Seven Point Eight (54 page)

“Look,” I said, “they seem to react to us. Try feeling happy when you see them.”

Oscar and George followed my cue, and all three of us focused on positive emotions. In response, we elicited a colourful display that rivalled Bonfire Night fireworks, or a host of fireflies. Laughing, I spun around and took Oscar by his non-corporeal hand.

“They love us!”

George’s orb circled us as we danced, and Oscar stood still, brightly coloured iguanas scuttling around his feet.

 
“Do you think we could communicate with them?” Oscar asked me.

Looking around at the explosions of light, I replied, “I think we just did. We communicated with our emotions, and they responded.”

He began to understand now, not all communication involved words. However, the harder we tried to induce further responses, the less feedback we received, and I concluded free flowing emotion brought greater dividends.

Then the field powered down and the emotion realm faded from view, to be replaced by the interior of the machine. Paul opened the hatch, hopeful of results while I noticed Max perusing the situation, keeping his thoughts to himself.

“Well, what happened?” Paul asked. “Let’s get over to the camera.”

Oscar and George looked dazed, so I gave them a squeeze of my hand and led them over to the corner of the room designated for cine camera feedback.

“I… think that experience has just changed my life,” Oscar said into the camera.

None of us would be the same ever again.

“I do believe we met Ganesh,” Oscar added. As Paul looked puzzled he added, “You know, the Indian God thing with an elephant head.”

“More references to ancient Gods,” he pondered out loud.

Max wandered over, arms still folded in some kind of display of authority.

“So, is this project viable?” he asked, as only a businessman would.

Paul looked satisfied and could barely contain his excitement.

“Send the rest of The Institute’s residents over,” he responded, emphatically.

***

Max took Oscar and George back to The Institute, leaving the farmhouse quiet once more. Paul sat at the pine table in the kitchen while Tahra took a bath upstairs. He used the opportunity to return to the literature concerning mankind’s encounters with supernatural beings, and he needed to read more essays on the subject to add to his notes. Tahra also wished to hear his revelations. A while later, she emerged with damp hair, wearing her dressing gown.

“Sit down,” he said, excited. “I’ve got a story to tell you.”

Needing little persuasion, she sat next to him on the sofa, nicely warmed by a roaring fire. As she began to finish drying her hair with a towel, he began.

“I’ve been reading up on the history and culture of shamanism, and you’ll be amazed at what I’ve discovered. The basis of shamanism states there is a hypothetical otherworld that interpenetrates our own everyday world, and it can’t be seen by any normal means because it’s invisible.”

“That’s what the therianthropes told us, in essence,” Tahra confirmed.

“While we use the machine to access the invisible worlds, tribal shamans travelled to other realms by consuming sacred plants such as iboga and ayahuasca.”

She made a valid point, after listening carefully.

“But did they access the same worlds as we did in the machine? Is there any frame of reference?”

“This is where it gets exciting,” he continued. “Typical ‘visionary experiences’ involved
snakes
or
serpents
, geometrical shapes, ladders, pulsing lights
, entities with men’s bodies and crocodile heads…
Sound familiar?”

She really began to pay attention now.

“What’s amazing is the remarkable consistency of these visions, not only among the shaman tribes but with
our
experiments.”

Tahra countered, “Although we’ve encountered worlds and entities that these visionary experiences haven’t mentioned. Is the chemical journey as valid as the ones in the machine? Psychologists tend to see psychoactive substances as short term ‘model psychoses’.”

“Maybe psychedelic substances are tools. Let me elucidate,” Paul said. “Since early history, the use of psychotropic plants has been well documented.
 
The Eleusinian Mysteries of the Greeks were held for two thousand years, a practice that began in Eleusia in
Greece
but eventually it spread to
Rome
. Powerful personal experiences took place in the Hall of Initiation. On entry to the Hall, everyone was obliged to drink a special potion which induced visions and a feeling of oneness. Scholars believe the potion, named ‘kykeon’ was a concoction of barley and pennyroyal and it’s interesting to note that the parasitic fungus, ergot, grows on barley and that ergot was the substance from which LSD was synthesised”.

“The initiation was believed to
unite the worshippers with the Gods and included promises of divine power and rewards
in the afterlife. It’s likely many of the rites centred around a re-enactment of the Demeter/Persephone myth, in which Demeter’s daughter was abducted to the Underworld, where her mother had to search for her. Along the way, she
teaches
the secrets of agriculture. Although rescued eventually, Persephone had to return to the Underworld for a season each year, during which no plants grew.”

“Hmmm,” Tahra’s opinion on chemical tools to expand consciousness began to sway, “I can’t help but wonder if Persephone’s Underworld was another dimension of reality. Interesting how there’s reference to the sharing of knowledge and teaching, something both the serpents and therianthropes referred to. Are there any descriptions of this Underworld in the Eleusinian Mysteries?”

“No. The practices were kept strictly secret, there’s very little information what these visions involved.”

“Maybe these mysteries are part of the First Time that the therianthropes referred to,” Tahra pondered aloud.

“There’s more,” Paul continued. “Further references to psychoactive brews are found in the Vedas, many of which are devoted to a potion called ‘soma’. It’s referred to as plant, drink, and God as one entity and the writers of the Vedas believed it bestowed divine qualities in the drinker. Listen to these quotes: ‘
I am huge, huge! Flying in the clouds. Have I not drunk soma?
’ Here’s another one I wrote down: ‘
We have drunk the soma, we are become Immortals, we have arrived at the light, we have found the Gods’.”

Tahra’s eyes began to open wider, in many ways.

“I love the references to flying,” she commented. “They remind me of my own experiences in the early stages of the OOBE project.”

“Exactly,” Paul reinforced. “But it gets better. Although there are no references to psychoactive brews being ingested, religious texts contain many visionary experiences and encounters with supernatural beings. Look at the seeds of Christianity: Moses saw a burning bush and accepted heavenly writings, St. Paul had a supernatural encounter on the road to Damascus and don’t forget that angels visited Mary, mother of Christ.”

“Now that you come to mention it,” Tahra added, “the Prophet Muhammad had encounters with the Angel Gabriel, who gave him the text of the Qur’an.”

“And the Angel Moroni presented the Book of Mormon on golden plates that vanished into thin air.”

They reflected on the examples discussed. Paul drew the
 
inevitable conclusion.

“The basis of our religions seem to revolve around Shamanism. They have a common frame of reference, and therefore a common bond of spirituality. Even Buddhism, which has no God, revolves around a personal journey of enlightenment. It’s idiocy that religion causes wars, when its fundamental precepts come from the same place.”

Tahra nodded, seeing the irony.

“The wars are about the validity of the messenger,” she pointed out. “Each religion believes in one God, but they fight over whose God is true and whose teachings are right.”

“We can blame the invention of monotheism for that,” Paul commented. “Until Akhenaten changed everything, Egyptian religion revolved around a whole pantheon of Gods, the full spectrum of extra-dimensional entities. They believed in the Otherworld, which they referred to as the Duat. If you look at Paganism, the ancient nature based spiritual beliefs pre-dating Christianity, it too reflected deities and spirits synchronous with a creator entity. We’ve lost our awareness of these supernatural entities in favour of an all powerful God who controls the world. It’s…sacrilegious,” he said, almost in disgust.

Tahra concurred. “I agree, many of the world’s religions recognise the other dimensions in the most simplistic sense, although it’s reduced to a very monochromatic Heaven and Hell. I certainly haven’t encountered anything like Hell yet.”

“I guess it boils down to people’s ability to see these other realms,” Paul pointed out. “It’s possible that a few individuals were able to see these worlds and beings without the use of psychoactive plants. It was certainly regarded as something natural and sacred, with great emphasis placed on these individuals as being special, gifted, or holy. “

“It’s ironic that modern psychiatrists would see these same individuals as delusional or psychotic;
mentally ill,”
Tahra commented.

Paul shook his head, communicating exasperation.

“How many gifted people reside in mental institutions for accessing the other dimensions? It’ll make my dream of initiating the Second Time a real battle.”

“Well, there must be hope,” Tahra said. “Aren’t there more modern anecdotes concerning contact with supernatural entities, that don’t involve insanity?”

Paul nodded. “Yes, both Joan of Arc and Bernadette of Lourdes received visitations and encounters with a being referred to as ‘our lady’. However, Joan was burned at the stake, and wasn’t as lucky as Bernadette. Such visions aren’t always confined to lone experiences either”.

He flicked through his notes for the relevant information and continued.

“A mass visionary experience culminated on the 13
^th
of September 1917. Thirty thousand people witnessed a globe of light and the formation of a white cloud where previously three Catholic children claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. ‘Petals’ fell from the sky, although the report states that the glistening globules grew smaller as they got nearer, and melted away when people tried to touch them. It certainly sounds like some contact with the other dimensions, although there’s no evidence of drug use. I’m stumped as to how thirty thousand people could see the same vision though.”

Tahra added another revelation.

“What about the creatures of folklore such as elves, leprechauns and fairies, more anecdotes of the non-physical realms?”

“Quite possibly,” he responded, “although we haven’t encountered any.”

“Our ancestors didn’t have the machine though,” Tahra pointed out. “We have a very powerful tool here.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Paul pondered. “Before I built the machine, remember that dream I told you about?” Tahra nodded. “I believe the Egyptians used the Great Pyramid to commune with their Gods, these extra-dimensional entities. This was part of the First Time. What I don’t understand is:
why did they stop using it
?”

Tahra shrugged, after giving the question some thought.

 
“We must look to the future now though. I believe we’ll initiate the Second Time.”

Paul smiled, warmed by her faith and enthusiasm.