Sauron Defeated (34 page)

A dark shape sometimes passes across the sky, only seen by blotting out the stars as it goes. Then there is the tall, grey, round tower on the sheer end of the land. The Sea cannot be seen, for it is too far below, too immeasurably far; but it can be smelt. And over and over again, in many stages of growth and many different lights and shadows, three tall trees, slender, foot to foot on a green mound, and crowned with an embracing halo of blue and gold.'

'And what do you think they all mean?' asked Frankley.

'It took me quite a time, far too long, to explain the very minor story of the librarian,' said Ramer. 'I could not embark tonight on even one of the immense and ramified legends and cosmogonies that these belong to.'

'Not even on the Green Wave?' said Lowdham;(46) but Ramer did not answer him.

'Are the Blessed Trees religious symbolism?' asked Jeremy.

'No, not more than all things mythical are; not directly. But one does sometimes see and use symbols directly religious, and more than symbols. One can pray in dreams, or adore. I think I do sometimes, but there is no memory of such states or acts, one does not revisit such things. They're not really dreams. They're a third thing. They belong somewhere else, to the other anchorage, which is not to the Body, and differ from dreams more than Dream from Waking.

'Dreaming is not Death. The mind is still, as I say, anchored to the body. It is all the time inhabiting the body, so far as it is in anywhere. And it is therefore in Time and Space: attending to them. It is meant to be so. But most of you will agree that there has probably been a change of plan; and it looks as if the cure is to give us a dose of something higher and more difficult. Mind you, I'm only talking of the seeing and learning side, not for instance of morality. But it would feel terribly loose without the anchor. Maybe with the support of the stronger and wiser it could be celestial; but without them it could be bitter, and lonely. A spiritual meteorite in the dark looking for a world to land on. I daresay many of us are in for some lonely Cold before we get back.

'But out of some place beyond the region of dreams, now and again there comes a blessedness, and it soaks through all the levels, and illumines all the scenes through which the mind passes out back into waking, and so it flows out into this life.

There it lasts long, but not for ever in this world, and memory cannot reach its source. Often we ascribe it to the pictures seen on the margin radiant in its light, as we pass by and out. But a mountain far in the North caught in a slow sunset is not the Sun.

'But, as I said, it is largely a rest-time, Sleep. As often as not the mind is inactive, not making things up (for instance). It then just inspects what is presented to it, from various sources - with very varying degrees of interest, I may say. It's not really frightfully interested in the digestion and sex items sent in by the body.'

'What is presented to it, you say?' said Frankley. 'Do you mean that some of the presentments come from outside, are shown to it?'

'Yes. For instance: in a halting kind of way I had managed to get on to other vehicles; and in dream I did it better and more often. So other minds do that occasionally to me. Their resting on me need not be noticed, I think, or hardly at all; I mean, it need not affect me or interfere with me at all; but when they are doing so, and are in contact, then my mind can use them. The two minds don't tell stories to one another, even if they're aware of the contact. They just are in contact and can learn.*(47) After (* See the further discussion of this point on the following Night 62. N.G. [Only a fragment of that meeting is preserved, and the only part that could correspond to this note is as follows. ' "How can the dreamer distinguish them?" said Ramer. "Well, it seems to me that) all, a wandering mind (if it's at all like mine) will be much more '

interested in having a look at what the other knows than in trying to explain to the stranger the things that are familiar to itself.'

'Evidently if the Notion Club could all meet in sleep, they'ld find things pretty topsy-turvy,' said Lowdham.

'What kind of minds visit you?' asked Jeremy. 'Ghosts?'

'Well, yes of course, ghosts,' said Ramer. 'Not departed human spirits, though; not in my case, as far as I can tell..'."

Beyond that what shall I say? Except that some of them seem to know about things a very long way indeed from here. It is not a common experience with me, at least my awareness of any contact is not.'

'Aren't some of the visitors malicious?' said Jeremy. 'Don't evil minds attack you ever in sleep?'

'I expect so,' said Ramer. 'They're always on the watch, asleep or awake. But they work more by deceit than attack. I don't think they are specially active in sleep. Less so, probably.

I fancy they find it easier to get at us awake, distracted and not so aware. The body's a wonderful lever for an indirect influence on the mind, and deep dreams can be very remote from its disturbance. Anyway, I've very little experience of that kind -

thank God! But there does come sometimes a frightening... a sort of knocking at the door: it doesn't describe it, but that'll (the chief divisions are Perceiving (free dreams), Composing and Working, and Reading. Each has a distinctive quality, and confusion is not as a rule likely to occur, while it is going on; though the waking mind may make mistakes about disjointed memories. The divisions can be subdivided, of course. Perceiving can be, for instance, either inspections and visits to real scenes; or apparitions, in which one may be deliberately visited by another mind or spirit. Reading can be simply going over the records of any experiences, messing about in the mind's library; or it can be perceiving at second hand, using minds, inspecting their records. There's a danger there, of course. You might inspect a mind and think you were looking at a record (true in its own terms of things external to you both), when it was really the other mind's composition, fiction. There's lying in the universe, some very clever lying. I mean, some very potent fiction is specially composed to be inspected by others and to deceive, to pass as record; but it is made for the malefit of Men. If men already lean to lies, or have thrust aside the guardians, they may read some very maleficial stuff. It seems that they do." '])

have to do. I think that is one of the ways in which that horrible sense of fear arises: a fear that doesn't seem to reside in the remembered dream-situation at all, or wildly exceeds it.

'I'm not much better off than anyone else on this point, for when that fear comes, it usually produces a kind of dream-concussion, and a passage is erased round the true fear-point.

But there are some dreams that can't be fully translated into sight and sound. I can only describe them as resembling such a situation as this: working alone, late at night, withdrawn wholly into yourself; a noise, or even a nothing sensible, startles

- you; you get prickles all over, become acutely self-conscious, uneasy, aware of isolation: how thin the walls are between you and the Night.

'That situation may have various explanations here. But out (or down) there sometimes the mind is suddenly aware that

' there is a Night outside, and enemies walk in it: one is trying to get in. But there are no walls,' said Ramer sombrely. 'The soul is dreadfully naked when it notices it, when that is pointed out to it by something alien. It has no armour on it, it has only its being. But there is a guardian.

'He seems to command precipitate retreat. You could, if you were a fool, disobey, I suppose. You could push him away. You could have got into a state in which you were attracted by the Fear. But I can't imagine it. I'ld rather talk about something else.'

'Oh!' said Jeremy. 'Don't stop there! It's been mostly digres-sions since the meteorite. My fault largely. Won't you go on?'

'I should like to, if the Club can bear it. A little longer. I only meant: I'ld rather get back to the visions and the journeys. Well, apart from such dangers - which I've not experienced often or thought much about - I think that what one calls "interests" are sometimes actually stimulated, or even implanted by contacts.

As you might get a special interest in China, through being visited by a Chinaman, especially if you got to know him and something of his mind.'

'Have you gone to any Celestial China?' asked Frankley. 'Or anywhere more interesting than your invented tales: something more like Emberu?'

'I've never gone anywhere,' said Ramer, 'as I've tried to explain. But I suppose I could say that I've been in places, and I'm still busy trying to sort out my observations. If you mean places off the Earth, other heavenly bodies: yes, I've seen several besides Emberu, either through other minds, or by vehicles and ': records; possibly by using light.* Yes, I've been to several strange places.

'The one I told you about, Green Emberu,(48) where there was a kind of organic life, rich but wholesome and longeval: that was where I landed when I first fell wide asleep. It seems a long while ago now. It is still very vivid to me, or was until last week.' He sighed.

'I cannot remember the original again now, somehow; not when awake. I've an idea that writing these memories up, re-telling them in waking life and terms, blurs or erases them in -

waking memory; overlays them into palimpsests. One can't have it both ways. Either one must bear the pains of not '.

communicating what one greatly desires to share, or one must, remain content with the translation. I wrote that account for you, and all I'll have now is that, and stirrings and faint traces of what lies beneath: the vision of Emberu!

'It's the same with Ellor. Ellor!' he murmured. 'Ellor Eshurizel! I drew it once in words as best I could, and now it is words.

That immense plain with its silver floor all delicately patterned; the shapely cliffs and convoluted hills. The whole world was designed with such loveliness, not of one thought, but of many: in harmony; though in all its shapes there was nowhere any to recall what we call organic life. There "inanimate nature" was orderly, symmetrical, unconfused, yet intricate, beyond my mind's unravelling, in its flowing modulations and recollections: a garden, a paradise of water, metal, stone, like the interwoven variations of vast natural orders of flowers. Eshurizel! Blue, white, silver, grey, blushing to rich purples were its themes, in which a glint of red was like an apocalyptic vision of essential Redness, and a gleam of gold was like the glory of the Sun. And there was music, too. For there were many streams, water abundant - or some fairer counterpart, less wayward, more skilled in (* Jones says that Ramer explained: 'I think that as the seeing in free dream is not done with eyes, it is not subject to optical laws. But light can be used, like any other mode of being. The mind can, as it were, travel back up-stream, as it can go back into the historical record of other things. But it seems tiring: it requires a great energy and desire.

One can't do it often; nor can one go to an indefinite distance of Time and Space.' N.G.)

the enchantment of light and in the making of innumerable sounds. There the great waterfall of Oshul-kullosh fell down its three hundred steps in a sequence of notes and chords of which I can only hear faint echoes now. I think the En-keladim dwell there.'(49)

'The En-keladim?' asked Jeremy softly. 'Who are they?'

Ramer did not answer. He was staring at the fire. After a pause he went on. 'And there was another world, further away, that I came to later. I won't say very much. I hope to look on it again, and longer: on Minal-zidar the golden, absolutely silent and quiescent, a whole small world of one single perfect form, complete, imperishable in Time, finished, at peace, a jewel, a visible word, a realization in material form of contemplation and adoration, made by what adoring mind I cannot tell.'

'Where is Minal-zidar?' asked Jeremy quietly.

Ramer looked up. 'I don't know where or when,' he answered. 'The travelling mind does not seem very interested in such points, or forgets to try and find out in the absorption of beholding. So I have very little to go on. I did not look at the sky of Minal-zidar. You know, if you were looking at the face of somebody radiant with the contemplation of a great beauty or a holiness, you'ld be held by the face for a very long time, even if you were great enough (or presumptuous enough) to suppose that you could see for yourself. Reflected beauty like reflected light has a special loveliness of its own - or we shouldn't, I suppose, have been created.

'But in Ellor there seemed to be lights in the sky, what we should call stars, not suns or moons, and yet many were much larger and brighter than any star is here. I am no astronomer, so I don't know what that may imply. But I suppose it was somewhere far away, beyond the Fields of Arbol.'(50)

'Fields of Arbol?' said Lowdham. 'I seem to have heard that before. Where do you get these names from? Whose language are they? Now that would really interest me, rather than geometry and landscape. I should use my chances, if ever I got into such a state, for language-history.'(51)

'Arbol is "Old Solar" for the Sun,' said Jeremy.(52) 'Do you mean, Ramer, that you can get back to Old Solar, and that Lewis' did not merely invent those words?'