There is more than one way to create a diamond body. For example, Don Juan’s dreaming double and the Taoist’s diamond body are similar, each being bodies of consciousness that are independent of the physical body. However, the ways of creating them are quite different.

For Don Juan the dreaming double is created when we are able to be awake in our dreams. Once we can do this, our dream consciousness acquires an independency and a power of its own. It becomes us, although not us of the flesh. But it can operate in physical reality, and it will survive the death of the physical body.

The Taoist uses meditation to achieve this same end. In meditation, the Taoist circulates the light of awareness between two poles, the one of Spirit that is centered between the eyes and the one of Earth that is centered in the solar plexus. In this way, awareness begins to circulate between spirit and body, and from this circulation an inner child is born, a diamond body that will continue to exist after the death of the physical body.

And there are other ways to create a diamond body. I became a diamond body briefly when I died as a young boy, when a voice told me to turn the falling into flying. I did so and flew effortlessly and blissfully towards the Light. I was out of my body then, yet still me and still aware of what I was doing. The voice that told me as a boy to turn the falling into flying, that voice was my own voice from years later when I was a young man, a man who went back in time to help me as that panicked young boy. I remember when I did this as that young man, laying in my down sleeping bag in the high mountains, under the stars.
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For the Taoist, the life forces can flow either outward into the world or inward where they can be used to power the circulation of light. For most of us, however, our thoughts and feelings are usually directed outwards to the world, and our life energy, our seed, is used for pleasure or to create new life.

I have certainly embraced the joys of life. I have walked in beauty and love, and I have certainly helped to create new life. However. I have still spent much of my life alone, withdrawn from the world. I have turned inwards – dreaming and consulting the I Ching and meditating and of course doing medicine – and I have found my way back to my diamond body once again.
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The Taoist adept, once his meditation has become fixated, becomes in himself a true marriage of nature and spirit. Because his body has become conscious and pregnant with meaning, he will remain physically healthy and enjoy a long life. And because his consciousness has become infused with power and is pregnant with life, he will continue to exist as a conscious being even after the death of his body.

I’m certainly not the monastic sort of Taoist. I’ve always felt that since I was living in this world, in this body, I would be wise to explore and enjoy this world and this body. I have certainly done so. Although I have five children and have been a father for more than fifty years, I have still spent most of my life exploring the depths of consciousness and following the Tao. And now, almost 79 years old, I am still physically healthy and enjoying a long life. And when I do die, I will continue to exist as a conscious diamond body, an unlimited being with all the memories of this life that are worth saving.

I’m scared of falling, not all the time, but certainly whenever I’m at the edge of a cliff or on a narrow ledge. After all, it’s scary; falling is something that can and does happen in physical reality. But if I let it, my fear can become extreme, making me uptight and clumsy, making me more likely to fall.

But most of the time when I say I’m scared of falling, it’s because of what it means to fall psychologically. As a psychological experience, it is one of falling into the unconscious, often symbolized as a return to the womb. It’s a giving up, a surrender.

But I won’t surrender. I won’t just give up and fall into the darkness. I won’t mind my body dying, it’s wearing out, anyway, but I want to continue to exist as consciousness. This is why, like the Taoists, I have spent most of my life creating a diamond body, a consciousness separate from my body that will survive the body’s death.
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Of course there is another, deeper side to this. Actually fear of falling in physical reality is often mixed up with a repressed desire to jump, a repressed desire to give it all up, to end it all. I have felt this myself. I have stood at the cliff’s edge and have felt the desire to leap into the void. It’s exhilarating and scary, both.

However, on the inner, psychological level of reality, where the desire to jump comes from, we see that it is actually the desire to fall into the unconscious, to regress to an earlier state of being, one where we no longer have to deal with reality and its demands. It is a dangerous and unconscious yearning to be back in mommy’s womb, where all our needs would be met without our having to do anything ever again.

I’m not interested in this at all. I want to continue being an aware being well past the death of this body. And I know how to turn falling into flying.

Although I probably won’t want to return to this reality after my body dies, I have entertained, from time to time, several notions of what I would want to come back as if I were to return.

Years ago, when I was backpacking alone at Dinky Creek in the High Sierras I decided that if I did come back, I would come back as a giant Juniper tree standing alone somewhere in the high mountains.

An ancient Juniper had just spoken to me, telling me to turn off my head and be part of the world around me. I followed his advice that day, and that was when I decided I would come back as a Juniper tree. I liked the idea of standing quietly in the middle of the world. I also liked the idea of not having to move about or do anything. I liked that I could just be.

Since then I have also thought that I might want to come back as a bird, perhaps one that would fly up a river from the ocean into the high mountains and back again. I love both the ocean and the mountains. It would be awesome to be able to fly between them.

I have also thought that I would love to come back as a Water Ouzel, one of those little birds that live alongside creeks and can swim under water. I spent the whole day with one once. I could see that she was having fun swimming in the cold mountain water.

I’ve been thinking of being a bird a lot lately. I hate falling. It has always been very scary to me, probably from my experience of falling into death as a little boy. If I had wings I would feel a lot safer.

Of course, if I didn’t ever return to this material reality, but kept on traveling through the many levels of existence, I wouldn’t need either wings or a high mountain to stand upon.

Actually, when I think about it, I realize that I’ve been flying my entire life.

In my early twenties, I flew for the United States Air Force. I was an officer then, a First Lieutenant. “Off we go into the wild blue yonder, flying high into the sun…”

I flew on various airplanes, mostly as a flight engineer. The last plane I flew on was the giant B36 bomber, with its six pusher prop engines, three mounted on the back of each wing, as well as two jets at the end of each wing. We flew all around the world on our practice bombing missions. Once we flew for 27 hours nonstop, coming back to our home base in Roswell, New Mexico after a temporary duty assignment in Guam,

Later in my life, in the late sixties and early seventies, I flew a different craft, using LSD to fly through the various levels of consciousness. Folks saw me as a flyer then too. And once I began tripping, my dreams reiterated this. They used the metaphor of flying to describe my various acid trips. I would often dream of flying just after I had tripped or just before I was going to take off again for the higher reaches of consciousness.

I wonder if I joined the Air Force and became a flying officer because of my early flying experience, the one when I was that little boy dying on the operating table. I wonder if I got seriously into LSD for the same reason. Maybe I wanted to fly again, as I had as that young boy.

I’ve sure had a lot of practice flying free. I’m certainly going to be ready when I do leave my body and fly off into the future.

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Still

I was sitting out in our backyard, enjoying the sun and watching all the birds fly free. They seemed so happy flying free – all the Robins and Grackles and Wrens and Ravens and Crows and more.

I flew once. I flew when I was a little boy dying on an operating table. As I went under the ether, I fell into the darkness. I was terrified. But then a voice said to turn the falling into flying. I did so, and suddenly I was flying blissfully towards the light. That was my first taste of flying.

I’m 78 years old now, going on 79 soon. My body is wearing out, slowly but surely. So I’m thinking about death these days and what it means. It’s not scary. I see it as a major transition of consciousness. And I know that, although my body is wearing out, I’m not wearing out. I expect that when I finally do leave this body – and it has been a wonderful body and has served me well – when I finally do leave it, I’ll be flying free again.

I’m not scared of dying, although I’m certainly not ready to die. I do want to stay around until my three boys are grown into men, another 20 or so years would work for me. Both of my folks lived that long.

What I’ve understood from my own experiences, as well as from folks like the Tibetan Buddhists, the Taoists, Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda, is that, after the death of the body, we can continue to exist as consciousness. It all depends on the consciousness we have while we’re living. It depends, as the Taoists would say, on whether or not we have created our diamond body.

Am I ready for this next adventure in consciousness? Am I ready to explore a whole new level of existence? I’m trying not to have any unfinished business, although I am definitely not finished with Aspen and the boys. But living with them is so rewarding that I’m sure I’ll be able to stay around long enough to enjoy it. I’m working on it, and I’m still strong and healthy.

Most importantly, I’m trying to live cleanly so I won’t have to leave this level of existence with any hurt or fear left in myself or in those close to me. I don’t think I could fly if I had any regrets for how I lived my life. I’ve always tried to leave my camp cleaner than I found it. I’ll do the same when it’s time to leave this camp.

Once we have tuned in to ourselves, once we have searched within ourselves and have found wisdom’s light at the center of our consciousness, we will know who we are and why Spirit has given us life. We will know then what is wanted of our lives.

However, most of us, for most of the time, move through life on autopilot, following external directives and never asking what Spirit wants of us. We blindly follow these external directives, fed to us by the propaganda of the one-percenters as well as by our own fears and understandings of what people want of us.

We let others lead us because we’re lost and don’t know our way. In fact, most of us don’t even know that there is a way. Instead, we wander unconsciously through our lives, like lost and rudderless ghost ships adrift on the sea of life.

But once we have tuned in to ourselves and have found the light within us, we can become light bearers ourselves. If so, our consciousness can illuminate the world, waking all life to their light too.

There is immense spiritual power in this light, a power that can change the world. When enough of us become light bearers, we can turn back the greedy and mean-spirited darkness that has threatened to destroy Mother Earth and all her children. We can create a new way of being for all of us, one that follows the light and furthers all life.

And what is this light within each of us that can create a new way of being for all of us? The word ‘light,’ as used here, is actually a metaphor for a higher, spiritual consciousness, that aspect of consciousness that Carl Jung called the Self. It is a part of consciousness that exists within each of us, one that illuminates the darkness of unconsciousness. When the light is found, hidden in plain sight at the center of our consciousness, everything is illuminated and becomes clear.

A person who has become a light bearer illuminates the world through his or her inner light. Such people in the past have so impressed their world by their clarity and wisdom that they are still remembered and revered to this day. Imagine now what will be accomplished when many of us became light bearers.

Years ago, Tim Leary said essentially what I have said in my most recent note, the one called “Wake Up!” And he said it in one famous short sentence – “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” However, I would change the order of his saying. Today I would say that we first have to drop out and get out of our unconscious ruts before we can turn on and tune in.

For Leary, turning on meant doing LSD and the other psychedelics, including marijuana. However, there are many other ways for us to turn on – meditation, dream sharing, yoga, Rolfing, using the I Ching, walking in the woods, sharing ourselves with others, being in psychotherapy with someone more conscious than us, the list goes on and on.

Leary was right though, doing LSD could certainly wake us up, could help us find the light and be more conscious of who we are and our place in life. Unfortunately, it is illegal. And even if it weren’t, most of us are so unconscious that doing LSD could threaten to overwhelm us. That’s probably why we let it become illegal – because we’re all so afraid of ourselves.

For Leary, tuning in meant examining ourselves on all levels of consciousness, meant examining our lives and how we can use them to manifest our inner spiritual light. However, as I have said, there are so many other ways to tune into ourselves, most of which are much more benign, and certainly more legal, than the various psychedelics.

For Leary and the rest of us back in those early days, dropping out meant the natural response of our newly raised consciousness to retreat from the craziness of the world we lived in. It meant dropping out of the system and finding new ways of living our lives, ones that didn’t return us immediately to our previous state of unconsciousness or encourage us to return to the old and worn out ways of the straight world.

Unlike Leary, I don’t think we should drop out of the system and create a separate, counterculture reality. I think we need to drop out of our ruts first so we can find out who we are and become light bearers. Then we can create a new way of being for all of us, one that furthers all life.

We can’t let our freak flags fly if we don’t know who we are. We can’t know who we are if we’re not awake. And most of the time we’re not.

Most of the time we’re sleepwalking. I’m not talking about getting out of bed and walking around our houses in the middle of the night without waking up. I’m talking about how most of us are not really awake and conscious as we go through our daily life. Instead we live out routines and patterns, over and over again, without our being aware of ourselves, our needs, or what’s going on around us. We’re on autopilot, for God’s sake!

And most of our routines and patterns are orchestrated by the one-percenters, routines called work that are designed to keep us all busy being their wage slaves so that they can do what they want to do whenever they want to do it.

In a word, we’re stuck in our ruts, really the ruts the one-percenters’ have given us as our reality, ruts designed to satisfy their needs and keep us safely unconscious and out of their way.

Before we bring down the one-percenters, we need to find our own natural flows. We need to return to the Tao. We can’t do this without knowing who we are. And we won’t know who we are as long as we stay in our ruts.

So, we need to take time, all the time we need, to discover who we are separate from our routines, who we are once we’re out of our ruts. Once we can see who we are, we’ll know what we want to do with our lives – and what our natural flow really is.

We need to take a sabbatical from our routines, our ruts. We’ll never leave them behind as long as we’re unconscious most of our time. We need to spend our time meditating, walking in the woods, sharing our dreams with others, sharing ourselves with others, one way or another raising the level of our consciousness. We need to turn within, to the spiritual wisdom that lives in each of us. We need to see the light and wake up!

Lets see what Howard Zinn, the famed historian, has to say that’s relevant to what I have been saying in my last two notes:

You are saying our problem is civil disobedience, but that is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.

Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience.

Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty.

Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country.

That’s our problem.

Maybe we all need to be disobedient. Maybe we need to follow Spirit and stop following the dictates of those idiots in charge of our world. All they do is rip us off, and they certainly don’t have a clue.

Maybe we need to arrest those grand thieves, as Zinn calls them, stop them from continuing their gross mismanagement of their responsibilities as leaders of the human race.

What sort of world do we want to live in? Certainly not one like the one we’re living in now. Where should we take this current revolution, this chance for a new and brighter future? If we don’t know where we want to go, how will we ever get there?
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I envision a world where there is complete acceptance of all human beings by all human beings, regardless of gender, race, nationality, religion, or sexual preference, a world where there are no outsiders, no untouchables, not in any sense of that old and ugly word.

I envision a world where there is equality, on all levels for all folks, a world where there are no leaders or followers, no hierarchies at all. Where there are no privileged folks, not in any way.

I envision a world where there are no bosses, no one telling anyone what to do. This is a Rainbow Family concept. At the gatherings, everything is always decided by consensus. The entire idea of leaders and followers puts most of us down. Also, it should be obvious by now that all the leaders, throughout history to these present days, are always stupid, greedy, power seeking assholes.

I envision a world where there is no money, where everything is free. This is another Rainbow Family idea. Earlier though, back in the early 60’s, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters took it one step further, putting all their possessions in one room. When one of them needed something, he or she would get it out of the room, use it, and then return it to the pile.

James Redfield had a similar idea in his book, The Celestine Prophecy. He sees a future in which “Our needs for survival – foodstuffs and clothing and transportation – will be totally automated and at everyone’s disposal. Out needs will be completely met without the exchange of any currency.”
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How will we ever get from where we are now, mired in prejudice, inequality, greed, and evil bosses with their stupid power games? It will never happen with protests or revolutions. Anger and righteousness will kill any change for a higher future.

It will never happen unless we change our consciousness, and I definitely do not mean just our thoughts. I don’t even mean the consciousness that seems to live in our heads, the consciousness that we think comes from our brains Actually, each chakra has it’s own consciousness, and, if we let it, it will contribute to the whole.

We will need to change our consciousness from our present day and very limited left-brain ego consciousness – that very small bit of consciousness that we are able to accept today with our closed minds – to one more whole, one without fear, one more open to both masculine and feminine consciousness, and especially one that is more connected to Spirit.

I liked what Grof said about the results of his LSD Psychotherapy. I like that he showed us that we can all be fully conscious, as he describes it. This is certainly a goal worth achieving. If we can do this, we will have a future, otherwise, probably not.

I don’t care how we get there, to this new and higher consciousness. If we can get there without acid, fine. But if we can’t find our way to this higher consciousness otherwise, please remember that acid as therapy can take us there. We could just make acid legal for psychotherapy, as it once was. It would sure help. I think that’s why it’s here, to take us into our future.

According to Grof, with the guided use of LSD, we can overcome our fear of death, the source of most of our fears. We can give up our head trips and learn to appreciate the simpler aspects of existence. We can give up being selfish and competitive. And, of course, we can realize how exciting the exploration of consciousness can be. As Grof says, “The universe ceases to be a gigantic assembly of material objects; it becomes an infinite system of adventures in consciousness.”
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I envision a future that would satisfy all of us. This is so because no one would be prejudiced against another person, not after becoming conscious of that side of him or herself that is like that other person. I envision a future where we are all equal, where we know that no one is better or worse than we are. This is so because we have seen who we really are. I envision a future where there are no bosses, no leaders and followers. How could a fully conscious being think that they knew another’s path through life? I also see a future where everything is free, where we finally realize that we are all family.

The 60’s revolution failed. We all know this. The bad guys kept their power and undid almost all of the positive changes we had worked so hard for – all of them that they could undo, that is. However, some of the things we worked so hard to actualize back then did survive. In fact, many of the positive social changes from the 60’s revolution are still with us today.
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We have become much more aware of our Mother Earth, this awesome Spaceship Earth that we all live upon, cruising through the endless space-time continuum. We have learned that she is more fragile than we thought. We have learned that she loves us all dearly – after all, she is our mother. We have also begun to realize that we can help her too.

We have become more aware of the various kinds of pollution that are slowly killing all life on Mother Earth, whether it be in our waters, in our air, or even in our earth itself. We have seen the enemy, and he is not us. He is of the 1 percent that try to lord over the rest of us. If they would just get out of our way, we could still save ourselves and Mother Earth.

We have become more aware of overpopulation, although we haven’t done anything about it yet. In fact, there is a powerful faction here in the United States that is against limiting the population. But Mother Earth can only keep so many of us folks alive and well. Too many folks are already dying of hunger, bad water, and disease. I keep hearing folks saying, “Maybe we should all have to have a license to be a parent.” Good idea, but try telling that to most of the folks on this planet.

We have become more aware of the effects of global warming. This was something we were already very concerned about in the 60’s. It seemed obvious to us then. Now it is obvious to almost everybody, although the many brain-dead folks aligned with the immoral world of greed are still in convenient denial.

It is obvious now though. Temperatures are rising. Animals and even plants are slowly migrating north in the Northern Hemisphere. Most of the world’s glaciers are going or already gone. When we hike in the high country around here, we see that the glaciers we used to play on are already gone.
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Since the 60’s, we have become more aware of our bodies too. Physical health and fitness have become more important. More and more folks are walking, running, bicycling, skating, swimming, working out with weights, playing sports, skiing, climbing rocks, hiking, backpacking, doing yoga, making love, and all the other adventures that we give to ourselves these days. More and more of us folks are not going blindly into couch potato old age.

More folks are now exploring and enjoying Mother Nature in her wilder aspects. We are rediscovering Her as she truly is, as a place of high adventure as well as a place of spiritual renewal. Many of us use Her wild mountains and deserts as spiritual retreats, as places away from the chaotic group consciousness of the city and this sick society that we all live in, a place where we can slow down and listen to Spirit.
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In the early 60’s, it was difficult if not impossible to find organic food in most towns and cities across the country. Most of what we did find was in funky co-ops or vitamin shops that carried only a few organic items. Organic food sure caught on fast though. Look around now. There are at least ten natural food stores here in Boulder, and many more in the nearby, surrounding communities. And most of the big chains, Safeway and King Supers, are carrying more and more organic foods.

Along with this, in the 60’s, came an upsurge in organic gardening. For many of us, gardening has become a new but meaningful endeavor. Today, it is becoming a necessity.

People are raising chickens nowadays too, for the eggs mostly. But some folks are killing the males when they are old enough to be called fryers. At least three of our neighbors here in the city are raising them. No roosters though. Too noisy, too early in the morning.
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The 60’s really changed the status of women. We have finally begun to realize the importance of women and the feminine. We are finally accepting that women are different from men and at least equal to them. They certainly can mellow out the men’s warlike, testosterone induced energy. Without their balancing energy, men would probably have already destroyed this world of ours. Women can create life, whereas men can only destroy it.

Motherhood has become more important and more respected too. Women can now nurse in public. Many women can take maternity leave from their jobs and can even nurse at work now. Since the 60’s, women have gained much in the way of freedom, in so many areas of life.

Blacks are accorded much greater respect than they were before the 60’s. When I was young, we never saw a black person on TV or in movies, not unless it was Jack Benny’s Rochester. The same is true for the other minorities, especially for the Asians and the Latinos. Even the Indians are getting a better press these days.

Gay men and women have become much more accepted in our culture too, even in the military. Now they can honor their love for one another in a sacred marriage, just as those of us who are not gay have always been able to do.

Perhaps we are slowly becoming a more accepting culture. We definitely need to keep moving in this direction. It is in the Tao.
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Most of us are back living in our single-family dwellings, inside our single-family minds. Most of us have given up on community, although we do keep saying that it takes a village to raise a child, almost as if we’re trying to remind ourselves of something.

Lately, however, I have been hearing folks wishing that they could share the childcare, preferably without everyone having to live together in one house or on one farm. These folks are just beginning to wake up. At this time in history, we all need to remember (with a slight change) that old 60’s saying, “People (originally ‘dope’) will get you through times of no money better than money will get you times of no people.“

Dope helps too, helps community. Remember the circles and folks saying, “What goes around, comes around.”
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I wonder where we will take the world with this revolution? All these gains from the 60’s were just baby steps, mere beginnings on our way to a higher future. Wherever we do take it, it will help us if we remember that we are all here together on Spaceship Earth and that to keep it livable, we all have to work together.

In my next note, I will begin to share my vision for our collective future.