Preflight finished, the pilot stowed his bag in the airplane, opened the aircraft canopy, and slid down into the cockpit.
Like everyone else on the planet, he thought, the world I see around me is my own trance vision, materialized out of whatever gazillion suggestions I've accepted along the way. Soon as I say go, it moves ahead, molasses or lightning.
So my whole world is propositions accepted, and those become beliefs become assumptions become my very own personal private executive truth.
My positive truths: “I can . . .” open the way for further suggestions, ways to go. My negatives: “I can't . . .” close the way, lodge themselves as my limit.
I'm a citizen of a psychosomatic planet, he thought.
So what?
Then the pilot pressed the starter switch to START, spun the engine awake, and accepted his own suggestion: let's hold off reorganizing the universe and go flying for a while.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Southeast at low level over deserted land he flew, rivers and forests and wilderness, patches of old farm fields flashing below, turned to meadows.
This is what it looks like, flying in dreams, except in dreams you're not thinking where do I land when the engine quits.
So I'm a hypnotized citizen of a psychosomatic planet, he thought. So's everybody else. So what difference does it make?
That moment, for the first time, the pilot heard a new voice in his mind. Not the monkey-chatter voice that had been with him always, not his co-pilot I'll-fly-the-airplane-for-you self, not his let's-figure-this-out-together rational self; it felt like a whole brand-different mind, within, a higher self than the others.
So what? Here's what, it said. You're the one who's hypnotized yourself into the life you live every day.
Here's what: You can de-hypnotize yourself.
Take all the time in the world, please, and think about what that might mean.
He touched the control stick, the sky-blue airplane lifted her nose to clear a lonely telephone wire, dropped back down over the hayfields. It feels faster today, flying 160 knots just forty feet above the ground, than it had felt going Mach 2, years ago, eight miles up. He accepted that; it was true.
Ever since Dee Hallock, why am I seeing suggestions everywhere?
And how would I do that; de-hypnotize myself? Slam my whole lifetime into reverse? If I've accepted, say, two or three twenty-billion suggestions that my world is just what it seems to be, what am I supposed to do now to change it?
Dying would do it. Seems to snap most people out of one trance right quick and into another. But if you . . .
. . . WIRES! screamed the copilot mind, LOOK OUT! WIRES!!
No need to scream; the pilot saw them ahead. There was all the time in the world to clear the power lines . . . the airplane lofted easily over, settled back down above the empty fields.
Much better, thank you, said the co-pilot. Careful you think about dying. Not just power lines, there's microwave towers around here, airplane-traps; remember it's not the towers that'll get you . . .
. . . it's the cables that brace the things. I know.
Stop thinking about dying, please, and look out for the wires. You want to fly low, you pay attention to the landscape, you help me out a little, here.
Jamie Forbes solved the problem with back-pressure on the control stick. In a minute the airplane cruised above the claws of most towers, slow-turning left to follow a river meandering southeast. The flying mind relaxed.
We never flew this way in the Air Force. When we lifted off some runway, we knew where we'd be landing, no matter how far away it might have been. There's no square on a military flight plan to check we'll decide along the way.
Not any more. Civilian flying, you take off and go, when the weather's nice. Think about landing, if you want, half an hour before you get there. Press on in the general direction; not many places in the country more than twenty minutes from a little airport.
His new higher mind didn't care for air-talk. Want to know how you can de-hypnotize yourself?
No, he thought.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jamie Forbes landed for fuel at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, its runway afloat on a vast emerald lawn, freshtrimmed. Nice people there, friendly to strangers as they most often are at little airports.
“Where you headed?”
“Florida.”
“Long flight.”
“Yes. I'm out of Seattle.”
A laugh. “Long flight!”
Some words about the weather, a quick history of Pine Bluff flying when he asked, fuel for the airplane, then start engine once more and away.
Level at a thousand feet, instruments looking good.
Want to know how you can de-hypnotize yourself?
I never want to speak to you again, he thought. He didn't mean that, decided to be careful of his suggestions from now on, even in fun. They're powerful stuff.
OK. After I've given my consent to truck along as a mortal for a few years, how can I de-hypnotize myself without un-mortalizing myself at the same time?
You don't.
I don't understand.
Of course you understand. You do just what you said, Jamie. You un-mortalize yourself!
He laughed. This odd conversation was different from any he'd had with himself, and it was fun. Oil pressure's good, oil temp's normal.
How do I un-mortalize without dying? What's your plan?
Pretend nothing that's happened on this flight has been coincidence. Pretend it was a lesson waiting for the right time in your life to come along and that time is now.
According to what you've heard in the last twenty-four hours, how did you become a mortal in the first place?
I was hypnotized, he thought, I accepted fifty billion trillion suggestions that I'm a mortal and not pure shining spirit.
How did Sam Black bring you back from knowing you were in prison?
He snapped his fingers.
And with that reminded you who you are, that you had bought your ticket to an entertainment, that you had volunteered for the stage.
So I de-hypnotize by reminding myself . . . ?
. . . of who you were before the show began. Affirmations. Counter-hypnosis. Constant, non-stop declarations. You de-hypnotize yourself by dropping negative suggestions and affirming positive counter-suggestions.
That I'm not a mortal?
Fact is, you're not. Want to know what that feels like? Deny suggestions you're less than spirit, affirm that spirit is who you are, always have been always will be, no matter you're spirit choosing games of mortalhood.
Every player has a life beyond the game. Even you.
Interesting. He drew a pencil from his sleeve pocket, wrote the idea on the map, not far from the town of Grove Hill, Louisiana: I'm spirit. Deny all else.
Such as?
I don't do such-as's.
Such as . . . “I am not a limited mind, trapped in a limited body subject to disease and accident.”
Nice denial. Now your affirmation, please.
He considered that. I am already spirit, here and now. Perfect. Undying.
Not bad. Shifting the definition of yourself from the trapped to the free. And you do it over and over and over, you never quit, you put down suggestions that you're mortal as fast as they come in. Every time you're aware of a hint that puts you down.
Why?
You want to know why, watch what happens when you do it.
How do I know it's true?
Hypnotized, you don't. You can't prove you're spirit. Not wanting to seem foolish, most folks accept the suggestion they're one more body killing time till time kills them.
But they're not.
There's no rush. You'll prove you're spirit when you die.
You want me to be foolish?
I don't believe in bodies, Jamie, but you do, so you'll have to tell me. How does it hurt, to identify with undestroyable spirit, instead of the vanishing beliefs of spacetime?
Wha
t a strange consciousness, he thought, this higher self. So if I'm not mortal, why did you say look out for the wires?
I didn't. That was your nicely trained co-pilot. Looking out for your belief-of-mortal-self as you were about to discover some ideas to change your life, de-hypnotizing. So long as you believe you're vulnerable to sudden dying, it warns you when it . . . LOOK OUT! TOWER!
The pilot jerked his head from the instruments, tensed to dart left-right-up-down where's the wires!!
Just kidding, said his higher self.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Old meadows given way to green hills and farms rolling soft below. EGT and cylinder head temperatures normal.
The LOA. You know how it works.
Not a clue, the pilot thought, enjoying this new aspect of himself. LOA. Light Observation Aircraft? Love One Another? List of Acronyms?
Law of Attraction.
Of course. Law of Attraction: whatever we hold in our thought comes true in our experience.
LOA. NYN.
What's NYN?
Now You Know.
Now I N what?
Aren't you putting things together here, Jamie? Do you think she came into your life for no reason?
He knew she came into his life for a reason, but he had more on his mind that afternoon than the mystery of Dee Hallock.
I'm running an airplane here, higher self. Maybe you could just say what's on my mind in words?
To the best of my knowledge which is pretty good, it's taking two percent of your attention to run this aircraft. You're not flying, it's flying. You're just guiding the airplane, and once it's pointed in the right direction . . .
All right, he shouted silently, I'll tell you what I know!
He didn't know what it was he knew, but the instant he began, he knew he'd find out. It had worked that way so often in his life that he trusted the odd process again, and turned it on, shifting gears, thought to words.
“What does the-world-is-suggestions-I've-accepted have to do with the Law of Attraction.” he said out loud, and around the time he had said, “. . . have to do with . . .” the idea fell into place, the whole structure finished and done and true for him. Why didn't I see this a hundred years ago?
Law of Attraction: Whatever we consistently visualize, whatever we hold steady in our thought, soon or late will come true in our experience.
-plus-
Hypnotism is visualization, holding in thought: it's the Law of Attraction with a supercharger. Hypnotized, we see hear smell taste touch the suggestions we allow in our mind not sooner-or-later but right now.
An airplane, fortunately for Jamie Forbes, reacts no more instantly to thought than does the LOA, else the T-34 would have disappeared midair in a sudden explosion of understanding.
The LOA's no magic, it's no secret cosmic mystery. The Law of Attraction is hold-in-your-thought suggestions, accepted. LOA's the acronym for I'm Tranced By Every Suggestion I Accept.
The Law of Attraction, the whole thing, it's the same as, it's the definition of hypnosis!
More precisely, he thought, for his was sometimes a precise mind, the Law of Attraction is autosuggestion— it's self-hypnosis building stuff that, in time, other people can see for themselves.
This is only astonishing to those convinced the world is built from wood and stone and steel. It's only amazing if we've never questioned that our world is anything but what it seems to be.
Otherwise, the Law of Attraction is ho-hum of course all us subjects in trance are seeing visions of whatever we've agreed to see.
He swept into the landing pattern at Magee, Mississippi, enjoying the challenge of landing north in a firm west wind.
He solved it with a sideslip down final approach: the airplane banked to the left all the way down final approach, that unnatural tilt holding the machine straight despite the crosswind as the left main wheel touched the runway. Only then the right wheel touched gently down, finally the nosewheel.
He fueled the airplane, called a ride to the motel all in a whirl of understanding, a storm-trance.
He checked in, took his room key, walked past a rack of paperbacks. Buy this book, something suggested.
I've already got a book. The shadow of his old self, asking reasons for every smallest choice.
Buy it anyway, the blue one. He did, happily wondering why.
In his room, he pounded gently on the wall. “It is so . . . simple!”
Supercharged, indeed. So this is how the world works! He could do magic.
“Hallo Gwendolyn Hallock!” he said aloud.
He felt her smile, heard her voice in his mind: Just keeping my promise.
“Hallo Blacksmyth the Great!”
Have we ever seen each other, before this evening?
“Yes we have,” cried the pilot softly, “Yes, Sam Black, we have!”
Open the book anywhere.
The pilot picked the paperback from where he had tossed it on the counterpane, opened it at random, eager, trusting. The words which met his eye were science, dense as black bread to the starving:
We are focus-points of consciousness, enormously creative. When we enter the self-constructed hologrammatic arena we call spacetime, we begin at once to generate creativity particles, imajons, in violent continuous pyrotechnic deluge.
Imajons have no charge of their own but are strongly polarized through our attitudes and by the force of our choice and desire into clouds of conceptons, a family of high-energy particles which may be positive, negative, or neutral.
Attitude, choice, desire, thought Jamie Forbes. Of course! Aware or not, conscious or not, that's what determines which suggestions I accept. They affect these little strings, these thought-particles this guy is calling . . . what? He read back a sentence: imajons.
Some common positive conceptons are exhilarons, excytons, rhapsodons, jovions. Common negative conceptons include gloomons, tormentons, tribulons, miserons.
What I'm feeling right now, he thought, must be them excytons.
Infinite numbers of conceptons are created in nonstop eruption, a thundering cascade of creativity pouring from every center of personal consciousness. They mushroom into concepton clouds, which can be neutral or strongly charged—buoyant, weightless, or leaden, depending upon the nature of their dominant particles.
Every nanosecond, an uncountable number of concepton clouds build to critical mass, then transform in quantum bursts to high-energy probability waves radiating at tachyon speeds through an eternal reservoir of supersaturated alternate events.
For a second the page disappeared and he saw the fireworks in his mind, movies from microscopes in orbit.
Depending on their charge and nature, the probability waves crystallize certain of these potential events to match the mental polarity of their creating consciousness into holographic appearance.
That's how I got to fly airplanes. Mental polarity. Visualizing. My own autosuggestion triggering thought-particles into . . . into what does he call them? Into probability waves. This guy doesn't know it, but he's describing how it works, everyday hypnotism, suggestion, the Law of Attraction!
The materialized events become that mind's experience, freighted with all the aspects of physical structure necessary to make them real and learningful to the creating consciousness. This autonomic process is the fountain from which springs every object and event in the theatre of spacetime.
Every object? Of course, from our consent and visualization. Every event? What are events but objects in proximity, acting together?
The persuasion of the imajon hypothesis lies in its capacity for personal confirmation. The hypothesis predicts that as we focus our conscious intention on the positive and life-affirming, as we fasten our thoughts on these values, we polarize masses of positive conceptons, realize beneficial probability waves, bring useful alternate events to us that otherwise would not have appeared to exist.
That's no hypothesis, he thought, it works. Sure enough, he thought. Real laws, you can prov
e them yourself.
The reverse is true in the production of negative events, as is the mediocre in-between. Through default or intention, unaware or by design, we not only choose but create the visible outer conditions that are most resonant to our inner state of being.
That was it. There's the so-what: We create. Our inner state of being. In what seems to be, Outside ourselves.
Nobody's passive, nobody's a bystander, nobody's a victim.
We create. Objects, events. What else is there? Lessons. Objects and events equal experiences we have, and the learning we get from them. Or don't get, in which case we create other objects and events and test ourselves again.
Was it coincidence? Of all the pages he could have turned to, in a book he felt compelled to buy, his finger came down on this one page, out of—he turned to the end of the book—400 pages. Odds 400-to-one. And this one book out of . . . how many books? Not coincidence, he thought, destiny, and the Law of Attraction at work.
That was her theory.
It's no theory, she whispered, it's law.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Canopy cover off and stowed, next morning, Jamie Forbes slid once more into the cockpit of his airplane, mildly concerned about the weather ahead. The cold front had stalled ahead, clouds piling up over Alabama, storms with kilotons of lightning halted, thrashing in mid-air. Hardly a welcome mat for little airplanes.
Mixture—RICH
Propeller Lever—FULL INCREASE
Magneto Switch—BOTH
Battery—ON
Boost Pump—ON, two-three-four-five, OFF
Propeller Area—CLEAR