From StarDreaming:

Letters From a Mystic to a Science Fiction Author

1 September 1994
Dear Damien

Thanks for your letter, which I received along with an upbeat reply from La Trobe UP concerning your Theory and Its Discontents. I’m pleased to hear, as well, that your radio play is punningly receiving some final fine-tuning. As I see it, though, the obvious trouble with ‘Schrödinger’s Dog’ as a title is that, well, it sounds German, whereas ‘The Wind at the Edge of the World’ has a distinctly Australian feel to it. Besides, how many potential listeners will be drawn in through picking up the allusion to Schrödinger’s Cat? The original title, on the other hand, would probably sound poetically alluring to a potential audience. Still, I haven’t read the play, so of course am not really qualified to judge which title does justice to its content.

Have you come across the following two books which someone recently recommended to me: Music of the Mind and The Death of Forever, both by Darryl Reanney and apparently on quantum physics? My problem is that because I work only part-time, I can’t afford to buy many books but must instead confine myself to begging and borrowing—I haven’t resorted to stealing yet—from friends and libraries. Still, the pros of part-time work include having plenty of time to read lots of sf books. I’ve been at it pretty solidly for over a year now, so I’m still very much at the toddler stage, which translates into digesting as much good stuff as I can, without overloading my brain.

I’ve also just been absorbing a book on the marvellous Ainslie Roberts (sadly, no relation of mine.) The mythic basis of one painting—‘Mangowa and the Round Lakes’ (1964), which features godlike cosmic hands reaching forth from the galaxy—struck me as having robust potential for a science fictionalisation of Dreamtime myth, perhaps in a vein similar to your Dreaming Dragons. The myth in a nutshell: ‘Pursuing the lovely Pirili, whom he loved, Mangowa the hunter followed her into the sky, tearing down handfuls of stars from the Milky Way as missiles to drive her back. Pirili eluded him in the end, but the stars fell on the earth and formed the round lagoons that fringe the shores of the coastal lakes of South Australia.’

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Artwork © Carol Spicuzza

Significantly, I recently had a dream about taking a bus trip to one of these lagoons. As we drove, I could see beneath the bus the sacred animals that ‘followed’ the Songlines of the Dreaming through the Land. When I arrived at the shore of the lagoon, very large, black hands—dotted all across the surface—reached up out of the water in a kind of greeting.

And now, for the fun of it—and triggered by your final injunction to ‘Watch the skies!’—I’ll tell you a bit more about that powerful Dream I mentioned having on the last night of the Melbourne Mythopoeic Conference. The mandalas I mentioned occurred in the following context: in the first part of the Dream you and I were sitting at a table outdoors—possibly on a university campus—and two other people, whom I didn’t recognise, were nearby. It was night time and in the sky two alien craft, which looked like stars, were rapidly orbiting each other in a complex interweaving. Then I (and I assume you also) suddenly lost awareness of outer reality and we were telepathically imprinted with a rapid series of mandala images, which I (at least) somehow knew originated from the alien objects (all very Phildickian, I’m sure you’ll agree.) The defining lines of the mandalas seemed to be constructed of some sort of thin, luminous wire, variously coloured and apparently technological in origin. When this telepathic ‘imprinting’ suddenly ended, I asked you how much time had elapsed and you looked at your watch and said, ‘Ten minutes.’ (And this, as I recall, was roughly the length of time I spoke with you after I’d given my Conference talk.)

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In terms of ultra-real clarity, fateful impact and overwhelming emotion, the only comparable Dream I’ve ever had occurred four months ago, when I precognitively experienced the fatal crash of Formula One World Champion, Ayrton Senna. I was privileged to meet him briefly at last November’s Australian F1 Grand Prix, where he kindly autographed a photo for me. Knowing that he was deeply spiritual, I then said to him, ‘May God be with you on Sunday’ (the main race day), unaware that this would be his last ever Grand Prix win. Some five months later in the Dream, my consciousness was present in his racing car during his final lap before the crash, and then finally (and horrendously) as it crashed into a wall. I woke up in shock, grief and trauma, certain that it was Ayrton, and knowing that he’d been killed. About an hour later the terrible crash (at the San Marino Grand Prix) was seen live on tv.

Needless to say, I was utterly devastated, as were billions of folk worldwide. The whole thing was and still is intensely gut-wrenching, given that Ayrton was such a sensitive, generous, highly evolved and beautiful soul. It feels, though, like he’s still around, not in any sort of ghostly way, but more as if he’s a Bodhisattva who’s chosen to return to the world out of compassion.

Incidentally, I’m intrigued by your description of what’s involved in your writing journeys. However, if you balk at me (justly) praising your writing, I’ll no doubt make you even more uncomfortable by praising you instead, namely by saying that I see in you a good heart. If you don’t care to acknowledge this truth then the blind spot is, I suggest, perhaps in itself evidence of such goodness, by which I don’t imply any kind of moral superiority, but rather the rare capacity to empathise and articulate the tragicomical heights and depths of the human condition.