Journeys into the bright world

Marcia. I see our two minds-just like two twists of the same spiral. Can you imagine what power can go through? Its like those two serpents that undulate up and down the rod of Mercury-always two. When you have two serpents the power can come down the central channel.

Howard. You have to have two?

Marcia. Yes. You see, in Hindu Philosophy they call it Ida and Pingala. The central canal is Sushumna. And somehow those stars up there in the universe decreed that we should be born, each of us, in the sign of twoness-Gemini, the heavenly twins, each one always looking at the other. We spiral round about each other and then the power comes through… It's so strange to see myself in another body, with a slightly different kind of plumbing. And its narcissistic too because you look so beautiful. You're the absolute embodiment of beauty. And then I can say, "Ah, he is I, we belong together… And now, my dear, do you feel as though you're starting to come down?

Howard. No, I've reached a plane. I'm kind of moving along. I'm just golden. (Laugh) Are you all the way down?

Marcia. Yes, I'm coming down. But its downness like when you're skiing and you don't have to put any energy into it. Or when you're bicycling and all at once you can rest back and just coast. That's what I'm doing, coasting. I'm on a long golden hillside and I'm just coasting down.

Howard. I'm visualizing skiing down this long golden hill. We should go skiing.

Marcia. I love to ski.

Howard. I know. You like to do everything I want to do.

Marcia. How could I help it? I'm the other twist of your spiral. (At this point there ensued a discussion of some personal problems which had recently arisen.)

Marcia. Sometimes I worry about the ability of the little personal small-letter m.m. self to cope with it. She get's depressed. She's not worth worrying about. Worry Wort. (At this point I saw my initials, M.M. mirrored as in a lake so as to appear like W.W.-for Worry Wort. Worry Wort's problems no longer seemed worth talking about.)

Howard. God, when I close my eyes I see all this gold. It's beautiful.

Marcia. Isn't it nice. I love that gold. Now you know why I call it the bright world. But we're not in the bright world; we're only on the edge of it. We're in the suburbs of the bright world.

Howard. Suburbs of the bright world. Wow!

Marcia. I'm very happy to know that I can take a mini-trip and remain seated in the lotus posture. (At this point we each took a booster shot of twelve and a half miligrams.)

Marcia. I'm very excited to think about the potential of big K. for marriage counseling, because you certainly can bare your heart to another person in a special way. It's sad how many husbands and wives can't communicate even when both sides want to, even when they're reaching out, when they're longing to communicate. See, here we have it. Howard and I sitting here looking at that Gemini picture. One on the left and one on the right. They're reaching out for one another-but then there's that barrier between. Now even with mini-doses we could bridge that gap-Howard. There's only one thing that disturbs me about that picture. You never had the experience I had, but that scarab looks like a cockroach. When I was going to medical school we lived in city housing and it was infested with rats and roaches. I hate roaches. I hate them. The thing that really disturbs me is that roach.

Marcia. Now I never thought of that before, but I suppose every scarab has its shadow side. Every scarab has its cockroach. At the moment it seems as though that had cosmic significance. There's always a shadow side to things. In India they always used to say, it's darkest right under the lamp. There's that beautiful Egyptian scarab and there's a cockroach just under it. There's always a "dweller on the threshold."

Howard. Boy, I've fought him, I really have. You have no idea. I say you have no idea but you do have. He really battled me.