Mission

by Patrick Tilley

  It was the knowledge that I had experienced these alternate states of mind in my feeble efforts to make sense of my own life that enabled me to appreciate, in some smallmeasure, the difficulties The Man had faced then and the much greater problems he would encounter if he were to attempt the same task today.

  We, the sum total of human/divine consciousness, might have started out as twelve pristine Celestial over-minds, each with its own tidy flock of human hosts, but the situation now was completely out of control. It was true that Isaiah had uttered the prophetic line – ‘… Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return’, but there were now over four billion people on this planet with more due every day.

  That meant the Ain-folk element in each of us was now only a fraction of what it had been in less populous times. Was this all part of the plan, or was the injunction to ‘Go forth and multiply’ a crafty bit of editing by ‘Brax? The fact that our present share of the trapped Celestial presence was only a fraction of what it must have been, could account for the disappearance of those legendary powers our ancestors were said to possess: second-sight, telepathic and healing ability, the understanding and mastery of the power stored in the stones, trees, earth and sky, and intuitive rapport with the world of nature and the ability to penetrate other planes of existence.

  Nowadays, the vast majority of us had lost touch with the ‘other-world’. It was only the odd individual, or isolated groups, like the last true Mayans now living on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, who exhibited those strange powers that defied rational explanation. For the most part, they were derided or ignored by the rest of us who preferred to adopt the more comfortable unquestioning approach to life. To concentrate on the practical day-to-day problems of living. I had done the same thing myself quite happily for many years. I might pause now and then and ask myself, like Alfie, what it was all about, but asking questions does not necessarily entail a commitment to change. And even from where I’m sitting now, I know that speculating on just what the hell God is up to does not pay the rent. If you and I just sat around like the lilies of the field waiting until somebody clothed us we’d end up with double pneumonia.

  I understand things a lot better now, but I still remember how I felt as we sat listening to The Man that evening in good old New York. It was easy for him to talk about the need to rouse the Celestial remnant that had taken refuge inside us. We, the poor earth-bound vehicles, with our bald tyres, rusty chassis and worn-out motors had to face up to the brutal truth. Which was – to paraphrase President Nixon – in the battle for men’s hearts and minds, ‘Brax had us by the spark plugs. And had no intention of letting go.

  So far, the only solution The Man had come up with was to cut them off – albeit metaphorically. I was aware that some of the early Christians had gone in for self-castration but, to be frank, it was not a solution you could sell to the hedonists of the twentieth century. Or to Jews with a penchant for metaphysical speculation. I had already made God a gift of my foreskin and, at that point in time, I had no intention of making any further donations.

  Chapter 15

  Wednesday, 6th of May. I arrived at the office at my usual time and spent the day tidying up more loose ends in preparation for my proposed two-week break. I had left The Man at my apartment with a plea to lie low. I did not tell Linda that he was back in town and, unless he walked in through the plate glass door without opening it, I didn’t intend to.

  In the evening, Miriam came round and we sat through another family-album session with The Man. I won’t go into the day-to-day details here. It’s all down on the tapes I had been running since our first talk-fest up at Sleepy Hollow. But the broad outline was this: after Varus’s legions had crushed the rebel uprising in Judea – in which Zacharias had died – Joseph, Mary and The Man-child Joshua returned to Nazareth in Galilee taking the widowed Eliza and Johanan-Gabriel with them.

  Just in case you’ve forgotten, Galilee was now ruled by Herod Antipas, the second of the old man’s surviving sons, whose nickname was ‘The Fox’.

  Eliza and her son stayed with Joseph and Mary for the rest of that year then moved to a place called Aenon, near the village of Salim where there was a religious community run by the Essenes – the breakaway sect I mentioned earlier in this account. The enclosed, ascetic life-style of the Essenes had kept their collective karma to a minimum. It’s something that’s hard for us to appreciate but the spiritual power generated by the community formed an umbrella of energy under which Gabriel was able to shelter from the will-sapping vibrations that ‘Brax was beaming in from all sides. By taking cover in this way, Gabriel could keep his own karma down to a level which would allow him to pass back through the Time Gate.

  The Man, however, elected to soldier on. He needed to acquire at first-hand, the experience ofliving in the world in order to appreciate the plight of the trapped Ain-folk.

  A few weeks after The Man’s fourth birthday, Mary gave birth to James, the first of her six other children. Four boys and two daughters. Benjamin, the last, was born when Joshua-Ya’el was eleven. His twelfth birthday was in 6 AD. A year in which several things happened. Archelaus, the weak-kneed elder son of Herod the Great who had been appointed ethnarch of Judea, Samaria and Idumea, was deposed by the Romans and handed a one-way ticket to Vienne, in the Rhone Valley. His three-piece princedom was turned into a second class Imperial Province ruled by a Roman Procurator. Palestine, I gather, was not regarded as a popular posting among the soldiers and administrators of the Empire. Its history of internecine discord plus the ever-present threat of sectarian violence and covert assassination by Jewish militants, made it as attractive as the US Marine’s fire-base at Ke Sanh.

  Publius Coponius was the man who drew the short straw. He set up his headquarters at the port of Caesarea Sebaste (now just a heap of ruins near the fishing village of Sedot Yam midway between Haifa and Tel-Aviv). Hold it – I’ve just realised that parenthetical remark needs some qualification. By ‘Now’, I mean ‘Now in 1981’. Okay, back to the story.

  The first thing Coponius did was to hold a census, something that struck dread into the heart of every Jew. A census of people, goods and property was the cornerstone of the Roman tax system. In their overseas territories, taxes were collected by an enterprising individual (or syndicate) known as a tax farmer; Roman money sharks who bid against each other for the licence to milk a particular province. The leg work was done by the hated publicani – freelance IRS men. Matthew-Levi was one of them until he got a better offer. The tax farmer and the procurator of a province worked hand in glove; the more they collected, the bigger the share that went to line their own pockets. The system was open to gross abuse but Rome didn’t interfere as long as it got its share of the loot without having to send the troops in.

  Since Augustus was still emperor when Coponius took office, my guess is that this is the census that the author of Luke mentions in his birth narrative and that somehow, with the passage of time, he got his dates mixed up. It’s only one of several irreconcilable items in the four Gospels and is not crucial to the story. The important thing is that the stage was now set for the entry of Pontius Pilate who took over from Coponius in 26 AD, ensuring himself a place in world history and creating jobs for a string of Hollywood actors.

  The same year found The Man-child in Jerusalem and, as he told it, being punished for the first time by Joseph for misbehaving in the Temple. Son of God or no Son of God, you don’t get lippy with the High Priest when you’re only twelve-years-old.

  This particular incident also occasioned the first meeting between The Man and Nicodemus, one of the younger members of the Sanhedrin – the supreme governing body that regulated Jewish affairs. Impressed by The Man-child’s grasp of the Scriptures and his general level of intelligence, Nicodemus did his best to persuade Joseph and Mary to let their son be educated as a religious scholar. Joseph said ‘No’. Turning down what was, on the face of it, a golden career opportunity. Which was either pro
of that he had a mind of his own, or that the Empire, through The Man, was continuing to move in its own mysterious way.

  At first I thought it was strange that Mission Control would have turned down the chance to put The Man into a position where he could have remoulded Jewish religious thought. Maybe even have been tapped for the post of High Priest. But then I remembered what he’d said about starting a grass-roots movement that had to break out of the strait-jacket of first-century Judaism and carry the flame of awareness to the world of the Gentiles. I can see now that because his theosophy drew together the disparate threads of all previous religious thought and welded them together into the shining strand of Truth from which each had sprung, it could not be contained within Judaism. It had to begin anew, drawing unto itself those who sought The Way. Leaving the corrupted, man-made structures to crumble like empty corn-husks.

  When Joshua-Ya’el turned fourteen, he announced his intention of joining his cousin Johanan-Gabriel in the Essene commune on the banks of the River Jordan. This time, Joseph did not stand in his way. In any case, he now had four other young apprentices in the family and, since that first trip to Jerusalem, The Man had spent most of his time studying the Torah and arguing points of interpretation with the local rabbi. Who, it appears, was heartily relieved to see the back of his precocious pupil.

  Upon his arrival at Aenon, The Man was immediately recognised as a ‘spiritual master’ by the Essenes and was welcomed into the inner circle of Initiates where Johanan-Gabriel, despite his youth, had already established a commanding presence. Eliza, now fifty-eight, remained in the nearby community of adherents.

  If you are not a student of arcane wisdom, ancient history, geography and the Kabbala, you may find parts of this next segment hard to handle but it’s important to make the effort to understand, because it has a direct bearing on our own situation. Some of you, I am sure, will know exactly what I’m talking about and may even be ahead of me.

  It is almost impossible for us to comprehend through our physical senses the problems that The Man and Gabriel faced in trying to protect their meta-psyches – their Celestial spirit-forms – against the corrosive radiations beamed at them by ‘Brax. Even now, the whole set-up of the Empire and its billion year struggle with the elemental forces of the Netherworld still remains, for me, a nebulous concept. But as I’ve already recorded, it is the ultimate reality. The war is taking place over us, through us and around us. ‘Brax is as real as the Presence and we are all prey to his power.

  For The Man and Gabriel, it took the shape of a malevolent spiral vortex in which they found themselves trapped, and which was trying to suck them down ever deeper into the physical world. While they, on the other hand, were trying to avoid this karmic accretion which coarsened their spirit-beings. They were like seabirds struggling to free themselves from a glutinous oil slick.

  We have all felt our will to succeed in a given task or situation ebb away. Our self-discipline crumbles; we opt for an easier course – or do nothing at all. And maybe you’ve even had the impression that some external agency was sapping your mental and physical energies. It’s no accident that it always seems to happen when the change you want to bring about is for the better. It’s ‘Brax who makes it easier to accept life rather than question it; to take rather than give; to deceive ourselves and others rather than face up to the truth; to keep our hands in our pockets rather than offer help to a stranger; to envy rather than admire; to hate rather than love.

  Man has been the target of ‘Brax’s negative influence since Earth fell into the hands of the Secessionists. We have been subjected to a relentless bombardment that has pounded the Celestial stowaway inside each of us into insensibility. It is this baleful barrage that we have to resist, with the help of the Power of The Presence. The force of will that the three magi acknowledged as an attribute of the newborn Man-child is not the drive that some of us possess to acquire material riches or political power. It is the will to renounce the desires and the false values of the ‘Braxian world and, in doing so, to help change it. To win freedom for ourselves and victory for the Empire.

  ‘Garbage,’ says that ‘Braxian voice in our ear. And there is a natural tendency for most of us to agree with that assessment. Locked in our mobile homes, with our fogged-up windscreens, we can hardly see round the next bend. How can we even begin to imagine what it’s like at the end of the road? We bump along, trying to get through the day, the week, the month; lurching from one year to the next, trying to make ends meet; make out; make some sense of our lives. Impose some kind of order on our own little corner of a disordered world. When you think of the labyrinthine reasonings of the theologists you can’t help being struck by their total irrelevance to day-to-day living. I mean, really, when you come right down to it, who the fuck cares how many angels can stand on the head of a pin?

  It’s a hell of a lot easier to accept a less demanding analysis of our relationship to the rest of the cosmos. Namely: what’s out there is out there and what’s here is here. And that includes us. As to the greater mysteries of Creation and the concept of an omnipotent guiding intelligence the answer was equally simple: if this is the best God can do, he should make way for a younger man; if he’s trying to teach us a lesson, it’s been a big waste of everybody’s time; and if this is his idea of a joke then he can go screw himself.

  It’s not difficult for the ‘Braxian mind to make out a case demonstrating the basic futility of The Man’s message. The meek might be blessed but it was hard to see how they could ever inherit an earth threatened by radioactive weapons whose lethal after-effects could last for thousands of years. Two-thirds of us risked going out with a bang and the remainder with a leukemic whimper.

  Despite the bleatings of present-day democrats, every century, every year and every day furnished us with additional proof that it was only violence that paid off It was bloody civil strife that had broken the rule of despotic monarchs, freed the slaves in the South and the serfs in Russia. It was the calculated savagery of freedom fighters that had driven the whites to surrender their resource-rich colonies in Africa. Mindless atrocities had given terrorists political clout, and murder had enriched gangsters everywhere. The Power of The Presence was, on the available evidence, no match for the power that came out of the barrel of a gun.

  Man’s violent nature, it could be argued, only mirrored the underlying ferocity of the natural world; the devastation that could be unleashed by the elements; the evolutionary predator and prey system of the reptilian and mammalian species; the relentless kill-and-be-killed cycle of the insects. We could only wring our hands and hope that things would get better. Meanwhile, this way to the gas chamber.

  A yawning chasm of wilful incomprehension lay between the ‘Braxian world and that of the Empire, but it was possible to bridge it if you began to think of yourself not as just another intricately-structured bio-chemical machine but as someone trapped inside that machine. The Celestial driver who had collapsed unconscious over the wheel and who the Empire, through The Man, was doing its utmost to revive.

  The deep coma into which our inner being had sunk had crept upon us by degrees after the World Below was plunged into the Age of Darkness. A Cloud of Unknowing descended upon our soulminds, cutting us off from the Light of The Presence.

  As the bond between the Ain-folk and their earth-hosts strengthened, there was an intermediate stage when control of the host-groups was exercised through a human ‘demi-god’ endowed with magical powers. This was the origin of the shaman. Later, when the parts became greater than the whole, the terrestial leader of the race, or tribe, claimed as of right the qualities of the folk-god and became the mouthpiece and instrument of the divine will – now at one stage removed. The conditions had been created for dynastic succession by divine right and for the emergence of theocratic forms of government through the person of the High Priest and a self-serving hierarchy of acolytes. The conscious knowledge of their original pure state sank into the furthest recesses of the sub
conscious. The Truth became lost in the myths of Time.

  It was this new-found ignorance that gave rise to the first primitive religious rituals; the worship of folk and nature deities. With the awareness of their Celestial origin now enveloped in a miasma of misunderstanding, our ancestors were encouraged by ‘Brax to think of themselves as springing exclusively from the planet that nourished them. Eardh-Ain. The Mother of all Life. Which had to be revered, worshipped and placated by gifts and blood sacrifice in order to calm its elemental ferocity and nourish its life-sustaining fertility.

  The mysterious forces in nature came to be seen as an intrinsic part of the physical world and the rapidly-expanding pantheon of folk gods were given animal or human form or a combination of both and endowed with every excess of human and/or bestial behaviour. They were stronger, prettier, more energetic, generally larger-than-life and lived forever. They were either here, eternally present in the wind, the sea, the mountains, forests and running water or, when they retired, they were carried across the Western Seas to the sunset islands in the sky where the aphrodisiac wine never stopped flowing, where the men were endowed with monumental virility, and the women were young, ever-beautiful and blessed with perpetual nymphomania.

  As Man was drawn deeper and deeper into the darkness of physical existence, female sexuality became identified as the active ingredient of the ‘Braxian world because, as the bearer of new life, women were the living symbol of the eternally fertile Earth-Mother. The willing collaborators of ‘Brax. The coils of the serpent. The vortex sucking the trapped Celestials ever deeper into the World Below. Cutting them off from The Light.