Journeys into the bright world

The next house trip was startling because it was the first time that we went absolutely nowhere. Had not the candlelight, incense and my own mind been so sharp we might have thought that the medicine wasn't working. Howard started out by questioning our intention to purchase an expensive van for our travels, and suddenly switched to the idea that the same money could be applied toward a down payment on a larger house farther out in the country. For the next twenty minutes we lucidly discussed the financial, professional and psychological ins and outs of making such a move and determined that it would be both right and feasible. By the end of the conversation we had embarked on a course of action previously uncontemplated. In the following days and weeks our enthusiasm remained undiminished and we took the requisite steps to locate a more accommodating home base. My conclusion was that low-dose samadhi therapy can, when the occasion warrants, be an exercise in realism and I made a mental note to consult the goddess the next time we needed a think session with regard to pressing personal issues.

At the high dose level we also engaged in some purely theoretical excursions into the nature of good and evil and the reasons for existence. Repeatedly I witnessed the panoply of creation laid out as a mandala in which the lowest depths faithfully reflected the most exalted heights. However, at this point in our narrative a description of each separate sortie would soon become as boring for the reader as a home movie show of someone else's kids, pets and sightseeing tours. Perhaps, therefore, the time has come to ask, how much of this activity was recreational and how much educational? Were we merely indulging our imaginations or were we being led somewhere? What were our flights of fancy actually teaching us?

There was no doubt but that our sessions were taking us through a graded series of insights. Because most of us are so imbued with the puritanical idea that mankind can evolve only through pain, it took a while to realize that in ketamine's kingdom growth can also proceed through joy. That is, the process of learning how to be happy can be educational in an altogether practical way. We dance because it feels good but at the same time the exertion keeps us healthy and better able to cope with our jobs.

The antithesis of spirituality is puritanism. Historically these sour and earnest partisans of the pain-limned route to eternity banished music, dancing and games and became the world's capitalists and war mongers. Our culture is still sufficiently imbued with the hellfire and damnation puritan ethic to make it exceedingly difficult for the goddess to say, "Accept my gift because it will make your hearts sing and help you to melt in wonderment at the glories of creation." Only if we could somehow prove that we were solving problems, that we were practicing therapy rather than a form of yoga could we justify inviting her into our homes.

The word yoga means integration. To a large extent we were integrating diverse approaches to reality. That is, it was becoming increasingly difficult to decide whether we should be categorized as scientists, artists, educators, therapists, priests or philosophers. Seemingly, we were experiencing a kind of professional synesthesia that made it seem as though what we were practicing was not so much samadhi therapy as samadhi yoga.

Essentially, the goal of all forms of yoga is the achievement of divine bliss. Little by little we discover that we have been laboring through all our vicissitudes toward a unified condition which is not an escape from the contingencies of planet Earth but rather a resolving of paradoxes and a balancing of the multitudinous pairs of opposites which rend us this way and that. Disciplines and restraints remain but are easily accepted as we progress to the point where ends and means, the play and the player, become One. In all this we are no less concerned for the plight of humanity. Our pleasures are neither selfish nor selfless. Rather we become more transparent to ourselves.