The Key

by Whitley Strieber

  Conscious energy is not like unconscious energy, the servant of those who understand its laws. To gain access to the powers of conscious energy, you must evolve a relationship with it. Learn its needs, learn to fulfill them. But also remember, it is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, easily detectable by your science as it exists now. You can learn to signal and be heard, and to record response. The veil between the worlds can fall. The undiscovered country can become your backyard.

  But how can we do this?

  By first realizing that you are not cut off. There is no supernatural. There is only the natural world, and you have access to all of it. Souls are part of nature.

  I don’t feel that we have access to the whole of the physical world, then. We’re trapped here on earth, for example. Our space program has lead feet.

  When you were challenged from the outside, your government chose the path of public denial and secret defiance. This is the path to failure. It must change its policy to one of public admission and open defiance.

  You speak of secrecy concerning the alien presence here?

  Until you take your place, you will remain trapped. The threats that have been delivered to your government in secret are a test. To pass it, you must defy them. Your place will not be given you. You must be strong enough to take it.

  I have the impression that the government knows very little. Then you have the wrong impression. But remember that government is very complex, and a good deal of it is not what it seems at all. Much is hidden from your public officials. This world is run in secret.

  Government is not what it seems?

  Form an assault on secrecy. You are right to fight against official secrecy. It is the greatest present evil.

  Not even most people in the government understand this, and when it comes to aliens, the culture of denial is total. Look at this book I just finished—a few thousand people will buy it, nobody will act.

  You must find a way, because the alternative is to be denied your place in the higher world.

  What is this higher world?

  What difference does that make to you?

  I am trying to find out our relationship to it.

  Not all human beings are radiant bodies. But all may become such.

  You are saying that we don’t all have souls?

  I am saying that you are not all discreet radiant beings, but all participate to some degree or other in conscious energy. To remain a separate being after death, there must exist the ability to maintain the structure of the radiant body by the action of attention. This is why we have been so insistent that you meditate. Otherwise, we will lose you when you die and we don’t want that. If a being cannot self-maintain after the elemental body no longer does it automatically, it is absorbed into the flux of conscious energy. You go into the light, as it were.

  Isn’t this going to heaven?

  There is an element of ecstasy, but it is not complete.

  When another elemental forms that fits the pattern of that particular fragment, it will return to the physical in search of more sensation. Or, if one never does, its unfulfilled desires will remain forever as a part of the tapestry of memory.

  Would the person perceive this? Feel happy? Feel trapped? These memories are somewhat self-aware. But they do not know themselves as beings. Just as your memory of your childhood games with Mike do not have a being of their own, but rather are part of a greater whole.

  You remember my childhood?

  I do, of course. But we will return to that later.

  How does a person evolve this radiant body?

  The imprinting of essence with experience requires effort and attention. It is the object of all “paths” and “ways” to higher consciousness. It is the object of real prayer. To begin, you must meditate. Who does not meditate, disintegrates.

  Any specific recommendations?

  Paying attention to physical sensation is paying attention to energetic sensation. Being awake to oneself and one’s surroundings increases the intensity of the impressions so that they affect the spin of the electrons that are present in the nervous system. In this context, being awake means being aware of one’s own self while at the same time absorbing impressions from the outside. The increase in spin and enrichment of the complexity of the pattern of being that results brings more and more form to the radiant body. You will remember yourself after your death—who and what you were, why you existed, and what you intend for your future. You will, in short, acquire a true aim, and join the companions of God in their journey toward ecstatic and conscious union with one another and all that is. It is the difference between being a plant and being Rembrandt. The plant has a certain fragment of self-awareness, but Rembrandt is vastly complex, a being rich with fully realized talents and self-awareness that makes him a worthy companion in higher form.

  Rembrandt was a saint?

  Rembrandt was conscious. As far as his being a saint is concerned, though—forget it. Radiant being and sainthood are not the same thing, believe me.

  So he persisted as a radiant being? Where is he now?

  That’s his business.

  What about those who don’t acquire this ethereal independence? After death you cannot be blind and therefore you cannot change. There, you wait.

  Wait for what?

  To understand that, you must first understand that the living and the dead share the same world. Your dead are not off somewhere in space. Their lives and beings are intertwined with yours. They see all that passes here, but can only affect it indirectly, if they can make themselves heard in the minds of the living. However, you the living are changing now. As this change proceeds, you are better and better able to feel the presence of your dead. You will find your dead in the immediate surroundings of their lives, for the most part, clinging to what they can of their memories, attempting to preserve their selves despite the magnetic attraction of what would envelop them.

  So the light is not our friend?

  The light is the fate of sleeping man. Awakened man makes his own light, as part of the radiant choir who sing forever the song of God, which is the word.

  But what about people from the distant past? Surely they don’t linger here.

  There is no other place for you to linger. If you are not an independent being after death, you remain engaged in the life of the earth, awaiting your chance to recur and increase your being. Lives in elemental form change the patterns of the electrons that form the soul and intensify their spin. The great dead have lived lives consciously devoted to the evolution and growth of the radiant body. But most of you, in the state of death, bear only fragmentary bits of what you were in life. Simple patterns, weak spin, no clear form to the radiant body and no ability to maintain it. You are subject to a process of recurrence so powerful that there are none from the distant past, except the radiant.

  How do we access past lives?

  All may remember all. You do not realize what you are.

  And what of death itself? What should we expect?

  A death is as unique as a face. You die into your expectations. But you generally survive them.

  Somebody who doesn’t believe in the soul?

  They make a great discovery.

  So some become radiant bodies, some linger and try again, and some enter the memory of God? Who enters the memory of God? Those who have no further potential and have not grown into anything. But recall that their experience does not go anywhere. It dies with the elemental body because it is insufficiently potent to survive. What survives is generally nothing but a tiny essence, a spark that would be barely recognizable as the person who had previously existed.

  What is essence?

  Taste. The way a certain specific being tastes. Essence is foundation.

  So the bad essences go back to God. God gets the dregs? Every life is an experiment. Not all succeed. But most do, to enough of a degree that the being-body will remain coherent, clinging to the earth in the region of its memories. When a body is
created that fits its essential attachments, it will be drawn to that body by a magnetism that it cannot resist. Birth to this world is death to the other, and vice versa. The recurrence is a great breathing.

  What do these souls do while waiting?

  They experience peace, some of them, only coming slowly into an awareness of what they need to continue on. Others are frantic, because of the nature of their lives. There can be great anguish, as loved ones are witnessed in the nakedness and, often, the horror of their own lives. There can be obsession, and the lusts of life can be endlessly indulged but never satisfied, for the physical world can be seen but not touched by these beings. However, there is also kindness among them. In a world where there are no secrets, only truth, the compassion of one for another is very great.

  Can the dead influence the living?

  Not these little ones, not much. They have not the knowledge or wisdom to make themselves heard.

  What are psychics?

  A part of the electromagnetic field that fills the nervous system rests a few centimeters above the skin, outside of the body. This field is an organ just like the heart or the brain. It is in quantum superposition, the electrons effectively everywhere in the universe and nowhere specific. It may be imprinted by information from anywhere and any time. With it, you may see other worlds, you may see the past and the future, you may see into the lives of those around you. You may haunt God. However, the process of imprinting itself causes the organ to cease to be in superposition and thus to cease to be accessible to further imprinting. In psychics, there is either an inborn or learned ability to balance the attention in such a way that these impressions do not cause this organ to become focused into particulate form. The ability to control this organ can be developed.

  How?

  Many practices will work, but the best is to meditate in such away that the mind is concentrated on physical sensation. This relieves the pressure of impressions incoming from the physical world on the electromagnetic body and enables it to expand.

  How far can it expand?

  Anybody can become God.

  In life?

  In life.

  How can a mere imperfect human being become the master of the universe?

  What is imperfect is your vision. You can find your perfection right now, this moment, always.

  What is this seeing? This marvelous seeing you allude to?

  You must understand the difference between sight and imagination. Real inner vision unfolds with an unmistakable spontaneousness. What is seen, also, is the same from person to person. But the universe is so vast that only the most adept will be able to see the same thing one as another. It is even hard to go back to a place you have seen once before, unless there is a line of communication opened between yourself and somebody who is there.

  This can become a scientifically valid means of communication? It already is, even here. Although you do not presently understand the true meaning of indeterminacy, what you refer to as quantum physics offers a useful partial view of the inner workings of the physical world. Quantum instruments of communication, as your scientists now understand them, depend upon the entanglement of particles. You think now that you must separate two photons physically for them to be entangled, so your faster-than-light communications are limited by how far apart you can physically place the photons you entangle. But there was a time when all particles were in communication and so all are entangled. When you realize this, it will also be true that your quantum communications devices will be able to communicate instantaneously across all worlds. But until you realize it and understand it, it will not be true for you. Vision, in the manipulation of quantum reality, as in the perfecting of your being, is everything.

  You seem to be referring to scientific progress and spiritual growth in the same breath.

  They are the same. Your science progresses toward communication with all worlds only as fast as your spirit evolves. Animals may not leave their worlds, because they lack the ability to see the needs of others.

  We are animals?

  A true human being has four levels of mind. Most of you have only three, and perhaps a vestige of the fourth. Your destiny is to enter the humanity of the universe. But you may not fulfill it.

  Are there such things as alien abductions?

  As you grow in fourth mind, you see more.

  Many of these encounters are brutal.

  The kitten is terrified of the veterinarian. To subdue the little creature, violence is unavoidable.

  But the slaughterhouse is also brutal.

  Yours is not the destiny of the steer.

  We aren’t fodder for a higher world?

  I know that you can ask clever questions. Don’t try to play with me, Whitley.

  That’s an even more clever answer—what’s your name, anyway? If I said Michael?

  An archangel in a turtleneck?

  Legion, then?

  I think you’re a perfectly ordinary person with an ordinary mother and an ordinary name.

  I can imagine no greater honor than to be called human.

  Let me go back to the quantum issue, because I see that as something concrete that we can understand. You started by talking of using superposition as a means of communication, then changed to talking about entangled particles. What role does superposition play in higher communication?

  The tiny layer of electrons that lies outside of the skin is an organ in itself just like the eyes or the blood. It is a sensory organ, but not one that operates naturally, except in a few, as I have stated before. Even in them, it cannot be used very effectively without higher consciousness. It is the organ of higher consciousness. You must be able to watch and not watch at the same time. When you learn this, it will stay in superposition even as you take the imagery that it is receiving into your brain and process it.

  You are speaking of opening the third eye?

  The nervous system delivers these impressions to the area of the brain closest to the pineal gland, which is where this organ is centered.

  Can machines be created that “see,” using an artificial version of this organ?

  Machines are already being created that communicate via entangled photons. These machines will be the first that detect the voices of other worlds. It is also possible to create machines that mimic the action of the organ we have been discussing. But these machines must be conscious to work.

  Conscious machines?

  We will return to that later. There is a question lingering in your eyes that you have not asked. Ask it now.

  You mentioned monsters in the world of the dead.

  The acts of life affect the appearance of the dead in every tiny detail. Everything is imprinted upon the soul, often in surprising ways. Most dead appear as innocent children, longing for sensual lives and hoping that a body will be sparked that fits them. Some are aware enough of radiant being to try to ascend, but they always drift back, or if they become lost, are returned to earth.

  By radiant beings?

  Yes.

  This creation of radiant bodies doesn’t sound much like surrender. On the contrary, it is total surrender. The unfocused fragments of lives barely lived do not contribute to the ecstasy of God. God seeks true companions. Ecstasy is not ecstasy unless it is shared.

  Can radiant bodies enter the physical world?

  Radiant beings may be born into elemental bodies if they wish, but these are acts of intention. Or it may be requested that they do it, and they go on life-missions into the elemental world. These can be dangerous missions that cause them to fall from radiance, but also that may greatly increase their ecstasy. So they go on these adventures. It is happening a great deal now, which is why you have so many glorious children among you. In addition to entering the physical by means of being born, some high beings may so perfectly create an image of the physical bodies they once possessed that they can walk the streets.

  Can they have babies?

  This would be an act of God, but certain
ly it is possible.

  Does it account for the birth of Jesus?

  Jesus said that he was the son of man. Take him at his word. He was God, though, a radiant body fully aware of who he was and fully invested in all and everything. He entered the elemental body consciously. But I remind you, all are God, all are Christ. The difference was that he knew it.

  Was he a product of recurrence?

  God is.

  What of Jesus? What of Buddha?

  Those are two different, but intertwined, questions. First, you must understand that the teachings of Buddha had reached the community of Hellenized Jews in which Jesus lived. So they form a part of Christianity. He was a spiritual revolutionary who brought a message of mercy and compassion and the dignity of man to a world of unimaginable terror. The Roman rule was blind and brutal and unspeakably greedy. Ancient knowledge was being murdered by Roman ignorance and Roman power. This knowledge consisted of how to consciously form a radiant body so that you would not recur into the physical, so that you would be free. Christ was here to preserve this knowledge and pass it down. But even his deposit was corrupted by Roman politicians, who transformed his practice into a religion after he died.