Five Years Old, New Delhi, India: An afternoon with hailstones big as marbles. Myself, excited about going to the circus. Circus cancelled. I lived in New Delhi, I had never seen hailstones before. I ran to the front stoop and watched them fall on the grass. Then the sun came out and they gleamed in the sunlight. I crept up to the grass and picked one up. Holding it gingerly in my hand I crunched on the hailstone, totally absorbed in the act, as children are. At that moment, an expansive mature awareness washed over me, (still imprinted in me today by the crunch of ice in my mouth)——I was aware that I was God in a body, and that I was born to forget this. That was the covenant I had with my soul. I would forget by the age of 7, and then life would afford me opportunities to remember. And if I didn’t remember all my life and died in ignorance it was okay because I would have another chance, and another. As many as I wanted. Until I got tired of the game and decided to wake up.
Fourteen Years Old, Mumbai, India I am walking home from school. Pelting warm rain. Soaking wet. I’m walking down a concrete hill, gazing idly at the 20 ft. stone wall to my left. There’s a crack in the wall. I trace it’s course. Then suddenly, without reason, I begin running, full-tilt down the hill. I hear a thunderous sound behind me. Trembling, I turn around and see that the entire wall has collapsed in the exact spot where I had been. I have been pushed by an unseen hand. My life preserved for reasons I can’t see.
Thirty Three Years Old, Taos NM, USA Waves of ecstatic blue-electric energy coursing through my veins, without any substance at all. Just the elation of having completed a firewalk, plus three days of new metaphysical knowledge and 4 am Theta Meditations. The ecstatic state lasts for three weeks even after I return home. Then it leaves and I fall into a void, a depression. I work hard to reclaim it, and years later when I do MDMA for the first time, I say: “I know this state. It is our birthright, but we have to claim it and purify to contain it.”
Age Thirty eight, Sedona, Arizona: I am doing a journey with Ayahuasca and mushroom tea with a dozen other people. The brew is mild, everyone says, not very potent. But God comes forth in me anyway. I am sitting with my eyes closed waiting for the journey to begin, and I say fervently: “I want my life to be a living prayer.” Minutes later, I begin to tremble like a leaf in the wind. Even my teeth are chattering. I shake for a long time. Then I feel a surge of energy begin to pool at my groin, both hot and cold at the same time. The energy begins to ascend up my spine. As this happens I ‘see’ in my inner vision, the geometric petals and colors of the charkas opening up, and pulsating. The colors are vivid. And this is not the kind of seeing where I am ‘looking at’ something on the screen of my mind. I am inside the thing being seen, there is no subject and object, it defys the laws of physics. As each chakra opens fully, the channels become clear for the energy to ascend. Finally it reaches my head, and the thousand petalled lotus opens, in humble majesty. The central channel of my spine is like a hollow tube, with a soft wind whistling through it. On either side are two channels, one hot, one cold. In Sanskrit they are called the Ida and the Pingala. I am at the center of all this movement, perfectly calm, tranquil, in love.
For many hours I experience this opening that is happening in my body. Then it’s done, and I spend the rest of the night understanding balance and imbalance in my body, and how it manifests in my life. I spend the next few weeks after this experience writing ecstatic poetry, waking at 3 am in the morning with words spilling rapture onto the page, images burning like jewels in my inner vision, God filling me with rapture.
