“All right—I’m willing to try. I’ll think about it.”
I still had a question to ask before I left him. “Stephen, what do you think about Julian’s regressing someone into a supposed past life?”
He looked startled. “Any particular reason why you’re asking that?”
“He’s suggested taking me back. He feels that I’m connected to what is happening here, yet I still have an outsider’s viewpoint. He thinks that events happen over and over in different ways, and that the same—souls?—come together again and again. He thinks I might pick up something helpful.”
“I know. I’ve been reading some of Julian’s books.”
“Do you believe any of this?”
“Believe is a strong word. So is disbelief. Perhaps I’ve begun exploring a little. I haven’t had much else to do, and one of the counselings that comes through is that negatives breed more negatives. I’m not especially proud of what I’ve let myself become.”
He spoke without self-pity, and even a little defiantly—lest I agree with him?
“You needed time, Stephen.”
“I’ve had enough time. I’m glad you’re here, Lynn.”
“It’s a pretty strange accident that I am here—only because Julian happened to catch me on television.”
“He doesn’t believe in accidents.” Stephen smiled. “So maybe it was time for you to come. Now that we all need you.”
This was more than I could handle, and I spoke quickly. “What about this regression? Do you think I should try it?”
“You’ll have to decide. It’s not a game to take on lightly. You never know what might come out. Talk to Vivian about it. Julian’s taken her back a few times, and—”
“He certainly has!” Vivian spoke cheerfully as she came into the room. She was carrying a tray with a plate stacked with sandwiches. “We’ve missed lunch, so I put Meryl and Jilly to work fixing us something. They’re eating in the kitchen, so I thought I’d join you.”
Vivian’s serenity—something she had learned from Julian—was what we needed now, and I helped her to set plates and pour coffee.
“Julian has told me what has happened,” she went on. “He’s gone up to the Singing Stones, in order to help Carla. I know he will. Though this is much more terrible for us than it is for Carla—providing she can go on to the next plane.”
I supposed that the time might come when I would take this sort of talk for granted, but I was still a stranger to spirit country.
Vivian went on calmly. “Julian says it’s best now for all of us to put a white light of protection around us. Then anything that is evil and negative will be held away.”
“It’s too bad Carla didn’t know that,” I said.
“Oh, she did. I told her long ago. But her spirit wasn’t ready to accept. Lynn, are you going to let Julian regress you into a past life?”
I picked up a sandwich, hesitating over my answer. “I’m not sure. It seems to be reaching out pretty far for answers. And who knows what I might go back to? It could be horrible.”
“Not the way Julian does it,” she assured me. “I’ve told you he doesn’t believe in going back to some awful suffering and living it all over again.”
“So you think I should try?”
“That’s up to you.” This was what Stephen had said. But Vivian went on. “You really can trust Julian. When I went back to being a cabin boy on a ship, I knew I’d been beaten terribly by the brutal first mate. Perhaps I even died from the beating. But I couldn’t feel that poor young boy’s pain, even though I knew he was someone I’d once been. Julian kept all the pain away.”
“If I did this, could someone else be present?” I asked.
“If you like. It doesn’t matter so long as the others are quiet and don’t interrupt.”
“Would you be there, if I do this?” I asked Stephen. “Then if anything goes wrong, you could stop it.”
“Nothing would go wrong,” Vivian said serenely. “I’d like to watch, too, if you don’t mind.”
I knew I was coming to a decision I’d never have thought of making even a few days ago. “If I do this, of course I won’t mind,” I said. “But I’m not sure yet if I will.”
“You might as well do it and get it over with,” Stephen told me. “What can you lose? In the meantime, I do want to take you and Jilly up in a hot air balloon. As you reminded me, Jilly has always wanted to do this, so I’ll phone the Roscoes and see if they can manage a trip for us right away—while the weather is still beautiful.”
“That’s a fine idea!” Vivian cried. “The mountains will be gorgeous from up there at this time of year.”
I felt breathless, as though I’d lost my own power of direction. It was good to see Stephen taking hold again, but it appeared that I was being scheduled for two journeys, without very much say in the matter. Even while I’d been told it was up to me, I found myself swept along, and a new anxiety stirred in me—a sense of events moving toward some unknown climax.
18
Vivian and I waited for Julian on the deck outside his study. Stephen would be brought upstairs when we were ready. Paul, of course, must be kept away. At the moment Meryl and Jilly were together, and would not join us. There must be no negative presence in the room, Vivian said—nothing that might interfere with my concentration, or Julian’s.
The afternoon was warm as spring, with no wind blowing, and though I listened I could hear no singing from the Stones.
“Why does Julian feel as he seems to about the Singing Stones?” I asked Vivian.
She answered readily. “I can understand, because one time when Julian took me into another life, we were together up on top of that cliff. Julian hasn’t been able to be regressed himself, but since I was there, I knew what happened and could tell him. Up to a point—when I died.”
Nothing astonished me anymore. Perhaps I was beginning to accept this strange world that Julian and Vivian took for granted.
“I don’t know the exact period in time,” Vivian went on, dreamy now, as though she relived something that was very clear in her mind. “Once there were Indians living around here. Julian was a young Indian man. These weren’t nomads or warriors—they cultivated the land. I was an Indian maiden and I was in love with this young man. Somehow, when I go back to another life, I can usually see the connection with the present when I return. Larry came into that scene too, but not right away. When these visions come they may not have a sequence—they just happen—and they can skip around.
“The young man and I were on the ridge near the Singing Stones—though of course we didn’t know them by that name. We were attacked by a wild animal—I think a panther. I can remember yellow eyes and terrible, tearing fangs. Sometimes the young man had brought offerings to the Stones and prayed there. So the Stones helped him. They crowded around him and kept the panther from reaching him, and so he was saved.”
She spoke as though she could live the experience again, yet without terror.
“What happened to you?” I asked. “Do you know that?”
There was no change in her voice, though she closed her eyes. “The animal killed me. It must have been a horrible, painful death, but when Julian took me back he set a guard about me so that I couldn’t feel what happened.”
“You said Larry was there.”
“Yes. He was out hunting and he was in love with me too, so he had followed us up there at a distance. The panther got to me first, though Larry killed him before I died. I asked him to look after my young man, who was younger, and he promised that he would. So, though everything was different, they were friends in that lifetime too. Of course I don’t know what happened after that, because I was no longer there.”
Her utter conviction was touching, though I wasn’t sure I could ever accept this as she did. In fact, mine might be the negative presence in the coming experiment.
We saw Julian heading across from the bridge, and Vivian went to get Stephen.
“I’ve helped to
set Carla free,” Julian told me as he joined me at the rail. “She’ll be happier now—and safer than in this life. Though who knows what still lies ahead for her. She may not want to be born again right away. We all choose the families we want to be born into, you know.”
I didn’t know—anything! Yet I couldn’t question Julian’s conviction and confidence in what he believed he had done. Now he studied me and seemed to sense at once why I was here.
“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you, Lynn?”
He didn’t wait for my answer, but led me inside to his study and gestured me toward a couch set against one wall. At his direction, I lay down on my back and he placed a cushion beneath my head. Realization of what I was about to do seized me, and I started to shiver. As Stephen had said—this was no game, and I wasn’t ready to surrender my will to Julian.
He drew a straight chair to a place beside the couch and took my hand gently in both his own, so that in spite of myself I began to quiet a little.
Vivian returned, pushing Stephen’s chair, though I was only vaguely aware of what was happening in the room behind Julian. My focus now was completely upon him. The clasp of his hands about mine took me into some quiet, untroubled place.
Someone turned off all the lights except one lamp in a corner. The room was quiet, and Julian sat very still, holding my hand and lending me some inner strength that dismissed any doubts I might have had. He closed his eyes for a moment, and I sensed that he might be praying—perhaps asking for protection and guidance.
I felt relaxed now and unafraid, but he took me into an even deeper relaxation. He had placed a blanket over me, and as he put my hand gently beneath it, I began to feel warm again. His words, spoken so softly I was surprised that they reached me clearly, performed the ritual of relaxation from the top of my head through my arms and my legs and into my very toes. Any last trace of tension and anxiety melted away.
Julian held a metal pen before my eyes and told me to follow it. First from side to side, and then gradually upward until my eyes rolled up to an uncomfortable degree and I closed them. My lids were too heavy now to stay open.
“You are unable to open your eyes,” he told me softly.
Some rational part of my mind told me that of course I could open my eyes, but when I tried to move the muscles of my eyelids nothing happened. I felt a mild surprise, but gave up trying.
Julian continued in the same low voice. “You will be perfectly conscious throughout this journey into the past. If anything troubles you, raise your right forefinger and I will bring you back at once. You are safe. Nothing can make you afraid or cause you pain. You will remain an observer and not feel any suffering you may have experienced in a former life. I will ask you questions, and if you are able to answer, fine. If not, we’ll go on. It won’t matter.”
I had never felt so peaceful, so trusting. My chest rose and fell rhythmically with my slow breathing.
“You are going very deep now,” he told me. “Deeper and deeper. You won’t need to make a choice. Your own guides will take you where you need to go. Can you tell me where you are now—tell me what you see?”
A picture formed under my closed lids, and I heard my own faint voice telling Julian what I saw. “I’m standing before a house. A frame house. I see a rickety gray porch with a few steps up to it. There’s an old rocking chair on the porch.”
“What year is this, and what season?”
I didn’t hesitate—the words seemed to come with no conscious prompting. “It’s late fall. The year is 1899.”
“What place are you in? Tell me what you see.”
“It’s a mountain place. There are mountains all around the gray house.”
“What country are you in?”
“I’m here—in America. The place is Colorado. A woman is riding up to the door. I am that woman, but I’m only watching her.”
“That’s good. That’s exactly right. What is the woman riding?”
“A mule,” I said, and something curious happened. That part of my conscious mind that was watching with me rose to challenge. “A mule!” I echoed in denial, my voice stronger and louder.
“Go deep, Lynn—very deep.” Julian’s tone was calming, and the part of my mind that wanted to deny quieted. Now I seemed to see an empty circular brown space before my eyes—a dark vortex that descended endlessly into a void. There was a sense of swirling nothingness.
“Are you in a town? Do you know the name of the town?”
A picture formed across the vortex and words came from my mouth. “I’m in the mountains. Near Genessee.” Once more the conscious part in my mind objected. “I’ve never heard of a Genessee in Colorado!”
“It doesn’t matter. Go deeper, deeper. Very deep. Where are you now?”
The brown void returned and the picture was there. The woman I watched—the woman who was me—was inside the house. “I’m standing before a big fireplace where a fire is burning. I’m wearing a blue dress and a big white apron that covers all the front of my skirt and is tied behind with a big bow. There’s a table in the room. Not set for a meal. There’s a bowl of blue flowers on the table—that match my dress. My husband brought them to me.”
“Blue flowers?” my other voice echoed.
Julian ignored it. “Is anyone else in the room?”
“There’s a small boy kneeling by the hearth—my son. And a girl of fifteen is standing by the table—my daughter.”
“What is your name?”
The answer came without hesitation. “Alice Lampton.” It felt right, and I’d taken no thought to it before I spoke.
“Who is your husband?”
“Jim Lampton.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“Back home in Ohio.”
Julian took me briefly through a first meeting with Jim Lampton, through my marriage—not in a church, because my father—Alice’s father—didn’t believe in religion. So I was married in a house. In a parlor filled with flowers because it was spring. It developed quickly that Jim was not doing well in Ohio, and he had big dreams of the West. His carpentering skills got him by, but he drank a good deal—too much—so he couldn’t hold a job working for others.
“How did he treat you?” Julian asked.
“He was good to me. He loved me. But I had to be strong for us both.”
The part of me that stayed aware knew that Jim had become Stephen in my present life, and we were still working out our karma.
“There were twins,” I went on. “They were born late in my life and they died.”
I felt no pain, no sense of loss, yet, strangely, real tears were coursing down my cheeks.
“Tell me something else that happened in your life. Something difficult you had to get through.”
Again, pictures formed in the brown space. “We’re in a wagon coming home from town. Jim is excited and happy. Last week he made a strike of gold on our property, where the stream runs down the mountains. We’ve just been to town to turn in the gold, and we have more money that we’ve ever had before. Jim isn’t drinking these days and he’s singing because he’s happy.”
My words stopped, faded away.
“What happened then?” Julian prompted.
I could hear emotion in my voice as I went on, yet I still felt nothing more than empathy—as though I read someone else’s story. “Men came riding after us—after Alice and Jim. Bad men. There was a leader the others called Scotty—a small, good-looking man. I think he was crazy. His eyes were wild, though he smiled all the time while he and his men were robbing us. He was the one who shot Jim, so that he fell from his seat on the wagon. Then Scotty rolled Jim’s body down the mountain into a gulch. Afterward, he rode up beside me and took off his hat. He said he was sorry for what he’d had to do, but it was necessary. He flapped his hat at the mare pulling the wagon, and set her galloping along the trail. Jim’s body was never found.”
Again there were tears running down my face, though I felt no sorrow—only an obser
ver’s objective pity for Alice Lampton.
“Did you know any of the men who robbed you? Go deeper, Lynn—deep, deep.”
I felt no recognition as far as appearance went. But some part in my mind knew something that the woman, Alice Lampton, couldn’t know. I had met the small, vicious man again in my present life. There was something in him—some essence—I recognized, yet I could put no name to whatever it was. I had known Jim for Stephen—perhaps because I’d known them both so well. But I could find no present identity for Scotty. I was silent, able to tell Julian nothing more.
“It’s all right,” he assured me. “You are fine, and you’re moving away from that time now. That unhappiness is long in the past. You have moved ahead to the time of your death. Tell me where you are.”
I was still in the gray mountain house, lying on a bed near a window, where I could look out at the mountains I loved. My grown daughter and grandchild were beside me, and my daughter was crying. I described the scene for Julian very clearly. I knew that I was dying, and I knew I would see Jim again, so I was not unhappy.
“What are you dying of?”
I spoke easily. “Cancer.” I felt no pain. I wasn’t crying now—no tears on my cheeks. I simply closed my eyes and slipped away into another place. Yet my present self went on talking to Julian.
“They are burying Alice in a wooden box in a country churchyard. But she isn’t in the box.”
“What do you mean?”
“She has left the box. The real substance of Alice has left the box.”
“In the spirit, you mean?”
“Yes. She probably has another assignment before she can return to a new life.”
“That’s fine, Lynn. You’ve done very well. I’m going to bring you back to the present now. I’ll count backward from ten slowly. When I reach zero you will be wide awake and feel refreshed and calm. You will remember everything, but it will not disturb you or give you pain.”
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