Hello, this is the Universe.

Are you listening?

By Cynthia Sue Olsen

CHAPTER ONE

CHILDHOOD

I had my first hallucinations as a child. The first one came while I was eagerly waiting for the Easter Bunny to bring my basket. My parents told me not to wake them up early in the morning. I did indeed wake up while they were still sleeping, sitting up in bed fidgeting with my sheets, impatient for the big moment. Then a very large rabbit walked into my room. He looked about seven or eight feet tall and he had to duck his head to get into my room.

The rabbit wore a little bowler hat on his head and a vest. He had an Easter basket slung over one arm. The rabbit leaned against my wall with an insouciant air and smiled at me. Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. I opened my mouth to shout “It’s the Easter Bunny!” but before I could speak, the rabbit put one paw to his face in the “Sssh” manner, so I stopped mid-scream. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face – he was just fantastic. Then he winked at me and hopped away. When my Dad came to get me, I told him I had seen the Easter bunny and he placated me nicely.

The following year two strange things happened. My Mother was taking me to the homes of all the sick children in the neighborhood so I could catch whatever they had, on the theory that would provide immunization for my adult life. She was particularly concerned that if I had one of those diseases later in life it would make me sterile. Unfortunately I came down with two diseases at once. I can’t remember if it was chicken pox and measles, or measles and mumps, but I was in bad shape. I had a high fever and slept a lot. I remember waking up and struggling to sit up in bed, thinking “I’m hot, I’m so hot and how can I get cool?” and suddenly my bedroom had become the ocean. I was underwater, but I could breathe and there were lots of beautiful and colorful fish swimming by. It was quite absorbing and quite cool. When the ocean went away, my fever had passed. I told my parents about it and again they did not believe me.

Later that year the strangest event of all happened one night when I was out in the yard, looking at the full moon. I was staring at it intently, looking for the face of the man in the moon, when I had what I think of as an “other world experience”. I didn’t know who I was. I remember looking down at my body and saying out loud “so I’m a little girl” with some disgust and then up at the moon asking “what am I supposed to do here?”

I felt that I didn’t belong in my body and I kept wondering why I had been put here on earth and what my purpose in this life could be. It was so disorienting. After a while my mother broke the spell by calling out “It’s time to come in and get ready for bed” and I obediently walked into the house in a robotic fashion, trying to adjust quickly to the new scenario. Getting through the pre-bed ritual of brushing teeth, etc. and getting tucked in with the goodnight kisses was a strain for me.

That night I lay in my bed, unable to sleep for a long time, feeling quite uncomfortable. In the morning I decided I had to forget about that strange experience and I did forget it for many years. Then one day many years later, when I was meditating, it all came back to me. It was like watching a movie, but I remembered exactly how I felt that night. It was just like the “what am I doing in this container?” feeling that came back to me after my first out of the body experience.

When I think about my life and what I have learned, my thoughts turn to the metaphysical events which have occurred to me in my past and also in the present. I do not understand the things which have led me here, or why I had the strange experiences which have altered my reality.

At about the age of ten I read that adults only used seven percent of their brains. I thought that must be a mistake. I asked my father. He said "yes, I think that's true - I also read it somewhere." I thought he was mistaken. My science teacher, Mr. Talbot, lived in our neighborhood and I often stopped to chat with him if I found him outside. So I went over to his house, and he was mowing the lawn. I remember the smell of cut grass, the sun-dappled houses and the huge elm trees that shaded the street with the arch of their boughs.

It was a time full of peace and innocence for me. Mr. Talbot seconded my father's opinion, that it was true that we only used seven percent of our brains. I can't tell you how much that bothered me. I thought "well, he's a science teacher - he must know." But it couldn't be right and I hoped it just was not right. It made me feel so limited. For about a week after that I asked every adult I spoke to - "do you think it's true that we only use seven percent of our brains?"

They all said "I think that's right" or "Yes, I've heard something like that." It depressed me to think about it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Finally I just couldn't stand the uneasy feeling it brought to my lovely summer. It was like a mosquito bite that wouldn't stop itching. I resolved that I could only deal with this problem by making a promise to myself. I solemnly promised that when I grew up, I would find a way to use more than seven percent of my brain.

Of course, I had no idea how to go about this. But it stayed in the back of my brain and sometimes I would hear about something - usually something strange - and I would think "well, you never know, maybe this would work". This later led me to the Rosicrucian’s, to séances, to LSD, to numerology, Ouija boards, ad infinitum.

I think I was twelve years old when I starting putting myself into trances. I was walking home from church one summer day (in my religious period) and trying to remember a prayer, or a psalm. I walked slowly, but with a rhythm and repeated the lines over and over, enjoying the feeling of the hot sun on my body.

Then I started to realize that something in my consciousness had changed. I didn’t understand the concept of consciousness at the time, but I knew my brain felt different and that made me feel different and I liked it. I wondered if the effect was due to the fact that I was reciting something out of the Bible, like a religious swoon of some sort. Later I decided to try something else, and I choose Poe’s Raven poem, which has a great rhythm. It worked even better than the prayer. So not religion. I kept up the walking trance throughout high school, when walking in between classes, and I got the reputation of being very weird.

CHAPTER TWO

LOVE

My first love was named Andy and we met at the age of eight, when my family was at his house on for a Sunday dinner. My father and his father were friends and they both couched Little League because both of our brothers played baseball. After dinner we were sitting around, me on the couch and Andy sitting on the floor. I looked at him and our eyes connected. I remember thinking at the time “I really like this boy” and then he looked at me and smiled. We started hanging out together then, later both of us were on the same swim team. He was a fantastic diver and I swam 50 and 100 meter breaststroke and backstroke races and relays.

Often we walked home after the races, but when we were on the Lombard Park Commons team either his mom or my mom would pick us up. One night when we got off the bus at the park we couldn’t see either Mothers’ car or we had spent all our money on popcorn and cokes. So we decided to walk home together. It didn’t seem like it could take that long.

We always had a lot to talk about and after we had walked a few blocks chatting he stopped me at the corner and said “I have an idea, let’s kiss at each corner.” We had been good friends up until then but as soon as he said it my heart leaped and that evening our romance began. At each corner we would stop and kiss and in between we talked and talked. I didn’t get home that night until nearly midnight to find two very worried and angry parents who had called the police to report me missing! I was in hot water after that for a while.

Andy was not very tall and not very handsome but he was cute and sweet and he had a wonderful smile. Which made him perfect for me. He also had a lot of moxie, a good sense of humor and he was just a great person. I remember the night he finally asked me for a date. I wasn’t allowed to formally “date” until I was sixteen. Andy kept coming over to visit my brother Jeff, but I knew he was really hanging out at my house for me. Then just after my 16^th birthday he came over and I answered the door.

Andy stood there and asked me if Jeff was home. I said “When are you going to stop pretending you are coming here to see my brother and ask me for a date?” And he grinned and said “I’ll pick you up at 7:00 tonight.” His mother had just bought a beautiful yellow Mustang convertible and she let him use it for our date. It was a beautiful summer night and we cruised to the pool hall with the top down listening to the Everly Brothers and life was dreamy.

We fell more and more in love as the years went by. Andy was a great gymnast and the first one in our state to do a triple back. He also had a love of motorcycles and we had a lot of fun riding around on his bikes. He took me to a dirt bike race track a few times and taught me to ride and most importantly, how to take a fall. Andy had a few different motorcycles over the years but my favorite was his Norton P-11. I remember riding over to a pool hall on it one night when we didn’t have enough money to do anything.

Another thing Andy was good at was playing pool. It wouldn’t take him very long to make the money we needed. Both of us looked younger than we were and I think when he walked into the pool hall people thought he was a dippy little kid and it sure worked for him. He asked me if I would “go steady” with him when we got our high school rings. I had to put a lot of pink angora around his to keep it on my finger and I still have the ring. When we were nineteen he proposed and I said “of course I’ll marry you.”

I still have the picture my Dad took when Andy picked me up for our senior prom in his tux, holding my corsage. I was wearing a white gown and we both had big grins on our faces. After the prom we changed and went to the sand dunes where we spent the night with our friends around a camp fire. It was so much fun and so innocent. We did a lot of necking and petting but we were saving ourselves for marriage. How quaint that seems now.

Andy got a gymnastic scholarship to Oklahoma State and I was really depressed that he would be leaving. He delayed until the winter semester and then one night before he left when we were driving around town, in his mother’s Mustang yet again, he drove over to the junior high parking lot. It was completely empty and covered with ice and he started driving really fast with me screaming at him and then he put his foot on the brakes and we spin and spun, but of course there was nothing for us to hit.

I was appalled that he was doing that with his Mom’s beautiful car, but it was so much fun that we laughed until we cried. And when he stopped the car we fell into each other’s arms and cried for real because we both realized at the same moment that it was the last fun we would be having together for a long while.

Andy sent me funny cards and letters every week while he was gone but I could tell Oklahoma was not his sort of place and he wasn’t happy there. One night on a bet he rode his motorcycle up and down the stairs of some old historic building on campus and got himself kicked out. He wasn’t sorry and I was so happy to have him back in town again but his father was not pleased. He got a job with International Harvester which he didn’t really enjoy, but he was kind of lost and didn’t know what else to do. At the time I was working for the Sears Roebuck offices in the city (of Chicago) and I didn’t love my job either, but we were saving money for our marriage.

Andy had a very low draft number and when he learned he was drafted, he decided to enlist with the Marines because he felt that was a notch above the Army. I remember vividly the day he came to tell me that news and what a shock it was to me. I said “Are you crazy? The war in Viet Nam was created by a bunch of old men in Congress who are just paranoid about Communism. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

He said he was going to fight for his country. I said I wasn’t afraid that the Vietnamese would invade us in their rice boats. We argued about it some more and then finally I said, without thinking “You are going to be a god damned hero and you will die with your head being shot off and your death will be meaningless.”

I didn’t know where that came from because it was one of those things I blurt out without thinking, but as soon as I said it I knew I was right and it would happen. I was desperate to make him understand because I couldn’t face losing him. I felt like I was standing at the edge of a cliff about to fall off. I said “If you leave me now and die over there I will never forgive you.” Andy responded with “Olsen, sometimes you don’t have any class” and he stormed out of the house. That was our last conversation.

I decided to use the money I had saved for our wedding to go to college. Late one night my freshman year I got a call from one of Andy’s friends who learned that he was killed in Viet Nam. He was a gunner and he provided cover for his men while they escaped from the Viet Cong. After that, he was shot by them in the neck so many times his head was cut off. I learned later when his body was returned it was in a coffin that had been soldered shut because of the fact that his head was detached.

When I got the news, I went crazy and destroyed my dorm room, screaming and crying and throwing things. He died on November 22^nd and we didn’t get the coffin back until almost Christmas. For many years after that, I couldn’t look at a Christmas tree without crying. I hated the thought that I was right about his death and when he got the purple cross and other medals, his mother asked me if I wanted them, because she didn’t want them. I shook my head no, because I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the damned things.

My desperation over his death was overwhelming. I realized then that I loved him more than life itself. In the days after the funeral I would go to his grave and sit there pleading with God to let me die. At that time I fully expected that God would understand my feelings and take me, but it didn’t happen. At one point I understood it wasn’t going to happen and that’s when I bitterly tried to go on.

But the feeling of emptiness and desperation would not leave me. One day in the spring when I was back on campus, a friend told me he had some great drugs that would make me feel better. I said okay, I’ll take a couple. It was LSD and soon after I took them, I was in a different reality. I saw Andy and he told me to kill myself so I could come with him and we could be together again. I was in my dorm kitchen downstairs, fumbling around for a knife that I could use to kill myself.

Then a wonderful friend I had named Tony found me there and asked me what I was doing. When I explained it to him, he took me out of the kitchen and outside. I realized at that point that I loved everyone I saw and I started going up to everybody and hugging and kissing them. Tony thought that was funny, until I got the urge to take off all my clothes. It was worm outside and it struck me funny that I was even wearing clothes. He bundled me into his car and drove to a motel that was far enough away from the college that he felt that I was safe from attracting some much attention or I get arrested by the college police. While he was checking me into the motel, I spied a cow grazing in a meadow next to the motel.

As I gazed at that cow I was filled with love for it. Then I jumped out of the car, ran to the cow and took off all my clothes before I climbed onto its back. While I was sitting there on the cow and gazing at the beautiful blue sky with fluffy clouds and thinking how much I loved the beauty of this world, a visualization came to me.

Suddenly an image of the oneness opened up in the sky. At first it looked like chaos, but the longer I watched it, I saw the breathtaking order which was very complicated. Up until that time I had never considered the concept of the oneness. I remember thinking that I had to remember it; it was so beautiful. When the vision faded, I couldn’t remember how it worked; only that it was real.

Then Tony came and found me and gently dressed me and took me into the motel room until I was straight again. I told him and many of my other friends about the oneness experience and they all felt it was a product of the LSD. I did not feel that way and many years later, my feelings proved true when I got the visualization of the oneness twice again at times when I was completely lucid.

CHAPTER THREE

OPIUM PALACE

While I was in college I had one surreal experience in the “just ask for what you want and the universe will give it to you” category. It was Easter and all my friends were away for the holiday, but I was broke and couldn’t go anywhere. I just got off my job washing dishes at the student union and sat on the steps feeling sorry for myself and thinking “what can I do, what can I do?” and then a little white sports car pulled up. In the car I saw two odd looking men.

One was a black man with a big fro who was dressed in hippy finery. He had on a flowered shirt with big fat sleeves and bell bottoms with fancy boots. The other one was a white guy with a big blond fro (which made me wonder how he did that) who was dressed in a similar way.

They were both handsome and they smiled at me and said something like “Hi cutie, would you like to go for a ride?” I immediately said yes, but then I saw that they were both very tall and the car was a two sitter. I asked them where I would sit and one guy smiled and said you can sit right here on my lap. So I jumped in and away we went. I asked them where they were going and they said it was a surprise but they could tell by looking at me that I would like it.

We drove out into the country and eventually came to a big estate. It had a long driveway that led to a big black gate. We had to stop and guy who was driving pressed a button and said something and the gates opened. We pulled up to a big beautiful mansion. I was in awe. My eyes probably got a lot bigger when we were ushered in to the great hall with vivid ornate decoration, lots of dark wood with bright silky fabric everywhere and bronze statutes. One of the guys said to me “this is where we part but we will be seeing you soon” and I was led off by a small Asian man.

He took me to a small room that had soft mattresses all over the floor with many colorful pillows. The walls were hung with dazzling tapestries. Then he handed me a small gold pipe and lit it for me and said “smoke.” I obeyed and after a few hits he said “enough” and left the room. I sank back on the pillows and then had the most wonderful experience. I realized right away that I had smoked opium, but I don’t know how I knew that because it was my first and last experience with it. It was like having one beautiful dream after another, with my eyes open and it was utterly fascinating.

A few times the little man came back and had me smoke some more but for me the whole experience was unbroken, just an incredible stream of consciousness where I swam in the sea, flew in the clouds, watched wonderful animation, became a silk worm, etc.

Later in the day the Asian man came back and led me out of the room. I felt dazed and confused at that point, I saw my handsome friends in the big hall but they didn’t look so great. I said “you look awful” and one of them looked at me ruefully and said “you don’t look so great yourself.” I said “I’m really hungry – let’s go get dinner.” They looked at me and laughed and one of them said “Dinner?

We’ve been here for three days. Let’s get breakfast.” I was so shocked to learn that much time had passed. I didn’t have anything to drink, didn’t pee and didn’t close my eyes. No wonder I felt and looked so awful. They told me they knew what would cure us and we drove to the nearest White Castle and gorged ourselves on greasy hamburgers, French fries and lots of Coke and we felt ever so much better. They drove me back to campus and bid me a fond farewell. I knew that I could never smoke opium again because I might never come out of that room or someplace much worse. This weird experience was the single bright spot in my otherwise grim existence at the time, feeling like there was a big hole inside of me and wondering if I would ever be able to love again. How could I find someone like Andy?

CHAPTER FOUR

PANDORA’S BOX

For seven years after Andy died I continued to feel like an emotional zombie. I was still attracted to men and when I was with a guy who wanted to get involved with me I always said the same thing. “I like you and we could have fun together but don’t get attached to me because I am so emotionally dead that I won’t be able to form a commitment.”

Every one of them said either “OK” or “that’s fine with me” or something like that and most of them were fine with my lack of commitment. However there were a few who later told me they loved me and I reminded them of how I warned them at the start. Inevitably, they would say they believed that I would change when we were together for a while, but that never happened.

That is, until seven years later. I was working at the time as a paralegal intern at the Denver District Attorney’s office and finally finishing college. I met a young man named Jim who was also a paralegal intern and we immediately were drawn to each other. When I gave him my “no commitment” speech, he agreed because he had recently ended a relationship and he still felt bad about that.

So we started out on that basis, both of us believing that was all we had, which changed pretty quickly. We spent our time together hiking, smoking pot, watching Star Trek and making love in his big water bed. We fell in love, despite our promises. He was the only lover I’ve ever had who always had his orgasm at the same time I had mine. After a few months, I started having anxiety attacks whenever we felt especially close. We would be lying in bed after making love wrapped in each other’s’ arms and suddenly I would get really sad and afraid and start crying. Jim didn’t know how to handle that (like most men) so his response was to get up and leave, which was the wrong thing to do. It made me feel that I could not trust him and I moved out and got an apartment of my own. Jim was very distressed over that and pleaded with me to marry him, but by that time I was disassembling pretty fast.

One day soon after that I was in a plant shop, looking for something nice to get for my Aunt Sally’s birthday. I found a pretty plant and when I was paying for it, the man who was the cashier started coming on to me. He wanted to know my name and if I lived in the neighborhood and I knew the next thing he would ask for was my telephone number. I don’t know what he said after that because I started experiencing his speech as a foreign language, or just nonsense. With a shock, I realized my brain was practically shutting down because the concept of having another relationship was too threatening to me.

I ran out of the shop crying. In the days to follow, I found myself crying at unusual times, like when I was in class, or walking home, or standing in line at the grocery store. Each time I would feel the tears on my face before I realized that I was crying and that I was sad. One day at home I looked in the mirror and didn’t want to see myself again. I covered up all the mirrors in my apartment with towels or sheets. Then my appetite disappeared.

I have always loved eating and loved cooking ever since my mother taught me to cook, starting at the age of eight. I would go to the grocery store and buy my favorite foods and go home to cook my dinner and then I would stare at the food but I couldn’t eat it. I would just throw it away. Often I wandered through the grocery store, trying to find something that I would eat and leaving without any food.

I developed asthma during that period and I remember asking my doctor how long a person could go without eating. She smiled like she thought I was kidding, but took a long look at me and her smile disappeared when she realized I was being serious. She told me that if I drank a glass of milk every day and a few glasses of water, I would last for a long time. Hopefully long enough for me to come out of my depression.

I didn’t know why I was still so depressed, after all these years of grieving for Andy. It was hard for me at that point to understand who I could have a lot of grief and anger in me, but later I realized that was true. When Andy first died I cried almost nonstop for two weeks. At that point my mother came into my room and told me that I had shed enough tears and it was time for me to get on with my life. I thought she was right and I tried to do that. I was a Vista Volunteer for two years and I worked my way through college. I learned to push the pain and rage deep down and keep myself busy.