“He never denied it…” she attempted a feeble defense.
“Perhaps that is why the Home Planet is so rich in texture,” Alec continued, lost in his own thoughts. “So prolific in everything. We can always imagine whatever we’ve ever experienced…”
“…or haven’t as yet,” she added. This time Alec nodded in agreement.
What he did not tell Suzy was that the unconscious lay far beyond the reach of even our subconscious. The Far Country was the realm of the unconscious. Of virtually pure thought.
There was another advantage to visiting men while they slept. Their own consciousness may have been taking its own trip to other realms. Alec could not only explore their subconscious, but what had been equally fascinating, he could hear and thus witness at least some of the waken activities of others within reach of the host’s body. He’d discovered that the subconscious never sleeps. It was like using a time machine which, though it could not move from place to place, it could provide information on its immediate surroundings.
Does this have something to do with my legs? My partial paralysis that defies diagnosis?
But here he came across a new problem. While the subconscious stored its data in images, when attempting to espy activities ‘live’, language became a barrier. But even so, at least the emotions had been well discernible.
That was the good part.
The bad part was that when exploring the subconscious of another, one sacrificed one’s own. And this was why, particularly on the first few occasions, Alec had felt so completely lost or, as his father would have put it, discombobulated. He not only hadn’t known where or when he’d been, but who he may have invaded at the time. Literally. He was no longer aware of his own beingness, yet did not feel integrated into the new mental environment. In time, he developed a sense of allegiance to the alien nature, to the mind in which he’d found himself a temporary visitor. And frankly, whatever subconscious he visited in those few days it, or he, felt as alien as anything he could imagine.
We think we know one another, but this simply isn’t true.
Within the depth of our being, we share almost nothing. We are as different from each other as a cockroach would feel finding itself within the body of butterfly. It would have to become cognizant of wings with which to fly, of the eyes with which to see in a completely different spectrum. It would have to learn to recognize different colours, different smells, even different impulses driving sexual attraction.
It was almost as bad among humans.
Alec found that the range of human emotions was spread over a very wide field. Also, it was conditioned by such an incredibly divergent environment that it was subjected to moral and ethical codes, which had been interpreted differently by each human subconscious he’d entered. It seemed that what made us human was not our capacity to unite, but to differentiate from one another.
Could this have been the underlying reason for human strife through the ages?
And yet, at some level of our being we long to be one.
When Alec observed the minds of giants of the past, he’d detected a trait in their humanity that defied our weaknesses, or apparent predisposition towards all that sets us apart. The trait wound its way through the ages, never to be broken in man’s gradual progress toward greater self-awareness. Perhaps toward the awareness of Self? Only Alec suspected that the Ultimate Goal, identical for all, if hidden as yet from our eyes, had been and continued to be approached from countless diverse directions.
Hence the apparent alienation.
It took Alec hours, sometimes days, to decipher what he’d experienced, not to mention to interpret the acquired knowledge into a sequential, logical order. What had been right and logical some twenty-six centuries ago did not always mesh with the present reality. Not immediately. While a great deal of the past may be regarded as ‘out of date’ in terms of our latest discoveries, our forefathers entertained highly advanced attitudes, which now appeared lost for reasons which were hard to fathom. The greatest among them, it seemed, was the incredible diversity of resourcefulness the past giants had exhibited. They each encapsulated a gamut of interests akin to Leonardo da Vinci’s. Alec became determined to widen his view of the world—to become more aware, at least, of his immediate environment; to live in a more intense state of awareness.
He also learned that among the early Greeks, science and philosophy had been integrated into a single discipline. What happened to set them apart? He’d learned the importance the Greeks placed on mathematics. Not just the axioms, which we used to this day, but the manner in which thinking was disciplined by mathematical logic. Much of this wisdom was still practiced by his colleagues today, but certainly not by all. While the world overtly conformed to patterns, to beautiful rhythms that could be expressed in mathematical terms, such knowledge seemed inaccessible to most people. Even the mathematical beauty manifest in the endless unfoldment of fractals remained a mystery to members of his own family.
“Is this my fault?” he wondered. “Do I share in the blame?”
Some of his theoretically minded friends, however, went as far to ‘the other side’ as the best among theological mystics. Were they the quislings, the vendus, or did they cut a new trail through the jungle of science by opting for theoretical concepts without any regard to the due process—the process of logical analysis. Of course, quantum mechanics didn’t help. The classicists believed in cause and effect. Alec’s ‘quantum’ friends opted for ultimate uncertainty. There was still a cause, perhaps a prime cause, but the effect was only in the realm of probability. It was as though there was still God, but She was no longer responsible for Her actions. He liked referring to God as ‘She’. He thought he ought to balance the equation of thousands of years of machismo.
And thinking of gods…
Alec had soon discovered that search for the essence of reality, no matter how scientific, inevitably led to the realm of the infinite, even as his own Theory of Information had taken him to the very gates of the divine. Throughout history, it seemed, the search for truth had lead men to gods—no matter how absurd their arcane concepts might have been.
Recently, Alec had also learned that no self-respecting Greek philosopher-scientist could be accused of regarding his or her various gods the way the later generations looked upon theirs. Not the way the Hebrews, the Christians, or the Moslem looked upon their gods. The Greeks placed no reliance upon their divinities. They did not live in fear of their punishment, or worship them in the hope of rewards. To those early Greeks the gods had been no more than personifications of certain human traits, raised to their probable ideal. That was all. The ancient philosopher had relied on gifts he had been blessed with, perhaps the Prime Cause, perhaps Evolution, to determine his own future, his own fate, his own Olympus or Hades. Not at all like later religions that made man no more than a servant of the invisible, invincible, omnipotent, adamant, reputedly all-merciful but as often utterly cruel deity, condemning the ignorant peons to eternal damnation. Ancient Greeks may have tolerated such beliefs among their uneducated masses, but such perversions had been neither taught, nor encouraged, nor accepted among men of philosophers’ stature. The Greeks accepted the possibility of an inherent predisposition to the Universal Good, but that was all. The rest was up to them.
Alec leaned back and closed his eyes.
“All things are made of water,” Thales declared.
And on that day modern science was born. Not because Thales was right, but because he motivated his successors to ponder of what we are made, and ultimately of who we are. He had shown that in philosophy, as in science, what really mattered were the questions you asked, more so than the answers that were given. From his day on it was up to us to steer our ships across the oceans of time and knowledge. At least they, the ancients, had steered their ships with courage of conviction.
What happened?
When did people draw a line between the gifts they had been given and the giver of all gifts? Is not Moza
rt’s music still Mozart’s even though played by his successors? Is not the composer and the composition irrevocably of a single nature? Are they not one, indivisible, forever united by the creative act?
Greeks had known the truth. We seem to have lost their ancient understanding.
“Wasn’t Moses a historical figure?” Alec asked no one in particular. He tried to pit the early Hebrew philosophy against the knowledge of ancient Greeks.
The foursome was sitting on the terrace after an early dinner. The gentlest of breezes wafted over the waves, carrying a salty smell of faraway places. The sun was playing peek-a-boo with the low clouds over the horizon. The atmosphere was as serene as the Pacific itself.
Alec never owned up to his latest escapades, but he did raise some subjects ensuing from them. And there were many subjects. More than he could fathom on his own. The influence of the Torah on succeeding generations was just one of them.
“He might have been, for all the good it did them,” Desmond replied.
“You mean he might have been more successful, so to speak, had he been but a myth?”
“They say that pen is mightier than the sword. And they assign a lot of books to Moses,” Desmond affirmed. “And, by the way, never say but a myth. All religions are based on ten-percent fact and the other ninety on myth. Myth is the most powerful weapon man has invented to date.”
For a moment Alec tried to figure out how many men died in the name of religions and how many as a result of atomic bombs. The myths won hands down. Desmond was in a habit of stating the obvious which no one seemed to have noticed before. Maybe he was a Greek philosopher in disguise?
“So why are you so negative about Moses?” Alec pressed on.
“Because Moses was virtually the first offender,” Desmond explained. For some reason he’s foregone his usual r’s. “He’d been inspired with a superb set of rules which could have set men higher on their dismal perch, and what did he do? He told them that he’d been given those rules by a burning bush. Hardly surprising the people didn’t take him seriously.”
“Could he have told them the truth?” Alec sounded doubtful.
“Maybe he had, in a symbolic way, but how many among the masses were likely to understand esoteric symbolism? Have you met anyone lately who was actively studying the Kabala? As it turned out, the Mosaic method could hardly have served him any worse,” Desmond smiled sadly. “And the second time round, he’d been told, reputedly, that the giver of the Ten Commandments was I AM.” He drew great big letters with his index finger in the air. “Not you are, not He or She way-up-there-yonder is, but I am. And did he listen to his inner self, his I am?”
“Possibly not. But this time he did speak the truth.”
“Only in a manner of speaking. He didn’t tell them that he’d been inspired to give them the Mosaic Law. His Law. He implied that it came from an external source. Not from within. He wanted them to accept his god in lieu of their divine golden calf. Well, when you first tell people lies, thereafter they don’t believe you. There is a built-in reflex in all of us to smell the rat. Our brain is wired to reject the improbable.”
“And a body set in motion continues in motion until...” Alec didn’t finish.
“What are you talking about?” Suzy cut in.
“I was quoting from Newton’s Principia. It parallels Desmond’s proposition, that once a religious leader, or any leader for that matter, starts lying to his people, he doesn’t know when or how to stop,” Alec said.
“One fellow did stop lying… didn’t do him much good, though.” Des murmured, seemingly to himself.
Alec did not know enough about the Bible to agree or disagree. He tried to imagine a world in which people had listened to Moses. Not his story about the tablets or the burning bush, but to his set of laws. The Greeks could not have improved on them much. And Moses was way back before the Greeks. There was one other Greek that fascinated Alec. A Greek who spoke the truth.
Alec’s next peek into the past was even more unnerving. Had it happened in a dream, it would have been another story. His arms were getting stronger by the day, and the evening felt just right for some exercise. He could actually lift himself up from the bed onto the wheelchair by himself. Alec decided to take a hike along the coast, all by himself.
At some point along the bicycle-path, his mind wondered. He imagined he was running. Perhaps his synapses were making new connections. Next, incongruously, he thought he’d tripped, and fell flat on the ground. As he turned over, he was reclining on a long bench. He was propped up on a few pillows.
I must have hit the ground hard, he thought. By then he was elsewhere. And elsewhen.
He felt consciousness ebbing from him fast. He could hardly keep his eyes open. Around him he could just discern a small group of people.
“My friends,” he thought. “My dear, dear friends…” he repeated.
More were not allowed. Even his closest friends were here only by special dispensation. Their faces showed concern, sadness, a few displayed anger. The guards stood further off, as if afraid of what his friends might do if they got any closer. His eyes were loosing their clarity of vision. He could only just recognize his friends’ faces. The space around him was growing darker, less distinct.
“So much to do... No matter, Plato will carry on,” he sighed deeply. “Unless they get him too...”
He felt very weak.
Minutes earlier, still walking, to let the poison circulate faster through his veins, he could just see the back of the South Stoa with the Law Court on the left, and Tholos beyond. The farther buildings were already veiled a darkening mist. Not of the air, but of the hemlock which was taking its hold. When he lay down his vision was even more affected. With an effort he raised his eyelids. Crito looked worried. Good old Crito, he thought, always faithful…
“Crito… listen,” his voice was hardly above a whisper. “My truest and best part will survive my body...” Why do they worry about such things? I taught them for so many years... Why can’t they understand that my body is but an insignificant part of me?
“What shall we do with…”
“….with my body? You can do with it whatever is usual. It is of no concern to me.”
Why is it so dark? It must be time. He smiled with relief.
“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius––pay my debt for me…”
Alec hadn’t tripped. He hadn’t been jogging, either. His body responded to the rhythmic movement of his arms, the beat of his heart. It’s been set on automatic. Not so the body his mind had just left.
One fellow did stop lying. Didn’t do him much good…
Alec recalled Desmond’s words. His friend had not been talking about the Bible. Alec’s wheelchair came to a gradual stop. For a while, he just sat there. He sat there and wept.
He felt like Crito. Quite helpless.
“I really don’t feel like it today, Sue. I’ll stay with Sacha,” he said.
It was early next morning. Bright, sunny, blissful. Not at all like his vision last evening. She tried to persuade him to take a stroll, but failed. Alec could be quite stubborn.
Matt helped Alec strip and left him seated on a stool in the bathroom shower. Alec could reach the faucets himself. He took a long shower, then, with Matt’s help, dressed and spent the next few hours with the Bible on his lap. He’d never read the whole Bible. Like the vast majority of the Christians, he’d always relied on hearsay. Sue and Des were the only people he’d ever met who read the Bible cover to cover. They also read the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, Tao Te Ching, Rumi’s poetry and who knows what other pearls of ancient wisdom. He’d read some extracts of the Bible in school, but later he’d given it up.
Science seemed more fascinating.
Not that he objected to the quintessential teaching, but he couldn’t stand the constant talk of sinners, of the uselessness of man, of man’s inadequacy, of man’s constant reliance on external sources. But he still felt that any book to which one billion people
pledged their allegiance must have something to offer. He was determined to find out what it was. What it might be. Frankly, his physical condition did not inspire him to delve into the reputed source of benevolence. Then he started getting desperate. At present, he had little to lose.
Alec had many reservations about the authenticity of the scriptures. For his mathematically trained mind, there were just too many contradictions, too many teachings which, judging by the evidence of his own eyes, had been completely ignored by people who claimed to base their faith on the scriptural writings. He was fully aware that the Bible had been written by hand, copied and recopied by equally fallible hands many times, then translated again and again from two dead languages into modern usage. This even applied to the King James Version, though the English of early seventeenth century did support, in his view, the poetry of language, perhaps of the original. This was lost in latter attempts at bringing the translations more up to date. He saw those in hotels, on his travels.
Alec was also acutely aware the text had been written for people who have been dead for more than 2000 years. Long-gone idioms, referring to long-gone images, probably made sense only to the contemporaries of the scribes.
No matter.
Alec was on the quest to find out who he was. Later he tried to do equal justice to the Koran. He hadn’t fared as well. After some fifty pages he’d given up. Having found each Sura adorned with assurances of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate... and then, on the very same pages, being told that this Magnanimous Deity is ready to dispatch him, under the slightest pretext, to eternal, fiery and altogether unpleasant damnation, he decided to get depressed easier and faster by reading the Financial Times.
Even in his unaccustomed studies, Alec suffered from one weakness.
When something began preying on his mind, he couldn’t let go until he bit off at least a good chunk. And the Bible was no exception. Last night, and almost every night since getting to the villa, instead of a good night’s sleep, he’d read in bed till after three in the morning. Finally he’d close his eyes only to be taken on a wild spin through the biblical stories, some pleasant, some full of gore. Last night he’d ended up in a stone courtyard. He found himself crouching on rough paving, his back against the wall, just to the side of an arched porch. It was still on the dark side of gray. The day was just breaking. His head was propped up on his hands, which in turn rested on his bent knees. He was not a happy man.
Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two] Page 27