a metaphysical accident I had a few months after this present story I’m telling; I conjured a demon and had to deal with that and learned there really were fearful things lurking in our bed sheets.[iii]
Studying ancient literature about the exploration of consciousness, what I did to get a handle on what I’d experienced with that demon and other inner experiences I was having, I found those presences that present themselves in cataleptic trance and lucid dream to be called guardians of the threshold, what you have to overcome in order to go further in your exploration, like a test you have to pass, whatever they themselves think they’re doing there, but I never have been able to get back to such mastery as to be able to lay down and induce the state. Now I’m doing sadhana, spiritual practice, and I don’t focus on ‘powers’, as they are called in yoga, and so both my experience of cataleptic trance and OBE have waned, but when it’s called for by my practice, and it seldom is, I leave my body, usually for a specific purpose.
Getting back to that enchanted rock, I had no trouble going out of my body, something you learn if you have enough practice doing it. I simply use my will and rise up out of it. I was just above my body and had a thought about seeing the tent from the outside, and suddenly I found myself well away from the tent up closer to the mountain about 20 meters above the ground. In inner exploration (though here it’s more like being on the inside in outer reality) where you put your will, which might just be thinking about something or someone, is where you will go or attempt to reach, why it takes such focus and concentration to explore consciousness. You really have to have a handle on it.
The moon was nearly full, waxing or waning I don’t remember, and I became excited when I saw that I’d done it, was a free spirit floating in the material world, what I figured I had to be in order to leave the earth. I’d tried to go just into space free of the earth in a lucid dream a couple of years before, and I realized I’d have to do it in an complete OBE. I didn’t make it then. As I got to the outer atmosphere everything disintegrated, and I awoke in my bed.
What I hadn’t yet fully grasped, though, was the threshold matter. There are thresholds other than the hostile powers, and one quite significant one is leaving the room or enclosed space you’re in. If you don’t have enough focus, grasp on your consciousness, you simply go out of there and into a lucid dream. Obviously leaving the earth is a much larger and more difficult threshold to master, and though I’ve had dreams of being in space or on the moon or Mars, I’ve yet to cross that threshold and actually leave the earth intending consciously to do so. I don’t know the difference between dreaming of that and doing that in waking reality while in the dream or inner state, such as an OBE, but I do feel there is a large or small distinction between the two, but I can’t discount the possibility of finding myself off the earth in dream and really being off it. I suspect our view of the matter is too rigid, and that there aren’t clear cut lines between the planes as we believe. Nature, whether inner or outer, doesn’t draw distinct lines between things like we do. Things often sort of blend into something else, though there are definite boundaries too.
The scene before me with that looming moon was fantastic. As a ‘spirit’, the moonlight seemed to be what the scene was about, not what was creating it but its focus. I looked around me and, to my slight disappointment, saw that there was one difference with waking reality. Though my friends in the tent were all sleeping as though the tent was there, curled around its walls, my body too, there was no tent. Other than that I was the free spirit I wanted to be. I looked up at the moon and willed myself up, going up very quickly, faster and faster, and just as had happened in that aforementioned lucid dream, as I got to the threshold of space the scene before me disintegrated, but I don’t think it was a lucid dream I found myself in but a dream experience, what in the integral yoga means you actually go somewhere in the inner fields and don’t just dream you do, intending to or not.
I found myself looking at a clearing in an old growth ancient forest, the full moon shining upon the scene illuminating it with moonlight’s coolness. I didn’t have a physical presence. Sitting in the middle of the clearing was a beautiful middle aged woman. Her hair style was quite distinctive, very intricate braiding that’s too complicated to describe, and she wore simple but adorned natural clothing. She was sitting on some sort of chair or stool I couldn’t see because all around her and on her were the animals of the forest, birds, butterflies, squirrels and things on her body like living decorations, larger animals as near to her as they could get, as it was evident they loved her and she them. The clearing was full of animals, predator and prey alike, but there was no strife. They just wanted close to her, and so did I.
She was smiling the sweetest and wisest smile I’ve ever seen, smiling at me, and with mirth sparkling in her eyes she said simply, and I remember her exact words, “You’re on the right path. Don’t turn to the right or left, and take baby steps.” Then the scene faded suddenly, and I awoke in my body inside the tent.
The path I was on, and still am, though I’m a sadhak of the Integral Yoga of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, was what I called at the time the personal growth process towards wholeness and healing, and my focus was inner exploration. It would bear mentioning that for me I didn’t take up the spiritual path for realization but for healing with an impossible disorder I relate in poems, stories, and articles on my personal blog.
In order to prepare for the moon shot, I just stopped all vital indulgences, rigidly, the vital in our yoga the life-body of the impulses, desires, emotions, and preferences, what usually in a sadhana gives the trouble, more than the mind and body, the two other instruments of the lower being. My main indulgence at that time was grass, and I’d stopped smoking it for the duration of my attempt to reach the moon.
Grass for me has been an indulgence, accelerator, and a medicine. The powerful spiritual experiences I had at the beginning of my sadhana were partly triggered by it, except the finding of the soul, where I wasn’t stoned because I was deep inside a night’s trance. I don’t call it a sleep because, though it’s the same state, there I was conscious. Lucid would neither be what I was because I was no longer in dream but had gone all the way through it via a dark ‘tunnel’ and was no longer in this universe or this type of existence but in spirit, the well of soul, a journey I took some months after this OBE. The story is in the works and will be posted on this blog upon its completion if I do actually complete it.
Lately, pot has only been an indulgence and a medicine, the latter since it stops nausea and vomiting and eases stomach pain, and I’ve have a serious mysterious stomach condition. It also helps accelerate having spiritual experiences, if you know how to use it that way, but not for a permanent realization, though anything is possible in the wide conditions we find ourselves in. I see it now more as an immaturity than as an aid. My muse said, when it first started some 15 years ago, when I was a daily pot smoker, that “pot can take over any nature there is,” and I’ve found that to be true. I guess I just have to say smoker beware; pot’s a double-edged sword.
The earth mother, whom I feel that woman was, wasn’t telling me to give up pot at that time, or anything else. She was saying something in very simple language that I can’t explain no matter how many words I use: neither denying your desires nor simply indulging them. My latest story on my personal blog, “Clambers on the Mountaintop,” about posting poems on Mt. Sinai in Egypt, goes into that idea in great detail, but, as much detail as I give, I still can’t put that idea into concrete language, but the attempt, I feel at least, is worth the read. That story takes place some years after this one, and it was the earth mother that planted the seed that had me planting poems in Jerusalem, Mt. Sinai, and the pyramids at Giza. Now those seeds and poems are flowering, and I understand what she told me, but I can’t give you that understanding. I can only tell you the story, taking my time to do that, 25 years, because the last thing she said is as important as the other two, what I needed to hear because I wanted the moon, and wanted it now. You see I didn’t get it. I may try again at some point, but when and if I do it’ll be the right time.
Harm's End 