There were two brothers, the Intelligent Man and the Fool, and it was their habit to go out shooting to keep their parents supplied with food. Thus, one day, they went together into the mangroves swamp, just as the tide was going down, to watch for the fish as they nibbled at the roots of the trees. Fool saw a fish, fired at it, and killed it. Intelligent Man fired also, but at nothing, and then ran up to Fool and said, “Fool, have you killed anything?”
“Yes, Intelligent Man, I am a fool, but I killed a fish.”
“Indeed, you are a fool,” answered Intelligent Man, “for when I hit the fish that went your way, so that the fish you think you killed is mine. Here give it to me.”
The fool gave Intelligent Man the fish. Then they went to their town, and Intelligent Man, addressing his father, said, “Father, here is a fish that your son shot, but Fool got nothing.”
The mother prepared and cooked the fish, and the father and Intelligent Man ate it, giving none to Fool.
Then they went again; and Fool fired, and with his first shot killed a big fish.
“Did you hear me fire?” said the Intelligent Man.
“No,” answered Fool.
“No?” returned Intelligent Man. “See, then, the fish I killed.”
“All right,” said Fool, “Take the fish.”
When they reached home they gave the fish to their mother and , after she had cooked it, Smart Man and this father ate it, but gave none to Fool. As they were enjoying the fish, a bone stuck in the father’s throat. Then Intelligent Man called to Fool and bade him go for a doctor.
“No,” said Fool, “I cannot. I felt that something would happen.” And he sang:
“Every day you eat my fish,
You call me, Fool,
And would let me starve.”
“How can you sing,” said Intelligent Man, “when you see that our father is suffering?”
But Fool went on singing:
“You eat and eat unto repletion;
A bone sticks in your throat;
And now your life is near completion,
The bone is still within your throat.
“So you, Intelligent brother, killed the fish,
And gave the fool to eat?
Nay! but now he’s dead perhaps you wish
You’d given the fool to eat.”
While Fool was still singing, the father died. Then the neighbors came and joined the family circle, and asked Fool how it was that he could go on singing now that his father was dead.
And Fool answered them saying, “Our father made us both, one intelligent man, the other a fool. The Fool killed the food, and they ate it, giving none to the Fool. They must not blame him, therefore, if he sings while they suffer. He suffered hunger while they had plenty.”
And when the people had considered the matter, they gave judgment in favor of the Fool, and departed.
The father hied, and so had been justly punished for not having given food to the Fool.
He who eats fish with much oil must suffer from indigestion.
You will sometimes automatically translate this reality into physical terms. Such images will be hallucinatory, but it may take awhile for you to distinguish their true nature. It must be understood, however, that all physical objects are hallucinatory. They may be called mass hallucinations.
There is constant translation of inner reality into objects in the waking state and a constant translation of ideas into pseudo-objects in the dream state. Within a certain range of dream reality, ideas and thoughts can be translated into pseudo-objects and transported. This is what happens when you adopt a pseudo-form in projection, though I am simplifying this considerably.
When you travel beyond a certain range of intensities, even pseudo-objects must vanish. They exist in a cluster about, and connected to, our own system. The lack of these, obviously, means that you have gone beyond your own camouflage system. If it were possible, you would then travel through a range of intensities in which no camouflage existed. Then you would encounter the pseudo-camouflage of the next sytem. This would or would not be physical matter, according to the system. You would then encounter the heart of the camouflage area. The completely uncamouflaged areas at the outer edges of the various systems should remind you of the undifferentiated areas between various life cycles in the subconscious. This is no coincidence.
As a rule, you see, there is little communication within the uncamouflaged areas. They act as boundaries, even while they represent the basic stuff of which all camouflage is composed. (Without the camouflage, you would perceive nothing with the physical senses.)
The sentence is really meaningless, however, because the physical senses are themselves camouflage. There would be nothing to translate. It is only the inner senses that will allow you to perceive under these circumstances. Theoretically, if you can bridge the gap between various reincarnations, then you can bridge the gap between our system and another.
Once more: The undifferentiated layers are composed of the vitality that forms the camouflage of all systems. Such an area is not really a thing in itself, but a portion of vitality that contains no camouflage, and is therefore unrecognizable to those within any given system. We are in touch with infinity in such areas, since it is only camouflage that gives us the conception of time.
Now, during some projections, you may be aware of nothing as far as surroundings are concerned. There will only be the mobility of your own consciousness. If this occurs, you will be traveling through such an uncamouflaged area. You could then expect to encounter next a more differentiated environment, that seems to become clearer as you progress toward the heart of another system.
The completely uncamouflaged layer would be rather bewildering. You might automatically be tempted to project images into it. They would not take, so to speak, but would appear and disappear with great rapidity. This is a silent area. Thoughts would not be perceived here, as a rule, for the symbols for them would not be understood.
If a certain intensity is reached, however – a peak of intensity – then you could perceive the spacious present as it exists within your native system. You could, from this peak, look into other systems, but you would not understand what you perceived, not having the proper root assumptions. I have used the idea of neighboring systems for simplicity’s sake, as if they were laid out end to end. Obviously, such is not the case. The systems (of reality) are more like the various segments of a tangerine, with the uncamouflaged boundary areas like the white membrane between the tangerine sections.
The tangerine, then, would be compared to a group of many systems, yet it would represent in itself but one portion of an unperceived whole. The tangerine would be but one segment of a larger systems. You can see, then, why some projections would lead you in a far different direction from our linear sort of travel and why time as we know it would be meaningless.
Nor do such projections necessarily involve journeys through space as we know it. There are systems, vivid in intensity, that have no existence in physical reality at all. It is now thought, I believe, that time and space are basically one, but they are both a part of something else. They are merely the camouflage patterns by which we perceive reality. Space as we perceive it in the dream state comes much closer to the reality.
Projections within our own system will, of course, involve us with some kind of camouflage. If none is present, you will know you are out of the system. The dream universe is obviously closely connected with our own, since pseudo-objects are present. Even there, we are to some extent free from the space-time elements of our own system. Within the dream state, then, we are in the ‘outward’ areas of the physically oriented universe.
One point: There are other systems all about and within our own. The undifferentiated areas move out like spirals, through all reality. Little resistance is encountered within them. They represent inner roads that connect systems, as well as divide them. The traveler must leave his/her own camouflage paraphernalia behind him/her, however, or he will get nowhere.
It is possible, theoretically, to travel to any system in this manner and bypass others, you see. Such a traveler would not age physically. His/her body would be in a suspended state. Only a very few individuals have traveled in this manner. Most of the knowledge gained escapes the ego, and experiences cannot be translated by the physical brain.
However, it is possible to travel under such circumstances and some of the data would be retained by inner portions of the self. In a creative individual, some of this information might be symbolically expressed in a painting or other work of art.
Each brushstroke of a painting represents concentrated experience and compressed perceptions. In a good painting, these almost explode when perceived by the lively consciousness of another. The observer is washed over by intensities. The excellent work of art recreates for the observer inner experience of his/her own, also, of which he/she has never been aware. As you know, paintings have motion, yet the painting itself does not move. This idea should help you understand experience in terms of intensities and projections of the movement of consciousness without necessarily motion through space.
True motion has nothing to do with space. The only real motion is that if the traveling consciousness.
A MAN CALLED THIEP, who was native of Sango, a town in the Oyo country, admired a girl called Lith very much. She lived in Oyo and he wished to marry her, as she was the finest girl in her kraal.
It was the custom in those days for the parents to demand such a large amount as dowry for their daughters that if, after they were married, they failed to get on with their husbands and could not redeem themselves, they were sold as slaves.
Thiep paid a very large sum as a dowry for Lith and she was put in the fatting-house until the proper time arrived for her to marry. Thiep told the parents that when their daughter was ready they must send her over to him. This they promised to do.
Lith’s father was a rich man. After seven years had elapsed and Lith came out of the fatting-house to go to her husband, her father saw a very fine girl, also just out of the fatting-house, whose parents wished to sell her as a slave. He therefore bought her and gave her to his daughter as her hands-maiden.
The next day Lith’s little sister, being very anxious to go with her, obtained the consent of her mother, and they started off together, the slave girl carrying a large bundle containing clothes and presents from Lith’s father. Thiep’s house was a long day’s march from where they lived. When they arrived just outside the town, they came to a spring where people used to get their drinking water. No one was allowed to bathe there. Lith, however, knew nothing of this. The women took off their clothes to wash close to the spring, where there was a deep hole which led to the water juju’s house. The slave girl knew of this juju and thought that, if she could get her mistress to bathe there, her mistress would be taken by the juju and she would then be able to take her place and marry Thiep. So they went down to bathe and, when they were close to the water, the slave girl pushed her mistress in, and Lith at once disappeared.
The little sister began to cry, but the slave girl said, “If you cry any more I shall kill you at once and throw your body into the hole after your sister.” She told the child that she must never mention what had happened to anyone, particularly not to Thiep, as she was going to take her sister’s place and marry him, and that if she ever told anyone what she had seen, she would be killed at once. She then made the little girl carry her load to Thiep’s house.
When they arrived, Thiep was very disappointed at the slave girl’s appearance, as she was not nearly as pretty and fine as he had expected her to be; but as he had not seen Lith for seven years, he had no suspicion that the girl was not really Lith for whom he had paid such a large dowry. He then called his society together to play and feast and, when they arrived, they were much astonished and said, “Is this the fine woman for whom you paid so great a dowry and whom you told us so much about ?” And Thiep could not answer them.
The slave girl was then for some time very cruel to Lith’s little sister and wanted her to die so that then her position would be more secure with her husband. Every day she beat the little girl, and she always made her carry the largest water-pot to the spring. She also made the child place her finger in the fire to use as firewood. When the time came for food, the slave girl went to the fire and took a burning piece of wood and burned the child all over her body with it. When Thiep asked her why she treated the child so badly, she replied that she was a slave whom her father had bought for her.
Now when the little girl took the heavy water-pot to the river to fill it, there was no one to lift it up for her, so that she could not get it up on her head. She therefore had to remain a long time at the spring and at last began calling for her sister Lith to come and help her.
When Lith heard her little sister crying for her, she begged the water juju to allow her to go and help her, so he told her she might go but that she must return to him again immediately. When the little girl saw her sister she did not want to leave her and asked to be allowed to go into the hole with her. She then told Lith how surely she had been treated by the slave girl, and her elder sister told her to have patience and wait, that a day of vengeance would arrive sooner or later.
After seeing her sister, the little girl went back to Thiep’s house with a glad heart, but when she got to the house, the slave girl said, “Why have you been so long getting the water?’ and took another stick from the fire and burned the little girl and starved her for the rest of the day.
This went on for sometime, until, one day, when the child again went to the river for water. After all the people had gone, she cried out for her sister, but for a long tIme she did not come. There was a hunter from Thiep’s town hidden nearby, watching the Lith hole, and the water juju told Lith that she must not go. When the little girl went on carrying so bitterly, Lith at last persuaded the juju to let her go to her sister, promising to return quickly. When she emerged from the water, she looked very beautiful with the rays of the setting sun shining on her glistening body. She helped her little sister with her water-pot and then disappeared into the hole again.
The hunter was amazed at what he had seen, and, when he returned, he told Thiep what a beautiful woman had come out of the water and had helped the little girl with her water-pot. He also told Thiep that he was convinced that the girl he had seen at the spring was his proper wife. Lith, and the water juju must have taken her.
Thiep then made up his mind to go out and watch and see what happened. So in the early morning, the hunter came for him, and they both went down to the river and hid in the forest near the waterhole.
When Thiep saw Lith come out of the water, he recognized her at once, and he went home and considered how he should get her out of the power of the water juju. He was advised by some of his friends to go to an old woman who frequently made sacrifices to the water juju, and consult her as to what the best thing to do.
When he went to her, she told him to bring her one white slave, one white goat, one piece of white cloth, one white chicken, and a basket of eggs. Then, when the great juju day arrived, she would take them to the water juju and make a sacrifice of them on his behalf. On the day after the sacrifice was made, the water juju would return the girl to her, and she would bring her to Thiep.
Thiep then bought the slave and took all the other things to the old woman and, when the day of sacrifice arrived, he went with his friend, the hunter, and witnessed the old woman make the sacrifice. The slave was bound up and led to the hole, the old woman called to the water juju, and she then cut the slave’s throat with a sharp knife and pushed him into the hole. She then did the same with the goat and the chicken and she also threw the eggs and cloth on top of them. After this had been done, they all returned to their homes.
The next morning at dawn the old woman went to the hole and found Lith standing at the side of the spring. She told her that she was her friend and was going to take her to her husband. She then took Lith back to her own home and hid her in her room and sent word to Thiep to come to her house and to take great care that the slave woman knew nothing about the matter.
So Thiep left the house secretly by the back door and arrived at the old woman’s house without meeting anyone.
When Lith saw Thiep, she asked for her little sister, so he sent his friend, the hunter, to bring her from the spring. The hunter met the child carrying her water-pot to get the morning supply of water and brought her to the old woman’s house with him.
After Lith had embraced her sister, she told her to return to Thiep’s house and to do something to annoy the slave woman, and then she went to run as fast as she could back to the old woman’s house where, no doubt, the slave girl would follow her. There she would meet them all inside the house and would see Lith, whom she believed she had killed.
The little girl did as she was told, and as soon as she entered the house, she called out to the slave woman, “Do you know that you are a wicked woman and have treated me very badly? I know you are only my sister’s slave, and you will be properly punished.” She then ran as fast as she could to the old woman’s house. When the slave woman heard what the little girl had said, she was quite mad with rage and seized a burning stick from the fire and ran after the child; but the little one got to the house first and ran inside, the slave woman following close upon her heels with the burning stick in her hand.
Then Lith came out and confronted the slave woman, and she at once recognized her mistress whom she thought she had killed, and she stood quite still.
Then they all went back to Thiep’s house, and when they arrived there, Thiep asked the slave woman what she meant by pretending that she was Lith and why she had tried to kill her. But, seeing she was found out, the slave woman had nothing to say.
Many people were then called to play and to celebrate the recovery of Thiep’s wife, and when they had all come, he told them what the slave woman had done.
After this, Lith treated the slave girl in the same way as she had treated her little sister. She made her put her fingers in the fire and burned her with sticks. She also made her beat fufu with her head in a hollowed-out tree and, after a time, she was tied up to a tree and starved to death.
Ever since that time, when a man marries a girl, he is always present when she comes out of the fatting-house and takes her home himself, so that such evil things as happened to Lith and her sister might not occur again.
