Vivekananda, the first yogi to visit the Western world, was speaking of the relative, cyclical nature of social evolution to the intellectual elite of England and boldly said that when India was at its height as a civilization the Britons were painting their bodies blue and living in trees.

Only political and materialistic opportunists who promote fear in the ignorant and fearful people focus more on people´s differences than people´s similarities. Nationalism, even in more responsible and rational forms, has always seemed rather immature compared to the perennial idea that we are all microcosmic consciousness evolving and existing in the living and vibrant Macrocosmic Consciousness of the universe.

The subjective Consciousness is the same in all beings. We may have different minds with different cultural conditioning, but the internal "I" is identical in all. It is only in the objective part of our minds that we are different. The objective mind (chitta) is connected to the external world and the physical brain and so it therefore is qualified by external objectivity. If one sees only the external, then all appears different. People are simply conditioned and qualified by different environments and objective circumstances like race, culture and social class. However, if one knows the pure, inner Consciousness, then one realizes that the internal, subjective Consciousness is the same in the divine Macrocosm as well as all individual beings, or "microcosms." All beings share the same inner soul with the infinite subjective Consciousness, or Macrocosm.  The microcosm and Macrocosm are essentially united.  Really, there is only a Macrocosmic Mind and Consciousness. "Microcosm" is actually a misnomer; it is used to describe a mind qualified by relative, changing objectivity, the part of one´s subjective consciousness that appears to be qualified and changed by the external world.  Yet this consciousness is never really modified. It is like a mirror reflecting so many objects. No matter how many objects and colors that are reflected in the mirror, the mirror never changes.

I listened to an interview with Cornel West the other night. I cannot say I have read his works but his interviews have always impressed me. What most illuminated me from this interview were his reflections on how the Neo-liberal Left and the Neo-Fascist Right are controlled by the same big interests in Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex. Both sides serve the American Empire, only the Left wants to let minorities and women into the game while the Right maintains a more traditional racist attitude. He spoke at length about how people are never introduced, even in universities, to the idea that the U.S. is an empire with a history of colonialism, genocide, and capitalist exploitation.

Reflecting on this interview I begin to think of a person whose image I always try to keep out of my mind, the “Neo-Fascist” leader that West refers to. I only recently heard his voice and listened to this person speak. I feel at one with the world but there are still people whose mental form is so disturbing that I do not want to let them anywhere near my soul by even thinking of them. When we conjure up a person or object in our minds there is actually a connection with the original object or person. Weak and unconscious minds only see their own projections and have very little connection with the original object in their minds. The stronger and purer the mind, the more one is able to connect with the person.

Trump is the supreme and perfect example of “white trash.” “White trash” is a term I stopped using some time ago, at least until now. It seemed rather racist in that it implies that white people can also be “trash,” not just the minorities so commonly discriminated against. Also, its common use to describe rural and simple folk is truly offensive. I cannot even use the term "white trash" for fearful and violent, gun-slinging fundamentalist Christians.  These people have inferiority complexes that are exploited by their leaders who inject a false sense of national and racial superiority.  I can only call their leaders "white trash."  Trump is the perfect symbol of collective ignorance and brutality, the perfect leader for a trash culture in a trash empire. Only trashy, crude, materialistic consciousness could manifest this abomination.

Such distortions of human consciousness that endanger our evolution are always eventually cursed by nature and the Macrocosm itself turns against them. Nature simply unleashes all of the accumulated reactions to the past actions of the collective consciousness with such perfect precision and even uncanny symbolism so as to make it clear to history that what was destroyed was an abomination. Hopefully, now I can remove this form from my mind but I do in some strange way thank Trump for being such a clear and perfect symbol. The American Empire will not be spared the fate of other fallen empires who no longer serve any evolutionary purpose.

I recently dreamed that I was hiking to the North Pole with ex-president Obama.  He was asking me some questions about yoga philosophy.  I did not want to talk to him.  I thought internally that "you might be a decent fellow if you weren´t the leader of the corporate empire, the war machine of the military industrial complex, etc.etc....  I said nothing.

In the dream I was aware it was a dream and was thinking I am dreaming this because in my past, after the Purulia incident, I was always in playful dialogues with very "intelligent" people.   I had an eye kept on me but I was an innocent person in the debacle and I felt that the intelligence and military people I dialogued with were genuinely friendly with me.  They knew I was no patriot but also understood that I was not an anarchist or violent revolutionary.  I took advantage of the situation to give them some subtle moral clashes about being servants of the war machine.  I wondered that if they woke up a little spiritually and morally if they would end up renouncing their government and military positions?  For example, I once dialoged with a navy officer and West Point professor about neo-platonic ideas and their similarity with the Upanashadic doctrine of the identity of the Atman with Brahman.  This is essential the same debate of the Christian mystics as to if the human soul is at one with and identical to God, or if it was a separate entity than the divine essence.  He cited John Scotus Eriugena.  We spoke about whether the Atman, the individual soul, was equal to Brahman, the universal soul.  I said it was true and he asked if it were true in the sense of the two cantaloupes he was holding were identical.  Are they identical, or just similar?, he asked.  I said that there is nothing exactly similar in the physical plane but in the spirit all is one.  It would be as if two cantaloupes could be exactly identical.  If they were completely identical then we could not notice their separateness under any scrutiny and they would be entirely one.  Such coincidence is impossible in the physical world but in the spirit all is one.  However, in the physical world we should see unity in diversity, as finite and diverse creation trying to express the Infinite through the evolution of consciousness, I said.

Anyway, it was my personal little history of being able to see how people inside the both sides of the eternal game of rebels and empire officials really think, as human beings.  And so with this in my mind I realized that this was the reason that in this dream I was supposed to guide him to the north pole.  Obama in this dream is definitely the most refined symbol of great human intellect enslaved to dirty politics, in the end a false humane and rational face for the most irrational and self-destructive empire.

Continuing with the dream, we reached the tip of the world.  The North Pole was directly in the middle of what seemed to be an igloo.  On approaching it closer the igloo was really a pool.  It was covered from the weather and there was a small door on this roof to enter the waters below.  Obama asked me to open it.  I saw the waters were deep and connected to the oceans all around this block of ice we were standing on top of.  Obama asked to look in and I moved aside.  The waters started swirling and the entire pool became a giant vortex.  A giant wave engulfed him and I watched him get flushed.  The vortex grew and engulfed the entire north pole and I saw the entire human society getting flushed as well.  I was wondering why I was not getting flushed but realized I was just a witness without a physical body in this dream.

While I was a university student I spent my summer vacations at a yogi ashram in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.  It was ironic to be at such an enlightened community in the middle of what seemed to be an environment out of the movie "Deliverance" of the 70´s.  The community had a children's playground with a cement lizard that had a sandbox underneath and a rope swing that children could use after climbing on top of the lizard´s head.  The local Baptist church started a rumor that the strange yogi cult actually worshiped the lizard.  That was the lighter, funny part.

Other interactions with the community got a little more heavy.  The local KKK would come and attack our community by firing off their rifles and even burning crosses.  Many of the people living in the community were monks from India.  The racists would shout "sand niggers" before firing off their guns or lighting fires.  That is a racist term for Arabs but what does a hick know?  For them, "if it ain´t white then it ain´t right."  I was put in charge of security at the community.  Talking to the police came to no avail and so I decided to fight back.  Some people thought we should get a gun but I was against it.  It was all good fun on my part.  I would climb a giant oak tree and throw rocks at their trucks when they arrived.  They did not see me and thought a gun was fired at their truck.  I even put giant spikes in a log that dropped across the road when they entered.  I once jumped out of the woods at night with a broom stick to pound the side of their car.  I was almost naked, just wearing a yogi loincloth, kind of like Tarzan.  I was called to duty in the middle of the night when they arrived.  It was so funny to see that some poor neo-Nazi with a bald tattooed head screaming like a baby out of sheer terror from some skinny, almost naked vegan who was "attacking" him.

Yet there was also a lighter, friendlier side to the local people.  It relieved me that untamed human nature free from modern civilization could also have a good side as well.   I became friends with a hillbilly family.  They thought I was so nice that I must be a Christian.  I was just a free thinker who practiced yoga and hung out with some monks on vacations.  However, I liked some passages from the bible and I shared this with them.  They began to defend me from the prejudices of their church.  One day, while visiting them, their preacher arrived.  He had a really bad vibration, full of hatred and prejudice.  They said "this is our friend Bill and he is a good Christian.

My friends back at the community began to joke with me and call me Bill, the Christian hill billy.

A few years ago I visited a remote community in Chiapas with a psychiatrist who was working with local communities.  We were discussing the nobility of humans when they are free of modern civilization but were also recognizing the obvious dark sides of humanity.  I told her about the Ozark hill billys and we recognized that things were not so different here.  As a Texan who has lived in Missouri and now in Chiapas I can say that the redneck is a universal human phenomenon.  They come in all forms and colors.  Wherever there is xenophobia, fear of outsiders and a desire to defend oneself from imaginary threats, then there are rednecks.  Yet here in Chiapas there does seem to be a little more friendliness..   I think there is a little more inclusion in their communities and a little less intentional cruelty than with the Ozark hicks.  However, I have also heard of some pretty savage communities here as well.  My friend and I both agreed that it was very important to treat these people well so that their innocence does not convert into crude, divisive ignorance.

She told me about a very friendly local man named Hitler.  He had no idea who Hitler actually was.  His parents just knew he was some famous, powerful man and they liked the sound of his name.  Hitler had a dog named Killer, who was actually a nice dog.  He did not speak English but heard it was a good name for a guard dog.  It was very ironic that a friendly man and a friendly dog had such names.

Most people I know around here relate to me as another person, not as somebody from the U.S.  However, some people idealize me because I must be some white and rich foreigner.  Their inferiority complexes make them think that foreigners have these really beautiful lives.  If they only understood how really terrible it is to have lived in Nazi Germany or the U.S. in current times!  In the end the quality of life in racist dictatorships is not much better than in the impoverished, corrupt narco states like Mexico.  It is all so absurd that it seems unreal.  Yes it is absurd, yet so dangerous that ignorant minds have no idea of what these "good" forces are actually doing to the world.

I always thought that North Korea had the most absurd political mythology.  The semi-divine Kim Jong-il even went so far to say that he never had to defecate.   Now Trump´s AI diarrhea depicting himself as a Christ figure pushes the U.S. into first place.  I always wondered if any North Koreans really believed any of the ridiculous state propaganda or if they were just too scared not to.  Yet Trump is an elected leader in a Christian democracy, making it all the more absurd.  He maybe one of the wealthiest and powerful men in the world, but he is really just another white trash red-neck.

Rightist, leftist; capitalist, communist:  If your philosophy is matter then in the end you really do not matter.  Matter is an illusion, people only believe in it when their spiritual heart is not yet open.  Universal reason cannot be separated from universal love.

Over the last 500 years it has been demonstrated that the capitalist system cannot survive without genocide, slavery, and a multinational imperialism which exploits human labor and hoards natural resources stolen from other lands. Communism, which was born as the bastard son and counter-reaction to capitalism, has mostly fallen short of its ideals when put into practice. Instead of a liberated proletariat and the dissolution of the state, we find tyrannical central governments that grossly oppress human rights. Capitalism seeks to bind with gold chains while communism binds with heavy iron chains. Neither system helps all of humanity evolve physically, mentally, or spiritually.

If there are parasites that attack the physical organism, then why cannot there exist parasites that attack the mental organism? Just as parasites can root their way into an imbalanced and infirm organism, then why could not a mental parasite worm its way into an infirm mind, or ideologies that create mental imbalances? Perhaps limited, materialistic ideas like capitalism and communism are destined to make both the individual and collective minds insane because they are limited ideologies based on materialism and only recognise the material and social nature of human beings. A human being desires infinite freedom. Not only do we desire freedom, but we are designed to seek it. There exist within us all of the thought forms and emotional structures to seek higher mental and spiritual forms of happiness. The common error is to seek the infinite in the finite. If our infinite desires situate themselves exclusively in creature comforts and egocentric desires, then frustration and unhappiness will eventually destroy this limited happiness as one's higher nature has not been expressed.

These mental parasites are called microvita in tantra yoga. Just like there are positive as well as negative bacterias, there are both positive and negative microvita. Positive microvita stimulate the higher desires of the mind and the endocrine system while negative microvita keep the mind bound to our animal nature. There is always a balance of positive and negative microvita in nature but when negative microvita become overly expressed and positive microvita are not expressed, then great imbalances occur and nature must restore order. A human being that does not participate in physical, mental and spiritual evolution is a waste of energy and will be attacked by negative microvita. The planet must get rid of some dead weight. Ideologies that mold human beings into slaves of matter will eventually be flushed by nature as they do not foster the evolution of spirit.

The mind is the intermediary entity between spirit and matter. "As you think, so you become." The mind becomes like the objects of its attachments. Subtle occupations of the mind make the mind finer while crude occupations degrade the mind. If the ego, the driver of the mind, is weak then negative microvita help make one selfish and mean minded, seek creature comforts and dreams of getting rich, and attaining only mundane ambitions. If one is strong and intelligent then positive microvita helps one to struggle for liberation from all mental limitations and ultimately finds peace in the infinite spirit within. When the mind unifies with spirit it is nirvana, freedom from time and rebirth. The mind no longer exists as a separate entity: it merges into spirit. When one defies one´s true purpose of dharma (the path of physical and mental evolution toward spiritual freedom) the mind unifies with matter. In this union one is also free from human rebirth: the mind disintegrates in matter, the body dies, and one becomes one with the garbage on the streets and the caca in the sewers.

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While I was a university student I spent my summer vacations at a yogi ashram in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.  It was ironic to be at such an enlightened community in the middle of what seemed to be an environment out of the movie "Deliverance" of the 70´s.  The community had a children's playground with a cement lizard that had a sandbox underneath and a rope swing that children could use after climbing on top of the lizard´s head.  The local Baptist church started a rumor that the strange yogi cult actually worshiped the lizard.  That was the lighter, funny part.

Other interactions with the community got a little more heavy.  The local KKK would come and attack our community by firing off their rifles and even burning crosses.  Many of the people living in the community were monks from India.  The racists would shout "sand niggers" before firing off their guns or lighting fires.  That is a racist term for Arabs but what does a hick know?  For them, "if it ain´t white then it ain´t right."  I was put in charge of security at the community.  Talking to the police came to no avail and so I decided to fight back.  Some people thought we should get a gun but I was against it.  It was all good fun on my part.  I would climb a giant oak tree and throw rocks at their trucks when they arrived.  They did not see me and thought a gun was fired at their truck.  I even put giant spikes in a log that dropped across the road when they entered.  I once jumped out of the woods at night with a broom stick to pound the side of their car.  I was almost naked, just wearing a yogi loincloth, kind of like Tarzan.  I was called to duty in the middle of the night when they arrived.  It was so funny to see that some poor neo-Nazi with a bald tattooed head screaming like a baby out of sheer terror from some skinny, almost naked vegan who was "attacking" him. 
   
Yet there was also a lighter, friendlier side to the local people.  It relieved me that untamed human nature free from modern civilization could also have a good side as well.   I became friends with a hillbilly family.  They thought I was so nice that I must be a Christian.  I was just a free thinker who practiced yoga and hung out with some monks on vacations.  However, I liked some passages from the bible and I shared this with them.  They began to defend me from the prejudices of their church.  One day, while visiting them, their preacher arrived.  He had a really bad vibration, full of hatred and prejudice.  They said "this is our friend Bill and he is a good Christian.  

My friends back at the community began to joke with me and call me Bill, the Christian hill billy.  

A few years ago I visited a remote community in Chiapas with a psychiatrist who was working with local communities.  We were discussing the nobility of humans when they are free of modern civilization but were also recognizing the obvious dark sides of humanity.  I told her about the Ozark hill billys and we recognized that things were not so different here.  As a Texan who has lived in Missouri and now in Chiapas I can say that the redneck is a universal human phenomenon.  They come in all forms and colors.  Wherever there is xenophobia, fear of outsiders and a desire to defend oneself from imaginary threats, then there are rednecks.  Yet here in Chiapas there does seem to be a little more friendliness..   I think there is a little more inclusion in their communities and a little less intentional cruelty than with the Ozark hicks.  However, I have also heard of some pretty savage communities here as well.  My friend and I both agreed that it was very important to treat these people well so that their innocence does not convert into crude, divisive ignorance.  

She told me about a very friendly local man named Hitler.  He had no idea who Hitler actually was.  His parents just knew he was some famous, powerful man and they liked the sound of his name.  Hitler had a dog named Killer, who was actually a nice dog.  He did not speak English but heard it was a good name for a guard dog.  It was very ironic that a friendly man and a friendly dog had such names.  

Most people I know around here relate to me as another person, not as somebody from the U.S.  However, some people idealize me because I must be some white and rich foreigner.  Their inferiority complexes make them think that foreigners have these really beautiful lives.  If they only understood how really terrible it is to have lived in Nazi Germany or the U.S. in current times!  In the end the quality of life in racist dictatorships is not much better than in the impoverished, corrupt narco states like Mexico.  It is all so absurd that it seems unreal.  Yes it is absurd, yet so dangerous that ignorant minds have no idea of what these "good" forces are actually doing to the world.  

I always thought that North Korea had the most absurd political mythology.  The semi-divine Kim Jong-il even went so far to say that he never had to defecate.   Now Trump´s AI diarrhea depicting himself as a Christ figure pushes the U.S. into first place.  I always wondered if any North Koreans really believed any of the ridiculous state propaganda or if they were just too scared not to.  Yet Trump is an elected leader in a Christian democracy, making it all the more absurd.  He maybe one of the wealthiest and powerful men in the world, but he is really just another red-neck.

Comments

A few years ago I received a gag Christmas gift, a Christmas sweater with Trump's face and words that read "Make X-mas Great Again." I put the sweater on, grabbed an empty beer bottle from a cousin next to me and started to pretend to be so drunk and idiotic that I believed not just in Santa but in the good Christian nature of Donald Trump. I was the perfect MAGA idiot. Everybody had a good laugh. It felt strange to hold a beer in my hand. Within my family in Mexico people make jokes about how I drink all of the alcohol and don't get drunk. I am the beer master. I play with that title because I helped people master beer. I taught meditation to people who drank alcohol and many never drank again. I always felt a little heavy and mentally confused for a while after teaching meditation to people who drink alcohol, but we worked through it. I understand the negative effects of alcohol because I feel what happens to people when they drink alcohol. I never hang around too long around environments where people drink. After the first few drinks they have the vibe gets heavy, and I leave before the fatal assault on their neurons begins. A photo was taken and I even shared it on Facebook the last few years at every Christmas. But then there was Trump 2.0 and the beginning of the 4th Reich. Now I feel using the photo as a joke is becoming as inappropriate as wearing a shirt with the bust of Hitler and classic German font that reads "Deutschland Uber Alles." I hear people say the comparison with Trump and Hitler is exaggerated. Regardless, even the vice president referred to Trump as "America's Hitler" before he joined his cult. It was easy to make jokes about the USA and Trump. I was not anti-American but was always more interested in being a citizen of the world than being an American. This detachment made it easy to make light of the situation with jokes, but now I am afraid I could hurt my good friends who are trapped within the Reich. I did not leave the US because of some intense existential clash that made me want to renounce my citizenship or identity as an American. Good and evil are relative and are present everywhere. One one may plug into their channels everywhere. Life just lead me elsewhere, changing with other selves in other places along the way. It is good to flow along with so many different others and come together. One can be here or there, yet ever still, oneself. Coalescence is the eternal game of hide and seek within creation. Playing through desire, the infinite hides and resides within the finite. We desire it everywhere, in all forms, times and places. It is temporarily found and there is joy, and then it escapes through all forms, times and places. It eternally hides, then again calls us ever onward toward the new. "Don't look out too far. Behind every face I am you. "

I stopped drinking alcohol when I was a student. I never drank to the  point of getting sick but I began to feel depressed after drinking.  Instead of drinking more to cover the depression (which is what I saw so  many people doing) I simply quit. Meditation helped with that. Later I  helped other people stop drinking by teaching yoga and meditation to  them. I used to see light social drinking as pretty harmless but have  seen friends and family fall into heavier drinking problems. I now avoid  social situations when people drink alcohol; not so much out of  prejudice but because the energetic vibration is dense. The bottles open  and people`s auras go dark. They seem happy because they escape into a  stupor of unconsciousness. I perceive this on the subjective  mental-energetic level but there is tangible scientific evidence of its  destructiveness as well. A recent study I read in The Guardian reveals how any amount of alcohol consumed reduced brain gray matter density.

A yogi once said that worldly pleasures are like a dog chewing on a sharp bone. The poor dog doesn't even understand that he is enjoying his own blood. I believe that there are some worldly pleasures that one can enjoy in a balanced manner . Being very aware of the senses makes the senses more alive and one feels that the spirit is enjoying through one, that it is enjoying being embodied in the human form with all the colors, smells, tastes and sounds of the sensory world. It is not the same as the compulsion where one loses consciousness in sheer and desperate sensation.

Alcohol is the most deceitful of desires. It kills your brain while you think you are feeling pleasure, just like the dog chewing on his bone. At least when you eat too much and gain weight you can change your diet and exercise and return to a normal state of health, for example. It is not the same with alcohol. Any amount kills the gray matter of the brain that doesn't regenerate. One is left more foolish and unable to distinguish between what is healthy and not what is healthy.


According to the practice and philosophy of yoga, the brain, organs  and glands must be balanced and healthy to develop spiritual awareness.  Alcohol kills the brain and liver and is therefore a poison. A little  alcohol is a little poison and a lot of alcohol is a lot of poison. But  is it more destructive than political-religious dogma that also kills finer ideas?

Here is an article that I wrote about how to transmute addictions into healthier desires with meditation and yoga.

Pleasures, Habits, Addictions, and the “5M” Of Tantra

A friend writes to me the other day and asks how he can leave behind  some worldly habits that prevent him from being able to dedicate himself  to meditation. They are common habits that many people enjoy but that  serious meditators have left behind. So, if many other people have  overcome habits of enjoying alcohol, tobacco, meat, and drugs then it is  certainly possible that any other person of similar determination may  also transcend these habits. If only we can understand the methods of  which these meditators successfully used to leave behind their habits  and commit themselves to the practice of meditation then we may detect a  pattern that can be taught to others really struggling to break these  habits.

I will speak not just from my own experience but from the experience  of many friends and students who have become dedicated meditators. Most  of us stopped drinking and smoking in the like in a very gradual manner.  While at the same time we started practicing a little mediation and  yoga. By getting some positive feelings and natural highs we became  convinced that it is possible to feel really good and even better than  drinking alcohol or smoking something, however the habits were still  present. Furthermore, these habits were almost always socially enforced  by our friends and family. I always told my students that they never had  to break their habits abruptly and that in fact this could have adverse  consequences. Stopping a habit requires a lot of repression and this  repression may bounce back with a fury that creates so much tension that  one decides to leave meditation altogether because it simply creates  too much stress. Instead, one should gradually reduce habits. At the  same time one becomes just a little more disciplined, one should  concurrently gradually reduce the amount or frequency of alcohol,  cigarettes, etc. consumed. This approach is called “systematic  withdrawal.” If one notices that one is just a little less bound to  one´s addictions and is also beginning to feel the benefits of  meditation, then some confidence is inspired.

Really, what we need is confidence in ourselves, in our will to  change. Perhaps, it is lack of confidence and firm determination that  one can succeed, cope, or overcome that leads one into addictions to  begin with. Sometimes addictions are simple social and personal habits  but so often we develop addictive habits so as to cover up some tension,  neurosis, or complex. This is another important reason to gradually  reduce habits, because we may be opening a Pandora´s box, a door into  something unconscious that the ego is not yet ready to see, accept, and  integrate. So confidence must develop gradually. It is important to  spend time with people who foster this confidence. It gives one an  example of successful integration and the good counsel of such teachers  helps one onward. If one remains alone with one´s habits trying to  overcome them without these examples then the task is so much more  difficult.

Once one begins to have confidence and a strong will then one is able  to fully leave the habit. With this freedom one feels that your mind  belongs to you, that nothing can bind it. However this is where we must  be careful because there is always some other habit, some other hidden  tendency waiting to disturb the newly found peace. A tantric meditator  should understand this principle, that there is no peace without  struggle, and every victory gained should be an accumulation of strength  for the next battle. Maybe one has overcome alcohol and meat and the  sexual urge is somewhat placated, but what next? Later we move into  psychological habits, perhaps mental patterns and defenses for the ego.  Now we have to deal with the roots of anger, fear, and insecurity. Now  the habits are no longer physical, but psychological. And so the drama  continues passing through lower psychological complexes toward resolving  more subtle psychological complexes until our meditation leads us into a  more spiritual state of existence.

In tantra there is a concept called the 5 M. The “Ms” are sanskrit  words that begin with M: Madya, Mamsa, Matsya, Mudra, and Maithuna. The  words are for the habits of wine, meat, fish, social company, and  sexuality. The idea is that the practitioner may begin practice with  these habits but gradually understand the true meaning of why one is  attached to such things. There is a crude as well as subtle  interpretation of each M. By gradually understanding the subtle longing  of a desire one can let go of the crude habit and find what one is truly  desiring.

Madya is wine. The spiritual connotation is divine nectar, or amrta.  It is easy to understand the desire for alcohol. Alcohol is something  that some people enjoy with moderation but at the same time it is a  great disease that destroys not just the lives of individuals and their  families but entire societies as well. Here in Mexico the vast majority  of men are alcoholics. It is amazing for me to consider this and has far  reaching disastrous effects into family and cultural life. What one  seeks in the bottle is Spirit, and the more one seeks it the less Spirit  is actually there. Meditation gives us a true enebriation and we feel  that some bio-chemical process is also trigerred, however it does not  leave us in a state of stupor and a compulsive desire to continue  looking for such a passing, destructive pleasure. When the mind becomes  purified through yoga and meditation the pineal gland becomes more  active and gives one a sweet state of spiritual “intoxication.” This  feeling is lasting and does not damage the liver like alcohol. The  emotions are not suppressed like in drunkenness where one escapes into a  temporary state of pleasure. Instead one begins to see the mind and  heart from this sweet state of spiritual intoxication. The complexes and  problems of life are accepted and integrated with such clarity and the  state of happiness or bliss only continues to increase until it becomes  infinite, or “ananda.”

A student recently wrote to me to tell me that he now often  experiences states of bliss after his meditation that he likens to LSD.  He has never even tried LSD but he always imagined such a state as the  closest approximation to his current experiences. So many times I have  had other students who said they felt like they were on mushrooms,  stoned, or enebriated with alcohol. Many of them have tried these  substances but after the practice of yoga left them and found higher  joys. They used the analogies of tripping or being enebriated because  these states are the best way to explain these “altered” states of  awareness to those who cannot understand the pure and balanced joys of  spiritual ideation.

When one uses an external, or “exogenous” substance to activate one’s  inner neurochemistry, one is really only stimulating one’s internal  “endogenous” substances like neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and  hormones. Did nature evolve the human brain over billions of years so  that people could only discover their internal neurochemical states  through psychedelics and alcohol? After so many centuries of  materialstic thought it has become so rare that humans naturally  discover these states through mysticism, aesthetics and natural,  balanced living. Ignorant people argue that one should not worry about  spiritual discipline when it is much easier and quicker to use a  substance to achieve a mystical state of consciousness. Only  superficially does this appear to be true. There are always side effects  to quickly attained states of awareness. Instead of gradually  fine-tuning the nervous system to cultivate these states as second  nature, one instead blasts the mind with an experience that is very much  different that one’s normal state of awareness. A yogi slowly accustoms  the mind and body to spiritual ecstacy and so therefore maintains this  state in balance and experiences it regularly. As such, the mystical  state of awareness becomes permanent knowlege instead of a temporary  experience. I always hear that one´s first ayahuascar or mushroom  experiences are the strongest. Later, one cannot have the same depth of  experience even with higher doses.

Although power plants may give one some initial insight into  mysticism, these states are simply not sustainable. However, such  experiences are far better than using alcohol. One who intoxicates with  alcohol is in spiritual darkness. Alcohol is the crudest and most  deceptive substance that human beings have discovered.

While there is always a drinker who surprises one with a degree of  spiritual insight, however, I believe this speaks more to a strong  character resistant to poison. How many such strong souls are there? How  many have enough reserve vitality to resist the slow but certain pull  into deadened consciousness, damaged organs and ruined families? Having  seen so many fall, I suppose my point of view has evolved into something  similar to a person who has passed through Alcoholics Anonymous and  views the use of alcohol as a personal, social and spiritual disease.  And living in Mexico where at least half of the men are alcoholics has  only strengthened this view.</

Mamsa is meat. The animal mind craves intense sensual pleasure. When  we know not of subtle desires then the tongue is also crude and desires  flesh. Carnivorous habits keep us bound to other compulsions as well.  Vegetarians begin to feel a certain lightness in their existence and can  more easily understand spiritual ideas. Mamsa´s subtle interpretation  is control of speech. From a calmer and more introverted state of  existence one sees more clearly the mental habits and their expressions  and is able to regulate their expressions, not just with how one speaks  but with how one thinks and feels.

Matsya means fish. Eating fish is the same as eating meat. However,  the subtle interpretation of Matsya refers to controlling the Ida and  pingula energetic currents through yoga and more specifically pranayama,  the control of breath. The Ida current is the lunar, centripetal, calm  and inward current of the mind. Ida controls inner thoughts and  feelings. The Pingala is the solar, centrifugal, vigorous and external  current of the mind. It is more related to external actions and  movements. Ida and Pingala are states for the brain and nervous system.  By regulating the inward and outward currents, the vigorous and calm,  the introverted and extroverted, one finds stillness. The Ida and  Pingala are said to be two subtle energetic currents that twist around  the central current of the Shushumna, in the very center of the spinal  column. The image of the Cadaceus is a western image for the Ida,  Pingala, and Shushumna. Pranayama is the yogic breathing practice of  alternating the respiration through the left and right nostrils. The  right nostril controls the Pingala solar current while the left nostril  controls the Ida lunar current. By concentrating the respiration on a  point in the center of the spinal column, both Ida an Pingala merge into  the central current of the Shushumna. The breathing becomes very slow  and steady through Pranayama breath control until eventually it stops.  One enters a state of breathlessness where the mind is completely  stilled. The body enters a state of stasis with full vitality but the  mind stops and one sees Spirit in a pure and calm state, like the  reflection of the moon on placid waters.

Mudra means posture. In this context of the 5 Ms it refers to social  company. One may remain in the company of people who enforce worldly  habits or one may seek spiritual company. I have received tremendous  help from the company of spiritual people. Not only does one see an  example of spirituality and ask questions and receive counsel but there  is also a subtle energy emanated into the environment where spiritual  people gather. Regular, collective meditation helps generate such a mind  field and really helps people to concentrate. For a beginner this is  very important because it is so difficult to concentrate. It is as if  each individual mind gets focused and together each mind is a ray of a  laser that helps to break through mental barriers.

Maithuna means sexual intercourse. One does not have to renounce  sexuality in order to meditate. However, the more energy that is used in  sexuality the less energy one has for meditation. Therefore one should  gradually reduce sexual intercourse so as to have more stamina for  meditation. The so called “tantric sex” practices really do not help  people with this. In most cases it is just kinkiness and wild novelty  that makes people even more sexually compulsive. Meditation is about  finding inner love and sexuality is deepened by meditation. Instead of  desperately seeking pleasure through compulsive sexuality, one enjoys  deeper, more loving experiences with sexual intercourse and simply does  not have to go at it all of the time in desperate efforts for love,  happiness, and meaning. When one becomes truly in love with Spirit one  may even transcend sexuality. Entering into union with Spirit is  spiritual intercourse and is the greatest form of ecstasy that a human  being may experience.

Love is something that unites us and makes two different people feel  the same, to see things with equal understanding, and even progenate a  new being made in their image. If that is not mysticism, I do not know  what it is. It is natural mysticism, human mysticism, the mysticism of  nature (Shakti) and its creative expressions. Perhaps it is expressed in  the relative plane but the love that expresses itself here on earth  comes from the same source as the love that attracts us to the absolute  mysticism of the infinite consciousness, Shiva. In this relative world  everything is distinct and diverse and human or natural mysticism unites  everything that is separated by time, space, and person. There is more  variety in this mysticism. However, in the end I find it difficult to  say that it is something other than transcendental mysticism because  finally it is the same source of love that pulls everyone and everything  towards Itself. Human mysticism is a shared spirituality. Instead of a  solitary mind seeking eternal refuge in its own solitary process, one  seeks eternal union while being unified with others, and not necessarily  through romantic love but with love for friends, animals, and nature.

While it is possible to express pure love and reach mystical states  through maithuna, or spiritual sexuality, the most free form of maithuna  union is through pure mysticism. A developed yogi expresses sexuality  for producing very spiritual children or out of the most sacred  connection with one´s soul mate. After the evolution and full experience  of this process one may become a celibate. This is quite a different  process than a forced vow of celibacy. Instead of renouncing sexuality  through spiritual discipline one traverses through the whole gamut of  sexual evolution from physical, to emotional, to spiritual forms of  union with one´s sacred partner until one´s only desire is to merge with  pure Spirit.

Conserving the semen and seminal fluid redirects the tremendous  vitality that normally goes into the biological activity of reproduction  toward spiritual reproduction. Instead of being wasted through  excessive sexuality the vitality nourishes the nervous and endocrine  systems. A strong nervous system with all of the proper nutrients to  produce adequate hormones makes the will firm. Furthermore, there is a  subtle alchemical process of converting the reproductive intelligence of  the organism into spiritual reproduction. The brain that is fully  functional actually transmutes physical energy from the material,  biological level into mental energy. In other words, the spiritual mind  and brain actually has the capacity to transmute energy from one plane  to another. In ayurveda and yoga this refined, transmuted energy is  called “ojas.” Cosmologically, this is a conversion of energy from the  solid, or material, factor into the liquid, or bio-energetic, factor.  “Liquid” energy is not liquid in the physical sense, but a finer form of  matter similar to the concept of “chi” or “qui” in Chinese medicine.  Liquid energy is a step above the physical material level as an  intelligent flow of information that organizes matter into meaningful  activity. With more liquid ojas one´s bio-energetic field, or aura,  begins to magnify. One begins to feel subtle energies more within one´s  body as well as perceive this energy in others and in nature.

The more one is given over to the expression of energy into the  physical, sensual plane of reality, the less this conversion takes  place. Therefore, excessive sexuality is dangerous in that it locks the  mind into the error of seeing only the physical world and the pleasures  of the physical body. The higher levels of energy are not perceivable  for the sensualist and the process of physical-mental-spiritual  evolution is hampered. There are so many levels of matter beyond even  the “liquid.” In yoga, there are 5 levels of matter. Beyond matter is  the mind and beyond mind is the spirit. The materialist and sensualist  lives in the greatest illusion in that they really only perceive the  “solid” material of reality without even understanding the “liquid” and  other levels of subtle matter, not to mention understanding the pure  mind and Spirit.

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I still get some correspondence from people in Ananda Marga who came across these old writings.  For me Ananda Marga is something that has already come and gone.  Of course it took years to reach this state of detachment in my mind.  After all I was arrested with terrorism charges against me because of the dirty arms deals of the monastics that put them on the FBI´s top ten terrorists list.  I defended them on the BBC only to later realize that they were truly guilty of arms smuggling and the organization was using my ignorance and innocence to put me in front of the cameras to create a believable story for the world.  This confusion in my mind;  believing and saying one thing to myself and the world and then learning that I was being deceived by them, took a while to process and reach some clarity.  One wants to believe what one says because it has already been said, yet the story begins to fall to pieces with too many contradictions and one has to use a lot of mental energy to be truthful with oneself and how one tells the story to others.  It is hard to admit that what you once got inspiration from is actually something really harmful, and that one has been used and as a consequence has also participated in their huge lies. 

The need to be congruent in thought word and deed is paramount to insightful spiritual practice.  Tantra Yoga is too intense of a practice for a mind twisted and confused with unoriginal and deceptive ideas.  Tantric meditation vigorously pushes the mind into union with the Infinite.  The mind flows into vast ideas and has no choice but to be consumed with the flow toward union.  The mind turned toward the finite world can willfully move in so many directions and with so many desires.  The mind directed toward the Infinite moves only toward the infinite and is guided by spiritual intuition.  All disparate tendencies are surrendered to the witnessing consciousness, the Atman. 

The mind must be purified of all false ideas in order to resonate with the conscious truth that consumes all the limitations of the finite mind.  The force of the practice will cause the distorted mind to fall with exponential intensity.  Instead of heightened mental energy used in the pursuit of self-realization, the very same energy is used to make the mind move towards its limited desires.  In this process there is also truth, but very dark and hard truths.  The mind merges into its delusions and suffers the consequences with much intensity.  Hopefully, this fall awakens one with a desire to be more sincere.  If not, then the mind falls even further into darkness.

During this personal process of redefinition after the Arms Drop scandal the organization was unraveling and all of the dirt hidden beneath the surface was becoming so painfully evident with all of their hidden mafia activities: drug and gun smuggling, sexual crimes, political infighting and even assassinations.  My closest friends in Ananda Marga all left out of a sense of shame of being associated with such a deceptive cult.  We were in a swamp of cognitive dissonance and existential confusion.  How is it possible to be a sincere human being while being associated with people who propagate such lies?  Instead of being in an enlightened spiritual society we felt we were in a dangerous cult.  

I feel I was as honest and impartial as possible when writing about my subjective experiences with that organization some decades ago.  My critiques were two-sided in that I wrote about some very positive aspects with certain people in that society yet I did not try and cover up any of their scandals.  

Some people are affected by the negative information I shared.  While it is true that the negativity is substantial enough to invalidate the whole movement and make people think they are in a cult, I can say at least your practices and philosophy have truth in them.  In Light And Dark Tantra I did write that I believe that the corruption entered Ananda Marga even before Anandamurti had died.  I never stated that he himself was corrupt, but argued that at the end of his life the organization slipped out of his control and that the fall of his disciples took its toll on his health.  He was a spiritual guide and healer that took on the negative karma of his disciples.  In the early years the society around him flourished.  Later, he was bogged down by a larger movement, with more people and more minds to heal.  And then many of the minds around him began to fall into hypocrisy.  I think it was too much for him to digest and he reached his limit.  In short, their waywardness crucified him. 

His name has been sullied by the organization he left behind.  Anybody who still has any connection to his ideas or philosophy or sees him as their personal spiritual guide eventually has to reconcile the fact that he was alive when his organization became a mafia.  My take on it is that Anandamurti in the end had an energetic fall.  Despite all of his ethical intentions, he simply could not keep it all under his control.  He was older and his health was poor and the organization kept growing and he simply did not have the energy to keep everybody in line.  By the time he died A.M. was an international mafia. Karunananda was a monastic leader who provided prostitutes to some of the more desperate monks working under him.  He counterfeited dollars in Brazil with Devashish and even sold drugs in Denmark!  This was all in the 70s and 80s, not after Anandamurti died. I heard Karunananda talk about the prostitution personally and the author Devashish also told me he went to federal prison because of his crimes while working with Karunananda.  There are so many other immoral scandals out there as well.  I mentioned these because I could personally verify them and were not mere rumors.  Why did not the perfect and wholly divine guru put an end to this?  I think the waywardness of the dirty monkees crucified him.   We live in the shadow of the guru who could not control all of this madness. 

Certainly, most people ignore these dissonant facts and prefer to remain in a safe space with a concept of an absolutely divine guru.  Divine incarnations and absolute, perfect divinity are totalitarian fantasies used by priests the world wide.  It is the oldest trick in the book used to keep a flock together.

A meditator is a bold truth seeker and if one truly seeks the truth then whatever incongruity in one´s mental framework will eventually cause disturbances.  One gets disturbed by the idea that if he was so vigilant at guiding his disciples on the right path, then why did he not put an end to all of the mafia around him?  This is why I say that in the end it all slipped out of his control.  Yet I think it is safe to say that Anandamurti was a viable teacher and even his social movement had a great beginning and endured for several decades before it all imploded.    At least his ideas and teachings remained congruent.  

Tantra is a vast spiritual science based on the spiritual laws of the universe that cannot be negated by the downfall of any single social organization or person.  The organization may collapse into dogma and religion but tantra yoga will live on.  I no longer have any strong opinions on the current state of affairs.  I ended my connection with them several years ago and only hear things from old friends who are still on the fringes of A.M.  Every once in a while I hear rumors of good things happening, however.  For example, I heard that the family acharyas, or lay teachers somewhere in Europe prohibited the monastics from their society.  I have always thought that if A.M. were to ever have a chance of survival, then it would have to be with the elimination of the monastics from the movement.  This would not be nearly as difficult as removing the priests from the Catholic Church.  Ananda Marga does not have an influence over the ages like the Catholic Church.  Although it is dominated by priests it is still a relatively new institution with a clear and rational philosophy.  Actual spiritual practice instead of established dogmas is the ideological base.  Also, it was founded by lay spiritual teachers.  The monastics came later, as did the corruption.   The good monastics have already come and gone.  A monk or nun in uniform nowadays is either a hardened criminal, a weakling who lies to oneself and others, or just completely naive.  There may be some younger monastics who came into the order that were attracted by the ideals and did not really understand what they were getting into.   I would hope that they were respected and be allowed to mingle freely with a new and open society, although without any official status as monks or nuns.  

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It is interesting history.  I have not really studied it personally, but rather have had many friends who did.  

After a society passes through the violence of conquests or imperial expansion and eventually tyranny against its own population by despotic rulers there is a collapse. Perhaps the collective conscience of the people goes through a grinding process of reflection and awareness and they become a little more peaceful and more truly human. The Romans were terrible but now the Italians have quite a nice culture. The Vikings were beasts but now the Scandanavian countries have the most humane governments and social systems on the planet. In recent history we can look at the Germans. Although there is currently a rise of fascism with far-right (nazi saluted by Elon Musk), there is a lot more resistance as most people remember what happened in the last century. The Mayans now seem to be very friendly people with an innate spirituality. What would happen if they remembered their true heritage, and perhaps what Kulkulkan really is?

The first time that I have ever knew anything of Kulkulkan was when I was 21 year old university student, although it was not in some history or anthropology class.  It was a strange spiritual vision that I had after waking up in the middle of the night.  I wrote about it in A Name To The Nameless: "I was initiated into a Tantra Yoga tradition when I was a student in Austin in 1993. I adopted a very healthy vegetarian lifestyle without drugs and alcohol. Within a few months the kundalini began with what would be a very long and intense awakening. As a student of psychology and world literature, I had heard of kundalini and other mystical energies but I had never thought they were real, live forces. I thought it was just interesting archaic symbolism, and not an actual force within the human body that rises up through the spinal column to awaken higher states of awareness. The universal symbol for this force is the serpent. It is said to be a covert, spiritual force beneath the surface of conscious awareness, like a coiled snake. Kundalini is the fundamental intelligence behind life and evolution, waiting to be awakened when the mind finally desires liberation from finite mental bondages. As this divine “serpent power” rises through the spinal column, one experiences states of deep spiritual realization. For the yogi, kundalini is the force that unites the human with the divine.
One day after classes and a short meditation, at which I was merely a beginner, I laid down on my back due to exhaustion. I felt a soothing force begin to rise up my spine. As this point of white, soft energy rose up into the thoracic region of the spine, I began to hear the sacred Om sound. It became frightening because there was only Om and nothing else. I opened my eyes but could not see anything. My faculties of sight and hearing were unified and there only existed Om. I knew I was being dissolved in a force that was vibrating within every particle of the universe. It was ecstatic and exhilarating but terrifying. I felt my whole identity would disappear and never return. The kundalini was entering the medulla. I began to repeat my mantra for meditation but it only made the experience more intense. Instead, I began to repeat my name, William, over and over and trying to remember that I was a student in Austin, Texas on the physical plane of reality. The kundalini began to go back down as Om diminished. I couldn’t take any more.
After that experience I became very confident but experienced a lot of mental turmoil. It was very productive turmoil in that all negative memories from my past were being quickly purged and purified. I began to feel completely whole and that I had already lived a very complete life.
The second time the kundalini (serpent power) rose was a few months later. I saw the same light in my spine although this time it was an infinitesimally small point. Physical reality disappeared and I began to “see” from Om and nothing else. I opened my eyes but could not see anything. My faculties of sight and hearing were unified and there only existed Om. Physical reality disappeared and I began to “see” from the crown of my head a turquoise bird flying closer and closer as the point rose higher and higher. The bird landed on the crown of my head at the same time the point rose to the same place. Heaven (the turquoise bird) and earth (the serpent) had met and I was lost in an infinite web of sound vibration where I could no longer see even this beautiful vision.
I was dissolving in a force that was vibrating within every particle of the universe. It was ecstatic and exhilarating but terrifying. I felt my whole identity would disappear and never return. The kundalini was entering the medulla. I began to repeat my mantra for meditation but it only made the experience more intense. Instead, I began to repeat my name, William, over and over and trying to remember that I was a student in Austin, Texas on the physical plane of reality. The kundalini began to go back down as Om diminished. I couldn’t take any more.
My last thought before losing awareness of not just the outer world, but also the inner world of vision, was that the forms looked Meso-American. Only years later would I learn of the Mesoamerican concept of kundalini, what they call Quetzalcoatl, the “Plumed Serpent.” The quetzal is a colorful bird of Chiapas and the mayan symbol for the kundalini, the spiritual energy of evolution and enlightenment that resides dormant within the mind.
(The kundalini was named Quetzalcoatl by the Toltecs and Kukulkan by the Mayas. A version of the image of Quetzalcoatl is on the Mexican national flag to this day. )
After this experience I lost all interest in a career and marriage and a “normal” life. I barely graduated the university and went to India seeking more understanding."

an extract from A Name To The Nameless: 

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Gymnopedia

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My friend tried to laugh it off but I was afraid he felt rejected.  Nowadays I would say it was definitely a good think to have false dreams rudely broken so as to wake up and get real but at that time I still did not have such clarity and confidence and felt bad for my friend.  I felt ashamed.  I  was not sure why at the time but felt that it was all such an ugly experience; all of those sycophants who bend like a willow trying to get accepted by such an ignorant and superficial elite.  Who put them in charge?  Why do they decide things?  I recalled the punk I met earlier and reflected on how he was much more real than the rest of the people I met that day.  

So I told my friend that we should go back to the train station and find my punk friend.  He could bring his buddies and we could smash some beer bottles outside the club and paint some vulgar insults a on the two way mirrors.  At least my friend laughed a little.

Exclusivity is so destructive, especially when groups of powerful people prop themselves up by putting down others.  Although the people in the club were so frivolous and superficial, their attitude is found in so many exclusive circles.  If one is shrewd then other shrewd people invite you into their circles where one eventually risks getting devours by them when you are no longer useful.  It is the same with intellectual and artistic pride as well.  I have known some humble and even-minded artists and intellectuals but many artists are full of vanity and driven by ambition and a sense of superiority.   I even think that most spirituality is just rude vanity masked by tranquility and sham humility.  They will also use their two way mirrors and invite you into their circles only to eventually devour you when you try to be yourself.

Whatever one does one must be sincere.  To be sincere is to be humble.  Humility is not weakness.  It is a strength acquired through so many struggles to put the fearful and isolated ego aside and permit the consciousness of the universe to work inside oneself and bestow some of its array infinite qualities into your personal expression.  This process is part of our inward evolution and all beings will eventually have to tread this path of integrity.  The Atman is the only true and honest mirror that we have.  It does not judge nor distort our true, inner image.  Perhaps it is difficult to see in this light of truth for a mind accustomed to darkness, but its process of integrating the wayward mind towards Consciousness is always for our welfare.  

Such vain and self serving attitudes are everywhere and are the roots of racism, classism, nationalism and all of the other "isms" that I find so shallow and stupid.  Human societies are mostly just silly popularity circles run by little princess and princesses who are so lost and lonely that they bandy together with other lost souls who think they have some superior qualities they can suppress others with.  The shrewd elite are really weak and fearful people who can never look into their inner mirror and walk a path of integrity.  I recall the Sex Pistols and the German punk reciting them:  "They made you a moron".. and "there is no future for you"......  

Truly there is no future for a humanity dominated by such ideas and our arrogance is destroying the entire planet.  Vanity and exclusivity are behind racism, economic and class exploitation and so many materialistic distortions that are destroying nature and humanity.  These are very disturbing realities that unquiet the minds of most thoughtful people I know.  I think that they would despair if they were not sincerely trying to help others and create a better world.  Yet sometimes the most optimistic minds are overwhelmed. Perhaps as an escape for myself I conjure the memory of the punk shouting the refrain "no future for you..." as  the rude lyrics of  God Save The Queen resound in the mind as a mantra to drown out these far ruder impressions.

Two Israelis Under The Atman

However, the universal spirit, or Atman, never gives up on us.  It is the nucleus consciousness of the entire universe.  It is the "prime mover" of all physical, mental and spiritual dimensions of the universe.  The human mind unconsciously seeks its source in infinite consciousness.  Our higher ideas and sentiments are designed to lead us into union with this essence.  As it is the universal consciousness within every mind, every mind must eventually express subtler consciousness.  Sensible and conscientious people all over the planet have an intuition of the One that unites us all. 

There was a short period in which I would leave my abode in the desert and make short trips.  Mostly I met indigenous people while visiting their communities, but also people from many places in the world.  At that time I was meditating a lot and lived a very quiet and contemplative existence.   I preferred this over the active life in cities but I really enjoyed getting out and meeting people from time to time.  Really, a great part of meditation is being able to truly connect with others.  Obstacles and staticity always intrude on one´s spiritual practice that is based solely on the individual desire for liberation.  If the Atman is found within one, then, by its very nature, it must also be seen in others.  Seeing the divinity in other people is just as important as finding the divinity within.  

I was once in San Cristobal De Las Casas, Chiapas.  A friend had referred two young Israeli men to me because she thought they would like to talk to me about meditation and yoga.  They had just finished the compulsory military tour of duties.  They were in Gaza during one of the most violent periods around ten or twelve years ago.  Any world traveller comes across Israeli soldiers who are travelling the world after they are discharged.  They are so often traumatised and looking for ways to anaesthetise their pain with drugs and alcohol or some other escape.  Sure, there were some who found more healthy ways of escape by simply travelling and seeing the world but it was all too common to find circles of ex soldiers living in some place like India where hash or heroin was really cheap and one could live for years with scant savings after military service.  

The two young men I met were very special.  They were traveling, had been to Africa and South America and were now in Mexico.  They had already passed through the scenes of raves, alcohol and ecstasy but were still unsatisfied and looking for something more. They smoked some weed and enjoyed some novel reflections on life before being haunted by violent memories that no substance could quell. They told me they were looking for a shaman to give them ayahuascar or peyote.  

One of them was very cool and calm.  It surprised me to see that he had such peace in him after I later heard what he had been through.  The other was more expressive and outgoing.  He had a certain intensity about him but had an extremely sharp mind that he could withdraw from its intensity to reflect upon deep ideas.  He told me very clearly that they had tried everything they thought could help them but simply have not found an escape.....They must find some sort of escape.

The vocal one told me that he was in Gaza just a few months before our meeting.  He told me that he had to confront some Palestinian militants who were using a small child as a shield.  They pointed a weapon at the Israeli soldiers while holding a child in front of them so that the soldiers would not shoot them.  I did not ask him what he did nor did he tell me.  He said the Palestinians were terrorists.  His friend interjected and said that they had really given them no other choice, that his country´s political policies creates terrorism. They were also terrorist, he said.   

I told them that I was also from an imperialist, terrorist culture.  The United States used slaves to build the country while killing off the indigenous people.  I would feel terrible shame if I had any national pride or waved a flag. Being a human was so much more than all of those lies and those morons who believed in such things were really not yet humans.  This is the planet of the apes, I said, and then apologised to the apes for the insult of bringing them down to our level.  

I responded to him by saying they want to escape into something that they do not have in order to get rid of what they have.  I said maybe you can find something that you already have to help you git rid of what you do not want.  They both followed me and knew I was speaking of something spiritual.  The outspoken one said with desperate intensity, "How?, Where is it?  

It is closer to you than your deepest thought or your most traumatic memory, I responded.  I spoke of the Witness of the mind that is always consciously present and aware of the mind in an eternal presence.  It is with us in heaven and hell, in joy and suffering.  It is above the activities of the mind but always attracts it toward its higher essence where all of the relative doubts and suffering can find relief, can find a meaning and reason.  You just have to find a way to still the mind to see that your awareness just is, that it continues even when you are not thinking or feeling or acting.  It is a joyful experience and if you experience it just a little the mind finds some happiness, a little bit of light begins to creep into its labyrinths and whispers a few secrets and inspirations of how to heal.  

The calm one sat there so calm like he already knew this.  The other one vocalised and conceptualised it a little.  "Yes, it is always there and never changes...I know it is there but it is too easy to forget and I do not know how to get back...is this where we were or where we came from when we were children?"

The Atman is the ground of our awareness.  It is like the electricity passing through a series of different bulbs.  The light might be white, yellow, or blue, may be a disco ball or a lava lamp, but no matter what form the outlet expressing it has, it is always the same electricity enlightening all.  It is one struggle to see it in oneself, but an even greater struggle to see it in others, especially those who are perceived to be the enemy.  To find some common ground in the social and relative world between rivals is peace.  But what if those social negotiations also recognised a deeper common ground?  Would there be a god of Israel, a god of Islam, or the god of the Christians to impede our essential union?

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In the phase of involution, Shiva, the infinite consciousness, has been transformed by his immortal consort Shakti, the divine creative energy, into all that is in this universe. Shiva is the material cause of the universe, Shakti is the efficient cause.  Shiva is pure light.  Shakti is gravity that apparently bends trajectories and attempts to mold this pure light into her created forms and molds.  It is Shiva itself that has willingly become “star stuff,” the Thing from which all finite things are made of.  Shiva and Shakti as the Supreme Consciousness have projected this universe from their essential purity.  Life is a creation made on the return journey, where star- light and matter are yearning to evolve beyond physicality, into pure energy, into mind, and finally back again into Consciousness. Therefore, the soul trapped within life and evolution, or "microcosm," is fundamentally dominated by the centripetal, return, or evolutionary force. “Ha” is the sound of this primordial centripetal energy of mind. It is the first vrtti, or vortex of the mind, which is pure subjective awareness.  “Ha” pertains to the Ajina Vortex, the essential and purest level of mind. Here the mind mysteriously fathoms the unfathomable Atman who is entirely beyond the mind itself. The mind “conceives” this inconceivable truth in understanding that “I am That”; “I am Consciousness itself, and not this mind.” It is an entity subtler than mind who sees the mind.  "Ha," the center-seeking, centripetal force of the mind is the only mental vrtti that goes entirely into transcendence, into the pure subjectivity of Shiva. Even the noble Vishuddha tendencies relate to the external world in a spirit of service and chivalry, but “Ha” is a force of mind, of Shakti, that surrenders itself only to Shiva. Its comforting to know that it is the only force that can entirely dominate the mind and unify it in the infinite abode of Shiva. The universe conspires against our external desires. It is only here that all desires find their fulfillment. All of the other 49 major vrttis go outward. “Ha” is the only tendency that delusion can’t touch. The very existence of the parasite who feeds on unconsciousness depends on your not going back to the One, of your inability to transmute your little “I”, the ego, into the great “I-Witness.” Therefore, only surrendering to the infinite Atman will bring an end to ignorance’s dominion. Only the entity who stands beyond good and evil can liberate one from good and evil.

While incarnated in human form and passing through the soul-building experiences of this world we must know and cultivate the positive propensities of mind that help us to expand and adapt to this relative world while never forgetting that our true home is in the spirit. We must discern between the relative and the absolute, between finite and infinite. The world isn’t inherently corrupt, we just haven’t properly learned how to handle ourselves. We haven’t learned to economize the infinite nature of desire.

Discernment is the sixth propensity of the Anahata Vortex. It is administrated by the sound “ca.” Discernment is conscience, the force of Consciousness over the mind. Mind harmonizes with the sublime, transcendental consciousness and lives and acts according to its inner way. The inner path can only become pure when we really know the difference between what liberates us and what does not- that which causes suffering and delusion. Desire is tamed only through the realization that it always brings some form of suffering in the end. The only desire that truly liberates is the desire to become one with the Infinite. It is only when a soul has struggled and wrestled and developed its discernment that the instinctual nature of external desires begin to lose their grip on the mind. The finite can never satiate the infinite. External desires can never bring nirvana. Striving after this liberation doesn’t mean giving up the world entirely, but a seeker must have the eyes open so as to properly navigate through maya. With the development of discernment, temptations may come more to test you, but finally help to establish one in a deeper understanding in which renunciation truly becomes sweet and not something forced and manipulated.

Not understanding this essential truth of existence always brings emptiness, existential ennui. This is the 7th vrtti of the Anahata Vortex, psychic depression, controlled by the sound “cha.” “Ha” must descend to “ca” to return the undiscerning mind back into equilibrium. Hopefully, a little “dark night of the soul” will do the trick, but many fall so deep into emptiness and accept all that psorax is offering. Psorax loves an empty, bored ego and will always find ways to fill you. “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” The greater the image that one invests in the separate ego the greater the shadow cast upon the mind by the infinite radiance of consciousness. We don’t understand that it is our own shadow cast by an inflated vain image that traps us in this maya. If there is a place for an image in this eternal mind storm of vrttis, then I imagine that is should be as light, honest and transparent as possible. The dark schemes of the unconscious ego can’t hide too well in this discerning light. Discernment

As previously mentioned the Anahata level of mind is the fulcrum on which rests the directional flow of mind. If the Svadhistana and Manipura propensities qualify the Anahata propensities one may get an intellectually developed mind with a definite and abstract sense of separateness lacking warmth and moral conscience. This aloof coolness is due to the fact that the intellect and abstract, self-concept is still preoccupied with the self- establishing propensities of the Svadhistana Vortex and/or the self- acquisitional propensities of the Manipura. The ability of a heightened consciousness and personality with a potentially deep, inner life and capacity to think and feel deeply is in this state unable to use this consciousness to relate with others in correspondingly deeper ways. The drives of the lower vrttis usurp the intelligence of the higher. The propensity of conscience or discernment informs the mind with the ability to use its reason to determine what choices and modes of being lead toward the growth and expansion of the inner life in relation to Spirit as well as world. It can also discern what actions lead toward the confinement of self-centeredness and psychological stagnancy. With conscience the mind can understand its potential for self-centeredness while at the same time be in touch with the intuitive ideas that guide the mind out of its limitations and towards spiritual realization.

Discernment, the ability to know what is good and just, is a propensity that is rooted in the Intuitive Mind. Having a deep, intuitive ability to understand and peer into the nature of the self and the world enables one to act in accordance with truth. The intuitive conscience spoken of here is the essential conscience, the conscience as Consciousness; it is the representative of Spirit within the mind. Discernment, or viveka, is not the external, conventionally imposed script of do’s and don’ts, but the inner voice and benevolent guidance of the eternal Tao. The higher order of harmony in the Tao, or Cosmic Mind, is intuitively understood by the Aham at the Anahata. These subtle laws are translated into microcosmic existence and harmonized with humane sentiment and discerning wisdom. . The principles of Yama and Niyama serve as guidelines to develop this natural, moral conscience that is guided by the Intuitive Mind. Depression

There are 3 main degrees of depression that can be experienced. The propensity of psychic stupor at the 2nd vortex is of course the heaviest. It represents a crippling of the entire psychological foundation. With melancholy at the 3rd vortex there is an entropy of the dynamic, extroverted propensities that link the phenomenal self with its world. The vrtti of emptiness at the fourth vortex is, as the name implies, a mental depression in which the conscious ego experiences ennui, boredom, lack of meaning, and dispiritedness. It is more of a psychic and existential malady as opposed to a mere crippling of the drives and instincts that characterize melancholy and psychic stupor. The Aham, or ego, feels empty not just because the world is not in harmony with the psyche but the psyche is not in harmony with itself. The Anahata Vortex is concerned with the deep meaning of the phenomenal identity, of what the true nature of the personality is. Psychic depression results when these existential needs are not fulfilled or realized. There is only an empty, inner space. Nothing connects and integrates the self definition with itself as well as to other selves and society. Essentially, this type of depression ensues when the ego is not in harmony with its conscience, the deeply intuitive ideas that link all elements of the personality together and give it inspiration and direction. Conscience is the guiding spirit within mind. It shows us what is virtuous and how to align ourselves with the spirit of benevolence or Dharma at any given moment and in any situation.

The flow and dynamics of mental life is not a chaos but a very refined order. It is only when the ego resists this intuitive order that one can become confused, alienated, enervated, and eventually depressed. Depression, especially when experienced existentially at the Anahata, has its own meaning and order. It is in fact a wake-up call to be more conscious of what we are and how we should be. In many cases depression manifests in periods of great transformation. “Before preparing a man for great things, heaven first fills him full of bitterness and despair,” a Taoist friend once said. Perhaps depression, at least when viewed spiritually, can serve the purpose of making us more real, more aligned with our inner selves. The duplicity and incongruities within the personality are undermined and disabled from further perpetuation. So often the ego invests itself in socially constructed and uncreative images, in a superficial conformity to a conventional system, or just never explores or listens to its own inner voice that is always calling for expansion and transformation. Psychic depression can root out the subtle forms of egotism and vanity in even the most spiritual of minds. St. John of the Cross termed this type of dispiritedness the “Dark Night of the Soul.” It appears as a contraction and dulling of the mental faculties but underneath there is a spiritual process occurring that is helping a soul move beyond all of the limitations and boundaries that keep it confined to its separateness and self-enclosure. And with psychic depression there is the ability to ruminate over why one feels heavy and lacks meaning, why things are just not going right, and to thereby find solutions. Our inner lives are never haphazard and meaningless. Life is a constant process of becoming. Each and every situation is an opportunity for growth-to exercise our discriminative intellect, insight and humane compassion. Within us always is conscience, the voice of Spirit, incessantly guiding and directing our lives for our greatest good. We need only to listen to and be true to ourselves.

excerpt from Anahata  

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An Excerpt from A Name To The Nameless 

There has never been nor will there ever be a more exalted inspiration than the realization of the oneness of the human soul with the Infinite Being. This is an ever-renewing germ of thought in the perennial philosophy that will sprout wherever there are noble hearts and great minds that seek to love and understand the deepest parts of our being.  The greatest sages of all eras and cultures have proclaimed this great truth: that the deepest source of a human being's existence is at one or in union with the Supreme Consciousness.  The universality of such a cardinal idea is not necessarily due to the cultural transmission of a great seer to others following his or her cultural descent, nor is it necessarily due to the influences of one culture upon another.  Its universality represents the realization of spiritual aspirations innate to the nature of humanity.  For an individual to understand the essence of one's inner “I” which transcends all of the particularities of his/her biological inheritance, cultural orientation, social conditioning, and personal tastes, is to know the essence of the universal “I”, the infinite consciousness and life-source of the universe.
    
The fundamental spirit of this book is an attempt to understand the psychological and spiritual processes involved in the realization of the Infinite.  The explanation of these processes will be described within the theoretical and practical framework of the intuitive science of Tantra.  Instead of being a religious or philosophical system of thinking, Tantra is an experiential and intuitive science that is based on spiritual practice or sadhana.    Theory explains the how and why and is verified by one's own experience through the intuitive introspection of sadhana.   Intuition and empiricism aren’t separate ideas in Tantra.  Just because something is experienced on the internal levels of mind, doesn’t mean it isn’t a “practical experience.”  The greatest human discoveries have always been intuitive, even intellectual and scientific realizations.  The practice and outlook of Tantra encompasses not just the spiritual and internal planes of existence, but the intellectual, emotional, and physiological as well.  The explanation of the mental and spiritual processes involved in the quest for our self-realization must examine the whole spectrum of human consciousness from the "simian to the seraphic.” One must understand  all of the modes of thought and expressions of feeling that influence one's soul.  It is also necessary to understand how one changes and evolves from one stage of thinking and feeling to the next. Most importantly, Tantra sadhana is the quest to  liberate the mind from the complexes and fetters that bind it in limited identifications that cloud our thought and narrow our feeling.  Intuitive understanding gives mental freedom, peace and purity.  With intuition, the radiance of the eternal, inner “I” becomes simple and self-evident.
    
To realize a spiritual philosophy and worldview that comprehends our nature as a whole may seem especially difficult  in an age where scientific, empirical knowledge is so specialized and compartmentalized. The modern scientific disciplines are so fragmented and isolated from the other disciplines within their broad family. However, science seems to see no other alternative than to fragment and isolate in order to reach precision and accuracy.
    
Tantra literally means expansion from crudity.  It is a process to transform the instinct into intellect and further transform intellect into intuition, where head and heart are so perfectly balanced.  The uniqueness of the Tantric approach is that spiritual practice and realization follow certain psychic and spiritual laws that are embedded in the subtle nature of the mind.  There are mental dynamics and laws that function just as clearly as gravitational force functions in the physical world, for example.  This subtle knowledge is discovered through the trials of sadhana, of inner experimentation in the mental laboratory.  Aurobindu termed this process “mystical empiricism.”  
    
So often one thinks that a scientific approach to knowledge is only antithetical to a spiritual and intuitive means to higher knowledge. And there is certainly good reason for this. One has not only to look at intellectual and cultural history with all of the conflicts of faith versus reason.  One can see the contemporary disparities between knowledge of the physical world opposed to knowledge of the mental and spiritual spheres.  Science can rationally explain our physical world to some extent.  However, it is very rare to find people or institutions that can explain the spiritual and deeply psychological layers of our being in a rational, lucid and methodical manner.  Most of the time spirituality is seen as religious dogma and conventional belief systems instead of a practical science.  One of the greatest struggles that human culture faces today is the reconciliation of the scientific world view with a modern and rational spiritual world view.
    
This synthesis of the spiritual and scientific approach is possible without deadening an integrated, holistic spiritual outlook with the tyranny of scientific materialism and reductionism.  What is needed is a philosophy that recognizes the transcendental unity behind the changing and ephemeral phenomenon of nature while at the same time recognizing creation or nature from a perspective of the most heightened, benevolent and refined spiritual intellect:  an intellect so pinnacled it conceives the essence of things while at the same time upholding "sharply delineated concepts," as Steiner puts it.  Therefore, we must realize that not even the fall of a sparrow can happen without the cosmic will but to also know the hidden, esoteric cause.  We must perceive and conceive the subtle mechanisms that bring about the manifestation of cosmic will.  
    
For a spiritually oriented mind there is no end to the capacity to understand this universe.  In accordance with Tantric theory, we can understand and conceptualize everything in this creation be it crude matter or subtle mind.  The only limitation to our knowledge is in defining our inner “I” consciousness.  What is meant is not the common use of the term consciousness as particular perspectives and idiosyncrasies of an individual. Consciousness is rather the fundamental Witness that is the hub of the identity, a Supreme Subjectivity.  All of the personal qualities, experiences, feelings, and intellect are but spokes stemming from the hub of the Supreme Consciousness.  All that exists is seen by the Supreme Consciousness.  There is no existence apart from this, only the illusion of our separateness.  Our deepest subjectivity or sense of Self is in essence the immediate, inner presence of the Supreme Consciousness. The Upanishads ask, "How can the Knower be known?" The Supreme Consciousness witnesses and sees all minds and hearts from its state of pure, subjective Consciousness and cannot become an object even for the most refined intellect.  The only way to know the Absolute is to become one with it, to merge into it by discerning its reality within the inner feeling of “I-exist” and to know and feel that you are It.  This refined, mindful, intuitive vision is the essence of mysticism.  This is the highest spiritual knowledge and existential realization possible in Tantra: to be and live in union with the Supreme Consciousness.
    
And what about the stages along the journey?  Are there realms of being in-between the relative physical world and the Absolute?  Are there simply name and form here and namelessness and formlessness there?  Or does the spiritual and contemplative life becomes so nebulous and abstruse that we entirely abandon our intellect and language when things become subtle?   And what of the passions and sentiments?  What is their place and purpose in existence? A truly spiritual outlook must have the scope of understanding the array of feelings from the basest to the passionate to the most noble of human sentiments.
    
In the times we live in, psychological balance and a deeper meaning of life is quite rare.  More rare is finding a spark of cosmic consciousness present within ones life.  The lot of humanity is moving towards self-alienation as meaningless pawns in a degenerated materialistic system with little or no regard for humanistic and spiritual endeavors.  It is no wonder that so many lives are governed by fear, resentment, insecurity, ambition, and vanity when there are so few healthy channels for human expression.  When a sincere person does try to open the  heart and mind, one finds so much inner conflict and confusion that the temptation to rejoin the herd-consciousness is almost izrresistible.  One finds not the inner, blissful consciousness but rather a quagmire of self-doubt, repressed fears and complexes.  
    
However, we must find a solution, both as individuals and as a united human society.  We must not give way to fear and apathy and the repression of what is truest and pure in our nature.  Tantric philosophy and practice may give us such a deep understanding of the all of the mind's existential and emotional needs that it is possible to understand and heal them.  With the integration of the psychological limitations one can progress onward toward the deeper, intuitive layers of mind until one finally understand the core of consciousness and purpose of life.  Finding this great “I” within liberates one from suffering and shows the way to freedom.  This inward gaze is a feeling of eternal joy, of knowing beyond all doubts that the internal “I” has always been free.   Our truest essence is bliss.
    
The Supreme Consciousness is the Self, the subject and witness of all created things- the mind, the body, and the entire universe.   This blissful, pure Self is so essentially unified with in us and so close that the mundane mind can’t even grasp it.  Mysticism is the process of revealing what is inside and hidden.  This mystical union is possible through the science of sadhana, spiritual practice.  Through cultivating our inner oneness with the infinite Consciousness  our entire being can indeed be gazed upon from that abode of bliss.     
    
Through our union with the source of infinite knowledge, resourcefulness and creativity, all things are capable of being understood.  Within the universal mind, is the intuitive perspicacity to penetrate the secrets of heaven, the subtle worlds, or divine realms.  It can understand all things, including itself, up until the point it asks itself “from where have I come, what is my source?”  The Vedas even mention that Brahma, the Creator, does not even know its origin.  Only when mind attempts to fathom the unfathomable is it ultimately defeated, but defeated in bliss.  Like an arrow in its target, the mind becomes lost in Brahma. Mind dissolves in its essence and origin with that final inquiry.  “The only way to know Brahma is to become Brahma.”
    
This understanding brings us to a very fine balance between the intuitive approach of eastern mysticism and the dynamism of the western intellect.  At one extreme is the complete transcendence of the mind, world, and body: at the other, the reduction of all things to matter.  So the modern contemplative must of course be able to tread the fathomless ground of the godhead, of the absolute, uncreated Brahma. While at the same time it is necessary to maintain an acute intellect and intuition that can fully comprehend all the spiritual and psychological processes along our journey through the physical, psychic and spiritual worlds.  With this harmonious balance of the inner (subjective) and outer (objective) spheres the individual attains his/her own emancipation by realizing the Infinite Being within one's very own existence.  This realization  cultivates one's deepest humanity  and gives the wisdom and compassion to care for and further the progress of all creation.

An Excerpt from A Name To The Nameless 

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Listen To Padmasambhava

“Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padme Siddhi Hum.” This is the classic mantra of Padmasambhava, a great yogi from India who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet. It is a mantra to purify the mind and environment for meditation. The “guru” awakens the kundalini at the base of the spine (padme) with the force of “Hum.” This elevation of the mind with “hum” gives one the power to overcome the lower tendencies in the human mind. This new power serves as a “vajra,” a protective weapon to keep away immoral forces, both internal and external. In the ancient legends Padmasambhava used this mystical weapon to punish sinister people and restore dharma, or moral order in Tibet. Some people think these ideas are just mythological. I think it is literal, at least the possibility of using spiritual force to move the world. I don’t know much about the historicity of Padmasambhava, but my ideal of him is kind of like Che Guevara with occult powers, but perhaps with a little more forgiveness for those enemies who surrender to his compassion and renounce their evil ways.

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Personally, I fared very well growing up in the United States. My grandparents were farmers yet they sent all their children to college and they all progressed into the middle class. My mother was the only daughter who, due to my surprise arrival, did not finish college immediately after high school and only later did she finish her education. We passed through all of the socioeconomic spectrum while this single mother finished her education while living in a poor working class environment and gradually ascended into a middle class profession. I grew up close to the other members of my family kind of like an extended Latino family. Also, my grandparents, aunts and uncles helped me financially while I was studying at the university.

While my mother simultaneously worked full time in a low-paying job and studied, we lived in a rather poor apartment complex. Many parents of the white children did not allow them to play with the black children. My mother never imposed such ideas on us. I once received a black eye when I got into a fight with a black boy and had some of the black children angry with me. My mother made them cookies and made sure we were all friends again. She also scolded me and told me that I probably deserved it.

She learned this broad social awareness from her mother. Once, my mother told me about an incident when I was with her mother in a store in Alabama in the early 1960s. They reached the end of the check out line. The people waiting in front of them were all black women waiting for their turn to pay at the cash register. According to the convention, the ladies left their positions and tried to get behind my grandmother at the end of the line. My grandmother did not let them. She said they were there first and that they should go in front of her. The other white people were offended by this. “Why does another white person come here and break the rules of our established order?,” they said. This happened in the early sixties before the Civil Rights Movement.

I write this little piece of personal history to say that I had a very good life in the United States and that despite its racist past I have always seen great potential for universal human culture there. My teacher Anandamurti said that human society is like a garden with so many variegated and beautiful flowers and that each one has its place. I am in favor of so many different cultural expressions, but it is the ideas of white nationalism and arrogant patriotism that I find particularly unpleasant. “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Nationalism and patriotism are abstract and politically constructed ideas that trample the flowers of human culture. They are limited and dangerous ideas, especially the militant and arrogant nationalism and patriotism that affects so many Americans.

In the 90s he had a group of friends who were yogis and meditators and also had a very progressive political awareness of “middle left.” We saw the conventional American right as centuries behind the times and the American left as people who tried to be progressive but who were simply politically ignorant or too cowardly to face the hypocrisies of the capitalist system. Some people had a certain sympathy with Clinton, Gore and later “Obomber”, but in our hearts we knew that these people were a false front for true democracy and only put a good face over the ugliness of the empire. Most of us liked Ralph Nader and some later supported Bernie Sanders. We were mostly white and middle class. Most of us were not radical enough to be fans of Che Guevarra or Castro, but the Zapatistas did have a human appeal, even if no one had seriously dreamed about picking up a machine gun and joining in the fight.

It has been a long time since the beaches of Normandy when the United States was hailed as a benevolent force in the world. The unfair wars of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and economic exploitation and interventions in the Middle East and Latin America eclipse past American glories. Now it is impossible to have a sense of national pride without telling so many lies. All kinds of distractions are created so that people never understand how they are exploited economically, culturally and spiritually. While the quality of education decreases, people eat junk food, wave flags, worship a white Jesus, buy and watch TV while the political-economic system continues to use its votes and taxes to wage war, steal resources and rape the entire planet. Most people are so distracted by divisive national politics and their pseudo culture that they could never understand what the empire is doing all over the world. Actually, the entire first world violates the third world, only Americans do better. They have 38 major military bases worldwide and according to the Pentagon’s world property portfolio there are another 514 military posts located abroad.

As a US citizen, it is easy for me to go where I want to go and while I am in Latin America I see such unbridled exploitation of their economies. So many resources are taken from these countries and much of their work is exploited for the benefit of multinational corporations. Neoliberal imperialism creates economic imbalances in Latin American “colonies” and creates the need for people to emigrate from their economies devastated by unfair economic policies. Immigrants simply go to where the wealth is, where their stolen resources end up and where their exploited labor is capitalized upon. Rejecting immigrants when they arrive and seek refuge is another blow and a great hypocrisy of the racists who always blame the victims of their own crimes.

People who believe in the law of compensation, of action and reaction, should not think that someday Americans will suffer their negative reactions because of their global economic imperialism. The country is already a mental asylum. What people are not suffering on the physical level they are suffering on the psychological level. How can a country create ongoing wars to steal the entire world from its resources without reaping what it sows? There is not much compassion for immigrants and there is not much among their own citizens in their own world. This mental illnesses increases exponentially with so much internal political struggle, alienation, neurosis and medicinal and recreational drug addictions. There are no substitutes for culture and humanity. If people could only understand the selfish causes of their own suffering and those that they harm, then perhaps they could escape the vicious circle of suffering. Finding a little humane feeling within and giving up materialism and narcissism would solve a large part of the problem, but that requires too much moral strength and character for most. One simply has to admit this and ask for forgiveness with humane acts. But we do not see it and do not change and, therefore, descend even deeper into an abyss of suffering.

The leaders and also their followers also carry the burden of truth through the lie. Those who accept the popular lies also pay the price in the end. Although most are not aware that they are ultimately working towards truth, even through their own degeneration. The materialistic and narcissistic example of existence with all its psychopathology has given proof to the world of its non-sustainability and its inevitable madness. This giant collapsing on itself is teaching many lessons to the world of how not to live. Do people still perceive the subtle, yet inviolable law of compensation? The collective “karma” of a society affects all of its members. The universe holds all individuals accountable, those who lives in conformity, pays taxes, and pledge allegiance to such a monster. Here I recall the stoic philosopher Diogenes who roamed about in broad daylight with a lantern saying he was looking for honest men.

On my last trip back to Mexico, I was surprised by the calm atmosphere on the plane. Half of the people seemed to be Mexican and the other half seemed to be American. Normally, when I travel in the United States, I feel a lot of neurosis in the environment and the overall vibration is quite heavy. Although Mexico is a totally chaotic country, most middle-class Mexicans (people who travel at airports) do not seem as neurotic as Americans. I have nothing against Americans and I love them as much as any other people. However, I think they suffer more psychologically and are more psychologically alienated than any other “developed” society on the planet. On the plane it was a relief to see people who seemed friendly, natural and self-confident, and I began to think that maybe there really is some hope for Americans. When the flight arrived in Mexico and we were waiting on the immigration line, I realized that most of these people were Canadians. Well, that explained it. Although many Canadians speak and resemble Americans, I generally notice that Canadians are much less neurotic.


I have not suffered from depression or even melancholy for decades. I once told a friend of mine when I was 25 that it was impossible for me to get depressed. She asked how it was possible. I said because I know that I am not my mind. It is the mind that thinks and feels depressed. If the mind recognises that it is witnessed by the calm and peaceful “I”, the “I-Witness”, then one feels peace, joy and is reconciled eternally with the infinite and therefore depression or any negativity takes to its heals.

In recent years I have gone through a total hell with the drug war in Mexico.   My house was surrounded by 4 paramilitary camps and I witnessed the most extreme violence and I even had to defend my life. I listened to people being tortured and mutilated and was always under threat of being kidnapped by the narco assassins of Santa Muerte. Sometimes I thought I would fall into pessimism or depression and that I would have to eat my previous words. However, remembering the “I-Witness” floating weightlessly over the tribulations of the relative mind always saved me. I even got mad at Tao for allowing me to be at peace in such a terrible situation … it almost seemed perverse and out of place, but our essence really is eternal bliss and, in fact, it is possible to be one with bliss under all relative conditions and circumstances.

Because of this resistance to depression, I feel that I am a good indicator of depression. I can feel depression in other people’s minds and in environments where depressed people live and interact. I feel intense pressure in my head in such environments or when I am close to depressed people. I try to say something nice to those people if I feel I can have any effect or just avoid such situations altogether. That’s why I like small rural communities instead of big cities. When I go to the United States, I clearly see that it is a society plagued by depression. It is difficult to find places, communities or cities where the vibration is not really heavy. I have noticed this since the 1990s when I began to become sensitive. I have only noticed that the collective vibration has only become even more depressed over the years. Even Austin, which was once a very positive place with a very progressive and alternative culture, is now a zombie camp. I used to say that the United States was a neurotic and depressed society, now I say that it is beyond that and is moving towards psychosis. I don’t know how much longer a society can remain integrated under such degeneration. When will we reach the breaking point?

The Possessed 


I was born in 1972 during the Vietnam War, at the beginning of the country’s final decline. Eisenhower tried to warn us about the dangers of the military-industrial complex more than a decade earlier than when I was born. With the secret manipulations of the Vietnam War, President Johnson had just sold out our democracy to the international bankers and multinational corporations that would eventually totally undermine the credibility of our government. This time was roughly the beginning of the end for the U.S. I felt it in my early childhood. My home was a safe haven but sometimes when I was out in the city with my mother I would feel that people were just not happy. I didn’t understand why intellectually, but I certainly felt the pervasive depression and ennui of materialistic, capitalist culture. I still have exactly the same feeling when I enter large cities and areas where really mundane people gather.

My grandfather performed some heroic acts during the second world war. As a farm boy he continued to drive a tractor, albeit a giant one, all across Europe. He was always very intuitive. Once, when he was a teenager, he told his cousin that he had better pull the car over because the tire was about to explode. His cousin thought it was nonsense. A minute later the tire exploded. It turned out that this intuition saved him several times in the war, from the crossing of the Po River Valley and on into Bavaria.

He and his high school friend were taking their tractors from one battle site to another during the invasion of Italy. German Junker dive-bombers were screeching down to attack them. In the middle of the journey they come across some UK platoon commanded by an Indian Sikh officer. He ordered them to dig a trench with their giant tractors to protect them from artillery. My grandfather saw in his mind’s eye that all of these men were about to die and that he had better leave. He disobeyed this officer and drove away. Just when he was leaving a shell exploded and killed the whole platoon.

He once had to clear the path across the Po River which was blocked by American tanks destroyed by German artillery. His officer gave the order and he said, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful sir, but there are 2 dozen dead men in those armed tanks that tried to cross the river. My tractor is open-caged and all I am wearing is a t-shirt.” His officer replied, “Don’t worry son, we have got you covered.” It took him 30 minutes to clear the path. All the while he had bullets bouncing off of his tractor and shells exploding all around him. When he returned to the shore nobody could believe he was alive.

His fellow soldiers started to note how he escaped the most impossible situations and began to stay close to him in conflicts because they knew he would be alright. He was always very calm and peaceful. I always felt safe with him and always lived nearby.

I saw the first images of carnage from the first Gulf War during my last year in high school. I was disgusted and ashamed. Although most of the teachers and leaders in society were supporting the government propaganda of a justified attack, there were also a few dissenters in the public school system who gave alternative views. I had been influenced by one such teacher. I really had no strong political views but I learned just enough of modern politics to entirely mistrust our government. At the same time a giant boil appeared on my cheek. It was enormous and swollen and very embarrassing. As the fluid oozed out all I could think about were the images of the bodies of the hotel clerks in Bhagdad who were killed by misguided guided missiles. I was ashamed to be an American. There was no more John Wayne and heroic Green Berets saving the day; just filthy rotten imperialists and duped, flag-waving morons robbing and murdering weaker societies for their natural resources. Well, for several years at least I vacillated between that extreme definition of my countrymen or the idea that they are also victims exploited by bad education and capitalist pseudo-culture. Either way, fascism always ends up taking hold of empires just before their demise.

During the second invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 the boil returned in exactly the same place. It was like a malevolent spirit that still haunted me. I was no longer ashamed of being an American because I had become a universal citizen by then. I really saw us as no more different than the German population around the time of Hitler. However, I still had those same feelings of disgust with the mindless American populace that unwittingly goes along with the plans of the military industrial complex, bankers and politicians that make all of this profitable war business and propaganda possible. More than just a rebellious attitude against authority, it was rather an attitude that these worms have no right to inflict this terror on any human being, especially when the justifications for aggression are based on crude lies.

I had just moved to Mexico in 2003 and met a young couple who were very concerned about the war. They were intelligent, educated, and had a very humanistic outlook. They had a new-born baby at the time and were a very happy family. However, they were horrified at how the United States was so blatantly pulling off this scheme that any reasonable intelligent person unbiased by Fox or CBS could clearly see through. The wife seemed to be deeply affected by the of war and was becoming even more so as time went on. Although I don’t think they were actively protesting in the streets, I did hear of them attending some social and ceremonial gatherings of a pacific nature. Slowly she began to become depressed and withdrawn. Nobody heard from her anymore. There was a Summer Solstice meditation event soon afterwards in which we heard from other friends that she had become very depressed, would not talk to anybody and was hardly even interested in caring for her baby. Her husband was very worried and did not understand what was happening to her.

She arrived and gave a faint smile to everyone. I hardly recognized her. There seemed to be nobody at home. My friend took her into a back room of the clinic away from all of the people participating in the festival in order to talk with her and give her some naturopathic treatments. I could see her husband was very concerned and was having to give a lot of time helping to care for the baby.

About an hour later I was called back into the room. My friend asked me to touch the crown of her head. She asked me if I could feel something strange. I did so and felt a terrible, evil presence. It was similar to the feeling I had with my boil but much, much stronger. I knew that this was an evil too powerful to be coming from her. It was like a giant, super-personal plasma blob of evil that was in the room. I felt sick and went into the next room to lie down. Ten minutes later my friend came in and said her patient was feeling much better. By that time I had already begun to decipher what was affecting her. My friend saw that I was abnormal and asked me if I absorbed something. I replied that I believe I had. My heart was pounding as if I had run a marathon. I could distinctly feel another presence inside of me. I had never felt like there was some other being existing inside me before. Yes, maybe I had had some strange experiences with deeper parts of my existence but it was always an experience with the various aspects of my own self. My friend immediately lost her non-attachment as a healer and began to worry about me. She wanted to take me to the hospital, which was quite ironic because she always “stole” patients from hospitals before the butchers took people’s organs out. She was crying and begging me not to die. I laughed and told her to shut up because I am fighting for my life with all of my force and the last thing I need is for my doctor to say I am going to die!

I lied there all night listening to the suggestions of this dark entity. I knew it was either it or I that would be alive in the morning. Fortunately, my life was very full and vibrant and I didn’t accept any of the suggestions from this evil. It was like a pattern that simply made everything negative and distorted- pessimistic and destructive thoughts, feelings, while at the same time it siphoned the life out of the body. It was a contest to see which mental pattern would control this body, the evil plasma of war and violence imposed on humanity or my own conscience. I could now understand very well what was affecting our friend and her family.  

The scars of war never leave us.  They remain in the collective memory and contaminate our thoughts and feelings.  All of those winners of all of those wars thought god was on their side. They could but kill more efficiently than their foes. And all of the unresolved terror and trauma of our victorious forefathers still weighs upon us. For the crime a punishment without end.

After a few hours I recovered a little. The woman had fallen asleep and I went to speak with her husband. I was exhausted but said that I believe everything will now be alright. He seemed a little relieved. I awoke with a terrible headache. It stayed with me a week or so while this presence was being digested. In the meantime the family learned meditation and we spent much time with the baby and all was alright. It was the most terribly illuminating experience I had ever had up until that point in my life. It was the beginning of a live microvita study that has only gotten wilder as the years pass on.

How I Learned to Love the Apocalypse

There is an occult story about some yogis meditating in the Himalayas who intervened in the second world war. They were secretly moving astral energies so that the world would not be totally destroyed. They had the ability to enter and influence the minds of the mundane political figures on the world political scene. They knew that the dark forces of the Nazis and the Communists were actually able to destroy the entire civilized world if there were no great psychic intervention by yogis and highly realized beings. They made a deal and called in some celestial force from on high. But there was a problem. There were no “good” forces on the planet that these virtuous spiritual forces could manifest into. They could see that the entire planet would undergo radical apocalyptic changes within one hundred years. These changes would eventually destroy the domination of materialistic ideologies like capitalism and communism, but this time was still very far away and it seemed like the world would not make it through the second world war.

The operation would require some special tinkering. They would have to use the best material available; the least evil: the Americans and the English. Now this was a difficult decision because these evolved beings saw almost no good in the imperialist English and Americans. They really helped spawn reactions to their own insidious imperialism with repercussions like Nazism and Communism. However, there was absolutely no good in Communism nor National Socialism. So these microvita or spiritual beings entered the bodies and minds of the Allies. It would warp and accelerate evolution. The war could be won, but the societies of people that received this boost would become very unstable afterwards. Most people would not be able to assimilate the new evolutionary speed and would most likely degenerate instead of evolve. It was a meta-physical political intervention on a very grand scale, and with great and necessary sacrifices to ensure that we would make it to the real and benevolent apocalypse in the future; a time when the materialistic forces will receive a final death blow.

Just after the evacuation Dunkirk in which the Germans drove the Allies off of the continent, there was debate within the German high command as to whether they should invade England immediately or wait. The yogis decided to use this opportunity to influence the minds of Hitler and the generals not to invade because the yogis knew that victory would actually be with the Germans if they invaded and defeated the English at this time. The rest of the story is known history and the invasion never happened. After a few years of dead lock, the allies made great advances toward victory.

Sometimes I am inclined to believe such stories. I have seen such interesting occult influences on much smaller personal dramas than the second world war. Also, my grandfather had some interesting psychic experiences that helped him survive many battles and so I am inclined to accept such “fantastic” stories as being possible. It is at least great material for a novel and fun to consider.

If I were to continue the story I would say that the U.S. totally consumed the technological power, intelligence and evil of the Nazis but never really transmuted it into something better. Instead, fascism has a new multi-national disguise. U.S. imperialism has taken capitalistic tyranny to all corners of the globe. We became the carriers of Nazism. It was our duty to transmute this evil but it has consumed us. We have put it to such destructive use and it has almost destroyed all hope for the future. Yet not all of us are zombies, and the world still persists. Finally, now we come closer the end of the cycle…………

The “good” or “conscious” people will make it through this evolutionary pass. Now more positive microvita can enter into the collective mind. Mental influences translate themselves into subtle nervous and glandular activities that are awakening more psycho-spiritual potential in the species. Once again, it will have destructive effects for the masses; most will perish from illnesses as their psycho-physical parallelism will be disrupted. The body simply won’t be able to keep up with the imposed changes, but such is evolution. It is as if we are all going to get a mental “software” update. Is your “hardware” compatible? Have you struggled to evolve your nervous and glandular systems? Have you put your neocortex to good use? Are you ready to become the new human that your conscious, higher nature wants you to be?

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Before the tragedy of The Purulia Arms Drop I spent my time meditating and reading Anandamurti´s books, among some other books on yoga while at Ananda Nagar in India. I was the first student in the tantric research project at Ananda Nagar and I was living near my teacher, Chidghananda.  I was learning under two teachers, Samanvayananda and Chidghananda. Samanvayananda was really a wizard. He overtly demonstrated all kinds of occult powers. He wanted people to understand the higher intelligence and power of the mind and because he knew so many secrets he was always showing them off. Later, Anandamurti would discover that his disciple was abusing occult powers and then beat him with a stick. Later, Samanvayanda would learn a new trick and start showing it off and then get beaten again. I will write more about my relationship with him later. He was controversial but his friend Chidghananda was more of a sage. He did not really seem to have any vanity. He spent a lot of time alone but he really loved people and was always interacting with people who would come and see him. People always got the impression that he could see right through them and give them advice based on his intuition even without engaging in psychological dialogues and disclosures.

I was reading the yoga sutras of Patainjali. In one of the later chapters Patainjali is speaking about how advanced yogis connect with higher spiritual forces that help divide the personality into separate components so that the yogi can finish his samskaras, or karmic reactions more quickly. Instead of one person doing the work, there could be 2 or 3. It sounded like multiple personality disorder but Patainjali was speaking of it as a very advanced and subtle practice of connecting with the fundamental structures of the personality. Could this be an enlightened understanding of the “Gestalt Round Table” in which one starts to dialogue with the different aspects of the pesonality?, I wondered. It is a psycho therapeutic technique where one gets all of one´s internal personalities together in an imaginary round table so that they can all communicate. For example, in an imaginary dialogue the angry part of the person expresses his view, and then the insecure part and then the strong part. Instead of having separate wills competing for the control of the ego, the therapist guides the dialogue so that the fragmented parts of the personality all begin to understand each other and synthesize into an integrated being.

This Gestalt idea helped me orient myself to this strange idea of Patainjali. While discussing this idea with Chidghananda about Gestalt Psychology he began to say that an enlightened or nearly enlightened mind has integrated the disparate parts of the personality. They are beyond the duplicity and the incongruities of the lower mind. Instead, the enlightened parts of their personalities come to full expression. Dada explained that certain microvita intelligence connect with each part of the person and the yogi uses his or her own personality as a vehicle to express these deep aspects of the personality. He explained how Anandamurti could be so sweet and loving and would heal people spiritually. On other occasions he was the task master and social leader that had to keep everything in order. He could be like a mother as well as a 5 starred general, and had full confidence in all of the various aspects in his integrated being. He also explained how the guru would have certain moods that he expressed, each one according to situations and people he was guiding, and each one with a very special transformative power. He was always taking the samskaras of his disciples and using the different parts of his personality to do this. Chidhananda´s explanation went far beyond what Patainjali mentioned. Patainjali was speaking of how a nearly liberated being uses this technique to achieve liberation from all samskaras. Chidghananda was explaining how Anandamurti completed this process and instead of finishing off his own samskaras, engaged with other beings to help them evolve the samskaras that bind them.

I playfully asked Dada if I had any “friends” accompanying me, because I felt like I was moving so fast that I would disintegrate. He laughed and said we would speak more of that later. Later, I got deported. He died, but kept his promise and we began to speak about that again, but more on that later.

There were also dreams with the form of Anandamurti which were always illuminating. I once had gastritis and it had bothered me for 6 months. I dreamed that Anandamurti came to me as a doctor dressed in white. I did not recognize that it was Anandamurti. The doctor touched my stomach and I felt immense psychological pain which revealed the reasons why I had gastritis. Then a soothing light from his hands passed into me. I looked up to see who this doctor was because I was doubled over in pain and had not seen his face. I saw the face of Anandamurti just for a fraction of a second and then saw an infinite white light. At the same time I woke up and felt the light inside my stomach curing me. I stopped taking medication that very same day and have never suffered from gastritis again.

Chidghananda was there when I had these experiences. I was living next door to him when I had these experinces and I strongly suspect Chidghananda´s influence. I was surprised that such a mature and great man acted like I was his best friend. It was the greatest honor of my life.

I did not want to be deceiving myself with false visions. I was educated as a scientist and always tried to be very critical of my own subjective experiences, especially these strange mystical visions. I ate psychedelic mushrooms once in college and it was beautiful, but it was really nothing compared to these meditation experiences at Ananda Nagar. The experiences were so much more powerful than mushrooms and did not require an altered state of consciousness. The practice of yoga and a few hours of meditation a day induced these experiences. I was vegetarian, used no drugs nor alcohol, and in the company of Chidghananda I truly felt like a monk. He was a perfect gentlemen around women and he showed them so much respect, yet I never saw him overstep his monastic boundaries. Having an example like that really made a young man feel confident that one could live a happy monastic life like him.

<a href="https://filedn.eu/lJ2nfF6TS2qfy9gLlLonYGy/assets/chidghananda.mp4">Video Interview With Dada</a>

Every time I meditated near him he went into trances. All of the air would immediately be pushed out of his body with an extremely loud “Humm” sound as the kundalini would rise. Then his body would get really tense and shake and then he would stop breathing and was totally calm, as if he were dead. I asked him what he experienced. He said he always heard the Om sound but when he meditated he would let himself go and be absorbed into it. Sometimes he would see the form of Anandamurti just before entering into this samadhi trance, other times the experience was completely formless. He encouraged me to meditate on formlessness but always said there was something very special in the form of Anandamurti. He never dogmatized about it and when people asked him if Anandamurti was really the incarnation of god, or Taraka Brahma, or some other concept, he would simply say, “Baba was Baba. Anandamurti himself said he was a mystery and will always remain a mystery, so what can I say?”

I look back on my time with him and some other older disciples of Anandamurti and realize that the form of the guru worked through all of them. It is not that the entire force of the guru manifested through one particular person, but it was so clear that these men were connected to some invisible mind field that was very powerful and benevolent, that could awaken the kundalini within any person who had prepared themselves. These monks really understood the inner, mystical secrets of yoga. However, as you can see in this video, Chidghananda never leaves rational and practical thinking or asks the listener to accept some authority or dogma or fantastic idea. He was a true and rational disciple of Anandamurti who understood that proper and balanced reason awakens intuitive faculties with a very balanced vision of spirit.

These dreams and visions through subtle form and intuitive concepts give one some confidence in the practice of contemplation, but are not proofs in themselves. They simply clear the confusions from the path so one can have formless experience. These were all preparatory experiences for learning to achieve the state of total peace in meditation, like Chidghananda experienced regularly in the breathless state of samadhi. The “proof” comes in samadhi, with the revelation of OM within the eternal I-feeling which absorbs the little “I” of the relative ego. One understands that one is infinite and pure behind the mirage af mind and world. After that one has no doubts. Remaining in the body one can suffer greatly, pass through trial and torture yet never, ever be able to deny That, “Tat Tvam Asi” – Thou Art That

Eating For Kundalini

“I am the food of life. I am the eater of the food of life. I am the two in one. I am the first born child of immortality born before the gods.” – Upanishad

At Ananda Nagar I sometimes only slept a a few hours and heard Om through the night. I started getting really far out. Fortunately, I was with some good friends that always made fun of me and that kept me in line. Whenever I would go without eating and get really high they would make me eat. At other times, after hours of meditating, I would eat and eat and eat and never get full. They were constantly laughing at my bottomless pit and each new full plate was a new joke.

I got very, very thin but I had tremendous energy. Sometimes while sitting in the lotus posture I would enter into a state of bliss all too suddenly. My body jumped 2 feet off of the ground when the kundalini would rise. My friends told me that when they were sitting next to me. It was involuntary, but it was not one of those energetic manipulations of TM and kundalini yoga where people bounce around like clowns and call it yogic flying. The kundalini rose from the base of the spine like a lightning flash and struck the Anahata chakra in the chest. This resistance shot my body up 2 feet into the air very quickly. It was not a gradual levitation but it was a vigorous jump. There was also once an experience of levitation, but that is another story.

After these experiences I got terribly hungry and would hurry home to eat but I hardly had energy to walk. I bought a can of ghee and started pouring the ghee on top of mounds of rice and lentils. I would then sleep a few hours in the night and start the cycle again. At breakfast I would force myself to eat until it hurt because I knew I would be hungry again in an hour. Then I would quickly go down by the river to meditate before I got hungry again. I would immediately enter into some trance. I could just barely keep my observing intellect active so as to not get swept away. I was a student the year before and was very interested in bio-psychology. My friend Lowan and I would talk about mysticism, psychedelics and neuropsychology for hours on end. I still had those questions in my mind and wanted to observe my mind and brain in these states of concentration. I tried to keep reading scientific books but I was losing interest. I felt it was too much of an attachment for my mind. Chidghananda said that the desire was almost finished and that I should just indulge it. I once found him reading my copy of “The Tao of Physics.” He said he really liked it. He browsed through “Order Out of Chaos” by Prigogine and said “these are revolutionary ideas but you will soon loose interest in them.

Dada explained to me how Anandamurti said that microvita research must be conducted by people with conceptually developed minds along with yogis who could guide them intuitively. So therefore the yogi must also be somewhat familiar with modern scientific ideas. He said I did not need to read any more books. What was more important was to remember these ideas when the mind was coming down from samadhi, to see these ideas in a new light, an eternal light. One understands that the object one thinks upon is unified with the deep thoughts about that object. For example, if you think of a plant, your mind becomes at one with the plant. The plant becomes part of your objective mind, or chitta. Knowledge is the subjectivization of external objectivity, or bringing outside what is inside. A superficial conceptualization of it sees the plant outside of oneself in time and space. One may study it deeply, dissect it, discover the secret of its genes but the plant still remains outside of one self. A partial subjectivization is an intuitive understanding of the plant in which there is a feeling of “oneness” with the plant. One conceives it deeply but also feels into it and knows its inner secret. Healers may have this connection with plants and also with the human body and understand the healing relationships between them. Total subjectivization is when there is no longer subject and object. There is no longer a plant nor a mind perceiving the plant. The mind spiritually merges into the Atman and there only remains pure subjectivity. This is spiritual knowledge. One who knows the supreme Knower or Subjectivity attains liberation.

Just as one overcomes the objective-subjective barrier to reality created by the limitations of the conceptual mind, the intuitive mind also transcends its subtle concepts and realizes that all cognition is ultimately dependent on the witness of the mind, the atman. From the point of view of the atman, one is capable of seeing all things. And from this vantage point one can see what nature and mind really are and have very exact ideas about them. Furthermore one sees the structure of thought itself, the stuff that dreams are made of. I asked him if he could see microvita. He said yes but it is more important to conceive them than to simply see them. He said they were a moving collage of geometric forms and colors that were in constant flux behind the physical world. The quantum void is full of prana, or vital energy, and the microvita play these strings of prana which ultimately “collapse” into material reality.

He said I should do as much meditation as possible at Ananda Nagar because he was not sure how long the house arrest would last; months, or years, perhaps. I continued with my meditations and the more my breath stopped in meditation the less my intellect could analyze these states, and the less that I desired that it continue analyzing them. The bliss that was entreating me called, “Just let it go now, it is time for bliss. Adios little German intellect”

Meanwhile, these experienced really required a lot of energy and I became even more exhausted. I asked Samanvayananda, the wizard friend of Chidghananda, for advice. He told me to get a can of ghee and a mound of rice as well. It was hilarious that we came to the same conclusions. He used to get the younger monks to prepare him food. He would entertain everybody by really pigging out. They could not believe how much he could eat. Then he would say “I am going to the river to meditate now. Have some more food ready for me in two hours when I return.” He passed through these states for so many years without sleeping and meditated all through the night.


Persons and Places

Everybody I have met has been very nice to me on these 46 orbits around our Sun I have traveled thus far. It is as if an invisible god has been accompanying me who jumps out and enters everybody I meet, giving that eternal salute from yet another unique perspective.

All of the unresolved questions that remained for me about the mystical experiences of my childhood and youth were answered in those brief years I was living with yogic monks and nuns in India and in Missouri. Before that, I had many deep and powerful experiences that my friends also shared and experienced with me. My mother always believed me and helped me find some answers to these mysteries. She introduced me to her friends that meditated and practiced yoga.

Such experiences were blasts of clarity and insight that always seemed to occur with interesting existential and emotional “synchronicities” connected with my friends and family since childhood. However, it was when I learned tantric meditation that all of these experiences became clearly understood. It was as if these earlier experiences needed to be cleared up in my mind so as to make space for newer experiences.

And so it was; the more I assimilated the earlier mysteries, the more I experienced newer ones. By the time I went to India I started entering in states of deep, breathless meditation. It was as if I were dead but my mind was very active on the inside, processing memories of those deep experiences in my youth with friends and family. Everything made sense and all was good…my family and friends gave me everything.

Chidghananda said my spiritual work was done. All I have to do is give and serve others. I was no longer bound by attachment to my past. What now?, I wondered. As time went by he started to speak of the future, as if he really wanted to tell me something important about not just my future but the future of humanity. I began to have very uncomfortable experiences and visions after those very blissful trances. Everything that I experienced was sublime yet terrible. I saw so much suffering and knew that there would be difficult times ahead. Chidghananda confirmed this and said that I would suffer miserably and be involved in huge political dramas for some time but after it ended I should just live a normal life.

At the same time I met another yogi who gave me another piece to the puzzle. I didn’t know him at all but we liked each other instantly and he started to tell me very interesting and insightful tips that seemed to be exactly what I needed. He told me that yogis could consciously invoke the “Near Death Experience” with certain yogic techniques. In such a state, one can see what one needs to see, and all of the way into eternity. He said that I could enter into the Hall of the Immortals and ask any liberated being any question that I wanted. He gave me the technique, I practiced it and indeed verified that he was correct, that yogis can invoke the near death experience through meditation.

I saw my whole life flash in front of me. I saw my future homes in great detail.  I remember many of these vivid visions but recall with each new experience in life a feeling of deja vu and realize that I have already seen this too. I saw everything in that vision, yet I consciously remember fragments. When I have deja vu, there is no mystery of where the feeling of familiarity comes from; the familiarity came from the fact that I had already seen this part of the drama unfold in that near death experience, or what really became a series of near-death experiences. It is like when a friend shares a memory with you. It was the same experience but when he or she recalls it to you then you remember the picture more completely. You hadn’t forgotten those aspects, they were just unconscious. Similarly, when I would have feelings of deja vu I would contemplate on where I actually did experience that memory and actually recalled when and where and it the origin always came back to those experiences of near death, in the eternal now. Near death is so close to Life.

an excerpt from Light And Dark Tantra

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an excerpt from Light And Dark Tantra

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an excerpt from Light And Dark Tantra

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Although it was a terrible tragedy I look back on all of this as a really humorous experience.  For me it was the Cosmic Theater Of The Absurd.  It was if the master crafter of all souls fused together Samuel Beckett and Peter Sellers to create The Arms Drop.  One night, just after being released from a dirty Indian prison and being placed under house arrest at the A.M. compound, there were rumors that the drums we were hearing were war drums.  There were similar drums many years before when the Bengali Communist government gave the locals alcohol, money and weapons to attack the Ananda Marga monks.  They killed six of them one day and had killed another 100 over the next two decades, according to the A.M. monks.  So there really was reason to be alarmed.  The monks were running for the trains to leave but we were under house arrest and could not leave.  Some monks told us just to make a run to the Nepal border any way we could.  I said we would be state fugitives.  The monk said that at least we would be alive and have a chance.  

We still did not know that Ananda Marga was really behind the arms drop.  That came later.  I was being used as a poster boy of innocence and the leaders of AM put me in front of the press to tell my story.  It worked well and we became like local celebrities as people recognized us in public and wanted to meet us because we were "famous."  I think that many really had hoped we were really insurrectionists.   Later, the world discovers the truth after some true culprits were arrested.  It turns out that some A.M. monks bought some weapons in Bulgaria and tried to bring them into India.  The plan was discovered by Interpol and the British MI5 and the whole plot was foiled.  Ananda Marga was seen as a terrorist organization.  So there was all the more need to make some positive propaganda to make AM more favorable in the public eye to prevent an attack from the Bengali communists.  Little did I know I was being used as a pawn in an  insurrection against the Bengali communist regime.  

Even though we had been through so much stress by being so affected by some international coup against the Bengali Communists and under threat of an attack with spears, bows and arrows by some tribal people, our spirits were very high. We had nothing else to do under house arrest but meditate a lot and we were all really very high.  My friends and I made jokes most of that night about how we were going to survive the night.  They said the Texan (myself)should turn our hostel into the Alamo and make one last brave stand like Davy Crocket and the boys, using the guns we were accused of smuggling into the country.  I said that because we were already accused of being terrorists then we should just put panty hose over our heads and just be so freaky that the locals would be scarred of us and run away thinking we were demons.  We knew nothing would happen to us and nothing did.  

The The Arms Drop documentary was impossible to see on servers in the U.S.  This was just a few years ago, 25 years after The Arms Drop occurred.  One had to use a VPN to see the free documentary online.  Like me, the documentary questioned why the US government was so interested in that affair.  At the same time some Indian journalists, authors, and film-makers interviewed me because they had read The Debate.  I was hoping that their work would not be overly serious nor factual and intellectual, that the movie would have at least some dancing at the end.  All of the main characters in many Indian movies, friend and foe, dance together at the end.  Just imagine those orange-clad clowns dancing with AK47´s while the CIA and MI5 agents boogie alongside them!  I would be brake-dancing.

an excerpt from Light And Dark Tantra

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Of course I remember a time when living in a society of monastic celibates was a very positive experience. I felt that most people were looking for self realization and struggled to transmute their sexual desires in order to put more energy into their meditation and contemplative efforts. Of course there were some that were probably escaping their frustrated sexual desires and emotional issues but the majority were sincere in their intentions. It worked, but with some discipline. Living in such an environment gave me a lot of energy. I slept very little, meditated and worked a lot as well. Sometimes our afternoon volleyball games were intense but I think such healthy collective activities helped lower tensions. I think few people could just make such a vow on their own without the help of a community. If somebody broke their vows they were sent back to the training center to meditate for some time. Once they were ready for monasticism again they were given the clothes of a junior monastic. They had to start over. 

I recall how I once saw a few older men who had on the uniforms of the young brahmacarii. I asked an older monk that I confided in as to why these old guys were junior monks. Did they get a late start, I asked? The monk laughed and said that the system of A.M. really works and there were no cover-ups. People simply got sent back to the training center. For the most part I think these people were treated well because everybody truly knew how difficult their path is. To preserve this joyful life-style it was necessary to preserve it with strict yet compassionate discipline. Scandalous cover-ups would have undermined the whole spirit of the culture of spiritual celibacy. If somebody really could not handle the pressures of celibacy, then they were encouraged to live a family life. Actually, it seemed to me like the most advanced yogis in that society were married people. From the monastic point of view family life was frequently considered something lesser, for the ones not strong enough for celibacy. Yet when things fell apart it was non monastics who had more sincere life-styles.

Their society fell apart through an internal civil war. The leader of the rebellious band of monastics was the infamous Shamitananda, the one whom I wrote about that got obsessed with a nun and tried to poison her with cobra venom. He remained in charge of this dark revolution against the principal order and very few questioned him. He was like a king.  Well, they had their own scandals and so they all decided to bandy together in a coalition in which nobody could tell on anybody else. Were they mature and spiritual free-lovers free from the shackles of institution? Hardly so. They were miserable and depressed in their duplicity and roamed around like titillated tomcats trying to hump everything that moved. They left a trail of harm everywhere they went and were no longer welcomed with families who found out about them.  They really convinced me of the argument for the need of a firm and honest community. They became what is now known as The Path Of Bliss in North America. It is really the path of B.S. Whenever I get invitations to connect with them I think of this quote of Diderot:

 
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

On the other side of the rebellion remained the conservatives. The sincere ones were grandfatherly figures. They were people who could be trusted because they were congruent and their demeanor was very peaceful. Yet they gradually started becoming ill and dying off. There was no longer any inspiration in their society. All of the sincere people, both lay and monastic, had left out of shame of being connected to such a scandalous society. I had so many friends that were just too ashamed to be associated with all of the scandals with the monastics. They did not want to raise their children in association with such people. One friend told me that he was born into Catholic society, later found liberation from it but yet ended back into it again through A.M. This hurt the grandfathers. They were the responsible ones holding it all together. It made them sick. I also felt really sick when I was around those monks. It was the saddest sight to see them so desperate.

All of this talk nowadays about sexual inclusion makes me think where celibates would be classified. I think that in open, mundane society a "celibate" is completely misunderstood be just another form of dysfunctional sexuality. In a materialistic, dysfunctional, self indulgent society it really is nearly impossible for people to have a healthy and well adapted sexual expression. Celibates are seen as people that are just trying to give it up because it has caused so much suffering. Through so many failed efforts and unfruitful relationships in love, the emotional pain is too much and they just try and escape it, yet there remains a repressed fire smoldering with toxic fumes. Celibates are just like the rest of repressed people with an internal bomb just waiting for the moment to take the sexual energy into some other warped form and some other confusion.

Sexuality develops as a healthy expression through the self-confidence. Those who have little confidence and self knowledge are confused, repressed or overly compulsive. Who really understands what sex is all about? What is one looking for, essentially? Or is one hiding from oneself, using some desire as an escape and desperate attempt at pleasure when life is too empty? People speak of sexual liberation. Who could possibly be liberated by following a blind impulse from an unconscious space?

When one has more internal space there is more energy for desires to grow and transform into something useful.  Replicating one's soul image inter-fused with the image of the person that god has intended for you to create a child is the best use of sexual energy.   Sincere, romantic love is sublime when it is liberated from selfishness.  It is a longing for most people that brings mental expansion to the degree that there is true love, a love that is always converting into pure compassion. Too many people are frustrated and confused and cannot find true love with another human, so how could they ever love the infinite?  Human love teaches us spiritual love and we will be bound to the cycle of birth, death and rebirth until we figure this out.  

One must work with both thought and feeling to liberate blind desires. Higher cognition foster subtler emotions and subtler emotions foster higher cognition. This requires not just spiritual practice but a different social life-style. For the yogi mind all desires are food for the spirit. Any dense energy can be taken within and transformed into golden light. It is possible as meditation is simply following nature´s more subtle, internal processes. The mind has an internal order that can put all other things in order. If life is a chaos, then one´s mind is chaos. If life becomes harmonious it is only because one´s thoughts are harmonious. Perhaps one cannot consider celibacy or the life of a yogi, but the more the mind is nurtured through meditation and spiritual culture it is certain that sexuality will express itself more sanely.

  
"Opus Gei"  
  
My initial exposure to monasticism was very pure regarding sexuality. There were not so many cases of perversion. Later, after great conflicts that effected the stability of the order, people started getting into scandals. There was no longer so much spiritual inspiration or existential security within the order and people started “falling” into their repressed and distorted instincts. The monastic order was a spiritual society based on the practice of tantra yoga.  
  
In the beginning, before the fall, I could see how the monastic life-style really functioned in a healthy manner. There were some older monks that never seemed to have any sexual tendencies. There were others who struggled but as long as they had a healthy spiritual environment, then they could continue with their efforts in a healthy way, without dangerous repression. And then there were the ones that had very little success in this endeavor. The monastic institution would be better off inspiring them to have family lives instead of trying to force monasticism. Otherwise, their natural, albeit repressed tendencies always lead them into trouble. Naturally, their scandals were heterosexual when they were heterosexuals and homosexual when they were homosexuals. However, there were very few homosexuals in this order when I first entered, probably not higher than the mean. The community did not seem to be a refuge for gays, as some skeptics might argue. However, as time passed and the social solidarity of the monastic society eroded there began to be more sexual scandals, and significantly more homosexual scandals. The middle group of those making a sincere and effective struggle began to slide down into the third group of those that just need to do something else and leave an unhealthy, repressed life-style.    
  
According to a recent article I read in The Guardian citing modern social scientific data, only 7 to 10% of the population have homosexual tendencies. Within this 7 to 10%, only a small percentage of people are completely homosexual (2 or 3% of the general population) while the remaining 5 to 8% only have homosexual tendencies to varying degrees.  
  
If societies of humans have populations with more than 10% homosexuality, I believe we would be seeing an effect of increased homosexuality caused by social conditions instead of natural, innate tendencies. Perhaps some people are born homosexual, while in others homosexuality is socially conditioned. The distinctly high manifestations of homosexuality in one particular society would seem to suggest that certain psycho-social dynamics in that particular society somehow induce homosexual tendencies. Why is there more homosexuality in such a society that there isn’t in general society? What would be the personal and social- psychological conditions that cause such a high rate of homosexuality? The most obvious examples of “false homosexuality,” or homosexuality affecting heterosexuals, is in monastic orders and prisons, which sometimes are not so different. I had always heard such rumors about the clergy of the old Church, but I never knew any of these people or was familiar with Catholicism. Later, I became friends with some more progressive Liberation Theology priests who were more honest about the hypocrisy of the supposed celibates.  There is no spiritual vitality left in the church and most priests are really poorly adjusted people that don’t understand their natural impulses. The Catholic church with dogmatic institutions like their very gay “Opus Dei” have propagated this plague for nearly 2000 years.  
  
When “celibate” priests begin to manifest a sexuality that they themselves consider taboo, then the probability for an inappropriate “scandal” is quite high. I saw that people that really were not gay were later getting involved in gay relationships, both monks and nuns. And because they were not supposed to be sexually active, their sexual activity is not natural and free, but often involved inappropriate, imposed and sometimes even perverse and criminal expressions. This is what I refer to as “Opus Gei,” a dark and dogmatic idea against sexuality that eventually paradoxically binds one deeper into sexuality in ways that are not natural to one’s being and that they really don’t seem happy with. Instead of being celibate, a heterosexual becomes gay; “Opus Gei.” This concept has nothing to do with homophobia, and hopefully people would not use such an argument as a diatribe against homosexuals, but rather against hypocritical priests. Perhaps this notion may help distinguish between more innate forms of homosexuality (people actually born with physical, androgynous bisexuality) and those manifestations of homosexuality that are simply caused by temporary confusion, weakness, psycho-social maladaptation, and social decay. Birds, fishes, and many species of mammals are known to develop homosexual relationships when they were unsuccessful with heterosexual procreation attempts. They tried to be heterosexual but homosexuality was the only option available for them and they settled with it. Is it any different for monks?  

I worked with a partner in the reformation of Ananda Marga when the social situation with the organization started going down quickly.  All we encountered were criminal and sexual scandals.  She became enraged over this and often her rage carried over to me, and perhaps even all men.  I became all the more the playboy in her mind each time she heard of these monastic scandals.  Later, when we began to encounter homosexual scandals with the monks, she really lost control. She never expressed hatred toward gays before this but later started to see homosexuals around every corner, and eyed them with hatred.  Later, she even said I was a homosexual.

Due to this I was forced to try and understand something I had not given a lot of effort to understanding.  I also saw many homosexual expressions as something really imbalanced, however, I really did not see them as so much different than heterosexual hyper sexuality in the form of "free love" and open sexual relationships.  Whether heterosexual or homosexual these sexual indulgences always create more suffering than pleasure and cause degeneration.  Unlike her, I could not condemn them but I tried to see their higher consciousness beyond their impulses and distortions.  One must understand that our social world is degenerated with so much narcissism, hedonism, materialism and hyper sexuality that create so many psychological complexes.  Also, I saw that there were more mature and responsible homosexuals that contained their sexual expressions with other homosexuals in a more responsible manner.  How could I condemn them if these homosexuals were even more responsible than heterosexuals who practiced the hypocrisy of "free love" and went around harming others with their selfish impulses? Yet on the other hand I cannot assert, as some religious homosexual activist do, that God simply made them that way.  I think if God were to create  homosexuals or guide evolution creatively, then such a God would have given more appropriate organs for homosexual expressions, especially with male homosexuals who practice sodomy.  The anus is simply an excretory organ that is not divinely designed for healthy sexual activity.  I certainly believe that divine compassion is for all and that God does not judge anybody for anything, but that homosexuality just like other human mental adjustments and complexes are of our own making, our own history of karmic actions and reactions. God has nothing to do with the creation of homosexuality yet divine compassion can touch and transform all parts of our being. 

Also, some of her followers had certain homosexual confusions.  I saw them as heterosexuals with slight homosexual tendencies.  Intuitionally, I saw their minds had some strong complexes in the second chakra, the svadhistana.  I always saw that male homosexuals had two very strong propensities in the svadhistana:  lack of confidence and compulsion.  These emotional and energetic imbalances distort the svadhistana´s libido, cause the pranic or energetic flow of the mind to move downward (toward the first chakra), and overstimulate the first chakra by creating the confusion that the anus is an erogenous zone.  In the case of people with slight homosexual tendencies, they often resolved their homosexual tendencies by seeing these underlying complexes in their minds with the help of meditation, yoga exercises and the study of yogic bio psychology.  It certainly was not easy to become aware of such unconscious tendencies rooted in the base of the personality and it was a lot of work on my part to guide them through the process, but I did see that these people eventually became heterosexuals with healthy relationships.  This is a process much more refined than the "Pray The Gay Away" dogmas that harmed many people by making them more repressed and guilty about a homosexuality that never disappeared or was successfully transmuted into heterosexuality.  I saw that many people could become completely heterosexual by processing their complexes in the svadhistana, but not all.  

In short, I always tried to treat homosexuals as I do other people.  If they express sexual imbalances then I try not to see it as so different than heterosexual imbalances.  If they are more mature, conscious, and responsible I simply recommended monogamy and a mature, compassionate relationship just as I recommend to heterosexuals.  

All of these accusations against me were too much to bear.  She got the weaker members of our community together to take her side against me, including some of the people whom I had helped with their sexual confusions.  Nobody believed what she said about me but still some of them stood beside her.  Once, when I briefly left the place they burned my belongings. 

A similar situation happened with my first yoga teacher who told people I was the next step in human evolution. He was so proud of being my mentor, the one who discovered and developed me. Later, when I confronted he and his dirty monk friends of being playboys and hypocrites he said that I was an emotionally troubled person!  He was a married man and I was simply defending his family from him and the young college girls that he flirted with.  

A spiritual person will always maintain close connections with other human beings.  However, one must always follow one's conscience instead of any other influence.  One should always maintain one's independence without being influenced by the will and actions and ideas of others.

I began to learn about microvita, or discarnate spiritual force, with Chidghananda.  In the process of healing one may connect with certain microvita in order to get information on how to heal another mind.  This information and spiritual force is useful in that the distorted mental patterns that create physical illness do not affect the healer.  This is not the same as channeling.  Channeling is when one opens one´s mind as a vehicle for discarnate force and one´s will is suspended while the will of the microvita takes temporary control of the mind and body.  Channeling is always a dangerous and inferior healing process that eventually creates mental imbalances.  A strong healer does not succumb to the "possession" of the spiritual force that helps in the process, nor does the strong healer succumb to the mental patterns that create illness in the mind of the one being healed.  Instead, a spiritual healer connects to the information and force of microvita to use it in the process of healing.  This proper use of spiritual force helps diminish the influence of the negative patterns of the mind being healed upon the mind of the healer.   

Spiritual healing and working with microvita is not so much different in principle than leadership in the mundane social world.  A leader must be open and receptive to his or her subordinates.  One must be understanding and take into account all opinions.  However, a leader must have the strength to make decisions based on a greater discernment and insight that, while being considerate to all opinions, must have the strength to decide and override divergent aims when the decisive moment arrives.  A weak leader may be too influenced by all of the voices one hears and cannot make clear decisions because one wants to please everybody and has no strong resolve.  Similarly, a weak healer may be overcome by the influences of the infirm mental patterns and may become ill while trying to transmute them.  The weak healer may also invoke a discarnate force or microvita to do the healing work through their own mind and body.  Ramakrishna made a very relevant analogy when referring to a weak guru as a small serpent trying to swallow a fish but cannot and both the serpent and the fish are stuck in a process of suffering.  The serpent cannot swallow and the fish remains squirming in its jaws.  A strong guru is one who can swallow it in one bite.  

Sexual Tantra -excerpt from A Name To The Nameless  
  
When speaking about the second, or svadhistana vortex, most people immediately think of sexuality.  The six vrttis or vortexes of the svadhistana vortex are indifference, depression, compulsion, lack of confidence, paranoia, and resentment.  These 6 tendencies have more to do with a lack of sound grounding in one's person rather than sexuality.  The sexual drive is rooted in the sensory mind, in the first vortex.  The problem is that due to a lack of awareness of one's emotional and physical needs, the sexual desire often gets confounded with these defense mechanisms.  
      
It is quite natural and healthy that the sex instinct of the sensory mind finds higher expressions in higher centers.  In a balanced second vortex the sex drive hasn't reached its full maturity but still is not a blind animal instinct.  It has more to do with emotional security, which is the constant theme when discussing the svadhistana vortex.  The problem is that this biological instinct gets tangled up in the distortions and insecurities of the svadhistana, self-conceptual mind. The ego begins to exploit this gratification for its unconscious necessities and there is always suffering and degeneration.  
      
I have never taken the so-called “sexual tantra” seriously.  Firstly, because the only people who I have ever known to practice such things were never really balanced.  Sure, they spoke of awareness and love and transmutation and all of those nice things, but it was just all too obvious that they were just sex addicts propelled by unconscious emotions.  They always left a trail of harm.  It may be that there were once some more conscious practices that really didn't trap people into their compulsions, but if they were in fact truthful, then would have to be based on yama and niyama, the ethical base for the practice of yoga.  Most sexual relations ultimately lead one to suffering.  It is a transgression of ahimsa, or no-violence, to project one's selfish urges onto another.  It is no wonder that in the 2 languages that I understand, the crude word for the sexual act can be  synonymous with the words cheating, deceiving, or generally harming another.  
  
The only functional sexual tantra that I have ever known is to first be responsible and never try to harm anyone while at the same time make the indefatigable effort to try and understand the propensities of the second vortex.  The sexual distortions exploit these fundamental vrttis.  The more suffering, separation, and insecurity that there is in the svadhistana level, the more likely that sexuality will try and compensate for these emotions.    However, these necessities are valid and are so profound and fundamental to the personality that they really need to be understood.  Perhaps the blind compulsions are due to an untimely withdrawal of a mother's breast that left one sucking in nothingness.  Or perhaps sexuality has aligned itself with an inner, unconscious resentment and lack of confidence that tries to outwardly seduce and dominate through sexual dominance, games, or manipulation.  
  
I have come to think that when there is no suffering, there is no desire, and where there is no desire, there is no suffering.  This is true for all desires, not just sex.  Few people can really understand this.  Ramakrishna once said that mundane pleasure is like a dog chewing a sharp bone and doesn't realize the “satiation” of this desire comes from its own blood.  It is fear and insecurity that keep us bound into the limitation of a separate self, and therefore bound to selfish desires.  Sometimes, even very highly developed minds overlook these underlying reverberations in the shadows of the emotions.  The pirates to our present state of bliss are often something unseen from our past.  I have found that the study of the vrttis, especially those of the svadhistana, are paramount for finding the psychological balance that permits intuitive, spiritual development.  

an excerpt from Light And Dark Tantra

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My email is williamenck@ik.me.  You may send me an email to sign up to my mailing list and receive notifications for new posts.  

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Some "fractal" music with Pablo Mario.

A “God’s eye” is a yarn weaving and a spiritual object. The Ojo de Dios (Eye of God in Spanish) is woven with yarn and wood, often with several colors. The weaving of an Ojo de Dios is an ancient contemplative and spiritual practice for many indigenous peoples in the Americas[citation needed], and beliefs surrounding them vary with location and history. Some people believe they were originally part of the religion of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples.[citation needed]
In many of the Pueblos of New Mexico (U.S.) Ojos de Dios have traditionally been created for celebration or blessing, presented as a gift or designed to bless a home.[citation needed] Often they reflect a confidence in all-seeing Providence. The spiritual eye of the Ojo de Dios is thought by some believers to have the power to see and understand things unknown to the physical eye. During Spanish colonial times in New Mexico, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, Ojos de Dios were placed where people worked, or where they walked along a trail (Mager, 2012).

Traditional Ojos de Dios are frequently woven in solitude, as part of an extended meditation or prayer. In other settings, their construction is one aspect of longstanding communal engagement and connection. For centuries, young people in the mountains of New Mexico have made Ojos de Dios in learning circles (wisdom circles) with their elders.[citation needed] In other parts of the ‘New World’ they were used as ritual objects or for rites of passage. Today, artisans weave complicated or variegated versions of the traditional Ojo de Dios, selling them as decorations or religious objects. There has also been a huge increase in the use of Ojos de Dios as an easy and fun craft for children, but with the meditative and collaborative aspects removed.

The Ojo de Dios or God’s eye is a ritual tool, magical object, and cultural symbol evoking the weaving motif and its spiritual associations for the Huichol and Tepehuan Indians of western Mexico. The God’s Eye is symbolic of the power of seeing and understanding that which is unknown and unknowable, The Mystery. The four points represent the elemental processes: earth, fire, air, and water. The Huichol call their God’s eyes Sikuli, which means “the power to see and understand things unknown.” When a child is born, the central eye is woven by the father, then one eye is added for every year of the child’s life until the child reaches the age of five. Original Tepehuan Crosses are extremely rare to come by. There are many that are being made for the tourist market, but they do not carry the same traditional and spiritual significance.

In the traditional Huichol ranchos, the nieli’ka or nierika is an important ritual artifact. Negrín states that one of the principal meanings of nierika is that of “a metaphysical vision, an aspect of a god or a collective ancestor."[1] Importantly, it is the term the Tepehuan use to refer to deities. Negrín quotes Lumholtz as stating that for the Huichol and Tepehuan “a nierika means a picture, an appearance, or a sacred representation.”[1] The term “nierika” is etymologically rooted in the verb “nieriya”, “to see”. Nierika are found in Huichol and Tepehuans’ most sacred places: house shrines (xiriki), springs, caves and temples. Some Natives of northwest Mexico and throughout the southwest U.S. had visions during peyote ceremonies. Natives have received guidance from Gods who appeared before them in many shapes, though the eyes of the God was so intense and overwhelming many Natives could only see the eye of the God. To show others the vision they had, became the God’s eye woven on sticks with handspun yarn, colored with various types of berries, flowers, and other materials that contribute to the sense of the God’s eye.
Negrín states that: “The votive nierika is generally a round offering, symbolizing an ancestor and prayer offerings sanctified by the blood of a sacrificed animal."[1] Nierika as a ritual object may be attached to votive arrows with bamboo and yarn, or wood-and-wax-embedded objects. Similarly, Lumholtz states that the nierika “evokes an ancestor, thanks it with blood offerings, and invokes its favors.” The nierika may take different forms and fabrication may differ greatly: a small round or square tablet with a hole in the center covered on one or both sides with a mixture of beeswax and pine resin into which threads of yarn are pressed; when the image is not round, it may be considered a resting mat for the ancestors, or a prayer mat or itari.

Negrín states the elaborate interwoven nierika that Lumholtz called “namma” (which is close to the pronunciation of Namkha) from which originated the detailed and now prized yarn paintings of the commercial art world, are now rarely if ever seen.[1] Namma were generally rectangular or square in shape, with yarn woven onto a grid of bamboo sticks. These God’s Eyes are also called by the Spanish term “ojo de dios”. One understanding of the ojo de dios according to Harvey is of a: “wand” (the eye) through which the eye of god will see the supplicant. Harvey states that: “The cross of the ojo de dios is that of the legendary four directions: earth, fire, water, and air.”[2]

The nierika may also be understood as a shield which we interpret as a metaphorical protective device shielding against temptations or distractions along the ritual and spiritual path. Nierika is also referred to as a mirror with two faces; often both sides are covered with yarn designs and the hole in the middle of some forms of nierika is considered a mirror or often a small glass mirror is evident. The nierika is a reciprocal magical conduit or path: the ‘eye’, ‘hole’ or ‘mirror’ is the magical portal through which humanity and deity perceive each other.

The nierika, in ritual use, is a face; of the sun, of the earth, of a deer, the wind, the peyote, and the face of the person making the offering. The nierika is also a portalling device that facilitates entry into other states of consciousness or the “spiritual world”. For the Huichol there are five directions, each of the cardinal points and the fifth, the central point or “eye” is the spiritual, source of visions, power and enlightenment.
Beginning about thirty years ago the yarn painting evolved to its high state today from the "nierika’. A small square or round tablet with a hole in the center is a nierika (nearika) or sacred magical offering. These tablets are covered on one or both sides with a mixture of beeswax and pine resin into which threads of yarn are pressed. Nierikas are found in all Huichol sacred places such as temples, springs and caves.

The first large yarn paintings were exhibited in Guadalajara in 1962, a direct outgrowth of the nierika - simple and uncomplicated. At present with the availability of a larger spectrum of commercial dyed and synthetic yarn, more finely spun yarn paintings have evolved into high quality works of art. Realism, based on mythology, is the basis of yarn paintings. Peyote cactus is much revered by the Huichol, a veritable gift from the Gods. Through the use of peyote, the Huichol create the elaborate designs used in their artwork. It symbolizes the essence, the very life, sustenance, health, accomplishment, good fortune of the Huichol. Plus through peyote’s hallucinogenic effects, enlightenment and shamanic powers can be achieved. Annual pilgrimages are taken to Wirikuta to collect the peyote. Only the ‘purified ones’ can participate in the harvest or the peyote will not be found. Peyote mandalas or neakilas (nierika) symbolize the entrance to the spiritual world. As important power objects they are often found at the center of yarn paintings. Each mandala is individual, Utilizing many of the same sacred designs and patterns as seen in yarn painting and weaving, the Huichol create anklets, bags, belts, bracelets, chokers, earrings and rings with the seed beads. “Life is a constant object of prayer for the Huichol, it is, in the conception, hanging somewhere above them, and must be reached out for,” explains Lumholtz, "thus all phases of their lives are prayer - the planting, harvesting, peyote pilgrimages - all art, weaving, bead work, face painting and yarn paintings, embody prayer within symbols. With this introduction one can better understand the Huichol, their art and their constant communication with the spiritual realm. Ramon Mara Torres sums it all up by observing, “This ancient art, modernized as a result of circumstances entirely outside Huichol culture itself, has become like an exotic flower, eagerly sought after by the cognoscenti.” The following information on sikuli has been reworked from the sales spiel included on the site by Zelaya as background material for the sale of the sikuli.[3] A specific type of nierika namma or Huichol Cross is called sikuli by the Huichol and is specifically crafted to protect children and is constructed in several periods. The central woven design, or eye, is made at the child’s birth, and four more are added, one each upon each consecutive birthday. The weavings are connected by two perpendicular sticks which are actually used to support the first eye when it is crafted in this format. This Sikuli was bought from a Shamanistic family from the Highlands of Jalisco that travels to the central part of the state.

The four points that result represent the elemental processes of Earth, Fire, Water and Air. Zelaya states that: “the ‘Eye of God’ design is sometimes included in larger flat weavings as a reminder of the power of holistic unity that is central to Huichol beliefs, but this is not the same as the actual Cross made for each child.” The sikuli is well guarded through the person’s life as a talisman of spiritual protection, health and well being and may be used by the individual or by shamans in healing or other rituals.

Hung in a child’s hair or on the walls of homes, or tied to the ends of arrows, the sikuli’s main purpose is to ensure children a long and healthy life.[4] When a child is born, the central eye is woven by the father. Then one eye is added for every year of the child’s life until the youngster reaches the age of five. The resulting design in the shape of a cross symbolizes the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. The Ojo de Dios is the most well known symbol. The Indians believe the design of the eye has the power to heal and to protect. The Ojo de Dios is hung on the wall and used in ceremonies and prayer. The colours used have different meanings: red - life itself; yellow - sun moon and stars; blue - sky and water; brown - soil; green - plants; black - death.


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