The Unpretenders - Chapter 11

It had been almost two years since I'd observed Isobel sleeping. On that occasion we were sharing a tent together, during a camping holiday in Cornwall. I tended to wake-up first, for some reason, and then ponder how long I should wait before disturbing her. And yet I never did disturb her - not once! Not intentionally, anyway. One morning I waited for a whole hour before she awoke, utterly captivated by her strange and almost eccentric serenity. I remember it so clearly because it was the best hour of my life.

Not that I had any idea why, of course, at the time. I even considered the possibility that I may have been falling in love with her. And that certainly wasn't out of the question. For Izzy had an elfin charm, and looks to match, which I had always found enchanting. But no, it wasn't that. I later realised that my blissful experiences in the tent, watching her sleep, could actually be ascribed to meditation. Up until then, it has to be said, I doubt that my mind had been still for more than a few seconds at a time. In fact, many people had described me as being hyperactive, or simply a chatterbox. Certainly though, I did fall in love during that camping trip. Not with a person, but with solitude herself.

Isobel rolled over and curled up into a fetal position, clasping the duvet between her pipe cleaner legs. Facing me, now, her scrawny body was reminiscent of a baby bird, fresh out of its shell: painfully fragile, totally defenceless, barely even alive. And yet, according to Julian, Izzy was the alpha and the omega, the One, the Source, infinite consciousness. Who was fooling who, I wondered. Was it crazy to believe that we were all actually God? Or was it crazy to believe that we were nothing more than the sum of our cultural programming, destined to play out those scripts in crude, ageing meat suits, before disappearing back into the nothingness from whence we came? 

Either way, the being before me opened its eyes and proceeded to start the day with a question. "What are you doing, Sophie?"

"Nothing," I replied.

"You're staring at me."

"So? I think you're beautiful."

Isobel sat up and checked her face with her hands. "What have you done?" she asked, accusingly.

"I haven't done anything. I was just thinking about our camping holiday in Cornwall. Do you remember it?"

"Yeah. But what are you getting at?"

"Nothing in particular. I just have fond memories of it, that's all. Why? What did you think I was getting at?"

"Under the circumstances, I thought you wanted to practice kissing again. Not that either of us are likely to have a boyfriend anytime soon."

"Oh, I see. No, I wasn't thinking that, Izzy. It's funny though, isn't it, looking back?"

"What is?"

"How we needed a pretext like 'practice' in order to express our affection for one another. It's like kids who play doctors and nurses, when they really couldn't care less about the hats and stethoscopes. Those are all just props to assuage their conditioned sense of doing something naughty."

"Conditioning starts in the womb."

"You know," I said, teasingly, "we don't need a pretext any more."

Isobel balked at the idea. "I would rather kiss Julian!"

"Would you, though?"

"What, kiss Julian?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe."

"Do you fancy him?" I asked.

"Let's not have this conversation," she grumbled, getting out of bed.

My mind then returned to the issue of deceit; of who was doing what to whom, and of how we could ever know for sure. All knowledge existed within, according to Julian, which was potentially the perfect safeguard against deception; against the virtual inevitability of becoming imprisoned through one's own identification with external teachings and information. This truth alone, I realised, was sufficient to guarantee my freedom. Few had a clear channel to that innate knowledge, however. For it appeared that the masses were totally preoccupied with worldly affairs and distractions of one sort or another - including spiritual distractions.

Nevertheless, how could the apparently separate self be deceived, I wondered, if it was truly nothing more than a phantom in the first place; nothing more than the ephemeral product of social conditioning? It seemed more logical to conclude that the separate self, itself, was the prime deception, regardless of what it believed or didn't believe. And if that was indeed the case, wouldn't this conclusion be the ultimate and inevitable outcome of alignment with inner knowledge?

I immediately began to think about the Garden of Eden. Not only as a consequence of my musings, but also as a consequence of having stepped onto the balcony, and seen the veritable paradise below. "Look, Izzy!" I said, excitedly.

It was hard not to feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all. Even the area closest to the house, which was by no means the largest area, had more trees, lawns, hedges, shrubs and flower beds than I could ever have realised, from the ground-level. To say nothing of the various fountains, statues and abstract sculptures dotted around. There was even a series of artificial waterfalls, leading to an immense pond, which I felt sure was teeming with Koi carp.

Further on, the grounds became more wild and bucolic, although no less alluring. I could now see the elusive lake, way off in the distance. It was hard to determine its precise shape, due to the number of surrounding trees, but it appeared to be quite elongated, perhaps resembling a croissant. Julian had spoken of deer on the estate, as well as peacocks and other animals, but I couldn't see any of them from where I was standing. I began to wonder whether he owned a pair of binoculars.

"I reckon it's another test," said Isobel.

"In what sense?"

"Well, all of this beauty and tranquility. All of this luxury and abundance. It's not by chance, you know. It's a test, it must be, to see how long people can live without some sort of drama in their lives; without some sort of purpose or meaning to their existence; without a proverbial t**d in the punchbowl. It's to sift the chaff from the wheat; to determine who is actually ready to return to an ultimately hedonistic universe."

"You just want us to stay here," I contended, feeling that she was trying to manipulate me.

"Well? Isn't this place almost as good as another planet?"

"Yes, but we'll be discovered, sooner or later. And then the world will drag us back, kicking and screaming. You know it will. At least in another country it will be easier to disappear."

"Stop deceiving yourself," she said, a phrase that she had borrowed from Julian.

Her comment drew me straight back to the Garden of Eden, as it were, supposedly the very birthplace of deception. And there, as I churned things over in my mind, I remembered the serpent's promise to Eve: "Ye shall become as gods." Which foreshadowed Jesus's revelation: "Ye are gods." What was perhaps most significant about these two statements, however, was not the assertion of individual godhood, but rather the implication that a singular God could somehow be pluralised, or multiplied, into apparent individuals. A pluralisation process which, interestingly enough, couldn't be accomplished without a symbolical reaching out for knowledge. That is to say, as the story goes, the eating of fruit from the tree of knowledge. Fruit which has subsequently been found to taste very bitter indeed, because all externally acquired knowledge is ultimately false knowledge, including - or perhaps especially - the knowledge that we feel we have pertaining to our own identity. 

Isobel was right. I needed to stop deceiving myself. We all did.