Gaia Awakening

Invitation to Planetary Tantra

The German poet Novalis, iconic genius of the Romantic Movement, wrote: "When we dream that we are dreaming, we awake in the dream." In this aphoristic remark, Novalis defined the phenomenon of lucid dreaming. About sixty-five years after Novalis' death, a French aristocrat published the first book giving an extensive account of experiments with lucid dreaming: that is, dreams in which the dreamer awakens in the course of the dream, either due to a preset signal or intention, or spontaneously. Since the 1960s, lucid dreaming has become the subject of many seminars and guidebooks. It was raised the level of high magic in the serial fables of Carlos Castaneda who introduced an entire generation to lucid dreaming, considered as a shamanic technique.

"Gaia Awakening" is the signal that introduces an entirely new dimension to metahistory.org. Everything that will be taught and proposed on this site in the future entails a single revelation: how Gaia awakens. The framework for the new orientation was set years ago in a passage titled "Invoking the Muse" in Sharing the Gaia Mythos. There I proposed "an adventure in mythmaking", taking its direction from the Gnostic narrative of Sophia, the fallen goddess. That myth is a coherent "vision story" of the origin and evolution of the earth, unlike any other myth on record. If there is a single and supreme myth able to guide the human species, this is it, as far as I can tell.

Now the myth continues, and takes on a different look. Rather than being a mere artifact from the past, the vision story of Gaia-Sophia presents an experimental trajectory into the future. From being a mythopoetic exercise—beautiful and inspiring, perhaps, but more or less fictive and subjective—it morphs dynamically and goes interactive. With the conversion of this site, I will be able to fulfil its original purpose, "to invite a future myth about being human," in a way that I could not have imagined when the site was initiated six years ago.

"Gaia Awakening" is the invitation to participate in a unique event that encompasses the entire planet. This event has been widely discussed in terms of an immanent "planetary shift" and a possible mass escalation to higher awareness for the human species. We'll see about that, for there is still way too much ambiguity in the definition of the shift, and the concept is over-developed to the point of meaning everything and nothing at once. The approach to this shift on metahistory.org is simple and explicit: this site now moves from a mythopoetic view to direct experiential and ritual involvement with the animating presence of this earth. The invitation to this sublime adventure pivots wildly between two distinct questions:

Does the planetary consciousness awaken from sleep, as one wakes up in the morning to begin the day?

Or does Gaia awaken while she is still dreaming?

Gnostic Vision

As far as I know, this choice of questions has not been articulated in just this way, so far. The debate over a possible awakening of humanity and the earth itself in 2012, even a reorientation of the earth to the galactic center, does not include this particular syntax, using lucid dreaming as a metaphor for the anticipated shift. But I do not propose it merely as a metaphor. With the suggestion of a "planetary lucid dream," something entirely new enters the discussion about the coming shift. Not just a new way to work the discussion, but a new experience to discuss.

But first of all, it must be asked: How do I determine that Gaia, the living planet, is asleep? Consider this synopsis of Gnostic cosmology:

The telestai, "those who are aimed," were seers of the ancient Mysteries who taught an elaborate myth about a cosmic deity (Aeon) called Sophia. In their cosmological vision, Sophia was a goddess in the galactic center (Pleroma) who fell into enmeshment with a planetary system in the galactic limbs. "The world we inhabit came to be as it is due to a mistake," says one Gnostic text (The Gospel of Philip). This "mistake" turns out to be the occasion for a unique experiment in novelty with the human species (Anthropos) as the primary agent in the experiment. Sophia, the feminine divinity, had a prevision of human potential so enthralling that her passion for it pulled her away from the galactic center where Aeons normally abide. The story of Sophia is unique due to her involvement in the serial animation of the species she, a cosmic deity, emanates. In the usual course of cosmic affairs, Aeons do not become enmeshed —"personally involved," if you will—in their imaginative projections. Sophia did.

The Aeon Sophia surged away from the galactic center in a huge plume of Organic Light, the primary substance of the Aeonic divinities in the Pleroma, the galactic core. Sophia's impact in the galactic limbs rotating around the core was immense and anomalous. It generated an inorganic species of locust-type entities in elementary matter: the Archons. They fabricate the planetary system exclusive of the sun, moon, and earth. The sun, formed by an ecstatic explosion in an interstellar gas cloud (Orion Nebula, M 42), provides a turbine-like vortex around which the Archontic planetary system organizes itself and stabilizes. This happens before the earth and moon are formed. Sophia herself morphs into the planet earth as her torrential currents of Organic Light (her "primary substance body") densify and acquire tangible and sentient properties. The Organic Light literally curdles due to the absorption of elementary matter, and the Aeon Sophia materializes into a planet. The moon is expelled from the earth as a condensed remnant of her divine luminosity. It is like a pearl Sophia produces out of the grind of her oyster-like process of materialization. Once formed, the planet earth is captured in the Archontic system of celestial mechanics, but it does not originate with that system.

In Gnostic planetary myth, Sophia is the name for the animating spirit of the earth before it became a material planet. The Mystery seers saw in the material and sensorial elements of the biosphere the life-processes and emotions of the goddess Sophia. It is she who dreams the earth and all that lives upon it. Today we call the living planet Gaia. Gaia-Sophia is the term I propose for these conjoined aspects: the immaterial pre-planetary Aeon, a torrent of Organic Light originating in the galactic center, and the Aeon morphed into the material planet sheathed with the biosphere. In other words, the primary substance body (Sophia) and the planetary body (Gaia) of the same cosmic entity. Gaia comes first in the hyphenated term because we encounter the planet first, through the natural evidence of our senses. Only by a visionary act of heightened perception do we come to realize how the physical planet is the dream-object of a cosmic, super-planetary presence.

Sophia Asleep

When we sleep we may dream or not. Dreamless sleep is less common than dream-filled sleep. Telestic myth is explicit about the state of consciousness of Sophia: the planetary goddess dreams our world in a sleep-like condition. Her sleep is not exactly like human sleep: she is, after all, a superhuman, divine being. And her dreaming is not merely like human dreaming, either. For the Aeon, sleep is trance-like absorption in the imaginative projection of a planetary world, a private vision which so enthralled Sophia that it induced her "fall." Her awareness in sleep operates many levels beyond our wakefulness, of course, but in one key respect it resembles human dreaming. Relative to her own dimension of awareness as an Aeon, sleep is a state in which she, the cosmic dreamer, is not conatively engaged with her physical body, the earth. The operative word here is conative.

Conation is psychological lingo for the connection of knowledge and affect to behavior, enabling a subject to understand "why" it acts as it does, hence to direct its own actions in a consistent and purposeful way. Conation is "the personal, intentional, planful, deliberate, goal-oriented, or striving component of motivation, the proactive (as opposed to reactive or habitual) aspect of behavior. It is closely associated with the concept of volition, defined as the use of will, or the freedom to make choices about what to do. It is absolutely critical if an individual is to successfully engage in self-direction and self-regulation."

For Sophia to act conatively, she would either have to wake up from sleep or pass into a lucid dream while still asleep. Telestic myth teaches that the Aeon Sophia is asleep and dreaming. If she can have a lucid dream, the question is, What happens on the planet when she does? And how is humanity affected?

The planet earth is the materialized dream of the Aeon Sophia, a dream come true, made real and tangible. Earth is Sophia's planetary body, physically present to the goddess in her dreaming in a manner similar to the "dreambody" we experience when dreaming normally or lucidly. While the status of the human dreambody is dubious—there is no way to prove it is physical, but its physicality cannot be disproved, either, and there is some striking evidence that it can manifest in physical independence—the dreambody of Sophia is a fact of nature. We live in it. We are looking at and interacting with it every moment. We do not merely live in the dreaming of Sophia, we live as mobile cells embedded in her massive dreambody.

The intriguing notion that Sophia could have a lucid dream leads to a fantastic challenge: how to discover what happens to humanity when the animating presence of the earth awakens in her dream. But it is impossible to consider this mysterious event without considering how Sophia herself will realize that her dreaming has turned lucid! In other words, her lucid dream and our realization of how it affects and involves us must be simultaneous and interactive. To imagine our way into this interactivity, we need only assume that the same thing happens to the goddess as happens to anyone who has such a dream. As Sophia wakes up in her dream, she recognizes her dreambody and begins to use it as a lucid dreamer does, conatively, moving and acting intentionally in the dream scenario. Sophia awakens, but still continues to dream with the planet earth realized as her vehicle of expression. Gaia Awakening would be the actualization of dreaming through the instrument of her dreambody, this very earth.

Planetary Tantra

Regular readers of this site will have noticed that I have not posted any new material in over five months. During that time I was engaged in a shamanic investigation that required my full concentration, leaving little attention for the exercise of writing. As explained in a previous posting, I found myself guided into a 108-day ritual lasting from April 6 until July 21. Initially, I presumed that the "Emma Story" was merely a personal matter, only to learn that it was the set-up for my spectacular initiation into Tantra, planetary-style. I went into that initiation facing a sexual-romantic addiction and came out of it living in magical interactivity with the earth in ways I had never imagined before—and I have a pretty good-sized imagination. Gaia Awakening and the way of Tantra are intimately related, hence the term "Planetary Tantra."

The Sanskrit word Tantra literally means "weave," but in a more abstract or technical sense, "continuity." So here's the first definition for the conversion of metahistory.org:

Continuity in mind and action with the lucid dreaming of Gaia is Planetary Tantra.

Gaia, the living earth, is having a lucid dream. She is not waking up from sleep, she is awakening in her sleep. Humans can interact in her lucid dream through the merge of love and the supernatural, which operate on the same frequencies.

I can make this compound claim with some confidence because I am actually participating in Gaia's lucid dream, even as I write these words. This waking dream belongs as much to the dreambody, the earth, as it does to the dreaming divinity, Sophia. In our experience, the dreambody is the intentional agent within the lucid dream. As Sophia awakens in her dream, her dreambody begins to express the direction and intention of her divine, super-animating powers, her field of imagination, her desires, and the beauty and scope of her intentions. Is there is huge shift underway, an unprecedented event unfolding on this planet? Most definitely there is.

We have reached the moment when the Goddess who dreamed humanity and the earth itself into existence is starting to interact directly with the human actors in her dream.

I happen to be one of those actors. Certainly not the only one, or the superior one. But perhaps the first self-identified person to make this awesome experience known to the world at large.

Until now, there has not been anything quite like this kind of intimate and spontaneous interactivity between humanity and the Goddess. It supercedes all previous ways in which members of the human species have recognized the divinity of the earth and worshipped it, served it, interacted with it. Gaia Awakening is a singularity in the cosmic order and the opportunity for a spectacular breakthrough for the human species. This is the dawn of Planetary Tantra.

The earth is having a lucid dream in which humans also can awake simultaneously, one dreamer at a time, but preferably in pairs—hence the conjugal aspect of Planetary Tantra, the merge of love and the supernatural.

These words do not present a theoretical concept, a supposition, a personal fantasy, a schizophrenic indulgence, or a mere inspired guess. This is direct, first-hand testimony. I know that the Gaian lucid dream is happening from the viewpoint of a human witness awakening simultaneously with it because I am such a witness. Although only a few months into this process, I am deeply engaged with it mentally, emotionally, and conatively, in the full range of my actions and intentions. The learning process that comes with interactivity in Gaia's lucid dream proceeds in high acceleration. Gaia herself directs this learning process through a matrix of feminine powers: the Shakti Cluster. Let it be known, this is the surge of the Mahavidyas, instruction by Diamond-Sky Dakinis. Mahavidya means "great wisdom." Scholars of Hindu religion give this generic name to ten core feminine deities in the Cluster.

So how am I getting along so far in my interactivity and learning? A brief progress report: I already know the origin and direction of Gaia's dream—its plot or configuration, as I will call it. I know when the lucid dream of the planet began in historical terms. Amazingly, this event can be placed in an historical framework, and, indeed, needs to be considered historically so that we can best appreciate its purpose and its parameters. The learning process is largely practical, engendering a lot of applied knowledge, much of it in ritual form and formula. (Kala Tantra is intensely and intensively ritualistic.) I have inceptive knowledge of the full array of 18 Diamond-Sky Dakinis, aka Wisdom Dakinis or Buddha Dakinis, their Hindu names and methods, their Tibetan identities, their yantras and mantras, their moral and sexual preferences, their signature magic.With any luck, I can explain how to recognize, engage, and participate in the Gaian lucid dream as it's manifested by the Shakti Cluster. I intend to present this explanation in such a way that anyone who wishes to participate in the dream can do so, with or without recourse to the use of psychoactive plants.

Initial delivery of Planetary Tantra in written form will come through this site on midnight EST, January 26, 2009. Delivery (i.e., Lash living up to his outrageous claims) will be loaded simultaneously in five components, with interactive features ready to install and run. Until that moment, I will post writings for orientation and background to support the delivery and prepare reception.

Future writing on this site will be dedicated to a single aim: engagement with the Gaian lucid dream. Let it be known at the outset that this is a daring, volunteer adventure. Not everyone on the planet will volunteer, and not everyone who volunteers will stick with it. Engagement with Gaia Awakening is a ravishing tango with thunder and lightning. The Gaian Shaktis put the same challenge to everyone: "How much beauty can you handle?" This is a "vajrayanic" practice: in the style of the thunderbolt that flashes across the sky and illuminates the landscape, not to mention the minds of its inhabitants. There is a selection process underway in the waking dream. In my view of this event, relating it to the immanent planetary shift, the awakening of humanity is not a planet-wide collective process, but a planet-wide selective process. I can and will explain in explicit and graphic terms the conditions of this selection and how it is being made.

The Oral-Only Rule

Most of what I will transmit about Planetary Tantra has to be given orally. I place this requirement on myself, but I did not determine by myself. Why do I assert this requirement? I do so on two counts. First, because it has been thus asserted to me. By whom? That remains to be explained, so hang on and keep an open mind—I promise I will not be coy about my collaborators! Second, Planetary Tantra comprises a unique teaching suited to the conditions of Kali Yuga, and the optimal way to transmit this body of knowledge and practice is orally, by the spoken word, in person.

I would like to state what I think "Tantra" is, considered in historical terms. The word is not unfamiliar, but I would guess that you, brave reader, have not previously heard this little tale:

"Tantra" is the loose term for a secret message and method that has been preserved without being written down for 2500 years, since the time it was originally imparted by the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni.

In other words, Tantra today is the emergent form of a secret oral teaching that originated with Shakyamuni. Have you ever heard that statement before? If so, I would like to know when and where. JLL

I will explain the historical origin of Tantra more thoroughly in upcoming material on this site, including some audio files. For now, let it be known that the requirement for oral-only transmission has two aspects: First, oral-only transmission was deemed necessary by the historical Buddha when he imparted the rudiments of Tantra to a select group of close students, so that the teaching would be relayed person to person and preserved from written exposition until the closing phase of Kali Yuga, which is now. Second, even at the moment of its disclosure today, the Tantra for Kali Yuga requires oral transmission and can only be framed in a tentative manner in written form. Hence, all the writings on Planetary Tantra on this site are merely preparatory to the message and method: hermeneutics, orientation, framing, set-up. Oral delivery will proceed in complete openness after January 26.

Almost all future writing on this site will be in the genre of the new button: Planetary Tantra (replacing Before the Panic). The overriding purpose of metahistory.org from this moment on will be to present Planetary Tantra. Not to transmit it, because that can only be done orally, but to frame and initialize that transmission. I will also call the message and method I am presenting Kala Tantra: that is, the Tantra uniquely intended and required for Kali Yuga. Kala means "the instant, this moment." Kala Tantra is what works now and only now, right this instant. Kala Tantra is a fresh, novel teaching, improvised for the turbulent times we live in, this unique moment in the history of the planet. It has an extremely rapid and intimate impact, as rapid as the lightning-like synapses flashing in your head, as intimate as the radiant hue of your heart's deepest desire, for it reaches each one of us in the fleeting instant of personal existence when time dies into the bloodstream rush, dissolving to a flow-point in the split-second dream that is called a mortal life.

For written exposition of Kala Tantra, I will introduce Sanskrit and Tibetan terms and some names of Tibetan deities and Hindu goddesses such as Kamala and Bhuvaneshvari—but breathe easy, folks, you're gonna love it. Or not! The practice of Planetary Tantra depends on learning some technical language, as happens with any art or discipline worth your time and attention. The technicalities are no greater, say, than those one faces in becoming computer-literate. Do you know what a spambot is? Fine, soon you will know what a dakini is, on Gaian terms. I will define all the terms I introduce in the exposition of Planetary Tantra, the moment I introduce them. Now there's a switch!

I will endeavor to be agile and easy with definitions. Stay in playful inquiry, trust your inborn knowing, abide joyously in the beauty and sanity of your heart, and you will rapidly realize that the key to learning these terms is not intellectual mastery but the sheer excitement of using them, knowing what they address, who they address. Both the motive and the result of such learning is bliss.

Then the Bodhisattva Vajragarbha said to Buddha: If this great bliss of enlightenment is by nature non-existent, what is the use of it in the process of meditation and spiritual striving in which we are engaged?

Buddha said: Dispel your doubts in this instant, my warrior friend. I teach that the body finds ultimate bliss in this world. The meditator and object of meditation are like a flower and its fragrance. If the flower were by nature non-existent, there would be no fragrance to smell, would there? The same applies to your body and the great bliss, mahasukha. If you understood this as I do, as a Buddha does, you would be divested in an instant of fantasy, obtusity, and lassitude. The perfect attention of the diamond-sky dakini is the way to supreme bliss.

The Chinese Hevajratantra, VII, 595c

Self-Identified

So, clearly, John Lash is going out on a limb, or overboard, depending on which metaphor you like. He is assuming a specific role here. An outrageous role, if I say so myself. I am putting myself forth as a teacher of Kala Tantra, Planetary Tantra. From the get-go I would like to make perfectly clear how I feel about doing so. In a single word, delirious. In another word, overjoyed. In a few more words, thrilled, excited, delighted, abashed and astonished at my own audacity. Assuming this role of teacher of Kala Tantra makes me more happy than I ever imagined this man could be. Right now I am pretty crazed with the wonder and wisdom of what is pouring through me, what is revealed and going to revealed, written and spoken, danced, divined, invoked, installed and initiated.

To use an old (certainly Puritanical) expression from coastal Maine where I grew up, Planetary Tantra is "wicked good." It is also wicked fun.

Years ago, someone compared me to Joseph Campbell, the famous world-class mythologist. I now feel compelled to reply to that highly flattering remark. Campbell was an academic who taught at Sarah Lawrence and other universities. I am a natural-born mystic and self-taught maverick with no academic association or allegiance to any institution of learning or to any spiritual tradition, for that matter (except the Gnostics, but that is a dead movement). Campbell also taught the general public. In his last years, he advised Spielberg and Lucas on the plot for Star Wars. Advised them rather badly, if you ask me. Hence the tedious cosmic schlock of those films. What has the human species learned or gained for its enlightenment or survival sanity from the Star Wars saga? Nil.

I make no bones about it: I have a superior story-line that utterly surpasses the old Ahriman-Ormazd battle, the stock plot of Persian duality that underlies the Star Wars trilogy. Namely, I teach the myth of the Fallen Goddess that I have been developing on this site for over six years. Unlike Campbell, I propagate goddess mythology exclusively, without compromise or apology, and I ferociously reject the festering dualisms of the patriarchal game of division, deceit, and domination. I also differ from Campbell in that I do not teach the general public but only a self-selecting portion of it: those who can handle engagement in a future myth because they have the passion, playfulness, and imagination for it.

With this invitation to Planetary Tantra going out to the world, it's appropriate that I define my role in explicit terms:

I appear to be the first identified teacher of the first generation of the nine generations of the closing phase of Kali Yuga. Whew!

I emphasize the word "identified." Make it self-identified, if you will. In this capacity, I might serve as an advisor to the Endtime Tribes. In this same capacity, I may also be an exemplar of the sorcery of love and intention, if you can stand it. So far I don't see anyone else developing the merge of love and the supernatural quite along the same lines, with strict emphasis on the complementation of shamanism and sexual Tantra, but I expect to be joined soon enough by fellow travelers and other teachers of Planetary Tantra. So far I know of only two teachings that approximate partially to the nature and aim of my version of Kala Tantra. This material comes from Daniel Odier and Amarananda Bhairavan. I welcome anyone with the smarts and smack to set up class in this sublime genre, but my standards for Planetary Tantra are hard-core and extremely rigorous, so be warned.

Nine Generations

Let me elaborate for a moment on my self-identified role regarding "the nine generations of Kali Yuga."

When I was in the 6th grade at the little red schoolhouse in Friendship, Maine, I came across a book on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen. A children's book geared to readers of my age, around ten or eleven years old. It had vivid color illustrations of Egyptian gods and goddesses with animal heads, and so forth. This book was my first introduction to mythology. It cued me to my life mission. Over forty years later, I discovered the fifth axis in the Dendera Zodiac. This discovery allowed me to work out a timeframe for the sequence of Zodiacal Ages in the great precessional cycle of 26,000 years. With the overview provided by the DZ plus other research, parameters from Hindu chronology, etc. I have determined a reliable estimate for the end date of the current precessional cycle: 2215 CE. That is 207 years ahead from this year, 2008.

The end date of the great precessional cycle (or Kalpa) is not the end of the Piscean Age, the current Zodiacal era. It is the end of the lesser Kali Yuga that began in 3102 BCE. So, we are living in the last two centuries of the minor octave of Kali Yuga. In other words, we are in last 1/25th of the Yuga. As if it were the last hour of a 24-hour day. The "eleventh hour," coming up on midnight.

Now, I have done a fair amount of fancy permutations with the timeframe of Kali Yuga. I have noted elsewhere on this site that the midpoint of the Yuga, halfway between 3102 BCE and 2215 AD, is 444 BCE. This is close to the time of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni or Prince Siddharta, who is said to have lived from 563 to 483 BCE (although some reckonings among the Tibetans put his life a century or more earlier, I believe). The death and so-called paranirvana of Shakyamuni may have occurred some 40 years before the exact midpoint of Kali Yuga. Whatever the exact historical chronology might be (no one really knows), this timing is both symbolically pregnant and existentially pertinent. In the last years of his life, at the midpoint of the Yuga, Shakyamuni imparted to a select group of students the secret oral teachings for "Tantra" to be revealed to the world at large in the closing phase of Kali Yuga, right now.

This is how I reckon the generations: take the end date of 2215 CE and assume 30 years for a generation. This gives nine generations starting in 1945. From 1945 to 2215 is 270 years, nine generations of 30 years each. The first generation of the Endtime Tribes of Kali Yuga were born in the interval 1945 - 1975, the second generation 1975 - 2005, the third generation 2005 - 2035, and so on. I was born in the first year of the first generation of the Endtime Tribes. John Lash is the first identified first-generation messenger of Kala Tantra. I claim to be just that. I like to keep my pretences right out in the open... You don't have to wait around until the cows become homeless, or plow through a lot of blog and blather before you see where I'm coming from, folks. I'll tell you right up front, right now. Transparency can be such a great time-saver, can't it?

Losing the Audience

Planetary Tantra is not just the announcement of an event, it is that event. Namely, an eruption in the world-dreaming of Gaia-Sophia. Cosmic dreaming, when it turns lucid, produces a sudden and spectacular eruption of mythical events into phenomena, including the phenomena of human thought, feeling, and perception.

The Gaian lucid dream is an eruption of the highest rapturous magic of the Divine Feminine into the human psyche, pouring through mind and body, all at once.

The recent historical preparation for this eruption was the Romantic Movement that flourished in the Western world from 1775 into the late 19th Century, with some late Romantics (Rilke, D. H. Lawrence, H.D., et al) surviving into the 20th Century. I will show that Vajrayana, the quintessence of the mystical wisdom of India and Tibet, was seeded into the matrix of the Romantic Movement around 1820, preparing the conditions for an unprecedented spiritual revolution in human history, the revolution that is happening right now. This cross-fertilization of East and West is the background to the coming planetary shift, viewed in Tantric terms.

The conversion of this site is now in progress, but what do I have in mind, exactly? And how will I handle it? Obviously, metahistory.org is going Tantric in a big way. For the new direction of the site, I will adopt Tibetan and Indian Tantric lore drawn from both Buddhist and Shaivite sources, including wisdom teachings and secret practices,. Put otherwise, and more candidly, I am going to make over Vajrayana to my own liking—that is to say, in Gnostic, Sophianic, and Gaian terms. And I am going to do it Romantically, as can only be done by an heir to the Romantic Movement, if you will indulge me on that one.

I don't want to lose or alienate my audience in this process, but that risk comes with the conversion, of course. Over more than six years, this site has attracted a large clan of loyal readers, students and collaborators. I have done a fair amount of soul-searching about the likelihood that some of you may be put off by the steep shift into Tibetan and Indian Buddhism, including some of the elaborate lore and language that comes with those genres. "What's going on with John?", you may wonder. Is he flipping into a cultic posture? Has he blown a fuse over a shipwrecked romance? Is this fine mind finally going to the Dzogs? Is he seriously suggesting that we adopt these Asian teachings and practices, and log on to these heavy-duty teachings and all the jargon that comes with them? Not at all. I ask nothing of the sort. Just watch me.

I am going to spring the teachings and practices of Vajrayana out of the self-serving medieval paternalism where they have been cradled for 1200 years and launch them like fractal fireworks into the mind's sky of the 21st century. If this little mission of mine blows the doors off the Potala, so be it.

So, don't go anywhere too soon, loyal readers and long-time collaborators. Let it all come to you in lucid technicolor dreaming and guru-free panavision, right here on metahistory.org, or wherever you may catch me, talking up a perfect storm here and there across the planet. Planetary Tantra will be like nothing you have seen in all your born days. I can assure you this is so because I am gazing right now at what I call the configuration of the Gaian lucid dream, and I can't name nuthin I have known in this life or any other that compares to it. I am stunned and saturated moment to moment by the luminous beauty of this Dakini Wisdom.

I will make the changeover of metahistory.org as carefully and methodically as I can, going in progressive stages. Next posting: The Tantric Conversion.

* * * * *

One final qualification. Or better said, a reservation. "Tantra" is a word loaded with sensational sexual connotations. The word is practically synonymous with mysterious sexual rites, "Tantric sex." According to its mainstream definition, Tantra involves the practice of ritual sexual acts. It is some kind of "yoga of sex." Okay, that may be so for Tantra as practiced by some people in the past and today, but this is not so for the Planetary Tantra I am going to present on this site.

Kala Tantra does include sexuality and sexual acts in a most decisive way, to be sure. But the sexual activities it entails are nothing like the New Age Tantra taught by sex gurus and marriage repair advisors today; nor do they involve the performances of classical Hindu Tantra with its postures, breathing exercises, chakra meditations, and so forth. Sexual Tantra in the Kala mode or Kalika style more closely resembles secret practices preserved in Tibetan Buddhism and Dzogchen, but even then, it departs in a radical and refreshing way from those practices.

My presentation of Planetary Tantra would be incomplete without including its sexual aspects, but they are going to be off limits for metahistory.org. Here I set a boundary: the explicit sexual features of Planetary Tantra belong to the dimension of this sacred transmission that will not be represented on this site by exposition of any kind, or even by hints. I will signal readers where to access those particular features if and when the moment comes for me to make such a sacred disclosure via the medium of the Internet.

jll: 22 November 2008 Andalucia