I was painting deep blue thick paint, a crest of yellow highlighting two dark lined shapes that kink in the middle, pin-pricked with red markers. Apart from its abstract beauty, there was nothing ordinary about this painting, as it shimmered iridescent, becoming no longer a painting but a sea-scape of pockled sun rays and mysterious deep-sea creatures bobbling.
But it wasn't the ocean, it was a journey; a journey into space. Deep in space and time, a hyper-technology, glistening translucent mothership was coming into focus, a complex transforming vessel drifting calmly in weightless space.
Two ladies were sitting at a sleek yellow cafe table in one of the many dining spaces of this glassy magnificent space-ship reality.
“May I join you?” I approached. I felt not out of place, but as a traveller with an aversion to solitude. Her curt white-yellow hair contrasted the mahogany of the younger girl opposite. I sat down, “I.. um.. I'm from somewhere less developed than here.” She recoiled slightly, like from someone of a lower class, but then she smiled. In a flirt she caught my eye, and slid her long fingers along my inner thighs. I felt heat rushing to my face as a powerful lust swelled. She sedated my initial anxiety with deft emotional and sensual skill, and before long I was at the height of something slow, powerful and pleasurable. What was this place?
“She is using a technology that let her do that.” The mahogany girl said, a wry smile showing a pleasure at having witnessed this initiation. I looked at them both, and then down to the floating wet martini olives on the table.
Days passed. In this world, scenes seemed to change but it never seemed strange, nor did I feel the need to question this reality. One scene I would be driving my blue bubble car around the city, the next sipping sweet soma in luscious surroundings filled with girls I barely new or from my past, the next photographing fascinating creatures in mysterious lands, hoping one day I could show them to people on Earth. It was a paradise with no responsibility or hangovers, it softly caressed the dreamy mind with pleasures.
However, there was one frustrating and recurring scene. I was in school learning things I didn't understand or care about. During lessons my mind was always in another place, daydreaming of the girls or driving my bubble car this way or that. “I am concerned with your progress” the tall and slender teacher would say, “you have never attempted any homework.” Over time I began to think; What are these lessons? Why does she seem familiar? Even away from school, when I was under the spell of a lullaby union with nameless girls in pink pillowy clouds, this thinking arose, threatening the coddled sensual world of the mothership.
Then one day I saw an identical baby-blue bubble car stopped opposite at the crossroads. It struck me as peculiar, being the first like mine I'd seen, and as we pulled off in the same direction I glimpsed the driver. It was me! Or at least he looked like me. I followed behind but the lights turned red on me as he drove into the distance. Slamming the accelerator, I jumped over the crossing traffic and was back on his tail. At the edge of the floating city, the pink clouds caught the sun, my double stopped his bubble car, got out, and entered a tall, narrow building. Even though I must have been the second me to climb the stairs, figures from my past greeted me unfazed as I passed, and at the top of the stairs was a black door. Inside and in front of me was my double, sat in one of two low black leather chairs and silhouetted by the pink clouds that glistened as my deep blue painting had done what may have been lifetimes before.
“This world is not all it seems.” My double said as I sat down opposite him.
“I've been thinking...”.
“And it is intruding on your play.”
“...questions have been arising. 'Who are you?' for example”.
“I am you, you are seeing yourself for the first time since you arrived here. In this place, your mind manifests as your reality. Now that you have been thinking, you have been becoming. You have been failing at school?”
“..Yes”
“Pay attention and you will see.” he finished, and looked down at the martini on the round glass table. I walked out the door slightly anxious and entered a kaleidoscopic cathedral. I quickly conjured sweet soma and was greeted by a girl, she giggled, we kissed, and we played together. She was so cute, so wonderful, I lost myself once more, but for how long?
Before long I was back in class, me with the other me sat next to me. I noticed that all the other students also had brought their doubles too. This was different; I was ready to listen this time.
“Welcome to the second class.” The teacher began. For the first time I noticed the beam of light connecting her forehead to mine. It caressed and focussed my mind like a helmet of energy. “The first assignment was to notice yourself, I thank you for bringing yourself with you today.
“This mothership is always changing. It is the consciousness. You are slowly coming to develop thought, and along with it your world is becoming more disturbed. This will continue.
“Have you ever wondered why I am a teacher? Why do I not engage in play like you do? Have you noticed the others?” I thought hard. No, I hadn't. I had been bubbling along in my bubble car and hadn't noticed much at all, except when I encountered my self that time. “Minds are disturbed, even here on the mothership,” she continued, “and there is nothing here that can be done about it. I was once like you, here in this class, and soon I will go back to earth. When you realise how disturbed you are you will learn to love as I have, and go back to earth to begin life anew. Only on earth can one realise the truth. Only on earth do things come and go, are we constantly confronted with the truth. Here we do not have the opportunity.”
“I thought I must be in heaven.” I said.
“This place is but one of many realms. It is my duty to usher you back to Earth for you to discover the heaven you seek.” she replied, her electric blue iridescent fringe waving calmly as if under water. Would I ever be ready to leave this illusory paradise? “When you are ready, here is the door. But you are not ready yet...
“Life exists because death exists, but you cannot know life in this place. To know life is to be life, to be life is to transcend death, and to transcend death is to be pulled out from death's lure by the love that knows no death. This place is deathless, and therefore lifeless. Through the door is life, but also pain and death. But life that discovers the Love is free. Life that does not discover the Love is not truly life, and after death may return to this place, the mothership, or another realm. I can show you the way out that door and back to earth, but many, like myself, get stuck here. That is why I teach, I am learning to love enough to go through that door. Back to Earth.”
I left class with a strong desire for more soma, and allowed myself to be led to new heights of pleasures by seductive red velvet ladies and martini olives, pink fluffy dreams and baby blue bubbles, white-yellow perfume and coddled lusty embraces, like a weightless warm mothership drifting timeless in space. Liberation was a long way away – a birth squeeze, cold, pain, work, unsatisfied desires, death and perseverance – it would be a long time before I opened that door.