Many Mansions
Hm.
This, too, I wondered a little whether to share.
What do I mean?
Well, first, I'm alluding to myself -- here and here.
As there, so here -- when I say I wondered, I suppose I didn't really wonder that much, or so deeply, because -- as here, so there -- I wouldn't have gone so far as to Invoke the Muses by means of this rhetorically characteristic introduction if I didn't mean to share it after all.
The question, now as always, is -- what to share, in what way, and, of course, why.
There's a logic to the things I share here and to the order of their sharing, even if I'm only caressing the contours of it in the dark.
What I'm saying is, having commented on my experiences in the jungle (such as it was, and they were) and a few other forays into the wilds of my being, I've shaped enough of a mythopoetic landscape of my inner imaginal realm that, assuming you've followed me into it and kept your wits about you -- well, now the tales of the deeds of those who dwell in this world begin to take on more flavor, to gain in richness.
Maybe that's more mythopoesis.
Maybe if I was 100% sure what that meant, I could tell you for sure.
Anyway, I said "first" above.
Second, I wondered whether to share this because it is more of a journal-entry, though I shared it with others as part of one of the "two spiritual tracks," itself part of the "two year plan," I alluded to in Ayahuasca.
I'll give the context here, of course, but what I mean is -- that context is so broad, populated with its own characters and language and history, it's a work of mythopoesis (or cosmogony) in itself to give it in full, and I don't have God's patience to create that context for you ex nihilo.
So -- I wondered, What's the point of sharing this if it won't make sense?
Because there's something important there.
I mentioned elsewhere on this website (I'm weaving quite a tapestry here and I've only got 10 fingers, so forgive me for losing the thread) that my life seems to have its own logic; all the things that at one point didn't make any sense, later proved to make perfect sense.
That's why I want to share this.
What do I think of this spiritual side-track I took and the, shall we say, governor of the train that ran on it, one of whose dingier boxcars hosted me, my bindle, and my hobo-feet for a couple starry nights before I humbly tumbled outward again?
This will, or would, take you way, way into my imaginal realm -- I think of Beowulf diving to the depths of the noxious pool, full of corpse-grey stinging eels, in whose womb was a hidden cave housing Grendel's mother.
What I'm saying is, for one, I had some very interesting dreams about him, whose lingering flavor was: mmm, thanks, but no thanks.
And, on what is called the rational side of things, historical research has bolstered that, as I've called it elsewhere (with my usual inimitable rhetorical flavor), dead-center intuitive hit.
Check the name of this website, if you forgot; I reserve the right to my elusiveness and allusiveness.
Back on track.
I said I wanted to learn about healing, to be a healer.
This spiritual side-track seemed to have a scent of truth, so I followed my nose.
I guess the relevant point to this discussion is, what was being taught, at least nominally, was a way to connect with Mystery, with Divinity; its chief means and methods were Not-Knowing, Nonsense, Shocks, Emotionally Intense Music, and Fervent, Heartfelt Prayer.
How those ingredients were used, and might be used, depended, and depends, on the cook.
Taken from that high vantage -- I would say that's a valid path (and I hope to make that clear, here and there, to bring some of that flavor into what I cook you in this restaurant, so to speak).
But my experience on the ground floor, hobnobbing with the hoi polloi in the dining cart, reminds me a bit of Joyce's Ulysses:
"Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the animals feed ...
"Perched men on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches ... A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting it to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that?"
Yes, Sah!
Mmm-hmm!
Ok.
If I'm ever going to get to the context, frame this thing, and put it on the wall for you to blink and stare at -- I'd better do just that.
To try to give us this experience of Divine Mystery and its Fire, to bring the train to the station for us hungry hobos, our Good Governor cleared a broad improvisational space, brought in story, poetry, and music, and when spark touched tinder -- fanned the flames like a MF.
It would be apropos to allude, without imputing kinship to the two poets, to the Persian poem of the fire in the field of reeds.
The reeds caught fire one day, and the white crane took flight.
Those Persian poets, and their other halves, the musicians who give life to their words, are keepers of one of the highest (and deepest) spiritual traditions of mankind.
I'm told pomegranate and saffron originated in Persia -- flower-pollen worth more than its weight in gold, fruit with no peer or precedent elsewhere in the world.
There's something in the water there, or in the blood.
What I'm saying is, one night in my boxcar, a spark set my rags on fire.
I'd like you to read a little bit of what I wrote about that then; then, I'll pick this thread up again and weave a couple more flowers into the tapestry before leaving the loom.
Of course, any names, I've changed, and [....] means I left something out.
Do you remember the last night in [....] ?
We all got on our knees, and we bowed in prayer. It reminded me of being a kid.
My dad is from Iran, and at that time was at least nominally Muslim, so he'd take me to the masjed, the mosque. The prayer-room floor was covered in Persian rugs, and at the front, the leader sat in an alcove and led the prayers. Mostly ritualized and "cool," but everyone would bow together.
I also thought of Mecca, where all the pilgrims circle around a central point and bow together.
And I thought of my grandmother, a simple and religious woman who taught me prayers when I was young, and who told me a story about one of the Shi'a imams, called Sajjaad.
Sajde is “bowing,” what you do in prayer; masjed is “place of bowing”; and sajjaad is “someone who bows a lot.”
Apparently this imam became a renunciate, and was known for staying up all night in prostrated prayer.
I kept shaking while bowing, and I began to understand why someone could stay up all night like that. It pierced my heart thinking about it afterwards – one looks everywhere in the world for satisfaction, and there, in one's own back yard, so to speak, is the answer all along.
Joanna was next to me with her hand on my back the whole time, shaking– the shaking mingling, or alternating, or mutually amplifying. It was unexpected!
[....]
The next day as we sat in the hall, Joanna brought me a leaf and a berry, said they were for me, and asked if I knew what they were. Nope. I told her this – I loved the nonsense of it and the innocence of the gesture, – but also kinda thought, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this? So I kept them in a mint-tin – couldn't just throw them out.
I looked up what the plant was, but it didn't mean anything – no real medicinal use, just cover, decoration, shelter for birds.
The other night, I read some blog that mentioned seeing things from other perspectives. So, I opened the tin, looked at the leaf and berry, and something struck me.
This bush grows in my father's backyard – I missed it! Pyracantha, “firethorn.” Burning bush, holy fire; thorns, needles, nails that prick, spur, ignite heat. It's evergreen – never dying [....]
That's it.
Does it not seem like much?
It was a revelation to me then, though it still didn't seem like much; now, years later, I see it was indeed rich with pith and meaning, and has since sprung up into something that's borne a lot of fruit.
In fact, you might say it was smaller than all seeds, but became a shelter for all the birds of heaven.
You might say, that fiery little thorn set the field of reeds alight and set the white crane to flight.
When I wrote then that that burning bush grew in my father's back yard -- it gives me chills now, even as I write it, because -- that realization, that experience, came from God.
In my father's back yard, which spans thousands of years and hundreds of generations, are many poetic pomegranates and countless musical saffron-flowers -- many mansions in my father's house, you might say.
What am I saying?
I go into it a little bit here.
What I'm saying is, what I didn't realize at the point of revelation was... this Persian dastgaah music, these Masters -- Lotfi, Shajarian, Sarvestani, Musavi, just to pluck a few flowers from the field -- were, in a sense, the connection to the divine that I was spending those two years of travel, all around the country and in other countries, looking for.
I was looking for ecstasy, fire, poetry, divinity, a path, a language -- and it was growing in my back yard, my own father's back yard, all along.
And -- the blindness! -- elsewhere I had said, here I am trying to grow wheat in clay.
In a sense, in a truer sense, Qigong -- Spring Forest Qigong -- is my true spiritual path.
Yet, in a yet-truer sense, what I've come to see and am saying is -- the improvisational dastgaah music of the Persian music masters and the sublime poetry they bring to an even richer liveliness with it IS Qigong.
Don't be so narrow, as I was.
As Rumi put in the mouth of God chastising Moses:
"You have separated me from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever? ...
"It's not me that's glorified in acts of worship. It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words they say. I look inside at the humility.
"That broken-open lowliness is the reality, not the language ...
"Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression!"
It IS that other spiritual path of Not-Knowing, Nonsense, Shocks, Emotionally Intense Music, and Fervent, Heartfelt Prayer.
It IS the burning bush, the smallest of seeds, shelter for all birds of heaven, and the house of many mansions.
I can't say more; you have to enter it to know it.
Yet, I will say more; I said elsewhere, and will say again: these Masters of dastgaah music, and their music itself, needs many portraits of many words, though I know before painting them they will never show who these Masters are or what their music is.
You have to enter it to know it.
11 April 2022
P.S. I've since begun painting those portraits. Direct your cherished and much-belabored eyes downward, to that picture of that many-colored temple, and rest and renew them on the sacred images housed therein.
Or, if you're really lazy, click here while I judge you, with a silent regard of compassionate sorrow, for your failure to make a Gurdjieffian super-effort, which, as you should know he said, is the only kind of effort that counts.
