The Knights of the Sacred Trousers.....

Secret meeting place of the Order of the Knights of the sacred trousers' worldwide headquarters.

Enter a topless man with a plastic bag over his head shuffling into the room with his trousers around his ankles. 


Warden: Has this man been properly dazed and confused senior officer?

Senior officer: Aye, he has been duly twirled around.

Warden: Has he been tripped over and shoved three times senior officer?

Senior officer: Aye, he has been tripped thricefold and thereupon he was rolled around the ground.

Warden: Has his shirt been properly stolen and the buttons from his trousers duly removed?

Senior warden: Aye It has all taken place as so ordained.

Senior officer: And the shirt has been duly sacrificed?

Warden: It has.

Senior Officer: And the buttons thus scattered to the four corners of the globe?

Warden: (throws the buttons which he was holding behind his back into a corner of the room) Yes.

Senior Officer: It is well done. (addressing the man with the plastic bag on his head) You are here of your own free will are you not?

Man with the bag on his head (muffled): Yes. 

Senior Officer: And it is your fervent desire to join the trouser knights?

Man with the bag on his head: Yes.

Senior Officer: Do you swear to uphold the majesty of the order of the trousers in all you say and do and to always be willing to give up your trousers if a brother knight is found in greater need of trousers than yourself?

Man with the bag on his head: I am.

Senior officer: What has happened to your own trousers? Why are you wearing them at half mast?

Warden whispers the words to the Man with the bag on his head who then repeats them: In mourning for the death of the master-tailor.

Senior officer: Why was the master tailor killed?

Man with the bag on his head: For keeping the secret of the sacred stitches.

Senior officer: And how will you recognise a true brother knight?

Man with the bag on his head: By examining his trousers.

Senior officer: And you will be on your guard in the company of the profane, namely: men who wear shorts, gentlemen of a female persuasion and the Scottish. You must never reveal the secrets of our order. The penalty for doing so will be to have your bobbins removed, your piping unstitched, your gusset hewn out and your cloth and trimmings burnt as off-cuts unworthy of the Master draper. Do you thus swear to protect the secrets of the order and accept the just penalties?

Man with the bag on his head: I do.

Senior officer (to assistant tailor): You may remove the bag of ignorance.

The bag is removed from the man’s head, as the bag is removed he is presented with a new pair of trousers.

Senior officer: These are the trousers of a true knight of our order. You will be known to your brothers in them and likewise your brothers will be known to you. Put them on and join us as a fully initiated Knight of the trouser!

The men line up to form a human tunnel. Cheers and clapping as The Man wriggles free of his old trousers smiling and puts on the new trousers.

Senior officer: Now you are ready to be tested as a knight of our order. All Knights undergo hardships and trials in their pursuit of the true knowledge of the Great Tailor in the sky. Your first trail as an apprentice tailor will be the pressings!

The man is led through the human tunnel and his face changes to uncertainty and then terror as he is beaten roughly on the bottom as he goes through the human tunnel.

Senior officer: Now we shall begin the business of the lodge as we welcome our newest Tailor to take his place in your ranks. The man takes a seat which is shows to him while nursing his bottom.

The Grand-Master stands up. 

Grand-Master: Gentlemen, we are faced with a deadly danger to our noble profession.

Murmurs There are people out there members of the poorly tailored profane rabble, who would come between us and our ultimate work: The tailoring of mankind. I say this to all the gentlemen here and I say this also to all the invisible amorphous ageless beings who have watched and helped us with our great work for the past 5 thousand years, I say this, we have never been closer to achieving our goal than as we are right now! Never before have so many people been so easily reachable by our instruments and never before have these people been under the illusion that it is their free-will which directs them to do as we bid them. 

Never before has there been so little resistance to us and never before has there been so much dependence on us. The time of ripeness is at hand, and we shall soon harvest the fruit of this Earth for our masters of a bounty and richness never before known. Our Great-Dressmaker in the sky will measure us all out our due rewards if we succeed. But should we fail. I need not tell you of the instruments which our even handed and fair minded master has at his disposal. The needle, the seam-ripper and the pinking shears await each and every one of us in the great haberdashery in the sky when we will be called to account for measuring up short. 

Imagine a pin-cushion, each pin a prick of the conscience for everything we could have done better for his and our plan to succeed. So think of the pin-cushion gentlemen. This will be your fate should you in any way fall short in your zeal to conclude our business on Earth for our Master. The eternal stabbing on and on, relentless thrusting into your very soul. 

But enough, let us not clog our spirits with fear of the consequences of our failure when we are so close to success, and that is a testimony to your ceaseless efforts in your diverse fields of endeavour. The Grand Master gestures to a particular group of people in the chamber. 

You scientists for instance. Your work has been seamless, on the one hand you have managed to control even reality itself for these untailored people. What they think they know about this world, WE have told them. Yet what we have not told them and what they may suspect may exist of the spirit world, we have told them squarely DOES NOT EXIST. This includes the very existence of our Master and his amorphous ageless eternal servants themselves, so they are assailed at all sides by us. By the spiritual warriors of our Master who daily plague them with a thousand suspicions, terrors and uncertainties by their subtle arts of temporary possession, and by our scientists who tell them there is nothing to be afraid of in the dark, when indeed THERE IS. 

And for that matter, also tells them that there is no one who can save them in the light, when indeed, again THERE IS. We have totally disarmed the population of the one weapon we cannot fight against, and in fact, we have mostly turned them against their very benefactor. 

Turning to another group in the room. And you, representing the forces of the media have been our very voice. Whispering calamity, incessantly, constantly. Befuddling and vexing the profane masses until they are nothing but reflex machines which can be controlled and studied at will with a perfect degree of accurate prediction. You indulge them in unattainable dreams and fantasies on one hand, then bring them their penance with daily murder and violence. You have taught the world to dream the nightmares we bring them. You drug them into a stupor of despair by six o’clock, and then you enroll them in our vision of the world. The brutality, the death, theft avarice. THE DRAMA! What a word! How hungrily the sheep chomp down the poisoned herbage with relish. We give them drama, turmoil, confusion, and ultimately, pain. You have brought their minds low with pain and misery which they internalise as their own and they are ready for us now to take to the final stage.

Man at the back: Whispering to another man What’s all this got to do with tailoring? I only joined because I thought this was some kind of dress-making hobby clubs. I wanted to learn to make clothes.

Other man at the back: It’s only a metaphor! 

Man at the back: If I’d known it was only a metaphor I would have stayed at home the evenings instead of getting involved in all this world domination stuff.

Other man at the back: Well it’s a bit late for that now isn’t it? Didn’t you cotton on that that’s what this was all really about?

Man at the back: Well, I just kind of tuned it out and hoped one week we’d all start learning to make clothes. Besides, the dinners are nice.

Other man at the back: Well you’re in now to the bitter end.

Man at the back: Oh come on, it’s not that serious.

Other man at the back: It IS, it’s deadly serious. Did you not remember the penalties you agreed to if you neglected your fellow tailors?

Man at the back: That was the only bit I really enjoyed, all the talk of stitches and gussets, I thought we were getting somewhere at last.

Other man at the back: Shh, he’s looking this way, better keep it to yourself.

Man at the back: No why should I? I have a right to express myself, I don’t care if he calls himself Master Whatsit, I’ve never feared no man.

Master Tailor: Gesturing to the men at the back You men at the back! No doubt planning fresh intrigues to help us on our way. I do not recall your professions at present, tell the assembly what activity you have recently been doing that we may share and compare. 

Other man at the back whispering: Now you’ve done it!

Man at the back: I’m not scared standing up Er, well, I was just discussing with my friend here how I’d wish we learned more about clothes making than all this other stuff we always talk about every week.

Other man at the back quickly standing up: No, that’s not true your Master, it was him who was discussing it and I was telling him to shut up. It’s nothing to do with me sir, it’s all his idea.

Man at the back: Yeah, that’s right. I only joined because I like clothes and thought that you’d teach me how to make them. And dinners too of course. I like the dinners. Nervous Laughter

Master tailor: Ahh, you like clothes and dinners indeed. Well, what is your name?

Man at the back: Trevor.

Master tailor: And what is your trade? 

Trevor: I am a taxi driver.

Master tailor: Well Trevor, so I expect you’d like me to personally teach you how to make clothes is that it? (laughter)

Trevor: If it isn’t too much trouble your Master. 

Master tailor suppressing a grin: Well MasterTrevor, I think we may have a little job for you to do, after which I will personally teach you all there is to know about making clothes. Does this appeal to you?

Trevor: Yeah!

Master Tailor slyly: Goooood!

Appreciation of truth through meditation.

I include this chapter to provide details of a hitherto neglected technique to instantly improve your quality of life. in these fraught and stressful times it is essential that we regain full control of our own minds because without control over our emotions, moods, and thoughts, we are at the mercy of those who know how to push our buttons, whether they be the government trying to tax us within an inch of our lives, or the banks fiddling the interest rates leading us to worry about whether we can still afford to make the payments on our family home, or the local malcontent trying to infect us with their own misery. We need to defend ourselves and truly the most effective way of doing this is to not let things ‘get to us’. We all know this. But we also know this is easier said than done.

We need to learn to put some distance between our true selves and the outside world of uncertainty, pain, worry and stress. It is not the events of life which dictate whether we are happy or not but how we deal with those events. Some people can have all the money and luxury in the world but be deeply unhappy and depressed, they take things for granted, while others may have only enough money to live on a day by day basis but can may be delighted with their lives.

From visiting third world countries like Egypt I have learned that it isn’t what objects and wealth you possess in the outside world that dictates your level of happiness, but what you have on the inside. What I’m talking about is inner peace. Many people in third world countries can scarcely afford to feed themselves but they have inner peace in abundance. This is largely due to the fact that many of the third world countries have not become wholly materialistic because there are not the markets and capital or need for these products, so people retain their native spirituality. It seems to me that the more one focuses on what they can own and buy in the outside world the more they neglect their inner wealth.

 The more you own the less you are. You define yourself by the things you own but they start to own you. You think fondly of your new digital high definition 3D TV, your new car. Your thoughts and your consciousness gets  projected onto machines and gadgets which inevitably soon lose their lustre, become common place and are soon superseded by new models. They are not permanent. No doubt it is enjoyable to think about some new gadget you’ve bought but sooner or later you get used to it and it no longer evokes the same feeling of excitement so soon you are not as happy as you once were. This is the same psychology involved in becoming a so called ‘shopaholic’, the initial thrill of buying new clothes for example disappears within a couple of days of their purchase as the clothes have been worn for a few days and no longer feel new, particularly with their first wash the sheen of newness disappears, and the genuine shopping addict will need to buy something else to regain the transitory feeling of happiness. Of course, it goes without saying that this is a pretty fruitless way to attain happiness but for some people it really is all they have, precisely because they have forgotten to ‘be’ happy themselves. They cannot achieve happiness from within so they constantly need something to make them happy.

Many people replace the quest for ‘something’ with the quest for ‘someone’. This is a perfectly normal and natural human impulse, to have a partner, to feel love for someone and to know they are loved in turn and perhaps start a family. But due to the pressures and temptations of modern life, often the strains and pressures of life get between the loving couple and the relationship cannot weather the storm or the world, or indeed, some people have a materialistic attitude to loving relationships and find, just like the shopaholics, that after a few months or years, the sheen of newness and excitement of the relationship, seems to fade, and so they dash off in search of someone new who will allow them to feel the fleeting thrill of the new again.

So many marriages these days end in divorce because people are so desperate to find their happiness in other people, when really they need to find it in yourself first. You cannot find love in others, you must have the love in yourself first and share the love. If you depend on another person for your emotional wellbeing, then whenever you perceive that they are not giving you what you need or feel entitled to, you will need to move on to the next partner in order to get your supply. Again, this is another form of addiction. All of these people running around looking for some feeling that they have been told they can either buy or obtain from other people, but they are not told that the surest supply of this wonder product comes from within: happiness.

All we have to do in order to be completely and perfectly happy is to obtain genuine inner peace. To be at peace is to be happy. When we are deeply in love with someone and we wrap our arms around them in a cuddle we feel at peace. Time seems to fade into irrelevance and no pressure or worries plague us. This is the feeling of love and it is the same as true peace. We feel comforted by our partner and their presence gives us confidence and a feeling of total security,  but we are perfectly able to obtain this feeling ourselves without the necessity of either obtaining it from the presence of another person or the presence of material goods.

I suspect also that our habit to rely less on our own inner resources and more on other people, leads people to rush headlong into relationships which perhaps on an a deeper level, people know are not ideal, or not really what they want, yet they feel the alternative of being alone and hence a lack of security and confidence, to be something they cannot contemplate, and so enter into an ill advised relationship with someone who won’t be able to supply them with all their needs and fill their sense of inner emptiness. And so we have divorces, broken homes, confused and unloved children, and a perfect recipe for the breakdown of society.

It could not have been planned any better.  It begs the question: Is our world ruled by fools or by cunning and malicious psychopaths? Our society is falling apart, love is fading from homes and relationships at the same rate with which the lusts of materialism are pumped into our homes by the plasma flat-screen high definition 3D TV set. We see beautiful men and women on our TV, immaculately made up and styled,  and this only serves to make us more aware of the imperfections of our own partners. We see the homes and lifestyles of the rich and famous and our own lives and homes seem drab in comparison, our lives seem less real and less valuable than those of the stars we see. We have seen how the introduction of television leads to the phenomenon of crime, as in the example of Bhutan. Not just because people want the things they see on the screen but because the things they see on the screen actually make them unhappy, unhappy with themselves. Happy people do not commit crime.

We can produce all the happiness we need in our lives: we can have instant peace and a sense of security on tap, without spending a penny or without asking anyone to give it to us. As the title of this chapter suggests the answer lies in Zen meditation. There are many forms of meditation and all sorts of things which people are asked to visualise, but by far the simplest and most effective is Zen meditation. However the one thing that Zen meditation is not is an instant-fix.  However you will see results almost straight away. The other thing that it isn’t is easy. It requires you to do something that they don’t want us to do and something many of us simply find ourselves unable to do effectively or for prolonged periods of time. That is: concentrate.

When you start Zen meditation and if you commit to it and do it say three times a week for at least half an hour each time then within 3 months you will be smarter, happier, more serene, less irritable, less stressed. You will sleep better, be able to think better and you will also notice dozens of other new mental skills that you will amaze you. The potential for development is limitless because no one really knows what the limits of the human mind are, but for the first time since your early childhood, you will truly be using your full mental faculties to their full potential.

As we have seen before, our consciousness is NOT our thoughts. Very young children do not ‘think’ because they do not have the words to construct thoughts. Similarly animals do not think for the same reason. However both are certainly perfectly conscious. Instead of thoughts children have completely untroubled and pure minds. They may cry because they are hungry or tired or because they are affected by negative stimuli around them, but a baby or a small child has no concept or worry or concern about the future. They just exist in a perpetual present. They do not project themselves into the future and worry about it the way we do. They do not project themselves into some other reality because they are dissatisfied with their own reality. Mostly babies, small children and animals exist in the easy untroubled happiness of the Zen state.

We can return to this state if we want to. All we have to do is start to separate our awareness of who we are from the thoughts constantly going through our minds and ultimately learn to stop the thoughts at will. With Zen meditation the angry, sad, jealous or painful thoughts will be stopped because we will be aware that they are not good for our happiness, we will be able to control our mind fully and not be at the mercy of the constant chatter of worry, anxiety, uncertainty or concern.

The constant chatter of thoughts in our mind is only a habit we have acquired because of the stressful nature of life, whether at school and the various rivalries and power struggles there, or the demand to quickly answer the questions demanded by the teacher or to think of an excuse for not being able to answer it. Or if someone seems upset with us for some reason we search our thoughts to find a reason to explain their attitude. And so we all acquire a certain level of constant mental activity in order to solve the various puzzles of social living and human relationships. In extreme cases, where stress is elevated to an extreme level then the trammel of thoughts becomes uncontrollable and sometime several trains of thought take place at once. This is a sure sign that if this level of stress continues then serious mental illness can follow when the brain becomes overloaded with ideas and associations. Physical illness often develops as a result of high emotional stress. 

Schizophrenics often claim to hear voices telling them to commit various terrible crimes and the surprise is that one would do so merely at the behest of a voice in your head, but this is how powerful our inner world is. You may yourself have noticed that if there is someone you particularly dislike, and you allow yourself to think negative thoughts about this person, then inevitably your thoughts will externalise into speech and either you will express your dislike of the person to someone else, or indeed you will find yourself directly expressing your feelings to the person themselves, leading no doubt to conflict of one kind or another.

This is as Jesus said when addressing the ancient equivalent of the freemasons, the Pharisees, he said: ‘You brood of vipers. How can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart!’ Matthew 12:34. And in Matthew 15:18: “Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart; and they defile the man.’

 
Although it is difficult to control your feelings about someone, it is possible to control your thoughts  about them. With practice, the next time you see that person in your mind’s eye and start to think  negatively you will be able to stop yourself and say to yourself: ‘why am I thinking like his?’ ‘what purpose does this negativity serve?’. Indeed it serves none at all. Negativity only makes you yourself feel bad, angry or aggressive, and increases the likelihood that you will project these emotions on the people around you who have done nothing to offend you in the first place, damaging other relationships in turn.  In an emergency conflict situation remember the following words:

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” Thomas Jefferson.
 

The practice of Zen meditation is very simple and involves simply trying to stifle your thoughts completely until you reach the Zen state of mindlessness of Nirvana. With continued practice you could attain ‘real’ Nirvana in less than 6 months. It is the best feeling in the world, better than any drug intoxication you can imagine.

Find yourself somewhere very very quiet to carry out your meditation. There must be no audible activity around you at all because this will certainly break your concentration. Sit cross-legged on the floor and close your eyes. The purpose of this meditation is to reach a point where you no longer have a constant dialogue going on in your head. Initially it will be very difficult to do this, in fact the task will seem impossible and it will be mentally exhausting, but the plus side is you’ll feel very relaxed afterwards. You could also try this if you have trouble sleeping, it certainly help sufficiently tire the mind so that it seeks rest and is ready to relax.

Just try initially to sustain inner silence in your mind for a few seconds, it will be tiring, but persevere and over the next few days and weeks the periods of sustained silence and total inner peace will become longer and longer. If any thought comes into your head RESIST the temptation to explore it or become involved in it. Actively attempt to block it out. Some meditation techniques advise you to observe the thoughts and watch them come and go but this doesn’t achieve a great deal  in my experience, you need to learn to master your own mind and no longer be at the mercy of the many negative thoughts and feelings of anxiety and worry about the things society is forever trying to make us worry about. The news and certain TV shows work very hard to create a fevered pitch of worry, anxiety and high drama because if we are infected by these thoughts then we are in their playground and we can be controlled. For example the government will be able to introduce more CCTV camera and more stringent infringements on our liberty because we will have been infected by the same degree of panic as they have, as schizophrenic robber barons who are unfolding their new-world order control agenda and are hoping that the public as a whole won’t decide to do something about it.

So they need us scared of terrorists, that way they can have their naked body scanners at airports and random police identity checks so we start learning to become scared of them too. Then they will have their power over us and essentially this is all they need. They already have all the money in the world but they don’t have total carte blanche to do what they want and in order to get this they need us to learn to do as we’re told. It seems many of us are learning to do just as we’re told at an alarming rate of knots.

When I learned that naked body scanners had been introduced at not just London Heathrow and Manchester airports, but also at many other regional airports too, I asked myself why no one protests these terribly invasive things. I needn’t have bothered myself because I later found out that that 90% of people asked supported naked body scanners in airports. It is clear that the endless threats and fears pumped out by the media have terrorised the British people to a level where they are willing to acquiesce to anything if they are told it will make them safe. What a sad bunch we have become. Did we defeat Nazi Germany and totalitarianism only to have it follow us home and move in with is?

Those to blame are the media for scaring us with  hundred ways to die very week. If it isn’t the meteor from space it’s swine flu, or bird flu, or SARS, or mad-cow disease, or a pole shift, or melting glaciers flooding the planet, or a plague of zombie, or anthrax in the mail, or anyone of a thousand promoted terrors designed to weaken our minds and make us stand in line and do as we’re told. Line up and take your shoes off, line up and take this vaccine full of mercury, line up and get a dose of dangerous  x ray radiation as we ogle your naked body.

It will get much much worse if we let it. And the way things look right now with the whole population stuck to their TV sets drinking up the fear, it’s going that way. There was a time when to be fingerprinted meant you’d been arrested by the police for breaking the law and they had the right to add your fingerprints to their lists of other felons. Now if you happen to be a child of three or above at a certain school who wants to borrow a library book you will be fingerprinted.

The next logical step in this chain is for schools to collect children’s DNA. Then what? Perhaps with developments in technology they will be able to read our whole lives just from our DNA sample. When we die, how much we weigh, the colour of our eyes. What our favourite movies are, whether we are likely to be a good citizen or whether we will insist on trying to maintain our privacy.  

Yet the things we ought genuinely to be worried about such as a new world war are the very things our rulers seem to want after calling for tough new sanctions for Iran and claiming that they already have a nuclear weapon, the next step in the rhetorical rise to Armageddon is to join US hawks like Hilary ‘I’m not a witch! I’m not a witch!’ Clinton.

In 2007 Hilary voted on the Kyle-Lieberman amendment supporting military action against Iran. In 2008 she threatened to ‘obliterate’ Iran if they invaded Israel. A bit like going up to a blind man and saying ‘I will smash your teeth in if you look at my girlfriend’. Clearly psychotically aggressive, clearly inappropriate. And now Obama, the black messiah himself is in a bullying mood because of the goading of his Wall-street pals who know the only future for the United States Of America is the spoils of foreign conquest. We need to remove ourselves from this toxic and hypocritical system and that means disengaging your mind and attention from the million and one harmful illusions, lies and new horrors they fire at us.

 
The search for beauty is the preoccupation of  every human and living creature in this material world. We search for beauty outside of ourselves for what is within we fail to appreciate and generally take for granted. It seems for most of us, that we must seek personal happiness and validation outside of ourselves. And so we venture further into materialism and further from the source of personal wisdom. We can never ‘know’ another person as we know ourselves. We can never achieve wisdom from another person because knowledge and awareness lies within our own consciousness. Some of us corrupt what is within, due to a lack of insight or personal damage of some kind, and what is within themselves appears rank and poisoned and the inner beauty is lost.

So we project our love and desire outside of ourselves, like plants reaching their leaves to the sun, we hope to find sustenance and a purpose for living in someone else. This makes no sense spiritually because the person in whom you are trying to find this beauty is also looking for the same thing in you, yet the fact that both of you are looking for something which you lack, in someone else, means neither of you possess what you are searching for, because if you did you wouldn’t have to look for it in others.

 
Superficially, women are attractive and men are handsome, yet this only appears to be the beauty they are searching for, but it is only a configuration of physicality, it is more materialism. It has no deeper meaning and is only a cipher for beauty but not the real thing. The attractiveness and charm which some see in others is often enough to make them love them, but rarely is it enough to make the person possessing these qualities love themselves to the point of self completion.

The person having the qualities of attractiveness or charm knows that these things are not the real person they are, yet they seem sufficient to make the other person love them. These things are merely tools to enable the person to obtain emotional, sensual, material or financial security. But love is the dream, but it comes from within the self. Why is another person needed to produce a feeling which originate within the self. What is love? Love is a form of attention. Love takes the attention from ones own personal inner problems and gives one something to focus on outside of the self.  But what happens when attention goes outward? The material world expands and grows as the all knowing inner being reaches out into the void.

 
The reality is short lived because true love requires timeless understanding and a still mind. Within a human relationship these things are unobtainable in this world which by definition is constantly in flux and full of a thousand distractions. There are financial pressures, communication failures, misunderstandings. It is easier to find love in yourself and keep it there than it is to search for it in someone by reaching across the void to another consciousness. Why reach across the void at all?

So we all reach out of ourselves because we feel dissatisfied with our own inner beings, and we seek to expand our inner light into the darkened void. The consequence of this is human reproduction, which is actually a form of entropy, or widening chaos. Materially, having children is natural, from a spiritual perspective however it is not. 

 
Reproduction is the consequence of our failure to find God, it is a consequence of a spiritual hunger for completeness which we think the material world can solve for us. But it cannot, it can only offer the temporary excitement of desire followed by a slow loss of the self at the expense of assuming a role as head of a family.

We fracture and divide ourselves. And so from the original harmony we have ‘difference’, we have tribalism, peoples, nations, conflicts, wars which are inevitable when different universes occupy the same world. Reproduction is shattering the hologram into a thousand more holograms.
 

Marriages are not easy and often fail because eventually we realise that we can never really find love outside of ourselves, except as a kind of dozing domesticity, but if we really look into ourselves we will realise that what we were looking for was inside us all along. 

 

Consciousness is a field. As individuals most of our experience of consciousness is very limited and narrow  field. Our friends, our job and hobbies, our desires and our anxieties, all enter our consciousness and preoccupy us. Essentially in this way we have limited our consciousness, the way a magnifying glass examines a very small part of a plant such as a cell, but is incapable of simultaneously being aware of seeing the whole plant itself. This is why we are mostly unable to understand the universe and what consciousness and life itself represents.  We cannot see the wood for the trees is an expression which represents the inability to perceive the totality of a concept or situation due to excessive regard for the finer details and minutia.

Some species exist within a larger field of consciousness than we do at most times. Bees, ants and birds usually, despite their apparent smaller size than us, actually have a larger field of consciousness. The complex tasks which ants and bees undertake such as the discovery of food, cleaning their nests and the feeding of their young, are all carried out by a field of consciousness which uses the individual ants as relay stations, or circuits. Birds tend to have a more defined individual identity when both parents for instance are feeding their young. At such times their field of consciousness is limited to the maximum radius from the nest at which both parents find it necessary to discover food. At other times however, during mass migrations, the field of consciousness of the extends throughout the whole flock which has taken to the air and creates a stronger  egregore like entity than each individual bird. For humans too the field of consciousness modifies and also gives strength to the individual. Being in love for instance is the merging of two consciousness fields, being next to the partner with whom you are in love is when this ‘togetherness’ can be felt as more than a physical sensation but that somehow there is something within you which is complete or feels more expansive.

Sports fans, particularly in the UK, football fans, feel this most when their team has just scored a goal, also when the fans are singing in unison. One feels part of the crowd, the individual is still aware of him or herself but also feels joy at being part of something bigger. Indeed in these moments I would say that they feel love also.
I believe that the feeling of love is actually the experience of enlarging our field of consciousness. For instance there was a time when young people in the UK would use a drug called Ecstasy for the feeling of euphoria and being ‘loved up’ that it provided. The funny thing was there was no particular romantic feeling associated with this feeling of euphoric joy, it was more a love of everything and everyone.


This same effect is possible through meditation. However through meditation there are arguably greater possibilities  due to the greater clarity which an undrugged consciousness is capable of.
If drugs are used the nature of the consciousness expansion is of somewhat a choppy nature, like being on the deck of a ship during a fierce storm, one finds it hard to maintain a calm and serene inner experience as the ground and the sky seem to be constantly in motion and there is no dry land beneath your feet on which to ground your experience.

During meditation the possibility of return to dry land instantly and quickly rationalise and consider your experience is very easy. It  only requires thinking about them. Meditation however is not easy for some people because it required the cessation of thought and most people are so used to thinking all the time that they are not even aware there is an off switch for their brains. What is required is a realisation that when the ancients said  ‘as above so below’ they were mistranslated. What they really meant was ‘as within so without’.

What is inside every person is the same as what is outside. Consciousness.  Most people base their consciousness inside their own heads so, after thoughts has been stifled through concentration , one can start to enlargen and broaden the space inside their heads.
 

What happens is that you experience a feeling of the observational point which is you growing smaller within yourself and also of your field of vision and consciousness expanding. You start to glimpse the size of the universe itself and the everyday world, despite being just next to you waiting for you, seems to be an immense distance away.

You are now INSIDE YOUR OWN MIND. And this is infinite. As it grows and widens something else will happen, you will start to get the feeling of falling into yourself. This is the final break through and although it might seem frightening, a bit like dying or surrendering yourself to some force, it isn’t. It is only a state of expanded consciousness and all you need do to instantly return back to the so called ‘real world’ is open your eyes again.

 
As you fall into your own field of consciousness you will start to spin and move as your consciousness becomes aware of its own energetic natures and twists and turns in its own eternity, you will also experience a satisfying feeling of all knowing all understanding and love. Simple because for the first time in your life there are no thoughts and no boundaries anymore.

 
You have found heaven. Nirvana. The abode of peace. You have merged with the consciousness field of the greater universe.

Gone the next: a trueish story.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, it’s the strangest thing.”

Ollie sat up more than straight, his arms hugging his knees, ready to spring into the air and start pacing back and forth. It was only his arms that held his legs back. He was doing his best to reign himself in, for my girlfriend’s sake I suppose.  He had a habit of scaring people who didn’t know him, when he spoke he tended to get highly animated, springing about and waving his hands in the air, to those who didn’t know he could seem like a whirlwind of chaos, or just a plain old loony. I knew him better however, he overflowed with energy and its seemed always to be escaping from him, people often turned away from him, like he burned too hot and they needed some shade.

But now he was disordered, that much is clear. For many years he’d been my best friend though I’d hardly seen him for anything longer than a couple of weeks these last few years, it might seem strange for me to say we were still best friends but we were: it made no difference how long he disappeared for, or where he went. He told me stories, incredible stories that I promised him I would never repeat so don’t ask me to do so here and now. I'm only going to tell you what I know about this case.


 For months that became years he would drop out of all knowledge, we’d known where he’d gone, but that by then was the remote past, the phone numbers and addresses he had given us soon became worn out coordinates, a snapshot. That’s how I would describe my feelings now for Ollie, my thoughts of him are like snapshots, I don’t see him as something fluid, but as a series of static images and ideas of the man who was my best friend.

The last adventure of his, where had he gone to? Jordan. I’d had one e-mail from him a couple of months after he’d left wishing me happy birthday, I answered him back telling him how great it was to hear from him and asking him if he’d had any chicks drop their Hijabs for him, the usual silly lad banter, we meant no disrespect of course. He told me he was working on it but that it was proving harder to get into than a tin of sardines using only a banana. He was happy though, make no mistake about that, always was a happy person, like a blessed snail he took paradise with him where ever he went: he didn’t have to look for it. And so for six months I heard nothing, for the first time ever he didn’t return at Christmas, nor did he return in the summer, then the year became two years, and I thought in all seriousness that I would never see him again. Then a knock on my window while I was eating my sugary cornflakes, it was Ol! I almost couldn’t believe it, at that weird morning time of day when no one ever comes to see you, before going to work! He told me he’d just flown back and was really jet lagged and strung out, he said.

“Sorry about the crazy time of day, it doesn’t mean much to me anymore though but I really need someone to look to and talk at. I mean look at and talk to. That came out the wrong way didn’t it? or did it? it works either way I suppose, I can’t think now which is more appropriate.”

And I let him in, and felt a little uncomfortable, for about five seconds until we started talking and it was as if a million years of silence could have passed between us and all we would need would be those five seconds were we weighed our friendship and discovered that it hadn’t lost a gram of its value and that nothing would ever change between us, we were still best friends.

 As I ate my cornflakes and snaked my tie around the shoulders of my jacket in readiness for work, and my girlfriend got ready was just finishing her coffee and getting ready to leave the house, he sat stood there wide eyes and electrically charged, still carrying in him the flux and smog of Tokyo. He was still somewhere over the Pacific, I had no idea when he got there or even what he was doing there, all I knew was that the major part of him was there with me in my front room at half past seven in the morning and I was very glad about it. I felt reassured that he was safe under my roof, I say this and I measure my words carefully, but I always felt that the threads that held Ollie’s life together were of the thinnest flimsiest and finest material that could ever exist, he used to say that he lived in the astral web and every time I was with him I felt it. His whole life was no more solid and substantial than a silken spider’s web, shimmering silvery in the moonlight, but a few heavy drops of rain could tear the whole thing apart.

I can tell you no more than that, this is strictly a subjective feeling, call it instinct or intuition whatever you like but I’ve always known that he would soon be gone.

Jo came into the room, looking perfectly fresh and ready for her job at the accountant’s in town. She smiled at Ollie:

   “I’ve heard so much about you but I never thought I’d actually get to meet you. Where have you been?”

   “Japan.”

   “How was it?”

   “It was,” he paused looking for the right words, “very very interesting. I went out there to get the east-west fusion thing going on, find my soul, something like that, and also get to the bottom of that sushi thing.”

   “How did that work out for you?”

   “Well I found a way of controlling my own perception of reality through meditation and I tracked down the location of my own soul, which was cool, but a man could spend a whole lifetime to understand the profound mysteries of raw fish.”

   “I think it sounds disgusting personally. I mean, I couldn’t stand the idea of eating raw fish.”

   “I miss it already, the prospect of eating meat again sickens me, still its all relative ain’t it.” He said with a wink.

   “Yeah, I suppose, okay I gotta go to work, see you later people.”

When she was gone he seemed to become himself.

He looked seriously at me and spoke:

   “It’s the strangest thing,” he had said, “wherever I go there are always this group of people around me.”

   “Sounds good!” I said.

   “No, it isn’t, I can’t really explain it but I’ll try.”

And he did try and I think perhaps he succeeded, then at other times I don’t know what to think. Anyway I didn’t go to work that morning, not after what he had said to me, I was spooked, scared for him and myself for having heard his story. I didn’t like it in the least.

   “It’s not good because these people who surround me are not my friends, in fact they pretend not to know me but they know me alright, they are my enemies and they follow me everywhere.”

I smiled, and feeling light I cracked a little joke, thinking perhaps that this was what he was talking about, I said:

   “What do you mean? You’re not telling me that you upset the locals eh? That some nice proud tea drinking Muslim has sent his family on to you for breaking into his nice chaste daughter’s Hijab and they had followed him on his travels. Or did you spill A Yakuza’s pint?”

He smiled a cracked and strained smile. That wasn’t it, it seemed.

   “Yeah,” he seemed distracted and elsewhere, “something like that, I think.” He paused before adding, “I don’t know. I don’t know who they are, where they’re from,” He looked down at the carpet, “or what they are.”

   “What do you mean?” I asked carefully.

   “I don’t know, there’s so much I don’t know. All I can say is I’m glad to be back, on firm ground with my best mate.”

He gave me a look of such intensity that I couldn’t match its gaze for more than a few seconds, his eyes burned with something: knowledge, wisdom or madness, I couldn’t identify it but it was a very powerful something. It worried me because I couldn’t understand it, where had he been?

The  more he talked the deeper my confusion became.

   “I arrived at some restaurant, some mad Japanese place where the waiters dress up as ninjas and jump out at you carrying your desert skewered on the end of a shiri-saya blade. It was early, the Japanese corporate piss up crowd hadn’t finished their overtime yet and the westerners were, well god knows were the westerners were. I was literally the first person to enter the restaurant that day and that was the way I liked it. When I’m eating I find the presence of other people distracts me from enjoying my food, you have to put on a show when you eat communally, well I do anyway, not that my table manners are bad, it’s just that ideally I would prefer not to bother with them, just make like a pig before a trough and get stuck in. Actually the funny thing about Japan is that they have table manners, among the most refined and complicated on earth, but then they do things like eat sushi with their fingers and drink their soup from the bowl and make a loud slurpy sound when they do it. In fact to confuse me further I was told quite reliably by a  Japanese business man that if you don’t make the required slurping noise when drinking cha or soup or eating noodles, then your Japanese hosts feel insecure, you don’t seem to be one of them. Apparently making the noise, just making the slurp noise, bridges the culture gap between east and west. 

 

So there I was looking forwards to an uncomplicated dining experience with only myself to judge and approve myself, I spread my shoeless feet out under the table and relaxed.  I’d just ordered a beer when I noticed a western couple being guided into the restaurant. They sat at the table just opposite me so that they were looking  directly at me. That kind of thing was normal, some westerners abroad like to latch onto other westerners, they gaze at them and smile at them just as if they were members of their own family, they’re the weirdos, worth steering clear of, then there are the others, those who flee from other westerners. They’re the sane ones in my book, they go abroad for a good reason, they travel in search of enlightenment through confusion. When they go abroad they don’t want to learn the language nor do they want to understand the country they’re in. For them it is a total drag to perfectly master and understand the language and customs of nation. They immediately become embroiled in taking a point of view and actually having to think about the stupid things that happen in the country. They’re more than happy to be in a country where they understand a great deal of absolutely nothing. The language is a musical jabber and nothing more, the symbols and shapes on the morning newspaper tell them nothing of the death and dissatisfaction that invariably reign. They are blissfully unaware of its sordid and foolish politics, the crafty caprices of politicians, ignorant of the ignorance and  prejudice that blights its people. They do not care and they don’t have to care.

However in time, the great evil of knowledge will dawn on them and they have nowhere to escape, their eyes and ears will be assaulted on all sides by news!

They will become a partisan, they will have to take a position and have an opinion, was there ever a more burdensome asset to modern life? All the naïve blind charm of a people seen only upon its virtues will vanish as they dig deeper and deeper until the inevitable disillusionment. So the best thing they can do once they understand the language, the politics and the culture is go elsewhere and bask in the bliss of total confusion again. I am of the latter category. I flee from knowledge and from other westerners. Their gaze was a burden to me, of course back home they wouldn’t look twice at me but they seemed to be in need of a friend that night. They weren’t the only ones. More and more people arrived until the restaurant was almost full.  Within two minutes of me sitting down an ordering a beer the restaurant had gone from empty to almost full. I could see too that the ninjas were a bit disorientated by this too, as more and more newly dressed and trained bewildered ninjas were pressed into service to deal with the anomalous surge of diners. It was a little strange but I put it down to some bizarre coincidence, that was until I noticed that they all seemed to me looking at me at one time or another.”

   “Well,” I said, “maybe it was because you’re a westerner, a good looking one too.”

   “Yeah, well, not to be immodest but  I had thought about that but that doesn’t explain why wherever I go there’s always a crowd about two or three minutes behind me.”

   “Maybe it’s your private fan club, I’ve heard that Japanese girls are very impressionable.”

   “But it wasn’t just Japanese girls, it was all sorts of people, distinguished old Japanese men and their neat and petite yukata wearing wives; loud mouthed and leery English teachers, even small and extremely quiet Japanese children, it was like a total cross section of society would turn up wherever I went like a shadow. First I thought it was amusing, like I’d go to a pub, it would be more or less empty and totally quiet, I’d order a pint, cross the deserted dance floor and  I’d sit down at a table and sip my pint. I’d look down at the front page of my English Japanese newspaper, recline back in my chair, music would come on and look up from my newspaper and the dance floor would suddenly be crowded with all sorts of people dancing, jiving and twisting. Thirty seconds ago not only was the dance floor empty but so was the pub, now it was full, and they all seemed to revolve strangely around me. I can’t explain it but I was the centre of attention, it was always the same, then I started asking myself if I was losing my mind. That’s why I’ve come back here, I didn’t know what it meant and it was wearing my head out trying to work it all out.

I was shocked, it seemed my formerly solid and happy old buddy was losing his mind, or at least that he was suffering from some kind of monomania.

    “It gets worse.” Ollie said quietly, I inwardly sighed, I had no doubt that it did.

   “Have you ever sat at a table in an ordinary  restaurant or in an even more ordinary  café or pub and sat at a table next to a couple of these odd people, sometimes a man and a woman, or two women or two men, they order a drink, peanuts hell maybe even soup cheese and a side of beef too, the whole feast, among friends, and the whole lot without saying a blasted word? Who are these people, these frozen mutes who just sit and stare, who go out together not to talk to each other? What does it mean? Who or what are these people, are they real? I think I have found the answer. I think that these ‘people’ are in fact what I call filling. In fact they’re not really real and they’re just there to provide filling to an otherwise empty scene. Like in a movie there are the extras who wander aimlessly and mute or who otherwise repeat the same couple of syllables over and over again to give the impression of conversation, well the extras exist in real life, the filling.. 

 

They have no autonomy of course and they don’t think, they just sit and blink all the while. I now believe that half of the whole world is stuffing, and I see them everywhere. and they’re after me. I’m scared, either that they’re really after me or that I’m going mad or that I don’t know anything anymore.”

   “But why would anyone be after you? It doesn’t make any sense.”

   “You’re telling me.”

   “Are you sure about this, it really doesn’t seem very likely?”

   “I know, believe me I know, I really don’t want to believe it, but that’s when I started getting really crazy, it was like I was denying the evidence of my own eyes, my brain was telling me something and I was trying to ignore it at all costs. I couldn’t even trust my mind anymore, I even stopped leaving my room, I stopped eating because I kept seeing those strange people. I was destroying myself and I was weak. So I just decided to go with it and chill out, I felt much better, stronger, and maybe in a kind of way it does make sense, I mean there are lots of strange things in the universe and, well maybe I’m getting some kind of spiritual insight from all this.”

We had breakfast together and I called in sick and I didn’t have to try too hard. Ollie certainly seemed to be crazy, at least what he said was totally crazy but he was still the same old Ollie, I decided not to make any kind of judgement about what he was saying, just go along with it and see what happened. It was true that he was a bright bloke and had seen a lot of things, maybe in some way he was right, I did hold out the possibility that all or some of the crazy things he said could be right, however it was only a small possibility for me. It was all so unfamiliar to me, he was too much a philosopher, always had been, for me to follow him out there wherever he was lost and wandering now.

After breakfast we decided to go out for a couple of drinks and a few games of pool.

As we walked down the street on the way to the pub Ollie noticed a black car driving slowly just behind us, it followed us all the way to the pub, and parked while we went inside.

   “I told you!” Ollie said.
    “Just a coincidence.” I said.

   “I wish I could still believe it was that simple. You say coincidence and it doesn’t trouble you in the least but the word coincidence scares me and fills me with horror.”
   “Why? Coincidences are usually nice things like bumping into a mate  you haven’t seen for ages just when you were thinking about how nice it would be to seem him again.”

   “Yeah but do you understand them, how they work and why?”

   “Well, not really, they just happen don’t they. It’s a good feeling though, makes you feel kind of spiritual I would say.”

   “But what if they were bad coincidences? Not bumping into a friend but into somebody who can’t stand you, and not just sometimes but every time you go out, every time you go out something totally improbably bad happens to you. Like your best friend gets killed in a car accident just when you were out the night before having the best time you’ve ever had with them or a bank error has caused you not to have your account credited with your wages and at that very moment your sister begs you to lend her some money because she’s in serious financial trouble.”

“Yeah but I’m not sure that heavy shit happens that often.”

   “It’s happening to me now Jake, and it happens every day.”

   “Shit!”

   “Something’s out to get me and it’s not of this world, some other power is messing with  me and I’ve no idea why.”

   “God I don’t know what to say. Is there anything I can do?”

   “Yeah there is actually.”

   “What? Anything I can do?”

   “Get pissed with me, lets get rolling drunk.”

   “Is that all?”

   “Hey it’ll mean a lot to me, while I was away I couldn’t even trust my drinking buddies.”

We walked through the car-park of the Boot, the duke-box was playing a song I didn’t recognise but which seemed to be significant to Ollie as he gave me a look which seemed to say ‘here we go again’.

The pub was empty when we went inside and Ollie seemed to be looking around furtively, he gave me a resigned look to say that it wouldn’t last and that soon the bar would be full.

However we sat there and two pints and a couple of games of pool later, the pub was still as bare as it had been when we went inside. A little later I remembered something he said and while I was lining up the black I asked him.

   “How come you couldn’t trust your mates in Japan?”

He gazed at the black ball I was preparing to pocket, and he shrugged.    

   “Oh I don’t know it’s the coincidence thing again it scared the shit out of me. I would be mulling over my pint and perhaps thinking about how Spurs were getting on back home when my friend would suddenly start talking about football and how his favourite team was Spurs, I thought he was reading my mind at first and I nearly went mad but then I realised that it was just a coincidence, a creepy scary and viciously orchestrated coincidence.”

I struck the black side on and sent it firmly the corner pocket with a satisfying clunk.

   “Nice shot!” Ollie  said.

 

I started racked up the balls for another game, and tried to cheer him up.

   “Maybe it wasn’t so viciously orchestrated, I mean maybe it was a good thing that your friend shared the interest with you and that you had something to talk about.”

   “Well I don’t know about that, it just freaks me out. Then there’s the weird crowds that seem to be watching me all the time, I don’t know if that’s some kind of coincidence too.”

   “Well they haven’t followed you in here, maybe this place is too dingy for ‘em.”

He smiled, “Nice idea, I think maybe I’ll stay here then.”

   “About these crowds that are watching you, have you tried to talk to them.”

   “I might seem strange but no I haven’t.”

   “How come?”

   “Well I don’t know, I just don’t think it would serve anything, besides they sicken me I’ve nothing to say to them.”

   “So when did all this start?”

   “Oh I don’t know, it was kind of a gradual thing. I thought I was becoming more spiritual, like Jung talked about synchronicity and apophenia.”

   “What’s apophenia when it’s at home?”

   “It’s pattern recognition, or at least it’s a kind of mania that leads you to see meaning  behind the most otherwise insignificant things. I think in small doses it can be nice, like the coincidence thing but in larger doses it can drive you mad. I’m a case in point. Still I’m not the only one, Stravinsky it is said suffered from delusions of apophenia.

Jung’s own example was of a beetle flying into his room while a patient was describing a dream about a scarab. The scarab is an Egyptian symbol of rebirth, he noted. Therefore, the propitious moment of the flying beetle indicated that the transcendental meaning of both the scarab in the dream and the insect in the room was that the patient needed to be liberated from her excessive rationalism.”

A couple of people came into the bar, I eyed them suspiciously, seemingly Ollie was contagious and I almost considered them as his weird stuffing people but then again they were just blokes like me and him. A couple of moments later a group of four of five people came into the bar.

   “Is this your fan-club here?”

   “Could be, they arrive in small groups gradually until there’s at least a dozen of them, they don’t actually talk to each other but somehow they know each other or at least they’re involved in something together.”

I went over and talked to this guy and told him that my friend thinks he went to school with him and wants to talk to him. They got chatting and Ollie kind of realised that he was just a normal bloke, the problem was that he hadn’t spoken to anyone for such a long time, not a proper old chin-wag like, that he started to get kind of manic.  Ollie talked to me and seemed to be cured of his delusions.

   “I don’t know what to say, maybe things have been getting to me lately, well for these last five years or so. I guess I’ve had no stability, hell I haven’t had a girlfriend for the last year, maybe the loneliness got to me.”

   “It probably makes more sense than this business about people following you and what was the other thing?”
   “The stuffing people?”

   “Yeah!”

   “I’ve just been somewhere totally different for the past year or so, Jesus I feel like I’m just waking up out of a bad-dream. I feel such a fool.”

   “Hey well it’s all over now.”

   “I think coming back to see you is the best decision I’ve ever made in my life, thanks mate.”

He hugged me with warmth and he seemed very full of grateful emotion. I was really happy, still puzzled how my friend could have lost the plot for so long but relieved now that he was better and I was pleased to have been able to help him in such a simple way, just by being there. To celebrate we decided to keep up our day’s festivities into the night when we ended up our favourite haunt of years gone by, a very small but very funky little nightclub called Swift’s.

We had a few drinks and danced to all the cheesy hits of our youth.

The last time I saw him he was dancing opposite me to some cheesy old Brit pop song that seemed to take about 10 years off us and reminded us of good old times. There was a surge on the dance floor and I saw a couple of girls dancing next to him and he started talking to one of them, or at least shouting at them, you know how it is in night clubs, impossible to have a conversation, she was a pretty pixie faced little thing, just his type. Whatever  he was bawling into her ears seemed to be making her smile and I figured that he probably wouldn’t be going home alone tonight.

He seemed to be floating away from me across the dance-floor, and there was another surge and more people came onto the dance floor increasing the number of people between me and Ollie. The Specials came on, Night Club, he’d started dancing again with the girl, they were pogoing up and down, I kept seeing his head pop up above the others.

He seemed really to be enjoying himself, almost like old times, then I didn’t see his head pop up anymore, he must have stopped dancing. I found myself pushed out to the edge of the dance-floor and I took a seat. That’s the last time I ever saw him.

 All I know is he’s gone again, maybe he’ll come back one day maybe he won’t. I don’t know where he is, no-one does, his mother doesn’t know what happened to him because she called me to get news. It’s strange. Anything could have happened to him.  I feel strange, maybe one day there’ll be a knock on my door when I least expect it. When I’ve almost forgotten about him and I’m having my cornflakes, he’ll show up with more incredible stories.  The only problem now is that in my heart of hearts somehow I really don’t expect it, not at all.

That’s really all I know.