Seven Point Eight (50 page)

What is this place? I thought. Where are we? What’s more, where’s Tahra?

Initially, I saw no signs of life. I began to wonder if Tahra had accompanied me, or if she’d been kidnapped so I searched for her. Once I adjusted myself to functioning in this new realm, I recognised her presence and spotted a ball of light nearby. It wasn’t necessary to speak, as the communication became instant and natural.

“If you focus on a thought form of your image, you can materialise in human form,” she told me, in her ball of light state.

Tahra appeared beside me, demonstrating how to achieve this and when I pictured myself as I saw my body in the mirror, I materialised beside her.

“Did you feel me carry you here?” she asked, although her lips didn’t move.

“Oh,” I replied, a little surprised, “did you do that? I didn’t realise.”

“I can tow the consciousness of another person,” she revealed.

“That’s a useful talent.”

Tahra looked around at the place we found ourselves in.

“This isn’t the place I visited before.”

We began to move through the undergrowth, although not as you would with your corporeal body. As we had no legs to move, we needed to focus our attention on the intended destination and let our minds draw us there, quite a strange sensation but fairly easy to master. Luckily, I had Tahra to teach me the technique of navigating without a body. We found ourselves by a stream, populated by silvery fish shaped like the letters X and Y, swimming in perfect rhythm and harmony, as if in time with a beat or pulse that flowed through the water itself.

“Do you think there’s intelligent life elsewhere on this planet?” I asked her.

“I sense the presence of sentient life, in fact, I believe we’re being watched.”

We both stood still and looked around carefully, unsure what we were searching for. Tahra spotted something in the trees, so I turned to where her ‘finger’ was pointing and found a host of serpents coiled around the trunks. I saw long and short ones, two headed ones, winged serpents, and some with very short legs. All of them were brilliant in colour: scarlet red, turquoise, jade green, yellow as the noon sun, or orange as the sun set. It occurred to me that these were the serpent beings I’d encountered in my lucid dream, the one in which they discussed the machine and The First Time with me. We moved over to their position and observed their movements. They were aware of our existence on their planet.

“You came here by virtue of the machine,” one or more of them said, it was difficult to pick out an individual voice.

“Yes,” I stated, “I built a machine to help consciousness reach the stars. Are you the ones who helped me do this?”

They flowed around the tree trunks like energy.

“The serpents who helped you reside in this realm,” they said.

“Can I find them here?” I asked, keen to tap them for any knowledge they possessed that could help me in my quest.

“If you so wish,” they said.

“I seek knowledge, the wisdom of the Gods.”

“Like many before you. Now you have the machine you can visit many realms,” they responded.

“That’s what I hope. Are there many other worlds?”

“Yes, but they are all very, very different. The frequencies are the key,” they told me.

I pondered what they’d imparted. How could the frequencies be the key to visiting many realms, as they put it? Then the answer became clear. Before I had time to respond to their hint, I felt myself being pulled back into my body, a sensation like releasing the tension on an elastic band. In less than a moment, I sat back in the machine, opening my physical eyes as the field powered down. I wished I’d set the machine to run another five minutes.

Tahra looked over at me, relieved the experience had been a positive one and we climbed out of the machine, moving over to the corner, where camera stood. I switched it on to record our thoughts on the experience.

“I’m on a high,” I stated, looking directly into the lens of the camera. “All I can think about is the next trip. We achieved something so…profound today.”

“The most important thing achieved today was the machine’s ability to project Paul’s consciousness,” Tahra added. She turned to me and asked, “Do you realise what this means for OOBE?”

I’d almost overlooked the obvious, the ramifications were enormous.

“It means anyone can do this,” I stated, heart pounding. “7.8 hertz unties the binding of consciousness to the brain matter, to the physical form.”

Tahra sighed.

“I feel obsolete,” she said.

“We wouldn’t have got OOBE off the ground if it weren’t for you,” I said, forgetting we were on camera. “Plus, the machine extracted my consciousness from my body, I couldn’t travel anywhere without you.”

She shrugged.

“I guess so.”

“This also means we’re looking at non-psychic recruitment much earlier than I’d anticipated,” I said, on turning back to face the camera. “If I can do it, there’s no reason why a group of people off the street couldn’t do this. Of course, they wouldn’t be ordinary people off the street, they’d need to be psychologically strong and grounded, and undergo rigorous testing.”

“I can help,” Tahra stated, “I can be their guide.”

I squeezed her hand.

“We’re in this together,” I reassured her. “You need to tow them, like you did with me. Without you, they’d be bouncing around inside the machine.”

Despite the new impetus in the project, all I could think about was our next journey in the machine and on meeting the serpents, I realised how to direct the outcome of the journey in terms of the destination. With so much exploration to do, I realised how difficult it would be for me to stand aside and watch Tahra be the sole voyager. However, as project manager, I needed to remain objective despite the fact we could now share the project in every way. What would I learn from these extra-terrestrial beings? Where would Project OOBE take us?

***

Although I craved another journey with Tahra, I allowed a forty eight hour break in which to get us both assessed medically. Everything checked out fine and if anything, I felt invigorated, cleansed, and inspired. I thought of the next trip; do we pay the serpent world another visit, or do we seek to create a travel guide for the worlds that we could reach with the machine? Tahra opted for the latter and I was inclined to agree, as I wanted to experiment with the combination of frequencies and their amplitude, to propel consciousness further and further afield. I knew that, if I so desired, I could visit the serpent realm again and Tahra would be the necessary tow, if I asked nicely.

First, I made just a small adjustment to the frequencies, that is, I replaced one of the harmonics to see what result this would produce. Setting the system up on autopilot again, I attached us to the monitoring devices and we both sat inside the machine, hearing the vibrations as the field powered up. I wasn’t nervous anymore, why be afraid? The paralysis of my physical body didn’t alarm me anymore, and I separated from my body within moments. The power of 7.8 threw me towards another land, as our world faded out to be replaced by another.

We found ourselves in a very different land to the serpent realm, as it seemed quite arid. I saw a great expanse of semi-desert, and a series of outcrops of rock reminiscent of
Death Valley
, in which there appeared to be a number of grand looking caves. These caves looked worth exploring at some point. The colours of this world were quite neutral: ochre and gold sand, and rock with dark contrasts formed by the hardy plants that populated the landscape. The taupe sky looked quite insipid, cloudless yet with a pallid subdued light, source unknown.

I focused my consciousness at a point in the distance and drifted towards it, while Tahra moved to a point a little further away, beside a huge, gnarled tree that looked as it were petrified wood. I found myself within a circle of dry shrubs, the branches of which were spindly, curving around and twisting in on themselves. They were formed by an ebony shade of what looked like petrified wood, covered by some kind of shimmering substance. On closer inspection, I found the shimmering substance to be a swarm of silvery ants, oozing out of a small hole in the base of the shrubs.

I moved over to Tahra, who seemed transfixed by a strange looking creature. At first, I thought it was a capuchin monkey, although it looked slightly smaller and appeared to have the tail of a rat and the fur of a yellow tinted polar bear. However, what made this creature appear so strange was its face. It had a human visage on the body of a simian, with startling blue eyes, a thin nose and lips, plus ears high on its head. Even though we didn’t present a physical body, it sensed our presence and screeched loudly, jumping off the tree then scuttling away into the distance. We watched it scurry across the floor of the desert.

It led our gaze towards the horizon, where we spotted a most amazing sight. I focused my consciousness on a point nearer to them, to gain a better view, and saw a large herd of mammoth-like creatures. Like our erstwhile simian friend, they were hybrids of animals from our world. While not quite as hairy, their fur was darker and shorter, but they bore tusks and a trunk much like our mammoths had done. Their body shape resembled a triceratops, they carried an extra horn at the front, and dragged a long tail behind like that of a stegosaurus, with a clump of spikes at the end. They weren’t interested in us and ambled on by, minding their own business.

From our viewpoint, we surveyed a huge plain, stretching out to what seemed like infinity. There were no mountains or valleys to break it up, as it was flat like the East of
England
with the climate of
Southern Spain
. In the distance, we saw creatures that looked like golden gorillas crossed with the genes of a sloth and a sabre toothed tiger. They walked on their knuckles but had slimmer limbs than a gorilla, and they had long, protruding fangs. Momentarily, they stopped to listen to something, then pounded heavily on the ground before continuing on their way.

I began to wonder if there were any sentient beings here with which we could communicate. At that point, something walked over to us, as if it had heard my thoughts. Tahra had already seen it, another bizarre hybrid comprising the head of an ibis and the body of a man. He was tall, standing over six feet at least, holding a long staff in his hands and he wore some kind of minimal padded armour. Tahra held his attention.

“Welcome traveller,” he spoke, “it is good to greet human beings again.”

“You know us?” Tahra said.

“There has been a long standing friendship between therianthropes and humans,” he explained, “but there has also been a long absence. Welcome back.”

“Where is the therianthrope’s planet?” I asked, hoping for some direct answers in this realm. “What galaxy are we in?”

Our therianthrope friend looked thoughtful then answered.

“You have not travelled any distance in the physical sense,” he corrected. “You have shifted your perspective, your reality. You are in the same locality, yet at a deeper level of creation. Both of you are beginning to perceive reality, to peel away the layers of the structure of the Monad.”

His explanation dumbfounded me. I wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed as we hadn’t travelled anywhere, or curious about what exactly we were exploring.

“What’s the Monad?” Tahra asked, figuring it was significant.