Fasting, Siddhis, and Assorted Alien Entities
Brandon Auman
I had a terrifying and transcendentally freakish experience while fasting several years ago. What I saw was so unbearably alien and removed from normal reality that it changed my entire perception of humanity forever. I felt like a character created by H.P. Lovecraft, driven to the edge of sanity by otherworldly forces that seemed to be not only our collective creator, but our true, naked, inhuman Self.
The decision to fast was not a spurious one; I needed a deep, fundamental change in my life. I was 25 years old and had no idea who I was or where I was going. Everything I was reading at the time -- Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, alchemy -- pointed to a lengthy, controlled fast as a tool for exploring sublime states of being. Fasting was given far greater importance in the ancient world, whereas nowadays it's often relegated to simple purification/cleansing. My friends were against it, claiming it physically dangerous. But recent research at UC Berkeley suggests fasting can prevent cancer, slow down the aging process, and lengthen life.
The first few days without food were unbearably painful. It felt like my stomach was eating itself; it growled with such demanding ferocity I was sure it was a separate animal. I was weak, my head throbbed, and I could barely stumble down Mission Hill to art school. It was winter, early February in Boston, not the best time to fast. The weight shed quickly. All I consumed was water and fruit juice -- the sugar kept me going when my energy level bottomed out. By the end of the week it became difficult to draw and paint... but I forced myself to continue. I needed to master my will.
I felt much better by the second week. Perpetually high, but not in a stoned kind of way. My mind was clear and elevated, I had no fear. Spontaneous knowledge would pop into my brain. I was beginning to understand that reality was made entirely out of thought. The constituents of the world -- the ocean, sky, trees, animals, lightning, rocks -- were all symbolic of different states of consciousness. It was as if the world was a magical picture book, and each object was a different aspect or quality of the All. This seemed perfectly clear to me, first on an intuitive level, and then later on an experiential level. Slowly I could see the world break down into their pristine, shimmering archetypes.
By the third week, everything began feeling connected, but not in a pleasant way. It wasn't a joyous experience... it was foreign and impersonal. There were no real visuals; I was simply disappearing into universal "sameness," sinking into a swamp of nonsensical non-state. The archetypes seemed to be fragmented from a higher mind, and we -- humanity -- were archetypes as well, slivered pieces of this shattered alien consciousness. But there was nothing holy about it, nothing benevolent, nor malevolent for that matter. It just existed, I was a part of it... and I had to accept it. I could sense this alien "other," but I could not see it. Not yet.
Night was becoming a problem for me. I was afraid to sleep, I had a deep fear that I wouldn't wake up. I was convinced I'd simply disappear out of existence, re-absorbed into this utterly alien consciousness. I felt as if I was fighting to maintain a sense of self, and if I let go, I wouldn't come back. The thought of that was beyond horrifying.
My fears abated by the fourth week. I was beginning to get the intuition that something wondrous was about to happen. I had lost 34 pounds. At 6'2" I weighed 178. Now I had dropped down to 146 pounds and looked like an emaciated skeleton.
On the 34th day of the fast, I woke up and prepared for my class in Chinese Religion. As I collected by backpack, all at once I shot out of my body. It wasn't as if my soul was flying around hurly burly... it was as if it grew out of my brain, unfolding, getting bigger and bigger -- overshadowing the earth.
As my consciousness swelled out, the physical universe shrank, until the stars blipped down to the size of electrons. I phased into the macrocosm. There were only two things here: a black, calm, nebulous void and a creature living within it.
The monster was vast. It appeared to be a glowing, white, translucent, manta-like entity. It seemed our universe existed as a quantum state somewhere inside its titanic body. It would have made my bowels quiver, if they weren't reduced to subatomic size.
I said, "Are you the Holy Spirit?" And it replied, "I am the Sprit of all Humanity." I felt fairly together, not frightened at all. I found myself asking, "So then what is God?" and it plunged me deep into that black, endless, watery, womb-like void.
All at once I was back in my body. I was still standing with eyes open, and felt completely calm and rational. Surprising, considering I had just chatted with some kind of ultra-cosmic space creature that claimed to be the real us. Not knowing what to do, I went to class. I hoped being around students would ground me. I wasn't really amazed at the time; it felt very natural. Everything seemed wondrous, illumined... for a day or two. And then things got really weird. I began having jarring, random psychic experiences. In Hinduism, these psychic abilities are called siddhis, and you can gain them through meditation or chanting or spontaneous Samadhi. But fasting to gain them is not considered a good idea, because the mind isn't focused enough to control them.
I never would have believed it, never thought it possible. Spontaneously, without any desire or will to do so, I began reading people's thoughts. I had no control over this; it wasn't as if their voices shouted in my head like some cheesy sci-fi TV series... it was as if I simply understood everyone I met: their essence, their motivations, their wants and needs and desires. All of it stemmed from the infinite craving to exist as a separate self. My own ego was malleable and no longer fixed, and I felt lost in a roaring ocean of consciousness.
I started eating again. It was time to reestablish my own identity. I ate some beans, a piece of fruit and some dry bread. I began to reconnect with my body quickly, feeling the earth tugging my spirit once more.
The next day I had the most frightening experience of my life. I was attacked by a Luciferic force that erupted out of the top of my skull. It hovered above my head like some satanic crown chakra, spewing all kinds of dark revelations. It claimed to be the true controller of humanity, the real voice in the head. "The devil is the ego," it said over and over. It roared that if I didn't worship it, I'd suffer and everyone around me would die. It created horridly lucid visions of my girlfriend getting into a car "accident", and my family struck down by terrible tragedies. It was like a rep of the dark half of John Lily's ECCO, and it was literally "I" or "me." It walked me like a marionette into the kitchen and forced me to open the knife drawer, pulling out a meat cleaver.
With every ounce of will I fought it down. I argued with it, trying to find and retain my "self" within it. Finally I regained control of my body and screamed for the creature to get out, clapping my hands over and over in banishment, the shock and feeling of it giving me a sense of strength, reconnecting me to the physical. I felt then as if I was somewhere else entirely, looking through my body from afar. But I had control again.
The second "siddhi" or psychic phenomenon I experienced was precognition. It happened in spontaneous five second "bursts." I kept seeing five seconds directly into the future, over and over. I could never tell anyone -- it happened too quickly. And I never knew when it was happening -- suddenly reality would "loop" and repeat itself for no reason. It was like living in a PKD novel; I was becoming unstuck in time. My friend Adam would poke his head through my bedroom door and say, "Are you okay, Brandon? Do you want some tea or warm milk?" And then he would vanish and reappear, poking his head through the door once more, to ask the exact same question.
At this point I refused to leave my bedroom. I wanted to "get out," and was beginning to have suicidal thoughts. I wondered if I could suffocate myself with a pillow. There was no way I could go on like this, and I couldn't turn it off, no matter how much food I ate. I felt like I was being punished for my desire for knowledge. Who was I to try and see God, to know my Higher Self? I was just a kid, I didn't understand shit. But now I was beginning to see all of my mistakes, and there was nothing I could do to fix them.
Half an hour later, two paramedics forced their way into my bedroom. They stood near my bed and said, "You're going to be okay, buddy. We're going to get you help." As they touched my arm, they vanished, only to reappear in the doorway, to say the exact thing all over again.
Not long after being taken to the hospital, they injected me with sedatives. I must have been acting manic, terrified. I thought the injection was poison, and they were putting me out of my misery. When I woke later, I found myself in the mental institution.
I spent a little over a week there. To talk about it in detail is a book in itself. During my surreal stay, I discovered my girlfriend had left me. I fell into a deep despair. I had to get out and see her. The meds were making me sleepy but I found it impossible to sleep, except at night. I realized that they didn't want all of the patients lying around all the time. I paced incessantly. I started acting "sane," telling the doctors exactly what they wanted to hear, "Yes sir, I believe everything was a hallucination! No, ma'am, I didn't see a giant macrocosmic space alien, nor a ball of light claiming to be Lucifer... can I leave now?" They had no clue what to do with me, didn't like drugging me up, so they let me go.
I went straight to see my girlfriend, but she wanted nothing more to do with me. She fled when she saw me on the street. Of course she thought I was "crazy" and probably thought me capable of anything. I let her go. I understood.
I stayed locked up in my room for several days, having no desire to see anyone. My roommate "Jessica" eventually drew me out of my shell. She was rarely around -- always at school -- but now that I was out of the mental ward, she decided to help me reconnect with reality. We spoke for hours about spirituality. Finally she asked about my out-of-body experience. When I told her of my visitation with the "Human Spirit," she seemed entranced. And then all at once, she cut the conversation short. She became very withdrawn. Bewildered, I went to my bedroom, wondering if I did something wrong. I paced about, finally sitting down to draw.
Half an hour later, Jessica's best friend was knocking on my door. He said that Jessica had a nervous breakdown, and was staying at his house. Shocked, I asked what happened. He looked furious, claiming that I was somehow the cause for her breakdown, and now I would have to pay for it. He had called 911 and they would be coming to get me any moment. I would have to go back to the mental ward "where I belonged." Why he did this is beyond me. But there was no time to demand an explanation. I already heard the ambulance pulling up. I leapt to my feet, screaming, "I won't go back!" and ran out the front door, blowing past the paramedics.
Panicking, completely paranoid, I hid in alleys and behind parked cars, absolutely convinced they were ALL out to get me. I took off my jacket and pants, thinking "they" would never recognize me in a stripped-down state. Of course it was March -- still winter -- and I was crunching around the snow in boxers and t-shirt. This was the point in my journey where I realized I was indeed far gone; I could recognize my perceptions were completely outside of normal consensus reality. I sat down on a snowy hill and communicated with Buddhist spirits by staring at the moon. The spirits told me to dedicate my life to the Buddha. I said I would, if they could get me out of this dire situation.
I made my way to a friend's apartment. He put me up for a few days, loaned me fresh clothes and a jacket. When I returned home, I found all of my stuff sitting on the front porch. While I was fishing around I received an anonymous phone call from a disguised voice. It said I should look in the attic. When I did, I found a note declaring I should die; I should throw myself into the Charles River. I couldn't understand it, how could anyone be so inhumanly cruel? And what was worse was that Jessica and her friend would offer no explanation.
I had no where to go. My friend Marcus invited me to spend some time in a Korean Christian "monastery,",where he lived. In truth it wasn't really a monastery at all, but a large old house on the edge of Boston housing eight members of a cult called "Providence." "Providence" was a very strange religious order that has largely disbanded after much controversy surrounding their founding Pastor. They believe in various spiritual states and prayer techniques to access them. The junior pastor claimed I had invasive, negative spirits inside me and tried "exorcising" them out. To my horror I watched my body jump and writhe and produce low guttural noises, as painful electricity jolted through me. I couldn't control it, but it felt as if he was drawing spiritual energy up and out of my body.
Ultimately it didn't help. Nothing helped. I was in a perpetual panic, and felt dark, unseen forces closing in. I saw destruction superimposed over the city streets. Humanity seemed like a bunch of dumb, talking monkeys... I wondered if we were Lucifer, fragmented into many individual selves. It seemed as if our true soul was in an unreachable dimension, and what we were left with was a lowly desirous ego-spirit in its place. My thoughts seemed to plunge even lower... I started to wonder if we were all trapped in hell.
Finally the elder pastor arrived from Korea. He had a young son around five years old, whom he shared an intimate telepathic connection with. It was beautiful and innocent; I'd never seen anything like it between two people. It was as if they shared the same soul, and they knew I could sense their connection. The pastor was one of the most compassionate men I had ever met. He unleashed waves of blissful healing energy towards me. Over the next few weeks, we played soccer and went on picnics and painted the fence around the house. I barely knew him, yet he prayed for me and helped me heal, as if I was his own child. The waves of energy were so blissful that I felt intoxicated by them. After a time, he let me know that I couldn't rely on his prayers anymore. He gently placed me back on my own feet, and I thanked him for it.
It was time to move on. I couldn't expect Marcus or the church to keep me any longer. I still needed time to recover, so I quit school and packed up my beat-up Toyota and headed out west. I ended up in Los Angeles, where I've remained ever since. Although I still paint and draw, I happened to fall into the world of children's animation. I write mainly sci-fi, action/adventure stuff for kids, and I love it. Recently I've been writing superhero stories for Marvel Entertainment. Many of these archetypal tales are of regular humans going through tremendous trials, gaining super powers, encountering aliens and monsters, and learning from wise elders. I never planned this profession, but I suppose art really does imitate life in so many impossible ways.
Image by Redgum, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
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Great Read.....
Thanks for sharing details of your personal journey. It sure resonates with me. And, welcome back, btw.
lw
Thank you
wow
very interesting...
Found this very interesting. Thank you for sharing it here. I respect your seeker nature and openness to reveal a difficult experience, which will undoubtedly help and inform others.
I recently read a comment on RS that expressed some concern over the discussion of entheogens -- that it might promote careless usage. I welcome such concern, but personally haven't seen any promotion or suggestion of careless usage on the site. Your article is another that speaks to both the potential power of consciousness-exploration techniques, and the caution/research that is recommended.
Have tried some water/juice fasting and master cleanses. Appeared in my mid 30's as a tributary to yoga practice. Varied in length, longest perhaps a dozen days. Now in early 40's, shorter duration, one to three. I find the mental and logistical preparation important, as well as taking care when starting back up on solid food. Very gradual.
After those initial two days, I too feel that significant increase in mental sharpness and energy you described, as well as other physical benefits. Also feel an increased ability to feel calm and compassionate. No siddhis, but definite increases in synchronicities.
The first few times I was amazed at seeing how inundated we are with messages of food.
Grateful that fasting appeared on my radar after a good amount of yoga practice as I sense the strengthening of the nervous system can help the navigation of altered states.
Is there a link available on the recent UC Berkeley research? Will google it.
Looking forward to reading other's comments, I imagine a fair number of RSers have experience and advice on this. Perhaps some fasting experts might, uh, weigh in?
dark!
Trickster daemons
really interesting story! I have never embraced fastic myself. I tried it once, because I was planning to take some shrooms late at night, so I fasted all day---I know small time to your WEEKS??--. I remember going for a lie down, and I hallucinated a neighbour baking a cake. I felt I could sense the neighbour across the road actually baking the cake...LOL, but it was just wishful thinking. When I came to take the shrooms the experience was SO powerful, it freaked me a bit. My whole face and head seemed to shapeshift... I did a quick google on origins of fasting, and what I read seems to only mention the BIG religions, including Buddhism. So I am assuming it wasn't practised by indigenous ancestors...? Also, as far as I am aware, animals do not do it. They eat when hungry, and if sick maybe then they naturally fast. But not for any 'reward'. I once tried the alternative means for visionary experience, 'Holotropic breathing'. I had to do it solo, because the groups were few and far where I live AND very expensive. I did it twice, and both times I ended up crying till my eyes were sore for days!! I am assuming that might be connected with the breathing, and how close it is to sighing, and how one is before one weeps, grieves. But it was nothing like psychedelics where usually the Trip is more heralded bu joyous bubbling gigglings, and laughter. I also believe that HB works because of the lack of oxygen to the brain due to the pranayama type breathing. I don't believe psychedelic experience deprives the brain of oxygen? But what I am getting at is that the very process of fasting might in itself create the wrong type of set and setting?
And as for the title of this post. I have been reading Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality, where he suggests many of the daemons we might meet on our Otherworld journeys often take the piss...;) in a Tricksterish way
tiny fragments of one super-consciousness
Fasting Off the Gorge
Only to the degree of accumulated lust, greed sloth ... does fasting offer the appropriate balance.
Our own bodies and minds naturally get bogged down by such built-up inertia however slight ... not referring to just the more gross and obvious versions of such
However fasting is, like anything else, a complete science.
Just like true, non-synthesized Entheogens are not supposed to "cause" anything to happen, but simply support the release of consciousness from "causes" ...
Fasting helps purge the accumulation ... while Entheogens help to synergize the brain chemistry to integrate higher potentials.
Many Entheogenic experiences have such purging effects ... even initial paranoia is really a mental purging of sorts ... confronting ones own limited sense of safety and security in relation to infinite possibility.
Both the Buddha and Jesus fasted extensively ... both had visionary states manifesting extreme glory ... and extreme demoniac influences ... no eating off the eternal "Tree of Life" ... until all such duality finds it yoke {yoga} ... it's connection to the full and present moment ... good and evil karma's .. and all of their astral, and/or subterranean representational beings ...
The very strength of the conscious soul ... released from all "prop" can integrate such magnaimous possibility .. 'lest the very mind itself become lost in the very nature of possibility
However fasting has to be done systematically to insure "balance" throughout the experience.
Dr Gabriel Cousens MD is considered to be the "Guru of the modern day fast"
His Tree of Life Rejuvenation center in Patagonia Arizona {200 acres of mountain plateau} ... is considered one of the top ten such places in the world
... fasting his specialty. 7 to 10 day fasts ... 21 day fasts ... 40 day fasts ... all medically supervised ... all based on decades of direct observation.{40 day fasts among Moses/Jesus was actually a standard type of mystical practise according to Dr Cousens ... the Essenes were well versed in this tradition as well
Full nutrient dense "green veggies juices" are provided for balanced integration ...{never should the more hypoglycemic fruits be taken alone for long periods ... causing hyperactive brain chemistry response}
The days before ... and the days after the fast being just as important as the fast itself .. gradually weaning off ... gradually adapting to.
There is never excessive weakness of any sorts when done properly ...
According to Dr Cousens the 7-10 day fasts can easily to done by everyone {unless heavily incapacitated} if done systematically ... probably twice a year.
No one is ever encouraged in the longer fasts whimsically.
Gabriel is also a Kundalini Yoga Master ... with over 40 years experience in such studies, along with his MD, and Psychology degrees {Columbia University etc}
He does not promote Entheogenic mixing with his programs there, but all of the staff are open-minded and certainly know of such things ... pretty hip place to purge-purify and integrate.
To prepare the body and mind for the higher potential of the Kundalini {Holy Spirit} .... fasting 'but a natural inclination.
Similarly the potency of an Entheogenic experience could more easily be integrated without excesssive indulgence {even visionary indulgence} ... if the body and mind were first purged of misgiving and ill-conceived notions of ones place in relation to "All That Is"
Fasting but the very science of ones natural penetential sense in relation to physical and mental indulgences ...
... sort of like the "starving artist" version of the soul proper
Cosmic Mantid being
The monster was vast. It appeared to be a glowing, white, translucent, manta-like entity. It seemed our universe existed as a quantum state somewhere inside its titanic body.
I found this part of your story most intriguing. Especially because I keep reading about inter-dimensional mantid or mantis-like beings that exist in astral realms. Some ET contactees have interacted with these beings on occasion. They are supposed to be incredibly advanced, technologically and spiritually, and kind of look like giant telepathic praying mantises.
There is limited information on them, if you search the Net for contactee/ET stuff, most of it is on the Greys/abduction phenomenon, and some rare stuff mentions "Nordic" humanoids or the ever present "Reptilian" paranoia fiasco. But from what I've read in passing about these mantoid type beings, they live inside and between dimensions, and are no longer physical. Probably why there is so little contact with them from this side of the veil.
Harrison K. mentioned in his reply above, that he believes at least some of these astral/incorporeal entities we glimpse in other realms, whether through entheogens(DMT) or profound visionary trance and superconscious states(as in the siddhis), are actually guardians meant to keep humans out of these realms of greater understanding. I guess it is more or less their territory.
Still, although it sounds like your experience was trying and terrifying (who wants to re-live the past 5 seconds over and over?!), I think you had great courage to be willing to confront the unknown in your life and experience something greater than yourself. I think most people who seek a greater purpose will benefit from the lessons you've learned. Heck, if that starts happening just by fasting, I might do it too! Thanks for sharing your incredible story. :3
Consciousness is real and nonphysical.
{embrace the power of
Courage
Thank you for your sharing. It is indeed helpful, and a real act of courage on your part. The challenging thing for those of us who are willing to push the boundaries of the known is what we encounter "out there/in here", however you like to put it. As Terence McKenna used to chant, "Things are not what they appear to be..."
Strangely, or not, I had an experience this past full moon, January 10th/09, while making use of the plant medicine, Teonanácatl, or "magic mushrooms", of actually becoming that universe-sized being that you spoke about. The way you described it perfectly fits my experience. Reaching that state of awareness involved some interesting steps along the way. As "my" self-identity began to dissolve, I found myself more and more in everything, like a drop of water dissolving in a sea. And I began to flow, as awareness, through that sea. Then I began to find myself in peoples' bodies, and each time I was aware of myself there, I uttered a statement:
I accept this pain. I take responsibility for the state of my life. I am accountable for all of my thoughts and actions.
Then I would move on to another and another, and then this began to spread outward, happening in many bodies at once, human, animal, water, air...it seemed a necessary requirement for what followed - the waking up of the universe. All parts had become connected through this work. Like a body with individual, self-aware cells that, altogether, form something that houses another "level" or form of consciousness, so too could the universe become something more and greater once all of its parts were working in harmony. Cause it was at that "waking up" stage that, as the universe, I became aware of myself swimming, undulating in a vastness beyond comprehension, just like your vision.
It was a pretty wild ride.
Other experiences have led me to the conclusion that it is at the level of consciousness that we are "all one", yet obviously, as separate pieces of "all one", we represent different points of perspective, each a thread originating from the same place, yet weaving a unique path within the tapestry of the unfolding universe. This is how a particle can be in multiple places at the same time...consciousness, God, Great Spirit, whatever your way of describing the bigger picture is, exists in all places at the same time! In all times! At the same time! Even though I am consciousness in this body, so too am I the same consciousness in your body, at the same time. Our unique thread, our life story, simply gives us an alternative point of perspective that we have taken as an identity. But if you listen to us speak, much is revealed... All of us are "I"...we refer to ourselves as owners of something...my body, my mind, my ego, my soul. Who's the owner of these things? It's the same owner for all of them, your body, my body, everyone and everything. Maybe.
I'm not sure why I felt compelled to share this with you and everyone. I don't really talk about these particular things except for those close to me. But the closeness of your experience to mine - and others - seems to point at something that, today, could have some significance. If my experience provides some kind of connectivity for you, some kind of validity for you so that you can stay connected with and honour the truth of your Self, then it's worth it. And if not, at the very least, I hope that you recognize - mushrooms aside - that many others are encountering the vastness of the unknown and unknowable too. You're not alone.
Things are changing. There really is something going on, almost like bubbles in a sink of dishes, and the walls between the bubbles are separating, boundaries are dissolving, and there is an increasing overlap between what was once unseen and the world that we are familiar with. Face it facing forward...keep moving with the flow, into Life. And remember courage.
Thanks again for sharing.
Re: Courage
Like a body with individual, self-aware cells that, altogether, form something that houses another "level" or form of consciousness, so too could the universe become something more and greater once all of its parts were working in harmony. As "my" self-identity began to dissolve, I found myself more and more in everything, like a drop of water dissolving in a sea. And I began to flow, as awareness, through that sea.
Hi Sean,
Everything you wrote, but especially the above, reminded me of something Paramahansa Yogananda wrote about the evolution of the human spirit. I'm roughly paraphrasing it, but it was something to the effect of: all living things are evolving towards a singular state, and this state is SatChitAnanda, Mind-Consciousness-Bliss. A superconscious state of transcendence, in which the self merges into the All.
Yogananda often used the metaphor of a droplet of water merging back into the ocean, to describe the soul of a human being merging with God. He used the same metaphor to describe how you don't lose your identity when you reach enlightenment, but instead become more of your true self than ever, because you see your self in everything.
Seems like you had a taste of that with the good medicine. :3
If only we could just snap our fingers and launch into satori...
Peace.
Consciousness is real and nonphysical.
Self-discipline, self-hate, or self-intoxication?
Some researchers into the disease Anorexia think that excessive fasting causes the body to produce endorphins (hormones - chemically similar to morphine and secreted by the pituitary gland - that block pain, decrease anxiety, and create feelings of euphoria), and that it's possible to become addicted to this artificially-high level of endorphin release.
Some religions use fasting as a method to increase personal spirituality. Fasting is said to clear the mind and enable closer communion with the Holy Spirit, however, it's usually only one day a month. Special fasts for personal or family reasons, as an adjunct to regular prayer, can be a powerful force to get spiritual help with difficult problems, but even then it's not to be used excessively.
When Jesus' disciples couldn't cure a lunatic and Jesus had to do it for them, they asked him why they'd failed. He answered, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." (Matthew 17:14–21.) Chapter 58 in Isaiah is only about fasting: "Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily..."
A Way with Words
There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink, an ugly metal
statue sits where your spirit should. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you’ve lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them. A table descends to your tents,
Jesus’ table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.
Rumi, translation Coleman Barks
Wow
The enemy of my enemy is my friend; but so too is my enemy
Hi Brandon,
What a fantastic piece of writing—vivid, luminous and provocative. As it did for many of the other participants in the forum, your experience in jumping beyond the ego brought back memories, and has parallels with many aspects of my own experience. After an early, late adolescent flirtation with out of body travel and high energy states, however, and the period of psychic overexposure that resulted—which I took to be the beginnings of psychosis—I decided to take a more circuitous approach to the exploration of alternate worlds.
By the early 1990s, when I was again subject to the type of violent and apocalyptic expansion you describe, I was, luckily, much better prepared, and had purged most of the more paranoid elements from my nature. This time, I was able to move much more freely between one dimension and another, even though I encountered many of the same terrifying traps and entities and obstacles. All manifestations of the catalytic power of the Other, which had first caused fear, were in this later phase perceived to be a potential source of joy; an invitation to the dance—that the Other extends to the unconscious Self.
We tend to like those beings who can understand and appreciate us; the same holds true in reverse.
One major change between psychotic fear and knowledge was that, through the years, I have developed a working relationship with a being that I call “the Double”, who is my escort to the realm of the Non-Dual. In this way of seeing things, which owes a certain amount to “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”, the cosmic mantis could be perceived as a vast, but not unusually strange, projection of the Double.
Rilke, toward the beginning of the first “Duino Elegy”, wrote, “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely deigns to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.” At the beginning of the second elegy, he continues, “Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul, knowing about you."
Here is a brief description of my current perspective from a comment that I wrote to Aeolus Kephas about his post “Owning the Apocalypse; the Upside of Annihilation”:
“What I am suggesting here is that the Double, in his aspect as the Shadow, may appear to be allied with the powers that “oppress” us—although the ultimate goal of these “oppressive” actions is very much open to debate. The Double, of course, is in no way limited by this, or by any other, role. As a “double-agent”, he is neither “here” nor “there”, neither one of “us’ nor one of “them”, and delights in playing stupefyingly complex games with our Psyches.
In my non-dual system, there can be no ultimate “enemy”; the original omnipotence of the Soul cannot be stolen. It does not break easily, or perhaps at all, and there is no action that cannot also be interpreted as a gift.
I do not say this lightly. The implications of this power-sharing arrangement are enormous, even terrifying. Placing, upon our moral sense, many harsh and almost impossible demands, a radical expansion of perspective follows from our contact with the Double; we can only gasp at the leap that we have taken, and the distance that we have come.”
—BTW: My ears stood up your mention of “Mission Hill.” I went to school just down the street from you at Massachusetts College of Art. A sister school or arch rival? Mass Art Rules!
There is no hallucinogen that his body does not also manufacture
“There is no hallucinogen that his body does not also manufacture”--From "To Akasha/ Part 1"
Hi Brandon,
You wrote, “As my consciousness swelled out, the physical universe shrank, until the stars blipped down to the size of electrons.” This reminded me of a passage from my book “To Akasha/ Part 1; An Incantation for the End of History”, which was begun in 1992, during the period of violent expansion that I described in my previous post, and was finished, after many challenges and detours, only over the past year.
The passage reads: “The whole ocean has become an exercise in yoga, a pinpoint stadium. It responds to any breakthrough with a behavior modification program.”—You will note the reference not only to the “shrinking” of the universe that you describe, but also to the punishment that seems to follow any sudden growth of consciousness.
Here is the end of section 6 and the whole of section 7 from the book. The “You” addressed in the poem is “Akasha”; a female personification of the “memory of space.” The excerpt is as follows:
“Prepare his heart for the sacrifice that will cost not less than everything. It will not be enough. Destroy false innocence. Subject 1 revolutionary primate to the vertigo of the 1 inch flying laboratory.
Out of sound step down. Make human the 1st laws of harmony. Here strut your power. May you open once again his mouth. His memory expand. Make his ego strength transpersonal. Reactivate the organ that makes true hallucinations. Collect the bones once forged by Rintrah out of adamantine stars.
He has entered consciously the 8 x 8 great codons of his DNA. He has set foot on the spiral steps of a tornado- in whose vortex is encoded every glyph and letter of light’s preexistent language. Return to him the courage to jump headfirst into death. Prepare his body to survive its crossing of the currents of the 4 lost worlds.
7
Your ancient mariner is now swept off babbling. He is carried towards the boiling of an ocean. Chaos has unlocked its jaws. The lost continents come out to play.
Orion rules by violent action at a distance. The Pleiades are screwed. He is carried off with dog skulls on the plutonium of a river. His opened skull convulses. Each strand of his hair ignites- they are wired to the stars. Atonal bird squeaks announce the commencement of the interplanetary games. Force-fields put on throw-away bodies.
Each sign attracts its champion. He now wrestles with a plastic GI Joe in the glow of the atomic surf. One wins. The other looses. The Barbie dolls have swum out naked smoking Marlboros. Death is the reward that the gods give to the victor.
The whole ocean has become an exercise in yoga, a pinpoint stadium. It responds to any breakthrough with a behavior modification program. Shadows battle archetypes. A floating factory rotates like the large hand of a clock.
No different is at first the deluge than the contents of his subconscious.
More energy would be needed to abort the hypnotic power of the simulacrum.
More energy becomes available, and then continues to increase. Ecstasy is implacable. Fear has become the most intimate of companions. Human history is a challenge that he throws at the Nefilim. Like an iron glove. It is an offer that they can’t refuse. They too have been subject to nostalgia. They have dreamed of the reactivation of the games above north Asia.
Calendars collide. Loud footsteps echo from a wheel of clockwork armies. Battles that once leveled Earth explode- an apocalypse in the eye blink of an epileptic seizure. Rules get broken. In a flash the courier comprehends that there are patterns but no rules. His breathing towers. Each thing has occurred a great many times before.
He has had sex with his sister. He has killed as if by accident his father and his mother. He would train to love the maguses of Mu. He would shock the monkey. He would tread upon the Triad. He would educate Plato. He has made the lightning. He is older than god. “
wow indeed
been in the same boat...
Except you ended up being committed...my major catalyst was Aikido blended with the Tarot, Psionics and a crazy "dream" that started it all...being "possessed" by something strong and funky is not always fun... Btw I could not help but notice the similarities between your descriptions and what was depicted in Neon Genesis Evengelion: End of Evengelion...
following our Will and Wind, we may just go where no One's been
Spiral Out
I've never seen End of
It involves
giant manned bio-bots that are actually giant armored (and therefore bound and programmed) homonculi created by man to mimic the colossal "Angels" that are portrayed as the "Aliens" of the series in order to fulfill the prerequisite chain of events necessary to carry out the "Instrumentality Project", aka a really big, rather dark, artificial "Great Work".
You may wish to either watch the entire series before seeing the movie (since it sums up the series in a very climactic way) or get your hands on "Evangelion: Death and Rebirth" which is a special 2 disc set that kinda crash courses' one through all the significant points of the entire series in order to prepare on for the movie, while sporting very very informative special features that enlighten one to the esoteric intricacies of the plot in a way that would normally require much personal research and re-watching of certain episodes.
following our Will and Wind, we may just go where no One's been
Spiral Out