Douglas Mercer
December 3 2024
Continued from Crow (Part Nine)
A psychotic break is defined simply as a break with reality. Thus in order to make the assessment that someone is psychotic one must know what reality is; and if anyone has a leg to stand on in that regard I for one have never heard tell of him. I really should get the upfront royalties of all future books about me; how they will rave and banter about the method of my madness and my disordered and disorganized state of mind, of how I blind with science, that as I wrote I lost more and more control, and how by the end I was totally out of touch with reality and out of my mind, of how I use visionary statements of the near insane (this last will be written by non-psychiatrists who have no standing in the matter); of how I decompensated and my defense mechanisms were exploded by over-stimulation, and any number of dreary ideas, that I was scarcely sane when I began and a lunatic when I ended, of how when I could no longer fight I chose flights of fancy and wild impossible conceits. They will say the idea that man is to become god is an example of inflation and narcissism and delusions of grandeur. All I can say (for love is divine) is that if I were them the idea that I could become a god would seem preposterous to me as well.
No doubt this will really vex them, poor Donald! That is what they will say. And they will trot out all the stories of how I liked to play games, was mischievous and they will say this was my last effort at self-deception, my last if not my most convincing role. But I have never felt more sane than now; and I remember learning about a folie a deux (another of the things which I pulled out of my hat in time from the ill-educated shards of my memory store), of how two people, usually a couple, can share a delusion. Well so can three or four or any number including everyone living. I myself was lately of their number, in thrall to a lie, I had inklings of what I now know, but always it was the fear of utter opprobrium which precluded me from saying all that I knew. It was bad enough to be called a larker or a game player, or a baffling boffin, fey and ineffectual, imagine how this would have gone over in Teignmouth among the more hearty of the blokes. Around the bend he is, fit for the strait jacket poor man, it would be the general opinion. My only advice is that when you do go round the bend and finally see ahead run for your life for freedom.
It was not long before I hit on the idea that the strange stirring which came from within meant that I was becoming second generation cosmic being. But what a paucity of imagination! Second? Why not third or better Nth? You see the universe has no beginning and it has no end and neither does the awakened human soul. The purpose of the current incarnation of the universe (or game if one remains hung up on that terminology) is to achieve the completeness of its self realization. Psychologists speak of the authentic (or real) person having achieved self actualization and that is good as an analogy. The creator or creators created the universe we find ourselves in in order to create more creation and more creators and so on ad infinitum. This has been going on forever. The whys and the wherefores will be explained to us once we have the designation of creators (or gods if one will) and are read in to the ground plan of nature. For now we must know that this status is attainable and available at any moment with enough intelligent application. This is a process or learning (more being fed into one’s computer) provided the data can be sorted and made sense of. My achievement of this state means that I will the first to cross the threshold and is the signal that this incarnation of reality is coming to a close—the ones who make it across will become immortals and those who do not will be consigned to oblivion. Is it possible what I take to be an infinite process has a Nirvana point, where the cycle of creation ends and only immortals will reign in one place? Time will tell as it tells everything.
On June 24 1969 (Midsummer’s Day) I began to write down a great new truth I perceived. My guess is that at the current rate I will pen some 50,000 words which should be hoarded by posterity. Some of it has been scribbled in gaiety, all of it with passion, and most often in a feathery script. Sometimes I use such large capital letters that press through the pages. I hung on each and every word as it was all important for the world to know this truth and as I suspected that my time here is up and I only had seven days to write it down. They say that God created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh; but that cannot be true; and if it is I have looked at the world he created, particularly its humans, and he might have worked thought the weekend to finish the job. As for myself I work day in and day out come rain or shine.
I was at rest and becalmed on a mild sea amidst the strange weeds and phantasmagoric creatures of the Sargasso Sea. Odd that not far from here is the Bermuda Triangle of legend, where peculiar undersea forces are said to make ships and planes disappear. If God has a connoisseur’s taste for tension filled melodrama he also has a flair for locale, set and setting. The hot summer’s sun shone down by day; by night I holed up in my cabin writing by a dimming bulb and an always flickering oil lamp. My cabin after long months of substandard housekeeping was cramped and smelled of cabbage juice that had been allowed to ferment and then baked in an oven; tins, plates, cutlery, cups, containers, boxes and curdling curry all lay ill-assorted about me and my bed seemed to be rotting (the last thing I did before I acted was spruce the place up, an English tic which I observed even at the end). The only alcohol I possessed was contained in medicine bottles and my life jacket and safety harness remained stowed away where they were from the first, totally without interest to me now. Spilling all about me were valves, transistors, ear phones, microphones, valves, and bundles of copper wire, all of it in a state of utter disarray. The log books, my prize possessions, lay on the table in front of me flanked by my pencils and I knew that when they happened upon this space it was these which would first seize their imagination and then elicit their pity or perhaps, just perhaps, their wonder.
***
DEPARTURE TIME
550AM LOCAL TIME
Sargasso Sea
July 1 1969
In 70 Hours From Now
Man is a lever the ultimate strength and length of which he must determine for himself. There is no limit but the strength in his heart and capacity in his mind, his disposition and talent. Where he chooses to place the fulcrum will depend on how great are his ambitions. Like a pure mathematician he should place the fulcrum near the effort; his work will be that of stipulation, of will, of mind and imagination, it is these gossamer qualities which will be able to carry the load and the weight. It will be the idea that rules and by ideas man will be able to carry nothing but his own and kindred minds along the road. As radiant beings the chosen few will stand above time and space, issuing words as commands and creating always-new worlds and new beings. It will be a Universe above all Universes, of pure consciousness, beyond the Nature we know now, a world of pure and instant creation without end.
The stride of the mind. The phases of man’s development. Like the development of man’s education: elementary, secondary, higher. Like the psychological hierarchy of needs: basics first, then social, then realization (becoming real). No real classification is possible until the final state of stage is reached. To the stalled mind the present state will always seem advanced—to the free mind the present state will always seem elementary. I introduce the idea of the square root of negative 1 because it leads a free mind to the imaginary worlds of a dark tunnel of the space time continuum and once the mental technology emerges from this tunnel the “world” will “end” or transform into its next incarnation. What this will mean is that though our will power we will have attained a state where our physical existence will have become superfluous. In the process the mechanism of second sight or prophecy will be laid bare for what it always has been, simply the possession of intelligence. It will be the diligent application of this intelligence that will allow these mechanisms to be used at will, to create things by thinking of them, to make manifest by thought. Indeed this was the means by which our universe and all previous universes were called into being, by previous generations of cosmic beings, and now we are called to become one of their number and take our turn in the great chain of beings and our place among the immortals.
THE KNOT
The process we call mathematics. The first flower of basic intelligence. Ideas can be manipulated. If manipulated under a correctly formalized set of rules they produce new results which clearly reveal aspects of the original concept which, though valid, would not have been otherwise revealed. The idea that mathematics is the language of god perhaps has more poetic than abstract validity. It should be perhaps restated that mathematics is the only certain ground that man has today in the realm of the Empyrean. Would not we all agree that mathematics is nearest that we can currently get to truth that is acceptable to all? For all that is true of the Empyrean will be acceptable to all who accept such a kingdom. And I know nothing that rivals mathematics and science in this respect. It seems that progress is the coin that is always most valuable to mankind. Progress towards what? Why, towards a cosmic integration of course, where else do you suppose we are going? Why, here, I will show you………
Man is approaching his destined state in this version of the succession of realities where he can make (or not make, the choice is ours) the great leap forward, we have evolved to a state where we possess the ability to become disembodied beings, the mind can escape the body and live free in the world of thought. A determined intelligence can make this happen. This happens though will power and the willingness to speak without qualifications. The master will say it is to be the case whereas others will hedge and say I think it is to be the case. Any vacillation in clarity and certainty (one slip!) and the state is ruined. Which is why pure knowledge is always the Holy Grail (so to speak) so one can speak from a position of authority (as author or creator).
In the beginning (or the beginning of this universe, the cosmos being the container of all universes extant) was a Void, a site without physical matter. Then a sudden change emerged and matter arrived (the creators were creating a new game). Matter disturbed the stable system of the Void until then in turn it too was stabilized; life came next and after life came intelligence. Each new change causes an explosive change in the universe disrupting the apparently stable system which preceded it (the final leap will be an explosion of explosions which is why it is the great danger). The system always fights the new arrival and wants to retain its stability (or worse, regress to a preceding level); but it always loses in the end. Recently man’s thinking has begun to improve thanks to brave thinkers like Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Darwin each of whom dared to disrupt the static system of society in their day with new ideas. Because of their thinking human progress has been accelerating and now with our research institutions putting the method on an institutional basis (thus taking out the need for the fluke of random genius) this acceleration will increase exponentially. Intelligence has now grown so powerful with all of this accumulated knowledge that it borders on the cusp of the next and final (for this version of reality at any rate) leap of change in the system thereby disrupting it forever. This of course will be the freeing of the mind from matter (mind over matter) so that the intelligence will be free of the necessity of physical instantiation and can assume its rightful place in a purely abstract existence. Needless to say at this final disruption the system will fight tooth and nail for what it deems its prerogatives but as always it is bound to fail.
The moment for man’s next great leap out of our present biological system is at hand. The man who is about to tell the world all about it in the great tradition of Galileo and the rest is myself. Indeed when news of my flight goes planetary it will cause reverberations far beyond what can be seen as yet, for I will have become the first one in our present system to cross over and the transmission will go out that the way is open. Naturally the system will fight this development as it will perceive it is a mortal threat to its stability. When I utter this message all that are prepared to hear it will recognize it as truth instantly and in turn will force the great effort of free will into abstract existence. Many of course will deny it, that will be as easy as lying, but the word will have got out and that it the main thing. That indeed was my purpose, which was my creator’s purpose, that the final evolution of man should begin to be visible in the world.
***
In the future I will become a mythical being, all the chronicles will speak of my splendor, and the nest in which I was born (the Teignmouth Electron), will be remembered forever, for the bird will have flown. The lack of a body, the fact that I vanished without trace, will trouble them and there will be sightings of me: messages in bottles will float ashore, they will see me dancing with Hitler in Rio de Janeiro, I will be said to have gone with the Hyperboreans to an underwater world of ice, a space craft will have beamed me up. Posthumously I will have gained the fame that I sought so dearly in life, and my name will become a name to conjure with, writers and artists will particularly be drawn to me, and legion will be the books and films about me, some for a mass audience and some for small coteries, but books and films will come and of them there shall be no end. The artists will see in my story some paradigm or kindred spirit, and perhaps the philosophers will see some truth, and the average man in the street a spell binding good sea yarn if one that is rather bizarre. Only The Sea Will tell will be a good title but there are many others: Fatal Sea Voyage, Death In Bermuda, The Wild Sargasso Sea. The story of my mysterious fate will be told and retold around the global campfire and it will be the greatest story ever told, and everyone will have their version, if the denouement will be in doubt.
As for my person as with all mythical figures, from Christ and Arthur on down, my name will be surrounded by glamorous romance and legend, they will have me on midget submarines, diversionary tales will be told to youth unborn that I never died, that I swam for it, that I am alive and well in South America, or some other paradise for escapees, awaiting the time when I can return to normal life. In bars across the world they will say: Crowhurst? He is still alive and then debate how Houdini like I managed to escape. Reporters who hitherto portrayed me as that stock figure of marine epics, from electronics wizard to home town hero, will retail my exploits and draw the conclusions they and their public consider reasoned. But from the tales of how I made it the Azores, or appeared with a beard in Cornwall, or am hiding out in Gibraltar, the fascination will be endless, and why not? Does not everyone love a good mystery, especially one that it is impossible to tie up neatly and so one ponders it over and over? What will have happened of course will be more outlandish than the wildest of speculations for the hardest thing of all will be simply to take me at my word, I had been raving after all, and the umpteenth farfetched theory will seem more compatible than this; and they will only have my own say so and I was known to them to be fond of games. But to me all of this is only amusing, I must finish my tale, assured in the fact that once it is complete they will not be done with me. Not by a long chalk.
Continued at Crow (Part Eleven)
