Sacha—The Way Back

by Stan I. S. Law

  No matter, it was a step forward.

  Next he began watching his blood circulation. By placing his attention on his heart, and then following the cardiovascular currents coursing through his body, he’d learned that he could actually place his attention on any, no matter how small, portion of his anatomy and, to a degree, control the blood flow. On one occasion, while watching himself in the mirror, he’d pumped so much blood to his face that his mother, seeing his colour, lost most of her own.

  “Sacha! What’s wrong darling?” she gasped.

  “What is wrong with you, mother? You look as though you saw a ghost!”

  It wasn’t always as bad.

  On that occasion he was experimenting with setting limits. Usually the purpose of following the blood flow with his attention was only to establish control over various parts of his body. He found that if he could mentally separate one finger, or his kidneys, or his spleen from the rest of his body, then he could actually affect its or their functioning. And that included the healing process. It just so happened that there was never a healthier lad walking the Earth than he was. No matter, he thought. None of us know the future. It also might come in useful.

  He pursued the geography of his body until he knew it inside out. Only then did he feel satisfied that he could consciously use it or, if need be, abuse it. Though the latter was very unlikely. Studying his physiology and biochemistry he’d grown in awe of its incredible complexity. And yet, what really amazed him, within this magnificent machine there was indescribable grace, sheer beauty of the way the various systems worked in such balance, such harmony, one could almost say, in courteous consideration of each other.

  “My body is the greatest miracle, Dad,” he confessed, the next time they were alone.

  “Isn’t it going to your head, lad?” Alec said sternly.

  “Dad! I meant...”

  But his father couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Gotch’a,” he said. It wasn’t often the he could get the better over his own son. And he enjoyed it. Frankly, though he did his best to look hurt, so did Sacha.

  In the final stage he examined his envelope as an electromagnetic construct. This phase of his research took a lot longer. He also found it more satisfying.

  Some weeks later, Alec and Sacha were walking along the beach, and, as so often when they were alone, they talked about Sacha’s inner life. Little wonder. They would not breach the subject with Alicia or Grandpa Des around. It wasn’t a subject you could talk about to people who did not experience comparative realities themselves. You could not repeat them, nor invoke them under the, so-called, controlled laboratory conditions. You knew of them or you didn’t. And that was that.

  His father, in spite of, or perhaps by the grace of his sharp scientific brain, knew.

  Sacha had long suspected that many exponents of pure science were much closer to understanding the workings of the universe than people who tried to find the truth in religion.

  “You always had an advantage, Dad,” Sacha reminded Alec, when he was backing himself into a rhetorical corner. “You can’t always argue what you know. You must learn to just accept it.”

  The scientists did enjoy a head start. Their brain was not muddied by 90% of extrapolated, often incomprehensible myths, which they would have to sift through before finding the original thought that lay behind the parables and symbols. Scientists, with the possible exception of the theoreticians, started with reasonably objective facts and continued from there. The secret was not to discard observations, which, at first sight, didn’t make sense. It took Alec years before he really accepted his inner experiences as real. In fact it was only when the odds of a triple hallucination were less likely than acceptance of the experience that he gave in. When all three of them, Suzy, Sacha and himself, perceived an inner reality which they shared without equivocation, then he had to accept it as ‘real’. And that happened on the Home Planet.

  “So what does it feel like to be fourteen years old? They say it is the beginning of manhood,” Alec asked not really expecting Sacha to answer.

  “It feels as though my body was born fourteen years ago, around nine months after Canadian Labor Day.”

  That was the day, night rather, which Alec wouldn’t forget to his last breath. “It was a dark and stormy night...” he mused. God, it was so long ago, but when he held Sue in his arms, yesterday, it felt like… yesterday. She retained all her beauty, her wit, her sense of humor. Only her temper mellowed a little, for which Alec was inordinately grateful. He was too old to go to work with bruises. Or could it be that she’d lost some of her aim?

  It was a dark and stormy night…

  The two of them were anchored in Spoon Bay, off Valcour Island, on Lake Champlain. It was a forbidding night, but they didn’t care. They were together. And by the time the night was over, the first spark of Sacha was with them. Alec wondered if Sacha, with all his talents, knew that.

  “I really got interested in my body a little later, Dad,” Sacha was again reading his father’s thoughts. “But I was aware that the wheels of my becoming were already turning.”

  His father didn’t say anything. Neither he nor Suzy had ever shared their memories of that night with anybody.

  “Then why did you ask me?” Sacha again interrupted his thoughts.

  Alec laughed. “You, my son, are not anybody. You are as much part of me as is your mother.”

  “Aren’t we all...?” Sacha muttered under his breath. He wondered when the human race would realize that. Or realize their potential. Or their heritage. Or even, just, who they are. Individually.

  But he didn’t say any of this, though again he had that strange feeling that his own destiny was drawing closer. And, somehow, the thought did not make him happy.

  Days became weeks, weeks––months.

  Sacha lost track of time. He’d spent relatively long periods of time in the upper realms. Although even that didn’t make much sense, because he was capable of returning to physical reality at will, at any time in relation to his departure. To be more precise, Sacha took time to consolidate the knowledge he had gained so far, without venturing into new territories.

  In time he grew confident that he was in total command of his physical body. He was wrong. He still had a great deal to learn.

  Chapter 8

  A Matter of Fact

  Even as his father studied physics in order to understand the mysteries of the universe, so Sacha engrossed himself in philosophy and psychology in order to understand what people do with the knowledge they discover. He soon learned that his father had chosen an easier route. While the universe changed constantly, its activities left a firm trail behind. The photons from stars millions of light-years away were reaching our planet only now, and the scientists could, with a high degree of accuracy, estimate what transpired way out there great-many eons ago. As a result of their studies, they could estimate their own origins, or at least make an inspired guess about the origins of our own solar system.

  Not so with the human species.

  In Sacha’s eyes, we all seemed bent on destroying our past and if we couldn’t destroy it then we attempted to obfuscate it as best we could. Even our reputedly holy scriptures have been written and rewritten, and translated, and re-edited, so many times that each successive student found himself, or herself, further and further away from the original intent.

  And then the various churches really got down to brass tacks. As the original scriptures offered little on the subject of successful money management, but a great deal on the possible exploitation of our kinsmen, a great many scholars got down to business. They set themselves up as the interpreters of the ‘holy’ writings and, adding their own slant to the wisdom of the ages, they converted them into superb money making machines.

  The damage was thorough.

  Whatever the ancient avatars had attempted to tell their contemporaries became so insidiously ensnared in hearsay, so distorted by the professional interpreters, that no a
mount of effort was likely to rediscover the original concepts. And this in spite of the wisdom of the ancients, who drew a veil of symbolism over the original teaching. By the time the teaching reached Sacha, the symbol was taken as fact, and the parables as a historical reality. The method employed was now called fundamentalism.

  “The proponents of this method evidently forgot that fundamentalism is derived from the word ‘fundamental’ or ‘basic’, or ‘bottom’,” Sacha said sharing his thoughts with his father.

  “You mean the ABCs?” Alec asked.

  “Well, they are terms we normally associate with the kindergarten,” Sacha added hardly believing his own findings.

  Sacha had already read all he could find that pertained to all major religions. To discover his own purpose, he had to ascertain where he was in relation to others. No man is an island unto himself, he recalled reading somewhere. He swam in the ocean, among other fish, and they affected him. He soon learned that in the ocean bigger fish eat smaller ones, only to be eaten by still bigger fish themselves. He’d picked up long ago that the dictum ‘eat or be eaten’ applied to politics. Now he began to follow the appetites of religious leaders.

  And the ridiculous thing was that everything he saw on Earth was in direct opposition to the currents underlying the higher realms. There, one never gained at the expense of another entity. One drew directly on the Ocean of Infinite Possibilities to create the reality one chose. There was no need for ‘eat or be eaten’ premise.

  He thought of the silver and the golden cords.

  Early on, Sacha discovered that even as the silver cord connects his consciousness to his physical body, so its golden equivalent connects his light body, his body of light, soul if you like, to the Source. We could no more survive on Earth without the silver cord connection, than retain our individuality without the golden link.

  Once the golden filament is dissolved, we merge with the Source. Since he’d begun his present incarnation, Sacha witnessed one such dissolution on visiting the Undiscovered Realm. The golden globe which was about to dispense with Its individuality was immense. If most of the spheres of light could be compared to miniature stars, then this magnificent entity shone with the radiance of a billion suns. It was truly that of which It came. This resplendent Soul has accumulated an immense storehouse of universal traits. It became indistinguishable from Its Source.

  And then it happened.

  Its radiance seemed to grow, increase still further, until it permeated the whole realm. Sacha felt repeated waves of euphoria, of ineffable bliss, as It grew, swelled, expanded, even as a supernova expands its presence, until Its consciousness became so finely dispersed across the Undiscovered Realm that Sacha could no longer sense Its individuality. It would, Sacha felt, never be reassembled into a distinct entity again. It became one with the universe. In a way, we all are. We never really separate from our Source. But we assume individuality to experience the process of becoming. Then, ultimately, we become as the wind that cannot be felt apart of the air that it carries.

  This was a rare occasion. Or perhaps we are only given to witness such an event when we are ready. When we are no longer afraid to forsake our singularity. Sacha suspected that some of us never would. Although never is a very, very long time, and one is not aware of time in the Undiscovered Realm.

  For a moment Sacha found himself suspended on gossamer threads in a realm inaccessible to most humans.

  Time stopped.

  On such a day, as when a mature soul merges Its individuality with The Source, one can hear music of the spheres permeating the vastness of the Far Country. The music is there to be heard at all times, but it seems to swell even as the ocean swells when the moon illuminates its surface.

  SACHA 15+82days

  There is a paradox in heaven. Soul is. I am. I never was nor ever will be. And the same can be said of that magnificent Soul which integrated Itself with the Whole. Yet for countless eons It accumulated Its attributes of ever-greater universality, until It reached the stage of becoming indiscernible from Its Source.

  In this sense that which that magnificent Soul ‘was’, now became integral with the universe itself. From a different perspective, it always was that. I always was that. I am that. We all are. We all are indivisible, integral elements of the universe. Not just of the manifested cosmos, but of that which hovers eternally at the ineffable border between the potential and the manifested. Yet that great Soul became and enhanced that aspect of the Infinite Potential that is dominated by the proposition that all things are inherently good, with the predisposition towards order and harmony. And beauty. After all, to be able to disperse one’s consciousness across all the realms, one must have honed all one’s qualities to a universal perfection.

  That particular entity no longer flourishes in Its own, individualized becoming. Its being is now expressed through all other entities. It enriches all consciousness. I, too, feel I have become more than I have been.

  And yet... I am. Eternal. Unchangeable.

  Hence the paradox of being and becoming.

  As I look up at the star-filled sky, I’m reminded of the early Greeks. They called it kosmos. To them the Universe represented order and harmony. But the word also meant ‘an ornament’.

  An Ornament of God?

  The eternal Being.

  The eternal Becoming.

  The nearest Sacha could get to his passion—the study of human potential—were people themselves. All the books he’d read could only take him so far, and having been tutored at home, his contact with people at large was severely limited. Thus, when his father said that he was flying to Boston for a series of lectures at Harvard, Sacha asked if he could string along. Alec agreed, and the two of them set off together. Sacha hadn’t mentioned that, at the time, there was some kind of ecumenical congress taking place in Boston, with audience participation. He knew his mother wouldn’t approve so he kept quiet about it.

  They landed at Logan International Airport. A limousine took them to MIT, where Alec had been invited to stay with an old friend. From there Alec had only a short taxi ride to Harvard’s grounds. The next day, Alexander Baldwin Ph.D. went about his business, leaving Sacha to fend for himself. That was exactly what Sacha had hoped for. In order not to offend anyone, he put on his best suit, and made for the downtown Convention Center. The bus deposited him at the doorstep. He was welcomed with open arms.

  “It’s youth we want. Youth!” The fat lady told him at the gate, scanning his size and age in quick succession. “Will you be taking part in the discussions?”

  A smirk hovered on her ruddy face. She evidently had grave doubts if this puerile mop-stick might have anything interesting to say on any subject.

  “I was rather hoping to, Ma’am,” Sacha replied, ignoring her visible disdain. The corpulent woman shrugged, and directed him to the entry tunnel on the right.

  So far, so good, Sacha thought. He’d half-expected not to be allowed in without confessing his affiliation to a specific denomination. That could have proven embarrassing. He could easily have lied, but it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. It would be a bad start. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find at this meeting; he only knew that he must start finding out. Somewhere.

  The Batterymarch Conference Center offered two amphitheaters. He was directed to the auditorium on the right. Apparently that was where the audience could take part in the proceedings. He wondered what surprises lay in wait for him. He had no idea what happened on such occasions. He didn’t feel quite at ease.

  Soon he was enwrapped in near darkness. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the lurking shadows. They were peppered with people wielding more designations than he could have imagined. They all carried lapel tags displaying their titles. Every attendee flaunted a doctorate of something or other, from divinity to theology, to scriptural studies, ancient languages, backed up by philosophy, psychology and an armful of other, lesser credits. They were an impressive bunch. Sacha felt naked without a tag.

&n
bsp; He realized, belatedly, that he didn’t belong.

  All the other attendees looked important. For some strange reason, a goodly percentage of them were grossly overweight. Some wore imposing apparel, with colourful hats, and big solid gold chains hanging from their necks. The gold chains supported an array of symbols. Roman and Greek Orthodox crosses, Stars of David, and a number of seemingly ancient pagan symbols, all rested, immobile, atop their protruding paunches. For a moment Sacha thought he’d ventured into some sort of repertory company selling theatrical wares. Not so. These people took themselves very seriously. Very seriously indeed.

  And then a gong rang, really, a bona fide gong, reverberating in the penumbra of the hall, like the sacred syllable of Aum. A tall, thin, virtually emaciated speaker, supported by an over-long staff with a round, luminous balloon perched at the upper end, staggered onto the stage. He seemed in considerable danger of getting entangled in his own flowing beard that descended to well below his waist. The poor man really was as thin as most others were obese.

  Sacha suspected that he’d come to the wrong place; either he, or the man on the podium. Perhaps both of them. The speaker was the spitting image of a character named Gandalf.

  “Lord of the Rings!” Sacha almost cried out.

  The part of Gandalf, he remembered, was beautifully acted by a British actor Ian McKellen. His father had inherited from his own dad a distinct propensity for all things British. Sacha found it harmless enough and rather amusing. It had been a good few years since they’d all seen the movie, but the image of the man staggering on the stage, here and now, brought the film freshly to Sacha’s mind. The only thing the man was missing was a tall, pointed hat, and the illusion would have been perfect. Had he been even closer to the film version, Sacha would have felt like Frodo, a hairy-legged pint-sized hero of the book. At least Sacha’s lack of pedal hair was amply compensated if not amplified by his hairy mane.