Cookies and Consciousness

I am reading ‘The Divine Romance’, by Paramahansa Yogananda while drinking coffee and eating triple chocolate cookies.  Elke is eating an apple. I am devouring cookies after dipping them in my coffee, northern Italian style, and Elke is devouring her apple, all of it, even the core, and I am reading about the opposite modes of material and spriritual consciousness, and about how I can test myself to see which consciousness I have, and I read these lines:

Material consciousness says to eat your apple and cookies yourself. Spiritual consciousness says to divide and share with someone else.

I freak a little and I turn around to see if Paramahansa Yogananda is in the room, watching us with our cookies and apple, and there is no one there, and I look up and in other directions but the yogi is not there, and I am about to tell Elke to stop but it is too late; the apple is gone.

He wrote this book when my mom was a kid. How does he know we are eating an apple and cookies?

The apple is gone, but I have cookies still. There are six left. 

“Cookie?” I offer, though I know Elke will refuse because she doesn’t eat cookies. 

As expected, she says "Nein, danke."

I am still scanning the room for traces of the yogi. He is on the astral plane, hovering over my shoulder.

If I read the same lines tomorrow, and I am eating toast instead of cookies, will it say in the book, 

Material consciousness says to eat your apple and toast yourself. Spiritual consciousness says to divide and share with someone else. ?

This is a test indeed, and the yogi knows it, because I am selfish about cookies. 

Spiritual consciousness says to divide and share with someone else.

Elke bought me the cookies, and said, “These are your cookies, just yours,”

and I had kept them all to myself,  knowing that here they would be safe from the boys.

For you see, the boys are also cookie monsters. They also devour cookies as if they were potato chips. 

The other day I found cookies in the kitchen, and I ate two of them with my coffee, dipping them into the coffee as they do in the north of Italy. I only ate two because they were the last two cookies. Then, later that evening, as I was strumming on the guitar, they came into this very room, and sat down together, smiling.

“Did you see cookies on the counter in the kitchen?” asked Philipp.

“Because we can’t find them, there were two cookies,” said Max.

“We are looking for them, did you see them?” asked Philipp.

There was a little uncomfortable pause as they scrutinized my countenance for a sign.

“Ah, you mean those sandwich-like cookies, with chocolate cream in the middle?” I asked.

“Yes,” they said in unison, smiling a little, scrutinizing.

“There were two?” I asked.

“Yes, there were two,” said Philipp.

“Two cookies,” said Max. “We can’t find them.”

“Did you see them?” asked Philipp.

A little pause, and I believe I must have been blinking a lot and swallowing.

“Yeah, I ate them with coffee this morning,” I blurted out. “They were sitting on the counter, you know?”

The twins laughed a bit, looking at each other and nodding, then back at me.

“Yes, of course,” said Philipp.

“Yes, they were on the counter,” said Max.

“There were only two? I thought I had left some,” I said.

“No, there were only two,” said Philipp. “Okay.”

“Yes, okay,” said Max.

“Okay,” I said, and I believe it was for this reason that Elke had bought me my very own pack of cookies.

So now I have these cookies, and the yogi is hovering over me somewhere in astral space, telling me personally through his book that I should share the cookies. 

Alas, as I have been writing these words I have eaten two more cookies. There are now but four, and I will have another cup of coffee, and I will require cookies with that cup as well.

 But… the test.  Am I of a more spiritual or material consciousness? Will I share my cookies? 

Later in the day... 

Max and Philipp have given me some cake. 

I offered cookies so now I can't change my mind. There are three left. Three triple chocolate cookies and I will share.  I will eat one more myself.

"Yo! Yogi Yogananda! I'm sharing my cookies!"

I am clearly a spiritual man.

Kamelle!

In Jülich, it is Carnival. Actually, it has been Carnival since 11:11 am, on the 11th of November-- it is what people in and around Cologne refer to as the Fifth Season, but it is peaking now, and I am in Jülich to watch the Carnival procession. I had no costume, so the neighbors have provided me with a hat for the occasion. It looks like the hat Marlon Brando wore in 'The Wild One', but it has all the colors of the rainbow on it, so I wouldn't fit in very well in a biker bar.

The crowd has gathered for the procession, and the costumes are mainly colorful and clown-like-- there is no imitation Rio de Janeiro here, as was the case in Portugal, which was ridiculous, given the Winter climate. No, the Germans of North Rhine Westphalia have their very own Carnival traditions that go way back to the Middle Ages. Prussian uniforms to mock the Prussian occupiers, for example.

With German efficiency, two cars edge along the path of the procession like lawn trimmers to force the crowd to back up a little, and the crowd remains back after the cars have passed. In most of the places I've been these past several years, the procession itself would have to force people out of the way, and if cars had passed to force the people back, the crowd would have moved in again just behind the cars, but this is Germany, and there is order. Or so I believe at that moment.

A band leads the way of the procession. The first big float is a sailing ship, towed by a farm tractor. The crowd begins to chant.

"Allah! Allah!" they are saying. And also, "Camellah! Camellah!"

There are many Turkish immigrants here, and clearly their faith has become a part of the Carnival tradition. I am impressed by the multi-culturalism.

"Allah! Allah!" I chant with the crowd. "Allah! Allah! Camellah! Bismillah! Inshallah!"

Allah is truly for everyone, as so many of my Muslim friends say.

I am then told that the chant is "Alaaf" rather than "Allah". It is the customary Carnival greeting.

"Ah, I see. And 'camellah'?" I ask.

"Kamelle. It's the Cologne dialect for 'candy'"

No matter, I change my chant to "Alaaf! Alaaf! Kamelle! Kamelle!" and I stretch out my arms, palms up, as the big ship passes by, and there are little children high above me on the float, and one of them hears my voice over all the others, and she is a child of perhaps seven years of age, and hearing my appeal to Alaaf, and hearing my plea for kamelle, she is merciful, and her tiny arm stretches out, and she opens her little fist, and candy flies through the air in my direction, and I stretch out my hand, and the mini Snicker's bar floats right to me, it is inches away, and another hand drifts into view, right in front of my face, and my mini-Snickers is intercepted, the wrath of Alaaf be upon him.

I had noticed the man who has stolen my candy as the crowd had waited for the procession. He is about my age, which for most people means a respectable age, and he looks like an accountant with children studying at the best universities. I glare at him but he gives me no acknowledgement. He pockets the mini Snicker's and ignores me, and I feel that I have suddenly been cast in shadow as the dark clouds of war pass overhead.

"Kamelle! Kamelle!" I roar, demanding now-- I will get my kamelle-- and once again the word creates an immediate response from the Kamelle angels passing by high above, and something-- a big candy bar possibly--arcs towards me-- it is rectangular, and it turns slowly as it arcs through the air as if it were on display-- and I reach out, and, almost, almost, and the hand-- the accountant's hand-- opens directly in front of my face-- and in that instant I see everything in slow motion-- the slowly turning rectangular object drifting to me, the hand wide open-- it is a pink, pale hand of average size with a wedding band on it-- and the hand closes on the object, my big candy bar-- closes and disappears from view. I glare at the accountant again, and again he ignores me. He hasn't been chanting the word--"kamelle"-- he has been standing there silently letting me make the appeals while he snatches the rewards from the air. I have an urge to flick the back of his ear as he inspects the object he has snatched away from me, and I've got my right middle finger in a circle, it's nail pressed hard against my thumb, cocked and ready to unleash against his pink ear when he hands the object over his shoulder, not even turning to see me-- just hands it back to me, and I take it-- he knows he was in the wrong-- I take it and I won't flick his ear after all-- and I look at the object, and it is not a big candy bar but a little packet of tissue paper.

"What the...?"

But I haven't got time to retaliate with an ear flick as the next float has arrived, and it is blaring that kind of music that makes you happy and want to dance, and those who are occupying it are dancing and throwing out candy, and I yell, "Kamelle! Kaaaameeeellee!", and the words are again answered by candy flying out, but not singly-- nay, not one candy but dozens of candies flying through the springtime-like sky, the cellophane glinting in the sun, a flock of candy, or a swarm perhaps, like a swarm of locusts, yet not locusts, but candy, flying to me, and yet, which candy to snatch out of the air? I want them all, haven't they been thrown to me? Mine! All mine! And an army of hands reaches out to snatch my candy away, yet some candy has gotten through the hands and they splatter like shotgun pellets on the ground, and I switch now to ground mode, bending down amidst the legs of the crowd, and I reach for a candy-- it is yellow-- lemony flavor, or butterscotch-- and it is snatched away by an elderly woman with a sack, and she puts it into her sack, and I glare at her but she acts as though I weren't there.

"What the...?"

But there, there is another, and I am down on all fours-- it is a long piece of taffy-- and I reach through someone's legs and grab one end of it but at the very same moment another hand has it by the other end-- it is another man my age, middle-aged-- a respectable age-- and he is well dressed, not even a funny hat to celebrate Carnival-- and we glare at each other for just a nano-second before the legs I am reaching through back up a bit and my head is pressing against a woman's rear end and she seems to be mildly panicking and I release my grip and the well-dressed man escapes with the taffy and I am sure at that moment that he drives an expensive Mercedes and cuts people off in traffic and gets away with it every time.

"Sorry," I say to the woman who looks very confused and does not reply.

But no time to reflect on this.

"Kamelle! Kaaameeelleee!" I shout with outstretched arms and it works again-- a child on the float is answering with a candy fired at point blank range-- a line drive straight to my head-- the accountant is distracted and the candy gets past him and I've got my hand out just in time and it's in my hand but I bobble it-- no! just like when I played second base in Little League baseball, I bobble it and it deflects from my hand to the ground and I haven't even managed to make a move for it when another hand snatches it off the ground-- "Kamelle! Kamelllllleeeee!"-- and a big rectangular object floats like a slow knuckleball and not in a predictable trajectory either, it moves left and right as if caught by the wind but I snatch it out of the air-- I've got it! It's mine! And it's a sponge-- the kind of sponge with a green scouring pad on one side, and I say again, "What the...?" and the accountant is facing me and he sees my prize and he seems to be mocking me.

Then two jumbo candy bars float through the air and a dozen hands reach for them and one hits the ground and a gray haired woman with a long-tailed coat and a tam-o-shanter on her head scrambles for the one on the ground and she gets it and hands it to me because she senses my suffering and I know there is hope for peace on Earth. She has converted me, this woman, and now I will gather candy to give it away, even to give to my enemy the accountant and that other bastard also wherever he is.

On a balcony there are people yelling "Kamelle!" and the more confident young men marching alongside a float in old Prussian uniforms hurl Snicker's bars to them but the Snicker's fall short of the mark and hit the pavement but no one below seems to have noticed them and I rush to fetch them-- not for myself, but to throw them up to those who have appealed to kamelle up on the balcony-- I have been converted and I will help promote peace in the world and I reach for one and a woman snatches it up-- she is in her thirties and not even watching the procession or making appeals to 'kamelle', just walking along-- and I scramble for the other one and she snatches it up too and she turns just enough to look at me contemptuously through the corner of her eyes and continues on her merry way and I've suddenly lost interest in the candy the same way I lost interest in making money which was also like seagulls fighting over fishheads.

But no matter, the neighbors I've come here with have a huge sack full of candy anyway and they give most of their haul to us and we go into a friend's house which is right where the procession is and we eat würst and drink beer and next year I will bring an umbrella bent the wrong way to catch all of the candy high above the merciless snatching hands and then I will hand it out to accountants and businessmen and mean old ladies and innocent children and throw it to people on balconies or maybe I'll just hoard it all for myself.