by Bob Frank
“Once, my brother Yisma’el and I were very old, and my father was over one hundred years old. My father got so angry with us that he threatened to kill both of us. We were all such old men in these bodies and yet we acted like children. Our father yelled at us that he would kill us if we did not do as he wished.”
Laughing out loud, Iqbal continued, “Oh, later, when we came back from the mountain, the stories became fantastic legends. My brother and I played along so we would not hurt my father’s feelings. People were saying that God told my father to sacrifice his son.” Iqbal belly-laughed even louder. “But the next week, we all forgave each other and made a feast in the village. People said that God changed his mind and told him to kill a goat for the feast instead of sacrificing me or my brother. The stories were amusing to the family.”
Shali allowed Iqbal to spew out the history of significant events in this life while she conferred with Clay on the side. “Any idea who this person may have been?”
Clay clicked away on the Internet and said, without looking up, “I think I know who we have here. Let’s see. Yes, our buddy Iqbal here seems to be Isaac. Yitzak is Hebrew for Isaac. I am guessing that his father Ibrahim is probably Abraham. Yes, the Abraham, the root of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He had two sons, Jacob and Esau; and his brother was named Ishmael. Yeah, this has to be Abraham’s son. It makes sense to me based on that story about the mountain.”
Shali asked, “What do you mean?”
“Supposedly Abraham got a command from God to sacrifice his son.”
“And — ?”
Still reading from the Internet, Clay said, “The story goes that God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, but later God changed his mind and told them to sacrifice an animal instead. Remember Solomon and Hillel and the human sacrifices? It wasn’t uncommon at that time to just sacrifice a human, even your own child.” Clay paused. “If this was really Isaac, then it sounds like Abraham was just a crusty old fart. Being that old and if he was really that nasty, he might have had dementia or Alzheimer’s. Although, an angry father is no different than when my dad caught me stealing whiskey from the liquor cabinet as a teenager. He told me he’d kill me if he caught me again.” He chuckled. “Hey, maybe exaggerated stories of my dad and me could start a new religion.”
Clay sat back in his chair for a moment, glowing in the success for finding another historical hit.
“We can try to validate events tomorrow, after we review the recordings,” Shali said. “Yitsak lived way before the secrets were even assembled.”
“Agreed. But if this is really Isaac, then we’re batting a thousand with this guy. You know, all of these tens of thousands of regressions and ninety-nine point nine percent of the lives are just plain boring people. And now we run across a slew of historically famous people in this one young Palestinian. We’ve got to dig for other living members of his soul pod. If his soul mates have strings of famous lives, then I’d feel like we were singing in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack. I’ll bet he’s got more famous lives.”
“Could be, but don’t get your hopes up.”
Iqbal chattered on about this life of Isaac for five more minutes before Shali moved him forward in his Akashic record. Iqbal then revealed two very ordinary lives. One life was a woman in the Olmec civilization of ancient Mexico in 1500 BC. She died of natural causes as an old woman, leaving thirty-seven grandchildren to carry on. The next uneventful life was spent as a fisherman along the Turkish coast. As expected in the timeline, they came to his life as King Solomon.
At the end of the description of King Solomon’s life, Shali said to Clay, “The review of the Akashic record validates what we got in the regression earlier this morning, but with a lot less emotion and more objectivity.”
“That’s why I like to get to the Akashics as quickly as possible.”
Shali continued the regression and found three more ordinary, simple lives between 900 and 600 BC: one each in Egypt, the Indonesian islands, and Italy.
Ten minutes into Iqbal’s description of the next life, Shali was glowing. She turned to Clay and said in smug tone, “We’ve got ourselves the one and only Pythagoras, here: revered philosopher, mathematician, mystic and scientist. How’d ya like them cookies?”
Looking up from his laptop, Clay said, “You’re kidding!” He started clicking away at the keyboard. “Let’s see — I’ve got 480 to 590 BC. Damn, he lived to be ninety years old.”
Shali smirked. “Not quite. The official Akashic records here say he died in 478 BC, so that would make him ninety-two.”
Clay looked at Shali through the top of his eyes and then back to his screen. “Here, I see that he’s known as the father of mathematics.”
“Man, if only we could bring this public,” Shali said. “Just think of the ramifications. But poor Iqbal here would be eaten alive by the press.”
“That is, of course, if anybody believed it. We’d probably be tarred and feathered as heretics, or most likely branded as lunatics. We’d be eaten long before they got to Iqbal.”
* * * ~~~ * * *
They continued the review of the Akashic record for a grueling thirty minutes and three more lives. Shali pulled Clay aside for a quick translation as Iqbal continued describing his lives for the recorder.
Stretching her head back and then rubbing her neck, Shali looked down at her notes and said, “Here’s what we’ve got. A couple of uneventful lives in the three hundreds and four hundreds BC: One was a concubine to a low-level warlord in China; the other was a short-lived aboriginal boy on a Southern Philippine island. But I think we may have found who you were looking for. We’ve got a life in the two hundreds BC named Apollonius, although he said he was from Rhodes, not Tyana. Didn’t you say your Apollonius was from Tyana?”
Clay scowled and blew out a sharp puff of air. He looked down at the laptop and furiously clicked away for thirty seconds. “Dammit! We got the wrong Apollonius. Iqbal was Apollonius of Rhodes in the two hundreds BC, not Apollonius of Tyana of the one hundreds AD. We got the wrong one — they’re three hundred years apart.”
Shali sat back in her chair, raised her eyebrows and stared at Clay, as if looking for guidance. Iqbal babbled along about the life of Apollonius of Rhodes to the recorder in the background.
Clay continued reading his laptop and then said under his breath, “Why this Apollonius? Why were we led to Iqbal?” A few moments passed and then he exclaimed, “Of course! Of course, I’ve been looking at this in the wrong way.” He glanced up to Shali and said in reserved excitement, “Our Apollonius of Rhodes here was considered one of the keepers of Alexandria’s great library. Now I understand why I was led to Iqbal. I have been searching for philosophers, scientists or authors. I should have been focusing on the people who collected and stored the writings of others. There were once great secrets from all over the world stored in the Alexandrian Library about two thousand years ago. However, the entire library was slowly and methodically plundered and destroyed by different groups over several centuries.”
Shali rhetorically asked, “What better soul to know of secret writings than the head of the greatest library, huh?”
Clay shot back, “So maybe the key to finding the secrets is in finding the Librarians of Alexandria. We need to focus on the later librarians who were probably involved in stashing the secrets before the library was destroyed. Let’s keep going. Maybe Iqbal has more relevant lives later.”
Shali continued reviewing the Akashic records with Iqbal for another thirty minutes before stopping to translate for Clay. “Well, there wasn’t much more eventful for Apollonius. Then came the next two lives of Hillel and Philostratus, as we expected from this morning’s session. Nothing new turned up, there. But the next life was a guy named Iamblichus from Syria in the three hundreds AD. I think I’ve heard the name.” She nodded toward his laptop. “What can you tell me about him?”
Clay perked up with excitement and jumped back into his laptop. “I know about Iambl
ichus. He was a famous Neo-Platonist philosopher who studied under a guy named Porphyry in Rome. Porphyry, in turn, studied under Plato. They all had a general philosophy of a single connected universe and a possible single world-soul. But they were all at odds with both the Christians and the Jews at that time.”
“This must have made for some interesting debates, huh?”
“Oh, I’m sure it did. In the Akashic records, Iqbal’s soul described many conflicts they had with religious groups.”
Clay looked up from the laptop. “Here, it says that Iamblichus was known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.” He chuckled. “Now, who would know more about Pythagorean philosophy than the reincarnated soul of Pythagoras? This soul just didn’t want to give up on his opposition to organized religions. Let’s keep pushing on. I can tell from the monitors that Iqbal is getting tired.”
Shali moved Iqbal’s soul to the next life. In just a few minutes, she turned to Clay and said, “It’s getting better. His next life was Nestorius around 400 AD. I’ve heard the name but don’t know any details. What have you got there?”
Clicking away, Clay said, “Well, let’s see. This Nestorius was the archbishop of Constantinople in Turkey. He made proclamations that started huge Christian debates over the separate existence of God, Jesus Christ, human bodies and divine souls. Whew.”
Shali thought for a few seconds before responding. “That makes senses. His earlier incarnation as Iamblichus saw a merging of individual souls and the divine soul into one. Hence, he must have portrayed God, Christ and all mankind as really just one entity. Our buddy Iqbal’s soul has a theme here. But I’m not sure how it plays into these secrets that we’re after.”
Clay said, “Agreed. This is interesting stuff, but if we don’t get moving, we’re not going to find these writings. Iqbal only gave us one day.”
Shali pushed Iqbal’s soul through four more lives before pausing to translate for Clay. “The next two lives in the five hundreds and six hundreds AD seem like normal people in Europe and Africa with pretty obscure lives. But the next life in the seven hundreds AD was a guy named Jabir, in Persia. He was into philosophy, science, things like that; seems like he was renowned. Do you know anything about a Jabir or can you try to look him up?”
“I think I know who he is. Give me a second.” Clay smiled a dirty grin. “Here he is; I found him on Wiki.” Clay read for a few seconds then paraphrased what he saw. “Jabir ibn Hayyan was a Persian Arab in the seven hundreds AD. Wow, a prodigy genius. In addition to being known as the father of chemistry, he was a renowned alchemist, astronomer, astrologer, engineer, geologist, philosopher, physicist, pharmacist and physician: a regular wiz-bang guy. Does this sound like the guy you got?”
Shali smiled back and said, “Sure does. He talked about most of those disciplines. At least the history books were spot on. So, Iqbal’s soul was the father of mathematics as Pythagoras, and now we see he was known as the father of chemistry in Jabir. I wonder if he’s got any more fatherhoods?”
Iqbal continued to describe his past-life experiences to the recorder while Shali and Clay continued conversing in the background.
Still fixated on the laptop screen, Clay said, “Wiki says that Jabir was a prolific writer. This guy had some three thousand known writings, many so complex, deep and twisted that the English word “gibberish” is believed to derive from reference to Jabir’s writings. He had one book called the Book of Stones that supposedly described how to artificially create life, including humans. The text was written in some type of encoded language that could barely be understood, even after years of studying Jabir’s gibberish.”
“Alright, Mr. Encyclopedia, I can tell from the tone of your voice that you have something on your mind. What are you thinking?”
“I remember reading several of the books written by psychologists on past-life regression. Even though I’ve never run across it in my PLR work, the books said some souls had supposedly practiced the creation of life on obscure planets somewhere else in the universe. I don’t know whether to believe it or not. Maybe Jabir’s work was an incarnated human’s documentation of this phenomenon. I wish we had more time to dig into this Jabir’s life. Damn you, Iqbal, we could use a couple more days.”
Shali said, “Anything else before I push on?”
Almost ignoring her comment he replied, “I wonder if Jabir had some sort of connection to another dimension or world where he remembered these experiments in the creation of life. If so, it’s probably no wonder his writings were all gibberish. This makes me wonder if any of Jabir’s writings are part of the collection of secret hidden writings that we’re looking for. I wonder if these are the secrets of the universe we are looking for?”
After a few seconds of hesitation Shali said, “I got one more life after Jabir, another Persian named Rhazes. What details can you find?”
Clay turned his attention back to the laptop. “Here it is in Wiki. The next life of Iqbal’s soul was Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī, but they called him Rhazes or Rasis. He was another famous Persian jack-of-all-trades around the year 900 AD.”
As Iqbal continued rambling, Clay suddenly and excitedly burst out, “Holy Moly, this guy was another hot shot. Although raised and died in Iran, he spent much of his life in medical and academic circles in Baghdad; that’s where he kept his main laboratory. Just like Jabir, Rhazes was a renowned alchemist, chemist, physician, philosopher, scholar and musician. As a physician, he was famous for dealing with smallpox. He was attributed with discovering rubbing alcohol, and he authored thousands of books and articles on a wide-ranging set of disciplines. Ha! Guess what? He was big in childhood diseases and child medicine: Rhazes is known as the father of pediatrics.”
Shali chuckled. “Is Iqbal’s soul some kind of a promiscuous intelligent; he has to be the father of all disciplines?”
Clay read on, “It says here he was a believer in the transmutation of metals. He believed you could transform one metal into another. You know, like turn copper into gold. He even wrote two books about transmutation: one was called al-Asrar or The Secrets, and another was called Sirr al-Asrar or The Secret of Secrets. Do you suppose — ?”
Before he could even ask, Shali cut him off. “Could be. Maybe this guy wrote down a lot of the secrets you have heard people mentioning in your regressions.”
“Yeah. According to the history books, contrary to Jabir, Rhazes was very concise in his writing. Maybe he learned something from his previous life as the jabber-mouth. Maybe that was his soul’s correction in this life — to learn how to write intelligible books.” Clay chuckled at his own joke.
Shali said, “When Iqbal’s soul talked about Rhazes’ view toward religions, he wasn’t very gracious. Can you see anything about this?”
“It looks like our regression has proved the historians right: Wiki says Rhazes pretty much had a disdain for organized religions. He had conflicts with religious leaders, in particular those preaching Islam, even while living in Baghdad.”
“I wish we had more time with this guy, but we don’t. We’ll listen to the tapes later and try to dig out more details.”
Chapter 7
Shali continued working Iqbal’s soul through the next life. She suddenly looked at Clay and said, “We’ve got another multi-disciplinarian here. He’s another Persian named Avicenna who lived about 1000 AD. He said he was very experienced as a physicist, philosopher, astronomer, chemist, physician and mathematician. What can you find on him?”
Clicking away on his laptop, Clay replied, “Yeah, he was a Persian, too, but he came from Uzbekistan. The history books say he was also a renowned geologist, logician, paleontologist, poet, psychologist, scientist, soldier, statesman and teacher. Whew!” A big grin came across Clay’s face. “This guy is a regular Captain America, or should I say Captain Persia?” Looking up from his laptop, he added, “Shali, ready for this one? Avicenna is known as the father of the concept of momentum — as in physics.” Clay looked at Iqbal but leaned ov
er to Shali and whispered so only she could hear, “Enough fatherhood, okay Iqbal?”
Shali quietly laughed. “Promiscuous soul, huh? What else do you have on Avicenna?”
“According to Wiki, he was a great pharmacist. Even today, Avicenna’s picture is on the diploma of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. However, I sense that he may have been a bit confused.”
“What do you mean confused?”
“He was a devoted Muslim living in the heart of Islam at its crowning peak. Catch this: by the age of ten he had memorized the entire Quran. It seems like he may have found himself at conflict between Islam and science. For the most part, I would say that Islam won the debate. Avicenna became extremely critical of Rhazes, his own former incarnation. He must have been one confused puppy, somehow in conflict with his soul’s core philosophies in a previous life.”
“Yeah, but Avicenna was no different than anyone else in any other time who is influenced by the religious, philosophical and cultural environments in which they grow up.”
Clay tilted his head to the side and grimaced at Shali before responding, “My Lady, you are getting deep, here.” He spun his finger in a circle and said, “Roll on.”
She glared at him and then moved the regression session forward. Suddenly, the soul’s guide came out in full interaction without prompting from Shali. The change in Iqbal’s tone and demeanor was obvious. Clay smiled at Shali and nodded an acknowledgment that the guide had finally exposed itself.
The guide revealed the last publicly known life of Iqbal’s soul: “Ezra Pound, 1885; United States, Italy. Writer, poet, political activist — ”
Shali immediately translated for Clay, but he was already searching the name. Clay whispered to himself, “Hmm.” Not looking up from the screen, he said, “This guy is a mess. How did this soul, who had so many very significant lives over the past four thousand years, end up in a screwed up life like this American, Ezra Pound? I thought lives were supposed to improve over time.”
As the guide drawled on in staccato monotone in the background, and Clay continued describing Ezra to Shali, “On one hand, this guy appears to be a popular writer. On the other hand, he’s almost a radical nut case: a hyper-liberal. He died only a few decades ago. Pound was politically active in Italy before World War Two and supported both the Fascists and the Nazis. But he was chastised by both sides. Neither side wanted to claim him. He was very negative towards everything. Whoa. After the war, Pound was imprisoned as a traitor by the United States. He was charged and tried as a criminal, but since they couldn’t prove it, they just committed him to an insane asylum to get him out of the way.”