David Narby - Chapter 3 - Ryarkanaglish

As I sat there thinking could it all really be that simple, Ruishk said, "Well, David, you have had your first trip. Did that feel like work?"

"Of course not," I replied, "That was fun. I really enjoyed that."

Ruishk asked, "How much work did you have to do to achieve that result?"

I was a little perplexed by his question. I had just said that it was fun and there was no work involved. I said, "I'm not really sure that I understand your question."

He smiled as he replied, "I'm playing with the meaning of words. 'Work' has many meanings, and we usually rely on the context in which it is used to understand what is being said. You are thinking about work in terms of things you do or have to do, but I was asking about work from a scientific-engineering perspective."

I asked, "I realise that Scientists and Engineers work, but what has science or engineering to do with work?"

Ruishk replied, "Scientists and Engineers have definitions for everything. Nothing is left vague. They have equations and formulae for everything. Using work(W) as an example:

W = Fd
F = ma, and therefore
W = mad

Where W is work, F is force, d is distance, m is mass, and a is acceleration."

What was Ruishk trying to do to me. I just had one of the best experiences of my life and here he is talking about definitions I hadn't heard or used since I was in school. However, I was getting to know him and realised that he was not engaging in idle chatter. As I wondered where he was going with this, he continued.

"David it is important that you understand the experiences you have. For you to understand we must come up with explanations that make sense to you. To get explanations we will take ideas from any source. Here we are, on this bus travelling west. The bus has mass and needs an engine that uses fuel to make it move. Without going into all the technical details, the engine converts the fuel into motion, so we can get to our destination."

"So, where is our destination?" I asked.

He replied, "Let's leave that for a while, and let me finish my explanation. As I said, the bus has mass and a lot of work has to be done to get it to move. When you traveled through the air, there was no mass involved. It was not your body that was travelling. It was an idea, and an idea has no mass. When we put m = 0 into the equation W = mad the answer becomes W = 0. And because there is no mass to move no 'work' is done and no fuel or energy is required for you to move. This means that you can travel anywhere in space-time and with a simple flip you can also travel anywhere in time-space."

I was familiar with the expression space-time but I did not see that there was any difference in time-space except that the words were reversed.

Ruishk noticed that I had screwed my face into a question mark and continued, "We are used to thinking of space as 3D, the plane that we move about on and above and below; and time as always moving from past to future. In time-space, location is locked and we can move to any time - past, present or future. So if we flip back and forth between space-time and time-space we can be anywhere and anywhen."

This explanation made sense. My imaginary spaceship was just an idea and it could go anywhere in time and space. Ruishk had gone quiet, and I began to wonder where I could go. Could I go to the stars? Could I really go anywhere? I decided to give it a try and thought of the place I would most like to be, out in space far enough away from the Earth to be able to see it all. I closed my eyes and imagined what the Earth looked like from space. I watched and watched, but nothing happened. All I saw was the blank screen. Eventually, I opened my eyes. I was annoyed. What was the matter with me? I had flown off the bus and gone to that beautiful valley. Why couldn't I take the trip out into space. Was there some barrier I had to overcome, or some permission I had to get? I smiled as I realised that there certainly was nowhere to buy a ticket. I looked at Ruishk and he was smiling too.

He said, "We all run into that little difficulty at the beginning. It is your mind that has the power, not your ego. We might even say that 'your mind has got a mind of it's own'. What you were trying to do was ego based. And ego is loaded with limitation. So, in your sense of having work to do, your work now becomes 'undoing the ego' or dropping your sense of limitation. The other thing is, that in the early stages, you need someone to help you, someone with the same idea. This works on the principle - 'when two or more work together with the same purpose the result is magnified at least a hundred-fold'. So on your first trip I was helping you."

"Huh!" I said, "does that mean that I won't be taking any more trips? That I'm confined to 'our destination' until I've dropped all my limitations"

He replied, "No, you will be taking lots of trips, but you will not be able to program them. Your mind will decide when and where you travel so that you learn your lessons. Get used to it. Learn to enjoy it all. It's not out to get you. It's helping to get you out."

I asked, "Where is our destination? Where in that Emerald Isle of Leprechauns, Saints, Scholars and Shamrocks are you taking me?"

Ruishk laughed so loud that people on the bus turned around to see what was going on and in his best brogue replied,

"Erra me bucko, we'll be taking you to a little backwater estate on the banks of the Lee outside Cork City, where you'll be able to enjoy the famous Irish hospitality of sharing the parlour with the horses, pigs and other animals. You'll have a little thatched cottage, with a smiling Irish maid dancing attendance on yer good self day and night."

I said, "You're not serious." He had a dead-pan expression. "Does this beautiful estate have a name?"

He said, "The Anglicised version of it is Ryarkanaglish. The Irish name for it is 'Radharc An Eaglais', translated into English means 'sight of the church'. In light of your background, the initial work you'll be doing will involve examining your view of the Church."

"And seeing as you are getting into translations, what does your name 'Ruishk' mean? And do you have a surname?"

Ruishk replied, "'Ruishk' is my last name. My full name is Cara Druma Ruishk. I am named for a town in Co. Leitrim that my parents fell in love with. In English it is called Carrick-On-Shannon. Carrick' is anglicised 'Carraig' which means rock. 'Druma' is a ridge and if we change 'cara' to 'cora' it's a rocky ridge.

The word 'cara' means friend; 'druma' is back, ridge or wave; and 'ruishk' is poke, stir, vessel made of bark, or 'large tough person'. So combining these, Cara Druma Ruishk might mean 'a friend who stirs an empty vessel' or 'a large tough person who you can rely on as a friend'.

We call this the translation problem. But there is also the interpretation problem. Words have many meanings. Take 'will' as an example - "My name is Will, and you will be going against my will if you do not do what it says in my will."..."

Ruishk had trailed off into silence. He sat perfectly still, his back upright, with a faraway look in his eyes. I left him in peace and wondered what had happened to him. Was he sick? Did he have a heart problem or a stroke? After a few moments he began to come around. I asked,

"Are you all right? What just happened?"

He replied, "I'm great. I just got a message from Mi-Li-Sam telling me to stop waffling about language and get on with the real stuff. They know that I have a huge reluctance to talk about the Church."

I told him that I had written articles on all the 'Pillars of Civilisation', and that included the Church. He said,

"I've read your articles and they dealt very well with the organisational and political aspects of all the major establishments. But they did not deal with the people at the 'grass roots' level, nor how these people are controlled by the manipulation of emotions."

I said, "I was writing an objective account of these organisations. It was never my intention to delve into the mental and emotional aspects of the people that make up our Civilisation."

"And there-in lies the problem, you never got subjective about what was going on. You totally ignored the spiritual aspects of religion..."

I could feel my heart beginning to race, my face was getting red and my fists were curling up into a tight ball. I closed my eyes and told myself to calm down. Why was I getting so angry at this 'empty vessel' that was making so much noise?

"Anyway", Ruishk continued, "Let me tell you why I have such a problem with the Church. I was brought up to be very loyal, and I was loyal to my family and friends. The worst thing we could do was 'tell tales' on each other. So we learned to keep our mouths shut about everything. I mistakenly transferred this loyalty to the Church. As time went on I began to realise that it was a loyalty based on fear and I began to transfer it to all authority. The fear manifested as distrust and I became a 'rebel'. Everything that established authority told me I regarded as a lie. The down side of this was that I always had problems with management in any shape or form. The good news is that it made me learn to question everything and to try and understand what was going on beneath the surface or, you might say, to read between the lines."

I asked, "What has this got to do with me? I've never rebelled and I always got on well with authority figures."

He replied, "I know. What I'm coming to is that much later in life I realised that I had thrown away a lot of essential ideas. So, I went back over all the teachings of the Church and other Religions in an effort to reclaim the basic ingredients. What I discovered is that all religions agree on a very few basic tenets and that these were taught to us when we were very young. Unfortunately, these tenets are quickly covered over by the teachings on right and wrong, good and evil, and the correct way to live our lives so that when we die we go to Heaven rather than being sentenced to eternal damnation."

"Was the fear of being sent to hell on Judgment Day what bothered you?" I interrupted, "Or was it the more immediate fear of being caught and punished?"

He answered, "Both, there were so many rules and regulations that it felt like 'mission impossible' to live a good life. I suppose the big problem was 'fear of God.' So, I did a little experimenting. I went against the rules to see what would happen."

"And what happened." I asked.

"That was the point," He replied, "Absolutely nothing, if I did not tell my transgressions in confession, no one was the wiser. God never did anything to me, no thunderbolt out of the blue, nor earth opening and swallowing me up. I began to think that there must be something the matter with this all-powerful everywhere God."

I said, "But isn't the whole idea that God lets you do anything you want? He gave us all free will. We are free to do what we like and on Judgment Day God will review the consequences of our actions and decide where to send us - Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven."

Ruishk said, "Yes that's what they taught us. Lets look at the logic of it - God gave us free will - so we must be free. Yet here you are and you can't fly out into space and look at the Earth. So, you're not free, you're bound by something. Usually we think that the something which imprisons us is the body. But it is not the body, it is the idea that we are limited. When we look at the rules and regulations we realise that they are all geared at what bodies should do, how we interact with each other's bodies, what behaviours are acceptable, what we can and can't do, what we can and can't say to each other."

"How does this idea of limitations come into play?" I asked.

He replied, "When we don't abide by the rules and regulations we believe that there will be consequences. This leads us to being afraid of doing certain things and then if we do them we have learned to feel guilty. So to some extent our lives become ruled by fear and guilt. This is emphasised in many thought systems by getting us to do a regular review of our actions. This review usually focuses on what we have done wrong. It keeps us looking at the past. It keeps us comparing ourselves with some idea we have about how we should be. And it is this idea that limits us."

"What is the idea?" I asked.

He replied. "We believe that we are separate - you and I are separate from each other and from everyone and everything else. This idea of separation is totally dependent on the idea that we are bodies. All of the establishment views, the Pillars of Civilisation as you call them, are based on bodies."

"That is what we all believe." I said. "In all my years of education and journalism I never met anyone who advanced the idea that there was something more to us than brains and brawn."

"Therein lies the problem." Ruishk said. "You stayed within the boundaries, you worked within the box. Everything you have come across has reinforced this one central tenet of civilisation. And even though you say that you have never rebelled, that is not quite true."

I was getting ready to react again, Ruishk held up his hand and I stopped.

He said. "You've had many little minor rebellions, but none of these are of any consequence. They were just letting off steam. Your life was well-ordered, working on your long-term life plan and then, oomph, you disappeared."

When he put it like that I realised that in that moment in St. Peter's Square I threw away everything that I had been working for all my life. Wow, that was some rebellion. Ruishk was silent again, and I begin to think about what I had done. How was I going to live now that all my daily, weekly and annual routines were gone. I was going to have a lot of time on my hands. In a moment of panic I even wondered if I should go back.

Ruishk interrupted what were beginning to turn into morbid thoughts. "There's no going back. You made a life changing decision back there. It wasn't a spur of the moment decision either. At the back of your mind, something about your life has been niggling at you, off and on, for years. Your life map was all external development, there was no time in the plan for David to develop himself. There was no inner growth path. Your runaway decision allows you all the time in the world to look at life from a different perspective, and this is what we have set up for you in Ryarkanaglish."

I looked out the window of the bus and could see lots of green rolling hills of well cultivated fields. The signs we were passing indicated that we were getting close to Cork city.

Ruishk said. "We should be there in about an hour or so. That gives us time to clear up a few ideas. Earlier I mentioned confession and review. These are two of the conventional methods used to keep us stuck in the past. Our emphasis is on getting you into the present. We let life be your teacher. Memories and experiences from the past are going to surface but we do not deliberately go looking for them. The question we encourage you to ask is 'What is this idea trying to teach me?' or 'What am I trying to learn here?' Primarily, you will be looking at and learning stuff that you have either simply ignored or have rejected out of hand. We have stocked your library with books that you have regarded as alien, weird, or irrelevant."

"What kind of authors are you talking about?" I asked.

"People like Velikovsky, Von Daniken, Sitchin, O'Leary, McKenna, Casteneda ..." He said.

"But these are all crazies, totally discredited ..." I was going to add 'by the establishment' before I realised that he was trying to get me to look at a different perspective.

He continued. "There will also be some of the more interesting science fiction and fantasy authors included. There will be courses in Cork City that we think you'd do well to attend, 'Flower of Life', 'Mayan Calendar' ..."

"Hold on." I almost screamed. "Are you taking over my life? Don't I have any say"

He said. "These books will be in your library. These courses will be available. You don't have to read or attend if you don't want to. Your education and life so far have been totally one-sided and we are pointing out to you that there is another side and a different way of looking at the world. There are bookshops and libraries in Cork City where you can choose your own material. They are not up to the standard that you are used to but they are more than adequate for our purposes."

I saw a signpost for Ryarkanaglish as the bus began to turn into a group of houses, all very small and duplex.

"In Ireland," Ruishk said, "they are called semi-detached. You will be living in the one called 'Usu Ilimmu'. Your neighbours will have little or nothing to do with you. This does not mean that they are unfriendly, there has been a lot of changeover of ownership and they take their time getting to know strangers. The joy of it is that you can remain completely private."

The bus had pulled up at a house on a corner, opposite a small green area. I was standing up to get off the bus when Ruishk stopped me. He said.

"Hold-on a few moments. We have one final thing to do before you leave. Back then, when you tried to see the Earth I could have helped you. You had to learn that we don't always get what we want. In a body-based thought system we think that to get energy from other people we have to be present with them in the same space. In mind, there is no such limitation. You can tap into me, Mi-Li-Sam or anyone anywhere just by thinking about us. However, we all have to share the same purpose."

"When we start looking at the screen behind our eyes we get an afterglow from what we were looking at before we closed our eyes. This fades and then we get shapes and colours from our pineal gland. Eventually, and this can take quite a long time, we begin to see with our mind. While we are looking we have a tendency to engage our pattern recognition system and start putting names on what we see. This usually takes us out of looking at, and into thinking about what we are seeing, and how or why we are seeing it. Close your eyes and look at the screen."

I closed my eyes and immediately saw an orange glow. This began to fade and I saw bright different coloured lines like we see on a compact disc. Then, everything went black. Suddenly, I could see a disc with triangles around it. I was about to try and figure out what this was, but I remembered what Ruishk had said. I just kept looking. The disc began to have shapes and colour in it. I looked around me and all I saw was black with tiny dots of light. I looked back at the disc. It was the Earth. It was like the pictures I had seen but it was glowing and had triangles around it. After some time, I have no idea how long, I opened my eyes and I was sitting on the bus. I felt completely at peace. Ruishk was smiling and said.

"We won't go into explanations. Let's leave that for you to research. Anyway, here are the keys to Usu Ilimmu, your new kingdom."

"Is that it?" I asked. "Aren't you coming in with me?"

He replied, as he walked me off the bus. "No, David, this you do on your own. Remember, we are always available, all you have to do is think about us. Now, goodbye."

He shook my hand and I stepped off the bus. I walked around to the back of the house. There was an enclosed garden with garden furniture scattered around. I sat down on one of the chairs. I closed my eyes and listened. A great sense of calm came over me. And I said out loud, not caring what the neighbours thought "Yes, I am going to enjoy this."