Or, for an instant of eternity, just before merging, you could perceive your own true nature, he thought. But there was no point saying that. Not yet.
They shared the silence that followed Sacha’s words with the mounting wind. Clouds, a short while ago hanging over distant horizon, have swollen to cover most of the western sky. Soon the first drops of rain would start their irregular tattoo on the terrace roof. How many times had they all sat together, just like this, and watched the fulminating clouds approaching them across the endless waters. So many memories. Perhaps this is the greatest trap. We become attached to our own memories.
Even as I am to India...
When Suzy left to help Maria with supper, Alicia moved her chair closer to Sacha’s. Alec, sitting on his son’s the other side, was happy to just listen without interrupting. Suzy extracted a promise from Sacha that he wouldn’t say anything interesting till she returned. Sacha assured his mother that he had absolutely nothing interesting to say. His mother didn’t like that.
Alicia looked at Sacha as though trying to remember a familiar face. She wasn’t really aware of his nocturnal visits. Not enough to carry them intact into the light of day. But they did help her. Enormously. They stabilized her enough to carry on with her life. Towards her destiny. As best she could.
“What a pity you missed Grandpa. He would have so liked to see you, now that you’re all grown up,” she said at last.
She’d forgotten that Sacha was here less than a year ago. She saw an almost indiscernible difference in Sacha. His last ten months did not advance his factual knowledge, but he had rubbed shoulders with people the way you cannot do in Europe, or in any part of the Western world. Here we enjoyed, or suffered, clearly defined, what many called, psychic spaces. We respected each other’s rights to privacy. Out there, few things were private. Particularly in India. Oh, there were some rich people as depraved, or as attached to their worldly possessions, as here. But percentage-wise, those were few. The vast majority had nothing to protect. Not even their psychic space.
Whatever the reasons, those last ten months had turned Sacha into manhood. In Europe he’d matured intellectually, now his metamorphosis was complete. He had learned to respect people who never asked for respect. Who didn’t demand, let alone expect, that favourite misnomer of the West called ‘dignity’. The people he’d met possessed certain nobility, a distinction that did not come from their possessions or position, but from who they really were. From their soul? They called it their Atma. Their true being. Some gurus said that you have the body you think you have, the body others think you have, which they call your mental body, and your real body, the Atma. That last was where the respect was accorded. All peripheral appurtenances were shunned by many, perhaps most.
It was a strange country.
East and West... Sacha wondered what forces created two cultures so diametrically opposed. The need for balance? It wasn’t a question of which was better, which worse. Just so very, very different. Would they ever overlap?
He smiled at his recurring thought: ever is a very long time… It’s as eternal as now.
Suzy was back.
Alec got up to offer her his chair, next to Sacha. Suzy, looking out to the ocean repeated almost word for word Alicia’s concern.
“What a pity you missed Des. He would have so liked to see you...”
Most of Suzy’s memories of other realms were also stored in different realities. On her return to Home Planet, she found everything familiar. Yet here, it was like remembering fragments of a dream. Alec had already developed a much better recall. He’d had a lot more practice.
“It’s all right mother. I didn’t miss him. Nor he me,” Sacha said it so that only his mother could hear him.
Then she remembered. He brought her and Ali to Des’ side in his hour of need.
“Thank you, Sacha. Somehow I knew it, though it’s so hard to understand.”
“It will come. Patience is a divine virtue,” he murmured.
His mother never suffered from abundance of patience nor, for that matter, of self-control. She smiled at Sacha’s words, then leaned over and kissed him. Again. Yet she remained saddened. There was so much she’d missed.
“Don’t try mother. Just feel it. Feeling is like the gravitational force. It is omnipresent. It affects everything, even though you can’t see it. So few of us realize how very dependent we are on it.”
Sacha thought that being with one’s parents was the nicest dream one could have on Earth. It was the only place in the physical reality where everyone gave without asking for anything in return. There was no need for miracles here. Life at home was characterized by the same traits as chaos. Not as in a mess, but in the ancient Athenian sense—by a constant, never-ending predisposition towards order and harmony. At home, with the people one loved in a particular way, this trait was translated into a predisposition towards helping one another.
After dinner, they continued chatting on the terrace. The oncoming gale gradually dissipated itself somewhere in the vastness of the Pacific. The rain, such as it came, was perfect for watering the plants, for cleaning the dust off the roads, for refreshing the previously heavy air. They retired well after midnight.
Sacha had one more chore he’d reserved for his homecoming.
Already in bed, he reached out with his emotive tendrils and carefully prodded Alicia’s mind. She was already asleep, but not yet deeply. Her condition was perfect. He was hoping she would be perfectly relaxed but not completely unconscious. In this state the mind is most receptive to new ideas. It would likely accept that which it would reject when wide-awake.
“Grandma?”
A moment later Alicia took a deep breath. She thought she’d hear Sacha’s voice.
“Grandma, don’t wake up. This is me.”
Ahh, finally I’m asleep. I love dreaming about my little Sacha.
Sacha immediately adjusted his configuration to fit Alicia’s dreamy perceptions.
“Will you come with me?”
Where?
“Far, far away, to a place you’ve never been before...”
Little Sacha had loved it when she used to tell him stories about far away places. They invariably began with words ‘Once upon a time....’
Lead on, darling. Grandma will go with you wherever you want to take her...
Next Sacha opened Alicia’s mind to the reality of the Home Planet. He led her here and there, holding her hand, pointing out the beauty of this realm. He then looked up at his grandmother and tried his luck.
“In this country, Grandma, we can be anything we want to be?
Of course we can, sweetheart.
She was still humoring him. So far so good. Sacha tried again. “Would you like to be young like when you were twenty?”
She smiled as though remembering a long forgotten dream.
“Oh, do it then, Grandma, do it, please do it!” He danced around her in small circles.
Oh, all right darling. I am now as young as I was when Alec was your age!
And in that very instant she became young again.
“I love it, I love it, I love it, Grandma!” Sacha assured her.
It was time. It wouldn’t do to bring Alicia here to meet Des when he was a sprightly youngster, while she an advancing widow. Now it was worth a try. After all, anything can happen in a fable, let alone in a dream.
And in that instant Desmond, still in his Roman toga, appeared as though from nowhere.
“What...?”
Desmond? Is that you?
“Lassie...? You were never this beautiful. Except in my dreams...” Desmond took a pace back not believing his eyes.
Neither of them noticed when Sacha withdrew. The two youngsters—not as young as Sacha in this particular dream, but youngsters nevertheless—would not have noticed if an earthquake destroyed the whole planet.
Sacha admitted to himself that he cheated a bit. But what’s the point of having powers if one didn’t use them at all? He only hoped that, on wak
ing, Alicia would retain some of the memories of the dream he tried so hard to make a success. Anyway, he could do no more. If it worked, two entities in this vast universe would be a little happier than they were before. And surely, that was worth a try.
It was an eerie feeling to lie down in one’s own bed. After the hard cots of so many Ashrams, his old bed felt truly palatial. Admittedly, Sacha was not prone to make new or maintain old attachments, but he observed his own body with all its accessories, including his mind and emotions, and he noted that most people couldn’t help being what they are. The bed you knew for many years felt good. It gave you a feeling of belonging. It gave you a sensation of safety. Safety from what? Safety from all imaginary danger. Safety for your transient, ephemeral, organism, which subsisted in a constant state of ferment and change. Trillions of electrochemical reactions per second maintained it in, what we liked to call, the condition of being alive. Sacha knew that there was no body as such. There was only the instant of birth followed by the instant of dissolution. A condition of continuous transition. A condition of constant transmutation, alteration, regeneration, conversion and substitution. Each single cell would be replaced on an ongoing basis. No one lived in his or her body. The body was never there long enough for anyone to take up residence.
Sacha tried to visualize what it would be like to suspend time so as to make his body a permanent abode. He dismissed the thought the moment it crossed his mind. The idea abhorred him. A prison in a constant state of decay.
“Never”, he said out loud. “Not for an instant!”
Sacha knew where the problem lay. Once we lose conscious awareness of who we are, we became a byproduct of the dictates of our body. Yet he seldom met a person who expressed the slightest interest in who they were. What they were seemed all-important. How they appeared in the eyes of others.
“What will people say?”
“What impression am I creating?”
“Was this or that good for my image?”
People he’d met as good as admitted that all that existed in their perception of reality was an image. Yet they fought, tooth and nail, to sustain that ephemeral, ever-changing impression. They lied, cheated, stole, abused and murdered in the name of that image. In the name of a wisp of their distorted imagination. Not all people were like that. But, from what Sacha’s observed––the vast majority were.
Unable to create an image they could abide in, they reached out and created gods in the image of their inflated egos. Gods that magnified their own limitations, even their iniquity. Gods that punished and rewarded arbitrarily, depending on which religion they belonged to. And to assure their superiority over others, they acclaimed a single God. Not a single God for all men, but just for those few who’d accepted and worshiped their particular version of divinity. My God is the only God, they said. You shall have no other gods before me. God is one, they acclaimed, providing it is mine, not your God.
The human condition…
And when their true self, their real indestructible nature, desperately attempted to get through to their disfigured consciousness to make itself known in their sleep, they dismissed such truly Herculean efforts as ravings caused by having overeaten at supper.
“That could be true, on occasion,” Sacha murmured his understanding.
But there were so many other occasions when the inner voice was screaming, calling for a new vision, demanding to be heard, not to be ignored...
“I’m a realist,” he or she announced proudly. “I believe in what I can see and touch and smell and hear.”
They could not see. Neither could they hear. They were the blind leading the blind, the deaf preaching to the deaf. They were transient vagabonds waiting for a free ride.
Sacha’s thoughts kept sleep away from his eyes.
Did they act thus on purpose? Why did the human body create such a reality? Was it so on other planets throughout the universes? Why am I limited to just one physical reality, one Home Planet, one Far Country? Or was this condition of the human race a byproduct of millions and millions of years of drifting away from our true nature, tempered and influenced by the body’s need to maintain an image of pseudo-immortality? Perhaps all creation strives to emulate its creator. Like father––like son?
Only God, in whatever form or definition, did not cause attachments. If God be theirs, indeed our Source, then It is both the potential and the manifestation of such diversity, with changes occurring at such an incredible rate, that only the very instant of creation subsisted in the present. And God IS.
All else was no more. Or remained not yet perceived by Its own mode of becoming.
I must do something.
I must help them.
I must...
Chapter 14
Not Bread Alone
Even as Sacha fell asleep there was a nebulous smile of surprise on his face. As he slowly drifted away from the physical awareness he realized how very human he’d become. “Other planets?” “A single Home Planet, a Far Country?” He was close to forgetting that whatever he perceived with his senses, regardless whether the senses were physical, emotional or mental, he perceived the product of his creation. Not even that. What he perceived was the product of his creative will. He, and he alone, gave his perception reality. It couldn’t be otherwise. He reinforced this fact by raising his consciousness to the Far Country. In the next immeasurable fraction of eternity, the wonder of the universe appeared at his fingertips. He closed his mental eyes and dismissed his own creation. The next instant he was suspended in the vastness of impenetrable darkness. A void without thoughts or feelings. Without an echo. If hell existed this was it. A reality without creation. An emptiness of mind, of emotions. An absence of light.
With a mental shiver he restored the glory to the universe. The cosmos.
The ornament of God.
Next morning Sacha was back to his usual self. He knew who he was, and was getting very close to knowing why. The all-important why of life. He was determined to find his particular path without cheating, by rising to the Undiscovered Realm where all memories, past and present, coexisted in perfect harmony. There is no sequence of events in that illustrious reality. No sequence, no time. Neither past nor future. It is a realm from which Mozart and other soul travelers drew their inspiration. It is a realm wherein such as he could hear whole symphonies in a single magnificent chord. It was the Source of all.
From the viewpoint of the highest realm, you were wherever you placed your attention. You experienced on whatsoever you placed your attention. You experienced by direct perception.
He knew that by drawing on the unfathomable reserves of the Undiscovered Realm, he would not learn how to control his own mind and body in the physical reality. He would not become a master of all the realms. He would not be the best that he could be. And thus his contribution to the Whole would be diminished. That he simply couldn’t afford. What God was to some people, the Whole was to him. It was the Eternal Source, the bliss of indivisible oneness, the enigmatic bliss of eternity. In the palm of his hand. Not to keep, but to share and spread among all who developed the capacity to understand the meaning of love. The meaning of oneness.
That much he’d learned in Bardo.
Furthermore, memories stored in the ineffable fabric of the Undiscovered Realm were only those that concerned the universal traits. The successful results had been recorded for others to draw on. Not methods on how to obtain them. All other memories were kept in the lower realms. And those realms were his to create. As was the reality with which he was struggling at present.
There was one other reason for Sacha’s return to LA, to Solana Beach. Sacha was broke. Flat broke. And his moral code did not allow him to sponge off other people. He had to pay his own way. He decided to ask his father for advice.
“Can you think of a way I could earn a decent living doing something constructive?”
“Why would you want to, son? Can’t you make your usual chaotic exercise on the computer and...�
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“Dad, I said constructive. I know how to make money, but it seems abortive to be rewarded for doing virtually nothing.”
“Using your brain is hardly nothing, Sacha. Isn’t that what I’ve been doing all my life?”
“You know very well what I mean,” Sacha would not give in.
There was a moment’s silence. Alec regarded his son with concern. Twice he opened his mouth as though to say something and twice he held back. There was something eating at Sacha, and Alec had no idea how to get at the problem that his son might be facing. It was only then that Sacha began scanning his father’s thoughts.
“I am twenty-two, Dad. What did you do when you were twenty-two?”
“Not much more than you are doing now, I suppose?” Alec didn’t know where Sacha was going with this.
“And here I am, a wunderkind, a prodigy with a string of letters from Oxford and the Sorbonne behind my name. I’m capable of memorizing a book just by putting it under my pillow. I’m capable of healing my every ailment, of speaking a dozen languages enough to speed-read their literature, of polarizing photons dancing around my body... Dad! I am totally useless! I don’t have a single achievement to my name. I am nothing. A failure. An absolute dismal failure.” Sacha’s tone was becoming quieter, until the last words were uttered in a frantic whisper.
Alec was stunned.
The list of abilities, which Sacha had enumerated, was hardly Alec’s idea of failure. He thought that to have done, seen, learned by Sacha’s age all his son had learned, was a tremendous achievement in its own right. He thought Sacha was indeed a prodigy that had come to fruition—a child’s promise that was fulfilling itself in a marvelous way. What else could Sacha possibly want?
And what of the guidance he’d provided within the inner realms? Did he count that for nothing, too? Was not his mind reaching where no man’s mind had reached before? Was he not daily crossing new horizons, conquering new unknowns, finding answers to which most men couldn’t even formulate questions?
Sacha—The Way Back Page 18
