The White Door by Stephen Chan Read Free Book Online Page A

army, but you can surround and contain it. Look at the tip of the ibis beak, see only the tip, every two minutes I’ll shift the ibis closer to you, until it is only eighteen inches away from your knees. As it comes closer, let your vision of it become slowly more blurred. At eigthteen inches, your eyes will close quite naturally.
     
    As you sit, just breathe normally – but only through your nose. As your eyes blur, as the vision becomes gentle, loses its restrictive edges, let the breath also become very gentle. Count it in if you like, slow four in, hold it in – very gently – using or seeming to use the lower stomach muscles, slow hold four, then without any effort, no effort to release it, no effort at relief, slow four out. Keep looking at the tip of the ibis beak. As your vision blurs you will become a little cross-eyed – particularly as I bring the ibis closer. See if you can imagine your eyes blurring into one eye in the centre of your forehead.
     
    As the breathing becomes easier, let your tongue very lightly reach out with its tip to touch the top of your mouth, very near the back of your teeth. Now the eyes close, your heartbeat is having the holiday of its life, you are still counting in and out the breath. You hear me as if from a distance. Later, I will be able only to come to you from a distance. This is how you will hear me.
     
    When I was a boy you bought me a one-volume encyclopædia. Only afford one volume. It had pictures of an Indian fakir who could slow his heartbeat, endure great pain. If I burnt your feet now, you would feel nothing. You must practise this every day, to be ready when the great pain seeks to eat you from within. Teeth of fire. The interior pain is the worst of all.
     
    Now the breathing is a circle. In gently through nose, sink gently to navel, rise gently to the one eye. When it emerges from the one eye it is like the free and gentle breeze. The cooled forehead, the cooled forehead. The eye is so small now, the breeze emerges through a needle point, but it does not rush.
     
    The ibis stick, ah, the ibis stick. Remember its waves of radiant energy. This is what emerges now from the needle point. Father, it is blue, this energy. It is like a cascade, so slow, still voluminous. You are a fountain. The eye is a fountainhead. As you sit here you are the centre of all that is washed, the centre of a cavern of water. Within the cavern, if you enter, is another cavern. Ah, now, shall we enter the cool, blue caverns? This is done on foot. You are a solitary walker. This is how you enter yourself.
     
    A small version of you enters the great cavernous fountains you have created. It is a washed pure soul that has migrated from the top of your head. Now it walks, dwarfed by the blue liquid caverns. Each portal is succeeded by another portal. Through these fountains it is walking deeply into you. It cannot reach the liver. There is a war there. It reaches, deep in you, a very small screen. The small pure soul has to focus on the very small images. It can choose one of three programmes. Depending on your need, choose each day the programme that will suit that day’s pain.
     
    There is a very great army. You may choose its colours, design its armour. It is your army. It surrounds the cancer army. But it must never engage the enemy hand-to-hand. No soldier of yours can be replaced. If one dies in battle your forces are reduced forever. While the cancer army grows more numerous by the day. Look at them with their pale cloaks. One day, by sheer force of numbers, they will overwhelm the siege you now prepare. But you can make the siege a long one. Your soldiers must harass cancer from a distance, fire arrows and missiles constantly into cancer’s swollen ranks. Ah, now Father, make not the armour too intricate, but spartan and functional. Your own host is a grim one, yes? But to give it some of the martial panoply that lights up the screen, let the junior officers wear plumes and the