Money, sexuality, illumination and the double helix (revisited)

The dollar sign is indeed a subtle variation on the caduceus which can be traced right back to Sumerian images of Enki, whose clan symbol was the serpent (probably denoting his mother's indigenous Snake lineage).

Enki, for those as yet unacquainted with the Anunnaki pantheon, was a master scientist-wizard whose son, Ningishzidda (better known as the Egyptian god Thoth), grew up to be among the greatest healer-scientist-wizards in history. The caduceus reappears in connection with Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek incarnation of Thoth, who initiated Pythagoras into the Mysteries. The caduceus was adopted by the Hermeticists as their emblem, indicating spiritual descent from Enki.

Hippocrates (possibly a student of Pythagoras) is called the Father of Medicine - and his symbol was the caduceus. All doctors were obliged to take the Hippocratic oath (don't know if they still do so today), which explains why the Medical Association also has the caduceus as its emblem.

The serpent represents not just an ancient tradition of scientific wisdom originating on earth from Enki's work as a geneticist (it was Enki who engineered the Adamic race with a little bit of help from Ninhursag, his feisty medical officer and half-sister). There is thus the distinct possibility that the entwined serpents on the caduceus (yes, there are usually two) symbolize the double helix of our DNA.

Kundalini - that mysterious bioelectrical force that supposedly surges through our chakras along the spine - has traditionally been depicted as a coiled serpent at the base of the spine. When awakened, the serpent uncoils towards the crown chakra, facilitating enlightenment, It is therefore highly likely that the early Illuminati (Enlightened Ones) revered the image of the serpent(s) entwined around the tree (or spine).

As in Tolkien - as well as Stars Wars - mythology, the Illumined Ones (aka Istari or Jedi, guardians of cosmic wisdom) were not immune to hubris, hence the occasional "fall from Grace" that produced renegade Illuminati (like Saruman or Annakin Skywalker). It is unfortunate that in our time, being labeled an Illuminatus is not necessarily a compliment. Indeed, everyone assumes you're a member of the New World Order Cabal. (This explains the moral ambiguity of secret mystical orders like the Templars, Freemasons, and so on. David Icke, for one, doesn't conceal his intense mistrust of the Great White Brotherhood and all the Ascended Masters - this is simply because the ones involved with manipulating human evolution are identified as the Archons, what Susan Ferguson calls the Phantasmal Hierarchy in her 'Inanna' books.)

Tree of Knowledge by Martina Hoffman

Tantalizingly, the caduceus image is contained in the story of Adam and Eve as the Serpent on the Tree, representing the potential of kundalini arousal, which would result in tantric consciousness - spiritual adulthood, autonomy from the dictates of a paternalistic deity. (There are actually TWO trees - one called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the other the Tree of Immortal Life.)

It's easy to see why the caduceus was modified into the dollar sign - after all, money is a universal symbol of energy, it's a form of sexual currency or current - it triggers activity, propels industry, and secures material needs. Hence the money-fixation of our sexually-repressed species - which shows the many facets of activated kundalini, as creative as well as procreative impulses. When we lust after money, it's really the sublimation of an insatiable desire to fuck and be fucked. Perhaps that's why sexual abstinence is often linked with voluntary poverty.

Mr Kundalini by Nathan Hopkins

Modern notions of sexuality are inextricably linked with money. Pornstars don't do it so much for fun as for profit. Me, I'm old-fashioned and prefer to do it for fun. How about it, sexy, doing anything this weekend?

[From an email posted 2 March 2003 on the Magick River Network, first published 17 June 2012, reposted 8 April 2013, 25 March 2016, 13 July 2017, 26 March 2021 & 9 August 2024]

Why I often pick "Mr Lee Bee Doh" or "Hum Sup Loh" when I require a fake ID... (repost)

When I was 19 I went through an intense and highly compressed ascetic phase. For about two weeks I lost interest in food, sex and sleep. My mind went into overdrive and kept me in a constant state of excitement. I was absolutely determined to figure out what the hell I was doing on this planet in a human body - and what I had been, if anything at all, before taking birth.

My days and nights were spent reading, writing, thinking, observing everything around me, and discussing my ideas and insights with a couple of close friends. I didn't require much solid food, sometimes drinking only a bowl of soup and nibbling on a Marmite sandwich. Meat didn't appeal to me; often I chewed on some vegetables just to get their essence; and I couldn't be bothered or didn't need to sleep, though I would sit in lotus position and recharge my cells from time to time.

Soon I found my testicles retracting and my penis shrinking to a ridiculous size. All I did was burst out laughing because I suddenly understood why Indian yogis have traditionally subjected themselves to long periods of fasting and abstinence.

It was to focus their minds like a laser in order to cut through the crap of mundane existence and begin to stepdown and receive data from an extended range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

I've written extensively about my early initiatory experiences elsewhere so I'll fast-forward to the moment when, unexpectedly, I experienced a resurgence of my libido. I was absorbing the Sun's energy one morning and suddenly found myself with the most incredible hard-on ever. The word virile  came alive for me as I felt the solar force course through my throbbing veins. I gazed in awe at my rampant manhood, luxuriating in electric ripples of unmitigated concupiscence.

Priapus, Greek God of Fertility

It was as though my libido had died and resurrected itself as a hitherto unknown species of sacred sexuality wherein my own innate divinity was being expressed as a manifestation of the Primordial Progenitor. The Father archetype and I literally became one.

Omphalos stone

From that moment hence, I was liberated from a hundred thousand generations of hand-me-down sexual taboos. In a flash I understood the serpent symbolism underlying all pre-Abrahamic belief systems. The esoteric word kundalini  was unknown to me at the time, but when I later read about the phenomenon I knew it was what had spontaneously happened to me.

The electromagnetic basis of all existence in a bi-polar universe is grounded in the sacred union of shakta and shakti, male and female principles. This simply means that the ultimate goal of yoga - which means "union" in Sanskrit - is conscious fusion between polarities on all levels - from the biological (as in sexual conjugation) to the metaphysical (as in the alchemical marriage between our divine and human aspects).

Tantra teaches us that the ego-transcending act of sexual union is among the most powerful and direct methods of realizing our own inherent divinity - at least when performed as an act of worship by those who have cleansed themselves of negative emotions like guilt, fear and hypocrisy.

However, the erotophobic male priesthoods that sprouted in the wake of Abraham approximately 4,000 years ago have systematically perverted human sexuality with their erroneous doctrines of shame and false purity, wherein celibacy became promoted as a virtue unto itself.

Activation of the chakras above the navel was encouraged as a means to "get closer to God" - whereas activating the chakras below the navel was considered dangerous - even wrong - as it reinforced our animality and focused our senses on carnal pleasures.

Thus was sexual taboo entrenched in the Book Religions which gave rise to what I call the fig leaf syndrome. Humans became schizoid and a great divide separated their inner and outer personalities into private and public selves - with a hardwired conditioned reflex to cover up whatever was considered "private" and exaggerate or magnify everything regarded as "public."

This is why in patriarchal societies like Malaysia, issues of morality tend to revolve around sex. Corrupt and dishonest politicians are tolerated to the extent that they often get re-elected, but they must resign the moment they're caught with their pants down.

In effect, we're being given the message that it's okay to do just about anything - including abduct, extort, intimidate, torture, imprison and murder - so long as we keep our trousers on at all times.

By the same token, anything sexual is subject to strict censorship - no kissing, no nudity, no glimpses of genitalia. However, the worst forms of violence are acceptable: punching, stabbing, shooting, karate-chopping, beheading, crucifying, dropping bombs on crowded cities are all "okay."

Is it any wonder that our police force - and a volunteer reserve force like RELA - has attracted such a large number of sexual perverts and psychopaths? These are men who have been brought up to believe that their sexual nature is demonic  and must be suppressed or controlled through harsh laws. Burdened with chronic guilt feelings, these men harbor a subconscious fear of being assigned to hell after they die. And if you're going to hell for masturbating too often, you might as well go the whole hog and commit rape, murder, brutal torture, the works.

Have you ever wondered why on earth in the 21st century we still have statutes against oral and anal sex? Not only are these activities ominously classified as "acts against the order of nature" - they are also punishable with caning and imprisonment of up to 20 years! Each day that such nonsensical laws continue to exist in our legal statutes, they make a complete mockery of reason and sanity.

Only a perverted male priesthood could visualize a deity dressed like a stern-faced judge who can routinely sentence anyone to jail for up to 20 years simply for enjoying a bit of mildly kinky sex. How can you argue with such a twisted mindset? The keenest legal mind in the world cannot get you off the hook except by proving your innocence beyond doubt or providing a watertight alibi.

The ISA may be an extremely cruel and unjust law - but what about the laws against anal and oral sex? They are utterly insane and totally insufferable. If this Victorian era legislation were to be enthusiastically enforced, I'd venture that more than one-third of Malaysia's adult population would right now be serving time (free at last to enjoy as much anal and oral sex as they can handle, just as drug addicts can always find a regular supply if they befriend the right prison warders).

Infamous arsehole Saiful Bukhari Azlan with Khairil Anus Yusof,
special aide to Najib Razak

But do you think any Barisan Nasional lawmaker would even consider revoking these archaic laws so long as Anwar Ibrahim remains poised to take over as prime minister?

The issue of sexual repression I have raised with this blogpost has a multitude of ramifications. Nature has designed our bodies in such a way that when we attain puberty, a psychedelic slew of hormones are secreted into our bloodstream which accelerate and enhance mental and spiritual growth. But if our early encounters with our own sexuality are fraught with guilt and shame and subterfuge, we shall find it much harder to attain mental and spiritual maturity.

This is precisely why patriarchies are invariably dead against sex, drugs and rock'n'roll - which may be considered evolutionary triggers in the context of modern living. Sexual freedom causes the young to mature more quickly. Drugs (specifically entheogenic substances like LSD, psilocybin and ketamine) - notwithstanding their potential negative side-effects - can facilitate neurological and sensory breakthroughs that provide otherwise unavailable glimpses of ordinarily inaccessible realities. And rock'n'roll  is essentially a code name for any innovative genre of music that serves to initiate young people into neo-tribal states of consciousness, often catalyzing new artistic and cultural forms into manifestation.


Going by the orc-like behavior of our policemen and security personnel, one can easily conclude that what we have in Malaysia is a sex-obsessed society of mental and spiritual retards. The more we attempt to suppress our sexual nature, the more obsessed we become with it. Four thousand years of religious erotophobia have produced only one significant result: the burgeoning of a multi-billion-dollar porn industry.

No sexually repressed society can ever produce great works of art. As long as our collective kundalini  is blocked or forced to express itself through "underground" routes, Malaysia will remain a mediocracy - where mediocrity rules unchallenged.

Think long and hard on this, people... and make sure your children do not grow up sexually repressed!

[First published 20 April 2009 as part of a 9-part series & reposted 26 July 2013, 12 November 2014 & 13 August 2019]

MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE (repost)

I rarely have meaningful dreams supercharged with symbolism – or perhaps I occasionally do but just don’t remember. So when I read about people achieving their dreams, the idea doesn’t actually carry that much excitement or veracity for me.

What dreams? Like the one I had earlier today where I found myself in a room full of accumulated memories discussing with Rafique Rashid how to dispose of his brother Rehman’s earthly possessions? Or the one I had a couple of days ago where I was just sitting in a coffeeshop, paying for my tea and I counted out 80 cents in coins – which made me realize when I woke up shortly afterwards that I had traveled back in time to the late 1980s when a cup of tea or coffee cost less than a dollar.

The Frank Zappa dream that came to me a couple of weeks ago was interesting. I was hosted to dinner by Mr and Mrs Zappa and all through the meal I kept thinking that Frank somehow didn’t look the way he’s supposed to look. He had boring hair, wore a middle-class suit, and his nose wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t by any means the first Zappa dream I’ve had. After my first and only close encounter with Mr Zappa at the Fillmore East in New York in the summer of 1968 - where I also exchanged small talk with saxophonist Ian Underwood (husband of percussionist Ruth Underwood) and shook hands with Jimmy Carl Black (the Indian of the group) – I had a series of vivid dreams involving Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

In the first Zappa dream I was a kid back in my hometown Batu Pahat sitting on the  front steps when I heard a squadron of aircraft overhead. I looked up and realized they weren’t actually airplanes but Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention flying in arrowhead formation. As they got closer I felt a compulsion to join them the way some kids suddenly decide to run away and join a circus. Then there was the dream where I was walking around a gypsy caravan and had to step over thick electrical cables coiled like black snakes all over the floor... then I realized I was on a movie set and noticed Frank behind a glass window in the control room tweaking some knobs.

Well, okay. The Zappa dreams do contain a whole load of symbolism if you care to delve into them, just like the vivid dream I had about a grizzly bear a few years ago. But the only dream I would like to see fulfilled is the lucid waking dream I have held close to my heart since the age of 19.

What is that dream? It’s not easy to articulate, but certainly worth an attempt if only to see how it sounds when verbalized...

I dreamt I had accomplished the greatest feat possible for any living creature on earth – to remember its own mysterious origins and to free itself from the illusion of limitation and separation! In my dream this spontaneous awakening to and realization of the absolute sacredness and miraculousness of life rippled out in all directions and dimensions, from the subatomic to the supergalactic and beyond, creating a domino effect of illumination and jubilant celebration.

Source reconnecting with Source, as the accumulated experience and memories of every expression of consciousness, encompassing the unconscious, in infinite feedback loops of awareness. All of it flowing through Me and all other aspects of my boundless cosmic Self, eternally and effortlessly, in ecstatic multidimensional mandalas of timeless beauty and self-regenerating, self-reintegrating truth.

The word “ecstasy” became a living reality and I perfectly understood what mystics, dervishes and yogis have spoken about for generations when they describe transcendent states of consciousness – using terms like samadhi, satori, beatitude, baraka, bliss. Remember, this was long before ecstasy became nothing more than a designer drug for techno-trancing urban kids. Let me tell you: once you have experienced pure cognitive ecstasy, sustained over days, even weeks, you will never settle for humdrum human notions of “success.”

Well, it’s true that at various times of my life I have entertained, albeit briefly, aspirations towards enormous worldly success – after all, would any young person spurn fame and fortune if they were within reach? And so at the age of 24 I embarked on setting up a company with two childhood friends. It was to start off as a creative consultancy catering to the advertising and public relations industry and after a few years, when we had sufficient capital, we would diversify into production of books, music, films, perhaps even launch an airline... nothing was impossible for a creative powerhouse named I.N.R.I. (for Igni Natura Renovatur Integra, an alchemical code signifying that the fire of passion completely renews or revitalizes the natural world).

This venture lasted all of three years and the main reason I eventually gave up was because I couldn’t get Telekom Malaysia to provide me with a phone line – despite residing in a diplomatic enclave in Kuala Lumpur. I even wrote a long, impassioned letter to the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications (no reply ever came, of course). But after I capitulated and accepted temporary corporate employment, the phone finally arrived.

Anyway, it was simply impractical for me to remain in a permanent state of carefree euphoria – not when I was already a father to two beautiful princesses whose mother, fortunately, earned a regular income as a dedicated schoolteacher. So I learned how to be immersed and involved in the world, but in a detached manner, lest I became trapped in its deceptive glamor.

My inner and outer lives were not always in alignment. Even though I was enjoying an active public life as a stage actor, musician and party animal, I went through patches of intense existential angst verging on despair. My Achilles’ heel was a tendency to succumb to an overwhelming sense of futility arising from a distressing mismatch between my dream of heaven on earth and what was apparently going on in the outside world. It was hard to find someone with whom I could discuss my self-doubts and the nagging sense that there might be something fundamentally wrong with me. So I took to recording these states of mind as poems and doodles (which I eventually compiled into a collection titled Moth Balls, published in a limited edition in November 1994 and now accessible online).

From time to time I would have a peak experience – whether spontaneously or with the help of psilocybin mushrooms (growing wild on grassy fields where cows grazed). Very rarely a kind friend would send me some good acid on a blotter via airmail. At these times my preferred default state of divine madness would be reinstated and my vision of paradise would snap back into crystal clear focus.

Nearly half a century has elapsed since my first glimpse of our true potential as sentient self-reinventing creatures on this bounteous planet. I used to feel a little isolated – the only other humans, a mere handful, who shared my vision were either living on the other side of the earth or long dead. But their thoughts recorded in words reassured me I wasn’t completely mad.

When the internet came along I discovered a growing network of human beings who share my dream of heaven on earth – and each one is a fractal of the whole, with unique experiences of universal truths, each one a significant piece of a colossal and magnificent cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

What we had in common was simply this: we had achieved vertical alignment with our own limitless potential, our Oversouls (I think Paramatman is the technical term for this in Sanskrit). I realized that the problem was how to persuade more humans to make a conscious 90-degree shift from being trapped in the horizontal plane where predator-prey games of eat-or-be-eaten prevail. On the horizontal plane, people subscribe to spurious notions of profit-and-loss, win-lose, and Us-versus-Them. Because resources are finite and limited on this plane, aggressive competition becomes the norm, each fighting for more food, more space, more influence, more power over others. The result can only be hell on earth!

Any individual who achieves that all-important 90-degree shift to the vertical also gains access to Source Energy – call it the morphogenetic field, the planetary mind or cosmic consciousness – and no longer buys into the illusions of limitation, separation or scarcity. Once liberated from scarcity conditioning (fang and claw, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth programming) cooperation becomes spontaneous and this allows for the power of dynamic synergy to take effect, and we suddenly become clear and coherent fields, attuned to all other fields and interacting in effortless harmony. The overall effect is that we no longer feel burdened by gravity as it only takes a bit of levity to neutralize the sense of heaviness. And once we can laugh at ourselves and everyone else, everything transmutes from being merely laughable to being genuinely lovable.

The world as we know it also transforms into something altogether different. We no longer need to be convinced that laws and lawyers, courthouses and judges, and law enforcement agencies are utterly unnecessary - the moment we become self-governing and accept full responsibility for our own thoughts, words and deeds.

Our ancestors found themselves entangled in webs of deceit and falsehood which made them turn to external authority for instructions as to what to do or don’t – whether that authority presented itself as an invisible all-knowing, all-powerful deity; an all-too-visible priesthood; an occasionally visible monarchy, or the monarch’s appointed agents (that’s right the income tax department)!

Photo by Lesly Leon Lee

Generations before us have lived and died ignorant, disconnected from their own divinity and innate nobility. Their souls often get trapped in the astral and many of them attempt to seek redemption and some misguided notion of salvation through their living descendants – namely us. Once we become aware of this, what we can do is to become enlightened ourselves; and in liberating ourselves from our own benighted condition, we also liberate our bloodlines from the curse of abysmal unknowing.

How is this possible? We are bearers of genetic codes and, as anyone who works with codes knows, once an error is rectified in the present, the correction sets the entire program aright in the illusory past as well as the illusory future.

So that’s my dream, folks. I just wish to see all wrongs set right, all cages and prisons dismantled, all locks and keys discarded, all doors and windows left open to the gentle breezes of conscious, eternally rejuvenating, growth-facilitating, ecstatic change. In a community of fully conscious humans, criminal or destructive behavior will be swiftly outgrown and become obsolete - because no one will suffer lack or the indifference of others. With the illusion of scarcity dispersed, a new age of abundance for all will dawn.

10 November 2017

[Reposted 18 November 2018, 14 December 2021 & 26 August 2024]

EVOLUTION BEGINS WITH EVE (reprise)

Roger Vandersteine, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1975

THE GENESIS MYTH yields a rich harvest of illuminating insights. Eve is blamed for the Fall. The Serpent directs his sales pitch at her and she takes the first bite of the Forbidden Fruit which endows her with sudden self-awareness. She offers the Fruit to Adam but as he sinks his teeth into it, God's voice comes booming out from concealed loudspeakers, causing the original attack of Fear and Guilt.

"Gulp!" bleats Adam with a chunk of "apple" stuck in his throat: "She made me do it!" What else can you expect? The scriptures were authored by MEN.

From the evolutionary viewpoint, however, the Serpent is a metaphor for the Vital Force (which yogis call kundalini); and Eve is the principle of curiosity, receptivity, adventurousness. In other words, the spirit of scientific research. What about Adam? He robotically obeys his programming until encouraged by Eve to experiment. But before he can swallow and digest the Experience, he goes into a total funk and tries to pass the buck.

Quite despicable and most unmanly (or should I say unwomanly?) - but fairly typical behavior in male-dominated power politics. To cover up their moral cowardice men perform assorted acts of physical bravado. As a child Saddam Hussein had his cheeks pinched by all his aunts and uncles, but just look at him now: SADDAM! Even his name sounds like the pounding of great big guns.

People used to call George Bush a sneaky little wimp. Not any more: BUSH! and there's a great big crater in the desert. Being extremely horny may be a nice macho feeling - but it's no excuse for rape.

I know two well-circulated feminist jokes. The first is about the astronaut who encounters God in deep space. On his return to Earth he's asked to describe God and he just laughs and says: "Boy, have I got a surprise for you. She's black!" The other joke has it that women are superior to men for the obvious reason that God is a perfectionist who learns from his mistakes; when God decided to create Woman he was a little more experienced.

Consider next the structure of the sex chromosome: females are double X-rated while males result from XY combinations. Geneticists say the Y chromosome is really just a deformed and undersized X chromosome. Sorry, guys, but facts is facts.

Did I hear Harry yell, "Traitor!" Hey, I'm not undergoing a sex change. I'm quite happily male, thank you, and the preceding polemic is essentially a scheme to improve my chances of getting laid. Seriously, though, I do have genetic memories (or at least vivid fantasies) of having lived female lives and I'm convinced that individuals often switch genders in the course of their earthly incarnations. They also tend to experiment with a variety of ethnic and geographic combinations - so let's all hurry up and outgrow racialistic-nationalistic nappy-rash jingoism. It's not so cute anymore.

And while we're at it, let's declare a general armistice in the Battle of the Sexes and put sexism to bed where it belongs. Here, you can wear the pants. I'm quite comfortable in my sarong.

Another aspect of the Feminine Principle that fascinates me is the dramatic transformation that Motherhood brings about: from lithe and slender flowerbud to bulbous huge ripe pear state is an awesome procedure. And when they spring right back to fantasizable size, it's another miracle all over.

I know the institution of Motherhood is sacrosanct (after all it's a vestige of Goddess worship) and it brooks no criticism - but I can't help noticing the psychological stranglehold that so many mothers seem to maintain on their children. Somehow the influence of the Father appears easier to shrug off.

Not in every case, I agree, but the number of middle-aged men and women who can be plunged into depression with just one Christmas phonecall to their dear Momsies far outweigh those who continue to recoil from their Daddy's wrath when they're 45 years old. I'm curious to know what the sons of Deng Xiao-ping or Lee Kuan Yew have to say about this. (Pardon me? Can't hear you, the tanks are too noisy...) which leads me to wonder if humans might not fair better reverting to oviparous reproduction ("Quick, Dicky, the egg's getting cold!"); even so I can picture how some mothers may suffocate rather than incubate their offspring.

Smothering beats mothering! ("Oh oh, here comes Mum with the pillow... mmmpfff!") I can't speak from personal experience on this - but does the pain of childbirth leave permanent scars on a mother's brain, causing her to be ambivalent thereafter about her kids? Perhaps our conventional approach to obstetrics should be thrown out with the bathwater: I have friends who have given birth in a tub of warm water with surprising ease and no complications. And no nightmarish fluorescent lights or forceps or masked strangers who rudely snip your cord and spank you for the crime of being born. Surely we're not all too busy being neurotic to think about a few fundamental issues of life-and-death importance?

Anyhow, I'm of the opinion that Motherhood is vastly overrated: it should be gently phased out soon after the child is weaned (yes, I'm all for breastfeeding but that's about as much mothering as anybody really needs, I think).

Have I shocked anyone? Don't misunderstand: every child thrives on tender loving care and lots of attention unstintingly given. And that must come from more than just one source - especially if that one source happens to take the role of Mother too seriously, too dutifully (and perhaps resentfully too, since she seems to have no choice whatsoever).

My real point is this: anyone of any gender can play the role of Mother for a while. Such a vital role demands a platoon of stand-ins; no one should insist on hogging it. Most clear-thinking and farsighted mothers will applaud this trend of thought. But first, we humans have to learn to let go. Insecurity makes us clingy and possessive. Kahlil Gibran said it best:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which

you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth...

Get thee back to the grave, Confucius! Respect for our Youngers is what I preach, and I do try to practice it. Respect, in any case, has to be mutual and spontaneous. Or else it's pure intimidation.

Now, coming back to the idea of Woman as the manifestation of the Goddess. I happen to view ‘chastity’ and 'wantonness' as equally seductive attributes. The Virgin and the Prostitute. Surefire marketing concept, Ms Ciccone aka Madonna. Men, be honest and admit that you desire both these qualities in your women.  Opposites aren't necessarily contradictory; usually they're complementary. Innocence and Experience attract each other. Virgins are still being sold to the highest bidder. Prostitutes work at union rates, negotiable on cold nights. Over here we have a loose woman with tight lips and over there an uptight one with loose lips. Take your pick, brother.

The Goddess is nurturer and destroyer in one. Before the birth of the Cosmos, there was the Cosmic Womb which the Egyptians called Nuit, goddess of Night. Others call it the Primordial Chaos. I call it the Matrix of Infinite Possibilities. Maria or Kali, Fairy Godmother or Wicked Witch: she can soothe and she can torment. Like the calm or raging sea, like life or death, the Goddess is not a static reality. She is not rigid with rationality, though she can be entirely reasonable or unreasonable as it pleases her. 

The practice of automatically assigning God the masculine pronoun Him is disturbing, perhaps even dangerous. Our only chance of making it through these apocalyptic times is to restore the Feminine Principle in our religious reckonings; to acknowledge that the sphere of awareness implies a concave as well as a convex dimension, an inner and an outer form.

And most cogently, to realize that the two are an interchangeable oneness in perpetual dynamic equilibrium. Without this understanding, we shall continue to inherit a world governed by overgrown little boys with dangerous toys.

That's right. Don't you be fooled by that funny mustache. He's got a pea-shooter in his pants. And a hot date with Mae West. Or, as visionary historian William IrwinThompson puts it:

"Civilizations, like the penis, rise and fall, and when the towers and the battlements crumble into the earth, they return to the embrace of the Great Mother."  

Pretty Oedipal, eh?

[Written 6 January 1991 and subsequently published in The Star. First posted 18 May 2013. Reposted 15 August 2016 & 28 June 2023] 

From Dragon Slayer to Dragon Rider ~ The Spiral of Conscious Evolution

Midgard Serpent by Alicia Smith

Mystics (and more often these days scientists too) speak of the planet as a living, breathing organism - a macro form of ourselves, actually. Gaia-Sophia, Pachamama, Lady Melina, Mother Earth are some of the names we call her. Just like us her body is a complex nexus of electrical circuitry and magnetic fields. Mountainous areas have long been regarded as sacred, with many serving as geodetic chakras where leylines or dragon paths converge.

Mount Meru as the electromagnetic axis of the world

During the last evolutionary cycle, Mount Meru (located in the Transhimalayan mountain range formed when tectonic plates collided) marked the spiritual axis of the planet. It was said to be where the head of the World Snake (or the Midgard Serpent of Nordic mythology) was located.

Then some 60 years ago (shortly before China invaded Tibet) the World Snake began to migrate, making its way slowly towards the Andes where its head now rests. The World Snake symbolizes the planetary kundalini or activated energy field; and all along its body you will find power spots and sacred sites. Often the serpent's body also marks the meeting of tectonic plates.

Earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and flashfloods are signs of the World Snake moving. When it moves volcanoes erupt, the ground shakes, and our daily routines are enormously disrupted (and, yes, death may be considered an abrupt termination of our everyday reality). Sometimes entire cities and continents are destroyed. And we are reminded to take heed of the fact that our physical existence is precarious and never totally predictable. Indeed, we build our towns and cities on the back of a sleeping giant whose slumber can last decades, centuries, millennia... lulling us into the complacency of busyness-as-usual.

In the past humans have sought to slay the dragon in a quest to obtain fame and fortune (for where dragons sleep it is believed great treasure can be found). The dragon or World Snake represents the elemental, primordial reality from which all life as we know it emerged. We cannot kill it without ultimately killing ourselves.

When we awaken to the cellular knowing that the planet (and ultimately the galaxy and the whole universe) is an extension of our physical and metaphysical selves, and that life itself is fractal and holographic in nature, we will spontaneously become empathetic and compassionate and begin to resonate and consciously navigate with elegance and gracefulness, with masterful restraint and gentle wisdom.

Lord Vishnu relishing his own Dream of the Universe

We will opt to learn how to ride the dragon, rather than foolishly attempt to kill it. We will get good at surfing the electromagnetic waves. And we can begin to do so by becoming conscious, individually and as a species, of the cosmic context of our being; by paying constant attention to the bigger picture and looking up every now and then from our rice bowl (or plate of quinoa) and remembering we are indeed unique parts of a magnificent Wholeness, born from the active imagination of Vishnu, the Dreaming God.

Many of us will revel in the Cosmic Dream, losing ourselves time and again in the illusion of separation, entranced by the shadow-play of Maya. And some of us will identify with the Dreamer instead of the Dream, the Eternal rather than the Ephemeral. So that when the Dream is over, we can yawn and rub our eyes and put the kettle on and enjoy a hearty breakfast before imagining another universe.

Antares
26 April 2015

SONG OF THE DRAGON

[Originally posted 10 January 2017, reposted 6 August 2019]

In Celebration of Love’s Labors Lost (Part 1)

Radha Krishna and the Gopis

As I lean back now and look back on the life path I have taken since I first stepped out into the world, two recurring motifs dominate the pattern of events.

The first is a hardwired impulse to be free – free of all external compulsions (which is well nigh impossible when you happen to be part of a family, and all of us are). But as one whose birthdate adds up to a 5, numerologists say I’m “one of those people who is always striving to find answers to the many questions that life poses; [that I] want to be totally unrestrained, as this is the sign of freedom and independence.” So I’m only being true to my core nature in cherishing my freedom.

Freedom from debt, for a start. I don’t have a credit card, no overdraft, and I have never once applied for a bank loan. The house I’m living in is in my wife’s name and it was given to her when her entire village was relocated several hundred yards upstream on account of the Selangor Dam. So, no mortgage either - although the fine print says the land the house stands on is on a 99-year lease. We have until the year 2106 to worry about having to move.

The second motif happens to be my susceptibility to love. Some live to work, some to eat, some to make money – I live for love.

My first love was at the tender age of 4, when I shared a bathtub with a neighbor’s daughter, who arrived on earth 11 days ahead of me, and later found myself sitting beside her at kindergarten. I remember how we shared little secrets in class. She was curious to know if boys and girls had similar genitals, and neither of us had a clue – so I drew a simple diagram to show her what mine looked like, and she reciprocated, very demurely, by handing me a piece of paper on which she had written the letter V. I wasn’t satisfied with her response, suspecting there had to be more to it, that she was holding back. Then we got separated in primary school – there were no co-ed schools when I was a kid – and didn’t meet again until we were in our early teens, and I was smitten by her luminous beauty which I noticed for the first time.

When I learnt she was in the habit of roller-skating along the corridors of a school opposite my house most afternoons, I decided to take up roller-skating too – and soon became quite adept at it. But we were both too shy to go beyond smiling at each other and I felt totally tongue-tied when face-to-face with her.

So nothing at all transpired until fate brought us together again when we reached fourth form. I was appointed to the editorial board of a science magazine jointly published by my all-boys school and a nearby girls’ school. At our first informal meeting to discuss the magazine, I was astounded by how mature the girls were compared to me at 15. She and her best buddy, my co-editor, were smoking real cigarettes (not the chocolate ones I was familiar with as a kid) and even driving around without a license.

That’s how I began smoking, and soon I was borrowing my dad’s car to drive – at first up and down the compound, then increasingly further around the neighborhood. Working together on the science magazine project gave me a good excuse to start visiting her in the afternoons after classes. She lived conveniently around the corner from my house, within a 3-minute walk, even less on my bicycle.

Several times a week, I’d perch my cockatoo on the handle bar and ride over to her place. She was usually home. We would sit around her airy front porch and chat till twilight. Each time I saw her she grew more beautiful in my eyes. But I just didn’t know how to shift gears from being her childhood playmate to being her beau. 

So things drifted along for a while sweetly enough, but neither of us wanted to make the first move into adulthood, although I occasionally detected a flirtatious or teasing tone in her glances. I just wanted everything to be perfect between us. The thought of doing something clumsy or saying something inappropriate paralyzed me. Much later in life I realized that the abstract notion of “perfection” itself could be the #1 Killjoy Factor in the human universe…

Anyway, many other events intruded that weren’t part of the pattern of “perfect love” and I took them all in my stride as part of love’s learning curve. As my mind drifts slowly backwards in time, scanning for precious memory fragments to rescue from analog oblivion, I become acutely aware of the many-layered nature of experience: in so many instances, I can’t draw a linear timeline marking one event without then wondering when some other event occurred.

For instance, during the years I didn’t see my first love, I enjoyed quite a few other romantic fantasies. I vaguely recall an alphabetic crush I had for a pig-tailed cutie who played the letter M in some kiddie concert I witnessed around 10. I remember a couple of stiffy-inducing dreams with me playing the letter K and somehow showing up the loutish low-class L who stood between us. I never found out her name, but I bet it began with the letter M...

Then there was WW, baby sister of one of my best buddies in whose home I used to hang out all day after school. My own siblings were much older than I, so I never felt the same sort of intense kinship with them. In this household there was a great deal of family interaction. It was an ideal atmosphere for innocent fun and puppy love to flourish: the stirrings of juicy adolescence, the brief but intense thrill of her foot brushing against mine during a game of Monopoly. I was present when her first period arrived, her face flushed as she hurried towards the bathroom.

I knew nothing about hormones and pheromones then. But I enjoyed the undercurrent of irrational desires and the heady sensation of erotic impulses. These weren’t exactly romantic – primal, more likely. Electromagnetic and biochemical, at least. No guilt was attached to these prurient fantasies; nor were they focused on any specific person. Non-specific lust is what I call this syndrome.

Girls were lovely to dream about, but my everyday reality was populated with boys. Since girls were sexually unavailable, we resorted to making lewd jokes about them; but among ourselves, we were comfortable showing off our erections and competing to see who could shoot his load the furthest. There was ample opportunity for experimentation. Staying over at male friends’ houses presented no problems with parents and it seemed natural for us to have temporary crushes on each other without their becoming full-blown affairs.

Being single-minded about anything has never been a habit of mine - which may explain why I never became a virtuoso in any specific endeavor. Looking back, if I had kept my focus on winning the heart of my first love, ignoring other distractions and settling for nobody else, perhaps we would have ended up as a couple. I can’t imagine what married life would have been like for us – but I’m fairly certain she would have compelled me to become a high flyer in the upper income bracket, since it’s clear she had set her sights on a comfortable lifestyle, being what people would consider a trophy wife. As it turned out, she subsequently dated and married a fellow who became an accountant – while I drifted in the opposite direction, devoting my energies to the arts, after a short-lived stint in the glossy advertising game.

Clark Kent look @ 1968

But I’m getting ahead of my narrative. While all this was going on, I began to visit a couple of pretty sisters – one shy and demure, the other outgoing and vivacious – both of whom eventually became integral parts of my life.

When you’re a teenager it’s very important to appear cool – and to visit a young lady on a rickety bicycle is fairly uncool (especially with a cockatoo perched on the handlebar). Since I had convinced my father that I could drive competently, he rarely protested whenever I asked to borrow his car. I had a schoolmate named Johnny who was always on the lookout for hot chicks. He didn’t have access to a car, so he would sometimes tell me about some nice girl he knew who happened to have good-looking sisters – and we’d go visit them in my dad’s car.

That’s how I got to meet Annie, my French kiss instructor only a year younger than I but slightly more experienced. It was because of Annie I decided to quit wearing glasses (which, prior to my first kissing lesson, I had believed to be a requisite accessory since they made one look smarter and older). We were both wearing glasses when the serious smooching began one sultry afternoon – and the collision of our spectacles almost turned the experience into an episode out of some Woody Allen movie.  Anyway, thank you, Annie – for your wonderful coaching which has served me well through the decades.

(In 2011 Annie tracked me down on facebook. Imagine the great joy I felt to be reconnected with her after 46 years. She's moved on from kissing coach to tai-chi instructor.)

[To be continued...]

Originally posted 1 April 2012, reposted 6 May 2016