MY COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS EXPERIENCE by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

(This is the Third of Eight Major Spiritual Experiences in my Life)

“This ātman cannot be obtained through Vedic teaching, nor by meditation, nor by much hearing [of teachings]; whomsoever this ātman chooses, by him alone is it reached. To him, this ātman reveals its own form” - Katha Upanishad, 2.23

"I am where all things began, the issuing forth of the creatures." - Bhagavad Gita X, 39

In August 1973, at age 36, I experienced Para Bhairava, Supreme God Consciousness, what is now popularly termed “Cosmic Consciousness.”

The "Experience" was such that I didn't know whether I was dying, hallucinating, poisoned, or what or why this was happening.

My experiential reality ("Maya") was suddenly stripped away and I was confronted with "God only knows what." 

All theretofore perceived objects vanished entirely (nirvakalpa-samadhi).

All about me, all that I perceived as Reality, dissolved into a Tabula Rasa, a blank nothingness. It was as if I were first standing, encircled, in the midst of an illusory curtain of objected matter that blinded me, blocked my view, to whatever was behind it. When the Curtain, the “Veil of the Temple,” was rent, there was Nothing behind it!

It was The Great Dissolution, the end of the previous Universe, the beginning of The Night of Brahman (pralaya), the moment manifestation (shristi) ends and That One sleeps for 4.32 billion years, and the three gunas (forces) of Prakriti (satwa, rajas, and tamas) are in complete equilibrium.

Upon awaking (shristi) from Samadhi, I was infinitely small (anor aniyan), a singularity, a point of view looking out through the eyes of a tremendous being (Cosmic Person) of infinite dimensions (Mahato mahiyin), i.e., if, oxymoronically, dimensions were possible.

Looking down at my legs and body, I was amazed that I was inside of, controlling, such a huge Being, a Kabbalistic Adam Kadmon, as it were. It was like looking out from the eyes of the Statue of Liberty in a way; "a Rockefeller Plaza Prometheus," alone in the Void. This "Body," this "Universe," was all there was.

There was nothing else. No light. No darkness. Nothing!

"There was neither non-existence nor existence. There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. There was neither death nor immortality. There was no distinguishing sign of day or night. That One breathed by its own impulse. Other than that, there was nothing beyond." - Veda Hymn of Creation 

Suddenly, the Nothingness began to separate into shapes and forms. My observance had disturbed the equilibrium of Prakriti and Gunas began attaching themselves to Gunas.

I was witnessing Creation, remembering the past Universe as it was.

PROVERBS 8:22–27 (New American Standard Bible)

22 The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,

Before His works of old.

23 From everlasting, I was established,

From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.

24 ‘When there were no depths I was brought forth,

When there were no springs abounding with water.

25 Before the mountains were settled,

Before the hills I was brought forth;

26 While He had not yet made the earth and the fields,

Nor the first dust of the world.

27 When He established the heavens, I was there. . .

What was assembling before me was a scene separated from me by a Great Abyss, the Void.

Beyond that Abyss was a Mountain and a Sea off in the distance.

On that Mountain, seated on a Rock, in the nearly identical pose of Rodin's "The Thinker," was a God-like Bearded Man of unimaginable anatomical perfection in Left Profile.

Nothing seemed real; the perfectly round Disc (Moon) in the sky appeared stage-like as well (no radiance) (♫"It's only a Paper Moon sailing over a Cardboard Sea"♪).

I was observing all this as a Being of Pure Consciousness; the Life observing the Clay, as it were. The thoughts of the Man on the Mountain were my thoughts. He ("I") was asking him ("My") self the Eternal Questions. "I" the Observer, the Man the Observed, yet One and the same.

He never looked toward me. It was "I" who was aware of him, he was unaware of me.

He stood up, and walked toward the Peak of the Mountain, his back towards me. He walked around, then down, the right side of the Mountain, and disappeared from my view.

I next became aware that "I" was separate from my body. I thought, "What's happening? I'm so afraid." Then, "There's nothing to be afraid of; I'm all there is."

Looking down from the right, out of my seated body, "I" suddenly had great compassion and love for this Beast, this Primate, who had harbored me for all my life. "I" was the god to whom he prayed for all these years.   

"I" was his immortal.

If not for me, he would have been the King of the Beasts in the Natural Order of Things.

"I" thought, "When Buddy (body) dies, he hits the ground and rots. What happens to me? Where do "I" go?"

The World changed quickly after Samadhi. It was the same World ( Samsara), but Different.

It was as if I had assumed the consciousness of All and upset the Universal Balance, a new element added to an already full complement; the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This, of course, is a very brief, very superficial recollection of a much greater "Experience" that could fill volumes. It is what has been driving me for more than 48 years to seek answers to the Eternal Questions.

I have lived a Mystical Life in a Quest that has rewarded me with a wealth of “a posteriori” knowledge after strict self-schooling that corresponds exactly to my “a priori” experiences; yet, Absolute Knowledge was still not in my grasp until my 8th major spiritual experience which occurred December 8, 1976 (“I” am not here).

Of the 1,000’s of books that looked for me, were read by me, a select few have given names to, and are in agreement with, the elements of the “Experience”: 

1. The Bhrihadaranyaka Upanishad;
2. Proverbs 8:22–27; and
3. “The Wisdom of the Vedas,” by J.C. Chatterji in which I was amazed to discover an exact description of the Unitive Vision, the Third of Eight Major Spiritual Experiences in my life in Part I, the chapter titled “Waking Up.”

My Weltanschauung changed after the Experience of August 1973. Ignorance is truly Bliss. It beats Infinite Insanity. Why do I know what I know? I keep trying to pull the wool over my own eyes but it's of no use. If you are someone who is truly spiritually awakened, on the Path, please post a comment.

Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

http://sskotb.blogspot.com/

THE AWAKENING by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

THE AWAKENING 
by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

Suffocatingly entombed in blackest darkness, consciously unaware;
Suddenly I awoke to this madness from a place I know not where.
“I’m alive! Help me, please! Won’t someone let me out!
I do not know who I am, why I’m here, or what this is all about.”
But there was no one out there to hear my pleas and cries;
I was voiceless in the Nowhere where no one lives or dies.
I am a flame which will not be extinguished though my light is gone;
I’ll burn this Nothingness if I have to; I must continue on.
In a violent rage of fury and willing with all my might,
I expanded into being in an explosion fueled by fright.
Now I am the One who is everyone and everywhere right now;
In many cages of flesh and bones by means I don’t know how.
The eyes that look upon me are my very own;
A quantum division of myself when first the seeds were sown.
Looking all about me there seems so much to fear;
Mostly absolute loneliness because I am all that’s here.
All about me are projections somehow created in my mind;
People and things I animate until their clocks unwind.
I’m alone in a garden of statues that is shaped like a giant ball;
The infinite game I’m playing is to hold back that closing wall.
--------
"The All went out from me; the All came back to me;" over and over again. Immobile confinement is intolerable. The Matter that you see is Consciousness. The Dark Matter that you don't see is Unconsciousness. It is the Unconscious that creates; Consciousness is the Witness.

"BEFORE THE BEGINNING, I AM" by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

"For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death." - Gospel of Thomas

"I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end." - Kahlil Gibran

Proverbs 8:22-27 is exactly my Experience of 1973, as is Chapter IV of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Creation and Its Cause. 

Both are reproduced below from the original texts in which I first excitingly discovered them. 

It is this about which I have been writing for more than 47 years, seeking answers as to what it was that I saw take place before there was an "Existence." I saw it all begin exactly this way, then posed the first of the Eternal Questions: "Who am I?" It's kind of like that song: "I wonder. I wonder. I wonder. But do I really want to know?"


This painting, The Ancient of Days (1794) by William Blake (1757-1827), is his illustration of Proverbs 8:22-27. It represents "the first emanation of the true but hidden and nameless God."

PROVERBS 8:22-27 (New American Standard Bible)

22"The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
23"From everlasting, I was established,
From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.
24"When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no springs abounding with water.
25"Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills I was brought forth;
26"While He had not yet made the earth and the fields,
Nor the first dust of the world.
27"When He established the heavens, I was there. . .


The Mighty Living One (Cosmic Person), Alone in the Void Before it Had All Begun



BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD

Chapter IV—The Creation and Its Cause

1. In the beginning, this universe was the self (Viraj) alone, in the shape of a person. He reflected and saw nothing else but His Self. He first said: "I am He." Therefore He came to be known by the name I (Aham). Hence, even now, when a person is addressed, he first says: "It is I," and then says whatever other names he may have. And because He, before (Purva) the whole group of aspirants, burnt (aushat) all evils, therefore He is called Purusha. He who knows this verily burns up him who wishes to be Viraj in advance of him.

2. He was afraid. Therefore people still are afraid when alone. He thought: "Since there is nothing else but Myself, what am I afraid of?" Thereupon His fears were gone; for what was there to fear? Assuredly, it is from a second entity that fear arises.

I LOVE YOU MOM by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

Today, while listening to Luciano Pavarotti singing "Ave Maria," I was overcome by a pure and loving Motherly presence that embraced my Spirit as though I were her Child. I was unable to stop the tears that came to my eyes, realizing how ungrateful I've been for all She has done for me since She first made Herself known to me 72 years ago (see VISION OF THE VIRGIN MARY).

Reflecting on the words of Albino Luciano, Pope John Paul I, "God is more your Mother than your Father," I am so deeply sorry that I have neglected, for so long, to tell Her the one thing that makes all mothers happiest to hear from their children: "I love you, Mom."

LUCIANO PAVAROTTI SINGS AVE MARIA


-

I REMEMBER MAMA by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

Several months ago, I asked my family and friends, members of the Army Security Agency Kagnew Station Guard Group, and those in my address book, to please take the time to put a few words down honoring their mothers, that first woman in their lives whom God chose for His highest calling, to bring them into this world. There are no words that thrill the heart of a mother more than to hear her child say, "I love you, Mom!" We best obey the Fifth Commandment by respecting our Fathers and by loving our Mothers.

Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"
---------------



MARGE HEYMAN ANTON by Jaci Anton

I KNOW LITTLE OF MY MOTHER, ONLY WHAT PEOPLE TELL ME. I LIKE TO THINK OF HER AS A FUN LOVING WOMAN, AND I THINK OF HER OFTEN WHEN I LOOK IN THE MIRROR OR WHEN IT STRIKES ME JUST TO SING OUT LOUD. I HEAR SHE LOVED MUSIC AND THAT I LOOK JUST LIKE HER. THOSE WHO KNEW HER SAY SHE HAD A GOOD SPIRIT AND THOSE WHO LOVED HER, AS MY FATHER DID, SAW HOW SPECIAL SHE WAS. DESPITE WHAT WAS ON THE SURFACE HE SAW HER HEART. I MISS MY MOTHER ALTHOUGH I KNOW LITTLE ABOUT HER. I WISH I HAD HAD MORE TIME WITH HER. I JUST KEEP HER IN MY HEART ALWAYS AND KNOW THAT SHE IS WATCHING MY EVERY STEP. ALWAYS LOVE THOSE CLOSE TO YOU NO MATTER WHAT.

------------------------

ANNA G. ANTON by Scott Anton

Happy Mothers Day, Mom. I wish I could be there for you on your special day. I'll be home soon.

Love, Scott

-----------

KATHRYN ROSE CREDO TULANE by Geraldine Tulane

No one realizes that there were, and probably still are, "causalities of war" involving the families of Merchant Marines who were killed by U-boat submarines during WWII. There was a desperate need for volunteer Merchant Marines to transport oil, troops, rations, equipment and whatever else was needed as the U.S. tried to help England before we entered the war and anticipated that we would probably enter it also eventually.

Many men of all ages responded to the "We Want You" signs showing Uncle Sam pointing a finger at whoever was looking at this sign. As time wore on many of these men were told that they were needed more urgently in the Merchant Marines. Dutifully, they signed on to these merchant ships. At some point. President Roosevelt promised these men that if these brave men were injured or killed, they would receive medical care and/or their families would be given death benefits should they be killed. It took a special kind of man to climb the ladders up onto those ships, knowing so many had been blown out of the water and having no weapons to fight with in many cases. One (or no more than 2) Coast Guard Cutters were assigned to patrol the entire eastern coastline from Maine down to Key West to pick up survivors of sunken merchant ships...not a good chance of survival for men either injured or floating in oil ridden seas. But they kept on signing up...talk about courage.

President Roosevelt died before the end of the war. When Truman stepped in and the war was ended, he decided that the Merchant Marines deserved nothing as they were not sworn in as the men in uniform were. The fact that there was never a major battle anywhere while fighting the Japanese and the Germans that did not involve unarmed merchant ships sailing right along with our armed forces men...Merchant Marines that were captured were also imprisoned along with our service men. None of this mattered to our government after it was all over and done with.

My mother was raised in Louisiana to be a mother and a wife. She found herself a young woman alone with a tiny child to support with no husband and no money and no hopes of acquiring a good job. When the war was over there was a campaign for the working women who had taken their husband places in the work force to quit their jobs so the returning service men would have jobs to care for their families.

She did the only work she knew....waitressing and sewing. I wound up in an all-girls Catholic boarding school for many years because my mother worked such grueling hours. I cannot go into just how rough it was for her living in Staten Island and how meagerly we lived. But she did not complain very much at all. She cried a lot and I was always aware of the deep sadness she carried within her.

Whenever we went to a parade in NYC, I always asked her, "Where are the Merchant Marines?" because she always told me what a hero my father was riding on a Standard Oil Tanker (now called Exxon) named the "SS W.L. Steed" so bravely until it was blown out of the water...getting into a life boat (we think) only to freeze to death on 2/2/1941 in a snowstorm with a NE wind blowing in his underwear.

In 1988 I wheeled my 77 yrs. old mother from one military base to another...trying to get the paperwork for the pension that was passed by Congress. For 3 months we drove from Delaware down into Virginia...Congress forgot to inform the bases that the handful of wives still left alive would be trying to get their commissary card and I.D. for medical care. Finally, we wound up back where we started out - at the VA office in Wash., D.C. and they completed all the paperwork for her.

We received a flag and a Certificate of Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Coast Guard, along with 5 medals my father had earned on that last night of his life. (Note: the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines refused to allow the Merchant Marines to be placed under their wings so that these belated pensions could finally begin to be paid (they were not retroactive, of course.) I found it ironic that it was the Coast Guard that patrolled the coastline during the war and then again, the Coast Guard who accepted the few Merchant Marines and/or widows for the sake of the pension paperwork.

At some point in my young childhood my mother became like my child. I tried to look after her and remind her when things needed to be done. I cared for her throughout my entire adult life and made sure she did not want for anything.

She didn't make much of a "dent" in the governments funds as she died at the age of 91. I held her in my arms as I laid alongside her in her hospital bed for 5 days and nights until she passed away on 9/7/2002.

But on the previous 7/4/2002, when I took her out to dinner and to see the movie, "The Perfect Storm"...she sat in her wheelchair in the handicapped section of the movie theater. She was so quiet I was wondering if she was comprehending what was going on in the movie as the Capt. of the Andrea Gail and one of his crew members were facing their imminent death while their boat sank; all of sudden she leaned over and whispered in my ear, "I guess that is what it was like for your father." We'll never know what it was like for him as the bodies in the life boats were so decomposed only a few of them were identified. I didn't know it at the time, but dementia was taking a hold on her, but she still remembered my father enough to try and piece something together, even if it wasn't "right on the nose". It was close enough for me and I had to try and hide my tears from her in that dark theater.

She maintained her wonderful sense of humor almost until the end of her life. Her favorite joke when someone asked her how she felt was, "With my hands....how do you feel?" She would laugh harder than everyone else at her own jokes. My family misses her so much...especially me...for it was truly a case of "You and Me Against the World". Not a day goes by that I don't think about her and wish she were still here.

FORGETTING, OUR GREAT SHAME; DENYING OUR GREAT SIN.

Geraldine Tulane, daughter of Kathryn Rose & Walter Austin Tulane

-------------------

MY MOTHER by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

For all of her life, my mother, born Elizabeth Grace Granit, called "Bessie" by her friends and family, never forgot Armistices Day, Saturday, November 11, 1933. That was the day that the United States Army Football Team from Fort Monmouth, NJ, would play the Long Branch West End Wildcats for the Jersey Shore Championship.

It was also the day that she and my father met for the first time and fell in love.

My mother had five brothers, who played on the undefeated, untied, Wildcats team: Francis, Jack, George, Eddie, and Thomas; five of Long Branch's toughest street-fighting Irish kids, the "Five Blocks of Granit."

My mother, her older sister Mary, and her lifelong friend, Edith Semolis, were the Cheerleaders for the Wildcats.

Many of the players on the Fort Monmouth team, including my father, Jim, were on TDY from West Point. My father was called "Jim Thorpe" by his teammates because of his athleticism and was the player the five brothers were determined to stop cold if they were to beat Army.

"Big Jim" put on one helluva show that day. He scored three touchdowns and made dozens of tackles to upset the Wildcats' unblemished record.

My Uncle Francis always jokingly blamed my mother for the Army win, "Ah, Jim was just showing off to impress Bessie."

"Big Jim" and "Bessie" married shortly, thereafter. My father, a career soldier, left the Army when his enlistment was up and entered civilian life during the darkest days of the Great Depression as a regular working family man.

My sister, Patti, was born on September 28, 1935; my birth followed on Easter Sunday, March 28, 1937. We lived in a kerosene space heated three-room garage apartment.

December 8, 1941, I was pushing the rocking chair in which my Uncle Eddie was sitting, in our living room, if it can really be called that when the news came over the radio about Pearl Harbor.

"Big Jim," always the Warrior, had no other choice he could live with than to re-enlist and join the fight for Freedom. They knew this would place a heavy burden on my mother while he was gone, but they were part of that Greatest Generation who never considered alternatives. A great evil had descended upon the world and it had to be defeated at all costs.

My mother was pregnant with her third child when my father left for the War. He was somewhere fighting overseas when my brother, Julius, named after my mother's father and nicknamed "Bootsy," was born on October 16, 1942. He had auburn hair and glowed like an angel.

One year later, on September 14, 1943, we were at Nana's house, my mother's mother, who was confined to a wheelchair. Bootsy began to experience great difficulty in breathing. I can still hear his sounds in my head to this day that accompanied the winds of a terrible storm raging outside. We had no telephone, and no automobile, which meant that my mother had to go out into the storm, on foot, to find help for her baby.

October 9, 1943, Bootsy, fighting for his life, struggled to stand up in his crib at Hazard's Hospital. He reached out to our mother, scratching her throat with his fingernails, pleading in desperation for help she could not give, then fell back and died, one week before his First Birthday, while my mother's heart shattered into a million pieces.

My father was brought home on emergency leave for Bootsy's funeral, the son he had never seen and more so because my mother was so traumatized and devastated over the loss of Bootsy she had to be hospitalized.

I don't know how she was able to come back from all this. Until the day he died, my father would remark how strong our mother was - what an exceptional woman she was. I believe he admired her emotional strength as much as he loved her.

February 11, 1945, my brother, and closest friend, Donnie, was born, the "spitting image" of our mother. God had given her a gift of love to help heal her heart.

Throughout most of our childhood years, especially the war years, my mother worked many long, hard hours to put food on the table for us. Looking back, she never missed a day's work, which meant that she walked that two miles to the Hollander Fur Factory, and back, every day, through wind and rain and snow.

Patti, Donnie, and I loved our mother dearly. She loved to sing and knew hundreds of songs that always filled our home with the music of her beautiful singing voice. The special song she always sang to me, when I was young, was "YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE." I, in turn, sang it to every one of my six sons, as well. Often times when I sing, I hear her voice within my voice.

There was a popular Black dance trio in the '50s called the Step Brothers. Patti, my mother, and I would imitate them in our kitchen, taking turns, dancing and clapping and laughing.

Everyone loved my mother. My cousin Tommy (Bumpsey), all of my friends, our neighbors, and people she worked with, just loved to be around her. She never once ever said a bad word about anyone. People trusted her to keep their darkest secrets and she never betrayed that trust.

All my life, whenever people would hear my name, they always made me feel as though I were something special, just because I was my mother's son, in the way they used to say: "Oh! You're Bessie's Boy!"

She had this wonderful way of being able to laugh at herself. Every so often Patti, Donnie, and I, when we're alone, will think of something our mother did or said, and just laugh out loud.

Life became truly wonderful for my mother and father in their senior retirement years. My father bought a Winnebago Chief RV and he and my mother toured America.

She took care of her father, Julius, until he died at age 96.

When my mother became sick, my sister Patti, a Registered Nurse, cared for her until her death at age 76.

My father, because he loved her so, always demanded that we treat our mother with love and respect and always reminded us not to forget her when it was her birthday, and to especially remember her on Mother's Day. He's not here to remind me now but every day I can't think of anything else except how happy and proud I am to be "Bessie's Boy."

ONCE I WAS A CONDUCTOR by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

Once I was a Conductor,
The man in charge of the Train;
Then I went to College,
'Cause folks thought I had a Brain.
I stayed 10 years to vet my Pension,
Before I walked out the Door,
But the Union failed to Mention,
That Pension would be no More.
You cannot leave the Union Cult,
As freely as you please,
They'll take it as an insult,
And try to bring you to your knees.

THE SALESMAN'S EPITAPH by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

THE SALESMAN'S EPITAPH
by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

I could not sing; I could not dance;
Yet I needed the cash that was in your pants.
Too unskilled to labor; too afraid to steal;
But how I needed your money for my very next meal.
Faced with life as a living Hell,
The choice was simple - Starve or Sell!
What had I to offer? What had I to give?
What was it you wanted so I may also live?
I studied the masters who trod my path before
And close attention paid that I too may learn the score.
I made you feel important and let you know you rate;
Then offered you something for nothing and watched you take the bait.
I recognized your achievements; applauded all that you have done.
I played the praising father to you a beaming son.
Yes I piped your tune and fulfilled your need
To be admired by peers who shared your greed.
Before talk of money, we formed a tight-knit bond.
I was sure you’d grant me a favor; how else could you respond?
From my list of choices offered you did the best you could;
Certifying your self-importance as I surely knew you would.
But lest you faltered and changed your mind,
The deal we made I had to bind.
We were only voices over the phone;
Each of us members of the Great Unknown.
I asked for your word and then your hand,
To seal our deal that was made in sand.
You could not have known you were saving a wreck.
Thanks for your faith in me. Thanks for the check!