I considered for a moment, reviewing. "Yes, I see what you mean. I haven't lost my center, my sense of Self."
"And your grasp of reality is pretty much intact."
"Like/1 notice when the stove is on and remember to feed the cats and make the bed and stuff?"
"Uh-huh. And you don't expect me to share your world; you aren't expecting me to see what you're seeing and feel what you're feeling. You're able to accept that I'm living in what might be called everyday, consensual reality, while you're not."
"Ah! And a psychotic wouldn't be able to maintain that kind of perspective?"
"Something like that, yes."
I leaned back against the kitchen sink. "You know, it's occurred to me several times, how much worse this whole business might have been, if I hadn't had experience with psychedelics? I mean, I'm used to altered states, and I don't panic. I sure don't like what's happening, but I haven't felt frightened more than a couple of times, and the fear didn't last -
probably because I was so involved in being angry."
Lost the original train of thought. Oh, yes! Got it again.
"As I said before," I continued, "I haven't lost my core, my sense of being me. In fact, in a funny kind of way, I don't think I've ever felt more centered in my life! Can you imagine what it might have been like to go through this if I'd never had any kind of experience with consciousness-changing?"
Shura poured himself another cup of coffee and asked if I was ready for a refill. I said, "No, thanks. I just need to explore things a bit more with you".
When I focus like this, talking with him, there's less noise from the thought-parade.
I asked him, "Can you think of any possible explanation for what's been happening, on the purely chemical and physical level?"
He said, "I'm sure I could come up with a couple of plausible-sounding theories, but we both know you can't get any real answers in this area by isolating just the chemical and physical factors."
"All right, but speaking just of the chemistry, anyway, could this possibly be the result of taking forty milligrams of the DESOXY? Two whole days ago?"
"I'm less and less convinced that it has anything to do with the material you took on Sunday,"
he replied, "But we can't be sure until I've tried it again myself, at the same level. And, eventually, you should take it once more - at a much lower level, of course, just to see if by any chance you're extraordinarily sensitive to it. If you can bring yourself to do it. I mean, when all this is over, when you've recovered."
He's thinking he shouldn't have said that, right now, about my taking it again. He's anxious.
I smiled, to reassure him, "Sure. Maybe try two or three milligrams, and if there's any effect at all, we'll have our answer, but it won't be strong enough to cause a repeat performance."
He nodded, obviously relieved.
"I must admit," I said, "I can't wait to see what happens when you take it, though my instinct tells me you're right; it probably won't have any effect at all. I certainly hope you don't have anything like this happen to you. Beautiful. Ever. This is hell, you know!"
I realized, with a tiny flash of amusement, that my voice had sounded quite cheerful.
I suppose there actually can be a bit of perverted satisfaction in going through such a strange, dramatic process as this; it is pretty exotic, for all of the misery. Besides, may as well get all the little satisfactions I can - of any kind - since I don't have much choice about being here.
Shura asked, "Do you think you can detect any kind of change from the first two days, anything you can pin down?"
"Oh, yes. There's a lot of change, but it's not easy to define. The White Mind is still around, but it doesn't dominate the field anymore. I guess my recognition of what it is, and realizing it isn't the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth, cosmically speaking, helped it to fade into the background. It isn't pushing at me, now. The streams of thought are going great guns, though."
"What kind of content? Can you describe any of it at all?"
I sighed, knowing that the tears would start flowing again as soon as I started telling him, but needing to share it anyway.
"Well, there are often several levels going on at the same time. Right now, on one level, there seems to be a sort of compulsive surveying of human history, images of people from prehistoric times up through the present, creating cities, books, paintings, religions, political systems, wars, making the same damned mistakes, over and over, and every generation asking the same basic questions and having to figure out their own versions of the answers.
"It's hard not to feel a dreadful despair about the whole picture. I mean, why don't we get wiser, as a species? Why can't one generation pass on what it's learned in such a way as to save its children from falling into the old stupid traps?"
I shrugged, spreading my hands, "Then, on another level, I'm seeing that if the elders of each generation were capable of really instilling chunks of wisdom into their children, they would also be able to instill other things. Along with the good stuff, you'd also get all the misconceptions, prejudices, traditional tribal hatreds - all that sort of thing would be absorbed and perpetuated too - and that would mean no new perspectives, no moving forward at all. If there's to be growth, evolution, the children have to shape their world differently, taking some of the good and some of the bad from parents and ancestors, but basically remodeling it, putting their own stamp on it."
Shura was listening intently.
"There's another level where I'm seeing the rise of all the great spiritual teachers, the ones who change the way people think about life - Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, thousands of others we have no record of - and how their teachings are always used, sooner or later, as just another excuse for persecuting other people, taking power over them, making them do as you do, and going to war, killing and destroying in the name of God and Allah and Whomever. You know, the endless perverting of original good into a new form of evil. The old story."
Shura nodded. "But, alongside that, goes the realization that even such an horrendous power structure as the medieval Church made it possible for a lot of creativity to be expressed, and a lot of beautiful things to come into existence. There's an image of a black field, stretching to the horizon, an awful, smothering blanket which represents all the arrogance and cruelty and persecution that goes along with religious power -"
Shura was nodding again; this was a subject we'd often discussed. In fact, it was he who had told me that, in the Middle Ages, unauthorized possession of a copy of the Bible was grounds for execution by those who enforced the power of the Church. Only royalty and the clergy were allowed to read the Holy Word or dare to interpret it. Ordinary peasants were to believe what they were told and live as they were ordered - by the priests - and were not to ask questions.
" - but out of that black landscape," I went on, "There are little green plants growing, here and there, representing the music and paintings and other forms of art which that same Church encouraged and made possible. Their motives weren't, of course, to encourage individual expression, but to add more glory to the good old Church. Nonetheless, those beautiful things came into being, to a great extent, because of the support of one of the most repressive dictatorships in history! Good out of evil, to balance the evil created out of original good.
"That's just one example of the kind of thing that's working itself out in my head, all the time,"
I said, "History on parade, sort of, with examples - illustrations - and continual images.
"The hard part," I paused, swallowing, "Is that I'm being bombarded mostly with the sadness, the suffering, the loss of meaning that human beings have gone through during their lives, century after century - and it's still going on that way, of course, all over the world. So much misery and gross stupidity, and I'm really getting sick of it. I'd much rather be in Philadelphia, to quote Whatsisname. I just want it to turn off!"
Shura moved quickly. He held me as I sobbed against his chest. I
didn't have to tell him that it was real crying, this time.
After a few minutes, I got my control back and apologized, "Sorry 'bout that! Didn't intend to drag you into it that way. I don't want you to tune into me, honey. You have to keep your psychic boundaries, because it won't help either of us if you lose them. I need you to stay strong and sane in all this mess."
"Don't worry about me, Luv," he said, his voice firm, "I'm not being sucked in and I'm not really worried. I don't like seeing you in pain of any kind, of course, but I know you'll come through this and out the other side with something you didn't have before. This whole experience will turn out to be of great value to you, in some way neither of us can foresee at the moment." I looked up at him and saw that his eyes were wet, but there was a grin on his face that seemed genuine.
I felt better; relieved and almost peaceful.
Needed to let it out. It helped to dump on him a little, even though I shouldn't doit. Just makes it harder for him. He's feeling helpless enough already. But I do feel lighter, for the moment.
I smiled and gave him the only positive thing I had to offer, "I have one very nice and rather odd bit of information for you. My dreams, these last two nights, have had a general feeling of contentedness about them, a sense of everything being in balance and even funny, now and then. As if my unconscious knows exactly what's going on and isn't disturbed or anxious at all.
Believe it or not!"
Shura pulled me to him again, murmuring, "That's good. Trust your unconscious, sez I!"
I said I did, as a matter of fact, adding, "I know, underneath the confusion, that whatever this process is, it's going to take a certain amount of time and it's going to proceed in its own way, with or without my consent, but that, eventually, it's going to work itself through, and I'll be back to some version of normal."
I squeezed his waist and told him I was now going to wash the dishes from yesterday, and thanks for letting me unload on him.
He said, "Any time, Luv. I'll get to work at my desk, if that's all right with you. Call if you need me."
When I had finished the few dishes, I spent time scrubbing at the refrigerator, the stove, then the cupboard doors, grateful for the simplicity, the uncomplicatedness of cleaning.
It was while I was keeping busy in this way, that I gradually became aware of the hurting.
Everything - thoughts, images, motions of the body - was being experienced through a faint haze of pain. I realized I'd been subconsciously aware of it for a long time, but - because of the intensity of the thought-flow - hadn't fully acknowledged it before.
Pain is a sign of imbalance, yes? Or a result of some kind of transition. Transition from one state to another usually carries with it some sort of irritation, grating. Snakes are known to feel miserable when their skins loosen, aren't they? Does a butterfly struggling out of its cocoon get cross and resentful? Probably. It's not physical at all, the pain, when I take a good look at it. It's the soul that hurts. Why? What message am I supposed to get? What am I supposed to be doing that I'm not doing? Or is it just another part of the process I have to live with?
It was really quite subtle, I thought; not intrusive, just continuously there, like a dull psychic toothache.
When Shura had left for his class, with my assurance that I would be safe and all right alone, I sat for a while on the couch, staring out the window at what had been my mountain, but wasn't any more.
I'm beginning to get really tired.
My Observer said. No, you're not tired. You think you ought to be, you're trying to persuade yourself you are, but it's just one more way of trying to escape. Take another look. You're full of energy; you're a living body of energy!
All right, all right, I'm not physically tired, but I don't want this any more. I need time off.
I thought again about yesterday, about the pressure, the insistent, inescapable pushing, of the Watcher-Recorder. And how it wasn't doing that to me, today.
It receded as soon as I really worked on it and began to understand what it was. Now, it's just one more thing humming away beneath all the other stuff. Why did it take over like that? Why did it come at me as if it was everything, as if it really was the mind of God, the only essential Truth, instead of letting me know it was just one of many important parts of the Whole? How was I supposed to know it wasn't the only thing that had any reality in the universe?
I sat, smoking my cigarette, as the outlines of an answer formed.
The unconscious psyche doesn't have a way of distinguishing between Whole Pizza and One Slice of Pizza - there's just Pizza.
That part of me which wants to bring something to conscious attention doesn't evaluate as to size or importance. On the level where I was operating, yesterday, there are no gradations, no comparisons, to help the conscious mind get some perspective on what's happening. Whatever is active at the moment - whatever is being brought up to be confronted and processed - fills the screen completely, so that, for a while, it seems to be all there is.
Why can't the damned psyche label things better than that? It makes everything so much harder than need be. Not to speak of bloody inefficient, for that matter! A lot of time got wasted yesterday in fear and loathing which could have been used for figuring it out and understanding it sooner. Stupid!
My coffee was cold. I got a fresh cup and returned to the couch.
How is one supposed to know what the rules are, about going through something like this, if there's nobody around to tell you ? What would have happened if there hadn't been an Adam for me to call on, someone who knew exactly what to tell me?
The Observer answered immediately. There was an Adam, it said. He was there, you called him, you got help. What-if's are pointless speculation.
I wandered into the dining room, wondering what else might be inside me that I was going to have to confront and acknowledge consciously, before this grinding so-called process would consent to leave me in peace.
Any more surprises waiting to pounce, huh? Am I going to have to look my deficiencies in the face, maybe? My inadequacies, my failures? I'm already miserably aware of most of them, aren't I? I was standing beside the table, looking at the basket of winter oranges in its center, when I felt something coming at me from behind. I became very still, my back crawling. It was
hate I was sensing; the most utterly virulent hatred I had ever met in my life. A murderous, contemptuous hatred so intense, my mouth opened in shock. It was directed at me, at everything I was. Something wanted me gone, destroyed, eliminated, never to have existed.
0/z, my God! Where did THAT come from! What could hate me so much! Has this been living inside me all my life?
I took a deep breath and groped my way back to the living room and the shelter of the couch, trying to stay open to what was coming through. I sat down and closed my eyes.
I was in a forest, standing at the side of an old, abandoned well. I leaned on the stones and looked over the edge, peering into the darkness of the well's floor.
I see me - a sort of twisted, squashed version of me - it's hard to see what its shape is-have to focus. Yes. Oh, Christ. Looks like a slimy little pink maggot. Dirty. Disgusting. The maggot feels the hate-contempt and knows it deserves it. Why? Because it's a maggot, and it's filthy and intolerable.
My hands were locked together in my lap. I opened my eyes to look around and saw the room in a blue half-light. I knew I had to go back to the well.
I have to connect with the maggot, with that - that terrible self-image - with the feelings it has. I have to do it. If I don't, if II come back later. All right. Have to go inside it.
I took a moment to reconnect with my body, to shift to a more comfortable sitting position, legs folded, with cushions at my back. Then I closed my eyes, and was instantly back in the forest, peering into the well.
The maggot is a part of myself which believes it is the only real me, the essence of what I am.
It knows it is unbearable, impossible to love. It identifies itself
as a monster, a nauseating little piece of shit - Jesus Aitch! Is this what Jung means by the Shadow? Is this my Shadow?
I connected with the maggot and felt the wrenching awfulness, the screaming humiliation of being uncovered, revealed, examined.
The phone rang. It was Wendy, asking what time I was expecting to be over in Marin County. I realized numbly that this was my day to drive to Marin for an afternoon with Wendy and Brian (Ann was away at college), and heard my voice, husky and dulled, telling her why I would have to change my plans, " woke up with the world's worst sinus attack/ honey. I'm totally immobilized! Haven't had one this bad in years!"
"Oh, Mom, you poor thing! Don't worry about it. I'll tell Brian, and you just take care of yourself. We'll see you next week, when you're okay." "Thanks, Sweetheart. I'm getting a prescription filled and I should be fine in a day or two. I'll give you a call when it's all cleared up. Sorry I didn't phone you right away, baby. I couldn't think of anything but my throbbing head!"
"You go rest," she said, "Take care of yourself. Talk to you later when you feel better."
When I'd hung up, I lit a cigarette. I thought about my children, about the almost painful pride I had in them.
I've been a good mother. For all my faults and mistakes, I've been a damned good mother.
There were hot tears on my cheeks.
How does that fit with the pathetic little maggot image? Or is this slimy, dirty thing lying in the dark of the well - is it left over from childhood? Has it lived down there, trying to stay hidden, since I was a child?
The answer was Yes.
And the hate? The killing hatred - has that been therefrom childhood, too? Is it me hating myself? Where did I learn it?
There was a memory of myself as a child, hearing a voice telling me that my clothes always had an unpleasant smell.
Someone said that to me, when I was little. The child knows intuitively what that means. Your smell is yourself; everyone smells of themselves. The message is, I am someone whose soul smells bad. Who lam smells bad to others. Who I am is a bad smell.
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