Through the Third Eye; Book 1 of Third Eye Trilogy

by Bob Frank

  Shali continued with the standard scripts and then, prompted by Clay, she asked, “When your people were released by this Pharaoh, did you walk out of Egypt to a land to the East?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you cross the sea to the east? Did you or your brother make a prayer to God to part the sea? Did the water separate so you could walk through the sea to the other side?”

  “We crossed to the east. I do not understand what you ask about the sea.”

  “How did you get across the sea without a boat?”

  “There were earthquakes, and the sea became very low. Traveling merchants told us we could cross the sea if we went north. We did. We walked across bridges of sand and strips of land until we got to the other side. Several weeks later there were more earthquakes, and the sea came back to normal.”

  Shali translated for Clay. He smiled and said to Shali, “Urban legends. After two hundred years, George Washington throws a coin across the Potomac River. A thousand years from now, George Washington will have parted the Potomac with his sword and walked across.”

  Shali gave him a glancing grin and added, “How about the time his brother Moses went off to the mountains to create the Ten Commandments? He was only gone a week, not forty days. And did you catch that Moses wrote the Ten Commandments on papyrus during his trek to the mountains and only carved them on slate stones after he returned?”

  “Yeah, no lightning bolts from heaven. So the golden calf of the idol-worship legends was really just a wooden statue with a gold necklace.” They quietly laughed together as Iqbal kept talking in the background. Clay added, “Take him to the end of this life and find out how he ends up dying. Every religion has a different spin on Aaron’s death.”

  She nodded and turned back to Iqbal. “Go to the last moments of this life and describe what you see, hear and feel. Go there now.”

  Clay shot a pulse to the Third Eye. Iqbal’s head pushed back in the pillow.

  Shali commanded Iqbal, “Tell me what you see.”

  “I went with my brother, Moses, to the mountains. Ever since we were young, we have loved to walk in the mountains and sleep beneath the stars. We would stare into the heavens and watch shooting stars and clouds dancing in front of the moon. But that night was cold, raining, and we argued about nothing. We found a cave and started a small fire to dry off and warm ourselves. He commented about something stupid that I did many years earlier. And then he told me how stupid I was with the wooden calf. Will he never let it go? I became angry with him. I made fun of his jumbled speech and mimicked his lisping impediment. Hmmffp mumpf ngumph. Why do we argue over nothing? We are so respected by our people, but we constantly fight with each other. I look at my brother, and he is so old. We are both old. This body is so tired. We are over one hundred years old now. We are angry with each other, but we finally stop and try to sleep. I cannot sleep. Hours later, I roll over and see my brother staring at me. I reached my hand to him. He took my hand. I told him I was sorry for the terrible things I said. My brother smiled at me in the last flicker of the fire against the walls of the cave. He apologized to me too. It was good. We are satisfied. I closed my eyes and this body died.”

  “How did you feel about this life?”

  “This was a good life. I am pleased. I helped others and gave others what I could. We gave them freedom. Freedom for people is good.”

  “What did you learn from this life?”

  “I learned much from my brother. He was aggressive but rarely thoughtful. I learned that you must push hard if you are to get what you want. It is important to be assertive. Without my brother, I could not have done that. We freed our people from that Pharaoh. I learned that people must be free from oppression by others and that I must try to break those bonds. I learned that worshiping idols is bad. People may worship beliefs, even Gods, but they should not worship idols and should never make a human into an idol. My brother was so correct in this. His anger was warranted over the wooden calf — it was an idol — but I wish he did not hold his anger at me in this life.”

  Shali questioned Iqbal about any connections to Moses in hopes they could find more leads. They got little, but she knew the LBL might yield more details. Shali walked through the script to bring Iqbal out his hypnotic trance.

  “When I count backwards from five to one, you will begin to come back to the present time and regain consciousness. You will not remember anything of the lives or events you visited during our session. Do you understand that you will not remember anything from the last several hours?”

  There was no response, so Shali signaled Clay with a head nod. He pressed the button to shoot a long micro-pulse to Iqbal’s shoulders. Iqbal’s neck and shoulders twisted upward in reaction to the shock. There was no further response, so Shali repeated again, “Do you understand that you will not remember any of this regression to your soul’s past?”

  Clay shot another pulse to Iqbal’s shoulders. His neck and shoulders wrenched again.

  “Yes. I understand. I will not remember anything from this session. I will remember nothing.”

  Clay started rapidly tapping on the Third Eye micro-pulse button. After five seconds, he stopped per the protocol.

  “Good. Five. You are now preparing to come out of a deep trance. You feel relaxed and have forgotten everything you experienced or saw in this session. Four. The memory of your past lives is quickly fading and will not come back in this conscious life. You are beginning to waken slightly. Three. You can feel energy returning to your body. You are relaxed and satisfied. You will not remember anything of the last several hours. Two. You are almost awake, now. Your eyes will open soon. The blood is flowing to all parts of your body. You feel totally refreshed and relaxed. You have no memory of the previous lives that you visited today. One. You are fully awake and conscious. You feel relaxed and satisfied. You remember nothing of this session. You may open your eyes at any time. You are now awake. Open your eyes and sit up in the chair.”

  Shali removed the goggles, cap and headphones. Iqbal opened his eyes and lifted his head up from the back of the lounge chair. Iqbal rolled his head and neck in a big circle to shake out the muscles. Shali gave him a large bottle of water to quench his thirst, which would be strong after more than three hours of intense regression.

  Chapter 5

  They agreed Iqbal could go home for his lunch and return in two hours. After Iqbal left, Clay closed down their systems and Shali walked to the balcony. She looked down at the security guard posted below their room and waved a hand in gratitude. Then she went back inside and pulled the balcony doors shut behind her. She turned the deadbolt and tugged stiffly to ensure the doors were locked. They finished locking up the regression room and told the guard posted in the hallway they would be back after lunch.

  A nearby restaurant tucked in a side street served as their escape from the grueling morning session. The colorful yet heavily worn tablecloths made the already dark restaurant appear even dingier. The pungent smell of curry shrouded the room, which had a low ceiling and only two small windows. The windows were half-blocked by heavy wool curtains, trapping the smells in the room. In near silence, they munched on bread and crackers dipped in thick humus and savored a tasty selection of kabobs. They devoured a Jordanian lunch of lamb cooked in whey and yogurt sauce, served on a bed of Egyptian rice with pine nuts and almonds.

  After eating, while quietly sipping on a strong sweet tea laced with cloves and other Eastern spices, Clay said, “We’ve been working together for almost two years now. It’s been good to work with you.”

  “I’d say ‘happy second anniversary,’ but the two months that we were involved don’t count. We didn’t get a damn bit of real work done while we were so busy banging away at each other’s bodies. The time that I went back to LA after we broke it off doesn’t count either.”

  Clay laughed, thinking of the three to four months after Shali went home to Los Angeles after their big emotional clash. During her absence Clay immersed h
imself into his treasure hunting regressions and rapidly went through three other translators.

  Clay quickly responded, “Yeah, but we both realized that we had to work together. It was meant to be.”

  “Professionally, that is. The strict hands-off policy is in full force, you know.”

  “Of course. Absolutely. I know you have the hots for me but you will just have to be disciplined and stick to the job.”

  “Yeah — right.”

  Their eyes connected just for a moment, then both looked away. After a few seconds, Clay looked back. “I know I’ve been a bit secretive, and I have sensed your frustration with me.”

  “No shit.”

  Clay smiled with a blush of embarrassment, “Well, this morning I finally gave you more details on the secrets, even though it wasn’t much. I guess if I can’t trust you now, then I never can. So I am going to bring you into my little world.”

  Shali raised her eyebrows in anticipation. “Good. These regressions have really intrigued me, but I need more than you have been willing to give to me. I can’t dig in the nooks and crannies in a regression unless I understand more about what is behind it.”

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Here comes the confession. You’ve been patient with me; so where do I begin?”

  “How about you take away my PLR virginity and tell me the source of your regression wisdom? There are more to these protocols than you are giving me.” She gave him a sheepish grin to help him break the ice.

  “Yeah. It’s time for me to show you the ways of the world, young lady.”

  Clay took a deep breath and looked to the far side of the room while he thought back to how his quest began. He lifted the tea cup to his nose and sniffed the deep aroma of cloves. “I worked at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park several years ago. Many years before I joined SRI, back in the 1970s and ‘80s, the U.S. government was running an eclectic collection of secret black-ops programs. Under the cover of foreign spy projects, U.S. intelligence agencies opened their undocumented checkbooks for PPO’s — para-psychology operations. The agencies were looking for any means that could give them an edge on their enemies, perceived or real. CIA spies inside foreign governments during the Cold War had convinced them that both the Russian KGB and the Chinese were doing their own advanced PPO programs, including astral projection, out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, and past-life regression, among others. All of these disciplines, if they can be called that, have had avid followers for millennia. Rather than be left out of the global PPO game, the U.S. intelligence programs followed suit and formalized their own PPO research. The Cold War made it all legit.”

  Shali’s face showed puzzlement and astonishment. She listened intently to Clay’s every word.

  “The U.S. agencies were not about to let the Russians get the jump on them, so they poured a lot of this black-ops money into PPO research. SRI became the hub of their PPO programs. The government piled mountains of cash in their hoppers as the programs ramped up. Extensive laboratories were built for all PPO disciplines at SRI. Some were secret and others were not so secret. The remote viewing programs were made the most public to distract attention from the deeper, more esoteric PPO’s.”

  “I saw a SciFi Channel program once that talked about remote viewing,” Shali interjected. “They interviewed some guys who were at SRI during that time. It was on a ghost show or something. Is this the same thing? The same guys?”

  “Yep. The remote viewing programs still have an active, almost cult-like following today. However, on the contrary, the Past Life Regression, or PLR, programs were kept under wraps. Real quiet. They set up PLR work teams across the country and even in a few friendly countries like the UK, Canada and Australia. The PLR program managers were experimenting with regressions wherever willing subjects could be found.”

  Clay took a sip on the sweet, tartly spiced tea and then continued. “Some programs, such as remote viewing, had less than stellar results but were thought to be more valuable to intelligence than others. Hence they received additional funding and had a favored status for damn near twenty years. Other government security and defense agencies picked up the financial tab for remote viewing and kept it alive longer than other PPO programs, well into the nineties. A few of the other programs, such as PLR, proved to be very successful and actually exceeded all expectations. But PLR did not have applicability to immediate military or intelligence needs. Running a PLR protocol on a subject could never track down Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein hiding in spider holes or mountain caves. Information from PLR regressions had little value when it came to finding culprits or dealing with them in the present. PLR could not find crashed Russian planes or missing submarines. So you can imagine what happened next.”

  “What?”

  Clay leaned back in his chair and lifted his eyebrows high. He sighed and continued, “During the early 1980s recession, Congress caught wind of these socially unacceptable and politically incorrect PPO programs. How could the CIA and other security agencies spend precious taxpayer dollars on paranormal research and ghost stories? The budget ax came swinging to end the PLR program. Only a few programs, such as the Stargate remote-viewing program, survived. PLR as a government program, despite having surpassed all expectations, was destined for the proverbial cutting-room floor. The entire program was shut down, boxed up, and sent off to the archives at SRI. All researchers were reassigned, released or terminated from employment. There was simply no substantive justification of PLR protocols to the U.S. intelligence community.”

  “So is this when you came to SRI?”

  “A few years later. The programs had been boxed away and nearly forgotten about. I was a senior analyst in the research department at SRI, and I was accustomed to regimented and disciplined research, having spent the previous ten years in U.S. Army intelligence. I was happy doing research for several years at SRI, but after a while it became a bit boring. Fortunately, they assigned me the task of cleaning out the archive storage for old programs.

  “My project assignment involved thousands of boxes of terminated or completed research projects from SRI’s sixty year history. I had to sort through thousands of defunct and obsolete programs. I was given three junior research analysts and an admin assistant for eighteen months. We were to review each program in the archive, write up a synopsis and make recommendations for disposition. SRI’s management reviewed the recommendations and directed disposition of records for each program.”

  Shali asked, “So the PLR program papers were all available to you and your team?”

  “Sure were. Having a team of analysts and an admin to do the tedious work on the boring projects left me plenty of time to dig into the more interesting ones and read the research papers. We were nine months into the clean-up when I came across the PLR program: one hundred eighty-two boxes of research papers carefully indexed, labeled and categorized. The people running that program had been amazingly organized. What is most surprising is how carefully they documented everything in the midst of what must have been a rapid and emotional program termination. I was amazed at how easy they made it for me to pour through the tons of information. The summaries and indices led me directly to the juicy tidbits I needed to exploit the PLR protocols.”

  “Exploit? And wasn’t all of this proprietary or classified or something? How did you get permission to use it?”

  “Because enough time had transpired since the end of the programs at that point, and the documents were declassified as part of my project. The decision was made to digitize and publish the PLR papers through a small group of universities. As soon as we posted the PLR material at the first few universities, there was a big hullabaloo. I figured it was all going to get yanked back, so I got copies of the material I needed for myself, legally. I managed to grab copies of the protocol procedures and a complete copy of the SRD, the Soul Regression Database. That’s all I really needed. When SRI revoked the PLR distribution, we pulled it all back, but it had been publi
c domain for a few weeks so I got my copy legally from one of the other universities, not through SRI.”

  “Sounds like there’s a conflict here.”

  “Yeah. I got into a big legal hassle with the institute. They backed off and let me keep the copy, but I had to resign. Since I didn’t have a job and had time on my hands, I started digging into the protocols and database, looking for ways to make a living.”

  “Alright. So that’s how you got material, but what was really in it?”

  “The primary objective of the program was to develop PLR technologies and methodologies to enable consistent collection of information from human souls. This information on the souls was to be stored, cataloged, and correlated for undetermined intelligence purposes. The overall program was divided into two main streams of work. First, developing and refining the regression protocols; and second, building a soul-correlation database through actual regressions.”

  “You sound like you’re giving a college dissertation.”

  Clay chuckled back. “If you worked with this stuff as intensely as I did, you’d be talking like this too. Anyways, besides the protocols, the PLR program built a sophisticated database system that precisely documented and archived the soul information acquired during their PLR sessions.”

  “So this is where you got the initial database. I wondered why it was so large and had different regressors names listed. I knew you couldn’t have done all of this.”

  “Exactly. They had designed computer programs to correlate different souls and lives. The archived material included sophisticated FORTRAN computer code and a database of regressions on nine thousand eight hundred human souls. Each had been regressed using various PLR protocols developed by the program. Perhaps twenty-five thousand regression sessions drew out as many as five to ten different human lives for each soul during each session. Some souls only had a few lives, but a few of the more mature souls had as many as a hundred lives. Most souls seemed to have between ten and thirty human incarnations in identified human history.”