(from new manuscript of short stories about books)
The Two Sides of Things
& Entertaining Angels
& Entertaining Angels
Leafing through
a newly purchased secondhand book the other day I came across a sheet of
notepaper, folded up several times into the shape of a bookmark. Maybe it had
been used for a bookmark, I don’t know? I looked at it; then picked it up
holding it a moment.
Although I felt
as if I were intruding I unfolded the lovely cream coloured writing paper and
read what was written on it. There were only three words. They were handwritten,
in red ink, in thin capital letters: ‘YOU ALREADY KNOW.’
That was all. Nothing else!
‘You already
know . . .’ I read the phrase several times. When I personalized it, it felt
good. So I toyed with the idea for awhile. This is what I came up with:
I already know something! In that case, if I
already know it, I am not missing it! And, if I am not missing it, it must be
in me, already! So somewhere inside me I am already knowing something even though
I don’t consciously know what it is!
I picked up the
book again; and I looked at the two pages between which the ‘bookmark’ had been
sandwiched. I noticed a small underlining on the left hand page, in the same red
ink. The words underlined were: ‘the two sides.’ Inadvertently I closed the book. (When I later
wondered what the context was, or what the sentence was that had those three
words underlined in it, it was too late; the page unmarked I couldn’t find it
again.) At once I put the two phrases together:
‘You already know the two sides.’
Immediately, an
amazing incident from my past came to mind, which illustrated the two phrases
when put together; and from that spontaneous remembrance I worked backwards to
understand more.
In what we
already know, are levels of meaning and value to learn more. Ever deepening layers of knowledge and
understanding can be found in everything; being revealed, or unveiled to us
according to the depth of our desire to see and desire them. ‘Ask, and it shall
be given you; seek and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you…’
At base, at the most fundamental level
of understanding, there are two sides, or two edges to everything. ‘Entrances’
are the easiest ways to understand these. A window can be looked through from
two different perspectives; a door can be entered from two sides; a fence can
be crossed from either side.
If the two-sided-ness
of things – their fronts and backs, their insides and outsides; even the very existence
of opposites are both perfectly normal in the usual scheme of things in this
ordinary world we live in, it shouldn’t be too great a stretch of the
imagination to believe that there were two sides to reality as a whole: ...That this world was one side of a two-sided
entity. …That we live on one side and there was something else on the other. …And
that if there were two sides to everything we can see, why could there not be
two sides to everything we cannot see, which are making life in this world
possible?
In our
thinking, most of us can see two sides to any argument; else, of course, there
would be no possibility for debate.
Somewhat
confusingly I have always been able to see where the two sides of a debate were
saying the same thing. I could never join the school debating club, for
instance: I would always see the truth on both sides at the same time, and so I
could never take sides, and so I wasn't wanted.
Light, external
and internal, makes possible two things: by its absence or by its presence are two
things: shadow, and ‘un-shadow.’ As external light shining on one side of
anything creates a shadow on the opposite side of it, so internal ‘light,’ or understanding,
does the same thing, creating ‘shadows’ in our minds where there is no ‘light.’
But the two are not separate they are just back to back. The two sides are joined
by whatever separates them. Two-sided-ness is actually the property of one thing.
People for instance are one thing, but they have a front and a back, an inside
and an outside. This is all so terribly obvious and true that to talk about it
seems perfectly crazy! But ‘imagination’ and ‘reason’ are not separate: they
are simply the two sides of the same thing: there is no void, no gap between
them.
Whatever we can
imagine, can exist; and does somewhere. Because we can imagine it, we can know there is something there which could
give rise to the possibility of it. It was simply one side preempting the other;
having ‘echoes’ of it, because it was really there.
This invisible two-sided-ness,
I know it not only because I have perceived it in my understanding: ‘in thy
light we see light’ . . . but because
I have actually seen it with my physical eyes.
One day in
spring, about ten years ago, I was travelling south to Kerikeri. And when I was
driving through the south side of Kaeo, near the little church there, on the
left, I saw the plain reality of what I am trying to describe and explain.
Beyond me, on
the far side of the little building, I saw a man step into this world. I saw
half of a man as he was stepping from an invisible somewhere, into the visible
here and now. He was looking straight ahead, across the road which was about
two metres in front of him; so I saw the front right hand half of his head and body,
and one leg come suddenly into sight as I was travelling towards him; then a
moment later, he was all in this world.
Though what I
saw of the half of his body was only for a split second …he appeared to be
walking at the normal speed of an unhurried man…what I saw is still indelibly
etched upon my memory. I can see it now. It was nothing I could ever have
anticipated, nor anything I could ever forget.
Automatically I
stopped the car to pick him up, to give him a ride to wherever he wanted to go;
which was Kerikeri.
If I am alone in the car I rarely stop to pick
up a hitch hiker; especially if it is a man; but the curious thing was it felt
like the most natural thing in the world to do at that moment. I felt a complete
affinity with him. I knew he was an angel, in human form; in plain lower middle
class clothes; and I was not afraid. He opened the passenger door and stared at
the seat he was going to sit on. Underneath a sheepskin I had put there twenty
minutes ago, before I left for town was the first draft of the beginning of my
autobiography DAWNING. He stared at
it; and with emotion: with much love and compassion, and with great joy; and as
though he could see through the sheepskin, read the manuscript of the book in
an instant, and affirm it with great delight.
I was on my way
to Kerikeri to post this ‘embryo’ of the book to my beloved friends in the
United States. And given the fact that these dear people’s response to the book
was going to be appalling, perhaps an angel had been sent to encourage me, that
it was not ‘the end of the world,’ and that I was to keep on writing even if I
kept on being rejected.
Later when I
felt like collapsing with grief over their comments, I remembered the angel,
and his heavenly joy, and the tears flowing down his cheeks as he worshipped
with raised hands; and which I had watched with real surprise. I was stunned that
angels had emotions. But why not? Why
couldn’t they? Now I wonder, perhaps he
was not actually an angel, but rather a person who lived in heaven and who was
sent from heaven. I don’t know? All I know is that he was definitely not of
this world: he was lit by a light from beyond the world. His total understanding,
and love, and his ability to know unknowable things, were not of the realm of this
earth.
I drove him to
Kerikeri. Approaching the Waipapa junction I asked him which way he wanted to
go. When he did not verbalize his reply, (this was when he just lifted his arms
in spontaneous praise, and tears of love and compassion ran down his cheeks ;) I
just drove straight on.
When we got
there, I stopped in the middle of the town; near to the Post Office. He got out,
and walked discretely behind the car making as though to cross to the other
side of the road; and then, he disappeared; I saw through the rearview mirror. And
it all seemed perfectly normal.
He came from
the Other Side of the curtain separating the spiritual world from the physical world.
He already knew . . . everything . . .
because he lived outside of time! This was at
least the fourth incident in my life when I have been helped by angels who have
appeared to me in human form.
‘YOU ALREADY KNOW THE TWO SIDES.’
…Our deepest longing is one side of the desire for that which we know not; and the
consummation or the satisfying of that desire is on the other side. The two
sides complement each other and fuel each other; creating in us a continuous
‘un-satisfy-able’ desire having its only possibility of fulfillment, elsewhere
than in this world.
When we have the sensation of already knowing something before we are
told it, we can enjoy the fact that we are eternal beings, and have come from
the Other Side, from beyond the constraints of time.
And the cream coloured, folded paper ‘bookmark,’
that had led me on this long train of thought and reminiscence, I felt to put it
back into the book in which I had found it. And that when I went to that secondhand
bookstore next time, I would give it back or trade it for another. That ‘bookmark,’
inspiring me with its intriguing message, had given me an idea: I knew what I could do through books, too!
*
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