1980 – 1982 Initiation 4: Crucifixion
INITIATION IV: CRUCIFIXION (1980 – 1982): The Eighth State: Brahman Consciousness
Part I
As I watched Margaret Austin teaching her course in pastoral counseling in the fall of 1980, I was stunned and daunted by the love I saw glowing in her eyes. One day as class was finishing, a fellow-student ranted furiously about how awful men were — the woman’s attack hurt and angered me: not all men were monsters! I stayed after class to speak of it privately with Margaret, who said she thought I was feeling compassion for the woman’s pain. Was I? I wasn’t sure — but I certainly saw deep love in Margaret’s eyes. I had gained considerable expertise in competitive academics, but I saw that if I were to succeed in the ministry, I would have to learn this soul-depth of unconditional love.
We students were assigned to each other for practice counseling, and we were told to be as open as possible with each other. I was to counsel a woman who had had considerable difficulty with schizophrenia. I was rather empathic, and as I listened to her over the weeks I found the light in my own world vanishing; the angels disappeared and everything became more and more flat and meaningless. I felt as if I were walking on cinders; I could taste the dust and ashes in my mouth. I had stumbled into Hades, the land of the shades. Once again, I was in terra incognita, but this time I was really scared. I didn’t know what was happening, only that it was acutely painful. For some reason, I, who had studied the mystics, didn’t think to apply the term “Dark Night of the Soul” to my own life, or to gain consolation by remembering that it was a necessary rite of passage. Saturn too was “crucified” on September 22, 1980, descending across the equinoctical horizon into Libra (Taurus-equinox Scorpio) and the realm of archetypal darkness.
I responded the only way I knew how — by fleeing. When Maharishi offered a course in Science and Veda in December of 1980, to be held in New Delhi, I jumped at the chance. I took a leave of absence from the Divinity School, and Annie and I went to India. You can see how much pain I must have been in, to actually choose India again to escape from where I was!
As the Movement had forewarned us, the course was difficult. It was large; about three thousand TM’ers from around the world had answered Maharishi’s call. Annie and I were separated. For the first week I stayed with same-sex room-mates in a decent hotel, which I was thankful for, as I had a painful bout of dysentery almost immediately that lasted for several days. Then we men were bussed off every night about a half-hour away to a tent-city near a nightmarish industrial complex called NOIDA — the New Okha Industrial Development Authority. It was December, and at night even India was cold. We were camping out in a dusty, muddy, rat-infested field, but still had to wear clean business suits on our daily trips into New Delhi. The sanitary conditions were bad here; the outdoor toilets, which quickly became permanently clogged, had been placed too close to the outdoor cold-water showers, and people started getting very sick. There was a wry joke going around the tents about “coming to the end of the world to see the world coming out your end.” I avoided that whole side of the camp as much as possible, and bathed from a faucet near our tent.
The food at the lecture-hall in New Delhi was plentiful, but coarse and greasy; after a few weeks I had to choke it down, and for years afterwards my throat would involuntarily close in nausea at the smell of Indian food. Worse, there was no concept of sanitation among the Indian food-servers; to my horror I saw that the bare-foot janitors, after swabbing out the bathrooms, often climbed all over the stacks of “clean” food trays, and that they sometimes rinsed the trays themselves in the toilets. I began using my own cup and silverware to eat the food, and sterilized everything before and after with alcohol. I warned everyone I could, but most ignored me. To top it all off, the course administrators actually forbade course participants from buying their own meals at nearby hotels, saying that the sanitary conditions in the hotels might not be high enough! Those with the courage and the money to break the rules generally enjoyed much better health than the rest of us.
The lecture-hall itself was overcrowded, and the acrid smoke from the cook-fires outdoors often poured through the windows, so that we were hard-put to breathe. However, after the first week or so, the overcrowding eased up; a whole top floor of the building was soon given over to cots and mats for the thousand or so course participants who were too ill to sit up and attend the lectures downstairs.
Worst of all, I began seeing facets of Maharishi’s character that really bothered me. On the one hand, he was still the highest man I knew, a clear channel of divinity, emanating tremendously charismatic spiritual force — once as he was entering the hall, he looked straight into my eyes and I instantly flooded out into an immense sea of light. Another time, he left the dais and exited the room; I was impressed by the energy which still rose off the seat like palpable heat-waves. It was exactly as if he were still on his seat. I went over and bowed to it, feeling as if I had passed some test. Still another time, he was going over and over some minute phrasing of a proposed course brochure, and I was getting more and more bored, until I suddenly vented a scream — inside my head. He stopped speaking, and stared across the room at me, his eyes like two blinding searchlights. “Sorry!” I thought to him, ruefully. He then continued speaking, and I felt cleansed inside.
On the other hand, he was exhibiting some very odd personality traits. He didn’t seem to care about the thousand very-ill people upstairs; he never mentioned them and never went to see them; it seemed I felt more compassion for them than he did, and that he didn’t want to see any unpleasantness. He appeared at times to see us as pawns in his large world-plan; I got the sense we were being used as status symbols when he would invite petty Indian politicians to the course and then fawn on them, as if saying, “See how many of these Westerners follow me?” He continually harangued the West, ignoring the fact that we Westerners were his most devoted followers, and had dropped everything to sit at his feet amidst misery and squalor halfway around the world. He was also quite paranoid at times, accusing the C.I.A. of infiltrating us, and making us all stand in line for several hours to get new identity badges. Several of his German guards carried guns, and exhibited distressingly Nazi-esque disregard for everyone but their leader.
Finally, he declared himself infallible; he actually said, “I never make mistakes,” which immediately reminded me of many errors he had made: first claiming that all meditators would reach Cosmic Consciousness in a few months, later adjusting the estimate upward to two-to-three years, then readjusting up to three-to-five years, then up again to five-to-eight years … an almost perfect Fibonacci sequence of failure. By now the estimate is probably eight-to-thirteen years, or more likely has risen to 13-21, or even 21-34 years. It seems one isn’t really able or allowed to get fully enlightened in the TM Movement; some of my old friends have been devoted practitioners for over thirty years now, still paying thousands of dollars in course-fees and Ayurvedic medicines every year, and still waiting for that magic day of enlightenment.
Another mistake was his claim that when one percent of a town’s populace started to meditate, that town would experience “Heaven on Earth,” with the crime rate dropping to zero, etc. Even by 1980 this was patently untrue. Fairfield, Iowa, home of Maharishi International University, had close to half of its population meditating, and still experienced its full share of car-accidents, theft, disease, and murder. Now, in 1997, Fairfield is much the same: it is a wonderful town, and the energy is very good there, but its police chief will, if asked, rapidly disabuse the questioner of any illusions about its specialness with regard to crime.
The experiences that really surprised me, though, were two: First, I saw a wall of angels’ faces, which suddenly flipped and became a wall of demons’ faces; then back to angels and then back again to demons. This seemed to be a re-emphasis of the lesson given to me last year, when I had slain a demon and watched it turn into an angel. This time, the experience seemed to be implying that good and evil were two sides of the same coin.
The other, more disturbing experience happened while I was watching Maharishi as he began another of his shrill tirades, and suddenly my vision split: With my right eye I was seeing Maharishi, and with my left I was seeing Adolf Hitler. The images flipped back and forth: Maharishi, Hitler, Maharishi, Hitler… and they finally fused, so that amidst a rising wave of intense anger, I realized I was once again following a false Messiah. Past-life memories came floating up of following the highly charismatic Hitler; of being his second-in-command; of developing an elite flying cadre for him to bring about a new world order; of being promised the kingdom upon his death, and of being betrayed as he slipped further and further into madness. Suddenly the Nazi qualities of his guards and the concentration-camp sufferings of NOIDA all fell into place. In some weird way, were TM’ers attempting to balance the karmic atrocities of the Nazis that we ourselves had been in former lives?
Up until this course, I had gone along with the thinking of most meditators, who absolved Maharishi from blame for the insanities of the Movement: “He doesn’t know what they’re doing,” they said. Now, it seemed clear to me that the Movement had been a perfect reflection of Maharishi’s consciousness in every respect: both in its brilliant strengths, and its tragic flaws. I had given over so much of my power to Maharishi, and placed him on such a high pedestal, that I could not help but judge him harshly when I found him to be fallibly human. I still did not understand unconditional love, and its transcendence of both good and evil. It took me a number of years to realize full unity, take full responsibility for my perceptions, and to work all this through fully into forgiveness!
After my attack of dysentery at the beginning of the course, I had been relatively healthy. Annie, however, fell sick later in the course, and was sequestered on the upper floor for some days; I visited her whenever the guards would allow. The anger and compassion that poured through me as I visited that immense sickroom was almost overwhelming. Now, as she recovered, I made plans with her to cut the course short to return home as soon as we could. The course had held a few interesting snippets of Vedic complexities, but for the most part had been quite dull. I was pretty disillusioned and wanted to go home to lick my wounds. I now had not only lost my angels; I had also lost my master. We managed to get new reservations leaving India about four days early. A sizeable number of us snuck out in the last week for a day-trip down to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. That “prison-break” to see an aesthetic masterpiece remains the most enjoyable memory I hold of the entire time.
The small group of us leaving the next day met with Maharishi privately that evening; it was a sweet meeting. At its end, I was alone, face to face with him for the first and only time. I looked at him, but could not even begin to voice the confusion and turmoil inside. I gave up, and said only, “Jai Guru Dev.” “Jai Guru Dev,” he replied gently.
Returning to Cambridge, I remained at the Fogg Art Museum until the Summer of 1981. The dysentery I had picked up in India returned every three-and-a-half weeks for several years, acute stabbing pains at first, that gradually lessened as the months wore on. Since I was no longer at the Divinity School, I moved into a full-time position as Harvard’s Cataloguer of Indian and Southeast Asian Art. It was interesting enough, but my inner emptiness remained. Annie meanwhile got a job right in Harvard Square, working as Assistant Manager, then as Manager of the Harvard University Press Bookstore. While my life was becoming more and more bleak, hers was becoming richer and more fulfilling.
INITIATION IV: CRUCIFIXION (1980 – 1982): The Eighth State: Brahman Consciousness
Part II
In the summer of 1981, we were driving north on Massachusetts Avenue on our way home one day when a bullet hit our windshield; particles of glass struck Annie. She was O.K.. I thought we had been hit by a rock, and got out of the car to investigate, so I had a perfect view as the police car screamed up and disgorged an officer who warily approached a hearse, opened its door and hauled a large, bearded man out and down onto the ground, handcuffing his hands behind his back. A moment later, the officer reached into the hearse and pulled out a rifle. The mood of the bystanders turned ugly, and they started to throw stones at the handcuffed man. “Stop it!” I said. “He’s already down!” Apparently, he had been shooting at the bar across the street, and we just got in the way of one of his bullets.
Oddly enough, I had passed this hearse — its rear window said, “We make deliveries” under a decal of Harley-Davidson wings — and seen its owner many times, on my walks to work. He didn’t live far from us in Somerville. Anyway, we took this as a sign that it was time to move out of the city; and so we started casting north on weekends. Within a few weeks we had found the perfect place in Marblehead; our long-time room-mates (Mary Ann, a co-worker of Annie’s from her Lauriat’s days, and her boyfriend John, a Yale graduate who was now in commodities) came with us. About this time, Margaret Miles, one of my old teachers at the Divinity School who had liked my work linking art and theology, asked me to be her Teaching Assistant. I regretfully turned her down, thinking Cambridge would be too long a commute. A few days later I reconsidered and asked her about the position, but it was filled.
Annie kept her job in Cambridge, while I started freelancing as an artist and sign-painter in Marblehead. I enjoyed painting signs in ornate, Victorian lettering that suited the 19th-century decor of the downtown area. I also designed and painted a large mural inside the Warwick Theatre of the nine Muses, arrayed and colored as an allegorical unfoldment of the chakras. Inspired by the artistic success of my uncle, Clark M. Goff, I also sold photocopies of the pen-and-inks I drew of Marblehead’s tiny, crooked streets of 18th- and 19th-century houses, its countless profusions of flower gardens, and its glorious vistas of cobalt ocean. Marblehead surrounded me with stunning beauty — my version of an earthly paradise — and it only served to heighten the hollowness I felt inside.
Annie had found an old bottle-dump in our backyard while putting in marigolds, and as summer slipped into fall I dug all around and under those flowers, excavating gorgeous antique bottles, lamp chimneys, and an eighteenth-century British penny. The dig also disgorged numerous white porcelain fragments, which I ignored at first until I found a shard with hand-painted blue lettering and real gold-leaf trim. I then spent countless hours gathering as many of the pieces as I could find — about 85 of them, spread over an eight-foot swath, about a foot underground — and then gluing them back together to restore an 1890’s apothecary soda-dispenser, about a foot high and barrel-shaped, with gold-leafed hoops framing the beautifully hand-painted label, “Original Dr. Swett’s Root Beer, 5 c.” As I worked, I sometimes sang along with the radio, which seemed always to be playing Christopher Cross’s “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do).” I somewhat identified with Arthur, who “does as he pleases; shows himself a pretty good time.” My father often joked afterwards that he felt I was trying to symbolically reassemble the shards of my marriage, but I was not yet aware that my marriage was broken.
I sometimes watched old reruns of “Welcome Back, Kotter” on T.V., which I had heard was based on the true teaching experiences of Gabe Kaplan, the star. I was inspired by Kotter/Kaplan’s success as a teacher. Our house-mate John had enjoyed himself immensely working part-time as a substitute teacher before going into commodities; I thought I would give it a try. I landed a one-day job at the Carlson School in neighboring Salem, and hopped a ride with Annie on her way to work in Cambridge. It was a nightmare. The second-graders were sweet and somewhat awed by my three-piece suit and beard, but quickly discovered I was a push-over; I was still too uncomfortable with my father’s parenting style to whole-heartedly be an authority figure myself. I tried diligently to impart all the material the regular teacher had left for me, but was swamped beneath the children’s high-spirited chaos. I remembered so clearly being their age and watching my class-mates tease a substitute-teacher. I had never joined in; feeling sorry for the substitutes, I had tried to make their job easier. Perhaps I was “remembering” my future agony! At day’s end I exhaustedly slunk away, and never pressed my case when the Salem school system forgot to pay me.
As 1981 crept to a close, I went to work at a small word-processing firm called ‘Neath the Elms; this was my first taste of microcomputers. What a revolutionary fluidity! I could store text; I could insert changes anywhere in a text and print them immediately; I could even correct my output as I wrote. No longer having to worry about hitting the right key on the first try, I doubled my self-taught typewriting speed overnight, to over 60 words per minute. Again, as with the photocopier, the new technology had a price; I could see that I would no longer be forced to digest ideas inside before putting them on paper, in order to print a high-quality single draft. The price did not seem too high. I also liked mastering the rather arcane codes of WordStar; I always enjoyed learning new languages. Owner Bob Allison quickly promoted me to Operations Manager and spoke of making me partner.
Annie had wanted to go to graduate school but felt she was not bright enough for Harvard; I convinced her that Harvard was a state of mind and that she could do it. She applied to the Graduate School of Education, was accepted, and did very well, taking courses part-time while she continued managing the Harvard University Press Bookstore. I sometimes typed and edited her papers on the word-processor at ‘Neath the Elms in my spare time — what little I had. I had begun working 60-plus hours a week, mainly to avoid being around Annie. Something odd had crept into our relationship.
One day she called from work and said she’d be working late. I felt as if I had been stabbed in the gut — I knew she was lying, and she knew I knew, but neither of us said anything. She was racked with guilt about her overpowering infatuation for a co-worker; she was having an affair and had confided in her friends, but couldn’t tell me. I, who had prided myself on the wonderful marriage we had, did not have the skills to deal with this. She had been my best friend; now I could no longer trust her. Our relationship froze into deeper and deeper silence.
INITIATION IV: CRUCIFIXION (1980 – 1982): The Eighth State: Brahman Consciousness
Part III
Annie’s adultery was especially galling to me because I too had had plenty of temptations — several luscious female customers at ‘Neath the Elms had unsubtly indicated their availability — but I kept my vows. Annie didn’t. In all fairness, I must say I was not an easy man to live with. While I was bright, empathic and compassionate, doing everything I could to raise Annie’s self-esteem, I was also addicted to the role of teacher/counselor. I was glib, arrogant, impatient, and something of a perfectionist. I was miserly in my asceticism; I had been known to place a light-bulb under the thermostat on cold winter days to save on heating oil. Annie and I had separate accounts and I did not attempt to control her spending, but was very tight with mine. While this meant I always had money saved to pay for our long courses that came up, I nonetheless begrudged every penny spent on pleasure and almost never went to the movies or to dine out. I was not especially romantic, while before our marriage Annie had been wooed and loved by literally hundreds of men, and was used to a lot of attention.
Finally around my twenty-sixth birthday in March 1982 she asked me to leave, so she could explore the other relationship without distraction, as she told me later. I intuited the reason; considered us divorced; and began opening my vision to my next mate. I got a vision of a young, blonde-haired, green-blue-eyed woman, and knew our souls had agreed to meet. This was small consolation — I wanted to burn out everything but enlightenment, once and for all. Bit by bit, everything else had been stripped away. I applied for a year-long course in Fairfield, Iowa.
The Movement kept delaying my acceptance on CCP — I forget what the acronym stands for — perhaps “Creating Coherence Program” — but it was a combination work-residence course, where for a hundred dollars a month and several hours’ work on staff at M.I.U. a day, one could have room, board, do rounds of extra meditation, and find a real, part-time job somewhere to pay for it. By May, I simply decided to go out there, live in town, and do the extra meditations on my own if they wouldn’t let me join the course. I preferred to be on the course, but I really wasn’t looking to the Movement as my sole source of salvation any more.
When I got to Fairfield, I was suffering acutely — I had always taken pride in my marriage, and now it was a wreck. Now, I was in a small, flat, smug town of complete strangers — and an ugly town it seemed, too, in the midst of May mud-season — with no distractions from my own emptiness. But when I showed up at the course administrators’ office in person, they found a place for me on campus at M.I.U. almost immediately. The universe is funny; my room-mate Ken was a nice guy who had known my brother John when they were on staff together at M.I.U., and who himself was in agony over being dumped by his own girlfriend. Needless to say, the atmosphere in our monastic little dorm-room was not overly exuberant. He played the radio a lot; Toto’s hit “Rosanna” will always remind me of those long nights of misery. Before long Ken left, and I had a private room.
Despite my inward sufferings, I was good at maintaining cheer, and I was quickly “promoted” from slicing vegetables in one of M.I.U.’s kitchens to the far more grueling job of scrubbing cookware amidst blindingly hot steam in the pot-room out back. It was a back-handed compliment; only the strongest, most enlightened course-participants worked here — mostly Governors and men from Purusha, the TM version of Brahmacharyan celibate monks. As May crept into June, I began to lose quite a bit of weight in this two-hour daily sauna!
At the same time, I got a paying-job at the ice-cream counter of Golden Glow, a health-food store a few blocks away. I had several applications pending for full-time M.I.U. staff positions: one in the printing-press, and one in the T.V. studio. I brought the latest scrimshaw I was working on — an antique elephant’s tusk, which I had ornately covered with engravings of 19th-century ships, houses, and women in a rigorously framed composition — to the interviews as my portfolio. In June I was offered a job managing M.I.U.’s new Unity Art Gallery, to substitute for my hours in the pot-room. I accepted with alacrity, and opened and ran the art gallery for two hours a day. I continued to work at the Golden Glow, which I had come to enjoy very much, turning down both full-time staff positions — press and studio — when they were eventually offered to me. By now, I had sniffed out the politics of M.I.U. and didn’t want to be at their mercy in a full-time staff position.
My co-workers at Golden Glow — Peter M., Mary, Kelly — were fantastic people — most slightly younger than I, who was now 26. All deeply committed to the spiritual path, they also knew how to have fun. They introduced me to new music by bands like The Talking Heads, The Police, and Men at Work. As soon as we closed the doors for the night at 10:00 p.m., we would dance around the store, sweeping the floors to the riotous noise of “Burning Down the House” and “Down Under.” After we finished cleaning up, we often went out dancing with other friends, or skinny-dipping in cornfield ponds or in the Reservoir out by Quentin Wood’s house. This was a whole new world to me! I was by now consistently missing the unofficial course bed-time of 10:00 p.m., often by two or three hours; for the very first time (except in India), I was OTP — “Off the Program.” I was still practicing my extra rounds of meditation, and I was filled with energy — I did not miss the sleep.
Several of the people I met through the store would remain very important in my life. One was John C., a darkly handsome Celt who sold wheat-grass juice and sprouted-wheat loaves to Golden Glow. He was bright and funny, a talented writer and story-teller, and a passionate seeker of the Divine. He introduced me to his lover Vicki, also darkly beautiful, a sweet and wise woman who had a genius for mathematics and flower-arranging. We all became good friends, and our paths would intertwine ever afterwards.
One of my ice-cream customers was Kerry M., the beautiful blonde of my vision, though I had forgotten it and did not recognize her. Indeed, I was immediately attracted to her vitality and green-eyed beauty, but my first impression of her was one of tremendous arrogance. She was only 18, and an Aquarius, and my alarm bells went off —”stay away from this one!” She set her sights on me, though, and from dancing and skinny-dipping we were soon staying up all night, talking madly — then kissing, then more. I was completely wired with energy by now, and did not sleep at all for some time! Once while I was at work, Kerry and a female friend snuck into my room — no women were allowed in our dorm — and sprinkled rose-petals all over my bed. When I finally tiptoed into my room around midnight, my heart almost leapt out of my throat. Who knew I was Off the Program? What were they trying to tell me? I quickly surmised it must be Kerry, but I noted my inner flash of fear and paranoia with some disquiet.
One night around midnight, Kerry and I were gamboling around the trees on the M.I.U. campus, pretending to be deer, when I flung up my hand to imitate stag’s horns and my wedding ring flew off my finger, something it had never done before. We searched the dark lawn for a long time, but never found it. The symbolism of the event was not lost on me. Was my marriage now truly over?
Now during this time, I had been speaking on the phone rather frequently with Annie, and she finally told me all. She had now been dumped by her boyfriend, who only had a thing, it turned out, for married women. I must confess I felt a trace of evil glee. When I told her of my new love, she reacted in shock — she had expected me to stay safely celibate while she explored her sexual feelings for this other man. Now, unbeknownst to me, she began telling my relatives at home that I had abandoned her for another woman, conveniently omitting the fact that she had asked for the separation to indulge in infidelity first. My maternal grandmother, especially, was very sympathetic with her.
I felt very distant from my old life in the East — almost as if I had died and been reborn. The most amazing thing was, Kerry and her mother Nancy belonged to a small group of seekers who were busily exploring other paths as well as TM — they believed in “prosperity-consciousness,” and worked with affirmations: Nancy, who was a Libra, had signs like “TRUST” and “THERE IS ONLY GOOD” strategically placed around her house. They had studied T.I.C., the Teachings of the Inner Christ, and had learned to contact their inner guides. They were interested in psychic phenomena, and regularly went to “channelers” in Iowa City. Rather skeptically, I listened to a tape by one such “semi-trance” channeler — his name was Ron Scolastico — and I was galvanized. As the voice came out of the machine, my spine again felt the powerful alignment of “no space,” as when I fused with my Solar Angel. I had to explore this! The next time Kerry and her mother went to see him, I came along, and Kerry and I shared a session with Ron.
INITIATION IV: CRUCIFIXION (1980 – 1982): The Eighth State: Brahman Consciousness
Part IV
On Nancy M.’s recommendation, I brought along a list of questions for Ron Scolastico — What was my Soul-name? What other lifetimes might be relevant to my lessons now? What was the nature of my relationship with Kerry? Was my relationship with Annie over? Did I have a spiritual master anymore? — and so on.
Ron was a quiet, rather sharp-featured, professional-looking man of manifest intelligence. I liked him immediately, but remained a bit wary. He ushered Kerry and me into the sitting-room, started the tape-player, leaned back, and closed his eyes. He said a short prayer of attunement, breathed deeply, and began to speak. I was fascinated, and my defenses dropped away. I could feel an angelic presence just over his head, beaming unconditional love and wisdom to us. It told me my Soul name; mentioned some relevant lifetimes, warned of deep issues of infidelity with my “mating one, Kerry” (which I assumed was Ron’s misinterpretation of the issues between Annie and me); said that in the deepest sense, a relationship was never over; that love always remained between souls; and said that yes, there was a radiant one who was willing to serve as my archetype of growth. The spoken message was not 100% pure — it seemed a mix of Ron and the angel — but the energies flowing through Ron were truly awe-inspiring. I had never seriously thought of allowing the angels to speak through me; to bless through me. I wanted to learn how to do this!
Meanwhile, Kerry and I were still not sure of each other. Her old boyfriend came back to town over the July-4th weekend. She and her mother accepted his invitation to attend the Independence Day fireworks at the Fairfield Reservoir. There was nothing else to do, so I went too — alone. It seemed the whole town had turned out; there were thousands of people there. I felt drawn to Kerry; was she thinking of me? Did she still desire her first lover, or was she simply trying to make me jealous? I felt that if she really cared for me, I would find her tonight. It seemed a Herculaean task. The reservoir was huge and unlit; she could be anywhere amongst the acres of milling humanity. As dusk slipped into total darkness, I followed my intuition, walking purposefully among the throngs of now-invisible people. At last, I received no further signal, and stopped short, giving up: I had failed. At that moment, the woman in front of me spoke — it was Kerry! I knew then that she and I were meant to be together. I greeted the trio enthusiastically, and we all watched the fireworks together.
In August, I left the CCP course — I was so energized, it didn’t seem to matter anymore if I was awake or meditating; it all felt the same, and I was tired of sneaking in late every night — and soon moved into an apartment on the town square with Kerry. We lived over a barber-shop. Ron Scolastico’s teacher, the psychic and channeler Dr. Carla Gordan, wanted to come to Fairfield to teach a course in psychic healing. We offered her the use of our apartment, and got to take the course for free. She was a large, motherly woman who was a “full-trance” channeler — she had no memory of what was said through her. Her guides were different than Ron’s — they felt “higher,” more aloof, less emotionally nurturing, and more accurate. Their delivery was extremely rapid, well-enunciated, and direct. They told me bluntly that I had spent several lifetimes being a Buddha, leaving my wife and family to gain enlightenment, and that in this lifetime it was time for me to integrate the enlightenment with the normal life of a householder, being “in the world but not of it.” I didn’t particularly wish to hear this. I still wanted to go up and out.
It was a most amazing course. She showed us how to run our hands above a person’s body, feel and diagnose their energy fields, work with the chakras, and so forth. Most important for me was a technique she gave us to transmit spiritual healing: She told me to bring my consciousness up through the top of my head to a radiant source of light above, which was “Grand Central” of the dimensions. There, I was to open to Divinity, and invite it to pour down through me like a hollow tube, healing me along the way as it moved into the other person. She assigned us to our healing partners; I was allotted a woman I didn’t much care for, personally.
I tried the technique, and I was lifted out of my personal feelings, and into an ocean of unconditional love, which then flowed through me and into her. As the session ended, she felt great, and so did I! I felt energized rather than drained, for I had tapped an infinite source of energy rather than using my own personal energy for healing. I felt clean and delightfully open in my abdominal area; even my voice now sounded fuller and more resonant. Carla’s guides told me I had cleared two lifetimes of karma in that session, and that sounded about right. It was awesome! Here I had a technique for contacting the deep pool of the infinite that I had reached in meditation, but now I could apply it to another as well. Two for the price of one! Feeling the Absolute moving was infinitely more satisfying than merely reposing in it. I was giddy with the new possibilities of service.
That evening I meditated, and I immediately saw a golden corridor of light extending from around my body up into the infinite, much like a radiant elevator shaft. Every “floor” of the shaft was being tended by various beings. I was lifted up this shaft, and at the top, sitting in an ocean of ecstatic bliss far above the Earth, was a circle of seven splendid beings, whom I knew to be Angels or Masters. They conveyed to me that they wished to try an experiment, and attempt to bring this bliss into Earth. If I wished to work with them in bringing this to pass, I was welcome. I agreed whole-heartedly, and we began to work together for hours on end. Seven hours would fly by like seven minutes. They told me that for me, conscious channeling was better than trance-work, as the goal was conscious integration and fusion with these aspects of my Higher Self.
I asked Kerry and her mother to ask questions of the Guides through me, and I would attempt to move my consciousness between “this” world and the “other” world to convey the questions to these Masters, and to bring back the Masters’ replies. The answers — and energies — were good; at first the power pouring through was almost overwhelming and I was hard-put to keep from bouncing around the room, as in practicing the sidhi for levitation, but it smoothed out with practice. I now had fulfilled a deep desire that I had thought to be impossible. I was following in Edgar Cayce’s footsteps. A circle began to form of interested seekers. The Guides recommended that we place crystals around the room to enhance our receptivity to the Masters’ subtle blessings, and we did. Initially neutral, I became fascinated by crystals’ ability to hold and transmit devic or angelic energies.
The Guides called it a Wisdom School, and began giving us all sorts of interesting knowledge. “Know by Being,” they said. The Universe was essentially a candy store; open to know a thing fully by saying “I am …” and feeling the subtle energy patterns of that being. This seemed to be what Maharishi had called “name and form:” simply by pure contemplation on a thing’s name, one could discover or “manifest” its associated form. I had discovered that this was easy; when clients would come asking about various loved-ones not present, I only had to know their name to access all kinds of helpful information about them.
The Guides recommended that we identify with various Masters and Deities to feel the different flavors. “Our presence IS our blessing;” they often said, and indeed it was so. We sat in the divine blessings and heard the messages of Jesus, our own Higher Christ Selves, Mother Mary, Yogananda, Buddha, Babaji, Guru Dev, Archangel Michael, Archangel Gabriel, Siva, Krishna, Radha … the list was endless. “Truth is borne on the carrier-wave of Love,” they would say. “Open to the Love; ask to be raised to the highest vibration that is comfortable in this moment. …” And the Love would fill the room in palpable waves of warmth, and we would fill with Light and Love and Laughter.
I learned more and more to feel and identify with the vibrations of the Masters. While I would not yet have admitted it to myself, I think perhaps I actually had entered my Mastery Initiation by now: Saturn entered its “mastery” on September 27, 1982, moving then into 22.5 degrees of Libra (Taurus-Equinox Scorpio). We encouraged everyone to make conscious contact and begin channeling, and everyone did. At times, Nancy M. and I worked together to help people make connection with their Guides. We made a good team; Nancy worked on the earthly level, helping people make “breakthroughs” by clearing psychological blocks to connecting with Divinity, while I soared in the spatial realms, monitoring and strengthening their connecting “soul-thread,” and helping them discern the various levels of consciousness available to them.
I also started doing a lot of work with discarnate entities. From the psychic point of view, our apartment was sending a huge, bright beam of light up into the aethers, and it served as a beacon to a large number of confused souls, many of whom did not know they were dead. I had been given a very good prayer from the T.I.C. by Nancy — it went something like “Dear One, you are healed and forgiven. You are filled and surrounded by the love of God; you are filled and surrounded by the light of God. I ask Jesus [or whatever master you prefer] to take you to your right place, to your own perfect paradise. Go in peace.” This was to be repeated as many times as needed, until one saw the entity go completely into the light, or felt a light, effervescent quality in the atmosphere, or both. It was interesting to see how the souls envisioned the path to the light — one fellow, who was still in his World-War-II uniform, saw his girlfriend arrive on an old train; he boarded and up they went! I later found it possible to bless a whole cemetery at once; watching as an enormous shaft of gold poured down and swept dozens of souls up into its love simultaneously.
Our circle grew and grew and grew. People began donating foodstuffs and money; and I soon began charging for private sessions. What a balm to my self-esteem! As word spread and demand increased, I raised my prices from $5 to $10 to $15, and later to $20, and finally to $30 for a private session of about an hour. It seemed that the more I charged, the more people came. I enjoyed some personal prosperity for the first time, and discovered that I loved to eat in restaurants! The channeled material continued to be highly accurate and uplifting. I laughed a lot while channeling; it felt so good on all levels. I noticed that this love began freeing people from the fear that the Movement was their only salvation, and reminded them of what the Movement had originally taught — that Divinity was within. Many of my erstwhile TM-friends and course-mates now shunned me for a heretic; I didn’t care. I had found what I had been seeking so long.
Sometime in October, Nancy M. introduced me to Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, who was enjoying a rather large cult-following in Fairfield at that time. A TM-teacher who had experienced some enlightenment, he had now “gone rogue” and was creating his own movement, publishing several extremely complex books, offering courses, and passing out his picture for contemplation by his devoted followers. The TM Movement was infuriated, sending their “security people” to spy on his meetings and take names of attendees. Soon they were excommunicating all his followers, expelling students from the University and asking TM employers to fire any Carlsenite employees. While Robin’s guru-aspects turned me off, I was nonetheless impressed with his gifts.
Robin was a skilled manifester, practicing much the same techniques of name-and-form that we practiced in our circle. The difference was that Robin showed no great desire to share the knack with his followers, but exhibited it as another example of his own superiority. “Robin, by the Grace of God, would you manifest…” a follower would reverently intone, and with grace, Robin would condescend to fulfill their desire.
More than this, though, Robin had an interesting — and disturbing — world-view. An ex-drama-teacher, he saw the world as a divine drama: a perennial conflict between the divine and the demonic in each of us. Robin also had an enviable certainty that he was always right; he trusted his perceptions completely, and did not hesitate to label one as “in the grip of the demonic.” This came as a shock to those of us used to Maharishi’s continual focus on the good, and omission of anything negative; to me it seemed to fall short of Unity Consciousness, wherein one takes full responsibility for one’s own perceptions as being aspects of Oneself, but it served to stir many of us out of our complacency.
While I didn’t care for his world-view, I had to admit that he did, indeed, have a razor-sharp intellect, beautiful intuition, deep compassion, and unhesitating honesty. When I rose to speak with him at one of his circles, I was aghast at the strong dissociation I began experiencing — as if I weren’t participating at all, just watching this dance between his mind and mine; or as if we were both watching my mind while the conversation flowed on automatically. Within the space of a few moments, we went deeper and deeper into my mind, until in the spotlight of our combined consciousness, I saw a small, squirming, wriggling, power-hungry entity trying to escape the light. It — I — was shocked and stunned, frozen in Robin’s gaze like a deer in headlights; I literally couldn’t speak for my — its — fear that was lodged in my throat. “You see!” Robin shouted triumphantly. “The demonic is stupid!” I was crushed, humiliated, surrounded in a cloud of grey-blue light. I went home, sat on the bed, and vomited up old emotions, from deep in my belly, sobbing for two hours, until my whole pillow was sodden. I could feel angelic hands patting my field all over, anointing me with creamy white light. The next day I returned to Robin’s and thanked him for what he had done; my whole psychic field felt looser and richer. I had begun to let go of identifying with my power-center.
Throughout the fall, Kerry, Nancy and I were almost inseparable, spending nearly every waking hour reviewing and applying the Guides’ lessons to our daily lives. We took frequent excursions up to Iowa City in Nancy’s plush new van, discussing spiritual truths over the Alan Parsons Project and Bob Marley on the van’s stereo, and going for channelings and flower-essence healings in Iowa City.
I mentioned to Kerry’s mother that I frequently saw Kerry’s Goddess Self; she replied that perhaps it was my own Self I was seeing. I misunderstood, and thought she was saying that I was trying to enhance my own Ego through claiming higher states of consciousness. I was mentally paralyzed — I could see both my and “her” view equally — I couldn’t decide who was right! My whole being became caught up in this paralysis for several days. I was still chewing on it as I went to my friend John C.’s birthday party — this was in November of 1982 — and I mentioned my dilemma to Margaret, a wonderfully wise friend from our circle. Margaret said, “It sounds as if you are working on ‘I am That, Thou art That, All this is That, That alone is’” — the Mahavakya, or “Great Saying” that one’s teacher uses at precisely the right moment to propel one into complete enlightenment. I gasped. Everything broke open, and wholeness poured in. “Thank you!” I told Margaret fervently. I saw that the Universe was not stingy; if I needed a teacher at any moment, one would be provided!
Over the next month or so, my mind felt crystal-clear, and I noticed that I could enjoy pretty much any state of consciousness — Cosmic, God, Unity — at will; it was as if I were in all of these simultaneously, and could focus on whatever layer I wished to perceive. About this time, Nancy and I took another course of Carla’s up in Iowa City, which served to heal and open me still further. I learned how to cut astral “cords” and remove subtle toxins from the body in a kind of psychic surgery, and Carla removed more “armor” from my own subtle abdomen, which fine-tuned my emotional empathy immensely. Carla and her Guides said I was now effectively one of the Guides myself.
I began to question Maharishi’s criteria, though — it seemed I had been measuring my growth for too long on someone else’s yardstick. For me it was not important now to be constantly in a state of witnessing; so what were my criteria now? What were my desires? I decided now what I wanted was to live in a state of perfection.
My mind lit up in excitement; I could have anything I wanted! Immediately objections to perfection flitted up through the layers; I answered them all as quickly as they rose in a rapid dialectic, until I had sunk to the bottom of the mind; there were no more objections. I was in a state of perfection. I opened my eyes, and everything was different. My Higher Self had completely vanished, and I was empty — on a terrifyingly, delightfully vast scale! “I” no longer existed — there was only That. My Solar Plexus felt as if it had been pulled out and spread all over the world.
I now saw that the pure consciousness I had always taken to be Absolute, had in actuality been subtle Ego; had been my Soul; had been my Solar Angel; who was now absorbed back into something infinitely larger — the World Soul. Everything was now exactly the same substance, rock-bottom; the pure, perfect Ground of Being. For the first time, I saw that Enlightenment did not depend on experience; on one’s perceptions, but rather the other way around: First one decided what knowledge was real, and then one’s perceptions or experiences supported that understanding. It was exhilarating, and confusing, and immense, and overwhelming. There was no escaping it, and there was absolutely nothing left to do. The Divine Immensity accepted me completely as I was, in its own crystal-clear substance, as it did a fire hydrant or dog excrement. We were all exactly the same. The words “Crucifixion” and “Nirvana” rang through me. The lamp was blown out. The veil was ripped open. It was finished. This was the completion of the Crucifixion or Renunciation Initiation; the Higher Self and Lower Self had met and overlapped at my Solar Plexus. I was now moving into Mastery; My Higher Self was moving down toward my Navel Center and my Lower Self was approaching my Heart Center or Buddhic Subplane, the Realm of Air. Interestingly, while my (Western) Astrological Chart abounds with Planets in the Earth, Water, and Fire Signs, I have very little Air in my Chart, and Kerry and her mother were the first Air Signs I had ever known well. They were certainly instrumental in helping me through this most difficult Initiation!
It was so simple — in a way, deep inside, I had always been profoundly “here,” but had always looked for something more, something different, something flashier — and so I had covered up this primal truth. I was stunned that I had spent the last nine years meditating to somehow reach where I already was. What a joke! And it wasn’t until I let go of meditating, let go of the idea of a path, and decided to claim my own reality now, that I had found what I had been meditating so long to find. The irony was priceless.
I had always heard that meditators who got enlightened went to Maharishi for confirmation, and I half-heartedly felt I should do the same. On the second day of my Crucifixion/Nirvana, I went to the TM Center, told them what had happened, and asked to speak with Maharishi. They decided to connect me with a TM-Sidhi administrator. They had me wait. After an hour or two, I realized there was no point in waiting any longer — everything was exactly the same! What did I most want? I wanted to go eat a grilled-cheese sandwich. I left, went to a restaurant, and had a grilled-cheese sandwich.
That afternoon, my friend Peter Melody began reading to me from the Brahma-Sutra — a compendium for those who had reached my state, to help them anchor and integrate the experience. It described the state of Brahman: “Akasha (Space) is Brahman.” “Yes, I see that,” I said. “Light is Brahman.” “Yes, O.K.,” I said. “Prana (Breath; Life-force) is Brahman.” “Wait!” I said. “I don’t see that!” I contemplated the phrase, paid attention to my breathing, and found that breath was bliss! This was, indeed, the next step I was looking for. There was actually a quality of Divinity beyond the pure emptifulness of Being. I thanked Peter and went home. Once again, Divinity had provided a teacher when I most needed one.
The third day, I attended to my breath again, and found my entire perception changing — the crystalline quality within the apartment walls began to quicken, to warm up into the laughter of the Goddess’ face. It seemed that Mind had now been satisfied by its plummet into Brahman, into Buddhi; and now it was Heart’s turn to develop and unfold into Spirit. That day’s mail included a letter from Annie with pictures of home, and my heart flooded with love as I thought of my friends and family there. I was also pretty sure that our marriage was over, but I wanted to return to tie up any loose ends.
That day, the TM folks called me up, made another appointment, and drove me to the TM offices, where I had a conversation by phone with TM-Sidhi Administrator Greg W. I had known Greg for a long time, and he had always struck me as another one of the TM-Nazis — a power-hungry petty tyrant, who did not hesitate to throw people off courses and out of the Movement, revoking their flying-badges for relatively petty infractions. My infractions were no longer petty! I had noticed over the past few months though, that his face had begun to light up when he saw me. On the phone with him, as I freely admitted the non-TM process through which I had gotten “here” — channeling, Robin Carlsen, the inner dialectic — I had a sudden revelation of his Soul, and the deep paternal love and duty that he felt. I started to cry as my love for him overflowed; I found myself telling him what I had thought of him, and how I now saw him.
He was somewhat non-plussed, I think; he did not throw me out of the Movement — though he did ask if I had my flying-badge with me (I didn’t). He recommended that I stick with my TM program, and told me about some advanced M.I.U. course programs available. At this point, I felt that I already had full access to any knowledge I needed. He asked what my plans were, and suggested that I go home to visit my family. I agreed that was good advice; I had just been thinking of going back East for Christmas.
