How to See Fairies. Ramsey Dukes
have got some results should we then use the Dagger to see if they were worth collecting.
EXERCISES FOR WEEK 1
The plan is to begin by increasing sensitivity in a way that does not present a direct challenge to reason. We can even catch reason unawares. Nor do we want to challenge the inner puritan that would disapprove of excessive sensitivity.
What would that puritan spirit think if it heard some know-all musical connoisseur say: “I simply refuse to go to that concert because the symphony they are playing should only be listened to lying down”? The reaction might be, “What a load of arty-farty codswallop! How can it matter whether you listen to music lying, sitting or even standing on your head?”
Like the angry young man quotation at the top of the chapter, it's an understandable reaction, but it isn't quite as rational as it might seem. Because, ever since the advent of stereophonic sound, it has become common knowledge that acoustics do vary as you move around in a room, so the position of the listener's head would actually make some small difference. What's more, the experience of music is not directly that of the vibrating atoms of air in the room, but rather how they are interpreted by the human ear and auditory system. Standing, sitting and lying alter the parameters of the balance system governed by the inner ear, and affect other factors like muscular tension and blood pressure.
So the position we are in must have some effect on the musical experience. The only question is whether it is too small to be noticed—can we detect the difference?
EXERCISE 1 : LISTENING TO MUSIC
So the idea is to go alone into a room and put on a piece of music fairly loud, then make a conscious attempt to hear it more intensely than ever before.
Try to extend your senses so you hear it not just in your ears, but feel the vibrations over your whole body. Give it your total attention—not a narrow analytical attention that separates out the instruments (like the Dagger frame of mind) and analyses the musical score, but rather a complete surrender to the sheer sound in its wholeness (the Cup frame of mind).
Do this for a while, maybe with different pieces of music, until you get a really good feel of listening in a different way, of experiencing the music as never before.
When you have done this to your own satisfaction, then proceed to answer the question: “Does this piece sound better standing, sitting or lying down?” In other words, you know rationally that there must be some difference, so are you able to detect it?
Experiment with that for a while and note your results with different pieces of music for comparison.
The idea is that we are trying to observe something that is very nearly invisible, but with the reassuring conscious knowledge that there really is something to observe. Unlike later clairvoyant experiences, this exercise does not challenge our scientific culture, but simply stretches it a bit to include experiences that it would consider to be trivial, rather than nonexistent.
EXERCISE 2: BEING A CONNOISSEUR
Now apply the same approach to explore your other senses. For example, assuming that you are not already a trained wine taster, see if you can make sense of the wonderful descriptions on the back of the bottle. Pour yourself a glass, sit in silent contemplation and sip the wine to see if you can detect the “sensational alchemy between the sweet flavours of creamy, soft red berries, chocolate covered orange peel and the fragrant, savoury woodiness which, on the palate, wrap themselves around the cool flinty core of this profoundly complex wine”—or whatever the experts say.
Once again, the inner puritan might want to declare “What a load of rubbish”, but remember that the person who came up with this rubbish is probably a highly-trained and paid expert. Again, there must be something in it, but is it something we can tune ourselves to detect?
The sense of smell is a tricky one for many people. You might for example take a selection of perfumes and, instead of asking the simple question “Do I like this perfume?” try something subtler, such as “What sort of occasion would be right for this perfume and what would be wrong?” or “What sort of person should wear this perfume and who should not?”
Sight is difficult for a different reason. Many people are so visual that they have ingrained habits of seeing that are hard to shift. If you take drawing lessons the teacher might well begin with exercises to make you look at things in a new way, seeing them as if for the first time. Rather than try to compete with that, I suggest you move on to the next exercise…
EXERCISE 3: THE SENSUAL AWARENESS MEDITATION
Sit comfortably in an agreeable and not overly intrusive environment and begin by listening to the sounds around you. Do it in the same vivid, fully aware way that you listened to music in the first exercise, but this time you are simply listening to the ambient sound around you. Again, try not to engage the analytic (Dagger) mind that recognises individual sounds and names them, but rather be open (the Cup) to all the sounds together as if they were the totality of a piece of music.
When you have achieved a measure of success at this, move to each of the other four senses, one by one. I suggest vision next: see what is around you in a similar, fully aware way. As before, you do not focus the gaze on individual items so much as become simultaneously aware of the entire 180 degree visual input—being as aware of the peripheral vision as the centre, and not naming what you see. Then try the same with sensation: become aware of the feel of the chair you are sitting on, the breeze on your skin, the position of your body and any tensions or good feelings in it. Smell next, and finally taste.
Note that this is not the same as a “stillness” sort of meditation; the sensing is more active. Although the best approach to sound might be to close the eyes and not move, when it comes to taste you almost certainly need to move your tongue a little to taste what is in your mouth; smell is greatly heightened by increasing the breath and sniffing; to be fully aware of the texture under your fingers, you will do better to move them slightly; and the visual awareness is probably heightened by slight eye movements.
Having run through each sense, you then try to hold that awareness for all five senses at once, to achieve what I'll call total awareness (TA, for shorthand). “Total” is an exaggeration, unless you are highly proficient, because it is very hard to be utterly totally aware. All we require for now is wide open senses and a conscious awareness that is constantly holding those sense impressions and feeling highly aware. Unless you are eating something, the sense of taste will probably get less attention than the other senses, but do at least try to hold sight, sound and body sensation together.
THE QUESTION IS: HOW DO YOU GET ON WITH THIS EXERCISE?
The answer I receive from most people is that, as long as you apply yourself, TA is fairly easy to attain for a few seconds, but hard to maintain.
All too soon you will find your mind has wandered. Either because one sense takes over—as when something interesting is seen and you start watching it and forget the other senses—or else the bored mind starts wandering and you suddenly find yourself daydreaming about something that has nothing to do with your immediate senses.
If that is the case with you, the next exercise should provide a solution.
EXERCISE 4: THE WALKING EXERCISE
Go to some peaceful place—such as the countryside or a quiet suburb—and take a walk, trying to maintain a state of TA as you do so.
Why do I suggest a peaceful place? Not for the value of peace in itself, but simply to avoid the sort of attention-catching distraction mentioned above.
Being in TA, you are vividly aware of everything around you, though trying not to “name” or “think about” any of it, simply receiving and holding the impressions. The Cup not the Dagger.
So, when you inevitably realise that your mind has wandered, and you have lost TA, the fact that you had been in vivid awareness means you can recall your last moments of vivid perception and make yourself turn around, walk back to the place where you had it, and then continue the journey in TA.
Make sure, however,