Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[American Dream]

Excerpted from:

THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN: LIFE WITH JOHN STEINBECK

Chapter 4: The Wild Tibetan

Nancy

I met John in Boulder, Colorado, during the summer of 1975. I had been living a chop-wood-carry-water existence for the past seven years with my husband, Paul Harper, in the wilderness of British Columbia. We had left San Francisco and moved to the back of beyond to insure that our acid trips would be totally undisturbed. We lived on a commune while raising our two children, Megan, age six, and Michael, age three, and a seven-year-old indigenous foster child who had fetal alcohol syndrome.

As a native San Franciscan, I had shunned the Haight-Ashbury ritual of dropping acid around hordes of people. Paul and I longed for nights of endless LSD communion with the Tao, the Source, and the assurance that there would be no intruders to bring us down. So we lived two miles from either neighbor, which meant long treks during the winter when the logging roads weren’t plowed. Snowed in for weeks at a time, we had all the comforts that didn’t require electricity or running water. Stacks of firewood and spiritual books. Horses, goats, kerosene lanterns, and a propane stove. A battery-operated phonograph to play Traffic, the Doors, Dylan. A community of friends who lacked boundaries and sensibilities, but shared equally fried senses of reality along with the responsibilities of children, gardens, and animals. Unlike the media’s caricature of the freewheeling hippie, we were on a rigorous spiritual quest that called for the destruction of our egos by severing all attachments. That meant letting friends borrow chain saws, vehicles, husbands, and wives. Often they would return broken,d effective, unwilling to work again. Sometimes you had to go looking for them. Have you seen my drill bit? Did my wife sleep here last night?

I was the daughter of two award-winning San Francisco journalists. A musical prodigy from the age of six, when an IQ test explained the boredom I was experiencing, I skipped the second grade. At the age of thirteen, after refusing the opportunity to become a concert pianist (I had discovered boys), I made weekend pilgrimages to North Beach with my friends. We hung out at City Lights Bookstore, rapping with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and hoping to catch a glimpse of Allen Ginsberg or Jack Kerouac. Having received the finest public education possible at Lowell High, which is still among the top ten in the country, I was steeped in literature and the arts. I was going to be a writer.

In high school, nuns in the street would cross themselves when they caught sight of our black leotards and leather sandals. Flabbergasted, the jocks and social queens didn’t know what to do with us. All they could come up with were unimaginative whispers of “whores.” They were so unhip, we’d just roll our eyes. The school administrators sarcastically called us “The Lowell Intelligentsia” in the same way the Cultural Elite is sneered at today. Despite the bravado over Lowell’s reputation, our academic rebellion threatened the administration. We rejected pep rallies and football games; we wanted to study poetry, art, and music. The girls’ dean declared it illegal to wear the handmade sandals we bought in North Beach, feigning concern lest we get our toes stuck in a door. So we’d don tennis shoes to walk the halls, and wear the sandals in class. If we dressed too outrageously in handmade tunics, they sent us home, claiming we looked pregnant. Confident we were part of an epic in the making, we survived humiliation by sticking together.

Only one teacher, Maurice Englander, really understood us. He quietly approved of our plumage and offered his classroom as a safe haven during sports rallies and lunch periods to study poetry and classical music, thereby escaping the ubiquitous ridicule that echoed through the halls. Later, when the rednecks came to town wearing dashikis and love beads, looking to get laid, we resented the price we’d paid in bloody tears for those fashion statements.

At San Francisco State during my freshman year, we met other baby beatniks and gave birth to the hippies. My kids teased me about that. “How can you invent the hippies?”

“Someone had to and besides, I read it I Rolling Stone. Ben Fong-Torres said the first hippies used to gather at a table in the Commons at State.” Kids think if it’s in Rolling Stone, it’s etched in stone. We were a bunch of rebellious, angst-filled teenagers, absorbing Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and On the Road, along with the incredible magic that backlit San Francisco in the early sixties. Distilling the creative fervor of the Beat Generation with our Boomer adolescent laziness, we created a societal sea change. I was there for that, for the drugs and the psychedelic music, the Charlatans, Janis Joplin, and the Jefferson Airplane. In 1964 I transferred to Berkeley just in time for the Free Speech Movement, majoring in philosophy.

I met Paul Harper at the San Francisco Juvenile Hall, where we worked with hard-core delinquents. Disgusted with the Haight-Ashbury pond scum that surfaced after the Hell’s Angels grisly debacle at Altamont, we were wary of the counterculture’s assimilation. Visions of love and light were disintegrating into drug overdoses and runaway tragedies. We fled the city and spent a year living in an abandoned cabin on a mining claim two miles up a dirt road from Callahan, a tiny lumber town near Mt. Shasta in Northern California, where Paul spent his childhood. That taste of country living sparked a yearning for unspoiled wilderness. The following spring, in a 1942 Ford truck loaded to the hilt, we immigrated to British Columbia. “You look like something out of The Grapes of Wrath,” my mother said prophetically.

For the next year years, we built our own houses and tended horses, goats, chickens, and gardens. When a social worker for the Canadian government came knocking on our door because she’s heard we had worked with problem children, we didn’t have the heart to refuse her request to take in an indigenous foster child. Andy Johnson was a crippled, brain-damaged four-year-old who was barely toilet trained. He had a sweet temperament and a certain magical detachment from the phenomenal world that made him irresistible.

Embracing voluntary poverty, without electricity or running water, we started a commune and wrote our own rules. Rumors about us practicing black magic began to circulate in the Kootenay Valley where we’d settled, spread by jealous husbands and wives who’d lost their spouses to the mystique of our merry band. It was a period of great pain and growth, laced with wild spiritual insights and abject ignorance. We prided ourselves on being so far removed from the agonies of the real world that we didn’t pay any attention to the Vietnam War, Watergate, or the moon landing, which we were convinced was a hoax.

Eventually, my smug complacency started to erode. I realized our rigid sanctions against mediocrity had us on the same treadmill as the bourgeois life we shunned. We were as attached to our trips, our tools and plumage, as a herd of male peacocks, or a gaggle of Junior Leaguers. My mother send me Meditation in Action, written by a young Tibetan lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who had come to the States to teach Buddhism during the early seventies. The book resonated deeply in my soul. Increasingly miserable in my abusive marriage to Paul, I decided to spend a summer studying meditation with Rinpoche I Boulder, Colorado.

One of the greatest benefits of communal living was that parents could leave their children in the care of extended family. Our foster child had recently been removed from our home by the Canadian government when they passed a law that indigenous foster children had to live with indigenous families. While I was sorry to say good-bye to Andy, who had spent four years with us, I was tired of merely surviving on the land and desperately craved a new life. After seven years of austerity, although I was still passionately attached to the natural beauty of our four hundred acres, my city-girl nature was starved for more intellectual stimulation than radio and the daily mail run.

Inspired since my beatnik days by the mystical yearnings of Rimbaud, Lao Tsu, and Meister Eckhart, I intensified my spiritual crusade to find eternal truth and wisdom. As if answering a call, every child of that lineage, all the hip quester heroes traveled to Boulder that magical summer of 1975. They came to study with the young Tibetan Rinpoche at his newly founded Buddhist university, the Naropa Institute. Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso were there, as well as William Burroughs, Michael McClure, Kate Millet, and Baba Ram Das. It felt like the most happening thing since the birth of the hippies, a spiritual Woodstock. We hadn’t felt such palpable magic since the early sixties. We were relieved to find we hadn’t lost it.

A magnetic aura surrounded Rinpoche (a Tibetan honorific meaning “precious one” and pronounced RIM-po-chay). Infamously wild, in his mid-thirties, and wearing Saville Row suits, he smoked Raleighs, drank whiskey, ate red meat, and sampled the entire panoply of hippie pharmaceuticals. He’d had a son by a Tibetan nun and had run off with his blonde British wife when she was sixteen. As a holder of the exotic Crazy Wisdom lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, his outrageous behavior was traditionally viewed as teaching. His renegade flamboyance appealed to the artists, poets, and musicians who flocked around him.

Finally, we felt, here was someone who wasn’t trying to temper our passions, while proclaiming the possibility of enlightenment in one lifetime. Every other Eastern guru had admonished us to curb our intensity and deny our appetites in order to achieve detachment. I understood how attachment causes pain. If you encounter a dead dog on the road, you might feel a pang, but nothing like if it’s actually your dog. Nevertheless, I could never get behind the command simply to cut desire. Rinpoche’s method was to go into the depth of passion to wear out the samsaric impulses. Samsara is Sanskrit for the endless wheel of death and rebirth, the treadmill to which we slavishly return in our ignorance. It is the opposite of enlightenment. We liked his message. It gave us some more time to dally in the eternal youth zone that hallmarked our generation.

We had no inkling that his method would be so mutually painful. Disillusioned by the unhappy stasis of our parent’s lives, we were inspired to chart our course far from their moral guidelines. Years later, when Rinpoche’s behavior turned criminally insane and too abusive to raise our children under the umbrella of his trappings, some of us would come full circle and embrace the sanity of our roots with tremendous relief. By then, we were educated about the marks of a cult leader. By then, the traditional values of our childhood looked like an oasis of lucid simplicity. When I consider the extraordinary journey of this gifted man, who ended his life as a tragic alcoholic, I ultimately freeze in a morass of ambivalence. Men like Rinpoche and Johnny take you on their roller coaster, soaring from passion’s heights to the depths of degradation. It’s all a matter of being a spiritual gun moll, game enough to go along for the ride.

It was precisely this license to befriend our emotions that drew John to Rinpoche in 1971. He was living in Greenwich Village with the mother of his two-year-old daughter, Blake, whom he refused to marry. After a particularly ugly fight, he attended a talk by Rinpoche. Johnny lingered in the room long after the crowd left. Rinpoche4 was speaking with a few other students and finally turned to John, who blurted out, “Sir, I have a lot of aggression and anger that I cannot subdue.” Expecting the usual rap about conquering passions with meditation and developing a peaceful state of mind, Rinpoche’s reply startled him.

“You have a lot of anger? That is fantastic! Don’t try to get rid of it. Express it, make friends with it. That is the only way to tame your emotions.” John had been playing with Transcendental Meditation, a technique that attempts to suppress negativity. The problem with that is, where does it go? His friends were flocking to Spain with the Beatles and actress Mia Farrow. They had been admonishing John to control his drunken outbursts with TM and were less than charmed by Rinpoche’s tolerance of John’s anger. After all, he was supposed to be settling down now that he was a father.

Unfortunately, he flared with defensive rage at the suggestion that his emotions needed to be curbed. It takes maturity to harness the volcano that erupts from the soul of a true artist. Thanks to the alcoholic adults in his life, John’s emotional growth had been arrested during his childhood. For temperaments like ours, Rinpoche’s technique worked better than TM’s amputation of desires. He urged us to explore our dark sides. By illuminating the shadows, confusion would dawn as wisdom. He warned us it was not a path for the fainthearted. To a standup guy like John, this was a challenge he could not resist.

Rinpoche’s patience touched him deeply. That meeting was the breaking point of Johnny’s old relationships. A wedge was driven between those who favored the Maharishi’s blessed-out state and the Tibetaqn’s barbaric technique of exhausting negativity. “Don’t try to escape your emotions,” he taught. “Wear them out like an old shoe.” Later, when he wasn’t allowed contact with Blake due to his drinking, John would claim “Indians stole my daughter.”

We learned basic Buddhism that summer, starting with the Four Noble Truths. “The essential fabric of life is suffering,” Rinpoche claimed in a lecture that summer. “There is an element of pain in everything. You cannot even begin to experience the notion of freedom until you acknowledge this background of suffering. It comes from nowhere, yet it’s everywhere, because we want so much to like everything and be happy. We think that is our birthright. Suffering only ceases when we reach the realization that pain and pleasure are one. This one taste, with no duality, comes from the discipline of sitting meditation. Enlightenment lies beyond good and bad, past bewilderment and sorrow. It’s different from happiness. The important thing is to connect with the pain, instead of increasing speed and aggression to get away from it, as you do in Western society. Only then can one attain equanimity.”

We learned about the Buddha’s teachings on the Three Marks of Existence. If suffering is the first Mark, it is followed by the constant presence of impermanence, the second Mark. It takes a fundamental act of bravery to admit this but we really do conduct our lives on very shaky ground. Nothing is intrinsically solid. Chaos and strife, little hypocrisies, never disappear. The problem lies in learning to live with ourselves. Uncertainties and fickleness plague us relentlessly. All that is left is the continuity of discontinuity. And within that lies the egoless state, the third Mark, able to function without solidification or credentials.

Rinpoche proclaimed that learning at Naropa would be based upon a student’s experience and state of mind rather than memorization and regurgitation. As veterans of top universities and a variety of acid trips, this was welcomed. Traditional schooling frustrated us, and now Rinpoche, who was supposedly enlightened, confirmed our attitudes as no one else had.

Despite the superstars, Ripoche insisted there was nothing special about Naropa. Through the process of slowing down, practicing our sitting meditation, and feeling the haunting quality of impermanence, we would develop a new way of looking at things. Newer than acid, with none of the psychedelic fallout? We were ready for that! Many of us were parents with young children and although we were still into peak experiences, we were looking for a little less excitement. All-night acid trips lose their appeal when crying babies wake you early in the morning.

Rinpoche held up a fresh mirror, a way to get to know ourselves. His meditation technique, taught by the Buddha, was simply to sit quietly, follow the breath and notice how thoughts arise and fade. He gave us a magnifying glass to look at all the hidden crannies we rushed to ignore. We were encouraged to slow down and make friends with the process of our thoughts. There was no promise of a magical mystery tour. He scoffed at the aggressive search for religious highs. During his nightly lectures, he would challenge us in an impeccable Oxford accent: “When your mind stops revving, you might feel like a grain of sand in the Gobi desert, majestic and simple. At that point, you can cultivate a sense of precision. Your mind will click into how to deal with the situation at hand with little confusion.” For the refugees from Leave-It-to-Beaver-land, we fervently aspired to meet his challenge. Having watched our parents suffocate in their attempts to avoid suffering, we craved the heroic state of victory over ego-driven futility. Rinpoche’s brand of enlightenment had a gutsy quality that blended well with our increasingly grim view of the world. In that post-Kennedy assassination era, we were realizing our generation wasn’t going to change much of anything. The notion of individual salvation was extremely inviting.

When Rinpoche told us to view the entire phenomenal world as our friend, he appealed to our vestigial love-generation taproot. By transplanting this radically new outlook into our hearts, we could generate compassion, wakefulness, and the ability to be gentle. Bodhicitta, the essence of the Buddha, was the fruition of an awakened heart, arising from the confusion of pain and aggression. Enter Bodhisattva, that enigmatic term we’d learned from Kerouac, who wrote of mystical saints dwelling in an eternal present, with a Christlike compassion for all beings. We were offered Bodhisattva vows, a commitment to an endless cycle of rebirths, until the last sentient being in the universe is enlightened. As Rinpoche described the qualities of a Bodhisattva, the openness and clarity, the spontaneity and tenderness, we felt like we’d come home.

And then Rinpoche delivered the final coup. History had confined our literary heroes to the Mahayana, or Middle Way of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Buddhism. Rinpoche was the most brilliant pioneer of that passage. He transmitted the highest teachings of Tantric Vajrayana Buddhism in a language we could understand. Previously held secret behind the fortress of snow mountains surrounding Tibet, these teachings were considered dangerous if not transmitted by a Tantric Master, a guru who works directly with the student. Vajrayana practice requires the personal experience of initiation and empowerment directly from a teacher who provides an oral transmission of the teachings, the dharma, along with secret mantras and ritual practice.

Rinpoche carefully studied his Western students, their particular hang-ups, their attractions and addictions. Unfortunately, that study eventually caught him in his own wringer. Twelve years later, he would die of one of the worst cases of acute alcoholism and drug addiction I had ever seen. And I knew, because by that time I was working in a silk-sheet rehab center in La Jolla, California, and John was lying in some gutter in the Los Angeles Asian ghetto, having succumbed to his inability and unwillingness to curb his instincts. As they say in AA, it took what it took. Rinpoche’s drinking himself to death served to wake John up to his own hell-bent; shortly after that he got sober for good. So who’s to say who was wrong and what really worked? Rinpoche emanated from a lineage called the Crazy Wisdom gurus, commonly misunderstood by the Western mind. In this tradition, the teacher imparts his lessons through outrageous actions. Later, when John and I lived in Kathmandu, Tibetans would tell us in hushed tones how fortunate we were to have Rinpoche as a teacher. “Oh, he very enlightened being. He drink a lot, right? You no worry about that. All Trungpas drank.”

Rinpoche was the eleventh incarnation in the succession of Trungpas. However, the others had lived within the confines of Tibetan monasticism. In America, Rinpoche was on his own, in a jungle of Western temptations that the others had never encountered. Years later, in 1989, our friend the Dalai Lama told us privately that he would never trust a guru who claimed, as Rinpoche had, that he could turn alcohol into an elixir. “Changing religions is very difficult,” he said. “I do not advocate converting from Judeo-Christian traditions to Tibetan Buddhism. It is very difficult to understand a religion that is not of one’s cultural heritage. One must examine the teacher with the utmost scrutiny. There are many charlatans.”

In the early days, Rinpoche mirrored our wild ways. As we matured, he lost his hold over us. Eventually John and I voiced strong moral objections about the irresponsibility of Rinpoche’s teachings. The story of that harrowing journey contains grave admonitions about the methods and madness of certain Tibetan lamas. Now that Tibetan Buddhism has become chic, the hottest new religion, I have concerns about how these gurus come without operating instructions. Far removed from papal constraints, their freewheeling style usually results in severe abuses of power and sexuality.

I still don’t have a clear answer to the paradox of Rinpoche’s life and death. Sometimes I think he was just a garden-variety addict who died of his disease. Did he purposely drink himself to death so that we would quit depending on him? Did we kill him with our greed and manipulation as we clamored to be near him? The Tibetan party line is that the guru takes on the diseases of his students, and most of us were full-fledged addicts when we met him. There was a depth to the experienced I had with Rinpoche, similar to the chaos I went through with John, which taught me that sometimes the only answer is a silent dwelling in the grey area beyond right and wrong. Nothing is either black or white. It just is. And that does not excuse anything.

In the end, the final proclamation of a guru’s worth can be found in his students. Those who remain loyal to Rinpoche’s vision display the pathetic lack of identity found in every cult. They are unhappy pod people who toast his posthumous brilliance with pretentious, self-aggrandizing platitudes. Denying his abuse of power and his rampant addictions (a $40,000-a-year cocaine habit, along with a penchant for Seconal and gallons of sake), they exhibit symptoms of untreated codependents. In order to restore our sanity, John and I had to distance ourselves physically and emotionally. In that heartbreaking process, we were forced to acknowledge those qualities in us that were attracted to the cult of Rinpoche’s personality in the first place. Yet Rinpoche’s definition of a spiritual warrior is one who knows himself. And so, the fruition of our path was also the point.

[American Dream]

Excerpted from:

THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN: LIFE WITH JOHN STEINBECK

http://www.american-buddha.com/cult.othersideeden.htm

26. Close Encounters

NANCY


People still ask me how I managed to stay in the relationship. In those early years, despite John's mood swings and heavy drinking, we clung to the sweetness we saw in each other. Our survival-mode living skills dovetailed beautifully. We had both grown up in a war zone, so we were addicted to a constant crisis and drama. As children, when insanity screamed from the rafters, no one was allowed to speak about it. We learned not to trust or even feel emotions. However, as is typical in recovery, those childhood safeguards eventually stopped working. The strength of our emotions was so powerful that we were forced to deal with feelings directly, instead of using the habitual defense of stuffing them.

As our relationship deepened, we dredged up the unimaginable and unmentionable from each other's psyches. Our psychic Roto-Rooting turned our safe haven into the trench warfare of our childhoods. In his search for recognition at any price, John had become a master manipulator. Abandoned by our parents as they chased after their own narcissistic reflections, we both had self-esteem issues, which resulted in the deleterious practice of people pleasing. Since neither of us knew how to communicate discomfort without anger, our fights became more frequent. And then, strangely, in the midst of our mutual napalm, we could drop the rage enough to give comfort, to search for meaning and hope. We never gave up on each other.

Later, when I became personally familiar with the private lives of my existential heroes, Kerouac, Cassady, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, I learned those guys had grappled with the same painful issues. For many years I have corresponded with beat icon Neal Cassady's widow, Carolyn, who was also Kerouac's longtime lover. She is one of the few women I've known who can truly understand my journey with John. Once Carolyn told me:

"People, especially feminists, ask me constantly why I didn't dump Neal. The circumstances he provided me were tailor-made, exactly what I needed to jolt me out of attitudes blocking my growth. Suffering is necessary in order to change. I pity those who aren't strong enough or too blind to have known such men as Neal, John, and Jack."

Psychiatrist R. D. Laing's widow, Marguerite, has also given me enormous solace about that chaotic period. Ronnie was a consummate alcoholic, yet Marguerite stayed with him because every other man paled in comparison, drunk or sober. She knows the magnetism of a man who reveals the full sweep of human emotions, from drooling drunkard to a brilliant, creative cult hero. We've spent hours talking about what it's like to live out the myth of Beauty and the Beast, as Ronald Colman morphs into Quasimodo.

William Burroughs watched his son die of a failed liver transplant in his twenties because he couldn't stop drinking and wore out the new organ. Born to a drug-addicted mother, Billy emerged from the womb craving a fix. Although William wrote with a tough veneer, the death devastated him. Watching a loved one possessed by the demons of addiction is heartbreaking.

Allen Ginsberg struggled to detach from his lifelong lover, Peter Orlovsky, when he drank. "We made a vow to enter Heaven together," Allen said. "It's hard to break that vow."

The radical feminists and recovery police would prefer us to toss guys like Ronnie, Neal, Jack, and John aside. They would chastise Carolyn, Marguerite, and me for our weakness and lack of self-esteem. But it's never that black and white when you love an addict, especially when you stop pointing the finger at their transgressions and look at your own character defects.

Robin Norwood, who wrote the codependency gospel, Women Who Love Too Much, is a pioneer in understanding the nuances of tempestuous relationships. In her subsequent book, Why? she explores the link between childhood wounds and an inclination to attract certain events and people into our lives. To toss John's problems out like yesterday's garbage would only have meant I would have attracted another difficult relationship. In order to clean up the mess in my own psyche, I had to develop stronger boundaries to keep from getting sucked into John's maelstrom. That cannot be done in a vacuum; I need to practice in a relationship.

Norwood goes so far as to question whether the prevention of addiction is even desirable. She claims that although the stakes are high and the price one pays for failure can be immeasurable, addiction can create a pressure which results in personal transformation. I am grateful that there are some veterans of the recovery movement who have emerged with such outrageous insight. I rode astride the razor's edge with John, and although we placed our bets on victory, the odds were on insanity or death, mine or his. As a result, I learned about the true nature of unconditional love. There is a bond so profound that it can surpass the ravages of child abuse, a garbage pail of addictions, and finally, even death. Nine years later, when John embraced sobriety wholeheartedly, he made his amends to me. "My drinking must have taken years off your life. Can you ever forgive me?"

[American Dream]

The growing volkisch movement began an active battle against the Jews, the defilers of their blood, reinforced by a pseudo-scholarly writer [Arthur de Gobineau] who satisfied their desire for academic respectability. Rightist Pan-German groups also bolstered their ideology by citing the dubious philosophical, historical, and scientific analyses laid out by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman in love with German culture. He told a mass society, at the mercy of the impersonal forces which were crushing it, that the Teutons were indomitable master builders, that in mysticism was freedom, that "every Mystic is, whether he will or not, a born Anti-Semite," and that Darwin's theory of natural selection justifies the stricture against mingling of the races. Even before Chamberlain, volkisch thinkers had tried to weave together lessons from history proving the heroism of the ancient Germanic past. Many of them were admirers of the Theosophical Society, which combined for the first time certain elements into a cohesive system considered by some people to be the beginning of modern occultism. The Theosophical Society was organized in New York City in 1875 by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a Russian expatriate countess known to her disciples as H. P. B. At age forty she decided to come to New York to investigate spiritualism, which had become an American craze. She delivered up an unlikely package of Hinduism, Gnosticism, and pseudoscience which had a tremendous impact on the intelligentsia of the West. She even converted the Indians themselves to the "ancient wisdom" in modern dress. Her ideas, about ancient lost races with secret knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality, the immortal soul perfecting itself through endless rebirths, and mastery of superhuman powers which could unlock the secrets of the universe, if they had been presented by traditional organized religions, would not have been credited. But people were perfectly willing to suspend disbelief of a huge Russian countess with magnetic eyes who smoked cigars and used bawdy language.

-- Gods & Beasts -- The Nazis & the Occult, by Dusty Sklar

[Hammer of Los]

...

I've just checked my voluminous shelves full of tomes of philosophy, both occidental and oriental.

I thought I had one, you know!

Here it is, "Illusion's Game", by that rascal Chogyam Trungpa!

It was only £3.99. I thought it sounded interesting.

However, upon reading it, I found it the most unengaging, obtuse, often even quite silly, teaching.

Not at all like the authentic theravada canon, the Dhammapada.

That was my favourite text, together with the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu.

Along with a zillion other influences of course.

About Helena Blavatsky, who was a humanitarian and a lively and original thinker;

She delivered up an unlikely package of Hinduism, Gnosticism, and pseudoscience which had a tremendous impact on the intelligentsia of the West. She even converted the Indians themselves to the "ancient wisdom" in modern dress. Her ideas, about ancient lost races with secret knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality, the immortal soul perfecting itself through endless rebirths, and mastery of superhuman powers which could unlock the secrets of the universe.

Unlikely to whom? Not to me. I rather like syntheses which reveal the perennial wisdom of the eternal Dao.

I believe the buddha had secret knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality, Lao Tzu as well, along with a host of others. Well maybe not the ultimate knowledge exactly, rather we should say the ultimate human knowledge. Or as close as they could get to it. I don't think anyone is perfect, but maybe some are just perfect enough.

I also rather like the idea of the immortal soul perfecting itself through endless rebirths.

The mastery of superhuman powers I'm a little unsure of, but I'm prepared to wait and see.

The jury is out on that one.

[undead]

This is an interesting informational film on Tantra and religious symbolism from the Thelema Press. Aleister Crowley certainly takes the cake for the first and probably most Tantra Deluded white person of all time. Did this thread touch on Crowley yet? This film is excellent, though. It has nothing to do with Thelema itself. One thing that I have noticed about Aleister Crowley, Ram Dass, and the Dalai Llama among others is that the disciples of less than perfect teachers can often do very positive things without perpetuating their teachers' negative traits. Or not perpetuating them that much, I guess. You tell me if it is helpful.

[undead]

The source of this article is a person involved in the Galactic Orgonomy Exchange, which is apparently a group of people trying to continue Wilhelm Reich's questionable "cloudbusting" research, or something. So portions on the efficacy of the various contraptions should be taken with a grain of salt. That he was imprisoned by the FDA and died in jail speaks more to his radical psychological work, as does his ejection from the Communist Party, and the parts about his interactions with the federal government of the USA are not at all far fetched considering the way things have gone since then. The FBI files on Reich are here.

Keep in mind that Einstein is on record about having vision-like revelations of the nature of light during childhood. He also turned out to be wrong about quantum physics, and invented a theory involving what he called "ether" to rationalize his rejection of quantum mechanics. This theory is roundly rejected by scientists today. Likewise, Isaac Newton's model of physics is accurate up to a point but turns out to be highly limited later on. Newton considered his work in mathematics and physics to be a a trifle compared to his alchemical work, which was largely unscientific vis a vis the modern scientific method. The point is that it is not uncommon for geniuses to loose the magic at some point and this does not necessarily discredit all of their insights.

The Wilhelm Reich Story (links in original)

by John-Michael Battaglia

Early twentieth century. A large, agricultural estate at the farthest outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, close to the Russian border. Precocious Willy Reich and his younger brother, Robert, enjoy a sheltered, isolated life as the beloved sons of a prosperous, domineering farmer and his beautiful, tender wife. Though Jewish, Reich's class-conscious father forbids his sons from playing with the Ukrainian-speaking peasant children or the Yiddish-speaking Jewish children of the people he supervises. Since language indicates status, the Reichs speak German. Lonely, Willy turns his attention to biology. Ever curious in natural science -especially in sexual matters- Willy leads his brother into the barn where they observe animals mating. Fascinated, Willy thinks it's wonderful; Robert feels disgusted. With equal curiosity, Willy spies on his mother copulating with his tutor throughout the course of their affair. Tormented over love for his mother and fear of his stern father, Willy informs his father of the affair. Using Willy as his witness, the jealous father confronts the mother with adultery. Ashamed and unable to tolerate the constant physical and emotional abuse from her unforgiving husband, Willy's mother commits suicide by taking poison. Wracked with grief and loneliness, Willy's father deliberately contracts pneumonia by fishing while standing in a pond in cold weather. His self-induced illness worsens into tuberculosis, and Willy's father dies, forcing sixteen year-old Willy to drop out of the Gymnasium to manage the estate. The insurance company declares the father's death a suicide and denies benefits to the boys, contributing to their economic hardship. The guilt-ridden young Willy assumes a heavy burden of responsibility for killing off both
his parents. In an attempt to atone for his betrayal, Willy resolves to understand how life works, to get to the truth about life itself.

World War One breaks out. There is fighting back and forth between the Austrian soldiers and the Russians. With the estate about to be overrun by Cossack soldiers, Willy and his brother are forced to flee for their lives. Cossacks on the hillsides shoot at their speeding horse-drawn carriage as they make their escape. Willy settles Robert in the home of relatives, and, though he has not yet completed his secondary school studies, he volunteers for the Austrian army. After some training, he is made a corporal in charge of a platoon of sixty men, most of whom are much older than he. Attracted at first to the romance and glory of war, Willy eventually comes to see it as an inhuman machine in service to a senseless purpose. After serving for four years at the front, the last as a lieutenant in charge of a battalion, he requests a furlough to continue his studies.

At the war's end, the collapse of the Austrian empire creates legal chaos. His native land annexed by Romania, all of Willy's lands and possessions are unrecoverable. Now twenty-one and concerned only with material survival, a pragmatic Wilhelm Reich enrolls as a law student at the University in Vienna, because it's the quickest way to make a good living. He soon realizes that
it's not for him, though, so he switches to medicine.

Penniless, Willy and his brother Robert share an unheated room with another medical student, often eating at the home of their hard-hearted and miserly uncle. But food is scarce, and they are treated like unwanted beggars, being given scraps only after their uncle's own children are fed. Since he cannot afford coal, Willy studies every day at a small cafe where an iron stove burns. For two years, Willy and his brother eat oatmeal with dried fruit, day in and day out. After Willy passes his examinations in physics, chemistry, and biology with top honors, he supports himself and his brother by tutoring other medical students. Though he is lonely and sex-starved, Willy resists the attempts by his relatives to marry him off to unattractive, rich, Jewish girls who are intellectually inferior. Instead, he pursues idealized relationships with several attractive medical student colleagues, who reject him for one reason or another, his lack of money being a main concern.

Although he is initially unimpressed with his first exposure to Freudian concepts and the peculiar, unnatural way sex is discussed in the student-run discussions on sex, Willy soon becomes the leader of the sexology seminar. His work in the seminar comes to the attention of Sigmund Freud, who invites him to a meeting. Willy is impressed with Freud's straightforwardness and naturalness; he becomes a devoted disciple. On the basis of a brilliant paper he delivers to Freud's Viennese Psychoanalytic Society, Willy is admitted to full membership while still an undergraduate, a rare honor. As part of his training, he analyzes patients with psychological problems. During the course of treating one pretty, well-built, eighteen-year-old patient (Annie Pink), Willy falls in love with her. Following the completion of her therapy, they court each other, timidly at first, then with unrestrained passion. Late one night, Annie's parents catch Willy and her making love in her room. They confront Willy and force him to marry her. Although they have no immediate plans to marry, the young lovers happily oblige. During the summer of 1922, they set up house in a rented apartment in Vienna, just as Willy graduates as a doctor of medicine.

Dr. Reich's rise in the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society is meteoric. While continuing to analyze patients, Reich regularly contributes several papers to its journal, one entitled "On the Energetics of Drives," which lays the foundation of a ubiquitous life energy and Reich's orgasm theory. Reich longs to be analyzed by Freud himself. Freud nearly makes an exception to his rule of not analyzing co-workers, due to the young analyst's brilliance, but ultimately he decides not to break this rule. Feeling rejected, Reich is shunted into analysis with one of the other clinicians. As a sign of his respect for Reich's talent and drive, Freud assigns Reich to a job as his first clinical assistant at Freud's Psychoanalytic Polyclinic in Vienna, a position which, for the first time, brings Reich in touch with working class people and their problems. Now interested in the social etiology of neurosis, Reich studies Marx and gets actively involved in the Viennese socialist movement. Reich writes several articles that attempt to reconcile Marx's ideas of the family as a formal unit that is dependent on continuous changing socio-economic conditions with Freud's concepts of the dynamic psychology of individual development within the nuclear, patriarchal family unit. These papers lead many of his colleagues to suspect Reich of displaying unacceptable radical tendencies. Opposition to Reich begins.

Annie completes her own medical studies and becomes a practicing analyst. Reich's brother, Robert, dies of tuberculosis, and a year later, Reich himself contracts TB and spends several months at a sanitarium to recuperate. By 1928, Willy and Annie Reich have two daughters, Eva and Lore. Reich is promoted to Director of the Seminar for Psychoanalytic Therapy at Freud's clinic, then Vice Director of the Clinic, now functioning as Freud's right hand man.

On his return from the sanitarium, Reich becomes more active in the political work of the socialist party. He marches and takes part in demonstrations, though these activities subject him to danger and often bring him into conflict with the police and their violent countermeasures. He preaches for the need for sexual hygiene clinics for the people, so that they can be educated on sex in general and on birth control in particular. Under the auspices of the socialist party, Reich, along with some supportive colleagues, sets up such clinics and provides sex counseling to parents and adolescents, while also giving lectures to the general public on sex and related matters. As Reich continues to evolve his theories linking sex with politics, tensions with his colleagues, even with his wife, begin to grow. Detractors spread rumors that Reich is mentally unstable; supporters are attracted to his intensity and unusually high energy.

In the midst of growing controversy, Reich proceeds undaunted to break new ground. He publishes "The Function of the Orgasm," which delineates a theory of mental and physical health that is based on the existence and flow through the body of an actual biological energy which Reich calls "orgone." In championing Freud's original concept of libidinal energy, Reich shows that the repression of an individual's natural, biological energy, leads, in every case, to physical or mental disease of one sort or another. While Freud says that libido is merely a metaphorical construct he had employed to communicate his philosophy, Reich maintains that this biological energy is much more than a conceptual construct - it has an actual physical reality. Other analysts attack Reich's attempts to evolve Freud's early ideas on the pleasure principle, themselves preferring to "adjust" their patients in accordance to the social realities of the day.

At the Viennese sex hygiene clinics, Reich delivers a paper that is unacceptably critical of the World League for Sex Reform. This incurs the wrath of the socialist party leadership, who accuse Reich of using the sex hygiene clinics as a forum for communist propaganda. Terminated by the socialists, and under siege from his psychoanalytic colleagues, Reich decides to move to Berlin to undergo analysis with Dr. Sandor Rado. Before he moves, though, he makes a visit to Russia to investigate their experimental nurseries and child-care centers, as well as Russia's reportedly liberal sexual laws. He gives lectures on child rearing that are well received, but he finds that the Russians lack basic understanding in handling sexuality among children and adolescents. Worse, the sexual paradise which the Bolshevik propaganda had boasted about is being steadily eroded by Stalin and his repressive edicts. Under Stalin's directives, the social reforms of the past decade are being undermined, and even moderately progressive legislation is being repealed in favor of harsh laws, such as making homosexuality a criminal offense.

In 1930, Reich moves to Berlin and undergoes a short-lived analysis, because Dr. Rado soon emigrates to the United States. Reich becomes intensely involved with the German communist party, and he presents a detailed plan to the central committee to start a sex-political mass movement. Reich's platform calls for better housing; abolition of all laws against abortion, homosexuality, and birth regulation; free birth control counseling; sex education on a mass scale; nurseries and sex-counseling facilities at all large factories and businesses; reform of marriage laws; and home leave for prisoners. As a result of his proposal, the communists set up sex hygiene clinics in the large industrial cities of western Germany, where Reich often gives lectures on sexual politics and on political psychology. Attired as a mountain climber, with a knapsack full of medical supplies, Reich actively participates in marches and demonstrations, despite the danger and assaults by the police.

Reich's devotion to the communist cause is so extreme that he insists on sending his two daughters to a communist children's center. Annie protests; Reich threatens separation; she acquiesces. The power of his personality is impossible to withstand. She complains that only absolutes are possible for him. Things are either black or white; people are either for him, or against him. Her disaffection with their marriage grows.

The communist party leadership, too, become disaffected with Reich's emphasis on sex, claiming that it is diverting the people's attention from the class struggle. They withdraw his books from its bookstores and brand him a counter-revolutionary. Joining them in opposing Reich's publications are the Nazis. Reich's writings on "The Sexual Struggle of Youth," "Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis," and "The Invasion of Compulsory Morality," along with his other books and sex-political essays, are removed from public consumption.

Immediately after the Nazis take power in 1933, they begin rounding up the opposition. Using the Reichstag fire as a pretext, the Nazis arrest over 1,500 leftist intellectuals, including many of Reich's personal friends. They make a public display of burning books they don't want people to read. Included in the burning pile are the books and articles of Wilhelm Reich. Reich learns that he is on the Nazi's list of undesirables; the Gestapo have been authorized to find him and shoot him on sight. Fearing for his life, he checks in at a hotel under a different name. Hearing that the Nazis have been to his home twice, Reich abandons his lucrative practice in Berlin and flees to Vienna, disguised as a tourist on a skiing holiday. Annie, unable and unwilling to support Reich's commitment to sex-political work any longer, soon dissolves their marriage, taking the children with her. Still subjected to increasing criticism by his psychoanalytic colleagues due to various personality and philosophical differences, Reich finds himself unwelcome. Although his manuscript for "Character Analysis" is finished, the director of the International Psychoanalytic Press reneges on the contract to publish the book because of the worsening political situation and Reich's reputation as a radical. Though he is almost penniless, Reich borrows money and publishes the book himself. "Character Analysis" presents Reich's concept of body armoring and the ways neuroses manifest themselves in the musculature of a human being as defenses against the streaming of life energy throughout the body.

Although the Viennese psychoanalysts are hostile to Reich, a group of analysts and trainees in Denmark urge him to join them there. Freud refuses to write a letter in support of Reich's Danish work permit, and the International Psychoanalytic Association refuses to certify any training which Reich might give in Denmark. Nonetheless, Reich goes to Denmark in May 1933. Elsa Lindenburg, a dancer with the Berlin State Opera and a member of the same communist cell to which Reich had been assigned, joins him there. They live together as man and wife in an open marriage arrangement.

In Denmark, Reich teaches, gives training classes, and does therapy while he completes the manuscript for "The Mass Psychology of Fascism," which describes the body language -the way of looking, of standing, of speaking- certain character types have, as well as the reasons for their propensity to be attracted to, and dominated by, authoritarian personalities like Adolf Hitler. Immediately after its publication in August 1933, the communists, in their fervent desire to signify their official condemnation of his psychologizing of politics, expel Reich from their organization. To them, he is a "counter-revolutionary" for having pointed out that communism in Germany has already lost out to fascism; they prefer to see Hitler's victories merely as a temporary setback in their ongoing struggle. To Reich, an orphan without a home, the expulsion is very painful. It signifies the end of his affiliation with a revolutionary social organization that would be able to take advantage of his sex-political ideas. To avoid further ostracism, Reich goes to England, where he visits Ernest Jones, president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, to lobby against also being expelled from the Association - an action which Reich says he has heard is being contemplated. Reich considers moving to London, but Jones discourages him, since England is still too puritanical to accept the concept of an open marriage arrangement, and neither Reich nor Elsa feel the need for a piece of paper to sanctify their love.

Due to the support and encouragement of his Danish students, Reich in September 1933 settles in Malmo, Sweden, which is close to Copenhagen. Besides continuing his own research and training his students, he gives therapy to A. S. Neill, the founder of Summerhill, an experimental school where children are reared in an atmosphere of freedom and happiness, unlike traditional schools where children are compelled to attend classes they're not interested in. By August 1934, Reich receives notice from the International Psychoanalytic Association that he has been expelled from their organization. Not only are his fellow analysts disturbed by Reich's continued work on his energetically based, sex-economic views (which they perceive as a major threat to the now conventional Freudian orientation in favor of the reality principle), but they are desperate to avert the hostility of the Nazis. By canceling Reich's union card, they hope to dissociate themselves from any taint of supporting his radical social ideas. One of the analysts, Otto Fenischel, turns especially vicious; he promulgates rumors that Reich had been institutionalized and is presently insane, a slander which is to plague Reich throughout the rest of his life.

Unable to extend his visa in Sweden, Reich is forced to move again, this time to Oslo, Norway. Elsa soon joins him. No longer bound by allegiance to any organization or political party, Reich realizes that it is time for the child that is the intellectual offspring of Freud's psychoanalysis and Marx's political sociology to strike out on its own. Summoning incredible strength and energy, Reich spends the next three years building up his own independent organization from the ground up, with loyal, dedicated followers. Through the support of a few, courageous colleagues, the laboratory facilities of the University of Oslo are made available to him. At last he is able to pursue his scientific research without crisis or disruption. To test his speculative beliefs that pleasure and anxiety constitute antithetical reactions in a human body, Reich conducts experiments in bio-electricity on couples in the act of making love. This leads to the publication of "The Biological Foundations of Pleasure and Anxiety." He founds the Institute for Sex-Economic Bio-research, where he gives seminars in psychotherapy, he starts a journal to publish his experimental findings, and he does research in biogenesis which leads to the discovery of elemental building blocks of life that Reich calls "bions." These mobile, pulsating forms of microscopic matter exhibit properties of life, even though they arise from inorganic material. He publishes "The Sexual Revolution," which provides a scathing critique of traditional sexuality and a clear affirmation of the healthy genital impulses of children, adolescents, and adults. He's in love with Elsa, and she with him. It's a busy, productive, fulfilling time.

But it doesn't last. Although Reich deliberately maintains a low profile and avoids doing anything which might jeopardize his standing with the Norwegian government, the press learn about Reich's work in biogenesis and sensationalize it in a series of articles. "God Reich Creates Life," cries the National Enquirer-type papers of the day. In late 1937, a virulent newspaper campaign attacking Reich starts up. His enemies consist of people who ordinarily not only have nothing in common, but who are fundamentally opposed to each other. A Nazi sympathizer attacks Reich's work on the bions as rubbish and nonsense, while a Nazi critic accuses Reich's bio-electrical experiments as pornographic. Although they might differ in their political leanings to the left or the right, they are opposed to Reich in their core self. Reich even knows why they are opposed to him: It's due to their armoring, their inability to feel. But they won't listen to him. Soon the Norwegian Psychiatric Society joins in the attack, criticizing Reich for his emphasis on the centrality of sex in the development of neurosis, as well as condemning him for championing the rights of children and adolescents to a free development of their sexual feelings. Reich counters by pointing out that anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, in his book, "The Sexual Life of Savages," found that neurosis was unknown among matriarchal societies where the love life of children was free and uninhibited.

Providing rational responses in an irrational environment does him no good, though. When Reich publishes "The Bion Experiments," all hell breaks loose. It's open season on the infamous sex doctor who claims to have found life among ordinary sand crystals. Spontaneous biogenesis? A universal life energy? Nonsense, say his critics, many of whom are authorities in their own fields. In over a hundred articles and letters, the press attacks Reich as a quack, as a Jewish pornographer, and as a mad scientist. Editors toss aside articles and letters supporting Reich; they publish only the sensational, critical stories. Not wanting to lower himself to the level of name-calling, Reich refuses to join the controversy. He asks only that people investigate the experiments he had done and decide for themselves what the truth is. But no one takes him up on his challenge. Caught in the midst of a feeding frenzy, they all would rather persist in the irrational attack on his character.

Though he remains publicly aloof, Reich cannot help but take out his anger among those closest to him, especially Elsa. The newspaper smear campaign continues unabated for a solid year; it destroys any chance for Reich to stay in Norway. Realizing that there is no longer any place in Europe where he can continue his work in peace, Reich accepts an invitation from the New School for Social Research in New York City for a position as an assistant professor of medical psychology. By the end of the newspaper campaign, Reich's relationship with Elsa deteriorates so badly that she decides not to go with him to America. On August 19, 1939 Reich sets sail for the United States. Two weeks later, the Nazis invade Poland. World War Two begins.

In New York, Reich quickly gets busy. He lectures on the biological aspects of character formation at the New School, treats patients, trains prospective therapists to do his innovative, body-oriented psychotherapy, and reassembles his laboratory to continue the experimental work on bions he had begun in Norway. His ideas, his enthusiasm, and his zest for life draws people to him. Students and professionals meet regularly at his home in Forest Hills for seminars. To be complete, all he needs is a female companion. In October, he is introduced to Ilse Ollendorff, an office worker; on Christmas Day, Reich marries her and employs her as his laboratory assistant. Eager to make a clean break with his European past, he is no longer "Willy" to his associates; he is now "Dr. Reich."

Reich's experiments with the bions lead him to discover the existence of a hitherto unknown energy. After studying its properties, he concludes that this is the libidinal energy that Freud had postulated so long ago, this is the primordial energy of life itself, the energy that is involved not only in sexuality, but in all other life processes. He finds further that this energy exists both within living organisms in varying degrees of intensity, as well as in the atmosphere. In 1940, Reich constructs a device to accumulate this energy. It's a six-sided box big enough for a human to sit in, and it's constructed of alternating layers of organic materials (to attract the energy) and metallic materials (to radiate the energy toward the center of the box). Reich finds that a living organism inside the box absorbs this energy through the skin and through breathing, and that it has a healthy effect on the blood and body tissue. Since it has measurable effects on an organism and it evolved along a process that directly evolves from his original research on the orgasm, Reich calls this energy "orgone."

Hoping to secure the support of a great mainstream scientist for his apparently momentous discovery, he visits Albert Einstein and presents his findings. Though initially intrigued, Einstein writes off Reich's discovery after the most cursory of examinations. The device is worthless, he says; the effects Reich got are merely subjective. Ilse consoles Reich by telling him that Einstein is too absorbed in his work on atomic energy to be tempted to follow an altogether new line of research. Like Freud did earlier, another leading thinker rejects Reich's work as too radical and refuses to support him. To Einstein, Reich was an inconsequential eccentric.

Reich is deeply disappointed by Einstein's rejection, but he pushes on regardless. He has unshakable faith in himself and his methods. Throughout the early and mid-forties Reich tests his orgone accumulators on human beings and finds that it has a remarkable ability to reduce and eliminate cancer tumors, heal burns, alleviate arthritic pains, relieve heart pains, and, in general, to charge up the body's natural immune system against disease. Use of the accumulator also reduces or eliminates the patient's reliance on prescription drugs. Knowing of the world's need for a cancer cure (as well his own personal need for recognition), Reich concentrates on researching the cancer problem. He eventually discovers that cancer is a psychosomatic disease caused by the putrefaction of body cells which are starved for life energy due to chronic sexual stasis and body armoring which prevents the healthy flow and discharge of emotional energy. Essentially, Reich says, cancer patients are shrinking and prematurely dying at the cellular level. He develops a blood test to diagnose cancer from the examination of cells in the body's secretions {12 years before classical cancer research developed an effective sputum test, and 15 years before cervical smear tests!}. He publishes "The Cancer Biopathy" to document his laboratory work and the path he took in the discovery of orgone energy, as well as to describe the etiology, prevention, and treatment of cancer.

Although Reich maintains a clinical practice in New York, he and Ilse move their base of operations to Rangeley, Maine, where Reich buys land and establishes Orgonon, a laboratory and research center devoted to the study of orgone energy. Several devoted followers accompany him and work in the lab, mostly medical doctors, psychiatrists, scientists from various disciplines, and assorted oddball types, who are attracted to his innovative ideas. Reich and Ilse have a son, Peter. While the move to Orgonon gives Reich the solitude and tranquillity he needs to do his work, it also insulates him from the scientific mainstream. Daughter Eva, now a medical doctor, joins her father and helps him in his work.

Besides doing research in orgone energy, Reich presents seminars and symposia on the techniques of natural childbirth and healthy childrearing. He attacks the traditional childcare practices of modern hospitals who separate a child from mother immediately after birth. He discusses schizophrenia from the perspective of a life energy vantage point. He decries the tendency in modern science toward fragmentation and "mechanistic thinking," pointing out that, in nature, all things are in constant interrelationship, and that living things cannot be studied apart from the larger energy forces of the universe.

By 1947 Reich's work with cancer patients comes to attention of a muckracking journalist (Mildred Brady) who visits Reich under false pretenses and then publishes two damaging articles about him. Her first assault, entitled "The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy" is published in Harper's Magazine. A few weeks later, "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich" appears in The New Republic, a liberal periodical which, in a review of "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" published at about the same time, condemns Reich for confusing liberals by leading them away from the political struggle. Brady's articles are deftly written combinations of truths, half-truths, and downright lies which distort Reich's work and slander his character. Brady implies that Reich is running some kind of a sex racket, and that the orgone accumulators are fraudulent and ineffective. A chain reaction starts, and soon other newspapers and professional journals are publishing similar articles attacking Reich, relying on Brady's statements as if they were facts. Other medical and psychiatric organizations join the chorus, including the famous Meninger Clinic, which reprints a Brady article in full, as if it were a scientific paper. Within two months, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerted to the "Reich problem" and sends an agent, Charles Wood, to investigate.

Unable to understand the chain of thought Reich followed in developing his work, agent Wood arrives at Orgonon with his mind already made up. He tells the groundskeeper that Reich's accumulator is fake and that Reich may likely go to jail for fooling the public. He's here to investigate this sexy racket mixed up with a strange box that is supposed to cure cancer. Reich greets FDA agent Wood cordially and takes him to the site where the accumulators are constructed. Wood meets Clista Templeton, the daughter of the man Reich hired to construct the accumulators. After her father's death, Clista took over the job. Agent Wood falls in love with Clista, marries her three months later, and she becomes his chief spy in Orgonon, providing him with crucial information for the FDA's investigation. Based on agent Wood's preliminary investigation, his boss, R. M. Wharton, concludes that a fraud of the first magnitude is being perpetrated and the FDA must now take careful steps to capture and bring to justice this wily Dr. Reich. With the help of his new wife, agent Wood zealously proceeds to gather all the necessary information to put Reich permanently out of business.

In between the assaults and raids by the FDA and the ongoing smear campaign in the American press, Reich continues on with his work as best he can, teaching, training, writing, doing research on the new science he calls "orgonomy." He publishes "Listen, Little Man," a forceful, and often belligerent, diatribe about the emotional armoring of the average person. He suffers several blackouts due to coughing spasms brought on by his excessive smoking habit. With the guidance of his attorney, Peter Mills, he incorporates the Wilhelm Reich Foundation. He publishes "Ether, God, and Devil" which describes his method of functional thinking and reveals the logical process that led him to discover orgone energy. He develops and demonstrates a motor which runs on no known power other than orgone energy, but the engineer who assisted him mysteriously disappears with it. And he publishes "Cosmic Superimposition," which presents an understanding of how man is rooted in nature, and by mere thinking, how we can come to know what nature is, and how it works.

Preoccupied that the Korean War could lead to a global nuclear conflict, Reich decides to find out if orgone energy, which has properties antithetical to atomic energy, can somehow be used as an antidote to nuclear radiation. He acquires some radioactive isotopes from the Atomic Energy Commission and places them inside an accumulator, thinking that the accumulator will neutralize the effects of the atomic radiation. What he finds startles him. After only five hours in the accumulator, the needles on the Geiger-Muller counters jam at their highest readings, indicating energy is being radiated faster than the meters can measure. The air in the room containing the accumulator is highly charged and oppressive. Reich concludes that, instead of orgone energy neutralizing nuclear energy, nuclear energy is altering orgone energy into another form. Fascinated with the unexpected results, Reich decides to continue with the experiment, despite signs of radiation sickness from several co-workers. The longer the Oranur (ORgone ANti NUclear Research) experiment continues, the more people get sick. Soon the environment around Rangeley becomes bleak, still, listless. Ominous black clouds form. Animals are lethargic. The air feels suffocating. The sky loses its sparkle. He dubs this effect "DOR," for Deadly ORgone energy.

Enough is enough, says Reich, and he realizes he must correct this dangerous situation. He constructs a device with long metal pipes at one end that are connected to cables flowing into a deep well at the other. It resembles a tank turret and works like a lightning rod. He points the device at the deadly looking clouds and dissipates them, alleviating the oppression in the atmosphere. Over the next few years, Reich constructs more of these "cloud-busters" and he uses them to make rain for the farmers of Rangeley, Maine, as well as for experiments in weather modification and pollution control. During a series of rain-making experiments in the Arizona desert, Reich creates so much rain one day that airplanes are unable to land. On another occasion, Reich diverts hurricane Edna from hitting New York and Boston, causing a Boston radio announcer to remark about the miracle that saved New York and New England.

In 1953 Reich publishes "The Murder of Christ," which, in blunt terms, discusses the "Emotional Plague," Reich's term for the universal scourge that affects mankind, causing it to destroy truth and love whenever and wherever it appears. Meanwhile, as if to prove Reich's point, the FDA, aided and abetted by the American Psychoanalytic Association, moves ahead in its mission to nail Reich to a cross of their own design. They harass Reich by every means possible, sending agents to Orgonon, openly and clandestinely, to acquire whatever information they can. Reich considers himself to be at war. Recalling his early days in the Austrian army, Reich begins packing a pistol. He has chains put up around the property to keep out the FDA investigators. With the Cold War in full swing and the spy game in full gear, Reich fears that the FDA agents may be Communist spies trying to steal his secrets. A fervent anti-Communist, Reich writes letters to President Eisenhower to keep him informed of his developments in cloud-busting and its potential for peaceful use of atomic energy; when Eisenhower gives a speech using a phrase Reich employed in one of his letters ("atoms for peace"), Reich interprets it as a coded message meaning that the President is aware of Reich's work and secretly supports it.

By 1954 the FDA figures it has its case together, so it issues a complaint for an injunction against Reich, charging that he has violated the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by delivering misbranded and adulterated devices in interstate commerce and by making false and misleading claims. The complaint alleges that the orgone accumulators are part of an ingenious money-making scheme hatched by Reich and that such devices are incapable of having any therapeutic effect since, according to the FDA, "orgone energy does not exist." In the FDA complaint, nearly all of Reich's publications -including many of them written years before the orgone accumulator even existed- are described as "labeling" for the accumulator. In another interesting twist of fate, the complaint is signed by Peter Mills, Reich's former attorney, now a U.S. Attorney for the State of Maine.

At first, Reich is deeply offended and enraged by the complaint, considering how inaccurate and distorted it is. In a state of shock, he doesn't know how to respond. What galls him is that the complaint does not bother to mention any of the hard work Reich did synthesizing major concepts of Western intellectual history for the health and betterment of mankind; all it does is reduce him to a quack, a charlatan, and a swindler. Once he calms down, though, Reich considers his options. One, he can marshal all his evidence in support of the efficacy of the accumulator and fight the injunction on factual, scientific grounds; two, he can succumb to the FDA's pressure, withdraw the orgone accumulator, and continue on with the other branches of his work; or three, he can fight the legality of the injunction on constitutional grounds.

Reich adamantly decides against the first option. While he knows he can substantiate his claims and he is fully prepared to demonstrate his findings to his scientific peers, he does not think a court of law is the proper venue to adjudicate matters of science. Legal technicalities might wave his evidence aside, or laymen might not be able to follow the logic of his science.

Reich rejects the second option, because it means denying the benefits of the accumulator to those patients who are already using it. It would also signify a tactical defeat in the face of the enemy, whom he thinks are forces of anti-life.

Rather than directly implement the third option, Reich elects not to appear in court to contest the injunction, but to write a letter to the judge explaining why it is inappropriate for him, as a natural scientist, to submit his scientific findings to a court of law. He declares that man-made laws cannot take precedence over natural laws of the universe, which he, in studying orgone energy, is engaged in and should not be interfered with. The judge interprets this naive response as a technical default and issues a sweeping injunction that not only orders that all accumulators rented or owned by Reich and those working in concert with him be destroyed, but it also requires that all labeling referring to orgone energy be likewise destroyed. Besides giving the FDA the license to burn Reich's books and journals, the injunction "perpetually enjoins and restrains Reich from making any statements or representations pertaining to the existence of orgone energy," a restriction that is not in accordance with the Constitution of the United States. Immediately after their victory, the FDA issues a press release and sends out thank you letters to those institutions, like the American Psychiatric Association, who have helped the government rein Reich in.

A group of medical orgonomists (doctors who practice Reichian therapy, using the orgone accumulators) protest the injunction, claiming that it interferes with their medical practice, as well as their freedom to publish and obtain scientific literature. Amazed that anyone would intervene on Reich's behalf, the judge allows the orgonomists to continue to use the accumulators because they are not named in the injunction. Due to a technicality, they are free to use the devices which Reich had developed, but he is forbidden. It is clear to Reich and to those around him that the intent of the injunction is, once and for all, to get Reich out of the picture. Under extreme pressure, Reich's mental health appears to deteriorate. More and more he sees himself as the victim of a Communist conspiracy that he thinks is designed to take control of his discoveries in cosmic energy though clever manipulations of the American legal system. Fearing homelessness once again, he takes his rage out on those nearest and dearest. Slowly, many of the people around Reich -including his wife- out of cowardice or enlightened self-interest, begin to slip away, leaving him to face the wrath of the government authorities alone.

Reich considers the injunction merely an unenforceable nuisance, and he chooses to give it only minimal compliance. Of much greater urgency in his mind is the need to reverse the DOR (deadly orgone energy) process in the world's atmosphere that is being triggered by the nuclear testing. In an experiment to reverse the desert-forming side effects of this DOR process, Reich packs up his cloudbuster and heads for the Arizona desert with his eleven-year old son, Peter, and a few co-workers. There he brings rain to the desert and makes grass sprout in an area of Tucson where the local inhabitants swear grass had never grown before. By December 1954, the grass is twelve inches high.

While Reich is in Arizona, Dr. Michael Silvert, a psychiatrist whom Reich had put in charge of affairs at Orgonon, ships -at his own discretion- a large truckload of accumulators to New York City. Early in 1955 the FDA decides to check up on Reich to see what, if anything, Reich has been doing to comply with the terms of the injunction. After several cops-and-robbers attempts to inspect Reich's property, the FDA learns that, in fact, very little is being done. Books are still being sold; orgone accumulators are still being transported across state lines; Reich is still conducting experiments in weather modification. They accuse Reich (and Silvert) of contempt, and, after jailing him, drag Reich into court to stand trial.

The only issue which the court cares to hear about now is whether or not Reich, who acts as his own attorney, had complied with the injunction. Reich's belated attempts to discuss the value of his scientific work are dismissed out of hand, as are his complaints that the injunction was unfair and unconstitutional. Reich is sentenced to two years in prison. His appeals, all the way to the Supreme Court, fail, and he is admitted to Danbury prison in Connecticut, where he is promptly diagnosed as paranoid and transferred to Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, where they have psychiatric facilities. (Silvert is sentenced to one year, and, shortly after completing his term, he commits suicide.) Although the American Civil Liberties Union protests, the FDA sends its agents to Orgonon and they systematically destroy all the orgone accumulators and burn Reich's books. Soon after, they burn the accumulators and books at Silvert's address in New York City.

While in prison, Reich sustains himself with the belief that he has been put there for protection from enemies who would kill him, if they could get to him. He sets up a pendulum in his cell and continues his experiments on negative gravity, and he resumes work on the formulas for the orgonomic equations that comprise a unifying functioning principle similar to the field theory Einstein had been working on most of his life. Convinced that President Eisenhower would intervene on his behalf, he applies for a presidential pardon. But none comes. His son, Peter, now thirteen, visits him. Reich tells him that he had lost his mother at Peter's age, that his father died from grief while he was only sixteen, and his life was over-turned by the turmoil of a world war, yet he still managed to accomplish great things. Even being imprisoned in America on the basis of an unconstitutional order was a kind of an honor. They cry together. Two days before his parole hearing, on November 3rd, 1957, Reich is found dead in his cell. Heart failure, say the prison officials. His last manuscript, "Creation," disappears.

On the grounds of Orgonon, Reich is buried in a simple tomb marked by a bust of his head that overlooks the lake, as his family and followers gather to pay their last respects. Reich's voice is heard reading an excerpt of his last will and testament which provides that his archives shall be sealed away and that its contents not be made public for fifty years, in the hopes that a different generation might be able to respond to his discoveries without resorting to judicial murder. He dedicates his work {as we dedicate this film} to "The Children of the Future."

[undead]

AYP Lesson 54 - Kundalini – A code word for sex

New Readers: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "Why This Discussion?" athttp://aypsite.com/10.html


"Kundalini" has become a buzzword in many of the innumerable spiritual communities that span the globe these days. It has within it all the elements that attract people – knowledge, power, mystery, intimacy, excitement, alchemy, romance, adventure, danger, ecstasy, and more. But what is kundalini, really?

Put simply, kundalini is our connection between sex and spiritual transformation. There are a thousand ways to describe this, but in the end it boils down to the expansion of our sexual function into the spiritual arena, i.e., upward through our nervous system. Some say it is a "transformation" of sexual function, but that implies we are leaving our current sex life behind. "Expansion" of sexual function is a better description. As we consciously encourage the spiritual dimension of sex, maybe we will leave worldly sex behind, and maybe we won't. It is not for anyone to decide but us. It is our choice. Leaving sex behind is not a prerequisite for entering into advanced spiritual experience, not in these lessons, and not in life.

For thousands of years, the spiritual traditions of the world have tried to keep a lid on sex, usually to the detriment of their adherents, and sometimes with disastrous results. Why? Because sex is the greatest force in humanity. If it is not coaxed in a productive direction, it can be destructive. Lacking reliable means to enable sex for spiritual transformation, the tendency of spiritual traditions has been to try and squelch it. It is a fruitless endeavor, this attempt to squelch. The genie always finds her way out of the bottle. It is not possible to keep her in there for long. When she is not coming out to make babies, she is expressing in every other way through humanity – nurturing of the family, money gathering, the arts, philosophy, science, politics, empire building, charity, war, abuse, crime. You name it. Much of it is good. Some of it is horrible. For better or worse, it is all the expression of the life force in human beings, the expression of human prana. The great storehouse of prana in human beings is in the sexual anatomy. The key to spiritually managing sex is not in squelching it, but in giving it a natural channel to go in that will satisfy its evolutionary instincts. This takes some conscious doing. We need some more levers in the form of advanced yoga practices to facilitate the expansion of sex in a new and natural direction.

So far, we have skirted the issue of sex in these lessons. We have mentioned the "huge storehouse of prana" near the base of the spine. We have talked about prana being "drawn up from the pelvic region" during pranayama. We have described the beginnings of ecstatic experience as prana moves through the spinal nerve and spreads out through us. And we have talked about pure bliss consciousness brought up in meditation illuminating us with pure joy from the inside through our pranayama-cultivated nervous system. In all this we have skirted the word "sex." We could continue to skirt it as we move into advanced yoga practices that directly stimulate our sexual function upward into greater manifestation in the process of spiritual transformation. But of what benefit would this continued skirting of the issue be? Certainly not to your benefit.

We live in a highly scientific age. Above all, we want to know the truth of things, so we can apply it to better our lives, and the lives of others.

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Don't we know it? Look what science (the systematic application of truth) has done for us in just about every field of human endeavor. It is spectacular what humanity has done with truth so far. We have lagged miserably in only one area – the systematic application of the spiritual truth inherent in our nervous system. Success in applying spiritual truth immediately addresses the ethical and moral problems of the world, and the widespread feelings of emptiness and insecurity that affect so many of us, even as we live in material comfort. The stakes are high, and we can't afford to skirt anything that has to do with applying spiritual knowledge in reliable ways.

So, will we be talking about sexual energy in relation to spiritual development? You bet. A lot is riding on it. We will do so in a dignified way. Consider it to be an extension of your original education about the birds and the bees. Now it will be about the birds, the bees, and the angels. Along those lines. As we get into it, there will be some amazing surprises. It is like entering a second puberty.

There is much more to be said about kundalini and the expansion of sexual functioning -- about the inner dynamics of it. We will get into that as we review direct experiences. For now, let's focus on letting that genie out of her bottle in a direction she naturally loves to go in, up into our pranayama-cultivated nervous system. It is her home, her temple. There is so much for her to do there, and we will give her lots of help. Besides wanting to give us a good housecleaning, she is looking for her lover there, and we will bring her groom to her. We'd better. She will raise all kinds of hell if we don't. We will talk about that too.

We are speaking in simple metaphors here about a process that is embedded in our nervous systems, an evolutionary process that is completely natural. As we do a few specific things in our daily practice, nature will take over. The metaphorical language of kundalini is about nothing other than the inner dynamics of your own nervous system. So it is with the metaphorical language of every spiritual tradition. It is always about the human nervous system. The nervous system is the common link, the one thing that transcends all differences, the one thing that gives everyone equal access to the divine, regardless of race, religion, culture, upbringing, or station in life.

Everyone can sense the truth inside, how special each of us is. We are always on the edge of knowing who and what we are. It is so close, a part of us, but seemingly just out of reach. No more. If you really want to you can know the truth and be set free, just like Jesus said. The essential ingredient in this is your desire. You can open your gateway to the infinite if you choose to.

The guru is in you.

http://www.aypsite.org/54.html

[undead]

Lesson 108 - Kechari mudra – A giant leap for humankind

From: Yogani
Date: Thu Feb 5, 2004 4:54pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the web archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"


Kechari mudra is a subject of increasing discussion and debate these days. It is a good sign. It means it is coming out of the shadows of esoteric yoga and into the early morning sunshine of this rising new age of enlightenment.

What is kechari mudra? Let's put it in terms that we can easily relate to. A centimeter or two above the roof of our mouth is located one of the most ecstatically sensitive organs in our whole body. It can be reached relatively easily with our tongue. It is located on the back edge of our nasal septum, and when the nervous system is purified enough through advanced yoga practices, our tongue will roll back and go up into the cavity of our nasal pharynx to find the sensitive edge of our septum. When this happens, it is like a master switch is closed in our nervous system, and all of our advanced yoga practices and experiences begin to function on a much higher level. When kechari is entered naturally, we come on to the fast track of yoga. It is the major league of yoga, if you will.

Ramakrishna said, "When the divine goddess comes up, the tongue rolls back."

Many have experienced this natural phenomenon at times in their yoga practices. When the nervous system is ready, it just happens. The tongue wants to go back. But few are able to follow though, and this is just a matter of education. If strong bhakti is there and the tongue is rolling back, it is a short trip to make the connection in the pharynx to a higher level of spiritual experience.

Not many people on earth today have made this important transition in yoga. However, it is likely that the number of people entering kechari will increase dramatically in the coming years. As this happens, it will be a giant leap forward for humankind, for it will mark humanity's shift to a predominantly spiritual mode of functioning of the nervous system. This will bring with it the many benefits of rising enlightenment spreading out through our modern society. Kechari is that significant, that powerful, and that indicative of where the human race is heading. Only a few yogis and yoginis in kechari can have a huge affect on the spiritual energies in everyone. They radiate energy that quickens the rise of the enlightenment process in all. So, while kechari is an individual phenomenon on the road to human spiritual transformation, it has global implications, as do all of our advanced yoga practices. As Jesus said, "You are the light of the world."

But enough about the spiritual destiny of the human race. What about each of us, and our relationship with kechari?

Since kechari was first mentioned in the lessons some time ago, several have written about having the early symptoms of it, wondering what to do. "Should I stop the tongue from rolling back?" "Should I proceed? And, if so, how?" These are the questions that have been asked.

If the tongue is rolling back and we feel we are getting ahead of ourselves, there is no rush. If we have doubts or excessive kundalini experiences, it may be best to wait. It is the application of self-pacing, you know. Only you can know when the time is right. No one can tell you when it is time to go for kechari, or for any other advanced yoga practice. Your experiences and your bhakti will be your guides.

Even though we are talking about a journey of a couple of centimeters, kechari is a big undertaking. Not so much physically, though there is some physical challenge, but more so in the psyche and the emotions. Kechari is a big deal. It goes to the core of our spiritual identity. Are we ready to close a neurological switch that will transport us to a higher plane of existence? It is not that we are changed instantly and forever. It is not like that. The day after we enter kechari for the first time, we are still the same person. We may even stop doing kechari if we entered prematurely. No harm done. Kechari has its "clunky" stage, just as all advanced yoga practices do. It takes some determination to get through the awkward beginnings of kechari.

We are not instantly a different person the minute we start kechari. Only in time with daily practice are we changed, and this will be a substantial change. In a real way, we have become a different person before we enter kechari. The decision to do it is the crossover as much as the act is. In this sense, kechari is more than a physical act. Deciding to do kechari is a recognition of the nervous system being ready for the next level. The nervous system tells us when it is ready. We have become kechari even before we enter it. Isn't this true with all advanced yoga practices we undertake? We feel ready. We begin the practice. If we are in tune with our nervous system, the practice will stick. If we are premature, there will be roughness and we will have to back off. This is okay. It is how we test and find our openings to move forward in yoga. Kechari is like that too. Only with kechari, we are doing a bit more to get into it, and the experience is pretty dramatic, so it requires strong motivation to do it – strong bhakti.

Kechari means, "To fly through inner space."

This sounds poetic and dramatic. Yet, kechari is much more that that. It is much more personal than that. Regular practice of kechari takes us into a permanent lovemaking of polarities within us. The effects of kechari exceed those of tantric sexual relations as discussed in the tantra group. This is amazing because kechari involves no external sexual activity at all. Kechari is one of the great secrets of enlightened celibates. Not that celibacy and kechari have to go together. Anyone can do kechari and continue in normal sexual relations. But if one chooses a path of celibacy, then kechari, along with other advanced yoga practices, will provide more than enough cultivation of sexual energy upward in the nervous system. It is a
natural internal process that comes up in us.

With kechari do we "fly though inner space?" The greatest part of the kechari experience is the rise of ecstatic bliss. The senses are naturally drawn in and it is like we are flying inside. Our inner dimensions are vast, and we soar through them in a constant reverie.

The connection we make near the top of the sushumna, ida, and pingala in kechari is an ecstatic one that brings ecstatic conductivity up in the nervous system more than any other practice. Every other advanced yoga practice then becomes increasingly effective at doing the same thing – raising ecstatic conductivity. So kechari is an ecstatic connection that illuminates our entire nervous system. The sensitive edge of the nasal septum is an altar of bliss. The more time we spend there, the more bliss we experience. Kechari is the perfect companion for sambhavi. The two practices complement each other. Together, sambhavi and kechari draw divine ecstasy up, filling us with divine light.

Advanced yogis and yoginis use kechari continuously throughout their sitting practices, and often during the day when not engaged in conversation. In other words, kechari is home for the advanced yogi and yogini. We do not even know that they are in kechari. Only the subtle glow of divine light gives them away. Inside, they are in the constant play of divine lovemaking.

We will cover four stages of kechari here (see Image for sketches), all pertaining to the location of the tip of the tongue:



Stage 1 – To the point on the roof of the mouth where the hard and soft palates meet. This is the line of demarcation that must be crossed before stage 2 can be entertained.

Stage 2 – Behind the soft palate and up to the nasal septum. It is a short trip, but a momentous one. Initially this is done with help from a finger pushing back under the tongue, going to the left or right side of the soft palate where entry is easiest. This may require "breaking the hymen" of the membrane under the tongue. See below for more on this.

Stage 3 – Gradually working to the top of the nasal pharynx and septum. This takes us to the bony structure containing the pituitary gland.

Stage 4 – Entering the nasal passages from inside and moving upward beyond the top of the pharynx toward the point between the eyebrows. It is not as far for the tongue to go as it seems. Put your thumb on the hinge of your jaw and put your index finger at the tip of your tongue extended straight out. Then pivot the fixed length to your index finger up on your thumb to the point between your eyebrows. See? It is not so far for the tongue to go straight up from its root.

Many years may pass between stage 1 and stage 4. Kechari is a long-term evolution, not an overnight event, though it certainly has its dramatic moments of transition, especially between stages 1&2 and stages 3&4. Now let's look at the four stages in more detail.

Stage 1 puts us in contact with the bottom of the septum through the roof of our mouth. This has already been suggested as a goal to work toward in the lesson on yoni mudra kumbhaka. Some ecstatic response can be felt at the point where the hard and soft palates meet if the nervous system is rising in purity. Stage one is not easy, as it takes some effort for most people to keep the tongue on the roof of the mouth and work it gradually back over time. A habit gradually develops. Once the tip of the tongue passes the point where the hard and soft palates meet, and the soft palate can be pushed up with the tongue, then stage 2 is close at hand.

Stage 2 is very dramatic. The tongue is pushed back with a finger to the left or right side of the soft palate. These are the shortest pathways leading behind the soft palate. One of these will be shorter than the other. At some point you will experiment and see for yourself. The long way in is up the middle. The soft palate has an elastic tendon running across the back edge. When the tip of the tongue gets behind it for the first time, the elastic tendon can slip quickly around the bottom of the tongue as though grabbing it. Then the tongue is suddenly in the nasal pharynx and touching the edge of the nasal septum for the first time.

The first reaction is surprise, and the tongue will probably come out quickly. It is easy to pull out. No finger help is needed. It is also easy to breathe through the nose with the tongue in the nasal pharynx. On the first entry, the eyes and nose may water, there could be sneezing, there could be sexual arousal, and strong emotions. All of these things are temporary reactions to the event of entering stage 2 kechari for the first time. Upon repeated entries, things settle down. In time, the finger will no longer be needed to get behind the soft palate. The elastic tendon across the edge of the soft palate stretches out and stage 2 kechari becomes quite comfortable. In fact, it is easier to stay in stage 2 kechari than to stay in stage 1 kechari. The tongue rests very easily in the nasal pharynx with no effort at all, making it simple to use during pranayama and meditation. The tongue is obviously designed to rest blissfully in the nasal pharynx.

There are two practical matters to consider once in stage 2 kechari. First is lubrication in the pharynx. Second is the accumulation of saliva in the mouth.

The pharynx can be a little fickle. Usually, it is naturally moist and well lubricated for the tongue. Occasionally it is dry and not so well lubricated. In the former situation, kechari can be practiced practically indefinitely. In the latter situation, only sparingly. When the pharynx is dry there can be a stinging sensation when the tongue is in there. So, this is not the time to do kechari. We just go to stage 1 when that happens. Interestingly, the pharynx will almost always be moist during practices. But there is no telling for sure. We just go in when we are welcome, which is most of the time. And when we are not welcome, we honor the situation and refrain. Like that.

When we are up in stage 2 kechari, saliva will accumulate in the mouth down below. Since we can't swallow what is in our mouth with our tongue going up into the nasal pharynx, and we don't want to drool, then we come out of kechari as necessary to swallow the saliva in our mouth. In the early adjustment period to stage 2 kechari there can be a lot of saliva, so we will have to swallow more often. In time, the saliva goes back to normal levels, and coming out of kechari to swallow will become infrequent.

So, in stage 2 kechari, we are just letting our tongue rest easily on the edge of the nasal pharynx, and that sets spiritual processes in motion everywhere in our body.

In the beginning of stage 2 kechari we will be curious. We are in a new place and want to find out what is in the pharynx. There is the sensitive septum, the "altar of bliss." We have no problem finding that, and realizing that the best way to do pranayama and meditation is with our tongue resting on the septum. It is like having a powerful siddhasana working simultaneously on the other end of the spinal nerve, awakening our entire nervous system from the top end. When we are not enjoying bliss at the septum, we will no doubt explore, finding the prominent "trumpets" of the eustachian tubes on either side of the nasal passages. We also can't miss the entrances to the nasal passages on either side of the septum, and quickly find the extremely sensitive erectile tissues inside them. Too much. Better stay away from those for a while. So, we go up the septum on our journey to the top of the pharynx, to stage 3. For some this is a short journey. For others, it can take a long time. In going there we expose the full length of the edge of the septum to our tongue, and prepare ourselves to eventually enter the nasal passages and go higher.

A practice that can help as we go beyond stage 2 kechari is the so-called "milking of the tongue." It consists of gently pulling on the tongue with the fingers of both hands, alternating hands, as though milking a cow. A good time to do this is for a few minutes while standing in the shower each day. That way you can get the benefit of it without slobbering all over your clothes. Over time, the tongue can be lengthened by this method. This is not a very useful practice for getting into stage 2. Dealing with the frenum is most important for that, as discussed below. Milking the tongue is helpful for going beyond stage 2 kechari, especially in stage 4.

Stage 4 is another dramatic step. It could be years away from stage 2&3. Everyone will be different in approaching it. There is a trick to it. The nasal passages are tall and narrow and the tongue is narrow and wide, so the tongue can only go into the nasal passages by turning on its side. But which side? One way works better than the other. The tongue can naturally be turned with the top to the center by following the channel on top of the trumpet of each eustachian tube into its adjacent nasal passage. This naturally turns the top of the tongue to the center and allows it to slide up the side of the septum into the nasal passage. Turning the tongue inward to the center is the way up into the passages. Entering stage 4 is as dramatic as entering stage 2, because the tissues in the nasal passages are extremely sensitive, and connecting with them in the way described takes the nervous system to yet a higher level. Stage 4 provides extensive stimulation of the upper ends of the sushumna, ida, and pingala, and this has huge effects throughout the nervous system, especially when combined with our pranayama and its associated bandhas and mudras.

Going to stage 4 is natural once stages 2&3 have been mastered and become second nature. Before then we are not much attracted due to the sensitivity in the nasal passages. Our opening nervous system and rising bhakti take us to stage 4 when we are ready.

Once the nasal passages have been entered, the tongue can be used to do "alternate passage" breathing during pranayama and yoni mudra kumbhaka. This provides alternating stimulation in the nasal passages, which produces additional purifying effects in the sushumna, ida, and pingala. Our pranayama and kumbhaka become supercharged in stage 4 kechari.

The four stages of kechari foster major neurological openings in the head, and throughout the entire nervous system. Kechari is one of the most pleasurable and far-reaching of all the advanced yoga practices. Kechari represents a major transition in our advanced yoga practices to a much higher level.

Now let's talk about the membrane/tendon under the tongue called the "frenum."

For most of us, the frenum will be the limiting factor in moving through the stages of kechari. There is debate on whether the frenum should be trimmed or not. Some say that we are deserving or not deserving of kechari according to what kind of frenum we have under our tongue, and that the only way into kechari is by stretching the frenum. If we can't stretch it far enough to get into kechari, it is "God's will."

In these lessons, we don't subscribe to that limited point of view. The view here is that, "God helps those who help themselves."

In these lessons we view the frenum as a tether to be trimmed back when the time is right. It keeps us out of kechari until we are ready. When we are ready, and each of us knows when that is, the frenum can be trimmed. It is like a "hymen." When a woman is ready for sexual intercourse, the hymen goes. Until then it serves to provide protection. This breaking of the hymen can be a stressful and painful event if it is forced. Sooner or later the frenum will be forced open too, because going into kechari is as natural as going into sexual intercourse. It is biologically preordained. It happens when the nervous system is mature enough. Advanced yoga practices bring us closer to the transition with each day of daily practices.

Kechari results from a second puberty in us – our spiritual puberty. As our nervous system becomes pure, our bhakti increases. More than anything else it is bhakti that sends us into kechari. When every fiber of our being wants God, then we will go there. The tongue will roll back and go up. Like that.

Once our bhakti is hurling our tongue back into kechari, breaking the hymen of the frenum does not have to be stressful and painful. It can be very easy and gentle. Above all, it can and should be gradual. It is done with very tiny snips. Tiny snips, each as small as a hair or a very thin string. A sterilized, sharp cuticle snipper (like a small wire cutter) can be used to do the job, bit by bit. When we lift our tongue up, we can see right away where the point of greatest stress on the frenum is. If we take a tiny snip there, not bigger than a hair, it probably won't even bleed. Maybe one drop. If more than one drop, we did too much. The tiny snip will heal in a day or two. The tissues of the mouth heal very quickly. Then maybe in a week or a month, whatever we are comfortable with, we will be ready to do it again. And then, in another week or more, do it again. If we are sensitive, a little ice can be used to numb the edge of the frenum, and we won't even feel a little pinch when we snip. Don't use ice to take a big snip though. That is too much, and brings in some risk of infection. We should not snip if we have any kind of infection in the body. With tiny snips, the frenum will be allowing the tongue to go further back in no time, and before we know it we will be using our finger to push our tongue behind our soft palate.

We can continue with the tiny snips once we are in stage 2 kechari, and this will help us move on to stage 3. Then we can continue with the tiny snips once we have gotten to the top of the nasal pharynx, and this will help us move on through stage 4. It will take years. There is no rush. We may go for many months, or even years, with no snipping at all, content to enjoy the level of kechari we have attained so far, and the steady spiritual growth that comes with it. Then we may become inspired to continue going up with the tongue, and do some more snipping.

As the snipping progresses past stage 2 kechari, it becomes very easy to do it. As the frenum gives way slowly, the edge it presents when stretched becomes like a callus. There is no pain snipping it, and no blood. It is not difficult to trim it back so the tongue can go further up into more advanced stages of kechari. It is a long journey in time, and a fulfilling one. It can take decades to complete stages 1 through 4. There is no rush. The nervous system knows what must happen. When it knows, we know through our bhakti.

Everyone's frenum is different. A few will enter kechari with no snipping necessary. Others will need a lot of snipping. The rest of us will fall somewhere in-between. Whatever the case many be, we will know what to do when our bhakti comes up. No one else can tell us what to do when. Everything in this lesson is offered as information so you will have a better idea on what your options are as your bhakti comes up.

Some will have medical concerns about snipping the frenum. Most doctors will not be for it. Is there risk? There is always some risk when we undertake new things. That is life. The practice of trimming the frenum for kechari has been around for thousands of years – at least as long as circumcision, body piercing and tattooing. Not that any of these other types of body alterations are in the same class as kechari. They are not. Kechari is one of the most advanced yoga practices on the planet. When we know we are ready for it, we will be willing to accept whatever risk may be associated with entering it. We each choose our own path according to the feelings rising in our heart.

This lesson is not to promote stage 2 kechari and beyond for everyone. It is to provide useful information for those who are experiencing kechari symptoms and finding themselves stretching naturally past stage 1. What you do with the information here is your choice. Remember to always pace yourself according to your capacity and experiences.

The guru is in you.

http://www.aypsite.org/108.html

[American Dream]

So, undead, just to summarize, the position that I have seen you upholding in this thread- that there is a positive place for consciousness-altering techniques such as "tantric sex", conscious use of entheogenic substances, etc., is all valid in my book.

"Tantra", as described in the OP concerning TIDS, is I think more focused on the distinctively Tibetan synthesis of "Tantra" as a specific and then on the dynamics of culty guru groups in general.

Charles Carreon (author of the original article)- along with his wife Tara- has made an impressive work on their website at http://www.american-buddha.com/

I have learned a lot from having perused that treasure trove and I think that their strong critique of some of these things makes a lot of sense- especially given their own experiences- and is also valid.

So in synthesizing all of the above, we can I think, get to a good place with regards to babies and bathwater and all of that...

[undead]

Kundalini and Qigong Psychosis

By Dr. Tan Kheng Khoo



The seeker who dares to awaken the kundalini power without the grace and guidance of a guru might become insane, succumb to diseases, or even die. This is because he does not possess the necessary knowledge, steadiness of mind, or patience required for this difficult undertaking.

- Swami Kripalvananda

Introduction

I have been teaching Buddhist meditation for about 23 years. Being a doctor who is interested in psychiatry, I have always wondered whether prolonged and excessive meditation could produce mental imbalance. In these 23 years of running two courses per year, in every course the question of “zou hou ru mo”,走火入魔, inevitably turns up. It means “fire wild, devils enter”. In other words, “does one go mad with meditation?” In my 23 years of teaching, I have not encountered a single case of psychosis arising from my method of meditation practice amongst my students.

However, about 20 years ago a monk came to me complaining to me about a student in a meditation retreat he just organized. This is a ten-day retreat conducted by a few Burmese monks. The retreat consists of sitting and walking meditation for about 16 hours per day. After 3-4 days, a 25 year-old student started to pick up his food from the air. Not being in direct contact with the student, I am unable to determine whether the student had a meditation psychosis or was he a schizophrenic to begin with and the retreat brought on the symptoms. This is not an uncommon outcome if the organization does not screen the students for mental disorders.

About ten years ago, a middle-aged man stood up at question time and proudly announced that he has just completed a ten-day retreat with a group of monks. With great pride, he told the crowd of five hundred people that he had resigned from his job after the retreat. Then I asked how was he going to feed his family. Happily he retorted that because of this inability to feed them, his wife had divorced him and took his children away from him. From the way he spoke, I gathered that he was not in touch with reality, and he seemed quite pleased with himself. Retreats are intensive and with lay people the practice is excessive.

About eight years ago a man of 39 years old approached me for healing. He attended a course of kundalini meditation in Vancouver. The teacher was a Hong Kong Chinese who obviously knew very little of kundalini. This man found that his kundalini was stuck at the chest, the 4th chakra. I was able to bring the blockage down only to his 2nd chakra and no lower but he felt better. He then went to England to take up law studies. He is a very intelligent man, but the studies in UK were too stressful and this brought on his 4th chakra blockage again. He came to me a year ago with much worse symptoms of shaking all over the body and convulsing while I heal him. He has now suffered for 15 years after being taught to raise his kundalini wrongly.

Another middle-aged woman came to me with a stuck kundalini at the chest. Another teacher, who knew very little about kundalini, also wrongly taught her. Again I tried to bring down the blockage. But I was only partially successful. This lady also took the trouble of attending my course in meditation. She left me feeling better, but not totally cured. However she has now maintained a steady meditation practice and is leading a comfortable life.

There have also been many lay people who had the inclination to go to the jungle monasteries in Thailand to practice for a period of two weeks to a few months. Normally it is for a few months. In this context they practice as monks or nuns, keeping to the rules of the Theravada Buddhism. This includes not eating after midday and keeping to the 5 or 10 precepts. These novices are often ardent and they tend to overdo their meditation practice. Consequently, some of them suffer from visual and auditory hallucinations with intense fear. Shaking, convulsion and feinting do also occur. All these side effects of excessive and ill-guided meditations will disappear when they stop meditating, especially when they return to their homeland.

Now with the knowledge of all these cases and my commitment to teaching meditation, it behooves me to do some research on kundalini and qigong psychosis.

Kundalini

Kundalini is interpreted as a three and half times coiled serpent sleeping at the base of the spine. It signifies creative potential energy, which when awakened will move up along the spine upbraiding and purifying the 6 chakras on the way up to the crown chakra. It is the working of the energy of the glandular system combined with the nervous system to awake the brain towards total clarity. Some people interpret the culmination of this yoga of awareness as enlightenment. This kundalini needs the concentrated life force or prana to activate it. Prana is equivalent to Qi or Holy Spirit. Prana is the universal life force.

In order to awaken the serpent, prolonged internal meditation is required to release the vast mass of energy stored up in it. Other methods will be mentioned later. The aroused kundalini will then travel up the sushumna as well as the smaller channels, ida and pingala (see Fig. below). No matter how the kundalini is aroused, either a lot or a little, it can bring out abnormal reactions in the body and mind. In order for the full awakening to be achieved the aspirant must be guided by an accomplished teacher, who himself has succeeded in total awakening. On the way up, the purification of the chakras can cause much bizarre physical symptoms, some of which are distressing to the yogi. During this sojourn all the nadis (subtle nerves) around and along the chakras and nervous plexuses are opened up. In order to understand kundalini more clearly, we must go into the concept of kundalini yoga and bring in the terms Shiva and Shakti.



Shiva and Shakti

The word kundala means coiled. The root shak means to have power. Kundalini then signifies a serpent with coiled-up power resting at the base of the spine. Tantric yoga posits that the entire universe is a manifestation of pure consciousness. This pure consciousness divides into two poles, neither of which can exist without the other. One aspect is shiva, identified as unmanifest consciousness, which is masculine and static. It is a state of formless being-consciousness-bliss (sat-chit-ananda). It is aloof and not interested in the affairs of the world. It cannot ‘become’ or change. One can reach this shiva consciousness only through deep meditation. Out of this void everything in the world may arise.

The other polarity is shakti, which is dynamic, creative and energetic. This mother of the universe gives birth to all things in the universe---matter, life and mind.

These two polarities are united, but in the manifest universe maya causes an illusion of separation. Shakti is a projection of shiva, but maya veils the latter. This illusion is a process of involution, consciousness folding over itself. After many eons, the shakti will draw up all forms, when the universe is dissolved. This is evolution, when consciousness is no more interested with its manifestations. Energy always exists in two forms as 1) dynamic and 2) potential power at rest. In the universe manifestation a small part of shakti is involved in its manifestation, but the greater part remains dormant. The dynamic part is shakti in specific differentiated form, whilst the primal power remains as the coiled-up kundalini at the base of the spine. Shiva resides at the crown chakra. Ordinarily, only small amounts of the shakti energy is used for the normal functioning of the chakras and nadis for daily purposes. This latent power of the shakti can be conceived as the unlimited power of the unconscious. This latent force can be transformed to be an active one through appropriate means. Many methods have been described. This transformation is called the awakening of the kundalini.

The coiled serpent of shakti has to be awakened and carefully guided up the nadis of ida and pingala but mainly along the central shusumna. The snake then has to climb up to the crown chakra by going through the ascending six chakras (see Fig): (1) Muladhara at the coccyx, (2) Svadhisthana at the sacral plexus, (3) Manipura at the solar plexus, (4) Anahata at the cardiac plexus, (5) Vishuddha at the thoraxic plexus and (6) Ajna at the pituitary. The 7th is the crown chakra, which corresponds to the pineal gland. The awakening and the purification process of churning through the chakras are always attended with varying degrees of physical and psychological signs and symptoms. The peak experience, bliss and widening of consciousness may accompany the physical symptoms of heat, vibrations and even convulsions. All these are due to the release of powerful energy from the shakti kundalini. Union with God in Western Mysticism is equivalent to this tantric yoga (yoking union) of uniting of the kundalini shakti with shiva (pure consciousness). With this union the aspirant becomes fully conscious and awakened. Sir John Woodroffe says:

When Kundalini Shakti sleeps in the Muladhara, man is awake to the world; when she awakes to unite, and does unite, with the supreme static Consciousness, which is Shiva, then consciousness is asleep to the world and is one with the Light of all things.

When the serpent is asleep, the man is awake to the world. When the awakened shakti has united with shiva, man is asleep to the world, but fully awake to the transcendent realm where no objects or forms are visualized. The universe is dissolved in the yogi, whilst he is in this pure consciousness of no form, no thought and no emotion. The body has still enough energy to function and to carry on with the ordinary duties of man, but his mind is with the Gods. Not all yogins can arrive at this final goal. Partial awakening is much more common, and partial awakening normally will generate lots of symptoms.

How to awaken the Kundalini?

The Preparation

The preliminary preparation of withdrawal of worldly pursuits and purification of self are necessary because the flood of shakti energy may disturb, confuse and disorient the student. This preparation also includes physical and mental celibacy. The Hindus and the Taoists share this same view that the vital force of the semen must be retain and sent upwards towards the crown. The physical union between the male and female is forsaken and instead the internal union of the male (shiva) and female (shakti) takes place. Otherwise the outburst of energy can be of danger to the student. This sudden and massive release of awareness and energy can unbalance the student psychologically.

Methodology of awakening the kundalini

Although tantric yoga taught by an awakened teacher is the most potent and trust-worthy method, many other spiritual practices (sadhanas) may also partially awaken the serpent. The usual practices in India are firstly to withdraw from the external world and to purify oneself with pure thoughts, diet and proper exercises. Then he may indulge in one of the five forms of yogas: (1) hatha, (2) bhakti, (3) karma, (4) nana and (5) raja. Kundalini may be partially awakened even if all these methods are improperly or incompletely done and also because of past life practices. To an uninitiated student, the symptoms may frighten him. His practice will come to an abrupt stop, but with an experienced teacher or guru, the latter will guide him along gradually. The student must not force the issue or over do the practice.

Tantra Yoga

This yoga is par excellence in raising the kundalini. It centers on worshiping the Shakti, the mother of the universe. Tantric yoga does not mean sexual relationships only. In some forms of tantra a male-female relationship may be involved, but the genuine participants take it up to the realm of energy and consciousness and do not remain in the physical realm. They are now embodiments of shiva and shakti and are not physical bodies. In a purer form of tantra, Shakti is worshiped through meditation and mantra so that he is in direct relationship with the shiva and shakti within himself, and he unites them within himself. The practice is of course much more elaborate than what is described here and is totally guided by the guru.

Under the guidance of a guru

Without proper guidance by a guru, the partial awakening is not repeatable at will, although blissful experience of ecstasy and illumination may be encountered. However with the tutelage of an experienced guru, kundalini yoga may be guided to initiate the arising of the serpent. The supervision must be close and gradual. The mind must be purified first. What is a pure mind? A pure mind has no personal desires nor has it an inkling of revenge. It does not take advantage of the weakness or need of another person. A pure mind does not exploit the emotional dependence of another person. A pure mind does not result from simply being a vegetarian.

When the student is ready, he is given a ‘seed’ mantra to concentrate on. This initiation is practiced conjointly with spiritual and physical exercises together with mental disciplines to prepare the student. Then more difficult forms of meditation are taught in order for the student to be sensitive to the force within, and be ready to channel up the force when it arises. All this falls within a systematic scheme of things.

Shaktipat Diksha

Then in further progression a higher initiation called shaktipat diksha is given. This involves the guru to transmit energy directly to the initiate to remove the final obstacles so that the serpent can be awakened for its upward journey. This can be done through a touch, a glance or a thought. Thence the guru’s power can be transmitted to the student immediately. Temporarily, the student may be transported to a higher divine consciousness, which may last for an hour or a few days. After this the serpent returns to its abode at the base of the spine. He is now transformed because he has experienced directly the awakened state, although he did not achieve it through his own effort. Some of his creativity has been kindled, and spiritually, morally and intellectually he has been elevated. However, now he has to practice himself and intensify his efforts for many more years so that the serpent may repeated be awakened and guided correctly up the spine.

Special cases of kundalini arousal:

Swami Muktananda (died in 1983) described the usual heaviness of the head, sensations of heat and pain at the base of his spine. He had involuntary movements due to energy flows through the body and unusual breathing patterns. There were inner lights and sounds, visions and voices. Then the most unusual experience is this repeated sexual excitement that he described with great agony: “Every day brought new kriyas and new experiences. One day, my body and senses became possessed by sexual desire….I was meditating in my hut at Suki, and in meditation I was seeing the red light. I was happy. Then, in the middle of my meditation, came a kriya that was utterly humiliating…All the love and intoxication I had felt in meditation left me… Instead, in their place came a powerful sexual desire… I could think of nothing but sex! My whole body boiled with lust, and I cannot describe the agony in my sexual organ. Whether my eyes are open or shut, a beautiful woman would appear to entice me. The naked woman pursued me, finally standing in front of me. She began to torture me excruciatingly with only one apparent objective: she wanted no other sacrifice save my sacred vow of celibacy.” He traveled to Ghrishneshvara to a sadhana hut in Nagad. In this hut while doing his sadhana, he was asked to read a book in the cupboard. This book explained that this sexual desire is due to the piercing of the 2nd (Svadhisthana) chakra. This process is the turning of the flow of the seminal fluid upwards towards shiva. The naked, beautiful damsel was actually the Goddess Kundalini! After reading the book his progress was without obstacle.

Gopi Krishna (1903-1984)

Gopi Krishna was born in Kashmir and later lived in Punjab. He was an Indian householder, who after 17 years of unsupervised meditation, at 34 years old experienced the awakening of kundalini during his morning meditation. He was doing fine in an exercise of concentration on a lotus. In his own words: “I suddenly felt a strange sensation below the base of the spine, at the place touching the seat, while I sat cross-legged on a folded blanket spread on the floor. The sensation was so extraordinary and so pleasing that my attention was forcibly drawn towards it. The moment my attention was thus unexpectedly withdrawn from the point on which it was focused, the sensation ceased. Thinking that it was a trick played by my imagination, I fixed my attention on the lotus at the top of head, again the sensation occurred. This time the sensation went upwards and was so intense and extraordinary… My mind went towards it, and at that very moment it again disappeared.” The sensation came and went, until with a ‘roar like a waterfall’, he became ‘all consciousness’ and ‘immersed in a sea of light.’ “ The days that followed had all the appearance of a prolonged nightmare…. The keen desire to meditate, which had always been present during the preceding days, disappeared suddenly and was replaced by a feeling of horror of the supernatural…. I could not bear to have a light in my room after I retired to bed. The moment my head touched the pillow a large tongue of flame sped across the spine into the interior of my head. It appeared as if a stream of living light continuously rushing through the spinal cord into the cranium gathered speed and volume during the hours of darkness. Whenever I closed my eyes I found myself looking into a weird circle of light, in which luminous currents swirled and eddied, moving rapidly side to side.”

“The heat grew every moment, causing such unbearable pain that I writhed and twisted from side to side while streams of cold perspiration poured down my face and limbs. But still the heat increased and soon it seemed as if innumerable red-hot pins were coursing through my body, scorching and blistering the organs and tissues like flying sparks. Suffering the most excruciating torture, I clenched my hands and bit my lips to stop myself from leaping out of bed and crying at the top of my voice. Flesh and blood could not stand such strain. There was dreadful disturbance in all the organs, each so alarming and painful that I wonder how I managed to retain my self-possession under the onslaught. The whole delicate system was burning, withering away completely under the fiery blast racing through its interior.

He could not eat. Neither could he sleep. He felt like dying. The heat was awful, scorching his throat, which was parched. When he got out of bed, he was unsteady on his feet, trembling. He was also on the verge of madness and self-violence. Then a miracle of thought came into his mind: “….burning in every fiber, lashed as it were by a fiery rain of red-hot needles piercing my skin. At this moment a fearful idea struck me. Could it be that I had aroused Kundalini through pingala or the solar nerve, which regulates the flow of heat in the body and is located on the right side of sushumna? If so, I was doomed. I thought desperately and as if by divine dispensation the idea flashed across my brain to make a last-minute attempt to arouse ida, or the lunar nerve on the left side, to activity, thus neutralizing the dreadful burning effect of the devouring fire within. With my mind reeling and senses deadened with pain, but with all the will-power left at my command, I brought my attention to bear on the left side of the seat of Kundalini, and tried to force an imaginary cold current upward through the middle of the spinal cord. In that extraordinarily extended, agonized, and exhausted state of consciousness, I distinctly felt the location of the nerve and strained hard mentally to divert its flow into the central channel. Then, as if waiting for the destined moment, a miracle happened.

There was a sound like a nerve thread snapping and instantaneously a silvery streak passed zigzag through the spinal cord, exactly like the sinuous movement of a white serpent in rapid flight, pouring an effulgent, cascading shower of brilliant vital energy into my brain, filling my head with a blissful lustre in place of the flame that had been tormenting me for the last three hours. Completely taken by surprise at this sudden transformation of the fiery current, darting across the entire network of my nerves only a moment before, and overjoyed at the cessation of pain, I remained absolutely quiet and motionless for some time, tasting the bliss of relief with a mind flooded with emotion, unable to believe I was really free of the horror. Tortured and exhausted to the point of collapse by the agony I had suffered during the terrible interval, I immediately fell asleep, bathed in the light and for the first time after weeks of anguish felt the sweet embrace of restful sleep.”

Lee Sannella classify all the above signs and symptoms of kundalini arousal into four categories:

1. Motor---- any manifestation that can be independently observed and measured.

a) Automatic Body Movements and Postures. These kriyas are spontaneous, although the devotee may inhibit them. They can affect any part of the body. The movements may be smooth, sinuous, spasmodic and jerky, or vibratory. They range from muscle twitching to prolonged trembling to the automatic assumption of otherwise difficult and maybe even impossible yogic postures (asanas, mudras, etc). The person may not know these practices beforehand, and if one is not conversant with them, dating these practices maybe impossible. These may include spontaneous crying, laughing, screaming, and whistling.

b) Unusual Breathing Patterns. The yogin aspires to control the flow of prana in order to harmonize his bodily energies and increase his vitality. This is to prepare for the awakening of the kundalini. Pranayama comes from ‘prana’ meaning life force and ‘ayama’ meaning “extension, lengthening”. This word then means “breath control”, which also means controlling the life force. Therein lies the danger. Therefore rapid breathing, shallow breathing, deep breathing, or extended breath retention may come about in the manifestation of kundalini awakening. If these phenomena are spontaneous they may cause a great deal of anxiety. The masters warn against using pranayama to accelerate the kundalini’s ascent.

c) Paralysis. Sometimes during deep meditation, one is locked in certain postures. As these partial paralyses are worrying, one can explain away these changes by emotional support and rational explanation to the devotee. The paralysis maybe a secondary manifestation of a primary underlying organic weakness stimulated by the arising of kundalini energy.

2. Sensory Phenomena

a) Tickling Sensations. There is tickling, itching or vibrations of the skin or underlying tissues. They may extend as a deep ecstatic tickle and orgasmic feelings. These feelings emanate as a ‘bullock cart’ wheel: starting from the feet, up the legs, pelvis and moving up the back to the neck and the crown of the head and then down the forehead, the face, the throat, and the abdomen, where they terminate.

b) Heat and Cold Sensations. Temperature changes quite often occur to either part or whole of the body. They may also move through the body but mostly without any pattern.

c) Inner Lights and Visions. A variety of light experiences do occur amongst the yogins. The light may be white, red or blue. There maybe white and black spots in them. They can cover the whole body or localize to certain parts or organs of the body. Rarely, the whole room is illuminated, and if other people see this, this is the surest sign of the realization of the cosmic realm. Further concrete proof is the visible aura or halo of the enlightened person seen by other people.

d) Inner Sounds. A variety of sounds or noises such as whistling, hissing, chirping, and roaring may be heard. These are very common. They vary according to the type of meditation practice. The typical transcendental sound is that mystical one called “OM”.

e) Pain. Pain may be felt in the head, the eyes, spine and other parts of the body. They may appear abruptly and disappear just as fast. It may last for seconds or hours. The explanation is that the yogin may be subconsciously resisting the arising of the kundalini or the kundalini energy is purifying the chakras as it ascends the spine. Some tension headaches are said to be due to partial awakening of the kundalini.

3. Interpretive Phenomena

a) Unusual or extreme Emotion. In the awakening, feelings of ecstasy, bliss, peace, love, devotion, joy, and cosmic harmony may occur. On the opposite side, intense fear, anxiety, confusion, depression, and even hatred may also be felt. The first set of positive feelings tends to be present more in the later stages of the awakening.

b) Distortions of Thought Processes. Thinking may be speeded up, slowed down, or altogether stopped. Thoughts may seem off balance, strange, or irrational. The person may feel that he is going mad. He may go into trance states, or he may become impulsive, alienated or confused. In deep meditation (as in vipassana), the myriad of thoughts in their subtlety and complexity tend to bewilder the meditator to a great extend. This is the stirring up of the unconscious, some of which is very unpleasant to the yogin. These fantasies can knock the unstable yogin off balance.

c) Detachment. The individual feels that he is an independent observer of his own thoughts, feelings and sensations. He has become a ‘seer’, but not aloof. His normal daily function is unimpaired.

d) Dissociation. When there is deep psychological disturbances, fear, confusion, or social and other environmental pressures present, the above detached seeing may lead to hysteria, akin to a schizophrenia state. Or he may become egotistical as he has been chosen ‘for a great a mission’.

e) Single Seeing. The eyes of the yogin do not distinguish the object from its background. Both are seen as one. Turning the eyes inwardly, both inner and outer landscapes are seen at the same time. Many direct and indirect references have been made to single seeing or the ‘one eye’ to depict an advancement of spirituality. In Luke 11:34; “the light of the body is the eye; therefore when thine eye is single thy whole body is also full of light”.

f) “Great Body” Experience. Sometimes in deep meditation or in the ascent of the kundalini, the body feels much larger than normal. There is an exaggerated sensation of the ballooning out of the physical body, which also seems heavy, like lead.

4. Nonphysical Phenomena

a) Out-of-body Experiences. This phenomenon is rare amongst meditators. However they do occur.

b) Psychic Perceptions. Clairvoyance, telepathy and predictions do occur with individuals who have succeeded in awakening the kundalini. Again, these paranormal experiences are sporadic and are not constant. Most of these abilities do not arise on demand.

All the above signs and symptoms may arise after awakening the kundalini. But they may also come about in people who meditate constantly and regularly, without the arousal of the kundalini.

Kundalini versus Psychosis

From the above signs and symptoms, one must differentiate psychosis from arising of the kundalini. This is not easy, especially if the therapist or psychiatrist has not heard of kundalini. The awakened person can diagnose partial awakening in another subject. The psychiatrist can diagnose schizophrenia easily, but give him a case of kundalini arousal, he may fumble and label the yogin with partial awakening as pure psychotic. However, there are certain signs and symptoms which occur are more in one and not the other:

· Sensations of heat are much more common in kundalini states but are rare in normal psychosis.

· Vibrations or fluttering, tingling, and itching that move in definite patterns all over the body. These patterns may be irregular if the arousal is atypical.

· Bright lights are seen internally in kundalini arousal.

· Pain, especially in the head may come suddenly and it may also disappear as suddenly. It comes during a critical period of the arousal.

· Unusual breathing patterns are common in kundalini.

· Mudras such as automatic movements, gestures as in prayers and even dancing are almost exclusively due to kundalini arousal.

· In kundalini cases noises such as whistling and chirping are heard, but not negative intrusion of voices. In psychosis, voices give negative instructions to the patients to do harm to self or others.

In guided and systematic kundalini arousal, the symptoms will disappear spontaneously over time. This is because it is a process of purification, and the process must be self-limiting. It is also therapeutic as they remove pathological elements in the body. The kundalini energy is always positive and creative if it takes its own gradual course and not forced. At the end of the kundalini process, the individual is usually at peace, and he is now able to handle much greater stress than before. The best course to take is to find a guru who himself has successfully awakened his kundalini and let him guide you to fruition. Without proper preparation, the individual is bound to deem himself psychotic when mental and emotional symptoms arise. There may well be many a patient in mental homes who are not psychotic, but merely has accidentally awakened his kundalini partially. The institutionalization of the man alone may drive him crazy!

Therefore in assessing a patient, the psychiatrist (and not merely a GP), must be very cognizant of the kundalini process. With the above distinctions enumerated and his ability to ‘smell’ out a schizophrenic he may then come to a correct diagnosis. Without this knowledge all GP’s and most psychiatrists will diagnose them as psychotic. If the patient is sent to an awakened master, the guru will be more likely to tell the difference.

Must spiritual life begin only through the kundalini?

Gopi Krishna and some schools of thought avow that spiritual life and therefore enlightenment is dependent entirely on the awakening of the kundalini. This cannot be the case because there are many traditions (Buddhists, Taoists, Sufis and Christians) and other Hindus whose members attained enlightenment without the arousing of the kundalini. The adept, Da Love-Ananda (Da Free John), put forward the same idea as the Vedantists and Mahayana Buddhists that authentic spirituality is the transcendence of the ego, the body-mind and all experiential states. Enlightenment means there is no separation from Transcendental Reality (The Absolute). He said:

You have been contracted upon yourself with emotional force, and no amount of thinking, considering, experiencing, desiring, exploiting, and manipulating yourself in the world can affect that contraction. No awakening of the kundalini touches it. It has nothing to do with the kundalini. You can have kundalini experiences until you are yawning with boredom, yet you will not have touched this emotional recoil at all.

Seeing that it is the ego that prevents enlightenment, spiritual practice consists of consistently going beyond the wall of the ego, and reaching out and embracing all life beyond fearlessly, with an open heart. In an unpublished talk dated July 8. 1978, Da Love-Ananda remarked:

The lust for the kundalini in the brain is exactly the same as the lust for the kundalini in the sex center. It is using that mechanism in a different direction. But neither direction is towards God…Attachment to the brain through inversion of attention in the kundalini, or the Life-current, is traditionally promoted as the way to God. This is an error that has crept into the spiritual traditions. The way to God is not via the kundalini. The awakening of the kundalini and becoming absorbed in the brain core is not God-realization. It has nothing to do with God-realization. It is simply a way of tuning into an extraordinary evolutionary mechanism. The way to God-realization is the one by which that mechanism is understood and transcended completely.

Da Love-Ananda has had many experiences of completely raising the kundalini himself. He advocates the ‘Way of the Heart’ as the means to enlightenment. It begins and continues as taking responsibility of one’s own emotions: one’s lovelessness, distrust, moods, sense of conflict and fear. One then has to transcend the negative and the positive emotions and all psychic and paranormal experiences. The fire is in the heart and not in the perineum or in the brain!

The Dangers of Arousing of the Kundalini

Swami Kripalvananda in his Science of Meditation followed the advice quoted in the preface with two more paragraphs:

Many seekers are found wandering here and there in search of a guru who will awaken their kundalini…. Although thousands may claim that they know kundalini and that their kundalini is awakened, it is doubtful if even one of them really had such knowledge or experience.

To awaken the kundalini power is one thing, but to make it move upward into the passage of the sushumna is something else. In the beginning, as the kundalini is awakened, the seeker feels a lot of enthusiasm. But as he advances in (meditation), he begins to encounter various menaces of kundalini. Only one with great courage can cope with these menaces; it is simply not possible for all to do so.

Sri Chinmoy reckons that there are two ways of arousing the kundalini: (1) the tantric process and (2) the vedantic process. He warns that the tantric approach is systematic and elaborate but quite dangerous. The vedantic method is simple, mystical but safe and no less fulfilling. The tantric method is dangerous because it deals with the lower vital and emotional life. It is also dynamic and courageous, but one has to be strong internally to conquer the vital forces of the kundalini energy. The vedantic method is safe because he purifies himself and expands his consciousness first before he deals with the obscure, impure lower forces of the kundalini. Further awakening of the kundalini does not mean God-realization. God-realization is much more superior, and at that moment all one’s chakras are automatically opened.

According to Alice Bailey one needs to have ordered meditation of no more than 40 minutes per day. One’s development must take years with service. A normal and quiet life is imperative. Purification of mind and body and suppression of volatile emotions must accompany all this. One must not indulge in meditating for hours or arousing of any particular chakra. There should not be any fanatical dieting or curtailing of sleep. Together with these last two habits an intense interest in psychic power will inevitably end in ‘psychosis’. Pranayama or other breathing exercises should not be undertaken without expert guidance.

Qigong

Qi is life energy. It is the animating power or prana that enervate all things. A living person has this life force: a healthy person has more qi than an ill person. A dead person has no more qi left and thus there is no more warmth. To be healthy, the qi must be clear and unpolluted. It should not be turbid and it must be flowing smoothly and not blocked.

Gong means work. Qigong means working with this life force, and learning to control and distribute the qi to improve the health of mind and body. Qigong is a whole system of exercise and meditation. The exercise includes postures, movements, massage and breathing techniques. Qi is accumulated and stored in the body. In disease, the polluted qi is cleansed into pure healing qi. Impure qi is eliminated by proper breathing techniques.

Qigong is a practice because it is a daily exercise of 20 to 40 minutes. It is an enjoyable exercise. It requires only some time and hardly any money. There are techniques for every body of any age and physical condition. No equipment or large space is necessary. It can be practiced with standing, sitting or supine methods. With slight modification the handicapped can also practice some of the techniques.

Categories of qigong

It is generally divided into active (dong gong) and passive (jing gong):

(1) Dynamic (active) qigong means movement of postures as in a dance or if a posture is fixed movements of the arms. Dong gong is yang and active concealing the passive ying. Movement is the external appearance, but internally the mind is quiet and tranquil.

(2) Passive (tranquil) qigong is meditation with the body being still. Qi is controlled by concentration, visualization and breathing techniques. Jing gong is passive yin externally, but internally the mind is alert and actively yang. With the body still the breath moves the qi.

Although dynamic dong gong is movement and passive jing gong is meditation, there is no rigid line drawn between the two. To balance yin and yang, in movement there must be stillness in the mind. In restful meditation, the mind must be aware with attention.

In its application, qigong can also be divided into:

a) External Healing Qi. This is similar to cosmic healing.

b) Meditative or Spiritual Qigong (Jing Gong). This is meditation (jing gong) which is practiced as a complement to the active dong gong (yang), the commoner or popular qigong. There is a tendency to subdivide it as Buddhist and Taoist, but whatever classifications the essence is to attain ‘a sound mind in a sound body’.

c) Healing qigong is the major movement nowadays. Complemented with meditation, the active part includes stretching, deep breathing, low impact conditioning, and isometrics. This practice increases stamina and improves coordination.

So basically one learns qigong in order to establish medical and health benefits. The remaining types of qigong should not interest us. The most popular type of easy daily exercise nowadays is Taiji Quan. A smaller number of people would go to a teacher for proper and graduated training for physical and mental health and this is now generally called qigong.

Dangers of qigong

Although most qigong techniques are innocuous especially when guided by an expert teacher, dangers may be encountered if one is too impatient or eager and does not follow the teacher’s guidance.

Qigong Psychosis

Kenneth S Cohen coined the terms qigong psychosis and qigong psychotic reaction in late 1970s. These are direct translation of the Chinese expression zou huo ru mo, 走火入魔, “fire wild, devils enter”. In 1994, the “Glossary of Culture-Bound Syndromes” of the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association states:

Qigong psychotic reaction: A term describing an acute, time-limited episode characterized by dissociative, paranoid, or other psychotic or non-psychotic symptoms that may occur after participation in the Chinese folk health-enhancing practice of qigong. Especially vulnerable are individuals who become overly involved in the practice.

More is not always better. The lesson here is that the individual should not overwhelmingly go overboard to practice qigong, both active exercises and passive meditation. Kenneth Cohen cites two cases of a Taiji Quan teacher and a Buddhist master. Both were teachers of qigong, but both were out of touch with reality. The Taiji Quan teacher, after ten years of practice, is hallucinating about his ‘third aura’, which is non-existent in any spiritual practice. He was told to stop teaching and to do 20 minutes of standing meditation every morning. After one year his delusion disappeared.

The Buddhist master after spending 25 years of qigong is out of touch with reality. He was constantly talking to God by invoking deities, but he could not carry on a normal conversation with his friends.

In 25 years of teaching qigong, Kenneth Cohen had met 5 or 6 qigong teachers and at least 50 qigong students who developed similar problems after excessive practice of going too fast ignoring proper instructions. Dr. Zhang Tongling, professor of psychiatry at the Beijing Medical University, runs a clinic for the obsessive qigong practitioners. In a series of 145 patients she found that hallucinations emanating from excessive practice of qigong without guidance is common. The advice given here is: proceed gradually step by step. Do not overload your qi circuits by trying to do too much too soon. Do not neglect the joys of life. Relax and not to be obsessed with qi all the time.

Bruce Kumar Frantzis was fully trained in mainland China by one of this century’s greatest Taoist masters. He has written a book called ‘Opening The Energy Gates Of Your Body’. In the Appendix C of this book he described a few cases that went wrong:

Case 1: Too much Qi is painful.

This case concerns a man who was taught the basic ‘Hsing I Nei Gung’ practice of sinking the qi to the lower tantien (hara) in Amoy. After two years of practice the student became very powerful. When his teacher left for another city, this man began learning secret techniques from other teachers. He practiced these new techniques diligently. The combination of the new with the old ended in forcing the qi below the tantien into his genitals. He literally broke the barrier between the lower tantien and the genitals, emptying the tantien of qi. This resulted in mental and physical problems including involuntary semen emissions and hallucinations. His masters took three years to bring him back to normal.

Case 2: Vibrating Qi

In many qigong practices, there is a desire to deliberately trying to vibrate qi in the body, bones, tissues, brain etc. The breathing becomes rapid. The untoward aspects of this practice are that power usurps compassion. Symptoms of hallucinations and megalomania may also induce a mental illness. The shaking, the shutting and opening continue even after the practice is stopped, and this can damage the internal organs. This is like the partial awakening of the kundalini. Cancer patients when they practice this method tend to worsen their disease, because the primary cancer will send secondaries elsewhere.

Fukien White Crane

Psychosis will result when the enhanced qi goes up to the brain. This is quite common in the ‘Fukien White Crane’ type of practice. The madness starts with arrogance and breaking of bones due to the power. Some of the other symptoms are (1) Hallucinations with out-of-body experiences, (2) Things are moving much faster then they actually are, (3) Stiffening of the internal and external body, (4) Thirst for power, (5) Feeling constantly active and restless and unable to calm down. 6) Experiencing involuntary movements and body spasms. The remedy is to drain and re-pattern the vibrational qi.

A personal case of qigong psychosis

This is a good friend of mine. He was 64 years of age and retired from his profession. He started to practice qigong under a teacher. Everything was fine for a year. Then he started to feel strong and powerful. He used to tell me that he was so healthy and strong that he carried his own golf clubs and did not require a buggy to ferry him about. Then a few months later, he told me that he was radiant and light, and that he can put his arms up towards a tree and receives white light and energy from the tree. This sounded a little odd to me then, but there were no other symptoms. Suddenly one evening his son rang me up to say that his father was psychotic. He was meditating almost the whole night and then suddenly he began to shout vehemently. He was paranoid and insisted that there were evil spirits in the house. Then he began to cut round holes out of the carpet where he was meditating. Then he also put his hands around the wife’s neck trying to shake off or blow off the evil spirit in her. When I spoke to him on the phone, he seemed to confide knowingly that there are spirits around his house and he did not want to elaborate as he might anger them. I told the son to stop him from practicing qigong straightaway and to ask the psychiatrist to prescribe a certain drug. He slowly improves from then onwards. In this case he practiced only for 18 months. However, in the last few weeks he overdid it and even tried to meditate the whole night.

Conclusion

From the descriptions of the above two methods of spiritual paths, one can discern that psychosis may develop if the student over meditates, say several hours at one stretch. If the meditation is too intensive and the focus is on one or two chakras, then ill effects may arise. It is not so much the active part (dong gong) of the practice, but the meditative exercise that can go awry. In jing gong it is also the partial awakening of the kundalini that is to blame. In tantra yoga, it is not the physical exercise of hatha yoga that causes trouble. It is the meditative portion of the tantric practice that can go very wrong, especially when too much and too intensive energy is expended in the meditation. Generally, any form of meditation can give rise to psychosis. It need not be kundalini or qigong. A friend of mine had a skin disease twenty years ago. He was doing Buddhist meditation (samatha) in a stupa, in which urns of ashes of deceased people were kept. He thought he could self-cure himself if he meditated as long as he could in the stupa. He probably went into para-jhana, where his Buddha-mind or consciousness vacated his body. He was in an ‘empty’ state. After two months of meditating in the stupa, he became totally unhinged. Apparently three different types of entities took over his personality: he spoke in three different languages through out the day. He remained possessed in this fashion for many years. Many lay people in the Far East would like to go to Thai monasteries and be monks for a month or so. There are no radio, television or books to read in these monasteries. They meditate about 8-10 hours a day and stop eating after midday. This monastery practice can drive quite a few crazy, especially if they are not guided. Most of them are not properly guided. So the answer is not to meditate unguided for long periods of time.

References

1) Kenneth S. Cohen. The ways of Qigong. A Ballantine Book. 1997.

2) B.K. Frantzis. Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body. North Atlantic Books. 1993.

3) Krishna, Gopi Kundalini, The Evolutionary Energy in Man. Shambala. Boston and London 1997.

4) Krishna, Gopi. The Awakening of Kundalini. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975

5) Edited by John White. Kundalini, Evolution and Enlightenment. Paragon House. St. Paul, Minnesota. 1990.

6) Lee Sannella, M.D. The Kundalini Experience. Integral Publishing 1992.

7) Arundale, G.S. Kundalini: An occult Experience. Wheaton, Ill, Theosophical Publishing House, 1970.

Chinmoy, Sri. Kundalini: The Mother Power. New York: Chinmoy Lighthouse Publishing, 1974.

9) Kripalvananda, Swami. Science of Meditation. Gujarat, India: Sri Dahyabha Hirabhai Patel, 1977. Available through the Kripalu Yoga Ashram, Sunnytown, Pa.18084.

10) Woodroffe, Sir John. The Serpent Power. Madras, India: Ganesh & Co., 1974

http://www.kktanhp.com/kundalini.htm

[American Dream]

I should also add here the counterpoint to previous material on this thread which was from sources more questioning/critical towards Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I've been reading more of the Steinbeck book quoted upstream, and I think the story it tells of the very positive and healing role that 12 Step groups played in the midst of some very unhealthy dramas also deserves telling. To a good degree, 12 Step groups are a function of the people who make them happen...

Excerpted from:

THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN: LIFE WITH JOHN STEINBECK

John had always viewed Rinpoche as the Good Father he never found in Steinbeck. He would write him little notes.

Sir, I want to thank you for steering me in the right direction. There is no way that I can do this without the strong connection and presence of you as you guide my steps. My ego is large. Some people bring it out more than others. I think I know so damned much, but as we both know, the light of my knowledge could not illuminate even a flea's glove compartment in your universe.

Please help me. I am powerless over the need to have others respect what I have seen and learned and this is such a waste of time. It is compulsive and I know where it comes from, but it does me no fine service. Please help me with this in the cause of your skillful means. People treat me with kindness because they see the light of your face on mine. Please let me keep it there for a few more days. I supplicate you in all your forms. Help me be ever mindful of your living presence, as the entire phenomenal world is your dance and delight, without exception.

Hoping Rinpoche could heal his childhood wounds, John thought he had finally found a father figure he could trust.

As Rinpoche's drinking increased, we began to see holes in the fabric of our devotion. During a seminar that summer, Rinpoche was so drunk during his evening talks that several guards had to haul him on and off the stage. One night all he could say was "Be kind to each other. Please, be kind to each other" over and over. It was horrible to see him so inebriated, but it was even more chilling to watch the sycophantic fawning of his henchmen. John and I maintained a healthy sense of discrimination during that period, at the risk of being shunned, as happens in all cults when the student questions. Maybe we had a nose for it, because of all the obsequious behavior that manifests around fame, but we sensed a disturbing quality of delusion both in Rinpoche and his yes-men. Still, we wanted to check out Halifax, where many of our friends had already moved their homes and businesses. We were itching to leave the unreality of Boulder's Disneyesque confines, and hoped Halifax could offer a more cosmopolitan atmosphere.

At first glance, John agreed there was no way on earth those uptight Haligonians with their blue blood, or the peasants who had immigrated from Old Scotia, would ever leave their Church of England or Catholic religions. It was ridiculous to think of them ever becoming Buddhists, as Rinpoche predicted. Thom and John reacted to Halifax as if they'd been thrown in a vat of boiling oil. They were appalled at the slowness of the traffic, dismayed by the last-place-on-earth quality, the utter bleakness. John kicked and bellowed like a bull in a pen.

"There's no damn way I'm going to live here unless I have a guaranteed ticket out at all times. Boulder is provincial enough." We feasted on lobster as our friends showed us around the city. I convinced the captain of a pleasure cruiser to take us around the bay. All he wanted in exchange for the trip was a bottle of scotch. To this day, that poor captain still tells people that he met the Steinbeck brothers and they consumed the entire bottle during the first hour of the voyage. He barely got a drop. John drank vodka that week, which always gave him a bizarre, hallucinogenic high. On our way back to the Maine ferry one night, he suddenly ordered Thom to pull the car over to the side of the road. He leapt out and ran out to the middle of a field, as if he were being chased by bloodhounds. Thom and I sat there, incredulous.

"He has become Mother. The same mood swings and violent emotions," Thom said, shaking his head. Silent minutes passed on the dark, empty road and then Thom called out for him impatiently. John came back subdued, insisting he'd had a religious experience. He'd kicked off his shoes while he was running around the field and was magically led back to the place where they lay. This was an omen, a sign of his liberation. He railed to us about his freedom and what he saw out there in that field. At the hotel, when I couldn't listen any longer, he went next door to Thom's room and raved on. We had no idea what he was even talking about.

From then on, especially when we visited old friends of theirs in upstate New York, Thom would flash me a look that said, "See, now he's where he belongs. You can't touch him here. No girls allowed." Early on, Elaine told me she was stunned by the jealousy Thom exhibited toward me.

"Don't you find it disgusting that a grown man can be so resentful about his brother's girlfriend?" she asked. "Johnny said to me 'Wouldn't you know Thom would be like that?' and I said yes, unfortunately, I knew he had it in him. Does he think he's going to have John cornered for the rest of his life? It's pitiful."

Johnny told me not to take it personally, that Thom was that way with all his women, but it confused and hurt me deeply. I'd see Thom nonverbally putting out the message that I was excluded, and Johnny would be ignoring the whole thing, exuding his own static about Thom's expectations. When all else failed and there was enough booze, things would fold into the sloppy category of We're Steinbecks. I loathed the stale, closed system of Thom's mystique. All I saw were a couple of incredibly wounded bozos posturing like drunken apes, legends in their own minds.

I was starting to lose heart. John's horrible outbursts of anger, which were mostly related to his family, were wearing down my sanity. Not knowing how closely linked they were to his alcoholism, I was utterly confused as to where I fit in. When we were alone, the family baggage would slip off of him like snake skin and he would be at ease, sweet, and loveable.

Years later I saw women making gravel in the streets of Kathmandu, chipping away at a huge stone in the afternoon heat. That's what it felt like. I'd chip and hack and clear away, trying to get to the tender heart I knew was trapped inside John's calcified scar tissue, petrified I wouldn't make it in time. I began to dread that there might be so many obstacles lurking in John's psyche that the task would be impossible. Unfortunately, within the Buddhist community, seeking outside help in the form of therapy was considered taboo. Meditation was touted as the cure-all. When I sought advice within the community, I was given the useless recommendation that I should encourage John to practice meditation, or to sit more myself.

Sometimes his moods manifested as downright sadism. The friends we visited in upstate New York took us to a glider port one afternoon. John put me in the plane and winked to the pilot as he whispered, "Give her a whip stall." I had no idea what that meant, but since Johnny had done a lot of gliding, I figured he wanted to share the experience with me. The plane rose gradually and I was entranced by the graceful airiness of the silent motion. Suddenly, we started going straight up, nose first, tail down and then, without warning, the plane flipped over. As the green fields rushed up to meet us, my stomach felt like it was hurtling through my brain and out the top of my head. Terrified, I said prayers. I thought of the kids, I figured it was the end. And then, as suddenly as the downward lurch had happened, we leveled off easily. The pilot flew on calmly. I broke the silence.

"Did you lose control of the plane?" I cried.

"That was a whip stall, ma'am. Like your husband asked for." I sat stunned, blinking like a toad in hot ashes.

"Have you ever been in a whip stall before?" he asked gently.

"No, I've never even been in a glider before."

"And your husband sent you up without telling you what a whip stall is?"

I nodded.

"Lady, your husband is a sadist. That was a cruel thing to do."

I emerged from the plane, seething. It was the end of our fall foliage tour and the beginning of a giant six-year whip stall in our relationship.

One winter night in 1982, we rented a cabin in Rocky Mountain National Park, thirty miles from Boulder. Because we had started an instant family with our union, there were times when we needed to get away from the children, in hopes of finding ourselves, and our coupleship. We left Megan and Michael with Paul and brought along Sluggo, our Abyssinian kitten. John drank heavily and started his usual late-night monologue, which had been failing to charm me for months. Something about being stuck out there in the snow with him made me feel bone cold and alone. The next morning he woke up, still drunk, and continued where he left off. As we drove home through the mountain forests, the contrast between the purity of the white snow on the firs, the crackling blue sky, and his smelly, degraded appearance made me nauseous. Gone was my noble, aristocratic lover, as well as his wit and urbane manners. I saw an ape, Quasimodo locked in a belfry of oblivion, and my heart recoiled.

When we stopped to walk in the woods, John carelessly placed Sluggo on a tree limb. As the kitten crawled nearly out of reach, I quickly grabbed him. I was annoyed. Would John have let him climb up the other fifty feet to the top, and then what? Would he have waited three days till Sluggo decided to come down or would he leave when it got dark because it was getting cold and then always miss that cute little guy? Or maybe he would create a drama and call the fire department, miles away. Not only was John no longer so much fun to be with, because no one was home, but he was becoming a colossal bore, a time waster, a nuisance, a fool. 1 wanted to scream, "Get a grip!"

When we returned to Boulder, I started making phone calls to find help. I heard that some community members had formed a group which Rinpoche named Sarpashana (Sanskrit for "peacock" because they supposedly transmute poison) to study substance abuse. I asked John to attend a meeting with me, and I told my story of the ride through the forest that day. I was shocked to see people actually crying in sympathy. These alcoholics had started to face their own drinking problems. They were able to identify with my despair. Several shared that they had heard similar reactions from their loved ones. When they put themselves in my place, driving through the glistening snow, completely alienated from John, they were struck with the depth of suffering they were causing in their own lives. They urged me to seek professional counseling at the county-funded Alcohol Rehabilitation Center (the ARC).

Johnny sat there in his inimitable style, listening to every word in sympathy.

"Yep, I'm an alcoholic!" he announced in his typical stand-up fashion. He didn't notice that everyone looked at him as if to say, Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?

"The game is up," I told John when we got home. "I am going to find out what to do about this craziness. I will do whatever is necessary to get some answers, and if that doesn't work, I will leave you."

The fact that he'd recently been arrested for drunk driving kept John from slipping into defensiveness. The judge presiding over the DUI case ordered John to see a psychologist named Carl Sternberg, who specialized in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Carl suggested in addition to his sessions with John, that we do some couples counseling with him and his wife, Benta. While they did teach us some communication skills, the Sternbergs knew nothing about alcoholism. They mistakenly thought they could help in spite of John's drinking. Now, therapists know not to treat someone until they're clean and sober. To this day, the Sternbergs admit, "We blew it with the Steinbecks." Nevertheless, the fact that John was being watched by the law and by two outsiders caused him to modify his behavior.

The turning point came when I started attending Al-Anon meetings, where I saw women who had been married for forty years to alcoholics actually laughing! They had developed a sense of humor about their lives. I wanted what they had and I was willing to go to any lengths to achieve it. John went to court-ordered AA meetings and claimed he enjoyed the camaraderie. As they always did during his periods of sobriety, things started to lighten up.

In fact, we felt so buoyant, we decided to get married. We had been together for three years. If I were going to continue to put my children and my life in John's hands to such an extent, I wanted a real commitment before going any further. John felt it was necessary to cement the work we were doing. "I admire the fact that you can stick with me through this process," he said. I wanted to know why I'd developed that tenacity. Why did I feel like I've been fighting for my life all my life?

28. Apocalypse Now

NANCY

John never allowed me to be sanctimonious about the discrepancy between his wretched excesses and my practicalities. I could not hide behind a Snow White facade, pretending I didn't know why I had landed in the middle of Apocalypse Now.

He's driving me crazy. If only he'd quit drinking, everything would be fine. Reluctantly, I had to admit that was not entirely true. Even if he did get sober, I still had to face my character defects. What qualities in me caused my attraction to a raging alcoholic? I was too loving, too patient, too forgiving. Why did I feel so desperately empty when I thought of life without him?

One winter night, a year after our wedding, I got a phone call at two in the morning. We'd had a fight about John's drinking and he had gone tearing off to Le Bar earlier that evening.

"Mrs. Steinbeck, this is the manager of the Boulderado. Your husband has had an accident. Can you come as soon as possible?"

I threw on a trench coat and drove down streets paved with black ice. Going the wrong way on one ways, I drove recklessly, in a panic, afraid he might be dead. An Al-Anon phrase echoed in my head. The only difference between us and the alcoholic is the smell of our breath.

A fire engine, an ambulance, and two police cars blocked the hotel entrance. Slipping inside the lobby, I stood behind a crowd of bleary onlookers. My precious husband lay crumpled at the foot of a long marble staircase. I heard people say he'd fallen the entire length. The paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher; an oxygen mask covered his demented leer.

I knew if he saw me, he would go off on one of his tirades, so I stayed quietly in the background. For once, I didn't charge in to save the day. Thinking it best if he were left to his own devices, I simply watched. Let him face the consequences of this on his own. As I witnessed myself watching, I experienced the nuts and bolts of genuine detachment.

I called Mitchell Levy, Rinpoche's physician, from a nearby pay phone. He laughed as I told him about the fall. People often reacted to John's highwire act with inappropriate humor, the mark of an untreated alcoholic or codependent. Mitchell said he would meet me at the hospital a few blocks away.

I pulled up in time to see John's stretcher being taken to the emergency room. Floating down the eerie halls in shock, I peeked into the room where they left his gurney. John was sitting upright; the look on his face terrified me. His features were distorted in a manic resemblance of Gwyn, as if she had taken possession of his soul. True to the alcoholic's poisonous duplicity, Johnny, the victimized child, abandoned by his mother's holiday hospital stays, was now sitting in the catbird seat in her favorite vacation spot. Silently peering through the curtain into the darkened room, I saw that horrible no-one's-home look in his eyes, a one-man freak show. Ladies and gentlemen, see the monster impersonate his mother and grandmother in the throes of their dementia. Watch his handsome features change into a macabre mask, his brilliance turn to lunacy before your very eyes. Step right up, but not too close, or he'll turn into a snarling tiger.

I crept home and went to bed. An hour later John came tiptoeing in, meek with chagrin. He wanted to tell me all about it. I begged him to go to sleep, never letting on what I had witnessed. My blood ran cold that night, like the black ice in front of the Boulderado. This was the closest he had come to death since I'd known him. I had heard about the dozen times he had OD'd on heroin, revived by friends. Just a few weeks before, he'd drunkenly run a stop sign and was blindsided by a tow truck which then hauled away his mutilated car. In his denial, he thought of that as an elegant pun.

I saw his crumpled body in my mind's eye as the hours passed into a frigid grey dawn. He could have broken his neck on those marble steps. 1 should sue the bartender and the Boulderado's owner. He probably had been captivating someone with his drunken monologue. Talking to strangers, cavalier, frantic for recognition. Where is this going to end?

In the morning he looked appropriately haunted, and I could tell we had turned a corner into a chilling corridor where some definite choices would have to be made. My mother was reading Betty Ford's autobiography; she explained the notion of intervention. She encouraged me to educate myself more about alcoholism and codependency. The crux of my Al-Anon recovery was to resolve the conflict between their notion of Higher Power and Buddhism's nontheism, no external God, no savior outside yourself. Rinpoche taught that one could only rely upon individual salvation, saving yourself through the practice of meditation and a commitment to discriminating awareness. He laughed at the idea of a God in heaven and claimed Christianity fell short of the truth compared with the notion of emptiness found in Buddhism. One Sunday morning when he first came to Boulder, Rinpoche visited a little chapel in the mountains. As the pastor expressed his pleasure in seeing the Tibetan, our intrepid guru flipped him off. While we laughed at his roguery back then, I now think it was incredibly arrogant and rude.

When John and I left the scene and returned to our childhood concept of divinity, I realized how spiritually bankrupt we all had been. As children, we communed with a Creator, as well as angels, fairies, and lesser gods. To no avail, we had tried to follow the rules of nontheism by fostering devotion to the guru and the teachings, but it never worked. We were greatly relieved when the Dalai Lama explained our spiritual dilemma to us when we met with him later in Costa Rica. "It is not good for a person to change from the religion into which they were born. Very difficult to understand the religion of a foreign culture. Much better to stay with the one you know."


Return to your childhood concept of divinity and see "a" creator (not "The" Creator), angels, fairies,
and lesser gods in "Be Here Now," by Ram Dass

When I quoted a poem by Rinpoche on my Christmas cards one year, my mother was horrified. "Why do you identify with that? It sounds so melancholy." I found it enchanting.

The lonely child
who travels through the fearful waste and desolate fields and
listens to their barren tune, greets as an unknown
and best friend
the terror in him
and he sings in darkness all the sweetest songs. [2]

As Rinpoche divulged the dark secrets of his monastic training, I saw what made my mother shudder, a twisted survivor, like John and me and much of our Buddhist community.

One night, Rinpoche told a particularly gruesome story about his monastic training. His ten-year-old best friend had died. The next day, he was passing by a room where several lamas were gathered. They called him in and asked if he were hungry. A typical Tibetan meal often consists of a hunk of yak meat and some barley bread, so he didn't think anything when they cut off a piece of meat and offered it to him. It tasted a bit strange, but he washed it down with the traditional rancid yak butter tea. A few minutes later, the monks indicated he could go. As he was leaving, one called out to him. "By the way, that was a piece of flesh from the arm of your young friend."

"This was a teaching about the nature of impermanence," he explained, with no emotion. While primitive Tibetan psychology may not view that as an abusively criminal act, some of us did, and we were horrified.

I began to sense that under Rinpoche's rhetoric lay a metaphysical landscape of generic junkie desolation, a justification for the bleak inner world of cocaine, alcohol, and sedative addiction. This was not going to help me define my personal spirituality. Parroting cultist doctrine cannot heal the dis-ease, a rehab term used to encompass all forms of addiction; it is too cunning, baffling, and powerful to be vanquished by liturgy and recitation. I had to find a faith that could sustain me through the darkest night, a sense of sacredness that provided solace in times of crisis and heartbreak. Rinpoche's admonition to live "beyond hope and fear" was a bit too existential for me. Living without fear, yes, but without hope? Why?

As I listened to the people in those Al-Anon meetings, I abandoned the attempts to force the Twelve-Step program into the mold of Buddhist jargon. I had to start from ground zero if I wanted for myself the light I saw shining in those people's eyes. They told me it was a selfish program; I had to shift the focus from John to my dis-ease. We weren't there to discuss the alcoholic. How can you think about anything else? Here he is killing himself and you want me to think about myself? There's nothing wrong with me. Fix him! Why should I change? If he'd quit drinking, everything would be fine.

I saw that by detaching from the alcoholic, I could create health in relationships smothered by obsession. Alcohol enslaved John, but I was just as consumed by his behavior. Whenever I drove crazy, or called around frantically trying to figure out which bar he was under, I might as well have been drunk. The Buddha said all suffering was based upon attachment and craving. Well, John craved alcohol and I was attached to his behavior when he drank by wallowing in my outrage and self-pity. I used the Al-Anon slogans like mantras. Detach with Love. Love the person, hate the disease. Live and Let Live. Let Go and Let God.

I found serenity at those meetings, a peace that I didn't feel among my social-climbing, competitive Buddhist community. Although Rinpoche taught compassion, all I saw were a bunch of people jockeying for political positions and trying to outdo each other with Yuppie aggressive elegance. I watched other Buddhist women come and go, rejecting the Al-Anon program because it referred to God, as we understand Him. I didn't know what to say to them. Lonely and scared, I kept going back, trying to define my Higher Power.

I was asked to do public relations work for the Buddhist community. Proud at first, John became increasingly resentful of the time I was spending away from him, threatened because Al-Anon and work were making me feel more fulfilled. My absence exacerbated the hole inside him. I had been his toy; we had gotten way too enmeshed. By detaching, I was questioning the delicate balance of our marriage and it caused profound discomfort in both of us. I knew with bone certainty that I had to find my passion in life, other than loving him.

Although John dripped with wildly creative ideas, he lacked consistency. I struggled to come up with suggestions to channel his energies, but all he did was talk things to death. When I gave up and began to focus on myself, shifting my priority from his happiness to my fulfillment, he became indignant. Al-Anon calls this King Baby behavior. He was upset with himself because he couldn't find the motivation to occupy his mind with anything else but alcohol and me. No longer willing to be a source of entertainment, the greatest gift I could give John was to be an example of how a sane life is lived. When he finally got sober, John thanked me for my courage to pursue the Al-Anon program. He acknowledged that my inspiration penetrated his denial more than any previous attempts to control his drinking.

I was concerned that John was taking attention away from Megan and Michael, as the addict always does. The focus was always on him, which interfered with the children's development. I had to put their needs before all else. I finally got up the courage to tell John if he didn't get professional treatment, I would leave him. To my amazement, quite docilely, he immediately checked himself into an outpatient program without a fuss. It was a simultaneously excruciating and liberating process, a birthing, for our family. Along with all the other participants, we had to look at our denial, justification, rationalization, minimization, and enmeshment. When John graduated, he maintained two years of sobriety, and we created a life that did not revolve around my fears and his abuses.

http://www.american-buddha.com/cult.oth ... .25-28.htm

29. Magical Thinking

NANCY

As the dust settled on our home front, we could see more clearly into the toxic dynamics that were boiling in the Buddhist community. We began to understand the dangerous trap of magical thinking that surrounds many offshoots of Eastern religions. As my fearless compatriot Andrew Harvey writes in The Direct Path, the "temptation to transcendence is the last, subtlest, and most dangerous of all the temptations to power that appear on the journey to the Divine." [LC-1] Andrew claims that the initial temptation to use occult powers in the domination of others develops into a habitual pattern of "signing off from every kind of earthly responsibility in the name of 'ultimate awareness.'"

Believing that practice and discipline protects them from reality, both students and gurus act as if they are above the law, both civil and universal. Five years later, when Rinpoche's spiritual heir, Tom Rich, revealed his HIV diagnosis, he claimed our guru had told him that if he meditated properly, his unprotected sex would not endanger his partners. Rich proved that theory wrong when he infected a student's son, who died a year later. When Rich died of AIDS in 1990, we heard it was reported in the New York Times that he admitted having over a hundred sexual partners of both sexes, after learning he had AlDS. Senior Vajradhatu officials who knew this did nothing to stop him. According to the Times, Rich said that he thought his sexual partners were protected by the magical power he had received from his lineage.

Another form of magical thinking can be seen in Rinpoche's coked-out fantasies, which were responsible for turning the scene into a Mikado-like parody of courtly intrigue. He created a political mandala, with himself as king, surrounded by his henchmen. The all-male board of directors were adorned by their wives and secretaries. Only one woman had managed to rise to the highest rank, and I was her assistant. The source of a woman's power was her beauty or her husband's position. We were supposed to be building a utopian community. How was this different from corporate America? Fluent in a variety of languages, cultures, and religions, John and I shared an international consciousness. We considered ourselves to be citizens of the world and he raged against the provincial atmosphere.

Unfortunately, when there's a center, there's a fringe. Those who couldn't be at the hub because they didn't have the right stuff were comforted by the party line that a mandala needs people at the periphery. Secretly, they were called Fringies, derided in sneering whispers, like high school nerds. They were promised that if they practiced and volunteered enough, they could ascend to huddle near the chosen few who had the money, glamour, and panache.

According to Tibetan prophecy, When the iron bird flies and horses ride on rails, then the Dharma will come to the west. Rinpoche's pioneering efforts transplanted Tibetan Buddhism to North America. While he did not believe that the feudal monastic model was viable in the West, he couldn't come up with anything more original than the archaic mannerisms of the British monarchy for his "enlightened society." As courtiers, we were encouraged to give lavish dinner parties, fund-raisers, and formal affairs. He urged us to develop livelihoods that would give the community a strong economic base. Just as I'd deduced in my hippie days, our trappings camouflaged a bourgeois small-mindedness as the lemmings struggled to top each other with expressions of elegant opulence. Every house was a replica of Rinpoche's Court, with white carpets, white walls, and the requisite amount of calligraphies and Tibetan art hanging on the walls. While I loved wearing formal gowns and Johnny looked gorgeous in tails, it was like an endless beauty contest for who had the most exquisite clothes, luxurious houses, and extravagant dinner parties. The lack of spirit and conversational depth began to bore us. Once again, we had sought utopia and discovered dystopia. John and I were tired of the petty bureaucrats, phoney yes-men, arrogant intellectuals and their materialistic wives.

Naropa became an accredited university and Rinpoche continued to hold seminars. A program of Buddhist social services was created and any involvement with Boulder community services was highly discouraged. Problems such as alcoholism or mental illness were to be dealt with by the community rather than by outside therapists or AA. The party line was that unless we approached these issues from a Buddhist perspective, we wouldn't find help. This only served to seal the communal pain and family secrets. It was the blind leading the blind, with lay people claiming meditation could heal every problem. Now there is evidence that meditation can actually exacerbate emotional problems, and may even prove dangerous.

Our lawyer and friend, Duncan Campbell, was grappling with the same issues. He recommended Alice Miller's Thou Shalt Not Be Aware as the necessary Draino for our collective denial. She wrote about children who have been disempowered by abuse, growing up in a system where the parents punish them for making the smallest critical observation. Just as their rebellion is met with parental ostracism, this dynamic is later replicated when they attach themselves to a cult. We were attracted to a system that appeared to be antithetical to the rules of our childhood. We learned new customs, rituals, and languages that were completely beyond our parents' reality. As Miller points out, members of the group experience a sense of maternal warmth never felt before. This is how it should have felt had there been a healthy symbiosis with our own mothers. However, every form of addiction, instead of fulfilling the old longing, merely perpetuates the tragedy by repeating the dependency, which in our case was the community and the guru.

Then came the savage blow. We discovered our church was replicating the exact harmonic of our original families. Only this time, instead of our parents, the Buddhist community silenced anyone who questioned with the threat of ostracism. This created a similar anxiety to the infant who risks losing love by inappropriate behavior. This dynamic keeps even the most intelligent members from leaving the group. In our community, questions were often met with a condescending sneer. "How much do you practice?" Dissenters were told, "You're solidifying your ego."

Some guy would flip out because his wife was having an affair and six Buddhists would take him aside and lay that one on him, which always appalled me. I preferred the reaction of the great Tibetan translator, Marpa. When his son died, he wailed and moaned for days.

"Marpa," a puzzled student asked, "you claim the phenomenal world is an illusion, including suffering. Why do you let this bother you so much if it's only an illusion?"

"Because, you idiot, this is super-illusion," he roared.

So you wake up one morning, on a hippie commune or a Tibetan spiritual community, and suddenly you hear the same words your parents used to exert control. Someone else is telling you they know better. They have the answers. They got your power and you weren't even looking. See, you've always been a mess. You'll never get the point. Just do it our way, and you'll be fine, because ours is the only way.

Recovery from religious abuse requires as much courage and tenacity as recovery from drug abuse. When we understood the scene's fascist tactics, we experienced a profound existential crisis that eventually led to our spiritual maturity. Using the perseverance which spilled over from our efforts to hold our family together, we applied the reserves to heal the wounds from our toxic community. But the withdrawal process and subsequent discovery of our personal spirituality was a long and painful journey.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that a student cannot progress on the spiritual path without the guru's blessing. Even if you never practice or study, they claim that obstacles will be cleared and you can attain enlightenment solely by remaining devoted to the guru. However, even if a teacher is guilty of murder or sexual misconduct, once you have become his student, you cannot slander him, examine his qualities, or do anything but treat him with reverence and devotion. This primitive belief system teaches that if you criticize a guru, you will go straight to hell. According to scripture, those who lack faith in the guru will be seen as enemies. They will be everyone's target of abuse.

Initially, John was valued by the community for the feather his name put in their caps. He overheard one of the directors tell a fund-raiser, "Kiss up to Steinbeck. He's got money." They found intriguing similarities between John and Rinpoche, their drinking, the way women threw themselves at both men, their brutal honesty and compassion. John acted out the communal shadow side in his drunken escapades. As long as he was out there, walking point, dancing on the edge, they didn't have to face their darkness. When he began to question the politics, he was dismissed as recalcitrant. And I was often blamed for corrupting him.

When we quit playing the Emperor's New Clothes, many longtime friends turned on us. One of John's drinking buddies, Jack Niland, had previously treated me like Yoko Ono for removing John from the Sex Czar circuit. Jack didn't have the courage to confront John directly, but he confided to me that he was appalled when John told him he got down on his knees and prayed every morning and evening after joining AA.

"Buddhists don't pray!" Jack sputtered. "What does he pray to?"

"That's what keeps him sober," I explained. "He's talking to a power greater than himself and he's finding out exactly what that power is."

Jack's alcoholism was clearly threatened. "I can't even hang out with you guys without breaking my vows," he ranted, referring to the edict that it was dangerous to listen to heresy about the guru. "You say terrible things about Rinpoche."

"Like what?"

"That he's an alcoholic."

"You mean a medical diagnosis is not allowed?" I asked incredulously.

When I repeated the conversation to Johnny, he rolled his eyes. "Just ignore him. He's been invaded by the Body Snatchers. It's pitiful." They never spoke again.

32. Impermanence

NANCY

It took awhile for us to come down from the trip to Sikkim. Things seemed to be going along as usual, but as I look back on it now, full-tilt denial was reigning. John would stay up late most nights, listening to the shortwave radio or reading by the fire. Sometimes when he'd come up to bed, he seemed out of it. Whenever I asked him, he would say he was sleepy.

In the mornings, Gopal cooked breakfast. We'd say good-bye to the children after Serita had gotten them ready for school. John would fall back to sleep till noon. That gave me many hours of privacy to write in my office or practice my ngondro. We loved that routine. One mind could go off on myriad flights while the other one slept close by. One could sleep feeling totally safe because the other was there as guardian of their dreams.

Once or twice while we'd been living at the Vajra Hotel, when John seemed a bit lethargic, I suspected he had been smoking dope. After we moved to the house, a nagging feeling grew as I noticed changes in his behavior. He began to make daily trips to the Supermarket, Kathmandu's funky version of a mall. I hated the rows of tiny stalls that hawked a myriad of Western goods, mostly smuggled from Thailand and Hong Kong. The air was atomized by the pungent aroma of Nepalese plumbing. Supermarket epitomized Western greed, the window displays full of pirated cassette tapes, wristwatches, and electronic gadgetry. It was easy to score drugs there. A sly Nepali would stroll close and whisper, "Hi, you want hashish, cocaine, heroin, LSD?" If you didn't respond, he'd simply disappear in the crowd.

John started buying compulsively. Sometimes he would buy two of one thing, like the tiny Pentax cameras he brought home one day. "His and Hers," he quipped. I began to feel sad, because his life was revolving around long sleeps, visits to Supermarket, and isolated late nights. I didn't know enough about the signs of relapse to call this a symptom.

One night, my dream voice told me, Get out of bed and go downstairs. I came upon John as he was inhaling white powder from a magazine into a half-emptied cigarette. When he saw me standing in the door, he deftly flipped the magazine under the couch and smiled hello.

"What are you doing?"

"Just staring at the fire."

"What are you smoking?"

"A cigarette."

"I'm going back up to bed, and when you want to get honest with me, come up and talk." I turned and left the doorway, frozen with panic and fear. My denial dropped like a nickel in a winning slot machine.

He came right up to the bedroom and took my hand. "I'm really sorry you had to see that, but I'm glad you caught me. I've been smoking cocaine. I want to quit." It had been so long since I'd had to think about his abuses. I had been basking in months of heavenly freedom from the cunning, baffling tricks of drug addiction. Horrified and enraged, I mustered enough inspiration for a straight up Al-Anon number.

"You know what to do to quit. So, do it." I didn't rave, I didn't shame, but I let him know it had to stop immediately, foolishly thinking he had control. That's what he wanted me to believe, and I didn't know any better, yet.

Two days passed and he seemed normal. On the third day, I walked into the bedroom and entered a hell where I would dwell for the next four years. John was lying backward in the bed, naked, with his feet propped up against the huge plate-glass window. His legs were jerking spasmodically. His feral eyes didn't register recognition. Hallucinating and angry, like a trapped animal, he looked right through me. There were puddles of diarrhea on the floor. I ran downstairs and called our American doctor. It was Friday afternoon and he was on his way to a wedding reception. I begged him to come to the house immediately and alerted the staff.

"Sahib is very ill. Please take care of the children when they get back from school."

When the doctor arrived, I told him about the cocaine John had been smoking.

"Are there any drugs in the house now?" he asked.

"I don't think so."

"It may be a paratyphoid that's going around. High fever, delirium. You need to get someone to sit up with him tonight."

"Could it be withdrawal from cocaine? Can he be admitted to a hospital?"

"You don't want your husband in the Kathmandu hospital," he shook his head ruefully. "It's filthy and inadequate."

As the doctor gave John a sedative, my heart turned to stone. We were set to leave Nepal in two weeks, immediately after the school semester ended. Since our tenant's lease on the house in Boulder was not up for another month, we planned two weeks of sightseeing in Delhi, Rome, and Paris. How could we travel with this animal thrashing around, shitting on the floor? There was no way I could handle John on my own. Like a blind shark, he couldn't see me, but he smelled my terror and it made him murderous.

Frantically, I thought of a plan. The doctor's American partner was a friend of ours, married to a very tall man who had interviewed John for the tourist magazine he published. That's what I needed, an English-speaking doctor who could monitor John's symptoms and a large man to restrain him. I sensed I could count on them for help; they were ardent born-again Christians.

"Here's what I want," I said briskly. "Ask your partner and her husband to come spend the night here with John. I'm taking the kids to the Sheraton until he recovers."

We could hear him upstairs, slamming into walls. I asked the doctor to wait till Ken and Kathy arrived, packed up the children, and sent Gopal for a taxi. When Dr. Kathy and her husband arrived, we were ready to go. To my relief, Kathy agreed it sounded like drug withdrawal.

Ensconced at the nearby Everest Sheraton, we ordered room service and played cards, desperately trying to establish a ground of sanity in the midst of our shock. I had given the children a brief sketch of John's behavior, sparing them the ugly details. Long after Michael and Megan had fallen asleep, I stared across the rice fields at our darkened house. I was afraid John would die that night, perhaps sever an artery on the plate-glass window he'd been kicking. Filled with rage, terror, and a sense of betrayal, suddenly our safe little kingdom seemed hideously foreign. The exotic trappings mocked me with their inability to speak to the situation.

I prayed for protection and guidance all night. In the morning, Ken called and said it was safe to come home. To my great relief, the minute I walked into the bedroom I could tell John was himself. He apologized for putting me through the horror. Sometimes he had a candid way of copping to a situation. He did it with such bare-bones honesty that you could tell he meant it from the bottom of his heart. Whenever I heard that particular bottomed-out tone of voice, I would find the resilience to stay for one more day.

"That wasn't cocaine I was smoking," he cautioned me. "I'm withdrawing from heroin." When he got honest like that, I'd hear the plea for help, the plea not to abandon him, the plea to stay and fight the demons with him. There was still something so precious inside him. I could not walk away, not yet.

Kathy and Ken told me he had thrashed around the room all night. Thinking the antidote to his confusion was hidden in his glasses, he took a bite out of the right lens. Our wonderful Christian friends had stayed by his side, praying. Toward dawn, Kathy had gone into the bathroom and saw a huge black spider, the size of a tarantula, on the wall. Ken rushed in and killed it when he heard her scream. We looked at each other, but we didn't say it. Something evil had descended upon our home. The Steinbeck Black Hole was back.

"There's a Swedish guy named Ollie across town who runs a makeshift rehab for Westerners," Ken said. He suggested I go over there and see if they could detox John as an alternative to the dreaded hospital. Gopal went up the street to find a cab. I was relieved to have some direction, but it was a useless trip.

Ollie painted a bleak picture about John's condition. "He cannot travel. He could relapse into psychosis at any minute. You will have to leave him here with me." Several vacant- eyed hippies wandered past, lobotomized by street drugs. I remembered the young American Buddhist scholar who had lost his mind during our stay at the Vajra. I came upon him wandering, demented, in an alley behind the hotel. The desk clerk called the police, but even after several days in jail, the young man's mind was nowhere to be found. I arranged to have him sent back to the States by the consulate. It's funny how the universe trains in disaster preparedness. I was often given a dry run for the emergencies I faced to save John's life. Back in the taxi, I knew what I had to do.

This is why all our expatriate friends insist they have to return to the West at least once a year. How ironic that Mr. World Traveler is the first to succumb to Lord Jim jungle rot. We've got trouble in paradise here. We cannot linger under the pagodas a minute longer. Mother Asia is about to boot us out of our magical kingdom like a tigress. We need a clean hospital and a drug-treatment facility, American-style.

I felt myself grow bitter. I had traveled alone across the valley to Ollie's and returned to the house, alone. Alone, I begged John to go to the hospital, no matter how primitive the conditions. It was the only place I could put him where he would have no access to street drugs in order to continue his withdrawal. Alone, I got him a semiprivate room, though the procedure took five hours. During the interview, John told the nurse he had not done drugs since Vietnam. I was incensed. "Why are you lying to her? She's not a cop. She's trying to get you some help!"

John had a down parka with velcro pockets where he stashed his comb, cigarettes, lighter, and pens. When he was stoned, he'd spend hours searching his pockets, muttering to himself. He would start slapping his sides to feel for the item that had suddenly become urgently necessary. Ripping open each pocket, he'd desperately try to find whatever he was missing. You'd hear the velcro scratched apart, but within three pockets he'd forget what he'd been looking for due to short-term memory loss. The rest of the search was merely the death throes of his mind trying to remember what he wanted. He'd go through the annoying routine, first looking for a comb, then a lighter, then a pen ad nauseam. I sat there wondering if he'd be frozen in the Great Velcro Hunt for the rest of his life. He looked utterly demented. I wanted to scream. A handsome, red-robed lama passed by with an attractive Nepali woman and a small child in tow, and I distracted myself by making up a clandestine romance about them in my mind. To this day, the sound of undoing velcro sends shivers up my spine.

Years later, R. D. Laing's widow, Marguerite, shrieked with laughter when I told her that story. Ronnie would do the same thing, often at odd ends of the globe. Sometimes she'd pretend she wasn't with him, or that she was a hired nurse. "A drooler," she'd chortle. "An absolute gonzo drooler!"

John shared a hospital room with a dying elderly Tibetan. His entire family was camping out on the floor, cooking, chatting, grieving. Several days later, after he died, they replaced him with a raving American hippie who was coming down off speedballs. That guy never shut up.

"He's annoying, but he's also a lesson," John said meekly. "There but for the grace of your intervention."

Michael confirmed his words as we left the hospital. "You know, Mom, if it weren't for us, John would be just like that crazy guy." We noticed they had given John and the hippie the same diagnosis, Psychosis/Diarrhea, posted on the door.

Unfortunately, the Nepali form of detox was enough Valium to arouse John's disease to full-blown proportions. Although he was quite chipper when he left the hospital a week later, I sensed the desperate animal scratching under his skin. My blood ran cold watching him do his Maurice Chevalier number as he said good-bye to the nurses. Terrified to return home for fear the Black Hole was still lurking, I had remained at the Sheraton with Megan and Michael. As John and I entered our bedroom for the first time since that harrowing event, a terrible weakness possessed me. The demons were still there. I collapsed on the bed and spat out, "This place makes me sick. Once again, you have turned our home into a bedpan. We've still got a week before our flight to Delhi. I'm going to a hotel till we leave Nepal. I am never setting foot in this house again."

Instead of the impersonal Sheraton, I purposely chose the Dwarika Hotel, owned by a stern, no-nonsense woman who was also the Swiss consulate. I knew that the Spartan atmosphere would force John to keep it together until our departure. I breathed a sigh of relief when I noticed she didn't grovel over his name as he signed the register. My instincts had been right; she maintained a suspicious distance from us, and I didn't blame her.

That was when I lost my will. Dysentery swept over me, wringing ten pounds off my body. I lay in bed delirious, filled with hatred and resentment for John. I wouldn't talk to him. I was outraged that he could mindlessly trash our precious time in Nepal. Had I been more practiced in Al-Anon's wisdom, I would not have ranted at him for spoiling my heaven. I would have tried not to shame him. It would take me years to understand that heaping guilt on an addict only prevents him from feeling the full effect of his own remorse. The self- discipline of a veteran Al-Anon is staggering, and I was still a novice.

Just before we left Boulder, I asked Rinpoche for advice about the trip. He predicted that we would be forced to come home prematurely. Throughout the year, part of me had stayed vigilant, wondering what he meant. Now I understood.

John's liver-function tests showed a high level of uric acid, which, along with the drugs, explained his erratic behavior. I was desperate for the comfort of my support group in Boulder. Despite the fact that we still had two weeks to kill until we could return home, I felt that returning to the Western world would ease the burden of being in a country that had no understanding of John's condition. I was also concerned about the color of his skin. He had turned a peculiar shade of greenish bronze, which delighted the Tibetans. "Oh," they'd exclaim, stopping him on the street. "You look just like us."

By the time our plane left Kathmandu, I felt as relieved to be leaving Shangri-la as I had longed every day to stay there forever. I also felt curiously victorious. John often quoted Kipling, something about how you can't hustle the East. I hadn't. Facing the challenge of making myself at home in that relentlessly foreign culture, I had succeeded in finding and befriending myself. I had written, explored, and practiced. I quit smoking because the Nepali tobacco tasted like burning yak hair, and I discovered a wellspring of sanity and cheerfulness in my being. I had learned how to travel the world, and had transmitted that ability to my children, so that wherever we are on this planet, we feel at home. I was proud of myself. Compared to Mr. I've-Been-Around-the-World-Four-Times, I felt grace about my Nepali life, as opposed to his disgraceful undoing.

On our last night in Kathmandu, Khentse Rinpoche blessed our thankas, Tibetan scroll paintings. We had seen Khentse many times in Boulder and visited with him whenever he came to Nepal. He was one of the last great lamas, dripping compassion like a fat mother sow. We brought along our Tibetan friend, Tsering, whom we had met at the Phokara refugee camp. He was in awe of Khentse, as if he were the Wizard of Oz.

As Khentse printed the traditional sacred symbols of empowering mantras on the backs of the painting, I thought long and hard about this man's supposed wisdom. Here I am in the presence of a great lama. What does he know about heroin addiction? What advice could he give me about traveling with John? He did not dwell in the realm where opium poppies grew. I was on my own.

Where did all that magic and mystery get us in the end? There would be no miracles ahead, not for years, as John's disease progressed like wildfire. What good was any of it, I wondered, as I saw Tsering act as if he weren't worthy to be in the same room with Khentse. He had even gone outside to wash his feet in the dewy grass before entering the shrine room.

Was I hypnotized by the Valley, seduced by the fervid religiosity that hangs in the air? Is everyone in the Silver Jade Kingdom buzzed by a confluence of spirits, high on the realm where Absolute Truth can never bend so low as to touch Relative Suffering? What good has all the bliss and peace done? We are worse off than when we started. In the depths of my dilemma, I forgot how slowly evolution works, like the rings around a tree trunk.

John wanted to stick to our plan of sightseeing until the lease on our house was up. More crippled than any previous time in our lives together, we limped through Delhi. In my grief process, I had moved through shock and rage in Kathmandu. Depression settled in Delhi, where it was so hot, the hotel swimming pool was a tepid soup. One afternoon, friends from Boulder came to take me to lunch as John rested. At last, I could share our crisis with a Western mind. They were appalled at what I had gone through and the unknown territory that lay ahead. Nevertheless, when her Tibetan husband left the table, Betty whispered, "Noedup is having a hard time relating to John because he's not drinking. He feels awkward." I felt surrounded by lunacy.

Wanly, I tried to enjoy the Raj atmosphere at the Imperial Hotel. The children and I set off valiantly every day to sightsee. Unbeknownst to us, that's when John would duck down to the nearest drugstore to purchase over-the-counter Valium. I smelled a rat when I noticed he was buying compulsively again and seemed groggy. Five pairs of eyeglasses and twenty dress shirts later, we were up at 3:00 A.M. for our flight to Rome. On our way to the airport, with a set jaw and a sinking feeling, I did get one last exotic hit as we passed six camels walking down the freeway, bound for the marketplace. As John slipped into the duty-free shop with Megan, Michael and I went on to board the plane. Mercifully, we were flying business class, with long reclining seats and more clout than steerage, as I discovered when I had to ask the flight attendant to hold the plane till John appeared.

If the slogans say "Let go and Let God" or "Live and Let Live," would I be practicing Al- Anon if I let the plane take off without John? Had Megan not been with him, I might have risked it. I could not ignore the aching certainty that if John and I didn't make it back to Boulder together, he would die.

Rome was the worst. The minute we got off the plane, John started playing Papa Steinbeck-on-a-trip-with-his-family. Surreptitiously scoring more Valium, he postured and posed on the boulevards and in hotel lobbies. I wanted to strangle him. As we showed the children the Colosseum, the Forum, the Catacombs, John blamed his grogginess on "Italian vegetable tranquilizers." He fell asleep wherever we stopped, in restaurants, on benches, on the grass near the Palatine Hill. The children were embarrassed and confused. I explained as best I could, and cursed the fact that we were stuck in tourist limbo until our lease was up.

To my relief, I discovered Rome had Al-Anon meetings. In my broken understanding of Italian, the words I heard helped me formulate a plan. One night, a heavy dose of Valium triggered a heroin flashback in John. Delirious, sleepwalking, he arose and pissed in the corner of our pensione bedroom. I woke to the stench.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for the bathroom," he muttered sheepishly. He stopped mid-stream, went over to the toilet, and pissed all over it. I reached out to feel his forehead when he got back in bed. He wasn't feverish. He was tripping. I was alone again, except for my prayers. I thought of calling Thom and Elaine, but I knew they'd be of no help. They'd probably tell me to leave him here and I don't want to explain that I can't. In the morning, I phoned the American Embassy. They sent over an English-speaking doctor. By this time John was drooling, burning cigarette holes in the sheets. The doctor talked him into going to a mental hospital, which he euphemistically referred to as a sanitarium.

We set out in a taxi for Belvedere Montello, in the Roman suburbs. As a discreet attendant took John up to his room, I noticed it was a locked facility. That was not going to sit well with him, but his moods were no longer my problem. As I filled out the insurance papers, the head psychiatrist asked about John's name.

"Oh, the son of Steinbeck!" he crooned rhapsodically.

That and a nickel will get you to the point where you need your own rubber room, you idiot.

"Would you like to go up and see his quarters and say good-bye?" he asked graciously. I could tell he hadn't understood one iota of what I had been through in the last two weeks. It wasn't a language problem. He was so mesmerized by the Steinbeck thing, he couldn't hear me. Disgusted, I had to repress the urge to scream, No! He's all yours. You can wipe up the drool and the shit and venom. I'm out of here.

The poor shrink seemed to think I should be kissing the ground John walked on because of his father. "We'll take very good care of him," the good doctore promised, as if John were a living treasure. I stood with the children at the gate, waiting for the electronic buzzer to open the lock. It was an old palazzo and the grounds were beautiful, but the empty swimming pool gaped forlorn and abandoned, like the puzzled inmates who wandered amongst the voluptuous statuary.

During John's stay, I was determined the children would not miss out on any of the Roman history, art, or culture, no matter what we had been through. We wandered around the city, trying to be cheerful in the face of grave worries. In the evening we would visit him.

On the fourth day, Johnny wanted to come back to the pensione with us, promising Signor Doctore he would return by dinner. John had enough wits about him to sense we needed to spend time alone. We left the children on a street they wanted to explore and arranged for them to meet me under a tall clock on the corner.

John and I sat at a sidewalk cafe near the Spanish Steps and kept our conversation in the moment, as we always did after those fiascos. My rage was worn to a nub; I wanted to share Rome with my aristocratic Johnny and forget about the gonzo drooler. He asked me to ride back to the sanitarium so we could linger in an embrace. The world wasn't feeling exactly like my oyster, but hope springs eternal in the heart of a rookie Al-Anon.

Terror returned when I couldn't find the children at the appointed clock tower. I had a feeling something was terribly wrong, and I wasn't sure if they remembered the name of our hotel. The taxi driver shared my concern. We drove up and down the long boulevard three times. "Madonna," he would exhale under his breath, praying as if he had lost his own children. Finally, an hour later, he remembered there were two identical clock towers on that street. We found my poor waifs, looking like abandoned kittens. That's it. I'm not going to be an idiot anymore. We are strangers still, in a strange land, and if I don't stay on top of things, disaster will strike. Nothing is going to come between me and the children during the rest of this trip, not even John's ridiculous flirtation with death. Thank God they are with me again, safe and sound. They are the only sanity I have in the swamp of John's dementia and my own frenzy.

Upon his return that evening, John finagled a Valium drip. Several days later, he insisted on leaving against the doctor's orders. To my dismay, when I came to pick him up, he was more loaded then when he'd entered. I didn't bother confronting doctore's ineptness in dealing with drug withdrawal. This would not be the first time I experienced John coming out of a hospital detox flying on tranquilizers. Tests showed severe liver damage, which they feared may have permanently affected his brain. His ammonia levels were six times higher than normal, causing confusion and bizarre behavior. The doctors told me if John left, he could go into tranquilizer withdrawal and, combined with the ammonia levels, he might end up in a coma. True to his death-dance, John stubbornly refused further treatment. I knew it was hopeless to convince him otherwise; the animal was surfacing again, scratching at his skin, clawing its way out. He glared at me, daring a confrontation so he could rip me apart with his vicious blame as if the situation were my fault. Denial and blame is the name of his game.

I was beginning to understand the tightrope act he played with me, how he watched my safety net with cunning. When the net got pulled, he actually became quite docile. This gave me the courage to insist he find another hotel for the night. I simply could not bear the pressure of being responsible for his health for one moment longer. I needed a break, even if he went into a coma during the night. He meekly checked into a hotel down the block, oblivious to my worries and prayers for his safekeeping through the lonely, sleepless hours. I thought bitterly of all the times Thom had cruelly mocked my pleas for John to stop drinking and drugging. If I called Thom, he would only protest that he is not his brother's keeper. Why is it solely up to me to grapple with this madness? Let go and let God ... grant me the serenity ... the courage and wisdom ....

In the morning, I woke to a knock at the door. Certain it was the police with the worst possible news, a sheepish John surprised me.

"I'm ready to get off Valium. I can detox on my own." I burst into tears, grateful he had made it through the night. Secretly, I noted that a healthy dose of Al-Anon detachment can work wonders.

After several blessedly uneventful days, we felt brave enough to take the train south to Positano. Steinbeck had taken Thom and John there and he wanted to relive the memories. It was a glorious train ride, and I prayed the tide might be turning as our hired car glided along the Amalfi coast, past pink stone villas dappled by the afternoon sunlight.

Unfortunately, our hotel's manager was another one of those fawning spinsters. Like a moth to flame, I watched her fan the dying embers of John's ego. Within two days, he was back to aping his father, parading up and down the village streets as if he had just won the Nobel Prize. To add to the masquerade, when the tourist department filled our room with flowers in memory of Steinbeck's visit twenty years ago, John confused the gesture with adulation toward himself. For what? An award for pissing in the corners of assorted Roman pensiones? As I quietly watched John forget where he stopped and his father started, I decided it was time to remove myself physically, come what may. The culture shock of having left our magical kingdom and the burden of John's health was driving me insane.

Once we were back in Rome, I sensed John wanted more over-the-counter Valium. I sought a direction. I had been a Thomas Mann buff in college, and wanted to see the places described in Death in Venice. Knowing John disliked Venice's tourist trap aspect, I chose to escape there with the children for several days. Although I was haunted by the chaos of our situation, I started piecing together a sense of reality. We still had ten days to kill before our tenant moved out. It was up to me to orchestrate them. I decided we would meet John in Paris and limp through France for a while.

On the last night in Venice, he called me, freaking out. "I bought some gorgeous Fumi jewelry for your birthday. I showed it to the concierge yesterday. When I woke up, it was gone." He had ripped the room apart and then accused the hotel staff. "I told them I was going out for breakfast and when I got back, the stuff better be in my room." They must have figured he meant it, because when he returned, they claimed to have found it under the mattress.

Although he never made it there, John referred to those final days in Europe as his Death in Venice period. To me, Gustav with his makeup and his sirocco had nothing on John's disintegration. For some reason, the missing jewelry incident shocked John into staying sober in Paris. The withdrawal symptoms, along with his liver disease, had exhausted him. The city was crawling with tourists, but I managed to show the children the important sights. We spent hours at the Louvre. After a morning at the Jeu de Pommes art museum, John met us there for lunch. I caught sight of him strolling through the park, wearing an elegant new three-piece suit, lost in the fantasy of being a great writer, swinging his umbrella to the rhythm of his boulevardier strut. When he saw us, he seemed to wake from a dream. We knew only too well who he was, and the familiarity disoriented him.

By the time we arrived in New York, I was racing to get John to his physician. Something was terribly wrong, more than the progression of his addictions. His mind was not functioning. Usually his thought process was stellar, no matter how many chemicals he ingested. His skin had a peculiar bronze cast. It took ten days to receive the diagnosis. They told us he had liver cancer; that it would be a matter of weeks before he was dead. They ordered a biopsy and John immediately locked himself up with a case of Johnny Walker in the Boulderado, hoping to beat death's agenda. His doctor, with the bedside manner of Leona Helmsley, ordered me to prepare for widowhood.

http://www.american-buddha.com/cult.oth ... .29-32.htm

33. 1984

NANCY

It was now midway into 1984, and Orwell's predictions were coming true. Ever since reading this book in college, I felt something prophetic about that year. Sensing danger if Newspeak and Big Brother ever became reality, it would be an indication we were crossing over into a bankrupt lifestyle that would endanger the planet. A collective surrender of individual power would doom the spirit, the artist, and the lover.

Having been abroad for a year, I was more sensitive to Western speed, complaisance, and somnambulism. The signs were eerily familiar. The smokey wisps of thoughts that had arisen in my twenties were converging into the eye of a gathering hurricane, fueled by the ecological predictions of ancient prophecies -- Aztec, Hopi, Hippie, Aboriginal, and Marian.

Ten years prior, during the winter of 1974 in British Columbia, I devoured Doris Lessing while the kids slept. Paul was working on the railroad, often gone for days. Imprisoned by blizzards, I melted snow for drinking water, bathing, and washing dishes; fed the woodstove with huge arm loads of firewood; and periodically shot at a chicken hawk to protect our hens. Whenever Megan and Michael would go down for a nap, or sleep at night, I'd curl up with The Four-Gated City or The Golden Notebook and when I put down the books, the visions would come.

I saw a time when adolescent gangsters terrorized society. Driven by tribal instincts, they marauded the cities. I saw the graffiti and guns. I experienced a deep sense of their rage and numbness about the breakdown of a culture where greed and selfishness twisted traditional values. I foresaw a bleakness so horrible that no amount of gentrification or police could stop the spread of their slash-and-burn mentality.

When Megan and Michael woke, I returned to the mundane tasks of baking bread, sewing on the ancient Red Bird treadle machine, carding and spinning raw wool. Dying the skeins with golden onionskins, brown walnut husks, and orange madder root in the glacial waters of Kootenay Lake, I wove blankets to keep us warm under the heavy lead skies.

I had apocalyptic visions of hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. I kept asking why, and the answer was always the same. It is the only way to wake people up to the planet's destruction and the severing of their spirit. Haunted by those visions, I prayed that when the time came, I would be surrounded by a tribe of strong and trustworthy friends.

I dwelt in two worlds that winter and never came out of them. I can cross the bridge between the visionary and the ordinary, but I will never abandon one for the other. I have never married for money, never made a decision solely based on security. Living on the edge of choicelessness, I take things to the limit until a way out appears. You have to know this about me to understand what I went through for the next four years with John's drinking. Beyond the unconditional love, beyond the abject codependent flip side, much of my stick-to-it-iveness boiled down to Johnny's "shit happens" attitude, rock solid in the face of adversity. I wanted him there for the coming rites of passage, the death of my father, the kids' adolescence, watching Rinpoche kill himself with alcohol. As a friend once said, "John had more clarity and creativity in his little finger, drunk or sober, than most people have in lifetimes."

John was in a panic over the cancer prognosis. Since he couldn't drink himself to death at our house, he checked into the Boulderado. When he failed to show up for his scheduled liver biopsy, the hospital called me. I found him in his hotel room, bleary, reeking, and disoriented. He let me convince him to keep his appointment. If that smacks of enabling, I don't care. God knows when he'll find the courage to face this on his own. When we have the results of the biopsy, he can get treatment. If he's going to die, I'll quit fighting for his life and figure out what to do with the rest of mine.

This was the start of my bottom. I had failed to convince John to stay sober, and now it looked like death was going to solve that problem for both of us. Outraged in the face of this final abandonment, I was turning another corner, cold as ice, clinical, and dispassionate. As the biopsy needle probed John's liver, I saw the work that lay ahead. I had attracted abusive people, typical of an incest survivor. Al-Anon was teaching me to leave them in the dust if they didn't earn my loyalty, and John might be one of them.

After the biopsy, he came home and soberly waited three days for the result, docile and considerate of my anxiety. Whenever the dust settled between us, John tried to cover all the bases. Mr. Hyde, doing whatever he damned well pleased, gave way to tenderness and nurturing. I felt like a snake charmer, waiting for music to lull the viper.

"You must have been a great yak herder in a previous lifetime," he teased. "You know just how much rope I need to hang myself."

The initial scan had shown a black spot on John's liver that the doctors thought was a cancerous tumor. When the biopsy report came back, it took us a couple of days to recover from the shock, and then we laughed at the results. Fecal matter inexplicably had shown up in the CAT scan.

"It was a piece of shit! They put me through all that anxiety over a lousy piece of shit!" he groused, half humorously. So much for his tumor and imminent death. They did have a diagnosis, however. They called it hemochromatosis, a genetic condition in which the body absorbs too much iron, leading to potentially fatal complications by damaging tissue and organs. Amazingly, the iron deposits can cause cirrhosis of the liver without any alcohol abuse. The doctors bandied about life expectancies, a 60 percent chance to live five years and 30 percent to live ten. The treatment was laughably primitive, a series of phlebotomies.

"Bloodletting! We might as well go back to Nepal and live among the leeches," John quipped with tremendous relief. In order for new blood to replace the old, he would give a unit of blood at least twice a month. Finally we understood why he had turned such a peculiar shade of greenish bronze in Nepal. Iron stores in his heart, liver, and other organs had effected his pigmentation.

Later studies of hemochromatosis would attribute John's bizarre behavior to iron overload. Disorientation, mood swings, and other personality changes, such as severe depression and anger, are now considered symptoms of what they used to call "bronze diabetes." While the drugs exacerbated the dementia, his mood swings convinced me something else was to blame, although I fought my intuition with self-deprecating admonishments about my codependency. Ashamed that I had stood by him, I considered it was a measure of my low self-esteem. When the research recently confirmed my instincts, I forgave myself for saving his life. I knew if I left him in Asia or Europe, he would surely die. I have come through the eye of a terrible codependent paradox, and the experience has left me with little patience for people who give black and white advice.

"Why didn't you just leave him in the Kathmandu hospital?" my Al-Anon sponsor asked condescendingly when she heard the story.

"It didn't feel right."

"You are addicted to him. You can't live without him."

Remembering that Al-Anon sponsors are not supposed to give advice, I challenged her. "Look, the doctors have just diagnosed my husband with a terminal illness. We've got two children who love him deeply. I can't just throw him out. I may be in total denial, as you say, but I have to answer to myself. I can't take your advice on blind faith."

"Nancy, I cannot support you if you stay with him."

"Okay," I thought for a moment. "Then you know what? I'm firing you. I may not be very far into my recovery, but I have to take Al-Anon literally. Your insistence that I leave him goes against the program's traditions, and I cannot accept that." I hung up the phone and felt terribly alone, yet confident that I had done the right thing. This was my introduction to the syndrome of Al-Anon Abuse. Through the years, I earned a black belt fighting it.

John was weak and exhausted from the hemochromatosis. My strength was waning; caring for an invalid is a twin dilemma to anxiety over the alcoholic. Although we were no longer facing liver cancer and the prospect of imminent death, we still moved through grief, shock, and anger, to a point of bargaining with this new disease. Then depression descended. The ceilings got lower and lights grew dimmer as we adjusted to the unfamiliar presence of death in five to ten.

It wasn't just the prediction about his life expectancy. Hemochromatosis causes testicular atrophication. One day, when I saw how much his genitals had shrunk, I waited till I was alone in the house and screamed into a pillow in terror. Like the night Johnny ate his glasses and the huge spider appeared in Kathmandu, I felt like Job. Would we ever escape the genetic curses descending upon us? If it effected me that strongly, imagine how that devastated John's sense of manhood.

My ex-husband agreed to let the children live with him and his new wife, Jo. It broke my heart to see them go, but I hoped Michael and Megan would deepen their relationship with their father. Unfortunately, they had a rough time at Paul's. He was doing his usual emotional starvation routine with his wife. After his third marriage, he confided, "You know how I am. I'm great till I get married and then I withdraw."

Jo was already miserable. Just as with me, he spent all day and night at the car lot. She took her five-year-old daughter out for dinner most evenings, leaving Megan and Michael to fend for themselves, Cinderella-style. When they repeatedly complained that they were alone in the house with nothing to eat, we moved them back home. Forgetting that kids need food and attention, self-centered Paul felt abandoned. They changed their last names to Steinbeck later that year. They considered John to be their real father because he nurtured and loved them.

Johnny and I clung to each other in desperation, expressing our fears and sadness. Why is our life filled with swells of pain and the undertow of sorrow? If I lay next to him or go everywhere with him, I can keep death away. If he dies, I'll be so bored. If he dies, I'll have lots of friends but no one so brilliant. I'll just muck around pretending I'm living. I'll do everything they tell you to do to carry on but it will be so bleak. I'll just be waiting for my own death.

Weeks of tenderness would pass. Then John would go on a binge and turn monstrous. One night he reached in his pocket and pulled out a stiletto-thin Italian fruit knife we had bought in Rome. He pointed it at me and chuckled sadistically. I called the police and they charged him with felony menacing.

Boulder police are experts in domestic violence. If I didn't press charges, they would. When John drunkenly attacked me before we left for Nepal, a friend insisted my doctor record the assault, which involved a perfect set of teeth marks on my shoulder. Because of that evidence, John was put on probation. If he ever physically abused me again, the judge said he would send him to the federal penitentiary. That ended the violence between us.

We needed more support. Al-Anon friends recommended that I see a woman therapist, Tanya Zucker, at the county-funded Alcohol Recovery Center. John started seeing her partner, Don Roth, gifted in working with vets. Sometimes the four of us would meet together. Privately, Don and Tanya told me my recovery was extremely threatening to John. Because he could no longer control me, I was disturbing the family's unhealthy equilibrium. In Al-Anon terms, King Baby was feeling abandoned because I wouldn't be his caretaker anymore. He had been accusing me of trying to capture his elusive free spirit, and now my independence was frightening him.

Using the Al-Anon slogan Don't accept unacceptable behavior, Don and Tanya taught me to define abuse. While John was often infuriated that they were privy to the bizarre aspects of our relationship, I began to feel safe. His cover was blown, but I finally had a place to talk about my despair. The process exposed his monstrous excesses and screaming rages; things I'd kept secret from even my closest friends. At last, someone else knew of his drunken, late-night propensity to smash all the eggs on the refrigerator door, leaving them dripping until morning. Someone else knew he fired his gun into the rafters while I slept beside him. The fact that everything got reported to our therapists made him think twice. John could no longer criticize my Al-Anon meetings, massages, writing, cooking, not cooking, or spending time with the door closed.

"How can I work on people pleasing if you are constantly demanding I submit to your whims?" I asked. "From now on, I am focusing on my needs. You can take care of yours."

I wanted him to stop driving me crazy. Seeking instant gratification, I wasn't always rational. I often lacked the patience to practice communication skills. After the fear of death sobered John, he desperately wanted to change the qualities in him that created illness and insanity. The frozen feelings from our repressed childhoods were thawing. We made a pact to support the process.

Later that summer, they asked John to put on a fireworks display at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center for the yearly encampment, a gathering of Rinpoche's guards. People wore military uniforms and slept in tents, played mock war games. There was marching and whimsical calisthenics such as lying on your back and doing push-ups to the sky.

We arrived with a trunk full of fireworks at dusk. They ushered us to the front of the crowd Rinpoche was addressing. We had not seen him for almost a year. What we saw shocked us both. He was so drunk, two guards had to hold him up. His speech was unintelligible. This man will drink himself to death and the community will be torn asunder. Three years later, that's exactly what happened. When I went back to college for my degree in chemical dependency, I learned Rinpoche had passed over into chronic late- stage alcoholism during our year abroad. Soon after, he developed Korsakoff's syndrome, commonly known as "wet brain," and two years later he died of esophageal varicies.

The shock of his deterioration hit me hard that night. As John set off the fireworks, I sat alone on a hillside, watching the members interact. Coming from the warm, close-knit communal culture of Nepal, I saw white upper-middle-class adults behaving as if they were at a cocktail party. Little clusters would mingle and part, touching superficially, satiated bees on drained flowers. I can't do this anymore. There's no spark, no depth of communion, just emotional distance. Are John and I the only ones who see through this charade? Isn't anyone else concerned about Rinpoche's drinking?

We lingered till midnight, chatting in uneasy shallowness. I felt as if the skin were being peeled off my body. The shock of Rinpoche's deterioration had sent my grief process cascading. Raw and shaken, I was silent as we drove back to our hotel. Falling into a bewildered sleep, I awoke despondent and poured out my feelings to John. As he validated my horror, he lessened my feelings of alienation. When I studied the disease model, I realized I had seen five hundred people in denial about the drunken elephant in the living room. The brightness in their eyes, the glint of Don't you dare mention it, the brave attempt to carry on despite the guru's intoxication were poison to me. Like babies playing in a toxic waste dump, the community was oblivious to the time bomb's tick.

Back in Boulder, at my Al-Anon meeting, I developed a friendship with a fellow Buddhist. We dared to call Rinpoche "the A-word," like two naughty children who had been cast out from their garden of illusion. Slowly, we began to draw others into our fragile web through mutual education about the disease that was destroying our families, our church, and our spiritual leader. We learned how to give people the litmus test of nurturing. If you feel energized after an interaction, that is the sign of a healthy person. If you feel drained, run for your life, because that's the disease and it will kill you.

More Buddhist women started attending meetings. As we shared our insights, wisdom and strength began to dawn. Within the bonds of sisterhood, and as the men joined soon after, in fellowship, we formed a lifeline by sharing experience, strength, and hope from the perspective of our confused and denial-ridden spiritual community.

An article had appeared that summer in our Buddhist newspaper, the Shambhala Sun, about Dhyani Ywahoo, a female of Cherokee lineage who combined Native American teachings with Buddhism. Sensing an instant familiarity, I wrote her a letter about the need for female teachers to balance the steady stream of visiting male lamas. When she came to Boulder to address her Peacekeeper organization, I invited her to meet with our community, hoping to strengthen the link between the two traditions.

Dhyani's then-husband, Golden True, called a few days later and said she would be willing to give a short talk. I could tell from his deep voice, Texas accent, and kick-ass way of speaking that he and John would sniff each other out and find comfort in each other's maleness. "You know how to do that," John told me. "It's like walking behind a horse's rump. You make the clicking noise that tells a man he can relax."

We fell in love with Dhyani's beauty. As a Vietnam vet, Golden had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder written all over him, so he and John clicked. Instantly, we became family. Their rowdy two-year-old adored Michael. Feeling a spark of recognition, like coming home, we swapped many war stories about our lives.

I discovered Golden had witnessed one of those incredible magic moments in my life. It happened the year we moved to Boulder. Paul was selling shoes at Kinney's. The kids and I had gone to the mall with our dear Tibetan lama friend, Karma Thinley Rinpoche, to pick Paul up from work. We found the salesmen struggling with the huge door that slides to lock up the store. It simply would not budge. Afraid Paul would have to guard the store all night, I looked helplessly at Karma Thinley. He made a pass with his hand and muttered a mantra under his breath. "Now try," he said. The door slid shut like butter.

Golden passed by the store just as that happened. He saw the family with two small children squirreling around the shoe displays and the red-robed monk murmuring incantations at the door. "It blew my mind! I wondered who the heck y'all were." When we went out for dinner that night, Paul took me for a spin on the dance floor. When I returned to the table, Karma Thinley announced very enthusiastically, "Oh, you have besty body for dancing!" When I told Johnny that story, he nicknamed me "Best-y Body." He called me that a lot; it cracked him up.

The recovering members of the community attended Dhyani's talk. The next morning, over breakfast, she probed the issues of Rinpoche's health and the community's morale. John and I told her everything. Our loyalty was to the truth of the situation, not protecting the Emperor's New Clothes.

"Rinpoche has drunk so much that he has holes in his brain," she explained. "That is how the Native Americans describe the effects of alcohol destroying brain cells. He needs physical attention. You must gather people together and see if something can be done. It would be good if he would take a sweat with Wallace Black Elk, who knows how to cure those holes. Go to the nuns in your community. They are the most pure and they are concerned. Also, seek out the elders, who can see more in their maturity and wisdom."

"I don't want to be the target of criticism," I protested.

"In the entire community, you are the one who knows most about these things. You have no choice. Otherwise, he will die."

I called for a meeting with the nuns and elders. We asked Roger La Borde, a member of Wallace Black Elk's adopted family, to address the situation from his intuitive point of view. Roger was aware of the confusion and pain caused by Rinpoche's behavior. Although there was still clarity in Rinpoche's consciousness, Roger said damage to his brain cells had left him disoriented.

"Rinpoche cannot decide if he wants to stay alive. Those with clarity of heart and mind must learn to stand on their own two feet. If the conditions continue, Rinpoche will die. Your community is suffering from the same masculine imbalance as the rest of the planet, along with the suppression of the feminine. The women must unite in truth. You will not accomplish any healing by challenging the male-dominated hierarchy. You must all assume responsibility for having relinquished your hearts, your power, and your intuition." Roger went on to say that the Buddhist teachings could not flourish in a form that suppressed honesty. He accurately predicted that tension would be created by increased jockeying for influential positions in the hierarchy.

Roger had confirmed our deepest intuitions. We called another meeting for all the recovering women. Twenty of us gathered at our house in confidentiality. This was the first time students could ask questions without fear of rejection and scorn. Apart from Rinpoche's physical health, another concern was the fact that he was in the process of marrying six other women. They were to assume positions above the board of directors. While the party line claimed this was Rinpoche's way of empowering the feminine, we believed it was his way of getting his sex poodles to jump through their hoops. We viewed them as opportunistic airheads, simultaneously smug and confused about exactly what it was that made them so special. The weddings were secret; only inner sanctum-ites knew of them. The women were subjected to a rigorous examination about the Buddhist teachings. Rinpoche drunkenly nodded in and out of the ceremonies, and his wife never objected. If this were empowering the feminine, we'd eat our meditation cushions.

We discussed the arrogance and closed mindedness of the community, the blatant chauvinism that proclaimed ours is the only way. We met their doubts and concerns with kindness instead of censure. Emerging from denial about our own erratic behavior or a loved one's, it was time to acknowledge that we had more clarity than the flock of untreated codependents. Feeling tremendous sadness about the confusion, we also felt freedom as we moved from the role of victim to warrior, searching for clarity and truth.

I had rented a carriage house near the mountains to escape from John's illness and write. We gathered there every Tuesday at noon under the guise of a Women's Buddhist Al-Anon meeting. Wives of the community's most powerful men timidly discussed their domestic problems. When they started practicing the principles of Al-Anon, change invariably followed, and we celebrated each other's growth. As we revealed family secrets, from the microcosm of our homes to the cocaine debauchery at Rinpoche's court, we grew in mutual strength and support. This infuriated the hierarchy, who objected with derision and scorn. They said we were missing the point, that the crazy wisdom lineage gave Rinpoche license to do whatever was needed in the name of "teaching." As a result, we lost superficial friendships but gained a depth of intimacy we had never known. A large extended family formed, not to replicate the harmonics of our abusive childhoods, but one that was loving and full of joy. We learned how to play, to celebrate our success, share pain, become supportable, and speak from our hearts. These skills would save our lives, but not the life of our teacher.

36. Last Ditch

NANCY

In the dead of winter, braving blizzards and black ice, I shuttled the children back and forth to Denver for their second round of family week, where the patient's family is educated about the disease. I resented the inconvenience of being left to care for children and pets while once again John played at rehab. During this round we began to understand exactly how dangerous we were for each other. When they sensed the rage I was feeling about John's inability to stay sober, the counselors talked to us about separating. If we wanted to heal, we could not continue to live in such agony. When the rage subsided, heartbroken and terrified, we clung to each other and prayed, but the red flags of doom were flying everywhere.

When John soon relapsed after his second round of thirty-day treatment, we began our descent into the tragic destruction of our marriage. I marvel at commitment that eventually finds resolution in resurrection and healing. It felt at the time like I was being burned alive, but that was an illusion. We were really on the verge of witnessing a miracle.

My therapist urged me to seek codependent treatment at Sharon Wegsheider-Cruz's facility in South Dakota. That ten-day program solidified my determination to beat the odds. When I returned home, we decided to fulfill Megan's dream of attending boarding school. We chose Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, for its curriculum in the arts. Michael and I flew down to register her and I fell in love with the breathtaking red-rock formations and the silent desert.

They say that Sedona intensifies whatever you bring to it. If you want to heal, Sedona will etch that possibility in its red rocks. If you want to abuse yourself the land will provide carte blanche room for indulgence. Sensing Boulder had become a dead end for our growth, I didn't want to leave that enchanted land. Early one morning, sitting by the pinon fire in my hotel room, I called John.

"The scenery is spectacular. I want you to see it. Let's move here for a few months and then decide what we want to do."

The idea intrigued John. "You think we're ready to leave the stranglehold of the Buddhist community? I could use a change. Besides, every cop in town knows my name. I can't walk down the street without one of them calling 'Hi, John!' over their loudspeaker."

He had been DUI'd twice more that winter. Desperately in need of a rest, I sighed. "I don't want to leave you, but I'm tired. There's no fight left in me. If you can't stay sober, I've got to figure out a way to live without you." It was my last-ditch effort at getting us out of the ditch.

When Michael and I returned home, there was another medical crisis to face. True to the Pain Center's diagnosis, John had developed excruciating gallstones, which demanded more drugs to kill the pain. The doctors were considering yet another operation. In February of 1987, they removed his gall bladder, which brought on another bout of Percodan addiction. We drove to Sedona ten days later with just enough luggage packed in our car to stay in a furnished condo. I begged John to throw away his stash before we left town, never really knowing how badly he was hooked. He complied and we drove off with John in heavy withdrawal and me in heavy denial, both hoping for the best.

We spent our wedding anniversary in a condo in Moab, Utah, where we stayed for several days. Discovering an alternate reality we never thought possible, we felt at peace there. The windows looked out on the simple streets where life felt so deliciously ordinary. We explored the land through bright blue-skied days, hypnotized by the fantastic red-rock formations and the willowy green trees. Fixing dinner at night, I would pretend that we lived there, that we had lost our shadow side, our diseases, any vestiges that set us apart from the unpretentious, wholesome life outside. Maybe we were schoolteachers, easily blending with the small-town simplicity. No one was famous, nor related to fame, nor going to be famous. Then we could have a life, instead of a myth, an opera, a Greek tragedy. If we could just quit being larger than life. Sick and tired of our terminal uniqueness, I prayed for humility.

The notion of an unencumbered life charmed Johnny, but an impetus was driving us like a hurricane. Although we didn't want to admit it, it was determined to drive us apart. I remember how the poplar trees waved outside the window when we had a clear view of the life we wanted. Perhaps we could cultivate the ability to experience a graceful flow instead of torturous rapids and labyrinthine roller coasters. As I daydreamed, watching the leaves shimmer in dappled sunlight, I had no idea Johnny's drowsiness was coming from a massive and dangerous withdrawal from Percodan. I thought he was just tired from his gall-bladder operation.

We settled into an easy rhythm in Sedona. Since Michael had stayed in Boulder with Paul to finish the semester, with Megan in boarding school down the street, we were without children. This was an important time for us, a chance to spend uninterrupted hours together for the first time in the eight years since we'd met. Our days consisted of long drives up to Flagstaff and on to the Grand Canyon, picnic lunches, lying in the sun, swimming at the condo, and working out at a marvelous spa down the street.

John was still weak from the operation. Since it was a fresh start, and he didn't know any doctors, he tried to get by without pain pills. He suffered from adhesions from the gall- bladder operation, and was often in agony. When the pain lessened, he swam dozens of laps every day, trying valiantly to create a health-oriented life.

I felt like a newborn baby, cut loose from all habitual patterns, trying to figure out what I wanted to do, instead of what I should be doing. Again, as in Kathmandu, I was freed from domesticity. We were in a comfortable condo, not a large house with lawns and gardens. I wanted desperately to do something creative, but I was too numb to come up with anything. The best times were late at night when we nestled in the hot tub and drank in the stars.

Two months later, Rinpoche finally died of acute late stage alcoholism. I saw a picture of him taken a few days before his death. He was bone-thin; his eyes had the haunted look of a madman. "I will never have another teacher in this lifetime," I swore to the silent red rocks at sunset. The ravens circled the valley, and I felt as though I had wasted every ounce of my practice and training with this maniacal Tibetan.

Anger erupted in both of us toward Rinpoche's henchmen, whom we felt had killed him. In their Emperor's-New-Clothes mentality, his guards had refused to face the reality of Rinpoche's addictions. It wasn't just alcohol. The truth leaked out about his $40,000-a- year coke habit and, the ultimate irony, an addiction to Seconal. Sleeping pills for the guru who advertised himself as a wake-up call to enlightenment. John and I felt duped, cheated, and outraged, especially toward the yes-men, who remained unaccountable for the deception inflicted upon our community. Rinpoche's enablers claimed that supplying him with drugs and alcohol was a measure of their devotion, while sneering at those of us who objected. In their sick denial, they couldn't see he was suiciding right before our eyes. John and I had fantasies about kidnapping Rinpoche and detoxing him ourselves, imagining what thirty days of sobriety would have done to his warped perceptions. In his last year, he'd become so deluded, he would summon his attendants and tell them he wanted to visit the Queen of Bhutan. They would put him in his Mercedes and drive around the block several times. As they led him back to the house, they laughingly asked how his visit went.

"Wonderful," he'd reply. "She was delightful."

And they called that magic. "He's so powerful," they'd whisper. It was pathetic.

Before Rinpoche's death, at a large community meeting, John asked the attendants why they hadn't refused to give him any more alcohol. They pompously claimed it was a mark of their devotion to give the guru what he asked for. "Whatever the teacher demands, all that I will give," was their vow. They believed that to break that vow, to refuse to administer the poison that was killing him, would literally send them to hell.

Johnny's question made everyone nervous. "Why do I have the feeling that we're pouring booze down his throat out of our own desire for comfort, which stems from greed? The guru's goose is being cooked, and we're all sitting by the oven, warming our hands, waiting for the feast." We shared common dreams about being ostracized by the community. If they knew how John and I were redefining our spirituality, they would have stoned us on the spot. Those nightmares were a reflection of the impending shunning, filled with hideous torture, staged in the sewers and cesspools of our incestuous community. Feeling uneasy about the vows we'd taken with Rinpoche, we didn't want our state of mind to be a reflection of his insanity. Dhyani suggested a releasing ceremony to give back his bad medicine. When John and I flew back to Boulder after Rinpoche's death, twelve of us gathered in a circle and proclaimed, "Rinpoche, we release any attachment to your behavior. We release our aversion to your self-destruction, for within that aversion is the seed of attraction. By returning your intoxication and arrogance, we affirm our relationship to enlightened mind and the development of compassion." A symbolic cup of sake was passed around but not imbibed. John then threw it out the window with a vow. "I will never again use Rinpoche's behavior to justify my own addictions."

Comments from other lamas about Rinpoche began to seep in. They finally admitted that for years they had feared for his sanity and thought he had been acting irresponsibly, but no one had spoken out. This news confirmed our discomfort, yet we still had no idea how much abuse was in store for the community in the coming years. As the true nature of corruption revealed itself, we were grateful that we'd participated in the ritual that severed us from the madness.

We attended Rinpoche's cremation ceremony in May of 1987 with Dhyani and her husband. I was glad to be there with them, safe in the VIP tent, away from the crowd of three thousand people in heavy denial. Sitting with visiting dignitaries from other religious traditions, John and I felt too raw to face the onslaught of frozen feelings. True to the community's stoic form, no emotions were shown. We might as well have been at a cocktail party. After the body was cremated, rainbows and traditional Tibetan symbols appeared as cloud formations in the sky, confirming Rinpoche's magical gifts. Why had he not used that magic on himself instead of drinking with such a vengeance? It is said that the guru manifests the most neurotic aspects of his students, so there was always the glib attitude that Rinpoche's addiction was a reflection of our proclivities. Did that mean it had to kill him? We were told he could vanquish any evil in the world. Did he just not want to fight anymore?

"He got caught in his own wringer," John said ironically.

The party line claimed Rinpoche's outrageous behavior was a powerful vehicle for awakening his students. If you viewed it as drunken unmanageabiiity, they said you were missing the point, throwing away a precious opportunity for spiritual growth. The people with the greatest awareness about addictions were shunned as being the most impossible to enlighten. We were told that we simply were not "man enough" to take the industrial strength of Rinpoche's selfless teachings. In the May 2000 issue of the Shambhala Sun, the organization's mouthpiece, Rinpoche's son stated: "My dad ... was a drinking madman! How much of a madman are you? How brave are you to really do things? He was a warrior. A warrior with the pen. A warrior with the word. A warrior with the drinking. If you don't like his drinking, he was a fool, he's dead. If you don't mind the drinking thing and think he may have had incredible enlightened wisdom, then you are an eligible candidate for his teachings."

After his death, a Buddhist teenager asked me, "Did you know that some guys used to pimp for Rinpoche? They'd find him new women to sleep with." She was talking about the sharks that sought out eager new females, either at Rinpoche's request, or on their own recognizance, hoping to win favor with him. We discussed the obvious oxymoron to which everyone turned a blind eye, that an impeccable warrior's path cannot incorporate a voracious and sloppy appetite for drugs, alcohol, and hundreds of sexual encounters. While everyone was busy honoring Rinpoche's courage for being so blatant about his massive indulgences, his henchmen constantly skimmed the various centers for new blood. Women were trained as "consorts." That meant they knew what to do when he threw up, shit in the bed, snorted coke till dawn, turned his attention to other women, and maybe even got in the mood for a threesome.

Our little band of recovering Buddhists began to ask people if they thought this flagrant behavior constituted religious or sexual abuse. The standard answer you get from the male good old boys who buy into the system because it means their coffers will also be full to feed their own addictions, is that they never, in all their pimping, heard any woman complain about sleeping with Rinpoche. (I use that term loosely, because for years he was alcoholically impotent and would devise little sexual games such as using a dildo known as "Mr. Happy" or insisting women masturbate in front of him.)

You don't ask people in denial for reality checks. You ask those who have crawled though the trenches into the light, those who have dealt head-on with their own abuse issues. They are the ones who will proclaim the truth fearlessly in the face of mocking ostracism and threats of eternal damnation. Many women, who felt they were no more than chattel, silently left the scene. Sleeping with Rinpoche was like sleeping with a rock star. You got elevated for about an hour until he moved on to the next new face. There were always eager young initiates who mistakenly thought it was a way of gaining status in the community. Because of the spiritual trappings, women forgot that groupies are always relegated to the sloppy seconds category after they've been had. Like a bunch of high school jocks, the male-dominated administration smirked behind the backs of Rinpoche's conquests. A woman with low self-esteem and no education about abuse will acquiesce to such degradation out of ignorance.

Thankful to be removed from the scene, 1 found sanctuary in Sedona. Ironically, I realized I was getting all the help I needed to make the break from the battlefield. In Boulder, the typical recovering codependent attitude was if a guy won't quit drinking, you should kick him out and move on to a healthy relationship. Most of the Sedona Al-Anon women were grandmothers; they'd been married to their alcoholics for half a century. Accepting alcoholism as a disease, not an inconvenience, they mastered the art of detaching with love and humor. These grandmothers knew that you cannot take a disease personally. It's not out to get YOU, it's only out to get its host. They practiced the Al-Anon slogan -- Love the person, hate the disease -- with a sense of compassion that I wanted to emulate. Eager to transmit their wisdom, they shared their experience, strength, and hope with me.

These women loved their husbands. Whether for economic reasons or out of family loyalty, they did not see them as disposable. If, at times, their situation appeared hopeless, they closed ranks and nurtured each other. I marveled at their lack of vindictiveness, which often ate away at me. When they saw that my marriage was losing its lifeblood, their implanted vision of freedom from fear and anger carried me through the chaos. It has years of practice, but it was there that I learned to be gentle about dealing with addictions, because harshness just turns around and bites you back. My Al-Anon sages managed to impart the profound notion of powerlessness to me. I am grateful that they entered my life at a time when I desperately needed their wisdom and nurturing.

With the grandmothers' help, I faced a phone call from Thom that caused the bottom to drop out of our marriage. He had broken up with Joanna and was staying with friends on a farm in upstate New York. Footloose and free to party, he wanted Johnny to join him. We all knew half of John was suffocating, thirsting for a drink. In his perverse, Cain-slaying- Abel mode, Thom wanted to rescue him from the other half that was desperately trying to heal.

I was terrified that I would lose John. I knew if he continued to drink, he would die, and die soon. He'd been cirrhotic for five years; if he went to New York, he would ignore his biweekly phlebotomies. Thom was oblivious to the fact that alcohol increases the iron deposits that were strangling John's liver and heart.

I wasn't being perverse when I told John to go. As much as I dreaded it, I was ready to be on my own. I could no longer walk point around his slow suicide. I let go and faced my worst nightmare as John, following his brother's fatal cue, began to drink himself to death with a vengeance.

http://www.american-buddha.com/cult.oth ... .33-36.htm

[American Dream]

Kundalini and Qigong Psychosis

By Dr. Tan Kheng Khoo



The seeker who dares to awaken the kundalini power without the grace and guidance of a guru might become insane, succumb to diseases, or even die. This is because he does not possess the necessary knowledge, steadiness of mind, or patience required for this difficult undertaking.

- Swami Kripalvananda

Good one.

I would suggest that a good "guru" is valuable in the same kind of way that a good counselor is- not as some kind of absolute authority figure which one should be devoted to but rather as an experienced and skilled guide and helper, whose (more objective) feedback, advice and instruction can be helpful.

If there is such a person in your life, it's often good to think seriously about what they are saying.

Sick, negative, toxic, destructive "gurus" as in the picture of Chogyam Drunkpa which emerges just above- should probably not be listened to, much less obeyed...

[Simulist]

Right on, AD.

[American Dream]

ON EDIT: REMOVED PHOTO WHICH MAY BE OFFENSIVE

http://www.american-buddha.com/it's.tan ... TRA%20BABY

IT'S TANTRA BABY

by Charles Carreon




If your life is plagued with discord,
and you can't get out of bed,
If you're hungover with sadness
and wish that you were dead,
If you've got a forty-five
pointed up against your head,
Then you might as well
become a Buddhist
And save a little lead.

Well if you dig the Mahayana
You don't have to cut your hair
And if you chant a little now
You'll have nothing to fear
When death comes strolling down the aisle
And extends his hand to you,
You'll say "my ticket's paid today,
So what more can I do?"

The Dharma's just for losers
At least that's what the Siddha said
When he rolled the final snake eyes
With the eyeballs from his head
And dakinis started cackling
Like buzzards in the sky
Then he clicked his heels
And grabbed his chick
And flew away on high.

It's Tantra, baby, on the hoof
Too hot to try to sell,
And if you don't believe me
We'll discuss it all in hell.
The family is twisted,
That's known around these parts,
The men will steal your car
While the women break your heart.

The crossing signs are switched up
All around this place,
When you play it, it's a Joker,
Though you swore you drew an Ace,
And the hit men play with apple pies
The girls are made of stone
And every word that flies about
Is sure to break a bone.

The guides have all gone crazy
In this place where travel's free,
There's nothing more amazing
Than to see one in a tree,
Laughing like a psycho
With his head inside a box
You'd swear he'd never heard
That little kids get chicken pox.

It's Tantra, baby, grab a bite
And hang on to your hat,
We'll feed you magic potions
And lay you on a mat,
We'll dance around you wildly
With flowers in our hair
And when you wake in our place
You are a billionaire.

[American Dream]

Hugh B. Urban has some interesting scholarship on these topics.

Here are two articles which are available on-line:


2001 "The Omnipotent Oom: Tantra and its Impact on Modern Western Esotericism," Esoterica: The Journal of Esoteric Studies 3: 218-259. On-line at http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIII/HTML/Oom.html

2003 "Unleashing the Beast: Aleister Crowley, Tantra and Sex Magic in late Victorian England." Esoterica: The Journal of Esoteric Studies 5 (2003): 138-92. On-line at: http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/Unl ... _Beast.htm