Saturday October 31, 2009
Alto Paraiso
I have so many stories to tell you.
Yesterday Paul called me outside, “Look at this!” It looked like it was snowing from the ground up. Millions of wispy, fluttery, almost transparent or translucent insects were emerging from holes in the ground, filling the air! The holes were everywhere and each was spewing thousands of these insects. Paul says they are termites, but these are different from the ones we know in the States that eat wood. And as they emerged from under the ground, they shot straight up high into the sky. And all around us the air was filled with fluttering wings, moving from the ground up into the sky towards the clouds. How strange this land of opposites shows itself again!
Last week we were having a conversation with a young man from Alaska, now living in Pirenoplois with his Brazilian wife in an eco village, which is part of the Permaculture Institute. He was telling us how most of the life around here is underground. After seeing those termites emerge from the earth, I know what he means.
It’s magical here in so many ways. The music in the air comes from the wildlife; with so many birds and insects. Down at the end of our dirt lane two other lanes converge, each leading a different direction around opposite ends of the valley, and then climbing the mountains that encircle it. We saw again a few days ago while out for a walk, blue parrots more than 2 feet tall. Their sound is loud and wild and each evening and early morning we hear them chattering in the trees outside our window. It sounds like a schoolyard full of screaming children at play. But there are not just blue ones, there are also green, both large and small. Last week when we were still at the pousada, a blue parrot came to visit. It came close enough to feed it from our hand and stayed nearby in a low branch, apparently a regular visitor there. The little girl who lives there with her mom told me it was a female when I asked if it was her amigo (her friend) “Nao, isto a mulher” correcting my wrong use of gender. We could see the striped markings in her face, she was so close.
Our friend came to visit on Thursday and we talked of many things. He was excited to tell us about a 21 day process he wishes to undertake once he has saved enough money to cover the cost. He will travel to work in a special place to complete this training where he will go without food and water for 21 days, after which he will know how to receive all his sustenance from the energy of prana. He will no longer need to eat or drink to survive. The training is done in three stages of 7 days each, going without all food, then introducing only liquid. The details of it have left my memory – perhaps the second week is with water, though it could be tea or fruit juice. During week 2 the process cleanses and purifies the emotions and in the final week the mental processes are brought under control. He will remain in a state of meditation during the process and gain complete control over his mind. It is a radical idea but he is determined to become enlightened. I know this is possible having read many accounts of ascended beings living without food. And in fact I studied with a master, Guru Bawa, in the early 70’s who did not eat and was well over a hundred years at that time. If indeed we are not these bodies we inhabit, what need of food? These teachers we were told eat only occasionally to experience the taste of the food in some social situations where food is graciously offered as an act of love. In Yogananda’s autobiography, he speaks of similar circumstances.
The conversation then turned to Christ consciousness and he spoke of the wisdom he has gained from the Daime church and the ritual drinking of the tea, Ayahuasca. There are those who believe that Jesus Christ has returned, as so many faiths have been long awaiting, in the tea. During the ritualistic use of this sacred plant medicine, one enters an altered state of consciousness where all the wisdom of the universe is revealed. The “Christ consciousness” is realized and becomes who you are in that state, while the effects of the Ayahuasca are with you. For many people the effects are long lasting, while for others it wanes as normal waking consciousness returns. As I was listening to my friend elaborate more on this my thoughts wandered to my own experience with Ayahausca last January as I remembered the presence of the “Great Mother” instructing me in all the wisdom of the universe, revealing everything there was to know, in her loving and nurturing way. As I was returning to normal waking consciousness when the tea was leaving my body, I had the experience that I had become enlightened. In that moment I thought it would be a permanent state, that all I had learned would be a part of me and that I would now and forever continue to be enlightened. I needed to sleep for a while to recover from my journey and I woke wanting to share with Paul, everything I learned, but the words couldn’t come and the memory quickly faded away, leaving me as I had been before my journey, unenlightened, only remembering the light.
So I understood how people believe Christ has returned in the tea. For many who continue to participate in rituals, they have become changed. Many have realized Christ (or Buddha) consciousness. This by the way is the same. My friend tells me it is thought that when 30% of the people on the planet achieve this way of being, the other 70% will follow, but it is the 30% who will have to do the work. And he believes the work is through the Ayahuasca. My thoughts then went to the Catholic ritual of communion and the drinking of sacramental wine which is meant to symbolize the blood of Christ. It is thought, if I am not mistaken, that by drinking this symbolic blood of Christ, one accepts Christ which sounds to me to mean that one takes the Christ consciousness into his or her own body to become as Christ- enlightened, pure, full of love and compassion. Another interpretation…. Who is to say one is right and the other is not? And what of the sacramental wafer that represents the body of Christ. The priest places this wafer into the open mouth of the person receiving communion. This too, I would assume is for the same purpose of receiving the qualities of Christ (Buddha) consciousness. What if Christ consciousness (the body of Christ) is not in the symbolic wafer but is instead in pysciliciben mushrooms, which like Ayahuasca, take one’s consciousness to a dimension where separation does not exist. The entire planet is alive, each blade of grass, every tiny insect… all an interwoven fabric of unified consciousness. I often think about how different philosophical, spiritual and religious beliefs are merely different interpretations of the same great truths by different levels of developing consciousness. If a passage revealing divine wisdom is written in a book, say for instance a Bible, isn’t it apparent or even possible, that this information could be interpreted in many different ways depending on how the interpreter perceived him or herself in the world. Well, more on this line of questioning at another time…….
Later the same day, still visiting with our friend, we were sitting inside by an open window when his friend from the Netherlands happened by in search of another neighbor. We invited him to join us and for the next several hours were entertained by jaw dropping stories of his adventures. But before I begin to describe this next character in our unfolding drama, let me stop to say how Paul keeps remarking that he feels like we are on another planet here. To him, this experience is like having stepped through a stargate and out onto a different planet. I’ve been listening to him tell me this but having felt like I landed in a place that’s a cross between Woodstock, NY in 1968 and Boulder, CO in 1975, I wasn’t noticing how strange it was. I was feeling really homey and comfortable. But yesterday I knew what he was feeling. Walking home down the street from yoga class where we spent close to 3 hours inside a large dome, hoping to get our stiff aging bodies to be flexible enough to assume a few yoga postures, I felt the strange otherworldliness of this place and it did feel like I was living on that planet from the Stargate episode where everyone lives in peace and love and sings and dances and eats pure healthful organic foods, but has to run and hide from intruding visitors from other planets. Back to my story, how easily I digress…..
So, now that I am sharing such intricate details of these new people I am meeting, I will refrain from using names and simply say our new visitor from Holland spoke of his travels which took him to Dubai where he had been encouraged by a friend to come and set up a health center. I have heard a little about Dubai and knew it to be a place with incredible wealth. I met a woman in Abadiania last February when I was visiting John of God who came from Dubai. And my dear friend’s twin daughters were hired to fly to Dubai to perform their trapeze act for the daughters of a prince on the occasion of their sixteenth birthday party. This speaks to me of great wealth. Well I imagine this is the situation my new visitor expected to encounter and was instead regaling us with tales of a collapsed economy that sounded devastating, putting an end to his entrepreneurial hopes and dreams. He entertained us with intricate details of intestinal cleanses, which I am sorry to say don’t intrigue me as much as stories of enlightenment and various practices designed to achieve nirvana. But having lived in Boulder, Colorado, home to every form of alternative health care and treatment on the planet (or so it seemed) I am aware that there are those who believe that a clean body is the path to enlightenment. But remembering back to the days with teenagers at home, it was more that I needed to know. Leaving the topic of raw foods and colonics behind, the topic of conversation turned to a psychological model of understanding called Human Design. I was interested to hear more about this, thinking there might be some overlap with the system I am so interested in called the Enneagram. Human Design it would seem uses astrological wisdom, the placements of the planets at the exact time and place of your birth, combined with the Kabbalah and two other systems which unfortunately escape my memory at the moment, to create a DNA map. Using this map, this new friend can tell you how you best make decisions and what foods you should eat, whether they should be eaten cold or hot, or perhaps if there is only one kind of food that you are meant to eat.
Now I am withholding judgment on this and on everything new I am encountering and learning. It is what I wish to do for my own development, while in the privacy of my own home with my partner who loves me no matter how unenlightened I am, I might share an opinion or two – even if it makes me look bad! But here in this so public a display of my thoughts and emotions, I will refrain from expressing any judgment.
At the end of this day of fascinating stories, I’m afraid my all too introverted and anti social husband had gone on people overload. Today he is still recovering, though I think the yoga class had the most devastating affect on his psyche. Oh to be over fifty in a place with so many young people…. It is not always kind to one’s sense of self in the world.
So we have had several days of conversations with our friend to reflect upon and have both been having some interesting insights. I mentioned briefly a little of the history of this place and how many of the people who have been here the longest were followers of Bagwan Shree Rajneesh who later renounced his name but took the name of Osho. I really know so little about him yet and don’t wish to misrepresent him in any way, so please allow me to err somewhat in my narrative. Known as the sex guru because of his views on the freedom of sexuality, and also because of his materialistic opulence, his notoriety received more than its share of bad press. But as I learn more I am impressed with many of his spiritual teachings. This is all beside the point, but leads to an interesting observation and theory which Paul expressed to both our friend and to me. What if Osho who apparently knew of the bad times the planet would be facing in subsequent years, seeded this very special crystal laden place with pillars of wisdom by placing then young and very open women here to become the archetypical “Crones’ to be the pillars of wisdom to guide the young people to the new ways of consciousness on the planet. When he expressed this theory, I so strongly resonated with it and immediately thought of Jamie Samms book, “Thirteen Clan Mothers.” A great book, by the way, describing the Native American Indian’s reverence for the thirteen different wisdoms represented in each of the Clan Mothers. This place has been revealing in a surprising way a number of women of about my age who seem remarkably single. Not without the occasional boyfriend, but noticeably without long term relationships. Each who has ties to Osho. It’s noticeable in a place filled with so many young people and reassuring to me that there are some contemporaries I may relate in more ways to than I can with the youngsters. I am intrigued by them and hope that time will allow me to form some deep friendships here.
I thought you might find this following excerpt from Wikopedia of interest:
In 1970, when he was still known as Acharya Rajneesh, Osho was asked about his "Ten Commandments”. In his letter of reply, Osho noted that it was a difficult matter, because he was against any kind of commandment, but "just for fun" agreed to set out the following:
- Never obey anyone's command unless it is coming from within you also.
- There is no God other than life itself.
- Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.
- Love is prayer.
- To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.
- Life is now and here.
- Live wakefully.
- Do not swim – float.
- Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.
- Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.
He underlined numbers 3, 7, 9 and 10 The ideas expressed in these Commandments have remained a constant leitmotif in his movement.
I like them very much. And number 8 sounds like something Lao Tzu would teach.
From across the room, Paul has just remarked on the similarities of the names, Osho and Oceano de Sa, the former name of Yokaanam…………..
Food for thought.
All for now. We send love and blessings.