Saturday, October 4, 1975, was just another sunny day in Denver, Colorado. Some days the pollution count was worse than other days, but, generally I remember sunshine: Perfect sunny weather for painting houses from now to eternity. Fortunately for me though, it was a special day—or rather—my special day. The day upon which I was to become “initiated” which meant that the mineral spirits could get on without me… Again, the group of us who had been selected, (minus rumor had it one or two of us), filed into the front room at 1607 Race Street. But for a few pillows, nothing had changed in any way. In other words, the room was still blank, empty, and for me at least—serene and comfortable. I do not recall if any of our “enlightened”, or, “already initiated” brothers and sisters went into the satsang hall with us, memory being the fallible friend that it is; I remember only a group of warm, seated bodies spread evenly around the room leaning against the walls for support. After a brief introduction by Bai ji, we were asked to sit silently just so—around the perimeter of the empty, wall-to-wall wool carpeted room… backs up straight against the bare smooth walls for support if we needed… where we were to await each of our individual turns, as Bai ji went from person to person demonstrating each of the four techniques of meditation, one technique at a time.
The ceiling-to-floor drapes and sheers were drawn just as usual leaving the room in a pleasant semi-darkness. I could see the brown-skinned, sari-clad, elegant Initiator, Sulakshana Bai ji, quite plainly. There was an assistant with her as I recall, or, rather, someone whom she was preparing to become an “initiator” like herself, and, to whom, she was demonstrating—how to demonstrate the meditation techniques. This person was an American, but a stranger to me. It took some time, maybe a couple of minutes to demonstrate a technique, and then she moved on to the next person, and so forth in an orderly fashion. She spoke in a soft voice and I do not recall overhearing her words of direction, or, encouragement to the other aspirants in the room. I simply remember waiting quietly for my turn with oddly little anticipation of what I might “receive”.
I know this sounds odd, after all, I was about to “receive” the most important gift conceivable—the precious, precious Knowledge of Guru Maharaj ji, the Lord of the Universe. I’m not saying I was cynical about it, or, that I had doubts about its profound and precious nature. One might expect to be filled with all sorts of hopes, dreams, fears, thoughts, ideas, concepts, worries about the who or what or why of it all. I simply was not. I had no expectations whatsoever, because, you see. No one had ever successfully described to me the— indescribable. No matter how many hours of “satsang”—the Company of Truth— I might have sat through, and
The ceiling-to-floor drapes and sheers were drawn just as usual leaving the room in a pleasant semi-darkness. I could see the brown-skinned, sari-clad, elegant Initiator, Sulakshana Bai ji, quite plainly. There was an assistant with her as I recall, or, rather, someone whom she was preparing to become an “initiator” like herself, and, to whom, she was demonstrating—how to demonstrate the meditation techniques. This person was an American, but a stranger to me. It took some time, maybe a couple of minutes to demonstrate a technique, and then she moved on to the next person, and so forth in an orderly fashion. She spoke in a soft voice and I do not recall overhearing her words of direction, or, encouragement to the other aspirants in the room. I simply remember waiting quietly for my turn with oddly little anticipation of what I might “receive”.
I know this sounds odd, after all, I was about to “receive” the most important gift conceivable—the precious, precious Knowledge of Guru Maharaj ji, the Lord of the Universe. I’m not saying I was cynical about it, or, that I had doubts about its profound and precious nature. One might expect to be filled with all sorts of hopes, dreams, fears, thoughts, ideas, concepts, worries about the who or what or why of it all. I simply was not. I had no expectations whatsoever, because, you see. No one had ever successfully described to me the— indescribable. No matter how many hours of “satsang”—the Company of Truth— I might have sat through, and
there certainly were more than a few hundred, I had simply never heard anyone adequately describe the nature of “divine wisdom”, “jana”, “knowledge”…. “enlightenment”, to my satisfaction. Premies (lovers), as the devotees of Guru Maharaj ji called themselves, had all struck me as cosmic cheerleaders for an experience that was essentially way-way beyond the reach of ordinary mortal powers of communication, and so, I let it go at that.
Bai ji herself was not a cheerleader. Bai ji was a dignified functionary. She had a job to do, and, with gracious feminine poise… classical India Indian precision and compassion… she was doing it to the best of her ability. I had a job to do, too—to be done by Bai ji, to be… initiated by the initiator , that is all.
It seems in my unsteady memory, that perhaps Bai ji’s hand was shaking a bit with nervousness as she reached to my face to demonstrate “light technique”. She said, Now, I am going to demonstrate “Light Technique”, OK? And I nodded. The moment her fingers gently touched the distal corners of my closed eyes, the room, all of its prior occupants—around thirty of us—including Bai ji
Bai ji herself was not a cheerleader. Bai ji was a dignified functionary. She had a job to do, and, with gracious feminine poise… classical India Indian precision and compassion… she was doing it to the best of her ability. I had a job to do, too—to be done by Bai ji, to be… initiated by the initiator , that is all.
It seems in my unsteady memory, that perhaps Bai ji’s hand was shaking a bit with nervousness as she reached to my face to demonstrate “light technique”. She said, Now, I am going to demonstrate “Light Technique”, OK? And I nodded. The moment her fingers gently touched the distal corners of my closed eyes, the room, all of its prior occupants—around thirty of us—including Bai ji
v a n i s h e d
I felt no fear no pain. I felt no heat no cold. I felt no thrill of emotion. I felt neither clarity nor confusion per se. I simply felt nothing.
Before my awareness was a transparent blue tunnel linked to an odd sense of movement. There was not— a mysterious, dark tunnel in front of me, and a me, with my familiar body walking into its recesses. Rather, something disembodied—just pure plastic awareness? It’s difficult to describe. I was not there in the subtle sense of a watcher watching myself in a dream. My conscious reality had simply become a blue tunnel, and I, as some form of disembodied agency, was moving into it. Its seamless walls glowed with light from within like the light in cartoons, like the radiant light in Disney cartoon animation films. The tunnel appeared to be some kind of psycho-physical elastic. It was looping and swinging like a stretchy surgical rubber tube. Next, I remember the walls having red and blue diamonds. The walls were a pattern of interlocking red and blue diamonds like the costume of a harlequin, like the pantaloons of one of Picasso’s “blue period” clowns. Then, suddenly, the walls shifted into
interlocking patterns of “smiley faces”. You remember, those day-go yellow: HAVE A NICE DAY! smiling buttons people wore for a time back in the 70’s? The yellow, sunny-faced smiley pin-on buttons that some folks despised? Well. The undulating, red and blue diamond-patterned walls of the elastic tunnel morphed into a pattern of smiles and frowns in bright buttery yellow, somehow, within the harlequin design. It was like passing up or down the pant legs or sleeves of a circus clown—a madcap cartoon character—at great speed, a roll-a-coaster ride through a visionary funhouse, and then
BOOOOM!! I was shot right out of the loopy, clown-tunnel like… being shot out of a cannon under the big top!
The Ringling Barnum and Bailey Circus!! BANG!!!
No more clown costume. No more snaking tunnel. No more smiles or frowns. No more… I was… now in what appeared to be “outer space”. I mean, there was the dark background of infinite space with its sprinkling of stars… other worlds, galaxies, etc… like so many pinpricks of light in the distant black shroud of the void. I, if there was an I at this point, felt more like a point of motion. I distinctly felt motion. Perhaps that is all I had time to grasp. I appeared to be moving at a tremendous clip into the vacuum of infinite space. For a time, the stars just seemed to stand there, or rather, hang there as they do on a clear night in the vast reaches of eternity… smiling with cold, incomprehensible indifference. If I had a sense of time, or, of anything, it was all coming to me relative to my sense of velocity, or, accelerating motion. I knew that I was moving, and, moving exceedingly fast, that is about all—and—I could see the distant heavenly bodies of which I was familiar. I did not see the Big Dipper, mind you, or, Mars, Saturn, Neptune, Jupiter… nothing quite so definite. It was all too quick to register. But, familiar in a general way
Put simply, I was speeding toward infinite space—that is all—blackness and pinpoints of light.
This state went on for some time, but, I did not sense the duration of it. I could not count, say: seconds, minutes, months, years, light-years… I
had no chance, no way to measure the duration of it really—it all happened so quickly, then
WHAMMO!!
The blackness of space with its pinpoints of light appeared to stretch momentarily into long streaks and suddenly… shatter. It all came apart into fragments like a jigsaw puzzle, or, like glass shattering in slow-motion as though I had crashed into a black glass orb with white pin holes in it… a cobalt blue bell jar from the inside. At any rate, there was little time to contemplate this collision of sorts with the— “cope of heaven”—or whatever it was… for next, almost instantly—the visible context of the stars and all of the galaxies just melted away and vanished behind me.
I now faced, with no face, a vast, empty blackness. An enormous void, if you will. No-thing-ness. I sensed nothing, but again, speed—velocity, movement, acceleration—that is all. Did an eternity pass in this realm of blackness of blankness? It is hard to say. It was impossible to measure time —I could make out no reference points from which to infer the passage of time. It perhaps felt… denser, thicker, closer in this realm of utter darkness and nothingness. Again. I sensed only fleetingly that I was accelerating at a hair-raising, at an alarming, rate of speed. Something akin to light-speed and beyond.
Then I noticed it. Way far off—because I did still sense vaguely the feeling of space—I think. Way far off in the vast reaches of space… a tiny spec of light. Just a pinprick of white, on an otherwise all black void, at first. Actually, that’s how I began to register space again. Because you see. What first appeared as a white dot on a black ground slowly… ever so slowly… began to form into… a ring of light. A donut of light. Or, was it an eyeball, or, a mouth? Like an eye, it seemed to be, a beautiful ring of light, colored light, like the cornea of an eye? or, is it… yes… the exquisite colored iris of an eye with the alluring dark pupil in the center, the dark round pupil of emptiness in the exact center of it. This eye, or, ring of light, just seemed to hang out there far far away in the vast dark distance of blackness. It just floated there—a disembodied eyeball. It was beautiful to gaze upon, I do remember, for a moment, for what felt like… one of the only solemn, leisurely moments of this…. What? “Journey”? At least, I
think I remember, being struck in the moment by the wondrous beauty of this hanging eyeball in space.
Anyhow, the eyeball, the ring of light, kept getting closer. It kept getting closer and larger, closer and larger…. as though it was scrutinizing me. It did not blink. It just hung there staring. Just one eyeball. Not two, not three… Just one bloody eyeball with no face. It was excruciatingly lovely to gaze upon. But. I did not have too long to study or enjoy its splendid, strange colors, its intangible, glowing gem-like qualities before— BINGO!!
Here we go again! Straight into the center of the eyeball!! Dang, now I definitely didn’t see that coming
Passing through the eyeball, through the dark pupil at the center, was almost instantaneous. Rather, it was instantaneous! I mean, now you see it, now you don’t! BLAMMO!! It was as though the eyeball had no dimensions, no depth, that is—as though it was flatter than a crepe! A mere micron thick. Next, having passed through the immaculate eyeball gate, whatever you wish to call it, I perceived another distinct region of space, blackness, emptiness. Only this radiant zone was dominated by a cloud of whirling energy. And. Not too far off this time. This cloud of energy had a surface covered with rippling lightnings. It was white, or, white-gold. It was not hot. It was not cold. It was not exactly a fiery ball. It was more like liquid, fire, and gas all at once. A liquidy, fiery, energetic… electric writhing ball of snakes… an undulating plasma sphere. An egg-shaped cloud of primordial energy. A bowl of slow lightning soup!!
Ahhhhh…. one from column A and one from column Omega!!
Jesus, the mind quails. My descriptive powers are dwindling. Picture an artist’s renderings of an exploded star—there’s the ring of gases, multi-colored gases from the super nova explosion, and then, in the center of the ring of gases is a white dwarf of intensely compacted, enormously compressed energy. That’s about what it seems like in retrospect. A white dwarf star of super-concentrated liquid electricity.
At this point, as at every point of this…. “cataclysm”? I had no time to think. To catch up. I simply went colliding at unimaginable velocity straight into the swirling white dwarf star-thing
THE TRANSCENDENTAL OBJECT AT THE END OF TIME?
THE ES CHA TON
I was simply engulfed into a region of slithering lightning bolts, of shimmering energy-snakes… Lightning scrawls in the utterly silent void…. without… any thunder that I recall. Or fear. A soundless, whirling, exploding liquid world of living-electricity. The City of God, perhaps. Who knows? Then. From the infinite depths of this Campbell’s cream of mushroom cosmic energy soup, I heard a voice. A tiny, distant voice. The only voice I had heard on this whole passage from zero to infinity. And the voice said
“Do you understand? Do you understand how to do the “light
technique”?
pp. 27-31. Me, Myself and the Lord of the Universe. The abridged, un-published manuscript.
