Mack was washed away into the blackness then, a spark instantly absorbed into what was at once a tidal wave containing a whole ocean, and a wave of purest evil.
The darkness itself began to recede, until there was nothing left of the past in the portal, which itself shuddered, then faded, and slipped into memory.
David found himself looking out across a broad meadow that ended in trees, and beyond the trees, the vine-choked pink debris of a city, its ruined towers glowing in the dawn.
The ruins were very, very old, and they looked dark and haunted with the terrors of the last cycle. But they must be filled with useful materials, even with shelter.
But where was everybody else? In fact, where was he?
“David?”
Her! He’d come through the portal backward, that was all, and he whirled around and there she stood, her body framed by the golden light of dawn, as the sun, now placid again, rose behind her.
All across the meadow, sitting silently and watching the new sun rise, were the people they had rescued, and more; in fact, there were thousands upon thousands in this verdant new world.
There was a man with her, and they were hand in hand, and a knife cut to the frightened heart of David’s love.
“David, don’t you remember your old teacher?” the man asked.
Flushed with relief, then with the joy of meeting again after all these years, he took the shoulders of Charles Light, looked into his eyes, and the happiness of those days came flooding back, and with it all the memories that had remained lost, not the important things, which he had already remembered, but the less important ones, the way the desks were arranged, how exciting it was to understand the marvels they were being taught. And, above all, he remembered Caroline.
They had not been lovers in any adult sense, but in an instant he recaptured all the innocent happiness he had known with her, and remembered the promises they had made.
She stood before him, her eyes cast down, the sunlight flaming in her hair, a picture of dizzying sensuality and innocence all mixed together, and in that moment he truly understood how perfectly the human spirit is paralleled by the personalities of the old gods, and he saw her as the Lady of the Starry Skirt, at once an earthy, sweaty, soft woman and a star keeper, her body belonging to youth and the promise of the womb, her soul to the heavens.
He could not speak. He was beyond speech.
She came into his arms, and when he embraced her, she felt as soft as a cloud. Her eyes regarded him, looking in amazement at his face, then fluttering closed in the cathedral of their kiss.
For a moment, the kiss was the center of the universe—and then there came a hand to his shoulder.
They slipped away from one another. Charles Light was smiling, but then his expression became more serious.
“We have to organize them,” he said. “We have to get this thing rolling.”
Arm in arm, he and Caroline headed back toward the great crowd, where children were now running and dogs cavorting, and people were relaying down to the nearby river to get water.
“There’s a lot of work to do,” David said.
“That’s why we’re here,” a voice replied. It was Del, and he and Mike were arm in arm with a third soldier. They had found Tim.
Tim was appalled by the magnitude of the situation. All these people without food, without shelter.
“I don’t know where to start!”
Caroline squeezed his hand. “Of course you do.”
Which, he realized, was true. All of them did. They knew in their blood why they were still here on Earth, because they had wanted to participate in the building of the next great cycle.
But they weren’t the sort of people who were likely to think on such things. If you put one of them in a room, they would clean the room. Give them a file, and they would organize it, or an empty field on a summer morning and they would think ahead to winter, and start a house.
They were already stirring among themselves, seeking aim and direction, looking for work to do.
The immeasurably conscious presence that is the ascended wing of mankind was never wrong and could not be wrong. These were the ones who would put their shoulders to their task, and create the foundation of a new and better world, that would emerge out of the compassion that was common to all of their hearts, and it would be better than the old world, because in it there would be no more souls devoted to greed and all its cruelties. The last phase of history had been designed to cause them to reveal themselves, so that they could be removed forever. Mankind was not going to experience another cycle of evil and ruin, but this time would work on ecstasy, so that, somewhere along the vast halls of time, when this age ended, everyone would ascend and the species, finally, would leave the physical world entirely behind.
Eventually, other earthly species would gain intelligence, but that would not be for a billion and a half years, and by then even the least trace of human works would be gone, and mankind would have joined the journey into ecstasy which, like heat, has no upper limit.
In the deep redoubts that Mack had striven so to save, death had been slow, for they had been built to last, and to the people imprisoned within there came bitter hatred and violence, and finally madness, and they all sank away, all of those people, into the same darkness that had consumed Mack.
The god with whom David had been identified from his childhood, the great plumed serpent Quetzalcoatl, manifested in him not as a grand presence, but rather as a practical one, concerned less about the mysteries of time and the grandeur of its cycles, and more about making sure the water was fit to drink and shelter could be found, and food gathered during the plenitude of summer.
As some got water, others were already scouring the shrubs for berries, others heading in groups toward the ruined city, to find what might be of use there.
From across a far hill, another group appeared, people waving, and here and there joyous reunions took place, wife running to husband, child to mother. Over the whole of the restored Earth of all those thousands of years in the future, this same scene was being repeated.
But it would not be all joy. There would be struggle and suffering here. This was going to be hard.
David would do his best at his job, and become famous among them for his tirelessness, but time would wear on him as it does on us all, and one day he would leave them, and his beloved Caroline, and the family that they would make in a small house that was yet to be built, in a village that was not yet, on this first day, even an idea.
The secret of Quetzalcoatl’s power is that he is a humble god.
In many stories and religious traditions, and even in the science of the lost world, this time had been predicted. But there was one statement about it that turned out to be the clearest and the most profoundly true, which had been made over two thousand years before the old cycle had ended.
It had been uttered on a little hill in Palestine, by a tired man with a matted beard, the last public practitioner of the lost science. He was an itinerant Jewish carpenter and sometime preacher who had met an old Egyptian priest, who had given him white powder gold of the true form, confected at one of the great time temples, all of which were dedicated to Hathor. This one was in the Sinai, and it was here that he was taught the secret laws of reality, which enabled him to raise the dead and heal the sick, and see clearly along the dim halls of time.
He had gone far in his studies, and seen much. And so it was that there came a day when he saw a chance to speak a sermon that would contain the deepest human meaning that there is. So he set forth, in a few hoarsely shouted verses on a hot afternoon, the whole journey of the human soul, and the inner meaning of mankind.
In that sermon was contained the most important prophecy ever made—ten words shouted out while people ate and chatted, and listened with the same casual wonder they might give to a bird of surpassing voice, or a street-corner mountebank with a deck of cards.
After he had been speaking for a while, he saw that
he was not gaining their undivided attention, and he therefore tried this: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He had shouted it at them, but still there was little attention paid. What did it mean, anyway? They did not understand that he spoke not of the spiritually impoverished, but of those who share in spirit the suffering of the poor, and give of themselves to lift others.
He tried again, crying out, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” This had immediately regained the attention of the crowd. In that hard era, when the Jews were chained to the Roman yoke, there was not one of them who did not have reason to mourn.
So he had what he needed, the crucial moment of attention into which he would utter words that would define a future that was still over twelve thousand years away.
He then cried out, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
That had brought silence and questioning glances, then a confused murmur.
Soon after, he had gone down and taken a meal of bread and oil, and some thick wine. Nobody had recorded the words, but they had stayed in many hearts, and, in time, were given to the ages.
Today, though, those of whom they had been spoken had no time to think on them. And they weren’t thinkers, anyway, most of them. They were workers, and the sun was full up and the day was growing warm, and there was a very great deal to be done.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE WORLD OF THE OMEGA POINT
What if the world really did end? What would we do? How would the human species come to a close—in terror and chaos, or according to some sort of hidden plan?
If there is a plan, there will also be chaos, that’s clear enough. No matter how sublime the plan, people are likely to be quite upset, so I am happy to report that I don’t have any specific information that the world will end in 2012, 2020, or, for that matter, anytime soon. But I can assure you that, one day, for one reason or another, planet Earth will become unable to sustain human life, and there are people, or will be people, who will face this distressing inevitability.
So, what happens? Is it all simply random or is there some sort of meaning? Is there an afterlife, perhaps, or some other place we can go, or is our species condemned to join all the others who have emerged here, lived for a while, then died out and been forgotten?
Or, put another way, is the universe essentially random and chaotic, but so large that the emergence of conscious life here and there is more or less inevitable?
Modern science says that human beings are biological machines and that we emerged out of a long period of evolution that is mechanical and random. To make matters even more dolorous, the fossil record demonstrates with terrifying eloquence that gigantic, devastating extinctions are the norm on our innocent-seeming little planet. Add to that the fact that modern science says that death is the end of everything, and a pretty dreary picture emerges.
However, modern science’s vision is quite a new approach to the meaning of life, and there are reasons—a few—that enable legitimate speculation that it may not be correct. My own life has unfolded so far outside of what science tells us that we should expect, I really do wonder if we might not be having, as we live, quite a different experience from what appears to be the case, and one that is only partially explained by a mechanistic view.
Over the course of this little essay, I’ll tell some of the stories from my own experience that suggest—at least to me—that life may be much more than it seems, and there may be good reason for our inability to perceive the whole truth of it. Of course, I would be the last person to assert that I’m right and the entire scientific establishment is wrong.
In fact, I’m more than a little embarrassed at ending up so far outside of the mainstream. In terms of getting things like book reviews, for example, it’s been quite inconvenient. But I love quiet, and being an outsider certainly brings plenty of that. It also brings undeserved opprobrium and spittle-hazed rage. In my career, I have encountered many pumping carotids, and I confess to taking an evil pleasure in inducing bluster and outrage.
I’m annoying and, unfortunately, I enjoy this. But there’s a larger reason. I don’t think that I’m wrong about the marvels that have filled my life, and I do want others to enjoy them, as well, and to find the same delightfully light and deep meaning that they have brought me.
It is incredibly freeing to know—as, in my heart, I do—that human life is indeed part of a vast continuum of consciousness that persists after death, and that is woven into the extraordinary glory that is intelligent life in the universe.
So I’m full of joy, because I have had, and am having, a marvelous adventure that suggests that the secular and essentially mechanical vision of ourselves that has become a shorthand and core belief in scientific and intellectual circles, is not true, and that what is true about us is so far beyond even the most optimistic imaginings of the ancients that we actually live on a hidden frontier. Just beyond the lowering clouds that choke the present horizon lies a world of wonders, and the electrifying discovery of what we truly are.
I don’t think that, at any time in recorded history, we have been right about our true nature. Certainly, the old Western theocracy that arose out of the dismal Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 is wrong, and probably even more wrong than modern science.
I suppose that leaves me more or less out on a limb—or, more properly, a plank. Without science or religion, I certainly have no established allies. Maybe secret societies could take up my cause, but so far, no cigar.
It’s quite fun on my plank. Out here, if you jump you may just fly. Out here, we are a delicious mystery that goes far beyond the intricacies of physical life, but is also divorced from the guilty weight of conventional religion.
I do not think that we live in the highest civilization ever known, and I think that the modern intellectual enterprise has failed in two fundamental ways. It has been unable, or unwilling, to look at the past objectively, and it has been unable to devise any means to detect the existence of the soul as a part of the physical universe—a measurement that, I think, must be possible. If I am correct, it must also be the foundation of a much truer science than we now know.
I think that the modern failure to realize that energy can itself be conscious is as fundamental to our progress as was the failure of the ancient world to understand the potential of steam power.
Around A.D. 120, Heron of Alexandria invented a device called the aeolipile, a simple steam engine, which was used to open the doors of a temple, and also showed up in Roman playrooms as a toy. The potential of the technology was never understood by the Roman world. Without any ability to see the soul, and penetrate into its reality with technology, modern science is at least as far from understanding the truth about human life as the Romans were from understanding steam power.
If the experience gained from lives like mine is at all true, then we have two forms, one that is active and embedded in the physical body, and another that is contemplative and lives on when the body dies, in an energetic state. I believe that consciousness cycles back and forth between the two, but both are essentially part of physical reality. The soul is not in any way outside of nature, but human death is a transformation into another form, in the same way that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.
To me, the physical world is far richer than would be suggested by a mechanistic model of reality. I do not believe that religious traditions such as that of resurrection, which emerges in earliest times in the form of the story of Osiris, and continues to the promise of Christ, involve the supernatural at all. They are about living in the physical world in a way that leads to the preservation of individuality when the body dies and consciousness enters the energetic state.
From Osiris to Christ, I wonder if the resurrection stories might not reflect an ancient science of the soul that was lost as our increasing focus on the material world caused us to become soul-blind and thus god-blind and therefore also blind to the most vividly ali
ve aspect of our own being?
As a result of this change in focus, we no longer live to die, we live to live. On the surface, this seems nicer, of course. But that’s only on the surface. In that it assumes that death has no meaning, it also assumes that life has no meaning.
I think that it has led to a situation where most of us are completely unprepared for death. So we enter the other world in confusion, clinging to the residue of our physical lives. It has also led us to our fantastic obsession with material existence, and our addictive habits of consumption.
It’s interesting to contemplate just how awkward it must be for some people when they arrive on the other side. Christians who find no Saint Peter, or Muslims who are not greeted by dancing virgins—except, perhaps, for the women. Or people like Jean-Paul Sartre or, say, Nietzsche, whose embarrassment must have been quite fantastic. The truth, I suspect, is that on dying we enter another kind of life, but it is, also, ordinary life. Chiefly, it offers an immeasurably detailed reconstruction of our physical experience that can enable us to rise above the whole process altogether and, seeing ourselves with true objectivity, ascend into unimagined realms.
This is what is happening in The Omega Point, to the vast numbers of people who are ascending into the enigmatic higher reality. David Ford never quite understands what is happening to them, or why it doesn’t happen to him, so he soldiers on in his elegantly unsure way, trying to find the sense of his own very different mission.
Certain parts of the Bible, and traditions such as the ancient Egyptian religion, suggest that there may once have been more objective understanding of this other reality, and that it may have been addressed with the lost science of the soul. Among the relevant documents in the Bible, the Gospels are a chronicle of how to live to die in a state of compassion and forgiveness that enables us to let go of the concerns of physical life and ascend, rather than cling to them and end up eventually returning to this state—a fate which cannot possibly be considered as other than a pretty mawkish outcome, once one has become aware of the greater potential that one might have realized.
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