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EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:
CONVERSATIONS WITH NEO
Neo Calls Himself a
Celestialnaut That Makes Use of Spiritualnautical Tools
One night, as I was exploring my newly adopted
town, I decided
to stop by the Eugene Library for coffee and a late night chat with Neo.
He had not been to the gym for almost two weeks and I had
wondered what he had been up to. I knocked on the back door and I
waited for what seemed like an eternity. I turned to lookout in
the parking lot to see if his truck was there. I figured he
might be out of town since his truck was not in sight. I was
just turning to leave when the door opened suddenly and a big
guy with short dark curly hair appeared. I felt foolish and
fearful for knocking on the door of an establishment that had
been closed for hours. I knew it probably seemed suspicious at
best.
Reflexively,
I was muttering apologies and excuses
for my uninvited presence until the big man
started laughing.
His
laughter and big smile triggered recognition. It was
Neo standing there with the door wide open behind him.
Neo had cut and he dyed his hair completely back to the
glossy raven black color of his youth and he was sporting a
goatee that he had been growing for almost two weeks. That was
raven black also. The change of color and style was so startling
that he looked like a different person. The dark hair
contrasting against his usual dark skin color and his emerald
eyes was very flattering.
He looked as if he could pass for a mature and masculine thirty
year old athlete.
“What gives?” “Did you get all gussied up for the young
girls?” “Angela is not going to be able to control herself
around you now.”
Neo laughed and said, “Fer reasons I don’t want ta git into, I
needed to take on a more youthful appearance.” “I do this now
and then fer a change and usually if I am applying for a job
that is looking for a young bloke.”
I said, “Ah…and since you always managed to have various fake
ID’s I suppose you can get away with a lot of disguises.”
Neo said, “I got to do this if I want ta continue to enjoy
working a new job. “For this I need several different life and
work histories to present to my potential employers.”
I laughed and then I said, “If I told most people that I know a
guy who goes through all the trouble that you do to work at
different jobs for the sheer enjoyment of it, they would think I was
lying or you were off your rocker.” “Especially if they knew
that many of the jobs you go for pay low wages and are
dangerous as hell.”
Neo smiled and said, “Ah the price one has to pay to be a
celestialnaut…but it is just one of the many
spiritualnautical tools.”
I said, “Celestialnaut…spiritualnautical…what the hell is that?”
Neo said, “That’s the words I coined fer people like me…we're Celestialnauts.” “As ya know nautical refers to a seaman’s term
for navigation and celestial refers to or is related to the
heavens or divinity and spiritual relates to supernatural beings
or phenomena.” “I am a man that has devoted my life with the
navigation and exploration of the celestial and spiritual realm
as I just described it.”
“Judging by yer experiences with the entities you call the dwarf
and that dark energy being…you are a celestialnaut also.” “Not
seasoned yet…and without all of the tools…but a celestialnaut
nevertheless.”
I said, “What do you mean by exploration and what are
spiriutalnautical tools?”
Neo said, “My people believe in other realities or existence and
we believe that they are populated by other beings.” Neo saw my
face and he said, “Don’t look so fearful mate….almost every
culture and religion speak of other realities and spirits or
entities that are normally out of our perceptual field.”
I said, “I suppose it’s true that lots of people believe in
ghost and such.”
Neo said, “There are many tools that can be used to get into
those many realms, and there are many tools that can be used to
navigate in those realms.”
I said, “What kind of tools do you use?”
Neo said, “I use different types of breathing techniques, many
types of music, drumming, dance, different forms of meditation
and yoga.” “I will do chanting, running, fasting and believe it
or not exercise such as weightlifting is a great tool.” “The
tools a person can use is almost endless and the combination of
these is certainly endless.”
I thought, “Shit, to watch him diddle around with the old
lady weights one could hardly think of weightlifting as a real
tool for excursions into the spiritual realms.”
“Yet I have often felt that for me weightlifting
was key and perhaps essential for my experiences into the
non-ordinary realms.”
I thought, “Yeah, but the difference between me and Neo was
that I really pushed myself with heavy weights while he dallied
around with weights that were not so light as to be clinically
weak, but they certainly did not tax him or most men.”
He voice tore me from my thoughts,
“Let’s take drumming for example….you got a first hand
experience on how shamanistic drumming can get you into the
states.”
I said, “But aren’t those tools that you use too primitive…I
mean…primitive people use them…doesn’t that bother you?”
Neo said, ‘They are the tools that open the perceptual doorways
to our different senses…even our sixth sense, just like exercise
for our kinesthetic sense.” “It is why you probably stay with
weightlifting…whether ya realize it or not…it is what helped to
trigger yer excursions into those other realities that you spoke
of.”
I said, “I have always privately felt that it was a major
reason.”
Neo said, “That’s probably what ya were struggling to share with
all of us that day at yer gym when we had the major political
discussion.” “That’s clear ta me now.”
I said, “I thought that the drumming and the chanting was more
of a psychological prop to instill a type of magical
thinking or to create a type of placebo effect for the
people who use those “tools.” I was showing off my
knowledge of what I had learned during many of the
psychology classes I had enrolled in at Lane Community College.”
Neo said, “You thought that us going through the drumming and
chanting was props and placebos?”
I said, “Yes.”
Neo said, “And ya went ahead and did it anyway….why?”
He was giving that peculiar penetrating look of his as if I
could be on the verge of personal revelation.
I said, “Because I know that if I put aside my disbelief and
then entertain a belief that the drumming and chanting could
pass on magical properties that this entertaining helps me to go
beyond my ordinary perceptions or boundaries.”
Neo looked pleased and he whistled in what sounded like
amazement and said, “What yer describing is a quality and an
ability that is rarely exhibited in modern adults.” “Many young
children have this ability and so do many “primitive” adults who
are brought up in primitive tribes.”
I said, “Yeah, because for obvious reasons primitive adults and
children are not sophisticated enough to know that beyond their
belief of the magic in drums and chants, there is nothing of
substance.”
Neo laughed hard and long. Finally he wiped the tears of
laughter from his eyes and said, “So you think that these
primitives and the children are able to use the drums and chants
because they are too unsophisticated to know that these things
have no value.”
Neo said, ‘That sounds like Harry talking.”
Feeling a little offended I asked, “What do you mean?”
Neo said, “Ya know, Harry’s argument that if a person or a chimp
is too stupid to not know that they can’t such and such - then they can.” “No
offense mate, but besides thinking that these people are
unsophisticated…you are willing to smugly acknowledge that you
can willing drop yer “sophistication” and use yer
imagination to benefit the way a unsophisticated person
can.” ‘The fact is chanting and drumming and many other tools
have more to them than a placebo affect; they also have actual
and profound, relevant physiological effects on a persons
brain.” “This fact of physiology along with magical thinking is
why many of these tools are very powerful.”
I was more than a little embarrassed by my arrogance and so I
apologized for my hubris.
I said, “What experience do you have with other beings in other
realities?”
I felt odd about asking that type of question in an air of
serious academic consideration. I still felt uneasy about my
experiences because there was always the fear that those times
may have been due to fits of insanity or some other pathology. I
also privately questioned Neo’s sanity and I sometimes wondered
if my fascination with both his and my past experiences and my
fascination with novel religious experiences that I could
potentially be fanning flames of latent psychosis dwelling
within me. Nevertheless I was compelled to learn more…to hear
more from Neo.
Neo said, “I got to get back ta my chores mate so we got to
discuss that at a later date.”
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