Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
31
The Price of Passage
MARTIAL ARTS was not the only thing we studied as we plied the waters and traded our way up the coast. I’d heard of other arts, especially the tantras. I was trading in a port near the mouth of the Brahmani when I came across a library. I immediately delayed our plans to sail and spent many days in the library—like many libraries around the world, part of a temple; this one dedicated to Lord Vishnu. The texts were filled with concepts and instructions—some with which I had passing familiarity—and were written in Sanskrit, which was one of the languages I could read without translation.
Since the time of Gautama Buddha, more and more of the ancient teachings had been transcribed to scrolls and collected in libraries. I’d heard of one in the far north, near the Rapti River and planned to find it. An entire university had been established in the north as well and was reputed to have a great library. I resolved to visit it, too.
A young monk approached me and asked if I understood the passages I was reading. I asked in turn, “What is the meaning of knowing oneself? Can one not know oneself?”
“Awareness is the key you are looking for,” said the monk. “One may be very familiar with oneself, but still not know oneself intimately. This is a principle of oneness with the universe and with the gods.”
I was intrigued and sat with the monk for several days as we talked. I liked the young man more and more each day. One day he invited me to his inner chamber and suggested we practice one of the texts I had uncovered. We began by sitting on cushions in a more comfortable room than I imagined a monk living in. We faced each other and began by simply looking into the eyes of the other. It was an intense experience and I had to start over a couple of times. I felt he opened up to me and I to him. This was followed by exploring each other with our fingers, tracing the line of the jaw, the curve of the shoulder, the weight of the breast. I shivered a bit at the thought that we had worked our way to undressing almost without comment.
But the young monk did not rush toward my sex, nor I to his. We continued explorations, noticing when my nipples hardened, or his. I traced the bumps that raised on his arms when I swept his lips with my own. I was a pupil, not a teacher in this exploration. He pointed out areas of my body that were tense, and showed me pressure points that would relax that tension. We oiled each other with gingili oil and my senses were opened to his touch. I allowed myself to touch his cock and discover the veins and vessels within that pulsed in my hand. He found places inside me I had not known and I learned about my male self as well as my female self.
When we dressed, we had not had intercourse. Yet I was more euphoric than after any bout of lovemaking I had experienced as a woman or as a man. I returned to the boat in a daze and once in the infinity room, I lay on my bed in silence. As I lay there, unmoving, thinking about my experience, I was shaken by the most powerful orgasm of my life. Not just of my life as a woman, but of my more than two millennia on earth. And I knew I needed to teach this to all my people.
We stayed in that port for more than a year. Each day, I took women with me to study the tantric arts and the young monk was most helpful. While we were there, we duplicated volumes and transferred them to my library in the infinity room.
As we studied, we also discovered Drona, who was teaching us Kalarippayattu, also knew of these arts as an extension of his own. He had been working with select women for some time to introduce them to the sensual side of his yoga as well as the militaristic. The massage with gingili oil—an oil extracted from the sesame seed—was a major portion of the martial art that opened the senses and healed the body.
I had to return Lakshmi to her true form so she could learn the practice and discovered she was the finest of practitioners because she had such intimate understanding of both the male and female bodies.
That started a run which I did not hesitate to allow. From Nimia to the most recent addition to our harem, each woman wanted to spend a day in the body of a man. I granted this wish and during the course of their day, I made tantric love to each of them.
At last, it was time for us to resume our voyage and I found it was also time to resume my masculine form. Each of my women came into my arms before I made my transition, fondly caressing my breasts and my pussy. They all whispered how they would miss my womanly form, but they were eager to have my male form in their bed again.
Transforming from the slight but beautiful woman into a strong and powerful man again, made me feel I had left a part of myself behind and I longed to regain it.
Drona, who had long since been integrated into our society as a much younger version of himself, knew my true nature as a demon. He put a comradely arm around my shoulders after the transition as I complained about having left the womanly part of me behind.
“That is the price of a rite of passage,” he said. “You must leave a part of yourself behind. Do not lose what you have learned, and revisit it often. There is nothing saying you need to make a permanent transition. Your wives and concubines would like to switch places on occasion and your life will be richer for it.”
“Thank you, my friend,” I said. I set my face into the spray of the sea and sailed north.
And that brings me back to Liz. Remember? San Francisco, 1968? That’s what this story was about.
Lakshmi had just suggested that Liz spend some time as a man. That was not unusual to us in the infinity room by this time. Since the fourth century of the current era, each new woman who was added to our harem—I say our harem because it belonged as much to the women as to me—was given the opportunity to learn the martial arts, to practice the tantric meditations, and to become a man for a while.
Some declined the opportunity, but those were generally not women (or men) who became part of our inner circle. Often, they found lovers and life mates in the greater world of the infinity room. But those with whom I was most intimate—and especially, those I possessed—were immersed in all three arts.
And so, the day came when Liz said, “I’m ready. But am I supposed to simply pretend to be a man and make love to one of our concubines?”
“No, my love. What do you think of this body I’m wearing?”
“Um… Well, I love you. You could stand to trim up a little bit. I really like a smooth face and chest. I love your muscles. They make me feel safe when I am in your arms. And I love your dick. I mean, I really love it.”
As she spoke, I worked an incantation and transformed her into the body I was wearing, along with the adjustments she suggested. She was right. I had let this body go a bit with the sedentary life of a shopkeeper. I turned her toward a mirror and she was shocked by what she saw. She did much the same thing I had done when I became a woman. She stared at herself, touching her face, her arms, and her dick. While she examined herself, I transformed myself into a likeness of the Liz she had been. She turned and looked at me.
“Oh, shit! Did we just, like, switch bodies?” She shook herself at the deep sound of her own voice.
“No,” I answered. “You are in your body. It is the way you are as a man. And my body—that looks so much like you—is here to be your mate if you will have me.” My own voice had raised and softened.
Liz stood staring at me. Looking at oneself in a mirror is not the same as seeing oneself, separate and apart. In the first place, we become used to everything being on the wrong side when we look in a mirror. Left is right and right is left. Looking at oneself from the outside is truly like others see us. She looked down at her growing erection and started to cover it with her hands, jerking her hands back when she touched it.
“I’m sorry. I mean, it just did this by itself. I didn’t mean to, like, get hard just because you are standing there, looking at me like that, and I like you, and you’re really sexy, and I want you. I mean, I didn’t mean that. To do that. Do I really look like that? I’m going to die of embarrassment!”
I laughed and invited her to sit facing me as we went through the tantric rituals of self-examination and examination of our partner. And we made love. For hours. Sometimes doing nothing but looking into each other’s eyes and sometimes with him buried in me as deeply as he could be as he bellowed out an orgasm and filled my pussy with his cream.
In the morning, I returned Liz to her own shape. She stopped me before I transformed myself.
“Wait. Please. Let me kiss you and touch you. I feel like I know you better than any person alive. I know how you like to have your breasts touched. I know exactly when you are lubricating in your pussy. I know how to kiss you. And all that means, I know myself.”
We kissed and I transformed back into my body that she had so recently worn a likeness of. She giggled when she saw my cock come erect before her.
“I think I know what would feel really good right now.” And with that, we made love again.
“I’m going to write a book. Would that be all right?” Liz asked when we went to meet her parents. She cleared out all her belongings and we loaded them up to take to the infinity room. Her parents were surprised that their rebellious and independent daughter had suddenly moved in with a man. I did my best to put them at ease and promised we would come to visit when we could. I might have used just a little magic to calm their fears.
“What are you going to write about?” I asked.
“Well, it will be a book for women about women,” Liz began. “I might need to find a co-author, but I’m sure it will be successful. It will be all about how knowing our bodies is a key to knowing ourselves—who we really are. It’s just… We need that book.”
I smiled and vowed to help her succeed. After all, she was my possession.
Forgive me while I reminisce a little more about India. You see, I’d spent a very long time—close to two millennia—around the Mediterranean Sea. It was where I was born, so to speak. I’d sailed as far as the blue-painted Britons and had nearly frozen in the Northern Sea. I’d put in all along the north coast of Africa. I’d been with Caesar in Gaul and Alexander all the way to India. So, now that I was in South Asia, I saw no reason to hurry. We often put in at a port and either sold or abandoned the boat as I walked through a new part of the country.
I met interesting people that way. I decided to put in for a while and walk up the Ganges Plain toward the Indus. For some reason, I thought that now I had experience in the martial arts, I should stop in to see Issa. I was sure there would be no problem finding him. It’s hard for a man like that to hide.
I followed the words of many guides as I walked for years across the land. We had little in the way of threats, and I spent long nights in the infinity room with my lovers. Sometimes the nights went on for what seemed like many days, but I always emerged from the satchel the next morning. One day, perhaps I will understand time. But not today.
The great universities and libraries were not far from the river and I visited each, managing to duplicate their great libraries. I'll tell more about my adventures there one day. I became a student and eventually, a wandering monk, intent on learning.
At the university, I met a man who was very interesting to talk to. He’d have gotten on well with some of the philosophers of Greece. Maybe Pythagoras. I met him once when he was wandering around Mesopotamia. Or perhaps it was Euclid in Alexandria. I forget. But this isn’t about him, so I’ll move on.
First, you must know that India had a unique numbering system. I found Rome’s numbers to be good for nothing but recording totals. To add one to another, you needed to count them all over again. There were few records kept in Rome that were accurate because it was too difficult to decipher the number. Not long ago, I opened a book I found in a library in New York and noted the publication date was MCMLXVIII. I duplicated the book for no other reason than it was the year my precious Liz joined me as my possession. I made a gift of it to her. It was something about androids and electric sheep. But I digress. Again.
In Babylon, we used a numeric system which I started when I was in Bathra two thousand years earlier. It was the number that Ninra and Namri gave for building their temple. It was based on the number sixty. We have time units throughout the day that are still based on that system, as is much of geometry. There are 360 degrees in a circle. There are also 360 degrees around the earth, each divided into sixty minutes. Easy.
But in India, they used a system of nine digits. It was unique because every ten units advanced their value one order of magnitude. Easy.
Now, this man I met in the Ganges Plain was a philosopher who sought to explain the world in terms of numbers. I thought I might talk to him and discover what the secrets of my own world in the infinity room were. Let this be a lesson to you if you engage in magic. You do not need to understand how something works to know that it works. I created the infinity room using the spells and vision that I had in Pinaruti’s magic room. But two thousand years later, I still didn’t understand how it worked.
This man—Eshan, I’ll call him—was wise, but difficult to talk to. When we sat down to discuss anything, he first set a pot of weeds afire and we breathed the smoke. Then our conversations were much more intelligent. (Yes, my friends, ganja has been in use in India for 5,000 years and many great discoveries have been made while under its influence.)
“You speak of hundreds,” I said to Eshan. “How many hundreds make ten?”
“No, it is the other way around. Ten tens make a hundred.”
“Then we speak of five hundreds and six ones, how many tens are there?”
“There aren’t any, so we don’t speak of them.”
“Write it,” I demanded. He wrote ‘5 hundreds and 6.’
“But why must you write the word hundreds?” I asked. “And how am I to know that 6 is ones and not tens?”
“You cannot write something that is not there!” he exclaimed. We both breathed in more smoke.
“I have been studying the vedas and to become one, one must become nothing,” I said.
“Because when we are one with all, we are nothing at all,” he responded.
“Ah. If I am nothing at all, then I do not exist. I am not here and we are not having this conversation.”
“But I can see you here,” he responded. “Therefore, you are not one with all.”
“I cannot see me here; therefore, I am one with all and am not here.”
“You can’t see nothing.”
“There should be a symbol that is a placeholder for nothing so we can tell when nothing is there.”
I don’t remember how long we smoked or who spoke next. I puffed out a ring of smoke and pointed at it.
“Look there. The smoke is in the ring, but there is nothing inside it.”
“Hmm. We could use the ring to show where there is nothing,” he said. “It wouldn’t be nothing, but it would show where nothing is.”
And thus was born ‘zero.’ I swear to you, this is true.
I could have had that same conversation in 1970 in San Francisco. In fact, I might have. I lost track of Eshan when I moved on, but it wasn’t long before I began seeing numbers written with a ring in the middle to show what was not there: 506.
I searched far up the Indus for any sign of Issa. At long last, I found a place where an old man nodded and said Issa was no longer there. He led me to a simple tomb that was marked with characters that meant Yuz Asaf, or healer. The man told me that the one I called Issa or Yuza Asaf, meaning son of Joseph, had been a great saint and was revered throughout the land, but that he had died centuries ago and was buried here. He pointed out a carving that had been done of the saint and it clearly showed his feet with nail wounds in them. I supposed that was really the only way anyone could have identified him.
I should tell you about scars on demons. Damage done to our natural bodies is carried through in future manifestations. For example, when I am in my natural form, there is still a chip out of my left horn where the demon in the wilderness hit me with his axe. Issa was conjured in the form of a human and therefore the damage done to his body in Jerusalem was marked on his body forever. When we were swimming in the sea, I saw the scar from where he was pierced in the side. I also noted, by the way, that he was as well-hung as I am.
I was sad that I didn’t get to see my old friend again and left an account of our adventure together with the old man. I’m sure he didn’t believe me. And I had to admire Issa staging his death (again) and starting over. I had always just moved to a new place and adopted a new identity and a new body. Those bodies led me into all kinds of adventures.
Ah well. Zero Issa.
While I was there, though, I heard rumor of a Buddhist monastery far up in the mountains. I nodded to myself. This Lama, or holy man, the people mentioned would be just the kind of character Issa would put on so he could continue to teach and heal. I decided to journey into Tibet to see if I could find him.
I felt akin to the Tibetans. They considered themselves to be the descendants of a monkey king and a female demon. They also had more than enough legends and concepts to support an ancient kingdom. I journeyed through the river valleys and high into the mountains. Eventually, I found a river flowing southward and I joined it. But I never found Issa.
There was nothing.
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