They’d taken precautions, of course. They already knew that Sacha had the devil’s power to become invisible. No saints ever did that. And only the devil was usually invisible. Holy men had nothing to hide. To make sure that Sacha would not disappear, the four chains binding his extremities had been cast of formidable steel. Not one could be broken by the strongest among the guards. But they also played safe. They posted guards around the prostrate body of the prisoner with their machine-guns drawn. To protect him, of course. It wouldn’t do if Sacha’s followers stole his body and claimed that he’d liberated himself. No, that wouldn’t do at all. But the four iron chains were powerful enough. They gave the guards a chance to get some sleep.
This was the third day since Sacha had been tethered to the stakes in the desert. They still didn’t know how to dispose of his body. Particularly since he was still alive. They were hoping for God or Allah or Yahweh to help them. Something always turned up in the desert.
It did. It came in the form of a scorpion.
Since late morning yesterday, Sacha’s body began experiencing visions. This is what happens when the link with your self becomes so very tenuous. The body heard the plaintive crying, perhaps from a dessert minaret... therein are rivers of water unstaling... rivers of milk unchanging in flavour... rivers of wine... of honey purified...
Or maybe just water?
Water?
His tongue clang to the roof of his mouth. His throat burned with the fire of the desert. There was sand in the air. His guards wore scarves, but the face of Sacha’s body was exposed to the elements. Most of the time he’d spent in the Undiscovered Realm, waiting to be liberated permanently from his physical prison. He felt that he should not do it by an act of his will, though he also was reasonably sure that he’d already accomplished his mission. Yet there was a nagging emptiness in the pit of his stomach that wouldn’t let go. And it wasn’t hunger. His body had experienced hunger before.
And then his eyes saw the scorpion.
...rivers of water unstalling... of milk and wine and honey...
The scorpion got closer.
...and therein for them is every fruit... the voice sang in Arabic––it must have been from a distant minaret.
Only then did he realize, dimly, that whatever else he might have left undone, it would never do to let his body die of thirst or hunger. The scorpion wasn’t large, but it was food...
It was only after he felt the sting that he realized that he’d been hallucinating for some time now. Total dehydration. They’d given him some water. Perhaps the few drops sufficed for the Bedouins, for the men of the dessert. His body wasn’t adapted to desert life...
The next instant the Undiscovered Realm dissolved and Sacha became fully aware of his plight. Still invested with the resplendent light of his true home, he transferred all his power into his physical body. It was too late. It wouldn’t respond. With a superhuman effort he attempted to free his body from the shackles. There was a clap of thunder. The soldiers rose to their feet waving their machine-guns.
The prostrate body began shining with eerie light. Then, in deceptively slow motion, it rose and stood up on its feet. The shackles had melted away. Literally. They remained on the sand as little pools of melted metal. The next moment Sacha’s body began to shimmer and rise above the ground. The guards had been warned. They emptied their magazines into the air where they’d last seen Sacha’s body. But this, too, was too late. Only a shallow depression of a human form outlined in the fused silicone remained. It was as though Sacha’s body still lay there––only pressed into the desert sand. Their eyes deceived them.
Their prisoner was not there any more.
Sacha had never done this sort of thing before. Although it takes but a minuscule fraction of eternity to translate his higher state into physical awareness, he didn’t have that fraction at his disposal. He’d acted as a body of light, pure light, to liberate his physical remains. He’d failed. He’d only succeeded in converting the mass of his body into pure energy. An energy which could sustain him here, in this reality, until he fulfilled the remainder of his mission. Whatever it was.
Whatever it might have been?
That was all the information he’d managed to extract from his physical embodiment. Not what to do, but that there still was a fragment of destiny unfinished.
He had a little time. He’d learned long ago, from Eastern Mystics, that one can sustain ones physical body in the form of energy, on Earth, for up to forty days. He was sure it would be enough to remember the last part of his dream. The dream from Bardo. It wouldn’t do to leave such a great mission unfinished. In his last life, all he had to do was to give his all to help people. As a physician. He now sensed that it was not the healing that was of importance. It was the act of service. He now knew that we couldn’t help ourselves unless we helped others. It had to do with one’s awareness of Oneness.
He thought of himself in the human form. And in that instant his body assumed contours of his former self. A little transparent, but even as he looked at his arms, they became more opaque. Only he was naked. He couldn’t do much in this condition.
“How can I get some clothing?” he wondered.
He need not have worried. While the desire for some sort of covering was still formulating in his mind, his body became wrapped with the suit he’d worn at his trial. Or one exactly like it. The last memory, he thought. He assumed that what he’d worn even later, when tied down in the desert, got burnt to a crisp. Vaporized.
He tried moving his arms and legs. They worked just fine. He wondered if his body would still have to eat and sleep, but he doubted that. He was on Earth, but the body he now occupied was the product of his mind. It had nothing to do with biological evolution. It was more like a holographic projection. Only he, himself, was the projector.
Finally, he looked around.
He was standing on the familiar sand of Solana Beach. “Sand to sand,” he muttered, enjoying the coolness below his feet. “It seems that subliminal desires are also fulfilled in this body…” He was learning fast. The next moment he was in LA walking the familiar streets. He was no longer barefoot. He glanced at his reflection in a store window.
“Not bad. I now look like a regular Joe.” He hopped up and down. “It will be fun to see what people are saying,” he thought.
He now had a body he could use for that purpose. To find out.
And people were saying a great deal. Although he no longer commanded the front page of every national daily, in every newspaper he looked he found heated arguments regarding his heritage. About ninety percent of people demanded to know what happened to him after the Los Angeles Convention. There were rumors, which the authorities neither confirmed nor denied, that he had been drugged and waylaid by people who found his views uncomfortable. There were also direct accusations against the leaders of the principle religions that also remained ignored.
“I wonder how they’ll explain my real disappearance!” He laughed out loud.
The lady at the newspaper kiosk gave him a strange look, then shrugged and moved away. Sacha forgot that he had recreated his body in the image and likeness of his previous appearance. To all who met him, he was Alexander Baldwin, Ph.D. The man with a golden mop.
There was one other tremendous advantage in being what he now was. He needed neither busses nor airplanes to get from place to place. In his present form, his body responded to a reality much closer to the Home Planet than planet Earth. Whatever he imagined––just happened. He had to keep reminding himself that this was a new reality for him, and that he must be careful not to make mistakes. He had about thirty-nine days left to learn the rules. Later, it just wouldn’t matter.
He wondered also if he should visit his parents and Deborah. He decided against it. It was possible that they already went through the period of mourning. Four weeks must have passed since his original ‘disappearance’. Whatever Suzy and Alec and Debbie and Alicia suspected, they must have been, at least part
ially, reconciled to the worst. Even his nearest and dearest regarded liberation as ‘the worst’. How little they knew. Perhaps if they announce my death officially, I could drop in on them. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, he quoted one of his learned accusers.
There were other things he had to do.
Like his father before him, he made a whirlwind tour of South America. He didn’t make appointments. He materialized his body in various churches, synagogues, mosques, lecture theaters, university auditoria. He found controlling people’s mind was much easier than before. But he didn’t abuse his power. All he did was to instill in their minds a notion that he was not a crank who invaded their minds under false pretenses. Then he spoke as he had always spoken. He shared with people his perception of reality. No more and no less. He did not impose his views. He let every man and every woman make up his or her mind. He did that for just over two weeks. He had about three weeks left. He was on the way to repeat his performance in Europe, when an Arabian TV station announced that even as four soldiers had been guarding a man in the desert, the prisoner had suddenly disappeared. Sacha’s name wasn’t mentioned. It probably never would be. What could be better for the Ecumenical Authorities, the Holy Triumvirate, than having him disappear? No evidence, no body, no one to blame. God is on our side, they announced. But only within the walls of the Vatican. The rest of the world already knew that. Or so they thought.
Their opinion changed somewhat when Sacha has been reported seen in a number of churches in Rome, apparently dressed like a priest, a rabbi or an imam, doing his own agenda. The reports became more troubling when they arrived simultaneously from Rome, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow and some three dozen other towns, all reporting on Sacha preaching at various locations. This was not accurate. Sacha never preached. Nevertheless, for the Triune the matter was becoming serious.
“Mass hallucinations” was the official dictum, ex caterdra, urbi et orbi. The top men in control of the Ecumenical Trio had undersigned this sentiment. The Ecumenical Triad—the next best thing to the Vedic Trimurti, or other mythical Triune. Poor Arjuna, Sacha thought. He must have his own problems.
When Sacha had finished planting the seed in Europe he had three days left.
It was time to visit his family.
“Do not be afraid,” were the first words he spoke to them.
He appeared in the living room where Suzy and Alec and Alicia and Deborah were sitting around the table. There was some food served, but no one was eating. Even after he spoke no one moved. They all heard his voice in their dreams, often on the Home Planet. His voice was nothing new to them.
“I am here, with you,” he advanced a few steps towards them.
Deborah was the first to jump to her feet.
“Don’t get too close,” he advised. “I am not used to this body. I don’t know how it functions on contact with biological life form.”
Deborah’s mouth fell open. Suzy was on her feet and she too pulled short in mid step. Alec held her for balance. Only Alicia remained seated.
“Are you really here, Sacha?” she asked in her clear, precise voice. Grandma had nerves of steel.
“I am with you in every way that counts,” he assured them all. “But my physical body was... actually it was and it wasn’t destroyed in the desert...” There was no clear way to explain this. “Please sit down. All of you. I am taking this precaution because two men who touched me got inadvertently burned. Some sort of electrical shock, I think. They are all right, but it must have hurt like blazes.”
During the following two hours, Sacha described the essentials of his activities since his now famous disappearance from the LA auditorium. They, in turn, had news about him, apparently about him appearing all over Europe and South America, sharing his concept of reality. People were going wild. Especially in Brazil.
“But I left Brazil over two weeks ago!”
“No, you haven’t. They showed you speaking from the podium in Sao Paulo. Actually it was rather funny. All the people were staring at a point on the stage that was empty. Later they swore that they saw you and heard every word you said,” his father assured him.
“Evidently this body is capable of a lot more than I ever imagined...” Sacha confessed. Arjuna had told him that such a body as he now occupied could be incredibly powerful. He wondered what else it might be capable of doing.
“But we can all see you, darling. We can all hear your every...”
“Yes mother. So could they, but...”
“But we mustn’t touch you...”
“Would you rather I hadn’t come?”
Deborah rose again. She walked up to Sacha and stood a foot away from his body.
“I will never disobey your wish, Sacha. But if I were to touch you, would I go with you?”
“No, darling. We all have our own path to cross. Your time will come. Believe me.”
“Then I shall wait. Especially since your father taught me to see you on the Home Planet.”
“So you’ll never miss me,” he sounded relieved. He was.
“No, Sacha. I shall never miss you.” And then her voice fell to a mere whisper. “But I shall miss your body...”
An hour later Sacha said he had to go.
They all got up and remained standing. Suzy’s eyes filled with tears. Deborah hardly looked at Sacha. She was half way to the Home Planet where she could touch him all she wanted. Alicia took a few steps towards him.
“You won’t forget about Desmond and your grandfather, Sacha. Promise me.”
“I promise, Grandma. And I’ll never forget about you, either.”
“And my parents too...” It was all Suzy could manage.
“I will, mother. You know I will.”
Alec made as if he wanted to embrace his son, then he just waved his hands.
“I’ll see you, my son. Probably tonight.” His voice was hoarse. “If you’re free tonight son...”
“I shall always be free. Even as you are...”
And even as he spoke his body grew fainter till it dissolved in the evening light.
I’ll see you, they all heard. But they couldn’t see him any more. Only an eerie light lingered in the room for some time. Then, that too was gone.
He went to India to say good-bye to Arjuna. They spoke on the Home Planet, but somehow this was different. He asked Arjuna’s permission to leave an echo of his perception within the ashes he’d once visited. It was a sentimental visit. He owed a great deal to that time in his life. It gave him the confidence he lacked before. Arjuna was the only man Sacha had met in his quarter century on Earth that understood fully what Sacha was talking about. And vice-versa. They shared so much more than just friendship. They were united by their love of the same reality. Of the Undiscovered Realm.
And Arjuna had good news for Sacha. It had been years since the Government of India had officially dissolved the cast system that victimized, especially the Untouchables. Arjuna had thought of a way to remove the cast system from people’s minds and hearts. It might cost him his life, but nothing would give him greater joy.
It was time to make his last visit. Sacha was surprised to see the same faces all gathered together in the same room. The same semi-darkness; the same scarlets and whites and blacks—with skullcaps and turbans and yarmulkes. What not one of them wore was a happy face. Not one. All that they’d done went for naught.
“What else could we have done? Killed him right here right then? With our bare hands?” They racked their brains.
“He’s the devil himself,” one elderly bishop confessed. “You cannot kill the devil.”
“You are a devil! I could kill you!” Another assured him.
“Gentleman, gentlemen. Please! Is this the way for the inner circle of the Holy Triune to behave?”
Of the more than two billion believers, only about three hundred were present here. The man who acted as the principle judge at Sacha’s trial rose to his feet.
“We must find a way
. We had problems before. We solved them. We shall solve them again.”
“I suppose you will invoke the Holy Ghost for inspiration,” a turbaned dignitary asked with a sneer.
“If need be, my friend. If need be. But God gave us brains that we would use them. Let us...”
He stopped dead.
Only then he noticed that lower down, on the chair in the center of the rotunda a man was sitting as though dozing. His head was down, concealing his face, but the hair, the mop of brilliant golden mane, was unmistakable. The Chief Justice couldn’t even sit down. With trembling hands he began drawing a sign of the cross in the air.
“In nomine Patris...”
He couldn’t say any more. His throat was as parched as Sacha’s had been after three days in the desert sun. The rest of the men forming the inner circle were equally as stunned. They all sat motionless, frozen in the bizarre infinity of suspended time.
There was no doubt that Sacha had united the Churches. The many, or at least the Three became One. The three principal religions became a single organism determined not to fight each other. At least, not on theological grounds.
It was equally as evident, that the unification of the church leaders was quite another matter. Even on St-Laurent, in Montreal, there were some people he couldn’t help, who were too far gone. He sensed a similar mindset here. On the outside, they still performed their duties in accordance with an imposed unity. Behind their hardened faces a different brew was stewing in their derailed minds.
When Sacha felt his earthy vibrations waning, almost forty days after they tortured his body, he attempted to look on the New Vatican of the New Era. He returned here for one final time to bid farewell to all who fought each other for so many years, centuries. Now they sat united, brother akin to a brother, with long wiry beards, others clean-shaven, still others hiding they hair under exuberant headwear, many clad in most delicious garments with twenty-four karat accoutrements hanging around their necks––yet… all one.
Sacha—The Way Back (Alexander Trilogy Book III) Page 33
