They did come up almost every year, while Sacha had been gallivanting around the world. Both his parents were seasoned sailors. Sacha wondered if he could handle the boat on his own.
“John could do it,” Joan assured him. “I went with him, of course, but I was much better in the galley than at the helm. That’s why he installed the automatic pilot and brought all the lines to the cockpit.”
Sacha remembered. He thought Joan was underestimating herself by a long shot. On board, always composed, she inspired an air of confidence. That was of enormous help to any crew, visitors, and even the captain himself.
The following morning Sacha walked down to the dock. He found the yacht in Bristol shape, if in want of a little TLC. He unwound the long hose from the finger dock and gave the Princess a good shower. He then went over the wet deck with a long brush, and hosed the decks again. That’s all she needed. A little TLC.
He set out about eleven a.m.. He was only taking her out for a few hours, so didn’t bother to check the weather forecast. Anyway, the wind was Westerly, 10-15 knots. What could be less demanding? And, to make things even easier, he didn’t hoist the mizzen. The main and the Genoa would do just fine.
Two hours later he was barely within sight of the shore. The wind was steady if slightly stronger in the open sea. That’s as it should be. He set the automatic pilot, stripped down to his shorts, and sat back to enjoy the sun.
His mind wandered ahead.
He hardly noticed that the winds began gathering strength. The cumulus clouds dropped lower, darkened their edges and stretched all the way to the far horizon. He was heading directly into the approaching storm—a storm as irrevocable as the darkness that seemed to engulf him. Only minutes later the clouds amassed directly over his head. The waves churned, smashing against the bow with tempestuous anger. The wind whined and whistled ominous warnings.
“I must trim the sails...” he thought.
The clouds now tore apart and spat a tremendous flash of light, followed by a clap of thunder.
“I must...” Another thunder. “Must I?” The Princess was healing to port heavily. “I must, surely I must... But why me? Surely there are others...” “Isn’t there another way?”
Sacha shook his head and slapped his face with an open palm. The waters were as calm as minutes ago. Overhead, the same joyful cumulus clouds were reaching higher and higher. The sun shone with a serenity of a peaceful day.
He switched off the automatic pilot and turned the boat around. He’d had his sail. He knew that no matter how far he would attempt to run, he would not escape his destiny. The clouds on the horizon were his to face. To conquer.
He stayed two more days with Joan. They visited the hospital together and took a few walks. They also telephoned Solana Beach and chatted with Suzy and Alec. His father was planning another lecture tour. Suzy decided to visit her mother for a few weeks. Alec always gave lectures, in summer, to all-comers. He really wanted to spread the knowledge in his chosen field. It was his gift to humanity. That’s all anyone of us can do. Share our perception of reality, and hope that it will make someone else as happy as it makes us. What else was there?
On the way back to Montréal, relaxed by the regular rhythm of the railway wheels, Sacha had a unique vision. He saw the very beginning of the world. A sort of Eden. There were no stars, no galaxies. Man seldom looked up. He was content to live in the here and now. Later, as man’s thoughts were multiplied, as exemplified in Abraham, man created little points of light. Astronomers added nebulas, gaseous clouds and a great variety of galaxies. Sacha was in love with galaxies. He thought of them as jewels in God’s crown. There were the Spheroidals, the Sombreros, the Whirlpools... there were countless numbers of them. Each one totally different. Each created by a single mind, a single soul basking in the reality of the Far Country. Finally came the black holes that swallowed all previous efforts and forced man to start again.
It was in one of the great cycles, eons ago, that man first understood the concept of black holes. It was then that he’d decided to place our little planet, our Earth, in the most inconspicuous place he could think of. Around a small sun on the periphery of an average galaxy. The Milky Way. Man thought he was buying time to achieve his immortality before the black hole would swallow him again.
That’s why we are here, thought Sacha. Why we perceive reality from such an assiduously circumspect place. And yet we still think of ourselves as gods.
Or at least, that gods take special care of us.
Sacha was getting to know Montreal fairly well.
On his return from Kingston, he walked the streets at night. There were the homeless, the disenchanted, the drug addicts, the derelicts discarded by society. No one really wanted them. They did not contribute to society. They even endangered the image of the town they lived in.
He walked the streets in the early hours. There were not many people around. Not many witnesses. It was a good time to help people.
He didn’t heal anyone.
He quieted the minds of people in distress, removed the dross, momentarily suspended their lack of faith, and allowed their own light to heal them from within. He felt that was as far as he could go. If anyone had suggested that he was performing miracles, he would have laughed. He would repeat the words he spoke to his grandmother when she asked him how to raise money on the stock market on the Internet. Anyone can do it, he’d said then. He felt the same way about helping people to heal themselves. Anyone could do it, if they would only change their perception of reality. If they would only suspend, even for a moment, their misbegotten ideas fed to them, through countless millennia, by organized religions.
There was no god healing them from afar. What divinity there was had always been, and is, hiding within their own hearts.
And then Sacha grew pensive.
“Why can’t they understand my words?” he whispered. But no one answered.
No one even listened.
Chapter 16
The Red Lights
The first day of the second week after his return from Kingston brought Sacha to Rue St-Laurent. There were many famous Lawrences, spelled with a ‘w’. Montrealers could have named their street after any of them. There was Ernest Orlando Lawrence who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention on the cyclotron. They’ve been spinning atoms in ever increasing circles ever since. Sacha’s dad could write a book about Ernest Orlando. There was, of course, Gertrude Lawrence whose charm and magnetic personality captivated vast audiences. There was James, the American war hero, admittedly south of the border, but there was also Sir Thomas Lawrence, the English portrait painter who took over from Reynolds, and who’s vision of children adorn the walls of many museums on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps, even the walls of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, de Montréal.
There have been other famous namesakes.
But the French Canadians have always been obsessed with naming everything they could think of after saints. Their streets, villages and towns, even country lanes immortalize the names of numerous, long-dead, seldom venerated, Catholic saints. Men and women alike. And so it was with Saint Lawrence. In the year of Our Lord 285, this diminutive Roman is said to have been roasted to death on a gridiron. Perhaps it is from the red embers that the street took its name. For, over the years, the Rue St-Laurent of Montreal became the Street of Red Lights.
The number one street in the Red Lights District.
Sacha remembered how his father, when only thirteen or so, had created in his mind Princess Sandra, who turned out to have been his father’s higher image of himself. His Atma. Apparently, within a year, young Alec became reunited with his Princess, becoming Alexander. Sacha had suggested to his father that perhaps it was Sandra who created him, not the other way round. No matter.
What Sacha really envied was his father’s youthful ability to create a companion who was virtually omniscient, practically omnipresent, and omnipotent. The only problem was that in most of us, this Princess a
bides only in a potential form. She, the Princess, or her counterpart the Prince, are potentially omniscient, potentially omnipresent and omnipotent.
Potentially.
In his own case, Sacha would compare himself to the Prince. He was fully cognizant of the potential within himself. He identified himself with his inner nature. He could even exercise a great number of traits that seemed beyond the scope of average men. But that didn’t help. Even fleas have their fleas. And lately Sacha felt as if he was chewed upon, devoured, from within and without. He was struggling. He found himself escaping into imaginary realms, into dreams and visions, without conscious control. This had nothing to do with the Home Planet or the Far Country. Such experiences, as he suffered of late, belonged in the domain of psychiatry. He felt that Dr. Freud would have had a feast day with his subliminal experiences.
Sacha had to face problems that he didn’t know existed. He was facing the unknown. When he ventured into the minds of the derelicts of society to offer help, he was deeply affected by their depravity. His own perception of reality elevated the men he’d met at least to his own level, even if just potentially. He was no more than a messenger. The message had a life of its own.
He had the highest possible respect for man’s potential. He never imagined men, or women, could sink to the levels of subhuman impulses. He hasn’t learned, as yet, to remain only a spectator––a passer-by. To be non-judgmental. Yet if he didn’t learn, soon, to detach himself emotionally and mentally from the quagmire he’d discovered in the minds of those unfortunates, he would succumb to their maladies himself. He would be drawn, inexorably into their festering infernos.
It was a trying time.
SACHA 23+202 days
Am I swept by the events of my own creation? Sometimes I wonder if the reality I perceive has an objective base. Am I the only one who discerns this abysmal malignancy, or am I witnessing reality in which others really have their becoming?
Yet, try I must. I must try harder. Whatever the resolution, I sense that I am on the right track. That my intuition will guide me in my endeavours. At least, for as long as I remain tied to my physical body with the insubstantial yet virtually unbreakable, infinitely elastic silver cord. For most humans the cord is protected by the instinct for self-preservation. For me it is part of my perception of reality. I cannot break it without destroying my dream.
When Sacha first began wandering the streets, he felt somewhat lost. Now that he directed his steps towards St-Laurent, his perplexity grew exponentially. He saw children selling their bodies for whatever they could get. A few dollars, a hot meal, a reefer, or a sniff of white powder. They searched ecstasy in a pill, escape in a bottle. Some of them had not yet reached the age of puberty. They were the innocents, the martyrs of the present age, roasted on the gridiron of human depravity.
Sacha never found anything demeaning about sex, nor in the expression of sexuality. Without it, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be here. But the perception of sex depended on whether you were the taker or the giver of pleasure. He was not concerned with the body of the delinquent children at all. There were armies of physicians who could fatten their bank accounts catering to those. His concern was for the vibrations that the self-centered attitude brought to the world.
To the fabric of spacetime.
Yet he couldn’t force his will on anyone. He thought that the unfortunates, who sought and paid for the services of ‘working girls’, were even more depraved. Even if they didn’t cheat on their wives or lovers, they succumbed to their base instincts to the exclusion of everything else. Animals responded to their instincts. The humans sunk below theirs. They were the hardest to help.
He once saw a man sitting in his car for a good half-hour trying to muster enough courage to drive another fifty yards to give in to his desire. People, such as he, as that man, didn’t know that all desires are merely perceived. Imagined. They occur when stimulated by some associations and then are fueled into a conflagration by our imagination––till the flame is too strong for us to control. Then, we say, “I couldn’t stand it!” “It was too strong for me!” Some of us even blame the imaginary creations of our fertile imagination. “The devil made me do it!” we aver, with a straight face. We seem unaware that the tempter and the tempted are always one and the same.
In a sense, all of us, no matter how insignificant, always spoke the truth. If we allowed ourselves to procrastinate, to wait before we act, our natural defenses would crumble. We’d start as humans, go through the stage of animal instincts, and then sink to the level of demons that no longer perceive any light within themselves. We become as dead, as though our silver cord’s had been severed.
Only it hasn’t.
Gradually, rationality returns to our perception. We feel depraved by our own weaknesses. We become desperate. We search for an escape. Then, we return to St-Laurent hoping to loose our identity once again.
A vicious circle.
Sacha followed some of these unfortunates through their nefarious cycle. He gathered first hand experience of what hell was like. Some claimed that there was only one Creator. That god created heaven and hell. They forgot that we were the sole creators of all realities.
The only gods.
Later, Sacha witnessed the same man returning to St-Laurent on three successive days. On the third day, Sacha prodded his mind. The man yielded. All Sacha did was to show him what his perception of reality will be, or would be, one half-hour later. The man turned the key in the ignition and left. Sacha did not see him on street of red lights again.
But mostly Sacha tried to help the girls, if only because they were younger. It was too early for them to die, to become zombies, the living dead. Often he was successful. He approached each girl individually. He tried to assess her mental state. Some were too far gone. They’ve already acquired a slew of sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS— more often then not. They would soon die and try again. Later. Much, much, later… After another long stint in Bardo.
Sacha’s decision to concentrate on younger girls was a matter of judgment. He reasoned that if a girl began her spiral descent at a really young age then, if she survived, by the time she was an adult, she would have accumulated so much negative karma that all of her next embodiment would be an unmitigated hell.
He knew that no one died before his or her time. One could cheat death, but no one could cheat on his or her destiny. He recalled his father telling him about an airplane smashing itself to smithereens killing all on board––all but one. Two hundred and seventy-three people died and one walked off unscathed. Destiny would not be cheated. That is not to say that one could not take one’s own life. But it would be an exercise in abject futility. We would only sentence ourselves to dream the very same dream again. On the other hand, destiny is disposed with infinite, remorseful patience. It will keep us in our physical bodies as long as such bodies are capable of supporting our consciousness. Whatever our perceptions.
“Don’t ever forget,” he told one girl, “you are your consciousness.”
Usually Sacha did little more than to project a vision of the probable future that the girls were building for themselves. No one knew the future. But the telltale sings were unmistakable. After exposing the young mind to the ominous possibilities, many girls chose to try a different route. Some slipped back, but most succeeded. Most of us seem to think that we, and we alone, can get away with ‘things’. We might for a while. But sooner or later we must all pay the piper. Sacha didn’t mince words.
“This is the universal law,” he made it clear, “and the law cannot be broken.”
Towards the end of the fourth week, a beautiful girl caught Sacha’s eye. She looked about seventeen. At first he thought she was just another subject for his ministrations. But then he stopped short. Although she wore the uniform of her profession, she still didn’t seem to belong on this street. The extra short, extra tight skirt and an equally tight bodice exposing as much of her upper charms as is possible without actually bein
g arrested, did not match her face. Her bearing was upright, almost proud, her smile direct. She stood out from others, even other teenagers, possibly less fortunate than herself. It was the first time that Sacha was actually approached by a girl. Usually he chose his ground from a short distance, or managed to dodge into the shadows, and if not, he would polarize photons hitting his body and hide within a cloak of invisibility. Actually this ability had saved him more than once from possibly unpleasant consequences. On half a dozen occasions, oversized pimps had threatened to teach him a lesson, unless he left their girls alone. Apparently Sacha’s method of opening up the girls’ perception, to alternate realities, was not good for business. He also helped some other derelicts that had been taught a lesson by the goons for not paying the full amount to the girls. Sacha had no reservations about the punishment being well deserved but, left to themselves, the culprits would have died in a state of dismal depression. Such badly timed deaths were one of Sacha’s principal concerns.
Over just a few weeks, he’d learned from three other girls that some local flesh merchants were circulating a story about a troublemaker who was muscling in on their territory. Apparently Sacha has been roiling the waters, disturbing the established system. He was the purported troublemaker.
The roiling culprit.
Last week, one of the girls had actually shown him a luckily rather bad photo of himself, published in the local rag. The article that followed made up an amazing story about a disappearing Robin Hood who protected les girls from the hands of their atrocious villains. The funny thing was that Sacha had never taken a single penny from, nor given to, any of them. Whatever he was, a Robin Hood he was not. He dealt in quite different currency.
Sacha—The Way Back (Alexander Trilogy Book III) Page 21
