The Setting

 

When the sun has set and the sky is dark, a million stars bathe the earth in a soft, translucent glow. A Grand Experiment is about to the conducted; columns of powerful speakers have been erected around the Enclosure, and a drama, not of our making, is about to unfold.

 

Soon, the Chosen One will make His entrance, and He will embark on a journey, a journey into Pain, but one that is also magical, mystical and inevitable; a journey that will take him to the beginning of time.

 

The Ensemble are gathered and positioned at their appointed places. Angels, Nymphs, Seraphim, all waiting to be heard when humans and gods talk to each other for the first time.

 

The music, Mahler’s eighth symphony, will transport the players to worlds unknown.

 

We look up to the blackness of the heavens, and as we gaze outward towards its farthest point, so also do we turn our inner eye and plunge headlong into the deepest abyss that is our own mind. A single point of light beckons and holds us, and we are transfixed, such is the intensity of its hypnotic message. For so long has Patience performed her loyal duty amidst the chaos and confusion of misunderstood Signs; now, finally, Truth has found a route to her resting place, and so the drama begins.

 

Eyes wide open! The first crashing chord, played with mystical energy, saturates the eerie silence with sounds that suddenly awaken the soul; and dormant, long-forgotten feelings, deep inside the gut, stir and begin their ascent.

 

The Goddess stands at the centre; her beauty is indescribable. The softest, smoothest skin; her long, dark hair shaping her face and intensifying the radiance that emanates from within her eyes; and a smile that is far beyond comparison with any earthly woman’s smile. She is looking directly at her Angel, her bodily form, carrying Divine personified. She is about to give Herself totally to Him.

 

Her Angel is about to die.

 

The music takes over, cultivating its crescendo as unconscious forces fix their attention on the object of their desire; veering vehemently between the life that is and the one that is yet to be; deep, distant chords that descend silently and invisibly from the point of our conception to the moment of the realisation of our deception.

 

He walks towards Her.

 

She stands, inert and alone. Their eyes meet, her face he touches delicately with his fingertips.

 

That spark of electricity now tells its own story.

 

The Darkness Descends

 

Moving within her aura, his lips form shapes and sounds; thus he utters mortal words: ‘Oh sweet Divine, Goddess of mine, when didst thou first reach out with thine everlasting light, to touch my soul, to lure my I into your domain, wherein the ecstasy of your attention meets the cry of my heartache.

 

‘For I have waited these epochs, when Time was set in different mode, when noble Reason persevered and proffered its own modest service.

 

‘But where now is Reason, who abandons mine own sensibilities to the gut and moulds its own course?

 

‘Allow me one small degree of freedom, lest I lose all semblance of mortal, and my conscious align itself with your spiritual, when I may exist within you, yet I may never, henceforth, live outside you.’

 

Pain in the Ascendant

She gazes deeply into his bright, beautiful eyes, her smile extraordinary, her presence total and unconditional. Moving gently and with deliberation, she parts the folds of her gown. Her swollen breasts drip sweet, warm milk, enticing her Angel to wanting and desire. She takes hold of him with her hand and, ever so slowly, places her thumb on his navel and begins the Push.

 

Inwards.

 

He gasps as the Pain makes its presence felt, and he attempts to recoil, but she has him firmly in her grip.

 

Now there is no turning back.

 

The music reaches heights of ecstasy and climax.

 

She speaks: ‘Oh, my Achilles, to feel the power of thy masculinity. Wherein lies the seed of thy lust? Feel how my breasts yearn for your lips. Cast your eye on the origin of your birth, explore and enter, and I will tell you where to go.’

 

The Journey—Hosanna in Excelsior

 

My Goddess imparts words without sounds, transmitted in strange, mystical language that infuse meaning, yet without context; her mesmerising smile embracing and claiming my entire being, until I am no longer conscious but for the sound of the music; hypnotised and enchanted am I by the divine gaze in her eyes which, by providing the catalyst that draws the spiritual energy from within as well as from without, fuses the union between our souls.

 

She speaks with her eyes thus: ‘See the warm milk dripping from my breasts. Sense the dryness of your lips and how you must lean forward to fill your hungry mouth.

 

‘Feel the mounting pressure, like sudden surges and unexpected outbursts of electrical shocks, as I probe deeper into the belly of your ancestors. Feel the tightness in your loin as you begin to ache for release from the sexual imperative. Feel the dull ache in your gut that is soon to claim your entire body.

 

‘Feel the Pain rising from its ashes, deep in the pit of your solar plexus. The searing Pain as my finger digs ever deeper into the crevice that is your navel. Look down at Venus, its savage blackness, its delicious, yet haunting reminder, and Remember.

 

‘Pain is Life. Pain is Truth. Pain is absolute.

 

‘Look at my arm as it, without warning, pierces the membrane and edges its way unrelentingly towards and into your gut. Feel its presence as it makes its way through your belly and coils, like a serpent, round the base of your spine.

 

‘Scream the Pain.

 

‘For now you feel your spine being pulled ever forward. You are no longer standing. ‘Your legs are beyond reach, your arms like lead.

 

‘Your legs are now leaving the ground, your whole body now supported by my arm.

 

‘You cannot stop looking into my eyes. Your whole body is racked with Pain. Every cell and fibre cries out for release, but I hold you totally, mind, body, soul. My arm inside your body, your body growing out of my arm. Your body is my arm. Two lives fused into one.

 

‘You are folding in two as my arm now finds a new direction, and reaches ever closer towards me; and all doubled up as you are, you cannot stop its irreversible pull into me.

 

‘See the ensemble writhing in agony on the floor, screaming in Primal Pain.

 

‘The music, deafening and absolute, filling the sky with the thunder and the beating of your heart.

 

‘Blood pumping and thumping and jumping from artery to vein.

 

‘Great gushes of air filling your lungs.

 

‘Panic and pandemonium filling your mind, conscious is being disconnected. You can no longer breathe. You are now two halves tightly joined at the centre. My hand pulling your entire body into me; my hand now moving up my uterus. But still the sucking and contraction, the mucous and the seminal fluid covering your tortured body, filling your mouth, blocking out the air, your neck totally frozen, your ears filled with my mucous; my blood drowning your eyes.

 

‘And the pressure on your spine, snapped in two. Scream the Pain.

 

‘But you cannot scream; you cannot open your mouth.

 

‘The darkness, it is absolute. But now you sense a great calm descending. When the mighty pressure dies away, limbs uncoil and float away, lungs fading into a nether world, no need to breathe.

 

Only now can you remember.’

 

The End and the Beginning

 

Within the warmth and the blackness, I am conscious of nothing but Sound. I am encapsulated in a tomb that knows no day, no night, no time. Sound alone penetrates my being. It is all that I am aware of. Deep sounds, soft sounds, low sounds, high sounds, loud sounds.

 

Rushing sounds, gurgling sounds. Beats. A voice.

 

Sounds that mould my sensibilities.

 

Sounds that creep inexorably into the fabric of my psyche, drawing me ever inward into a world that is beyond depth, beyond foundation.

 

A world that is without.

 

Sounds that are far, far away as if another mystery has faded, and I can no longer place its source.

 

I close my eyes and pierce the dark.

Midst twinkling lights I hail a passing quark.

Pray tell me, Sir, what is thy mission?

To warn those raunchy isotopes, Of cool but deadly fission.

 

What is thy source, and who are you?

Just one of some, we’re quite a few.

I take the future, make the past,

Can’t stop, it’s now. Must get there fast.

 

I reach for a photon, but he says, When?

I was here, there, now, then and again.

You can’t catch me, I’m never there.

I’m first, last, bounds and everywhere.

 

At this level we confound,

Make for mystery so profound.

For mighty Zeus, ‘twas one big joke

Till Earth, the mother Goddess, spoke.

 

Timeless world, silent signs,

Images wild, sense sublime,

Creating depth, creating void

Conception now is overjoyed.

 

For when we seek the great unknown,

Something strange inside gets grown.

It takes us to a world of sighs,

Locked inside, the first baby cries.

 

A life is now embroiled internal,

Waiting for a sign external.

Looking for routes to eternal.

Hoping for a way to discern all.

 

’Tis but a fleeting time on earth.

From Glory’s death to raging birth.

When next I float in cosmic womb.

I’ll touch your soul, well here goes:

 

Zoom!

 

A voice speaks: ‘Sweet child of my creation, sweet child of my blessing. Pierce the blackness, see only the light, the glorious shining light.

 

‘And behold. Out of the blackness, light. A new kind of energy. I am one cell, I am swaying. I am a motion. Little lights darting backwards and forwards. Dancing lights. Singing lights. Sweet vibrations. New sounds. Happy sounds.

 

‘Lights that talk to me.

 

‘Do I perceive a smile? My nucleus has waited for just such a moment.

 

‘My membrane preparing for new life, bracing herself for rampage from millions of potential suitors. Here they come, swimming gleefully towards me; I am awash with expectancy and desire.

 

‘Come to me, my little ones. Swish your little tails backward and forward, from side to side. May you be strong and raunchy.’

 

Loud breathing sounds. Faster sounds. Beating heart.

 

Nothing.

 

My spirit hovers. Before me lies my now-still body. My Goddess holds me in her arms, gently caressing my face with her hand. Moist tears rolling down her cheeks, the music soft and knowing.

 

My closing words: ‘Oh, sweet Goddess of mine, take my heart, my body, my soul. As I slowly pass from this life to my new beginning, let me gaze into your extraordinary eyes, let our souls once again be joined as one. Take me on your journey of ecstasy, splendour, rapture, the everlasting, the eternal cycle of life, when my death and new conception will once again be in your care. For time knows no bounds.’

 

Her reply: ‘For in that netherworld of which you are soon to be a part, you and I will temporarily lose contact, and you must find a different route to the one I had previously mapped out for you.

 

‘This is your destiny, your one degree of freedom. This permits you an alternative future, and this is why you can never remember the life or lives already lived. Should you lose your way, your destiny will become uncertain, and you will have to summon to your aid different forces and phenomena which lie outside my control.

 

‘They will take you on journeys that embrace the whole of time, that know neither the past, the present, nor the future; for on this journey, time ceases to be. For you are at the level of the photon, the single point of light which has an existence as powerful and as significant as your own, and which is here, there and everywhere.

 

‘For it carries the primal sound from which life truly springs. For the photon is the primal vibration, the conveyor of energy, the primal intelligence. The seed of the universe is contained in its very bosom, and within that seed, which knows neither time nor space, lies the miraculous. It is a universe which in itself has no boundaries, no limits, no size, no nothingness. It is the eye of consciousness, looking at you and me. It is first, last, bound and everywhere.’

 

Conclusion

 

My spirit reaches out, and when I at last open my eyes, I am lying in the arms of my mother, and she is gazing down at me with her big, beautiful brown eyes. I have grown from vibrations of sound and light, to cell, to foetus, to baby and who is now beginning my new life. And what secrets and mysteries do we leave behind as we grapple with the uncertainties and mysteries of this new life? For even though we may have trodden this route many, many times already, still the sense of learning and discovery stays with us always.

 

There are two Goddesses in our lives. She who gives us life, and She who is waiting to greet us at the far end and reroute us back to our first Goddess.

 

One is the Goddess of Life. The other is the Goddess of Death. Both become one at the primal level. At this level, there is no turning back. There is no compromise. There is no mystery. Only truth.

 

Only this time, instead of telling myself to join the library’s classical music record section, I will ask my headmaster to repeat his warning that I should not neglect the A level physics revision over the S level, as I was temporarily distracted when the wasp flew into the room.

 

You can’t buck the system.

 

The most you can do is tweak it.

 

Once in a while.