The Solar Doctrine Read online

recall the details of his dream experience, but unfortunately all the previously mentioned Kantian categories of time, space and causality could hardly grasp in language the pure contents of such sudden experience, and just when a nurse asked him: “Excuse me Mr Gonzalez… Are you all right? He couldn´t help but answer:

  -I´m… I´m awesome. I´ve just had the most incredible experience of my life…

  -Did you?… Tell me… What happened?

  Arthur couldn´t come up with any words. What he had previously experienced in no way could be described with common concepts. The only argument he was capable of saying was: “Actually this occurs to each one of us, in each moment… The thing is that we can´t remember it…. We´re all amnesic. That´s the problem! Do you get what I´m saying?…

  The nurse furrowed her brow and immediately observed the clinical reports of “Arthur the patient”. All the clinical indicators of “Arthur the patient” were relatively normal and there were no sign of anything “supernatural” in the graphs and statistics…

  -Mmmm… It might have been just a nightmare -said the nurse- You better sleep and rest Mr Gonzalez, so that your recovery can be quicker.

  Arthur was stunned.

  -That I´d better sleep?? I´ve just realized that I´ve been sleeping my whole life?? Now I´m awake!! Can you all hear me? Come on! Wake up! All of you! Your life in no way is what it seems!! -shouted Arthur at the four winds frightening everybody present in the hospital room- You´re all condemned! You´re all penitents and beasts of burden! You don´t have a clue of who you are!… We´re all going to die!!!

  The nurse immediately called the hospital psychiatry department for assistance so that they could eventually deal with the outburst of madness that was taking place in the room where “Arthur Mr. Nuts” was experiencing a chaotic and formless perception of reality.

  For moments, Arthur could not control the fact that his awareness randomly leaped from “Arthur Mr. Nuts” to “Arthur the patient” or “Arthur of flesh and blood”. As soon as the therapists arrived they verified the schizophrenic character of “Arthur the patient”, yet after observing his previous clinical reports, they at last arrived at the conclusion that the temporary madness and signs of schizophrenia were very likely due to the side-effects of administering the sedatives for his pain and discomfort.

  I am, therefore I think

  Even though already calmed, Arthur couldn´t release from his thoughts the experience he´d just had, an experience in which the vision of the universe recalled an “eternal childhood interplay” that in some cases adopted human masks and in other cases adopted divine ones… Yet the favorite figure of his childhood “Son Goku” was still there, in some place trapped with powerful lights in some domain of his mind… Of “his” mind??… During those moments of dreadful uncertainties, Arthur doubted the existence of an entity supposedly called “mind” that scientists talked about and that was supposed to be “confined” in his brain, so to speak… In truth, during the transcendental experience that occurred a while ago, his “mentality” had been totally outplayed from impressions that ranged along very wide domains of reality that he was ephemerally capable of identifying during such dream experience. The universe was full of infinite possibilities and modes of experience… Facing this tunnel of multiple experiences, Arthur couldn´t help but believe that if the mind was supposedly conceived as something rigid and confined, this experienced dream had succeeded in opening it and widening it towards a fathomless infinitude…

  But at this stage of his life, and overall due to the authentic and dramatic conditions of Arthur´s actual life, a little bit of realism wasn´t something to totally dismiss… Actually, dreams are just dreams… Aren´t they? And the harsh fact was that Arthur was actually laying down in a hospital bed, feeling very sick and almost completely immobilized, thus constituting a perfect physical expression and symbol of his authentic and most deeply honest existential situation, especially after having been professionally rejected by the CSIC and conjugally by his wife. All that dreamlike and kaleidoscopic “infinite world of possibilities” couldn't be considered rather than ultimately a vague mystic irruption that in practical terms didn´t carry him anywhere, not capable of “lifting the wings” of a 250 lb man who was connected to medical devices through tubes, catheters and cardiographing electrodes… Yet that image that resembled so much the Son Goku character of the Japanese “Dragon Ball Z” cartoons in no way managed to become released from his thoughts.

  Due to the progressive loss of the side effects caused by the medication and the sedatives, Arthur realized that it would be very difficult to get in contact once again with that sort of “universal space of the mind”. Afterwards however, there emerged an irrepressible will within him, a sort of uncontrollable automatism that caused him to be a little more practical. Hence, he decided to become “Arthur the Cyborg” and get immersed through his Iphone into a domain to which he had immediate access, and that was actually the “universal space of the planetary mind”: cyberspace.

  Once he adopted the avatar of “Arthur the Cyborg” a sort of magnetic and irrepressible power took control over him once again in order to acquire the avatar of “Arthur the happy man on Facebook”. Actually, Arthur was already feeling withdrawal symptoms in his body, and thus felt the urge of browsing the Internet again, since he had already got accustomed to chatting and updating every single day all his profiles and moods on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, in most cases by uploading pictures of he and his wife Helena, always surrounded by their friends having colorful cocktails in night clubs and pubs, or traveling around to different cities of the world… And all these images of happiness and joy used to awaken feelings of envy on the part of their friends, who yet never admitting it, also dreamt of getting uploaded to the cyberspace network cloud in such a cool way.

  Yet this time, Arthur thought twice before updating his mood in Facebook… The most recent events of his life had demonstrated that the whole collection of imagery and smiles were not but a colorful and highly sophisticated lie that was actually built upon nothing real, and that the inevitable development of this virtual life had ended up necessarily in the materialization of what was his dramatically authentic situation. And which was this actual situation? The following: a man laying down sick in a hospital bed, suffering from the effects of a heart attack, an ulcer and cirrhosis; a man only having the physical capability of moving his fingers and browsing through the menus of his Iphone. Not even any of those friends who appeared pictured in countless smiling pictures sharing toasts next to him in Facebook had appeared in the hospital to visit him. Most of them, however, added all sort of encouraging texts to his Facebook wall:

  Come on Arthur! Get better quick so we can party soon with lots of beers!! lol

  Wtf!! So sorry about the CSIC issue, don't worry, be happy! ;) Something will come up. Take it easy!! ; )))))

  Hi Arthur, I´m sure you´ll recover soon. Hey! They´re considering in the department the sending of your resume to some staff in Germany. Kind Regards.

  When observing all these messages, Arthur expressed a melancholic half-smile. Just a “half-smile” because the “Arthur the happy man in Facebook” still induced him to not lose completely the other half. Ultimately for “Arthur of flesh and blood” the veils of illusion were falling down one after the other, no matter if such illusions were megapixelly digitalized in Facebook or Twitter. None of the former encouraging messages managed to release “Arthur of flesh and blood” from the pseudo-vegetative situation he ended up in. Sometimes this situation made him recall the tragic-comical moments he used to spend with Helena in the sitting-room when he used to say in a jocular fashion: “Helena, there is something I need to tell you… Never let me live in a vegetative state, depending on machines and the liquids of a bottle… If by chance you see me in that state, please unplug all devices that keep me alive, since in a situation like that I would prefer to die”. Helena, always surprised by those rare occasions when Arthur experienc
ed some sort of initiative outburst, stood up with decision and immediately started unplugging the T.V. set, the PC, the Ipod, the Iphone, the Playstation and, at last, as the grace note and climax, disconnected him too from the bottle of beer… In such situations of technological and alcoholic abandonment, Helena succeeded astonishingly when causing in Arthur an abyssal feeling of emptiness and vacuum when putting him once again in contact with the always-harassing “Arthur of flesh and blood”. Half joking and half seriously, the thing is that what had been previously the cause of a joke in the living room became dramatically actual, and in effect, Arthur in such a vegetative situation wanted to die.

  Yet as a rebirth from the ashes of such thoughts and ominous feelings there emerged as the Phoenix that figure so similar to the Son Goku character of Dragon Ball Z, that previously appeared in his lucid dream. He recalled that this figure was somewhat like “everywhere and nowhere”, a figure that somewhat remained in the deepest core of men and that actually consisted in the only aim for fighting, warring, combat; always illuminated by a sort of power and energy that was symbolically expressed in