The Book of Knowledge. Playing Another Reality. C. Castaneda award

12. WARNING! The DOORS are OPENING!

I knew the Teacher and Gera for many years.

“Help me close the Door,” I asked them from the threshold when we had met the first time.

Gera scanned me silently for a long time, and then said, “… ‘The door! Door! Please hold the door!’ Was it you who shouted?”

“Yes… I was twelve then. Mom was lying on the table in the living room, the door was constantly opening. I was scared to see my mom, so every time I passed by, I asked someone alive to hold the door. I spent those three days outside, at school and walking on the streets, in the evenings I stayed in the kitchen until late, and at night I went to my aunt. Those three nights in dreams, I saw my mother entering the flat, taking off her coat, changing her shoes, washing her hands, as usual. I felt uneasy, but she laughed assuring me that she hadn’t died and would continue to live nearby.”

“Did you start to see through after her death?” asked the Teacher.

“No, after mine. I died a year before her, being eleven years old. They refused to take me to the intensive care unit, but my mother signed some documents, and they took me, although my blood tests indicated that I was a corpse. From three o’clock in the afternoon until midnight, my body lay under drips. The nurse was assigned to sit next to me guarding my soul not to let me fall asleep, but the nurse was knitting something and fell asleep herself. Rejoicing freedom, I instantly moved into the hospital corridor, and on the wall, there was a clock showing ten minutes to midnight. I heard everything, saw everything, but I had neither a body nor any other boundaries of myself. The doctor on duty in the staff room was discussing with a colleague on the phone what to do with me. I was afraid of being noticed by him, so I returned back. The doctor entered the intensive care room and woke up the nurse. She asked what time it was. The doctor replied, ‘Ten minutes to midnight’, shook his head, looking at me, and retired to the staff room. The nurse dozed off again. I opened my eyes and saw my mother at the door. I ran up to her and hugged her. I was so glad that she came for me… However, mom sighed sadly and said, ‘You have to stay, and I have to leave’. She repeated that phrase several times, probably to make me remember it for the rest of my life. Of course, it turned out later that mom hadn’t come, but I came back to life, and she got sick to die instead of me… When my soul stopped moving away, and my body was still in the hospital, two nurses asked me to predict their destinies. I didn’t know to do that and tried in every possible way to sneak away, but they didn’t want to hear anything, since I had been There, it meant I could do everything of that kind.”

“And…?” Gera was all attention.

“Information started pouring out in a torrent. I spoke without hearing myself, and one of the nurses, with her eyes wide open, whispered, ‘You really know everything! You said what had already happened in my life!’ And then I returned home to nightmares. About mom. I begged her to go to the doctor, but she believed that my visions were the consequences of the stress I had experienced. It’s terrible when they don’t believe you, and you can’t influence the course of events in any way. Mom believed me too late… On the eve of her death, falling asleep, I heard the Door opening and someone’s steps, felt the icy breath of Death and realized that mom was about to die. She died in the morning. On the day of her funeral, some bearded man told me, ‘Your mother is not dead. She will be by your side. You are very strong now, because she gave her strength to you. You will be able to see a lot that you haven’t seen before, hear something you haven’t heard before. Now you are not like everyone else. Be careful’!”

“So did you begin to suffer from drafts?” the Teacher supposed.

“Yes, it was real hell in reality and in dreams. The door to my room used to spontaneously swing wide open. I heard footsteps, floorboards creaking, breathing behind me. I saw a Man in Black standing at the window. Icons fell from the walls, and neither pins in clothes nor needles stuck in the door frame helped. I was afraid to fall asleep at night, because my dreams were too true. Simultaneously with the attacks of the Lower Astral, I dreamed about a Voice from the Higher Spheres. It drew diagrams of the structure of the Universe. Holographic geometric figures, mathematical calculations and complex formulas appeared on the background of Eternity, but when I woke up, I couldn’t reproduce them on paper. The Voice talked about planetary cycles, taught astronomy and levitation. I saw creatures from other dimensions, people from other times, giants in lethargic sleep, pyramids, labyrinths, strange mountains and heavenly guards. Everything that the Voice taught me, I found many years later in the books of the Teachers. But then, at the age of twelve…”

“You were scared, weren’t you?” Gera said sympathetically.

“Yes… My relatives sent me to a church school. For five years I had sung in the church choir of the Epiphany Cathedral of the Patriarch Alexey II. When the Patriarch went abroad, we used to see him off at the airport. All the children brought flowers, gave them to the Patriarch and received his blessing. I had neither flowers nor money to buy them. I remember myself embarrassed approaching the Patriarch and asking for forgiveness. And he smiled, ‘Alice, you yourself are my flower!’”

“So you felt better, but the door wasn’t shut, right?” asked the Teacher, at the same time looking meaningfully at the slightly open door to their room.

“At the age of eighteen, I left the flat where the spirits lived, but continued to hear and feel Another Reality. One night, woken up by strange sounds, I looked towards the wall with furniture. The doors of the upper shelves of the closet used to be locked with keys, but that night the keys were slowly turning themselves before my eyes. They came out of the keyholes and fell loudly to the floor. I realized that my friend had died, and in the morning, in fact, I was informed about his death. Sometimes I felt an obsessive need to speak in an unknown language. The words were coming down like an avalanche.”

“Sanskrit… Once you lived in Atlantis, or Tibet,” the Teacher stated. “How did information come to you from There?”

“It happened that I already knew the answer, while formulating a question. The information came in numbers, in images, in words that I tried to decode.”

“By the way, do you know why errors occur at the stage of decoding and interpretation?” Gera interrupted the kaleidoscope of my memories and, without waiting for an answer, said, “At that moment, the brain and earthly logic start working, following patterns, stereotypes, settings, the programs embedded in them. So do you want to be like everyone?”

“Yes, I really want to be like everyone! Help me close the Door! I probably didn’t shut it behind me when I returned from There at the age of eleven.”

The Teacher and Gera sadly shook their heads and said that I could do it myself only.

Many years passed since then. Finally, I brought them my manuscript about Another Reality, but when I was about to say goodbye, Gera smiled, “Stay for a while! It won’t take you much time, but you’ll get tremendous pleasure. Something very, very funny will open our earthly door now!”

In less than a minute, a portly woman of indeterminate age burst into the room. The first thing that caught my eye was her horrible make-up, huge beads made of skulls and an abundance of mismatched rings on both hands. She looked at each of us from head to toe and, without waiting for an invitation, plopped her large body on a small sofa, “Hi, all!”

“Hello! Why did you come to us?” Gera asked with a smile.

“I don’t know where to start,” the stranger said mysteriously. “I worked in a hospital, intensive care…”

I shuddered, glancing at her terrifying beads, and involuntarily began to count the number of skulls.

“As cleaning lady,” the woman added.

I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed.

“I heard all sorts of different stories. You know, imagination works well when people are dying! They are flying along the corridors… supposedly… Others believe them so much, even lining up for stories, don’t feed them bread! Really, I felt somehow offended. Am I worse? Everything has been fine with my imagination since childhood. I had to lie too, where would I be without it? So I decided to become a fortune-teller,” the woman said and meaningfully added, “hereditary! I gave ads to newspapers, and it took off. Well, I arranged an office…”

The hereditary Fortune-Teller looked around Gera’s room, smiled smugly and said sympathetically, “It’s somehow modest in here. Few customers, I guess!”

“Financial crisis,” Gera answered, nodding in agreement.

“I have all sorts of witchcraft gadgets everywhere: on the walls, on the ceiling, and even more on the table! There is no room to lay out cards! Everything as it should be for my image. And they do believe! But sometimes I come across bores. They just keep throwing questions at me! So I came to you, I heard that you are real, maybe you can teach me something! Or at least, give me a hint! I have a customer, a regular one. A man about forty-five to fifty years old. So-so, nothing special, but… blond! He’s making an intellectual out of himself, keeps asking and asking the same thing. I just don’t know, what does he want from me? Flirting, maybe, huh? Or is there something wrong with his head?”

“What does he ask you?” asked the Teacher.

“Well, about the fish! You know, the fish! He says he has been looking for it for many years and still can’t find! I say, ‘have you ever been to a fish market, darling?’ And he says, he has been in a bookstore!”

“Did he say what kind of fish he was looking for?” Gera asked.

“Well, that one, what’s it called? I forget it all the time… He can’t even pronounce it properly! Ah, I’ve recalled, he is looking for flounder, or as he calls it plaice Shambhala.”

I almost exploded with laughter, Gera sighed heavily, and the Teacher looked out the window finding Autumn there, time of suicides and mental exacerbations.

“So I wonder,” continued the hereditary Fortune-Teller, “whether I should send him somewhere far away?”

“Great idea!” Gera agreed. “Send him to Tibet!”

The hereditary Fortune-Teller thought for a moment and, switching to a whisper, asked, “Tibet, where is it?”

“Listen, what do you need all that for?”

“What does your what for mean?” the Fortune-Teller got surprised. “For the same thing as you! There’s no money lying around on the road!”

“The doors open on their own towards the one who is coming to them,” the Teacher said thoughtfully.

“What doors?” the Fortune-Teller was even more surprised.

“We have to disappoint you, we are just students ourselves, therefore…”

“What a hell of you! Why didn’t you tell me that right away?!” she muttered in disappointment. “What a fool I was to spend two hours to get to you! I could have got some of my customers! That’s a lot of lost profits!”

Gera remained silent. The Teacher spread his hands helplessly.

“Well,” the hereditary Fortune-Teller said condescending, “I won’t tell anyone that you’re not real! But as some advice for you, at least furnish the room more impressively, well… get candles in candlesticks, throw some playing cards on the table, stick some needles into an old doll and put it in the most prominent place! Otherwise, you will be left without any customers at all! Who will believe you without such entourage?”

With some difficulty, the Fortune-Teller lifted her portly body from the small sofa, walked up to the door and didn’t have time to open it, as it swung wide open, hitting the woman on the forehead. There was another mysterious stranger on the threshold. The hereditary Fortune-Teller cursed.

“Be careful!” Gera said menacingly and added thoughtfully, “The doors are opening.”

However, no one, except the Teacher and me, heard her words. Probably, it wasn’t necessary.

Having returned home, I habitually pressed the magic computer button, but that time the magic didn’t happen, the computer didn’t turn on. I called my friend, programmer, he arrived, but… too late. He asked if I had managed to save my files somewhere else. I shook my head negatively, and the programmer smiled, “In this case, give it up and forget everything kept there!”

I had exactly one copy left of each of my spell-books. I recalled a not very rich oligarch whom I had seen only twice in my life just for work questions. The oligarch turned out to be not only a businessman, but also an artist. Compared to me, a professional one. I didn’t tell him even that I wrote spells, and, of course, I kept silent about my pictures.

I stopped by the oligarch’s office on the other side of the city. The secretary asked if we had an appointment. I shook my head negatively and asked to hand over my modest gift without an audience. The girl cast an incredulous and suspicious look at the books. Apparently, I was the first one who allowed oneself such audacity to gift books to the oligarch.

However, an hour later the oligarch called me. He was touched by the gift and regretted that I hadn’t dropped in without knocking, because he would have gladly offered me a cup of coffee. The oligarch praised me for writing down the feelings while I was experiencing them. If one doesn’t do this, the state that motivates to create disappears somewhere, one will never reproduce it. He said he would also try not to put off until later what was obviously feasible only ‘here and now’, and suggested that we meet and just chat.

“Surely… Someday later,” I said automatically, and I felt very, very sad.

…We met in three: Nonna, Lera and me.

“Congratulate me,” Lera said, smiling, “last weekend I was initiated into the Warriors of Light!”

“Well, I finished my studies at the Astral Academy,” said Nonna. “Now I can sleep at night without being conscious. I was lucky not to be expelled for absenteeism.”

“I have a task for you,” I said. “I need urgently to… ground myself.”

“What’s that, to ground?” the girls exclaimed in unison.

“I don’t know the way to do it either,” I sighed. “Everyone teaches people how to get rid of grounding, but keeps silent about the way to ground. Earthly attachments prevent us from living and cause us pain. We are gradually being taken away from what we are too attached to. However, I…”

“Do you want to become… ordinary?!” Lera was horrified.

“No, you don’t understand,” Nonna interrupted sadly. “Alice is in the Void. Nothing keeps her here. Meanwhile Another Reality will be Reality for her There as well as here.”

“I want to cling to something, but… I feel like I have nothing more to do in this world. And if one has nothing to do, one is to be returned.”

“I’ll think about it,” Lera promised. “Everything you say is true.”

“Listen, I got it!” Nonna exclaimed. “You must come up with some new Game you have not played yet! Understand?”

It was snowing outside. I was walking somewhere very far away. As usual, without looking back. Following me, quietly purring the Music of the Spheres, my Moon Cat softly walked along the snowy path.

“Alice! Wait!” a familiar voice was heard suddenly.

I stopped on the bridge between the Earth and Heavens and turned around. RAM came up to me and, looking meaningfully at my Third Eye, said, “Would you go with me to the mountains to visit the monks? They will help you with your abilities in the field of Another Reality.”

The Moon Cat, walking around us in circles, suddenly pushed me with his tail towards the Earth, “Agree, Alice! Eternity will wait. Looks like you haven’t finished something downstairs.”

13. BIRDS

“Light the candles,” SHE asked, knowing that candles were the only thing to be found in my flat always.

SHE was sitting across from me, at the kitchen table. It was the first time I saw HER so close. SHE was unusually beautiful for the Earthly Reality, so describing HER in words was an absolutely thankless task. Mostly SHE was silent or spoke mentally, urging me to do or not to do something. Sometimes I didn’t understand at all why and what for, but SHE disliked stupid questions. If I asked HER about nonsense, SHE ignored me. At first I was offended, but later I realized that my worthless questions would lose their relevance the next day, thus I began to ask less and less, and feel more and more.

SHE was looking at the flame.

“What are you doing?” I asked cautiously, afraid to seem stupid.

“I’m communicating with God, don’t interfere, it’s better for you to talk to Him too.”

“God knows everything even without my speeches,” I said sadly.

“That’s why I communicate with Him silently,” SHE said.

In the morning, I dreamed about someone persistently calling me on my mobile phone in the Earthly Reality. I knew I should wake up and turn on the phone urgently, but I didn’t feel like waking up. I wondered who it could be so early on Sunday morning, and I heard a voice, “Alice, hello. How are you?”

I tried to imagine a phantom of the MWWN. Maybe it was Him. The phantom appeared in all its glory, but the voice came not from the phantom, but from someone to the right. “Alice, why are you silent? Tell me what’s going on in your life! You didn’t leave, did you? You stayed here, right?” It made me sad, because it was not Him. Why wake up? What time was it? Probably, around nine in the morning. I answered something to the voice, at the same time, being tormented by the question, who it was.

I still forced myself to wake up, found my phone under the pillow, took it out and turn it on. A minute later, I heard the familiar sound of an incoming message and smiled, since the answer was close. It must have been a message from the telecom operator saying, “This subscriber has called you today at that time.” Imagine my amazement when I read a short message by Nonna, “Alice! It’s me who called you!”