The part of Gandalf, he remembered, was beautifully acted by a British actor Ian McKellen. His father had inherited from his own dad a distinct propensity for all things British. Sacha found it harmless enough and rather amusing. It had been a good few years since they’d all seen the movie, but the image of the man staggering on the stage, here and now, brought the film freshly to Sacha’s mind. The only thing the man was missing was a tall, pointed hat, and the illusion would have been perfect. Had he been even closer to the film version, Sacha would have felt like Frodo, a hairy-legged pint-sized hero of the book. At least Sacha’s lack of pedal hair was amply compensated if not amplified by his hairy mane.
Nevertheless, the man did not fly off on his broom, but Sacha was sure the strange apparition could have––had he put his mind to it.
“Good afternoon,” the sage intoned.
Sacha glanced at his watch. The time was eleven sharp. The man was obviously ahead of his time. Surprisingly, from such an emaciated body, the man’s voice was deep and resonant.
“My name is Gallan Grey. I shall be speaking to you on the subject of Druid traditions and other Celtic derivatives. After I finish, I invite those of you who are within walking distance of a microphone to ask questions. Any questions?”
“Have you finished?” Sacha murmured, and bit his tongue. He really wanted to ask if those not within walking distance, could use their broomsticks, but thought better of it.
Sacha glanced at his program. Gallan Grey was a priest of the Ancient Order of Druids. He flew here all the way from England. Dad would have loved that…
The man raised his head from his notes and scanned the audience. There were not that many present. The ‘real’ ecumenical meeting would begin at 3.00 p.m. These were the preliminaries. Now Sacha understood why the speaker preferred to greet his listeners with an afternoon greeting. It, sort of, put him in with the big boys.
Appearances can be misleading. Once the man overcame his initial stage fright, he spoke in a fluent, engaging and interesting manner. His knowledge enriched Sacha’s understanding of the Ancient Celts. Apparently there was a time when the Druids had performed the duties of both priests and soothsayers; they had advanced knowledge (according to the speaker) of natural philosophy, which led to the practice of herbal medicine. They had also supervised the moral ethos of the people, and had acted as judges in their districts. Politically their confederation had been powerful enough to foster a revolt against ancient Rome. But what really caught and held Sacha’s attention was the statement that the Druids believed in the immortality of soul.
Not bad, thought Sacha. In fact, a good start.
He was glad he came. In the countless books he’d read he’d never found it expedient to read about the Druids. He selected his reading material according to its applicability to the present time. He glanced at the program for the afternoon and his jaw dropped. The subjects, as far as he could see, had nothing whatever to do with ecumenism; nothing with the notion that began nagging his subconscious. He thought that if the socio-religious systems were responsible for the most numerous slaughters throughout the ages, then perhaps, if the practitioners of religions could see eye-to-eye, the slaughter might be diminished. He wanted to see what was being done on the subject these days.
The program for today read:
END OF THE WORLD IN PROPHECY
ARK OF THE COVENANT AND THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
ARMAGEDDON UPDATED—THE MODERN VERSION
EARTHQUAKES IN THE BIBLE AND ELSEWHERE.
SURVIVAL IN THE LAST DAYS
And then, in larger letters:
OPEN FORUM
Apparently, space permitting, he was free to wander from one amphitheater to another.
There was no point in staying the whole afternoon.
“Or should I? If I keep escaping whatever I don’t like, then how am I going to get closer to people? After all, they are what they are. I have no right to judge them. They are the best that they can be,” he argued with himself, silently.
But he lacked courage. He was afraid to loose all respect for the human race if he participated in fundamentalists’ raving about the end of the world. Don’t they know that the world is as eternal as they are? How can you have an end when there was no beginning? And even a few billion years back, before the Earth became habitable to entities in their present form, didn’t they even suspect that their form might have changed? Not to mention that there are other planets, other solar systems? Countless worlds, or as the Catholics like to say “Worlds without end...?”
When they’re right, they’re right.
Even the Druids accepted the concept of an immortal soul. How can they reconcile immorality with a beginning? Yet most, if not all, religions insisted on an ending. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day the world would end, they insisted. They couldn’t explain the beginning so they thought that explaining the end would be easier?
I must do something, he thought.
I must do something.
I must.
Sacha sat through all the lectures.
He joined the listeners in the other hall only to find himself just as bored. On pins and needles––but he sat through all the juvenile speculations. First he amused himself in alternating from one hall to another and trying to guess what has been said before. Later he attempted to read some of the speakers’ thoughts. Only now and then did they coincide with the orators’ mouths. The speakers recited well-learned manuscripts, probably regarding this get-together as a free forum to advertise their books.
And what ludicrous books they were.
Sacha sat quietly, his mind wondering repeatedly what he was doing there. This was not a gathering to foster ecumenical harmony, but a forum for cranks to air their distorted perception of reality. True––it was an open forum. You didn’t have to be sane to share your views. All cranks were welcome. The freedom of speech ruled supreme.
Blah, blah...
Sacha learned that the world was about to end. He was offered indisputable evidence from beautifully distorted sources, Biblical and otherwise, that his days were numbered. Yet this was not enough. He was assured that not all of us would be treated to a good dose of fire and brimstone. Some of us will be whisked up in a single swoop and raised to heaven.
“Way up there,” the speaker pointed to the ceiling; where we, ‘they’, will await better times?
A single swoop without so much as a parachute. No data have been offered where the lucky few would return thereafter, since the Earth would no longer be there. Here? The world had ended, remember?
Sacha scanned the speaker’s mind to see if he really believed in all this nonsense. The next moment he was stamped. The thought patterns in the speaker’s mind were so scattered, so incomprehensibly jumbled that, try as he would, he could not detect the man’s real self. Perhaps the scientists had finally succeeded in creating zombies, by sending the souls of some men to upper realms ahead of their physical deaths?
No, that wouldn’t work.
What would work would be for the scientists to maintain the bodies artificially alive after the consciousness had left them. I suppose the stories about zombies might be true, after all, he mused, half-seriously.
Sacha also thumbed through some books offered for sale during the various intermissions. He would have been better off thumbing through The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the attendant Zen, or for that matter jumping through Don Juan’s Rings of Power. Here he found mostly dissertations on the subject of flying angels, messengers of some concerned deity sitting on convoluted clouds, ready to reward or punish the faithful or the sinners, apparently with a wink and a giggle.
“Don’t people have enough problems to solve in their own lives,” Sacha mused aloud.
“Ours is not to reason why…” A readymade slogan reached his ears. He moved on.
Do they have to assign tasks to some dualistic, judgmental god just to satisfy their feelings of inferiority? What happened to the saying �
�Ye are gods?” Even the armies of scholars hadn’t managed to destroy some of the truth still discernible in some of the scriptures.
“You are gods!” he wanted to stand up and shout. “You are gods, indivisible…”
His thoughts were interrupted by thunderous applause. A man in colourful attire just mounted the stage. The time was 3 p.m.. These must be the big boys, he thought. I’d better listen.
“We humbly present to you His Divine Grace....” There followed a string of other titles.
If he is so divine, then what is he doing here? Why hasn’t he merged his consciousness with the Whole? How come he looks so old and worn, and decrepit? Can’t he even repair himself? And if he can’t, what can he possibly do for others?
Sacha knew that repairing oneself was not on the priority list of the great souls. Many were hoping to do their bit down here, and get back to the higher realms. But this? And on the top of it all, the man had a profusion of paint smeared all over his face. No wonder his grimace was filled with pain.
Sacha withdrew to the corridor.
He had enough religion for one day. Perhaps forever. Few steps away, he saw a man sitting on a windowsill. Elderly, a sad smile on his worn face, his gaze far away.
“You too?” he greeted Sacha without turning around.
“Yes, I didn’t find what I was looking for,” Sacha admitted. The old man’s thoughts were orderly, easy to read.
“Ah, yes.” The man nodded. “Perhaps up there…”
He wasn’t pointing to the sky, but to a series of doors opening on the other side of the corridor. Sacha sat down next to him. The man told him a lot of things that were not advertised in the entrance lobby. He spoke quietly, explaining what really happens at such conventions.
Sacha learned that the ‘real’ Ecumenical Sessions were taking place concurrently with the lectures offered in the two amphitheaters. Apparently in addition to the main auditoria, there were a dozen meeting rooms, secreted about the building. The higher echelons of the dominant religions attended those conferences. Their attendance was limited to three representatives of a number of Christian sects, or churches; equal number was assigned to the representatives of Islam––Shia, Sunnis and Sufis. A number of Jewish denominations represented the Diaspora. Another trio were speaking for Hinduism and a dozen others were allowed to attend, with limited power of vote. Each representative could call on six consultants, secretaries and such like, who drafted the preambles in the remaining meeting chambers. A few others had been allowed in as silent witnesses to the discussions.
There was a conspicuous absence of the Buddhists. Perhaps the followers of Siddhartha Gautama didn’t really regard themselves as a religion. More as students of reality. Like his father. Or perhaps they were all just a little too enlightened?
When the man finished explaining, he got up, smiled, bowed slightly and left. Sacha never saw him again.
Sacha was grateful. Perhaps out there, he thought, behind the closed doors, they made more sense than here. With a sense of unrequited hunger, he left the Batterymarch Conference Center and took a relaxing ride through Boston. He needed a break. Boston was a beautiful city, filled with beautiful people going about their business. They seemed glad to be alive. People aren’t all bad, he mused, with a wry grin. Perhaps God created religions to keep an eye on all the cranks. If I ever meet God, I’ll ask Her, he promised himself. I could then present a beautiful lecture on the subject.
Only he doubted anyone would come.
Chapter 9
Apron Strings
Sacha was disgusted. He returned to the Batterymarch Conference Center in time for the evening session. Not that it did him much good.
The Ecumenicists, Ecumenicals, or whatever they chose to call themselves, left a bad taste in his mouth. But they may have served to inject some humility into his relatively cheerful and carefree life. It wasn’t their attitude. They did what they had to do. But Sacha had learned in one easy lesson that one is not allowed into the inner chambers of power just because one is bright and willing. Before leaving the Convention Center that evening, he made a half-hearted attempt to gain entry to the inner sanctum where the ‘big boys’ negotiated ‘big deals’. The art of quid pro quo was unknown to him. He saw no reason for compromise. If we all strove for the best, there wouldn’t be any need for such.
He was young.
He didn’t have a chance.
He was asked, politely, which particular church was he the head of, or at least held documents attesting his authorization to speak in the particular church’s name.
Unable to satisfy either requirement, he was, politely, directed to the Main Hall, where the oversized gentlemen (four hunks to be precise) assured him that he would be taken care of to his entire satisfaction. Sacha replied that he’d already been there, and there was no activity taking place there, which had anything whatsoever to do with the ecumenical movement.
“Oh, yes, there is, Sir,” the second Herculean guard assured him. “There we offer microphones to anyone who chooses to have his say on any religion he or she may espouse.”
“Including ecumenicalism?” Sacha asked with a good dose of sarcasm.
“Including Ecumenism,” the colossus agreed pronouncing the word with a deep nod of his head.
But Sacha had already given up. In fact he was rather tickled by having been addressed as ‘sir’. It must have been his first. “Sir,” he muttered under his nose. “Sir Sacha,” he mused. “Rather British, don’t you know, old chap?”
“Well, son? How was your day?” Alec asked him on the way back home.
“Three days,” Sacha corrected. “Boston is a beautiful city,” he added appreciatively.
“That’s it, son?”
“That, and I’d learned that I am not ready, as yet, to live among people,” he added. It was a sad realization.
He was not ready to step into the ‘real world’. In fact, it was a world of illusion, an arbitrary construct more fragile in its structure than a single act of faith. Sacha decided to experiment with his own miniature universe, his own body.
For his father the trip has been more successful. Two post-doctoral students asked him if they could work under his wing on theoretical research. Alec was sufficiently unspoiled to find such inquiries flattering. He had no idea how very well known his work has become.
Back in LA, Desmond assured him: “I guarantee an Alfrrred beforrre ye die!”
“Alfred?” Alec was a little tired.
On the airplane from Boston Sacha was drilling him on possibilities of studies in Canada, Europe or anywhere for that matter.
“Mrrr. Nobel, m’lad. Alfred Bernhard Nobel!” Desmond explained.
“Ah... you mean posthumously?”
“Now, now, my lad. That will be enough of that!”
To Professor McBride anyone under sixty was a lad. And some over sixty as well. He also had an arsenal of much more condescending, not to mention degrading expletives for people he didn’t like. ‘Lad’ was his term of endearment.
A week after their return, Sacha began a new series of experiments.
Some time ago, he’d learned to control his breathing and his blood flow. This served to increase his awareness of every minute aspect of his physical body. He now decided to attempt the reverse. He decided to attempt withdrawing his attention from his physical envelope. Not completely, that would mean death, but partially, retaining just tenuous control of his physical awareness.
It took many months. He would practice not just while sitting in total silence and concentration, but during all his daily activities. And there were many of these. He also continued his studies to be able to qualify for enrollment to any university of his choice. But that would come later. He would have to be at least sixteen to be taken at all seriously. He decided to wait.
In the meantime, he was beginning to get some results. One afternoon, alone in the condo, he decided to take his exercises a step further. He sat on a straight-backed chair in his room, an
d watched with morbid fascination as his left hand virtually withered before his eyes. He accomplished this by withdrawing his attention, the light, one might say, or better still the life force, from his palm and fingers. He quickly restored the previous vital condition. He’d obviously gone too far.
He now attempted to withdraw his conscious attention but allow the subconscious to maintain its supervisory activities. In other words the biochemical functions continued. Next he took a long needle he’d prepared for the occasion, and pushed it through the middle of his palm until it emerged on the other side. He thought it would be easy, but it required a fair amount of force.
It worked. He felt no pain whatsoever. He was well on the way to control his physical envelope in both time frames. Forward and backwards. He could withdraw life from his body and he could restore it. This was nothing like going to sleep or even falling into a coma. This was a conscious control of his presence in and out of his body, while allowing his physique to support itself, at least for a certain period of time.
He practiced this on various parts of his body. In a way, it was a form of hypnosis. He controlled his body with his mind. It took a lot of work but each successive step was easier. He never lost his fascination with the magnificent organization of the organism. It truly was a universe in its own right. There was a time when he had little regard for his body. His attitude changed diametrically. He now bestowed on it all the respect and admiration it deserved. He’d learned to treat it kindly, one could say––with love.
“A universe of my own, right here, on Earth, amid the ocean of fragile illusion,” he mused.
Nevertheless he was not his construct, but it was his to govern. In essence, he had learned to die and to come back to life. At will.
He was ready for the next step.
By the time Sacha had turned fifteen, he had already passed all the high-school exams and wrote papers on more advanced subjects. The papers had been submitted to three universities, and within three months he had been sent application forms for enrollment. For better or worse, he had never advertised his age nor the method of his studies. At the time it wasn’t necessary. Now, it could prove fatal.
Sacha—The Way Back (Alexander Trilogy Book III) Page 11
