“The UFO phenomenon is a challenge to mankind. It is the duty of scientists to take up this challenge, to disclose the nature of the UFO and to establish the scientific truth.”
—DR FELIX ZIGEL
Moscow Institute of Aviation
I lay there for a long time. Then I felt David move. I turned over and looked at him. He opened his eyes all the way and shielded them from the sun. A tear dribbled from one eye. He looked as though he had just woken from a deep sleep.
He sighed heavily and stretched. “Christ,” he said, “I was out. I’m sorry, but I felt so peaceful in the sun I let myself go way under.”
He churned his arms in the air and brushed his eyes again. “It’s so warm and beautiful.”
I just looked at him.
“What’s on your mind?” he said, wiping perspiration from his chin. “How long have you been lying there like that?”
“About an hour,” I said. “And I have something to say.”
Some quality in the tone of my voice must have caught him. He sat up. So did I.
“This is unbelievable,” I said. “I feel like a horse’s ass. The hell with open-minded intelligence. I think I must be a first-class gullible jerk.”
David looked at me with sadness. “You mean about Mayan,” he said.
“I mean about the whole damn thing!” I said, almost in tears with outrage, exasperation and a much deeper feeling—of fear that my rage was mistaken … “I know,” he said. “Jesus, do I know. I went through all of that too. But then after awhile I just couldn’t ignore that what she said ‘felt’ right. You know what I mean? I mean I know you can make fun of feelings and everything. But when you come right down to it ‘feelings’ are everything. I mean even scientists have to have a ‘feeling’ about something before they set out to prove it. I just ‘felt’ that she was telling the truth.”
I sat staring at him with my arms dangling onto the grass. Then I stood up and looked down at him.
“David,” I said, “how do you know you weren’t just projecting some need you felt deep in your subconscious and it manifested in your believing what this person named Mayan said about herself? Maybe you needed to believe it—so she picked that up and just told you what you wanted to believe.”
David looked at me, astonished.
“But I didn’t want to believe it,” he said. “I told you. It took two trips back here and months of talking to her before I was even civil to her when she tried to tell me about this stuff. I hated what she was saying. I mean, she said she nearly gave up on me. She said I was almost too hostile to tolerate. And she was right. She upset all my beliefs and even my sanity for awhile. I liked my fast cars, and fast women and my life in the fast lane. The last thing I wanted was to give that stuff up and become spiritual. I wasn’t even unhappy. I wasn’t looking for anything. But after awhile I had to admit that what she was saying made sense.”
“What made sense, being a person from the Pleiades?”
“Well no,” he answered. “Not that. Her spiritual message made sense. All of her teachings and explanations of the reincarnation of life and cosmic laws and justice. That’s what made sense. I couldn’t run away from it.”
I watched him closely. He seemed to be so genuine.
“I don’t want to convince you of anything, Shirley,” he said. “What you believe is up to you. I just feel you should seriously consider the possibility of what I am saying. It doesn’t make any difference to my life one way or the other. I already know what I believe.”
I stood with my arms unmoving against my sides.
Another antique-yellow colored train came through the mountains. I wanted to jump into the freshly mined cargo of coal and dunk myself until I was black with its residue. That would be real. I wanted to dance to every Peruvian juke box I heard. That would be real. I also wanted to skip on top of the orange bubbles of the Mantaro, unconcerned that I might sink. I wanted to march to the Huaytapallana Ice Peaks and project myself over them so I could see for myself what was on the other side.
I got up and started to walk. David stayed where he was.
I walked for the rest of the day alone. My thoughts clanged together like thick new chains … full of confusion, fear, sadness, and hurt. Then I would experience bewildering eruptions of joy. What was going on, what was happening to me?
Was David only believing what he needed to believe? I thought back to California. Did Kevin Ryerson and Cat need to believe in spiritual entities? Were Sturé and Turid and Lars and Birgitta so agonized in their lives that they all needed to believe that this incarnate spiritual entity really guided them? Certainly they did not seem agonized, and David had never met any of these people, yet they were all thinking the same thing—from the reality of Karmic cosmic justice to the existence of extraterrestrial spirituality.
Chapter 24
“Take our own bodies. I believe they are composed of myriads and myriads of infinitesimally small individuals, each in itself a unit of life, and that these units work in squads—or swarms, as I prefer to call them—and that these infinitesimally small units live forever. When we ‘die’ these swarms of units, like a swarm of bees, so to speak, betake themselves elsewhere, and go on functioning in some other form or environment.”
—THOMAS EDISON
The Diary and Sundry Observations
I went off by myself the next morning, rambling and thinking—or not really thinking, just letting all the new experiences wash through me without trying to sort things out. Absorbing really new thinking, getting a new view, a totally different set of perspectives on life, is a process that takes and needs time—just time—to percolate through. We are so accustomed to the things we have grown up with that we don’t even remember the necessary silent times, the shut-out-the-world times, the solitary times of one’s growing up. And maybe one always needed some solitude. I sure as hell did right then.
It was late afternoon before I got back to David. “Let’s get to the sulphur baths,” I said.
“Sure.”
As we headed that way David reached into his pocket and handed me a bracelet of what looked like silver. It was just like the one he wore all the time. “Mayan gave me this,” he said. “I want you to have it. Wear it on your wrist all the time you are here. It will help make things more clear.”
I put it on wondering what he meant.
“What’s it made out of?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But it works.”
“What do you mean? It makes what work?” I couldn’t understand what he was talking about.
“Well, when I wear mine, I feel my thoughts are somehow more amplified so that I think with more clarity.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “It’s something to do with what she calls the third force.”
“Mayan gave you the bracelets?” I asked.
“Yes. Let’s get on down to the bathhouse. I can think better there and I’ll try to tell you what she told me.”
“Okay.”
The temperature was beginning to chill as we made our way to the pool house through the afternoon light; the sky was so clear and crisp that I could see the moon hovering in the daylight like a gigantic heavy gray ball. I felt my head vibrate. Some of my confusion lifted. The sky was real. The chill was penetrating. The moon was actual. Of those facts, there was no question.
David carried a candle and I carried my tape recorder. At night, my soft woolen poncho meant as much to me as my hat did during the day. I thought of immersing myself in the lukewarm sulphur water. Already my muscular aches were subsiding. The “waters” were helpful; that was also a fact. Hanging our clothes on the nails of the musty-smelling walls, we quickly undressed and inched our way under the water. It bubbled around us almost like a language. Maybe that was how water talked. Churning our arms around us, we touched the mossy rocks underneath with our feet, and again I was pleasantly surprised at how buoyant the bubbling wate
r was. I felt I couldn’t sink if I wanted to. I wondered if I’d be water-logged before this adventure ended.
The bathhouse was dim, David struck a match, lit the candle, turned it upside down to drip wax onto the earth floor above us and placed the candle securely in the drippings as they dried on the cold stone.
“Relax a little,” he said, “you’re wound up tight as a drum. I have to tell you more of what Mayan taught me. It’s a mind-blower.” As though my mind hadn’t already been blown enough.
I reached over to the tape recorder and turned it on.
“First,” said David, “let’s review your high school chemistry and the makeup of the atom.”
“I didn’t take chemistry,” I said. “I always knew I wanted to be in show business, so it didn’t seem useful.”
“All right—no problem. You know that the proton is the positive charge of energy and the electron is the negative.”
“Yes.”
“And you know that each of these charges carries energy equally balanced.”
“Yes.”
“And that the negative and the positive attract each other and the alike charges repel each other.”
“Yes.”
“You know that the electrons rotate around the protons constantly and at great speeds. In fact, the electrons and neutrons rotate around the protons in relatively the same way that the Earth and other planets in our system revolve around the sun. In other words, this atom is a miniature planetary system.”
“Yes, I remember reading that. Quite exciting, I think, that the atom is a microcosm of a planetary system. It makes you wonder if the whole universe isn’t in one drop of water.”
David’s face lit up. But he didn’t stop.
“Now,” he said, “there is a force at work that acts as the cohesive element enabling that miniature planetary system to rotate. This energy is what Mayan called a Divine Force—a force that is the organizer of all matter in the cosmos. It organizes the atom. Everything in creation is made up of atoms—trees, sand, water, whiskers on kittens, planets, galaxies—everything. Everything that is physical is made out of atoms. You might say this Force is the ultimate Source, the thinking element of nature.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “hold it. A thinking element?”
He stopped a minute and looked into the candlelight. Then he said, “Look, Shirley, let me tell you that later, okay? Just listen for now and if it doesn’t make sense, forget it.”
“Okay,” I said. “You brought it up. Take your time. So this Source is the ‘thinking’ element of nature. Then what?”
“Okay,” he said, “now let me break down the components of the atom. You understand that one simple atom is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, right?”
“Right.”
“And for the moment, you understand that this Source is the cohesive glue that holds the electrons and protons and neutrons together?”
“Well, if you say so,” I said. “You mean it is a kind of ocean in which everything floats?”
“Good, yes,” said David, “that ocean holds the atoms together, the planets together, the galaxies together and the Universe together—together in harmony.”
“This is what Mayan told you?” I asked, beginning to feel a strange stirring in my head.
David nodded. “Bear with me.”
“Okay.” I swallowed.
“Okay.” David went on. “The Source, or ‘ocean,’ as you call it, is made up of balancing and contrasting polarities.”
“Polarities?” I asked.
“Yes,” said David. “Polarities of positive and negative, yin and yang, or as scientists refer to it today, ‘quarks.’ ”
“I’ve heard of that,” I said.
“I’m not surprised. Some of our scientists suspect this energy is there but they can’t measure it because it is not molecular. They say there’s an energy that fills interatomic space, but they don’t know what it is. Even they call it the cohesive element of the atom, which they term as ‘gluon.’ They know it is not matter, but rather units of energy.”
“Well, specifically, what is it you are getting at?”
“Mayan says it is this subatomic energy that makes up the Source. Therefore the Source, that form of energy, is not molecular. Now I’m going to tell you the hard part to understand, but the part that is the most important. This energy is the energy that makes up the soul. Our bodies are made out of atoms; our souls are made of this Source energy.”
I could feel a nervous perspiration begin to seep out of my scalp. Could the soul be made of an energy force as real as the physical? Was that why the soul lived infinitely? My mind tumbled over and over. David’s words rescued me.
“Our science doesn’t recognize the existence of the soul, so it can’t recognize the scientific makeup of the Source. If and when science does get to establishing the Source, it will be acknowledging spirituality as a physical reality.”
“Why? David, can’t you see what a colossal assumption that is? I mean, who says this Source, if it exists, is necessarily the soul force? It could be anything—part of a fourth dimension, or space, or time—anything at all. And it seems to me to make damn little difference, at this point, whether we know for a fact, or don’t know, what the soul is made of. I mean, if we have to take its basic existence on faith—and we do, there isn’t any proof—then what’s the point of breaking down its components—why the hell not take its composition on faith? Why even ask any questions about the mechanics of the thing? Mechanics only have meaning because they can be proved. The soul can’t be proved, and so as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t need to be. But don’t try and sell me mechanics on faith.”
David chuckled. “Mayan said that that’s what’s wrong with our science. It doesn’t allow for the existence of forces that seem to dwell in the simple spiritual realm. That’s why they don’t really know what electricity is—they know it exists only because it has physical results.”
“But you really believe the soul is a physical force?”
“Yes, exactly. But it is a significantly different kind of force from the physical atomic and molecular forces that comprise the body. It is a subatomic force, the intelligent energy that organizes life. It is part of every cell, it is part of DNA, it is in us, and of us, and the whole of it—everywhere—is what we call ‘God.’ ”
I was perspiring now and feeling dizzy. No matter how I protested it, I can only say that this sounded real to me. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. I felt I was remembering something somewhere way underneath my mind in a place I had never touched. What David reported Mayan as saying triggered recognition in me, like suddenly coming into focus on something familiar that you’ve been staring at without seeing. I felt what he was saying was true because I had known it somewhere, sometime, before. Not the structure of it, so much, as the sure knowledge of a meaningful awareness that exists outside of, or rather in addition to, and as a part of, the life we know.
“You see?” he said gently. “This is it. This Source fills and organizes all life. It is the beginning and the end; the Alpha and the Omega. It is the God of Creation. And it is very much in Us.”
I stared at him. I couldn’t talk. There really was nothing to say.
I thought how arrogant it was to imagine God as a human, with a physical form like ours, created in our own image. No wonder we negated the spirit. Even our religious concepts of the soul were based mostly on physical images. And science couldn’t admit the possibility that a spiritual form might actually exist.
“So you see,” said David, “when Christ said God is everywhere, in a sense he was being literal—what he meant was this life-guiding spiritual energy is everywhere. Life, then, is the combination of the molecular structure which is physical matter, and the Source which is spiritual energy. The physical form dies. The spiritual energy lives forever.”
I clutched my arms around my midriff. Then I wiped the perspiration from my scalp and clutched myself again. I said ou
t loud: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, just transformed,” as though I was reciting high school physics.
“Right,” said David. “All is energy. But science only deals in what it can see and prove. Molecular properties are easier to find than energy units. And the soul is an accumulation of energy units. It has its own free will and when its accompanying body dies, it simply individualizes itself until it makes its karmic decision as to what new form will house it. Hence what we call reincarnation. Hence life after death. Hence the life before birth.”
I was silent. I wanted to think. I wanted not to think. I wanted, above all, to rest. I breathed deeply. A kind of bile rose to my throat. I stared at the flickering candle. My head felt light. I physically felt a kind of tunnel open in my mind. It grew like a cavern of clear space that was open and free of jumble. It didn’t feel like thought. It felt actually physical. The flame of the candle slowly melted into the space in my mind. Once again I felt myself become the flame. I had no arms, no legs, no body, no physical form. I became the space in my mind. I felt myself flow into the space, fill it, and float off, rising out of my body until I began to soar. I was aware that my body remained in the water. I looked down and saw it. David stood next to it. My spirit or mind or soul, or whatever it was, climbed higher into space. Right through the ceiling of the pool house and upward over the twilight river I literally felt I was flying … no, flying wasn’t the right word … it was more gentle than that … wafting seemed to describe it best … wafting higher and higher until I could see the mountains and the landscape below me and I recognized what I had seen during the day.
And attached to my spirit was a thin, thin silver cord that remained stretched though attached to my body in the pool of water. I wasn’t in a dream. No, I was conscious of everything, it seemed. I was even conscious that I didn’t want to soar too high. I was conscious that I didn’t want to soar too far away from my body. I definitely felt connected. What was certain to me was that I felt two forms … my body form below and my spirit form that soared. I was in two places at once, and I accepted it completely. I was aware, as I soared, of vibrational energy around me. I couldn’t see it, but I felt a new sense of “sensing” it. It felt like a new dimension of perception, somehow, that had nothing to do with hearing or seeing or smelling or tasting or touching. I couldn’t describe it to myself. I knew it was there—physically—yet I knew my body was below me.
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