Once and Again

He experienced love as pure light and sexual ecstasy as the esoteric state of non-duality, the cosmic dance of the dynamic male principle with receptive female insight.  When their bodies parted, they lay down side by side on the soft, sandy floor, still looking into each other's eyes.  They were surrounded by a halo a warm, golden light pulsating with the rhythm of their breath.  Through non verbal transmission he 'heard' Shakti Devi say:

"With this initiation you have been given the empowerment of sexual integration.  Male and female forces need not be competitive in order to shape their world.  They can both be balanced through the understanding of the tantric path which transforms negativities into wisdom.  When prajna, the female principle of vision is recognized as equal in power and sacredness to upaya, the active male principle, humankind will regain its natural state of illuminated knowledge.

You will be an enlightened King, guiding your people toward a spirituality free of superstitions, without neglecting their material needs.  You will govern through insight instead of rules, understanding that women are equal to men, and protecting the Earth instead of plundering her." When she stopped the telephatic communication, Siddhartha felt himself drifting into a sensuous dream where feelings and emotions had the colors of a rainbow.

*****

 “There’s nothing here,” she said to herself after what seemed a very long time.  “There’s nothing to it.  How long am I going to stay here with less and less air to breathe.  And how long before I get thirsty?”

There was a very subtle change in the atmosphere around her and suddenly, she knew she was no longer alone.  It was not really a presence she sensed, but something intensely alien and evil was there with her, within the confines of the narrow, cold sarcophagus.  Silently, a shadow darker than the dense blackness around her seemed to take shape just above her face.  She closed her eyes tightly while a wave of terror made her body tense up and her mind go blank.  She was unable to remember any of the protective Words of Power.  She felt nothing but a wild and primitive urge to escape and survive.  Involuntarily, her body tried to curl up into a ball but there was no room to move inside the hard stone coffin.

 “I am entombed,” she said to herself and the thought echoed loudly in the hollows of her brain.  “There’s no place to go, no one to help me.  I have to face whatever is here with me now, or die of fright.”

Her eyes, wide-open in the darkness, couldn’t discern anything but a kind of bluish mist.  The threatening shadow was gone and with it the sense of fear.  She started to relax again, but then a thought pushed itself to the forefront of her consciousness: “I’m alive, but not for long.  Soon there will be no air left to breathe.”