Reminiscing

Earlier today I was chatting with my best friend via Yahoo Messenger. He has been working in the US for a little over a decade now although he still manages to come home regularly at least once a year. There are times we would end up chatting via instant messenger, and it helps him bear the hardship of being by himself in a foreign land.

We usually talk about our hobbies and interests, which range from sci-fi, military, airsoft and roleplaying games. But over the last two years, I've also started to introduce to him my growing interest in esoteric topics. While in no way a real enthusiast like me, at least he is open to discussing these things and even has a few questions that I attempt to answer in the best way I can. In fact, sometimes I order hard-fo-find books through him so that he can bring them via balikbayan box when he visits. I tell him to feel free to read the books since they'll just be sitting at his place anyway until his visit, but he frequently has a hard time getting through all the topics, and that's where all the explaining comes in.

Anyway, today the topic turned to the discussion of how much I've diverged from the range of interests of our particular circle of friends. On the one hand, my old group of friends want to see more of the old me, the one they are more familiar with. But as I get more active with esoteric subjects, there certainly comes a point when one needs to choose how one's time is to be spent, and which activities to prioritize over others especially when there is a conflict of schedule. For me, esoteric activities have lately taken priority and I suppose it must sound strange to some people, such as those in my airsoft team.

For my best friend though, he's not that surprised because although my level of activity in esoteric stuff has definitely increased, he says that I've been into these things as far back as he could remember (and we were already friends as early as Grade 2). That statement took me a bit by surprise, so I asked him to elaborate some more.

He says he can remember my interest with those pyramids that energized water. He was referring to the Ernie Baron pyramid. It had a lot of uses aside from energizing water. There was also a version you could wear on your head to make your memory better.

My friend also said he remembers one particular instance during 1st year high school, I told him about astral projection and he couldn't sleep for a while after that because I told him that whenever we dream of flying, that was actually us going off. I also told him about the silver cord, that if it got cut while we were out of the body, our physical bodies would die. It was that and the "what if I don't come back" thing that gave him a few sleepless nights.

I remember I once tried to do astral travel after reading it from a book, but I don't remember telling anyone about that experience. I was on the 2nd floor of our house and it was a weekend morning. I remember my dad was also in the living room and I decided to try it out and lay down on the couch. I could feel myself getting lighter, but I got scared and stopped. My friend told me how excited I was when I related it to them, how it was so cool but how it scared the shit out of me. He said it reminded him of a kid who thought it was cool to poke a bear to see if he could outrun it! Another friend of ours who happened to be there when I related the story also commented that I was crazy to try it out, but I was quite nonchalant about it. Apparently, I wasn't as nonchalant as I sounded, because I never repeated that experiment.

Interestingly, he also had an idea during that same time period in high school that if you vibrated yourself fast enough, you could disentangle yourself from this dimension and see other planes. It was in the context of alternate ways to travel. I was talking of astral projection and he was talking about his idea in a sci-fi sort of way. Knowing what I know now about energy and vibrations, it reinforces my belief that my friend and I were both doing this stuff before in a previous life.

As my friend related all these details, I could only sit back in wonder. I remember reading my brothers' books on ESP and the paranormal, and particularly Doctor From Llhasa by T. Lobsang Rampa, but I don't remember getting into these discussions with my friend.

I always saw pranic healing as heralding my foray into the esoteric. Everything else before that was just general info that anyone with a modicum of interest could read about. But apparently, that wasn't the case. I looked at those ESP books as a small phase of my life, a passing curiousity during that time, but I didn't realize it made such a big impact on me and also on my friend. As is consistent with the onrush of puberty, the thing I could remember most about that time was my fascination with girls. Luckily, my friend has a better memory for those times otherwise I wouldn't have recalled such an important part of my past.

Finally knowing all this, I started to reflect why I had forgotten such important events, at least in the context of my stronger esoteric participation nowadays. I suppose it was part of the social programming of that time. We were studying in a Catholic school, and after a while even Dungeons and Dragons (all the rage that time) was frowned upon for being "satanic." For some reason, "satanic" groupings were quite in vogue in our school that time.

There were also the pressures of ensuring one's academic achievement. All the way until I graduated from college, a lot of my time was preoccupied with doing well academically. There was of course recreation, but studies were the main priority, under the stern watch of my parents. Beneath the bustle of all this activity, all memory of the esoteric got lost in the scatter, and it didn't help that I hadn't managed to encounter a group that would nurture this interest, not until I discovered pranic healing in 2008. Prior to that, D&D and The Lord of the Rings pretty much defined the extent of my esoteric knowledge (at least, that's what I thought, until I chatted with my friend today).

Despite a certain wistfulness at remembering all of this and the apparent loss of time (i.e., what if I had gotten into it much earlier?), I do realize that everything happened in its own time. One particular incident underlines this premise. Back in 1994, we had this summer job practicum in college. Those enrolled in the subject would be assigned at random to work at certain Top 100 companies, then the class would meet once a week on Saturdays to discuss each week's experience.

I was assigned to a company that had its main office in Makati. Since the first day was just an orientation, I was given the rest of the day off. But before I continue, let me put in a side story. My best friend, who wasn't enrolled in the summer job practicum subject, was also working in the company I was assigned to. It was also just for that summer, for experience. His dad happened to be working in that company and got him in. We hadn't discussed our plans for the summer so I was understandably surprised to see him there. Just goes to show you how much our lives were intertwined during that time period.

To continue, I was supposed to meet my dad at Greenbelt 1, but since he wasn't there yet, I passed the time at National Bookstore. I saw this book that I now know was Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon. Since it was about the practice of magic, I bought the book and started reading it when I got home.

I hadn't gotten far with the book when my mom noticed it. During that time her attitude about magic and the esoteric was a bit more negative than it is now, so she said that she didn't agree with my reading about magic, about how such stuff was dangerous and all. So I stopped reading the book and set it aside on my table, intending to read it later on (when my mom wasn't looking). However, I never saw the book after that, even after searching all the places where the book could be stored, so I assumed my mom threw the book away when I was out. Looking back on it, I should have hidden the book instead of having just left it on top of the table like that, but I digress.

Fast forward to 2008, the time I got into pranic healing, and I buy the complete set of Franz Bardon books. I didn't realize then that Initiation Into Hermetics was the same book I bought back in 1994 because the cover was already different, but the picture of Franz Bardon was tantalizingly familiar and I remember getting to the description of the white and black soul mirrors. I still thought I had a different book in 1994 that had a similar methodology as the one I was reading.

Everything came together after Typhoon Ondoy when I lost all my books. One of my friends from my esoteric study group kindly gave me another complete set of Franz Bardon books, but these were the old edition books, and when I saw IIH with the old cover that's when it all clicked that it was the same book I had encountered back in college. It obviously wasn't the right time back in college, so the information was taken out of my hands, although I can't help but wonder how my life would have been influenced if I had continued reading it back then.

To those reading this, it would be a good time to reflect on things that might have unintentionally been suppressed when you were younger. It might give insight into the things you are doing now, or they might lead you to an alternate path from the one you are taking now. Either way, everything in its own time.