Welcome again to my teachings, if this is your first encounter with my work,you should start at the first post and then proceed at your own pace chronologically through the subsequent. Should you reach this point, you will be the first; accepting of course my acolyte who dutifully commits my thoughts to computer.
I am communicating the decades of wisdom I have acquired, through a recount of an investigation of a haunted house in the North of England, during the summer of 2010.
I illustrated the value of treating one’s visions as real in my last post. It takes a while to cultivate the appropriate relaxation of one’s faculties which allow impressions from beyond the Ahamkara (the ego) and the unconscious shadow it casts, to arise. It takes longer yet to be able to yield to such experiences without falling asleep or seeking to consciously intervene and colonise them. Now that I sufficiently illustrated the insight which can be derived from such states of mind, I hope my students are inspired to devote themselves to training their consciousness.
It was no coincidence that the trance-induced vision - my instinctive apprehension of a space gaping beneath the hill - was confirmed by the actions of Crass and the other young man in the cellar; whilst I sat in quiet absorption, they had shoved much of the bric-a-brac aside and a hole had been forced through the plasterboard and wood bordering the upper part of the sandstone cellar. Rather than revealing more sandstone, the young men had uncovered a cramped hole gaping in the rock, although not before the subtle powers of the enlightened had discovered it first!
Aquinas expressed some displeasure at this destruction in the cellar, however as it afforded him an opportunity to use his torch, he soon perked up and discovered that the hole was in fact the opening of a dank passage way that fell slightly down toward the churchyard wall. A rank smell greeted us from that orifice, issued on sluggish air which dragged itself forth, the exhalation of the under earth. All of us knew that one should enter that space, yet even my own heart quailed at the thought of such an act. The young men felt more strongly than I did and we returned to the living room to consider our next action.
Common-sense dictated that none such enter there; we also had evidence of subsidence under the graves. Common-sense however is bred into us to allow us to negotiate the dangers of physical and social life; where matters of the spirit are concerned then common-sense should be overridden by the clarion call of one’s true self. Had not the spirits gestured under the staircase, in the very direction of this tunnel? Was not the wind itself draw down it, toward the heart of the hill? And above all, when one’s soul quails, is one not in the very presence of the Almighty as It ferments new possibilities from the ashes of what once was?
Once I announced my attention to proceed into the fissure and see how far it led, a look of relief came over the face of Aquinas who claimed he would follow behind me. Nozz was eager to proceed too and suggested that a rope should be employed to secure one another lest the floor should give way. Obviously we had no rope amongst our belongings. There were probably all manner of E-Ropes or virtual ropes on the computers but nothing serviceable for our needs, so the beds were stripped and sheets tied together around us.
Each of the young men shook my hand before I hunched and clambered into the jagged fissure. I had to contort myself somewhat, the stone seeking to snare my skin; certainly the sheet-rope was caught, halting me and it was only with a deft twist and a determined thrust down, that I was able to drag myself into the hole. I had the torch in one hand and by its light the sparkle of the minerals was revealed in the rock along with smooth, sweeping indentations, suggesting that it was man-made. Despite the dryness of the sandstone, the dank smell intensified as I dragged myself along the constricted passage. Sharp, crumbing sand scraped at my skin, drawing prickles of blood, arousing a fear that the earth itself was sucking on me. Calling inwardly upon the fearsome Goddess, such feelings were suppressed and happily, after twenty feet or so, the roof rose and I was able to crawl on all fours. Behind I could hear Aquinas shoving his frame through the gap. I reckoned we were under the garden now. Thirty feet on again, still downward, and I passed under a crumbling, partially-collapsed section which I understood to be where the wall of the churchyard stood. Behind, the two now gasped and groaned and I felt the sheet pull taut. Ahead, the air stirred and caressed me. A draught must have found access via a crack or fissure ahead. Although my followers were mere feet behind and I could hear them whispering to each other as the sheet now dug into me, I paused, feeling strangely isolated, conscious of the vast quantity of rock above and around me, and the space below, into which the draught passed and from which it was exhaled back.
Aquinas and the other dragged themselves along rapidly until I could feel their hot breath issuing around me as the sheets loosened. We crawled onward, the way opening up now and as we passed roughly forty feet along the tunnel, I sensed a gap above me. I paused and tentatively shone the torch up, illuminating a tunnel a foot wide, crudely hacked into the rock. I leaned up to it, the light uncovering a dark mesh of roots and packed soil beyond the sandstone and I understood some way above, a grave stood on the surface of the earth. Aquinas demanded to know why I had stopped and replying, I felt a chill draught descend. It joined the general current and I sensed that a host of barely perceptible airs descended from other, similar monuments above. For a moment the air noticeably stilled and there was a faint rattling before me and the draught returned, drifting passed to ascend to the graves beyond.
‘There has to be an opening on the other side of the hill, there has to be,’ I heard Nozz saying to Aquinas but as my body complained, I pressed onwards, still on all fours, rather than reply. I concede it was a struggle to detach myself from the complaints in my shoulders, elbow and back. The tightening of the rope and the muttering behind indicated the others were becoming similarly reluctant to proceed.
A further ten, fifteen feet further on, past another cavity hacked into the roof, the passageway widened. It was still impossible to stand but there was now a broad space culminating in a pile of sandstone boulders. In the torch light their blackened, smoothed shapes resembled deformed heads heaped before me, grinning, winking and tusked. I stretched out a hand as the two pressed close by me. The draught was drawn into and expelled from beyond these rocks. The stagnant odour of the air was stronger here and I could tell that the other two, with no experience of the subcontinent found it deeply unnerving. Leaning inward in search of a wider space between the stones, my joints cracked and I almost felt my age. The nagging fatigue returned like a hand that would gather me and usher me back to the house with its comforts. For a moment I nearly fainted and I was only able to continue by picturing an orb of moonlight beyond the stones toward which I reached out a hand as if I would plunge into it.
Revived slightly, I felt hot in this space with the three of us pressed together and a sweat broke across my brow as Aquinas’ phone commenced a rhythmic beeping. Finding a gap between the stones, I reached my arm through. My fingers waved in cool air. With my other arm, I then passed the torch under so that its light glared through the heap of stones.
‘There’s a bigger space,’ I snapped at the two who protested against the dark and casting the sheet from me (what help would it have provided if the floor or roof gave?), I contorted my body into the gap.
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