A Pitfall of Trance
Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 6:41 am
Original post: Harmonic_Order
If anyone has read my posts on vedic trance, y'all know I have gotten into that welcoming branch of Hinduism. I began studying and practicing trance through mantra because I read that Aleister Crowley recommended constant chant as a surefire way to raise one's grade. And I did, I believe, develope certain refinements through this practice that better enable me to cope with the world around me--a swell as appreciate the beauty and evocation of sound. However, even trance may have fallen behind this industrial world. I present this little exposition in order to demonstrate the limitations this discipline places on a rather ordinary man in the real world.
I noticed that, with constant absorption, the mantra and vedic mindset produce a visually opulent inner landscape. With proper pronunciation, sincerity, and rigorous practice, the shiva-mantra, maha-mantra, and other assorted mantras produce visual or aesthetic effects in the mind's eye. I take this as an unsought reward of the yoga of devotion, bhakti-yoga. Although, strictly speaking, the vedas ultimately say that Sri Krishna stands upright as the ultimate and only recipient of religious devotion, I tend more towards Crowley's writing "Worship it, and it becomes God" from the Book of Lies. Last night, I suffered a frighteningly visionary event that resulted from a rather mundane activity.
Since beginning mantra-yoga as a daily-life practice, I have cut away from violent people, loud and dischordant music, and extreme-lifestyle situations. I have surrounded myself with flowers and yogurt, so to speak. But what happens when a gentle yogi finds himself in less-than-ideal circumstances? Wars happen, as do tsunamis, for example. And eventually, an abundance of twenty-something American men have to visit the sex shop.
I walked out to the sex shop in the bitter cold. When I stepped into the building, I immediately noticed a strong smell of ass, silicone lubricant, and cigarettes. The sound system pumped out nineties hard-core metal, maybe Napalm Death or Biohazard. Some gays and some straight men, as well as one lone couple, prowled the DVD section. I looked about for a bit, bought a toy and some bondage gear, and left without marking much of the experience. I felt a bit drunk, but nothing more. About an hour and a half after returning home, I headed for bed.
Before I got into the bed, I did something on a whim: I put four chakra oils on their corresponding points. As soon as I finished, I immediately began to hallucinate very vividly, as if I had taken a stroing dose of mescaline. I lay as if struck dead for the next fifteen or twenty minutes. A hellish scene appeared which would not banish. I saw awful torture enacted, in a Tibetan World of Darkness-type landscape. A long-haired demon commanded me, "Accept the demotion." In my mind's eye, I entered a scene in wh a man's corpse sat tied to a chair. From the stark appearance and his denuded face, I could see that he died of torture. A caption appeared, reading "The Corpse of America." My dream-self entered his body from behind, assuming his place in the chair.
I saw the flies buzzing, felt the maggots crawling in his flesh. I felt and saw every rotting capillary, every squirming section of intestine, every disintegrating tissue, the jaggedness of his broken teeth, the horror of a half-dead mind, the bloody pulp in every dental root. I felt like some force pulled me microscopically through every inch from his sacrum to his cranium. I found the horror transfixing and exquisite. I could not move. My revulsion... I cannot describe it. I felt I left my body and entered this corpse as a punishment or penalty for some misdeed. As I rose through each horrid, putrid tissue, I realized about eight different levels of sensation. At the very end of the ordeal, within my own corporeal zone I felt/sensed/saw a bulbous head arise. It looked like nothing so much as a Beluga, a White Whale. "The White God?" Who can say? Then an unseen force jammed me back into my own body, which in its fleshiness disgusted me almost as much as that of the prisoner. After that I rolled over and went to sleep. The whole ting took about twenty minutes, not more, I feel almost certain. I really did suspect that this time I had died without noticing the event.
I attribute this to the rancid sensory info at the sex shop combining with my altered sensory processing. The smell plus the seedy people plus the deathly music combined with my butter-soft senses, cultivated by mantra-yoga, to produce a nightmare of apocalyptic intensity. The conclusion I draw from the experience follows: that, in this world of crime, violence and intrigue, the gentle discipline of mantra-yoga cannot provide the shelter and force I need to get by. I think it might better suit monastics. I cannot afford to invest my time this heavily in such a vulnerable art form. One chaotic experience could send me flipping out-of-my-gourd! Just imagine if I had experienced a natural disaster instead of bad music... I intend to toughen up and change my focus to a more durable practice.
Missing information: I also listened to CD of the IOT's [declassified] Cthonos Rite that afternoon. Probably doing this intensified the experience.
What do you think?
H_O
If anyone has read my posts on vedic trance, y'all know I have gotten into that welcoming branch of Hinduism. I began studying and practicing trance through mantra because I read that Aleister Crowley recommended constant chant as a surefire way to raise one's grade. And I did, I believe, develope certain refinements through this practice that better enable me to cope with the world around me--a swell as appreciate the beauty and evocation of sound. However, even trance may have fallen behind this industrial world. I present this little exposition in order to demonstrate the limitations this discipline places on a rather ordinary man in the real world.
I noticed that, with constant absorption, the mantra and vedic mindset produce a visually opulent inner landscape. With proper pronunciation, sincerity, and rigorous practice, the shiva-mantra, maha-mantra, and other assorted mantras produce visual or aesthetic effects in the mind's eye. I take this as an unsought reward of the yoga of devotion, bhakti-yoga. Although, strictly speaking, the vedas ultimately say that Sri Krishna stands upright as the ultimate and only recipient of religious devotion, I tend more towards Crowley's writing "Worship it, and it becomes God" from the Book of Lies. Last night, I suffered a frighteningly visionary event that resulted from a rather mundane activity.
Since beginning mantra-yoga as a daily-life practice, I have cut away from violent people, loud and dischordant music, and extreme-lifestyle situations. I have surrounded myself with flowers and yogurt, so to speak. But what happens when a gentle yogi finds himself in less-than-ideal circumstances? Wars happen, as do tsunamis, for example. And eventually, an abundance of twenty-something American men have to visit the sex shop.
I walked out to the sex shop in the bitter cold. When I stepped into the building, I immediately noticed a strong smell of ass, silicone lubricant, and cigarettes. The sound system pumped out nineties hard-core metal, maybe Napalm Death or Biohazard. Some gays and some straight men, as well as one lone couple, prowled the DVD section. I looked about for a bit, bought a toy and some bondage gear, and left without marking much of the experience. I felt a bit drunk, but nothing more. About an hour and a half after returning home, I headed for bed.
Before I got into the bed, I did something on a whim: I put four chakra oils on their corresponding points. As soon as I finished, I immediately began to hallucinate very vividly, as if I had taken a stroing dose of mescaline. I lay as if struck dead for the next fifteen or twenty minutes. A hellish scene appeared which would not banish. I saw awful torture enacted, in a Tibetan World of Darkness-type landscape. A long-haired demon commanded me, "Accept the demotion." In my mind's eye, I entered a scene in wh a man's corpse sat tied to a chair. From the stark appearance and his denuded face, I could see that he died of torture. A caption appeared, reading "The Corpse of America." My dream-self entered his body from behind, assuming his place in the chair.
I saw the flies buzzing, felt the maggots crawling in his flesh. I felt and saw every rotting capillary, every squirming section of intestine, every disintegrating tissue, the jaggedness of his broken teeth, the horror of a half-dead mind, the bloody pulp in every dental root. I felt like some force pulled me microscopically through every inch from his sacrum to his cranium. I found the horror transfixing and exquisite. I could not move. My revulsion... I cannot describe it. I felt I left my body and entered this corpse as a punishment or penalty for some misdeed. As I rose through each horrid, putrid tissue, I realized about eight different levels of sensation. At the very end of the ordeal, within my own corporeal zone I felt/sensed/saw a bulbous head arise. It looked like nothing so much as a Beluga, a White Whale. "The White God?" Who can say? Then an unseen force jammed me back into my own body, which in its fleshiness disgusted me almost as much as that of the prisoner. After that I rolled over and went to sleep. The whole ting took about twenty minutes, not more, I feel almost certain. I really did suspect that this time I had died without noticing the event.
I attribute this to the rancid sensory info at the sex shop combining with my altered sensory processing. The smell plus the seedy people plus the deathly music combined with my butter-soft senses, cultivated by mantra-yoga, to produce a nightmare of apocalyptic intensity. The conclusion I draw from the experience follows: that, in this world of crime, violence and intrigue, the gentle discipline of mantra-yoga cannot provide the shelter and force I need to get by. I think it might better suit monastics. I cannot afford to invest my time this heavily in such a vulnerable art form. One chaotic experience could send me flipping out-of-my-gourd! Just imagine if I had experienced a natural disaster instead of bad music... I intend to toughen up and change my focus to a more durable practice.
Missing information: I also listened to CD of the IOT's [declassified] Cthonos Rite that afternoon. Probably doing this intensified the experience.
What do you think?
H_O