He looked toward the guardhouse. “Several months ago, I met one of the officers of the guard station. I believe he thinks I’m a wanderer or a prophet or something. I had run out of water and he told me about the spring. I have talked to him several times on my trips here. He knows about the Document but he has always been very secretive. I also believe he knows Joseph’s brother.”
“What?” I said, glancing over at Coleman. “Joseph said his brother was a high-ranking officer here, a commander.”
“I have seen a big man who looked highly ranked talking to my friend.”
I looked at Coleman. “Where was Joseph this morning?”
“He had already left camp,” Coleman replied. “His tent was next to mine and I woke up as he walked off. It was still dark.”
“Have you seen Joseph up here today?” I asked Tommy.
He shook his head. “No one has been here, except for the two soldiers down below.”
“We could probably sneak past those two,” Coleman said.
“It is not time,” Tommy admonished. “We won’t be allowed up the mountain until we first learn to see.”
For a long time, we stayed where we were. Tommy said we must wait until the sun was in the correct position before trying to open up our perception. When the sun was near setting, he explained, it radiated a light of mystery, and extraordinary events could take place.
Coleman and I spent most of the day talking about the old Prophecy and what had occurred in Peru. In the Ninth Insight, the Prophecy had predicted that humanity would slowly increase its energy level and would systematically raise its level of perception. The question was how to practice this ability. We talked about this for a long time, sharing a granola bar for lunch, and waited patiently for the sun to lower in the sky. Finally, the time came, and Tommy told us to gather all our belongings. The sun was barely above the horizen.
“This is the hour that has the most magic,” he repeated. “A human can do things at this time of day that can’t be done at any other time. Just look out at this light.”
Tommy was pointing toward the east where everything was now bathed in a golden-colored aura, and the sky had turned a darker blue. The swirling clouds overhead were now taking on rich browns and streaks of orange. What struck me most was how the light reflected on the rock and sand, bringing out even more rippling highlights.
“Let’s walk south down to the desert floor,” Tommy said. “We can see better there.”
Tommy led us through the rocks along a different route from the one Coleman and I had traveled, winding along the spires and shelves and sheer drop-offs in a much more efficient manner, as though following a hidden trail that Coleman and I could not detect.
When we arrived at a flatter area, he stopped and sat down, looking back at Mount Sinai. Now the sun was hidden completely and the whole scene was cast in an even more mysterious tone. We sat down beside him.
“Look out at Sister Mountain,” he instructed, “and focus on it completely. Look at the lines the shadows draw.”
This captured my interest, and I began to see the huge range as having a particularly unique form. It came to me that every mountain range of this sort, rocky or wooded, had different lines created by its shadows. Because of this, every mountain system has an entirely unique countenance.
“Now, tune in to its beauty,” Tommy said, “and feel Agape in relationship to it.”
I was reminded of my experience in Peru at Viciente when attempting to see the auras, or halos, around plants. But I had the feeling Tommy wanted us to see something more fundamental in the landscape.
I focused intensely on the beauty of the mountain and tried to see it as one expressive form. And then a wave of Agape for the mountain gushed forth inside me. Coleman and I looked at each other. He was feeling it, too.
“Now look at the plant right here in front of us,” Tommy commanded. “See its uniqueness and beauty in Agape.”
He was talking about a short, compact, round bush that looked like a miniature tumbleweed. It was no more than three feet in front of us. I tuned in to the plant and looked for its beauty. As before, my emotions exploded with Agape.
“Now look back at the mountain again,” Tommy said, “and see its increased color and form, as if it now has greater majesty in your field of vision.”
Just as Tommy said that, the mountain literally jumped out in color and impressiveness. I looked at Coleman, and he shook his head in wonder without turning, showing me he was seeing this as well.
I then noticed that while I was looking at Coleman, I could sense where the mountain was, although I was not looking at it. I was feeling it in the exact same way I could feel my hand behind my back, only with greater intensity.
“Now look back at the plant and feel its impact on your emotions,” Tommy instructed. “Everything in our perceptual field has more than an appearance, it has an emotional identity as well—what the Ninth calls a Feeling Identity.”
Instantly, I realized the small plant did have an emotional identity, just as with the mountain. I experienced a sudden insight into why we all have favorite furniture, or come back to a familiar vista over and over. Objects have an identity that touches us emotionally.
“Now, switch your focus back and forth between the mountain and the plant.”
I did just that, focusing on and feeling the mountain far away, and then the plant close to us. At first nothing of note occurred, then suddenly, I could see them both in a new, amazing way—in what I could only describe as being equally in focus at the same time.
I jumped to my feet and looked all around, realizing that everything was in the same hyperfocus all around me, which created an enhanced, three-dimensional effect. Everything stood out with incredible clarity of color, form, beauty, and existence—all at the same time. And more, it seemed to stretch my consciousness, so that I felt as though I could reach out and touch the farthest cloud or rocky peak.
And then I remembered my experience on Secret Mountain, when I broke through to an apprehension of cosmic space. I was regaining that same consciousness now.
Tommy noticed and said, “It’s the consciousness that has begun to become accessible as the next step of creation approaches.”
Coleman was now walking around, looking in all directions as well. The thought came to me that we were seeing in expanded 3-D, like in the movies. I wondered if the development and growing popularity of 3-D movies was coming from an unconscious intuition that we were nearing the ability to see that way ourselves. Was another pathway popping open in the human brain?
The remarkable aspect of this way of seeing was that it seemed so easy and natural at this point. Coleman grabbed my arm and looked at me, beaming.
“This is the way it was on Secret Mountain,” he said, “only it seems more normal now.”
That was the word: normal. On Secret Mountain, the effect still carried a slight mind-blowing or adrenaline feeling. But now it was calming, if anything, and felt perfectly real, as if we were already integrating it as a way of perception we could sustain in daily life.
Besides the three-dimensionality, another enhancement was that my eyes now seemed to have an advanced acuity in which everything was more clear and lit up, as though I’d suddenly entered an inner-lit wonderland of some kind. And that included our bodies. They literally had taken on a sheen that was more radiant and beautiful. Yet again, it all still felt normal.
Tommy was looking at me with a huge smile, his face also beaming and glistening slightly. We were all in a state of pure love, Agape—with one another and with the beauty and majesty of everything around us.
Suddenly, I thought to check for a text. When I saw one from Wil, I laughed with delight. He said he could feel us reaching the Ninth Integration and had reached it himself. He added that while many other traditions spoke of this kind of perception, the Native traditions by far emphasized this ability to see nature as it really is. He ended by saying he was in contact with someone who knew where the Tw
elfth part of the Document had been released, and he would be heading to Sinai as soon as he talked to him.
I put the phone away and turned to Tommy. “So have you been seeing this way the whole time?”
“Mostly,” he said. “But Agape with Mother Earth has to be maintained and treasured. And one has to eat clean food to remain at this level of perception.”
We looked at one another.
“This is the Ninth Integration, isn’t it?” Coleman asked.
“Yes,” Tommy replied. “To maintain a heightened perception of the world, one needs only to intend to tune in, in Agape, to a new level of beauty, and to practice seeing everything with a single focus. The mountains will light up.”
He looked at Coleman. “As you have said, it can be proven to oneself!”
Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move in the desert, and I jerked around. Nothing was there. Coleman gave me an expression that told me he had seen it, too.
“What was that?” I asked Tommy.
He walked closer to us. “At this level of perception we are much closer to the other side.”
“You mean the Afterlife?” Coleman asked. “Heaven?”
“Yes.”
Colman glanced at Tommy again. “You think what we glimpsed was a spirit?”
“Yes,” Tommy replied, giggling. “But spirits are people, too. And they have something to tell us.”
WHAT HEAVEN KNOWS
As much as I wanted to stay in the mountains, it was almost completely dark now, and Tommy said we should go back. I saw a look on his face that concerned me, so I tuned in to our return trek to the Circle of Rocks. I found it difficult to visualize.
After about three hundred yards, Tommy suddenly called for us to stop. He was peering into the distance, listening.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “We have to be careful. Keep your energy up.”
He looked into the night for a few more seconds then said, “Do you hear that?”
I shook my head.
Tommy began walking ahead. “There are people talking up there somewhere. Let’s find them.”
We made our way forward for about a hundred feet, coming to a large outcropping about thirty feet high. As we grew closer, I began to hear the talking myself. We climbed up the rock and found a place where we could look over. About thirty feet in front us of was a group of Apocalyptics huddled together, discussing something in loud tones. At the center of the group was their leader, Anish. He was talking to a short, round man in an Egyptian military uniform, telling him something in Arabic.
“I can understand this,” Tommy whispered. “That large man is Joseph’s brother. He’s telling him about the Circle of Rocks and where it is.” Tommy looked at us in alarm. “Now they know where our camp is.”
A rush of anger moved through me as I remembered Joseph telling us he wanted to contact his brother. Did he give away our location?
“We have to get back!” I said quietly, trying to control myself. “Now! Let’s go!”
We made our way back to the circle as quickly as possible, and I was fighting against going into fear. For some reason I began to remember things my father had told me about his experiences in World War II. Getting rid of the fear is impossible, he said. All you can do is focus on what you’re doing, and even if people are being killed all around you, you concentrate on the job and get it done. I never quite grasped how he did that.
As we approached the first large boulders of the circle, Coleman pulled me aside.
“You look like your energy is collapsing,” Coleman said, obviously trying to look deeply at me to reestablish the Agape connection.
I blew him off. “If the Apocalyptics get there before we do, everyone could be killed.”
When we made our way back to the circle we found the others already breaking camp. As I rushed up to Rachel, she noticed the change in me immediately.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What happened?”
I told her what the Apocalyptics had said, then added angrily, “Joseph’s brother has sold us out. Joseph himself could be involved.”
“Calm down,” she said. “We were all getting the image that we should leave immediately, and we’re hurrying as fast as we can. But there has to be some mistake. Joseph would not have told his brother where we were camped.”
She pointed to a stack of papers that were lying on a rock near her tent. “Joseph brought us copies of the Tenth Integration he’d found, then left again. He’s still looking for his brother. Why would he betray us?”
“I don’t know.”
Her eyes were drawing me in again, and I felt the Agape and the peace come back a little, but my perception had totally crashed.
“We’ve been working on the Ninth,” she said, “at the same time you three were. We could feel you. You have to hang on to to it. We’ve even gotten into the Tenth.”
“We have to leave now!” I pressed.
“Okay, okay. Here’s the rest of your stuff.”
She was pointing toward my folded tent and a few other things I’d left behind. While I was packing, she seemed to think of something and ran over, picked up the copies of the Document, and stuffed them into my pack as well.
“There,” she said. “You can take care of these for everyone in case something happens.”
Her tone was again slightly sorrowful. This was the second time she’d said something like that. I wanted to ask her what she knew, but she had already picked up her own pack and was walking away.
“Come on,” she said. “We found a back way out of this circle.”
Before I could catch her, she glanced around and her eyes froze on something behind us.
“Do you still have that feather?” she asked.
“Yeah, why?”
She was still staring at something behind me. Whirling around, I caught sight of the silhouette of a lone figure standing on the huge boulder farthest from us. There was no mistaking that shape. It was Anish.
For a long moment we were frozen, and then Rachel looked at me and said, “Listen. None of us will make it unless I try to reach him. Go on, get everyone out of here.”
Without moving, she focused on the leader, and he turned and looked right at her, their gaze palpable in the night. Several others from our group noticed and stopped to look, but Coleman knew what was happening and pushed them on. I yelled at several people closer to me, telling them to get out.
“I’m not strong enough yet,” I heard her say, and I turned in her direction. It was already too late. Anish waved his hand, and instantly a flurry of bullets rained down toward us from everywhere, hitting the dirt and the rocks. One hit my pack so hard it knocked me backward into one of the big boulders. The fall dislodged the feather Rachel had given me from my pocket, and it landed on my face.
I grabbed it instinctively, even as I struggled to see in the dust and confusion. Suddenly, I felt Rachel’s arms around me, pulling me to my feet.
“This way,” she urged.
I realized at some point she had let go of me, and as I stumbled along, my head finally cleared. Surprisingly, I now had perfect clarity and was feeling no fear or anger at all. In fact, my emotional state had inexplicably returned to Agape. The night sky was radiant with moonlight and the rocks were more luminous than ever. I had regained my perception.
Rachel was ahead of me, walking briskly now, and I was able to keep up with no difficulty. I noticed that her body was moving along with unusual fluidity and grace, her clothes looking shiny and reflective. She led me straight to the spot where Coleman, Tommy, and I talked earlier, looking down on the guardhouse. Then she took another, hidden route past the soldiers and farther up toward the summit.
As we walked, I wondered how she knew about this hidden trail. Had Tommy or his mother told her about it earlier?
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Just up ahead a bit farther,” she said.
The
sound of her voice was different somehow and shocked me. I was experiencing it as much inside my head as outside. I slowed up and stopped, suddenly disconcerted. She noticed and came back toward me.
“We can go slower if you like,” she said. “It just takes a little getting used to.”
Her face was now more luminous than ever.
I sat down with a thud and realized my pack was still on my back.
She sat down with one easy move without using her hands, something I’d never seen her do before. And unlike when we were at the circle, her face was totally upbeat now, without a hint of sadness.
“You know where we are, right?” she asked.
“What?”
“We aren’t in Kansas anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
She leaned in closer. “Remember I told you that I read the Tenth Integration?”
“Yeah.”
“It says if we follow the Synchronicity, we will be able to learn from those in Heaven in a direct way, and that will elevate us into the next level of consciousness.”
I nodded for her to go on.
“I never finished telling you about my mother,” she began. “I hated her for making a controller out of me and was racked with guilt when she died before I could talk to her. Then, maybe because I was thinking about what I should have said to her, I began to notice little things happening. I would be shopping for shoes and see a pair that looked exactly like the ones she wore. Or I would pass a soap store and smell the fragrance of the very soap she used. At the oddest times, I would hear her favorite old songs.
“And then one day, without anything pointing out the way, I just decided to tell her how I felt out loud, as though she were there. Immediately, I began to intuit what she might say back to me, only I realized it wasn’t something I would necessarily have been able to guess. That’s when I realized that I was having a real interaction with her.
“The idea of communication with the Afterlife seemed too strange at first, and I stopped for a while, but the memory of the experience was so energizing and profound, I gradually began to communicate with her more often. Eventually, she told me how much she regretted the way she had raised me to think of men. She said it was all a mistake that tormented her, and that she now holds the Agape and speaks from truth—and wishes she had known earlier, so she could have taught me this new way.”