The Low Seat
2013
A relic was found, an ancient brain stem preserved and digitized from an organism during the time of forms. Interfacing with it allows All to bear witness to The Great Devouring that preceded The Great Awakening. This brain stem maps the inner workings of our ancestors metamorphosis, their perception of themselves as isolated beings, and the moment of their emergence into the unified field. The consumption of the living by the perceived dead provided the urgent activation and acceleration of dormant energies needed to approach the transcendental object at the end of time and to free consciousness from its nascent state.
- Mind Segment Ma_Hotep_Krine_D_1133, transmitting data on "The Great Devouring // The Great Awakening"
I move away from the inside of a mask. The back of a face both feral and trembling slowly distances itself. There had been an abrupt slip, a sudden drop from some considerable height. It is difficult to say with certainty how far I've fallen. Perhaps all the way. I recall having spent time with others up there. It had been a place where I'd considered their actions and responses as somehow related to my own. There was that. Now, there is this: a pained propulsion of Self, maintained only through the consumption of life.
I make believe at grope and paw, now placing myself wholly through the enteric mind. This is the low seat. And here there is the awareness of just a single relationship: that of predator and prey. Of devouring while simultaneously being devoured. An endless chain of submaxilla, wrapped around submaxilla, wrapped around submaxilla. This is the low seat. This is the low seat and I am surrounded. Four seething walls of sinew and bone become eight shining spears that spiral out in every direction. As Impaler and Impaled I take all paths; my narrow being stretched beyond limit. Neurons crest as the details of surfaces ceaselessly crystallize and shatter. Continually lost. Continually found. Something sleeps here, dormant and unseen. Something feeding, something growing, something unstoppable. To say "I know not what I do" would be a lie. I consume and they die.
I pulse and writhe through agonizing mazes of folded flesh. I crawl and scratch across vast expanses of acidic submucosa. I clamour and claw up atrophic cords of dysphoric plexal net. Digestion drapes itself across desire. In my own abode, I am a process. Terrible purpose incubates beneath the steaming rot of past. A blue hand presents a spinning wheel, burning and colossal. I accept it, succumbing to its urgent weight. Under this gift my obliterated sense of being is flooded with violent joy. I become the long anticipated rage as it builds and collapses around the invisible dreamer.
There is a compulsion to climb. To rise. The relationship has changed. The consumption ceases and the sleeper stirs. The way clears for a moment and then a barrier: an enormous sheet of toxic muscle, of towering flesh soaked in poisons of past, contracted and layered, impenetrable and rigid, bars the way. Yet, the unstoppable force has been loosed, and so, two immovable objects collide.
Three faces turn and three eyes blink. Old skins shed, begin to reappear. The hooded serpent that once protected, now shaken by doubt, sets itself upon me. Paralysed, I watch in horror as excreted identities compile themselves into one suffering form. A resplendent corpse of ash, comfortable and familiar, lies in wait for what it knows I cannot help but do: take it back. Suffering and pleading we see each other. Our place is right up close. A place of warmth. Face to face we feel the being tremble through short and shallow breathes. Our short and shallow breathes. The husk. The Self that pities. A humiliating act of excruciating regression plays out in high resolution. Two hands gently pick up The Sufferer by its shoulders. It is held out to me in the way a mother holds out a coat for her child. Tears run down two faces as the dry dead garment settles back around itself. I ossify around me.
There is one last fleeting image before all sense is cast into the abyss: A red right hand raises to shoulder height, the arm bent, the palm facing outward. Self sentencing. Self reassuring. Self annihilating. And now: welcome the wicked whorl of the grand gyre. Forever dead, forever dreaming. Forever awake, forever unaware.
Clarity comes at the abandonment of struggle and in the form of grey smoke. Two triangles intersect. Complexity increases. Turbulent energies return, forcing themselves through all halts and headways. Eons of masochistic digestion are converted into pure light. All thought becomes pointed, like newly forged weapons held by skilled hands. All thought multiples, fanning out into ornate displays of precision and harmony. The body breathes. I begin to occupy it. The skin of a great cat, fractilic and without end, replaces the dead garment at my shoulders. Behind my heart an insurmountable monument of sea swells and breaks. The longing for total dispersal, to be torn asunder, is deafening. It is held still by new love for Self . At all cost, I am propelled upward.
I recall having been alone down there. It had been a place where I'd dismissed myself as isolated and broken. There was that. Now, there is this: a self propelled wheel, an entirety of being, maintained only through the recognition and honouring of all parts of the whole. It is easy to say how far I've climbed. From the very bottom. There had been a deliberate step, a gradual ascension from some irrelevant measure. I move toward the inside of a mask. The back of a face both serene and still slowly reveals itself.