The Programme

CHAPTER ONE-3

Many of those who joined him were American exiles: there was a post-Vietnam generation - later, post-Gulf - addicted to cynicism and despair, living like Matthew against the backdrop of fire, who could not switch off and settle into the family business; some had fallen foul of the law - one or two had been to jail; although there were exceptions - like Amanda Kroger - they tended to bring less capital wealth into the group than their British and European counterparts, but they were much quicker to find ways to make money and most of them had at least a small income-stream from home, intended to keep them a s far away from it as possible.

Http://www.the-programme.org.uk (turn on sound if available).

This is what The Programme is like. It is like the secret place you hid in as a child: maybe you were a little scared, because you were hiding, but also you felt safe, safe as only a child can be, in the sanctuary of his or her parents’ keep. You are scared and at the same time you are drawn to it. What does it mean? It is an admission that we need something more than we can create for ourselves; it is an admission that we need someone to take care of us; we cannot go back and find our parents - we have to go forward and find something to take their place. It is something we need others to build with us; that means we have to trust them, and earn their trust; that means we have to know that no one of us is more committed - and no one of us has held more in reserve - than the others. In the end, it is like any relationship - the sum must be greater than its parts.

Matthew arrived back at Chesterfield Gardens shortly after lunch. Outside, a new follower - a non-resident member - was polishing the discreet plate that announced the way into the basement Coffee Lounge. The house was busy. He could hear noise from the kitchen; chattering in the Coffee Lounge. In reception, Sister Rebecca - ungainly, overweight, awkward in motion but quick with her mind - was detailing last night’s Coffee Lounge receipts overlooked by an oversized portrait of himself.

She glanced up as he entered, rose urgently, half-bowed and half- stumbled, finally remembered to smile.

“I am one,” she said.

“We are many,” he murmured as - without breaking his stride - he mounted the sweeping stairs that led first to the huge, high Meditation Hall and meeting room and, beyond, to the private quarters where the junior ranks of resident members lived in virtual dormitories and - beyond them - where he and Cassandra each occupied separate quarters of their own. He was home; he was God.

Http://www.the-programme.org.uk (turn on sound if available).

Do not ask me who or what God is. Ask me what godliness is. Godliness is what we put up there on a pedestal, to represent that special quality we see in ourselves and in humankind generally and that makes us better than we behave. Godliness can be kindly, it can be harsh, it can be profoundly challenging. Godliness is good just because it is godliness, not because it is nice or kind or forgiving. Godliness is our sense that we are more than flesh and bones and the limits of our daily lives; godliness is soul come to mind. Psychoanalysts might call it superego, individual or collective; moralists, the conscience; religionists believe that it is a quality that belongs to - and is given to us by - God. We believe that it is the other way round. God is the manifestation of godliness; God is the representative of what we hold up on high; God is the sum total that is more than our parts.

In his bedroom, Matthew changed into black slacks and a black high- necked, roll-top sweater. At one time, they had all worn black - black capes in the street, a black uniform like the one he had just put on. Around their necks they had worn The Programme symbol in different metals to distinguish their ranks. He and Cassandra - The Seer - wore platinum; the Superiors wore gold; Senior Messengers, silver; there were Junior Messengers and Initiates with brass symbols, and the outside Acolytes stainless steel. The segments represented the four elements, fire always supreme.

That was in the dark days when their message was of gloom and despair, when God was Satan and The Teacher their only hope for salvation. Members of The Programme would be saved from the final h*******t, but only at a price of punishment and penitence. Although he had played his part, and commanded unquestioning obedience to the rituals of humiliation and shame that Cassandra had devised, he preferred tunnels with shafts of unexpected light to caves of unrelenting night. When their personal relationship changed, he seized the opportunity to separate their spiritual paths. The Teacher and The Seer no longer spoke with a single voice; instead, he costumed the members in white while Cassandra and her clique hid in the shadows, waiting for prey.

Cassandra was his lawful wife. She was the source of his right to reside in the United Kingdom. She was a small, sharp-featured, heavy-breasted, black-haired Welsh woman, with an anomalous high-pitched giggle. A decade his junior, she was the sister of one of his earliest followers - Huw - who was also one of the first to leave the group: she and Huw had been uncomfortably close.

Matthew and Cassandra made an odd couple. They had turned the complex dimensions of their relationship as it used to be into a fount of tension through which the tenets of The Programme had emerged like a howling, new-born child, violent and innocent, knowledgeable and unlearned, instinctual and physical.

Then they had used their disunion to reshape the group. The Teacher was now both darkness and light; he could be a wrathful, disciplinarian God one moment and a forgiving Christ and joyful Cherub the next. He could choose at will. Cassandra remained The Seer, but she was always and forever harshness incarnate. It created two centres within the group and thus enhanced its range: the innermost core of senior members - Superiors - were immediately below The Teacher within the hierarchy; but a cross-section of members at every level were additionally the private property of The Seer, Satan’s troops.

The most secret ritual of the resident members - still called the Midnight Mass - brought these two internal factions into direct conflict light versus dark. From within this energy, The Teacher rose magisterially to decide which element was to emerge victorious for the next round. Exhausted, they curled up on the floor of the Meditation Hall to sleep, limbs entwined, comforting one another, some of them clinging on to one another, welded into a molten whole.

In the Chesterfield Gardens Chapter, Matthew wore black or white as the mood took him, but - like the other residents - only white when out and about in the world. The Seer alone wore no uniform; she was a triumphal star on the crest of the hill. Symbols around necks had gone altogether, replaced by belt buckles; the passage through spiritualism was ostensibly in the past, even if they returned to it in private; now it was about minds - giving up impotent individual freedom in favour of a collective freedom of infinite power. The disciplines this change imposed on the resident members were acts of liberation.

There was a knock at the door to his living-room. Except in an emergency, no one disturbed him in his private quarters uninvited except Sister Helen.

“Come in, Helen,” he called.

If anyone threatened Cassandra, it was Helen. Helen was Matthew’s future. Helen was the closest thing to a second wife. Helen was an ethereal, West Coast Canadian and younger than Cassandra by more than another decade. Unlike Cassandra, she was slender - small-breasted, small-waisted and taller, like a model. Her face was gentle, devoid of cutting angles and bruising knots. Helen was his child, his hand-maiden, his mistress. Helen was everything Cassandra was not. Helen was quiet; Helen was graceful; Helen was good. Helen would glide into a room which Cassandra would take by force. Helen could stand still for an hour but Cassandra not for a moment. Helen did not demand, she waited patiently until she was given.

“I am one,” she said automatically.

Matthew smiled, passed a hand over her fine red-blonde hair.

“We are many,” he replied.

“Together we shall be whole,” she concluded.

She saw he was wearing black. Her face revealed no emotion. When he was in a dark phase, life was turmoil: for all of them; for her too. That was what he wanted: to shake them up, to displace their complacency, to turn them on each other and even on himself; he wanted to throw everything into the air and see where it came down; it meant that he was unsettled or perhaps even frightened; at its lowest, he was bored.

As she stood passively before him, he fixed himself in her eyes, passed the back of his hand over her cheek, first one side then the other, he ran a finger the length of her torso, between her breasts, from the hollow in her throat to the silver symbol-buckle of the white belt of her white skirt, only recently exchanged for brass. He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the forehead.

“Later,” he murmured.

“I came to see if you’d eaten,” she said. It was her destiny to ensure that he was fed, for whatever he was hungry. “There’s soup. Fresh bread. Some rice.” They baked their own bread, made their own soups; they were vegetarian, making a virtue of necessity: it was cheaper than meat.

“I have work.”

“May I stay here?”

“I was working on an article for The Programme,” he said, meaning the magazine they sold in the streets and at reception. “It’s on screen.” Finish it for me, Sister Helen, he was telling her.

He passed Rebecca on the stairs, relieved from reception duty, on her way to her dormitory to meditate and rest, asked her where he might find Cassandra. Rebecca told him she was teaching, in The Temple.

The Temple was the sound-proofed, back room on the first floor, to which outsiders never had access, its high ceiling painted to resemble the hanging sheets of an eastern pagoda. It was the room in which the Midnight Masses were held once every two or three months. One wall held a giant painting of The Programme symbol: unlike its normal presentation, in which the areas between the segments were empty, in this painting they were rich in detail - storm and fire.

At a push, The Temple could hold fifty. Now, though, Cassandra was seated cross-legged on a huge, square floor cushion so tightly packed she hardly dented it, surrounded by a half dozen of her Initiates and Acolytes, kneeling. Matthew let himself in silently; if she heard him enter, she did not acknowledge it.

She wore a thin red robe big enough to cover her from head to toe. The members’ eyes were shut, their arms outstretched towards her. She took one of their wrists in her hand, someone with his back to Matthew, and drew it down herself, much as Matthew had stroked Helen, but across her breast, lingering, sensual.

“What do you feel?” she murmured.

There was a long silence. Then, dry-voiced, the youngster replied:

“Love.”

Matthew said:

“Agony.”

As the youngster turned, Cassandra let go of his wrist. Matthew recognised Brother Lucius, a slim, fair-haired, beautiful boy in his early twenties, Lucius of Cyrene.

“I am one,” Brother Lucius acknowledged The Teacher.

The others of the group intoned the greeting.

“We are many,” Matthew replied.

“Together we shall be whole,” they spoke in harmony.

Cassandra giggled but said nothing.

“Why agony, Teacher?” Lucius asked.

“Do you think that when you reach out to someone with love, it is necessarily what they receive? It can be painful, agonising. Especially if it is not what they want.”

“I love Cassandra,” Lucius answered. In this group, that was what they called her: not Seer.

“Yes, but does she love you?”

“I love Lucius,” Cassandra said. “He knows that I love him.”

She took his hand again and led it to her breast.

“What do you feel?” She repeated her question.

After another silence, Lucius answered, lowering his head in shame: “Agony.”

Http://www.the-programme.org.uk (turn on sound if available).

We say “I am one”, and someone answers “We are many”. What we mean is that together we have created that special something we each want; it is not an incantation but a positive reminder that there is a purpose to our coming together in The Programme. We want to make sure that - day on day - we do not take each other for granted; instead, we are here to work together - every single member of The Programme is here to work with each and every other member towards that purpose, every time one of us passes another on the stairs, or sits down to enjoy a cup of tea, or to share a mundane, housekeeping chore. What we are doing is taking the slightest, smallest task and focusing on how, doing it together, we can get something positive from it.