Journeys into the bright world

This concern with cellular reprocessing was becoming a standard feature of my trips, though I still had not the remotest idea why. Somehow the mystery of life was contained in the duplex rotary motion of the double helix of the genetic code-but how? In my normal earthside existence the name of the game was to rise to the heights of spirit. By contrast, here on the sublime plane of essences, the same game strategy demanded an effort to reach downward to and through the molecular depths of matter. Or was it intended that the growth process should proceed both ways at once?

Opening my eyes my attention was riveted to the traceries of bare-limbed bushes outside the window. "Even God must suffer." The words stumbled off my tongue, but the idea seemed fraught with significance. "It's so painful for Him to try to force that flow, to interfuse His life into our hard-edged world."

Now the prickly branches were thorns thrust into the breast of the sky-thorns piercing the heart of heaven as though each needle-tipped projectile were trying to penetrate the bloodstream of creation. In tortuous complexity the stark black shoots pushed upward like dry roots, longing to suck a modicum of moisture from the clouds. But there just wasn't enough absorbency in those probing points to soak in the sustenance offered by the vaporous atmosphere.

"I can't, I can't" my voice kept repeating. My own ethereal roots-in-heaven were still too brittle to sponge in the vivifying currents that emanate from the heart of the inner world where there are no separating surfaces. It would take many more ramifying fibers to satisfy the soul-deep thirst for the waters of life that rain down from above.

Again I closed my eyes and felt the pain of those roots trying to expand into an alien medium. All at once two tuberous tendrils intertwined and rose skyward to form an exquisite bud whose upthrusting petals unfolded like a crocus seeking the spring sunshine. Pain was still lodged at the base but the flower itself was a blosom of sheerest ecstasy. It seemed to me that Howard and I together were fashioning this floral fountain from the fused substance of our twin beings. Now the plant was exploding upward in an unleashed torrent of motion. At the peak, the blossom burst in a starry orgasm of glistening sparklets raying forth in a scintillant shower of light.

Then once again I was seeing Egypt. However, this was not the ancient civilization of the Nile Valley but rather an archetypal Egypt that exists independently in space and time. It seemed to lie in the direction of Sirius and to have some connection with the sign Gemini and the planet Venus, but I could not tell how or why these ideas came to mind.

"There is an innerdimensional Egypt!" I exclaimed. "It hovers over our world, yearns over it, caresses it. Oh world, I love you!"

All at once I was Isis herself, the virgin mother-goddess brooding lovingly over this world that I had created and was enfolding with arms like wings. I was making the sun shine, the crops flourish and the waters flow. The golden stream of my solicitude was turning the skies blue and the fields green. This microcosm was my beautiful garden of delight. I treasured every bit of it with undiscriminating concern. If anyone or anything there wanted to grow my blessing rested upon the endeavor, leaving it to some more austere male power to decree who or what might have to be weeded out.

Although I am far from being an expert on the Tarot it also struck me that this figure with which I was identifying was like the empress on the Tarot card. In any event, the feeling was that associated with one of those full-bosomed mythic earth-mothers who simultaneously exemplify the qualities of fertility and purity.

Returning to the space-pocket of our bedroom I saw Howard's dark-bearded face and gentle Piscean eyes. He seemed a long way off. In this state of meditative repose his countenance was the absolute image of the face of Jesus on a Russian icon. Was that a hallucination or was it really his face? I determined to check it out later.

To my right, the thorn tree outside the bedroom window was still silhouetted against the clouds on the horizon. But straight ahead, beyond the large glass doors that opened up on fields and forest, the sky was blue-as blue as the sky in my inner "garden of the world." I had been in Seattle a month now and the rain seldom ceased, even to the point where flood emergencies had been declared. Never once had I seen the sky this blue. It seemed as though I had created it expressly to match my inner vision.