Russell Brand has been a bright searchlight of sincere, intelligent enquiry in these oppressive dark times of planetary crisis. The following is a tribute in the form of an open letter to the tremendous amount of effort, heart, courage and energy he donates on a daily basis to the revolutionary cause of steering humanity away from global suicide. The dedication is generously sponsored by master-plant odyssey I've been undertaking with Princess CuddlePants in Peruvian Amazon, guided by Maestro Cesar Soimetsa of Rao Kano Xobo House of Healing Energy.
Russell, brother!
I've been enjoying tremendously your blazing podcasts from the cranking revolutionary furnace you've been generously stoking with poignant criticisms and mercilessly precise rhetoric well lubricated by proverbial English humor that only an expat of your island's damp overcast climate can muster. I salute you as a people's champion and a Knight Errand in these dark, barbaric times of unapologetic brutality, lies and corruption for your broadcast is truly inspirational and enlightening in the atmosphere of global oppression and stifling air of totalitarian state control imposed on individual liberties. I am grateful, for once, to the ongoing cataclysm and mayhem for the opportunity to behold your nonchalant bare-chested ravings of a highly unlikely Jesus (present day being appropriately apocalyptic for the Second Coming) veiled in flailing silk and velvet fatigues of a zensuni Jedi master wielding razor-sharp swords of argument and inquiry whose rant is punctuated by deadpan jokes and dressed in pantomime which often leaves me convulsing in spasms of undying laughter; for what else can be injected in place of a magic healing potion to alleviate existential pain, if not a good laugh at the corruption and misery of the world?
Laughter goes hand in hand with enlightenment. This is the first thing one does on becoming enlightened, said Osho. One laughs out loud, perhaps because one finally realizes the futility of pilgrimaging in search of happiness and fulfilment outside of oneself, the futility of chasing solutions to the always changing, shape-shifting problems. The manifested physical world is nothing but a flux. Everything moves and vibrates and falls apart on atomic level according to inherent entropy that ensures ultimate degradation of previously established coherency to provide elementary building blocks for the new structures to emerge in their time, evolution and change ad infinitum.
Russell, with your permission I am going to run my mouth a wee bit in a way of contributing feedback to your inspired broadcast and adding my two cents worth to the subject of revolution upheld by you as the only alternative to the ongoing world crisis, which naturally follows as a very logical consequence of past millennia's history of violence, ambition and ego dominating humankind.
The other night I happened to watch ‘First Man’ with Princess CuddlePants by my side in our mosquitero home theatre staring at the phone screen propped up by a thick volume of yoga manual to pass an evening in the jungle with our fave Ryan Gosling portraying Neil Armstrong, out of all people, alternately spun unconscious by space flight simulator and getting up to speed with heavy-duty rocket science, slingshot trajectories and all, so that he could risk his life strapped inside a blazing capsule of metal alloys melting away from blasted layers of the atmosphere, precision electronics and system of control vibrating itself apart, with chances of next to zero return to Earth, in order to obtain an outside perspective on everything most precious life has to offer otherwise afforded by simple means of watching one's breath sitting quietly on the grass by the Zen pond; hear them birds singing. Point being, one doesn't need to detonate oneself into sub-zero vacuum riding a tank of hydrogen fuel big enough to entertain one's nation's news with spectacular fireworks display in open desert just to recover a bit of lost child's innocence, forget all about Houston and go jumping up and down and frolicking in fine moon dust. We are so invested in the external mission control that we fail to detach ourselves from the suicidal momentum of a derailed train of human history skedaddling down familiar rails of frustration and antagonism in a wake of past wreckages and praying some god of our making to save the day while unable to let go.
Ego separates one from existence and this is precisely what is fueling all the madness: fear of discontinuation and the inevitability of losing oneself in the vast ocean of pure energy, an experience otherwise referred to as ‘death’. Birth of new consciousness and emergence of New Man long hailed by prophets means departure from the old paradigm heavily invested into dominating and ruling by force, deceit and conquest. I salute you for lighting a candle of awareness in the surrounding darkness. One cannot fight the darkness directly. Fighting darkness is a waste of energy that depletes one; one’s impulse to fight comes from unconsciousness in the first place, one is being triggered and drowning in reactionary impulses. Enlightened people are hard to come by, as you no doubt have observed. It takes a complete hundred and eighty degree turn of attention from the world onto oneself. Meditation is redirecting one's senses within, literally shining a light on oneself. And until your light is shining nice and bright, any effort to guide others, chaperon the world and stage revolutions, god forbid, is dangerous and altogether not advisable according to wise men. I am neither enlightened nor am I a wise man; I am but a boy in shorts. I do recognize the light in others, however.
I was incredibly lucky to meet a Sufi whirling dervish master, a disciple of Osho to boot, and consecutively live a number of years by her side in a community of ex-sannyasins in New Zealand after escaping Soviet Russia with its unquestionable thirst for the authoritarian military ordering of one's personal life, the exact opposite of the principle of freedom waved on a high flag of the communist state. I was born and raised in a city of three revolutions, gaping from the window of our room in communal apartment shared with five other families at May Day Parade bespeckled with red flags and scarlet scarves and ‘Long live communist party!’ banners stretched across baroque arches erected two centuries ago to commemorate a triumphant obliteration of some invading army and now towering over a streaming flow of working-class people made equally poor by noble notion of communally shared prosperity. One fridge for three families, waiting cue for the privilege of occupying single bathroom shared between seventeen people and an army of scattering cockroaches that retreat into the cracks of century old plaster as you flip the light on in the kitchen after dark. Incredibly enough, noble notions of people's equality and triumph of spirit over forces of darkness, corruption and evil impregnated into revolutionary folklore remained untainted even when strange men in grey cloaks that I later learnt were KGB agents busted into our room one day and kept us perched up on kitchen stools for better part of the night while turning the contents of my stepdad's writing desk inside out and frisking loaded with thick volumes of classical literature bookshelves for Samizdat flyers and self-published poetry, or any other proof of independent thinking that could potentially endanger or question official party line since my stepdad was a well-known literary figure whose words had power to penetrate far better than armor-piercing rounds and awaken dormant hearts.
Years have passed and I found myself, to my great surprise, with a hardcover edition of ‘Revolution’ in my hands by none other than Russell Brand while perusing a small depository of books left by visiting diateros of Santuario Huishtin, ayahuasca healing center run by Maestro Enrique Paredes on Boiling River (previously considered a mythical Inca legend on a par with infamous Tawantisuyu Golden City hidden in the Peruvian jungle). The Boiling River exists and one can boil one's eggs for breakfast quite happily in less than two minutes in fact, and I've been supremely fortunate to spend a good chunk of my time dieting master plants with my partner Rachel (aka Princess CuddlePants) in our small paradise found in virgin jungle with private hot springs right below our hut where we are tutored in medicine ways by residing therein spirits of Cachiyacu, in addition to being disciples of Maestro Cesar Soimetsa who opens our dietas in Pucallpa and transmits his ancestral Shipibo knowledge to us wherever we make it to town to attend ceremonies in Rao Kano Xobo.
Ayahuasca is known as vine of the dead for a good reason: it affords a glimpse of the beyond. Without an insight into death, life cannot be truly appreciated. This is why Buddha sent his disciples to spend time watching bodies buried in the graveyard as a necessary preliminary step to enter meditative state of contemplation. Death is inevitability, a highest point of life, an apex experience. To die consciously is to achieve liberation and to die unconsciously, as it happens with vast majority of people, is to get thrown right back into another cycle of samsara, into another body, and start all over again… so tell us Upanishads and as for my part, I've had enough glimpses to feel the truth of it.
Arriving to seeing the truth is a highly individual, experiential ordeal for the simple reason that every individual is unique as existence is rich enough and diverse enough never to repeat itself. There is only one Russell Brand out there, blazing away at corporate edifice in his silk revolutionary-flamboyant kimonos, a machine-gun rhetoric raining down at the wicked tyranny posing as 'justice' and 'progress' in torrential downpours of eloquence that capitalises on stupidity and folly and makes one shake with deep-belly laughter, for the volcano of tantric goodness is, indeed, erupting freely and sparks fly wide, igniting gloom and darkness. Yeah, I can't imagine another agent such as yourself ever being forged in a great cosmic furnace before or after this lifetime. This is also why when Jacinda Ardern announced that ‘We are [the government] is your single source of truth’ in public broadcasts televised all over New Zealand in regards to to plandemic three years back I had to escape good old Aotearoa as soon as I could get myself on the flight out to South America, a third-world Peruvian sanctuary where people still dwell in their heart, against all odds, while living in fairly post-apocalyptic conditions and finding excuses whenever possible to celebrate life in all its diversity. Much of this celebratory drive is tainted nowadays by imported customs that are far from wholesome, but it's not people's fault and I much prefer liberties of this old Spanish colony to outright Nazi attitude adopted by democratically progressive and ‘green’ New Zealand that, in reality, is filled with hypocrisy and made impotent by its complacent decadency of consumer culture while unable to get away from being a USA franchise and opting for comfort and convenience at the cost of its mana and spirit (which is why it has third highest suicide rate in the world among adolescents). I've been there myself, walking around with a sawn-off shotgun back in my heyday, one step away from blowing my brains out or going to prison for armed assault of a bank to escape the drudgery of factory work, having acquired all necessary skills to pulling the trigger in NZ Royal Infantry complete with setting ambushes and using anti-personal claymore mines for tactical purposes, regardless of Geneva Conventions, which go out of the window whenever peacekeeping mission gets underway.
If existential truth could be communicated, transmitted or otherwise shared, the world would be converted and saved by now. Fortunately or unfortunately, everyone must discover their own path to enlightenment. It isn’t transferable and without internal transformation any revolution will remain going around in circles, just as the word implies.
There is a Buddhist story about Bodhidharma travelling to China from India and a Chinese Emperor who wished to meet him in person, himself being an ardent benefactor of Buddhism. Upon meeting Bodhidharma, Emperor asked what would be his reward in heaven for having constructed so many temples for the monks in support of their practice, having fed them and donated his riches to the cause. ‘You'll go straight to hell’, answered Bodhidharma, because ‘your actions are tainted by your ego.’ Osho's commentary on this parable is that virtue follows enlightened man like a shadow and whatever a blind man does to help others, on the contrary causes more harm than good for a simple reason that the blind cannot see what he is doing. The very desire to help is blind ambition, in fact, where as enlightened man is free from desires and helps automatically whenever a situation arises because he is responding with eyes wide open, being consciously aware.
When I picked up ‘Revolution’ and opened up the book, out of sheer curiosity, it seemed incredulous to me that a loose loudmouth of a British stand-up comedian could sit himself long enough behind a writing desk to complete a voluminous tome. I was struck by the brilliance of delivery that captivated me at once and reminded me of writings by Hunter S. Thompson as well as Bill Hicks's explosive rhetoric, which sealed the deal and I had to read it swinging in my jungle hammock while somewhat light-headed from partaking of medicinal barks scraped fresh of nearby tree trunks in the vast natural pharmacopeia one inhabits in the Peruvian Amazon, hear them cicadas screeching away as monkey-wind sways high branches of trees in passing.
The only significant change is an internal shift to awareness and the message of Buddhism in this respect remains contemporary and valid as it was a millennia ago. For this reason I consider Elon Musk to be a dangerous article as he is driven by blind ambition and dwells in cold calculative intellect alone while handling huge resources and worshipping technology in the absence of God whose presence he undertook to acknowledge only once in his lifetime so far to supplicate successful launch of his latest space X mission, just in case God happens to be an existential entity undetectable by scientific equipment produced in laboratory of the mind so far. From what I have seen of Elon Musk in the media going back to pandemic times and first interviews with Les Fridman he has shown himself to be perilously immature phony character with emotional development corresponding to early adolescence who has never meditated for having invested his vital energy into acquisitioning material wealth, being a shrewd businessman inside out, a perfect example of a man to demonstrate the difference between being smart and being intelligent. Smartness, more than anything, pertains to one’s mental capacity of being superior to others and topping the game of competition, which creates hierarchy and separation, while intelligence connects one to the rest of the universe and sponsors genuine sharing. Intelligence invokes intuition whereby one receives solutions to seemingly impossible tasks and problems by allowing the answers to come from the vast network outside of oneself. This is how healing afforded by master plan spirits is channeled by a maestro-curandero who simply makes himself a conduit, a hollow bamboo to the healing frequencies of the icaros being sung. For this reason an icaro sung to a patient cannot be learned as each patient is an individual with specific problems that require unique healing frequencies.
Medical science, which fails to acknowledge the spirit and the soul for it lacks capacity to measure either one or another, likewise can never heal a man. At best the drugs will alleviate the symptoms at the cost of clogging up the liver and kidneys with toxic deposits but they will never induce actual healing. Health, wholesomeness and holiness have the same root in common and as far as I can see there is no moving forward towards the bright light of beloved revolution without going through individual healing processes in these times of the planetary scale Apocalypses, which basically implies a global healing crisis. I've come up with a wee article using downtime afforded by early lockdowns thus titled DIY Guide to Evolutionary Bottlenecks, Composting of Brains and Self-exploding Cosmic Jokes that reached a handful of people, quite literally, doing rounds on Facebook before the FB Notes section was made redundant in its entirety for some unknown reason (I will endeavour to include a link at the bottom).
Customarily all spiritual notions have a tendency to be swept away under a carpet by majority of people to avoid contemplating mortality in the manner of an ostrich who escapes the danger by sticking his head into the sand, electing ‘out of sight out of mind’ solution in the face of one's own spiritual bankruptcy. First and foremost, because there is no guidance available to discovering one's truth. When following guidance, one arrives at someone else's truth which is never going to be a right fit as human experiences, unlike your petri dish experiments, cannot be duplicated. One can follow instructions in a cookbook to arrive at a banquet with apple tarts just like Miss Poppins used to make; a religious following is utter nonsense, be it Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or Scientology. I am not condemning either one, I am just pointing out that if one walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it doesn't automatically make one a duck. It makes one a fruitcake, and that's about it. Sitting like a Buddha and talking like a Buddha does not make one a Buddha. It gives one an excuse to wear mala around the neck if you are worshipping King of Emptiness sitting cross-legged with a lotus flower in his lap, or embark on a couple of cutthroat crusades to whip them infidels and enslave their nations if your role model is the King of Jerusalem whom your forefathers crucified in their jolly day for discovering his truth and his Father in Heaven.
Enlightenment and living in one's truth is a dangerous business. Jesus was crucified, Socrates poisoned, Mansur hung for declaring "Ana al-Haqq", I am the Truth. As far as barbarous habits go we are happily dwelling in the dark ages. You see it all around. And most horrible, your own psyche is plagued by violence if you dig down to it. Jordan Peterson has put forward a notion of facing an internal apocalypse in one of the recent interviews with you on Rumble in order to avoid manifesting apocalypse in the external world. This is a big ask, he said, to lay such responsibility on the average person but a small price to pay considering total destruction of humanity.
Discovering one's truth isn’t an exercise for the fainthearted. Intelligence is needed to embrace the practice and stop investing oneself into what essentially one is not, like one's mind. Mind with all its marvelous abilities to solve problems and erect high edifices of words, build intricate labyrinths to get lost in and juggle abstract concepts to philosophize away both God and His heavenly Kingdom for all sterile eternity to come is utterly impotent to appreciate a single miracle of existence manifested in the flesh animated by spirit as mind has no life of its own. It is developed and acquired during one's life, some ninety percent of it in the first seven formative years. And what is acquired will once again be lost.
Yet, you were there before the first words were uttered, before you could talk. I remember having this feeling of knowing a great secret as a child, a true treasure inside of myself, that I could neither express nor share in words. By the time my vocabulary improved enough to approximately understand what adults were saying and to acquire the skills to state my case, the feeling was gone and so was the treasure. Writing this passage invokes the feeling once again, at least I can point to it as a finger points to the moon.
I believe everybody had the same feeling of possessing a treasure at some stage, an innate understanding of a great secret beyond one's capacity of communication. Everybody was a king before falling deep asleep, duped into poverty and issued false identity by society that destroys individuals while singing praise to democracy of individual freedoms and human rights and this subjugation runs much deeper than one thinks because of its subliminal nature. Thinking in itself creates the gap of separation between a man and reality, or God, which can neither be described nor conceptualized while retaining its oomph and awe-inspiring grandeur that leaves one speechlessly bowing down entranced in silence. A brilliant mind comes close enough to the truth to see its own inadequacy and limitations. Osho was fond of three M’s: first M stands for Mathematics, or the capacity to reason. Second M stands for Music and third one for Meditation. Music, in other words, is a great aid and a stepping stone on the way to meditation. I'd like to add another M for Medicine, primarily referring to ayahuasca, the vine of the soul, which generously provides deepest physical, mental, and emotional cleansing and throws wide open floodgates of perception and awareness, connecting one with one's heart and the rest of the universe by proxy.
Medicine, likewise, is not for faint-hearted but works wonders if you have stomach for it. In my case I've been purging for years spitting my guts out to expel not just the remainder of my half-digested lunch but some really nasty entities made visible by ayahuasca vision that made me shudder in revulsion at a time in horror that was nothing short of reviving ‘Aliens’ impregnation with Giger-inspired monstrosities from outer space. When it comes to liberating oneself from the body, the man stops eating three days before death if the process takes place its natural course. It gives body a chance to prepare for the decoupling of the spirit, that undetectable by science faculty that goes missing at the instance of death. Ayahuasca, in its full effect, accomplishes similar preparation in a matter of hours, allowing for such things as shamanic flight and retrieval of man’s soul to take place. Once I had an experience when I was purging from both ends simultaneously, shitting and vomiting at the same time, seeing all sorts of geometrical patterns and snakes dancing in front of me and being utterly disorientated as my body was packing up, thinking I was going to die. Not for the first, not the last time that it happened, but on that particular occasion I was lucky to have presence of maestro Cesar by my side that made all the difference between entering into a state of sheer panic in the face of losing grip with my body and my mind and being guided safely to the point where I was actually able to consciously release the ties with both the body and the mind and allow myself to melt in the fire that was consuming me, generously stalked by a Caesar's icaro till I found myself adrift with no sense of direction, no weight or form, completely surrounded by brilliant light on all sides and nothing but light.
I never experienced such an amount of energy, not in conscious awareness, anyway. This was a cosmic furnace where galaxies were forged and galactic superclasters arranged in fancy garlands to sparkle overhead of earthlings on a clear night, reminding them of Divine Design, Supreme Meaning and preciousness of Life, a place of absolute tranquility, power and Love, a place of encounter and reunion with dearly beloved friends and family who passed away from the world of living. My beloved wife, Katya, who died in my arms, gasping for her last breath, was there in the spirit, present in all her radiance. My dear old grandma, with all her tender affection and resurrected glamour, my step-dad, liberated from his crippled body and extending his homecoming embrace to welcome me to both the source and the final destination of the Spirit. I beheld my entire life laid out on a palm of my hand in front of me, every single experience leading me to this point of illumination, however temporary, which allowed me an outside perspective from the confines of the body and the mind. I realized that was it not for all the painful and unpleasant things I had gone through, cursing and pleading, all the failures, mistakes and accidents I had suffered, if I never took courage to empty my first glass of medicine, which ultimately led me to the maloca in Irapai, a most unlikely temple bordering the swamp and a sawmill factory next door with its incessant noise of reaping saws and clamour of primary school age kids nailing camo-camo boxes together for exporting vitamin-loaded superfoods to the first world countries that ensure Peru remains their slave labor colony for as long as they can exert their political and economic leverage… if I didn't go into a spiralling down trajectory in the wake of Katya’s loss like an amateur World War II pilot shot down by an ace in the ass, flapping my fuselage ass and Morse-coding SOS signal back to base, if none of that happened, I wouldn't be floating euphorically in the ether woven out of strands of infinite light and smiling from ear to ear like a village idiot who made it to the country fair for once in his life.
A place of elevated perspectives fills one with insight and gratitude. It takes, quite literally, going out of one's mind to arrive at existential truth that neither shakes nor wobbles under one's feet every time one is exposed to contradictory notions from PhDs with bachelor degrees in religious studies, psychoanalysis and political sciences. By the time maestro Cesar finished his icaro I was back in my body feeling newly reborn, smiling from ear to ear and unable contend my joy and deep gratitude for truly transcendental experience. I kissed Caesar's hand and asked him to teach me so that I could reach that realm of infinite light myself. That happened five years ago and I've been Caesar's disciple ever since, slowly but surely moving forward on the medicine path with proper guidance in order one day to hopefully become maestro-curandero in my own right.
My ayahuasca experience had a truly revolutionary impact on my life. Having thus glimpsed the source of infinite power and the realm of light I can no longer be lost, duped, manipulated or controlled by the mind. It has no sway over me. I know who I am and I don't need to argue my case because I rest in my truth rather comfortably with no need to prove what is self-evident and existential and felt on a cellular level. This is a revolutionary experience in the true sense of the word. Deep healing, in fact, is revolutionary. It makes one whole and at home in the world at large. Nothing irritates or disturbs one for one knows, not just believes, that manifest reality is transient and passing like a scenery in the window of a moving train and that life is a journey to enjoy, an opportunity to dance and sing and compose poetry on the fly in the company of the beloved smiling and laughing alongside.
A man who is healed is made whole and therefore cannot be easily manipulated by being offered transient benefits or material assets, for he lacks not in his spiritual essence. Spiritual essence is primary and presides over manifested reality one can smell, taste and touch for the vibrating atoms are never at rest and change their configuration every millisecond while eternity patiently waits for the pilgrim to return home. That's the definition of revolution in my books, Russell. I cross my fingers you may get a chance to skip through this acknowledgement at leisure, for dealing with anything longer than a punctuated telegram is not humanly possible for a guy in your shoes. And I do admire where you stand a great deal, this is why I actually take time addressing you in earnest with much love and enthusiasm inspired by free-flowing curls of yours and your equally fluid rap.
I haven't bothered with writing of late as my friends either accuse me of preaching to the converted or clam up like oysters exposed to screeching seagulls at the low tide (the Sufi community my mother lives in is located in English picturesque of Kaipara mudflats, which is why I'm well familiar with the mollusks' tendency to flex their primary muscle in order to preserve their status quo and avoid being slurped up for breakfast. Whenever I attempt to enlightened my mum on what’s going on in the world, for instance, she stops me mid-sentence to convey her utter lack of interest in a rather unceremonious, bordering on hostility fashion that tells me I am endangering her safe cocoon of ignorance. She is, by far, not alone in being unable to detach herself from dysfunctional social institution that provides bare minimum of subsistence for the price of one’s soul and calling it a ‘privilege’).
Albeit you are probably well aware of most things I have to say, I feel that certain truths are well worth reiterating for they point in the right direction. Anytime anyone hangs around Wim Hof, Iceman will inevitably revert to the benefits of taking deep breaths, regardless of where his questioner steers the conversation, as you have no doubt discovered. For a good and valid reason, as good old Wim perfectly knows that awareness of breath transports one magically into here and now, the one and only omnipotent moment in our entire life that makes transformation, transcendence and revolution possible. Furthermore, as far as conscious awareness goes, the change is not going to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow is just an excuse of the mind to postpone the action of change now, because by the time tomorrow comes one will find oneself, once again, in the now. Time in itself is a false concept that exists solely as a playground of mind. With neither past nor future, there is no room for mind to move, as far as mind is concerned. Stillness equals death of thinking, for the nature of mind is a perpetual shifting and jumping from one subject to another. It can guess, but it knows nothing. It's great at creating hypotheses and getting lost in abstract forests of theories, the thicker the better. It thrives on complexities, blowing up one's ego like an expert party clown in charge of air balloons and a nitrous oxide tank full of hysterical laughter. As mind is highly addictive, it can't get enough of oneself. It's prone to being verbose for no good reason whenever it comes to such unpractical subjects as spirituality, which is somewhat detrimental to communication in general and the task of a journalist in particular. I'm not an altogether illiterate migrant to English language culture, yet more often than not I find myself scratching my head attempting to retrace a large part of the concepts and questions you fire away in rapid succession at your guest speakers, who are miraculously apt at recuperating dispersed build-up of attention thus caused, being themselves of intellectual ilk. No transmission comes forth at the cost of clarity.
Profound truths are simple and verbose argument reveals one's ignorance as there is no knowing apart from existential knowing, which does not require proof and is simply transmitted by the one who knows. Ultimately, any half-decent revolution starts at the bottom in deep psyche of individual human being. It is not wholesale and is not fit for consumption by masses like your burger and fry’s combo at a local fast-food joint with a neon chicken nugget and coke making out with each other at a steady throbbing pace to lure a customer from two blocks away. No, revolution is a private affair that begins in the basement, for the basement is where the foundation is laid for the rest of the building. Society being a pyramid, it is the foundation that supports those at the top; spiritual foundation is needed for any meaningful change to occur and time is indeed short for such monumental task as opening people's hearts is concerned in the face of incoming apocalypse. Therefore, when one is serious about revolutionary broadcast, it’s a good idea to recruit guest appearances of people with charisma and heart who have healed themselves of civilization and gone beyond the mind to taste reality. I am a bit out of the loop when it comes to naming the legends presently living, but here’s a precious few I swear by: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dennis McKenna, Martin Pretchel, Dr Robert Morse. All would gladly give great discourse, I am sure. Time has never been more ripe. Perhaps it is the imminent threat of atomic warfare hanging above our heads like a razor-sharp sword attached by a thick golden thread to the ceiling of the bedroom that will wake up humanity. One should hope that things happen for a good reason and what is happening is meant to be happening because it is happening. I have great faith in the universe in this respect, having been a privy to its internal workings behind the scenes. In this way I can allow for greater universal intelligence to manage my life in a harmonious way with no agitation, frustration or headache.
Transcendence and trust go hand in hand, without one there is no other. To transcend one's limitations, to transcend oneself, great trust is needed because there is no guarantee being given when jumping off a cliff. And this is exactly what one is doing by going beyond oneself, by entering the Unknown. A master is needed to push one off a cliff with great compassion and love because only a complete madman will go willingly tumbling down into the precipice by themselves, laughing away at the fear and panic which fuels the mind. In one of his discourses Osho said that it will take two hundred enlightened masters to transform humanity and save the world from destruction by unconscious forces bent on committing global suicide. I don't know why he guesstimated such number, but the message is clear enough. We need them Gautamas and Mahaviras, Krishnas and Devis, Lao Tzus and Gurdjiefs. Bring forth your Gandalfs and Obi Wan Kenobis with blazing magic staffs and tall wizard hats armed with Jedi light sabers to part the darkness and illuminate the way.
Ultimately, freedom is found internally first and foremost. Revolution, being all about freedom, is never going to fulfill its prophecy of universal benefit to man, Nature and all sentient beings, unless it comes from within an individual and out of one's deep communion with the rest of existence. Anything that can be labeled as truly revolutionary must address authenticity of a man. And when your president and head of state cannot finish a sentence-worth of nationwide broadcast to the people on a resounding and meaningful note, teetering on a verge of somnambulistic collapse into zombified trance, it tells me that there is a great deficiency of meaning in the lives of people whose electorate summation head of state represents. And if the elections were rigged and fraudulent, as Princess CuddlePants points out, it further indicates critical absence of authenticity caused by distortions in the energy field of the entire populace essentially leading inauthentic lives, doped-up on pharmaceutical drugs, deceitful and violent media broadcast, bad television, bad food, etc.
We are what we eat, what we consume. A cow slaughtered in abattoir will produce hormonal response corresponding to the shock of its brutal killing, which will be reabsorbed by those who partake of the animal's meat. The meat is not cosher unless the animal's spirit is supplicated beforehand with all due respect and reverence towards animal’s sacrifice. If you want revolution, close down abattoirs. Or rather make people aware of the basic arithmetic of energy alimentation, and abattoirs will dry up and fall away like dead leaves because nobody would consume slaughterhouse meat. No wars will be fought if there are no volunteers willing to give up their lives for Uncle Sam or some other ruthless entity hellbent on policing the world while masquerading as a dear relative singling you out of the crowd with his pointed index finger from a glorified billboard. One can not shove things down people's throats, make them eat sprouts and give up their pornography. If you are in revolutionary business, that is. Love, respect and, above all, freedom must be given in scoops and loads. Especially freedom. One may not install any limit in regards to freedom, otherwise it ceases to be. All or nothing, unconditionally so. Conditions, regulations, national borders are a domain of the mind and everything truly communal that expands one’s perspective and inspires one’s growth is on the other side. Communion is only possible through merger when ego is no more and mind is quiet.
Nature opens its embrace and reveals its secrets when one enters medicine space of deep meditation. Everything breathes, not just people and animals, so do the plants, rocks, stars. In borderless state of pure awareness energy flows unencumbered and free, connecting phenomenal world by powerful undercurrents that interact and overlap with each other at all times, weaving their luminous threads in a universal matrix widely accessible through sympathetic resonance the instance intension is formed. We manifest our reality into being, plants taught me.
Nothing is impossible if we only set our minds aside and tune in. And if we don't, the earth will continue shaking and busting at the seams to let us know it isn’t nice to be pillaged, ransacked and drilled into and serve as a dumping ground for industrial waste and pollution, to be poisoned, deforested and deafened with nuclear blasts every time one's neighbours need to be bullied into submission.
To paint a revolutionary picture, Alonso del Rio once published two images side by side. First one was a photograph of a street riot with raging violence between police in combat gear and members of the public darting between flaming cars in clouds of tear gas. Second, an idyllic scene of a medicine circle gathered around the fire with folk singing and playing music, food being cooked, garden being raised, etc., both titled ‘Revolution’. You choose what resonates most true, what world you want to live in, and move in that direction. Easy. And not really a choice, but a reflection of one's inner state. Are you in harmony or in conflict? With whom you're fighting? Your dad, your third-grade teacher, a bully who humiliated you? Your girlfriend? Your past lives? How long one can remain mechanical device getting turned on and off whenever someone flips your switch or pushes your button? Whenever a man insults you, calls you an idiot, you're ready to smash him in the face and happily continue doing rounds on the karmic wheel of Samsara as if taking revenge was one's only option.
This is why revolutionary movement should start at the bottom by bringing a candle of awareness into the dark basement of one's psyche and facing one's demons which will wreck Armageddon if left to their own devices as this is what they do. And the bigger and more influential is the man with unchecked ambition and ego, the bigger is the damage he wrecks on others. Calling oneself a philanthropist, as is the case of Bill Gates, may he suffer his own medicine, is hypocrisy of the worst kind. But that's what happens when one is divorced from one's true nature and heavily invested into the mind. Such a person is sick, un-wholesome, being driven by ambition and unchecked ego. Osho, reflecting on how to remedy the situation of madmen controlling the world, proposed meditation to be made an integral part of higher education and that key positions in policy-making are to be given to poets, musicians and painters: i.e., those people who are least interested in hostile takeovers for the lack of ambition to dominate others and a genuine interest in harmonious co-existence for the fact that every worthy artist is nothing but a channel, a hollow bamboo on which existence performs its masterpieces.
I can’t imagine a parliament debate in this light being much worse than a jazz concert in a gallery of modern art with an odd haiku verse thrown in by a backrow poet animated to contribute his two cents worth. It is a revolutionary priory to understand the importance of tuning in in order to accomplish harmony and call forth the beauty, albeit I'm afraid it is too late to manifest salvation for unconscious drive of ego for it runs too deep in human psyche of an individual and without a holocaust good and proper, without external apocalyptic event that takes away convenience and comfort, one will remain deeply asleep and unconscious. I'm afraid that the rhetoric donated to the cause by trumpeters of awakening and vigilantes of the soul, even if it somehow penetrated thick veil of deceitful lies broadcast on public channels, is not enough to ring a bell and cause due transformation.
A hundred years back Gurdjieff said that man is not born with a soul but acquires one in the process of personal spiritual work during one’s life and has to apply oneself extremely hard to succeed. A soul is woven from threads of conscious awareness. One is, in essence, one’s awareness, the so-called ‘witness’. In this respect, a human being is the highest pinnacle of evolution, a universe looking back on itself after billions of years of splashing genomes together in a planet-sized lab. Hence the symphonies and grand cathedrals, heavenly Duduk and Armenian Suite, Sufi whirling dervishes, Rembrandt and Goethe, Einstein and Mozart, cascading overtures and divine liturgies, Great pyramids and Hindu temples, dancing Krishna and silent Buddha, Lao Tzu and Tao Te-Ching. I am not easily put to tears, but the prospect of saying adios and sayonara to the celebration of life on this planet makes me infinitely sad. I know it is a temporary transient realm, but it would be a great shame to see it all go up in smouldering flames because of greed and violence of overinflated futile egos, from the basic lack of understanding what life is meant to be.
There are destructive forces in the universe capable of turning our entire planet into a bowl of primordial soup to be served for breakfast with the spectacular view of a giant glowing crater, courtesy of a visiting meteorite from outer space, but knowingly inflicting Armageddon is a rather different matter. It will cause some heavy karmas since power to destroy worlds comes with responsibility to sentient beings inhabiting them and to Nature itself that gave birth to man after a five-billion-year pregnancy. Folks like Klaus Schwab seriously risk being reincarnated as amoeba or some equally primitive organism that lacks basic capacity to cause any trouble, free only to propel itself around petri dish with a wee protozoic tail.
One must wonder what the mighty oligarchs and those with power to decide the fate of nations think in their spare from indulging into insanity time about the final judgement, the inevitability of entering luminous tunnel as their brain is packing up the house at the end of the day and one is catapulted out of one's body, leaving behind everything: one's house, one's car keys, one's memories, one's beloveds, one's name, one’s ability to touch and see and hear; all that is left is pure love and truth and light. This is totality of investment for those who undertake the work. Nothing else endures, nothing else is transcendental. Your Holy Trinity, lo and behold, is beyond gender and has no hierarchy of a bearded boss presiding to lord over His Creation. All it takes is healing to reach divinity and light through love, forgiveness and acceptance. It starts at the base, with oneself. Once you accept yourself, you can accept the other, not before. Same with forgiveness and with love. One must shower on oneself first and reach saturation before being able to nourish anybody else, otherwise one's love and forgiveness are partial and conditional and one neither truly loves nor truly forgives being divided inside. One remains a screaming cacophony of mental narratives somewhat subdued by a steady diet of pharmaceutical drugs, bad television and cellphone screen time, until the moment these crutches are taken away and one starts tumbling down a dark hole and all chaos breaks loose.
Divided man is insane and this is the state of the world at the moment, ninety seconds to midnight on atomic warfare clock, wound up by hand of schizophrenic in a corporate tie, dishing out cruise missiles for personal gain and selling weapons to both sides of the ongoing conflict while reaping profits from sheer terror and killing. It makes no sense whatsoever that humanity should wipe itself out and yet the investment into insanity is so large and thorough it could well be the case, given disempowered, enslaved status of a man plugged into a system that is suffocating him on all levels, without being rooted in the truth of knowing oneself as opposed to being a marketplace crowd bargaining away the day and praising shining coin. There is no saving grace for a zombie.
One’s integration starts with recognition of the obvious and the planetary healing is going to be accomplished as a result of individual healing. This is where fundamental change is invoked and made possible, first and foremost. The rest follows as an extension of one's personal harmonization with nature, not the other way around. Things are only going to get worse, not better, while the universe waits for you to wake up, stretch your jaw with a mighty yawn of unconscious millennia and dust off that shine every child is blessed with. It may sound whimsical, but one of the ready-made remedies to avert the forthcoming Armageddon is go dancing on the streets. Get some funky tunes, some revolutionary friends, as bassy as speaker as you can get your hands on and rip into it mad-hallelujah style, kicking up the heels on some traffic light intersection downtown in the name of world peace and ceasefire. I believe music will save the world if we put our dancing shoes on and decide to have a boogie from the bottom of our hearts. People are going to pause in their tracks and inquire to what kind of rave is happening and for what purpose which will provide for much needed energy exchange to convey the spiritual meaning. No revolution will take place sitting on a couch, be it a revolutionary couch, it still remains at rest, inert and having no plans to deserve a mention in chronicles of glory documented for grandkids whose hypothetical arrival depends on whether or not we manage to preserve the planet from nuclear destruction and environmental impact of ravaging the earth for all its worth.
All words spoken or written, posted on screen or published in a paper only reach as far as one's eyes and ears while their meaning is supplied by one's own understanding. Considering utter inadequacy of populace collectively responsible for the unconscious nightmare taking place to get the message and to act, what are the chances of the kindling fire of rebellion in the heart of man comfortably snoozing on his couch after a busy day at work bending backwards to make a dollar? At best it will create a stir, perhaps will make one apprehensive of the needed change, but not provide much needed energy of direct communion to get across the spark capable of dispelling darkness.
A couple of years back we met a Shipibo curandero giving ceremonies in Sacred Valley and fairly instantly made friends, having just came from the jungle ourselves to visit the Apus. I asked Leonardo about his insight into ongoing pandemic situation and world crisis and he said to me, it's like in the bible story of Noah and his ark. The world will be flooded and there will be a boat but not everyone would get in. Many will die because they will not be able to enter the boat. Only those pure of heart and striving to co-exist in harmony will make it. It resonates with me, especially when Rachel points out that having been born in these times is a test of faith in the beauty of human experience that opens so many portals to appreciating life through art, music, poetry that it would make no sense to see all the goodies evaporate in a flash of a nuclear blast wholesale as if nothing ever happened. No ancient Greeks, no Egypt, no Chinese calligraphy, no Japanese flute, no black jazz, no Rumi, no Woodstock, no Jimi Hendrix, all gone in a violent flash. How can it be? There is no way. We are here for a reason to celebrate Creation, to throw a party. This resonates to the core because that's the truth of it.
This brings us back to healing as a prerequisite to moving forward with our lives and I would like to extend a cordial invitation of Rao Kano Xobo all the way from Pucallpa in the Peruvian jungle if you feel the call of ancestral medicine and the mysterious realm of master plant knowledge. Cesar Soimetsa is authentic man and outstanding curandero who charges flat fee of three hundred soles for his healing ceremonies and you receive the works, nothing short of being reborn, giving one's willingness to go the distance to acquire new lease on life in its unmatched splendor and glory, to be restored in full capacity of a beating heart and one's vital energy. It's a pretty cool offer. With revolutionary consequences to one's life, one may add, given the current state of the world and all the trigger-happy numbnuts in the high office of well-organized worldwide corporate terrorism, I'd do my best to make it over if at all possible. This is not an entirely selfless promotion of Rao Kano Xobo, as both myself and Rachel will benefit from instant friendship and it would expand our world. We run a wee retreat space in pristine jungle in the vicinity of legendary Aguas Calientes Boiling River with private hot springs at the junction of two small streams full of medicinal vapors and mystery, hosting folks on individual basis, one or two people at a time and charging four hundred dollars for a week's worth of adventure and healing that includes three ayahuasca ceremonies. Rachel will throw in morning yoga classes and I will knock down as many coconuts as you can eat with your roasted plantain grown organically in our chakra. It's a paradise, I tell you, complete with jungle orchestra of crickets performing live with no half-time interlude and monkey wind coming through, swaying high branches above. Come!
email <platonm@mail.ru>
WhatsUp +51962801016
DIY Guide to Evolutionary Bottlenecks:
As narrated by A. Bryenton: