The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century

by Thom Hartmann

  “This way,” Jim said, stepping into the hole. “Just duck and follow me. Watch your head.”

  Paul followed him through a wall that was ten to twelve feet thick. When they came out the other side, they were in a different set of tunnels, narrower and with closer ceilings. Steel beams arched gracefully up and over from each side, meeting in the center of each of three different track lines like in an ancient, gothic cathedral. Paul guessed he’d just gone from a tunnel built in the early 1900s to a network of ones built sometime before the Civil War.

  There was light here, but it showed in cracks and clots of yellow—kerosene lanterns and small wood-fires—and fainter glimmers from small grates above. The air was thick with the smell of smoke, garlic, cooking onions, urine, and tobacco. To their left, three sets of tracks emerged from under a rockslide where the walls had collapsed or been dynamited in some distant era. To their right, each of the three tracks vanished into its own narrow tunnel, each framed by the gothic-arched steel frames.

  A series of wooden boxes, every one the size of a Jeep, stood alongside the tracks in each of the three tunnels. The boxes were spaced about ten feet from each other, and in front of one of them four men and a woman stood around a wood campfire over which a grate on cinder blocks held three pans. Strips of what looked like acorn squash on the grate sizzled and dropped sputtering bits of moisture into the fire below, and the pans steamed. There was a card-table next to the fire covered with plates and cups. A dozen chairs surrounded the fire, ranging from old metal kitchen chairs to institutional folding chairs to plush but tattered recliners. This was apparently the community gathering place, Paul realized.

  Jim rolled his head toward Paul in a “come with me” gesture and walked to the fire and the people standing in a group beside it. Paul followed.

  The fire brought color back into the tunnel, in the area extending ten feet or so back from the flames. Two of the men were black, one young and one old, one looked Hispanic, one looked Middle-Eastern, as if he were Egyptian or Palestinian. The woman was black, perhaps Paul’s age, a bit overweight in jeans and several sweaters.

  The younger black man wore baggy jeans and several pullover sweatshirts, a watch cap, and expensive basketball shoes. He had a wide nose and round face, large eyes, skin the color of coffee, and long hair in dreadlocks. Jim introduced him as Pete, and Pete said to Paul, “How y’doin, man?”

  “Okay,” said Paul, unsure what the protocols here were. The five people seemed to have been expecting him.

  The older black man had lighter skin, the color of finished oak, and short hair that was shot-through with gray. Jim waved toward him and said, “This is Matt.” Matt nodded in Paul’s direction, and Paul nodded back.

  Jim gestured at the woman and said, “Salome,” and the woman smiled and reached out her hand. Paul shook it and said, “Pleased to meet you,” and she smiled again, but said nothing in reply. Her handshake was warm and firm, then she stepped back and looked into the fire.

  Jim waved at the Hispanic man, said, “This is Juan.” The man looked like he was in his early fifties, with a neatly trimmed moustache. His light brown eyes sparkled in the firelight, accenting the smile wrinkles that stretched from his eyes back into his hair and short sideburns. His hair was neatly trimmed and mostly gray. Paul shook Juan’s hand and both nodded to each other.

  “And this,” Jim said, as if he’d been building up to a grand finale, “is Joshua.” Again he pronounced it that odd way as he gestured toward Joshua and bowed slightly from his waist.

  Joshua looked like the young Middle-Eastern men Paul had seen so often on the news, Israeli soldiers or Palestinian protestors. He stood the same height as Paul, six feet tall, and had olive skin, straight black hair that was cut short on top but ran into a ponytail from the back, a symmetrical long face with striking wide-spaced eyes. He wore old blue jeans with a tear in the right knee, a green cable-knit sweater pulled over a blue plaid flannel shirt, and black army boots. Although poorly dressed, he looked impeccably clean.

  “I’m very pleased that you came,” Joshua said, reaching out to shake Paul’s hand.

  “I’m pleased to be here,” Paul said, noticing in his peripheral vision that the others seemed to hunch forward slightly and watch carefully as the two shook hands, as if they were expecting something important to happen. He decided to take a wild shot. “Do you know Noah?”

  Joshua smiled and stepped back, sitting down in a white plastic lawn chair. “Yes,” he said simply. The group around them breathed a collective sigh of relief, as if in Joshua’s positive statement Paul had just passed some important test. He added, “Sit down and relax.”

  Jim pointed Paul to a light-brown cloth-covered recliner with its footrest permanently fixed in the air, next to Joshua’s lawn chair. Each of the others took one of the other chairs, forming a small circle around the fire, except Juan, who leaned over the fire and stirred a pot filled with a thick vegetable goulash. Paul sat down, noticing the fabric was warm from the fire.

  “You like somethin’ to eat?” Juan asked Paul in Spanish-accented English, nodding at the pot as he stood up and stepped back to a chrome-and-plastic kitchen chair, where he sat down.

  “I just had breakfast, thanks,” Paul said, noticing the unmistakable smell of curry from the largest pot, a tang of onions, garlic, and ginger from a smaller one that seemed to be a sauté of vegetables and rice.

  Juan smiled. “This’s really lunch, I suppose.” He leaned forward and moved the squash strips to the edge of the grill, away from the flames. “Be ready in an hour or two, ‘though I could pull you off some now.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Paul said. “It smells good.” The fire warmed his face and hands, and he felt inexplicably relaxed here in this totally alien world he’d ever even suspected existed under the streets of his city.

  There was a long moment of silence, everybody looking into the fire. Paul realized it wasn’t the uncomfortable type of silence, like Mack would sometimes impose on an editorial meeting to build tension while each person in the room worried they were going to be the object of his next rant. This was, instead, a comfortable silence, the silence of close and trusted friends who enjoyed each other’s company. He felt like he was among family, among tribe, with friends who would live and die for each other.

  “Joshua,” Matt said, drawing the attention of everybody around the circle, “Tell us ‘gin ‘bout where to look.”

  Joshua stared at the fire for a moment, then looked at Paul with a totality of attention that made Paul feel as if he was the most important person in the world. “You know about people who come to tell you what to do to find the Kingdom of God?”

  Paul nodded. “I think I met one yesterday, on the street. He grabbed my arm and yelled at me about heaven.”

  Joshua nodded. “If anybody comes to you and says he’ll lead you to the Kingdom and says, ‘Look, it is in the sky,’ then the birds have already preceded you there. And if he says, ‘It is in the sea,’ then know that the fish were there ahead of you. The Kingdom is inside of you, as well as outside of you. When you know yourself, then others will know you, and then you’ll realize that all are daughters and sons of the living God. But if you don’t know yourself, or know where the Kingdom is within you, then you live in a place of ultimate poverty, and you, yourself, are that poverty.”

  “Is that one of the Wisdom School teachings?” Paul said. “I’m not sure I understand it.”

  Joshua said, “Actually, it’s a quote from Jesus, from the Gospel of Thomas.” He glanced at Pete, as if to ask him to answer Paul’s question.

  Pete leaned forward in his chair, a brown metal folding job that looked like it had once seen service in a high school gymnasium. He said to Paul, “There was this guy looking through the dumpsters for food, and he found a little bit here and a little bit there, some lettuce and some carrots and a half a bottle of catsup. And then in the last dumpster he found where the store had just thrown out an entire case of frozen din
ners, each one a complete meal, just because something had broken and spilled on the boxes and gotten them dirty. And so the store, they threw that out, these thirty-six complete meals. And when this guy found that case of frozen dinners in the dumpster, he pulled it out and threw into that dumpster all the other stuff he’d collected, and he took that case of food down to his friends, and everybody had all he could eat for two days.”

  “I’m not sure I understand that, either,” Paul said.

  Salome lifted a hand off the recliner she sat in and said, “It’s a parable, man. The pearl of great price.” She held her hand out flat, thumb up, and waved it side-to-side.

  “Ah,” Paul said. “I get it. Just like Jesus taught.”

  “Right,” she said. “When you get the Truth, the pearl, the case of frozen dinners, then you don’t need all that little stuff. You can leave behind your old life.”

  This wasn’t at all like his meeting with Noah, and Paul was thinking that Joshua seemed more like a street philosopher—maybe even a psycho—than an angel or a ghost or whatever.

  Paul wondered if Jim had just made up the story about where he’d find the guy with the omelet, and Paul had stupidly gone along with being dragged into some weird little cult of homeless people. He looked around the circle and everybody seemed harmless enough, even friendly, but then people probably thought that about Jim Jones and Charlie Manson in the early days, too.

  It occurred to him that maybe he should get out while he still could.

  He looked around into the darkness, the maze of tunnels, and wondered if he could find his way out without help. It didn’t seem likely. He imagined himself stumbling around in the dark trying to find the tiny hole between the two tunnel systems, running into rats or falling into piles of garbage or sewage. He could feel his heart race.

  Salome interrupted his thoughts. “Jesus taught lots of things folks choose to ignore nowadays,” she said. “Like He said that if you’re gonna save the world, you’re going to have to give up the kingdoms of Caesar and join us in a vow of poverty. That doesn’t mean you can’t have material things or even wealth; it means you’re not attached to them. If you lost them, or gave them away, it wouldn’t matter. And if you’re rich, it doesn’t matter. No matter how you live, you carry with you the knowledge that, ultimately, you’re always living without ever knowing where tomorrow’s food or shelter is coming from, but knowing that God will provide. In the Sermon on the Mount, He said, ‘Therefore take no thought, saying, “What shall we eat?” or, “What shall we drink?” or, “Wherewithal shall we be clothed?”’ You see? Live in the here and now, just totally present, regardless of wealth or poverty as defined by our culture. Then, and only then, are you living in the hand of God.”

  Her voice carried a certainty that verified Paul’s fear. They thought Joshua was some sort of saint or savior. The guy knew nothing about Noah but had just said he did because Paul had asked with an expectant tone of voice. And Jim had probably brought him down here to recruit him, maybe even to hit him up for money, or maybe something worse.

  He turned to Joshua, who was still smiling at him in a way that seemed friendly, but Paul realized could also be psychotic or even sinister. He said, “Why’d you ask Jim to bring me down here?”

  Joshua said, “I have cast onto the world a fire, and you can see, I am keeping watch over it, guarding it until it blazes.”

  “You’re a fire?”

  “My teachings are a fire.”

  Definitely Jim Jones stuff, Paul thought. “And you are?”

  Joshua pulled his legs up and crossed them, sitting cross-legged on the chair, his spine straight. “There is a light which is above them all, and that is Me. I am the All. The All came forth from Me, and the All will return to Me. If you split a piece of wood, I am there. You will find Me if you lift a stone.”

  “Are you an angel?” Paul said.

  “You can read the sky and tell if it will rain,” Joshua said, his voice growing so soft that Paul leaned forward to hear his words, “but you don’t recognize me as I sit before you, and you don’t know how to read this moment.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize you,” Paul said, thinking that he should get out of the tunnel before things got too weird. “I don’t think we’ve met before. Maybe you’ve mistaken me for somebody else.” He glanced over at Jim, but Jim’s expression gave away nothing.

  Joshua waved his hand at the people sitting around the small fire. “Unto these, my friends, it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables, so that seeing they may see but not perceive, and hearing they may hear but not understand.”

  “Your teachings are secret?” Paul said. Off in the distance over Joshua’s shoulder, up the left-most of the three tunnels, Paul saw a light waving in the darkness as if somebody was walking toward them carrying a candle. Juan, sitting just to his left, moved his head as if he noticed it, too.

  “Yes and no,” Joshua said. “Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed? Shouldn’t it be set on a candlestick? All the secrets are clear to the person who can hear them, but to those who can’t hear, they’re only stories. Just interesting, quaint stories.”

  “Parables.”

  “Yes, Paul. These are the ways these teachings have been given in the past. Each of my last five answers are words you can also find in the sayings of Jesus, in the Gospel of Thomas. Let me boil it all down for you. There are some who say that you can understand the mysteries of life through knowledge. They seek knowledge, and try to know God through their minds. But all they ever find is their own mind, talking back at them, because the soul of God is not knowable through the mind.”

  “Noah said something like that to me.”

  “Yes, he would. That first path, the path of knowledge, is useful and interesting, but to truly know God you must move to the higher path, the path of the mystic. The mystic doesn’t seek to know about God, but to both touch God directly and then to become one with God.”

  “And that is done through love?”

  “Love and faith,” Joshua said. “When your heart’s desire is to become one with God, then everything else falls into place. When you’re following the correct path, you’ll feel a deep peace in your heart. When you’re straying from the path, you’ll feel turbulence and confusion in your heart. This is the meaning of the parables of the Pearl of Great Price and of the TV Dinners in the Dumpster. Do you understand, Paul?”

  “I can’t say I do with my mind, but it feels right to my heart.”

  “There are three steps to this path, Paul. You’ll find them in so many parables, when you realize that this is what they’re talking about. The first step is loneliness. Your separateness from God brings you a deep loneliness, which most people misunderstand and our culture tries to translate into a desire for things that can be bought and sold. The second step is love, discovering the feeling of your heart, in one way or another. And the third step is to use the loneliness and love to step into the soul of God. This is when the father throws the feast for the son who left and has returned. Do you understand?”

  Paul felt a warmth in his chest that he couldn’t explain, like he was falling in love. But with a homeless man from the Middle East? He knew it wasn’t that; there was something deeper going on. Yet his mind was rattling on, trying to decipher the logic, trying to understand. And couldn’t. “I’m not sure,” Paul said.

  Joshua stood up and walked over to Paul, squatted in front of him, and drew a circle in the dirt. “This is the barrier between you and God. You are inside the circle, God is everything outside the circle. Your ego, your incessant thinking, your mind, are what the barrier is made of. That’s what the saying that somebody must leave behind their mother, father, brothers, and sisters meant. It didn’t mean to literally hate them or leave them, but to realize that all of these ideas that other people are ‘other’ or ‘outside the circle’ is wrong. Everything is ‘you.’ And th
e ‘you’ is both you and is God. Paul, there is no circle, no separateness.” He stood up and walked back to his chair, sat down.

  Paul was speechless. On one level it made perfect sense. On another, it was a prescription for giving away everything and joining a cult or some such thing. He took out his notepad and wrote, There is no circle, no separateness, between people, each other, and even the entire creation.

  “Paul,” Joshua said, “you realize that one day you will die. Right?”

  “Yes,” Paul said, feeling confused.

  “I can tell you with absolute certainty that unless you pass through that circle before then, that moment will be the loneliest moment of your entire life. You will be facing eternity totally alone. But moments after your body ceases to function, you will know a union and love beyond anything you could imagine if you had never passed that circle while you are alive. This is the threefold step-loneliness, love, union. You will do it when you die, but you can also do it now or any time. And then you mil never again be lonely. This is one meaning of being ‘born again.’ It means that you pass through death—the death of that circle, of the barriers of the ego—and enter into a new life. A life of union with God. A relationship of love. And then, in that, you see God’s eyes in the eyes of every other living thing; you hear God’s voice in the voice of every person, animal, and even the wind; you feel God’s love in every moment of life. Do you read books?”

  “Yes,” Paul said, feeling like he was emotionally gasping for breath.

  “People read to know that they are not alone, that others have had the same doubts and thoughts and fears as they. That others are alive, too. It’s that first step, again.”