Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “And that thing I encountered on the bottom of the ocean,” I asked, “you’re saying you think it was one of those old ones, one of those fish-gods, imprisoned on the astral plane long ago?”

  “Yes,” Morrell said. “And not only that, but these things, the NYMZA, continually try to reach out to the minds of mankind and control us. Their ultimate aim is to escape from the astral plane and return here where they can once again rule according to all the evil that is in them. This NYMZA has been a manipulating force throughout the history of mankind on both earth and Mars, and it was they who constantly interfered with the mental communications going on between the Aero Club and some of the people on Mars.”

  “And what about that object down on the floor of the Pacific?” I asked. “Who do you think made that thing?”

  “It was probably the Martians,” Morrell said, “but under the influence and guidance of NYMZA, just as they influenced the Aero Club.”

  “You think the NYMZA gave the Martians the knowledge of how to build the thing?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Morrell said, “so that the NYMZA could escape the astral plane. They cannot build in the material world, but they can project their thoughts into this material realm through the minds of living things, especially humans. Through such mental doors the NYMZA hope to eventually escape their endless imprisonment. That machine on the ocean floor is designed to rend the fabric of space and open an astral portal so those things can escape. It is a kind of time machine, for the NYMZA were imprisoned long ago and frozen in their own time. The Martians have probably been misled into believing that the machine will benefit them in some way. But it is not for their benefit, it is meant to free the NYMZA. This thing you encountered on the floor of the ocean last night sounds exactly like the legends of the Bell of Time, and the Key of Time— ‘key’ in the sense of a frequency of vibration— legends that have often been associated with evil, imprisoned beings. I have heard about these Bell legends in many esoteric circles around the world. The Bell is an ancient legend in India, and I heard about it when I was there.”

  “In that temple?” I asked.

  “That is correct,” Morrell said. “The old man spoke about it.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He pronounced a prophecy he memorized from an ancient scroll,” Morrell said. “It went: ‘When mankind becomes rich and complacent, and loses its spiritual sight, the evil ones will ring the great Bell of Time, and then shall the world shatter, and hopeless mankind shall perish.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” I said.

  The door opened and a guard stuck his head into the room.

  “We’re ready to take you down below,” the guard said.

  Jack and I rose to our feet, and Morrell came forward from the window. We all went to the door and went out and followed the guard down the hall. Several other guards met us at the stairs, and we all descended to the first floor. We were taken through several doors, down a long hall, and then through another door with massive locks. Instinctively, I studied all of these mechanisms as I passed them by, photographing them in my mind. We came to a cell block. The prisoners that had been out in the yard had apparently just been locked back inside their cells. As we walked by cell after cell, inmates called out to Morrell, and he called back to them.

  “Hey, Ed,” one of them said, “what’cha in for this time?”

  “Just to see you, Joe,” Morrell said. “How much longer?”

  “Three years, eight months, and twenty-nine days,” Joe said.

  “Hang in there,” Morrell said. “And stay out of fights.”

  “I don’t fight no more,” Joe said. “I just lay low.”

  “Good,” Morrell said, walking on.

  We got to the end of the cell block, and went through another heavily secured door made of steel. Behind this was another hallway. We turned off the hallway into a stone stairwell. Here we began to descend the stairs. Down below I found we were in the solitary dungeons. On my right, high in the wall, were a row of windows, all of them painted over, and thus giving the hall below a dim, dank quality. I had seen dungeons like this before in my youth, not on the earth, but on the planet Mars.

  The guard ahead of us opened the door of the cell.

  “Recognize this, Morrell?” the guard asked.

  “Yes,” Morrell said.

  Morrell walked toward the cell, and then stopped and gazed inside it.

  “This is it,” Morrell said. “This is where I stayed.”

  He slowly stepped forward and entered the cell. Jack followed him in, and then I followed Jack.

  “It’s even smaller than I remember it,” Morrell said, gazing about at the bleak, stone walls, slimy with mold.

  The cell was only about four and a half feet wide by about eight feet long, just a closet.

  “Could we have a few minutes in here alone?” Morrell asked. “Just the three of us?”

  The guard shrugged. “Warden said whatever you want. We’ll be right down the hall.” With that, the guard swung the door almost closed, leaving only a small crack for light to slip through. Otherwise we would have been in near total darkness.

  “This is it,” I heard Jack say.

  “I can see your astral body much better in the darkness,” Morrell said.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  “Well,” Morrell said, “it looks like it’s connected to part of another astral body. Do you want me to look into that for you?”

  “That’s why I’ve come here,” I said.

  Morrell said, “Since I made a number of conscious astral projections here, this place has been charged with the energy of my ka. That will make it easier for me to achieve an astral projection and to help you achieve one as well. I’m going to lay down here on the floor and try to relax. Usually, it takes a while to relax the body for an astral projection, but I’ve learned some ways to do it quickly. I want you to lay down here right beside me. There’s just enough room for both of us. Jack, you stand there by the door in case a guard comes up.”

  Morrell and I lay down on the cold stone floor, side by side. My left arm was pressed against the stone wall. Morrell lay only an inch or so to the right of me. There was barely enough room in the cell for us to lie side by side lengthways.

  Morrell said, “Close your eyes and roll them up toward your forehead. Breathe slowly and deeply and begin noticing your feet, legs, body, arms, and head, in that order.”

  I said, “I’ve been noticing my body ever since this thing happened to me last night. That part is easy.”

  Morrell said, “You’re breathing too fast. Slow down. Slowly and deeply, slowly and deeply. Keep looking up. Keep relaxing. I’m going to take you to some different levels now. I’m going to count and you’re going to feel a different level with each number. One— two— three— four— five— six— you’re at a very new level now, you can feel it, you’re breathing different, and that’s right— seven— eight— now we’ve reached an octave, very slow breath now, we’re on a threshold— nine— that’s it, we’re both— breathing— very— slow. Nine— is— the— portal— the— true— frequency— of— every— thing— else.”

  Silence seemed to descend upon the cell as a heavy weight as soon as Morrell stopped speaking. I was extremely relaxed and the distance I had been feeling from this body I inhabited seemed greater than ever. The awareness I had of this body now took the form of a cobweb moving over my face, much like the sensation I had first experienced when I got near the bell-shaped object. This cobweb sensation was followed by an intense tingling, as if electricity was coursing over the surface of my body, and then my arms, legs, and chest felt a sensation of pin-pricks, like when your leg or arm goes to sleep. My whole body was feeling this way. My whole body— really the body of Houdini Number Two— was going to sleep.

  “There are different ideas about astral projection,” Morrell said quietly in the darkness. “But near as I can figure it, we don’
t really leave our bodies behind. By ‘we’ I mean people don’t leave their souls behind. Your etheric soul body stays in your physical body. The astral body is a copy that your mind creates and sends out. The Egyptians called it a ka which means ‘double’. You send out a copy of yourself to experience the astral planes, and when the astral copy of yourself comes back to your physical body, it delivers all of its experiences to your mind, and then you remember everything that happened to your astral copy. Every night when we dream, our ka travels the astral plane, but since we are asleep, it reports to the dreaming part of our minds, so we usually don’t consciously remember our astral projections. Your situation is a bit different. I don’t think your ka, your astral double, has projected from a parallel universe to this universe. I think your actual etheric soul body, which usually stays in your physical body, has done the projecting. All of your subtle energy bodies have projected to this universe. That’s what we’ve got to look into and see if we can make some corrections, maybe we can even put you back into the universe where you belong. Now, I’ve reached a level of my own, and I’m now going to project my astral double. It will then help you project yours. Keep breathing as you are.”

  I kept breathing very slowly with my eyes closed, looking up to my forehead.

  Then I began seeing a grid of lines over an expanse of dark gray. I heard Morrell’s voice say:

  “Don’t go to sleep.”

  His voice sounded different, like it was coming from a different direction than from my right, maybe from directly above me. I kept breathing slowly. The field of gray brightened. The dark grid of lines took on colors and began to move. I remembered something Nikola Tesla once asked me. He asked me if I had ever seen a grid pattern of lines right before I dropped off to sleep at night. He had said that he often saw this grid right before he went to sleep. I told him that I used to see that pattern before I went to sleep when I was very young, about five or six years of age, but not after that. The grid I perceived now was this same visual phenomenon, but it was clearer and brighter and more colorful than any I had ever remembered experiencing before.

  “See the grid,” Morrell’s voice said to me. “Notice the colors. You can make them brighter by just thinking that you want to see them brighter. Think them brighter,”

  I tried Morrell’s suggestion. I willed the colors to brighten, and they did— intensely.

  “Look along the grid,” Morrell said, “to where each square is filled with a design.”

  I kept looking. The grid flowed past me from left to right. Then designs in the squares of the grid began appearing. These designs were geometric shapes in the colors of gold and red against a square of sky blue. I tried to speak to tell Morrell what I was seeing, but I found that I couldn’t move my lips.

  “That’s all right,” Morrell said. “Don’t try to talk to me yet. I know what you’re seeing. I’m watching the same thing. You see those squares that are just solid blue— the ones that still don’t have a design in them? Approach one of those solid blue squares. How? Just think it. See it and will it, just like you do when you decide to stand up or walk forward. That’s it. Just move toward that blue square.”

  Somehow Morrell knew exactly what I was experiencing. I was moving toward a sky of turquoise blue enclosed within the square of the grid— then I was in the square of the grid— it was like a window— or a square door.

  “You have reached the Door. Pass on through,” Morrell said.

  I moved on forward and felt a tremendous pressure on my forehead and throat. As I became immersed in blue light, I felt that I was being crushed flat. It felt as if my body was expanding out to the sides into gigantic proportions.

  “Don’t panic,” Morrell said. “Keep moving forward. Push against the pushing. Push on it. That’s it. You know how to push— push.”

  I was pushing against that pressure— that blue something that glowed evenly all around me. My heart began racing. It felt as though electricity was surging all over and through my body. The surging energy increased; my heart pounded impossibly fast; a buzzing sound in my ears increased in volume to a roar until I thought my eardrums would burst; the energy in my muscles became streaks of pure fire; I felt engulfed in a raging maelstrom of unspeakable power; any moment it seemed that my very body would explode into a thousand pieces.

  Suddenly, I heard a loud snap beside my head, and all the energy surging through my body rushed to my stomach, and I rushed forward through the blue for an instant, only to suddenly drop downward through an infinite, empty space. This feeling only lasted for about five seconds. I fell through the blueness and when I came out I found that I was floating in mid-air— floating upright inside the cell.

  I looked up and saw Morrell floating right beside me. His whole body was glowing from the inside out, lit up, like he was made of some kind of translucent material. He wore the same clothes, but his hair was more neatly combed and he looked younger and in perfect health. Jack stood directly in front of us, but did not look at us. He was looking down at the floor.

  I said, “Jack.” Or I thought I said, “Jack.”

  He can’t hear you, Morrell said to me as a directly projected thought into my mind. You’re experiencing this in your astral body, Morrell thought.

  I looked down, and was given a fright. I saw Morrell’s legs and feet and my legs and feet still lying on the stone floor.

  Stay calm, Morrell thought. Don’t look at your body. It will make you sick and dizzy. We’re on the closest astral plane to our physical universe. You’re not seeing the real physical cell and that’s not the real Jack standing there looking down at us on the floor. This is all an astral duplicate of our physical world. It serves as a point of reference for us. Don’t look at any one thing too long, or you will distort it with your dreaming mind. Now let me tell you something, and don’t panic. You’re prone to panic, we both know, and you’ve learned how to control that, so control it. Your control word is ‘Houdini’. Now, your other self in that parallel universe has got his astral body tangled up with yours. Do you feel like you’ve got something on your back?

  Yes, I thought to Morrell. I notice it, now that you’ve mentioned it. That feeling in my neck— something is connected back there, and now I feel it all the way down my back.

  Well, it’s another astral body, Morrell thought to me, just like yours, and the two of you are connected at your necks; you’re connected to each other back-to-back. Oh. He’s communicating with a duplicate version of me in that other universe. He’s talking to another Ed Morrell there. Our actions and thoughts are running along precisely the same lines. Hello, you other Houdini!

  Just as Morrell thought, Hello, you other Houdini, I received the clear thought simultaneously from another Ed Morrell who said exactly the same thing to me. It was the Ed Morrell from my home universe.

  I thought back, Hello Ed Morrell of my home!

  As I projected that very thought, I received my own thought from that pressure along my back. It was like hearing two people speaking in unison, or how it would sound if you talked in unison with a recording of your own voice.

  Ed thought: Your silver cords are intertwined with each other. Let’s find the source of this confusion. We will now move to the astral plane which is the source of this crossing.

  Ed moved upward. I looked up. There was an opening in the ceiling of the cell connected to what looked like a glowing tube made up of those same grid lines I had seen before. Ed’s astral body floated up and through this tube, and I, in my astral body, floated up and went through it after him.

  Ed flew ahead of me through the tube at an incredible speed, trailing behind him a cord that glowed with a silver light. I glanced behind me, and saw that another cord stretched back into the tube alongside the one belonging to Ed, and that this other cord was actually composed of two cords intertwined with each other.

  The silver cords of our astral bodies, Ed thought to me.

  I looked forward again and along the walls of the tube. We
were flashing past grid after grid, many of them filled with repeating patterns. I suddenly noticed that two sets of intertwined cords stretched far ahead of us in the tube; these intertwined cords were just like the one I had just glimpsed stretching behind me. Glancing down at my astral body, I saw that one of the intertwined cords was coming from my astral body and that it stretched ahead of me into the tube; the other cord came forward from out of the tube and apparently stretched all the way back to my physical body in the San Quentin dungeon. It occurred to me that my astral cord, intertwined with that of another, had formed a great loop stretching ahead down the length of the tube, and that Ed was following my intertwined cord to where it looped back upon itself. We reached a drab section of the tube, where the grid squares dimmed to a gray-brown. Suddenly Ed stopped before a grid into which the two sets of intertwined cords extended. Ed dived through this grid, and I shot through it after him.