3. Initiation

When I knew Tamas Bacsi he was already more than 70 years old, but he was still very active. He was working an shamanizing until he was 90. Then he suddenly died, within two days. That went quick.
One of his favorite pastimes was horse-trading. In that time it was the custom to organize horse markets and fairs on a regular basis, especially in the larger villages and cities. In Hungary the villages are far away from each other. Usually you can't even see the church steeple from the other village. The reason for this is that in the 16th and 17th century the Turks destroyed everything, and killed a large percentage of the population, by which large areas were depopulated.
Like every other shaman, Tamas Bacsi was very familiar with the soul of animals, especially the horse. The horse is a typical shamanistic animal. We even find it in Greek mythology, which knew the centaurs, half horse half animal. Actually this was a reference to the Scythes, a nomadic people that is related to the Hungarian people, and which was strongly connected with the horse. It goes back really far.
The shamans were also horse tamers. They not only knew the soul of horses, but they also traveled a lot on horses. This is one of the characteristics of shamans: they traveled a lot around the country to gain knowledge or to heal people. This tradition is very old.
Tamas Bacsi continued this tradition. He traveled a lot and traded horses on the horse markets. He didn't do this for money, but because he loved horses, and in this way he could be with and work with horses. It also happened that other people entrusted him horses to sell them, or to buy one for them because of his familiarity with horses.
He took me on one of those travels. I was about seven years old. It was in the beginning of the fall, just before school started, so that must have been the end of August. He was going to a market with his horse wagon, pulled by one horse. The horses he was selling were behind the wagon. During this journey special happenings took place. I was in the back of the horse wagon, under the hood, with a horse blanket over me. I experienced my first initiation during which I was completely outside myself. Later I understood that it was an initiation that Tamas Bacsi had created in me, but it isn't clear to me how he had accomplished it. He was always singing, even when he was alone, without words, in an incomprehensible way. It sounded like a language but it wasn't. Just sounds, rhythmically articulated and guttural sounds. He sang me asleep. The rhythm of the wagon and the smell of horses also created a natural atmosphere which made me go into this second state. The second state is the state between waking and sleeping, a sort of half slumbering, or dozing that can take hours.
Later I understood it was an initiation journey. While I was slumbering I felt myself leaving my body, a very special state known in shamanism all over the world, and what is also used in magical and mystical rituals. Thus I was brought in this half-way state, and my senses became much more sensitive to supernatural impressions. Shamanism teaches us that there are seven sources of knowledge, five senses, emotions and thoughts. From these seven sources all kinds of perceptions were made. One does need a special sensory organ for that. All usual senses become more sensitive. Like a telescope which works much better high up on a mountain top than in the polluted air of a city with its dark vapors.
People often speak of supernatural perception, but generally this does not exist. The seven senses have sufficient capacity to perceive a lot more than is usually the case, although there are other senses. From experience I know that there is an eight and a ninth sense. I can't speak of more senses because I haven't experienced these. Tamas Bacsi spoke of thirteen senses, because he had experienced these. I do know that there are more from my own experience. I do not have the abilities of these other senses, but I have had short impressions or flashes of these, and I have counted up to seventeen.
On the way to the fair I have made a real cosmic voyage, a macro-cosmic and micro-cosmic voyage at the same time. I traveled to the heavens of the stars, and I experienced the mechanism of material structure. I didn't meet another person or supernatural being over there, but I experienced the structure of the material universe. The structure is not the content. One cannot know the content when one does not know the structure. I experienced the mathematical structure of the macro-cosmos and the micro-cosmos. These were mathematical figures of fabrics and lines which you haven't seen before. That was not Euclidean mathematics. This was totally different. They moved about, they were alive. One transformed into the other. The different mathematical figures were space and time at the same time. I felt space, time and light, the white light. That I have experienced. At that time I didn't know what was happening, but it not necessary that one knows; it happens by itself.
Since then I was thinking differently from everyone else. That has caused me a lot of trouble, because I didn't have the same thought structure as before. When I went back to Budapest, they even sent me to a psychiatric institute because I was not normal. I didn't have the same thought and emotional structure as the other students.
In that time period, the 1930s, psycho-analysis was rising in Hungary, and the head of the institute was a student of Sigmund Freud. His name was Ferenczi. I stayed there a couple of weeks for observation. Later my mother told me that they had given her a letter to take to my school. When my mother came to pick me up, a professor of the institute told her “Be gentle with that boy, he is a genius.” But they didn't tell her in what I was a genius. My mother told me that in 1968, and they also said: “Let the boy do and think what he wants.”

I had the habit of getting up at night, around three o'clock. I felt completely refreshed. I dressed myself, and I walked through the empty streets to the park, or I crossed the Donau bridge and walked up the Gellert hill. This hill is named after the holy man Saint Gellert, who had converted with flaming sword, the Hungarian people to Christianity.
I walked up the hill, which is 235 meters high, and I was just sitting there looking around.

Gellert Hill, next to the Donau river

At home I had my own sleeping room, and I went out of the house by the window in order not to be noticed. But one day they must have noticed that I was not home at night. They were so frightened, and asked what I was doing there on top of the hill. I answered that I climbed to hill to sit there. “But why are you doing that?” my parents asked. They couldn't understand it why a boy would get up at three o’clock at night, and when he comes back he is not tired, and even goes to school for the entire day.
I said: “I expect something will happen, and that is the reason I am going there.”
Of course, all the way up there I had a beautiful view of the Donau. I was looking at the waves, the little babbling waves, and that brought me into a hypnotic state. My teacher had told me that, to look at the waves. There were a couple of ponds close to our village, not that big, about 200 to 300 meters long. We often stayed there in the evenings with Tamas Bacsi, and then we watched the stars or the clouds on the surface of the water, not looking up. He taught us to look at everything as being a reflection, and that brought me in a special state.
Now I know that you bring about a wider state of perception by this method. At that time, I was just sitting there, and at dawn I was looking at the small waves of the Donau, or listening to the rustling of the leaves. It is very important to open yourself this way, to widen your attention. Sometimes they give you various exercises, but it is easier to concentrate on only one thing, something that is alive, like undulating water and the rustling of leaves, something that is in movement. It is characteristic for a shaman to join the eternal cycle to widen his consciousness.
There I was, in expectancy. I expected that something would happen. But I have to say, nothing happened. What I didn't notice at that time is that the expansion of consciousness happened. That was the real surprise. This expansion of consciousness that came over me was an unnoticed education, because they didn't teach me to do it this way or that way. Tamas Bacsi only made it aware, and I developed it myself.

When I was at school, I was often reading a book instead of playing soccer. Or I sat in the corner of the playground and watched the dust particles dancing in the sunlight. The playground was not paved, it was of a dirt surface. Especially during the summer I was watching the dirt particles vibrate in the sunlight. I enjoyed looking at them.
Or I looked at the clouds, how they crossed each other, or penetrated each other. At that age it was unusual for a child and that is why the professor from the institute said to my mother: “Take it calm with him. Let him do; he is not dangerous, not to himself, not to other people, because he is a genius.” This is literally what my mother told me later, and she began to cry when she told me. Because it was something extraordinary, like a meteorite or so. Unfortunately my mother didn’t think of asking: “What is he a genius in?” They didn't tell her that. Now I can think logically about it, and that was not a genius in something specific, but more a multiplicity of things, whatever that could be.
After the war, when I went back to Hungary, I tried to get the files of the institute that they made of me during the years 1930-1931 through the mediation of my mother's doctor. He inquired, but found that the part of the institute, that contained the documents, burned down during the war, and nothing remained. It is a pity, because I would have liked to know what they had written about me.
I am telling all this because of my initiation in the horse wagon at night on our way to the market. I saw structures that were always in movement, as transparent crystals, but finer as if they were made of light, crystals that had become light. I saw a great number of dimensions which were penetrating each other, and also the white light, white on white. The intensity of the white light was so different! To image this, take a milk bottle with narrow neck, and hold it upside down until it flows out. This creates all kinds of white crystal structures inside the bottle, like a honeycomb, like soap bubbles. Tamas Bacsi showed us this and said: “This is what the universe looks like.” he always said: “The universe is full of holes.” His vocabulary was limited and didn't include mathematical structures.
Tamas Bacsi has seen it himself. He said: “Everything that is around you, the cow or your hand, all of it is full of holes.” It is the multidimensionality of the universe, in the sense that everything has structure and openings. He showed it to us with the milk bottle too. He said: “Also look at the air, and then you can see the holes. Then you can go through these holes into another space, another existence.”
Shamans were primitive people, but they perceived the multidimensionality that science can only suspect mathematically. They even went into it.
The shamans found that you can travel into it. That is the real travel. This was the same as looking at the dust particles on the school yard. Tamas Bacsi used to do this too. He would take a handful of dirt, threw it into the air by which the dust particles vibrated in the sunlight. “Look,” he said. “These little points you can see, are openings, and you can go through these openings. .” This was a didactic example, but at the same time a meditation. When you look at the air long enough, then you can see its atom parts.
That I have perceived myself for the first time in 1960-1961, thirty years later! I had been doing this exercise for many years, but the perception only happened then. Thus, never let your courage fail; spirituality is hard work.
This happened in Belgium. I was working in the city of Charleroi, in a metallurgy company where I was supervisor of the blast furnaces. I was responsible for about 300 tons of iron ore. For this, I had gone to a technical school for two years. One day I entered the control room, and suddenly I was seeing a multitude of fine points in the air, microscopic little points. I was seeing them so clear as if something had been removed from my eyes, and suddenly I could see. The points were blue, green, orange, yellow and red, actually the colors of the rainbow. There were two or three others colors two among which was purple.
I was thinking that it had to come from somewhere, and I was looking for a colored window. I was thinking about it in a very realistic way. I didn't find it, and when I opened the door and looked outside, I was still seeing it. I went outside,
made a tour around the blast furnaces, went back inside, and I was still seeing it. Then I went back outside again, and looked at the sky and saw it in the sky too, not just in the room. Then it dawned to me, as Tamas Bacsi had said: “look at the vibrating dust, in the sun light, and then you will see the holes, the colored holes.” Thirty years later I was seeing it, at a moment I was not expecting it, and under the most profane circumstances. I am telling this to make clear what that initiation was all about, the experience of the multidimensionality on micro-cosmic and macro-cosmic level.
In regard to this initiation I had to mention something that happened years earlier, when I was about five and a half years old. I was playing outside with the village children, and we were making a lot of noise. A farmer had already warned us a couple of times: “Don't make such a noise, my wife is sick in bed.” Then we were quiet for a couple of minutes, but the noise started again, because we played 'bandit'.
The farmer had already warned us two or three times, and each time he was more angry. Suddenly he appeared with a big stick that was used to hold up the vine branches. With big force he threw it at us and the stick hit my head. It was a heavy stick thrown with a lot of force, and I immediately lost consciousness. I don't remember what happened next, but my mother told me that I was between life and death for weeks. The stick had hit me in such a way, that my breathing has hindered and there was the risk of suffocation. The function of breathing in the brain was not damaged but it didn't function well. I had a severe concussion.
I fell unconscious, and during the entire time I was living in white light. I was traveling in white light. These were the same elements I experienced during my initiation, but this time I went though it. With my initiation I was looking at it, from a distance. I wasn't going, I was just looking. When I was unconscious, I went through it as through a white vapor. I felt myself as vapor, and I received impressions of forces, as if I was moving through electromagnetic fields. I really enjoyed it. I experienced myself timeless, spaceless, and as consciousness. In other words, I had another consciousness, a consciousness that was all knowing. This is the way I experienced that.
Later, my mother told me that the village doctor was unable to help. He did not allow me to be transported to the city, because at that time there were only horse wagons and the constant bumping of the wagon on the road would have killed me. The only thing my mother did was put ice packs on my head.
Only much later did I see the connection between the two events. It is known that a concussion can bring you to another level of consciousness, and the shamans used that in a deliberate way. Sometimes they hit their skulls softly to create an expansion of consciousness. This is a restructuring of the brain, the brain cells, and the neurons. Shamans would never explain it like this, and he actually does not for sure what happens, but he does know that something positive happens when he does this. He knows the result.
He hit his head with the back of his hand at five spots on the skull: at the back, at the spot of the primal brain, the little brain, then at the right temple, on the forehead, and the left temple. Then he changes his hand. He spreads the five fingers, bend them a little, and thus he hit the crown on the fontanel. Thus one hits thirteen times, three times four plus one, and the thirteenth is stronger. One hits so hard that one feels a slight tingling, and this way one hits the five spots.
Now I know that thirteen is the number of the master, like the twelve apostles and the thirteenth is Jesus; or the twelve signs of the zodiac and the thirteenth is the sun, the king. That is in every culture. This points to the four elements, earth, water, air, fire, and the three polarities, positive, negative and neutral. Three times four is twelve plus the thirteenth which is life itself that vivifies everything. This is the master who knows everything and can act. Therefore thirteen is a holy number.
The shaman provokes these vibrations in his brain as a light concussion. That one always has to do for oneself, because nobody else can feel how hard he can hit. It also depends on the time of day. You have to feel that it hurts a little, but when the pain becomes sharper, like a burning ray, then you have to stop immediately and wait for a couple of days in order to prevent accidents. Tamas Bacsi warned us for that.
He also showed us what can happen when one exaggerates. In the village there was a seventeen-year boy, the son of a bell maker. He had been studying with Tamas Bacsi in the past, and knew this method because he was born with a caul. He thought that the Old One is doing it too slowly, he is old and therefore he is way too careful. He started hitting harder, and when the radiating pain came up he continued anyway, and he ended up with irreversible brain damage. He began to stutter. When he was ten or twelve years old. It was so terrible, and nothing could be done about it.
There was another person of about forty years old and married. He also has been with Tamas Bacsi. He also has exaggerated and had become temporarily blind. At a certain moment he didn't see anything anymore, and nothing could be done about it either. Tamas Bacsi often said: “Look at Peter and Balins, don't you exaggerate.”
During that initiation I was constantly in a sound state. Sound characterizes this multidimensionality. The primal sound, which is a single sound that consists of hundreds of sounds fused together. That happens when one pays attention to the sound. The composer Robert Schumann expressed it this way: “The air is full of music.” That I have experienced, and I am convinced that Tamas Bacsi intentionally caused this to happen in me. I don't know how he did this. He sang monotone guttural sounds, that was it. He didn't give anything special to drink.
I remember that at a certain moment he called me: “Josika. Josika.” which is a diminutive of Joska. I slowly opened my eyes, and saw some faint stars in the sky. It was dawn already but some faint stars were still visible. It was as if I came back from the stars. I had the feeling that I just had been born.
Later I understood that this is the prenatal state. The embryo is still connected by two-thirds with the multidimensionality, but when the heart forms and starts beating, it loses another third. The embryo becomes more human, more material. When the child is born he loses the connection completely.
You can find it back as a memory, but the direct contact is gone. That has to be restored. It is important to experience the prenatal state again, not just the impulses one gets from the mother's body, but entirely different thought structures. Then one experiences the sphericity, the metaphysical condition. You don't have to believe that. I don't believe it, I am convinced of it. I have experienced it. That was the meaning of that initiation. It all felt so unreal; my body felt so strange. In comparison to what I had experienced, my body felt almost lifeless and rigid.
This journey with Tamas Bacsi is the most marked memory in relation to him. I remember that they were holding a secret meeting in a big tent. These were the wise men, the tudos emberek. Some of them were from Transylvania, the ancient Hungary, others were from Bulgaria and from Bosnia. These were the Bogomils. Now, when I see images of Bogomils, they remind me of the men who were there. They had come by foot with their herds to the fair, and had walked hundreds of kilometers. There was also an old gypsy.
They met inside a tent, eight men, of which the youngest was forty years old, but there were also boys of twelve and fourteen years old, their students. They didn't know each others' language, and Tamas Bacsi only spoke Hungarian. When he made it clear that they wanted to continue their journey, Tamas Bacsi took a string out of his pocket and tied it to his fingers. It was like the string game that children play. He made a certain form, and showed with his fingers three spots on the strings, and this way he showed them the shortest route. This was not the main road, but little side roads, and they understood that. They used the string game to find their way in space.
I also remember that my grandfather had a deaf servant who has very strong, like a bull. He was a hard worker, but he didn't like to work on the fields with the other people. Therefore my grandfather sent him to work on remote fields or vineyards, so he could work alone. My grandfather also use the string game to show him where to go work, and he understood that.
The string game was very practical and there are tens of thousands of forms. At the end of last century they said that an anthropologist is characterized by a string in his pocket, because at that time it was fashion to collect as many forms of the string game as possible. This way they tried to find the original culture from where it came, but of course, they didn't find it.
In any case, there are thousands of forms everywhere, from the Atlantic ocean to Alaska. In Stockholm there is a large collection of string forms which were used by the Eskimos. They used to think it was just a game to pass time, but it was also used for other purposes, to find one's position in space.
It was also used as a mnemonic technique, to remember the heritage of people, gods or spirits. In the area of the Pacific, boys needed to remember by heart the names of all ancestors, sometimes about twenty, thirty generations. Not only their names but also what they had done. They learned this by means of the string game. The mathematical and abstract tattoos and paintings, like in Africa, are nothing else but mnemonic techniques. When one knew more about their ancestors, one also profited from their powers, from their genetic past. In shamanism they also honor their ancestors, they knew their names and called upon them for consultation.
But there is a third element that they haven't studied yet: the structure of thought. Because the forms of the strings are thought structures, like yantras in the Indian culture. One made a certain figure and then one looked at it. They didn't know what it meant, and they looked at it until images came up, and then they knew what it was. They were thinking in a whole different way, and they could make travels, they could experience the prenatal condition. In their thoughts they could liberate themselves from time and space. By this game one can restructure the neurons in the brain. We know that the environment changes our state of mind, but the reverse is true too. Our state of mind changes our environment. Our brain also changes, as does our way of thinking.
From that meeting I remember that they were sitting together, drank some wine and sang. That was just regular red wine, and they smoked pipe. What was in the pipe I don't know. Maybe aromatic herbs, because they were always present in the tobacco for pipe. I suspect they might have exchanged some plants and mushrooms. I remember a real big mountain person who had made a tobacco bag from cat skin. That was soft skin. At a certain moment, he was looking for something at the bottom of the bag, removed it and held it up. I couldn't see it well enough to know what it was because all those other men were around him looking at it.
They were sitting in a circle and sang guttural sounds. I don't remember how long that lasted because at a certain moment I fell asleep. I had drunk one glass of wine, to which I had the right to drink, and then I fell asleep. The others drank more of course. From all the children, who were twelve, thirteen years old, I was the youngest. I remember that I was suddenly awakened and they said: “Come we are going back.” It was already evening when we returned. We took the entire night to get home.
They were singing for two reasons: for themselves and for the others, the world. Now I know that the sound can have a magical and mystical, but also a practical purpose. They sang themselves into a special state of mind. If they used herbs or mushrooms for this purpose I don't know. I did see that they did something secretly, that we, boys, were not allowed to see. The singing brought them into a special state of mind; that was the most important ritual.
In regard to the use of consciousness expanding means, another memory surfaces. I am seeing the old cemetery, the protestant cemetery, with the totem poles. The Hungarian protestants used the ancient pagan totem poles. Because the Catholics had crosses, the protestants wanted to distinguish themselves from the Catholics by using the ancient totem poles of the pagan religion on their graves. Actually these are the guardian spirits of the deceased, or sometimes the deceased themselves.
One day I was walking with him at the more than two hundred year old cemetery, when from the other side a gypsy was approaches us. In Hungary there two kinds of gypsies: some of them have a permanent residence in the cities, and the others travel around and trade in horses, while their wives are fortune-tellers. I still can see the gypsy before me. He was wearing a black wide hat, those were traveling gypsies, the Romani. He was speaking a little Hungarian, and he was looking for Tamas Bacsi. Somebody must have sent him here and given him a description of Tamas Bacsi. When he arrived at the cemetery he recognized him immediately, and asked him if he was Tamas Bacsi. He said that he had some herbs from the mountains.
He had a pouch which he opened and he showed the contents to Tamas to smell. Tamas took it into his hand, smelled it and said: ”Yes, these are the real herbs, these are good.” The gypsy wanted to sell it to him, and I remember that he was really persistent. Tamas Bacsi always smoked pipe, but when didn't smoke, he was chewing tobacco. When the gypsy persisted, Tamas said that he despised anyone who was using these herbs to enter into an expansion of consciousness because “Those people are too lazy to work on themselves. They resort to artificial means instead of taking the time and effort. Thus they are lazy. They are not worthy, because they want to reap without making an effort.” he turned his head and spit out his chewing tobacco as a sign of contempt. He didn't want to have anything to do with it. But after a little pause he gave him the name of another person and said: “Go to him.” Tamas himself never used it.
I have had several initiations. Actually they were more like tests to see what abilities I had and to what extent.

When I was twelve years old, I was staying for a summer vacation in Solt. On a warm day of July, Tamas Bacsi told me to go to a pond. Near the village were several ponds, the result of clay dug up to construct houses. The ponds were about a hundred meters wide and three hundred meters long. The depth depended on the rain fall and the season.
He told me: “Go to the pond Kopoia.” The word kopoja stems from the Hungarian Koponya, which is the popular expression for a skull. The pond had more or less the form of a skull. I had to go to that pond and find him a horse skull, and bring it to him.
I asked him where exactly I would find it. The water was not that deep, but when you went in it, you sank into the mud up to your knees, and the water became muddied. He said that I had to find that out for myself. He did say to go stand in the middle of the pond and to enter into contact with the water and feel that way where the skull was. I did that, but every time I moved the water turned gray, and I couldn't use my ordinary senses. I let myself be guided by my feelings. I found an old bucket deep in the mud. Like a radar I was being attracted by objects. The strange thing was that I first was attracted to iron objects.
Then I found a reed basket, that was a little more alive. I tried to stand still to let the mud settle, so I could something that looked like a skull in a little more clear water.
Suddenly I felt I had to go to the left, and I tried to concentrate on the object, in order for grabbing it in one swoop, because I couldn't go through the all the mud at the bottom. I reached down and I felt something sharp, and when I pulled I felt that it was buried deep in the mud. The horse skull must have been there for many years, because it was sticking out of the mud for only two fingers.
All that searching lasted for about forty minutes. I proudly brought the skull to Tamas Bacsi. He was under a tree, and I put the skull in front of his feet. The only thing he said was “mmmm”
Later he told me that it was a test to see if I could get into contact with objects. It was part of a series of happenings that comprised my initiation. At that time I became aware that I had abilities that actually I always had, and which a lot of people have. Looking for that skull was a means to waken my ability, and to actually do it, by thinking at what I was looking for and by this making contact with the object.
You can also see that with collectors who often find something that has value to them in an unexpected way. Also, most famous antiquarians know that they have a lucky hand in buying or selling. These abilities are present in man, and in shamanism they are called upon for specific purposes.
In my case it was also a totem animal, the horse. Even in the 11th and 12th century shaman were still offering white horses, and the Hungarian king Stephan the Holy One made an end to the practice with great effort. The skull of a horse was an archetypical image for the entire popular culture which held a shamanic tradition.
In the same period, my teacher send me to find a red brick at the east side of a hill about four kilometers from our village. In the course of history there was a watch tower on the hill, and in the 16th century the Turks had built a fort, that had been leveled afterward, and the farmers now had their fields there. From time to time they unearthed bricks or pieces of iron. These were red or white bricks. The white bricks were from the time of the Romans who also had a fort over there.
I had to find a red brick, and not a small piece. A big piece, a half or a whole brick, probably because the Turks were also a shamanistic people who were related to the Hungarians.
I went to look for it, and it wasn't easy to find a brick with all the bushes around. Within an hour I found a good piece, a half brick, and I brought it to him. As usual he only said: “mmmm”, by way of acceptance. Now I know that the purpose was to attune myself to the connection with the Turkish people, and this allowed me to experience my ability to do this. It also strengthened my self-confidence, and my self-respect that I was able to succeed in such a task.
Another time, in the same year, Tamas Bacsi told me: “Tonight you are going to sleep in the cemetery with the other children.” It was a warm evening in August, and the sun was setting. That night the moon was full. First I thought that it was a joke, and I told him that my grandparents were expecting me that evening. He said: “It doesn't matter, I will tell them that you are gone somewhere.”
That was the more than one hundred year old cemetery of the Catholics. Two thirds of the village was protestant, and one third was Catholic. He said: “Go to the oldest part of the cemetery, and find a place that you like or that attracts you, or that you fear; one or both. Go sleep there, and in the morning at sunrise you come to me end tell me what you have dreamed or experienced. Don't be afraid of ghosts or phantoms, because they do not exist. But in case you meet anybody, a spirit or phantom, then ask him nicely what he wants, and how you can serve him. That is the best way to please these rising spirits.”
I knew the cemetery well, because it wouldn't have been the first time that I was there. Being a child, we often played hide-and-seek in that place, and I knew all kinds of pleasant and less pleasant spots. There was a grave of an old woman, a certain Barbara, that always spooked me; also a grave of a young countess who had died when she was 8 or 10 years old. There was pyramid shaped grave that you also find in England from the previous century, that I liked. But I always felt connected with the girl, and sometimes I imagined what she looked like.
That spot was attractive to me, to spend the night. Next to the grave was a wooden bell tower, with one bell in it. Sometimes we played with the bell, until the guard showed up telling us that we could not do this, because the bell could only be run when there was burial ceremony. That bell also attracted me, and I made a connection between the girl and the bell.
Tamas Bacsi gave me three big pears. “To grab onto something.” So, I went over there, accompanied by three boys and a girl, having a horse blanket under my arm. First I sat at the grave of Barbara, but I didn't feel well over there. I continued to have the feeling to be sucked into the depths of a swamp. After a while I went to the grave of the young countess, and there I fell asleep. From time to time I woke up from strange dreams of a heavy thunderstorm. The clouds in my dream were as two fighting bulls causing thunder and lightning, as it is told in Hungarian tales.
However, when I suddenly woke up, I was seeing the stars and a full moon. At that time I didn't know that the bull also is a totem animal with shamans. When two shamans are fighting for their privileges, they would fight each other dressed as wild horses or as bulls. An ancient Hungarian saying even talks about 'bull heads of the shamans' when it thunders.
I went back to sleep, and then 'white' dreams followed, just like I had when I went to the fair with Tamas Bacsi, and I fell asleep in the horse wagon. Now I dreamed that I was enclosed by glass, crystal or ice, and I became more and more quiet inside. The glass actually was ice, and it became more and more heavy and dense. When I thought I would suffocate I was hearing the unnatural high sounds of the ringing of bells. The ice broke, and I was seeing the white dimensions that strongly attracted me.
I was fearful to lose myself in the maelstrom of endless white dimensions of different nuances which flowed one into the other, and which came to me from all directions. They moved in the direction of a light which was even more bright and white, as a hole into which all the white dimensions disappeared. My inner voice said not to go any further. Thus, I stayed at the edge of the maelstrom, and I did not go any further.
This was my second dream that night, and it didn't wake me up. I continued to sleep until Tamnas Bacsi woke me up. It was an hour after sunrise, and we went together to his house, where I got to drink a glass of brandy, the Hungarian brandy made of apricots, Palinka, and he asked what we had experienced.
I told him about my fear with the grave of the old woman, and he did his usual “mmmm”. About my first dream he told me that I had seen my shamanic ancestors fighting, and that they both were fighting to become my master. Because it wasn't clear who the winner was, I had to choose one myself. Both shamans were favoring me, but one of them had to show his superiority as master.
Much later, I had to think about this dream, especially during the bombardments in Germany, where I was forced to work. It always gave me a feeling of trust, that I would be rescued by one of the shamans. Bombs were falling all around us, but we were spared in a concrete cell, thirty of us.
I don't know how much I should attribute to the power of these archetypical images. Maybe these electromagnetic force fields protected me, I don't know. I do know that there is a lot that you can influence with your thoughts.
In any case, Tamas Bacsi told me that one of the shamans came from the north and the other one from the South. One symbolized water, the other fire. I am a Sagittarius, a fire sign, and my ascendent is Cancer, a water sign. That corresponds with my dream; the fighting and the union of opposing polarities.
About my second dream, he told me that it was the shamans who prevented me from disappearing into the white hole. He said that I always had to watch out that I wouldn't end up in the maelstrom. “You can observe it, but don't go any further than the edge of the maelstrom.” The painter Melwitch said, when he had made his white painting, “here we cannot go any further, because here begins another dimension.” In the same way, science has progressed so far in observing the smallest particles of matter that the energy of matter cannot be separated from one's own thoughts.
The white light is the energy where you have to arrive. In shamanism it is called the crystal consciousness.
These three events, the searching for the skull of a horse, the red brick, and the sleeping on the cemetery, were part of my initiation in order for me to be more conscious and to experience more knowledge later on. This is also the meaning of a master, to show the direction that fits with the personality of the student, and to bring his hidden talents to development, in service of the spirit.
One day, I was walking through the fields with Tamas Bacsi, and suddenly he found the bottom of a wine bottle on the ground. He said: “I use this to see.” he told me that when he looked at the hollow side he could see in the past, and he could look inside himself or the other person, and when he looked at the other upwards curved side he could see into the future.
What really marked him was that he always used ordinary, easy to get objects; and he also used simple thoughts and concepts to express complicated things. Something he gave was that piece of glass to us and said: “Tell me what you are seeing. Not what you think, but what you are seeing.”
I remember that I was seeing several shadow figures blending into each other.
Then I had to turn it and do the same. I said that I didn't see anything but the reflecting light. He told me to concentrate on this. He didn't explain it to me. I had to experience it myself and 'digest' that experience.