Blood Crazy (34 page)

‘But it wasn't as easy as that.'

‘Correct. The conscious mind and unconscious mind are still radically different from each other. Imagine if you hook up two powerful computers so they can exchange information and work together. That's what the two minds were straining towards. They have a problem, though. The link between them is far from perfect. Yes, you have your two computers, but you've got the wrong cable connecting the two. Okay, some information gets through, but then you hit the other snag. You discover the two minds don't speak the same language. With me so far?'

‘I reckon. Just.'

‘Please excuse all these comparisons to computers but it's important to me that I convey what I understand to you. Again, imagine the conscious mind is the captain of a ship. Imagine he's Russian. Now he can steer the ship, but it's the engineer down in the engine room who controls the ship's speed. We'll say he is Scottish. Imagine there's a problem. The engineer is trying to communicate
with the captain but can't get through. Every so often the captain shouts down Full Speed Ahead. But it's in a language the engineer doesn't understand. All the time they are shouting warnings and orders at one another but becoming more and more frustrated because they don't understand each other's language.'

‘And in the meantime the ship is rushing toward the reef.'

‘Exactly. Both the unconscious and conscious want to co-operate with one another. The unconscious only wants to be a good co-pilot, instead of the interfering back-seat driver.'

‘But how, if they can't speak the same language?'

‘True. Our Russian captain can't understand Scottie, our engineer – but there's nothing to stop him learning the language.'

I fetched the beers. Bernadette lay back on the bed, looking at the ceiling. She was thinking hard. It was hugely important to her that I understood what she told me. But I couldn't help wondering: WHY ME?

‘Cheers.' She sipped her beer, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Imagine, Nick. The benefits if we could get the two minds working together in harmony.'

‘It sounds great in theory. But would it make any difference to us in real life – I mean practical day to day benefits?'

Her eyes widened. ‘I can't even begin to guess the benefits. They would be enormous. You wouldn't be able to achieve union with the Unconscious mind straight away – only in stages. But someone beginning to achieve this in their lives would begin to reap the benefits pretty quickly. Crudely put they could turn their fifteen thousand a year life-style into a twenty thousand a year one. Men and women who find happiness difficult to achieve would discover happiness. For example, instead of having a series of troublesome affairs, they'd find a satisfying long term relationship; people who feel lonely would now enjoy eternal companionship. I'm not suggesting all problems would vanish but you'd find them less of an obstacle and easier to solve. Are you with me so far?'

I nodded.

‘People would be healthier physically and mentally,' she said. ‘You would be less likely to suffer from even common ailments like colds or 'flu; and if you did you would recover faster. People might admit to being completely happy thirty percent of the time. How would you like to be completely happy sixty percent of the time? Now, faced with genocide from the adults and having to rebuild civilization all over again, the benefit of going into partnership with the old mind in your head is simple: SURVIVAL.'

She took a sip of beer. ‘Old religions promised lots but rarely delivered. Even believers were troubled that they had more than their fair share of misery – and that when they spoke to their god he did not answer.
This one does
.'

‘Bernadette. Stop it right there.' The beer nearly slipped through my fingers. ‘Earlier you said, not only was there a god, but you'd show me where he lives. I thought you were pulling my leg. But now you're telling me there is a god and—'

‘And he's closer than you think.' She gently touched my temple. ‘The unconscious part of the mind. The old one in your head. This is what ancient people recognised as god.'

‘But they believed ancient gods lived in rivers, up mountains, in the sky?'

‘They did. But the human mind has a very clever trick called Projection. This is where people, without consciously doing it, transfer what they don't like about themselves, or their fears, onto other people. Or even onto the world around them. A classic example is the Nazis' hatred of the Jews. If the mind can't handle a problem it simply boots it out of your head. When the sanity crash came for Neanderthals they projected the battle going on in their heads outwards. I know it takes some swallowing but don't take my word for it. Pick up a book about ancient religions and right at the beginning there are myths about war in heaven. Look at the myths of hundreds of different tribes and civilizations and they all tell of a war between the old god who once ruled and the new god. The new god always wins, and the old god is always banished or imprisoned somewhere – never killed. Think of the struggle between the two minds, the new one wins, the other is banished to being backseat driver.'

My face felt hot. ‘Christ Almighty, Bernadette, I shouldn't be believing this … The trouble is, I am.'

‘Those legends are folk memories of what happened all that time ago.' Deep in thought she gazed at the bottle in her hand. ‘The myths continue the story. The new god still struggles with the old god. And while the old god never succeeds in regaining power he finds subtle ways of interfering with humankind. I imagine that sounds familiar to you? The myths also say that in the future there will be a reconciliation between the old god and the new god. And that they will rule together.'

‘But let me get this straight. This unconscious mind that the ancient people identified as god didn't, as the story goes, create the earth, the stars and – and—'

‘All creatures great and small?' She smiled. ‘No. But it does have tremendous creative power. When we learn to listen to intuition which flows up from the unconscious what are we capable of? Great music, life-saving inventions, miracle cures, sending people to the moon … You name it. If you asked most inventors, scientists, artists and so on how they came by the idea to do what they did most will say they don't really know – it just came in a flash of inspiration. Einstein actually dreamed solutions to some of his problems while he slept.'

‘Ah ha. You talked about dreams when I first came here. Adam was always having dreams where God tells him to do this or that.'

‘See, you're hitting all the buttons now, Nick. Until Adam began to tune in and listen to the old mind in his head he was a suicidal neurotic. Look at him now. Happy, energetic, brimming with ideas. In fact the idea of this Ark and running power lines from the water turbines on shore actually suggested itself to him in a dream. That's when the unconscious mind is most active, and most successful in communicating with us.'

The blood was singing through my body now, tingling me from head to toe. I found answers to my questions leaping into my head before I could even ask Bernadette. ‘You talked about learning the language of the unconscious mind,' I said quickly, ‘I'm right in thinking that one of the languages it speaks to us in is dreams?'

‘Yes.' Her eyes shone. ‘I think deep down you knew this all along. It just needed someone to give you a few clues.'

‘Okay, I have dreams but they make no sense.'

‘And I imagine Russian wouldn't either. The Russian might be telling you if you continue walking along the road you'll fall down a big hole. But you think it's just some agitated foreigner talking nonsense. It'd take too long to explain in detail now but one day you'll want to look into it more. Just remember that dreams are the language of the old unconscious mind. It's not talking to you in words but in pictures. And once you understand what these pictures or symbols mean, then you can begin your first real conversation.'

‘But how do you do that?'

‘One way to start is to remember your dreams: if you get a chance, write down a few lines of what you remember. It seems nonsense at first but as the days go by a pattern will begin to emerge. You may even begin to feel a change in yourself. People sometimes find dreams frightening, you know, loved ones dying or futilely groping round in the dark for something you've lost. That's only the unconscious mind getting frustrated and turning up the volume high to get you to listen.'

‘My mother once had a book about the interpretation of dreams to learn what's going to happen in the future but—'

‘But you're right: that's fortune telling mumbo-jumbo. Forget those books. Listen to the real authority on the subject, the old wise one who knows.' She touched my head. ‘The old gentleman in here.'

She must have seen puzzlement in my face.

‘Here's an example, then, of a dream which is basically a good dream but which seemed frightening at the time. When Adam went off the rails he dreamt he was wandering round the house he once lived in. Everything was familiar but he found himself being drawn to the top of the stairs. There, there was a door where no door existed in his own house. The door inexplicably frightened him. He didn't want to enter but as this was a dream he had no choice. He opened the door. Beyond was a passageway. Beyond that he knew there was a room with something inside he didn't want to see. He was terrified. He didn't want to go to the room and he'd wake up screaming.'

‘So what is the old mind saying to Adam then?'

‘First the dream symbolism needs to be interpreted. When you dream about your home you are actually dreaming about yourself, your own personality. This dream is commonplace and simple to interpret. The unconscious mind is saying look, there are parts of you that are hidden, that if you can only find them you can use them. It revealed Adam's solution to his problem as finding a new room in the house.'

‘So in dream language the hidden room was really the unconscious mind that lay hidden in Adam's head?'

‘Precisely. It was saying look, there's far more to you than you realise.'

‘But why the fear?'

‘Because it was new. That's all. The new and the unfamiliar tend to make you nervous, even frightened. I remember I was terrified when I had my first driving lesson. Only because it was something new.'

‘So you got Adam into the hidden room.'

‘Yes. That's when the transformation began into the new Adam you see today. It doesn't always happen overnight. But sometimes you do experience intense feelings of what in olden times people would describe as
seeing the light
.'

‘So,' I said, ‘in ancient times people weren't as dumb as I thought, worshipping all these weird and wonderful gods.'

‘No, they weren't stupid at all. What they were doing was experiencing a gut feeling that there was a powerful but invisible being that could affect their lives and thoughts. They looked very hard for this being, so hard in fact that they began to believe they saw him in the stars or the oceans or forests. The gut feelings were right, it's just they were looking in the wrong places.'

‘I don't know if I'm talking a load of crap,' I said, ‘but it's just come to me now that for thousands of years there's been this urge, maybe an instinct, to communicate with this supernatural being. A being who we believe, deep down, has an important message for us. One that, if we could only receive it would allow us to live happily ever after.'

‘You've hit the nail on the head, Nick. In all cultures believers look for guidance from the gods in the form of signs – astrology, palmistry, reading tea leaves, they're all part of the same thing. It all
points to the hereditary belief that someone OUT THERE desperately wants to speak to us. And, deep down, WE desperately want to speak to them. And it's not only ancient people. Scientists feel it too, but they try and rationalise it. They try and communicate with dolphins, or try to teach chimpanzees our language. Billions were spent on radio telescopes and research programmes like SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. They hoped they could tune into the transmissions of alien life forms. Scientists, too, believed these beings out there in space would have an important message that would transform humankind. Doesn't that, too, have a religious feel to it?'

‘So in effect ordinary people, priests, mystics, even scientists, have been striving and striving to contact a being who they instinctively know exists. Who wants to speak to man, and to help man. But instead of looking outward to heaven and the cosmos they should have been looking in here.' I pointed to my head.

‘And you don't need a billion dollar radio telescope, or a gaggle of holy men. You only need to go to sleep at night and to listen to your dreams.' She smiled. ‘And remember: don't ignore the old mind. After all, he's the friend inside.'

Midnight. Bernadette sat on the bed looking tired but satisfied. Getting the truth through my thick skull had been hard work.

I wanted to sleep now but there were still some loose ends. ‘So I'm right in thinking this. Fifty thousand years ago the new mind took control, pushing the old mind into the back seat. Neanderthal man then changed into us. Ancient people dimly remembered what happened and it became religious myth?'

‘Yes. For thousands of years men could talk easily to the old mind. Gradually they forgot how, and they began to believe that the old one they'd talked to long ago was god.' Her eyes, sleepy and huge, looked up at me. ‘Yes, Nick. Now you know – like you've always known deep down.'

‘And that eight months ago this battle between the two minds erupted again?'

‘That's right. Although we didn't know it, humans were already moving into a chain of events that would lead to their eventual extinction. Humankind was beginning to lose its way, its drive for
development had turned into a drive for self-destruction. Nothing spectacular like nuclear war. Just a slow rot from the inside. A cancer of the species. We'd lost our faith in ourselves; people believed they had no real reason for even existing …
What's it all for?
they'd ask one another.'