We don’t live in the real world, of course. We never have done and that’s what makes us so bitter. That’s what makes me so bitter anyway – I can’t speak for anyone else I suppose. That’s what makes me so bitter – the knowledge that I don’t live in the real world and that I never have done.

What a strange thing that is – to not live in the real world, even though there isn’t really anywhere else to live. There wouldn’t be, would there? What a strange thing – not ever to live in the real world and to spend your whole life not knowing it. Wouldn’t that make you sad? The sadness of not living in the real world afflicts us all – none of us escape this sorrow, although we don’t know it. I don’t get to escape that sorrow, anyway – it dogs me wherever I go, just out of sight, just on the very edge of my vision. The terrible sadness of not living in the real world and never having done so. What could be sader than that?

All I know is the Shadow World that I carry around with me everywhere I go, the Shadow-World of my tired old thoughts. My thoughts are so old and so wearisome to me. There are infinitely wearisome to me and yet I can never get rid of them. They are like a pall of black smoke that follows me around. My thoughts are the world to me and so of course I can never escape from them. You can’t run away from your own world after all. No matter how tedious and wearisome it might be. It’s all we’ve got – we have to make do with it. We have to live in the shadow world because it belongs to us. It’s ours forever, for better or for worse, and there’s no ‘better’ in it.

All I know is the Shade-World, the world that is made up of the black smoke of my thoughts, the thoughts that I keep on thinking. All I know is the choking black smoke of my thoughts. It’s a beautiful day out there, bright and full of refreshing breezes, and yet I shall never know it. I shall never step out from the choking black smoke of my old, old thoughts. The drifting pall of black smoke is me, it’s all there is of me. No wonder I’m sad. I’m not sad really though – I don’t how to be sad. I’m too lost in myself to be sad, too drearily self-obsessed. Being self-obsessed is a full-time business. Haunting oneself relentlessly is a full-time business. If I knew that I wasn’t in the real world and never have been then I would be sad, but I don’t really know that. I don’t really know anything. I’m too lost for that. I know it on one level but I’m not conscious of it and so that makes me bitter instead. I’m bitter but I don’t know why. I’m bitter but bitterness is all I know.

Sadness that we won’t admit to always turns into bitterness, doesn’t it? It festers and infects everything else. It infects us with evil, in fact. Sadness that we haven’t got the courage to face always turns into evil and then that evil slowly but surely infects our lives. Evil can’t tolerate anything apart from itself, you see. It can’t rest until it’s got rid of everything else that isn’t evil like it is. Slowly but surely, slowly but surely it will take over your world. None of us wanted to become evil, you see. I didn’t anyway. I never wanted to become evil – I feel like protesting that the fact, in case anyone thinks otherwise.

Our thoughts are evil, do you realise that? Thoughts belong to Satan – our thoughts are Satan’s instrument. They are the way by which he achieves dominion. It says that in the Koran, I think. Or in some learned commentary on the Koran. Satan is the Prince of this world – it says that in the Bible. Of course he is – all thoughts belong to Satan and thought gets everywhere. Thought is behind everything – thought makes the whole world, does it not? The Buddha said that.

Thought makes the whole world and thought can’t abide anything but itself. Thought will get rid of anything that isn’t itself and that’s why we all have to be thinking all the time. Thought can’t tolerate silence; thought can’t tolerate the lack of thought. Thought can’t ever let there be any kind of break – that’s how it keeps us hypnotised. That’s how it keeps it under its power, which is the power of the Dark One, the Father of All Lies. We have such loyalty to our Dark Father don’t we? Such great loyalty. We do his will in all things, even though his will is evil. Not that he rewards us of course. What would he reward us with after all? What has he to give us? Only his scorn, only his endless malice….