Obscure Origins
of the 8 Circuit/24 Stage Model of Evolution
-
often attributed to Timothy Leary
Introduction
While he lived, Leary claimed, and received, credit for an
ingenious "8 circuit/24 stage" model of evolution. To tell the
truth, he did not originate the theory. However, he did do an
excellent job of expanding, popularizing and "Westernizing" the
concept. The following few pages will convince you that the most
important suite of ideas which Leary received credit for during his
lifetime was actually the intellectual
property of a little
known Hindu Tantric regimen.
During 1963, while Leary's Millbrook years were unfolding in upstate
New York, the entourage of psychedelic pioneers entertained one
"Professor Adams", a guest from the Oriental Philosophy Department
of Rutgers University. Adams delivered a Hindu manuscript to Leary
and instructed him upon the occult meaning of the little Asian
jewel.
I am certain that you will enjoy this extract of the relevant pages
from the original edition of Leary's first autobiography, What
Does WoMan Want?, which
was published in 1976 by 88 Books. We have here the tale of how
Professor Adams' life was scrambled by the application of the erotic
and often dangerous Tantric information, and Tim's recollection of
the droll banter between Adams and his most famous pupil as Adams
delays and diddles before he finally turns-on Tim to the Bengali
point-of-view.
For convenience, I have split the tale into seven "Chapters." We
pick up the conversation after Professor Adams has already spent a
few weeks at the compound and has become an unlikely sexual guru to
an increasing number of the women residing at Millbrook.
- Dimitri, et al, circa 1999
Chapter 1: Millbrook, New York, August 1963
The Commodore had offered to take Professor Adams on a walk around
the estate.
They passed the two-story Bavarian Bowling Alley, with its ragged
wooden supports and enormous stone stairways and entrance turrets
along the creek to the two stone towers that supported the gate to
the forest preserve. They walked north for a half hour along the
dirt road skirting the creek. As the road turned right, Leri (sic)
motioned north. "Lunacy Hill is up there. Western view. Good for
sunsets."
The two men walked west for another half hour through the heavily
wooded terrain, and cut eastward off the road to a meadow which
swept up a grassy slope. "Ecstasy Hill," said the Commodore. The two
men climbed the slope and sat under the shade of a huge oak tree.
"Tell me about the Shiva yoga," asked the Commodore.
Professor Adams was not articulate. His large laryngeal bump wobbled
and protruded, his huge ears waggled. He rambled about Shiva/Shakti,
the union of male & female principles, maithuna, sacred fucking, the
Serpent power that resides at the base of the spine and which can be
roused by Yoga and the energy that can be obtained by spiritual
sexual linkage with the female, the eroticization of all energy, the
fact that, by means of concentration of consciousness, he had
learned to make love for hours at a time without orgasm, the basic
male/female charging of form and structure in nature, the necessity
to keep focused on and in harmony with the oceans and whirlpools of
sexual energy which were apparent to the adept, and his hopes of
attaining higher levels of consciousness and maintaining the erotic
posture through the Millbrook experiments.
Leri, to tell the truth, was confused by the lecture which was
delivered in broken, fragmented phrases, non sequiturs, nervous
giggles; uneasy demeanor which contrasted to the cool content of his
discourse.
Adding to the verbal discord were the frequent references to his
financial plight, his alimony payments, his wish to quit his
teaching job and move to Millbrook, his almost completed book of
Sufi poetry, a film script which was designed to heighten the sexual
energy of the audience, and his conviction that mastery of Shiva
Tantra would make possible acquisition of any material goal,
including money which he needed badly for his alimony payments.
The conversations with Professor Adams continued on the run while
the Commodore was mowing the enormous lawns, his favorite task, or
hoeing the garden, or lying reclined at sunset on the slanting,
green coppered roof of the mansion, smoking and drinking chilled
wine. Adams would crouch by his side; thin, knobby, intense. At
times his erotic ramblings seemed like crankish eccentricity.
Mornings, Adams would give yoga lessons. There seemed to be no fat
on his body and when he demonstrated Asanas in a ridiculously flimsy
bikini bottom, his body seemed to be a tight envelope of skin over
thin rubber muscles.
Leri was fascinated by Adams' attitude, that is, his angle of
approach. Like a lodestone, his consciousness swung unerringly to
the nearest or the most powerful vaginal source. When he entered a
room picking his way gracefully like a cat, he scanned immediately
for the female energy and pointed directly to it. His every movement
seemed magnetically hooked to Pussy which his transceivers
automatically locked into. Where he sat in the room, the posture
assumed, the gestures, his words all seemed to be part of the love
act.
To the Commodore's surprise, he discovered that this ugly,
absent-minded visitor was actually fucking the female contingent of
the Federation quite shamelessly in public without approaching
within a yard of them.
Intellectually he seemed almost moronic. Pointless stories
punctuated with a silly laugh. The men paid him little attention,
saw him as a confused, ineffectual chap who complained about his
smoker's cough and his financial problems. The women were very aware
of him, either drawn to him or repulsed by his presence. To some he
was a clown, his erotic overtures impertinent. Some of the gentle
women were irritated by his brazen seductiveness. Most sighed and
smiled at the mention of his name.
There was more to be learned from observation than from his talk. He
babbled incoherently about female electricity, recharging batteries,
about the left-hand path, finding God through the forbidden, often
saying that there was nothing personal or egoistic about his
sadhana, that any and every woman could be elevated to Shakti
posture, that every woman carried within Her, just below the surface
a divine erotic power, a simple procedure to tap into as one would
plug-in electric cord to outlet.
One night, while high in the Meditation House, he burned a third eye
above his nose with a lighted cigarette. The scab remained for two
weeks and strangely enough seemed to have made him even more
irresistable to women.
Like most Hip Hindus or Americans heavily exposed to Ganges
radiation, Adams was avidly greedy for psychedelic chemicals and
lost no opportunity to get high. As a result, his usual demeanor was
giggling flotation which led most of the male staff members and the
less sensitive females to disregard him as a harmless non-entity.
His persistence in erotic pursuit, of course, paid off.
First, a rather plain-looking Radcliffe graduate began private yoga
lessons. She was later noticed wandering down the hall of the
visitors' wing with a cheerfully dazed expression on Her face. There
was no question that Her figure improved, her disposition mellowed
and that She turned Her consciousness towards Adams, like a flower
to the sun.
A similar experience happened to a jazz singer of fading reputation
and a successful, if not sensational, fashion model. Most of the
I.F.I.F. staff, centered on their own research and their own psychic
evolution, remained oblivious to the effect that Adams' yoga was
having on some of the residents.
It seemed to be Adams' custom to give color reproductions of Hindu
paintings to anyone who seemed receptive. After a while, whenever
one saw a Tantric design or a Yab Yum drawing, one thought of Adams.
As the weeks unfolded and as the parade of blissed-out, softly
smiling ladies slid gracefully up and down the corridor leading to
the Yogin's room, Commodore Leri, whose own busy schedule of
lecturing, writing, and press interviews kept him distracted from
the daily details of Millbrook life, finally found time to talk to
Adams.
Chapter 2: Millbrook, New York, October 1963
It was an afternoon in early Autumn and the air had that sharp
crispness about it, an ambiance very different from summer's
languor, an undeniable scent of winter's coming.
As though to underline the changing season, maple branches slashed
lines of flaming red . . . first flare promise of the weeks of
riotous color which would turn the northern forests into a
flamboyant conflagration.
Commodore Leri and Professor Adams strolled through the gaudy
landscape, peered at the center of a sumac cluster, narrowly
escaping being pulled into the whirlpool of crimson. They paused to
examine a lemon-yellow maple leaf which Adams picked up and held in
his hand.
They sat on the tall, brown meadow grass of Lunacy Hill and pondered
the almost unnoticeable variations, perhaps slight mutations,
accidental or (as Leri was beginning to suspect) purposeful
combination of genes which gave certain individuals a slight
advantage over others in escaping enemies.
"What are you doing, Adams?" asked the Commodore.
Adams: "Giving you a message."
Leary: "Well, deliver it."
Adams: "It's in the form of a manuscript. I've been waiting for you
to indicate your readiness."
Leary: "Where is it?"
Adams: "In my room."
Leary: "When?"
Adams: "Maybe tonight. You've been so busy running around preaching
and teaching and raising public consciousness; there's been no time.
Can you arrange to come to my room tonight for a few hours?"
Leary: "Delighted. But in preparation, why don't you answer my
question: How did you happen to get here?"
Adams: "I have already told you about my home-coming revelation at
the Calcutta airport," replied the Yogin. "Back at Princeton I
picked up the rhythm of academic life but in my spare time began to
read everything I could find about Indian culture and philosophy. I
bought an illustrated book on Hatha Yoga and prepared a monastic
cell in my attic. For twenty hours a day I followed the routine of
young professional married man. For four hours a day I meditated and
stretched my body until I could perform the most advanced asanas."
"This regime continued for five years, the solitary practice
combined with extensive reading of Hindu philosophy. I found myself
drawn to Shivism and in particular to the Bengali tantra. The
teachings of the Secret Flower. I pondered long over pictures of the
erotic temple carving from Konorak and Khajuraho, marveling at the
historical fact that for six hundred years, seventh to thirteenth
centuries, a powerful kingdom existed in which sex worship, the
loving union of man and woman, was the orthodox religion!"
"Let occultists speculate about lost Atlantis and other visionary
utopias of forgotten past. The shore temple at Konorak still exists,
acres of sculpture illustrating the tantric doctrine that this world
is a playground (lilakshetra) for blissful sensualists. And,
hundreds of miles away from the lndian ocean, in the center of the
subcontinent, Khajuraho with its legions of round-limbed girls and
slim regal lovers acrobatically intertwined in a hundred variations
on the dance of life, some of them so complicated that it takes a
knowledge of Yoga and the assistance of two side-girls to bring them
off."
"What was it like, I wondered, to live in a culture where the great
religious ceremony was a sacred feast climaxing in the sexual union
of man as surrogate Sun God in ritual intercourse with the soft,
moist representative of the Earth Goddess?"
"It beat the Presbyterian church and the pious prudities of the
plump effeminate swamis who toured the campus. I found my self more
and more isolated from my family and university colleagues, living a
double life, preparing my body and polishing my mind for the highest
level of tantric erotic communication."
"My studies of the Shiva Tantra convinced me that man is only one
half, and the weaker half at that, of the complete consciousness
unit formed by the union of male and female. So far nothing
original. In 1961 I took my sabbatical leave and went to Calcutta
and located a Guru in Bengali Tantra. This was no abstract book
learning course. Nine months of practical exercises in mobilizing
and directing prana. Do you know what that means?"
Leary: "I've read the literary definitions."
Adams: "Well, reading between the lines is one thing. But Siva-ji
taught me the real thing."
Leary: "He's the guru with the big YMCA ashram at Rishikesh?"
Adams: "Good God, no! Siva-ji's name has never been mentioned in an
English language publication about Yoga. He doesn't speak English
and wouldn't let a western devotee get within ten miles of him."
"Do you hear what I'm saying? He teaches how to contact your sexual
energy, to eroticize every moment. The least important aspect of his
teaching is the maintenance of the perpetual erection."
With this blunt remark Adams had finally hooked on to the
Commodore's attention.
Leary: "Fascinating."
The two men sat silently on the hillside. The locale was completely
natural. Nowhere did the eye fall upon a man-made artifact. Birds
swept across the meadow. Bees bustled on last minute errands before
the frost. The wing feather of a bluejay with a white tip lay bright
against the brown leaves, mute reminder of some fierce feathered
encounter with hawk or owl.
Leary: "So after you mastered the Bengali Tantra, what did you do?"
Adams: "The Shiva Tantra is a path of power," answered Adams, "and
must not be confused with the equally valid but more benign path of
the Buddhist Tantra. To the Bengali adept, the vital energy is
located in the woman and we are drawn to Her as a soft, yielding
battery of power."
"When a bee buzzes into a garden he is aware only of the forest of
wide-open flowers beckoning with scent and pollen. So it is with the
Bengali Tantric . . . when we walk into a room it is, for us, a
forest of wide-open, blooming yonis. And like the bee we center-on
and buzz around the source of that life power. The effect of this on
most fertile females cannot be exaggerated."
Chapter 3: Millbrook, New York, October 1963
THE TWO MEN ARE SEATED under a tree on the top of the rolling grassy
slope (which had been designated by the I.F.I.F. staff as Ecstasy
Hill). Bushes and small trees are scattered down the incline.
The Commodore was hooked into the Game of Life that has been played
out on this grassy terrain for several million years. He had become
conscious of the incessant flirtation of pollen, sperm, root,
branch, blossom; of the web of communication existing among each
life form that had been seeded in this small corner of the planet;
aware of the chemical fabric that wove the landscape into a gossipy,
interspecies village in which each organism sensed and adapted to
the movements of each other.
Adams was reclining on the ground. He suddenly sat up and began
speaking rapidly. "You realize, of course, that these phases unfold
in sequence. First, the Energy is turned on. Stage 13. That is the
easy step and the dangerous one."
"Next, it must be understood and controlled. Stage 14. This is the
Yogic discipline that was taught me in Bengal. The precise
calibration of each physical sensation. The chants, the postures,
the mastery of the internal organs, the exercises, at first alone,
and later with Shakti partners."
"After a year of this bodily training, so demanding that rapture
merged with torture, I was initiated, given the yogic name Aryabhata
and sent back to America to find my tantric mate."
Leary: "Your wife wasn't with you?"
Adams: "No. Unhappily She wanted no part of it. During my sabbatical
She stayed back in Princeton. To tell the truth, She was relieved to
have me gone."
"As soon as I arrived in America I began to read about and, through
the academic grapevine, hear about your Harvard experiments. I saw
at once the significance of your signal. It was a simple matter to
request a colleague in the Department of Biology to order and turn
over to me a hundred doses of pure Sandoz Lysergic Acid, which, in
those days, was a little–known experimental drug easily available to
qualified scientists."
"There was nothing covert about the arrangement. My Department Head
and the biologists were interested in my reports about the effects
of the experience. And so, in the familiar privacy of my meditation
room, I took the drug, folded my legs into the lotus position and
waited to see what would happen."
"It is useless to talk about preparation for a brain–altering
experience. But certainly it is safe to say that I was well prepared
for the voyage."
"As you know, the direction and quality of the neurological trip is
determined by the characteristics of the launch. Everyone has a
basic bodily posture which represents their mythic role, their
self–conception. It’s like statues of historical personages.
Everyone’s body image is trapped forever in one, revealing,
characteristic pose that says it all. What is the bodily posture
which reveals your solution to the problem of inhabiting this kind
of planet with this sort of body? The body position you most
naturally assume tells everything."
"Look at the statues of the great religious leaders. Christ
anguished and bleeding on the cross? Moses striding down the
mountain, sternly frowning the law? Mohammed leading a crusade?
Krishna, barefoot, lounging with flute, ogling the cowgirls? Buddha
sitting in meditation?"
"The karmic statue I want on my tombstone is yab–yum. Sitting naked
in the lotus pose with Her resting on my cock, our eyes locked in
soul embrace. This is the platform from which I launch the time–ship
of my life. You may see me running around eating, drinking, hustling
money, but that’s all peripheral robotry. The rubber band of my
Karma snaps me back home to sacred fucking."
"My acid revelation was clear. I set out to search for Her. For days
I stayed high wandering around as the God Shiva, watching, looking.
I had, of course, imprinted the Divinity and employed yogic
centeredness of mind to maintain the reality."
"I would gaze unblinking at the women I met, seeing them through
their social facades, and psychological cordage to the divinity
within. They all wanted to fuck me, of course, but I was seeking
more than campus adultery. I found Her in the University Library
pretending to take the human robot form of a voluptuous Jewish girl
with a master’s degree in Library Science."
"We took a sleeping bag camping trip the next weekend, and sitting
around a campfire in the Pennsylvania mountains, smoking grass, I
began my multi–circuit courtship. I showed Her how to sit naked in
half lotus. I played my flute then lifted Her on my lap and fucked
Her for hours as She had never dreamed possible, dreamily joined,
eyes linked, two flowers swaying in the evening breeze, under moon
and starry sky."
"For several weeks I taught Her all I knew, had Her read Bengali
texts, study Konorak paintings, practice yogic control of Her body.
Then we took LSD together."
"We were," he said, "centered on the throne of our divinities. I,
Shiva, the earth energy and She, Shakti, the energy of life. Our
bodies radiated. Her face took on the thousand forms, as did mine.
We grew together. My fibres rooted in Her body. I could no more
separate from Her than a tree be taken from the ground."
"It was summer vacation. I told my wife I was leaving. I wept, but
the force that had infused my spirit was stronger than life. I went
to the attic meditation room to pack my books and yoga gear. Feeling
terrible. Why was this different from any bored middle–aged man
throwing over responsibilities for a young girl? I picked up The
Life of the Buddha and reread the story of His escape from social
responsibilities. It's an amazing parable for a respectable religion
to peddle."
"The Buddha is crown prince. He has his royal duties and a wife and
children. He steals out of the palace one night and hits the road in
search of enlightenment."
"I signed over the house, the insurance, all the assets to my wife
and headed for the Virgin Islands. We spent six months living in a
cottage by the beach in total blissful union. Two, four, six hours a
day in yogic maithuna. We shared every second, every stimulus, fed
each other, dressed each other, bathed each other, shared every
thought."
"We attained such poised control of our bodies that we could fuck
endlessly, slowing, moving from one asana to another, sliding
together in slick, rubbery erotic acrobatics. We were obsessed by
beauty. Everything that touched our senses was pure aesthetic
essence. Our faces shone with love. We were the radiant sun of
beauty to each other."
"We thought that never had two people become so close. Her body with
its million pathways of sensation and response became my own. We
were living statues of the love gods. Reclined in rapture we would
look in each other’s eyes and laugh to think of fellow humans
hurrying like ants through the routines of life, unaware that such
ecstasy could exist."
"We felt so pure. We were following the scriptures of every
religion. To love. We were innocent love babes, children of a new
race. Do you know what happened then?"
Leary: "I can guess," said the Commodore.
Adams: "What?"
Leary: "You got bored."
Chapter 4: Millbrook, New York, October 1963
LEARY: "YOU GOT BORED. You needed more input and wider output. You
ran out of money. Your visas expired. You had to broadcast what you
had learned. Something like that."
Adams: "Yeah. Something like that . . ."
"We had become completely intertwined. Like the double–helix,
spiraling around each other. Inclusive. Excluding. Our intersection
had triggered tremendous energies in each other, brought out beauty,
but we needed something outside to harness it to. We were two gods
lounging on golden clouds far above the planet idly looking down,
debating if and how we should descend to interact with mortals."
Leary: "Did it occur to you to have children?"
Adams: "I could see the natural unfolding in that direction. I had
no need to reproduce biologically. I had been through that domestic
scene and had two kids whom I should think about supporting. She
would have liked to have our child, but she couldn’t conceive."
"We decided that we would return to society and try to teach what we
had learned. We flew to New York and found a small apartment. She
got a job as administrative secretary for a publishing house. We
were bursting with love and energy, but how to channel it?"
"Everyone we met responded, wanted us to be around, wanted to make
it with us. But orgies and casual affairs weren’t what we wanted. We
thought we could find another couple as unified as we were. Perhaps
our two could become four."
"There were no such duets to be found in New York. I wrote poems and
essays trying to communicate the beauty. They were good, but like
astrophysical formulae, could be understood only by those who had
reached the levels of revelation and communion that we had reached."
"I began painting mandalas which were effective. Friends would place
them on their walls, or on their shrines. The paintings passed on
the message and unfailingly guided people, who were already high,
into the realm of sacred erotic union, but the gallery owners shook
their heads and magazine editors took them home but wouldn’t print
them."
"I should have been content with that. Quietly turning out handmade
instruments to turn on meditative power, working silently like a
Sufi craftsman. But I wanted more. I had become God and wanted the
divine power. We knew that we were tapped into the timeless fountain
of physical beauty, but to hip, sophisticated New Yorkers She was an
attractive girl who worked as a secretary and I was an ugly man
trying to hustle pictures."
"It was your fault too. I envied your fame and charisma. You were
the star. The light to whom everyone looked. And I knew you were a
phony. You could point the way, provide liberation and ecstatic
discovery for millions of people, but I knew, as you know, that you
hadn’t found the basic link, you weren’t operating from the only
position that can send you up and out into the timeless . . . the
yab–yum."
"You weren’t focused on Her and hadn’t discovered how to connect,
fuse, merge with Her. You were a glamorous figure striding radiant
through the crowds, sitting in the splendor of lotus position,
reclining like king of the universe on the roof of the castle
watching the sun set on your endless green dominions. But you
weren’t hooked up to Her. You were some sort of half–creature out of
touch with your body. You couldn’t turn Her on like I could."
There was nothing to say. The Commodore nodded him to continue.
"So I went crazy with the power. Did just what the text books tell
us not to do. Used the magic for ego. I hooked up to the most
beautiful women in New York. I’d take a woman aside at a party, look
in Her eyes and tell Her exactly who I was and what I wanted to do
with Her."
"Half would back away nervously. The other half would listen
wide–eyed. Then I’d give Her one of my mandalas. Tell her to hang it
on the wall and use it in meditation. They are powerful
aphrodisiacs."
"Toby Dupont took one home and then phoned me. After a week I moved
in to Her penthouse. This was something! The richest beautiful girl
in the world. I painted an enormous yoni–mandala on Her bedroom
wall. There was no way She could get away from me. She said she’d
give me anything I wanted."
"I told Her to rent a 707 and we’d fly to India with ten of the most
beautiful models in the world and some photographers to do a picture
story on erotic Hindustan. It would have been the greatest sexual
coup in history. I made the mistake of taking acid, though, and
microscoped my plan. So I told Her to cancel the flight and returned
to Sylvia, who was, of course, patiently waiting."
"So we went back to sexual geometry. We moved through the New York
and Ivy League scene again, scanning for companions. Like a typhoon.
There’s no social unit as powerful as a couple, sexually secure and
erotically in tune, let loose among the poor sexual isolates."
"We spent a few months trying out the combinations. There’s no
sexually active person that can’t be pulled into the attractive
field of a highly charged sexual binary. But it always ends up in
Euclidian household details and emotions."
Leary: "Ah yes," sighed the Commodore. "Emotions. That’s the juice
that most of this human sexuality runs off of. Possession, jealousy,
status hierarchy. Bardot, who certainly should know, admits She gets
off on complicity and membrane conspiracies."
"So what did you do?" asked the Commodore, whose mind was spinning
from the strange words of the skinny Yogin.
Adams: "Sylvia cashed in a small inheritance from Her Grandmother
and I wrangled an air–ticket and we flew off to Calcutta to talk to
Siva–ji."
Chapter 5: Millbrook, New York, October 1963
"WE FOUND HIM SQUATTING in a loin–cloth on the banks of the Ganges,
hanging around the burning ghats where they cremate dead bodies,
smoking hashish from cloth–covered chillums."
At first He wouldn’t talk to us. Just laughed and cracked dumb Don
Juan Zen jokes in Bengali. But we stuck it out."
Leary: "What do you mean?"
Adams: "We just squatted down there on the river bank and passed the
pipe around and watched and tried to groove with the scene. The
third day Siva–ji wandered down to the river’s edge and we followed.
He spent hours just watching the sluggish current flow by. Then he
suddenly gave a little cry of pleasure and darted to the water’s
edge and grabbed a thin tree branch that was floating by. He
examined it, laughed and handed it to us. Around the branch was
entwined a symbiotic vine."
Leary: "A good hand with props, that fellow. Then what did he do"
Adams: "A most interesting thing. Threw the double–stick back into
the Ganges, stood up and waved us to follow him; then led us to a
broken–down hovel. We all sat down on the mud floor. Then he turned
to me, grinning a toothless smile and spoke. The first words he ever
uttered to me directly. You know what they were?"
Leary: "No idea."
Adams: "He said Lay Ree."
Leary: "What does that mean? I don’t speak Bengali."
Adams: "I didn’t know what he meant either. He looked at me
questioningly for a moment and then reached down to the Shiva Shrine
in the corner and took out a silk bag with a book inside it. He
shoved it in my hand and pointed up the river, which happens to be
west and repeated the words, Lay Ree. Then he bowed and folded his
hands in the Namaste gesture of farewell. And that was that."
Leary: "What did it all mean?"
Adams: "That’s what I asked the little devotee who trotted beside us
on the way to a taxi. His answer was simple. He said, "Siva–ji say,
book very, very old. Take back to Professor Lay Ree in America.
Shanti." Then he bowed and pressed his hands and watched us drive
off in the taxi."
Leary: "You have the book?"
Adams: "Of course. It’s been the center of my life since that day."
Leary: "Can I see it?"
Adams: "I guess that’s what I was supposed to do. So come to my room
tonight and I’ll do what I was sent here to do."
Chapter 6: Millbrook, New York, October 1963
ARYABHATA’S ROOM AT MILLBROOK was transformed into a Tantric yoni .
. . A tigerskin meditation rug . . . A shrine with three small
statues, of magnificant artistry, obviously old and valuable.
One was a Nataraj. Naked Shiva dancing within the circle of flaming
energy.
A Tibetan Buddhist Dakini, a dancing girl with slim waist, flowing
breasts and long hair, winsome, abandoned.
And a seated Buddha with naked mate sitting on his cock, arms
entwined in yab–yum union. Aryabhata motioned for the Commodore to
be seated and the two men, in time, attained an accelerated flow of
consciousness that seemed to satisfy the Yogin.
Aryabhata then took, with great reverence, an object from his
shrine. It was a parchment book wrapped first in red–flowered silk,
and then in fine woven cloth inscribed with Sanscrit symbols. The
book unfolded, accordian–fashion, like a string of picture
postcards, each page perhaps eight by six inches and sewn to the
next.
He placed the back in front of the shrine and arranged candles to
illuminate. Then he flipped back the cover and exposed the first
picture, an amoeba–like creature with an enormous human mouth, open
in a sucking position. The painting possessed a horrid attraction,
both slurpingly erotic and formlessly soft.
After what seemed like a long time, Aryabhata gracefully flipped to
the second picture . . . the same amoeboid mouth, now biting a
breast dripping scarlet blood. The brutal, direct, frontal force of
the picture forced the Commodore to flinch.
Leary: "Powerful, but I don’t get it."
Adams: "It appears to be a sequence," replied the Yogin quietly.
"Let’s continue."
The third picture . . . the smiling, satisfied faces of a voluptuous
woman and a plump–faced man, each face attached to the body of an
octopus with dozens of tentacles each covered with round
sucker–cups. The painting was disturbingly erotic . . . engulfing
flesh, blind, voracious, invertebrate, ancient life–hunger,
relentless root-striving.
The Commodore was both repelled and deeply moved by vague tissue
memories pulling him into the soft, greedy, feeding, devouring
embrace.
"Notice," said Aryabhata, "that the first three cards portray a
watery environment with the figures colored red. They represent the
Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu aspects of this first phase."
The fourth card portrayed the face of a beautiful young man–woman
(?) attached to the slim, wiry, sleek body of an otter colored a
flaming orange crouching warily at the edge of a body of water,
alertly surveying the landscape. The scene jarred with clashing
themes . . . the swift, graceful, furry–sexual beauty of the
creature and the sense of sly, furtive awareness of danger.
The fifth card was a hermaphroditic centaur standing proudly at the
peak of a hill.
The sixth card was Egyptian in motive, two enthroned regal
creatures, naked, one with the strong commanding body of a man, the
other with the lush queenly body of a woman . . . both with heads of
lions.
The Commodore looked up in bafflement. "They are magnificently
painted and disturbingly moving. But I don’t get the point."
Adams: "Wait until you have seen them all," replied Aryabhata. "They
are like Tarot cards that tell a sequential story."
The two men were crouched on their knees, Japanese style, raptly
concentrating on the unfolding parchment book. The candle light
reflected off the bald forehead of the Yogin, and flickered on the
three statues; the spinning Shiva, the floating Dakini girl, the
fused Buddha.
Aryabhata flipped to the seventh card . . . a hulking, hairy,
yellow–skinned hermaphrodite, paleolithic hominid holding a
stone–axe is bending over looking at its own reflection in a pool.
The eighth card . . . a golden–skinned hermaphrodite sitting on a
Chariot, Hir righthand holding a pen (which in Steinberg fashion is
drawing the outline of Hir own head. Leary: "This one is modern
enough to be from The
New Yorker," said the
Commodore with awe. "How old is this book?"
Adams: "The Orientalists I’ve talked to say that this style of
handsewn parchment is at least two hundred, and more likely, several
hundred years old."
The ninth card . . . two regal, golden–skinned humans coupled in the
Yab–Yum position, each with a plumed pen in right–hand drawing the
other’s body.
On the tenth card a naked young, handsome man, green–skinned, stands
in front of a mirror from which he is reflected as a beautiful young
woman. Each is lustfully fondling the genitals of the other.
The eleventh card is a straightforward presentation of Mother–Queen
and Father–King naked, green–skinned, on thrones surrounded by
children.
The twelfth card . . . an enormous city square completely filled
with human beings, millions of them jammed together, all facing the
center of the plaza where an enormous stone lingam rose up from an
enormous oval stone yoni. Both were green.
Leary: "That’s amazing. It’s a scene right out of the Third Reich."
Adams: "Yes. Quite prophetic," said Aryabhata, reclining back on his
heels. "Now tell me. What do you make of that sequence?"
Leary: "It’s a Tarot card summary of evolution. An amazing
performance, if you’re right about the date. Preceding Darwin, I
mean. Do you agree"
Adams: "Of course. But there’s a lot more. I’ve studied this
manuscript for a long time and at many levels of magnification. I’m
beginning to understand why Siva–ji passed this on to you."
Leary: "Why? I know nothing about the Tarot."
Adams: "But don’t you see! This manuscript is a fucking Rosetta
Stone and that’s just for openers. Notice that there are twelve
drawings. Don’t you see? It’s the Zodiac! The trick is that it
starts with Pisces. Do you see it?"
The skinny Yogin was leaning forward speaking like a No actor, soft
hissing intensity, eyes flashing. Raving.
The Commodore scanned the twelve cards and nodded. "I’d like to give
it more study. But I think I see what you mean. Aries. Taurus. Yes.
And Gemini the otter!"
Adams: It’s also the twelve Divinities in the Greek and Roman
pantheon. The I Ching. We’ll
get to that later. But next I want you to see the second half."
Leary: "There's more?"
Adams: "Sure. The first twelve are just the first half." Aryabhata
leaned back again on his heels and watched the Commodore’s face. A
long period of silence followed. Leri suddenly blinked and pushed
his body forwards to look at the Yogin. "You mean . . . " he said
slowly, "you’re implying that . . ."
Aryabhata nodded smiling.
Leary: ". . . if the twelfth card is Aquarius and it portrays
Hitler, Mao and the sexualization of centralized government . . ."
Aryabhata was smiling broadly.
Leary: ". . . then we’re just now at the mid–point of evolution . .
." Adams: "That’s how I read it."
Leary: ". . . and the twelve cards on the other side will give us
the evolutionary stages to come?"
Adams: "Are you ready to look at the future?" said the Yogin
reaching down to turn over the cards.
Chapter 7: Millbrook, New York, October 1963
ARYABHATA HELD THE DECK of parchment cards in his hands and shot a
happy grin to his companion.
"The cosmic dealer, huh?"
Aryabhata, with slow deliberation laid the deck on the tiger-skin
rug and flipped the thirteenth card. The color was blue. The figure
of a hermaphrodite floating horizontally. A serene, blissfull look.
"Thirteen is rapture? We’ve been there."
Fourteen was blue. A hermaphrodite Yogin, with flowing hair, sits in
the lotus position on the back of a powerful winged horse which
soars through the clouds. "I know that one well," said the Yogin
softly.
"I think I can guess what comes next."
Card Fifteen . . . a man and a woman fused in Yab–Yum coition
floating on a cloud, radiating a halo.
"That’s interesting. We seem to be dabbling in the future already."
"I think that’s why The Old Man gave this to me to give to you.
We’re ready for the next stage."
Card Sixteen is light–blue, sky–blue. A hermaphrodite, in free fall,
through a sky filled with stars. Hir body is also filled with stars
whose beams intersect in a web of interstellar radiation.
"The Electron Hippy?" said the Commodore.
Card Seventeen, the same figure, sits in the lotus position in the
star–filled sky. From Hir hands and from Hir head radiate bundles of
shining rays. SHe is creating forms with radiation.
"The Electron Yogin?"
Card Eighteen, a naked man and a naked woman sit in the sky–blue
meadow of stars. Bundles of energy waves radiate between their heads
and their bodies.
"Brain fucking?"
Card Nineteen . . . the Interstellar Hermaphrodite is duplicated in
ever–decreasing size, copies of Itself spiralling through the
star–filled sky. The color has changed to violet. "It has something
to do with evolution. But I don’t really get it."
Card Twenty . . . the Interstellar Hermaphrodite is creating organic
designs, weaving star–rays, designing Its own body.
"I see. Nineteen and Twenty are interstellar versions of Seven and
Eight. That’s fascinating. Do the first twelve stages predict the
next twelve?"
Card Twenty–one . . . the Interstellar Lovers are now coils of
energy spiralling around each other, weaving rays to form each
other’s faces and other organic forms.
Cards Twenty–two, Twenty–three, and Twenty–four portrayed silver
doughnutshaped clouds sprinkled through a jet–black field. Faint
broken track lines of silver curved through the void.
The twelve "future" cards are now exposed. The two sit silently
studying the sequence. From time to time the Yogin carefully
rearranges the cards to expose the first twelve pictures, prepares a
chillum or lights a fresh candle.
"Now you know why I came here. First to remind you that tantric
fusion is the posture from which the future is explored."
"That message is hardly new," sez the Commodore. "There are dozens
of tantric handbooks in the occult bookstores."
"But they’re written by wrinkled Hindu scholars translating pedantic
instructions about matching penile length to yoni size. And the
astronauts don’t read them. This map tells us what comes next."
"Stages beyond the body?"
"No. Fused bodies, eroticized, become the extraterrestrial
time-ships."
"Blissful bodies can’t get us off the planet."
"But they can eroticize the electronic. That will get us off. We are
being expelled from the planet. Like baby birds from the nest."
"Hhhmmmm," sez the Philosopher thoughtfully.
"Oh, by the way, I talked to Sylvia today. She’s in New York. I
wondered if she could join me here"
"Of course."
"And She’d like to bring a friend. Is that all right with you?"
"Sure, . . ." sez the Commodore hopefully.
"Her name is Rosemarie Barnacle. She’s a high person. And beautiful.
You’ll like Her."
The End
The preceding was salvaged from the
pioneering and now defunct website: E=±mc²=Thé
Ðëòxÿríßøñµçlëìç HÿÞêrdïmèñsîøñ.
