Chapter Thirty-Nine
FISH
1
It took seven nights before Thebe finally spent a night in the house, but when she did, it was in Slater’s bed. Slater and Lucy became completely smitten by her. She was like a shining light, like an angel that had come and settled in their house.
It was early morning, Saturday, May 15, 2010. It had been eight days since Thebe’s arrival. They sat on high stools around the kitchen and sipped hot cups of coffee as the conversation rambled. The main topic was Lucy’s back and its miraculous improvement.
‘Mana is a most remarkable substance,’ professed Thebe. ‘I am still left in awe and amazement whenever I witness its healing properties.’
This morning was Lucy’s third morning of having her breakfast in the kitchen. She had been spending more and more time out of bed and becoming active. Thebe continued to prepare Lucy for her Fish initiation by talking about it at opportune moments. She knew that Lucy’s prior experience with psychedelics would now assist her with the Fish.
‘Pretty soon, Lucy, when we are close enough, we may do the Fish together. Your back can be made like it was never broken. It happens in the Fish.’
‘What, is it like an acid trip?’
‘It’s like an acid trip on top of an acid trip. You need a lot of control and absolute stillness of brain and body, and you need to practice the perfection of breath. That is my department. I will even breathe for both of us. Our breaths will be in perfect harmony. You will, in the main, be a passenger, although that won’t diminish the experience. Your brain will calm to stillness, so you won’t react. It’s kind of a numb feeling. You’ll start to slobber …’ Thebe began to laugh, then stopped herself. ‘Just kidding, nobody slobbers. I control the trip. You experience it, but I control it. You will feel me merge with you, through your back, and we will merge as one, and you will feel my control. You will feel your body straighten and the muscles in your spine tense. I will perceive your flow and … ah …’ Thebe searched for a simple explanation of the natural process but gave up in the end, finally opting for, ‘… ah … we will just let the motherflow do her thing and … ah … straighten out the kinks. The Fish lets it happen. … After, I thought we could go on a bit of a look-see.’
‘A look-see?’
2
May, 2010, was a vintage month of classic perfection on the points of Noosa. Slater and Thebe hadn’t missed a day of barrels since they met. Each day revolved around the go-outs, tides, winds and swells. They also revolved around Lucy’s meals, although she was beginning to cook up her own, and when told it was no trouble to prepare her meals for her, she still insisted that she was happy to do it herself because she was really enjoying it.
They had to pay attention to their diet because they were using up so much energy. So, most of the non-surfing time was spent congregating in the kitchen, either preparing, cooking, or cleaning up after meals.
They went surfing in Slater’s Kombi only once after they met. On all other occasions Slater suggested for them to go out in the boat. The ride out to Granite, on the average, took forty-five minutes, from jetty to anchor.
Slater had just recently become the proud owner of a new, Mercury, 420 Ocean Runner, rigid inflatable boat. He donated Adam’s old boat, which was a Quicksilver, to the Noosa surf club. The boat was powered by a 25hp, Yamaha two stroke, which was tiller steered. The Ocean Runner was a huge improvement on the Quicksilver because it had a fibreglass centre section, which was deeply veed, the V making it perfect for running across the often-choppy water of Laguna Bay. The boat also performed much better across the treacherous bar at the mouth of Noosa River. Slater had made it out of the river through over two-metre-high swells. He always reckoned,
‘You just gotta wait for a lull.’
They strapped their boards in the bow of the boat, one on top of the other. They untied from the jetty in Slater’s back yard and motored off at four knots around the canals, past all the Noosa mansions, to the lock. That part of the trip took about 15 minutes. They passed through the mechanical wonder of the lock and sped off down Noosa River towards the river-mouth. During lower tides he had to pay special attention to shallows and channels, particularly when crossing the bar. They then sped off across Laguna Bay on a straight trajectory to Granite Bay. He anchored off the break and they went surfing.
3
As it turned out, they had not missed a day together since they met. Slater especially loved the way she jumped into the shower with him every time he was in there.
‘It’s an old Rama custom to shower together,’ she explained.
‘It’s an old Earth custom to get horny,’ he replied.
Around about this point in time, Thebe began to introduce Slater to the art of creative telepathy. Even though Slater was a full telepath, he was completely untrained. Virtually all of his meagre telepathic ability was used for reception. He only had a rudimentary idea of how to transmit, as did Lucy. They had learned to think to each other mainly because they could naturally hear each other all the time, like an open phone line. They also realised that they could manipulate other people’s thoughts and behaviours because, fundamentally, they were telepaths and their subjects weren’t.
Creative telepathy involved the higher art of creating realities in one’s mind and holding them there. As one holds the reality in their focus, another telepath may experience it as well, if there is a mind thread established between them. But creative telepathy begins at the beginning, with the basics. Thebe began an early-morning, meditation session, every morning. She sat Slater on the floor of their room, facing the wall. She took a pencil and marked a small dot on the wall, at his eye level, then said,
‘Concentrate on that. I bet that I can distract you without touching you. Breathe deep and smooth. I will guide your breath from time to time. Now, make a bead on the dot and don’t let anything break it. If you break the bead, even for a second, even with one eye, it means that you have lost your concentration. Your opponent, whose task it is to be your telepathic distraction, becomes the winner of the game.’
The game was called the concentration game. It was played with highly-creative enthusiasm by all telepaths. Thebe’s favourite style of distraction was the curiosity killed the cat variety. ‘Get them wondering,’ she used to think.
Slater progressed quickly. At first, she got him all the time. She once used a distraction that her Rama friend, Ambriel, had shown her.
A clenched hand appeared just above Slater’s dot. He noticed it in his peripheral vision, but did not react. He remained zeroed in on the dot. Very gradually, the hand began to sprinkle fine black dust from within its clenched fingers. The black dust floated gently past Slater’s dot and down to the floor. He maintained a steady, constant bead on the dot as the black dust floated enticingly past it, down, past his peripheral vision, to the floor. Suddenly he became aware of a thought that was beginning to germinate in his brain. His discipline to not-think was part of the stillness, part of the focus and part of the bead. To think was to break the bead on the dot, because you were somewhere else. Suddenly he thought, ‘I wonder if the dust is settling on the floor?’ He looked down and saw the dust disappear into thin air.
That was one of her favourite victories and one of his favourite defeats.
Creative telepathy was a deeper, much more intimate form of communication between humans. It was not diminished by distance as it occurred in the mind. When humans became telepathic, a new type of society developed, one with fewer machines. Also, the humans became more serene because, as their telepathic ability emerged, their perception changed. It broadened and deepened. They especially began to sense the ‘vibes’ being emitted by all living things. To the telepath, the non-telepathic human was a hornet’s nest of thoughts and reactive emotions. It felt like standing next to a jackhammer, not a place to loiter for too long. For a telepath, being on a non-telepathic planet felt like being the only sighted person in a sea of grating, blind, deaf, mutes. 4
Seven weeks went by. They sat around on the veranda at night, overlooking the water, and smoked Thebe’s Mana. Lucy’s energy had returned and her pain was gone, and she only went to bed to go to sleep.
The three of them were like a close family now, and it felt to them like they had been together for much longer than they actually had. Thebe sensed that the time for the Fish was getting close. There was not much preparation, except for fasting from meat for three days.
‘You do not want to be doing Fish and digesting meat at the same time … trust me!’ Thebe’s comment came with a cautioning tone, which was borne out of prior experience.
The only other thing Thebe requested was that they do the Fish behind a locked door.
‘You don’t want anybody walking in on you when you’re on the Fish … seriously … you get pretty non-comprende if you know what I mean. You definitely don’t want anybody walking in on you when you’re like that.’
They sat on two, square, wooden kitchen-table chairs that they placed next to each other in one of the bedrooms. They locked the door behind them and sat on the chairs.
‘See how a whole bunch of alertness disperses from your brain as soon as you lock the door,’ remarked Thebe.
Lucy sat on the left chair, Thebe on the right. Thebe produced her small, crystalline container of Fish and a pair of fine, gold tweezers, and placed them on the coffee table in front of them. It was early morning and they were both alert and fully switched-on. Thebe then produced her solid-gold box of Mana and the little ceramic white pipe. She breathed in deeply, closed her eyes and whispered,
‘Feel the serenity.’
Lucy was already in passenger mode. She wasn’t going to do, or say, anything. Thebe opened the containers and picked up the pipe. She loaded some Mana into the pipe and quipped,
‘Welcome to Rama.’
She then picked up the tweezers and skilfully extracted a small grain of Fish, about the size of a small sugar crystal, and placed it in the centre of the pipe on top of the Mana. ‘May I light it for you?’
She gave Lucy the pipe and lit it for her. Lucy smoked the whole load in one drag and held it in for a while before she blew it back out.
‘It takes about five minutes to kick in. The whole Fish is done with the eyes closed, so close your eyes and don’t open them for any reason.’
Lucy closed her eyes into blackness. The room was quite dark as all the blinds were drawn.
‘Now sit up straight and square. Spread your knees apart a bit, about a foot and a bit, and find your physical balance with a really straight back. Breathe nice and steady, focus on your breath, no thoughts, nice and open, and trusting, and not apprehensive or curious. Open, receptive and still.’ She paused, then continued in a slightly more philosophical tone, ‘The cosmos, Lucy, is one infinite standing wave and an infinite number of standing waves, all at the same time.’ She paused for a moment as she perceived the Fish absorb into Lucy’s body, then she said, ‘I’m done talking. I am taking the Fish. I’ll see you in there.’
Both women sat next to each other, with straight backs and closed eyes, breathing still, full of faith and courage, and waited for the Fish to arrive. It took about five minutes. Lucy’s initial perception was all blackness all around, and perfect silence and stillness. Then she spotted, on one side of what to her all of a sudden appeared like a sphere of vision, a light, which began to glow a warm yellow. It just floated there in the blackness. And then she noticed the emergence of a faint light from within her as well. She felt her back stiffen and micro-adjust into ruler straightness. She felt her breath relax into a smooth, rhythmical flow, and she felt herself lock into no-thought mode with much more intensity than ever before.
As she began to glow a brighter orange, she began to lose sense of her physical body. As the light glowed brighter, her physical body left her. She now saw them as two tiny lights floating in a huge spherical blackness.
She became faintly aware of a presence gently approach from behind. The ageless question was asked once again.
‘Trust, or not trust?’
‘Trust.’
There was a merging, and there was a healing, and there was a journey, impossible to describe with words, which passed through oceans of expansive, multi-dimensional realities, interspersed by Mandelbrot-set, roller-coaster rides.
She became aware of the mind threads that had developed between her, Thebe and Slater, and the mind plane, the plane of telepathic communication, and some of the advanced things that could be done in there.
They were gone for six hours. As the Fish wore off, they gradually returned to the reality of the room. They continued to deep breathe for a couple more minutes then gradually opened their eyes.
‘Wow!’ was all Lucy could muster.
‘Back from the never-never,’ was Thebe’s first utterance.
Lucy’s healing from the Fish manifested itself, little by little, at its own natural pace. It took about three years to complete. Her understanding of reality rose to another level, as did her realization of what creative telepathy really meant. She had resolved to devote herself to the study and improvement of her own telepathic skills.
…….