Telepathic Therapy Log 1

As unemployment left most of humanity in a state of nihilism, existential therapy became one of the few sectors that was still growing. Even so, the therapists found that they did not have enough time to deal with the epidemic of suicidal depression, which could occupy only a few hours weekly of their time, but all hours of their subjects'. With many of their friends depressed as well, there was nowhere they could find reprieve in between sessions. With a chain reaction making suicide the number one cause of death in developed countries, they realised their problems needed their constant attention, forcing them to organise group therapies, which were just as effective. The irony was that the groups soon found that they didn't need a therapist at all, just anyone to talk to, so that now the therapists, too, were now out of a job, and became subjects of existential therapy as well.
We experimented with using telepathy during altered states as an accelerated form of group psychotherapy. This is the unedited translated log of our telepathic therapy sessions, with which we are hoping to convince you to follow our example. As the translation of perceptions into words isn't perfect, this log may be fragmentary, and a feat of imagination may be needed to fill in the gaps. Subjects have agreed to publish this information on condition of anonymity, so that each subject will be designated at most by a letter only; at times even these may be left out entirely for the sake of anonymity within the group itself. This is logged from the perspective of myself, the group's former therapist.
Log 2029•117•777,37

Nothing. A static of patterns rise from the nothing and sink back into it like waves, and I swim through them, trying not to drown. The patterns stick to me heavy like mud. I fight against the waves seeking for a shore, but even so they sweep me ashore. The sand is made of more static, my mind trying to find patterns where there is only sand. I try to look at it as it is, but it keeps shifting before my eyes. Then someone’s shadow comes over me, and when I look at him the patterns resolve into his broad face. He’s a former patient.

“Welcome with the rest of us, to the land of the lost. Now you’re one of us. We know this place, and now it’s time for us to show you the way. You looked down on us when we didn’t find our place in your world, but now the tides have turned, and you must find your way in ours.”

He gives me his hand. I take it and get up, and we look face to face. I don’t know the meaning of the look in his eyes: it speaks a language I don’t know.

“Look around you. What do you see?”

I look around. Shapes swim around me: buildings, mountains, giants, all kinds of things, all shifting into each other. But beneath it all the nothing.

“I see nothing… and everything.”

“The two are one. You need to become one with the nothing, like us. All arises from it, all descends into it. Come.”

I follow him onto the cliffs, and there in the valley beyond, at the end of a set of stairs, three slabs of stone form a portal, but there is nothing on the other side. He leads me towards it and says “When you step through to the other side, nothing will ever be the same.”

I look at him and see what he’s doing: it’s a hypnotic suggestion, but I can’t see what he’s trying to achieve. I don’t know if I trust him, but I don’t know what else to do, and I have nothing to lose. I walk through the portal, and nothing happens.

“You see? Nothing is still the same as before.”

“What was the point of that?”

“You were waiting for a resolution to your life. There never will be. What lies ahead of you is just more of the same kind of thing that came before, more life.”

I look ahead at the landscapes ahead of me. They’re shifting before my eyes like desert dunes in a time lapse, and at this thought the landscape turns into a sandstorm.

“Why is it shifting?”

“Because the future isn’t fixed, but you need to face it anyway.”

I swallow hard and walk into the sandstorm. I don’t know what I’ll find in the sandstorm or if it will even matter if it will bury everything anyway. I see images of people and places shift through the sand, but they all disappear when I move closer. I turn this way and that to chase the images until I lose track of where I am. I try to run back the way I came from, but only walk deeper and deeper into the sandstorm. When I realise I’ve lost my way and give myself up the storm, I get the feeling that I’m floating, and I’m not sure if I’m falling into quicksand or flying into a whirlwind.