“Rest assured there is no deeper than rock bottom”, said Professor Arkengaard. And Professor Arkengaard is at all times mistaken, which is a fine gauge as to the veracity of statements about the world. Whatever Professor Arkengaard says, the opposite is probably true.

To illustrate his mistake, rock bottom is the sub-stratum of the sea bottom, the layer below the sand. And you can in fact go deeper than that layer. Lower yet you will find the Earth’s crust, the upper mantle, the mantle, outer core, and inner core. So one can in fact go deeper than rock bottom. An alcoholic mistreating his wife is still able to drop their child from the fourth floor. This is a very real possibility. A politician dumping his country in an abyss can still be re-elected. You can always go deeper still.

Under the Earth’s crust we find nigh unfathomably thick layers of rock with the taste of magnesium. An uncomfortable location in which an invulnerable person could dig deeper and deeper, towards the core of the Earth, and the core of that core, until the perfect middle has been found where deeper can only mean one thing: back to the surface. In that sense, to sink deeper is to lift oneself up, though in the meantime experiencing a hellish uninhabitability. Perhaps it would be better to make a standing rotation when things get heated. Rock bottom is not a place you want to pass.

“Professor Arkengaard, how can one know the world? How can we step outside our worldly bondage to see with true objectivity what it is we are part of?”
“Vandal! The world is round and that is all your very small heart needs to know.”
“But the world is oblate and I need to know more.”
“Then go and find out what it is you need to find out. Enter the world, enter the books. Gather experiences. Talk to people, seek the revelation, study and reason and imagine. Waste all that time, to return in 30 years as a pitiful man made modest, knowledge having brought you no further to certainty of anything, which is to say, you’d be back at square one.

And I did go in search for thirty years. And I did find everything and I did return with nothing. But Professor Arkengaard, who is never right (which is a fine gauge as to the veracity of statements about the world), was wrong. Because the nothing with which I had started was an entirely different nothing from that with which I returned.

photo credit: bolandrotor

What I have personally gotten from my dalliances into meditation is that, if I do it with reasonable regularity, I’m less anxious and more alert. Also, during the meditation itself, I remember little things I’ve forgotten in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I also generally feel quite pleasant, like sort of a warm post-orgasmic contentment. Lastly, I’m able to explore old memories with much clarity and feel a greater appreciation for life and people, which compensates for the built-up misanthropy gained through a day of dealing with people. Meditation (or a less loaded name for it: self-hypnosis) isn’t all that different from mild psychedelics.

Position: My personal preference is lying on my back in bed. Only works when not too tired, or you’ll fall asleep half-way. It is a misconception that meditation requires the lotus position. Any position works.

Breathing: 4 seconds (out) -4 (hold) – 4 (in) – 4 (hold). Variations are plenty.

Next do a round of your senses:

1. Hearing. – Identify every sound. In a quiet room you’ll probably start noticing it isn’t all that quiet.
2. Vision. – If you close your eyes, stay alert, don’t fall asleep. If you keep them opened, relax your eyelids and concentrate on an interesting point. Notice shapes, depth, colours, texture.
3. Smell. - Feel the air as you breathe, and any smell it may have.
4. Taste. – Probably not much of that going on.
5. Touch. – What is your body touching? Feel the pressure and fabrics.
Also, what is the temperature like? How is your sense of balance? These too are sensory impressions.

Don’t take too long, lest you fall asleep. Now for the most important part (and the part which hints at the hypnosis in self-hypnosis), relax each part of your body separately. For example, for each body part imagine it being warm and heavy and linger on that for a little bit.

This should be exceedingly relaxing.

Now you’re ready to do whatever. You can pretend your thoughts physically entering your right ear and exiting through the left, which is one way of bringing thoughts to a stop. For extra relaxation you can imagine a ball of yellow energy very slowly making its way from your crotch upwards, becoming ever more red and large and fierce, then releasing it back onto the whole of your body when it reaches your crown. You can find endless suggestions and techniques on other websites, depending on what you’d like to accomplish.

MANIFESTAT

Existence 1:1-2:9

1

2 And from Everything, that in its omnipresence was equal to the Nothing, spawned as necessarily born from the peculiar laws of Nothingness the Something, which happened to be in an even greater state of undeterminedness.

3 This Sacred Construction was however both timeless and limitless, and all alone in its unmeasurable state of being. Consequently the sublime moment of birth was not attached to any point or stretch of time, hence unaffected by such concepts as beginning or end, resulting in one’s ability to say: nothing ever came to exist. Or: everything always existed. Or: good golly, I exist! What am I going to do now? I think I’ll start with having a light breakfast.

4 Now, this construction had not yet come to complete maturity, as such properties had arisen within the Possible Impossibility, that this Something was equal to a Field of Potential. Whether the forces implied by this Field were born by necessity of the construct set in motion, or by an implication of the Everything, this cannot be revealed without juggling

5 balls for a straight

6 hours under water.

2

2 The nature of Nothingness wished the universe, and everything within and because of her, but it was not wished, as there was Nothing to do the wishing yet it had already come to exist.

3 In a spectacular explosion a new hotbed of space was filled and a measure of time passed in which elements one moment in a certain point in space found themselves, at other moments, in different points in space.

4 Forces remained in motion, playing their part according to their nature, and so the matter and gasses of the heavenly bodies came into a swirling existence and there was development visible, of the rough to the refined and of the simple to the complicated.

5 Thus formed too our planet. And the Earth was a sweltering, hellish planet and there was much violence of nature and she made much of a racket, heard by no-one. At length she cooled down and settled into a routine.

6 Again and still the forms and chemical structures refined themselves. In such a way, even, that the reactions and connections created a great wonder together, sloppy manifestations of an idea of Life. Organisms appeared.

7 Life appeared in complicated single-celled organisms, initially, but as time advanced and the universe became old so did Earth at last get to see many-celled organisms and an overwhelming diversity of organisms spread across its surface, of plants and animals and bacteria and: the human being. And the human being was conscious of itself and recorded for all time its experiences, its own place in the workings.

8 The big-bottomed mammals thought and were occasionally happy and occasionally unhappy. And at times they were happy to be unhappy or unhappy to be happy. And now and again they would make soup or shout out an expletive, and sometimes the making of soup during its course would warrant an expletive.

9 And at yet other times they would sit saying nothing at each other and yet another time they sang a dirty song or thought of something as beautiful. Then it would start to rain and all praised their conception of reality.