Tejas Wallah "Muhara" 1959

Note: Text in parentheses indicate posted messages to Usenet.

Chapter One - Tejas Wallah, 'The Taco Eater'

Richard J. Williams is an American pioneer visionary mystic whose spiritual "career" did not really take off until he was ten years old, and it began in the East rather than in the West. He sees experiential comparative religion on a large, not to say cosmic, scale. In all espects, he is exceptional for his practice of having visions which he sometimes shared with his friends.

The Tejas Wallah is a gifted and unusual seeker who gradually, over several decades, became an equally gifted and unusual teacher. His most distinctive characteristic, both as disciple and an adept, is his ability to enter directly into different spiritual traditions and find it's true teaching. It is said that he can give instruction in yoga and tantra in over eighty-five different languages!

He was born in Texas (Tejas) in 1943 and one could say that he was the paradigm child of the times, prepared to explore any avenue. His parents were in the Air Force: his mother was a Wilson; his father, career military Williams.

He told his California disciples in the sixties that he had been specially trained for the problems of metaphysical confusion (Yaqui Vision and Initiation) and he once said that the secret of his composite teaching was "years and years of being a military brat" (What I Did Last Summer).

His spiritual quest began in earnest in 1955, when, at the age of 15, he was initiated into Theosophy in London. He was immediately taken with the idea that true spirituality only differs in appearance outwardly, but are essentialy identical for the insider or initiate. And that theme was to become a major part of his own life and teaching.

He was also intuitively convinced by the notion of a spiritual 'technique' and in particular that its advanced practices were and are taught by "masters" who have experienced the higher levels of awareness - the wise and enlighted teacher. He was always a practical fellow and he soon found that Theosophy, Wicca, Magick, and the Occult, at least in the East Anglian form in which he found it, was little more than parlor talk and speculation.

The really important relationship for Wallah in these early years was with Melesis Casas, a Yaqui medicine-man. Walla entered into the Yaqui world in 1963. He says that when he entered the sweat-hut to meet Casas for the first time (in the flesh, that is), there was no person standing inside, only a tremendous energy and aura. It is typical of the Wallah that he should have had not one, but two visions of his teacher before he even actually met him (My Friend, Don Juan).

Excerpt from the autobiography:

"I first met Carlos Casteneda out at Esalen while we were both attending a conference with Bucky Fuller. About a year later, I was walking in downtown Mexico City with Oscar Ichazo and John Lilly, when I again met up with Carlos who introduced me to a Yaqui medicine man he variously called Juan or Don Juan Matus. Later I learned that Don's real name was Melisis A. Casas and that he lived on the Westside of San Antonio. He was originaly from Laredo and was a Silva Mind Control teacher and nature healer."

It was late spring when I went down to Mexico with Carlos Casteneda and Oscar Ichazo, but they didn't find any magic mushrooms growing in the wild. However, at a party someone, probably don Juan, gave me a taco to eat that was laced with 'fly agaric'. When I found out I almost gagged on the spot. I'ves always been a Tequila man, chased with Mescal.

Anyway, although I spat out the offending fungus right away, it was too late; the psychoactive ingredients were already taking their effect on me: to alter my very state of conciousness. At the sweat lodge party apparently Don slipped a magic mushroom into my taco.

Carlos thought that would be funny, I guess, since I was such a skeptic about the spiritual world of the Nagual mentioned in his book A Sepearat Reality. Of course, I didn't swallow the whole taco in just one single bite; just a small part of the 'shroom got inside me right away, but that was just enough to set me off on the road to experiencing an altered state of conscoiusness.

After eating the taco, I slowly, without effort transcended and I saw and experienced the entire cosmos as a divine bi-unity, all inter-related, just like the net of Lord Indra. I realized that we are all inter-connected - I became enlightened on the spot (Nectar of the Gods).

Then, standing right in front of me, appeared the Creator God of Volcanos and His wife, the beautiful Wisdom Sophia, their son Baal, and their daughter Ashley. I realized that existence is, in Reality, a big family affair - all united in one great big Field!"

In 1964, according to his own account (writing about himself in the third person), he is in a hotel room lobby in downtown Los Angeles just off Skid Row; then he is upstairs in a room facing a small, dark, bearded, Hindu man seated on a tiger skin - the man was a Yogi. "You can explain Yoga?"; "Yes, and all yogas."; "What is Yoga?"; "Yoga is silence and it has been brought to light by my Gurudeva" (The Real Thing). Later Wallah got the meditation technique from the Yogi's right hand man.

Ever since then, Wallah has been in total Unity Conciousness 24 x 7. He apparently doesn't need a guru anymore, chemicals or magic herbs, or trance-induction techniques in order to relax or to witness his own true nature. Where the Wallah lives, the enlightened state just is (Cosmic Consciousness). He meditates 2 x 20 because that's just what intelligent people do.

One of the teachers who had a considerable influence on the Wallah was Shunryo Suzuki, whom Wallah met in 1968. Wallah reports that he himself went into immediate samadhi at the Zen Center (Up Against the Wall). It is entirely typical of Wallah that it was he who acted as the catalyst for this event. The San Francisco Zen Center was located across the street from his apartment in San Francisco. He met the Zen Master in a vision the day before he walked across the street to the SFZC.

Wallah continued to have visions of various sorts all his life. But he had a particularly concentrated patch during the late 1960s. In 1967 he met a Sufi Master, Ahmad Murad Chisti, at a used bookstall in North Beach (Yaqui Vision and Initiation). This was Wallah's first real contact with Sufi teaching (not forgetting Omar Khyam, who was not really a Sufi, and Indries Shah, who was a bookseller). It was to be his strongest connection with that tradition and one that he drew inspiration from in his later years.

But the next intense period of his life was about to begin. In 1970, he went on a long trip to Mystic India, lasting about a year, travelling with Bhagavan Das (It's Here Now), Ram Das (Be Here Now), Charan Das (Texas Yogi), and Krishna Das (Live On Earth).

He met a large number of teachers such as the Mother at the Sri Aurobibdo Ashram, the Babaji at Upper Kashi, the Sai Baba of Shirdi, and the Maharaji of Blanket Yoga. He had many unusual experiences with other Fakirs and Yogis. While visiting the Himalayas the Wallah apparently taught the sadhus a thing or two about deep meditation (The View From Up Here).

Starting off in South India, the Wallah immediately felt at home in Madras shirts, and when he visited Bodhi Gaya, the (Place of the Buddha Guy), the head monk of the vihara explained the relationship between Northern and Southern Buddhism, which, says Wallah, "is exactly the same as that between the Nagual and the Warrior, this down to details" (Power Places of Central Texas). This is a typical Wallah comment and probably no one has made the connection before.

While in India he met the Tatwalla Baba, whom he describes as a "Saint" (It's Not What You Think); he was initiated by the Tatwalla, the Man of the Tat, at Rishikesh, recieving the name 'Tejas Wallah', which translated from Hindi means: "The bright fellow from Tejas".

In 1971, after about eight months in India, (during which he seriously considered becoming a pundit), Wallah returned to California, which, as it turned out, was on the verge of the expanded consciousness explosion.

As before, Wallah continued his various simultaneous paths. In 1972, he met an Aikido master; the great Hung Fong and three years later, he was ordained "Zenshi" (Zen Gleanngs) and given the name, "Muhara" which means "Nothing Holy, Beer Belly" just like the laughing Buddha of Nanking. This can be regarded as formal Dharma transmission.

Wallah was then initiated into Tibetan Buddhism by the Lama Govinda, who lived in the Himalays in India. According to the Wallah: "I became one of the first tantric yogis in the USA. My directions with regard to the tantras are simple: I am to be establish the Maha Mandala" (Foundations of Mahamudra) in a field.

To be initiated into the Tantras is quite something for any Westerner, especially an Anglo, however we understand the term "initiated". Elsewhere, Wallah says that it is entirely possible that he is performing historically a mission in the Western world comparable to Bodhi Dharma of an earlier period (A Dharma Bumkin). That is, just as Bodhi Dharma brought Zen to China in the fifth century, so Wallah is bringing visions to Tejas in the twenty-first (Visions and Initiations).

In 1973, Wallah completed "Gleanings" perhaps the most spectacular of all his experiential researches. It has three parts: 1. a Hindu section, completed in 1971 (Samadhi), in which Wallah uses the voices of various Vedic rishis; 2. a Buddhist section, written in 1973 (Satori), which is spoken by various Bodhisatvas; and 3. A Sufi section, entitled 'Paradise', written about 1974 (ibid.), Book II of which was dictated by Sufi Sam himself (ibid.).

It contains many typical themes. For example, there is reference to Ram, Sita, Shiva, and Shakya the Muni (in chapters IX, X, and XI respectively). And there are two short essays by Wallah (written separately from the Gleanings) at the end of the book which deal with the reconciliation between Hinduism and Buddhism through the practice of Super Concious Meditation.

After seven years in California, Walla went to Colorado (in 1973). This time he started off with the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche where he was initiated into both the Shambala and Tantric Kagyu Orders (Meditation Inaction). Then the Wallah returned to Tejas, where he was recognized as a master in the Yaqui Order by Mel Casas, who said "He had to be reborn and go away a military brat, to wander in the world, so that he could bring gibberish nonsense to Tejanos and Vatos" (ibid).

In 1978, he began to "receive" various "super-visions" as a means of spiritual transformation. They have come to be known as the "Visions of Causation" and Wallah often saw them in dreams. The two most important ones were Bhakti and Vajrayana, traditions, which, even today, most people would have difficulty in harmonizing. Wallah evidently found no difficulty at all, perhaps because his understanding of them was experiential rather than theoretical.

But more than that, he regarded all his experiences as aspects of the One Reality, that is, Pure Knowledge which is structured in conciousness. This idea is described by Wallah as the "Middle Way" in which he entered into the very presence of angels, devas, avatars and bodhisatvas. His 1976 vision, at the Blue Hole swimming pool, when he saw Buddha, Shakti, the baby Krishna and Hanuman all meditating together, is an obvious example.

Of himself, Wallah has said:

"I have to assume that I'm either way wrong or I may have the testimony of Beezelbub. From what's been told to me lately, maybe this is true, because the effect on other persons has been glorious and great" (They Call Me a Master)."

His old friends certainly think so. They say he can give darshan as Buddha, Dogen, Shiva, Ram, and Krishna to different people, one after the other, when they come to see him on his porch in the Hill Country just outside Austin, Texas (At the Center of the Universe).

And, according to one of his closest associates, Wallah does everything with an all pervading sense of humor, for example, he often posts to internet newsgroups.

Whether or not you accept these messages, the Wallah himself is persuaded that if anyone is going to make pronouncements that have any value at all about the various spiritual traditions, it has to be along the lines that Wallah has adopted: namely, what he calls Experiential Comparative Spirituality.

It is one of the strongest arguments of this story that the West has fundamentally changed all the Eastern spiritual traditions by the mere fact of bringing them together and asking questions that none of them has asked before. Wallah is one of the pioneers in this movement.

Appendix I

Statement by the Tejas Wallah - May 2002

"We seek contentment, peace and happiness in the physical world around us. As time goes by we realize that this is a futile pursuit. The transitory world is but a stage for the perception of momentary successes and failures. Then death comes and all the achievements, the wealth we accumulated, recognition and respect from others, our legacy, vaporizes into someone else's memories. Clearly there is more, and it has been proven through experience by the seekers before us."

In 1968 the Wallah stated:

"I am absolutely free to give out two phrases for anyone to meditate on: Om and Mu" (We are All on the Same Path) .

This is what we learn through in the Middle Way Program:

"We seek a greater permanence; where efforts of our being are identified with the ever existing "transcendent thing", in the Kantian sense, rather than these temporary bodies we use. The sages teach us that peace and the Freedom lies within. Enlightenment is a way of living each moment of our lives in fulfillment of the highest ideal of perfection.

The essential practice of the Middle Way is an effortless meditation that is transcendental; a technique of utilizing a non-ideational, mnemonic device (seeded meditation) in order to go beyond speculative thought and by being attentive to any task at hand. This yields a discriminating attention, where the consequence of our actions is evaluated BEFORE we act or react to circumstances.

The efficient evaluation of actions leads to a focus on the central purpose of our existence. Being aware of being aware. This absorbed attention, when applied to daily life, becomes the seed that can bloom into full unity conciousness, in turn leading to absorbion and freedom. Of this, there is no doubt."