And then, abruptly, she grinned with Ted's old grin, and I knew it was all right.
"Hey-mix us a couple of Crazy Marys," she said. "I want to get out of this dress." She came back in a red silk robe that was probably illegal in some parts of the world, and sat cross-legged at one end of the couch.
I handed her a drink and parked myself at the opposite end. I wanted to hear the rest of her story.
"It was that willingness to experience that they were looking for," she continued. "That was the whole purpose of the retreat. They were tapping into me. They knew when I had broken through. When they picked me up again, they told me I'd graduated to the next level of my training. I'd demonstrated that I could assimilate. Now I was ready to be trained in assimilation.
"You can't imagine the classes, Jim. We wore the most incredible bodies, different bodies every day, bodies we'd never seen before. The paradox was that it was so we could be trained as beings, not identities. You see, identities and bodies are all tangled up together. You can't detach from one unless you also detach from the other.
"Do you know-no, of course, you couldn't-but after a while, when you know your body is just a transient phenomenon, you realize that bodies are irrelevant. Very quickly, you get detached from the physical universe that way; you lose all identifications and you begin to exist only in an experiential universe-a universe of pure beingness. I mean, the physical stuff is still there, of course, but it doesn't have any significance any more. It's just another piece in the game.
"And then after that, they started making us stay in the assigned bodies for longer and longer periods of time, so we wouldn't get too detached. Sometimes we had bodies as young as six, sometimes as old as seventy. Once I wore a Down's syndrome. Another time, I wore a little-girl body that still wet the bed. Once I was a football player. I felt like I was made out of bricks. They wanted us to know-and appreciate-the operating equipment that the rest of the human race is ... trapped in. So we could. .. sympathize with their condition.
"Then-and only then-did we start the classes in how to act like a male or a female in different cultures. I was amazed at how much I didn't know about how to be a man. I knew I didn't know how to be a woman-but there's a lot about manliness that most men don't know either. And we don't take the time to learn, because we think we already know it by the mere virtue of having been born male. The roles that we play-including gender-are almost all learned behavior. We make it up. Really! It's all an act, a performance. We had to learn those performances. We had, to learn how to be actors putting on our parts so thoroughly we became them. Just like you mundanes do-except you mundanes don't know you're doing it. That's the trap-and we escaped. We learned how to let go again too, so we could move onto the next identity.
"They told us we would probably change sex so often that we'd eventually lose any identification we had with either gender. And with that we'd also lose whatever investment we might have in a specific sexual identity. They said that ultimately we'd become omnisexual. I think I'm beginning to understand that now. Sex has become a totally different experience."
"I can imagine. .." I started to say.
"No. Unfortunately, you can't. I'm sorry, Jim-I feel like I keep excluding you. But this is beyond imagination."
"Try me," I said.
She sighed and waved a hand in frustration. "What I've experienced, Jim, is so ... incredible, I can't put it into words. It's that different when you don't have an identity attached. See, Jimthat's what I really learned-that I don't have to have an identity!" "I beg your pardon?"
"Normal people need identities. Telepaths don't. We're detached!"
"Uh-" I said. "I'm sorry, Ted. I don't get that."
"Oh." Her mood collapsed. Her effervescence disappeared. "You missed a step along the way, huh?"
"I guess so."
"Sorry." She scratched her head, a very unfeminine gesture. "Um, let's see-I guess I'm going to have to define my terms. Look, Jim," she said patiently, "the problem is the word `identity.'
"See if you can get this. Your identity is really a concept that you carry around. It's all attachments. You attach yourself to your name, to the cards in your wallet, to your job, to everything in your life-the car you drive, who you live with, who your parents were, what your rank is, where you come from, what school you went to, what your ambitions are, what your zodiac sign is, what church you go to, what branch of therapy you're currently in-did I leave anything out?"
"Doesn't sound like it."
"But that's not who you really are, is it? You could change any of those things-or all of them-and you'd still be the same self, the same person experiencing. Right?"
"All right, yeah. I got that."
"The self is what experiences the identity, Jim. Identity is only memory. It's the cumulative sense of all that stuff in your data banks. If I were to take away your memories, I'd be robbing you of your identity, but you'd still be the same person experiencing."
"But-I know I'm me now," I said, tapping my chest. "I know who I am-"
"You know your attachments. When I ask you who you are, where do you go to look? When I ask you where you went to school, who your parents were, what kind of terminal you work on, where do you look?"
"Uh-oh, I see. In my memory."
"Right," she grinned. "So if I took away your memory, you wouldn't know who you were, would you?"
"I'd be awfully confused."
"Sure. In your case, that'd be just like normal. But you see the point. If you had no memory, you'd have no identity. You'd have to build a whole new one, wouldn't you?"
I shrugged. "Yeah, sure."
"Now if I gave you all of my memories, if I could just pour them into your head, you'd think you were me, wouldn't you?"
"Yeah. I can see that."
But you'd still be you, the same person experiencing it all. You'd just be experiencing a different identity now, right?"
"Okay, I got it."
"Good." She leaned back against the sofa and relaxed. "Well, that's what this whole thing is all about. The self-that being inside-that's who you really are. A telepath needs to know that or he'll go crazy. That's what all that training is really about. I had to experience my identity as a thing apart from my self so I could know my self. Jim," she said, with frightening candor, "I can never be my old identity again-because I know how artificial it was in the first place. In my training, I learned how I made it up. I looked at all my old memories. I saw how it all happened and it freed me!
"They tell you when you start your training that you're going to have to give up that thing you'd rather die than give up. I didn't know then what they meant-but it's the attachment to your identity. I had to give up being Ted. I am not Ted any more. I will never be Ted again." She stopped abruptly and looked at me-as if waiting for a reaction.
I stared at her. For a moment, I had the bizarre sensation that I was sitting with a total stranger again. "But I know who you are-" I protested. "Or do I? Is there any of Ted left?" I asked.
"All of me is left," she laughed. "What's gone are the `foofoos'-the arbitrary attachments to being a specific person." "This is very confusing," I admitted. "I keep thinking they've done something weird to you. I mean, weirder even than you're telling me."
"Of course it's weird!" she laughed. "That's the only reason for doing it." And then she turned serious again. She took my hand in hers. There was a hint of-was it sadness?-in her voice now. "The difference between us is that I know that identities are all artificial. That's a terrifying thing to know. An identity isn't just threatened by that fact-it's destroyed. Of course, you're going to resist knowing that. Because then you have to start being responsible for the identity you've created, are continually creating!"