The motif of the transition between two worlds feels very resonant.
A force from the ‘new world’ impinges on the visitor in an endeavour to pacify the disorientated. One needs to be wary and on guard as the new world traps the attention and exerts a pressure; It strives to become all-encompassing; Expelling all traces of the previous world.
As with the partaking of food or drink in the world of faerie, participation in the new world seals the deal. Once absorbed, all that the traveller has left is the occasional vague notion that something important has been forgotten!
A clip from ‘Sapphire and Steel’.
The admonition not to move is important. The position of the body being the most ‘solid’ link with the previous world. (Castaneda, in this sort of context, talked about only looking at 3 or 4 objects in relatively quick succession in a repeated cycle to try to stave off this trapping force)
Appended is an abridged excerpt from Castaneda’s ‘The Art of Dreaming’, where Castaneda finds himself suddenly transported bodily into a different reality.
We walked to the Regis Hotel. We went directly to the elevator. My fear had sharpened my capacity to perceive details. The hotel building was old and massive. The furniture in the lobby had obviously seen better days. Yet there was still, all around us, something left of an old glory that had a definite appeal. I could easily understand why Carol liked that hotel so much….
……We went to her room and sat down on the edge of the bed. My last conscious thought was that the bed was a relic from the beginning of the century. Before I had time to utter a single word, I found myself in a strange-looking bed. Carol was with me. She half sat up at the same time I did. We were naked, each covered with a thin blanket.
“What’s going on?” she asked in a feeble voice.
“Are you awake?” I asked inanely.
“Of course I am awake,” she said in an impatient tone.
“Do you remember where we were?” I asked.
There was a long silence, as she obviously tried to put her thoughts in order. “I think I am real, but you are not,” she finally said. “I know where I was before this. And you want to trick me.”….……I began to examine my surroundings. The only light in the room was moonlight shining through the window directly in front of us. We were in a small room, on a high bed. I noticed that the bed was primitively constructed. Four thick posts had been planted in the ground, and the bed frame was a lattice, made of long poles attached to the posts. The bed had a thick mattress, or rather a compact mattress. There were no sheets or pillows. Filled burlap sacks were stacked up against the walls. Two sacks by the foot of the bed, staggered one on top of the other, served as a stepladder to climb onto it. Looking for a light switch, I became aware that the high bed was in a corner, against the wall. Our heads were to the wall; I was on the outside of the bed and Carol on the inside. When I sat on the edge of the bed, I realized that it was perhaps over three feet above the ground…….
……..Carol Tiggs was famous among us for her speed in adapting to any situation. In no time at all she was convinced of the realness of our predicament and began to look for her clothes in the semi-darkness. I marvelled at the fact that she was not afraid. She became busy, reasoning out loud where she might have put her clothes had she gone to bed in that
room.“Do you see any chair?” she asked.
I faintly saw a stack of three sacks that might have served as a table or high bench. She got out of the bed, went to it, and found her clothes and mine, neatly folded, the way she always handled garments. She handed my clothes to me; they were my clothes, but not the ones I had been wearing a few minutes before, in Carol’s room at the Regis Hotel.“These are not my clothes,” she lisped. “And yet they are mine. How strange!”
We dressed in silence. I wanted to tell her that I was about to burst with anxiety. I also wanted to comment on the speed of our journey, but, in the time I had taken to dress, the thought of our journey had become very vague. I could hardly remember where we had been before waking up in that room. It was as if I had dreamt the hotel room. I made a supreme effort to recollect, to push away the vagueness that had begun to envelop me. I succeeded in dispelling the fog, but that act exhausted all my energy. I ended up panting and sweating.“Something nearly, nearly got me,” Carol said. I looked at her. She, like me, was covered with perspiration. “It nearly got you too. What do you think it is?”……
…….I was in total agreement with her; we were in a horrifying mess, yet I could not conceive what the horror of that situation was. Carol and I were not novices; we had seen and done endless things, some of them outright terrifying. But there was something in that dream room that chilled me beyond belief.
“We are dreaming, aren’t we?” Carol asked.
Without hesitation, I reassured her that we were, although I would have given anything to have don Juan there to reassure me of the same thing…..…….Carol and I, without saying another word, went to the window and looked out. We were in the country. The moonlight revealed some low, dark shapes of dwelling structures. By all indications, we were in the utility or supply room of a farm or a big country house.
“Do you remember going to bed here?” Carol asked.
“I almost do,” I said and meant it. I told her I had to fight to keep the image of her hotel room in my mind, as a point of reference.
“I have to do the same,” she said in a frightened whisper. “I know that if we let go of that memory, we are goners.”
Then she asked me if I wanted us to leave that shack and venture outside. I did not. My apprehension was so acute that I was unable to voice my words. I could only give her a signal with my head.
“You are so very right not to want to go out,” she said. “I have the feeling that if we leave this shack, we’ll never make it back.”
I was going to open the door and just look outside, but she stopped me. “Don’t do that,” she said. “You might let the outside in.”
The thought that crossed my mind at that instant was that we had been placed inside a frail cage. Anything, such as opening the door, might upset the precarious balance of that cage. At the moment I had that thought, both of us had the same urge. We took off our clothes as if our lives depended on that. We then jumped into the high bed without using the two sack steps, only to jump down from it in the next instant.
It was evident that Carol and I had the same realization at the same time. She confirmed my assumption when she said, “Anything that we use belonging to this world can only weaken us. If I stand here naked and away from the bed and away from the window, I don’t have any problem remembering where I came from. But if I lie in that bed or wear those clothes or look out the window, I am done for.”
We stood in the centre of the room for a long time, huddled together. A weird suspicion began to fester in my mind.“How are we going to return to our world?” I asked, expecting her to know.”
