I do some stretching exercises and look around again. We've secured Moira to some piles in the Port Douglas Estuary. On three sides the view is of mangrove trees. Parts of the small artist community of Port Douglas are visible at the entrance to the harbor. A century ago this was a gold town. There were 100 pubs over there. Today there is just one pub, a small hotel, a couple of general stores, a bakery and, in the estuary just north of the peninsula, a little harbor with a slipway. Out in the mangroves there are mounds of old bottles from the 100 pubs. Freddy and I go hunting there for antique glass for the Moirascopes.

I scan the horizon, still feeling something dangerous is approaching, perhaps to maintain a modicum of self confidence in my instinctive feelings. There is an odd-shaped, rounded hill on the southern lip of the estuary - a mound. Otherwise the land around here is flat. The air is unusually clear this morning. I can see the Tablelands rising over the mangroves out to the west. No sign of anything wrong.

We came here last August to slip Moira and paint her bottom. I loved the place right away and decided to stay for the hurricane season. It's an estuary, not a river. That's important because when a hurricane hits, rivers become dangerous places, carrying off huge masses of rainwater along with floating debris - such as houses and trees. It would not do to have a house drift down on top of you during a storm.

Walter was busy on his own projects, seemed uninterested in mine. I haven't seen or heard from Walter in a long time. It's been good here in Port Douglas. Lee and Janet, live up here aboard their new boat. Their new daughter Jesse is growing rapidly. Lee takes her everywhere. She watches him feed the pelicans and soon is carefully doing the same thing, the pelicans still much bigger than she is.

Robert the Artist comes over to visit from time to time. Megan and John, the doctors, all live within a short walk of the slipway so we have friends to visit and talk to.

I gaze thoughtfully at the notch in the horizon where our favorite river lives. Up there, in the hills of the ridge, is a beautiful river where we swim naked in clear cold mountain water.

The feeling of something wrong increases. I examine the sky above the ridge. There are only a few clouds over the mountains. Which way are they going? I watch them, waiting for them to move relative to the mangroves and tell me the prevailing wind direction.

I have been writing like a man possessed, about all kinds of things. No, not possessed, obsessed. Worrying away at the tangled skein of Moirae threads. Deciphering the message the Whales implanted in my DNA. Whatever. There are times I feel I've almost got it. All the lessons seem to be focusing in on a single, central, all pervading concept. It is something so obvious, so simple, it is completely invisible. Sometimes I wonder if it really exists or if I'm just fooling myself.

The clouds are rising over the mountains, coming from the northwest. They are coming towards me, and seem to be moving unusually fast. I turn and look out to sea, checking the wind direction there. It should be away from me.

During this obsessive writing, and the feeling I was tracking something basic and terribly important, I let Inner Voice select the reading material. Time and again, Inner Voice would have me pick up a book and it would flop open to just exactly the critical passage I needed. I was dragged, bored and confused and often half-asleep, through an absurd array of material, from Einstein to the Book of Dzyan of the Cabala.

In fact, the Cabala appeared in the hands of a friend yesterday. Voice flipped it open to, "Listen ye sons of the Earth to your instructors, the sons of fire." This quote seems eminently apropos at the moment. The feeling of danger is everywhere.

Hmmmm, that's odd, the clouds from Sea are also rising. Coming in over the mound on the lip of the estuary. Coming in exactly towards me. Coming fast. I look south, holding very still, watching the clouds.

This morning I have been just finishing my manuscript about the cosmic kaleidoscope. Pondering the obvious yet astonishing fact that all the DNA in every cell of every living being has never died. From the first successful DNA molecules, the living memory system has expanded and grown and become all which lives on our planet. DNA has certainly died in the process, but every single strand of DNA living today has it's origin in the creation of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is immortal. This immortal DNA forms a basic memory system reaching right back to day 1. The Thread of Awareness unwinding in Chaos.

There are all kinds of obscure and not so hidden references to this immortal memory system in occult literature. Have the mystics been tying to describe some real, remembered events in fumbling convoluted attempts to match their language and metaphors to what they could perceive on some deep molecular level?

The clouds in the south are coming right for us, too. Fast. I swivel around, checking again. This is impossible. The clouds are now moving so fast they tumble across the sky like a time-lapse movie. They are rolling in from three directions at once, vectoring in on where I am standing on Moira's deck.

"Freddy! Get up here quick!" I shout below. She is still in bed, "Quick! Now! Emergency!" I begin to pull down the big awning to reduce windage. Freddy comes out on deck, "Whaas going on?" she grumbles, looking around.

"Storm coming in seconds," I bundle the cloth. "Check the forward lines." She runs forward and checks the lines to the piling. I check the aft lines. The sun is still shining on us but there is a black river of clouds flowing in from every direction, sweeping down on us as if we are in some sort of atmospheric vortex.

The worst windage pulled down, Freddy and I stand there, awe struck, as the clouds race towards each other. "Wow!" I gasp through a tight throat. I am looking towards the village. The gray-black clouds roll over the mound, folding into a giant fist. The clouds approaching from the other directions meet, lift and spread out to form a cupped hand. A part of the cupped cloud hand swoops over Moira and the wind of its passage smacks us hard.

"Christ! It must be blowing 60 knots!" I shout into the churning wind.

Hand and fist come together directly over the center of Port Douglas. The force of the blow sucks the air out of my lungs. The harbor water froths and Moira slams over hard. Freddy scampers below and turns on the wind instruments. "Damn! 75 Knots!" I shout. There is a lash of ice cold rain.

Then it's over. Peaceful, and calm, the harbor basking in the early morning sunlight. "That's the damnedest thing I ever saw," I mumble to Freddy as we stand on deck, looking around, bewildered.

THE ABO'S POINT

On New Years Day, Freddy and I step out of the palm trees onto the four mile long beach and walk down the soft white sand. It is low tide so the beach is maybe 100 meters wide. It is bright and sunny, although there is a hurricane not far away, north of Cooktown, supposedly headed this way. About a half mile down the beach I turn and stare back at the funny mound-shape which tips the end of the peninsula.

The Aborigines say that mound of dirt is a place of awesome power in Dreamtime.

The Aboriginals have two consensus realities. One matches the waking reality of hunting and fishing and social business. The other consensus reality is a kind of communal recognition of Lefty's world. It is a place with no time, a place with intricate links to the world of spirits and forces beyond normal human perception.

When an Aboriginal enters the world of Dreamtime, the planet acquires a very different aspect. Some places appear as special focal points of power. And the lump of Earth at the end of this gleaming beach is one of those places. Freddy and I have come out onto the beach to get a better perspective of it.

Yesterday, Robert, Freddy and I went to visit one of Australia's better known painters who lives on the side of the hill. As usual, Robert's timing was off. The artist was having a showing in Sydney and wasn't home. However, his house-keeper/friend invited us in. We sat for awhile in the living room. I could see nothing but jungle from the big windows. Big dark glossy green leaves climbed through the trees and vines. It looked just like a scene from the artist's paintings.

I turn and walk down the sand towards the sea. Summertime is the season for box jellyfish - cubomedusae - the nastiest, deadliest of the stinging sea creatures. There are signs posted along the beach warning people to stay out of the water. Freddy shucks her dress and wanders down close to the water, looking at it, wishing she could plunge in.

From another 100 meters down the beach I can see the whole of the rounded hill. There is the corner of the roof of the artist's house. I stand and examine the place of power.

I felt something odd about that hill long before I discovered it was a place of power. There was, for example, that freak storm a couple of months ago. Talk about weird. A week or so after the storm we were walking in town and met Peter and Amanda (not their real names). They were out for a stroll, pushing their baby along in one of those little carts. Amanda is a vicious pathological liar who lies to hurt people. She is indiscriminate about this, anyone will do. She told one girl here her boyfriend (who has taken a job in Sydney) was shacked up with another girl (not true but it caused some bad times for the girl). Naturally, neither the girl, the boy or their collective friends thought much of Amanda after that. Multiply this by the fifteen or so major hassles her lies have caused people here in Port Douglas and the network of people in this small community has become pretty well saturated with people who dislike her. Or, more simply, everybody hates her guts.

Anyway, Bob had his arm in a sling and Amanda had a big bandage on her nose and big red welts covered them and their baby. They looked like someone had beaten them up, baby and all. Which would not be terribly surprising.

We stopped and I asked them what happened. The freak storm blew down a big banyan tree right next to their house. Bob and Amanda went out to try and clean up some of the mess. Luckily, the tree had toppled away from their house but still, a limb had brushed their roof and it was leaking. Bob climbed to the roof to fix it and fell off. He broke his arm. At the same instant, Amanda was trying to move a branch of the tree and it got away from her, swung back, and broke her nose.

The big red welts all over them were from mosquito bites. Ever since the storm, a never ending army of gigantic mosquitoes attacked them, day and night, with dedicated ferocity.

Their car quit working with some mysterious inner ailment which nobody can (or will) diagnose. In a freak accident, their house almost burned down (leaving a charred hole in the wall for the mosquitoes to soar through). They wailed their troubles at us and finished by saying they were packing up and leaving Port Douglas. Heading off on a trip to Western Australia to start again.

Freddy and I walked off smiling. We stopped by their house and I walked over to look at the banyan tree which had attacked them. It was a big old tree, looking sad lying on its side. Someone had begun to cut it up. The extensive root system stuck up in the air. It had been well rooted to the planet. I marveled the storm could have blown over the old tree.

I looked around. There were lots of other trees and bushes still standing. Bob's house was a dilapidated old wood building. The storm didn't do it any harm. In fact, the old tree with the big root system was the only evidence of the storm. It was as if the storm blew in from every direction and focused its power on this single tree. It came in over the Aboriginal's place of power. It came down through the estuary. It came out of the sea. It reached into the center of town and snatched that tree right out of the ground. A tree which must be at least 100 years old.

There was a big hole in the ground where the roots tore out. I looked down into it. Umpteen billion big mosquito larvae flicked enthusiastically back and forth in the muddy water filling the hole.

Freddy chortled, "They all seem overly energetic. Probably impatient to metamorphose so they can vampire Bob and Amanda."

Within a month after the magical storm attack, Bob and Amanda were gone, driven from the village by natural elements. They bought a camper-van and headed off across northern Australia. I have heard rumors that, somewhere in the middle of that vast empty outback, their van caught on fire and burned to a crisp, leaving them stranded in the middle of the desert.Some say they were rescued, but were in bad shape.

If one were prone to believe in magic, one might just possibly think the group hatred of the people here in Port Douglas had blended with the Aboriginals place of power to zap those two.

I only discovered the Aboriginal legend yesterday, while we were in the artist's house. I looked out the window and said, "I can see where he gets his inspiration for his leafy paintings."

Robert said, "It's more than the leaves, the place is supposed to be built on sacred ground."

"Really? Sacred to who?" I asked.

"The Aborigines felt this was a place of spiritual power," Robert put on his round-eyed here-be-a-mystery look.

"That's true," agreed the artist's friend. "In fact, when we bought the property we selected this spot because it was close to the spot the Aboriginals say was the seat of power. Sometimes, at night, I hear weird noises and some people have said they've seen ghosts in the house."

I wondered if I could feel anything of this supposed power and, while Robert and Freddy and our host scared each other with ghost stories, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to float down into a state of quiet relaxation. When I mentally reached out, I felt I saw the whole hill all at once. With a weird kind of x-ray vision, I could see the bedrock of the hill below the mantle of soil and vegetation. The soil was much thicker on the top of the mound than I thought. Before, I had assumed the hill was a big rock pile.

Just behind the house, a twisting vortex of smoke spiraled into the sky from a cleft in the rock and soil. The moment I noticed it, it noticed me. It expanded and moved in my direction. I sensed a churning power within the coils of the twister. It rushed at me with surprising speed and determination.

Trained in spiritual martial arts, I knew exactly what to do. I opened my eyes and yawned.

In a little while, we went out back of the house and our host pointed out the Seat of Power. It was a cleft in the hill just where I envisioned it. In non-Dreamtime reality, the cleft was a normal sort of woodsy place. There was no smoke or steam or anything else coming out of the earth. But I felt a cold chill as I stood looking at cleft I had dreamed inside the house. It was a chill like a wind blowing right through where I was standing.

This morning, I walked all around the hill and found there is, in fact, a very thick layer of soil covering the bedrock. Now, from the sandy beach, I can see the mound is shaped exactly like I saw it in yesterday's vision.

My reality test complete, Freddy and I begin to walk back towards town. "We are the energy of the star upon the stage of the planet, sunlight dancing in earth crystals, a cosmic kaleidoscope." I say and laugh, kicking the sand, seeing it from twin viewpoints. From the perspective of my right and left minds. In one view, the sand is a glittering white beach. In the other, Dreamtime, view it is alive, moving, shifting, fully intertwined with the behavior of Sea's organisms which create and maintain the sand and the beach, tightly knit with wind and fetch and tides.

"It is neither the point in space nor the instant in time that has physical reality. Only the event itself," Wrote Einstein. "Places" exist only from a viewpoint, which may be different from every side, from every level of motion, from the micro to the macro world. There is an essential point in the fact that time is a personal, individual event; different for a man on a space-ship traveling along a reality path at the speed of light than for another man "at rest" on Earth.

A place of power is an event, requiring a certain perspective to gain momentum so it can shatter the inertia of our control locks.

Buckminster Fuller's book, Synergetics, has been a well-spring of ideas. It is somehow a pivotal concept in what Voice is trying to show me. I glance up at the mound and see it as a pyramid: four triangles arranged so one angle of each is confluent with the others. When four triangles are arranged together into a pyramid, they form something brand new and unpredicted: a square. This the base of the pyramid of power. It is so obvious it seems trivial. But it is the base of Fuller's powerful philosophy, too. In synergy 2 + 2 does not equal 4 but can equal 5 plus something new and different.

Fascination in the place of power is the appearance of something new and different, something unpredicted, from the behavior or geometry of its parts. The same principle creates awareness and fascination in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, the Artist's paintings, in my Moirascopes, and in my mind.

For awhile I thought synergy was negative entropy. But it isn't.

Entropy deals with digits, 1 + 1 = 2. But synergy deals with the + and the = directives. I walk along, head down, thinking about the directives and synergy. I feel so close, so very close, to the core of the tangled skein of Moirae threads.

Lee and Janet drive by and Freddy and I wave. Lee is part American Indian and has been a fisherman all his life. His ability to catch fish is almost magical to the Aussies. Partly, I suppose, because of the Australian custom of changing jobs frequently and doing anything which comes to mind, qualified or not. But mostly because Lee sees Sea and Fish differently than other people. He views relationships, directives, in the sea/fish environment, not the digits of a fish here plus a fish there plus a hook with a lure. He has a synergetic orientation.

He sees moon gravity shifting Sea, creating tides of hunger in the fish and the flow of currents of water directing the movement of the fish. He knows where they will be and when they will be hungry because he perceives these forces.

Like Kitchner Wheatley in the Solomons, Lee is a "sayer" because he does not focus on the world of objects most people see. Understanding the forces directing behavior lets him use these forces. So he can catch fish effortlessly while other hominids flail around, fishing unsuccessfully, using the non-existent forces of luck.

Dowsers, like Freddy and her Grandfather, point their forked willow branches along lines of behavioral forces other humans can not perceive. I think of Edgar Casey and his penetrating predictions. Dowsers and people like Casey enter a mind-state that is, in effect, a time dilation altering one's recognition of levels of environmental forces. This thought bounces off Dreamtime again and floods with a riptide of links to environmental forces, ranging from moon-phase and internal molecular clocks to nexus upon nexus of atomic, molecular, cellular, metazoan, megazoan, ecosystem links. We alter our interval of awareness, perceive new levels of change.

Freddy and I have walked about 10 meters and the sound of Lee's car is just fading from the quiet tree-lined street. Thoughts passing through us are, themselves, the synergetic flood of innumerable forces treading out into the network of events linking each one of us to the whole life system of our planet. Each of these events has a strange, "Quenkin" aspect to our consciousness.

A quenkin is a forest spirit in Aborigine mythology, well known from older cave paintings. They are two dimensional spirits. When walking in the forest you might see one out of the corner of your eye. But when you face them, they turn sideways and you can't see them anymore.

Freddy sees some tiny sea shells in the tide line and stops to pick them up for the Moirascope action chambers.

At the base of Port Douglas's Dreamtime Place of Power I feel my thoughts and writing about the forces of nature and the controls of synergy are like quenkins. I can see them out of the corner of my mind but when I try to get them into the open, to capture them in a cage of words, they flip sideways and vanish. Buckminster Fuller had the same problem.

I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN

Getting just the right pieces in the action chamber is a challenge. I've tried differing combinations of all sorts of small objects and each Moirascope has its own persona and beauty. "Oh, WOW, look at this one," I pass it to Freddy. She puts her mind into it and oooo's at every turn. It really is magnificent.

I check my watch. Almost 7 PM. All this concentration has cramped my muscles. I stand up, stretch and climb out on deck. The sky is cloudy but, over the harbor, towards the dark Place of Power to the Eastnortheast, there is a hole in the cloud-cover.

The Moon is just visible through the mangrove trees on the other side of the harbor. It is full, a big orange sphere. I start to call Freddy to come see the Moon rise. But the dark skyline against the rising moon holds my attention.

"That's just how it's looked for ages - thousands - perhaps millions of years." I think.

I reach out with my mind to feel the mangrove forest and the trees on the hill. The Moon is in the center of my field of vision but I see the entire hill-forest panorama with my peripheral vision. I mix the vision from my eyes into the pool of knowledge of the movement of those ancient atoms and molecules, the biology of trees and the geology of rocks, I see them shifting, alive, growing through the ages like some cosmic kaleidoscope getting more and more complex with each passing turn.

The altered mental time scale and the unexpected awareness of all the light falling on my retinas changes the setting of some deep internal perceptive switch and, with an expanding feeling of awe, I perceive the planet revolving under the moon and stars.

I drink the vision of a planet slowly, majestically, effortlessly spinning through space.

It is Steiner's draught of remembrance, the antidote to Moira Lethe's draught of forgetfulness. It calls up feelings and understandings from the core of my being. Each moment, every passing instant, my inner being becomes more and more aware. A moment of fear comets past and I nearly cut off the experience. But I accept the consequences and let go, opening myself totally and completely to the tides of awareness.

My body stands on Moira's deck headed East at 900 knots while the faint breeze of the tropical Australian coast turns the moonglow on Sea into a million sparkling reflections. Earth carries me sweeping through space and my awareness flows out and out until I, myself, am the entire planet. I feel my massive silent spin. I see my huge body turn, the angle of rotation turning the magic place of power and black silhouetted trees downward, revealing the floating sphere of Luna.

The vision deepens, swells and comes alive with meaning and detail I have never seen or known or thought about before. I sense everything, wet tears on my face, muscles rigid, trembling, every separate aroma of Sea and Shore, every ray of light, each movement of air against my skin, the smallest sounds of night. I drink the vision, and it transforms me and all my knowing in directions beyond thought.

How long it lasts, I don't know. An instant? Forever? Trembling, exhausted, blinded by tears of emotion, I find my way below and go directly into the shower. Freddy is reading and does not look up as I pass by. I don't want to talk to her. I need to be alone. After awhile, the warm water calms me and restores my normal self, but I have seen the Whale's message, the Moirae's plan. I may not understand it all, not completely, but I get the idea.

I towel off, pour a cup of tea, and sit down to try and write about what happened. But words don't seem to be...enough. It would take a book to describe what I saw. All my biological training, from the simplest facts about atoms and energy to the most complex thoughts of evolution and behavior suddenly gelled into a whole new perspective. All the lessons I've experienced on the entire voyage of the Moira now make sense.

I don't think I'll ever find the way to put this perspective into words that don't sound either too simplistic or too trite.

The perception is complete. But it leads into a whole new mental lagoon filled with unseen reefs. It will take time to find my way through. And longer still to find a way to talk about it.

One fact stands out in my mind. What I experienced was not a mind game, not a hypnotic delusion, not a metaphor. It was a perception, an experience, an observation. Yes. An observation, not a discovery or a theory. For one moment I (the conscious I) was able to observe the world around me from a different kind of viewpoint.

In this new perspective, I was not looking at the trees and Earth and Moon and Moira and myself. I was perceiving.... the interaction of these "elements." This interaction (not a very good word for what I am trying to express) existed everywhere, everywhen, from the furthest star in the universe to the deepest part of my being.

I try to write more, but nothing comes. I simply can't describe what I perceived.

"Maybe you can't, but try anyway." Inner Voice rescues me. "Your language mind-set prevents you from discussing experiences such as this. It is a mental short-circuit preventing you from wandering into areas of hominid control. Go ahead and try anyway. If you don't record it now, it will be gone tomorrow."

"Ok, ok. I'll try."

During the moment of revelation, I went through layers of thoughts, but all at once. They are one thought but it is impossible to say them as one thought. And, damn it, when I try to say them as individual layers they come out wrong.

Inner voice is right. Our language system prevents me from saying it. Actively prevents me from saying what I experienced. The language has built-in barriers and mind-shunts to prevent these thoughts. The only words available already have consensus definitions meaning something else or are misleading. Or wind up as meaning "Wow!, Golly Gee Whiz! Far Out! Too Much." I feel myself sliding off the topic and try again.

We say sunrise because there is no easy way to describe what really happens as the planet spins. The word sunrise alters our conscious perspective and makes us see the sun rising, not the planet turning.

"Shunted again. Try. Try it as a painting, an image." Voice insists.

Right. An image.

Imagine a huge sphere of elements spinning in space. The elements are the embers of an exploded star. We call these embers carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and the other basic elements. They are not randomly distributed in space, they form a spinning planet orbiting a star. Together with the star, they orbit a galactic center and, together with the galaxy, fly at the square root of the speed of light through space.

The outer portion of the planetary sphere, irradiated with a blast of sunlight (pulsing due to the planet's spin) develops a pattern of larger associations of atoms. Some of these duplicate themselves by assembling other atoms from their environment into a self-replicating pattern of behavior. This is DNA, the basic messenger of life.

Awareness is born, awareness of how to manipulate the environment, to perceive, to conceive. After billions of years of awareness, perceiving, remembering, reacting, the same awareness is still manipulating the same atoms of the same planetary crust using the radiation from the same star. Only now the atoms are moving in more and more complex levels of behavioral awareness.

The atoms nest, by the billions, interacting as populations we call molecules. The molecules nest, interacting with each other in multi-billion populations we call cells, the cells nest by the trillion, behaving as unified, immense cities of cells that rise into the sunlight, move around, fall and decay. We call these trees and flowers, whales and people. These beings interact to create larger entities - forests, gardens, cities - and these blend into integrated ecosystems and finally nest to become one living planet.

Throughout the layers of interacting beings, there is a thread of awareness constantly assembling each physical form from chaos. Each nested form, from atom to galaxy, exists as a synchronized, flowing pattern of behavior of forms larger and smaller than itself. A moment ago, part of the planet's crust was assembled into the form I call my body, standing on an assemblage of molecules I call Moira and this portion of the planet was looking at the rest of the planet through a planetary development called human eyes and was aware on a multitude of levels that it was a portion of the planet looking at itself.

"A vague start." Inner Voice's sarcasm cuts in. "You're missing a vital part of the observation."

I know. I know.

I saw - I understood - during the vision.... I saw the development of the crust of the planet as a great and complex flowering of awareness - a magnificent learning process. I saw the evolution of all life as an interactive development of points of awareness called selves as they move through one experience after another. But always, always, they remain the living awareness of the composite, breathing, developing, learning planet/star combination.

This does not seem exactly right, either.

Inner voice bellows at me, I'm not sure what it says. (Later I think it might have been "Fool!" or maybe "Idiot!") but the shock of the power of the Inner Voice is like the doctor's slap which, years and years ago, moments after I came out of my mother, made me into an aware being. My mind travels along the Moirae's Thread of Awareness. With effort, I force myself to continue to write.

I am aware. I am Intelligent. I am conscious. I see stars and galaxies and know them as blossoms of fusion reactions as hydrogen crushes together. I see atoms and molecules and delve into their deepest secrets. Not with my two eyes or my individual self - I see the length and breadth of the cosmos through the eyes and knowledge of Mankind. I am mankind, and mankind is an awareness flowing within the planetary elements, moving with the light and heat of our Star. I think. And therefore the planet, of which I am a part, thinks. I AM the planet thinking. I AM the planet aware of itself!

The planet is alive! No, not just the planet, the planet/star combination. Yes! We exist in the outer edges of our star's atmosphere. Our star is the source of life's energy. All the basic elements, except hydrogen, originated in stars. Yes! I am/we are the awareness of the Star/Planet. The energy of the star is transformed by the behavioral array of planetary elements into my/our awareness and this awareness is therefore a stellar event.

This doesn't mean the sphere of exploding hydrogen gasses thinks. Or the core of the planet thinks. Or there is a mysterious mystical aura of the planet that thinks. It means I and every living human and all the associated life forms create a thinking, learning, evolving star/planet.

My mind is on fire. I see Earth Awakening.

I am part of the planet. I am aware of myself as a living planet, therefore I AM Earth awakening.

My eyes are Earth's eyes seeing itself, becoming self-aware. Earth Consciousness flows through, within, between my mind and the whole shifting, moving, titanic interconnected star/planet which IS my larger being. It is a thread of awareness in chaos, unwinding, expressing itself, becoming.

I am everywhere all at the same time. I feel the ancient, titanic awareness of Sun/Earth shift within/around me as awareness sees itself through the lens of my mind. Awareness sees language as Earth's consciousness with an anatomy of social traditions and laws, with telescopes and radar as Earth's eyes. Awareness sees humans as planetary brain cells. Planetary thoughts move through them as digital impulses meaningless to the individual cells, but giving thought and sight to the whole being of Sun/Earth. Awareness sees decisions and forces regulating whole masses of humans and all animals and plants of Earth as Mind reaches down through the ages to move itself towards greater perception.

I tremble at this vision for with it comes a sense of control. Not a personal or individual control, but a collective control of unestimatable power. Within this control system, I see war and death and thirst for power beyond human reason. The greater Sun/Earth awareness is not overly concerned with the life and well being of any individual hominid.

Others have been here, often. But their stories have been edited from the mind of Man, replaced by religion and myth. As I think this, I feel as if the greater Awareness sees me, like a youth shifting its attention from the view through a kaleidoscope to the actual instrument itself. Knowing, from personal experience, what happens to the kaleidoscope next, my mind flees into Sea.

Sea's embrace cools me, arrests all thought. Awareness immerses in the immense mind-web of the cetaceans, feeling the threads of dolphin and whale awareness pervading Sea. Cetacean and hominid mind-webs weave together, become integrated with all awareness. All the perceptions of all the creatures of Sea, all the threads of awareness, twine together into the most wonderful Sea/being: a complex tapestry of color, majesty, motion and mind. Awareness remembers having been this vision before, reflected in dreams as old as life itself, dreams lived during eons of incubation in the womb of Sea. My vision threads back to the dawn of life, through all the awarenesses, a living thought that has never died.

I surface aboard Moira, moored in Port Douglas, on the Northeast coast of Australia. Freddy is in the galley, getting a late night snack for Walter. She is turning to look at me. Walter the Cat does a long, ass-up catstretch and jumps down, out of sight, into the galley.