Inner Legacy

by Douglas Stuart

  Many revelations came my way in the time that I hung in silence, in the void. These last thoughts are not of that calibre but merely an expression of long held opinions of mine here on earth. But my experience that I am relating to you is not of this world or universe but is of otherness and because it speaks of an otherness there are no ways to adequately describe it except by drawing reference to this world and its myths. Did I meet a real dragon-like creature? Of course I didn't. This was just a manifestation in my imagination of something much deeper that was being undergone. But how else could I make sense of the otherness of the experience except by trying to find a suitable reference in my own mind? Have I made up as I go along these descriptors of the experience? Such a thought I must emphatically deny! Not in any sense have I added to or subtracted from the experience as it happened to me. I saw the dragon in that valley and so I have described it as such. Do I think that was real? Of course not. Do I think the cave magically disappeared? I think not - these were just the way my mind attempted to make sense of what I experienced. So like Gandhi I can simply say that what was elusive and deceptive resolved itself into crystal clearness. That process began as I was joined with the diamond, the crystal, the light. Was my companion real? Indeed of that I have no doubt for I knew his name. Was he as described? I doubt it. How does one describe the wind when it is invisible to the eye? We cannot, we can only describe it by its effects on other solid and visible objects. Imagine however you could see the wind but not the objects it touches and try and describe it, if you will, and you will see the problems I have had in relating this tale to you. That is true I have not the slightest shadow of doubt, the fact that I resorted to the realms of fantasy characters to describe it, is partly my fault and my failings in my skill at conveying the truth and perhaps had I felt able to talk about this out loud it might have helped crystallise the experience into a clearer form of words. It is only now as I run out of time and my end draws near do I have serious doubts about my ability to truly relate to you what happened and what it means. At least what it meant to me, what I think it was about. Now I confuse myself and I no longer can hold the train of thought as once I could. My mind is growing weaker like my body and my concentration starts to fail. I am not long for this world now Adam and I will shed no tears for its passing from my life. I know now what awaits me for I have seen it and I rejoice.

  However since time is short I am devoting all my energies when I am alone, which is seldom now, to finishing these writings. Not only must I finish them but also hide them in the place where you uncovered them and do so before I am too weak to finish although I know that I will finish these notebooks and that I will be able to hide them. The fact that I know this is part of the proof I will give you at the end of this tale so that you might perhaps go back over my writing with a less sceptical eye and look for the clues I have hidden in the text for you to find and then understand. I am assuming you are taking this all with a sceptical eye and aren't of such a gullible and easily led nature as to take this all at face value. I will be disappointed if you have taken it all in without questioning it. You need to question. You need to seek out the truth within this tale. That is my true legacy to you, Adam. Be brave enough to ask if I am/was mad as hatter. Be strong enough to ask is this all a fiction or is it something more? Shred it to pieces in your mind and do not take what I have written as literal truth. True it is but not in that sense. I have struggled here to try and reach out to talk to you about this but I am no longer sure if my logic and train of thought can remain constant and I fear I may have wandered into dead ends or left thoughts unfinished and I am aware I have not yet finished my tale and the necessity to do so is pressing upon me. Yet today I have felt it necessary to try and offer some guidance as to how to read this tale and to seek reassurance for myself that in speaking freely of this to you, you will not doubt the sincerity of my intentions. While such little commentary as I am able to achieve is added with reluctance to this tale have no doubt that when I am relating the tale I am doing what I would call a clear memory dump onto paper. I just wish like everything else in my life that I had started on this project earlier and I would have had longer to move over the words with care, to shape them into what they ought to be instead of this babble for that's what it is that floods these pages. A mind fart.

  Silence is not for the faint hearted for in silence you come face to face with truth.

  I must rest.

  Can I ask one favour of you my dear dear Grandson? Do not tamper with my words. Add what you like to them if you share this tale but leave the content of my notebooks as they are, do not feel the need to edit or to clarify or even to protect my memory. Let it be as it is. If you ever do anything with these notebooks I am thinking here of you showing them to others or whatever or adding to the words - do not feel the need to try and explain what I describe for what you perceive may not be what I intended and what others see may not be what you see. I hope this at least will be honoured.

  Upwards

  Like many events in my experience the change was so gradual at first that it took some time to register in my consciousness. Around me it was all changing; the blackness was falling away, the very fabric of where I hung suspended in the great silence was slipping away. Again I have to emphasise although it is blackness and darkness yet there is light to see it and I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms. Maybe there was no light except in the perceptions of my brain or the manipulation of my retina? I can't answer only tell you I could see clearly.

  The blackness was falling away on all sides like a curtain being withdrawn, and yet as it moved away, while I was aware of it happening, I was also very much aware that the curtain or veil was falling away to reveal the reality of my surroundings, which appeared as dark if not darker, than it had been before and yet radiated not only light but life and warmth.I could say the dropping away of the veil was to reveal nothingness and in one sense that would be true but it was like silence itself, not definable by an absence of something else but rather was there in its completeness. I was in a true void of nothingness, no longer suspended just there in this place that was dark yet light.

  It was all at a distance though and didn't seem to touch me but rather surrounded me . I was in place where it did not touch, a bubble in this fabric that seemed to be living.

  The great silence was there, still, hanging on it felt by its fingertips. I could sense it was about to end, that it was like a grace note in music. The silence between the chimes of a clock. The moment before a sneeze. A sense of anticipation, of waiting.

  And suddenly there was a rushing wind like nothing I have ever experienced on earth. The noise was deafening and rose to a roar that filled and vibrated through every sinew of my body. It became like the hot breath of a roaring lion. It was as though a great beast was below roaring upwards at me. Sparks of flame appeared from nowhere and danced around me. Little tongues of flame and then there was music. Such glorious music and my body moved and swayed and became part of the music no longer a grace note but an active part of the whole. I danced.

  It was all-consuming and I was lost as though absorbed by the music, not a trance but like it. I was at one with the music. I closed my eyes and visions passed before me. Seen in my mind. The eye of the mind. The window of soul was opened and I saw.

  Deafness fell from my ears and it was as though I had never heard before and I heard voices. Voices that were part of the music, not additional to it but an integral part of it as though human voices were instruments.

  Then my nose awoke from a deep slumber and I felt the scent in my bones. It overwhelmed me and I opened my mouth to taste and was overwhelmed by sweetness.

  Time was meaningless and I cannot say if this lasted for minutes or millennia for how do you measure that which doesn't exist.

  I consumed and was subsumed.

  Light grew then like a living thing and the darkness around me grew to an intensity of light and everything increased in intensity and I was at one
with the whole. The light approached me and the bubble in which I had been was closing in on all sides and slowly it touched me, touched my body and entered into it until I was at one with all around me.

  I could see yet saw nothing. I could sense but sensed nothing. I was aware but unaware. I was subsumed into that which I could not see. There was no fear yet something was not right. Something was missing. It was like being in a misted up car and looking through the windows knowing the world was out there but being unable to see it.

  Hunger grew inside. The hunger of desire. It started in my heart and took over every part of my being. I needed to be fed, I needed to know.

  I was swallowed up by desire for what I knew not but a longing deep in my being grew until it became my sole focus of being and existing. As it grew so all else that I was experiencing seemed to fade away. The very light itself seemed to withdraw, the scent vanished, the visions stopped, the flames flickered into nothing, the wind died and the music stopped.

  I was arched like a bow, my head turned upwards and flung back as far as it could go and I was filled with a longing, a hunger like nothing I had ever experienced.

  When I thought I could no longer live with this longing it grew even more intense. My whole being every cell and atom was filled with a deep, deep need for completeness. I ached to experience joy. I fought to try and clear away this aching and longing to get control over myself. I even tried to think to make sense. It was futile as I arched and strained towards what would fulfil my longing.

  I confess with shame I think that I fought this tooth and nail. I knew I couldn't resist this inexorable pull and yet for a reason I can't explain I resisted. I had been happy, if that is the right word, to go along and accept all that was happening but here in the final moments of my journey I faltered and stumbled and fell before this desire, this longing. It was as though I was being pulled apart, as though I was reluctant to submit.

  I was reluctant to give in to this situation. I hung like that while I battled. A war raged inside me. I knew that I had to give up myself to this longing and become part of it and yet I resisted, I refused.

  I would not go.

  I would not let go.

  And then suddenly I resigned from the game. I knocked over my King and admitted defeat. I wanted this with all my heart now, more than anything I had ever wanted. Whatever the cost I needed what I longed for, my hunger and need had to be satisfied.

  I was at peace, one that goes beyond understanding. Conflict was over. Forever. I was the now and almost whole. My body no longer arching felt as though it began to rise through the darkness. I stretched my arm out ready to welcome and hug and absorb that which was to come.

  Joy began to flood my being and tears flowed. I raised my eyes to the above and saw green.

  A green stalk begin to fill my vision.

  Rose

  I came upon a rose. The stem of a rose and rising up I saw the rose bud. Its green casing curling at the top outward ready to burst open and flower.

  It was life. A living thing that was the very source of life. Why I saw it as rose I have no idea, I do not like roses, I don't like the thorns and I like the flowers even less. Yet here before me as I circled it was a rosebud or what appeared to be a rosebud about two metres around the widest part. When I say rose that was what I thought I was looking at and yet around its base stood a ring of thorns unlike anything I had ever seen before. I became aware of movement and noticed my companion was back, not beside but curling and caressing the stalk, the ring of thorns and lovingly or so it seemed embracing the very bud itself. Stranger still the more time I had to take in fully what I was seeing I noticed that ring of thorns also moved in response to my wispy companion's movement and there was light as they danced together or so it seemed to me. Like lovers intertwining and responding to one another they danced together and then the rose itself seemed to change its nature, the stem pulsed with light and all three elements before me seemed to dance together in a strange and intertwining penetrating dance of love. A community. A community of love. They seemed oblivious to my presence and yet I felt no shame to gaze upon this thing before me for all I felt were waves of love.

  And the stem and the circle of thorns and my companion seemed to grow faint before my eyes and I believe they were being caught up together in the rosebud until all that lay before me was the bud itself.

  Slowly, oh so slowly the bud began to open. At first all I could see were little hints of light as the outer green protecting the bud began to fold away. I recognised the light immediately. I had seen it in the the cave. The cave where I had travelled the length of the tunnel only to be tantalised by the light beyond the rock face where I had read the words NOT YET with great frustration. I also realised at that point that although I had appeared to be travelling and journeying many kilometres through space I was always beside this light and that as far as the light was concerned I had never moved. My mind was reeling as I saw more and more revealed and in the time of revelation I came to see and understand. I knew then what I had gone through and why. I saw everything I had ever known or experienced fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle and I knew. Beyond that I cannot explain it. I knew. Oh how I knew. Knew and was known. I saw myself as I truly was meant to be. I saw how that had been the case for ever and all time and in time before time. I no longer thought, I simply was. As it unfurled before me there was no rose at all to be revealed. Instead I looked and beheld and knew. I cannot tell you what I saw then. There are two reasons for this, first and foremost that I can't even begin to recall it to mind. It is a faint knowledge just beyond my earthly mind's reach. The second reason is that even if I could recall it and, by some miracle actually describe or pass on to you what I knew and what I beheld, I would have to refrain for such things are not to be spoken of in this realm of ours.

  My body was gently turned and I was looking out and up and down and saw the veil of darkness disappear before my eyes and I saw all that had been hidden from me. There was no darkness only light and I saw before me laid out the most wonderful sight I have ever seen, the most beautiful city stretching into the everness and I saw millions of beings like me rising up towards me and I became as one with them.

  And then finally even that vision peeled away, the light vanished, the rosebud of light vanished and then I truly saw all things as they are and will be and what above all else I was.

  But here the tale of this journey, this trek, this vision, this experience must draw to a close for there is nothing beyond here, nothing I can describe for no language, no human idea, has ever reached or come close to what there was on the other side of otherness, in place before the beginning and beyond the end and what lies beyond our sad concept of infinity. However I can tell you it was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen and I ache and long to be there again. I will be soon. I am sure of that.

  I have to be more honest I think. I saw much as I indicated. I could try and explain it to you and would gladly do so but not only do I think my time of writing is ending but also I think there are some things best left unsaid. Perhaps I might even feel a restraining hand upon my my soul preventing me from sharing it with you, I'm not sure if this is truly the case or whether or not the restraint is self imposed. I am sorry I have presented this to you almost as a riddle but if as I pray you will know the truth as I do then there will be little of a riddle in reality and you will see it for the allegory it is.

  I was rolled gently back from that which is other and found myself in the blink of an eye back here in my room and in my bed and opening my eyes to greet morning. Do not take from this that I had had a dream for this was no dream or if it was it was dream beyond dreams. I came back to myself from otherness and woke to find myself trapped again in my pain filled body.

  I know you will doubt but have I not already provided proof that I knew when I would die. I knew in the otherness and not in this life and I kept that knowledge when I woke. If I am in fact delusional and I expect you may think so then my proofs
to you will be wrong and you can burn these notebooks please and forgive an old man his dreams. If on the other hand they prove to be true then perhaps you will treasure my writing and above all else seek out that which is not explicit but is implicit in this text. I know I have yet to provide you with the final truth or proof.

  I will do so but I have more to say now than at first I thought. I have more time than I thought and I can dwell a little upon things and pass on to you others that are in mind, I want to speak to you across the void. I want to reach out and touch you.

  I could have been far more explicit in my writing I know that. I could have made it all less strange and vague but some things are best hidden. If you are as I hope you are then I know you will understand and will need little help to understand what I have written. If my hopes for you on the other hand are not met or have yet to be realised by you then this will not be clear and may appear as little more than the recounting of fantasy dream induced by drugs or impending madness. If that is the case then I am sad at thought even as I write these words to you.

  I have a favourite book and I think you will know the one I will mean even though you may have little memory of it. I think and hope it is also your favourite book. If so our minds have met across the divide of time and we are already united.

  Proof and Reflections

  It is I think having slept on it important for me to shed some thoughts on my experience. Forgive me if I am repeating myself at any point but I find my memory to be less than reliable at the moment. I think it is either due to the cancer perhaps having started to attack my brain as it spreads its insidious deadly little fingers into every part of my body or it might simply be due to a combination of pain killers and sleeping tablets. Knowing I have no time to revise anything I write I would rather make sure I have said everything that needs to be said as there will be no second chance at this attempt to share my experience. I hope I seem lucid in my writing? If I repeat myself therefore I must crave not only your understanding but your forgiveness.