Illness

I’ve been ill and it has changed the way I look at things, because I can’t escape the feeling it has had a metaphysical dimension. I wish it were only a matter of microbes and symptoms, but I suspect that this feeling ill, week after week, has a meaning. This troubles me as much as the thought I might not get better.

I travelled up to London in mid-July for a meeting. Thick incense smoke, plus the cigarette smoke of fellow magicians silently took their toll. But I can’t lay my illness at the door of smokers; the kundalini breathing exercise that was part of my working, which we performed in the unventilated room, wasn’t a good idea in retrospect. I’d loaded up my lungs with a toxic stew.

And then – that pesky metaphysical dimension. Perhaps I became sick because I was sick already of everything. On the tube ride to Victoria Station, homeward bound, drunk people disgusted me: so many of them, self-medicating for the weekend. I was struck by the appearance of young men in particular. I wasn’t convinced they were made of flesh, but of something like foam-rubber that hung in rounded folds about their cheeks and limbs. If you prodded them, it seemed the dent might take seconds to disappear. Many sported tufts of facial hair, to distract the casual observer from how they were made of Play-Doh.

Play-Doh

Play-Doh. A sort of spongy modelling clay. (But *what* is that child holding?)

At Victoria station I bought peanuts. The man at front of the queue was drunk, playing out loudly his realisation he hadn’t enough money for his purchases. He seemed to want to involve everyone in a theatrical performance of himself. He didn’t look the kind of person you’d expect to do that: grey suit, goatee and glasses. A briefcase and a laptop slung around his shoulder. If the middle classes have given up on not acting like twats, is it any wonder the city would explode into moronic riots a fortnight later?

I’d taken my seat before I noticed the state of the carriage. It reeked of booze, because booze had been flung all over it. There were plastic glasses and beercans tossed everywhere. Ripped packets of Haribo lay under seats, their contents thrown wildly around. I helped the cleaner. We loaded his plastic sack with the glasses and cans, discovering several champagne bottles. Some of the Haribo were wet to the touch, as if they’d been sucked and spat out. I washed my hands afterwards, as best I could, but looking back, proceeding to eat peanuts with my fingers was perhaps not the wisest thing.

A man and woman sat a few rows ahead. The grey-suited guy from the shop asked if he could join them. It seemed a coincidence, but the carriage smelt so much like a pub I realised it was a subliminal Mecca for piss-heads. The train moved off and I listened to their conversation. Grey Suit talked self-deprecatingly, but then used any sympathy he received to launch personal, sexual remarks back at his hosts. Offending them, he would apologise, blame it on the drink, make more self-deprecating comments, and begin his game over again.

I wished he would wake up, and stop polluting others with his unacknowledged loneliness. But telling him that would only fuel his narcissistic self-hatred. The woman and the man eventually took flight, so Grey Suit started on the people opposite. I was sick of his bleak misery and changed carriages, and then all seemed well again. But it was far too late. The damage, the disgust, would wreak its effects.

a bag of haribo

A bag of Haribo. Ideal for sucking and then flinging around railway carriages.

I don’t remember much of the two weeks following. The next day I was groggy and wheezy from the smoke, but that’s not unusual after a night with magicians. Except it grew worse, until I felt feverish and aching, like the early stages of flu. I was at my girlfriend’s. She has chronic fatigue syndrome and is currently housebound. I figured I had a cold and wouldn’t be placing too much of a burden on her. But over the next few days I worsened until I could hardly move or eat and lay alternating through cycles of shivers and sweats, racked by a gurgling cough.

After a week of this and no sign of recovery, I rang my GP. I could only stand for a few seconds before becoming faint. He diagnosed pneumonia over the phone. I passingly thought it odd he didn’t need to examine me, but I eagerly took the course of antibiotics he prescribed. Over the next few days my temperature stabilised and I coughed up less green stuff. But another week passed and I still felt shit. Most of the time I stared into space, wondering why I had no energy to do anything else. I should have been bored, but I didn’t have the energy for that either. And my consciousness had changed. I could no longer see the Absolute. Since my awakening in March 2009, I’ve only had to turn my mind towards the Absolute and there it is: that vibrant spark of nothingness at the heart of self. I’d forgotten what life had been like before it appeared. Now I was receiving a cruel reminder.

Formerly, when unpleasant sensations arose, although there was suffering it was also apparent how there is actually no one to suffer – because at the heart of self is nothingness. But I couldn’t see that any more. The reason seemed to surface in a distorted fashion during feverish dreams. I dreamt I felt bad, yet kept assuming that feeling bad was centreless and absolute, a principle or the origin of experience rather than just another impression. The awakened recognition of the Absolute as the centre of self seemed to be serving me badly, now that I was ill. I’d assumed that a connection with the Absolute makes illness or dying easier to bear. But this is not the case. There are no guarantees against suffering for the awakened mind in illness – and, presumably, on the verge of death. The reason for this is obvious – but first, I had more suffering to do…

The antibiotics helped, yet my lungs still wheezed like a broken accordion, and in the night I couldn’t stop coughing once I’d started. I could get up for short periods, but a trip to the corner-shop left me faint and wiped out. So I rang my GP again. After much wrangling, a doctor came and examined me. She diagnosed bronchitis-asthma and prescribed inhalers, plus a course of steroids. Within two hours of the first dose of steroids, I felt miraculously better. I still had symptoms, but suddenly there was no sense of ‘illness’. It felt so striking, I tried to sketch the difference in my condition before and after:

The difference in consciousness of illness and of feeling better.

In the top drawing, the individual consciousness emerging from the Absolute, shown as the circular area, has impressions from the non-dual (I), astral (A) and etheric (E) levels bleeding into it. The lungs feature hugely in consciousness, which is fuzzy with illness, not as capable as usual at differentiating impressions of itself from others.

The bottom drawing shows the sense of illness dropped away: sensations from the lungs are less, and consciousness is clearer, because it can distinguish more ably impressions of itself. From a non-dual perspective the notion that consciousness is the container of impressions is problematic, but it seems to me this sensation of separation plays a role in our sense of well-being. When we are less able to distinguish between consciousness and its impressions, albeit an illusory distinction, then we live in a diseased universe rather than a diseased self.

The course of steroids lasted five days. Still shaky, I went back to work the following week, but started to notice that foods I usually enjoyed were becoming oddly repulsive. This steadily grew worse until I struggled to find food that didn’t make me retch the moment I put it in my mouth. By the Monday following, chocolate was about the only thing I could stomach, so that’s what I had for breakfast. Then I started to brush my teeth, but the sensation of the toothbrush in my mouth was suddenly so nauseating I found myself over the toilet bowl, puking.

‘Nausea is a common reaction to withdrawal from steroids,’ the doctor said. ‘If it hasn’t passed in a week, come back.’ And thus began five days of monumental vomiting and nausea. Each day until the Friday following, I puked up at regular intervals a rosy bile with flecks of blood in it. No matter how plain, all food was vile. And while I lay weak and inactive, my asthma, which had begun to improve, now took the opportunity to make a comeback. This nausea, supposedly a reaction to the medicine, felt worse that the condition the medicine was supposed to cure. I seemed in a worse place than where I started.

The metaphysical dimension was nagging me again. Suppose my own disgust had made my experience disgusting? Had this to do with the magical work I’d been doing? The last Enochian aethyr I’d scried had been the tenth, which traditionally is said to span the Abyss. I’d supposed that the Abyss held no further terrors for me. But what if the Abyss is that which by its nature presents an ordeal, regardless of where we are? I recalled how, the day after scrying the tenth aethyr, I’d visited the toilet and unexpectedly pissed blood into the bowl. (I’d decided at the time not to get this checked out, figuring that if it signified a serious condition it would recur – which it didn’t.) What if this signified the beginning of an ordeal of health? What if my passage across the Abyss hadn’t ended with the vision of the aethyr that I received, but somehow I were still inside it?

These thoughts nagged as I continued to fail to recover. And as the Absolute continued to evade me, I started to brood also over one of Christ’s last utterances from the cross: ‘Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?’ (‘Eli Eli lama sabachthani?’ Matthew 27: 46; Mark 15: 34) Not that my condition bore any comparison with Christ’s mutilation, but those words made me wonder why even a spiritual master as great as Christ had experienced an unexpected withdrawal of the Absolute at the moment of his greatest suffering. Was the absence of the Absolute a failing on my part, or an indication there are other possibilities for development I have yet to grasp? The weeks of illness have convinced me that the experience of the Absolute is of limited use against suffering. To paraphrase the Zen saying: first there is shit, then there is no shit, then there really, truly is shit.

The reason the Absolute is not apparent at the height of suffering is that the experience of the Absolute is not the Absolute. Because it is just an experience, it can be eclipsed by more powerful experiences – such as those we encounter in illness. To assume that the experience of the Absolute must be our most powerful experience is to make the same mistake, because if it’s an experience then that’s all it is. Its content doesn’t matter, even if its content is no content whatsoever. An experience of no content is still an experience. My feverish dreams tried to show me this, in a reversed fashion. Formerly, I could take refuge in the experience of the Absolute, assuming it were different somehow from experiences of suffering. In my fever-dreams I took my experience of illness as if it were absolute, and the result was a universe of suffering.

Although I now feel much better, I’m still not recovered. My health might remain fucked-up for a while, or maybe for years. Having witnessed the Absolute shrivel uselessly in the face of this suffering, a change in direction and view seems called for.

17 thoughts on “Illness

  1. Eeew. Be well, Duncan!

    Regarding Jesus’ last words – he was quoting the opening words of Psalm 22.

    http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+22&version=NIV

    Which goes on and on to describe misery in words similar to your post.

    Also, I’m struck by the way you put this: “The awakened recognition of the Absolute as the centre of self…” I’ve seen this before somewhere. I’ll let you know when I find it.

    Take care,
    Florian

  2. Hi Duncan,
    You have my sympathy’s completely. Although not as bad as your illness (no vomiting) I can empathise, having been through the bronchitis/asthma mix over the last two weeks. Added to that my inhaler ran out and my repeat prescription failed to turn up, leaving me ‘airless’ for about 6 days.
    I got through it by listening to a CD of Tibetan Monk chanting, while repeating to myself internally ‘there is only now’. This calmed me and lessened my need for oxygen.
    Perhaps you are right about your experience signalling a ‘turning point’ for you. I thought enlightenment would be the ultimate goal to aim for. This seems not to be the case. Maybe after enlightenment comes the need for caring for the sick of body and mind. Possibly your illness is a sign for you to start to do this caring for others in some way?
    I can’t say much on the deeper aspects, having a limited knowledge/intelligence to draw on! At the very least you should concentrate on strengthening your body and mind, I think, though.
    Good luck! and get well soon.

  3. I know this is sort of a tangent, but were you weaned off the steroids? They work wonders, but there’s a reason they usually come prepackaged with specific instructions that change daily. Giving someone a constant dose and having them stop suddenly is just irresponsible; I wouldn’t wish those withdraws on anyone.

    Sorry, just professional indignation as a pharmacist.

  4. Hey Duncan, thank you for this, it is good to know I’m not alone- I have had similar experiences during bouts of illness, I have no idea what it’s all about.

    I hope you keep well and feel better and stronger. Don’t worry overmuch about these troubling experiences, my friend. Guides from beyond, as Rumi said.

    Peace :)

  5. Man, may you get better!! I’m stuck in bed thanks to an (light) vehicle accident and It’s been a great reminder to care for the other people too, as I want to be caressed on these momments. Great post anyway!

    This makes me think a lot on Ayahuasca and Shamanism. Can I somewhat digress? Just add some interesting information I’ve collected first hand and may be related (and I’m plenty of time, heheh).

    When you drinka ayahuasca you may find yourself with a sensation of sickness – a sensation that characterizes the “Peia”, ayahuasca’s purgative bad trip. Counsciousness blacks out partially – the sensation is that of compression, opression, weight, small mindspace and nausea (I don’t know if the sensation of sickness is the stomach disconfort, or if they’re separated; they appear to me as a continuum but maybe it’s my blunt and confused concentration during the peia. It’s shadowy, hard to see). The sensation is of unholy mixture, like you have something alien (and repulsive) inside you. Speaking in junguian terms, it’s like the self is partially identified with the shadow; or maybe, ego and shadow are mixed out. Shamans would talk that you’re “haunted” and I think it means the same thing. It’s like you can’t really distinguish yourself from something you should. Oh, there’s also some kundalini effect going on, like a cold flame, sometimes with a metallic or eletric feel attached to it.

    Then you vomit or shit it out. You purge the peia’s alien throught physical medium, like Shamans do with feathers, stones, bones, supposedly found inside the patient’s body (they probably fake it, and it works anyway). This is ayahuasca’s main difference to other psychedelics. It does the whole work, you just need to surrender to it’s effects. It’s possible to black out when vomiting, if the peia is strong enough, if there’s enough energy circling (indigenous people, and synchretic ayahuasca religions, treat the ayahuasca “proccess” as alien contact – be it contact with the Force of the Forest, or with Christ, or with the spirit of Solomon, or with the twin spirits of the Serpent and the Jaguar, or even UFO contact, depending of your paradigm).

    After the purge, you get into the Light – counsciousness get lighter, oscillate slower, gentler, things are easy to understand, there is more space to maneuver, it feels overall pleasurable and clean. Body’s energy channel (etheric?) seems unobstructed – the muscles are relaxed and integrated all around the body.

    (there are the energy models for englightenment, right? Like, you experience the fruition through opening “gates” and building psycho-energetic circutry like Kenneth Folk says)

    On what planes exactly this manifests? I’m not sure. There’s what I think that is some kind of non-dual proccess going on ayahuasca – I get the sensation that I’m looped inside out, reversed like a cloth and then reversed back, in a moebius strip movement, first there’s macrocosm and microcosm, then there’s a hard to explain movement and they switch sides, and they’re both in the same movement, they’re continuous in their discontinuity. It’s like it puts your counsciousness through the mind strata forcibly, rocketing through the jhanic ark if you’re able to be relatively equanimous. Maybe there’s some kind of non-dual stuff visibly going on, affecting the lower planes, the grosser stuff, re-estructuring it on non-dual terms, some angelic agency, I dunno.

    The way I feel after an ayahuasca session… is the same way I felt after my first and only retreat, 10 days of vipassana on a Goenka center. But vipassana’s effect was deeper long lasting, as it was crafted with the determined and careful build up of concentration. Maybe the difference is this: when you do vipassana, you reap deeper insights, because you’re more concentrated, you’re more equanimous (but it’s also harder, demands more discipline). When you do ayahuasca, you reap lower insights, because you’re not that concentrated because there are allucinatory distraction in large ammounts going on. Getting stuck in a peia on ayahuasca may be due to a combination of a low enough dose and enough “sankharas”, reactive patterns, fixed on the abyss strata. (higher doses would propel you naturally to vomiting, and vomiting almost ever weakens the Peia).

    All specullative, folks! What do you guys think?

  6. It must have been terrible. Hope that you’re health already got better. What I found most interesting in your post are the statements:

    – “the reason the Absolute is not apparent at the height of suffering is that the experience of the Absolute is not the Absolute” and,

    – “having witnessed the Absolute shrivel uselessly in the face of this suffering, a change in direction and view seems called for”.

    You have definitely paid the high price for what looks like a precious insight. After awakening, the self-center, ego or knot of perception that we used to experience as the center of consciousness is replaced by a nothingness or an emptiness that we have learned to recognize at the Absolute (or what I like to call the Unconditioned). Although neo-advaita rhetoric claims that no one gets enlightened, it is consciousness that it enlightened by the Absolute, simply because the Absolute doesn’t need to be enlightened. Yet the enlightened consciousness is not the Absolute, but the window through which the dark light of emptiness radiates through the center of our being. Since consciousness is impermanent and dependent upon the physical brain to function properly, a weak or ill body is likely to alter the experience of the Absolute, even for an awakened person.

    My current assumption is that Siddhartha Gautama was already awakened and recognized as such by his peers before his final breakthrough, but wasn’t satisfied, because this event -known at his time and still experienced by non-Buddhists-, was not (yet) the end of suffering. Accordingly, his final breakthrough under the Bodhi Tree was probably not awakening as we have experienced it, but the final and complete dropping of the Self, namely, the very sense of being or whatever remains of it after awakening, putting a final end to the flow of becoming, birth, death and suffering.

    The good news is that we can get back on the cushion.

  7. im going to meditate at 7.83Hz and focus on your image, the healthy One is the only one i know.

    I fear perhaps this illness is a subconscious powerful, yet self-induced response to scrying the 10th…The Abyss. It’s seriously heavy shit man. However, once you get to the other side, and I have no doubt that you will, I imagine you can throw across a kind of rope ladder for the rest of us – if you would be so kind, sir. Trust me and believe me when i tell you that you shall retrun to perfect physical, mental, emotional and spiritual balance….soon, brother, soon.

  8. @Florian: Christ was *quoting* as he suffered?! He goes up even more in my estimation! I’m heavily influenced by Bernadette Roberts at the moment (thanks to Alex), which may have affected my choice of terminology…

    @Jeff: Inhaler-less for 6 days must have been very scary indeed! Sounds awful. I’m glad you came through it okay. I agree that relaxation and meditation is great for asthma, for keeping that sense of panic at bay – which of course only makes it worse. As to what comes next for me – I suspect it probably just involves just carrying on like everyone else: trying to live out this human existence as fully as possible. :-)

    @Pallas: Thanks for your indignation! There was no weaning, unfortunately. It was only a short course (5 days) but it seems I am unfortunately quite sensitive steroids, because my girlfriend received the very same treatment last Christmas, but had no adverse reaction at all. I’m not qualified to say whether I should have received a different prescription, but I would be really apprehensive if I was ever prescribed steroids again! :-/

    @James: Cheers! Stay well! :-)

    @PiedP: I don’t have the relevant experience to comment authoritatively. What I would raise, though, is the question of what we’re doing when we raise the fucked-up-ness of our body to a metaphysical status. We can take meaning from bodily sufferings, for sure. But *should* we? Should we maybe be seeing through such experiences, just as we’d strive to see through bodily sensations and visions on the meditation cushion? I’m pondering this one… ;-)

    @Alex: I am leaning toward your view… Damn! I wish I could remember the name of that sutta, the one where Gautama argues with a group of followers who have clearly attained unitive consciousness, and shows how what they experience as eternal isn’t necessarily so because it is within their experience and will cease at death… It’s famous, because it’s the only sutta where the Buddha leaves his audience distraught at the end, rather than overjoyed! :-)

    @Greg: Many thanks for your kind 7.83Hz vibrations! I managed to scry the 9th Aethyr last week (report to follow), so I hope – I really hope – this could mean that I’m out of the woods… the metaphysical woods, at least.

  9. Ye gods, Duncan, you have been through the mill and I hope it clears up soon. I’m inclined to suggest that since in my experience physiological disturbance seems to trump other aspects of experience that maybe you needn’t read too much into your loss of the experience of ‘the Absolute.’

    Another random consideration I notice is that suffering — in a physiological sense — is not going to disappear from our lives. And in regards to the alleged last words of Jesus, they’ve been echoed many times over in the pain of even the most united-to-God of contemplatives, who have mostly recorded that sometimes the only way to deal is to submit patiently and not give up.

    My best wishes, brother.

    Kite

  10. Really glad you are getting back on your feet. I must admit having quite high expectations of what might lie on the far side of such a strange and deep Abyss…no pressure, of course. ;)

    Thanks for sharing the gory details with us. I look forward to many more reports on your adventures in the future – most of them will be far more pleasant, I hope!

    Be well! -Ona

  11. This is great, Duncan! No joy in your suffering, but what a great opportunity to get into sickness and look around. Excellent drawing.

    -“Formerly, I could take refuge in the experience of the Absolute, assuming it were different somehow from experiences of suffering.”

    I’m glad you’ve been retched from this comfort so you can get on with It! Also thinking that this retching is nothing we can choose to do, but it is done to us–we can make ourselves available, but ultimately it is the Absolute that opens us up. This might be called Grace; what a pretty word.
    I can’t resist the chance to plug Benadette…the phrase that comes to mind is “As Belief decreases, Faith increases.” How it may apply here is that our known experience gives way to what our mind cannot know.

    Truly thankful you shared this, and best wishes in a solid recovery.

  12. ‘We can take meaning from bodily sufferings, for sure. But *should* we?’ Extraordinary thoughts there Duncan… Can’t decide what I think about it all… Had I known you were so ill I’d have chucked in my magickal twopenn’orth earlier, but it’s magick night Saturday so I’ll send some Kawa Pohr energy your way.

  13. Grim! Adding to the wishes for wellness…
    I’ve been on that train and it truly can be the Abyss, containerised and set in motion. I was on a late one once and a young drunk guy in a suit got on, fell asleep, vomited copiously then went back to sleep. The whole train was full so moving wasn’t practical. The motion of the train made the vomit flow first one direction, then another.
    Somewhere in mid-Sussex, the train stopped and the man woke up with a start and dashed out into the night. A smartly-dressed middle-aged Oriental couple were sitting near him and had endured the worst effects. Only when he got off did the man get up and open a window – as if it would have been impolite to do so earlier…
    But then I too have been that drunk man. One time (late 80s) I did a performance piece which had some kind of satire of yuppiedom in its concept – I was wearing a smart suit, and piles of credit card statements were among the props. I had made and drunk numerous cocktails and smoked a cigar during the piece. On the tube I was sick over myself with smoke-blackened vomit. All I had to try and clean myself up were wads of Visa statements… The actual performance had been pretty lame, but the unintentional improvised Tube version had quite an impact judging by the looks of pity and scorn I received.
    Er…so, stay well man.

  14. @Duncan:

    “In the same way, friends, even though a noble disciple has abandoned the five lower fetters, he still has with regard to the five clinging-aggregates a lingering residual ‘I am’ conceit, an ‘I am’ desire, an ‘I am’ obsession. But at a later time he keeps focusing on the phenomena of arising & passing away with regard to the five clinging-aggregates: ‘Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance. Such is feeling… Such is perception… Such are fabrications… Such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance.’ As he keeps focusing on the arising & passing away of these five clinging-aggregates, the lingering residual ‘I am’ conceit, ‘I am’ desire, ‘I am’ obsession is fully obliterated.” Khemaka Sutta

    seems that you are catching the virus. If it is the case, you may find the following article interesting.

    http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/TheParadoxOfBecoming.pdf

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s