Through the Third Eye; Book 1 of Third Eye Trilogy

by Bob Frank

  Clay focused on his target. “Sogui! You will not be hurt by what you see. This is not happening now. It happened thousands of years ago. You will not be harmed in any way. Come out of the body and only look at the body from above.”

  “Stop! No!” Sogui screamed. “They are pulling me off the chariot. They are hitting me! Beating me! Why are they doing this? Why? No, stop. Please stop! They are beating me with sticks and whips; ten, twelve of them. It hurts so much. I can hear my bones breaking. Please, stop. Now they are stripping me, tearing off my clothes, tying ropes to my arms and legs. Please, no. They are dragging me down the street to the courtyard and yelling terrible things. Ahh, stretching me out with ropes, pulling me, stretching. Who are you and why are you doing this?”

  “Sogui, listen to me,” Clay shouted loudly. “Remove yourself from the body. Remove yourself from the body, now. Only look down on the body as if this is a movie. Get out of the body, now.”

  Shali yelled, “Clay, her vital signs are blowing the scale. Bring her out. Get her out.”

  Sogui’s screams echoed through the hotel suite: “Ahhh! No, it’s you! I know you; and you. You are the monks, the monks. Please stop. Why are you doing this to me? No! What is that? Stop. No. Oyster shells, broken oyster shells scraping the skin off of my body. The pain!”

  She continued screaming as Clay shook her in an attempt to break her out of the hypnotic trance. “Sogui, you will awaken now! Wake up. Leave that body and come back to the present. Come back to here and now. Sogui! Sogui!” He shook her with near violence.

  Sogui screamed again. “Scraping skin off my body. Raw, bloody. My flesh. I see bones. Cannot stop it, only pain. No! No, stop. Not fire. There is wood and fire, torches on fire. No, please just kill me. Please kill me. Stop dragging me on fire. I am not dead. I will not die. Let me die, please. The fire. Stop. The pain. Die. Please die.”

  Clay physically lifted Sogui up in his arms. “Sogui, wake up!” He propped her up to full sitting position and pulled off the headphones, goggles and cap. As soon as he pulled the pulse pad from her forehead, Shali threw a glass of water on Sogui’s face and slapped her cheeks. She stopped screaming, and with Clay holding her upright, she finally opened her eyes and glanced around the room with a dazed look of absolute terror. She looked as if she was about to scream, but nothing came out.

  She slowly shook her head side to side, as if still trying to wake up from the nightmare. Sweat soaked her body. In a few minutes, her body began to tremble and shake from the withdrawal of adrenaline.

  “For Christ’s sake, Clay,” Shali yelled in a near panic. “Her heart rate hit over one hundred eighty beats per minute. This is entirely too fast for a frail, old woman.”

  Clay nodded and held a glass of water to Sogui’s mouth. She sipped the cool water to quench her parched throat.

  Shali wiped Sogui’s face, neck and arms with a wet cloth to calm her. It took several minutes after coming out of the hypnosis before Sogui had recovered enough to be cognizant of the surroundings. She looked Shali directly in the eyes and then at Clay. In a colloquial Kuna-accented Spanish she blasted out loud, “Wow. What a ride. Those bastards! I’d kick their asses if I could. Damn it, Clay, you said it wouldn’t hurt.”

  At that, Clay and Shali looked at each other with relief.

  “Sogui, I am so sorry,” Clay said in a conciliatory tone. “It should not have hurt. We’ve never had this happen. You went inside your previous life and relived the experience. This is why we don’t normally allow people to remember their regressions. When we control everything in hypnosis, we try to keep you away from bad events, but your subconscious pushed itself inside that life and would not respond to us. You obviously felt everything that your soul felt that night. It should not happen when we get to the next phase: the life between your past lives. One thing we do know is that your soul is definitely connected to what we are looking for, but we need to be more careful.”

  “I understand,” she said, “but this hurt. I felt every cut, every scrape, and every burn. And yet right now, I feel so alive. I feel rich. I am energized.” She looked at the ceiling, paused and then said, “Let’s keep going.”

  “No, no, no,” Shali fired back. “We’re stopping for today. You need to recuperate. This was harder on you than you think.”

  “Alright, but you are looking for what we had in the library, aren’t you? She knew — Hypatia knew. I knew. You want those documents. You want that knowledge, don’t you? That’s what you are looking for.”

  Clay glanced at Shali with a sheepish grin as if he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He looked back to Sogui and responded, “Si, Si, yes, of course. We don’t know exactly what we are after, but it is probably what your soul was trying to move out of Alexandria before the monks killed her.”

  “Oh, mi Amigo, I want to help you. When you find it, I have to see it all, in this life, in this body. I must see it. Will you do that? I have a job to finish, you know. Well, Hypatia has a job to finish, and I am going to help her.”

  “I promise,” Clay responded. “If we find it, I will personally see to it that you can see, touch and feel every document again, in this life. But we are going to skip the individual life regressions from here. It is too risky. If we continue this way, we won’t know what we are going to run into. Your soul evidently wants to relive the past despite how painful it was. We will try to deal directly with your guide from now on. Is tomorrow okay, or do you need another day to rest?”

  “Tomorrow is fine. But did you know that I was a virgin? I mean, Hypatia was a virgin. I was a gorgeous, beautiful, voluptuous, fifty-five-year-old virgin. What the hell was wrong with me? Look at this body of mine, now. It’s torn, tattered and twisted, but I’m not even close to being a virgin. Hell, I’ll get up from this chair and take you on right now. Bring it on, my young boy. Can you handle me?”

  Clay and Shali broke out in rolling laughter at Sogui’s raw sense of humor. They closed up the regression suite and migrated to the hotel lobby for afternoon Sangria. Despite her current difficult life, Sogui was completely alive and vibrant with energy.

  On their second pitcher of Sangria, they told Sogui about their regressions with her soul-mates Tommy and Iqbal, and they explained Iqbal’s former life as King Solomon.

  “Hola! When I was the Queen of Sheba and this Iqbal was my Solly, we had the hottest sex-filled summer Jerusalem has ever seen. Tell Iqbal I’m ready to do it again. Some day in this life, maybe you can bring my two soul mates to the beach in San Blas. I’d like to show them paradise.”

  The three of them joked and laughed through dinner. Later, when Clay and Shali met alone in the regression suite to review what had happened before they retired for the night, Shali revealed her concern. “This incident with Hypatia was simply too close to the edge for comfort.”

  “I know. I’ve seldom used Protocol 73, so I’m not sure what went wrong.”

  “Like you told Sogui, let’s restrict the dialogue to the guide or an elder from here on and not get in direct contact with the soul, especially when we get to Hypatia’s life.”

  Chapter 14

  The next morning, they started the regression at 8:00 a.m. sharp. Sogui immediately dropped into a deep trance. The guide came forward, and Clay moved directly to the LBL phase. He walked the guide through a review of each life identified in the earlier regressions.

  In late morning, Shali pulled Clay aside and asked, “Have you noticed how different this guide is compared to the two previous guides?”

  “I sure did. Sogui’s guide is softer in composure and less rigid, although she is still another hard-ass.”

  “It seems that each guide has a unique personality.”

  “But if you think about it, guides are just advanced souls. Every soul is different, just as living people are all different. This particular guide was much more objective and less opinionated than the others.”

  Shali said, “Well, the Akashic records affirmed everything we heard from
Sogui’s soul before the incident with Hypatia. But this guide was awfully opinionated about, and almost spiteful toward, organized religions. There was certainly no holding back on criticizing them.”

  Clay nodded. “All of the guides in this soul pod seem to be somewhat critical of religions.”

  Shali said, “Agreed. We better roll though the rest of her lives and get to down to asking about our treasures.”

  Clay led the guide through many past lives that had not been previously revealed before the Hypatia incident. The first life revealed for Sogui’s soul was Al-Farabi, a renowned Arabian scholar in Baghdad in the nine hundreds AD. Al-Farabi had been heavily influenced by Aristotle, Plato, Porphyry, Ptolemy, most of whom were lives of the other souls in the pod. The next life was Solomon ibn Gabirol, a Spanish medieval scholar in 1000 AD. Gabirol was suspected of having rewritten parts of the Bible’s Old Testament but was murdered by an Islamic follower of Mohammad.

  Next was Henry More, a sixteen hundreds Platonist in Cambridge, England. More was a prolific writer of philosophical positions against idolatry. Then Sogui’s soul described the life of Thomas Paine in seventeen hundreds England and the United States. Paine had authored a written piece called Common Sense, which stimulated the American Revolution against England. Paine was also the author of many other documents that helped lead to the French Revolution. He also authored The Age of Reason; which advocated Deism, rejected notions of supernatural Gods, and threw serious doubt in the face of religious beliefs, even in those days.

  Lastly, they reviewed a final life in the late eighteen hundreds, after which they paused the regression to regroup and let Sogui’s mind rest.

  Clay said to Shali, “I just cannot believe that three souls from one pod could have had so many lives that contributed so significantly to human society. But this last one is intriguing to me.”

  “I know. I’m reading here that Helen P. Blavatsky was the Russian-American founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky was the author of a book called The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. It’s supposed to be a large multi-volume reconciliation of ancient Eastern knowledge and modern science.” Continuing to look at her laptop screen she continued, “She claimed that she got knowledge from Indian mahatmas who retained the secret knowledge from the Ancients. She also claimed she was the one ‘chosen’ to reveal the knowledge to mankind. Ironically enough, Blavatsky’s writings were sometimes said to have been a foundation for Hitler’s Nazi Germany.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m well versed on Blavatsky. But the rumors about Hitler were later proven to be politically motivated fabrications. There were organizations trying to discredit both the Theosophical society and her reputation. In her writings, she often referred to Aryans, but I think it was fundamentally different than Hitler’s Aryan race. Her ideas totally were taken out of context.”

  “Then what’s this secret knowledge of Blavatsky’s from the Ancients?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out for a couple of years. I tried reading her books, but to me they are almost incomprehensible. I guess if you really studied her material, you might catch on after a while, but it never came to me.”

  Shali gave Clay a slight smile. “You mean it’s like gibberish?”

  He looked at her intently. “Yeah, just like Iqbal’s writings from his previous lives as Jabir and Ezra Pound.”

  “I still think we’re missing lives in Sogui, though. There is a five-hundred-year gap between Buddha and Ammonius, and then again after Hypatia. But I think we’ve got what we need for now. It’s punch-line time. We need to get to probe her about the location of the secret writings.”

  “Agree; I’ll wrap it up. Keep your fingers crossed.” Clay turned his attention to Sogui. “There are large collections of secret written documents that are hidden and protected. Does this soul know where those secret writings are hidden?”

  “Yes.”

  Clay and Shali’s eyes popped wide open and their heads turned toward one another. An optimistic look of success came across both of their faces.

  Clay leaned forward and asked, “Where are these writings physically located at the present time, and how do we locate those who are currently hiding the secrets?”

  The guide hesitated. Shali gave a long shot of micro-pulse to the Third Eye.

  Sogui responded, “In the mountains is the location of the hidden truths written by many, beneath the peak of Sipri, near the place called Tingri, by those who call themselves Drukpa.”

  Clay jerked his head toward Shali. “Did you get that? Quick, see what you can find on any of these words or places.”

  Shali furiously clicked away at the keyboard while Clay continued to probe the guide for more leads. Shali was still staring at her laptop when she quietly interrupted Clay in a low, slow voice. “I’m not sure of the spelling, exactly, but it looks like this place is probably in the Himalayas. In Tibet, I would say. Yes, here is a Mount Tsipri, and just off to the south is a small village named Tingri. It’s close to Mount Everest. Now, the other word, Drukpa, if I’ve got the spelling right. Let’s see — ”

  Clay waited for her as she read from the screen.

  “There are references to a Drukpa Kargyü Buddhist sect based in Tibet. I’d venture a guess that we’re going to find some kind of a Buddhist temple out in those mountains. The bad part is that this is in the heart of Tibet. We’re going to have problems with the Chinese government. Tibet has been in on-again-off-again lock-down status for years.”

  “If our secrets are hidden in Tibet, we’ve been talking with the Buddha himself,” Clay said. “Remember Tommy; his soul lived as Dolpopa, another full Buddha living in that same area. I’ll bet there is a connection.”

  Shali took a deep breath and then exhaled. “I’d say so. I think we’ve got what we need for now, and I’m a little concerned for Sogui. We’ve worked her over for three long days. This is stressful for her, especially considering what happened when we ran across Hypatia.”

  Clay sat back in his chair and said, “You’re right. Unless you have other ideas, let’s bring her out. There is a trip to Tibet to plan.”

  Clay brought Sogui out of the trance and they debriefed her for an hour. Their work in Panama was finished for now. They locked up the regression suite, freshened up and met in the lobby for dinner. Sogui promised to honor her agreement not to reveal the names or details of her previous lives. It was their little secret for the time being. Clay was mostly concerned about her revealing the location of the hidden secrets before he could locate and recover them himself. They agreed that after recovering the writings, they would work with Sogui to publish a documentary on the lives she had lived before. In return, she agreed to keep recording any more details from her past lives as she remembered them.

  That night they went out for seafood and invited the professor from the university to join them for dinner. Sogui knew a great little hole-in-the-wall by the waterfront that served fabulous traditional shrimp ceviche, Panamanian Sancocho soup and broiled corvina fish.

  After sharing several bottles of red wine, Sogui cut loose with her stories again, just as she had at the steakhouse a few nights earlier. Before the evening ended, the professor was nearly rolling on the floor with laughter due to Sogui’s non-stop recollection of sexual exploits, each told in provocative, sensuous detail.

  Part II - Quest for the Present

  Chapter 15

  Lhasa, Tibet

  The Chinese Embassy in San Francisco granted Clay and Shali sixty-day visas to visit Tibet as photo journalists. Several weeks later, they landed in Tibet’s capital. On the long ride to downtown Lhasa, the occasional scent of burning coal sifted through the air in the back seat of their taxi.

  After freshening up, they met for an early dinner. The smell of stale carpet permeated the air of the hotel lobby. They walked down a hallway lined with intricately carved wooden wall hangings certainly made by earlier generations of Tibetan craftsmen. At the h
otel restaurant they took their seats and ordered from the rather limited menu.

  Still waiting for their meals, Shali broke the silence. “A few days before we left, I met with some monks at a Silicon Valley Buddhist temple to get inside scoop on the Drukpa,” Shali said. “It seems they are typically a passive, non-radical sect that makes no trouble for the Chinese occupiers. Because they are so low key, the Chinese don’t bother them. From what they could tell me, there may be some monasteries in the mountains and valleys in that remote area. But they did not have any specific locations or details. We’re going to have to research further from here in Lhasa, if we can. There are some Drukpa temples here. Hopefully we can get some leads.”

  “For sure. A monastery is probably a good place to stash secrets if you want to keep them away from the prying eyes of the Chinese government, or from any of the other foreign governments that controlled Tibet in the past.”

  Their dinner finally arrived. After a few minutes, Shali broke the silence again, “Did you realize that Milarepa lived somewhere out West around Mount Tsipri about nine hundred years ago? I’m a little surprised that one of our three friends wasn’t Milarepa in a past-life. We had Buddha, Confucius and Dolpopa; it would have been nice to get Milarepa, too.”

  “Agree. I remember reading that Buddhists still make pilgrimages to the caves where Milarepa meditated. Those caves are sort of like what Mecca is to the Muslims, or what Jerusalem is to the Christians and Jews.”

  “Did you know he was a big-time Yogi who ultimately reached full Buddha-hood, even though there were some questionable stunts he pulled earlier in his life.”

  “Sure did. I’m up on him.” As the second beer kicked in, Clay got playful. “I’ll bet you that given a little time we would find that Milarepa has the same soul as the Dali Lama himself.”

  Shali acknowledged Clay’s quip with a nod and a grin. “Hey, while we’re out here, maybe we could head over to Nepal or India — ”