My Rebirthday Experience
A number of times in LJ, I've mentioned my religious/initiatory experience on April 1, leading me to call that day my rebirthday; I've even come close to writing about it at least once. Now seems like a good time, despite the fact that I can't remember if it was in 1980 or 1981.

I was in my early 20s and in graduate school. I had to finish two incomplete courses by a certain date or flunk; eventually the anxiety of not doing it overcame the anxiety of writing, very close to the deadline for four papers. Looking back, I realized that an academic set of all-nighters has many of the characteristics of sitting for a vision: little and then no sleep, little food, stimulation with caffeine and tobacco. Right before or during this, I got a copy of supergee's amateur press association, The Golden Apa, with discussion of heightened consciousness, kinds of meditation, etc.

My last paper was about Sir Thomas Browne's "Hydriotaphia" and "The Garden of Cyrus," partly concerning how he uses the theta and the chi or X and quincunx (five points arranged as on dice), for death and life respectively, and combines them in a globe: two intersecting circles are seen as the theta from the side, the chi from above. (Frank L. Huntley figured this out based on an otherwise inscrutable passage in the latter work.)

Life, death, the globe. This is cool enough, but as I walked from my apartment to the library--through Duke gardens--I realized I could use that as a meditative technique, identifying chis and thetas (or at least circles), seeing that truth throughout nature as Browne traces the quincunx in "The Garden of Cyrus."

As I dropped off the final paper, right on the final day, awash with relief, weird things began to happen. Instead of the professor's door, suddenly I saw something more geometric, maybe the Platonic form of door. When I began typing up stencils for a Golden Apa zine, I fell into a playful, Joycean semi-gibberish and couldn't get out of it. It didn't bother me, though; I was too tired, too happy, not afraid. I typed out the famous end of "The Garden of Cyrus" ("To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.") and was sure I'd go to sleep.

Instead, I had visions--at least starting out identical to hypnogogic visions--for 3 1/2 hours real time. At first a globe appeared, just meridians of gold against black. That was my guide, in a sense. I can't narrate everything that followed, but it was amazingly eclectic, in five stages. At one point I met Coyote; in the fourth, I felt my Kundalini rise, go out my head, and come back in, bringing something new & good with it. The only bad part was in the middle, a black and red encounter with some angry hunger, like the sow that eats its young.

The fifth stage was Heaven. At first I was also aware of myself, as in the other parts or stages. I knew it was Christian, and when I saw rabbits, I thought, "That's good. Rabbits are a good symbol. Sheep would've been cliche." Then, there was a chorus. And then I joined it. And then there wasn't any me but the chorus, the song, G-d.

For a long time, I would have done anything to recreate that experience. With time and with good advice, I realized that isn't the point. Kenneth Rexroth, on the spiritual alchemy of Thomas Vaughan, mentions "apostles of irresponsible do-it-yourself ecstasy," and says, "The great trouble with these people is that they confuse transcendence with sensationalism." That's a vital distinction. On the other hand, I suspect that what I experienced might be one thing that happens after death, in which case I am A-OK with it.

The envoi was the globe reappearing, and then morphing into a face made by the shining gold lines, like a basic computer graphic; I identified it with Hermes. As it withdrew, the face faded away until only a mouth was left. The mouth spoke a word, which I could not hear, but which I knew was, like whatever the kundalini brought in, a gift of the experience. In this case, the word was my purpose, what the rest of my life would accomplish. And then blackness, and the vision was over.

Later I recognized the Cheshire cat as well as Hermes. And I love the fact that the experience was on April 1.

One immediate effect was that I looked at the ashtrays full of cigarette butts and thought, "Drawing hot smoke into one's lungs and releasing it. What an odd concept." I haven't smoked since. Now, I was an occasional smoker, but a chain-smoker when I did smoke, and that had been getting more often. I really wanted to smoke only once after that, when studying for my Ph.D. comprehensives, and I knew once I took it up I might never stop, so I didn't start.

And the whole world was just wonderful. The next day, I saw a friend, and when he said "How are you?" I said, "Perfect!" The next day, he said, "Are you still perfect?" and I replied, "Yes, but now I've decided everyone else is perfect, too."

In fact, while I'm still a bit proud about the whole thing, I've also come to realize that maybe I was just so stubborn that no other method could reach me, and it was less that I'm a saint and more that I'm the mule that you hit with a 2x4 to get its attention.

I also emerged convinced not only that there is a G-d, but that I had experienced a meeting of sorts. But being an agnostic seemed more socially acceptable. I only half jokingly wailed to a friend, "Only weak, stupid people believe in God!" And he said the perfect thing: "As weak as Martin Luther, as stupid as Augustine...."

And then there's the question of craziness, which I grappled with for a while. Among other things, Philip K. Dick's experiences convinced me that one can be both crazy and undergoing a genuinely spiritual experience; I learned that it also makes sense to share certain experiences mainly with people who won't stigmatize them, who have productive ways to frame them. In a way, writing this up shows my extreme confidence now. I'm happy to answer any questions.

I began to read voraciously and spent years getting my basic bearings around the experience. Magic, religion, consciousness studies, synchronicity, more. As the years went on, my voracious interest shifted gradually from the issue of what exactly I experienced to the issue of, given what I experienced, how I should be living. I learned to pray--not just talking to G-d, but listening, not the strong point of a Catholic upbringing. I came to understand the benefit of a community, and sometimes I go to church, but in many ways I still prefer art, such as the words of Charles Williams, Thomas Traherne, William Blake, Sir Thomas Browne, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I generally feel that I was lucky to have just enough religious training to understand religious art, but not enough to spoil the whole topic for me.

My sense of G-d is sometimes quite strong, sometimes not so. To me, faith is not believing with no evidence, but believing even when I don't feel G-d, knowing that it's temporary and I will again. I see no particular reason why anyone should believe in G-d on anyone else's say-so, though mocking believers or the concept just because of one's own lack of experience seems to me to be quite rude.

Mood: reflective, exposed, interested to see responses