albionspeak 2: the gates of dis (14.6)
SESSION 77: 3RD NIGHT, 11/3/02
Much of the day’s energy went into the afternoon & evening’s gathering: My parents and [friends C-- & M--] came over for dinner & a “slide show” of our summer trip to Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. [C-- & M--] showed photos of their own bike trip through southwest France as well. [My wife] brought her light table from [her classroom], and I set up the T.V. in the living room, which was well-suited to such an event. Our new Turkish kilim seemed somehow to anchor both the setting and the very idea of connection among us. (I regard this kilim as a gift from Vilansit, and the connectedness of the evening confirmed everything.)
Our invocation: “Glyphic” from Chromatic Madrigals by [Scribe].
Don & Anand
1. Q: [Guide], are you there?
A: [YES] I AM ABOARD OUR BOAT
2. Q: Tell us our exercise, please.
A: ANO[THE]R ASYMMETRY ANAND & DON
SENSE [THE]M BEHIND YOU
U E
[YES]
◊
[CUP]
3. Q: Is anyone facing anyone?
A: [YES] BUT WE WILL CONVERSE ABOUT IT LATER
Although facing becomes one of this year’s dominant themes, we never returned to this particular facing; that is, we never did “converse about it later.”
4. Q: Further instructions?
A: IMAGINE A SILENT CONVERSATION GOING ON IN OUR BOAT AS WE GLIDE ALONG
[THE]N WORDS WILL ARISE
Facing Memory
5. Q: We begin now.
A: § DON
AM I IN EVERNESS?
Don reminds us of his poem which we used as an invocation two nights earlier. “Everness” incidentally is the title, in English, of his original Spanish version.
6. Q: In two senses: you are in the poem “Everness,” and you are addressing us from the everness outside of time.
A: ALAS [THE]RE IS NO OBLIVION
“One thing alone does not exist -- oblivion.” The poem’s first line.
7. Q: But there is (in time anyway) absence.
A: [YES] & YET ABSENCE IS A FORM OF MEMORY
IT IS SO TO SPEAK A LOOKING…
8. FORWARD TO MEMORY
We note an earlier response: “Caring is the future of memory.”
9. Q: [Absence is] Different from facing memory.
A: [YES] AS WE FACE MEMORY ABSENCE ENDS
10. Q: Is what is behind us absent from our point of view?
A: [NO] BECAUSE IT IS HELD IN AWARENESS
[NO]T FACED BUT SENSED
IT THROWS A SHADOW AHEAD OF ITSELF A SHADOW YOU FEEL ON YOUR SHOULDERS
Three connections here, two of which were voiced but played no further role: Plato’s Cave, where reality is played out behind the prisoners who see only shadows; also, for [Scribe], how the giant Albion, sometimes as a green sail, appears behind him on the eve of significant collaborations; finally, how Anand generally positions himself with respect to us.
11. Q: Anand is generally behind us, as one who poles near the stern. He gives us strength in the back. That is not absence.
A: I AM CONVERSING WITH YOU IN SILENCE
I AM FACING YOU
§ ANAND
Conversing in Silence
12. Q: Does conversing in silence with us mean speaking directly to our serpent?
A: [YES] AND YET SERPENTS DO NOT HEAR
RATHER [THE]Y SENSE & [THE]N ACT
Recall, the serpent is our deepest self, while, in contrast, the cricket represents our noisome discursive self. Flyers have direct access to their serpents, while non-flyers dwell more in the domain of the cricket and are often plagued by an internal monologue of doubt and distraction. Even when we are not consciously aware of it, our serpents can grow and connect with others, primarily, we assume, members of the Jewel outside of time. (They can also fail to make such connections and fail to progress.)
13. Q: Such a conversation (almost) bypasses words.
A: IT IS A WAY OF AWAKING [THE] DEEP EAR WITHOUT AROUSING [THE] CRICKET
14. Q: If you are always speaking to the deep ear anyway, why do we need this teaching in words?
A: BECAUSE YOUR DEEP ATTENTION IS INTERMITTENT
WE NEED TO PROD YOU A LITTLE
The Serpent’s Twin Tongues
15. Q: The serpent unites two capacities:
a) intent: facing ahead
b) sensing: what is behind
A: [YES] WE CALL THESE [THE] TWIN TONGUES OF [THE] SERPENT
[THE]Y ARE ANTENNAE OF A KIND
16. Q: We recall that emotions were given no separate beast in our lore. (They are lights & shadows playing over the scene.)
A: [YES] IMAGINE [THE] SERPENT RECEIVING THEM AS SCENTS OR TASTES AS HEAT OR COOLNESS AS IT GLIDES
17. Q: Perhaps irrelevantly, you used “glide” of our serpent, [Guide] of our boat, [Scribe] of our planchette’s motion tonight. Comment?
[Note: I forget who voiced this question aloud; but if it was I, I would not have phrased it in this manner. [Scribe]’s locution here is beyond my construction.]
A: [YES] THESE MOTIONS ARE AKIN ALIGNED WITH INTENT BUT APPARENTLY WITHOUT EFFORT
[Scribe] & I have long known that while flight requires considerable energy, it -- counter-intuitively, even paradoxically perhaps -- appears effortless. Effort, in fact, is indicative of a failure to fly. I reminded [Scribe] of a line of his read that day, “With no wingbeat, you will seem to walk on air.”
18. Q: It is wrong to fetishize effort as such.
A: EFFORT ALONE NEVER REACHES ANYTHING
CRICKET IS ALL EFFORT
SERPENT ALL ATTENTION & ACT
19. Q: You’ve mentioned the twin tongues of facing & sensing. Could these verbs be applied to our OUIEA band?
A: [YES] § DON
E FACING A
O IS BEHIND U
WE COULD PLAY A GAME
20. Q: Would it be a YES-&-NO game?
A: [YES] IS TOMORROW NIGHT CONVENIENT?
Credit [Scribe] with this important insight. Of course we only learned about E, A, O, and U (and I) at last year’s YES-&-NO game. Just to review, [Scribe] and I are represented by the letters E and U respectively. Between us lies our fallen member I, an Albion and contemporary of Blake. O and U were identified as members, but we knew nothing more. Clearly, however, given their prominent board positions -- more central than Jane’s V, for instance -- they had to be important to us.
Saving this discussion for the next night, we turned to an unresolved issue. That is, facing and sensing are important modes of reception in “feeling the aliah of others;” and yet we had been explicitly forbidden to see the aliah of persons (trees were encouraged). And we knew, of course, that the distinction here could not be strictly visual, since seeing could just as well mean an acoustic or tactile arousal and did not necessitate a visual experience at all. So if seeing aliah was forbidden to us, why were we now being schooled in facing and sensing?
An Old Proscription Revisited
21. Q: Why not? Meanwhile, here’s something that’s been puzzling us. You agree that sensing the aliah of others is a vital function of the antennae?
A: [YES] ALIAH ARRIVES THROUGH THIS…
22. MODE OR MEANS OF RECEPTION
23. Q: Yet it is an old proscription that we must not try to see the aliah of others. Why not?
A: OUR BELIEF IS THAT FACING OTHERS’ ALIAH IN THAT MODE IS AN INTRUSION
24. Q: An intrusion on what exactly?
A: [THE] UNIQUE SIGNATURE OF ANOTHER
THEY MUST CHOOSE FREELY TO SHOW YOU
25. Q: If we sense others’ aliah, aren’t they showing it to us in a way?
A: ONLY A LAYER
WHEREAS SEEING GOES T…
26. THROUGH [THE] LAYERS & LAYS [THE] OTHER BARE
THIS IS POSSIBLE BUT WE FEEL NOT PERMISSIBLE TO OUR K
Recall, “k” = karass.
27. Q: We guess that from such seeing it might be a short step to manipulating the energy filaments of another.
A: RECALL [THE] STONE WORLD OF [THE] SORCERERS?
THEY ENGAGED IN COMBAT BASED ON SUCH MANIPULATION
Don reminds us of the indelible image he provided years ago: ruined temples, gray rubble ad infinitum, utter global desolation; the aftermath of a war where weapons of spiritual destruction were employed.
Evil. I then felt strongly that the step between seeing another’s aliah and evil itself might not even initially be a moral one: Following the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, where one cannot truly observe matter without affecting it, I felt that to see (into) another’s aliah was in some way already to interact with it, thereby altering it.
28. Q: We hypothesize: seeing in itself affects the other’s signature?
A: [YES] GOOD GUESS NOW TELL ME -
IF YOU SHOW ALIAH FREELY TO ANOTHER - THEN?
29. Q: You are allowing yourself to be changed -- perhaps profoundly -- by that other person. (Ovid might say that you are allowing him to take on the function of a god.)
A: [YES] NOT TO BE OFFERED LIGHTLY
& NEVER TO BE TAKEN AS A PEROGATIVE
30. Q: Don & Anand, we’re grateful for your teaching, but [Scribe] is weary. [Duncan too.] We must go on our way ready to sense and knowing we must not use our power to see.
A: [YES] AND YET THIS IS POWER ITSELF IN [THE] VERY BEST SENSE
GOOD NIGHT
1:05 AM