The 2012 Story

and always will be. We’ve just clouded our vision of it with ego’s distractions and Seven Macaw’s fixation on glittery ornaments, the things of surface reality.

Letting go in meditation is an important practice for setting aside, or transcending, the nagging dictates of ego. Sitting with one’s inner thoughts, not engaging in outward activity, deepening the sense of being present to Nowever, awakens the timeless. We open to eternity and directly understand that eternity is at the root of time. Going to the center is like awakening your inner One Hunahpu. I find it amusing that the English word hurricane is derived from variants on One Hunahpu’s name. The Maya deity Hun-rakan (one-foot) is associated with God K (k’awil) and the Quiche Maya god named Tojil. They are one-footed and spin upon the Pole Star. Readers might recall that Seven Macaw, as the Big Dipper, spins upon the Pole Star, suggesting that Seven Macaw and One Hunahpu are two facets of the same entity. And they are: Lower self and higher self are two parts of the whole being, called Ego and Divine Self in the Perennial Philosophy. More subtly, a transformational ethos is at play here, for from a certain perspective Seven Macaw (ego-focused identity) is meant to transform into One Hunahpu (unitary selfless identity). We must go to the center of the hurricane, the eye of phenomenal change, to transcend the chaos! And in so doing we find that we are the source and center of the tumult.

As we do these things our relationship with the world changes. As our identities become centered on our true Self, and we consciously restore ego to its proper function as a temporary extension of the true Self, our relationships will change. And we find that we slowly shift from acolyte of the mysteries (a student or initiate) to teacher. We are granted an esoteric PhD as we climb the degrees of inner gnosis. We begin to take on the identity of conduit rather than recipient, conveyor rather than container.

^{Heart of Heaven, from a late Classic Period vase. Drawing by the author}

Christopher Bache is a teacher who has observed the transformational cocreative process between himself and his students as he has deepened his spiritual journey. With subtle insight he notes that his own state of awareness can trigger understanding in his students. And he has noted the potential problems of transference that are common in the psychoanalytical field, in the give-and-take between therapist and client. Sometimes the teacher becomes the student; in fact, Bache notes that teaching is most effective when a nondual or nonhierarchical relationship is established.

Bache has openly shared his pursuit of self-awareness using the tools of psychoactive plants. He understands that modes of consciousness define modalities of knowing, and this has little to do with learning in the commonly understood sense. He writes of the change that any person on a journey of spiritual awakening is likely to undergo. Not surprisingly, the initiatory death-rebirth experience, occurring at ongoing levels of deepening integration, is essential, and at some point the person’s orientation to the transcendent wisdom shifts:

When an individual’s death-rebirth experience is concluded, therefore, he or she does not detach from the species-mind, as if that were possible, but rather his or her therapeutic role, vis-a-vis the species mind, shifts from that of providing cathartic release to that of infusing transcendental energies into the collective psyche.⁹

Which is to say that a person does not leave planet earth upon establishing a connection with the transcendent source consciousness. Once the ego-self is sufficiently transformed, it no longer requires cathartic initiatory release into the transcendent; instead, the person becomes a channel for “infusing transcendental energies” into human culture. Here let’s recall Joseph Campbell’s definition of myth: “Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations.”¹⁰ A person becomes a leader, a source of genuine insight. The Maya king was shamanically elected into office in this way, his ruling power conferred by his ability to infuse higher wisdom and guiding insight into his kingdom. In comparison, democratic elections are mere popularity contests. Our political figureheads should not, however, be given the power that we can establish for ourselves in the process of awakening our true selves. We should not elect Best Ego but rather the True Conduit. And we can recognize the true conduit to the extent that we have become true conduits ourselves. A true conduit once said:

The person who has not courageously confronted the basic unreality of conventional structures—including both individual and collective egocentricity, including as well the very notion of a substantial universe—can never sincerely Love the Real or long intensely for the Real, much less become Reality.¹¹

That was Ramakrishna, a Hindu saint who in many ways inspired and guided the West’s initial encounter with Vedanta. Rene Guenon’s book from the 1920s, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, framed this nicely in the context of the Perennial Philosophy, whose cause was soon taken up by Ananda Coomaraswamy and Aldous Huxley. In some quarters there has been a tendency to psychologize the Perennial Philosophy (particularly in the psychology of Carl Jung and his students), and some writers have suggested that “subconscious” terminology confuses higher states of integration with lower states of unconscious nonintegration.¹² The goal of both Jungian psychology and the Perennial Philosophy is, however, wholeness and integration. Bache draws from Jung’s psychological terminology, and his genuine insights need to be understood in this light:

[I]f we are a holon functioning as a part within a series of ever-enlarging wholes, then the death-rebirth dynamic may have different functions for different levels of reality, all of which are being realized simultaneously. From the perspective of the smaller holon, for example, the effect of death-rebirth may be liberation into that which is larger, while the effect of the same transition from the perspective of the larger holon may be to allow it greater access to and integration with the smaller field. An event that functions as an “ascent” from below may simultaneously function as a “descent” from above.¹³

The transcendent illumines and informs the individual consciousness to the extent that it can descend into, open, and see beyond the filter of ego. (This, I believe, is the deeper meaning of the epigram to Chapter 8, taken from Rene Daumal’s philosophical fable Mount Analog.) Here we find the suggestion that depth process is really an awakening to higher truths. As with any encounter with nondual concepts, polarities of height and depth are easily conflated. But the nondual truth in this is that knowledge, which science traditionally accepts only as coming from outer sense data, is ultimately rooted in the most inner recess of the being, the transcendent source-center. This can also be conceived as the highest heaven. As one of the Perennial Philosophy’s most insightful voices said: “The traditional universe is dominated by the two basic realities of Origin and Center, both of which belong to the realm of the eternal.”¹⁴

A DAY IN ETERNITY

I wouldn’t be able to say these things with such conviction if they hadn’t been galvanized by direct experience. Here I’d like to share an experience that reoriented my entire being, at a young age, and has led me along the path that is my life. This kind of treatment, being about the most subtle level of direct gnosis, will always fall short of providing what it talks about. It simply can’t; words and concepts can’t be used to convey what ultimately must be directly experienced for oneself. The closest I can come is to relate a personal experience in language that is a bit freed from tedious discursive constraints.

Meditation and sensory isolation go hand in hand. A useful tool that can help deepen meditation and the awakening of the inner light is the sensory isolation tank. These devices were developed in the 1960s by scientists who were doing research on consciousness. They enjoyed a brief spate of popularity in the 1980s as “relaxation tanks,” because they provide a completely dark environment protected from light and sound, with the surrounding water and air at body temperature. You float on an 80 percent Epsom salt solution, which keeps the body buoyant and the head above water even if you fall asleep. In this environment the consciousness can withdraw its attention