Lively Communion: invoking mutual meditative exploration

Lively Communion: invoking mutual meditative exploration
 
Rich Murray Room For All rmforall@comcast.net  505-501-2298
1943 Otowi Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 USA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/messages/1

Lively Communion: Invoking Mutual Meditative Exploration

1. INTRODUCTION: We now join in exploring the co-creation
of an open ended process of mutual meditative exploration.
We call this Lively Communion.

God. That word. May it refer to
something real, to our actual experience.

As fabled lovers leap from terra firma into abyss, we hold
mental hands and fall together into openness, into space, into the
intimate unknown, into peace, bliss, and power. Naturally, it is
effortless, spontaneous, yet surprising and vigorous, a white water
rafting of two souls. We journey, mostly, with open eyes, and open
"I's". And, most humanly, we talk and talk -- but mainly about what is
happening right now... This is Lively Communion. Let us
agree to cooperate in allowing it to happen now, in this very writing
and reading.

2. FRAMING: "Let's sit together for a while, and join in a mutual
process of meditative exploration. We call it Lively Communion.
"The idea is to look into each other's eyes or into a mirror
together in a relaxed, informal way, while allowing our situation to
evolve in its own best way. We just describe to each other, back and
forth, some of the things we start to see and experience.
"So, let's agree to just relax together and let anything emerge.
When something changes in our situation, just let go into it and let it
evolve naturally in its own way. We tell each other some of what we
experience and see, as it happens.

"Have you ever done anything like this before, looking into
someone's eyes or into a mirror, and having new and surprising kinds
of experiences?"

"It's OK to blink, glance away, laugh, react,and have all kinds
of feelings and thoughts. This isn't anything rigid, heavy, tight, or
serious. The idea is to maintain comfortable visual contact while
appreciating the experiences we share. It's fun. It's easy and
natural. What you feel and how you happen to be each moment are
fine with me."

The guide uses these initial suggestions, proposals,
agreements, invocations, and reassurances to gently and agreeably
frame a new kind of meditative exploration with the partner. The
strategy is to invoke, without being very specific, the expectation
that somehow something new, pleasant,
and interesting will transpire.

In fact, LC can within minutes become surprising, exciting,
and profound. It is better to let the partner discover this in their
actual process, rather than proclaim it at the get-go. The guide
adapts to the very unique traits and needs of the partner, as the
situation develops from moment to moment. The guide expects the
unexpected, always, always, always.

A major goal is to expand the range of choices available to
both guide and partner. Therefore it is essential to always respond
immediately to the partner's needs, wishes, and choices, including the
choice to disengage. Disengagement may be conscious, deliberate,
and clearly communicated. Disengagement may appear as resistance: not
maintaining much contact or openness, talking a lot about all kinds of
things, sleepiness, curling up and closing physically, or even
ostensibly external interruptions, such as the phone ringing or someone
else showing up.

Disengagement often leads to a satisfying conversation. By
being low-key, gentle, relaxed, open, positive, and flexible, the guide
has a chance to sense who the partner is, what his issues are at that
moment, and what he might be ready for. Hopefully there is a shared
sense: "Sure, this is OK so far. Let's do some more."

Looking into a mirror together has some advantages. Some
partners feel negative reactions: "I don't like the way I look," "I
avoid looking in mirrors," "This doesn't feel real to me."

Sitting side by side, both guide and partner can join in
playfully releasing the usual subject-object polarization. Each can
see themselves for a while just as they are used to viewing others.
There is naturally an expansion and freeing of the habitual self
concept to include the mirror self. The fact that the mirror self is
at first clearly an image allows a greater freedom to play:
"Well, it's not really me, after all."
Yet there is the implicit suggestion that the
conventional self also is only an "image".
Furthermore, left and right are reversed, which must affect
something in the various ways the two halves of the brain interpret
the face. The whole room is also reversed with a doubling of
available space. The subtle presence of the mirror's surface acts as
both barrier and connector. One is free to settle into a direct self-
encounter, even, "Talking to myself."

3. INVOCATIONS: "Well, I'd like us to share the widest possible
picture on what's going on here. It is well known these days that
there is a universal, single source for everything and everyone. We
call it All That Is, God, Allah, Void, Absolute,
Mind, Love, Great Space.
"You and I in this moment and our whole world exist within It
as expressions of It. It is being you, and It is being me, and as we
communicate, It is talking to Itself as you and as me. So, if you go
all the way into your deepest center of being, and I go all the way
into mine, we find the same thing. That's the universal One.
"So, deep in the heart of Texas, our conversation and communion
right now express on a many levels the power and creativity of the One.
It's in our very individuality and uniqueness as persons together in
this local time and space that Source
fully expresses and reveals Itself.
"So, being here together right now is actually very profound,
mysterious, magical, deep."

"By the very fact of Being, we have a basic right to enjoy
wider and deeper experiences and realizations of our Identity
together. Deep within each of us right now is our own soul
connection all the way to Source and back. The inner teacher or
guide is ready and willing right now to help us as soon as we ask.
We want help. We choose to accept the help that actually comes.
"So, let's agree to ask to be given from within deeper
experiences of communication and communion, to have a variety of
expansions of awareness, to enjoy subtle perceptions and
understandings, and to be led playfully and naturally into deeper
levels of our Identity.
"We acknowledge that we desire and choose this, that all this
is perfectly safe, that we certainly deserve this, that we can accept
our inner gifts together without knowing
ahead of time what they will be.
"We are willing also to contribute spontaneously and naturally
to the enlightenment and free creativity of everyone.
"We are willing relax our attachment to all previous
perceptions, concepts, stories, identities, and positions.
"So, all we have to do, really, having agreed on this much, is
just relax, let go, hang out together, and talk about whatever
happens, as it happens."

"Since the Source is One, It doesn't actually have any binding
boundaries and limitations within Itself. All of It is directly,
dynamically, and intimately connected to every part of Itself. So all
of It, in all Its complete Infinity, is here right now in you and in me
and in our communion together."

"You see, Source has no binding boundaries or limitations
within Itself. It can't hold Itself back. It is helplessly, fully,
totally available to every unfoldment within Itself. But we as
expressions of Source share the absolute free will of Source Itself.
We are free to set up as many
binding boundaries and limitations as we
choose, wittingly and unwittingly. Source has to wait at our door,
perhaps knocking gently, perhaps calling in a whisper, until we of our
own free wills choose to open it a crack. Then It can shine forth more
and more freely in we who are avenues of Its aliveness, Its levity.
So, let's agree to give Source a free hand,
a lot of elbow room to play
freely as us, to spontaneous reveal its subtle creativity in our
unfolding experience together."

"It takes tremendous lifelong effort and concentration to
maintain our ordinary highly limited experience as seemingly isolated
selves in a world of apparent separation. Any time we relax this
habitual effort and focus, the true spontaneity and subtle creativity
of Source starts to immediately shine forth.
Let's agree now to simply relax, let go,
and enjoy a spontaneous flow of grace to bless us with
a variety of new experiences and understandings."

"The outcome will be that we will enjoy a series of various
experiences and realizations together. This is already starting to
happen. There is usually a rapid, changing tour that touches many
new bases. So we relax and just let things keep happening and
changing, one after another, without trying to hold onto or settle into
any one particular thing."

"Later, we may find ourselves settled into a stable experience
for a while. We'll trust that what comes
is the best thing for that moment."

"Our long-term goal is to become fully realized in our own
natural way, and function happily and creatively in our world and its
many levels to bring others into realization, peace, and full
creativity. We want life here to be glory!"

These declarative invocations establish the understandings
and agreements that frame and launch Lively Communion.
Depending on the nature of the partner and the quality of the
situation, the guide is intuitively guided to speak only some of these,
quite spontaneously and creatively.

Delivered gently, agreeably, and confidently, while
maintaining comfortable eye contact, the declarations usually at this
point are accepted with no resistance and little comment: "Yes, this is
simple, even obvious." Actually, the statements outline a radical,
consistent, and far-ranging operational
schema for mystical experience.

It has tremendous impact on the guide to review these
principles in collaboration with the partner. The guide is
automatically brought into the proper mental and spiritual alignment to
participate in communion. Since in the One Mind, all apparently
separate minds are joined, and therefore influence one another
continuously and intimately, the partner is also brought into resonance
with the guide's peaceful, open, and expanding consciousness.

Surely, this is happening right now, the writer in various
moments of consciousness, writing and reading: the reader
experiencing these very letters and words in his awareness. There
may well be a mood of relaxation, interest, settling in, releasing the
current menu of daily concerns, a quieting down, an expanding
appreciation of the here and now. If so, this is our joint co-creation
of communion. If you will, experiment with choosing now to allow
communion to unfold during your reading, participating with full
awareness, memory, and personal power.

The sober truth is: "you" are reaching across "time" and
"space" to help compose these very words. And I gratefully say,
"Thank you very, very much!" Communion is profound, valid, and
enjoyable. The guide naturally is very grateful for each partner.

Obviously, language should be comfortable for the partner. If
both are used to "A Course In Miracles," the invocation might be:
"Together we are the Child of God. Let us accept the help and
healing of the Holy Spirit within in order to experience the Holy
Instant, seeing the face of Christ in each other."

4. THRESHOLD: "Well, now, after saying so much, let's
notice what's going on right now. I feel more relaxed, silent, and
settled in. I feel you looking into me, and I sense the power of your
presence. What do you experience?"

"Yes, and now I see your face becoming a little more luminous,
somewhat hazy. I feel somehow drawn in deeper and carried along
with you. What's it like for you right now?"

"OK, that's the beginning of our process of communion. Just
keep letting your awareness move naturally into these kind of shifts
and expansions. We just let go together. Allow things to unfold
naturally and easily in their own way. Go ahead and laugh, if
something surprises you. I'm with you. I'm experiencing a lot of
changes, too. Is it fun?"

"You are now experiencing more of your own capabilities of
consciousness. I'm not doing this to you. I'm simply emptying myself
and making a space to allow you a freer experience of your own
powers of consciousness. So all this comes from within you, and all
this belongs to you."

This is the point when the partner starts noticing a shift in
experience, including fairly novel perceptions. The experiences may
be very limited: "You look a little different," or suddenly shift
dramatically: "Oh! You just looked like a completely different person!"

So, the guide patiently abides, occasionally reporting some of
his actual experiences, and gently questioning the partner. Whatever
the partner reports, the guide responds with validation: "Yes, that's
right. That often happens. Let's see what comes up next."
Thus, the partner starts to appreciate the experiential
possibilities, and to consciously own his part in the communion. He
has become a committed player. Most likely, the communion will
continue creatively for half an hour to an hour.

There may be a reaction of mild surprise and curiosity,
astonishment, mild anxiety, rising of the volume and speed of speech,
gesturing, often a combination of excitement
and relief, an, "Ah-ha!" breakthrough.

The partner may react: "How interesting! Well, thank you
very much. I think that's enough for now. I'm just not ready for
this." The guide instantly agrees, "Oh, sure! Fine! Thank you!" and
breaks off eye contact, but not changing his position.

A kind of negotiation process may ensue, or an ordinary
conversation. A great deal has already been accomplished.
Important ideas have been seeded; much energy shared. The
partner has been alerted to new possibilities, and his control and
integrity validated.
Generally, a friendly rapport has been established.

Through shared experience, the guide teaches how Lively
Communion works and how to facilitate it. It is soon
apparent that every conscious agreement leads quickly, even
immediately to experiential results.

The strategy is to always create agreements or explicit
understandings that will lead to a positive step from the current
situation. This almost immediate enunciation, demonstration,
application, and verification of principles ensures that they will be
noted, understood, remembered, and applied again.

The process becomes a lively collaboration in invention,
exploration, and discovery. The guide strives to make the process as
obvious and open as possible, and to encourage every initiative and
innovation from the partner. This is exactly how Lively Communion
itself was developed.

5. CONSOLIDATION: "I assert now that I am completely
comfortable with the totality of your actual power. Right now I accept
all of your power, exactly as it is, moment by moment. I open fully to
your power, and I choose to let it shine into me, contacting every
level and aspect of my being.
I accept the totality of your actual power."

"We can release more deeply into our process together by
listening to all the sounds around us right now. Just open up to
hearing every available sound, exactly as it comes, such as the
sounds in the house right now, the quality of this voice, and outside,
the birds, wind, traffic, the airplane.
"Let your attention be drawn out into space to contact each
sound. It takes no effort to receive and enjoy the spontaneous
presence of all these sounds. This lifts you automatically out of the
repetitious routines of ordinary thinking.
"You may notice now a sense of shared silence between us
and about us, a silence that is somehow deepened and displayed by
the sounds. We're attending to the same sounds. We're attending to
the same surrounding silence.
"Let's allow this silence to expend, deepen, thicken, becoming
a felt presence, an enveloping field of being.
"Let this enveloping presence of silence move and flow gently
around and in us, saturating and blessing everything here."

"Rather than looking at me, see if you can look through me,
as through a window or tunnel. Let your awareness move straight
ahead far into subtle space. What you behold is a subtle creation
within the visual space of your own awareness. Project through
the image to the far horizons of awareness.
You may experience this as an 'on the beam' connection, from
centerless center to centerless center. In traditional language, this
is called 'activating the third eye'."

"Be aware of your whole visual field, not just my face, but
everything you can see from all the way left to all the way right, and
floor to ceiling. Notice the colors and luminosity that are available.
Just be willing to allow new kinds of visual experiences."

"The infinite Source of all this is completely open to Itself in
every place and aspect. Right now, we seem to be separate beings
in finite space and linear time. It takes continuous effort and
tremendous, habitual focus of concentration to maintain our limited
reality here.
"So, all we have to do to open and expand is to just let go.
Choose now to let go, surrender, yield, drift, flow, be carried along,
dissolve,expand.
"Then the one infinite Source will be freed here to reveal its
natural unimpeded depth, subtlety, and full creativity.
"All we have to do is to just let go of doing, releasing the
habits of effort, giving up attachments to perceptions, feelings,
words, concepts. We are willing to release
our previous stories, positions, and identities."

"As we relax into this situation, it becomes less solid and
physical, more radiant and magical, more free and spacious, very
dreamlike. We allow the playful freedom of dream creativity to be
restored."

"As we look into the mirror, be aware of our presence, side
by side on this couch. Feel our alignment with our mirror images.

"Be aware of the surface of the mirror. Let our mirror images
become real presences, looking at us."

"I am letting my mind become very quiet. I am not projecting
any energy. I'm letting myself empty and expand. I'm making space
to let your energy and power shine forth into me."

"OK, feel what it's like to center yourself in the fullness of
your natural power. Just be open to the spontaneous presence and
effortless authority of your own central being.

"As a royal person, dwell now in full natural dominion. Own
and inhabit every part of your body fully, right to your fingers and
toes, your belly, chest, and head."

"Now, experiment with projecting your power into me. Try
making intuitive contact with me. Notice how that feels. Notice how
what you see of me changes.
"I felt that clearly. I became quieter and deeper, and saw a
lot of subtle light in you. Now, let's reverse the flow. You become
empty, open, and expanded, and I'll project my power, allowing a
dynamic intuitive contact between us."

"I'll say my full name slowly a few times, noticing what I
experience each time. Then you try saying your name."

"Let's look into the left eye for a while. Now, the right eye.
Now, between the eyebrows. Now, the top of the head. Now, the
mouth. Let's make faces together, like kids, grimacing playfully,
stretching the face muscles as much as possible in every way."

"Now, let's both just let go even more deeply and completely."

The guide and partner have become very open to each other.
Usually, they are in the same space, more or less, and their
experiences shift simultaneously. So, when the guide experiences a
shift, it is usually a good bet to say: "I just had a change.
How about you?"

It is important to keep checking in together verbally, to
establish a joint acknowledgement of what is happening, and lay a
road map of sorts for the next session. Equally important is hanging
in together, silently and patiently, letting the process germinate.

"I accept the fullness of your actual power as it actually is
right now," is a very potent declaration. It implies the relinquishing
of safeguards and defenses, and a willingness to meet the other fully
and in trust on their own terms. Henceforth, no matter what comes
up, the guide will always sense how to handle things positively. Full
openness to the other's power is balanced automatically by one's own
deep presence. And what is power, really, but personal divinity,
peace, wisdom, and love? Yet to use the word, "power," seems to
creatively cut through habitual limitations.
Power is not limited or limitable. Power is...
fresh, spontaneous, creative....

6. ABIDING IN THE BODY: "At this point, I want to share a very
powerful and simple way for grounding and deepening our process
together, and working with whatever comes up. It is simply to tune in
on and describe the actual sensations in the body this very moment.
"For instance, I am aware of my clothing touching my skin all
over, the pressure of sitting, the sensation of breathing air in and
out, saliva in my mouth, some tension in the back of my neck,
an itch on my back, the steady beat of my pulse. Now, I find myself
straightening my posture a little, and that feels better.
"The idea is to fully notice and accept whatever is available in
the body as perceptions, sensations, and feelings, without trying to
explain or control anything. Notice in every part the actual
sensations, tensions, pains, or vibrations that are present right now,
and describe as much as is comfortable the actual details.
"It is the very ordinary and mundane sensations that are
significant. You may be surprised to notice a lot more going on than
you usually take time to feel."

"If there is any pain or discomfort or strong sensation, focus
gently and openly into the very center of it, and let yourself explore
whatever is actually there.
Don't bother with explaining what you feel.
Just stay focused on what you actually sense right now. Let any
feelings and energies develop and move in their own way.
"You'll find that simple awareness itself will help any stuck
areas to spontaneously release and readjust. This'll help you
automatically escape from confusion into an available clarity. I find
that one of the most powerful things I can do to help is to ask the
person to notice and describe their actual sensations right now."

"Notice how you experience breathing right now, the
sensation of air going in and out. Notice any resistance or limitation
in the breathing. See if you can allow the breathing to slow down a
bit and become deeper and easier.
"Let the breath move down deep into the belly. Let the chest
expand easily. If there are any tense or painful places, let the flow
of breath somehow connect into those places right now.
"Let the breathing just happen by itself each time. Each
breath is a new journey."

"Notice what you sense now in your feet and legs. Now, in
the belly. In the chest. Arms and hands. Neck and throat. Face,
mouth, nose, ears, eyes, head."
Simply sensing body sensations is a powerful remedy. It is
grounding. One is automatically brought out of whirls of thought into
simple presence. The next step becomes obvious. Quite often, just
abiding with the sensation of a negative emotion for a few minutes is
enough to resolve it, leading to insight and peace.
So, instead of probing why the partner is angry, the guide
says, "Tell me exactly how you experience this anger right now as
sensations in your body. Let these sensations change and move in
their own way."

"What is the most prominent sensation in your body right
now? OK, focus gently into the very center of it. Give up fighting,
resisting, or controlling it. Let it be in its own way.
How big is it? How intense is it?
What shape might it have? What color?
"Let it have a voice, and let it speak right now. What do you
have to say to it?
"Take a posture that expresses the sensation. Now,
exaggerate the posture. Now, relax the posture. What major
sensations are you aware of right now?"

7. EMOTIONAL EXPLORATIONS: Intense communion allows
strong emotional issues to emerge. In fact, an unresolved emotional
issue is often first encountered as an experienced block in the
communion process. Things just feel stuck. The flow is limited, or
frozen. Not much energy is available. Scanning the body is likely
bring up issues to work on. These issues almost always involve a
relationship with another person.

"Is there someone in your life that you're having or had some
difficulties with? Your parent? What is his first name? Let's try
working with this right here and now. I'll be him. You look at him in
me, and say whatever it is you need to tell him right now. I'll listen
as him, and do the best I can to express what's going on for him as him.

Let's feel where this goes, if we try it.
"So, now I'm Henry. Tell me, what am I really like? What
kind of man am I?... OK, how do you feel in your body right now,
talking to me?
"As Henry, I feel very heavy and tight. It's very hard for me to
listen to you now without interrupting... What you're telling me right
now is true. I've been afraid to listen to you... I'm sorry. Please
forgive me... Despite all our trouble, I do love you and respect you
as you are."

This role playing usually becomes very real in a very natural
way. Most partners are ready to handle role playing dialogues.
There's a world of difference from saying, "I'm really angry at Henry.
He's so irritating and defensive," versus, "Henry, I am really pissed
at you right now. I'm very frustrated by your defensiveness.
My throat is really tight now."

The direct dialogue is satisfying. Insights and resolutions are
achieved straightaway. The guide has to be able to allow
involvement and detachment both. The oneness of Mind guarantees
that "Henry's issues" are in fact likely to be his, too. The play has
many levels. The guide and partner often enjoy playing rather
skillfully. The partner has the immense relief of speaking intensely
and freely, and being heard, straight on, face to face.

The guide usually will be able to empathize well enough with
"Henry" to speak his part and describe his process. The liveliness of
the situation makes psychic information freely available. The first
words that come are likely to be usefully accurate. This natural and
spontaneous psychic ability in itself is valuable to experience and
understand.

"Since we all exist together in One Mind in a dynamic
intimacy that transcends time and space, our role playing dialogues
and communion serve to communicate information and feelings to
those important others who seem far away or not even physically
alive. Something is bound to get through; something is being shifted;
everyone involved is being helped by what we're doing here."

Even very painful situations can be played out, as "victims"
confront "perpetrators", or a mother talks to the daughter given away
at birth for adoption. Usually, a sense of completion is reached in a
few minutes. There is a mood of relief, pleasure, success, intimacy,
and energy. Unless more emotional issues surface, the communion
is likely to shift quickly into reincarnational and spiritual levels.

It can achieve a lot to just role play saying, "No," over and
over, until the partner can say it effectively and fully.
Then explore, "Yes."

8. REINCARNATION LEVELS: In the infinity of All That Is, every
situation interacts dynamically and creatively with every other.
Buddhism terms this, "codependent coorigination." Rinpoche
Tarthang Tulku in "Time, Space, and Knowledge" affirms that every
point can be reached and interacted with.

Jane Roberts' "Seth" voice explains that the whole past and
future of any line of history interact creatively with the experienced
present, and moreover interact sideways in time as probable
alternative histories, and vertically as higher and more vast levels of
actuality.

The convincing usual experience we share in this realm is
one of living as limited and separate beings in three dimensional
space, carried along on an irrevocably one-way single line of time
and causality, able to communicate only by language and contact.
This is the commonsense (common sense) view, and the view of all
our sciences.
Yet it is only a view. Communion reveals vastly wider views.
We can for convenience call these reincarnational levels.
The guide seeks to validate new modes of experience while
hinting at wider and freer interpretations.
The wider experience itself will in time lead
the partner to release or expand limited, outmoded,
and negative beliefs and frameworks. But if habitual beliefs and
systems are challenged head on, resistance is likely to rise.
"We may start to glimpse each other or our mirror selves as
we appear at various times in our life, even the future. Or see what
we look like if we took a different path in life.
Or see ourselves more spiritually as angelic beings.
We may see a variety of past lifetimes,
or glimpse a future self, or settle into another lifetime in which
we know each other."

"If you see a different face, just mention it. See if you can
tune into the felt presence of that aspect, their mood and power.
What is the quality of that aspect right now? How does this relate to
the reincarnation hints in your present lifetime, your resonance with
certain countries, languages, movies, books, situations, issues?"

"Allow yourself to recognize and take on the positive qualities
and powers of this aspect of your wider self. Let your breathing
connect. Notice what you feel in your body. Say what you want to
this aspect. Let this aspect speak. What is happening right now is a
dynamic two-way interchange which somehow benefits both parties."

"Let's see who we are in other lifetimes where we know each
other, living and working together."

9. SPIRITUAL LEVELS: Spiritual communion may be immediate,
and may be all that unfolds, or may develop after emotional and
reincarnational explorations. Peace is prominent. The body and the
environment radiate and fade into color and light, or become intensely
real, present, and detailed.
There may be a sense of shifting, floating, or rotation.
Quickly, a whole new level of intimacy may be present, hard to
describe, "I feel that I've fallen into you, that we've merged into
emptiness and unity."
The overall quality may be lofty, spacious, empty, divinely
neutral, impersonal, vast, or intensely, fully personal, loving,
joyful, spontaneous, immediate, energetic. Thought is subdued, often
absent for long minutes, and is likely to be received from within as
innate inner wisdom. The body may be warm, feel subtle vibration, or
be filled with grace and power. Breathing becomes very steady and
delicate, even imperceptible.
The self feels released into its natural wider ranges. Shared
satisfaction is. Faces are timelessly, radiantly beautiful. Eyes are
deep, warm, powerful. One or both may feel like closing the eyes for
a while.

"Let's try a mantrum together, and see where it takes us:
Om ma-ni ped-me hung. Om na-ma-ha shi-va-ya.
So ham. al-lah hu.
Om ah hung vaj-ra gu-ru ped-me sid-dhi hung.
Ah-eh sha sa-ma-ha."

"Let's just really let go totally now. Let everything come apart
into space."

"Just let go and expand into the available presence of radiant
bliss... Now, allow expansion and surrender beyond bliss into
emptiness, profound absence, neutrality, void, deeper and deeper into
nothingness...allow awareness of this emptiness to be simultaneous
with awareness of all other levels."

"Let's look together into this photograph of Ramana Maharshi,
Poonjaji, Gangaji, or Mother Meera. Let it become a real presence,
looking at us, radiating back at us. Let go into any changes that
develop in the image. Let go into any changes that unfold in our
whole situation.
"We accept all of your power. We let your reality connect
with us at all levels and aspects of our being. We are of one Source,
already, always, beyond space, time, and stories. We want help. We
ask for your grace. We accept your forgiveness. We agree to
release our attachment to all perceptions, thoughts, stories,
identities, and positions. We are grateful to you. We love you."

"We appreciate that consciousness itself is beyond color,
beyond even white or black. I'll name a sequence of colors, and just
allow each color and its subtle realities to immediately, effortlessly
flash into awareness:
Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Violet.
Black, soft and velvet. Black, hard and shiny.
Clear, transparent. White. Brilliant radiance."

"What is here now is not a physical reality. This is not a
physical body...No physical reality or physical body can exist or ever
has existed...
What is here now is not a visual image, not sound, not
sensation...No visual images, sounds, or sensations can exist or ever
have existed...
What is here now is not personal mind, not individual mind,
not localized mind...No personal mind, individual mind, or localized
mind can exist or ever has existed...
What is here now is not God, not universal mind, not
void...No God, universal mind, or void can exist or ever has existed..."

"Let's give some grace and healing to our friend. We
acknowledge this person's true nature as an infinite soul, a perfect
expression of God. In fact, the condition of his body and life are not
bound by any restricting laws of causality or karma. All errors and
mistakes are healed, forgiven, transcended, and released. May he
have the highest possible evolution."

"Let us acknowledge all humanity as one family, the infinite,
innocent, and fully interconnected children of one God, who in their
free will are learning to acknowledge and experience their infinite
oneness in God. All are free to love, commune, and create without
limit. May peace and glory abide in this realm."

Spiritual communion opens the body to a dynamic process of
integration on various subtle levels. This is often experienced as
tension, warmth, vibration, pressure, or pain in the legs, back, neck,
head, eyes, mouth, throat, chest, and belly.

In the Eastern traditions, this is called the arising and flow of
kundalini, visualized as a subtle flow of golden energy, usually up the
back with each inhalation, and down the front with each exhalation. If
there is fear and resistance, the process can become difficult. It is
almost always best to simply let go in trust into whatever sensations
are unfolding.

The process and available safeguards are described in many
books. Sometimes, the guide may feel safe in suggesting, "Allow
yourself to simply be very open to the actual sensations, moment by
moment. Let them develop and change in their own way. Let your
emotions flow and express naturally. Be aware of your breathing.
See how it feels to be aware of your whole spinal column, from the
tailbone right up to the top of the head.
"I'll say the names of the seven chakras or subtle centers
from bottom to top. Just let go into the awareness invoked by each
name: Mu-lad-ha-ra. Swa-dhis-tha-na. Ma-ni-pu-ra. An-na-ha-ta.
Vi-shu-dha. Adj-na. Sa-has-rah-ra.

"Mu-lad-ha-ra. Feet, legs, tailbone. The body and our
physical realm as a solid foundation. Form. Earth.

"Swa-dhis-tha-na. Belly, genitals, uterus, kidneys. Life as
flow. Water.

"Ma-ni-pu-ra. Stomach, liver, diaphragm, solar plexus. The
central integrity, will, and poised power of the body. Air.

"An-na-ha-ta. Heart, lungs, the flow of blood within the whole
body. Emotions. Energy. Fire.

"Vi-shu-dha. Base of the skull, throat, mouth, nose, ears.
The ancient, instinctive, intuitive aspects of consciousness. Full
Moon, Yin, dark, female. Space. The Fullness of sound and silence.

"Adj-na. Eyes, the center of individualized awareness, which
can focus anywhere in any space or time or level. Sun, Yang, light,
male. The third eye. Form and light.

"Sa-has-rah-ra. The whole cortex. Opening above the head
without limits. Absolute consciousness. Void. Emptiness.
Unqualified Being, beyond perception, beyond thought, beyond any
identity, beyond any space, beyond any time."

"Let's explore a framework given in the 1970s by Oscar
Ichazo in his Arica Institute. The various simultaneous realms of
awareness are given numbers:

"Our background memories and concepts form the overall
frameworks that contain and define our experience of this moment.
That's given the number 96. 96 includes such relevant, habitual
concepts as time, space, social roles, all the rules we respect.

"The actual communication that is happening each moment is
called 48. So the hearing and speaking of these very words is an
aspect of 48, whereas, for instance, our shared available vocabulary
and grammar would be 96.

"Now, 24 is the actual living activity happening, such as our
body sensations, breathing, and sensations, right now. We are both
breathing, and both have a discernable pulse, and are sensing body
posture and physical sensations, seeing shapes and colors, hearing
many sounds. The cascading flow of appearance is 24.

"Simultaneously with all the above levels, we also appreciate
12, the emotions of the moment, which hopefully are happy and
peaceful. We open to primordial joy and bliss.

"Individualized awareness itself is 6. The pure consciousness
that accommodates and appreciates all the other levels, the mind that
can will to focus at any point at any time in any realm. Thus, we can
move in a moment from these very words to focus on the earliest
memory of this physical life.

"Universal Mind is 3. Void, Source, Absolute, which sustains
all presentations. Here, you and I are one ground of Being.
We let go totally and completely, in absolute surrender on all levels.

10. HIS STORY: Lively Communion has come into this
probable history, which, of course, is, by the very fact that you are
reading this, also now your own fully actualized probability, as an
expression of my unique, continuing unfoldment of consciousness.

Henry Ford proclaimed, and more rightly than he realized,
"History is bunk." That is, in part, history is a variously
self-serving and too often a self-denigrating story woven out of the
whole cloth of the present, and serving to glorify or justify this
present. Yet, "bunk" also refers to a simple private resting space, in
which one can for a while escape the pressures of social life, and
retreat to renew energy and inspiration.

Furthermore, from the radical viewpoint of the Seth material,
the timeless present is the position of power from which we view,
emphasize, select from, and actually create a variety of equally valid
probable pasts and futures. In my experience, it is very clearing and
energizing to review my apparent past process in a positive light,
appreciating the constant exploration, experimentation, inspiration,
and unfoldment. Likewise, in the spirit of Seth, this story, brief,
succinct, and episodic, is best presented lightly, playfully, and
nonlinearly, albeit chronologically.

I just loved to read. In 1949 or so, as a second grader, I had
a little red book, "The Little White Rabbit with Red Wings." This
little bunny was earthbound, and very frustrated. How he envied the
birds! One day he found himself looking at his reflection in a magic
pool in the woods. He wished and wished he had wings and could fly.
And, poof!, it was so! He had a little set of red wings. He flew and
flew. But, alas!, crashed. Bruised in body and spirit, he returned to
the magic pool, gazed at his reflection, and wished away his magic
wings, thenceforth content to remain as an ordinary rabbit.

What a depressing story. This sort of societal propaganda is
typical. Young minds are early impressed with the importance of
staying within strict limits. Yet, just as typically, the very warnings
bear important hints that nourish the innately intrepid soul.

I explored mirrors that year. I looked behind them. I puzzled
at the mystery of reversed text. I watched my image cut in half when
I stood at the edge. I pressed my forehead, feeling the cool, smooth
glass. I reflected the sun's intense East Texas light around huge
weeping willows and little white houses on concrete blocks.

I love Hans Christian Anderson's "The Emperor's New
Clothes". A fast-talking knave persuaded the Emperor to buy a
sumptuous uniform, which happened to not even exist. Arrayed in his
supposed finery, the Emperor paraded bucknaked at noon before all
his people. Terrified, they applauded like mad. But a small boy piped
up, "The Emperor has no clothes!" The whole crowd roared, "The
Emperor has no clothes!" Wow!

How the censors let this devastating parable get by, I'll never
know. On one level, an archetype for questioning all social authority.
On another, social reality as a shared, lived in-myth within the naked
radiant Void. I do know I've been that little boy ever since.
That was the year Mom confirmed Freddy Romero's
outrageous fib that Santa wasn't real.
I consciously thought, "Grownups don't always tell the truth."
That's what I learned in the second grade.

I read Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the
Looking Glass," but probably received more imprints from Disney's
animated versions. I still remember the huge caterpillar, with his
(hash?) pipe, demanding, "Who are You?"

Unlike everyone else, we checked out a dozen books a week
from the library. Dad wrestled mightily on our piano with Bach's
Three-Part Inventions, like Jacob with the angel, and the whole
neighborhood, devoid of air conditioning, uncomplainingly bore
witness. I devoured science and science fiction. This yarn has
nothing to do with Communion Process:

Freddy and I stood one dusk at the end of his sidewalk,
barely above the ditchwater, swarming with crawdads, looking across
the lush, mosquito infested grass toward my house, whence came
intricate streams of Bach. "You know what, Richard? You and your
whole family are so weird that sometimes I think you're Martians or
something from outer space, huh?"
I just looked down, shaking my head sadly, "Freddy, I've
always liked you...but now you know too much. We're gonna have to
get rid of yer."
He jumped back two feet. "Don't you kid me like that! You
hear!"

Dad, Christopher Anderson Murray, directed the minuscule
choir at the Presbyterian Church, the most liberal available in a sea
of Southern Baptists. With a B.S. in chemistry, he worked for the Pure
Oil Company, filing several patents to their benefit.
As a lowly priest in the worldwide secular church of modern science,
he was a closet atheist.
I, too, would brook no malarkey, no pernicious superstitions.
"Who created God?" I demanded in Sunday School. Southern
Baptists gathered to pray for my soul, so I was told, and, judging by
the long-term results, deserve some credit.

I willingly consecrated myself to science, while uneasily aware
of strange huge clouds erupting in the vast Pacific, the wild tundra of
Siberia. Science fiction entranced me, with its vistas of unlimited
progress, unified humanity, vast space, eternal exploration, alternate
worlds, inscrutable beings, paranormal powers.
Little did I suspect the amount and quality
of metaphysical teaching that was being sneaked
into my receptive mind. I loved Heinlein's telepathic twins, history
shifting time travellers, and magical Martian elders, so like Tibetan
lamas. I read vivid portrayals of thermonuclear spasm cataclysm,
and grimly resolved to face this as a dire possibility.
I dared to know this dreadful secret,
while in the dull bright daily world, society
accelerated into Elvis, the satellite, the computer, the ICBM.

I experienced the extinction of consciousness under ether at
ages five and ten. This must be a very powerful initiation. Perhaps
much of the healing power of operations arises not from the surgery,
but from the anesthesia, the conscious mind forcibly silenced, and
deeper realms revealed. Even without conscious memory, there must
be effects.

As a junior, honking away on my tenor saxophone amidst the
God awful cacophony of the Nederland High School Band, winded, I'd
experience a strange serenity and vividness coming over the whole
situation. I had no thoughts or words for it, but I remembered.

I wanted to find the root of reality. I sensed it had something
to do with space. I wanted to understand the physics of space. I
pored over catalogues and pamphlets about M.I.T. with innocent
concentration. The probable realities bent accordingly,
and, viola!, I was accepted. But we couldn't possibly afford it.
Then, viola!, I got a four-year $ 2,000 scholarship,
courtesy of McDermott of Texas Instruments in Dallas.

Arriving on the bus in 1960, I passed the
massive monument of the Christian Science Mother Church, peering
a mile down Massachusetts Avenue at the equally mighty M.I.T.
Great Dome, two polarized symbols of my unfoldment.

Aldous Huxley was there. Kresge Auditorium was packed,
students sitting around his feet on the stage, as he, tall and gaunt as
Ichabod Crane, hunched over whispering like Poe's raven, in a high
very British accent, "Man is an amphibian in multiple worlds."

After four grueling years, I emerged in 1964 with a double
major in physics and history and a deep aversion to work, deadlines,
and pressure. There had been momentary hints: a strange
Indonesian cult (The Little Lambs of God) leader speaking at our
Unitarian-Universalist youth group, Ravi Shankar's incandescent sitar
concerts, a friend talking slowly with widened pupils about how
glorious riding the subway was after taking "mescaline" in an
experiment at Harvard, an eminent German scholar informing me
pointblank in a seminar, candid blue eyes resting gently on me,
"There is a God.", a local bohemian, Ted Moynahan, with gentle
voice and happy eyes, allowing weekend beach parties at his large
shack, reminiscing about the glorious sound of tires swishing by
when once he lay drunk in a gutter.

Sick of school, I married and worked. In summer, 1965, I
read Gail's copy of "Zen Buddhism"(1956) by the eminent D.T. Suzuki
(1870--7-12-1966). I was attracted, intrigued, puzzled:

In China in the 600s, the fifth Zen patriarch Hung-jen asked
his over 700 monastic students to apply to be his spiritual successor.
The brilliant Shen-shiu submitted this stanza:

"This body is the Bodhi-tree,
The soul is like a mirror bright;
Take heed to keep it always clean,
And let not dust collect on it."

The illiterate Hui-neng, who for eight months had pounded rice in the
monastery, had a friend copy and post his reply:

"The Bodhi is not like the tree,
The mirror bright is nowhere shining;
As there is nothing from the first,
Where can the dust itself collect?"

Hui-neng was secretly awarded the successorship the next midnight,
and became famous as the sixth Zen patriarch.

Although I fancied myself well educated, and had scored in
the 99th percentile, verbal and math, in the Graduate Record Exam, I
was clueless. For the first time I encountered material that was
profound, full of life and humor, that I absolutely did not understand
in the least. I knew I didn't know-- something?

I read Aldous Huxley's last novel, "Island" (1962- Aldous died
of throat cancer, with a hefty dose of LSD, Nov. 23, 1963, the day of
Kennedy's assassination.). I just noticed the probable pun in the
simple title, "Is Land". What a contrast to "Brave New World"!
Huxley had obviously distilled his whole life's learning into this
utopian vision. I was introduced to florid Hindu mysticism, applied
hypnotherapy, psychedelic revelation, and terse Buddhism: "Nobody
needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only know it, already
there."

Huxley describes in detail a conscious dying:

"He looked again at the fleshless face on the pillow and saw
that it was smiling.
"The Light," came the hoarse whisper, the Clear Light. It's
here--along with the pain, in spite of the pain."
"And where are you?" Susila asked.
"Over there, in the corner," Lakshmi tried to point, but the
raised hand faltered and fell back, inert, on the coverlet. "I can see
myself there. And she can see my body on the bed.""

At the time I dismissed this as wishful fantasy, a blemish on
Aldous's rationality. Now, after ten years as a hospice home care
giver, I regard it as plain speaking of a high order.

His description of psychedelic revelation is peerless:

"One, Two, Three, Four...The Clock In The Kitchen struck
twelve. How irrelevantly, seeing that time had ceased to exist! The
absurd, importunate bell had sounded at the heart of a timelessly
present Event, of a Now that changed incessantly in a dimension, not
of seconds and minutes, but of beauty, of significance, of intensity,
of deepening mystery.
"Luminous bliss." From the shallows of his mind the words
rose like bubbles, came to the surface, and vanished into the infinite
spaces of living light that now pulsed and breathed behind his closed
eyelids.""

I was still clueless, but now I was motivated and reassured.
A man I trusted had given his all to make it believable to me that
there was an unknown realm of understanding, and that psychedelics
were the door. How I wanted to have these amazing experiences!
What could, "Time had ceased to exist," possibly mean? Don't you
want to know? So admit it! Now! Yes, you!

In addition, Aldous depicts what I call, "Communion Process":

"Will opened his eyes and, for the first time since he had
taken the moksha-medicine, found himself looking her
squarely in the face.
"Dear God," he whispered at last.
Susila laughed...The eye sockets were mysterious with
shadow and, except for a little crescent of illumination on the
cheekbone, so was all of the right side of the face. The left side
glowed with a living, golden radiance--preternaturally bright...What he
was seeing now was the paradox of opposites indissolubly wedded,
of light shining out of darkness, of darkness at the very heart of
light..."...you're recognizably you, and I'm recognizably me--though,
needless to say, we're both completely different. You and me by
Rembrandt, but Rembrandt about five thousand times more
so...Meanwhile there's this extraordinary face of yours." He leaned
forward to look into it more closely. "As though one were looking into
a crystal ball," he added incredulously. "Something new all the time.
You can't imagine..."
But she could imagine. "Don't forget," she said, "I've been
there myself."
"Did you look at people's faces?"
She nodded. "At my own in the glass. And of course at
Dugald's. Goodness, that last time we took the moksha-medicine
together! He started by looking like a hero out of some impossible
mythology--of Indians in Iceland, of Vikings in Tibet. And then,
without warning, he was Maitreya Buddha. Obviously, self-evidently
Maitreya Buddha. Such a radiance! I can still see..."
She broke off, and suddenly Will found himself looking at
Incarnate Bereavement with seven swords in her heart...She took a
deep breath and squared her shoulders.
Before his eyes the face, the whole body, underwent another
change. There was strength enough, he could see in that small
frame to make head against any suffering: a will that would be more
than a match for all the swords that fate might stab her with. Almost
menacing in her determined serenity, a dark Circean goddess had
taken the place of the Mater Delorosa...the face before him seemed
to glow with the consciousness of triumph. Power, intrinsic power--
he saw the expression of it, he sensed its formidable presence and
shrank away from it.
"Who are you?" he whispered...
He smiled back at her--smiled back at a laughing girl with a
weakness for kisses and the frankness to invite them..."Are you really
all of these people?"...
"Plus, potentially the old dying woman who looked out at me
from the mirror the last time we took the moksha-medicine together.
And then Dugald looked and saw what he would look like in another
forty years...""

I recognize Huxley's reference to Rembrandt. Rembrandt
painted over sixty remarkable self-portraits. When I look at them, I
am drawn into deep communion. They come remarkably alive. He
must have had deep unfoldments looking into the mirror. He paints
his subjects often looking directly outward. Hours and days of sitting
with direct eye contact with Rembramdt must have been a powerful,
transforming experience.

I started graduate studies in psychology at Boston University
in 1965. One term paper was on research methodology in
parapsychology. I concluded that the most impressive evidence was
anecdotal, and that it suggested that our current scientific paradigms
were very incomplete. I still had no personal expanded experience at
all, except for brief unacknowledged episodes of serenity and
vividness. I collected and read paperbacks on Zen, barely aware that
there was a vast world literature on mysticism. Samurai movies from
Japan started to attract me deeply. Gail and I saw Swami
Satchidananda close up during a long meeting, in which he sat cross-
legged on a table and exuded charisma. I might as well have seen a
man from Mars; he was that far beyond my world. Alone with my
questions, in fall, 1966, I photographed my serious visage in a mirror.

I heard more and more about marijuana, and in March, 1967,
I stealthily and guiltily procured an ounce. The results were profound.

I still remember walking on Cambridge Avenue, experiencing the
landscape, crystal clear and amazingly deep in its three-
dimensionality, flowing through my boundless depth of
consciousness. Looking at the fascinating, satisfying beauty of a tree
trunk, I for the first time became really aware that all experience is
only in consciousness. Music was ecstatic flow, and food deeply
delicious. I let go into improvising hour-long ragas on the piano,
abiding in a peaceful void, watching my fingers flying like
butterflies, every note a beautifully self-complete chord, the music
a white water symphony. I never had such fun.

I read my beloved Zen paperbacks stoned, and all was self-
evidently, radiantly clear--for about an hour, until the munchies
returned. This happened over and over, twice a week or so, for 13
years. My already lack-luster studies languished entirely, and I was
given a M.A. as I was removed from the Ph.D. program. I cared little,
for I knew I was on the trail of the Big Ox.
I sought refuge in work as a night security guard.
Gail and I attended the 1967 World Fair in
Montreal, where one exhibit had us standing in huge mirror rooms, in
which we were multiply reflected into vanishing infinity.
We conceived our child.

In December, 1968, I was initiated into the Transcendental
Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Accepting the focused spiritual
energy of an ancient lineage and guided by an experienced teacher,
the simple method had immediate and gratifying results. I
relinquished pot for a few months. For the first time in my life, I
could sit in silence for a half hour to an hour. I had been instructed
to let thoughts come and go freely while returning to gently,
effortlessly allowing the repetition of a mantra in my mind. I learned
a basic principle of great value: to simply notice and allow body
sensations and emotions to evolve without control or explanation.
Surprised and perplexed, I found that invariable the group meditations
were significantly more deep and satisfying, my first conscious
experience of telepathic communion. A few weekend retreats led to a
week-long meditation retreat in June, 1969. I had become more
open, exposed, adventurous, playful, and, nourished from within, was
somehow led by an inner impetus. I noticed the cultish, authoritarian
mindset of the movement with tolerant misgivings.

I found LSD to be like marijuana, only day-long. I
experimented with mirrors, making photographs of myself, high,
facing into a mirror corner that multiplied me into a circle of six.
Gail found new support in the women's movement, and,
rather arbitrarily, we separated at the end of 1969.

Life had become fluid and experimental. By the summer I
had joined a sociable urban commune. That winter, with Joey, I
found something neat to do: we'd gaze into each others eyes , feeling
warm and soft, listening to the slow movement of Beethoven's Ninth.

I had read Dr. John Lilly's books about communication with
dolphins, and so on Labor Day weekend, 1971, took his weekend
workshop, "Continuous Satori". He had just finished five months of
spiritual training in Arica, Chile with the remarkable Oscar Ichazo,
and so eagerly shared his insights and techniques.
The main exercise was to sit in pairs with
eye contact in dim light with weird music, such as
"Tonto's Expanding Head Band," for 45-minute sessions. People
reported very psychedelic experiences. I didn't have this myself, but
somehow I was hooked. Lilly was a very catalytic influence for me.
He spoke for the individual's intrinsic right to explore creatively and
freely, without any actual limits. He introduced me to the term
"consensus reality", with its devastatingly liberating corollary, an
available infinity of "nonconsensus reality". He regarded beliefs not
as verities to be defended, but as arbitrary creations to be studied
and modified without limit.

"Center of the Cyclone" (1972): "In the province of the mind,
what I believe to be true, is true or becomes true within certain
limits to be found experientially and experimentally.
These limits are further beliefs to be transcended."

When I asked him about what possible reality astrology could
have in a universe of real stars, he smilingly admitted, "Well, I just
don't believe in an objective reality anymore." He talked about the
capacity in Level 6 consciousness to locate and perceive anywhere, a
concept entirely new to me. I asked, "Could you go to Mars in Level 6
and collect observations?" "Sure, but in Level 6 you wouldn't
feel like going to Mars and collecting data!'

I immediately starting getting stoned while looking into a
mirror. The results were gratifyingly psychedelic. I got more and
larger mirrors. I hung a mirror over my waterbed, a very powerful
setup. Mary and I would trip out together, talking and laughing,
looking up into our reflections, listening to music. Almost
inadvertently, in this playful way, a new mode for the social
sharing of expanded states had been opened for exploration.

In January, 1972, I took a thirteen-week full-time Arica
Training in Manhattan with 72 compatriots. It was a full menu of
spiritual methods: high-protein diet, exercise, yoga, postures,
movement, dance, chanting, breathing, concentration, visualization,
prayer, music, kundalini work, massage, ego analysis, silent retreat,
and, best of all, "trespasso", eye contact work. At first, we gazed at
the colorful Arica mandala, as its intense blues and reds would
vibrate, reverse, disappear. Sometimes, a brilliant flashing strobe
light would turn the mandala into a visual tornado. Midway in the
training, we were introduced to formal trespasso, gazing left eye to
left eye, often with a shared affirmation, "You and I are One Self."
Immediately the whole mood of the group shifted, as we all became
more energized, playful, and intimate.

John Lilly describes his first trespasso with Oscar Ichazo in
"Center of the Cyclone" (1972):

"At one point [in Arica, Chile in May, 1970] he introduced me
to a dyadic eye fixation exercise, which is a powerful interpersonal
programming technique. While sitting and not moving, each person
looks into one eye of the other. When this is done for ten minutes to
an hour or so, many things happen to oneself, one's perception, one's
being. In my first demonstration of this technique with Oscar, I
seemed to go through shared past life experiences with him over
several tens of lives in various parts of this planet, including China,
Arabia, early Europe. Also, I went into spaces of great peace, quiet,
and golden light. With Oscar all of these experiences were quite
familiar, safe, and rewarding."

I had abstained from drugs, but when three Arica classes
were combined that summer to create the Temple Training, over 200
in Manhattan, I starting trying all the exercises and ideas with
marijuana and LSD. I had read Lilly's "Center of the Cyclone" (1972)
and Robert Monroe's "Journeys Out of the Body" (1971). I had
started to accept the concept of reincarnation. Amazing, wonderful
experiences became my norm, and I leaped from insight to revelation.
I found that the surest route to the most psychedelic expansions was
trespasso, direct eye contact or in the mirror above my waterbed, with
marijuana or LSD. I experimented very freely, testing out right eye
contact, focussing on the forehead or mouth, naming the seven
chakras, breathing together, moving hands together. I became
known as a good person to have a trip with. This intense, ecstatic
communion became the initiation and substance of my love affairs.
My own consciousness and depth of presence had deepened more
than I consciously realized.

Arica Institute, out of money, dispersed. Libby and I ended
up in Santa Fe, New Mexico in July, 1973. I led a weekly process,
"Consciousness Open House," leading people into trespasso and
other exercises. Life oscillated between ecstatic communion,
catalyzed with pot, and codependent pain, fear, and rage. There was
ecstacy, but not peace, simplicity, or stability.

Jane Roberts' wonderful books, "The Seth Material" (1970)
and "Seth Speaks," (1972) followed by "The Nature of Personal
Reality," in August, 1974 made plenty of sense. They demonstrate a
multidimensional Reality in which every soul uniquely creates and
expands itself and its interactive reality, through conscious belief:
"You create your own reality." "Your conscious beliefs determine
your experiences." "The present is the point of power." "There are
no limits to the self." Both the past and the future are opened up as
accessible to investigation and interaction from the multidimensional
present. The present includes not only higher and more subtle levels,
but a manifold of adjacent probable histories, each equally valid.
These grand views simply blow away ordinary ideas of ESP, intuition,
inner guidance, or spiritual progress. To test, explore, and apply
them is the labor and play of a lifetime.

Jane's books, devoted to the teachings of her Seth aspect,
describe her own unusual perceptions and experiences. One,
involving a mirror, was shared with her husband Rob and a friend, on
January 2, 1964. Jane had started speaking for Seth December 15,
two weeks earlier. "The Seth Material" gives Rob's exact notes:

"The living room side of the door holds a full-length mirror,
and Seth told us to look into it. Since the mirror is tall and narrow,
we had to crowd in close on three sides of the little table,
in order to see our reflections. Jane sat in the middle...
'Now the three of you see your reflections clearly in the
mirror, just as you should. Watch, for I'll change Jane's image and
replace it with another's,' Seth said. And Jane's image did begin to
change. Her head dropped lower. At the same time, the shape of
the skull changed, the hair grew shorter and fit about it much more
closely. The shoulders of the mirror image hunched over, and grew
more narrow. And then the head in the mirror tilted, and looked
down, while Jane herself sat erect, staring straight ahead into the
mirror.
Jane said later that this shocked her more than anything else.
I looked at her first beside me, then in the mirror. There was no
doubt as to the difference between the two. I also saw a shadow
suffuse the mirror image. At the same time I had the feeling that the
face hung forward from the body. The mirror head seemed to grow
smaller. I detected a faint glow about it as it hung in space,
seemingly between the mirror reflection and the three of us.
It was also obvious that the mirror image sat
several inches lower down than Jane herself sat.
And now and then the mysterious head would dip down and
then hang forward from the body."

Jane comments, "Actually, for the first time in our lives we
found ourselves experiencing events that we couldn't explain, and
doubting the obvious evidence of our senses--an uncomfortable spot
for anyone."

Describing this event in "How to Develop Your ESP Power,"
(1966), Jane adds, "The electric candles were still lit. We were in
semidarkness, but again, there was enough light to see objects. Our
images in the mirror looked commonplace enough. Our hands were
in clear sight on the table."

Several features of this account agree with my experiences:
Surprising changes are seen in the mirror in a lit room in a fairly
ordinary level of consciousness, without drugs, with normal
conversation and movement. The witnesses agree. The "psychic"
also is a fully aware witness. The changes occur after an agreement
to allow changes.

Arthur J. Deikman published his excellent report,
"Experimental Meditation," in Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease,
Vol. 136,329-373, (1963). I found it in "Altered States of
Consciousness," (1972), editor, Charles T. Tart. Four normal
professional therapists had 12 structured meditation sessions each, in
a three-week period, extending to 15 to 33 minutes time. Each sat in
a comfortable armchair in a well-lit small room with green walls and
looked eight feet away at a blue vase ten inches high. Distracting
sound was played on a tape recorder, in order to compel the subjects
to deepen their concentration.

They were instructed:

"...Your aim is to concentrate on the blue vase...see the vase
as it exists in itself, without any connections to other things.
Exclude all other thoughts or feelings or sounds or body sensations.
Do not let them distract you but keep them out
so that you can concentrate all your attention,
all your awareness on the vase itself. Let the
perception of the vase fill your entire mind..." After the session each
answered questions and described the view out the window.

Reported phenomenon were many and striking, and sometimes caused
anxiety:

"...deeper and more intense blue...more vivid...the vase
becoming brighter while everything in their visual field became quite
dark and indistinct...luminous... instability of the shape of the
vase...felt change in the size or the shape of the vase, a loss of the
third dimension and a diffusion or loss of its perceptual
boundaries...movement...time-shortening...hard to put in words...all
sounds were obliterated...personal attachment to the vase...sessions
were usually pleasurable, valuable and rewarding...the blue and I
were perhaps merging...as though the vase were in my head rather
than out there: I knew it was out there but it seemed as though it
were almost a part of me...I was swimming in a sea of blue...
I felt this whole complete other plane where I was nothing...
it was radiating heat...during this incandescent
kind of radiating inner glow thing...I could feel my pulse
beating in my penis and in my temples...I felt
that there was a light coming down from above, too...many colors
around the edges of the table."

Looking out the window, one subject experienced
dedifferentiation: "...things look scattered all over the lot, not hung
together in any way...no planes, one behind the other. There was no
response to certain patterns. Everything was working at the same
intensity..." The next day, this person saw a transfigured landscape
of pleasure, luminescence and beautiful movements.

Deikman concluded:"...the ease and rapidity with which the
phenomena were produced...Such rapid, intense effects point to a
capacity, under minimal stress conditions, for alteration in the
perception of the world and of the self far greater than what is
customarily assumed to be the case for normal people."

The invocations I offer for Lively Communion are directly
opposite: the client is encouraged to open totally and effortlessly to
everything at once. Expansion of awareness is affirmed and chosen
in fellowship. Help is asked for from the inner soul identity. The
client is free to talk and change the process. Each change in
perception, understanding, and level is used
as a springboard for more.

Charles T. Tart has his own report in "Altered States of
Consciousness," on explorations done in 1962, "Psychedelic
Experiences Associated with a Novel Hypnotic Procedure, Mutual
Hypnosis." He hypnotized two psychology graduate students, and
instructed them to continue to hypnotize each other to go much
deeper. "The Ss never had any experience with psychedelic drugs."
The results were dramatic:

"Anne deepened Bill by suggesting that he would experience
himself lying on a warm beach in the sun and listening to the waves
rolling in. At the end of this I suggested to Anne that she dream a
dream which would lead her into much deeper hypnosis and that she
describe the dream aloud to Bill so that he would also go much
deeper. Anne described dreaming of the two of them being in a car
on the desert, watching the road unwind before them, seeing small
lizards run over the sand, then walking along the desert road, feeling
hot and sticky but with an overall feeling of pleasantness. When
asked by Anne, Bill indicated he was dreaming the same dream. From
later questioning, both Ss were by now completely oblivious to
their actual surroundings and totally absorbed
in their hallucinatory world(s)... [[Reader, what you are in right now
is a hullucinatory world...]]

"Both Ss began to resent my intervening and suggesting that
they do anything in particular. Both Ss also felt they had been much
more deeply hypnotized then ever before and, in addition, I and one
of the observers felt that Anne was a far more dramatic (and
presumably effective) hypnotist than she had ever been before: her
voice became "hypnotic", she improvised effective techniques instead
of sticking to the SHSS forms, and clearly showed great empathy and
rapport with Bill's reactions. Both Ss were pleased and excited over
this mutual hypnosis technique, and wanted to continue working with
it...Following this second session, Anne and Bill developed an intense
friendship, spending a great deal of time together. They felt
extremely close to one another as a
result of their shared experience...

"The Ss experienced themselves standing together in a place
that they described as a "heaven" of some sort. Their conversation
sounded like a continuous description of a drug-induced psychedelic
experience. The Ss expressed wonderment at the beauty
surrounding them. Almost immediately Bill instructed Anne to
appreciate what was around them but not to look too closely, not to
interfere with them, to let them change as they would. Bill's
instructions to Anne to not grasp at the phenomena, to accept them
without trying to possess them, are remarkably parallel to the sorts of
instructions given in psychedelic 'trip manuals' which came into print
years later, such as Leary, Metzner, and Alpert's (1964), and are now
widely disseminated as psychedelic lore...

"The first thing the Ss remarked about this heaven world was
the water in front of them: it was like champagne and had beautiful,
huge bubbles in it. They swam in it together and found it to be
remarkably buoyant and 'bouncy', as well as tasting delicious...It also
came out in conversations some weeks later that this passing through
each other [each other's bodies] was also accompanied by a sense of
merging identities, of a partial blending of themselves quite beyond
the degree of contact human beings expect to share with others...

"A variety of experiences reported by the Ss are frequently
reported in conjunction with drug-induced psychedelic
experiences...These included marked perceptual changes, changes in
self-concept and body image, feelings of greatly enhanced empathy
and paranormal communication, and a sense of immediate
significance to the experiences...In the broad sense of the term, these
experiences were "hypnotic dreams," dream-like experiences induced
under hypnosis. However, they were not at all like the usual hypnotic
dream in quality, intensity or after-affects..."

John Lilly briefly describes in "The Dyadic Cyclone," (1976):

"...Various parts of the image will change their shape, their
color, the relationship to one another. You may see an ancient face
in the place of your own. You may see a baby's face in place of your
own, etcetera.
B. Face in Mirror: Very similar effects to those in the
afterimage exercise can be achieved by looking at the same spot on
your face, reflected in the mirror, that we talked about earlier,
between the two eyes. Sit perfectly still and have nothing else in the
room moving so as not to disturb the effects that you are looking for.
You can kneel or sit in front of the mirror in a comfortable position
so that you can stare at a single point between your two eyes above the
bridge of your nose for at least one half hour. If you maintain the
fixity of gaze, blinking when necessary, you will find that all sorts
of phenomena develop. You may see entirely new faces and various
other sorts of phenomena. You may find that your state of being can
be changed under these circumstances also."

In his diary, in an essay translated by the German-born
Lama Anagarika Govinda in "Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism,"
(1960), Baron Dr. von Veltheim-Ostrau describes his contact with the
great mystic Ramana Maharshi in India:

"While my eyes were immersed in the golden depths of the
Maharshi's eyes, something happened which I dare describe only with
the greatest reticence and humility, in the shortest and simplest
words, according to truth. The dark complexion of his body
transformed itself slowly into white. This white body became more
and more luminous, as if lit up from within, and began to radiate.
This experience was so astonishing that, while trying to grasp it
consciously and with clear thought, I immediately thought of
suggestion, hypnosis, etc. I therefore made certain 'controls', like
looking at my watch, taking out my diary and reading in it, for which
purpose I had first to put on my spectacles, etc. Then I looked at the
Maharshi, who had not diverted his glance from me; and with the
same eyes, which a moment ago were able to read some notes in my
diary, I saw him sitting on the tiger-skin as a luminous form. It is
easy to explain this state, because it was so simple, so natural, so
unproblematic. How I would wish to remember it with full clarity in
the hour of my death!"
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