OCTOSENSUAL

Octosensual is based on Timothy Leary's Eight Levels of Consciousness - The Eight-Circuit Model of  Consciousness is a hypothesis by Timothy Leary, and later expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson and Antero Alli, that "suggested eight periods [circuits] and twenty-four stages of neurological evolution".

OCTOSENSUAL TAKES US INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN FLOOR AND TEACHES US ALL ABOUT THE EIGHT LEVELS USING THE SENTIENT LESSONS OF AN OCTOPUS TO IT'S STUDENT - A YOUNG WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED IN ORDER TO JOIN HER TEACHER BENEATH THE WATERS AND LEARN THROUGH EXPERIENCE AND OBSERVATION, THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING THIS MYSTICAL CONUNDRUM. 

Photo by Malu Gomide

OCTOSENSUAL

THE OCTOSENSUAL BODY

(based on the eight levels of consciousness by Timothy Leary)

I sit here on the bottom of the abyss. Dark liquid surrounds me and I can hear her heart beating if I stay perfectly still. The subtle movement of her soul rouses me from the trance and I uncoil my arms to feel her powerful presence.

She talks to me here.  Reveals herself to me… knowing I must return to the realm of air and light with her secrets. 

“Come to me”, she summoned. “I will give you the eight senses of the world and hollow out a womb to protect you within.”

When I am with her, I feel nothing but the cold chill of death though I can hear every drop of water that spills into her, smell the shifting tides as they meander from coast to coast and I can taste the coppery musk of my own blood, rich in nutrients, filling every cell with its own unique source of intelligent knowing…

“Eight wonders.  Eight lives.  Eight levels of being.” She continued the mantra over and over to me until I relented and breathed in the briny fluid of the water mother.

I sense the presence of danger all around me and prepare to launch at high-velocity from this soft underbelly of life’s true source. The enemy circles above me. I am camouflaged in my own skin. Ready.

Eight brains… I have eight brains… each possessing its own set of sensory input… each expendable, and amazingly regenerated without so much as a fleeting thought to its re-creation.  With little time to learn, I must be vigilant as well as attentive… I have but a short time here before I am called back to the surface or perish with her mysteries held tight within.

She begins to count the realms of mystery residing on the left side, starting with the first…

She gently lifts the arm and speaks, “The breath of consciousness”, she whispered, “infancy, nurturing, the understanding of trust or doubt, spatial dimension, awareness…”

Delicately she drops the arm, allowing it to gently return to the sand.  She picks up another from the left and sighs, “Self-awareness, survival, instinct, reactive to stimuli without consideration…”

Again, I feel the second arm float weightlessly to the surface of my bed.

“Symbolic mind”, came the rush of her breath, caressing the tip of my extension, the third arm, holding it there as if in awe…, “herein lies the map of existence. Hold on to that which has no conscious interpretation but will inform you nevertheless. Intuition is her first born.

Release… and she takes the last of the left four into her bosom. “The last of these is the gift of passion, a sensual knowing of self and other, the release within a heightened state of arousal, creation…”

I could not understand the wisdoms she imparted but understood that I should take these gifts and share them above as below.

The people of Earth, the ground walkers, must have the pearls of wisdom to ponder, to build, to pass from generation to generation…

At that moment I felt the rush of movement as danger approached and with a thrust of the sea through my mantle, I was off; blackness – the inky anesthetic from my bowels marked a clean getaway.  Once more I was safe.

Frightened.  I was so very frightened. Would I be able to stay alive long enough to collect this vital potion to deliver it upon my return?

“Zen.” She called out to me.  “The fifth level of being is Zen – the mind, body connection that feeds the soul. She did not pick up my fifth arm. "The path to enlightenment, but one must learn to crawl before they walk and to walk before they fly….”

But you have not touched any of the arms on my right side, I thought to her. 

Looking down at my side I noticed that number five no longer existed there for the counting.  It had been sacrificed upon my retreat from the predator.

“It will be returned to you, but it will never be tangible, it will remain in the ethereal – you will be in an altered state of consciousness when you come to experience this presence.”

I immediately felt a deep sorrow for the loss.

And, she lifted the sixth arm… remaining silent for a moment as if suddenly shocked by its weight; its mass.

“Herein lies the magic that exists inside of all life. It is heavy with responsibility and accounting, you must be careful with this knowledge… it redefines reality as you know it.” She grew silent once more. I could not see her. 

Where did you go, water mother? I thought out to her.

“I am here. This is my home. This is where I reside in spirit. This is where the power of every living thing resides. It is difficult for me to impart such wisdom to you. In the wrong mind, this can be a very destructive power to mankind. Guard it carefully… protect this one.”

She let go and my arm dropped like lead to the floor of the sea.  It felt as if all the misgivings of man pulled it down.

“We are almost finished with the Eight Senses, little one.” She choked as she lifted the seventh arm.  “Morphogenetic.”

She coughed again.

“Past, present and future are at your command. Memories of past lives, reincarnations, immortality…”

Are you saying that I can change at will? I asked to her in my mind-voice.

“You will remember…” she answered as she placed my seventh arm over the sixth and reached out to lift the eighth.  The Eighth Sense, but why did she cover the sixth arm with the seventh?

“This is the highest order of the senses – it is leaving the corporeal senses behind you and experiencing that which is beyond ordinary space and time.  You will overcome the limitation of the speed of light… you will become illumination, out of the physical body, astral projection, and communion with entities unlike any you’ve ever known.”

I felt heaviness all around me as if she had given up her last breath in order to deliver this final message. I wept, thinking I had lost the water mother but instantly felt a stirring inside of me; she was becoming a part of me and spoke to me one last time as a separate being… that’s it!  All the while, I was becoming… a complete being!  She was with me now – united and whole!

Do I dare return to the surface with her inside? Will she survive the air? Will I return to my original form? What will become of this beautifully sinuous and graceful form?

I began the long ascent to the surface break and as I reached the shallow tide I could feel myself drawing back into the skeletal existence I had previously known. I took a long deep breath of salty air and rose out of the waves.

She wanted me to stay but knew the student must return the teacher… I paused to look back over the vast expanse that was her home… she is with me now, I am her home… we will return here whenever I long for the womb of her boundless love… I am the Eighth Sense.

M TERESA CLAYTON

Question for the reader: Why, do you suppose, the sixth arm was heavy? Why, do you suppose, did the Mother covered the sixth arm with the seventh?  Just as the human girl became an octopus to receive her secrets to conscious, why did the elder octopus need to incorporate herself with the younger before returning to the surface and a human incarnation?