The Essence of Life
by
Tom Morris
Copyright 2014, Tom Morris
All places, characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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The so-called after-life is identical to the collective unconscious of the human race.
"The Dark Side of the Moon", Jack Vance, New English Library, 1986.
My name is James Curzon. I once knew Arthur Harrison as a colleague and a friend but who or what he is now I can only speculate. As a result of his striving to explore a hitherto little known region of human consciousness and my own unwitting help in his endeavours a catastrophic threat to our whole way of life has been unleashed and I have no alternative but to describe the events by which it has arisen. I can only hope that it is not too late for the situation to be averted.
We both graduated at a northern university some years ago with degrees from the School of Psychology; both stayed on as postgraduate students and then took up teaching posts. I suppose neither of us was particularly filled with any great ambition to stray far from an environment which we found satisfying and comfortable. The university was one of those known somewhat disparagingly as "Red Brick" by the southern, more ancient edifices of learning and indeed it had been founded in the mid nineteenth century as a College of Science and Medicine by a group of wealthy local businessmen in order to provide education for the children of middle-class industrialists and merchants. The original buildings are still in use but sadly hidden away by more recent additions of limestone and concrete.
My own interests lay in the field of Behavioural Science while Arthur became more and more engrossed in aspects of Parapsychology and in particular re-appraising and developing the idea of the Collective Unconscious put forward by Freud and Jung; an approach which was not received by the Faculty with any particular enthusiasm. The Dean probably expressed the view held by most of his senior colleagues that it was at best based on a misunderstanding and at worst an unacedemic dabbling in areas inhabited by hysterics and charlatans. Arthur was unrepentant, dismissing them as archaic dinosaurs and fuddy-duddies, unable to appreciate radical ideas. We were in the habit of meeting once or twice a week to discuss our work and to have a natter about things in general although Arthur tended to monopolise these occasions to expound on his theories.
"Freud," he said, "developed his theory of the Id as part of the psychic make up of humans. The Ego and Super-ego relate to our conscious processes while the Id lies deep in our subconscious. He suggested that the human psyche resembles an iceberg with the two egos operating in what we perceive as reality while the Id lies deep in what has been termed the Collective Unconscious. Freud defined it as 'the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations' but what he and others who have taken up this theory failed to do," he continued, "is to really understand what is meant by this. For them this was no more than a theoretical abstract, a convenient tool by which to examine and interpret human behaviour. I am convinced that in fact this represents an actual but imperceptible realm which underlies our own dimly perceived reality."
I smiled. "I'm not surprised the Dean has little sympathy with your suggestions," I told him. "What possible evidence can you have that would even suggest such a thing might be possible?"
He was unperturbed. "You may find the notation amusing," he replied, "but don't you see that this might well explain phenomena such as telepathy and ESP? If each of us has some form of connectivity into this universal sea of being then there is no reason not to believe that on occasions two minds might link together and share some transitory thought or emotion."
"If your proposition is correct then I suppose it would just be feasible that such a phenomenon might occur," I conceded, "but this is no more than speculation. Even if you could replicate the work by Sherman and Wilkins and other investigators this would still not provide any evidence for the existence of an actual substrate acting as conduit."
Arthur leaned forward, his chubby face animated with a boyish enthusiasm. "I know, I know," he answered, "but I am beginning a programme of experimental work that will provide the proof that I need. My interest was aroused when I discovered a cache of papers by Madam Blavatsky in the university special collections and in particular her work The Secret Doctrine. She was the founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875, made extensive studies of oriental spiritual practices and developed the principle of what she called 'an homogeneous divine substance' or 'An unknown Absolute Essence'. Much of what she suggested is simply rubbish but somehow she seems to have glimpsed an underlying truth. Her ideas were taken up by others and promulgated by Macgregor Mathers when he established the Order Of The Golden Dawn at the end of the nineteenth century. In turn they were developed further by Aleister Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientis. I'm well aware of his notoriety but none-the-less in the Enochian rituals he conducted with Victor Neuberg in Morocco in the early Twentieth Century, based on the esoteric revelations of the 16th century Elizabethan mystics John Dee and Edward Kelley he seemed to have achieved some degree of contact with an underlying stream of existence which, for those with some understanding of the symbology he employed, can be recognised in his Liber Porta Lucis and the infamous Book of Lies. Spurred on by this I made a wide-ranging study of the precepts of transcendental philosophies and in particular the techniques employed by practitioners such as the Buddhist masters, Native American shaman and certain of the Dervishes and I believe that I can enter a state of consciousness that will allow me to drill down into my Id and then emerge as a conscious entity into the Collective Unconsciousness. If I can achieve that then it should be possible to reach up into the mind of another and make my presence felt in such a way as to show beyond doubt that some form of transference has taken place."
There was little I could say. I had no wish to suggest to an old friend that what he was attempting was misguided, doomed to failure and would make him a figure of ridicule so I simply expressed the hope that his experiments would prove to be of interest and left it at that. How I wish that instead I had used every argument at my disposal to dissuade him from the path that he had chosen. If I had only known the unforeseen consequences of his proposed exploration of those other states of existence then I would have implored him to desist. Such is the futility of hindsight. After that I saw little of Arthur and it was probably some three or four weeks before he had anything to report on his progress, but finally he confessed that he was making only limited headway in his experiments.
"I can achieve strange glimpses of an almost unreal state of mind," he told me. "I am convinced it is not simply my imagination but has some actual external existence. There are transient sensations which don't quite mesh with my normal perceptions. Trying to interpret them is frustrating in the extreme."
I was uncertain how to respond. My first inclination was to dismiss his claims as no more than the effects of a driving ambition which was clouding his judgement but I was reluctant to admit anything of the sort to him, knowing just how obsessed he was with his work and anxious therefore not to strain our friendship.
"Perhaps there might be some way of proving the reality of your experiences." I suggested. "Have you considered perhaps employing electroencephalography to record your brainwaves? This might well detect some anomalous neural or psychophysiological phenomenon."
Arthur smiled and clapped his hands. "You have hit the nail on the head," he cried. "Excellent advice. I shall act on it without delay." We discussed the best means of securing an EEG apparatus from the Department's stor
es without raising too many unwelcome questions and Arthur left in considerable high spirits. As one reflects back on life I am sure we all recall actions and decisions, seemingly trivial at the time, which afterwards can be seen to have had a devastating effect on the events which followed. How bitterly I regret that suggestion and wish I had left well alone. Perhaps Arthur might have come to the same conclusion, perhaps not and therefore would have eventually abandoned his quest for some other area. In any case the outcome would not have weighed so heavily on my conscience for my having unleashed a chain of events which would lead to such an appalling conclusion.
For a while after that I saw less and less of Arthur, apart from occasional glimpses in the department corridors or in the library. He would wave but always seemed to be in too much of a hurry to stop and talk. From odd remarks from colleagues I gathered that there was a growing concern about the quality of his teaching. His lectures were sometimes delivered for him by a junior and his postgraduate students were complaining that he was neglecting his tutorials. I determined to