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I was out in public (for a change), facing west, on a sunny Saturday morning in May, sitting on a metal NYU bench. I did what I always do, breathed like I always breathe, eyes closed, expectant void tempered by anguish & loss & then & then -- the scary sweetness threatened, the weird wonder was againtroduced, the bright bird the brave bride the chock-full chalice the intimate initiation dawned-felt-given. THE LAST TIME THE EARTH QUAKED & THE HEAVENS OPENED I promise you this happened: The breath was deep, the posture erect, Egyptian, the hands on knees, the explosion astounding, thoughts impossible, the fact of the matter is, in front of the professorial Indian guy on my left & the whole looking world, I was shaken dangerously out of control & UNCERTAIN, pitching forward, cascading felicity notwithstanding, my/the world imploding -- Help! A hundred broadcasts at once max. volume & peaking! LOST! --DEATH!! (now I've done it!)... I became in full truth like an inflated balloon unpinched-- let go to chaotically bounce-fly up & to the right where my being hit a ceiling & pitched forward. Are people staring? --Steeped in buzzing ecstasy, at home with all that surrounds me, shaken dashed ragdoll who thinks he's in Heaven but is dying on the pavement... Sirens. Coming. THE LAST TIME THE EARTH QUAKED & THE HEAVENS OPENED However, there may have been no epileptic collapse-- as always this realimage gave way to reveal what had been reveiled which is/was holy heaven's dawning, pure blissfulness pouring, the 'test' passed, the crown-tingling pressure, the crowned + anointed sensation, each chakra humming, the keynote of this particular visitation being the intuition: This doubtless Bliss-Satori, this Dark Night-driven re-immersion in Godly Honey, this disappearance of thought/identity that has re-visited (blessed) me for maybe the hundredth time (each a miraculous, utterly unbelievably convincing dip into/awakening as Heaven-Bliss-Perfection impossibly scrumptious-- your best orgasm X 1000, your funnest day X 10,000, your tastiest meal & best-news-ever X 10 trillion!, condensed into half a minute) IS the true I of gone life, the real We of Divine Identity (very possibly), the flowing pure energetic glowingness of hearty stellar anandafried subtle Beauty Peace Angel Presence that will greet us, comfortingly, at our deaths-- an education not taught in our schools... IS Death, disguised as Holy Spirit, purehaps Life Eternal, Spirit Indomitable. THE LAST TIME THE EARTH OPENED & THE HEAVENS QUAKED I couldn't believe, I can't believe, I couldn't believe, I can't believe, the gloryglow the sweet comeuppance, HOLY HOLY HOLY LORD GOD ALMIGHTY HEAVEN & EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GREAT GLORRY We lift our... in loving gratitude. Shut ma mouth
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1. Spontaneous Statement of what I've picked up / applied / synthesized with my own experience: We aren't our form or name or ego or past or species, etc.
We're ultimately the spark in our hearts which is the 'pilot light' of our lives, the element (fire) without which we are most quickly forced to die O M Aivanhov points out that we can survive longest if deprived of solid food (30-60 days perhaps? /EARTH element); slightly less long (a week or two without: WATER); a much shorter time (minutes) if deprived of oxygen (AIR element); but we instantly die if the spark in our heart is extinguished (FIRE element)! There's a physical elemental primacy obvious here. I follow/accept Aivanhov's initiatic consideraton of spirit as FIRE, not AIR... also his description of trees as 'solid' sunlight! ...I believe this hidden protected flame is the divine eternal spirit gift that = the Self, the 'I-I' of Maharshi, the aham sphurana of yogic esoterism, the goal of all successful spiritual paths, whatever name is used. And from the Tibetan tradition, it is asserted that sleep (only) occurs when consciousness falls into the heart; which correlates with the Patanjalian equivalence of samadhi with deep sleep (+ awareness)! Osho & shiatsu theory too reminds us that blood, life force must sink from the brain down in order to sleep.
The bad news is that everything else of our bodily being is perishable/not us; the good news is that this imperishable element (that I just said WAS us) isn't 'knowable'-us either, but that's OK because it's (our share of) the Divine! -- which is better to 'be' than mortal anyway, having noticed that "everything outlasts us". Like the string on which are strung lifetimes like pearls... the lifelong projector of all imagination, worlds, inner-outer brain shows, NOT the passing shows, this spark's a Marvel! It's not matter! But a Gnostic Spark that must, in many of these ancient myths, reascend past the prisons of matter & planets to stellar/solar sublimity! We're star stuff sang Orpheus...
Science can't find this flame, nor bullets kill it! But it keeps us 98.6 alright, like a good pilot light, and returns to the sun when we die.
This gift, situation, spark IS you, I, the miracle that allows all sentient life (as much as this can be humanly experienced, imagined, i.d.'d)
-G. Elliott 2. Experience of May 4 1988 while sitting on a stoop: I was the energy plugged in, blissfully building, intolerably expanding, breath sunk deep, going, going, gone a rushing river or starry sky occupying the exact shape of roots stem and blossoming me vacated, riding some universal wave of self, a bright immersion in what men have called God. Plugged in noonday springtime sunny steps beneath cherry blossoms, an image of me and dad pissing into the same toilet then he killed himself, breath sunk deep followed by an increasing screaming roar inside my head and equalling somehow the building and buzzing expansion-feeling roots stem and blossoming, a very loud siren getting nearer and playfully tearing a guy's brain and being apart, no it was the pranayama or a combo of ripe factors, the spinecrack at heart level (self-chiropractice) plugged in flying dying absentness throbbing nearly fainting breath sunk deep swaying sunshiney roots stem and blossoming kundalini puppet spilling filling self with ringing inging Note to self & others: This proved to be my first "rebirthday"... re: Kerouac's Golden Eternity moment; Brunton's Glimpse; Da Love-Ananda's Thumbs; RM Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness...this sometimes-repeatable melting into blessedness that my pen often tries to capture. 3. Sonatina This is to document the existence of an obscure and extraordinary Sonatina for 16 wind instruments written by a European composer/sage near the end of his life. The piece has been found to possess the amazing effect of causing players who learned and performed it together a few times to attain mystical states of "enlightenment," "cosmic consciousness," "samadhi," or "satori," to use some now-common terms. It was found through exhaustive research that of the 48 players (3 ensembles) who had rehearsed and recorded the Sonatina since 1960, of the 38 still alive and reachable, 36 men and women had indeed become practicing mystics, contemplatives, or yogis -- all claiming their first religious experiences to date from their acquaintance with the work! And while the effect of merely "passively" hearing the music is soothing and uplifting on an audience, the effect on the players them-selves is dramatically transcendent. Note that none of the musicians had known of this hidden benign intent on the composer's part. He had designed the actual physio- logical details of the playing of the piece as an alchemic process of educating the unwary instrumentalists' nervous systems in beginning, middling, and advanced yogic trance...achieved, evidently, through the masterful blending of his own realization of high meditative states with a knowledge of both pranayamic and hornplaying breathing techniques; with the combined effects of the frequencies, durations, and sonorities of certain musical notes played and harmonies created (plus equally crucial pauses) on the players' subtle anatomies-- triggering the desired chakric responses that would culminate in deep meditation and ascended kundalini experiences by its finale. One could claim that the piece itself, frequentically "playing" the players' 7-tiered spinal chakra systems and activating the specific psycho- logical/emotional qualities of each, promoted the high trance achievement. The ensemblists all recalled the peaceful mystical sensations to develop after a few rehearsals and to have reached profounder depths the more polished and perfected their performance became; till they were left at its conclusion with (in their terms) a silent, blissful, closed-eyed, glowing, hour-long, thoughtless, blank, unexpected taste of boundless serenity and beauty...the occurrence of a state of "group samadhi" whilst sitting erect in a studio, sweating, saliva-dripping woodwinds suspended in their grips, no room for embarrassment or comment, locked as they were in amazed ecstatic appreciation of the profound gift of the deceased composer/sage. From DOCUMENTA Journal / 1970
1.
O concentrate on something to the exclusion of all else
Dear Self, True Universe: 3. Prayer
Pure me, brutally unique,
Wherever you are
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