I & I
I
first met James Campbell over 25 years ago outside of Cascades, Jamaica. A
friend, Lee Faulkner, had met a remarkable black man on the beach who had
severely tangled and knotted hair who lived in the Jamaican mountains. He
invited her to visit his camp at the edge of the wild country. She, in turn,
invited myself, my wife at the time, our son, David, along with my friend and
attorney, Gene Brooks. We left for Cascades and then hiked several miles into
the mountains and finally reached his camp. While visiting this camp, I met
another elder Rasta sitting behind one of the grass huts. When my friend left to
swim in a waterfall nearby with some of the younger Rasta men, I elected to
stay and hang out with this elder Rasta, James Campbell.
At first, I noticed a
profound sense of peace about him. As I started spending time around James, I
noticed something special. In a nonverbal way, James seemed to share an
understanding I had come to call “turning inside-out”. This was a profound
realization I experienced a few years earlier while reading a newly released
book called “Be Here Now”. The term used formally by the Hindu philosophy to
describe this realization is Nirvilkalpa Samadhi. This is a total absorption in
God, in which all bodily awareness is dissolved along with all form to
reveal the formless nature of God or One’s True Self. All "otherness"
was obliterated. The ultimate experience of this absorption, I only recollect
through subtle intuition. The fruit of this intuition was the perception of
oneness. At the time, I attributed the graceful experience to the guru, Neem
Karoli Baba.
The experience of conventional reality upon resuming bodily awareness was
interpreted by me as “turning inside-out”. The first eye contact after this
experience was with a small girl in the room. When I looked into her eyes, I
realized that I was looking at my Self! Not as a reflection of a form in a
mirror but the very essence of both of us were really one and there existed a
continuum. When the sun came up the next morning, I recognized the sun within the
infinity of my Self. Everything was within the infinity of my Self. I was
stunned by this realization and had little context in the world in which to frame
it. I lacked the vocabulary to express and articulate my insight. Shortly
afterwards, I began to loose the realization and started searching for a way
back to it. I had not the conviction to abide in this realization. James was
the first person I had met that I thought truly shared that deep understanding
of “inside out”.
While the others were off swimming that day, James began warning
that disruption was coming to the camp and started instructing everyone. I
looked around and nothing was happening that could cause the disruption. He
continued to warn folks of trouble brewing. Sure enough, thirty minutes later,
my friend returns with his Rasta friends and they are running and very
disturbed. The local police were chasing them. We decided to leave the camp
abruptly. I wondered how James knew of the disruption in advance. As we were
leaving, James said to me calmly that he would prepare a place for me on the
next mountain over and would see me in a few months. At the time, I thought it
was a strange thing for him to say.
I returned to North Carolina
and my life totally fell apart. My business was failing and my wife, left me to
be with my best friend. My heart was completely broken. In the midst of my
emotional turmoil, I could not get James off my mind. Within a few months, I
sold my last possession, a Volkswagen, and purchased an airplane ticket and
backpack and left everything behind to go live with James in the mountains of
Jamaica. I had no money or worldly possessions left. I trusted my intuition.
I arrived
at James’ (affectionately called Jamesy-Man) camp, on top of a mountain, a few
miles into the wild mountain country of Jamaica, outside of Cascades. It took
several hours of strenuous mountain hiking to reach his campsite. When I
finally reached the camp, Jamesy was actually expecting me and had built a
grass hut for me to stay in. My hut or Gate as they would call it was woven
with bamboo and situated on a knoll under a Mango tree. I could see the
Caribbean Sea in the far distance. The camp was permeated with a deep and
profound stillness. He introduced me to the others in the camp. There were
several other white people in the camp with similar circumstances as I. They
all had very interesting stories about how they were drawn to be there with
Jamesy.
I stayed with Jamesy in the mountains for that entire
winter. He began to teach me the lessons of Love through nourishment in every
conceivable way. Jamesy literally fed me out of the wild. There were no roads,
no electricity, no mirrors, no running water, etc. There was no money around as
money was not used. Our huts were made of bamboo and straw with dirt floors.
There were no schedules, no names of days and months and no watches or time
references within the environment. I was treated and respected like God.
Jamesy’ mantra was “I & I One Love Jah Rastafari”. The idea of “you” or
"other" was not in his mind or language. He never asked for anything
in return for his profound generosity. He taught me not to put my faith in
money.
I was in awe of Jamesy. When I would awake in the morning, Jamesy would be
returning from the wild loaded with wild yams, veggies and fruits to feed us.
He prepared herbal teas and nursed our sores. At nights his laughter would ring
through the mountains and brighten ours hearts. His actions always appeared to
be so graceful. I saw coincidence become commonplace as “accidents” became
extinct. My time paradigm melted away into the eternal now. Days were spent
preparing food, time alone in the wild, bathing in the waterfalls, toting water
and tending to our boo-boos and of course, hanging out with Jamesy. I was in
Zion, as the Rasta would call it.
I began to see
this illiterate black man in the mountains of Jamaica as one with a profound
saintly nature, similar to the sages of India, Neem Karoli Baba, Ramakrishna
and Nityananda. (Since I am from the South, I had deep racial prejudices to deal
with. The idea of a black saint blew my mind even more.) During that winter,
several of my friends were also drawn to Jamaica for varying lengths of time.
Everyone was treated with equal love and respect. Others from different parts
of the world trickled in and out with stories of remarkable synchronicity. The
local people would visit frequently. They would bring gifts of food and always
be good company in the camp. The environment was free of conventional religious
trappings. There was no organization or hierarchy and nothing to “join”.
Everyone enjoyed the simple company of Jamesy.
From time to time, Jamesy would share with us a little story that he would make
up on the spot. One story, in particular, has been a profound teaching for me
for all these years. I would like to share it with you. On one occasion, when a
friend left the camp to go see the young Guru Maharaji in the US, Jamesy
appeared at the door of my grass hut where several people were spending their
morning. He was very animated and
playful. He started acting like a puppy dog as he started telling the story.
“There was once said puppy dog who wanted so bad to find said bone. It was all puppy could think about.” James started saying. “So, puppy looked and looked and looked.” Jamesy started ransacking the place like a puppy looking for something. He became obsessed with looking for the bone. He saw a stick on the dirt floor and grabbed the stick with his mouth just like a puppy dog would. He acted so happy to find the bone, holding the stick in his mouth!
“Puppy
dog has bone. Puppy dog happy” Jamesy kept saying. He was strutting all over
the place being proud of his new bone (stick). “Puppy dog comes to pool of
water in stream. Puppy dog sees reflection of bone in pool. Puppy forgets bone
in mouth and is attracted to bone in reflection. Puppy goes for bone in said
reflection.” Jamesy says.
In a very animated way, Jamesy then goes for the reflection of the bone in the
imaginary pool as if he did not already have the bone in his mouth and
immediately the stick (bone) drops from his mouth. “Now puppy dog not happy,
lost bone!” Jamesy says as he starts acting like a puppy that is fretting over
something.
Jamesy starts looking for the bone again. After another very fretful search, he finds the stick (bone) and is once again happy. “Puppy quickly returns to same said pool with bone,” Jamesy says, holding the stick in his mouth. “This time puppy looks very carefully.” Jamesy says slowly cocking his head to the side “Puppy sees it’s only a reflection of bone already in mouth. Puppy understands puppy has bone. Puppy holds on to said bone”. Jamesy then swiftly departed and left us to consider the teaching.
And so it went that winter in James’ camp. There are too many stories to tell
in this writing. As winter turned into spring, I was increasingly looking at
the path coming up the mountain, hoping to see an old friend or loved ones.
Thinking about my friends back home, I returned from my sojourn to Jamaica and
“Zion”.
Returning to the United States, I am made aware of how many of my "Nerw
Age" friends were into gurus, etc. It didn’t take long before I dropped my
bone, joined my friends and started looking for my “bone“ again. It almost
seemed fun to “search” again with my friends. A kind of adventure and
camaraderie. The journey took many years and many a pond’s reflection to
realize what Jamesy had been teaching me.
When
I returned to the US, it was the young Guru Maharaji, quickly followed by
several years as a devotee with Swami Muktananda who gifted me with a mystical
awakening and tour through the world of shakti and visions. He blessed me and
put the Wizard hat on my head the last night he was in the US before departing
back to India and discarding his physical form. I founded The Lindenself
Foundation and began retreats and satsangs with Muktananda’s blessing.
I met Ram Das, sponsored
retreats with Bhagavan Das, met Joya and the list goes on.. I continued to have
my bone and drop my bone in the pond of my reflection that Jamesy spoke of,
over and over again. I met Ramana Maharshi through the literature of Bubba Free
John. I had purchased a text of “Talks With Ramana Maharshi” from a bookstore
in California when I was trying to visit with Bubba Free John and was turned
away (They told me that my traveling buddy was not qualified because he hadn't
read the books). Here again in this text of Ramana Maharshi was someone who
seemed to articulate and understand my experience of “inside-out”. It became a
source text I truly treasure. I have always been thankful of the link between
Adida (Bubba Free John) and Ramana Maharshi. Adida, too, had intuited Ramana’s
understanding of Advaita Vedanta (non dual understanding).
When Muktananda dropped his form, I became increasingly involved with the formal community of a Western born teacher, Adida. This was an intense spiritual process for me as my assumed understanding of the teachings of Adida as articulated by his literature were in the same vein as Jamesy, Ramakrishna, Nityananda, Neem Karoli and Ramana Maharshi. My tendency to seek “the bone” reached full bloom with my relationship to the Adida community.
In
all honesty, what I ultimately found in the Adida community was actually the
antithesis of the teachings of the Masters I had come to know and love. I would
sometimes literally scream at the Murti of Adida with disapproval. It all
appeared to be organized and confused with religion business. Adida appeared to
be the demonstration of his own teaching of Narcissus. It appeared to me to be
form over substance. My ultimate perception was that it was the form of new age
boilerplate religion business as usual.
With all due respect, I got turned off to the whole new age scene
as a seekers’ haven. I saw lots of puppies chasing lots of spiritual bones. I
saw lots of spiritual materialism in the name of spiritually. I had not met a
single person in the Adida community or any other new age guru culture who
truly understood and communicated the truth of our oneness, our inherent
divinity or my recognition of “inside-out”. It did not reconcile with my
experience with Jamesy, my darshans with Muktananda, the subtle plane darshan
of Nityananda and Neem Karoli Baba.
I realized I had dropped the bone of Self-realization again and was trying to see the source of my own Divine Self exclusively in the form of another, rather than a mutual vision of I and I! I saw in the new age community a reflection of my own tendency to drop the bone and that reflection offended me. With this understanding, the Adida community was no longer attractive to me in a positive or negative way. It is just what it is. I withdrew my attention and energy. My deeper thoughts returned to Jamesy.
The years pass. After
some 20 years, I am again drawn to James Campbell in Jamaica. The synchronicity
was just as intense as it ever was twenty years earlier. This is another story,
but I was literally called by circumstances to revisit Jamesy in Jamaica. My
intimate partner, Carol, my son, David (all grown up), and a few others go on a
pilgrimage to Jamaica. I meet Jamesy again and it is no different than the
first time. I am walking down a single path in the out country and he simply
joins in from out of the jungle. A profound since of peace is at hand. He knows
me, is expecting me, and we pick right up where we left off. (This is the time
I take the pictures of Jamesy you see on the web page.) The sense of One Love
was so pronounced, that all seeking and questions were dissolved in the
stillness of the moment. I am humbled by my meeting with Jamesy again. We share
some very precious moments together.
When I return from Jamaica, an Indian, K. Sridhar is introduced into my life.
His mother was a devotee of Swami Nityananda and he had grown up with Swami Nityananda
in India as a small boy. He played music for Neem Karoli and other genuine
spiritual masters, spent lots of time in caves, the Himalayas, at Arunachula,
etc. Like Jamesy, he understood my experience of “inside-out”. He asks about my
relationship with Adida, Jamesy, Nityananda and Muktananda. He tells me his
guru in India sent him. He notices the Murti of Nityananda on my mantel over
the fireplace and acknowledges that as a sign from his guru. He begins
immediately to build confidence in my own self-realization, just like Jamesy.
Again, there is no money karma. You can’t give money to Sridhar. He won’t take it. He will give it away. He will only accept money for concerts or CD sales. You can only feed him and offer a place to sleep. Sridhar, like Jamesy and Nityananda never went to a formal school. Sridhar began spending informal time with me. He offered constructive criticism about my relationship with Adida. Sridhar became an authentic “Knee of Listening” (Upanishad) for me. With a refreshed understanding of my own tendency to seek, I had a fire puja and sacraficed all the Adida spiritual memorabilia.
On a subsequent visit,
Sridhar said he was instructed by his guru to accompany me on a journey to
India to visit for a month, with specific dates and places. I agreed to go. The
sojourn began after a short stay in Bombay visiting Swami Muktananda’s and Swami
Nityananda’s ashrams in Ganeshpuri and then spending a short time with Papa-Ji
in Lucknow just before he died. For the most part they all looked like a model
of the Adida community and other new age communities with seekers, formal
organization, pictures, books and religion business. Sridhar was teaching me
what organized religion business is all about, first hand. It depended on the
devotee dropping the bone. It depended on devotees staying within the confines
of a religion. I got it! This was the turning point in my trip to India. I felt
I had totally transcended the need for organized religion in all it's forms,
once and for all.
We
rented a car with a driver and traveled overland to the ancient city of Benares
on the Ganges River. This is a very holy city in India. It was sunset. Sridhar
leaves me in the car until he finds our rooms. While sitting in the back seat
of the car, waiting for Sridhar to return, I have a darshan (or meeting) with
Ramana Maharshi. An Indian gentleman approaches the car. It looks just like
Ramana Maharshi. He speaks to me. I get out of the car and stand next to him.
He strikes certain poses as I watch him. He is identical to Ramana Maharshi, walking
stick and all. At first he speaks in Hindi and then he speaks to me in English,
saying that all is fine now. He suggests I simply be true to my own conviction.
I am awe struck. Sridhar returns and is talking and waving at me to get my
attention through the crowd. I turn around to see Sridhar and when I turn back,
there in no one there. The moments that follow are filled with the same
stillness and perfection I experienced at James’s camp.
I was
effortlessly on the E side of E=Mc2. That is to say that there is was no longer
solid matter or any "noun" to be separately identified with. The only
resort for my sense of being was the infinite, eternal and silent expanse of
consciousness that is ever and all pervading. All phenomena was E or energy, simply
a light show. Phenomenally, I am looking over the Ganges River, next to the
burning ghats with dead bodies being cremated, watching candle lit flower pujas
float down the Ganges with a profound sense of Deja vu. I spend that night in
Benares, India opening and opening.
The following morning I am
instructed by Sridhar to go to the banks of the Ganges. A Brahman Priest
meets me and instructs me to take three dips in the river. I do so. He then
sits me on a bamboo mat facing the Ganges, applies Tiki to my forehead and
performs a series of Vedic chants before dismissing me. The rest of the day is
spent spontaneously in bliss. The knot of separateness was dissolved.
We finished our trip with a stay in Southern India (Tamil Nadu) at Ramana
Maharshi’s Ashram. When we arrived at Arunachula, we were welcomed, fed and
given a place to stay. When I entered my room, I was stunned! There was a
photograph on the wall facing me directly. It was of Ramana Maharshi exactly as
he had appeared to me in Benares a week earlier. There was stillness throughout
the campus. Money was never mentioned or even expected. There was not a set of
rules or anything to join. It seemed free of the religious trappings found in
the Guru Ashrams of Northern India I visited. My own sense of separateness
again dissolved in this ocean of silence.
What I was learning with Sridhar in India is exactly what Jamesy was teaching
me. I am the one I seek. I am the very reflection I see in holy people,
literature and places. I am my own “bone”. I am the silence. I embraced the
conviction needed to not drop the bone of self-awareness. I began to see
everyone and everything in God.
When I returned
to Jamaica after being in India with Sridhar, the same synchronistic patterns
emerged. Jamesy had moved to a new camp in the mountains. We just took off in
the direction of Cascades and were effortlessly led to his new camp. We were
welcomed and showered with the simple love of a little man in the hills of
Jamaica with a heart as big as all outdoors! Nothing had changed about Jamesy.
I told him about Sridhar and my journey to India. We laughed, talked about
earlier times on the mountain, and “reasoned” as he would call it about
“spiritual matters”. The teaching was always the same. I and I One Love. He
gifted me with a bowl he had fashioned from a calabash. We left, returning to
our accommodations on the cliffs of Negril.
It
had been very dry in Jamaica. It was the rainy season and there had not been
enough rain. Water was scarce everywhere. We were staying in a small bungalow
on the cliffs overlooking the Caribbean Sea, facing west. We had just returned
from visiting Jamesy in Cascades. It was sunset. Large dark clouds started
rolling in. Lightening is striking everywhere. It grows dark fast and the
torrential showers begin. I take off my clothes to take a shower in the storm.
On the way out of the bungalow, I grab the calabash bowl that Jamesy had given
me earlier. I take a wonderful shower naked outdoors in the rain.
Upon finishing my shower in the storm, I offer the calabash bowl in outreached
hands to receive the rain for a drink of rainwater. I take the bowl to my lips
and begin hallucinating that the bowl has become a female breast and I am
drinking from the breast of the great mother. The stillness was profound. I
drank from the breast and then the calabash transformed into a large green jade
egg before returning back to a calabash bowl. Still naked, I returned inside
the one-room bungalow and stood facing the Ocean through an open door with
lightening flashing everywhere. Drops of rainwater dripped through the ceiling
anointing the very crown of my head. I felt the presence of Jamesy. I moved
forward and took a seat and was transfixed, staring at the ocean flashing with
lightening for sometime, deeply absorbed in the silence, within which, was
raging a great storm. Jamesy was communing with me at the most profound depth
of silence. At times I would rage back, “Yes, I! Yes I! I and I One Love!” I
was God-intoxicated and began dancing with the lightning.
The next time I see Sridhar, he asked me about Jamesy. He said that his guru in the Himalayas informed him Jamesy was my Guru. Wow! I had just come to really know the truth of who Jamesy is but how does Sridhar and his guru know? They were all coaching me to not drop the bone of Self Realization. The real teachers are all on the same team. Jamesy, Nityananda, Neem Karoli, God, Guru, Self and in truth, all of us, are all one and the same. I was being taught that Love is more gracious than a name and Love makes no claim of it's own.
The last time I saw Jamesy was the summer of 1998. Carol and I traveled with her daughter, Lisa, and my son, David. David and Lisa brought more of their friends who wanted to visit with Jamesy. I carried a video recorder. We visited the market, bought food and a rope of tobacco and set off to visit Jamesy in Cascades. As always, the synchronicity increased. He was thrilled to see us and began fixing a meal for everyone in his primitive outdoor kitchen. The fellowship, as always, was sublime. He was saying “Jamesy Man Rasta Man, John Man Rasta Man, I & I One Love”. He said, “color doesn’t matter, dreadlock hair doesn’t matter, John Man Rasta Man”. At the same time he insisted that he was just an ordinary person. I thought of a saying Sridhar had shared with me “an elephant knows not its own weight”.
Jamesy started ”reasoning” about the environment, organic practices and the use
of GMOs in his own language. He said the abuses were even destroying our
precious oceans. He spoke of the nourishing power of the seed. How important it
is to protect it. I understood exactly what he was speaking of. He was coaching
me in right livelihood. I made the decision right there to implement and
integrate these changes into my personal and business life. I heard Jamesy,
once again. It turned out to be the last “reasoning” I had with Jamesy.
When we left, I kissed him all over his head and told him how much I loved him. Jamesy was repeating I & I One Love, Praise Jah! I & I One Love, Praise Jah! I knew I had found a love free of the ownership of religion and the death of forms. My true Self.
The following year, I implement an organic strategy for our company. I share my
feelings about my relationship with Jamesy more openly. The silence and peace
continue to emerge as the common denominator of all my experience. My company
had a Vision Quest retreat. The spirit of Jamesy and our own inherent sense of
peace were at hand. We “reasoned” about our common understandings and the
vision we wanted to realize.
That fall, I attended The Natural Food Trade show and
dressed up to be The Wizard for an introduction of a new product, being so
close to Samhain, Eve Of All Saints and Halloween. We had already begun
making plans to celebrate Halloween, that year. This time, it was to be
different. We decided to have an out door affair with a Rasta motif. We decided
to have a big cauldron and fix Rasta style I-tal (Rasta vegetarian organic
soup) soup. There was to be no alcohol. I had invited a lot of people who had
known, or known of, Jamesy. We planned to do a drumming circle.
While
I was being The Wizard character at the trade show, I felt so powerfully the
silence and peace, even amidst the trade show traffic. I started talking like
Jamesy, saying Yes, I, Yes I, I & I. Little did I know, that Jamesy had
just discarded his physical form. When I returned from Baltimore, I began to
think about the Drumming circle on The Eve Of All Saints. I pick up my wizard
staff and go for a walk into the back area in the woods. Carol is with me. For
some reason, I grab my stick and roaring Jah, Rastafari, slam the stick in the
ground. We decided to make this the spot for the fire. I notice a coconut shell
from last year’s Kava celebration and mark the spot with the shell.
I then return to the house and the
phone rings. It is David. He said he just heard from Jamaica that Jamesy died.
He ask me to let folks know. We shared a few words and I put the phone up. It
immediately rang again. It was a very old friend who was in Jamaica and had
actually been imprisoned with Jamesy. (that's another very interesting story)
He wanted to know what had been happening. I told him and said to come on All
Hallows Eve to remember Jamesy. And so it went, most gracefully, how
synchronistic, even when the form is gone!
We set Samhain, 1999, aside to remember Jamesy. This was the end of the
millennium. The gathering was like a gathering in the mountains of Jamaica with
Jamesy, including periods of sublime peace and stillness. I read a passage from
the Chinese Hexagram Ting, The Cauldron and confessed my own love for Jamesy
and the peace he shared with me. We all shared this profound stillness and
communion. I was in Zion, again. Yes, I…
I & I
One Love
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