Arno looked at his clothing. It was a brown shirt with silver embroidery on the cuffs. Ringo Badger was still with him. As usual he was dressed in red and yellow hood, blue breeches and an emerald green tunic.
They were down on the ground, in the scorched land. The only things in sight were dust and ashes under an overcast sky. The pair went through veils of smoke and saw burned corpses and charred houses: the bodies of man and woman, children and pets, all had been ravaged by fire.
Everything was burned; the Earth Kingdom was in ruins. Lifeless. They walked across plains and sandy heaths; they crossed ruined cities and blackened valleys. Finally, they faced a forest of bare trees. The Badger sat down on a tree trunk and took out a pipe.
Arno saw the Badger’s pipe and asked:
“Will you really light it? Isn’t that a bit… not in keeping with this world destroyed by fire?”
“The less the risk of burning something then,” the Badger said, lit his pipe and puffed.
Arno said:
“I think everything seems pointless.”
The Badger said:
“Indeed? You who used to say, ‘I Am,’ and then be ready for anything.”
Arno nodded at this. Then he quietened down his mental turmoil, took a deep breath and said, “I Am.” This made him calm, as it always did.
But still, he had set fire to the world and this upset him. This he told his guru, who said:
“You feel anguish over this. OK. It shows that you’re human, that you have an ethic. But your woes aside, we can’t undo the fire. Now you must reset yourself and think about coming days.”
“Indeed,” Arno said, “I will.”
He fell in a trance where he sat, immersed in concentrated thoughts. He took a breath, he took two, he took several. He thought: the way forward – coming days – new world.
A bird sang. The sky revealed a rip in the clouds.
“Have some wine, the sunshine is fine,” the Badger sang. Arno heard it and said:
“Summer’s here, eh…?”
“The fields are black but the sun’s shining. As for you, Arno, I have an inkling that you’ve cleared your psyche. Well, at least you have a foundation to build on. You can help build up the world again…!”
“But how?”
“By acknowledging your ‘I Am’-impulse – and seeing the same impulse, the same spark in your neighbour’s eye. Also, you can build a new world by living in the here-and-now. By being constructive, being present in the present. Light will prevail over darkness. But we have to actively choose light. Willpower is needed, in this as in any other case.”
This was in sync with Arno’s own philosophy and he cherished the thought.
That very moment rain started falling from the sky: a Benign Higher Being sending water over the Earth and all its countries, putting out the fires that still raged. The rain fell and extinguished the remaining fires, moistening the throats of thirsting people. For some still lived.
Arno got up and said goodbye to the Badger. The other man bowed his head in a respectful gesture and continued puffing at his pipe. Arno started walking. He looked back at his guru who faded away in the moor while the rain fell, the sun shone and a rainbow arched in the sky.
Arno continued to dream. He was, as intimated, a seasoned dreamer: “He was old in the land of dreams,” as Lovecraft once put it. And this dream had just begun. He went off through woodland and desert and eventually spotted a building in the distance, a tall, narrow tower, built of reddish stone. Arno approached the structure and stepped up to the gate, a massive, ironbound oak door. He knocked.
No one answered. Arno tried the door. It was unlocked. Once in the hall he saw a staircase straight ahead. Up old, worn stairs he went, reaching the upper floor and heading for a chamber. Soon he found himself standing in a round room with a lancet window. The walls were covered by woven fabrics, monochrome hangings in turquoise blue. Otherwise, the room contained nothing. He walked over to the window and looked out over the Dreamland.
He saw the plains, he saw the forests in the distance, he saw the azure heavens. The sight of this was unremarkable but it was pleasing to Arno. There and then he realised it all. He gained clarity; there was a sense of clarity in the things and clarity within him.
He understood his lesson: Yes, fire and uninhibited belligerence can burn the world. He had during the war, when he was in hospital in Hanover, dreamed that he burned the world. And in the dream recently experienced his spiritual guide, Ringo Badger, had re-appeared and reminded him about this world fire. “The World Conflagration,” this was a symbol for World War II, what Arno had participated in. Now he had, in the dream, seen its devastation. And learned to make use of moderation in wielding arms. Like: if you go too far you create atomic bombs.
Arno hadn’t dropped the nuclear bomb. But he had, in his 1944 dream in Hanover, dreamed that he burned the world with “the Cherubim Sword” and it was in spirit the same as dropping a nuclear bomb.
Arno had served in the war as a combat soldier. He had fought for his land, for his people, against Bolshevism. This he was proud of. But on a more abstract level the violence bothered him, the destruction, the uninhibited use of force as displayed in the great armies. This had triggered his dreams of burning the world. Arno, having served the War God, got nightmares from the ferocious, nihilistic aspect of the war. Back in the day, he hadn’t been altogether immune to the allure of nihilism. “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”
But now Arno had been reconciled with his past. The Badger had helped him see the big picture. Standing in the castle chamber Arno faded into the dream landscape. He said:
“Everything is unity. I am the plain, I am the woods, I am the world. I am Arno. I AM.”
He dreamed on. He dreamed that he left the chamber, walked down the stairs and went out into the sun.
He wandered through the woods. They were green again. It was a seemingly endless series of neighborhoods that must be crossed for the dream to be fulfilled. So he walked on, saw cities and seas, parks and gardens, woodland and moor. All alive once again. And then he woke up.
He was in his cabin in Aspeboda. He looked at his watch and its luminescent hands. Half past five. Through a gap between the window sill and the blind the grey morning light was seeping in.
In other words, it wasn’t really time to get up yet. Arno thought about what he had dreamed. He was only human. He wasn’t a saint, nor a war god. But he had, as he already knew, a will – a will to do good.
The dream from 1944 to burn the world began to gain some perspective. Arno still shuddered at the visions – visions he had received in the replay he had just dreamed. But it wasn’t his fault that the world was mad. Not solely.
I’m no saint, he thought. I Am That I Am. Ego sum qui sum. I have the divine spark within me. I’m trying to be more than I am, trying to realise the Light by force of Will.
With that he fell asleep anew.
Arno lived on. His money was running out, so he took a job. For a while he earned his living by working as a waiter in Örebro. Additionally, one day in 1948, he went to visit his parents in Karlstad, Horst and Tora. It was a happy reunion. Then, in the ’50s, he became an NCO in the Swedish Army, serving in the I 21 Regiment in Sollefteå. He became a regular military employee. More about the career-related side of this shortly. Anyway, he moved to Sollefteå, this northern metropolis at Ångermanälven river. And in 1955, he was in this city living with a certain Solbritt. She was only 19-years-old but looked like 25 or more. She was a voluptuous, captivating, full-blooded woman with dark blond hair and blazing blue eyes. She worked as a bank assistant.