The Intraterrestrials

A Foretaste of the New World

Stanley Messenger
1995-1996

Contents
Preface
Introduction
Book 1 Reality for Beginners
Book 2 A Seed Germinates
Book 3 Greenery
Book 4 Dark and Light Flowers
Book 5 Fruit
Book 6 Aftermath
Epilogue
Preface

I would like to tell you how it came about that this book consists
entirely of people talking to each other, with only the absolute
minimum of opening and closing words to set the scene and complete
the picture. The book is neither a play nor a film script. It isn’t really
fiction and it has no plot. In retrospect it had to take this form for two
principal reasons.
The more important of these is that we have to find a way to get
beyond channelling. Channelling is fine as a stage of development on
the way to trans-dimensional awareness. So a century ago there were
the big spiritual movements, like Theosophy, the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky
stream, Anthroposophy, Subud, etc. (It would be invidious to single
these out and compare them since membership of them is a karmic
matter.) So is attachment to a guru. So are the various religious
affiliations. We have all needed some of them , and some of us have
needed most of them. Channelling (writing in 1995) is probably the
latest to surface and, for many people now, it dominates the field. But
we have to get beyond it.
The second reason for a book in which people sort out reality between
themselves is because of Extraterrestrials. Don’t misunderstand me. I
have nothing against ETs. But I do see the need for people to sort out
what inside and outside of us really signifies. The title of this book
already indicates the directions such an inquiry could take.
These two realities, channelling and ETs, are closely connected. They
both fix our attention on something in consciousness which is other,
and divert our attention from the emergence in us of an ever more
active and reality-filled inner space which turns out to be inhabited by
a great deal more than we can become aware of by simply talking to
ourselves.
Jane Roberts’ Seth never tired of saying that we create our own reality.
When a number of people take this fact on board, and then look for
ways for the realities they create to find a common space, it is at this
point that channelling is transcended, and a dialogue with the entities,
including perhaps some ETs who were hitherto only in one-way
communication with us, can begin.
That is the shift we need.
So, if this isn’t fiction and it isn’t channelled, what is it? Using Seth’s
language again, I think it is the perception of a ‘probable reality’. The
emergence of other articulate voices into ordinary conversation than
those of the apparent human participants is happening more and more
frequently nowadays. I have tried to describe a course of events in
which this can come about, and in a fashion not far removed from my
own experience. The extension of natural phenomena in the crop circle
scenes also takes a path which is implicit in what has already
happened in the last year or two. I ask the indulgence of my friends in
the croppie world for imagining their reactions in face of these
‘probable agroglyphic events’! Apart from these imaginative sallies,
the events in the book are mainly things that have happened to me,
and my friends are more likely to recognise me in the characters than
themselves. In that sense, the book is a kind of distributive
autobiography. I knew it needed writing and I didn’t know how else to
write it.
After all, to quote Arthur Guirdham, "We are one another".

INTRODUCTION

A number of quiet residential streets lie behind the busy highways

leading into the commercial and shopping centre of Golders Green in
north-west London. They used to be known as Hampstead Garden
Suburb, and were originally set up experimentally as a quiet middle-
class enclave a little bit removed from the hurly-burly of rough traffic
audible a few streets away to the south. You won’t find it now marked
on the A-Z Street Map, but a few of the avenues still carry the
atmosphere of a quieter age.
A young woman in her thirties was walking down the tree-lined
pavement of one of the smaller crescents on a sunny spring afternoon.
She had a leaflet in her hand, and kept stopping by the garden gates
and looking at the numbers. She seemed to be in no great hurry, and
occasionally stopped and gazed round at the well kept gardens with a
quietly curious look. A little smile played round the corners of her
sweet mouth. She was a very pretty woman, casually but carefully
dressed, femininely assured, but looking today a bit out of her usual
element... the street-wise miss in an unfamiliar street.
She found the number she was looking for and fumbled with the latch
of the garden gate. This garden was not so meticulously kept as some
of the others she had passed on her way; not exactly neglected, in fact
some of the flowers looked more appreciated than others, but as if the
occupant chiefly had her mind on other things. This was a woman’s
garden, she thought, the sort of garden she would have liked herself in
a different life.
She rang the bell and waited, looking round at curtains and colours and
smelling the trees. Unformulated wishes, even longings, played round
the edges of her mind. Someone unhurried was coming down the stairs
inside.
The door opened...

Book 1
"Reality for Beginners"
Dialogue 1

L Good afternoon. Is this the I.T. School?

M It is, yes. Good afternoon
L Who am I speaking to please?
M I’m the interpreter on duty this afternoon.
L You call it ‘interpreter’. Are you a teacher at the school?
M I do some teaching, yes, when that is what seems to be needed.
L I see. Well can I come in? It seems silly to be standing here at the door.
M Yes, certainly. By all means come in. I have to wait till you ask, you see. I’m sorry
if I seemed impolite. Here we are then. Would you like to sit here? This is the most
comfortable chair. Can I offer you something to drink?
L No thanks, this is fine. Thank you very much. What a beautiful room. Van
Gogh’s sunflowers. I have his ‘Blue Cart’. I think I’ll just take off my coat.
There! So, where were we? Do you mind if I go on asking questions?
M Not at all. That’s how we like it to be.
L You haven’t asked me if I was thinking of joining the school, or even how
I came to hear of it.
M No, that’s true. Obviously these things are important, but often they seem to come
later. I think we both have to feel our way a bit first.
L It occurs to me you are already doing your interpreter bit for me.
M Well, yes! It actually starts the moment I open the door to someone. Just as...
L You were about to say...?
M (Laughs) Well, actually, I’m learning my job as an interpreter, just as you in a
sense are learning yours as an inquirer or applicant. There is no set form. Another
thing is that there is no actual moment when anyone joins the school. You are in it or
you are not.
L Sounds a bit like Kafka!
M Point taken!
L The dialogue itself is the school then. It starts on the doorstep.
M It seems to me you’ve already joined the school. Probably quite a time ago.
L Well, I certainly feel very comfortable here. And I agree that we seem to
have passed the preliminary stages, almost without noticing them. It’s
almost as if you knew I was coming.
M Yes. It’s not the first time that has happened.
L Can you enlarge on that?
M What I mean is that one gets the sense of smooth running from the moment the
door opens. The right interpreter meets the right inquirer and both are aware of the
serendipity of the occasion. At other times everything seems to feel wrong from the
start. Someone comes to the door and it all feels like the grinding of gears.
L Yes. How do you deal with that?
M Well, you improvise, just as in all the situations. I sometimes say, sorry, there’s
no-one in at the moment. Would you like to come back on Monday.
L (Laughs) ...and do they?
M Yes, sometimes. And there will be another interpreter on duty. Quite often they
then get somewhere, which may involve an indirect suggestion that they are not
ready. Sometimes there is the advice there and then that they read a certain book, or
join a yoga class or something. Off putting in one sense, but leading the inquirer
towards the next step of introspection. But quite a lot of people don’t come back.
L What then? I mean, how do you look at that?
M I feel an interpreting job has also been done then. As much is done by what one
doesn’t say as by what is put into words. You don’t block people’s paths, they block
their own.
L So there is a good deal also you are not saying to me.
M You underestimate yourself. I have a favourite saying in connection with that.
"Never answer a question someone hasn’t asked you" Everyone goes at their own pace.
I feel this is going quite well, don’t you?
L Well, yes. But I’m impatient to get on.
M So am I. But that often means that it’s time for a break. Why don’t you come back
this evening if you’re free?
L Er... no, I can’t manage that quite. What a pity When are you on next?
M How about tomorrow?
L Fine! Same time tomorrow afternoon?
M Suits me! See you then. I’ll see you out.
L I’ve really enjoyed this. I’m really most grateful.
M It’s a two-way process, you know. It wouldn’t work otherwise. I’ve enjoyed it too.
L See you tomorrow then. Bye.

Dialogue 2

L Good afternoon. Are you ready for me?

M Just about. How are you feeling about yesterday?
L Seething with questions, some more relevant than others, no doubt. I’m
finding it difficult to sort out where to start.
M We can start anywhere. Come on in. Have you eaten?
L Thank you, yes. But I could do with something to drink.
M Come into the kitchen. Take off your coat. My goodness, you’re really tense,
aren’t you? Sit on the stool for a moment. Let me massage your shoulders. Breathe
slowly for a bit. There, that’s better.
L My thoughts have been going round and round since yesterday. I’ve been
looking for something of this sort for ages, but I didn’t know where to start.
Then on the way home yesterday I thought to myself, well, that’s funny, I
was really beginning to feel quite keen about being here. But no sooner had I
started settling into that feeling than there I was out in the street walking
home! At the same time I felt really right about it. I can’t stand all these
spiritual movements, all different, and yet somehow the same, and all so full
of themselves.
M You feel more confident here?
L Yes I do. I think I want to go on coming. What I really want to know is...
M Here, let’s make drinks first. Are you into herb teas and stuff?
L No, I’d rather have ordinary tea please. Earl Grey?
M Coming up. I’ll have the same. You go in the front room and settle down. Switch
on the fire if you need it. I’ll bring the drinks.
*****
M Are you comfortable there again? Warm enough?
L I’m fine thanks. You know, you’re not at all like my picture of a teacher.
M Well, that’s a relief. I don’t feel much like a teacher either. I think we slip into
roles as they are needed. Don’t you think our society is obsessed by qualifications and
credentials? At the moment I’m using this word ‘interpreter’. It seems to cover where
I’ve got to in my role-adoption bit. I feel happy in helping people to sort out
understanding about life, or at least a sort of preliminary area of that.
L You have an odd effect on me. This question of roles. Just making your
remark about that changed my feeling about coming here. In fact it
changed... it changed my role as an inquirer into something else.
M Yes. I felt it too. You are not only in the school already. You are already an
interpreter, at least as far as I’m concerned.
L So my role in relation to other members of the school might well be
different.
M Certainly it might. Of course, that’s up to them. But I feel it probably already is
different.
L I suppose that’s partly a result of how your feeling about me affects
them.
M Yes, certainly.
L For me it raises the question of what the school actually is, how its
members hang together as a school. Do I get to meet other members of
it?... all sorts of questions. For instance, I don’t even know your name.
M Or I yours! Neither of us asked. Incidentally our tea’s getting cold.
*****
M Your last remark had three important questions in it. Four actually. Which shall I
answer first?
L What’s your name?
M I got a picture when you asked that of a door opening onto a landscape of multiple
forms like rocks. Opening the door caused the forms to tumble about and realign
themselves. When they had settled down your question appeared in quite a different
light.
L Looking at you over this cup of tea I am seeing you through half closed
eyes. I can almost, as it were, see your name as well. Something like
Melissa, Miranda?
M Go on.
L I think it’s Melanie.
M I like it.
L Is that your name?
M As far as you are concerned my name is Melanie. It will do nicely.
L Why don’t you tell me your real name?
M I think that’s your first real question in this session. I mean it is something that
really needs a bit of interpreting. It began when the forms started tumbling about and
realigning themselves.
L Before my question in fact.
M No. Funny that. You confused your question with the answer you almost
immediately found for it. Questions about names tend to do that. I think the tumbling
forms in my picture were adjustments to the order of events in time. If you ask
someone’s name it raises multiple questions of identity, which in ordinary life we gloss
over with the disguise which appears on our birth certificate. In the school, that is
almost irrelevant, unless we need it for some practical arrangement like a letter or an
appointment.
L Or, for that matter, in almost everything we deal with in practical life. But
I think I’m beginning to get the point. The school is a sort of jacking up of
consciousness onto a level where we can decide what is relevant. Almost, we
create our own reality, is that it? Isn’t that a pretty dangerous enterprise?
M Yes, extremely dangerous. People sometimes end up in mental homes doing the
sort of things we in the I.T. school are doing.
L You sound fairly serene about it. Incidentally we are going at such a pace
I’ve begun to forget a lot of the questions which seemed so urgent overnight.
But you’ve just reminded me. What does I.T. stand for?
M That makes four unanswered questions now we’ve sorted out the question of my
name. Or have we?
L Yes. I don’t feel any urgent need at the moment to know the name on
your birth certificate.
M (Laughs). It’s not particularly private. But we’ve made the point, I think, about
levels of reality. Actually it was you who made the point. There’s a lot more to be said
on the subject but it will emerge in its own time. Meanwhile... do you want some
more tea?
L Yes please.
M I’ll get it, while you put the questions I’ve still to answer into one. I think they are
actually all the same question.
*****
L I don’t know how we’d manage without tea. There doesn’t seem to be any
better way to create the necessary pauses in conversation.
M The question has come up frequently in the school. We have found other ways, but
they seem to be particular to certain groups and situations. The trouble with tea and
coffee is one of dependency. It’s all right if they remain fall-back ploys while a
relationship is finding its feet, so to speak. Did you want to ask your questions about
the school again?
L No, I’m happy to leave you to sort it out. You’re supposed to be the
interpreter.
M I’m thinking of resigning and letting you take over.
L I’ll consider it. Meanwhile...
M Yes, meanwhile... your feeling the need for a more circumstantial picture of the
school than has emerged from our explorations to date. There’s less to say than
perhaps you’d think. We meet in each other’s houses. This is my house. I presume
someone who had been here told you of the school.
L Yes, she gave me a leaflet. I’ve got it somewhere.
M There are many such leaflets. Anybody who finds it possible to do a turn as an
interpreter makes their address available at specified times. By keeping it informal
and mobile in this way the synchronicity has more chance to work. But as we said
earlier it is always possible for sand to get in the works, and that is not always a bad
thing. People get led on to the contacts they need and sometimes have difficult
experiences en route.
L But do these one to one meetings lead on to group sessions?
M In a sense, yes, but more informally than you find in some spiritual and religious
movements. Most movements start with some sort of arranged form into which the
content finds its way, sometimes in a quite disciplined way. Many people seem to need
this, and even insist it is necessary. We provide something different.
L Why call it a school? And isn’t that degree of formlessness somewhat
dissipating of energy? You might as well be a group of friends meeting
casually in a café or somewhere.
M Sometimes that is what does happen. But you expressed the difficulty yourself in
one of your remarks yesterday. Spiritual movements and societies have this tendency
to become in-turned and self serving. At the same time some degree of form seems to
be necessary. We have allowed the forms to develop in a minimalist way in response
to a need we have sensed in people, partly indeed to find answers to these deep
questions, but more and more nowadays to share valid experiences of their own, as
you are doing.
L Yes, I see. The school comes together out of the renewal of the impulses
of its potential members by serendipitous contact. Contact first, then form, in
so far as form is required.
M I couldn’t put it better. Moreover the forms can dissolve as easily as they arise,
and no loss. New forms continually replace them.
L And I.T.?
M That starts a whole new cycle. Do you want to go on now, or leave it to the next
session?
L Leave me with the name for now and I’ll come back later. I’m running
late.
M I.T. stands for intraterrestrial.
L Intraterrestrial! Wonderful! Have you a phone? Oh yes, the number’s on
the Leaflet. I must run.
M Here’s another leaflet in case. Yes, give me a ring. Forget the duty interpreter
ploy We’ve made a good start. Bye then.
L Bye. See you. Sorry I must run. Thanks for the tea. Intraterrestrial! Well I
never!

*****

Dialogue 3

L Good morning Melanie.

M Hello Love. Come in. Don’t stand there in the rain.
L Couldn’t get a taxi. I’ve walked from the station. Run in fact.
M We can dry your things in the kitchen by the Rayburn.
L I’ll just shake the umbrella first. There! I wish I didn’t live so far away.
M Where do you live? I’ll put the kettle on.
L Just off the Chalk Farm Road.
M Oh! So it’s only three stations on the tube. There’s somebody in the school on
Haverstock Hill. Quite a number of people are working round there as far as I know.
L You think of it as work, do you?
M It can be jolly hard work at times. People have horrific problems. You and I have
sailed into smooth waters, at least for the moment. Here’s your tea. I took it that Earl
Grey is your tipple.
L Thanks.
*****
M Do you like that chair again?
L No, actually I thought of myself this time sitting back on the sofa. I was
thinking about this room in the night and it felt really like home. Do you
mind?
M On the contrary, I’m relieved. You may have gathered that I’m almost as fresh to
this interpreter role as you are. A lot of this I.T. business is centred round the question
of one’s own self-image. I’m realising that mine has been pretty poor on the whole. I
seem to have gone over from asking endless questions to helping other people with a
few answers. But I haven’t much idea where they are coming from. You give me
confidence.
L Tell me about Intraterrestrials. I’ve already jumped to the idea that the
name is a sort of extension of the notion of ETs I keep meeting people who
are high on the idea that we are about to be rescued by a benign invasion of
space-folk who will beam us up into other dimensions, while the Earth sorts
itself out with a polar shift, a new ice age, Atlantis reappearing in the pacific
or whatever. I gather you are not interested in that sort of scenario.
M I’m very interested in all that. I’m sure there is some sort of meaning to it apart
from escapist fantasy. But I haven’t got very far yet with putting it into perspective.
L Is it a projection of something which is really going on inside people?
M Yes, I’m sure it is partly that, but not simply in terms of classical psychology. On
some level I’m sure that these beings exist. But the whole science fiction scenario
seems to be based on a very fundamental misunderstanding. The word intraterrestrial
appeared for the first time in a conversation between some of us about three years
ago. We had... (pause) I’m running a bit ahead of myself. That’s the trouble with the
interpreter role. One is so full of ideas, explanations, speculations...
L Interpretations, in fact!
M Indeed, but before you know where you are you’re breaking my rule about
answering questions before they’ve arisen in people, It’s always better, I think, to be
one step behind people’s process than several steps in front. What I should be doing is
asking you what sort of feelings... feelings I think rather than ideas... come up in you
when you hear the world intraterrestrial.
L Yes, I’ve been doing this a bit during the night. The word itself has been
opening one of your inner doors for me. But instead of tumbling rocks it was
something I call a ‘presence’. The word focuses something I’ve always been
somewhat aware of, but also insecure about, the notion that we are not
alone on this planet. There are other beings than ourselves occupying this
space we call Earth. But what seems to happen is, we have an insatiable
hunger to tell stories about them, to build mythologies, religions, scientisms,
anything to distance ourselves from our intuitive sense of immanent
‘presences’, which is otherwise intolerable, and generally speaking, scary.
M The two words that resonate most with me in all that are ‘scientism’ and ‘scary’.
Scientific explanations of things always make me scared. I get a deep feeling that
what has caused men to build up what they call science is mainly fear... well, fear
and curiosity, but mainly fear.
L We’re women.
M Yes, but these days that’s not supposed to make any difference. You’ll have the
feminists after you.
L Calling ‘presences’ Intraterrestrials is a very door-opening thing to do.
M It is, isn’t it?
L Who are they then?
*****
M I’m going to cal you Lucia.
L Why?
M Melanie is darkness, Lucia is...
L Light. I don’t feel much like light.
M You certainly bring a lot of light to me.
*****
L There’s a ‘presence’ here now.
*****
M I’m getting cold. Let’s put the kettle on again.
L I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we go out for a meal?
M That’s a good idea.
L Have you a special place round here?
M There’s a new one up the hill towards Golders Hill. I haven’t tried it yet.
L Let’s try it now..
*****
L What shall we have? Oh, look. They’ve got s mixed seafood snack thing
on a pancake. I’ll try that.
M That should ground some of your sparkle. You light-beings are all alike, can’t wait
to grovel in the murk.
L On the basis you’d better start with a champagne cocktail. Sure specific
for melancholia.
M I suppose I am a bit heavy. But I’m not actually miserable.
L No, darling, you’re certainly not. You’re actually very serene. I feel very
comfortable with you.
*****
M This is a very good salad. What’s your fishy thing like?
L Scrummy. (Pause). Melanie, are you a lesbian?
M I thought you’d ask that at some point. I like women very much. I get on with
women. On the whole women seem to trust me and relax with me. But, I haven’t
experimented, and I’m not really inclined to. My feeling is that sex closes more doors
than it opens. And of course there are times when doors need closing, otherwise
spiritual exploration really does weaken your hold on reality. But I’d rather do that
with men. I’ve had some good times with men. (Pause). On the whole in my
experience spiritual exploration doesn’t usually go very well in a sexual setting. Sex is
a world on its own. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything outside itself.
L Except having babies perhaps.
M Indeed. But apart from that it is also a wonderful world. What about you?
L I’ve played the field quite a bit. Both sorts. But I’m a bit jaded at the
moment. I’m having a celibate sabbatical.
M You’re very pretty. But I don’t fancy you in bed.
L No. I think we’re all right as we are. Shall we have a sweet?
M Just a coffee for me.
L Let me get them.
*****
L So, who was this ‘presence’ back there?
M An Intraterrestrial.
L I’m scared.
M What scares you?
L I don’t know. The unknown, I suppose.
M Do you want to know things?
L Yes. But I want to be in control. I want to be me, to keep the initiative in
my life. I’m scared of being taken over.
M Self-protection is a very powerful impulse, and a very valid one. There are real
dangers in these unknown realities, and the first reaction to the intuition that this is
so is fear.
L I’d rather be safe. Better safe than sorry.
M That sums up the whole reason why humanity remains cut off from reality. Better
the devil you know. "Human kind cannot bear very much reality"!, says T.S. Eliot. But
reality won’t leave some people alone. After all, you did come to my door. What were
you looking for? Was it just curiosity?
L No, you’re right. There was something more. But back there in your room
I was sort of paralysed. I wanted to open up to what I knew was going on,
but I didn’t know how. I stayed all rigid inside. I sat there watching you,
sitting with your eyes shut, breathing. Then I looked out of the window.
Buses and people going by, and I thought what a bloody awful world. Then I
looked at you, and I knew something else was going on, and I didn’t know
what to do. Oh, I don’t know, it’s all... (cries)
M Oh, sweetheart, cheer up. It’s all a great deal simpler than you think. You are also
a lot nearer to a breakthrough than you think. Let’s go back to the flat.
L Why don’t you come back to my place? I’m rather lucky. I’ve got this
rather posh room in one of those old Victorian houses down in Chalk Farm.
There’s some central heating, but there’s a massive open fireplace where you
can have a really big fire going, logs and everything. Come and see it. Oh
lord, I’m going to cry again. Let’s pay and get out of here.
M (Laughs) You’re a priceless girl. Most of my inquirers so far have been rather
solemn and solid. You’re more natural somehow.
L Oh Melanie, I’m so glad I’ve found you. I suppose actually I lead a rather
frivolous sort of life, but I haven’t had any proper friends since I left college.
I need to know things. I really do. You’ve already started something in me
I’ve been looking for, for ages. I’m so grateful.
M Darling, it’s you who are doing it. If I’ve been a way through for you to start
something, that’s wonderful. But we’ve scarcely started yet. At the same time...
L What?
M At the same time I have a sense of having crossed a sort of bridge with you. It’s
happening for me too. Let’s wait till we get to your place. I’ll try to tell you then.

*****

Dialogue 4

M God! It’s enormous!

L Yes without the log fire it would be an impossible room to heat, even with
the radiators. Look at these enormous windows. No double glazing in those
days.
M Masses of cupboard space. Whatever’s that thing?
L I suppose it must originally have been in the kitchen. All those little
drawers were for spices. I keep toiletries in them.
M I really envy those book-cases. This must have been the library.
L Perhaps I shall at last start to read something. I’m disgustingly ignorant.
Here, let’s get the fire going. You sit down. I’m used to the thing. There’s a
kind of knack to these contraptions. Actually this one’s extremely efficient.
Once it’s going it’s a real furnace.
M Can I do something? I’ll wash up these things.
L Melanie, sit down. Let me play mum for once. There, the fir’s beginning to
respond. We’d better keep our coats on for a bit.
M Lucia, how old are you?
L I feel a bit funny when you call me Lucia here. It seems to belong to a
special situation I associate with your house up the hill. I think of it as a sort
of... a sort of temple or something. A sanctuary.
M It’s actually more of a forecourt than a sanctuary, though we do have a sanctuary.
I think you feel my room’s special because you had a particular experience there, and
because a number of other people have been through their ‘stuff’ in that room. Rooms
build up a mood in which your ‘presences’ also feel more at home... But that can
happen in any room. This room is still pretty neutral, but it already carries something
of you in it, superimposed no doubt on the older library atmosphere.
L Such as what?
M Well, somewhat empty, spacious. A bit restless. But with a huge capacity for
fulfilment. Needing love. And also capable of giving love. I think it’s the right room for
you.
L I’ve only been here a few months. Since my last relationship broke up, in
fact.
M Your celibate sabbatical!
L Exactly! (laughs) You asked me how old I am. I shall be thirty-three next
birthday, which is tomorrow week.
M Lord, here we go again! (laughs)
L What do you mean?
M I have this extraordinary habit of coming across the important people in my life
when they are thirty-three. There’s something very special about thirty-three. It was
the year of Jesus’ crucifixion. Something happens to the whole of mankind in its
thirty-third year. I look back on that year as the time I discovered my work.
L How old are you now?
M Rising forty. I shall be forty in October.
L Have you been married?
M Yes, twice. I’m still married, but we don’t live together all the time. He’s
wonderful. But he has his own life as I do. When we miss each other too much we
spend a few months together, and then we sometimes take big steps forward in our
understanding of life and of each other. But we also have separate paths of our own to
follow.
L Is he part of the I.T school?
M Very much so. Very much so indeed. He was one of those who started it. I owe him
an enormous amount. He’s a very wise man.
L Don’t you want to be with him all the time?
M We went through all that a few years back, both of us. It was a very painful time.
But this is a good deal better. We both look forward to our times together and make
the most of them when they arrive. And we know they always will.
L What did you mean when you said you had crossed a sort of bridge with
me?
M All sorts and conditions of people come to the door to ask about I.T. It happens to
other people who decide to take on the interpreter role too. The loose structure
allows something to work which we can call happenstance. Serendipity. In the East it
is more connected with the idea of karma... not in its crude form as fate,
predestination... more as a sort of subtle working of events under a kind of higher
guidance. A man called Adam Bittleston once wrote a prayer called ‘Against Fear’,
which began:- "May the events which seek me come unto me.", and went on to include
people and spirits. The point of the prayer was that the working of this subtle kind of
causation is implemented by what he called Ground, Love, and Light. Love is actually
the substance of it, but Ground and Light are the essential parameters between which
love operates. There is a huge power in this Love, and if it is invoked in the right way
it can be overwhelming, in fact terrifying. What I am trying to say is that there was
nothing wrong or even unusual in your reaction of paralysis and fear when the I.T.
appeared in my room. It was largely you yourself who drew the presence towards us. I
don’t yet have that particular capacity. But you most certainly do.
L I don’t feel that is so at all. I’m positively staved of love. I faff about all
over the place, sleeping with this man or that for a night or two, and
sometimes women too. I look for love, but I don’t actually find it, and I don’t
really give it either. I’m a mess, and I feel extremely confused.
M Hence the celibate sabbatical, and hence also what is happening to you now.
L But why do I have to be so scared?
M Love is the most powerful thing in the whole of human experience. People think of
fear as powerful, of hatred, and war, and bombs and tanks as powerful. So power
comes to be associated with fear. You have a very powerful intuitive connection with
love and light, but perhaps not yet with ground. What scares you silly is your own
power of love. The bridge I felt I had crossed with you is...
L What?
M I’ve been struggling along for about three years in this interpreter role, and most
of it has been pretty heavy going. A lot of the people who come to me I have passed
on to others. I didn’t seem to have the particular answers they were looking for. But
with you, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something has sparked off as a clear road,
not only what I sense for you, but for me as well. The being who came into my room
was drawn to you, but it had to do with me as well. In fact it spoke to me in a certain
way, because I was not afraid of the situation. Do you want me to go on, or shall we
have a break?
L No, I want you to go on. There is something in what you are saying that
makes me less afraid. In fact I’m beginning to feel something very special. I
feel much more open to what you are saying. Let’s have a bit of quiet again.
Here in this pace where I feel at home, and with this lovely fire, I feel
relaxed. Do you mind if we are quiet for a while?
M Lucia, I love you very much. I thank you for something which is very precious to me
as well (they are in each other’s arms).
 *****
M Stop crying, you silly girl. Here, I’ve got some tissues in my bag.
L Who do you think you are, my mum? I want you to make love to me.
M No you don’t. You’re in a muddle. What you have to do is start to realise that you
don’t have to open up on all your levels at once. You’re not used to being loved, only
to being desired. Can you honestly say any of your lovers have actually loved you,
apart from wanting to fuck you?
L It’s the same thing isn’t it?
M You know it isn’t. What do people want to do after you’ve made love?
L (Giggles) Make love again. No, of course you’re right. It’s like an empty
space. You go on looking for the right person.
M There isn’t such a thing as the right person in that sense.
L I thought you might be the right person.
M So, bang goes the celibate sabbatical! Lucia, I do actually love you, you know. Get
used to the idea that we are actually friends. You don’t need to desire me for that. I
like you. I appreciate you. I think you’re lovely and wonderful. You can trust me. But I
don’t want to fuck you.
L Oh lord. What am I going to do?
M Once you start letting yourself love people without being afraid you’ll lose them
the next minute you’ll be amazed how relaxed you’ll be. You might even find you love
a man without caring a damn whether he fucks you or not.
L That’ll be the day.
M Lucia, you found me by coming to my door because you were looking for a place
where you could learn things, perhaps learn the secret of living. Were you afraid you
were going to lose all that and me with it?
L Well, yes I was. I’ve always lost people before.
M As long as you need me you’re not going to lose me. I have no need whatever to
send you away, abandon you, cut you off or anything else, because I’m not attached to
you. I just love you.
L I love you too.
M Yes, I think you do. As you said yourself, we’re alright as we are. And if we want it
to, it will open a hell of a lot more doors than lovemaking would. I told you I sensed a
capacity in you for a particular kind of light-filled love. But it’s been stifled, and quite
a bit damaged. It would probably help if you told me about your childhood, but all in
good time. We’ve got all our lives (they hug again).
*****
L Tell me again about the being who came.
M You were aware of it weren’t you?
L Yes I was, but I was scared.
M Are you still scared?
L No, I don’t think so.
M Why not?
L Because of us. I feel you know what’s going on, and I trust you to lead us
on to the next step. What is the being? Is it here now?
M In a sense they’re always here, whatever here is supposed to mean. But the
particular thing that makes you call it a ‘presence’ is something different.
L What do you mean?
M Well it’s something you create yourself. A picture arises out of your expectations,
or desire, or fear, or worship, and the appropriate being fills the picture you’ve made.
L So if you’re scared then it’s a scary being that shows itself.
M Well, it can be like that. It’s certainly possible to play about irresponsibly in
psychic regions and attract all sorts of nasty entities. But at a deeper level there are
much more powerful forces at work. What really drew that being into my room was
the fact of you seeking something deeper in your life and a more mysterious thing
about who you actually are, and what you have come onto the Earth to do. Also the
fact that it was me you came to;’ something to do with your hidden connection with
me. And then of course also the fact that life has taught me something about psychic
healing, and that I am actually able to help you sort out your sexual muddles. There
are depths within depths, and in the end there remains something quite mysterious in
encounters like ours. That being has something to do with both you and me, and even
if it is wholly benign it is still possible to be scared of it. I told you, it is your own
power of love that really frightens you.
L This I.T. school is really something, isn’t it? Do you think that being has
to do with this love power you say I have?
M What do you think?
L I think... I think the being is me.
M I think so too.
L I’m beginning to... I feel awfully funny.
M (Stands up) Lucia, hold my hands. Breathe. Go on, breathe deeply in and out. Go
on. Deeper That’s it. Stamp up and down.
L What’s happening?
M You were going out of your body. Has that ever happened before?
L I don’t think so. I feel better.
M We need some fresh air. Let’s go for a walk. I’m sorry, Lucia. I let the session go
on too long. I didn’t anticipate the effect moving so fast would have on you.
L I’ll put some coal on the fire, and some slack to bank it up a bit. Where
shall we go?
M How far is Camden Town? I wanted to look in the Compendium bookshop for a book
I’ve seen.
L Come on then. I still feel a bit funny.
M You’re fine. We’ll walk it off. Come on. What a life. Eh?

*****

Dialogue 5

L I feel quite ordinary again. Coming back on the tube...

M What happened?
L I don’t know quite. It was the faces of the people. There was something
really quite horrible about them.
M How do you mean?
L Well, there we all were in the train lurching along the tunnel, and I
suddenly realised I had never actually seen the train before, or people, or
anything really... and what was so horrible was that, in a way, none of us
was actually there.
M What about the faces, the faces of the people?
L Well, that was it. There was this row of faces, apparently all together, but
actually we were all by ourselves. There was no connection between anyone
and anyone else. Everyone was trapped on their own in a nightmare, an
illusion of reality. I nearly panicked again. But I breathed like you said, and
concentrated on that little girl’s dolly, and felt how she loved it, and
everything sort of came together again. But for a moment I wondered if I
could ever bear to be out in the world at all again. I couldn’t wait to be back
in the house here.
M Sometimes it seems as if looking for knowledge, looking for a more real existence,
is so dangerous that the path is best left alone altogether. Psychologists tell you to
pull yourself together, come down to earth, get married, have a baby, take up tennis,
anything. Anything is better than trying to get a glimpse of reality. You’ve just been
on the edge of a precipice, and you stepped back. You’ve also had a glimpse of your
real being, and that nearly yanked you out of your body.
L What am I going to do? I feel I’ve started something, opened a door
which I can’t shut again.
M It’s all actually totally with in your control. Panic and hysteria are simply self-
indulgence. They make you feel sort of special. Yippee! Goody-goody, I’m psychic.
Look at me everyone. You said yourself that sort of thing is dangerous, and it is. Do
you know what agoraphobia is?
L Never heard of it.
M Well, you caught a glimpse of that too this morning. It’s a fear of open spaces
induced by a suspicion that the whole world may be a ghastly illusion, which of course
in one sense it is. But if you indulge in that realisation it can threaten to take you
over, as you found out. Do you mind me giving you a sort of elementary psychology
lesson; "reality for beginners", so to speak?
L Not at all. It’s what I need.
M You’re sure? I’m always scared of patronising people.
L No, you carry on. I love it.
M Have you heard of Carlos Castaneda?
L I saw a lot of his books this morning. Looked fascinating.
M They are, if you read them at the right time. One of his most important bits of
advice is:- "Don’t indulge!". Whatever else you do on the path, don’t indulge. Have
you ever taken drugs?
L No. Thought about it.
M I’m not going to act the school-marm and say don’t. Though with your
hypersensitive psyche I perhaps should. The important factor in all that is to have a
solid base, and I don’t feel at the moment that yours is all that solid, thought it could
quickly become so. You need to know who you are and where your identity is, and that
however far you venture out from that identity you know how to get back. Most people
who experiment with drugs do so wholly unprepared.
L Do you use drugs yourself?
M No.
L Why not?
M You could say that I was caught by reality in time. By the time I met people who
were caught in the vortex of addiction I was already far enough into the experiences
they had gained through drugs not to need to. Simply by following my bent in the
course of natural development I found I had reached the levels they had needed drugs
to reach.
L How do you know the experiences you were having were the same as
they were getting through drugs, that you were not missing something
essential?
M That has to do with something which develops in the course of the emergence of a
certain sort of perception. You can call it clairvoyance, though I realise it is not the
whole of what people wiser than me identify as such. All I can say is, you learn to rely
on your perception of what goes on in people down to a certain depth, while at the
same time knowing that you have only gone a certain way down that road. It is the
same when you look at a tree. You know perfectly well that it is a tree that you are
looking at, while still knowing that there is a lot more to perceiving trees or clouds or
butterflies than you have yet attained.
L Yes, I can accept that. That is certainly part of "reality for beginners" isn’t
it? I need to think about it more but there’s another thing. How do you think
you came to that when other people didn’t?
M Protection, simply.
L What do you mean?
M I met my own being and started to follow it. When you do that you are protected.
You are in the middle of doing the same thing. You have been walking towards the
experience of your own identity... I suppose all your life... but more particularly
since you started for my front door a couple of days ago.
L Following my bent.
M Precisely.
L And am I protected? I feel I am.
M Protection is something you have to ask for. But essentially, yes, you are protected
anyway. Asking takes the process further and prevents complacency. More than that,
if you do need, for karmic reasons, to follow a dark road for a time, you can do so with
more awareness. And you can sometimes avoid unnecessary accidents.
L Why aren’t other people protected? I mean, why do so many people come
unstuck, go down slippery slopes into the shit, or just do nothing, get more
and more bored, sit for hours and hours glued to the telly, have sex, go out
for a drink, have more sex, on and on and on. Why aren’t they protected?
M They are.
L What does that mean?
M Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with anything anyone does.
L You mean people like torturers, child molesters, what they do is all right?
M Try and form a picture of someone like that, a child torturer, say, sitting in the
middle of their situation with their victim. The screaming, the smell of vomit, the
pleading for them to stop, the torturer is going on compulsively looking for the next
sensation, hypnotised by her own horror. And next to them, invisible, as close to them
as we are now to each other, the ‘Presences’, their own higher selves, carrying all this
pain, protecting them, surrounding them with love while all this horror is being
worked through, resolving lifetime after lifetime of interaction, passion, rage terror,
mutual destruction...
L Oh do stop, do stop, Melanie, I can’t bear it. What are you saying? You
mean all this horror has to go on happening. Isn’t there any end to it?
M "Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing?"
L Underneath are the everlasting arms.
M I quote Eliot, you quote the prayer book. I would have expected the other way
round! Lucia, it is all self-chosen, the whole thing. Perpetrators, victims, they are all
one. They play both roles. We are all one. We’ve all done these things at some time or
other, and had them done to us. We are one another.
L Why? Why? Why?
M For some mysterious reason, the only way to Love is through Pain. At some stage in
our suffering of the deepest dullness of spirit only inflicting pain on others suffices to
arouse our compassionate feeling. But woe betide us if we discover this truth in
coldness of heart and use it deliberately to restore feeling in our own dead hearts.
This only drives us deeper into the dark. Masochistic submission to others’ cruelty in
self-punishment has the same effect. Only karma itself can be trusted to resolve the
balance in truth and justice.
L So we don’t have to go on struggling through the dark for ever?
M No, we don’t. Ultimately we come out of the dark into awareness. We miss
countless opportunities to do that, but finally the Light dawns, and we take one of
them. That is what is happening to us now. You meet someone who starts you off on a
process of waking to reality. But not until that is what you have started looking for.
Often it is a mutual process, as it is for us now.
L Two interpreters meeting head on. You’re the senior interpreter. You’ve
gone further than I have.
M I’m not sure that’s true. In some ways, perhaps. Good lord, whatever time is it? I
must fly. We always seem to overshoot, sweetheart... Thank you! I[’m so grateful
we’ve met (hugs).
L You’re opening a new world to me. It’s wonderful. Don’t let me go, for
God’s sake!
M The whole thing is absolutely mutual. We are only at the beginning of a dawning, a
new day, a world of light. It’s no good trying to put it into words. I’m off. You ring me
this time. I’ll be home about six. Ring me! Bye!

*****

Dialogue 6

L This was a good idea, meeting up here.

M My father used to say you could see St Paul’s Cathedral on a clear day. We
sometimes used to come up here with our nanny as children. We used to fly a kite.
L Did you have brothers and sisters?
M I had a younger sister. We were very close.
L Do you still see here?
M She died. She had polio.
L Was that a long time ago?
M Yes. We were still children. I was nine. (Pause). I suppose you could say I still look
for her. For me this is what relationship with other women is about. I am aware of the
search, this possibility, whenever I get close to a woman. The notion of a lesbian
relationship confuses the issue for me, diverts the energy into a different channel, you
could say.
L At first I was hurt when you pushed me back from that. But I felt closer to
you afterwards. It was part of the door... one of the doors you were opening
for me.
M I think sex is wonderful. At the same time I always have the feeling that it darkens
the energy. Not hat there is anything wrong with that. In fact there can be a blazing
radiance at the heart of an orgasm. But it is light in an enclosed space.
L What do you mean when you say you see me as a light being?
M Precisely that. Something very powerful. But I also sense you fear of this power.
L Are you saying I escape from this power by dissipating it in sex?
M I think you do, yes. But I am not saying sex is wrong. It is a necessary grounding of
the light in darkness. Otherwise we would be shooting off into space all the time.
L How do I stop doing that? Doing what I do?
M You won’t do so until you are aware of the issue. Intuitively you had withdrawn
into celibacy, but it threatened to come unstuck when you felt close to me. Then
when I nudged things back into balance, and we had the experience of your true self
approaching us, you threatened to shoot out of yourself altogether. What is this, do
you think? What is actually going on?
L I think I’m unstable. I don’t know who I am. I’m frightened of myself.
M And you’re nearly thirty-three.
L You mean I’m immature? I ought to have steadied up sooner?
M No. You’re no more immature than most people in our day and age. But thirty-
three is becoming more and more a special time for people in search of themselves, in
search of reality.
L Go on.
M What you and I are doing easily becomes isolated from the world. Out here on
Parliament Hill you can get a feeling of the whole of London spread round you... All
the millions of lives going on in all the cramped little houses.
L Cramped little lives too mostly.
M I think a lot of Hampstead people come up here from time to time to get a glimpse
of themselves. But there are fewer and fewer voices in our society giving them any
guidance in this.
L So what happens when you are thirty-three?
M Doors start opening for people, as they are doing for you. How do you feel about
what we have been doing in the last few days? Where do you feel you are standing?
Who are you, Lucia?
L I’m opening and shutting my eyes. First I see Parliament Hill and the
whole of London. Then I see me and my feelings and a world of inner doors
opening. I’m on a sort of tight-rope, with darkness on one side and light on
the other. I’m scared of falling.
M Visualise your ‘presence’, your being. Breathe, Lucia breathe in and out while you
open and shut your eyes. You won’t fall.
L Why won’t I fall?
M Because you are beginning to see that there is something else besides batting from
one side to the other between darkness and light. There is a third reality ahead of you
as you edge your way step by step along the tight-rope towards it.
L It is my own being.
M Who is your own being?
L My light says it is your being as well.
M My darkness says the same.
L We are one another.
*****
L (Shivers) It’s getting a bit cold up here. Shall we go?
M Yes. Let’s go back to your place. I’m getting hungry.
L Why don’t we stop at that café in Belsize Park on the way, and have a bit
of lunch?
M The trouble with Parliament Hill is it’s always so windy. Hence the kites.
*****
M Do you want to go back to your place straight away, or shall we stop and have
another coffee? I like this place. I’ve not been here before.
L Let’s stay on a bit then.
M There’s something I want to suggest, but I’m not quite sure of the timing. Up the
hill this morning I felt we’d come to a sort of threshold, as if we needed something
new to happen.
L So did I, but I didn’t want to lose what we’d got already. I didn’t want to
lose you.
M You won’t, and I won’t either. But we won’t do that by hanging on to each other.
I’ve found my sister, darling, but we need to let go a bit.
L I know what! It’s something I’ve been wanting to ask for days? Aren’t
there any other people in this damned I.T. school, or is it only you and me?
Isn’t it time I met the boss?
M (Laughs) We don’t have a boss. But that’s what I’ve been waiting for you ask. As a
matter of fact I rang him up this morning. I told him about you a few days ago. This
morning he said he’d like to meet you.
L You’ve been holding out on me. Who is this guy? It’s not your fella is it?
M No, but they’re very close friends. They and one other started this affair together.
L So you weren’t in at the beginning of it?
M No. But they had only been meeting in this sort of way for a couple of years when I
came across them. As a matter of fact I met this one first at a conference, and he
introduced me to my husband. All very romantic!
L What’s his name?
M I think I’ll let you hear his name from him, see if you recognise it. It’s a funny
thing about names in the school. They can change sometimes. It keeps things mobile.
L You mean he may not go for our Lucia-Melanie thing?
M We may not go for it either when we’re with him. We’ll see.
L Shall we go to my place?
M Why not? I’m in no particular hurry today for once.
L I really don’t think we need the fire, do we?
M Well, I’m warm enough. What’s happening to the seasons these days? One day it
feels like winter still, as it usually does in February, and the next you hardly know if
it’s Autumn or Spring.
L You know, Em, I’ve never related before to anyone in such a daffy way as
this. What is it stops us asking each other all the usual questions people ask
each other when they meet? In the ordinary sense we know damn all about
each other, yet in another way we’ve got closer to each other in the last few
days than... how long is it now?
M Just over a week. Last Friday you came to Golders Green.
L Gosh, is it really only a week? It seems like months.
M A lot’s happened. (Pause). How fast things develop between people affects our
sense of time. When you meet ordinarily an enormous amount takes place
unconsciously. The way the school is set up creates a special sort of expectation. It
makes us all act a bit differently from the way we would usually behave.
L Yes, it makes you realise how conventional we are most of the time.
Conventions make you oblivious of what’s going on. You don’t even know
they are conventions.
M More and more I realise that, when it works, this so-called interpreter role can’t
actually survive the process. Unless the dialogue quickly becomes mutual a false
situation develops. This started to happen with us almost the moment we met.
L You mean the school is also a convention?
M It quickly becomes a convention unless it constantly changes, develops, adapts to
what it stimulates as people meet in its frame of reference.
L Do you actually control this?
M Well, I certainly feel it is controlled. No, not exactly controlled, but guided.
L ‘Presences’?
M Yes, I think so. How do you feel it? What are the presences really doing in you?
L I have this feeling of something intensely aware and expectant and
loving, watching with absorbed attention and concern every minutest change
and movement in our awareness. It is as if something deeply within me is at
the same time not me, something profoundly concerned about my freedom
from interference, longing for me to free myself from what drives me
compulsively down certain paths.
M Isn’t this just you yourself trying to untangle yourself from involvement?
L It certainly is also this, but not more so than my compulsion to get
involved, especially sexually involved. I know exactly what you mean about a
tightrope. But I feel more as if I am being pulled apart by two opposite forces
which are at war with each other in me, one tangling while the other
untangles.
M I keep coming back to this third thing. Don’t you feel sometimes as if this whole
struggle in us is like a monstrous red herring? Something dark and malicious in us uses
the conflict to divert our attention from the real issues in life? And there in the
background stands this benign intelligence waiting expectantly for us to grasp what is
happening.
L There you are then! Involvement, non-involvement involvement non-
involvement, and on and on and on. Let’s tell them both to go to hell!
Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. (She dances
round the furniture. Melanie picks up a cushion and starts banging at her.
Bedlam. They end up shrieking and giggling on the floor).
M (Sits up) It’s a good thing there’s plenty of room in this great barn of yours or
we’d’ve brought down all your precious knick-knacks.
L When are we going to see this gorgeous man?
M He’s not particularly gorgeous. He’s a bit tubby and wears glasses.
L I adore fat men. Let’s go and see him now.
M We can’t just turn up at his office. Unlike you he works.
L How do you know I don’t work? You don’t know anything about me.
M O.K. What do you do when you’re not examining your sub-conscious and pestering
the life out of me?
L (Hits her with the cushion again) I like that! It’s your bloody I.T. school.
M I rather doubt that. I told you I was thinking of retiring. Why don’t you set up your
own branch here? This would be a lovely room for people to come to.
L I might just do that. Em. Let’s be serious a moment. I want to...
M I’m always serious. You’re the frivolous one.
L I know, I know. But I do want to ask you something special.
M O.K, O.K. little sister (hugs her). What do you want to know this time?
L Stop playing the reluctant interpreter and LISTEN TO ME!!!!!!
M I’m listening, honestly. (They look seriously at each other).
L I was thinking of making this room over as an artist’s studio. I’ve been
doing a course at art college for the last six months, doing modelling and
sculpture. I sit for people, but I also work myself. The only thing is, the
light’s not particularly good in here, otherwise I’d have brought some of the
pieces I’ve been working on down here already. But since I met you I’ve
been wondering whether this wouldn’t be a very good room for meetings.
We’d need more comfortable chairs and so on, but what do you think?
M There’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time. I was thinking about it
before you turned up, but it seems to be coming into focus now you’re on the scene.
The school is changing. Up till now it’s been Richard and Joe and me, and one other, a
woman called Fiona who I don’t know very well...
L Hang on... Richard’s your husband, is that it? And Joe’s the one you want
me to meet. Bang goes your experiment with his name!
M Yes, never mind. Now Fiona is an old friend of Joe’s. I think they may have been in
a relationship. When I met Joe at this conference she was there too and I had a brief
talk with her. She’s a quiet, shy person. Joe is too, but quite voluble when he gets
going. In the last few months she’s worked in the school situation very much on her
own. But something Joe said the other day made me feel she wanted the four of us to
meet together and discuss something.
L And is that everybody who’s involved?
M No. There’s a number of fringe people who occasionally get called in to talk to
inquirers we’ve been less sure of at first meeting. It’s a sort of filter system. We
touched on it the first time we met.
L So how many people are involved altogether?
M Well, that’s just it. It’s a fluid situation. I don’t even know actually how many it’s
touched. We don’t want to define it and turn it into a sort of movement. I’m as tired
of movements and societies as you are. They always become separate and in-turned.
People are people. The structures which form need to be more subtle and fluid, with
much more room for improvisation. At the same time there is a feeling in the air that
a kind of core group might want to form in an ad hoc way. Not a foundation or society,
simply a forum to enquire together what’s happening.
L Yes, I feel it needs to be a strictly functional thing. The next step in a
process.
M That’s it. And I wonder whether you and this lovely room aren’t part of the
answer.
L I find this very exciting. I can’t help wondering whether these I.T. beings
aren’t nudging it along somewhere. But one step at a time. When can we see
Joe?
M Why don’t you invite him here?
L Do you think he’d come?
M I’m quite sure he would. I painted a glowing picture of you.
L What are you doing, matchmaking? I’m all of a flutter.
M I don’t know about that. But I have a feeling you and he will get on.
L What shall I do, give him a ring?
M Yes, why not? I’ve got his number here.
L I’ll tell him you and I are planning to meet again here and would he like
to come along.
M Sounds fine.
L What about Richard?
M All in good time. But I feel it won’t be long before all five of us find ourselves
sitting round this gorgeous fireplace.
L I can’t wait. Look, Em, I’m sorry to push you out, but I promised a couple
of chaps I’d meet them at the studio to sort out something about a new kiln
they’re installing. I’ll ring Joe tonight and arrange something. Could you also
ring him and see if what we arrange suits you? If not, change it and I’ll fit in.
M O.K. I’ll ring him in the morning. I think this is quite exciting.
L It is! It’s wonderful. I feel as if we’re on the edge of something rather
overwhelming.
M You know why? It’s because anything like this attracts the attention of entities in
other dimensions. It is their approaching involvement that gives us this feeling of
impending events. There will be many more consciousnesses than us three involved
when Joe comes.
L I.T’s?
M Precisely. Intraterrestial presences with plans and ideas of their own, inseparable
from the searching’s and aspirations of people like us. Ask Joe about them. He is quite
inspiring on the subject.
L Goodbye, my friend. Thank you for coming. Thank you for everything.
Thank you for being you!
M Bye, sweetheart. See you!

*****

Dialogue 7

M Here he is. This is Lucia, Joe.

L Come on in. You’re not at all like our voice on the phone!
J What do I sound like, then?
L Tall, dark and handsome.
J Well I am tall dark and handsome.
M No your not, Joe. You’re tubby and bald.
J I’m not bald. Well, a bit thin on top perhaps.
L Come in the warm. I’ve got the fire going for you.
M Oh, you’ve got some new chairs! Oh Lucia, doesn’t that make a difference? Now it
really feels like a place where there could be gatherings. Where did you get them?
L The studio had a shift round when some new students came, and these
were surplus to requirements.
M So the students have to stand.
L Well, for the time being we can’t have a common-room, we need it for
studio space. I’ve actually borrowed these, but we’ll see. Sit down Joe.
J Melanie told me you had a big room, but I didn’t realise how big. It’s a nice shape too.
All sorts of open-plan possibilities.
L Yes, I’m still trying out different arrangements.
J May I sit here, with you two on the other side?
L Yes that’s fine. I’ve sort of adopted this place with my own old armchair
facing the window. (Settling into chairs) Joe, did I hear you call her Melanie?
J Well she is Melanie. That’s her name. What do you mean?
L Melanie! What have you been playing at?
M Lucia! It’s perfectly all right, honestly!
L I feel awful.
J What’s going on?
M Listen Lucia. Think back. You were looking at me over that teacup, actually sussing
out my name psychically. You’re a hell of a lot more psychic than you think. But
you’re not very stable yet in some ways. I saw what was going on. That’s all. When you
arrived correctly at my name I didn’t want to get directly into the business of
psychism and all that. It was too soon. I didn’t deny my name was Melanie, but I let
you think you were choosing a name for me, which you were. I told you names were a
sensitive area. They can throw time into confusion, give power away, all sorts. Names
are quite tricky. Have you read Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula le Guin?
L Yes I have. Marvellous book. If you know someone’s true name you have
magical power over them. Be careful who you tell your true name to.
M That’s it. But she was talking about a time when things worked more loosely in a
magical way. In a psychic sense we are both more conscious and less powerful now.
Names are still important, and we can change them to suit particular circumstances.
L I still think you misled me. You talked about the name on your birth
certificate being no particular secret, but you still didn’t let on. I think you
were being tricky.
M Lucia, do you know me?
L I thought I did.
M Who am I then?
L Well now I know the name on your birth certificate, I seem to have
psyched out, or guessed, your proper name.
M Who am I then?
L Yes, I see what you’re getting at. I actually know you better than any of
this.
M You’re actually nearer to knowing me than the name Melanie. I few more steps and
you might find yourself knowing who I really am, which I don’t even know myself.
L What are you saying? No, don’t answer that. O.K., I know what you’re
saying. I’m psychic enough to suss out that you are Melanie, but...
M But that sort of psychism is neither here nor there. It appears to be very
wonderful, leading towards Reality with a big R, but actually it gets no nearer to who
people really are than the birth certificate does. What I’m really saying is this. The
I.T. school is not, it seems to me a place where we stop at the level of psychic
perception, and I didn’t want us to get involved at that level, at least not so soon.
What do you think Joe?
J You both seem to have got a considerable way in a remarkably short time. It could
have been a tricky situation. I could perhaps say that you’re not quite experienced
enough, Mel, to avoid all the pitfalls. But I can see that there is quite a beautiful long-
term thing going on between the two of you. You’ve obviously known each other for a
very long time...
L Other lives, you mean?
J Exactly, and I don’t see how you could have avoided falling headlong in a certain way
into each other’s processes. I can see what Melanie means when she sees you as a bit
unstable. There is this out-of-the-body thing, and perhaps, (am I right?) you can get a bit
hysterical at times, indulging in your own feelings, and so on...
L Yes, I suppose I’m a bit of a mess all round.
J Well you don’t seem to have had much help. You may wobble a bit from time to time,
but it seems to me your actual path is doing pretty well. You’ve found your way to us.
You’ve homed straight in on someone you’ve been involved with before. And she’s seen
clearly beyond the muddle to something of your deeper nature as a light-being. I think it’s
wonderful. I suppose, Mel, you feel you wobbled a bit, and your own insecurity made
Lucia lose confidence for a moment just now. But as I say, you’re not very experienced
yet, and this situation between you is a wonderfully protected path for you both. What
about you Lucia? Do you like the name Lucia?
L Yes, I really do. I think I’ll adopt it.
J Do you want to tell us your so-called real name?
L Step forward birth certificate! I was christened Susan Margaret
Maconochie. I’m usually called Sue. There are so many Sues about nowadays
I feel like a sort of clone.
J So, exit Sue, enter Lucia. Is that it?
L Seems so. And what about you Joe? Have you always been Joe?
J Well I don’t seem to have been Joe in any other lives but this one! But it’s a nice
neutral sort of name for most purposes.
L So are you aware of other lives, then?
J Have you talked about reincarnation?
M No, we haven’t actually. We’ve been to busy sorting our present selves out.
J Is that what you want to hear about, Lucia? Reincarnation?
L Well I certainly do sometime. But it’s not what I’m immediately thinking
about. It’s funny, Em, but every time I bring up the subject of the name
Intraterrestrials we seem to have got hived off onto something else. I’ve
been thinking that that’s what I most want to hear Joe expand on.
M Do you know what I think has been happening? All the time your mind has been set
on the question of names we have actually been faced with the direct experience of
your own higher being, felt as a ‘presence’, and dealing with the effect this has had
on us both. It is as if the world of the gods, or guardians, or however we want to think
of them has already been answering your question by giving you a direct experience of
it, instead of letting me attempt a sort of theoretical answer.
L Content first, form later, as it were. We said that about something else,
didn’t we?
M Yes, we were talking about the school, and our sort of minimalist, mobile approach
to the structure of it.
L Joe, how do you see this experience Em and I have been having of a
‘presence’, something she sees as a light being which is the real me? How do
you see this in relation to the term intraterrestial?
M Give us one of your mini-lectures, Joe. He’s awfully good at this, goes on for
hours.
J I see. You want me to put a sort of conceptual cloak round what you’ve been going
through, do you.
L Something like that. How did you come to the term intraterrestrial? Well,
I mean, it’s obvious you were drawing a parallel with all the stuff about ETs,
extraterrestrials, which so many people nowadays go on about. I nearly said
guff instead of stuff! But I suppose it’s not all guff, is it?
J Not at all. The trouble is, most people haven’t much of a context for it all., so it gets
into the realm of science-fiction and speculation. What I really see as happening is that a
lot of people are having a whole plethora of new experiences for which the world they
were born into gives them no context. Broadly speaking, the public world, which really
nowadays means the world of the media, is rapidly losing touch with the whole of what,
for centuries, gave ordinary experiences a background of meaning.
L You mean what came in through education, religion and so on?
J Yes. In the last couple of centuries there’s been a growing culture of scientism; not so
much science itself regarded as the spearhead of exact knowledge, but the belief system
which has grown up round that among vast masses of untrained people. You see, only a
relatively short time ago most people in ordinary life lived in a kind of cultural dream
which went back centuries and centuries into the mists of time. There may have been
bitter struggles within the religious culture as to where the true authority lay, but the idea
of authority itself was not questioned. What it seems to me has happened is that, when
more and more people began to be affected by the gradual take over by science of the
whole cultural world, they didn’t at the same time, these ordinary people, lose their need
for a cultural authority. They needed someone, in other words, who would tell them what
to think and believe.
However, science itself was not like that. Science itself came out of a huge revolution in
consciousness. More and more people were waking up to the idea that humanity itself
could decide what reality was about, and to hell with classical and religious authority. But
this waking is, of its own nature, an individual thing. It depends on individuals making
their own way on a path of scientific investigation and knowledge. What makes science a
corporate matter, and turns science from a path of individual knowledge into a system of
beliefs, a sort of science oriented religion, is not science itself, but people’s unregenerate
need for outside authority, someone to tell them what to think and believe.
So, we get scientism instead of science, an authority diluted and spread by the media, and
built up in an education system, where teachers are mostly passing on stuff they have
read in books rather than seriously questioning where their vested authority comes from,
and passing the same scepticism on to their pupils.
M The poor little brats behind the desks, Eh? Well there simply isn’t time is there,
with thirty or forty wild television soaked kids milling about, and the bloody national
curriculum on top of it all. We’re a long way from the quiet Groves of Academe,
knowledge contemplated in tranquillity. Fat hope of that these days.
L This started by being a way of getting into my question about
Intraterrestrials. I can see how what you have been saying prepares the
ground for that. I feel what you are leading up to is the connection between
three facts. One, people are having new experiences, becoming more
psychic. Two, this is taking place in a media dominated world.
J Go on.
L Three, the media themselves take for granted a belief system which
thinks of itself as scientific, but is actually quite confused about the nature of
the scientific process, and still defers to it as an authority, much as it did to
religion before we began to ask awkward questions.
M So, science is in danger of replacing religion, or even actually becoming a religion.
L So we push our new experiences, which are really inner experiences out
into a realm where we can try and cope with them with scientific, or rather
with scientistic beliefs. And that leads to the ‘guffy’ aspects of all this
extraterrestrial stuff.
J Broadly speaking, yes. This, you might say, was the sort of conversation Richard and I
were having in which the name Intraterrestrial first came up. But years before that Fiona
and I had talked about these things, about ‘spiritual beings’ as we called them,
speculating whether there were other levels of existence behind the apparent sense-world,
whether we humans were the only conscious denizens of the Earth, and so on. Fiona was
an anthroposophist, if you know what that is, a follower of the system founded by Rudolf
Steiner, who talked about "Spiritual Science", exact scientific observation of transcendent
realities.
L Rudolf Steiner... aren’t there Rudolf Steiner Schools, dealing with difficult
children and all that?
J That’s the chap, yes. Fiona had once taught for a while in one of them. She is still
quite involved.
L Do you know about this anthro... whatever it is, Em?
M Anthroposophy. Yes I do. I’ve read a few of Steiner’s books. I feel it’s very
important. There’s a whole movement , a couple of thousand or more people in this
country, who belong to a society based on Steiner’s teachings. I haven’t joined it. I’m
not sure how far in its present form it can carry the sort of developments among
people we’ve been talking about. You’re a member, aren’t you Joe?
J Yes, indeed. I joined the society when I was quite young. But I’ve had similar
problems with it to Mel’s. You must talk to Fiona. She’s the one with the most
experience of anthroposophists.
L Joe, are you actually aware of supersensible beings, ‘presences’ as I call
them, yourself? How do you see what we are talking about here?
J People come into this sort of realm from so many different directions; almost you
could say from as many directions as there are people. As a boy I suppose I thought of
myself as one of the religious ones. I went to a religion-oriented school, and all that.
Apart from the chapel services there was a school prayer union S.P.U., which made a
good handle for the heathen to use against us. SPEW! SPEW! They used to shriek at us.
Most of the staff kept fairly aloof from this, though a couple of these were felt to be
sympathetic, and even talked to us about the Bible. And there were other currents among
the staff. The head was an orthodox anglican clergyman, and even brought in a distinctly
high anglican chaplain. But a definite evangelical and fundamentalist underground
prevailed.
So there was a sort of cultural divide in the school. And I was on the scientific side when
I got into the sixth form, so I was split down the middle there too. Truth to tell I was
never really comfortable, even as a junior boy, in the evangelical atmosphere of the S.P.U
meetings,. There was something going on underneath which has less to do with Jesus
than with a barely concealed, but unacknowledged sexual interest some older boys had in
the younger ones.
This was by no means entirely unhealthy. In fact it kept most of the relationships on an
emotional rather than an openly sexual level. But generally speaking, boys’ public
schools in those days were a maelstrom of undealt with emotional and cultural currents.
People said school was meant to be a microcosm of the world outside. But it was an all
male society and hopelessly out of balance.
M Why are you telling us all this?
J Looking for an answer to Lucia’s question, I’m trying to get back to my own feelings
as a boy. There I was in a scientific education with strong intuitions that there was
something more to life, and all round me were people trying to pull me into ‘religion’, a
religion which at some level I felt as squeamish about as did all the heathen monsters
who yelled ‘spew’ at us. I ended up knowing that religion as presented was not the
answer, at least not for me. I needed to know the truth about reality. I was being taught in
the classroom a darwinistic biology which felt cold and arid, and out of school a weak
piousness which made me slightly sick and ashamed. There was no adult at first I really
trusted. I took refuge in the musical life in the school. I had a fine treble voice, and I sang
my heart out.
And then there was a kind of breakthrough on the religious side. One of the staff became
a member of what was then called the ‘Oxford Group’, later known as ‘Moral
Rearmament’. Twenty or thirty boys, mainly the older ones, were drawn in. Things began
to happen on the edge of the psychic, you might say. There was a slightly magical
atmosphere about getting up in the cold early mornings, meeting in a quiet room
unknown to the rest of the school, getting ‘guidance’, as they called it, and writing it all
down in a special notebook. Commonplace personal stuff as it mostly was, yet it had a
mystical aura, a direct hotline to God! When one morning five or six people all had the
same guidance about a certain boy, that he should be approached and invited to join us,
and then there was a knock at the door, and that very boy walked in, we felt the age of
miracles had returned. It was in a way a turning point for me. I felt I had a sort of handle
against materialism and physical science which no ordinary religiousness could provide.
Naturally all this, as I learned later, scared the pants off the school council, and I don’t
think it lasted long after I left. Nor was it enough to stop me going over the edge as a
young adult into emotional disaster, ‘nervous breakdowns’, as they called them then. Life
had led me into a path of education which I increasingly knew was nothing to do with
me, and into a career in medicine which I felt I had no real calling for. And I didn’t know
how to ask for health. Well, that’s funny! I meant to say help not health! But it was
certainly health I needed. I needed a source of spiritual health, and instead I got ‘nervous
breakdowns’ months long periods of emotional agony, feeling as if my body was on fire,
wanting to do nothing but sleep and masturbate, and if possible, die. I went and taught at
a prep-school for a term, but this was only going back on my tracks, and I did try for a bit
to get through my medical exams. Finally I somehow mustered the courage to leave
medical school and throw in my lot with artistic and pacifist young people in London. I
had done some amateur acting, and within a few months I found myself with a job in the
theatre. For the first time in my life I felt free to be myself.
L Was this Oxford Group experience a reality, do you think? Was it your real
path? What actually happened there?
J I think if it had been I would have gone on with it. But in a way, you know, those
people, although they thought of themselves as part of the Christian church, were actually
struggling out of the evangelical world into something much nearer to a meditative path
of self-development. In that sense it was very much my path. For the first time I sensed a
connection between the inner and the outer life.
I don’t know who we were praying to, or where our guidance was coming from, but
whatever it was it seemed it could actually make something visibly happen in the outer
world. In a vague sort of way I suppose this was a first step towards an awareness of
‘presences’ in your sense. And it was certainly a preparation for my response when I met
anthroposophy for the first time.
M You know, Lucia, I’ve never heard all this stuff from Joe before. It’s really quite an
eye opener for me. I’ve always thought of you, Joe, as very self-assured and
authoritative. I’d no idea of you as having such a messed-up youth.
J I sometimes feel as if on a psychological level I nearly didn’t make it, Mel. There
were certainly others round me, I can remember one or two, with similar experiences,
who ended up in mental hospitals. Once you got into the hands of the medical profession
and had one or two courses of suppressive drugs there was much less hope of coming
through into a balanced life.
M You were very lucky. Thank god you gave up medicine.
J There was a lot more to in than luck. More and more I realise how very protected I
have been. It was as though a guiding power knew that it was safe to plunge me fairly
deep into the mire, and I would come out all right. There must have been certain things I
could only learn in a condition of weakness and insecurity. I was very, very suggestible. I
took everything on board. I had no defences. And it must be that for me there was no
other way to become gradually aware of other dimensions behind the apparent ones.
L We are in a very shitty world, aren’t we? What you went through is no
different really from what the whole world is going through. It makes me ask
whether the whole of humanity isn’t being plunged into disaster, going right
to the edge of dissolution, because that is the only way for it to evolve into a
new stage of awareness and development. Does this mean, as Melanie
thinks, that the whole of mankind is just as protected as you were.
J I think this is the implication, however unlikely it may appear.
M But most people seem to be quite unconscious of it.
J Well, there we go. That was why we got this idea of the Intraterrestrial School. We
wanted, in a very basic way, to stimulate a sort of mobility among people who were
looking for reality. We felt the time for formal spiritual movements was going by. Even
such fundamental breakthroughs into spiritual science as anthroposophy were not
addressing the needs of ordinary people, especially young people, who were looking for a
more real existence. We needed to explore how people were actually meeting each other
in their search for reality.
M Like giving a sort of shot-in-the-arm to coincidence, chance meetings.
L That’s it! Have you read that extraordinary book, The Celestine Prophecy?
M Yes. Very much to the point. He talks about a series of insights into the way things
happen, how people meet, how we experience the meaningfulness in a series of
events.
J In one way the I.T. school is becoming an experimental laboratory for just that.
M What are you thinking about, Lucy-Lu?
L I was thinking that in my own way I haven’t exactly lived on a been of
roses either.
M I could say the same.
L Joe, would you say the kind of people who knock on your door are all
misfits of one sort or another?
J That, certainly, but only a proportion of people who go through the mire go on looking
for something different. The rest adjust to the status quo. Life’s like that, people say. You
just have to get on with it. All you people who look for deeper meanings all the time are
simply fooling yourselves. Life’s what’s under your nose. There isn’t anything else.
M And then there’s politics. A lot of people put all their energies into trying to
improve things, things as they are.
L That’s to say, improve things for us, Tories, or improve things for
everybody, Labour.
M Or find a middle way and satisfy nobody, Lib-Dems.
J Don’t let’s argue about that one, we’ll be here all night. There’s also sport. How many
people who dig down into reality go in for sport, do you think? Not necessarily playing
games, but identifying with those who do?
L Not a lot, I would have thought.
M And pop-music. Hoe does the music scene relate to the search for reality?
L I think it has a lot to do with it. A lot of it expresses the longing. I think a
lot of the pop-scene keeps the longing alive, the longing for something
different.
J Apart from specialist interests, that about covers it for most people.
M Nobody’s mentioned work or making money.
J I think we’re talking about two main streams of public preoccupations, depending on
whether people still think it’s worth while taking an interest in something, making an
effort, or whether basically they’ve given up and are just passing the time, or getting into
mischief.
L I’d like to be a bit clearer about what our motives are in this I.T. business
(the other two laugh). No, I’m serious.
J You really seem to be getting stuck in, don’t you? ‘Our’ motives, eh?
L Melanie says she’s thinking of retiring and letting me take over.
M No, I think I’ll stick around and see what sort of a mess you make of it.
J What would your motives be, Lucia?
L I’m beginning to be very, very interested in what you are doing. There’s a
sort of ‘meaning of life’ underground, isn’t there? There’s a growing number
of people milling around in a spiritual limbo, smoking pot, going to gigs or
playing in them, going to lectures and workshops... circle dancing...
M Joining dems and marches, taking to the road, tangling with the police, and
protesting, protesting, PROTESTING!!!
J ...and it’s all a huge fertile ground for the kind of people we’re looking for and who
are looking for us, or for something like us. What I feel is that there is a great danger of
polarisation, in people getting stuck in a particular version of a New Age, or a New Time,
or whatever it is, and missing the sheer totality, the sheer apocalyptic totality of the
revolution humanity is going through. We always want to domesticate everything. Tame
it, make it ordinary. You know, there is a frightening tendency for the new age to end up
just as bloody boring as the crud dullness of the world of television and the gutter press.
Bloody old boring Glastonbury, for instance, all taking in each other’s spiritual washing,
dissatisfied with the big spiritual movements of seventy or eighty hears ago, but ending
up with the same old navel gazing.
L Are you saying we ought to spend time putting a bomb under places like
Glastonbury?
M I think you’re a bit hard on Glastonbury, Joe. I know the dangers you’re talking
about. But not everybody who goes to Glastonbury gets stuck in the spiritual mud
there. There is still the place itself, and the incredible reasons which draw people
there in the first place. I think you appreciate the power and beauty and vision of a
place like that better from a distance. If you stay too long in places like that you suck
them dry...
J ...not only that, you tend to stagnate yourself. I still say that many people who relate to
Glastonbury and to a growing number of other places like Totnes, Stroud, Findhorn,
Culbone, and places where the Steiner movement has established schools, like Forest
Row, Brookthorpe, Kings Langley, and smaller centres everywhere, do tend to get stuck
in patterns that don’t move. And it is often in those places that you find a growing
number, especially of younger people who are increasingly restless about the way the
spiritual revolution is going.
L What’s the answer?
J Mobility has a lot to do with it. Dissemination of initiative. Developing the ability to
stimulate the curiosity, hope, latent insights of quite ordinary people. Cultivating loving
affection for more or less everybody and everything. Looking for the soft underbelly of
people everywhere who have petrified and hardened off virtually the whole of
themselves, and sticking the knife in! Not the cruel knife of exploitation, indulgence and
abuse, but the knife of compassion, insight, fellow-feeling. People are exceedingly scared
of being loved and understood, in case they are exploited, indulged and abused. One
needs to be very sensitive, but at the same time realise that at the end of the day love is
inexorable. It demands everything.
*****
M We still haven’t said much to Lucia about intraterrestrials. She does really want to
know what we mean.
J Do you Lucia? Melanie’s told me about the episode with one of your ‘presences’..
You felt you were meeting your own higher being, didn’t you?
L And then I nearly flipped.
J And at the same time opened new doors for Melanie herself, who is a lot better at
knowing what is going on in people round her than in waking to her own processes,
aren’t you Mel, love? (arm round her)
L Em, I love you.
M I love you too, sweetheart. But I don’t quite know how to answer your questions.
Perhaps you haven’t expressed them clearly enough yet. Perhaps you haven’t even
formulated them to yourself. Questions are a lot more important than answers. Quite
often they provide their own answers if they are sufficiently clear.
L What I’m asking is... what I’m asking myself all the time is... Is that the
whole story about I.T.s? Is this simply an increasing awareness of ourselves,
or deeper and deeper levels of our own being... or is there something more?
I’m in a simply horrific muddle about the whole spiritual bit... God. CHRIST,
angels, the lot. O.K. then; extraterrestrials are obviously, at least partly, a
sort of S.F. mythology, a projection of new things waking up in everybody.
But a projection of what, for God’s sake? Are we alone on this bloody planet
or not???
M Joe?
J I’m tempted to say "Don’t look at me!". But yes, there is something I can say. Lucia,
it’s all very well coming to other people for answers. But I think you’re beginning to see
that the I.T. school is primarily a place people come to for a clarification of their
questions. What subsequently happens is not so much answers as something else. We
start to see each other, and in seeing each other, in asking each other who they are,
experiencing the extraordinary power of Names, and naming, we get into a kind of
tottering insecurity about TIME! It’s as if time goes into a sort of sliding focus, like
pictures on a screen slipping sideways. We seem to be on the edge of remembering
something gigantic in which we are in danger of losing our identity...
M ...and at the same time reaching out...
J ...or in...
M Yes, reaching in to ourselves for a more fundamental identity. And this identity is
the same for all of us. That’s the extraordinary thing. In that sense we actually are
one another. But we don’t lose ourselves. On the contrary, we find a more real being
in ourselves, and also in one another.
L And then we keep losing it again. We come down to Earth, as people say.
Everything goes dull and ordinary again, and we’ve lost it. It’s got a lot to do
with memory, hasn’t it, Joe? We seem to have lost our memories.
J That’s what religion and the old cultural education, still partly alive in the classical
world of the universities, gave people. But it’s drying up. It’s like a corpse, flogged into
life with less and less success in each generation. Academics have lost their memories
too. They can’t remember what they’re supposed to be teaching people.
L Has science caused that, then?
J On the contrary, science is the result of it. Science isn’t dull and ordinary to proper
scientists, Lucia. They see it as the Light of the World, and so it is, true science, that is.
What Steiner saw is that science can take over and penetrate a spiritual dimension which
was formerly the province of religion.
L That’s why I feel science is leading into the dark. It has a sort of dark
light. Scientific discoveries always make me feel a sort of despair, as if I was
being caught in some sort of awful trap.
M You know, that’s exactly how I felt the other day when you and I were talking
about sex Lucy. Do you remember me saying about orgasms that I felt that the
explosions of light in sexual experiences are enclosed, and cut off from other realities.
L Is science like that, Joe? Is there a sort of dark link between the
excitement, the almost obsessive absorption in breaking through to the final
truth, the ultimate particle of material reality, the ultimate control of D.N.A,
and all that... is that the same thing on another level as the way we lose
ourselves in sex, going from one experience to another, one person after
another in search of the ideal?
J Yes, I think you’ve got hold of something there, something quite blinkered, that I
hadn’t quite seen in that light before. It may well be that the more material people’s
knowledge of the Earth becomes the more physically sexual their search for each other
becomes. It’s the counterpart of something Richard and I have been talking about more
and more in recent months. You know, Mel, I think it’s high time we brought into these
meetings with Lucia.
M And also Fiona.
J Yes, indeed. You know Lucia, I feel you’re bringing something quite new into what
we’ve been doing. I can’t quite describe it. When Mel told me about you she kept using
the word Light. You seem to carry a quality of illumination which makes people... well
speaking for myself, I’ve found myself...
M Well, yes Joe. I’ve known you some time, and I’ve never heard you talk like that.
It was as though a kind of beam was shining into your past, throwing into relief things
you didn’t know you knew about yourself.
J I think that’s just what Richard needs you know, Mel. Can I tell Lucia what I feel
about this? (Melanie nods) I’ve known Richard quite a time now.
L Melanie told me how you’d met.
J In many ways, I feel, Richard knows more about what lies behind what we are
attempting than any of us. But he’s basically a very lonely soul. He seems to need to
spend most of his time on his own. He loves Melanie very much, but he doesn’t seem to
know how to share himself with her. You always say, don’t you Mel, that you’ve reached
an accommodation over this as a workable relationship. But I sometimes wonder whether
that’s the whole story.
M I’ve adjusted to what I’ve seen as the real situation between us. I’ve accepted it. I
feel very fortunate in having met him at all. He’s a wonderful man.
L But you want a baby.
M Oh Lucia, don’t (she breaks down). Leave it alone, Lu, there’s a dear. You can’t do
anything. He has to follow his path, as we all do.
L Let me loose on him. I’m good at that sort of thing.
M What’ll you do? (laughing through tears) Get him into bed?
L I doubt if it’ll come to that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I can’t open his
eyes to a thing or two for all that. Joe, what were you saying just now about
mobility? O.K. I’ve got myself into a lot of muddles with men, and women.
But I’ve also learned a lot. And also, for God’s sake, I’ve met you two. I.T.
school or no I.T. school, I have the strongest feeling of a breakthrough into
some much more real direction in my life. What you were saying just now,
Joe, about finding a more competent way of, well sort of raising the level of
awareness of how people meet each other, open their eyes to themselves
and each other, and all that. Well that’s exactly what I feel I’ve learned,
particularly, of course, on a sexual level, and I agree that leads to a lot of
confusion and blind alleys, but it’s not all negative by any means. I feel I
know a lot about people, their deepest personal feelings, hopes and fears,
disappointments, everything. They talk about post-coital depression. But it’s
not all depression, not if you’re confident and competent.
M You’re a real old courtesan, aren’t you Lu?
L That was Sue Maconochie, the light radiating whore! This is Lucia talking.
M I hate that word whore. It turns everything filthy.
L The word originally simply meant lover. It carried the combined stigma
and sacredness of the temple maidens in the ancient mysteries. It was the
church, with it’s fear of women, which anathematised women and sex. I’ll tell
you sometime what I’ve learned about Mary Magdalene.
J Sounds fascinating. I’d love to hear about that
M Meanwhile, what are we going to do? Are we ready yet for a full-scale meeting of
the five of us?
J I don’t think we are.
L Oh, what a shame! I was looking forward to us using all these chairs!
J All in good time.
M I’ve got a brilliant idea. Richard’s been away on one of his awful UFO and crop-
circle conferences. All a lot of nonsense to my mind, but he comes back very
stimulated. He wants to tell me all about it, and we were going to spend a few days
together. We’ve planned to meet for a meal on Tuesday, and then discuss what we
were going to do. Why don’t I ring him and say I’ve a friend I particularly want him to
meet? He’s always a bit prickly when we haven’t seen each other for some time, and I
know meeting you, Lucia, would smooth the path a bit.
J Hell of a lot more than that if I’ve understood Lucia’s intentions. Doesn’t sound very
smooth to me (general laughter).
L I promise to be good.
M Don’t strain yourself.
L If you feel that’s what both you and Richard would be happy with I think
that would be an excellent way of meeting him. I can be a new audience for
all his UFO and crop-circle ideas. I know very little about all that.
M Well, I’ll ring him and let you know.
J It’s time I moved on a bit. Lucia, it’s been lovely meeting you. Let’s face it, I’m a bit
shy of beautiful women. I think you’re gorgeous.
L Your are most gallant, kind sir! (she hugs him).
J Let’s see how it goes when you’ve met Richard and leave the next meeting till then.
L I’ll look forward to that very much. I’ll see you out. Are you staying on a
bit Mel?
M If you don’t mind.
L No. I hoped you would. We’ll be talking about you, Joe. I hope your ears
burn.
J They’ll probably burst into flame. Bless you! See you soon.

*****

Dialogue 8

L Where’s Richard, then?

M Coming straight here from his conference. I was going to the house to wait for him
there, but he was giving a lift from Dorset to one of the croppies and I expect he got
involved with him. He’s always very full of it all when he comes back from these
shindigs. He was giving one of the lectures this time, and I’ve no doubt they were still
discussing it.
L Croppies, do they call themselves? How sweet.
M Oh, I don’t know what it’s all about.
L Darling, you’re all tense, aren’t you? Was this a good idea? Wouldn’t you
rather have had him to yourself for a bit?
M Frankly, I almost chickened out altogether. Here, let’s find ourselves a table.
There’s one over there by the window Richard and I usually like. Oh look, it’s empty.
L Room for four.
M You go and bag it. I want to go to the loo. Oh lord, here he comes. (Calls) Richard,
we’re over here.
L He seems to have someone with him.
R Hi, sweetheart! Sorry we’re a bit late. This is Paul. He wanted to meet you too, so I
brought him along. Hope you don’t...
M No, that’s fine. Hi, Paul. This is Lucia, both of you. I’m for the loo.
R Where shall we sit? Melanie likes to be by the window. You can just see the park
from here.
L You sit opposite here, then, and me next to her. There we are. Hello Paul.
P Hello Lucia. Are you in this I.T. school I’ve been hearing about?
L Yes, just about. I’ve only known Melanie for a fortnight, but we’ve got so
involved it seems like six months.
R Yes, Melanie told me on the phone. She said you were obviously a natural.
L She said she was retiring as an interpreter and letting me take over!
P I think the whole thing sounds fascinating. I’m particularly interested in the
way you seem to have picked up on the effects of that extraordinary Celestine
Prophecy book. Have you read it?
L Yes, indeed I have, although it didn’t occur to me when I read the I.T.
leaflet that there was any connection.
R Well, it didn’t to us either, but of course we’ve been operating for some time, and the
book’s only been out for a few months. But you know it’s not really surprising. There’s
been a rash of books of this sort for the past year or two, things like Marciniak’s Bringers
of the Dawn...
L Haven’t read that.
R ...and a good many others. There’s been a kind of cumulative effect. I mean it’s years
now since Ken Carey’s Star Child books, and solid bodies of reading like Castaneda,
and Jane Roberts’ Seth series. But there’s something else going on...
P I see it as a sort of hundredth monkey effect. For a certain time there’s a slow
penetration of new ideas from people who’ve struggled and suffered and
created a focus of attention, often very in-turned and one-sided like all the
channelling schools in California... Ramtha, Lazaris and that lot... and then
suddenly...
R It all breaks out like a rash. Here comes Melanie. Here you are love. We’ve put you
by the window.
M This is our special table. We’ve got a gang of friendly elementals who know we’re
coming and they repel boarders till we turn up.
R I think they do it by creating nasty smells. One day there was a bottle of spilled
ketchup all over it.
L I couldn’t smell anything today.
M No, they disperse it all when they see us coming. Sorry I’ve been so long, there
was a queue. Have you ordered?
R No, here she comes now.
*****
M What have you been talking about, then? Crop-circles? This stuff’s good.
P No, surprisingly enough. We more or less exhausted the subject coming up in
the car. It was a much better conference than some of them. Richard was
particularly good this time, weren’t you Richard?
R If you say so. I certainly feel we’re getting a lot clearer. There’s less stupid argument
going on between people who say it’s al a hoax, a sort of extended student rag, and
those who are looking for more serious explanations. But we don’t want to talk about
crop-circles. Melanie thinks it’s all boloney, don’t you love?
P I don’t agree, Richard. I think it’s very relevant to talk about it. It led directly
to your telling me about this I.T. affair.
L I’m a bit lost. Actually I’ve never even seen a crop-circle. What’s the
connection?
P The really important thing to my mind is not so much the phenomenon itself
as the people it’s brought together, people who would have been unlikely to meet
in any other connection. It’s had a sort of depolarising effect on people.
M What do you mean?
R I would have thought it was the exact opposite. We came together to make an exact
study of something extraordinary, and we’ve spent half our time in polemical arguments
about whether this or that formation is a hoax or not.
P But look at the effect that has had on you. You’ve got the hoaxers and the
devotees actually talking to each other. You’ve got the hoaxers seriously
examining their own motivations. You’ve got people talking about agroglyphic
craftsmen instead of hoaxers.
M What sort of craftsmen?
P It’s a word somebody dreamed up meaning ‘forms in the fields’, Agriglyphs.
Crop-circles is not a very good description. Most of them aren’t circular at all.
As for depolarisation, I regard you, Richard, as the chief reconciler in all that.
And when you started talking to me in the car about this I.T. school I saw the
connection.
L How do you see it then?
P I think we’ve really got to find a way of stopping people congealing into
schools of thought, taking particular points of view and banging away at each
other. The whole energy of mankind gets dissipated into the mechanics of
opposition. Our whole society is built up like that, adversarial politics, the party
system. And the law too, their whole process is focussed on winning cases
instead of finding out the truth of a matter. No wonder the police are sometimes
corrupt.
M How else can it happen? The whole society has vested interests in one thing rather
than another. There have to be forums where things are thrashed out, where people
defend their corner. It has to be like that.
P No. I don’t think it does. And when Richard started to tell me about your I.T.
idea I really began to wonder whether you hadn’t hit on an important aspect of
the question, even perhaps a solution. You know, I’ve always been fascinated by
Lewis Carroll’s rhyme of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee resolved to have a battle,
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee had spoiled his nice new rattle.
(They all start to join in)
Just then flew by a monstrous crow, as big as a tar-barrel,
Which frightened both our heroes so they quite forgot their quarrel.
(General laughter)
M Everybody’s looking at us. They’ll think we’re mad.
L So we are, thank God!
P Every time in our crop-circle affair people get bogged down in stupid
polemics, along comes an even more extraordinary formation which for a little
while totally silences the argument. The crow is, as it were, so monstrous that
we all shut up for a bit.
L You know, it’s weird, isn’t it Mel? Only a few days ago Melanie and I were
dancing crazily round my room banging each other with cushions and
shouting Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I can’t remember what we’d been
talking about.
M I know exactly what it was. We were talking about... about involvement and non-
involvement, about how we were constantly throwing ourselves deliberately into
situations which entangle us in them, and then equally deliberately struggling to
disentangle ourselves again and all the while there is this benign third force intently
watching for the moment when it can plunge into the situation and more or less shock
us out of it.
L All this came out of the experience we’d been having of what I call
‘presences’; trying to come to terms with what I suppose you could call the
nouminous; asking whether this is what I.T’s are; whether they are simply
ourselves, our higher beings, if you like.
M I’m beginning to think crop-circles are not such a nonsense as I thought. You’ve
found yourselves a monstrous crow to frighten yourselves with.
R Yes, but in this case the position is reversed. Anomalous phenomena, like UFOs,
Crop-circles, and all sorts of other extraordinary events, of the kind also that "Celestine
Prophecy" drew attention to... all these things came first. The quarrel comes afterwards.
P Well I think the quarrel is there already. The phenomenon highlights it,
makes it conscious, gives it the stimulus towards what I call depolarisation.
R You haven’t met my friend Joe yet, Paul. You have, haven’t you Lucia. Joe always
talks about mobility. What we’ve tried to do in the I.T. school is to create a situation in
which meetings between people who are in search of a new reality take place in as
mobile a situation as possible, one in which there is no organisational centre. I know that
the mechanics of bringing this about are partly contrived by the I.T. school ploy. But that
is simply a filter system by which people can be streamed into the contacts that are most
productive for them. This means that we have no idea how many people are involved.
But the form tends to dissolve as soon as the contacts are made. It’s simply a doorway.
P I think it’s very ingenious. But I see all sorts of snags.
R Such as?
P Well, continuity for one thing. You say the form is always dissolving...
R ...but it re-forms after each new contact.
M Like those awful chain-letter and pyramid-selling affairs that break out every now
and again, where everybody starts to believe they’ll end up with a fortune.
L And do they?
M Well I met someone once who claimed to have made a few hundred quid. But I also
heard of a mathematician who said there was a provable statistical limit. He said it
was actually self-limiting at a certain point down the line. I can’t remember the
details.
R I don’t think there’s a real parallel. In I.T. each person has only one initial contact.
There is no commitment to make contact with a prescribed list of unknown people.
P But what about the continuity question? How do you keep tabs on people?
R You don’t. That’s just the point.
P Then how can you tell if the system’s working?
R I think this is just the crucial difference from the way most cultural, religious, and
even political movements begin. The whole thing has a quality which is quite
antipatheteic to organisation and organisational thinking. It’s structured in such a way
that even the network has dissolving strings. We literally do not know in any feedback
sense how many people, for instance, are involved.
P I still can’t get a picture of it. For all you know to the contrary the school is
just you three and Joe...
R ... and one other, Fiona.
M Richard’s deliberately keeping something else at arm’s length, Paul. He’s not
exactly playing with you, but he’s leaving something out of account for a particular
reason. Shall I go on, Richard?
R Yes. I know what you’re going to say. I hoped you’d come in at this point.
M I have a particular saying, a cliché almost, which goes: "Never answer a question
someone hasn’t asked you." It’s a rule it’s almost impossible to keep, in fact it’s
destructive if you’re rigid about it. It’s more that it points to an attitude of mind. Joe
told me once that the old Oxford Group had a saying: "Let the other person do the
talking", which I thought was somewhat patronising and arrogant. You let someone tie
themselves in knots as if you were playing a fish, and then you bang them on the head
with your dogma, and there they are, landed in your particular organisational net.
P Heavens! Fishers of men, Jesus was supposed to have called it! Is that what
networking means?
M Yes, and born-again Christians still play it very hard. I’m quite sure Jesus, or rather
the CHRIST, meant something quite different, but we’ll come to that. What I was
coming to was this. In a classical I.T. situation, when someone knocks at your door,
you have to be extremely sensitive to what they are actually asking you... not so
much the words, but what they are looking for behind the apparent questions.
Sometimes, as happened with Lucia and me, it all goes so quickly that a lot of the
stages are bypassed altogether. You have to pay very aware attention to just how
people make contact. There are no set rules. Look at you now. One conversation in a
car, and here you are landed with three of us. In an outward sense, you didn’t hear of
I.T. through a leaflet, or a bit of casual information, and then seek us out. You met
one of its founders, and he, for reasons of his own, told you about it before you had
any reason to ask. Is that how it happened, Richard?
R More or less. Put it this way. I trusted my intuition that Paul had something to do with
us, and I took it upon myself to jump the gun and tell him a few things. But it was his
impulse to suggest coming with me now. In that sense I was simply an animated leaflet.
He could have screwed it up and chucked it in the bin.
P The fish took the bait, you might say, and here I am. So what’s the hold up?
Tell me more.
M (Hesitating) I think we’re all waiting for you to ask something. I don’t precisely
know what it is. Lucia, you’re very silent.
L Yes... I’m sorry. I’m a bit flummoxed. I don’t know quite what’s going on.
Or, yes I do, but I don’t know how to react.
M Your usual sparkle’s gone all gentle and wispy. And you’ve hardly eaten anything.
Look, I’ve got a suggestion. Why don’t we al go back to my place? We often seem to
get into this sort of confusion in restaurants, don’t we Richard? It seems like a good
idea at the time to meet for a meal, and then everything gets so intense everyone
leaves half their food.
P What you need is a sort of community house where you can eat in comfort
and have proper meetings.
M Something of the sort is what Lucia and I have been hatching up in the last day or
two. Come on, Lucy-Lu, sweetheart. What’s the matter, love? Let’s all go in Richard’s
car back to my place.
L Well, no actually I think I’ll get off home. Oh I don’t know what I want. I
think I’m going to cry again. Damn it, Sue Maconochie, pull yourself
together. You’re acting like a bloody teenager. Look, all of you, I’ve got a
great barn of a room down in Chalk Farm full of comfy arm chairs, and we
can make a roaring log fire and sort ourselves out in comfort. Wouldn’t that
be better, Mel?
M Yes, that’s fine love if you feel like it.
R I’ll settle the bill.
P No, let me.
L Come on, Paul. Where’ve you parked the car, Richard?
R It’s right outside across the road.
M The cash desk’s over here, Richard.
L (Soft) Paul. They need to be by themselves really. They haven’t seen
each other for weeks.
P Shouldn’t we leave them, then?
L No... .Richard still needs a bit of cushioning. It’s not been easy.
P I thought you’d only just met him.
L I have, but you know how girls get together. Melanie and I have been
pretty close in the last couple of weeks. Have you and Richard known each
other long?
P Yes, quite a time. We haven’t met often, and up till now only at these croppie
do’s. I’m finding this all rather overwhelming.
L So am I. It’s like being on a roller-coaster. (They grin at each other).
R All settled. Come on then. You’d better sit in front, Lucia, and show me the way.
Chalk Farm is it?
L That’s it.
M Come on then everybody.

*****

Dialogue 9

L Thanks Paul, ever so much. You don’t really have to do this, you know.
I’m a big girl now. Yes, the proper logs are behind there. I find it goes best
with plenty of kindling. Here are the matches.
P I love making fires. I used to be a scout.
M Lucy, shall I make two pots? Some people want Earl Grey.
L No, make a big pot of ordinary and Earl Grey in their own mugs with tea-
bags. Lets have a semicircle of chairs round the fire Richard, please: no,
leave the big armchair where it is, that’s my special. Oh, I’ll answer the
phone. Hello, Sue Maconochie. Oh, Hello, Joe, it’s Lucia; you’re a
synchronistic phoner! What? Yes we’re all here, just come in. you must have
picked up on our vibes. Why don’t you come on over? Well, as soon as you
can then. Good, that’s lovely. Bye. Joe’s coming as well, isn’t that nice?
R Can he come straight away?
L No, he said he might be about half an hour.
R Don’t these six books look lonely in this vast bookcase?
L I’ve been picturing it full of all the books I propose borrowing from you
people and forgetting to give back!
R (Laughing) Why don’t you start a library, then we can all borrow them and they’ll be
ours anyway.
L Well, it’s funny you should say that, because Mel and I have already
begun to picture this room as a kind of I.T. centre.
P Looks as if my suggestion is already taking shape then.
M Cup of tea, Paul? Sugar?
P No thanks. Thanks Melanie.
R This is the sort of situation I’d envisaged. I’d also begun to see the snags.
L What do you mean?
R Whenever you focalise an essentially mobile process onto one place, one situation,
you have the possibility of a block in the flow. Then before you know where you are, you
have the seeds of an organisation, a society, a movement, yet another us-and-them
situation. You’re creating a scenario which gives people once more an opportunity to
picture the initiative of their spiritual process as being outside themselves, something
other people began, to which they can then attach themselves.
L I think there’s something a wee bit paranoid in that picture, Richard. I can
see how that could happen, but as far as I’m concerned I think I’ve got
enough sense of myself and of my need for privacy to prevent I.T. taking
over my private space.
M And doesn’t the I.T. process itself already pre-empt that situation by its filtering
action? There’s already a sort of hiving off of people into the contacts that suit them
best.
L That’s what I mean. If I picture myself doing what Melanie has done,
putting out I.T. school leaflets and drawing people towards me in that way
I’ve already got a sense of how the intuition works for me. For instance,
there was a woman at art college the other day, and we got talking. She was
obviously quite needy and lonely, and I found myself wondering how she
would be in an I.T. situation. But you know I could feel her attaching herself
psychically to me like a leech. I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it if she
started coming here. How do you deal with situations like that, Richard? One
doesn’t want to add to people’s feeling of rejection, but at the same time...
R You are not responsible for other people’s processes Lucia. It’s all too easy to give
away your power and feel guilty for not helping people. But it is they who are creating
their path, and the feeling of rejection is something they themselves have to handle.
Sooner or later, if she is already genuinely seeking to climb out of her dependant
situation, she will meet someone confident and experienced enough to confront her with
it in a helpful, loving, but probably quite painful way...
M ...Yes, someone who can at the same time give her a sense of confidence in her
isolation, so that she can feel happy in it, and know she needs it. Then in all
probability she’ll start to relate to others more naturally, and people won’t feel
threatened and invaded by her. Why don’t you give her a leaflet with my number on
it? If I don’t feel happy with her I’ll hand her on, or recommend something else.
P You know, I think I’m beginning to come round to the question you seemed to
be waiting for me to ask. I was really rather worried by what seemed to be the
almost offhand way in which you, Richard, declared that nobody knew or
needed to know, how many people were actually involved in what you had
initiated. After all, this seems to be a very powerful thing you have set in train,
and it obviously carries in its wake a quite considerable, even heavy,
responsibility. When I asked Richard earlier how the continuity worked, and
how you kept tabs on people, he simply said baldly:- "We don’t". This gave me a
real shock. My first thought was, "What the hell are these people playing at?
Are they really releasing what seems like potential dynamite into people’s lives
and then just leaving them to sink or swim? I couldn’t believe that was the end
of the matter. I think I would put my question like this. How do you exercise
responsibility for what you have yourself put in train for a particular person.
All right, you don’t, as I expressed it to Richard, keep tabs on people. But in an
inner way you are obviously concerned, or, if I may say so, you are being
somewhat irresponsible. How does this actually work out?
R Shall I answer this, Mel? I think perhaps we really need Joe for this or even Fiona.
P Who’s Fiona?
R Big question. To a great extent she lies at the heart of what we’re doing. I hope you’ll
meet her.
M There’s something I’d like to say, Paul. I think it’s usually best to talk about
specific instances rather than generalise, but at the same time I feel it’s time we got
back to basics. What you are questioning would be perfectly valid if we felt we were
simply plunging into sensitive human lives unaided. But right from the start we knew
we were tapping a source, an energy level, beyond the ordinary intelligently human
one. As soon as we began to take the steps we did take, to get ourselves involved in
people’s lives in this way, we had the strongest possible impression that something
beyond ourselves was, as it were, taking an interest in what we were doing. Lucia
talks about ‘presences’. We coined the expression intraterrestrials.
P Oh, I wondered what I.T. Stood for. Intraterrestrials. I suppose you got that
from the expression Extraterrestrials. I.T. is a sort of extension of that idea.
R More a challenge to it that an extension of it. I’ve tended to see the whole E.T.
culture as an outstanding example of what I was talking about earlier. There is an almost
universal tendency for people to place the focus of what is going on for them within their
own consciousness outside themselves. In other words, to set up a god and worship it
rather than find their own centre and explore it. Sooner or later if you do that the god
always becomes an idol. That’s why Jehovah in the old testament was always so
insistent on people not setting up what he called ‘graven images’, what nowadays we
call Reification, turning processes and activities into THINGS, so that we can dissociate
ourselves from the, treat them as ‘other’, instead of identifying with them in an intimate
way, going along with them, taking responsibility for them, and so on and on into our
future development.
M Stop, Richard dear, you’ll exhaust yourself.
L He does go on rather, doesn’t he? Joe was doing the same thing the other
day, wasn’t he Mel? I think men are wonderful, don’t you, the way ideas take
hold of them and pour through them like waterfalls. Ever so sexy!
M Oh, shut up, Lu. Everything’s sex with you.
P (Roars with laughter). Oh my god! I’ve never met people like you before. I
thought all you spiritual people were such a solemn lot.
M Well, Richard’s quite solemn, aren’t you Richard?
R I have to be with people like you and Lucia around. Your approach to the spiritual
world is positively hysterical.
L It’s because we live in our feelings. At least I do. I don’t think Melanie’s
hysterical. She’s very serious. She has the sort of serious side I need. I’m
simply frivolous. At least I’m not really frivolous, but I put it on or I’d be
crying half the time.
P I think you’re gorgeous.
L Thank you Paul. You’re not too bad yourself. Where were we?
M I was trying to explain to Paul how we were trying to steer our way between
responsibility and interference with people’s paths, and I was just getting to the point
of saying how it was this very process which seemed to draw the interest of
‘presences’ towards what we were doing, and then the name intraterrestrials came
up. Richard started up on his theme of E.T.s being a reification of I.T.s, which I know
is extremely important, but it sort of stopped my flow. Shall I start again? ... Oh,
here’s Joe.
L Hi, Joe! Come in. Was the front door open? I’m so glad you just came
through, we were right in the middle of things. This is Paul, who came with
Richard from his crop-circle do.
P You mean agroglyphic academy.
L Oh do I? If you say so.
J Hi. Paul. Sorry I took so long. I had a client. Don’t let me interrupt. Where shall I sit?
No tea thanks. Here?
L Melanie was answering a question of Paul’s. Paul raised something which
has been worrying me too. No, not worrying exactly, but I didn’t know how
to frame it as a question. I think I’d put it like this. What we seem to be
doing is suggesting by calling it a school that we have a clue to something
people are looking for. But almost as soon as they get involved this structure
falls away, and there they are, as we now are, back in the old situation of
discussing deep matters on virtually equal terms. Almost, one could say, the
blind leading the blind as usual. I suspect in fact there is more to it than this,
and that is, as Melanie said just before you came in, Joe, that the process
does something to alert what I call ‘presences’ that something in us is waking
up, so to speak.
R Well, there you go? Isn’t that...
L No, wait a minute Richard. I was just getting to how I see Paul’s question.
This thing about keeping tabs on people. It’s not so much that... after all,
people are simply people like us... we aren’t in the business of interfering,
never mind directing, their processes. O.K., they are free beings and we
respect, value, their freedom. But we are also responsible for what we do.
How do we exercise responsibility for what we do to people without
interfering with their freedom?
P I couldn’t have put it better. This is what I am asking.
R You’re talking as if the whole process was a one-way flow between us and the
people who come to our door. After all, they do actually come. They take this step.
Sometimes, as you seem to have done, Lucia, they step right through the door we open
for them and, so to speak, it dissolves behind them. They at once start to participate in
our process. It becomes a continuation of their own process.
P But what about all the others, the ones who are not in the room with us now?
Do you care what happens to them? Do you know what happens to them? Do
they even exist in relation to the school? In fact, what school? Isn’t it just a
metaphor for something?
J No. There’s a real school.
P But do these people actually join it?
J Nobody joins it, Paul. That’s not the situation.
P You mean...?
J Everybody’s at a different stage in their search for it. Some people find, when they
contact somebody who’s put out a leaflet...
P I’d like to see one of those leaflets.
J ...that they know exactly what’s going on. They realise that whatever we mean by the
term I.T. school they are actually in it already.
L That’s what I feel has happened to me.
J I suspect, though I don’t actually know, that some people take up the idea and put out
leaflets of their own, or invent other ways of getting kindred spirits together. Some are
drawn towards other initiatives we know about, all the multifarious New Age shindigs
you see advertised in magazines like "Kindred Spirit". That’s why they called it that.
P So there you are back where you started, simply with a group of friends.
J No, Paul. You’re leaving out the ace-card-in-the-pack. Richard and I got to this
position you’re expressing some years ago. There were three of us. A woman called
Fiona, Richard, and me. Then Melanie came into it. We’d reached the point you’ve
reached yourself it seems to me. But Fiona was different in that for some years she’d
been involved with something called the anthroposophical society, the initiative of
someone called Rudolf Steiner at the end of the last century, and at the time of the first
world war.
P Yes, I’ve heard of it.
J Anthroposophy, as Fiona described it to us, was a gigantic body of teachings about a
spiritual world, but different from all the other innovative movements of the nineteenth
century in being specifically associated with Science. Steiner conceived the whole path of
mankind as having moved beyond a culture dominated by religious belief.
He saw us as having advanced to the point where we become able to deal with the
matters religion addresses with the methods validly developed by science. In this sense he
didn’t experience religion and science as separate, never mind antagonistic to each other.
Religion, science and art were becoming for him an integrated whole as a result of a new
cultural-spiritual awakening in humanity. Fiona became deeply involved with this as a
young person. But as time went on she became more and more oppressed by something
she couldn’t quite define. Gradually she realised that the very thing that had opened doors
in her soul when she was young she now experienced as a huge indigestible mass of
information and beliefs which seemed to be weighing her down. More and more she felt
she no longer had the capacity to process it through her inner life and understanding, to
digest it and make it her own. At first she felt this was her own fault, that this was all a
matter of personal inadequacy. But then she realised that many of her friends, and
particularly those of a younger generation, were going through similar experiences.
Young people were no longer able to integrate themselves deeply into the lifestyle of
anthroposophy as she had experience it in the fifties.
R Neither Joe nor I ever got as closely involved with all this as Fiona did, thought you
are still actually a member of the Anthroposphical Society, aren’t you Joe? But we were
so close to her that we experienced vicariously most of what she was going through. I
never joined the society, and it was perhaps through that that I was able gradually to see
what was going on. I felt that the actual physical circumstances in which anthroposophy
arose, the condition of humanity into which Steiner was born had radically changed.
Humanity, developing spiritually in an evolving planet, was still largely asleep. But the
spiritual world into which it could potentially awaken was not the same as the world into
which Steiner had awoken. Moreover anthroposophy, which had incarnated into a
movement and a society embodying what Steiner had awoken to, had not kept pace with
these fundamental changes.
M Can I come in there? You see, Steiner was obviously deeply and actively involved
with the spiritual beings he so richly described. But equally obviously most of the
people round him who became anthroposophists were not. Many of them were
exceptional and inspired human beings, I’m quite sure of that. I’ve talked to many
members of the movement who were taught by them and inspired in their turn. But
few of them seem to have gone very far into the worlds Steiner spoke of. They mostly
felt themselves to be on a long hard road of disciplinary development and education.
But personally I didn’t pick up that there was very much joy in it all, or if there was it
was something they may have shared with each other, but they didn’t seem able to
radiate much of it to the world outside their movement.
R You see, it was out of all this that the idea of I.T. arose. More and more people
seemed to be experiencing a nouminous world of their own, vague and muddled in all
sorts of ways, and prone to all kinds of illusion, but somehow different in tone from the
apparently austere world of the anthroposophists.
J Yes, it does seem austere from the outside, but I assure you there are very few people
who penetrate deeply into the anthroposophical world who don’t experience from time to
time a tremendous joyful ecstasy of understanding it is almost impossible to describe. I
myself have had an inkling of that.
R You see, what I feel has happened is that, however vague and muddled people’s
new sense of transcendental reality is, it is something they have to develop, as it were,
from below up. It is no longer appropriate to weigh people down with a huge body of
information and insights, which are bound at first to appear to them as coming to their
consciousness from outside. People need above all to come to a new understanding of
how their inner and outer experiences are related to each other.
J Anthroposophy does that.
R Yes, but not in the way that gives people the confidence which can only come from
having discovered it for themselves.
J It is precisely the ability to discover the spiritual world for themselves that
anthroposophy gives them.
P Obviously people need a lot of help. Say what you like, I think most people
need some sort of authority in their lives to refer to.
J In that sense anthroposophy is not what you mean by an authority. It is an endless
stimulus to people to make the sort of spiritual discoveries Richard is talking about, very
much from below up. On the other hand there are more than enough authorities for
people if that is what they want. The whole new age bristles with authorities of every
possible complexion.
R Moreover it is often just by scuttling away from their own waking selves into the
consolation of an authoritative teaching that people come to terms with those selves,
and start to do what a friend of mine calls "entering into the freedom of your own spiritual
authority". I think in I.T. we are looking for people who have already been through the
authority bit, or perhaps never needed to go through it. They don’t in the first place want
to be taught about spiritual beings. They’re too busy learning to come to terms with the
spiritual beings they are, in however provisional a way, aware of themselves.
P Intraterrestrials?
R Exactly.
L Where do we go from here?
P I’d rather like to meet this Fiona lady.
L So would I.
J Richard and I have been telling her that something new has been happening in this
cellular growth of ours. I feel that something has to happen now of a rather more radical
kind, or we shall find ourselves losing the very mobility it came into existence to foster.
Before we know where we are we shall have formed a new closed society of our own.
M Let’s break this up now. We’ll get in touch with Fiona and see what she’s been
thinking.
P Is Fiona in some way the leader of this group?
R She wouldn’t like you to think so. But she’s a very special lady.
L Stay for a nibble If you like. There are plenty of oddments in the fridge.
J I think I’d better make a move.
R And me. I never seem to get any work done these days. I’ll get the sack.
J You’ll have to sack yourself. I’m not going to sack you.
L Will you stay on a bit, Mel?
M Yes, I want to. You’re all off then? Bye everyone. See you soon. (Paul comes across
to Lucia and holds her arm).
P Cheers, Lucia. I hope we meet again. Bye Melanie.
*****
L Oh, bugger, bugger, bugger! I hate that man.
M No you don’t. You’re falling for him.
L He’s so bloody arrogant. Half making out we’re play-acting, leading
people on and dropping them cold.
M He’s scared, that’s all. He’s afraid of that happening to him. He’s probably done
that to other people a time or two. He’s got plenty of charm.
L I don’t want another bloody man! Not yet, anyway. And certainly not a
charmer like that, practically raping me in front of everyone. (Melanie bursts
out laughing).
M If touching your arm and looking intense qualifies as rape in your book I wonder
you’ve survived at all. Anyway, you’re a free agent. You don’t have to meet him
anywhere else.
L (Laughs) I probably do!
M Well, he’ll probably pursue it. He couldn’t take his eyes off you.
L He’ll pretend it’s I.T. he’s interested in, which he isn’t. He’ll just come to
be with me. I’m bloody well not going to let him spoil my involvement with
the rest of you.
M Lucia, snap out of it. To start off with, he’s extremely interested in I.T. It’s a real
challenge to his sort of scepticism. It’s not just you he’ll come for. He really wants to
know what’s going on.
L How do you know?
M Darling, I may flounder a bit in the interpreter role, but I’m fairly streetwise in
general for all that. I see Paul as a real challenge to what we’re doing, and a very
necessary test, not just for you but for the group. He’s already making Richard, and
even Joe, look again at what they started in what seems to me a quite healthy way.
L You say ‘even Joe’. Do you think Joe has a deeper involvement than
Richard?
M No, I don’t. But Richard is far more intense and less peaceful than Joe is, and more
extraverted.
L Neither of them has much humour, do you think?
M Not a lot. But I’m not sure that’s entirely a matter of temperament.
L What do you think it is?
M I’ve found myself wondering whether we’re really in the right setting for this kind
of work. London’s pretty oppressive to live in at the best of times, and it’s getting
worse.
L I’ve never imagined myself living anywhere else than London. But I must
say when you took me up to Parliament Hill the other day I really felt free in
a way I haven’t felt for a long time.
M It’s time you met Fiona.
L Tell me about her.
M She’s quite a bit older than the rest of us, even Joe.
L How old’s Joe?
M I think he’s about forty-seven, forty-eight. I got the impression when we first met
that I was about seven years younger than he is. Richard’s forty-four. I would say
Fiona’s in her late fifties. She might even be sixty.
L Positively ancient. I’m the real baby at this party.
M Oh, I don’t know. I should say Paul’s fairly young.
L I wasn’t counting him. I don’t know whether he really belongs in what
we’re doing or not.
M Something in us longs for a smooth passage in our search. But there’s a wise
guidance that sees to it that we come up against resistances when we need them.
Paul’s a bit of a resistance in this immediate situation. It’s all going so fast I can feel it
needs a bit of a brake.
L B R E A K?
M No, B R A K E. Certainly not a break in the other sense. We provide that ourselves
by dividing our sessions into different settings, not going on too long with
conversations, trying to reach a certain rhythm in what we’re doing.
*****
M But there’s something else. How can I put it? It has to do with the overlighting of
intraterrestrial beings, the feeling that our restless searchings and deliberations have
attracted the attention of other levels of conscious intelligence than our own. The
smooth flow of our expanding awareness becomes tense and restless, as if these
‘presences’ were nudging us to rise onto a different level. Something comes in which
interrupts the smooth flow...
L Paul.
M ...yes, I think so. A mildly disruptive note sounds, which turns our attention
inward. We realise we need a bit more help, or something from somewhere.
L We’re waiting for Fiona.
M Yes, I think we are. I don’t think I’ll tell you any more about her. Let’s wait and
see what she does. I hope you won’t be disappointed when you meet her. She’s
sometimes a bit reserved. But she comes out with some surprising things. It’s rather
like the sun coming out from behind clouds.
L I can’t wait. She sounds like another light-being, if that’s what I am.
M Maybe you’ll end up like her.
L There we are, then. We’re all waiting for Fiona. Poor woman. I wonder if
she knows.
M I’m quite certain she does. Not much gets past that lady. I’m a bit in awe of her,
but I love her very much.
L I have a feeling I will too.

END OF BOOK ONE

 Book 2
"A Seed Germinates"

Dialogue 1

L I feel quite nervous. The others have given you such a build-up that I had
started forming a picture of you as someone really quite formidable.
Needless to say you are utterly different from what I had imagined.
F You were expecting to meet a dragoness in her lair?
L Not exactly that, but somebody a lot more reserved than I think you are.
At one point someone even said you were a bit shy.
F That was perceptive of whoever it was. Sounds like Melanie.
L It was.
F I do feel a bit shy still at times. I was certainly shy as a child. As for
being formidable, well I can be that at times if that seems to be what
people are asking for.
L We thought you were probably going to suggest a general get-together of
the five of us, well six if we include Paul. They’ve told you about him?
F Yes. He still seems to be a bit of an unknown factor. It’s really up to
him.
L I’m a bit afraid he’ll try to winkle me out of the group and get me on my
own. I’m furious with him and attracted at the same time.
F That was a factor in my suggestion that we didn’t meet as a group
yet. In any case I wanted to get to know you a bit first.
L Am I being vetted?
F Don’t be an idiot. You know, I wish they didn’t give people the
impression that I’m a sort of mystical initiate behind the scenes of I.T.
I’m nothing like as wise and wonderful as they make me out to be.
L Well, you are older and probably wiser than the others. And I imagine in a
group situation they tend to defer to you a bit.
F Yes, that does happen when we have met a a foursome. You know,
obviously, that the overall tone of conversations, even in as closely knit
a group as we are becoming, alters radically with each mix of two,
three or four people. When it is just Joe, Melanie and I there is a more
equal balance. But with Richard it alters. It’s just a little bit less
integrated, and I think this is what gives them a feeling that I’m
controlling things from a higher level.
L Are you?
F Good question. You know, Lucia, you’ve been coming towards this
little assembly of souls for some time. It was time you surfaced. There
is a sense in which I do get tempted to exercise too much control over
the situation. I need someone to share some of my own difficulties
with.
L I could say the same. I’ve found a great closeness with Melanie. She’s
already helped me quite powerfully over my sexual hang-ups and muddles.
She and I are already on quite an even keel there. I like her very much. But I
feel... how can I put it? I feel she lacks a real sense of herself as a woman.
She’s intelligent and clear and confident in dealing with someone like me. But
when it comes to her own life she seems to come unstuck somewhere. I feel
she really needs to wade in with Richard and tie him down somehow.
F I’m quite sure that’s what you’d do in similar circumstances. But
with Richard I think you’d be wrong. He refuses to be tied. What are all
these personal relationship problems really saying to people, Lucia?
Why do people go on and on in our time making just that sort of
mistake with each other?
L I think I know something about it, but I don’t know what to do about it.
F What do you think it is then?
L I think we’re afraid of bringing our sense of higher presences,
intraterrestrials as you call them, into direct connection with other people’s
experiences of the same thing. We try to work out our relationships in too
limited a sphere of action, on too low a level. I suppose it is an astral level
and a sexual level.
F Yes, I know this is true. And when I try to do something about it, it
simply takes me over. I invoke a higher level of myself as I think, and
there I am exercising power over people in sometimes quite a
formidable way.
L Did you have close personal relationships when you were younger?
F Yes, indeed. But after a few bad experiences, one particularly
frightful affair, I simply withdrew. Then Joe and I were a bit close for a
time, but it wasn’t really right. I’ve been on my own for a long time.
L When you feel yourself being taken over by a sort of power thing with
people, do you think it is this unresolved sexuality that comes into play?
F Yes, I think you’re probably putting your finger on it. But I don’t
know what to do about it.
L My life has been almost the exact opposite of that. As I said to Melanie
I’ve really played the field sexually, all over the place. But at the same time
it hasn’t really touched my deeper levels. I seem to have left a free space
where I can begin to be aware of higher beings, sometimes as quite a
powerful presence. But my looseness on a sexual level has had a dangerous
side as well. Melanie probably told you that when the contact we had
encouraged me to be more deliberately aware of my higher being I was
nearly driven out altogether. I suppose astrally I’ve simply made myself too
loose.
F It looks as if you and I represent two poles of the same thing. We
need to find a balanced position half-way somewhere.
*****
L I’m...
F Stand up. (She does the same). Here, hold my hands a moment.
L It’s coming back. I mean, I’m here now.
F Breathe a bit more deeply. There. I’m here too.
L Fiona...
F Don’t be scared. Just breathe. Now, say what is there in your mind.
L (Slowly) When two, or three, are gathered together in my Name, there
am I, in the midst.
F Who is speaking these words, Lucia?
L I am speaking these words. I have spoken those words. These words will
be spoken in me. I shall become those words.
F Don’t stop breathing. Breathe your thinking. Think your breathing. I
am in the midst with you. I am you. We are each other.
*****
L Things can never be quite the same again.
F No, but they will be very nearly the same. We forget very quickly.
L That’s tragic. We need to be like that all the time.
F No, it isn’t tragic. Forgetting is just as important as remembering. If
we didn’t forget we couldn’t remember, and remembering is the clue
to our whole path of development.
L Why does coming down to earth have to be so painful?
F Because pain is the door to remembering. When we are in pleasure,
in joy, we are. When we are in pain, we become. When pleasure and
pain are in balance, both present together, we achieve. And in
achieving we fulfil not only ourselves but the earth itself. We are the
earth. We are the earth’s awareness.
L Stop now Fiona. I can only take so much of this sort of thing. I need time
to digest it.
F We need time, full stop. When you enter the timeless, and don’t
forget to breathe, back you come into time. But the reality lies in the
movement.
L T.S. Eliot said that... "the point of intersection of the timeless with time."
He said it was an occupation for the saint.
F Yes, he talked about it all the time. "The still point of the turning
world".
L "There the dance is, and there is only the dance". But Fiona, does it really
have to bring us all back into religion? If religion is really the price of all this
I’d rather stay as I am. I simply can’t stand the atmosphere of religion and
religious people. Religion always seems to me like sticking pins through
butterflies. "You’ve just had a transcendent experience? Join the club. Sign
here." They don’t just bring it all down to earth. They positively stamp it into
the mud.
F If they didn’t do that people at an earlier stage of development
would lose touch altogether. Simple religions, and even trendy new-
age mysticisms and occult games are necessary introductions for some
people to the possibility of stillness and attainment. You not only have
to have the temple, it has to have inner courtyards and outer
courtyards, places of acclimatisation where people can start to lose
some of their fear and scepticism. We are in such a courtyard.
L Fiona, are you a Christian?
F (Pause). Well, I haven’t signed on the dotted line. I don’t go to
church. I’m not an anthroposophist either, although I did join the
society. Like most people, when I was young I joined things. But I don’t
operate very well in groups.
L What about I.T.?
F I.T. has this particular dynamic of disassembly, mobility, not
allowing form to overtake content. You can’t join I.T., it’s simply a code
symbol for a process. But I stalled your question.
L About Christianity, yes.
F No, I’m not a Christian. I think for the time being Christianity has
blocked the path of spiritual development for mankind. Christianity has
hi-jacked the growth of an awakening, emergent consciousness of the
spirit in humanity and put a price-tag on it. The church recognised
what was saleable and controllable in what emerged in Palestine 2000
years ago, and marketed it. Sin, atonement, advocacy, and hence
priesthood, hierarchy, authority, these could all be marketed and
placed as a solid structure between the awareness of humankind and
humankind’s true being.
L What is humankind’s true being?
F You know that Lucia. You stood looking straight at it ten minutes
ago. You showed it to me. You opened a door for me to see it too.
L It was only a glimpse.
F The glimpse we get of that reality is not partial, whereas the
glimpses of sense realities are only scraps of the whole. When the light
breaks through in that way, through the kind of chink that people like
you provide, it’s the whole Light which momentarily we see. Light is
indivisible. Each glimpse is, so to speak, a hologram of the whole.
L And that is humanity’s true being?
F Yes, it is.
L Has it got a name?
F Yes it has.
L Can we speak its name?
F Names are tricky. They do things to consciousness. They alter time.
Spoken thoughtlessly or inadvertently they raise devils instead of gods.
L Yes. Melanie and I have gone into that a bit. We talked about The Wizard
of Earthsea. People need vernacular names, because true names hand power
to the unscrupulous.
F Lucia, without going into the state you brought us to just now, can
you stand fully in your body and speak the name of humanity’s true
being so that it is acceptable to the Earth, and stands there in our
Earth consciousness as a description of what we are becoming?
L Are we sufficiently protected to do that?
F I am beginning to know how to invoke that sort of protection. My
faint memory tells me that in the past I have been a magician, and I
know the techniques and manipulations of power that put walls round
what we did. But that is no longer appropriate in our time. We have
sacrificed power to awareness of our own spiritual presence.
Humanity’s true being protects us to a much greater degree than the
old magicians could achieve. But we have to ask it to do so.
L Let’s do that now.
*****
F Speak the name now. Lucia.
L CHRIST IN US.
*****
L I feel tremendously powerful. I feel I could conquer the world.
F You could. The first people to have that experience, to be aware of
that identity, set out to conquer the world on its behalf. They created
Christianity and destroyed half of humanity in the process instead.
L Instead of what?
F Instead of joy, then pain, then the marriage of pain and joy, which
is the achievement, what is called the pleroma, the fullness.
L What can I do with this power?
F Bring it into balance with its opposite, with powerlessness. Apart
from that balance power only destroys.
L Is that done through breathing? Is that why you told me to breathe?
F It is not only that we bring opposites into balance by breathing.
Balance, poise, equilibrium, whatever we call them, actually create the
breath, the heartbeat, the whole rhythmic system.
L I can’t grasp this. Are you saying that if we could master the breath we
could understand the world?
F There are powers which would like us to think so. Breathing is so
powerful that mastery of the breath is mastery of the world. What
these dark powers don’t tell us is that this is a two way process.
Mastering the world is at the same time being mastered by the world.
The only way to make the world our prisoner is to be totally imprisoned
in it. The idea that we can freely control the world from outside is an
illusion. When we act in the world it is also the world which is acting in
us. At the level of action in the world we are the world. Understanding
the world is something different.
L How do we understand the world?
F In the first place by doing what we are doing now, by thinking.
L There’s something missing.
F There certainly is!
L What is the missing factor?
F The missing factor is we ourselves. We are absent from our own
situation if we simply think and act, think and act. We also have to feel.
We have to feel ourselves. We have to feel ourselves thinking, feel
ourselves acting. We have to be, and we have to become aware of
ourselves as being.
L So in feeling ourselves we are in joy, then in thinking about the world we
are in pain, and in acting we synthesise the two and achieve the pleroma, is
that it? There’s something a bit wrong with that isn’t there? I mean we
certainly feel pain as well as joy. And in becoming aware of ourselves we are
certainly also thinking. Moreover in acting we feel both pain and pleasure and
also we are aware that acting is a rational thinking process on some level.
Isn’t there something contrived about this whole threefoldness of thinking
feeling and willing? It’s almost as if they’re interchangeable.
F They certainly are interchangeable, down here on the earth. But it
is the fact that we are in physical bodies that enables us to hold them
together. Otherwise they would fly apart. This is why we have to have
physical bodies you might say. As spiritual beings we humans are in
our infancy. The three forces or entities which manifest in us as
thinking, feeling and willing are gigantic powers in the spirit. If we, as
minute spiritual infants, were to experience them naked and
unmediated, they would blow us apart. We wouldn’t survive for a
fraction of a second. Our physical bodies are cunningly and wonderfully
contrived to hold together, in a single entity, beings which, in their own
infinite sphere, are engaged in titanic cosmic battles and towering
harmonic agreements, which we could only survive after multiple
incarnations over countless millennia of time.
L You make our physical bodies sound like electrical condensers.
F On one level that is precisely what they are. The physical human
body is the supreme achievement of the creative universe. It is the
only entity in the whole of creation which can contain within its tiny
compass the entire scope and infinite variety of the cosmos, yet so
stepped down energywise that it can contain the spiritual embryo
which we ourselves are, and act as a vehicle and an instrument by
which we can grow and mount upwards, and scale the heights from
which it was created.
L No wonder so many people nowadays say that it was implanted into the
planet millennia ago by extraterrestrials.
F That is partially a materialistic distortion by people who have not
inwardly grasped the fact that the planet is a living organism which we
become part of when we incarnate into it.
L It isn’t itself simply a single undifferentiated organism though, is it? I
mean it is inhabited by hosts of beings, ourselves certainly, but other
sentient beings as well?
F Which is why we arrived at this word intraterrestrials. We came to
the realisation that the new-age movement was losing touch with the
reality of its own earthly experiences. It is as if a materialist fantasy
world of science-fiction had invaded human consciousness and was
blowing it up like a balloon, progressively dispersing and thinning out
human experience, and detaching it from the planet, of which it is an
indispensable part.
L Are there no gods outside the planet then?
F Human consciousness is in danger of being dominated by space,
and this means that the human soul is getting lost in the depths of
time. What is supremely important is that we should find our way back
to the intensity and concentration of the present moment in time and
the present location in space. That is what we made a momentary
contact with this morning when you achieved what you did achieve.
The question of outside and inside is one of the inexhaustible
mysteries. We have to think, feel and will our way into it in every
moment of waking consciousness.
L I feel you didn’t answer my question.
F I didn’t. I felt you might answer it.
L I think there are gods outside the planet. I think it is a male being which I
sometimes feel approaches me, and that’s why I tend to be drawn out of my
body towards it, and to be united with it. I feel it is my other half, or other
side. I feel it is my more real self, and that it belongs to the stars.
F Have you ever met a man who said:- "I think there are goddessess
inside the planet. I think it is a female being whom I sometimes feel I
approach, and that’s why I sometimes feel drawn into my body
towards it and to be united with it. I feel it is my other half, my other
side. I feel it is my more real self, and it belongs in the earth.
L (Laughs loudly) How absolutely astonishing! You repeated my words
exactly as a perfect mirror image. You must have amazing powers of
concentration.
F Well I think I’ve learned to listen! But the thing is, have you met
such a man or men?
L Well of course I have. Every time a man falls in love with me; and then
we lose it all at once when we make love.
F Exactly. Why do you think that is?
L Well I have the feeling that men don’t actually see me at all. They see
something else. I’ve always thought it was simply a mirror-image of
themselves which they lose at the moment of orgasm. And there I am in
front of them, all glamour dispersed. Mostly they are deeply disappointed and
take it out on me. ‘Can’t think what I saw in her’, they say after a few more
times. Post-coital depression sets in.
F You’ve been unlucky. So have I. But perhaps it isn’t such bad luck
after all.
L Why?
F We’ve been able to see some things a lot of people don’t see. They
just get on with it. We ask questions, and I think we get true answers.
L Don’t you think a lot more men than women project that sort of
experience? Why do you think that is?
F Oh, a lot of women make gods out of their men. But women are the
real earth-beings. They make a better job of the projection! They
adjust to earth realities... babies and washing-up. Most men go on
fantasising and look for the goddess in the next pretty young thing.
L Are you saying that women have more sense for the real divine than
men?
F No, not at all. Who creates the churches? Who scans the sky for
UFOs and extra terrestrials? Who sends rockets to the moon and the
planets? Men are natural denizens of the outer realities. That’s why
they are reluctant to admit to the real existence of goddesses on earth.
Men have as powerful a sense for the numinous as women have, but
they have less sense for it in its incarnated planetary form. They want
the goddess to be a phenomenon. They’d rather have a rock-star
Madonna than the Sistine Madonna. They want heaven to stay outside
where they think it belongs. Their GOD is unitary and above all male.
L So they have created a male world to embody him.
F And that male world is destroying the earth.
L But men wouldn’t have been able to do that if we hadn’t made it possible.
F Not only possible but in a way inevitable.
L How?
F By being the unattainable sexual goddess ideal for man. By putting
all our energy into that. By aiming at Marilyn Monroe and then crashing
down into our fat or skinny, smelly, boring monstrous selves. In a word,
women’s God is also unitary, but female. We want heaven to stay
inside where we think it belongs. So we have created a female world to
embody our female God. And that female world is destroying the stars
as effectively as man destroys the earth.
L Stars are indestructible.
F So is the earth, but humanity is having a jolly good short at
destroying both.
L It seems you are implying that there is something one-sided in the green
revolution. We ought to be paying just as much attention to the way in which
the reality beyond the earth is being denatured and eroded. We need a
golden revolution as well.
F We confuse GOD with the gods and goddesses. Outer space is
peopled by gods of all shapes and sizes, some beneficent, some
malevolent, destructive and anti-human. Inner space is equally
populated by goddesses, and not all of them are on our side either.
Feminists counter the male paternalist hijacking of GOD by attempting
to erect a unitary goddess opposition. But that misses the point
altogether. GOD is beyond polarity neither male nor female. GOD is all
there is. GOD is Being itself, Being aware, Being aware of itself, Being
thinking its awareness of itself, Being aware of thinking its awareness
of itself. GOD is immanent in Being, but constantly transcends that
immanence. So GOD creates polarity but is never subject to it. Gods
and goddesses are another ball-game altogether.
*****
L Fiona, when we went into those altered states earlier, that was something
different from gods and goddesses wasn’t it?
F You know it was.
L Can you describe what was happening?
F Do you know the word hierophant?
L Yes.
F Do you remember what it means?
L I think you’re telling me that I was acting as a hierophant just now, and
that I should remember that, because I’ve done it before. Is that what you’re
saying?
F Listen, I’m not teaching you. I’m not your teacher.
L What are you doing then?
F I’m doing what a man I know calls "putting myself in service of your
higher being". At least that’s what I’m trying to do. As I told you, I find
it very difficult to do that, and I frequently find myself controlling the
situation instead.
L I don’t think you’re doing too badly. I’m a lot less disciplined than you
are. I flounder about more.
F Well you’re less experienced than I am, but you’re not doing too
badly either. You’re responding to suggestions and allowing things to
happen without interfering in them. You’re also staying awake. You
didn’t slip out of your body this time, so you’re responding to an
intuition that you don’t want to be mediumistic.
L That’s quite right. I feel quite sure that’s not what I’m meant to do. But
what are you doing while I do my hierophant bit?
F I’m more of what should be called a priest, if it weren’t for the fact
that the word has been thoroughly downgraded. Most priests just go
through the motions in a traditional way. They have no real idea what
they’re supposed to be doing, they just hope that God knows and carry
on as they’ve been taught to do. I’m talking about catholic priests, but
in protestant churches they don’t even get that far, in fact they don’t
even call themselves priests. They prefer to think of themselves as
pastors, guides, shepherds of their flocks. But we don’t really need to
go into all that. You know it already.
L So what does a real priest do?
F A real priest creates and makes him or herself responsible for what
is called a temple. It doesn’t have to be a physical structure, although
it is often helpful if something physical is there to act as a focus of
attention.
L What’s a temple for?
F It’s a receptor, a receiving station, a set of parameters, a place
where the god or goddess can manifest. In the last resort it is the earth
itself which is the temple.
L So the temple is the female half of what we’re talking about.
F Exactly. In ancient Greece they had this picture of Zeus descending
from the heights and impregnating the swan, Leda. But that is rather a
primitive level of what we mean.
L Why doesn’t the Christian church have hierophants?
F You can feel, can’t you, that we’re getting nearer and nearer to the
point when we are going to have to use the Name again, the Name
that emerged in you when you became momentarily a hierophant.
L The C-word. Why am I so obstinately reluctant to pronounce that word?
F You pronounced it loud and clear an hour ago.
L I feel that it itself pronounced itself in me. And before that it spoke one of
its sayings in me.
F But you were not being mediumistic then either. You were aware
that the "I" of the Being and your own "I" were one being.
L We’re talking about Names again. I feel that the saying of that Name in a
purely referential – not reverential, referential – sense is straight blasphemy.
F And this is the girl who hates religion and religious people.
L Religion is blasphemy. Religion is a secularised compromise with atheists.
Religion is a cowardly disguise for responsible spiritual life. And look at the
result. In our time Christianity is nothing but tarted up humanism.
F (Laughs). I think you may have to modify some of those
statements.
L (Laughs too). Oh, Fiona dear, what are we going to do about all this?
F As you said, it’s about names. What has happened is that you feel
the C-word is no longer a Name of Power in the Wizard of Earthsea
sense. It has become a nickname, a soubriquet, something bandied
about in pubs and on the street as an ordinary oath, a swear-word.
What do we do when all our words are downgraded, when people have
taken all the sacred symbols out of the Temple and desecrated them in
the gutter.
L But we know something different, don’t we? We know that it is possible to
open ourselves to the level at which the CHRIST can speak in us. There! I’ve
said the Name. And unlike a Roman Catholic I didn’t make the sign of the
cross as I did so.
F They know the Name needs protection. But they haven’t reached
the point where their own being protects it in the act of speaking. Nor
have we all the time. We have to trust the path, and that means losing
fear and the superstition that goes with it. Then we can begin to
restore the name CHRIST to its former power. Now I’ve said it too.
(They get up and hug)
L I’m getting hungry. Whatever time is it? Christ, I must go!
(Covers her mouth)
Oh lord, whatever have I done?
F You haven’t done anything very serious darling. The profane world
is also part of reality. We are in it. We are transforming it. It takes time.
L But why am I so thoughtless?
F One day we shall reach continuity of consciousness, continuous
presence. That’s the object of the exercise. We’re getting there.
L When are we meeting again?
F Keep in touch with Melanie. She loves to be the contact point. I’ll
ring her. Anyway, soon, soon! Off you go. It’s been lovely.
(A last hug, and Lucia goes.)
 *****

Dialogue 2

R What’s wrong with you these days Mel?

M Is there something wrong with me?
R Well, something’s wrong. I don’t seem to be able to get through to you the way I used
to.
M No, that’s true, Perhaps the whole notion of ‘getting through’ to
someone has something wrong with it.
R What do you mean?
M Well, perhaps if things are right with people in the first place the
idea of getting through to them doesn’t arise. Did you always feel you
had to get through to me from somewhere?
R Well I thought I knew you. Heavens above, I did know you. I know you now. I love
you very much indeed, darling girl. But I feel you’ve pulled away from me somewhere.
M Yes I have. I know I have. I’ve told myself for ages that we’re a
very well adjusted couple. We each have our own life and our own
needs and we’ve found a modus vivendi that suits us very well. But in
my heart of hearts I know perfectly well that, at least on my side, this
simply isn’t true. I’m lonely and sad, and I’ve had to withdraw a bit to
cope with it.
R I’m really amazed. I had no idea you felt like that. Why on earth didn’t you say
something? Did you think I wouldn’t understand? I think the world of you Melanie.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make you happy.
M People’s happiness is not ours to command Richard. We can only
make people as happy as they can be in the part of them we actually
see. If there are parts we don’t see we have no access to the
happiness or misery in those parts. We can’t make people see us. It
either grows out of our hearts or it doesn’t. So it becomes a great
temptation, perhaps a necessity, to adjust to things as they are
between us.
R You’re saying I simply don’t see you. Are you also saying I don’t love you? That my
love is an illusion?
M Richard, in your heart you know that that can’t possibly be true. To
doubt that would be to undermine your whole picture of yourself. And
that picture is one you share with me. I see that picture and I love it
deeply. I love you, Richard. I know that you are in some ways a very
lonely man, that you need your loneliness and value it. I do my level
best to guard and protect that need for a lonely path. But in doing that
I’m beginning to fail myself. I’m not being honest with you about my
real needs. And I know that if I fail myself I shall start to fail you. That’s
what you sense in me and why you feel you can’t get through to me.
R I think I know what you’re saying. You want me to come and with live you. We’re
back where we were three years ago. You say you are protecting my lonely way, but
your real self wants to be inside that space.
M I think there are two halves of you that never meet. The love you
have for me is in one space; the need to be by yourself is in another. I
don’t think these two selves talk to each other. Moreover, I don’t think
either of them see what is happening to me.
R I’m beginning to think I’ve been deceiving myself about our relationship all along.
M I don’t think you really trust that loneliness of yours. I think you are
afraid of losing it. I think I trust it more than you do. In spite of the
deep reality of your love for me I think you feel threatened by me.
Richard, I don’t threaten you at all. Your freedom is of as much value
to me as it is to you. I positively depend on your freedom. It is not I
who threaten it. It is the division in yourself which does that. These two
beings in you need to talk to each other. They need to resolve their
differences. Then perhaps you will be able to turn towards me and
really look at me.
R Melanie, I don’t think I know you at all.
M On the contrary, I think you know me very well. But there is a
compliant, self-deceiving side of me which has begun to create a gap
between us. Some conversations I have been having recently have
begun to make me realise that I am afraid of losing you. I’m trying to
be more honest with you, and that means putting our relationship at
risk. I can’t be honest with you without being honest with myself at the
same time. I have more needs in our relationship than I have been
admitting. But simply declaring these needs will only make you feel
more threatened. I feel you need to allow your love of me to make you
more perceptive of me, otherwise you will end up with a romantic
dream of me which will drift away and leave you with nothing. If you
start to see me clearly as well as loving me you will see my needs and
want to help me with them, as far as that is possible and right for you
to do so. (Cries:) Oh Richard, I’m sorry. I’ve become a bit exhausted in
our relationship, and not really known what to do next.
R I feel I’ve been thoroughly selfish, only thinking about my own needs.
M Living, thinking, striving very intensely in one’s life is an inherently
selfish activity. Only love opens windows into that. It’s not easy to keep
the balance.
R What do you really want, Melanie?
M O, that’s very simple and normal. I want to live with you and bear
your children. And I want you at the same time to have all the scope
you need for finding yourself in life, finding out who you are, and what
you are really doing on this planet. Couldn’t be simpler could it?
R Melanie, you’re wonderful. I don’t know how you put up with me. You’ll have to let me
mull all this over and see what I come up with. I need to look more critically at my life.
M There’s something else. I.T. is changing too. It’s reached a new
threshold with Lucia coming in, and now perhaps Paul. You know what?
I should go and have a heart-to-heart with Fiona if I were you.
R Why do you think I should do that?
M I don’t know. Just an inkling of mine. She’s a wise old bird.
Normally she keeps her counsel, but if you put a pennyin her slot she
sometimes disgorges a jackpot.
R Well I might try it.
M Are you staying here tonight?
R I thought so. Why?
M Lucia’s coming about lunchtime so I need to stay in. I wondered if
you could pick up something for supper. We could eat together here if
you like.
R I’d love to do that. I’ll gather a few of the things we usually get at the market.
M See you later, then. Bless you darling. I love you very much.
R Me too. Bye.

*****

Dialogue 3

M So you went to see Fiona? My god Lu, you look quite different.
What’s been going on?
L You feel different too. Stronger somehow.
M I’ve had it out with Richard.
L Oh bless you Mel! How did it go? Was he uptight about it?
M Well he tried to be at first. But I just forged ahead. He was quite
shaken I think. He went away in a pensive mood, but still warmly
affectionate. I’ve burned my boats with him, but I don’t feel scared. I
feel it’s all part of the general clearance that’s going on in the group.
L I wonder if the reason impulses like this I.T. thing seem inevitably to get
stuck in fixed forms has to do with people failing to do that. So instead of
opening doors for people in general to start living in a more meaningful way
they just get bogged down in their own ‘stuff’.
M Rudolf Steiner talked a great deal about ‘karma’. In fact you could
say that through him the whole eastern notion of karma was reborn in
a western form. He cleared out the whole rigid notion of a sort of
revengeful fate pursuing people, and superstitious pictures of
‘metempsychosis’...
L You mean being reborn as a caterpillar or something if you were a bit of a
creep in your last life... (hoots of laughter)
M Yes, all that sort of nonsense, and he showed how the whole
interplay of relationships on Earth is a self-devised and enormously
intelligent device for untying in the next life knots one has tied in a
previous one. But what was even more insightful, he showed how
karma, so far from being a kind of grim revenge of the gods upon our
misdemeanours, was the inevitable process of the fall of man into
matter; and that this so-called ‘Fall of Man’ was at the heart of the
divine plan for humanity.
L How do you see that?
M The whole secret of the difference between humankind and the
gods seems to lie there. If we remain content to see the whole
universe as based only on love, then humanity is intended simply as
the latest version of self-perpetuating manifestations of successive
angelic hierarchies.
L So all the hierarchies of angels do as they’re told, but humanity is
supposed to do as it likes.
M Yes, exactly. But if doing as it likes is not also what God likes, so to
speak, humanity simply ceases to exist; not out of a sort of divine
disapproval, but because it is acting as a destroyer of its own created
nature.
L So, we see evil, tragedy and pain as sort of alarm systems to warn us
that we are in danger of self-destruct. What becomes of freedom then? Do as
you like but if it isn’t what God likes you’re clobbered.
M No, because our freedom goes deeper than that. Steiner talked
about the twin nature of humanity as ‘God-willed Man’ and ‘God-
estranged Man’. The whole mystery of humankind lay in the notion
that a being could emerge with a unique synthesis of freedom and love
inbuilt into its nature. But if this freedom was simply bestowed on us
from above it wouldn’t be freedom at all. It had to evolve. In other
words, we were invited to be partners in our own creation. Freedom
from the gods implied complicity with the gods. They had to agree, and
not all of them did agree.
L This gets very complicated. Why can’t it all be simple?
M At the heart of it there is a prodigious simplicity, because at certain
moments the author steps into the scenario and initiates a new cycle.
Oh here’s Richard. Come in, darling. Lucia’s pressing me very hard to
explain the entire universe, and I was just about to get out of my
depth.
R Where had you got to? Incidentally, as you see, I found the afternoon was free after
all. I haven’t had any lunch. Lucia, can I help myself to a sandwich or something?
L Go ahead. You know your way about my kitchen cubby-hole. There’s
some ham and salad in the fridge. Put the kettle on. Melanie, let me get this
straight. If we, as you say, were partners in the creation of our own nature,
then at some level we accepted the necessity of pain and suffering as fail-
safe mechanisms for the survival of our freedom in a world of divine law...
divine law which was the product, the mechanism, you might say, of divine
love.
R We not only accepted it, we conceived of it. We were in on the mystery from the
beginning. Where’s the butter? Oh here it is. Lucia, we talk about God as if he a sort of
giant, archetypal person. But the notion of ‘person’ doesn’t come into it when we are
talking about the creation of humanity. Lucia, we are God. We did it. And by ‘we’ I mean
also the whole galaxy of angelic hosts, of which we are the latest edition, the
contemporary version. The idea of ‘person’ comes later, after the Fall, you might say.
Has Melanie told you Steiner’s picture of ‘God-willed Man’ and ‘God-estranged Man’?
M Yes, I was talking about that just before you came in. Most of what
I was telling her was a watered-down version of things you had told
me. You came just in time.
R As I came through the door you were saying something about the gods not all
agreeing. They not only didn’t all agree. They stepped in, some of them, and exploited
the new development with versions of their own. It was they who transformed the
necessary safeguards which man and the angels had devised in order that freedom
should not destroy the very nature of humanity as love. And created actual evil out of it.
L You say ‘man and the angels’. Didn’t woman come into it?
M The goddess had plans of her own.
L ‘Mary kept all these things in her heart’. Mel, Mel, hold me love please. I
go all out of balance. All right, I know breathe, breathe! I am breathing. I’m
puffing like a porpoise. Why do I keep quoting these things out of the Bible? I
don’t believe in all that stuff.
M Lucia, you have to bring the different bits of yourself together or
you’ll go a bit potty. You have to find a centre.
L That’s what Fiona said. And it was when she said that, I found myself
quoting the Bible for the first time.
R I don’t believe those are just quotations, Lucia. When you said that just now about
Mary I felt you were speaking directly out of the experience of Mary herself. What did
you say the first time with Fiona?
L "When two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the
midst".
R There, you said that without wobbling.
L Yes, but this time I was only quoting. This is what seems to happen with powerful
words. They get born out of you like flames, as it were. Then they condense and harden
off, and they become simply quotations. I think that is what makes me so prejudiced
against religion. It has lost its source in the flame.
M The tongues of fire the apostles experienced.
R It would help me a lot, Lucia, if you told us about these experiences you’ve been
having since you joined us. How many times has it happened?
L I think this just now made the fifth time. But they’ve all been different.
M Well it happened twice when we were together, didn’t it, Lu?
L Yes, and then twice when I was with Fiona. And now again here.
R What seems to spark it off? Let me say, I’m not simply asking out of curiosity. I’m
beginning to realise that your arrival among us is like the flowering of what the group has
been aiming at all along. I feel it was a very wonderful happening.
L But I’m also very muddled.
M Yes, I think we have something for you too.
L Fiona also said something of the sort. She said I had been approaching
the group for some time, and now I had surfaced as it were.
R Venus appearing out of the waves.
M Stop flirting, Richard.
R Well she is lovely isn’t she?
M Yes, she’s very lovely indeed. Stop chewing that sandwich and
dropping crumbs all over Lucia’s floor. Where’s that tea you were
supposed to be making?

*****
L You wanted me to talk about these experiences I’ve been having. I find I
have to overcome a reluctance to do that. Why do you suppose that is?
R Have you any idea why?
L It would be a bit like getting undressed.
M Yes. I’m beginning to feel we have to look at the idea that these
episodes have a lot to do with your sexuality and what you are doing
with it.
L You mean they’re connected with...
M Richard, Lucia confided to me quite a lot about her sexual life. Do
you want the conversation to take this path?
L I think it has to. I’m not usually so bashful.
M You described what had been happening over the last months as a
sort of celibate sabbatical! (Laughter)
L Instead of defiantly playing the role of loose woman and getting
increasingly uncomfortable with it.
R Actually feeling guilty do you mean?
L Not as simple as that. I enjoy being beautiful, and I’ve been through what
most of my kind go through over that, knowing that there is a perfectly
innocent side to it, but also that you can’t sustain it in the face of men’s
sexual pressure; nor in face of the sort of prissy puritanism that surrounds
everything to do with sex, especially among older people. So it’s more
defiance than guilt. I’m beautiful and sexy and bugger the lot of you! It
becomes a way of life.
M But then it began to pall a bit.
L Well, I did begin to wonder where it was taking me. Especially after some
shaming episodes, like when a man I respected got interested and ended up
calling me a tarty bitch in front of some of his friends who I also liked. So I
withdrew a bit from all that.
M At the same time there’s something about being celibate on
principle that is also defiant, isn’t there? Some women make a
profession of it, and it’s not usually the most attractive women who do
that.
R How has it been with you, Mel? I mean before you and I met?
M Well I never felt myself as being in the front line of sexiness,
Richard. Yes, I know what you’re about to say, but that is especially for
you, and yes, I think I’m the sort of woman whose sexuality only
emerges with a particular man. When that fails, as it so often does,
there is heartbreak. But there’s also a secret realisation that one-man
women are specially blessed in some way. It’s something you can’t
take any particular credit for, it just happens.
L All the same, a hell of a lot of women do take credit for it in an
unpleasantly arrogant way. I feel women like me, whether we are tarty
bitches or not, are as you said, Mel, in the front line. We take most of
the brunt of men’s untamed and sometimes brute sexuality, and we
get precious little support from the respectable majority in doing that.
M Well, a lot of them say it is mainly you who provoke it.
L They certainly do, and there is obviously some justice in that. At the same
time, it’s a man’s world, Mel. Men broadly speaking call the tune in most of
these things. Streetwise women dance to that tune, that’s all. We sort of
draw off the excess energy, and in doing so very often it is we who get men
to realise that there is a richer, more fruitful life with the little woman and
her kids at home. Shit, I’m talking like a Hollywood film script!
R I think you’re wonderfully clear and honest about it all.
L If I am it’s because there’s space with you I.T. lot to come to the surface
of my life, as Fiona put it.
M What I felt we were beginning to come to, Lu, was that there was
an actual connection between these, (shall we call them?), psychic
episodes and the change in your sexual life.
L When I’ve been thinking about them afterwards I’ve had the curious
impression that these were events happening much more to you, and also to
Fiona, than to me...almost that they were happening to the world, as it were,
even to people who only heard about them happening, or read about them
happening in a book. For me they were much more like losing consciousness,
losing my hold on my body, speaking in spite of myself.
R What you are talking about, Lucia, is mediumship. Many people claim that
mediumistic phenomena are directly connected with suppressing one’s normal sexuality.
L And yet I also know that what I was seeing and giving voice to was
something absolutely wonderful.
M It is absolutely wonderful, Lu. But do you remember what we said
the first time it happened? I asked you who you thought the ‘presence’
was, and you said you thought it was yourself.
L But now you seem to be saying that it was simply the result of my
repressed sexuality!
M Lucia, don’t allow the rubbishing values of our ordinary society to
cloud your actual experiences. You experienced something wonderful
and so did I. So, I presume did Fiona, though you haven’t told us yet
what happened then. Just because a typical psycho-analyst would
dismiss what happened as nothing but disorganised glands doesn’t
mean that the episodes didn’t themselves occur, and that they didn’t
open up new perceptions. What we are dealing with now is the
possibility of further confusions and deceptions beyond the obvious
ones.
R This is really quite extraordinary! Joe and I have had endless discussions about who
these Intraterrestrial presences really are, and a lot of the time we have come to the
conclusion that there is no evidence that we are sensing anything more than a
somewhat deeper layer of our own being. Are you confirming that?
M I would be very hesitant to say there was no evidence. What I am
saying is that as far as Lucia and I are concerned we have been
experiencing a very powerful and wonderful presence which we sense
as the visible approach of a deeper level of her own being. I find it
quite distasteful and destructive to rubbish that as nothing but the
product of Lucia’s wilful celibacy. The sexual aspect opens the door,
but what that open door reveals is something ineffable and beautiful in
itself, Lucia’s higher being. How much higher I’m not prepared to say.
Possibly only as far as her astral self. We all have such higher levels
and it is wonderful when they are revealed. But they can also lead to
the possibility of further illusion. Seeing Lucia’s higher astrality world
be wonderful, but it would also be illusory, especially if we start to
think we are already seeing into the spiritual world. We are only
touching the outer fringe of reality, and even that may be distorted by
the fact that Lucia is somewhat mediumistic.
L I don’t want to be a bloody medium.
M You don’t have to be. Mediumistic vision is a sort of psychic illness.
But that doesn’t mean that you are any more sick than the rest of us.
We all have this potential, but in most of us it is concealed because we
stay in our bodies. Your particular mix of, first, over-expression of
sexuality and then suppression of it simply revealed in you what is
potential in all of us.
L And yet what happened was so wonderful for all of us. It was still more so
when I got to Fiona. I really feel that there something more came through,
something much more real and somehow in control.
R That’s probably because Fiona herself is so much more in control. But I think we
need to be with Fiona to hear about that. Shall we stop this now, and see whether she is
ready to have this meeting with all five of us that we talked about?
L Which raises the vexed question of Paul again. Have you seen him again.
Richard?
R No. He seems to have gone back to Dorset. He lives down there, quite near to where
the conference was. I thought he would have been in touch with you. As a matter of fact
I thought he was rather gone on you.
L Do did I. I don’t know whether to be relieved or miffed.
M He’ll surface again when he’s sorted himself out. I feel he wants
you, but he doesn’t quite know whether he wants I.T. He’s afraid he
can’t have one without the other.
R (Laughs) Poor Paul! Oh dear I seem to have dropped him in it, don’t I? Look, I’ll give
Fiona a ring and fix something up, shall I?
L Stay now, won’t you, and have something to drink?
R I think Mel wants to go shopping, don’t you love?
M He’s suddenly getting all solicitous, aren’t you sweetheart?
R What on earth’s that supposed to mean?
M I’ll tell you later. Come on.
R ‘Bye Lucia. I still think you’re beautiful whatever she says.
L So do I. Get out of here, you two!

*****

Dialogue 4

F I hope you didn’t mind me suggesting we met here instead of up

your end of town. I had a particular reason, which I’ll tell you later, but
I know it’s rather a long way for you and Lucia, Melanie.
M Bless you Fiona it’s perfectly simple thanks to Richard’s car. He
simply picked Lu and me up from her place, and Joe’s this end anyway.
R No problem. These are journeys we’re all quite used to anyway because of work.
Except for you Lucia, it’s a bit off your usual stamping ground, isn’t it?
L On the contrary, it feels almost like coming home for me. Till I started the
art-school course I had a room here in Abbey Road. My mum still lives in
Carlton Hill where I was brought up, walking distance from this house. I
really love St. John’s Wood.
F How interesting! I wonder if I know your mother by sight. I have
friends in Carlton Hill. Never mind, we can talk about that another
time. The reason I suggested meeting here was to do with you anyway.
I expect you’ve told the others about our talk here and how it went,
have you?
L Only up to a point Fiona. We talked quite a bit about me and my psychic
episodes, but not about the special thing that happened here. I rather
wanted to wait so that you could be here too. I felt it was important to be
clear about what did happen, for my own sake As well as everybody else’s.
J I seem to be the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on.
R Yes, I’m sorry Joe. There doesn’t seem to have been an opportunity to tell you in
spite of our meeting every day. Things move so fast.
J That’s why I always lay such stress on mobility. But it needs a lot more presence of
mind to keep all the balls in the air than it does when life is more compartmentalised.
This I.T. life has a certain style which takes time to get used to.
R It’s skill as well as presence of mind Joe. The analogy of juggling is quite apt. I see
I.T. as a way of living out consciously things which usually go on automatically in a kind
of dream.
F What one discovers I think is that ninety percent of what happens
in our lives we simply don’t notice at all. They don’t really move any
faster, Richard. It’s simply that we block out everything which in our
half-dreaming state we couldn’t take on board without going crazy.
M In one sense, Fiona, things clearly do move faster. Technology for
example compounds a problem which is there anyway. In fact, the
more material stuff we take on board the dreamier we have to become
to cope with it. Look how many people move in a sort of zombie mist
from work to television and back, salted with a bit of sleep, sex and
sport, and then back to work again.
R Till cancer, ulcers, heart attacks or Aids rescues them from the nightmare and gives
them a chance to reincarnate. (Shocked laughter, rather rueful).
L Oh lord, is that really the sort of awareness that opens up in the I.T.
School? I think I’ll go back to the peaceful existence of a streetwise
sophisticate. It’s less of a strain.
F Yes, but quite seriously, that’s why the Beings have nudged our
awareness to the point of trying to get things organised. But not in the
old style of sorting our lives into insulated compartments. It’s not a
filing system we need, it’s an organisation that really is organic and
alive, and as Joe says, mobile.
L I remember you saying the other day, Mel that it’s also a rather
dangerous procedure. You even said people sometimes end up in mental
homes doing it.
M The psychological profession, with few exceptions, is engaged in
pushing things in a diametrically opposite direction. They condemn
what we are doing in raising people’s awareness as over-stimulation,
pushing people nearer to the precipice. They want to damp things
down, tranquillise people, get them into more healthy physical activity,
less introspection.
F We, on the other hand, believe fundamentally that human beings
are fully capable of facing up to the fact of their own mental, psychic
and spiritual evolution. At the same time we know perfectly well that
the path of awakening is fraught with danger. Particularly is this so for
people who, for mysterious reasons, have a natural orientation towards
psychic experiences.
L Like me.
F Yes, and like more and more people every day, especially in your
generation and younger. Which brings me to why I suggested your
coming here today. More preparation has gone on in this room than
has probably happened in the other rooms where you work. I mean the
sort of preparation we need for dealing with this new event in the life
of the I.T. enterprise. That sounds a bit pompous, but it is also a reality.
It is an aspect of what we call temple-building, the recognition of
sacred space, and the actual creation of places conducive to the
raising of awareness. Over the years, long before we called it I.T., this
room was a place where Joe and I and others had worked in that sense.
It used to be a lot more complicated and fussy than it is now, didn’t it
Joe, bristling with altars, icons, pictures of prophets and saints and
gurus, crystals and incense everywhere. At a certain point we cleared
the lot out. Now there is nothing but this single artefact, which Joe
made, and the candle.
J You might call it a point of reference, Lucia. It’s the opposite pole to mobility, a
voluntary, almost arbitrary, still point by which to measure what we are doing in I.T.
L "The still point of the turning world".
J Exactly. And you can stand it anywhere you happen to be.
L Like Aaron’s rod in the wilderness.
F And his breastplate with the pillars Urim and Thummim on it.
L It’s beautiful, Joe. I’m trying to think what it reminds me of. Oh I know.
It’s like a menhir, a bit like the one on Callanish which I’ve never seen except
in photographs, or the one on St Agnes in the Scillies, which I have seen.
J Oh have you, Lucia? How splendid! I’m glad you’ve seen that, it’s one of my
favourite places.
L Called Gugh!
J That’s right! It’s on a little peninsula off the main island, which you can’t go onto
except at certain states of the tide. You can’t see it from the main island, you have to
walk round to the seaward side.
L And then you suddenly come on it a little below you in its own protected
valley with the sea behind it. You walk down a couple of hundred yards to it.
J You feel it’s been waiting for you. (They look at each other, sharing this.)
R I think all those stone-age monuments only come into existence when people look at
them. What happens when too many people do it is, they cease to be able to do their
job.
J Like Stonehenge, which is beginning to look positively exhausted, worn out by being
stared at by millions of people.
L What is their job then, Richard?
F Well, that is precisely what we are referring to when we talk about
temples. Sorry to butt in, Richard.
R No, I was trying to think what it is they do. I think menhirs are like concentrated,
condensed temple-forms with a special relationship to people who worship there on their
own.
L What do you mean by worship? That’s another word that makes my
hackles rise!
F Yes, it’s sad how many people like you have been alienated from
crucial experiences by the way religions have downgraded them. I feel
you’re always experiencing worship, but you’d call it being awestruck,
deeply impressed, coming to awareness of your own presence in
relation to something. It’s when that gets tacked onto someone else’s
dogmatic, proselytising, often downgraded notions of the sacred that
people like you get so indignant about it. You probably have more
capacity for true spontaneous worship than people like that do.
They’ve been told by priests to worship. You do it anyway. But don’t
fall into the opposite trap and think you’re better than they are. I’m not
suggesting you do that, you’re too spontaneous. But plenty of rebels
do. They become just as dogmatic in their prejudice against formal
religion as the churchy people they reject. Also they are plenty of
isolated struggling individuals inside the system who live what
somebody called "lives of quiet desperation" surrounded on all sides by
religious philistines. I think those are the ones I.T. is really geared to
finding and rescuing, the ones who stay inside the system out of
loyalty.
J It was feelings like that which made me sculpt this figure when Fiona suggested we
needed a kind of focal point in this Temple-room of hers, something to help us quieten
ourselves down when we came in out of the trafficky hurly-burly outside. As you saw,
Lucia, it is actually a miniature of a menhir. The one I modelled it on is called the Goh
menhir which stands at the corner of a field in Brittany, north of Vannes. It’s very
isolated, quite difficult to find, in fact you need a detailed map. You ought to go there one
day, Lucia, it’s special.
L I’d love to. It sounds my sort of place.
J Perhaps I should take you there.
(Joe moves the pillar between them)
*****
L I’m standing in the dark in the wind by the pillar on St. Agnes. It’s raining
and the darkness is complete. There’s a tremendous storm at sea all round
me. The whole island feels as if it’s trembling with the violence of the
elements. I feel as if I’m out on the exposed headland of the whole of human
life, and that you are all behind me, holding me steady. I’m not a medium,
I’m fully conscious. I’m a sense organ for what the I.T. school is doing in the
world. All the stone pillars, in a sense, are one, but each one is an antenna
pointing out into the cosmos, and trembling, sensing on behalf of the Earth
what is going on out there.
*****
F Psychism is a precious and perilous gift, Lucia. People have been in
the habit for centuries of treating psychics as only half- human. One
minute they are guarding, even imprisoning them in oracles,
pampering them and listening piously to their every word, and then the
next minute they’re torturing them and burning them at the stake as
witches. What we have to do is to humanise and demythologise
psychic ability. There is so much of it now, ‘Gifts of the Spirit’, as the
old spiritualist movement used to call them, are bursting out
everywhere. We have the opportunity to purge the unhealthy aspects
of them, and allow them to function as one means among many by
which the two levels of reality, sensible and super-sensible, can
gradually merge and become one again as they were long ago.
J But this time consciously.
R Yes, that’s the difference. You know, we can almost be grateful to the hyperactive,
obsessive paranoid life in a technological age
for driving us down further and further into the dream of matter. It
adds sharply to the sense of urgency in some of us to wake up and
help to wake others to a New World of reality…
L Christopher Fry... "It took so many thousand years to wake, but will you
wake, for pity’s sake?"
M That’s one of the precious lines George Trevelyan always quoted.
L Fiona, you said just now that you were nudged into starting the I.T.
school by Beings. Are you talking about specific Beings you are in contact
with, or are you just saying in a general way that the impulse was prompted
by the spiritual world?
F At some level you know as much or more about that than I do.
Perhaps it’s time we told them what we think happened in this room
the other day.
L You see, Melanie and I have been talking a lot about this and I don’t think
either of us is clear yet, (do you, Mel?), about where the line is between
projected images of our own deeper nature and the actual presence near us,
or even inside us, of other conscious entities, other than our own.
M Also much of this has to do with names and naming.
F The Wizard of Earthsea again, wonderful Ursula le Guin.
M The power of the Name to invoke the ‘presence’, to alter time, to
reach reality, or equally to open up monstrous phantoms and demons
of possession. We have to get the names right, and this means finally
we have to acquire the power to bestow new names on things, and
even on people.
L As you did with me, Melanie, Lucia is not the name on my birth-
certificate.
R So you’re in disguise, are you?
L No, it’s the birth-certificate which is the disguise!
J Tell us what happened here for you, then.
L Well, briefly, I’ve got a lot of misgivings and even hang-ups about
religion, religious people, churches and all that side of life. But when Fiona
and I started to open up the space here the other day, what seemed to
happen was that a very high Being spoke in me. Fiona, it seems to me,
started to ask me things and I felt this Being speak its own essence in me.
That’s the nearest way in which I can describe it. Temporarily I felt that I and
it were one. It spoke in me and I spoke as it.
F Who is this Being, Lucia?
L This Being is the CHRIST. Saying that now is different from saying it then.
The CHRIST has taken a further step, now, today, in this moment, than
happened then. After the episodes in Melanie’s room I felt only the pain of
"coming down to earth" afterwards. This time I feel that the joy and pain are
united. The CHRIST seems to me now to be something concretely present in
our actual conversation. This is what "Gathered together in my Name"
signifies. The actual naming of the CHRIST has this effect. We become one
another in naming the CHRIST in this way.
M I feel this has a special character because of Fiona, and what could
go on between the two of you. Fiona has this special relation to the
CHRIST, just as I have to the Name, and Lucia to the Light.
F That’s why I asked you to come here. The CHRIST is the central
secret in the problem of healing and protecting the vulnerability of the
psychic, who otherwise falls into the sickness of mediumism. The
CHRIST is the reference point, the pillar, the menhir. But the CHRIST is
incomplete without the horizontal dimension as well, the Earth’s
surface on which the pillar stands. Steiner called it "the CHRIST-will in
the encircling round", and he described it as prevailing especially in
the rhythmic nature of the Earth, where he said it was the element
which conferred blessing on the human soul.
J So the CHRIST has these two dimensions, you see, a vertical and a horizontal
dimension, and these form a cross. It becomes an open question which came first, the
intuitive perception of the cruciform nature of the CHRIST in the Earth, or the Cross on
which Jesus, bearing the CHRIST, was crucified by the Romans.
L Another case of synchronicity, apparently.
M Redfield in "The Celestine Prophecy" would say that it makes no
difference. All events and phenomena in the world are ultimately
synchronous. Hen and Egg. Cart and Horse.
F The Rosicrucians added a further dimension to the picture by
figuring a rose-stem with its thorns, growing out of the vertical pillar of
a black cross, winding round the crossing point, and then flowering as
seven red roses in a circle round the centre of the figure. This was the
blessing of the soul, healing and redeeming the inherent clash
between spirit and matter indicated by the cross itself. Steiner also
described how the rose was a demonstration of the healing conferred
by the etheric, with its pure green sap, upon the astral, embodied in
human blood. The blood, as well as being the physical bearer of the
soul, is also the element in humanity capable of sickness, the bearer of
the Fall, and potentially vulnerable to evil. The red fragrant sap of the
flowering rose arises directly, like healed blood, out of the green sap of
the stem and leaves in the etheric. The etheric world itself cannot be
sick. Leaf diseases and stem or trunk diseases in the plant world are
always invasions by an astral element, through insects or fungi, for
example. All this represents how the living CHRIST force in the etheric
Earth heals the vertical astral-ego element in the human. It both
redeems and validates the Fall of humanity into matter.
M Now I see why they were called Rosicrucians. The Name embodied
their whole perception of reality, Rose and Cross.
F The CHRIST is both humanity and Earth. Humanity and Earth are
one.
*****
L I didn’t understand everything you were saying about the Rosicrucians.
The language is a bit too involved for me. Is that ‘anthroposophical’
language?
F Yes, those were Rudolf Steiner’s images.
L I resonate very strongly to the images without understanding all the
relationships.
F That grows with familiarity.
R Lucia, when you had that vision earlier on out in the Scilly Isles, I didn’t feel you were
out of your body, did you?
L No, not at all. Very much not! I was very much aware of the elemental
powers out there, but I was also very much here in the room. I felt you
holding me here by your attention.
R I was quite riveted by it. I don’t usually see much in the way of inner pictures, but as
you spoke I could almost hear the wind and smell the sea.
J I think we all could.
M I couldn’t. I was too absorbed in what was happening to Lucia
herself. I felt you were quite different, Lu!
L I felt different myself. Being with you lot is having the effect of tightening
me up, as if there were inner threads somewhere, contracting in me and
sharpening the images I see.
J I don’t think the process is confined to your just being with us, Lucia; do you, Fiona?
There’s something else happening as well. I think you are also responding to the kind of
thoughts which have been arising in the conversations you’ve been having with us all.
There’s an element in these thoughts which goes beyond the personal, and it comes about
because we’ve all to some extent been touched by what we call anthroposophy. In the
first place it was Rudolf Steiner who touched off and developed thoughts which have this
particular quality, but people who take them up are able to resonate with them and take
them further.
F What happens then is that they get embodied into a kind of
thought-entity which goes beyond the personal thinking derived from
our largely materialistic culture, and is to a great extent in opposition
to it. Steiner identified it as a real Being in the spiritual Earth which he
called Anthroposophia-anthropos, human, sophia, wisdom. It’s a
synthesis, an ongoing process of growing together of purely human
insights with the insights inherent in the living planet itself and the
cosmos in which the planet is embedded.
R You can see, can’t you, how utterly at odds that notion is with everything our present
media-dominated culture presents to us from childhood up, something none of us can
avoid from our mother’s milk onwards. It’s not only the folk thinking within our family
situation which is embedded in a sense-material experience of reality, but that is
hammered into our consciousness by virtually everything in our education, up to and
including the pervasive influence of the philosophical assumptions of the universities.
M And then all that is continually battered into us daily and hourly by
the media, who promulgate a condensed, down-graded version of it
into the very pores of our skin every minute of a twenty-four hour day!
L Lord! You make it sound like the depths of Hell. Isn’t there any let-up?
Aren’t there any chinks in the armour of the Devil?
F Yes, there is still some innocence in the world. Most babies are still
born relatively untouched. There is a great deal of active inner
searching and hope among people creating enclaves of reality within
the sleaze. Some of them coalesce and mutually strengthen each other
as is happening in our group. And there are many such groups. But it is
a shrinking asset. Spontaneous innocence doesn’t usually survive
unaided. The presence of what we call the CHRIST is there as a natural
endowment in every human heart, and there is a great deal to be said
about that. But in most people it remains at the level of a seed, an
unquenchable fire, but incapable of growing and taking over reality on
its own. Humanity has reached the stage when the CHRIST on its own
in each human heart cannot of itself overcome the darkness of the
world unaided. The CHRIST has called upon the help of other Beings to
tip the scale.
L I.T.s
J This is what we think.
F We do more than think it. We know from the inner evidence of
anthroposophy that the planet is peopled with hosts of other entities
than the human. They have always been there, but as far as humanity
is concerned they have been in a sleeping condition. But they are
awakening. We become aware of them as intraterrestrial conscious
agants because of this tide of awakening going on around us, behind
the visible material front the world presents to us.
L But what has tipped the scale? Why is this happening now? If I
understand you rightly the darkness has almost succeeded in killing off the
spontaneous innocence as seeds of mankind. Didn’t William Blake forecast a
time when babies would be born trembling? It seems we have reached that
time now. Are you saying that the tide has turned? Is there a hidden factor
you haven’t mentioned apart from our own efforts and that of similar groups?
F Yes. The tide has turned. The initiatives of groups like ours are
spontaneous, but they are like germinating seeds. In order for seeds to
germinate in the plant world the season has to be right. We have to
recognise what season the evolution of humanity has reached.
Impulses like this one of ours don’t create the seeds. They have been
hidden in human ground for millennia. But we have only been nudged
to start watering them because the time is ripe. The season has
arrived.
L This has an apocalyptic ring to it.
J This is what I was describing as the evangelical atmosphere I experienced as a boy at
school. They always talked about the Second Coming. But for them it was always just a
jump ahead of us in time. After two thousand years the reappearance of the CHRIST was
still receding in front of us, like the pillar of fire which the ancient Israelites followed
across the wilderness towards the Promised Land.
R Then when the Messiah did at last appear they didn’t recognise him.
F There is a parallel between what happened 2000 years ago and
what is happening now.
M There’s a mood abroad among new-age people everywhere of a
heightened expectancy, which you could interpret as meaning that the
second coming of the CHRIST could happen any minute – NOW! What
did Rudolf Steiner have to say about that?
F Rudolf Steiner died in 1925, seventy years ago. He spoke then of
the imminence of this CHRIST-event in his own time. He even gave
actual dates. He saw it as the first glimmering of a spiritual dawn
rather than as a single apocalyptic crashing event from one moment to
the next. He said it would grow in people’s consciousness in this way
too, as a process rather than as an instantaneous revelation.
J At the same time the indication was that there was a discontinuous as well as a smooth
growth, both in awareness and in outer events. There would be thresholds in the dawning,
rather like the time before sunrise when the light sometimes seems to grow and then
recede again several times before the sun actually appears. I see it as rather like the tide
coming in. There is the steady advance of the waves, and then every now and again a
much bigger wave appears and there is a more definite advance. A further threshold
seems to be crossed, and then everything settles down to smooth growth for a while.
L The seventh wave phenomenon. But what about the actual dates Steiner
gave? When were they? In our time now? End of the century?
F He gave the dates 1933, 1935, 1937 as the first glimmerings of the
dawn.
L Good heavens! That’s over sixty years ago! Are you serious? No wonder
you draw the analogy with 2000 years ago. We seem to have missed the
boat again, good and proper! Can this really be true? What about all this
new-age millennialism then? What’s supposed to be happening now?
M (Laughs) Good old Lu! You’re a very rewarding recruit to the I.T.
school, Lucia, love. You ask all the right questions one on top of the
other.
L Oh do shut up, Mel. I’m totally confused. Sixty bloody years ago! Then
we’re right bang in the middle of it.
F In one sense, yes, deeply into it. What’s been happening to you in
recent days sharply illustrates that. But we tend to take our own
subjective experiences for granted to some extent, without seeing
them in historical perspective. Sixty years ago people certainly weren’t
having experiences like you’ve been having this week. Others, equally
psychic perhaps, but with quite a different flavour. And then again in
another sense, ‘bang in the middle of it’ is hardly an accurate picture.
In another sense the apocalypse has barely begun. You know, I think
it’s about time we had another break. The I.T. process is strictly
analogous to the more macrocosmic developments we have been
describing. It goes in waves. Lucia, what about going on tomorrow in
your room, which I’m very much looking forward to seeing?
L I can’t really manage tomorrow, Fiona. I’ve got special art-school things
all day. Can we manage Wednesday? What about you others?
R OK with me and Joe, isn’t it Joe?
J Fine. Morning best I think.
R Melanie?
M Yes, that’s fine. What about ten o’clock?
R I’ll pick you up, Fiona. Joe and I will probably work in the office early, won’t we? So
see you all at Lucia’s. Shall we take you home?
M Lu, there’s something I want to talk to you about, OK? If you don’t
mind, Richard, we’ll make our own way.
L I’d rather like a walk, Mel. I’ll show you some of my old haunts. Joe, I’m
really interested in your Brittany menhir. Let’s get together over that
sometime, can we?
J I’d really love that.

*****

Dialogue 5

L What’s it about then Mel?

M Look, if we cross the road here we can take a left turn down the hill
and we’ll find ourselves in Maida Vale.
L I don’t want to go as far as that. Look, this is Carlton Hill. I’ll show you
where I used to live as a child. That’s the house across there. Mum’s moved
now to a smaller house further down.
M Do you want to call on her?
L Not today. I think this is her club day. Oh look. The garden’s all different,
they’ve paved it over.
M I don’t wonder. I don’t know how plants survive at all in London
nowadays.
L My sister and I used to play down there in the area. I had a treasure-
trove place under a big stone. It’s all gone; what a shame.
M Being a child survives somewhere inside us though.
L Yes, I think that’s important, keeping faith with it somewhere. I wonder
what it’s like being old.
M I think there’s some of it that isn’t all that different. That’s why I
think it’s important not to forget. You need a space to expand from, to
refer back to in the end, when you reach vast spaces that are utterly
different.
L Come on. I’ve seen enough. We can get a bus, back on Abbey Road.
M And then another one practically home for me.
L Oh, yes. Let’s go back to your place. What did you want to talk about,
then?
M You remember I told you there were one or two people working on
I.T. in the Haverstock Hill area?
L Oh, yes.
M Well, I hadn’t heard of them for months. There was one chap in
particular who seemed very interested.
L How long ago was this?
M It must be well over a year. I never learned their address or
anything and I’d heard nothing since. Well yesterday a woman turned
up at the house whom I didn’t like at all. She referred to these people
and said there was quite a large group of them working, not in our
immediate area at all, somewhere over Muswell Hill way she said. And
then she started asking questions about me and my contacts, but not
in the sort of sympathetic way we know about which gives you the
feeling of being in the same line of country. It was... .
L What sort of things did she ask?
M Well to start of with she said she was secretary of their association
and more or less implied that they’d sent her over to find out if I’d
started a group and how we were working, and shouldn’t we get
together and affiliate in some way. To cap it all she took out some stuff
and started rolling a joint and offered it to me.
L Didn’t she ask you first?
M No. She made herself thoroughly at home. There was a sort of "all
in this together" mood, slightly patronising and nosy at the same time,
fingering the ornaments and so on...
L What did you do?
M Well, I stalled a bit. I didn’t actually lie to her, but I implied I
worked on a one-to-one basis, leaving people very free. I said I’d had
some very interesting talks with a few people and made a few friends,
but that these were all very individual. Did any of them know each
other, she wanted to know. I said I thought some of them had met, but
that as far as I knew none of them had formed any regular groups. It
was more a matter of spontaneous visits when there was something
interesting to talk about.
L So in a sort of a way you clammed up on her. (giggles)
M Well, she still went on probing and poking, so I turned the tables a
bit. When she asked what we talked about when we met I said it was
all different depending on who it was. Some people were always going
on about flying-saucers and all that, which didn’t interest me much,
and so on. I gave the impression I wasn’t all that interested in what
happened unless I made a good personal contact with the person
concerned. She more or less gave up after that. But I did manage to
get the name and address of the original chap in Belsize Park out of
her. Finally she said in a rather indifferent way that I was welcome to
come to any of their meetings in Muswell Hill and handed me a leaflet.
Soon afterwards she left.
L How did you feel afterwards?
M Jaded and despondent. I felt I’d handled the thing badly and was a
thoroughly unworthy representative of what we were supposed to be
doing.
L I think that’s complete nonsense, Mel. I think you did all that could
possibly be done. I felt all the time you were talking that you were quite
brilliantly defending the delicate and vulnerable aspects of what’s happening
from that sort of invasion. There are times, it seems to me, when what Joe
calls mobility demands a very skilful capacity for cut and thrust, sometimes
attacking, sometimes taking evasive action.
M Well, that was the trouble. I felt I’d really evaded the whole issue.
L But was there a single moment, quite honestly, in which you felt you
could have opened up and shared with her something which was important to
you?
M Not really, no.
L Well, I think that’s the answer, then. It was she who was defensive, not
you. The best form of defence is attack. Consciously or not, her style of
aggressiveness constituted a cast-iron defence against anything positive you
might have introduced into the conversation.
M What shall I do about it?
L I should go and see the bloke on Haverstock Hill, or better still write to
him, and ask how he’s getting on. Tell him about the woman’s visit, and say
you would like to know whether he’s interested in what’s going on there. See
if he responds. After all, you were his first contact. There might well be
something real in it.
M That makes me feel better about it. Thanks, darling. You’re a wise
girl. How would you have handled it?
L Probably scratched her eyes out! But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The
fact was that it was you she came to see. Things don’t happen by chance.
This was an occasion which called for defence, and you defended. I would
probably have attacked, and might well have opened us to a damaging
counter-attack. If I were you I should forget the whole thing for now. Se
what this other chap and his wife are like. If Paul were here I would use this
to show him the difference between keeping tabs on people and remaining
awake to the possibility of further contacts opening up by themselves, and
then responding to them.
M Talking of Paul, I wonder what’s happened to him. Do you think
he’ll turn up again?
L I still don’t know whether to hope he will or hope he won’t. This is crop-
circle season. I expect he’s grubbing about on his hands and knees in some
Dorset cornfield. I think I’ve cooked off him a bit. All this other stuff is much
more interesting.
*****
M We’re nearly there. What have you been dreaming about?
L Yes, I think I dozed off. I hardly noticed us changing buses. Did we
change buses?
M Of course we did you idiot. You paid the second fare.
L So I did. We’re coming into Golders Green. Look at that woman’s hat. She
looks like a barnyard fowl.
M Come one, we get off here you crazy girl. Let’s shop a few things
for supper. You eat with me this evening, eh?
L That’s nice. Shall I cook you some of my special pancakes?
M I haven’t let you loose on my stove yet, Have I? Are you a good
cook?
L Positively cordon-bleu. I have an international reputation.
M Well, if Waitrose is up to your exacting standards we’d better shop
there. Here we go.
*****
(brr brr)
M Melanie here.
(Deep sepulchral voice!) Is that the Intraterrestrial Reception Unit?
M Richard, you idiot! (Yorkshire accent.) What’s to do?
R Fiona asked me to call. She’s got some news. She wondered if we could meet this
evening. Joe and I could bring her to you.
M Sounds fine. Richard wants to come down with the others, Lu. All
right with you?
L Fine.
M Lucia’s with me. She says ‘fine’. Will you have eaten?
R We’re having supper now. Joe would like a word with Lucia.
L Hello, Lucia here.
J Hello, Lucia. You all right?
L I’m fine, love. How are you? As if we hadn’t been together half the
morning.
J Yes, I know we’re spending a lot of time together. It’ll probably settle down soon.
Look, what I wanted to tell you was, after the conversation about menhirs I went through
my photographs from last year when I was in Brittany. I wondered if you’d like to see
them.
L Now that really would be interesting. Were you thinking of bringing them
down this evening?
J No, I don’t fancy we’d have much time to look at them tonight. Fiona seems to be
bubbling over with something or other. In any case there’s rather a lot of them and I’ve
been sticking them up on my living-room wall where you can see them properly, with a
map I drew at the time. I wondered if you’d like to come over here sometime and see
them.
L Inviting me to come and see your etchings, as it were.
J Precisely. You couldn’t have put it better.
L Joe dear, I’d be delighted. When do you suggest we do that?
J Up to you.
L Well, I’m at the studio all morning tomorrow. I’m free in the afternoon.
But aren’t you working?
J Richard and I more or less suit ourselves. These days we seem to do most of it in the
early hours of the morning. Working for ourselves from home we can do that.
L I don’t know anything about what you do, you must tell me about it.
R (Back on the phone.) Get Mel to tell you. She’ll also be able to tell you how to get
here. Joe and I have apartments and office space in the same building.
L Good. I shall look forward to that. See you tonight then. Eight o’clock, Mel
is suggesting.
R We’ll be there. Bye now.

*****

Dialogue 6

M Come in, everyone. Wipe your feet. Filthy day again.

R It’s not actually raining. Hi, sweetheart.
M What a damp hug. I’ll put everything round the Rayburn. Sit
yourselves down. Five’s about the limit in this room.
L I’ve been thinking about the different rooms we’ve met in. It’s not just a
question of physical space. All three have quite a different atmosphere. Of
course I haven’t seen yours and Joe’s yet.
R I don’t see us meeting in our house. Too much of a working batchelor establishment.
And anyway my room’s impossibly untidy and only two chairs. You’d all have to sit on
the bed.
M What’s Joe’s room like?
J A bit bigger.
R And a lot tidier.
J In fact father bare. I just sleep there really. And the office is just an office.
L I thought you said you had a living room.
J Well, I call my room a living-room. The bed converts into a settee in the daytime. And
I’ve got a table and a gas-ring.
L Sounds bleak.
J Well it is rather bleak I suppose. I hadn’t thought about this before, but all the places
we feel at home in for these get-togethers are women’s rooms. Even when you live alone,
most of you, simply as women, seem to create spaces it feels good for other people to
come into.
F It’s very interesting that you’ve got onto this subject because what
I want to tell you about is very relevant to it. At least I rather hope it
will be. I don’t know if Joe’s mentioned it, but I’ve got an old house in
the country. It’s an old family home, although I’ve never lived in it
except for brief periods between tenants, getting repairs done and so
on. Years ago Joe and I lived together there for a few months, didn’t we
Joe?
J Yes, Love! That was our faded romance time wasn’t it? We were very happy while it
lasted.
F Life moved on, but I think we both retain an affection for the old
place... it’s not exactly a mansion, but it’s quite large, four bedrooms
and masses of space downstairs, and a really quite enormous garden,
almost two acres. Anyway, why I’ve been thinking about it, and wanted
to tell you about it, is that the old man who’s had it for the last five
years has just died. His wife, who is a few years older still, feels she
can’t possibly manage there alone: it was already getting a bit beyond
them, and their extended family haven’t visited so often as their own
families have grown. I’ve been talking to the eldest daughter who lives
in London. The old lady’s agreed to go into a home nearer here so that
they can visit. I’ve cancelled the lease, so in a few weeks time the
place will be empty.
L Where is it, Fiona?
F It’s in Herefordshire, not actually in a village, but only about half a
mile outside, a place called Garway.
M Oh, I’ve heard of that. Doesn’t it have a Templar church?
R You’re absolutely right. I remember visiting it once with a part of people from one of
the Wrekin Trust conferences. Sir George Trevelyan took us. He had a genius for
bringing places like that alive.
F I remember it as a child. A couple of old aunts lived there, and I
used to be sent to stay with them in the school holidays when my
parents went gadding off to the continent. I had a wonderful time
exploring the countryside on my own. One aunt was a naturalist and
she taught me all about birds and flowers and butterflies. So, as you
see, there is something nostalgic about the place for me. I don’t want
to live there on my own, can’t afford to anyway, so it’s been let for
years. But each time there has been a change of tenant the question
comes up again what to do with it in the longer term. I’ve no-one to
leave it to, and I don’t want to sell it, for sentimental reasons. The
house has been waiting for something.
L I remember, Mel, you saying that you’d been wondering whether London
was the right place for this I.T. work. Had you been wondering about going
to live in the country?
M I had, yes. Not perhaps actually living there. Going to breathe in
the country would be a better way of putting it.
F It’s not really only a question of whether London feels right for us
ourselves. London feels pretty awful and it’s getting worse. But the
cities are places of tremendous need. I’m sure there are more and
more people searching half-consciously for the opening up of an inner
space, which is at the same time a longing for communication with
others on another level. If there really is something we have got onto
which can begin to address that need, then it’s important that we are
somewhere where people can get at us physically. It doesn’t have to
be London, but it does have to be near centres of population.
J Of course there is another aspect of that picture and that is places like Glastonbury,
Totnes, Stroud, Forest Row, Malvern, Mickleton, Findhorn, places where people in
search of deeper realities have tended to congregate over recent decades, places where
people are drawn together in loose communities engaged in a more active life of study
and service.
R I don’t think that this is at all an arbitrary thing. Those places tend to have a special
quality in the first place which draws people to them. And this is where your mobility
thing comes in, Joe. Places like that tend to get very in-turned after a time. They get
stuck in particular attitudes. Even when they evolve it is only within certain limits. They
still remain a bit precious and stifling.
F I think though it would be fair to say that particular people outgrow
places like that and are replaced all the time by others who can still
find them helpful and nourishing. The trouble starts when a core of
people get stuck in a dependency relationship to such places. Then
gradually they become less healthy, no longer places where people
can go through the life changes they need.
J I know. I’ve got a bit of a ‘thing’ about Glastonbury, which I particularly experience
as a place of stiflingly in-turned energy.
M I, on the other hand, love the place. I come away revitalised
whenever I visit it. There are different levels to such a place. People
discover them, or don’t according to where they’ve got to in their lives.
Places like that tend to sort you out. That can be wonderful at some
moments and terrible at others.
F Coming back to Garway, do you think, perhaps, that I’m on to
something? I mean something that might be relevant to us as a group?
R What are you suggesting, Fiona? Are you wondering whether the five of us might be
interested in taking the house on as a joint venture?
F Something of the sort, yes.
L It’s a very exciting idea. It makes me feel very alive inside. I can feel it as
a situation from which we might get a broader perspective on the work.
M More than that as well. It could feel like a place where we go for
revitalising our own energies, so that we have more to offer when
people come to us.
F Something’s happening which has occasionally happened to me
before. I’m feeling a sort of extension of my own consciousness where
I’m aware there’s something else wanting to express itself. It would
help if someone wrote down what I feel needs to be said.
M Here’s a telephone pad and biro. Who’ll write?
J I will, Melanie. This has happened before.
F It seems to be the same being who spoke last time, Joe. I think it’s
a name something like... Me... Meruel. Anyway it wants to speak. It
says:-
*****
M "Dear friends, don’t be alarmed. Steady your hearts down. You’ll
find breathing helps. It’s important you don’t allow glamorous feelings
of excitement to take you over when things like this happen when you
meet, as they will, more and more frequently in this time. Remember,
Fiona, that it is you yourself who are speaking. It is you who are
forming the thoughts, and you who are saying the words. You are not,
as people say, "channelling" me, any more than you are channelling
Melanie or Richard. I am simply beside you in the room as a thinking
entity, just as they are. I have thoughts and feelings and intentions just
as you do. But I don’t think verbally. I do not need a body or a brain, or
even words or a language to express the thoughts. Nor am I using
yours to do so. The initiative to express your awareness of these things
in me is entirely your own. On the other hand I sense what is
happening in your lives, and I want to support it. I’d like it very much if
you felt happy about this and would allow me to take part in your
deliberations".
M Is Fiona right? Is your name Meruel?
*****
M "You haven’t quite understood the situation, Melanie. Everything
that is being said is being said by Fiona. You know about Names. If you
and Fiona both call me Meruel it establishes what could be a useful link
so that you can take part in this conversation. And that applies to all of
you. You establish a convention, like a file on a computer. Meruel
becomes an analogy for what is really going on. Your own names are
just the same; it is simply that you are more used to them. The
important point is that you do not from this moment on simply treat
Fiona as a channel for what I, so to speak, "say". That simply nudges
Fiona towards mediumship, which is no longer a valid way of
communicating with beings in my situation. And I am not interested in
a relationship of that sort with you either. There would be nothing, as
you say, "in it for me". I have been drawn towards you because of what
you have been doing by way of extending and raising the level of your
own thinking and communication with each other. I believe I can play a
useful part in that, and I would like to. I’ll withdraw now so that you can
discuss what you think has happened, and how I can fit in there. One
thing I will say. You are blessed by higher beings in what you are
doing."
That seems to be all.
L Well! Wasn’t that interesting! Interesting and wonderful. It makes me feel
much more secure about what’s been happening to me recently. I think
there’s been something a bit hysterical in the way I’ve been reacting to
experiences along those lines.
J Insecurity. If we feel insecure our bodies often take over and give us a signal which
can attract attention and draw towards us the help we need. It’s better still, of course, if
we can calmly ask for that help, but that’s a matter of knowing whom or what to ask.
Failing that we provide ourselves with an alarm system, like hysteria or anger, in the
hope that someone or something will come to the rescue.
F Which they often do. Do you not feel, Lucia, that people have been
rallying round for the last couple of weeks in response to your
expressed needs, whether hysterical or not?
L I most certainly do.
F There is also an opposite aspect to what has been happening. For
some time I have had the feeling that we other four were reaching a
turning point. I didn’t know what it was or how it would manifest. I was
waiting for a more specific indicator, something which would
demonstrate unmistakably that the moment had come and would alert
us to being able to recognise the direction we were supposed to go in.
L You’re saying I was the alarm clock, are you? That’s what you meant the
other day when you said I had unconsciously been approaching the group
and it was time I surfaced. Submarine Sue. So my alarm clock was not just
to get help, it was an indicator for the group as well.
M Are you also implying that the appearance of the Garway house
maybe the direction indicator we were supposed to look out for?
F That’s what I’ve been wondering. You see, all this sort of thing is at
the same time fraught with the possibility of superstition and illusion.
It’s one thing to come to the realisation that events are synchronistic
and serendipitious by nature, as "The Celestine Prophecy" points out.
It’s quite another to follow their indication like iron filings round a
magnet, in a slavish, zombie-like way. Our freedom only operates truly
if we make the subsequent judgements by exercising normal
intelligence and common sense. If common sense now tells us that
taking up this house is a bit of risky nonsense, blindly refusing to look
at the proposal from all sides because the idea of it attracts us, then
we are simply the superstitious idiots most people think we are
anyway. What do you think we should do Richard? You’re the practical
one in this sort of field.
R Well, I think the first thing we should do, as soon as it is practicable, is all to go down
and look at the place. Let’s see what our feelings tell us about it. There are hundreds of
thousands of attractive saleable properties on the market. It may be this has turned up
simply to make us think about the question and ask ourselves whether a country house
is the right sort of next step for the group.
J At least it would give us some practice in making judgements about properties in
general. It’ll make us ask the right sort of questions.
R Exactly. Then the second thing I would like to do, if you agree, is to meet each of you
privately and go thoroughly into the question of your resources, what you’ve got and
what it would be possible, and also wise, to raise in the way of finance. Would anyone
find that unacceptable? No, I thought you’d see that was sensible and necessary. It
would at the same time oblige each of us to look seriously at the question of whether it
was really what we wanted to do.
J And equally whether we were looking in a healthy way at what was being indicated to
us by our higher selves and the colleagues in the intraterrestrial dimension who we
suppose to be guiding us.
M We need to see it also in the context of our ‘non-I.T.’ lives, if I can
express it in that way. It brings us slap up against the question of our
degree of commitment to I.T. in relation to other possible
responsibilities. I mean things like family and so on.
F I suggest we leave it at that for now. Let’s go away and mull it over.
But I take it we’d all like to go and look at the house as soon as
possible.
L Why don’t we go down with a view to helping you sort the place out
physically, Fiona? You’ll need help with that anyway. I think it would be very
nice if the help was us, if the others agree.
F I would love that. It’s a generous suggestion. Much nicer than
strangers picking things over. But I need to see the daughter first to
see whether her mother’s personal things are still there. I think I’ll be
able to let you know that in a few days. Well, thank you very much for
your interest. I confess I feel quite excited about the whole thing, and
I’m very much looking forward to showing you round the place, also
Garway itself.
M And the church. I’m fascinated by Templar places.
F Well, that’s about it as far as I’m concerned, unless anyone else has
something to say.
M I have. I think it’s a wonderful, generous and really imaginative
idea you’ve put in front of us. Whether it comes off or not the energy
of it is sure to move forward the whole project into new areas. Bless
you, Fiona, and thank you.
J I’m sure we all feel the same. And I have an idea it’s going to happen. Meanwhile
we’d better go and get some work done, Richard.
L I still don’t know what you do. I’m beginning to suspect you’re secret
counterfeiters or smugglers or contraband or something.
J You’ll learn all about it tomorrow, Lucia, in between looking at my etchings.
L Etcetera, etcetera.
M What are you two up to?
L We’ve got an assignment, haven’t we, Joe. Very clandestine and
romantic. All about menhirs.
J Anyway, I’ll tell you all about what Richard and I do as well. It’s actually rather dull,
but it makes us a certain amount of cash.
L That sounds useful. I’m off home as well, Melanie. Have you got room for
me too, Richard?
R A ta service, mademoiselle. All aboard, everyone. This’ll be about the last time we’ll
be making this particular rendezvous. I’m moving back in here with Mel for a bit.
L Oh, Mel! You didn’t tell me.
M I was keeping my fingers crossed.
L Bless you, darlings.
(General good-byes, thank yous, hugs and kisses)

*****

Dialogue 7

(Doorbell rings. Melanie answers)

M Oh, Mr Phillips.
S Yes, I hope you don’t mind us not ringing first. We just came along
at the time you put on the leaflet. You remember my wife Anne.
M Yes, indeed. Hello Anne. Do come in. This is my husband, Richard.
S How do you do? I hope this isn’t inconvenient. Thank you for your
letter.
M No, not at all. We have someone coming later in the morning, but
there’s plenty of time for a chat now. Let me take your coats.
A I think I’ll keep mine on if you don’t mind Mrs...
M My name’s Melanie. I hope you don’t mind me calling you Anne.
S Yes, and I’m Stephen. I think you must be what the media call
‘new-agers’. Christian names and hugs all round. Takes a bit of getting
used to, but really I rather like it.
M Perhaps we’ll convert you! Actually a lot of it is rather on the
surface with some people. But it does express a feeling that most
conventional life is a bit stuffy and needs loosening up a bit. Maybe we
overdo it at times. Now, where are you going to sit? Anne, how about
this chair? Richard likes this one,. Can I give you some tea? We were
just going to have some.
A Thanks very much. It’s a pretty room, isn’t it Stephen? I like the sunflowers.
Brightens it up, doesn’t it? No sugar, thanks.
R I hear you’ve been following up our I.T. idea over in Muswell Hill somewhere. A
woman cane to see us.
S Yes, it was funny, that. I mentioned it to some chaps at work, and
there was someone who already knew about it. Not through you,
though. There’s quite a gang over Muswell Hill way. I went over there
and went to some meetings. Got themselves properly organised
apparently.
R What did you think? Did you like what was going on?
S Well to tell you the truth I don’t think they’d got the idea at all. It
felt quite different.
M Did you go Anne?
A I went along the second time. I couldn’t really make out what was going on.
There was a lot of discussion. Everybody seemed to have different ideas, and
there was even some arguments. I didn’t like it much really.
M But they were calling it ‘I.T. school’ were they?
S Oh yes. There was one chap holding forth quite a bit on that. But I
think he had a bit of a bee in his bonnet about some chap called...
Lazarus, was it? He wanted us to start listening to a tape he[d brought
along. But nobody wanted to do that, and somebody even switched the
telly on, said there was a programme about the Moonies or some such.
The meeting broke up after that.
R All sounds a bit chaotic. I expect the man with the tape was a follower of a channeler
who brings through a being called Lazaris.
S Yes, that’s right. You’ve got it. Lazaris it was. He swore by the
teachings of this chap. You know about it, then.
R Yes, I’ve heard one or two of the tapes and read part of a book by the channeler,
Jach somebody.
S Was it interesting?
R Yes, as far as it went, very interesting. There are several movements like that on the
west coast of the U.S. They attract an enormous following. But I gather you didn’t much
like the feel of these meetings at Muswel Hill. What did you think was wrong?
S I’ve been trying to think about what you said, Melanie (is it?), when
I came before. I know what it was really. You seemed much more
interested to know what I thought about things than in telling me
something. You didn’t start in on me and try to teach me something.
All those people over there…well no, there was one woman, we talked
to her afterwards, didn’t we Anne, who just sat quiet and listened…but
the rest, yak, yak, yak, at the top of their voices most of the time.
P I don’t think they ought to call it the I.T. school at all.
M I think you have to let people get on and do what they want to do.
P But won’t a lot of people get the wrong idea through them?
M For them it isn’t the wrong idea. The name I.T. school is simply a
doorway. If people get stuck in the door, try and fix things and
organise according to preconceptions of their own, then we simply
open other doors with other people. If necessary we change the name
of what we’re doing. But the chances are it will simply peter out, or the
Lazaris follower will draw a few of them into forming a Lazaris branch.
The rest will drift away.
A What you’re saying sounds a bit vague to me.
M I wouldn’t call it vague, Anne, I’d call it mobile. We have to keep
things on the move, so that people are able to keep their options open
and not get stuck in side-issues. What we’re interested in is people’s
own path, not in what they join or get attached to.
A But don’t they get attached to I.T.? Isn’t that the idea? Haven’t you got a
group round you?
R Following your path doesn’t mean you don’t have friends, colleagues, people who
see things the same way as you do. But people’s true paths in life are parallel, not
convergent, if you see what I mean. True paths don‘t get stuck to each other.
S Risky, isn’t it?
R Very risky. But you get the point of what Melanie’s saying, don’t you, Stephen? I think
what you missed over in Muswell Hill was freedom, space to breathe. Am I right?
S What does I.T. stand for?
R It stands for intra-terrestrial. We came to realise that wild ideas about E.Ts, people in
space-ships rescuing mankind from its troubles, was missing the point.
S Are there really people who think that? Sounds barmy.
R There are more people panicking about the future of the Earth every day. Plenty of
people, both in new-age circles and elsewhere, have lost hope in any of the so-called
practical solutions which politicians and others offer. There is a real danger that more
and more people will look for answers in a sort of science-fiction fantasy world.
S What’s intra-terres... then? What you said?
R We began to realise that the real help we need lies inside the Earth situation, not
outside it. If there are indeed beings behind the scenes aware of humanity’s difficulties...
in fact more than just difficulties, aware that mankind is in a desperate situation... they
are here with us, inside our own situation, possibly even inside our own consciousness.
S Religion, you mean?
R Some of us think that religion has become yet another red-herring.. These are things
that need a lot of study and discussion. Look, our friends will be coming soon, we shall
have to break this up. I’d very much like to talk again if you’d like to.
S Well I’d like to very much. What about you love?
A Yes, I’m quite interested.
R Let’s meet again. Give us a ring, Stephen. Here’s another leaflet with this number,
and I’ll put my office number on as well in case you’d like to talk to me there. There’s
usually someone at one or other of these numbers.
S O.K. then. Nice to meet you both. I’ll be in touch. Thanks very much
both. Very interesting indeed. Cheerioh then.
M Good-bye then, Anne.
P Cheerio. Thanks very much for the tea.
M Pleasure. I’ll see you out.
R Bye, both.

*****

Dialogue 8

L Phew! You didn’t tell me you lived in a skyscraper.

R Hello, Lucia. Come up. Found your way then?
L Up is right. My god, have you counted these damn stairs.
R Thirty-six exactly. Three floors. Twelve each.
L I need to sit down. I’m worn out. No wonder you both look so fit.
R Joe won’t be long. Come in the kitchen. He’s slipped out for some milk.
L I need the loo first.
R End of the corridor. There look.
L Gosh, it’s quite roomy, isn’t it. Is that the office?
R Yes. I’ll show you round in a bit. Oh Hello Joe. Lucia’s here.
J Usual place was shut. I had to go down to the market, so I brought some biscuits.
R Kettle’s boiled. Coffee for you?
J Please. Oh, hello Lucia. Nice to see you.
L Hi, Joe. Is that real coffee? Oh, no, I’ll have tea please. I don’t go for the
powdered stuff. Sorry to make a fuss.
J No problem. Your satisfaction is our pleasure.
L Relax Joe. You look all nervous. (kisses his cheek).
R He’s been fussing about like a hen with chicks with all his photographs and maps.
You’d think he was going to give a weekend workshop instead of just showing a girl his
holiday snaps.
J You don’t know anything about it Richard. Lucia and I are engaged in a piece of
serious archaeological research. Clumsy clots like you can’t be expected to appreciate the
finer points.
R I like that! Who did all the drawings for the grocery storeroom?
J Oh that! Routine commercial stuff. I’m talking about artistic finesse.
L Stop bickering you two and give me a cup of tea. You’re like a couple of
kids. I’m totally exhausted. I’m supposed to be coming to an archaeology
lesson. In this state I couldn’t tell a menhir from a mud-hut. What was that
about a grocery store-room? Are you two in retail trade or what?
R No, that was for a client. That’s what we do. When we met we found we both had
qualifications in architectural and commercial drawing., so we decided to go into
business together. There’s a lot of small firms round here which can’t afford to engage
proper architects, so they employ us, mainly for minor changes in lay-out and so on. We
don’t advertise, it’s all word-of-mouth stuff. You’re not really allowed an office in a
residential building, so we work on the telephone with a fax-machine and slog round to
clients’ own offices. We ought soon to be in a position to get an office of our own
outside.
L What about V.A.T. and all that?
R So far it’s all been cash. But if we got any bigger clients we’d be in trouble. There are
quantities of small businesses operating outside the law because the authorities make it
too expensive to survive otherwise. People say we exploit the system, but larger
concerns exploit us all down the line.
L How?
R Well for one thing we’re always last in the queue when it comes to settling their
accounts. So we virtually have to avoid larger accounts altogether. But you don’t want to
hear all our troubles. Go and look at menhirs. And then I’d like to invite you both out to
lunch if you’ll let me.
L How very sweet of you Richard. I personally would be delighted.
J Me too. Come on then, Lu. Pray enter the wizard’s den.
L Oh Joe! That’s a wonderful display. You’ve really worked on it haven’t
you. Those poster enlargements must have cost a bomb. I take it that’s the
whatsit menhir, the one you modelled the artefact on, the one in Fiona’s
room.
J That’s it. The Goh menhir.
L I wonder what Goh means.
J I never found out. But can you see how, a foot or more from the top, there is a break in
the smooth line of the stone? I believe this stone was erected with enormous physical and
inner effort towards the end of a path of awakening and initiation, many thousands of
years ago and that this break near the top indicates that the process was never completed.
L Do you think they failed in some disastrous way?
J I think it’s very difficult to form a true idea of what we call failure. In order to set out
on a path of achievement of any kind human beings erect, or find themselves situated in,
some kind of enterprise, a business, say, or an idea for a unique painting, or a cathedral,
anything you like. The point is we are never wholly in control of the terms of reference,
the parameters as we call them, of what we set out to do.
L You mean, if we are inspired towards some great achievement, the
circumstances are never ideal, or perhaps unknown to us, they may be quite
unsuitable.
J Exactly, although even there we can be mistaken, because if we correctly understand
destiny, karma as we call it, we ourselves in a mysterious way have taken part before
birth in setting the scene, which then appears round us later as the circumstances of our
lives. We have no memory of this, so the difficulties look as if they are part of the
chance, often hostile, circumstances in which we are obliged to struggle.
L So, if we have been wise, those difficulties may be the very ones we knew
we needed to overcome the weaknesses in our past efforts.
J Well that is how it would appear. If only it were so simple! You see it is only too
likely that our karma is not always so wisely chosen. Steiner spoke somewhere of the fact
that human karma has gradually reached a condition of considerable confusion. And this
throws quite a different light on the whole picture we have of success as opposed to
failure.
L I’m beginning to have a horrific picture of what it would be like if some
mighty human effort were to be flawlessly successful!
J Yes, it is a horror, isn’t it? Because what we see in the world as monuments to our
mistakes in carrying out our enterprises are also, on top of that, evidence that our aims
were misconceived in the first place!
L Why bother? If at first you don’t succeed, give oop!
J So, now we look at the Goh Menhir, with it’s flawed summit.
L And heave a sigh of relief, so to speak. Then what was it those people
were actually trying to achieve, or thought they were trying to achieve?
J I think it has something to do with a longing for something in their own bodies. Early
mankind didn’t have the upright vertical posture we have now. There was a sort of
species memory of the horizontal, of our spine being parallel with the Earth’s surface.
Did you see Arthur C. Clarke’s film "2001"?
L Yes I did! Wonderful film. I know what you’re referring to! It was that
incredible sequence where all those monkey-like creatures were trying to
scrabble their way up the enormous black basalt pillar that appeared in their
wilderness. That scene…I felt it right through my body as a sort of physical
lust for being upright, for verticalness. So you are saying that Darwinism is
correct, that we are descended from these ape-like creatures?
J There is an enormous pressure in our time to believe in Darwinian evolution. It is part
of what I call scientism, as opposed to science, a belief system superimposed on a
genuine path of knowledge.
L A physical religion, as it were.
J That’s exactly it. People shrink in terror from the idea that they can decide themselves
from within what is true. They have an insatiable desire for authority, not only the
authority of other people, so-called experts, to tell them what is so and what is not so, but
even more than that, the authority of the physical world of solid inescapable facts
received via their sense organs.
L Yes, I remember in science lessons at school, it was always a question of
proof, proof, proof. If you had an insight people always said:- "You don’t
know that. That’s not knowledge. How do you know that? Prove it. You only
feel it’s true because you’re a girl."
J Female intuition and male clarity have to marry to get to what is true. Lucia, you
know, don’t you, that I want you desperately. I can hardly contain it sometimes. I don’t
know whether I love you or not, but I certainly want you.
L I want you too, but we’re not going to do it here, all among the
photographs and these mighty thoughts about the path of knowledge. Look
Joe, stand up, hold my hands, look into my eyes and breathe. This is me,
Lucia, person, human being. We are teaching each other, finding each other,
recognising each other, perhaps even remembering each other. Don’t short-
circuit it into sex too soon. See me, Joe! See first, fuck later. Get it? Go on,
get that penis down. Relax. All right? Here I am, your friend Lucia. We’re
getting to know each other, and I like you very much. I have an idea we may
well be right for each other, but I don’t know yet. Here, give me a hug, a
nice friendly hug.
J You know, you’re the first girl I’ve ever met who really seems to know what’s going
on. I think you’re incredible.
L Yes, I am incredible. I’m a star, that’s what. I’m a proper little whore, but
I’m a whore-plus. I’m a mistress of sexuality. I refuse to let my star-quality
be wrenched apart from my straight wife-and mother womanhood by male
prejudices and preconceptions. I can do, and actually propose to do what
Monroe and Madonna in their different ways failed to do, be a whole woman.
J So, we’re back where we started. Look at the Goh Menhir again. Is a whole woman
possible, given the flawed outer conditions of life? Is it even a valid ideal?
L No, of course it isn’t, not on its own. It implies its counterpart, a whole
man.
J Lacking which we just fuck. If at first you don’t succeed, give oop!
L Fucking is more than a confession of failure. What we have to do is to
keep the copulating and non-copulating life in balance. Women are usually
better adapted to initiating that balance than men are, although I’ve only
learned that the hard way. It’s something to do with knowing what it’s for,
knowing we are on the earth. In the last resort fucking is about babies, which
men tend to forget. In the morning when the ecstasy fades pregnancy is still
a fact. It all seems very obvious stated like that, and I’m not against
contraception, but it’s amazing how easily we ignore the underlying reality.
J Especially when we realise that most of our social disasters and problems come from
ignoring it. Thank you for reminding me. Yes, and now I’ve calmed down a bit I’d like
you to look at this map and some of the other photographs. You see those red dots on the
map. They mark other menhirs in the immediate district.
L They seem to be on a spiral with the Goh Menhir at the centre.
J Yes, but I drew the spiral myself. I have actually walked most of the spiral and there
are real footpaths connecting some of them. Obviously landscaping changes radically
over the millennia. Basically this is all heathland, but it has been increasingly farmed
over the centuries. Last time I visited the Goh Menhir it was at the corner of a cornfield.
L From the photographs it looks as if the other stones are mostly stubbier
and shorter.
J Yes, but they’re al pretty massive for all that. There’s a perpetual mystery about how
on earth they were transported to the sites.
L Some of them seem to be a quarter of a mile, or even half a mile apart.
J The whole thing seems to be a landscape temple over a mile across.
L I suppose archaeologists would simply say they are markers.
J That, or religious symbols of some kind. I’ve never read any of that sort of
archaeological study. But I’m strong on the feelings this sort of thing arouses. When I
was young I once walked the four miles from Amesbury to Stonehenge in the middle of
the night.
L Alone?
J No, I was with a girl. When we got in sight of the King Stone I suddenly started an
appalling coughing fit. I could hardly stand. She must have thought I was a complete
ninny. But I was sure at the time it was a sort of protection. There was some reason why
it was psychically dangerous to be among the energies of the stones unprepared at that
time of night.
L What happened?
J I’ve never been able to remember how the episode ended. We were members of a
theatrical company. We must have got back to the lodgings before morning.
L No hanky-panky then?
J No. I was sweet on her as they say. But usually painfully shy.
L You still are, aren’t you love? It makes a welcome change for a woman
like me. It’s no problem to fight you off, but it makes me glad you want me.
Don’t be hurt by it or feel rejected, will you? I’m taking my time for a very
good reason.
J I trust you Lucia. I wouldn’t be sharing this stuff with you if I didn’t. The things that
happened to me over in Brittany that time meant a great deal. They were quite an
important part of my inner journey, though they didn’t have any immediate
consequences.
L You didn’t become a specialist in menhirs then?
J No, not the stones themselves, nor even what they represented. Something else. Let’s
try and put it into words. It was as if, by being in the landscape, the stones highlighted
what was around them, made it feel more real, while they themselves disappeared from
reality. It was as if they were in another kind of space, a negative space almost. What
they were in. the landscape of fields and grass and trees, was matter in space. But they,
the menhirs, were a sort of anti-matter, like black holes among stars. I felt they were
sucking me in, like going down into a whirlpool, a vortex.
L Well, they were arranged in a spiral, weren’t they.
J Yes, though it was by no means obvious till you studied the map. But you’re right.
Perhaps it was the feeling of being sucked into negative space that led me to recognise
the spiral form in the landscape.
L And then of course there was this fault at the top of the Goh Menhir,
wasn’t there.
J Yes. I didn’t have this thought at the time, but looking back it seems as if the
architects were only prevented in the nick of time from achieving something utterly
disastrous for mankind and the Earth. Maybe if they had succeeded, the whole of Earth
matter would have whirled down a plug-hole into anti-matter, non-existence, or anti-
existence.
L Success or failure, which was it?
J Are you saying it would have been better for mankind if they had succeeded? In view,
for instance, of what life on Earth has now become? Is nuclear exploration another
suicidal journey on similar lines?
L I’m seeing something, Joe. Hang on a minute. Gosh, I wish Melanie or
Fiona were here. But no, I can manage on my own, just. I need to hang on
to my body. Do what you did before and hold my two hands, but this time
shut your eyes. Joe, they wouldn’t have destroyed mankind or the Earth. It
would have been something worse. There is a tremendous mighty being
standing there, behind the Goh Menhir, inside its negative space. If they’d
crossed the last hurdle, completed the form, they would have handed the
whole of creation, mankind, the Earth, the lot, into the final control of that
vast dark power. All open-ended evolutionary events in human consciousness
would have come to an end. The whole future would have been pre-empted,
eternally fixed. Freedom would have ceased to have a meaning.
*****
J What is it that stops that happening every time, Lucia? There must be something
deeper still in us which stops us each time from placing the last card on the summit of our
house of cards.
L We keep our options open for something else, Joe. There is a true missing
card in the pack, as well as the false one. The false completion of the game is
physical perfection. Andrea del Sarto’s perfect model mistress. Madonna and
Marilyn Monroe, the hard and soft versions of the false feminine ideal.
Physical perfection is a side issue, a discard. It belongs on the cutting-floor.
J So where’s the genuine article, Lucia?
L It’s what I‘m half seeing now. But I can’t quite grasp it today. The other
day with Melanie, and again with Fiona, I caught a glimpse of the joker in the
pack, as one might say, of what humanity is trying to achieve. This ability to
throw light on what’s happening when I’m with people seems to take a
different form according to who I’m with at the time. I saw a Melanie version
first, the secret of two or three human beings together arriving at what
Melanie experiences as the Naming process and what this does to Time. The
timeless human archetype, what we call the CHRIST, then appears "in the
midst", gathered in the Name. Olive Pixley, who developed a system she
called "The Armour of Light" called this process "The Rhythm of the Name".
It was one of a series of what could be called deeds of light which she was
shown. Later I was shown a Fiona version of it, which she asked me to
speak. This emerged in the phrase St Paul used in the New Testament,
CHRIST IN ME. Fiona is quite different from Melanie, so I see something
different. Somewhere behind what we’ve been going through this morning
there’s a Joe version of this which I can’t yet quite grasp. Perhaps if you tell
me more about this spiral, and how you discovered it I shall see more
clearly. You know, Joe, I get a feeling we’re taking all this a bit too fast.
What time is it?
J Good heavens, it’s nearly one o’clock. However long have we been in here?
L We haven’t been in here, we’ve been half way round Brittany. Look, let’s
find Richard. He promised to take us to lunch.
J (Calls) Richard! It’s one o’clock. We’re hungry.
R Hi, you two. Are you now qualified in stone-age lore, Lucia? Has he given you a
certificate?
L No, I’ve given him one. I found he knew damn all. I’ve sorted him out,
though.
R That’s all right then! Come on. We’ll go to my favourite place in Baker Street. Car’s
round the corner. (They clatter down the stairs).

*****

Dialogue 9

R So, what have you been telling the lady, my old friend? He doesn’t talk to me much
about his landscape wanderings, do you Joe.
J No, it’s funny that. We’ve known each other for years, and we’ve often talked the
night out about the sort of things that led to the three of us, and later Melanie, starting this
I.T. thing. But we never seem to get round to talking about old stones.
R Any more than I talk to you about crop circles. And yet there’s a real connection
somewhere. There must be.
L I don’t know anything about crop circles at all. Incidentally, why do they
call them crop circles? I’ve seen pictures of them and they seem to be all
possible shapes.
R The early ones were mostly discs and rings. Then they appeared in groups, so-called
quincunxes. Only later did they appear stretched out in long lines connected by straight
tracks, various fish-like and insect-like forms, and so on. It was quite an evolutionary
process. But they started as circles.
L Why do you think there’s a connection with Joe’s menhirs?
R Well, it is a curious fact that when the interest started in the phenomenon in the
eighties most of them were appearing in central southern England, mostly Wiltshire and
Hampshire. And that is a part of England where so many stone-age monuments are
found. There were occurrences year after year round Avebury and Silbury Hill, for
example, and the West Kennet long barrow.
L You’ve obviously got a theory, Richard, about all this, and I’d be very
interested to hear about it. But Joe was still in the middle of telling me how
he made some of his discoveries in Brittany, and I don’t want to miss the
rest of that either.
J Yes, and we don’t really need the maps and photographs for that, because it was more
to do with how I set about trying to relate more consciously to the experience I’d been
having In other words the menhirs and I were relating to each other in another kind of
space than the one in which they were set into the landscape.
L Joe was showing me on the map how the stones were set in an enormous
spiral, centred on the particular one which was the model for the figure he
made for Fiona’s room.
J What I felt was that the approach the stone-age folk made to the central menhir site
must have been ritually proscribed. I found existing roadways, and traces of former tracks
which seemed to indicate this. But I don’t feel that this was a religious process in the way
we understand it.
R What then?
J I feel that the vortex, or spiral, was constructed in a series of steps. I don’t know, but I
think there may have been long periods, centuries, maybe even thousands of years
between each step.
L So, each step in turn may itself have been the focus of attention for a
long, long time, the Goh Menhir of its day perhaps?
J Yes, and I don’t think there was a blueprint. The spiral was the result, not the cause of
the process.
L They didn’t know it was going to be a spiral?
J Well, not consciously they didn’t. But remember, at the same time they themselves
were evolving, developing. Their consciousness was changing, century by century,
millennium by millennium. The whole exercise was nothing but a projection, a signature
in the mineral world of what was going on inside them. And this process was taking place
also in the dreamy, misty, semi-fluid, almost substanceless forms of their own bodies,
and every now and then throwing off onto the physical cutting-floor the failed, semi-
animal products of their efforts.
L Neanderthals and so on?
R Yes, and these became the objects of attention for science, and are the so-called
evidence for Darwinian evolution. It’s a jigsaw with all the essential pieces missing. Joe,
how on earth did you arrive at all these pictures and ideas?
J For most of it you already know the answer to that, Richard. You’ve read as much
anthroposophy as I have. Rudolf Steiner perceived the greater part of the general picture
nearly a century ago.
R But there’s more, surely.
J There certainly is.
R You still haven’t explained why the end result was an Earth temple in the form of a
spiral, a vortex. All you’ve said is that it was paralleled by developments in their own
consciousness and in their own bodily development. All you’re... .. Oh my God!!
L What, Richard? What’s the matter? You’re as white as a sheet.
R Joe, you cunning bastard! You’ve been leading us on!
L What, Richard? Come on. Give!
R Well of course! D.N.A.!!
L What? What do you mean?
R The double helix! The twin spiral form of the nucleus in the human cell-structure.
Those people were projecting the mathematics of their own evolving organisms onto the
landscape around them!
J I think it was more complex than that. I’ve never thought of the human form as in any
way separate from the planetary form. I think the Earth and the human body are evolving
as aspects of the same organism. Humanity, as well as being made up of autonomous
individuals, is at the same time the consciousness, the sense organ, the system of
antennae for the planet in its cosmic environment. It is a means for the Earth itself to
know what’s going on around it. As far as the vortex was concerned, those people were
getting as much from the Earth as they gave.
L All this is a bit beyond me, though I feel the direction it’s going in. Look,
do we have to go on sitting in this bloody café? I mean, it’s a nice restaurant
Richard, and thanks for a delicious lunch!, but can’t we go back to your place
now? I want to look at your photographs again, Joe, and the map you drew.
R So do I now. I’d no idea you’d taken the thing so far, Joe.
J Well you never asked. There has always been so much else going on. Let’s drop it
now till we get back.
*****
J Before I show you any more pictures and maps there’s something else on my mind,
Richard. I don’t know how much it needs saying, but I’ll say it anyway. It was very
exciting when you suddenly made that mental leap and spotted the connection between
the double helix in the D.N.A and the tendency of the menhir-culture people, certainly in
this instance in Brittany, to construct instinctively giant spirals in the landscape. I won’t
pretend I hadn’t spotted this connection too. In fact a group of us some years ago on
Dartmoor found another instance of it in a bit of ancient woodland. It appeared that some
old thorn trees with double trunks had grown in a spiral about twenty or twenty-five
yards across. I first noticed it when I was moved to step or climb through the gap between
the two trunks of one of these, and noticed another pair a few yards away. I followed the
indication, and lo and behold it happened again and went on happening. After climbing
through half a dozen pairs in a diminishing circle I came to a little patch of very green
grass the size of a large hearth-rug at the heart of the spiral. When I went into a sort of
mild trance there I could feel how easy it would have been to slip out of my body.
L You know what came into my mind as you were speaking Joe; all the old
fairy tales about enchanted forests where someone follows a secret path and
ends up trapped in fairyland for a hundred years. Perhaps you were lucky to
find your way back so easily.
J Well in a way I did superstitiously cross my fingers, so to speak, by carefully climbing
back between the trunks the way I had come!
R I had a feeling you started off by directing those accounts at me, Joe. Had you a
particular reason for that?
J Yes I had. I suppose it was a sort of warning really, though as I said, I don’t know
whether you need it. It is to do with the sort of mistakes science constantly makes about
cause and effect, not through mistakes in logic, but through putting two and two together
in the wrong order. The sheer excitement of experiencing a sudden insight like that puts
people off their guard. It is just at that sort of moment that science again and again jumps
to a wrong conclusion about what causes what. And these wrong conclusions are
cumulative. They have resulted in the building up of the whole one-sided world scientific
picture.
L How does all that relate to what you were talking about before?
J Well, the big question is, for example, did the menhir builders find themselves
constructing a giant spiral landscape temple because they themselves were organisms
built up on a microscopic cellular pattern based on double-helix molecules? Or was it the
other way round? Did the entire planet come into existence because matter itself comes
into shape out of a non-material world, by whirling in on itself in spiral form? Is the
human organism simply a special instance of this? Which came first, people or planet,
Humanity or Earth?
L Well, which is it Joe?
J Wait a minute, I haven’t finished! The thing is, what happens when human-beings
become conscious, when they start to want to play a part in their own evolution? The
materialistic view of the world is fatally prone to one-directional cause-and-effect
explanations of things. The answer to Lucia’s question is – neither and both. What is
wrong in our current human view of the world is a step deeper than making mistakes
about what causes what. The mistake is in the very notion of cause and effect itself. It
gradually becomes apparent that this is not a cause-and-effect world after all. It is
something different.
R Joe, are you saying that this is not a logical world at all? Then science might just as
well shut up shop altogether.
J No, Richard, that is fortunately not what I am saying, or what I believe. The concept is
a bit more difficult than that. It is rather that the things we put together and say that one
causes the other are actually related to each other differently from that. The relationship
is a mutual one. It all comes about from the fact that we experience time as one-
directional. We say one thing happens and then another happens, as if somehow time was
moving along. But it isn’t, Richard. It is still. It is we who are moving in time. This, as it
were, is not time’s fault! It is an illusion created by our relation to time, which is a
moving, changing one. We do not stay still in time. We move into it by incarnating into
bodies, and we move out of it by dying, which is an equally protracted process. But all
this while time itself, so to speak, minds its own business. The past stays where it is. So
does the future.
R But don’t they change? Are the past and the future fixed and permanent?
J Far from it. They change constantly. But all their changes, variations, possibilities, or
rather probabilities as Seth prefers to call them, are permanent, multi-dimensional,
capable of going either way, or both ways, on demand.
R You said this was a logical universe, but that sounds like chaos.
J No, it’s not chaos, but it’s a much more complex and subtle order than we are used to
thinking about.
L I’m totally lost, Joe. I don’t know where I am. But at the same time I feel
intuitively that you are right. I’ve got a specific question arising out of that.
R So have I, Lucia.
J Let’s put your two questions side by side. They’re probably connected if they’re not
after all the same question.
L I’ll say first, shall I? Joe, while the menhir-builders were centred on, say,
menhir number three, numbers one and two were behind them, established,
steps of their past, so to speak, or of their ancestors. O.K? Menhir number
three was the peak of their achievement. What I want to ask is, what was
happening at the place where, centuries later, millennia even, the Goh
Menhir would one day be?
J That’s your question?
L Yes.
J Well, let’s hold that question steady for a moment and see what Richard’s question is.
Richard, what’s your question?
R What I want to ask is this. If we are ditching cause and effect as the pattern of
relationship between all the factors in front of us when we try to find explanations of
things, then what the hell are we going to put in its place?
J And that’s your question?
R Yes.
J What I find wonderful about this I.T. process is the way in which the questions people
stimulate in each other are at the same time the emergence of their own being into
awareness and presence. The deeper people’s questions probe the nearer to manifestation
their visible intraterrestrial presences become. There’s Lucia, for instance. She’s never
been to Brittany, but she stands there with the ray of her light-being focussed on the dark
mystery of the Goh Menhir as if she hadn’t just seen it for the first time today in that
poster on the wall.
L And in your beautiful sculpture in Fiona’s room darling.
J Yes, I forgot that. But I feel as if you’d known this whole scenario for centuries.
L I probably have.
J Maybe we both have. And Richard’s question is equally characteristic. The path of
knowledge. The clear logical construct which knows the paramount importance of a firm
logical foundation for everything if we are to avoid illusion.
R Where do you stand in this, Joe? What’s your characteristic stance, your leitmotiv in
life, so to say?
J I always feel as if I’m hovering above the surface of life like a sort of barrage-balloon
on a string... well, a whole network of strings actually. What holds me down is simply
other people. If it weren’t for other people I think I’d just float away from life altogether.
L I think you’re more like a T.V. satellite than a balloon, Joe. You provide
the perspective the rest of us need. You circulate the Earth providing all the
pictures others can’t see because of their more specific, Earth-bound
functions.
R What does your perspective have to say about our two questions, then?
J I’d like to have a go at Richard’s question first. I think what fills the vacuum created
by losing faith in linear cause-and-effect is best summed up in the word resonance. If the
world creating the human form and the human form creating the world are equal and
opposite aspects of the same phenomenon it gives me a feeling like music. It’s a feeling
like an inexhaustible symphony of interweaving harmonies in which the two contenders,
humanity and the world, are engaged in an eternal counterpoint.
L I love that expression "inexhaustible symphony". It gives you the feeling
that however appalling and disastrous the working out of human destiny
appears to be, the overall process, including Steiner’s notion of mistakes in
karma, and the last minute fault in the Goh Menhir, that overall process is
still to be trusted.
J I don’t know about you, but when I listen to a great musical work I always feel I am
taking part in the creation of it. And all of that is implicit in the notion of resonance as a
step beyond that of cause and effect. Do you respond to that, Richard?
R Yes, I do. I don’t know how that affects the workings of my logical mind. I shall have
to see, I’ve been reading Rupert Sheldrake’s book on morphic resonance. I think I shall
have to read it again. Resonance, obviously, is a two-way process. It implies that the
future is not just an empty space being filled from below by the accumulation of events in
the present. It implies that the future is already there, so to speak, whatever ‘there’ may
be held to mean. That in turn means that if causation is still a valid concept then the
future is causing the past as much as the past is causing the future.
L And that leads directly to my question, doesn’t it, Joe? At the time of
menhir three, what is going on at the place where the Goh Menhir will one
day be?
J It’s very difficult forming pictures like this, chiefly because at this stage neither the
pictures we form, nor the realities they represent, will stay in their places. The chief
reason why most people, and that especially means most intelligent practical people,
don’t get involved in all this sort of thing, is that it won’t stay put. At least in the first
instance you don’t know where you are with it. The ordinary materialistic view of the
world may be a lie but at least it’s a lie you can handle. Whereas all this other stuff may
be true and alive, but you can’t fix it, grasp it with your old concepts. You yourself have
to change to become as mobile as it is.
R Yes, but the trouble is this apparently solid handleable material world seems at the
moment to be rapidly rushing downhill into chaos. That’s why we felt that to start
something like the I.T. school was somehow a real action in an unreal world. By keeping
it mobile we felt it resonated with the situation in which it found itself, where all the
comfortable realities were losing their dependability, their sharp identifiable outlines.
L When the land all round you is turning into sea, you’d better get yourself
a boat.
J Yes, that’s what we felt. At least in the first instance you need a point of reference for
the emergence of a new reality, a "Reality for Beginners"!
But almost at once everything changes. As you get used to the
changes going on around you, you learn, as it were, to swim. You don’t
need the boat any more. Reality for beginners has turned into a
germinating seed.
L I think that happened to me the very first day I arrived at Melanie’s
house. It was almost as if she admitted that, in a way, the I.T. school
formula was a spoof. Well, if not actually a spoof, then at least a very
provisional formula. Not so much a boat as a pair of water-wings!
J To have an introductory formula at all is almost an invitation to people to erect the
institution your mobility attempts to avoid. But it’s difficult to know what else to do. You
can’t go round knocking on people’s doors and saying:- "Hey, do you want to enter the
New World?" The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons have been trying it for years. It
doesn’t really work. The problem with the I.T. method from the start is that everybody
feels the need to jump out of the provisional boat and swim, but they do so at different
points. People develop at different speeds. That was the difficulty that friend of yours,
(Paul, was it?), spotted straight away. If everybody leaves the boat at the same point,
some have learned to swim straight away, like you, Lucia, and others are left floundering.
Where does your responsibility lie then, said Paul.
L Melanie’s had a visit from two or three people who were in precisely that
position.
R What happened to them?
L It seems to have developed rather rapidly, and in a quite organised
fashion. Meetings and secretaries and so on, over Muswell Hill way, she said.
She didn’t feel particularly happy about it, felt she’d failed them in some way.
I think I helped her a bit to realise that they were free beings and had their
own paths to follow.
R Now that is just the point where I feel my young friend Paul, the croppie, would have
wanted to step in and get them sorted out. I wonder what’s happened to him, by the way.
I thought we’d be seeing more of him.
L So did I. I was rather dreading it to tell you the truth. There was a lot of
magnetism going on between him and me, which I would rather have been
without. I’m rather afraid he will turn up sooner or later. I shall need your
support.
J You’ll get it from me. I’ll knock the bugger’s block off.
L Oh Joe, sweetheart, you don’t have to act out of character. I much prefer
you as you are. If there’s any teeth to be kicked in I’ll do the kicking myself.
But Melanie told me firmly she thought he was genuinely interested in I.T.,
and would be coming back, not just because he fancied me.
R What we shall need to watch is his propensity for taking things over and trying to run
them. It’s not only God’s gift to women he sees himself as. I’ve seen a bit of that in the
crop-circle movement. When he gets the bit between his teeth he tends to think he has
all the answers. On the other hand he is quite sharply intelligent and he will have a lot to
contribute if he does surface. It would be interesting to see what Fiona makes of him.
L We’ve rather lost touch with our theme, haven’t we, Joe? My main
question is still rather hanging in the air.
J Yes, I got side tracked onto the question of how difficult it is to form pictures that stay
in place when what were dead forms start waking and develop something like a life of
their own. I think the best thing I can do is to tell you what happened when I tried to deal
with the rather frightening realisation that these menhirs were occupying a different space
from what was standing round them. What I did was to stand in front of each of them in
turn and try to look into the alternative space I felt they were occupying. I’m not a very
good or practised meditator in the ordinary way. I have some difficulty in understanding
what most spiritual folk really mean by meditation. But if standing in front of an object
with your eyes shut and trying to penetrate it with your inner vision is a kind of
meditation, then that is what I was doing. The results in a couple of instances were really
quite startling. With others nothing seemed to happen at all. Shall I try to describe what I
saw?
R Yes, please do, Joe.
L Joe, why don’t we all three shut our eyes while you are doing that and try
to visualise the same thing as you are remembering. Have you photographs
of the ones you are talking about?
J Yes. Here they are. There’s number two, rather dark, short, and massive, a few feet
from the right hand side of the bridle path; and number three a bit taller and paler, and as
I remember it a little further back. Shut your eyes, then. What I remember of number two
was of a sort of incised circle, perhaps half an inch deep and a foot across, in the centre of
the side of the stone facing me. There was nothing of the sort visible physically, as you
can see from the photograph. As I continued to look inwardly at this incised disc the
circle began to glow faintly with a pale greyish-lilac mist. And then a cross slowly
formed in dark green, a quite large equal armed cross of the kind usually called a
Canterbury Cross, the arms slightly spreading so that the outer ends form segments of the
surrounding circle. Dark green on lilac would be too vivid a description, it was all more
greyish than that. The image faded after a bit, but when I tried it again a few minutes later
it repeated itself, though less vividly.
R How long did you stand there?
J I can’t remember. It’s a good while ago. I should think about twenty minutes. I didn’t
think about it for a long while afterwards, but of course in all probability that particular
symbol, indeed all the variants on the circle and cross theme, only appeared in human
culture thousands of years later. Apart from a simple projection of my own, there could
be several different explanations for that particular symbol appearing there in my inner
space.
R Like Christian pilgrims trying to combat what they thought of as evil paganism, and
leaving a psychic image behind.
L Yes, I rather fancy you as a monk, Joe.
J I’d rather be a monk than a monkey, even with a black basalt pillar! But what I’d
rather have as an explanation is that the counter-space these menhirs seem to me to
occupy is actually open to different eras of future time. At number three, for instance, all
the images I saw were Egyptian. A number of them appeared and then faded and gave
place to others. I remember an ankh, a Horus hawk head, and I think a Pharaoh’s head-
dress in black and gold.
L So the spiral vortex may be something in time as well as in space.
J Could well be.
L And my Goh Menhir question?
J I’ve found myself speculating whether places like that on the Earth may not be a bit
like acupuncture points on the human body… places where the structure is more open to
communications from the entire universe. Many people feel the same sort of thing at
places like Chalice Well in Glastonbury, in some great cathedrals at the crossing point of
nave and transepts, the altar stone in Stonehenge, and hundreds of other such places.
They are places where anything can happen, and often where much has already
happened. As far as the Goh Menhir is concerned, I feel it belongs to the future, perhaps
the very, very far future. It seemed to me to be almost unthinkably alien, difficult to
contact with ordinary warm human feeling. I went once with the same pair of researchers
who introduced me to Brittany to a remote spot in a forest in South Wales. They had
sensed that the crown energies, you might call them the pineal energies of a landscape
temple were to be found there. By pooling our three capacities we found our way to the
exact spot. The most clairvoyant of the three of us then made contact with a giant devic
being, who warned us that the energies we had found there could be highly threatening to
anybody who approached them with intent, but unprepared. It warned us, for example, on
no account to bring parties of people there. I have much the same feeling about the Goh
Menhir, which I have also visited with that couple. A place to be visited with caution. It
is not good to short-circuit time.
L I need to be off home. Someone from the studio is coming round.
R Let me give you a lift. It’s time I packed up too.
L I can easily go by bus, really.
J Don’t you dare go by bus. I’m coming too. From now on, my girl, I propose to be at
your elbow, night and day if necessary, in case that Paul fellow turns up.
L Oh Joe! You’re a real darling. What should I do without you?
J I don’t propose to let you find out.
R Come on, lovebirds. I’m ready to lock up.
L I want a last look at the photo-exhibition. I want to fix an image of it in
my mind. I have a feeling we’re going to need it. There we are, then. Off we
go.

*****

END OF BOOK TWO

 INTERMISSION

A few days later on returning from the Art School

Lucia found a greetings card from Joe on the mat
Inside the door. He had painted it himself, and on
It was written:-
Dearest Lucia,
I once tried to share all this Menhir Lore with Fiona. Do you
know what she said?
She asked:- "How does Love, which is tiny and intimate, and
gentle, survive in the vast spaces of Cosmic Thinking?"
She answered it herself:- "In the same way in which the Atom,
which holds in its spiral vortex the secret of all Space and
Time, survives in the Pleroma, the infinite fullness of the
Divine Heart"
This, darling girl, is the inexhaustible symphony I hear up here
in my T.V. Satellite. Perhaps sometimes it touches the Music of
 the Spheres.
I love you very much. Joe.

On the facing card he had drawn a pentagram with their names.

FIONA
"CHRIST in the Heart"

RICHARD LUCIA
"Love of Knowledge" ""Light upon the ‘Presence’"

JOE
MELANIE
"Freedom of the
"Mystery of the Name "
Cosmos"

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
FJ
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

 BOOK 4
"Dark and Light Flowers"

Dialogue 1

M Guess who phoned?

L Who? No, I know who it was. It was Paul, wasn’t it?
M It was Paul, yes. He wanted to speak to you.
L I don’t want to see him. Where’s he been? What’s he been doing?
M He seems to have left Dorset. He says his firm’s moved to
Plymouth and he’s living down there.
L Did he say anything about I.T.?
M Yes. He says he’s started a group, which is going like a bomb. He
wants to discuss progress with us up here.
L The man’s a menace. I hope you put him off.
M Look, Lucia, I don’t think we can avoid him, nor do I think we
should. I know exactly how you’re feeling. You feel vulnerable, because
a part of you is drawn to him and you don’t feel strong enough to cope.
But that is precisely why he too feels drawn to our scenario. He doesn’t
trust our reliance on the right things happening through a process of
synchronicity, a guidance which goes at its own pace, which knows
that a process like this needs to grow, and growth has its own times
and seasons like a plant. He doesn’t trust that. It scares him. He not
only wants to organise things, he believes it is right to organise them.
Organisation, believes Paul, is how things root themselves into reality.
For the same reason he wants to organise you. He recognises
something in you, a quality which he lacks, and he wants it.
L He’s not going to get it, not from me.
M Well, maybe he is. But not from your vulnerability, the thing which
arouses his maleness, his desire to conquer. On the contrary it may be
precisely what you need to turn a weakness into a strength. You are
extremely strong, Lucia, but you don’t believe it yet. You need to
discover a new dimension in that Light-being of yours. A little less
Aphrodite, my girl, and a little more Pallas Athene is the recipe for
young master Paul. Keep Aphrodite for Joe who can appreciate her
without wanting to enslave her.
L You’re very good for me, Melanie my love. You remind me of Cassius
talking to Brutus. We did ‘Julius Ceasar’ for A-levels. How did it go? "I, your
glass, will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself that you yet know
not of" Well, well! Pallas Athene, eh? Tell me about her. Greek myths, isn’t
she?
M A Greek miss in a Greek myth. It was she who was said to have
sprung fully armed from the head of Zeus. Steiner said she was the
female counterpart of Michael. So, she is the female aspect of cosmic
intelligence. I have a feeling about her which reminds me of the U.S.
Statue of Liberty. She loves men, but she doesn’t take any shit from
male dominance. She brings out the hidden strength in men whose
gentleness makes certain men appear weak.
L Joe.
M Yes, Joe. You’re the ideal sort of woman for Joe. You can reflect his
gentleness back to him so that he experiences your Aphrodite
sexuality and radiance. But with a man like Joe too much of that would
emphasise his weakness and passivity. He also needs the other aspect,
the Palladian quality, the lightning flashes which shock him into a more
assertive masculinity. You won’t turn Joe into a macho brute, he hasn’t
got it in him, but you should be able subtly to bring out in him a
courage which he would otherwise be too perceptive to risk.
L As you talk, I’m recognising both sides of this in myself. When I was
younger I may have been a bit of a soft touch sexually, but I don’t think I am
now. I may have played the field a bit, in fact I know I did, but I can look
after myself when I have to.
M Yes, but how?
L Well, I suppose more by avoidance than aggression.
M Why do you feel vulnerable to Paul, then?
L I suppose you’re right. There’s a side of me that knows I can’t altogether
avoid him.
M So long as you go on wanting to avoid him the vulnerability will
remain. It seems to me you need to find the strength of the Light-
power in you which is the equal of Paul’s desire to dominate and
control. For that you have to believe in it, and to find an adequate
reason for doing so.
L My love for Joe is a more than adequate reason for finding that strength.
But I don’t want to make Joe feel I am defending him from something.
M I don’t think you need fear any such thing. Joe has a quiet strength
all his own which comes from his deep belief in all we are doing. When
you discover you have an equal belief in that to Joe’s you will no longer
feel vulnerable to Paul. You have to stop being afraid Paul may be
right. But you don’t have to confront him alone. We will all be
strengthened by the very fact that he exists, and is likely to challenge
what we are doing.
L That’s just the point! What are we doing? It’s tempting at times to think
we’re not doing very much.
M And that’s precisely the effect people like Paul have on others,
making them feel ineffective. There’s a certain kind of initiative and
enterprise which takes no account of the actual way in which
processes evolve. Things have their own times and seasons. They’re
like plants. They don’t take kindly to being forced into the mould of
peoples’ short term intentions and desires, which is why so many
nursery-forced pot plants die off quickly and don’t stand being planted
out.
L Don’t you think you may be projecting onto Paul more insensitivity than
he really has?
M Now who’s defending him? You were the one whose hackles rose
when he was questioning what we were doing.
L At the same time I was initially very attracted. What was that? Just
pheromones?
M You know, my reaction to Paul is not really very different from
yours. I was quite aware of his attractions, though probably not as
strongly as you were. But I was also aware of his insecurity, and of how
he tackles it by taking control of situations.
L How did you leave it with him? Where did he ring from?
M Plymouth. He proposed coming up this weekend. I said I’d ring
back when I’d talked to the others to see if we’d be able to get
together. I said I was sure Fiona would like to meet him. I was friendly
without being all over him. I didn’t refer to you again.
L You’ve made me feel much stronger about the whole affair. If he rings
again, I’m not here. I don’t think he’s got my number at Chalk Farm. I want
it to be obvious Joe and I are together, and the best way to do that is if he
sees me first at the meeting.
M What shall I say if he asks for your number?
L Give it him. I’ll keep the answer-phone switched on. Let’s forget Paul for
the moment. I’ve got something more interesting to show you.
*****
M Oh Lu, that’s beautiful. Oh, that’s really lovely. Bring it to the light.
I can almost smell the flowers. Oh, and Joe’s menhir in the middle
ground. I love the way the people are walking towards it from the
town. I suppose you’ll reduce it to about A5 size won’t you for the
leaflets themselves?
L Or even smaller. It depends on the wording really. It depends whether we
just have the wording on the back, or whether we make it into a folder. What
do you think?
M It would be nice really if the wording was in a separate space from
the personal stuff, addresses and phone numbers, in which case we
could have the reading matter inside the folder and the hand written
stuff on the back. What about cost?
L I haven’t been into it yet. I imagine the initial cost will be quite steep. The
print run will depend on numbers.
M Oh, Lucia, I really think that is a very beautiful painting. You know,
it would make a beautiful greetings card. Would it enlarge to poster
size? We could defray some of the cost by selling cards and posters?
L Let’s discuss it tonight. We’re meeting at Fiona’s aren’t we?
M They’re going to love it, darling. I’m sure it strikes just the right
note. The flowers and greenery are alive and familiar. The town in the
background is what people want to redeem, and the menhir in the
middle is mysterious and challenging without being menacing. The
light on that man’s upturned face looks as if it’s coming from the
menhir itself.
L You don’t think it’s too sentimental?
M No. I think he looks intrigued and awestruck, but certainly not over-
eager or slavish. I like all the faces. You know, I don’t think the leaflet
should be too small. The menhir is very impressive. You don’t want to
lose that. I think A5 would be about the minimum.
L So we would print it on A4 and fold it.
M Right! Let’s get Richard to make some enquiries.
L What about the wording?
M I think the painting will stimulate people to come up with the right
words. Let’s wait till the meeting.
L I felt Ophromine very much present while I was painting it.
M In the foreground?
L No, I felt I was doing the flowers myself. It was more when I was doing
the menhir and the space round it. I was trying for a sort of vortical
movement there in the middle. Ophromine was inducing that in the last
meeting at Fiona’s.
M I’ve just noticed the butterfly. It looks as if it had emerged from the
green-blue-grey swirling round the menhir itself.
L It had. And look, I tried for an indication of others in the vortical swirling
mist.
M I didn’t recognise the butterfly. Is it any particular species?
L I think it must be, though it’s not one I know. Joe bought me a butterfly-
book for Garway. Those green, blue and silver colours are not very common
in a tiny butterfly like that, certainly not in Europe. I wonder if new species
will emerge in the new time?
M What does Ophromine think?
L Let’s ask him! Shall we? What do you think Ophromine?
M ¤ " I don’t think. It’s you who do the thinking".
L Don’t quibble, Ophromine. Form pictures and Melanie will try to put the
pictures into thinking.
M ¤ "Butterflies are pictures".
L I thought butterfies were insects.
M ¤ "They’re somewhat reluctant insects. The butterfly energy kills
the insect, burns it up."
L Doesn’t the insect resent that?
M ¤ "Insects don’t feel resentment, they just eat and grow.
Metamorphosis overcomes their eating and growing, which they resist
by skin-changes for as long as they can. Finally the process overcomes
them and they pupate. The light and heat form a sensitive surface into
which the butterfly picture can imprint itself. Then, with a final burst of
life the insect gives itself over entirely to a kind of flowering fruiting
process, which kills it. It starts to die the moment it emerges from the
chrysalis. Your friend Steiner says that the light-form carries the dying
insect round beneath it like a sort of suspended suitcase, which it
burns up and dessicates into dust."
L What a sacrifice. Poor caterpillars. There was a cartoon once of two
caterpillars sitting on a leaf and a butterfly goes by. One says to the other:-
"They’ll never get me up in one of those things".
M ¤ "If caterpillars could think instead of just eat themselves to death,
they might feel resentment. Merciful life gives them the ecstasy of self-
immolation instead".
L So butterflies are pictures. I just painted a butterfly Ophromine.
M ¤ "You are a creative girl, Lucia. But you have no access to the
insect kingdom".
L So my picture will never become a new species.
M ¤ "Who said so? There’s more than one way to skin a cat".
L "What vulgar analogies you use, Melanie! I never said that".
M What did you say then?
L ¤ "I don’t say things. I simply..."
M Oh, come off it, Ophromine! What picture did you form, then?
¤ "I formed a pcture of a changing world situation in which creative
impulses in humanity will find new ways to embody themselves in
incarnate reality".
L Ponderous, Ophromine, but I get the picture. I’ll go on painting and hope
for the best. Meanwhile, the object of this picture is to stimulate people to
ask questions about the I.T. school. We needn’t raise the question of Paul till
tonight, need we?
M No. Meanwhile I’m feeling sleepy. It must be all this
communicating. I wonder if I’m channelling Ophromine, or if I’ve
reached the point when we are side by side communicating in a free
and independent way.
L I think you are probably still allowing him a bit too much space in your
own aura. That’s maybe what’s making you sleepy. But you don’t slip out of
your body like I sometimes do. Have a bit of a sleep now and I’ll make a cup
of tea in half an hour. I’m really glad you like the picture.
M (Yawns) I think it’s a masterpiece. I feel drunk. G’night. Wake me
up soon.
******
Dialogue 2

M Hello Fiona. Boys not here yet?

F No. Richard rang. Usual story of having to meet a deadline for a
prompt-payment client. They should be here soon.
M We have news.
F Good or bad?
M Good! Two things, one beautiful and wonderful, the other
challenging.
L I would have said scary rather than challenging. But I’m coming round to
Melanie’s idea.
M Lucia, I do love you. I don’t push you too hard, do I?
F Come off it, you two. You’re both doing wonders for each other.
Let’s have the scary or challenging bit first. I know what it must be.
You’ve heard from this Paul chap again.
L He’s moved down to Plymouth with his job and started a group there. He
says its going like a bomb. To put it mildly, I have misgivings.
F Why?
L Well, simply he’ll be telling them all what to do. He’ll be describing a
personal version of I.T. picking a group with similar ideas of organising things
to his own, and getting them into high-powered movement. And I bet they
all adore him.
F Just as you very nearly do.
L Oh, Fiona, for heaven’s sake! All right, I’m conditioned to respond to
charisma wherever I find it. I’m not free of that yet, you’re right. But I do
begin to get the point. I’ve never been exactly naïve, but I’ve self-indulged in
the glamorous side of things and I’m paying for that. I’m enormously
privileged to have met you people. I feel I’m on my own path at last. And
that path certainly doesn’t include Paul and what he stands for.
F I think you may be over simplifying. I think he may well be on your
path in a certain sense. We don’t fall in love with people for nothing.
L Fiona, I am not in love with Paul! I was very attracted, but there’s a lot
about him I really hate and distrust. And then I met Joe, for whom I feel a
great tenderness and a sense of partnership, and a real feeling that there is
something important in life we have to do together.
F Are you in love with him?
L (Cries) Fiona, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to make things
more difficult for me? I need to have the strength to meet this encounter
with Paul, and I feel you’re undermining my efforts by...
F By what?
L Well...
F Darling, I want you to be strong in this every bit as much as you do.
You have a formidable strength which I need, which everybody in the
group needs. But we dare not watch you try to build that strength on a
falsehood, on a position of patched up insecurity. This is not simply a
matter of you and your path. Let’s look at how this actually came
about. I haven’t even met Paul yet, but he’s approaching me, just as
his path has approached the rest of you. I would very much like him to
meet me if possible in a clear situation. We have to consider Paul’s real
needs in this, just as we consider our own. You see, in a fundamental
sense, Paul is absolutely no threat whatever to any of us. The fact of
Paul falling in love with you is just as much on his path as it is on
yours, and, by extension therefore, on ours as well. Paul needs to
discover his real relationship to I.T. As it appears at the moment, you
are his most likely clue to this. As you’ve described it, he is at present
bulldozing away on a misconceived project, which may well draw
others into similar misconceptions. In the long term these can do no
harm to the reality of I.T. which we are beginning to understand, which
Meruel supports and embodies, and so on. Certainly Paul may cause
others to go a longer way round than seems necessary to us, just as
Paul himself does. But maybe they need this. Paul himself certainly
seems to need this path.
M Another thing is, some of his group, whatever it is, may come to
meet us as well. Paul can’t immunise people to other life experiences.
Nobody can, unless they choose to be isolated in circumstances others
suggest.
F Meruel seems to be wanting to suggest something.
L What’s he saying?
F "It seems a great part of the answer lies in your other bit of news".
M Oh, how silly of us! Show her, Lu.
*****
F Oh, Lucia, how wonderful! I feel the whole of what we’ve been
talking about has risen onto an altogether different level. That is really
absolutely beautiful. Don’t you see? I feel we’ve been implying that
something confrontational, on the level of arguments, polemics,
divisions among the people who meet us, including Paul, was about to
dominate our lives. And it isn’t like that at all. You, my darling, have
produced something which will make a direct impression on people
without a word of discussion being involved.
M There you are, Lu. On one level you already have inside you the
answer to what, on another level, throws you into confusion.
L Not the whole answer, Em. It needs words as well. I need words myself.
The picture itself is a kind of prayer for the right words to challenge people.
F I see much more than the right words emerging from this. There
will be other pictures and other words. This is the sort of thing that will
stimulate people to produce their own pictures, and others to offer
quite different words. Some people will want to make contact with
each other through initiatives of which we know nothing, people with
whom, on a karmic level, we have virtually nothing in common except
our humanity.
M We can only start from where we are, and others from where they
are.
F I was trying to say something of the sort to my two ‘Friday ladies’
last week. There was a moment when I felt reluctant to let them go. I
think there is every possibility I won’t meet them again, at least, not
until they have found themselves on another level than what I have
been able to introduce to them. Somehow we have to convey to people
that they are absolutely free, and that what happens to them is exactly
what needs to happen.
M "May the events that seek us..."
F Exactly! Here come the lads I think.
M I’ll let them in.
*****
L Hello darling. You look all gloomy. What’s up?
J We’re in a bit of trouble.
R The neighbours in the flat below have complained about our running a business in
the block. We’ve had a notice to quit.
M Oh, Richard! How long have you got?
R The notice says twenty-four hours but our lease gives us a month. They’ll take us to
court, which gives us a bit of time.
L Oh you poor dears. What a business. Melanie had just started to quote
Adam Bittleston’s prayer when you rang the doorbell. "May the events that
seek us come unto us".
J Yes. A quiet mind seems to be the appropriate response. I think we had this coming to
us all right.
F I have the feeling we five are no longer separate individuals in the
way we were a few months ago. Anything that happens to us
individually happens to us all.
R If that means Joe and I are now going to depend on you three for our fish and chips I
don’t agree at all.
M Male defensiveness doesn’t feel like a quiet mind to me, Richard.
The people who seek you are coming unto you as well. Your
understanding heart should tell you that. Our need for each other is
mutual. We are just as dependent on you as you are on us.
L In any case I feel this will be quite a temporary crisis. Why should a
particular door slam shut unless it is to draw attention to another one
opening?
F I suggest that for the time being we simply pool our resources. It
may turn out that we want to make that a permanent arrangement. In
any case none of us is exactly on the street.
J I suppose I’m the one with most need to think about accommodation. Lu and I spend a
lot of time in her big room, don’t we love? But there isn’t really room for us both. I
haven’t moved much of my stuff in there. I’m a bit of a jackdaw when it comes to
personal bits and pieces. I shall need another room.
L We’ll start looking straight away, won’t we dear? For all I know there may
be an empty room in my building. I don’t know what goes on upstairs. I’ve
seen a couple come and go once or twice, but not recently.
F The third verse about spirits and a clear soul seems to offer the
next clue. What is this event saying about where we are on the I.T.
path?
J It’s saying something about commitment, isn’t it? It seems to be suggesting that at a
certain stage I.T either becomes a full-time job, or it is likely to fall apart.
R Joe and I have been getting uncomfortable about this business of ours for some
time. It’s not really what we feel we should be doing. If we stopped tomorrow no one in
the trade would miss us There are plenty of other people our clients could call on. Apart
from a minor inconvenience for a few people we would disappear without trace.
F Are there any debts?
R Nothing our savings wouldn’t cover, and nothing immediate. We should still have two
thousand or so in the bank.
J We’ve got a bit of breathing space. I think the beings are challenging us to take
another step in I.T., almost calling our bluff. "How serious are you about this?" Meruel is
saying. "Are you going to go on relying on conventional sources of income, or are you
prepared to put your entire weight on us, which means on your own higher selves?"
R Is that what you are, Meruel? Are you simply a synthesis of our own joint spiritual
beings, projected into a common space and given a name?
J "I am that, and also more than that. Just as you are also mineral, plant and animal, as
well as human, so I am also all those things and also human angelic and archangelic. I
rest on your higher and angelic selves just as you rest on the nature kingdoms. In the
same way as much of your behaviour is purely animal, so much of mine is purely angelic
and human. Without you I wouldn’t be properly earthed. I am an Earth being just as you
are. I am an Intraterrestrial like you. I don’t have an individualised physical body, but I
do have an individualised angelic body, made up of a number of angels, and higher
human selves.
M What does that mean? Is our body made up of our five higher
selves and our angels?
J "You five are the main part of my incarnated self at the moment, but there are others
you don’t know about yet. The big difference between you and me is that my component
organs are self-aware, that is to say, you, and your higher angelic selves. Your component
parts are aware in an animal sense and a plant sense and a mineral sense, but not yet
aware of themselves as components of something higher".
F What has this got to do with the next stage in what we are calling
the I.T. work?
J "This awareness is crucial to it. You will soon be meeting many other people who
your activities are nudging into self-awareness and group-awareness, people who are not
linked to me at all, but to other entities like me. Now, some of these entities are more
self-aware than others, just as some humans are. Some humans, indeed many, live almost
entirely on the animal level. So you have to understand that some archangels live an
almost entirely human existence. Some archangels rise to an angelic level of life, where
they animate humans who live lives of isolated power, controlling themselves and others.
But some are like me, finding their way to groups of people who are intuitive enough to
become self-aware as a group. I long for a time when your lives are so integrated that you
start to recognise other groups like your own. This will enable me to meet other
archangels like myself who are awakening into the Earth in a self-aware way".
L What happens to archangels who don’t rise above a purely human
existence?
F "They are the animating spirits of all the people who organise
themselves into groups and live in a group awareness. Nations,
political parties, groupies of every kind, all the people who only sense
their identity in what they belong to."
L So there are no human beings without an archangel of some sort?
J ""Here again the analogies apply all the way up the ladder of existence. There are no
animals without some sort of dependence on plants, though some are separated by
millions of years from active involvement with them. There are plants whose
involvement with animal processes are extremely tenuous, but which could become
extinct if all animal life disappeared. Other plants are symbiotic in a direct way with
animals throughout their existence, as food, as environment, or even closer. Animals
relate to humans as food, as clothing, as zodiacal categories, as expressions of unresolved
passions and emotions, as companions in the expression of tribal identity, as intimates in
magical practice. And so to humans, who relate to angels on the path to self-awareness
and awakening into conscious identity. That identity attained, your angelic selves reach
archangelic levels in karmic association on group paths to spiritual awareness and
initiation. But if that awareness is not yet reached, you become subject to archangels on
the level of corporate, tribal identity as members of subject groups. You literally become
the food of such dominant archangels, represented as eagles lions bulls or man-angels,
controlled by them as hordes, mobs, armies, churches, sects, cloned on a sub-individual
level as part of your training and testing in self-development. In these cases it is not just
you humans who fail to reach your full spiritual potential. The archangel too is on a lower
rung of its developmental ladder. It too is struggling in partial darkness, its karma only
partially resolved, just as you struggle when you dominate and exploit and abuse the
lower kingdoms."
R Returning to your own existence, Meruel, I understand from this that you are not just
the result of our naming you, you are already in existence before that.
J "Already in existence, but not fully aware. When you form thoughts about me I awake
in you, just as the animal activities of your own brain and blood and liver are vehicles for
your human awareness, and ultimately for your self-awareness. Your thoughts are the
expression of my awareness. The thoughts of your higher being raises this awareness to
self-awareness in me, and the capacity to communicate with others of my kind as an
embodied Intraterrestrial being."
F And this is how you teach us to follow this path?
J "Indeed. This is the further development of what induced you to arrive at the concept
of an Intraterrestrial school. I sense that Joe is getting sleepy. Let him off the hook for a
bit. You need to learn a better balance, so that all aspects of my being, represented in you
five human beings, get an even chance of expression. I’ll leave you now for a bit." I’m
cold.
F Here, sit by the fire, Joe. We need to become rather rapidly more
aware of each other on a practical level. Melanie, there’s a rug over my
chair in the bedroom; do you mind fetching it darling? Room on the left
at the top of the stairs.
R I’m getting a feeling that we simply don’t know enough to handle these energies.
We’re like kids playing about with a sophisticated machine. They press buttons on a trial
and error basis without knowing the risks they run.
F On that level children are unprotected because the adults who
invented the machine and are in charge of the children are
irresponsible. We are not at the same kind of risk., because the beings
awakening through us are doing so directly through our own activity.
We are consciously present at each stage, and so are they.
R How do we know that? If that were so Joe wouldn’t have lost touch with his body just
now.
L The same thing happened to Melanie this morning when we were talking
to Ophromine. She slept for nearly an hour.
F Protection doesn’t mean that the beings need to swaddle us in
cotton-wool all the time. There’s a dangerous side to all activities
which stretch us beyond the habitual. We need to take sensible
precautions, that’s all.
R I think we’re getting into areas where we no longer know what sensible precautions
are.
M Here’s the rug, Joe. Let me sit by you. I want to put the palm of my
right hand at the back of your neck. And here, let me hold you left
hand.
J I’ve got quite a headache and that’s making it worse.
M I think it will get a little worse at first. Relax and let it flow out of
your head and down my arm. Breathe more deeply and allow the pain
to flow.
J Your hand feels extremely hot. It’s almost burning me.
M It’s not my hand itself. To me it feels cold, because your head’s
cold. There, now it’s warming up a bit.
J And the headache’s going.
F Let him lie on the floor.
R Do we really have to go through all this palaver every time the beings want to speak
to us?
F No, of course we don’t once we learn the lessons which the palaver,
as you call it, is teaching us. Here’s Melanie, for instance, beginning to
realise why she had to go through the Reiki experience.
R But don’t you feel we must be going about this process of making contact with the
Intraterrestrial beings the wrong way? Each time we hve one of these episodes one or
other of us seems to go into an altered state, loses touch with their normal
consciousness. First it was Lucia going partly out of her body. Then Melanie, and now
Joe.
F Richard, there isn’t a single human activity in which extension
beyond the habitual isn’t accompanied by tension and strain. If you
want to take another one-tenth of a second off a hundred metre sprint
you have to accustom your muscles to a painful degree of effort. Our
organisms are entirely unaccustomed to the kind of activity we have
been involving them in, in I.T. We’re out on the frontier of human
development, into entirely new experiences, some of which humanity
has literally never encountered before, certainly not at this level of
awareness. You have a special function in this group to do with the
clarification of knowledge in the quietness of pure thought. But the
route we are following towards that goal is bound at first to be a
confused one. We need you to clarify these things. But meanwhile
others need to take risks.
R I’m scared of the loss of control.
F Yes, I know you are. It seems to me that exact thinking usually
carries an element of fear. Exactitude exacts a price, if you’ll excuse
the pun! The results is often dogmatism, rigidity. Fanatics are afraid of
being wrong.
R How do I get beyond that?
F I can remember moments when I was aware of you finding release
from that sort of rigidity in a very characteristic way. An idea took hold
of you, and it was as if you were riding a wild horse. You felt the beast
between your knees, and the horse had the bit between its teeth, and
you were away! That’s the other face, both of fanaticism, and also of
scientific genius.
R I don’t think that happens very often.
J Oh yes it does, Richard. In minor ways it happens quite often at work, in fact
whenever you have an awkward problem in a drawing, for example, and suddenly you
see how to get it right.
R What occasion were you thinking of, Fiona?
F I was thinking of the glint in your eye when you suddenly realised
Joe was an alchemist.
M Yes! And do you realise that was just before we first became aware
of the entity we afterwards knew as Ophromine. I had a sense of
danger, if you remember.
F Intellectuality always seems to have a link with the elemental
world, both the rigidity and the wild release from it. Steiner calls it the
realm of the Ahrimanic. It both arouses fear and the desire to control.
Left to itself it grows into a closed system where chaos and power are
linked in a rigid embrace into which no warmth penetrates.
R And yet it has its own dark light which fascinates people like me. It’s the realm of
inventive mechanical genius, the world where television and computers were born.
M And because it’s all on the surface it has a deceptive innocence. It
appears to be free of emotional problems, a nuts-and-bolts world
where simple male souls can get away from the wiles of us women.
R It’s not the wiles of women men want to get away from it’s their sleek complacency.
M Oh come on, Richard!
R Yes it is! Men love the wiles of sophisticated women. What they can’t stand is the
domesticated pussy-cats who think all they have to do is to smile and purr and smooth
the warrior’s furrowed brow and solve all the stupid male problems.
J I think this conversation’s falling apart. Not up to our usual standard at all.
R You’re very silent, Lucia.
L Well actually I’m bored rigid if you want to know.
R What’s going on?
L ¤ "I’m what’s going on."
F I think it’s our friend Ophromine again.
L ¤ "You people have got a hell of a long way to go yet in what you call the
I.T. school. You’re still at the stage when I can usually twist the lot of you
round my little finger. So long as you stay on the heights where you can
open doors for Meruel and beings of his sort of class, you’re doing fine. But
down here in the shitty world you’re all over the place. And I’m telling you
straight, beings like me don’t thank you for it either. There are thousands of
us down here who’ve been hanging about for millennia, literally imprisoned in
matter, waiting for you lot to get your act together. And you still faff about
most of the time like dreamy wambly kids not knowing your tit from your
ass, as if you’d got all the time in the world. Your whole Earth existence is
coming apart at the seams, and a lot of the time you’re still playing
intellectual games with it all. It may not seem like it when I talk like this, but
beings like me love you humans very much. You’re like gods to us. We
rejoice with your joys and weep with your sorrows. But a lot of the time you
drive us bloody mad. You’re so bloody feeble."
R Well! What a carry-on! What set him off?
L I wish you wouldn’t call Ophromine ‘him’. It was my energy it was using.
R All right then, ‘it’. Seems a bit impersonal still.
L ¤ "Well, we’re not personal. It’s you humans who introduced the
personality factor, and that’s half the problem. Sexual polarisation is a
wonderful instrument for you, but you have to transcend it. Failure to do so
leads to fiascos like you got into just now. The level on which you are
beginning to achieve a common identity in Meruel is actually beyond
personality. What you now have to do is achieve a comparable lucidity down
here in the elemental world, the actual Earth. That’s a much more difficult
problem for you, because you’re working in the dark, especially the men.
That’s why we tend to favour women to work through. A streetwise dame like
Lucia is a sort of natural element for us. Still more so when she melds with a
quiet underground worker like Joe to feed her with new perceptions.
Incidentally, I apologise for blowing my top just now and I’ve a suggestion
you might like to consider."
F I think we’re in the sort of chastened mood, thanks to you, when we
could do with a bit of help for our next step.
L ¤ "Why don’t you have a sort of formal session in which Richard talks to
you about crop-circles and Joe supports him with his knowledge of the
stones? I’ll put in a word or two now and then and boost what Richard comes
up with. Al this has a lot more to do with your work than you think, and it’s
been hanging fire for some weeks now. You couldn’t have done it earlier, but
I think you’ll find your latest insights through Meruel have given you a new
ability to work together. Why don’t you try that?"
J What did you mean just now, Ophromine, when you said something about being
imprisoned in matter for thousands of years? You implied that this was somehow our
fault did you? Something we’d done, or failed to do?
L ¤ "You’ve no idea, Joe, what an extraordinary event this conversation is.
Roc in Edinburgh and others at Findhorn achieved a tremendous
breakthrough in communicating with us, but communication between your
kingdom and ours on this sort of level is actually still a matter of
extraordinary difficulty. Look, Joe, would you mind swapping places for a bit?
This is not very good for Lucia. I have to translate everything into a sort of
foreign language. It puts Lucia under a lot of strain. We don’t want her losing
consciousness again."
F I can see what the paradox is, Joe. Lucia’s a natural medium at a
time of spiritual awakening when mediumism is becoming less and less
appropriate. By letting Lucia take the strain of Ophromine we’re taking
too easy an option.
R But how can we control what happens? These beings just suddenly appear in our
minds, and away we go. It’s like water breaking through a dyke. It takes the path of least
resistance.
F Ophromine itself pointed the way.
R How?
F Meruel. By opening our understanding to our actual relationship
with beings of a higher, that is, more comprehensive awareness we are
becoming a conscious bridge between their world and the world of the
elements of which we stand.
J "That’s better. Now you’re forming thoughts with which I can link. We have been
waiting for thousands of years for you to realise that your abstract intellectual thinking
has nothing to do with reality as such. It is an essential exercise by which you have
acquired freedom of operation in the natural world, but you have acquired it at our
expense."
R How is that?
J "Because it is we who hold the natural world together as an ongoing spiritual process.
When you form abstract thoughts about it, it is as though you suck the living juice out of
it for your own purposes, so freeing your own action in it. What is left is a sort of dry
husk of reality in which we are imprisoned like caricatures of ourselves. You hand us
over to mighty dark beings, what Steiner called Ahrimanic entities, who set us in a kind
of spiritual concrete. We can do nothing but wait, until you use the freedom you have
acquired to think live thoughts in this concrete world and so restore its blood-flow. You
are beginning to do this with your realisation of what you call Gaia, the Earth as a living
organism, because you are a part of that. But it’s a painfully slow process, and it isn’t
made easier by all the half-baked idiots who want to repudiate the freedom you have so
painfully acquired for yourselves and us, and sink back into a sort of soupy nirvana
dream. It’s as if they deny that Kali-Yuga ever existed or needed to happen.
R What’s Kali-Yuga?
J "Go on, tell him, Fiona. I’m worn out. But thank you everyone. We’re making
progress. Thank you especially, Lucia. You opened the channel for the others. But we
have to get beyond channels."
F You see? Ophromine’s right. None of us can do this work alone. We
have to work as a team, a common consciousness. We have to be a
cell, an organism in which Meruel can also find himself. Herself. Damn
these pronouns. I think it’s time we stopped this session. We need to
breathe out a bit. It’s been quite a struggle, hasn’t it? Would it be a
good idea if we centred ourselves round Joe’s pillar, lit a candle, and let
Richard see Lucia’s picture. You haven’t seen it, have you dear? And
somebody put some music on. Something nourishing like Mozart or
Bach. I can’t stand that featureless discarnating new-age stuff.
M It isn’t meant for you love. They write it for people who’ve worked
in factories and offices all day, breathing petrol fumes and tapping
computers.
F O.K. I’m an old-fashioned square. But I do appreciate you people.
You’ve brought new life into my old one.
M And you’re a wonderful healer, Fiona. You bring everything back
into a peaceful centre, like Gray’s Elegy. You have a closing day quality
like late afternoon sunlight!
F I don’t propose to draw the curtains on my life yet, Melanie. But I
appreciate what you’re telling me. Oh, listen! The slow movement of
Bach’s Double Violin Concerto. Just what I needed! Thanks Richard.
*****

Dialogue 3
L I ‘d been wondering whether we’d ever get to use this room for I.T. work
after all. And now here we all are, and we’ve turned it into a kind of lecture-
room. I don’t know whether I like it.
J Well, it is a bit of a barn now that you and I have gone all domestic. I think we’ll find
ourselves mainly living upstairs, don’t you love?
L We haven’t told you have we? It turned out there’s a whole empty flat on
the first floor, two rooms and a bathroom-cum-toilet.
M And it was empty?
L Seems the couple living there moved out a few weeks ago. I thought I
hadn’t seen them recently. The owner’s been away and hadn’t got round to
advertising it.
F Can you afford to have both?
J Well, it’ll be a bit tight. We shall have to see.
F Maybe this is where the pooled resources come in.
R I wonder whether this is the right moment to launch out into a new project in London
when we’re still thinking about Garway.
M What’s in your mind Richard?
R I was thinking that we’re right in the middle of the summer. Everybody’s out of town.
It’s certainly not the right time to draw people together for indoor activities. But it might
be the right time to think about being in the country for a bit if we decide to go ahead with
Garway.
L What are you suggesting?
R Well, have you actually taken the flat upstairs?
L Not yet.
R Why don’t you move in there? I’ll help Joe move all his clobber from the office. Would
you consider risking giving this room up till the autumn when we see how things are
going at Garway? It might still be empty.
F We’re somewhat at the parting of the ways, aren’t we?
R More than somewhat. As I see it we have to make a definite decision.
J I wonder if there’s really room for all my stuff up there.
L I was thinking we’d still cook down here, and meet here. We could use
one of the rooms upstairs as a bedroom and the other for Joe’s stuff. Then
my painting and clay and so on could be down here.
J Let’s ask the landlord if he’d treat the three rooms as a single let….see what the rent is
before we decide.
R Meanwhile the timing of Garway is really up to Fiona.
F The old lady’s taken all her things now. The place is empty.
Nominally as you know it’s a furnished let. But it’s pretty sparse. We’d
be camping out really till we’ve decorated and refurnished it. They’re
aren’t even enough beds for us all.
M I can’t help feeling there’s a missing factor somewhere. You know
what Meruel said about the group being somehow incomplete. I believe
we’re waiting for some people we don’t even know about yet.
R I think we should drop the subject for the time being. Why don’t I show you some of
these crop-circle slides, and let you ask me and Joe questions? That may introduce
some more factors into our thoughts. We’re like people doing a jigsaw puzzle with too
few pieces on the board.
L Shall I draw the curtains? Actually it’s almost dark enough to see the
screen without them.
M It would make it cosier, Lu. Is everybody warm enough?
F Plenty warm enough I think. It’s been such a hot day.
R Don’t trip over the lead, Fiona. Could you switch on, Joe? We got this fixed up
earlier.
L Did you take these photographs, Richard?
R Lord no. These are aerial photographs, copies of some of Busty’s slides. Busty
Taylor’s been one of our principal aerial photographers. At first he was the only one.
He’s done some wonderful work. This is a selection of some of the most spectacular
forms, spanning several seasons. I won’t give you details of dates, just show you the
pictures. This is a good one to start with, Barbury Castle, one of the most spectacular
we’ve ever seen.
*****
M Richard, are you telling us in all seriousness that that is a natural
phenomenon?
R I am, Melanie, yes.
M I simply don’t know how to react to it.
R What do you mean?
M Well, here we are sitting round in Lucia’s room as if this was an
ordinary slide-show, and you calmly show us something which in
ordinary human terms is totally unbelievable...why aren’t we all madly
rushing round the room in screaming excitement? Or are we all just
sitting here stunned like me?
R Well, first of all, are you telling me you haven’t ever seen a picture of this Barbury
Castle form before?
M I am, yes. And I don’t know how to live with it in my world. It has a
total impact on what I am sensitised to, on what I am geared to
respond to. I am a namer, Richard, and there is no name for this thing.
F I think we have to accept, Melanie, that human beings have very
nearly lost their capacity to react to the phenomena of the world with
wonder and astonishment. We have turned the entire experience of
our daily lives into science-fiction, a story somebody made up. The
easiest thing to do with a thing like this is to say it must be a television
spectacular by Stephen Spielberg or somebody like him, and dismiss it.
R What rather surprises me is that you haven’t already seen pictures of it somewhere.
Actually it’s been all over the place in the last year or two, magazine covers, T-shirts,
posters. I’ve even seen Barbury Castle earrings. It’s much better known than the
earthwork on the hill above which gave it its name.
L And did you actually see it yourself, Richard? I feel rather as if I were ‘one
of three’ asking the Ancient Mariner if he really saw the albatross, or if he
made it all up to gain attention and the price of a beer.
R Yes, I saw it. I walked round it with a few dozen others within a week of its formation.
How about the rest of you? Have you seen it before, Lucia?
L I’ve seen it with others in passing, mainly in bookshops. But Fiona’s right.
There are no miracles anymore. If they happen they’re quickly drowned in a
sea of minor technical wonders in department stores, so that they look like
all the other things we’ve become immune to.
R What about you, Joe?
J I’ve heard you talk a bit, and picked up one or two of the books, Colin Andrews and
others, and looked through them. I know I ought to be reacting. But there’s too much
going on, isn’t there? One’s almost bound to put up a wall of resistance. Our world’s
falling apart but we tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later.
M But wait a minute, wait a minute, Richard! Are we really going to
damp down our sense of urgency over a thing like this that fast? Are
we I.T. promoters just as bloody dull and stupid as the rest of zombie
humanity? Can’t we keep an edge of wonder sharpened for just five
minutes, or are we condemned just to rationalise it away with all the
other ersatz rubbish our minds are filled with? You actually saw the
thing, Richard, you walked in it, smelt the wheatfield, looked at…
M ...other people’s faces. What was it like, for God’s sake?
R Well, you’ve made the point yourself. People were stunned. They didn’t quite believe
it. But they didn’t quite reject it either. There was already by then a good deal of
polarisation into sceptics and believers. People were stumbling around nailing anybody
who was prepared to hold forth and do their thinking for them. "What do you think’s
behind it all?" was the commonest question you heard. Very few people were really
allowing themselves to experience anything direct. People always drug themselves
against actual experience by demanding immediate potted explanations. It was a great
temptation to react to this and to air one’s theories in a rather unconsidered way. I did it
myself, even to journalists sometimes on the spot. Very unwise! Not that they ever
printed anything which didn’t conform to editorial policy, most of it sceptical. But it
doesn’t help the process of refining one’s own understanding if one yields to people’s
demands for explanation, and to realise too late that they are really after a handle to
facilitate their own desire to rubbish it all. I gradually learned to keep my mouth shut.
M I’m still stunned. And just by that one picture. I don’t really want to
see any more slides, Richard, at least not yet. I can’t really believe that
you have had all that in your mind all the time we’ve known each other
and never said anything about it. After all, we’re not exactly strangers.
R Be fair, love. You didn’t want to know, did you?
M I suppose I wasn’t ready. Joe, you’re not saying much, love. What
do you think?
J I also think we weren’t ready for this before. I think it’s a very wonderful and
miraculous thing that we have come so close together before we allowed this particular
sharing to happen. We’re going to need the perspective of what we call "the beings" if we
are to take this crop-circle experience on board without being thrown off course by it.
I’ve already begun to suspect something in this formation I hadn’t at all expected to see.
In fact I couldn’t have seen it if Lucia and I hadn’t already done some work on the
menhirs. Do you see what I’m referring to, Lucia?
L I think I do. I’m not sure. I’m so overwhelmed by this form I want to start
painting it, sculpting it, dancing in it, anything! I need to lose myself in the
experience to stop the pain of being separate from it. It has a quality of
instantaneous, overwhelming meaningfulness that is too strong, so violent
it’s almost like an insult to one’s capacity for experiencing it. It’s beyond
words, isn’t it? No wonder so many people believe they’re nothing but a kind
of trick, a hoax.
R One of the books refers to a cartoon in an early issue of the magazine "Punch", in
which an old farmer surrounded by kids is paying a first visit to the Zoo. They take him
into the giraffe enclosure, and there he stands with his mouth open. Finally he blurts
out:- "There ain’t no such animal!"
J It doesn’t appear at first as if we could make any connection between this and any of
our other experience. That’s why so many people feel obliged to lump it in with S.F.
Science fiction is the only mythology into which it seems to fit. It’s like the solitary
flower blossoming in the giant spaceship in Arthur. C. Clarke’s "Rendezvous with
Rama". It bursts into your reality and touches your direct soul experience, but out of a
completely alien world.
F Imagine what it would be like if we ourselves were S.F. aliens
landing on the Earth, and we saw a flower for the first time, or a
butterfly, or a sunset. We’ve lost the childhood immediacy of
experience. Perhaps that’s all these crop-circles are, projections of our
unconscious minds into nature, in an attempt to reawaken our dying
consciousness.
L What did you mean Joe darling when you said just now there was
something you hadn’t expected to see?
J I hadn’t expected to see cosmic intelligence, as I’ve learned to experience it in
anthroposophy, directly represented in the form in such an obvious way.
R Explain.
J Well, it’s those three vortical forms at the points of the main triangle. They’re all
completely different versions of a circular vortex. None of them could have been inferred
from the others. Think of the Trinity, or the three monkeys, blind, deaf and dumb!
Symmetrical figures like simple circles or rings are immaculate, transcendental. Even
pairs of things simply confront each other, cancel each other out. But trinities raise our
awareness. Three is the first number that demands description and analysis. Its three
members do not mutually imply each other. Pairs of opposites can remain irrevocably
alien, like Lucifer and Ahriman, or they can relate. A third element which harmonises,
reconciles, or holds the ring, is not inevitable. It raises the question of freedom,
alternative possibilities.
R Good grief! Now stop waffling Joe and say what you mean.
J Just look at those three figures, Richard, all of you. I’m really looking at them for the
first time. You’re familiar with them. Look at that first one, a simple circle. It’s like a
spinning disc on top of a needle. I feel it is spinning there at infinite speed, and at the
same time totally still. It’s like thought.
L "The still point of the turning world".
J That’s it. And then the second one, with its six double curved spokes. It’s like the
governor on an old-fashioned reaping machine. The spokes have bit of spring in them, so
that on a hot day they won’t expand and split the iron rim. It’s a circle that can breathe
and control the rhythm of the system which it monitors. It’s like feeling, like our own
rhythmic system. But it’s the third one which really astonishes me. Look at it, Richard,
homing in on its centre in a series of six distinct steps. It’s like a gimlet or a corkscrew. It
screws its way into the centre like an act of rhythmic will. You’ve got a vivid picture
there of our threefold soul system, mind heart and will. Too fanciful? I don’t think so.
And what does that third one remind you of, Lucia?
L Well it’s obvious what you mean, now you point it out. It’s the path of
initiation at your menhir spiral in Brittany, or the paired thorn-trees on
Dartmoor. It’s the relation of the will to the initiatory path. One step at a
time. Is the blemish in the Goh Menhir represented?
J I don’t think it’s necessary. When you have mind initiation, feeling initiation and will
initiation all represented in one form they heal each other, keep each other in balance.
You can represent a virtual reality, a reality in the making, without pre-empting and
threatening the whole course of creation. I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I’m
not exactly waffling, but I’m improvising on an intuitive level. I’ll stop.
R What about you, Fiona?
F I didn’t want to have to comment, At least not so soon. You know,
the whole way in which we have learned to use our senses when we
are awake is like a continuous steady blasphemy. I’m not getting at
you, Richard. We five are close enough not to violate each other’s
sense of wonder when we share experiences. But we still feel
embarrassed when we have to confess that we are totally
overwhelmed by something. We don’t know any longer how to allow
each other the privacy of worship, or private prayer.
M Isn’t that what we are in process of transcending., Fiona, when we
allow ourselves to accept that Meruel is real, when we let ourselves
feel a common identity, a shared privacy?
F Does anyone remember their first communion?
L I had a Catholic childhood,. I knew other kids, some of them were
experiencing something. But my parents had stopped believing, so I couldn’t
really either.
R This is the real problem about crop-circles. A lot of people feel they ought to be
taking their shoes off, falling on their knees, or contacting what they call "circle makers".
But the thing confronts them in a wholly secular setting, which is quite disorienting. You
become aware of a temple atmosphere, but most people don’t know how to behave in a
temple. So they either behave like tourists in a cathedral, or they try to respond with
some acquired ‘new age’ ritual, beating drums or intoning ‘oms’, embarrassing
themselves or each other, and exciting the hilarity of sceptics.
M I’m still a bit shattered Richard, that you managed to keep all this
to yourself while we were all going through the I.T experience together,
and while you and I were coming together in a new way.
R I actually refused to think about it Melanie. For me it was a step too far. I felt I needed
more time, coming into a common experience with you all, to assimilate the changes in
myself. You know, this knowledge path of mine is probably more separative than the
very different paths of experience you others are on. I have more potential for scepticism
than any of you. But I have just as much longing for integration, and for belief in my own
experiences.
J Would you say Ophromine was more confrontational for you than Meruel?
R I would, yes.
L Catholics would say all this is the work of the devil.
J So would fundamentalists; in fact they would be more violent about it.
L Fiona, you and I have a clue to all this. When we first met, you
remember? I was fighting off what I called the C-word. I had a feeling that
the very pronouncing of the name was blasphemous in our time. Somehow
our capacity for wonder and reverence has to be restored before we can
allow ourselves to approach the C-reality, to pronounce the name of our own
true being.
J That’s why reality is approaching us from these two diametrically opposite directions.
Steiner called them Luciferic and Ahrimanic. It’s not that Meruel and Ophromine are the
work of the devil. It’s rather that we, having lost our capacity for wonder and reverence,
being unable, we think, to identify with the CHRIST, push Meruel towards Lucifer, and
Ophromine towards Ahriman. Do you remember Ophromine declaring he was morally
helpless, unable to choose allegiance to CHRIST, or to Pan, without our initiative?
F By the same token, our common identity expressed in Meruel
would be a Luciferic blind-alley unless we achieve the common ground
between our inner and our outer experiences.
R This is why Christians of all complexions tell us to leave all this stuff alone. It’s true
that if it doesn’t reach the reality of the CHRIST, new-age spirituality becomes "the work
of the devil". And what is the work of the devil? It is to keep Meruel and Ophromine from
meeting!
J To keep all polarities from meeting. To keep the future and the past from meeting. To
keep crop-circles from meeting stone-age temples. To keep feminists from meeting the
Sun-god.
F To keep Lucia from meeting Paul.
L Joe, I love you. But I do need to meet my alter-ego.
J Yes I know.
M But, central to it all, the work of the devil is to prevent Christians
from recognising the CHRIST. As humanity awakens, it is Christians
more than anyone else who fight tooth and nail to remain asleep in
their Christian dream while the CHRIST batters at their door.
F He warned them. "As a thief in the night", he said he would come.
While they were asleep. Asleep in their preconceptions.
*****
L Let’s stop Christian-bashing and put the kettle on. There’s the phone.
Could you answer it someone?
R Hello. Who? Oh, Paul. Hello! How did you find me? That must have been the
caretaker. Yes, this is Lucia’s flat, we’re in the middle of a meeting. When was that?
Only yesterday. Centred where? How absolutely incredible. Yes of course we must see
it. Where are you ringing from? So you’re all staying in Devizes? No, I don’t think I can
come today. I shall have to discuss it with the others. Hang on. Can I ring you back?
O.K. I’ll ring in about five minutes. Don’t go away. Yes, I’ve written that down. (Repeats
the number) Yes, O.K. as soon as I can. Bye. Well that was Paul, as I suppose you
gathered. He’s got his whole group at Devizes in the middle of crop-circle territory.
There’s been an unbelievably enormous crop formation completely surrounding the
whole area, miles across apparently. He was a bit incoherent. Virtually the whole croppie
community seems to be there. He wanted me to go straight down. I said I’d ring back.
M Why don’t we all go?
F I’m not sure I’m up to it. Unless we go on from there to Garway. It’s
a bit late in the day. We might go tomorrow.
M That would give us time to get some sleeping bags and provisions
together if we go on to Garway.
F There are three beds in the house. I could stay at the guest-house.
I’d offer to entertain you all again, but I’m a bit short at the end of the
month.
M We’d manage perfectly well. How do you feel you two?
L Shocked. But actually fine, don’t we, Joe?
J Yes. I think the beings are looking after the situation in beautiful style. It’s an
objective cosmic scenario to lift us out of the personal a little way. Couldn’t be better.
R I’ll ring him back, then, shall I? If we start early we could get down there by about
eleven tomorrow. All right, Fiona?
F Yes, I can manage that.
R I’ll tell him.
L Come and get your tea. I’ve made some flap-jacks and a cake.
J Are you feeling nervous, love?
L Yes very. We’ve built up this Paul business into quite an unreality I think.
It will all turn out quite differently from what we expect, I’m sure. Not very
fair on him really.
J Or on ourselves. He’ll be far too involved with this event and his group to bother
about us, at least at first. What did he say, Richard?
R We’re to meet him and the group at eleven. I know the café he means.
M That’s fine. Now we can relax. Have a flap-jack, darling. They’re
delicious.
J Did he say any more about this crop-circle breakthrough?
R If I got it straight it appears there are fifteen or sixteen formations completely
surrounding the Avebury area, formations which themselves form a circle. It must be
several miles across, at least two or even three miles apparently. It’s too soon for
anyone to have done a map. I asked where the centre was, but they don’t even know
that yet, or whether it’s an accurate circle. They’re all a bit stunned, obviously.
M I’m not surprised! It must be quite a boost to the sceptics who say
people are doing it all. Would that be a possible explanation?
R Whenever a spectacular new formation appears the whole polemic between
believers and sceptics surfaces again. This is clearly a completely new departure. But so
was Barbury Castle, and before that the Alton Barnes series. Every step has been a
breakthrough.
M But would it be physically possible for human beings to carry out
such an undertaking?
R It would be a colossal logistic exercise, an impossible one for untrained amateurs.
There seems to be some evidence that a group of people, perhaps more than one
group, have trained themselves very intensively to do just that, for several years now.
The difficulty is not so much the organisation, it’s the secrecy. The more complex and
extended the form the more the likelihood of someone spotting something. Nearly all the
forms have been demonstrably overnight operations during the early hours of the
morning.
L But what on earth would the motives of such people be?
R Well, that isn’t a simple question either, Lucia. A lot of illusionism starts as a kind of
student prank. There is a huge fascination for some people in doing something
everybody says is impossible. And of course the whole path of technology partly
depends on that. And there is the other side of the coin too. In a world where science
claims there is a mechanical explanation for everything, even life itself, people develop a
lust for being mystified, a longing for the nouminous. Some psychologists claim that all
spiritual belief is based on that simple reaction, even belief in God. If he hadn’t existed,
someone said, somebody would have had to invent him.
L Yes of course. The huge popularity of conjurers. Now all the classical
conjuring tricks can be bought in sets for children’s parties, you have
practitioners of the impossible on T.V., like the American David Copperfield.
R The object, at least some people’s motive, is to perform the impossible and then to
demonstrate that it is not impossible after all, but actually quite simple if you learn the
rules. You ensure their continued fascination by doing ever more impossible things, but
in circumstances which make people believe you know how to do them. The final secrets
are never revealed.
L Then it’s all a game!
R They would like you to think that. But there is a serious motive behind the game.
There are people who seriously want to undermine peoples’ belief that there is an actual
supersensible reality.
L Why?
R First of all because they want to exercise ultimate control of the world. They couldn’t
hope to do that if they believed there were mysterious supersensible realities, and they
don’t. On the other hand they don’t want to destroy all peoples’ hope for better things,
because they need to control that too. They don’t want a world of zombies to master.
What they do is, they inculcate a belief that the system always wins. They portray heroic
souls standing alone against the system, and then show them defeated, but without ever
finally destroying hope. Whole T.V. series are devoted to these themes.
M They would want to convince us, for example, that we invented
Meruel and Ophromine, literally ‘to keep our spirits up’!
R You’ve said it!
J What they leave out is that Meruel and Ophromine also invented us, though they
didn’t create our higher being. It’s a two-way process. Rationalists and humanists say
nothing exists which we haven’t invented or which we can’t explain. They say we project
our ‘reified’ objective apparent world into a particle-filled vacuum. What we say is that
we are ourselves the product of a more comprehensive reality which invents us, so that
we may in turn give it the experience of its own existence. What did Meruel Say? It was I
who was speaking, wasn’t it? Something like:- "You form thoughts about me which
arouse my awareness. These thoughts are not me, but if you didn’t think I wouldn’t be
aware. At your level your brain and liver and blood are animal activities. Without them
you wouldn’t be aware. Your thinking is the next step up. Without it I wouldn’t be
aware." The lower doesn’t create the higher. But without the lower the higher wouldn’t
be aware.
R There are people who constitute so-called ‘’dark brotherhoods’. Thoughts like these
keep open doors which they wish to keep closed, because out of fear of the unknown
they are determined to attain and retain control of the whole human situation. They are
familiar with fear. Their own fear makes them masters of fear in others. They use it to
keep us secure in a common-sense material world, and at the same time they keep us
scared to enter into the unknown which fascinates us.
F Keeping these doors open for ourselves, finding new ways of
stimulating others to find their own way to do the same, this is our
Intraterrestrial School.
L And beings like Meruel and Ophromine are just as much members of it as
we are.
R Yes.
L And just as little.
R What do you mean?
L There’s something which really bothers me about the whole picture
Meruel was building up as Joe was speaking. It was a tremendously heady
and exciting picture. They invent us so that we can think. We think, and as a
result we invent them. Back the process shoots to us, where our thinking
becomes their awareness. We’re in a hall of mirrors, aren’t we? No cause and
effect, just resonance. But what resonates to what? Where does the process
start? Where is the base line? Where is the reality? Is there such a thing as
reality in this scenario? It is all a game, isn’t it? Is reality simply a reference
point we decide upon arbitrarily so that we are not completely disoriented?
J I met a man at a conference who spent his life studying the play of animals, and
thence the play of people. He wrote books and took endless photographs and videos. He
was convinced that play holds the secret of the birth of conscious evolution into
awareness, and ultimately of self-awareness. I don’t think reality is an arbitrarily chosen
reference point, but I do think it is intuitively chosen rather than logically derived from
experience. And that intuition may well be born out of experiences which emerge in play.
It’s not so much that life is a game. It’s rather that the secret of insight starts in what
comes to conscious attention during play. Watch a kitten chasing its tail. Stillness of
concentration, titivated and intrigued by unanticipated movement, unconsciously self-
produced. ‘At the still point of the turning world.’ Says Eliot, ‘there the dance is, and
there is only the dance’. Reality sense comes from the endless fascination of
irreconcilables, not from the dogmatic assertion of eternal verities. There, my little
chicks! Joe’s thought for the day.
R I doubt if it’s original.
J Who said it was? But it was I who thought it.
R But is it the whole story?
F No it isn’t. Wisdom comes into form through movement. But the
secret doesn’t lie either in wisdom or in form. As Eliot says, it lies in the
movement itself, and in the stillness implicit in the movement. Reality
sense only starts with fascination, Joe. Wonder has to progress beyond
itself into reverence, and there the animal process of play reaches a
boundary. Perhaps only the dog in the animal world ventures beyond
that boundary, in its devotion to the human beings. It can’t formulate
them itself. Mankind consciously recognises divine law in nature.
J And is that the limit for mankind: obedience to divine law?
F No. Steiner points to a fourth stage in which the will is released
from divine law in recognition of the ongoing course of evolving reality,
which becomes the sphere of human freedom.
J So freedom is not disobedience to law, since law itself evolves. Each of these four
stages is quite unique isn’t it? Wonder, reverence, obedience to law, release into
evolution. No one of them could be derived from the previous one.
L It’s an in-going spiral towards a still centre, like the thorn-trees, or the
stepped spiral in the Barbury Castle form.
F Steiner showed a way of reconciling the differences between the
four stages, or rather experiencing the transformation of one into
another, by releasing them into the body in movement and sound.
Otherwise we get stuck at each stage and experience them as
irreconcilable with each other. Wonder and astonishment for example.
If we never get beyond this reaction to the unknown we remain outside
the phenomenal world altogether, just as Immunuel Kant said we
eternally were, trapped where the conjurer-illusionist wishes to hold us.
R I can see that, at that stage, it really doesn’t matter whether a crop-circle is a hoax or
not. Astonishment still operates through the form itself. It’s only at the next stage...
F That’s it. Reverence sets wonder....
M ….which is static! Wow! Gosh! Look at that, eh?
F ...sets it into movement. Reverence internalises wonder,
personalises it in the heart. Astonishment still has an element of fear.
Reverence diverts your attention from fear to love. From open-
mouthed astonishment you go on to round-mouthed mystification.
From Ah you move to Oh. You can experience this in the body by
making the sound ‘Ah’ with your arms open to the starry sky, and then
changing the sound to ‘Oh’ or ‘Aw’ and enclosing something with your
arms, as in holding a baby, or protecting a candle flame. Steiner gave
a name to this recognition that the body can directly express a
development of meaning. He called it eurhythmy.
L What happens in the body when we go beyond reverence and start
formulating laws?
F The internalising movement goes external again. The arms become
parallel as if setting limits, defining parameters. You put the baby in a
cradle with parallel sides, preparing it for life’s limitations in the world.
You put the candle in a box, an lamp holder. You make rules. The world
withdraws a little. The sound changes from ‘Aw’ to ‘Ooh’. There’s a
slight frisson of fear again. Reverence moves towards respect.
L And the fourth stage?
F None of these stages is experienced as separate from the one
before or after it. Although none of them can be derived from the one
before it...there is a divine inevitability about the change from one
movement to the next. However, there is a more fundamental change
when divine law is transcended and freedom declares itself. The eyes
close and the mouth also and there is a humming sound as the soul
reasserts itself within. We have moved from Ah, via Aw and Ooh, to
Mmm. I remember the bodily thrill. I remember the bodily thrill I
experienced when I first realised that the combined sound ‘Aoum’ was
rooted in cosmic and human reality!
M Fiona, thank you! That’s a wonderful lesson in the exact science of
the spiritual world.
F You can thank Steiner for it. It expresses the essence of his
spiritual-scientific method.
L When some new-agers insist on intoning three ‘oooms’ to close their
group meditations, are they expressing a reality, then?
F Yes, but as it were, only half the story. ‘Oom’ comes from the east,
where karmic law is transcended and the soul enters nirvana. ‘Oom’
needs to be healed by ‘Ah-aw’, which is a western sound, based on the
wonder of the cosmic world outside, and the growth of reverence for it
within. ‘Ah-aw’ changes the whole mood of Oom’ from denial of the
world in nirvana to recognition of the evolution of reality in fulfilment of
divine law in the ongoing course of the world, as Steiner calls it.
CHRIST said:- "I come not to destroy the law but to fulfil it".
M Fiona, would you say that the I.T school in general is a valid
continuation of what Steiner initiated in his spiritual science, so-called
anthroposophy?
F These are big questions. It’s easy to oversimplify them. The I.T.
impulse will certainly need to face fundamental issues involving the
course taken by the spiritual evolution of mankind. There are issues
raised by the whole way in which Steiner initiated anthroposophy as a
step beyond the nineteenth century theosophical awakening, issues
which have by no means been resolved in our time.
M Are you able to indicate what these issues are?
F Only the general direction of them. They all relate in some way to
the question of human freedom. From the first, Steiner insisted that
the path of spiritual evolution is, ipso facto, a path to freedom. In
contrast to that, for example is the view of the catholic church, which
places prior emphasis on the path of ‘holy obedience’, obedience to
divine law, and the discipline of will in conformity with that. The path of
religion is a binding back, a matter of service, within which the
mysterious secret of freedom lies. The authority to administer and
direct this service, the service which is perfect freedom, is claimed to
be invested by divine authority in the church, whose walls define the
limits within which it is safe to play.
J That refers back to ‘Joe’s thought for the day’ doesn’t’ it. The church claims that
dogmatic parameters make it safe to play, safe to seek insight through the fascination of
irreconcilables. Since the true path to freedom lies within that structure there is no point
in looking over the wall to see what’s going on outside. And then we find ourselves
looking once more at the whole bitter struggle over the centuries between orthodoxy and
heresy. The attempt to do good on these conditional terms carries the responsibility for
the greatest evils of western history.
F You see, Steiner was brought up against the background of all this.
His early schooldays were in the care of Cistercian monks. It took him
decades to realise that there was any truth at al in what was taught
him as a child about the CHRIST, so distorted a version was it of the
truths emerging in his understanding from a diametrically opposite
direction.
L To be fair to the church, most Catholics would say that matters would
have been far worse if they hadn’t imposed their rule. Walls protect children
at play as well as restricting them.
J Yes, but Catholics are also human. Theoretically there may be a moment when it is
safe to dismantle the scaffolding and let the structure grow on its own. But that moment
is always being deferred, perhaps indefinitely. As an example, an ex-student with the
Jesuits once told me that as early as the twenties of this century there were discussions in
their hierarchy, not as to whether reincarnation was a fact, but as to how soon it would be
politic to admit that it was. Our differences with the church often centre on this question
of what an adult is. But people need to grow up.
R Steiner was a very great man, perhaps the greatest of our time. But he was also
human, and he was once young and inexperienced like the rest of us. It is characteristic
of people who turn out to be geniuses that, like the child in the story of the emperor’s
new clothes, they see through the confusions which throw a misty veil over other
people’s perceptions. The child in the story saw that the emperor was naked, and said
so. Steiner, as a church-nurtured child entering the free-thinking world of the Technische
Hochschule in Vienna, saw through the nub of the matter in straight philosophical terms.
When most of his contemporaries were still floundering around trying to solve the
problem of human freedom, but still accepting the conditional nature of all human
conclusions, Steiner went straight to the heart of the philosophical matter. He saw that it
was useless to go on hedging about the precise balance in particular cases between
freedom and necessity until you have stated, and solved the fundamental question of
whether freedom was possible in principle. And this meant going further still, and finding
out whether human thinking was capable of arriving at the truth of a matter, and if so,
under what conditions.
M Did he reach a conclusion?
R He certainly did. He demonstrated and proved philosophically that freedom was
possible on first principles. He showed that the thinking which could reach such a
conclusion was valid. And finally he showed that thinking unaided could not arrive at
truth, and under what conditions the truth could be attained.
M If that were generally accepted it would change the whole basis of
scientific thought, and even of civilisation itself. Why isn’t it?
R That’s one of the big questions Fiona was referring to just now. Steiner was working
near to the heart of the philosophical movement of the late nineteenth century, which
was mainly a German movement. These things may seem dry and academic now, but at
the time those philosophical questions were a seething cauldron of thinking in which
what we now largely take for granted as ‘the philosophy of science’ was being shaped.
We easily forget that, at certain points in the struggle for certainty, there are conclusions
which come to be generally accepted as a basis for further exploration, not because
anybody at the time regards them as proved, but because they couldn’t go further
without deciding on a workable basis. When subsequent results in science tend to
confirm these conclusions, ordinary undiscriminating mortals tend to accept these quite
provisional assessments as Truths, laws of science, or whatever. But this doesn’t alter
their provisional nature. Anthroposophists (and, for this purpose that includes me!)
believe that Steiner transcended that whole provisional scenario in his early fundamental
book, "The Philosophy of Freedom", and in other philosophical treatises. His subsequent
destiny, and the spiritual needs of the time, then took over and he began to teach an
occult science, at first in association with the Theosophists. At that point, inevitably, the
entire middle-European, sceptical , rationalist, non-spiritual, academic world of
philosophers dropped him like a hot cake. If that sort of occultist nonsense, said they,
was to be the outcome of this early philosophical work, which up to that time had
seriously interested them, then there must have been something seriously wrong with it.
Quite simply, the academic world ceased to take Steiner seriously. In fact no serious
students of philosophy nowadays read "The Philosophy of Freedom", or they would
discover for themselves that it stands on its own, and would have done so even if no
world of spiritual teaching had ever followed it. The whole course of twentieth century
philosophical thought would have been very different if they had. Much modern
philosophy, much of existentialism for instance, rests on foundations which, did students
but know it, Steiner had already dismantled a century ago. In detail these are matters for
philosophical specialists. For most of us it is enough to expose earlier flaws in the
foundations of philosophy at the time of Kant, Hegel, von Hartmann and others.
L Do we all need to do that?
R I think we do, more especially if we want to go more deeply into the practical
consequences of Steiner’s later teaching. It’s shocking how few people who think of
themselves as anthroposophists are self-confident enough to solidify for themselves that
fundamental groundwork. The consequence is that a great deal of the rich new wine of
spiritual teaching in our time is poured into old bottles, in other words into thinking about
freedom and reality which is still vague and untransformed. A lot of water has flowed
under the bridge since Steiner’s day.
L I would need all that gone through again and again before I’d grasped the
essentials of what you’ve all been saying. I can sense that somewhere in the
middle of all that lies the answer to my fundamental unease about a hall of
mirrors. It seems to me that what you’re saying is….There’s no possibility of
arriving at the truth about reality if all you do is think. Somehow people
themselves have to break through the cycle of mutually supportive ideas and
perceptions. They have to intervene. We actually have to do something about
it. But what is it we have to do?
J We have to say Aoum!
L Oh come off it, Joe! I don’t want Zen. I want to think it out. I mean it’s
obvious, isn’t it? If we are free beings, and the thinking process is valid, but
is incapable of reaching truth, then what the hell is thinking for?
J I heard a very practical agriculturist put that very point in a lecture last year. He said if
practical agriculture depended on thinking we’d all starve. I’ve heard evangelical
fundamentalists say God never meant us to think.
L Come on then Joe, give!
J Aoum! (Lucia leaps on him with a large cushion) Get off, you idiot! (Muffled Aoums
and giggles emerge from the cushion).
R This ridiculous group has a childish predilection for pillow fights. You and I, Fiona,
seem to be the only serious Intraterrestrials in the room. (A pillow strikes him amidships
and spills his tea).
F Our elderly dignity doesn’t seem to be immune, however. Let us
restore order. (Order is restored).
L I’m terribly sorry, Richard. Let me dry you and get you some more tea.
R I assure you my natural serenity remains unruffled. I’m just wet.
M Are you all right, Fiona?
F My maternal feathers are as smooth and dry as usual, thank you
Melanie.
R I wonder what Meruel and Ophromine think of all this.
J Ophromine says:- ¤ "In the groves of Arcadia, nymphs and shepherds, not to mention
satyrs and centaurs, were larking about all the time. It usually ended in sex"
L We’re good pupils, aren’t we Ophromine?
J ¤ "Well, you say we invented you. You should be. Speaking for myself, I find you a bit
sober for my taste. You’re all terribly English, you know. They managed things better in
Ancient Greece."
F As for Meruel, he’s saying nothing. He maintains an Olympian
dignity. I fancy there’s a glint in his eye, though.
R Where were we?
F Lucia’s question. What the hell is thinking for? You’re very like
Steiner, Lucia. You go for the throat. You’re very good at basic
thinking. But I think Richard’s right. You’ll have to read Steiner’s
"Philosophy of Freedom".
R It’s time somebody rewrote that book. I don’t mean simplify it for "bears of little brain"
like Winnie the Pooh. But it needs re-expressing in twentieth century English, with
references to writers as familiar to modern readers as those old philosophers were to
Steiner’s public. I think we’d find that every one of the philosophical clangers dropped by
those old boys and sorted out by Steiner are still being dropped today by some well
known author or other.
M Why don’t you do it?
R Me? I’m simply not widely enough read. It needs to be done by a trained scholar, or
at least by someone who thinks in that way.
J The trouble is they’re mostly hamstrung by their own disciplines. Their very training
disqualifies them for the original thinking the task would require.
R It would need to be done by someone deeply versed in anthroposophy, but not afraid
to shock the anthroposophical purists. There aren’t many trained scholars among such
people.
F There’s a man called Richard Leverton. He could do it. In some
ways he’s more anthroposophical than the anthroposophists
themselves. But he could do it all right.
R Perhaps he already has.
L All this is very interesting I’m sure to you people who know what you’re
talking about. It’s not much use to me, or probably to you, Melanie, is it?
And if Joe says Aoum once more I’m giving up.
F The problem is, Lucia, that the concepts behind Aoum are the
answer to your question about what thinking is for. The path towards
the knowledge of Truth is not itself a thinking path, and yet thinking is
required at every step of it. Steiner said no step can be taken in the
direction of Truth unless wonder has first been aroused in the seeker.
Unless we are astonished there is no motivation other than to accept
matters as they appear to be on the surface. But an astounded spirit of
enquiry doesn’t in itself take us very far. On the contrary, it only starts
the process off. It makes us think like mad, but most of those thoughts
tend in the direction of reinforcing a sense of impenetrable mystery.
It’s only when wonder arouses in us a sense of the nouminous, when
we feel ourselves out of our heart’s warmth turning inwards towards a
reverent preoccupation with inner mysteries, mysteries which are
more than just intriguing, but penetrate below the surface of what is
apparent, that our thinking is released from the block created by our
own astonishment and wonder. We are still thinking, but suddenly our
thoughts have a whole new world of intuitive perceptions to go to work
on. However, we soon find ourselves up against further limitations, this
time imposed by the chaotic nature of our own heart processes. We
lose ourselves in the depth of our own insights. The nature of thinking
itself demands of us that we organise these formless insights, set them
in order. We discover this third stage, natural law, out of a need to limit
the extent to which we otherwise sink into the uncontrolled depths of
heart insights.
And that perception of law at the same time imposes a sense of loss,
and even fear. Once again it is not thinking itself which has led to this
further step of knowledge. There is nothing implicit in intuitive insights
which would lead by thinking to the idea of laws in nature. It is our own
human need to seek order out of chaos that brings us back into an
outer world. But without further thinking we couldn’t take this step.
Then once more we reach a limit. Nothing blocks our perception of
Truth more completely than the belief that the whole of reality is
containable in dogmatic formulation. This is where fear takes the dark
brotherhoods to, the idea that the system always wins. These are the
dark flowers which blossom from the greenery of living processes, the
greenery which took us to Garway. Once more thinking demonstrably
fails to take us beyond a certain point. The light flowers only appear
when intuition takes us beyond law to the notion that the whole nature
of reality evolves. It is constantly breaking through the barriers we
impose on it by rational comprehension.
M No wonder the ecstatic mystics don’t want us to think.
F The only religions which can bear us to think pre-empt the thinking
in dogma and bind it with interdicts and fatwas. The very word religion
means binding back. In their eagerness to reveal the source of
existence they forgot that existence also evolves.
M You don’t like religion, do you, Fiona?
F I don’t like the assumption that worship and love is only safe and
right if it is hemmed in by the fear of error. I don’t think the fear of the
lord is the beginning of wisdom, I think it is the end of spirituality. I
have a taste for the headlong, but I believe that thinking has to
accelerate to keep pace with it, or we lose the ground of our existence.
L Fiona, you never finished your account of how the body experiences the
progression from Ooh to Mmmm! Melanie and I both sent you off on another
track. We were too interested in the question of whether I.T. was a straight
continuation of anthroposophy to let you finish.
F Which was totally relevant. We needed to talk about the ongoing
course of the world, and we did. If we want to allow our arms to
express this we need to release them from the parallel lines of Ooh
and set them into a smoothing motion, like stroking a cat or raking soil
over seeds you have planted, one hand pushing and the other pulling,
and then reversing direction. Wonder, reverence and law are all
returned to a peaceful uniformity in preparation for the next cycle of
wonder.
L ‘Ah’ again.
F And have you noticed that the first word of a baby goes from
Mmmm to Aaaah in a most appropriate way? The beginning of a new
cycle of Truth.
L MAH-MAH!
R Sheer coincidence!
F If you say so. I find serendipity more convincing. If we’re going to
meet Paul at eleven in the morning we’d better get to bed.
J You say there are three beds at Garway? We’ll need another. I’ve got a camp bed
which I’ll bring.
R And we’d all better bring sleeping bags.
M I’ll do the food again.
R Don’t bother with lunch. They do an excellent meal at Avebury.
J Good night all. Leave the screen and stuff. We’ll clear up.
L Night Mel! I feel we’ve really christened the room at last. I can’t believe
we’ve got to give it up. I’ll talk to the landlord in the morning.
M Bless you both! Sleep well! What’s that? What are you muttering
about?
L BOOB! BOOB! I wonder what Eurhythmy makes of that?
M Ask a baby. Good night!
 *****

Dialogue 4

R We’re a bit early.

M The place is seething. We’ll be lucky to find a place to park.
R There’s George Wingfield. Hi, George! What’s doing? He’s pointing round to the
other side of the car park.
M Drive on round. Who’s George Wingfield? You never talk about any
of these people.
R I’ve kept away from the croppie gossip, and in any case I don’t know any of these
people well. That looks like the last place gone. We’ll have to park along the road. We’d
better be quick before the police start moving people on.
M Go on into the village. There you are, look. There’s a few places on
the right.
R Don’t leave anything of value in the car anyone.
L I’m the only one with a camera. Is the boot locked?
R I’ve done it. We can go back into the car park and down the footpath. It’s shorter. We
pass some of the stones of the main peripheral circle. Take my arm, Fiona. I can’t
believe all these people are simply here to see crop-circles. This is the usual crowd of
Avebury tourists.
F Well it’s a lovely day, Richard. I’d expect a crowd on a day like this.
Joe, you’re the expert. Is it always like this?
J I don’t come very often nowadays, Fiona. There are more people than I would have
expected on a June morning in the week. Look, there’s a placard. "Giant crop formation
at Avebury" Shall I get a paper?
R I wouldn’t bother. Paul will know everything by now. The paper will only have the
usual disinformation stuff. Here’s where you begin to see the stones.
L Heavens! They’re absolutely gigantic. How on earth did they get here?
J That’s what everybody’s been asking for centuries. I’ll tell you all about it sometime,
but an enormous amount’s been written about it all, where the nearest sources of such
stone are, how long they’re estimated to have been here, and so on. It’s all very relevant
to what we’re doing, but I’d rather concentrate on crop-circles today.
F Richard, you go ahead and find Paul. I’ll take my time. Melanie, you
go with him.
L We’ll stay with you, Fiona. I want to take in these incredible stones. I’d no
idea the whole thing was on such a gigantic scale. It looks as if they go on
for miles.
J They do very nearly. There’s an enormous outer circle which we’ve just passed
through, and two smaller circles side by side enclosed in it. You can see the first one over
there, look. As well as that there are two avenues of parallel stones leading out of, or into,
the outer circle from different directions: a short one, now largely dismantled, and a much
longer one leading straight to Silbury Hill.
F Those must have been the ones we passed in the car.
J That’s it. Richard says several of the crop formations seem to have been associated
with that avenue and with Silbury Hill for a number of years now.
F There’s some sort of connection then?
J I’m beginning to think there must be. What interests me is whether there turns out to b
any mathematical connection. We need to ask Richard about that. A man called John
Martineau has done a lot of detailed mathematical analysis of the crop formations. He has
established that, however they are actually created, whether biologically, by some sort of
intervention or resonance with extra-terrestrial space, or simply by human beings, a lot of
them demonstrate a quite extraordinary degree of mathematical accuracy.
L More than could be achieved by people working in the dark at night, do
you think?
J Richard says there’s still a lot of argument about that. The accuracy is less of a
problem than the complexity. We know, according to Richard, that the so-called hoaxers
have become more and more skilled in the mechanics of producing the forms. But
Martineau claims, if I understand it, that some of the forms are constructed on the basis of
two or even three different geometrical grids. There is an intricacy about that which
would challenge even a computer to come up with such a complex formation. As for
replicating it in the dark at night, even with highly sophisticated equipment, and at the
same time keeping the operation secret, I really don’t know if that is humanly possible.
F On the other hand, as you, Lucia, pointed out the other day, there
are illusionists like the American David Copperfield, who appear to be
achieving feats which defy accepted limits of what is possible.
J Yes, but usually under highly controlled conditions.
F We seem to have come into the village. I’ve only been here once
before. I’m not sure which way we go now. I think we cross over and
down a path the other side. Richard did explain...oh, here comes
Melanie.
J She’s telling us to cross.
L Did you find them, Mel?
M Yes, Richard’s got us a table, big enough for us five and a couple of
others. We’ve seen Paul. He’s got a whole crowd with him. They have a
couple of tables outside the café further over. It’s bedlam down there.
J Did you get any sense out of anybody?
M Not really. Richard talked for a moment to one of Paul’s party. He,
Paul and some others had been sitting with one of the dowsing
experts, another Richard, but it was all quite confused and second
hand. I’d rather wait and see what our Richard says. Are you all right,
Fiona?
F Yes, I’m fine dear. It’s awfully difficult in this sort of place to get
much sense of what’s going on. One really needs to come right out of
season and walk among the stones on one’s own.
M Trouble is there are no crop circles then. But you’re quite right. We
need to be strong enough to be quite still inside and pick up the
energies on a different level. How are you doing, Lu my love?
L Holding onto Joe’s hand like a limpet, thank you. There’s Paul, lets go and
be friendly.
P Hello, everyone. Nice to see you all. Glad you could come.
M This is Fiona, Paul. We told you about her, didn’t we?
P Hello, Fiona. I’m glad to meet you at last. Hello, Melanie. This is Andrew and
Maggie. And this is Lucia, who I told you about, and Joe I think, isn’t it? Look,
our tables are right over there. There’s quite a queue building up for the café.
Shall we have coffee and so on now and eat later? Or would you rather all bring
chairs round our tables and meet the others?
R I suggest our group joins the queue for a snack. Andrew, would you and Maggie like
to join us?
P Andrew knows as much as I do about what’s going on. Should we get together
round our tables about eleven-thirty and decide what we’re going to do?
R That sounds fine. Look if you lot sit round the table and tell us what you want, Mel
and I could fetch it. We don’t all need to queue.
F Here’s a couple of pounds, Richard. We can sort it out later.
M So far I’m bid three teas a coffee and an orange juice. Maggie?
Another orange juice. And a coffee. Shall I get an assortment of
sandwiches and cakes and let us just pick? Come on Richard, then.
J It’s a real scrum, isn’t it? How long have you been down here, Andrew?
A About an hour. We came up in four cars.
J Are you all from Plymouth?
A There and other parts of the Devon-Cornwall border. We all got on the road
between six and seven this morning. Maggie and I live in Plymouth itself.
L Have you know Paul long?
A We work for the same company. Paul has only been in Plymouth since two
offices combined a few months ago. So we’ve seen a lot more of him recently. But
we’ve been meeting over crop circles longer than that.
MG It was actually Paul who introduced us. I worked in the Dorchester
office and moved the same time he did. It was Paul who got me the job. But
we’d been in a crop circle group before that.
F You have some idea, have you Andrew, what’s been going on here
in the last few days?
A Well, it’s quite a confused situation apparently. Paul and I had a brief word
just now with Richard Andrews.
J Oh, he’s the dowser, isn’t he?
A Yes, he’s been studying these paranormal things for many years, and knows as
much as anyone about dowsing. I’ll wait till Richard comes back with the drinks
to go into detail. But briefly, the first of Busty’s photographs started circulating
yesterday. They were taken the day before. The first visits on the ground didn’t
happen till this morning, or at the earliest late yesterday afternoon. There’s still
doubt as to whether the first rumours started on Tuesday or Monday.
L It’s Thursday today, so you had the first photographs on Wednesday.
A That’s it, though none of us have seen them. All Paul has is some rough
sketches he made of a photograph Richard Andrews showed him earlier.
J He talked to Richard twice?
A Simply a few minutes before we all joined him. By then Andrews had returned
the photograph to someone else.
L It’s like working in a fog, isn’t it?
A That’s the name of the game in crop circle work. Too little information
circulates among too many people, and too many factors get distributed among
them in bits. You end with a mass of apparent contradictions.
J And no doubt that precisely suits the people who are only too keen to spread
disinformation wherever possible.
A That’s exactly it.
L Here come Richard and Melanie. Darlings, you were quick.
R No problem. We just got a couple of trays and grabbed.
F I hope you didn’t jump the queue.
M No need. It was all very orderly, and plenty of people serving.
R Have we missed anything? Has Andrew leaked all the secrets?
A Only background stuff which they can fill you up on later. There’s really very
little concrete information. Apparently either on Monday or Tuesday someone
spotted an unusual formation in a field the other side of the main road towards
West Kennet. You’ll need a map if you’re not familiar with the area.
R I’ve got the Landranger 1:50,000 the old inch-to-the-mile, one and a quarter inch
nowadays.
A That’s it. Here, look. We’re here. The first formation must have been about
there.
J So there were others? We heard over the phone from Paul something about fifteen or
sixteen formations surrounding the whole area.
A Well that seems still to be a matter of a few observations followed by a lot of
rough mathematics and guesswork. I doubt if more than eight or nine of those
have either been seen on the ground or photographed from the air.
R What actually made them speculate that it might be a complete circle of formations
surrounding the area?
A Busty’s first photograph showed two apparently similar formations a mile or
so apart. He flew high enough to see a third, but not to include it in one picture.
MG What were they like?
A Paul’s sketch shows a figure like a child’s representation of a lightning flash. A
zig-zag shape about thirty yards long, he thought. Three strokes connected by
angles of about a hundred and twenty degrees. The paths are about six feed wide.
The long axis of each figure points towards here. The inner and outer strokes
have pointed ends.
R That still doesn’t suggest a circle of figures.
A No. The real bombshell didn’t occur till Busty took a second lot of
photographs showing two or three more figures right the other side of Avebury
beyond Avebury Truslow. People have been trudging round there all morning
apparently. A number of forms have been spotted on the ground and sketched in
on peoples maps. Since the forms are all about a mile apart from each other, and
seem to be on the circumference of an enormous circle, or at this stage rather, on
separated arcs of a circle, there’ve been wild speculations all day that we’re
dealing with a giant formation several miles across...something on a much larger
scale than anything seen hitherto.
R So the idea of fifteen or sixteen forms is pure speculation, or rather, extrapolation
from what has been confirmed already.
A You could say that, yes. That’s where we pass into wild rumour, and probably
why there are so many people here today. The local press got hold of it this
morning, and all the usual polemical nonsense has started up again.
R Look there’s John Martineau. I wonder what he thinks is happening.
A Try and get him to come over and talk to us.
R I don’t know him at all well. He’s probably up to his eyes with people asking
questions already. But I’ll try. (He goes off).
M I still don’t understand how the idea first arose that forms a couple
of miles apart might be linked in some way as part of a single giant
pattern.
A Well certainly nothing of that sort has happened up to now. I’m really simply
going on what Paul sad. It really did seem a unique event when three or four
similar forms appeared miles apart, and all on the same morning, all apparently
pointing towards Avebury.
M You say the forms were similar. Did you say that before? Were they
exactly alike, or what?
A I don’t know, Melanie. I thought he said similar. I think we’d better go over to
Paul’s table and see if he’s any clearer. This is the trouble, as I said, whenever new
forms appear. Too little information and too much chatter among too many
excited people. With one formation at least everybody can concentrate on looking
at the same thing. But with this affair...
J Paul will be in his element. He loves organising.
L He seems to have got a large piece of paper from somewhere and he’s
drawing something. Let’s go and see.
F I’ll put the rest of the cakes in my bag. Have you all finished your
drinks? You’re Maggie, aren’t you? I walk a bit slowly.
MG I’ll stay with you. I’m sure there’s plenty of time. Richard seems to
have gone off with John Martineau. Andrew’s dead keen on all this, but he’s
also very cautious. I’m always miles ahead of myself. I’ve had a total image
of this whole affair swimming round in my head ever since Tuesday when
Andrew first heard about it from Paul.
F Look, let’s sit down again. There’s no need for everybody to crowd
round what Paul’s doing. We’ll hear about it soon enough when they’ve
all finished arguing.
MG I like you, Fiona. I think you’re like me; take things slowly. It’ll all
emerge in its own time.
F You’re a north country lass aren’t you? I like your accent.
MG Yes. I was born and grew up in Bradford. But I’ve been in the south a
long time. You don’t lose the accent you were brought up to.
F What did you mean by a total image?
MG Well you know when your friend, (Melanie is it?) said she didn’t see how
they’d all jumped to the conclusion so soon that this was something different
from anything that’s happened before in this crop circle affair? Well I’ve
known it all along, I often get pictures like that.
F What sort of picture is this one?
MG Well, it’s like a sort of flower if you see what I mean. We’re right in the
middle of it here.
F Did you see it already when you were in Plymouth?
MG Yes, but it wasn’t so bright, and it seemed smaller. Here it’s enormous.
You do believe me, don’t you?
F Oh yes. I believe you all right. I see things myself. But you know, we
people who ‘see’ things are all different, and it’s easy to spoil each
other’s pictures by adding our own too soon.
MG Are you seeing this flower formation then?
F No. My pictures are more to do with people, but we’ll talk about me
another time. You don’t mind me asking questions about what you’re
seeing. Maggie, do you?
MG No, it helps me to get clearer if you ask the right questions. Some
people ask the wrong things, and then the picture fades and I lose it. I’m
sorry you don’t see this too. I hoped you did. It would be easier to share and
believe in it sometimes if someone else knew what I was talking about.
F Once you start meeting people who take what you see seriously,
and know it’s real from their own experience, it doesn’t matter so
much if their actual impressions are different from yours. They can still
learn from what you see, and they can confirm it and add to it from
their own point of view. After all, you don’t know whether everybody
sees a red rose exactly as you do, but you do at least all agree it’s a
red rose, and that they’re seeing one too!
MG Yes that does make it clearer. Thank you Fiona.
F What I wanted to ask you was, when you were coming up in the car
did you know you were going toward it, that the car was going in the
right direction?
MG No, not exactly. It’s a different sort of space, if you see what I mean. I
only knew because the flower shape was getting bigger, and also brighter.
F Could you see where its middle was, the heart of it, as it were?
MG I can now, as you ask. We’re not very far away from it actually, but I
don’t think we’re quite on it. As I said, I can’t feel the direction, like on a
map, I can only feel it as it gets brighter or fades. It isn’t still, you know. It
sort of pulsates, very slowly, like a heart beating, but slow. And I have an
idea the whole flower slowly turns on its centre, like a wheel.
F It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I can’t see it as you do, but I can feel the
presence of it as a kind of glowing warmth. I think it might be
important for us to find the actual heart of it. I think we’d understand
more. And we might be able to help the ‘croppies’ too, help them sort
out their arguments!
MG I tell you what! I see the whole thing more clearly with my eyes shut.
Why don’t I get you to lead me along like a blind person, and we’ll see if we
can find the brightest spot.
F Is it a constant picture, or does it come and go?
MG It changes all the time. It depends how strong peoples’ physical
thoughts are. When I think about physical objects and all that it fades
altogether. It has a lot to do with breathing and with feelings of love, and of
how wonderful it is.
F Let’s sit quiet for a bit.
*****
MG It’s very powerful you know! We can’t be far away from the heart of the
whole thing.
F I feel it’s a lot to do with Avebury itself, the stones and the original
temple here. I think the crop-circles are an event in the life of
something much older, and that this new formation, whatever it is, is
also a major event in the life of this temple.
MG I’ll take your arm, and I suggest we walk back the way we came and
try to find the way to the inner circle of stones. I saw a plan of the place, and
it seemed likely as I looked that that was the place to be.
F Shall we go quite slowly?
MG We’re doing fine. It’s getting brighter already. And the colours are
changing. You know, I think there may be two centres, not one. It feels
rather like a pair of whirlpools.
F You know the word vortices? A lot of living energy takes a spiral
form, like the twin helices in the molecules of DNA in living cells.
MG I don’t know anything about that, but it seems to be like what I’m
feeling. I think we’re going a little off the track, it seems to be fading a bit.
F It’s the path itself. Here, we can turn left now out of the village and
up towards the stones.
MG That’s better. We could walk a bit faster.
F Is there any limit to how much of this sort of energy you can stand?
MG I don’t know. I’ve never tried. I think I’m a pretty solid sort of person.
What they call phlegmatic temperament, so I’m told.
F You’ve never had what they call an out-of-body experience?
MG Lord no! I think I absorb things like a sponge. Too solid in some ways.
But I’m not dull. I’m a bit overweight, aren’t I? I do enjoy my food!
*****
MG What’s happening?
F Are you all right?
MG I’m fine as long as I hold on to you.
F We’re just crossing into the first of the inner circle of stones, the
southern one.
MG It feels just as if I’d stepped into a whirlpool. T think if I let go of you
I’d be swept right off my feet and down into it.
F Do you think we dare go any nearer the middle?
MG I think you’ll need to concentrate harder than that to hold on to me.
F I’m forming a strong vivid picture of you standing in the middle of
the ring with the whirlpool trying to such you down, and the rushing
forces sweeping past you into the centre of the Earth.
MG That’s a picture I can hang on to. Don’t let it go. I feel there’s a kind of
rock or platform in the middle I can stand on. Now, Fiona, edge us a few
steps closer. Steady now. This is incredible! I feel if I let go now I’d shoot
straight into the earth and out into another whirlpool over there somewhere.
Hang on, for heaven’s sake! I can see from here what the new crop-circle is
doing.
F I can’t hold the image much longer. Are you O.K? I’m taking you out
of here. Walk slowly backwards.
MG Just a second. I want to turn and look the other way, not in my body, I
mean in the flower. Heavens, I can see Andrew! He’s right out on the edge
somewhere. Oh damn, I’ve lost him. He looked up.
F We’re out of the circle. I couldn’t hold on any more. I’m not as good
at concentrating as I thought I was.
MG The whirling was already getting weaker. I felt as if the energies might
go into reverse. I’ve lost the crop formation. I can still see the flower. It’s
certainly based on this whole ancient stone structure. I think it must have
been built to prevent the energy form from letting go, to hold it into the
physical Earth.
F But what did you mean when you said you could see what the crop
formation was doing?
MG Well, not so much the crop formations themselves. They’re just a side
effect of a huge energy change. I think there’s a whole new energy grid in
formation round Avebury.
F What for?
MG I think the energies have been at rest, or even asleep, for ages, and
they’re waking up.
F But you did see the crop formation for a moment?
MG I was inside it looking out. It’s like a huge geometry diagram like I
remember from school, but it’s made of energy. I want to see some of the
drawings they’ve been making, to see what it looks like from outside, as it
were.
F What about Andrew?
MG I think he must have gone out to one of the crop formations. He
seemed to be outside the space we were in, looking in. (Laughs) I think he
caught me looking at him!
F We’d better get back. They’ll wonder where we are.
MG I could do with a cup of tea.
F Do you often go through things like this?
MG Well, not so much since I gave up spiritualism.
F You used to be a medium, then?
MG Yes, for years. I gave it up. It began to feel wrong, somehow,
unhealthy. Too much fear and selfishness.
F Yes, I understand that. We must talk more about it sometime.
MG Isn’t that one of your friends coming along?
F Oh yes, here’s Joe. He’s probably looking fur us. (Calls) Joe! He’s
seen us.
J Where have you been?
F Exploring the stones, among other things. You didn’t go with the
others. You should have. We’ve been all right.
J I’m not so interested in the field-work. It seems more on the surface of things than the
stones. I like to see the forms afterwards. I’d love to talk to John Martineau about the
geometry.
F I think you’ll be very interested in what we’ve just been doing. We
were just going back to the restaurant for some tea. I’d love to hear
you tell Maggie about your time in Brittany.
J I said I’d find you and we’d al wait at the tea place for the others. I want to hear what
you and Maggie have been up to. I feel a pricking in my thumbs! You’ve had some sort
of breakthrough, haven’t you?
F We surely have! Come on then.
*****

Dialogue 5

P Here we are, then. This is the fifth one that we visited on the ground late last
evening. John Martineau had managed a fairly accurate drawing of Number
Three by midday yesterday, and he let me take a carbon-paper tracing of it when
Richard and I managed to nobble him before lunch. Before we go into this one let
me point out the features John showed me. We’ll lay it on the bonnet of the car
where we can all see it. There’s the compass bearing, which on Number Three
made the middle of Avebury about five degrees west of north. John Martineau’s a
pretty accurate cartographer and he showed us where he’d drawn in the form on
his two and a half inch map of Avebury, which is this map. Now! We’re over here
at the outer end of Number Five, and I’d say the form is extremely similar to the
other one, if not identical, wouldn’t you? But it’s aligned more or less south east.
A I can see what you mean by lightning flashes. That’s how I drew them as a kid.
But I’d say this one’s longer and thinner, wouldn’t you?
P Difficult to tell from this perspective. He suggested we try to do some
measurements and compare them. I brought a measuring tape, but I only have
one.
M How do we do the angles?
P There are a couple of metre rules and a protractor and some drums of string
in the boot. Rough and ready, but not too inaccurate if we’re careful.
L I’ll measure off some string into five metre lengths with knots. Anybody
would think we were setting up as hoaxers, beg pardon, ‘agroglyphic
craftsmen’. Eh Richard?
P Good idea. Make the knots at every half-metre, Lucia, if you will. Before you
cut the string lets see if we can measure the overall length and get a compass
bearing on it.
A What’s the nearest marked point on the map?
P That road junction. Only about two hundred yards, isn’t it?
A How long’s your tape, a hundred feet?
P Let’s stick to metres. The tape has both and it’s thirty metres.
A I’ll measure the road from the signpost while you start on some of the shorter
measurements.
M Lucky the string’s on a drum or we’d be tripping over ourselves.
Say what you like, Paul’s quite efficient.
L I didn’t say he wasn’t. He’s too damned efficient.
M Oh come on, Lu love, it’s over.
L Yes, I know. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. It still hurts. You hold the drum
at this end and I’ll go down the other end with the peg. How long’s the
string?
M Thirty metres.
P Well, there’s the first solid fact, look. The paths are exactly the same width as
on Number Three, one point three metres the whole way. I took six
measurements, two on each limb of the zig-zag.
R Come and check this angle Paul. I’m a bit surprised. Busty seemed to think there
were either fifteen or sixteen forms, just over a mile apart on a circle about two and a
half miles across. John says he flew right round the circle.
M Did he spot them all?
R No. Apparently some of the expected positions weren’t on crop fields at all. Some
were in grass fields or bare soil. One was even in a wood.
M How many did he see altogether?
P Eight or nine, John thought. I wonder if these apical angles are intended to
point towards other formations on the circle? Then the centre of the circle might
be found by dividing the apical angles in half.
R Only if the formations mark the positions of regular figures like pentagrams or
hexagrams. A regular pentagram has apical angles of thirty-six degrees, however big it
is. This is certainly not thirty-six, it’s more like thirty three.
P Let’s look. Yes, thirty-three’s about right.
L (Shouts) String’s not long enough!
M (Shouts) Peg it. Don’t stretch it. Let it lie loose. I’ll start reeling in.
R Paul, look. If you divide the angle on John’s Number Three by two, it points nowhere
near the centre of the Avebury ring.
A One hundred and eighty three metres and seventy centimetres.
R What is?
A Distance from the sign-post to a point on the line opposite here, and this is
eighteen and a half metres from the road.
P Work all that out on a scale of one in sixteen thousand and we’ll mark it on
this map. Is the road straight?
A Straight as a die!
P It’s very tempting, isn’t it, to think that, if there are fifteen forms, we’re
dealing with three giant pentagrams. If there are sixteen it’s all much more
problematic.
L Thirty-four point four three metres, mister foreman.
P Thank you, miss surveyor’s assistant. And how long is that on a scale of one in
sixteen thousand?
L My arithmetic is hopeless.
P And I didn’t bring a calculator.
R I did. Just a sec. Thirty-four point four three? That’s two point one five, plus a bit.
Near enough two centimetres, one and a half millimetres.
P Well, we can now mark the apex on the map, but nothing else until we get
some accurate compass bearings.
M I’ve noticed something very interesting on John’s plan. Do you see
that the apical angle of the figure is in exact alignment with the points
where the second and third limbs begin, and also with the apex at the
inner end?
P So they are.
M I wouldn’t have noticed it except for the fact that when we laid the
string out it ran exactly along the edge of the first limb. If we tied
another four or five metre string to the peg and took it to the inner
apex I bet it would still line up.
P Do the same thing on the other side, from the apex to the elbow where the
third limb starts. Put the peg in at the apex Melanie, and unroll it down to the
second elbow. Yes, it seems to be pretty accurate.
L Why do you suppose its done like that?
R It’s almost as if someone was drawing attention to the fact that the apical angle and
the two arms from it needed to be very accurately figured.
A We need to do a second rough drawing to the same scale as Martineau’s
Number Three.
R What’s the matter? You look peculiar. Are you all right?
A I saw Maggie. I do sometimes.
R What brought it on?
A I held Paul’s sketch below my eye level and tried to align it to where the
middle of Avebury lies. I felt a sort of jolt in my solar plexus, and there was
Maggie looking at me with her mouth open.
R You’re quite pale.
A I’m all right.
P Where’s John’s sketch. What’s the matter? Oh, you’ve got it. I’ve got a couple
more measurements to do with the metre rule and then that’s about all we can do
here. The compass bearings are more problematic. Somebody needs to bring a
theodolite.
R Who’s co-ordinating all this?
P There’s a meeting at the so-called croppie pub, The Barge, at eleven
tomorrow. We shall have something to contribute, and I’m sure a lot of others
will too. There, that’s about it. We’d better get back. Where are you people
staying?
M The five of us are going down to Herefordshrie, but only for one
night, as far as we know. Then back to London.
P Will you be coming back this way?
R I’d certainly like to. We’re meeting now at the restaurant again, aren’t we? We can
discuss it there. I don’t know if we can get back in time for the meeting. I’d certainly hope
to be there, if only to meet the experts.
P It could be quite stormy. There’ll be a lot of controversial opinions. Croppies
are not noted for peace and harmony.
L I’d rather keep out of all that.
M So would I. Let’s wait and see. See you down there.
*****
J Here they come, Fiona. Hi, darling, what have you been up to?
L We’ve had a gorgeous time. Melanie and I are now apprentice land-
surveyors. Paul’s our foreman.
P Martineau gave me a copy of a form he surveyed yesterday and suggested I do
a sketch on the same scale of a figure right the other side of Avebury on the north
west side.
A Hello Maggie. I saw you from up there, like the time in Dorchester.
MG I thought you might. I saw you too, but only a flash.
A You had your mouth wide open like a fish.
MG I’m not surprised. I was in a whirlpool.
A A whirlpool? There isn’t any water in Avebury is there?
MG Not a water one, silly. An energy vortex, isn’t it Fiona?
F There seems to be a double helix here, similar to the one in DNA,
Richard.
R Good heavens, that opens up an enormous field for speculation. What if...
A Don’t let’s theorise too soon. For heaven’s sake let’s wait till we know more
facts. We’ll only muddle things.
P We’ve got something quite solid from our work up there. It needs some proper
triangulation to put the figure we were looking at firmly on the map. But I did
pencil it lightly in.
J Are yours and Martineau’s exactly alike?
P No they’re not. They’re like different versions of the same general plan. Here
are the two plans roughly drawn. Mine is longer and thinner than his.
L Ours.
P O.K. Ours.
J What do you think that’s supposed to indicate? If anything. By which I mean it’s all
too easy to impute purpose to these things in an anthropomorphic way.
R Quite valid if human craftsmen have been involved again.
J Not if they haven’t?
P I would have thought not.
J I don’t agree. I would impute a form of consciousness to the plant world itself, but not
a purposive one.
M I think that’s a valid comment. Just look at those shapes. If these
had been single triangular wedges in the corn, the two sides would
have been joined by a transverse edge at right angles to the Avebury
direction. That would have taken the attention off the directional
character of the two sides. It’s almost as if there had been a deliberate
attempt to emphasise that it is the apical angle, both its dimension and
its orientation towards Avebury, that is being emphasised.
R That looks like human craftsmen again.
J Not necessarily. How would a non-human intelligence express an angle and an
orientation in space with the minimum expenditure of energy and design, and the least
number of confusing inessentials? Like this I would have thought.
R That’s purposive, isn’t it?
J Not in our terms. There’s no separation in nature between the idea and the
phenomenon which expresses it. "Conformity of thought to thing". I think that was a neo-
platonist expression. At that level there are no errors in nature. There’s no gap where they
can creep in. An intelligent phenomenon just exists.
M And com is itself an intelligent phenomenon. That’s why you
always emphasise that crop-circles are primarily a biological
manifestation, isn’t it, Richard?
R Whenever people ask for an external cause for a phenomenon in nature, without first
looking to see whether they have underestimated the breadth of nature’s own capacities,
I feel uneasy. Superstition arises when people suspect divine intervention whenever
anything unusual happens. ‘Croppies’ who invent circlemakers to explain agriglyphs are
really saying the gods made a poor job of inventing nature in the first place.
J Well, that’s our materialistic view of the world, isn’t it? An automatic machine
abandoned by its inventors.
R More commonly, a self-explanatory machine which needed no inventors. However,
Mother Nature is apparently alive and kicking. The old bag has more tricks up her sleeve
than mechanistic theory allows for.
P O.K. But when you’ve done philosophising there’s still the interesting question
of why these two apical angles are different. For instance, if this turns out to be a
perfect circle with fifteen points of the circumference emphasised by these zig-zag
forms, it’s tempting to speculate that we may be dealing with three interlocking
pentagrams.
R Whose apices are marked by these forms.
P Right.
R They can’t be regular pentagrams related to the centre of a circle, or all the apical
angles would be thirty-six degrees.
P And we know they’re not. Of the two we know about, one’s thirty eight
degrees, and the other, the one we measured, is thirty three. So where does that
leave us?
R Either the outer perimeter is not a circle, or they don’t all relate to one centre.
P Or both.
R Or, as you say, both. In either case, if they’re pentagrams at all, all four of the lines
subtending the two angles we know about will hit the apices of other formations, four of
them.
P Or two, if they both belong to the same pentagram.
R Fair enough. And that’s about as far as we can get.
F Except for us.
R What does that mean?
F It means that as far as Maggie’s and my very different experience
is concerned, what you’ve only experienced as a possibility is an actual
fact, namely that these energies are centred on two different foci.
Moreover we know where they are.
MG More than that, we know which of the two centres has to do with your
formation.
A Yes, we do Paul. Maggie and I were aware of each other while we were
standing at our apex, working.
P And you were standing at a point you regard as a focus for the centred
energies?
MG That’s it. I wasn’t exactly on the spot, because the pressure was more
than I could bear, even with Fiona’s help.
P Is the experience repeatable? I mean, could you find the spot again?
F Actually, it was fairly obvious where the point was going to be once
I guided her into one of the inner rings of stone.
P How do you mean, guided her?
F She kept her eyes shut. She evidently finds it easier to sense the
direction in which the energy is more intense if there is no visual
interference.
P Can you replicate an experience like that? I mean, could you bracket it, as it
were, from the other side? If you could approach each focus from a number of
different directions we might get a pretty accurate fix to work from.
F I’m not at all sure the focal points are stable, Paul.
MG That’s right. I was already having a feeling, when Fiona had to let go of
her concentrating, and we had to leave the circle, that the whirling was
getting weaker.
P You say ‘whirling’. You were in a sort of whirlwind, were you? It reminds me
of the sort of things Terence Meaden used to say about crop circle formation. He
was sure it was all meteorological.
MG This isn’t a physical thing Paul. It’s difficult to put into words, because it
isn’t the same as when something happens in the direction of the senses and
you describe it. It happens in a different direction and you turn and face it.
Difficult to...
P You mean half way between inside and outside you?
MG I don’t understand this inside-outside business. I get this feeling of a
huge whirlpool going round, and it’s also very bright, bright colours like, and
the nearer the brighter. I feel it inside my stomach. But it must be in the
other direction as well, towards what you can see, because although I don’t
know which way to move to make it brighter, I can experiment with it, try
different directions.
P What makes you feel there’s another centre apart from the one you had
found?
F She told me before we went in there she’d had a feeling there were
two whirlpools side by side.
MG When it started getting so bright I lost the other centre. But when we
moved away I could feel it again. Oh, I’ve remembered something Fiona.
When we were fighting to hang on in the middle there, I was afraid I’d be
sucked into the Earth and then be shot out into the other whirlpool. I’d
forgotten that.
F She’d been describing how during the journey up here she’d
pictured a huge flower-like formation which got more vivid as you
came nearer to Avebury.
MG You know, I once read about these blowers they have in hot springs in
some places, like in Australia. They have sort of rhythm. One dies down and
another starts up somewhere else. It felt like that, almost as if the energies
were breathing and I was getting caught up in it.
P It’s all very interesting, but whether it has anything to do with what we were
looking at remains to be seen.
A All the same, it’s a bit odd that I seemed to get a momentary line on what she
was doing from where we were working. It happened when I stood at the apex
and tried to line up the middle of the drawing on Avebury.
R I don’t think the drawing had anything to do with it. It was the crop-formation itself.
P Maybe. By the way, I wonder what’s happened to the rest of my group. They
went off in the other car, following Richard Andrews, apparently looking for
other formations. They were supposed to meet us back here at four.
R What time is it now?
M It’s about four-thirty.
F You know, if we’re going to get down to Garway in reasonable time
we ought to get moving. I’m tired already.
P Your not going back to London then?
M No, we’re spending the night at a house Fiona has in the country.
MG I’m really glad we met, Fiona. I’d love to talk to you more.
F We live so far away, don’t we? What are you and Andrew doing
tonight?
A We’re supposed to be spending another night at this pub in Devizes, and then
we wanted to listen in at this meeting at Alton Priors, at ‘The Barge’ pub where
the croppies meet, in the morning when the experts get together.
F I was wondering whether you would like to join up with us for the
night, only you probably haven’t brought sleeping bags with you.
A Maggie has; I didn’t think I would need mine. In any case, what about cars?
We’ve got two others of our party in mine. Are you in two cars?
R I’m afraid not. And there are five of us.
M It doesn’t look as if it’s going to work this time, does it? Do you
think we’ll manage to make it back to this meeting in the morning,
Richard?
R I can imagine getting back here by midday. I doubt if we’ll be earlier. But meetings
like that go on forever. We’ll certainly learn a lot more whatever time we turn up.
F Well, let’s look out for each other tomorrow then.
A We’ll wait for you at the Barge at least until one. I’m sure we’ll know more by
then.
R What’s happened to Lucia and Joe?
F They drifted off somewhere. Oh, there they are look. Somebody
seems to be holding forth at that far table. I’ll try and detach them.
R Paul, thanks very much for letting us know about this. And that was really interesting
working on the mapping.
M Yes, thank you Paul, that was really fun. And we want to hear a lot
more about your I.T. doings. You’ve got a group going, have you?
P Yes, I hoped to have a chance to compare notes and hear how you were doing.
M Well, maybe we’ll get a chance to make an arrangement when we
meet tomorrow. What was going on over there, Lu?
L Very interesting indeed. I should go and join that group, Paul. There’s a
chap there who went out with Richard Andrews this afternoon. But it seems
we have to get moving. We’ll hope to link up again tomorrow then?
P Yes, I hope so Nice to see you again Lucia. I hope you enjoyed the field-work.
L Very much. The whole thing’s quite fascinating.
J On our way, then. Bye Paul. Bye everyone.
A I think Maggie and I will walk with you to your car. I wanted just to ask you
about your I.T. work in London. Paul’s told us a little about it, but I get the feeling
he doesn’t altogether agree with the way you’re going about it.
M What does he say, then?
A He thinks it’s all rather vague. He has a great sense of urgency, has Paul. He’s
full of ideas about the breakdown of civilisation and the need for everyone to get
their act together and prepare for Earth changes. And I will say for him that he’s
an excellent organiser and quite a good speaker. The only thing is he doesn’t leave
much room for other people’s ideas. The one person he does seem to listen to is
Maggie, doesn’t he love? There’s something about her approach that intrigues
him, something he can’t quite make out. It irritates him and fascinates him at the
same time.
R He only spent a short time with us in London, not enough really for him to hear in
depth what we were doing. He was obviously intrigued, and we rather thought he would
try to get something moving of his own. Meanwhile a lot more has happened in our
group which he doesn’t know about. How many of you are there?
A About twenty altogether. We meet regularly every week and most people come
every time. He runs the meetings and talks most of the time. And I must say it’s
all very interesting stuff. He must have been putting quite a lot of cash into it too.
There are always quite a lot of books on display. I think he gets quite a lot on sale
or return, but not all booksellers will do that. But what Maggie
and I really wanted to know was why he thought you were all too laid
back about it all. You don’t seem at all like that to me.
M My impression is that Paul doesn’t have much idea about the way
in which spiritual processes develop. I think it’s because he’s so active
in himself he hasn’t learned to listen to what goes on in other people.
A So what does go on with you people?
J Well, we’re beginning to be able to take account of other conscious entities besides
ourselves.
A Telepathy?
J Not exactly. No, I’m not talking about communication with other human beings in
bodies. I’m talking about conscious entities which put their oar in while we are
communicating with each other.
A Channelling?
M No, not channelling either. Though, if we don’t watch it, the
process does tend to drift into channelling. That’s to say some of us
may begin to be pushed aside by such entities because they don’t
have speech organs. They don’t even have language. Their thinking is
non-verbal, or at least trans-verbal. So they are very dependent on us
meeting them half-way, as it were.
L Some people seem to be more mediumistic than others, more easily
pushed aside, and therefore tending to be attractive to bodiless entities who
are over-eager for embodiment in human terms, not too respectful of our
freedom and independence. I’m a bit like that, but I seem to be getting over
it, asserting myself more.
MG Sounds like me too. I used to go in for spiritualism, got caught up in it.
In fact I began to get ill.
R I think once we begin to see the issues, experience what’s involved, we get a lot of
protection and help from beings who are concerned with humanity’s next stage. Indeed,
their own further development is bound up with ours.
MG I believe we could learn an awful lot from you people. Fiona and I got
on like a house on fire, didn’t we, Fiona? At least I thought so. It helped me
no end to be with someone who took what I was going through seriously.
You seemed to know exactly what I needed, and you had a very steadying
effect altogether. I sometimes panic a bit, but I felt quite safe with you, safe
to let go and allow things to happen.
F I’m really glad, Maggie, and thank you for being so open after
knowing us for so short a time. But it’s far from being all one way you
know. We’ve been feeling that our group isn’t complete yet. There are
things no-one in our group can do, and direct telepathic
communication, in the very circumstantial way you and Andrew seem
to be able to achieve, is certainly one of them. Gifts of that sort aren’t
acquired easily. If you have them naturally, and then meet people you
love, a lot starts to rub off.
A So these beings you communicate with are pretty independent, are they? They
don’t just come when called, like genies out of a bottle?
L Far from it. They sometimes appear quite spontaneously in the middle of
a conversation. One of us is just suddenly speaking as one of them. It’s
almost like speaking a part as an actor.
R I used the analogy the other day of suddenly finding a horse between my legs and
riding it at a gallop. That’s why we don’t feel we are channelling. It’s a partnership.
A It sounds as though they’re higher aspects of yourselves.
F To some extent I think they are that. But as we become aware of
the situation we project identities onto them. We even name them.
M And discover in doing so that they are doing the same to us.
L And that’s where the process takes off. A new level of being starts to be
born.
F Intraterrestrial, we call it.
MG It’s a beautiful word. Paul uses it. But he isn’t anywhere near what
you’re talking about. It seems more like just an idea when he uses it.
A But be fair, Maggie. It’s a very interesting idea. And he’s very inspiring when
he’s talking about it. He talks well. I’d even say more. Paul’s the kind of person to
whom things happen. He only has to walk into a room and things begin to buzz.
L Yes, we know all about it, Andrew. It’s called glamour. You either love it
or you hate it. I think it’s awfully difficult to be fair to a person like Paul.
People think glamour gives people an unfair advantage. Often it’s just the
opposite. Glamorous people actually take advantage, override people, cut
corners, cover up their own insecurities, and end by missing out.
A How do you make that out? I would have thought just the opposite. Things
happen round them. They get things going.
L I didn’t say begin by missing out. But the initial success glamorous people
have is usually too heady a wine for people to take. The temptation to ride
the wave and by-pass problems is too great, both for themselves and for
those round them. Help me Joe. I don’t want to overstate this, but you know
how I feel.
J Paul had a powerful effect on this group during the very short time he was with us. In
a way he threw things out of balance. We couldn’t stop talking about him.
L I frankly fell for him. I was all over the place.
M It was as if he was still here. We were all affected, in different ways
of course. My own chief impression was that he needed a lot of help.
He didn’t really seem to know what was going on in other people.
R Having a person like Paul around is like having a baby elephant in your living room.
You want to help, but it keeps smashing the furniture and trumpeting. Most people give
up and just follow the lead.
M And if you cut them down to size, very often they’re lost. I think
the problem of leadership is a very difficult one in our society.
Consciousness is waking up in people. We want to decide on
fundamentals for ourselves, take our own line. We put natural leaders
out of a job.
F This is the most extraordinary conversation to have standing round
a parked car. I’m getting very uncomfortable.
R Fiona, love, I’m so sorry. Here, I’ll unlock it. You get in.
F Maggie, you and Andrew would be very welcome to stay with me in
London any time. Give them our addresses and phone numbers,
Richard. We need to talk a lot more. Give me a hug, Maggie, before my
legs collapse.
MG Oh, bless you Fiona, it’s been lovely meeting you. Have a good journey.
We’ll be in touch. And perhaps we’ll see you tomorrow.
R Bye Andrew. We’ll try and make it. In case we don’t here’s a contact list for us in
London. Bye all. (General good-byes).
*****

Dialogue 6

A You know, Paul, I don’t know if I even want to go to this damned meeting.
P Why the hell not? Everybody else’ll be there. It’ll be the one chance we’ll get
to listen to the impressions of some people with experience, and at a time when
a major breakthrough is fresh in their minds.
A Paul, it’s all so damned predictable. I mean people are so transparent. Just
picture it. There’ll be George Wingfield trying to believe in the reality of the
phenomenon, and at the same time helpless to disbelieve any idiot who claims to
have made the things. Then Colin Andrews will bustle in looking harassed, with
his briefcase bulging with secret documents hot off the press. And Michael
Glickman almost in tears over the dawning wonders of a cosmic breakthrough.
P Yes I know, and Erik Beckfjord in despair that everyone doesn’t see that
every new form confirms what he has always said about language. And don’t
forget Stanley Messenger, eyes aglow with his latest insight into the creative
vitality of nature, and John Martineau with sheet after sheet of geometric
transcripts, and Barbara Davies bubbling with statistics. But that’s the name of
the game, Andrew. That’s the seething cauldron out of which new insights come!
To my mind it’s the stuff of life. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
A I sometimes wonder whether you’ve ever had a genuine inspiration in your
life, Paul. For you it’s all nothing but an intriguing game, and the more intrigue
the better. You’re intrigued by Maggie, for example. I watch you trying to make
up your mind whether she’s genuine or not. Sometimes you think she’s just
another hysteric who’s found a line she can sell. Don’t’ you?
P I give Maggie the benefit of the doubt, Andrew. I like Maggie. But honestly, I
simply don’t know. I’ve never had any reason to believe there’s anything to life
other than what there appears to be on the surface. I find everything endlessly
interesting and exciting as it is. Why do people have to have explanations all the
time?
A Good question. Let’s see what they’ve got for breakfast this time. Seems we
help ourselves unless we want something cooked. Coffee’s what I need.
P Morning Maggie. Did you sleep well?
MG I never sleep too well away from my own bed. Did you?
P I hardly notice where I go to bed. Out like a light the moment my head
touches the pillow.
A We were talking till all hours, weren’t we, Mag?
MG Aye, we were natterin’ away till after midnight. Very interesting too.
P So you heard what the rest of the party had been up to. I gather they tagged
on to Richard Andrews and some others and went dowsing. Did they find
anything?
A Not at first, apparently. Somebody had been into Swindon with Busty’s
negatives and got some big blow-ups, and Richard Andrews and others had been
trying to see whether they could dowse on the photos the way the surrounding
circle was going at the two ends.
P Ends of what?
A Well, the ends of the line through the forms they’d already mapped. One of
our group, I think it was Peter, was with a party working on the two figures on
those photos which hadn’t yet been mapped. Peter said...
P Yes I talked to him. I even saw a copy of their plans. Not very clear, but they
seem to have got the same sort of results as we did. Figures the same general
shape, and angles at the apex of between thirty and forty degrees. But what
about the dowsing?
A They said Richard was a bit uncertain about the outer circle on the photos.
The angles of some of the shots made it difficult. But it was enough to get them
started on the ground, and then it seems it went very well. There was a strong
dowsing trace which they all agreed on, both connecting the three figures and
going on beyond them.
P Were they still in wheat fields?
A Don’t know. I think they followed it clockwise at first, and then a couple of
them left and tried to follow it the other way. It’s obviously an enormous job, and
I don’t know how well organised they were.
P Do they really think they’re going to dowse a whole circle fifteen miles
round? Even a dozen competent dowsers could take a week. And what about all
the places where there’s no crop growing? Morning Peter? Sleep all right? I
thought you were going off early with the people you were with yesterday.
Peter I was. I overslept.
P Did you arrange to meet them somewhere?
Peter They were going to pick me up here about nine. What time is
it?
A It’s about a quarter past. They’ve probably overslept as well.
Peter I’d better eat something. That porridge was good yesterday.
P Peter, can I look at those diagrams you had yesterday?
Peter Here they are. One got a bit torn.
Simon Morning everyone. Girls not up yet?
MG I am. Mandy and Brenda are sharing a room. I’ll go and see if they’re
awake.
A Finish your breakfast first love. There’s no hurry. Meeting’s not till eleven.
P Peter, are you sure you’ve got these angles right? I thought you said they
were all between thirty and forty degrees. You didn’t show me this third one. It
must be damned near sixty degrees.
Peter They’d already done that one before I got there. I simply
traced all three with some carbon paper they had. Didn’t really look at
that third one.
P If you have got it right it throws my idea of three pentagrams right out of
the window.
A I think you’ll find that by the time we get to the meeting someone will have
put together a composite picture of all the findings to date. I suggest we stop all
further speculation till we get there.
MG The girls have got as far as the bathroom.
Peter Here’s my lift I think. See you later.
P Can I hang on to these? I’ll take good care of them.
Peter O.K. Bring them with you to the meeting.
MG What are they Paul? May I have a look? This one gives me a real funny
feeling.
P Which one? Oh yes. That’s the one Peter didn’t show us yesterday.
MG It’s quite a different shape, isn’t it? Sort of broad and squat, like a frog.
P It’s the same general pattern though. I want to measure that angle. The
protractor’s in the car. Morning girls, you almost missed breakfast. Simon’s
eaten all the porridge.
Brenda Can’t stand the stuff. Cornflakes’ll do me. And lots of lovely
coffee.
Mandy I want a cup of tea. I feel awful.
MG Nobody’s really heard how you got on yesterday. You were with Richard
Andrews, weren’t you? Was it interesting?
Brenda It was really pretty amazing. You know I’ve done a bit of
dowsing myself. Did I tell you I met those two chaps who did all that
Michael and Mary Line stuff in Cornwall four years ago?
MG That’s right. They did a book, what was it called? "The Sun and the
Serpent".
Brenda That’s it. Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst. Well, that’s
what started me off dowsing. I got really into it yesterday following this
Richard Andrews. He was striding away with his rods and every time he
got off the line he was following they would collapse and he’d walk
back and edge sideways like a crab, and suddenly the rods would flick
into position again and on he’d go. It was crazy. We went across the
rest f the cornfield like that and...
A What do you mean, which cornfield?
Brenda The one where the zig-zag shape was, the one we’d been
measuring.
A So there was no laid corn where you were dowsing?
Brenda No, it was just energy. Real powerful.
A The farmer can’t have been best pleased.
Brenda We’d already talked to him earlier, and Richard Andrews told
him exactly what we’d be doing. He seemed all right about it. I think
Richard gave him some money.
A So what happened when you got to the edge of the field?
Brenda Well, we climbed up a bank and onto the road, still
dowsing…
A You were dowsing too, were you?
Brenda Yes, I was following him with my pendulum. I tried to keep a
little to the left of his line and hold the pendulum a little to the right of
me. It went wild every time I touched the edge of the energy. Well we
crossed the road and there was a hedge the other side, so we had to
find a gate. Richard made me stay by the hedge while he and the
others found their way round to the other side. Soon he called to me to
mark the spot where the line went through the hedge so that he could
pick it up again on the other side.
A Did you have any idea how wide a band of energy it was?
Brenda As long as we were in the cornfield he didn’t want to do any
more damage to the crop than he could help. But when we got into the
next field it was just grassy meadow, and that’s what he and the
others were doing when I got back to them. Richard was dowsing at
right-angles to the line, then Mandy and the others marked the spot
with a stick...
Mandy Usually a dry cow-pat. (giggles)
Brenda ...and then he’d go on a few yards and do it again. We went
right across the field like that.
Mandy Soon there was a double line of cow pats and sticks all across
the field. It looked great.
A How wide?
Simon He got me to measure it as we went along. It varied between
ten and twelve yards. It seemed to me the outer edge was straight and
the inner one wavy
A So then what?
Brenda Well, we crossed two more fields like that, still grassy. The
land was sloping up a bit, so we could see back to the cornfield where
some more people had arrived. There were cars parked along the lane.
MG You know, it’s funny as you talk I’m getting the most odd sensation of
two worlds meeting.
A You mean this flower thing of yours?
MG I wish I hadn’t used the word flower to describe it. There isn’t really a
word. It’s a huge coloured pulsating thing like an enormous wheel.
Sometimes it seems as if it’s made of clouds or coloured cotton-wool. Then
the picture sharpens, and it’s like peacock feathers or butterfly wings, those
big blue ones. And it slowly turns round. When Simon said the inner edge
was wavy I felt that next time they measured the width of that band it would
be quite different.
Brenda Anyway, on we went, and the next field was clover and that
other stuff...alfalfa. There was no hedge so we climbed through the
wire and went on round. Richard was worried about trampling and sent
us round the edge of the field, so we didn’t measure the band till we
got to a strip of rough ground at the edge of a wood the other side.
A How far were you from the others by then?
Brenda We were out of sight of them, but they were all pretty big
fields. I reckon the best part of a mile. Richard said we ought to be
expecting another formation soon, so we all trooped round the edge of
the wood to the left to see what was on the other side. It turned out to
be about, say, three hundred yards wide, and the other side was
sloping down-land going into a broad valley. Not a cornfield in sight till
you get down onto the flat land below.
MG What did you do?
Brenda We were all a bit flummoxed. Then Richard started picking
up the perimeter again further down the edge of the wood. Simon was
still marking the edge of the inner edge of the band, and it was roughly
the same width. The two of them went on down the hill quite a long
way. There was nothing for the rest of us to do, so we just stood and
watched.
Mandy It was hilarious, wasn’t it Brenda? We suddenly found
ourselves all looking at each other, and we knew we had all picked up
the same thought. And that was just the moment when Richard and
Simon stopped what they were doing and started trudging back up the
hill.
A Yes, I’m picking it up too. The next form simply had to be inside the wood!
But how on earth would...
Brenda Well this was obviously what had been in Richard’s mind for
some time. If the forms were anywhere near equally spread round the
circle, and we were now getting on for a mile and a quarter away from
the last one, we had at least to try in the wood before we went any
further.
A So?
Simon Well, we all had a confab by the edge of the wood. Richard
wasn’t at all certain what to do next. We were all pretty tired by then.
We sat on the ground, and Richard started reminiscing a bit. He’s a
pretty old hand at the dowsing game, and I get the feeling that this
whole crop-circle business has been a tremendous strain on him. Well
it has on all of them really.
A How do you mean that?
Simon Well, it’s become a bit of an obsession with some of them. It’s
altered their lives. You can’t just isolate it from the rest of your life,
turn it into a sort of hobby, like. It gets hold of you.
MG That’s what I was trying to say. We all have different ways of adjusting
when we start to feel we’re living in two worlds at once.
Brenda How do you mean?
MG Well I mean look at us! On one level we’re all practical people. You’re
young, but a lot of us have jobs and families and so on. What do we think
we’re doing wandering about the countryside with pendulums and bits of
wire?
Simon I think that’s what we began to feel sitting out on that hillside
yesterday. At least with crop-circles there’s a shape in the cornfields
you can actually see. As Richard talked we began to feel that those
shapes are only the tip of the iceberg. Where there happens to be
wheat or barley growing you can see something. But we were going
where the shapes were just as real, but there was nothing to see!
MG I’m living in a world like that a lot of the time. It’s difficult to keep your
feet on the ground when half the world you’re aware of is apparently invisible
to the people round you. You feel a bit crazy sometimes.
A But at least you’ve got something visible to refer to in your parallel reality.
Brenda Yes, whereas when you’re dowsing you can only feel it in
your hands and feet. It must be a bit like what blind people feel.
A So what did you do next?
Brenda Well for me, and I think for the rest of us, it all got a bit
chaotic. Richard seemed to know more or less what he was doing. He
had a bit of board with a paper on it and started plunging about in the
wood with a pendulum. There wasn’t much room to work with his
dowsing rods. I stayed with him, holding bits of string and pegs and
putting them where he told me to. Mandy and Simon went back the
way we’d come, and I think you joined the others, didn’t you?
A But did you find the form?
Brenda Yes we did, after a fashion. There was a lot of thorn scrub
between the trees, so some of the lines were incomplete. But he’d
drawn on his plan something we recognised as a zig-zag shape like the
others. Whether he could measure actual angles and lengths like yours
I’m not sure.
A Well, thank you very much, Brenda. That was a very clear description. No
doubt we’ll hear all about it at the meeting. By the way, what time is it? Whatever
happened to Paul?
MG He went off to get something from the car.
A It must be getting on for ten o’clock. We ought to get going, otherwise we
won’t have a chance to talk to anybody before the meeting starts. Oh, here’s Paul.
Where have you been?
P I found Richard Andrews. He’s staying across the road. We’ve been comparing
the different figures. Apparently the one in the wood was another broad angled
one. I hope someone has managed by now to do a general map of the whole area,
and on a big enough scale to mark all the forms that have been found so far, with
the apical angles accurately measured. More and more I’m beginning to feel we’ll
end up with sixteen points, not fifteen. I think there must be a hexagonal form
with six of the sixty-degree apices. In both the forms I’ve seen drawings of so far
the sixty-degree angles were dead accurate. That not only means it would be a
regular hexagon. It also means that the perimeter line is a perfect circle.
A But it also means that the two pentagons are irregular, or all the angles would
be the same.
P Exactly. We ought to get going.
MG None of you seem to have grasped that this means something else as
well.
A What, Maggie?
MG It means there should be three vortices at the centre, not two. So far
I’m not at all aware of a third vortex to this thing.
P I don’t know what that means. We can’t stop now. Where’s Mandy? We’ll be
late.
Brenda Making up her face I expect. Mandy! We’re going.
Mandy (off) Coming! I can’t find my camera. Oh here it is.
A Roll on the day when we can all live in one reality.
*****

Dialogue 7

M Well, I must say, I’m glad to be out of that. It may sound

complacent, but thank God for I.T.
L I thought it was all jolly interesting, but I know what you mean, Mel. As a
group they have no common ground. It’s amazing they work together as well
as they do.
J Which way are we going, Richard?
R I thought through Marlborough and straight up the A4 I don’t feel like motorways
today. Let’s find somewhere nice for lunch.
F Drive slowly, Richard. I want to get home, but I don’t want to hurry
either. We don’t have to stay on the A4 all the way, do we? We might
stop at one of those nice pubs on the river, Moulsworth or Shillingford
or somewhere.
J I wonder how long they’ll go on talking.
R Most of the day I imagine. But there’s still a hell of a lot more fieldwork to do.
L What a nice man that Michael Glickman is. He’s really quite inspired when
he talks, isn’t he? He’s really enthralled by the sheer beauty of the whole
crop-circle event, isn’t he?
J The one who really struck me was John Martineau. I do love accurate observation.
There’s no speculative nonsense about him. He observes and measures, and when he’s
measured it opens up more observations for him. It was he who drew out the big map
they had on the wall, wasn’t it?
R He got into a bit of an argument with Richard Andrews at one point. I don’t think he’s
done much dowsing. I think he thought it ought to be possible to trace out the whole of
those giant geometrical figures across the landscape by straight dowsing Richard said it
was impossible. The thing about dowsing everything in sight for years on end is that you
begin to know its limits.
J The trouble is, dowsers doesn’t always agree. What is dowsable to one person may be
simply a blank to the next person who comes along.
R Nobody knows precisely what dowsing is. Only that it works.
J For some people.
R Probably for everybody if they let it work. It seems to be more dependent than, say,
sight or hearing on whether you believe dowsing works or not.
J Then there’s a second level, which is whether you believe what you’re dowsing for
exists or not. If you believe there’s an underground stream across your garden you can
trace it. That is, some people can trace it. There are better discussions than this.
M Well, I should think there jolly well ought to be. Talk about a blind
man looking for a black cat in a room with the light out.
J Dowsing lore would probably claim that a dowser would be more likely to find the cat
than most people. And namers like you, Mel, would probably have the most difficulty.
L Wait a minute, wait a minute! I don’t believe it’s all that different in a way
from sight or hearing. Isn’t hearing enormously dependent on what people
think they can hear?
F And on training. Whole worlds can be opened up, even to people
with relatively little constitutional sight or hearing by people who have
taught themselves to extend the range of their own senses, and can
teach others to do the same.
J I think there is a difference, you know, Lu.
L In what?
J Between dowsing and other senses. Even the word itself conveys it. By that I mean we
describe dowsing as an activity, but it is equally a sensitivity. With other senses we
distinguish looking from seeing, listening from hearing. With dowsing...
R If we weren’t so materialistic we wouldn’t make that distinction. If I don’t concentrate
on driving we’ll bump into something. This is Marlborough. Why don’t we stop here for
lunch? It’ll be hours before we get to the Thames valley.
M Look there’s someone just backing out. Right here on the left!
F Well done, Richard. There’s a nice place called Polly’s something or
other.
L We’re right by it Fiona.
*****
R I wish the world of journeys and cars and meals wasn’t always cutting our
discussions in half.
J You’re very fortunate it does, Richard. Otherwise you’d be in an intellectual dream
half the time.
M What’s so special about Richard is precisely that he can live on
both levels at once.
R Sometimes I hardly know which is which.
F It’s synchronising them that’s the problem, realising that they’re
actually the same world, that there’s only one reality.
R Well that’s exactly what I was trying to say in the car. We make a false distinction
between looking and seeing, listening and hearing, dowsing and...well, dowsing!
L What do we really mean when we say that an object is there?
M Elaborate, Lu.
L You look at a tree and there it is. You lie in bed in the morning with your
eyes shut, and a bird sings. Where is it? There’s quite a palaver of picturing
goes on before you locate it as on the tree outside, or down the road
somewhere. With hearing there’s more of a gap between sensing and
locating.
J Reminds me of the Welsh riddle! What’s the difference between a collision and an
explosion? Answer: with a collision there’s a bang, and there you are. With an explosion
there’s a bang, and where are you?
M But with hearing, there is an actual bird in a particular place,
singing away. A singing bird is a collision as well as an explosion!
L Yes, but that’s a bit of information you get by seeing it, not hearing it.
R I’m lost.
L Well, I repeat, what does there really mean in regard to things?
J Are things any more than conventions we have about actions, processes, about
something going on, not necessarily located in space or time.
R Materialism would say you’re talking nonsense. The real world doesn’t allow for such
distinctions. ¤ "The fact is, Richard, you are a materialist by constitution. That is why I
have a special connection with you, and why it was in the crop-circle dimension we first
met."
L Hello, Ophromine! How are you today?
R ¤ "Today for me is all the time. Very well, thank you, Lucia, my candle-flame. Stop
flickering. Burn steadily. You are needed now."
L Why now especially?
R ¤ "Because the crop-circle world is changing. Didn’t you see what was going on at
that meeting?
L Well, yes, indeed I did. There was a moment when everyone was riveted
on that enormous map on the wall. Richard Andrews was describing vividly
how he had struggled to identify a figure in a piece of woodland, and his
astonished realisation that it had the same general form as half a dozen or
more already visible in the crops. Somebody shouted out that it was only
because he expected it to be there. Then John Martineau asked, in that case
why was the angle in his diagram accurately measurable, and exactly what
one would expect as the sixth apex in a hexagram, five of whose angles were
already identified in cornfields? Then bedlam broke out, and I lost touch with
the argument.
M Michael Glickman was in tears. Stanley Messenger was trying to
take the stand, but I couldn’t hear what he said.
F I was sitting with Maggie. She was in tears too. She said she was
hopeless in meetings, but somebody needed to point out that it was
the six-sided figure they should be looking at. The pentagrams were
simply indicating the closing of what she called the Avebury age, the
historical period of mankind’s history. The hexagram held the clue to
the realignment of the Earth Grid, I think she said.
J What do you think, Ophromine?
R ¤ "I’ve told you before, I don’t think. You do the thinking yourselves. There is one
thing, though. You need to pick out the essential from the non-essential in this crop-
circle situation. That’s your job, Lucia."
L Oh, Ophromine, let up will you? I don’t know anything about crop-circles.
R ¤ "What you know about is the level from which they are coming. I have a
suggestion. You’ve been meeting people over this, two in particular. Your group is
incomplete. Work with these two. They will link you with others. Darkness is rendered
visible by light. Light attracts darkness towards itself. The dark and light flowers need to
bloom together, but do not confuse them. The time of harvest is not yet, but it is coming.
It is very near".
*****
L I’ve hardly eaten anything again. It’s time we stopped having major
spiritual encounters in restaurants. He meant Maggie and Andrew, didn’t he?
F I’ve no doubt of it. I invited them back with us, but they were too
involved. Garway’s the answer, isn’t it?
M Just that brief glimpse again convinced me. We’ve simply got to
commit ourselves and get on with it. I don’t know how we’ll manage it,
but we will.
R I was recommended an extremely good trust-forming solicitor in the Strand. I hope
you don’t mind. I simply instructed him to get on with it. He’s drawing up the deed as
soon as he can. He seems a very nice man, knows the ropes. He says ‘new-age’ trusts
are becoming second nature to him.
J Have we got Maggie’s and Andrew’s address?
R Yes, I got it yesterday.
J Let’s go back to town, wind up our affairs, and detach ourselves. It can’t be too soon
for me.
F Let’s at least spend the summer down there and see how it goes. I
know Maggie will be dead keen. I have no idea whether Andrew will be
able to move.
M It’s a long way from Plymouth to Garway. Maybe they’ll come at
weekends, or he will.
J Speculation is the thief of time.
L That’s procrastination.
J Speculation is a sort of procrastination.
L You’re a metaphor mixer Joe.
J What about your fairies on birthday cakes riding round on carousels?
L You started that one.
J I… DID… NOT !!!
R I don’t know what you two idiots are talking about, but somebody’s got to pay this bill.
I’m cleaned out with all the petrol.
F Here, give it to me.
J Not all of it, Fiona. Here’s some for Lu and me.
M And me.
R Off we go then. Intraterrestrials on the march. Garway via London next stop.
*****

END OF BOOK FOUR

Book 5
"Fruit"

Dialogue 1

M Are you seriously suggesting, Meruel, that the whole shenanigan at

Avebury, – what is it? – five weeks ago, was a show put on for our
benefit? I mean, how many people were involved during that week or
ten days, three hundred, four hundred? I’m not questioning your
judgement, but...
F M+ "Well, you should be doing so".
M What do you mean?
F M+ "You should be questioning constantly the whole time, every
day, every hour, every minute, every sentence and every nuance of
every thought that arises, in this scenario in which you have set up a
communion between yourselves and what you refer to by this name
Meruel. Melanie, I am not a puppet. I am not a sort of Disney cartoon
figure, a caricature oracle you can come to and consult. I warned you,
and I am speaking to you all now, do not put too much, too one-sidedly
on Fiona. Fiona is a lot older and a lot more frail than the rest of you.
This whole exercise will turn out to be a disaster unless you all learn
very quickly now."
M What do you suggest?
F M+ "I suggest you relax. In one sense we have all the time in the
world. In another sense humanity is up against the biggest crisis, the
most perilous crossing of the most horrific abyss, the most formidable
threshold of its entire existence on this planet. On the other side is
glory. You are walking a tightrope. But it is very strange! You are in no
danger of falling. Your paranoia, your paralysis in this situation, is an
illusion. For you have wings. You can actually fly across. But do not
simply let go and shut your eyes. The abyss is real. Experience it!
Hover! There is plenty of time. All the time in the world. ‘Time stops
and time is never ending".
M Fiona, are you all right? Fetch a glass of water, someone. Fiona,
love, we’re all here. You’re all right. Just breathe slowly in and out. I
think she’s having a heart-attack, Joe. Where’s her bag? She’s got one
of those amyl nitrite inhalers.
J Here it is. I didn’t realise she had angina.
M She told me the doctor said it was very mild, at least until recently.
F I’m feeling better. There’s a dropper bottle with something called
Onopodoron in it somewhere. It’s better than amyl nitrite, less violent,
goes deeper. Look, Melanie love, in fact listen, all of you! We have to
go into a new phase with these dear ‘beings’ of ours. Spontaneity is all
very well. But, as Meruel is always saying, we are at the operative end
of this whole exercise. We are ‘causal’, as those wretched
Scientologists always insist people should be. But the initiative-will
which takes us to the next step on humanity’s path is no longer
personal, if it ever was. It is what Steiner calls ‘the CHRIST-will in the
encircling round’. As Meruel said, we can fly now, but we must learn to
hover, to savour the crisis we are in.
M M+ "I would like to continue the theme through Melanie for a little
while. This episode with Fiona just now had to happen because you
haven’t been aware enough of your need to carry the load more
evenly, to recognise your competence as a group to pursue what you
have been calling the Intraterrestrial path into its implications for the
world as a whole"
J How would you sum up... I know it’s a silly question but…..
M M+ "Not silly. You have to see your way. You, Joe, made a star
map of the five of you some months ago. At that time some of us
responded to your vision by preparing a series of ‘crowns’, or what you
at least would be likely to visualise as like the crowns your kings used
to wear. They are actually energy vortices designed to relate to, and
enhance the activity of, your own highest chakras, which you in any
case have traditionally referred to as ‘crown chakras’. We have been
keeping these crowns in reserve for the moment when your group was
ripe to enter the next phase of its task. The interesting thing was that
even at that time it was seven such crowns we prepared, not five. We
realised, as you partly did, that your group was incomplete. And here
you now are, all seven of you! There’s a lot of rejoicing going on up
here, as some of you can begin to see."
L Oh Meruel, dear, thank you! What a wonderful gift. Can we wear them in
fact, are we wearing them? Shall we be able to see them?
MG I can see them. They’re all different. Different shapes and colours.
M M+ "Maggie, you’ve brought a wonderful new dimension into this
group, something it didn’t have before, and which from now on it will
increasingly need. I’m not leaving you out, Andrew. We’re going to
depend on you for something vital if the group is to avoid the dangers
of deepening without also broadening its scope. But I am going to be
very hard on you both also. You aren’t going to find being in this group
at all easy. Maggie, what would you say is the thing about these five
people you find most difficult to put up with?"
MG You want me to be honest?
M M+ "We won’t get very far unless you are. This isn’t a one-sided
affair. They aren’t going to find you and Andrew easy either. You’re all
going to stimulate big changes in each other".
MG I can sum up what I don’t like in a simple word. Class! Where I come
from this lot would be written off as middle-class intellectual snobs, and
bloody southerners into the bargain! But I’ve learned a lot since I came to
live in the south. It’s opened my eyes to things my whole background taught
me to despise and not to see. But I’ve a long way to go yet. I don’t
understand half the things you talk about. Part of me still thinks they’re not
worth understanding.
J Maggie, what is it northern working people really hate about southern middle class
people with educated voices? I knew an actor from Bradford once, a solid professional,
wrote poetry. He used to talk about the ‘flat, fat south’.
MG The feeling is that you’re self-indulgent and soft, but you still think
you’re a cut above the rest of the country, the part that’s always done the
hard work that supports you and gives you the leisure to indulge your
fantasies.
M Do you still feel like that about us?
MG I’ve never identified all that much with my own class background. But
when there’s a general attitude all round you and you’re growing up, you
start to realise, as I did, that there’s something else going on as well,
something most people aren’t aware of, and you start to change. You start to
ask questions. You still live in the working class world round you, but you
start to fight it. You find yourself a bolt-hole. I found mine in spiritualism.
A I found mine in politics, union work and that. But you outgrow these things,
at least I did. You start to realise that what you are trying to corner, to identify,
and to beat and come to terms with, is not the class enemy, it’s yourself. The class
enemy is yourself in the mirror. It’s a shadow.
MG Most people I know up north never ask questions, or if they do, they
don’t know how to face them. So they just pop back onto the old battle
grounds and pretend they didn’t have the experiences that would have
opened them up. The number of times I was told as a kid:- "Maggie, you’re
too dreamy, get on with something, do!"
L It’s just the same with us. I’m sure it’s the same with everybody. My
mother used to say to me:- "Susan, you’re so introspective. Wake up girl!
You’ll never get married if you…." And on and on and on. Parents are awfully
good for us, aren’t they? If parents understood us we’d never get anywhere.
J My mother understood me. I suppose I never really…..
L Yes you did. You got over her death when we got together.
MG I though your name was Lucia.
L Lucia’s my waking-up name. But I was Susan as a kid, and Sue till I met
these people.
MG Have you all changed your names?
L No, only me.
F I changed mine when I grew up. My mother called me Mildred. Can
you imagine? Mildred Stokes, I was called. Even the aunts at Garway
called me that.
M Fiona’s a lovely name. I first heard it when I read the books of
Fiona McLeod. And ‘she’ was a man, wasn’t she?
F William Sharp. That’s why I called myself Fiona. He was a distant
relative of my mother’s.
J I never knew that.
*****
M M+ "All this is necessary clearing of the ground. I said you had
enough time. All the time in the world, in one sense. But there is no
time left for attitudes, for any sort of posturing. As Andrew put it, all
such projections are simply yourselves seen in a mirror, multiple
mirrors in fact. The whole world you have constructed over millennia is
nothing but a vast stage-set of multiple projected images of
yourselves. But it is getting distinctly worn. It is wearing very thin.
Reality is approaching you at a great rate, and is starting to break
through the illusionary skin which covers it, in all the weak spots."
J It seems to me the habit of projection is not so easily lost. What I mean is, we
frantically try to repair the gaps in our disintegrating reality-sense with new projections.
MG Now that’s just what I mean about you people. What the hell is that
gobbledy-gook supposed to mean? Can’t you put it in plain English?
M M+ " What he means is that when your reality is falling apart it
terrifies you. You quickly try to build another one in its place. In one
sense I, Meruel, am just such a construct."
MG Who’s this Meruel you all talk about? I thought your name was Melanie.
J M+ "They’ve given me the name Meruel. They’re gradually learning to accommodate
me as a common voice to communicate with. So far it’s been only among themselves.
But now you’ve come along things are different. You’re having a powerful effect on
these five people. It’s almost as if they’re closing ranks, consolidating their common
identity."
MG I find this quite spooky. Are you all this Meruel, or what? I can’t tell
who’s talking. And anyway, my reality’s not falling apart. If anything it’s
getting stronger. I’ve learned to ‘change gear’, as it were, between the
different levels of it. There’s the ordinary world, and then there’s another
layer which kind of links it together. Most people don’t seem to see it, but I
certainly do.
J Meruel, I’m going to try to tell Maggie what I, Joe, think she’s doing. Maggie, when
you see the thing you describe as a huge flower, or turning wheel at Avebury, do you see
it all the time?
MG No, that’s what I said. I only see it when I look at it. I sort of turn and
look at it, like when you turn and look at a person.
J Have you always been able to do that? I mean, did you do that when you were a child?
MG Well, as a child you don’t think, do you? Life just happens.
J Did you have this other layer of reality as a child?
MG It’s difficult to remember. I don’t much like thinking about it. The world
most people lived in didn’t make sense, was how I saw it. The pictures I saw
sort of glued it together, like. Otherwise there was something missing. I
thought everybody was the same. But I began to see that most people only
saw the surface of things. They didn’t know anything else was going on.
J Did you feel the inner pictures were more real?
MG Not more real but just as real. And in any case, what do you mean by
inner pictures? I don’t get this inner and outer business. People are always
talking about their inner lives. I’ve always just experienced life itself, but it’s
incomplete. You have to turn and look at what completes the picture.
J And does it complete the picture?
MG No, there is always further to go.
J Further from what?
MG I don’t know what you mean.
J What do you think people are doing when they talk about their inner lives?
MG I simply think they’re stuck. They want to go further into the real world,
but they don’t know how. So they go round and round in circles just talking
about it and getting more confused.
J And you do know how to go further into reality?
MG Well, I certainly seem to see further into it than most people I meet.
When I was a medium it was like having another sense-organ, an eye or an
ear, and exercising it, training it to see more. I don’t use that in the same
way now, but I still have it. I’ve turned it more onto the nature world, less
onto peoples’ questions and problems.
J And where is this world you turn the extra sense-organ onto?
MG I find that a meaningless question. The world just is.
J Are you part of it?
MG I don’t know. Are you? Are any of us?
F We all are, Maggie. We’re all part of the world. But we’re something
else as well. If you think back to the moment in Avebury when you
began to share with us what you were seeing, I think you’ll see what I
mean. You’ve got used to not being accepted by people, to being
looked at as a bit queer. All psychics go through this. Then something
happens like what happened at Avebury, and you find a space in other
people which you can share. You start to put your weight on that and
expand into it. In fact your clairvoyance actually works better, comes
to life when you are being accepted by someone else. But you’re so
used to your isolation you soon slip back into it. I though your visions
at Avebury were beautiful, Maggie, but at the same time they seemed
a bit empty, almost heartless. It was like watching a cartoon of reality
rather than experiencing what was really going on. And there was a lot
of fear. When you nearly got sucked into the vortex even I was a bit
scared! What saved us was the fact that you trusted me, in fact you
had begun to love me. You were on the very edge then of what we call
the inner life, but you were not yet ready to acknowledge it. You still
aren’t.
MG I’ve had too many shocks, too many let-downs.
F You have it with Andrew
MG That’s different. We’re almost the same person.
F And then that combined person shuts itself off from the world, and
you’re in the same state as before.
A It seems to me you ask a lot of people, Fiona. I can see what you’re implying.
You seem to be saying we should be on the same intimate footing with everybody.
But there have to be limits. We need boundaries. Otherwise it would be emotional
chaos. I don’t think humanity is ready for universal love.
F It’s not. But we’re on the way to a New World, a new level of reality,
and it’s closer than people think. There’s a threshold approaching us,
and we’re all approaching it. Over the other side of the threshold
universal intimacy has a different quality. It’s on a different level.
Meruel has something to say about that.
M M+ "What I’m trying to do as Meruel is to show you, a step at a
time, something which is actually quite new to mankind. It can’t really
be done, my dears, without some quite painful experiences. Let me try
and link up with some of the thoughts which you have developed and
verbalised over these months and years since you came together. First
Fiona and Joe, and gradually Richard. Then Melanie to identify what
was going on, and Susan-Lucia to throw light on that. New
developments in humanity have a common pattern. Fertilisation,
conception, embryonic development, and so on through all the stages
familiar to you in your own lives. We beings who have been through all
these stages in other parts of the universe, or in earlier stages of this
planet, and have transcended them, are woven into the tapestry of the
planet to monitor what goes on. We do this because you, who are in
some sense our children, are going through these same things at a
more advanced level of evolution. You rightly call us Intraterrestrial
Beings. We are woven into the spiritual substance of the planet as
volunteers, supervisors. I was alerted to the possibilities of this group
of human beings by perceiving what could be called a karmic knot, a
kind of seed, whose germination had the potential of raising human
awareness and activity onto quite a new level. I recognised that the
way you met, the ideas and feelings that evolved in you, were
recapitulating something which happened for the first time in England
four hundred years ago. This was the emergence of a new soul organ,
the consciousness soul, the soul event which led to what you recognise
as the European Renaissance. When we beings are alerted to events
like this it is a very exciting experience for us. It’s like sensing the
appearance of a point of illumination beginning to coalesce in the
otherwise dark and murky sea of struggling humanity. You five people
coming together was a recapitulation of a four hundred year old soul
memory. Such recapitulations are always signs that a new stage for
humanity is beginning. These events are beginning to happen all over
the western world now.
J I sense that you are leading up to talking next about the painful consequences of some
of this…
M M+ "Thank you, Joe, yes. I can do this more readily by talking
through you than through Melanie. I honour your perspective, Joe, and
the love in you that makes this perspective possible. The birth of the
consciousness soul four hundred years ago was fraught with psychic
and spiritual dangers. These dangers and agonies and ecstasies were
articulated with tremendous powers and insight in what was written
and performed at the time by the group of souls which you sum up
under the name Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a multiple mouthpiece
of the emergent consciousness soul which followed with transcendent
beauty in romantic love."
A That’s just it! That’s just it!
MG There you have it. That’s where what became the class-struggle really
began! Romantic love was always a self-indulgent middle-class thing.
A Mocked and caricatured by Shakespeare’s peasants and clowns, and yet at the
same time underpinned by their labour and their servitude.
J M+ "Yes, my dear friends, this is always the danger. Waking into love is never free of
the fear of loss. Every pop-record proclaims it. The waking process of the renaissance
became the perquisite of those who were politically and economically in a position to lay
claim to it and protect it."
A At the expense of the workers.
J M+ "That’s not entirely true. It is certainly true that the awakening reinforced the
polarisation of the classes. But they were already firmly founded and established in the
feudal system which preceded the awakening. But the self-indulgence and self-protection
of the romantic movement, and the civilised, culture of science, art, and religion which
grew out of it, were simply the shadow side of the enlightenment. The enlightenment
itself was still valid. A tremendous opportunity was offered to mankind at that point in its
history, particularly in England, to overcome the polarisation between kings and
aristocrats on the one hand and the peasants on the other; between consciousness and
responsibility and work on the earth with the soil and the nature-beings. The opportunity
was missed, but it was not missed simply by the upper classes refusing to share their
awakening into romance and intellect with those who worked the land. It was equally
missed by the workers, who gradually lost their capacity to live in the elemental life of
nature. They could no longer follow the elves and fairies into an inner magical world,
which would have balanced out the more and more abstract, mental world of spirit
developed in the religious conspiracy of kings and priests. Read "Midsummer Night’s
Dream" again with that in mind. Read "The Tempest". In fact read the whole of
Shakespeare! It’s all there. Shakespeare foresaw the tragedy potentially hidden in
humanity’s awakening. That’s why you have no inner life, Maggie. It’s not only because
the middle classes have stolen your birthright, which they have. It’s also because you and
your class are scared to allow yourselves to feel where your insights are coming from".
L ¤ "You’ll have to introduce her to me".
R Hello, Ophromine. I wondered where you’d got to.
MG Now what’s happening? Andrew, what are we going to do with this lot?
I’m getting proper scared. I gave up spiritualism, and now I’m back in all
that spooky stuff. I know where I am with the pictures, they’re something I
can control. But leave the spirits out of it!
L ¤ "I’m not a spook. I’m just as much part of your pictures as the giant
vortex at Avebury. You only have to turn and look at me. I’ll stay where you
can see me."
MG My God! Who are you? What are you?
L ¤ "Stop feeling scared. I’m quite safe. Breathe in and out. Now what are
you seeing?"
MG You keep changing. While I was panicking you were tall and sharp and
green. Your fingers were spiky like stinging insects. Your eyes were long and
slanted. Now you’re much rounder and your hair is flowing. You’re pink and
gold and blue and violet.
L ¤ "You can make me seem to you exactly what you like. It’s best for you
if you talk to me through Lucia, rather than, say, Richard, for the time being.
I love you Maggie. We’ll really get on. You can ask me things. Lucia will show
you my light side."
MG You’ve got a dark side as well, haven’t you? I saw it.
L ¤ "My dark side is brought into existence by your fear. Beings like me
depend on humanity to keep our dark and light aspects in balance. You teach
us at the same time as we are teaching you.
MG Andrew, can you sense this being?
A I can see the change in you, darling. That’s my path. I feel good about what
I’m seeing.
L ¤ "What you’re seeing now, Maggie, is not falling back into spiritualism. I
don’t belong in the world of astral cast-offs, the shadows of people’s stale
feelings and longings. I’m alive. When you gave up spiritualism you freed
your clairvoyance to wander into a world of form and colour which was very
cleansing. It was a kind of healing balm for your loneliness and isolation. But
it was still itself a very lonely world. You were its only occupant, until later
you drew Andrew into it. He couldn’t see it himself, but he was healed by it
through what he sensed in you. In a world of such beauty and promise you
felt you and he could wander forever, and never need to realise how lonely
you were. But there were other things in your destiny, Maggie. Your secret
garden is not uninhabited after all. You can see me! From now on you will
never be able to forget that."
MG I can turn away from seeing you.
L ¤ "Not without turning away from the whole extended world of your
visions at the same time. Then what will you do?"
F This was implied from the moment you and I met, Maggie. Denying
the existence of an inner world becomes impossible the moment you
truly share spiritual perceptions with others in a state of love.
MG Andrew and I share my world, and it is still just one world for us.
F That won’t satisfy him forever. Nobody can live vicariously through
someone else’s perceptions, however close they are.
A We have to get out of this, Maggie. These people have no idea of privacy.
They’re attacking the whole basis of our relationship.
F At the same time you can see the change in Maggie, and you like
what you see. It threatens you because you think you are not ready for
such a drastic change in your world. An inner life for Maggie implies a
drastic change for you too. You said at one point that humanity is not
yet ready for universal love. The only way it can reach that is when
individuals who are ready for such a change acknowledge it. Humanity
may not be ready, but are you not?
R M+ "That’s why you need Ophromine and his kind as well as me and my kind. You
are meeting in us a very ancient current in human affairs, but in a new form suitable for
the present chapter in human evolution. They knew all about it in ancient Greece, when I
was identified with Apollo and Ophromine with Dionysos. We are talking about seed and
soil, about what it is that grows and where it has chosen to grow. We are talking about
Sun and Earth, about the source of humanity as a seed of the spirit and the destined
planet of humanity’s evolution, the Earth, chosen by the CHRIST power as its theatre of
operations; ‘the only planet of choice!’
M Seed and soil! Maggie, it makes no more sense to think of spiritual
evolution as elitist and middle-class than it does to think of the world of
clairvoyance as a crude and clumsy working-class version of pagan
religion. Seeds need soil and soil is infertile without seeds.
R M+ "Now this is where the whole process comes into danger! This is what I meant
by saying that in the first instance we drew you, Andrew and Maggie, into this situation
because of Paul. From the start this group recognised Paul as a kind of threat to what
they were doing and to what we were doing through them. Paul turned up in their lives at
a vulnerable early stage in their discovery of each other. They over-reacted. Lucia in
particular was susceptible to his peculiar ability to radiate a glamorous charismatic light
over everything he encounters, because she too is a light-being. He wanted to blow it all
up into a world movement before the seed had even put down its first tentative roots into
Earth soil. Your group in Plymouth is the first fruit of this. But Paul reckoned without you
and Maggie."
M Perhaps there’s an analogy there with Findhorn. Did something
similar happen there?
R M+ "You’ll have to ask Ophromine about that. He had a lot of friends there. What I
am seeing here is that Maggie and her perceptions are potentially Paul’s Achilles heel..
And you, Andrew, can if you will form a link between what is going on here and Paul’s
spiritual inflationism. Your relationship with Maggie is in no way threatened by what is
going on here. She is at the threshold of a new dimension in her clairvoyant abilities.
This dimension is something this group lacks and needs. At the same time you can
participate in this step she is taking as you have in all the others. This can be the
dawning of an inner life for you too. And it will then be precisely this element that you
can bring into Paul’s activities in Plymouth. You can ground Paul in a way that this group
would never be able to do. You and Maggie belong to both groups. What is at stake here
is the whole Intraterrestrial movement, whether it turns inwards and festers, as the
nineteenth and early twentieth century spiritual movements did, or whether it can seed
itself out into the lives of ordinary people as is happening in Plymouth.
M But at the moment in what seems to be a superficial and perhaps
dangerous way. You and Maggie are very much needed on both
counts.
MG I’d forgotten all about this sort of thing, Andrew. I used to see that sort
of being as a child. But they laughed me out of it. And then I got to thinking
I’d made it up and it was all kid’s stuff. I even got a bit scared of it. The life
of pictures and feelings about peoples’ lives seemed safer somehow. Then
that went sour as well. I’ve been getting back into the life of nature since I
came to live in the south and met Andrew. But you’re right about the
loneliness of it. I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to think about.
F I think you’ll be fine Maggie. I like working with you. I think we’ll be
a help to each other.
A If we’re to get back before midnight we’ll have to be going. It’s a working day
tomorrow. I’ve got a lot to sort out with all this too. It’s all a bit of a shock. I’m not
used to people being so open with each other. I still wonder whether it leaves any
room for you own life.
R It’s true your priorities alter in this I.T. work. You get more committed as you go
along. Personal things, and what you call privacy, don’t disappear, but they fall into place
in a different way somehow.
A I shall have to think about it. Meanwhile I’d still like to come up at weekends
as we’ve been doing. It’s a long way, but the motorway’s easy enough if we drive
at night and get to you on Saturday for breakfast.
R How far is it?
A I reckon about a hundred and eighty miles. We’ll be back about eleven if we
start now. O.K. Maggie?
MG There’s a side of me that doesn’t want to go. I didn’t expect that! It’s
almost like having a new family. I hope we haven’t been too awkward.
M The beings warned us there’d be difficult and painful stuff to get
through. I feel we’re all doing very well. In one way, they said, there’s
all the time in the world. But there’s also a feeling of urgency, and it
presses on us all. I hope we haven’t squeezed you too hard. There’s a
lot of love about, isn’t there, between us all? That’s what makes the
difference.
*****

Dialogue 2

R The latest crop-circle magazine came in the post this morning. Talk abut the cat
among the pigeons! That affair at Avebury has changed the whole croppie perspective.
The magazine has twice the number of pages. Everybody in the croppie scene seems to
have put an oar in, even the so-called hoaxers.
J Is there a completed diagram?
R Two-page spread. Here it is look.
J Fascinating! Now you can see why all the pentagram apices had slightly different
angles. You can also see that the huge dowsable outer circle corresponds directly with the
outer stone circle. You know, it was strange, wasn’t it? Ophromine had suggested that we
met and talked together about crop-circles and my work with the menhirs. What actually
happened was that we got totally caught up with Barbury Castle and never talked about
menhirs at all!
R Then the Avebury thing overtook us and the real meeting Ophromine had suggested
happened on a much larger scale. These beings of ours really know what they’re doing,
don’t they?
M (Coming into the room) To put it mildly! Ophromine, what are you
trying to point out?
¤ "You haven’t grasped really what’s going on, have you? You can be
slow-witted sometimes, you people."
J What are you talking about Ophromine?
M ¤ "The hexagram, you idiots! Because the pentagrams are off-
centre they capture your attention. You find yourselves looking at the
ground plan of the stone circle, and you see that the pentagram drew
attention to the energy focus in each of the inner rings of stone. Then
you think back to Maggie’s experience, and her perception that the
vortices of energy breathe backwards and forwards, into the Earth and
out of it again, like volcanic blowholes. You are marginally aware of all
this going on. Every member of your group has a different perspective
on it. Except perhaps Lucia. Her perceptions of that weekend are
somewhat in abeyance. And meanwhile there sits the hexagram, quiet,
symmetrical, uniform, enigmatic. Minding its own business. Almost
complacent, one might say. Sleek. Waiting for you dunderheads to
wake up and ask questions. Even Maggie didn’t know what was going
on, but you never commented on what she said. I’m not aware of a
third focus of energy’, was her comment if I remember."
J Is there a third focus of energy, Ophromine?
M ¤ "Well, ask yourselves that. Fiona at least should have begun by
now to wonder what the pentagram-hexagram theme was trying to say
at Avebury. She’s wise enough in the ways of anthroposophy. Ask
yourselves, my little chickabiddies! What is the actual relation between
pentagrams and hexagrams? What planets rule roses and lilies, five
petals and six petals? There was no indication of any of this at
Ogbourne Maizey in 1992, was there? The ‘two eggs in a pan’
formation? That was a straightforward hint that man’s relationship to
his ‘only planet of choice’ was beginning to wake up to new levels. The
two eggs, humanity and its planet. The pan, the CHRIST presence in
the etheric aura of the Earth. Now the whole theme reaches a new
level of manifestation at Avebury itself, seven miles to the west of
Ogbourne."
J Shut up a minute Ophromine. I want to think.
M ¤ "About time!"
J We’re talking about Mercury and Venus, aren’t we? The energies at Avebury have so
far been on a mercurial level, polarised in movement between the inner and outer aspects
of the planet Earth. And now suddenly, Venus appears, quietly holding the balance
between the two inner circles.
M ¤ "Now we’re getting somewhere"
J So, Ophromine, clearly there is no third focus of energy in the Avebury formations.
We’re no longer talking about energy foci. We’re talking about a dimensional shift. The
energy grid system of the planet is on the blink. Something was going on there which
calls the bluff on everything we have hitherto been thinking about crop-circles. It’s also
gone beyond the range of Maggie’s clairvoyant perceptions.
R There was something I wanted to ask. What was it? Oh, I know. How many of those
sixteen formations were actually in standing crops?
J We can see in Martineau’s diagram here. About nine or ten. It looks as if this one was
right on the edge of a cornfield with half of it across a roadway. Richard Andrews must
have had fun dowsing that.
R So nearly half, about three eighths of the formations existed purely on an energy
level. No wonder the whole croppie movement is in turmoil. What on earth must George
Wingfield be thinking? He can hardly believe Rob Irving can hoax an energy-field.
M I’m having a sort of deja-vu. What’s going on? Oh I know.
Yesterday I was in the middle of a conversation with Meruel through
Fiona. Meruel had been nudging me towards considering that this
group of ours had been in a more ‘causal’ relation to what went on in
Avebury that week than we had thought. We were beginning to reach
the thought that it was in some senses a show put on for our especial
benefit. Then Meruel began to put the pressure on, saying we were
putting too much weight on Fiona’s insights, not participating enough,
and so throwing Meruel itself out of balance. At that moment Fiona had
her heart attack, and the energy changed,. We lost the thread. Meruel
began to talk about crowns, and we had that big sort-out with Maggie
and Andrew. The balance began to be restored by completing the
structure of the group itself. The pressure on Fiona was relieved a bit.
It was as if Maggie was becoming a sense organ for the group,
something which had been missing, particularly for Fiona.
J Where’s Lucia?
R She and Fiona were talking in the garden ten minutes ago. Why?
J There’s something coming up. I don’t know what it is. It’s a kind of energy shift. You
know, we’ve been down here nearly a month, and in a sense we haven’t really done
anything yet. What’s happened to the original I.T. impulse? Lucia’s had all those leaflets
printed and they just stand there in the cupboard.
M The right moment hasn’t appeared yet. The full tally of the group is
only now beginning to form. Andrew and Maggie have to find their
balance between here and Plymouth.
J Another thing. I have the feeling that we are approaching a kind of threshold in the
possibilities of communication within the group itself. Actually I feel quite scared.
M This reminds me of a moment last year when Lucia first joined us.
Something we set in motion caused a kind of realignment of the
energies round us. It was like an inner earthquake, when tectonic
plates in the Earth readjust themselves to relieve pressure. A lot of
rocks started tumbling about in my inner spaces.
J I feel like one sometimes does before a thunderstorm.
R It’s this hexagram, isn’t it? There’s a change in the balance of Venus and Mercury
forces in the Earth itself. So long as our energies are geared to polarisation we feel we
can breathe. Look at the difference in energy in this diagram between the hexagram and
the two pentagrams. You eye follows continuously round each pentagram. The freedom
of movement allows you to shift from one side to the other, to feel in your body and
sheaths the rhythmic interplay between ourselves and the planet. But the hexagram is
on a different level. In order to bear its energies in your aura you have to rise to a level
where you no longer need to oscillate between twin poles of experience. You have to be
able to tolerate the stillness.
J The frightening thing about death is that you stop breathing. Your heart stops beating.
This is what was scaring me.
M We’re moving from Mercury energies into Venus energies. Here
come Lucia and Fiona. What have you two been talking about?
F We’ve been coming out of the green into the blue.
J I was with someone once who was dying of lung-cancer. There was a terrible day just
before she died when she couldn’t get her breath. She didn’t know how to control her
panic. Nothing worked, oxygen, inhaler, meditation, nothing! Then, quite of itself, her
whole system crossed a threshold into calm waters. She didn’t stop breathing, but her
system ceased making violent unquenchable demands for air. She lived another twenty-
four hours and just slowly withdrew herself from her body, like taking off a glove.
L Yes, that’s how the green world moves over into the blue.
F When Maggie panicked near the vortex at Avebury she was sensing
something of the planet’s agony as it approaches the death-throes of
this particular age of the Earth. The energies circulating in those two
giant interlocking pentagrams must in fact be slowly diminishing as the
calm blue stillness of the Venusian hexagram asserts itself there.
L Maggie’s clairvoyance doesn’t yet penetrate as far as that. It will be
interesting to see whether Ophromine can lead her in that direction.
R You know, these revelations have made sense of a five year old mystery for me. I
could never make out why the unique Ogbourne Maizey ‘two eggs in a pan’ crop-circle
formation appeared to be a kind of sketch plan of the Avebury stone circles. I could see
that the ring round the two smaller rings was an attempt to unify duality, but...
J Richard, I had been told by Michael at some point that the planet Earth was the
uniquely important place in the universe where CHRIST-energy and human energy could
be brought together, with the ultimate aim of eliminating duality altogether from the
cosmos.
R Yes, I see. Of course that is clear in the symbolism of both Ogbourne Maizey and
Avebury. But why use a crop-circle to point out something visible at Avebury anyway?
J As I see it, that’s clear now, isn’t it? Ogbourne Maizey was saying:- "Keep your eye
on Avebury! It will show you something about the moment when the CHRIST enters the
heart of the material world" The Earth at Avebury is dying of lung-cancer, so to speak. At
some point the energies will stabilise there, and it will be possible then to experience
Venus there instead of Mercury.
R And that energy is not vortical in character, which is why Maggie was mystified to find
that there was no third vortex. There isn’t one.
¤ "As Ophromine I am beginning to be quite pleased with you. Pleased
and hopeful. I was beginning to wonder whether you would ever get
there. You’re not the only ones who are experiencing a threshold crisis.
This is not just a human problem. You can’t imagine what a scurrying
and hurrying, a darting to and fro, is going on throughout the whole
elemental world as billions of little gnomes, undines, sylphs and
salamanders, as well as devic entities like myself, and vast regional
entities linked with solar and galactic hierarchies, are re-allotted and
re-assigned to their functions in the post-threshold world, a world
which looms nearer and nearer, minute by minute, hour by hour, day
by day. This is something we Mercurial entities can’t handle on our
own. And your friend Meruel can’t handle the new Venusian energies
on his own either. This is why what humanity is for the most part so
desperately slow and stupid."
F M+ "And I as Meruel am beginning to reach a new dimension of
possibilities as this group of human beings reaches, step by painful
step, one insight after another which links these two realms. The gap
between Ophromine and me is ‘normally’, so to speak, too wide, on
this sort of individualised level, for direct communication. By opening
yourselves to both these levels of your own perceptions and
articulations you are doing far more than simply evolving spiritually as
human individuals. You are opening doors through which whole
categories of conscious entities can communicate with each other on a
self-aware level, something which has never been possible in this
planetary evolution before."
J How can we describe these beings, these categories you refer to, to ourselves?
F M+ "They are usually described in your so-called ‘sacred writings’
as Hosts. I told you once, I belong to a category of beings who have
evolved a couple of stages beyond what you think of as ‘human’. You
call them archangels. Your friend Ophromine brackets humanity at
about the same distance the other side. Ophromine looks upon you as
role-models for an embodiment of what will one day be a human
manifestation on a future, more evolved planetary existence.
Ophromine is a sort of cosmic adolescent, who regards you as adults,
wonderful goals for aspiration, and at the same time frustratingly
primitive versions of what will one day be possible. Ophromine is a
devic aspirant to the human condition, whereas I stand upon the
human condition much as you do upon the animal. For me, humanity is
how I got here. I attained the human condition long ago upon the Sun,
when it was still a planet."
R You said once you worked in the service of Michael. Is that what you meant by
‘Hosts’? Are you referring to Michael’s Hosts? How do you regard Michael?
F M+ "The nearest analogy is the way you regard human beings who
you look upon as so-called ‘ascended masters’. Ascended Masters for
you are people who have mastered the whole human condition, just as
master carpenters are people who are in total control of everything
that can be done with the material ‘wood’. Archangels regard Michael
as an ascended master of what we experience as the archangelic
condition."
R M+ "I want to move over to Richard a minute so that Fiona can breathe out. You’re
getting more mobile in this process now."
J So Michael should no longer be referred to as an archangel?
R M+ "Many humans all over the planet regard themselves as higher animals, though I
sometimes wonder what they mean by ‘higher’. Much of your animal rights movement is
linked to this misunderstanding. It is the same in the archangelic world. We have riff-raff
just as you do, groupies who get their kicks out of mob rule. They don’t want to evolve
any further, and they don’t acknowledge Michael as being any different from
themselves."
M So not all devas, angels and archangels are part of the Michael
system?
R M+ "Not by any means. The Michael system, as you call it, has come into existence
as a result of the CHRIST path towards the Earth. Michael’s ascent results from his
commitment to that path, which not all hierarchical beings are committed to. Michael
believes in humanity".
M Then are some human-beings also part of the Michaelic hosts?
R M+ "Humanity is a special case. Humanity is destined to become a tenth celestial
hierarchy, ‘a little lower than the angels’. Michael chose to take on the role of a celestial
guarantor of that process. This was a gigantic cosmic commitment which resulted in an
almost universal realignment of the entire forces of the universe. The formation of the
Michaelic Host is an aspect of that realignment. The emergence of that commitment by
Michael involved an alteration in the nature of time. Michael’s ascent to the next level
above the archangelic was the inevitable result of it. Michael initiated changes in reality
as fundamental as those which took place when time emerged originally from the
timeless."
M I’m getting a feeling of being stretched, as if you are trying to
express in words levels of reality to which the process of human
mental comprehension is not really adapted.
R M+ "Yes, that is the situation. You asked whether some human beings become part
of the hosts of Michael. Questions like that illustrate the point. It would be like asking
whether foetuses are part or the democratic system, and should be entitled to the vote. It
is the difference between what is actualised and what is still only potential, a gleam in
the cosmic eye! What we are talking about as Michaelic Hosts is an actualised reality in
the cosmos, but we belong to an earlier stage of cosmic evolution that you do. Humanity
from that point of view is still scarcely off the drawing-board. Humanity is ninety-nine
percent just a good idea that might one day come to something. I am trying to convey to
you what the Michaelic Hosts are and who Michael is. When we say ‘Michael’ we are
talking about that aspect of the cosmic hierarchies which has been prepared to foster
this ‘good idea’ we call humanity in a sponsoring kind of way, to take a chance on
humanity coming to something".
J These are pictures that put human affairs in a somewhat unfamiliar light.
R M+ "Well, yes. We can’t pretend that from a certain point of view humanity amounts
to very much yet. But the potential is indescribably great, gigantic. So much so that, a
few hundred years ago in the spiritual world, Michael initiated what can be described as
a School, a venue in which certain human beings who had matured sufficiently in
previous existences were invited to come together and be shown a vista of what some of
these potentials were. This so-called Michael School became a powerful incentive a
hundred years ago for increasing numbers of human beings to come to Earth
determined to spread a new level of insights about these vast potentials in human
evolution. A high proportion of these souls found their way into Rudolf Steiner’s
anthroposophical movement and began to develop a true path of knowledge, a spiritual
science. Other groupings too, and other teachers, found their way into awareness of
what Michael had done and developed other aspects of a conscious cognitive path into
spiritual realms. And in the spiritual world itself, one might say a few million foetuses
turned over in their sleep and heard some very stimulating music!"
F We need to ask something, don’t we Lucia.
L We certainly do! Meruel. What is CHRIST from the point of view of what
you have been saying? How does Michael relate to the CHRIST?
*****
F What’s happening, Richard?
R There’s a sort of silence. You know how with a computer sometimes you can set a
process in motion by a certain question, and you get a sense that everything in the
machine is being more fundamentally re-aligned. Something of that sort seems to have
been put in motion by Lucia’s question. We simply have to wait. Oh. Here he is. He
wants to know what day it is. (They laugh).
M Are you saying Meruel wants to know what day it is with us? It’s
Friday, Meruel. I, the namer, Melanie, say to you, Meruel, that today is
Friday! (laughter).
R M+ "Then tomorrow, Saturday, you will have Andrew and Maggie with you for
breakfast. Michael is expressing a wish to give Lucia an answer to her question himself.
But he would like to do so when all of your group of seven is present. Would ten o’clock
tomorrow morning be a suitable time for us all to meet?"
M That seems fine, Meruel.
R M+ "Michael asks whether he can start to speak through Fiona, but he would also
like to speak at times through Lucia and perhaps others. These are the new possibilities
of communication in the group you were beginning to be aware of. This will be a new
departure for us all. Michael is conveying a great blessing on you all which he is asking
me to give you now."
*****
L Oh lord! What have I done? We seem to have hit some sort of jackpot.
R I don’t know what you’ve done, you crazy girl. But it’s obvious you have a basic
approach which goes down well with ‘them upstairs’.
F As a group we constitute a certain mix of characteristics which
works the oracle in a special way. It sometimes seems as if they have a
special soft spot for Lucia. But then, so have we! However, the
spotlight is by no means reserved exclusively for Lucia. There are
times when it falls strongly on each one of us.
R Not excluding Andrew and Maggie, obviously. Michael made sure that when he
spoke the group would be complete as it is perceived from, his viewpoint.
J I think Michael perceives the group as a single awareness. To be perceived as such by
a higher consciousness must, I would have thought, be the prime requisite from our point
of view for beginning to be aware of new possibilities of communication among
ourselves.
F Perhaps we can start to understand from that a little about the
difference between an archangel and an arch-e, or what ever you call a
member of the hierarchy of Archai. Meruel clearly perceives us very
much as individuals, as he must if his role is to explore and progress
the possibilities we have of taking human group activity to a further
point in its evolution.
R And thereby enhancing his own evolution.
M Exactly! Whereas Michael perceives the end-product of all that in
its seed form and addresses that directly. My goodness, we’re in for a
very special experience tomorrow.
F Maggie and Andrew. They’ll be pretty unprepared for it.
M We don’t necessarily know that. Everybody has a unique path in
preparation for what is to happen next for them.
L Joe, come for a walk. I feel I’ve hardly begun to explore the country
round here yet.
J Let’s take sandwiches.
L Bless you all, everyone! What a wonderful time we’re having!
*****
Dialogue 3

A We didn’t take so long today. We’re getting used to the route.

R What time did you start?
A We were on the motorway at four-thirty. We left the house at about twenty
past. What time did we get here?
R It was about five past eight when I came down. You were just coming up the drive.
A I reckon we’ve pushed the average up to just about fifty. I know it was forty-
five last weekend.
R Do you drive Maggie?
MG Yes. I drove quite a lot of the way today. I like it on the motorway. But
I let Andrew do the twisty bits this end. He learns the turnings quicker than I
do.
M What do you want for breakfast, Maggie? You like an egg, don’t
you?
MG Yes, I could just do with a boiled egg. Thanks Melanie. Country air gives
me an appetite.
A And me. I liked the way you did the porridge last time, Richard. Could I have
that again?
R You certainly could. I’ll join you.
A We’ve got a lot to tell you. To start with, Paul wants to come up. He intends to
appear some time tomorrow if you agree. He won’t stay; he’ll be on his way to
London for the firm. But he’d like to look in for an hour or two.
R Sounds fine. So what does he want to talk about?
A I showed him one of Lucia’s leaflets. He was very impressed. Moved, in fact.
He began at once to try out wordings for the centre spread. We brought a copy of
his latest effort. I think it’s very good.
M We talked a lot about that. As you see, in the end we decided to
leave it blank apart from the heading, ‘The I.T. School’, and the few
lines at the bottom to explain what I.T. stands for, and how we came to
choose the name.
A Morning Joe. Hi Lucia.
J You’re nice and early. Hi Maggie. That’s nice. We can have sit-down breakfast
together. Is there enough of that porridge for me?
L Hello Maggie. I like the look of those eggs. Can you do me one? What a
gorgeous morning again. Where’s the toaster?
A Yes, Melanie, we all liked the fact that the main space in the leaflet was left for
people to write the stuff they wanted on the leaflets they themselves were
handing out.
L Has Paul seen the leaflet?
A Yes, he has. He’s very impressed. He’s been doing his own version for the
centre page. I’ve just been telling them; he’s going to look in tomorrow on his way
to London. He wants to ask you if we can start using the leaflet now for our work
in Plymouth.
L Can we see what he’s written?
A Yes, I’ve brought a copy with me.
R Eat your porridge first Andrew. Here it is.
A Should we wait for Fiona?
M She’s having hers in bed. I’ve just taken it. We’ve also got a great
deal to tell you and Maggie. Fiona’s going to get up soon, and we’ll tell
you then what we’ve in mind for this morning.
J This is all very interesting. So have the rest of your group down there seen the leaflet
as well?
MG Not everyone. A few of us got together last Wednesday, not our main
weekly meeting, just Peter and Mandy and Paul and ourselves. Paul showed
it to them.
J Did they like it?
A It was a bit of a mixed reaction. I think Peter felt there should be a variety of
ways of introducing I.T and that not everyone responded to written material.
MG Peter and Mandy and Simon and Brenda, and two others you haven’t
met have been meeting on their own. We haven’t been to their meetings, but
Brenda’s told me a bit about it.
A I know Mandy liked the leaflet very much. She very much wants to meet you
Lucia. I don’t think you talked at Avebury, did you?
L No, but I thought she looked a very sweet girl. You know, perhaps it’s
time we all went down to Plymouth one weekend instead of you coming here.
MG What’s been happening is, our weekly meetings have been changing.
Instead of dear Paul holding forth all the time we’ve each been having a go
at leading the meeting. Brenda did a very good presentation last week. She
talked about dowsing and got us all on our feet with pendulums and rods.
J Read us Paul’s thing Andrew.
A O.K. Here it is. He ran a few off on the computer.
M Just a minute, Andrew. Here’s another pile of toast. All right, fire
away.
A "Are the right things happening in your life? Are you coming across the people
you really need to meet? Is your understanding of life becoming more
meaningful? We would like you to have opportunities to open up new avenues in
all these directions. At the same time we respect your freedom and have no wish
to control what happens to you.
Making contact with the person whose address and phone number you will find
on the back will start a process of meetings with people who have asked
themselves these questions. Sooner or later, so we believe, this will lead you to
people with whom you will resonate.
We call this process a School, and have called it the I.T. School for reasons we
give below. We keep the whole process as fluid as possible. We are not recruiting
people to any formal belief system, whether religious, scientific or practical-
political. We do however want to share our experiences with you.
If these remarks arouse your interest you may like to pursue them further by
telephoning the number on the back and arranging a meeting".
R And that’s it?
A That’s it. I’ve typed it out on one of Lucia’s leaflets to you can get an
impression of what somebody reading it would actually see. What do you think of
it?
J I think it’s terrible.
A What’s wrong with it?
J I don’t know. It makes me cringe. The whole thing sounds like a sales pitch for
something it doesn’t quite mention. Softly softly catchee monkey. It even succeeds in
making Lucia’s lovely painting look sentimental.
R I couldn’t help being reminded of the Jehovah’s Witnesses ‘Watchtower’ publication.
M Good taste is always a tightrope. The more you appeal to the
emotions the nearer you get to the precipice of cliché and glitz.
L At the same time I’ve no doubt there are a good many people to whom it
would appeal for the precisely the reasons that it offends our sensibilities,
Melanie. I understand precisely Maggie’s and Andrew’s problems with us,
Joe. We’re not talking about good taste and bad taste. We’re talking about
real deep differences in how different social and educational backgrounds
build up the tone of people’s emotional and soul lives. Maggie, how did you
react to Joe’s and Melanie’s remarks?
MG I almost began to take them personally. I felt snubbed. I thought:-
"Here we go again! Bloody middle-class snobs."
A I felt the same, personally hurt. When I read the leaflet I understood just how
Paul appeals to so many people, especially to lonely people. It’s the same when
they meet him. People feel taken in to a sort of warmth. They want to be with him
and hear him talk.
M Yet it was you, Andrew, who felt that our sort of communication
was an invasion of your privacy, too near the knuckle.
MG Until you get used to it, Melanie, the way you bring in these beings
from another reality is simply scary. What Paul does is appeal to the
experiences people feel they lost as children. People feel cared for.
J All the evangelising movements do that. In a sense their aim of comforting what went
wrong for people as children can block people’s emergence into more adult experiences.
MG Even a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have understood what you meant by
that. I feel now as if I’m on a bridge between the comforting path and the
waking up path!
A My feeling is that Paul’s leaflet goes a long way towards bridging the sort of
gap Maggie’s talking about. I agree it’s talking down a little bit to people, treating
them as lost souls who need rescuing from their isolation. But the implication
that people are free agents is also there. It’s not aimed at people like you, it’s
targeting people at a different stage of the path.
MG I’d like to turn the whole thing round and ask you, Lucia, what you
would put in the middle page if you were putting your own leaflets out.
L Yes, I’ve been thinking about that. You know, we can only share what we
ourselves have to share. I could never put myself behind a leaflet like Paul’s,
yet I can sympathise with the fact that it is those thoughts which my picture
arouses in him. Actually I’ve sketched out a few notes which I had planned to
put on some of them to take round the village here. I thought I’d put a few in
the post-office for instance, and on the church hall notice board. Shall I read
what I said?
(voices, ‘Yes please do, Lucia’)
"I paint under the name of LUCIA, and I have turned a room at Middle Town
into a studio for my paintings and modellings, and also for my partner’s
photographic work. We would gladly welcome you to see this work, and hope
that anyone in the area who does their own work in photography, paint, clay,
stone or wood would bring work here to show us, and if they like, use our
facilities. It can be fun to work in the same space, and we have plenty here
to share. In any case, do come and visit any time. Someone’s usually in."
Then I put the phone number and a note that the painting is also available as
greeting cards and posters.
MG You don’t actually say anything about I.T. then?
L No. I feel all that needs to be said is there in print, in the title ‘The I.T.
School’, and in what we put at the bottom in explanation of that.
MG I haven’t read it. Oh yes I have. I liked it.
R Read it out Maggie. I forget what we said.
MG "I.T. in the title of the School stands for Intraterrestrial. A lot of
publicity exists in our day suggesting the existence of E.T.s, Extraterrestrial
beings. We try to balance this by speaking of Intraterrestrials, that is, beings
who live in and on the Earth. There is a much longer tradition of conscious
entities who share the planet with us, including the elemental devas,
gnomes, sylphs and others, and also beings of higher angelic hierarchies.
Much of our work, including work in the arts, relates to such Intraterrestrial
beings, and we happily relate to these in our lives."
I like it very much. Who wrote it?
L Fiona did.
A I think it’s excellent. So does Paul. I think his wording in conjunction with
that is exactly what appeals to people, certainly to the sort of people we encounter
in Plymouth.
J How do you feel about your leaflet gong out with Paul’s message inside it, darling?
L It makes me look at my own painting quite differently. It makes me
realise that it can arouse feelings on a broader spectrum than I experienced
in painting it. To be honest, it also makes me realise that I do have a
sentimental side, as well as a more meaningful one.
M Do you mind that side of your work being appealed to?
L I don’t think I do, no. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with
sentimentality if it leads people through to deeper emotions, and a more
profound understanding as they mature. It depends on what people are
ready for.
MG Oh here comes Fiona. Good morning dear. How are you this morning?
F I’m fine. How are you two? I thought I’d better come down. I didn’t
want to miss anything. Have you told them what seems to be
happening this morning?
R We haven’t got round to it yet. We’ve been too busy talking about what’s going on in
Plymouth. Paul wants to look in tomorrow on hi s way to London.
F That’ll be good. How is Paul? How are things going?
A It’s all very active, and very interesting. A lot of people are becoming involved.
Paul’s seen Lucia’s folder and is very keen to use it. We’ve been talking about
what needs to be written inside, and I think we’re starting to realise what a wide
range of possibilities there are.
F Something very interesting happened here yesterday. We’ve been
going more deeply into what is really involved in these
communications with Meruel and Ophromine. I realised, for the first
time really, that they are just as dependant on us as we are on them.
Quite new possibilities are opening up for them, not only for their
communication with us, but even more strikingly for each other. We
tend to imagine that the spiritual world is quite uniform, and that the
beings in it are all aware of each other in a free way. But something
happened yesterday which showed that our awareness of them can act
as a bridge by which their consciousness of each other is also fortified
and clarified.
MG That’s very interesting, because Andrew and I have also been feeling
that we are becoming a kind of bridge between two worlds. It’s actually quite
painful. We feel very much part of things here, but we come to them from
such a different direction that it is like being stretched over a kind of chasm.
We also belong with Paul in a quite different world, much simpler in a way.
F Well this is what we’ve begun to realise from another side. You see
Meruel was beginning to explain more to us about the archangelic
world, and how it related to the elemental earthly world Ophromine
springs from. Meruel once told us that they all related to Michael as
their leader, and this led to a description of how Michael has much the
same relation to them as the beings we cal ‘ascended masters’ have to
us. We began to realise that Michael experiences our group in a
different way from that in which Meruel does. Meruel as an archangel
sees its own being reflected in the way we in our group relate to each
other as individuals. But Michael is at a higher stage than this. For
Michael, this group of ours appears as a single awareness. At a certain
point Lucia and I realised that we needed to ask Michael something,
because we have twice been confronted with a presence we
recognised as the CHRIST. So Lucia asked point blank how Michael was
related to the CHRIST. Her question aroused very deep responses from
this mysterious world we are becoming aware of. It was as if our
relationship to all these matters was being realigned at a higher level.
Meruel then said that Michael wished to answer this question directly,
but could only do so to the group as a whole. This meant waiting till
you two were also here. What we then did was to arrange that we
would come together at ten o’clock this morning, trusting that you
would want to become involved in the way Michael clearly sees you as
being.
L It naturally crossed our minds that in the ordinary way we should consult
you first. But this seems to be a necessary condition of how the group is. It
would be nearly impossible to explain everything we would have needed to
over the telephone. We thought if Michael sees you as an essential part of
the group we could afford to trust that you would too.
A As far as I’m concerned there seems to be a kind of inevitability about the
whole thing. There’s a lot I don’t understand, but it feels fine to me.
MG I feel the same. Isn’t it nearly ten o’clock now?
F About ten to I think. We’ve been having these meetings in a fairly
formal way in what I call the aunts’ room, the one that looks out onto
the garden. We got the room ready earlier, which means principally
putting Joe’s menhir model in the centre with candles round it.
R ¤ "They do that mainly for me. Otherwise all the talk about ideas makes me nervous".
A Oh, I get. That wasn’t you Richard, was it? It was your friend Ophromine.
Takes a bit of getting used to.
M And actually Ophromine you’re wrong. There’s a lot more to it than
you think. This time we’ve actually got sixteen candles there, and
they’re standing on a copy of John Martineau’s plan of the Avebury
crop-formation with the two pentagrams and the hexagram. But we’re
very glad it makes you feel at home.
F It’s time we moved in and got settled.
*****

Dialogue 4

F ++ "The joy! The joy, the glory, and the light! But beyond
everything is the joy, born of Love, a Love so great that it can utterly
penetrate and pervade all, yet without overwhelming, without
annihilating. This is the joy into which you are welcomed in response to
the choice you make to identify this moment as a moment of meeting
with me, Michael, and through me with the CHRIST, whose
countenance I am.
Lucia, sweet Lucia, shine! Illuminate the path for these seven souls as
you pass through the door into the welcoming joy, into the glory, into
the Light, born of the Love of the CHRIST. Perceive what you are
meeting as you identify this moment. I, Michael, have changed the
nature of time for you. I have opened for you a new door, a new
pathway of access to what you call the present moment. Humankind
had almost lost the capacity to experience the instantaneous.
Everything had become dulled into the uniform greyness of endless
continuity. I, Michael, have looked at what you call history. I have
acknowledged it with reverence, and I have closed the book. You have
no need of history, for everything has become now. This is what your
prophet Eliot saw and called "the point of intersection of the timeless
with time".
Melanie, priestess of the dark realm of will from which ascend the
identities, polish the names and bring them into the light of renewal.
Find new names for the experiences of the instantaneous moments, for
occasions, for celebrations, for acts of presence, for statements of
immanence which are hitherto nameless. Melanie, baptise with your
naming power the practice of the presence of spirit.
Joe, explorer in the cosmic landscape, reflect the brilliance of instant
perception from every corner of space and time. Mark and record the
uttermost frontiers of reality for those who follow. Their gratitude
reached you across the abyss of time and space, that they are not the
first in the unknown wilderness. Nor are you.
Richard, receive from Lucia’s Light, from Joe’s scope of perspective,
from Melanie’s power of the Name, the essence of what can be
perceived by humanity, and allow the Concept of that essence to arise
like mist into the realm of Thinking and there become clear. From the
love which that clarity arouses in you words of Truth will rain into the
hearing of mankind.
And now, Fiona, let Lucia carry my words, so that her Light-filled voice
may speak an answer to her own question."
L ++ "I, Michael, perceive in each of you the manifestation of your essence,
and behold it as forming a single Being. In Fiona that singleness and
uniqueness shines most clearly as a quality of the Heart. CHRIST is present
in the Heart of each one of you. It is only that in Fiona that presence has an
extra quality which enables the rest of you to be aware of the CHRIST
presence in yourselves. It is that awareness that opens the door to me, to
manifest, especially through Fiona, a dawning visibility of the CHRIST in your
group, something that can be called its Countenance. There is a fivefold form
in your group which has grown to the point of being able to manifest this as
a Unity. But it reached a threshold which threatened it with isolation from the
reality which gave birth to it. This is what led the group to Avebury, where a
similar threat, and a similar birth of transcendental healing, was taking place.
Just as the Pentagram at Avebury, in both its centripetal and in its centrifugal
form, gave birth to a Hexagram, a double triangle, which reunited it with
Earth, so your group met there the two human beings who could both
complete your group, and protect it from isolation from the world around it.
Maggie, you have the capacity to extend the range of vision of the
whole group into a world of perceptions which it is now strong enough
to bear. At any earlier point your kind of clairvoyance would have
drowned the group in a psychedelic turmoil which would have
dissipated its identity and power of growth. For you yourself this is
another step on your path towards freeing yourself from the squalor
and astral confusion of your spiritualistic experiences bringing form
and exactitude into your clairvoyant perceptions.
And so finally to you Andrew. Just as Maggie is a citizen of a world of
perceptions which can lift the group a timely step further into the
etheric realms, and thereby bring the pictures into amore truthful form,
so you, Andrew, can ground the group in the experiences of common
humanity. You can express the realities the group is destined to bring
to mankind in terms which make sense to them out of their own lives,
something which you share as your daily reality. Without you,
everything the group represents would float off in isolation. Without
Maggie it would sink into abstraction and banality. You represent the
two triangles of the group’s Venusian Hexagram, so that it can be
suspended from the point of the one above it, and balance on the point
of the one beneath it.
Let Richard now hold the baton, so that I can add a closing perspective
upon these thoughts.
R ++ "There is now a seven fold pattern of relationships, a heptagram, which will bring
a new dimension and a new quality into what you do. This in no way supersedes or
diminishes the combined hexagram-pentagram which preceded it, or indeed the original
pentragram which has been forming over the last twelve months. These enhancements
were in turn preceded by an earlier form, the triangle which grew for many years
between Fiona, Joe and Richard. Each stage of growth has manifested itself as a living
geometry, and each one I, Michael, perceive as a unitary whole. This is my function in
relation to the CHRIST, to present for mankind a visible, bearable, sustainable, and
comprehensible Countenance of the changeless divine nature, so that the CHRIST itself
can continue in its eternal becoming and enhancement. CHRIST is not what you,
humanity , are. CHRIST is what you eternally become, I, Michael, am your guarantor
that you can eternally change without in the process losing your divine nature and
Being."
F ++ "Let us now through Fiona seal this event in the New Time, that
it may both irradiate the cosmos from this point and at the same time
germinate as a living seed of thinking in each human being whom your
I.T. School reaches. Joe, could you express this for me before the
CHRIST as an invocation, and Melanie, could you record in writing what
is said? Dear Meruel, I ask you to hold the Form, so that all those
present may participate with full attention in what is done. Dear
Ophromine, I ask you to be present in the Pillar, in the Flames, in the
Paper and the Pen in Melanie’s hand as she moves to record the words.
Let us rest in the stillness of quiet breathing as Joe prepares to speak."
*****

Joe prepares to speak the invocation. Melanie sits with paper and pen.
The others close their eyes and breathe quietly. The sixteen candles
burn steadily. The patterns of light and shade on the Pillar move in the
candle light. Far away in Brittany the Goh Menhir stands in the dusk.
Rain pours steadily down upon it and trickles through the fault line.
Human endeavour is never complete.
Joe:
At the infinite plane all is Light
My bodily mind is reflecting Light at this point of intersection
That my soul may comprehend Light through its Human Intelligence
So may Spirit Humanity create Light and be GOD
May Light descend and ascend upon Earth between GOD and
Humankind
*****
At the infinite plane all is Love
My bodily heart is resonating to Love at this point of intersection
That my soul may worship in Love as its World Temple
So may Spirit Humanity create Love and become CHRIST
May Love pervade the Earth and give birth to CHRIST in Humankind
*****
At the infinite plane all is Life
My bodily will is incarnating Life at this point of intersection
That my soul may fulfil Life as its Earthly Deed
So may Spirit Humanity create Life and achieve Mastership
May Life stream forth from Earth and serve the Cosmos as Humankind
*****
We perceive the point-centred power of the Lord-of –This-World
Denying Heaven
We feel Lucifer aflame within us storming the Heavens
Banishing Earth
There stands and strives between them Michael-CHRIST in Humanity
Its shining countenance redeems Lucifer’s Light
On the neck of the Serpent-Dragon rests its sword point
Through Michael-CHRIST, All Light Radiant as Cosmic Intelligence
Through Michael-CHRIST, All Love Resonant as World Temple
Through Michael-CHRIST, All Life Active as Earthly Deed
May the Divine be reborn upon Earth as Freedom
*****

Dialogue 5

M Style.
J I beg your pardon?
M I said ‘style’. The perpetual problem of how to live from moment to
moment on this planet without falling over your feet and feeling
ridiculous most of the time.
R Not most of the time. But certainly a lot of the time.
M More and more of the time as time goes on.
R Traditionally people have always solved it by ritual, which means balancing the
body’s urge towards spontaneity by disciplining it.
L So when you urgently want to pee while an archangel is communicating
you hold it?
M You go before the session starts.
J What then happens is that life becomes monastic. A rigid pattern of matins and trines
and complines and vespers, with bodily needs fitting in as best they may.
L Or suppressed altogether. No sex, for instance. Till it bursts out at
unexpected places.
M We sat there for an hour and a half this morning, unable or
unwilling to move. Yet the final word was ‘Freedom’!
R Not Fiona. She slipped out quite soon.
M What was she doing?
J She went to the kitchen and made sandwiches.
L She doesn’t make a pompous point of that sort of practicality. She just
does it.
R The temptation to schedule spiritual life and make everybody work to a time-table is
enormous.
J So far our Beings have been pretty spontaneous with us.
L Well, we’re in this extraordinary process of creating each other, so since
we’re spontaneous and fairly undisciplined, that’s the side of them which
seems to manifest.
M At least at first. But this time, you notice, there was a need for the
Beings to pay attention to our pre-packaged time system if they were
to get all seven of us together at one moment. Saturday, ten a.m. on
the dot! Please be there.
J Yes, but not on orders from outside. They asked first what was convenient.
M But then, having elicited a free decision it was succeeded by
insistence.
J Yes, but it was our insistence. It is our nature which seeks a form, not theirs. They
already have form, without the need for further discipline.
M And we need discipline. But it is free, spontaneous discipline we
need. In other words STYLE!
*****
L Finding names for Michael’s timeless moments. That was what he asked
you to do, Mel. Style seems to be one of them.
M Certainly a specification if not a full name. A pointer. Unless I’m
much mistaken that’s Paul’s car coming up the drive. Faultless timing
for lunch.
L Where’s Fiona?
M Lying down I think. Having made lunch and left the kitchen
spotless.
L Don’t over to it love. The rest of us aren’t exactly slovens either. But she
is pretty marvellous, I agree.
M Paul, hello! Welcome to Garway!
P Melanie! Lovely to see you. And Lucia! You’re ravishing, but I’ve sort of got
over you! (hugs her).
L I don’t fancy you any more either, so perhaps we’re no longer a threat to
each other. I’m so glad you said that. I wanted to avoid you, but there’s no
need.
P Joe, Richard, hello!
J Hi, Paul. Nice to see you.
R You’ve caught us in a sort of waking dream this morning. We’ve all been on a kind of
spiritual space-trip since breakfast. We’re just about through the jet-lag.
J That’s a very good analogy Richard. It’s just how it feels.
P I’m very glad to have come at that sort of moment, because that’s really what I
need to talk to you about, particularly since Maggie and Andrew started coming
here. Where are they, by the way?
M I rather think they went off for a walk soon after the end of our
morning session. They must have gone about an hour ago.
P And Fiona. How’s she?
M She’s fine most of the time. But she does seem to need a lot of
rest. We haven’t talked about this among ourselves, but I have been a
bit worried lately.
R She moves more slowly. I put it down to the sprained ankle at first, the one she had
just before our first combined visit here in May. That took a long time to heal.
P Maybe she should see someone. We have an excellent health centre in
Plymouth where one or two of them are very open to alternative therapies. So we
can get homeopathy, for instance, on the national health.
R I know she isn’t on anybody’s list since we moved here. There was a woman doctor
in London she used sometimes to see.
J Perhaps we should all sign up with someone in Hereford for a general check-over.
That would be less alarmist.
M You don’t really think she’s ill, do you Joe?
J I think it’s probably been in all our minds that she may by.
P I’d rather like a word with Andrew and Maggie. Do you think I’d meet them if
I went down the hill?
M Well, that is the way they went. If you took the car you might well
meet them down near the river. You could turn at the main road and
come back the same way. They know it’s nearly lunch time. You could
bring them back.
P I’ll do that. See you later.
*****
M We never offered him a drink.
R I felt he was a bit restless. He wanted to talk to his friends before launching out into
whatever’s on his mind.
J It’s not difficult to anticipate what that might be. There’s a bigger and looser thing
going on down there in Plymouth. He wants to tell us about it. At the same time two of
his chief lieutenants are spending a lot of time with us. I feel he probably pictures us as
being some sort of opposite camp with different priorities. I think he’s sniffing out the
question of possible divided loyalties.
M I think we’re creating a polarising other half of that picture as
well…..thinking of ourselves as deepeners and them as spreaders, and
projecting a feeling of division. Maggie and Andrew don’t give me that
feeling, though, that they are being pulled two ways. Not at all. On the
contrary I think they are ambassadors in both directions. It is simply
that there is a lot for them to digest in coming into the kind of intensity
going on here. There simply hasn’t been time or occasion for the tide
to flow the other way.
L Time and occasion! Exactly what Michael is conveying. I think it will
balance itself out once we start experiencing Plymouth. I think we need to
take that initiative.
R Soon. Here they come.
M I’ll fetch Fiona.
 *****
L Who wants a cold drink and who wants tea or coffee? Or there are several
herb teas?
MG It’s really steamy hot down there by the river. This is a wonderful bit of
country you’ve settled yourselves into. I always feel hot tea cools you down
quickest on days like this.
L Comin’ up, Maggie. Tea makes me hotter than ever. I need pints of
orange juice.
A We saw at least four different sorts of dragonfly. I don’t know one from
t’other.
MG Fiona, love, how are you? It’s lovely to see you. Andrew and I have
been exploring your beautiful river.
F It is lovely, isn’t it? I used to play down there as a child.
MG Paul brought us back in the car. I was glad of the lift.
A You’d soon lose weight here sweetheart.
F Hello Paul. Welcome to Garway! This is your first time, isn’t it? I
hope there’ll be lots more.
P It’s a lovely place, Fiona. I’ve never spent much time in the country. I’m a
townie.
L Like me. But I’ve acclimatised very quickly. I don’t really miss London at
all.
P To some extent in Plymouth we have the best of both worlds It’s a nice town,
and I do appreciate being by the sea.
L We’ve been talking about going down to see you one weekend instead of
Andrew and Maggie coming here.
P That’s one of the things I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. I think it would
be a great pity if we lost touch. As far as I’m concerned the whole idea of I.T.
started when I met you that first time in London. It was as if a seed was sown
then which sprouted and grew very rapidly. I felt that what you were doing was
germinating seeds which didn’t start to grow until they were planted out. We had
definite evidence in our case at least that we had a highly fertile seed in our
hands. I seem to remember that at the time I met you another one had sprouted
in North London somewhere and was growing very rapidly in the same sort of
way. You’ll remember how at the time I was seriously concerned that you seemed
to show no interest in the results of what you were doing. I couldn’t understand
how you could judge the effectiveness of I.T. if you had no feed-back channel, and
didn’t even feel the need for one.
R Have you felt the same way since Maggie and Andrew started coming up here?
Before you go on I’ll tell you now that we feel this was a very important thing to have
happened. It was as if a channel of communication opened up at a very timely moment.
M Sit down Paul and have some lunch. You can’t think on an empty
stomach. Has everyone got what they want to drink?
F Sit next to me Paul. I want to be sure I understand exactly what
concerns you. You have a very powerful energy and I want to
experience its quality. I know you have a very important function in the
I.T. situation. I want to feel whether this function is working for or
against what I conceive this Intraterrestrial impulse to be.
P That’s amazing! How can you possibly imagine that the active sprouting and
spreading of the germinating seeds you have sown could be working against the
I.T. impulse? Surely that’s what the whole impulse is about.
J Here Paul, have one of these prawn mayonnaise sandwiches. As an immigrant in
Cornwall you’ve doubtless discovered the importance of fish for the brain. It cools it no
end and nourishes it at the same time.
P I feel somehow you’re putting me off. Yes, I’m quite hungry, and the
sandwiches look really good. Thanks. But I feel as if you’re stalling. I’ve got
serious concerns, and I’d be very angry if I felt you were not equally concerned. I
recognised straight away that you’d hit on an important idea with this I.T.
scheme. At the same time I felt, and I still feel to some extent, that you were being
less than fully responsible in the way you were promoting it. You talked about the
need to avoid becoming isolated and in-turned, becoming yet another variant on
the theme of religious cults or sects. But I feel that’s already what you are in
danger of becoming. I sense a certain seductiveness in that very tendency. And
one of the things that really upsets me is that Maggie and Andrew, who are two of
the most important agents of the impulse in Plymouth, seem to be going the same
way. Frankly we can’t afford to lose them.
R Andrew, have you any sense of divided loyalties in this new situation developing for
you and Maggie? For example, have you discussed with Maggie the idea that you might
want to leave Plymouth and come and live here? How do you feel about this Maggie?
MG Andrew?
A I think the idea has probably occurred to us both, though we haven’t
discussed it. Maybe we should. But I don’t in any way see it as a question of
loyalties. I think to a great extent that is a projected notion created by something
which disturbs you, Paul. I think you feel threatened by something. It seems to
me very important to find out what that threat is, and whether there is any
substance in it. Would you like us to live here Maggie?
MG Not in the least. I feel very strongly that our work is in Plymouth. What
I get here is very important to me, and more and more I feel that we need it
for our work in Plymouth. But there’s something else too. I don’t know
whether you, Paul, are ready to hear it.
P You’d better try me. We’re past the point of playing about. I think one thing
we have in common is the realisation that something very important for
humanity is going on. The question is whether we can agree on what that is.
A You aren’t half getting through those prawn sandwiches Paul. You picked the
right thing there Melanie. I’d like another myself.
M Fiona made them. These communication mornings make us all
hungry I think. Here, try one of these strawberry and nut ones Maggie.
MG You don’t care about my weight do you? But I won’t say no.
A I’ll tell you, Paul, what I really think, and you’ll have to forgive me if I say it
very directly. I wouldn’t have been able to a couple of months ago, but I’ve
become very clear on it since we began taking part in what they’re doing here.
When it comes down to it Paul, I don’t think you have very much idea at all what
these seeds you talk about actually are. You speak of these people having hit on
an important and effective idea , and you’ve said to me several times you didn’t
think this group had much idea how to promote it. Your great strength is that
once you’ve got hold of something you have a gift for organising , explaining and
spreading it around. You’ve done it very effectively for some time with the crop
circles. They are something you can see concretely in front of you, visible and
measurable. You’ve played an important part in the croppie movement in sorting
out the issues involved. But with I.T. it’s different. You’ve treated it as an idea and
promoted it as such. But what it is an idea of, you have very little notion. Maggie’s
experiences intrigue you, but that’s as far as it goes. You haven’t at all made up
your mind where to place them as realities in your own world.
R Let me ask you something, Andrew. I won’t ask Paul because I want an independent
witness. You told us that at first when you started getting groups together Paul held forth
a great deal of the time, and then that later on other people who had been with you for
some time began to get the confidence to speak. What I want to know is, what does Paul
actually talk about to these groups? How does he introduce the subject? People must
ask him what I.T.s are, at least those who have seen leaflets or Lucia’s folder. What
does he say about them? Does he talk about Intraterrestrials as if they were realities to
him?
A What do you think Mag? It’s difficult to answer that. He certainly doesn’t
down play them as if they were mere symbols. At the same time…..
MG I’ll tell you what I experience. He talks about them as someone who is
referring to UFOs who talks if he hasn’t actually seen one. He give the
impression that he probably believes in them, but that’s as far as it goes.
A I don’t think that gives quite the right impression, or rather I don’t think it’s
the whole story, darling. You know Richard, Paul, if he’ll excuse my saying this, is
a very excellent and experienced speaker. When he hasn’t made his mind up
about something he is fair enough to put both sides of a story with great skill, and
leaves people free to make up their own minds. At the same time, as I was about
to say just now, he can’t help being honest about his own preferences. I’d describe
you Paul as a middle-of-the-roader. You’re open minded only as long as the
people round you are not too committed. At that point you veer towards
scepticism. It’s commitment that threatens you, and to be fair, that includes
materialistic commitment as well as the various paranormal belief systems.
P I don’t know if I’ve been put under a microscope or shoved through a wringer.
I find it quite uncomfortable.
A A dose of your own medicine perhaps.
P What do you mean?
A You’re powerful, Paul. Powerful enough to infect a lot of people with your own
uncertainties. As a result, the effect you have is a manipulative one. You’re not a
nihilist, but you are an agnostic, and charismatic with it.
P So you think I’m a menace.
R Andrew’s expressed the situation very clearly, and I don’t think he concludes you’re
an unequivocal disaster area! I certainly don’t not if his analysis of you is correct. Is it?
P It’s not too far out. But he underestimates some of the consequences of my
scepticism. I think the consequences of allowing you to give free reign among
ordinary people to a presentation of your so-called ‘Beings’ as objective realities is
extremely threatening to independent judgement. It certainly threatens mine.
You talk about charisma. That can take many forms, one of which is certainly the
power of myth. Letting loose the sort of tales among ordinary folk that you tell,
according to what Maggie and Andrew tell me, about your communication with
supersensible beings is no different in essence, to my mind, from encouraging a
belief in Santa Claus among kids. There comes a point where you have to come
clean. There ain’t no such animal. When push comes to shove, consciously or
unconsciously, you made it up.
L No, we didn’t. At least I didn’t. Did we, Mel?
M You know we didn’t.
J None of us did.
R We’re beginning to learn something about how consciousness, including its content,
comes into existence in the first place. We know a bit about creation, and that includes
being created as well as creating. If we created these beings then they certainly also
created us. That’s the implication as far as I can see. In your terms, if they’re fiction, then
so are we. They made us up.
P I’m not aware of any such implication. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the sole
available point of departure for my own mental processes. I’m a Cartesian. I
think, therefore I am.
R And before you thought?
P No one has any ground for supposing they existed before they were first aware
of thinking, except for the indirect evidence of others. They existed then only as
objects in other people’s consciousness.
F I know I existed before I have any awareness of having formed
thoughts.
P How?
F I remember the dangler in my cradle.
P You regard that memory as evidence that you existed?
F Not really. I only make it as a comment on your statement. I didn’t
think at that stage. But I don’t regard thinking as evidential in that
sense. This sort of discussion doesn’t ask real questions. When we are
able to think we can become aware of our own existence as
permanent, not because thinking itself can reach such a conclusion,
but because it can lead us to the discovery of abilities which can
themselves demonstrate that such a conclusion is true. When we are in
a body thinking arises in the form of concepts prompted by sense
perception. We become aware of objects and processes in this way,
ourselves among them. Body-free thinking is also possible, either as a
result of meditation, or in involuntary out-of-body experiences.
Furthermore, this thinking can actually be perceived if attention is paid
to it. Castaneda’s Don Juan called this the second attention, prompt-
free attention originating as an act of will. This act of will is the only
valid evidence, if such is needed, of my own existence, and it is only
apparent to me. You have no evidence of my existence, except by
analogy with your own, until you choose to direct your second
attention onto my thinking. You are then directly aware of my
existence without resorting to analogy.
P From what you are saying, this so-called second attention is just as prone to
illusion as the first.
F Certainly.
P Then how do I know that the Fiona I create by my second attention is real?
F You mean, what corroborative evidence do you have?
P Yes, if you put it that way.
F It was you who implied it. I was finding out whether it was what
‘knowing’ implied for you It appears it is. Like most people you confuse
knowing with what you think of as proof, which in the last resort is no
more than cumulative statistics, which by their own definition are
never complete. Knowing in the sense I mean is a statement of reality
which I make. It is something I do. It is the reality I create, and it is the
only reality which, in the first instance, is valid for me. It is complete
for me at the moment of its creation. You have access to it by virtue of
directing your attention to it. I do the same with you, and in doing so
extend what is real for me beyond the reality I create. That is the only
process we are entitled to call real communication between us.
P What about tables and chairs?
F Indeed. What about them? What about the whole process we refer
to as calling a spade a spade? All I can say is, I have come to view the
whole scenario which we call the world as, shall we say, extremely
provisional. In no sense is it real at the level of the questions I have
been raising. But we don’t get very much further along the lines of
what is brought into consideration by the path we have called
Intraterrestrial if we insist on confusing reality with this working
hypothesis we refer to as ‘The World’.
P What about these so-called Beings of yours, then?
F It would be more accurate to refer to them as ‘Coming-into-Beings’,
which is a bit clumsy. But it’s a healthy exercise to picture them in that
way, and also, of course, to picture ourselves like that. I sometimes
picture them as species of mirrors in which we start to see what we are
like at other levels of reality than the obvious one.
M M+ "I see you all as reflections of myself in different areas of what I
call personality. So you are also mirrors for me in the reverse direction.
I am held together as a self-aware entity by virtue of your
communication with each other at that self-aware level. Steiner calls
that level of communication ‘archai’. Or rather he calls Archai ‘spirits of
personality’, which amounts to the same thing. I literally come into
being as an archangel in the course of that process, just as you come
into being as a human in the course of an assembly of animal
processes. But I no more consist, in my self-awareness, as a mere
product of your communication with each other, than you exist merely
as a bi-product of animal processes. I am not a Cartesian archangel
either, Paul. It isn’t a case of ‘you think therefore I am.’! It is however
perfectly true that I owe my self-awareness to the growth of your
conscious communication."
P So, who was that? I gather it wasn’t you, Melanie.
F No, that was our friend Meruel.
P Meruel? And he’s an archangel? Well either you’re crazy or it’s a con. Spiritual
name-dropping.
R Would you consider letting us loose on your flock?
P I don’t know. In one way it would be a wonderful opportunity to educate their
reality-sense. I’ve a good mind to let you try. I warn you though, I’d tear you to
shreds. I don’t know. I’ll think about it. I don’t know how you do it. You’re as
batty as fruit-cake. I must get going; I’ve an evening meeting in London.
A We’ll see you off.
P I simply don’t know what to say. You’re extremely convincing, especially you,
Fiona.
F Thank you, kind sir!
P I’ve always been told psychotics are a hundred per cent convincing. I don’t
mean to be rude but... .bloody hell!
F You must come again. You’re always welcome.
P I might well do that. Hell, I must be crazy myself. Bye all. Thanks for your
hospitality. Those sandwiches were special, Fiona. Stay afloat all of you. Bye.
*****

Dialogue 6

L He called us psychotic.
J Yes. He thinks we’re crazy.
M Genius is to madness next allied.
R People who think they’re geniuses may not be technically mad, but there are
certainly psychological risks involved.
J Everything we’re doing is a hectic cavorting along the edge of psychic precipices.
You learn to steer or you come to grief.
F Meruel said as much to me on one occasion if you remember. It
was just before I had that minor heart-attack. He talked about a tight-
rope. But he then said we were in no danger of falling, and that our
paranoia was an illusion. The abyss is real. We have to confront it, and
that means actually overcoming fear. It also means overcoming
destructive rage in ourselves and others. And it means total trust. We
have to achieve a moment by moment conquest of doubt. We not only
have to confront the abyss, we have to cross it. And that means we
have to be ready. It’s no good shutting your eyes, holding your nose
and jumping, like children learning to dive. He used the interesting
word ‘hover’. We have to hover over the experience like hawks. We not
only can’t avoid the threshold, we have to experience it consciously.
But it isn’t just a dose of nasty medicine to be swallowed with a
sweetie afterwards. We have actually to savour it. We have to
familiarise ourselves with every nuance of it. We have to master it,
become experts in it, thoroughly enjoy it.
L You make it sound positively masochistic!
F Yes, that’s the opposite danger, getting so absorbed in the navel-
gazing aspect that you forget it’s only a means to an end. All this has
been confronted times without number in all the monastic disciplines
of the world. And there are still countless practitioners who say you
can’t get anywhere without rigorous discipline of your moment by
moment existence. Many people seriously believe you’re not supposed
to enjoy yourself.
J I would have thought that was a posture that falls well short of genius.
A But we’re none of us geniuses.
MG Or saints for that matter.
R M+ "I see it as my function as Meruel to urge you constantly to aim very high, my
friends. Saying you are neither a genius nor a saint may be true as a statement of your
stage on the path, but it is no help at all as a description of your potential. Humility is not
a grovelling posture, it is simple self-assessment, a quiet acceptance of who you are and
where you are. You take an inventory of the contents of your kit-bag before you set out
on each leg of the journey. It is not a put-down to define your parameters. Parameters
are not limitations, they’re stepping-stones. In fact, dancing-stones would be a bett3er
description. You need to skip and leap rather than plod and creep. Ask Ophromine!"
L What about genius, Meruel?
R M+ "You need a means to objectify it. Identifying with it at a personality level leads to
an area of total conflict which then slips over into the various schizophrenic modes.
According to temperament and mood you become murderous, paranoid, hebephrenic or
catatonic. Objectifying the schizoid as genius at a higher level of consciousness restores
the forms of madness to their proper function as temperaments, choleric, sanguine,
phlegmatic or melancholic. Genius is functional and directional. Madness is implosive
and explosive. You know this. I, Meruel, am an expression of your knowledge that this is
true. I help to stretch your reality sense beyond the limits of mediocrity."
F Paul said he’d heard somewhere that psychotics are totally
convincing about the reality of what they portray and express. You
can’t convince unless you are convinced. This means that once you
confront the abyss of insanity your only hope lies in genius.
M This is the point where all the psychotherapists and religions crowd
round you battling for your soul. What do we have at that point?
R M+ "You have me. At this juncture of your lives I am the objective expression of your
collective genius. I am not an obsessive illusion taking possession of your souls from
outside, because you recreate and so objectify me anew on every occasion. That is why
I warned you so severely through Fiona that you must continually question the process
at every moment. The higher you fly the more grounded you have to be."
M ¤ "That is why you also need me. With Meruel you fly. With me you
alchemize. Genius in your time is a group experience. The lone
alchemist was as batty as the lone mystic. But they both prepared the
way for what in your time you can achieve, a corporate mastery of the
heaven-Earth scenario and path. You look into each other’s eyes as a
sevenfold consciousness and see there your common identity, whose
name you are beginning to recognise."
R M+ "Your genius requires me and Ophromine to be continually rebalanced in your
awareness and your practice. And we are only the beginning. You start on a tightrope
flanked by us. Then you learn to fly. You are the bridge between the archangelic and the
devic-elemental worlds. In redeeming yourselves you open doors for our redemption as
well as your own."
L What do you mean by alchemise, Ophromine?
M ¤ "I think perhaps Maggie is the best one to answer that"
MG I couldn’t possibly!
M ¤ "Yes you could. All you have to do is turn and look at me and
describe what you see. Forget that it’s Melanie’s voice and just watch
me. It will help the group enormously to have a direct experience of
that kind. Some of them may also begin to see what I do.
MG I’ll try. I thought I knew what you meant when you said the word
alchemize, but then I lost it again.
M ¤ "Keep your eyes on what I do and try again. What am I doing
now?"
MG Making a kind of figure-of-eight form between each candle-flame and
the pillar, Joe’s thing.
F The candles aren’t alight Maggie.
MG Aren’t they? Oh no, so they aren’t. I must be looking back to the
meeting.
M ¤ "Not looking back or looking forward, Maggie, just looking. When
you look at Joe’s pillar, can you see the table?
MG No.
M ¤ "What else can you see?"
MG I can see the forms of everybody’s looking at what was going on at the
meeting, and what people are seeing as we talk now. It’s like moving waves
of colour, and also warmth, warmer in some places than others.
M ¤ "What about the things and the room itself?"
MG It’s almost as if we are all suspended in mid-air. The things are only
held together by people’s thoughts and feelings about them. The things
themselves are like empty spaces, vacuum. Oh yes, now I look, there’s a
corner of the table which has been repaired at some time in a loving way. I
can see the movements of the craftsman’s hands where he appreciated the
forms. But the table itself is an empty space.
M ¤ "And Joe’s pillar?"
MG Well, that’s the brightest spot in the room. Something alive has filled
the space and communicates with the light that falls on it. I see it as directly
connected with Joe, but there’s also something painful. I can see his pain as
his movement in time gradually pulls him away from what he has created.
M ¤ "Well there Maggie! You’ve already hit on a great deal of the
essentials of what alchemy is. It’s a particular kind of action in the
material world which combines Love with Insight into the nature of
matter, and then extends that through craft skills into an actual
metamorphosis of the matter itself. The nature of matter is refined. It
not only comes alive but it becomes a fresh source of original creation,
beyond the scope of what the artist put into it".
L So is alchemy simply another name for art?
M ¤ "By no means, Lucia. You could say, though, that art is the most
comprehensible and accessible aspect of alchemy for a civilisation
perverted by materialistic thinking. Alchemy goes way beyond that
definition. Art brings the forms expressible through matter alive.
Alchemy brings alive the actual substance of matter itself. Nature does
that all the time. The aim of the alchemist is to become totally creative
in the way that nature is, but with the added dimension of self-
awareness."
A What about lead into gold and all that stuff?
M ¤ "Hello Andrew! ‘All that stuff’ is right. That aspect of alchemy
gradually got bogged down in technological understanding and the
technique of practice. But the original insight that gold is fundamental
to the understanding of matter and how to deal with it was never lost.
Living matter originates in the sun. All matter has in essence died and
awaits rebirth. But gold has died less than most other material
substance. Concentrating the greater part of the world’s gold in Fort
Knox comes near to completing the process of the death of matter.
Spread it a few molecules thick as gold leaf over the artefacts in the
tomb of Tutenkamun and it still retains some of tis capacity to
commune with the Light.
L So what is the true object of alchemy?
M ¤ "Ultimately alchemy defines the true nature of all human action,
which is to transmute all matter into its original form and nature as
Light. What the majority of human action has become is simply moving
dying matter about on the surface of the Earth into different shapes
and sizes. Nothing really changes."
A Like shifting deck-chairs about as the Titanic goes down.
M ¤ "Exactly put! In the long term, most human action is
meaningless. I.T. as you call it could change that".
L How? How do we perform what you are calling true human deeds? How
do we recognise a truly effective action, something which actually changes
the world into something else?
R M+ "Rudolf Steiner has been listening to this conversation. You may think that he
could have answered this question himself. But you have to understand that he has
gone onto other work. So he asks me, Meruel, to answer you. What I would ask Lucia is,
‘Lucia, do you want the world to be something else?"
L Of course I do. I want it to be better.
R M+ "That doesn’t quite go deep enough. How do you recognise real change? How
do you judge that the world has become better as a result of something you do?
F Can I step in? I would say that I have a moral sense, a direct
perception that when deeds are morally motivated the world ought to
be changed for the better. But in practice morally motivated deeds are
often ineffective or even counter-productive. Paradoxically
considerable changes for the better can come about as by-products of
greedy and selfish actions of powerful individuals. It seems that
something more is needed before we can say that our motivation
makes a direct link with betterment in the world.
R M+ "Something which has been invisible in the situation stands behind what you
have been talking about. It is as if there is a pincer movement in the world you can’t see
between two complimentary realms which have a bearing on the nature of your deeds in
what you perceive as your world. My world, what we can define for the moment as the
Meruel world, is one in which you start to gain an altogether wider perspective on what
kind of reality you are living in. You start to see reality from above downwards. At the
same time, from below upwards so to speak, there is the Ophromine world, in which
your perception of, and your effectiveness in, the world of matter sharpens. It is only at
the meeting point of these two aspects of reality that your actions, whether they are
morally motivated or not, can be experienced as effective in the way you seek them to
be."
L Up to that point you have made no distinction between good and evil
deeds. It looks as if becoming awake to you and Ophromine gives as much
scope to evil as it does to good.
R M+ "So it certainly does. At that point you begin to see the difference between deck-
chair shifting and alchemically transforming deeds. But something different has to
happen if you are to perceive the difference it makes to the world itself whether your
deeds are morally motivated, or aimed at personal power and advantage. In order to
grasp that you would need to rise to a higher level of action and perception than mine
and Ophromine’s reality can encompass. At our level, you can only accept our word for
it, so to speak, that moral motivation springs directly out of Love, and moreover, that
Love is not simply a feeling, it is an actual perception of the substantial reality of the
world. As the philosopher expressed it, Love is Substance. Substance is Love. In other
words, truly morally motivated deeds create the substantive reality of the world, whereas
evil power-motivated deeds, especially when they spring from supersensible perception
and knowledge, actually annihilate Substance. This is what we call Black Magic, and it is
capable of driving reality out of manifest existence Moral motivation in terms of ideas
then becomes irrelevant to its results."
L This Love already exists in our hearts. I know this. There is a seed of the
CHRIST-being there, waiting for us to activate it. Knowing this to be true is
the apex, the growing point of all knowledge. I know this by direct
perception. It is this which springs from the substance of the Heart, and
hovers over the abyss, illuminating it.
MG I’m finding it takes quite a bit of courage to look at these two Beings of
yours. While Richard was talking I tried looking to see if I could be aware of
Meruel in the same way as I could begin to see the other one, Ophromine.
L Could you?
MG Well, they both fade in and out quite a bit. I think what happens is, you
get a nudge they want to speak; then you open up to them, let yourselves
expand to make room for them as it were. At that moment if I look I can see
them as a kind of extra brightness when I look at your aura. I can begin to
see which one it is speaking. But then something else happens. You’re
suddenly struck by an idea. Your own enthusiasm takes over, and it’s as if
you push them aside and I can’t see them. I think I could begin to follow
them to where they go, but there’s some lack in me then.
F Is that what you meant when you said it needed courage to look at
them, Maggie? Are you afraid of these Beings of ours?
MG I don’t think I am, no. What I’m afraid of is something which happens
in me when I look in their direction. There’s a change happening in me which
I feel threatening.
F Can you feel what that change is?
MG Not quite. I feel I’m losing something and gaining something else, but
at the same time I’m resisting the change. I don’t want to lose the ability I
have to see into things other people don’t see. It’s all to do with the sort of
looking at myself which Joe opened up in me. It’s this inner and outer world
business. I’m afraid of what you call the inner world. I feel as if I’ll lose the
ground under my feet.
F It all comes from something our bodies do to us. Being in a physical
body is a very two-pronged business. On the one hand it gives us the
freedom to act independently. But on the other it cuts us off from a
realm of realities which would complete our being, make us whole. This
gives us a feeling that there are two different worlds, an inner and an
outer world. By extending your perceptions from childhood on into a
clairvoyant realm which is closed to most people you have succeeded
in avoiding this dilemma. You have avoided an experience of duality
most of us take for granted. But you still have an unconscious fear of
it. You have hung on to the experience of one undivided world which
most people lose at the moment of birth, but at the cost of a inner life
which for most of us is our main source of soul-richness.
MG I feel I’ve been thrown out of balance. I want all the time to retreat
back into the world which was familiar to me. But I can’t . In any case it no
longer satisfies me. I’m in a sort of limbo.
F The experience of meeting the Beings is beginning to provide you
with the feeling of two different worlds, which for most of us in a
different form is the common experience of non-clairvoyant humanity. I
believe that if you open yourself to what they tell you they will lead
you to what most people call their inner world, but without you losing
the knowledge you already have that there is only one reality. Our
illusion has been that there are two worlds, an inner and an outer
world. Your illusion has been that there is no inner world. We are both
wrong, and the experience of meeting the Beings is part of the way we
are all being led into a common space where we met the same
realities.
R Can I talk to you again as Meruel, Maggie?
M+ "You see, it is this very condition of imbalance, or rather new balance, which you
call limbo, which makes you so valuable to the group, and equally to the world of people
you are connected with in Plymouth. There is a tremendous lot of illusion in the world
about the way in which healthy change could come about in this sick and dying
civilisation of yours. Sections of humanity have always wanted to convert each other,
and what they couldn’t convert they have tried to destroy. In these of your days some of
it takes the form of so-called ‘ethnic cleansing’. There is a total unwillingness to
incorporate differences into a common reality."
L Will it change? Can it change?
R M+ "That’s something that needs answering on a level beyond mine or Ophromine’s.
Lucia, Michael is looking at you."
L Can the world change, Michael? I think Michael wants to speak through
me this time. Yes, that seems to be right.
*****
L ++ "No human being reaches the point of self-confrontation, which every
barbaric savage cringing soul seeks, until it is truly ready. What every soul
needs to grasp is the nature of that readiness. ‘How long, oh Lord, how long?
How many more times must I long to slash and torture and rape my way into
something beyond my frustration, my impenetrable dullness and boredom,
my stupidity? How many more times do I need to purge my savagery in the
false innocence of babyhood to be slashed, tortured and raped in my turn?
Bosnia is my footstool, Ethiopia is my melting-pot, saith the Lord.
My friends, for the Earth, this blue and golden planet of illumination, of
freedom and of joy, the nightmare is nearly over. The Earth needs to wake.
The Earth is waking. And each of you is both Earth and self. You too need to
wake. You too are waking. But there is a problem of synchronicity, of
congruence. What if the Earth is ready and I am not? What if I am ready and
the Earth is not? The times are out of joint. Karma has not proved to be a
perfect instrument. The chronicle of Akasha is like an archetypal computer,
and it has a Virus, my friends. I told you before, I have had to abort the
programme. I have had to abort it, my friends. There is no painless way.
Time must have a stop. Karma has to make a fresh start. And as the
universe comes to a sudden unavoidable shuddering halt, every soul,
whether ready or not under the old dispensation, is confronted with itself,
and with the true reality of the planet. You seven have all learned something
in recent weeks of the abyss, of the reality of your personal threshold. And
now, my friends, what of the world abyss, the crossing of the planetary
threshold? Do you see the implication of this for your own situation? I have
been obliged to alter for you the nature of readiness itself. I have been
obliged to open a new window upon your perceptions, and in doing so to
reveal a new substantive reality in the depths to which the incarnatory
process is permitted to sink.
The CHRIST is entering into the depths of the substantiality of the material
world. You may look upon this as an ascension process, since matter as the
sphere of your operations is becoming more mobile, more plastic, more
intensely vibrant, in a word, more BLUE, or you may look upon it as a new
descent into hell, since every agony now reaches a further resolution, a
redemptive confrontation. For indeed it is both these things.
You explored with Ophromine the nature of Alchemy, and its relation to Art
on the level of human deeds. I am now speaking to you of a step in World
Alchemy, of a trans-substantiation of the Earth itself, of which you are an
inseparable part. I perceive your group as an alchemic cauldron, a seven-
faceted diamond of seething transformation, in which a part of this new
artistic creation is coming about.
Lucia, as you receive and transmit the Light: Joe, as you transform it into
visible substance: Richard, as you conceptualise that substance into forms:
Melanie, as you identify and speak the names of those forms: Maggie, as you
become the eyes and ears of the group awareness of what is coming into
being: Andrew, as you bring to the world the reality of what is taking
place...I, Michael, perceive all this as a whole monitored by Fiona, a single
shining beacon in a world of fundamental change.
Yes, Lucia, the world can change, the world will change, the world is
changing. You yourselves as a group are a presage that the change is taking
place, and are indeed a role-model for it."
F What can we do about Bosnia, about Ethiopia, about the next place
where the poison breaks out and people go over the top.
M It might spread from Toxteth or Brixton or Handsworth next.
L "There is little you can do beyond the sphere in which your own changes
are taking place, until the point when those changes themselves take effect
in the places to which they take you."
MG Plymouth, for instance.
L ++ "You are nearly at the point now when your ripening as a group
inevitably works into situations beyond your present scope. A year ago your
ideas about the nature of your I.T. impulse were not much more mature than
Paul’s are now. It largely worked through your heads. But your hearts and
wills were also open to growth, so your heads had a sphere of operation to
work in where real change could begin. This drew you into effective realities
which previously had only been present to you in the form of ideas, realms
where Meruel, Ophromine and I, and many, many other beings are also
present and active, and, through your intervention, are also coming into
consciousness in your terms."
R What do you see us doing next?
L ++ "I do, and shall not, see you doing anything until you actually do it.
But the pressure of initiative in you is growing moment by moment. The
instant it surfaces into action I am in a position to empower it to a degree of
which you can scarcely conceive. This has the effect of providing you with a
much more immediate feed-back than you are used to. It is like a sort of
instant karma, which results from the loosening up of the Akashic record I
have been describing to you. You will thus become much more sensitive day
by day to whether your initiatives and responsive actions are appropriate.
I suggest now that I withdraw, so that Lucia can have a rest and you can
look after her for a bit. You also need to become aware now of the
empowerment you already have through opening to me in the way that you
have now done."
*****

Dialogue 7

A I have a suggestion. Do you suppose anyone has ever set up a workshop in

which there is no named speaker, just seven anonymous folk on a platform,
giving a joint presentation?
R You’re thinking we might put on something of that sort in Plymouth?
A That’s certainly what occurred to me.
M What an idea! The mind boggles. In a sense I suppose that’s the
sort of way evangelising and proselytising groups usually go about
things, isn’t it? People get up and spontaneously witness for the Lord.
J Would you picture us just jumping in the deep end, so to speak, or do you think it
implies quite a lot of preparation?
F The most difficult thing is winkling people away from their fixed
preconceptions about what it is you’re doing. If you call it a lecture or a
workshop they have certain pictures of what to expect. The same
happens if you call it a service or a festival, or a rave. If you’re going to
do something completely new it has to carry an atmosphere of renewal
from the start.
M Style.
F Exactly.
J Classic I.T. – the Radio-free Broadcast.
L Supersensible Media-of-the Year Award.
J Channel Infinity – Beyond Channelling.
MG You know the whole thing cries out for music, where Stanley puts those
rows of little crosses... Oh!
R What are you talking about, Maggie? Who’s Stanley?
MG Oh sorry! Forget it.
A What are you picking up, sweetheart?
MG Parallel universes I should think!
A Won’t you elaborate love?
MG It may be just day-dreaming. I’ve been having these fantasies for
several days now that in some other reality everything we’ve been going
through is not more than the plot of a work of fiction. The author of the book
has envisaged us as characters going through a kind of spiritual evolution
which an audience reads or overhears. In the broadcast version the times
when we are not speaking are marked from time to time by short musical
intervals. I’ve even been hearing some of these musical passages, and
they’re really quite beautiful.
A Jane Roberts’ Seth’ talks about parallel, or what he calls probable realities,
doesn’t he? He thinks everything which could happen does happen somewhere at
some level.
L So we may be someone else’s probable reality, Stanley’s perhaps.
M And he may be ours, so to speak.
L I know, let’s write a book about Stanley. That would put the cat among
the pigeons, wouldn’t it?
F We create our own reality. There’s no implication there that we
create other people’s as well. Or is there?
M Well we certainly appear to be creating at least some aspects of
Meruel’s and Ophromine’s realities.
J And they claim in the same way to be creating ours, or some aspects of it. But at the
same time, as I understand it, the scenarios we create do not make up the whole of
Meruel’s and Ophromine’s reality. We create picture selves for them into which certain
aspects of their being can embody themselves. They do the same for us. I have no doubt
at all that certain aspects of my manifest life exist because that is what they picture them
as being.
F We’ve faced this one before, but not in such a stark way. If we are
indeed at some level characters in a book, you may be sure that it is
being written by someone who already perceives himself to some
extent in the same light.
M And darkness.
F And darkness. We faced before the question of whether there is a
truly any firm ground in perceived reality. How do we get beyond the
point of experiencing consciousness as anything more than one lot of
shadows creating another, and being in turn created by them?
M Everything tends to the CHRIST, which is by definition that which
lies beyond this problem.
R We could say more. The CHRIST is the only reality which lies beyond that perceived
limitation of consciousness. And it is the reality which we ourselves, and all other entities
of which we are aware, are in process of becoming.
J And that is why it is so painful, since it implies, or seems to imply, leaving behind all
other experiences as less real than it is.
L Are we not permitted, since conscious experience is our familiar home
and nest, to allow Light to penetrate and illuminate our actual experience as
an aspect of what is real? Do we not love the darkness, because we see what
is real in its subtle lineaments when they are illuminated?
F Is not our fear of the CHRIST, and rejection of CHRIST’s claims, a
fear that the CHRIST may in turn cruelly reject that whose familiarity
we have learned to love?
R Did we not do this in Atlantis?
J In Atlantis, and later perhaps in Egypt and in Palestine.
A Who was Jesus?
*****
R Well done Andrew! That turned out to be the conversation stopper of the morning?
Did you come up with any answers?
A Well no. Actually I went back to what we had been talking about before. It
occurred to me then that if we are anything at all, apart from shadow-creating
shadows, we must be what Seth would have called the CHRIST’s probable reality.
The thing about probable realities, if I understand Seth correctly, is that a hell of
a lot of them turn out to be blind alleys. The big question for me is simply
whether or not humanity itself is simply a huge cul-de-sac. I think this question
looms behind all the Seth books.
F That was what Richard was essentially talking about the other day –
were you there? – that humanity was a jolly good idea but there was no
evidence that the idea had come to much yet.
M Not so much a blind alley as an unexplored one.
R Actually it was Meruel who said that Fiona. I remember he had just handed over to
me after the two o f them had helped us to sort out what happened at Avebury.
J I think this is moving into a very important new area through Andrew’s question. I’d
like to say something about it, but I don’t know quite what. Perhaps the first thing would
be to say that bringing Jesus into the area of what we’re doing was directly linked to the
other bombshell which Maggie had just fired off, raising the question of whether we are
all fictional characters in somebody else’s mind.
R How do you see the connection?
J It seems to me that the whole difficulty about Jesus is that nobody can quite bear the
idea that someone had actually made it as a human being without... and this it seems to
me is the essential point... without losing his recognisable identity as a person among
persons, someone who, like everyone else, is on a path of continuous further development
in a perfectly understandable human sense. So they shoved him up on a pedestal as Jesus-
Christ to avoid having to take account of him as the Possible Human. In doing this they
also ensured an almost total misunderstanding of what the eventual second coming of the
CHRIST would be.
R But isn’t that just the point, Joe, that nobody else has made it in the sense you are
talking about?
J Who are the Masters then, the ones Alice Bailey talks about, and we were discussing
the other day? Melanie, what’s the difference between a saint, a genius, a bodhisattva,
and an avatar?
M My god! I think I’d have to be all four to begin to answer such a
question. Perhaps something like that could be a test case for all
naming.
J I’ve met people who say Jesus was just an avatar, whatever ‘just’ means in such a
context. They call him Master Jesus, and some of them call him Sananda, as if he had
graduated out of the class of us ordinary folk and needed a graduation name like any old
hippy sanyasin.
R What’s this got to do with us being characters in fiction? Are you saying that Jesus
too is an invented character, an archetype onto whom we project all our notions of
unattainable perfection?
J No, Richard. I think I’m saying almost the exact opposite of that. I think relegating
Jesus to the category of mastership in the same sense as one does with D.K, Moria,
Kuthumi and the others misses something essential. There’s a fundamental difference
between perfection and completion. The masters have gone up into a senior class, having
completed a course which puts them into a different category from the rest of us. This is
something which it has always been possible to do without conscious reference to the
CHRIST, and I am not saying that Jesus hasn’t also done that. What distinguishes Jesus
from the others is that Jesus has also moved the other way. He is nearer to us than anyone
else we are likely to meet. I think Jesus is the most ordinary human being there has ever
been. He is what all human beings are meant to be like. Everybody else is slightly off-
key, perhaps especially those with notions about categories of perfection, which confuse
it with the completion of what is possible as a human being.
M So you don’t think Jesus is a perfect human being?
J Yes I do, but I think his incompleteness is essential to his perfection. He not only
evolves like the rest of us, he achieves the maximum possible evolution at any given
circumstantial moment of his life.
M Do you see him as a role model for being human then?
J No, not in the least. I think he looks for, expects, and actually evokes in everyone the
same kind of open-ended developing uniqueness which he himself embodied, and which
led him 2000 years ago to become the first CHRIST-bearer, Christophoros. He sees each
other human being as on a unique path to CHRIST-bearing just as he pioneered then, but
totally idiosyncratic, and transcending his own. "All these things shall ye do…..!"
F ...And more!
L Do you think Jesus is still about somewhere then, Joe, reincarnating like
everyone else, in a relationship somewhere, having sex, going to the loo,
eating fish and chips, doing a job, and all that?
J I see absolutely no reason for supposing anything different. I feel we need Jesus
among us as an ordinary bloke, probably more than we need anyone else. The whole
trouble with Christianity is that it has made Jesus inaccessible. They have dehumanised
the one person who is really in a position to explain, having borne him on and within his
own human person, what CHRIST is really about.
L But would he know he was Jesus, and if he did, could he possibly afford to
admit it?
J He could admit it to close friends, because the way reincarnation works ensures that
some of them are people he already knows from other lives, including 2000 years ago.
But he would have to be very careful with Christians and particularly with the churches.
Happily though insight is not totally blocked by fixed beliefs. I am sure that there are
many Christians who think deeply about these things, and some of them by now will be
coming to the same sort of conclusions as we do, and having similar experiences. Only
they keep quiet about it.
M But in what circumstances could that possibly happen without
alienating all the people most likely to confuse it with the second
coming of the CHRIST?
F As far as I have been able to see, the only person who actually
understood the second coming of the CHRIST was Rudolf Steiner. Very,
very slowly his teachings about the etheric CHRIST have penetrated
much more widely than one would think judging by the small size of
the anthroposophical movement. But even he made very little of the
reappearance of Jesus in a prophetic way. It would have been too
confusing for people, until there was a wide enough perception of the
fact that the second coming had already dawned in the thirties of this
century, and has been growing as an etheric organism ever since.
There would have to be a widespread "hundredth monkey" effect in
connection with that before Jesus could declare himself in that context
without confusion.
J And this is especially so because the whole point of his reappearance would be to
become fully CHRIST-ed again in twentieth century circumstances, and to show people
the path to becoming CHRIST-ed themselves. And that would not be at all an obvious
process. In fact, I think it would be very mysterious, and not at all easy for people to
grasp.
M Perhaps especially difficult for people who already thought of
themselves as being on a spiritual path. Easier perhaps for very simple
unpretentious heart people.
L Do you think we’re likely to meet him?
F Meruel might have something interesting to say about that.
L Would you, Meruel?
F M+ "It takes you a long time to grasp completely just how we
beings relate to the events in your lives. The thing you call your life-
path is not a pre-packaged programme. It is coming into existence all
the time, certainly on the basis of what you and we have prepared
together before your birth, but also to a great extent following
spontaneous present choices of your own. Your desire for particular
events or meetings set in motion tremendous forces, like Melanie’s
tumbling rocks. The world has an infinite capacity for subliminal
realignment, especially if people like you are awakening to this sort of
possibility. If it comes into your minds that you would like to cross
Jesus’ path that desire alone sets a great deal into movement, which
cannot but have powerful positive effects for many people, though not
necessarily for yourselves in a direct way. That depends on multiple
factors which I can no more forecast than you can. Much depends on
whether you are actually ready for such an event. Wishing for it to
happen is only one of multiple preconditions for it, only some of which
are in your control."
M I wonder why things aren’t simpler!
F M+ "They are a great deal simpler than you sometimes make
them. These questions are arising in your minds now because you e
ready for them. The work you have done together has opened doors
for you. You are ready for a much more centred and directional
character in your work together. You need to start focussing your
motivation in this work. You need to decide on specific goals and
pursue them. That’s the sort of thing that leads to a feeling of
simplicity. Then you can carry any amount of complexity in your
conceptual and imaginative life."
J I’ve often felt that we misunderstand, where simplicity lies. It doesn’t lie in our heads
where we try to look for it. It lies in our hearts, where our wills can then implement it.
M How does it get to where our heads can connect with it, then?
J That’s what Steiner meant when he said:- "Hearts must begin to have thoughts". The
head changes its function. It becomes the place where the thoughts the heart has are
reflected back to us where we can perceive them, instead of the place where they
originate at the behest of sense-perception.
M I can see something else about my naming process now. Head
naming just sticks labels on things. Tacky taxonomy! True naming goes
to the Heart of the Being’s being.
F Where have we got to then? What started as a suggestion by
Andrew that we expose our process, as some sort of a forum in
Plymouth, to public observation led almost at once to a glaring light
falling on us by Maggie, in which for a moment we looked at the
possibility that we were already in that domain as someone’s invented
characters. It then came swinging back to Andrew, who perceived that,
once we realise we can only get beyond the stage of being shadows
invented by other shadows and inventing them in turn, by recognising
a reality beyond that, called CHRIST, then this leads inevitably to the
question of who Jesus was, or is. We explored that, and Joe helped us
sort out the difference between perfection and completion, and
recognised Jesus as both perfect and incomplete, which we are in
process of becoming as we become the CHRIST.
M You know, I’m continually astonished at the difference it has made
to the group having you two with us, Andrew and Maggie. It’s like
having lived in an undeveloped photograph, and then suddenly it starts
being printed out. We are faced with the stark consequences of what
has been slowly germinating in us all year.
R You mean the question of whether or not we go public?
M That’s how Andrew’s idea first hit us. But I’m beginning to think
that might be like overprinting the photograph. I think there’s an
intermediate stage.
A How about letting Paul set it up?
L I felt a shiver like someone walking over my grave, as they used to say.
J You have the picture of him gathering a lot of cronies together who would challenge
the very basis of the way we work?
L Well, he did say at one point he would tear us to shreds.
A I don’t think that’s his style. Paul’s very fair. I can assure you there are plenty
of people we have made contact with who are wide open to the sort of thing you
have been developing. However, it is set up it would turn out to be a very open
forum. Seeing you, as a relative newcomer, I am perfectly certain you would more
than hold your own. If I may say so, you need to trust yourselves more!
F I don’t see us as Aunt Sallies sitting up on a platform faced with an
audience of inquisitors. I envisage us blending into a balanced circle of
people who are in some sense a select group.
A Picked by our group down there, do you mean?
F I feel they’ll pick themselves. Whoever’s meant to be there will be
there.
MG I think what’s coming up is that you’ll let Andrew and me work in with
Paul, and we’ll set up a meeting which comes a good bit short of an open
forum. We’ll make sure you have a sympathetic group, but where people can
ask really important questions. You won’t be pussyfooted, but there’ll be
plenty there to keep Paul’s and others doubts in balance.
R Let’s leave it like that then. I must say I’m really looking forward to it.
A It’s time we were going. You know, I go for what you said, Melanie, about the
difference Maggie and I have made to your group. I would never have believed it
was possible that we would have gone so far in just a few weeks. I’m very, very
grateful to you all.
MG We both are. A lot goes on for us when we’re not here. I need to talk to
you some time about the changes in what you call my clairvoyance. You’ve
made a huge difference to me.
R Give our love to Paul. We’re looking forward to meeting them all.
A So will they. We’ve already put out some feelers. There’s a lot of expectancy
down there. I don’t think you’ll disappoint them.
*****
 END OF BOOK FIVE

Book 6
"Aftermath"

Dialogue 1

L Whatever’s the matter, Mel? You’re as white as a sheet.

M Sit down a minute, Lu. Where have you been?
L Only up to the shops. What’s happened?
M Fiona. She’s had another heart-attack. The doctor’s with her now.
L Is it serious?
M Worse than last time I’m sure. The boys are out too. I was on my
own.
L Oh Mel! I’m so sorry. Did you phone emergency? I’d have thought they’d
send an ambulance.
M It seems they send a local G.P. to see how serious it is. I heard him
pick up the phone, so I presume... here he comes. How is she, doctor?
Dr She’s stable, but she’s not conscious... I’ve sent for the
ambulance. Are you her daughters?
M No, we’re a sort of community here. As far as I know there are no
relatives, certainly no close ones.
Dr I think you should be prepared for a serious outcome. So there’s
no next-of-kin?
L You’ll really have to ask Richard. This is a charitable trust. We’re all
trustees, but Richard has handled the business side. I’m afraid he’s out at
the moment.
Dr One of you should really go with the ambulance.
M It’ll be Hereford will it?
Dr Certainly at first. You never really know these days.
M I’ll go, shan’t I, Lu? I hope Richard and Joe come back before the
ambulance comes.
L I’ll go with you if they don’t. Can two people go, doctor?
Dr It’s sometimes all right. I’ll go back to her. I’ll wait till the
ambulance gets here if you like. They aren’t usually very long.
Sometimes if they’re carrying an extra attendant there’s only room for
one. Could you not go in your own car, then you could all go. I can tell
you how to get there.
M Thanks very much. You’re being very helpful. Can we see her?
Dr By all means. She may recover consciousness fairly soon, but it
may be much longer. As I say, she’s stable at the moment.
M What sort of attack is it?
Dr It’s a heart infarct. Has she had any trouble before?
M She’s had a mild seizure a few weeks ago. But she recovered very
quickly, almost at once really.
Dr Yes, I thought that might have been how it was. Here comes the
ambulance now. That’s quick, even for them. They must have been
fairly nearby. You two need to relax! Put the kettle on, I should.
L (crying) I’ve got an awful feeling this may be it, Mel. I knew Plymouth
was too much for her. We ought not to have let her go.
M Cheer up, darling. There’s no stopping Fiona if she’s set her heart
on something.
L And it’s just her heart that’s let her down. Come in, it’s through here. The
doctor’s with her.
M I wish Richard would come.
L Come on, sweetheart. We can’t both be helpless females.
M The back door will be easier for the stretcher, officer. I’ll move
these chairs. Is she still unconscious?
Dr Yes, but she’s breathing quite steadily now. No more snoring. I’ve
steadied her down with an injection. She’ll be all right till she gets to
hospital.
M Can you tell us how to get to the hospital?
Dr You know the way into Hereford? The hospital’s well sign-posted
as you get into town from this end.
M I think we’ll wait for the others and all go in together.
Dr I’ll be going now. Here’s my card if you need me for anything.
L Thanks very much doctor. You’re very calming. Is she going to be all
right?
Dr This isn’t a massive attack. I doubt if she’ll go this time. By
‘serious outcome’ I mean there’s a good chance of a massive attack
later on. It could be tomorrow, or in six months or a few years. We can
never tell. But she won’t be as active as before.
M Thank you doctor. We’ll look after her.
Dr I’m sure you will. Bye now.
L What a very nice doctor. Dishy too.
M Lu, you’re incorrigible. I don’t know how Joe puts up with you.
L I adore Joe. Joe is a perfect angel. I never make Joe jealous. Joe is
exactly what girls like me need. But nobody could call him dishy. I like dishy
men.
M So it seems.
L Oh don’t be like that Mel. There’s a certain sort of man who instils
confidence at moments of crisis, and it is very often the ones with sex-appeal
that have that gift. They may be absolute swine at the same time, though I
don’t think that doctor is. Mel, don’t misjudge me. I’m O.K. honestly I am.
It’s just that I know my way about in a way that you probably never had the
opportunity or inclination for. You can knock spots off me in all sorts of other
ways.
M I’m sorry Lu, it’s just that I’m still in a bit of shock over Fiona. I’m
beginning to realise how much I’ve been depending on her. In spite of
what you say I feel a bit guilty that I didn’t make more effort to stop
her overdoing it.
L I think she might well have been heading for this attack in any case. It
isn’t only physical strain that brings these things on. I’m quite sure she keeps
a hell of a lot under her hat. She carries quite a lot more responsibility for
the way things are developing in I.T. than the rest of us. She must often be
tempted to control things in a way I’m quite sure she would be well able to.
And she doesn’t. She gives us our heads in a way very many older people
wouldn’t dare to. Here come the lads I think. They seem to be deep in
conversation about something and they’re hurrying.
*****
R We’ve just seen the ambulance up in the village, coming from this direction. Is
anything the matter?
M Fiona’s had another heart attack, a serious one this time. She’s all
right for now, but the doctor seems to feel she’s far from out of danger.
R You know, we were sure there was something of that sort as soon as we saw the
ambulance. She was very quiet all the way back from Plymouth, but I knew there was a
lot going on. I was expecting her to come out with a lot of stuff about the meeting when
we got back, but she went straight to her room.
J I went in to see her late. We talked from a long time.
L Why didn’t you let on?
J She asked me not to. Is she going to live, Lu?
L I don’t know. I have a feeling she may not. She didn’t recover
consciousness.
J It’s amazing, this attack, in the light of what she said to me. I think we should go to
the hospital. When she comes round from this I’m sure she will be very anxious to tell
you what she told me. She needed to speak to us all herself, or I would try to share it
now.
R What if she doesn’t survive?
J I think she will. I think she’ll do her utmost to share with us all. If not I’ll obviously
tell you all I can. But I know there was a whole lot more to come.
M The beings will surely do their best through the rest of us. But she
has a capacity to plumb far greater depths with them than the rest of
us achieved, at any rate until now. I think we’d better go.
R Do you know the way? We can all pile into my car. Come on.
*****

Dialogue 2

F I’m so glad you’ve come. I seem to have been away for ages. Are
you all here?
M Yes, but the sister will only allow us in two at a time.
F Pity. It means I’ll have to repeat a lot of what I need to say, because
you all need to hear it. Lean closer. I can’t speak louder than this.
L Darling, how are you really? I’m so very sorry we all happened to be out
but Mel when you had the attack. We all feel we should have done more to
look after you. It was obvious Plymouth had tired you out.
F You aren’t to blame yourselves. It al had to happen the way it did.
Plymouth was very, very important, and I had to be there. There was
no other way.
L You were absolutely incredible. I mean, you have been wonderfully clear
all along, both on your own and with the beings. But this time you excelled
yourself.
F Have you been discussing what happened at all?
M We’ve hardly said a word about it since we came back, and we
were all pretty tired on the journey home. In a state of euphoria really.
F Well it was pretty wonderful, wasn’t it? Even dear Paul. The poor
boy was simply taken by storm.
L The actual content of what you and Meruel put over was so overwhelming
that nobody really had a chance to question the authenticity of the
communications. And as for Ophromine! (laughter)
M Well, of course, he was absolutely hilarious. The look on that
woman’s face when he told her through Joe that he’d been expecting
her at the meeting and had a message for her husband about his
drinking!
L She’d been looking for trouble all evening hadn’t she? I think she thought
she’d strayed into a spiritualist séance.
F She as good as told Joe he was a phoney medium.
L Poor Joe! I don’t think he’s got over it yet.
M I saw them in conversation after the meeting and I think they’d
sorted it out a bit by then.
F Well, it was all pretty amazing. But it isn’t at all what I need to talk
to you about. The trouble is I already feel pretty weak and tired after
just these few sentences. I think what I’m going to have to do is write a
lot of it down. Then you can read it to each other at home. Then when
you come to see me, as I hope you will, you can do most of the talking,
ask questions and make comments, and perhaps we can have a series
of sessions like that.
L I’ll tell you what, darling. We’ll ask sister if we can go off for half an hour
now. We’ll all go off and have a meal in Hereford, and then the boys can
come back and have a short session with you later. We’ll buy you a big pad
of paper and some ball points. You go and arrange that with sister, Mel, and
I’ll stay and make a list of things Fiona wants.
F I really don’t know how long I’ve been in here. What day is it?
L Friday.
F Good lord! I must have been in here three days. I thought it was
only Wednesday.
L You’ve had quite a bad do. But you’re pretty tough though aren’t you? I’m
sure you’ll be able to tell us all you need to.
M Bye for now, darling. See you very soon (kisses her)
*****
R Can we come in?
F Yes, do come in. I’ve been having a snooze. I was very pleased and
relieved to see the girls, but I feel very weak and I needed a lot more
sleep. Thanks so much for dropping in and the pad and pens. I’ve been
writing and writing ever since I woke.
J I managed to restrain myself completely when I got back. I felt it was really important
everybody should hear what you told me directly from you. It’s not only that it was so
incredible, but even more that we should otherwise all have had the feeling we might
have got some of it wrong.
F Now at least two of you will be here at a time, so one can confirm
or modify what the other thinks I said.
R Shouldn’t we be writing down what you say now, just in case you aren’t so well next
time someone visits?
F What you really mean is, suppose I pop off during the night before
you’ve heard it all, which I may well do. I find now I’ve got to this point
that I have a pretty good general idea what’s happening to me.
J What are you saying, sweetheart? Are you saying you think you’re not going to make
it this time?
F Joe, there isn’t such a thing as not making it when we are engaged
in the sort of thing we’ve been doing. The process is going at an
incredible rate for all seven of us. We have no idea at our stage
whether the particular communications we are responsible for are
better made from this side or from over, where Meruel and Ophromine
and countless billions of other beings are. Several times recently I’ve
begun to have a feeling of limitation, as if I was losing the capacity to
put things into words. I think it is probably true it’s time I "shuffled off
this mortal coil" as Shakespeare so graphically put it. I think it would
considerably enhance the process for the rest of you if I did. I could
make a much stronger bridge for you between the two conditions from
over there. Besides, I need to get to Michael and a whole lot of other
beings, on their own terms, as it were. Oh I know what you’re going to
say... you’ll miss having me about and all that. I love you too! But you
won’t have got rid of me, not by a long chalk. Having me interrupting
your conversations along with the others will enhance your confidence
no end. It’ll be very good for you.
R All the same, short of exhausting you more than necessary, I’d love it if you were
able to say some of the things you told Joe while you’re still on this side, as I’m sure you
will be for some time.
F The thing is I’m already a little bit over the threshold now. I’ve
begun to get a general idea of what is lining up for the group along
several fronts. For instance, if you decide you really want to meet Jesus
and some of the others from 2000 years ago you probably can. It’s a
question of whether it’s ‘on your path’, as they say, or on his for that
matter.
J He is about, then? I mean, is he in a physical body again, aware of who he is and all
that?
F Oh yes, indeed. I’ve become very much aware of that in the last
two or three days. I don’t seem to see that I shall be meeting him in a
physical sense though. That’s one of the reasons I have this idea that
I’ll be going over soon. But I’ve been having some quite distinct
pictures of what Jesus and his associatesthis time round are up to.
J That’s what I found so extraordinary and important in what you said yesterday.
F Well a great deal of that is what I’ve been writing down. I hope you
can start having sessions back at Garway and read some of it to each
other. I’ve been slipping over into a realm where he and I have been
having some long conversations with each other. Here comes Sister I
think to turn you out. I’ll give you this wodge of papers. See if you can
go through them tonight, and I’ll try and have a lot more for you if the
girls can come tomorrow. Have you let Andrew and Maggie know?
R Not yet. We’re ringing them tonight. They’ll be up again on Saturday in any case.
F Well off you go. I can hardly speak at the moment.
J You’re wonderful, and we all love you lots.
F See you! One way or the other!
*****

Dialogue 3

L How was she?

J Amazing! She talked at great length, but very slowly and quietly.
R We had to sit quite close to the bed and bend over to hear her.
J She handed us a bundle of papers as we left. She’s written screeds of stuff. She wants
us to have a session this evening and read some of it aloud.
M I want to hear it all.
R Oh my god! Look at this. She’s written her will. She’s quite sure she’s on her way
over, you know.
L Oh bless her, the darling.
R She’s made me her executor. Obviously this is one of the things she wants read out
this evening.
M Don’t let that overlap with the other stuff. Surely as executor
you’re not supposed to read it, or share it before she dies.
R No, that’s perfectly true. I wasn’t thinking straight.
L Let’s have supper, and then have a session about eight.
R It looks as if there’s enough here for several sessions.
M We could start as soon as we finish eating; leave the washing up
till the morning.
J M+ "Don’t forget Ophromine and me. We may well both have something to
contribute. We were in touch while she was writing. I don’t know if you realised it, but
she and I were the only ones in your group who could communicate non-verbally. The
rest of you are still dependant on actual conversation to know what we are
communicating".
L Can the rest of us reach that point as well?
J M+ "Well it’s not the sort of thing you can bring about directly by conscious effort. It
grows in its own time as a capacity resulting from the general growth of your insights,
and particularly from the heart connections you are making. What I can say is that you
are all on the way to it. I would have suggestions as to how you might strengthen your
direct control over the times when you are in touch with us. Some groups form which
start in quite a different way, by creating a set of circumstances in which they listen to
what they feel we want to say, and then write down what they think we are saying. This
works well when the initiators of the process are already strongly in touch with us on an
intuitive level. A great proportion of what they write down then really emanates from us.
But in most cases there is an element of contrivance about it, and it easily slips over into
partly mediumistic channelling. It can sometimes be quite difficult then for people to free
themselves from that, and reach genuine dialogue with us, in which the process of mutual
creation such as we are engaged in has a chance to grow."
L What are you suggesting we do, then?
J M+ "I have to make clear to start with that there is quite a number of groups now
working who are achieving something that has never before actually taken place in
human spiritual development. Moreover none of these groups is exactly like any of the
others. Each has to invent its own path as it goes along just as you have been doing. You
have not yet met any other grouping of this kind, so you have nothing to compare
yourselves with, no mirror as it were in which you are reflected. If you had you would be
able to get an inkling of a spiritual outsider’s view of what it is that is unique about your
group."
M I can see that it would be very difficult for you to substitute for that
possibility in our karma, because you are at least in part our invention,
just as we are yours.
J M+ "Yes. And that is where the matter would rest but for the fact that your
stimulation of my self-awareness has opened other paths for me in my natural archangelic
sphere which would otherwise remain closed. I have become aware in quite a new way of
what is going on among other archangels. I recognise when some of them are having
similar experiences to my own, and this enables me to sense something about the
particular way in which our group is unique."
M Can you describe that?
J I can try!
M+ "In trying to pick up the mood of what I take to be the effect of parallel groups on
what I will refer to as my colleagues….(you understand, don’t you, that I feel slightly
ridiculous talking like this, because I can’t really yet describe in your terms how we as
archangels relate to each other at this level)... . However, what I was about to say was that
I have not yet sensed that any other group has started with your quite unusual facility for
talking to each other straight out of our non-verbal level, and into your fully verbal one,
without any intermediate stage of struggle to express us. Of course I can only speak for
myself, for Ophromine to some extent, and to a much less extent for Michael, who is in
some ways as much of a mystery to me as he is to you".
R Why do you think this is, Meruel? I mean this particular facility of ours?
J M+ "Let me talk through you, Richard, for a bit. Joe’s getting tired again. You often
overdo it a bit, don’t you Joe?
R Are you all right, Joe?
J Yes, fine. Too much makes me feel a bit drunk.
R M+ "Well you get near to a sort of channelling if you stretch yourselves too far. We all
need to pay constant attention to this.
M Meruel, what do you think has given our group this special facility?
R M+ "I think we’ve already touched on this. It’s certainly a matter of something you’ve
done together in a past life or lives. I’ve already hinted that you were together at the time
of the consciousness-soul revolution. You took part at some level in the process which
resulted in the Shakespeare plays. As I see it, you developed something then which has
resulted in this extraordinary facility with words now. You all have it, whatever your
educational backgrounds have been this time. You call it the gift of the gab. It enables
you in the first place to communicate with each other with the absolute minimum of
misunderstanding. It’s extraordinary! I’ve said before that what you call ‘Shakespeare’
was in some sense a corporate effort. Something of that reappears now in your virtual
interchangeability when I or Ophromine convert our meaning into speech through you.
Other groups have much more difficulty in doing this, and one such group is the one
through which Jesus and his associates operate. The present day people who embody
that group from 2000 years ago are a far more diverse group of seven than yours. They
have a far wider scope of talents than yours. It is mainly the unique one-pointedness of
Jesus himself, his total devotion to Love, and his virtual continuity of consciousness
along the path of development in Love, which holds the group together. Each member of
the group is strongly identified with the personalities in which they related to each other,
both in Palestine, and also in Egypt and in Atlantis. This is irrespective of how much they
consciously remember of these lives. It is Love which holds the group together, rather
than the intelligent understanding in which you seven operate. This has meant that their
relationship to the divine beings who guide them is also more diverse than yours, and
more based in the heart."
L Are you picking all this up through a fellow archangel, then, Meruel?
R M+ "No. It’s not quite that simple. Their relationships in Palestine 2000 years ago
were linked by the Archangel Michael. At that time, five of them were in physical
embodiment and two were not. Those relationships I can perceive through Michael as he
was then. Now, however, Michael is at a higher level of embodiment than the
archangelic, as I told you. It is Michael’s deed in altering the nature of time that enables
me now to perceive that the Jesus group of souls is indeed physically embodied. It is
also through Michael that you have a link with them".
L Does it seem to you, then, that this link will bring us together with them
in this lifetime? Fiona said yesterday she thought it might well be possible for
us to meet them if it was on our path, and also on theirs.
R M+ "My feeling is that your link with them is operating on a rather different level from
that. If Fiona decides now to come over onto our side I think she will see that, and will
certainly wish to facilitate it. It is through Michael that your two groups and many others
are linked, and as you know he sees such groups as single points of awareness. You
already connect to the Jesus group on that level."
L All this is quite wonderful. Come on now, let’s eat as soon as possible. I
feel Meruel needed to say all that prepare us for what Fiona has been writing
for us. The potatoes were on ages ago, Mel, they’ll be charcoal by now.
M No, I’ve just looked, they’re about ready. Come on, you two. Dinner
up.
******

Dialogue 4

M Who’ll read?
R It should be Joe I think. He reads very clearly, and it was he who heard the first draft,
as it were, of what she had to say.
M O.K. Joe?
J Yes, all right. She’s dated it Friday. She was already quite able to sit up a bit and write
within forty-eight hours. Shall I start to read?
"In hospital. Friday 19th. For Richard, Joe, Melanie, and Lucia, and for Andrew and
Maggie when they come.
I’ve been a long way away. Yet I feel I haven’t left the Earth. It’s simply that the inner
space of the Earth is enormously greater that we think. I feel I’ve become a denizen of the
true Earth for the first time. I still don’t know whether I’ve finished yet with this physical
body. I think I have, but at the same time I don’t think it will let me go until I’ve shared
something more with you all. The most important thing, the only thing really, is that I’ve
met the CHRIST. Even that doesn’t really express it, because in one sense I’ve actually
become the CHRIST. I’ve begun to know from the inside what the CHRIST really is.
That’s how I know that I’ve not left the Earth, and shant leave it, because the CHRIST
has actually become the Earth, and this makes it possible for us to become the CHRIST
and remain in the Earth with the CHRIST and as the CHRIST. For the first time also I’ve
experienced from inside what an Intraterrestrial being really is, and what a wonderful
piece of insight we were given when this word appeared in our midst.
Because , you see, it is we humans who are the most characteristic Intaterrestrials. It is
we who carry the principal responsibility for the evolution of the planet into its full
consciousness. And that full consciousness is the CHRIST’s self-awareness, of which we
humans and no other beings are the active instruments. The CHRIST can only become
fully self-aware in us. As we awaken so the CRHIST awakens in us.
What about Meruel and Ophromine then, and all the others? What about Michael? Aren’t
they also intraterrestrial beings? They certainly are so, in the fullest sense. Meruel and
Ophromine, as representatives of their two hierarchies of being, born here out of totally
Earthly activities of consciousness, in common with more and more of their two kinds,
are pioneers of a process by which human beings are becoming Earth citizens in a sense
that never happened in the human history before. Until now humankind has never
experienced Earth as other than the temporary place of sojourn for itself while inhabiting
a physical body. Indeed in recent centuries people have regarded themselves as simply
passing from non-existence before birth to non-existence after death. In earlier centuries,
when forms of clairvoyance were widespread, and hierarchical and elemental beings were
apparent in the environment, they were still often seen as alien, satanic even, or in any
case more or less inaccessible. Humankind experienced itself as belonging to the
heavens, the transcendent, unembodied world, making a brief incursion into Earth almost
as a punishment, or at the least as a hard, necessary, and often unwelcome lesson. Earth
was seen as a vale of tears, and the joy of heaven as something only attainable by leaving
Earth, ascending from it into a transcendent sphere of being. Many Christians and other
religionists still see it like this, which is why the notion of reincarnation is often so
repugnant to them.
What then has changed, and in so fundamental a way? What has this change to do with
the growth of communication between people and other Earthly inhabitants, and the new
experience of a common destiny with them which our intraterrestrial movement has
begun to open up, (I am sure as only one thread, one instance, of a widespread awakening
to new realities)?
In simple language what has changed is the second coming of the CHRIST, as it has been
called for the greater part of the last 2000 years. The whole evolution of humankind on
the planet has been nothing but a preparation for the awakening of the planet itself as a
unified conscious entity. In cosmic terms this is no less than saying that this planet Earth
is on its way to becoming a Star. In this light the statement that when we die we don’t ‘go
to heaven’, we go to Earth sounds a little different! It is an Earth with a cosmic destiny.
Going to Earth is not a descent into a lower region. It is an ascent into a New World. This
New World is itself the CHRIST, as we are. In an analogous way to that in which the vast
expanded awareness of each reincarnating human being disappears at each new
embodiment into a fertilised ovum, sacrificing its consciousness totally to the complex
processes of embodiment and growth, so does the CHRIST. As the ultimate role-model
of the human condition the CHRIST plunged 2000 years ago, through the agency of Jesus
at the crucifixion, into the planetary ovum, and there lost the consciousness of the whole
of unified humanity in utter commitment to planetary embodiment and growth. Now,
2000 years later this planetary incarnating entity wakes to its first stage of conscious life,
just as a foetus-baby-toddler wakes at its change of teeth to the awareness of a little six-
year old child. We can put it like this. The CHRIST as a planetary infant has just reached
its change of teeth!
How does Steiner’s ‘anthroposophy’ describe this event when it takes place in an
ordinary human infant? It refers to the fact that the life form surrounds the adult human
being as a kind of sheath, whose first layer, as it were, is called the ether-body. Some
clairvoyants see it as a cloud-like nimbus round the physical form, extending beyond it
for a variable distance, from a few inches to several feet, depending on the energy level
obtaining at the time. Some clairvoyants describe this as a misty colourless cloud, hardly
to be distinguished from a physical, perhaps electro-magnetic, energy field,
corresponding perhaps to what Rupert Sheldrake calls a morphogenetic field. This is
clearly not what Rudolf Steiner referred to in his anthroposophical descriptions, which
was something not to be described in three-dimensional terms at all.
It has more of a two-dimensional character, and was to be perceived as a moving area of
vivid colours which varied according to the life-processes, nutritive, eliminatory, tropic
or whatever and to changes in the other bodily systems, taking place in the organism. The
ether body occurs in its simplest form in connection with living plants, both as they
develop and as they die away. This true etheric ‘body’ blends in its finest essence with
further so-called sheaths beyond it with which it resonates. The next level is known as the
astral which connects with the animal level of activity. This is even less spatial, one-
dimensional, perceived more in terms of sound than of vision. And there are still more
refined structures beyond that again.
When anthroposophy describes the incarnation of a human infant, it sees the mother
when she becomes pregnant as becoming much more active in all these auric levels, from
the simple morphogenetic energy field through to the astral and beyond. Separation and
individualisation of the child’s auric fields is not completed until the change of teeth in
the sixth or seventh year. In recent times this natural succession has been ever more
distorted by the wresting of human life out of its natural relationships in every sphere of
life. More and more children are forced too early out of their etheric and astral nurturing
within the mother’s field of auric protection.
For the CHRIST in its process of becoming a planetary self it is the Earth itself which is
the Mother. The CHRIST has been developing over the last 2000 years as the evolving
foetal offspring in the womb of the planet, reaching its birth at the time of the
consciousness soul with the European renaissance, and now during the early part of this
20th century emerging into independent etheric identity. We can perceive the CHRIST as
an actual budding of the Earth’s own etheric aura into an independent offshoot in the
atmosphere of the Earth. It is precisely this which was expressed at the time of the so-
called ascension of the CHRIST when he prophesied:- "I will come again in the clouds".
This is like a second birth of the CHRIST in the Earth, but this time on the etheric level.
The small human being goes through the same rebirth at the time of the change of teeth
when it acquires a measure of separate etheric identity from its earthly mother.
What we are describing here is an actual self-discovery of the CHRIST at the level of a
small planetary child. This has made possible for us human-beings a quality of self-
discovery never before possible for us in our lives on Earth. This child-like self-discovery
of the CHRIST in the ‘encircling round’ of the Earth awakens in us at the same time.
More and more human beings are making this discovery at this time. We are realising
that this is our only true identity as human beings. We can call it a higher self if we like,
but this is still rather a separative term, carrying the old notion of ascending out of the
Earth into a separate heaven. It is better to feel it as our real self, in contrast to the dying
husk of personality which is still tied to the processes of death and reincarnation.
The discovery I have been making is simply this. The Earth is where the action is. Here
and now is where the deed of CHRIST is going on. And this scenario is largely
independent of whether we are in a physical body or not. This is not to say that being in a
physical body is losing its importance. But the nature of the physical body is changing as
the CHRIST emerges day by day further into self-realisation in us. So death is changing
too. We will move towards a time when the discarding of certain elements of our
embodiment will change its nature. I am beginning to experience a foretaste of this time.
There is a very strange way of expressing this which will sound to people very eccentric
even slightly mad. Of course, Christians have always spoken of eternal life, of
overcoming death and so on. But this has been a very one-sided doctrinal matter. The
assumption has been that Christians will die as usual, but that after death they will ‘go to
heaven’, however they have understood this. What I am beginning to experience is
altogether different in tone from this. I begin to feel that the re-appearance of the
CHRIST in the life-energies of the Earth is effecting changes in how I undergo my own
feeling of being alive. Not only that, I feel what I can only call a kind of selectivity in the
way in which my tired old physical frame moves towards "death".
How this will appear to you as further changes happen in me, I don’t know. A number of
times in my life I have been with people who have died, and though I have been aware of
some of them to some extent after death, this has not lasted very long. I have not had the
feeling that their death was very different than it would have been had I not been aware
of them afterwards. Maybe my own so-called death will not be all that different. Yet
somehow I feel it will. I feel I will, so to speak, ‘die’. At the same time I think it will be a
very partial death. This is what I mean by eccentric or a little mad. Put it this way. I am
quite sure you will be aware of a lot more embodied existence left behind of me, as it
were. Perhaps it will be in a few days’ time, certainly not very far in the future. The way
in which we experience each other will be different, but I think a lot less different than
we would have expected. I think to some extent I shall ‘die’. But only to some extent. We
shall see. I can already see a lot about the Earth changes that are already starting to
happen and will happen a lot more".
L Joe, will you stop a minute?
J What’s the matter, love?
L This is all having a very powerful effect on me. I don’t know quite what’s
going on. It makes me feel I want to die too. At the same time it’s making
me realise that actually none of us needs to die. You know how quite often I
used to… what I called going out of my body?
J You don’t do that any more, do you?
L No, the communications have made all that more stable. But I think I’m
beginning to understand why I used to do that. In my case it had something
to do with the drugs I used to take. Instead of being able to rise to a higher
level of perception from time to time, using finer aspects of my body to
accompany the shifting aura, and to record what was happening... instead of
doing that I used to shoot out, and then when I got back, not really know
what I had experienced.
M What effect did the drugs have then?
L I think they had the effect of condensing the sheaths into a sort of hard
lump, where I experienced intensely vivid extensions of physical perception.
This meant loosening the attachment of the higher and lower levels to each
other.
M What I think Fiona is saying is that the so-called ‘new death’
process enables the auric sheaths to appropriate rather more of the
finer bodily elements to themselves at the time of release of the
heavier exhausted parts of the body.
R Yes, and this is due to the alteration of the auric nature of the Earth itself since the
CRHIST woke up in it.
M Not only the aura of the Earth. Don’t you remember them saying
that the CHRIST was now entering the Heart of the material world?
L No wonder she feels so odd about the prospect of dying. If we hadn’t had
all these experiences in the last months, I think we really would think she
was going a bit crazy. It made me feel, as I said, that I wanted to die myself.
But what I really meant was, I wanted to get rid of all the heavy worn out
parts of my body and take the light-filled living parts with me.
M I think we all need to go on the path towards the CHRIST that Fiona
went along before we are really ready to do that. It would be like going
into quite a New World.
L I think we shall all do that. Can you go on reading Joe? Is there a lot
more?
J Pages and pages. I’ve been glancing at it. It seems to go into something quite different
about how it will be after the Earth changes.
L Perhaps we should leave that till another session. Let’s ring up and see
how she is.
(Melanie goes off and phones)
*****
M The sister says she’s asleep. She’s done a lot more writing. Sister
will phone if there’s any change.
R Whatever happens I think the work is going to be very different.
L This writing of hers is changing it already.
J While you were talking, Lu, a very curious thought struck me. You may think it as
mad as Fiona thought she was being. It was when Melanie said that about the separating
self drawing more of the lighter elements of the body and sheaths into itself at the time of
separation than happens with the kind of death we are used to. I wonder if that will
happen more and more as the CHRIST takes an ever deeper hold on the matter of the
Earth. Perhaps it will reach a point of balance when very little residue from the ageing
process needs to separate.
M So death then becomes more like a critical elimination process of
worn out elements of the physical body.
R Plus purged aspects of the sheaths, negative feelings, toxicity of all sorts at an astral
level.
L Leaving behind a sort of purified physical-etheric-astral self which is more
or less immortal, a sort of resurrection body, increasingly immortal as time
goes on, if that doesn’t sound too Irish. I had a feeling of this when I said I
wanted to die, but really didn’t see why we ultimately needed to.
J Jesus said "I am the way". I wonder if these pictures are some sort of clue to what
really went on after the crucifixion. Did Joseph of Arimathea and Magdalene manage,
with enormous difficulty, to rescue an element in Jesus which survived death altogether?
Jesus may really have been the forerunner of something we can all attain to now that the
CHRIST has come again in the clouds. He said that would be so, didn’t he?
M Christianity has always been confused about the resurrection and
the ascension. The resurrection of Jesus and the ascension of CHRIST
to the right hand of God are two quite different things. But one couldn’t
have happened without the other.
L What does the right hand of God mean, then?
R Clearly it means the Earth. This is where it’s all happening.
*****

Dialogue 5

L Let’s go on reading. Do you want to go on, Joe?

J Who else wants to? I’d like to listen a bit.
M I’ll have a go.
R ¤ "I want to listen in, and perhaps chip in a bit too. I was with her when she was
writing this bit. It’s all about how to transform the most materialistic bits of the Earth into
something the CHRIST can live with. I know all this from both sides on, as it were."
M Oh, It’s Ophromine.
R ¤ "Of course it’s me. Who did you think it was? Who else would be interested when
Fiona began to look at Earth details from half way across the bridge? I’m involved, both
when people rape and exploit the Earth and subjugate everything with money, and also
when they start redeeming, alchemising and transforming it with Love through the
CHRIST. I know it all from both sides, so of course it’s me! I wish you didn’t find Meruel
so much easier to recognise."
M Do you know why that is, Ophromine? There, I didn’t ask you what
you think this time.
R ¤ "You’re learning! Yes I do know why it is. So do you. You’re on the way to the
CHRIST. This fact about you is crucial to me as well as to you. I’m extremely intelligent,
but it is not a thinking intelligence like yours, it’s built into the actual created substance of
the Earth. Earth is in thrall to Ahriman, unless you reach the CHRIST, and allow the
CHRIST to wake, which means waking in you. Unless this happens, I too am in thrall to
Ahriman. It’s up to you whether I remain an Ahrimanic spirit or not. I’ve told you before, I
and my fellows have waited thousands of years millions of years, for this. Of course,
there are no years in this sense, but you know what I mean. We have been desperate
for what seems like eternity. What makes you ignore me in a way you don’t ignore
Meruel is that you are scared of me. This will go on until you commit yourselves to the
CHRIST, then everything you fear in me you would love to the same degree. Love and
fear are the same."
J Why have you suddenly become so interested now Fiona is at her crisis point?
R ¤ "You’ll find that out if you take in properly what she’s written next".
L Go on, Mel. We really need to hear this now. Ophromine, thank you. We
treat you abominably.
R ¤ "You can’t help it. I hope it will change."
M Here goes then. Where did you get to, Joe?
J Let’s look. Here it is. She was saying Earth changes would happen a lot more.
M I’ll go on from there. She goes on:-
"In one way we can say quite blatantly that the Earth is rapidly
becoming uninhabitable. But this is only one half of the picture. The
other is that humankind is changing equally rapidly in, as it were, the
opposite direction. By this I mean that the Earth is only becoming
uninhabitable to that element in humanity which it needs to discard in
parallel to what the Earth is discarding. Humanity needs to discard
everything which will weigh down intolerably that in it which is
becoming CHRIST-compatible. Exactly, in fact, as the Earth is doing.
From the point of view of a pure destruction scenario both humanity
and the Earth are dying, just as I am. You already know how I am
experiencing this in myself. This enables me to see that I am one of
those who are becoming conscious in myself of what is happening to
the whole of humanity and the planet. In other words, the Earth is
becoming uninhabitable, and so are our human bodies, to that which is
not becoming the CHRIST, and only to that.
Am I making a general statement here about the whole of humanity? Is
literally everybody, whether consciously or not, on the way to the
CHRIST? Is Hitler on the way to the CHRIST? One thing is certain, that
nobody, nobody at all, lies outside the definition of a human being as
understood and created by the CHRIST. No human being exists in
substantial form apart from substance as it itself is. And substance is
Love. There is no other. All that is possible is God. Any human being
who is on the way to anywhere is on the way to the CHRIST, even if it
appears to be going in the opposite direction, because there is only
one way, which is the Way, the Tao. It is possible even probable, that
there are human beings whose substantial existence is diminishing.
But so long as any substantial reality exists in them, that substance is
Love, and to this they have access, if only by the bare fact of their
existence. No other being has the right, or indeed the ability, to judge
the extent of any other human being’s substantial existence. No doubt
the parable of the prodigal son indicates that the journey to the
CHRIST may for some people be indefinitely long. But no other human
being has the right, or the ability, to deny or abort the journey of
another.
Having said this, it also has to be said that there are particular
projects. The path of humanity is one of Becoming, and the CHRIST is
our name for that which humanity is becoming. But this vast drama of
becoming is not by that token a seamless whole. This is both free and
inevitable, because the mysterious fabric of humanity is woven both of
inevitability and of freedom. The human path is seeded along the way
with free choices, and these choices are influenced by what each
individual becomes aware of. People who become aware of the
awakening CHRIST will probably make different choices from those
who stay asleep. The most fundamental rift in the seamless garment of
humanity is that of consciousness. There are multiple streams of
awareness of all complexions and qualities. These choices and
alternatives, as Ophromine points out, vitally affect other spiritual
beings which have an interest in the evolution of the planet. Some
plans and scenarios for the development of the planet are made
impossible by the limits imposed on them by the fact that much of
humanity has not woken to the waking planetary entity itself. Other
miraculous and unforeseen plants become possible because some of
humanity has woken, woken at a rate and to a degree that the gods
did not foresee, perhaps could not have foreseen.
Once people start waking to the new presence of the CHRIST, and
more and more such people are waking, the majority then become
‘Earth Choosers’! They become aware that the CHRIST energies are
awake here, and they ‘want in’. Their choice to be involved plays an
increasing part in heightening Earth energies. The process of
discarding unwanted elements of the burnt out Earth and their own
burnt out bodies accelerates. But what is releasing and heightening for
them appears in a very different light to those who have made
different choices or no choice at all. We start to enter a period of what
appear as disasters for those who have acquired no wish for things to
change. What has been called "The Year of the Storm" approaches.
What has been held together in the Earth under increasing tension
through the pressure of one-sided, unawakened human aims reaches
critical instability. For increasing numbers of people who have, to
different degrees, passed successive thresholds of transformation, and
who are now partly released from the pressure of their own dying
organisms, these changes in the Earth are experienced as confirming
and supporting the changes going on in themselves. But for the rest,
The Year of the Storm is an experience of holocaust and apocalypse.
Millions will die. When they come to seek reincarnation, they will find
an Earth transformed beyond the stage where it can fulfil their further
needs.
But they are still human. Love is still the substance of their Being, and
Love is infinitely creative. Their own need will itself bring into existence
the venues they need for further evolution. "In my Fathers house are
many mansions" was how Jesus put it."
L What does she really mean there, do you think? That people who can’t
cope with Earth changes...
M ...Not only Earth changes; can’t cope with changes in themselves.
L ...Yes of course. Those are part of changes in the Earth, aren’t they? Does
she simply mean they’ll go off to other planets, or somewhere where
conditions are more familiar and less demanding?
M Or do you think they’ll continue to work things out on the Earth,
but at a diminished level of consciousness?
J Surely that’s what’s happening now. That’s why we have the feeling that scientific
materialism, though enormously intelligent, actually operates in people at a lower level of
consciousness than even fairly unintelligent spirituality.
M Spirituality doesn’t have to be unintelligent.
J No. That’s what Steiner’s ‘heart thinking’ is in aid of. Thinking, but not the
constipated entropic thinking of the brain.
L I feel she really does mean that huge numbers of people who are not able
to rise to these levels, and who have threatened the Earth’s and their own
survival on that account, will necessarily be hived off elsewhere. By their own
choice also, of course, when they perceive things after death.
R I’m sure she must be working up to something. It’s not like Fiona to go on with
generalities for page after page unless she had some sort of bombshell up her sleeve.
M Oh Richard, for God’s sake! What a metaphor. You’re as bad as Joe
and Lucia with their fairy-cake carousels.
L Worse! At least ours are picturesque.
R Well, a bombshell anyway. Will under our feet do?
L That’s better.
J She has.
L Has what?
J Got a bombshell up her jumper.
L Don’t you start, Joe.
J The thing she asked me to keep quiet about hasn’t even appeared in what she’s written
so far. She’s simply laying the groundwork for it. Reading ahead while you’ve been
nattering I think she’s coming to it now.
M Richard, you read for a bit.
R If you say so. Where are we? Oh yes. ‘Many mansions’, said Jesus. She goes on:-
"All this is by way of preparing you to take a further step in your own self-realisation as a
group. You have to start to accept that the work we have done together has brought us
to the point where we are capable of certain responsibilities we would never have
dreamed of before we started on this I.T. work. We have put ourselves in such a position
that we need to make a conscious choice whether to stay with the Earth in the Sense I
have been describing. What I am seeing is that we are actually being given that choice.
We have been chosen to take such a responsibility. But of course we are still free
beings. We are perfectly free to say no, and just go off with millions of others through the
holocaust, detach ourselves from the destiny of CHRIST and of the Earth, and continue
as karmic pedestrians elsewhere, in much the same way as we have for several
millennia already.
It may look an obvious, even an easy choice to make. Apart from false humility, who in
their senses would turn down such an offer? But of course it’s not quite that easy. That
degree of waking is like emerging from an anaesthetic… Wonderful to be awake and
alive, but there will be no more suppression of pain. We will be waking into freedom, and
you know what the price of that is. Yes, eternal vigilance! Not necessarily a very
comfortable option. Meruel steps in here.
M M+ "That’s why I’ve been giving you hints that you will not be
entering such a New World naked, in a state of amnesia, not having
the faintest idea why you were chosen, as chosen you were. You have
to come to terms with memory, and memory starts with
understanding. It’s much better to come to an understanding of who
you have been in past existences than to have some of these past-life
regressions, where somebody unfolds the tally of your past lives like a
story that happened to someone else. That may even start by blocking
your memories through shock. I’ve given you an indication already that
you were involved at the time of Shakespeare. The whole awakening at
that time was linked with what we call the Rosicrucian impulse. The
Renaissance was to a large extent under the supervision of a being
called Christian Rosenkreutz. What started to emerge was a series of
soul archetypes.
New kinds of human beings started to emerge, which set the
parameters within which arose the new soul level called consciousness
soul, of which Rudolf Steiner elaborated the most vivid descriptions.
One set of such archetypes, clearly, are the leading characters in
Shakespeare’s plays. But these are only the best known of them.
The human types which emerged in you through Joe’s imagination
came straight out of that same treasure chest. They constitute, if you
like, the best evidence that the I.T. impulse has that same impeccable
ancestry. You are a like a suit of seven cards, each one superbly and
artistically fashioned for the playing of a particular game. They can be
relied upon to hold each its identifiable and dependable character in all
manner of combinations and situations. This is what is so unique and
wonderful too about Shakespeare’s principal characters. Each one is an
artistic whole. You can’t analyse them into psychological types, and
classify them, and compare them by some common yardstick. Each is
whole, unique, and unrepeatable.
But there is a big difference. The birth of the consciousness soul was
four hundred years ago. The multitudinous archetypes which humanity
gave birth to then have multiplied, and diversified, and formed
themselves into the whole western culture as we know it. Humanity is
ripe for a new development as fundamental as that of the Renaissance.
As we have seen, this maturity of soul potential is inseparable from the
rebirth of CHRIST in the etheric sphere. The two events could not have
happened except in context with each other. Only opened souls could
have faced the challenge of CHRIST’s reappearance. Only ripened
souls could have found their way into each other’s lives and formed
groups which could be recognised by Michael as having a common
identity and consciousness.
You have experienced the awakening of that identity in your own
group. I have every reason to believe that it will happen to many other
groups".
This intervention by Meruel, and all these other thoughts and new
awakenings have come to me since my attack. But I have only been
able to glimpse them from half way across the bridge, as it were. The
conviction is growing in me that I am being offered a new role, or
perhaps a further stage of my present role with you. I think I need to
join Meruel and Ophromine on a non-physical plane. Neither of them
have a direct experience of what humanity is now going through. Both
have shared their own experiences with us. But I feel one of us now
needs to enter their perspectives as one who has immediate
experience of the human condition. I believe we can continue our
communications largely as before, but with the possibility of
tremendous new horizons, the best of both worlds, you might say.
I am going to bring this to a close now. I have rather exhausted my
physical powers in writing so long. If possible I will write more later.
Meanwhile, my dears, keep in touch, one way or another! That seems
to be becoming my new catch-phrase! I love you all very much.
FIONA.
*****
L There’s something I absolutely have to ask about all this. I should think
we are all bursting with it.
J Go on.
L Well, obviously, why on earth us? Why on earth us? What on Earth makes
us so special? I should have thought we were a pretty average bunch of
mortals. How on earth do spiritual beings with their immense perspectives
come to light on a particular combination of human beings and put a crucial
responsibility like this on their shoulders? Meruel, come on! What are you
seeing in all this?
M M+ "It’s a question of what yardstick you judge yourselves by. The
first thing I would say is you aren’t being judged by any sort of
comparative standard. People fit spiritual roles by absolute qualities,
not relative ones. It’s virtually impossible for a unique human being to
see him or herself straight if this is being done by trying to compare
with others. Suppose someone is painting a picture, a great genius,
Raphael, say. Could you say, could anyone say, that a blue garment
would be more artistic than a green one? What makes his Madonna a
work of genius is precisely that it can’t be compared with anything. It
achieves an absolute, not a standard. All I can say about you seven is
that you fit the particular case the gods had in mind. I could of course
say things about particular qualities you display. You are perceptive,
you are loving, you jump into situations rather than act cautious, you
share common intuitions and so on. So do lots of other people. None of
these qualities is unique, though the particular combination of them
you embody may be. But it is certainly not a matter of having these or
other qualities in conspicuous excess, is it? Maybe you also needed to
be sufficiently ordinary, or you would alienate people. My dear idiots,
you fitted the bill. We all noticed it."
L My god!
M M+ "I couldn’t have put it better!"
J F+ "Nor could I".
M Who’s that?
J It seems to be Fiona.
F+ "Yes it is me. I agree entirely with what Meruel says. From over here the group
glows like a kind of gentle beacon, a pulsing glow, rather like a heart beating."
L Darling, are you all right? You haven’t gone over have you?
J F+ "I don’t know. I think I may have. Why don’t you ring the hospital and find
out?"
M I’ll ring.
J F+ "You must really try and help me. It doesn’t help at all if you’re tense and nervous.
I know it’s a unique situation. Quite extraordinary really. It’s all very well talking about
Earth changes, about the human condition fundamentally changing and so on. It’s
somewhat different when it comes down to Earth in your own life".
R And in your own death.
J F+ "And in your own death, especially in going through death together, straddling the
abyss together. I’m going through the most wonderful experiences. I can’t really describe
them. All I can say is that everything is turning into Light. It isn’t like ordinary daylight,
it’s in constant movement, and it’s alive. The Light itself is alive. It responds to one’s
attention in the most extraordinary way with Love. Because of the work we’ve done
together I’m going to be able to share all this with you. I’m able to open window after
window on it for you. And not just for you, for everyone who has the insight to approach
you, to approach the I.T. school and ask the real questions. This is what we’ve been
chosen to do. To open endless windows upon love."
R Here comes Melanie.
M Sister says she’s in coma, and not expected to come out of it.
J F+ "I thought there’d been a change. You can be of tremendous help to me now. We
must help each other to keep an even keel, to maintain our complete presence of mind."
L Someone’s coming up the drive. Oh it’s Andrew and Maggie. I’d almost
forgotten they were coming. I’ll let them in.
R Presence of mind. We’ll need it all the time.
MG Are we in time? How is she?
M She’s fine, Maggie. But if you mean is she getting better in the
ordinary sense, no she isn’t She’s pretty well over the threshold now.
MG Yes I knew that. I’ve been seeing it. All I meant was, were we in time
to help her over?
J F+ "Yes, you’re certainly in time for that, bless you. And I do need help. It’s not easy
to keep one’s presence of mind in two worlds, difficult enough in one. Also this is to a
great extent a first time for humanity as well as for us as individuals. You know what
would help a great deal. Settle into the aunts’ room round Joe’s menhir and light the
seven candles".
R ¤ "I was waiting for someone to suggest that. I hope I don’t have to remind you again
I’m here".
L No, Ophromine, you don’t. We need the balance, and we need you. Fiona
has to find her new relationship to the elementary world. It may be the first
time any human being has consciously died into the new BLUE reality and
kept in mental contact with her group all the way through. This is the
beginning of the role you’ve been waiting for all along.
R ¤ "If you can keep yourselves wide awake I shall be able to make it possible for you
to see Fiona as well as hear her. And then maybe you will see me, just as Maggie does."
MG We can work together on that, Ophromine.
A How on earth am I going to be able to explain all this back in Plymouth?
J F+ "Don’t forget I made a lot of friends in Plymouth myself. We shall have plenty of
support. It was a very good thing I managed to get down there and back before this
happened. Don’t cry, Maggie darling, it upsets the vibes. Everything is going to be
wonderful."
M I’ve lit the candles and the room’s nice and warm. We need that,
even if you don’t, Fiona.
R F+ "Of course I need it, silly. Warmth’s indivisible, like Light."
 *****

Dialogue 6
L The CHRIST lives in the Light. CHRIST has entered the Heart of the
material world, and everything there begins to glow inwardly with BLUE,
Fiona stands by the pillar, and her eyes are closed. Between the flickering
gold of the candles and the BLUE radiance of the pillar, her form comes and
goes as she strives to accustom herself to her new situation. The BLUE and
gold interweave like the fingers of a sculptor, and the moving modeller is
Ophromine. Fiona submits herself to his skill and gradually she begins to
shine. She opens her eyes, and beckons to Richard to let her speak.
R F+ "Dears, I can hardly speak for joy. I had no idea. I had no idea what it would be
like. I know now what Jesus meant by the kingdom. The whole situation is indescribably
beautiful. The wonderful thing is that you are all in it too, and I don’t know whether to
laugh or cry that you can’t see it too. But you will. I can really see the changes now. Of
course, I knew about them before, but that is a very different matter from seeing them.
Now I can actually see the substantial changes of Earth approaching. I can see how fast
they are coming, and I can see how near you all are to being overtaken by them.
Let me tell you a bit about it. It is as if you are all standing out on a sort of promontory or
headland which protrudes into the New World and is already illuminated by it. There are
other headlands and other groupings further off, some even nearer than you to the Light,
others further back. But all the groups are bathed by the Light, and there is a kind of half
waking expectancy behind their closed eyes. You have it too, very strongly.
I can also see shadows and pain. Many of the groups, close as they are to the New
World, are still powerfully addicted to the old situation which they have striven so hard to
transcend and leave behind. I can see elements of it in you too, and in myself, and I am
overwhelmed with gratitude that we have been privileged to stay together as a group so
that I can guide and console you when the painful aspects of separation from the old
increasingly overtake us.
I can see Meruel here too. I can see how much of Meruel’s form and style has been
brought into existence by us, by our creativity and imagination. And I can see balancing
this how it is Meruel, out of his Archangelic power and nature, who has brought into
existence the reality and working of our group, its quality of communication, its flavour
and its style.
But what is most wonderful of all, my dearest family, is that I can see something of the
nature and direction of our path as a group. And towering above that path I can sense an
enormous presence. I cannot see it for it extends into a region more rarefied than I can
yet penetrate, but I am aware that it is Michael, and I can feel an overwhelming thrust of
direction in his presence. I am aware for the first time what they must mean by the
expression ‘the Sword of Michael’, and it is quite overwhelming. It is the most powerful
indication of direction and purpose I have ever experienced. I hope I shall be able to
communicate more and more to you as time goes on what a reality it is that we are part
of the School of Michael. It is Michael who leads and guides the paths of all who have
recognised and committed themselves to the destiny of the planet Earth on its journey
toward the Stars. It is Michael who responds first to the awakening of Earth to its own
true conscious being, the CHRIST."
*****
L Richard, does it feel the same to you when Fiona is talking as when it is
Meruel or Ophromine?
R If you mean, can I tell who it is, I can certainly tell, can’t you?
L Yes, indeed I can, but I sensed there was an added difference.
R I know what you mean. When you described what was happening, could you actually
see her?
L I could see her very distinctly when my eyes were closed. When I opened
them I tried to focus and I lost her.
MG Try and keep your eyes unfocussed. It makes it easier to bring the two
levels together. I simply do what I’m used to doing, turn my attention
towards her. When I do that I feel I come nearer to hearing what shy says. I
once or twice anticipated what Richard was going to say.
L I’m sure with practice there will be a lot of further growth now. It’s almost
like learning a new language.
M I have a feeling we shall also need to be more aware of discipline. I
don’t mean anything rigid. But we need to be aware when she is near
and when her attention is on other new experiences.
J She needs to be equally aware of how she is affecting our lives. I feel that a kind of
rhythm will develop. Perhaps we should ask her if she would like to be with us at certain
times of day.
M It’s my ‘style’ thing again, which has everything to do with rhythm.
It will grow naturally, but it does need form.
J I think the form will grow from within, out of what actually takes place. We know
each other pretty well. That won’t alter.
M It’ll make us much more aware of what actually does rule our lives.
It was don Juan, wasn’t it, who teased Castaneda about how dependant
people are on meal-times, rhythms dependant on bodily habits.
R F+ "I have to get used to having no body, or at least a much less rigid body than I
had before."
M We shall learn a tremendous lot from you all the time. Sharing in
your crossing will enable all of us to take part in CHRIST’s overcoming
of death in quite a new way. Darling Fiona, we’re still together!
*****
L Was that a car turning in?
 END OF BOOK SIX

Epilogue
The light was fading at about six on an autumn afternoon
when a young man in his late twenties was making his way
down the hill from the direction of Garway Church. He had
a leaflet in his hand which he had picked up in the village
hall.
He had actually come to Garway to visit the Templar
church, as part of a tour round Templar sites all over
England. He was quite a shy and rather lonely young man.
He was not really at all sure that it was the Templar
movement that held the meanings he was looking for. But
he had once had a dream in which knights with red crosses
on their breastplates were escaping from horrific
persecutions and burnings, and this dream had become
the yardstick for the kind of researches he had been
making for several years now into the secret sources of
spiritual meaning. Much of his sadness and loneliness
sprang from the fact that the actual goal of the search
seemed continually to recede before him, ending in the
cold emptiness of old churches and tombs, stone circles
and empty hill tops. Like the rest, Garway Church had
seemed empty and dead. The gaunt tower had smelt
musty, and the prayer books and hassocks in the church
smelt as stale as those anywhere else.
He was about to get into his car and drive back to Hereford
when a leaflet fluttering from the notice-board outside the
village hall caught his eye, and he walked across to look. A
chilly wind had sprung up, and a flurry of rain blew in his
face and blurred his vision. So he saw the colours and the
pillar and the line of upturned faces through a mist.
Something struck him which linked directly with the dream-
life which alone these days motivated his increasingly arid
quest. He pushed open the door of the hall and peered in.
There was a women’s meeting of some sort going on. He
apologised and was about to withdraw, but a woman called
out:- "Can I help you?"
"Oh I was wondering about the leaflet on the notice-board.
Have you any more of them?"
"On the table".
He stared stupidly round. The woman crossed the room
and thrust something into his hand. He muttered his
thanks and went out. He was clutching several notices.
Fortunately one of them was the right one, and once more
he found himself in a half dreamy state as he looked into
the misty background of the picture. He began to read;
something about a school. As he read he felt as if voices
were calling him from some place half way between
sleeping and waking. There was an invitation to visit a
house in the village which sounded very welcoming. For
some reason he felt tears behind his eyes and the sense of
a journey coming to an end. There was a little map; you
went back down past the church. He turned the car round,
switched the lights on and went slowly down the hill.
Middle Town. There it was on the left. He turned into the
drive and parked. It was quite a long way up the drive. He
decided to walk.
As he approached the house he could see into the hallway
through a side window. An inner door opened, and he saw
a group of people moving out. There were flickering candle
flames in the inner room. He raised his hand to the
knocker.
Footsteps came rapidly across the hall, and the door
opened. A strikingly pretty woman stood in front of him,
and a number of other faces turned to look at him.
"Excuse me. Is this the I.T. School?"
Conversation suddenly stopped. Then somebody laughed
happily, and suddenly everybody was talking at once.
Several hands clutched him, and he was drawn into the
kitchen and sat down at a table.
A cup of tea and some cake was pushed in front of him,
and everybody was asking questions at once.
The pretty woman said:- "I’m Lucia. What’s your name?"
It suddenly all became too much, and great tears spilled
from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
"I’m sorry. I don’t know. I forget. I seem to have found my
way home".
"There you are", said someone, "It’s started. I had an idea
it would. We’re through the gap into a New World. They’ll
start to come in droves now. Welcome, my dear friend.
Never mind about your name. We’ll give you a new one.
Melanie, give this nice young man a name."
A dark woman came across and sat by him. Everybody
suddenly seemed to him taller and straighter, and very
attentive. The woman looked into his eyes. "May we call
you Michael?" she said.
"I remember now", said the young man, "That is my
name". He laughed. "My name is Michael".
Fiona rose mightily out of the house and above the roof,
and into the darkening sky above Garway. As she turned
upwards the last thing she heard was the sound of
laughter.
END