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Interested parties:

The Agents; The Parties In Power; The Entertained; The Information Itself;

The Planet; The Radiant Void; The Experiencers

 

 

                    (1) The Information and the Experience

 

 

 The Information has always existed.  There has never been a time or place where The Information did not exist or was not available.  Its formulation and availability predates both the idea for, and creation of, The Planet.  When Individuals came to understand, through spontaneous activation of the memory function or some other inspirational channel, that The Information was not only available but also accessible through certain applications of the psyche, and pursued that perceived link, they arrived at The Radiant Void.  Perhaps not so much arrived as disappeared into.  Present but apparently invisible within The Radiant Void, the individuals, remembering but not currently perceiving their unique and discrete constitution, explored the new territory attempting to discover its nature, attributes and possible applications.

On returning to their original state from this apparently unfathomable otherness to complete the usual necessities of daily life they said, trying to convey the exaltation, ‘It’s all light, it’s empty but shining, it’s full of mysterious knowledge which gives immediate understanding, it’s a satisfaction beyond happiness’.

When asked by others who had not yet made the connection to convey the nature of this strange knowing, the Experiencers could not fit its exact nature to anything like a description.  Details were evasive; they would drift through the mind like clouds, giving satisfaction but resisting analysis.  Some asked if it were not as the great joy of joining with one’s mate or cradling one’s child.  Yes, like that but more, much more.

As the passage of days and nights became categorized as time and then history, and more individuals made the psychic connection, The Radiant Void, as it came to be known, took on greater and greater significance.  Individuals returned from their immersion renewed, refreshed and deeply satisfied.  The harsh realities of daily life, the predators, the winters, the disease, the sad separations of the living and the dead, seemed to lose their icy grip.  The Experiencers said it does not matter, these are trifles, this is all a fantasy, a nightmare, a conjuror’s trick.  The Radiant Void is our home, our succor, our contentment.  Worry not for your future or your fate, they said, be happy in this moment, surround your family and friends with love.

(2) The Radiant Void and Paradise

Many Experiencers discovered that the paradise world of the dead was but a stop on the way to The Radiant Void and relayed this to those who had yet to take the journey.  The statements were met with measures of disbelief and disenchantment.  Surely the paradises of the dead, which the sibyls and shamans had described so often and so appealingly, was the heaven of our dreams and the reward for earthly trials?  What solace could such a nothingness, however brightly shining, afford?

The Experiencers spoke of a bliss beyond compare, a transcendence of earthly cares and relationships, and a union with a loving intelligence so pervasive it seemed not only omniscient but omnipresent.  To many this sounded feckless and irresponsible, an abdication of responsibility and duty so profound its indulgence should be condemned rather than praised.  Surely the deities would not approve of such wanton playfulness, surely it would have to be paid for in some future existence.  The Experiencers, disappointed but unperturbed, gradually withdrew into small and inoffensive brotherhoods of the initiated, feeling that the mass of mankind, the toilers in deprivation and those who would be their lords and shepherds,  were as entitled to their beliefs and expectations, their families, tribes and demanding deities, as they were to The Radiant Void, and that peaceful co-existence was more to be desired than the further torment and dislocation which fervent evangelizing would inevitably bring.  The eruptions of enthusiasm driven by religion were surely bad enough, they reasoned.

   (3) The Parties In Power

As embodied life on the Planet continued season after season and the struggles for a safe and unhindered subsistence evolved into the structure of possessions and the armor of power seeking and retention, groups of the powerful and wealthy came into prominence, some claiming divine authority and others merely exercising it ruthlessly.  These became what is called the Party in Power, or the Parties In Power.  They all had the same aim, to maintain their hard won power base and inexorably extend their sphere of influence.  They had discovered that eternal truth:  Once you have possession of the hill, you are immediately required to invent the means of securing your tenancy.

To this end it was seen to be useful to adapt, and hopefully fuse, their claims of divine authority with the belief systems and deep needs of the masses, those toilers in deprivation who would become, with the pressure of time and push of innovation, in these days thought of as ours, The Entertained, so as protectors of the people and agents of the divine they gradually, with equal measures of guile and contempt, asserted and then reserved an irreversible and unassailable righteousness.   Growing fat on the inevitable profits and  pursuing war as an aggressive pleasure, which refreshed the dull stalemates of diplomacy and kept the masses conveniently enslaved to the baser passions, turned out to be their most prominent talents.

To these ends, within their sluggish and garrulous ranks they developed Agents of various talents.  The first type specialized in infiltrating the populace to gain knowledge of the contemporary currents of attitude and opinion, and report back to the Parties In Power, usually encased in stone of great thickness and height.  The second type were trained to master the belief structures involved in relating to the popular deities, that the spiritual needs of the masses be catered to without endangering the authority and privilege of the Parties In Power.

These agents soon became so identified with their various agendas that they quickly forgot their common source and purpose and shifted into the shady back-room-deal-and-power- sharing mode, so familiar to the modern citizen shaped by the insidious dramas of the headline. The cast and crew of a long time ago and once upon a time are the same shape-shifting stars of now.  Whether anguished or pleasured, we, whether Experiencer or Entertained, live in the everlasting theatre of the moment.

It was realized, early on, that The Information obtained and shared by The Experiencers could easily deflate the authoritative insistence of the Parties In Power, and so efforts were made to curtail any possible influence.  In modern terms we would say they were marginalized and then demonized.  This process, not surprisingly, effected a further retreat from the mainstream into the relative safety of the rural backwater and the stately home, areas where the experience could be quietly pursued, taught and shared, with nary a ripple of interference nor threat of inquisition.

(4) The Radiant Void and The Planet

One of the issues arising from these sharings was the exact nature of the relationship between The Radiant Void and The Planet itself, for The Experiencers could easily see, on their disembodied way, that The Planet existed as a spinning sphere in the dark firmament of space, despite the various reasonings of the more terrestrial thinkers so enamored of their polished guesswork, geometries and primitive equipment.  Much fine tuning of their innate perceptive equipment later, it emerged that the heavens of the dead lay around The Planet in concentric rings of light, narrow glowing bands which seem to immediately expand into fully fledged landscapes dotted with communities when entered by the curious explorer.

The Radiant Void appeared to be an extension of the outermost of these rings, its true state becoming apparent as the forms and details of the paradise worlds slowly thinned into a veil-like evanescence which itself slowly withered into cloudy wisps before beginning to shine in the recognized manner of The Radiant Void.

Was The Planet some kind of remarkable and mysterious protrusion of The Radiant Void, whose light perhaps first created the paradise worlds before then charting the course of the immovable matter of The Planet?  To some it seemed so, to others this particular unfolding was not so perceptively clear, and they were unwilling to commit to such a simple theory. The debates amongst the enlightened quietly simmered for decades, though the bliss of the actual experience softened the brunt of any potential brutalities.  That their pockets of privileged experiment be preserved in calm and secure privacy, The Experiencers were always prepared to agree to disagree.   Such is the charm of the chastened brotherhood.

(5) The Game Of Delusion

The Experiencers viewed the masses, those scavengers in the wastes of scarcity, with a dignified and restrained sadness, seeing how their lives were dictated by the scurrilous and ignoble demands of The Parties In Power, whose teams of agents exercised various reinforcing stratagems to enforce compliance.  Their view included the understanding that the deep fears of the people, those toilers in deprivation who would, in the days called ours, become The Entertained, were catered to in such an arrangement.  They felt protected by the various Parties In Power, protected and given a direction above the daily grind of tasks and labors.

Life, that familiar sway of days, nights and the search to elude suffering was seen by The Experiencers as an elaborate game managed by a series of elaborate deceptions, deceptions which both the toilers in deprivation and Parties In Power subscribed to.  War and peace, calmness and storm, plenty and famine, health and plague, deities and demons, all were aspects of the deep game of delusion, and all the players thus embroiled equally deluded and deserving of a silent and enduring compassion.

Let us not bind them with yet more beliefs and ordinances, it was agreed, let us instead bless them at a distance with our understanding, and perhaps a small trickle of the bliss we lap up so readily will be quietly transferred to them in their childish and argumentative ignorance.  Our position as elders of understanding in such a dark and pestilent existence entails this labor of love, such as the regular immersion in the Radiant Void seems to nourish and satisfy us.

(6)  Additions To The Ranks

Only occasionally did The Experiencers welcome additions to their ranks.  Individuals seeking exits from the maze of life’s mysteries, broken by suffering or boosted by  surfeits of plenty, would appear at their doors petitioning for answers and eventual admittance.  Vague notions of training developed, not the instructions and disciplines many expected, but gentle submersions in the silence and emptiness of a room minus any sign of activity.  With nothing to do and no anxiety to fill the passing hours, there was a chance to consume childish boredom and secure at least intuitive glimpses of The Radiant Void.

In these ventures the quietude of patience and the serenity of a sun were considered the most appropriate avenues of approach, although no rules, other than the common decencies of the citizen required elsewhere, were laid down.  Experiencers considered such admittance a gift they were divinely ordained to bestow.  Thus various underground brotherhoods, some employing admixtures of herbs and roots and some not, sprung up, silent in the face of the Parties In Power and their Agents, but continuously active under the radar of suspicion.

Knowing the realities of the world out there, neophytes were more than willing to negotiate the apparent rigors of a perceived training in grateful acceptance. The silence and inactivity seemed pointless, yet the reward of decades spent in such pursuit, glowing as it was on the faces of their elder brothers, was obvious enough.  Thus, despite the inevitable inroads of death and plague and war, the ranks of Experiencers throughout The Planet were slowly but inexorably swollen.

The Parties In Power, through their cleverly dispersed Agents, noted the possibility of such an increase, but were content to tolerate the situation provided that their power base and privilege remained unthreatened.  Maintaining status and safety amidst the cut-throat competitiveness reigning at the top of the power heap and rewarding themselves with banquets and baubles usually kept them absorbed in the froth.

Yet a complex relationship slowly sprung up between the Parties In Power and those who would have graduated from The Experiencers, had they sustained the necessary discipline and devotion to merge with the Radiant Void, but who instead tired of the snail-like progress and found it easier to scoop the partial rewards of their early development and apply them in the various difficulties of life, becoming conjurors, psychics, magicians, jesters, astrologers and adepts of the various crafts of cunning and connivance.   The powers they developed were intriguing and useful, both to the masses and the Parties In Power, and they moved inexorably into comfortable niches inaccessible to both the average man, still the deprived toiler, the Parties In Power and their Agents.  Although lacking possession of the deep and unassailable calm of the Experiencers, their various practices afforded them both a subtlety of perception and an unmatched access to all areas of society, matched only by the more refined providers of sexual services, that their resulting brazen assuredness almost matched the noble yet knowing posture of the Experiencers.

They had not swum in the light of the Radiant Void but they strongly suspected that its existence was several notches above that of a rumor, and more than likely superceeded the succor and freedom from calamity advertised by the various deities and their proponents.  Still, there was no guarantee on anything, most felt, and therefore it was wise to hedge your bets by quietly acknowledging the provocative myth of the Radiant Void while paying convincing lip service to whichever religion held sway, especially as many of their adherents would be paying you for the services not rendered by its functionaries.

The enlightenment implied in the graceful demeanor of the Experiencers was all very well, but how was one to make one’s living in the meantime?  One adapted to the needs of one’s society as best one could.  Not everyone was comfortable in a hermitage, milking goats and chasing chickens.  Some required sustenance of greater sophistication and raiment of a suitable refinement.  And who, exactly, was fit to judge their needs and desires?

(7) A Welcome Discovery

As time turned into centuries and came to be spoken of as history, and tribes blossomed into nations constructing their civilizations on the rubble of earlier conquering heroes, it became apparent that more and more guidance was being received from the realms of the dead.  Every religion, of course, had its prophets, sibyls and priesthoods who vied and connived for control of the masses, the purse strings, power bases and rare perfumes that their adherence provided. And although some of these, deluded by the enthusiasm of their sincerity, actually believed the threats and promises they regularly uttered, most acted out of prideful habit and vanity.

But some of the newer guidance seemed, as we now say, non-aligned, and dedicated not to the salvation of the fallen and the sinner but to the assistance of those following the threads through the maze of physical existence.  They offered assistance rather than pitfalls and categories to get caught in.  After some dedicated investigation it was seen that some Experiencers who had left the earth had, out of compassion for the ignorant of the planet, forsook their return to the Radiant Void, lodging instead in some corner of the heaven worlds remote from the afterlife empires of the religions.  The heaven worlds were indeed vast, they assured, there is plenty of room for all types of humanity, and even those cast into one or other version of the outer darkness can discover, after traversing the illusory landscapes of threat and denunciation, an eventual paradise equal to any other in which exiles like themselves can bask like the carefree natives of the tropics so often referred to in travelers’ tales.  This welcome discovery was, as we now say, a veritable get-out-of-jail-free card.

Of course, such liberating advice was frowned upon in many quarters.  Surely the sturdy foundations of the status quo would quiver quite visibly if glib reassurances of this nature were allowed free passage about society.  Devotion and discipline would be undermined and a subversive idleness would be the inevitable and disastrous result.  Striving based on fear was surely of greater utility and perhaps even of the essence in these all-important matters.  The common man could not be permitted such lackadaisical hours and weeks.  The high days and holy days had been instituted for just such a manageable purpose.  The prospect of further such languishing was just not acceptable.  Psychic channels of this sort were counter- productive to the natural and orderly progress of society under God’s eye, and would have to be properly restrained.

 

(8) The Mystic And The Occultist

 The Experiencers on earth sought to discern the wisdom behind this development.  Surely the Radiant Void was not worth compromising, it was said, surely the pleasures of paradise were nothing compared to the bliss of non-being, where all the burdens of actually being someone with the baggage of somethings could be dispensed with once and for all.  But, the Experiencers stopping over in the heavens argued, we would like many more of the needlessly suffering to experience the depersonalized bliss of the Radiant Void, and these heavens, though remote from their religious empires, is the best place from which to receive the curious, of which there seems to be an increasing amount.

As these debates unrolled between the Experiencers in heaven and on earth, it became known that these compassionate Experiencers had been influenced in their new direction by Experiencers from other planets in the Universe, adventurous souls who wished to experiment with the new and challenging conditions devised for Earth.  Their benign influence was matched, however, by a seemingly opposing brotherhood, who thrilled to the thought of earth dwellers in thrall to the type of fear, anger and superstition which kept them under the thumb of the Parties In Power while on earth and well inside the straitjacket of the religious empires in the heavens.  It was even hinted that elements of this opposing brotherhood were psychically nourished by the emanations of fear, anger and devout superstition rising up from the populace.  Indeed the existence of this rival brotherhood, with its selfish manipulative agenda and its unbridled lust for power and control, was all the more reason to be functioning in their unregarded corner of the heaven worlds, dispensing guidance to all thirsting seekers, both on earth and in heaven.

For many decades did these exchanges continue, such was the import of the revelations for Experiencers on earth, who had for so long considered the Radiant Void the only home worth returning to, and the only destination worthy of efficient transportation provision.  Now it seemed as if the Radiant Void was the cosmic womb from which all experience was born, and that Experiencers could not only be midwives to that understanding but also nurses and teachers to those so expertly wound in the bandages of experience that the original wounds had long since faded from view.

Some felt this new service provider status to be the natural outgrowth of their mystic revelation, while others worried that its divine potential would be all-too-easily diverted into the rituals and dogmas, which would soon coalesce around its leading proponents, whose initial humility and devotion, would soon swell into status games and self-promotion.

Teachers, they argued, needed students, and Experiencers, in their knowing, should need nothing at all. Experiencers shared their understanding, they did not teach.  There was a difference. There was, in fact, little to learn other than surrender to the unknown, a willingness to absorb the nothingness which knew no bounds.

One had to only to put aside one’s sense of being unique and separate, one’s precious identity, and merge with the light of the Radiant Void.  The Experience was not an accumulation of techniques aimed at eventual mastery, it was gradual letting go, – of ego, assumptions, beliefs and what we now call self-cherishing.  This letting go could not be taught, it could merely be given uncluttered space in which to happen.

The guidance from the heaven based Experiencers suggested that the teaching was necessary, that many souls would never rise to the understandings of the Radiant Void unless pointed firmly in its direction, so enraptured were they by the belief systems of the various Parties In Power, endlessly cycling between the earth and the heaven worlds, the revolving meat wheel as they termed it, that the potential ego problems of the teaching role were well worth the risk.

As might be expected this divergence mutated in schools of thought, the original Experiencers who would not publicly be seen as teachers and would only allow their demeanor to reveal their source in bliss, the Mystics as they allowed themselves to be called, and the new breed, Experiencers who heeded the call from the heaven worlds and became teachers, and soon fell in to a category of Occultist, one who brings the hidden into the open.

(9) The Status Quo

The Agents and the Parties in Power viewed both these developments with suspicion, fearing that any move into the public realm by Experiencers could not possibly bode well for the status quo.  It was decided, after the customary backroom deliberations and shady diplomacy, that these teaching Experiencers and their would-be pupils would henceforth be cast as demons who must needs be destroyed, so that the system already so admirably and comfortably designed might continue undisturbed.

Various inquisitions fell into place following this decision, and a number of persuasions and coercions were devised with varying degrees of success.  Accusations were uttered, soldiers dispatched and courts convened, with little in the way of dignity and honor being recognized in the process.  The guilty were the accused and no defense was accepted.  Those who might rail against such summary prosecutions and judgments were themselves tarnished with the same brush.  The garish theatre of inquisition so familiar to us all.

Many of the Experiencers, accustomed to such vindictive action, quickly shifted into exile or melted into anonymity.  Fortunately for those caught off guard, the resources of the Parties In Power and their Agents were regularly sapped by their almost continuous vicious struggles with each other, and they came to see that the lust of those inflamed with righteousness, though deplorable and destructive to the common health of societies, was curiously, and lastingly, in their favor.

(10) The Planet And The Information

The Planet and the Information Itself were not consulted on these matters, at least not by those entangled in the imbroglio, and continued their existence as always, caring not, cause and effect smoothly entwined with function and result.  Some modern thinkers would say The Planet is a self-regulating sentient system and can be effectively termed Gaia, while others of the same adventurous ilk, would confidently confirm that the Information Itself is intrinsic to our human consciousness, though cleverly hidden, entwining itself in the strands of our DNA.  In this they are essentially accurate, although it should always be recognized that encasing the truth in contemporary metaphors is a universal habit spanning all of cultured history, and as such suffers from the usual transience intrinsic to such processes.  The truth behind appearances never changes and is always accessible to the humbly determined, it is merely the conceptualizing and describing which varies through the epochs.

What Individuals actually do with their relationship to The Planet and The Information, if and when they come to understand its immanence, is, of course, up their relative appropriation of the free will designed into the system.  Yet regardless of the path they impose on the accretion of enigmas we call the mystery of existence, they all come to discover that The Information leads only to its source in the Radiant Void, where everything, entity and experience lives out an unseen potential, amusing its lack of self while awaiting that mysterious impulse which signals the opening of the path to birth.

That brilliant Light, they see, is filled to overflowing with tiny lights, just as the sea is composed of trillions of invisible droplets.  And, as they themselves perceive this reality, they are also a tiny light, no more and no less than all the others.  And that each tiny light holds within it, the complete understanding of the Radiant Void and its infinite potential.  A holographic understanding, as we now say. They know that where they are, seemingly lost in a sea of light, is the home of understanding, that it is actually omniscience and omnipresence, and that no adventure in the created worlds of the Planet and its spheroidal colleagues can match its magnificence, and that although tiny lights have and will always venture forth to experience the limitation and challenge of multitudinous forms, the ten thousand things, as they are often termed, they will never actually be any more than the tiny lights they are now.

All the adversaries who model for our news as they vie for momentary dominance in the tides of commerce, war, and celebrityitis, …The Agents, The Parties in Power, The Experiencers, and even The Entertained, those deprived toilers now drowned in toys, are all dancing around their tiny lights, cheerfully ignoring the Information while they chase experience and wonder about God and the meaning of it all.  However long they linger in the seductive dream of time, seconds, centuries, minutes or millennia, they shall all come across some cache of The Information and, assuming it to be unique rather than universal, will be lead back, thrilled to be thus selected by a mysterious fate, through the various allures and repulsions of created worlds, to The Radiant Void, where absolutely nothing has happened since they faked their disappearance by seeming to depart.

Once there they will know, as they have always known, beneath the folds of their fears and desires, that there is nowhere to go, nowhere to come from, nowhere to be, no one to do this coming and going, nothing to know or forget, no secrets to penetrate and expose, no here nor there, no who or why, no need to do or be, and that there is only the now, with all its lovely illusions.