The first posting of my long tale of travels in this and other worlds.
I've been writing this for several years now and it just seems to constantly
become a greater and greater task to get through it . . . i will keep
posting as I write more chapters.
Chapter One
The point
at which one achieves the attainment of communication with discarnate higher
intelligences is a supreme moment in one's spiritual life and cause for great
joy. Paradoxically, recognition of this moment almost invariably occurs at a
point in time too late for the due celebration. In my own case I had to undertake
a very long and arduous journey simply to discover that I had already reached
such a state some years previously. This is a chronicle of that journey detailing
the revelations I perceived during it's course which led me to realise that
the quest I had taken upon myself had reached it's climax previous to it's conscious
commencement. The whole issue of deducing the point of attainment is further
complicated by the necessary annihilation of such material misconceptions as
linear (or even pan rotational) time and three (and subsequently multi) dimensional
space. The heart of the matter is that to achieve one's apex of spiritual ecstacy
and consequently realise one's nature as it is in itself one must first make
the naturally unnatural transcendence from spacetime dependant consciousness.
I had begun to experience feelings of curiosity at the ill informed and affected
assumptions about my existence from a surprisingly early (to speak for the moment
from behind the supercilious vale of spacetime consciousness) age. It was not
until several incidents during my latter incarceration in the condemned cell
of higher education that I was made aware of my younger perceptions of the inhomogenuity
of spacetime and all it's associated consciousness. After this awakening I was
led to explore more closely the irrational nature of nature and my own relation
to the cosmos as a whole and, although with hindsight it seems a facile and
unnecessary reaction, embarked on a systematic deconstruction of my physiological
and psychological adornments which were allowing me to exhibit expression in
material (spacetime) consciousness. In short, having discovered that there was
much more hidden behind the vale of physical expression (which I take to included
all processes of biological, chemical, magnetic, electrical, thinking, feeling
and living activity) I proceeded to tear parts of my personality away until
after several months I had nothing left about myself and was able to throw myself
naked upon the purifying fire of human community and become thus consumed by
it. It must have greatly disturbed those in proximity to me during this time
as the outward expression of my inner annihilation took on all the symptoms
of manic depression. That said, I was no more aware myself of the hidden truth
of what my spirit was doing and, with all my consciousness firmly seated in
Malkuth - the realm of this material world - I took on board my own symptoms
and diagnosed myself as depressed. Caught up in the utter hopelessness of it
all I engaged all stages of breakdown through emotional, mental and finally,
inevitably, physical. Breakdown not withstanding I began a detailed study of
all available literature on the nature of existence, religion, theology and
philosophy but found my most empathic points of reference were in more fictitious
works and I came to constantly refer to myself in terms of characters in whichever
prose I was currently engaged, Mallory being a particularly regular example.
I found myself concluding my studies with the utter blackness and despair of
realising the non existence of anything beyond our nature as biological byproducts
of cosmic (in the planetary sense) chemistry. It was hardly surprising that
I should conclude that my soul did not exist when it was so absent from my consciousness
being engaged as it was in running unchecked and unbound by spacetime through
vast conversations and journeys with higher order intelligences. So unfettered
it was that a double sting was in operation on myself and I was in very real
danger of becoming just the soulless catatonic comatose I was convincing myself
I could not help but be by my very nature. My degeneration was finally complete,
I had no moral obligations to myself any more, my career slipped away, my friends
became no more than a nuisance and I spent my days in melancholic self contemplation
until I made myself ill through an apathetic appetite and general disregard
for my physical welfare. It needs reiterating that throughout all this I was
unaware of my great journies across the abyss of the spirit, believing myself
to be the victim of psychiatric illness served as a working hypothesis for my
condition. The spirit did however return but I must report that there was no
great awakening of enlightenment, far from it, it kept to itself and refused
(or was unable to forge) any link with my consciousness at that time. So I believed
for a good while afterwards that although something strange had happened to
me that seemed to somehow lay uneasy my denials of life beyond consciousness
I had merely altered my state and level of consciousness by a last despairing
act of will and made myself whole again. Meanwhile the people around me had
persuaded the university authorities to review my position in light of medical
evidence and prudently sent me to a doctor and psychologist whose quackery was
only surpassed by his cretinous credulity about his own abilities. It was with
almost orgasmic glee I listened to him pronounce his treatment a success and
his prescription in need of artful dosage reduction in light of my apparent
recovery - especially since I had quietly introduced the Tyneside sewerage system
to the benefits of every single tablet I had been given. It is a strange trait
of spacetime existence that having had to suffer great hardship for the attainment
of something important, be it material or discorporate, wealth or wisdom, one's
life path very soon crosses that of another who might have led one to one's
discovery without any of the ardour of the recently completed process. My path
crossed two such others and it was by fusing the knowledge I gained from both
that I took the first important step towards bringing the experiences of my
spirit in those dark days of my self-annihilation closer to the scalpel of my
consciousness for dissection. The first person to cross my path was Ruben. I
had had the fortune of sharing a flat with some good friends during the previous
two years, the most notable of which will receive attention later. At the time
that I was coming out of my supposed illness things were most unstable but after
my spirit had returned from its wanderings and I had hauled my outer being from
the abyss the Board Of Studies granted me the dubious pleasure of repeating
my second year and thence going on to a final year of my degree (my fourth).
One of my flatmates, a sensitive and melancholic soul, had become interested
in certain faculties of the human condition beyond the normally observable partly
of his own volition but more, as is the common wickedness and affliction brought
about by such creatures, because of a girl. Chelle was (and I suppose still
is) an intelligent and balanced girl with a keen intuition for the occult so
it was no surprise to me - though a considerable one to everyone else - that
I was soon tagging along to a meeting of a group calling themselves "The
EMIN". The lecture was on the broad subject of Human Electromagnetism with
particular emphasis on its induction in others. One of the visiting members
of the EMIN was a gifted psychic and a talented occultist though his arrogance
and affectation were laid bare before my barrage of naive questions. I have
always made a point of taking a responsibility to teach whatever I can to a
willing student but this particular specimen seemed less than responsible, preferring
to wallow in his own self importance though a more generous explanation may
well have been that he was too tired from a long journey north and a complicated
lecture. It was, in the end, his sidekick Ruben who took up the cause of my
spiritual and psychic enlightenment by distracting me from the leader long enough
for him to make his escape and encouraging me to ask further questions. Ruben
was, by his own admission, a student of the mysteries and a less than advanced
one at that but he had clearly learned the courtesies of initiation and endeavoured
bravely to guide me along my own path. He explained that in the end a decision
had to be made, the path to enlightenment lies within the power of any individual
who chooses to take it. There are no guarantees of success and no teachers who
will do the work for you but it boils down to a question each of us must ask
ourselves. He became most animated at this juncture and he possessed a peculiar
way of looking piercingly at one in a sidelong manner. I could feel something
hammering at my hindskull before I almost begged him to ask the question of
me. This great question, now, seems in context of this overdramaticised account
to be something of an anticlimax but Ruben said to me "What you need to
ask yourself is whether you actually want to have an extraordinary life. Ask
yourself if you have observed phenomena outside of classical scientific explanation
and if you have can you feel the tug of duty calling you to investigate?"
I said that I thought so but he insisted that I needed no preparation to answer
the question and urged me once more to make a vow to myself there and then :
"Do you want to have an extraordinary life?". I had, in the face of
such a provocation no choice but to reply convincingly in the positive to which
he sat back seemingly pleased. Our discussion carried us no further that evening
and after the meeting had broken down at some ungodly hour of the morning I
took my leave and never saw either Ruben or any other member of The EMIN again.
It did not matter for the seeds had been sown. I was haunted over the next few
days with this fascinating question, did I want to have an extraordinary life?
I would wake up at night with the words in my ears and it was from then onwards
that, having made more formal and solemn vows to my inner self, I kept my faculties
awake to the possibilities of learning more about my existence and my being,
not to mention the world around me. It wasn't long before I got my reward for
all this vigilance because within a week I had encountered Bill who was to give
me all the tools I needed to begin to create the vehicle that would bear me
upon the road to my enlightenment. I met Bill in one of the bars close to the
university that I used to frequent one afternoon when the appeal of amusing
myself by toying with Dr Jackson's psychology in an organic chemistry tutorial
fell foul of my greater desire to pass a sunny afternoon quenching my thirst
for knowledge of the organic make up of some good real ales. Bill lectured in
psychology and we found ourselves discussing magnetics in a pleasant haze of
alcohol. There was no striking characteristics to our meeting just the now familiar
pang that a certain stranger holds something worth knowing and the ineffable
and sudden knowledge that before us lies an opportunity to learn that we must
not waste. Bill and I became firm friends over the coming weeks. He was some
fifteen years my senior and had been lecturing in psychology in Newcastle for
eight or nine years. Bill was pragmatic about his studies and often amused himself
with playing games in public places. He would wager with me that he could make
a certain person across the bar remove his coat without actually speaking to
him or the person concerned even being aware of Bill's presence. He would then
proceed to puff and blow and make all the signs of being hot, loosening his
tie and his collar etc. The stranger would invariably begin to exhibit the same
behaviour after a minute or two and nine times out of ten the coat would be
removed and Bill would win his bet. The interesting thing to me about this phenomenon
was not that it worked regardless of the actual temperature in the room but
that the subject could be manipulated thus without consciously acknowledging
Bill's presence and sometimes even without making any sort of visual contact.
I surmised that there was more to Bill's act than the visual aspect and that
some form of subtle force was acting between Bill and the subject. After a great
deal of study I surmised that the same effects could be achieved by a mere act
of will on Bill's part and, since the subject could not always see the ritual
antics, may also be achieved at distances beyond even sight. This became the
first practical example I had of magick being performed though it was not immediately
apparent how this fitted in with the mysticism of the journey I had undertaken.
In due time I came to greater understanding of magick and the ability to affect
a change in one's environment (and therefore the world as it is represented)
by an act of will. I became obsessed with the notion of a purely subjective
reality and the meaninglessness of accepting the observable world around us
as ultimate truth. I suppose it might be said that I acquainted myself with
the first Buddhist precept that the world is a world of sorrows and, had I been
conscious of such notions at the time, I would have no doubt warmly embraced
the idea appealing as it would to my sense of the dramatic, romantic and, ultimately,
the futile. My university career was reaching an end with the aid of two very
likable Doctors in the Department Of Chemistry, Dr John Smith and Dr John Carpenter
who had shown me great kindness in arranging for me to work a final year project
with them which had been resurrected from the University of Vancouver in Canada.
Something subtle was calling to me as I studied the research notes from that
far away place and I began to draw my plans for what I would do on leaving full
time education. Most of the others around me were scuttling about looking for
a job but I was at the time so purified by my experiences of madness and personality
destruction that in reassembling a vehicle in which to move through the material
world I had woven in with great elaboration the precept of having an extraordinary
life and there was absolutely no possibility of my knuckling down to what I
perceived (rightly as it turns out) as a wasted life of slavery to that old
toad money. It was thus, with the aid of a friend who had travelled extensively,
that I hit on the idea of supplementing my inner quests with a more worldly
journey and it occurred to me that to achieve the maximum effects of solitude
with the minimum of day to day interference I should choose to travel among
cultures similar to my own. I quickly gave up my disposition to wander around
the British Isles however much I felt the romantic influence of Mallory and
our own national archetypes, I needed to make a clean break from the inhibitions
of being a British citizen and all the associated trappings of conformity without
the waste of effort of learning to live in a society alien to me. Thus the new
world and the old British empire became my focus of attention. Australia and
New Zealand held some appeal but on closer inspection conformed too closely
to the ridiculousness of English society and India seemed too obvious a choice
for spiritually guided travel so it was not long before America came to fit
the bill for my physical retreat in my mind. Here was a nation that geographically
had a great deal of open space in which I could become safely lost, a culture
that promised to make my day to day living needs easily accessible and an endearing
philosophy that was so crude and childlike to be not above reproach but below
it. So it was that I drew my plans to disappear into the west and as soon as
I had permitted myself the degrading spectacle of graduation I stepped consciously
onto the emotional plane of living and said my farewells to those who had nursed
my body and feelings through my spirit's sojourn and to whom I referred as my
dear friends. I went through many small triumphs and disasters in formulating
my plans being careful always to accept no responsibilities to other than my
own quest and make no plans further than my first port of call in New York.
Finally I had assembled all the possessions I would need for the journey and
had converted all else I could into hard cash for my staple support on the road.
I trembled and quaked at the prospect of getting up and going but nothing was
going to prevent me now. The two expressive media I had discovered for myself
at university, music and poetry, were my source of both intellectual and emotional
stimulation as I prepared for departure, I was at home in the garden reading,
writing and playing from early morning to late evening and I had much to study.
Eventually the day of my departure came and I had fed myself on so rich a diet
of sonambulisitc romanticism about my impending "Great Journey" I
was emotionally and morally drained as we left for the airport. I carried with
me little more desire than the poetic need to record all the events and my observations
of them and a tenuously vague sense that some form of spirituality would emerge
from the impending escape from the antheap of my life in England. I flew to
New York early in the spring and was thoroughly unprepared for the immediacy
of my arrival. I would say that this is surely the best way forward in any venture
about which one has reservations, the unprepardeness being a solace to the wound
of vulnerability that paralyses one so completely with the awareness that one's
actions are irreversible. The aim now of these writings is to demonstrate how
my physical world changed me and drew me to make the startling realisations
my spirit had made in those dark days in Newcastle and kept from me ever since.
During the course of my travels I will describe the places, people and events
I witnessed, my feelings towards them and the sequences of dreams and visions
I had on my inner planes during that time culminating in my expanding understanding
of how the universe is presented and how my own being plays a part in it. To
some it will be an interesting guide to living on the roads of America as a
hobo, to others a tale of one man's quest for enlightenment and to a small group
of brethren worldwide an expose of the fundamental truths this illusory world
so eloquently conceals.
