Breathe your own radiant self...
THE RADIANT SELF

The Radiant Self now has its own website!! www.TheRadiantSelf.com

Eventually, every album will have its own In Depth page where you will find very fine background details about each album with all sorts of private facts about how the album was created, notes from the Japetus Journals, scans of 'track sheets' from the recording sessions (eg this one from The Great Great Silence) and much more.

In the year preceding each album, the journey and instructions for that album were visioned and written out in the 'Japetus Journals'. The most important key part of The Radiant Self album was the spontaneously sketched graph that plotted all the different aspects and levels of that journey.

The Radiant Self is a two-part journey and the first part - The Journey Through - is an important and essential section because if you can't 'get in' then you can't 'be in' the inner space to experience the second part - The Realisations - of which there are five. 'The Journey Through' is an important soundspace that guides, prepares and trains the adept for 'inner space' where they can then undertake their own explorations and realisations.

Below you can see an annotated scan of the original hand-drawn graphic in Journal #26 (which was titled 'Germination') in late January 1989 . It clearly shows in simple detail the landscape and topography for that first part of the journey. It is 'The Way in'!

Click on picture to view a close-up in a new window.

Here is the text transcribed exactly as written from the two pages in the journal that preceded the graphic above:

"Mind is radiant. Mind and imagination are the jeweled silver screen in the theatre of your life. Back-projected on the screen are the diverse pictures of life and possibility and growth. Causes and seeds.

And you sit within and gather the fruit.

Now, what shines on the outside through the thought-forms; what is the projector?

It is your own Radiant Self of course, However, to raise yourself up to truly perceive the highest truth, you also 'grow into the light' - you become 'enlightened'.

Thus you can equate the search for the highest self as: a pathway to overall enlightenment.

What you discover though, is that the light that has been shining on you is simply a pin prick hole in the fabric of time, space and ether that is the doorway into something even greater - the animating energy of life... the universe.

The pathway through self is to all. The pathway to all is through self.

Jesus said "I am the way and the light". What he actually meant was "(The) 'I' is the way and the light (is the way)."

So, the radiant self is the keyhole to the depths of consciousness. It is the 'bridge across forever'. Imagine... if you could journey up through the gateway into the perception corridor, see through the screen, enter the inner sphere and gaze open eyed into the light of your own perfect self.

Floating in abyss - straight in - instant relaxation - no questions - no exceptions - Infinity.

Gradually manifest an intensity and have it blossom, after building, then fruit to a glorious climax." Japetus - January 1989.

---

Japetus writes: Researching this page was an interesting discovery for me. In my memory, I believed that The Radiant Self was created in 1987, a year after Visions of Paradise (1986) but there is an interesting story about that time frame. I remembered that the second part of The Radiant Self album, called The Realisations, begins and ends with a one minute excerpt of the album that followed it - Infinity (1988).

This was really interesting.

After going through the initiation of creating the music for Nevill Drury's Mystic Pathways series in 1985...

...I went on to create my most popular and best-loved work - Visions of Paradise in 1986. From there I visioned....

...I visioned - what could be next? What do you find when you 'vision'? Visions of Paradise was my vehicle to reach up through the swirling miasma of mental delusion (see whirlpool in the bottom of the cover below) and look out above the inner ocean (of emotion). In the distance, through a waterfall of illusion, I visioned an 'island of Self'. It was my inner-self, individualised and busy in the world 'below'. I was looking across to the distant horizon and my island-self seemed to be floating. Above it was a vibrant glow. That was glare from my inner being - my Radiant Self.

I was surfing the inner worlds on the surfboard of my consciousness, steering with my vision, and as I approached the island I could see that the gigantic spherical glow surrounding the top of the volcano actually contained a giant luminescent pentagram that was spinning, as slow as a galaxy, over a central volcanic core. The pentagram had large opaque coloured spheres on each point.

But the question immediately arose: where is the radiant self? Where does it 'live'. And straight away the answer: in Infinity! So if I created The Radiant Self then the deeper realisations that you have in that inner space would need to be 'seated' and 'enthroned' by 'Infinity'. And so I immediately knew what the follow-up album to The Radiant Self must be. It would be called Infinity and contain all the 'God/Monad/Sprit sounds' that I had created for my existing work to describe the 'colour' of the infinite.

So, before I could finish The Radiant Self I had to create Infinity so that I knew where to 'put it' and also what the parameters are for 'measuring' The Radiant Self. It is only from the perspective of infinity can you truly appreciate the completeness and depth and complexity of that Self; its relationship and references; its context.

Realising that, I decided to pause the whole The Radiant Self recording and moved on to create the album Infinity which was a quick and fascinating process itself (more written details coming soon). When Infinity was finished after 3 months I went back to The Radiant Self and restarted the recording process for the secon section - The Realisations - knowing the complete context of the journey.

In the weeks before recording I had dreams about The Radiant Self journey... climbing through the graph in my mind... from level to level... looking forward and looking back. It was all laid out in the graph, so before I started I knew all the parameters for each section and how they related to the other sections. The second part - The Realisations - developed spontaneously directly based on my experiences once I had created The Journey Through and penetrated the inner sphere.

The Radiant Self disc artwork - the view looking down on the island.

Once I was floating on my back immersed in my Source at the top of the volcanic centre of my being, I could project my awareness up into each of the spheres hovering overhead attached to the giant spinning pentagram. As my focus was absorbed by each sphere I experienced five different realisations.

Between each realisation my mind would travel along the silver tubes of the pentagram delivering me into the next realisation sphere in order. The final sphere was the most unexpected - The Realisation of the whole... of the entire journey as one complete form.

The Radiant Self inside rear tray artwork

It was amazing, some 12 years later in 2000, to 'distill' the original music track down into words and add the guided visualisation to the package. This visualisation added a whole new dimension and gave in-depth perspectives. It brought clarity to the process even though the journey is fully encoded into the music soundspace anyhow. I literally played the music back to myself and then re-experienced the journey and wrote down what I believed was the clearest interpretation. The words literally decoded themselves while I listened to the music soundspace and condensed onto the paper as I listened fifteen seconds at a time and I described the story of the journey as it proceeded.

The Radiant Self - back cover

One of the unique things about The Radiant Self visualistion was that after The Journey Through the listener is actually asked to sit (in their imagination!) as a now transformed, glowing radiant being and meditate on the pentagram and visualise themselves (within the visualisation!) back up at the top of the volcano and project their consciousness up into each of the spheres. Then, coming back from the spheres to the base of the volcano, you awaken from that 'internal visualisation' so you can continue the original visualisation and exit the golden sphere of 'inner space' by retracing your original steps out, back to waking consciousness.

That is quite a unique workout.

Hopefully this In-depth explanation has helped you gain a deeper understanding of The Radiant Self and the journeys and levels involved. Please ask any questions or share any experiences you have.

Because The Radiant Self is my 'major work' I have started this new In-depth section with that album but over time I will hopefully be writing an In-depth story with background details for each of the albums in the Visionary Journeys catalogue.

Thanks for your interest.

Japetus.