The next thing that I remember was daylight and the sounds of screaming.

“Medico! Medico!”

The guards of Teotihuacán were yelling at Miguel to get me medical assistance. Miguel was hollering back that I was not suffering from a physical collapse but rather an emotional catharsis. I felt jubilant and thought that despite my exterior appearance, I had never felt happier. We were sitting on the exterior steps of the Palace of the Jaguars and Miguel was holding me in his arms. He was the most loving father, the most comforting friend.

Later that night, Miguel would tell our group that the “Islamic doorway” that I experienced was called the Portal. It was an energy arc that connected our world with other dimensions. It was very common for great masters such as Christ, Baba Gi, and Buddha to materialize in that spot and live among the priests of Teotihuacán in the early centuries of its theocratic origin.

“The three of you are in the second attention,” Miguel said. I looked around and saw my sister-in-law, Tita, for the first time. She had apparently been with us all along, but I had not noticed her.

“There are other apprentices who need my help,” Miguel said. “You three stay here. When you feel up to it, I want you to climb the Pyramid of the Moon. I will wait for you at the top. Take your time.”

The thought of climbing a two hundred foot pyramid was so ridiculous that the three of us burst into a simultaneous, almost hysterical fit of laughter. Clutching each other for support, we made our way to the foot of the Pyramid of the Moon.

About one hundred yards in front of the pyramid was a gigantic boulder cast upright in the ground. This eight-foot-tall black boulder was called the Guardian Stone. Mataji told Tita and I to put our arms around the stone and embrace it. As soon as my hands touched the cool surface of the rock, I was drawn into it the way Alice must have been as she tumbled through the opening of the rabbit hole. I fell into the interior of the stone. I perceived vast grids of light that disappeared into the distance. I was traveling at phenomenal speed into the microscopic, atomic world of rock, and, most surprisingly, I was unafraid. In fact, I felt blessed.

A gentle calmness had overtaken me. The boulder exhibited an anthropomorphic tenderness toward me that was so heartfelt that I thought I was being embraced by a human being or a god.

When I opened my eyes, I was looking directly at the Pyramid of the Moon. It gleamed in the midday sun with a breathtaking, vaporous aura that danced twelve feet above its apex. Just as the guardian stone was animate with consciousness and exhibited a profound kindness toward me, this great towering edifice was also alive.

As I watched groups of Mexican adults and children climb its steep face, I realized that the monument was constructed from layers of intelligent light as well as from stone and mortar. I remembered Miguel’s words during our first breakfast in Teotihuacán. He said that the rocks were alive with energy and creative intelligence and were blueprinted for future generations by the master builders who first set foot here. In some inextricable way, everyone who made the pilgrimage up the pyramid was being redeemed and healed.

In attempting to make sense of this with my Western mind, I thought back to my first trip to Florence, Italy in 1978. I had come upon Donatello’s seven-foot marble saint in the Cathedral Museum. The delicacy of spring was urging its birth with the first blossoms and shoots that pushed their way through winter’s cold soil. In this fertile atmosphere, I had discovered Donatello’s sculpture and was caught off guard when I noticed that the veins in the statue’s right arm began to pulse with life. There was a mysterious breath to the stone, a palpable vibrancy to the skin.

The power of Donatello’s consciousness had cut into the marble five hundred years before, capturing forever his artistic spirit. Just as the love of the artist for his creation caused consciousness to transfer from hand and chisel into the heavy marble, so too the conscious love of the sacred architect priests of Teotihuacán caused heaven to emanate from cold stone. It is that divine love that is the bridge between heaven and earth. And it is that love that is the real mortar and limestone of Teotihuacán.

Arriving atop the Pyramid of the Moon, I was amazed at my agility as I literally leaped up its vertical wall. Miguel greeted me with a broad smile, his childlike enthusiasm spilling in every direction. He took my hand and said, “Look at Hell. Look at it with your other eyes.”

Miguel told us that Hell in Teotihuacán cosmology was symbolized as the Earth, a place where human beings dreamed that they were not God. Human emotions, he said, were so dominating that they severely limited an individual’s ability to attain freedom or mastery over life or death. In other words, Hell existed on Earth by virtue of man’s inability to master his emotions. Yet Hell was a dream, a collective and personal delusion that each one of us had agreed to maintain. And because it was a dream, it could be changed. In fact, if we were able to release judgment about ourselves and others, the dream of Hell could transform into the dream of Heaven.

The Pyramid of Hell was three miles to the south, past the Pyramid of the Sun, the largest monument in Teotihuacán, down the broad avenue coined by the 16th century Aztecs as the Avenue of the Dead, and further south through the five large grassy courtyards each of which symbolized a different element: air, water, fire, earth and temptation.

The Rio San Juan divided the Ciudadela, the city of Hell, from the rest of Teotihuacán. The Ciudadela was the center of commercial and political life for seven centuries, with the Rio San Juan serving as the border between the general population of Teotihuacán and the sacred college of priests.

A lay person in the first century A.D. could only traverse the river by invitation of a priest.

Walking through the rushing waters of its river signaled the start of an individual’s spiritual journey. It marked the beginning of an ascent from the false self and its limited dream of life, back to the godhead, which in Teotihuacán was the Sun, the source of all energy and intelligent life on the Earth.

As I observed Hell from this two hundred foot summit, I heard frightful screams. I heard the voices of friends and clients, I heard my wife’s voice, I heard my own voice. I heard thousands of strangers screaming.

The howling was overwhelming. Each person was in pain. In that moment, I had a profound realization that the louder the screaming, the more distant an individual was from God.

The screams symbolized a separation from God, from spirit, from one’s own nature. And the greater the distance from God, the greater the fear, confusion and suffering one experienced on Earth. Encoded in each scream was a solution to the pain. But each individual solution demanded a turning inward, a turning toward blazing fire, toward horrible fear, toward self-doubt and self-judgment. It is this interior movement that is so difficult. But as the haunting pain of fear is within, so too is the comforting balm of salvation. I remembered a line from the Persian mystic Rumi, which reads, “Move inside but don’t move the way fear makes you move.”

The interior, self-created pain causes one to reach outward toward the world for comfort, safety and security. But the world itself is impermanent, always changing, always shifting. The facing of one’s interior darkness is the only true pathway toward light.

Hearing those cries made me weep. I had the greatest compassion for all of Earth’s suffering. My love for humanity, and for Earth herself, was forcing me back to Hell. I understood the urgency of descending the pyramid to collect the parts of myself that were still asleep and suffering, and to attempt to help others who were also lost. I understood how difficult it would be to maintain my perception of freedom and how quickly I would be ensnared by the temptations of the world. Yet I felt compelled to travel back to Hell and the prison of my false self with a vision from Heaven.

The winds picked up. As I looked out over the vast Teotihuacán plains, billowing white clouds were hurrying through the heavens. The next morning our group would walk to the Pyramid of Hell and begin the arduous yet precious process of personal redemption. I would have to face Quetzalcoatl, the serpent of the dead and in my own unique way breathe life into the parts of myself that were still dreaming.

*********************

Steve Hasenberg, MA, MFCC, has spent the last 25 years studying the sacred technologies of many cultures, and integrating them into the framework of Western Psychology. He has developed and conducted relationship workshops, meditation and mindfulness retreats and corporate stress management seminars throughout the United States.

Steve has edited two best selling books: The Handbook of the Heart and The Handbook of the Soul, with Benjamin Shield and Richard Carlson, and Women Take Heart with Richard Helfant, M.D. He has also consulted to the film industry on character development and worked with Miramax to rewrite their feature film entitled "Mother's Boys" with Jamie Lee Curtis. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Monterey Peninsula College, Antioch University, and UCLA extension. He is currently practicing spiritually oriented psychotherapy in Santa Monica, California and conducts workshops in art, shamanism and relationships. Steve can be reached at forspirit@earthlink.net.