The Beatles - Samadi - & My Life with the Spirits

For those of you who haven't read my autobiography, "My Life with the Spirits" might enjoy this excerpt. This happened many years ago (1968 I believe) when Constance and I and my brother and his wife and a family of other Southern California hippies had "Tuned in, Turned on, and Dropped out" in the woods of Southern Oregon.

CHAPTER EIGHT
SAMADHI ON WALDO ROAD

The Waldo house was marvelous. Each couple had a private bedroom, the children shared a bedroom and the cats had the run of Southern Oregon. Constance decorated our room like a jewel box. She hung the ceiling with a huge colorful poof of an Indian bedspread and color coordinated all our bedding and pillows.

The only thing wrong with our new communal environment was that Constance and I did not get very much privacy. After all, we were newlyweds and still pretty frisky. A week or so after we arrived we declined an invitation to join the others on an overnight visit to the famous Sunny Valley commune and seized the opportunity for some time alone.

While Constance soaked in a hot bath I thought I would sit and meditate near the fire and listen to some music. If it had been six months earlier I would have also lit up a joint, but one of the first things we learned about Oregon was that marijuana and psychedelics were not readily available. For the most part, country hippies got high the old fashion way – yoga, pranayama, and natural food.
I took off my boots, put on a Beatles album, settled into a half lotus and took some deep breaths. I closed my eyes and used the familiar tracks of the music as a mantra. Everything seemed perfect.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.

“Wow,” I thought, “that is just like something out of the Tao Te Ching.”

Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.

“Yes, just like the Tao Te Ching!”

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.

There was nothing unusual about projecting cosmic significance to popular music, especially that of the Beatles. But that night I was taking it particularly personal.

Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.

The second time I heard the words “It’s easy.” I felt as if I would burst. I was no longer listening to the stereo. The song had become nothing less than a direct communication from God to my soul. I was so thrilled that I squeezed my buttocks with a contorted shiver of religious ecstasy. Instantly, shivering pangs of intense tingling exploded in my abdomen and between my shoulder blades.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.

“Oh yes!” The more I surrendered to the tingling the stronger the tingling, and the more personal the lyrics became.

Nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.

This time when God told me it was ‘easy’ the tingling burst like a balloon at the very top of my head. It was as if an egg of electric fire shattered on my crown and sent scintillating goo slowing dripping over my head.

All you need is love.

“Surrender,” I told myself.

All you need is love.

“Surrender. This is it! Let it happen. It won’t happen unless you let it.”

All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.

Miraculously, I took my own advice. I let go. I surrendered to the tingling at the top of my head, and as I did it became so intense that everywhere it spread it obliterated all sense of separateness. As it covered my head I could no longer see, feel, or conceive of my head as being anything other than everything that was. Wherever the electric fire touched became everywhere, everything. I was becoming universally wall-to-wall from the head down. I could feel my lips, but I could also feel the air that touched my lips, and everything the air that touched my lips touched, and on and on until my lips lost all meaning except to serve as position for the perfect center of the cosmos.

As I continued to surrender it rapidly expanded to the back of my neck and down my spine to usurp the lesser tingling between my shoulder blades. From there it spread to my arms and hands.

All you need is love (All together, now!) All you need is love
(Everybody!) All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.

Almost with a thud it reached the base of my spine and flowed into my legs and feet; but then -- I had no feet. The new-I reached to the innermost/outermost corners of universe, of space and time and energies. The only thing that remained of old-I was the part that observes, the part that realizes – realizes that it is the One Big Whatever-it-is; realizes that its fiery blissful consciousness fills every nook and cranny of the One Big Whatever-it is; realizes that this ‘thisness’ is eternally this!

But old-I, the fleshy-fat and blood-filled tumor at the center of the One Big Whatever-it-is, also realized that it was losing itself; realized it was dying; realized that its lumbering crust hadn’t taken a breath in a long time.

Love is all you need (love is all you need) Love is all you need (love is all you need) Love is all you need (love is all you need) Love is all you need (love is all you need)

The One Big Whatever-it-is didn’t particularly care that old-I might be dying. Things were forever dying and being created in One Big Whatever-it-is. It said to itself, “Old-I is lucky to die united to the One Big Whatever-it-is. Isn’t that the spiritual goal of all old-Is?”

Old-I was afraid. Maybe it was too soon to say goodbye to old-I. It searched the immensity of everywhere to locate an old-I hand or an old-I foot. Movement might break the spell of reverie the One Big Whatever-it-is held upon old I. But, fearful as it was, old-I loved being one with the One Big What Whatever-it-is so much that it felt like blaspheme – spiritual suicide -- to leave this bliss.

Fear triumphed. An arm moved, and in doing so voluntarily separated itself from the One Big Whatever-it-is. The arm lost the omnipresent tingle. Then the other arm moved. Wriggling feet were the next mutinous angels cast from paradise.

I slumped forward and gasped for life, sucking in great waves of stinking air that caused my heart to race like a hummingbird’s. The magick fire withdrew from all my extremities and lingered for a few last seconds in the back of my neck. Then it was gone. The stereo was silent. I opened my eyes to discover that a cat had shit on my boots.