One Great Year (25 page)

Plato slowly climbed the stone steps. His age was wearing at his joints, and he cursed his younger self for designing such a steep incline. Only the view had interested him back then.

The sun illuminated the assembly in front of him, casting an angelic glow as he approached. The light was too white and he raised his arm against it, squinting, and realized with a happy surge that there was a purple karmic glow from within the group.
Perhaps an Emissary or two has found their way to the Academy
, he thought. As he got closer he stopped abruptly, his heart pounding, his ears and scalp tingling.

“A true friend is one soul in two bodies,”
¹⁸
a soft, fluid voice intoned. Plato craned his neck to find the owner of the words. The sun's beams were blinding and only when he grew nearer did the glaring mass of faces become discernible. Plato's eyes skipped over the folds of the fabrics, the arch of each forehead, and the bridge of each nose. He stood at the edge of the group, now anxiously scanning each face and straining to hear.

“Friendship is essentially a partnership,” Aristotle said from the center, answering his professor while turning to face Plato directly on.

Plato was overcome. His energy exploded in every direction, and for a moment he disappeared completely, reduced to a seismic commotion of matter, thought, and emotion. Violet and indigo light rippled through him, and his Marcus-brain soared. The karmic colors were flying, intertwining, meeting, mingling, and touching his soul in every way. Intense beauty, love, and joy recognized and enveloped him. He caught his breath. The familiarity and lightness of Theron's being radiated from Aristotle.

Plato saw with his soul—Marcus was calling to Theron, and immediately her energy had rushed to his. Tears, overwhelming relief, and pure happiness surged through him. Aristotle looked kindly at the much older man, who appeared overwhelmed and ill, and interrupted the dialogue to call out to him.

“Are you well? Do you need assistance?” he said. Plato's body was again electrified by the voice, the underlying timbre and rhythm so familiar, so loved. Plato collected himself, every hair and whisker still at full attention. An electric current ran through him as his soul boiled to meet the creature before him. A whisper echoed through the group as Plato was recognized by his former students.

“I am Plato. I beg to know to whom I speak,” he said unsteadily. The professor, Eudoxus, approached him enthusiastically, but Plato irritably waved him away, beckoning to the young man who had affected him so strongly.

“I am Aristotle, good professor. It is a great honor to meet you,” Aristotle said, moving past the other students and standing before the founder. Plato looked up at the face so full of hope and optimism, already inches above him, and wept inwardly with joy. At long last, after so many lifetimes and so much disappointment, he had found her. The current between them flowed freely: eros and philia, every kind of love, intertwining, swirling, and humming. Plato's head was singing in symphony and churning with the fragrant odors of jasmine and sunshine. Marcus was grateful for the magic of the potion that allowed him to know her, and he cursed the will of the Universe that kept his Theron sleeping and unaware of him.

Plato found it difficult to speak, not wanting the assault on his senses to lessen even slightly. The spectators wrongly assumed that the older man was fatigued by the walk up the stairs in the warm morning sun. Aristotle steadied him and assisted him up the final steps and inside the building. Plato let himself be led. Aristotle's hands on him were like hot stones in his bed on a cool night. Butterfly wings fluttered manically in his chest. Once seated, Plato was handed a silver goblet of water, which he drank in one gulp, settling his churning chemistry.

It was always like this. Overwhelming, exhilarating, sometimes slightly nauseating. In each lifetime he had searched, and in too many he had not found her, or he had been kept from her by circumstances beyond his control and forced to agonizingly love her from afar. Not this time. This time she was his student, waiting at the Academy for his return. How long had Aristotle been here? How much time had Plato wasted in Syracuse? Marcus grieved for every lost moment.

Plato looked from his cup to the radiant smooth face of Aristotle. The younger man, not yet twenty, looked at him with clear admiration in his pale blue eyes.

Eudoxus broke their gaze by exclaiming, “If you would lead the oratory today, it would be a pleasure the likes these men have never known.”

“You flatter me, though you know I abhor it, Eudoxus. Today I have more to learn than to share. A wise man knows when to speak and when to listen,” Plato answered, smiling. “Return to your dialogue, I would like to absorb for a while,” he said, standing, once again strong and steady. Together Plato and Aristotle—Marcus and Theron—returned to the group on the steps in the warm sunlight.

For the next two hours, Plato listened in rapture to the dialogue and discussion, every molecule and cell of his body vibrating in ecstasy. Aristotle felt it—something magical and energized. He assumed it was Plato's charisma and his own nervous excitement at meeting the legend. He did not understand that every ounce of him remembered this soul and magnetically reached out to him and was embraced.

Plato took a small humble room in the Academy wings, and he was barely able to restrain his happiness. Aristotle, still barely a man, looked upon his mentor with awe. The young student was the most promising and impressive of the pack and, not surprisingly, Plato took him under his wing. He taught him to question and to challenge every thought and assertion no matter how small, just as Socrates had encouraged him.

Plato reclaimed his life at the Academy with unprecedented vigor and optimism. The founder and his favorite student spent endless hours in study and discussion. It was not long before Plato realized that, unlike himself and Socrates, Aristotle had a very different way of thinking about the world and its makeup. He challenged almost every point that his mentor asserted, testing and frustrating Plato. Plato's ancient understanding of Atitala and of God, the Great Year, reincarnation, and the time in between, as well as his complete understanding that all matter is created from identical building blocks, made it difficult for him to tolerate Aristotle's views that opposed his certain wisdom. Marcus wished that Theron had taken the memory serum with him, so that her understanding of the Universe would not have been fouled.

Plato struggled to comprehend how her lack of awareness could possibly be helpful in her role as an Emissary. It seemed to Plato that his greater comprehension and recollection were his gift to the world of man and the reason why he recorded everything so carefully. It was all there—he wrote everything down that would free mankind from its doubt and ignorance. One had only to seek the knowledge. He assured those who would listen or read that each person has a soul and that justice is the function of the soul. To be happy one need only be just and do right. Plato believed that those worthy of the information would seek and find it; those ready for the messages would embrace them and understand the universal connection and be free of the doubt that paralyzed so many.

Finally he had no choice but to accept that Theron's path was fundamentally different than his own and it was not his place to question. He wondered what her role would be. He could only guess. Marcus was still searching to understand his own path and life cycle. For the time being, with his most beloved soulmate at his side, Marcus was absolutely content.

Walking in the garden one day, Aristotle questioned Plato about his time in Sicily.

“Was it eromenos? Was it for love that you went?” Aristotle asked pointedly.

“My love has only ever been here … I placed my faith in an errant vessel. A prophecy, given to me by an oracle in Siwa many years ago, led me to search. I came home a greater mathematician but no closer to finding the boy philosopher king that I sought,” Plato answered, enjoying the physical nearness of Aristotle as they strolled.

“The prophecy was of a boy king?” Aristotle asked, indulgently, though both men knew that the student believed no more in oracles than in centaurs.

“Yes. I am rife with frustration and bitterness when I remember my time in Syracuse. I could have been here.”

“Do you still believe that you will find a boy king and that an oracle can predict future events?” Aristotle asked skeptically.

“The Oracle said that I was one of three in the destiny and that my wisdom would be summoned in the initiation of a great boy king. I have found my destiny here and do not wish to leave again,” Plato chuckled.

“I do not believe in mysticism and oracles. Nor do I embrace the notion of fate. I have observed that each man is his own visionary. There is no foregone conclusion, no predetermined future. Yet the prediction by one who is trusted may very well affect the behavior of the hearer, who then, by his actions, causes the foretold to occur.”

“Perhaps we are born with our knowledge and it is revealed to us as required … or as we can bear it. It is possible that there are many choices and paths that lead to the same result. Could our free will be an illusion? Perhaps we merely choose
how
we will arrive at the ultimate predetermined outcome,” Plato asserted.

“The soul does not exist without the body, without material cause of life. No one can know if I will spontaneously reach for a mango as the asp slithers past, or lean too far from my window and fall to my death. Our choices and paths are just that, there is no ultimate goal or result,” Aristotle replied.

“You cannot prove, therefore you cannot be certain, that death is the end. Nor can you be sure that oracles cannot predict. You certainly have no evidence that the soul does not go on outside the body,” Plato retorted.

“The evidence is the absence of life. There is no evidence that anything goes on. The soul is the final cause of the body; the body dies when the soul dies,” Aristotle debated.

The men continued to consider, to counter, and to connect. Aristotle was inspired by Plato and sought his counsel and company. Their friendship quickly grew. Having lost his parents at a young age, Aristotle was grateful for the bond he and Plato had easily formed.

Marcus felt Theron in every moment and rejoiced in their time together, but at times he was lonely even with her spirit nearby. Their closeness was not close enough. He wished so fervently that she would wake to him, that her kindred soul would be conscious again and know him as he knew her. As he sat or walked at Aristotle's side, he would concentrate and send streams of color, light, and energy into him. His student would respond warmly, sometimes in a way that implied a glimmer of recognition, but then, as quickly, it was gone. Plato was left desperately alone in his awareness.

One afternoon Plato wrote tirelessly while Aristotle worked nearby.

“Why do you write your dialogues without your voice and name to the philosophies on the page?” Aristotle interrupted.

“My name is irrelevant. My philosophies and personal beliefs are likely to change and grow with my understanding and experience, and I do not wish to be tied, forever fixed to one way of thinking. I do not seek to record one true answer, only the myriad of necessary questions. A conversation is so much more entertaining than a lecture,” Plato replied.

“But you have an opinion. You are bursting with opinions, will you not claim them?” Aristotle asked.

“I would rather show an argument and let the reader deduce reasonably how he would think,” Plato said, and Aristotle shook his head skeptically.

“There is obvious leading in your words. You claim to present an argument but you are not unbiased, you seek to sway the reader.”

“I cannot create balance. I cannot create an equality of ideas where they are unequal,” Plato laughed.

“Your neutrality is false, Plato. You seek to sway others, but will not admit it.”

“There is no falseness, I seek only to shed light on contemplation and ideas and the importance of reflection. What is it that irritates you so?”

“By writing in dialogue, by speaking through characters, you distance yourself from your statements. I think you should claim your beliefs and give them the power of your status.”

“My status is fleeting and false. It is a pretense and a flaw of our society born from the desire in the belly of men who seek notoriety. Humility is a virtue, Aristotle. The ideas are what matter, and they were here before I came and will be here after I am gone. We are not creators, Aristotle. We are blind explorers plundering dark caves that have been discovered many times before with barely a flame to cast a glow.”

“What if we are here only once? Here and gone, nothing before or after. Your words will guide those who come after you. Do you not wish to claim them?”

“It is not a question for me whether I have lived before and will die and be born again. I know it to be so. I would shed this corporeal body today and rejoin the incorporeal world if I knew you would be there with me, surrounded by the proof of the ideal forms,” Plato answered.

“You beg others to question all, yet in unguarded moments you speak definitively about the world after death. Where does this certainty come from? How does it fit the paradigm of questioning all?” Aristotle challenged.

“I cannot pretend not to know what I know. You now understand why I write in dialogue, not as Plato, not as myself seeking to become famous and convince others of my beliefs. It matters not what Plato thinks, it matters only that I lead others to question and think for themselves.”

“You ask impossible questions that are of a nature not even you can answer.”

“And what is an answer but a supposition not yet disproved? Yet where there is a question, there must be an answer! Should we not wonder or ask because we do not already know the answer? Should we not walk the road beyond because we know not where it leads? If there is a road, there must be a destination. If there is a question, there must be an answer. To seek the answers in the purpose of life,” Plato said, leaning back comfortably in his chair.