The 2012 Story (57 page)

Letting go in meditation is an important practice for setting aside, or transcending, the nagging dictates of ego. Sitting with one’s inner thoughts, not engaging in outward activity, deepening the sense of being present to Nowever, awakens the timeless. We open to eternity and directly understand that eternity is at the root of time. Going to the center is like awakening your inner One Hunahpu. I find it amusing that the English word
hurricane
is derived from variants on One Hunahpu’s name. The Maya deity Hun-rakan (one-foot) is associated with God K (
k’awil
) and the Quiché Maya god named Tojil. They are one-footed and spin upon the Pole Star. Readers might recall that Seven Macaw, as the Big Dipper, spins upon the Pole Star, suggesting that Seven Macaw and One Hunahpu are two facets of the same entity. And they are: Lower self and higher self are two parts of the whole being, called Ego and Divine Self in the Perennial Philosophy. More subtly, a transformational ethos is at play here, for from a certain perspective Seven Macaw (ego-focused identity) is meant to transform into One Hunahpu (unitary selfless identity). We must go to the center of the hurricane, the eye of phenomenal change, to transcend the chaos! And in so doing we find that we are the source and center of the tumult.

As we do these things our relationship with the world changes. As our identities become centered on our true Self, and we consciously restore ego to its proper function as a temporary extension of the true Self, our relationships will change. And we find that we slowly shift from acolyte of the mysteries (a student or initiate) to teacher. We are granted an esoteric PhD as we climb the degrees of inner gnosis. We begin to take on the identity of
conduit
rather than
recipient
, conveyor rather than container.

Christopher Bache is a teacher who has observed the transformational cocreative process between himself and his students as he has deepened his spiritual journey. With subtle insight he notes that his own state of awareness can trigger understanding in his students. And he has noted the potential problems of transference that are common in the psychoanalytical field, in the give-and-take between therapist and client. Sometimes the teacher becomes the student; in fact, Bache notes that teaching is most effective when a nondual or nonhierarchical relationship is established.

Bache has openly shared his pursuit of self-awareness using the tools of psychoactive plants. He understands that modes of consciousness define modalities of knowing, and this has little to do with learning in the commonly understood sense. He writes of the change that any person on a journey of spiritual awakening is likely to undergo. Not surprisingly, the initiatory death-rebirth experience, occurring at ongoing levels of deepening integration, is essential, and at some point the person’s orientation to the transcendent wisdom shifts:

Which is to say that a person does not leave planet earth upon establishing a connection with the transcendent source consciousness. Once the ego-self is sufficiently transformed, it no longer requires cathartic initiatory release into the transcendent; instead, the person becomes a channel for “infusing transcendental energies” into human culture. Here let’s recall Joseph Campbell’s definition of myth: “Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations.”
¹⁰
A person becomes a leader, a source of genuine insight. The Maya king was shamanically elected into office in this way, his ruling power conferred by his ability to infuse higher wisdom and guiding insight into his kingdom. In comparison, democratic elections are mere popularity contests. Our political figureheads should not, however, be given the power that we can establish for ourselves in the process of awakening our true selves. We should not elect Best Ego but rather the True Conduit. And we can recognize the true conduit to the extent that we have become true conduits ourselves. A true conduit once said:

That was Ramakrishna, a Hindu saint who in many ways inspired and guided the West’s initial encounter with Vedanta. René Guénon’s book from the 1920s,
Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta,
framed this nicely in the context of the Perennial Philosophy, whose cause was soon taken up by Ananda Coomaraswamy and Aldous Huxley. In some quarters there has been a tendency to psychologize the Perennial Philosophy (particularly in the psychology of Carl Jung and his students), and some writers have suggested that “subconscious” terminology confuses higher states of integration with lower states of unconscious nonintegration.
¹²
The goal of both Jungian psychology and the Perennial Philosophy is, however, wholeness and integration. Bache draws from Jung’s psychological terminology, and his genuine insights need to be understood in this light:

The transcendent illumines and informs the individual consciousness to the extent that it can descend into, open, and see beyond the filter of ego. (This, I believe, is the deeper meaning of the epigram to Chapter 8, taken from René Daumal’s philosophical fable
Mount Analog
.) Here we find the suggestion that depth process is really an awakening to higher truths. As with any encounter with nondual concepts, polarities of height and depth are easily conflated. But the nondual truth in this is that knowledge, which science traditionally accepts only as coming from outer sense data, is ultimately rooted in the most inner recess of the being, the transcendent source-center. This can also be conceived as the highest heaven. As one of the Perennial Philosophy’s most insightful voices said: “The traditional universe is dominated by the two basic realities of Origin and Center, both of which belong to the realm of the eternal.”
¹⁴

I wouldn’t be able to say these things with such conviction if they hadn’t been galvanized by direct experience. Here I’d like to share an experience that reoriented my entire being, at a young age, and has led me along the path that is my life. This kind of treatment, being about the most subtle level of direct gnosis, will always fall short of providing what it talks about. It simply can’t; words and concepts can’t be used to convey what ultimately must be directly experienced for oneself. The closest I can come is to relate a personal experience in language that is a bit freed from tedious discursive constraints.

Meditation and sensory isolation go hand in hand. A useful tool that can help deepen meditation and the awakening of the inner light is the sensory isolation tank. These devices were developed in the 1960s by scientists who were doing research on consciousness. They enjoyed a brief spate of popularity in the 1980s as “relaxation tanks,” because they provide a completely dark environment protected from light and sound, with the surrounding water and air at body temperature. You float on an 80 percent Epsom salt solution, which keeps the body buoyant and the head above water even if you fall asleep. In this environment the consciousness can withdraw its attention from the five physical senses to awaken inner vision, the dormant faculty of gnosis that perennial philosophers call
intellectus
and mystics call the third eye.

Dolphin scientist John Lilly wrote about his visionary experiences inside of isolation tanks, using LSD as a catalyst. At age nineteen I was inspired by the intrepid adventures of Lilly, which I had read about in his books
The Center of the Cyclone
and
The Deep Self
. At the time I was very into yoga, meditation, fasting, and breath work. It was an extreme phase of purification, identity exploration, and engaging transformative inner work. Being resourceful, I sought out a facility in Chicago called Spacetime Tanks that advertised its “relaxation” services and “state-of-the-art” isolation tanks. After four or five trial experiences without pharmacological help, I had become comfortable with the process and made friends with one of the clerks there, and decided to propose my experiment. I had logged some experience with sacred plants, although I had lately eliminated mind-altering substances in deference to yoga practice, seeking clarity of mind. Nevertheless, I believed in the transformative power of these substances and decided to experience what Lilly was talking about—they weren’t called “consciousness-expanding” for nothing. I would be combining my ability to go into a meditative state, which I had developed as a result of daily meditation practice, with the isolation tank and a good dose of quality LSD.

It was a fine spring day in early June. I cultivated a sense of gratitude and reverence while I disrobed and settled into the warm environment of the isolation tank chamber, closing the door. Lying back, supported by the buoyant body-temperature saline solution, I began to let go. I breathed deeply, gently, working out some body kinks. I was already comfortable with the process, having had a few previous experiences in the tank. This time, of course, I was aware that within forty-five minutes or so the LSD would start having an effect. Pure darkness, at this point, appeared like a flat screen with no depth, but by the end of my voyage that flat screen would be radically enlarged. Images and sounds of the day, of driving into Chicago, popped into my mind. I breathed and let go. It took fifteen to twenty minutes before this sensory detritus of the day’s impressions began to fade and an inner vista began to dawn. My heartbeat was present for me; my rhythmic breathing took on a distant, autonomous quality. I allowed myself to disengage from fidgeting and readjusting my body; there was nothing really to do in this regard, I told myself as I was floating in a perfectly safe ocean of comfort. The quietude was complete.

My mind began to seek reinforcing boundaries of my body, which usually come from pressure, gravity, and contact with clothes or a chair. But here there were no sensory signals to be found, so my mind decided that no body limitation existed and began to reach beyond. The mind, I found, has the innate capacity to reach outward into many dimensions, including time, but it is usually quashed by sensory signals that define boundaries. Not so in the tank. Relaxation indeed! My mind began opening like a thousand-petal lotus. Excuse the cliché, but that’s the perfect metaphor. I became aware of presences on the fringes of my consciousness, which seemingly drew near as my mind ventured outward, expanding into multidimensional space. I heard a conversation between two people, an everyday chat that I imagined was happening somewhere else in the building where I lay, or perhaps another building nearby. Other beings were sensed in other directions too, at the same time, although direction really had no meaning because I was becoming a manifold multidirectional awareness. My inner observer seemed to remain intact, and I suspected the psychedelic was taking effect, although I experienced no distortions of perception with which it is usually associated. No melting walls or dripping colors or demon faces or elfin laughter; I felt those were all distortions that would happen only if I was trying to engage outer reality—at a party or rock concert, for example—or if my system was also trying to process other chemicals, such as marijuana or alcohol or even food. (I had fasted the previous day and that morning ate only an orange.)

Instead, pure expansion of mind into a boundless space occurred. While the spatial infinity emerged from the shadows (for that is how I felt it occurring), time also dissolved. I sensed an intensity growing around me, a throbbing urgency that may have been my own blood coursing through my veins, or some endocrinal system kicking in, but all that got left behind as I telescoped out onto a quick succession of larger cosmic viewpoints. The previous domain, which I thought was immense, was quickly seen to be a mere speck on a stick on a tree in a forest on an island on a planet in a galaxy, which was only one galaxy of trillions. A kind of apotheosis or upward-expanding experience that was intimately involved with my very being, my sense of self, accelerated. Suddenly the darkness simply wasn’t dark anymore, but light, pure unmodified light that spread in all directions and through me. Boundless, infinite, and eternal: I am. Or rather, I had once congealed out from this and was now returning into it with some semblance of a memory-making self-consciousness that was nevertheless quickly being subsumed into the light. I suppose, in retrospect, that the light was also love, but at this stage the experience was very much a pure-light illumination, perhaps the “dawning of the clear light” spoken of in the Tibetan Book of the Dead
.