There, I dreamed that the Lord of the skies had hurled such a great wind against the sea, she gave birth to a storm, so terrible, it threatened to break up the ship. Abandoning the rest of the crew to their own fear, as they plea-bargained with their gods for a little more time in which to distance themselves from the sins of the past, I fell into a state of suspended animation, until I was awakened by the Captain, himself.

“What’re you doin’ asleep?“ he asked. “Get up ’n’ call on your god! Perhaps he’ll spare us so that we do not perish.“ Jon. 1:6.

When the crew cast lots to determine on whose account this calamity had befallen them, the lot fell to me.

“Tell us why this calamity has come upon us,“ they demanded of me. “What’s your occupation? Where do you come from? What’s your country? And of what people are you?“ Jon. 1:8.

“I am a new breed of man called Homo Sapiens,“ I replied, “the final act of a divine drama that has played itself out over millions of years, to help you get a better sense of the Original Being. Unlike previous species of man, such as Homo Neanderthalensis, I bring together the great wisdom of the body and the vast intelligence of that void, you call the mind, for within me are joined heaven and earth in one very unique and harmonious whole. While heaven is my country, like an only begotten son do I strive to love the earth, from whence I’ve come, just as I do my father in heaven. Only I have yet to find she who’s missing—the life I’m meant to lead—my link to heaven in other words.“

At that, they grew even more afraid. “What is it you’ve done,“ (Jon. 1:10) they asked? For they knew that I had failed, as a sentinel for Uncle Sam, to warn them when I received word from the Lord concerning their condition or loss of soul.

“What shall we do,“ they asked, “that the sea may quiet down?“ For the sea was growing more ’n’ more tempestuous. Jon. 1:11.

“Pick me up ’n’ throw me into the sea,“ I replied. “Then the sea’ll quiet down for you, for I know it’s because of me that this great storm has come upon you.“ Jon. 1:12.

Instead, they tried to stabilize the ship, enough, so that she could be kept from capsizing and safely steered to calmer waters.

The sea only grew angrier with them.

In a last ditch effort to save themselves, they cried out, “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.“ Jon. 1: 14–15. And so did they throw me overboard.

Having gotten her man back, did the sea cease to rage.

Fearing the Lord even more, did they sacrifice their animal natures to the Lord and vow to live Neanderthal lives no more.

Swallowed up by a great gray whale, like a single spermatozoon by an egg, was I spared some semblance of a life. Forced to give body to one whale of an idea, did I struggle, for three days ’n’ three nights, to free my self from this notion before it absorbed me and spewed out upon dry land, a sentinel for the house of Uncle Sam.

“Get up,“ commanded the One Voice, “return to Honolulu and proclaim what I tell you.“

Having just had one helluva dream, did I awaken to my true calling in life.

A new breed of men, the reservists differed from the low life Neanderthals as much as did the Cro-Magnon men of prehistoric times. A more intelligent and sensitive lot, they hated, with a passion, their indentured servitude to a lower form of life, and rued the day they had ever gotten involved in this country’s military solution to the problems in Vietnam. However much they indulged in grass, hashish, or acid to escape the hellish conflict within themselves over their participation in this war, they nevertheless remained faithful to the wives and fiancées they’d left behind. In spite of their disaffection with the Navy and the war in Vietnam, they still performed their tasks, only to the beat of the rock music to which they constantly subjected themselves, to drown out the screaming of their souls in righteous indignation over their complicity. More often than not were they standing up for what they believed, and at least confronting the lifers before they would agree to carry out those commands that offended their sensibilities in any way. And because I seemed to speak to something hidden deep within their beings, they unconsciously adopted me as the rebel for their cause, the white knight who might just free them from themselves.

The lifers, on the other hand, feared this new breed of man, who dared to stand up to them and question their authority. Like outcasts, the lifers had flocked to the Great Gray Whore, only because she appeared to give them what this society otherwise withheld from them—a reason for living. Driven to serve the soul of this sick society, these patriots of the Great Gray Whore searched in vain through the brothels of the Far East for her ever-illusive form. In their quest for the Great Prostitute, the genie who could fulfill their every desire, they turned to the Spirits of Alcohol. Instead of releasing the genie bottled up within them, they aroused, from his slumber, the ogre who ruled over her, the instinctive beast hidden within us all—Hyde. Because Hyde gave them what they wanted, they grew fond of the horny old devil. Then, one day, they ran into their own shadowy perception of the white knight, hiding out within a lowly peon named Drury, and grew fearful; for somewhere, in the back pages of their minds, they recalled a tale from the days of old, in which the white knight slays the beast.

And in the middle stood the majority of the crew who, unlike the lifers, still had some semblance of a conscience to which the white knight could appeal. Caught up in this tug-of-war for their souls, when push came to shove, they often fell prey to the ways of their animal natures. In their inability to interpret the language of the body, they easily lost their heads when confronted by the rawness of their desires. With their heads in the clouds, and their feet mired down in clay, were they driven to live like the gods, one day, and the beasts of the earth, the next; for this, they believed, was the fate of those who lived in the middle.

While neither lifers nor reservists would have much to do with each other, those who lived in the middle associated freely with the members of both factions. By at least keeping open the paths of communication between the two sides, they seemed to temper some of the hostility each side felt for the other. For now, they were the glue that tenuously held the crew together.

As the supplies in her hold dwindled with each passing day, I ventured out into this harsh and desolate wasteland, farther ’n’ farther, in search of food for thought and the waters of life. But I’d only let my mule go so far, since I feared losing touch with this last bit of reality onto which I still clung. In fact, I unwittingly held such a tight rein on my mule, that I succeeded in doing nothing more than going in circles around my present position. After all, how could I put my trust in an animal nature that has so often led me astray? Deserted by every aspect of myself but my animal nature, was I forced to rely on my own ass—to trust in my own basic instincts. Unaware that I had let loose of the tight grip I’d held on the reins, I finally got up off my ass, one day, to go off in search of soul, no matter where my ass might lead me.

Unable to keep up with my own ass, this instinct which seemed to be leading me ever more deeply into the hinterland of my being, I suddenly realized that I had lost sight of my guide. In a panic, I raced off in the direction in which its barely visible footprints seemed to lead. When they, too, disappeared beneath the blowing and shifting sands of time, I fell flat on my face. In my exhaustion, I rolled over on my back and swirled off into unconsciousness, where I lay until I caught wind of a gentle breeze blowing about my face.

Opening my eyes, I caught sight of a dove fluttering its wings in midair just above my head. Certain I was still under the spell of some dream, I closed my eyes to rub the sleep from them, whereupon the dove disappeared. Upon looking out over the length of my body, I thought I saw the dove again, this time, fluttering at my feet where it simply vanished as I blinked my eyes. The third time around, I spotted the dove fluttering in midair at my left side just above my heart where, instead of disappearing again, it suddenly transformed itself into the image of my soul, right before my very eyes.

“Come with me,“ she begged with a smile I could hardly refuse.

Suddenly, I found myself standing knee deep in a sea of grass that thrashed about wildly, in response to the strong gusts of wind which came and went like the breath of some mighty being. Never before had I seen such a wind, that could buffet my body and, in the same breath, blow right through me as if there were nothing to me. Never before had I been permitted to see the world around me with such clarity, for a great light penetrated everything. No longer did I, or anything else for that matter, cast a shadow. Never before had I encountered such all-encompassing unity.

As my vision refocused its sights on the forest surrounding this magical little meadow, I quickly honed in on a lone tree, the only one bold enough to wear an evening gown in broad daylight—to sport her true colors before it was time. Why I was so completely captivated by the radiant splendor of her gown, the exquisite blend of yellow, orange, and red in the leaves of her dress, that I could not take my eyes off her.

Whatever I so earnestly sought out there in nature, suddenly manifested itself in the form of a young woman of east Mediterranean descent. Dressed in a simple gown, the style worn by women around the time of Christ, she held in her bosom a stone tablet that was divided into two pages, like the face of an open book, and upon which were written, in some ancient middle-eastern script, Ten Commandments.

As soon as I realized the significance of the stone tablet, I found my self standing beside an image of my soul in an enormous cavern filled with every religious symbol in the whole world.

“Do you see anything else that strikes your fancy?“ she asked.

“No, I don’t,“ I replied as she reached out to open a door that had not been there before.

“You know,“ she added, “you’re a very interesting person.“

“Really!“ I exclaimed, quite surprised by what I’d just encountered within my own being.

And with that, she closed the door and disappeared within.

“Dury,“ shouted Marty in a tone of voice that alarmed me.

“What’s the matter?“ I inquired.

“He’s plannin’ to kill ya, Dury!“ exclaimed Marty.

“Who’s plannin’ to kill me?“ I asked.

“Kraft,“ he answered. “He thinks you were behind the fiasco down on the mess decks. He’s so convinced you poisoned my mind and then turned me loose to make a fool out of him in front of everyone.“

“He’s made a fool out of himself,“ I exclaimed, “by choosin’ to live like an animal. He just didn’t like the way you pointed that out to him.

“So he thinks I set him up,“ I mused, for the whole thing’d really been quite spontaneous.

“And then,“ Marty continued, “when he plunked $50 down onto the table and offered it to whoever’d push you overboard, I thought I’d heard everything, until he called those who were standin’ there, all cowards cause no one’d taken him up on his offer. He shut up real quick when he was asked why he didn’t wanna do it himself.“

“Why that Judas priest!“ I exclaimed. “Who the hell does he think he is? Why no one in his right mind would kill another person for a measly fifty bucks!“

“They killed Jesus for less,“ rebutted Marty.

“Yeah, but thirty pieces of silver was a lot of money back then,“ I added. “Fifty dollars, today, ain’t nothin’.“

“I don’t know, Dury,“ rejoined Marty. “I wouldn’t put anything past the motherf___ers. Seein’ how you sit up here by yourself, night after night, why any one of them could sneak up behind ya and push you overboard.“

Unwilling to believe that anyone in his right mind could stoop so low, I concluded that Kraft’d just let off a little steam. “Look at how you act when you get mad at one of them,“ I finally said. “You go off on the poor son of a buck, rantin’ ’n’ ravin’ about how you’ll kill the motherf___er when you get your hands on him. But you don’t ever physically grab hold of him and wring his neck, like you said you would when you were still angry. Instead, you imagine what you’ll do, in order to vent your anger in much the same way you observed Kraft venting his.“

“Only, I don’t plunk money down on the goddamn table and ask someone else to do my dirty work,“ rejoined Marty. “I’m tellin’ ya Dury, you coulda heard a pin drop when Kraft told them you were a threat that had to be reckoned with, if they didn’t wanna see your rebelliousness spread around the ship, like some f___in’ infectious disease.“

“Why I’m impressed,“ I exclaimed.

“Don’t you see, Dury,“ Marty insisted, “If you piss enough of them off, they’re gonna do ya in.“

“I don’t know, Marty,“ I replied. “I just can’t believe they’d go that far. This is the twentieth century, ya know.“

“You can believe what you want, Dury,“ Marty persisted, “cause that don’t mean a goddamn thing to these medieval motherf___kers.“

“I have a hard time lookin’ at Kraft’s conversation any differently than the ones we had around mutiny,“ I rebutted. “While there was a lotta talk about mutinyin’, we never did cause that was not our real intention. Just as I don’t believe Kraft really intends to have me killed. I see his actions as the reaction of his animal nature to bein’ cornered by his own human nature, which he sees as belongin’ to me rather than himself. Unable to reconcile these two aspects of himself, he’s decided to go after his humanity before it takes away the double life he’s been leadin’ as an animal, for he has yet to learn that domestication’s really the only way out of the Jekyll/Hyde dilemma.“

“Listen, Dury,“ insisted Marty. “While all that may be true, you’ve forgotten one thing—the motherf___kers don’t know how to do anything else but live out their f___in’ fantasies on other people. You gotta realize, Dury, that you’re dealin’ with a bunch of f___in’ wild animals, who’ll turn on ya, the minute you think you’ve tamed them.“

“It is written, Marty, that ’the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all of my holy mountain; for the earth’ll be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.’ Isaiah 11:6–9. The picture painted here, Marty, by the prophet, is one depictin’ the end of evolution, for it’s within man that these miraculous changes’ll take place.“

“You’re impossible, Dury,“ exclaimed Marty as we both looked at each other and smiled.

“Thanks for warnin’ me,“ I finally conceded. “I don’t know what I’d do without ya.“

So did I go below, that night, assured that harm was less likely to befall me as long as I had friends like Marty watching out for me.

Greatly disappointed, I would much rather have stayed where I was. At least with the lifers in First Division, I knew how far I could push my rebellious behavior without blatantly overstepping the rules and regulations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. By playing ignorant and purposely fouling up whatever my hands touched, I’d been relegated to the innocuous task of cleaning the head. But even this job I performed so poorly that, presumably, the lifers decided to transfer me up to the mess decks to see if they could break my rebellious spirit by subjecting me to an even more odious task. Thus would I have to start all over again, in testing out a new set of guys, to see just how far I could push my noncooperation without getting written up.

Besides, I had finally found someone, in the person of R., with whom I could go on liberty and have a good time without getting drunk or laid. Oftentimes, I could appeal to the gentler side of R., but only when he wasn’t hell-bent on “getting liquored up enough to go down on the strip to get some of that nasty ole poontang,“ as he used to say.

For R. was a simple kind of guy who expressed little feeling except around sex and his hate for the Navy which was very profound. In fact, he blamed the Navy for having made him into a “f____n’ animal“. “There’re times,“ he’d say, “when I just feel like goin’ out ’n’ f____n’ every bitch in sight, or else gettin’ good ’n’ goddamn drunk. Or sometimes I feel like goin’ out ’n’ kickin’ ass, just for the hell of it. I never felt like that fore I came into the Navy. I’m tellin’ ya Dury, the Navy f___s with your mind in some strange kind a way; it turns ya into a f____n’ animal.“

“As both gate ‘n’ gatekeeper to the vast and unexplored reaches of your own inner space, the void that separates the gates of heaven from the jaws of hell, I allow free passage to any thought form, whether good or evil, who wishes to enter your life,” he replied, “for like any shadow, I simply reflect what still remains hidden from consciousness.”

“Is that why I’m so afraid of you?” I asked as I grew increasingly more apprehensive of the anxiety that’d overtaken my body which had begun shaking so violently, I could barely control my own movements.

“The fear, you’re experiencing, is really that of your demons, who’re deathly afraid they’re about to be exposed,” he replied.

As my head went into a spin, and my heart pounded away at the bars of my chest, in wild gyrations, I slumped to my knees, gasping for air, for his words had gotten stuck in my throat. In one violent convulsion after another, did I vomit up three, large ‘n’ gray, leathery-skinned demons who just stood there looking at my wretched self, with their fiery red eyes, before diving back down through my shadow, to seek out the darkest depths of the void in which to hide. With that, I broke out crying ‘n’ laughing hysterically, whereupon my shadow stooped down and gently helped me to my feet.

“My God!” I gasped. “I had no idea that such hideous creatures as these even existed, much less dwelled within me.”

“And still do,” piped up my shadow, “for you have only visualized what you have yet to exorcise from yourself. Now that you’ve become a threat to their existence, they’ll do everything in their power to keep you from exposing the truth hidden within them from even themselves.

“I’m possessed,” I cried out of the feelings of humiliation and defeat that’d overtaken me.

“Come now, my lad!” exclaimed my shadow. “You must get hold of yourself, for all is not as bad as it seems. Why you’ve been given a great gift in the ability to see your demons, or that part of your animal nature which still has you in its grip. While you may now see this knowledge as more of a burden than a boon, you’ll one day be called upon to share it with the rest of the world, for like Jonah, you’ve been confined to this instinctive existence, to force you to find the way out.”

With that, I realized the mass is about the transformation of our animal natures into human nature—the image into the likeness of God.

Through the priest, do we offer our bodies to God via the bread, so that we may literally be transformed into full human beings, the body of Christ. So too, do we imitate the priest (Abraham) whenever we sacrifice, on the roughly hewn altars of our daily lives, those animalistic tendencies which no longer befit us as human beings. Only when we see the handwriting on the altar, and embrace the holographic prescription etched there, in place of the sin offering, can we truly give up such animalistic behavior.

As I sat there poking around in the fire of my heart’s desires, with a stick, I grew uncomfortable with the feelings I had stirred up. Fearful of letting the beast in me take over, I jabbed the stick, quickly in and out of the coals, before plunging it all the way into the fire and letting go of it.

Gone was the fire that burned between us. Gone, too, were the two of us, for in our place stood, for just an instant, an invincible being of neither sex, before it returned to its former glory as a writer in search of soul.

Such was the nature of my first encounter with soul in years. For is not the ultimate act of love to create consciousness–to free our humanity from the fetters of a purely instinctive response?

To this end, have I dedicated my life and now this book, that you, the reader, might decide to join the fray to save humanity from its self and the destructive side of its animal nature.