Brantano’s Journey – Part One
Gerald Brantano , as he is rarely but affectionately known by those who for some reason feel close to him, if asked, would tell you that he is first and foremost, a traveller. A traveller, he might say, with a secret or a semi-secret mission. A mission which continues leading him as it has always done, through the ragged fences and hedges of his wayward sub-conscious. A psychic exploration consisting of an alternate assault upon the senses followed by the soothing calm of a volcanic seething. A temperament interspersed with loving kindness, and a sometime rapture spilling through from an unknown source.
Gerald unwittingly engineers his own downfall, more often than not. Then an unexpected gleam of luck shines through and he hits a high which sometimes borders on an ecstasy often being exterior to his inner state of development. He is an explorer of the human condition – at least to his own mind, and would be the last to favour self-indulgence, even though he may sometimes rather inadvertently encounter it. If pestered, he would probably say that his being is immersed in existentialism. This being backed up by an early study of Jean Paul Sartre and his resultant identification with the concept that one should become engagé in one’s relationship with ‘Life’. It is not acceptable to observe from the touchlines, as it were, one really must get in there and ‘play the game’. The longer one does this, the longer one has to learn life’s true lessons. Experience, thus, is life’s only real way of teaching us the only real knowledge that there is to learn, as appropriate to our Karmic lot. For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action; for our every deed there will be a result and a reward or a punishment (a negative result).
All of the above, as Brantano might now say, is History. The story of a young and often troubled spirit. His lack of any real knowledge of the world causing him to plough through it like a kind of psychic bulldozer, rarely pausing to truly assimilate any experience; rather feeling the shock of often unwanted interactions with realities not of his own making. His journey however, was long, and many mysterious perceptions arose in his sometimes over-stretched mind. He had often thought since early childhood, that he existed in a rather mysterious world, to say the least and this was more or less constantly born out during his travels.
Then, somehow gradually, an extended flash of enlightenment seemed to suddenly cast it’s gleam upon his existence in a way that he had previously not suspected possible. The stars shone from an open sky upon him as his mind opened up unto the universe. Nature spirits gambolled in the streams and in the trees. Then the enigma of life showed itself as a clear breath, both unifying and yet transcending itself. The world of Zen had finally congealed in Brantano’s wayward heart and he felt his life changed and purified forever; the mere shadow of a guiding concept remaining, reminding him of his ultimate duty to the cosmos and himself.
The Third Testicle, as he had come to think of it, had been born almost behind his back – so to speak - but still he had belief in the other two, as most traditional (i.e. masculine) western belief systems all agree: if you have the balls then you stand a good chance of winning in the game of life. And Brantano would be the first to agree with this; nobody wants to lose, most especially in the realm of spiritual knowledge.
