Howard. I'll take your blood pressure. It's 140 systolic over 90 diastolic… You'd better lie down. You're lying down now. Can you hear me? Are you with me? Hum. (Laughing) She's in the bright world. (Pause) Where are you? Your pupils are constricted. Lets see, it's seventeen after. Blood pressure 130 systolic. Pulse is 100… Pulse 92. Where are you at? (Laughing) I'll make it funny for the tape. (Speaking into the recorder) This is getting to be a drag. I do anesthesia all day and then I come home and do it at night. You'll appreciate that tomorrow when you hear… (Pause) Well, you're still in the bright world… Let's see what your blood pressure is doing… 92 pulse. It's 7:30-twenty minutes.
Marcia. (Whispering) I'm always saying that's the deepest I've gone. (Sighing) Oh God, it's like you have to begin all over again to try to remember.
Howard. That's powerful stuff, isn't it.
Marcia. (Coming back to the surface with difficulty.) The only reason I try to write about the bright world is because I'm so stupid. Because anyone who knew what it was really like would know that you can't bring it through. Is that the same fifty milligrams as my Christmas trip?
Howard. Exactly. It makes a big difference when you fast.
Marcia. There's actually nothing I can bring through. Oh God almighty, nothing. That music was amazing. It's lucky, it was just the right music. That was very important. This is a very humbling experience.
Howard. So much so that you can't remember anything?
Marcia. I remember it. I just can't bring it back.
Howard. Where did you go? What did you do in the bright world?
Marcia. Ah…so much.
Howard. Isn't that terrible! You feel it. And you know it. But you just can't articulate it.
Marcia. I can't believe that was only fifty. I've had seventy-five and not gone that far. Oh, that did it. I needed that humbling to realize that what I've been able to get into our book is like one drop out of the ocean. The only thing that comes near to the bright world is music. I didn't want music because I was afraid I'd be at its mercy. Thank God we just happened to have the right music on the radio… There's only one other thing that comes near the bright world and that's pain. For some reason that pain in my right leg has really started to hurt again.The ketamine brought out the pain. (Looking at the door.) Strange, it's just like it brought out the grain in this wood in the door. I can see that the pattern is still flowing. And I can still feel that strong pain in my leg.
Howard. Try moving it.
Marcia. I can move it all right, but it hurts.
Howard. Maybe you can find a more comfortable position. Rotate it a little bit.
Marcia. I supposed I overdid it with the yoga, though I don't remember pulling anything. But it's a curious thing-that dream I had at Kareen's house that the witches of Vancouver were after me. They were thrusting in a pin that came in right through that right leg. And I thought, "Oh that's such a peripheral part of the body. They didn't get any vital organ." Well, actually they did get in…but I'd like to think this can be a useful pain. Pain is in some way strongly connected with the bright world, but I haven't been able to make the connection. God really is loving; He wouldn't have forced us to endure all this pain if it hadn't been necessary for what He had in mind.
Howard. It's to grow.
Marcia. We grow through pain.
At this point the ketamine was exerting its truth serum effect. I hadn't wanted to think about or admit that my mind was not strong enough to repel what appeared to be a psychic attack. What had actually happened was that I had just arrived at Kareen Zebroff's house in British Columbia and was staying in the guesthouse. One night while in a state between sleeping and waking I had a dreamlike vision of two repulsive gray sluglike creatures coming at me, one from either side. It was impressed upon me that this was an emanation deliberately sent forth by the same satanists who had been so viciously harrassing my friends over the telephone, and that probably they were using an effigy of my body in their rites. At that point my fatigue was so great I thought, "Oh I just don't care. I'm not going to fight it." Thereupon one of the protoplasmic masses seemed to penetrate my right side at the level of the hip joint.
At that very instant the telephone rang once. This was not a hallucination; it actually did ring and wake me up. However, when I arose to answer it no one was on the line. But the spell was broken and I determined never to give in this way again. Looking at my watch I saw that it was three forty-five in the morning. Pondering this phenomenon I felt convinced that the ring of the phone had been an act of intervention designed to arouse me from my trancelike state.
Now, under the influence of the ketamine it seemed as though this pain in the hip joint was a way of taking on and transmuting some of the negative forces that were plaguing mankind, and that I had to play out my small personal drama to help accomplish this end. It seemed important to make the point that there could be a meaning and purpose to pain. I thought of, but could not quote the section in my hypersentience book where in a blaze of inspiration, I had written:
"Of all the insights hypersentience has bestowed on me, the most meaningful has been the conviction that throughout the millennia of this planet's evolution not one iota of anguish was ever wasted. No drop of blood or human tear was ever shed in vain… With the dawning of a more comprehensive vision of what the past has meant, we will finally come to realize how it was that out of all this suffering the soul of humanity was born."
Marcia. The pain is like the grain of the wood in this door that I'm looking at. It's still flowing so I know I'm somewhat under. Oh dear, I don't want to get into that pun-ishness of the subconscious. and pain rhymes with the grain of the wood. I don't want this to be just a schizophrenic flight of fancy. It has to be the real thing. And I know I'm well back. I've long since passed that portal. When I've passed the portal it means that I'm capable of prevaricating. (At this moment I was exceedingly conscious of the way in which the word "pain" rhymed with the word "grain" while at that moment my pain seemed to be an exact replica of the flowing grain in the wood. That is, it seemed as though the substance and beauty of the human soul has been formed out of pain-literally ingrained pain.)
Howard. It's 7:40. It's been exactly thirty minutes.
Marcia. Oh my God, that was incredibly deep.
Howard. (Taking blood pressure) 130 over 80. Pulse 76.
Marcia. It's strange. The drug brings out the pain flowing through my leg the same way it brings out the grain in the wood. What was the blood pressure at its maximum?
Howard. It was only up to 140. That's not bad.
Marcia. I was under thirty minutes. It didn't seem that long. It was like eternity and like nothing. There won't be much on this tape. There was just nothing to be said. I am going to tame this stuff though. But isn't that amazing? I haven't developed any tolerance for it at all. It's as though the goddess were telling me, "Look, I call the shots." (Pause) I'm going to stay with it until it's tamed. I won't tame it, really, I know. But I have to keep trying until I've done this thing I have to do.
It brought the pain in my leg right to the forefront of consciousness. An anesthetic is supposed to remove pain, but actually it was like rubbing wood with oil and seeing the grain of that pain-so very deep within. I'm aggravated with people who say that diseases like cancer are just an issue of wrong thought and that you should think better. Ramakrishna died of cancer and Ramana Maharshi died of cancer, and many of the greatest saints took it on. They were doing something high and noble for humanity. There's a mystery there. Ramakrishna could have been healed. The disciples used to plead with him to cure himself. But he wouldn't do it. There was some reason why he had to take on that load of pain and work it through. It was as though he was doing it for all humanity.