Here follows an excerpt from a coming novel with the working title “Common man”, which is a novel about a journalist who sets out to come up with an alternative form of world governance. The novel is a product of imagestreaming, a technique of invention and creativity developed in the 80s by Dr. Win Wenger. For more information about imagestreaming, and about other imagestreamed novels and stories, visit this link. If you’d like to be kept up to date as new chapters get published, sign up using the form in the right-hand column. More chapters are here in reverse order.
You will have understood by now that I normally start an imagestream by formulating the quest and then closing my eyes and dictating what I “see” into the tape recorder. I have had the habit earlier of imagining a lift that will take me to my destination. Recently, however, the technique evolved of its own where before I get to a lift I get met by someone. It is often, but not always, the facilitator.
Sometimes there are clues already in the terminus or station that leave an impression on me.
Having wrestled with the Dunbar number and done loads of looking up what “Federative” means I was looking forward to making one small step towards greater clarity. I needed it because whilst I had read a lot and downloaded a few academic papers I could not equate how they meant “Federative” in my imagestream with the information I found on the internet. Because of this I cannot really put anything down in writing.
I put the tape recorder on. I found myself back at the terminus, looking up at the glass roof and started thinking if it was constructed on the principles of Bucky balls when I heard a voice.
“You think too much.” It was the facilitator. Not dressed in a suit but a red lumber shirt with braces.
“Ah, I am taking it all in,” I said.
“You have to analyse it too, you know,” he replied, his hands in his braces.
I sense he is in some kind of mood and I tell him as much.
“Nooooo, not really,” he says unconvincingly.
He turns and walks away, I follow after. The terminus is the most crowded I have ever seen it. I see him through the crowd.
He stops and looks back at me.
“There is someone I’d like you to meet.”
He introduces me to a figure with long white hair and a long white beard.
The person smiles at me puts out his hand.
“Hi, I’m God!”
I find it funny on many levels. And fun. I am beaming back him. Speechless, of course.
The facilitator is smiling and chuckling. God is looking on with amusement.
“You really need to lighten up,” the facilitator says.
God nods in agreement.
“Thank you – that’s good advice!” I manage to say.
God looks at me and starts to explain that the whole commons approach I have been learning about is very much spiritual. It has a spiritual vein to it.
All religions in their beginning had a relationship to the Earth which has been lost over time.
God explained that he was happy that I was reviving the spiritual side of the relationship with the Earth.
It started to sink in. The life force is within us, and that force is in all living things. That makes humans part of everything else. We have for so long seen ourselves as apart from nature. As we reach limits of what we can extract and emit we come to realise that we have always been a part of the universe and it a part of us.
This is not an idea – it is a feeling. It can’t be understood in our head but felt in our heart. The Earth is a gift, this life is a gift and we can appreciate that. From that appreciation we can construct a governance system and way of stewarding the planet.
A heavy tiredness came over me, so I stopped the tape recorder.
I know that it was God and at the same time it wasn’t God who spoke to me. It was more symbolic, and very amusing to see it dressed up in the long white hair and beard. I’m not mad. On the edge of madness maybe, but not mad.