When the Impossible Happens (31 page)

I realized that this unexpected complication provided an element that was previously missing to make my fears absolutely convincing. Earlier I had doubted that MDA alone could kill me, but now I was not sure what large amounts of the toxin of hundreds of giant Mexican ants could do to someone whose sympathetic nervous system was strongly activated by MDA, an amphetamine derivative. The ants brought an unknown into the equation—the chemical ingredients of their toxin and its interaction with the substance I had taken. I decided to run, to escape from the ruins, remove myself from the influence of the deities. However, time seemed to have slowed down almost to the point of stopping, and my whole body felt enormously heavy, as if it were made of lead.

I desperately tried to run as fast as I could, but it seemed that I was progressing as if in a slow-motion movie. I felt as if I were caught in a tractor beam; the deities and the walls of the ruins had a firm grip on me and were holding me under their spell. As this was happening, images of the entire history of Palenque were still flashing through my mind. I could see the parking lot full of cars separated from the ruins by a heavy chain. There was the predictable rational world of my everyday reality. I set my mind on the task of getting there, feeling that this would somehow save my life. At the time, I saw the chain as a boundary where the influence of the magic world of ancient gods ended. Has not our modern world conquered and discredited the empires based on beliefs in such mythical realities?

My expectation turned out to be correct. After what seemed like eternity and with enormous effort, I reached the parking lot. At that moment, it was as if a heavy weight—physical, psychological, and spiritual—was lifted off my being. I felt light, ecstatic, reborn and pulsing with exuberant life energy. My senses felt cleansed and wide open; the glorious sunset during my return trip from Palenque, the dinner in a small restaurant in Villa Hermosa, watching the pulse of life in the streets, and tasting of fruit juices in the local
jugerías
were truly ecstatic experiences.

However, I spent much of the night taking cold showers to alleviate the pain and burning sensations from all the ant bites. As the effects of MDA withered away, hundreds of itching bumps covering my entire body became my dominant reality. Several years later, a German friend of mine, Christian Raetsch, a famous anthropologist and ethnobotanist, who had studied extensively MesoAmerican cultures and actually lived for a long time with the Lacandon Mayas, told me during his visit to Esalen that ants played an important role in Mayan mythology and were deeply connected with the Earth goddess and with the death-rebirth process.

ULURU AND ALCHERINGA: An Adventure in Dreamtime

This story describes some extraordinary adventures in non-ordinary realities that Christina and I had during our visit to Australia, more specifically to central Australia and its spectacular Ayers Rock, or Uluru. What makes this experience particularly interesting is that we were able to find independent verification for the new information about the archetypal and ritual world of the Aborigines that we obtained in our respective holotropic states—me in a psychedelic session and Christina in her spontaneous experiences, which were part of her spiritual emergency.

Australia has many features that make it unique and remarkable—its isolated location in the Southern Hemisphere, the vastness of its central desert, the picturesque giant Ayers rock in the middle of the continent, and, particularly, its fauna, which has no parallels in the world—the marsupial kangaroo, wombat, and Tasmanian devil, and the monotreme duck—billed platypus and echidna. But for anthropologists, psychologists, and consciousness researchers, the most intriguing aspect of this continent is its original inhabitants, the Australian Aborigines.

This remarkable group of hunters and gatherers has been in Australia for at least fifty thousand years and has essentially coevolved with the changing continent. The Aborigines adapted to the harsh Australian environment by living in seminomadic groups in conditions externally not very different from the Stone Age. And yet, their inner life has been extraordinarily rich. They have a fascinating ritual and spiritual life and complex mythology closely related to the land in which they live. Researchers who have lived with the Aborigines and studied them report that these people spend much time in a remarkable state of consciousness called
alcheringa
(Dreamtime).

We have read and heard many stories about the remarkable psychic abilities of the Aborigines. These accounts described that they were able to communicate with each other without the aid of any physical means, such as messengers, sounds, or smoke signals; they could accurately transmit thoughts, feelings, and ideas to friends and relatives who were hundreds of miles away. The intuitive connection the Aborigines had with nature was equally remarkable. They knew, for example, that a small local rain, a rare and precious occurrence in the desert, would fall several miles away, and would run there with impeccable timing to intercept it. According to some other stories, they have been able to reconstruct crimes, identify and track down criminals, and locate strayed cattle and lost valuables. They also had incredible ability to see and identify small objects at great distances.

These reports together with our knowledge of the mythology, paintings, and music of this extraordinary group of people generated in us great interest in getting to know them better. Our first opportunity came when we were invited by our friends Alf and Muriel Foote to conduct a Holotropic Breathwork workshop in their center in Blackwood, near Melbourne. Another reason for our meeting was to prepare ground for a conference of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) in Phillip Island, near the Australian coast.

During our stay in Blackwood, we started exploring with our friends the possibility of spending some time with the Aborigines and meeting their elders. This turned out to be a much more difficult problem than we expected. We found out that they were not a homogeneous group; several hundred thousand surviving Aborigines spoke among them more than two hundred languages. In addition, they were divided into a number of so called “skin groups,” each with its own mythology, rituals, and strict rules for intermarriage. It was generally not easy to find “cultural brokers,” who mediate the contact with the various Aboriginal groups, and the few that we found out about were very protective of them, because of some bad experience in the past, and very cautious about foreigners whom they did not know.

While still in California, we had decided to include central Australia in our trip and visit Ayer’s Rock, a unique geological formation in the middle of the continent that the Aborigenes call Uluru and consider their “Cosmic Mountain.” Because all our attempts to find useful contacts had failed, we had to undertake this trip on our own. As it turned out, our encounter with the Aboriginal culture took a different form than we expected. It happened through powerful inner experiences rather than external contacts.

We flew from Melbourne to Alice Springs, and instead of using a small plane for a flight to Ayers Rock, we decided to rent a car. We wanted to get an intimate feeling for the awesome red desert covering most of Australia. The distance between Alice Springs and Uluru was almost three hundred miles, and the drive in scorching heat lasted many hours. The Aborigines are able to perceive many interesting nuances in the desert territory and have various mythological stories attached to them. In addition, they believe that every meaningful activity or process that occurs at a particular place leaves behind a vibrational residue in the earth, in the same way that plants leave an image of themselves as seeds. The shape of the landscape thus carries and reflects vibrations, which echo the events that created them, as well as footprints of the mythological beings that were instrumental in this process. This energy pattern,
guruwari,
or seed power, is an integral part of the terrain and lends it profound metaphysical meaning.

To us, as Western observers, the scenery seemed beautiful and awesome, but monotonous. On occasion, we noticed along the road bleached skeletons of dingoes, camels, and other animals. A welcome distraction on our long journey was an encounter with a perentie, a giant monitor lizard
(Varanus giganteus)
basking in the sun a few yards from the road. We later discovered that the meat of this animal was considered a delicacy by the Aborigines.

Ayers Rock, or Uluru, is the world’s largest monolith, roughly oval in shape. It is a spectacular sandstone formation with the circumference of almost six miles, towering a thousand feet above hundreds of miles of red desert. It is thought to be the tip of a mountain that extends miles below the surface. When we finally arrived there exhausted after many hours of driving through the desert, we discovered to our delight a small motel, located only about 200 yards from the majestic monolith. We checked in and decided to go for a walk and get the first impression of the environment.

The sun was setting, and we walked far into the desert to get a good view of the rock. When we reached a sufficient distance from the motel, the panorama of Uluru with its reddish-orange sharply contrasting with the dark blue sky was absolutely magnificent. This wonder of nature was known to shine with its full breathtaking beauty at sunrise and sunset. The motel, located in such an auspicious place, seemed like a perfect setting for a psychedelic experience. I had with me some LSD, a leftover from my research in Czechoslovakia, where I had been principal investigator in a program of psychedelic therapy and had unlimited access to the substance.

Although I felt somewhat tired after the long drive through the desert, I decided to use this unique opportunity and embark on an inner journey. Christina, who at that time was wide open and had had many spontaneous experiences as a result of her Kundalini awakening, decided not to join me in this adventure. She offered that I wake her up if I needed somebody to “hold my kite string,” as we called it. I took 400 micrograms of LSD and made myself comfortable on my motel bed.

After I engaged in about forty-five minutes of quiet meditation, the sub stance started to take effect, and my state of consciousness underwent very rapid and profound changes. I felt that my experience had transported me rapidly to Dreamtime and to the beginning of the world. I had some passing knowledge of Australian mythology, but what I witnessed by far surpassed anything I have ever read or heard about. And yet, I somehow did not have any doubt that my experience of this mythic domain of the Aborigines was absolutely authentic.

I saw the surface of the Earth, flat, nondescript, and featureless, and witnessed the arrival of mythic figures of many different forms. They chanted some mysterious songs, and as they were doing that, they seemed to give shapes to the landscape, bringing into existence rocks, mountains, canyons, and waterholes. Some of them had human forms, others the shape of snakes or other animals. Among them were several giant anthropomorphic figures that particularly attracted my attention. I had never heard before that giants were part of the mythology of the Aborigines.

Initially, I just played the role of an observer witnessing this fantastic display of Dreamtime scenes. Suddenly, this situation changed; the inhabitants of the Dreamtime world now turned against me as an unwelcome intruder, threatening to destroy me and demanding that I reveal the motivation of my daring trespassing. I tried to explain that I was coming with much respect and humility, that my intentions were friendly, and that my only motive was search for knowledge. I underwent what seemed to be rigorous psychological and spiritual scrutiny by these mythic beings and was finally granted permission to visit their domain. The condition was to fully submit to its rules.

Having overcome this difficult impasse, I was able to continue unimpeded my journey through the Great Dreaming (or Dreamtime). In front of my eyes, the majestic mass of Uluru emerged out of the primordial abyss existing some where beyond space and time as we know it. It was not an inorganic geological mass, as it appears to be in our world, but a giant crouching creature, a terrifying monstrous reptile. I heard deafening thunder as it opened its massive jaws and could see the inside of its maw. It was filled with what seemed like whirling volcanic magma, which occasionally spewed out in monumental discharges.

But describing the inside of the creature’s maw as volcanic magma captured only the surface appearance of this mysterious substance. Like hot lava it seemed to have the potential to destroy or create, but on a much deeper level and a much larger scale. It seemed to be the archetypal essence that underlies volcanic activity. Like the Greek primordial matter,
hyle,
or the
prima materia
of the alchemists, it seemed to be the universal principle of creation and destruction. It was the essence of existence, from which forms emerge and into which they return. I watched this awesome spectacle and felt that I was witnessing the ultimate mystery of the cosmos.

Before I could fully recover from this shattering encounter with the primordial Uluru reptile of creation and destruction, I was confronted with another giant figure. It was the Great Mother Goddess in the form of a female kangaroo. Suddenly, I realized that I had become a tiny kangaroo fetus in her womb, undergoing the process of birth. The passage through the birth canal was easy as compared with my human birth, which I had experienced in my previous psychedelic sessions.

What was an exceedingly challenging ordeal, a true rite of passage, was the following climb to her pouch and the struggle to reach her nourishing teats. This journey was so demanding that I felt several times I would not be able to finish it and would die on the way. But, finally, I was able to reach my goal, and the nourishing milk pouring generously from the nipple of the Great Mother Kangaroo tasted like ambrosia; it made me forget the hardships of the tedious journey. The ecstatic union with the Kangaroo Goddess was the last major experience of my session.