Hyp Prose is the way our subconscious speaks. It becomes available to people in times of emotional turmoil and heightened emotional states.
Hyp Prose can only really be written by those who have been profoundly touched by the Ignis Sacer - the Holy Fire - the experience of what Ignatius of Loyola called consolation, which is always followed by desolation.
Hyp Prose can however reach ordinary readers, temporarily lifting them (gently and safely) out of emotional normality in order to instruct and refine their spirits. Like those who engage in the Spiritual Exercises, you don’t need to undergo the privations of Ignatius to learn what they taught him.
One of the great promises of psychiatry is that people suffering from profound religious mania can be retrieved out of their suffering, and restored to enough sanity to allow them to teach what they have learned by their journeys through heaven and hell.
The sample text [From the Chronicles of Lupa 1:8] shows Ruby taking Jesse down into a deep state of emotional receptivity before she speaks to him, in a kind of Hyp-Prose-within-Hyp-Prose moment.
P. Julian
3 March 2019
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Such conversations are perilous things, especially when they are inflamed by the drinking of fine and sensual wines. Ruby and Jesse began talking about what they wanted, in love most of all, and what they would settle for, and there were covert declarations within these confessions, and there was secret yearning expressed without any explicit confession of anything, and more than that even, in the longing that was between them.
Ruby, he said.
Yes.
I have something to ask you.
She lowered her head.
Mr Jesse.
Yes Ruby?
It might be better if you didn’t.
Jesse sighed and looked downwards, shifting his cutlery with his fingertips.
I suppose I already knew that, he said.
Ruby saw such sadness rise in him, and his hard solitude, and his yearning to be released from it. She also saw his tragic goodness shining out to her more brightly than she had ever seen it. Ruby began to soften and she felt her heart reach out to him but there were gargoyles at the gates of her heart and they arrested it as it flowed. They turned her love back sharply and she saw deeply into things that she had not properly comprehended before, and with the mercy and the severity of every Ruby Tuesday, the great heart that had beaten since Gan Eden, she took Jesse’s mind and she shepherded it beside quiet waters, and in those cool pastures where he was led Ruby spoke to him, using just those words that were stored within her, for Jesse and for this very occasion.
O Jesse. You fine, upright man. My heart yearns for you, as you can only imagine. But in Babylon you know: my love would mark you out for destruction, and damn me to die of desolation. O spring of Jesse, O my heart’s desire. I shall not yield to you. You shall not know me, Beloved, until we are led back into the Promised Land.
Ruby was silent again and Jesse was quiet and still, and he did not move for many seconds. When he did move he slowly picked up his wine glass, and examining it in the soft light of the room he asked: what are they putting in my wine? And Ruby held her glass up too and she laughed gently at his astonishment and said: whatever it is, I hope you feel better. And he said: I feel proud, for some reason. I feel like somebody loves me. And Ruby said: we all love you, Mister Jesse. More than you can know.
And although Ruby was quiet about that and did not volunteer anything further still Jesse’s heart swelled gently within him. It grew and also softened in pride and satisfaction, and although these feelings were strange still he felt as though he was worthy of them, and they did not abate for the whole of the rest of the meal, or the next day, or the next. Like a gift, an abundant blessing, these feelings stayed within Jesse and they shored him up, and while his solitude persisted he felt justified in it, and even loved, and he felt all of the strictness of his honour but also the sturdy reassurance of it, as it beat with the same beat of his heart, entirely inseparable from that deep rhythm which sustained him, and which raised him up. Such is more than most men could hope for.