Ecto-splatt

AFTER cruising the ethereal
regions unable to get a grip on my
Coffeehouse Culture reporter’s
notebook and pencil, the pull of
responsibility brings me twanging
back to my mortal frame with a jolt.
Such is the price of frame, as they
say. As always it takes me a
moment or two to adjust; twice I try
to walk through a door that on this
plane needed to be opened. But
bruises are the marks of the
seasoned astral traveller. As we
say in the ectoplasmic dimension:
‘It is all cruise and bruise.’
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Psychobabble

THE responsibilities that brought
me back so hurriedly, dear reader,
are those I owe to you. Striking forth
into the great unknown to bring you
the latest news and views from the
discorporate, the disembodied and
the spectral, we will be scouting the
psychic worlds, visiting dimensions
unvisited, tuning into the psycho-
babble of the spheres and generally
breaking new ground in worldly
journalism. I mean, where else can
you keep up to date with the worlds
unseen? OK, so I know that The
Sunday Sport is a pretty good bet
but, quite frankly, it is a case of
cruise or lose. And we cruise.
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Yogis: Blissed-
out & Blasted

WHILE I am contemplating the
prospects for this column, Mr Bliss
enters the room. I always expect
him to swing in through the window
on a liana with a rucksack full of
priceless oriental treasures on his
back but on this occasion he comes
in through the door carrying a Hema
carrier bag. Real life, ladies and
gentlemen, real life.
He has just returned from one of his
trips to India. This time it was for the
swami shooting season, I believe.
The beaters, I am told, taunt the
hiding swamis into demonstrating
their powers of levitation and as
they rise above the foliage, the
shooting party lets them have it.
Sounds like fun.
We discuss the amazing contrasts
one encounters in India. Mr Bliss
fears, however, that the ancient
Indian culture is under its final
attack. For over 4000 years India
has been one of the main
repositories of the truth about
consciousness. Throughout that
time the profound knowledge that
India possesses has given a
structure, shape and raison d’être
to the society it serves. And India
has been proud and protective of its
noble responsibility as the keeper
of what must be some of the most
important knowledge available in
the world. In the face of almost
insurmountable obstacles, it has
maintained the purity and
meaning of the knowledge as
India’s spiritual inheritance and its
legacy.
Suddenly, Mr Bliss tells me, all that
is starting to change. India has
stood up to the ravening hoards
but it cannot resist the inevitable
ingress of Western technology. It
used to be the case that every
Indian — rich or poor, Brahmin or
Untouchable — was imbued with
and empowered by the light of
India’s ancient knowledge of
spirituality. Increasingly, however,
Mr Bliss tells me, young Indians
look with contempt upon their
spiritual heritage.
While we both express our regret
that this culture should be in
decline, we are reassured by the fact
that only 30 or so years ago the
largest and purest section of this
knowledge together with a crucial
technique that made it all come
alive made the short hop from East
to West. Simultaneously, we wonder
if this is the Cosmos passing on
the knowledge so that it will be
kept alive. We believe it is.
Mr Bliss says he will be writing
Continued top of column 3
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all about the nature of this know-
ledge and how it made its way to
the West in future issues.
As I feel my eyes closing and my
astral body freeing itself, Mr Bliss
realises that I am off. As he
leaves I hear him tell me that he
bagged no swamis in India but
was, indeed, bagged by one
himself (again).
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Krishnas + Kebab

HIGH above the world like
Jonathan Livingstone Segal
(the amazing flying Jew), I gaze
down to see Mr Bliss leave the
office. As he walks down the
imposing steps of Vulture
Towers, he removes a half-
eaten kebab from his carrier
bag. He is about to take a
large bite when, from nowhere,
he is surrounded by chanting,
dancing Krishnas and he, too,
is off.
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The Library
of Babylon

IT is difficult knowing what is for
real and what is merely illusion
when you are travelling through
the unmapped regions of the
Cloud of Unknowing. The
answer, of course, is simple. In
many ways the astral is exactly
like the real world -- just a lot
cheaper and less tiring. As
those of us that spend any time
at all in the real world know,
reality is something we all make
up as we go along. And it is the
same in the slipstream of the
psyche. Except it is more
instantaneous.
Fancy a visit to Egypt? You've got
it. Immediately. Before you can
finish the thought Cairo comes
into view and with a swoop and
a dive the pyramids are below
laid out in all their ancient
splendour. Maybe you'd prefer
Kathmandu, Peking, Machu
Piccu, London, New York, Paris
(though maybe not) or Frisco.
All you have to do is think it and
. . . . Wham! There you are. But
that is not all.
As you may know up here time
does not exist. Yesterday, today,
tomorrow, they are all the same
thing. Everywhere is as access-
ible as everywhere else and so
is every time. Although on earth
we all view time as a sequential
phenomenon, it is not at all like
that. Time is actually made up of
an innumerable pile of 'nows' .
We only think of time as sequent-
ial because it is conceptually
confusing to think of it in any
other way. There is, however,
another quality to time that
makes it rather less confusing
in practice.
Time, you see, if it exists in any
real sense, is also relative to
both people and places. And that
is the key. Every destination can
be visited in any time period. Any
point in history is accessible. It
is amazing that we are not all
History Majors. The signing of
the Magna Carta, the Gettysburg
Address, the Trojan Wars the
sweep of the Mongol hoards, the
invention of mayonnaise -- all
these crucial world events can
be witnessed first hand. The
hang-up is, of course, that the
gulf between this world and that
is too wide for memory to survive.
The lack of accepted parameters
that might help in some small
way to define where and when
one is while surfing the ethernet
makes for the sort of confusion
that can only be discharged by
infection.
So, where was I? Oh, yes. So I
was thinking of a short story by
Jorge Luis Borges, the original
blind librarian (honest, it's true)
called The Library of Babylon or
something similar and suddenly
I was there. Where? That is it. I
don't know where. I had thought
that Borges wrote fiction. But I
was there. Confused? Well, now
you know how I felt.
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