The Archive of Stanley Messenger
The Intraterrestrials
A Foretaste of the New World
BOOK 3
"Greenery"
Dialogue 1
M Who’s actually driving then?
R Well, I’m happy to do the dull part, and I know the way out of London. A friend showed me a very snazzy way straight from Fiona’s through West End Lane and then parallel to the Edgware Road almost as far as the beginning of the M1 motorway. Cuts out all the main road traffic from central London.
L But which way do we go after we leave the boring part? I shall keep my eyes shut through all that. Do we go on the motorway? I love motorways.
J You don’t have to drive on them. You just get wafted along like a fairy on a roundabout.
L Roundabouts don’t have fairies, silly. They have horses. You mean birthday-cakes.
J Whoever saw a birthday-cake zipping along a motorway with a fairy on it? You’re getting your metaphors all mixed up.
R Love’s making him slightly drunk all the time these days.
M If you two don’t stop assing around we’ll never get started. I’ve got masses of food, as well as thermoses and fizzy drinks in this hamper, which I’ve never used since I left college, but which comes in jolly useful now.
R Fiona, you’re to sit at the back in the middle because you don’t drive. The rest can take turns next to me. Melanie, you won’t want to drive on the motorway, will you?
M No, let me start when we get to the Oxford bypass.
L Will somebody please explain to me which way we’re going? I’ve never been to Herefordshire in my life. Where is Garway?
J Fiona and I have been there lot’s of times, haven’t we, love? It’s really a very simple route although the place itself is so remote.
L We’d got as far as the beginning of the M1. Do we go up that first.
J No we don’t. Shut up Lucia a minute. What we do is turn left onto the North Circular Road and go west along there for two or three miles until we reach the junction with M40, the motorway which goes to Oxford. It’s nicer than the M1, Lucia, better driving surface, and not bad countryside once you’re through the suburbs.
R Yes, it goes over the Chilterns at High Wycombe and then down into the flat land south of Oxford.
J When you get to the A40 it’s sign posted to Cheltenham, and I’ll drive then, shall I, Richard? It’s a bit complicated there. You don’t actually go through Cheltenham, you have to fork left and go south of it till you reach the Gloucester ring-road. Which circles round Gloucester on the north side. You get a good view of the cathedral. Then the road crosses the River Severn and on you go, still on the A40 towards Ross-on-Wye.
M I’d like to take over there, may I, Richard? The road goes straight towards the Forest of Dean which you see ahead of you most of the way.
J Yes, with May Hill high up on the right, the highest part of the Forest with its crown of beech trees. On a clear day you can see it from twenty-five miles away right down near Bristol.
M You actually drive to within a mile of the top, invisible by then. The road snakes up through the trees and out onto the higher ground for the last few miles down into Ross. Let’s keep the food for late afternoon in Garway, and I suggest we stop for lunch in Ross itself. There’’ a nice pub down by the river with swans and everything.
L Sounds terrific. Let’s get going then. Have we got all our things? Fiona, where are we actually staying?
F I’ve booked us in at a very nice motel called the Priory at a village called Skenfrith. It’s on the road towards Abergavenny. I’d better sit in front after Ross-on-Wye and show Melanie the turning. You go out of Ross on the Hereford road for a couple of miles and then fork left. Skenfrith is actually on the Welsh border on the River Monnow. It has an old ruined castle which you can see from the hotel.
L That must have been part of the Welsh Marches then, was it, where we defended ourselves from the forays of the wicked Welsh?
F You have it exactly. A narrow lane runs along the river bank into England, and climbs up towards Garway, which is in England, but only just.
L And the Templar church?
F That’s concealed in a fold of the hills higher up. You get to my house before that. It’s set back in the trees between Lower Town, the farm where the lane leaves the River Monnow, and a beautiful house called Higher Town on the lane itself, dominating the valley. Higher up still on the right is the church, and just below it a farm in which there is a massive domed dovecot which belonged to the Templars. I’ll show you on the map when we get in the car.
R Are you two ready; we’ve packed the car.
F You go down then, Lucia dear, while I lock up. Minou, puss, be good while we’re away. Maisie will come in and feed you. Off we go then.
*****
Dialogue 2
F This is the most sheltered spot in the whole garden, though there are also some lovely nooks lower down. As you can see, parts of the garden are quite steep. The aunts used to keep quite a lot of it mown, but none of the recent tenants took much interest. This last old couple have let most of it run completely wild.
M They seem to have kept the part round the house quite nice.
F Yes, and they got a man in from the village to do a little, but he was getting on a bit, and was rather irregular.
L I like the feeling of the house itself very much. That’s a lovely big room at the front with the bay-window.
F Yes, and of course it gets the afternoon sun at this time of year. That’s where the aunts liked to sit and sew and read. And it still has the original fireplace with the inglenooks. The last people didn’t use it, they had an electric bar fire in the hearth, but I don’t think they could afford to have that on all the time.
L Gosh, it must have been jolly cold in the winter.
F I don’t think they have been managing all that well the last couple of years. I felt bad about it, but I couldn’t afford to put central heating in. I think they spent a lot of time in the bedroom.
R There’s a lot to talk about if we do decide to take it on, but I really feel central heating would be a must. Not just because of the front living room, the whole house feels a bit damp.
F I haven’t had it thoroughly looked at since when the tenants before this last couple moved in. That makes it about nine years ago. At that time it was structurally perfectly sound. But I notice the gutters look pretty choked round the back, and there are some lines of staining down the walls which weren’t there last time I came. Of course the trees don’t get any smaller, but there are no serious encroachments and I’m very reluctant to cut anything down.
M It really is wonderfully protected and quite isolated from neighbours, and yet you feel a great sense of space: that lovely stretch of sky beyond the river.
F Yes, we get very little wind down here, and as you say, we are hardly aware of the neighbours. In the winter you can see a lot more of the river. Look, there’s a pair of swans there now. You can see quite a bit going on at Lower Town Farm when the trees are bare, but it’s more or less hidden now.
R What about up the hill?
F You can see the chimneys of Upper Town from one bedroom upstairs and a bit of the garden but nothing else. It’s over five hundred years away.
R Do you think we’d disturb them if we came regularly?
F They’d have to be right at the bottom of their garden to see our garden at all, and probably nothing of the house except chimneys. As for sound, it’s too far away. I don’t believe the old couple knew the neighbours at all.
L Hello, love, where have you been?
J Up to the village. I caught a glimpse of the church but I didn’t go in. I thought it would be nice to wait till we went together. It looks much the same, Fiona. I didn’t go far. I went round by the road.
F It’s a very scattered village. What there is of a centre is further up, beyond the church. We’ll drive round later. What do you think, shall we have our picnic now, or would you like to walk up to the church first?
M I vote for eating now while it’s still sunny out here. I think this is a delightful spot, Fiona. I would really look forward to tackling some of this garden if we do manage to take it on.
F This old picnic table has been here since I was a child. It was the aunts’ favourite spot. They could see each other if one was indoors and the other out here. Violet used to tap on the window and cup her ears if Mary was wanted on the phone.
L Was Mary the naturalist one?
F Oh you remember that! Yes, this was where she used to teach me bird-song and point out the butterflies.
L I’ve seen several while we’ve been sitting here. I know nothing at all about them. I’ve really hardly ever been in the country in my life. Like many town people I find it a bit frightening. Too much space. Look there’s a butterfly now.
F Yes, that’s a Brimstone. It’s the only pale yellow one you’re likely to see. You’ll know at least one butterfly now, won’t you?
L Oh Fiona! I do hope we can pull this off. Melanie, isn’t this a wonderful place! Do you like it as much as I do?
M Darling, I think it is a real dream place.
J It reminds me of Delius’ "First Cuckoo in Spring". Where are we? May. We might hear one.
L Joe, let’s explore the garden.
M Have your tea first, sweetheart. Look, I’ve laid all the things out. There’s even a tablecloth.
L What scrummy biscuits. Where did you get them?
M Waitrose. Nothing particularly new age about them. But they are good. Do you want tea? Or there’s some orange drink.
L Tea for me please, and are those egg sandwiches?
M They are. Fiona?
F Please, I’d love an egg sandwich. You have done us well, Melanie.
M Help yourself, Richard. I’m going in to look round the house again if I may, Fiona. I want to imagine what we could do with all the rooms.
F Help yourself dear. I think I’ll sit here a bit.
L Come on, Joe. Drink up. Race you to the bottom. Bring your sandwich.
*****
F Well Richard, what do you think? Have you been able to talk to everybody yet?
R Everybody but Lucia, though Melanie and she have been talking things over.
F How does it seem?
R Tight, but possible I should say at first glance. Nobody’s earning except me and Joe, and we only just get by, so there’s no question of us buying it off you with a mortgage. My suggestion would be to form a charitable trust with the five of us as trustees. Everybody could then pay into that according to their own means and commitment. None of us could benefit personally, but we could recruit interested I.T. inquirers as associates or friends or whatever and build up a maintenance and expenses fund like that.
F You have to make out a pretty sound case for that don’t you, if you are to avoid charges of tax-avoidance?
R The best bet always is to form an educational trust. If we organise seminars and conferences, and make ourselves a proper brochure of introductory courses on our aims and methods, I think it would be perfectly acceptable as a non-profitable trust.
F We’ve spoken so much of the need to avoid the organisational frameworks which have dogged movements of this kind in the past. Don’t you think we are in real danger of sliding down the same slippery slope as they all do, finding ourselves tied hand and foot to our own framework, however minimal we try to keep it?
R Yes, I do think that is a real danger. I don’t think there is any formula, given the nature of society and its rules, which can of itself avoid these pitfalls. But I also think we are capable of being conscious enough to dissociate ourselves from them. I think Melanie will agree that much will depend on names, on what we call such a trust. We don’t have to call it the I.T. trust, for instance. We can give it a neutral name and support each other in treating it as a facility we all have, we who happen to be associated as I.T. school interpreters. That would only be double talk if we allow it to be so.
F yes, I see what you mean. It would mean being very conscious of what we are doing, and continually reminding each other to keep everything in the work free and mobile.
R I haven’t thought too much about it yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it led us in the end to developing quite original and even revolutionary ideas about money and how we relate to it.
F I respond to that very strongly, Richard. I’ve never felt very happy about personally owning this place, for instance. But nor have I felt happy about anyone else owning it, not even a congenial little group like ours. Somehow I think we have to have the courage to abandon the whole notion of ownership altogether. But it’s extremely difficult in practice to find a way of doing that. Trusteeship is not an ideal solution, but it may be a provisional necessity as a transitional stage of the process.
R The big question for me would be, if one gives up all claim to what one is legally deemed to own, then who or what does one relinquish that claim to, if you’ll excuse the grammar!
F I think that’s something we will all at some stage need to discuss. Here come the others. They look quite shy, don’t they?
R Have you two been studying the birds and the bees?
L Not what you mean by that, you dirty old man. But yes, in the literal sense, we have. But not a metaphorical one. Real birds and butterflies. Joe doesn’t know about bees, do you love?
J Only that they make honey and sting you.
F Not if you’re careful and tell them secrets. The aunts had a row of beehives in the old days.
L Yes, we saw where they must have stood, next to the old shed.
F Oh, the remains are still there, are they?
J It would be good to restore them. The hedges there are full of honeysuckle. It smells wonderful.
F What birds did you hear? Joe’s wonderful on bird-song.
J There’s a small stand of spruce down there, so of course we heard goldcrests and I think a coal-tit. And there was either a marsh or a willow-tit; I still muddle them.
L Eessli-eessli-eessli-eessli-itchikoo.
R What the hell’s that supposed to mean?
L Joe says it’s what goldcrests say.
J She’s a quick learner. A real country lass she’ll turn out to be.
L y Mayfair friends will turn up their noses and say I smell of cow-dung.
R So you will if you start rolling in the hay.
L (Chucking cushion) That’s quite enough from you Richard. You’ve got a one-track mind. As far as you’re concerned I’m a fairy on a carousel in the middle of a birthday cake. And that reminds me, it’s my birthday tomorrow and you’re all invited to my birthday cake at the Priory Hotel, Skenfrith at eleven tomorrow morning! Being a girl of some forethought I got Joe to help me decorate the cake yesterday, and we brought it with us. Isn’t that a nice surprise for you all!
R Did you hear that Melanie? It’s Lucia’s birthday tomorrow and we’re all invited.
M Yes I know. She’s thirty-three. It’s my favourite age.
F We’ve cleared up the things Melanie. I suggest we go up now and see the church. No, not that way Richard. The house has its own footpath up the back through the trees. It’s quite a lot shorter than down the drive. Leave the basket here; we shall come back this way.
L There’s another Brimstone. Oh, and what’s that one? What a lovely colour.
J That’s an Orange Tip. There’s a little stream on the right a bit further into the wood where there are usually Lady’s Smock flowers. That’s where they lay their eggs. You go ahead. The path’s a bit narrow here. That’s a Speckled Wood, look.
L Where?
J That brown one flying up into the bushes. And there’s its mate.
F Oh look at them! Round and round like a paper windmill up and up over the bushes.
J Yes, that’s their mating dance.
L Do all butterflies do that?
J Yes, but not so often where you can see them. There’s the Cuckoo Flower patch.
L I thought you said Lady’s Smock
J Yes, that’s the country name for it. Don’t get your feet wet. I’ll see if I can find you an Orange Tip egg. Here we are, look.
L Where? Oh, that tiny little orange thing? Is that a butterfly egg? It’s minute. Look, Fiona!
F This really takes me back. This is the very spot where Aunt Mary showed me my first Orange Tip egg, fifty years ago!
J They’ve probably been laying eggs by this stream for tens of thousands of years.
R I imagine the stream itself has changed its course several times over that period. But you’ve made the point. Time scales defeat human imagination. And we move in and out of them with the impermanence of fire-flies.
M We may well, all of us, have walked up this path before in other personalities at other times of history.
F You can see the church now, and the dovecote look, Lucia, over on the left. Perhaps we’ve seen them before too. Coming this way you get to see the church from below. When the Templars built it the nave was round like a mosque. It must have looked magnificent from here. The remains of the foundations of that were only discovered in 1927. The first thing you come to from this side is the chancel; the circular nave would have towered above and behind it. And behind again a little to the right was the separate tower, massive, and more like a castle than a church tower, linked to the church by a short corridor. It houses the bells, but it was also a fortress, a refuge from Welsh raiders from over there across the river.
L What happened to them, the Knights Templar? They sound formidable.
F They were formidable. They were the most disciplined, the most able, the most powerful element at the heart of the Christian church, and in the end the church turned on them. They thought they had made themselves impregnable. Not only the church, but the secular world as well had allowed itself to become almost totally dependent on them. So they were taken by surprise.
L How did it happen?
F Well, like so much in the world today, dependence and envy were an unstable combination. The King of France at the beginning of the fourteenth century was Phillippe le Bel, a handsome profligate, trendy and a big spender. The big trend of the time was the crusades. Rome had this high-flying illusion about capturing Jerusalem for the church.
R That’s it. Jerusalem, the golden city, the heart of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, the Mecca of Christian romanticism. But of course in secular terms it was an illusion. The Judaeo-Christian temple at the heart of Jerusalem was, in secular terms, a running sore at the core of the real secular and religious power of the middle east, Islam, just as the state of Israel is today. For the religious world the crusades were a pious aspiration, a projection of spiritual longings onto the physical world. But politically they were equally a godsend, military adventures tailor-made to take peoples’ minds off the poverty and misery at home. The difference was that this time the French King had disastrously overspent. And it was the Templars who had all the lolly. They were the first bankers in the modern sense. In fact it was they who invented banking. Their knowledge of gold had mystical and occult roots as well as technical competence. But they had two fatal weaknesses. One was that, although they controlled the wealth, they didn’t control the military. The second was self-indulgence, slipping over into corruption. Of course the secular powers and the church itself were also corrupt. But when corruption fights corruption the side with the military edge wins. By 1308 the Templar moneylenders in France had squeezed the King of France too hard. As for the Pope, well the church had always been scared of genuine psychic and spiritual power in its midst. It tolerated what it saw as heresy in the Templars only because, like the king, the church depended on them for money. But the goose that laid the golden egg had got fat and lazy. When Phillippe unexpectedly struck, the church supported him. The night of the long knives was almost wholly successful. The Templars were arrested, tortured, condemned and burnt in hundreds, thousands even.
L Did none escape?
R Oh yes. And we’re standing at this moment beside what became one of their important refuges. Several hundred fled across the channel. They had an established safe-route to their strongholds in England. It was at Shoreham in Sussex, where there was a chapel on the beach, now buried under the stony foreshore. And a few miles inland at Shipley was one of their principal churches. The river Arun at Shoreham was navigable in those days right up to Shipley. There are old pictures of their boats tied up next to the bridge, which had buildings on it like those on the old London Bridge.
M So the secular powers in Britain didn’t turn on them, nor did the church apparently.
R No. The old antagonisms between Britain and France worked to their benefit once the tide had turned against them. But they were safer still in Scotland. Many of them drifted north and went underground. Their skills and occult knowledge didn’t desert the survivors under persecution, in fact they were probably strengthened. But their place in open society was lost for ever. For another two centuries they remained as part of the church in Britain. But when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries they went underground altogether. The very notion of secret societies, the Brotherhood, the Illuminati, owes its inception to them. It still has its partly visible fact in Scottish Cult Masonry. But the guts and strength of their substance was invisible and secret, and still is.
F Thank you, Richard. That was a remarkable and very appropriate summary of what the Templars are about. I love your mini-lectures, dear, just what we need before going into one of their sanctuaries. This is the private gate into the churchyard, now mainly used by the farm. And look, this is their sacred spring, just inside the gate here. I’ve brought a cup so that we can taste the water.
M This must have been a pagan site even earlier.
F I don’t know, but there is certainly said to have been a Saxon church before the Templars’ Norman one. There is no trace of that now. They were often built on sites already regarded as sacred. If you come round this side you can see the foundations of the round nave protruding beyond the more modern square one. And do you see the crosses incised into the wall? Equal armed crosses in different forms are characteristic of movements with pre-christian roots. The christian cross, representative of the crucifixion, is a later development. Look, it has several different modifications with different emphases in the meaning.
J I think they must have carved them into the wall as part of the consecration of the building to the Templar Order. That last one with the double points is characteristic of the Knights Hospitallers who took over their lands and properties after the suppression. The Knights of St John were part of the same process, so that cross also survives in the St John Ambulance Brigade.
F Here’s the way into the connecting passage, look. We’re standing under the tower, which is now just a belfry.
L So this is where they took refuge from the wild Welsh!
F They’ve closed the door off into the church. You have to use the main door from outside. They don’t keep it locked, see?
R You sounded Welsh when you said that!
F I spoke a bit of Welsh as a child. Dwy ddim yn gallu siarad Cymraeg yn nawr.
M What does that mean?
F I don’t speak Welsh now, or only a few phrases. A lot of the people round here are bi-lingual.
M My goodness, it’s a massive space. And that huge archway at the end, that’s typical Norman isn’t it?
F Yes, the zig-zag pattern in a round arch is typical. Archaeologists call it dog-tooth. As you see they’ve curtained off the choir now, and only hold services in the nave here. Modern small congregations would be lost in the space of the whole church.
L Can we go through?
F Indeed we can. The curtain gives a feeling of privacy to this inner part. A few years ago they uncovered this ancient altar-stone and mounted it on a new plinth. See the consecration crosses at the four corners?
J And another in the middle.
L One each.
M And this side chapel?
F Yes, the Templars added that a bit later. This was the heart of their world. They probably curtained it off from the rest of the church. It had this separate entrance from the outside as well, with sacred symbols over the door inside. This was where new members of the order were initiated.
L Let’s make a circle of chairs and sit down.
M We can form a pentagram.
*****
L The Templars are here.
M We are they.
L They’re dressed in white, with red crosses at the breast. They’re standing behind us.
M Meruel is with us. Meruel is enjoining us to separate ourselves from too great an identification with our Templar selves. We have come here to redeem our Templar karma, to bring the secret power into the open. Meruel wants to speak to us through Fiona again, but not exclusively. We are all at the same time our Templar selves, but we have grown beyond them. We have other functions now.
*****
F "Friends and Brethren! There is no Grand Master now! No one leads you. The CHRIST in your heart does not lead. The CHRIST becomes. You become in CHRIST. You become as CHRIST. You become CHRIST. The more you become CHRIST, the more you become each other. The less different you are, the more distinct you become. The CHRIST is unique in Becoming, so each of you is unique in your Becoming. CHRIST in You! Fiona, do not lead them. Become them, that they may become each other. Who are they, Melanie?"
M I know their names, but I do not name them. They name themselves, and I see the Names and speak them. In the Light they are indistinguishable. In the Light they are nameless. I, Melanie, am in the Dark. I see their Names in the Dark. In their Names they are distinct. What do you see, Lucia?
L I see what I illuminate. When I see each of you I become you. Then when I feel my ‘presence’ I do not leave my body. In the Light we are invisible. In the Dark we have Names. I illuminate the Names, so that we can see each other. But then we become too distinct, too complete. How do you liberate us, Joe?
J I circle the Earth. I save each of us from completion in the nick of time. Just as the finishing touch is about to be made in our identity. I have moved on. Identity is saved by Equilibrium. What is coming into Being is also coming into Balance. At each moment, the Monster of Completion is about to seize the World, and lo! It has moved on. What have you learned, Richard?
R I have learned that the edifice of knowledge is never complete. Another brick is added to the building, and there, the perspective has altered. Another question remains. Astonishment turns to wonder. Wonder evokes Reverence. Reverence develops Respect for Law. Respect for Law reveals acceptance of Change. Change arouses compassion for Loss. And there Love is born. Love of Truth.
F "And so", says Meruel, "we return to the starting point, for Love is CHRIST in the heart. Friends and Brethren! This is your latest Initiation. Initiation is never complete. It is no accident that Fiona was linked to this place in childhood. She could bring you back here to pass through the next doorway on your path together. You are no longer Templars. We, your Templar selves, release you. May your Intraterrestrial vision redeem the errors which, as your Templar selves, you made in the past. Go with our blessing. CHRIST in you!
*****
F And there! Meruel is gone.
L I don’t really understand who Meruel is. Was that Meruel speaking in all of us just now, or was it simply our own higher selves?
J (In cod-Irish). Well now, Lucia mavourneen, it’s all the same difference, isn’t it now?
L (Similar) Well, the devil take you, yes, and so it is!
M If we’re all going to start larking about we’d better go out in the sunshine. I don’t know about you but I’m getting jolly cold in here.
F Did you know that in all Temple ceremonies it was someone’s place to do a ceremonial job of sweeping up and closing the door as the participants left? He was called the Tyler.
R Well I think perhaps that’s my job. Clear out everybody. Party’s over! I ought to have a bunch of keys to rattle.
M I wonder how long it is since the last initiation happened in here.
F Not so long as we think perhaps. I know there is a group who think of themselves as latter-day Templars, but whether they really know what they are doing I’ve no idea. Some groups of that sort are little more than literary antiquarians going through the motions.
R A lot of freemasons are like that too these days. Well, as we’re the last, Fiona, I will ceremonially usher you through this handsome red curtain, so, close it behind us, so, and mark it with my finger with a Templar cross… so!
F There’ll come a time when that little formality will no longer be symbolic but taking place in a quite different reality. I don’t think it’ll be long now.
*****
F Have they gone round the back again? Oh no, they’re down by the main gate I expect Joe’s showing them the long way round by the road. I’d rather like to drink that spring water again, wouldn’t you?
R Yes, I would.
*****
R Oh, Fiona, look There’s a butterfly settled on the wet stone. Oh, there are two of them. There, one’s flown off. I thought they were white, but they’re blue. How astonishing, I didn’t know butterflies drank like that. What a pity Joe and Lucia didn’t see them.
F As far as I know that’s the only British species which regularly goes to streams like that. They’re Holly Blues. In very dry seasons I’ve seena number of species trying to get a bit of moisture from damp patches on paths.
R This water’s all right to drink, isn’t it? Not just for butterflies!
F It should be all right. There is a stream running through, but it seems to be fed by an additional spring out of the ground under here.
R It tastes jolly good. Are we going back the way we came?
F I’d rather follow the others. I haven’t seen the lane this time. You know, after today I’d really be very surprised if we didn’t manage to pull off this scheme of ours.
R I feel the same. The temptation will be to spend too much time here and neglect London, where the real work is.
F I’m feeling the work as having the shape of a Templar cross, equal-armed. This is the vertical dimension of the cross, the depth and the height. We shall come here to deepen and strengthen the impulse and at the same time to rise to the heights.
R And then London as the horizontal dimensions where the work spreads. You know, I was beginning to feel a bit arid up there. It’s two or three weeks since a new enquirer came to me and Joe. We needed this shot in the arm. How has it been with you?
F Well, there is a little group of two, possibly three women who’ve been coming to me on Fridays for some time now. Recently one of them seems to have made a contact of her own. I’m sure this visit will brighten things up quite a lot. Let’s wait and see how the others feel. We’ll go and register at the hotel and see if there is a quiet lounge where we can have some tea. I’ve got a bit of a stiff ankle. I’ll be glad of your arm down the hill. I feel a bit of an old lady today.
R My pleasure, madame.
*****
Dialogue 3
F Do you like your room, you two?
M We’re real cosy, aren’t we Lucia?
L We can see the castle and the bridge over the river.
F I think all the rooms at the front have a glimpse of those. What about you two; everything you need?
R Very snug. Joe and I are used to sharing on occasional business jaunts. But they’re usually a lot rougher than this.
J Yes, it’s really quite posh, isn’t it? Thank you very much indeed, Fiona. A very generous gesture.
F I’m sorry I couldn’t have put you couples together. You don’t actually have to produce a marriage license, but it’s better to be on the safe side.
L Especially in Wales, I understand.
J We’re only just in Wales. The border’s only a few hundred yards away.
R There is a strong non-conformist colour in Wales, but it’s only relatively greater than in parts of England. I think it’s more an individual matter. I rather like an old-fashioned place sometimes.
F Well, so do I, and I chose this place for that reason. I’ve stayed here several times before. In fact I’ve been in this particular room before, and I always ask for it if it’s free. Look, I have a suggestion, Lucia dear. I don’t know how you’d feel, but would you mind very much if we cut your birthday cake this evening instead of tomorrow? I know it’s not your proper birthday, but we’ve got a long drive tomorrow and I’d really like to make an early start. What do you think?
L I honestly don’t mind at all, in fact I have a better idea. Why don’t I fetch it now. We can have it in that nice lounge I saw as we came in. We don’t have to make a big palaver of it, and cake is always nicer at tea-time, don’t you think? I know you’re longing for a lie-down, Fiona, and that’ll make us cut things short. What do you say?
J Yes, if we waited till this evening I think we’d all be tired. I certainly plan to have an early night.
F I think that’s a better idea still.
M Fiona, love, while Lucia gets the cake and orders the tea, why don’t we go to your room and I’ll give you a bit of healing on that ankle. I can see it’s a bit swollen from here.
F Couldn’t you do it in the lounge, then I won’t have to come down again?
M OK you go to the lounge and find a comfortable chair, and I’ll go and fetch the massage-oil. See you in a minute.
*****
R We seem to have got it to ourselves. Are we the only guests, then?
F I don’t think there are many. I saw one other couple just now but I think they went out. Most people probably only appear at dinner.
J Oh, my dear, that ankle’s really quite swollen, isn’t it. You shouldn’t have walked all that way down to the house again. Richard could easily have fetched the car.
F No, I wanted to see the lane again. The hedges with the hawthorn and the honeysuckle are so lovely there. Melanie’s going to give me a healing and then I’ll go up and lie down. This is an old trouble of mine and it only needs a couple of hours rest.
L Here we are. Joe, can you help me move that round table into the middle here.
R Joe and I will do it. You unwrap the cake.Oh, here comes the tea.
M Rosemary and hypericum which gives it the pink colour and is very healing, especially for muscular soreness. But it’s good with joints as well I find. Oh Lucia, that’s a beautiful cake. Did you ice it yourself?
L It made the cake and Joe iced it. Look, he did a pentagram with our five initials. We didn’t want to obscure it all with candles, so we had just one candle and a double three in the middle.
M
L 33 R
F J
J Have you spotted the other secret?
F Wait a minute M.R.J.F. and L.
J There are two little dots by the J and two more by the F.
F Meruel! Oh how clever, Joe! We ought to preserve that as our logo.
L Instead of which we’re going to eat it. Folks, I have a stipulation. Will you please not sing Happy Birthday to you! That damned tune is my pet aversion. It’s even worse than god save the queen. Somebody think of something else to sing.
(Melanie starts to hum "Santa Lucia", and the others recognise it and start to join in. Lucia cuts the cake and a couple of large tears drop onto it. Melanie starts gently to rub Fiona’s ankle. They go on humming quietly while Lucia hands the cake round).
*****
F That feels much better my dear. Thank you so much. If you could just hold it now for a little while that will be fine. Could you just reach in my bag for a little parcel? That’s it, thank you.
M I’ve got one too. Where did I put it?
R This is delicious Lucia. Did you make it? I like this sort of light sultana cake much better than those rich heavy shop ones.
L I made the cake and Joe made the icing.
J And we both iced it.
L Joe did the pentagram and the letters, being a professional in such matters. Oh, thank you Fiona. I wonder what this is. Oh and look, I’ve got a whole pile of things. You are a lovely lot. This is my best birthday ever and it hasn’t even started yet!
F Are you going to open them now, or shall I go up and lie down?
L Oh no do stay a moment. Now we’ve started my birthday we must do it properly.
M Perhaps with your new name you’ve got a new birthday as well.
L What an excellent idea. Perhaps everybody ought to have a new name when they get to Thirty Three. Am I going to have a whole year of new things?
M Well, strictly speaking it’s the thirty third year round Easter time that counts, and you’ve already had that, about the time you joined us.
F The death of Jesus, and the birth of CHRIST into the planet. It’s the maturing of that human and planetary event in each individual that makes it so powerful.
L Oh, look what Fiona’s given me! Garway church. Who took it?
J I did, some years ago. But I didn’t get it enlarged till now. I think it’s come out quite well, don’t you? I think it was about this time of year wasn’t it Fiona?
L Yes look, those are primroses, aren’t they, by the path? Thank you Fiona. I shall treasure this. I’m thinking where it can go in my room. It’s a present for this whole visit as well as my birthday.
R Open the others so that Fiona can go up.
L I can see I’ve got two books, so those bookshelves will be a little less cavernous. And what’s this little one?
J That’s mine.
L Another book. Magenta paper this time. Oh Richard, I had an idea you’d give me this. "The Celestine Prophecy". James Redfield. I’ve been looking forward to reading that. Thank you very much indeed, Richard.
R It’s a real activator of events, that book.
L I think they’re pretty activated already in this group, don’t you?
R I certainly do.
L I’m running out of emotions. I’ve got the vapours like a Victorian schoolgirl. I need smelling salts or something, plus a Japanese fan.
M Perhaps a dry Martini would do.
R Oh yes! Let’s have some drinks. I’ll go and see if the bar’s open.
L You open it sweetheart. I’m all fumbly.
J You’re so pretty today I can hardly bear it.
L Oh Joe, sweetheart, they’re absolutely beautiful! And they’re studs, not danglers, which I much prefer. I adore earrings.
M What dear little pentagrams, and sapphires in the middle. They’re beautiful Joe. Are they silver?
J White gold actually.
L I’ll take these sleepers out, and then you put them in for me.
R The bar is open. What’s everybody having?
F Nothing for me, Richard dear. I’ll be going up now.
M Can you manage dear?
F Thanks to you it feels a whole lot better. Look, I can waggle it.
M I should keep doing that from time to time. But don’t overdo it. Do you want an arm?
F No, I’m fine. I’ll go in the lift.
L Sleep well Fiona. And thank you for this whole lovely day.
F Bless you!
M Richard, if you don’t mind I’ll just have a soft one. A St Clements would do fine.
L I won’t have a Martini. Could you see if they’ve got a dry sherry Richard? A Tio Pepe if possible.
R Your usual, Joe?
J Please. There! Now you can be the fairy on your own birthday cake.
L Except that we’ve eaten it. We’ll make another when we get home. Joe, darling, I do love you so much. Joe, will you hold me? Can you hold me? I’m like bloody quicksilver. I run all over the place. You don’t deserve someone like me. You’re too nice. I’ll ruin you.
J I’m pretty solid, you know. What I’m afraid of is that I’m a bit too solid. We may turn out to be too far apart.
M If I may say so, I think you’re both underestimating yourselves. Let your Auntie Melanie wag her finger at you for a moment. You’ve no idea, either of you how rapidly you’re changing. Part of you perhaps is thinking you may be all set for a typical Hollywood romantic tragedy. Beautiful girl in need of stability tempts ageing man to seek lost youth, and all that guff. Phooey! This is one of the most important things that is happening to people in this new dawn. Hollywood is over, my little chicks. Finished! The whole Hollywood scenario is part of history, a faded picture book of the twentieth century. Lucia, you will not be able to lead the stick-in-the-mud Joe astray, because that stick-in-the-mud, romantic, fantasising part of him, the part of him that adores your goddess image, is no longer where his energies are centred! You’re both leaving your New World selves out of account.
And you, Lucia! Your picture of yourself as an irresistible femme fatale no longer makes sense to you. You no longer need that false security to establish your self-image. This is not just another victim in your long line of ego-boosting males. This is your friend Joe, who sees the goddess, but also likes you, and resonates to the ‘presence’ the Intraterrestrial who inhabits the goddess image. In the first place, you Lucia no longer need that sort of projected stability. And in the second place, you Joe have not lost, and are not in any danger of losing, what you think of as your youth. You could be twenty years older and she could still be right for you. Or wrong, as the case may be. Oh, bloody hell, sort it out yourselves! I’m going for a walk.
*****
L God, isn’t she marvellous! What a woman! I feel as if I’ve been under a cold shower of tonic-water. I’ve got little bubbles all over me. No more vapours. Here’s Richard with the drinks.
R Where’s Melanie?
J She said she was going for a walk. If I may advise you, my friend, I’d leave your beer and run after her. She could do with a large husbandly hug and a bit of attention and reassurance. Tell her you love her for God’s sake!
R Oh, OK (he vanishes)
*****
Dialogue 4
M We’re right into London already, look. I’ve been fast asleep.
L So have I. Where are we? What time is it?
J It’s ten past three.
R I’ll drop Melanie first. Do you want to go on home, Lucia?
L No Richard dear, I’ll stay with Mel a bit, then you can get Fiona straight home. How’s the ankle, Fiona?
F Stiff, but not painful, thank you. It’s on the mend thanks to Melanie.
M I’ll leave you with this little bottle of oil dear. You can rub it yourself again tonight.
F Are you sure? Don’t leave yourself without any.
M I’ve got a big bottle at home. Anyway, I make it up myself.
F Thank you very much indeed. And thank you, all of you, for a perfectly lovely weekend. I feel we really brought the place to life again. Even if we only go on visiting from time to time, as I’m sure we will, I think we’ve got ourselves a spiritual home, somewhere to refer to in our minds as a source of strength.
R I’ve a notion it’s going to be more than that. I’ve every hope we can work out something financially, though maybe it’ll take a bit of time, a few months perhaps. Fiona and I will talk again soon, and I promise you I’ll keep things moving and we’ll talk "ways and means" again very soon.
J Thank would really be wonderful. Things are moving so fast I’m sure we’re all feeling quite breathless. I certainly am. But I’m quite sure this is all meant to be happening.
M So am I. Another thing which I think is immediately important is that we get together as a group again very soon, probably this week, and really see where we are with the main work. We can’t stand still in that, because the work itself doesn’t stand still. Every time a new person gets involved it alters the whole pattern, the nature of the work, and the relationship of each of us to the work. How about it? Can we meet, say, on Wednesday? Or Thursday.
F I hope it can be before Friday, because then I can bring a new impulse to my two Friday ladies.
L I’d rather it was Thursday, for art-school reasons, and because...Joe, you’re coming up this evening, aren’t you?
J Yes, love. Do you want me to fetch you from Melanie’s?
L No, I’ll make my own way back. But don’t come before six. I’ll make you some supper.
M We turn left at the lights, Richard.
R Oh, yes, that’s the short way, isn’t it? I’m not used to coming from this side.How long will Lucia be with you do you think I’d like to come back later.
M Oh yes, do darling. That’d be lovely.
L I’ll need to be home between five and six.
R I’ll come back at about six or a bit earlier then. Here we are now and somewhere to park for a change.
M Is the boot locked?
R No, just a minute, it’s a bit stiff. I’ll get your bags out.
J There, Fiona, now you’ve got the whole back to yourself. You can stretch your leg a bit.
(Calls of "good-bye, see you later from Melanie and Lucia. Car doors banging, etc).
*****
L Although I’ve been sitting for two and a half hours I still want to go on sitting. I’m not used to long car journeys.
M I’ve learned to relax on them a bit more since Richard got this car. It’s a smoother ride than the last one he had. But I still find it tiring. Is tea all right for you?
L I’d rather have a cold drink, Mel, if you don’t mind.
M I think I’ve got some apple-juice. Here we are. Is that all right?
L Fine, yes. I nearly said scrummy again. I must stop using these silly adolescent expressions. I’m a big girl now.
M They’re part of your charm. It’s a problem, isn’t it? How do we survive becoming more self-aware without becoming self-conscious in a negative sense? The soul wakes up, so the body wakes up too. I heard somebody say once:- "If I’m a reincarnation of John out of the Bible I must stop picking my nose."
L (laughs) Hilarious! You don’t think eccentric personal habits are inconsistent with spiritual development?
M Well, I think the process of interaction between the different levels is accelerated. But there’s a lot of resistance, especially on the part of the body. St Francis called the body "Brother Ass". What we need is more self-forgiveness, and self-love. When we’re still asleep we don’t realise we exist on different levels. Everything I just "me". The realisation that we ‘have a soul’, as we put it, comes first. Lots of people stop there. The approach of a spiritual entity, a so-called higher being, compounds the problem. The soul also gets uncomfortable. Brother Ass is joined by Sister Show-off. A lot of people nowadays refuse to face the issue. They start to repudiate the lower levels. They discipline and castigate the body and then they start to sneer at astrality and mere personal feeling and want to be pure. It’s all a lot of nonsense. We are all three, and the three have to co-exist, share the space. What happens if we accept this is that they really do start to affect each other in a healing way.
L Melanie. I really want to ask you this. Who is Meruel really? Have we just made him up? He was really very much there, wasn’t he, when we were being Templars, or remembering we had once been Templars, or whatever?
M I think Meruel exists in its own right as an entity, and I would provisionally place it at the level we call ‘archangel’. But what we experience, and communicate with, is provided, constructed even, by our own activities and needs. Archangels don’t have physical bodies. But in order to exist on our level they need to put on an overcoat when we go outdoors. And it is this that we provide for them. We, in this sense, are what they feed on if they are to share our reality. This is literally so, not a mere metaphor. The beings of the hierarchies feed on the excess products of our soul activity, just as we feed on the overflow of the animal and plant kingdoms and think nothing of it.
L So Meruel’s manifestation is our creation in a parallel sense to that in which we manifest also as minerals, plants and animals as well as ourselves.
M Yes. Earth entities provide us with the means of becoming individual selves on their Earth, and look up to us as greater beings as they do so. We in turn look up to the next level of intraterrestrial entities, and provide them with characteristics of a soul nature which we can understand and resonate with. Not only that, we can also name them, as we have done with Meruel.
L So Meruel is a hybrid, composite character, partly created by us.
M Yes, but then so are we from the point of view of animals plants and minerals. There’s nothing wrong with that. We haven’t made Meruel up like a character in a story-book, any more than we are ourselves a work of fiction created by the material reality on which we stand. Scientists would sometimes like to think that’s all we are. But most scientists don’t acknowledge the existence of a spiritual world.
The truth is that reality operates, as it were, from above downwards as well as from below upwards. Because I happen to live in this house it doesn’t mean I am a product of it, or an aspect of it. I am also to some extent that as well. But I have my own existence apart from it. I am myself, Melanie. But I am not Melanie to the armchairs and the kettle and the floorboards. I am simply a co-ordinating counterpart of their own existences. It becomes even more obvious if there is a cat in the house and plants on the windowsill. We are what waters them and produces tins of ‘Whiskers’. We are ‘grace’ to them. If they were self-aware they would also see that they are aspects of our foundation for an incarnated identity.
You can transfer all those analogies to how it is between us and Meruel. For Meruel, we are his life-circumstances. We are what gives him occasion to be an intraterrestrial entity on this evolving planet.
L What does he feel about all this? I said ‘he’. Perhaps I should have said ‘it’. It’s a pity we haven’t got a trans-sexual pronoun for super-sensible beings.
M The language will probably develop one when it is more generally felt as a need. As for what Meruel feels, the clearer we become about the Meruel-nature the more possible it becomes to get into dialogue with it. You can ask Meruel that yourself. Shall we do that?
L What, now? Is that what people call ‘channelling’?
M You could ask Meruel that too.
L If I did that, I can’t help feeling that it would be I who would be supplying his answer.
M And there we encounter the paradox that lies at the heart of all our communications with other dimensions. My intuition is that it is precisely this misgiving you have about something illusory in channelling that your ‘presences’ are drawn to in you. It is as if they were alerted to something special in you which they do not find elsewhere.
L You are so clear about these things, Melanie. Why aren’t they drawn to you in the same way?
M Because I’m a namer. Naming is part of the paradox I’m talking about. In order for trans-dimensional realities to become manifest here in our dimension they have to enter a realm of darkness. These I.T. friends of ours live in Light, and Light is not itself visible. Light manifests as visibility only when it encounters darkness. Colour and form in our sense world come about precisely in that way. You might say that colour and form are a sort of ‘naming’ of realities which in their own being are ‘nameless’, ie. Colourless and formless.
L I would have thought, then, that it would be to you rather than to me that psychic entities would be drawn.
M Yes, but what psychic entities, Lucia? The dimensions that lie behind the immediately apparent reality we live in are populated, indeed they are positively swarming, with entities which seek manifestation in it.
L What are they looking for that they can’t get at home, as it were?
M Well, very roughly and briefly, they’re looking for freedom. The trouble is they don’t really know what freedom is. They confuse it with license, just as most human beings do.
L Most of them are no different from the majority of us humans, then. So, what’s the difference?
M Well, of course, a large proportion of the psychic entities so-called channellers bring through are precisely that, human beings seeking manifestation, but by an off-beat route. This is what the spiritualist movement is plagued with. Straight mediumism, even if pursued very idealistically and high-mindedly, can’t avoid distortions of this kind, for the very reason that trance mediums are ‘not all there’, so to speak. Without a lot of hard work while conscious and a lot of help from their supporters who are seeking enlightenment in other ways, they are not in a position to discriminate. That was the position of Jane Roberts with Seth, for example, Jane had very enlightened and conscious support which kept her au fait with what Seth was saying on a session by session basis.. But even she could not finally avoid the fatally destructive physical effects mediumism so often brings with it.
L But there are conscious mediums, aren’t there? People who can act legitimately as channels for beings who are not human necessarily, but who have legitimate business with us, or who we also seek for their wisdom, their wider perspective on our reality?
M Yes. This is the tricky, half-way region people like us are struggling to clarify. In order to leave the coast clear for beings like Meruel, who, as you put it, have legitimate business with us, we have a colossal task of elimination in front of us. What you call ‘conscious mediumship’ is part of the answer, but as I see it that is only a half-way stage. What, it seems to me, we are really searching for is legitimacy, authenticity. What, for example, is the authentic way in which human beings who need to manifest on this planet can do so?
L Well, get themselves a physical body, be born, simply. Become babies. Go through the nappy stage. Grow, mature, acquire street-wise Earth citizenship the hard way. Like me!
M Yes. And you know very well what that all too easily leads to. For most people that becomes the whole story. They sink too far in. The authentic way to be human, to take our rightful place in this legitimate, wholly authentic, wholly characteristic planet, is just the very way which sucks people down into a less than human condition. No wonder scientists concluded that human beings are simply specialised animals, just as animals are specialised plants and plants are specialised minerals. What a recent book correctly named as "The Only Planet of Choice"! promptly becomes a death-trap, a blind alley for most of the people who seek it.
L eruel, who are you? How can we hear you and speak to you without dragging you down to a less than archangelic condition?
M "I am also you", Meruel says, "just as you are also animal. It is your growing self-awareness that gives me my opportunity to manifest in your world, and retain my self-awareness in your human-ness. As you become aware that you are more than animal I can become aware that I am more than human. Then I can communicate with you on a level which transcends ‘conscious mediumship’. As I said to you earlier, it is you who are speaking the words. It is you who are thinking the thoughts. The enhancement is your enhancement. But in achieving this you also cause me to grow in stature, to take a further step in my evolution without limiting yours, as do the entites who take the lower road of manifesting through mediums and channellers."
M Meruel, who are you? What are you?
L "I am what you call an archangel."
M Not an angel, then?
L "No, Angels are in a sense our younger siblings. They seek human souls who remain in their privacy, as you too sometimes do. We seek to manifest where there is human communication, as there is between you two, and increasingly also in your group of five".
M I don’t think your name Meruel is very generally known.
L "No. You might say I am a fairly junior archangel in your terms!"
M Do you have a particular allegiance in your own archangelic realm?
L "Yes. I work in the realm of Michael."
M I understand from the work of Steiner that Michael has already passed beyond your realm into the next hierarchy, the Archai.
L "Yes he has. This question has caused us to reach the limit of what we three can achieve as communication at this time. Lucia must not stretch herself too far. She is not very experienced yet. I must leave you. Rest and gather your energies. We will speak again. I love you very much. Thank you so very much for this".
M Meruel’s gone then?
L Well, not very far away I think. But it was true. What seemed to be happening was that I was slipping out of my body again. When that happened Meruel felt me beginning to ‘channel’ instead of what I was doing before. My body began to pull Meruel down into itself. I felt a bit scared again.
M I think I know why. I think the change of energy drew the attention of some of the greedy astral entities near by, and they threatened to crowd into the space. In withdrawing like that for protection Meruel was also protecting you. In order to avoid being distorted and contaminated by the seething astral whirlpools which surround all human soul activity, these I.T.’s have to find a way of standing closely side by side with us in a realm of pure thought.
L That sounds awfully arid and intellectual.
M Yes, that’s what Steiner realised. This was why he laid such stress on changing the focus of where thinking takes place in the human organism. He saw that if humanity is to take the next step in its evolution, and start to live consciously in trans-dimensional reality, it was vitally essential to loosen the connection of thinking with the brain. Our whole culture is fixated on the idea that the brain excretes thought like a gland excreting hormones. Steiner perceived directly that the brain is a dying organism. It no more creates thoughts than Richard’s car finds its own way to Garway and back. But the car is a perfect instrument for enabling Richard to do so. The brain is a perfect reflector, a mirror. It makes the thoughts visible to perception.
L I wonder what triggered off Meruel’s withdrawal?
M I think it was the mention of the Archai, the realm above that of the Archangels. If that had happened casually in a more of less intellectual way it wouldn’t have had that effect, but then Meruel wouldn’t have been beside you at all.
L But you mentioned the Archai, and you’re a Namer.
M Yes, that was it. My naming activity has become an entity in its own right it isn’t just words any more. Actual energies are operating.
L We need constant vigilance, don’t we?
M Vigilance, legitimacy, authenticity. In other words Truth.
L Where would the thinking go then if it is driven out of the brain?
M To the Heart, said Steiner. Thinking has to reverse its dynamic. As well as being the passive recipient of sense information, it has to become the active willed sculptor of insights, and these must be mediated through the artistic creative levels of the soul of which the heart rather than the brain is the physical counterpart Thinking which isn’t through and through imbued with warmth of feeling is incapable of reaching the world of spirit.
L Yes, I can see that. It looks as if the invasion of trans-dimensional space by thinking which is still brain-bound simply produces science-fiction!
M Precisely. What you get is simply a story-book analogy in physical space and time of perfectly real events, but events which can only be correctly described with enhanced perceptions and thoughts. A kind of thinking clairvoyance.
L And that is how we come to deal with Intraterrestrials instead of Extraterrestrials.
M Yes.
L How do we get over the difficulty, then, and Meruel’s difficulty too? If every time we try to follow Michael beyond that point, Meruel has to disappear, what do we...?...?
M You and I are only two-fifths of our group, which is a more powerful and intricate soul entity than the combined energies of you and me together can achieve. There it is on the wall, the copy you made me of the pentagram Joe gave you. With those five powers together, and the right questions from each of us, I believe we can begin to ask Michael direct questions, and I’m sure that is what Meruel would love us to do. Look darling, Richard will be here soon and we both have meals to make for our menfolk. I shall have to turn you out.
L How on earth are we going to convey all this wonderful stuff to the others. Oughtn’t we to have been writing down what Meruel said?
M Meruel didn’t say it. You did. What you said you can say again, if not in so many words, in others equally cogent. Meruel won’t abandon you. Off you go, sweetie. I’ll walk with you as far as the shops. It’s four-thirty. There won’t be all that choice.
L I’ll pick up some stuff as well. Come on then, let’s hurry (hugs her). Aren’t we having fun?
M You’re a frivolous spiritual gadabout. They won’t half have a game with you in the New World. Come on.
*****
Dialogue 5
R What have you cooked? I smelt it coming up the path.
M What perfect timing. In five more seconds I’d have put it back in the oven. Now I can bring it straight to the table.
R Wonderful! Let me just wash my hands. I had to put some oil in the car. (Voice from the bathroom) Out of luck with parking again. It’s miles down the road. I’ve noticed there’s one place just round the corner in what’s-a-name terrace that’s nearly always empty. It might be worth...
M What about wet nights?
R I’ve got an umbrella.
M Well it’s up to you. I think if I spoke nicely to the two neighbours I might persuade them to park a little more consciously. Trouble is these days you have to have the co-operation of the whole damned street.
R (Reappearing) And even then there are more and more casuals. The problem’s insoluble on the level at which we try to solve it. Anyway...
M Sweetheart, sit yourself comfortably by the fire for a few minutes and relax. The dinner won’t spoil. Let’s get a bit of the psychic grime off you. There. You know, I’m beginning to feel for the first time that the healing initiation I took five years ago may have had some purpose after all.
R You’ve hardly ever mentioned it. Some eastern thing, wasn’t it?
M Japanese. It’s called Reiki. I was persuaded to do it by one of their so-called Reiki masters who was on a visit from the States. I met her at one of those Wrekin Trust weekend conferences, like the one you came to. I felt at the time she over persuaded me.
R Move your right hand further down my left shoulder. There. That’s it. Ow! That’s where it’s really stiff. It’s all this driving.
M Not only the driving. City life’s seizing up and we’re all part of that. Come on now, I’ll dish up.
R What were you saying about this Reiki thing? You weren’t happy about the way they promoted it?
M Well, not altogether at the time; although I never had any doubt that it is exceedingly powerful. But I was in two minds about where it fitted into the western scene. No, not that. What I really wondered was whether the forces it made use of belonged to an earlier time, only appropriate to a less conscious phase of evolution. I don’t know. I’m still confused about it.
R Perhaps we can sort it out a bit. My goodness, this is really delicious! Have you had a magical cooking initiation as well?
M No, but I have been thinking more about food. All part of wondering what my part is in this new phase you and I seem to be emerging into at last. You know Richard there is a much deeper change going on in me, and things like re-looking at Reiki and cooking, and even the little garden patch outside, are all part of it. What’s really happened is that I’ve stopped judging myself. Under all the defensive stuff you and I have built up about leaving each other free, I’ve all along taken for granted that I was actually a failure as a wife. And now, in a sense, I don’t care a damn about that. The hopeless longing for what I idealised as a happy marriage has simply drained out of me.
R Have you fallen out of love with me?
M I suppose in a way I have. But it’s not you I’ve fallen out of love with. It’s simply that the romantic dream I had of you has become rather boring.
R It always was boring to me. What I didn’t realise was that I also had a romantic dream of you of a rather different kind, and I still have it to a great extent. Distancing myself from you has been my only way to preserve it, and at the same time to ignore the fact that I found you r picture of our relationship threatening.
M A few months ago I would have been cooking this, though I say it myself, very delicious meal as a way of trying to draw you into a home life you no longer felt as a threat. But now I am much more interested in it as proper food.
R It’s also a much better meal. It feels less self-conscious, if you know what I mean.
M It’s because life itself has become so much more interesting.
R Go on about Reiki. I think I know what the problem is, or at least something about it. It has something to do with the inevitable conflict between purity and growth hasn’t it?
M What do you mean?
R Well, how does a system of healing, or for that matter a social convention, or a political party, or a way of teaching algebra, or any other damned human structure, survive in a world of change? Every system comes into a world which is constantly, century by century, transcending the terms of reference which obtained when it first emerged into the world, when it was a brand new, shining inspired invention. Do you get it, Melanie? Nothing, absolutely nothing stays still in the real world. If it did it would die. But the purity of a new creation, as Reiki once was, has the inner stillness of the eternal verities. So everything divinely inspired feels it has to fight for its existence in the actual circumstances of the world. It reflects itself in the attitudes of people in every walk of life. It polarises people in every sphere into preservers and innovators. As Gilbert and Sullivan put it a century ago, you’re either born a little Liberal or a little Conservative.
M How does this apply to my experience with Reiki?
R If I’m seeing it correctly, Reiki, as an ancient powerful system of healing in a sceptical Reikiless world, feels it has to fight its corner. In order to do so it has to be promoted by preservers. Innovators are a threat to it, it thinks. In that it’s no different from anything else in the human scene which comes to us out of the past. Look at Judaism. Not one jot nor one tittle of the Law shall be changed. Look at evangelical Christianity. The Bible is the total unalterable word of God. Look at the Trades Unions. Clause 4, or we go down fighting. Look at anthroposophists. Us and the Outside World. Look at Islam. Attack us and the infidel condemns himself to unalterable Fatwah.
M What are you, Richard? An innovator or a preserver?
R I think by temperament I’m a preserver. But I find myself in this I.T. context in an innovative event. As the impulse of the I.T. movement grows I shall be one of those tempted to carry the impulse beyond its real sphere of usefulness. Preservers are at a disadvantage in the Apocalypse! They’re blinded by the light. All the forms they depend on for the sense they have of their own reality and function are whited out by change.
M What am I, then?
R In relation to me you’re obviously an innovator. But with Lucia you’re a preserver. With Joe I’m a preserver too. He innovates me all the time. The business would fall apart if I didn’t contain him. And Lucia, who is so innovative with you is a preserver with Joe. Her Light is tremendously formative with him. He comes out like a little flower! Dear Joe, I’m very fond of him you know.
M I know you are. And so, what about Fiona?
R Fiona holds the scales. She’s like the Figure of Justice.
M Blindfolded?
R No. Justice with her eyes wide open.
M Perhaps Garway will be her courthouse.
R My feeling down there was that in Templar times she had been our Grand Master. What does karma do to such a one in times when we are all equal before the threshold of a New World?
M I think you’re right. She holds the scales. CHRIST in the heart, Joe said. The heart feels like a pair of scales, doesn’t it, keeping the balance between intake and output.
R Steiner was very insistent that the heart is not a pump. It doesn’t push the blood round. The blood circulates with the same cosmic movement that makes a solar system or a galaxy spin. It then animates the heart as a modulator, balancer of forces within the stream. The Earth has the same function within the solar system and the solar system within the galaxy, I imagine; the heart of it but not the physical centre.
M Do come back to my connection with Reiki, Richard. I’m sure I’m very near an answer. Look, I’ll tell you what happened at the time I got involved. I’d met this woman at a conference, and she’d obviously had a speculative eye on me as a potential candidate for the initiatory process. She’d invited me to a number of preliminary conversations and given me stuff to read. I had no very strong feeling about being on a Reiki path, but I could see she had a genuine intuition about it. I trusted her conviction, but I made myself quite clear with her that I definitely didn’t regard myself as one of these New Age healers. I confessed that I thought a lot of them were doing little more than boosting their own self-image, giving themselves an identity in the movement. I gonna heal you’re gonna heal, all God’s chillun… etc… etc. I wanted no part of it.
R Joe had a similar experience. He was very nearly pushed into being a doctor as you know.
M And yet somehow there was another level to it. Anyhow, it came to initiation day, and there we all were sitting in a row with our eyes shut wondering what it would feel like to have this, to me, rather alien energy implanted in our sheaths, or whatever. The master stood behind us in turn and did what she was supposed to do. Well, she came to me, and immediately she had done her bit, a Japanese woman swept in front of my inner vision, and then stepped back quite sharply as if to say:- "What are you doing here?" I almost opened my eyes, and I felt a bit giggly, but I controlled myself and the moment passed. I told the master about it afterwards. I don’t exactly remember what she said, but we both felt it was all right, although there was a bit of a mystery about it. Later on she also persuaded me to go through a second stage, and that I found more difficult still, and it brought my active involvement more or less to an end. But the deed was done, I was in! You might say they were stuck with me.
R Interesting! And the aftermath?
M Well, from my end, no problem. On one level one could say:- "I can heal in their terms, but I don’t". How it is from the Reiki movement point of view I don’t know, because I’m not in touch with them. But it seems to me there must be some double-think going on. In order to promote something like that there must be a presumption of unity. They don’t just have a healing method, supported by a body of senior practitioners, and presumably an advisory process available for people for whom Reiki is central in their lives. They also have a powerful instrument for modifying the human organism, with the consent certainly of the individuals incarnated in it, but not necessarily implying that Reiki healing will become the central theme of their lives.
R How does that affect you? Are you a Reiki healer or not? When you say:- "I can heal in their terms", what does that imply?
M Yes, that’s where there’s an element of mystery. My organism has been modified by something. I only have to direct my inner attention on my hands, or even my feet, and I feel something opening up there, something through which healing currents can flow. But this I feel no differently about than I do, say, if I lift my hand up like this, seize the teapot and pour you another cup of tea. Gods operate through my organism. I am not, or at least not yet, a fully conscious entity. My organism works to a large extent automatically, like your car, for example, which is in that sense an unconscious extension of your ability to move about. You’re a motorist; I’m a healer. But just as you aren’t stuck with your car while you’re doing other things, nor am I stuck with this extension of my organism. It’s like a car which I don’t use very often.
R Do you feel it needs maintenance? Will it go rusty with lack of use?
M Well, I do use it from time to time. But there is no palaver of healing sessions, meditative preparation, visualisation of traditional power symbols, inner pronunciation of traditional Japanese words. It has quietly extended itself into the general psychic equipment of my sheath system, so that if someone has a stiff neck or shoulders I just hold them, touch them, massage them, or even just form an image of relaxation in their pain areas, and a degree of relief occurs for them.
R Yes. You’ve done it for me, often.
M It doesn’t even need to be particularly conscious. I suspect quite a lot of people involved with the Reiki movement could tell a similar tale.
R It must have created a problem for them.
M I think these are very ancient powers they are dealing with, which once operated in a dreamy unconscious region of ourselves which has now largely atrophied, and had a much greater power than is now possible. They are engaged in an inevitable hand over of these powers to a western race of mankind.A race which no longer operates psychically and spiritually from the same assumptions. When modern consciousness tangles with these powers in the old way it creates problems, not only for the Reiki people themselves, but for people to whom they transfer their powers.
R When you say "Reiki people" you presumably mean also those not now in physical bodies, like your Japanese lady.
M Yes. What I sensed in her was something like panic. And I think this must reflect itself in their formal organisation, here, and in the States. As with many movements, there have been divisions in the Reiki movement between traditionalists and modernisers, and I am sure these must go beyond mere personality and karmic clashes.
R There are fundamental problems as we go further and further into spiritual self-awareness in how we are supposed to relate to our physical organism. Your Reiki experience is widespread in many parallel movements. I’m thinking of Subud, for instance, the Indonesian movement where psychic equipment for the raising of consciousness is handed on, ie. literally by a direct hand contact.You’re supposed to top this up in a regular corporate exercise called Latihan. I’ve not experienced this personally, but accounts I’ve heard give me the feeling that it puts the evolving human organism under tremendous strain. Once more, old and new powers are wrenched apart, set at odds with each other, instead of allowed to undergo a smooth transition into new modes of spiritual life.
M Then there’s Rebirthing, of course. You and I have both experienced that. Where does that fit into what we’re saying?
R I don’t think there’s anything wrong with waking these things up in ourselves, so long as we are exactly aware of what it is that is being woken. I’ve often used the analogy of the butterfly metamorphosis. When a chrysalis begins to approach the moment of hatching it does so in the setting of invisible cosmic powers, just as all the phases of plant growth do. The moon, for instance, is deeply involved. There is a right moment for it to happen, and when it does so it is with the sharpness of a pistol-shot. If you breed butterflies indoors, a batch of Peacocks, for instance, the eggs were all laid on the same day so they’ll probably all hatch from the chrysalis on the same day, sometimes actually in the same few moments. They seem to set each other off. You hear a series of sharp little snaps right across the room, and out they all come.
M Like warriors springing fully armed as in Greek mythology.
R Wonderful! Now, it’s perfectly possible to interfere with the process, to pick at the chrysalis with a sharp instrument, and loosen the little lid which covers the proboscis and antennae. And out comes the butterfly. But nearly always it will be distorted. The wings don’t quite open properly, and the insect will have difficulty in flying.
M Makes you wonder whether induced births of babies, particularly Caesarean section, aren’t open to the same risks.
R On a subtle level I think they certainly are. I think we know very little about the long-term effects on a person’s life if it begins in that way. But I used the analogy to answer your question about breathing, or rather the special use of breathing in the method which has come to be known as Rebirthing as developed by Leonard Orr, and later by Sondra Ray. Steiner talked about this, decades earlier. It’s common experience that the minute you turn inward and start to meditate, or when you deliberately visualise the presence of a supersensible being, your breathing alters. You only have to sit round a table and hold hands before a meal and bless the food, and everyone finds themselves breathing much more deeply. Breathing is the essential link between body and soul. But what Steiner pointed out was this. He said that conscious, willed, heart-based, brain-free, THINKING, was becoming the new organ of sentience by which we make contact with the trans-dimensional world. This inevitably activates the breathing as the link between the body and these other dimensions. But if you do it the other way round, if you breathe in a controlled way in order to make these contacts from the outside inwards, instead of out into the body from the depths of the thinking consciousness, then it wrenches the process out of the god-guided unconscious rhythms, which are still the healthy parameters for the whole process.
M In other words, Rebirthing, if overdone, picks at the chrysalis. It releases the perceptual images a little out of time, and somewhat distorted.
R Yes. I think that can happen. But having said that, there’s no need to be fanatical about it. In moderation it’s perfectly valid. We can do all these things. We can be opened by Subud. We can Rebirth. We can ‘primal scream’. We can undergo EST. We can be activated by Reiki. We can do all these things. But my dear magical Melanie, we must not go to sleep over them. And most people do. They slip back into a pre-conscious state in them. They go back into a dreamy Atlantean state of 10,000 years ago. And the dark powers rub their hands in Satanic glee, so to speak. This is their aim, to prevent humanity rising to a higher level of consciousness, where they will discover that all these powers can be acquired otherwise. There is a far more broad-ranging awareness than can be reached by resorting to ancient capacities built into the body-sheath in Atlantean times.
This is a post-Atlantean age, Steiner said. In fact it is the fifth of such ages. It has its own level of awareness which is potentially on a far higher level than the Atlanteans could achieve. So all these magical body-based powers are atavistic. They can only lead us back into earlier stages of development. Certainly they can lead to births. But they will be partly aborted births, not ultimately viable. Experience them by all means, but only as a pre-vision of what is appropriate for where we are now in time.
M This is what I.T. is going to be up against. We[’re going to be swamped by people who’ve discovered the existence of all this body-magic. How are we to persuade them that these apparent short-cuts to instant enlightenment actually go in the opposite direction to the one they’re looking for?
R We’re not missionaries, Melanie. We’re at the receiving end of peoples’ intuitive questioning and seeking, and of the working out of their karma. People don’t come to us by accident. Remember the Bittlestone prayer:- "May the people who seek us come unto us." We depend on the faith that there is a pre-birthly decision involved, at the very least, and probably involvement in previous lives as well.
M I’m quite sure that’s the case with me and Lucia.
R Oh certainly. And that’s why we need a filter mechanism. What we’re trying to do is not to convert, but to try and remove some of the blocks which stand in the way of those who seek paths they saw in their future long ago.
M I think this is a conversation that needs to take place quite urgently among the five of us. A great deal of consciousness has been activated just in the last few weeks by the arrival of Lucia. If we don’t catch it in mid-flight at this moment there is a danger of it condensing, imploding, turning in on itself, becoming "the flavour of the month", a fashionable new quirk in the New Age scene.
R That’s why we’re meeting on…did we say Thursday?You brought it up just as we were arriving back from Garway.
M My impression is, we didn’t actually fix it. I’ll ring the others and arrange time and place. Meanwhile it’s beddy-byes time. Oh Richard, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve worked so hard on not trying to grab you I was becoming quite paranoid. Help me not to try so hard.
R You already feel quite different, and so do I. Those few moments when I caught up with you on your walk at Garway seemed to tip the scale. I felt I’d come close to losing you.
M I was really beginning to doubt whether you wanted me at all. I didn’t know how to stop threatening you.
R The feeling of claustrophobia in our marriage has almost gone. I realised I was creating it myself. I owe a lot to Joe in this. I believe he saw it before I did. He didn’t say much, but just by being with me, especially since he found Lucia, he managed to convey his concern.
M I feel the same way about Lucia as you do about Joe. I had no-one I could really share with. She’s a wonderful person.
R I’m having a bath. Make us some drinks, there’s a girl. See you later.
*****
Dialogue 6
F I’m so glad you decided to have the meeting here. I’m beginning not to want to go out much in the evenings nowadays. Also I feel there’s something which has built up in this room over the years which provides a protection and a base when it’s something especially important that seems to be happening.
M Oh, I’ve not doubt at all we need to be here. And anyway, how’s your ankle darling? I didn’t notice you were limping at all.
F It’s almost better, thanks to your magic salve. I’d almost forgotten it.
M I think you can thank Reiki too, which Richard and I have been talking about this week.
L I didn’t realise you knew about Reiki, Mel. Are you in that too. I met a group of them on a Glastonbury visit last year.
M Well, I am and I’m not. I feel it as a resource rather than a practice, if you see what I mean. Like everything else in this time of apocalypse. Reiki’s changing.
R It’s almost that it’s become an asset of the group, like Lucia’s light, and Joe’s alchemy.
J My what?
R Didn’t you know you were an alchemist, Joe? Those old stones of yours have drawn you into a compact with the mineral realm you’ve hardly begun to exploit yet.
J I’ve never heard you talk like that before.
R No. I’ve never had thoughts like that before. They’re my thoughts. But there’s someone else in the room quietly smiling as I have them.
M No. Not Meruel. Someone less powerful, but more mischievous. It’s to do with your mini-menhir, Joe. Bring it into the centre of the room again, like we did last time.
L We need candles. May we put five candles round the stone, Fiona?
F Yes. Take those five off the table over there.
L But that’s your altar isn’t it?
F Everything’s mobile. Use them by all means.
L I’ll light them. One opposite each person, please Joe.
*****
M
May the events which seek us come unto us.
May we receive them with a quiet mind
Through the Father’s ground of peace
On which we stand.
May the people who seek us come unto us
May we receive them with an understanding heart
Through the Christ’s stream of love
In which we live.
May the spirits who seek us come unto us
May we receive them with a clear soul
Through the healing Spirit’s light
By which we see.
*****
M Who is it, Richard?
R It’s someone I now realise I’ve had with me ever since the crop-circle weekend, but have not been fully aware of till now.
M Be careful, love. My feeling is it is not a wholly benign presence. Mischievous, as I said, but not hostile unless you open to it in the wrong way. I said it was not so powerful as Meruel, but in the wrong setting it could harbour very destructive energies, be itself taken over, as it were. It’s very drawn to your sculpture, Joe.
R It belongs to the formative energies by which crop-circles come into manifestation in physical corn. It could lead us to talk about nothing but crop-circles tonight, but I feel that is not the sense of the meeting. My feeling is that this little being is somewhat awe struck by what it is observing in this room. It’s mischieviousness is taking on a tone of more innocent playfulness. And with that it is beginning to pervade the room with a kind of plant-like fragrance, something like a summer meadow. It’s as if the room is becoming green.
F I’ve had a feeling of greenery ever since we came back from Garway. Joe, your sense that the IT. school needs to keep alive a constant mood of mobility, this is very difficult to sustain in the climate of a large city. We can’t transfer everyone who comes to us down to Garway. But we can bring the basic elements of the plant world into the places where our inquirers meet us. I think that is what will make it possible for Meruel and other I.T.s to overcome the polluted atmosphere of the city, and create a wider, fresher, less claustrophobic inner space in which to work.
L You know, that was the very first thing I sensed when I came up to your front door that first time a few weeks ago, Melanie. That little patch of front garden, with its fragrant mixture of neglect and care and the flower patterns of your window curtains, sent me into a kind of dreamy reverie which has been part of my awareness ever since. It kind of prepared me for Garway, which I would otherwise have found rather overwhelming.
J It’s a matter also of style, of mood. People come to our doors full of questions. They expect to encounter some sort of training or schooling. If instead they start to become aware that they have entered a kind of magic garden space, then they can begin to formulate their questions and enquiries in a more tentative, intuitive way. We don’t aim to bewitch them, but we do need to calm down the frenetic, hyperactive urban mood from the moment they enter the house.
M Where have we got to? What do we need to do?
J Apart from consciously cultivating the mood of the spaces where people meet us, I think we need to keep the style and method of making ourselves visible in the environment constantly under review.
R We need to remember also that other people are also using the I.T. method and probably creating quite a different atmosphere, as appears to have happened at Muswell Hill. We need to be open to learning from the experience of other groups as we come across them.
J I think we may have reached the time for designing a corporate leaflet or brochure for us five to use. I am not paranoid about this independent mobility concept. We have become a cell, which is developing a characteristic style. Our contact outside needs to reflect that style. The cell itself is developing its own karma and mobility, and needs to meet the world.
L I can see this leaflet inwardly. I would like to form it.
F "Let it grow slowly, darling. Don’t bring it to completion too quickly, or too soon.
J Do you see what’s happening? We’re being given the answer to the problem that’s bugged me from the start. On the one hand there’s the obsessive impulse to prevent a powerful creative energy from simply slipping away and dissipating….to allow the need to do this to bully you into organising things, to hold on to what you’ve got, and impose the resultant form on other people. And on the other hand...
M Hold on, Joe. You’re going too fast for me.
R And me.
J Let me just finish. On the other hand my insistence on keeping everything fluid can be equally obsessive, and can end up with the put-down that your friend Paul expressed so graphically the other day. Back to square one, with a group of friends meeting over coffee, going round in circles, the blind leading the blind.
R In other words you either organise, and confer a perceptible authority upon the organisation you bring into being, or you are exposed as having no more to offer than those whose expectation you have aroused.
L What’s the answer?
F "I am".
M I beg your pardon, Fiona?
F "I said I am the answer. I, Meruel, your corporate being, am the answer to your problem. What Joe pointed out to Paul…."
I’m sorry, I’ve broken the contact. I don’t know what Joe pointed out to Paul. I wasn’t there.
J I pointed out to Paul that he was ignoring what I called "the ace in the pack". He was ignoring the intraterrestrial element which manifests in a group when communication reaches a certain clarity and intensity.
L "When two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I"
F "I can continue, now that Fiona knows what you were referring to. As Lucia was about to say, ‘there am I in the midst’. I, Meruel, lead you back on a direct path, up and back through all my hierarchical mentors and forebears, to the source. You are a group of friends. But you are so much more. You have a corporate identity, linked by its "I" nature to the source of egohood itself, the I am that I am’, the CHRIST. As you mature as a group you will all, together and singly, be able to travel up that Light path with me, your archangel, through all the hierarchies to that source.
J And that solves my dilemma, because, contrary to what Paul asserted, this group has an identity which has no need to organise itself in order to survive. Just as we individuals are all people floating free among all the people of the world, so is Meruel. Our corporate identity will not dissipate through the fact that we are free, mobile individuals. Its entity survives.
R ¤ "And that’s where I come in".
J Come again?
R ¤ That’s where I come in. That is why I am here. I joined Richard at the crop-circle event, but I didn’t acquire a proper set of sheaths till you went to Garway. If you concentrate your attention on Joe’s menhir and let your breathing slow down a bit and deepen, it will help me tune in a bit better to your thoughts".
M Who are you?
R ¤ "I was going to ask you that. What’s my name, Melanie? You’re the Namer. You’d better name me soon. I’ve no means of resisting entities which are not so friendly unless you do."
M Ophr…. Ophric…. Ophrel…I can’t get it.
R ¤ "Link me with a higher level. But not ending in ‘el’. I’m not a sun-being.
M OPHROMINE
R ¤ "That’s wonderful. It tickles. I can wriggle about in it. OPHR-OM-IN-E. Four syllables. Clever girl, Melanie. Thank you".
L I know who you are. You’re the one who started off my picture of the leaflet. Basically you’re green, aren’t you? Moving, flowing, GREEN! If we let go into you we’d float away down an etheric stream.
J Like poor Castaneda down the stream behind Don Juan’s house.
L I haven’t read that, but I pick it up, Joe. We don’t need to be afraid of you, Ophromine, because Meruel balances you.
R ¤ "And this heals me. I have no natural ability to choose between….the CHRIST and Pan. Only human beings can make that choice for me, especially people like you who are discovering their own orientations and allegiances. As Lucia remarked, your clue to me is your concept of greenery. My brother is Jack of the Green! My mother is the Green Goddess! Your trouble has been London. Crop-circles and Garway have come just in time for you. London is ruled by Apollo, Garway by Dionysos. You needed an Apollonian-Dionysian balance. I can help you establish one. I am your plant nature. An anthroposophist called Olive Whicher wrote a wonderful book called "The Plant between Sun and Earth". You should read it. More than that you should look at her paintings. They’ll set you breathing."
F Ophromine, how do you see us developing this I.T. impulse, then?
R ¤ "I’m not that familiar with your terms. But I can sense a heavy weight in human life-forces which tends towards a kind of gigantism, overgrowth".
J Cancer, perhaps?
R ¤ "Perhaps’ I’ll try to give you a picture. Keep breathing. Live in the five-fold candlelight which is producing a pattern of moving light and shade round that activity you have there in the middle, (what is it, a kind of pillar or statue? It’s beautiful. I can flow very easily into its form). Join me if you can in this flowing movement. Now, see this impulse you have initiated to alert the people round you to the world of perceptions and thoughts of which you are becoming aware see this impulse as a primitive plant form taking shape in a flowing, limpid stream of clear water. Lucia, irradiate this stream with glancing beams of Light. Melanie, focus the plant form in a mobile geometry of planes and angles. Joe, nourish it with salts and nutrients from the crystal bed of the stream. Richard, sense the intelligence of higher planes informing its created being. Fiona, take it into the blessing warmth of the Mother, and guard its growth. Now, friends, watch what happens to this plant, and remember that it is your own common, human impulse that you are observing. See it begin to heave and surge from the heart of its own being. Sense its restlessness and pain. Sense its longing for change. And then, with growing wonder, observe how it buds like a Mandelbrot figure, with miniature holograms of its own form. See these daughter images caught in the current of the Light-filled water and float off down the stream. This is the stream of destiny of your common I.T. impulse that you are watching. You have no knowledge of where these daughter forms will settle, or what will happen to them. But you and Meruel know from your inner source allegiences that they will be developing in their own unique way just what youa re developing. For have you not yourselves in your day been just such a daughter-growth, assembled by the gods of your former existences, and settled here where Meruel and I have found you? Meruel is from the Sun. I am from the Earth. We are ancient. You humans are relatively new-born. We welcome you into our reality."
*****
M The meeting between Meruel and Ophromine reminds me very much of the mood in which Oberon encounters Tinania’s realm in "A Midsummer Night’s dream". Meruel on his own is too austere, and Ophromine on his own too frivolous. We become human in the realm where they meet, where Apollo meets Dionysos.
L I feel lost sometimes in the language you all use. You have all obviously read so much more than I have. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, because the words carry so much energy that they evoke light images I can understand on another level. So I understand what you are talking about most of the time. But then suddenly I get overwhelmed by my own ignorance.
M I can sometimes have the opposite problem with you, Lucia. Just by being in the group you make me sometimes feel dry and intellectual. I know you think of yourself as a worldly sophisticate, but you actually carry a wonderful innocence as well.
J It’s that combination which I fell in love with, and which is beginning to irradiate my world in a totally magical way.
L Darling Joe, you open up a whole new world for me. Perhaps I don’t need to read all that number of books. Perhaps I mainly need to have contact with other minds directly. No wonder Richard says you’re an alchemist.
J I think the old alchemists must have withered away and dried up like dead leaves on the floors of their laboratories if they didn’t actually find the gold they sought. They needed the kind of muse you are rapidly becoming for me.
R I’ve read a tremendous number of books, Lucia. In fact, I’m reading all the time. It’s a very wonderful world, and it’s all too easy to make it the only safe place in one’s life. But a library can be just as dry as a laboratory. Melanie and I were in danger of contemplating each other’s dry intellectuality at arm’s length, weren’t we, love? If a couple respect each other’s freedom too long, they end up with no freedom to respect.
F Living alone with a cat you learn to compass all these questions within the confines of your own personality. It can be a dangerous thing to do unless you have accumulated enough soul equipment to survive on before you close the door of your cell. The cell can then grow until it becomes a home. Then the home can grow until it becomes a temple into which the world can come. You have no idea how you four are enriching my life. It’s like having a family of grown-up kids which you don’t have to feed and clean up after. It’s time you went, though. I have a solicitor friend coming. You’ll stay and talk to him, won’t you Richard.
*****
Dialogue 7
F Come in, my dears. You met on the doorstep this time, did you?
Alice No, actually we had some lunch together in town first with Connie’s sister They had some shopping to do.
Connie I’d been wondering, or half wondering, whether to suggest bringing her along today, hadn’t I, Alice? But I’m not so sure now, Fiona.
Alice The prospect of four old biddies nattering away on Friday afternoons is a bit daunting, isn’t it?
F It depends who the biddies are in themselves. Do you get on well with your sister?
Connie Yes, very well on the whole. But I’ve always had a bit of a problem opening up with her on what I call the serious side of life.
F How did the question come up, then?
Connie She picked up one of your I.T. leaflets lying on the dresser and asked about it. But the conversation drifted along as it always has before into her criticising what she calls the ‘culture vulture’ side of my life. I’m always wanting to better myself, she thinks. She talks about me being bookish. She says I’m perfectly all right as I am, and what a pity Bert and I didn’t have any children.
F Is she older than you?
Connie Yes, by two years. But we don’t want to talk about her. I wanted to go on with last week’s conversation about the Earth changes.
F I’m not sure I agree. If you don’t mind, Connie, I’d really like to talk about you and your sister a bit longer. I’m interested.
Alice Can I put a word in? I was watching Mabel while you talked over lunch. She’s a nice woman, Connie. I like her. In fact I think you and she are rather alike.
Connie Oh, no, Alice!
Alice Yes you are. Very strong willed, both of you. I was watching her mouth and her jaw while you talked about something; curtain material I think. And I thought to myself:- "Why is it Connie thinks Mabel ought to meet Fiona?" Not that I think she’d ever agree to come. But it was you thinking of asking her that interested me.
F That’s why I wanted to hear more, Connie. I was interested in why you wanted her to come.
Connie I thought it would help her, broaden her horizons a bit.
F Do you think she needs help?
Connie I think we all do.
F What I meant was, is she aware of needing help?
Alice She isn’t, Con, is she?
Connie No, I’m sure she isn’t. All the same…
F At a deeper level, Connie, I think people know what they need.
Alice Well, how does that work if they don’t know they do?
F Our lives come at us from two directions, Alice.On one side we’ve got the events, what happens to us, what we do, who we meet, everything we think of as our lives. But there’s another side, the side that mostly only seems real when we’re by ourselves.
Alice I cal that the "four o’clock in the morning" side, when you wake and can’t get back to sleep.
F That’s the side I mean. Not everyone lies awake like that, though. You can wake up out of what you’re doing in the middle of the day. People can be by themselves surrounded by noisy children, or blaring pop-music, with the television on.
Connie I think that’s more like me. I sleep like a log all night. But I get thinking during the day sometimes mostly when I’m knitting or washing up. Bert and I don’t talk much. He’s tired when he gets in.
F The point I was leading up to was that this inner waking side, which both you and Alice have, even if you mostly experience it in the daytime, and Alice at four in the morning, this is not something everybody experiences, not by any means. Huge numbers of people sleep all day as well as all night. They almost never become aware of themselves through what happens to them.
Connie Mabel doesn’t. She just gets on with things. Not that she isn’t intelligent, but that doesn’t seem to make her content. She’s a demon for work. She’s had to be with all those kids. She puts everything into that. But she’s restless.
F In the end that restlessness will either wake her or kill her unless she finds a way to damp it down. Most people nowadays do that with the television.
Connie People with kids haven’t time to watch telly. Mabel doesn’t.
Alice You’d be surprised, Con. A lot of my neighbours are glued to it half the night, kids and all. Fast food bolted down, often round the box, and creep into bed after midnight.
F Mabel looks after her kids then?
Connie Oh yes, Fiona. Mind, they’re nearly grown up now. But she does everything for them. And the house is spotless. I don’t know how she does it all. Martin’s good too round the house. In many ways they’re an ideal couple. All the same...
F Everything you’ve said about her confirms what I said about people knowing what they need. She even needs her restlessness. She sounds perfectly all right to me, Connie. But I also understand your concern. With a lot of people it’s a question of timing. Mabel sounds to me like someone who knows intuitively exactly what she needs for the present. But her restlessness is a ticking clock beneath the level of her awareness. She’s not ready to listen to it yet. One day perhaps the alarm will go off and she’ll start to ask questions. All in good time! She might even ask you, Connie!
Connie I’ll have to wait, won’t I?
F I think you will. May I make a suggestion?
Connie Yes, do. That’s what I come here for.
F Turn your love for your sister inward. Put yourself in service to her real self. Lots of people call that praying for people, but I don’t know if that’s how you would choose to think of it. Do you go to church?
Connie Not any more. I used to.
F Some people like to feel their help for each other in religious terms. But more and more people nowadays feel they can take responsibility for caring for each other themselves. I think Mabel’s keeping her waking time in reserve.
Connie You’re so wise, Fiona, isn’t she Alice?
F If I am it’s because I can sometimes burrow down into where my friends wisdom rests, as I sometimes can with you two. Your wisdom rests in your love for people. I don’t suppose she’s the only person you’re fond of.
Connie Well, no. I’m fond of Bert of course. We’ve been together thirty years.
Alice There’s no ‘of course’ about it, Con. Lots of couples who’ve been together thirty years hate each other’s guts if the truth be known.
Connie That’s terrible, Alice. That’s a terrible thing to say. What do you think, Fiona?
F If you don’t question life, don’t wake up to yourself, a lot of very dark things can happen. After all, you are in the dark, so it’s not surprising.
Alice I’d never thought of that. I suppose that’s why when people get religion, people say "She’s seen the light".
Connie Yes, and usually sneer a bit.
F And where does the sneering come from? What makes them sneer?
Connie Well, it’s a mixture of things. Bit of jealousy for them being happy, plus despising them for being conned, I suppose.
Alice Plus misery, Con. People like that are usually unhappy themselves.
Connie I think a lot of people are unhappy, perhaps most people are. Unhappy and bored.
Alice Most people have happy times, though, Connie. They’re happy as kiddies. And they’re happy when they have kiddies themselves.
F Are you happy Alice?
Alice Yes, on the whole, I am, Fiona. Very happy really. I love my kids. And I’m very fond of George too. We’re a happy family.
F You sound a bit doubtful.
Alice Well, there are a lot of worries, aren’t there?
F Four-in-the-morning worries?
Alice That’s it. Usual stuff. Money mostly, I suppose. George gets a good wage. But you hear of more and more redundancies. I’ve managed so far not to take a job, but I don’t know how long I can carry on.
F Does George want you to?
Alice No. He really doesn’t. He worries too. Mainly about the kids. At least, those are the worries he shares. I suspect he worries about other things as well, which he doesn’t share.
F What do you think they might be?
Alice Well, you always worry in your marriage about other women. When people say they know their man is absolutely faithful you wonder how close they actually are to him. If you’re really close your body tells you. But a lot of women who don’t enjoy sex much withdraw a bit, and really I don’t think they know any more what goes on in the man. They tell themselves a story they can live with, that’s all. If you know what goes on in a man you know whether there are other women involved, and let’s face it, there usually are to some extent.
F Have you been involved with other men?
Alice Before I was married, yes. Not plenty, but several. Since I met George, no.
F You think George might play around a bit?
Alice No, I don’t think he plays around in that way. What I mean is, I know when he’s interested in someone else and I get angry and scared.
F Then what do you do?
Alice Well, I suppose I turn off, go into myself more.
F Do you still have sex?
Alice Not then, no.
F Does he still want it?
Alice Yes, but I get the feeling he’s thinking about someone else, and I turn off.
F And then he feels guilty and masturbates. It’s a vicious circle, isn’t it? So that’s what you think about at four in the morning.
Alice I ought not to be telling you all this. People don’t talk about things like that. With Connie here too. I feel awful (cries).
F Alice, a lot of people do talk about things like this, because in one way or another everybody is the same. When you bottle things up you start to forget that.
Alice Some things are private. (snivels).
F That’s fine when things are going all right. When they go wrong, then what do we do? Keeping dark things secret is what starts off all the horrors in the world. In the country it’s easier in a way, though even there a lot goes on under the surface. But here in London, in big cities everywhere, most people still stay private, even when they’re jammed like sardines in a tube-train.
Connie I wonder if this get-together on Friday afternoons is quite what I thought it was going to be. I was quite excited when I saw your leaflet, Fiona. I feel very ignorant, and I felt Bert and I were getting older and life was going by. You’re either looking at the telly or looking at each other, and where’s it all leading? So far you’ve been telling us exciting things about the Earth waking up, talking to plants, healing and all that kind of stuff...a new world. But today’s been different, what with me and my sister and now Alice and George, I wonder if I want to go on coming.
F I’m no different Connie. I’ve had lots of dark secrets. I learned how to bring them out, dust them and deal with them, and I feel much freer. We have a choice. There’s no compulsion. You can keep everything in your life in separate compartments and not let them talk to each other. Then you can tell yourself everything is all right, and most of the time it is. When Alice said she and George and the kids were a united and happy family, she wasn’t lying to us. Most of the time they are. But I sensed that under the surface there was something you could call ‘the worm in the bud’. We dug a bit and we found it. And it was painful.
Alice I don’t think I shall come again either.
F I think in time you might, not exactly come again to these conversations but...well, let me put it this way. Once you start asking questions, poking about under the surface of life, you can’t any longer choose what comes up. What drew you both here was the feeling that there must be more to life. And so there jolly well is. But you find out quickly that it won’t stay in watertight compartments. Asking questions is like a lucky dip. You dig down and find you have bought the whole package. You let the light in. The process is difficult to stop once you start, and there’s a lot of pain, but also a lot of joy. A new World, as Connie says. But there are dark spots. It’s painful to lance an abscess, but what a blessed relief afterwards! So much you suppressed begins to make sense. And life is not all abscesses, thank god. It’s simply that if you don’t deal with them they start to infect the whole of your life.
Connie I feel a bit bad about saying I wouldn’t come again, don’t you Alice?
Alice Yes, but I also feel a bit let down, and a bit resentful.
F Against me?
Alice Yes, a bit.
F You started by feeling that this was a protected space where it was safe to talk. So you did, and I encouraged you, and what came up was painful. Is that what you mean? You felt I should have left well alone? The trouble is, it wasn’t very well, was it? I’ve got a suggestion. Is it all right if I make it?
Connie Yes, do, Fiona.
F Alice?
Alice Yes, O.K.
F I suggest you don’t come next week. Instead I suggest you meet together at one of your homes, and without me. You might even like to bring in a third person, perhaps the one who gave you the leaflet in the first place. Whether you know it or not, you’ve gained a lot in the last few weeks and not all of it from me. I was mainly the stimulus for changes you made yourselves. With a third person who has thought less on these lines, you would find some of that coming out. Later on you might want to come back here, or perhaps invite me to join you. See how it goes. Anyway, talk about it. You don’t have to let me know. You’re free agents. But you’ll always be welcome here, any time.
Connie Let’s go, Alice. I’d like to talk it over as Fiona says. I think a lot more needs to happen, but I don’t know what it is yet. And I still want to hear more about Earth changes.
F You’re a good sort Connie. So are you., Alice. You’ve had a bit of a shock, that’s all. I should be sorry not to see you both again. Keep in touch.
Alice All right Fiona. Thank you very much. I’ll think about it. Good-bye now. We’ll be going. Perhaps it’ll be all right.
*****
Dialogue 8
J Richard! You know what you said about me being an alchemist?
R Mm.
J You’re not listening.
R Shut up a minute, Joe. I’ve made a mistake on this elevation.Where’s my bloody rubber? There!No, it’s still wrong. Oh, shit!
J Richard, relax.
R I can’t bloody relax. This thing’s got to be ready by lunchtime.
J Ophromine lives in two dimensional space
R Oh! You mean...
J What is an elevation after all? What is perspective drawing?
R Well. It’s an attempt to convey an illusion of three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional medium.
J Right! Ophromine is an etheric entity. The physical world is three dimensional. The etheric world on the other hand is two-dimensional as far as space is concerned. Its third dimension is a time one. Time is not a dimension in three-dimensional space, it’s a moving finger, a paradigm, a circumstance, a locus. There is no real third dimension in a perspective drawing. So, in a sense, a perspective drawing is an analogy of an etheric perception. There are two sorts of lines in it. There are some which you perceive without a sense of movement. They are parallel to the plane of the paper. But there are other lines in your drawing which give an illusion of depth.
R But those lines are in the plane of the paper too!
J They are indeed. But when you look at them your perception of them behaves in a different way. It seems to move from what appears to be the foreground of your picture to what appears to be the background, or vice-versa.
R And movement takes place in time!
J Exactly! Exactly, Richard. A perspective drawing exists on a piece of two-dimensional paper. It also has depth. But depth also involves another dimension. In a drawing we know it cannot be a third spatial dimension. But we also experience in it a movement of our perception, and movement, as we say, ‘takes time’. Time, which in three-dimensional space is simply a moving monitor, becomes in your perspective drawing an actual third dimension, a non-spatial one.
R So my drawing is in the etheric!
J No, Richard! Your drawing is in the physical. But it nudges your perception out of the physical into the etheric. That, of course, only applies to your drawing of the elevation. Your perception of the plan, although it is on the same piece of paper, remains in the physical. A plan is a two-dimensional drawing, in a three dimensional world, of a two-dimensional reality. An elevation is a two-dimensional drawing, attracting to itself a third dimension which is temporal, in a four dimensional world, therefore, of a three dimensional reality’.
R Phew! Very confusing for Ophromine.
J Yes. Which was why I brought Ophromine into it.
R Why did you?
J He perceives things differently. I thought he might help you to do so.
R I think alchemists perceive things differently.
J It was watching you make a cock-up of your drawing that made me bring up what you said about me being an alchemist.
*****
R There! As soon as I visualised Ophromine I drew it correctly.
J Did you see it differently?
R Yes I did. Just a minute while I fax it to them.
J Faxing must be even more confusing for Ophromine.
R Just a minute! This damned fax machine is just as confusing to me as it is for him.
J Let me do it. (Pause). There. Let’s go to lunch.
R Why don’t we bring fish and chips back?
J Because they stink up the office. In fact they stink up the whole flat. It stank for weeks last time we did it. If you want fish and chips we can have it at Donizetti’s. They’ve got a place at the back.
R All right. Let’s do that.
*****
R I don’t know why people eat fish and chips, do you?
J Well, why do we?
R Because we’re lazy sods and we’re in a hurry.
J The fish and potato inside the revolting batter and oil and salt and vinegar are perfectly good food.
R But you need time to find decent restaurants which cook it properly, time to relax and digest the stuff properly, time to...
J ...or do different work in healthier circumstances and eat at home and grow your own food. Be whole human beings in fact.
R That’s an idea. Why don’t we do that? New life, new point of view, new perceptions which include trees and sky...
J ...bird-song instead of traffic noise. Butterflies in the garden. We don’t do it because the rural dream in England now is based on bloody hard dawn-to-dusk work in crippling financial conditions with marginal survival unless you turn it all into agribusiness.
R Which kills all the bird-song and butterflies.
J That’s about it.
R What are we going to have? The breaded sole doesn’t have the revolting batter. We can have half-portions of chips.
J But it’s more expensive and you have to wait longer. Here she comes.
R O.K. miss. Two breaded soles, and one portion of chips between two. No tea thanks miss.
J We’ll have to work later.
R The girls won’t like that.
J What are we going to do, Richard? We’re in a cleft stick. This I.T. work has got us by the short hairs, It’s not going to leave us alone. It’s like opening a door which you can’t shut again. You either have to change your life altogether, or your whole raison d’etre becomes a romantic dream, Kid’s stuff. We’re supposed to be adult men, Richard. What are we playing at?
R There’s Garway.
J Is it a reality?
R It could be.
J Are you serious?
R It depends on Fiona. She’s talking about making it into a trust, with us as trustees. The solicitor says she’s mad, of course. Generating the income from courses and workshops is much more difficult now than it was ten years ago. People can’t afford them any more. In any case, that aspect of the new-ager revival was always socially and economically selective, divisive even. Wrekin Trust, Gatekeeper, Runnings Park, Mickleton, and dozens of other smaller enterprises, they did wonderful work, but it only served a fairly narrow category of people. The same people came year after year, generally speaking. The courses got more expensive as the recession bit more deeply into life, and you ended with the private income gang taking in each others spiritual washing. It isn’t really what the potential clientele for I.T. will be looking for.
J We’re looking for them.
R Well yes, but it’s mutual. I really think I.T. and enterprises like it are the next stage, but the format hasn’t taken shape yet.
J It’s a mobile shape. I think of it as being like an ants’ nest. The venues need to be able to build up quickly and dissolve quickly, in a more and more changeable world. Temples will need to be like circus-tents!.
R Where does Garway fit in?
J That’s the other half of the picture, private houses in the country where people top up their energies for the work. As far as the neighbours are concerned, just another commuter family.
R You don’t see the Garway house integrating into the local community?
J Not the local community as it is now. That’s a dying pattern in any case. It’s a waste of time trying to visualise patterns in a whirlpool of change.The Garway house is just a house in a few acres of land. It could become a base for us five. As for work in London, I don’t feel that would stay the same. Other groups will form, are forming. We should find people in Hereford, Ross-on-Wye and the villages.
R We might find ourselves talking to groups in London form time to time.
*****
R What’s the matter?
J I shivered. I had that feeling people call "someone walking over my grave". Perhaps it’s this fish. It tastes a bit off.
R Don’t eat it.
J I’ll just finish the chips.
R I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the fish. I think you’re picking up something. What’s going on?
J "By the pricking of my thumbs, something evil this way comes!" I’m scaring myself with bogeymen.
R The honeymoons’ over.
J What do you mean?
R I think we’ve reached the point where the tests start. We’ve been sailing on happily with the I.T. idea like kids playing a make-believe game. I think if we don’t wake up soon to some more serious implications, we shall find ourselves in trouble.
J "You’re in trouble already". That wasn’t me. I feel sick and I’m scared. In fact I’m going to be sick. Where’s the loo?
R Over there. Go on, hurry! You’re as white as a sheet.
*****
R Did you get there in time?
J Just.
R Have a rest. I’ve ordered some tea, without milk, strong. You need something astringent. Lacking a herbal remedy, that’s the best you can do.
J I need to get home and change. I stink.
R Have a bit of a rest first. Meanwhile it would be just as well to look at your fear. I picked it up as well. Are you still feeling scared?
J Not as scared as I felt ten minutes ago. I don’t think that was either Meruel or Ophromine. For a moment I felt something really quite menacing. I felt a sort of dark shadow over everything we’re doing.
R Light attracts darkness.
J You said the honeymoon was over. Is that what you meant?
R It’s quite straightforward. In strong sunlight, if at some point you don’t walk into shadow you can’t see straight any more. But what is quite certain is that fear is not the appropriate reaction. I’m not saying we can avoid it, or even that we should do so. But we should only allow it to register and then take immediate steps to identify it. Not counter it or deny it. Simply identify it and what is causing it. Our fear at this moment is telling us something.
J Here’s our tea. Thanks miss. It tastes like ink.
R Tannin lines the stomach with leather. Don’t drink too much of it, but drink it hot.
J I feel better already. Let’s go home. If I sit in this mess I’ll be sick again.
R Stay there while I fetch the car round.
J No, I’m all right. Come on. You pay, will you?
*****
J I feel a new man. That was a lovely bath. Rosemary oil. Excellent stuff. And the water was really hot for once.
R Well, you certainly smell better. What a business! Do you think the fish rally was bad?
J Not to the point of actual food-poisoning. Not very fresh though. I think it was part of an alerting process. A flashing warning light.
R Against what?
J Against taking it easy. Garway was a positively blissful contrast to London. We needed the break, but… what’s that French expression?… "reculer pour mieux sauter", to withdraw the better to leap forward, the movement of an archer as he draws the arrow back before releasing it.
R We need to go onto the offensive. Did you believe what that entity said:- "you’re in trouble already"?
J Now you mention it, no, I don’t believe it. But we jolly easily could be. We need a campaign, Richard. This is the point where my mobility theme really gets put to the test.
R Guerrilla warfare, with our campaign headquarters as mobile as the rest of the troops. Garway one day Lucia’s the next. We need to get together again really soon.
J I think the girls are going to need a lot of support. They’re both pretty strong, but vulnerable as well. We’re very lucky aren’t we, Richard? They’re a wonderful pair.
R And Fiona’s like a guardian angel over her brood.
J Angels don’t have broods.
R A mother hen, then!
J We’d better get some work done, or we’ll starve before the war starts.
R You really think we’re about to be up against some resistance from now on, don’t you? That’s why we need to meet. Let’s ring them and meet tonight. I think it ought to be at Fiona’s again.
J Richard, there’s a tremendous support behind what we’re doing. The dark and light powers need to be constantly rebalanced. I think the chief thing we need to register after this morning’s episode is that the Light beings were limbering up for a big new manifestation in our awareness. But the dark energies always try to pre-empt them. Wherever panic arises you can be sure it presages a miracle! We’ll find when we get back to the girls that they’ve been going through a corresponding crisis.
R I suddenly had a glimpse of Fiona then.
J What was she doing?
R She was by herself in her room. She’d just lit a candle on her altar. Her face was glowing in the flickering light. I’ve never seen her look so beautiful.
END OF BOOK THREE
The Archive of Stanley Messenger
The Intraterrestrials
A Foretaste of the New World
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