A Rage for Revenge

15 Conversation with the Monster

Each night, I slept with a different person, sometimes a woman, sometimes a man. Sometimes an adult, sometimes a child. Sometimes we had sex, sometimes we didn't. There were no secrets. We were supposed to share ourselves totally.

If there was ever a question about it, the answer was, "Jason says we should, so we can find out how we feel about it." That didn't always make sense to me, but it was something I couldn't question either. It was clear to me that Jason was doing something right and I wanted to know what that something was.

I guessed I wanted to be a lot like him. Respected. Understanding. Compassionate. In control. Loved.

And something else.

Jason had a way of looking at things, looking underneath them or inside them-or maybe from another dimension. Jason said that he wasn't just looking at the thing, he was looking at the context around it as well. "Look at what's happening, Jim. Not what you think i§;happening, but what's happening. The way people behave demonstrates what game they think they have to play to win. Most people play to win, not to play; that's why they're not having any fun."

Right. That was me.

Jason spoke with a level of insight and certainty that was terrifying. I felt blind by comparison-and very jealous of his skill-and at the same time grateful that I was being allowed to learn from him.

So, if Jason said, "Go ahead. Do it. Find out why it makes you uncomfortable. Find out why you're afraid of it," we did it. So, when Jason told us to go naked, I went naked. And learned about clothes. And when Jason told us to trade clothes with each other, I traded clothes with Sally for a week. And learned about nudity. And when Jason told us to sleep with each other. . . . Jason said I was afraid to let people love me, so I held them at arm's length with a combination of belligerence so they wouldn't see who was really inside, and self-pity when they did. Jason said that I was a racketeer, a snake, and a rip-off artist; I was cheating the people around me by not letting them discover how wonderful I really was and how much love I really had to offer. I wanted that to be true, so I followed his instructions.

I wondered if Jesus had been like this. The real Jesus, not the one in the fairy tales. If he had been, I could understand how all those religions grew up around him.

There were no marriages here. Marriages were from the old system. "That kind of pair-bonding," said Jason, "is invalid in the game we're playing now. It works against the cohesiveness of the Tribe. For the Tribe to be a unit, we must be each and every one of us bound to each and every one of us."

As the days passed, I began to see what he was talking about. Living with the Tribe was the chance to step outside of that other agreement-the one called The United States of Americaand experience a very different agreement. It became the opportunity to discover how much of my thinking was really me, and how much of it had actually been the culture I had been immersed in expressing itself through me. A startling realization, that one. And very uncomfortable. It hurt to find out how much of what I thought was me really wasn't anyone I knew at all. I hadn't made those agreements, but they were there in my head anyway.

"Those agreements could be you," Jason said. "If you want them, own them. But consider what the cost of those agreements will be. Consider what you will have to pay for the privilege of owning those agreements. How much of your aliveness will you have to give up? Do you really want to be an American, Jim? I don't think so.

"You say that you want to be that thing that you think an American is supposed to be. But you don't really know what that is, do you? What is an American, Jim? No, don't play the tape. I've heard it. I helped write it. See, you've bought into a reality that's impossible to succeed in. You hold this idealized image ahead of you like a donkey holding his own carrot in front of his nose. You keep it out of reach and won't ever let yourself have it. You'll only let yourself have just enough of what you want to be miserable. You and I both know it.

"What you really want, Jim, is larger than any nationality. You've got a whole bunch of words connected to it, like God and brotherhood and freedom and justice and peace and love-but you don't really know what's at the center or how to get there. You just keep flubbering along in all directions at once, hoping you'll stumble into it.

"The only part of it, Jim, that any of us can ever get right is that we can recognize that place when we do find it. But the only way to recognize it is to stop trying to fit it into our pictures of the way we think it has to be. You have to let go of what you know to find out what you don't know. So, let go, Jim, and find out what's available here."

Jason was right.

There was something going on here. I had never experienced a context of such total love before. I had never experienced a society of human beings that was as nonjudgmental as this one. Anywhere else in the world, you were reviled for being different. Here you were applauded for taking the chance, for expressing yourself. Think of it this way. Silliness is an art form. And there are no experts in it.

You have to invent it fresh every day. It was a startling discovery.

I loved it.

And I discovered. . . .

Look, you take a person out of one set of agreements and drop him in another and then another and another, and it's like washing a dish. The agreements become transitory; you get to see the person underneath much more clearly. And once you can recognize the transitory nature of cultural agreements, you're free to reinvent those agreements in your culture that support you in the results you really want to produce.

Myself, I began to see how I had been trapped inside the whole military mind-set.

Old news: The mind is a computer program. Part of the program is hard-wired into the cortex; the rest is self-programmed, starting just about the time daddy rolls off mommy and falls asleep.

There's no instruction book. Baby has to figure it out without help.

And you wonder why we're all so screwed up?

Most of us can't even communicate with each other clearly. You don't hear what I'm saying, you hear what you think you hear. I hear what I think I hear. And then we bludgeon each other to death for our misunderstandings. And because we've all worked so hard to program ourselves, we're convinced we're programmed right and everyone else is wrong.

No wonder most of life is one long argument.

Jason said, "What we're doing here is tuning. We all have to agree on the language we're using, we have to learn how to hear what we're really speaking. We have to agree on our larger purposes. We have to, each and every one of us, willingly be a part of the larger whole."

We were taking a stroll around the perimeter of the camp. Jason took a meditative walk every afternoon. It was a privilege to be invited to accompany him. Today, he had asked me. Usually, it was an honor. Today it wasn't. At least, I didn't think it was. I'd done something terrible.

Everybody knew.

And now I was going to find out what happened when you did something terrible.

Orrie followed thoughtfully behind, stopping occasionally to chew on a tree or examine a bush. Jason would turn around and study Orrie, or sometimes just admire him. He was filling out beautifully. Sometimes, you could hear him singing all over camp.

It made me feel ashamed.

I wasn't worthy of this attention. And at the same time, I was angry. He didn't have the right to punish me. I hadn't done anything wrong.

"Jim." Jason put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to him. "What are you afraid of?"

"Nothing. "

"That's your military mind again, Jim. Now talk to me honestly. Do you want to talk about what happened yesterday?" I'd had a tantrum yesterday and had refused to attend the circle. It didn't matter what the tantrum had been about. What mattered was the fact that I had been unkind to Ray and Marcie and Valerie. I shook my head. "No." I stared at the ground.

Jason put a finger under my chin and lifted my face.

"Jim, I'm not your daddy. I'm not going to punish you. That's not what we do here. Intelligent beings don't use fear and pain and punishment to motivate results. It's counterproductive. Punishment is evidence of the failure to communicate."

"Well somebody failed to communicate with me then. . . ." I stopped myself. I sounded like a bigger asshole than usual when I tried to justify myself. I shut up.

"This is not a question of right or wrong, Jim. It's a question of being appropriate to the situation. What you did was inappropriate; something happened and your mind triggered an inappropriate response. So what? Don't beat yourself up for it. We all do that. The appropriate thing to do is apologize and get on with the real job." If en took me by the elbow then and began leading me up the garden path.

"Jim," Jason began quietly. "Do you know what the condition of life for most people is? Unconsciousness. I'm not talking about coma or catatonia; I'm talking about simply not being aware. People walk around this planet in hypnotic trances. They go through the motions. They eat, they sleep, they watch TV, they make love, and they do it like they're on rails. They're unconscious to the passion in their own lives. So what happens when something disturbing happens? Your mind gives you an uncomfortable reaction, and the automatic response is fight or flight. You know what happens when you wake people up? They get angry. You get angry.

"Guess what? We're in the business of waking people up here. It's a dangerous business. You know why? Angry people use their anger as an excuse to kill. You can get blinded by your own rage and do terrible things. Or, you can learn to recognize that the rage is a signpost that you've been unconscious about something.

"Jim, when you let go of the rage, what's left is what you've been resisting. If you're willing to confront the uncomfortable things, something wonderful will happen. You'll start to experience all those things that you've been resisting so hard-anger, fear, boredom, grief-and that's when you get the joke. You find out that resisting them hurts more than experiencing them. And then they disappear. And you get larger and more alive.

"So all that uncomfortableness that you're experiencing here, Jim, shouldn't be seen as a formidable barrier, but as an exciting challenge-because on the other side of it is your own life."

I didn't answer that. What he was asking me was to stop being mad. And I thought I had a damn good reason to be mad.

I just couldn't remember what it was.

"I guess I'm having a hard time adjusting," I said. "The rest of you make it all look so easy."

Jason laughed. "You're doing fine, Jim. Really, you are. You're right on schedule. This is part of the process too. We all love you."

"I don't know how I can look anybody in the eye again. I'm so embarrassed."

"Just go up to them and hug them, that's all that's necessary. And then you can all laugh together. You'll see."

I knew he was right. These people never let any hurt last very long. But how did they get this way? Sometimes it felt like an impossible job to me.

"Jason," I asked. "You brought in three new guests last week. Obviously, you want the Tribe to grow. But toward what? What's the vision? How can I tap into it too?"

He smiled. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked. "I don't have a vision-and I do. I know, that sounds confusing. Let me tell you, Jim, when people speak of their visions very often they're talking about the pictures that their belief systems produce. Listen to me: your standards and ideals are your ego in disguise. Your belief system is your ego in disguise. So, to talk about that kind of vision is to not talk about what's truly possible, but about the way you think it should be done. I don't have that kind of vision.

"When I talk about my vision, I'm talking about what I've seen in the Revelations. The new gods, Jim, are a message to us." He stopped and squatted to the ground to examine something. He stood up and held out his hand. "Have you ever seen one of these before?"

I looked. He was holding out a tiny red marble of a creature. It had eight tiny legs and two black eyes. I shook my head. Jason put it back on the ground carefully. "It's a Chtorran insect. Have you ever noticed what perfect little machines insects are?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. I've always been fascinated by insects. They're so alien."

"Mm-hm," he said. "They don't have any choice, do they? They're just little biological machines. Their functioning is determined by the pattern of DNA in their chromosomes, right?"

"Right."

"Have you ever noticed what perfect little machines human beings are?"

"Uh, well, biologically, yes."

"But not mentally?"

"That's a loaded question, Jason, isn't it?"

He grinned and clapped my shoulder. "Well . . . ?"

"Jason, you know this is the stuff that makes me angry. Every time you insist that my mind is a computer program, I just go crazy."

"Wrong. You don't go crazy. Your mind does. Don't get confused, Jim. You're not your mind. You're just the place where it happens. And that 'craziness' is one of the things your mind does to keep you from hearing the bad news. It's a programmed response, Jim. Your mind is a computer program that likes to insist it's not a computer program. Very boring. And not very productive either. The only difference between you and that insect is that you are a complex enough machine that you have some choice in your programming. You are a machine that programs yourself. The insect isn't. But you have to know what you are before you can be it."

We started walking again. I wasn't sure where he was going with this train of thought.

"Think about this, Jim: everything that human beings know is a product of human experience. The human machinery only knows those things about itself that the human machinery can discover. We can't know anything that we can't know. Do you follow that?"

"Just barely."

"All right, let's try it this way. Suppose you wanted to know what was on the other side of that hill, but you couldn't go there to see. What would you do to find out?"

"Um, I don't know. Look at a map?"

"You don't have a map. You're trying to make one. That's why you want to know what's on the other side of the hill. What do you do?"

"Try and figure it out?"

"You're guessing. Figuring it out is another way of making something up. You might just as well write 'Here there be Dragons' in the space. You know that's what people do when they don't know something. They make something up instead. What's the responsible thing to do when you don't know something?"

"Ask. Ask someone who knows."

"Right. You see, there's the opportunity here. We can only know what human beings can know. That means that all our gods are human gods. They are reflections of ourselves. God an this world is a mirror of our own flaws.

"The Chtorrans know things that we can't know. We're trapped in our own physiology. We're apes. We always will be. All we can know is ape stuff. We can never escape the trap-we'll always be apes. But we can know what's beyond apeness if we will take advantage of the opportunity that the Chtorrans represent. They know what the world looks like from their side of the hill. They can share that with us.

"Do you see? They bring us new gods-new mirrors. The opportunity is for us to get beyond our own humanity, for us to transcend the machinery of our biology, and to finally discover those things that we could never discover by ourselves. The new gods can be our teachers, Jim. I've seen things in the Revelations that I cannot explain because our language doesn't have the words for it. We don't have the concepts. We don't have the paradigms. We have no models. We don't even have any contexts in which to construct the paradigms, models, and concepts.

"I have had experiences that I cannot share yet because there is no one else on the planet who can receive the message. Do you know how lonely that can be?" He put his arm around my shoulders and held me close while we walked. "What I want to do here is share the vision. Every time we have a Revelation, the whole Tribe advances. Do you know what a god really is, Jim?"

I shook my head. "I always thought a god was beyond human comprehension. "

"That's one of the aspects, of course. But let me give you the simple definition. A god is anything you use as a power source. Before the worms, before the plagues, people used money and sex and possessions as gods. That's where they found their identities. We've found a new power source in the Chtorrans, and a new domain of identity for the human machine. The question of validity-or right and wrong-that's all irrelevant. The important thing is that this new domain produces results. It works. You can see it in the faces of the Tribe. Already, most of them are more awake than I was when I first let Orrie into my life. Do you know what his full name is?"

"No."

"Ouroboros." He waited to see if I would react.

I knew the reference. "The worm who eats his own tail."

"You're literate, Jim. I'm surprised."

"My dad was a fantasy-programmer. He wrote a game called Ouroboros. I helped with the research. Ouroboros is the great worm of the world; he symbolizes the eternal process of death and renewal. It's a good name for a god," I added.

Jason shook his head thoughtfully. "It's a human name. Eventually, Jim, we're going to have to abandon human names and human language and human identities."

"And replace them with . . . ?"

"If I knew, then we'd already be doing it," Jason said. We walked on for a while.

A question occurred to me and I voiced it. "Orrie is different from Falstaff and Orson," I said. "In fact, Orrie's different from all the other worms-Chtorrans-I've ever seen. Why is that, Jason? What is it that makes Orrie so special?"

"Orrie's not special," Jason said. "But he's different and that difference makes him seem special. The truth is, he's really the first one. He's the first Chtorran to be raised by human beings: He's the linkage. Or maybe we should say that we're the first human beings to be raised by the new gods and we're the linkage. So are you. Either side of it is only half of it. The point is, this is the place where the linkage is happening. The other two-Falstaff and Orson-they were wild. Orrie brought them in."

"But, they're bigger than he is. I don't understand how ."

"Size doesn't have anything to do with it, Jim. The Chtorrans are not a species where bullying determines who's in charge." Jason took me by the arm. "Come with me, Jim. Let me show you something. Orrie is building a family. After you build a family, then you build a tribe. Then a nation. But you start with the family." He led me toward a part of the camp that Falstaff had never let me explore before. "Orrie can't build a family with Falstaff or Orson. They're older than he is, so the bonding wouldn't work. He wouldn't be the head. Also, they're all males now. "

"Huh-? What do you mean now? How do you know that?"

"Orrie told me. I don't know what it means. He doesn't have the language yet to handle the concepts. But we'll get there." Jason led me down a slope to a little hollow. There was a burned-out building here and an old, abandoned swimming pool. As we approached the pool, I could see that one end of it appeared filled with refuse. "Our camouflage," Jason explained.

He led me to the edge of the pool and made a chirruping sound. Orrie came up beside us and peered down into the pool and said, "Chtrrrppp!"

The rubbish at the bottom of the pile shifted, then pushed aside, and two of the tiniest Chtorrans I'd ever seen-they were pink and fat and cute-came flowing out to greet us. They were like little teddy bears. They were each the size of a large dog, less than a meter in length. They were small enough to pick up and cuddle. They stretched up the sides of the pool, waving their arms and trying to reach us.

Jason made me take a step back. "Careful," he said. "They're hungry, and they may not recognize that you're not food."

"These are Orrie's babies?"

"Not biologically, no. But in a Tribal sense, yes. The new gods don't make families like we do: But they do build families. When these babies get bigger, they'll be Orrie's mates. We need one more to make a fourth corner for the family. That will be happening almost any day now. It'll be quite a cause for celebration."

Orrie flowed down into the pool and began to curl up with his babies. Jason took my arm and steered me away from the edge. "Let's go back now," he said.

We walked in silence back up the slope. Orrie did not follow us. I could hear a deep purring rumble from the pool.

Jason said, "Jim, it's time to talk about you. You've been given the opportunity to discover what we're up to here. We've shared everything with you-our food, our beds, our visions, our Revelations. You know about the goals we've chosen, our plan to find a safe place to live. A place where we can build our Tribe. You know what we're up to here; you've met the new gods and you know what the opportunity is. They bring us the opportunity to transcend ourselves.

"Now, it's time for us to talk about your participation. The bottom line is this, Jim. You're either a guest on the planet, or a host. Most of human history, the apes who were our ancestors have been acting like they were guests. Most of the human species still acts like they're only guests here.

"The opportunity for us is to be the host. Do you know what that means?"

I admitted I didn't. My survival mind offered a few disgusting possibilities, but I didn't voice the thoughts.

"To be a host is to be responsible for the guests: Guests eat. Hosts serve. To be a host is a higher state. What I'm building here is a Tribe of hosts. We will be responsible for our guests on the planet-our human guests and our Chtorran guests. The question that you need to answer is this? Do you want to be a host?"

A long moment passed between us before I answered. I said, "Jason, you have told me never to make a commitment unless I'm one hundred percent willing to complete it. I don't know all of the commitment yet. I have to look at this and see."

"That's fair," he said. "I didn't expect you to jump in immediately. And if you had, I'd be suspicious of your ability to keep the commitment. What you're demonstrating here is how important you hold the choice. That shows that you recognize the size:of it. That's good. But let me give you this question, Jim. This is the question you need to answer. When you have the answer to this, you will know what your commitment is: What is your life about? What do you want your life to be about?"

He took me in his arms and hugged me. I hugged him back. He kissed me, I kissed him, and then he dismissed me to do my daily chores in the vegetable garden.