II. Anton

II. Anton

John started me off on a course of meditation. His instructions were not complicated: he said "Meditate' n SO I did. I don't remember quite what those early sessions were like, but they were probably a combination of Transcendental tMantra) Meditation someone had taught me some years before, and prayer. These practices, though crude, helped keep Bomo away.

One night in March, I was meditating and I saw a white glow on the wall. This was only for an instant, but after that moment I felt a presence in the room. I began to feel an urge to do automatic writing. My rational thought was that I should be terrified, that Bomo was up to another trick, but emotionally I felt fine, curious and somehow safe in spite of the risk. I wrote invisible letters on my knee. ''My name is Michael. I have come to give you music." I immediately flashed on that place in Yeats' A Vision where spirits come to him through his wife to give him "metaphors for poetry." This kept me suspicious, for knowing the source of the expression in my own memory made me feel slightly manipulated; I have since come to understand that spiritual entities higher than ourselves will tend to communicate with us via the path of least resistance, and since this was a concept available in my consciousness, the entity used it as a means of conveying a complex concept, i.e. he was a benevolent spirit, he meant me no harm, he would help me as an artist like other entities had helped Yeats, whom I greatly admired, and that he was in fact going to give me music. That night, through automatic writing, he gave me a theme which I harmonized and used as the basis of my Suite for Violin and Strings. It is a very simple theme, but it is very elegant and singable. It has had an elevating effect on those who have heard and played it.

His full name was Michael Anton. He was a higher

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astral entity whose last incarnation was as a teacher on the frontiers of North Carolina around the year 1700. He had been sent to me as what is commonly called a "spirit guide" to lead me along the spiritual path. Anton was chosen for me because of similarities between us in temperament and education, and because we had known each other in one previous life. More importantly, however, he had in several lives, been in intimate association with the spirit who would soon incarnate as my first child. My wife and I had, for six months, been trying to conceive a child. The spirit chosen to become our firstborn was waiting patiently in the wings, working with Anton to increase his future father's spirit consciousness. But let me leave off on that subject for a bit lest I get ahead of myself.

Anton established himself as a dear friend almost immediately and started me on a disciplined course of study and creative work. He would wake me up at six in the morning and give me a short piece of music, then a prose dictation expounding on various subjects of an abstract nature, or dealing directly with my questions or other personal issues. Then, during the day, he would be in constant communication with me, answering, as best he could, the flood of questions that constantly swelled out of my excited brain, concerning this vast new world I was discovering.

At this point, it is important to clarify the manner in which these communications took place. The automatic writing given by Bomo was a process whereby my volitionless hand was driven across the page by an external force. With Anton, the process was quite different. I would sometimes feel a lightness, an extra energy in my hand as it flew across the page, and sometimes my handwriting would change, but the primary communication was through thoughts forming in my head which I wrote down as fast as I could. Sometimes they would come a word at a time, but more often a phrase or

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astral entity whose last incarnation was as a teacher on the frontiers of North Carolina around the year 1700. He had been sent to me as what is commonly called a "spirit guide" to lead me along the spiritual path. Anton was chosen for me because of similarities between us in temperament and education, and because we had known each other in one previous life. More importantly, however, he had in several lives, been in intimate association with the spirit who would soon incarnate as my first child. My wife and I had, for six months, been trying to conceive a child. The spirit chosen to become our firstborn was waiting patiently in the wings, working with Anton to increase his future father's spirit consciousness. But let me leave off on that subject for a bit lest I get ahead of myself.

Anton established himself as a dear friend almost immediately and started me on a disciplined course of study and creative work. He would wake me up at six in the morning and give me a short piece of music, then a prose dictation expounding on various subjects of an abstract nature, or dealing directly with my questions or other personal issues. Then, during the day, he would be in constant communication with me, answering, as best he could, the flood of questions that constantly swelled out of my excited brain, concerning this vast new world I was discovering.

At this point, it is important to clarify the manner in which these communications took place. The automatic writing given by Bomo was a process whereby my volitionless hand was driven across the page by an external force. With Anton, the process was quite different. I would sometimes feel a lightness, an extra energy in my hand as it flew across the page, and sometimes my handwriting would change, but the primary communication was through thoughts forming in my head which I wrote down as fast as I could. Sometimes they would come a word at a time, but more often a phrase or

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sentence at a time, depending on how available the concept was already in my consciousness. It is important to emphasize that very rarely were completely original ideas planted in my head. Rather, spiritual teachers must, in general, work with clarifying concepts which have already been vaguely realized by the student (or chela, as a spiritual aspirant is called). With each clarification, more and more originality is possible, but only gradually as the continuum is developed, not all at once.

The only actual physical relationship I felt was an involuntary shaking of the head to confirm or reject my interpretation of the impulses sent to my brain. For instance, to create a line of music, I might say, ''The first note is C7", pointing with my pencil at the middle C line.

Head shake, n No . ''

"D?"

''No. "

''E?l

Head shake, "Yes".

"Okay. Eighth note.? r'

"No. "

"Quarter note?"

Etc.

This sometimes very laborious process would go on until the entire soprano line was created. Then we would start again with the alto and go all the way through the piece. As the music got more and more filledin, I began to be able to guess logically what might follow from one note to the next, and things went faster; but if I got cocky and tried to fill it in myself, using my own thinking, Anton would hold me back. He supplied solutions to musical problems which tended to be purer and, sometimes, more startling than mine.

See below some examples of Anton's work. Of particular interest is his setting of the Doxology.

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.l I I] J dl I 4! ~ JJ ~ ~ I I. 1

~ .n ~ ~ ~ ~ V ~ ~ = ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

$1 ~ I ~ I f 1t = ~ lr f Ff i1 111 ~ 1; ~ L 11 :11 3 1 : r ? ~= ~ ~ ~ ': t ~ ~ • • ~ ' ~ , ~ ' ~ I l ~ i I I ~ ~ l I I ~ i ~ i ~ j I I ~ April 30, 1983

Always at the heart of Anton's communication was more than an artistic message. Always there was the intention of expressing spirit through music; and more than that, the intention of teaching me about myself. Dense as I am, music is the best way to reach my heart, and Anton, though he had not been a musician in any of his previous lives, manipulated my knowledge of music into a language capable of speaking to me of spiritual things. I cannot say that Anton's music is in no part mine, because it is, in a way; the musical discipline, the lyric sense, the habitual application of certain cliches of stress, surprise, development, etc., are all mine, but the original and expanded application of these qualities were totally Anton's and could not have been created by me: the ideas were too pure, too free, too otherworldly. I have indeed learned from Anton, and have been able to advance my own music along the lines indicated by him, as his music in a way represented a prophecy of what my music might become.

What came to mean more to me, even, than the music, was the prose dictations given me after the music dictations. Anton's deep answers to my many questions gave me a firm footing on the spiritual path. Anton directed my reading to an extent; and he directed me to read the New Testament, for a start. His interpretations of problematical passages remain some of my most treasured pearls of wisdom. My

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favorite is hi~ explication of this saying of Jesu~ from Luke 7: 3135:

Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like?

They are like children sitting in the marketplace, and calling to one another, and saying, We have piped and ye have not danced; we have mourned to

you, and ye have not wept.

For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of

publicans and sinners! But wisdom is justified of all her children.

Anton's explication reads like this:

The text refers to children playing games and their frustration about life not fulfilling their fantasies. We are all together in God, and reality is a sharp edge that human kind finds difficult to take. The winebibber is a man who cannot get drunk enough to

see his fantasy. John came to prepare the way for Jesus so that people would be prepared to have their hypocrisy shattered. Buddha was not the same power as Jesus. Buddha did not destroy. Jesus built a synagogue out of the rubble he made of people's fantasies. Illusions are outside our ability to discriminate; fantasies are selfwilled deceptions. Jesus came to break that will.

1

Truth is its own reward. Likewise, fantasies give the person the reward he deserves a cardboard castle  tasteless wine  nothing but air, then nothing at all.

The idea of fantasy was deeply linked to this passage from John 13: 1116 which Anton established as a major theme in my life:

For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean.

So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?

Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.

If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye ought also to wash one another's feet.

For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord; neither he that is sent is greater than he that sent him.

It was important for me to learn to wash feet because the superiority of my musical gifts was the justification my intellect used to put distance between me and other people. I was born wierd, no doubt about it, and my differentness had always been a source of alienation. I reasoned, as a teenager, that since I was a great genius, I should not expect normal, dumb people to understand me, and if they didn't like me, they could go to hell. When I began to grow up and really to suffer from this attitude, I felt powerless to change and was certain that I was condemned to a life on the outside perimeter of what was happening in music. Never would I be allowed a chance to demonstrate my talents or even to prove that I had the slightest talent whatsoever.

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I was able to endear myself to ~tudents and teachers and church choir members because music, bringing out my best self, was able to soften the hardness of heart created by ego and insecurity; but, in general, I had a terrible time getting along with people. I had numerous enemies wherever I went because of my abrasive personality traits, excessive shyness which tended to be interpreted as arrogance, and a sharpness of tongue which made other people think I thought they were stupid, even when I didn't think they were stupid. (People I didn't even know would often tell me they were sorry I didn't like them, when I truly had no opinion about them one way or another.) I thought I was a great composer and that, as such, the world owed me something. I was furious with the world for not giving me what I deserved. I felt wounded by rejection, and radiated my disappointment to others in such a way that they thought I was rejecting them. I wanted so much from people, but my hangdog assumption that I would never get anything made people think that I didn't want anything they had to give. It was very dumb.

Jesus, through Anton, was able to show me that the master is the one who is obliged to give unceasingly, thereby creating a flow of energy through him which continues to enhance his gifts and increase his greatness. This realization changed my life. People began to notice a change in me, and I began to be able to claim my divine birthright in terms of material, recognition, and simple human friendships.

But first I had to get rid of the demon which still persisted in invading my house.

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