Sacha—The Way Back

by Stan I. S. Law

  A searcher, not a seeker.

  Sacha held that a seeker was one who yearned for spiritual life. For inner life of some sort, beyond the limitations imposed by physical reality. Sacha was the very opposite. His inner life was his nature. He was searching for sense in his outer existence, searching for his particular, unique place on Earth.

  So was his friend.

  It seemed that whereas the direction Sacha was pursuing in relation to his own environment steered him towards the exigencies of the world known as The West, his friend was gravitating to becoming his alter ego in the Orient. They met and communicated on the inner planes of perception. They also talked English, face to face, in the old town of Delhi. New Delhi had been constructed to replace old Calcutta as the national capital. But Delhi, old Delhi, was a town as old as most in the vastness of India, and it was there that Arjuna chose to live and advance his knowledge. It was the first time Sacha’d met somebody trapped in a physical form. Even as he was. Arjuna also found Home Planet, the Far and the Undiscovered Countries his natural habitat. It brought Sacha great joy. He no longer felt quite so lonely.

  “Could it be that life is no more than an eternal search?” Arjuna’d asked Sacha on the first day they’d met.

  “For what?” Sacha replied. “Searching for what?”

  They both laughed.

  Sacha felt it the moment it happened. He was convinced that the greatest evidence that at some level of perception we are all One, or at the very least effectively and indivisibly interconnected, was his immediate sensing that Desmond needed his help. Sacha suspected that we all have an affinity for one or two, perhaps more people, who in turn are tied to two or three others, until the whole world exhibits a matrix of emotional or mental relevance as strong and as unbreakable as to render us into a single organism.

  Perhaps, he thought, filaments of emotions stronger than we imagine connect some of us. Though physically he was the farthermost away, when the consciousness of Desmond McBride decided to withdraw from the material world, Sacha was the first to sense it. He was ready to leave India anyway, but even a supersonic jet, had one flown from New Delhi to Los Angeles, could not have brought him to Desmond’s side in time.

  Yet, Sacha did make it.

  He got there in time for Grandpa’s departure. He got there in a manner in which he could help more than by being there physically.

  When Sacha arrived, Desmond was still sleeping. His grip on life was tenuous at best, but his body was still breathing regularly, if not exerting his lungs to capacity. Alicia was also asleep on the bed separated from Desmond’s by a common bedside table. They pulled their twin beds apart only last year to ease the chore of making them up in the morning. The king-sized linen was just too unwieldy to handle.

  “So this is the end?” Des had asked at the time.

  Unbeknown to all but Alicia, Des was an incurable romantic.

  Sacha connected directly with his grandfather’s mind. There was neither time nor any need to attempt to revive him. Desmond had a long and, for the most part, good life. By Sacha’s terms of reference, this was a joyful moment. A sense of anticipation of an impending liberation. Of freedom such as few men have ever imagined.

  Last year, just after Sacha’s visit, Alicia had taken Desmond to Australia. His son, George, welcomed him as the long forsaken father. He must have gathered, after so many years, that his father had spent a lifetime of emotions on his mother. On his first wife. There was none left, till Alicia had slowly rebuilt them.

  Desmond’s son had been right. His father had given too much to his wife. What remained after her death was a deep-set, indefinable anguish. So many years ago…

  It was the kind of pain that leads to total indifference. On their arrival in Sydney, there was a feast waiting for him worthy of a king. Not to mention a queen who’d engineered the long overdue reunion. George and his wife, and their two sunburned children, treated the elders like visiting royalty. The McBrides had dropped in on the McBrides only for a weekend. There was no telling what the meeting might bring. No telling if a gulf of such pain could be bridged with equanimity.

  But in Alicia’s eyes it looked promising.

  Everyone played their part. The past was never mentioned. They rejoiced in the moment. When it was time to go, Desmond’s son announced a surprise of his own. Politeness demands that we see one’s guests to the front door, the porch or at best the gate at the end of one’s garden. George, though alone, saw them to Solana Beach. It was the first time he’d ever visited his father. They both needed gestures of reconciliation. Yet, sadly, these remained mostly gestures—a mild anesthetic applied to still festering, if slowly healing, scars. They contrived to bring peace to each other.

  But after all these years they had too little in common. A week later Desmond drove his son to the airport. Both shed a tear, both held each other, both swore to keep regularly in touch. And both breathed a little easier when the departure gate closed between them.

  It had been too long. Just too long.

  In the months following the reconciliation, Desmond grew a little more pensive. More introspective. Alicia thought she might have made a mistake by bringing them together. She shouldn’t have worried.

  “You know lass, I would find it very difficult to die if it weren’t for you. Very difficult.”

  She didn’t ask what he’d meant. She thought it obvious. They didn’t exactly read each other’s thoughts, only Sacha could do that, but they could detect each other’s emotions with such accuracy that the actual thoughts became secondary. They’d grown very close. As though they’d spent their whole lives together.

  And now Des was dying.

  Sacha never questioned whether it was by accident or design that he’d returned just in time to take Grandpa across the great divide. He’d responded to his inner voice the way people respond to a voice blaring on a multi-amp speaker. Now, at the deathbed, he had to wait until Desmond was ready. At the right moment when the silver cord snapped like an over-stretched string on an angelic harp, he surrounded his Grandpa’s awareness with a halo of golden light. He held him with warmth generated by his own love.

  Like most people in this moment of truth, Desmond appeared worried. Then slowly and carefully Sacha had raised him to the Home Planet.

  “Where am I?” Desmond asked, his eyes as wide as a newborn baby’s.

  “You are almost home, Grandpa. You are almost home...”

  Sacha could only help the freshly liberated consciousness to find its own level. Sometimes the souls stayed here for hundreds of years. Sometimes they soon rose to the Far Country. Only a few rose all the way. Others bode their time in the lower strata, yet realms so much higher than physical consciousness that most regarded themselves as having arrived in heaven. After all, on Home Planet you could sate virtually all your heart’s desires. Providing, of course, you knew how to desire. How to create with imagination.

  “What do you call this place?”

  “My mother and father call this the Home Planet.”

  “You mean we’re not on Earth...?”

  He finished the sentence but only just. Sudden realization hit him with a force which most people find overwhelming.

  “I’m... I am...”

  “...you are very much alive and well, Grandpa. Only not on Earth. Well, it is a different Earth, Grandpa. You left your physical prison and are free to satisfy all your desires.”

  Desmond examined his arms and legs. They seemed to him in perfect order. “My b-b-body?” he stammered. “B-but… but... w-why...?” No one ever seemed to understand why they died.

  “You don’t get to choose when or how you die, Grandpa. You only get to choose how you live.”

  Desmond looked around and then grabbed Sacha by the hand.

  “Alicia?” he whispered, his eyes filled with concern.

  “She knows. I told her. I am also with her this moment.”

  “You are here and there?” Desmond’s scientific mind refused to accept
the paradox.

  “Space and time are a dualistic concept created to facilitate perception of material worlds. In fact, we are all everywhere at all times, Grandpa. We just don’t know it. Not yet...”

  “But time and space...”

  “...are figments of our imagination. Look!”

  And Sacha changed the panorama in front of them with a sweep on his hand.

  “Can I do that?” His mouth hung open. “I mean here...” he added, his gray, shaggy eyebrows rising in disbelief.

  “You can try, but I would rather you started with your own body.”

  Desmond was still wearing his pajamas. Imaginary pajamas. Pajamas he expected to wear on stepping out of his bed. Deathbed. He shivered. Sitting in ‘Alec’s villa’ with the most glorious view of this incredible country, he looked and felt profoundly incongruous.

  “How do I do it?”

  “Just imagine what you would like to be wearing.” Sacha couldn’t help smiling.

  On his deeply lined face, Desmond still carried evidence of years of care and concern. But the most incompatible item with this reality was his whole body that showed unmistakable signs of prolonged neglect. In addition, he looked lost, and embarrassed, and helpless. The next moment he was covered, from head to toe, with an abundance of lustrous white linen.

  “Too much, eh, lad?” This was the first sign of his humor returning. Rapidly. The next instant he was wearing a flowing Roman toga. “I should have been wearing one of these at my oral exam, a century ago,” he quipped.

  “Now tr-r-ry your-r-r body,” Sacha mimicked his earthly accent.

  “What?” Des either ignored or didn’t notice the joke. There was no sign of his former Scottish accent. He was too busy trying to make head and tail of his new surroundings. Hardly surprising, Sacha had to admit, with a boyish grin.

  “Your body. Wouldn’t you prefer to look younger?”

  Desmond didn’t question his youthful mentor. He closed his eyes as though to utter abracadabra and opened them with a shout and a chuckle.

  “It tickles a little,” he confessed. He now looked like a young Roman patrician ready to deliver his doctoral dissertation. Yet, he was still unmistakably Desmond.

  “I think I am going to like it here,” he muttered. Then his face lost his boyish enthusiasm. “Are you sure Alicia is all right?”

  “I’d better check,” Sacha agreed. Being here and there was one thing, but the focus of attention was another. “Experiment, Des. Walk. Use your young body. If you want to eat, create food. If you want to fly... well, we’ll leave that for another time.

  Sacha wondered what Desmond’s reaction would be to the Far Country. People didn’t usually progress all the way ‘up’ at the moment of ‘death’. In fact, a lot of Desmond’s physical reality was still lingering on Earth—the ‘real’, solid Earth ‘below’. Hence, his retention of physical characteristics when he first got here. Not to mention his pajamas! Likewise, his concern for Alicia. There will be moments when he’ll miss his morning cup of coffee, his drop of the hard-stuff towards the end of the day. In time he’ll develop new, much broader interests without the attendant emotional ties. It was just too easy to change one’s perception of reality here to become attached to any specific part of it. Perhaps that is why suffering on the Home Planet was virtually impossible. What you didn’t like, you changed. Usually it takes the equivalent of forty earthly days before the transfer of consciousness is complete. But it varies. After all, the concept of time here is quite different. By the Home Planet’s standards, Desmond would be fully adjusted in about a year.

  But the Far Country would really be much more Desmond’s cup of tea than the Home Planet. With his knowledge of physics, he could really have fun there. Providing he doesn’t allow his learning to hold him back. He would only lose his erudition after his spell in Bardo. And no one had any idea when that would happen.

  When Sacha was about to leave him, Des looked up at his young friend with concern.

  “Am I here all alone?” He looked around.

  “Look again,” Sacha admonished.

  The next moment the streets of this wondrous city seem filled with people, strolling, standing in groups, chatting, laughing, as carefree as can be. The next instant they dissolved into thin air. “It’s all up to you,” Sacha repeated patiently.

  “What happened?” Des asked, his eyes once again filled with awe.

  “This reality, like any other reality, is what you make it, Des. It doesn’t really exist. What gives it actuality is your perception of it. Trust me.” Again, Sacha smiled. He didn’t realize how new and incredible Home Planet must look to people who lost all memory of their previous visits here. “And anyway, here I’ll see you for as long as you like, as often as you like,” he added.

  “But isn’t this a place for the dead?”

  “Ha, ha... No, my youthful Grandpa! This is the place for the living. The place for the mostly dead you’ve just left behind!” What a strange question, Sacha thought. What bizarre concepts of life people evolve on Earth. They really forget their true identity. I wonder why I didn’t? Or my friend in India?

  India! My body’s in India...

  Desmond still looked unconvinced. Sacha wanted to transfer his attention to other matters but he decided to try once more.

  “Do you feel dead, Des?”

  “I’ve never felt more alive!” he answered, surprising only himself. Sacha was already gone. It didn’t matter. Grandpa Desmond was already in the process of realizing that not just his body but he, that which made up his awareness of being, was also no longer that of an old man.

  By then Sacha’s attention was elsewhere.

  A second later Alec and Suzy appeared out of thin air at both sides of the young patrician wrapped in his white, luminous toga. Both new arrivals looked as young, or younger, then they had been when Desmond had first met them. Neither Suzy nor Alec recognized professor McBride. Not with their eyes. After all, here he wasn’t a professor. He was a willing beginner. They both saw to it that he learned fast.

  Sacha, who’d witnessed some of this from afar, sighed wistfully. What a pity that Alicia was not ready to join them, he thought. But he didn’t create the rules. And there were rules here. There were rules in every realm. It took an eternity to learn them. And then one was free.

  So they said...

  “You know, Grandma,” Sacha was sitting on the edge of the bed holding Alicia’s emotive hand, “we never listen to what Her Majesty, our Queen, has to say. She gives her Christmas or Easter Messages, and we assume that that’s her job. We wish her well, but we don’t really listen.”

  Alicia didn’t agree. She’d always listened to Her Majesty’s messages. Alicia thought the queen was a wonderful, wonderful woman. Actually Sacha knew of Alicia’s sentiments regarding Her Majesty. That is precisely why he chose this route. He continued before Alicia had a chance to question his judgment.

  “But there was an occasion when we should have paid close attention. It was at the service for the people who died in the bombing that Islamic extremists committed against humanity in New York. Her Majesty didn’t attend, but she had sent a letter. Towards the end of the message, she wrote that grief is the price we pay for love. I think there is truth in this statement. I thought you might want to know that, Grandma.”

  The truth of this statement was only in the physical, dualistic reality. But that is where Alicia was trapped at present. That was where she needed help.

  “He’s gone, isn’t he?” she asked. The question was rhetorical. She knew.

  “Yes Grandma,” Sacha echoed her emotive thoughts. “He loves you very much. I never saw such love in a man...”

  Two tears formed at the corners of her eyes, and then ran slowly along her cheeks. After all, sleeping or not, her body was the expression of her emotions. Her sorrow would not be denied. Slowly she opened her eyes. She turned towards Sacha to thank him. She was surprised that he wasn’t there. Sacha had already withdrawn his emotiona
l sheath. But not his presence. He would always be there. She’d never been, nor ever would be, alone. None of us are, he smiled. Ever.

  And he embraced her with a caress of pure, quite invisible to the human eyes, golden light.

  In earthly terms, at about this time his body, his physical body, was boarding an airplane that would bring him back to Los Angeles. The loving, earthly home. A home where he would see his family. Only Grandpa would be missing. Poor Alicia. Would she understand?

  Sacha’s meeting with his friend was fruitful. They agreed to do their best to find out how many more kindred individualizations such as themselves walked the Earth at present. They suspected there must be a good number. After all, there was so much to do. They both were in their middle twenties and still had difficulties in formulating their exact destiny. Actually Arjuna was a few years older, in human terms, than Sacha, but it didn’t seem to matter. Their thoughts oscillated between them, often without uttering a sound.

  “Perhaps we are not supposed to know the future.”

  “Perhaps we should follow our intuition wherever it takes us.”

  “Isn’t our intuition our silver cord?” Arjuna asked quietly. His English was coloured by a slight Indian accent. It seemed to add an esoteric flavour to their exchanges.

  Outwardly, Arjuna was always quiet. He had not chosen the path of learning in universities as Sacha had. He chose instead to find the truth within himself. It was more the Oriental way. Sacha belonged to the West with equal intensity. He thought that the truth within should remain within. He thought that we are here to learn to perceive the truth by the rules established and controlling this peculiar reality.

  “Why else would we be here?” he asked Arjuna.