Spiritual Anomaly
Hi, Davie here, I’m the one who snuck into Heaven through the book door.
I was born a Baby Boomer to a Marine Veteran from Texas and his Indiana wife both of which ended up in California because of the war. They were people that came through the Depression and WWII. They believed in Jesus and hard work, and like all post-war parents, moved their family out to the suburbs to get away from the hustle and bustle of city living.
By all intents and purposes, I should never have come to this. I was raised to love Jesus (only on Sunday), work hard, love football and America, and don’t take no crap from anyone. One has to fight their way to the top through hard work, and maybe, hard punches.
To bad too, because I was just the opposite. I was a cowardly, lazy boy. I just wanted to have fun. Not only that, I had a sense of humor and a mean streak. This set my mother on me in a big way and I was constantly in trouble. I was criticized and beaten. Wait! This is not a sad song. I’m not complaining. I brought it on myself. Hell, I was a rebel, I ditched church and responsibility every chance I could. I was a thorn in everyone’s side. Eh, wadda a you goin’ to do? I was a bad penny.
SO, it stands to reason that when the 60s came around I was one of the first in the drug line. I was going to get my kicks on Route 66. Literally, we use to race cars on Route 66. Anyway, I started taken drugs for kicks but I got into psychedelic drugs and things changed quickly.
At first it was, pretty colors, weird patterns, crazy visions, Wow Man, Far-out! But then one morning I was sleeping in the camper out in front of the house (I told you I was a bad seed, I was in the camper because I was kicked out of the house and was sneaking into the camper at night for a place to sleep), when one of my friends woke me and asked me to stay awake and talk to him. He appeared to be in a panic state and I was too tired to deal with that. Good Lord, can’t he understand that I had been smoking hashish and drinking all night? I can barely open my eyes. But he insisted. He kept saying something like, “you don’t know what I’m seeing, you can’t understand,” something like that. I told him to go away and leave me alone. He handed me a pill and said, “you’ll understand if you take this.” I told him if it would make him happy and if he’ll leave me alone I would take it, and I did. As I fell back to sleep I heard him say, “Please stay awake with me, please!”
When I woke again he was gone and in his place was a feeling of anxiety. I was anxious and I didn’t know why. I was lying on my stomach in bed and I opened the curtains of the camper and looked out. It was a beautiful day, too beautiful. Everything appeared to be lit up, like it was shining. My God, everything was so colorful, so bright and shiny. What the hell was going on? As I look towards the mountains I observed pillowing white clouds against a bright blue sky and out of the right side of my peripheral vision something radiant came flying into view and my field of vision exploded into distorted patterns. My body immediately started melting into my immediate surroundings. I was merging into, into what?? Suddenly I perceived a vast radiance approaching. As my body started to merge with everything, the very essence of my being, my life force, began to dissolve into this vast radiance. Like sugar into water, my very soul was merging with the radiance.
Sounds good huh? NOT TO ME!!!!! I immediately started to grab on to anything, everything. I began to scream for help. I started shouting out a warning to anyone, everyone, “turn around, it’s a dead end, it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s a dead end!!!!”
I hit the door of the camper, but whatever I touched seem to melt into me. My body kept trying to merge with its surroundings. The first thing I saw was my father coming out of the door of the house. He ran to me and scooped me up. He said, “it’s alright son, you just have a monkey on your back.” Oh no, my Dad thinks I’m on heroin. But in hindsight, he was right, I had the Monkey-Man on my back and he didn’t like seeing his own demise.
My father laid me on his bed and I felt myself ascend. It felt natural and before I knew it I was in the upper corner of the room looking down on my body as my father sat on the edge of the bed holding my hand. I felt like an all-knowing shining star. There were no thoughts accompanying this state of awareness, just a feeling of benevolences and love.
Within seconds (it seemed) I felt myself descending and I opened my eyes. I was back in my body. That is, I now felt that old familiar feeling that I was located in the middle of my head again. However, no one was there. The room was empty. Just then my mother open the door. She still had a worried look on her face. She said, “Your friend is here”. In walked the man who had given me the pill. He was smiling. He looked at me and said; “now you know.” He instructed me to go with him. Without a second thought I arose and walked with him. However, now it was different. When I arose it was effortless, as if I wasn’t doing it. It was the same when I walked. Also, there was no internal dialog, no thoughts. Everything just happened, without the need for me to do it. I just felt like I was witnessing something happening, but was not a participant.
We got into his car and drove into the very same mountains that I had just witnessed exploding into nothingness just a few minutes before. Or was it hours? Days? Time was now gone. Halfway up the mountains my friend spies a nice little hill with long grass and wild flowers growing on its slopes. He pulls the car off the road and turns to me and says, “Lets climb that hill.” As we ascend the hill I begin to get that melting feeling again. My hands and feet seem to be merging with the hill. I call out to my friend that I can go no further and I turned and laid on my back looking skyward. He came down the hill and lay next to me. Once again big, white, clouds floated through a beautiful blue sky. One of the clouds was positioned between us and the sun, casting us in its shadow. Out of nowhere I blurted out, “that cloud is beautiful but it blocks the sun,” to which my friend replied, “do you know what you do then?” Before I could answer he stretches his arms, held together, out before him and said, “you say, part clouds,” And with that he spreads his arms apart and the clouds parted to reveal the sun. This did not surprise me in the least. In fact, intuitively I expected it. I didn’t know why. There were no analytical thoughts going through my mind that would support what I had just witness. Yet I accepted it like I would accept the fact that the taxi stopped to pick us up when we flagged it down. It was just expected and it seems perfectly natural.
We got back in the car and started back down the mountain. And as we descended I seem to descend as well. Gravity seemed to take hold. It no longer felt effortless to move about. Nor did it feel like everything just happens, without my participation. Now I felt the weight of things. I felt myself embodied so to speak. The internal dialog began to run, and man, did it have questions.
Apparently, according to my friend, what we both had taken was a powerful dose of LSD. He told me that when I fell back to sleep he went home (he lived just up the street) and sequestered himself in his bed. When he came “down” enough to venture outside he again went to see what happened to me. He had given me the pill in the middle of the night and he returned to my parent’s home around noon only to find that my mother had stayed home from work because I was so sick. He asked to see me and the rest I was aware of.
That experience had been both enlightening and terrifying. Therefore, part of me never wanted to take LSD again, but the other part just had to know what had happened. Two months later, in the Mojave Desert I again was on LSD and again I was swept to the brink of infinity, however this time it happened so fast the ego had no time to grab hold of anything. My body quickly melted into everything and my soul dropped into the vastness. As they say, the drop of water fell into the ocean and became the ocean. Better stated, the drop of water found out it wasn’t a drop at all, it was the ocean all the time. The feeling of being a drop of water was an illusion.
However, I returned! I didn’t want to return, it just happened. One minute, everything blew away revealing nothing but infinite formlessness, and yet, it all returned. Atom by atom, molecule by molecule, cell by cell, it pieced itself back together and once again the body and the world was there. Yet, I could feel the Infinite Light behind all things. I perceived all things as one infinite thing. All things manifested from the One Source. And all things radiated that that Light in joyous, loving, peace.
However, once again, the experience was fleeting. I came DOWN! And this was the beginning of my spiritual adventure. I tried LSD and other drugs again, trying to re-experience this joyous union of life, but to no avail. I began to study every book I could get my hands on. I got a Guru and started mediating. I change my diet, my friends, my habits, anything I could do to get back to IT.
I was told at the time that I didn’t stay in the light because I used drugs to get there. I was told that I would have to be patient. That I may have to study, to meditate, to sacrifice, to do good works, for many, many, years, nay, lifetimes, in order to re-establish myself in the light and retain it permanently.
Well, like I said, I was a normal American kid. When I want something, I want it now. Lord, give me patience, and I want it now. I got discouraged after a few years and decided, the hell with it, I think I’ll concentrate instead on a career, and perhaps find a mate. Isn’t that what I was suppose to do before all this LSD stuff, all this spiritual stuff?
I did both; I got a career, married, and raised a family. In fact, I got two wives. I thought that was big of me (or is that bigamy)? Actually, I married twice, had one child from each union, and am happy to say, both children are wonderful human beings, even though my marriages didn’t work. They didn’t work because my drug use didn’t go away like my spiritual enquiry did. It just degenerated into alcohol and amphetamine abuse. The first marriage ended because my wife did not agree with its use. The second ended because I had sobered up and didn’t agree with my wife’s use of it. Either way, they ended.
I found myself in the mid 90s and in my late 40s raising my second child by myself. At the same time I found computers and the Internet, and on that Internet I found the Skyhero website. This website belonged to Bill Cozzolini who is the author of the book, The Path. I read the book and my spiritual life opened up again. This time, no drugs.
I can’t say I feel much of anything. I don’t have any experiences of oneness, of infinite joy, love, peace, or anything for that matter. That is why I don’t regret my use of LSD. I might not be able to experience any of that now, but I know it’s true. Without it, I would have never been able to read and understand the books I read now.
I can say with certainty, not intellectually, not philosophically, but actually, that all is God, and God is all. God is the substrate of every manifest form. God is the infinite formlessness that all form precedes from. We are that infinite formlessness, which was never born and will never die. We are eternal, infinite, joyous, loving, peaceful consciousness, and that consciousness is one consciousness. We are all One.
So tell us Davie, why do you still read books, and go to message boards, and appear to be searching for something when you already know who you are???? Because, like I told you, I’m a spiritual anomaly. One who knows, but doesn’t live the life spiritual. One who has seen, but can’t seem to bring it to bear on his everyday existence. One who snuck in the back door of Heaven and was thrown out the front door. Why? I don’t know, that’s why I’m here.