The Temple was built against the side of a mountain, each floor higher up the mountain, and surrounding the whole thing were other mountains of great height and beauty, white with snow and dazzling in the sun.
Within the Temple were great works of art. Wise men were studying scrolls with little markings on them which Kyra knew in her dream were symbols which they could understand within their heads.
Her own people had no such thing as writing, but in the dream Kyra understood what writing was and how it was being used to store the knowledge of a great civilization.
She walked about looking at exquisite paintings hanging on scrolls from the walls, at statues carved with perfect precision from the hardest rock. She heard great men discussing learned ideas.
So great and splendid was this storehouse of knowledge, and so magnificent and advanced upon her own civilization, that she concluded she was seeing a vision of the future.
This was the first part of the dream.
The second part was horrible.
Suddenly from the sky came monsters in vast hordes. They dropped black rocks upon the beautiful, shining building, and as the rocks touched they roared and flashed and whole sections of the walls disappeared in smoke and flame. Pieces of roof and wall and statue were flying everywhere, and everyone was running about and screaming.
Only one group of men seemed to stay calm. There were seven of them and they walked calmly to the courtyard that was in the heart of the Temple, and went to a tree that grew in the centre of the courtyard. The leader lifted up his hand and picked a single seedpod from the tree, and then the seven turned and walked away.
Through all the corridors they walked quite calmly among the screaming, running people, the falling timbers and the splinters of rock. The scrolls of paintings were in flames, the scrolls of writing utterly destroyed.
The seven men picked their way past the debris and the flames and went out of the temple by a small side door, low on the mountain and not far from a forest.
They looked back as they entered the forest and saw the last of the Temple laid flat.
The monsters in the sky were not content with that but continued their work of destruction on every living thing they could see or on any fragment, man-made or natural, that belonged to the civilization they were determined to destroy.
The seven men hurried through the forest as the demons turned their attention to the living trees and began to blast them with their fiery rocks.
As the last cover was destroyed, the seven men entered a dangerous rocky chasm.
One by one they were killed.
But before each died he passed on the green seed pod they had been so carefully carrying to the next man who was still untouched.
Kyra, watching it all, was in despair.
The flying monsters were determined to destroy the men as they had destroyed everything else.
As the last man saw that there was no way out for him he flung the seed pod into the river far below him and Kyra saw it swirling off in the white and boiling waters of the rapids.
The last man stood with quiet dignity watching it go until he too was blown to pieces as his companions had been.
Kyra woke remembering the utter desolation that had once been the most magnificent civilization she could ever have imagined.
The class listened spellbound to her story. It was a message from the spirit realm. Of that there was no doubt in their minds. None of these things had ever happened to Kyra in this life, and there were things in the dream that she could not have known about or seen.
After a long silence the teacher said to Kyra, ‘What have you learned from this?’
They all knew that with spirit messages you always took the meaning that came to you at the moment of waking. This was part of the message.
They never discussed, or analysed, these kind of dreams even if the interpretation that came with them seemed at first illogical.
‘I learned that nothing is ever completely destroyed, but lives on, in another form. What is past nourishes what is present, and what is present nourishes what is future, and there is no changing this.
‘And I learned that the Temple I saw was not only in the future, but was also in the past. This had all happened before and would happen again. The circle and the spiral are the most potent symbols of Being known to man.
‘The seven men of wisdom, the guardians of the Mysteries, rescued the seed pod rather than any of the fabulous paintings or scrolls of writing, because it contained the tiny germ of life that would grow again wherever it landed into another civilization. This one was finished, but a new one could grow as long as this Mysterious seed containing spirit-force was preserved.
‘I realized this world, or any other world, could have had many such civilizations which had disappeared and grown again, as it were, from seed.
‘And we who grow do not remember the others, no more than the seed remembers the tree from which it was taken, or the tree remembers the seed from which it grew. But the tree would not be what it is if it had not come from such a seed. And the seed would not be what it is had it not come from such a tree.’
The High Priest Guiron who was present at the examination of Kyra stood up and raised his hand above her head.
‘You have done well. But remember always, graduating from a class means only that you are now fit to begin to learn what there is to learn, and that you have some idea in which direction to look for knowledge.’
The rest of the students drummed with their feet on the ground and looked at her with smiling faces as she passed along in front of them.
She felt very happy
6
Divination
The first thing Kyra learned in the class for divination was that the power of divining was not in the object itself, but in the mind of the ‘Seer’, so that it was perfectly in order for them to use anything they liked as aids to divination.
‘Our “surface” mind,’ the teacher said one day, ‘is not only crude and noisy, the most inadequate form of consciousness we have, but also arrogant and shrewd. It has been used for so long it is reluctant to give up its domination. For this reason, before we have the skill to change easily and accurately from it to the subtler regions where we are sensitive to influences travelling invisibly from person to person, spirit to spirit, we have to use little subterfuges, little tricks, to outwit our “surface” minds.
‘For this reason some people throw pebbles or sticks, and make their decisions on the way they fall. Others burn bone and examine the pattern of cracks. Others kill animals and peer into their entrails, and yet others consult oracles and are given words which can be interpreted in many different ways.
‘Where you have been hindered by lack of confidence, or by trying too fast to master a skill you are not ready for, where you have been staring so hard that you can no longer see, or so long that you no longer notice, a return to the quiet within yourself will be invaluable.
‘Sit in front of a flower. Watch it grow.
‘Relax.
‘Understanding flows up from under the surface like a spring and brings you refreshment from times and places long forgotten by your “surface” mind. Everything you have ever learned in this life and in the ones you have lived before, is preserved, available, if only you know how to reach it.’
The students sat spellbound. Their new teacher was a vigorous and lively man who paced up and down in front of them as he spoke, using gestures energetically to emphasize each point.
Kyra knew much of what he was saying already, but if she had learned anything in the past year, she had learned how necessary it was continually to renew and reinforce one’s knowledge of truth. But she wondered if the ‘surface’ mind the teacher spoke about with such disdain was not a protector as well as an enemy; we need to draw on inner levels of consciousness from time to time, but to live so intensely aware of so much all the time would be exhausting. We need rest, not only from our ‘surface’ mind, but from our ‘inner’ min
d as well. We need the kind of sleep that most people call their waking life, as much as we need the kind of waking that most people would call sleep.
* * * *
The students practised at first by throwing little clusters of pebbles and trying to see what they could make of them.
Kyra was amazed how often her set of pebbles took on the shape of a boat. At last, worried about this, she turned to her student neighbour and asked what he saw in her pebbles.
‘A tree,’ he said without hesitation and returned to his own.
‘A tree? Surely not...’
She remembered the dream she had of the boat.
She trusted this teacher enough to talk to him about it. He quietly cross-questioned her until, without meaning it to happen, the whole story of the young priest she was longing to see came out.
The teacher smiled.
‘There are two possibilities here. Either you are longing for him to be on a boat coming towards you so that you force this image into existence – it is a wish-image. Or perhaps you have penetrated to a deeper level where you are in thought contact with him and he is actually on a boat coming towards you. Both explanations may be valid simultaneously. There is no limit to the number of levels that can be operating at once.’
* * * *
After they had spent a great deal of time using different methods to explore their own most secret knowledge, the students were told each to choose a partner and start to work with him. One would ask the question and the other would be the ‘Seer’ and try to answer it.
Each student found some things worked better for him than others and the teacher encouraged them to choose the method they felt most at home with. Belief in its efficacy and a relaxed attitude was very important.
Kyra had a set of small, carved, walrus ivory pieces, beautiful to feel and touch, that her father had given her as a farewell present.
She had always found the quickest path for her to the inner realms was the path of visual beauty. The curve of something, light touching something with unusual delicacy, the sudden harmony of two reeds moving in a breeze ... these things were enough for her to slip from mundane consciousness to a level where depth of awareness of anything was possible.
In throwing her ivory pieces, in calmly and deeply contemplating them, Kyra drifted into a state of receptive meditation, where the bond of inner communication between herself and Vann, who had asked the question, was so close that she could ‘feel’ what he deeply wanted the answer to be. He wanted to specialize as a healer, but his ‘surface’ mind told him he should leave the college as soon as he could qualify as an ordinary village priest because his family wanted him back with them.
Kyra looked at him, her eyes misty from staring at the exquisite ivory pieces.
‘You have great potential as a healer. It would be wrong to throw it away. Your family will understand eventually and be glad.’
He knew this. He just needed to be told it.
He felt at peace at last.
* * * *
One day their teacher strode briskly into their midst and asked them one question and then sent them away for a few days to think about it.
The question was: ‘Does a prophet really see into the future?’
The students argued amongst themselves and went for long walks alone to think about it, and when he called them back again there were almost as many different suggestions as there were students.
When the teacher had heard them all he told them to sit down and he would give them a demonstration.
He sent Panora, who was hovering around as usual, to fetch a man who was famous as a Seer and prophet.
Panora vanished instantly, overjoyed to have such a mission, and returned not long afterwards with a very old, very bent man Kyra had seen from time to time about the Temple environs.
He was led by Panora to stand before them, and Kyra saw that he was blind.
The teacher asked for a volunteer to question the Prophet.
Several students volunteered but Kyra was chosen.
She left her place and stood before the man.
‘Do not ask your question aloud,’ the teacher said. ‘The Prophet is not only blind, but deaf. Think it! The rest of you must keep your minds as still as possible so that there is no interference in the flow of thought between the two.’
Kyra was a little nervous now that she was so exposed, but seeing Panora’s mocking face she felt she had to continue. Somehow she disliked the girl. Perhaps she had never forgiven her for laughing at her that first day when she addressed that perfectly ordinary rook as ‘My Lord!’ But she was ashamed of being so petty.
She took a few moments to compose herself. She had intended to ask if she would ever meet her young desert priest in the flesh, but somehow, perhaps because Panora was staring at her so fixedly, she found herself thinking about the High Priest Guiron, and what lay between him and Isar.
The old man took a long time to speak and some of the students began to be a bit restive. The teacher stilled them with a fierce look and there was unmoving silence again.
At last he spoke and his voice seemed to come from a long, long way away.
‘A woman began the trouble and a woman will end it.’
Kyra waited, hoping he would say more, her heart beating fast.
Nothing more seemed to be forthcoming.
‘Will it be the same woman?’ She found herself thinking.
‘A woman that was loved was there at the beginning, and a woman that is loved will be there at the end.’
And that was all he would say.
The teacher broke the tension with a sharp clap of his hands.
‘That is all,’ he said to Kyra. ‘You will get no more.’
And then he turned to the class.
‘I am afraid Kyra chose a question that will not be of much use to you as a demonstration. Whether the answer has relevance or not will not appear for many years. I should have put a limit on the kind of question to be asked.’
He looked around at the disappointed faces of the students.
‘I will choose another one of you, and this time the question must have an answer that can be easily checked. Ask it aloud first, that the class may know what you ask, and then in your mind that the Prophet may know it.’
Kyra felt she had failed them in some way, and returned to her place disconsolate. It had been an ‘unsuitable’ question, but she did want to know the answer.
The student who had now been chosen cleared his throat and said aloud to the class:
‘Can you tell us the exact day and time of day we will see the very next complete stranger from over the sea in our Temple?’
This time the whole class concentrated on the question, and whether it was the force of all their minds working together, or whether it was because the question was simpler to answer, the answer was given almost immediately and without any of that eerie sound of distance he had had in his voice before.
‘On the third day from this, precisely at noon, a young priest, his skin much burned by the sun, dressed in white and blue, with gold around his waist, will stand with the Lord Guiron in yonder circle,’ and he pointed exactly as though he could see, directly at the southern circle contained as a sanctum within the great circle.
Kyra gasped. It was the very question she had wanted to ask, but had been prevented from doing so by Panora’s disconcerting eyes. Had her mind influenced that of the student who had asked the question?
It must be her priest! The description fitted exactly.
She was so excited that her mind wandered far from the class she was attending and was only brought back to some kind of sense by the sharp and sarcastic voice of the teacher who could see that she was not listening and had trapped her with a question.
She blushed and stammered, but her mind was hopelessly out of tune with the class.
She caught Panora’s eye and felt that she would like to shake her for the look of amused triumph on the girl’s face. The thought of
doing violence to her had no sooner left her mind, than the child laughed and snapped her fingers. Kyra momentarily turned her eyes away and when she looked back, in Panora’s place, tugging at something in the grass for its midday meal, was a black and evil looking rook.
‘Oh!’ she snapped irritably, and stamped her foot.
‘Perhaps it would be better if you left the class for a while, Kyra,’ the teacher said to her. ‘I can see you are not going to listen to a word I say.’
‘Oh ... I am sorry...’ mumbled Kyra, contrite. ‘I really will concentrate!’
‘No,’ the man said, ‘you will waste the time. Climb upon the earth ridge, and walk the whole circumference slowly. When you have done that, return to me and tell me what you have learned.’
In shame, Kyra did what she was told.
‘That Panora!’ she caught herself thinking resentfully. And then, ‘No, not Panora. Kyra! My mind should be under my control, not at the mercy of every disturbing whim and influence.’
She climbed the ridge and started walking, taking deep breaths of the wonderful early summer air, feeling the warm energy of the sun stirring her spirit, its light beautiful on everything it touched.
Some people thought of the sun as a god, but to her it was enough that it was a channel of power for the limitless One, as she was herself.
When she returned to the class she was peaceful and refreshed, and the words of the teacher made sense to her.
‘All I ask of you is that you learn as much as you can about everything you can,’ he was saying, ‘keeping a mind always open and ready to receive, and yet careful and guarded enough to weigh the new against the old, the unlikely against the likely. The more background understanding you can accumulate from the past the easier you will see into the future, for the one grows out of the other.
‘No knowledge, no understanding, is ever wasted. If it is not immediately needed, store it, you will need it one day.’
He gave as many examples of predictions that had failed as had succeeded, and pointed out that where the prophet had gone wrong it had usually been because he had not been patient enough to sift through all the knowledge he needed for the task.
The Temple of the Sun Page 11