Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

"Alexandra, let us end our work for the day. I need to think for a while."
That weekend Mrs. Dahl asked Alexandra whether she would join them at a concert on
occasion of the second anniversary of Mahler’s death. Richard Strauss would conduct Mahler’s
Sixth Symphony, possibly his happiest and most unified work.
The concert hall, its walls and ceiling painted with mythological murals of the deeds of
Herakles, was crowded with the intelligentsia of Munich. Strauss gave a speech praising the
towering genius of twentieth century music, and a soft-spoken Alma Mahler read a tearful
commemoration of her husband.
From the first few bars Alexandra, who had expected another Farbensymphonie, was
overwhelmed by the music. She did see her usual colors but, at the same time, the ominous
marches of the first movement made all her foreboding visions reappear. Entire armies
marched before her eyes, battling nostalgic memories of a decadent, romantic way of life.
Again and again the sweet dances of Vienna resurfaced for a few bars only to be trampled
under the feet of another combative battalion of marching soldiers.
Relentlessly this destruction continued through the second movement. She was haunted
by a vision of ruined cities and devastated landscapes. The melody of a broken merry-goround
playing on and on until it too broke off. A phalanx of armed men were mowed down by
an army proceeding from the opposite direction.
The slow third movement, a euphonious lullaby, apparently intended to show a new
generation of children growing up who survived this mayhem in some sylvan glade, almost
made her angry.
The long last movement confirmed the lies of the third and the horrors of the first two. A
gigantic battle between good and evil, between classical beauty and the voracious war
machines, ended in three final blows of the kettledrum: thrice dead. A fitting requiem for
Europe.
Alexandra, deeply shaken, remained unusually quiet for the rest of the evening. Beyond
a heartfelt thank-you to Mrs. Dahl, she felt in no mood to talk about her experiences.
During their last session at Dahl's Alexandra finished her description of her meditation
exercises including her new way of letting spontaneous images arise. Dahl found this an
interesting exercise, as it would allow him to reproduce the content of the subconscious in
pictures while fully awake.
"But how do you induce your dissociation? How do you separate yourself from your
body and split your personality in order to fly?"
This Alexandra could not describe. "I guess, because I experienced flying
spontaneously once—produced by an extreme condition—I find it easy to slip back into this
state. Maybe one has to have had a death experience to learn to fly, and again maybe that is
the reason why the initiation rites in Tibetan Buddhism and in all shamanic disciplines
culminate in a death experience."
After she had reached the dissociated state what happened next? What was
superposition?
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