He who learns to worship the lotus, to dissolve his chittavrittis in consciousness of the lotus/that man-or woman, it might be, for woman is in the man and man is in woman-that man or woman says "thou," knowing that "thou" is the same as "I." Tat tvam asi: that thou art. Thou art atman, thou art brahman, thou art adipurusha, the Universal Man. He or she who knows that is wide awake. He or she eats the lotus. He or she drinks the rajas, which means not just blood but all female secretions. The rajas are nectar. The rajas are angel food. The rajas are rasa, which means "bliss." Rasa also means "sap." The divine sap rising in the woman, that is rajas. A man who is not enlightened has this fear of nothingness that comes from saying "I." When a man has this fear, he turns to woman. She is mother. She is common sense. She has no fear. She is prakriti before it thought "I." He turns to her. He makes love to her. He inhales her aroma. He looks into her black eyes and sees the redness of her mouth when she laughs. There is a poem that says, "Put away the idea of two and be of one body." The fear that he has goes away. She is maya, she is nothingness. Who knows the name of the mother of Buddha, whose father was called Shuddhodana? [Distant shout.] Yes. It was Maya. Buddha was born of Maya.
You in the West fear nothingness because you think God is a big bearded fellow in the sky who will crush you. You think, "How can I make that Big Guy like me better?" You think, "I will hate myself, then He will like me. I will hate all cunts, because they give me bliss. Then God will like me very much." In India too, they torture themselves, to burn away the ego and its fear. They sit naked on burning rocks. They stare at the sun until the eyeballs are all white and quite blind. They make fists until their fingernails grow out the other side. You ask, "Is it hurting?" They say, "No, it feels fine. I am enjoying samadhi." That is one way. That is the way of "neti neti"-"not this, not that." Not anything, and then what is left will be good. That is the way of yoga. There is another way, the way of bhoga. Bhoga means "pleasure." The way of bhoga says "iti iti"-"it is here, it is here." Buddha and Brahman are in everything. In kama, pleasure. In rasa, sap. Say no to nothing. Brahman, Buddha are in you also. You are the same mystery. When ego dissolves, purusha is there. Eat the lotus. No Big Guy will crush you. You are Brahman. [Loudly] OM. Buddha is yours. You carry him about like a little fetus curled in the shadow of your mind, and in this same way he carries you. [Louder still] OMMM.
[end of tape]
Gentlemen:
To follow up our letter of May 24: our former chief accountant, Ma Prem Nitya Kalpana, has due to the mental stress of her responsibilities taken a permanent leave of absence, and the matter of your unpaid bills for six Lincoln limousines is being investigated by her successors. The disorder of the accounts is formidable, but we hope to be getting back to you soon.
With every good wish,
Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.
Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat
/k
Dear Jerry-
What a pleasant surprise to hear from you! Yes, I am well, and trust you are the same. Caracas must be lovely this time of year-but, then, it's lovely all the time of the year, isn't it, being on the equator and a plateau and near the sea all at once? Here it is hot, 110° is not uncommon, but as I work in an air-conditioned office I don't really mind it, except that in changing from the chilly indoors to sizzling outdoors I've caught one of my wretched colds. When we were growing up-I used to blame the germs you brought home from the boys' gym or locker room-I can't do that now, can I?
I don't know what alarming stuff Mother has been feeding you but your implied chastisements are really rather amusing. And old-hat! This is a spiritual place but also a hard-working place, and my colleagues are not outmoded flower-children and drug-dazed losers as you sweetly put it but well-educated and highly integrated men and women trying to create here an alternative life-style for so-called Homo sapiens, based on our higher instead of our baser attributes. We are not the first and won't be the last to beat against the tide of consumeristic materialistic capitalistic garbage, but the effort is at least as worth making as your life which as far as I can tell is spent sucking up to the Venezuelans who are getting rich sucking the oil out of poor helpless Lake Maracaibo. I don't judge you, and when you made the South American move it was I, at that time Mommy's good little girl, the typical doctor's wife tending the garden of her typical lovely North Shore home, who stuck up for Kid Brother and suggested, albeit timidly since Mother was still in her fearsome prime, that approaching thirty maybe you had a right to your own life. You're welcome, though I don't recall getting any thanks.
The person you should be writing sly advisements to is our dear madre. Never, really, the most acute manageress of her affairs, family or otherwise, she is flipping her lid down there, in my opinion-acting and dressing like a seventy-year-old beach bimbo (she watches with inane delight something called "Golden Girls" on television), going out on disgusting dinner "dates" (I think at that age the thrill is mostly in just the eating, but God knows) with some octogenarian former admiral she's lured into her sun porch, and doing unspeakable things with what little of Daddy's money she hasn't already wasted. She's fallen in with some smooth young broker who's got her to believe she's the Hetty Green of South Florida-by the time the two of them get done "adjusting" her portfolio there won't be so much as a treasury bond left. There is a whole tribe of people in Florida-brokers, podiatrists, chiropractors, faith healers, home helpers, seductive practical nurses-who prey on the old and senile, and one of my. fears as Mother gets battier is she'll give all the silver away as a tip to the boy who trims the palm trees in her patio.
You're just a little blue water away from her, and all of your fancy hidalgo friends have fail-safe apartments in Miami in case the Sandinistas take over-couldn't you go visit her and see what's going on? My intuition is she's being taken terrible advantage of by men. She always was man-crazy, let's face it-all those nights dragging poor Daddy off to some party or other so she could flirt and flash her boobs while all he wanted was to sit home marinating in his old books and having yet anotKer whiskey, leaving us in the care of some evangelical monster like Mrs. Van Liew or that girl from Needham whose boyfriends tried to keep us quiet with tokes of pot. Think of it if she gets married again-Daddy's ashes whirling in their grave, and all those lovely Perkins and Price and Peabody antiques distributed among our step-siblings,-of whom I'm sure the admiral will supply a greedy passel. I'd go myself but I'm very tied up here-I've become rather important in running the place, funnily enough.