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Chapter Fifteen
The Prima Materia's Essence has been extracted and taken a form as its expression and containment. To prepare for and activate its eventual transmutation, I must now activate the ultimate purification and renewal. Every aspect still attached to Essence that is nonessential, circumstantial or merely habit must die. It must suffer, decompose, perish to all its old self. What is left is free of contaminates and is ultimately refined, suitable to be brought through rebirth into the transcendent state.
This Procedure fosters the breakdown of the substance within the form, much as the caterpillar must perish and turn to nutrient in its cocoon for the butterfly to come into being. It creates a healing fermentation to destroy antiquated rigid physical and mental structures through trials, humiliation, some "dark night of the soul." It is a deathing that activates the powers of deep change and renewal, healing and life. It can activate the curative, creative powers that rise in survival's response. "As in healing, when all else fails, let it rot. This can precipitate a healing crisis," advised Abertus Magnus, the great Alchemist. "That a seed must die if it is to born again," advised another great Teacher.
There may be pain, illness, or other challenges to patience and trust. If the Materia is rigid, unyielding, it may be bent and snapped to pieces. Organics once emptied of life, will putrefy and rot.
Throughout the progress of this long and arduous Work, I have been called on to be most attentive and diligent, to intuitively support it from stage to stage. I've been patiently caring for it, to "make haste slowly". But this is perhaps the most difficult Procedure to maintain detachment in, to humbly know that I cannot control this suffering, in spite of my caring. To awaken deep change, to allow new healing and balance, I must watch this most anguishing of the Processes with humble, helpless detachment. Yet the Alchemist knows that, "Everything that dies is not the immortal true Self."
This descent into darkness and suffering as a means to bring a renewal of substance and aliveness is called:
MORTIFICATION and PUTREFACTION DEATH and ROTTING
The urgings of my bowels wake me, bloated, gaseous. I stumble from my hut, not quite awake. There are few sounds, some snores and coughing and early morning throat clearing. There's the soft, whiny murmurs of the ubus wanting to be fed. As I get near the far end of the field where the Nature House is, the smell of aging excrement grows stronger. I wonder if I'm going to be able to face this, but the torment in my gut compels me. I hold my nose but scan the pile in the dug out trench before I squat and add to it. These semi-rancid "Feasts" already have their effect on me but it seems not to be the state of everyone's bowels. As I leave the Nature House, the sun is just rising over the Valley's rim, blossoming to cast it's radiance down the far wall, consuming the night's shadow. The pink mist of sunrise deepens, and I longingly imagine the sun rising at some sea's horizon where I could bathe endlessly. Turo walks across the open area towards the ubus' pen, a large leather pouch over his shoulder. It's their morning meal from the way they cheerfully chitter and call, pressing their wide-eyed faces against the branches that form their pen. Fars and some other man walk towards the fields carrying crude wooden hoes and staffs. I go to the water bag to drink and rinse my face and hands. Its coolness from the night's chill is refreshing and I sprinkle some over my neck and chest with the hope of shaking my grogginess. "What is that? What are you doing?" I hear an approaching woman scolding from behind me. It is one of the women I met last night at Fars ' Night Feast, Turo's heavy and mouthy 'Beloved', but I don't remember her name. "That 'heavenly liquid' is only for thirst, for ours and the ubus', and the fields, when it is needed. But not for wasting on hands and face. Body parts do not need water. It is only for insides. Weren't you told?" She's very upset, offended. I didn't realize but, maybe for them, it is a matter of life and death, if there's not much rain now. I remember the wide river in the jungle I passed through. "If its needed so badly, why don't you go there," I point and nod upward, "and get more?" Her eyes grow wide and her jaw drops. "Above?" she asks with offended disbelief. "Nobody goes there. The water we need comes from the heavens. That is our belief." Her simple-minded acceptance of the filth and self-denial amuse me. "Well," I tell her with an innocent grin, "it's no problem for me. Since I came down from there, I know I can go back up and bring back lots and lots of water." Her heavy cheeked face scrunches up, and she blasts air out between her sparse, tightly grit teeth. "You just better ask the Dreamer before you do anything like that," she warns me and stomps away with a righteous swing to her wobbling hips. The sun now fills half the Valley with its brilliant bath. The heat intensifies, begins to bake. I stare with thoughtless focus as the eye-stinging glare makes its way, eating at the shadow's edge, minutely passing across the Valley's floor. Finally, I walk to the only side still in shade, where the huts are. Clustered about, the women are there at their tasks. Some are busy creating crude crafts with mud and sticks. Some are preparing food, grinding and mixing, setting herbs and roots to dry. Others mend clothes and tools. Food is cooking over the huts small fires in some huts, the door-drapes pulled back to air them out. There's a continual stream of chatting and good natured bickering. I'm repulsed at how exposed they constantly are to each other, literally. There's no way to hide anything personal, from excrement to dreams and sex lives. I shudder, almost choke at the penned-in feeling, chocking to death. Turo is walking about in the Tree's shade, talking to himself with wild gestures. I hesitate, but walk over to him. I need someone to talk with. He sees me coming and when I reach him, he's crouched over drawing in the dust. "Do you see what this is?" he asks as if he teases with a deep mystery.. "I see nothing but smudges and whirls," I shrug. I want to humor him, for company if nothing else, but I don't have a clue. "This is a picture of a man dreaming of a beautiful woman. And do you see this special mark on both their faces. That shows that they are soul brother and sister. They meet in dreams." He pauses to give me an inquiring smile. "You understand?" "Yes. Yes, I think so," I answer, not understanding at all. "Do you like Meriflur?" he asks, bringing his face very close to mine. A very personal question. "Meriflur... Yes, I think I do like her. Very much, as a matter of fact." "I saw you like her at the Night Feast. I like her too. She is the most pretty woman there is." Something tempts me to tease him. "Yes, but you know there are many pretty women in the other place." Even as I say this, I wonder if I'm being perverse, goading him or am I just looking for more nonsense. He stares at me with good-natured stupefaction. "You know what I mean. Outside the Valley!" I coax him. "The Valley is the heart of the world," he says, as if explaining all there is to explain. "But you know, there are other places. If you go up above and walk out through the jungle, you will find other places." "No," Turo shakes his head, a bit dismayed. "I never heard anyone talk about other places." "But you've been in that other place. I've seen you there," I insist. It starts as a joke but soon has me serious. "Maybe..." he grins with silly non-commitment. "But I don't remember any other places." "Where do you think I came from?" I stand challengingly close to him, face to face. "From... Oh, from." he laughs quietly to himself. "Do you know, I never thought about it. But I know why you're here." "Why am I here?" All right, maybe I'll get something helpful from him afterall. "To become our next Dreamer," he cheerfully exclaims, claps his hands, and giggles. "And. . ." "And what?" Now it feels things have opened too far too fast. He stops, rolls his eyes up in parody of deep though and says, "Better I can show you than explain." He blinks and invites me to follow him with a nod. "You know when I say I care for the ubus, it means I am there for everything in their lives. They are born and I am there, helping. They are sick. I bring herbs and flowers and water. I look at their fur and their eyes to see if they need anything. I am mother to their mothers. Maybe I do good with them because I am part ubu myself. "Now I show you another thing." We reached the ubu-pen and their chattering rose as we stood their talking. "Tomorrow is special Night Feast for your coming. We cook fresh ubu stew." I'm getting what he's driving at. Turo opens the gate on the pen and makes the clicking sound he calls them with to feeding. They tumble out towards him, with bright, good-natured playfulness. Turo goes to stand by the opening and when the last ubu scurries out, Turo sweeps it up good-naturedly. While the others are nibbling at the seeds and pellets he dropped for them, he carries the tardy one in his arm and cuddles and coos to it as we walk round to the back of the pen. "If he comes last, it is because he is sick or too fat or maybe lazy. A good reason for self-offering. The only time this is not done is if it is momma-big ubu." He picks up a large skin bag and a stone blade laying by it and beckons me towards the Nature House. All the while he's lovingly petting on the ubu, scratching its belly and making fond clucking sounds. The ubu happily responds with playful twists and grins. Turo steps into the Nature House but leaves the door-drape open so I can see. He rubs the ubu's nose fondly and, while it's in the midst of a frolic, hugs it to him and twists its head so we hear its neck bones snap. Turo instantly bursts into tears and pets at the limp body, cooing to it in soft consoling tones. He places it in a hollow in the wall above the refuse hole. With tears streaming down his face, he hacks at the creatures belly and lets the blood drain down into the trench as he sobs. I'm in awe at the range of relationship he and the creaturs' share, from mascot and companion to butcher for flesh that's to be eaten. After some while Turo places the body in the large skin bag and gestures that we can go. I suddenly remember what we were talking about before this slaughtering. "Are you telling me that I'm to become the next Dreamer by killing this one?" He nods seriously after some consideration. "That Dreamer goes," he waives an arm towards the huts he's now leading us towards, "and this the Dreamer comes." He giggles, clasping my arm in excitement. "Did he tell you that?" I ask, feeling shaken. What he says makes sense. I just hadn't thought it through and expected that to be part of the Rites of Transmission. This really is the shadow image of the Call celebrated in Balangpur. "What he says isn't important. His words only mean what he feels like saying. What matters is his eyes, or the way his feet make fists when be is hungry. But the best is to watch how his fire burns," Turo nods sagely. "But don't stir yourself up. He is old. Phu. Phu! Too old." Turo pats my shoulder consolingly. We do need a young Dreamer. If Meriflur likes you, I'm sure you'll take good care of us all." "Doesn't his dying bother you at all? Don't you feel you owe him some gratitude, for helping you with all those problems when you were young?" I can't believe he's so sensitive with the ubus and callous about the old man. "Oh you know, he's nice, I think. But he never helped me. I do everything for myself since I learn to take care of the fire inside my belly. See, when you are sitting..." he begins to explain and demonstrate his wisdom again. I jump to my feet in agitation. "Do the others know about my becoming the Dreamer?" "Everyone can see how you hold your fire. Of course there is talk of it." I'm shaken. "Accept... Accept..." I mutter to myself. How can I have any chance of accepting when things get more bizarre and unacceptable. Am I supposed to take this as something symbolic. Or does it mean that my part in all this, the role I was always called on for, is as a killer. My thoughts are shattered by the arrival of a pack of about twenty ubus who leap and meow all around us, their saucer eyes upraised, fingered paws stretched out to Turo. "They want to go with me to offer their friend to the cooks", he says with bashful pride. "No, this is too much," I burst out. "Here I am to be his Judas to become the next Dreamer and spend the rest of my life here when every instant is a misery." Turo's fixed grin doesn't change a hair. Hopeless. I leave a startled Turo and walk off towards the bench, disturbed and devoid of purpose.
The sun, already well beyond zenith, shimmers in a sea of its own thick, steamy juices. The viscous heat climbs the walls to fill the Valley, compressing breath and bone. Slowing the heartbeat, numbing the spirit. I watch the last of the people make their ways toward their huts with the clumsy persistence of deep-sea divers, towards shelter, towards sleep. Only Fars and Jemin, laughing and playing hand in hand, dare to stay out in the huge cook-pot till even they succumb to the heat. They walk past me on their way, hugging to the wall's shadow. The ubus are out of sight and silent. Even the plants in the fields look bowed in on themselves. The Valley is empty and hushed. I sigh. My head throbs, weakness and nausea thin my blood. I sit some little while longer and soon know I must get to shelter too. I go, bow low and enter my hut. Gratefully I find that it still wonderfully cool as I enter, as if the walls are bathed by underground springs. The chill swirls round and through me. A little light might help the gloom. But raising the door-drape lets in blasts from that furnace-sun. There are tapers, but I remember, with regret, leaving the lighter in Fars' hut after the Dreamer's repeated 'fire' lecture. I lie on my happenstantial bedding, bunch up in a ball, fists to my chins. I feel hopelessly frustrated and futile. As the only thing I can image as solace, I try to divert myself with daydreams and memories, interesting places I'd been, exciting moments in my ministry, anything that might divert me from this nightmare I'm in. My stomach is more settled, but my bowels still clench. My body weighs me down, oppresses me like a slab of lead. Thoughts register only in the darkest of grays. There is a new smell in the hut, rank and alien. I know it's me. Grit rolls underneath my fingers no matter where I touch myself, as if I'd been here a month. The stubble on my chin is caked, turning to beard. I'm less and less aware of the vermin at work on my skin. A fly drones and thumps against the inside of a door-drape. "That which I feared the most is upon me." A noble line in someone's play as a parody on my degrading fate. "The old man is right," I mutter. "I'm starting to rot. Won't be long before I'm exactly like one of them." As splendid as my soul's experiences are, this body is still my dungeon. In total perversity to what I'd think, maybe my spirit is enthralled with those visions and experiences. But those gifts seem to leave this human torment worse, even more helplessly tormented, bewildered and purposeless. Another betraying paradox. Like the Dreamer said, I'm still trapped in that mind from the other place. So the gifts come out backwards, that two-edged sword the Wizard talked about. Waiting. How long have I been just waiting, for the way to be shown, for a door to open, for the bubble around me to burst? Now there is no longer reason to wait. But, instead of freeing me, of bringing me to a place beyond the reach of all the maiming conflicts, he only gives them greater powers. How do I die to who I think I am? Interlacing images arise. I sink through a mirror like pools of mercury. I rise up out of a pool of shadow like India ink. He tells about that state of being, of consciousness, where everything resolves. The Jewel Of Paradox's work in full glory. But all he shows me leaves me more enmeshed in doubt and confusion. And there's never a time or place to even think all this through. There's always something or someone in my face. Though I think I'm getting used to it at times, it's just being numbed. I hear every sound echoing off the walls, reverberating with each other so that there's a continual background murmur going on. Not only the sounds, but the smells, even the thoughts and energies magnify, reverberate and intensify in this pressure cooker place. I'm being swirled round and round with everyone else in this stew. But right now there's silence. I remember with pleasure how much time I had to myself when and how I wanted, before, in that other life. That was one of the difficulties Melissa and I had. Though I loved her, adored her really, having her around all the time was simply more than I liked or could handle. I realize, with bitter humor, that the people I spent the most time with, besides her, was those I was assigned to in my ministry and was working up to kill. I seek for that hate-flame now, wanting to ignite it into a protective rage. But it's not there. There's only pain, all alone, aching and ancient, close to where the flame usually was in my heart. Out there, I was stealthy and cunning, with sly reasons for what I did or thought. I knew what I wanted and made things happen. Here I'm disabled by confusion so bad that I need things explained to me by a half-wit. Even with all the torment and frustration, I can't imagine feeling hate here. With this strange closeness and resonation between each other, killing one of them would be like killing part of myself. Each one seems a precious, vital part of what's happening. Especially the Dreamer. Even though he takes pleasure in my despondency and goads me into confusion, then gloats. He was so considerate in Balangpur, here he's such a scoundrel. It's like my being a wolf there, wild and ravaging. And here I'm a helpless, bleating lambs, my belly exposed like that ubu's before. Why did Turo bring all that stuff up now? His'picture' of me and Meriflur. Yes it excites me, and scares me too. Her being Melissa's Other makes relating more an unknowable than it was outside. Another kind of death they've prepared for me. And his way of showing me what I'm to do to the Dreamer. A sadistic fool and tender hearted saint at the same time. I came here with hope and high ideals and find deceit and madness. Striving to transcend myself, I'm flung into degradation. Its the recoil on my life of pretend out there into the bowels of irrationality. Rather than enlightenment, I'm Rather than enlightenment, I'm putrefying in the toxins of my life of hurt and heartlessness. My longing for the heights has brought me into the cesspool at the base of my being. With bitter humor I think, all that I'd twisted myself around one way, the Spiral now twists me around the other. Those who seek become prey for confusion. "What you seek is here, is everywhere, is. Every attempt to approach it gets in the way, cuts you off, turns you from it. Die to the old mind," the Dreamer exhorts me, "so that you can be in a new way." "All that you can find is what you are ready to see," he tells me. Well, all I see, no matter where I look, is soul-shredding conflict and mortification. As my thoughts writhe, my body too grows more anguished. The tea's cloying aftertaste has decomposed into fetidness. Worse than any of the others, I'm sickened most by my own stench. Yes, I'm ready. Die dear body, dear mind, dear soul. All die to all. There is darkness all around and inside me. My inner night is endless to every side. I see their faces -the Dreamer, Meriflur, the others- like the landscapes of distant planets. I hear their words like the murmuring in sleep. Nothing can touch through this dark night. I am dead and decaying. That's what this is. The Wizard's sacremental glob has killed me, and this is all an after-death realm. I am in hell. No defense against this despair, of feeling so naked and unmanned. As I doze off I see, far, far off my shining soul, suffering and buried in darkness. Crucified, mortified. Jesus on His cross. Judas in his guilt.
I awake. The sun has shifted West enough to pierce the thatching with hazy beams of golden light, giving the barely drifting motes of dust a dreaminess. Even the grubby stones of the walls glow with an aura. There's a leaden taste left in my thoughts and mouth, but beneath it is the sense that perhaps decay has run its course. As if a turning had been reached. The Valley is still. I lay content to let my fantasy play in the rays of sunlight. I smile. Though nothing apparently has changed, I feel a kind of exhausted contentment. But before long, like an engine slowly picking up momentum, my mind begins to niggle again, the countless goads telling me I must do something. I know, I'll confront the Dreamer, that's all. I'll just tell him. I'll demand a complete explanation. He can't expect to keep me in fathomless confusion. The heat has waned some. From a hut I pass on my way, I hear a sleepy cough. From another, an infant whimpering. I find him sitting on the ground outside the doorway to his hut. After I force myself to catch my breath from panting with my desperation and frustration, I tell him, "I'm dying. Look at me! My skin is ready to peal off. My hair is so matted I can't run my fingers through it. And my smell. Ugh! Like a corpse." "Everything that dies and rots is not the real you," he answers with calm assurance.
Click on the chapters from the list on top left. Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010 |
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