by Неизвестный
When Carl had reached mid-gate and Albert's interrogating voice had ceased for the regulatory pause, Carl's progress had not stopped. The diminishing relationship to his body had melted into nothing. And he was suddenly within another ether or state: neither far from nor near his body, neither light nor heavy, his whole self wholly transparent to himself, desirous neither of death nor of life, neither remembering anything nor forgetting anything, neither realizing anything new nor ignoring anything old. In that state he had neither past nor future. He was past mid-gate and into the high-gate position.
Albert, Norman, and the others were seriously worried at first when the monitoring machines ceased to record any brain activity in Carl's body. But Carl had forewarned of this also and told them that perhaps on the threshold of high-gate, and most probably in the high-gate position, there would be no apparent brain activity, certainly none that could be picked up by machines. But Carl had not been able to predict anything more. His assistants had no inkling of Carl's experience at that moment.
Quickly and simultaneously he surveyed an entire panorama. As he tells it, it was a medley of faces and places and animals which he had seen before either in real life or in books, faces such as the Ramses II colossus at Abu Simbel in Egypt, a Minoan goddess from the sixteenth century B.C., a lute player from ancient Tyre; places such as the Nike temple in Athens, the baths of Mohenjo-Daro, the early buildings of Jericho, sheets of ice-capped land, swamps, swirling gases, deeps of blackness; objects such as a sycamore tree in Pharaonic Thebes of the eighteenth century B.C., the high places of Machu Picchu.
It was not a question of images or pictures; it was the actual places and objects themselves. And an added peculiarity was that to Carl they did not come singly, one after the other or separated in space and time. He was ranging far above them, and they were simultaneously present to him.
The recordings taken during this portion of the session are silent except for the whispers of his associates. Carl was silent throughout high-gate.
After 25 minutes Albert and the others were beginning to become alarmed, when the pulse and heartbeat monitors began to record a faster pace. Carl must be “returning,” reviving, they knew. He was beginning to respond to Albert's direct commands and suggestions. In another ten minutes it was all over. Carl opened his eyes slowly and blinked in the electric light.
They all filed out, leaving Carl his accustomed time to recover. When they returned some 15 minutes later, he was dictating into the recording machine as much as he could recall of that high-gate astral travel. The elation of the group as they listened was understandably high. They still had to devise some method of verifying the data of his high-gate travel, but they had full confidence that such controls could be devised with repeated experiments.
Albert, Norman, and Carl were the last to leave the audition room. Their path lay across the campus to the dining room. As they walked, they discussed the salient points of Carl's trance. There were two or three aspects of Carl's astral travel that Norman was sure were unique, even in the low-gate and mid-gate states. He mentioned especially the peculiar time frame within which Carl seemed to move during the trance, and he remarked on the bodiless experience of Carl at certain moments of his experience: not only had Carl felt as if he was looking at his own inert body; he felt as if he had been definitively separated from it.
As they continued to talk, Albert and Norman were what they now call “taken over” or “totally dominated” by some psychic dimension of Carl.
Carl was just explaining the absence of distance during astral travel. They both recall his saying: “Take, for example, that ridge over there.” He indicated the high ridge that flanked his favorite walk. “You see it as a vertical dimension, some distance from you, on your horizontal plane.”
At that point, their perception of the ridge itself was no longer as of an obstacle on their horizon. The ridge was as much there as it had been the moment before this peculiar change. But now they were neither distant from the ridge nor near it, neither level with it nor lower in level, nor above it. They had, in other words, no sense of distance. In their description of it, the experience seems something like Carl's experience the evening when all distance had disappeared between him and the sunset outside his study window.
And the same change affected their relationship to each other and to Carl. Without any perception of distance or space between them, they were “with” him, “with” each other. The only material relationship that remained was that of presence: they were present to each other.
They were also aware of another change, this time in Carl. He was present to them and they, to him. But he was more present to, more “with,” something or someone else. And they were not so present to or “with” that something or someone else as Carl was. They witnessed his “meeting” with that other being, as it were, and heard strange words of conversation they did not understand. At times it seemed Carl was “talking” with more than one, with two or three “persons.” They could not make out exactly how many. And, while the dominant emotion of both Norman and Albert was one of fear and of nostalgia for a normal physical stance and posture, Carl seemed to be in ecstasy and wholly absorbed in his “meeting.”
Their memories become jumbled at this point. They remember speaking but in a wholly undeliberate way, as if some power in them was producing the words they pronounced. Several times they were saying the same things in chorus together; at other times they were talking almost at cross-purposes. They do remember hearing each other say: “Surely, we must make a special place here for Carl and his companions.” And they have only the dimmest memories of who or what those companions of Carl's were during these experiences. They have no recollection of human forms.
At a certain point, they remember, their vision was obscured by a blackness they could not understand or see through. Their hearing grew fainter. After that, Albert and Norman say, they seemed to become numbed or drowsy, and that numbing seeped through them both, lulling their senses.
Then they each felt a hand on one shoulder and heard Carl's normal voice.
“Albert! Norman! Do you hear me! Wake up!”
Albert describes himself as opening his eyes. Norman's description is of blackness melting from his vision. Both of them saw only Carl standing between them, a hand on the shoulder of each, and looking as normal as always. He was smiling at them and telling them by that smile that he knew what they had experienced. Nobody said anything. But Carl pointed to the ridge.
They looked over. The ridge was now flooded in sunlight, and so were the buildings at its base and the green expanse of grass between them and the ridge. They looked back at Carl.
He only said: “This exaltation is something people will not easily understand.”
They both nodded. They would themselves spend many hours discussing and trying to understand what had happened.
This experience made a huge difference in Carl's life. After some discussion, it had been decided to communicate to all the members of the special student group what Albert and Norman had experienced that morning. All now accepted Carl as a guide and guru. They referred to his guruship openly when speaking to others of their studies, although it was agreed that no public mention of Carl's “exaltation,” as he called it, should be made until all their findings were published. But from then on until after the Aquileia incident, Carl was revered by each individual of his special group not merely as a parapsychologist but as a personal guide in their progress of spirit and in true religious belief.
Inevitably word spread beyond Carl's in-group. And before long, Carl had a much greater following. He attained particular notoriety following a lecture he gave shortly after his “exaltation.” It concerned religion and Christianity. In it, Carl announced the goal of his studies and research to be a rediscovery of what Christianity truly meant, what Jesus had wanted it to be before Jesus' message had been corrupted by other men.
As time went on, Carl's following grew fairly large. More people b
egan coming for guidance in their personal spiritual growth. But even as the group grew in number, Carl's influence over the group became more profound. He imposed very severe exercises on each of the participants, disciplining their imaginations and schooling them in control of their mental processes in a way and to a degree quite beyond anything Olde had put him through many years before.
Carl began to lead special spirit-raising sessions for his growing group. They were held in the large room off his private study where he also held seminars and did so many of his experiments.
During these sessions, Carl stood at one end of the room, while all the “participants” sat on the floor in a semicircle around him. He spoke slowly and deliberately, instructing his listeners. His psychic abilities seemed to be at their most powerful during these sessions. With every sentence his control seemed to become more concentrated, and everyone gradually fell into a very quiet, yet alert state of body and mind.
Finally they all seemed to feel not only a special presence “with” them, but an overwhelming inclination within themselves to “bow” (or, as some said, to “annihilate” themselves) before that presence. A few participants withdrew from the group at one time or another because, they said, they felt the strange presence that was “with” them to be “unloving” or “cold” or “nonhuman.” Most, however, persevered. The few who talked with me about that presence which they felt during Carl's spirit-raising sessions stressed the peculiar control or “grip” which they found holding their inner feelings. It did not frighten, but it gave no impression of being benign or loving. It overawed, as one of them commented; but it did so much as an enormous skyscraper might overawe somebody standing close to its base and looking up its entire length. Overawing, it numbed the feelings. And, as it numbed, it seemed to control.
It was at the very end of one of these spirit-raising sessions in September of 1971 that the first signs of possession became outwardly apparent in Carl. Nobody, however, in Carl's immediate entourage was equipped to read these signs for what they were. They all took them as awesome manifestations of what they called Carl's “other and more real world.”
On that particular occasion, Carl had just finished his commentary, and the participants in the session were all returning to a normal state of consciousness, slowly being set free from that numbing “control.”
As they returned to ordinary perception of things around them, they became aware that Carl was having difficulties in breathing and standing up straight. He was in a peculiarly bent position. With his soles still flat on the ground and his knees bent, the upper part of his body up to his shoulders was being bent precariously, as if he was falling backward. His chin was sunk in his chest in his effort to straighten up. Only his head moved in that effort.
The rule at all sessions had always been clear: no hands on Carl during the session. So nobody moved to help, but everyone watched.
Norman and Albert, who knew Carl more intimately than the others did, felt that Carl was in some unusual difficulty. Something was wrong. Glancing at each other in agreement, they moved quickly about the room and whispered to the participants to rise and leave them alone with Carl. When they had all gone, Norman opened the shutters, letting in the light of day.
Carl's face was clearly full of pain and rage. He was muttering some words such as “Latter,” “truly,” “won't,” “will,” “faithful,” “forever,” “prime.” But they could make out only a jumble of words that conveyed no sense.
Gradually Carl straightened. He took one or two deep breaths, then stumbled to a chair, sat down, and covered his face with his hands.
“Leave me be,” Norman and Albert heard him say in a muffled voice. “I'll get to you later.”
They left him alone.
The next day, when all three met, Carl was composed, smiling, and as masterful as usual, until Albert mentioned the previous day's happenings. Carl's face clouded over. He would not look at either of them. He only said: “We too have our enemies. Our enemy. The Latter” (he gave a special emphasis to this word) “would disturb all harmony of psyche and reality, of mind and body.” He repeated these phrases over and over as if repeating a ritual recitation, until he began shaking and perspiring.
When Norman suggested that they put off that afternoon's session, Carl was vehement. To delay was to give in to the Latter. They must at all costs keep on, Carl said. They were on the brink of a history-making breakthrough.
The “breakthrough” took place in the late autumn of 1972.
Once Carl attained the first proficiency in astral travel, his next aim was to use that skill in order to attain at least one of his former incarnations.
Reincarnation, for Carl, was a very definite reality. He believed that the psyche of each person had multiple “layers” or “tiers.” Each “layer” or “tier” was evolved during one of several successive lifetimes, and every human being was composed of such “layers.” He also believed that the unifying factor for all such “layers” was one particular “layer” in which the person in question had received a direct light from “divinity.” For, at that precious moment, the reincarnating psyche became perfectly human. And, for Carl, to be perfectly human was to be indestructible. He called this unifying “layer” the “alpha layer.”
Carl theorized further that, in the freedom of astral travel, that alpha layer would come to the fore; but only the forceful action of one's will, prodded by the intelligent interrogation of a monitor, could help bring it out. If there never had been an alpha layer in the evolution of a psyche, then such a psyche would merely enjoy astral travel, but obviously never attain a reincarnation in the full sense of the word.
Carl's progress in reaching his alpha layer or principal incarnation was relatively slow. He began by studying the audio and visual tapes of his astral-travel sessions. He was searching for clues in words and actions. A special language, specific names and places, gestures that had a cultural, ethnic, religious, or even geographical connotation—these could be clues to the emergent alpha layer he was seeking.
From looking at fragmentary shots of his assistants taken occasionally and accidentally by the cameras as they panned over the entire scene at the sessions, Carl detected traces of what he felt was an astounding phenomenon: at times one or another of his assistants unconsciously made a gesture or took up a momentary attitude which corresponded to his own words and/or actions at that particular point in the session. Some of his own psychic ambient was obviously affecting those witnessing and assisting at the session. He did not know what this meant, but it all helped, with fresh indications of where to search for his alpha layer.
It was by the coordination of all these clues that Carl finally uncovered his own alpha layer: an incarnation back in the early days of Christianity in Roman times. His own mind and memory were like a sieve through which bits and scraps of perception were being shaken and sifted; they all concerned scenes, names, objects, actions, and events which, during the group review of the sessions, were determined to be identifiably of Roman and early Italian origin. Most of the jumbled words and phrases he used in session were classical Latin.
The name Petrus kept returning again and again. At first, they thought that this referred to Peter, the Apostle and Bishop of Rome. But, although Roma (Rome) did come up in connection with Petrus, together with other names historically connected with Peter, it became clear that the Petrus in question had something to do rather with Roman Italy, with the East, and with the sea.
What intrigued Carl and the others as they went over the tapes after each of the sessions was that, whenever the name Petrus was mentioned by Carl, one of his assistants would-apparently without realizing it-do one of two things. Either he raised his hand momentarily in the old Roman salute: outstretched arm, upraised hand, fingers together and pointing upward, palm turned outward. Or he would crouch momentarily, as if he were about to get down on all fours.
Bit by bit, Carl and his associates honed and refined the method of conducting the se
ssions. Albert, the chief monitor, developed a technique of interrogation. Carl's power of recollection subsequent to each session increased. They became more expert in reading the tapes of the sessions. It was only a matter of time and of the right occasion, Carl kept telling them. One day they would hit the target.
An offhand remark by a colleague who inquired how his work was going gave Carl a small but valuable clue. At the end of the conversation, the colleague quipped that, if his sainted Irish grandmother were alive, she would tell him to hold special sessions on the feast day of All Souls. She had always said that the souls of the dead returned to earth on that day. Carl always considered his friend's remark as a “message” from the world of spirits.
On November z, 1972, Carl held an unusual session of his special student group. With the help of Albert and Norman and his closest associates, he was going to make another astral bid to reach one of his reincarnations—the one he always seemed to be striving for but had never successfully achieved.
As was customary, the group met in the audition room an hour before daybreak. Carl seemed in fine form. He was tranquil and happy-looking as he greeted each of his group affectionately. He was in full command of the situation. He lay down on the leather couch and was connected to the various monitoring machines. The audio and visual recorders were started. Then all recited together the prayers Carl had written.
Carl's speech throughout this session was almost completely in Latin with an occasional Greek word or phrase and some expressions in a language they ascertained later to be a form of Coptic.
Carl apparently had no difficulty in attaining the high-gate position for his astral journey. Once he passed into high-gate, the anticipation among the onlookers became extreme. They sensed that this was one of the rare occasions in their lives when they might witness a genuine scientific breakthrough. They knew by now that in his former reincarnations, Carl had belonged to the ancient Roman world in early Christian times. But he had not, up to this point, found out where he had been living, the identity he had assumed in that reincarnation, and the events that had marked his life in those ancient days.