Quick And Easy

Barb Mourningchild

It happened back in early 1977, possibly the end of January or sometime in February. The reason I don't remember the exact date that it occurred is because during that period of my life I literally didn't give the date any thought. All I know is that it was Winter promising to end soon.

The experience was similar to PKD's pink light phenomena and this is the reason I'm relating it to you. To recall what happened in my life at that time brings up painful memories that I've kept buried in the back of my mind. I'm reluctant to confront them again. There is also a nagging feeling of unworthiness and guilt gnawing in my gut. You see, once you've reached Nirvana it's hard to come to terms with being human again and trying to live up to the standard of holiness which is expected from a Buddha, saint, or disciple of Christ. It's like I've somehow failed or turned sour - - I feel that I've been defeated instead of crucified.

I almost feel foolish telling about such an experience and expecting anyone to take me seriously. I suppose this is the way Dick must have felt too.

We are in a position where we want to tell others, it's almost like a sacred duty to tell others at first. Then when we tell people what happened to us and we start getting side glances, rolled eyes, frowns and even smirks, we realize it is better to try to fictionalize our accounts. Tell the world subtly about our miracle which seems less a miracle as each day passes and more like fiction to ourselves too. Nevertheless, it is a true experience for me and I know Dick was a fellow traveler, he experienced it too.

It was a cold winter night when it happened. My life was like the reality of A Scanner Darkly when the awakening took place. I wasn't addicted to any drugs but my second husband, Mac, was a certified flipped out drug addict. We had gone to meet a couple of guys who were going to sell Mac some THC which I suspected was probably PCP, a hog tranquilizer that some people called Angel Dust.

We went to a house in the poor end of town where I was introduced to two guys who professed to be full blooded native americans. They looked like native americans, black hair, dark eyes and tanned skin. One was called Quick, the other was Easy. I remember asking them why they called themselves Quick and Easy, was it in reference to their sexual habits? They just laughed and shook their heads. Then Easy gave me a line of white powder on a small mirror, he handed me a straw and told me to snort it up. I turned it down.

He mildly argued that I had witnessed them doing the drug and they intended to sell some to my friend. If I didn't do it, they would think I was a cop or something to that effect. I retorted that I didn't like to take strange drugs with strangers, they might be government agents testing some kind of mind control drug on me. He agreed that I had a point. But it was beside the point because Easy would not take no for an answer. So I wet my finger, dipped up the powder and licked it off. I hate putting stuff up my nose. The whole time I felt uneasy, wishing I would have stayed home.

As soon as the deal was made, Quick and Easy wanted us to go meet some friends who lived across the street. As we trudged our way through slush onto the snow packed street, I could feel the effect of the drug hit my system. I felt like I was in outer space trying to walk in antigravity. When we entered the apartment, we were greeted by a small Mexican woman. She led us to the livingroom where I was confronted by a picture of Jesus standing by a door, knocking. I remember saying something like, "Oh, I believe in Jesus too."

It was at this time that my head began to hum. I may have said that I felt faint or maybe I was in the process of fainting. Either way, I realized that someone was helping me to a couch and was asking me if I wanted to lie down. It sounded like Easy, but his voice was distant and fading. I was only aware of a huge ball of light energy like the sun hurtling through the ceiling toward me.

I froze. I was afraid. I heard a voice in my mind saying, "If you see a ball of light coming to you - don't reach out for it, let it come to you." I realized it was the words of advice from an acquaintance with whom I had had a conversation about meditation a few months earlier.

I tried to calm myself down. I realized that this was a very spiritual situation and I tried to remain aware. I restrained myself from trying to reach out to the light. In my mind, I said "God" over and over again, adding that whatever was happening, I just wanted to be with God. It had occurred to me that I might be dying from a reaction to the drug. So I was desperately seeking God's Grace, the only logical thing to do when you're dying. Right?

Then it hit me. I broke through the surface of the radiant golden globe as it engulfed me. Like lightning it jolted me with an omnipotent stimulation that saturated me with holy ecstasy. No longer was I sitting on a cold, dark, dead world inside a shabby living room surrounded by worried strangers, I had burst through some sort of gold soil. I noticed shimmering flecks of it showering over me as I broke through. I was like a plant growing at an accelerated rate. My arms reached out and up the way leaves go toward the sun. I was reaching for the omnipresent light of spiritual energy. I could feel the heat of the rays warming my skin. It was revitalizing me, replenishing my life force as it penetrated my body.

The figure of a man appeared in the light before me. He had a brilliant white aura so bright I could not see His face. I realized that it must be Jesus. Suddenly I was whisked back in time to Calvary, Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, where I was made witness to the actual crucifixion of Christ. I saw Him hanging on the cross, the bloody rusty nails holding the weight of His badly abused body. Sweat and dust filled my nostrils. I heard the rasp of each tortured gasp for breath. And I looked into his tear-filled eyes, dark pools of anguish, betrayed hope. I felt His pain, the pain of crucifixion, the pain of all the sins of the world like cold lead weighing heavy within my chest.

If only I could have saved Him, if only I could have put a stop to this murder, I thought in my mind. Then I became Him. I took His place, I hung on the cross, I felt the agony and the despair as it ripped and tore a rent screaming through my eternal soul. Out of the tortured chaos in my mind, a voice spoke to me.

It said, "You are a child of God."

Immediately, I came down. Back to the cold dark world, back to the strange room full of strangers. Someone was shaking me. I heard different voices talking all at once. The Mexican woman was saying, "She looks like an angel."

A man's voice asked, "Is she dead?"

Mac, paranoid and insane as usual was frantically yelling, "The police are coming! I hear sirens! Did you call the police?"

I opened my eyes and told everyone not to worry, I was fine. We left with our apologies. On the way to the car I noticed that the effect of the drug was gone completely. It seemed strange to me. The high of PCP is supposed to last a few hours at least. Maybe it hadn't been PCP after all. Was it some kind of herbal native american concoction? Humm, I thought, Quick and Easy... Maybe that's how they got their names. They turn people on to a drug that produces enlightenment the quick and easy way.

I never saw Quick and Easy again after that night or anyone else I had met that night. I wasn't even sure where they lived, I went down the street once a few weeks later and didn't recognize anything familiar. It was dark, I was high. Might have been the wrong street. The point is - the experience was real! It did happen.

But it didn't end there. As with Dick, there were other strange occurrences. For the next three days a voice spoke to me, it fed me information continuously even in my sleep. I wondered if I could really be absorbing all the knowledge. I found out later that much of the information I could remember could be verified as fact by documented scientific research. The information most prominently imprinted on my conscious mind concerned revelations about the environment, humanity, and prophecy.

The environment of the earth is so saturated in pollution that everything is poisoned. The air we breathe, the food we eat and everything we drink is poisoned. Fresh vegetables or things we grow ourselves are less poisonous but they are still poisoned to a degree just because it was grown from the earth. The poison is in the food chain.

I was given the mystery of the Missing Link in human history. It said that I was the missing link (the voice has a sense of humor). It explained that the missing link or factor which determines the changes which occur in the human species throughout time was what was happening to me at that moment. The missing link is enlightenment or VALIS or logos or whatever name you wish to try to pin to it. Whenever humans needed a boost to help them adapt to circumstances which threatened their survival, the human mind experienced enlightenment, an opening up of the mind to ideas on how to combat extinction. It is the will to survive which gives us the ability to create a more nurturing existence.

Another revelation was about the End Times as foretold of by all the old prophets. I was told that the End Times are happening now. The voice explained that the evil of humanity has grown completely out of proportion. The pollution has changed the environment and is making it hostile to life as we know it. The psychic and physical are so unbalanced that our survival is at stake. There will be a cataclysm, a reaction of nature, like everything has been stretched to its limit and will be released. I was shown what will happen when this occurs. The good people will be like the dew on grass, clear sparkling droplets of pure water evaporating into the sun. The evil people will fall into a vortex of black nothingness, nonexistence, not even death. A new earth will emerge, a highly spiritual world, a world for good.

There were some strange things that happened during the next few days. Things that can not be explained rationally. The first night all the plants in my house grew at least 3-4 inches overnight! My hair grew too and became wavy. I had to remove all my jewelry. For some reason it bugged me to have any on. The second night I dreamed that Mac bumped into a table causing a stone in the fishbowl to fall and kill the two fish. The next day I found the fish dead in the bowl, the stone had fallen.

After the intensity of the experience wore off, I found myself obsessed with the need to figure it all out. I needed to find out what had happened to me. I was driven like Dick to find out the substance or the meaning of it. What was it? Was it hallucination? Why did it happen? Was it rebirth? Enlightenment? Nirvana? What caused it? What triggered it? Am I the only one?

It seemed to be of Christian origin because I did see Christ hanging on the cross. I had previously turned away from religion for the obvious reason that organized religions are a hypocrisy. But there was a big movement of reborn Christians so I thought I would go to a fundamentalist Babist revival. I went up and excitedly told the evangelist my holy experience. He told me it was all a hallucination caused by the use of drugs, he told me I needed to get saved. I felt insulted. After what I had experienced, this charlatan was telling me to get saved! VALIS had told me that I was a chosen one. I felt like I was going to vomit, using the idea of God to make money, the false prophet!

I decided to go to a Catholic priest because the Catholic religion is supposed to be the original Christian religion. Maybe I was trying the wrong faith. The priest was a nice old man, white shaggy hair, short and plump. He listened calmly and benevolently to my account, his hands folded gently on his lap. When I finished he politely told me it was an interesting tale but he wasn't sure what I wanted from him. After scratching my head and thinking a minute, I realized that I wasn't quite sure myself what I wanted from him. He led me to the door and stopped. I guess he felt the need to do something for me so he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me. As he was about to release me, he whispered in my ear.

"Pray for me."

After that I realized that most modern day Christians don't believe in actual rebirth occurring like it did in the Bible with a blinding light and miracles, things like that just don't happen in a rational society.

I decided that maybe it might have been some kind of a psychological breakdown. I had been under a lot of emotional stress. I was still unhappily married and suicide was still lingering in the shadows of my mind.

It was during this time that Mac had gone completely berserk. He thought he was the evil antichrist, he had the stigmata to prove it. He was in imaginary pain all the time. The unyielding craving for some kind of drug induced high was his only driving force. He would suffer psychological and physical withdrawal if he didn't have some kind of drug in his system. Finally it got to the point where he had me take him to the emergency room to be admitted into the hospital for back pain. During his hospitalization he was given a series of multiple choice tests which were supposed to result in a semi-accurate psychiatric evaluation. The conclusion was that Mac was addicted to drugs and should be admitted to the "Round House", the psychiatric ward. He almost agreed, he envisioned lots of dope - tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Then he was shocked from his reverie when he heard all the rules he'd have to obey: wake up at seven, make his bed, rotating housekeeping duties, and the clincher was he could not leave or have visitors for two weeks! No phone calls either! It was too much like jail for him. He backed out.

I was flabbergasted! I thought that he would finally be completely out of my life for a while. It would have given me a chance to disappear from his life for good.

All hope seemed lost. Then the voice spoke to me. It reassured me. It said that I would not have to be bothered by Mac again. It seemed to take control of my being, I felt like I was just sitting back waiting. I turned toward the psychiatrist and told him to admit me into the Round House. When he asked me why, I told him quite frankly that I would kill myself if I had to spend another hour with that weirdo (referring to Mac). It ended up being a pretty good move on my part. The same rules applied to me. No visitors. No phone calls. He could not get to me for two weeks. I was free! I watched the sunrise every morning and the sunset every night. I overflowed with inspiration and wrote poetry during my stay. After two weeks, I got out and he was gone. The only time I saw him after that was for about fifteen minutes in divorce court.

I did get to talk to a psychiatrist. As the conversation progressed, I told him about my experience. I was careful not to incriminate myself and left out the taking of a strange drug. He told me that there were several people lately who had had similar religious experiences. He appeared to be very interested and even acted like he may have believed me which made me consider that it wasn't so crazy after all. Then he gave me his evaluation. He said that I was normal. He was concerned about my intake of marijuana, one joint a day was considered excessive. He didn't offer any theory as to what had happened to me. He did recommend assertiveness therapy.

After my stay at the Round House, I continued my search. Like PKD I had a compulsion to know, I had to find out, to get it straight in my mind what had happened to me. I read books. I went to college and studied all the social sciences and the arts. I realized that there are others just like me including Philip K. Dick.

I can analyze my experience from an academic perspective by using accepted theories and terminology to represent collective ideas, concepts and stratagems. It's been described as enlightenment, shaman visions, class consciousness, true consciousness, the grace of God, nirvana, and the supernatural. From a biological viewpoint it could be endorphines released in the brain causing morphine-like hallucinations or maybe it was synapses misfiring in the neurons of the brain. I've even had street people tell me it is the government beaming messages into our brains as a form of mind control. But I'm still not sure what it was that happened to me that night so long ago it seems just like a dream now.

I think Dick's explanation which he termed VALIS is entertaining to ponder intellectually and is fun to read. At least Dick offers us a hint to the solution that will help combat our impending extinction. In order to survive we need to find the truth hidden under the mask of society. We need to create a reality more conducive to the needs of all humanity.

It doesn't matter what VALIS is, all that matters is what we are and what we do. My motto is - seek the truth, then speak the truth, and act with righteous intentions. Remember - the meaning of life is LOVE.