“The Biggest Taboo” (December 2011)

The first trans-mystical experience I had was ego death. This experience, occurring multiple times throughout the past four years, has allowed me to realize that my ultimate identity is not physical, not emotional, not mental, and not individual. If this claim about human identity does not constitute “trans-mysticality” for the reader, then I apologize; however, I believe that many people would regard me as crazy or insane to believe this. The first time that I experienced ego death was while having a lucid dream, which is a dream in which one realizes that one is dreaming. Acknowledging the dream for what it was, I realized that literally everything constitutive of this experience was “not real,” meaning “not physical” or “not waking-state phenomena.” I realized that literally any aspect of the experience that I could perceive or identify was not real. The dream-sensations were not real, the dream-emotions were not real, the dream-thoughts were not real. My dream-body, the experience of myself as an individual, was not real. Yet despite the fact that all my experience was unreal, “I” still existed—but absolutely nothing perceivable constituted this “I.” I existed as the source of perception, but not as the objects or phenomena I perceived. I was simply pure being. Subsequently, I realized that if I am pure being, most fundamentally, then my ultimate identity could not be conceptually or linguistically reduced to any limitation or thing. Several other experiences while meditating invoked the same authentic realization concerning identity. While sitting in stillness/emptiness, I realized that I still am, despite not thinking anything. I realized that I am not a mind or thinking thing, because I still exist even when that “mind” and the thoughts constituting it disappear for uncertain stretches of “time.” Another trans-mystical experience and realization includes that of seeing light auras, ranging different colors, engulfing people’s bodies. I do not know if these auras are the invention of my mind or if my mind is recognizing an inherent category of reality. However, this perception is very real for me, aside from its epistemic normativity beyond the scope of first-person inference, exclusively. For several years now, I have also been able to focus my perception on certain areas of my body and, in doing so, “activate” a noticeable amount of energy or “subtle sensation” concentrated and limited to that specific location. For instance, if I sufficiently concentrate on the space between my eyeballs, then, suddenly, I feel a slight tingling or prickling in that top-middle region. The perception gains intensity as I further realize and experience a certain rotation or spinning of that energy activated. I have tried to see whether I can create the same experience on any bodily location rather than the areas to which my phenomenological success has been limited. However, this attempt has proven to be unsuccessful, showing me that there must be something quite special or significant about the particular locations allowing me to activate such energy. The amount of second-person information about trans-mysticality to which I have access is significantly greater than the amount of first-person information. The following individuals have each been important parts of my life for the past two and a half years. I could not have more respect for any of them given all their credentials of which I am aware. The amount of trust that I have for four of them is equivalent to the amount of trust I have for my closest family members and friends, while the amount of trust that I have for the other three is equivalent to the amount of trust I have for my closest professors and instructors. In this section, I shall describe my specific relationship to each one and then I shall list all of his credentials along with all of the trans-mystical claims that he has given me reason to believe constitute epistemic normativity. Two years ago, I met Michael Richardson. Richardson played Division I college basketball at Wright State University before transferring to Georgetown College. While studying ethics at Oxford University, he realized that the path he was on did not align with his authentic self. This realization moved Richardson to shift away from a focus on medicine and to earn a degree in English and to become an ESL teacher and student of Zen Buddhism in Japan. After graduating, he went to live by himself on his family’s farm in Kentucky for five consecutive years, without contact from anyone else, only meditating and writing. During the fourth year, Richardson claims to have experienced kensho, which is a Zen term that denotes sudden awakening to nirvana or nothingness. This realization prompted him to burn all twelve hundred typewritten pages that he had accumulated to that point while living by himself on the farm—symbolizing for Richardson that, after this authentic awakening experience, every single word in the English dictionary literally had a profoundly different meaning for him. He then went on to write a poetry anthology titled Suicide Dictionary, which was published by O-Books later that year. As of now, he stewards Globalish. My relationship with Richardson led me to connect with his good friend and entrepreneurial partner, Doc Barham. Barham works as a “transformation expert.” Since March 2010, he has been my mentor, life coach, and dear friend. Barham has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Psychology Today, the History Channel (Ancient Aliens), Business Insider, the Huffington Post, as well as PBS. His client backgrounds include Zappos.com, Playboy, NASA, NFL, Oprah.com, PGA, CMA, the Oprah Winfrey Network, NBA, World Series Poker, NASCAR, and the NCAA. Specifically, Barham’s individual clients include NBA All-Star Elton Brand, along with ex-president of digital media for Oprah.com and the Oprah Winfrey Network, Robert Tercek. The latter figure remarks that: "Doc has been my personal professional career coach for several years, and he has helped me achieve great results. I give him my highest recommendation. In 2005, I worked with Tony Robbins, and after that I did a project which involved more than 200 professional coaches, so I had the opportunity to meet several excellent coaches. In my experience, Doc Barham is the best coach I’ve ever worked with." Barham has also experienced remote viewing, kensho, and subtle-realm masters. Furthermore, he claims to experience any chakra (supposed energy vortexes connecting one’s physical, emotional, and mental bodies) at will. He also claims to have communicated with extraterrestrial beings while dreaming, a week before experiencing several UFOs hover several hundred feet over his vehicle for several minutes while near Area 51. One of Barham’s mentors and friends is a chi gong master named Master Jo. I have not yet met Master Jo digitally or physically, but have heard about him from Barham and saw a video demonstrating his abilities featured on Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Jo has known kung fu since age seven and chi gong since age sixteen. In the video demonstration, he raises a towel to near-boiling temperature without even touching it. The ability is shown using infrared camera technology. It is affirmed by Dr. Michael Upsher, a well-known MD who has experienced Jo’s energetic healing treatment and who claims to know that it is real. Another acquaintance of Barham, his meditation teacher whom I have not yet met but respect and trust, is Dr. Shinzen Young. Young, a longtime Zen master, authored The Science of Enlightenment series.6 Young’s own teacher is over one hundred years old, making him the oldest living Zen master on this planet. Aside from Young’s experiences of spiritual enlightenment, perhaps even more astonishing is his claim of profound visionary experiences for several consecutive years while studying under a “Taoist wizard” in his mid-twenties. These experiences were such that he saw blatant and coherent subtle/psychic phenomena merged in his everyday physical settings (e.g. perceiving nonphysical visions of beings from greater dimensions while sitting awake at his home)—which, if interpreted by conventional psychology/psychiatry, would constitute schizophrenia. Yet, like all of these second-person sources of trans-mystical knowledge, Young seems not only extraordinarily gifted intellectually, but also equally wholesome both emotionally and morally. With Barham, I also met Mick Quinn (digitally) in July 2010. We have remained in regular contact since that time. Quinn used to be a serial Wall Street entrepreneur. After experiencing kensho more than ten years ago, though, he realized that maximizing his personal development in all areas of growth mattered much more than merely making money. Quinn coauthored The Uncommon Path of Awakening Authentic Joy, which reached number one in its Amazon category of Consciousness and Thought. He regularly appears on the radio with Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and star of The Secret, along with Dr. Deepak Chopra, who Time magazine named among the top one hundred most influential people of the twentieth century (as the “poet-prophet of alternative medicine”). Quinn now works in a Guatemalan slum with his wife teaching Integral Theory to students and helping increase food, power, and stability. During a Facebook discussion that involved numerous participants concerning the reality of chi gong—namely, a video that displayed one master’s supposed ability to ignite newspaper without touching it physically—Quinn claimed that his old master, now dead, was not only spiritually advanced but also energetically powerful such that he could (telekinetically) knock down objects from across the room. The last person with whom Barham connected me, beginning in the spring of 2011, is his own mentor, Dr. Pete Peterson—who started working for the government before age thirteen as an inventor and engineer. According to Peterson, not only has the government been suppressing information about trans-mystical/paranormal phenomena since the early twentieth century, but he himself has invented technology of fantastic proportion, which has been suppressed by government powers, but which—for instance—reverses gravity, or allows any message to be communicated anywhere in the universe instantaneously.9 Barham and Peterson together claim that he has three PhDs and decades’ worth of independent research spent with dozens of Nobel Prize winners. Aside from his credentials, among Peterson’s other trans-mystical claims are that he used to throw “spoon-bending parties” during the 1970s, and, perhaps even more unbelievably, that he is permanently awake—meaning that he always lucid dreams and that his experience of time relative to the dreaming state is equivalent to hours and even days relative to the waking state. According to his description, Peterson lives not just one life, but many lives/roles simultaneously, continually experienced during his perpetuated state of lucidity while dreaming. For instance, one of these dream worlds that he experiences/visits each night features several family members who have been dead relative to the waking state—yet, according to Peterson, he visits these alternate realities each night, lucid the entire time, experiencing a reality that is as meaningful and complex as the reality that one experiences while awake. He also claims to know individuals whose energetic power is such that they can literally fly—meaning they can levitate their own bodies at will.