by Неизвестный
The rebuke was potentially serious, but Yves had talked his way out of it; the senior assistant was very firm, but he liked Yves, as everyone did. For his part, Yves wanted no trouble. He liked his post too much. But, afterwards, he had a deep surge of resentment about the whole matter.
The following day was his weekly free day. In the morning, while he was painting, the incident was still annoyingly in the forefront of his mind. But there was also a peculiarity which he was quick to notice and apparently powerless to prevent: he felt there were two parts of him or two functions going on at the same time in him, each of them working in different directions.
He went on painting, holding the brush, choosing colors, dipping, painting, standing back and returning to his easel and continuing to paint. All the while, the normal mechanism of his inner man was at work-imagination, memory, mind, will.
But all that while, too, another and parallel process was going on. His imagination was receiving data-images, impressions, forms—from some source other than the outside world. He knew this because they resembled nothing he had ever seen, heard, or thought. And then, too, it seemed to him that these images were not assimilated by his mind and will. Rather, they seemed to paralyze mind and will, to freeze them so that bit by bit they went fallow. An entire idea—he could not even make out its contours or details—was being “shoved” into his mind and forced into his will for acceptance.
He resisted the “push” of the idea; but it eventually invaded his mind and will through his imagination. And finally, as far as he could make out, he yielded. Then that grossly strange idea flooded back into his imagination with all its parts, reasons, and logic, there to be clothed in new images. His mind even supplied words for those images and sometimes, indeed, he found himself pronouncing these words in whole sentences.
After about an hour, on the first vivid and eerie occasion of this kind, he was shocked to discover that he was now painting in a strange and completely alien fashion compared to his normal way. His canvas had become a hodgepodge of his initial brushings, which he had intended to portray a street scene. On top of them was a crazy quilt of other forms and shapes-shadowy trees, rivers, irregular forms with legs, squares with ears, loops that ended in numerals.
When he resisted that inner “push” of ideas from that unknown source, his painting followed the normal course. But when he yielded, the hodgepodge started anew. He seemed to have become a means of translating into pictorial images some message or instructions or thoughts conveyed to him forcibly and not by his own choosing.
Yves felt alone and vulnerable. He was very disturbed. On an impulse he decided to drive out to see some friends in the country. But there was no letup. Along the way, he found he could no longer concentrate on his driving, so great and distracting was the force of all that was now pouring into him. He had to stop the car on the side of the road. He sat there and tried to keep his mind and will free of all those images and forms that were pounding at them from some source he could not identify.
But as he intensified his struggle, another element crept to the fore: his resentment about the previous day's argument with the senior assistant. When Yves yielded to the “push” of the idea being “shoved” into his mind, it brought with it some peculiar satisfaction in resentment. When Yves resisted, the resentment smoldered there and hurt him. In the brief pauses between these inner gyrations, Yves' mind dwelt on what he had said during the sermon and elaborated the ideas still further. He found intense satisfaction in this.
Eventually, as he sat beside the road, his planned visit with friends forgotten, he found himself yielding willingly to the “push” of the idea. And the moment he yielded, he felt immediate relief from an internal pressure and a deep conviction that his resentment against the senior assistant was justified: Yves had been right all along. He knew what was going on. Besides, he found his imagination and feelings once more chockful of inspiration which he knew would pour into his sermons, his painting, and his poetry.
Yves points to this experience as the moment “remote control” became a constant element in his life, because at that instant he accepted it willingly. It was, so to speak, the “consecration” of Yves' possession.
Once he voluntarily accepted it—and he insists today that he knew he was accepting some “remote” or “alien” control—he was suddenly inundated. He still had not moved from his car. All around him was soft-spoken countryside. But every sense—eyes, ears, taste, smell, touch—was saturated with a discordant medley of experiences. A riot of sounds, colors, odors, tastes, skin feelings washed over him. He could distinguish a certain rhythmic beat throughout this confusion and din. But he had no control and could not shake himself loose from these perceptions. Throughout, he felt a certain privileged awe, a secret pride. Then the storm in his senses gathered up inside him somewhere, absorbing utterly his imagination and memory. He now felt as if serpentine thoughts were touching the furthest reaches of his mind, and that fine tendrils were closing around each fiber of his will.
Slowly he began again to be conscious of the world around him. What had occurred had taken only moments, but for those moments he had been totally abstracted, walled up within himself.
Sound and light and shape now wafted back through the trellis of his senses, making him a newly aware observer of the world. He heard birds singing once more; he felt the sunlight on his face again. The coolness of the wind and the smell of morning-fresh grass and flowers became vivid for him. But now each lattice of sensation was filled by some coiling presence weaving slowly, possessively, with ease, lazily enjoying an acquired resting place in the shaded corners of his being.
For a brief instant, there was some echo of resistance in him. Some ancient voice protested in dim tones. Then it ceased. Yves “let go,” and all tension fled. He was at peace for the first time in many years. And he felt renewed. There was a sudden ease throughout his body and an almost fierce, certainly overpowering calm flooding his thoughts.
He was never more conscious of being “visited.” And every image he ever had of those who had been “visited” by “another” came tumbling from his memory: Moses at the burning bush; Isaiah catching sight of the flaming seraphs in the temple of Yahweh; Mary the Virgin in Nazareth bowing before Gabriel the messenger; Jesus transfigured with Moses and Elias on Mount Tabor and conversing with God; St. John in his Patmos cavern gazing at the Mystic Lamb in all his glory; Constantine galvanized by the Cross in the clouds; Joan of Arc in her prison cell tearfully hearing her “voices” in the depths of pain; John of the Cross in his prison cell piercing the Dark Night and embracing the Beloved; Teilhard fingering the bones of Sinanthropos and seeing Jesus, Omega Point, prefigured in those pathetic pieces. Yves had a clear sense of being destined, as all those had been, for a special revelation.
All this rushed by him and fell away as he raised his eyes and looked again at the fields, the trees, the sky. All was now moving in a new vision, animated by a life he had dreamed of, but never known. It was all, he now knew, a sacrament, a row of sacraments strung together as a lovely necklace around man's world. And his mind, will, and inner senses were permeated with a strange new incense consecrating him—as no bishop's hands could ever do—to the priesthood of a new being. He knew: always it had been so near him and yet so far. “Beauty, ever ancient, ever new! Too late have I known thee!” he murmured Augustine's quiet regret.
There was awe at the surprise of it all, humbleness at not having seen it all before. And, dominantly, an enthusiasm lush with passion. The coiling presence stirred in him; and he began to daydream.
“Hey, Father! Having any trouble?” The shout startled Yves. It was a local state trooper who had drawn alongside in his patrol car. Yves snapped his head around, angry at the interruption, his eyes blazing. But the genial smile of the trooper reassured him. They knew each other. “Just passing a few moments in peace, Pat,” he said, recovering himself and reaching for the ignition key. “Give Jane and the kids my love.”
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nbsp; With a wave of his hand he continued on his way to see his friends. From then on, Yves became extremely careful. It was as if he had been put on his guard. He knew with an almost uncanny foresight when trouble was in store for him. At times he was forewarned about a particular person. “Someone” told him. At other times the warning concerned activities: a request to solemnize a marriage, a request for confessions, an invitation to dinner at a parishioner's house or with his fellow priests; or it might be a book or article in a magazine or a letter. The warning was silent, but clear and pithy: “Avoid it!” or “Don't do it!” or “Don't meet them!” Except for an occasional flourish in a sermon, his colleagues found no further reason to cavil at his ideas.
But when he spoke privately with parishioners, with an engaged couple about to be married, for example, it was different. Then he explained their union so poetically, and he dwelt so insistingly on the peculiarly earthly role of Jesus, that they always departed completely charmed by his counseling.
Yves himself clearly explains now how the entire purpose, meaning, and reason of marriage as a Sacrament had changed for him. It had become a Sacrament of nature for him. It had lost its dimension as a channel of supernatural grace, just as the senior assistant had warned him. It was something that united people with the natural universe. And this meant there had been some deep damage to Yves' own faith. As time went by, and Yves introduced this same dark element to the other Sacraments, his own condition became far more extreme; and he himself began to sense more clearly the meaning of his voluntary commitment to a force he now could not control. The moment for possible resistance had passed.
In 1963, Yves' situation became critical for him. Saying Mass was a prime example. The servers and the people found that he began to take a longer time to say Mass. Peculiarly enough, it was only one part of the Mass that took the additional time. It was the most solemn section immediately preceding the Consecration that begins when the priest extends his hands, palms downward, fingers together, over the chalice and the bread. The ceremonial calls for complete silence, broken only by the tinkling of the Mass bell. Yves would now remain for abnormal lengths of time, with his hands outstretched-at first only three minutes, then ten, then fifteen, once thirty agonizing additional minutes, with congregation and attendants waiting and watching. Then he would take an abnormally long time to utter the actual words of Consecration. At an ordinary pace, all these ceremonial actions take no more than three to five minutes.
His colleagues thought he was going through a “mystical” period, or that he was suffering from “religious scruples,” that he took too seriously each official prescription for the actions and words of the Mass. Some priests go through such a phase. They know that any deviation can result in venial or mortal sin. So they torture themselves, making sure they observe all the rules; they go back again and again repeating actions and words, to make sure they consciously do everything correctly.
But Yves neither was mystical nor was he paralyzed by religious scruples. He was undergoing what he now describes as the most agonizing whipping and thrashing of his inner self. It began one day when, as he tells it, from the moment that his hands were outstretched over the chalice and the bread, until after the Consecration, the “remote control” changed in force and in its “message.”
“I fought every inch of the way,” Yves recounts today, “and I lost every inch of that fight.”
Instead of the officially prescribed words of the Mass and the concepts expressed in those words, Yves now found different concepts and different words. It was always and only key words that were changed. Every time, for instance, the word “saving” or “salvation” was ritually prescribed, he could only think and say “winning” and “triumph.” “Saving” and “salvation” appeared to him like words scribbled on bits of torn paper and pinned to a wall out of his reach. To reach for them impotently was the source of intense agony and searing pain.
Similarly with “love” (this now became “pride”), “died” and “death” (now “returned home to death” and “nothingness”), “sacrifice” (now “defiance”), “sins” (now “myths and fables”), “bread” and “wine” (now “desire” and “pleasure”). So it went.
An additional agony ensued whenever a sign of the cross was called for by the ritual, when Yves would find only the index finger of his right hand capable of motion, and it could trace only a vertical line upward.
Throughout, his memory and reflexes propelled him to act according to the ritual. The substitute words and thoughts poured in. He recognized immediately that the sense and intent of the whole ceremony was changed utterly by those new words and thoughts. He fought with will and mind to retain the ritual. But each time it was the same: as long as he fought, some hard lump seemed to start expanding deep within him-not in his body, not in his brain, but in his living consciousness. “It was like remembering last night's nightmare and knowing that this reality was what frightened you then.” As the lump expanded, it began to reduce in a sinister fashion the area of his very self.
At the excruciating limit of this inner pain, it began to have a physical and psychological ricochet: the blood roared in his ears and peculiar pains started—his hair, eyelashes, and toenails ached unbearably. Quick kaleidoscopic pictures of his entire life tumbled in front of his mind, always making him look ludicrous, smelly, contemptible, beyond help. He could hear himself beginning to form a scream, which, if it had emerged, would have been: “I'm drowning! I'm perishing! Save me!”
It never emerged. He stopped fighting. All agony ceased. And a marvelous exhilaration-not unmixed with relief-flooded him. The ease was almost painful in its contrast with the pain that had preceded it.
The final agony came one day when he started to pronounce the words of Consecration. Instead of “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood,” other words echoed in his own voice: “This is My Tombstone” and “This is My Sexuality.” As he pronounced these words while bending over the altar as prescribed by the ritual, all intent of authentic Consecration fled from him. His index finger bent into a hook shape, thrust itself into the wine, and then scratched a vertical red stain on the white wafer.
At that moment, Yves could not straighten up. His ears were filled with two different sounds. He was sure he actually heard them: a jeering laugh that echoed and echoed and echoed; and a faint keening, a muted wail or cry of protest which eventually died away in the reverberations of that heinous laugh. Then, as from that “remote control,” he heard the syllables: “Jesus is now Jonathan,” and “Jonathan is now Yves,” and “Yves is now Jonathan and Jesus.” And finally, “All is gathered into Mr. Natural.”
It was some time before Yves realized that only he had heard all those profanities. But whether they heard those words or not, it was Yves' appearance after those painfully extended moments of inward battle that shocked the people who watched him. When he turned around finally to distribute communion, his face was terribly drawn, haggard, the color of chalk. His hair, cut short then, seemed to be standing on end. His eyes, normally so impressively clear and winning, were narrowed to slits; and he was muttering through clenched teeth. The whole impression was stark and lifeless.
He finished the Mass in a violent state of inner tension. Only after some time spent alone was he once more flooded with that strange peace and exultation. Finally, when he had recovered himself alone in the vesting room, he emerged smiling, composed, looking as he had always looked.
His yielding to the “control” at Mass had immediate and far-reaching effects. In baptizing infants, he changed the Latin words, which were unintelligible to the parents and bystanders. When he was supposed to say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” he said, “I baptize you in the name of the Sky, the Earth, and Water.”
But the most momentous change in his performance both of Baptism and the other Sacraments (Extreme Unction, Confession) affected those parts which spoke of “Satan” or the “Devil” or “evil spi
rits.”
At Baptism, instead of saying (in Latin), “Depart, Unclean Spirit” or “To renounce Satan and all his works” or “Become a child of God,” he now said, “Depart, spirit of hate for the Angel of Light,” and “To renounce all exile of Prince Lucifer,” and “Become a member of the Kingdom.”
In Confession, he stopped saying, “I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”; instead, he said, “I confirm you in your natural wishes, in the name of Sky, Earth, and Water.” And when he administered the Sacrament of the Dying (“Extreme Unction” was its old name), he committed the dying person to the mercy and peace of “Sister Earth” and to the eternity of “Mother Nature.”
Whenever he felt an initial repugnance to accepting what was “dictated” to him by the “remote control,” that frightful inner lump grew sensitive; and Yves became a being of pure pain. He quickly obeyed, and he was rewarded always by a wild exultation. The sun was brighter. The blue of the sky was deeper. The coffee he drank was never so good. The blood coursed vigorously in his veins. And his head never felt clearer.
By the end of 1964, it became obvious to his colleagues there was something wrong with Yves that they could no longer explain by his artistic temperament, his French Canadian-Swedish ancestry, a mystical period of life, or religious scruples. It was all too peculiar. It frightened some. It repelled others. It angered still others. It left all with an eerie sense of something utterly alien in Yves. And to cap it all, Yves had begun to refer to himself as “Father Jonathan.”
But it was always isolated things, and nobody ever put them all together into a definite pattern. When he turned around at Mass (as the priest did four or five times) to say “Dominus vobiscum” (“The Lord be with you”), one colleague swore he heard Yves say, “Dominus Lucis vobiscum” (“The Lord of Light be with you”). Others did not hear that single added word, but the faint glint in his eyes gave them a momentary shock. Once, as he touched the forehead of a baby he was baptizing, the baby went into violent hysteria and had to be rushed to the hospital for treatment.