| MEXICO |
Stevan Orescan
Tecate, Mexico, is a small town on the border about thirty-five miles east of San Diego where a
somewhat famous school of yoga was located. A therapist friend who had lived there at one time
recommended I go for a visit for many interesting people from India passed through, and there I
might make some contacts for my future travels to that part of the world.
The school was run by an aristocratic old Russian woman and her venerable, German,
homeopathic doctor husband, and they attracted people from all over the world. It was expensive
and a bit exclusive -- yuppyfied might be a more apt description though the word was not in use at
the time -- and the old Mataji, regally splendid in her saris and other Indian finery, reigned over her
student-subjects with an iron hand. She taught a brand of hatha yoga formulated by Patanjali, the
second century B.C. author of the yoga sutras, and their days were spent doing yoga asanas,
controlling the breath with pranayama and learning the different aspects of the Samkya system (One
of the six orthodox Indian systems of philosophy based on the Vedas.) of physical, mental and
spiritual disciplines that would eventually lead them to Samadhi. At the conclusion of the courses--
beginner, intermediate and advanced--the students would graduate as bona fide yoga teachers,
their diplomas stamped with the imprimatur of Mataji herself, which would then entitle them to go
out into the world and teach others this age old path to enlightenment.
Every few years the Mataji would go to India to see her guru, a wild haired man with miraculous
powers, and return with new pearls of wisdom that she would share with her students. Sometimes
she would take some of her more favored ones with her and they would invariably return to the fold
shining with that beatific glow reserved for honored initiates. Other times they would travel to San
Diego to the home of a Jewish psychiatrist who was a disciple of the same fuzzy haired guru and
they would spend the evening singing bhajans, devotional songs, and take darshan, the act of
viewing a saint or deity and watch home movies of the guru. Though he was not there in the flesh
one of his orange robes that he had worn, and then gifted to his disciples, was placed on a chair
and obeisance was made to his essence. Some times movies would be shown of the guru doing
miracles. Often the psychiatrist’s mother was there, a kindly but perplexed looking older woman
whom one could imagine on occasion looking in resigned disbelief and thinking, “Oi vey, my son
the doctor, where did I go wrong?’…. or so it seemed.
Though not a part of the yoga academy’s inner circle, I had become friends with a woman who
lived in the neighborhood, on the U.S. side of the border – the school being on the Mexican side –
and on occasion we would slip through the forest and cross the border in the evening to visit. An
abandoned trailer atop the sacred Mount Chuchuma, and about fifty yards away from the single
piece of barbed wire that marked the border had become my home, and over a six month period I
had many opportunities to explore the surrounding area when I went on my weekly forays into the
village of Tecate for my supply of beans and tortillas. I was to return there years later as a smuggler
of illegal aliens, but that is a story for another time.
My time on the mountaintop overlooking this small Mexican village was well spent for it allowed
me, for the most part, the solitude needed to play out the hermetical role of fasting and meditation
that I had wanted to do for some time. The hermit’s life had always fascinated me but in our busy
lives of getting and spending, of racing through life chasing our tails, one has little time for oneself.
Only in the solitude of nature, without the demands of civilization, does one have the time to explore
the ebb and flow of breath, the beat of the heart, the rush of the blood through the veins, for the
householders life is not conducive to this kind of interior voyage where one needs to eliminate those
jangling noises of the market place and the endless chatter of children
My time on the mountaintop of Mount Chuchuma was productive. Like Siddhartha, I meditated, I
fasted, I wrote poetry and I waited; waited for the sign that was to tell me it was time to move on.
When the moment arrived it did so without fanfare. One morning it was time to go. I cleaned the
trailer and surrounding area for the next one, packed my kit, said goodbye to the lizards that had
been my constant companions and headed down the mountain into the morning sunlight.
In our beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills we had a five car garage, and one of the slots had a
grease pit. This was an old house that had probably been built in the 40s or 50s during film-lands
heyday when people had many cars with chauffeurs and private mechanics to look after them, but
now the pit had long been in disuse. It had been cleaned and covered up by the previous owner
and we had reactivated the space in order to use it as a storage bin for old files and boxes of
accumulated junk that we didn’t know what to do with but weren’t ready to throw away.
I had been reading about the desert fathers of old and the Tibetan hermit monks that would seal
themselves into a cave and spend years, sometimes their whole life, exploring the inner reaches of
their mind through prayer, meditation and the control and manipulation of the breath, and I thought
the grease pit would be an ideal place to retire for a few days and conduct some experiments. Just
for five or six days, I requested of my partner, if she would bring me a small plate of rice and fresh
water every day and carry out the slop bucket.
“What are you going to do down there,” she asked.
“Just sit and watch my breath,” I answered.
“All day long?”
“Yes, and maybe a good part of the night as well.”
’”Why?”
’’God is the breath inside the breath.” said Kabir. “Inside the gaps between the inhalation and
exhalation, that is where the mystery lies. I would like to explore that mystery.”
“Sometimes I really think you’re crazy. I’m sorry but I am not going to contribute to this madness.
What if you should die down there or have some kind of fit? I would be an accessory.”
It was of no use explaining to her that the Buddha made watching the breath a technique for
meditation, and to his eventual enlightenment. In Sanskrit breath means life, in Hebrew it means
spirit, in all the languages breath is synonymous with spirit, or life, or God. The holy breath connects
us to all that is and we are incapable of hearing it’s quiet voice amidst all the squabbling and
babbling of the market place, all the vain talk and empty desires that pass for everyday life.
So I had wanted to go down into the pit, like the hermits of old, in order to stop all the noise, both
external and internal for a few days, to play out the role of naked hermit and explore my innerness,
for it was said that the longer one watched the breath, were mindful of each inhalation and
exhalation, the wider would become the gaps between the inhalations and the exhalations until
eventually only very large gaps would remain. And in those gaps everything stops, the breathing is
absent and thus time will stop, thinking will stop and the world will stop. Thinking needs a
continuous supply of oxygen so if there is no oxygen there is no thought process and no thought
process means there is no mind stream which is the unfolding of thought and hence the whole world
stops because the world is a manifestation of the mind. And in that stopping it was said one would
come to know God which was the breath life inside the breath life and that was what I had wanted
to experience. For straight America at the time, that was crazy thinking.
But God sent one of his angels, an arch angel no less, as if to apologize for the closed mindedness
of some of his subjects. The angels name was DOM, and she came in the form of a little blue pill.
Where she came from I don’t know, out of the heavens, I guess, where all angels come from, and
she left as quickly as she came when her work was over.
I found myself in the possession of DOM one day and I retired to our back lot high on the hill
overlooking the greenery of the Canyon, and with the reverence due an angel, sat my body in a half
lotus position, and ingested the offering of the angel’s blue flesh. In a few minutes the most dramatic
experience of my life unfolded and continued for eight or nine hours as the silver liquid energy of the
cosmos traveled up my spine and out through the top of my head continuously, in painfully
exquisite, orgasmic pleasure with a fluid intensity I was able to regulate with my mind, to turn it
down a bit when the pleasure was too much or to turn it up when I wanted more, for the whole day
and into the evening I sat in that position with one pointedness of mind, never wavering, never tiring,
never thinking about pain in my knees or back, simultaneous images bathed in profound luminosity
as I sat under the Bo Tree as the Buddha, as I hung bleeding on the cross as Christ, as I danced
with the gopis as Krishna, as I sat in the cave as Mohammed listening to the words of Allah recite
to me the holy Koran, an endless stream of tears washing my face as I felt the pain and sorrow of
all the beings of the earth, laughing hysterically as I saw and understood the absurdity of it all, the
dance of Shiva, destruction and creation and destruction over and over, endless rounds of birth and
death, a merry-go-round of creation going faster and faster and we were all little children unable to
get off, screaming with our suffering, pleading with the gods to show us the way, all the time the
cosmic serpent tearing through my spine with the clean, pristine, sweet, hot, liquid silver as the
music of the universe, the OM of creation, echoed from the bottom of my soul in a cleansing
catharsis, an initiation of my spirit into another life, a rebirth, a cleansing of every facet of my self
that left me pure and clean as I was on the first day of my life when I left my mother’s womb.
As in the Orphic and Eleusinian cults of ancient Greece an initiation into the mysteries was
considered to be of grave importance and one was only a half man if he had not participated in the
initiatory rites. To do so was to become “twice born,” to be united with one’s true self. “Go in
peace” the priest would tell the initiate at the conclusion of the ceremony, for they were to depart
with their minds and souls serene and at rest.
I took a pill and saw God. Who dares to tell me if what I saw was real or not. My mind was still
when it was over. I had passed beyond sorrow and knew that my “I” did not inherently exist, that
what had been my “I” had been transformed into emptiness, to an adamantine clarity without
blemish or shadow. I had returned home and could now go forth unencumbered by the baggage of
self….. I could go in peace
somewhat famous school of yoga was located. A therapist friend who had lived there at one time
recommended I go for a visit for many interesting people from India passed through, and there I
might make some contacts for my future travels to that part of the world.
The school was run by an aristocratic old Russian woman and her venerable, German,
homeopathic doctor husband, and they attracted people from all over the world. It was expensive
and a bit exclusive -- yuppyfied might be a more apt description though the word was not in use at
the time -- and the old Mataji, regally splendid in her saris and other Indian finery, reigned over her
student-subjects with an iron hand. She taught a brand of hatha yoga formulated by Patanjali, the
second century B.C. author of the yoga sutras, and their days were spent doing yoga asanas,
controlling the breath with pranayama and learning the different aspects of the Samkya system (One
of the six orthodox Indian systems of philosophy based on the Vedas.) of physical, mental and
spiritual disciplines that would eventually lead them to Samadhi. At the conclusion of the courses--
beginner, intermediate and advanced--the students would graduate as bona fide yoga teachers,
their diplomas stamped with the imprimatur of Mataji herself, which would then entitle them to go
out into the world and teach others this age old path to enlightenment.
Every few years the Mataji would go to India to see her guru, a wild haired man with miraculous
powers, and return with new pearls of wisdom that she would share with her students. Sometimes
she would take some of her more favored ones with her and they would invariably return to the fold
shining with that beatific glow reserved for honored initiates. Other times they would travel to San
Diego to the home of a Jewish psychiatrist who was a disciple of the same fuzzy haired guru and
they would spend the evening singing bhajans, devotional songs, and take darshan, the act of
viewing a saint or deity and watch home movies of the guru. Though he was not there in the flesh
one of his orange robes that he had worn, and then gifted to his disciples, was placed on a chair
and obeisance was made to his essence. Some times movies would be shown of the guru doing
miracles. Often the psychiatrist’s mother was there, a kindly but perplexed looking older woman
whom one could imagine on occasion looking in resigned disbelief and thinking, “Oi vey, my son
the doctor, where did I go wrong?’…. or so it seemed.
Though not a part of the yoga academy’s inner circle, I had become friends with a woman who
lived in the neighborhood, on the U.S. side of the border – the school being on the Mexican side –
and on occasion we would slip through the forest and cross the border in the evening to visit. An
abandoned trailer atop the sacred Mount Chuchuma, and about fifty yards away from the single
piece of barbed wire that marked the border had become my home, and over a six month period I
had many opportunities to explore the surrounding area when I went on my weekly forays into the
village of Tecate for my supply of beans and tortillas. I was to return there years later as a smuggler
of illegal aliens, but that is a story for another time.
My time on the mountaintop overlooking this small Mexican village was well spent for it allowed
me, for the most part, the solitude needed to play out the hermetical role of fasting and meditation
that I had wanted to do for some time. The hermit’s life had always fascinated me but in our busy
lives of getting and spending, of racing through life chasing our tails, one has little time for oneself.
Only in the solitude of nature, without the demands of civilization, does one have the time to explore
the ebb and flow of breath, the beat of the heart, the rush of the blood through the veins, for the
householders life is not conducive to this kind of interior voyage where one needs to eliminate those
jangling noises of the market place and the endless chatter of children
My time on the mountaintop of Mount Chuchuma was productive. Like Siddhartha, I meditated, I
fasted, I wrote poetry and I waited; waited for the sign that was to tell me it was time to move on.
When the moment arrived it did so without fanfare. One morning it was time to go. I cleaned the
trailer and surrounding area for the next one, packed my kit, said goodbye to the lizards that had
been my constant companions and headed down the mountain into the morning sunlight.
In our beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills we had a five car garage, and one of the slots had a
grease pit. This was an old house that had probably been built in the 40s or 50s during film-lands
heyday when people had many cars with chauffeurs and private mechanics to look after them, but
now the pit had long been in disuse. It had been cleaned and covered up by the previous owner
and we had reactivated the space in order to use it as a storage bin for old files and boxes of
accumulated junk that we didn’t know what to do with but weren’t ready to throw away.
I had been reading about the desert fathers of old and the Tibetan hermit monks that would seal
themselves into a cave and spend years, sometimes their whole life, exploring the inner reaches of
their mind through prayer, meditation and the control and manipulation of the breath, and I thought
the grease pit would be an ideal place to retire for a few days and conduct some experiments. Just
for five or six days, I requested of my partner, if she would bring me a small plate of rice and fresh
water every day and carry out the slop bucket.
“What are you going to do down there,” she asked.
“Just sit and watch my breath,” I answered.
“All day long?”
“Yes, and maybe a good part of the night as well.”
’”Why?”
’’God is the breath inside the breath.” said Kabir. “Inside the gaps between the inhalation and
exhalation, that is where the mystery lies. I would like to explore that mystery.”
“Sometimes I really think you’re crazy. I’m sorry but I am not going to contribute to this madness.
What if you should die down there or have some kind of fit? I would be an accessory.”
It was of no use explaining to her that the Buddha made watching the breath a technique for
meditation, and to his eventual enlightenment. In Sanskrit breath means life, in Hebrew it means
spirit, in all the languages breath is synonymous with spirit, or life, or God. The holy breath connects
us to all that is and we are incapable of hearing it’s quiet voice amidst all the squabbling and
babbling of the market place, all the vain talk and empty desires that pass for everyday life.
So I had wanted to go down into the pit, like the hermits of old, in order to stop all the noise, both
external and internal for a few days, to play out the role of naked hermit and explore my innerness,
for it was said that the longer one watched the breath, were mindful of each inhalation and
exhalation, the wider would become the gaps between the inhalations and the exhalations until
eventually only very large gaps would remain. And in those gaps everything stops, the breathing is
absent and thus time will stop, thinking will stop and the world will stop. Thinking needs a
continuous supply of oxygen so if there is no oxygen there is no thought process and no thought
process means there is no mind stream which is the unfolding of thought and hence the whole world
stops because the world is a manifestation of the mind. And in that stopping it was said one would
come to know God which was the breath life inside the breath life and that was what I had wanted
to experience. For straight America at the time, that was crazy thinking.
But God sent one of his angels, an arch angel no less, as if to apologize for the closed mindedness
of some of his subjects. The angels name was DOM, and she came in the form of a little blue pill.
Where she came from I don’t know, out of the heavens, I guess, where all angels come from, and
she left as quickly as she came when her work was over.
I found myself in the possession of DOM one day and I retired to our back lot high on the hill
overlooking the greenery of the Canyon, and with the reverence due an angel, sat my body in a half
lotus position, and ingested the offering of the angel’s blue flesh. In a few minutes the most dramatic
experience of my life unfolded and continued for eight or nine hours as the silver liquid energy of the
cosmos traveled up my spine and out through the top of my head continuously, in painfully
exquisite, orgasmic pleasure with a fluid intensity I was able to regulate with my mind, to turn it
down a bit when the pleasure was too much or to turn it up when I wanted more, for the whole day
and into the evening I sat in that position with one pointedness of mind, never wavering, never tiring,
never thinking about pain in my knees or back, simultaneous images bathed in profound luminosity
as I sat under the Bo Tree as the Buddha, as I hung bleeding on the cross as Christ, as I danced
with the gopis as Krishna, as I sat in the cave as Mohammed listening to the words of Allah recite
to me the holy Koran, an endless stream of tears washing my face as I felt the pain and sorrow of
all the beings of the earth, laughing hysterically as I saw and understood the absurdity of it all, the
dance of Shiva, destruction and creation and destruction over and over, endless rounds of birth and
death, a merry-go-round of creation going faster and faster and we were all little children unable to
get off, screaming with our suffering, pleading with the gods to show us the way, all the time the
cosmic serpent tearing through my spine with the clean, pristine, sweet, hot, liquid silver as the
music of the universe, the OM of creation, echoed from the bottom of my soul in a cleansing
catharsis, an initiation of my spirit into another life, a rebirth, a cleansing of every facet of my self
that left me pure and clean as I was on the first day of my life when I left my mother’s womb.
As in the Orphic and Eleusinian cults of ancient Greece an initiation into the mysteries was
considered to be of grave importance and one was only a half man if he had not participated in the
initiatory rites. To do so was to become “twice born,” to be united with one’s true self. “Go in
peace” the priest would tell the initiate at the conclusion of the ceremony, for they were to depart
with their minds and souls serene and at rest.
I took a pill and saw God. Who dares to tell me if what I saw was real or not. My mind was still
when it was over. I had passed beyond sorrow and knew that my “I” did not inherently exist, that
what had been my “I” had been transformed into emptiness, to an adamantine clarity without
blemish or shadow. I had returned home and could now go forth unencumbered by the baggage of
self….. I could go in peace
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