Under a Watchful Eye(69)

Flight from Malignant Forms





Second Death





Incertitude





Mark noticed the change in Seb. ‘You all right, Seb?’

Seb nodded, but kept his response vague. ‘Reminders.’

‘Of?’

‘Ewan.’

‘The guy that died. I didn’t want to pry. But you said he was into Hazzard in a big way.’

‘You could say that.’

‘Was he a writer?’

‘Not really. But he had ambitions in that direction.’ Seb cleared his throat. ‘I’d like you to read his diary. The more legible bits. See what you make of it.’

‘It would be a pleasure, I think. If it’s Hazzard-influenced.’

‘And I’m sure the last parts were written at this Hunter’s Tor.’

‘I’ll look at his stuff, but I seriously doubt he was there.’

‘You haven’t been there in ten years. But you’ve read Hazzard’s stories, and Ewan did. If someone was determined enough to find out more . . .’

‘But they’d have to be crazy to follow in Hazzard’s astral footsteps. Wait until you read the second collection. That’s enough to put anyone off.’ Mark chuckled. ‘Here. Let me find it.’

He picked up the copy of Hinderers. ‘Very last story. This is how Hazzard closed his account as a published writer.’

Mark sat back and began reading from the end of the book. ‘I never cooperated with the divine plan. I have died too many times and walked the in-between land. I forced death. I went beyond space and time, beyond the earth. My own nature inhibited my greater self. My spirit never fully left matter and yet I believed I had found eternity. We are ever conscious of the third sphere, Elysium, Paradise, Summerland, but we can never ascend. Its rays merely warm our cold flesh in Hades. We are the super-physical who are trapped beside the temporal.’





18


Born through a Cloudy Medium


[Tape 1. Recorded 2 September 2004. Liza]

[Liza]: I’d been fasting for two days. Nothing but water. That was how you began the cultivation. You were already lightheaded, weak, and dizzy, before you started. But I think I was always too anxious about the medication. Some never needed it, the formula, and Alice and Fay were always on hand to reassure you. But they were always quietly insistent that some of us took it.

At that time, I also remember how I’d started to look about myself in the room that was called Elysium. This was at the Tor. You see, all of the rooms had names that carried promises. And in there I could really see how frail Margaret and Lizzy were. They were very old at that time, and they’d both been there for years. That is when the Tor began to appear to me like a retirement home, in which the residents were sedated. Drugged and controlled and then led back to their rooms, where they would wait, alone, to cultivate.

It was in your room that you would focus on the image and begin the words. That’s where we did the cultivation, alone. Never in a group like they used to do, only in our rooms, to cut out distractions. We’d practised rhythmical breathing every morning for months, right from the start of a residency. The breathing was vital to clearing the mind. You had to start there.

[Mark Fry]: What were the images that he gave you to focus on?

[Liza]: The river, always. The river and the tunnel, the silver cord. You have to understand that what is left, what is buried behind consciousness, still has properties, thoughts, feelings, though they are different. It’s all a part of you, but not as you have ever known yourself to be. But this part of us can be induced by desire, by the will, if you are prepared. The vital body can rise or fall.

[Mark Fry]: How did it start, the projection? Can you describe it?

[Liza]: When it eventually began to happen for me it was always a drop, like a sudden fall, as if I’d tripped. And then I would sink.

I remember my first few projections quite clearly. Some people went up, but I sank through the bed. Went down. And then I would find myself close to my bed in the darkness. The building was always very dark, like a photograph or film that had never been lit properly. And it’s very strange because the only light came from me, from what I was in that form, what I had become.

Inside this light I felt as if I was intoxicated. What I could see swum around me. The room was blurred and poorly defined. I had a very poor sense of balance too.

[Mark Fry]: What could you see when you projected?

[Liza]: I could see what was closest to me more clearly. But I couldn’t see for any distance. I could always hear water too, the river, the psychic stream, but when I found it the water was black.

I also suffered a terrible feeling of anxiety, of foreboding the whole time that I projected. It wasn’t what I expected, but I was told that this was inevitable at the start.

If I ever saw myself, my body, back inside the bed, I would always return. Just black out. That’s what it was like. And then I would come to, inside my body, feeling ill from the formula. The side effects, the nausea, could last for days. It was very strong. You had to pace yourself and recover between each projection. No doubt at all in my mind now that what we were taking was illegal. And I started to suspect that all those reports and stories in the archive were lies. The ones from the sixties. Why had so many people had such incredible experiences while we only struggled in the darkness? I always asked too many questions. They weren’t welcome.