“Why else would we be here?” he asked Arjuna.
But his friend had no answer to offer. He withdrew into the realm of light as though lacking air. A moment later luminescence returned to his dark, lustrous eyes.
“Why indeed, my friend. Why indeed?”
Although Arjuna had spent a few extra years in the material reality, he still couldn’t resign himself to accept what his physical senses told him. Perhaps there was too much suffering, too much injustice, too great an imbalance in his world. He desperately wanted to go back home.
“And what of your destiny?”
They were both acutely aware of Bardo. The dreams had been dreamt. Now, they had to be recalled. Played out. Those were the rules.
“Who created these rules, anyway?” he asked wagging his shaggy head from side to side like a disenchanted poodle.
“They’ve been around for as long as I can remember,” Sacha said with mock conviction. In spite of their temporal dilemmas they were both acutely aware of being immortal.
Arjuna, a name he shared with his hero from the Hindu scriptures, did not strike anyone as being a man with a mission. Of course, everyone has a mission. But the consequences of some missions affect broader numbers. They create wider ripples in the fabric of spacetime. Sacha had recognized a soul mate, if one could call him that, by his aura. The sheen surrounding Arjuna was such that he was clearly visible in the darkness of a moonless night. They both laughed when Arjuna confessed that that was also how he’d recognized Sacha. Yet, at the time, not one other person had been able to detect their eerie luminosity. It was true that some people had the ability to detect auras, but that was only when they concentrated. When they were actually looking for one.
It wasn’t natural for them.
Having met, for a little while Sacha and Arjuna felt embarrassed by their unique characteristics. For Arjuna this was second such meeting. Sacha began glancing over his shoulders to see if anyone was watching him. Arjuna laughed. He’d once met a swami, a Hindu teacher, who had recognized his aura. The teacher himself was sporting an impressive glow of his own. Yet, when he’d met Arjuna he’d prostrated himself on the dirt road and had asked to be taken on as an acolyte. Arjuna found this experience profoundly embarrassing. It had taken him hours to convince the old guru that he was himself but a beginner on the path. That he knew nothing. That he could not teach anyone anything.
At the time it was true. Almost true.
Arjuna was blessed with intrinsic knowledge, but he wouldn’t have known how to communicate it. Yet he doubted that the old seeker believed him. He was forced to enter the man’s mind and open his own consciousness to him. After that the man seemed satisfied, though only partially. He looked as though he suspected that Arjuna was hiding something from him.
Anyway, already then Arjuna went through the process of acceptance of his own aura, while Sacha had to overcome his self-consciousness only now. It wasn’t easy. He felt that he carried a big lamp on his head that he couldn’t hide. Much bigger than his mop of golden hair. It took him a good month to finally accept that his lantern was not visible to the masses. To people at large. And if someone did see it, the chances were that he or she would be a friend. As was the case with Arjuna.
On parting, they agreed to call on each other, in case of need. Now that they met, they both had the ability to do so. It is difficult to contact someone on the mental or emotional plane if one could not recognize him or her. Just like… on Earth.
“I’ll see you my friend,” Sacha said a little sadly, embracing the dark body of his soul mate.
“I shall always be with you, Sacha. You know that?” Arjuna replied, his tone as much a question as it was an assertion.
Sacha did know it. But physical perception places its own demands on our appreciation of what we recognize as reality. Sometimes we all need an assertion. It is habit forming. But, he knew that too.
PART THREE
The Journey
"Always go too far,
because that's where you'll find the truth."
Albert Camus
Chapter 13
Reunion
The whirlwind, which had blown Sacha around the world, was over. Sacha returned to Los Angeles on the last day of July. He found both apartments empty. He should have called. He decided to spend a few days in his parents’ LA condo, to recover from jet lag, and to get used to the pace of the Western world. On Friday he took a bus to Solana Beach. He felt sure he would find his parents there, keeping Grandma company. They would not have left her alone. Not now.
Almost a week had passed since Desmond died. Passed away, they called it. It was more like passing inward, although frankly, he was still here. There is only one Absolute Reality, and it is here and now. You can’t pass away from it. There is nowhere else to go. Sacha sighed, a distant look creeping into his eyes. It was here and now yet, like his father, when he thought of the inner realms, that far away look clouded his vision.
If they could only see it, he mused. If they could only see it...
By now, Desmond’s body would have been cremated or buried. Just as well. Sacha had absolutely no interest in discarded bodies. They had their uses, they were necessary under certain conditions, but that was all. He did not understand why people attached so much importance to their remains. Or the remains of their dear ones. After all, it wasn’t as though they hadn’t mistreated their bodies throughout their stints on Earth.
Or that nonsense about religious relics. They ignored, if not actually abused, their saints, and then worshiped their bones. How quaint. How very primitive.
Sacha knew exactly where Desmond was. He was not interested in rites that people maintained and cultivated for the sake of some ancient pagan tradition. As far as he was concerned, there was no death. Although, he had to admit, in the physical realm there was sorrow and grief. Usually caused by attachment to things, or perceptions, to which we had no business getting attached to, in the first place. Sacha found such attachments intensely illogical.
The atmosphere in Solana Beach was somber. Although Alicia, in her innate wisdom, shared many of Sacha’s views, well… she was also very human. And humans have a tendency to develop a fondness that leads to attraction that leads to affection that leads to grief. Sooner or later. No matter what the great avatars of the past had attempted to teach us, most of us persist in the same old ways. Buddha had insisted that attachment is at the root of all suffering. We continue to suffer. We continue to become attached.
Sacha learned on his travels that this was one of the peculiarities of human nature. People felt the need to attach themselves to things or ideas they knew were transient; or to people, for that matter, and then suffer for having lost them. It seemed that this was the price one paid for the fascination of becoming.
Sacha walked from the bus station.
A rucksack on his back, like the globetrotter he’d been so recently. A vagabond—without a reality to call his own. As he approached the villa, he regarded it with affection. Am I forming an attachment, he mused? For a short while he stood still, soaking up memories of the years he’d spent here as a baby, his first tentative steps in human consciousness, his total inability to reconcile his true nature with the reality perceived by his physical senses. He’d come a long way. The Undiscovered Realm remained his true home, but he’d forgone his frequent escapes to the other realms for the sake of spending most of his time here, on Earth. It wasn’t easy.
The door was open.
He found Maria busy in the kitchen. Poor Maria. “I’d completely forgotten about her. Dear, dear Maria.” He owed her so much. He reached out and gently stroked her black hair hanging loose over her shoulders. She recognized his touch instantly. She caught her breath. Soon her breathing became steady. He held her in his arms in silence. By the time he released her, her eyes were filled with tears of joy.
“Señor Alejandro! You look magnificent!”
Maria was the only one who, since his last visit to Solana
Beach, decided to call him by his ‘proper’ name. She thought that since the designation ‘Sacha’ was a diminutive, it smacked of familiarity. He was unable to persuade her otherwise.
Sacha had little idea of how he looked. He supposed it was all right to look ‘magnificent’. Or even less than magnificent, as long as one could function efficiently in one’s body. He decided to take a long look at himself, at the first opportunity, in a mirror. Although he continued to carry an electric shaver with him, once he’d finished his studies, he’d stopped shaving, In LA he’d found that his shaving machine didn’t work. He had no choice but to perform preliminary sheering with scissors. Finally, he snooped around, until he had found his mother’s safety razor, which she’d probably used on quite different parts of her anatomy. Once he’d removed years of outgrowth, he decided that he looked human enough so as not to scare his parents.
“Why thank you, Maria. You look lovely, too,” he assured her.
“No, Señor. You know...”
“Yes, Maria. I know. How is Grandma taking it?”
“I do not know. It is as though she hardly notices. Only the Señora is even more kind to me...” And her eyes once again filled with unrestrained tears.
“There, now, she knows that he’s all right where he is now...” he assured her.
“But how can we be sure?” she asked haltingly. Maria was a Catholic, and Catholics are never sure. To them most things are shrouded in mystery. They rely exclusively on faith, not on knowledge.
Sacha placed both his arms on Maria’s shoulders and gazed gently into her dark eyes. For a few seconds neither moved. It was as though they’d been cast in a single mold. Solid. For those few seconds Sacha had altered his and her perception of time. The next instant Maria looked away.
“I understand. Thank you Master Alejandro,” She spoke hardly above a whisper. Then she shook her head, sighed, turned, and went about her business.
Sacha followed her with his eyes. Funny, he thought, that people accept communication at their mind level as completely natural. She didn’t even ask me how I communicated the news about Desmond to her. Funny that...
Sacha found the rest of the family on the terrace. All three sat looking into the ocean, seemingly lost in thoughts. Peeka and Boo sat facing each other on the rail, probably catching some well-earned rest. As Sacha entered, Boo opened one eye. Peeka was too busy dreaming. The sun was getting ready to slip behind a ponderous cloud that was forming high over the horizon. The bottom edges of the billowing vapour were already refracting the reds of the Pacific sunset. The top was still bathed in pure gold. Sacha stood motionless transfixed by the intransigent beauty. Within seconds the phantasmagoria of light and shadow would be over.
In the next instant, the darkness of the cloud became ominous. I’m just in time, Sacha thought. He walked behind his mother’s chair and kissed her cascading hair. They all looked up. It was as though the mists that surrounded the terrace were swept away with a single breath.
“Sacha!” It was a shout of joy. “Sacha, my Sacha...” This time she whispered. She sat frozen, unable to move.
Alicia was the first to recover but Suzy’s arms were already reaching for Sacha’s neck. She held him without speaking. She was dreaming of just such a moment. Who says your dreams didn’t come true?
Alec stood up and waited his turn to embrace his son. For a while the two men were locked in a silent bear hug. It was Sacha’s physical proximity they all missed. They met in the inner realities. That was wonderful. But this was different. It was tangible. It was solid. It was, well… it was physical.
At last Sacha disengaged himself from his father and knelt before Alicia’s chair. She sat, a smile of blissful contentment on her lips, her eyes dreamy, as she witnessed the reunion of the three people she loved most. She looked at Sacha as though she’d last seen him only yesterday. She had. Even if only in her dreams. Every night.
“Thank you my love,” she whispered, so that only Sacha could hear. Her dreams kept her going. She was no longer as resilient as when she was younger. As she was when she’d lost Alec’s father.
Sacha rose and kissed her on both cheeks. She seemed not to have changed at all. A touch of gray mingled in with the gold, but that was already there a year ago. She was still beautiful. No wonder Desmond’s thoughts returned to her when Sacha accompanied him to the Home Planet. She looked as fresh, as joyful as though Desmond was sitting right next to her.
In a way, he was.
Maria’s smile appeared in the doorway. She brought a tray of glasses with a jug of red liquid. The fruit had sunk to the bottom while cubes of ice jingled on the surface. It was her famous Sangria. No one, no one in the world, made Sangria as good as did Maria.
“Maria, you forgot one glass!” This was Alicia.
There were four glasses on the tray. Maria shook her head. Alicia made as though to get up and get the extra glass herself. Maria quickly withdrew and got the missing tumbler.
“That’s better,” Alicia approved. “Surely you want to hear what my grandson has to say?”
“Yes, Señora. Gracias.”
Maria was more formal than usually. Could it be Sacha’s presence? She seemed in awe of him. She poured out five glasses and sat at the end of the terrace. Alicia gave her a stern look and she moved her chair closer. Grandma smiled and said nothing.
“OK son. Let’s hear it!” Alec leaned back regarding his son with a critical eye. Judging by the expression on his face, he approved.
“The beginning, the middle or the end?” Sacha asked.
“You choose!” Suzy also couldn’t take her eyes away from her son only there was nothing critical in her eyes. Just love, love and more love.
He was her only son.
During the next three hours, and two more jugs of Sangria, Sacha sketched out the last eleven months, which took him on a wild jaunt across the Far East. He related items that he thought would be of interest to all of them. While his parents enjoyed some awareness of the inner states of consciousness, Alicia would probably not be able to follow. Nor would Maria. Being awfully nice women did not qualify either of them to reach beyond their present destiny. This made them neither better nor worse. Sacha had learned long ago that every human being, every living creature, has a purpose. The universe, even the transient, ephemeral universe would collapse if a single atom were to be removed from it. Only metamorphoses were possible in all realities.
Some recognized this as evolution.
Sacha told them about his first impressions of India. He gave them a whirlwind tour of Japan and China. He tried to sketch the atmosphere of abundance, not so much of wealth as we measure it in the West, but the abundance of nature and of human spirit.
“I strongly suspect that most swamis who sit cross-legged in the omnipresent dust on the sides of the endless, unpaved roads know more about the workings of reality than the vast majority of priests, imams or rabbis. India is a strange country blessed with quite incredible progress in fields that are still in kindergarten in the western world,” he concluded.
Last night he was reviewing his diary. He remembered some of his notes, scribbled hastily, as though he’d found the subject distasteful. Or maybe just a little painful.
SACHA 21+ 36 days
The downtrodden gurus, regarded by many as freaks, never cease to amaze me. I have attended postgraduate courses in philosophy and theology at Oxford and the Sorbonne. Lectures given by established scholars, priests, monsignors, doctors of theology. I’ve listened to sermons in churches and cathedrals of England, France and Italy. Yet none of the sacerdotal scholars could compare their grasp of reality with those emaciated swamis. The lecturers all sounded like phenomenologists, arguing for the sake of argument. They relied exclusively on externally acquired knowledge. They never crossed any new ground. They sounded as though they tried to convince themselves of their own perception of reality.
Perception is perception. None is better than any other. It defines your universe and for
you it represents the truth. But only some knowledge advances you forward. The knowledge of others reduces you to gasping for air in a prodigious whirlpool of time and space of your own making. Virtually forever.
Those half-naked gurus with their faces smeared with sweat and dust, also exhibited infinitely greater understanding of the sacred and secret teaching of the Bible, the Koran and of their own scriptures from which they claim to have derived their knowledge. The difference is, I think, that they confirm their findings by practice, and adjust their perception of reality accordingly.
Even though he still searches for his exact purpose, I’m glad Arjuna has been embodied among such people.
“But what exactly do they teach?” Alicia’s tone sounded dubious.
“They teach about life. About being happy. About finding your purpose.” Sacha spoke as though thinking aloud. “But it is not as easy as it might sound. Every person listening to them hears a different message. I don’t know if they do it intentionally or not, but I found it quite fascinating.” Sacha remembered peeking into the minds of students as they all sat in a broad semicircle at the feet of various teachers.
“But isn’t the truth just one?” Suzy asked.
She tried hard not to return to the subject which had been dear to her in her youth and then left her with a feeling of great emptiness.
“I’m not sure what you mean by truth, mother. I am the truth. So are you. Truth is our indestructible essence. Truth is changeless but our perception of it varies from one instant to another.”
“Wouldn’t you say that the truth is the Whole,” Alec offered, stressing the word ‘whole’.
“It would be if any one of us could ever embrace the Whole. It is beyond our mind, our emotions, even beyond any individual consciousness. You must become the Whole to know the Whole. And should you do that you would no longer be you.”
Sacha—The Way Back (Alexander Trilogy Book III) Page 17
