Moons And Planets.

Levin A. Diatschenko

  Imagine a moon who revolves around three or so planets. Frustrated, he exclaims, “I am a planet too! I am not just your moon!” It is not true, of course; he is only a moon.

   You can never convince people that you are a planet; you either are or aren’t. An elephant does not need to say he’s an elephant.

   If we do not have the strength, endurance or power to circulate the sun, we need to circulate some one or thing else that does. Those people or organizations are planets.

   Planets have responsibilities. Their job is to help their moons to become planets too. Their job is to direct the aspiring gaze of his moon/s gradually to the sun. A planet is only useful if he is fulfilling this role.

   From this perspective, it is important to choose a planet, as opposed to drifting to the closest. A planet who just gathers moons is no use. None of these moons will become planets as long as they revolve around him.

   Moons have responsibilities too. Being a moon denotes that you revolve around something. You are attached to something, part of a community. Moons affect the tides. On the other hand, meteorites are wanderers with no attachment to anything, and no effectiveness except in destruction.

   When two planets begin fighting for possession of one moon, this is indicative of a transformation. The planets have started ‘revolving’ around the moon, and therefore become moons themselves. If the moon is conscious of this opportunity as it is happening, he instantly changes into a planet and gains two moons. If not, the three moons drift automatically toward the strongest place of gravity. 

   Helena Blavatsky was a planet within the Theosophical Society, and the Theosophical Society was a planet within the occult movement. She pointed to the sun of spiritual progress, and gained many moons under ‘planet theosophy.’ The gossip against theosophy that appeared in the literature of many more distant planets of the time (e.g. Brotherhood of Luxor, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Spiritualists, and on) are indicative of how strong and influential was the gravity of the Theosophical Society. There was jealousy.

   When Blavatsky died, moons grew to take her place and continue nurturing new moons. Under her, many moons became planets in their own right, and then they even broke away on their own orbits. Steiner, Alice A. Bailey and Krishnamurti all became planets of their own. This is not a bad thing, but rather indicative of Blavatsky’s ability to foster true growth.

   It takes more than knowledge and imagination to become a planet. Whatever the mind is attached to, the thinker is ‘revolving’ around. This is what Gurdjieff must have meant when he said, “considering others is a form of slavery”. On the surface it sounds selfish but there may be a difference between ‘being considerate’ and ‘considering.’

   It takes assertiveness to become a planet. It also takes foresight and planning; one must see the sun, plan one’s trajectory around it, and have such concentration as to never lose sight of the sun for a moment, even when other bodies distract. A weak will revolves around anybody or thing that comes in its vicinity (automatically). In the spirit of diplomacy and love, one often becomes a moon for others in order to learn the other’s point of view; but eventually one must crystallise into an embodiment of purpose. This is not aggression; this is a show of honesty. This is Self-actualisation and it can also be protection against slavery.

   Let us say that by doing another man’s will, you become an ‘extension’ of that other man’s being. His manifested self spreads to others as he wins over obedience or imitation. Weaker personalities allow this kind of possession all the time, unconsciously or out of politeness, or in confusion of not knowing what else to do. Whenever we think what others persuade us to think, they have ‘possessed’ us mentally. Whenever we feel what they want us to feel, our emotional body is theirs. Think of a crew of workers all dressed in the same shirts, performing the same physical actions. Just being caught off guard by a quick-talking salesman can lead you to giving some of your life to him (symbolised by money) and taking on a symbol of his possession of you (the product he sells you).

   An esoteric definition of ‘being assertive’ might be: ‘attempting to resist possession.’ There are, of course, positive versions of ‘falling in’ with other people’s wills. A musical group needs its conductor. A boxer trusts his coach. The psychedelics let the ‘spirit of the vine’ Ayahuasa in.

   The extent of this kind of possession that has been going on in society (and my own life) is stupendous. But only recently have I comprehended it. This is, I believe, because of the ‘Intention’ or ‘point of tension’ being built as result of occult meditation[1]. It is this pool of energy built in the mental plane (through meditation) that fills a vacuum inside a personality. It is that vacuum which, if left unfilled, sucks in passing entities (unconsciously) and allows them to take possession. (If no ‘passing entity is near, the vacuum becomes a ‘form of propulsion’ until a stronger will is found.) The world is filled with such vacant personalities, all malleable and susceptible to the suggestions of group laws, billboards, peer pressure, patriotism, violence, and so on. 

   Herein is the significance of Alice Bailey’s idea of service by being, rather than doing. The first stage of projection must surely be to be able to say no, when a wave of worldly forces extend your way. We do this not merely by ‘saying no’ in the literal sense, but by ‘being’—coming forward as a law unto your self, as a soul-infused personality.

   In reaching out, joining groups in the community in an attempt at serving, you also risk becoming a moon of many planets. This is my experience, and while it has enriched the past few years, I have found it difficult to hold a peaceful state amidst the ‘smoke of the battle.’ A still mind, restraining all modifications, is not as difficult when you are in a quiet and eventless environment. But to project that onto a busy environment is the next task. To fall into orbit of everyone that comes in proximity drains one of energy, and, eventually of effectiveness to manifest the ideal.   

[1] Specifically, the Arcane School method (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/arcane_school).

No Man’s Land;

Experimenting with a military approach to psychological evolution.

There are three barriers between you and the outside world. The first is your physical body. The second is your emotional body or ‘body of desire’. The third is your mind, or intellect, the mental body. Collectively, this is called the ‘personality.’[1]

   This suggests that ‘you’ are a fourth thing. Generally we identify the first three things as ourselves, however, I aim to show this is a misapprehension.

   Impressions first reach us through the first barrier. A sight, for example. The second barrier may give the sight a value. The sight may be disliked, funny, or it might cause lust, and so on. This sets off reactions in the third barrier, such as fantasies, memories and associations. None of these reactions are voluntary. This is the point; the thing seen is ‘getting to you’ via these three layers. It is affecting you. The external phenomenon is controlling the layers in those times.

   The personality can be thought of as a ‘no man’s land’ between you and external forces.

   A billboard is an extension of the will of the man who owns the company, which is selling the product advertised. If you react to the sight of the image – whether physically (a double-take?), emotionally (“I must buy one!”), or mentally (the image sparking off associations, or even if your mind diatribes against the billboard) – the owner has entered or ‘possessed’ you. If you accept the possession, your personality becomes – on sight – an extension of the billboard, and therefore an extension of him. If you rebel against the possession, he has still caused you to react unconsciously. He is a planet, and you a moon.

   Whatever you control is an extension of you. A tool, for instance. What you cannot control becomes an extension of something else. In the beginning, the barriers are non-existent: the gates are open. The strongest will absorbs the lesser.

   Imagine you are watching your weight, and somebody suggests ice cream. You say no, but then this somebody presents an actual ice cream to you, in front of your eyes. It is a hot day and ice cream is dripping down the sides. If there is temptation, there is something of a ‘tug-of-war’ over the first barrier. If you control it, you can make it not eat ice cream. If the ‘somebody’ controls it, then without physically touching it, he makes it eat. This somebody does not in this case need a strong will, just ice cream. But the power of temptation associated with the sight of it shows that the physical body is susceptible to outside control.

   Recently, I went for a job interview. It was a Wednesday. To myself, I decided that if they asked, I would not ‘be able’ to begin until Monday, loathing to start too soon. During the interview, the boss suddenly asked, “So, can you start right now?” It was a loaded question.

   Stammering, I said no.

   “No?”

   I stammered a lie about one more shift in my old job.

   “Well tomorrow then. You can start tomorrow, right?”

   Her question was not really a question but more like a beam of expectation, which penetrated all three layers. Almost as a reflex I answered yes. The prospect of turning her down twice frightened me. She controlled the personality then. Her will was for me to start tomorrow, and mine was not a factor. The three layers were under her control.

   A job possesses on different levels. The first level is physically. You do whatsoever your boss tells you to, physically. Your body is an extension of his will at least temporarily. The next level is emotionally, then mentally. In the case of management level jobs, the boss has broken through all three defences. He controls your mind inasmuch as you use it for his purposes for the day. You think what he wants you to think. You have given up more; this is perhaps why management is paid more. Labourers have only had the first barrier penetrated. So they are paid less. They are freer, as their thoughts are still theirs. If you find yourself desiring to please your boss, or taking a lot of pride in your job, the second layer too, has been conceded.

   This likens work to possession or obsession, but it must be remembered that most people need this possession. Anybody who is unaware of the fourth part, and therefore have no fourth part to speak of, need a substitute self. This they get in the form of employers; the boss is the substitute soul.

   If you, the fourth thing, have no control generally, it can be said that you are not a factor in your life. It can, therefore, be said that you do not exist for practical purposes. In this case, the belief that there is no soul is either true or might as well be. In the case where the three layers are controlled and protected by you, the fourth principle, you become a power. Assertiveness is a measure of existence.

   As said, the personality can be said to be a ‘no man’s land’ between the entity and the outside world of forces.

   The first task in any endeavour in life is to secure these three barriers. Until then all else is futile. However, they cannot be secured as long as you identify yourself as these barriers. Awareness of them as ‘not I’ is essential, which means awareness of yourself as a fourth part is essential. The fourth can be understood as awareness, consciousness.

   This awareness is the first assertion: “I am.”  Or “‘I’ am.” When this happens, the mind, for the first time, will react to the fourth thing, an internal influence. And so on down the line. The physical reaction will necessarily be creative, not consumptive; it will be responsive, not reactive. In Eastern symbology this conscious part is sometimes referred to as a flickering flame in the wind, the goal being to make it steady. To continue the military metaphor, we could picture it as the flag that must be protected in war games.   

The question of violence understandably comes up. This idea of building barriers sounds like a warlike way of viewing reality. Where is love?, one will ask.

   Love involves reaching out to others. The personality is your tool for reaching out to others. If you have no control over the personality, you cannot reach others, except by unconscious reaction. In other words, you are incapable of love. 

   Asserting the self over these three parts is not violent yet. The Old Testament comes before the New Testament; cause and effect is the first lesson learned. Afterwards, with full freedom from emotional reaction, you are able to resist the urge to retaliate—and turn the other cheek. Put simply all this is refraining from being a falling domino, or pinball machine. Before the securing of the personality, it is impossible to resist the urge in any consistent or predictable way.

   Assertiveness must not be mistaken for aggression. It takes great assertion of the fourth part (the soul) over the three other parts (the personality) to turn the other cheek. Especially when you are much stronger than the fellow who has struck you. Striking back is aggressive, but the self has made no assertion.   

[1] Terminology of Alice A. Bailey.

'The Playing card Pyramid' is an excerpt from the forthcoming book 'The Rooftop Sutras' by Levin a. Diatschenko which will be launched during the 2010 NT Writers Festival as part of the 'Tales of the Undergrowth' event.

Click here for more information about this event.

THE PLAYING CARD PYRAMID
by Levin A. Diatschenko

WHILE he was sleeping, Citizen Uccello heard a ‘knocking’ inside his head. Uccello, like all citizens of his day, only had one dream. It consisted of a single pyramid of playing-cards, stacked high and peaceful on a coffee table. But the present knocking shook the image, and the cards collapsed in a heap.
Uccello opened his eyes. After a moment of silence the knocking continued, only this time it came from the front door.
Uccello disentangled himself from his sheets, put some pants on, and opened the door to the intrusive sunlight, which, after a moment receded and introduced the silhouette of a small man. Uccello rubbed his eyes and focused. The silhouette slowly gained details. It was a police officer.
“Morning Uccello,” said the officer. His voice was too high and squeaky for that time of the morning.
“So it is,” said Uccello.
“You look a little shocked to see a man of the law.”
“Are you sure you have the right house?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? … But we’ve finally got you, Uccello.”
“What do you want?”
The officer held up a piece of paper in his chubby hand.
“What is it?” Uccello asked.
“It’s a summons.”
“A summons? … I don’t understand.”
The officer just smiled, faded until he was transparent … and then disappeared completely.
Uccello closed the door, sat down in the living room and looked at the letter.





Dear Mr Uccello D----,

Re: Revision of Citizenship

We of the courts have recently become aware of your existence. It is immediately apparent that you have evaded all your legal obligations thus far, possibly constituting a serious crime.
You are hereby summonsed to appear before a judge on this Twenty-Sixth of August, in the year Two Thousand and Seven, for the purpose of justifying your continuing existence. The hearing will be at three o’clock pm, Courtroom Three, the Supreme Court.
If it is found that you cannot provide acceptable justification for the space and resources that you use, or in the case that you do not attend this hearing, your right to exist may be discontinued.
Yours sincerely,

Justice M. Terd

Uccello hung his head and tears welled up in his eyes. When he finally pulled himself together, he stood up and said to himself, “Well, there’s only one thing for it … I need a solicitor.”
Uccello lived in a rural area. It was so peaceful that, not only did the inhabitants dream of undisturbed card-pyramids, but each home actually had a pyramid of undisturbed playing cards on their coffee table. Word has it that generations went by without the cards collapsing.
But on his way out to find a solicitor, Uccello slammed the door and every card-pyramid in the province collapsed. Not realising the harm he caused, Uccello sauntered down the road toward the city, hands shoved deep into his pockets. While he brooded on his troubles, the beautiful sight of the twinkling river and the blossoming trees was lost on him.

The solicitor was a button-eyed man with a hunchback. To Uccello he looked like a pincushion. His boss must have thought so too, because two or three pins were sticking out of the hump.
“How can I help you?” he asked Uccello.
Uccello gave him the letter. “Can you tell me what this means?”
The solicitor glanced at it and said, “It’s quite simple. You’re to justify your existence or they’ll take away everything that you’ve been getting for free.”
“What does that mean?”
“Have you been paying rent on the space you take up?”
“You mean my house?”
“No – your body. For as long as you’ve lived, your body has taken up space on the planet, breathed the planet’s air and consumed its resources. Did you think that was free?”
“I guess I did. How much money is the rent then?”
“You don’t pay in money. You pay in deeds.”
“Deeds? What kind of deeds?”
“Anything that might justify your existence. I suggest you get prepared, because the hearing is tomorrow.”
“Wait,” moaned Uccello. “I’m not sure I’ve done any deeds. How would I identify them?”
“First you need a purpose. Do you have one?”
“Hmm … no. One needs beliefs to have purpose. I don’t have any.”
“You must have some.”
“None at all.”
“Well get some by tomorrow or you can’t be helped.”

Back at home, Uccello paced up and down his living room. Finally he went to his study and pulled out all his ink and watercolour drawings.
“This should do the trick,” he said.

The Supreme Court was a huge concrete cube. It had a single door at the front, which was merely a rectangular hole. Uccello took a deep breath and slipped inside.
He found himself moving through dimly lit corridors, up and down creaky staircases, and passing portraits of judges and solicitors -- pale hunchbacks, their lipless mouths never smiling, their eyes sunken into shadow but the sparks of desire shining from inside them. They looked so thin that the skull was easily decipherable under the skin. Uccello began to worry that he would be late. The signs on the doors were in no discernable order. He’d pass Courtroom Four, then Courtroom One, Courtroom Seven and so on. Some doors were hung crooked or too small to enter.
Uccello finally saw some staff members, wandering around in their black robes.
“Excuse me…” he said, but nobody acknowledged him. Some of the staff passed right through him like ghosts, and others bounced lightly off him like balloons and floated off in the other direction.
Uccello finally came up against a wooden door with a sign that read ‘Courtroom Three.’
The room was more like a hall. At the other end of the room, Uccello saw a man sitting behind a desk, who was as thin as a stick and wearing a grey wig.
‘Come over here!’ called the judge, his gruff voice bouncing off the walls.
Uccello closed the door and approached the judge. His face was old and angry and his eyes and cheeks sunken, revealing the shape of his skull.
“Are you Citizen Uccello?” asked the judge.
“Yes.”
“Right on time. Very good. Well, don’t just stand there boy, have a seat.”
Uccello sat on the rickety chair, holding the watercolours on his lap.
“Do you understand the seriousness of this matter?” asked the judge.
“I think so, Your Honour.”
“You think so? My boy, do you know what it means to get your existence cancelled?”
“Not exactly. I’ll have to leave?”
“You won’t have to do anything! We’ll do it all for you, me boy!” His voice bounced off the walls and repeated itself – “We’ll do it for you!”
“Oh … Do what, exactly, Your Honour?”
“Sentence you to Life in the Suburbs!” The judge’s shoulder creaked as he raised his hand in a sweeping motion, “Which is to say Death in the Suburbs. And the end of you!”
Uccello ran his palm over his closely cropped head, but said nothing.
“You’re twenty-seven today. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” answered Uccello.
“How did you manage to go unnoticed for so long?”
“I don’t know. The first time I ever saw a cop was when I got this summons. I always thought they were a fairy story.”
“Listen closely. This is your current status.” Judge Terd opened the folder on the desk in front of him and ran his bony finger along some facts.
 “You have no position,” began the judge, “no money, no woman and no prospects. Shall I go on, boy?”
Uccello started to say no, but a wave of emotion took his voice.
Judge Terd’s voice bounced around the walls and off Uccello’s ears: “Well, boy?”
Uccello cleared his throat and tried again. “No.”
“For goodness sake, boy, you’re not going to cry are you?”
“No, Sir … Your Honour.”
“Good. And now, let me get on with it: I hereby charge you with having no good reason to continue existing, for yourself or the community as a whole. Do you understand the charge?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Step Two, then. Can you provide an adequate reason for being granted continuance?”
This was it. Uccello dumped his collection of art on the table.
“What’s this?” sneered the judge, and the whole room creaked as he leaned forward in his chair.
“It’s art,” said Uccello. “Watercolours mostly … and ink drawings.”
The judge took it and perused the pages. “Hmmm,” he mumbled. “What about it?
“I painted them,” said Uccello. “But they’re not finished yet. If you cancel my citizenship they will never be finished. I understand that the law must regard my work as a potential service to the community. What’s more, a potential masterpiece might be among them. Surely, on those grounds, I have the right to go on developing.”
Ever so slowly, the corners of the judge’s mouth creaked downwards.
“Is that true?” said the judge to himself.
“I’m afraid so,” his echo replied, after bouncing off the walls. “The law says that if we discontinue this citizen’s existence, the government may be liable for the prevention of a masterpiece. That’s murder.”
“You are clever, me boy,” said the judge to Uccello.
“However,” added the echo, “if the art proves to be frivolous, a mere work of entertainment – then it need not be completed; the world has plenty already.”
The judge took up the papers again and looked them over. “Hmmm,” he sounded. “This has no underlying purpose – just goes well with the curtains.”
“That’s not fair at all!” cried Uccello.
“Fair? It’s splendid,” said the judge. “I hereby sentence you to Life in the Suburbs, without bail. This sentence takes effect as of right this minute. Have you anything to say?”
“Bollocks.”
Judge Terd slammed the desk with his right hand – only, he didn’t have a right hand. Poking out of his sleeve was a wooden mallet.

The Suburbs were like a vast prison. People were sent there to prevent them from ever breaking the law. Each Suburb was like a cellblock, the inmates all glossy-eyed and bent over.   
   On the way there, in the Convict Transport Bus, Uccello asked a fellow inmate, “What the hell happened here?”
   They’d been peering out the windows as the bus pushed deeper into the Suburbs, now and then dropping a convict off at his or her assigned house.
   “Aimlessness, I guess,” said the convict, an old timer with a few wisps of grey hair, and neck skin that flapped in the wind.  “Sounds a trifle, but boredom spread through the middle classes like a plague. Had very little control of ourselves when these here houses were built, as I recall. Our actions were barely deliberate. The aimlessness made us weak-willed and we went about our existence like an empty raft on an ocean. Pain of the situation made us reluctant to face it, and so it was a relief to let our thoughts get carried away to another place...”
   He stared out the window for a while before he continued. “Anyway, because of that, certain repetitions formed. The similarity in architecture throughout western cities, for example; the flow of the population as it rounded its daily routine; the colours and the clothes and the dialogue. Everything seemed like unconscious automatons. More accurately, it was an accidental mass hypnotism.”
   “And now they’re capitalising on it, aren’t they?” sneered Uccello. “Those judges!”
   “I used to think that,” said the old man. “But not anymore. Reckon they’re asleep too. Nobody is in control.”        
The cellblock where Uccello was sent, however, was not much of a prison anymore. The stone houses poked up from the earth in rows upon rows, like tombstones in a vast cemetery.
If you’d ever gone there and wiped the dust from the windows, you would have seen Uccello sitting in his living room like a corpse. He spent his days trying to build a card pyramid, but it always collapsed before he could finish it.
One day, Uccello stepped outside and saw his neighbour rolling around on the lawn. Uccello saw that the man had shackles on his wrists and ankles.
“What are you doing?” he called.
The man shook his shackles off and stood up. He had slicked-back hair and his moustache curled up at the ends.
“Practising,” said the man.
Uccello suddenly recognised him: “My God! You’re Loudin the Magnificent, the famous escape-artist!”
The man smiled and bowed low. “The very same.”
Uccello remembered that twelve months ago a prominent newspaper had challenged Loudin to escape from the Suburbs. A huge crowd had watched as he entered the prison/cemetery, waving back and smiling. That was twelve months ago.
“So you’re still here, eh?” said Uccello. “I guess not even you can escape from here.”
“Nonsense,” said Loudin. “I can leave this minute. I stay for dramatic purposes.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I were to escape in only one day, the audience would think the feat is easy. If, however, I wait twelve months and return with ruffled clothes and messed-up hair, they will cheer after having figured me for dead.”
Loudin picked up his shackles. “Besides, one mustn’t try to escape; one must attain and conquer. Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked.
There were photographs of carnival folk all over the walls of Loudin’s living room, and a card pyramid on the coffee table.
“How do you intend to escape?” asked Uccello.
“I can’t reveal my secrets, but I’ll tell you this: The human will can accomplish anything, but only once it gains full control of the mind. Until then there’s little hope.”
“That doesn’t sound like anything I can use.”
“On the contrary, that was THE most useful thing I could have shared.”
Uccello tapped the wall. “All that’s real is what we can touch. Don’t talk to me about abstracts.”
   “If the wall is an illusion then so is your hand. You cannot qualify one illusion with another.”
“You’re clever,” sneered Uccello. “But if you cannot escape from an illusion, it’s as good as real. And I still don’t believe you can escape.”
“Suit yourself,” said Loudin disinterestedly.  “I bet you believe in the police, don’t you?”
“I saw one.”
“A product of your mind, a pestering thought-form. Your subconscious sent him after becoming aware of your lack of purpose.”
Uccello thought for a moment. “Rubbish. There is no purpose, unless you manufacture a fake one.”
   “I could say the same about the police.”

Prison life was a hellish eternity. Each morning the inmates were herded to the factories and offices where they would do the work assigned to them. Afterwards, they were shuffled back to their cells. One or two days per week they were let out-of-doors where they would pace around and enjoy the open sky. Uccello lived for those days.
The streets were oppressively quiet, and if Uccello ever went strolling after work, the hum of silence made his ears ache. Cops were always following him or watching him from street corners. Whenever Uccello attempted to stack a pack of playing cards into a pyramid, a cop would burst inside the house and knock the cards on the floor. Sometimes, sitting in the silence of his living room, Uccello would hear police sirens passing. The noise would build and build until it was deafening. It sounded as if the police were moving in packs. They yelled out orders and taunts and warnings through their microphones, fired guns in the air and sounded their sirens.
Uccello could do nothing but curl up on his couch and shiver. “We’ve already ceased to exist,” he complained. “What more do they want?”


Uccello visited Loudin ever now and then.  He wanted to prod Loudin and find out what he really knew about the nature of things, or whether he was just another prisoner. Besides that, Uccello enjoyed Loudin’s company. Morning tea at Loudin’s became a regular occurrence.
   Loudin didn’t say much. He mostly sat on his veranda, drinking tea and watching the street. The silence was unusually rejuvenating; the police never seemed to show up there.
   “You don’t talk much,” Uccello said one day, breaking the mood.
   “No,” said Loudin.
   When no explanation came, Uccello asked: “Well? Why don’t you tell me about your escape method?”
   “There’s no point. You will believe nothing you haven’t experienced yourself.”
   “If you tell me your method, I can then try it out!”
   “The only useful kind of talk is debriefing—and you haven’t done anything to debrief. Try to escape yourself, and then if it fails I will talk.”
   “And if my method doesn’t fail?”
   “Then you won’t need to talk.”

 

The next day, Uccello went to visit Loudin again, but he did not answer the door. Uccello knocked harder and the door creaked open. The house was empty. Left behind were a few carnival photographs and the card pyramid still intact.
After gazing a while at the pyramid, Uccello returned to his cell.

The routine ground away at Uccello. He decided to escape before he was reduced to dust.
Using the money he had saved from working, Uccello bought himself a rusty old car that would be entirely adequate for the one-way trip. He filled it with food and hit the road.
As Uccello came to the edge of the Suburbs, a sign reared up from the bitumen: “You Are Now Leaving the Suburbs”.
   Uccello swerved and missed it by an atom or two.
   Uccello had not zoomed one hundred kilometres down the highway before he saw the smoke cloud of a band of police cars in his rear-view mirror.
   The sirens began screaming.
   Uccello stepped on it and tried to lose them. But the farther he got, the longer the line of cops pursuing him became. “By the amount of cops I attract you’d think I did exist, and that I was important.”
   It was no use. The police were catching up. The sirens screeched loudly, and     
   Uccello felt fatigued. He turned the car radio on and up, in order to drown the sirens out.
   The entire hoard of police cars vanished without a trace.
   Nothing could be heard except Uccello’s car radio. Uccello pulled over. He got out of the car, peered up the road, and found that he was still alone.
“I can’t believe it!” he exclaimed. There wasn’t a trace of the police. “What happened?”
Without the slightest spark of understanding, Uccello hopped back into his car and continued on his road to freedom. He turned the music up and bopped his head.
   Later that night, Uccello parked away from the road and slept. When sunlight hit him the next morning, he opened his eyes.
   Looking around, he had an uneasy feeling. He left his car where it was and walked out to the road to take a look.
   He heard engines revving. Then he saw a dust cloud. Within seconds the cloud grew larger and carried with it a pack of snarling police cars.
   Uccello bolted back to the car. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he listened and waited … hopefully the cops would pass him by.
   Sirens sounded. More police cars burst into view and screeched to a halt around Uccello’s car – he was surrounded in seconds. Looking right into the eyes of his captors, Uccello saw that they were shaking with laughter.
   Uccello fumbled for his key and turned the engine on. He would still go through the formality of resisting till the end.
   The night before, Uccello had not turned the radio off. It simply went off with the car engine. Therefore, now – when he jerked the engine back on – an early morning talk show that was on the radio also came on. “ … Marvellous day ahead of us,” the host was saying, “Absolutely brilliant …”
   Uccello found himself alone again. Even the dust from the police cars seemed to have vanished.  
   “Where the fuck did they go?” he gasped.
   “We’ll be playing the same classic rock songs again and again and again … all morning long!” said the radio.
   Uccello revved the car, steered it back to the empty highway and drove it to the horizon.

   After a night and a morning of straight driving, Uccello arrived at the outskirts of a new town. He saw cattle and fences, signs and a few shacks. On the horizon he saw rooftops.
   Without warning, a street sign reared up at the car. It said, “Welcome to the Suburbs”.
   Uccello swerved and went white. He recognised the streets. But how could that be?    Street by street, Uccello felt sicker and sicker. This place was exactly the same as the town/prison he’d fled from, right down to every loose brick.
   When Uccello arrived at his own house, he opened the car door and vomited into the gutter. He saw that his hands were shaking.
   As he dragged his feet toward his house, he saw a police car parked across the road.    When he opened the front door, entered and closed it behind him, he heard the cops drive away.
   Uccello looked around him. It was his home all right.
   “It doesn’t make sense. How’d I end up here?” he asked himself. “It was one road without any turns!”
   He went to bed, assuming his death pose.

   Later that day, Uccello climbed onto the roof and dived off. Perhaps it’s the only way out, he mused.
   He seemed to sail down peacefully, accompanied only by the hollow sound of the wind. It felt good, but with a pinch of fear.
He slammed into the ground. Everything went black.
Within the blackness, gradually a pinpoint of light appeared. It grew larger and larger, until Uccello felt that the darkness was a tunnel, leading towards the light. It was an opening.
Uccello zoomed into the opening of light. It was so bright that all he could discern was whiteness. He waited and floated in the whiteness. Finally the harshness of the light lessened and Uccello began to see forms. He felt that he was standing on solid ground again. The light retreated into a sphere that hovered high in the distance … surrounded by a blue sky. A sun.
Uccello then looked down from the sun… And he saw his house.
“Fuck!”
Uccello was ‘alive’ and standing in the street. He fell to his knees and sobbed.
He seemed to have ‘reincarnated’ into exactly the same situation he had known before. So much for escaping, he thought.

   He awoke at noon the next day and read the newspaper. There was an article about Loudin the Magnificent’s “Brilliant escape from the Suburbs”.
“Smug bastard,” said Uccello. “Wonder how he did it.”
Uccello then looked at his scattered deck of cards. He knew he should make the attempt to build a pyramid, but for now he just didn’t feel like it. So he put on a shirt and went for a stroll outside.
The Suburb was stagnant. Uccello kind of liked that; it reflected how he felt.
He strolled around the block peering inside various houses, he saw many tables with cards scattered over them. Sometimes there were half-built pyramids. The Suburbanites had their radios and televisions on constantly. Drivers had their car radios on too.
   One needs Background Noise to get by in the suburbs, he thought. Police seemed to avoid the ‘choppy waters’ of tumultuous soundwaves, but they swarmed to any gap of silence.
It occurred to Uccello that Loudin was the only person he met in the Suburbs who had successfully built and maintained a card pyramid. Moreover, Loudin was neither bothered by police, nor was he a user of Background Noise.
   Uccello remembered Loudin’s remark. He went back home and looked at his scattered cards. How can I do things like escape when I cannot even rebuild my cards?, he thought. And how can I rebuild my cards if I cannot even maintain the pyramid in my mind?
First I must attain the representation of the pyramid in my mind, then I must conquer the cards in my living room. Attain a pyramid of the ones in my living room then conquer the prison and the police. Attain and conquer, attain and conquer, again and again…

   So, each night and each morning, Uccello sat in a chair and closed his eyes. He visualised a deck of playing cards and, one at a time, he pictured himself building them into a pyramid.
The distant sounds of the police interrupted him countless times, but the more Uccello practiced, the stronger his willpower became – and thus the stronger his concentration became.
Eventually, he built a full pyramid inside his mind. It became stronger by degrees, until Uccello visualised snowstorms and hurricanes attacking the pyramid with no effect. The pyramid held sturdy!
During his days off work and in the evenings, Uccello sat at his coffee table and carefully worked on his actual card pyramid. Ever so slowly, the first floor was attained, and the next started on. But he knew the whole deck of cards would take months to finish, so Uccello just balanced a card or two (maybe four on a good day) per sitting.

During this ‘constructive’ period, while out walking, Uccello came upon an old friend and fellow artist. They clung to each other and wept.
“What are the chances!” Uccello said, “that we would be sentenced to the same Suburb!”
Hanna had been an artistic activist.  After the bout of depression following her arrest (she was arrested two years before Uccello), she resumed her activism in the Suburbs. Her plans involved breaking into establishments and homes and leaving card pyramids there to be discovered in the morning. She attempted to leave pyramids in the middle of traffic intersections, and to climb onto houses and drop cards over the streets.  Uccello told Hanna of his escape attempts and his current card-stacking discipline.
They met every now and then for coffee, in cafes where the music was always on and the volume always turned up. He looked forward to their get-togethers. She seemed to, as well, always rambling enthusiastically about her latest venture. She couldn’t understand why Uccello didn’t participate.
“That’s all very well, you building that pyramid,” said Hanna, “but what about the rest of the Suburb? It’s not going to beat the police force.”
Uccello did not defend himself. He didn’t feel he needed to; she wasn’t judging him, she was inviting him.
Hanna went on to explain that card pyramids were impractical, anyway. “All the pyramids I’ve tried to build in houses or in public places blow down or collapse before I’m even finished,” she said.
“That’s the point,” said Uccello.
“So, I’ve moved on to radios. I break into buildings and plant blaring radios in the middle of the floor and the cops are blasted clear. You should see it!”
On some days, Uccello would see Hanna’s accomplices walking around with ghetto blasters in a show of rivalry to the police gangs. In their wake, police seemed to gather like darkness around a dying flame.
 
“I admire what you’re doing,” said Uccello to Hanna on one of their get-togethers, “but don’t you ever crave silence?”
“There is no silence, silly!” she said. “Do you want to attract the cops? The choice is either noise or cops.”
Then he told her about Loudin the Magnificent, and how his home had neither of the choices.
“Wow! You actually met him out here?” Hanna’s eyes lit up. “He must have had some background noise, surely?”
“I can’t recall any. His home was so peaceful …”

Later that night, Uccello came home to discover his house had been broken into. Debussy’s opera ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ was playing through the house. Uccello didn’t mind that at all.
Hanna was waiting in his bed with a smile on her face.
Hanna stayed with Uccello often after that. She watched him in the mornings while he carefully placed cards on top of cards, picked up the ones that had fallen and tirelessly rebuilt them.
Uccello came to realise that when Hanna was around, there were fewer cops about the place, and when she was gone there were twice as many as before. He hated being without her.
“It’s true,” he confessed one night. “Though I don’t believe in your methods, it’s as if your presence alone is a force that can not be imprisoned for long.”
   Shocked, she said that she thought the same about him. “It’s not me who the police are avoiding!” she said. “It’s you! I’ve never been so at peace than when I’m lying here with you.”
   “Maybe we ought to build a collective card-pyramid,” mused Uccello.
   “Wow, that’s it!” said Hanna. “We could see our culture and civilization as a cooperative art form, you know, that you would refer to in the same way as, say, Egyptian Art or Mayan Art. You follow? This way the Suburbs would cease to exist.”
   “I’m following,” said Uccello.

More and more, Uccello worked on his deck of cards. It got to the point where he’d be up most of the night working on them. In the beginning they had collapsed every time he’d gotten to the third level. But now, he was reaching the fourth and even fifth levels before his attention and hands started shaking. When that happened, he’d leave it alone for the night – if he were patient, that is. If he weren’t, he’d continue and end up knocking the whole thing over again. It was all about patience.   
Hanna came into the living room one night and said, “Aren’t you coming to bed?”
Uccello looked up with bloodshot eyes. “Oh,” he exclaimed, “what a wonderful thing is perspective!”
Uccello’s coffee table pyramid was almost complete. The structure only needed three more cards on top. They would form the triangle at the peek, but the interruption had shaken Uccello’s concentration … and, just to be safe, he left the three cards alone, to be finished tomorrow.
Hanna and Uccello hadn’t seen a police officer in months even though they’d ceased using Background Noise. They were living in a calm bubble of silence.
“Perhaps its time for us to disappear,” said Uccello.
“There’s nothing to stop us,” said Hanna. “The police seem to have disbanded.”

When Citizen Uccello finally disappeared from the Suburbs, he left behind an indestructible card pyramid on his coffee table. Next door, Loudin’s pyramid is also still standing. Across the Suburbs more and more houses attained card pyramids and the peaceful aura of strength that came with them, until eventually each house had one.
In time, the streets and houses became more like an art gallery, than a prison. Each street, public place and private home, was decorated with card sculptures.
People still visit the empty Suburbs to gaze at the beauty there – and to wonder what kind of people once inhabited them. They are no less mysterious and awe-inspiring than the ancient Egyptians or the Mayans. Why did they vanish? Where did they go? Perhaps we’ll never know.

Perhaps we will.

I consider it significant that most of us find it impossible not to overeat at Christmas time. Likewise, we cannot avoid company on New Year’s Eve. It could be a proverb. Just try it—and afterwards, ask yourself whether you believe in free will. Look at all the women lined up and packing the halls in shopping centres before Christmas, purchasing last-minute presents for their kids and relatives. They are sweating in trolley jams. Their money drains away as their stress levels rise. There must be an enormous percentage of people who dread the festive season, yet they keep participating. Why? Don’t tell me it is free will.

   Christmas could well be proof of astrology. At the least it gives astrology some credibility. The basic idea of astrology is that large invisible forces nudge us along in herds (or ‘types’) according to the position of the planets. This is another way of saying ‘according to the time of year.’ And because these forces are invisible, we are never conscious of them. So we assume Christmas time was a deliberate decision by us. We don’t think to question whether we could stop Christmas if we tried.

   Some will point out that the date of Christmas existed long before Christ’s birth, and was preserved from pagan religions as the ‘Winter Solstice.’ This only strengthens my point: they tried to change religions but the date would not budge.

   Muslims believe in astrology. Ramadan might well be an attempt at resisting overeating at Christmas time. Lent may be a similar crack at achieving free will by the Catholics, at Easter. This gives a new spin to religions that are often criticised as being controlling. The stars are controlling. Disciplined practices like meditation, prayer, fasting and giving your money to the poor all take will power. Free-will power.

   This is not to say that people don’t get controlled through religion. That much is obvious. What I am saying is that the religion is only the medium. Any institution or philosophy can be abused, and is abused. This is because our average underdeveloped psychological condition makes us prone to outside control. Science is no exception. The atom bomb, the industrial revolution, the pharmaceutical industry, pesticides and herbicides, asthma, cancer, pollution and other weapons of mass destruction all owe their existence to the employment of ‘scientists’ in one way or another. The Enlightenment is as ignored in science at least as much as The Golden Rule is in Religion.

   But people drift yet towards one or the other, until they polarise. We might call each camp the stalagmites and stalactites. The left wing and right wing in politics are the Stalagmite Party and the Stalactite Party. They react against one or the other just like water flowing downwards. There is no reason and logic, not without free will first—just emotional reaction. There is no free will in Palestine.

   Those who are developing free will are found in either camp. The religious of free will founded groups like the Salvation Army or Oxfam or World Vision. These are Quakers becoming human shields and Buddhist monks creating ethical economics in Sri Lanka. The religious of free will champion ethics to money-driven science (or ‘speak truth to power,’ as Quakers say).

   The scientific of free will champion Reason and Logic to money-driven religion. They dispel illusion and cry out warnings of environmental destruction based on evidence. They prove our unity on an atomic level.

   Inevitably, the free of both camps overlap. The scientific become ethical and the religious become reasonable. We can see this happening at least as well as we can see the invisible forces of Christmas.      

I stirred and awoke to find myself seated on the couch. A glorious sun shone through everything, as if my surroundings were translucent.

The television was on and I was alone.

   I could not recall how I came to be on the couch, or even what I’d done that day. I continued to watch television, to eat and mope about. At some point I discovered that it was not just that day I couldn’t recall, but also many days before.

   Just as you begin to forget a dream, I was forgetting my life. The surroundings were familiar (it was my home, after all) but it nevertheless felt new – like reverse de ja vu.

   So I went to explore the rest of the house, and I found a mirror and stood in front of it. The reflection only seemed vaguely familiar, like an acquaintance as opposed to myself.

   This scared me.

   Back in the living room I discovered that when I searched through my memory, it felt like looking into the mind of a stranger. My memory wasn’t fading after all; it just wasn’t mine anymore.

I left the house feeling like a trespasser. Though I didn’t notice them at first, two people were on the veranda. They sat silently around a table, so when I saw them I jumped.

   One was a Hispanic woman – about fifty years old – and the other was a lean boy of, say, nineteen. According to my memory they were my mother and little brother.

   They didn’t notice me. Their eyes were glazed over with a shine, and they sat like statues. On further inspection I saw that my brother’s foot was tapping so fast that it was a blur. My mother’s finger was doing the same speed on the table. They gave off a hum that reminded me of computers on ‘standby.’

   A wind whooshed by and the door slammed behind me. I started again and my family came to life.

   “Huh? Leonard, what are you doing?” mumbled the woman as she looked at me.

   “Who’s Leonard?” I asked.

   “Where are you going, Leonard?” said the boy.

   The boy turned away casually, but the woman’s stare intensified. It occurred to me that I might be ‘inhabiting’ Leonard, because I sure didn’t feel like him. I had to get out of there, so I began to walk toward the front gate, sweating under the gaze of the woman who was Leonard’s mother. “I’m just going um out…” I murmured.

A couple of days later, Leonard’s family picked me up wandering along the highway. The feeling that I’d recently awakened from another life had persisted all this time. I still felt lazy and I was regularly stretching my arms out and yawning. 

   The woman who kept saying she was my mother had a solution: to send me on a journey to find a famous doctor. She asked Eddie, her neighbour, to accompany me. Apparently I grew up with Eddie, an Aborigine.

   “No worries,” he said. “The doc will know what’s going on, if anyone does.”

   Outside the window, I could see the suburban houses huddled around as if to trap me there. “Let’s get on with it,” I mumbled.

   We said goodbye and climbed into Eddie’s Ford. He revved the engine and it slowly left the curb… The tires sank halfway into the cushion-like road, and in the distance the houses rose and fell as if on water. A crowd of homes in front parted to let us through.

   “What’s going on, Eddie?” I asked as the car pushed its way slowly through the Suburbs. I was lost already, but Eddie seemed to know where he was going.  

   “It’s all good,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I went through the same thing last year.”

   The smoke-ribbon from his cigarette stretched far behind us until I couldn’t see the end. After winding through street after street – like the repeated background of a cartoon – I could have sworn that the end of his cigarette smoke was in front of us. “Where are we going?” I asked.

   “To find Doctor Livingston.”

   “Who is he?”

   “The only man who’ll know what to do.”

   “Where is he?”

   “Some years ago he journeyed deep into the Suburbs – the deepest part – and nobody has seen him since.”

   “He’ll understand, then?”

   “If he’s still alive.”

   Our homes were not too deep into the Suburbs. The tops of the city’s high-rise buildings could still be seen over the horizon. These were beacons, to reassure us. “We’re not lost as long as they are still in sight,” said Eddie.

   Yet Eddie drove away from them. My sense of direction disappeared when the high-rise buildings disappeared under the horizon. 

After winding through an endless repetition of streets it was no surprise that I became hypnotised. I don’t know how long I was under, but eventually Eddie nudged me and snapped me out of it.

   “Look,” he said.

   The car was parked in a street in front of a non-descript house. Eddie and I got out and joined a group of native Suburbanites on a neatly manicured lawn. They looked up at the roof, where an Indian or Pakistani man stood holding a bottle and a ream of paper. When I squinted at the paper there appeared to be writing on it. As we watched, the man rolled up the paper, shoved it into the bottle and corked it. Then he raised the bottle above his head and let go.

   The Suburbanites all applauded as the bottle floated away – upwards -- across the town on currents of the air. When the bottle disappeared behind some clouds, the crowd dispersed and the Indian fellow climbed down from the roof.

   Eddie and I waited for him on the lawn.

   “Doctor Livingston, I presume?” 

The doctor was a middle-aged man with a potbelly. He was originally from India. The strange thing is that he also had a boxer’s nose, all bent and flat – the reward for giving bad news to patients. He called me into his dank office, which was the spare room of a private house, and sat me opposite him on a hard chair. Eddie remained outside in the garage, which was converted into a waiting room.

   When I explained my situation to the doctor he wasn’t at all moved. I might have just described to him the common flu.

     “…I don’t know,” I said. “Have you ever woken up one day and wondered how you ended up in this life?”

   “Yes, yes, Lenny, very good,” he said in a deep voice.

   “Leonard.”

   “Leonard. Sounds common enough. How old are you?”

   “Twenty-six.”

   “A good age. Not a moment too soon. What I want you to do Leonard is to think back to your very first memory and tell it to me.”

   I searched through the memory again. It was difficult but I finally found that there was no recollection at all before one event: I was on a sled of some sort, though it wasn’t snowing. It was on a plateau and the muddy path led down a hill into the sea. It zoomed down faster and faster until all I knew was the feeling of speed. I plunged into the water and the memory ends there. I told it to the doctor.

   “Ah yes, very good,” he said.

   “So what’s happening then?”

   The doctor told me to stand and lift my shirt. He put a stethoscope on my back and went on through all the usual check-up exercises.

   “What you consider to be your Identity,” said the doctor, “is an accumulation of debris – additions that you have picked up through your life thus far. Are you following me?”

   I made no reply.

   “Very good,” he continued. “Imagine that you are up on the plateau you speak of. This is you as a young child. Your soul is only just taking control of its vehicle, which is, of course, the body. Now you are speeding down the ramp and into an onslaught of influences. It is at this point in your life that you lose sight of yourself, being distracted by all the learning experiences. You then begin to identify with your experiences. Thus you are no longer conscious of yourself as you were – before the experiences – and still are underneath them. And what does no longer being conscious mean?”

   “Um, I’m not sure.”

   “It means being unconscious. That core part of you is asleep. And all the while, the outer identity has kept on building up.”

  “Go on doctor.” 

   “Now then … you zoom along under the ‘sea-of-unconsciousness’, which takes you through your adolescent years, through school right up to high school, then university. And you are running through new experiences along the way. You zoom through university and all the people you’ve met, and into the workforce. The sled/identity is catching more and more debris until you no longer even see the sled. Everything is latching on –

   “Suddenly, in your twenties and in the workforce, the sled is running out of momentum. It runs out and just drifts … and presto! You wake up here.”

   “End of the path?”

   “Not quite. Before you the track leads up, out of the water, to yet another plateau. But you have reached what we call the Wake Up Period, which ranges from the mid-twenties to early thirties – depending on the person. Are you following me? Leonard, for many years you have believed you were this accumulation of flotsam. This week you snapped out of it and intuited that you are, in fact, beneath it all. You are awake underwater.”

   “So I’m not Leonard!” I stood up. Everything I felt was confirmed.

   “Leonard is the name of that collective outer layer of crud.”

   The doctor smiled and turned towards a set of drawers. He opened one and rummaged through it.

   “You’re a very cryptic fellow,” I said. “But thanks. Now I don’t suppose there’s anything to be done.”

   “Oh there is much to be done,” he said taking a piece of paper. “That’s why I came here to the Suburbs.”

   “Are you kidding me?” The Suburbs are like an elephant graveyard: people only go there to die. Very few people who disappear into the Suburbs are ever heard from again. “Why don’t you come back to the city with us – back to civilisation?” I suggested. “We need more doctors.”

   “Oh, I’m not much of a doctor anymore. Not since I woke up.” He began to scribble away on the paper with a pen.

   “Then what is it that you do out here?”

   “I practise magic.”

   “Magic?”

   “The most important thing for us is to rise above the surface of the water and reach that second plateau.”

   I considered the metaphor… if that’s what it was. I couldn’t see the connection between that and magic.

   “To do this,” he continued, while scribbling, “we need to establish a connection with the surface. White magic works vertically.”

   He took a bottle out of the drawer, went to the window and opened it. “Some woken people become magicians, you see. The others go back to sleep.”

   “What is that?” I asked, pointing to the paper.

   “Your prescription: It is an S.O.S. I am sending to the surface.”

   The doctor/magician stuffed whatever he’d written into the bottle, corked it and held it out the window. As he let go, he chanted some words that I didn’t catch, and then said: “So mote it be!”

   The bottle bobbed and floated, and then rose higher and higher into the deep blue sky…  

Eddie was seated in the waiting room near two other strangers. The other two sat under a faulty light bulb. As it flickered on and off, the two strangers flickered from Anglo Saxon to Indian. 

   Eddie stood as I approached and said: “Come on. I’m hanging for a smoke.”

   From the moment I stepped outside, I was disorientated again. Suburbia stretched out before me in all directions. Eddie led me to his car. He started it up and once again the crowd of houses in front of us parted to let us through. But this time, floating overhead, was a message in a bottle.

   In time I began writing S.O.S’s myself. And to write, of course, I needed to ‘spell’. I became a magician.

   I’m about to roll this story up, stuff it into a bottle and send it adrift. Maybe you’ll find it.

Santa Clause does exist. He exists in the Fourth Century, in the area that is now northern Turkey, under the name of Saint Nicholas. To say that he doesn’t exist is a lie, as much of a lie as saying he has magic reindeers and a home in present day North Pole.

   The obvious rebuttal is to say he existed—not exists—in the past tense. My argument is that this is not more truthful, just more ‘our-own-time-centric’. Biased, in other words, like a metaphysical prejudice. Saint Nicholas does exist in that time and place. Being biased towards our own time and place is closed-minded, and leads to illusion and even violence. A case in point: somebody once said that the world is flat, based on the fact that no one in his own time could prove that it was round. Somebody could prove it, of course, in the future. But some notable people went to prison or were tortured, or killed, because they did not cater to the time-bias (shall I say ‘timeism’?). Giordano Bruno, I hear, is being burned at the stake in 1590 for affirming the Earth's motion around the sun.

   I once heard an atheist say: “The burden of proof is on the believer; I don’t have to prove God does not exist, they need to prove he does.” This is the same as saying: “Nothing exists unless we can prove it exists.” If this is true, then the universe needs to run everything by humans before doing anything. If it is true, then the world was indeed flat, and it transformed into a sphere only at the moment we could prove it a sphere. It is human-centeredness posing as reason.

   Given a modern understanding of space-time, and the implied ‘time-centeredness’ we suffer from (not to mention human-centeredness), we must acknowledge a limit to human understanding. We cannot understand a theoretical being that either is an entire universe or created an entire universe (God) any more than an ant can understand algebra. The act of personifying him as an old man in a beard is dumbing him down to our level, so we can own him. Similarly, to say this theoretical being doesn’t exist is reacting against something we can’t own.

   To disbelieve is as much an act of faith as is to believe. The agnostic, not the atheist, is being reasonable. Buddha said the beginning of wisdom to be able to say, “I don’t know”.

   We don’t necessarily need to grow out of believing in Santa, we need to deepen our understanding of who and when (and what) he really is.

  JOKES usually have three main parts to them. Here is an example:

Buddha walks into a pizza restaurant and says, ‘Make me one with everything.’

   The first part of that joke is Buddha. The second part is the pizza restaurant. The third part is the punch line. The first part is ‘supermundane,’ the second is ‘mundane,’ and the third part links the two inside itself.

   The punch line is the most important, and it always serves this function of ‘fusing’ the previous parts into a surprising unity. The surprise causes laughter.

   A Woodey Allen classic:

   “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken.' And the doctor says, 'Well why don't you turn him in?' and the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.'”

   The first situation presented is that the man who walks into the office is perfectly sane, and that his brother—a human, not a chicken—is deluded. The second situation presented is the delusion of the brother or the brother’s version of reality (that he is a chicken).

   The punchline unites the two brothers, and realities, into agreement (surprisingly).

   Sometimes they are delivered differently: “A guy walks into a bar … and is concussed for half an hour.” The ‘linking part’ here is actually the first line. The one sentence contains two (possible) meanings, one assumed. The next line separates the two and reveals the other, not-assumed meaning.    

   In poetry there is something called a ‘conceit’ which is attributed to the metaphysical poets. Here is a famous example from John Donne:

 'Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare

Where we almost, yea more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is.'

What it depicts is a couple in love, who are both bitten by a flea. The couple romanticizes the incident, noting that their blood is fused and united into a third life, the flea. The flea is therefore a symbol of their unity.

   Punch lines perform a similar function to Donne’s flea. These three parts of jokes show three factors that exist in phenomena generally. Ernest Wood, a theosophist, speaks of this occult trinity from a Hindu perspective in his book, The Seven Rays:

   “[T]here are three principles to be discerned, called tamas, rajas and satva, translatable as matter, energy and law. Ancient and modern scientists have equally discovered these three in that one, and have also observed their inseparability. They are principles of matter; not properties, but states, of material being, and a body can exhibit them in different degrees at different times, as consciousness can employ will, or love or thought, though they are always present to some extent.”

   Gurdjieff talks of three principles in nature too, calling them the ‘Holy-Affirming,’ the ‘Holy-Denying,’ and the ‘Holy-Reconciling.’ Alice A. Bailey talks of ‘form, quality and purpose.’ Of course, in spiritual literature we have the idea of ‘spirit, soul and personality,’ or life, consciousness and mind. The personality itself contains three: mind, emotions and body. 

   From this perspective, the United Nations is a ‘punch line’. Inside it are such different nations with such different agendas that to think of them as united would seem absurd. But, this linking principle is how to resolve them.

   Religion used to be a ‘punch line’—one structure and institution that brought different people together in a community. When the world got larger, and religion became a separator of people, a new linking principle was needed. Freemasonry did this to some extent, being a meeting place of all major religious persuasions. Theosophy did a similar function, being that members are encouraged to keep their previous religious beliefs freely when joining.

   Then there became a duality between religion and science, one believing and one disbelieving. Masonry, again, historically provided reconciliation within; the craft encourages both, and sees them as two pillars holding the same building up. Similar too is theosophy and other esoteric organizations devoted to scientific as much as mystic discovery. The first users of the scientific method were arguably the Brotherhood of The Rosy Cross, or the Rosicrucians: Christians.

   Mahatma Gandhi was India’s ‘punch line,’ uniting Muslims and Hindus.

   Families are ‘punch lines’ that unite the young and old, and both sexes. 

   Christ and Hercules represented this ‘middle principle’. Both were the child of a ‘heavenly’ father, and a mortal mother, linking both worlds. The mythological beasts of Greek mythology often were ‘punch lines’ in themselves. The griffon is the unification of the king of the air (eagle) and the king of the earth (lion).   

Whenever there is an impasse, the reconciling principle is missing. A poor worker may be frustrated over a lack of power in his community; he reconciles this with education and qualifications. Another fellow is stumped by how long it will take to get a message across town. He reconciles this with a fax machine. The fax machine is not funny because it is neither surprising nor unlikely, and it is practically needed. The punch line of a joke is not needed in a practical sense, and it is unexpected.

   Imagine a robot that has a limited number of responses. If you say hello to it, the robot automatically reacts with: “Hi, how are you today?” If you keep greeting the robot, the repeated response would get annoying and it would not take long for you to recognise it as a machine. But say the creator programs it so that at every third time someone greets the robot, it changes its response to a second sentence: “Fine day, isn’t it?” In this case you would take longer to catch on it was a robot, but not much longer.

   Now picture a robot with hundreds of programmed responses to a wide range of everyday interactions, so that it might take a whole year of interacting with it before it repeats itself. Even then, humans repeat themselves a lot too. Imagine that over that year, mistaking complexity for consciousness, you confided in the robot. You argued with it, tried to convince it of your political views. It responded each time according to its pre-recorded programming. How long would it take before you cottoned on that it was a machine?

   It is not uncommon to refer to the human body as a machine. But of course, people have ‘internal’ thoughts and feelings and because of this we are thought of as conscious. We even have political and religious views and if somebody denounces them we get ‘hurt’. This is an interesting occurrence: we react emotionally when others insult our beliefs. We feel the urge to defend our beliefs.

   This is because we ‘identify’ with the belief and therefore feel it is us who are being attacked. That is, we identify with beliefs because we have no identity of our own; like machines. As such, we ‘borrow’ a belief for which to use as a surrogate identity. It is this phenomenon of getting emotional that we usually associate with sentience. But this same phenomenon actually proves our lack of free will. We respond automatically – an emotional exchange is something like a pinball machine. 

   The study of Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., allows another approach to the subject. British computer scientist Alan Turing (died 1954) thought that the human brain must be a machine – and that as such we should be able to emulate brains with computers. Therefore, he reasoned, computers can be intelligent. He invented what is known as the Turing Test, which became the bar for testing artificial intelligence. No computer has passed it yet.

   However, as Jeff Hawkins with his associates of Numenta Inc. (Donna Dubinsky and Dileep George), have noticed, most computers are not modelled on the human brain. After studying the brain and finding it naturally hierarchical in its recording, organizing and contextualizing of information, Hawkins and his associates came up with the invention of the Hierarchical Temporal Memory (or HTM). From the Numenta Inc. website, we find this explanation: --

“Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) is a technology that replicates the structural and algorithmic properties of the neocortex. HTM therefore offers the promise of building machines that approach or exceed human level performance for many cognitive tasks.”

   The HTM is a memory system that doesn’t just perform a function, but can learn from the past, infer causes and make predictions. This sounds frighteningly promising.

   But what would it mean if a machine could consistently beat the Turing test?

   I would like to reverse Turing’s reasoning: the human brain is a machine; therefore we can emulate brains with computers; therefore, what we previously considered to be intelligent is in fact a machine. The idea here is that rather than man creating artificial intelligence, I propose that man is artificial intelligence.

   In Mary Shelley’s fiction, Dr. Frankenstein created a dangerous automation that reacted to external stimuli with little rumination. Upon discovering this, the townspeople reacted dangerously to it with little rumination.

   Later, I will show that this idea is not new.                       

   What we call the evolution of ideas shows evidence in itself of the absence of evolution in humans. This is because a distinction between the ideas and their carriers becomes apparent. How many of us actually understand Einstein’s general theory of relativity? What percentage of the population, I wonder. Most of us know the catch phrases associated with it, sayings like ‘everything is relative.’ Einstein himself saw this when referring to the genius Jan Smuts. In a recent article of The Beacon, Ivan Kovacs says:

“Albert Einstein who, after reading Smuts’ Holism and Evolution, wrote that two mental constructs will direct human thinking in the next (now present) millennium, his own mental construct of relativity and Smuts’ holism. He further remarked that Smuts was ‘one of only eleven men in the world’ who conceptually understood his Theory of Relativity.”

    Similarly, how many people are really familiar with Charles Darwin’s theories? Many people faultily sum it up with, “We evolved from apes.”

   What people do know well is what ideas are up-to-date. We know what we are supposed to believe these days, and what terminology to use.

   In Islam, there is an old metaphor of the donkey. A donkey is a beast that can carry many books on its back but it cannot use them. It cannot read, let alone understand the information. The masses of humanity are not unlike the donkey. The belief that there has been increased development is based on the development of the ideas, rather than their carriers. Instead of change, we have generally remained constant as receivers—not necessarily users—of information. Here is an extract from the science fiction book Venus Plus X, by Theodore Sturgeon:

“He remembered a thing he had read somewhere: was it Ruth Benedict? Something about no item of man’s language, or religion, or social organization, being carried in his germ cell. In other words you take a baby, any colour, any country, and plank it down anywhere else, and it would grow up to be like the people of the new country. And then there was that article he saw containing the same idea, but extending it throughout the entire course of human history; take an Egyptian baby of the time of Cheops, and plank it down in modern Oslo, and it would grow up to be a Norwegian, able to learn Morse code and maybe even have a prejudice against Swedes. What all this amounted to was that the most careful study by the most unbiased observers of the entire course of human history had been unable to unearth a single example of human evolution. The fact that humanity had come up out of the caves and finally built an elaborate series of civilizations was beside the point; say it took them thirty thousand years to do it; it was a fair bet that a clutch of modern babies, reared just far enough to be able to find their own food and then cast into the wilderness, might well take just as long to build things up again.” (Pages 33, 34.)

   Ouspensky the Russian occultist had trouble with this idea when his teacher Gurdjieff presented it to him at the beginning of the First World War. In Ouspensky’s book, In Search of The Miraculous, he relates the conversation: --

   ‘ “For a man of Western culture,” I said, “it is of course difficult to believe and to accept the idea that an ignorant fakir, a naïve monk, or a yogi who has retired from life may be on the way to evolution while an educated European, armed with ‘exact knowledge’ and all the latest methods of investigation, has no chance whatever and is moving in a circle from which there is no escape.”

   ‘ “Yes, that is because people believe in progress and culture,” said G. “There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change. Man remains just the same. ‘Civilized’ and ‘cultured’ people live with exactly the same interests as the most ignorant savages. Modern civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words. But all these fine words about ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’ are merely words.”’

   Most people I’ve discussed this idea with agree with to an extent, but not all the way. More especially, they would not go as far as to believe it applies to them. In fact, everybody you ask will no doubt say they are individuals. It would be most individual to admit you are not.

   But the conviction of occultists like Gurdjieff is that for the most part humans have very little free will. His proposition is that the vast majority, educated or not, are controlled almost exclusively by external influences, and therefore could be called machines.

   Alice A. Bailey, an English occultist around the same time, in her Esoteric Psychology Volume 2. gives us five definitions of the human personality, to be considered sequential. The first one runs: --

“A personality is a separated human being. We could perhaps say equally well a separative human being. This is the poorest and most loosely used definition; it applies to common usage and regards each human being as a person. This definition is consequently not true. Many people are simply animals with vague higher impulses, which remain simply impulses. There are those also who are primarily nothing more or less than mediums. This term here is used to apply to all those types of persons who go blindly and impotently upon their way, swayed by their lower dense desire nature, of which the physical body is only the expression or medium. They are influenced by the mass consciousness, mass ideas, and mass reactions, and therefore find themselves quite incapable of being anything definitely self-initiated, but are standardised by mass complexes. They are, therefore, mediums with mass ideas; they are swept by urges which are imposed upon them by teachers and demagogues, and are receptive—without any thought or reasoning—to every school of thought (spiritual, occult, political, religious, and philosophical). May I repeat they are simply mediums; they are receptive to ideas which are not their own or self-achieved.”

   Gurdjieff agrees with the above, but puts it in another way:

“Man has no individuality. He has no single, big I. Man is divided into a multiplicity of small I’s.

   “And each separate small I is able to call itself by the name of the Whole, to act in the name of the Whole, to agree or disagree, to give promises, to make decisions, with which another I or the whole will have to deal. This explains why people so often make decisions and so seldom carry them out. A man decides to get up early beginning from the following day. One I, or a group of I’s, decide this. But getting up is the business of another I who entirely disagrees with the decision and may even know absolutely nothing about it. Of course the man will again go on sleeping in the morning and in the evening he will again decide to get up early. In some cases this may assume very unpleasant consequences for a man. A small accidental I may promise something, not to itself, but to someone else at a certain moment simply out of vanity or for amusement. Then it disappears, but the man, that is, the Whole, has to meet them. People’s lives often consist of paying off the promissory notes of small accidental I’s.”

   This admittedly seems too black and white. But as said, Alice A. Bailey listed five stages all up of a human personality, from automation to master. As they proceed, union of the various parts of the man would be achieved. Eventually, union of personality and soul would come about, thus constituting an intelligent being. Think of the word individual as something like indivisible.

   It is interesting, in this light, that the word yoga is usually translated as ‘union.’ It directly comes from yuj, in Sanskrit, which means ‘yoke,’ as in the yoke that holds bullocks together when ploughing fields.   

   But until (and unless) such union happens, man is (as AAB said) but a negative medium for external forces. Gurdjieff states it plainly: in order to do, first you have to be. In Ouspensky’s book, Gurdjieff’s followers asked him things like, ‘How do we stop war?’ Constantly, he returned to the point that we have to get rid of the illusion that we are able to do anything. “Things just happen,” he said. That is, they happen through us. “Nobody does anything.”

   But he did allow for the possibility of evolution. “Everything in the world,” he said, “from solar systems to man, and from man to atom, either rises or descends, either evolves or degenerates, either develops or decays. But nothing evolves mechanically. Only degeneration and destruction proceeds mechanically. That which cannot evolve consciously—degenerates. Help from outside is possible only in so far as it is valued and accepted, even if it is only by feeling in the beginning.”

   Consider all of this in the light of Climate Change and the constant presence of wars in our or any other time. Consider Jerusalem as a knot of misunderstood forces in which anyone who enters into its vicinity become unconscious tools of such forces. Consider, too, how many times revolutionaries have become the monsters they intended to overthrow. ‘We cannot do anything,’ insists Gurdjieff. The idea is not preposterous.

   Still, the idea that we are forms of artificial intelligence feels incomplete. It is difficult to shake the belief that we are genuinely alive. This could be true (I believe it!) and perhaps it is the general definition of life that is the problem.

   Itzhak Bentov (died May 25, 1979) the Czech born scientist and inventor (known for his holographic model of the universe) speaks for a lesser-known definition of life, which includes even minerals. From Stalking The Wild Pendulum: --

   “We may at first have trouble trying to visualise a rock or an atom as a living thing because we associate consciousness with life. But this notion is just a human limitation; a rock may also have difficulty in understanding human consciousness. At present we restrict the term ‘living beings’ to beings that can reproduce. This, I believe, is quite arbitrary. We seem to project our own behaviour onto other systems, by saying that starting from the atom and going to larger aggregates there is no ‘life,’ and then suddenly, when the aggregates of atoms have reached a certain stage of organization, ‘life’ appears, because we can recognise our own behaviour in it. My basic premise is that consciousness resides in matter; put another way, all mass (matter) contains consciousness (or life) to a greater or lesser extent. It may be refined or primitive.”

   His view is not unique. The Theosophist  H.P. Blavatsky said as much many years earlier in her The Secret Doctrine: --

   “Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible Lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters it from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it organic or inorganic—is a Life.”

   Alice A. Bailey devoted her book The Consciousness of The Atom to studying this theory. She wrote: “In looking over one scientific book last week it was discouraging to find the author pointing out that the atom of the chemist, of the physicist, of the mathematician, and of the metaphysician were four totally different things. That is another reason why it is not possible to be dogmatic in dealing with these questions.”

   Proceeding, she gives us Thomas Edison’s view on the issue: --

“[…] I want to point out what Edison is reported by an interviewer as having said in Harper’s Magazine for February 1890, and which is enlarged upon in the Scientific American for October 1920. In the earlier instance he is quoted as follows: --

    “‘I do not believe that matter is inert, acted upon by an outside force. To me it seems that every atom is possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousands of ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements, forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this without intelligence? Atoms in harmonious and useful relation assume beautiful or interesting shapes and colours, or give forth a pleasant perfume, as if expressing their satisfaction … gathered together in certain forms, the atoms constitute animals of the lowest order. Finally they combine in man, who represents the total intelligence of all the atoms.’

   Finally, I would like to include a section from Dr Annie Besant’s book A Study In Consciousness, where she shows us the experiments of Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, pioneer of the investigation of radio and microwave optics, plant scientist, and who is considered one of the fathers of radio science.

   She begins:

‘Professor Jagadesh Chandra Bose, M.A., DSC., of Calcutta, has definitely proved that so-called “inorganic matter” is responsive to stimulus, and that the response is identical from metals, vegetables, animals and—so far as experiment can be made—man.

   ‘He arranged apparatus to measure the stimulus applied, and to show in curves, traced on a revolving cylinder, the response from the body receiving the stimulus. He then compared the curves obtained in tin and in other metals with those obtained from muscle, and found that the curves from tin were identical with those from muscle, and that other metals gave curves of like nature but varied in the period of recovery.

(a) Series of electric responses to successive mechanical stimuli at intervals of half a minute, in tin. (b) Mechanical responses in muscle.

‘Tetanus, both complete and incomplete, due to repeated shocks, was caused and similar results accrued, in mineral as in muscle.

   ‘Fatigue was shown by metals least of all by tin. Chemical reagents, such as drugs, produced similar results on metals with those known to result with animals—exciting, depressing, and deadly. (By deadly is meant resulting in the destruction of the power of response.)

   ‘A poison will kill metal, inducing a condition of immobility, so that no response is obtainable. If the poisoned metal be taken in time, an antidote may save its life.

Effects analogous to (a) incomplete and (b) complete tetanus in tin, (a’) incomplete and (b’) complete tetanus in muscle.

(a) Normal response. (b) Effect of poison. (c) Revival by antidote.

   ‘A stimulant will increase response, and as large and small doses of a rig have been found to kill and stimulate respectively, so have they been found to act on metals. “Among such phenomena,” asks Professor Bose, “how can we draw a line of demarcation and say: ‘Here the physical process ends, and there the physiological begins’? No such barrier exists.”’

  (These details are taken from a paper given by Professor Bose at the Royal Institute, May 10th, 1901, entitled “The response of Inorganic Matter to Stimulus”)

   The proposal of this article is that humans are of a quality of intelligence – or awareness – that might as well be artificial. No matter how complex, there is little free will involved. We are possessed by involuntary daydreams and physical sloth, driven by emotional reactions, mindless gossip and fear. However, there is real life there, as there is with any form of matter. This gives us the implied potential and hope.

   It would be natural to think that education – or increased knowledge – is what is needed to bring about real consciousness and free will. But this is an illusion, remembering the analogy of the donkey. The task is to create a stable point of consciousness, a permanent ‘I,’ which does not fall asleep in daydreams or emotional concerns every few seconds.

   Ouspensky relates how Gurdjieff saw the issue: “ ‘There are,’ he said, ‘two lines along which man’s development proceeds, the line of knowledge and the line of being. In right evolution the line of knowledge and the line of being develop simultaneously, parallel to, and helping one another.’” And further: --

   “ ‘People understand what ‘knowledge’ means. And they understand the possibility of different levels of knowledge. They understand that knowledge may be lesser or greater, that is to say, of one quality or of another quality. But they do not understand this in relation to ‘being.’ ‘Being’ for them, means simply ‘existence’ to which is opposed just ‘non-existence.’ They do not understand that being or existence may be of very different levels and categories.”

  To illustrate the point he gives the following example:

   “ ‘[…] In Western culture it is considered that a man may possess great knowledge, for example he may be an able scientist, make discoveries, advance science, and at the same time he may be, and has the right to be, a petty, egoistic, cavilling, mean, envious, vain, naïve, and absent-minded man. It seems to be considered here that a professor must always forget his umbrella everywhere.’”

   To return to the idea of most of us being donkeys, here is a quote from Wikipedia in relation to the word yoga: “Outside India, the term yoga is typically associated with Hatha Yoga and its asanas (postures) or as a form of exercise.    

   There are many systems of union, or of ‘increasing one’s being’. Given old word associations, it is important to distinguish between the word yoga with its different usages, and what it originally signified. It is not merely stretching exercises, and it includes more than the one type of yoga called Hatha, whose emphasis is the development of the physical body. Gurdjieff called striving toward union ‘the work’, or The Fourth Way. Bailey called it either yoga or practical occultism. The Golden Dawn called it magic. Religious mystics called it prayer or worship. We might here define it as taking the ‘artificial’ out of ‘artificial intelligence’. 

   If we cannot ‘do’ anything externally, maybe we can strive for the opposite. That is—stop letting external influences do things through us. Consider vows of silence and fasts. Consider ‘turning the other cheek’. Consider how Buddha stopped everything and sat under a tree.

   William Burroughs called humans ‘The Soft Machine.’ In his novel Junky he describes one of the many times he tried to kick his heroine addiction. The more he holds out against the junk craving, the more time he spends in bars, drinking; the less of a junky he is, the more of a drunk he becomes. Soon he is such a sloppy drunk, always getting into trouble, that his friend Ike says, “You’re drinking, Bill. You’re drinking and getting crazy. You look terrible. You look terrible in your face. Better you should go back to stuff [junk] than drink like this. ”

   It is as if in trying to evict one demon from the front door, another inches its way in the back door. Burroughs was an empty house, and nature hates a void. He – and all the rest of us -- could do nothing significant so long as the void existed. (The void represents the absence of consciousness.)

   Now reflect on the Russian Revolution. Think of William Burroughs as Russia. Heroin is the Tsar, and alcohol is the Bolsheviks. One external (and harmful) influence swapped for another. In an attempt to ‘do’ something, the same result occurred. Whether communism works or not is completely beside the point. If there is no free will psychologically, there could never be any politically. This would explain the occurrence of new governments eventually resembling the old ones.  

   Alice A. Bailey had the interesting idea that humans themselves are ‘atoms’ in the greater life we call planet Earth (humans constituting the brain). It should be noted that almost all occult traditions – including all those mentioned above – have advocated group work as preferred to solitary work. When considering this, coupled with Bailey’s idea of a macrocosmic being, we can imagine a group of people constituting the ‘point of consciousness’ or the permanent ‘I’ in the planet. This would imply that as ‘being’ increases, ‘doing’ becomes correspondingly more possible—and also less harmful.

   It is interesting, then, that issues (and groups) relating to Climate Change call more for working on ourselves instead of others, and for the ‘stopping of doing’ (for example, resisting convenience in regard to the technologies that burn fossil fuels). The same applies to war. The same again applies to the Economy: the argument there is whether to leave it alone as a rising and falling ‘automation’ that controls us without intelligence (the free market system)—or not.

References.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/#MacInt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Turing.

Hierarchical Temporal Memory Concepts, Theory, and Terminology, Jeff Hawkins and Dileep George, Numenta Inc. 2006 (from www.numenta.com)

The Beacon, October-December Issue, 2009. Jan Smuts And The Concept of Holism, by Ivan Kovacs.

Theodore Sturgeon, Venus Plus X, 1960, (pp. 33-34)

Ouspensky, In Search of The Miraculous, 1949 (pp. 51, 59-60, 65. 70.)

Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Psychology Volume 2. (page 264.)

Alice A. Bailey, The Consciousness of The Atom, 1922, (pp. 36, 38, 39.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga#Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali

Itzhak Bentov, Stalking The Wild Pendulum. 1977. (Page 78.)

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Sectret Doctrine I. 5th adyar edition.    (page 304.)

Annie Besant, A Study In Consciousness, 1907, (pp. 109-112.)   quoting a paper by Professor Bose at the Royal Institute, May 10th, 1901, entitled The response of Inorganic Matter to Stimulus

William Burroughs, Soft Machine, 1961, (the title.)

William Burroughs, Junky, 1953 (page 128.)

UNDERGROWTH is proud to preview an excerpt from the new novella META-DETECTIVE by regular contributor LEVIN A. DIATSCHENKO.author of The Man Who Never Sleeps, comes another surreal adventure that experiments with reality.

META-DETECTIVE is a new illustrated novella is a cross between pulp fiction detective classics and Greek mythology. 

For more information purchasing a copy of the book, contact Wolfty & Cliff Publishing

META DETECTIVE
A Novella

by

Levin A. Diatschenko



ONE


   EVERY now and then I jam up like old guns do. That’s what must have happened. I’d been stuck for a while, perhaps on some thought, because when I finally looked up there was a man in my office. I wondered just how long he’d been sitting there. To compensate for having been caught off guard, I jumped up and paced around the room.
   “Evening,” I said. “Have you been waiting long?”
   “Twenty-five years,” said the man.
   The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The colour of the man -- his clothes and skin – was black and white with shades of grey. He might have stepped out of an old movie. His expression was fixed as if he were being strangled. I hoped he was joking about the twenty-five years.
   “Sorry about that,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
   “I need you to investigate a murder.”
   “Whose?”
   “Mine. Twenty-five years ago today.”
   “Hold it,” I said. “You’ve been dead for twenty-five years and you wait till now to do something about it?”
   “A murder is still a murder.”
   He opened his jacket and revealed the gaping wound in his solar plexus. It looked like the work of a shotgun fired at point blank.  
   “Good God!” I said. “Cover it up.”
   “Will you help?” he asked.
   “Give me some details.”
   “Judging by your reputation I’d say you might be acquainted with some of them. Here.” He pulled out a piece of paper from his coat, and handed it over.
   It was a list: Seth Minx, Changy Collins and the Doyley Collective. He was right; these were all people I’d either crossed in the past, or at least knew by reputation.
   “Which one of them is guilty?” I asked.
   “They were all involved in one way or another,” said the dead man.
   “If you know that, then what is there to investigate?”
   “See, I want to find out who Doyley was taking orders from -- who is the new fellah taking my place?”
   “As Doyley’s boss?”
   “As number one in this town.”
   “So you’re using me for revenge.”
   “It’s up to you,” he said, “I get my revenge, yes. But you get the glory of putting Doyley and his lot away. I’m a first-hand witness to murder. You may not get this chance again. The police have been trying to put Doyley away for years.”
   “How do you know that?”
   “He used to work for me. That’s the thing: I’ve returned from the grave for a short time only, just to point my finger.”
      “What do I care whether Doyley is caught?” I asked. “Why don’t you go to the police with this?”
   “It’s well known that you’re a lackey for the police. And I’d rather deal with them indirectly.”
   “Now that hurt my feelings,” I said. “You’ll have to give me more incentive than that.”
   “How about your citizenship papers?” he smiled.   
   He was obviously a man of rank. One hears stories about how the Mob still give orders from prison … and now apparently from the grave as well. But I wasn’t one to fight their fight.
   “Hold it a second,” I said, considering.
   I turned and walked out of a door that was behind my desk and that opened out directly to the street. Reserved for a moment like this, it was in a foundation wall.
   You see, opening the door caused the whole room to collapse in on itself. The room shrunk and shrunk until it was but a small box with the dead mobster trapped inside.
   Now I was holding the cards.
   I heard the ‘undead’ man from inside. “You filthy animal!”  
   “Now my opportunity isn’t going anywhere,” I explained. “And don’t try to break out, because that will cause the box to shrink even farther, until space-time bends inwards and a black hole is created. Get it?”
   “I won’t testify to anything,” was his muffled response.
   “Then you’ll never get out of that box either.”
   I heard lots of swearing.  
   This is one of the perks of not having a permanent office.

   “What’s your name,” I demanded. “Speak up or I’ll kick another plank loose!”
   “You bastard!” he called. “The name’s Blacky. And nobody gets away with crossing me!”
   I’d heard of him. He had lived in the oldest and most central suburb, known as The Circle. It had very old buildings – the town’s first -- and was populated by wealthy families whose parents were the founders of the city. Blacky’s kind were like surrogate royalty. Much of the town’s money flowed back to its centre, glorifying The Circle and keeping it in good repair. The residents of The Circle were generally unintellectual and frivolous.
   A percentage of them – Blacky included – were vicious about self-preservation. They formed one of the two major political parties in the city – the Lyons Party. These were the Old Guard and they were determined to keep their ‘earth’ suburb, as it was called, as the town’s centre.     
   Since Blacky’s death, someone else had stepped up and taken the position of underworld boss. But this new person’s identity was shrouded in mystery.  
   I lugged the box up to ‘reception’.
   “Sinthia,” I said.
   My secretary was sitting on a stool, keeping watch at a broken window. The window had been like that since we found this disused warehouse and converted one of its rooms (which was now a box) into an office.
   “What happened?” she asked.
   “We’re homeless again,” I said. “Take this box over to The Pegasus – don’t let it out of your sight.”
   “Okay Sully. Where are you going?”
   I was putting on my coat and hat. “To gather up the usual suspects for a line-up. The Pegasus has rooms upstairs; get one and move all our stuff there.”
   She gave me a hard look. She always did, when I made her work late. “That’s going to cost money,” she said. “For the room.”
   I turned my back on her, pretending not to hear. I’m always reminding myself not to turn my back on her. She’s the violent type.

   The streets were soft and gluggy and the night was warm. I had to walk quickly because I was sinking into the road up to my knees. As I continued, a bullet whizzed past my ear. This was not uncommon in this part of town; I lived in the Second Ring. Each suburb was circular and ever widening, with The Circle as the centre. The Second Ring was symbolised as the ‘water’ suburb. It was the second-oldest part of town and a ghetto. Street gangs were common. So were riots. Stray bullets were just a part of the weather.  
   I ran out of wind in front of a little neon-lit pub.
   I entered and spotted an acquaintance. “Hello Split-ends.”
   “Hello Sully.”
   Split-ends was a dirty old man in a trench coat. The first image that comes to mind is fairly accurate. He believed that fingers were actually the split ends of arms, the same as the ends of hairs. So he chopped his hands off every once in a while and they grew back longer each time. He kept his arms rolled up in his trench coat.
   “What brings you here my brother?” he asked me.
   “I need your services for a moment. Will you come with me to Bonzo’s?”
   “Why not?” he said. “If you’re paying.”
   Bonzo’s is a highbrow restaurant on the main drag. If the goons from the list weren’t there, somebody who knew where they were would be.
   Split-ends and I got a table against the far wall under a painting of the Two Ronnie’s. I looked around for the highest rollers in the room. There was one fellow in particular I wanted to find, but I didn’t know what he looked like. Split-ends ordered a steak and some wine, the likes of which I couldn’t afford.
   “See that table over there, Split-ends?”
   “Them with the top hats?”
   “That’s right. Get me the fat one’s wallet.”
   Split-ends wriggled around in his seat for a moment and then his hand came up and dumped a wallet on the table.
   I opened it. The driver’s licence confirmed my suspicion that the man was a boyfriend of Seth Minx. ‘Block Head’ was his tag. I’d read in the paper only two days ago that him and Minx had been seen near the scene of a robbery. There was also about three hundred dollars, which I took for myself.
   “Split-ends, check if they’re armed.”
   Split-ends’s arms unravelled from his coat like two fire hoses. They then crept through the restaurant, under legs and tables, like cobras. Over the next few minutes Split-ends kept dumping revolvers and knives on the table in front of me. There were six guns already when I asked: “Is that it?”
   “That’s it,” he said. Then his hands turned to the job of filling his mouth full of food.
   I tossed Split-ends a fifty-dollar note from the three hundred.
   “Cover me,” I instructed. “I’ll give you the usual signal.”
   I approached the table of Seth Minx’s boyfriend. They looked up sneering.
   “Nice to know I’ve got a reputation,” I said.
   “Just what do you mean interrupting our supper?” said one.
   “I need information.”
   “Piss off!” spat Block Head, slamming his brick-like fist on the table.
   “I suggest you cooperate before I have to put my dukes up.”
   Smiling, they each reached for their weapons … only to find empty belts and pockets.
   I tipped my hat and Split-ends, from across the room, pushed a gun barrel into the back of Block Head. He looked over his shoulder.
   “Damnit!” he whined. “Split-ends is here, isn’t he?”
   I smiled. “Now, I have a question to ask. If it isn’t answered, Split-ends puts a hole in you.”
   They sat scowling.
   “Where’s Seth Minx?”
   “I don’t kn…” began her boyfriend.
   Split-ends gave him a poke with the gun.
   “She’ll be here in an hour.”
   “Thanks for your cooperation.”
   I turned my back on them and left the restaurant. Split-ends, according to our usual routine, would keep the gun on them until I left. The mobsters would then be left to guess which one of the customers was Split-ends.
   I’d been waiting outside for fifteen minutes when I saw Seth Minx hopping out of a car and striding towards the restaurant.
   “Hold it, Seth!” I called.
   The second she saw me she kicked off her high heels and bolted.  
   We wound in and out of side streets and alleyways until it became like a ride at the show. I’d just lean one way or the other to turn and slide around the bends. She was just ahead and I heard her cursing about her dress getting ruffled.
   Suddenly there was a wall.
   “Ooff!”
    When I climbed to my feet, she had vanished.   
   “Bollocks,” I said, looking around dizzily.
   In the distance I heard gunfire.  
   The only accessible door I could see was to the lodge of some kind of clubhouse. On the door was an emblem of an equal -armed cross and a serpent spiraling from the centre to the periferal. I straightened myself up and knocked on the big double doors.
   A Frater in a ceremonial robe answered the door. “Lately I’ve been having strange dreams,” he said.
   “I’m sorry, sir,” I replied after hesitating. “I’m not a member.”
   “Oh.” The man was in his thirties. A long nose stuck out from under the hood he wore.
   “I’m a detective,” I explained. “Did a woman come through here only minutes ago?”
   “Absolutely no women are admitted here!” he said.
   “No? Sorry to have bothered you.”
   He snorted and closed the door.
   I paced around, trying to figure out where she could have gone. I looked up theorising that she might have shed her gravity and floated away. There was no trace in the sky.
   An idea popped into my head. I knocked on the doors again.
   A woman, dressed exactly the same as the previous man, answered. “Yes?” she snorted. “You again.”
   I hesitated.
   “Yes, what do you want?” she persisted. Her nose also stuck out under her hood.
   “Hello,” I said. “Sorry for the bother but did a man come in just minutes ago?”
   “Don’t be ridiculous, this is a women-only society. Didn’t I tell you that a moment ago?”
   “But just now you were a man.”
   “Don’t be absurd,” she said.
   “Look, did a woman come here just before me?”
   “A member might have.”
   “Can you show me to her?”
   “Certainly not. We protect our members here. That is, of course, if one did come.” She began closing the door.
   “Hold it!” I glowered.
   Another woman appeared, dressed similarly to the first one. The new woman was grey-haired and stern. “Is there any bother here, Sister?” she asked.
   “How do you do,” I said. “I’m a detective. A non-member may have penetrated your meeting.”
   Both Sisters started.
   “A non-member?” said the first. “But they all gave the password.”
   “Are you aware that only minutes ago you were a fraternity?” I asked.
   “Well, sir,” said the grey-haired woman. “Don’t you think we would remember such a thing?”
   “I would hope so,” I said, “nevertheless, this lady was a man  the last time she answered the door.”
   Both women looked uncertain. But then the grey-haired one said: “No. No, I can’t believe that our whole lodge could have changed sex without me noticing. I’m sorry sir.”
   “Besides,” rejoined the younger woman. “The so-called impostor of yours gave the password.”
   “So a woman did arrive just before me,” I said.
   Begrudgingly, the young woman said, “Well, yes.”
   “How exactly did she give the pass?” the older woman asked her Sister.
   “Well, let’s see,” the young woman began. “I opened the door and said ‘Lately I’ve been having strange dreams.’ She said she must have knocked on the wrong door. I closed it and he knocked again…”
   “He?” said the older woman and I in unison.
   “Oh dear. I mean she.”
   “Please continue Sister,” said the older woman.
   “When I opened it, she said to me, ‘Lately I’ve been having strange dreams.’ Bound by the tradition, I had to reply: ‘What makes you so sure they were dreams?’ I explained to the fool that I was supposed to say the first line and she was to give the reply. She then said, ‘Go ahead then!’ We repeated the process properly, me giving the first line. I then gave him … I mean her … admittance.”
   “You fool!” said the older woman. “She’s tricked you into revealing the reply. Come in detective.”
   “Come to think of it, I do feel a bit out of sorts,” mused the younger woman.the foyer, the older woman stopped me.

“I’m afraid you can’t enter like that,” she said. “It’s like a muddy person coming into a room with white carpet. You’ll have to change sex.” She pointed to a changing room.
   After I had changed into a woman and donned a spare robe, I was led to a hall where other women in robes of various colours were engaged in a lecture. The older woman was the Mater of the group. She explained that this was a special meeting of twelve Sisters from different lodges. They had never met before now. Consequently, an impostor would not be discovered on looks alone.
   To Seth’s advantage (I found out later) only eleven of the twelve turned up, and so she’d slipped in as the twelfth member.   
   The Mater called everyone to attention.
   “Sisters,” said my host. “There is an impostor among us.”
   The room inhaled sharply.
   “Does nobody remember that we were a brotherhood not one hour ago?”
   All the women looked at each other.  
   “Are you sure?” one woman called out.
   “We’ve been diluted!” exclaimed the older woman. “Like a drop of milk in coffee, the whole sorority…ah…fraternity… has been affected!”
   “Affected how?” called another. “I mean apart from changing sex.”
   I stepped forward. “Well, ah, ladies…” I cleared my throat, so as to get more accustomed to my feminine vocal cords. “The so-called ‘drop of milk’ is a known criminal. As such, all of you here have become criminals to some degree from the moment she joined you.”
   The crowd roared.
   The old woman said, “Silence!”
   The roar softened into a murmur.

   “This is the whole reason we have passwords and so on!” said the old woman. “To avoid contamination I suggest we ‘cut off the hand that offends us’.”
   “How, Sister?”
   “Why, by staying true to the purpose of our organization, of course. We must take our robes off and wash them!”
   As one group entity, we all began the process of washing our robes.
   A person’s past is something he wears as clothing, in the form of memory. It comes with many stains, such as prejudice and biases. The custom of this organization was to ‘strip’ that mental clothing off upon entering the lodge. Then, once inside, its members donned their formal memory/robes. These were all similar, differing only slightly to denote levels of learning. Together they would share the organization’s past, and so form a group identity. Any self-centred thoughts or memories would be left outside. If an incongruous thought were to come inside, it would ‘smear’ itself over all the robes, changing the entire colour scheme.
   Now we were a diluted Group-Seth. Her criminal intentions had spread amongst us, albeit thinly. This, incidentally, changed everyone into women because Seth was female. That much was lucky; it is easier to spot someone changing sex than it is to spot his or her character.
   The members cleared the room and prepared for The Cleaning Ritual. The Mater insisted that I take part in it.

  We re-entered the main room and stood in a circle, facing inwards. On the floor in front of each woman was a large, rough stone. Beside each stone was a bucket of water.
   “Sisters,” said the Mater, “let us shed our outer, worldly identities.”
   Copying the others, I pulled my robe off and held it in my arms. Naked now, we kneeled at our stones.
   “The bucket in front is your heart. You will notice how clear is the water within. This reflects the purity of our motives. It is the cleansing water of Aquarius and sparkles with enthusiasm and aspiration. Take your worldly robe and immerse it in the water.”
   We did so.
   The Mater continued. “The rough stone in front is the elusive philosophers’ stone. It is the ultimate reason underlying all that we do and live for. Note how immoveable and indestructable it is. This sturdy point is the fulcrum that gives strength to the rest of our lives. Dash your personalities on the rocks of Reason!”
   The women took their robes out of the water and wipped them over the rocks.
   “Only in service to humanity do we wash away the selfishness that stains our true spiritual selves. Let us labour.”
   We commenced rubbing the robes against the stones. Due to the roughness, the stones served well as washboards. I laboured vigorously, stopping only to rinse the cloth in the bucket again. 
   “Here,” said the Mater tapping my shoulder.
   When I looked up she handed me a bar of soap.
   “This holy order,” she said, “encourages education. This soap is the product of intelligence. Labour intelligently.”
   The job was easier with the soap and soon the water was brown. I stopped and rung the robe out. Most of the women were finished, too.
   We held the robes up and inspected them. The sky blues and the buttercup yellows, the reds and whites -- all glowed as if the fabric were made of mythological silk.   
   The Mater left hers on her stone and circled the group, inspecting each bucket.
   “Aha!” she called, pointing to one.
   It was the only bucket still with clean water.
   “Here’s the impostor!” said the Mater. “The owner of this bucket.”
   The woman next to the bucket leapt back. “Keep your distance!” she said, as the women surrounded her. “Stay back!”
   She retreated until her back banged against a wall. “I can explain,” she said.
   “You don’t need to,” said one of the women. “Your water is clear because you were unwilling to give up your selfish perceptions.”
   “No,” said Seth. “It is just that I am already pure and so there was nothing to clean.”
   One of the women held up Seth’s robe; it was filthy.
   Seth’s face went pale. “Well … alright then. I’m not a member of your ridiculous cult. What of it?”
   “Restrain her,” said the Mater.
   Seth struggled in vain. Four women dragged her out the door.
   “Wait,” I called. “Let me take custody of her!”
   The Mater tapped me. “Follow me,” she said. “The ritual is not complete.”
   The remaining sisters also followed, taking their robes with them. The Mater led us up to the roof. Along the way, the first woman that I’d met at the door grabbed my arm and said, “Mater told me to give this to you.”
   She handed me something similar to a foldout stand in its folded up form.
   “We only have twelve drying racks,” she explained, “As we weren’t expecting you. You’ll have to carry yours up.”
   On the roof were twelve clothe-drying racks, in the simple shape of the letter T. I set mine up with the others. We then put our robes on the rack for the sun to dry.
   “But it’s still night,” I argued.
   “Yes. Never mind, the sun will rise in three hours.”
 

The order, of which I was now an honourable member, let me call the police to pick up Seth. I then changed back into my original clothes and sex and rode with her back to the police station.  

  I told Hardy – my connection on the force -- to hold her for me until I returned.
   “What’s this all about, Katonksky?” he grumbled.
   “I need her for a line-up. I won’t be long.”
    
   Next on Blacky’s list was Changy Collins. He began his professional life as a card counter. Changy enjoyed the skill so much that he later went on to card memorising and other memory feats. Eventually he entered chess tournaments blindfolded. All this mental weightlifting led to strange abilities, such as mesmerism and the like.
   Banned from casinos, he was a professional thief now. His method of escape was to disrupt the unity of a situation. The assailant would then give up, completely baffled as to how Changy got away. To understand a situation is to perceive the ‘unity’ of it. For example, a ‘horse and cart’ make up a working unity. But if you change it, say, to a ‘spider and cart’ the unity of the relationship will be broken. To catch Changy Collins would require an understandable relationship, like a lawman slapping handcuffs on a criminal. I knew this would be difficult. For a start, I wasn’t a lawman.    
   For the last month he’d been sitting in his car staking out a government building. I knew this because I passed him every so often on my way home from the pubs.
   When I accosted him he socked me in the nose and ran.
   “Ow!” My nose dripped blood and my eyes watered.
   I chased him into a park and hurled myself at him -- we rolled across the grass, finally stopping with me on top. Both of us grunted in pain.
   “Now hold on a second,” he said in his monotone voice.
   “Shut your mouth, Changy,” I huffed, dragging him to his feet. “You’re coming with me to the police station.”
   He thrust his steel gaze into my skull. “Why in reason’s name,” he said, “would you want to apprehend a tree?”  
   “I said shut up! I have my own reasons.”
   “But I’m rooted to the ground, Katonksky. Even if I wanted to come with you, I couldn’t.”
   I looked down at his feet and saw that he was indeed rooted to the ground. What I’d earlier taken to be jeans was bark.
   “See my point?” he reasoned.
   I felt quite embarrassed. In the corner of my eye, I saw passers-by laughing at me. Some detective I was!
   Never one to let a lack of logic stand in my way, I persisted.  
    Then I remembered something. It was vague, but I’d told myself earlier that in case of difficulty, I should use my magnifying glass. So I took it out of my pocket and peered at the tree through it...
   And saw a human, named Changy Collins!
   “Shit!” I snapped out of the trance.
   Unity was restored. Consequently, so was my strength. He was easy to drag along now.
  “Hold on,” he said. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
   I clutched my magnifying glass like a talisman.

   “How many more?” Hardy asked when I got back to the police station.
   “Just one,” I said.
   Hardy patted his comb-over down with his stocky hand. “This isn’t your own private clubhouse, Sully,” he said. “You better have a good reason for this.”

    The last person on the list was the Doyley Collective. Doyley was one man but he had nine bodies. To any stranger he looked like a gang of people, but those who knew him understood that it was one soul spread between them. Doyley was a kung fu expert, specialising in Hydra Style. He used his multi-body technique in the same way you or I would manoeuvre our chess pieces. People knew and feared him by the tattoo of a hydra on each of his forearms. He was the unofficial king of the Second Ring.
   Eight of him were hanging out at his usual hideout, on the first floor of a rundown building. The ninth Doyley was across the street watching for trouble.
   My plan was simple. I knocked out the ninth Doyley with a blackjack. Then I took him to the station. I knew that Doyley would try to rescue himself.
   Two more of Doyley arrived only minutes after.
   “I was standing there minding my own business,” the three Doyleys complained in a gravel voice that was almost a whisper, “and that damned fool detective assaulted me!”
   Hardy shot me a foul look. “Sully claims you attacked first.”
   “The prick!” snarled Doyley. “I didn’t get a chance to resist. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to have done!”
   “Is that true, Katonksky?” the cop asked me.
   “Of course not,” I said. “But while you’re here, Doyley, I need you in a line-up.”
   “Outrageous!” exclaimed the Doyleys. “Officer, I want to charge this bastard with assault!”
   “I have to listen to them ... er ... him, Sully,” said Hardy. “I told you that you need just-cause to go hauling people in.”
   “Alright, charge me,” I said. “But first let me do my line-up. I promise you this will be a big bust. The credit will be yours.”
   “We’ve got nothing if you assaulted him.”
   “It’s his word against mine.”
   “No it isn’t – this guy has high up connections.”
   “Are you a coward?”
   Hardy pulled me aside. “Look Sully. You know you don’t have any citizenship papers. If you’re arrested it won’t matter whether Doyley is in the wrong or not. You could even be killed.”
   “I’m willing to risk it,” I said. “I have a strategy.” It was simple enough. A familiar invader will be killed or exiled by a body’s immune system, but a completely new one hangs around and causes confusion. I didn’t consider myself a disease or anything, more like a new piece of information. If they couldn’t explain me away, I figured, they’d have to incorporate me as part of the town. This being the case, my citizenship papers would come. I didn’t tell Hardy all this, of course.      
   Hardy conceded and ordered Doyley to bring all of his selves to the station for a line-up. After that, he’d charge me on Doyley’s behalf.
   “Why are you so indifferent?” asked Hardy. “What’s your motivation? I don’t understand.”
   “I don’t understand,” I explained. “That’s my motivation.”
   “You’re still on about all that!” he sighed.
   “A detective must never be personally involved in a case. The only case I ultimately seek to solve is the question of my true identity. That being so, I cannot be personally involved in my own life.”
   Hardy scowled. “So, what does Doyley have to do with your true identity?”
   “That is what I intend to find out.”  
   I went over to The Pegasus. Sinthia was sitting in the tiny hotel room that she secured, staring angrily out the window. She’d thrown all our stuff around the room.
   “I’m here to get that wooden box,” I said.
   “I need some money,” she said. “I paid for the room out of my own pocket.”
   “Sure. Just give me a moment.” I dragged the box down the stairs and  whistled a taxi.

   “This is what’s going to happen,” I told the dead mob boss through a tiny crack in the lid, once we were in the taxi. “You’ll pick your killer out in the line-up, and I won’t let this box collapse in on itself. All right?”
   “Whatever you say!” came the muffled reply.
    Seth Minx, Changy Collins and the Doyley Collective were standing side-by-side in the line-up when I returned.
   “What’s that?” asked Hardy, pointing to my box.
   “It’s the witness. Have you got a drill?”
   “What for?”
   “So Blacky can see out.”
   “That name sounds familiar,” noted Hardy. “Come on, there’s a drill in the hardware cupboard.”
   Against my better judgement I went with Hardy.   
   “You know you’re turning out to be nothing but trouble,” he grumbled. “Hurry up, will you! I want to knock off for the night.”
   “Don’t you want to charge me?”
   “I’ll do it in the morning. Don’t leave town, for goodness sake.”
   When we returned to the line-up, all the suspects were gone. In their place was a stranger, standing against the white background. He adjusted his tie.
   “Who the hell are you?” I asked. “And where the hell did they go?”
   The man looked around. “Where’d who go?”
   “Answer my question.”
   “I cannot remember for the life of me,” said the stranger, “how I came to be here. Guess you’ll have to release me.”
   “He’s right,” said Hardy. “I don’t know who this bloke is. Got nothing on him.”
   The stranger smiled and Hardy showed him the door. I cursed but Hardy told me to drop it and go home. “You’re lucky,” he said, “You almost got charged with assault.”
   
   I don’t need to tell you that I followed the stranger. He led me to a quiet street – just the kind of street I wanted to rough him up in. But then he turned around to face me.  
   “What’s the idea?” I barked, suddenly aware of how unarmed I was.
   “Sully Katonksky, I’ve been hoping we could have a little talk. Oh yes: We knew Blacky would go to you.”
  “Smart bastards!” I said. “I should have guessed it was a set-up.” I stepped back and got ready for trouble. “Well, you succeeded in getting me here. What do you want?”
   “I have some information for you,” he said.
   “Oh yeah?”
   He reached into his pocket and tossed a little black book to me.
   “It comes with a warning,” he said.
   I glanced inside: it was my citizenship papers. “Say on.”
   “You’re a perfectly legal citizen. You were born not far from here in the desert, and you grew up in the Second Ring. You are the only son of a widow.”
  “What happened to my father?”
  “I believe he was from up north. The point is you can stop investigating who you are. You’ve been stirring up a lot of trouble. Seems a stupid thing to do, right here in your own home.”
   They weren’t new papers. A whole past identity was there and just reading the name made that citizen’s memory come flooding into me like a possessing spirit. It made me question all this detective business. I already had an identity, I thought, one that didn’t attract any trouble. It’s right here in the book.  
   “Do yourself a favour,” said the man. “Give the detective game away. We don’t need any in this town.”
   “We? Who are you speaking for, exactly?”
   “You’ve made some powerful enemies. Doyley is not just a thug. He works for somebody in the New Centre. Understand?”
   “Smug son of a bitch.” I bent my knees, took a deep breath and charged at him.
   He split into two people; I flew between them and crashed into the road. Although I was dizzy, I regained my footing and put my guard up.
   Smiling, the two then divided into eleven different people: Seth Minx, Changy Collins and all nine of the Doyley Collective.

   The sun had risen by the time I made it back, bleeding and raw, to The Pegasus.
   Sinthia’s dark mood dissolved when she saw how messed up I was. She was all smiles after that.
   “Go,” I told her. “Get some sleep.”
   “I can’t do that, Sully. Someone’s got to take you to the hospital.”
   “No. I’m fine here.”
   She would not take me to a hospital. I knew very well that if I passed out, she’d finish the job. I told her to bring the box in. I heard Blacky groaning inside. Sinthia covered it with a tablecloth.
   I put my feet up on it and straightened out my broken legs. “There we are,” I said. “This will be my new desk.”
   I took a swig from my hip flask. The morning sunlight streamed through the window and burned my tender flesh. Smoke rose from me like a cigarette.
   “Hey Sinthia,” I said after a while.
   “Yes?”
   “Did you ever have a dream that seemed so real that, say, if someone does you wrong in it, you wake up angry at them?”
   “Oh sure, Sully. Now and then.”
   “…Then you realise it was just a dream and your anger dissolves.”
   “Sure. What about it?”
   “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’ll awake from life like that. And all this crap will just dissolve.”
   “Sure, Sully.”
   Why did I even bother talking to her? She was just waiting for me to pass out.

End of Meta-Detective preview

To purchase a copy of the book, go to www.gamonville.com

 The Silent Question

   Enduring silence is uncomfortable because it forces us to hear our own thoughts. Here, we notice the mental dialogue, and that it is undeliberate. We find ourselves trapped in memories or daydreams, or tunes or circular rambling. Upon finding that we cannot stop it, we flick the radio or television on. The noise stops it by drowning it out. We repeat that solution unconsciously every day—or we avoid the problem by surrounding ourselves constantly with noise. Fear of silence, says the theosophist Annie Besant (A Study In Consciousness), is evidence of a weak mind.

   But there’s more to it than that. What we also discover in the silence, and then avoid[1], is the fact that we do not know how we ought to employ our thoughts instead. A radio is a form of employment. The host says, “Listen to this.” Now we have something for our mind to do. If it is a talk show, they give us topics for us to think about, passively. A book is mental employment. Television too.

   So, what we become aware of in the silence is lack of purpose. Silence is a question. This question is what we are avoiding. I propose that as long as it remains unanswered, that question becomes the most common cause of depression (and anxiety).

   I found it interesting when I’d meet someone who was wealthy enough to retire and yet stayed in the workforce, explaining that they “got bored” sitting around. Retired people often have similar attitudes. It is also interesting when people express discomfort at a job which is quiet and there is little to do. “It is better when it is busy,” they say. “Time goes faster.”

   Time, of course, does not actually go faster. The worker simply becomes less conscious of its passing. Less conscious.

   This avoiding of time sounds frighteningly similar to how we avoid silence. It betrays the lack of any purpose outside the purpose of the company we work for. Keep busy and the day will go faster; your life shall wiz by too, with any luck. A job then, drowns out a physical problem the way the radio drowns out a mental one.

 There is something very similar, by degrees, about addiction to drugs and fear of silence/being alone/free time/empty space. All is initially based on avoiding the ‘silent question’. All is based on the realisation of excess, whether it is excess of uncontrollable thought, space, free time, or so forth.

   In his famous book, Junky, William S. Burroughs explains, “You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default.” Radio, keeping company with people, television, computer games (or card games, for that matter) and beer – these all win by default too. (‘Keeping company with people’ is here over simplified, but I refer to the people who we stay with rather than being alone, not to close friends and beneficial influences.) 

   “As a habit takes hold,” continues Burroughs, “other interests lose importance to the user. Life telescopes down to junk[2], one fix and looking forward to the next, “stashes” and ‘scripts,’ ‘spikes’ and ‘droppers.’ The addict himself often feels that he is leading a normal life and that junk is incidental. He does not realise that he is just going through the motions in his non-junk activities. It is not until his supply is cut off that he realises what junk means to him.”

   The last line bears another similarity. It is not until our supply of entertainment or company is cut off, that we realise our problem. The majority of our lives have been based upon avoidance of facing this problem, usually unconsciously because we never let our supply of distractions be cut off for too long.

   A close friend of mine could not take being single, and could not bear going home to an empty house. He suffered from restlessness whenever left alone, and from deep depressions when having to live alone. His doctor did not tackle the problem of my friend’s fear of loneliness; the doctor gave him drugs to take away the depression.

   Here is another example I have experienced from three different people (two of them being senior citizens, the other in his mid twenties): At night, when sleeping alone in the silence, they would turn their bedside radios on. The radio would stay on all through the night, helping them sleep.

   These cases sound extreme. However, to find out how much you are affected, cut off your ‘supply’ for a while.

   Notice how jobs control our thoughts as well as bodies. If we feel empty (of purpose) inside, we take on a substitute purpose, in the form of a job. Having a job is a form of possession: we become possessions of our employers. They control us. There are three levels to this possession: physical, in the repetitive tasks, say, of factory workers; emotionally, the boss controlling your emotions through deadlines, rewards and chastisements; then the deepest level is mental possession, when the boss’s concerns inhabit your thoughts. This is complete ‘occupation,’ though not absorption.

   Absorption is when your identity becomes the job. Your personality becomes synonymous with the company. The job, being a substitute soul (for apparent lack of internal one), takes complete ownership – leaving any true soul floating in permanent abstraction.

   But they save us as well. Remember, we complain when there is no work to do. Also, we are glad to employ our thoughts as the boss wishes, not knowing what else to employ our minds with.

   An employer – a boss – is a substitute saviour. 

   I once worked with a man who came to work each morning, vomited in the garden and then happily began the day. Evenings and weekends were spent in marathon drinking sessions, which nearly always ended in his passing out. I truly believe that holding that job in the steel factory saved him from killing himself, for no other reason that he could not drink at work. It wasn’t the boss’s will.

   The idea of a Higher Self, and of Divinity, is endemically linked to the idea of there being a Divine Purpose. It implies that purpose is at the core of sentient forms (as opposed to sentient forms being at the core of purpose). For example, if each human is a cell in a greater being called Humanity – and an even greater being called Earth[3] – then a purpose is alluded to in the way that cells unite into organs and fulfil functions for the health of that organism. This is alluded to in the words, “He In Whom We Live And Move And Have Our Being” (New Testament).

"Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere,” said Edmund Burk, the so-called philosophical founder of conservatism, “and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without... men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” This quote could cause much mischief, but there is no doubt a point in it.

   Similarly, William Blake said: “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” If we are connected to our Higher Selves, it stands to reason we become conscious of a creative purpose. A soccer player experiences this when paying attention to the whole team (his ‘Team Self’) during the game; he sees where he fits.

   By this reasoning, an ‘enlightened’ man would inevitably become a ‘Self’-employed man. Furthermore, your boss at work serves as a substitute Higher Self. He is your ‘acting soul’. When we dislike our boss, we are disliking the gap he fills. He or she is a symbol of the void.

   That being said, this does not mean bosses are endemically good, like a spiritual purpose should necessarily be. We must perceive a difference between self-actualisation and Self-actualisation, the one being selfish and the other group-aware. This is why occultists call desire ‘distorted will’. The glimpse of the moon reflected as broken, shimmering shards in the lake.

   Many of us realise that our jobs are not fulfilling any greater and noble purpose. But only a very few of us hate our jobs enough to find them undoable. Either the need for money or fear of being idle is the bigger motivator. Eventually, people give up and become perfect employees.

   The idealist burning to toil at what he considers his ‘calling’ is surely struggling to ‘exorcise’ his employer. He is no longer satisfied with weekends. Until then, no matter how much we dislike it, the most mundane job fills a void and therefore keeps people going.  Here is more experience from Burroughs:

“After a junk cure is complete, you generally feel fine for a few days. You can drink, you can feel real hunger and pleasure in food, and your sexual desire comes back to you. Everything looks different, sharper. Then you hit a sag. It is an effort to dress, get out of a chair, pick up a fork. You don’t want to do anything or go anywhere. You don’t even want junk. The junk craving is gone, but there isn’t anything else. You have to sit this period out, or work it out. Farm work is the best cure.”

Where there is so much suffering that the employee needs to quit, there are two purposes rubbing against each other, causing friction. Unless the aspirant’s perceived purpose is strong enough to attract money and thus fulfil his living needs, he must camp under the ‘Staff’ of another (that is, get a day job). His spiritual cum daily struggle is to manifest his soul’s purpose to the point where it is as powerful and sustaining as his employer’s ‘false’ staff/purpose.

   Alice A. Bailey said this about auras:

“The aura is usually spoken of in terms of colour and of light, due to the nature of the vision of the one who sees and the apparatus of response which is in use. Two words only describe an aura from the point of view of occult knowledge and they are ‘quality’ and ‘sphere of influence.’ What the clairvoyant really contacts is an impression which the mind rapidly translates into the symbology of colour, whereas there is no colour present. Seeing an aura, as it is called, is in reality a state of awareness.”

   We can imagine an employer’s ‘sphere of influence’: a long shadow being cast from him over all his staff and all his outlets or factories. Imagine the employer as a great spirit incarnating in all the extended bodies of his workers, himself the head of a Homo Gestalt of some kind; the head with many limbs. (I have thought of this when my boss asked me to write an email in his name. In effect I was an extension of him.)

   In the case where the employer has himself attained some level of spiritual/psychological advancement, then we would theoretically get no friction, even if the employees were not empty of purpose themselves. We would get synthesis – like an organism or a soccer team. A Prime Minister or President’s aura reaches across his nation, but doesn’t necessarily posses or restrict; it could enable and facilitate. A truly great soul reveals a united vision. Jobs sprout naturally as the people work to realise that vision.

   Prayer could be seen as applying for a job. I don’t mean selfish prayer. True prayer involves discipline, selflessness and regularity – like how jobs do. A prayer is employing one’s thoughts. In Islam, for example, they sound the same prayers in the same order, five times per day. Imagine having to stop daydreaming about your own problems each day at the same time. When we employ something – like a muscle – it becomes stronger and healthier thereby. The Quaker version of prayer is literally to turn towards the silence and look into it. Members and ‘attenders’ of a Meeting sit together in a circle of chairs, in silence, for an hour. They seek The Presence in this silence, and in doing so transform the negative void into a positive portal. The world is put aside, and finally the Quakers’ ears are pricked up to hear the ‘still small voice,’ or the ‘voice in the silence,’ as they call it. If a member is moved to speak to the group, they do so, and then return to silence. To illustrate the positive connotation Quakers give to silence, one common saying runs: “If you cannot add to the silence, it is better you do not speak at all.” 

   We often ask if prayers are answered. If prayer is applying for work, the prayer is answered by itself. In this sense, Religion is not about understanding the universe; it is about participating in the universe. 

   Meditation could also be seen as applying for work. In meditation, you are also reaching inwards for divine purpose. If your equipment is calm enough, your resolve strong enough and your love wide enough, you will apparently sense this Divine Purpose. Those who claimed to have experienced the above behaved as if they’d passed a job interview; they did a lot of work afterwards. And they seemed to have gained the tools to do it. 

   When Christ got the job, he no longer had any time to be a carpenter. Buddha had no time to fulfil the functions of royalty, despite the financial incentive. George Fox and Mahatma Gandhi didn’t mind the jail time; it was part of the job.

   If, when reaching across the void, we ask, “Is there really anything there?” then what we are also asking is: “Is there actually any thing worth doing?”

   If not, we are justified in fearing silence, time and space. Imagine the cells of an organism scattering the way a soccer team disbands when a game is cancelled. Or when employees are laid off. Imagine cancer cells. 

“Junk is a cellular equation that teaches the user facts of general validity. I have learned a great deal from using junk: I have seen life measured out in eyedroppers of morphine solution. I experienced the agonising deprivation of junk sickness, and the pleasure of relief when junk-thirsty cells drank from the needle. Perhaps all pleasure is relief.” (William S. Burroughs.)

[1] A void.

[2] The word ‘Junk’ here used in its connotation as slang for Narcotics. (Levin)

[3] …and so on to a greater being called the Universe, etc.