“I must be losing my mind,“ I cried out, in response to the little musical charade that kept playing in my head. “I mean, one day I’m flying high, and the next, I’m wallowing around in my own shit, like some goddamn animal. I don’t get it! Just once, I wish someone, outside myself, could see what I’m going through. Even then, I’m not so sure I’d be any better-off, for they’d probably think I was nuts.“

Until I have gotten my self into a heap of shit or fallen flat on my face again, I never know if it’s “me“ who is getting in the way or not. In choosing to live out the dream instead of its meaning, I delude my self into thinking I know the way, when I don’t. And even though I may disagree with my soul, I always wind up doing exactly what she wants me to do, for it seems she must be obeyed, one way or the other. Either I act upon the truth I find hidden within the dream; or I’m sucked down below the belt, to live out the dream, like an animal. O that I could live out the rest of my life in tune with my Self!

Having spurned my soul’s suggestion to resist the Navy, was I confined to a body which, like any stubborn mule, refused to be pushed beyond the limits of its imagination. In my inability to drag my ass any further than the head or mess decks, I quickly found my self at odds again with the Navy when I failed to appear, one morning, at my appointed place of duty. Actually, I had gone by the head, I’d been assigned to, only to discover I was out of scouring powder. Like a dumb ass, I made the mistake of leaving my station without first having asked for permission to go ’n’ get what I needed. And to make matters worse, I followed my ass right smack dab into a conversation with a fellow jackass down in the compartment, only to forget why I’d gone down there in the first place. Having, as usual, been assigned to clean the head by myself, had I unwittingly responded to the greater need my brother, the ass, had for companionship. With no other explanation for my behavior than that, was I put on report. In the struggle to meet the demands of my being, thus did I learn the ins ’n’ outs of the art of passive resistance, that is, who to resist and who not to.

Looking ahead, I saw a doctor who reminded me of Dr. Jekyll, though he looked like Uncle Sam, standing over a young man whose battered body lay wrapped in a bloody sheet on the table before him. To the left of the young man’s body, in the shadow of Uncle Sam, stood another nefarious surgeon general, I immediately recognized as Hyde, though he looked a lot like Ho Chi Minh. As they stood there bickering over the fate of the young man’s life, I realized that neither of them could ever gain control, either in life or in death, of the spirit of the young man while it remained free.

Forced back into my body, I sat straight up on the table, looking a bit like the risen Christ, for I wasn’t about to let these two thugs take control of my life. I had to take the helm if I didn’t want to end up hanging from the cross of one or the other of these two thieves, who had already taken so much from the world, in the name of their respective ism, there was little else left for them to take, but life itself. Since I was neither an unrepentant god nor an apologetic beast, I wanted no part in the killing of other human beings. Nor did I care to lose my life participating in such a dead-end affair. Although I sympathized with the plight of the apologetic beast, I knew that his way of life left as much to be desired as that of the moral right or unrepentant god, for hidden within the desire to destroy the terrible images they saw in each other, lay the hope of one day unearthing the missing link, a way of being that seeks to live out the best of both worlds instead of the worst.

Only I couldn’t imagine what the missing link looked like, much less how it would act in my situation. While I sincerely believed that Jesus would never have participated in the killing of another human being, I didn’t know what to do about my own participation in such an act, now that I was in the position to take another’s life. After all, I wasn’t Christ. Nor was I even Christlike. Yet I knew the missing link was, in spite of its apelike appearance, more like Christ then I could ever hope to be, for this gentle humanoid was ultimately tied to its maker by the limits of its imagination, of which I was just now becoming aware.

“To you,“ stated my mentor, “has been given the secret of the kingdom, but for those outside, everything comes in images.“ Mk. 3:11.

“Only I do not know this secret of which you speak,“ I insisted.

“When an animal looks,“ replied my mentor, “it does not perceive. Nor does it understand what it hears when it listens, for it lacks imagination. And so it is with all who have never learned to enter, a second time, the womb of the imagination, for I tell you, unless your shipmates become like children, they will never enter the kingdom. Bound by the images of Instinct, they will instead be left standing outside to wail and gnash their teeth, like animals seeking entry to their master’s house.

“Pay attention,“ admonished my mentor, “to what you hear rather than to what you see. ’For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light.’ Mk. 4:22.

“Now that you know,“ he concluded, “wherein the kingdom doeth lie—having seen the face of God there, with your own eyes—take care, lest you lose sight of this vital link to Who You Really Are, or what consciousness has been given you, will be taken away.“

“All aboard!“ rang out the voices of my faculties, in the almost effortless, musical charade they played to entice me back into the world of the imagination.

At the invitation of the conductor, who looked a bit like my old mentor, did I fall back on the only reservation I had—of getting too carried away with my imagination.

“All aboard!“ came the last call.

With that, was I swept away with the rest of the crew, to the gun line off the coast of Vietnam, to see our first real action.

MR. HART: What was the approximate date the Davidson arrived on the gun line?

RESPONDENT: October. No, September.

MR. HART: 1967?

RESPONDENT: September, 1967.

“Okay,“ I responded rather lackadaisically, for I still had no insight into the cause of the tropical depression that’d descended upon me after our arrival in Pubic Bay. And since we both pretty much shared the same taste in music, I figured it might just be what I needed to help me take my mind off my self. But I found no more solace in his collection of songs than I had in those coming from the jukebox at the exchange.

Still feeling blue by the following evening, I let Marty con me into going back over to the exchange for a few drinks with Harold, Greg, and himself. Seeing how I’d gotten caught up in one of those psychic tropical lows with which one can do little else but ride it out, I agreed to go with him, for I knew Marty well enough by now, to realize that he was only trying to cheer me up.

“Boy are they packin’ ’em in, tonight,“ observed Harold the hare as we scurried in and snatched up one of the few remaining tables.

“It’s all a part of the f—in’ ritual,“ added Martin, the cynical talking horse, “in which the dumb-ass motherf—ers come in here to get all juiced up fore headin’ out into Olongapo to get jizzed up.“

“It’s the last civilized watering hole, this side of hell,“ snapped back the missing link from this side of the event horizon.

“I must say,“ added that gregarious little ole tortoise, Greg, “that I quite agree with you-all—this place certainly does have a way of releasing the animal, normally held bound beneath the surface of our civilized veneer, by the fetters of a very shaky humanity.“

“Why I feel as if we’ve all been sucked down into some big black hole,“ bemused the missing link.

“I see us all,“ quipped the tortoise, “as havin’ just escaped from the zoo, masquerading as humans.“

“And now I suppose you’re gonna tell us,“ insisted the talking horse, “that we’ve all come together here, tonight, to celebrate our new found freedom.“

“That’s right!“ exclaimed the tortoise.

“You-all strike me,“ observed the hare, “as a buncha kooks whose imaginations have all run away with your sanity.“

“Why have we run to the wild side of our natures?“ asked a curiously revitalized missing link.

“Cause we’ve been caged up like a buncha wild animals,“ snarled the talking horse, “onboard some goddamn ark bound for hell.“

“Don’t you-all see,“ inquired the missing link, “how easily we revert to animals when we choose not to live out the dictates of our own souls. Don’t ya see that she must be obeyed, one way or the other, as some soulless animal or as a full human being.“

With that we all fell silent.

At some point in the song, I found my self standing in a field of the most luscious strawberries I’d ever seen. Wary of the sudden craving, that’d come over me, to jump in and wallow around in the berries, rubbing them all over my naked body as I ate whatever I wanted, I backed off with the realization that man does not live by images alone, “but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God“. Mt. 4:4.

Then the magician, who’d been standing behind this fantasy, waiting for me to choose, took me down to the very kore of my being, or source of all fantasy, and placed me before the most voluptuous woman I’d ever seen, saying to me, “If you are a true son of God, then throw your self upon her; for it is written,
’You will not die;
For God knows,
That when you partake of this fruit,
Your eyes will be opened,
And you will be like God’.“ Gen. 3:4–5.

“It is also written,“ I said to him, “that ’you shall not commit adultery, for anyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart’.“ Mt. 5:27–28.

Again, the magician took me down to the very kore of my being and showed me every sensuous fantasy he could drum up, whereupon he said to me, “All these will I fulfill for you, if only you let me trick, er, I mean, treat you to the delights of your imagination.“

“Away with you, Satan!“ I finally insisted, “for it is written,
’Indulge not the fantasies of Instinct
But rather the way of the soul,
For it is she who must be obeyed
If you are to be overcome’.“

“In what book is that written?“ the magician demanded to know.

“Why, right here on this page from the story of my life,“ I pithily replied, whereupon he disappeared, leaving me sitting there with a brief glimpse into the strange workings of my soul.

When stripped of her masculine persona—symbolized by the presence of the military and the huge old Spanish cannon that protruded from her body like a phallus that’d been rendered impotent—Subic Bay exhibited all the hidden beauty of the female pudendum. To many, she was the biggest little whorehouse in all the South Pacific. Defiled, long ago, by Spanish troops, she unwittingly fell victim to a life of prostitution. Unable to resist the lure of easy money, she continued to whore herself out to the troops of the new, up-and-coming young pimp on the block, named Uncle Sam, after he ran her old boss and his rival, El Cid, out of the territory, in a big shoot-out during the summer of 1898. Although it would be a long time before she got up enough nerve to send Uncle Sam packing, she used him just as much as he did her, for there was definitely no love lost between the two, when they parted company after the eruption of an unresolvable squabble over money.

“Knowing this about you,“ added my soul, “the One Voice tried to alleviate your fears with the reassurance that you were going nowhere He had not already been and would be traversing again with you.“

“Why didn’t I see Him then?“ I asked.

“Like any voice,“ replied my mentor, “you cannot see it. Unlike the One Voice, you saw Him in the images that presented themselves to you after He spoke.“

“In response to the call for enlightenment,“ continued my shadow, “you delved into the dark pall which has hung over your head, like the Sword of Damocles, since puberty. There were you confronted by your alter ego as it flew out of control in its intoxication with the force of Nature that is released whenever the ego takes what does not belong to it. And for the first time, Dr. Jekyll, you recognized this image of Hyde as your stepfather. With the realization that you had vicariously inherited from your stepfather the same ugly tendency to usurp the sovereignty of the One Voice, you entered the theater of the absurd to seek out this tyrant, in a roundabout way, from among your own rundown and abandoned thoughts and feelings.“

“Not knowing what to expect,“ chimed in my soul, “you reluctantly inquired within, making yourself vulnerable to a confrontation with the force that had so marred your life in the past, it now appeared much more menacing than it really was. So threatened were you, by the brutish side of your nature, you tried to run away from it again, to no avail. Round ’n’ round your mind you raced, in an effort to escape having to confront your own brutality. No matter how hard you tried, you could not rationalize it away, this time.“

“As your mind expanded upon a way to get out of this pickle with your self-esteem intact,“ expounded my mentor, “you wound up on the receiving end, where your thoughts about the use of force had gathered to make sport of you. As they reiterated the chant you’d been taught in boot camp, to yell out every time you thrust your bayonet into one of them, you were overcome by the hopelessness, they had felt back then, of ever again seeing the light of day.“

“Then,“ interjected my shadow, “you spotted the narrow gate—the one seldom chosen only because the gate that leads to damnation is so much wider, the way to it, so much clearer to those who choose it. In running with the idea that the narrower choice simply consisted of putting some distance between your self and the urge to use brute force, you overlooked the limitations this choice really imposed upon you.“

“Feeling trapped,“ continued my soul, “you turned to face the urge to use brute force, as every thought ’n’ feeling in your body screamed out to kill the urge before it got hold of you and inflicted you with the wound that never heals—that endless cycle of revenge, of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.“

To be continued…

“If you go away from this experience with anything at all,“ stated my mentor, “I hope it is with the realization that you may never take the life of another human being, no matter how you feel, for you have been called by the Highest Authority to destroy the images of your enemies as you see them within yourself rather than in your neighbor.“

“Do you not see, my son, how the cycle of violence is passed from one generation to the next!“ exclaimed my mentor. “As you acquired the habit of putting down the lesser self and beating off the advances of the greater Self from your parents, so would you have passed this tendency down to your children, had you not chosen to break the cycle.“

“I hope you see now, how this behavior has led to the creation of Hyde,“ added my shadow.

“For She must be obeyed, one way or the other,“ interjected my soul, “as either a beast or a human being.“

“What I don’t understand,“ I inquired, “is why I was transformed into a wolf instead of Hyde.“

“You see, my son,“ answered my mentor, “because Hyde perpetuated the cycle of self-abuse, in his addiction to this narcotic, he could never have turned against his supplier.“

“Since only the witch knew the words to the incantation that transformed you into such a hideous beast,“ added my shadow, “as Hyde, you could never have destroyed this life line to your existence.“

“To get you to attack this predaceous image of your mother,“ insisted my soul, “we had to draw upon the instinct for survival, that you found in the image of the wolf.“

“It was all so horrible,“ I cried out, as tears welled up in my eyes. “Once I’d been transformed into a wolf, I could think of nothing but killing my prey, the old witch. As I grew more ’n’ more intoxicated with the idea of killing her, I had the sense that it was all right, that I was only taking this life in order to live. I felt as if I was only taking back what rightfully belonged to me, my own personhood. I tore into her flesh, not so much for the revenge, as I did for the food of the gods, that knowledge which comes from the destruction of an old image. Then I was overcome by remorse for having taken the life of an old god.“

“Only you never realized,“ interjected my mentor, “how incomplete was your picture of God, until you prepared this false image for interment.“

“When Mother Nature finally revealed her true identity,“ added my shadow, “she apologized for the shoddy treatment you had received from her alter ego, the opinionated old witch that’d devoured the image of your mother.“

“It was only you,“ insisted my soul, “who could free us from the devouring image of your mother.“

“To be perfectly honest,“ I interjected, “I really don’t want to kill anyone, real or imaginary.“

“You no longer have a choice,“ he replied. “Either you destroy the image which tells you it is okay to take the life of another human being, when sanctioned by the State, or this image’ll destroy you, just as surely as it destroyed your stepfather, when it robbed him of the very manhood he had taken from his opponents in battle.“

“Why must I kill this image?“ I asked. “Surely there must be some other way to deal with it.“

“Because you have allowed this image to acquire a life of its own,“ he responded, “this Frankenstein’ll never give it back to you till you take it from him.“

“Until you remove this parasitic growth from your own eye,“ he continued on, “you will never see how to remove the corresponding speck from your neighbor’s eye, for war is really about the killing of your own demons as you see them outside yourself in the hapless neighbor upon whom you have cast such dark shadowy aspersions. In the ensuing struggle to take your neighbor’s life before he takes yours, you fight not so much to protect your life as you do to protect the lives of those demons who have taken over some part of you, for he who has overcome his own demons has no need to take his neighbor’s life, nor defend his own, since it is already in the hands of the One Voice. And so are you tricked, by the projection of your shadow onto a neighbor, into believing you have slain your demons in the slaying of that neighbor when, in reality, you have only given your demons a little more control over your life.“

“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.“

“If you know the way, why don’t you show me?“ I beseeched him.

“I know no more than what the Council has deciphered from the images you’ve been shown thus far,“ he replied.

“Well I guess that leaves us all in the dark,“ I quipped.

“Not quite,“ he rebutted, “for we’re continually being fed images that shed light on the way you must go. Until recently, I’ve not been at liberty to discuss with you our latest translation—into thought—of some of the material we’d received from your senses awhile back. If you’re up to it, I’d like to share with you those thoughts that speak to the qualms you are having with your participation in the war in Vietnam.“

“Are you game?“ he asked.

“Sure! Why not!“ I exclaimed. “Like any true glutton for punishment, I want more, as long as it’s not too painful. Though, I’m not sure I could handle coughing up any more demons,“ whereupon he readily assured me that was not what he had in mind.

“If you don’t know it yet,“ he began, “you’ll soon find out that war is hell. Unless you deal with me on a personal level, that is, integrate me into your life, you will be forced to fight me on a transpersonal level, in the faces of the Viet Cong, for the Beast has been unleashed.“

“What beast?“ I asked out of the alarm he’d just sounded to alert me to the very real dangers that lay ahead.

“Why that part of Nature which still defies Consciousness,“ he answered rather matter-of-factly.

“I don’t understand,“ I exclaimed.

“You see,“ he unequivocally replied, “each human being is given, at birth, a little piece of the dark side of Nature, or hell as you-all call it, from which to free the truth he’ll need to get back into paradise. Till he frees the truth yet hidden within the animal side of his nature, it’ll haunt him like a specter. For this worthiest of opponents will act as a thorn in his side, and thwart his every effort to live out any other truth than the one meant for him. And he’ll be unable to resist such behavior because the laws of Nature must be obeyed one way or the other, as either an unconscious animal or a conscious human being.

“Like the fissile material in a nuclear reactor, the energy to live out this truth lies dormant in you till you reach the age of puberty, at which time the One Who Rules Over All releases control of it to you through your rod. If you lose control of this rod, by using your libidinal energy for any other purpose than that intended, you run the risk of releasing this creative energy in the form of that beast which had best expressed this truth, no matter how crudely, before you came along. And if enough of your countrymen lose control of this energy, so that critical mass is reached, a chain reaction of great destructive power is set in motion, above which only the individual can rise, until those who’ve contributed to this war regain their senses and banish the beast back to the wildest parts of their imaginations, from whence it came.