Samskara Sam Archive

MARch 1995 to August 1996

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Enter the Jagriti
by Atmadeva

I was in limbo. In-between jobs. Samskara Sam was my codename: undercover operative number 86 for ‘Cult Bust’ Inc. I was an atheist of course, but not impartial to picking up the occasional psycho-spiritual tools that one came across in my line of work.

The lay-off had been eight days, in a motel room watching a cloud of dark stuff build up overhead (cutting edge scientists would call it ‘negative microvita’). I kept a careful eye on the little fellas while the ceiling fan did it’s best to keep them moving on: tirelessly whipping them into a black hole. It reminded me of a ‘banana smoothie.’ But such scenes didn’t make my mouth water. Besides, breakfast was still a long way off - on the flip side of this dark and empty night.

At 2.47 a.m. precisely I got a call on my mobile. The shrill tone momentarily scattered the neg. MV’s. It was HQ... at last. Another ‘cult-napping’ and I was on the case.
Yours Truly was back in action. I shouldered my service revolver, threw my directional microphones into a sports bag and stole out of the sleeping motel, powering the late model 626 down the empty freeway to Sydney. I ran the brief over in my head, looking for openings: J.H Rasagoullafella Jnr., beloved son of J.P Rasagoullafella Snr. (highly respected incense magnate and the nation’s biggest importer of live trolls and pixies) had disappeared. J.P. Senior suspected the evil machinations of a physico-psycho-spiritual cult.

But where to start? A nightmare forest of such mind-cults had sprung up over night, flaunting a haunting bio-diversity. There were hundreds of them mushrooming in all shapes and sizes, providing customised brainwashing to the full spectrum of vulnerable youngsters.

What times to be working in! The collective mind of society was moving out of a healthy materialism and beginning to question the very meat in their McDonalds Hamburgers. The post-capitalist age was fast approaching and the newspapers were brimming with cases of well-brought-up kids turning their backs on the material goodies that their parents threw at them over their left shoulders. BMW’s were abandoned in five car garages as they headed for the LFT training centre (to use the terminology of one particular cult). These were times of great turmoil and social change. Just the other week something called ‘Dharmacakra’ was held at a Red Rooster outlet (the Pepsi-Cola machine was turned on it’s side and used as a ‘Puja’ table).

Not that it worried me! Business was booming at ‘Cult Bust’ Inc. Let the corporate class try to fend off the ‘new age’ from their ugly dinosaur features - I don’t mind the pay packets and bonuses. Nor would I be sorry to see the Vaeshyan’s mirror glass skyscrapers buckle and topple into the sea either: we Ksatriyans have for too long been the oppressed dogs-bodies of their self-aggrandisement. But the dogs-body will have it’s day - you mark my words (It’s all in the theory of social cycle). Ksatriyans: deep sea divers, basketball players, firemen, tri-athletes and the like, will rise up and rule the world in the very near future - I just know it.

Anyway, enough philosophy, enough munching on psycho-spiritual pabula. Sydney was still five hours away and it was time to break my journey. I pulled up at a ‘Twenty-Five Hour Servo’ looking to down load physical pabula. A PROUTist at the door tried to hawk alphabet soup. No Thanks! I’d tried the stuff on a stake-out once and the suspect got away while my mind tripped on ‘The Three Cardinal Socio-Eco-Politico Principles and Vice Versa.’ Very dry and intellectual stuff: (only five letters in the mix - P, R, O, U, T). No sir! Just give me a Plankton and Whale Milk Smoothie (750ml size).

Sipping away and regaining a suitable level of parallelism, my mind returned to the Rasagoullafella case. Casually I turned the empty Milk-Pak over in my hands. Suddenly it began to give off an aura of effervescent white light that bolted into the subtlest layers of my consciousness, surfing around and stringing up a wealth of inner associations and Picasso-esque connections. My entire being was riveted with meaning. I vibrated with spiritual energy. The Whale Milk in my tummy vibrated too. I was graced with a pure white certainty: I had the whereabouts of Rasagoullafella Jnr. within me. It was on the ‘hard-disk’ somewhere. All I had to do was to access it.

I washed out the Milk-Pak and with tweezers carefully placed it into a transparent specimen bag and hung it from the rear vision mirror. I performed this action more like a devotee than an investigator. Although I was loathe to admit it, the dangling milk-pak seemed to take control of the driving.

Before I knew it we hit Sydney with it’s suburban blur of Shudra townships clutching at the coat tails of ritzy, fortified Vaeshyan suburbs. The harbour was a sparkling blue as I crossed the world famous harbour bridge. The water seemed to be saying something... but I couldn’t understand. Waves lapped menacingly at the feet of the increasingly impotent corporate towers.

Then I began to feel like another Whale Milk smoothie. This was a sign! In a trance I looked for a ‘Twenty-Five Hour Servo’... very thirsty, and on the verge of losing the plot, I found one in the suburb of Ashfield. Leaving my vehicle double-parked I rushed to the drinks section. Out of Stock! The lead had come to a dead end.

I settled for a ‘Flipper’: Dolphin Milk with seaweed and garnished with a vegetarian genetically-engineered sea-horse. It didn’t taste so great and left me completely flat: no realisations what-so-ever.

Somewhat despondent, I got talking to a gang of youngsters hanging out on a stockpile of Coca-Cola: boxes and boxes of the stuff. Such crude liquids were getting more and more difficult to sell in these times of cult-consciousness - not even ‘Diet Coke’ had a market anymore. In a final fling, the beverage giant was marketing ‘Sentient Coke’, having gained the endorsement of Taraka Brahma II, a self proclaimed Guru from LA.

Anyway these brothers and sisters were known as the ‘Keartarn Krew’. They were a rag-tag bunch: their physical kosas were hung with self-mockery: baggy lungi’s and too-big gowns: reversed Calcutta League baseball caps completing the image of ego-downsizing. How much better they would look, fitted out in neatly pressed suits and ties, their minds keenly attuned to the stock market. I struggled to make myself heard over a ghetto-blaster broadcasting the ‘Name of the Lord’ at high volume.
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for J.H Rasagoullafella Jnr.’ I bellowed

‘Sure, no problem Bro.’ said a young Krew member, immersed in Bliss and cast forever in the shape of Surrender. ‘He’s in line for initiation at the Jagriti.’
Initiation! It sounded like a cross between something tribal and brain surgery. Well, I’d better hurry or ‘yours truly' will be up ‘samskara creek without a mantra’ (as it says somewhere in the scriptures). None-the-less it was my first concrete lead and I felt quite pleased with myself: I strolled over to the servo’s compressed air hose and inflated my ego to 165 p.s.i.

Finding the ‘Jagriti’, as it was called, was like an atheist trying to find GOD in a haystack. I wasn’t sure whether the ‘Krew’ member was just ‘spaced out’ or deliberately wrapped her directions in mysticism, so as to turn my search into a ‘rite of passage’. In any case it took me all day.

Just as a troubled sun was melting into the horizon, I found it. An enormous four-story mock Taj Mahal set in spacious gardens and boxed with high perimeter walls. The cult was obviously well-heeled and bent on filling the ideological vacuum left by capitalism. Two dangerous looking guards in grey uniforms flanked the iron gates, balancing vigilantly in ‘difficult tortoise posture.’ Somewhere inside J.H. Rasagoullafella Jnr. was mercilessly being reprogrammed into a vegetarian. They must be stopped!

With my ego still well pumped, I decided I would handle the situation by myself without calling for back-up. Besides there was no time for a phone call. The mansion was swaying with ‘Keartarn’. Dharmacakra was in full swing and the cult’s influence over collective consciousness was at it’s peak for the week.

However, not everyone found the chanting to their liking. Suddenly a Greyhound bus-load of ghosts, ghouls and assorted immoralists burst out of the compound, smashing the front gates, and toppling the VSS bouncers who lost parallelism and fell onto their Ajina cakra's.

I took full advantage of the ensuing mayhem.

Commandeering two medium sized pizza’s from a passing delivery boy, I used them as suction caps (melted cheese is ideal for this purpose), and scaled the security wall. Once inside, I made my way through the grounds and entered the building via a large lobby. Almost instantly I was accosted by an out-of-work margii trying to sell me a ‘Pole Shift Survival Kit.’ Looking like a useful source of information, I curried favour with him by buying one of the damn things. It consisted of a surf board (with which to ride the predicted tidal waves), wet suit, goggles, compass and a sprinkling of carob buttons.

The ‘Keartarn’ was blasting out from a large auditorium at over 500W per channel, but I yelled a question at the Pole-Shift profiteer anyway.

‘Where is J.H Rasagoullafella Jnr.?’ I bellowed at 501W per channel.

However it seemed he was only interested in swaying to the ‘Keartarn and mouthing doomsday predictions: ‘tidal waves will wash a flotsam of Yuppie paraphernalia as far up as Blacktown’ etc. etc. Then he switched to explaining each of the 101 uses for a box of collected cucumbers. I fled, stashing the survival kit behind a news kiosk selling back issues of ‘Cosmic Society.’.

Time was running out. I ducked upstairs. Somewhere in this swaying labyrinth of Op Shop kitsch, Junior was on the verge of being initiated. It was entirely possible that he was tucking into his first vege-burger right this very instant. Frantically, I checked from room to room. Soon however, I became lost and taking a wrong turn, slipped down a chute, landing on my Muladhara cakra in a large underground carpark.. The ‘vehicle pool’, as a sign on the wall indicated, was a sort of out-of-business used-car-yard where the collection of stone age four-wheelers would have driven even Fred Flinstone into a deep, deep canyon of shame.

My ego was now deflating rapidly, not to mention a severe smoothie deficit. I found a child’s bicycle pump and filled myself out a little. But it was not enough. I decided to call it a day and took a consoling walk in a very big backyard planted with a solitary Hills Hoist (a rotary clothes line, unique to this part of the world.) There was also a cardboard tombstone engraved with the words ‘Tiger’s Grave.’ There I took refuge behind it and prepared a large sack, waiting for the brainwashed ‘junior jiiva.’ I would bag him at first light when he came out to hang his langotta.

At least that was the plan anyway. It seems I fell asleep after such a long day of adventure and when I came-to in the morning, I was spinning wildly, pegged up on the Hills Hoist and ‘garlanded’ with the cardboard tombstone. As the clothes line came to a halt, I became aware of the fact that there was something stuffed in my mouth. It was a playing card: alas not the ace of spades but ‘The Joker’: and written on it in fluorescent orange was the letters T-R-G.

Who or what is T-R-G? What will become of J.H. Rasagoullafella Jnr.? When will Sam’s samskaras run out? What does the water in Sydney Harbour make of all this? Have these questions and more answered in the next exciting episode of ‘The Adventures of Samskara Sam.’

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