From Triund to Venus via the tenth dimension

There are dense toxic gases and bacteria the size of buses, but apart from that, unless you're able to see in the tenth dimension, there's not much on Venus. Some call it the ninth dimension, some the eleventh, some the first, some say it isn't a dimension at all. It doesn't really matter what you call it, except to the Venusians for whom it's very definitely the tenth dimension, and they get quite offended if you suggest it isn't.

A drum seller tries to sell his drums to four Israeli women. They pat his drums like they're small dogs, but they don't buy. He puts them down in front of the table I'm sitting at. I'm back in the Milky Way cafe which opens out onto the main street running through Dharamkot. The only traffic on this street is pedestrians. The cars and rickshaws never come this far down, and you don't see cows around here very often. Nor monkeys. Dogs occasionally.

There are dark clouds and thunder rumbling over the mountains. If a Venusian spaceship were to land up on Triund you wouldn't see it or hear it.

Someone from my guest house went to the local hospital yesterday with amoebic dysentery. She was drinking from the spring on Triund, and it was when she was up there that she started feeling ill, though she also drunk from the spring down in Bhagsu so it could've been from that, or from food. Down at the hospital she said was the English guy from the bar last week with the theory that each nation is a part of the body: England is the intellect, France the nose, Spain the tongue, Italy the chin etc.. He was having problems with his Peoples' Republic of China (arse), and went into great detail apparently about his stool sample, and the efforts he went to to produce it.

The tenth dimension, as the Venusians call it, is the quantum dimension. It cuts across the parallel universes, linking every possible reality and every impossible unreality. That's why they go to places like Triund where people sit around a fire competing as to who can come up with the most crazy way out belief. The more stupid your belief sounds the more enlightened you are. The Venusians like this. It gives them many eons of pleasure in many temporal dimensions. I think they picked me up because I wasn't saying anything. They wanted to know what I was thinking, but instead of just asking me they prodded my brain with quantum lasers, if there is such a thing. They prodded my brain with something, and took some parts of it away for further examination.

If there are inconsistencies it doesn't matter. Everything is true in the tenth dimension. And everything is false as well. You don't have to believe any of this. Whatever you choose to believe your belief will be true because you will live in the universe where it is true. If at some point one of your beliefs is shown to be untrue that will indicate that you have taking a journey through the tenth dimension, transported by Venusians most likely, to a new reality, one with a new set of truths.

It's stopped raining now. The mutter paneer and rice is settling in my stomach. I'll get up and go soon. Walk down to McLeod Ganj, past the monkeys feeding out of the skip that's never emptied, past the tall thin houses they started to build but then decided not to, past the road works they always have at some point on that road, and passed by the rickshaws, cars, motorbikes and scooters cruising down the hill with their engines turned off. It's cold though. Maybe I should pick up my jacket and go via Bhagsu. Walking through the woods I'll be sheltered if it starts to rain again.

There are some universes in which the Venusians do not exist. There are some in which the planet Venus does not exist. That creates problems for the Venusians. They can't travel to universes where they don't exist, but if they do manage to travel to those universes then they become universes in which they do exist. In order to travel to a particular universe they have to be observed by that universe, or by a conscious entity within that universe. (In many universes, including the one I'm now in, all entities are conscious to some extent. The mutter paneer I just ate knew it was being eaten, and now it knows it's being digested, though it doesn't know those things in the same way that I know things.) They need belief, like gods and babies. (Babies cry when no one is giving them attention because they fear that if they're not being observed they'll stop existing.) They have frequently been worshipped. This amuses them. They can't understand why human beings take them so seriously. We have no sense of humour, they laugh. To the Venusians everything is a joke, except the tenth dimension of course. Nothing makes them laugh more than a sincerely held belief. I had them in stitches, even though I told them I didn't believe in anything. That's a belief, they laughed, before disappearing into a wormhole and dumping me back on Triund from a great height just as Venus was vanishing and the sun was rising. I have bruises on my Peoples' Republic to prove it.

With some Venusians in the Milky Way cafe

Up on Triund there are not enough memories to fill the time that passed. I was awake the whole night. I may have slept an hour, but certainly no more than that. A trippy hippy danced around saying we are all organic gardeners, we are all one, we are all one organic gardener.

At the time there were three of us. Four including him. Twenty or thirty around the fire, and maybe a hundred scattered across Triund in caves and shepherds' huts and chai shops.

In the present tense a woman asks an old man the time. She points to the spot on her wrist where a watch would be but isn't. He doesn't understand. He isn't wearing a watch. But he must understand because he goes over to the clock above the counter and peers at it. It's a quarter past eight.

I didn't sleep at all the night before I went to Triund. Someone said that'd be because of the full moon, but how could it be? I was in my bed, the curtains were drawn. I couldn't see the moon. We're eighty percent water, she said, and the moon causes the tides so think what effect it must have on us. I couldn't think of an effect, but I couldn't think of a good argument to refute what she was saying so I said nothing, but I think the reason I didn't sleep that night had more to do with other things. There are always other things. Many of them.

On Triund people sat around a fire and talked, played bongo drums and didgeridoos, twirled fire through the night. Other things happened, but my memory has forgotten them. Mostly things didn't happen. It was a night when many things could have happened but didn't. The moon crossed the sky smiling at all of the things which weren't happening. When Venus rose behind one of the mountains the ones who were still awake thought this was highly significant. The moon and Venus in the same night! At first they thought it was a light on the mountain, then Jupiter, then Venus, but a Venus that was moving across the sky more quickly than anything else.

Some of the memories I have of this night are false. They're screen memories, placed there by the Venusians. The Venusians are not actually from Venus, not the Venus that we know as Venus. There was no physical abduction. It's all done in the mind. It might just as well be a dream. No, on second thoughts perhaps it was physical.

Those with mundane lives are more likely to be abducted. People whose lives are full of events, people who are rushing from one place to another and back again don't interest the Venusians. They can't tune into those kinds of minds. They're too noisy. A quiet mind with few thoughts but many beliefs is the kind they like the most.

A fork would be nice. The palak paneer and plain rice I ordered has arrived, but with just a spoon. No fork. I'm not going to ask for a fork. I never ask for things. I always accept what I'm given. The palak paneer is good, but eating with a spoon reminds me of when I was about a year old, sitting in a highchair and being force fed some disgusting baby food puree that looked like it had been eaten several times before.

The train disappears into the tunnel.

If you empty your mind of all thoughts, not just the trivial thoughts but the serious ones as well, then you will be able to follow the Venusians into the tenth dimension. How can you follow someone into the tenth dimension? That's like following someone into the third dimension, or into time. But the tenth dimension is different, and sometimes they say things that aren't exactly true because if they told us the truth we wouldn't understand it. They tell us they're from Venus because they think that'll be easier for us to comprehend, like a parent telling a child that their Christmas presents come from a fat man with a white beard.

Venus is a tenth dimensional portal.

If there are inconsistencies it's because I'm making this up as I go along. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's not true. Truth and untruth are illusions anyway, say the Venusians. Like reality and unreality. Just projections of your overly thinking mind.

Does the set of all sets which do not contain themselves contain itself?

I could make up another story, one about me sitting in the Milky Way cafe, with its hand drawn menu. I could write about the menu, and the food, and the other people in here, and the music that's playing - it was Phil Collins earlier, and no matter how much I told myself it was just an illusion it was still painful. The Venusians are very fond of Phil Collins. They see him as one of their own. We are all one. We are all Phil Collins. His band, Genesis, took its name from one of the Venusian's first publications. They are responsible for most of the Earth's religious texts. Not that they were trying to control us. They were just having a laugh. That's how they put it. They wanted to see what would happen. Like a child pulling the legs off a spider.

There's a wooden sculpture of a moose mounted on the wall of the Milky Way cafe. It's not life size. It's more the size of a bird, and it looks a bit like a bird, with leaves for ears and branches growing out of its neck. That could be what it is. I don't know if they have mooses (meese?) here. But they could have sculptures without having the real thing. You can make a sculpture of anything if you want to. Go ahead. It doesn't have to resemble something in the real world (which isn't real anyway). It could resemble something on Venus, but only if you think there is something on Venus.

McLeod Ganj, Himachal Pradesh, India

There are rumours that the Dalai Lama arrives today. Although this is supposed to be his home he doesn't seem to spend much time here. People say he's just coming to destroy a mandala, and then he'll be off again.

His movements are supposed to be posted on www.tibet.com but I can't find where.

The last chai shop before Triund

Walking up to Triund at the last chai shop before the top a guy in uniform with a gun (police or army, I'm not sure which) and someone in a checked shirt stop. Namaste. You are from which country? asks the plain clothes one. England. Let me see your passport. I don't have my passport on me but I show him my driving licence. Two guys walk past and they are asked the same question but their English isn't good and they don't answer, they just keep walking.

At the top I'm told there are a number of police hanging around, but I don't see them. They have asked a number of people to leave but most people have just ignored them and are still there. Apparently there was an article in the newspaper saying there was going to be an illegal trance party up on Triund so the police want to put a stop to it. But there are no sound systems up there, and the only electricity comes from the car batteries the chai shops have to power their radios and portable CD players. Some people are saying they were just after some baksheesh. I don't know if they took any. They didn't ask me for anything.