Jesus: Tell Me What I Am Like

14 February 2008 - Valentine’s Night

Journal Entry:

Had a date this week and as usual I was not at all into it. I decided it was best just to be content with my own company and to find happiness living my life as it is. Valentine’s night was last night and I had this vividly beautiful visionary dream, highly charged with erotic tension:

I find myself standing with a truly handsome young man I know. Middle Eastern with a frank regard wise beyond his years, he has thick dark curls and warm tea colored eyes. The soft shadow of his mustache accentuates his dark good looks. He stands aglow in the dark night at the end of a hitching post, wearing a collarless buckskin shirt. His shirt is the color of wild honey. He studies me with fathomless dark eyes as he eats something I can't see from a wooden bowl. We are alone together where we've just made camp deep in the heart of a red rock canyon. The year is some time in the late 19th century. Somehow I know that communication by wire has not yet arrived in the world outside, beyond our intimate canyon. The nearest town must be hundreds of miles away. The light of our bonfire dances on the canyon walls over our heads. Above the canyon walls, the endless stars glisten in an ink dark sky. His eyes penetrate and ignite my consciousness. Suddenly I am aware that his is a holy presence, like the burning bush on Mount Sinai albeit in the form of this young man. My lungs reel with exquisite tension. I stand before him as on sacred ground. This is my Beloved, the Friend, my God, and our love is the most perfect secret. He smiles knowingly and suddenly my mind is standing naked in front of him. His heart also stands naked. Its impact, like a bolt of lightning, hits me and I am like a tree consumed by fire. My blood races like wild horses through my body. He is a magnet; I am an iron filing. I go to him, sidling against his shoulder, taking his hand in mine. I nuzzle and kiss his golden neck, smell his warm skin. I am drunk on his scent and erupt with even greater longing. He accepts my desire, but only impartially, like the ocean welcomes a river. As I nuzzle his neck, inhaling his musk, he reaches up and offers me a generous handful of what he's eating. I open my mouth to receive this offering. It’s roasted pumpkin seeds, salty, still warm from the iron pan on the fire. I eat the seeds – they are delicious – and I laugh as I ask him, looking at his crisp buckskin shirt, if he – the young Middle Eastern man I know – is now a Native American? He studies me silently. His silence is eloquent. He's not amused by the question, but clearly the fact that I've asked it does amuse him. Finally, after a long and pregnant silence, his warm eyes reflecting the firelight, he answers. “Maybe I am a Native American. Maybe I’m an African. – Maybe I’m nothing at all." Then he asks me a question, which he poses like a puzzle. "Who can say what I am?” I drink his words, my heart wet with love. He looks at me. His eyes say he is far beyond knowledge. END

I awake awash in ardent love. This is how He speaks to me often, in the form of an extremely beautiful honey-colored young man.

I am reminded by his question of logion 13 from the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic scripture:

13. Jesus said to his disciples: "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like." Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel." Matthew said to him "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like." Jesus said "I am not your Master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out."

The Gnostic passage above is much older than Matthew 16:13-17 from the NIV Bible:

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" 14 They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" 16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 17 Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.

I later went online and looked up pumpkin seeds. They are easy to digest and excellent for promoting healthy male sexual function, a handful a day. But my Beloved has offered me roasted pumpkin seeds. It is a common yogic teaching that desires are like seeds that grow into weeds and thorns, and that we must strive to pull them out by their roots. But even better yet, the teaching follows, we should roast the seeds of desire in the fire of dispassion. By cultivating dispassion, we put an end to desire altogether. Roasted pumpkin seeds do not grow and don't bear fruit. Thus His message to me seems to be, “Roast these useless seeds of worldly desire. What use have you for aphrodisiacs when I am the one you want, and mine is the scent you are after? I am here - where I have always been – inside you.”

The pumpkin itself is a symbol of personal power among some Native American tribes. In China it is a symbol of prosperity.

Jesus: Lazarus Is Whole Again

Jesus: Lazarus Is Whole Again

03.05.2008

Dream:

I am sitting with Lazarus* outside the rich man's gate. He is lying on the dusty street and has scores of ugly, seeping, filthy ulcers with maggots squirming in them. His greasy, matted hair is full of grime. Black broken teeth dot his foul looking mouth. I am talking to him about how I have 'changed the prescription of my glasses' over the last couple of years, and affirm that I am now seeing life differently, in a much more positive light. I am talking to Lazarus as if he were an old and dear friend that I hadn't seen in awhile. I confide in him that "I'm basically, fundamentally happy now!" When Lazarus hears this, that I am happy right down to my core, he sits bolt upright and declares with tremendous relief in his voice: "Oh, that's good!" I notice that suddenly all his ulcers have disappeared, his skin has healed and glows like new. The maggots that were feasting on his sores have dematerialized completely. Lazarus is whole again.

*Luke 16:19-31

There was a certain rich man who was clothed in fine linen robe and passed every day in splendid luxury. And there was a certain poor man whose name was Lazarus; and he was laid at the gate of the rich man, suffering with ulcers. And he desired to fill his belly with the fragments that fell from the rich man's table; and the dogs also came and licked the man's ulcers. And so it was that the poor man died; and angels transported him to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being tormented in hell, he raised his eyes from afar off and saw Abraham with Lazarus in his bosom. And he called with a loud voice, and said: Abraham, my father, have pity on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and moisten my tongue; for behold, I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said to him: My son, remember, that you received your good things during your lifetime and Lazarus his evil things: and now, behold, he is here at rest and you are receiving stripes. And with all these there is a great barrier between us and you; so that they who would pass from here to you, cannot; neither can they pass from there to us. He said to him: I beg of you, therefore, my father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may go and protest to them lest they also come to this place of torment. Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. But he said to him: No, my father Abraham: but if one shall go to them from the dead, they will repent. Abraham said to him: If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not believe, though one should rise from the dead. (Peshitta)

** The name Lazarus means, He who God has helped.

Lazarus is the Latinized version of the Greek Lazaros, which is a translation of Eleazar in Hebrew and Lazar in Aramaic.

In another dream I was addressed as Lazarus.

Jesus: I Stand at the Door and Knock

01.24.2007

After 18 years, for the first time I am not feeling connected to my Guru, Ameyananda. She has mostly withdrawn from public activity, and the sense of her presence has dwindled at the local meditation center. This is not something new. It's not a phase. It has been unfolding over the course of the last few years. My chanting practice, along with meditation and mantra repetition, has fallen away like a leaf from a tree in autumn. This is to say naturally. Still, without my Teacher’s nearness in my life I feel I am afloat without an oar and without direction on the ocean of samsara. The pain is too great. One evening in real anguish, I sit down at my altar and ask, “Lord, who is my master?”

Shortly after this I go to bed and fall asleep. I cannot call what happens next a dream. It wasn’t a vision either. I received an important message from within my own being.

How else shall I put it?

Message:

A determined knock is heard on my inner windowpane at about 11:45 PM. I am sleeping. Still, I am very much aware that someone is knocking at my window. The room I occupy in the subtle realm is not my bedroom in the waking world, nor is the window my normal bedside window. Even so, it is without doubt my room. The knocking half awakens me. I turn on my left side and answer, “Yes?”

A voice like no voice I have ever heard before, in an accent harking to another time and place, says:

“Iesous is your master.”

“Who?” I ask, startled.

“Iesous.”

A golden light inside the crown of my head, showering down from the sahasrar chakra, illuminates my inner being. This light ignites my subtle body, flushing it in its warm, golden glow.

“Okay,” I say, agreeing to this news.

I fall back to sleep.

Iesous [ee-yes’soos] is the Greek pronunciation of the Aramaic name Yeshua, which we pronounce as “Jesus” in English.

[Photo: David Headland. Comet McNaught over Oamaru, South Island, NZ]

Jesus: The Marriage Place

5.23.2007

While lying in bed wondering why I am so very single in my life I consider the two people I feel closest to, neither of whom is available, and ask myself how I could be so consistently wrong about love in the world, about love in real-time. I am longing for physical love, conjugal domesticity, marriage, a long-term someone to say goodnight to, the comfort of human warmth shared in my bed. My heart quakes at the lack I feel within. This loneliness cuts so deep sometimes.

I resolve to dive deeper into the love I feel rather than lament not being closer to either of the two people who inspire the feeling. I resolve to hold onto this love itself as my Beloved. If God is love, then love is the Beloved and has a life of its own.

I hold all this love like a rare and precious fluid, an elixir all my own, cupping it in the well of my heart.

Like this, I fall asleep.

Dream:

There is a very small wooden hut with sleeping quarters. It is larger than a tool shed but not quite a house. This is the only structure as far as the eye can see, and it is situated in the middle of a vast barren field, completely devoid of any vegetation. We are a group of 10 to 16 people. We are each given a shovel and told that we have only a certain amount of time to find the buried treasure. The shovels and this challenge both are presented to us by beings that we do not see. They seem to be, if you will, “off-stage.” The treasure hunting challenge is equally presented as a serious task, a contest of skill, and a fun game. My cousin Fox and I are paired together and we set off at a good clip in the same general direction. In no time we lose sight of all the others.

Right from the start I have taken this challenge very seriously. I find it a great adventure, also, which makes it fun. The further afield I go, the more assiduously I dig wherever I stop. I always see Fox somewhere not far away as I dig and dig, then move about again, in several areas. Fox is not digging, however. He is looking across the field at something, an impatient and somewhat disinterested look on his face.

Finally, my intuition tells me to stop and dig in one place only. I settle on a spot southeast of the hut where we started. I don’t have to dig terribly long or hard there (the soil is very rich, pliable and dark) before my shovel strikes something hard. The sound of metal against metal startles my ears. I dig around this object and unearth it with my shovel. It is a sterling silver chalice.

“Fox, look!” I cry out. “I found something!”

Fox is within earshot and comes closer. He looks at my find and is clearly unimpressed. Granted, one silver chalice would not appear to be the treasure.

But curiosity compels me, and I continue digging further down. Again and again my shovel makes contact with more sterling silver home furnishings – the kinds of things a bride and groom receive as wedding gifts: a vase, a pitcher, candlesticks, ornate trays, a serving spoon, etcetera. I keep tossing these things in Fox’s direction, but he remains unimpressed, even a little upset with me. He’s still surveying the lay of the field, preoccupied and ready to move on.

Before too long I have dug deep enough to realize that all these silver wedding gifts are not buried in the soil willy-nilly. They are all coming up from a long wooden shelf that I have uncovered. Digging a little more, I break through to a spacious yet intimate, warmly lit bedroom. Clearly it is the bedroom of a young married couple. The walls of the bedroom are of fragrant cedar, as are all the shelves. There are fascinating art pieces, textiles, books, and a great big comfortable looking bed in the far corner, partially lit by candlelight. Covering the bed is a warm colored patchwork quilt.

“Fox!” I shout. “There’s a bedroom! There’s an underground room here!” I am so happy to find this remarkable and totally unexpected “treasure.”

Fox remains unmoved. He stares at me as if I am crazy to consider this bedroom the treasure. What’s more, his shovel doesn’t even have any dirt on it, as if he hadn’t broken any ground with it yet at all. More than a little impatient with me now, Fox believes that I have trespassed on someone else’s property and doesn't want to have anything to do with it.

“Well,” he says curtly. "I’m not putting all that stuff back in there. Not today. Not unless there are two 7:30’s!”

He implies here that we have to be back at the little hut by 7:30, which time is too close now to attempt putting back all the silver where I found it. He seems to be saying that we will never make it back on time – not unless there’s another 7:30 on the clock, a 7:30 later than the one fast approaching. This is my interpretation of Fox’s two 7:30’s while in the dream.

I hear Fox’s words but now I am the one who is unimpressed. I turn my attention back to my discovery and I have only one intention in my heart and on my mind: “This room is mine. It’s mine to live in and it’s mine to explore. And that’s just what I’m going to do.”

END

I awake from this dream with a spring of well-being rising up from the core of my heart. The sense of well-being is blissful as I reflect on the dream images. They were more real than real, as I sometimes say about dreams of this nature. Everything was authentically earthy, and digging in the field was a physically satisfying exercise. All of this I find deeply compelling.

I consider the “two 7:30’s” and I believe they must be references to Bible chapters and verses. I open my Bible and explore the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 7, there are two verses – 32 and 33 – which speak directly to my marriage paradox:

32 Therefore I would that you were free from worldly cares. For he who is unmarried is concerned in the things of his master, so as to please his master. 33 And he who is married is concerned with worldly things, in order to please his wife.


I am grateful to have this clear guidance. I find it comforting and reassuring.

The dream also smacks of Gnostic 'bridal chamber' theology. The bridal chamber, of course, is the 'marriage place', the place of union with the divine. Here are two verses from two different Gnostic scriptures. They shed a bit of light on what I'm saying.

Gospel of Philip, logion 107:

Every one who will enter the bridal chamber will kindle the light, for ... the mysteries of that marriage are perfected rather in the day and the light. Neither that day nor its light ever sets. If anyone becomes a son of the bridal chamber, he will receive the light. If anyone does not receive it while he is here, he will not be able to receive it in the other place. He who will receive that light will not be seen, nor can he be detained. And none shall be able to torment a person like this, even while he dwells in the world. And again when he leaves the world, he has already received the truth in the images. The world has become the Aeon (eternal realm), for the Aeon is fullness for him. This is the way it is: it is revealed to him alone, not hidden in the darkness and the night, but hidden in a perfect day and a holy light.


In the Gospel of Thomas there are several references to the solitary seeker, the 'loner', or monakhos. In logion 75 the lone seeker finds and enters the bridal chamber, which is of course the place of union:

Jesus said: There are many standing at the door, but the loners are they who shall enter the marriage place.

The way of the spiritual loner, or monakhos in Greek, is not one that we hear much about in the 21st century. Perhaps if the deeply spiritual life had a clearer and more integrated place in our modern world, and particularly if this aspect did, I would have had an easier time understanding my place and my way in the context of my own world. The monakhos is precisely what Gospel of Thomas translator Hugh MacGregor Ross writes about in an informative short essay of the same title:


Monakhos

There are three significant words in Thomas that have come down to us in untranslated Greek. We cannot tell whether they were originally spoken in Aramaic, but by their very nature that seems unlikely. Therefore they were spoken by Jesus in Greek, and it means that when he used them he was speaking to the Hellenists. Thomas did not have to translate them, they were not translated into Coptic, and they cannot be translated into English. All we can do is to try to grasp the meanings that Jesus intended.

The first of these is monakhos (spelt in our letters). In Thomas it is used in three logia, #16, #49 and #75. Monakhos is used only very rarely in the Bible, so we cannot gain much help from their contexts. Most western writers on Thomas render it as 'solitaires'. This derives from placing emphasis on the first half, mono- or mona- as in monastery. Because there is an idea amongst scholars that Thomas originated in or was subsequently modified by an ascetic community, it is assumed (without any discussion) that the Gospel was part of the tradition that took men out into the desert—the Desert Fathers—to live as hermits, or took them into monasteries. This occurred in about the 3rd century A.D.

However the Metanoia scholars have discerned much more, and offer a commentary of supreme profundity (logion #75): The term monakhos is without doubt the master-word of the Gospel of Thomas.

The monakhos is he who has made the two One or is engaged on an irreversible path that leads him to the One. In him, contradictions, oppositions, divisions are abolished or on the way to being abolished: the mind is reduced to its function as a servant; the ego no longer impedes the acquisition of knowledge, that is to say direct experience. The marriage place, or the nuptial chamber, is the inner Kingdom where the alchemy takes place during which ignorance is removed. The marriage place is where the illusion of duality ceases; but it ceases not by the fusion of two entities, since the One is alone, it ceases through the intuitive knowledge that nothing exists except Him, and that I am no other than Him.

We can even go further than this when we consider the context in which Jesus uses the word: #49 ... they shall stand boldly being monakhos.

So it becomes appropriate to quote from the 'Jesus untouched' book: "To stand boldly as a monakhos requires a certain sort of Courage, with a kind of determination and resolution. To walk one's spiritual life with independence, without going with the herd, whether that be in the community or within the family. It is because what Jesus came for was new, something different. That Courage resides in and comes from the Real Self."

H.McG.R

Finally, much Bible scholarship in recent years has focused on the senses in which the word eunuch is used in Matthew 19:11-12, where there is good reason to believe it is used in some places as a euphemism for 'homosexual'. This makes a lot of sense:

10 The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."

11 Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

I do.

Mattai the Preacher offers insight about the original Aramiac context of verse 12:

The Aramaic word m'haym-ne (plural) is translated as eunuchs here, but the root meanings of this word in this form are: trusted ones, faithful ones and believers. These "trusted ones" were also servants such as chamberlains, eunuchs and officers. In addition, m’haym-ne meant homosexual males because they were trusted around women that were married or were not of their family. They weren’t a threat in committing adultery with another man’s wife or in having premarital sex with the women of the nation.



[Photo: Eenar]

Jesus: Gangadhara

Lord Shiva is known as Gangadhara, the 'bearer of the Ganges'. The sacred Ganges River is said to descend from heaven, but it must pass through Shiva's dreadlocks to break its fall. Otherwise the impact of this mighty river would destroy the Earth on contact. This imagery reminds me of the dream of nectar descending from Jesus's crown. [Jesus: Let the Little Children Come to Me below]

Jesus: "Let the Little Children Come to Me"

02.25.2003 Dream:

My Guru has taken me with her to teach me a lesson intended just for me. I am standing at Ameyananda’s side, shoulder to shoulder, before the altar at a simple, nondescript church. Her flame colored silk gown falls straight down from her shoulders, making an elegantly glowing line from her thick head of black hair to the gray stone floor. Ameyananda is looking reverently at the cross that hangs on the wall high above the altar. Her focus is complete. Her shakti, her spiritual energy, is fully concentrated on the significance of the cross. As I feel her shakti reaching a crescendo of intensity, an immense marble statue of Jesus erupts from under the floor of the altar and fills the space before our eyes. With a lit candle in her hands, Ameyananda offers arati, waving the candle in a clockwise motion while praying in the following way:

Oh my Lord, I worship at the fountain of your feet.
Oh my Lord, I worship at the fountain of your heart.
Oh my Lord, I worship at the fountain of my life.

Creamy, translucent nectar springs copiously from the crown of Jesus’s head. It spills down his face, over his shoulders and chest, along his legs, and finally drips from his toes. Ameyananda places a baby bottle under one of the big toes and fills it with this nectar. When the bottle is full, she attaches the nipple and hands the bottle to me. END

This dream speaks directly to logion 22 of the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic scripture:

Jesus saw infants that were being suckled. He said to his disciples, "These infants that are suckled are like those who enter the kingdom."

They said to him, "If we then become children, would we thus enter the kingdom?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and that which is above like that which is below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male no longer be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter into the kingdom."

Jesus: "My Yoke Is Easy and My Burden Is Light"

Monastery of Christ in the Desert
Abiquiu, NM

Dream 03.25.2003:

“I will never let you fall,” Jesus says to me. He’s sitting on one of the walls along the corridor leading to the monastery's library. With these words the scene changes and we are now standing trailside on a steep mountain incline. A beleaguered man is climbing this mountain, carrying an impossibly heavy stone cradled in his arms. The stone is one cubit long and a half cubit deep; it is so heavy that with each step he has to let the stone fall to the ground. He rests a moment before picking it back up again. With each step he takes, he repeats a long, complicated mantra. Toiling, sweating, laboring under the weight of all this, when the man finally reaches the top of the mountain, he finds he is at the edge of a deep precipice. The weight of the stone he’s carrying pulls him over and down into the abyss below. All that for naught.

I turn to embrace Jesus, recognizing him as my Beloved. As I wrap my arms around him in gratitude for the lesson he has just revealed to me, his body transforms into one of the pillars along a corridor of the monastery, so I am actually clinging to him as my support by embracing the monastery, or perhaps monastic life.

People, even monks, walk by and see me holding fast to this wooden column, holding onto it amorously, and they don’t know what to think. Their puzzled expressions give away their confusion.

Now Jesus and I are walking to a wooden gate. It is the gate leading out of the guesthouse where I am staying. As I swing the gate open for Jesus, I say something of a mystical nature about being “out of time,” a double entendre suggesting that our visit, which is taking place outside of time, is now over. Jesus smiles, he gets my joke, but he responds by teaching me that time is just one of many rooms, and when he steps out of time he is not so much leaving me as he is entering another dimension alongside this one and relating with me from there.

I exit the guesthouse, following Jesus through the gate; though he is no longer visible his presence is with me as I navigate the physical world.

We arrive at a cliff's edge overlooking a wide, deep pit. This is the abyss into which the man carrying the stone fell earlier. It’s not a burning lake of fire but an impossibly deep quarry. Looking down into this pit, I can see that there is no hope of escape without intervention of some kind, be it a rope, a skilled guide, or grace.

In the pit there are throngs of people being entertained by a bizarre kind of children’s TV cowboy character. He’s dressed up in chaps, a bandana, and a wide brimmed hat, and as he swings his lasso in the air above his head, he says again and again, “Send me boys! I want boys!” Apparently this is a call for recruits of some kind, and war is implied. When he rides in my direction, I see he looks confused, deluded, and even comical. But the strangest thing is that this cowboy has no legs. His costume and his body both terminate in an obscenely large vagina. I am amazed to see that the cowboy is holding onto the phallic-shaped horn of the saddle with his vagina. This speaks to me of the fallacy of cocksure machismo, which is neither masculine nor secure.

Jesus takes me to Beverly Hills now where I am feeling at ease in the home of some old college old friends. There’s a big party going on, people are laughing, splashing and frolicking in the illuminated pool. It’s nighttime. A soothing masculine voice is singing a hauntingly beautiful melody, and the lyrics celebrate the charms of a buxom woman named Inga Binga. Mikal, my old college friend, is strumming his guitar and singing to a curvaceous blonde woman in the pool. His legs dangle in the water at poolside, his dreamy eyes gazing imploringly at Inga Binga. Mikal’s voice is soft and warm, sultry as Joao Gilberto's. I take a moment and study this man. I realize and remember how much I have always cared for him. I love him. He was once my closest friend.

I speculate how beautifully our two voices would blend if we were to sing together and wonder if it’s worthwhile to propose this to him.

Mikal has put down his guitar and is by my side now. I am hoping to talk to him about my proposal, my desire to sing beautiful songs together. As wandering troubadours we would travel the world together singing songs of spiritual love and longing. But Mikal isn’t listening. Or he is listening but not really entertaining my proposal. Instead, from right in the middle of his house in Beverly Hills he opens a wooden gate and steps into the monastery. Standing in the threshold of the monastery Mikal turns to face me. Very matter-of-factly, yet sweetly, he says, “Look at my feet and take a picture. You’ll never see them again.” Mikal closes the monastery gate and is gone.

I am back at the monastery, too, and it is midday. The atmosphere is deeply peaceful. The open sky is an expanse of high fingerlike clouds accenting the infinite blue. The monks all around me are busy with their daily activities, the candle making and animal husbandry that make up a good part of their life there. One of the monks is working in a field. As I watch him planting he tells me that I can go to any number of ‘mansions’. The monk stands up, shades his eyes with his hand and looks out into the distance, across the ubiquitous chaparral that soften the harsh aridity of desert landscape. I get the feeling that the monk can see the very mansions he has just mentioned.

I walk a little further on and come upon a nun in a Benedictine habit. She is enjoying the sun and fresh air. The sister turns from tending her section of another field and looks at me with a very sobering expression. She gazes directly into my eyes and speaks as frankly.

“It’s about time,” she says.

This is another double entendre. “It’s about time” I saw the world for what it is, and also understood what the life in Christ offers. Secondly, the monastic life is about time also, how we choose to spend our time, our life in Christ.

END

This was an extremely long and highly detailed dream. I have edited two additional scenes from the pit. The sense of the dream and its message are communicated well enough, I believe, without them.

[Photo of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, Abiquiu, NM, by Jeffrey Zoeller]

Jesus: Living Water

Journal Entry 04.07.2003:

Last night I talked to Jesus again the way I used to as a child. No dutiful, deliberate mantra repetition of his name in Aramaic - Yeshua, Yeshua - just a plain open-hearted talk and reconciliation. My heart felt broken somehow and I grew silent, eventually allowing that sorrow to do its own talking without the tongue verbalizing a single mental construct. Like this I fell asleep.

Dream:

I find myself on the ground floor of a tavern. The tavern is spotlessly clean and the barkeep and I are the only two people there. He's behind the bar drying shiny mugs and wiping down countertops. I am standing in the middle of the tavern as the barkeep watches me with a smile. He is a solidly built man in a tight white tee shirt. Though he keeps quiet, his calm, kind eyes speak volumes about his inner state. I find his presence protective and comforting, as well as uplifting. He keeps working in silence.

Everything is blue in the tavern, varying shades of blue, as if the space of consciousness itself, within which everything I am and see exists, consists of the finest blue light - soothing blue like a wash of moonlight on a cloud. Even the poured concrete floor is a fine powdery blue.

I notice now that a very light, ethereal kind of water is rising now from the floor. It is filling the tavern rapidly and in no time reaches my waist. I marvel at this water because, even though I am wading in it, I don't get wet. I collapse back into the water and gently sink down to the floor below. I'm still not wet, and yet I am supported by this water as if I were in a swimming pool or pond. From the floor below I look up to the surface. Everything above me appears just as it would from the bottom of a swimming pool, rippling, refracted, but crystal clear.

Delighted by this unearthly element, I play in the water for a good while before I am pulled elsewhere.

My attention is drawn to the next room. I leave the bar through a doorway on my right. In the corridor just inside the doorway I find two framed paintings hanging on the wall just above my head. The subject of one of the paintings is an old dark, wooden crucifix on a dreary, forsaken hilltop. As I study this crucifix it transforms into a decomposing corpse. The flesh of this corpse is actively peeling off its skeleton. The more I look at this picture, the heavier my heart becomes. Finally, I pull my eyes away and turn to face the other painting. This is a vibrant, beautiful portrat of Jesus smiling radiantly at me with a fearlessly present kind of love in his eyes.

When I see his smile and feel his love, my heart opens up to the bliss emanating from Jesus, and my body lifts off the ground ever so gently, and now my arms and hands on both sides also extend straight out from my shoulders. I find myself crucified in mid-air. The feeling overflowing my heart and washing through every cell of my body is of absolute surrender and ecstasy. Up from the core of my heart come these words, somehow enunciated simultaneously, as if I am speaking with two voices from my single mouth:

“I am healed! I am saved!”

Suspended in the air like this, crucified, my whole being undergoes an indescribable yet very palpable change. Once this inner transformation quickens and is complete within my being, I gently descend back down to the ground and find my feet again.

Overjoyed, I rush up the stairs to my bedroom now. It is an airy, bright and colorfully arranged room filled with goods and furnishings from all over the world. Sunlight flushes the room from a large window directly above the head of my bed. Through this large window and across the busy city street below, I see a handsomely built blonde man, a regal man in his prime, playing a silver flute on his 4th floor balcony. The man wears crisp white briefs and nothing more. He is disarmingly beautiful. I believe he must be an angel. As soon as our eyes meet, he pulls the flute away from his lips, smiles at me with an exquisite kind of love, and retreats behind drawn curtains into his apartment. In total joy, in key with the man with the flute across the way, I jump on my bed like a happy child, chanting over and over: “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

A kind-eyed, warm-hearted man enters the room now. He has glowing chocolate brown skin, and he watches me with a sweet smile on his face. He is like a brother to me, though I don't really know who he is. He is happy to see me this way and greatly entertained by my singing and jumping on the bed. END

Three years after I had this dream I traveled to Abadiania, Brazil, to meet the healer John of God. My guide made arrangements for our group to stay at Hotel Amazonas. When I arrived at this hotel, I realized that it was the tavern from this very dream.

Jesus: A Final Note on Baptism of the Spirit

Later in the same week of the dream of being initiated by John the Baptist [see Baptism of the Spirit, above], I was in Old Ellicott City, MD, where I came across a used bookstore called Grampa’s Attic. There I found a book by Charles Guignebert entitled Jesus [University Press Books, NY. 1956]. Guignebert was a professor of the History of Christianity at the Sorbonne.

Now let’s look at what Professor Guignebert has to say about John 3:23 and what baptism might have been in those ancient days:

John 3:23 informs us that it was at ‘Aenon near Salim’ that John baptized, because he found plenty of water there, but according to Eusebius this locality was situated far to the north in the valley of the Jordan, almost as high as Scythopolis (Beisan), that is, on the borders of Galilee. Certainly there is nothing to prevent the Baptist from having gone as far up as that, but when it is observed that Aenon means ‘springs’ and Salim means ‘peace’, it rather suggests that the writer took the Forerunner [John] to ‘the springs of peace’ for purely symbolical reasons. [p. 153]

Clearly, I have very good reason to believe that John did indeed baptize at Aenon near Salim.

Now, about the Johannine baptismal rite itself, Guignebert has this to say:

His baptismal rite is a matter of great uncertainty. We do not even know how he administered it, nor what part he, personally, took in the ceremony. Whether the penitent himself plunged into the water, after having announced his metanoia [change of heart, ie: conversion], whether John pronounced any invocation over the baptized, are questions to which we can give no reply. [p. 154]

My sense is that my baptismal experience in the vision is, in fact, the reply.

And now here is the coup de grace. From the First Epistle of John 3:23 we read:

23 And this is his commandment, That we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another as he commanded us.

Please now consider the dream of baptism by John, and the verses cited above, as you read the following words of Jesus:

But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom my father will send in my name will teach you everything, and remind you of everything which I tell you. Peace I leave with you; my own peace I give you; not as the world gives, I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:26 - 27

And who but the Comforter could have inspired this dream and taught me its scriptural significance?

Jesus: Baptism of the Spirit

Dream 02.2002:

With walking staff in hand, wearing a threadbare tunic, I am wandering in a reedy marsh, loosely following a rocky, shallow riverbed. Murky pools of stagnant water fan out all around me. After what feels like hours of wandering this way, my eyes fall on a sight that stops me in my tracks.

What I see at the far end of an especially large pool is a group of brilliant anthropomorphic figures. They are wise elders, they have been watching me, and it is clear they have been patiently awaiting my arrival also. There are five or six these beings of golden light, shimmering like mirages and yet not mirages at all. In fact, it seems as if my eyes cannot fully take in the light emanating from them, so they appear as vibratory frequencies rather than solid bodies.

Without saying a word, they gently draw me toward them, as if I am a fish hooked at the heart to an invisible cord which they are reeling in. I step into the water and trudge through the algae and scum until I am waist deep, the muck under my feet oozing up through my toes. I keep moving forward, almost somnambulantly, and the further I go, the more peaceful I feel. In a moment I find I am in too deep. Yet I don’t mind this because I am as weary as I am at peace within myself. I am so deeply at peace, in fact, that my peace of mind resonates like a radio frequency throughout the environment all around me. My peace deepens into bliss now, and I simply cannot move another step. Like pharaoh lying in his tomb, I fold my arms across my chest and gently, in a state of total surrender, collapse backwards into the water.

Floating on my back, arms folded across my chest, I deeply intone again and again, “Ommm … ommm … ommm.” I hear Om echoing back to me from every stone, from the river, from the reeds, and even the sky itself. Then, suddenly, someone’s hand thrusts me under the surface of the water, pushing down forcibly on my chest. Though I am startled, I don’t worry. I cannot worry. I have completely surrendered.

Underwater now, floating slowly down, down, down, the sound of Om becomes a new sound. Instead of Om I am now chanting Home. I ponder the meaning of this, but not for too long, because suddenly my lungs, at the point of exhaustion, gasp for a breath of air. I inhale a throatful of marsh water. The water I have swallowed is flooding into my lungs when I see the image of a young man refracted in the sunlight at the surface of the water. The young man reaches into the water, takes hold of my hand, and hoists me up onto my feet again. I spit up water and algae, gasping for air as I climb to the dry bank. The youth is someone I know. His name is John. He is in his twenties and in his hand he has a stopwatch. As I regain my bearings, John holds the stopwatch up to show me how long I stayed under. The watch reads 3:23. With a big, mischievous smile on his face, as if all along we had been playing a game together, John marvels, “I can’t believe you stayed down that long!” End of dream.

I have read the Bible for almost as long as I’ve been able to read. I do not know chapter and verse, however. Nonetheless, the dream was clearly a baptism of the spirit. I felt certain upon waking that the 3:23 on John’s stopwatch refered to the Gospel of John 3:23.

This verse in the Aramaic Peshitta, the Eastern Orthodox Bible, reads as follows:

22 After these things Jesus and his disciples came to the land of Judea, and he remained there with them and baptized. 23 John was also baptizing at the spring of Aenon near to Shalim, because there was much water there; and they came and were baptized. 24 For John was not yet cast into prison. John 3:23

‘Shalim,’ of course, means ‘peace,’ and this name is highly significant because what I wrote was: “I am so deeply at peace, in fact, that my peace of mind resonates like a radio frequency throughout the environment all around me.”


[Painting: John the Baptist. Andrea del Sarto, c. 1528]

Jesus: The Anointed

Dream 08.24.1998:

In the still silence of the Brahmamuhurta*, just hours before the first cock’s crow of the morning, Jesus bathes in a roughly hewn tub of warm water. He is much manlier and more ruggedly handsome than one might imagine today. Disciples and a small group of other devotees are gathered in the intimate space of a small room where golden light of a dozen oil lamps illumines the scene. Kneeling on the right side of his tub, I hold a piece of sea sponge in one hand and a shallow vessel of warm oil in the other. I dip the sponge into the oil, then gently daub Jesus' temples. From there, I stroke his cheekbones and nose with the sponge, rubbing the oil in tenderly. His skin is the color of milky amber; it glistens warmly in the soft light of the oil lamps, prominent moles like accents on his right shoulder, brow and cheek. A day’s growth of dark beard softens his jaw line. The black curls on his head, heavy with oil, shine like a starry night, while the smaller ringlets of chest hair swirl around his coppery nipples, dark waves on a rolling, swelling sea. My heart swells also as I daub his his chest with the oil, stroking his neck and his arms with the sea sponge. This beautiful man is my Lord. My Beloved. The Lord of Love. The Friend. Jesus lifts his right hand. I take hold of it and work the oil soaked sponge between his fingers, massaging the webbing, his knuckles, his fingertips.

I get lost in this adoration.

My mind is tangled in his fingers now. I have lost all sense of separation and my lips fall on his cheek, kissing him. It is accomplished. My separate sense of self dissolves in his greater wholeness. He knows I am his, lost as I am in his presence. Now rather abruptly he rises to his feet. Warm, oily water spills from his tall, majestic physicality. Wet, dark curls define his strong carpenter’s stature. Jesus, long legged and soaking wet, steps out of the tub and walks away, taking my love with him, wafting like the fragrance of a flower.

* 4 AM is termed as Brahmamuhurta. Because it is favorable for meditation on God, or Brahman, it is called Brahmamuhurta. At this particular hour, the mind is very calm and serene. It is free from worldly thoughts, worries and anxieties. The mind is like a blank sheet of paper and comparatively free from worldly concerns. It can be very easily molded at this time before worldly distractions enter the mind. The atmosphere also is charged with more sattva, refined energy, at this particular time. There is no bustle or noise inside oneself or outside one’s home.

[Photo Credit: Emilio Morenatti]

Jesus: The Wounded Healer

09.09.2000

While absorbed in a state of deep meditation called savikalpa samadhi*:

I overhear a conversation. While grazing their flocks in a highland pasture, three doubtful and somewhat mean-spirited Nazarene shepherds are discussing their grievances and misgivings about an iconoclastic young villager named Jesus. Contemporaries of Jesus, the men are in their late teens and early 20s. What is interesting here is that Jesus has yet to take on the role of Rabbi, or Teacher, for which we remember him today. He's just a kid. Despite their grievances and doubts, these shepherds know that whenever one of their sheep is ill or attacked by a predator, they can and will to take the animal to Jesus. They know Jesus is a healer who has worked many miracles. I am somehow privy to this amusing hypocrisy.

When my discursive mind awakens and understands what it is hearing, I emerge from meditation with a start. I have no doubt that I have just been among those Nazarenes who lived with Jesus as his neighbors over 2000 years ago.

* In the state of savikalpa samadhi, the attention and the life force are switched off from the senses and the mind is consciously kept identified with the inner Self. In this state the soul is released from the ego consciousness and becomes aware of the Atman in realms beyond creation. The soul is then able to absorb the fire of jnana, inner wisdom, which "roasts" or destroys the seeds of body-bound inclinations. The soul as the meditator, its state of meditation, and the Inner self, or Atman, as the object of meditation - all become one. The separate wave of the soul meditating in the ocean of Self becomes merged with the Self. The soul does not lose its identity but only expands as would a raindrop upon falling into the ocean. In savikalpa samadhi the mind is conscious only of the timeless inner realms; it is not conscious of creation without (the exterior world). The body is in a trancelike state called absorption, but the consciousness is fully aware of its blissful experience within.

[Photo: Eenar. The Miller's Son, Kashmir]

Notes on Zero

1) Phenomena, in order to appear, require noumenal space within which to appear. Though certainly it had already been intuitively cognized previously for millenia, the birth of 'zero' as a philosophical and mathematical concept took place when awareness of this noumenal space, in which phenomena have their being, was first articulated coherently in some practical sense. As a friend and I discussed recently, it was the Indians who first articulated the concept of zero.

2) More importantly, for a more intimate perspective: What we are in reality is this very noumenal space, or Void, in which the whole manifestation, the entire universe and all of life, appears.

3) Not only the cosmos but also our bodies and our mental activities appear within this noumenal space that we are. The body that we call our own is as much a part of the visual display as a tree or a shooting star, having its own ephemeral place among appearances. Our thoughts and feelings, too, are equally a part of this display, and our incessant self-talk makes up a large portion of the 'soundtrack'.

4) But to all of these phenomena are applied the words 'neti, neti', meaning 'not this, not this'. That is, we are not these appearances but are that to which and within which they appear.

5) Thoroughly experiencing, not just conceptually understanding, our own phenomenal (physical and psychological) absence is what is meant by transcending body consciousness, going beyond the body idea. The body, along with the sense of separate selfhood, appears phenomenally within the empty and boundless space, an emptiness called the Void, which is the true 'self'.

6) You are the single imperceivable no-thing in which countless perceived 'things' appear and disappear, arising and subsiding - and this imperceivable no-thing that you are is refered to in mathematics as 'zero'.

7) This is also what 'higher than the highest and lower than the lowest' alludes to, as do 'smaller than the smallest and greater than the greatest' and 'nearer than the nearest and farther than the farthest', all well known yogic descriptions of the imponderable nature of what some call God and others call Mind. Smaller and lower and nearer than all because there is absolutely no-thing there, "it" is truly dimensionless. And yet it is also higher and greater and farther than all because it is, in a sense, the Nth dimension, the immeasurable womb of emptiness out of which the measurable dimensions flow. Thus all perceived phenomena are wholly contained within and enveloped by this no-thing that we in reality are, be they galaxies, mountains, mole hills, our own daydreams, an ocean, quanta, or a grain of salt.

8) Consider where 'you' were one year before you were born, and also where 'you' will be one year after you die. Think about that 'presence as absence' as you contemplate this line from Wei Wu Wei:

"I am the presence of the absence of all that seems to be."

9) The word 'kha' means void, vacuum, or space in Sanskrit. It also indicates the empty space at the hub of a wheel, the space through which the axle which holds the wheel in place and on course is inserted, allowing the wheel to go around and roll smoothly. When the axle and the 'kha' space fit well and the wheel turns smoothly, we call it 'sukha' - which is to say 'happiness'. When the 'kha' space and the axle are poorly fitted, and the ride is rough as a result, we call it 'dukkha' - which is to say 'suffering'. So what gets into the empty kha space and causes the wheel of suffering to turn so roughly? Self-sense, or ego; the fear-based body consciousness which is the mother of the 'me and mine'.

10) 'Kha' in Sanskrit shares the same Indo-European root as English words like excavate, cavity, cavern, and cave of the heart.

11) Think of a stainless, flawless mirror, void of images yet capable of reflecting anything presented before it perfectly. Suddenly, however, rather than reflecting objects appearing somewhere outside it, this perfect mirror is now generating countless streams of images arising right within itself. Of course that empty mirror, stainless, void, free of all "images", is you, the real you. Consciousness arises quite spontaneosly as images, and you call this your 'birth', lending to the spotless mirror a series of sensory patterns out of which narratives grow, and with these narratives an I-sense, which is the sense of self called ego. Suddenly, after 25, 59, or 92 years of serialized self-imagery, all on their own these streams of sensory images spontaneously subside, run out, disappear, and this is what we call death. The self-narrative no longer has sensory input with which to sustain the sense of self, and the ego which relies on this input now finds itself insubstantial and redundant. "I am not the 'I' I thought I was!" And now the ego, along with its independance, its individuality, and its personhood, dissolves like a lump of salt in the ocean of non-being. The stainless mirror, the no-thing that you really are, once again free and clear of reflections, remains unchanged: zero.

12) Imagine a "frameless" window. (Don't imagine a wall). That frameless window is where you experience Consciousness. Everything that passes before the frameless window of your Consciousness is what you are conscious of. But it is you who are the frameless space in which Consciousness arises, manifests creation, and in time disappears. You are the frameless space which abides with or without the Consciousness, and that is precisely where and when the 'here and now' meet eternity.

Gaucho Country

7.7.05


I'm at an outdoor party with a few garrulous Brazilian rancher friends, dream companions that I've never seen before - strapping, jovial guys in tight jeans, thick mustaches, shiny belt buckles, and eye-catching gaucho boots and hats. We laugh and drink heartily, corny jokes tossing between us like corks on the ocean.

Shooting the breeze beneath a palm-thatched roof, my train of self-thought is utterly derailed by the good time I'm having. My self-concern has bled into the surrounding scene, and I've lost track of myself altogether. Suddenly one of the handsome gauchos calls out to me and asks, "Hey! So, what've you been up to lately?"

"Me?" I reply in a matter-of-fact tone. "I've just been coloring myself in."

Coloring myself in. I awake with these words spilling audibly off my tongue. For the next few days I could not stop thinking about them, their myriad of implications. How does one color oneself in?

Twisting His Long Dark Curls Between His Fingers

30 October 2008

Last night I lay in bed and asked for a clear sign that the proposed move to Brazil would be the right move for me to make at this time in my life. When I fell asleep I had another vision:

I am in coastal Brazil in my robin's egg blue bedroom. I’m with my lover, whom I love like I have never loved before. It is like this: He is the love in my heart, the essence of my heart, manifest in human form before my eyes. In relationship with him, I now know what love is - or to put it more aptly, what being truly in love with the other myself, my soul mate, is.

He's lying on the bed, twisting his long dark curls between his thick fingers, watching TV as I'm folding clothes. We are talking about nothing in particular but it's intimate talk. We live together and we clearly belong together, and there is no question about it. It is what is, and it's better than right and good. The refrain that comes up again and again in our talk is a gente vai ver, and a gente pode comer, and a gente acha logo . . . A gente, a gente, a gente: "We, we, we."

Finally, I am kneeling on the floor next to where he is lying on our unmade bed, under the half-drawn mosquito netting. The TV drones on softly in a lilt of soft blue tones as we look into each other's eyes, and then, overcome, sweep each other into a deep and rich, loving embrace. I kiss him. He kisses me back. We are so deeply in love, we so solidly belong together, and this is the taste of my life in Brazil with him. Somatically at home in my skin, I am well on every level. I hear a hauntingly beautiful love song playing and it closely matches, in music, what I am experiencing within my heart of hearts. It's Ivete Sangalo: Se Eu Nao Te Amasse Tanto Assim. 000

I wake up, my heart tender, pounding, drenched in profound love from the very core of my being, a feeling so deep from a nourishing physical and spiritual intimacy I have never felt before in my life. I am moved beyond thought, certainly beyond words. I want to cry because I now know what I have been missing - and it's a fundamental piece of my heart, essentially it’s a chunk of my well-being. One last detail: his kiss tasted like a salt lick. Strange, but the symbol and its significance are totally a propos.

To See this Beautiful Thing Just as It Is

4 July 2008

Couldn't sleep. At 2 AM I went outside to discern where exactly the loud noise of pumping water was coming from. Of course it was the huge water tank above my room, which is silent by day. But when I opened the door, the brilliant, sparkling stars threw themselves at my eyes. A cloudless night. Scorpio bright and clear in the southeast sky, and the Milky Way spilling over southern Brazil. I closed my bedroom door and reclined on the lounge chair by the pool. Bathing in the starlight, looking at the awesome sky over my head, a shooting star flashed and darted south. And it occurred to me, Yes, you could wish upon a falling star - wishing for yet one more thing, material or otherwise, among so many things you have already - or you can just say Thank you for having both the eyes and the opportunity to see this beautiful thing just as it is.

Dattatreya

An old devotee friend approaches now and asks if I'd consider collaborating with her on writing a book of new teachings. I am reluctant to engage in any such activity. Meanwhile I notice a pure stream of shakti entering my subtle body through the sole of my right foot. It is a wonderfully vibrant sensation. I look at my foot to see where this energy is coming from. I am standing on a book. I lift my foot and see the book's cover: I Am That. But instead of those words printed in gold, there is in their place a warmly glowing image of Dattatreya as golden light.

I Look Into a Triangular Framed Mirror and See

4 July 2008

My back is peeled open as a clean incision is made down my spine and the skin folded back revealing the whitish undertissue. In rows flanking each side of my spine the astral surgeon implants dozens and dozens - and ultimately hundreds - of small dime-sized platinum batteries.

The Voice explains: “You will need both the positive and the negative ions.”

I look into a triangular framed mirror and see my ether-body, which is composed of countless lights shaped like small precious stones. Resembling a coat of mail, albeit of bright, luminous colors, my ether-body is not shaped like a human form but is a flowing cascade, like a waterfall, in the spectrum of the rainbow. There is no end to this ether-body: the more I look, the more there is of it to see - up and down, as well as within. I understand that this is the work being done this summer: the reconciliation of my current self-concept with the integrity of my formless essential being.

I ask the mirror what the karmic roots of the misfortune in my present life are. In response, the reflection in the mirror overwhelms my senses, and I am now enveloped in it.

I am a European explorer in the early colonial period in woodland North America. I am in fact a bounty hunter, clearing indigenous people from the land to make room for white settlers. My men and I flush a young Native man, a ‘brave’, out of the bush. It’s as if we were hunting pheasant, which strikes my heart hard as that part of myself which had asked the question watches the scene unfold. The young man, who could not have been more than 19 years old, makes a break for the river, dives in and submerges himself for as long as possible, letting the current carry him along underwater. I order my men to catch up and kill him. I order them to kill any other Native people they encounter along the way. “Make the message loud and clear: There is no more room for Indians in this territory.”

The scene becomes less literal. The red bark of the surrounding trees peels off and stands before my mind’s eye, my dream eye. The red bark is suspended in the air. 000

When I awake I think of the red bark as red skin, as in hunting “redskins” like beavers. There was the remnant memory of an aspiration: “How many redskin pelts will I bring back to the settlement this time? The pride of a perverse kind of heroism was in that aspiration.

The image of the red tree bark extends and becomes a metaphor for the destruction of not only Native people but of the forests, and then the planet´s integrity, its balance. Disease is to the human body what the destruction of Native peoples and global warming, etc., are to humanity and to the planet. The two go hand in hand. If I am not karmically the spiritual reincarnate soul of that bounty hunter, then perhaps I am in this body carrying the soul debt of the transgressions of some major ancestral actions. A thought.

Also, my own skin is red and in the dream it was being peeled back like the bark of the tree. In Costa Rica there’s a tree called the Indio Desnudo. The Naked Indian. It too has a beautiful deep copper bark.

Tantric Jazz and Sand Tangerines

5 July 2008

In a grand but modern hotel in a world to come, a future beyond the imagination, I am going to visit Faisal on the fourth floor. Entering the elevator I am surprised to find that it travels at high velocity and laterally, horizontally, instead of vertically.

Once at Faisal's place, I see him behind a sliding glass panel, working at his computer in a dimly lit room. Erica is there with him, standing at his shoulder. They are mixing the sound levels of the strange music I hear coming out of the walls, the furniture, the floor - out of the atmosphere.

The music is exquisite, extraordinary, transporting my body into undulating waves of prana, shakti, chi, as I dance sensuously, like a warm, slowly burning flame, around a small circular coffee table. "What's the name of this song?" I ask, feeling as if I've just tasted an unanticipated plane of heaven. "Sand Tangerine," Faisal answers.

I notice there are large fruits on the coffee table, about four or five of them, nectarine shaped, whitish with a peach blush. The fruits are not tangerines. Or maybe they are. Maybe they are sand tangerines. The mysterious fruits on the coffee table are also dancing to the exquisite music.

"Quincy Jones wrote the original composition," The Voice says. "But the media weren't ready for tantric jazz at that time."

Until just now the song had remained unknown. 000

eric's window

pink turning
krishna-blue clouds
blow east
swift like a caravan
of flying carpets
carrying
three magi
home

mingled
scents of
frankincense
and myrrh
van gogh-ing
gogh-ing
gone

and those
several planes flying
into lax as night's
inkwell spills over the city,
earnest as moths diving
into a gas lamp
just outside
the frame

the final wisp
of the helicopter,
an errant honeybee
bumbling home
late to the hive
after drinking
his fill of nectar

or
is it a firefly
understanding
before it's too late

impulsively
consciously

wanting always
to be present

its life so fleeting,
willing and believing
itself able to follow
the sun

beyond the far
dark western horizon
to the other side