CHAPTER FIFTHTEEN

Unexpected Benefits From The Flight?

      For whatever reason, the experience of my non-ordinary flight seemed to give my body added vitality. Shortly after my flying OBE, Larry and Harry came over to workout. We had our equipment set up outside and as usual the high school kids took their lunch break from the tech school that was nearby to workout or watch us.

      Harry, like Larry, had a tough time doing bench-presses because of their long arms (I also believe it was because they constantly told themselves they were not built for benching). Anyway, I finished off with 320 pounds at the end of a workout. Larry wanted to see if he could lift the weight off the bench rack. He tried and could not budge it, no matter how much he tried. Harry tried and he also failed to budge it. Harry and Larry decided to have a contest to see who could lift more off the rack. They started at 225 pounds and with each successful lift, continued to go up by twenty-five pound increments.

      Larry went for 275 pounds and struggled to extend his arms all the way. We all clapped. Harry barely got 275 pounds. He tried to lift it several times and finally, barely pushed the weight up, locking his arms for a split second. The weight threatened to crash down on him during the entire lift, as it wavered unsteadily all the way to completion. The kids hooted and cheered their approval.

      Harry and Larry got to 300 pounds. Larry tried several times and, finally, just managed to push the weight up and barely held it locked in position for a split second. Like Harry’s attempt at 275 pounds, the weight threatened to crash down on him.

      Harry failed after several attempts to budge the weight. Everyone voiced their disappointment.

Harry begrudgingly congratulated Larry, as he was disappointed in his failure to do 300 pounds.

      Larry said, “I know I can’t lift 320 pounds, because I’m really tired from all of the lifting, but let’s put 320 on the bar. I just want to strain against it.”

      Harry’s voice dripped with sarcasm, “Yeah, right!”

      Larry tried several times and failed, the only thing he managed to do was roll the bar back and forth on the rack. Harry decided to try and, because I felt bad for him coming in behind Larry, I focused on putting him in a hypnotic state.

      We went through the process while Larry was smirking. During the hypnotic procedure I emphasized to Harry that the bar would be so light for him that it would feel as if was levitating, that he would be drawing on the mental energy of all of us to make the bar levitate. All the High school kids were chanting intensely for Harry. Finally he positioned himself on the bench and he told me to keep my hands close in case he couldn’t hold it, but not to touch the bar unless it was ready to fall and crush him.

      Harry said, “Don’t help me lift it. I want to do it by myself or not at all.” All of a sudden there was a rush of strange energy coursing through my body and it felt as if that energy intertwined with Harry and the energy field in the bar. There was a strong tingling in my hands as I held them three inches above the bar. We chanted the countdown for Harry’s lift off.  “One, two, three… go!”

      I felt a strong magnetic energy between my hands and the bar, which rocketed off the rack at incredible speed. The energy seemed to alternate very quickly back and forth, both an attractive and repulsive force. Harry screamed, “Noooo!” in anger as the bar rushed up towards my hands which I had to move quickly away for fear of the bar colliding with my hands. The bar was extended completely and looked as if for a second his upper body would come off the bench and follow the bar upwards.

      Then he brought the bar back to the rack, and as soon as he racked it, leapt up in a rage and said, “You son of a bitch! I told you not to touch the bar! I wanted to do it by myself, but nooo, you had to grab it!”

      Harry said it felt like I had ripped the bar out of his hands and he was forced to move his hands quickly to follow the bar up. The kids watching had noticed how odd the incident looked and they told Harry that my hands stayed approximately three inches above the bar.

They recounted that it appeared the bar had levitated off the rack at high speed and that Harry had barely managed to keep his hands on the bar. When his arms had been fully extended, the levitation or the perception of the levitation stopped.

      I have not been able to explain this incident to my satisfaction. Harry swears the bar raced away before he could push and then struggled to keep his hands on the bar. All the witnesses claimed it appeared that not only were Harry’s muscles not straining or flexing, but that his arms appeared to be partially dragged upwards by the force. I swear I felt that unusual alternating energy and my hands never did touch the bar.

      It would be years until I got any satisfactory explanation.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

My Encounter With The Dwarf

      Aside from the levitation incident, life went along as usual. I hit another plateau in my training and allowed myself to be seduced into a night of drinking, the first in a very long time. I went out with my friends Johnny Q., Don Hangman and Big John Baloney. Big John had a stepsister I’ll call Glory. I had a major crush on her, or, to be more accurate, I lusted for her immensely.

      We decided I was too drunk and tired to drive all the way from Bridgeport to Phoenixville, so I was given the couch at Big John’s. His stepfather and mother had gone to bed much earlier and all of our friends had left. John and Glory decided to turn in. As I lay on the couch in a drunken stupor, I decided to try another OBE. It had been a habit of mine to do this every night for several months. Most times I failed, but I had been attempting it every night. I suppose I tried because occasionally when I drink, I have trouble going to sleep. Perhaps it had to do with reasons of lust and curiosity. Who knows?

      I went through the usual rituals and finally managed to emerge from my body. As I peered down at my body, I noticed that I looked like hell. It was obvious that had really tied one on. I looked around the room as usual to make sure everything was where it should be, to make sure it wasn’t a dream. Unlike dreams, when I had an OBE, everything in the room or house was always as it should be.

      For example, there was never a time when a certain piece of furniture was missing when it should have been there, although on a few occasions there were certain items in sight that did not belong in the room—on a few occasions there were entities.

      I felt both light and sluggish. It was tough to navigate, but went up the stairs, thinking to go into John’s room, wondering if I could see him. A light was coming from under his door. I looked over to Lori’s door and, although there was no light, the door was cracked open about a foot. Looking in, I could see it was dark as an abyss. I was toying with the idea of trying to see what she was doing or attempting to wake her, motivated by a lower, baser drive than any concern of spiritual evolution. Just as I was attempting to look into the darkness, I sensed someone or something looking at me.

      Sitting on the banister, near the door to John’s parent’s room, was a dwarf. My heart stopped. This was the first time I had encountered an entity face-to-face. The other had been out of the corner of my eye. The dwarf was staring at me, the expression on its face was absolute malevolence.

      He was swinging his legs back and forth like a child on a chair that’s too tall for it. The dwarf didn’t say a word. With unexpected suddenness, the demonic dwarf leaped off the banister and scuttled toward me with hideous speed. The dwarf’s hands were held forward and high, as if anxious to claw me to death, his mouth a wide-open, evil grin. “Death dwarf”, my mind screamed and in my terror, I felt my non-ordinary body zip down the stairs and jolt back into my alcohol besotted body. As if a switch was flicked, I leaped up with a yell of terror, running around the room turning on all the lights.

      It was a long time before I messed with attempting another OBE.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Valley Forge—Finally Attending To All My Baser Needs

      I moved to Valley Forge trailer park, which was much closer to work. The trailer was an upgrade compared to the one in Phoenixville, a small single to a nice doublewide. It was a one-room affair; the only thing being separate was the bathroom. I loved my new place; it was just the right size—and cheap. Since being hired permanently with the Postal Service, I was finally enjoying decent wages that allowed me to live in a style I had never before enjoyed.

      I would see Harry now and then. Since he was let go after his ninety day probation at the Postal Facility, he was finally actually living one of his fantasies, that of a cat burglar. No laser lights or high tech equipment, oh no! He chose to involve himself with some of the lesser denizens of Norristown in low-level breaking and entering.

      Harry was a promiscuous cheat. He always ran around on his woman and tried to get me to cover for him or lie to his woman. This was something that I refused to do for him. Eventually, I found that I could not hang with him as he insisted continuing a lifestyle that was not conducive to anything positive.

      I was still seeing Apollonia. Because I was not indulging in sex with her, it was driving me nuts. Though forbidden fruit is more desirable, I was seeing less of her. Not only because I was trying to avoid her, which I was, but my job schedule kept me from seeing her more often. Her family also remarked they also wanted to see more of me; I gave them lots of excuses.

      In my time away from work, in order to deal with my overarching drives, I would meet women at clubs. After hours of drinking, my friends and I would invite them to my place to continue the party. My piss poor line was:  would you like to see my books? Other guys use the line, “would you like to see my etchings?” I used books.

      I would take a girl to my bedroom to show her all of my books. I had at least a thousand with which to impress the women I tried this line on. My queen-size bed sat right up against the bookcases, so I tried to get the girls on the bed with the pretense of crawling over to get a closer look at the ones on the far side of the bed. Some were too canny for that obvious maneuver so, instead, I would stand by the bed and kiss them. Then we would end up kissing passionately. This made it simple to ease them onto my bed. A few times the girl resisted and I used a wrestling move to trip them onto the bed. They resisted until we both were on the bed, then they would melt and it would work out fine.

      However, there were at least two girls who did not go for that shit. They got angry and told me in no uncertain terms, no. I was never one of those guys who thought that a woman’s mouth may say no, but her body was really saying yes. To me a verbal no meant just that…no! Yes, there are a few women who say no, but want you to still take them sexually, but I stayed away from these women. It was one thing to have a spirited give and take physically, but another to go for a woman who did not have the courage to go with her desire.

      On a few occasions, a woman may not have resisted, but I found she was actually scared, going along only because she did not want to be perceived un-cool or prudish. Encountering this, I cooled my jets and backed off. It was tough, but I managed. Regardless of what I considered to be honorable behavior, much of what we guys did could be considered date rape today or, at the very least, severely pushing the boundaries.

      Part of the problem is that men and women communicate differently. Men tend to be direct, voicing what they want, though that’s not to say sometimes they’re not lying. Women communicate indirectly and covertly, though they are not necessarily lying by doing this. It’s just the way they communicate. Some women do lie, as well. Of course, this makes trying to figure out what women want that much more difficult.

      As a result, guys like me go by the old axiom, “actions speak louder than words.” If a woman is screaming no and is trying to take out your eyes with her thumbs, it is best you understand these subtle signs and respect her wishes. 

      While trying to seduce women, you will invariably go from one level to the next. Some guys call it running the bases. Women are like horses in as much as, with horses, no two are alike. Knowledge of technique is not enough; you have to be patient when learning what they’re willing to do.

      Some women may let you go through most of the steps, thereby lulling you into a false sense of hope, so when you think you’re home free, they’re suddenly adamantly against you.

      Some women do this to test your resolve. However, if you try to force your advances, you might crush her spirit.

      Once you break a woman’s spirit, your relationship is never truly satisfying. Only a man who is dysfunctional would take pleasure in this. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Promiscuous Sex With Monotonous Regularity

      From 1977 till 1981, my life was a monotonous daily grind of partying and promiscuous sex. ) Pretty tough situation, I know. While I won’t over the details, let’s just say that my mattress was fast becoming a forensic nightmare with all of the women that I was bedding.

      Looking back, I do wish I had made many different choices. I tried to have monogamous relationships with a few women:  Lorraine, Angelina, Donna, Michelle, Nola, Debbie, Josephine and Angela are women with whom I wanted things to work out permanently. However, circumstances, and their good judgment, eventually prevented that from happening. Mostly, at the heart of the matter, I was a guy who had a bad combination of overactive libido and a deep dread of commitment; beneath that was the fear of abandonment. I also suffered from the misconception that if you felt attraction for more that one woman that meant you did not love any woman. I was under the impression from my early Catholic imprinting along with the Knights of the Round Table programming that when men and women are in love, other people’s attractiveness became invisible to them.

      It would take me years to sort it all out.

      Because I had trouble committing, I was constantly looking for short-term fun. My friends and I liked to go to certain clubs because the bands were good and they had lots of ladies. One favorite watering hole was the Village Inn in East Norristown. Back then it was tough to score with women in the east coast, especially the ones in the big cities.

      These women seemed to have different criteria for choosing men then those in less urban areas. Most wanted to meet someone that looked like John F. Kennedy Jr. Jan Michael Vincent or Brad Pitt. The guys they wanted had to be dressed a certain way, have a fancy car, a nice condo or house, make a lot of money and have a cool job. You had to have snappy patter and, regardless of how much your intended quarry liked you, if one of her friends didn’t, your chances quickly went to zero.

Angelina Shares Beauty Secrets

      During this period of my life, I met one of the finest women of my life. She was a curious mix of coquettishness and bawdiness. She was what most guys dream about. The typical act and look like a lady in public and fuck with wild abandon behind close doors. She was petite, well formed, thick curly raven black hair, big heavily lashed green eyes under expressive brows, pouting red lips centered in fine-bone alabaster skin. She loved her tea and English muffins. In her schoolmarm finery, she was the picture of ultimate femininity.

      The attraction between us from the first was mutually immediate and overpowering. We didn’t have sex off the bat, which was not normal for me, -- because she was an upstanding Irish gal with a Catholic background.

      But, after dating her for a month and all the sexual tension that it entailed, she decided to give me a grooming session of my life. She was very focused on beauty secrets and had aspirations to become a beautician.

      After much kissing and petting, she instructed me to get into my bathtub, (with my shorts on of course). She gave me the most sensual and fun baths that up until that time I have ever enjoyed. She dutifully applied herself to my body and scrubbed, wiped, exfoliated, suds me over, wiped some more, then she shampooed my hair, and massaged my scalp. As she was massaging my scalp, her amorous intentions heated up. Bottom line was that she ended up giving me the most delicious blowjob. The orgasm practically blew me out of the tub.

      She was smug, feeling powerful of her feminine wiles and the pleasure she had given me.

      She smiled sweetly, tilting her head, arched her eyebrows, “Well? What do you think? Did you enjoy that?”

      Still feeling giddy, “Well… is there any chance that you could rinse and repeat?”

      She laughed musically at my crude humor. I knew we had the makings of a good relationship.

Angelina was one of the most extraordinary lovers that I have ever known. We were suited sexually. We both liked lots of sex and we knew which buttons to push with each other. Sex with her was often very mystical, not just in the way that I had felt with Carlita and a few other women; there were times that our minds, the very synapses of our nervous systems merged. I became she and she became me and we became one.

      Angelina was also a very uninhibited woman and if truth were known, she would initiate to explore in certain sexual realms that if left to my own devises, I would probably have never explored.

      Once, while we were making love, (In the missionary position), She looked up at me with her disarming coy manner, “Vinny, she whispered in her sultry voice, do you want to try something different?”

      Always looking to please, “What do you have in mind?”

      “Would you please stick your thingy in my poopie hole”, she crooned? “Let’s try it from this position”, she added.

      I was startled from this unexpected raw request for such a coy little woman. Previous to her request I had never traveled the “Hersey Highway”, feeling that this deviant act was more than a little nasty. However, always a guy who wants to please his love, I complied with vigor.

      Once we got deep into Greek interface, she looked up, “What do you think?”

      “Ahh... it’s okay, what do you think?”

      “It’s different, let’s keep going.”

      We increased tempos and force of our movements for a few minutes, until she let out a growling response that sounded just like the possessed girl in the ‘Exorcist”.

      She screamed and all coyness went out the window, “ Get off me!! I’ve got to SHIT!” And with that, she threw me off with superhuman demonic force that belied her tiny female form.

      As I was lying there, she ran into the bathroom and the sounds that she made on the toilet were not made from any human being I have ever known.

      I loved that woman. Unfortunately, because of my demons, I was not in a space to appreciate and accept what she had to offer as a mate.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The ‘Look’ From Mr. Chang

      Within a week of confronting my growing angst over my life, I went to the King of Prussia mall alone, wanting to immerse myself with people. As I was going thru the mall, I noticed several hundred people milling around upstairs. They were watching a martial arts exhibition from Chang’s School of Martial Arts, of all places. I was standing behind several tall people, barely able to squeeze through to watch the exhibition.

      Mr. Chang and his advanced students were demonstrating their amazing skills with each other to the crowd. I couldn’t wait to say hi to Mr. Chang, as it had been years since I had seen him, the last time being right before I went into the Marines; I had been five foot six inches tall and weighed only 145 pounds and was more or less clean-shaven. Now I was five foot eight inches, weighed 185 pounds and sported a long, thick bushy beard. I was sure he wouldn’t recognize me and imagined how he would react when I reintroduced myself to him.

I was standing among a crowd of a few hundred people.

      Mr. Chang was coming out of a roll into a standing position when he turned his head and quickly scanned the crowd. I felt his eyes lock on me for what must have been 1/100^th of a second. In that minutia of time I felt as if a high-speed computer was scanning and evaluating everything about me. This type of look was one I would not experience again until meeting another remarkable person years later. Mr. Chang’s exhibition ended five minutes later.

      Right after the exhibition, Mr. Chang immediately marched straight through the crowd with his hand extended and yelled out, “Laz, how are you doing?”

I was blown away!! I re-joined Mr. Chang’s school at once and began meditating again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

If I Meditate God Will Protect Me!

      I decided to pursue the meditative practices I had given up since the encounter with the dwarf, my thoughts being that the incident had been the result of drinking and a sense I was misusing the potential power

I was tapping into. Perhaps that power, used for the wrong intention, corrupted. Things would be all right now, I thought, since I was no longer susceptible to misusing my potential power. I guess you could say,

“If my heart is true, God will protect me.”

      I had started an even more intensive regiment since getting a job at the Postal Service. I was 185 pounds, though some of it was beer weight. Looking back, I now realize I was over training by several hundred percent.

I trained too often, did too many reps per exercise and workout. I had hit a wall. For example, on the days I did chest exercises, I would train on the bench press first, starting with 50 pounds and performing 25 repetitions

in a very fast, ballistic manner. Then I would increase the weight by 25 pounds, again performing 25 repetitions until I got to 225 pounds. With that much weight,

I could barely do the 25 reps. I then continued to increase the weight, though only by 10-pound increments, doing as many reps as possible until I reached 350 to 360 pounds.

      Prior to reaching this level, I had been unable to improve, so I started to eat what I called a perfect diet:  two to three dozen eggs a day, no starchy foods, sugar, fruit, alcohol or coffee, plus I consumed lots of water and raw salad vegetables.

      The only cooked vegetable I ate was spinach and I added generous amounts of olive oil to all my food. I ate four to six times a day and took basic supplements and extra brewers yeast.

      Along with this new regiment, I started to employ yoga again, as well as meditation, visualization and hypnosis. In fact my doctor sent me to a highly skilled professional hypnotist. I went three times a week and, just before each set, unconsciously started to use other techniques of yoga such as power breathing and personal mantras. I also lost what little fat I had, dropping to just under 175 pounds. My sex drive, which I already thought excessive, went through the ceiling.

      When I hit another plateau with my training, I still wanted to improve. I had enjoyed new levels of mental and physical highs I had never felt before. I knew (correctly) that proper diet along with a variety of intensive exercise and meditation techniques was the key to achieving mystical events. I also believed that when people were able tap into these mystical events it would help them overcome mental and physical plateaus.

Fasting For Purification and Enlightenment

      As I studied more about yoga and other mind/body disciplines, I became curious about the benefits of progressive fasting. Going without food has always been the toughest thing for me. Even starving was not as mentally difficult as simply going without food. Since working regularly for the past few years, I had made it my mission to not miss a meal. 

      Now I went on a program of fasting a little, eating perfectly, fasting a little longer, and again eating perfectly.

The first day I went without food was tough. The following week, I went two days. It was tougher, with the headaches and lightheadedness being especially bad; the three days the next week were the worst. After that, I did not fast for two weeks.

      The next three-day fast wasn’t so bad. Finally, I went ten days without eating, and even abstained from sex (that was really tough, tougher than going without food). I only drank water and meditated.

      During this time of fasting, my dreams became more colorful and I again tried to have out-of-body experiences.

An OBE Of The Remote Viewing Kind

      Previous to my new regiment, I had gone so long without attempting an OBE that it was tough to try again. It took many attempts before I started to get the familiar sensations. Then I succeeded. On previous attempts, I had come close, but one distraction or another had interrupted me and I had given up and gone to sleep.

      Then one night I was awakened by a noise outside.

I was in bed, listening intently, trying to figure out what was making the noise, when the familiar sensations began. This time, however, the light inside my head was not as bright as during previous experiences. It seemed more like remote viewing, since I could not feel my new body or see any part of it. I did, however, have the sensation of floating. I looked down at the bed and was amused to see that I looked like a mannequin. It was as if my mind’s vision extended beyond my body and would go wherever I directed it.

      I looked around the room, making sure everything was in its place and kept a wary eye out for any dwarfs or other potentially disturbing entities.

      I remained close to my body while I continued to look around. I attempted to alleviate my fears by telling myself that God would protect me. This thought encouraged me to extend my exploration to include the rest of my doublewide trailer. I was able to float my vision to the other side of the room while never moving beyond the sight of my prone body; nothing was where it shouldn’t be. A neighbor’s dog started to howl and this sent a stab of fear into my mind. I felt myself rush back into my body. 

      On other nights, evenings or early mornings,

I awakened to these sensations and would explore around my bed. A few times I could see the outline of my non-ordinary body, though usually it appeared as a perfect shadow outline. Although I could go where my mind directed, the level of control I desired seemed to be lacking. The majority of times I was able to leave my body only after an intensive attempt to do just this. Most of my OBE’s were never as intense as the daytime one

I experienced years before in the Marines. During some of the OBE’s I experienced while fasting, I came across items or furniture that did not exist when I was in my normal body.

      After the first few days of the fast, I felt more energized; my thinking became clearer and I felt more centered. Also, the hunger was gone and I worked out as much as I had before fasting, but now I didn’t use the heavy weights that would force me to do four or less reps.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Night Time OBE – A Higher Level

On the tenth night, I lay in bed. I was not fatigued; it was simply the normal time I went to bed.

I decided to try another OBE. Over and over I experienced the familiar sensations, but each time one thing or another distracted me.    I got out of bed, deciding to work out with weights, doing just one set of all my exercises at 50%. My previous workouts had left me feeling better. I had not increased weight or reps since the fast, but I felt my body and mind aligning towards a more efficient state. It was about quarter after eleven and I still wasn’t sleepy or fatigued. Rather the light workout seemed to both energize and relax me.

      I decided to lie down again, turning out all of the lights, even the lava lamp. There was extensive cloud cover and no moon to light the midnight sky, so the room was pitch black. Going through the rituals to attain an OBE, my mind was extremely alert, but also calm, with no scattered thoughts to distract me. Eventually

I felt the same sensations I had in Cherry Point. This was the third time I had experienced every atom in my body vibrating at higher and higher frequencies; my muscles were molten wax.

The humming of the frequencies was deafening, yet not painfully so. The glow of intense bright golden light inside my head filled my world. I fell through the floor.

      Then I was standing over my body. Curiously,

I could see every thing clearly. How could that be? Despite my poor eyesight, I have always enjoyed superior night vision. Yet even with this advantage, the room had been pitch black before I had begun meditating.

      Once again, it was as if my vision was superhuman.

I looked down at my body and it was apparent the fasting had made a difference in my appearance. I was skinnier, yet much healthier. I thought, “Wow, I look as relaxed as humanly possible without being dead.” This thought so startled me that I did a double take. I saw a slight smile of bliss on my face. My breathing was barely noticeable, but I thought, “Nope, I’m not dead.”

      I could see with unusual clarity. I could see the energy fields of all of the articles in the room. I saw that my non-ordinary body was naked, did not surprise me since I always sleep in the buff. My body looked perfectly formed and I could see a type of aura of fluctuating energy fields extending out from my body.

      My non-ordinary body was emanating energy fields that were more colorful and brighter than any of the other articles in the room, and the scintillating waves extended much further than anything in the room, and although I didn’t see it, I had the sense the my energy extended to and perhaps beyond the limits of the universe. I felt that my energy was influence by and in turn, influenced all other energy fields, which I felt also included, all people.

      I looked again at my ordinary body lying prone on the bed. The energy fields generated from my ordinary body was much more dramatic in everyway compared to all articles in the room except for my non-ordinary body which my ordinary body’s energy paled by comparison.

      I wondered if this was because my ‘real’ self was apart from it. I looked around again and I noticed that some of the articles appeared to have their energy more pronounced than other articles.

      Why was that I wondered. Then it hit me, everything that was organic in origin showed more energy.

The wooden pencils and even the sheets of paper and envelopes on my desk showed more intensely. A few balls of paper that I had crumbled up earlier in the day looked especially neat because the whorl of patterns that the crumbled paper had.

      My wooden desk produced more than the cinder blocks that were holding up my bookcase or the Formica counter top in the kitchen. The less processed the organic article, the more energy. The few plants that I kept in the trailer produced even more energy; despite the fact that they were half dead from the inadequate care I had given them.

      It occurred to me to go to the full-length mirror on my bathroom door, and as I looked at the mirror, wondering if I could see myself. I was disappointment instead. I was standing in front of the mirror and I could look down at my non-ordinary form and look back at the mirror and see back behind me as if I was the mirror looking out and there was no one to impair my view of the room. I was disappointed because I felt that if I could see myself that would show me proof of these experiences.

      I also wondered if the reason for not seeing my self had to do with the properties of light, the speed of light, which I knew to be 186,000 miles per second, and uncertain properties of human consciousness. An errant thought that perhaps my consciousness and perception in my ordinary body extended faster than the speed of light. I wondered if the speed of consciousness was faster than the speed of light, or perhaps even instantaneous.

I Tried To Move Material Articles

      I tried to see if I could pick up some of the articles on the desk or to knock on the desktop and failed. I found that my hand passed through without effort.

Why, I wondered, that when I passed out of my body that it felt as if I fell through my bed, and why if my non-ordinary hand passed through the desk instead of feeling resistance of solid form, why was I not falling completely through the earth?

      Perhaps I was able to move around my trailer in a somewhat normal fashion because I expected to.

I pondered this, because even though I felt light, I also felt like I had substance, and when I think about it I realize the lightness seemed to have more to do with feeling an utter lack of strain that even the strongest most athletic person would feel when moving their body.

      But it wasn’t only that. I felt as energized and as powerful as I did when I had that remarkable experience in Cherry Point.

      I felt like I could lift tons overhead or fly at a floating pace or move at light speed or greater or even teleport anywhere in the universe by just a single thought or intention.

      Once again I tried to see if I could influence the movement of something outside of myself. I tried to caress the leaves of one of my poor plants. Nothing happened, except that my hand went through, although the energy fields around both my non-ordinary hand and the plant seemed to vibrate with excitement -- even expectancy?

      I looked at my plants and found myself thinking

I should apologize. Suddenly, it was as if at some cellular level the plant forgave me. No, it seemed to generate love and acceptance. In other words, even though there were no words, I had the sense the plant did not hold my negligence against me.

I Influence Certain Articles To Move

      I tried to caress it again and for my efforts I got just a glow of excited fields. Perhaps I was perhaps trying too hard. Then it hit me. My intellect or my thoughts were getting in my way. I kept the intent and drop the thoughts. Again I tried. Then plants leaves moved in tandem with my fingers! After doing this a few times, I went to my desk and tried to pick up the pencil. No luck. Then I tried using only the intent and finally I had it rolling back and forth!

      I tried it with the plastic pens, but no matter how many times I tried, the pens would not be influenced. I tried going back and forth from pen to pencil; the pencil would move, but the pen would not. I could even influence the balls of paper to skitter a bit on the desk as if a breeze hit it. After much experimentation, I found that I could only influence living things the easiest. Articles that were not “living” but were organic in origin I could also influence, but to a lesser degree.

I thought, the less organic the less influence.

Why Could I See In The Dark?

      What I found exceptionally curious was, though I could see clearly in the pitch black, the experience of sight was different than the bright daylight hours of the Cherry Point OBE. Years later when I looked through night vision glasses, I realized they did not allow me to see everything as if in normal daylight.  During my OBE, I could see I was operating in a dark room, but it seemed the light my non-ordinary eyes were using was emanating from the atomic level. I had experienced nothing like this in my ordinary body. I went past the full-length mirror again and nothing in my life or previous extraordinary experiences prepared me for what I saw.

Is This How Angels Look?

      I could see my entire naked non-ordinary body!

I did not see myself as transparent, but rather filled with energy that was emanating outwards. I cannot describe how beautiful I appeared, though not just from the colorful scintillating energy patterns that made an unusual aura around me. I mean, without any thoughts of conceit or arrogance, that my face and form were as beautiful as I imagined an angel to be. I wondered,

“Is this how angels appear to people?” Gone were the blemishes, imperfections and asymmetry of my ordinary body. “How is it possible that I look so beautiful?”

I asked myself. It was puzzling, as I normally did not like my appearance. I always thought if I could change this or that about my physical body it would be a major improvement.

      I wondered about the aura. It did not look like the auras depicted in biblical paintings, but was unmistakably an aura of sorts. Now I was facing a greater dilemma, having seen nothing before and now seeing a reflection of my non-ordinary body. This made me even more uncertain of my experience. I wondered if I was dreaming instead of having the most incredible of experiences.

      I pondered why I hadn’t been able to see myself in the mirror previously, but now could. Could it that in this reality, time operated differently? Why was I able to look down and see my non-ordinary body both times regardless of whether I saw myself in the mirror? I wondered, “Was reality simply what we made or chose it to be?” I decided to check my perceptual awareness even further.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

My Non-Ordinary Body Goes For A Night Time Stroll

      I don’t know how long I was posing in front of the mirror but I finally decided to see if I could walk out my trailer into the night like a “normal” person. I went to my front door and tried to open it, but my hand kept passing through the knob. I decided to go right through the door. I walked out into the night. Because of the non-ordinary visual system I was blessed with, the darkness was not a barrier.

      “Here I am outside,” I thought, “and everything is so beautiful.”

I walked the streets of the trailer park. Lights were still on in a few trailers and I could see people were still up watching the late shows. I saw a few silhouettes moving behind the curtains and could hear the sounds of the night with more clarity. It seemed I could hone in on an individual cricket and hunt it down anywhere in the park.

      The colors and energy patterns of the trees, bushes, and grass were stunning. I can’t describe the color of green leaves at night seen only from the light of their atoms.

      As I walked, I felt an odd energy mingle with mine, so turned towards that direction. It was coming from the bats flying and flitting about overhead. It was the energy patterns of the radar pulses the bats were emitting. The pulses were going out, the waves colliding with the bodies of other bats, insects, trees, bushes and buildings.

      During each collision I could see a portion of the pulses return to the bats. When the pulses entered my energy fields, I could feel the pulse waves coalesce with mine, but did not see any of the pulses return.

      I could hear the high pitches emitted by the bats, as well as the snappy flitter of their wings.

      I watched for a while as they feasted in the air on swarms of insects.

A Dog Could Sense Me

      I walked on, going by a neighbor who kept a Doberman pinscher. I had a prejudice against Dobermans since my unpleasant dinner with Mr. Granite ten years prior. I disliked this dog even more. It barked incessantly and everybody in the neighborhood was intimidated by it. Anyone approaching the dog, other than the owner, would get a lunging response from the brute, me included. I walked by the front yard where he was kept. The dog had been lying out by the driveway and was chained, but I didn’t want to get too close to him. Walking by, I noticed he looked in my direction as if he could make something out. I turned to see if something or someone was walking behind me. Nothing was there. He started to whimper and whine, wagging his stubby tail and assuming the position of a puppy trying to please its master. The dog acted as if it wanted lots of petting. I was thrilled, but decided not to go near the dog—just in case.

      I walked further through the park and saw an old guy walking his little poodle around the park. “Great,” I thought, “I’ll finally get a chance to see if a person can see my non-ordinary body.”

      I walked up and his little poodle seemed to tell I was there. He was crouching and wagging his tail while whining with pleasure, acting in the same manner as the Doberman.

Hoping To Be Heard

      The old guy kept saying, “What is it, boy? What is it?” I reached towards the dog and he got more excited, just about quivering into pieces. The man was really perplexed. He said, “What is with you, little fella, I‘ve never seen you act this way.”

      I looked at the old guy and could tell he just loved that little dog. I tried to talk to him, hoping that on some level he might hear, see or at least sense me. Yelling very loudly, I said, “Hello! Can you hear me? Sir! Can you see me?”

      I started to dance around the old guy waving my hands to see if this would get his attention.

      He just stood there, because his dog was acting as if he could sense me, acting like the most excited, happiest puppy imaginable. The dog seemed to be tracking me with his eyes and body. The old guy was perplexed and laughing (though a little worried) at the unusual puppy behavior his old pooch was displaying.

      Going further through the park, I startled a cat that arched its back a bit before coming towards me. It walked around and through me purring like mad. I thought if this isn’t real, I’m having one hellva temporal lobe epileptic seizure.

      I thought I’d try one more thing. I thought that perhaps I should try to touch the old man. But the idea of actually touching him made me pause. For some reason, I initially felt a sort of shyness at the prospect, like touching a girl on her private parts without her permission when she’s passed out.

      I thought, “If I just touch his shoulder, it’ll be okay.”

      I succumbed to my temptation and tried to brush his shoulder with my hand, but it just passed through him.

      It is the oddest thing to see a seemingly solid hand pass right through a seemingly solid shoulder. Both of our energy fields appeared to become excited, the colors and energy wave patterns fluctuated faster as both of our fields of energy coalesced. Despite the change of energy, he did not appear to notice or sense anything. At that instant, I experienced an epiphany or sorts.

      It occurred to me, “Is the old guy and me generating these energy fields, or are we just non-ordinary energy field entities generating our bodies? ”

      Words just don’t do justice to the powerful all consuming epiphany that I had just experienced. I tried to brush the old guys shoulder again, and once again my hand passed through him. The only thing he noticed was his excited pooch. 

      It occurred to me to drop my intellectual goal and to move with only intention, the intention to connect and be one with the old guy. I brushed his shoulder again. This time it was different; I was immediately sorry I had touched him. Then I was glad, but felt mixed emotions.

A Touching Experience

      This time when I touched him, the energy between us felt like the fields of a powerful magnet that is quickly alternating between attractive and repulsive properties. This feeling of magnetic energy was much like the experience with Harry, during the bench press session, when the weight had seemingly floated upward. My hand did not just pass through the old man’s shoulder, it seemed to pass through and then pulse out, while our energy fields interlaced and became much more excited.

      Still, a part of me was glad I had touched him, because at that instant I sensed a part of him that was pure love. In that instant, I received a flood of other emotions, thoughts and memories that would take a lifetime to sort out and explain. The old guy lived a life that had been filled with more sorrow, pain and hardship than most people, yet I sensed that his life had also been richer than most in regards to love given, and received, as well as joyous experiences lived and shared.

      As I said a part of me was glad to have touched him because, at that instant at his core I sensed a part of him that was pure love, like my houseplant, yet there was more to it. I got the sense that the part of him that God manifested and also, but not necessary different, but entirely distinct, the love that was from ‘his’ core.

      On some level, receiving all of this was almost overwhelming, even in my superior state. I’m not sure I could have survived it in my ordinary form. All of that sadness, joy, anger, fear, frustration, loneliness, love, pain, sense of loss was almost more than I could bear. And all this was felt in an instant.

      It occurred to me at that instant that I probably could not survive that in my ordinary body, but was all of this almost unbearable in my non-ordinary form because I received all of it in an instant, or was that the only way I could survive it? This was something I chewed over for many years. 

       Having touched him, I grew sad, because I sensed he was not long for this earth.

      I don’t know why I felt certain of this, as he appeared to be in a better physical condition than most men ten years younger than him. He was able to walk several times a day at a fast pace and often did.

Also, he always seemed to be in a cheerful mood, despite his life. 

      I walked away, out of the trailer park, wanting to go to Valley Forge Park. I don’t know how long I walked, but I finally got there and pondered what I had been experiencing. As I watched the deer in the park doing their nightly feeding, I could tell they saw or sensed me, but did not seem concerned.

Am I Alone?

      It suddenly occurred to me. “Where are all the other people like me who are in their non-ordinary bodies? Where are the angels or dwarfs or any other entities?” I thought of the billions of people teeming on our planet and wondered, “What was the population density of non-ordinary entities on this plane of existence? Is the reason I’m not seeing anyone else is because there are so few people or entities like me? That makes sense. I may have to travel a lot to stumble on others like me. If I come across others, what will we do?” I felt I was impervious to any acts of violence from people in ordinary bodies, but wondered if it also applied to people in their non-ordinary bodies. I felt so filled with power, peace and love, I could not imagine others who felt the same way being capable of violence.

      I wondered again, “Am I alone?”

      I felt very alone without feeling lonely or desolate (it would take me years to fully understand the concept or feeling of loneliness). I thought, “I could go on forever like this, even alone. Still, it would be better, even grand, to meet others like me and share greater possibilities.”

 I considered, “If this is not a dream (I did not believe it to be a dream as this was unlike any dream I had ever experienced; even lucid dreams), can I choose not to go back to my body? If I don’t go back, will my body die or will I simply split from my body while the other me continues to live as before, thereby creating two realities? If my body dies right now, will my non-ordinary body die or will I continue to exist?”

      As I was pondering all of these questions, feeling very powerful and blissful, I wondered, “Is there any more beyond this?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

My Hungry Body Calls Me Back

      As I was standing in the moonless, starless night, surrounded by the feeding deer, another thought came to me with absolute certainty, “I better break the fast.” Somehow I knew my ordinary body needed to start eating again. At that instant, I felt myself zip across the trailer park and, in the blink of an eye, was back in my body, fully alert and feeling smug. I opened my eyes and could not see a damn thing in the pitch-black room.

      My bladder was telling me to trot to the bathroom.

It was to be expected, as I was drinking gallons of water everyday since starting the fast. Luckily, I could get to the bathroom, as I had done it hundreds of times in the past. 

      Afterward, I turned on all the lights in the house and looked on my desk to see where the pencils, pens and crumbled-up papers were. I wanted to see if they had moved. It looked as if they were not where I had placed them earlier in the day, but to tell the truth, I could not be a 100% certain.

I Break The Fast

      I weighed in at 155 pounds at the end of my ten-day fast. I was still on top of the world, but felt as though my body was starting to feed on muscle. I knew it was time to start eating. After ten days, I had to start back slowly:  steamed veggies and fruit. Within a week I was back to eating lots of eggs and salad. Practicing the OBE’s, along with all of the other methods I was using, I started to make phenomenal progress with my weight training.

      Within the month I increased my power lift workout weights by 50 pounds. In the bench press, I went from 225 pounds for twenty-five reps, to 275 pounds. After doing twenty-five reps with 275 pounds, my second set was with 300 pounds for fifteen repetitions.

      From 300 I would go up by ten-pound increments, doing as many repetitions as I could, until I maxed out at 410 pounds for one repetition (while weighing only 165 pounds). At that time, the world’s record for the bench press for lifters in the 165-pound weight class was 427 pounds.

      From years of experience, I know that whatever I can do for one rep, after a high volume workout, is fifty pounds less than I can do if I’m fresh. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Energy Training and Training With Energy Brings Me To A Worlds Record

      During the workout I just described, I don’t want to give the impression that during the workout I was crudely and mindlessly lifting lots of heavy weights around. My mind was entirely involved with every repetition, every set, but not in anyway a conscious intellectual fashion. I used hypnosis and visualization to prepare every level of my mind before I trained and whenever I got the chance. I also did this the occasions that I trained during each rep and set. I often would feel that I felt something akin to my ordinary body emanating my energy fields from the atomic interior of my body and extended beyond my body as I was training. It felt as if these energy fields were drawing on energy from sources all around and using it to go beyond my normal physical performance. With every rep and set throughout this workout the sensations of my energy fields were more intense.

The entire workout, my intellectual part of myself dropped away completely. I did not analyze what was occurring, it simply was.

      I don’t want to give the impression that the workout involved me crudely and mindlessly lifting a lot of heavy weights. My mind was entirely involved with every repetition, every set, but not in a conscious, intellectual fashion. I used hypnosis and visualization to prepare every level of my mind not only before I trained, but also anytime I had the chance. I felt I was emanating energy fields from the atomic interior of my body, allowing me to go beyond my normal physical performance.

      With every set, the feeling became more intense, the intellectual part of me dropped away completely.

I did not analyze what was occurring; it simply was.

      The best way to describe the feeling was that my body started out feeling energized with endorphins but also much more, the feelings grew ever increasingly until I felt that I was both existing and operating halfway between my normal body and my non-ordinary body.

I seemed to fluctuate back and forth a bit and during the course of the workout.

      I felt that my ordinary bit very alert active body would transcend and become or could possibly become permanently superior and forever possess the powers of my non-ordinary body in my everyday life; at least enjoy the abilities halfway between both at a whim. As I benched the 410 pounds easily, my friend Brian A. by chance was knocking loudly on the door. I racked the weight and the ecstatic spell fell away with each loud and insistent knock on the door and with each bellow of my name from Brian. 

      . As I benched the 410 pounds easily, my friend Brian A., by chance, knocked loudly on the door.

I racked the weight and the ecstatic spell fell away with each loud and insistent knock.

      Brian came in and saw the 410 pounds on the rack. He had heard me lifting from outside and said, “Vinny, what are you doing with all of that weight? My God, did you bench that?”

      I told him I had. He was shocked.  When I told him I had done it after my normal training routine, his shock increased tenfold.

      Brian was well aware of my crazy high volume training but hadn’t known how I had been performing.

If he had not come over, I felt I could have kept going.

I did not tell Brian anything of my mind/body experiences. He knew I practiced hypnosis and was strict on my diet, but knew nothing of what I was experiencing. Let’s face it, how do you explain to people in our culture things they are taught to dismiss as fantasy?

    Can you imagine the conversation? “Hey Vinny, what are you up to?”

“Oh not much Brian, I’ve just been leaving my body a few times a week…you know flying here and moving my energy there, the usual stuff.” I’m not sure that would have gone over real well.

      The second time I repeated the workout, the effect was similar, though not nearly as intense. However, I did manage to repeat the performance. I have experienced this phenomenon again over the years. Again, I stopped at 410 pounds because, right as I was ready to lift 420 pounds, my friends Johnny Q. and Dave Burnsy walked into my trailer after a quick knock (John had a key to my place).

John was there in time to watch me do the 410 pounds easily. I tried for the 420 pounds while John spotted me, but I had lost the feeling of magic.

      Sometimes the universe can be very perverse. Johnny Q. reacted the same way Brian had the previous week. He was also stunned to see I had lifted that much weight after a high volume workout. He was ecstatic by my performance.

      He laughed and said, “Way to go, Vinny!”

      Both Johnny and Dave were quick to point out that most NFL football players were not able to bench that much weight. Of course I treated them like I had Brian, thinking it best not to share my non-ordinary experiences. The only friend I did share a few of my experiences with was Jon Lynch, because of his strong philosophical bent (he eventually got a degree in philosophy).

      It occurred to me, as I stood in the room with Johnny and David, that the way I felt, especially during the previous week’s workout, may have been what some people called “The Rapture.”   

CHAPTER THIRTY

Mystical Love Making

      My fine-tuned regiment of perfect eating, lifting, yoga, judo, hypnosis, meditation, and the practice of OBE’s were having a powerful effect on every aspect of my life. Not only did my libido increase dramatically, (I could make love several times a day for hours if I needed to and I often wanted to), but lovemaking took on greater dimensions. Even the women besides Angelina that I regularly made love too noticed a difference.

They mentioned that the sex was much better and it had nothing to do with my technique, which had not improved. Sex seemed to transcend technique.

      I would hear, “I don’t know what it is but it feels more intense, more magical.

      There were many times when I would make love with Angelina or some of the other women I had been running with would go beyond merging as one with them. I would often have the same sensations that I experienced while benching the 410 pounds insofar as my energy fields would make me feel as close to my non-ordinary body while making love.

      The added dimension and ecstatic sensations came not only from our physical bodies intertwining, merging, straining, releasing, and giving, taking, sharing of physical pleasure; and also our energies were coalescing, intertwining, merging and sharing pleasure at the physical, emotional, mental (not intellectual), and on the spiritual or non-ordinary realm. With these women,

I would feel as if I merged with them similarly as with the old man walking his dog, without the negatives.

      There was only the merging of love, joy, bliss, along side of and equal with the blissful, baser animal part within each of us. It was then that I realized that this baser animal part of us should not be confused with anything evil or lower, just baser.

      In this state, orgasms seemed not to be the main objective as it often is when having sex with a woman I was not connected with. It was the icing on the cake. However, I found it to be the most wonderfully pleasurable sensation to experience the release of both physical and non-ordinary orgasm.

      After making love, especially if the lovemaking were at the non-ordinary heights, the likelihood of waking up later in the night and enjoying an OBE was greatly enhanced. During an OBE I loved looking down at our naked and sleeping bodies. Sometimes we were often still holding each other in a loving embrace. Usually the OBE’s were of the remote viewing type when I still felt as if I had a half formed non-ordinary body that lacked the more intense feelings that I had experienced in Cherry Point, and Valley Forge Park. These experiences however were still pleasant.

      I remembered thinking how nice it would be to have any of the women that I felt more than a sexual connection with to be with me out free from their ordinary body. I wondered if they even had the potential capacity to free themselves and then we could intertwine without the limitations of our bodies.

      I also wondered if these experiences were not a manifestation of my brains ability to extrapolate from billions bits of data collected consciously and unconsciously to create a powerfully vivid and seemingly real event that I was now experiencing as I was looking at Angelina. I felt a lot like “Alice in Wonderland”.

Potentials We All Share?

      I believe many of us share these potentials. Of course I believe there are also many benefits from spiritual training, including training for OBE’S. I also emphasize that it is our sexual energy, along with the stimulation of our physical bodies, which helps to promote OBE’s. They make up both sides of the equation.

      I have found this type of training, as well as the experiences that come with it, to be very attractive and exhilarating. I believe it has helped me, a painfully average or less than average Homo Sapien, to perform at world record levels of strength—without the use of steroids.

      The training has allowed me to enjoy lovemaking with an intensity and depth that I never dreamed possible. I’m certain most people would benefit from this type of training and I regret the years I wasted on unnecessary doubts. I could have gone further and farther.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Re-Touching Bases With The Old Guy

      A few weeks after my non-ordinary excursion through the trailer park, I saw the old guy who had been walking with his dog that fateful night. Although I didn’t know his name, I had seen him on a few occasions since that wonderful night.

       We had exchanged pleasantries such as, “It’s a nice day for a walk” or “Wow, can you believe all of this snow?” You know, the usual things people do to show we are interested in each other, at least in a superficial way. I wanted desperately to find out whether he had sensed something during my non-ordinary excursion.

      I found he lived almost at the far end of the trailer park, several streets over. Despite the intensity and realness of my excursion, there was still a part of me that had lingering doubts—I needed to confirm my experience.

      I approached the old fella and yelled out, “Hey there!” 

      He yelled back a jaunty greeting, “How ya doing?” Encouraged I quickly covered the distance between us.

      I said, “Sir, a few weeks ago were you out late at night, around 11:30, walking your dog?” He seemed taken back by this question and adopted a bit of a defensive tone.

      “I might have been,” he said in a quavering voice. “Who wants to know?”

I did not expect this defensiveness and was not certain how I should approach him on the subject.

      I couldn’t very well say, “Hi sir, I was out of my body (and possibly my mind) and decided to take a jaunt around the trailer park in my non-ordinary, naked body and saw you. I kept trying to touch you, no, no, don’t let my being naked alarm you. The question is, sir, did you see or feel my naked non-ordinary body?”

      Desperate to get an answer for the question that had been percolating within me those past two weeks I stammered, “Sir…two weeks ago… I was dreaming…

I mean, I think I was dreaming… that you were on the other side of the trailer park and your dog started to act funny… did you feel like your were being watched?”

      The old man started to look very disturbed. On his face warred the emotions of fear, anger and suspicion. He picked up his dog and started to back away, not wanting to take his eyes off of me. I thought, “Aw shit!!”

      I realized too late that perhaps my fearful query had put him off. I wondered if I had calmly approached him and shared my experience with him if I would still have appeared unstable and terrifying.

      It was now evident that the old man thought I had been watching him while hiding in the middle of the night. Who wouldn’t think that was creepy. I tried to repair the damage I had done.

      I said, trying not to stammer, but failing, “Sir, I don’t mean I was watching you… but, but… was your dog acting funny? Did you feel like you, you… were being watched?”

      I was failing miserably to repair the situation. I was scaring the poor old man and he was becoming very angry.

      I was frustrated because I had wanted to alleviate any doubts regarding my experience. The old guy started scuttling towards the trailer he lived in, still keeping his eyes on me so I couldn’t attack him.

      “You keep away from me,” he said. “I don’t want you talking to me anymore.”

      I felt my heart rip out of my chest. I knew our relationship, as infrequent and superficial as it had been, had gone to a different level. Our friendly jocular hellos were gone forever. I cursed my stupidity.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Trying To Make Amends With The Old Man’s Daughter

      A woman in her fifties came quickly out of the same trailer the old man lived in. The neighbors said she was his eldest daughter. She looked concerned for her father and more than a bit uncertain about me.

      She said, “Dad, are you okay?”

      “I don’t want to talk to him anymore,” he said shaking his head in my direction. She looked over at me and could see the hurt on my face.

      I said, “Let me explain, please, I didn’t mean to scare you!” At this, the woman’s eyebrows rose up. I said, “Ma’am, just let me explain”

      “You get away from me!” the old man yelled again.

The woman said, “Dad, you go into the house and I’ll be right in. I’ll make you your favorite meal. Now get in the house while I talk to this young man.”

      He was on his porch and cried out something inarticulate. I think he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t harm her. His daughter, however, appeared to be a woman who could handle herself despite her age and motherly appearance.

      She looked at me, not unkindly, and asked, “Well, what happened?” I started to rush my explanation. She smiled and patiently said, “Stop, take a deep breath, and tell me slowly.”

      I told her that I had a dream and saw her father walking his dog late at night a few weeks before. In that dream, his dog had been able to see me but he couldn’t.

      I also told her that I had touched him and he seemed to know it had been by someone he couldn’t see, which startled him. After I stopped talking, she looked at me for what seemed like a long time.

      She said, “And what has this got to do with you scaring my father?’

      I felt silly. “I just wanted to know if the night I was dreaming about him walking his dog, he actually was.” She looked at me as if trying to assess my sanity. I looked over her shoulder and saw her father glowering at me through the screen door. I felt I needed to explain further so I said, “I just wanted to know if your dad felt like he was touched by someone invisible or if he felt like someone was watching him.”

      I cringed as I made that last statement. I knew how flaky that sounded.

      She was looking at me with more concern, so I blurted out, “I’m not nuts! It was just a very real dream.” When I look back, I know that it would have been better if I could have clinically explained my experience and theories, but I was not equipped to do that.

      She looked at me with compassion and said, “That was some powerful dream.”

      I agreed with her and told her that I did not want her father mad at me or afraid of me. I told her how much I liked seeing him on his walks with his dog. Finally I told her that it pained me to see how I had upset him. 

      She said, “Don’t take it personal. My father hasn’t been himself these days.”

      Remembering my feeling I had when I touched him, I asked, “What’s wrong with him, is he sick?”

      She said, “Well, the doctors said that physically he is healthy as a horse. They can’t find anything wrong with him except he seems to be losing his memory… he often forgets where he is and sometimes who I am. Just within the past year, he’s become more easily aggravated and suspicious of people. I shouldn’t let him walk the dog by himself, anymore. He has trouble sleeping so he likes to get up in the middle of the night and walk the dog, although I don’t know if he did the night you had your dream,” she smiled as if sharing a joke.          

      “Don’t let his outburst hurt your feelings—he hasn’t been himself for quite awhile. Why just a year ago, nothing would upset him so easily.” The old guy was yelling to his daughter telling her to make me go away. She said, “I have to feed him, you take care.”

She turned away and left. I felt troubled and was now uncertain as to how real my experience had been.

      Years later, shortly after I moved to Oregon, I learned he died of a brain hemorrhage. That was less than a year after my last encounter with him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

My Brother and I In A Three-Some? – I Don’t Think So!

      My Brother James came into the Seven-Eleven shortly after I nearly assaulted a customer.

The customer was a sphincter of a man, who was always rude in the extreme. This day, he came in, gruffly slapped down exact change, and asked for two packs of Marlboro cigarettes. Since ninety-eight percent of people that smoke Marlboros like them in hard packs, I handed him two hard packs.

      His face twisted in contemptuous anger. He screamed and threw the packs viciously on to the counter, bouncing into my stomach and on to the floor. “I wanted soft packs Goddamn it!”

My blood pressure rose so fast, so extreme that I thought my head would explode like a ripe melon in the hot summer sun. At that moment, I was in boot camp again and ready to attack my opponent. My body was thrumming with the twin desires to maim and kill along side with a distant voice in my head telling me that the customer was always right.

      I deftly grabbed two soft packs of Marlboros and I brought my arm back like a professional baseball pitcher and I threw the packs of cigarettes with as much force as I could muster into the center of his chest.

      As they hit his chest, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “There’s your fucking soft packs mother fucker!!”

The packs bounce off his chest with one pack each going into separate directions across the store. His eyes were wide in terror and disbelief that I had failed to acknowledge the ‘customer is always right’ protocol.

      He scrambles quickly after his purchased cigarettes as I lean half way over the counter with my entire body quaking, my synapse screaming to murder this sphincter fuck. It took a Herculean effort to hold myself back. The dark part of me praying that he would attack me for what I had done to him; instead he ran out, red-faced and in terror.

      A co-worker, a local thug who loved to fight, was laughing, “Man, I thought you were going to kill him!”

“God damn it, I wish you would have”, he said with a look of familiar lunacy in his eyes.

      Just then my brother walked in.

      He looked at me knowingly, “I bet you know why that last customer ran out of here in a hurry.”

      “I don’t want to talk about it”, I mumbled, knowing I needed to normalize my blood pressure.

      I introduced my brother to my thuggish co-worker. They smiled at each other, mutually recognizing kindred spirits.

      My brother had matured into an extraordinarily handsome guy. He looked like a mixture of Patrick Swayze, Mathew McConaughey, with the flavor of Italy running through his features.

      He had grown about an inch taller than me, and his body was almost a duplicate of mine, only not as burly. He was more Tanzanian. His and my body had minor differences. My arms were longer, my shoulders a bit broader, rib cage deeper. I was two or three inches taller in the saddle than James.

      However he had two or more inches of length in his thighs than I had, (Our lower legs were exact), giving him that extra inch in stature.

      James also had bigger hands and wrists. He had a mane of curly dirty blond hair and more of my father’s face. It was reputed in the local grapevine that James had also inherited both our father’s and grandfather’s legendary epic endowment. Some people called him a home wreaker.

      James had also grown to become enormously strong for his weight, with coordination and agility couple with the inner fire that he had inherited from our father. This had given him a reputation as a street fighter that was not to be taken lightly. He had in fact kicked the shit out of Miles and some other fearsome people over drug deals gone badly.

      James also took some of my attributes of life-style and took them to levels way too extreme for me at the time. As I had acquire one tattoo when I was in the Marines, and could never decide on another. James liked my tattoo and eventually got several -- not the convict types -- but nice ones. These seemed to be placed strategically about his sinewy body. I wore a pirate’s earring for a short while. He like that and got three of them, one earring in one ear and two of them in his other. James like my Honda motorcycles and even this he took to the next level. He loved Nortons, Harleys, and Triumphs and he love to make them into snapped out looking choppers.

      James was always getting into motorcycle accidents and fights. He was either finding himself in the hospital or putting someone there. He was often involved on the wrong side of the law, breaking into beverage centers in the middle of the night when he and friends would get the whim to have some beer.

      Other times his friends would pull knives on each other and on him when a disagreement popped up during a drug deal gone bad.

      James actually got into a fight with a big guy that he owed money to for drugs that had been fronted to him. James was terrified of the guy and was taking a beating, fighting the entire time to get away and run, until the guy made the mistake of kicking the side of James’s fancy car.

      Just like my dad, James could tolerate a lot, but don’t mess with his fine clothes, his car or bikes, or there would be hell to pay. My brother commenced to kick the shit out of the thug. In fact, James manhandled the guy so soundly, that he soon found himself fighting for his life with the thug’s family. The thug’s elderly mother was clinging to his back beating him with a ball-peen hammer, cracking several of his ribs and the thug’s younger brother doing his best to bite off my brother’s finger.

      James use to hang out with the Warlocks, an outlaw motorcycle gang until a drug deal went bad between them and him. He broke in their clubhouse and stole thousand of dollars of stereo equipment, guns, rifles, shotguns and a really nice old-time World War II leather motorcycle jacket.

      Yes my brother found himself mixed up with some rough people with bad intentions.     

      James was a badass.

      He was almost a cinematic reality of the sexy bad boy. In the vanilla suburbs of King of Prussia, I was considered by many to be a bad-boy. In the neighborhoods of Bridgeport, Conshohocken, Swedeland, Swedsburg and other areas, I was treated with caution by many of the toughs; but by comparison, James made me look like Woody Allen riding around on a bicycle with training wheels. He was glamorous. 

      However, as bad as he was, he still looked up to me, especially when he got into trouble with people that he feared, (Which happened to be all of the people he kicked the shit out of), he would always try to enlist my help to go and kick someone’s ass; just like when we were younger. He would offer to pay me money to do his gorilla work for him. Even though he was tough, he still felt that I was the bigger tougher brother.

It must have been from all those years I had to pound the crap out of him in self-defense, when he came at me with knifes, bats or various garden implements.

      It’s funny. The truth was, that if James and I were to get into an all out fight…I would be in the fight of my life. He was much tougher than he thought… most likely tougher than me.

      James was a sexy badass.

      Just ask many of the beautiful women that would throw themselves at him. He was a sex magnet. When I was at my best looking, I was able to attract my fair share of women, but when James entered the room, it was invariably, “Vinny who?” I am exaggerating of course, but not by that much.

      Yes there were women that prefer me to James and vice versa. There were many who for some inexplicable reason found the thought of having a threesome with both my brother and me extremely exciting. James and I could not count the times that a woman would approach either him or I with the idea that we should get together for a Menasha trio. The numbers seemed legion. As perverse as this seemed to me, I would try to seize an opportunity to have sex (Just one on one) with any of the women that had approached James or me.

      It was ironic, perverse and maddening that many of these women could not be negotiated with to dally with either of us alone. No, the deal was all of nothing. Of course, in my mind this was not going to happen. I am not the kind of guy that likes another man in bed with me; I don’t care how beautiful the woman is. I don’t mind sharing, but not at the same time, and for God’s sake not with my friggen brother!

      James apparently was much more forgiving of socio-sexual norms. 

      As we were in the Seven-Eleven, one of his female flavors of the month came into the store. She was a stunning sexpot that I had seen around Bridgeport. She had a rep as a hot sex-pistol. We knew each other by sight and rep. She starts to drape herself all over my brother, her hands stroking and grabbing in areas that normally are not traveled except in the privacy of one’s room, (Or store cooler).

      My brother had the look and attitude of a sultan that all of this was his just desert.

      She coos, “Hey Laz, you better talk to your brother. He’s gay you know.”

      James’s face flushes a bit and he shifts uncomfortably.

      “Oh, I’m sorry. He does like to fuck women, and he is an great lover, but he fucks around with guys too.”

      “Any port in a storm, Jitterbug”, my dad’s voice whispers in my mind.

James was looking more uncomfortable, but I could tell that he was trying to maintain a cool and aloof façade.

      She bites his ear, grabs his crotch, as she looks me directly in the eye and croons, “I got to get going lover. Be sure to come by later.”

      She looked at me again with what I could swear was a come hither and I will do you also look. “See you around Laz, James has got something to talk to you about.” And she left.

      James and I met after I got off work at a pub called the “Fiddler’s Green” a local Irish pub two doors down from the Seven-Eleven. He seemed like he wanted to get something off his chest.

      He was struggled with the best words to approach me about something as he sipped his beer.

      Finally he said, “I want to talk to you about what Angie said.”

      I thought I knew where he was going. I had heard many of the rumors about my brother sexual proclivities from many people…many of them mutual friends. I heard the rumors about him and Karm, especially when they lived together. I heard about many things that were witnessed or heard second hand.

Some of these people are the most credible people I know. I had heard assertions from some of my bisexual female friends with whom James and I have had sex with on more than a few occasions.

      I wanted to beat him to the punch, to save him humiliation, to let him know that no matter what his sexual orientation was, that I still loved him. I wanted to tell him that even though I really didn’t understand why people traveled into those sexual territories, he was still my brother, and I loved him. More important, I had grown to like and respect him.

      “James, I don’t really care about Angie saying that you’re gay.”

      He flushed, “I don’t know where you heard that, he stuttered, maybe because I lived with Karm, and he slams his beer down to wash away embarrassment. He was clearly embarrassed that his big brother had heard these rumors and he was clearly worried about how I would think of him.

      “Don’t worry, James, I don’t give a shit. It’s your business.”

      Not agreeing with me, not confirming or denying any of it, James moves away from that subject obliquely.

      “I wanted to talk to you about what Angie wants to do with the both of us”, he said.

      “You don’t mean…?”

      “Yes, he laughed, the usual.” “It’s crazy, isn’t it Laz?”

He was referring to the bizarre phenomena of the numerous women that wanted to have sex with both of us at the same time.

      He said, “Not just her that wants to do it, but her friend Jodie wants us both brother.”

      “Well, I offered, Jodie is a hot little number. I have been lusting for her for more than a few years. I must say that I have had a thing for Angie for years also, you lucky bastard.”

      James nodded, “Let me tell you Laz, Angie is hot and she’s hot for you. But the deal is, she won’t have sex with you unless it’s with the both of us at the same time.”

      “So what do you care, you’re having sex with her regularly right”, I asked?

      James eyes glow with excitement, “Yeah I am, but her friend Jodie wants to do the both of us, and she made it very clear that it has to be either both of us at once or nothing.”

      I was feeling queasy and frustrated, “Sorry James, you know how I feel about this shit. I don’t mind trading off with you, but honestly, the thought of you next to me, with any woman give me the heebie geebies.”

      James was frustrated at my reticence, “Hey Laz, any port in a storm, Jitterbug. Come on, don’t be such a puss. You’re too squeamish.”

      “James, can’t you see that this is wrong? You’re my brother for God sakes”

      “Come on Laz, It’s not like you and I are going to have sex.”

      “Honestly James, the thought of any guy’s naked body next to mine, gay or not is a turn off for me.

      “It ain’t going to happen. Just out of curiosity, why do you think that we are getting approached by all of these women that want to do us both? I mean it would make more sense, if these women wanted to have sex with us regardless of a threesome or not. It’s down right weird that many of them want the all or nothing full meal deal. It’s downright sadistic.”

      “Hell, I pondered, I don’t hear about any of our friends getting these kind of offers.

      James laughed and redoubled his arguments, “I don’t know big brother. All the more reason to not look a gift horse in the mouth and take advantage of the gifts that God bestows upon us. Besides, what would our father think if he knew that we passed up these opportunities?”

      “Concerning this, I don’t give a fuck what he would think. I ain’t doing it and that’s all I got to say.”

      “Big brother,” he implored dramatically in a singsong tune.

      “Forget it,” I said with finality!

      Over the years since, I have had much time to think about this incident, and other incidents like it. Besides my brother, I have had two other male friends where the phenomena of certain women wanting to have sex with both of us in an all or nothing deal. One friend was Harry Babel, and the other I would not meet until I moved to Oregon.

      Both of these guys were hypersexual and lusty. Both were sexual magnets to the female of the species. They had also experienced the frustration of their loins wanting to have sex with women that found them and me attractive.

Both of them experienced some of these sexually desirable women refusing to have sex with either of us, but instead promise us out of this world sexual pleasure if either Harry and I, or my other friend and I to have sex with them.

      They also tried vigorously to convince me that it would be in all of our best interest to go for the threesomes.

To the best of my knowledge, neither of these guys is bi-sexual, or deviant in anyway, or at least not too much.

      I have only done the threesome thing a handful of times with Harry, and while I was not so turned off enough that I was unable to perform admirably; I must say, having him in the same bed with me and the woman, put a major damper on what would have otherwise been a mind-blowing experience.       

      Eventually, these few scenarios caused a bit of bad blood between Harry and I because two of the women wanted a monogamous relationship with me. A friend of mine who is a therapist claims that men who really get off on the two men on one woman threesomes are in reality trying to satiate homo-erotic fantasies in a somewhat accept manner, that perhaps they are even bi-sexual regardless if they know it or not.

      I really am not sure about all that. In fact, I would imagine that if true, it is probably true only some of the time. To me, it does not matter what makes a person’s boat float, as long as I and other people are not harmed or adversely affected.

      At any rate, I have had to question many of my female friends from the old neighborhood about this all or nothing deal. They told me, it was because James and I had a major reputation as being totally uninhibited sex hounds. We had a reputation for being guys who could keep a secret (Me especially), and we had a reputation for being inexhaustible lovers whose main goal was to please the woman we were with, by almost any means possible.

      According to my female friends, James and I had more experience than most of the men in the neighborhood for guys our age, but even compared to men that also had lots of experience, we were different than many of the guys in our Italian-Irish Catholic area that looked at women with an attitude of the Madonna-Whore complex.

      These women knew that regardless of how down and dirty, how nasty they wanted sex to be, James and I would not denigrate them. They knew that with us, it was all fun and games.

      Also, unlike James and I, a lot of guys in the neighborhood who had reps for being good lovers, were constrained to go to far out of the norm because of their tight affiliations with their family and friends in the community. Word of what people did often got out and this put a damper on what a few of these guys may have otherwise been tempted to do.

      James and I did not have these constraints.

      In addition, the attraction according to my friends was that James and I did have a bit of the forbidden bad boy fruit about us that drove a lot of parents to fits of apoplexy. That, many of the women could not resist.

      In my brothers case, years later, he tried to share with me, to explain to me his sexual orientation, after it came out that he had put a major sexual hit on a mutual friend. Before, he could explain, or try to make it right with me, I saved him the embarrassment and assured him that I had suspected for years and I that I did not care as long as he was healthy and happy. I told him what I told him that day in Fiddler’s Green, that I loved him, liked him and respected him.

      When I search back in my mind, back into the past, I toil with the whys and what-for(s). Why did my brother become even a more extreme sexual being than me, why was he so over the top in everything he did. Why did he have the values he had. Why did he at times feel the desire, perhaps even the necessity to have sex with men? Was he trying to be just like our father, that any port in a storm was the desired mantra of the day?

This is not to imply that my dad is bi-sexual, he is not.

      Instead what I am looking at is the machinations that have me what I am, James what he was, and my sister what she is. Each of us has suffered the affects of a broken home. Each of us have especially suffered the affects of an absent uncaring father, (or not caring in a way that is healthy and needed). Each of us suffered the life of latchkey kids, depriving us of strong parental influence.

      While it is true that countless kids in the world grew up and are growing up with home lives far worse, even unspeakably horrifying, -- and because of this, I weep for them more than I could ever weep for myself and my siblings; However, I am still plagued by my pasts to better understand the whys and what-for(s), to make sense of it all, to help other parents and kids to understand how best to avoid pitfalls, particularly the ones that are truly unnecessary.

      In the book “Iron John”, the author has grabbed the horns of this very same dilemma, which is the dynamics between parents and children, and he delves more deeply into the dynamics of father-son relationships.

      In the presence of a father with strong personality that give mixed signals of love and outright material and emotional neglect, the children, particularly the sons are affected deeply, profoundly.  The author has noted that when this occurs, the son(s) will often take one of the two most likely strategies to deal with this schizophrenic situation in which they have been thrust into.

      For example, a son may choose to mimic, to become their father entirely as in the case of my brother.

Another son may choose to be the antithesis of the father, fighting to be a different personality entirely. That was my course. At least that was the course I struggled to travel, despite my genetic predispositions.

      Yes, James had fought and struggled mightily to become just like dear ole dad. He strove to become a party animal like our dad. He worked hard to acquire the materials and luxuries that my dad felt was so important to have in life as a measure of one’s worth.

      Along with his strong genetic leanings of hyper-sexuality, he became the lusty womanizer that my dad was.

He studiously copied my dad’s bad boy persona, putting lots of emphasis on his clothes, vehicles, and jewelry.

He copied my dads gestures, body language, facial expressions, and even parroted all of my dad’s pet sayings and cliques.

      To my dad’s credit, he is not just a bundle of bad examples; my brother had many good qualities to copy also. Like my dad, James developed a strong work ethic. He, like my dad was the model of responsible, and ambitious employee. My dad is in many ways hyper-intelligent with strong mathematic and mechanical skills; James picked those up from my dad.

      Also like my dad, James loved to tell stories, entertain people, and was very generous with people he choice to hang out with.

      With regards to my brothers sexual proclivities that my father does not share; I think that James picked that up from earlier imprinting. People can say what they will about being born gay as if it is determined by the stars or a past life or what have you; they can talk about genetic propensity, or even how friendly or hostile the womb of one’s mother was. My opinion?

      I tend to lean towards the school of thought that physical and emotional environment plays as heavily in the equation as the other stuff, if not more. I also believe that what we think and do, -- that is, our internal dialogue and how we consciously carry out our actions in the world may very well have the most to do with what we become. Cause and effect.

      From what I can piece together from my brother, our friends and family, I think James’s early sexual imprinting along with the pain of missing a strong fraternal presence was the key to these sexual proclivities.

I remember James telling me that he ‘caught’ that kid “Pat”, (The kid that wanted me to touch his woody) and a friend of James’s, named Jimmy, sucking each other off.  He told me he caught them several times. I had the distinct impression that he went out of his way to catch them in the act, just like he like to try and catch me masturbating. I am not sure, but I always had the sneaking suspicion that James and Jimmy would often get together to do more that simply play with their toy soldiers.

      Years later, when James moved in with Karm , and even before, -- Karm was an adult male who paid a lot of attention to James. He would always be there to hear of his angst. Karm showed James that he was interested in him and that he cared about him. Since Karm was bi-sexual, (Something that my parents and I did not know till years later), and because Karm was the kind of man that would put the hit on other men or women if he could, particularly if he was high.

      I think he introduced and imprinted this behavior to James. Karm was after all a surrogate father figure.

Looking back, Karm perhaps was a pedophile, at least with teenage boys, he certainly was bisexual that lean more towards men than women.

      I suppose he followed my fathers creed of “Any port in a storm” also.

      At any rate, my brother’s closest friends, my mother and I did not realize the extent of his involvement with Karm with regards to drugs and other aberrant behavior. I believe that my brother’s formative years were a source of the deep depression that he habitually suffered from.

I believe it was this and his anxieties that caused him to medicate himself with drugs, alcohol and sex.

      I believed that it’s what caused him to involve himself in a wide range of risky behaviors and activities. It is the reason that he and Don would sometimes play a variation of Russian Roulette, the variation where a person points the revolver at you and pulls the trigger, and each takes turns spinning the cylinder, pointing the gun and the other and pulling the trigger.

All of these things tormented my brother for years.

      Why didn’t I suffer the same problems with substance abuse or aberrant behavior? Simple. I am a different person, with my own unique battles with dependencies and aberrant behaviors. As I said,

      I struggled hard, despite my genetic leanings to choose a different path than my father and brother. Though I am not bisexual, nor have I had the same problems with drugs as James, I have had my own demons. I still have a one or two left. I have struggled mightily to be the opposite of my dad…and much of the time I have failed miserably.

      The author of Iron John addresses many of these issues and he talks about the other son, the one who tries to break away cleanly. I think in some cases it is best to find a middle ground. One day I hope to reach this goal. 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

May 3^rd, 1995 – Scuba Diving In Bonaire – Out Of This World

      This was a great time. I went to Bonaire with the Eugene Skin Diving Club. The Griz, Ron an instructor from the shop and I shared a Condo right at the docks, which was right of the reef. The air stayed a breezy and dry eight-two degrees and the water stayed eighty-two degrees during the day and not much cooler at night.

      Before I went I told Neo I would be going with the group. Imagine my surprise and joy to hear him say he would take time off to visit a few friends in Aruba and Bonaire and that he and I could enjoy diving a few times together. He told me he would be a day or two behind me, but that we would hook up.

      All of us settled into the condos and Griz and I went out to explore the island. The island was literally a desert island with mostly cactuses, and desert foliage. The island was once a slave colony for the main purpose of collecting salt from the ocean and it was said they could tell when the North Eastern United States had a bad winter depending on the amount of salt they had to export. During this shameful past of human history the colonialist kept the slaves in little adobe huts clustered together by the ocean. The huts were the size of small sheds with nothing for a floor except the sand of the beach.

      The huts held eight to twelve people which would not have been large enough to allow all of the slaves to lay prone and sleep. Even if they all leaned their backs against the walls it would have been deadly crowded. I mused that perhaps if certain people in Postal management had their way, they would keep and house us this way.

      The people of Bonaire were handsome and many of them were of African and Dutch mix which made for a very attractive blend. I found out that I was able to enjoy a level of energy that my scuba mates did not possess. Normally when during my healthy months, when I was out of the plant or on the dock I was use to working up to twelve hours a night, doing a few hours a day on construction, and two hours a day working out. Now on vacation, I had nothing to do but scuba dive. There were not even any workout facilities to vent my physical hyper activeness. I also attributed my added vigor to the mind/body work I had been doing with Neo.

      The basic diving itinerary offered by our dive club on this trip was a morning boat dive, and an evening boat dive, and later in the week we had a night time boat dive planned. Any other diving had to be done by your own imitative. This was easy, for those of us that had the energy. We could rent a car and try different dive spots or we could stay at the resort and simply walk off the dock where the water was often three feet in depth. From the dock you could swim down the decline that started off gently but once you got to fifty or sixty feet in depth in some spots the reef became a wall, -- not quite vertical but a severe decline in many spots that would drop to another two hundred and fifty feet in depth. During the day the visibility was so good you could see the bottom, from the surface.

      There was so much underwater foliage and fauna it was almost too good to be true. Everywhere you reached were fishes of all kinds, eels, even leopard and large moray eels, sea horses, eagle rays, sea turtles, little octopuses, barracudas. Sometimes I would find myself in a swirling whirlwind of what seemed like millions of fish in a tightly group school, and yet none of the fish would accidentally bump into me. Some of the colors of the fish were almost neon, not the soft pastel neon of my one experience, but the colors were brighter, bolder, darker, stark neon, of blue, yellow and green.

      In the many areas I dived their were fields of elk horn coral, brain coral, fan coral, fire coral…coral of all sorts. There were many types of sea weed and kelp and amongst all of these fields of plants and fields of coral, the animals, lived, hunted, slept and mated. I found that all of my scuba mates usually had enough energy to do the boat dives, and perhaps a third dive in between. I would get up at dawn and dive, then I would do the morning boat dive, then a midday dive, and then an afternoon boat dive, then an evening dive and I would finish it off with a night dive. I spent six to eight hours in the water diving. My body was good at conserving air, which is strange because my lung capacity was no longer what it was in my youth due to the years of asthma at work. Perhaps, this forced my body to utilize less oxygen while I did more than most people. Who knows?

      At first I had to hunt down and approach strangers to allow me to follow them, because it is a rule that divers should never dive alone. Eventually many of these people would avoid me, because they were getting tired of diving, --so I started to dive alone. I decided to be as safe as possible, I had to find how deep I could dive and come back up without a weight belt, a buoyancy control vest, or a tank of air. I experimented using just my mask and flippers. I was uncertain where to start because I had a tough time holding my breath for more than a minute and a half. I would dive down to ten feet, and go to the surface, and I would try progressively deeper dives. Finally I found that I could dive down to forty feet and swim up to the surface without much difficulty.

      I knew that with a weight belt, a buoyancy control vest and a full tank of air I could safely go down to eighty feet and if my air gave out at eighty feet, I could dump the belt fill up the vest, swim like hell and I would scream towards the surface.

Even if my vest didn’t work, the buoyancy from my suit and lungs would bring me up. Also, I had gotten to the mind set that I just had to remember how many times at night I felt I was suffocating and resigned myself of potentially dying in my sleep.

      The first night Griz and I went out diving was both scary and thrilling. We stepped off from the docks and followed the gradual descent. When we got down to eighty feet, we swam perpendicular to the coral wall. I have been night diving many times off the shores of the Pugent sound area so the darkness did not bother me. We had our flashlights and our experience. My fear was that we were in the tropics at night and everyone knows that is when sharks loved to feed. That was the myth I had heard and believed.

      Thinking of this myth I compulsively kept shining my lights into the murky depths so that I would not be caught unaware of the shark that was going to feed on me.

      To my right was the coral wall and to my left was the Griz. I shined my light into the depths and I saw a gigantic prehistoric silvery body coming towards us. I felt a sudden jolt of fear squeeze my guts, and just as suddenly the beast swam away. I thought that it was shy of the light, so of course every few minutes I was looking into the depths with my flashlight until I saw the beast again. Each time I shined the light on it would swim away, but each time I saw it…it managed to be much closer to Griz and me. This concerned me big time. I flashed my light on the beast again and I shook the Griz to get his attention and I made as much noise as I could while I pointed in the direction of the big prehistoric body, mmm! mmmm! I said and pointed. Griz just had a jaded look and shook his head as if to say, “Yeah, so what?”

      I was pretty pissed off by Griz’s machismo. I thought to myself, “Screw him, if he’s not concerned, then I’m not going to show him how concerned I am.” “Besides, I thought, he is between me and the shark and I can swim faster than him.” I felt a little guilty for thinking this way, but the Griz did tend to be a show off sometimes. I also tried to remember that my brother Damian a scuba instructor had told me that sharks attacking humans was rare, even if they were around you. Remembering that helped a little. All of a sudden the Griz who had been to my left the entire time started making panicking noises and was thrashing around wildly. My heart leaped up into my throat. I turned towards the Griz expecting to see just his bloody body parts floating by. Instead I saw that the Griz was fully intact but his eyes were as large as saucers and seemed to fill up his entire mask. He was going “mmm, blub, blub, mmm!”

I signaled to him that both of us needed to ascend to the surface. On the surface Griz was blubbering fear and telling me about the huge shark brushing up against him.

      I said, “I pointed the shark to you earlier and you did not seem concerned.”

      He said, “I thought you were pointing about how deep the water was.” “I didn’t see the shark.”

      He said, “I was swimming along and then I felt a body bump against me and I thought it was another dive group that had caught up to us.” “I looked over and I was face to face with this huge eye looking right next to me.”

“That’s when I freaked.”

      I said, “We need to get to the bottom as fast as possible so that the shark does not grab our legs while we tread…we are sitting ducks on the surface.” “We get to the bottom and that will make it harder for the shark to get us, if it comes close take your octopus and spray air at the sand.” “That will make a cloud cover for us and maybe get some sand in its gills.”

We got back to the dock and shared our scary adventure with the rest of the scuba divers and the natives. They laughed their guts out and it turned out that the joke was on us. Instead seeing a shark we had met either Fred or his mate Freda the giant sturgeons. They liked to accompany night divers and use the divers light to target fish. They were not swimming away from fear of the light, no, they were able to see the fish at the end of the beam of light and off they would zip. We became good friends with Fred and Freda.

      In the middle of the week Neo had tracked me down by the dock. He asked if I wanted to go on a few dives with him and of course I was thrilled to go with him. Neo was much more at home in the water than me. He had perfect control of his buoyancy and he moved his body with the utmost efficiency. Sometimes he appeared to move his body like an eel, sometimes a little like a dolphin, and sometimes he reminded me of the sea horses.

      He controlled his breathing and buoyancy so well that there was no wasted effort. He could swim with his head pointed straight down and in that position he could swim backwards and forwards or twirl to the left or right.

      He could do the same thing with his head pointed straight up and his feet straight down. and go forwards and backwards and twirl to the left or right. In that position he reminded me of a sea horse. I was clumsy by comparison, then again, compared to my friends at the dive club I was so clumsy that the running joke was that I was plowing for corn, because I would skid harshly into the silt. I did have more energy and stamina than any member of the club and I was better than most with my air usage. However, compared to Neo I sucked my air up in no time flat. Each time it was me that had to signal to go back to the dock or to some point down the coast. My tank would be almost empty and Neo barely used his air.  

      I asked Neo if he could teach me to be as efficient in movement as he was. I asked him how he managed to rise above the coral without looking. (This was important to achieve because whenever you touched the coral that spot would die). The object was to get as close to the coral so you could enjoy looking at it without touching it.

      Neo said, “We will have to get you back into the water to give you some sensitivity training, but first we have to lay some ground rules.”

      I said, “Okay, let me have it.”

      Neo said, “This will be easier for you more than most people because the same principles that you apply to your weight training applies.” “You know that when you are training that it is important to minimize or stop the verbal dialogue in your head?”

      I said, “Yes, I know what you mean…the same applies to scuba.”

      Neo said, “Yeah, and you remember the times when you extend yourself, your energy beyond your ordinary body, while still conscious and intertwining it with the energy outside of you?”

      I said, “Yes, I know what you mean.”

      Neo said, “You must use this same principle when you are in the water.” “When you are diving try to remember that it is only your mind that tells you that you are separate from the outside environment…If your remember that your atoms are in flow with the other atoms and energy of the water, of the kinetic energy of the current, you will become one with the water.”

Neo had me go through many of his yoga and breathing exercises and focusing on the energy flowing through the chakras, the meridians, and the 72, 000 nadis.”

      He said, “Okay, now lets get into the water, and I won’t tell you what to expect…I want you to open your mind and tell me what you feel when it is over.”

      We went back to get our tanks refilled and while we waited we lunched on a very light salad and lots of fresh water. As we went up to buffet to get a bit more salad, we notice that the salad had been out, and Neo quietly asked the beautiful women who were working the buffet if he could trouble them to refresh what we wanted. These young gals were actually flirting with him! They were looking mesmerized with their pupils dilated and their feminine bodies swayed gently back and forth as if they were like a cobra in front of a snake charmer. He started to communicate with them in a different language. They put their hands to their mouths as they giggled. He smiled and it sounded like he thanked them in that language. We went back to the table and I asked him what the language was he had conversed with them in.

      Neo said, “Aw that’s I know a bit of Dutch mate.”

      I said, it sounded like you are very fluent.”

      He said, “I can make me way around the red light district in Amsterdam I suppose.”

The women came over both of them fussing to serve Neo what he had asked for; I was just an after thought, a friend of Neo’s.

      After the light meal, we went to the dock, picked up our tanks, suited up and just before we went into the water Neo said, “Just clear your mind and be one with all that is around you.”

      I laughed and said, “Okay Yoda.”

      We went into the water and I relaxed and cleared my mind. I tried to be both brain stem and higher non-thought, and zoned out of the thoughts and internal dialogue. What I related now is how I analyzed it with my intellect after the fact. I just moved along with the current and I extended myself to be empathetic with the coral, with the fish. I focused on my breath and I imagined without the use of thoughts that my atoms blended in between the atoms of the water. I imagined and felt that I was part of the water that washed over the coral. I would get an inch from the coral and I would look straight down and I ignored what was in front of me. Without effort or thought and without the use of my buoyancy control device I would rise intuitively just above the coral. In my ordinary intellectual state, I would have crashed into the coral that rose up in front of me, but in this new state not only did my atoms feel perfectly blended amongst the atoms of the ocean, but my body’s energy fields felt extended well beyond it’s atoms that were blended with the ocean, --the best I could described is that my energy fields acted as a type of reconnaissance mechanism that allowed me to sense the bio-energy of the living coral and even the non-living terrain.

     Without looking I sensed just how much I need to breathe in to allow my body to rise just above the obstacles and when to breathe out in exactly the right amount to lower myself to stay just above the terrain.

I was felling very blissed and as I looked around in my underwater world I felt a thrill of the sight I now saw. I could see the energy fields of all of the coral, the seaweed, and the fish that swam around. The energy fields of the flora and fauna extended out as I have seen mine when in a non-ordinary state.

A part of my mind was wondering if I was not feeling the effects of nitrogen narcosis, but then another part of my mind said, that if I was experiencing “Rapture of the deep” then I must have done this many times above water. I decided to not let my skepticism ruin the experience and I moved deeper into a mesmerized state. 

      I lost all sense of time, yet a feeling was tugging at me that it was time to leave the water. Just as I thought that Neo came by my side and pointed at my dive computer that it was time to leave the water unless we wanted to risk the bends. Neo seemed to know without looking at a dive computer, although he did eventually purchase one.

Neo and I got out of the water and I felt totally bliss out and relaxed. I looked at my air gauge and I only used half of the air that I normally used at that depth.

I told Neo of my experience of what I thought were the energy fields that I felt and then I thought I saw.

      Neo said, “Ah yes, you seem to perceive Lumina natura quite often.”

      I said, “What the hell is Lumina natura, is that Latin or something?”

      Neo patiently said, “It is Latin and it means roughly ‘the light of the spirit infusing nature’.”

      We went later in the day, and during this dive using the same technique I learned to swim upside down in a vertical position backwards and forwards just like Neo and right side up in a vertical position like a sea horse backwards and forwards just like Neo. Everyone at the Eugene Skin Diving Club, especially Griz was surprised that their “corn plower” now had finesse and skill. I now was able to control my buoyancy better than most divers who had been diving for years, thanks to Neo’s guidance.

      Neo wanted to do a night dive with me. We talked about being one with God and the magnificence of the Universe and all of his “Mansions with their many rooms.” We again talked the potentiality of some people’s egos surviving the death of the body, egos well-integrated with the soul….a soul that would be dualistic and one with God.

We talked about the Tibetan’s belief that most people and/or their egos do not survive the body for a meaningful amount of time but instead their unbalanced egos survive in a disjointed state that experience different levels of pleasure and pain, heaven or hell. We talked about how the Tibetans figured out what people feel after death.

This information came from a channel who supposedly talked to the dead… the writings of people who claimed to have psychic access to the akashic records, -- people who had near death experiences, and from the dreams states of the Tibetans that practiced dream yoga.

      I asked Neo, “I wonder what a person feels when they die…what they feel as they are absorbed right into the collective or universal conscious or unconscious.” I mused, “Does a person who languishes in pleasure and pain eventually go into and feel the same as a person who just straight out dies and have no stops along the way.”

      Neo said, “I think once an ego, soul, or the collective of both from one individual that does not survive the body in a meaningful extended way passes into the collective, God, or what have you probably feels the same.”

      Neo said, “I believe I know what it feels like to lose my identity and be absorbed into unconscious mind of God, of love.”

      I looked at Neo with interest and yes, skepticism.

      I asked, “How would you know that?” Before he could answer, I asked, “I would like to experience that without death of this body.”

      Neo said, “That often requires that you actually lose fear of death of this body.” “I think I can guide you to see what it is like.” “Are you interested?”

      In my best Sylvester Stallone voice I said, “Yo, absolutely!”

      We spent the afternoon stretching and doing the deadman’s pose and he instructed me on focusing on my energies moving completely unobstructed though my body. At 10:00 p.m. we went to the dock and put on our scuba equipment. We went off the dock into the water and followed the slope that descended to the reef wall. We went to a depth of eighty feet. Prior to the dive, Neo instructed me to breathe a certain rhythm or count of in and out. He also had me imagine the several tons of water that was crushing me, but not crushing me because the atoms of the water were intertwined with my atoms. He wanted me to focus on the insignificance of my physical form and my identity of my self. Neo stopped me at the depth and we floated that way for fifteen minutes. I focused on the tons of water and that I was just an insignificant speck several hundred yards away from the dock and as if Neo could sense when I reach my peak state, he reached over and touched my solar plexus and the crown of my head simultaneously just like he had in the past with me and with Gladys. A jolt went through my body and it was if I could feel my pupils dilate out to the horizon of my irises. I saw a flood of colors through the interior of my head and a vibratory feeling of an out of the body experience came over me.

      I felt my non-ordinary body slip out of my ordinary body, and I was able to look down and see by body floating next to Neo who still had one hand on my solar plexus and the other on the crown of my head. I looked around at the coral and the fish and I looked up at the full moon and I felt as if I was drawn by a desire to speed towards it. As I was speeding towards the moon I looked down at Neo’s and my body and we/they appeared to be getting smaller as my non-ordinary body created more distance away, -- towards the moon. My non-ordinary body came out of the water and I could no longer see my body or Neo, but I could now see the lapping waves glimmering from the light of the moon. I continued to soar and as I went further up into the air I could see the hustling and bustling people on the dock and some of my friends from the scuba club sitting on the dock at the far right end having their favorite late night alcoholic beverages.

      I continued to soar and as I did I could look past the condos of the resort and behind it I saw the road that went from the driveway of the resort and went left and right to the opposing sides of the island and the other roads that branched off from this main road. I could see the cars with their headlights going to and from throughout the island. I could see the other buildings on the island and some of the buildings still shown light through windows hear and there from people still up or who had carelessly left the lights on before going to bed. I continued to soar at what seemed an increasingly faster rate and now the island was small and finally it was so small and I could see the coast of Venezuela, and then I could see what appeared to be the expanding land of Central and South America. I looked toward the big bright full moon that appeared so clear in the sky.

      I was still zipping along and I felt that my non-ordinary body’s acceleration was increasing, but I did not feel any corresponding wind or chill. Finally I could see the entire perimeter of the earth. I looked back up at the moon and it appeared as if I was half way between the moon and the earth. The moon looked very close and I was able to see the craters and so called dead seas. I looked back at the earth and I could see clouds, bad weather patterns, land masses, and I could see the lights from the huge megatropolus and a light that was like the corona from our sun on the perimeter of the earth. I suppose that was because the sun was exactly on the other side of the earth and out of my sight.

      I felt awe and bliss. The awe and the bliss expanded in intensity until it became everything and then my consciousness exploded and dispersed and was absorbed into the collective to be one with God. The explosion came with a brilliance of light and then no vision of the earth, nor the moon, nor anything, nor any thought or normal emotion. (Now bear in mind a lot of this is fleshed out with thoughts after the fact so that I can communicate this with you, and yes it is a pathetic and impoverish, but it is the best I can do to share what I experienced. I felt like an eternity had gone by). I was nothing and I was one with everything, and I felt utter joy, love and one with the creator, with the source. …

      My consciousness of my ordinary body slowly came back and the fabric of this reality came back as light slowly getting brighter into the dark void, and then I could see colors and forms as in the shreds of the fabric or nothingness was rending and the shreds of the familiar fabric slowly assembling itself. Then it was as if the fabric healed its own tears and I could see that Neo was holding me steady as we were floating at eighty feet down. He was no longer holding my solar plexus or my head. I looked at him full in the face and he had a smile of complete knowledge of what I had done. I looked at my watch and I saw that only five minutes had gone by. It had felt like an hour or more. We slowly swam back to shore.

I felt so much joy, so much bliss and I was so relaxed, I had no desire to talk to anyone, not even Neo. I did not want to hear anyone and thankfully Neo kept silent. He led me to my room and I showered up, dried off and hit the hay. I slept a dreamless sleep.

      The morning I woke up I felt refresh, recharged and powerful. I went down to the dock to have a light meal and one of the two women who had flirted with Neo hand me an envelope. It was from Neo. I opened it and the note said,

“Sorry I couldn’t stay the rest of the week with you mate, but something had come up and I had to rush of to South America.” “It might be two weeks to two months before I see you back in the states, depending on how this project I have goes.” “I had a great time divind with you.”

“You have a good day mate.”

Your friend, --- Neo

        Neo was always running off somewhere for this or that project or adventure. He was still mysterious.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Neo, Me and The Mosquitoes

      The day before my flight back to Oregon, my Dad & I spent most of the day together just chatting while he drank & smoked. Towards evening he fades & had to go lay down. Neo called the house to touch bases with me & wondered if I wanted to hang out a bit. He explained why he had not been able to make it for Jet Skiing, & since he knew it was the last night that I would be in Florida, he suggested that we go to a river he liked to do some night fishing.

      I met him at the diner that was down the street from my Dad’s house right by the main drag in Destin. We spent some time to chow down & chat. Neo told me that he was going to hang out to finish up with personal issues for a few more days & then he would go back to Eugene, back to his other responsibilities.

      After dinner we went to a truck that Neo had rented & true to our ritual we kept quiet during the drive. Neo took us inland & the trip took an hour to an hour & a half. We unloaded the bamboo fishing rods. Neo had a primitive set up that I had actually used as a kid when I went fishing.

      He brought along a few long thick flexible bamboo poles with a long line hanging off the far end. Several feet down the line was a floating bobber that would be pulled under water if a fish started to nibble on the baits. Lower down the line was a lead weight & a few hooks where the worms were placed.

      Neo set up a camp fire in record time. We were fishing in one of the inter-coastal waterways that run throughout Florida. The one that we were fishing in was quiet & slow moving. The fish were plentiful & we had a great time pulling out the fish whenever one would bite by whipping backwards over our head the bamboo pole which flung the fish right on to the bank. I felt like a kid again back in North Carolina fishing for food.

      After we had pulled in fair number of fish, Neo gutted & cleaned them quickly & put them in a cooler of ice. He said that he had friends that would enjoy the bulk of what we caught. He put four large ones aside & started to grill them over the fire after he added & basted a mixture of olive oil & herbs. His secret seven herbs & spices I would joke with him.

      The mosquito population was out full force while we fished that night. As we sat close to the fire the mosquitoes were especially murderous. As inured as I was to swarms of mosquitoes from my younger years of living in North Carolina & Paris Island, I found this night on the edge of being unbearable.

I mentioned my discomfort to Neo & I also noted that he did not seem to be bothered in the least from the swarms. He tossed me some repellent for me to apply if I wanted to. I was grateful for the repellent like a drowning man grateful for a life jacket.

      The repellent helped noticeably, but I was still being feast on by many of the more persistent & tougher “Skeeters” as Neo liked to call them. None of them went for Neo and he claimed that he had not needed the repellent but that he was left alone because of an herb or spice that he had added to his food for a week prior to his trip to Florida. I have to admit that I cannot remember the name of that herb.

      I was starting to whine & expressed my displeasure that God would see fit to create such pest as mosquitoes.

      Neo smiled as we were both finishing up on our delicious meal of fish.

      As he was swallowing the last bite of his fish he said, “It’s all part of the web of life mate.” “We eat the fish, the mosquitoes feed on our blood, the fish along with the bats feed on the mosquitoes & the entire web of life flows in an interconnected cycle.” “Don’t get mad about it…don’t take it personal.”

      I sighed, “I know, I know…I suppose that since you put it like that, it would be help to take the bite off the discomfort if I could really walk a mile in the shoes of a mosquitoes if you will.”

      Neo laughed & slapped his thigh, “Yer really full of Freudisms, & unconscious puns tonight.”

      Confused I asked, “What do you mean?”

      “Never mind.” “Are you really in earnest about ‘walking a mile in a mosquitoes shoes’?”

      “Well…that is just an expression about an impossible hypothetical,” I reflected.

      “Is it just hypothetical,” Neo mused? “Have you forgotten the camping trip we took when we saw the running & spawning of the salmon?”

      “I groaned, “Yes I remember that trip, & I remember what I told you what I had imagined.” “I must emphasize the word imagined.”

      Neo laughed again, “I know…you have trouble believing that it was real…as if imagination is always separate from what is real,” he mocks me with his fingers making the quote signs.

      “Yes…it did feel real,” I mocked back by making quote signs.

      Neo suggested, “Why don’t you try doing that again?”

      “You mean imagine being a salmon again,” I asked?

      Neo mocked sighing impatience, “Ya can be so dense Vinny.” He gestured his hand all around, “Ya can imagine what it is like to be the mosquitoes that bug you…no pun intended,” he blurted out when he saw me ready to jump on what he said.

      He said, “Do you want to try?”

      Intrigued I agreed, “Sure.” “Why not?”

      He directed me to get into the most comfortable position that helped me to facilitate a non-ordinary experience. For me to get in to a position other than laying flat on my back I have to sit back in chair or against a tree. I just am not able to get into any yoga position such as the lotus or the kneeling position that Neo was so adept at doing. So I did just that, I sat back against a tree with my knees bent & folded out froggy style with the bottoms of my feet joined together.

      This allowed me to be supported & also to it gave me a place for my hands to set on my knees.

      I relaxed my body with just the bare minimal tension in my body to keep my posture. I worked on slowing my heart & breathing. My usual method is to prepare myself with my desire & intent. After my eyes were closed I heard Neo thumping with one of his drums that he used to put himself in a trance. The vibrations from the drum were not so loud as to distract me, but it was loud enough to feel them against & seemingly sink into my body…into my skull.

      After a period of time…the length of which I cannot begin guess. I started to feel a familiar vibratory response that almost always accompanies an OBE or other non-ordinary experiences. Unfortunately one sort of distraction or another would interrupt any sort of completion. Each time I got close, something would distract me.

      Finally, Neo stopped his drumming, & in low melodious tones he said, “Keep your eyes closed…stay relaxed… breath & try not to think.” “I will give you some help.” “Don’t be alarmed or startled.”

      He gently put both of his hands at the same time on two separate areas of my body…the crown of my head & my solar plexus.” I felt unusual warmth coming from his hands, more than what was to be expected from normal body heat radiation. The warmth started to expand throughout my abdomen & my head. He kept his hands on those areas, & I started to feel familiar vibratory sensations in every atom of my body. It reached the levels of frequency that I had each time before the distractions disrupted my own endeavors.

      A golden light started to form in the interior of my head. This of course did not alarm me since I have experience this more than a few occasions in my life preceding many non-ordinary experiences. Then I reached a level & strength of frequency that superseded what I had experience prior to Neo’s assistance.

The frequency was becoming increasingly louder in the interior of my head in tandem to the golden light increasing in brightness that was not uncomfortable. Both of these events were happening in tandem with the increasing strength of the vibratory experience.

      Neo eased his hands off my body & this I barely perceived since the strength of the brightness of light, loudness of sound & the feelings of vibratory frequency almost made other perceptions null & void.

In the back drop of my perceptions I heard & felt the vibrations of Neo’s drum beating cascading against my body before sinking into my body & entraining down to & along with the atoms of my body individually & collectively.

      Suddenly I felt & heard a crackling. My non-ordinary self disengaged from my ordinary body. Now from here I have to fill in my thoughts & feelings of what I experienced during the entire event. I had to do this after the fact. I have to do this because this experience was devoid of my normal consciousness & thoughts. My intellect evaporated. I became nothing but an array & collection of primal sensations of sight, color, textures, feelings & urges.

      Next I was feeling the wind & I felt that I was whirling around at high speed without me having any control. I saw chaotic images of the moon, the sky, trees, leaves, and the river soaring up at me. Then I saw the flickering of the campfire & I saw Neo beating his drum & me leaning against the tree!

      I could feel as if I was in a body of sorts; a body that I had no control over. I felt that I was along for a ride on an unpredictable scary speeding diving soaring erratic vehicle. I could feel high rush of warm air, the pulling resistance of large volume of air against straining fast & flitting limbs, (Wings?).

      High pitch screams coming from an area that feels like a neck; the same screams coming back like an echo from a canyon & instantly moving away from another flying body which seemed like I would crash into. The next scream coming back from the creature whose brain I was riding was bringing sensations of frequencies not unlike the drum cascading back on to the body that was flying, against the area that I felt was large ears. Suddenly the body I was riding moved quickly & I tasted soft crunchy chalky wings & goo sliding down a mouth filled with saliva. I felt intense pleasure mingled with intense driving hunger. My vision I was now experiencing was far superior to my normal vision. The high speed change of imagery, constant nonstop high-pitched screaming was on a certain level overwhelming, suddenly the body I was riding flitted in an area of several giant bats & it seemed as if the body nearly collided into them, but instead spun down close to the fire & I looked into the face of Neo who seemed to look right at me as I was speeding closer. The image of his face quickly flitted out of the range of what I saw, for a split second I saw me still leaning against the tree, my eyes closed; another crunching of wings & legs, a thrill of pleasure. Then I was over the river speeding towards a water bug barely stealing it away from a fish.

      Suddenly…my vision changed & how my body had felt in the air also felt different. The instant before I was enjoying superior vision, now my vision was blurry, indistinct & I saw what I now realize was thousands of repeated or identical images. I seemed to be able to detect movements all around me, even better than a moment before. I felt light. I felt air hitting my body in a different way. I felt lighter & the speed of my aerial movements was much slower, less erratic, less terrifying. My vision or the creature I was riding vision may have been blurrier than the previous creature I had been riding, even blurrier than my normal vision; my new vision may have had thousands of identical frames of images side by side, one over the other in my entire field of vision. I seemed to be able to see further in every direction. It was now disturbing that I could see that I was in what appeared to be a swarm of mosquitoes. Not just any mosquitoes, but giant mosquitoes that appeared to be as big as me.

      While I was riding this new creature, I could no longer hear Neo’s drumming, or the previous high pitch screeching. I could now feel strong assaults of vibrations against the body I was riding. I could feel what I think was Neo’s drumming. I could feel what I think was the screeching of the bats. I could feel vibrations of many (Sounds?). To my left & right I could see the bats snatching & chomping down on the giant mosquitoes all around me. The bats that appeared to be giants before were now especially gigantic. They appeared to be the size of gigantic high speed, high flying elephants.

      As the body I was riding felt light & pushed harder by the air currents. The giant bats zipping by so fast caused what is best described as powerful undertows of air causing the body that I had no control over to lose its own control. A few times I felt the sliding impact & hair of a giant bat’s body brush against the body I was riding.

      The body of the creature I was riding went lower & was moving closer to Neo & my own normal body by the tree. I could see both Neo & me at the same time, only Neo was framed in thousands of identical images on one side & I was framed in thousands of identical images on the other side. The input that I was sharing with my ride, the visuals, and the sensations of thousands of vibrations cascading against (Our) body, the unexplainable primitive urgings that was driving it away from Neo & moving towards me was always on the brink of overwhelming me to the point of insanity.

      My ride was all urge & intent that even now I can not explain or define. It was odd to be moving closer & closer to my own body that I could see blurred but in thousands of frames becoming so gigantic until the image became too blurry to see the entirety of me. Now the vehicle I was riding I could see a section of my gigantic forearm & the hairs on the arm of my ordinary body appear to be trees bent in every direction forested all around the vehicle I was in. I now felt appendages like six (Feet?) that I was standing on. I could feel the muscles & skin move underneath making the terrain unstable. An overpowering urge & then I felt a part of (Us?) plunge deeply into the skin of my ordinary body. A rush of mindless indescribable pleasure quivered throughout both the creature & me as thick viscous blood pumped into (Our?) interior, the body stretches almost beyond endurance from the blood.

      Suddenly, I felt I was in two places at once. It was a feeling similar to what I had felt in Cherry Point, N.C. almost twenty years prior. I felt the sensation of itching & burning while in my ride & in my ordinary body.

      In my multi-framed vision I saw a quick blur of movement eclipse the world around my vision, startling (Us?) at a very basic primitive level. The next instant I felt the briefest crushing of weight & I was jolted back into my ordinary body, my heart beating like a trip hammer, my breathing harsh & ragged. The world looked normal again. I glanced down at my right hand that that was covering a slight burning itch on my left forearm.

I lifted my hand off & underneath was the blood bloated body of a mosquito that I had crushed.

      I looked around me with a new sense of clarity & wonder. I saw the bats feeding on moths & mosquitoes & other insects. The fish in the river coming to the water’s surface to grab the water bugs, the swarms of mosquitoes searching for food with their endless driving hunger, I looked at Neo who had quit beating the drum who knew when, smiling at me. I was aware more that anytime in my life the entire web of life that flowed in its wondrous interconnected cycle.

      Neo whispered, “How ya doen mate.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Krishnamurti died – February 18^th, 1986, in Ojai, California

      I was visiting Neo in late February. I was let in by one of his members who told me that Neo was in the reading room. I came in and saw Neo reading a letter that had been sent to him. I glanced down at the desk and noticed that the envelope which the letter had come in was from Ojai California. He seemed to be in a contemplative mood, and a little sad or wistful. I asked him if he was okay and he told me that the letter he was reading was from a friend of his from California telling him that his friend and mentor Krishnamurit had died earlier in the month. Neo told me that Krishnamurit was an extraordinary thinker and that he would miss him greatly. I asked Neo if Krishnamurit was well known since I had never heard of him. Neo took me to his quarters to show me a picture of Krishnamurti and lent me one of his books. I thought Krishnamurti was a very striking looking man throughout his life, even as an old man. From my readings I found that one of his many famous admirers was the late great Bruce Lee. I had a chance to reflect again on all of the people that Neo had gone out of his way to become associated with. He had a lot of mentors. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Neo Warns Me About Jeb

        The first few years that I work for the Postal Service I was meeting a few people that had taking an interest in weightlifting. I started to train with one of my future business partners by the name of Jeb Galoot. Jeb is big tall and very muscular. He is an extraordinary athlete and a good basketball player. He is also very competitive and frustrated that he was not allowed to join competitive sports when he was growing up.

      Jeb was ambitions which I liked and he knew that I was the same. Before I met him I had invested in real estate and he heard that I was interested in going further. He had a severe financial handicap. From a previous divorce he lost his shirt and had to file for bankruptcy.

      I was developing feelings of respect, admiration and even affection for Jeb. He was laconic and had a plodding by deep intelligence. On the surface he seemed gentle and shy to the bone. This surface persona was not the entire Jeb he was a Jekyll and Hyde type of guy. I started to hear accounts when the Hyde personality dominated. First I hear about this from my co-workers then I heard about this dark side of Jeb's from Neo.

      In the early years I have seen this dark side Jeb only when he was competing in basketball or any other sports. I had wanted Neo to meet my friends from work. Neo was not big on hanging out with people that he did not know or have opportunity to observe before interacting with them. For me to be included in his life was a fluke. If it had not been for the gym and the opportunity that the gym afforded him the luxury of observing me over time, we never would have become friends. I told Neo that all of my friends from work were going to play basketball under the Washington Street Bridge. I asked him if he would meet me down by the bridge so that he could hang out and teach me some chess moves.

      True to form I ran behind schedule and did not get to the basketball court until the game was over everyone was gone…even Neo.

      Neo had brought the kids down to the courts so that they could study in the nice weather. As he waited for me he got an opportunity to watch and overhear my coworkers on and around the courts. He got an eyeful of one of my future business partners. Evidently according to Neo, Jeb was not a good team player. Neo said that Jeb was a ball hog. He simply would not pass the ball regardless how much he was crowded. If he could not make the basket, he blamed his teammates for not guarded him properly. If someone else on his team managed to have the ball he constantly made noises that they should pass the ball to him. If they failed to make the basked, he would bitch, saying that they should have passed to him.

      Neo said Jeb was quick to call a foul at the slightest accidental brush, especially if it happened as he was making a shot. The most disturbing thing is that Jeb had no compunctions about running over anyone that stood in his way regardless how long and firmly the person on the other team had been situated in his position.

      I fellow workmate had been run over more than a few times by Jeb and Jeb had the nerve to yell foul. Finally Biscotti planted himself well in advance to Jeb reaching him. Jebs two hundred and sixty pound body crashed with purposeful intent into Biscotti’s one hundred and sixty pound body. Biscotti flew backwards and landed on his ass and back. The back of his head hit the pavement hard with a resounding crack. Because he had intentionally fouled Biscotti, everyone on both teams starting yelling at Jeb. They pointed out that he was dangerous to play with. Jeb just stubbornly set his face and ignored the pleas and concerns of his of all his co-workers.

      Evidently Phoenix yells to Jeb that he was chronically and intentionally hurting other people in a game that was suppose to be semi-casual and friendly. Jeb could not be swayed to say he was sorry or to cease his behavior. Eventually Jeb's co-workers refuse to invite him to basketball games.

      In a nutshell Neo told me that he thought that people who displayed the degree of competitive that Jeb had were dangerous to get into business relationships. He also told me that if he had to judge Jeb as a potential business partner, he would be the type of guy that if he felt he had the whip hand he would use it. He felt that Jeb would try to control every aspect of a business partnership, by the use of various manipulations. and then if problems occurred he would be quick to blame the partner just as he blamed his teammates for not passing the ball or guarding him well.

      Some of my coworkers felt the same way. I chose to ignore the warnings since I felt that sports and life were separate and discrete acts, with one having nothing to do with the other. Neo would prove to be prophetic.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I Meet Antonio Badass and Dr. Hawkeye Feelgood Again At Neo’s Place

        I went to visit Neo at his fortress & much to my surprise & pleasure I got a chance to see two of Neo’s best friends from Los Angeles, Dr. Hawkeye Feelgood & Antonio Badass.

      For those of you who missed my earlier description Dr. Hawkeye did not look like Hawkeye Pierce of the movie “M.A.S.H.” I called him this because his wit, demeanor & intelligence reminded me of the character played by the actor Alan Alda. Besides those qualities he was a surgeon. With the exception of his thinning scalp having less hair Dr. Feelgood had not aged since I had last seen him nine years ago. In fact in some ways he appeared to be younger & more vigorous. He was about six foot three & weighed about a lanky one hundred & eighty pounds. He wore reading glasses over a long sharp nose with which warm hazel eyes peered with amusement & compassion. Most people would say that he was a little homely in appearance & yet he had a compelling way about him. At first appearance he would seem to most people as if he was weak & clumsy. He was neither. Despite his gangly arms & legs I have observed Dr. Hawkeye lifting weights & he was capable of lifting very heavy weights.

      Antonio Badass was Hispanic American. born & raised in the barrios of L.A. Antonio was once a gang member in his youth & eventually he became a EMT & then a police officer who’s specialty was helping the youth & gang members in his spare time. I called him Antonio Badass because to me he looked like the love child of Antonio Bandaras & the Actor Edward James Olmos. He had thick glossy black hair with tight waves. He had smoldering obsidian eyes & heavy brows, a fine nose & a squarer face than Antonio Bandaras has. He had medium brown skin, which made his strong white teeth look more startling when he smiled. He was about two inches taller than me with broad shoulders, a deep chest, flat stomach & slim hips. He really loved to lift weights & so he was built like a strong bodybuilder.

      He reminded me of Edward Olmos because it was evident that in his youth he had acne so bad that his face was still heavily pocked & it was the only thing that marred his otherwise perfect features.  Like Olmos he sometimes had an edge to him. He seemed to be carrying a secret pain or sadness.

      He had not changed in nine years except perhaps his face seemed less pocked marked…a little smoother.

I had an opportunity to watch the Antonio & Dr. Feelgood practice an odd martial art that I had never seen before. They seem to move around fluidly like dancers. Sometimes Dr. Feelgood & Antonio worked with each other while Neo watched intently as a student trying to grasp all of the little nuances of what they were doing.

      “No doubt Neo will pick it up pretty quick like he does everything,” I thought.

 To me it looked like Dr. Feelgood & Antonio were equally skilled as they whirled around each other like dervishes. Every now & then I noticed that one or the other would use Neo to attack, to hone their skills & to teach Neo.

      To Neo’s credit he did seem to fall & roll in a very expert manner. I knew that if it had been me I would not have fared very well.

      “It looks like all those years of stretching, dance & yoga have paid off a little for him” I mused.

Sometimes Dr. Feelgood would have Neo & Antonio do an attack, other times Antonio would have Dr. Feelgood & Neo attack him. Most of the time that Antonio or Hawkeye would work with Neo individually, they would go through repeated practicing of slow & deliberate movements that would increase in speed & vigor with every third attempt. I thought that it was nice that Antonio & Hawkeye were taking the time & patience to help Neo to learn.

      When they finished up Neo told me that the three of them were going to another room to meditate & I good make myself at home in his gym. I lifted with a few of his students who decided they needed to take a break from their mental efforts.

      After I finished my workout, I went looking for Neo & his friends I opened up the door (Without knocking) that he normally used for meditation to see if they were there. I looked in quietly and squinted my eyes to focus into the dim interior. Neo had only a few incense candles burning & a strange melody was lightly…almost perceptively permeating the room 

      I saw the three of them still with their eyes closed breathing slowly, deeply in certain prescribed patterns that Neo put me threw on occasion. I saw something that made me snap my head back to do a double take. I thought I saw a glow around them. When I looked at them directly it disappeared.

      “A trick of the lighting, or my imagination,” I thought.

      As I shook my head at my faulty perception, I slowly turned back away & as I did so, in my visual periphery I saw the glow. I looked back directly again…nothing. I turned away slowly…& there was that glow around each of them. I tried this several times & then I turned to see if this affect would happen on the opposite visual periphery. It did! When I squinted my eyes, the glow around them was better seen, unless I squinted too much.

Each of them seemed to have an aura or energy field glowing & extending beyond their physical body. The main corona was just a few inches past the exterior & I could see finer filaments of energy fluctuate & extend a bit & then recede.

      I thought that the flickering lights from the candles were the cause of this trick of perception that I saw.

Trick of perception or not…I noticed that Dr. Hawkeye’s body energy seemed to glow more intensely than Antonio’s & his fields fluctuated with more vigor & seemed to stretch out further. The colors in the corona of his field seem more intense, not so much that you could not see through the fluctuating bands of color. I could see through the colors as anyone could see the brightest & richest rainbow.

      For some reason, Neo’s energy field, (If that was what it truly was), was many times brighter. The corona of his field of energy appears to extend much farther, the colors more vibrant, & the filaments of energy seemed to fluctuate & extend many times further & with more vigor.

      Their eyes were closed the entire time I had observed them & I was so quiet during my observations I felt smug that I would have made a good ninja or assassin or some such shit.

      Finally, I thought that perhaps I should leave them to their meditations so I turned to leave.

      Neo calls out, “Vinny, don’t leave.” “Where going to make dinner & you’re welcome to join us.”

      I turned back around to look Neo in the eye as I would accept his invitation for a free meal…naturally.”

The three of them were still in their lotus position & now their eyes were open. I was disturbed to see that the energy fields that I had so confidently saw were gone. I turned this way & that to see if I could get a glimpse in my peripheral vision. I squinted & turned, until Neo laughed & said, “What are you doing?” “You look like a wallaby fidgeting on a hot rock.”

      Hawkeye & Antonio both laugh.

Feeling silly & not wanting to appear sillier I simply said, “Ahh…nothing, just checking the lighting in here is all.”       

      More laughing from the three of them. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if they new what I had been checking.   

CHAPTER THIRTY

Dinner Was Unbelievable

        Neo, Antonio & Dr. Hawkeye organized the kids to help them to prepare the supper. Neo had a rule with his students. They had to prepare their own meals. Often he would assign them to rotate turns for them to make supper for the others. Neo kept the twelve kids in two groups of six. Sometimes however they all joined in.

      Dr. Hawkeye looked over at Neo as he gestured his hand in the direction of the two groups of boys, “Hey Skipper, I see that you still like to use the Seal Team Six protocol.

      My head snapped over at Neo, “Skipper?” “Seal Team Six protocol,” I privately wondered what that was all about?

      Neo simply smiled at Antonio & Hawkeye & then he glances at the twelve kids & he slyly rubs his big forefinger in front & over his lips. To me it looked like a signal to his friends to watch what they said around the kids.

      Meals were prepared with the consideration that a few of the boys were strict vegetarians. A kid that I will call Hajji for example came from a very wealthy family in India & since he was a strict Hindu, he could not eat meat or any animal by-product.

      The food that Neo demanded that the kids used was organic. All fruits & vegetables harvested from people that did not use chemical fertilizers, unnatural chemical pesticides. The source of animal proteins was from animals that were not raised on hormones, anti-biotics & no preservatives or additives were used in the meats, poultry or fish. The animals were raised either free range or in quarters that were unlike the factory pig, chicken or veal factories.

      Neo believed in hunting, but he did not believe in the mistreating of animals by keeping them tightly confined in their own filth, shooting them up with hormones & anti-biotics. He believed that even the slaughter of animals should be do as quickly & as un-expectantly as possible so that the animals did not dump & over abundance of adrenaline & other hormones of fear & depression.

      He rarely stocked beef, but preferred instead to provide elk, deer, & bison for most of the red meats.

Neo & his friends directed the kids to make up a dinner that was mostly raw vegetables, fruits & nuts. A portion of the vegetables were lightly stir-fried or cooked, especially bitter greens. Uncooked vegetables were put into a salad mix. Each serving had a modest size portion of animal protein.

      I pointed out that the way that they were eating was not too dissimilar to how my own mother mostly provide for us. I also mentioned that I was surprised that for devote yoga practitioners they were not shy about having meat.

      Dr. Hawkeye leaned back as he smiled & rubbed his belly, “Yeah, well some people such as Hajji here don’t eat meat because of his religious beliefs.” “Thank God he doesn’t try to make us feel guilty.” “Some of us feel that all life has energy & intelligence & that we all are involved in the cycle of life, feeding or eating something to sustain us.”

      Antonio was shaking his head in agreement as he continued to chew his food with gusto.

      He looks over at me, “If you notice the bulk of our food is raw vegetable & fruits.” “The raw vegetables keep too much sugar from the fruit to dump into our system.” “Instead sugar is modified & pick up slowly from the body.” “All of this roughage also helps to keep the body from absorbing too much fat into the body.” “The oils that we put on the food are used by the body in the amounts it needs & no more.”

      I pointed at the modest size bison steak, “That portion is much smaller than what most lifters or athletes I know would eat.”

      Neo said, “Most people that get a lot of raw food can get away with eating less meat.” “There are many enzymes & phytochemicals that augment & amplify the animal protein that you take in; thereby helping with the phenomena that less can be better under certain conditions.” “Everyone is different of course, & they need to attend to their differences.”

      Dr. Hawkeye pointed to Hajji & a few other kids & said, “Their bodies are different that Neo’s or yours.” “They come from a culture that for thousands of years has evolved to handle much higher amounts of starchy carbohydrates & fruit with less meat or fat.” “On the other hand some of Neo’s relatives have spent thousands of years evolving on a diet that is high in fibrous content, lower in starches & high in protein with moderate fat.”

      He looked pointedly at me, “The people of your Mediterranean background have spent years evolving to a diet that is high in fibrous vegetables, moderate to light in fruit, moderate to high levels of lean meat, poultry & fish…especially fish & game.” “Clearly the Mediterranean’s do better on a much higher intake of animal protein than Hajji’s or Shoji’s people in Japan.” “Mediterranean people indulge in very high fat intake, mainly olive oil, & contrary to most people’s belief, not too high in the pastas.” “It is the Italian-Americans that eat lots of pasta, which is why many of them get fat as they get older.”

      I looked at Hawkeye & Antonio as I laughed, “Shit, & I thought only Neo was a regular Mr. Science.”

Everyone chuckled at Neo’s propensity of indulging in scientific litanies.

      “If raw food is so superior…why do you even to cook some of the greens or the same stuff you cook,” I asked?

      “Hajji raised his hand & jumped up & down like an eager student looking to show off, “Let me explain, let me explain!”

      He was intentionally being cute of course & Neo went along with his joking & said, “Tell him Hajji.”

      Hajji’s British education show through with his musical voice speaking in clipped sentences, “The reason why some food is cooked & other food is raw Vinny, is because light cooking releases & makes more accessible many nutrients & chemicals that raw food will not provide.” “We eat many of these same foods raw, because even cooking can destroy other nutrients & phytochemicals that are available raw.”

      I looked at the time & noticed that I had to go. I gave everyone my thanks for both the nourishment & the education.

      Before leaving Antonio & Dr. Hawkeye promised me that they would be coming up from L.A. to help Neo now & then with the school & to simply visit. They assured me that even if Neo was out of town I was welcome to hang out with them.

      They were great guys.

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