REMEMBERING

There are memories that come to mind when I am about my daily activities, especially when I am driving and my mind wanders. There is an awareness that I am present in this body in this life even as I was present in other bodies in other lives. They are a bit like remembering movies that I’ve seen in the past, though when I was younger my memories of such were much more dramatic, emotional and “personal” to me. I don’t recall or try to recall them or their specific details any more but I have a definite sense that I was “there” just like I was there at my high school graduation or when I received an award in first grade at Roosevelt Public School for my drawing of a sailing ship (which I believe I still possess somewhere hidden in my tomes of things perhaps in the garage). I remember myself getting up proudly, my parents beaming on either side of me, and walking up the aisle and up the stairs to the stage to receive my award certificate. What I refer to as my “past life memories” are much like that, except that they include rather dramatically unpleasant moments as well as some pleasant ones. I am more emotionally detached from these past memories than I used to be. Some of them used to be very painful and sometimes still are. The more recent ones still have some emotional effects on me. 

The most recent is that of a rabbi who, with his eight children, are sent to the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. His French wife was previous murdered by German soldiers whom she attacked as they tried to rape her, as he thought more of protecting their children than going to her defense, which, of course, would’ve gotten him killed. He felt himself to be a profound coward for not dying to protect her. The Kommandant of the camp did not kill his children in order to retain his willingness to help keep his congregation “under control” rather than rebel. Ultimately every child died of sickness and he was left to face the firing squads of German boys in uniform as the Russians entered Poland. There is much more to this story.

In the other "recent" life, a fourteen-year-old Lakota Sioux boy whose father, Little Fox, and mother have been killed by the US Cavalry, is, with his sixteen-year-old sister, left to defend those remaining alive of his tribe who are fleeing the soldiers. They are attacked, his sister has her jaw broken and is raped by the soldiers. He is captured by the soldiers who laugh at him because he is so small. He escapes his bonds and stabs a soldier in vengeance. As he runs away, he is shot in the back, the bullet passing through his lung. Then his head is put in a noose and his spinal cord is supposed to snap or he is supposed to strangle when dropped. But he is so scrawny and light that he just hangs from the rope and kicks until one of the soldiers grabs his feet and yanks him down.

I know these things happened. There are many more descriptive details. It seems like my imagination running wild but these are not old TV shows I saw as a child. They actually happened to me when I was another person in another time. I remember all sorts of things, and especially liked being in the world before the advent of technology—cars, telephone, engine—when all moved by horse-power, when the horse was personal and had a name, was a friend. I prefer those times when the world was slower and quieter and the main diversions were human—conversation, music, games. I was able to find “success” in this world by being able to sell financial advice and services, which required, in my estimation, one who could demonstrate a care for the client, the customer, as well as satisfactory financial results. I did this before computers came onto the scene and took over as the informational source. But I have always had a kind of awareness that I don’t really belong in this world, even though I was able to just about convince myself that I could be comfortable in it. But not quite.

There's another story from the early 18th century. My sister and I are hiding under a table in a pub full of drunken sailors and not-quite-as-drunk prostitutes, one of whom is our mother. The floor is covered in a matting of damp straw that smells of beer, urine, and vomit. Like the proverbial Dicken's theme, we are ultimately adopted by a well-to-do Anglo-Irish couple and live in a mansion outside of Dublin. At university, I become interested in the "black arts" and drop out to move to the country and be educated by a group of women who are always at risk of being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake by the priests. This lifetime would appear to end in 1728 when Seamus is put into a door-sized hole in the ground, a wooden door is placed upon him, and the priest directs the villeins to throw rocks upon the door to crush him. But he is saved from death, though not quite intact, by one red-haired witch, who literally remembered him 250 years later. There is more to be told of this story as well.

I wish there was a moral to this story and the others, but I find that it’s a story in which myriad other stories converge. I just have to let this be as it is. As one who has paddled and floated down the river of his particular life and who discovers that there are numerous other rivers now converging into a great river flowing into the greater sea, I see that I am now carried by the current. We may call it “forward” but it is simply the direction of the current. Remembering the memories of the long past of one’s lives reveals oneself to oneself as flowing within a current of different times, different places, different people. It instills a perspective that extends beyond time, place, and personal identity. What I feel now, I have felt before. But the beauty is that it is all fresh and new in every single moment that occurs here and now in which there is no past and no future.

TO A FRIEND

This is a copy of an email to a friend whose medical condition is fragile:

I was thinking about what you said a while back re Buddhist meditation and it just "sunk in." You had the idea that the meditation was meant to "bring you out of your body," and I noted that that's not its purpose and continued to pontificate as usual. But now it dawns on me that you were seeking a meditation that does allow one to "transcend the physical." I did practice such a meditation for ten years or so pretty much on a daily basis. It's a theosophical rendition of what is probably a Hindu meditation. It takes you out of your body by moving up the chakras until you are beyond it and then you come back down into it with what might be called spiritual insights. I'd be happy to describe exactly how it's done, if you might be interested.

For most of my life I was hardly in my body and believed this was how it was for everyone. There are causes for this that I could share with you if you might want to hear them. Suffice it to say that I could sit zazen for hours and hours and hours once upon a time, though now I can't at all--which is probably a good thing. So I spent much effort trying to "get in" rather than "get out."

But I, for many years now, have been very interested in knowing how to "make the transition" out of the body when I die, for one must be able to be in the proper mind that can adapt to a different (non-physical) state of being. I have finally internalized what I see as true regarding this: the non-physical state of being is our natural state, whereas being in the body is actually an unnatural state for us. I think that's why I enjoy sleeping as much as I do--being out of the body. Rudolf Steiner said that death is much like going to sleep--but then waking up without the physical part, which can be disconcerting if one isn't aware of what's up.

Just wanted to share these thoughts with you. I think life and death can be seamless. Time is somewhat relative and our self-identification needs to be expanded if not replaced.

A WALK OVER THE FROZEN SWAMP

He had been walking all day, since early morning. Now it was late afternoon. He wasn’t tired; he just wanted to keep walking. He had started on a fire trail, then to a hiking trail, and for the last few hours, a deer trail, very thin but worn, skirting thick brush, but sometimes quite steep. Once, when he was much younger, back in New York State, he followed a deer trail for hours and actually came upon the deer grazing in a small meadow. In those days he liked to walk in hopes of actually getting lost so that he might then have to find his way once again. And he had gotten lost a number of times and always found his way out, once after thirteen hours and spending a winter night in front of a roaring fire in the ruins of an old mansion with a six-foot high fireplace.

            He no longer sought to get lost; he knew he already was lost, so there was no need. He just wanted to walk and really didn’t care whether he was lost out there in the forest or not. He might die, he thought, but it was not on his mind. He thought about when he ventured into the forest not so far from Millbrook back in New York State in the middle of winter when he could explore the vast marshes and swamps that were frozen over, places he had never been able to get to before. This is where he came upon the foundation of an old mansion that probably belonged to a patroon who had cleared the land and farmed it as early as two hundred years ago. Now, all these farms and their mansions had been reclaimed by the forests of Dutchess County. Why the farms failed, he didn’t know. The rock and cement foundation was quite large and at one end stood a six-foot high rock fireplace with a thirty-foot high rock chimney. The hearth in front of the fireplace was six-feet across and stood three feet above the foundation. It was all surrounded by thick fir trees, some of which grew within the walls of the foundation.

            The sun was setting and it was getting to be in the low 20s. He wasn’t particularly cold yet but he had no sleeping bag, only the clothes on his back. He gathered a big pile of firewood, packed it into the fireplace and lit it up. A big white owl flew out the top of the chimney. Soon there was a roaring, hot fire which he fed with a couple of logs he had dragged up to the hearth. He laid down on the rock hearth and fell asleep, using his small knapsack as a pillow. Soon it became too hot, so he took of all his clothes and lay on the smooth rock of the hearth which had become warm from the fire. He slept for a while and was awakened by a chill that pierced right to the bone. The fire was now embers but still quite warm. He put on his clothes that had been warmed by the hearth.

         Suddenly he looked around him and saw literally scores of glowing eyes watching him from the edge of the forest, reflecting the light of the fire. Some were large, some small, some higher, some lower. He wasn’t frightened though he thought that there could easily be a mountain lion in the mix of what were probably deer and raccoons. He rose at dawn and followed his tracks back, eventually finding his way out of the swamps and marshes, and back to the road home.

WHY THE STORIES OF OUR LIVES?

I can tell stories of my various life experiences, yes, but to speak of or otherwise discuss these in a philosophical or spiritual or psychological manner requires that I use the pertinent languaging or terms. But I find this approach to be very limiting and restrained and false in that respect. How does one speak specifically in vague terms? One does not. One cannot. Instead, one tells a story and thus conveys the attainment of any “meaning” to the reader. One lets the reader draw the conclusions. Perhaps even leading the reader to what one does not particularly wish to conclude. 

     And what, after all, is "true"? Are our experiences of ourselves, as we tell them, accurate? True? I would say not. Not because we're liars, but because we have our particular and literal points of view. We see in the way that we see. Which is to say that there are things that we do not want to see about ourselves; things that we avoid. Such blind spots are not so conscious to us; we just don't see them because we don't want to see them. Our stories are primarily for ourselves, even to ourselves. That someone else might listen or even hear what we say is validation to us that we are telling the truth and even that we simply exist. 

    Some of us feel compelled to tell our stories. It's not just for "attention"; it's because there are "vital human lessons" to be gained from reading these stories. There is some kind of wisdom, or at least some kind of "wider experience of being" that people should be aware of for their own knowledge of being. That's precisely why, in my mind, I maintain this blog and why I write in it. Somewhere, weaving in and out of the words, is a kind of spirit. Call it even a demon if you want to. It has power and knows things; things beyond the notions of "good and evil." It just is and is present behind the words. I have faith in this much, though it is unseen and unknown and unmeasureable. 

MY CHILDHOOD QUANDARY ABOUT THE PRESENCE OF EVIL AND HOW I FINALLY CONJURED UP A DEMON

As a child, I was never particularly afraid of the Devil or devilish things. Rather, I was afraid of Dracula and Frankenstein, whom I could see lurking in the darkness of my closet just a few feet across from my bed at night. I was afraid of some creature that dwelt under my bed as well. I went to a Catholic grade school and high school, but they never talked much about the Devil or even evil. Mostly they talked about Christ and all his goodness and love and sacrifice for our sins. My father was often physically abusive of me but I never considered this to be evil even though it engendered much fear in me on a daily basis. In high school study hall, I noticed that someone long ago had scratched “I like Eich” upon a radiator. It was 1965 and the Holocaust had ended on 21 years ago and wasn’t a focus of history yet; I don’t recall it being taught in grade school at all. But I was somehow aware of it, probably due to the fact that many of my father’s friends and associates, especially in the legal professions and judicial systems, were Jewish, and in our many social interactions, probably spoke of the losses within their own families. But I hadn’t thought about it much at all until I saw this graffiti on the study hall radiator that was put there by a Catholic boy in my high school. I was horrified that someone at my school could have written this, thinking that they must be incredibly ignorant and hateful.

I realized that what happened to the Jews was evil. The evilness of it somehow seared into me like a laser. I felt the absolute unhumanness of it, the soullessness that could take over people’s minds, and allow them to kill with passion and faith.

          At this same time, 1965, the Civil Rights Movement was happening. Blacks were being subjected to beatings and hangings and shootings, and this was appearing in the news. As I watched this, I realized that this was another form of Holocaust, and was stunned by its utter evilness. I recognized how many people were stupid and ignorant, and had been raised and trained in a stupid, ignorant culture. I could not understand how Americans could treat other Americans in this way. I saw it as pure evil.

          There was a boy in my grade school when I was in fifth or sixth grade who became my friend. We played together and enjoyed each other’s company. The other kids seemed to shun him and someone said that his father have been a soldier in the Nazi army. I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t want to ask the boy. I envisioned his father in a Nazi uniform and very frightening, for he must have killed Americans, and Jews too. But the boy was very kind and sweet, and I didn’t want to be mean to him by rejecting him. He invited me to his house, over on Eileen Street, not far from my house, to play and have a sandwich for lunch one Saturday. I was afraid that I would see his father but I went. We played in his back yard and then his father called out and told us to come in a get some lunch. I was terrified when I heard his voice; it sounded very harsh and severe. But I went in the house and sat down at the table anyway. The father came into the kitchen as we were eating the sandwiches. He was small and hunched over and looked very sad. He said “hello” to me, shook my hand gently, and smiled. I smiled back. I wanted to ask him is it is true that he was a Nazi soldier but I said nothing. He was so small and gentle and did not seem like he ever could have been a bad or cruel person in his life. I didn’t hate him and I wasn’t afraid. And he was here in America, so he must be a good man. That’s how I explained it to myself.

         

How I Conjured Up a Demon

When I was a freshman at Boston College, a Catholic university, I had a old Jesuit theology teacher who was quite “old-fashioned Irish” in his passionate faith and fear of the Devil. He spoke like an old-time preacher leading a revival meeting and talked a lot about Satan and demons and the like. I think it was his fear-mongering that got me interested in conjuring up a demon so that I could find out for myself if it was true or not. I checked the archives at the library and found all sorts of Puritan books from as early as the 17^th century, all speaking of devils and demons and Satan, and in great fear of the witches who held Black Masses in worship of them. I decided I would have a Black Mass in my dorm room on the second floor of Fenwick.

But in order to actually conjure up a demon, you had to follow the proper procedure and have the necessary accoutrements. I found a store in downtown Boston, near Beacon Hill, which was called, appropriately, The Coven Bookstore. I went there and found it to full of items which were necessary to conduct a Black Mass. I was helped by a few older women who were very interested in helping me to attain my goal of conjuring up a demon. They showed me a very old, black, leather-covered book that told how to conduct a Black Mass safely and how to bring a demon for assistance. The book smelled like waxy smoke and was very heavy. In it were precise instructions on how to draw a pentacle with various symbols and a circle in the middle in which the one who was conducting the Black Mass would stand for safety. They went through the book, almost page by page, with me, and were quite pleased. They actually lent me the book to use since they said it had much “conjuring power” itself. In addition I bought a large black candle, about four inches wide and four inches high that smelled of cannabis and honey, and a smaller “dab stick,” like a narrow, short piece of tallow that was to be heated up and then dabbed on one’s forehead, shoulders, and chest in a backwards sign of the cross. They told me any good Catholic cross would be sufficient.

          While I was at the bookstore, another woman, who was probably in her mid-20s, came over to me and struck up a conversation. She was perhaps six feet tall with long black hair and very pale skin, and wearing a long black cotton shift. Her name was Cassandra. I should not reveal her last name. She asked me if I wanted to come with her to her house so that she could throw the I Ching for me. I had no idea what she was talking about but she was pretty so I went with her in her car. She lived in a large “house” which had been built among the warehouses on the docks of Charleston. The building was very old and ornate and large and dark. She told me that these warehouses had been in her family, who had been shippers, for hundreds of years. They had been among the original Puritans and that one of her ancestors has been hung as a witch in Salem. She showed me a room full of Puritan furniture, books, scrolls, kitchenware, pans, utensils, tools, children’s toys, as well as public notices. Then she threw I Ching coins and read me “my future,” which indicated that I would choose not to kill my fellow man and might go to prison for doing so. Again, I had no idea what she was talking about, though five years later I would argue my case to be a Conscientious Objector rather than going to Vietnam and partake in the killing there and be willing to go prison for my beliefs, which prevailed.

          My dorm room, on the second floor, had a linoleum floor and cinderblock walls, with a bed on either side of the room, and a built-in dresser and desk at the foot of the bed. Outside the window was a floodlight that shown brightly into the room, even when the pastel green curtains were closed. For some reason, I ended up chalking the pentacle on the floor in front of my roommate’s dresser, while my roommate and two friends sat on my bed across the room, maybe five feet away from me. It was dark and late in the evening. The dorm was quiet. I had drawn the pentacle very carefully on the floor and the instruction was to stay inside the circle within the pentacle so as not to be harmed or even be taken by the demon. On the top of the dresser, which was over four feet tall, I placed the leather-bound book, the black candle, and a four-inch cross which was upside-down, up against the shaded lamp, which was not on. Light was provided by the candle and more so by the streetlight outside the window. I stepped into the circle, lit the candle, which had an oily, sweet, marijuana, smoky smell. I began reading the Black Mass in Latin, which I could read and somewhat understood, having taken it for four years in high school and now at college, turning each page carefully. I read for perhaps fifteen minutes and noticed that the room was getting quite smoky and dark. The candle was burning bright enough for me to read but the room had become an inky black and I couldn’t see anything else, including my friends sitting on the bed.

          Suddenly, I heard what sounded like body punches and groans. It sounded as if my friends were being physically attacked. I heard them trying to get up to run out of the room. I panicked and stepped out of the circle. At that moment I saw a hideous face just six inches in front of my face. It was a demon. Its face was like a very muscular hairless black cat with bat ears, sharp features, and firey red eyes. Its mouth was small and open with no teeth but an immense tongue. The face was there for only a second, after which it moved away from me, and I literally saw a small black fist come at my face in an instant and hit me so hard in the jaw and cheek that the room spun and I lost consciousness. I don’t know how long I was on the floor knocked-out but when I awoke, the room was clear, my friends had turned the overhead light on and were coming over to me. They had been punched in their faces, which were swollen and with red marks. My right cheek and jaw were swollen and painful. When I went to the ER later that night, I was told that my jawbone had been splintered a bit but would be ok. My friends hadn’t seen anything come at them; they said it was as if they were attacked by an invisible force. The candle had burned all the way to the bottom of the wick, but the book had vanished! There was nowhere it could have fallen to since everything was built-in to the wall; it was simply gone. My friends were so freaked out that they never even talked about what happened after that night. None of us believed in demons.

THE ODDITY OF BEING IN THE FLESH

In due time, after a life, we leave our bodies, generally as old flesh rag dolls, and weep our hearts out for the “loss of our loved ones” that has just occurred. None of this is “absurd” in itself; it just all happens as it happens. It is “real” in its own way but only that. The great problem and absurdity is that WE THINK IT IS REAL. We do exist, yes, but WE THINK THAT THIS HERE AND NOW IS ALL THAT THERE IS; we fail to see the obvious: the flesh puppets are only real until they are not, which is a very short matter in the scheme of it all. I am always aware of this and, while not always, have been rather aware of it my whole life, especially since I had what might be called an “out of body experience” when I was very sick at the age of seven, and then I saw my dead grandfather’s body when I was ten. That really cemented it for me; I knew that this was some kind of passing fancy. It wasn’t something I even had to remember because it was just so obvious to me. I even saw people as somehow already deceased—not in a morbid or fearful way but simply as how it is. I suppose this created a kind of detachment and a dissociation to a certain extent within me, but even a detachment from myself as though I were not quite real and surely quite temporal in existence. Though I was raised and educated in Roman Catholicism, I never quite believed that Heaven or Hell would follow an existence, especially, at age seven, after “meeting” and getting to know the ghost of the suicide who “lived” in my bedroom, the same place he killed himself prior to my moving there. I was quite aware of what might be called “after death dimensions” of existence, but at the time really had no concept of reincarnation, though this was to come to me rather strongly in my teenage years, especially after I joined the Rosicrucians (AMORC) at age 16 and then had my first bona fide past life experience at age 21, though it had also been clearly presented to me, when I was 19, by a person whom I met and am still friends with who knew me from a past life of 250 years ago.

          I have held numerous beliefs regarding reincarnation throughout my life but it was the actually experiences of past lives, some of which were independently corroborated and some of which could be placed in specific historical date, time, and place. In a certain sense, such past lives could be “proven” but such experiences are not about that; they are simply to be recognized rather than dwelled upon. One must live as who one is now, even in the obvious knowledge that it is most temporary and that over-identification with one’s self put one at an obvious disadvantage when it is time to move on.

          Being in the flesh on the third planet from the sun amazes me just about every single day. It is beautiful here and there is also the literal pain as the body deteriorates, as well as the emotional and mental pain. Of course there is obvious joy as well. I agree with Gibran that only those “who cry all of their tears and laugh all of their laughter” truly live, to paraphrase. The closer one is to the transitory nature of existence, including death itself, the closer one is to life itself. But, as I already said, we must, for our own sakes and sanity, not believe too much of what we think we are. Life is sacred, yes, and it passes to other states of being before we know it. Therefore it is best that we know ourselves, which is to say, what all “this” is.

THE DUALISM OF WESTERN THOUGHT FINDS SOLUTION IN THE UNITY OF EASTERN THOUGHT

Having read both Mircea Eliade and Michael Novak, the first a mytho-philosopher who taught in the History of Religion Department at the University of Chicago, and the second a renowned Christian philosopher, in The Myth of the Eternal Return or Cosmos and History, and Belief and Unbelief, I find that I see a gap in their lack of understanding of Buddhist thought and the “middle way.” For they both, though most articulate and with a great expanse of knowledge and understanding, are limited by mindset and dualistic belief. Eliade presents a human condition in which one is either “sacred or profane,” locked into either an “archaic cosmological (sacred)” or a “modern historical (profane)” system of belief and existence. Novak claims that one “chooses” belief in God or not, which, in my estimation, rather, is an “evolving awareness” than any kind of decisive choice.

           Eliade’s contrasts the archaic/cosmological/cyclical (circular)/spiritual man with the modern/historical/linear/scientific man. From the Western dualistic perspective, his conclusions are dramatic and fascinating. Similar to Novak, Eliade’s spirit versus matter, belief in God versus unbelief in God present a diametrical opposition, the option of either-or; the twain cannot meet. Eliade is compelling and concludes that the only obvious choice is that of archaic man: belief in God, specifically the Christian God. Throughout his book, he seems to objectively present the arguments of both sides, even as Novak presents those of the believer versus the non-believer, be he atheist or agnostic.

          Both Eliade and Novak both perceive only from the Western (Judeo-Christian) dualistic mind. They both fail to present the “middle way” of Buddhism which reveals a mind-body unity rather than opposition or at least a co-existence between spirit and matter with an avoidance of extremes, be they physical or spiritual. The body has its place, its realm, as does the mind/spirit/soul. Eliade does include Buddhism in his discussion but essentially dismisses it as leading to “negativism.” This is an oversimplification which, in itself, is only a part of the equation of being as presented in Buddhism (though there are many different Buddhist sects and perspectives) and is accordingly inaccurate.

          I adhere to the notion of the Middle Way. Its primary principle is that through practice of Buddhist meditation one comes to see and understand the transitory and temporary nature of the flesh and the material world, and, consequently, is no longer so utterly occupied and directed by it in one’s actions and being. With such an understanding, one realizes that one cannot abandon one’s survival in the body and the world as long as one exists in it and of it. But one is no longer in bondage to the flesh or the world, which is to say that the body is recognized in itself and as itself, that is, with its appetites. One naturally adopts and adapts a moderation in both the physical and the spiritual process of living. Such is the logic of the Middle Way as I see it—and it remains easier said than done. I have been practicing zazen for forty-five years and I can see that this kind of mind-body co-existence with the extremes of over-indulgence or self-mortification is a possible synthesis of human life.

          There is much more to be said about this topic and I hope to approach it more in the future.