1
Lying in his cosy sleeping bag by the tranquil Murrumbidgee River, next to his campfire, Adam suddenly felt inspired to write some more in his journal. He crawled into his small tent, retrieved his journal and pen, sat down next to his fire and began to write.
From the moment we entered this world and experienced its wonderful light, from the very first moment, and it could be seen in our yearning eyes, there were two instinctive, universal questions that were common to all of us.
What is going on?
And
Who will love me?
And as the days, months and years passed, most of us were lucky and at least had the second question answered for us, in the sweetest way, through the love of our parents. As time inevitably moved on, we passed through seasons. We passed through the seasons of forgetting and remembering the questions. When love was all around us, who needed to ask, Where is love?
And when we were lost in the fantasy and magic of childhood, cocooned deep within our precious gift of innocence, who needed to ask, What is going on?
Because everything was going on and everything was real. Those were the best times, those times of forgetting. We were too busy doing it to think about it. But inevitably, sooner or later, many of us found ourselves alone. We found that we had thrown away our innocence, in fact we were in a hurry to do so, thinking that being an adult was going to be so great. And when we found ourselves in the grimy, dirty, heartless world of adults, some of us may have wondered, why? Why didn’t I stay a child just a little longer? And we drifted away from the most perfect love we were ever to experience, our mother’s love. Why? And in time, lost in the world of survival, we forgot what innocence was like and what being a child was like, and began doing things and saying things that jeopardised the innocence of children living around us, chipping away at their bliss, stealing it away, perhaps thinking that we were exposing them to something better, but more likely acting out of our own subconscious envy of their precious gift, the gift that we, ourselves, so blindly squandered.
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But perhaps I am being too harsh on us all. Perhaps I am just being resentful of it happening to me. Perhaps, in fact I’m pretty sure, the loss of innocence is just a part of nature, a part of growing up, unavoidable and absolutely inevitable, and whichever way it happens, the whole process is hideous, without exception.
So, is the child destroyed? Forever? I don’t mean the child in the world; I mean the child in us. Is that shining little person we all once were gone forever? It would appear so, on the surface, even beneath the surface.
Who can believe in the impossible, the improbable and the invisible? I don’t mean an outward show of belief. I don’t even mean a cerebral kind of belief. I mean a total immersion in an invisible reality, a place where even love can be found. A child can do it effortlessly, but what happens when the child is gone? When the hard, stony reality of this world presses in so overwhelmingly that the child literally suffocates. What happens then? And can there be salvation? And what is the road to that salvation?
As we stand at the crossroads, we see that life offers us many choices. Which of us will take the road that leads to the ultimate truth, a truth we instinctively suspect could be hidden deep, deep within our own being.
We begin life with love and an abundance of life. We forget the fundamental questions because we don’t need the answers. We drift away from the love of our parents. We rush headlong into adulthood like a young soldier in a screaming, heroic charge, and run into a hail of bullets that splatter us into a million little pieces. With this initial wisdom, earned the hard way, we spend much of the rest of our lives surviving in the hostile, myopic, one-dimensional reality of the stampeding mob surrounding us. Shell-shocked, beaten down, sometimes shaking like a scared rabbit, we recoil, we retreat or we hide. Sometimes we do it to save ourselves, a conscious act, leaving the phone off the hook and locking the door.
Sometimes fate, through coincidental circumstances, brings us there. And, in a busy, frantic, overpopulated world, we find ourselves absolutely, completely alone. No one to turn to, no one to talk to. And strangely, almost as if having orbited full-circle around the invisible, magical world of the child, we return to the two fundamental questions, the ones we asked in the first seconds of our life.
What is going on?
And
Who will love me?
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Lost in our solitude we realise that these questions can only ever be satisfied through personal experience, not books or testimonies of others. And it seems that deep within ourselves we know that the only way to find that ultimate satisfaction, that ultimate contentment and inner peace, which comes with the realisation of the ultimate truth, is to embark on a quest, a sometimes frightening, always mysterious, secret inward journey that is the search for the lost child.
2
About half a dozen impeccably-dressed, business types were waiting for the lift on the eighth floor of Adam’s building in the city. They were all suddenly startled by a young, shirtless man, wearing only blue jeans and sneakers, bouncing on his back side down the last flight of stairs from the ninth floor. The two elegant women and the four, slick, grey-suited men only expressed their amazement subtly with just a hint of a raised eyebrow.
The young man ended his bumpy slide sitting on the marble floor right at their feet. He looked back up the stairs as if he was listening for something. Then, still sitting on the floor, he turned towards the people in front of him, gave them a cheesy smile and greeted them.
‘Good morning, good morning.’
The group, fairly stunned by the young man’s surprising entrance, just stared at him as he rose from the floor and scampered back up the stairs, audibly laughing to himself.
Adam quickly re-entered the wide-open door of his waiting room. On the way back up from the eighth floor, he glanced around for anyone who may have known him.
Luckily, he saw no one. Once inside, he locked the door behind him and sat down in his surgery. He thought to himself,
‘What the hell was that?’
He noticed the gas mask still on the floor where it had been flung in a panic. The machine was still switched on. He checked the levels. Three-and-a-half Nitrous, two-anda-half Oxygen. They were his magic levels, unbelievably low but most effective. He switched off the machine and placed the mask on top of it. He stepped into the small, back room, put on the jug for some coffee and sat down on the chair in there, thinking,
‘That was new … definitely worked … scared the crap out of me.’
He had a nervous chuckle, then thought,
‘I’ve never run out of the surgery before, panicked, clear down to the eighth floor.’
He started laughing out loud. He thought the whole event absolutely hilarious.
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‘Those people must have thought I was completely nuts. Ha ha ha, maybe I am?’
He opened his attaché case and took out of it a thick, hardcover journal and placed it on the narrow bench in front of him. It was already three-quarters full of handwriting.
He found the first empty page and began to write.
Saturday, August 18, 1979, 11.00am. Concentration, concentration, concentration. All my recent experiences seem to be about intensifying my concentration, but things are happening to me on this gas that are trying to deflect me away, to scare me off. I’ve got to concentrate harder and not allow myself the luxury of fear. I am learning that the way to intensify concentration is to intensify distraction. Well, the distractions are coming thick and fast. From whom? I don’t know. But it’s like a game. You try to concentrate on your dot and we’ll try to distract you. It’s a game of telepathy. We’ll play it and anything goes.
Trickery, cunning, intelligence, cleverness and blatant fear. All these methods are successfully being used against me to break my concentration. Today was no different. I lost the game, again, but the method was very different, very unexpected, and ultimately very brutal. I completely lost it. I don’t think that today’s distraction was particularly clever, but it did work, like a sledgehammer works, or a cricket bat in the head.
I started breathing, same as usual, making my mouth aperture smaller, gearing up my breath, hooking up with the flow, zinging it up, both eyes focussed on the dot on the wall. I got the tunnel vision, saw nothing but dot. My back was like a ruler. I did minute adjustments of my spine. I felt the resistances clear. I get so focussed now, so powerfully focussed. Then I heard this sound, subtle at first, but constantly, gradually increasing in volume until it became a noise. It sounded like it was in the surgery, a noise like feedback coming out of speakers, but my speakers were switched off. I was concentrating on the dot as hard as I could, but the noise just kept getting louder and louder. I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or in the room. It sounded like it was in the room. My concentration and my focus were already shaky. The volume of the noise just kept building and building. It started to become extreme.
I thought that if it got any louder, my eardrums, or my head, were going to explode. In the end it was like the loudest noise I’ve ever heard, louder than it is possible to imagine. It was blowing my head apart.
Right out of my deep trance, I must have thrown the mask on the floor and ran out of the surgery, out the front door and down two flights of stairs, slipping on the last flight because I was running in such a panic. I bounced down the last ten steps on my backside.
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The most interesting observation I made, though, was that the noise stayed in the surgery as I ran down the stairs. It wasn’t in my head. As the gas wore off, the noise went away.
Adam put his pen down and made his coffee. He read back what he’d just written while stirring the sugar. He then stepped out of the tiny back room and looked out through the venetians. It was raining and cold outside. Total misery. He had nothing better to do so he thought he might as well stay where he was and have another go on the machine in a little while. As he sipped his coffee, he flicked back through the pages of his journal and read some of his entries back to himself. He went right back to the beginning.
Sunday, December 26, 1976, 10.00am. I’m doing this all alone now. There’s no Nancy to talk to. I have no idea what is going on. I have my dot on the wall and I am trying to concentrate on it. I’m practicing my yoga breathing and I’ve got a mindset now. I don’t really know where I get all my ideas. The Gita is definitely my main influence, but I am also relying heavily on my own instincts. As well, I feel a deep, fundamental need to trust in God. I sense that this journey, this unbelievably-exciting odyssey, is somehow a pilgrimage towards Him, towards a revelation of His ultimate truth, the truth that sets us all free. I believe that I am doing yoga meditation assisted by Nitrous Oxide. It’s as simple as that and it’s the biggest, most mind-blowing trip imaginable.
As I sit down to meditate, I try to set my mind into the following state.
Don’t move and don’t think anything, no matter what happens. As well, don’t expect anything, don’t hope for anything, don’t wait for anything, don’t want anything and don’t react to anything. Basically, don’t lose your concentration no matter what happens. Do nothing, think nothing, not moving, not reacting, back straight, mind focussed, breathing still, smooth, rhythmical and steady. Just be. This is my yoga.
I tried to do this at home without the gas and absolutely couldn’t even begin. I can’t ever imagine meditating without Nitrous Oxide.
Friday, March 11, 1977, 11.00pm. These trips excite me like nothing I’ve ever done in my life. I think I’ve discovered a new world. It feels like I’m the first. It is the biggest adventure of my life. I feel like I’m discovering places and things that no one had ever experienced before. I am becoming totally obsessed with this.
Sunday, April 17, 1977, 4.00am. I am becoming totally unafraid of death. It doesn’t concern me at all. This is essential. It is impossible to do these trips and fear death, utterly impossible. The only slight concern I still harbour at the back of my mind, however, is that
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of potentially losing my sanity. But that won’t stop me either. I am now more determined to continue than ever. I never ever dreamt that life could be so stimulating, so adventurous.
Saturday, May 7, 1977, 10.00pm. The most amazing thing has just happened. This is profoundly explosive on my psyche. I am so excited that I can barely contain it. Get this, I AM
NOT ALONE. Someone is definitely tuned into my trip. Today, about half an hour ago, the gentlest, the cleverest, the subtlest soul interacted with me. I am just so blown away. There I was, sitting on my stool, focussed on physical and mental stillness, breathing rhythmically, seeing the pendulum, zeroed in on the dot, full-on determined concentration. It’s my yoga.
My mindset was that nothing was going to deflect me this time, when a hand appeared.
Actually, it was more like half an arm, from the elbow down. The hand appeared, real as life, just above the dot. I can remember drilling into that dot, not allowing myself to take my focus off it, even though the hand was plainly in my field of view. Then, and try to convince me that this was coming out of my own head like a hallucination, the hand started to sprinkle this fine, black dust, and the dust floated past my dot, down. I was concentrating on the dot. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to take my eyes off the dot. It’s my discipline. But I couldn’t help it, I had to look down and see if the dust was settling on top of the cabinet of the gas machine. The moment I looked down I realised that I had just got tricked out of my concentration. The hand, the dust, the whole deal faded away as soon as I broke my bead on the dot, as soon as a thought passed through my brain, as soon as I moved. How good is yoga, mate. I put the mask down and laughed. Some really subtle person tricked me so cleverly. I am so delighted. And, as I was coming down from the gas, all these understanding thoughts passed through my mind. Like I just knew about these new things, about things like the concentration game. It’s a game that telepathic people play just for fun and to sharpen their own concentrations. Even little kids play it. One concentrates on a focus while the other tries to distract him telepathically. How outrageous is that? How do I know that? And how do I know that yoga teachers have used a form of such distraction, not telepathic, in secret, for thousands of years? The students would meditate and concentrate, and when the yoga teachers thought that the meditating students least expected it, they would sneak up on them, silently, and maybe tickle them behind the ear, ever so gently, with the tip of a feather.
Or they might begin making a very subtle sound in the corner of the room, arousing the students’ curiosity. Or, with the most advanced students, they would quietly approach them with a blade or a flame and gently, lovingly, cut or burn them, praying that their student
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was strong enough, and advanced enough, to not react to the extreme distraction. How do I know these things? I’ve never read about them.
I was so beautifully distracted. It was pure art. I lost the game but this time I became aware of the game. I have won a million times more than I lost.
There’s something going on in the universe that nobody on this planet knows anything about. It’s a meeting of minds, minds far, far cleverer than ours. They can communicate with each other and they know everything that is going on. In comparison to them we are like amoebas.
I wish so much that I had Nancy here with me to talk to about this. I’m sure she’d have some profound thoughts about what is happening. But that’s not to be, ever again. But I have you, my reader from the future. I feel like you are here with me, like I’m talking to you right now. And only the future will tell if you were reading the words of a man slowly going nuts, or the words of a man finding a new truth, which in actual fact turned out to be the oldest truth in existence.
Adam leaned back in his stool and thought to himself, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that I really wrote that. I’ve got to make sure that nobody ever sees any of this stuff. They’ll have me certified if they do, not to mention have me thrown out of dentistry. Now, where’s that time some guy tried to saw me into slices?’ He flipped through the pages looking for a specific entry. ‘Boy, I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. There sure are some nasty mongrels out there, with a really sick sense of humour. Where is it? Oh yeah, here it is.’
Tuesday, January 10, 1978, 8.00pm. I began my meditation facing the wall, single-point focus, sliding easily into my trance, steeling my concentration, preparing myself for the inevitable distraction. Suddenly I heard the sound of a big, electric buzz saw being switched on, like in a timber yard. I sat, unmoving, as I heard the loud noise screaming behind me. Then I heard the sound change, like the saw was sawing through something. As I heard this sound, the wall in front of me began to be sprayed with what looked like blood.
I kept my concentration. The loud sound of the saw sounded like it had cut through whatever it was sawing through, then immediately it started to saw through something again. Blood was spraying all over the wall in front of me. I maintained my focus on the dot, but I could feel myself wavering. I could tell by the sound that the saw had cut through whatever it was cutting through, and then I heard the sawing sound again, for the third time. This time I felt a strange feeling across my chest, not pain, just a sensation. I lost my concentration and looked down. What I saw completely freaked me out. As I took my gaze off the dot, it was as
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if someone pulled the plug on that saw, cutting its power. Looking down, I observed that the huge saw had been slicing through my chest. The whole surgery was sprayed with my blood.
The saw jammed itself in my chest as it stopped. I was looking at two-inch-long, bloodstained, metal teeth sticking out of the middle of my chest. I ripped the mask off my face and totally freaked out. As the effect of the gas wore off, the saw and the blood stains on the walls gradually disappeared.
I have genuinely been frightened out of my skin by this experience. What frightens me is the savage nastiness of my telepathic opponent. I am uncertain of his motives. I fear that he hates me with a passion and that he, perhaps, would like to destroy me. My greatest fear is my uncertainty of the potential nastiness of this character and the potential horror he is capable of unleashing upon me.
A couple of hours have passed since the sawing incident. I’ve calmed down and have had time to think about it. I remember Nancy’s theory about such experiences. She thought that they were a sign that we were on the right track and that we were getting closer to our goal. Good old Nancy, she was a tough little tripper. She’d get the crap scared out of her, then she’d think about it, reassert her faith and finally turn it into a positive experience.
Then she’d get back in there, tougher and stronger than ever. I still miss her like crazy. I don’t know that I’ll ever find anyone like her again. God, I loved her. I still love her.
It’s later now. I feel much better about the sawing experience now. I think that it does have something to do with scaring me away and that does make me more determined to keep going. Anyway, I feel so obsessed with this that I don’t think I could stop even if I wanted to.
Adam looked up from his journal and thought to himself, ‘Isn’t that the truth.’ He sipped his coffee and casually thumbed through the pages. ‘Ahh, my teacher.’ He began to read about his teacher.
Saturday, February 4, 1978, 12.00 noon. Today I had the most unbelievably beautiful experience of my life. I will never, ever forget today. It’s been a few hours since it happened.
I’ve been coming back down. Today I’ve been higher than ever before. Today I met my teacher. He came, silent and still, and he did this magic. I thank him. Every atom of my being thanks him. I know he can hear my thoughts, even now. I know he can feel my feelings. I know I am his student, in his care. All my efforts, all my struggles, fears and failures were preparing me for today. I will try to explain, but words cannot describe this experience.
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Earlier today, I was sitting tranced out, tunnelled into the dot, breathing like a machine, when I sensed, in the subtlest way, the presence of someone behind me. I sensed a closeness, a calmness and a stillness in this presence. I felt that I was being given a choice, trust or don’t trust. Something instinctively felt right, so I chose to trust. As I made this choice, oddly enough without thinking or moving, I felt myself, kind of, let go. As I did this, I felt, it kind of felt like my back opened up and this calm entity entered my body and perfectly merged with it. It’s hard to explain. Merging of spiritual bodies, I guess, is the closest I can get to describing the strange phenomenon.
The moment his entity was merged with mine, everything changed. It was like his knowledge became my knowledge and his mind became my mind. I remember my pathetic, piddling little focus transform into this powerful, locked focal beam and my back become rigid and straight like an iron bar. All the muscles up and down my spine tensed themselves.
I felt a calmness and stillness overwhelm me, as well as a feeling of confidence and competence. My right arm came up with my first finger pointing towards the ceiling. The tip of my finger then juxtaposed itself with the dot on the wall. My focus transferred from the dot on the wall onto the end of my finger. Then, like it had a mind of its own, my hand began to conduct my breathing. As my hand moved away, I breathed out, and as my hand moved in, in a smooth upward curve, I breathed in. My mind, no, my brain felt absolutely frozen, completely free of thoughts. I felt the energy, flowing up my spine, change from a trickle to a stream. Then there was a special in-breath, and then these sounds came out of my mind, loud, strong and heroic.
AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
I was doing it, but I wasn’t doing it. He was doing it through me. He was showing me how it was meant to be done. Powerfully, and with confidence and authority. And it’s as if all forces and energies vibrated into harmony around me and I felt a stillness and a focus and a clarity, like a perfect crystal. It is so impossible to describe in words, so magnificent, so beautiful. Then, somehow, I found myself behind myself and I was looking at these intersections, all in a line, like singularities. Infinitely fine points with lines of energy radiating out from them, and I recognised them to be energy centres. I was looking at a line of energy centres, which looked like singularities, and I realised that they were my own, running down my own spine. The teacher had somehow transferred my consciousness so
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that I was behind myself, looking at my own spine from behind, seeing something that was normally completely invisible.
Then this other thing happened. I can’t really remember how I went from looking at my back to this next thing, but the next thing I remember are two persons, or some kind of beings, I don’t know what they were. They were almost semi-transparent, almost made of light. They were floating in front of me and I was the centre of their attention. They brought out some kind of gadget, like a gun of some type, and pointed it at my forehead, right between the eyes. As they did this I literally froze. Suddenly the gun thing, that they were holding, started shining a light, a fine white beam, like a laser, and the light seemed to begin burning a hole through my scull, right between the eyes. As the light penetrated into what seemed like my brain, my whole head filled up with nothing but brilliant white light. I remember my body going into a huge spasm as this happened. I threw my head back and my spine arched backwards as far as it could go. There was no pain, there was just bright white light everywhere, like I had spherical vision. I must have fainted because when I awoke from that experience, I found the gas mask on the floor with the machine still going.
I have had some time to think about this last trip. I don’t seem to get past the thought that I have been marked for something, something that is going to happen in the future. I’ll write no more about it except to say that this visit from my teacher and the resulting consequences have more profoundly changed me, and my understanding of reality, than any other single event that has ever occurred in my whole life up to now.
Adam felt a surge of emotion as he thought about his teacher. He felt that this man, who he had never met in person but only in spirit, had given him a great gift. He sensed nothing but love and guidance coming from him and it touched Adam deeply in his heart every time he thought about him. He never knew his name; he only ever knew him as ‘my teacher’. He thought to himself,
‘What a day that was, what a glorious day. So many words, from so many books, faded into oblivion for me in the light of that magic day. I think I’ll have another coffee. ’ He looked out the window. ‘Ugh, check the misery outside. It’s nice in here, though. Nancy reckoned it was a magic space, a little magic hole hidden deep in the bowels of the universe, completely secret. God, I really love it here.’
Adam put the jug on for another cup of coffee and randomly turned over some more pages. He read,
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Thursday, April 20, 1978, 10.00pm. I have just seen these strange hieroglyphics glowing like fire along the base of my vision. They were strange letters that I couldn’t recognise. They just appeared and were not unlike subtitles you’d see in a foreign-language film. The only difference was that they were in my eyes.
He turned the page.
Friday, April 21, 1978, 8.30pm. Someone must be trying to communicate something with me. Yesterday I remember strange hieroglyphics, which I can’t remember. I couldn’t reproduce them and I had no idea what they meant. The only interesting thing about them was the way they appeared along the base of my vision, as if it was possible to communicate text telepathically. Today, while in a deep trance, I saw a geometric shape, a symbol of some kind. It was two triangles, one inside the other, both pointing to the right. The lines making up the figure were glowing, like gold neon. The shape appeared inside my head. It was as if I was under a dark dome and the shape appeared, glowing on its ceiling, kind of in the centre of my forehead. I don’t know what it means or the purpose of me seeing it but I know that I will never forget it. I’ll probably be speculating on its meaning for the rest of my life.
Adam sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. He looked through the doorway at the Nitrous Oxide machine, thought for a while, turned back to his journal, flipped the pages forward to the current day, picked up his pen and added another paragraph.
Who would ever guess what that machine can do? It must be the biggest secret on Earth and the only people that have it are dentists, bloody dentists. I wonder how many of them have stumbled into this? One thing’s for sure, though, no one will ever know because no one will ever talk. They can’t. They’d all be too afraid of being de-registered for behaving way beyond the boundaries of what is generally considered professionally acceptable. I think that the dental machine is the only one you can do it with. It’s the only one with individual and separate flow meters for each gas. It’s essential to custom-tune the machine for each individual operator, to really get it working. First, the operator has to find out their natural breathing rate in litres per minute. Mine turned out to be six. Then, the operator has to find their optimum mix-ratio of Nitrous and Oxygen. It’s like tuning into a radio station, except it’s your brain that’s the radio. It’s like finding a harmonic frequency. It takes perfect concentration to do it, and perfect silence and stillness. The operator must ultimately become very comfortable at sliding into a trance. He must then learn to keep still, physically and mentally, irrespective of the nature of their inner experience. It’s a strange game and if
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it wasn’t so exciting, why would anyone do it? I always feel like I am an explorer, the discoverer of a new universe who was the first to witness its strange mysteries.
I am quite aware that what I am describing in these pages sounds unbelievable and highly improbable. I believe that such experiences are, by their own nature, only meant for the person experiencing them. As soon as they begin to be related to others, they just become second-hand testimonies, and God knows the world is full of those already. Also, I am aware that a majority of people in this world would think me completely loony. That is why it is my intention to never let anyone see these writings, at least not while I’m still alive.
At this time, it might be appropriate to report on the physical changes that I am experiencing as a result of breathing so much Nitrous. It is normal to feel numbness and tingling in fingers and toes while under the influence of the gas. The numbness normally disappears with the effect of the gas. With me, however, two things are becoming evident.
The tingling and numbness are there permanently now, affecting more than just my fingertips and toes, and I am gradually losing my physical balance. Interestingly, this does not seem to affect my hang-gliding ability. I can see now that I only have a finite amount of time left to find my truth. I expect that my body will tell me when it is time to stop, and when it does, it is my intention to turn away from the gas forever.
I am also noticing mental and psychological changes in myself. I am experiencing a more profound feeling of aloneness, not loneliness. I feel that my experiences are separating me from society, from people. I know that it is impossible for me to relate my journey to anyone. Since I’ve lost Nancy, I feel like I’ve lost my last true contact with the human race. I don’t talk about the trips with my flying friends. How could I? I feel, in myself, that I am becoming strange and withdrawn. So much of my mind and body is focused on the trips, that I feel that I am becoming separated and distant from normal, Earthly reality. I have consciously and willingly let go of it. There is no way that you can explore higher realities and stay attached to the Earthly one. I am finding myself walking alone late at night, all over Bondi, feeling disconnected from everything except, and this is strange, it’s a strange feeling, I feel disconnected from everything except the stars.
Interestingly, though, I am managing to practice my profession without a problem. No one has the remotest suspicion of the depth of my involvement with the gas. Even Michelle, whose loyalty is unwavering, doesn’t have a clue.
I am finding that I need peace and space more and more. The city where I work, the city that I used to play in and enjoy, is beginning to feel traumatic. I seem to be noticing
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everything these days. All the noise of the cars, buses, building sites and those bloody, ubiquitous jackhammers, is beginning to grate at my nervous system. I seem to be becoming much more sensitive to everything around me. Walking through the city arcades, I find it difficult to cope with the shopkeepers flogging their wares through loudspeakers. This is a new phenomenon and it is exceedingly repulsive to me. I don’t know how long I am going to last in this city. I know that this new sensitivity of mine is one of the side-effects of chronic gas use. It’s one of the costs of finding out. I am firmly of the opinion, however, that it has already been worth it. I feel that I have been closer to the truth than any person I am ever likely to meet. I also feel much more grounded in my own philosophy. Gone are the days when someone could mess with my mind with his or her stupid religion. They are frauds because their truth is always derived from books and is thus, at best, second hand. My truth is my own. I have seen it with my own eyes and there is nothing, that has ever been written, that can move me from that. I believe that God has placed me on a rock and said, stand here.
I have been there and I’ve come back, and I feel that it’s only natural that I am going to be a bit strange for a while and develop physical and mental symptoms. I haven’t yet been all the way though. I know that there is something special waiting for the one who perseveres to the end and doesn’t chicken out. All I know is that I’ve got to go on. I’ve got to go on.
Adam put his pen down and took a long, hypnotic gaze at the machine in the adjacent room. He looked at the clock on the wall. It was 1.00pm. Two hours had passed since he’d run back into the surgery from the eighth floor. He was feeling re-energised.
His positive energy was beginning to flow again and he felt ready for another journey into the unknown.
He stepped out into his surgery, sat down on his operator’s stool in front of the machine and flipped the switch. He took the mask in his left hand and placed it over his nose. He carefully drew in the first, most critical, breath. As he did this, he reaffirmed, in the heart of his being, his total faith in, and devotion to, his God.
He focussed on his dot and began to breathe his yoga breath. These days he slid into a trance almost immediately. He knew what to expect and he just let himself go. His focus was locked onto the dot, his breath was steady and his mind was still. Suddenly, he heard the same noise begin to sound around him, quietly at first, but gradually getting louder, exactly the same as before. He later wrote in his journal, in almost illegible writing, Saturday, August 18, 1979, 3.30pm. He said to me, KNOW THAT I AM. I cannot write any more right now. I am too blown away. I’m barely hanging in.
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Adam called Michelle from a roadside phone booth first thing on Monday morning and asked her to ‘scratch’ the whole week. He spent that week driving west to distant isolated places, out in the outback where he could be alone, where he could contemplate the meaning of his last, consciousness-exploding experience, and where he could feel closer to God. After seven days of wandering about, and camping out in his small tent under the night sky, he again felt ready to write.
Saturday, August 25, 1979, 4.00pm. I am camped by the bank of the tranquil Murrumbidgee River, not far from the small, isolated town of Hay. I have collected plenty of firewood for my campfire because the nights out here get freezing cold. It’s not long till sunset. Soon my friends, the stars, will fill the clear, night sky. The country here is absolutely flat and, except for the banks of the river, is totally devoid of trees. You can follow the path of the Murrumbidgee for miles and miles across the flat plain by the low line of trees growing along its serpentine banks. I can actually feel my spirit spill out over the land out here, giving me an unparalleled feeling of freedom and serenity.
Lately, I have become very sensitive to all things made by man and even to man himself. Walking down a city street, I seem to be picking up everyone’s bad vibrations. It’s like static, unpleasant and traumatising. People are so full of dark thoughts and emotions, and their spirits are like stormy oceans. When I’m surrounded by too many of them, it becomes too hard to handle. Increasingly I crave solitude. How will I continue to live in this world? What kind of future could possibly be in store for me? Maybe I’m becoming sick.
How different, how refreshing it is to have my journal open somewhere else other than the surgery. This is the first time that I have written in it outdoors. And what a magical place this is, so quiet and tranquil except for the crackles of the fire.
It’s twilight now. You should have seen the beauty of the sunset. I thought that I had seen the most beautiful thing ever a week ago but now I realise it’s out here to be seen by anyone who cares to look. God brought me out here to show me this, to show me that every day, every second of every day, is mystical. Every living microsecond is pure magic. This is the ultimate truth. The thing is that we can be looking straight at it and not see a thing. We can be swimming in it and not have a clue. This is the thing. We have eyes, but they don’t see anything. We have hearts, but they don’t feel anything. They just pump.
Ahh, I’m not going to get into bagging the world. It is what it is. It’s the same before we get here and it’s the same after we leave. There is heaps of good and heaps of evil, light
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and dark, but that’s how it has to be. I understand that now. There is no point in trying to change it because it is what it is, and it is, and must always remain for the sake of its own existence, in a state of perfect balance between these opposites.
This isn’t sounding much like a scientific journal. Maybe it’s my environment. Maybe it’s the release I feel, like finally biting through a tough piece of leather after chewing on it for ages.
I guess I should begin relating the events that have brought me here to the banks of the Murrumbidgee. I have been changed, like Arjuna.
‘All my dark delusions have been dispelled by my inner light. By God’s grace, I remember my light and all my delusion is gone. I have no more doubts and my faith is firm and I can say to the Lord, Thy will be done.’
That’s out of The Gita. I’ve got it here with me. I feel like I am Arjuna. I feel like He has brought me out of the darkness into His light. I have seen such wonders that it is impossible to describe them, wonders beyond wonders.
‘KNOW THAT I AM.’
‘Know that I Am’, is how it began. Not ‘believe in Me’ or ‘have faith in Me’, but ‘Know that I Am’.
A week ago, I had my second big trip on the gas, on the same day. It was in the afternoon. In my first trip, in the morning, the whole surgery filled with an unbearably-loud, screaming noise, constantly increasing in loudness, seemingly with no limit. I felt like my head was going to blow. I was so totally freaked out that I cleared out of there and ended up down on the eighth floor. I have had hundreds of trips by now and never, not once, has a trip repeated itself. They were always different, always something new. That’s why I always lost my concentration. I always got surprised because I was never ready for any of them.
I sat down for my afternoon go. I did my usual point-focus meditation when the same thing began to happen as happened in the morning. It was the noise, the same bloody noise, real quiet at first but I knew straight away where this trip was going. Then something completely different happened. I’ve never done anything like this before. I closed my eyes for a second, but kept breathing the gas. The noise just kept getting louder. Then suddenly, as if by instinct, I opened my eyes, put the mask down, turned around and grabbed the headphones hanging on the side of the dental unit. The cups that the headphone speakers were mounted in were made of metal and the padding completely sealed out over ninety percent of the outside sound. I grabbed the headphones and placed them over my ears. They
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weren’t plugged into anything. I turned around and rolled the gas machine closer to the dental chair. I then grabbed the mask and, facing in the opposite direction than usual, away from the wall, away from the dot, towards the windows, I placed it over my nose, closed my eyes and began to breathe. I guess I focussed on an imaginary point in my head. I really can’t remember that part very clearly. I can remember the noise start up again, but this time it was distinctly outside of my headphones. I still can’t work out how that happened or what was going on. All I can do is write down what I remember.
I remember hearing the noise getting louder and louder outside. Outside of me that is, not outside the surgery. I remember keeping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth and literally pulling my head in. The headphones and my closed eyes made the raging noise seem outside, and I was inside, like in a cocoon. It was like a frantic storm, like a wild cyclone. The headphones were definitely working. I could hear the screaming mayhem, which was almost completely muffled by the headphones, increase in volume and pitch, way beyond that which made me panic and run the previous time. I can remember being too afraid to open my eyes and look at what was going on in the surgery. It sounded like, it’s really hard to find words, insane, screaming noise, like a vortex, spinning in the eye of a huge, ferocious storm. I didn’t see it, I dared not look, I only heard it, muffled enough to be bearable. I just pulled my head in, stayed focussed on my breath and kept my inner focus firmly locked between my eyes.
The next thing I can remember is hearing the mayhem recede away into the distance. Then it became as if I had a kind of hemispherical vision. Everything became silent and I was looking at the night sky, which was full of stars. I could see the whole firmament at once, horizon to horizon. I remember sensing its majesty and infinity. Then, suddenly, I heard a note, like a musical note. Its sound was beautiful, played on some instrument that I have never heard before. As I heard the note, I saw what looked like a leaf, an iridescent, metallic-coloured leaf, appear near the horizon. Then I heard another note, which played in harmony with the first, and I saw another leaf, this one a different colour. It appeared at another part of the horizon. As I watched, the leaves continued to appear, slightly overlapping each other, each a different colour and each accompanied with its own musical note. The leaves, with their colours and sounds, began filling the whole sky, one by one. The music was building, with each additional note making a grander, more beautiful chord. Finally, the whole firmament was filled with the magnificence of thousands upon thousands of iridescent, multicoloured leaves and the most unbelievably mind-expanding celestial music I have ever heard.
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Adam lifted his pen off the page. He thought to himself,
‘This is so inadequate. How can I describe, in words, what I really saw and heard? …
Hey, what was that?’
Startled, he snapped his head around. He thought he heard something in the darkness. He moved closer to the fire, picked up a branch and listened for a sound. There was nothing, just the crackles in the flames.
‘Might be a dingo or a wallaby. Christ, how would I know? I’m not exactly at home out here. Something feels strange, though, something is calming me. I can feel it. I should be feeling scared right now, but I can’t. How weird is this? Someone’s out there, real close. How can I tell? But they don’t want to harm me. How do I know that? I feel a strange yearning for contact. What’s happening? It’s OK, relax, it’s OK. Someone is watching me, a person, but it’s OK, it’s OK. What time is it? 8.35. It’s still early. Feels like somebody’s out there. I might make a Milo, boil some water on the fire … hey! … I’m getting a bit jumpy … Jesus! … How weird is this?’
He closed his journal and put it in his tent. He wasn’t sure why, but he started to chuckle to himself.
‘I think they reckon that you can go a bit loopy out here, especially at night and if you’re alone.’
He made his Milo and put on his warm parka, beanie and ski gloves.
‘Boy, she’s gonna be another freezing night tonight. Look at all those beautiful stars.
This Milo sure hits the spot. Oh, Nancy, I wonder where you are now? I can’t even imagine what life would be like if you were still here. I miss you so. How about some of our trips, eh?
I’ve really been out there, girl. You would have loved it. There’s more out there than either of us could have ever imagined. It does all just go on forever, just like you said. Forever and forever, and we’re part of it, and that’s the most exciting thing. We touched forever together, Nancy. I will never forget you, never. You’re part of my heart now, forever. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Remember the tape you gave me all those years ago? Dark side of the moon? I brought it with me. It’s in the car. I think I might play it now, down low, for us, and I’ll remember the day you brought it with you and how we were the first to listen to it. Oh, Nancy, why did you have to go?’
He opened the glove box in the Charger, which was parked next to the small tent, and took out the cassette. He pushed it into the player in the dash and set it at a low volume. He then crawled into his warm sleeping bag, lay down on the ground, next to his
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campfire, and rested. Listening to the music wafting out of his car window, he dreamily gazed at the star-encrusted firmament above him. For the first time in years he felt a deep release within himself. He felt that he’d satisfied his curiosity. He truly felt that he could stop the gas now. He felt a deep contentment, which he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life. He thought to himself,
‘This whole world is hung up on names. Names and divisions … and ownership. My god’s name is ah … ah … Gazza … and he’s the only real god. Renounce your god or I’ll go to war with you. Gazza will be on my side and he will destroy you. Am I the only one who sees the stupidity? They give names to the nameless and they build fences across virgin wilderness. What kind of truth is that? And they look for God everywhere except within themselves. What’s the point in that? They reckon they know it all and everything they talk about is mystical, but actual mystical experience scares the crap out of them.’
He lay there imagining the depth of outer space and marvelling at its vast infinity.
He allowed random thoughts to drift through his weary, shell-shocked brain.
‘How beautiful is the Milky Way? Like a huge string of pearls. Like a long archipelago of islands just waiting to be sailed to. Boy, how clear is the sky out here? It’s been too long since I’ve camped out like this. There’s really nothing like it. Like taking time out from life.
It feels like being a kid again, sleeping out in my tent. Can’t get rid of the feeling that there’s somebody watching me, real close. Don’t seem to be able to worry about it though. Probably just residual side-effects from the gas. I think I’ll throw some more wood on the fire. … My heart, why do you beat with such passion? … Did I just think that?’
About five minutes later,
‘Hey, I just thought of something … the lost child. … Where’s my journal? … And my pen?’
…….
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