My last conversation with the Goddess
Well folks, the Goddess finally tracked me down. She may not be omniscient,
but She does surf the web after all. I think She found my site by reading Dave
Gorman's email. Either that or She got ahold of Reichsmarshall Ashcroft's file on
me. In any event, She appeared to me in a dream last night.
I dreamed that I was surfing the internet, running a whimsical search on
Google. I had been wondering if there might be balm in Gilead. I'd had no luck
seeking it, and I was considering turning off the computer and consulting my Tarot
deck. Then I thought of asking the question of the Web. I had done this before, and
I had found it about as useful as the Tarot or the I Ching. But I couldn't pin down
the proper wording for what I wanted to ask. The thought uppermost in my mind
was that I wanted to know how I could get Harriet out of my head. I wanted to
enjoy my leisure time without the annoying distraction of missing her or
remembering some endearing little thing she used to do at times.
But this simple request brought up a plethora of related questions. What
about death? How could I learn more about death than was offered within the
confines of the Garden of Conventional Reality? All the Garden offered was pie-in-
the-sky paradise or resignation to existential angst. Sorry, folks, but this just isn't
enough for me. No offense intended to your favorite theological or philosophical
credos, but I'm a sub-genius and I outgrew cartoon-level metaphysics decades ago.
Then there was the Eshaton. Robert Anton Wilson wrote speculative fantasy
that revolved around political and esoteric groups attempting to immanentize the
Eshaton. The Eshaton is basically Doomsday, the end of the world as depicted in the
Book of Revelations in the Christian Bible. To "immanentize the Eshaton" is to try
to bring about a Doomsday scenario in the world.
I had noticed of late that the current Presidential Administration in DC
seemed to be doing its utmost to immanentize the Eshaton. At the beck and call of
oil interests and the Christian Right, Bush and his cronies have already set the
economy rocking off balance and started one war based on scant evidence, a war we
are still fighting. Now they want to start another war that is not only based on zero
evidence but actually flies in the face of what little we do know. Further, this war
they want to pursue would be the very impetus, perhaps the only impetus, that could
cause the enemy to use whatever biological weapons he may possess.
And then there was my friend Goldstar's dream. Click on this link for that:
Goldstar's rather disturbing dream
So my query now centered around Harriet, death, and Doomsday, not a
combination that sat comfortably in my mind. Giving up, I typed in the following
query: <"?"> The result was a blank screen. Normally, when a search engine
doesn't get a hit on one's query, the result is a message such as "Sorry, there were
no results to your query" or "Sorry, we couldn't find the page you were looking for"
or "Your query received zero results", something like that. All I got was a blank
page with the Google banner at the top. I tried several permutations of the same
query: <"?"> and <+?> and simply ?, getting the same result every time. No
pages listed, no error message, just a blank.
Stymied, I stared into the blank screen of the monitor, thinking of the
"radiant Void" of Tibetan Lamaism. The screen began to acquire a three-
dimensional aspect, and I noticed a kind of discontinuity in the center of the screen,
a swirley-whirley of white amidst white. Thinking it was maybe a smudge of
condensation, I reached up my finger to wipe at it. Suddenly in the wink of an eye I
was drawn into the whiteness. There was an instant of searing heat that was
somehow also electric, like being blown to atoms in a bolt of lightning, and I
remembered no more until I found myself coming together again, Somewhere Else.
As often happens in dreams, I was not at all surprised at any of this.
I was ambling pleasantly through a tulgey wood, enjoying the autumn
spashes of color and the swushing sound of my feet shuffling through dry leaves,
when suddenly I happened upon an incongruously green glade. The glade broke into
a verdant clearing, in the midst of which was a high throne. Seated on the throne
was the most beautiful Lady I had ever seen. She wore a light blue robe of some
sort, although it seemed I could see through it to Her body beneath. I couldn't be
certain, though. The robe appeared to be in constant motion. Try as I might, I
couldn't focus my eyes on it for more than a moment at a time. I looked back up to
Her face. Small lights winked and circled above her head.
I was enrapt. Despite my enrapture, I recognized Her. She was undoubtedly
Harriet, or at least the entity Who had once been Harriet, before I handed the
crown of divinity to Her.
"Uh, Harriet?" I stammered.
"That soul I was, once. Now I am All," She murmured.
"Ah!" I said, "'Tis the Lady clothed with the heavens and crowned with the
stars! Hope You don't mind a biblical allusion?"
"Look about you, o beloved boy. What do you see?"
I gazed around. "Uh, trees, leaves, rising and falling ridges, a squirrel nest
here and there, blue sky between the branches."
"This is the book that God wrote."
"This forest here? These trees?"
"These and all their family, cosmos-wide. They are the book that God wrote.
All others were written by mortal minds."
In one fluid movement, She leaped to the ground and stood in front of me. A
perverse back area of my mind was disappointed that the robe didn't ride up to
reveal Her thighs as She did so.
"Let us go hence," She whispered, taking my hand. I felt a warm glow
flowing from her palm to mine and spreading throughout my body, cresting at my
seventh chakra. The glow continued as we walked across the sward. If anything, it
grew more intense. To me it seemed that we were walking like that forever, had
been walking together for all eternity in a woodland paradise that existed both
within and without us. I sensed, rather than saw or felt, an infinity of like couples
stretching behind and before us. We could feel them striding as we strode,
breathing as we breathed.
I had to stop. It was too much for me to hold in my mind, in my heart, this
parade of us. I was losing myself in the multitudes. I halted and grasped both Her
hands. "I have to know," I said.
She stood, silent, unanswering. In my peripheral vision I could see the
thousands of us standing now not only behind but also to either side. For a second I
almost lost Her face in the plethora of faces around and all about. I blinked to clear
my eyes, but it was no use.
Carlos Castaneda had said that one could assert one's consciouness in dreams
by looking at one's hands. I hadn't the will to let go of Her hands, so I raised them
up to eye-level, like dancers do. All the universe as one drew my eyes to Her hands,
but I resisted perversely, gazing at my own knuckles instead. I felt something rise
unbidden within me, something that I had felt before and welcomed into my
perception.
It was not bravery. I'm not a brave person. But there is something within
each of us that can rise up and assert -- what? Selfhood or selflessness? Will or
desire? Altruism or foolish sentiment? I don't really kinow what it is, but I've felt it
before, both in dreams and waking. It is beyond my control and yet it asserts my
sovereignty over the space I occupy, both physically and otherwise.
I used to have nightmares that centered around a white ferret. I don't know
why my paraconscious would choose this animal to symbolize my deepest fears. I
certainly don't fear ferrets in my waking consciouness. I think they're rather cute.
But in these nightmares, which I've had since I was a child, there is always a white
ferret which is trying to approach me. I retreat from it, throw things at it, but it
dodges and keeps on coming. I usually wake up in a cold sweat. Sometimes I have
thought that the white ferret is a symbol of death.
But the last time I had the nightmare, I was leaving a building, and three of
them blocked my exit. I hesitated, afraid to go farther. Then this certain something
welled up inside me. Instead of fear, I felt anger. "Hell with it!" I thought, then
stepped forward. The ferrets' eyes widened in surprise, and they scattered,
scampering for the hills. I woke chuckling and had a very good day that day.
It was this same feeling that surged inside of me now. I gazed up from my
knuckles to see that She was studying me with a look of puzzlement, Her brows knit.
It was the first time in my life, waking or sleeping, that I had ever seen Her (or her)
confidence falter.
"I have to know if You are Harriet," I said. She parted Her lips to speak, but
I held up my hand. "Yes, I know You're all women, all females, and by extension all
of humanity, even, by further extension, all the universe. She smiled again, Her
awesome confidence returning. "But that's not enough for me," I added, and Her
smile faded again, Her brows knit once more.
"When I wake up, I want my little wife, whom I love with a love that is
mortal and earthly. As annoying, even downright infuriating as she can be, yet she
is more often endearing, and I want her when I wake.
"Then in a future life, whether on Earth or in one of the other countless
dreams of Vishnu, I want to be with Harriet for a time. I want flesh-and-blood
Harriet, with all the aromas and odors of sweat and tears and accompanying bodily
fluids. Harriet on a twenty-eight day cycle. Harriet with morning halitosis and
curlers in her hair. Harriet with cold feet that she wiggles under my butt on the
sofa on a winter's night."
She nodded Her head and smiled a pensive smile. "That may be," She said,
"or it may not. Even God knows not what human souls will do. But one thing I
know," She added, holding up a finger, "and that is that some day you will come to
Me, as do all."
"That may well be, also," I said. "You are certainly more qualified to know
about that than I am. Certainly it seems like it must be true that every individual in
the universe must someday merge with the Light. And that will be the end of me."
She gazed back into my eyes. There was something of pity there and
something of joy spiced with gentle mockery. I glanced quickly down at my
knuckles, then back up at Her. "But there is one thing I want right now," I said,
"something I will have, come Hell or high water, and that is me. Not the universe,
not all these others around us, not even You, nor Harriet, nor my wife. I want me."
She laughed out loud. For a moment I was as enraptured as before, the
sound was so beautiful, so free. Then She stopped and said, grinning, "Silly child!
You want you? Does water want wet? You have you! Even if you die and
reincarnate! Even if you merge with Me! Even if you are totally obliterated in
every way! -- Which you have been, you know. You have been utterly destroyed,
yet you came together again and were still you. After all, what makes identity? If
two things are exactly identical, are they not one and the same thing?"
"Twins are identical. Clones are identical. I want to be me, not some
doppelganger."
"No, twins and clones are not perfectly identical. Take two electrons or
photons side by side, twins in every way. But they are not perfectly identical. They
differ in location. You are you and will always be you, no matter what, until the end
of time."
"And then?"
"And then, who knows? Billions of years hence, who knows? Certainly not
I. In any event, you have a long, long time to ponder the question." She laughed
again, briefly. Then She turned and, letting go of one of my hands, said, "Let's
walk."
As we left the green glade and walked into the autumn forest, leaves began to
sprout from the trees around us, making a swath of green wherever we walked.
Squirrels scampered here and there, while birds sang in the branches above.
"Even here," I said, "even here Your greeness comes with us."
"It's My nature," She said.
"But I'm not green trees and birds singing. I'm autumn leaves and bare
branches whipped by a stiff breeze from the north. I always have been. I'm yellow
teeth champing down on a sooty briar pipe, chapped lips chugging an icy brew after
a hard day, cheeks red with the rough kiss of Lady Wind. I need more than this," I
said, waving my hand at the wood around us.
"My boy waxes poetic. That is your nature." Again She laughed that
musical laugh. "Yes, indeed, you do need more than this. You are human, and
human intelligence always needs more. Humanity needs both light and dark, and
not only that but also shades of gray, and not only that but all the colors of the
rainbow. But you have a problem, as do all human beings, with focusing on the
negative. Ultimately we are all white light, but the eyes will see what they want to
see, the mind will manifest what it sees within itself. You pick out from the white
light what your world will be. Learn to focus on perfection, and perfection will
manifest in your life."
"And then I'll be ready for Nirvana. Then I'll go POOF!"
"There are a million years or more between hence and thence. Plenty of time
to decide whatever you want to decide, plenty of time to do and to be. You yourself
will realize your own divinity long before you ever have to even dream of
contemplating Nirvana."
"Divinity? I wore that crown before. Didn't like it. No thanks."
"The crown you wore had no substance. You thought you knew divinity, but
you knew nothing. All comes from the Source, and to that Source all will return.
All creatures are of the divine, by right of birth. Realizing that divinity is much
more, though. You added two plus two and got yourself as God, but you only knew
that in your logical mind. You never manifested it in your being. You gave Me no
crown but what I already posessed within Me. Now I know you like you have never
known Me. You are wiser now than you were then. Then you thought you knew
much, but you knew nothing. Now you know that you know nothing, and that makes
you wise. I like you better this way."
I must have blushed, because She giggled and leaned forward touching her
lips to mine briefly. It made a tickling, glowing sensation in them. The blissful
feeling I had gotten when She first held my hand was now multiplied tenfold. My
heart was pounding and I thought of people who died in their sleep. Was it from
dreams like this one? My lower chakras cried out for my usual solution to any
overwhelmingly good emotion. "Wish I had a cigarette," I murmured to myself.
She raised Her hand palm out in a warning gesture. As if to distract me from
my craving, She said, "What travels faster than light? Darkness, for wherever light
goes, darkness is already there waiting. Darkness flees from the light or, more
accurately, light pushes darkness away."
"But when the light is gone, darkness moves in again."
"Or it might be said that light consumes darkness. Darkness is infinity
becoming finite. Light is finity becoming infinite."
"Eats it and shits it out again, huh?"
"I see you haven't lost your way with words," She said, laughing softly.
"Words are the Way, Sweetie."
"Then listen to Mine now."
"What's Your hurry? You got an appointment or something?"
"I have all eternity, but your time is limited, little boy."
"I'm fifty-two."
"Such a little boy, hardly a glimmer on the aeons. Now hush, child, and
listen."
"Yes Ma'm."
"Light is active; dark is receptive. Light is ecstatic; dark is blissful. Light is
motion; dark is stillness. Light is time; dark is space. Light is the phallus which
impregnates the dark womb. Light pierces darkness, in-forming it. The two of them
together give birth to information. As information multiplies algorithmically, the
Uncertainty Principle comes into play at its edges, where light and dark are
imperfectly blended. Then information becomes imagination. Imagination
crystallizes in the matrix of time/space, thereby becoming the physical universe."
I pondered that for a minute or two. I could think of no adequate response,
so I made small talk. "So now you're a goddess. Well, THE Goddess. Can we still
be friends?"
"I am that I am-- but you are the Way and the Light."
This was getting a little too heavy, even for a dream. "Look, Sugar, don't put
that blues on me! I'm just a simple country boy from the the flatlands of the Delta!"
"Whosoever awakens into eternal becoming-- becomes eternity."
"Big words from a figment of my dreaming libido!"
"Whoever displays the Way-- is the Way. Whoever utters the Word-- is the
Word. Whoever reflects the Light-- is the Light."
"Uh, yeah, right on, aum Shiva shankara. Well, I think maybe we better
wind this down, Babe, I gotta get up pretty soon and go to work at the funny farm."
She smiled a Mona Lisa smile. It was kind, loving, gentle, knowing-- and it
scared me silly. It wasn't the baby goddess innocent Eve smile of her childhood and
it wasn't the socialite smile of her adolescence, nor even the confident female
wisdom smile of her young adulthood. It was a smile with a quiet intensity that
somehow brought to mind the awsome reaches of space and time.
The blue of her eyes took on a cast of insane serenity, serenity so intense that
it overwhelmed all else. Instead of being comforted, I was terrified at the sheer
power of it. The blueness seemed to emanate from her eyes and spread to merge
with sky and unseen ocean. It filled my own eyes; it filled my head. It seemed my
very selfness would be subsumed by the blue, and the blue was love, love so powerful
that it would obliterate whatever it lit upon, love that would consume me like a dry
leaf. I opened my lips to protest, but even as I did so, I could feel myself dissolving
into the rapturous blue. There was an instant of terror, then a loud buzzng sound
that rended my dream with discord.
I rolled out of bed and onto my feet, wide awake with my heart pounding and
my breath coming in gasps, like an RAF pilot waking up to a midnight V2 attack
over London. Slowly getting my bearings, I stumbled over to my alarm clock and
tapped the button to stop its annoying buzz. I sat back down on my bed with a
thump, putting my hand to the pillow to catch my balance. It was soaked in sweat.
My skin felt clammy. I limped into the kitchen to fetch a cold cup of coffee from
yesterday's pot. I had about an hour to get to work, just enough time to fire up the
computer and get the dream on harddisk.
Post script epistle posted
Camino Surreal Cantina
Tupelo Zero
