Here is what I wrote last night about that experience. I am not in anything like that state anymore; I am in my same old dreary state. But I still send it, and though it is very long, and quite confusing and irrational, I still have more to say. But I thought I'd send what I wrote (as garbled as it is) just so you have a rough idea. I don't think I will repeat it to anyone.
-- starting last night's writing --
All the romance is gone away. The fasting was all I had that I still enjoyed. And it was botched. All my worldly problems and anxieties have returned in their full force, and all my dreams of union and the path are washed down the drain.
But I am in need of distraction. Even if I move now, into a new apartment or a new town, it will take a month or so, and maybe more, and I have to cope. On the trip to the museum I quoted a line I heard to Lucy, Coralie’s daughter, a nurse, about how I was trying to address this noise issue now. “Don’t underestimate your ability to cope.” I heard this at the hospital in a list of coping tools to keep in mind, but I did not say where I heard it. But she said, rightly, that coping is more complicated than just saying a line. For there are methods of coping, and I saw she was right.
So this writing is just an attempt to cope, by distracting my mind, as there is not much I can do to solve anything quickly.
So I’ll tell the story as best I can, though it is no longer fresh in my mind.
An exotic and strange spiritual experience, perhaps gone awry
When I stepped out of the taxi on Thursday at 3:00 PM and walked to my door, returning from the hospital, I was dressed in strange clothes. My pants and shoes were from the lost and found, the pants falling down a bit. The shoes were two sizes too big but stayed on snug due to the many pairs of hospital issued socks. I was still wearing a hospital shirt, covered by a sweatshirt given to me by my 19 year old roommate in the hospital, and I carried a paper grocery bag filled with the hospital soap, toothpaste, shampoo, comb, several extra feminine pads and wads of net underwear stuffed in the bag to get me home, all things the hospital said I could keep. Also I had a composition book filled with my notes to self, organized as who to call for what, telephone numbers, and one of the hospital issued pencils I had treasured and guarded. We had not been allowed to have a pen. I had arrived at emergency room naked, and taken to the psychiatric ward in paper clothes (just meant to make the ambulance ride and the trip up the elevator) and then issued a set of brown standard garments, and socks. They even gave me a pair of reading glasses in the psych ward that I requested, but I had had to return them before going down to the taxi. I had treasured them. The faces and names still lingered in my mind from my three days observation on the ward, but now I missed them badly – all that temporary love and all those temporary friends I would now likely never see again, all those loving nurses and doctors, techs, etc.
I came to the top of the stairs, and my heart sank to see it was worse than I had imagined. I had prepared myself for a shock, but nothing like this. My lovely plants were all smashed, many missing entirely, or tossed in one bucket torn up by their roots, drying now, a bicycle tire by the door, the fire extinguisher missing and its box torn open dangling down. Luckily no one was outdoors. Outside my door was swept a pile of sand, dirt, and cigarette buts, still seemingly stinking, making me dread to open the door.
I creaked the door open and saw a shocking sight. A room that had once been a haven of organization and immaculate cleanliness, was overturned, as if in one hour of mania I could not remember. I had been told things that shocked me in the hospital by my doctor, about how hard it was to subdue me, that I had been tased three times by the police before I could be subdued. A shopping cart was overturned in the middle of the room, things tossed around. Coming into the kitchen I saw a huge pool of dried blood on the tile, blood on all the walls too. My bedroom was even worse, the bed sheets tossed about, with spots of blood all over them and the pillow cases too. Blood smeared some of the walls, even beside the large cheaply framed picture of Baba, as if I had beat my head or smeared a bloody face onto the wall near his own face, but the picture itself was clean.
In the bathroom, not only was the curtain in the tub along with the remnants of a pair of cheap slip on shoes that had come apart from the sole inserts, for I had apparently stepped into the tub in my shoes, otherwise naked, to wash myself and them, but the enamel of the tub was deeply scratched too. Slowly a horrible fight with myself came flooding back to my mind, in blinking possibilities, though very hazy and uncertain. I had not known for sure where this fight had occurred with the shower rod, a fight that stood out in my memory still unexplained to me, its sharp metal end having dug into the white enamel paint of the floor of the tub as I had attempted something physically impossible, but spiritually (to me then) important and meaningful, and as if making sense.
I went to work at once to clean the apartment, though my bladder pressed hard since it was weakened, but I was afraid to face more blood in the bathroom so just worked, and so just postponed it and worked to clean it all up. I through away a burlap or plastic shredded sack I remember trying on for my exit from the door when I had gone mad. I tossed away that kind of garbage immediately, taking no time to examine it or think about it, as if to hide it from my own now mostly recovered mind the full madness and intensity of the drama that had taken place inside myself. The more I cleaned and scrubbed and cleaned while denying my racing heart and shallow breath at the fright of sights, I found the room quickly restored to a semblance of normality, as if it was only a thin layer of clutter sprinkled atop a quite clean underlayer. Thus the house began to quickly sparkle. I squatted down in the kitchen and scrubbed the blood away with a wet towel. It came off easily, as it did from the walls after. It would be a day before I would find the last splashes of blood on walls. This cleaning took about a half an hour, then I finally sat down and looked around. I had made many trips to the dumpster with bags of awful trash, and simply thrown out all my dead plants and crushed buckets, swept the sand and earth from outside the door, dug the stenching cigarette buts from between my porch deck boards, and filled a tall basket with wet towels, blood stained pillow cases, and clothes. And finally had sat down. It would take a very long time, I mused, to process what had happened. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. And a sadness swept over me as I sat, such a long unhappy road ahead to hoe. What now would my life be? A life with no possibility of union with God, nor normality or joy, where my dream of realization turned out to be just a mad man’s paradise, but of no true lasting substance. Baba had said that chillas could end in madness or death if failed at. And here I was wishing it had been the latter and not the madness which had ended up being my lot. How shameful. What a disappointment. A life long dream shattered in an hour, and nowhere to pick up pieces of a life I had never actually had a plan to live. What in the world would I do next? What did getting better mean to a man like me, except avoiding such a horrific reoccurrence at any cost. At some point I picked up the tiny cell phone. I thought it would not work, thought it was silly to try, but I found in my sadness I dialed you, to hear a friendly voice and feel sane. And miraculously after several rings you picked up, quite rare and unusual. And I found myself quietly telling you the bits I could remember as you sat quietly and mercifully did not remark or scold. You seemed interested rather than horrified, which was a relief to me.
It would be days before it would start to come into better focus, with more facts, just as it had in the hospital. It was good I talked to you then, for some of it is in some senses lost to my memory. My notes left to myself from the event, kept by me in the room as they occurred as if for posterity or notes to self as if important, were mysteriously cryptic and sometimes oddly detailed, with not only dates, but exact times, sometimes to the precise half minute, of events as they happened, such as the lyrics on the radio at the time, written as I heard them, sketches of the images of Baba on the wall as they appeared from my desk as I wrote – real physical pictures still there. Later I would find a whole trove of such notes neatly stashed in a file, a terrifying sight, the notes not only dated but with hand written page numbers, all in a strange scrawl. I also found a strange and beautiful poem written several days before all this, which I remembered liking as the end of my philosophical period, carefully dated in the corner, and held together neatly with a paper clip, though it was on scraps of yellow paper from a pad.
After talking to you I was eager to go to sleep. I had no idea how I would live the rest of my life. I just kept telling myself not to think about it now. I knew there was nothing but time ahead to piece it together over the months and years, and all these notes and signs to examine and ponder as clues.
I made it to the library that night before it closed, emailed for an hour and a half. There was quite a bit of email. I had a worried loving email from Megan, and replied and asked her what she knew. I went home, ate, and went to bed. When I got in bed the house was very clean. In the morning I would buy a new shower curtain. I had written it down in a note to myself. I took a half Xanax and dropped into a short sleep. Then a few more that added up at last to enough hours.
So how did all this begin?
The full account of it would be too long and cumbersome to tell. Luckily you and Megan had been kept abreast of it for years, and required no back story, a relief to me now. I could tell you the final events and you would have the full context, or as much as me. It didn’t need to be explained from the beginning, and never can be to those who don’t already know my story. No one ever needs to know but you two. Someone had to know though, or so my heart wanted. These are just the final missing hours then, when a lifetime, and especially three intense and exotic years of it, of search inward and outward, came to a climactic and disastrous and violent end – as mysterious as it had begun. A man who wanted union had only found madness at the end of a long desperate descent.
Before I begin I must say some things that are not exactly in my favor, but they are thoughts that you and Megan knew a lot of through years of listening to me, but sketchy. It is vital to understand that I was never deliberately following any particular person’s pattern to God, but I had long and meticulously and systematically filled my mind with knowledge of spiritual journeys of others in the past, and strange largely ignored spiritual facts about the outward aspects of the path when it is most strange. These stories include those of many of the saints and masters Baba spoke of with feeling, and a few he did not, and many secret mysteries, including a study of Lord of the Rings, a study I have learned Baba himself had begun to sketch out much as I have, that was deeper than I ever wrote for anyone including you, and have deliberately kept to myself. The journey into knowledge I had made leading up to this event was intense and deep, but did not lead to imitation, but it did lead to a form of strange surrender, for strange had become only too familiar from reading, and not frightening, though in my hands had turned out to be disastrous, at least in ordinary human terms and by ordinary human standards of sanity. I will list some of these strange facts, that may or may not apply to my case, but being there had made me wonder all along. And I will end with the quote from Lord of the Rings that came to me at some point late in all this as my mind recovered, when I began to feel a deep remorse.
To begin with, Baba’s own story truly begins with his own father eventually attempting a chilla nashini in the desert and failing, falling upon water after thirty days, and feeling defeated and depressed, until a voice had soothed his mind and told him what would come, a son, and not to give up hope. No voice had come to me, but the precedent of failure as a marker of a real beginning was burned into my blood to ponder by then, and give me some hope. It was not utterly alien to me this idea of sacred failure, no matter how shattering and horrific. There were two others I knew of, both living people, who I knew had tried chilla and failed, both waking in hospitals like me, one quite seriously and with a long recovery time like I was now facing. I hadn’t met him, but he lived in Myrtle Beach I had been told, and took the path seriously. I never talked about these people to anyone, but I knew that failure was possible, though I had never guessed mine would be so horrific.
I had even joked about these failures, and a seeming pattern, one I had hoped to not repeat. I had not wanted to be captured or “rescued” and this is the reason for my journeys to the wild that ended in failure. It seemed no human could penetrate this iron wall, even Indian sanyasas had failed, as recounted by Brabazon. Yet Baba had explained that Hafiz had succeeded, though it is possible Hafiz was already perfect and did not know it – or on the 6th plane. I knew I had not started out so high as him, or with his love and character. He also had a living master at the time he did it.
I also knew that even Moses failed at his chilla, in that he had fainted with fright of seeing God at its end, and only reached the 6th plane when he was intended for the 7th. Yet he had met his destiny anyhow, which is consistent with a line in Infinite Intelligence about what is possible for a sixth plane saint, a book I had not only read many times from the original manuscript and transcript, but had translated from them, only completing my version after a couple of years of work a few days before all this began – my final act of philosophy.
I knew that Baba had said that a failed chilla could lead to madness, and I had been duly frightened, determined to experience the second option of death if I failed if I could. The line by Baba that I had finally clung to was that “to fast to death to see God is heroic but very rare.” That’s the sum of my philosophy at the end, that line, bracketed from all else. It was the end of my road, my last attempt, meant to mark its finality for good or bad and to put myself into the dangerous but optionless care of God to judge.
There were other strange coincidences. Upasni Maharaj had said, and I had long memorized all I knew of his words, that one could not experience Godhood unless he first experienced madness. What kind of madness did he mean, that he himself experienced and described, and was mine related or only a mediocre sort? Certainly my own madness was like a God madness, all about thoughts of God and nothing else, finally scrambled and confused. But I knew I could not be God mad, for in the Wayfarers it explains this state, which cannot be recovered from, as I was now recovering. There are many reasons that this was not God madness that I had experienced. A person becomes God mad when he has a spiritual experience, such as meeting a spiritual personality, that causes an inner change so intense and rapid that he outstrips the endurance of his mind, and goes truly insane. While this, Baba carefully explained through Dr. Donkin, is a state on the involutionary path, the only form of recovery was to die and take a new birth, with a washed memory I had always supposed, something I had preferred actually. So I was alive. I could not have been God mad then. So what was my madness? And what had Upasni meant by his own madness?
Upasni had also said some strange things about his experience that now sounded hauntingly close to some of my own at my worst. He said that he had somehow become naked. “Somehow I became naked. People called me a mad man.” I remembered I was totally naked in the ambulance, had been outside my apartment walking naked, covered in blood from my head. Tajuddin Baba had also taken off all his clothes when he became God realized and was promptly committed to an insane asylum where he lived a long time. Upasni had said that when something happened to him, he had found a gunny in a gutter, covered, he said, in shit and vomit. “God knows if it had belonged to a cholera patient.” He said that he had taken it lovingly and washed it in a stream many times, and put it on and worn it “like a beautiful costume of silk.” I remembered taking clothes from dumpsters and washing them many times, even buying stronger detergent to remove the horrid smell, and wearing them proudly. I wrote to you about this.
I had also read somewhere, I think by Baba, “Even God fears a naked man.” What did Baba mean? I had never known. I had also read where Baba said that to fast to death to see God is a way to “threaten God.” It is such things that get God’s attention is all I could fathom of such words. Eruch had been asked by my father how you get God’s attention, and Eruch had said, “You put a gun to your head, and mean it.” That even God had to take notice it appeared, something I had wanted, but was now unsure I had gotten. This attention of God I take to mean attention of the living Perfect Masters, wherever they are, who know all or become aware of such events through the hierarchy that is forever watching advanced souls. The living Perfect Master, I had come to understand, was the only God a man could ever know on this plane, according to Brabazon, quite correctly I felt from my own more careful reading of Baba’s words on God’s awareness. There are five of such masters in the world at all times. Each is God, and each is aware of all true seekers, but only those that are true. A perfect master is ever passive. He does not act, but only responds to the actions of others. He is there to be used, and has no impressions but yours to react to. A perfect master, Baba taught, above all else that he does, is ever on the lookout for a human being seriously ready for God realization, which means tired of the world to the point where he will do anything, or so I imagined.
But no master had ever appeared to me, as one had in a vision to one great saint Baba described who lay still on his back and fasted for forty days, and no God-realization had occurred, and no voice was heard as with Sheriar alone in the wilderness. Nothing but electric tasing by police, disgrace, humiliation, beatings, and physical ruination. My body was covered in bleeding sores from head to foot, even inside my body so I had to wear a diaper. I still wear one. My sores still bleed at night into my sheets, but I cover them as best I can.
I had bashed open my own head, quite deliberately upon the floor, perhaps many times, it is not clear. The attempt had apparently begun in the bathtub, and the final victory appears to have occurred in the kitchen, as the pool of blood and the stitches wrapping the top and side of my left eye appeared to attest to. I had remembered seeing the stream of blood and the pool widening under me before I had passed out into it, but could not remember which room it had been in. But here was the enormous blood pool in the kitchen, showing me the spot at last. More stitches on the other side of my head I was sure were due to being beaten outside by my neighbor, when I was naked, an ex-boxer and veteran, a strong stout fat elderly black man.
All had ended in disaster and disgrace. And so to my mind the sad disappointed words of Frodo to Bilbo in Rivendell Gardens came flooding in, as I have the movie memorized, the sad words I had promised to tell that came to my mind very recently as I tried to fathom my failure:
FRODO turns a page ... there before him, is a map of the SHIRE.
FRODO
(quietly)
I miss the Shire ... I spent all
my childhood pretending I was off
somewhere else ... off with you,
on one of your adventures...
(looks at Bilbo)
But my own adventure turned out to
be quite different ... I'm not
like you, Bilbo.
So what happened? What was this journey that I felt I had tried that had turned out, I felt, to be so different from my heroes, and so disappointing in comparison to theirs?
Bilbo had only answered Frodo, with enormous compassion and equal sadness:
My dear boy.
Neither new they were at the beginning of Frodo’s own journey, and not its end. I will tell my own aborted journey, that began so hopefully, appeared to be fruitful beyond all my hopes at one point, only to turn to horrific ruin two days later, ending in horrid handcuffs and blue medical arm-restraints in an ambulance racing away from my home.
My attempt to find God was bumpy and confused, but had two main methods. To learn everything about God and the path that I could, to consider every option, to try every yoga I could endure to the best of my very limited ability, and to concentrate on divine subjects as exclusively as possible. It even included knowing how the universe and world were really run, even the dark secrets of world politics, planetary evolution and how this relates to the yugas, uncovering the lies and deceptions of spiritual and material history. The main work then was fasting and prayer, and concentration on knowledge, to achieve Dnyana (or gnosis - true knowledge). The path of Dnyana (or true knowledge) is complicated and more than I want to go into here. Baba has written on it in depth, and I have edited his words on it and made them available for others to ponder if they like.
The knowledge is not just for sake of curiosity, but has an actual technique to which it is meant to be applied eventually, that includes fasting. This is all in Infinite Intelligence, available on a research site I made for my version and study of it. I had been actively trying to apply these teachings in my own life for three years. I had even sent my daughter away so I could pursue only this desperate method, horrified as I was by the world and the future.
Why was I desperate? My health and finances had simply made my stress with living too intense for me to endure any longer. So I had wanted to die, to hopefully if possible merge with God, to no longer endure such anxiety, the great promised boon of union and my truest personal aim, but I knew too much bad news to expect too much. So I had felt that even if I could wipe out most of my sanskaras and reincarnate to a simpler more cleansed and sane and obedient life to work for Baba in a new way he chose for me, better than this life ruined by my lack of wisdom, knotted up with my impressions as it had been, a life I still can see no way to purify and return to sensible order and calm.
So my real motivation was simply to escape from misery and anxiety, something Upasni Maharaj had actually applauded in human beings, so rare he saw, and explained what to do when one has it, which is to seek methods to escape it. This, in fact, is exactly the course I had attempted, out of desperation, in great confusion. And even this form of desperation is described in God Speaks, “an incurable disgust for the world and an ardent and burning thirst for God.” And it is demarcated from lesser more ordinary temporary feelings of disappointment with life, that it says are of no significance. I was not disappointed, but utterly sickened by life itself, especially my own, but the world in general. I don’t know if I have the real kind, but it seems so, and I only know what seems, as I am not God and cannot know more than I see. So this was the sole motivation, same as many, many saints it seemed from my reading. I was quite sure it was my only course open to me. I still feel it was. That is why I now feel so awash and unsure and frightened for the future.
So for three years I had tried numerous fasts and penances, and numerous penetrations into spiritual and material knowledge.
When all these led to nothing, I finally chose a coarse most dangerous – simply to fast to death with no real yogas (methods) at all. Simply to find ways to occupy my mind to stay calm until I died, to put my soul in the hands of God’s terrible dangerous mercy. And this was the final course I was on when all this occurred. It was simply to not eat food, to “fast to death to see God,” which to me means become one with God, which means real death of the false self, obliteration of world experience, Majzoobiyat, and nothing more.
As desperate as it was, it was chosen carefully nonetheless, or at least at the end of great effort to choose among all I could dig up.
Even if my techniques I put together in the end were hodge-podge and crazy, they were the result of a lot of tortuous thought, increasingly loose since all else had failed, the last of a thread coming undone, a tapestry that was so thread bare by unraveling by then that it had no true image left.***
Part of my hodge-podge of techniques I put together for my erasure from the universe included no lustful thoughts at all, keeping very physically clean, and doing calm things as I fasted, though I drank grapefruit juice. I no longer disallowed failures with food, but would simply slog on, returning to fasting, flushing out my body with faster and faster methods, including enemas and vomiting, anything. I assumed it would take at least ninety days in this insanity, that as I grew weak I would slowly remain hidden in my apartment more and more to escape questions or well-meaning but misdirected interventions, and finally I would stop moving, read, waste away, and die, and find out the outcome of my death, at the mercy of a dangerous God I could no longer not face facing with all my faults in tact. For life was simply unendurable to me now, my last joy my own wasting. I assumed if God did not want me to die, something would happen that would intervene and show me a new way to live I could not then guess. Thus it was a surrender even of my own control over my yoga itself, or its results, only the desire for death was remained, or for someone higher to decide my fate for me and reverse me.
I had long learned that I was happiest when I would “work” like this, that this kind of thing was the only action that still gave me any peace, for it was the only action where I felt any accomplishment or movement of my soul, or hope of any kind. Life had nothing left to offer me, and it had increasingly felt had nothing left it wanted from me. I saw no purpose in my life even to help anyone, and even wrote this carefully, for I had given all I had most truly, ending with a final perfection of the Intelligence Notebooks, and no more untold thoughts. Everything I did at the end was tying loose ends for others, and smoothing a path to death for myself. I felt at the moment of my experience I had done all in my power to do, and nothing at all remained. I wanted the best for everyone, and even did all I could to make things best as I could figure for them in the event of my passing, but wanted nothing but annihilation for myself, especially the end of my ravenous tortured unquiet mind.
I grew very thin obviously, perhaps 120 pounds. I took long painful walks to tire myself. Everything hurt. Sleep began to vanish, but I found myself lying upon my bed enduring peacefully the long nights without complaint or movement, simply staring at the dark and allowing my thoughts to quietly work without interruption. I said the prayers often, at any time, and had a large photo of Baba’s face before my bed, 20 X 30 inches, behind Plexiglas in a cheap plastic frame from Walgreen, but very straight on the wall and taped in place, even the corners glued tied.
At some point I finished my last philosophical work, the final touches on my version of the Intelligence Notebooks, with help from Stelios in polishing the final complete draft. When it was done I cleaned up its home on a website I had built for it, linked to it from my own site, and abandoned it for others to find or ignore. It would be there. This I saw as my greatest philosophical work of my life and its summum bonum, the editing of Baba’s own most important and most esoteric book in my mind. I felt I could contribute nothing beyond it of any measurable significance in comparison. It was a conclusion.
All my own thoughts were preserved too, including my thoughts on the planets and the world, left in a PDF for Megan and you and Stelios. This was sufficient I felt. My short book of my own theory, Evolution of Perception, I knew was important, but paled next to the final book of Baba’s I had put together in a way I felt proper and destined to be done by me. I felt blessed for having been given that opportunity, I felt was something Baba had spent my life preparing me to do. I felt my death would simply bolster its significance if it came just after its completion. I felt that editing Baba’s book was my ultimate contribution to Baba’s manifestation, and the last I would ever perform, and could never out-do by my own mind. With that I ceased all philosophy, and even wrote a poem titled “Beyond Art, Beyond Philosophy,” written on paper and dated, paper clipped and put aside. All poetry I wrote I kept to myself at this point, only to tie internal loose ends so I could leave all aside from my thoughts.
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| Ship model I had ordered |
And this is where things stood, everything neatly in its place, when it happened. I can only add that as the end approached, my behavior became increasingly odd, though I hardly judged it. Anything seemed right to me. I would dig in dumpsters, sometimes with people looking on, and dig out clothes that I washed and wore, and food I put into the freezer to eat if I was ever God realized and needed to eat again. I froze strawberries and bread from a dumpster. One time I put the strawberries into my grapefruit juice and crushed it up in the blender and ate it. I tasted the bread and threw the rest away. I wanted an empty refrigerator. I then returned to fasting.
I would walk in my clean dumpster clothes I took in with needle and thread to fit me, and kept meticulously clean. I had needle and thread by my bed and was always mending my own clothes, and fashioned my bathrobe with a button rather than a sash, even sewing the button hole by hand.
And then one day it happened. A very strange turn of events.
It was the morning of 24th of August, 2012. I was cleaning my apartment. This is very hard to explain and I don’t know if I can do it, but I’ll try. Up to this point I had grown very, very odd, as I have explained. I had even taken to dragging stones home to my apartment. I had intricate ideas about these stones and their souls.
Now on this morning, I began to notice that I had no idea what I was doing, but that each time I set something down in my apartment, such as a pen, a paper clip, a handkerchief (I had many clean ones all folded), I did not need to know why I did so. I would move about cleaning the apartment mechanically like an automaton, and return, and find that object set right where I needed it at that exact moment, neatly folded and waiting for me in the spot closest to my hand, which then picked it up for the task without thinking, but pondering who had known that exact moment and need would arise at that exact spot. Certainly not me. This made me see if I could consciously let go of being conscious altogether, or at least have any deliberation as I simply observed and tried to stitch together what was happening after the fact, it would be clear I thought if I let go. I did not know what was happening, but I noticed it made a strange internal logic, but not my own. Every tiny movement of my body turned out to have a meaning and purpose, that later revealed itself in subsequent minutes or in the morning, but not my own purpose, something transcended my own conscious mind. This happened best if I simply acted automatically, without judging the movements of my feet and hands. I began to simply watch my actions without judging them, and observed becoming very busy, cleaning, with no exact purpose known to me, and everything grew strangely bright and clean.
Then it dawned on me that it mattered not what I did, as I was not doing it at all. Some other force, something I thought might be God in some sense I had never thought of, was doing all this, and not me, and always had but I had not realized it. Thus what difference did it really make. Increasingly I experimented with taking no notice of why I did anything, but simply surrendered to the impulse and observed that I or some kind of I was observing. I took this observing “I” to be my soul, that this actor acting was in fact God, my true Self, the only actual Real Self. It dawned on me that this real Self was the only actor in all human actions, but our minds interfered and told themselves they were the doer, a false belief that seemed true only through thinking it. I had actually read this spiritual fact many times, but had never stopped to observe it by removing all of my own intentions or thinking. Thus it occurred to me to abandon myself entirely and let my mind go and simply mechanically obey the energy moving me, a kind of command which I did not hear but saw apparently moving my body. Thus I retreated and became the witness solely, the observer, the student of God. This body was now moving very rapidly, and I had abandoned it utterly. It was run by God I thought and not me, it was not my business what God was doing, or his purpose, only His business. I had no business. I became fascinated, but impartial.
So then I found myself about to throw away my broken water distiller that I found under my sink, just gathering sticky dust. I cleaned it first though in the sink, then took it to my desk I had fashioned for making my model, sat down and began to attempt to fix it, simply watching my hands disassemble it bolt by bolt. I examined the electric parts, knowing nothing about how electricity worked. But as I studied it under a magnifying glass I had bought for model making the thought occurred that all knowledge lay somehow possible to attain simply by being thoughtful and staring and going deeper and deeper, one screw at a time as it revealed itself behind the last piece of metal removed. If there was something to salvage I would discover what it was, if there was a purpose in my actions it would reveal itself to me, simply by allowing the body to go into full concentration without effort. The hands thus worked and worked, the eyes studied without thought, but would just stare and think. Then the thought came that it was somehow burnt out beyond repair, at least by me, but still some kind of metal pot was possible to salvage, and nothing useful should be thrown away it seemed to my salvaging mind. Thus I walked with it and tools to the dumpster outside and began to simply peal piece after piece from the stainless steel canister, throwing it away to clear away a pure canister that might have some purpose like my large rocks I gathered, perhaps for plants. I had a hammer by the dumpster and many other tools set in the grass around me. It slowly was cleansed in my hands until I could go no further. I put away the pot in a spot outside out of the way, still imperfect, having tossed everything else, gathered all my tools and went inside again. It would make sense later I found my observing disinterested soul musing passively. It was a big so what. There was nothing to the pot perhaps, but if there were I was confident it would make its purpose later clear to me. I should add that a strange mantra had come to me in the days building up to this, “What difference does it make?” This thought seemed to make utter sense to me, and now was in full sway, no longer thought discursively but being enacted mechanically, a kind of senseless abandon.
I entered the house, set down the tools neatly on a trunk. Then I was before a full length mirror. I found I looked like an automaton to myself, a lifeless man, my body moving increasingly mechanically with no life, eyes staring, but very awake. But there were no thoughts, just a strange interest. I surrendered even deeper. My body began to walk, stop, shift a step to the right or left, then walk more straight forward, then do something. All this was very fast though I was walking at a normal rate. I noted the time. There was a desire to note the time. I noted it in paper at my desk. It was something like noon. I drew on the paper beside the time where things were when I wrote it. I did not ask why I was doing so. I put down the pen, stood up and walked into the next room, not knowing where I was going.
I found myself in the bathroom, having walked there robotically. I stopped and faced the mirror, waiting for movement, not knowing what the next movement would be, confident it would manifest on its own as was the pattern now of the day.
Then the thing happened. I don’t remember what happened perfectly. I did a lot of strange very small movements. No more tools or instruments in my hands. I was standing in the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the tub I think, and began to see thoughts rush before me. Everything passed through my mind. What did I “see?” No images. I heard nothing. Just knowledge rushed through faster and faster, teaching me something. I was realizing something. Time got very strange. I did not know if things were taking a second or a million years, but I tried to know. My body was so mechanical and not in my hands that I could not gauge time at all. And then I realized that seemingly no more than a second was passing, or something like seconds, if I stitched some sounds coming from me together as a single utterance. The first utterance came in parts of words, then froze as I saw vast seeings of knowing pass, then more of the sound. I at first did not know what was being uttered. Something like “Oh . . . my . . . God” was coming from my mouth, but first “Oh” an then freezing a long time, and a little movement, as I saw, I saw that I was about to know what was real, what was behind time, much time passing, then “m. . . y” then frozen seeing again.
I see now, trying to describe this frozen extended moment, that I cannot describe it. I use the word “seeing” often but saw nothing with shape or color. I heard no sound. But there was knowing diffusely what was being conveyed to me through seeming direct sight. I felt I was being shown time for some reason, to see noontime behind it, that it was true but not enough to say time was an illusion, a perceptual schema. I knew that all this was known to me, but not in the way it was being shown to me now. I knew that only a philosopher of my type would grasp any of it, that even Evolution of Perception was vital to have written to experience it, but that there was something missing in my knowledge previously that God now wanted me to see directly, to actually observe. It was the grand horrible scope of time, that was related to my being now, that I had still overlooked, even though time never existed. I had to weep for the expanse of time, that the plants and stones endured, that men and women endured in endless births, and I wept it internally, and I had to see that which was beautiful in creation that could only be experienced through the appearance of endless time, and I felt that joy truly for a moment, and I had to be shown how enormous time (illusory as it was) truly was, just how unfathomably vast and horrific. And that if we stretched back into the past and future at the greatest expanse, that God was showing himself in me, only then could I grasp who or what I was and who Baba was and who and what Upasni Maharaj was, and a Majzoob was. I saw that at the very outer stretches of this tragic horrific though beautiful thing that wrapped around reality called time before it gave way to what lay even behind it, was Baba, the Avatar. And nothing lay beyond Baba. I was to see or know just how horrific his state truly is, and that he was in fact quite possibly me, but at a great distance in the beginning, and the horrific thought came that when this was over that this God was me and I would awaken at the end as Baba himself. But this was horrifying. And then I saw somehow that I was also already a Majzoob, and that I was in fact also already a Perfect Master. But all this shifted. I did not know who I was suddenly. Am I Baba? Am I Perfect? Am I a Majzoob? Am I a Salik? What would I be when this was over? More and more I longed for it to be over, and each time it appeared to end, it would restart and go in a new direction and show me more, rushing in thought into space and beyond the stars, into the atoms of the sink and things around me in the room, into the oceans, into the cells and atoms of my own body. I felt myself experiencing each part of my face, moving from atom or cell to the next, healing it, altering it, feeling this odd healing. I waited as my mouth seemed to turn into a new mouth, and felt all my gums were being healed as something moved through my head. I even searched for my missing tooth with my tongue, wondering if it had reappeared, and wondering if it would at the end be repaired, as all seemed possible at this moment and I had no idea what was taking place, but some kind of transformation. I thought, “Is this what perfection includes? Is even the physical being perfected?” I had no idea what was happening for sure. I found a sob come, slow and in pieces. I was still sitting on the tub. I got up and my hands began to fold a towel that was damp and on the sink counter, carefully one fold, then another, then pressing down on the moistness, then I saw my hand pick it up and clean the sink to perfection. I was mesmerized as the dirt seemingly disappeared almost before the towel arrived or under it. Then I thought I was to be shown through this towel analogy the real meaning of the power of the 4th plane, for no clear reason except that all seemed to me to be being shown to me down to the last detail, nothing excluded, and this power lay at the bottom of the mystery of time, and I saw books that would come of all this knowledge all lined up, but I did not know who would write them. But each time the power of the 4th plane was to be shown, the hand then abandoned it, saying it was not time yet still, failing, and went on showing more layers of atoms and time, and even the core of quantum reality I thought.
I didn’t really know what was going on. I only knew that I no longer had any control. I was not doing anything and this was growing exhausting. And I was frightened. Then this began to slowly release me, bit by bit. My arms moved for a moment freely like an ordinary person, like I was beginning to control it, or feel I was, then it froze again, then returned more. Slowly I found myself returning to what I was intended to remain for some years yet, though I still was wondering what that new thing was. I no longer thought I was to be Baba in the ordinary sense, but it occurred to me that I was certain that at the back of my truest reality of self that is exactly what I was, though this was farther back then I would ever have to endure seeing again. And then I found that I was turning into something more and more like Chris Ott again and even heard the name I believe. But somehow I felt that Chris Ott was perfect now, not the same person as before, but also utterly normal at the same time, a philosopher again, but Perfect in some hidden strange sense – who knew everything, but at the same time nothing.
At last I found myself standing before the mirror seeing a face much like Chris Ott, but his face was in fact mildly changed and disfigured, as it has remained to this moment, quite frightening to behold to me still. Enough like Chris, but somehow very altered, especially around the mouth that now hung at the sides unless I pierced it up into a new strange smile I had never seen before. Expressions were in the face that had never been there before, and he looked far older, like a 60 or 70 year old man. I looked just like a Perfect Master to myself, much like Upasni. I found myself then abandoned again, just standing there, some kind of self again with no one else there. I found myself leaning into the mirror examining my face very carefully. I found my hands go to the closet, come up with the trimmer, trim my beard and hair very quickly and then set aside. Then I picked up a whisker scissors, a real one I own, I might have gone to fetch it but don’t remember, a very fine hair scissors. And I leaned into the mirror, automatically for this last moment, but not quite so mechanically, me or not me I wasn’t absolutely sure. My hand went to trim the hairs near my ears, and pulled hairs from my ears. When it trimmed certain hairs there was a squeaky uncertain but very tender and loving hand doing it, so shy and unsure, so frightened to cut even a single piece of skin of the delicate ear, or the wrong hair on such a great face, and it trimmed very delicately as if trimming on another person some hairs overlapping the delicate flabby ear tops. I felt the tickle. And then the scissors was put aside, and it was done. I stood there. I was delivered entirely back to my own decisions. Whatever had happened was over. I was someone else, but I didn’t know exactly who or what that new person was.
I thought I was perhaps looking at the true face of a Perfect Master, that I was a Perfect Master now, but named Chris Ott, and the thought then came most naturally that a Perfect Master had just appeared on Earth, almost like coming into this body and replacing the old self, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. And I realized how utterly possible that this was, though it had not happened before in eons, and there would be others some day due to Baba’s birth who like me would find the way due to him. I wondered if I was one of the five, or only a simple salik, one of the others who do not hold any office in the hierarchy. I thought that if I were one of the five, I would soon be contacted by someone. If not, I might be left to my own devises and to decide what to do with my perfection, simply a man with no impressions, but no great karmic work.
I then took control of my body fully. What would I do. My movements were strange, these movements have since left me, but for a couple days my body moved in this strange shy way, hunched over a bit and taking small steps, and very timid and careful and quiet, shy and loving. I looked so different. But I thought I was Perfect, purified utterly. I know I’m not now.
It came through my mind that I was all these things I had wondered if I was, but not all at once in the domain of time, but only beyond time. But still I assumed I was Perfect. I simply could not explain the strange experience I had just had any other way at that point, and that is how my mind interpreted it. I then tiptoed seemingly or shyly walked, hunched a bit, my hands forward and delicate and searching and touching things tenderly, into my bedroom, saw Baba’s picture on the wall before my bed, and fell back frightened. “Noooo!” I said to Baba, “I don’t want to be Perfect. I want to only love You!” I really said this to Baba’s picture, and fell down and wiped the threshold, one rung of the shelves that serve as my alter to him. I wiped it delicately to show my devotion to him. I found my copy of God Speaks, or rather it felt I discovered it as if I had never been in this room, and set it on the bed, carefully on a pillow before Baba. All I experienced I thought was in that book, and I would worship it. I patted it lovingly, and then looked at Baba, then walked over and stood before his picture and turned back to my bed to admire God Speaks as if I were him, seeing it as him.
I turned to the picture again and recited the Master’s prayer, hearing the words more deeply as I said them than at any time in my life. I went on with the Prayer of Repentance, feeling I was saying it for the whole world. I committed myself to remain his disciple, and whether or not I was Perfect I would refuse to be. It dawned on me I did not wish to be perfect, and it was awful, for I only wanted to worship Baba, nothing else. I guess my mind flipped about like this, with no quarrel over contradictions. I was deciding, as I did not know for sure what I was, and it seemed hardly to matter. I would live as whatever I chose. I thought perhaps I was only 6th plane and pondered this serious possibility, for love was so strong but no philosophical thoughts. I had only a desire to love none really to be God, but only to have the chance to adore God. I felt utterly pure, but simply had only the desire to love him, and love him in everyone and everything all around me, and to help others perhaps. Perhaps also I was an Akmal, who has no disciples, but is perfect. I simply didn’t know.
But then I heard music in the next room, coming from the radio that had been left on softly and rushed to hear the music. I sat and wrote the lyrics with a flourish of my pen.
I got up and tiptoed to the door, stepped out into the sunshine, felt very happy, returned and quietly shut the door as if sneaking. I found myself examining my things, tiptoeing through the strange apartment, thinking how marvelous it was to have these material things I could call mine now if I wanted as Chris was gone. I examined Chris Ott’s things, feeling I was naughty but allowed to rummage through someone else’s things and choose what I liked as he was somehow me. I remembered Chris had a watch, and I searched the apartment for it with great excitement and interest, though timidly and shyly. Finding it I turned it over with great love, and put it lovingly in my pocket like I had made a terrific find. I went through Chris Ott’s wallet, and discovered his debit card. I was very happy that Chris Ott had had disability, and felt very much that I was relieved I did not have to work, and grateful to Chris Ott whoever he was for all these things he had seemingly prepared for me and left behind for me to now enjoy in his absence, for some higher purpose. I explored the room for some time, sometimes seeking out things I could barely remember but were returning to my mind, but everything felt new and fresh. At each Baba picture I blew kisses and bowed and backed from them. At each moment and each movement I would find the Baba picture in the room and was pleased to see it and waved to it and acknowledged it. Baba was all I wanted now. I hardly cared what I was. I was having quite a lot of fun being this non-self – just a simple lover of God with no identity.
I later found a note I wrote then, actually a whole stash. I had been drawn from Baba’s picture in my room by words of a song being sung on my radio as I mentioned. I had rushed into the room to hear them, and danced and swayed to them, sitting finally and writing them furiously, then the next song too. I scribbled and scribbled the words till my hand wore out and the lines scrawled off into exhaustion. I could find the song later I thought, to hear it again. And then I wrote, “I must make a fresh start.” For I found this in the notes from that time. And this was followed by a grocery list and things the house needed. I wondered how much Chris Ott had on his debit card, and felt I must be quite rich. I also noted that the experience had taken place between 12:30 and 1:30 PM. It was just 1:30 when I entered the room.
I finally dressed, quite exotically, and took a bag I had made when I was cleaning, and set out to get groceries with my list. My fast was no longer needed. I walked along happily toward town, to the grocery store. Along the way I heard a voice. It was now about 6:00, and still daylight. I was passing through town, and I heard a woman’s loving voice call to me, “Hey you.” I turned and saw the Jewish girl Aviva in her car, stopped in the street near me, looking at me and calling to me. I got a big smile and said I could not remember her name which was so sad for I remembered her so well. She had listened to me talk a year before and even fasted afterward for eight days. She said I was much thinner than she had seen me, and I lovingly teased she had gained, and she agreed and smiled. I was so happy to see her. She is very spiritual, the only one like her I know, but we never really knew each other, but a couple encounters when we had talked. What a strange coincidence now, but one I felt was expected somehow, the kind of thing that might happen now as all was a new life.
“Would you like to go to a concert? I won these tickets and my friends I had in mind to go with me could not come?” I was headed for groceries, but told her with delight I would might like to go. It started in thirty minutes she told me. I asked if I could tag along with her, or if I would go alone, or meet her there, or what I should do. I was hoping she would go too. She said she meant with her if I liked. It was utterly spontaneous, and she has nothing but love for me, no designs. So I told her I was going for groceries, but it would not take me long. She offered to drive me, to speed it up. She drove me in her lovely car. I remember being very happy in her car, and so amazed at our encounter. We talked like brother and sister, joking a lot. She waited outside as I ran through the store filling my basket with good food, and came quickly out with a giant bag and we rushed it home, and I changed my shirt and ran back down and we went to the concert. There we got a lovely dinner, and had lovely conversation, and I talked about God and stigmata, and I told the story when my hands bled in San Francisco and she listened with fascination. And then we saw the concert, and later after having much fun, we walked home. Her house was right near mine it turned out, she had moved into town since I saw her. It was one in the morning when I said goodnight and walked home and got into bed, spreading all my gathered memorabilia from our night out together onto my counter. I had been on a date it seemed, though a very chaste and spiritual one. Someone that might be my friend, or so I hoped, but didn’t quite care. It was complete in itself. I was in the moment, but there was a pungent feeling of new possibilities and a new life starting.
The following day I woke and it was equally strange. I will tell it next time. I didn’t know what I was, but my mind was open to almost anything, and for two solid days things seemed to go smoothly and I ate. It was only as the second say ended when things got weird, and then deadly weird on the third day.
The next morning was Saturday, August 25. I woke and found all the beautiful things from the night before’s concert. I was quite romanced by the night before, not by the notion of female companionship, but the feeling of spirituality and a quiet hope I was making spiritual friends. I even had had the thought that if I were a master, and I didn’t know, but felt I would just be observant and it would be clear eventually what I was and what had happened if I were patient. All would become clear. I felt that if I were a master and was meant to have any followers or helpers or friends to help, who would understand me, they would appear. And if they didn’t that was okay too. I didn’t particularly care. But my mind was open to nearly any possibility. Thus things that happened I tended to observe for what they might show me.
When I got to the library I was interested in getting an entertainment paper I had never heard of that I found in my possessions when I woke. I wanted a couple of copies so I could save one and send a copy to Megan or someone. I don’t know why I wanted it. At the library I asked the librarian, who is normally quite gruff. I said very sweet things to the librarian and she was very flattered. She took to taking me all about in the library searching and telling other librarians the little joke I had made about her age that flattered her. She was smitten by me, oddly. I am a common item in the library, someone hardly understood, referred to respectfully as “Mr. Ott” but never adoringly, only cautiously. Suddenly this very normally tight head librarian woman was my companion, and when we could not find a copy of this paper anywhere in the library I learned a bread company I never heard of had it. I set out for it, collecting flowers along the way. I find myself surrounded by old hippies and tourists at a farmer’s market I never go to. I tend to stick to my poor side of town, with my precious dumpsters, but today I felt rich and beautiful and wanted to reach out to everyone. I would gather flowers that I picked and draped on my cloth bag, in my bright white pants walking, and would also carry flowers in my fingers and anyone who gave me directions to this bread factory, I would give a flower to, often to great delight. In the bread factory eyes were all one me, often smiling, and I would smile and make the funniest loving comments, teasing and flirting but not in any dirty old man way, mostly to old ladies. Everywhere I asked for things and was given them, by men too. I saw a dog and said to the man holding its leash how beautiful it was. I asked if I could pet him and he said yes and I crouched and the dog licked my smiling face for a very long funny time. I never did that in my life. He had very nice breath. The colors were very bright to me. All things seemed clean and beautiful, and everywhere I went I had never been before. I got my entertainment paper, and stopped for incense, and was very popular. People stopped to talk to me. Once after picking some flowers a policeman stopped to ask directions and I gave them to him. He asked if I was going to arrest him, and I asked if he was going to arrest me and how lovely that would be, and he said no. Then he said that the town should hold a fund raiser and run me for mayor, then he raised it to governor. It was a very strange day like this. Then I found Coralie in the library approach me. Normally I am in strict no talk mode with her, but I was warm and ended up going over to her house. There she sat me in a chair that felt like Baba’s chair. Everything seemed magic and I took it as a sign perhaps I really was Perfect and even gave a short talk in the chair and became a bit lovingly directorial. And everywhere I went people turned and smiled at me, and even wanted to talk to me. It was so odd.
I thought I was making things happen. I did not know how. I also thought I saw plants vibrate when I passed them. I would wave my hands at things. I walked all the way home blessing all the trees and bushes with Baba’s name, “Jai Baba.”
Many days later Coralie said how strange I had been behaving, so my interpretations were apparently all wrong. But it was not I who approached her, you must understand. So it is a bit odder than she realizes.
The following morning was the truly terrible day. I woke stranger still than before. My thoughts were so strange on this third day, the Sunday of my arrest, they are hard to communicate.
In fact I can’t even remember them clearly. But I found myself stepping naked but with shoes on into my bathtub. I normally only take showers. But I sat in the shallow water and began strangely washing my feet and the shoes floated in the water and came apart. I scrubbed and scrubbed myself and picked at the soap, and even washed the shoe parts floating. I felt I had no idea why I was doing this, but that if I just focused hard enough on whatever I did I would penetrate something.
What dream distortion came from this moment I can’t quite say. But it had to do with some kind of Christ idea. I had told Coralie a bit of my idea, which I later heard she thought was crazy, having to do with Fayetteville being the first to wake up, which I had felt had to do with my sainthood or Perfect Masterhood being there and creating a temporary atmosphere. I felt all could feel me and this new age dawning. I then felt after leaving the bathroom with the shower curtain, or perhaps while in the tub (I’m not sure) that I had to first penetrate something. I gave myself the task of stripping myself of the skin from my hands, using this sharp object in a strange way too hard to explain. As I began to attempt to fillet myself alive that it was too painful. Each time I opened my eyes after trying I found I had failed. I then felt that the only way to succeed was to do it so bad that I died, by killing myself, and by doing this I would set the new age in motion. And I felt that there was a logic to this, that made sense to me, that I expect does make sense in its own internal strange way, divorced from ordinary reality and all the facts that did not seem to matter to me, and I set about some kind of horrible action that was extremely violent. I don’t even know for sure what I was picturing. But the final result only came after many tries, more and more violent, and then I finally “succeeded.” This success amounted to flopping to the floor so fast that I bashed my head open, and when I saw the blood pouring and pooling beneath me I collapsed into a faint into my own blood smiling with satisfaction.
Apparently I awoke and got up, though I don’t remember doing that. After this head smashing I only have tiny snap shots of what happened, much like a flash bulb going off in the dark and leaving me an impression of that fraction of a second, though with very bright color and vividness. I remember my door burst open and people outside screaming “Get him” and a taser wire jump from a policeman’s gun pointed at me and grabbing me in the stomach and my collapsing. I remember trying even to dress for this occasion in a ragged sack I had found outside and then abandoning it as it looked absurd and went to my job naked. I felt I had to be crucified, or I had to lead a band of people singing “Onward Christian soldiers” until we changed the whole world. I had a million quasi spiritual fantasies. I remembering grabbing the T-shirt of my neighbor and trying to rip it off his body. I don’t know why. I believe I was outside stark naked at this point, and likely covered in blood as head wounds bleed enormously and my wound I gave myself I now know required numerous stitches. I remember Joe beating me with his fist over and over until I fainted into the deck floor outside, quite happy to be beaten. I remember being lead bound and in pain and I thought I had to tell them the beginning of the earliest Avatar and they would release me. And I remember shouting, “And before Mohammed was Jesus, and before Jesus was Abraham and before Abraham was Zoroaster!” to the police as I was lead to an ambulance with people jeering. I felt it was all a show and my story constantly changed. At one point I was calling out all the names in the film industry I knew as if this was important to the police, and they were actually demonstrating a spiritual film we were all going to make and they had found their Jesus for it, and Mel Gibson was involved.
I shouted and babbled, and was beaten everywhere to a pulp. And in the ambulance I went on talking as they put restraints on me, horribly twisted my handcuffs to my thumb went numb (and it still is numb). I remember I thought all the paramedics were bad actors, but I told them they were good actors, as I thought they were auditioning for me, and I thought they were good enough as it was to be one of those Christian movies, that are well intended but amateurishly acted, and I felt this was good enough for our purposes. I felt that I would say the right thing at any moment and the torture would end, for it was all to get me to say some special expected thing. And I was to guess it. I asked the police at the emergency room standing all around me as I was tied down if they were a secret order or Christians. And I said I was quite studied on such secret societies. And I thought my mind was utterly lucid and everyone was agreeing with me utterly and excited as me about the drama we were enacting. I felt it was all momentous spiritually, and that I had to suffer.
But as the suffering went on I said, “I wanted to be crucified, but now I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be crucified.”
In the emergency they jumped on me many times and things happened too terrible to describe. I remember a doctor standing in front of me stitching up my head on both sides as he pleasantly talked to the police. I felt no pain.
At last I must have been so drugged I fell asleep. I woke in an observation room in the E.R. of the hospital, a nurse at all times watching me through a small window. They did not come and go but watched continuously. As I lay bound nurses came in occasionally, or orderlies. And I began to gain incite that I had gone mad. It took me a long time to accept that I was actually in a real E.R. and this was not a movie or play we were enacting. I turned finally seriously to my philosophy training and searched my mind for ways to test what was true and false. I began to say different things to see the responses in the young orderlies who I suddenly began to guess were just humble real orderlies. It was a young humble Mexican girl who came to clean something of mine or change something that made me see it in her face and I said something very lucid and different see her response, and her simplicity and sweet answer made me see I was right. This was a real E.R. I had made a dreadful mistake the night before. I began to be nicer and nicer to everyone. I was at last unbound and a potty chair brought. I used it many times, and after a while found I could walk out shyly and if I explained what I was doing could go and dump the plastic removable pot from it in the toilet across the hall. Everywhere my clothes and sheets were bloody. As I got new ones these became bloody. Soon I realized I was bleeding from every part of myself, even my pot had blood. It was in my urine. I must have eaten a lot for as many trips as I made. I also got a meal in the E.R.
By mid day I was no longer psychotic. I had woken from the feverish delirium and regained my incite. I felt proud that I could do it as fast as I did. It is very hard to give up a psychotic thought, but I had nothing invested in it actually. I literally had just gone mad.
Anyway, the day became pleasant, and I began to work harder and harder to control my bleeding, even secretly fashioned a kind of diaper for myself out of a towel, under my smock, and I figured out how to tie it in the back in two places. I found where the pillow cases were and sheets and changed them several times till all the blood was controlled. I wanted the room to not show my madness, for I had been told my social worker counselor was coming to assess me, and I was very excited to see him. I had met him briefly the night before and he had asked for any telephone number of a family member. The only number I could remember was Leslie’s, and he had gotten through to her. Leslie spoke also to a policeman, and he mentioned that I was babbling some philosophy. She said I was likely babbling but that she wanted him to know that her brother actually did have a master’s in philosophy. To this the policeman told Leslie (she later told me) an amazing thing, and she said it was meant sincerely as she heard it in his tone. “Oh we are treating him with the utmost respect.” This is actually true, and though I suffered, I could see that in their eyes. There were many, many police in the room initially, and only very slowly did they reduce the number. And they sat around and listened to me and my strange questions, and even thought about them. The night was long and much happened.
So anyway in this new observation room I finally got everything tidy for my social worker I was so much wanting to see to speak lucidly to. I was told I was going somewhere else and was excited about it. At last the door opened, but rather than the social worker from the night before it was a woman. I liked her, but she seemed frightened. I did manage to relax her a little, and she told me they were looking to find me a bed among many hospitals. There was much commotion about how to take me when they found one, and I insisted I wanted to go in a police car and not an ambulance, to save money, and told them I didn’t have good insurance, but they ended up going with the ambulance for some reason. I almost got my preference though. But there were other issues. I was given a set of blue paper clothes to wear for the journey, which I put on, careful to keep my diaper on that I had made. I had arrived at the hospital stark naked and had nothing. I remember looking down at my naked body in the ambulance, and marveling how Christ-like I had looked, straight out of the Passion of Christ, and this may have stirred some of my weird thoughts that we were auditioning for Mel Gibson and this was a secret Christian order, as Mel Gibson does belong to an odd sect of Catholicism.
Anyway I was wrong. I had gotten truly psychotic to the most extreme level, where I had for a while been impervious to pain, but this had in stages given way to extremely sharp pains at time.
Anyway dressed in paper I was wheeled away in the ambulance, reclining, and then at some point stood up in the psychiatric ward where I was given all my accoutrements and led to my room. I loved my brown outfit, shirt and pants. I still have the shirt. I also loved my toiletry bucket. I didn’t much like having to wear a blanket for a coat, and began to ask everyone, first nurses, then patients, if they had a jacket, until one strange black boy gave me his coat, that he didn’t wear. I found men standing around him and saying that all that was given to him he just gave away, and I came to his defense as my hero, and I remember whispering to him what a loving thing it was.
Over the days I grew quickly to know and love the routine, and to deeply love my doctors, many of the nurses, and all the patients. In fact it was so loving it was like a sahavas, all of us filled with love for everyone else. One odd thing was that when I spoke to nurses about nearly anything, they listened intently. I was also telling them amazing things about subjects they were interested in. Many swore they would look it up and I had them very often want to talk to me. But I also had very serious physical problems. I avoided thinking about these by losing myself in loving everyone, really loving them, and being loved, and was really truly loved, and this gave me some peace. It was a very happy time. I went to as many programs as I had strength for, and would participate very hard, even taking enthusiastically to crayons, a throwing game, anything. In group discussions I contributed things that made some of the leaders brighten up. I even had student nurses sitting and listening to me. I told my whole group I was celibate for nine years, and this amazed people. They were also startled to learn that my blood work in the ambulance had turned out negative for drugs or alcohol.
I grew to love my roommate, a 19 year old boy with psychotic thoughts that would have definitely lead to his death, it was part of his belief. He had been there a long time with no improvement, and I began treating him. We would return to our room often for more conversations so I could help him overcome his delusion, which was serious. After much hard work it seemed I was definitely succeeding. He changed his entire view and would take notes on everything I said, even reading to me his court appeal, which I drastically changed, and he would stop and change a single word if necessary. He said I was a genius and gave me his sweat shirt, insisting I keep it, even putting on a blanket himself, which saddened me. He just wanted me to remember him. Before I left he came and hugged me and we exchanged emails discretely. I told him he was only three years older than my daughter and I saw him as a son, which I did. His whole story is very moving and I’ll tell it to you someday perhaps. But it was very moving.
But it was not all fun. On my last morning there I woke to so much internal bleeding that I walked to the door through a puddle of my own pouring blood at 4:00 in the morning and called down the hall, “Nurse! Help me!” The nurses ran to my room and instantly went to work changing my sheets and mopping up the blood. This was so frightening, my bed was drenched and the floor covered, and I begged them not to let my roommate see, as I didn’t want him to be traumatized, but it moved him very much. For he saw I was suffering too. I was very open with him about my own psychosis and how I escaped it and this deeply reached him too. He had so much respect for me, even called me a great man. One time he put a blanket on my bed very lovingly when I was across the room, for I had complemented the blanket.
The whole place was like this.
The bleeding turned out to be highly fortuitous, as it led to some of the deepest counseling with my psychiatrist of the whole time there, and it went all the way into my fifteenth year of life, as a teenager, as these health problems had their real origin there. And much that was blurry to me all my life became clear with him, both medically and mentally. My diagnosis was finally changed to what I always insisted that it is. I was not found to have bipolar. I was first of all found to have psychosis upon admission, but this was resolved. I was entirely in agreement. Second I have severe anxiety disorder, which is what I have always said.
No criminal charges were ever made against me. I was there under police order for a 72 hour observation, and this is exactly how long I was in the psychiatric hospital. I was given no drugs and no prescriptions were written when I left. I arrived drug fee and left drug free. I was always open that I had become psychotic, which was the sign it was resolved. I was extremely open, even enthusiastic, about treatment. I loved and respected both my psychiatrists, more than any I had ever known.
I was also eager to eat, asked my doctor for and received double portions, and had myself weighed twice, and gained at least ten pounds while there, from 130 to 140 pounds. I stopped being vegetarian while I was there, as it was not on the menu, and ate as if by God whatever I was served, including pork and bacon. I cleaned my plate every meal and filled out every form and cleared my tray. I kept my room and body clean, and even requested to shave, which was done with a tech present. You are handed the raiser and watched. This was very hard, as I arrived with a beard. I cut out a goatee. Girls talked girl talk with me, and no one flirted and I never flirted. All the techs and nurses had excellent boundaries and never flirted or overly commingled, but did sit and played chess with patients. I became true friends with several nurses. I learned every type I was to go to for each thing, and had many requests. I was shown diagrams by two nurses of the same internal problem, to have it explained to me carefully, and went over it with my doctor too, who as you know is a medical doctor as well as a psychiatrist. All agreed, including him, my problem, partially created by one very violent act I performed while psychotic, would heal fully, but received advise for after care (both physical and psychological) and how to get it very carefully if it was needed, though neither was ordered.
I received one adavan when I left the E.R. or on arrival (can’t remember) but none after, as well as atenolol once for blood pressure, but this was discontinued after the first day.
I have now returned to my humble simple crazy lonely life. I have spent much time with Coralie, who had left a note on my door, and brought me food. She does not know I was in a psychiatric hospital, only that I went to a hospital for malnutrition and dehydration, which is true.
Now upon returning, what happened to my belief I might be perfect? I no longer believe it at all. It was a strange hallucination. But my spiritual experience on August 24, I am still wondering about. I think something happened, but I don’t know what. When I told Megan, asking her not to tell this to Mimi, where she was when I spoke, that I had bashed my head open on purpose, something I did not admit at the hospital, she instantly noted that Baba smashed his head on a rock, with sincere curiosity. I agree this might be significant, but I don’t know.
I am certain that I became truly psychotic and thus temporarily mad in the most clinical sense, and not any magical sense, but I don’t know where the spirituality might end and the biological begins. It is interesting to note that my blood upon arrest was absolutely free of drugs and that I moved my bowels several times in the E.R. showing I had been eating. I had in fact been eating for two days when this occurred, without drugs or getting drunk. So this is very odd.
Nothing I saw with my eyes was unreal, but my interpretations were psychotic, not unlike the thoughts of my 19 year old roommate. This is why I felt so sure he might be able to heal, and he showed much sign of recovery from listening to me at great length.
I gave him some of the same advice I gave myself to heal. I won’t say his weird belief system he had concocted, but saw that it was rigid and he had nothing else to hope for. I began to ask him to simply doubt, not toss out his belief, and began to introduce into his mind more healthy 19 year old interests, using my own experience as a young man to help him to see some that were genuine for him, until he grew actually excited. The main thought I introduced into his mind was the suggestion that there was no harm in him putting his fantasy story about himself on a back burner, that it would not go anywhere if he put it off until he was 35, or any age, and that he might then return to it with a more mature and experienced mind. We found he would like to travel and wanted to see Germany. I explained to him what a youth hostel was, how cheap they are and that they are all over Europe. I told him all he would have to do to make such an adventure possible, cost of a ticket, the idea of traveling with a friend to be safe, how to save it, quite easy as he lived with his mother. We talked about school and what schools he might get into and what he might like to study. It turned out it was music. He became visibly excited and thoughtful, even hopeful, and wanted to discuss it. About his delusional ideas, I informed him historically about the real lives of the real historic figures he had erroneously worked into his vision, and he was extremely interested to learn of the facts of the matter, very different than his boyish fantasies. I corrected many of his false beliefs, filling him with far more complicated and interesting true one on those very subjects. He admitted he smoked a lot of pot, and was open to giving it up and finding new friends. He wondered many things then that were his own idea. He had thought he was gay, then out of the blue volunteered the odd thought that he was doubting that now. He was considering that he might not be gay. I told him that I didn’t care, but just so he knew I happened to know two people very well that, against all common wisdom, had this same realization and were no longer gay. This is true. One works on the Meher Center, and is now happily married for something like twenty five years. His entire mind was rearranging, and he actually wanted to go home. He even thought his mother, who was married in Germany, might like to go with him. I told him how little I had done at nineteen, and how many amazing things I had done afterward, such as being a filmmaker and later at forty a philosopher, and publishing my first book at 43. He was deeply amazed. He asked me many questions and I told him. I really do know an awful lot.
Then one day in my own despair, I told him I too was suffering, admitted I too had wanted to die, and then taught him the prayers I say to remain sane, prayers I had even begun to say to myself in the E.R. to recuperate my sanity, and I went through the Master’s Prayer, the Prayer of Repentance, the Beloved God Prayer, the Mandali’s Prayer, the Seven Names of God Prayer, and sang to him the Australian Arti, explaining the meaning of terms as I went. I did my whole arti for him in the dark alone on our last night together.
Am I on a plane? It does not feel like it. I feel just like I did when I arrived in Fayetteville. Nowhere. I am just Chris Ott, a mixed up man, struggling with everyone else. If anything I am waking up from my last illusions, much like my roommate, but much later in life.
When I came home I removed my Baba picture from the wall and set it in the closet. My hopes are gone. I mean the real spiritual seems to allude me. I am an intelligent and knowledgable man, who raised a great daughter. I have many who love me that I love. Will I ever be with Baba? I guess one day.
One thing sticks out from my experience. I had the thought near the end of it, that I am all these things, but not all at the same time, and time never existed, but the experience of it is terrifyingly long. I am a Majzoob right now, for in truth all souls are destined to be, and since there is no time, I already am in a certain real sense. But in the dimension of time, which we all seemingly must endure (though it is also where divine joys are made possible, and not just long tortures) I apparently must be Chris Ott for as long as that is in the illusory story. I got a glimpse of the fact that I already have reached my goal, but the illusion of the shroud of time hides my eyes from the presence of my ultimate goal, the ultimate goal of every soul. Am I Baba? Yes. But in the dimension of time I am not. Baba is the Alpha and the Omega, that which stretches from the beginning to the end, thus subsumes all in a certain way, though we do not subsume him.
One more interesting thing. When I was searching for the beginning of time, I said and before so and so there was so and so, and before that was such and such. But when I was in the E.R. surrounded by police I had a delusion that my freedom rested on my answering for myself a vital question. When did love begin? Is it first in the original, or did it only manifest through apparent separation. It is my belief now, though I am not absolutely sure, and I am never absolutely sure of anything, that love indeed was always there, and is the source as well as the goal.
If I gave to my young roommate anything, and I can’t know what was permanent that he got, and just a fleeting happy hope, it is was the gift of my unfathomable uncertainty. In that I am second to none.
Love,
Chris
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| Dated finished manuscript |
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| Hospital Discharge August 30, 2012 |
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| Photo of me 2 months after discharge from the hospital, showing how thin I still was |
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| Shortly after arriving in Myrtle Beach on November 25, 2012, 3 months after discharge |
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