Seeking the Essence.

I remember as a child being very taken with all things to do with myth or mystery. The myths came mostly in the form of King Arthur and Robin Hood, the mystery with tales of the supernatural. I would avidly read about such subjects and imagine the physical scenarios in which they were placed. But the physical aspects were vague and disjointed; what I experienced most strongly was the hidden essence of the environment. That was what I found most thrilling.

The problem with essence, of course, is that it touches none of the five senses to which our bodies are restricted. It can’t be seen, smelt, tasted, touched, or heard. It exists inside us, even though it might have its root somewhere on the outside.

And so for all my life, that has been the place I’ve most wanted to visit. There’s little in the physical world which attracts me sufficiently to want to make the effort to go there; where I’ve always wanted to go is to that place inside of me which I hope will project its own form of apparent physicality sufficient to allow the kind of navigation to which our physical forms are habituated.

I haven’t managed it yet and I doubt I ever will because I’m tempted to follow the standard interpretation of such a phenomenon – that I was just a sensitive and imaginative child who never quite grew up. And yet I still cling to the hope that I shall one day find a door that will offer access to a reality far more thrilling and engaging than the one available to the physical body functioning in a material world.

The priestess once described having entered such a state after taking a particular drug, but she avoided the usual trap of perceiving it in retrospect as merely a drug-induced illusion. She recognised it instead as an alternative form of reality. I respected that interpretation, and I envied her.