...never the same...

?KThe world's so full of contradictions
Predilections to indiscretions
Falsifications from vilification's
And a burning desire to quench the truth

Inequalities run dry of qualifications
Education falls foul to indoctrinations
Romanticisation springs from false vindications
And the messages come too thick and too fast?K

(a poem, I wrote it once, can??t remember when)

1.
As I sit in the huge library, I forget who I am. I split my reality
into two parts. There's the "real" time and space, which for whatever
reasons I always seem to try and forget, and then there's the imaginary
reality, a time and space known only to me and those I would share it
with. The library serves as a gateway at this juncture - its' doorways
all lead to the comforting intimacy of other thinking beings'
minds.
The me I forget, and the me I become, for now I shall describe as
inhabiting two separate realities which I shall call "slow" and "hyper"
reality. "Slow" reality is the kind that requires of me to wait for the
kettle to boil, while in "hyper" reality kettles and indeed tea,
coffee, biscuits, dinners, 9 o-clocks and most incidentals of the
"real" world cease to play much of a part in anything that really
matters.
Of course, describing these two "realities" in such terms is quite
misleading, since when thought about properly the world the universe
and everything in it can only be thought of as "one". This is a truism.
But while the overall "world" is of this nature, it is far easier to
think of my world as inhabiting two spaces rather than one. Anyone
persuaded by this rather small point and objection should then either
humour me or put this piece of writing down right now and forget they
ever laid eyes on it.
The main problem associated with forgetting oneself is the two
realities, "slow" and "hyper", are often forced to meet at inopportune
times and sometimes even to co-exist like some strange hybrid. While
the "hyper" is never forgotten as an arrow once fired will never simply
stop dead in mid air, so the "slow" will always retain the power to
bring the "hyper" down to earth as certain as it is that the arrow will
eventually strike its target or fall to the ground.
Four paragraphs in, and as I've often thought myself, I can hear the
cry of those reading accusing me of being mad or a "schizo" or of
having some other mental health problem. But this is then a challenge.
Taste of the "slow" and the "hyper" and, though you may not realise it,
you will experience a similar delineation of experience.
A typical "slow" experience of mine runs?K?K
?K?Kwhat a pretty lake it is today. Glad the weather's warmed up. So
cold yesterday. Hungry, I'm getting a burger for lunch, work should be
more bearable after that. Hand's in my pocket looking for money and
change to pay for it. I've got a five-pound note, I can feel the paper
on my fingertips. A door stands before the cafeteria. I'd better extend
my arm to open it. Push it when I get there?K?K
A crude example, but the general thrust of "slow" makes it through.
"Hyper" on the other hand goes a little like this?K?K
?K?Kwhy the hell did it have to happen like that? Why did he act like
that instead of like this? Why does the moon follow the sun??K?K
Which can eventually lead to thoughts such as?K?K
?K?Ksince the dawn of time men sought to impose their will and view of
the world upon others, not only because they believed it right, but to
satisfy their inner insecurities and hunger for the promotion of
themselves?K?K
It may thus be observed that while sitting in the huge library,
undeniably forgetting myself, I have at the same time discovered an
overall "self" which some may like to call "humanity".
Some would call this objectivity but I would rather describe it as the
individual but interlinking imaginary worlds of everyone. The story I'm
about to tell involves the interlinking imaginary worlds of two.

2.
Once upon a time men didn't even know how to make fire, but then
thousands of years later they discovered how to split the atom and
wreak unimaginable destruction on the face of the earth. Around the
same time this happened another discovery was made, but given far less
publicity. If men had known what it was they had discovered, it might
have been given the credit it deserved, but as such it was simply known
as the discovery of LSD, a man made compound which when taken correctly
gives what were known as " hallucinations".
After afew half-hearted tests and experimentation's the drug was taken
out of the scientific realm, and instead ended up as a recreational
drug along with many other recreational drugs popular at the
time.
Those who took it very rarely knew what it was they were taking. If
they had, only those with the very strongest of spirits would have gone
ahead. But then again, if only those people took it the word "trippy"
would never have entered our vocabulary.
You see, things happened wherever and whenever LSD was around. Not
silly, trivial things like avalanches, earthquakes, volcanoes or
famine. No, when LSD was around things REALLY happened.
At least, that's what the veteran drug takers would say. More
worthwhile knowledge could be had from one Trip, then, say, an entire
school career. If you wanted to find the important things in life, how
could trivialities such as maths, geography, history and english
possibly help you on your way?
Odd, you might think, to trivialise ones' education when ones' goal is
knowledge. Often, the reply to such criticism ran:
"But what use is such knowledge when it doesn't REALLY matter?"
To the uninitiated I'm sure this all sounds just like some crackpot
miscreants meaningless gabble, but that's because, in the view of the
veteran, the uninitiated exists in a perpetual state of "slow" reality.
The veteran has been exposed to the drug so much he has forgotten what
the real difference between "hyper" and "slow" is. Indeed, the true
picture (if I may be permitted the luxury of painting one) is, if
anything, a strange, hybrid, ironic reverse. It is not the uninitiated
who exists perpetually "slow", but the veteran who has migrated,
graduated, ascended to the "hyper". Thus these people who nearly
everyone at the time simply dismissed and thought of as "too far gone",
would I'm sure find it delightful to hear me refer to them as the
"super-hyper".
They would be foolish though to think that I am ascribing to that old
American paradigm of "bigger is better". What use is a giant car if the
roads are too small for it?

3.
"?
As is the wont with drugs that fall into the recreational soup, LSD's
influence was felt far and wide. Numerous persons of different
dispositions, social standing, ideology and tragic histories all at one
time or another found themselves slap bang in the middle of a Trip. The
realisation that one is in such a predicament, however, transcends all
the arbitrary inequalities of humankind. However you got there, whoever
gave it to, wherever it came from and whoever you are with at the time,
when the lightning strikes in your brain after the insane yet
delightful laughter and chuckling, it is like for the first time you
can see everything and everyone for what they REALLY are. You see like
a blinding light that in the here and now you are tripping, and you
know (or rather in this knowledge you cling for security) that only now
is your true nature exposed.
Is this nature human? Now that's just taking things a bit too
far.
Are you talking about everything or everyone, or just yourself?
The dangers and confusions that arise from such exposure to the truth
that the drug gives you are hardly few and far between.
But so it was in essence as I have described, for Joe Blunton, who had
not "bought the ticket" as it were. The first time round no one has the
ticket they thought they'd bought. They paid for the magic roundabout,
the magical mystery tour, but they ended up with a trip to Bognor Regis
or the greatest roller-coaster in the world, depending on which way you
look at it. Were they swindled or did they hit the jackpot?
Whichever way round, Joe Blunton did not get what he paid for. As he
sat in the living room of his friend Ike he certainly thought that for
the last hour or so he had been present at the most fantastic music
festival in history. Ever since he first began to feel the strange
giddiness, to hear the true voices of the singers on the stereo, he
could not contain his laughter. And not just him, but everyone was
laughing. What were they laughing at? This is the paradox of the
awakening Trip, the first stop on the road as it were.
They were laughing at the truth, their truth, and the truth of what
they heard. They all knew it so precisely, so exactly, that it was too
much for words to communicate. It transcended the words, and their
worlds'. Yet they were so sure of their collective realisations at this
stage, they could all see this thing so very clearly, that the only way
to get even close to communicating it was by mumbling something
connected with just the surface of their vision, stare each other in
the face, and laugh wildly and hysterically.
What can I say? For an hour or so this general state of affairs saw Joe
through just fine.

4.
The moment when the simple, delightful laughing stopped, when the worm
turned, was when Joe first traced his footsteps to the day before. The
morning before, infact. It was precisely 10:37am when his friend Ike
suggested a possible activity for the next evening: Friday night.
"How's about we all take a Trip?"
"Where to?"
"No. Not like that. You know, LSD."
From then on he had spent the day thinking, pondering, just considering
the thought. Later that afternoon he turned to Ike and said:
"Will we get hallucinations?"
"You mean visuals?"
"I guess. You know, like will I see dragons flying around? Will you
turn into an elf or a fairy or something."
"I hope not a fairy."
"No, seriously, I need to know."
"Well, maybe. Sometimes you get crazy visuals, sometimes not. Like I
know these guys who took a Rolling Stone and went and sat on the roof.
They saw a spaceship, a chariot type thing with golden lights and
things leaving trails of pure lightening they said. They were convinced
it was a real spaceship and not just some hallucination, though it
sounds like a pretty good hallucination just the same. Even now they
swear blind it was just TOO real to be just part of the trip."
"Shit."
"Pretty cool, huh. But like I said, I've done it before and not
actually SEEN anything particularly out of the ordinary."
"Oh."
"I still had a blinding time though! Come on man, we should do it!
Let's!"
Joe traced the turn of events back then to that evening at home when he
got closer and closer to overcoming his doubts about it. It's not that
he was afraid, he'd just never come across the opportunity, and so
never really considered the prospect. Now that he thought about it, he
didn't REALLY know any facts about it. Only two preoccupations
dominated his mind.
The first was a comic and not unaffectionate image of a hippie back in
the sixties. Long hair, beard, psychedelic clothes, dark John Lennon
glasses sitting in the middle of a green field on a sunny day with lots
of crazy beatniks guys and girls dancing around and his right hand held
up making the V shaped peace sign. He sat cross-legged, still,
enlightened, at peace, a slight smile of contentment on his face.
"That doesn't seem too bad." Thought Joe.
His only other preoccupation was the one his teachers had had to give
him at school. This was the terrifying, shocking and sad tale of the
14yr old girl having personal problems. Her parents argue every night,
her friends either bore or are nasty to her and somehow she gets in
with the "wrong" crowd. Eventually, and inevitably, she is offered
drugs, and she, being in the mood to break new boundaries, grow up,
broaden her horizons, have fun in abundance and heavily influenced by
her new "friends" (and don't forget the sixties hippie image), decides
to take LSD. What can I say, the consequences are disastrous. Aforesaid
girl goes mad, either believing she can fly or that she is encased in
an impenetrable protective bubble, either jumping out the window or
infront of a car. Either way she ends up dead.
Joe laughed slightly to himself.
"Am I going to believe those druggy scare stories they tell in
school?"
Of course not.
Now he traces his steps to the next morning, where once again he sees'
Ike.
"I think we should do it. We might as well. Why not."
Ike looks him in the eyes and says.
"Cool, we'll have a wicked time. You'll see."
In Ikes' eye is an incomprehensible yet promising and playful glint
that Joe can't resist but interpret in the best possible way. The
decision made, Joe was now forced to view the forthcoming event as if
it deserved the glee a small child expresses by rubbing his hands when
he knows he's going to the fairground.
The worm had turned from the gleeful, ecstatic hour of laughter.
"So that's how I got here" thought Joe.

5.
Animals with big brains. That's all we really are. Nothing more than a
dog or a cat or a baboon whose brain grew so much he didn't know what
to do with it. That's the question. What should you do with your brain,
your mind? Where do you take your soul? You can't just leave it be, no,
that's too easy. Your brain wouldn't allow it.
From the seed of a simian consciousness grew civilisation, now so
huge, so sprawling. Without those bigger brains where would we be? At
home, in the cave. Hunting for wild boar. Cooking our sustenance.
Eating it. Sleeping. Hunting for females. Rearing your children.
Feeding them. Living, leaving be. Not messing with the world. Just
taking from it, but only what your desires call you to action for. You
go hungry sometimes. Sometimes you starve. Sometimes you eat well, you
swim in a lake. There is no tommorrow.
But the brains got out of hand. Placed a gridlock on the world. First
it was trees, mountains. You worshipped them. You feared the night. The
world was neither flat or round, it just was. But there was something
higher. You gave thanks to that something. Sacrificed for it, sang to
it. Loved it, feared it. Sometimes it grew cold for days on end. Snow
fell and your home was transformed. Food was scarce. You wondered why.
Then it grew warm again and you were just happy the endless darkness
and scarcity was over. Once again you could live as your desires
dictated. But the remembrance stayed with you: over and over the dark
times would return, and you were forced to retreat. Still the hope and
the awarness of the higher force kept you going. You worshipped
all.
The brains gradually rearranged themselves. How could you worship the
land and the sky if you could almost control them? You planted seeds
and then watched them grow. You ate well. Now the world was flat, and
the grid your mind imposed on the world grew more complex. You gave
your loves and your fears a name, and you made sure that you and
everyone spoke the name as often as possible. You built special
buildings where the name could be said with proper reverence, where the
songs to the name could be sung with graceful, delicate acoustics. The
songs and the togetherness forced your brains to work together. Heads
would bash against one another in bloody war unless the gridlock grew
further, encompassed more, wiped out argument. Argument enflamed your
soul. Made you grow angry and lash out. Sometimes the grids would get
entangled with each other. There was no way out. A bigger grid was
always needed or there would be no grid at all. No longer could you be
without a grid.
So the animals with the bigger brains formed themselves into
structures: people structures. And the people structures laid down
their brain gridlocks' onto the world. The words and the name found a
home on paper, inscribed on walls and taught in schools. In pictures
and words it was laid down and standardised so that there need be no
conflict between different brains' ways of imposing their being onto
the world.
"What are you thinking?" Asked Ike of Joe.
Joe stared at the wall across from his seat, where he sat trying to
project an image of calmness. It wasn't working. He rocked back and
forth, and he clasped and unclasped his hands together in erratic
rhythm.
"Joe." Ike called a little louder. Joe was brought out of his
stressful meditation and slowly turned his head to face Ike.
"Is this a bad trip?" he asked.
"I hope not. No, why should it be?"
"Why is my brain so much bigger than a cats' brain?"
"I don't know."
"There must be an answer."
"Must there?"
"The cats' so much happier than I am. It just sits around and sleeps
and eats and doesn't care about anything in the world. It doesn't even
know the world exists past its whiskers. I have to think and work and
never a moments rest."
"It's as it should be."
Joe sighed.
"Why aren't we laughing anymore?"
"There's nothing funny."
They stared at each other in sudden fear.

7.
I can see the world in its entirety, and it's not a pretty sight.
"It's out there." I pointed at the window. "All the people and all the
places and all the goings on, its all right outside."
Ike chuckled. "I know." He pondered. "It's always been there, since the
day you were born. It's been there around your family since your family
bloodline first got going."
That got me going. Bloodlines. The same blood pumping around so many
different bodies with so many different souls at so many different
times. Different people, yet related. Similar faces. Similar thoughts?
Similar genes. The same, yet constantly evolving social
circumstances.
Then my mind drifted back to the world outside. The result of centuries
and millennia of intermingling bloodlines and thought patterns, all
this time and circumstance and events boiled down to this single
instant in time at which I now sat in my friends living room, only just
now realising the fact.
"Whooa." I said, without realising it. Ike followed me to the same
place, showing the fact with a similar "whoaa" afew moments
later.
"But wait!" I thought loudly. Not just a single instant, the instant
was constantly moving. It already had moved in the seconds just passed.
All the activity. Now my mind went to this. All the people. Energetic.
Lethargic. Sleeping. Dancing. Working. All the people, moving in their
own way, right now. Some people deluded, others enlightened, some
happy, some in love, some suicidal. Some on LSD.
On LSD, like me. Now there's a thought. These people, and only these
people, were the ones with the true grasp on reality. And there could
be some others, right now, with that grasp. But what were they
thinking?
I had to know; yet it was impossible.
What are they thinking in their grasp of reality that they must have
now? What are they thinking?
Then the next thought, like the ticking of a clock, came to me.
Ike.

8.
The shadows were beginning to fall, their slanting curves growing
insidiously as the evening wore on. The waves grew too, but the
darkness obscured their ferocity. All that could be registered were the
scraping and thrashing sounds of the angry waters, their roar growing
with the same darkly sinister speed of the shadows.
My legs carried me along the orange lit promenade, leaning this way and
that, erratic, stumbling. I was in a hurry. Whilst my body was
propelling itself along the wide stretch, angry waves to one side,
growling cars to the other, my mind was somewhere else.
Your life is nothing and finally you've realised it. That's the only
way I can tell it. Like the thunder all around me I felt this fact. As
the ferocious shaking of my bones. As an electric shock from a high
volume speaker system. I knew it.
My legs carried me away with this glory of knowledge, as one is swept
by the tide roaring out from the shattered dam. I heard noise, heard
music. The laughter of humanity. Glasses chinking together, breaths
gasped and spoken into my cold and empty night. I followed the beacon
and could feel the curiosity surging and overwhelming, threatening to
kill the cat. Icarus flying up to his midday sun. The door approached
me. Swinging lightbulbs flashed at me through the stained glass
frontispiece. Thrown and broken on the jagged shapes, strong colours of
the spectrum filled my eyes.
"Where is everyone?" I shouted. "Ike!"
I had forbid myself his knowledge, and now I was paying the price. I
had seen the other side, the shared ecstasy and terror that was the LSD
truth. Run scared, I had run scared. There had been another right
beside me but the vision of who and what he was, who and what we all
were, had blinded me into an existential panic. Then I ran, literally
ran for it, to experience the world of real people with their real
fantasies and dreams playing out in the here and now. Laughing their
way to oblivion, but I wanted to see it in action, the world without
the perspective from no-where and everywhere. What must Ike have
thought as I bolted out of his door?
Where to from the core, the nascent womb that had been erected? Where
do I go? Too big a question, so my legs decided for me and took
over.
Where am I going, in the fullness of realisation, where am I
going?
Looking, listening, I remembered the sounds all around me. It was dark
and late at night and my legs were running full speed across the silver
sheath of the sea front. The world was in harmony, but then the voices
of the minds I had come to seek once again beckoned. I heard the pub
with its spread hive, its pulsating fog of clouds, mind-clouds, each
cloud intermingling and mixing with others, mixing until the different
shades were indistinguishable. I heard the noises and saw the light
from this place, my ears and eyes pulled with the trails of beckoning
experience.
My legs responded to the new weather in my mind, and soon the door was
fast approaching me.

9.
Joe Blunton spent the next hour sipping beer insidiously. He sat
amongst the laughter and clattering noise of the bar, noticing
everything, saying nothing. He glanced occasionally at the football
match on the large T.V. screen, an insipid lack of communication with
his fellow human beings. He hardly knew it, but his team was playing.
Infact, it was everyones team where he lived, and they were winning. As
the first goal went in the entire establishment erupted into an
overwhelming fire of glorious celebration. Joe Blunton stared at the
way the players' legs moved around the large green rectangle and
gloried in the magnificent complexity/simplicity of the game.
Ike was patrolling the streets, possessed of infinitly greater
happiness than Joe, and with effortless dedication searching for his
friend. He enjoyed his new grip on reality and found a cause in every
corner of the town; he was a missionary with a burning desire to decode
the truth for everyone amongst the urban existence who had long ago
lost their way amid the mindless, endless media sprawl of modernity. He
was on fire, but his one final, golden mission which he knew would
leave his spirit worse than dead if it was not completed, was to find
Joe and bring him over to the light side, the good side of
illumination. He was surfing on the icy waters of reality, atop of the
ocean of meaningless answers, and he had to bring that other who also
flew with the LSD spirit by his side. Physically, intellectually and
spiritually, he needed Joe as a disciple and friend and equal for his
Acid vision.
Still, he was possessed of much strength in his overwhelming happiness
of spiritual truth, and he was content to walk the streets all night,
talking to any and all he met, as part of the general plan to find
Joe.
All of a sudden, Joe grew tired of the feet and the flying little
white ball and all the endless screaming and shouting. What are they
all getting so worked up about? He saw on their faces such brilliant
satisfaction; the violent pleasure in their singing filled all the
space around him. It was in the air, in his lungs. He breathed in
deeply to see if he could taste it, assimilate and feel the joy that
beckoned to everyone else, but to no avail.
It began to trouble him. The other team scored, and suddenly everyone
was unhappy. Abuse was shouted. Why? Thought Joe. What's so important
about it? He found his eyes couldn't stop moving, from place to place,
face to face in the dusky beer smelling den. He tried to refocus,
staring once again at the screen, but he could no longer glean anything
from it. It was as if where once he had found fascinating movement,
little legs scurrying here and there, now there was just a painful,
scary abyss. It had so much meaning for all those around him, yet he
only saw a darkness, and he feared it.
I've got to get out of here, he thought to himself.
He didn't want to be seen, yet now he was struck by the thought that
everyone could be looking at him. But no, he was just being paranoid.
All these people are fixated on their terrible game.
Or was it just paranoia? In the corner of his eye he knew, no, he felt,
that someone could see him for what he was. He moved his head slowly to
glimpse at the people around and sure enough an old man sat at the bar
adjacent to him, his purple little eyes bleakly addressing him.
Joe stared back, but the old man did not wither. The mysteries of time
and age were in his eyes, and in Joe he had found a piece of truth. Joe
tried not to look back, but couldn't help be drawn. It was as if the
old man was giving him a death sentence, a reason to be clear about
mortality. A fatal view of everything as seen by one who nears the
end.
Ike, thought Joe. Where the hell are you?

10.
The Great Conversation.
I call it The Great Conversation. There's only one in a lifetime, only
once does it all appear clear between the two souls of flight. Only
once can the black night come alive for all the stars shining in the
endless doom of a sky so bright. Only once.
For Joe and Ike it was that night. There was no stone left unturned
that did not fill them both with the gluttony of forgotton ages. There
was nothing on earth or in the starry heavens that did not enter their
minds and slot into the Great Picture of the universe like the pieces
of a gigantic, sublime, profound jigsaw puzzle. They had the solution,
they had found the last piece and put it into place a thousand times
over, a thousand times better. They ruled the world as Kings of the
Mystic Treasures, with a sceptre that was their minds and their burning
eyes filling the empty spaces around them with the rainbow of Divine
translucence. They were on fire.
The empty 4am roads were their world, and they drove them as if they
were big black BMW??s.

11.
At some time in the dawning morning, the conversation and the
marvellous spilling soul fire drew to a natural close. Energy was
spent, satisfaction was had, sleep was needed.
Joe went home and slept, feeling empty but with a small inner
happiness, knowing that things had changed greatly in his life. Things
must change greatly, he thought, because now I have experienced
knowledge.
In the years that followed, Ike and Joe grew apart. Joe followed his
path to knowledge, the path that was given first frightening but then
golden reality during that night. Ike was not the same, but then who
ever is.
Joe and Ike eventually suffered a sad but inevitable schism, which is
not the subject of this tale. Suffice to say they were very different
people. But neither of them forgot that evening, and the happy times
that pervaded that time. Theirs was a love of friendship, and
awakening.
So now I sit in the giant library, and I must say goodbye. Be careful
if you take LSD, it never does what you think it will. But if you do
decide to find out what??s on the other side of the looking glass, I
recommend taking a couple of warm fuzzy shields with you to keep you
company before you discover how wonderful love is.
Don??t ever forget, you are what you are, and whatever will be, will
be.