Chasing Authenticity

Being authentic - sounds simple, doesn't it? Do your own thing, man. Be true to yourself. Follow your bliss? Er, no. Granted there are different degrees of authenticity, but to honour this pursuit at all deeply is one of the most difficult tasks on offer to a human being on this planet.

Authenticity requires removing, or at least getting beyond, the veil upon veil of fabrication that stands between our everyday experience and direct immediate reality. From the moment of our birth - or even beforehand, if we take seriously the work of Stan Grof and others - we are assailed by all manner of input and information drawing us out of our core. Very soon our direct perception of reality is being substituted by an interpretation of it, or what in the works of Castaneda is termed a description of reality. This normally happens seamlessly, a process of which we remain blissfully ignorant. Undoing the knots and tangles presented by this taken-on interpretation is a large part of the process of self-discovery, spiritual life, call it what you will.

Two main, though not completely discrete, elements of this fabrication of experience can be discerned. Firstly, there is what is commonly known as personal conditioning. A library of therapies has appeared over the last century with the aim of helping to untangle the knots and tangles (complexes), the distortions developed through our lifetime that have stayed buried, unconsciously skewing our experience of the way things more truly are. In Castaneda, this is referred to as 'erasing personal history': not that things didn't happen, but liberating us from the dark magic that their hold maintains over us.

Then there is the distortion created through the ever-present influence of the media, religion, the education system, the belief systems and taboos of the culture that we grow up in. As Neil Kramer vividly explains, it is almost impossible to be authentic, real, while remaining a heavy consumer of mainstream media, such is its power to tell you what is what, and what is not. A little research soon throws up the unsavoury truth that these are not organs passionately dedicated to getting to the bottom of things and aiding in our quest for liberating authenticity. Even if this was their more noble original intention, they function, in their mainstream guises especially, to put onto an unsuspecting public a particular version, or single tiny slice, of reality, making out that this is the whole story.

It is my observation that many people into 'spiritual things', while acutely aware of the former, often limit their degree of authenticity through ignoring, or denying, the second form of distortion summarised above. If you are being constantly put on, by the media, for example, and not even conscious that that is happening, what chance have you got of experiencing the deeper levels of your reality? We have a personal responsibility to delve below the surface, to try to see what is really happening to us, what we are really being fed and why. Taking personal responsibility is an integral part of developing authenticity. To get topical: if you believe hook line and sinker what international thugs like Obama and Kerry, Cameron and Hague, tell you about Syria, you are likely suffering from a severe unconscious reality distortion.....

Contact with greater authenticity is one of the main benefits of immersion in 'nature' as we call it. It could be anything: forest, desert, rivers or oceans. In my case, mountainous places are the main thing. Go to the mountains and you are confronted with authenticity. You can't escape it. Stones, rocks; heather, peat, mountain streams; wind, rain, sun; a deer on the horizon, a frog caught unaware in a pool of slime. All have no choice. They know no other way than to be authentic, whatever that might be for each and every one of them. Out of the tangled, distorted world of humans for a week, a day, for a few hours even. Recontacting, reconnecting. Back to source, giving our authentic self a chance......

            

Casey Heads West....

Casey Hardison has appeared before on Pale Green Vortex, most notably in 'The Gagging of Casey Hardison', posted on October 24th 2011. He was, you may recall, well into a twenty-year prison sentence dished out to him for producing LSD and other 'psychedelic-type substances' in his house in Brighton. His persistence and irrefutable logic regarding the ridiculous severity of his sentence finally led to the Home Office issuing a 'shut up until you're out of here, reality pest' order on Casey.

Anyhow, after nine years, three months, two weeks, and two days in prison, Casey was released into the light of day on May 29th 2013. Considering his honesty-and-reality speak a threat to the system, or at least a serious nuisance, St. Teresa May at the Home Office saw fit to deport him immediately whence he came, the U.S. of A.

I am keeping the link to the 'Free Casey' website (as well as still wearing my t-shirt of the same) on Pale Green Vortex, since it is a useful portal into the world of the War Against Some Drugs, and especially the War Against Certain Types of Consciousness. Anybody still labouring under the delusion that drugs laws are anything to do with the health and well-being of the general public is advised to have a good old scratch around here.

And as far as Casey Hardison is concerned: Pale Green Vortex wishes you good luck with the rest of your life!

  

Mountains of Mystery

Photos one and two: on Beinn a'Ghlo. Photos three and four: wild camp on Ben Macdui

Beinn a'Ghlo: hill of the mist, or hill of the veil. The literature surrounding this Scottish mountain abounds in adjectives such as beautiful, mysterious, isolated and remote. Yet veils and mysteries seemed a world away when I began my visit to Beinn a'Ghlo at the end of June. I stepped off the train in the small and quiet township of Blair Atholl, and was soon walking past flower-filled meadows and bright green pastures. Only ninety minutes south of where I live, yet Blair Atholl and its immediate environs exude a softer, lighter ambience than the frequently-stern landscapes nearer to home. I could have been in Sussex.

An hour or so later, I arrived at the base of the mountain proper, and any notions of being in southern England were quickly dispelled. A steady wind was blowing beneath a uniform grey sky; as I climbed I could not help but notice that, despite the wind, a distinctive silence seemed to have enveloped the entire scene. This, the eerie silence, is another feature of Beinn a'Ghlo sometimes noted in the literature. Was this 'just' a fabrication of my own imagination? Was the silence 'really' out there? Was the reality a mixture of the two? Was there any practical way of knowing?

A long serpentine ridge connects the three major summits comprising the massive bulk of Beinn a'Ghlo. I moved along the twisting snake of the back quietly and with the respect appropriate to this great mountain. I sensed the place to be a repository for some ancient wisdom long disappeared from the world of human exoteric knowledge. When the time arose for me to return to Blair Atholl, I eschewed the ridges and trodden ways, instead making a beeline across the stone and heather for a bridge across the river way, way below. As I started to descend, I sensed a movement out of the corner of my left eye. Over a mile away, and far below, a herd of deer had nevertheless caught my scent. As a single body, they moved across the surface of the corrie, bunching close together as they went. I have never seen such an enormous herd of deer in my life, and the sight brought to mind those aerial shots of huge herds of wildebeest or buffalo roaming across the great plains of Africa that are the staple of wildlife documentaries on television.  Mountain of hidden mysteries indeed.

More recently, I had the pleasure to visit another mountain that brims with folklore. As part of a wild camp multi-peak trip across the Cairngorms, I took in the second highest summit in Scotland, Ben Macdui. As Rennie McOwan observes in his fascinating book 'Magic Mountains', the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui is the best-known spectre of the Scottish mountains (as well as being, according to the author, the one about which most nonsense has been written). As one penetrates the interior of the Cairngorm massif, a very particular quality of savage wildness emerges. Wide highland spaces cut through deeply by crag-lined, loch-cradling, clefts and canyons. Ben Macdui is characterised not so much by its massive domed summit as through the cliffs and gashes that form its perimeters. Personally, I saw no evidence of the Grey Man. However, many claim to have done so. Certainly, the enormous rock-and-gravel strewn summit area seems more suited to the Moon than to be regarded as an Earthly landscape, and it is not difficult to envision all kind of otherwordly happenings taking place on the upper slopes of Ben Macdui.

Rennie McOwan is of the opinion that the Big Grey Man no longer walks the tops of the Cairngorms. 'The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui will never return to that mountain. The mountain is too busy. It is often thronged with people. The old mystery has gone. There is no longer an atmosphere when the feel of the hill can frighten people.' He has a point. Certainly, as I stood beside the summit cairn and became aware of a man not fifty yards away conversing on his mobile phone, it seemed as if there was a human conspiracy at large to remove the mystery from these high places. Yet I have been to spots where the mountains have provoked fear in me. I have had strange experiences in these high places, and felt the veil between the worlds become wafer-thin. We can still learn much from these repositories of the most ancient of wisdoms, the mountains. I shall return.....

                  

In the Footsteps of Castaneda

                              East face of the Witch

In the footsteps of Castaneda: no, not literally. That's Neil Kramer, recently returned from a great road trip taking in the Sonora Desert, northern Mexico, home to the many adventures of Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan Matus, Don Genaro, et al. I speak more of following some of the techniques and practices sprinkled throughout the pages of Castaneda's compelling prose.

It's convenient to dismiss Castaneda as mental titillation for the bohemian wing of the student population. 'Wow! Amazing stuff! Hey, who's got the dope?' In truth, the works of Castaneda are among the few of my inspirations from the 1970s that speak more profoundly and eloquently to me today than forty years ago. The wisdom contained therein seems more pertinent and closer to hand than it ever did during the years of my communal youth.

'The Teachings of Don Carlos' is a compilation by Victor Sanchez of practices gleaned from the volumes of Castaneda, along with other techniques he has learned himself. Significantly, he had lived and trained with the Nahua and Huichol Indians of Mexico long before coming across Castaneda and finding striking similarities (thereby lending authenticity to the sometimes disputed wisdom of Castaneda).

Today I am largely concerned with the teachings on walking. The Mexican Indians are, according to Sanchez, masters of the art of walking, having developed the requisite skills during centuries of roaming across vast areas of mountain and desert. In Castaneda's books, time and again the author is taken on a long walk by the aged seer Don Juan, the wise old man moving effortlessly across the surface of the Earth for hours on end, the hapless Carlos puffing and panting, sweating and struggling along behind. The teachings on walking form part of the process of 'stopping the internal dialogue', a prerequisite for moving into the separate reality, other dimensional/density space, call it what you will. The art is to perceive reality directly, rather than thinking about it; direct experience instead of mere description.

I leave Newtonmore station, on the edge of the Cairngorm National Park, and am soon walking above the cascades and plunge pools of the Calder River. The teachings are simple in essence, yet ridiculously tricky to apply with any consistency. Walk rhythmically and silently, concentrating on the terrain near at hand. If you want to talk or look at the wider landscape, stop walking. Stay 'in the body', wear a rucksack and carry nothing in the hands. Remain conscious of breathing, and try to synchronise it with walking. Stay aware of the Earth. In general terms, don't think about where you are going or where you have come from: just be 'in the walk' right now. Follow these instructions and you will gain access to unknown reserves of energy, not to mention opening the crack between the worlds.

It is as I begin to climb more steeply and the terrain becomes rougher that the challenge really looms. As a better-than-reasonable reader of maps and of the landscape, I can easily fall into gauging my current altitude and how many more metres I have to climb. This is largely a reflection of the unpleasant sensations sometimes experienced when climbing - an ascent becomes a disagreeable slog, something to get over and done with as soon as possible. But now, don't think of the top of the mountain. Put away the map, don't consult your watch. Just be aware of moving through the landscape, whatever its nature.

My practice of walking Toltec-style is deeply flawed, yet makes a difference. I cross peaty, conventionally dull and featureless terrain in a mood of contentment.  Eventually, I find myself beside the cairn on top of the mountain. A'Chailleach, it's called: the Witch. Who is this witch? Did a traveller through the different densities of the cosmos once inhabit the mountain, maybe inhabiting a cave in the crags below the summit? Was a witch from ancient Celtic legend - the Cailleach Bheur, for example, witch of the storms - reputed to live on the mountain top, or to have created it? Was a witch burnt here during the times of persecution? Does it refer to the mountain itself, endowed with magical and healing properties? Does anybody know?

I continue onwards, across a landscape increasingly remote from the cares of normal human civilisation. The sense of shifting into a different world is palpable as I ascend peat and grass slopes to the top of another hill, Carn Sgulain. In truth, it is a small rise in the general swell of the moorland. Carn Sgulain may indeed be the least spiky of all the Munros, but looks out over the vast sprawling spaces of the inner Monadhliath, and I love it. Distant horizons are obscured by a uniform grey murk, but the sense of expanse is marvellous nonetheless. A place that the witch would feel at home indeed.

This Monadhliath, with its Chailleach and Carn Sgulain, is prime territory for trashing by industrial-size windfarms. Within a few years, the number of these monstrosities in the area will have multiplied. The witches, wizards, and local spirits will not be pleased. As documented elsewhere on Pale Green Vortex, a look below the surface hype and hysteria reveals that logical and rational arguments for this desecration amount to literally zero. Even for someone chasing the chimera of decarbonisation, windfarms are the last thing to be promoting.

I freestyle across boggy terrain, pathless and infrequently visited by humankind, finding hidden cascades and an unexpected craggy aspect to the Witch as I do so. Eventually a vague path appears alongside the stream threading down the glen and leading me back to the world of human affairs. A shaft of warm sun breaks through the greyness overhead as I pass once more along the Calder gorge and spy the little township of Newtonmore close at hand.

          

Road To Avalon

                                     
'I'm not a bloody terrorist!' All my self control needs to be exercised to hold myself back from shouting at the guy at airport security and slapping him hard across the face for being so stupid. This would not, however, be a clever strategy for the long term. This being the case, I obediently place jacket, belt, watch, toiletries, and other bits and pieces in the little tray and observe them disappear into the innards of the x-ray machine. As usual, I beep, so am subject to shoes-off and the pat-down. A boy, aged seven at a guess, has similarly set off the alarm, and is busy taking off his shoes under close official scrutiny. 'Get them young' is obviously the latest strategy of Al-Qaeda; they have doubtless learned this tactic from the global warming softly softly totalitarian brigade.

I have lived in Inverness for eight years now, long enough to see the local airport transformed from a friendly provincial place into a small copycat of the mainstream monsters. The zealous nature of some of their security officials can outdo anything their counterparts at Heathrow or JFK are likely to serve up.

Having negotiated security without breaking anybody's nose, I stumble into the departure lounge, where I am immediately appalled by the atmosphere. Casting an eye around, I cannot help feeling that, despite the money, the travel, the Rohan and Barbour clothes, the majority of people here lead lives that are poor in quality. I also notice another peculiarity: newspapers. Adults are all sitting around reading newspapers. Not only that, but their facial expressions suggest these newspapers are a very serious matter. They appear to be taking in and actually believing what they are reading. A quick peek at the headlines sets out a nightmarish vision of humanity. This is what reality is, this is what's important today, and you'd better believe that is so.

In some ways, it is the 'educated middle classes' who are most susceptible to this particular form of mainstream control practice. They demonstrate a great passion for, and avidly consume, their newspapers of choice, thereby considering themselves infinitely superior to the illiterate lower classes with their vulgar tabloids.

Security checks; newspaper headlines on terrorism, celebrity perverts and paedophiles; nearly everything else on the front pages: it seems I have stumbled into a world where the generation of fear and insecurity, and the consequent necessity to tighten control over the populace, is the main name of the game. It's transparent - how anyone continues to believe in these constantly re-enacted scenarios beats me - but relentless and apparently successful it remains. Scary......

Once aboard the plane, I am reminded of how our 'reality' is largely determined by what we are prepared (or able) to perceive. 'Are you interested in mountains, then?' the lady sitting next to me inquires, as I put aside the book I have been reading, entitled 'Magic Mountains'. She did not, apparently, clock the word 'magic', actually in larger print on the front cover than 'mountain'. But 'Are you interested in magic?' or 'What kind of magic do you find in the mountains?' are questions outside the domain of the lady's conscious perception of what constitutes reality.

I arrive in Bristol, where it immediately starts to pour a drab, insistent rain. I am unable to find the bus stand I need, and quickly feel as if I have arrived in hell. Resisting the urge to panic and jump on the first train heading back north, I pass repeatedly between train station and main street in my search. Eventually I solve the koan, and head slowly out of town on a bus full of soggy commuters going home. It is tortuous: southern England seems small, crowded, and jam-packed with busy psychic disturbance, guaranteed to prevent clarity of perception.

Things finally start to pick up when I arrive at my destination. The rain is still falling in torrents, but somehow is less bothersome. With its plethora of crystal shops, tarot readers, esoteric booksellers, reiki practitioners and assortment of healers, Glastonbury is unique, in Britain at least. On this soggy evening it is like a ghost town. Almost without realising, I find myself ascending a path leading up a hill to the celebrated tor. The mist-suffused setting seems perfect for this famously mystical spot. There is barely a soul around, and after the day's trials the tranquility is balm. At the top, I bump into Paul, gazing over the mist-shrouded Somerset levels. We have never met before, but within five minutes are swapping tales of energies, mystical happenings, and the like. It's not the typical supermarket-queue conversation, but it's kind-of what I've come for. My only previous visit to Glastonbury was in 1974, the day after my first psychedelic experience (see 'The dangers of psychedelic substances, part two', posted on Feb 13th 2011), and both Glastonbury and I have changed since then. I am curious to experience the closest that Britain has to an 'alternative town'. Eschewing the temptation to organise my time here into a whirlwind programme of events and workshops, I come devoid of a schedule, aside from general wandering around, open to whatever may or may not happen.

As twilight imperceptibly melts into darkness, I wend my way down the path leading from the tor to a quiet road and thence to my resting place for the night. 'Spirals' is the name of the bed and breakfast I have booked into; located on the edge of the town and at the foot of the tor, it is highly recommended by me. Unless, that is, you crave the starchy atmosphere typical of breakfast in many of these institutions, a constipated silence punctuated by the crunch-crunch of sliced white toast. Spirals is, I suppose, the kind of hostelry you are more likely to find in Glastonbury than elsewhere: informally friendly, bookshelves crammed with literature on power animals, the tarot, Castaneda, the kabbala, not to mention the super-duper shower. Above all, the place oozes authenticity, a world away from the synthetic theatre of grand fakery I had endured only hours before. I feel energised, but eventually drift into sleep: a morning of adventure awaits.

                

The Summit Cairns

                    On the South Glen Shiel ridge

Living In Strangeness

              An alchemist: student of strangeness

Part One: Update on Weirdness 

'Does a God who has conceived and borne intimate witness to all life and manifestation throughout the vast multi-dimensional realms of ineffable splendor - over countless aeons and through infinite iterations of mind-boggling dynamic evolution - really care what individual human beings choose to eat, drink, wear, say, or believe? Let alone choose to do with their genitals? I would suggest that the answer is no. God doesn't mind at all. Not even a tiny little bit.........  Perhaps the only thing that would be of tremendous interest to a supreme creator entity is just how well we are progressing on our own individual spiritual journey......'     (Neil Kramer, 'One Dream, Many Awakenings')

Neil could well have added that this 'supreme creator entity' does not care overmuch about personal trauma, either. Unpleasant, disorienting, and, er, certainly traumatic: but in the cosmic scheme of things, personal trauma barely registers. This is a perspective that I can at least begin to entertain as the traumatic element in recent life events slowly fades into the distance.

It is almost a year now since my life was thrown into unexpected turmoil by the trashing of our house by flood, all within the wider context of an astonishing and nightmarish synchronicity (see 'Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine', July 10th 2012, and 'Life Inside a Random Universe', August 21st 2012). Suggested interpretations of the flooding have poured in from a variety of sources: of a neglected house protesting; of a dwelling place that we originally moved to in immaculate condition now demanding to be our own creation; of the collapse of an ego personality and a corresponding rebirth and renewal; to mention just a few. People have read their Jung, taken note of the reality of correspondences, and these have been the results. To all who have offered suggestions, I say 'thank you'.

On the subject of the massive synchronicity involved, however, words of wisdom have been less forthcoming. This is more seriously weird, cutting across our normal perceptions of time and space, and I have been largely left to my own devices to deal with this one.  There are times when I have tried to dismiss the whole idea of this being synchronous as erroneous, just a chance coincidence; but the odds of this being the case are infinitesimal. The 'meaning', if indeed that is an appropriate notion, remains elusive. Maybe dark archontic forces started to take notice of me, and havoc was the result. Certainly, soon after the event, it was chaos and destruction - in the form of Shiva -that readily came to mind. Or maybe the Universal Consciousness decided the time had come to test my resolve; or that I was off-course and, failing to do anything about it, needed a helping hand in straightening myself out. Or maybe the Universe was simply putting on a fantastic magic show as a means of opening up my experience of the non-ordinary elements to existence.    

As the months have passed, I have become less concerned about 'understanding' the synchronistic aspect to the event, than simply absorbing on deeper levels that it took place at all.  In retrospect, I can begin to envision these various synchronistic events as all parts of a kind of initiation. An invitation into non-linear modes of experiencing....

Without doubt, the period prior to the house flood found me accessing unfamiliar states of consciousness - both during and outside formal meditation/mystical practice - with an ease and regularity that was new to me. An unmistakable change - maybe I was being primed for something bigger. But still nibbling around the edges. Then a higher intelligence entered centre stage: 'OK, dude. So you're interested in weird stuff? Well, here's something to really get you going. You won't like it. But I think you can take it.'

So it was an exit route from purely causal, linear, time-and-space perception into direct experience of something quite different. The old mechanistic way of thinking just wouldn't be able to get a handle on this at all. The water pouring from the attic onto the sodden floors below was not just an agent of destruction: the leaking water tank was also a vase of initiation, bestowing grace upon one terrified student of consciousness.

Today, the weird continues to manifest more regularly in my everyday life. While the domino-style world continues, another functions in parallel, the two entwining from time to time to create a richer tapestry. Rather like a number of computer programmes running simultaneously, one visible and obvious, the others chugging along in the background, but ready to manifest the moment it is appropriate. As it has started to become more commonplace and familiar, the weird is gradually becoming, well, less weird. More like a facet of life that I am constantly challenged to accept with equanimity.

Part Two: Buddhism's Missing Link

As should be clear from some of my recent posts, the questions of 'Why did I become a Buddhist?', 'Why did I stop being a Buddhist?', and 'How did Buddhism work and not work for me?' continue as threads in my life. They are not so much obstructions to personal energy as part of the wider task of understanding myself - plus, understanding what many of my former colleagues (some still good friends) are still up to.

Just recently a theory has presented itself to me. It remains speculative and not fully digested, yet worth outlining here nevertheless. It concerns missing bits in Buddhism as commonly practiced by westerners today.

As one such westerner attempting to follow a Buddhist path at the end of the twentieth/ early twenty-first century, I sensed that something major was missing. The practices just didn't work for me anymore. That was not, I concluded, because I was just lazy or obstinate or avoiding issues. The thing that was missing, I now see more clearly, was the weird stuff. The mystic shit. And the connection goes like this......

The sacred path is enumerated in various ways in Buddhism; but as an umbrella term, you can't do better than the Threefold Way. This consists of Sila (translated most frequently as 'morality' or 'ethics' - it's how you conduct your everyday life), Samadhi (meditation, one-pointed concentration), and Prajna (Wisdom). As I have seen Buddhism commonly practiced by westerners, the importance of Sila is readily understood and its practice taken seriously. The effects of our habits of body, speech, and mind in moulding consciousness are properly recognised. Folk are also generally prepared to take on Prajna, be it reflecting on impermanence, meditating on the dissolution of the elements, attending a course in Vipassana, Mahamudra, or any other of the wealth of approaches the Buddhist tradition offers to 'the way things really are'. But what about Samadhi? Sure, most folk spend a bit of time on a meditation cushion, but it's more than that. On presenting the Threefold Way, the Buddha put forth Samadhi as a whole one-third of the path. It was Sila, Samadhi, Prajna; not Sila, Samadhi, Prajna. My (past) experience leads me to suspect this is often not grasped. One reason? Samadhi is tough, disturbing, and seriously weird. It's where you find the mystical stuff; and where you can go nuts.

As conventionally presented, Samadhi has two main threads. One is that of developing one-pointed concentration. The other is the element of entering dhyanas, 'supernormal states of consciousness' as they are sometimes described, and each associated with a corresponding objective world (different density/dimensional realms as they are described in some western mystical traditions). I have met few Buddhists who appear to have taken this dhyana stuff all that seriously. More typical is an incident I recall from being on Buddhist retreat thirty years ago. One Buddhist colleague of mine, who clearly suffered from an overly discursive mind, emerged from the shrine room after another unsuccessful attempt at one-pointedness with a broad grin on his face. 'It's OK' he beamed reassuringly. 'You only need a bit of the first dhyana (the 'lowest' of these 'supernormal states') to become Enlightened.' A comfort, no doubt, to those reluctant to leave behind the unfamiliar; but a complete misreading, nonetheless.

Despite apparently being an integral part of the Buddha's path, these dhyanas are known to get a bad press, or at the least to be presented in a spirit of ambivalence. Typical, maybe, is the relevant section in 'A Survey of Buddhism', the magnum opus from his earlier years of my former Buddhist teacher. Having described the various states of superconsciousness, as he calls them, he goes on to discuss the supernormal powers associated with them: things like walking on water, passing through walls, telepathy. These powers, he emphasises, are not to be developed for their own sake: should they appear, they are devoid of spiritual significance, and are to be looked on 'with indifference, even with disgust.' The Buddha, apparently, regarded these powers 'with contempt and loathing.'

While there may be some truth in all this, it is hardly psychologically astute. For a modern western practitioner, bred on a diet of the Three D's (Descartes, Darwin, and Dawkins), any suggestion that we don't need to emerge from the safety of normal, consensus reality will come as a great relief. This distortion - that the supernormal powers are loathsome, therefore this dhyana stuff isn't worth the paper it is described on - amounts to a huge cop-out. You can only view these supernormal powers with loathing and contempt because you have actually been there and seen their limitations first-hand. The type of caution declared in 'A Survey...' may have been relevant at the time of the Buddha, when life seems to have overflowed with meetings with devas, yaksas, and all sort of other-dimensional entities. Or in tenth-century Tibet, when unleashing conjurations of thunderstorms on your neighbour's crops was a favourite pastime. Our 'weird stuff', intimately connected with the dhyanas and non-ordinary states in general, was more familiar to these people. To modern western folk, things are very different: entering the world that is embraced by the term 'samadhi' becomes in itself an enormous challenge and achievement. It means taking on the supernormal states and the weird stuff that is their hallmark. Leaving behind the narrowly rational, everything you ever learnt at school, scientific materialism and the rest. Synchronicity, telepathy, crop circles, past life regression, encounters with fourth-density entities, etc etc : anything that challenges the linear time-space programme, introducing in its stead felt paradox, strangeness, creating elasticity with regard to causal relations. This is all part of 'becoming whole'.

In the popular versions of the Buddha's life, as his final act before Enlightenment, he 'travels up' through all the superconscious states, then comes back down again. This is not, we can presume, done purely as a piece of good entertainment for the masses, but as an integral part of the process of the  Buddha's awakening, a profound teaching. In the light of what I have written above, its meaning becomes transparent. Full, red-blooded spiritual awakening has to contain everything, including the weird stuff. A being coursing purely in ordinary, linear consciousness is a mere ghost of a being. For modern western folk, it might be more appropriate to think of the samadhi stage as the stage of high strangeness. It's where the universe, and the individual who comprises part of that universe, ceases to work in the manner we are used to. This is what we are concerned with, rather than a literal journey up an escalator of 'superconscious states'.To chart a course through this unfamiliar territory will require all the strength, the energy, the subtlety, and the courage that we can muster. Do this and the student of consciousness will truly earn the title of spiritual warrior.