“Come, fly with me...” he heard himself saying, only it was redundant.
They were flying, soaring really, or hovering easily from place to place, looking down on a spherical gaseous orb, still irregular, but gradually taking shape as the spinning motion smoothed its contours.
“Look,” he said. “Up there.”
He didn’t point because he didn’t have any arms. But Suzy looked. Above them, a little to their left, there was an enormous ball of fire. It appeared about twenty times bigger than the sun they were used to on earth. It was quite unbelievingly huge. Its raw power was such that they became aware of the roar of countless atomic bombs exploding, simultaneously, in an ongoing, horrendous holocaust. Only there wasn’t any roar. The roar was born in their minds in response to that which there ought to be.
“Why am I not afraid?” she asked.
It was an emotive question. A question that Alec heard, and to which he responded in kind. She heard him. She was quite relaxed now. She was not aware of having a ‘body’, but felt being held by him firmly, protectively, as though he’d never let her go.
If we had bodies we would have been fried to a cinder, he thought. Suzy giggled. Obviously she heard his thoughts.
“This is your world,” he smiled. “Do with it what you want.”
It was at this moment that he became aware that he was sharing Suzy’s subjective reality. Subjective, yet identical to that he remembered from his youth. I’m sharing her dream, he mused. Also, at this moment, he became acutely aware of Sandra’s presence. Not apart, as in the past, but as integral part of his being. He felt whole, complete, as he did once, so many years ago.
I love you forever more, my Princess. You are my life...
He remembered the words he’d spoken to her outside the confined of time and space when he was but fourteen years old. Yet, it felt like yesterday. He became aware that by denying her presence, he was denying life itself.
He turned his emotive thoughts to Suzy.
“This is your world in which to create life. To turn it into Eden—into Paradise. It is your universe to rule and command and to learn how to be benevolent. To be kind to your creatures. You are all they have. You are their life. You dream them. You give them their reality.”
“Who am I?” Suzy’s mind asked.
“You are who you are. But to them, your children to whom you’ll give life, you will be what each of them thinks of you. Each one of them will carry an image of you. And whatever that image, that you shall be to them.”
Alec listened and tried to comprehend his own thoughts. It was Sandra speaking though him. The Sandra within him. Ideas, knowledge, raw unorganized, timeless, swirling information overwhelmed him with the might of their infinite potential. It was frightening, yet here, he knew, he was indestructible. Immortal?
It had been a long time since he’d heard Sandra’s voice as his own. He’d forgotten how to listen. The answers really did lie within him.
“Always listen to yourself. There lie all the answers.”
This was for Suzy. She was new to this realm.
Suzy was cuddled-up under Alec’s arm. The swing-chair was swinging gently, to and fro... to and fro... Her eyes rested on the ocean, breathing the depth of its peace into her mind. She’d never experienced such serenity. Could Alec control the elements, she wondered? Something happened. Something she neither caused nor understood. The images were still floating before her eyes.
“Why wasn’t I afraid?” she asked, again, only this time in past tense.
She knew the answer to her question, but still found it hard to accept. She was as sure as she was of anything that she and Alec had witnessed, together, the instant preceding creation. It didn’t make sense. Preceding the creation of her reality? She had no idea how she knew this. The knowledge was part of her. It was intrinsic to her nature.
She nestled deeper under Alec’s arm. All the doubts she had, for so long, about Alec’s dreams, visions, even what she considered ‘ravings’, begun to recede into the mists of disbelief. She realized, instead, how hard it must have been for him not to be able to share what he’d seen and heard, what he’d touched with his emotive thoughts. No words could ever do them justice. Poets tried, composers turned those precious, enigmatic moments into symphonies, jubilant oratorios. But even they could offer but a dim reflection of the inner reality. There, she witnessed her own self––not with her senses, but with the essence of her being. I am that I am, she mused, her mind still caught in the wonder of that moment.
Ye are gods... she remembered reading.
Only now she was beginning to realize how much Alec had given up by remaining in the physical reality. Did he have a choice? Had he been waiting for her all this time?
“Have you been waiting for me?” she repeated her thoughts aloud.
“I knew you’d come. It was just a question of time.”
“Up there, there is no time. Is there?” The stars shimmered in her eyes.
“I think there is. Only it unfolds very slowly. Perhaps it is we who give it its momentum. I rather think that time decreases its progress as we rise in consciousness. Somewhere up there, it stops altogether. But when it does, I’m not so sure we are still aware of it. That it stopped, I mean.”
“I’m not sure I understand...”
And then the second magical thing happened that very same night. The moonlight swirled in his irises till they became iridescent. She looked into them and nodded. “I see,” she said. “I understand,” she confirmed again.
He hasn’t said anything.
But for the hum of the waves washing the shore, they sat in silence. The night was too beautiful to go back inside; too silent to disturb it with voices. What they shared that night couldn’t be put into words, anyway. Time slowed down, seemed to hover in serene abeyance.
“I am the servant of My servant’s image of Me,” Alec whispered. “We must be careful, you and I,” he added after yet another pose. “We must be very careful what images we create in our minds.”
“Do I also have my Prince?” Suzy sounded as curious as she was fascinated.
“You and your Prince were there together. You can’t get there on your own.”
“But why can’t I see him, the way you saw Sandra?”
Alec didn’t answer. He asked himself that same question dozens of times. Why can’t I see Sandra when I want to? Like I used to? He thought he knew now.
“I suspect it is the privilege of the young.”
“How beautiful…” Her eyes were shimmering with playful moonbeams.
“You know, that last time I saw her on the Home Planet she looked just like you,” he whispered.
She cuddled even closer.
The following day, after breakfast, Des took Alicia to visit San Diego. Alicia had never been there and she’d been long curious about the Salk Institute. She knew Louis Kahn designed it. There was a time when she’d hoped that Alec would choose architecture for his career. With his father having been an engineer, there would be certain continuity. It was at that time that she’d read quite a lot about architecture. She’d thought she would have had more to share with him.
It didn’t turn out that way, but her interest remained.
Suzy took Sacha to the beach. Alec sat close to the rail of the terrace, following them with his eyes. Now and then he moved his toes. Then with an enormous effort he moved his right ankle. No more than a fraction of an inch, but he succeeded in contracting and relaxing his foot muscles by the effort of his will. It took all his concentration to breathe life into his feet. It wasn’t easy to bring life to earth. People took it for granted.
Thank you, he said through clenched teeth. And then he tried moving his left foot. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Finally, he relaxed. He felt as though he’d climbed Mount Everest. He looked at his hands, now working perfectly. People never seem to realize what magnificent creations their bodies are, he mused.
Matt, looking through the window, nodded
approval.
Sacha never seemed to get tired of wading in and out of the water—of splashing, kicking the approaching wavelets, and generally making a successful impersonation of an otter. He splashed in every imaginable position: standing: lying on his stomach, on his back, and any configuration of imbalance in-between. Alec thought that given half a chance he would swim. All by himself. Alas, Suzy would not allow him to wade deeper than his tiny ankles. Knees, at most.
Later, they sat on the terrace again, books on their laps.
“Where was it that we were, exactly?” Suzy asked. She wanted to ask him that since last night.
“It was obviously well into the pre-Mu realm. In fact pre-Eden, although I’m not sure which came first. It’s the old chicken and the egg problem. Did we create Eden, or did Eden create us. I suppose it depends with which consciousness we choose to identify. Anyway, we were both bodiless.”
Alec was aware that it sounded stupid, inadequate at best, when put into words. It sounded more like the stuff of fantasy. It couldn’t be helped. After all, didn’t it all happen in our minds?
“Did you miss my body?” she asked innocently.
He couldn’t help laughing. “You have a one track mind.” He’d missed her body for months now.
“Well, did you...?”
“I miss every single atom of your body that is not all mine to do with as I dispose.”
Her brow tightened in concentration. Then she smiled. “I think I can live with that,” she nodded pensively.
But Alec would never believe it. Suzy was anything but a submissive woman. She knew her own mind, and she knew it pretty well. He didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t push his luck.
“So each one of us is given a world to develop?” she returned to previous subject.
“I still haven’t figured out if the stuff we see, out there I mean, is literal or symbolic. It could be that it is up to our interpretation,” he said slowly.
“It was my very first time, but I gather from my impressions that everything up there is subject to our interpretation. You are what you believe yourself to be.”
“I tend to agree, but the proposition is frightening. I just cannot imagine riding herd over a world. Being an absolute ruler. No matter who created it.”
“But you’re not, darling. ‘You are what your servant thinks of you,’ remember?”
“I am where my servant thinks of me,” he corrected. “As for what I am, Rumi said ‘I am the servant of my servant’s image of Me.’ In a way, that’s even worse.”
“Not if you grant free will to your creation...”
“As I’ve said, that’s even worse. Can you imagine how great must be your love for your creation to grant them their own, individual reality? Even when you know that they are completely wrong?” Alec sighed.
“Isn’t this what unconditional love is all about?” she said, lowering her voice. She felt they’d been talking about things that seemed ‘holy’.
“Unconditional love is the prerogative of God!” he almost barked. He was rebelling against the knowledge thrust upon him.
Suzy waited a moment and then she said very softly. “And of creators...”
“Gagooooooo...” Sacha confirmed their conclusions.
The next moment they looked at each other and tried their best not to burst laughing. “Mustn’t wake our young philosopher, must we,” Suzy whispered.
Alicia was enchanted. “You should have come with us. Really. It was absolutely marvelous.”
She carried on for quite a while––all in superlatives.
She reminded Alec of the mother he’d known some ten years ago. She seemed to have shed about as many years since she’d met Des. It was now evident that his father’s death left a bigger scar on her than he’d originally realized. And the initial shock may have been exacerbated by the loneliness that followed. She’d never shown it. She was a good actress, when she wanted to be. Alec also suspected that his mother believed, and practiced her beliefs, that it was all right to share her joys––her sorrows she kept to oneself. Most people did the reverse.
Desmond sucked it all in. His eyes shone, a vaguely pompous grin seldom left his face. The McBrides obviously complemented each other in an incredibly fortunate way. For another while, Alicia continued praising San Diego, the University, the drive, the air, the whatever-she-could-think-of. When she finally finished, Desmond rose to his feet.
“The King of the Scots!” he proclaimed, holding a white, ceramic bottle above his head.
Suzy and Alicia genuflected, to pay homage to Royalty. Alec bowed deeply; Matt smiled and withdrew, while Maria run, giggling, to the kitchen.
“You may arrise,” Des acquiesced unperturbed. “My dearr laddie,” he turned to Alec. “The glasses, if you will?”
Alec spun his wheels, and still bowing retreated backwards to the kitchen in abject obeisance. He knew better than to trifle with the King of the Scots––may his name be whispered on blended knee. Alec was already in the kitchen when Desmond’s voice reached him from the terrace.
“Make it fourr crrystals, m’lad. The lasses shall parrtake in the nectarr of nobility—just on this special occasion,” he added, evidently surprised at his own beneficence.
Desmond, The Keeper of the Bottle, never explained what the special occasion was. Finally, if foolishly, Suzy asked him.
“Why, my wee lass, it is the firrst time that yourr motherr-in-law and I drrove to San Diego togetherr!” the Professor said collapsing onto a deck chair.
“How silly of me,” Suzy apologized planting a big kiss on his forehead.
“Aye,” Dr. McBride accepted the gift gracefully, “I cerrtainly deserrved that.”
They all agreed that he most cerrrrtainly did.
***
23
The Undiscovered Country
“Actually, you’ve already been to the Home Planet, remember?” Alec’s tone sounded studiously matter of fact.
Suzy’s eyes grew perceptibly larger. She wasn’t sure if Alec was serious. He seemed too happy lately. She assumed it had been due to the gradual recovery of sensation in his legs. Actually his ebullience reached a sustained peak, a sort of arête, since they soared together in full consciousness. For some reason, Suzy found it perfectly natural, even as Sacha had that one time on the Home Planet. Have I been the only one to find all this so... so esoteric, Alec wondered, so mysterious? Suzy, with all her doubts, has been waiting for just such a thing to happen for so long that, when it did finally happen, she took it as long overdue. It was Alec, not she, who was beginning to lose hope.
“And just when did I accomplish that marvelous feat?” she demanded.
“We were there together,” he assured her, and then added softly: “All three of us.”
This made her sit up. She didn’t mind not being aware of a dream-type trip, which could be construed, at a pinch, as a ‘real’ dream, but to dream together, not just with Alec but with Sacha, and then to forget it, well... this just wasn’t fair.
Alec explained how and when it happened, and why he’d decided not to tell her about it straight away. After some five minutes of huffing and puffing, and unwittingly showing him one of her most luscious pouts, she calmed down.
“It is your consciousness that must expand, not your itinerary,” he finally said.
She nodded. She got the message. Or, so he thought.
“When can we do it again?” she asked.
Alec sighed.
“It’s not like snapping your fingers,” he assured her for the hundredth time. “And it certainly couldn’t happen when you’re agitated.”
“First, I am not agitated,” she stated categorically, her voice rising with each syllable. “And second, why not?”
“Again, I can’t be sure, but it seems that when we are tense, or angry, or involved deeply at the emotional level, then the doors to the reality which relies almost exclusively on your emotional content remains tightly shut. Your emotional condition ties you to the reali
ty you are in at the time.”
He remembered his many ‘trips’ into the past, yet always as a spectator. Not once had he succeeded in venturing into the creative realms.
She weighed his words for some time. After all, he’d been at it for more than ten years. For her, all this was new.
“It is like throwing an anchor and trying to sail at the same time. It just doesn’t work.” This was on her familiar ground, ah... water. This would sink, ah... float. Alec always had problems with metaphors. Even in his own mind.
“What you must do is to take me to Home Planet and the Far Country,” she said slowly. She knew all about them from his many descriptions. “Or, if you prefer, in reverse order.”
“Well, I thank you, my lady, for your gracious permission, but I fear I do not hold the keys to the kingdom of either. You and you alone can make the trip.”
“But I don’t know how, you know that!” Once again she was loosing her cool.
There was no point answering her, until she changed her attitude. After a while he tried again, softly: “Look within yourself and listen. The answers are all there. And remember you already found them. Twice.”
Once again, her mouth started to form pout, but she didn’t argue. She was disciplined and honest enough to know that Alec was right. And, in the meantime, it was high time for breakfast. Just before they left their bedroom, Alec began feeling sorry for Suzy. He recalled how he’d tried, often desperately, to contact Sandra, all to no avail. And then, somehow, she was there. He’d learned to expect Sandra, regardless when she chose to make her presence known. It sounded like a contradiction, but it wasn’t. Or hadn’t been. At least, not for him. Even as a boy, he’d learned to live in a state of grateful acceptance, rather than that of a demanding desire.
“I’ll tell you what helped me, darling. Learn to expect the best. Learn to expect what you really desire. But concentrate on the expectation, not on the desire. Don’t push it; just believe firmly that it will happen––when you’re ready. Be grateful, as though it was already happening. Accept the gift, even if it is a future gift. Believe without even a slightest trace of doubt. No matter how seemingly impossible.”
Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two] Page 30