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.
In contrasting therapy and yoga we have an echo of the age-old conflict between those who regard life as a problem to be solved and those who see it as a reality to be experienced. In the Chinese philosophical treatise The Secret of the Golden Flower it is written, "When purpose has been used to grasp purposelessness the issue has been grasped." Perhaps it would be as appropriate to say that when the distinctions between work and play fade out then we will see creation as God's (and our own) recreation. Then indeed we will grow through joy and the kingdom of heaven will bubble forth from within. In the same way we will find that while "samadhi yoga" feels good and could produce a stupendous addiction to God, it will certainly turn out to be useful in dealing with the sick and suffering as well as in giving guidance to so-called normal people. Samadhi yoga is also samadhi therapy and in the final analysis there is no difference between the two.
As January slid into February it became increasingly evident that what the goddess was giving us were variations on one theme which could be expressed in the words, "Let the soul seep through." Again and again, both symbolically and through direct apprehension, I was made to see that the evanescing appearances of the phenomenal world are but ripples in the surface of a universe containing oceanic depths of beauty, goodness and compassion. Regardless of where one begins, the journey inward is bound to reveal some segment of the core of meaning that makes our lives worth the living.
Repeatedly, the idea of all the elements becoming permeable to one another was presented in pictures of mists softening the garden spots of earth, of the fragrance of sage drifting through desert cacti, of the intermingling of sand and surf, of air beaten into a froth of waves on the sea shore, and of the warmth of sun lifting the morning dew skyward. Often the images took the form of textures as though the threads of one level of consciousness were being woven into those of another to produce a crochet of sumptuous designs. Still other images were organic as when I saw the members of humanity as God's earthworms aerating the soil of animal instincts with higher aspirations or as spiders of light weaving cobwebs between earth and heaven. On another occasion it was shown to me that dreams are like enzymes of the psyche, enabling us to digest and assimilate the day's experiences.
Analogies pertaining to cookery were also common. There were times when it seemed as though my task, was one of raising a soggy batter into a souffle, mousse or chiffon cream pie, and I wondered if it would ever be possible. Probably the most common of all the images was one of being worked upon like beaten gold. In this respect it always seemed astoundingly apposite that my new name, "Alltounian" meant literally "son of a goldsmith."
One of the most vivid of these picture lessons dealt with the process by which we are "in-spirited" by the breath which flows through our bodies. I had started our session by breathing in yoga fashion first through one nostril and then through the other while visualizing the pranic life-force flowing in through the top of the head down to the base of the spine and out along the channels of nerves. Suddenly it seemed as though my backbone had become a magnified syringe in which the horizontal lines, like markings on a ruler, were laid out like vertebrae. A fiery energy current was pressing down the hollow cylinder of the spinal canal from whence it was being apportioned to every cell of the body, enabling each one to partake of the largesse of the whole. In turn, the minuscule cell entities were busily engaged in a process of combustion, using their varying allotments of oxygen to stoke the furnaces of the organism in which they were incorporated. Moving up a level it was impressed upon me that the entire universe is like a syringe, as the breath of spirit is injected into the body of matter, only the process is going on all the time everywhere at once.
At this point, however, it seems necessary to warn the reader that we definitely don't recommend this visualization exercise. It is too powerful and can disrupt or prematurely stimulate the fires of the body. Certainly anyone using ketamine on a regular basis should read Gopi Krishna's cautionary book Kundalini and take it to heart.