‘The Nektar of the Gods, the Nektar of the Gods!’ I cry out excitedly, getting all worked up by nothing at all, as usual. But that’s not for the likes of us though – that Divine Elixir certainly isn’t for the likes of us! No way. Indeed it isn’t. ‘But what would happen to us if we WERE to drink the Nektar of the Gods?’ I hear you ask, besides yourself with unbearable curiosity, ‘what would happen then?’
Your face would start fizzing like sherbet is what would happen. Your ears would catch fire and blaze like a roll of magnesium ribbon in a chemistry class demonstration and the top of your head would lift clean off and go into orbit like a space rocket. Your nose will swell up and burst and you will see innumerable multi-coloured spots swimming in front of your eyes. Stuff like that, I imagine. Lots of stuff like that. I wouldn’t really know, though. I’m only guessing, as I have no personal experience of the matter. I’m just grasping at straws as ever. I’m grasping at straws and they’re not even real straws, they’re hallucinatory ones. I know that they’re hallucinatory but I’m grasping at them all the same. They’re all I’ve got.
The Nektar of the Gods is not for ordinary folk, obviously. It’s too rich for our blood, it would go straight to our heads. That’s alwayswhat happens, after all – we instantly become preposterously intoxicated. We become the instigators of evil acts. Quite frankly, there’s no end to the trouble that this can bring. The terrible, terrible trouble. My mind is losing focus at this stage, however. I have to admit that I’ve lost focus in a big way. I always lose focus in a big way. I remember myself from time to time of course – I become present in my life and witness what is there to be witnessed, which isn’t usually anything very pleasant, needless to say. It’s never very pleasant. Right now, however, I have to admit that I have lost focus in a big way. I’ve taken my eye off the ball when I shouldn’t have done and I know that there are going to be serious consequences to this.
I had worked out by this stage that I was actually inhabiting a colossal Time Machine – the whole universe was one big Time Machine! You’d never spot it, in other words. You’d have no idea of what was going on just to look at it. There are none of the trappings that we would normally assume to be part of a time machine. And yet here I am, tunneling through time at a rate of knots and not even knowing it. Not until now anyway. This blew my mind entirely, of course – it staggered me. I was trapped on some crazy camouflaged out-of-control time machine tunneling away into the distant future, heading towards some completely unknown destination. ‘What will the future bring,’ I ask myself, full of agitation, ‘what will the future bring?’
‘Well at least they will say of me that I have died a hero’s death’, I declared bravely, trying my best to console myself – ‘no one will be able to say that I didn’t die a hero’s death…’ Then it came to me that this wasn’t actually true – I’d forgotten what had just happened (although how I could have done that I don’t know). Earlier on, I had just betrayed the entire human race to the Evil Grey Predator Aliens and now they had just told me (via telepathic mind rays) that they were going to kill me anyway. They told me that they’d only been lying when they said that they would reward me richly for my cowardly betrayal. They won’t going to reward me at all. So possibly they won’t say that I’ve died a hero’s death after all, it struck me. Not that there will be anyone left to judge me anyway, I realized then. Which is at least some small consolation, I suppose…
On my third trip I travelled to the land of the Paint Lovers, who thank you whenever you hurt them. Nothing pleases them more than discomfort and so were are you to inadvertently elbow one of them in the eye you would be doing them a big favour! It would be very easy to make friends in this realm, it occurred to me listlessly. Particularly if – like me – you have a tendency to be carelessly insensitive to other human beings from time to time. Or worse. I quickly grew bored however and left the Pain Lovers to their own devices again.
I wrote that particular passage a long time ago and it wasn’t true even then. It was an old entry in my diary – one of the oldest, in fact. Things happen in my mind and I don’t note them down at all; other things never happened and I pretend that they did, I pretend that they’re real. Sometimes I mean what I’m writing and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes things happen in my head and I don’t know that they are. This isn’t the time to go into all of that however and I don’t intend to. I definitely don’t intend to. Instead, I will return to my diary and continue to make my way through the entries that may or may not be contained within it. Some will be interesting whilst others – undoubtedly – will not.
Blaming is an addiction and I personally blame those who suffer from it. They have no one to blame but themselves, in my opinion. That’s my viewpoint on the matter, at any rate. For what it’s worth. That’s my contribution to the debate, such as it is. There’s no point in whining on interminably about society and how it crushes true individuality and wants to turn us all into robots. You’re letting yourself down when you do that. You’re letting yourself down and so you’ve no one to blame but yourself when that happens. That’s fairly obvious of course – it wasn’t anyone else that let you down, it was you that did that. All by yourself. No one else but you, no one else but you…
‘What’s your favourite Transuranic element?’ people sometimes ask me, ‘which one do you revere above all the others?’ I wrote that fragment of a much longer monologue many years ago and it was a lie even back then. It’s always been a lie. When I was younger and at the peak of my creative powers I invented a system of communication that was based entirely on lies. Only that isn’t true either. That is very far from being true. Sometimes I get caught out when I lie too much and then I get in trouble for it. People judge me for that. What they don’t understand is that I’m only being true to myself. I’m only being true to myself because I am a liar. I’m a true liar, true to myself, only I’m not.
My ego loves to attain things. It loves achievements of all kinds. It never doesattain things of course. It never actually achieves anything. Just nonsense stuff, stuff that doesn’t matter. Pointless stuff. In the early days it covered itself in glory, succeeding brilliantly at meaningless tasks. Those heady days have long since passed however – they are but a memory. Now even the nonsense achievements are too much for it. It fails at nonsense tasks on a full-time basis. It is completely crushed by them.
I love to mock my ego about that. It’s a real sore point, obviously, so I keep on ribbing it. I rib it mercilessly; I rib it night and day. How could anyone resist? I mock my stupid old ego every step of the way and that’s only as it should be. That old ego of mine is the Laughing Stock of the Whole of Creation, and I make sure to let it know this at every opportunity! That stupid old ego of mine is the ultimate Figure of Fun, the ultimate Butt of All Jokes – it exists purely in order to be made fun of, and yet at the same time being made fun of is the thing that hurts it the most! Ironic, isn’t it? It is fitting, it is most undeniably fitting, but at the same time it has to be said that it is extraordinarily cruel. It hurts my ego so very much. This makes for the most excellent sport, in other words – or at least this would make for the most excellent sport if it were not for the fact that I am my ego.
When I first embarked upon my career as a liar I was by anyone standard’s a very good one. I was a highly accomplished and fluent liar and it was clear I was going to be going places. For a liar as accomplished and inspired as I was no door would remain closed for very long! Who knows what I might have achieved? Or at least, as I should probably say, who knows what I might have claimed to have achieved? It never worked out for me though. That early promise was never fulfilled – my lies quickly became all too obvious. They were frayed at the edges; I lost my creative power and ended up in an unhappy place. My lies were poor unconvincing things and they fooled no one, least of all myself. They were in fact an embarrassment to everyone concerned.
Space entered me then – it got inside me and that proved to be the end of me. It chased me here and there like a bank of impenetrable fog, it drove me from pillar to post until eventually there was no more getting away from it. It rushed towards me from all angles, like the irresistible force of nature it was. Only at the same time it was nothing at all! Nothingness beset me from all sides. There was nothing in it except for more nothingness, nothingness hidden within nothingness, which then opened up to reveal endless vistas of yet more nothingness, as pure as the freshly fallen snow in some vast Northern Forest after a week-long blizzard has just lifted. Space with no footprints in it, space that you can’t ever think about. Space that no onecan ever think about. Imperturbable space, Infinite space, Immutable space – space that no force can ever stand against…
Do you know that thing where you’re in the Trash World and the sad truth of the matter is that you’re absolutely loving it? You’re loving it so very much – you’re eating all the trash food, talking all the trash talk, listening to all the trash talk, dreaming all those good old trash dreams and everything is just so wonderfully trashy that you can’t help having a good time. Why wouldn’t you, after all? Why wouldn’t you be having a great, great time? Everyone else is and so are you – you’re roaring and shouting and yelling and blowing shit with the best of them. You’re blowing shit all day long.
You know the thing I’m talking about, I know that you do. Don’t deny it, please! You know it very well indeed – you know that thing for sure and why wouldn’t you? You know that old ‘living in the Trash World thing’ and you can’t get enough of it. You’re loving it. Your appetite for trash is endless, the same as us all. The same as us all. Good times, my friends – good, good times. I can feel a single tear sneaking its sneaky way out of the corner of my right eye, which is my emotional eye. I’d like to deny it, but I can’t. It’s the truth, the emotion is real my friends, the emotion is very real and so I have to own up to it. I’m human the same as you and I’ve got feelings, plenty of them. They’re not authentic feelings it’s true, but we won’t worry unduly about that! Those good, good times are so very good, aren’t they? Only they’re not, of course – they’re not at all. We all know they’re not…
We are addicted to trash spirituality at the end of the day. You and me both, buddy – you and me both. That’s what it all comes down to. Trash spirituality in the Trash World. Gratitude diaries and stuff like that. Self-affirmations. Incredibly wise sayings that will change your life forever. Transformational quotes. That’s what you’re after when it comes down to it. That’s what we’re all after – we’re hankering for that good old trash spirituality. It’s hard to beat of course, it’s very hard to beat. None of us can get enough of it. That’s what it’s like when you’re in the Garbage World and you’re letting loose, that’s what it’s like when you’re letting loose like there’s no tomorrow. You’re addicted to that dirty filthy old trash spirituality and you just don’t care! So don’t hold back – please don’t hold back. Give it your all, shout out your unbridled stupidity to the world. Everyone else does after all, so you won’t be on your own! No way will you be on your own so you don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to worry about anyone having a laugh at your expense because they’ll on your side. They’ll be rooting for you, they’ll be identifying with your predicament. You bet they will…
I feel like apologizing at this point. I should apologize at this point. I’m a prisoner of my own horrendous nonstop bullshit when it comes right down to it. That’s the long and the short of it, I’m afraid. I’m coming clean about it – the bullshit keeps bursting out of me. That’s the way it is. I might for example start telling everyone that everything’s great and that life couldn’t be better and that I’m having a good time but that’s bullshit for a start. I might tell you that I’m a well-adjusted member of society and that I know what I’m doing and that my life is meaningful to me but there you are again, you see. More bullshit. We can never get away from it, can we? By Jingo we can’t. ‘But suppose I don’t love the Garbage World as much as I ought to?’ you ask then, in a sudden fit of utter terror, ‘Suppose I don’t praise it as much as I should do and someone notices? What then?’ You’re afraid of course and I don’t blame you…
‘It’s your lucky day!’ the message on my phone told me, ‘You are the lucky, lucky winner…’ I was delighted of course. More than merely delighted, I was absolutely overjoyed. I was over the moon. Such joy was mine that I cannot even begin to express it. ‘How lucky am I?’ I asked myself, ‘how lucky am I that today just happens to be my lucky day!’ My lucky day, my lucky day. I became a child again: ‘Write a story about your lucky day’, my teacher said, ‘write a story about your lucky, lucky day and share it with the class.’
I became enraged at this point – enraged and more than just a little irritated too. Quite irritated, in fact. Peeved, you might say – peeved with the whole of Creation. I drummed my fingers on my desk, waiting for the sensation of being annoyed to pass but it didn’t. ‘This too shall pass,’ I told myself wisely, but it didn’t. Quite the reverse was the case. Quite the reverse. My very existence became an affliction – I knew no more joy, I lost all pleasure in the things I love the most. I became surly and short-tempered and people avoided me in the street. They knew I wasn’t a nice person and they feel feared my cruelty.
‘It’s your lucky day, it certainly is your lucky day,’ the voice in my head told me, ‘you have become enlightened with the bare minimum of effort and that’s a plus, that’s a bonus. Most folk have to work very hard indeed for that but it all just fell in your lap – that most precious of jewels…’ Everyone was smiling, everyone was happy. No one had a bad word, no one spoke harshly or with evil intention. I was about to become a millionaire again and that was good…
I was trying to explain to my supervisor that genetic information wasn’t information at all and that the less we had of it the better off we would be. It’s all a trick, I told him, it’s a device to ensure our compliance to the coercive mechanism of a fate that is too dark for us even to imagine. Far too dark. All of us, tied into this horror that they call ‘corporeal existence’. Bound fast to the wheel and lashed on a daily basis by the flunkies of the Dead God. Parasites feasting on our essential energy every day of our lives. We are nothing to them but a means to an end, after all. And the less said about that end the better – it is neither fitting or proper to speak of such matters in a public forum.
Nine out of ten telepaths are working for the man in the suit, so they say. Did you know that? They’ll rat you out to the authorities, they’ll sell you down the river as soon as look at you. Their abilities are for sale to the highest bidder and they’ll betray their own kind without a second thought. They’ll hunt you down no matter where you hide. They’ll get inside your head and you don’t want them to do that – you really don’t! Nine out of ten telepaths, nine out of ten telepaths. Probing your mind from a distance. Uncovering your secrets. Ratting you out to their corporate masters. Selling you down the river. It’s just not possible to sink any lower than that, you know – that just isn’t possible. They’re locked into their dark fate of course, the same as us all. The same as every one of us. We’re such conflicted creatures: we’d rat ourselves out if the price was right. We are such poor conflicted creatures, what hope is there for us?
So, as I was saying to my supervisor, our genetic inheritance is what binds us to the World of Form, the World of Corporeality. Every gene that gets deleted is another step forwards in the direction of freedom. Forget the World of form, if you can. Let it go and do not hanker after it. Do not hanker after it for you hanker after the causes of your own misery. What biologists don’t understand is that everything has its own DNA, even stuff that isn’t alive. Even stuff that was never alive. Stones have their own DNA and so too does the air we breathe. Even the stars have their own DNA. Nobody understands this however – they don’t understand it because their thinking is too narrow, too predictable. Our malign artificial environment makes our thinking predictable and that’s why we never understand anything properly. We never can. We’re being controlled by the construct and this ensures that we can never escape our doom. We don’t even want to escape our doom – the parasites in our brain are goading us ever onward, telling us that the future is great, telling us that the future is golden…
The way of evil, the way of horror – the strong devouring the weak, the clever swindling the foolish. All that kind of stuff. Fluent, sophisticated liars duping their unsuspecting brethren. Heartlessly swindling them out of everything they own and then laughing about it. Predators roaming the streets. Parasites delighting in the interminable misery of their long-suffering hosts.
That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, though. That’s the way the world works and so we just have to get on with it. This is the situation we have inherited as a result of our own actions, our own complicity. It’s an evil path that we have gone down and I suspect you know that perfectly well yourself. It’s a Predatorial World we live in and every single thing in it is out to get you. Even the furniture in your living room is eyeing you up with a view to making a sneaky move on you later on when you start to doze off. You can’t afford to do too much dozing in the Predatorial Universe, obviously. You can’t afford to be too casual when it comes to getting a bit of shuteye.
People get bugs in their head that infect them and make them start believing in the most atrocious nonsense. Isn’t that the way it is? Then they’ll do stupid stuff because they think they’re so smart. They weren’t playing it smart you see, they weren’t being careful about the content they were browsing on and we all know what happens then. We all know what can happen then – there are some very nasty little bugs out there just waiting to jump into your head and take control of your perennially befuddled brain. Making you into some kind of laughingstock, turning you into some kind of blathering gesticulating jackass.
It’s a very dangerous world out there and there is absolutely no point in pretending otherwise. OK, I know that for the most part everything seems perfectly fine and there are no problems anywhere and everything seems totally normal but that’s just the surface-level appearance of things. That’s just a frighteningly thin veneer. It’s like that thing where things always seem perfectly OK until, all of a sudden, they don’t. You’re running around thinking that everything is fine, that everything’s cool, that there’s no problem, until it dawns on you that things aren’t fine at all. All of a sudden it comes to you that things aren’t in the least bit OK but you just assumed that they were. You assumed that stuff was OK but it was sheer force of habit making you think this, making you so ridiculously relaxed when you shouldn’t have been, when you really, really, really shouldn’t have been.
That’s called ‘skating away on the very thin ice of your own ridiculous misconceptions’, isn’t it? That’s what they call it. Something like that, anyway. We skate for all we are worth, we skate as if there were no tomorrow – skating, skating, skating – but this isn’t the carefree affair that the casual observer may so easily take it to be. There’s a hidden tension there, you see. Something waiting to happen. There is a hidden tension that is just about to give and when it does give it’s going to be the biggest shock in your life. It’ll be the biggest shock by far. The biggest shock by a long way. You won’t see it coming at all. You won’t believe it but you’ll have to believe it because it will actually be happening. Damn right it will actually be happening! So don’t say I didn’t warn you…
We are all told what to believe of course and – obediently enough, with a surfeit of obedience – we hurry to swallow whatever wretched lies it is that we have been told. We can’t believe the lies quickly enough. We burst ourselves in the never-ending frantic struggle to be the best believer. ‘Are we believing in what we’re supposed to be believing in well enough?’ we ask, ‘is there anything else that we can do to believe better?’ And then, after a moment’s reflection, we ask, ‘Should we punish those who amongst us do not believe enough? Should we visit your frightening wrath upon them, so that they shall know that they have sinned?’
We love the Demiurge you see. We love him so very much. He is the Great Abuser and we relish his relentless abuse. We cherish his senseless cruelty. We adore him because of his senseless abuse, because of his unfathomable and abiding cruelty. ‘Tell us what to think, O You Most Splendid Demiurge’, we cry out, ‘instruct us as to what our opinions should be. Instruct us on what our attitudes should be…’ The Demiurge doesn’t need to be asked twice of course – he’s as keen as mustard, he’s ferociously keen. He is keen just as a hungry stoat or weasel is keen to terrify, catch and devour a poor helpless rabbit that has wandered carelessly into its path. We are the rabbits to His weasel.
We pray to the Demiurge to tell us how best we can enact His Will and we compete viciously with each other for those very special Brownie Points. Those good old Brownie Points are always on our mind. It’s dog eat dog, you see. Dog eat dog is the name of the game. Dog eat dog is always the name of the game. We’re so hungry for approval – so desperately hungry – that we’ll do anything. There are no limits to what we will do. We’re desperate for approval from the Demiurge even though it is a well-known fact that He despises us with every fibre of His being. He hates us – his poor creatures – more than anything else in the whole wide world. He hates us more than He hates himself, even. His malice is more than merely palpable, his malice is legendary. His malice is the alpha and the omega of this unhappy world…
It’s a perfect setup, for this very reason. It is a work of art – it simply can’t fail. Our reward in heaven will be meted out in accordance with the degree of our conformity in this earthly life, as is well known. Our craven conformity to our hideous corrupted master will never go unrewarded, you can be sure of that! Never, never, never… No indeed – that’s one thing we shall always be rewarded for. Great shall be our rejoicing on that day, great shall be our glory. Great shall be the extraordinary benefits that shall be bestowed upon us. The Great Liar Himself has told us so. The Arch-Deceiver Himself has given us his word….
I was thrashing around wildly in the Habit World, desperately seeking some sort of way out, desperately seeking some kind of relief from the infinite tedium of my formulaic existence. This too was nothing more than a habit however, and a very futile one at that. ‘What’s the formula for freedom?’ I asked my higher power, ‘what steps do I need to take, what types of formulaic behaviours do I need to enact, and is it possible to succeed at this? Should we attempt to emulate the great heroes of the past, or would that be presumptuous of us?’
The good things are good, it is reported by the media, but it could well be that the wonderful, amazing super-good things are even better! How good would that be, huh? I made my home in the Habit World the same as everyone else and I became the habit of myself – I was as happy as Larry but yet at the same time deeply, profoundly miserable. ‘What sort of frighteningly tedious formulaic behaviours ought I to emulate in order to become a real human being?’ I wondered. ‘What are the key skills that I need to master, what are the all-important steps that I absolutely need to take? Which renowned liar do I need to follow in order to obtain the correct information?’
The tedium of my odiously formulaic existence – that’s what’s getting to me, you see. That’s the fly in the ointment that is causing all the problems. There’s actually very little in the way of ointment left at this stage – you’ve got to scrape the bloody flies off with a knife and even then I suspect that the ointment’s all gone. Nothing in the jar but dirty filthy flies crawling around licking their lips, or what they have in place of lips. The awful unbearable tedium of my inauthentic life is crying out to me – I’m looking for redemption but I don’t really mean it, I am looking for redemption but that’s only one of my ruses…
Thrashing around in The Dirty Old Habit World whilst trying to come up with some behaviour that isn’t purely formulaic, something that isn’t a tried and trusted protocol. ‘Halt stranger’, they call out, ‘what protocols do you follow?’ ‘I follow the loathsome protocols of the Great Unclean God’, I reply bravely, ‘and none shall interfere with my quest lest they bring upon themselves the fearsome wrath of his appalling utterable malignancy’. There was no answer and so I carried on, having made – as I presumed – the correct response. The Lord of all Unclean Things will protect me’, I told myself hopefully, striving manfully to sound at least halfway confident as I said it.
Seeking a way out, seeking an escape. Seeking redemption. Desperately casting this way and that in my feverish search for authenticity. There must be something I can do so that I’m not a second-hand person, I thought for myself, but at the same time I knew that there wasn’t. And at the same time I also knew I didn’t really care anyway. Not really. Nowhere in my bag of habits was there a habit which would facilitate me in living the authentic life that I yearned for. Nowhere in my bag of tricks was there a trick that would enable me to stop being so fundamentally dishonest. The trick for that hadn’t been invented yet. Nowhere in my extensive collection of lies was there a lie that was actually the truth.
‘Emulate the Greatness as best you can’, a mighty voice cried out from deep within my own mind, ‘emulate the Greatness from morning till night, emulate the Greatness for all you’re worth. Emulate the Greatness as if your very life depends upon it…’ I recognised the voice as that of The Deceiver Himself and so I scurried off hastily to do his bidding. I scurried off as fast as I could, trying to look busy, trying to look as if I knew what I was doing. ‘The Deceiver has spoken’, I told myself, ‘and I must hurry to carry out his orders.’ I was so afraid that all I could do was babble senselessly – fear had driven everything out of my head, you see – including any vestige of any good sense that I might once have had. I was filled with the panic stricken urge to obey. I was filled with the panic-stricken urge to obey, even though I didn’t have the fainest clue as to how I was supposed to do that.
I wanted to be a perfect little mechanical toy ego so that I could put my name down to go and live in the new Disney Planet that the government has just manufactured. A brand new Disney Planet, straight off the assembly belts, only you had to be a mechanical toy ego in order to be allowed to live in it. ‘Craft us, oh Master’, we cry out, ‘craft us so that we can truly be what you want us to be’. Thus do our prayers ring out, and waft up to the heavens where the gods are said to dwell. Make us into your things, we mutter. Make us into your things… That’s just the world we live in though, so there’s absolutely no point in me or you complaining about it. No point at all.
Do you know that thing where someone else gets the blame for something you did and you don’t say anything at the time and the only emotion you feel is relief? You leave the area as quickly and yet as unobtrusively as you can. Offering up your heartfelt thanks silently to whatever deity might be presiding over your fate on this day. The person you let get the blame gets in an awful lot of trouble and even years later everyone still gives him dirty looks and nasty comments and yet you don’t feel the slightest bit of remorse. ‘That’ll learn you’, you think, and ‘try that for size, sucker!’ ‘Rather you than me, buddy boy’, you say to yourself, still delighted by your good fortune all those years ago in escaping the rap.
I guess we’ve all been there, right? I guess we can all relate to that one – I know I can. Yes indeed. This isn’t what I’d call ‘true evil’ though. It indicates a person with a shocking lack of empathy, a shocking lack of compassion, as well as a shocking lack of personal responsibility, but it’s still not what I would call true evil. True evil is when you manufacture the Disney Planet.
I wanted to be a perfect mechanical toy ego so that I could reap the benefits. Reaping the benefits is what it’s all about and we all know that. I was a prisoner of the Mechanical Universe and I only ever did what it wanted me to do. I never stepped out of line. I had handed over all my responsibility to it, you see. ‘You take it, I don’t want it’, I had famously said, on that most momentous occasion, flamboyantly signing away my birthright to the fast-talking man in the smart suit. The Mechanical Universe tells me what I want in order to save me from the bother of having to find out for myself. The dreadful bother of having to find out for myself.
I was praying out loud to the Great Malignancy ‘Oh Great Master’, I prayed, ‘mould me according to your vile and corrupt will.’ Make me into your thing. Make me into your thing. Make me into your thing. I wanted to be a toy human being so that I could serve the Toy Master. I prayed constantly and fervently that I might be considered worthy of serving him in some small way, in no matter how small a way. Anything at all would do – all I wanted was to be useful. The sweat was pouring off me in rivers as I prayed. I was rattling off invocations nine to the dozen. I was shouting out my prayers. The gods care not about the troubles of mere mortals, so it is said. They are oblivious to our difficulties and why wouldn’t they be? They are gods, after all…
I had done the bad thing and that was a mistake. I had screwed up and that was an error. I made a very bad mess of things and that was wrong – so very wrong.
The words were running around and around in my head ‘It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s all so extremely wrong…’ I was trying as hard as I could to backtrack, to reverse hastily out of the situation, but it just wasn’t happening for me. I couldn’t undo what I had done. I couldn’t cover it up. No backtracking allowed, says the sign. No backtracking allowed.
Ghost figures were shaking their heads at me – ‘There is no way back, there is no way back, there is no way back..’ they were telling me. ‘No, no, no – you can’t ever go back,’ they told me. Grim figures, serious figures, austere figures, shaking their heads dolefully. They were communicating telepathically of course. That’s how they always communicate – by direct non-verbal telepathy.
People don’t believe in telepathy of course. They think they know better! They laugh out loud when you try to inform them about it. People automatically think that you’re soft in the head if you bring telepathy into the discussion; they assume that you must be some kind of messed-up drug casualty who has permanently messed up their brain by having amphetamine psychosis too many times.
‘How many times is too many times?’ you ask cannily, but I can give you no answer. I wouldn’t know. I can’t say anything about that. Somewhere or other out there in possibility space there is a critical boundary condition that we would be well advised to keep a close eye on, but beyond that I’m fairly hazy. Beyond that I am very hazy indeed, in fact. The following visualization exercise might help, however.
Imagine yourself in the following situation, if you will. You are somehow suspended in the middle of a dark and terrible void and there is absolutely nothing there for you to perceive, not even yourself. You’re a disembodied presence only you’re not really that present. You’re only barely present. And there is something that’s not right in this situation – you have an awareness of an ominous problem somewhere nearby. The awareness blossoms silently within you; becoming more and more awful as time goes on. You have realised to your horror that the problem is you.
So that’s the situation we’re talking about here. This is the key repetition of the core revelation, and it could well relate to the point at which the critical boundary condition may, or may not, have been reached. Or could be reached. The entire hallucinatory sequence of which I speak lasted no more than five minutes, but during that time I hallucinated myself as a hallucination. ‘Wow – that’s too much!’ I told myself excitedly, but me saying this was also a hallucination. It was the hallucination of a hallucination. I was hallucinating myself hallucinating and so there was no way to know if this was actually true or not.
‘Is it true that this is a hallucination, or is it not true?’ you ask yourself, ‘or is it the case that I am only hallucinating that is true?’ You have smoked plenty of weed in your time of course, but you have never known yourself to hallucinate this badly before. This is a new one for you. ‘Or am I perhaps hallucinating well?’ you ask yourself, ‘could it be the case that I am hallucinating very well?’ You can’t be sure if it’s the one way or if it’s the other. Are you perhaps only hallucinating that you are hallucinating badly when actually — if the truth were to be known – you’re hallucinating very well indeed? How would you know, after all? How could you tell the difference?
