BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.... it was the new year and I had diarrhea. The Indians were turning on the music full blast. I was taking the loss of my Tibetan Family very hard. I was stuck with Rosie and Nanina, a French student of Bero's and a German dharma groupie. "It's getting worse and worse, Michael," lamented Rosie. "Ten years ago there was nothing here. Now the Indians are destroying this place," she sighed. But Rosie got me to a doctor. I was saved in the nick of time. Nanina was also sick and spent most of her time lying nude in her room. She asked me if I wanted to fuc k her. I said no. But it was Bero's appearance during his difficult time that inspired me. He was an ox of a man, beefy and huge. My head would swell and shoot sparks whenever he passed me. I followed him to the stupa and sat with him inside the giant monolith's guts; we faced a huge glowing Buddha figure. It seemed to sit in suspended anima tion.
All Buddhist statues pierced you with their weird trance. I began to feel light and free. I heard the Buddha speak: CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE. My rib-cage was smarting. I could feel Summer's subtle body. It was denser than mine. She had a lot of witchcraft behind her. "Don't get lost in a dream world with her," the Buddha warned. "Balance your energies CORRECTLY and CONSISTENTLY, RELEASE MORE!" I could hear the New Year crowds heaving and barging outside. It sounded like empty bottles rolling and clanking away. But in a strange muffled sort of way. I gazed ruefully at the floor. Memories of Bero's frescoes flooded my mind. I saw strange half-clad figures; they tied knots in their heads and had deep nasty stares; these were the wrathful Maha-siddahs, the crazy adepts Jim had so admired. I started to cry. I was disgusted with Jim and at the same time missed him terribly. Jim's weird legacy still haunted me. Summer was on my mind, too. Was she also a new sacrificial victim? Was she also a victim or just another perpetrator of the black arts? Did she abuse her powers and skid off into an illness spiral? My head began to tingle. Bero was getting up. A strange humming entered my ears. Bero was blessing me, I could feel it. Now was the time to plunge into the unknown.
I took a bus to Gaya, a miserable and ugly town, dark, intense, menacing. A medical student who had befriended me at the stupa showed me off to his roomies. These young Indians were obsessed with the dazzling mammon of the west. My Olympus camera and worn-out Walkman were minutely inspected, and I was hosted to a dinner prepared on the premises and served steaming hot. My hosts wanted visas for the promised land. I was noncommittal.
I was on my way to Calcutta. My train arrived on time in Gaya. I was in desperate straits. I was running out of money in a foreign land at the very start of a brand new year. My hosts were from Uttar Pradesh and were looking for a hustle. They guided me to my cabin and left me in a Bengali world. The screech of the train pulled me back from my self-imposed trance. I was frightened and now had to face KALI. The black Madonna of India, licking the world's sins with her lethal tongue, making my movements absolutely mad. No words, no words .... inside KALI'S mouth. I began hearing her haunting refrain .... CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, KOFFEE, KOFFEE .... CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, KOFFEE, KOFFEE. I looked outside my window and saw a wall of thick haze and tropical vegetation. I could see industrial infrastructure everywhere. If Delhi was like Beijing, than Calcutta was like Shanghai. The train crawled into Howrah station.
Howrah was a monster. All kinds of noise and squalor, videos and beggars, huge lines and crowds, touts too. I was in shock. I could not afford a taxi and didn't know which bus to take, so I walked across Howrah bridge. It was mesmerizing, zillions of people and moving objects swarmed over the bridge in both directions. The smog was astonishing, like a vision from hell. The Hooghly river was barely visible. Calcutta was madness.
I was inside KALI's belly and a monster was now shaking up and down, first sideways, quick walking, sitting, then crossing its legs, then uncrossing them, then getting up and rubbing its hands, now rubbing its fly, hitching its pants, then slitting its eyes to see everything, then grabbing me by the ribs, and screaming, screaming. This was KALI'S song. There was no money waiting for me at the bank. I had given my stepmother the wrong wiring instructions. I had to contact her and start from scratch. money was running out and I was in a hot spot. I found lodgings at a Theravadan temple, just in time. I plunged back into the maelstrom and sent two telegrams.
Then I went to visit KALI for she was the queen of Calcutta. Her face was everywhere. I found relief from the heat and noise in the unfinished subway system and zoomed down to Kaligut. Here KALI'S blood lust was satisfied. Priest touts showed me the sacrifice altar where goats were killed every morning. I poured water and flowers over a shiva lingam, a kind of stone penis , and said prayers for the family. I swished around some incense and got slammed for a donation. There was red paste on my forehead. The cry of ravens was everywhere. Beggars roamed in every corner smelling of strange purification. I thought about Brown Eyes. KALI knew how to work with the elements, with blood and water. Here I was exactly one year to the day since my final puja at the Burmese place. I could taste Summer's honey suck le breath. The world was in turmoil. The hard-liners were gaining ground all over the world. Exotic nickknacks and fast food absorbed my attention as I walked back at night. Men piss ed right on the street. Smoke was everywhere. I had survived my first day in Calcutta. KALI was laughing and taunting me, then making love to me, she was now my consort for this nightmare part of my journey. I was really protected
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I cracked the Watergate case and helped bring down Tricky Dick Nixon, but you have to understand that Dallas, Vietnam, and Iraq were all journalistic shams.
Why?
Read my Rolling Stone article where I show that over 444 national media journalists are in the direct service of the CIA.
I am a Czech psychiatrist who experimented with LSD in the sixties and saw in my patients a common experience when under the drug....
All had transpersonal experiences where they under went multiple kinds of mind states simultaneously. Past life, birth, shamanic journeys into other psychic realms, and I termed this entire process a series of COEX matrices.
I don't have time to go into detail.
I saw that my patients were tuning into other mind channels normally inaccessible to them in " normal " states of consciousness....
Many of my patients were having a spiritual emergency and I needed to go beyond the restricted paradigms of western psychology and find new ways of treatment.
I am a historian who saw cycles of rise and fall and learned to have double vision by comparing one culture with another and past cultures with cultures of today. I also delved deeply into religious history and saw the rise and fall of religions as the main engine of human evolution....
Technology being second in importance and the ultimate product of religious paradigms....a true paradox.
Om mane padme Hum Om mane padme Hum Om mane padme Hum Om mane padme Hum Om mane padme Hum Om mane Padme Hum Om mane Padme Hum
The poor seeker landed at Lhasa airport with little interest in explorations of the mind.
Boundless wastelands and stirring streams fiercely greeted me. The new moonscape facing me was weird and hypnotizing. The infinite vastness engulfed me. I frequently felt these ancient rhythms.
The dust....
The seeker was karmically ignorant. The seeker was terribly self-centered. The seeker was on the periphery. The seeker still thought there was a goal. The seeker still felt there was a distance. The seeker was still seeking.
There were strong flashes of an ancient life just barely being grasped here by a mind that was seriously weakened. Headaches and chills. The traveler was in some desperate trouble.
So what is a mantra?
I must keep drinking more water or I shall be in the hospital tomorrow. My poor lungs ache like hell. There is something so cruel about Tibet that I cannot really describe.
So what is a mandala?
It's so powerful the way the natives prostrate and drag themselves on these long dirt paths.
So what is strong devotion?
I don't understand what I'm seeing, really....
So what is witnessing?
I stepped suddenly into the twilight zone and found no mental orientation hooks to latch onto here. The mighty Jokang left me in a daze. Disneyland, the Buddha, and Dracula were all fused dramatically inside my thoughts. This was the moment my mind encountered this higher and unknown force.
So what is mental disorganization?
Dusty pilgrims prostrated themselves on the dirt floors and dragged themselves forward. The potent smell of yak butter hit my nostrils. I entered the Jokang's noisy courtyard and then its main altar-room. Lines of pilgrims snaked themselves through the main altar-room and towards the darker and smaller rooms nearby.
(The seeker never considered himself much of a spiritual person....)
Each room had zillions of statues of the Buddha and other saints unknown to me then. Monks sat and chanted endlessly.
The pilgrims uttered the name of SHAKYAMUNI, ceaselessly.
So what is the deepest reverence?
Along the walls of the inner courtyard, prayer wheels spinned seemingly without human assistance. Shining reds, yellows, and greens captivated the curious traveler.
So what is real magic?
The priests wore these curiously curved boots. The endless statues were painted in bright hallucinatory colors. Some of the sacred statues had scary fangs and multiple arms.
So what is real power?
I walked slowly up the steps just outside the potola. The thin air forced my tired lungs to grind and labor. I trudged up the steps to the second floor and found a sublime view.
So what is this?
The Dalai Lama had fled Potola long ago. His old boots rested next to his bed and the clock on the wall was frozen at the exact hour that the master had exited his country.
So what is a real trance?
I hitched a quick ride to the Deprung monastery and quickly realized this was going to be another twilight zone experience.
So what is real reflection?
Deprung consisted of hundreds of nested temples. My eyes suddenly glazed over and my senses soon began to shut-down.
So what is real transformation?
I trudged up the mountain towards the sound of these blowing horns. I found a stream and drank some holy water. The sky was huge and pure.
So what is an ego?
I contracted some type of immodest throat infection. My sleep was dicey and restless.
So what is that?
The old sutras were stacked up against the dark walls gathering dust among the mysterious demon figures.
So what is this anything?
The monks prayed and chanted and I mentally followed their harsh sounds.
So who am I?
I felt slightly better and guessed that the worst of this ordeal was now possibly behind me.
So where am I from, really?
Lhasa sickness has struck me down again. I'm just too ill to write. The high altitude is purifying me.
So where am I going?
I took a dicey chance and biked over to the Sera Lama monastery. I saw a picture of a snake chasing a hog which in turn was chasing a bird. A mystical, endless loop which I did not fully understand.
So where is this where, anyhow?
I'm amazed by how much these Tibetan pilgrims resemble the Indians of Guatemala which I saw earlier this year, in another completely different continent. Especially, the bright colors.
So now what?
I violently slammed the walkman against the wall and it started to work again. It just had a curious and miraculous rebirth.
So then what?
I made myself a nifty Lhasa burger by wedging a piece of fried meat in between two pieces of barley bread. The Tibetans at the hotel were amused.
So when is a when a what?
I missed the gruesome sky burial, early in the morning. The bodies were hacked into small pieces and given away to the vultures. After the bones were finally picked clean, they were then pounded into a fine dust and then mixed into a dough for making these strange holy ornaments.
So how is now?
The murderous bumps on the unpaved roads suddenly began as the Potola's ghostly image disappeared from my view. I felt anxious, depressed. A kid barfed inside the bus and the stench was pretty bad.
When the bus arrived at the dark airport, my backpack got stuck between the iron seats and a furious dust storm began to smack the vehicle. I had difficulty finding my hotel room and began screaming loudly at the people sitting in the airport kitchen.
So then what?
I flew out the next day, like I flew in. A wild sleep-walker....
OK, I was a little innocent. I was married to a CIA guy and I then later turned into a bohemian artist before the hippies became vogue, but after the Beats had their day.
I turned JFK onto acid and weed. I was on a peace offensive with a few other women who were sleeping with and turning on powerful men.
I got shot less than a year after JFK bought it in Dallas.
I am considered by some scholars to be the greatest English writer of the 20th Century. I basically learned to see and write on multiple levels simultaneously.
Stream of consciousness scribbling led to COEX scribbling and I ultimately broke into the future and predicted things that happened after I died.
I consider my self a dreamtime writer with puns as my weapon of choice.
I started out writing with a linear slant and ended my life with non-linear works. If you want to know what I have to say you have to work in deciphering my codes.
If not stay with Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist.
Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are for hard-working people who like literary adventure.
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