Just because these experiences take place within the realm of the imaginable doesn’t mean they’re any less real than those of the material world. They appear less real only because the truth transcends all dualities such as inner and outer or real and imaginary. In the end, they are no more absurd than our own perceptions of reality to which, of course, they only allude. In that sense, they’re much closer to the truth than we realize, for isn’t it the unstated goal of the experiences of both worlds, to assist us in finding the imaginable hidden within the real, and vice versa, the real hidden within the imaginable?

“Until you forgive yourself,“ I replied, “you shall carry the past with you, like a great millstone around your neck.“

“How can I ever forgive my self?“ he begged to know.

“Can’t you see the good that’s come out of telling me these tales?“ I asked.

“No!“ he asserted.

“Don’t you see how you’ve helped me make up my mind to never go back to Nam again?“ I questioned him further. “Don’t you see how many other souls you might save from the same terrible fate, by telling them your story? Don’t you see this as the penance you must accept if you wish to ever find forgiveness?“

“How the hell will that help me forget the f***in’ nightmare?“ he asked, out of his frustration with himself for ever having gotten involved in the goddamn war, in the first place.

“It’ll only take away the sting of guilt or torment of the nightmare,“ I replied. “The images will stay behind as a reminder to share these grisly tales with others that they might avoid the same cruel fate. For ’whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’“ Mt. 16:19.

“I don’t understand,“ he exclaimed.

“In other words,“ I explained, “man is bound by the laws of Nature to live out the images of his imagination in one of two ways, by either mimicking them like an animal, or giving body to the meaning of them like the human being he is slowly becoming. In choosing to live like an animal, he binds the truths of his imagination to the images of the earth, until he can free them from their imprisonment in both the real and the imaginary—the latter being but a mirror image of the former.“

“How the hell can I do that?“ he asked, out of his disbelief in the powers of the imagination.

“There is only one way I know, to free the truth from Nature,“ I assured him, “and that is by returning to the womb of the imagination.“

“You speak of the imagination,“ he interrupted, “as if it were some place I could walk to, like the back of this plane.“

“Indeed I do,“ I exclaimed, “for it is that space between wakefulness ’n’ sleep—known as the dream state—we so easily slip into, whenever we relax the mind long enough to quell its fear of fantasy—a fear we normally overcome by racing off, like Pan, after every fleeting nymph or thought that pops into our heads.“

“I don’t dream,“ he insisted.

“You’re dreamin’ constantly,“ I added, “even now as I speak. Only you’re not aware of your dreams because you’re listenin’ to mine.“

“How can I become more aware of my dreams?“ he asked.

“By listening to the other within you,“ I replied, “just as you have listened to me.“

“I can’t do that,“ he insisted.

“Only because you’re afraid you’ll hear your Self speak to you,“ I added. “Didn’t you see the Great Soul of Mankind as the life of your friend left his body, tearing a hole in the very fabric of life—allowing you to see beyond the here ’n’ now?“

“That was a different situation,“ he insisted, “triggered by the death of my friend.“

“It was triggered by something you’d seen but could not comprehend. Isn’t that right?“ I asked.

“Yeah, but only because the son of a bitch had gone off ’n’ left me when I needed him most,“ he confessed.

“Then forgive him,“ I insisted.

“I already have,“ he reluctantly admitted.

“Have you forgiven those who have taken his life and the lives of all your other buddies as well?“ I inquired further.

“No, goddamn it, I haven’t!“ he shouted back.

“If you wish to find forgiveness for yourself,“ I persisted, “you must first forgive your enemies.“

“How can I ever forgive ’em for what they’ve done?“ he asked.

“Haven’t you committed the same crimes they have?“ I fired back. Finding it hard to admit that he had, he turned to look out the porthole where, in a flash of light that’d just pierced the clouds, he found the true meaning of forgiveness.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who’ve trespassed against us,“ he muttered under his breath.

“I understand,“ he blurted out as he turned from the porthole, beaming with delight. “To find forgiveness, I had only to find it in my heart to forgive those who had wronged me in the same way I had wronged them. When I did, I found it there, just as you had said I would.“

“I’m free,“ he exclaimed, “free at last.“

“How can I ever repay you?“ he begged to know.

“You already have,“ I replied, “more than you’ll ever know.“

“O thank you, Father,“ I thought I heard him say, “thank you for forgiving me of my sins.“

“Go now,“ I thought I heard the Father say in response, “and commit these crimes against humanity, no more.“

“Saw who?“ I blurted out as I was pulled back into his world at the mere mention of her.

“As I held him close,“ the corporal went on to say of his buddy before he died, “I was taken aback when he reached out to his mother instead. Looking up, I saw this woman standin’ there, all decked out in the magnificence of the earth’s mantle. As the spirit of my friend left his body, I saw her pick up a little boy who’d fallen while playing soldiers with the other boys in the neighborhood. Dumbfounded, I watched the little boy grow younger and younger, till he was but a mere babe in her arms, whereupon she disappeared, I was made to believe, to deposit this new life in the womb of a mother close by, where it’d be given another chance to break the endless cycle of livin’ ’n’ dyin’ like an animal, only this time, from a very different point of view.“

“So that’s what purgatory looks like,“ I exclaimed.

“Hell is what I’ve been through,“ my young friend assured me.

“And more,“ I proclaimed, “for it is the life of an animal which lives in total darkness, oblivious of anything but its own burning desire to survive at all costs, and if it can’t, to at least die fighting.“

“Then what is heaven?“ asked my young friend.

“Why it’s the living out of Who We Really Are,“ I replied, “the only life that frees the soul from having to make the eternal return to this purgatory, we call life on earth, to purge itself of any lingering attachments to its own animalistic past.

“Who’re our children,“ I went on to say, “but little reincarnations of those aspects of ourselves that have yet to be born or given form. They are the result of our drivenness to give body to soul, that she might give flesh to the unknown. How often are they bred merely to propagate the Neanderthal within us, or worse yet, some throwback to the age of the dinosaurs, like Hitler or Mussolini.

“In our failure to live out Who We Really Are,“ I concluded, “we rob the soul of life eternal, forcing her to return, again ’n’ again, to the physical realm, that we might one day free her from the chains of Instinct or strings of failed attempts—or past lives—to attain immortality without her. If we are to build a vehicle capable of transporting us from this world, before Instinct has destroyed this one, which he most surely will, just as he did the body of Christ, we will have to live up to our fullest potential.

“And by vehicle, I refer not to some technological tour de force by man, but rather to a psychological mode of transcending the meanness of our animalistic materialism, for the void that separates us from Who We Really Are is no deeper than the inner space to which the outer reality alludes. To overcome the immensity of this illusion, I need only walk backstage, to see who’s pulling the strings. Only I see us going nowhere, unless we start giving the contents of our imaginations the reality they so deserve, for no one may leave this purgatory until he has died to his animal past, been born again or evolved into his own full humanity.“

“Now the whole group“ of this new race of men “were of one heart ’n’ soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, for everything they owned was held in common. With great power“ did those, who had become Who They Really Are, give testimony to the rise ’n’ fall of the first born of this new species of man, “and great grace was upon them. There was not a needy person amongst them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them, brought the proceeds of what was sold, and laid it at the feet“ of the first born of this new species, from whence “it was distributed to each as any had need.“ Acts 4:32–35.]

“…Havin’ regained my senses,“ added the corporal, “I realized I was gonna survive this hellhole, for no other reason than to tell my story. From then on, I shot at imaginary enemies. For I would much rather have died than take the life of yet another human being…“

[As he recalled an incident in which one of his buddies was blown to kingdom come in an attempt to rescue a screaming baby that’d been booby-trapped prior to their having gunned down its entire family, which now lay dead all around it inside a hut his companions were preparing to torch, my ears were filled, once again, with the shrill sound of a woman in labor, screaming out from somewhere across the void.

Just then I saw two eyes pierce the darkness that envelops the mind. Through them I could see that all I had to offer this troubled troubadour were the insights they had given me, over the past year, to help ease the pain the incomprehensible causes one to experience in its prodding of the ignorant to become conscious of themselves.

With that, I turned just in time to see a fountain of lava burst forth from a fissure in the ground swell that had created this little bump in the road. Having regurgitated the half-digested body of a red ’n’ white frog—or about half the story of the struggle between the upper and lower echelons of my being—I witnessed the birth of something far greater than I could ever have imagined, a work of art of indescribable beauty.]

“But I never got a good look at the true nature of the beast till some time later when in the heat of a skirmish with Viet Cong guerrillas, this massive gook pops up out of nowhere, with an AK-47 in both hands, and starts mowin’ us down like flies. Pinned down by the fire of both friend and foe alike, I lay there under the cover of a thicket of tall grass, like a dead man, waitin’ for the big ape to come chargin’ by, that I might rise up with a fixed bayonet and drop the motherf***er fore he kicked our sorry asses. Havin’ expended my last clip, I had no other choice but to play possum and hope like hell he’d fall for it. As the few remaining members of my platoon riddled the f***in’ ape with round after round, I couldn’t imagine what was keepin’ the motherf***er goin’, till I looked up and saw that shit-eatin’ grin on his face, at which point he toppled over on me and died. Drenched in blood, I struggled to get out from underneath him so I could see what manner of man or beast this was. Confronted by that same shit-eatin’ grin, when I rolled him over, I knew this was no mere mortal lyin’ here, but rather the very beast that inhabited my own body. As I came to the realization that too many people have died at the hands of the motherf***er, I grew to hate the beast even more…“

“Who’re you?“ I asked as I bent down on my knee and bowed my head in response to some inner urging to pay my respects to the remains of this aspect of the Original Being.

“I am She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Great and Holy Spirit you seek—the Eve of your manhood,“ She unabashedly proclaimed.

“How might I best serve thee, O Wisdom?“ I begged to know.

“You must put an end to this abuse of my body by you and your fellow countrymen,“ She demanded.

“And what abuse is that?“ I asked as if I didn’t already know.

“Look!“ She commanded as She opened Her mantle to reveal the most hideous scenes of man’s perversion of paradise, I’d ever seen.

Passing out, I came to, back on the airship, just in time to pick up where I’d left my companion, amidst the more sordid details of his life.]

“…Seein’ ’em get their hands and feet, or arms and legs, blown to smithereens after havin’ touched off a booby trap or land mine, I’d crawl up to their sides to comfort them as any mother would an injured child. As I washed their faces clean with my own tears, I’d watch the life, I held onto so dearly, ebb with the blood that flowed from their broken bodies to mingle, once again, with the mother of us all. O how often I heard ’em cry out to their mothers as I hugged and rocked their tremblin’ bodies back to sleep, only this time, forever.

“And O how often did I, like the king’s men of old, labor in vain to put these poor eggs back together—to stuff their bloody guts back into their bodies before they ceased to exist as men and assumed some lower or higher form of life dependin’ on how they’d lived out this one…“

[As I honed in on the shrill sound of a woman in labor screaming out to me from across the void, I recognized the woman’s voice as that of my soul. At the crowning moment, I lost sight of the birth of this little objection of mine to military service, as our plane hit a pocket of turbulence and dropped me from the vision.]

Having managed to survive the killing fields of Vietnam without physical injury to himself, a tour de force in and of itself, had he nonetheless incurred the deeper wounds of a house divided against itself. Tormented by his participation in the blood bath that war is, he suffered the same inability to leave behind the memories of the past year as they welled up in the tears that filled his eyes and burst forth like the long-awaited thundershower that can no longer hold back from clearing the air of the dirt around which its droplets have formed. Sequestered from the plane’s other passengers, by the sheer noise of its engines, did my friend open up to me like a repentant sinner in a confessional.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,“ I thought I heard him say as he began to unload the memories that haunt those who’ve been forced, against the better judgment of their souls, to commit themselves to murdering their fellow man, in the name of the god and country or warlord back home in whose service they have enlisted.

“I don’t know how you felt,“ he confessed, “when you got back from Nam. But I was so goddamn glad to have gotten my ass outta there in one piece, that no sooner had I hit land than I fell down on my hands ’n’ knees and kissed the earth as if she were my own mother. And I woulda hugged her too, had I been able to get my arms around her. For I felt as if I’d freed myself of the monster I’d created over in Nam, till this Frankenstein came creeping back to haunt me.

“For almost a year,“ he went on to say between fits of sobbing and outrage, “I’ve been forced to live like an animal, slitherin’ about the jungles of Southeast Asia on its belly, never knowin’, from one moment to the next, whether or not it’d survive the hunt. As both the hunter and the hunted I played the deadliest game of all, the survival of the fittest, killing other human beings—even women and children—fore they killed me. Like a beast, I trusted no one but the members of my pack and the gods back home, for whom I fought, that they might retain their dominion over the monsters they’d made outta me ’n’ my cohorts in crime.

“Havin’ made a pact with the devil, early on, I traded lives with the other members of my pack, that I too might live as long as the gods back home. For unlike the Auddie Murphys and John Waynes, I held back to let the daredevils take the fall. As the face of my platoon changed, with the death of one after another of these poor fools, I imagined I was next in line to die. I musta died a thousand deaths fore I was released from this firestorm of bullets, for every time I watched one of these unsung heroes die, oddly enough, I saw a part of myself die…“

“What if somethin’ would happen while I’m gone!“ I declared. “I could never forgive my self for havin’ left ya here alone.“

“I’ll be fine,“ she insisted, “whether you’re here or not, for you have a much more important task to perform, which ultimately concerns the survival of both me and the child, if you fail to find the key to the Gates of Eden, or your own happiness, before we fade away.“

“Whata ya mean?“ I shot back.

“I mean this,“ she went on to say, “that we won’t be here when you return, if you fail to make the connection between your world and ours, or give us the reality we so desperately need to survive.“

“I still don’t understand,“ I insisted.

“Unless you give us the means,“ she reiterated, “or body to live out Who You Really Are, we’ll be driven underground by Instinct, to operate through unconscious channels from the animal side of your nature, until conditions in your life become more conducive to our gaining the strength we would need to rise up again, into conscious view. For we can no longer allow you to sit idly by while we entertain you with fantasies. Though you have made great strides in participating more fully in your fantasies, we feel it is about time you make the same concerted effort to live them out, one way or the other, in real life.

“The choice is yours,“ she concluded, “either you work with us willingly or unwillingly. If you fail to unearth the vital link with reality, we so desperately need to survive, upon your return, you will simply find that neither I nor the child have survived the birth.“

With that did she disappear, leaving me in a real stew.

“What a wonderful way to begin a vacation,“ I thought as I embarked upon the single most important archaeological dig of my life.

With Marty having pulled duty and Greg ’n’ the others indulging in the ever increasing use of marijuana, I found my self wandering alone down Waikiki Beach on New Years Eve. And as I trudged through the sand with the weight of the world on my shoulders—the sound of the surf pounding in one ear, and auld lang syne, in the other—I freaked out when I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world. Grabbing hold of my ears, to drown out the din of death as I ran down the beach, deserted now, by even the sun, I screamed out in my anguish over the darkness that’d befallen me. Blinded by my own salty tears, I lost my footing in the loose sand and tumbled over onto my back, where I lay until I cried my self to sleep.

Awakened, shortly thereafter, by the sweet caresses of my soul, I knew of no other who could ease the pain of a shipwrecked sailor, marooned on the isle of his Self, than she who, like Penelope, had awaited the return of her other half from his twenty year odyssey. Had I known then, what I do now, that this sweet dove was she whom I really sought, I would never have turned my attention back to the home of my youth and the flame that burned there brightly, in the likes of Mary—to a paradise lost, in other words. For I could not let go of her long enough to see that she was but the doorway to a deeper reality, that life is but a journey up a mountain of images that must be washed to the sea before one can safely rest behind the Gates of Eden. Nonetheless I wanted to go back home where, oddly enough, lay the key to the long sought-after answer to the question of why I wanted out of the Navy so badly.

With the passing of one of the most horrendously difficult and yet incredibly wonderful years of my life, I flipped that imaginary coin in my head, which came up tails again. Reminding me of sails, I made it back to the ship.

Having taken me some twenty odd years to come to a fuller understanding of the language of my body, I shuddered at the thought of the cataclysmic events in my life which’d precipitated my return to the isle of my Self for the healing I needed. Had I not been hardened by the constant threat of a volcanic eruption whenever the tension increased along the fault line between the upper ’n’ lower echelons of my being, I would never have withstood the shake-up that finally broke the backbone of my resistance to the new way of life the Creator and his beloved Holy Spirit were trying to create for me. Once I got my life back in order though, I sincerely hoped, like Job, I would be healed of any affliction or impairment I had suffered in the physical realm as a result of all the years of wear and tear such an inappropriate life’d had upon my body.

Alas, the rightful heir, or God-man, had not yet assumed the throne upon which Instinct still sat in his evil reign over the kingdom that was once his, for too much of Who I Really Am still remained hidden from me, in the outback of my being.

O how I longed for the King’s return—the return of Order, Consciousness and Love to this humble abode of mine.