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

“The same. But sometimes I feel, this is he, while he thinks this is not me.”

“You came to tell people about Another World through the Word and paintings, deal with it! You should write and paint, create!”

“I can’t write in His absence!” I stated.

“It’s funny,” Nonna said thoughtfully, “once upon a time, in Ancient India, yogis had the Third Eye, but already weakly expressed. They periodically scratched it with special sticks so that it could see better. It means that men will still be sent to you so that you write, but kept at a great distance, because if one suddenly turns out to be HIM, and you realize your kindergarten dream of earthly love, you’ll obviously stop writing. Men for you are like that stick of the yogis, to stimulate the work of the Third Eye, so that you see Another Reality. By the way, I see an exhibition of your paintings,” Nonna said casually, biting into what once had been a lamb. “Of course, like with your book then, it seems unrealistic to you now, but it will happen. So paint, my dear, paint.”

“I’ve already painted everything I saw There,” I said sadly.

“No, not everything!”

“I really don’t know what else to paint!”

“If you can’t remember, this doesn’t mean at all that you don’t know. Therefore, sit down in front of the canvas and ask yourself, ‘What do I see There?’ You don’t have even to invent anything, your hands will do everything themselves, believe me. Your Path is creativity. You have to somehow combine it with work and money. In my opinion, there is no need for a fortune-teller, everything is too obvious.”

“Nonna, just don’t swear at me. Please, hear what I’m telling you now… I… WANT… LOVE… EARTHLY Love. Understand?”

“No, I don’t understand, and I don’t want to,” she said calmly. “By the way, what do you see about me?”

“You are a nomad. Wanderer. You can’t stay in one place for long. You’ll be moving. A lot of. Countrywide. Maybe even abroad. This is your Path. You have to help everyone.”

Nonna nodded in agreement.

“Nonna, but if you have to help everyone, so help ME!”

“I do help you… on your Path.”

“You are a sadist!” I couldn’t help exclaiming from a feeling of complete hopelessness.

The waitress brought dessert and was about to put it on an empty place on the table when Nonna said, looking at me reproachfully, “Get your bag away!”

“It’s heavy! I can’t move it by myself, and you don’t send me a man… Help!”

I did as Nonna had said. I took canvas, paints, brushes and suddenly saw There… a girl with a Moon Cat. They walked together in Another Reality. Both were ghostly, almost transparent, against the dark blue sky, very far from the Earth. The girl was recalling what had been on the Earth and what not. It’s enough There to imagine something as it immediately appears. As ghostly as everything There. The girl recalled her acquaintance with the Man Who Was Not and her spells written to Him, which He had just flipped through and never answered. The girl visualized autumn alleys in the park, since she wanted to walk with Him on the Earth, but she was walking along the Heavenly Alleys with her Moon Cat. The girl built a small astral house. She lived next to the majestic pyramids, the same as on the Earth, but There. The six sacred geometrical bodies of Plato’s and Ancient Egyptian symbols appeared before her eyes. So I painted what I saw through the eyes of that girl. She felt very lonely. At night, she used to open the Window to the World and look at the Earth with longing. The Moon Cat couldn’t understand her. The girl wanted to return, because she really wanted Love, earthly Love.

Once a year on the Earth they celebrate a day when everyone suddenly begins to recall you. It took me a long time to get used to this. It turns out that here you can forget about someone for a year, and then, on that very day, call or come and say a bunch of compliments so that the person doesn’t inadvertently think of being accidentally forgotten by you, and disappear again for a year. It’s a pity that on the Earth such a day happens only once a year.

Some days before I had to stop at a glamorous place where I didn’t want to go at all, because I knew in advance that I would definitely meet Him there, the MWWN. By chance, not according to the laws of the Earthly Reality, He was to be exactly in that place and at the time when I was there. After the spell-castings in the haunted basement, He disappeared, and I didn’t want to remind Him of myself, because He didn’t care if I still existed in the Earthly Reality or no longer. The other day I had a dream. We were sitting at the table in that glamorous place. He spoke to me about the stars, ordered to paint pictures for Him the way He wanted them, with such colors, of such size. I didn’t want to paint like that. That was why I didn’t want to go there, but I couldn’t help but go.

I was standing by the elevator when I saw Him approaching the building. The elevator arrived. I went in, pressed the button for the desired floor, “Please, close the doors! Let’s go! Please!” The elevator didn’t obey, the doors remained open. I felt Him coming closer and closer, climbing the steps, he would enter the elevator soon. Out of complete impotence, I leaned against the wall, lowered my head and closed my eyes.

“Alice? What are you doing here?” a familiar male voice said in surprise.

The elevator closed the doors immediately and started moving up. I sighed heavily. I didn’t know if He understood why I wasn’t surprised at our meeting. I didn’t know what to say. I was just silently looking somewhere through. He explained confusingly something about a difficult period, that He was very busy, but I turned off my hearing, since he was playing words which already meant almost nothing on the Earth. The elevator stopped. The MWWN expressed a desire to talk with me. We were sitting at the very table I had seen in my dream. He spoke to me about the stars. I listened silently. He ordered to paint pictures for Him the way He wanted them, and even began to show the way, but I interrupted Him, finishing what He had already said in the dream. I said that I didn’t want to paint like that. He was probably offended. Saying goodbye, I hinted that I would be pleased if He called me on Sunday to congratulate me on the day that happened once a year. He smiled and asked three times the exact date. I repeated three times that it would be the nearest Sunday. He said he would certainly not only call me, but invite me somewhere on such occasion the next week.

For better or worse, that Sunday I realized that I hadn’t had much contact with ordinary people for many years. I used to meet those speaking a different language, incomprehensible to mass, or if not speaking, listening and trying to understand, and even asking questions, smart questions, not to keep up a conversation or out of politeness, but in order to find out something interesting. My guests remembered me more than once a year. I showed them my meditation paintings with the Girl and the Moon Cat as protagonists. The guests tried not to look, but to see. Then we sat at the table like ordinary people exchanging mystical life stories. Svetlana asked me to tell a funny story about homeless people.

I often take the subway, since I haven’t recalled yet the way to get around the city without earthly means of transportation. That day, I was returning from work late in the evening in a half-empty train and, while reading an interesting book by a Teacher, I came to a chapter saying that under no circumstances one should experience negative emotions towards the homeless ones. The train stopped at the next station, the doors opened, several people entered it, and a bum fell down from Heavens onto the seat to my right. Everyone around grimaced and waited with interest for my reaction. Curiously and without negativity, I shifted my gaze from the book to my new neighbor. He was suitably creepy dressed and smelled like all homeless people without exception were supposed to smell. In one hand he held a huge dirty bag stuffed with only he knew what. The bum seemed to be about fifty years old. He studied me with the same interest, trying to see what lived inside my earthly body. Suddenly, with his second and bag-free hand, the man reached into the pocket of what had once, apparently, been a jacket. After rummaging in it, he pulled out… glasses (!), immediately and somehow in a completely not bums’ way rubbed them on his dirty sleeve, put them on his nose, leaned towards me and almost hovered over the book, which I continued to hold open right on the page about his fellow sufferers. The bum started reading the book.

Less than a week later, I had to go to the city center. That time there were a lot of people in the train, and as soon as a seat was freed up next to me, another bum immediately landed on it out of nowhere. That old man with a blurred look of small gray eyes, but, as it seemed to me, with the same huge and dirty bag in his hand, barely moving his tongue, was not at all drunk. He wondered when his station would happen, but no one responded. So I said it was the next one and, without expressing any negative emotions, continued reading another interesting book. The train stopped, the doors opened, but the bum continued to meditate. I was afraid that my neighbor would drive past his path, so I warned him about it. The man looked intently into my eyes. His cloudy gaze, directed through, became completely clear and deep. He took a step towards the doors and, continuing to scan me, sadly and kindly said, “You are from Heavens, aren’t you?”

The third homeless man happened to me on the way home from the grocery store. He sat on the steps with a piece of white bread in his hand, washing it down with milk from a paper bag and, in pauses between meals, sang something loudly to the whole street. Having seen me, the homeless man fell silent for a moment and suddenly said seriously in an absolutely sober voice, “Be careful! You can fall, but you… you must not!”

“Right! You must not fall!” Svetlana supported the homeless man. “You have to give your knowledge into the world.”

“As my cousin once said, if you do something in your life that someone else can do when you’re gone, you do nothing at all here. My spells are what I did in the Earthly Reality myself, not someone else. I’ll turn them into books. I’ll move them from the desk drawer to a bookshelf.”

“Books are books, but you need to come up with some kind of personal business. Maybe… Could you heal people?” asked Stasya.

Stasya was a successful businesswoman. She had different Teachers, but… periodically indulged in Black Magic, the danger of which I warned her more than once. I didn’t know why, but unlike me, my friend was sent men by the handful without a break so that I had no time to remember their names. My friend got probably offended, when she asked once again on the phone what I thought about Vasily, Peter and Konstantine, and I was silent, recalling who of them was who, not even trying to understand what had happened to Ivan, Pavel and Michael, about whom she had asked a month before. No, I didn’t envy her. Of course, I wouldn’t have managed a similar situation myself. However, the logic of the Higher Forces sometimes puzzled me.

I looked at Stasya with another vision. She noticed my gaze and asked with fear, “What do you see?”

“Wings,” I said calmly and added, “black ones.”

“So you’re the second to tell me this! What kind of wings?”

“Beautiful,” I laughed and glanced helplessly at the silent phone.

The MWWN, of course, wouldn’t call, I knew He wouldn’t, but I still wanted a miracle.

“Listen, open a training center. Let those you know teach people something too. It’s so simple!” proposed Svetlana.

“No, I can’t,” I shook my head, “I won’t succeed.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know to fill out tax returns.”

Svetlana laughed, but quickly forced herself to calm down and said, “Sorry, you’re right, lifting a table in the air is much easier than filling out a tax return, but I will teach you.”

I picked up the guitar. I sang looking at the silent phone. Nothing seemed to be easier than to get angry and send the Man Who Was Not to the far side of the Moon in order to see Him never again. However, I had long forgotten the way to get angry, and I would still see Him, no matter how far I sent Him, because He had long been a part of me, He was present in me all the time and would be already forever.

7. PEOPLE of LIGHT

Andrey was my earthly friend, who had known me for many years, or rather, like others, he thought he knew. After reading a fragment of my diary on the Internet, Andrey suggested having lunch at a cafe.

“Alice, let’s get acquainted! I saw only a part of you, the earthly part. And you are completely different.”

“Like everyone else, you see only what you want to,” I stated sadly.

“Doesn’t it bother you to communicate with ordinary people? Well, for example, with ones like me?”

“I look at a person and know immediately whether we can communicate or not. We have been friends for a long time, so don’t worry.”

“Can I ask you stupid earthly questions?”

“Of course, I’m even pleased when people ask questions.”

Andrey had to undergo surgery. I told him about the types of diseases, the causes for their occurrence, the ways to work with different types, which books to read and in what order. We smoothly moved into the field of Consciousness and Subconscious. I drew a lot of circles on a napkin, starting from the multifaceted Self to Anima Mundi (Soul of the World), talked about patterns and stereotypes, self-programming, the body-saving trance each of us involuntarily used to fall into several times a day, methods of Teachers, phobias and much, much more, up to comparative religion analysis in the context of the theory of reincarnation. At that point, Andrey awoke.

“When I was little, about four years old, I insistently asked my parents to take me to my mother’s grave in Germany, repeating that these parents, although good, were… in fact not quite mine. I said that my mother was transferring me in a baby carriage across the bridge in 1944 or 1945, when the bombing began and she died. Of course, they didn’t take me anywhere. Then I gave it up and forgot almost everything.”

“So you’re not so earthly. You’ve recalled a lot.”

“It’s you who are unearthly. I still remember you help us give birth to your namesake.”

Andrey had three daughters. When his wife was pregnant for the second time, I didn’t know about it. All that night I dreamed myself giving birth to a girl, so clearly that when I woke up, I was painfully wondering the meaning of my strange dream. I retold it to my colleague and immediately received a message from Andrey, saying, “The Earth has got one more Alice tonight!”

Andrey asked what anchor meant. I talked about the types of anchors and the possibility to anchor our Places of Power, which could help us in hard times.

“What are your Places of Power, Alice?”

“There are few of them. Nikolina Gora, for example, both grandmothers had cottages there. Funny, right? Being poor, I spent my summer time at two cottages among the royal castles. As a child, I used to merge with the Soul of the World through nature there, and it will forever remain my Place of Power. Then my French grandmother moved out and the second house was set on fire. But every summer I come to the river there. Mount Athos and Tibet also. I’d like to live in Lhasa or on the border with Mount Athos. I feel calm and comfortable there. Like at home.”

“Paris, no? Your French grandmother lived there.”

“My French grandmother, a light person, wanted me to visit Paris as soon as I could go abroad. She told me the street and the house she had lived. I ended up in Paris after her death, I walked the length and breadth of the city. Walking around the center, I came across her street and found her house. Several times I dreamed us walking together in Paris, but it’s still grandma’s city.”

“What other are yours?”

“I like Venice. I’ve been there many, many times. I don’t even remember how many. I often visited it with Brother. A strange city. Someday it will go under water,” I involuntarily shuddered, “like another city I see in my dream.”

“Another?”

“Not like others. There were no cars in it. There are no cars in Venice either, at least in its pedestrian and water area. And there was water too. Water everywhere. All around… My dream is also connected with water. I’ll tell you sometime later about my dream and that city. I think it used to be mine once. It was situated on the ocean shore. On an island or on some continent in the ocean. But it’s no longer there.”

“Doesn’t St. Petersburg remind you of Venice?”

“It reminds me of Venice and something I don’t want to remember at all. Therefore, let’s change the topic.”

“What kind of a person is that man of yours?”

“He is not a person,” I answered automatically for some reason.

“Who is he? Well, what do you see about him?”

“He is stronger and smarter than me. I look at Him from the bottom up, I am drawn to Him. He is the leader. I am the follower. I find it interesting and not boring with Him. We speak the same language and accept each other as we are.”

“Well,” Andrey sighed heavily, “you said too much in few words. Where is such one to be found? Who can speak the same language with you? In all my life, I have never met people who were as strong as you. And you need an even stronger one.”

“You don’t understand. You’re talking about people. He is like me, a different one.”

“Alice, who are you? Well, how did you end up here? Why did you come? Everything here is different.”

“I don’t know who I am. Nonna believes we both came down on our own, because we wanted to. I don’t know why, maybe, as she says, to feel this world, these objects,” I touched the table we were sitting at, “to try the food they eat here. To tell people here about what’s There. I haven’t recalled almost anything yet. I paint, and Nonna has goosebumps from my paintings, because she has already seen them There. I rejoice finding in the books of Teachers something I have known for a long time, but I don’t remember where from. Although the Voice I heard in my dreams in childhood taught me something. Many of my wishes come true instantly. But… I really want Love, no one has ever loved me for my existence here, just loved, just the way I am. However, I am not given such Love. I can’t explain why. It looks like a vicious circle. I don’t understand something. I can’t recall it.”

“You should feel yourself like someone, no?”

“A little silent girl from a stingy childhood, who every summer early in the morning went with her grandfather into the forests and wandered through them in complete silence. My grandfather picked up medicinal herbs, I picked up flowers, mushrooms and berries. He taught me to communicate with Nature: with trees, flowers, animals. By lunchtime we used to return to our cottage, where my friends were waiting for me: a hedgehog, a wild Siamese cat Panther and a White Rabbit. Probably every Alice should have her own White Rabbit. My grandfather built me a hut, a real house for a fairy. When the Sun was shining, I used to open the window. There were also two chairs and a small table inside. I used to seclude myself there and read books. The walls and roof were made of straw, laid out in several layers, with a waterproof film between, so I could stay in the house even in a downpour, and the door had a real lock. I remained that little girl.”

“I knew you as the general director of a large factory with a turnover of a billion.”

“You won’t believe it, once in anger I told a man who looked down on me and offended me very much that I would become, like him, a general director. And my words were taken there for an order. Well, let’s not talk about earthly things, rather let’s play. Trees are often played in art therapy. You should imagine yourself as a tree. What kind of tree are you? Where are you growing up: on the edge of a wood and alone, or inside a deep dense forest? What are your branches? Roots? Foliage? Is your tree sick or not? What is it afraid of? What’s the way to help it? Well, imagined?”

“I’m probably growing up in the forest. Everything is great there, and I’m not afraid of anyone.”

“I painted my tree upside down.”

“How is that?”

“Its roots are in the Sky, like snakes or lightning. The Moon lives in them. The tree is transparent. On a dark blue background. Its trunk is a guide from There to Here. And its branches hang over the sleeping city, creating something like a dome. But almost no one sees my tree.”

“Wow!”

“When I showed the picture to my son, he really liked it, but asked, ‘Mom, why did you do so with it?’ I said this tree was me. He sighed and said, ‘Now I understand.’ But I don’t know who I am. It’s just a game.”

“What other games do you know?”

“Visualization, for example. Imagine your dream as if already implemented. In detail, very colorful, with all the positive emotions that you experience. Then describe the picture in the Present Perfect tense, as if you have already got it. Return to the recording as often as possible, re-read it rejoicing.”

“So what? Will it come true?”

“Certainly.”

“Have you played this game?”

“Of course, I even came across a special notebook with the inscription ‘Book of Wishes’. So I used to write everything down there. For example, when the company I worked froze all projects due to the financial crisis, I described in the book a portrait of the owner of another company who would offer me a new job. Very detailed. Well, I mean the portrait not in terms of appearance. And he called me two weeks later.”

“And?!”

“I forgot to write down an important detail, to get a job in my city. He offered me a job too far away. So when you play, try not to forget anything.”

“Okay, what else can you do?”

“In general, nothing special. Everything that happens to me is as simple as two plus two. The youngest group of kindergarten.”

Andrey chuckled, but then he made a serious expression again and asked, “Do you always see the Future?”

“I never look into it on purpose. The Future is multivariate. Sometimes I see an option for the development of events, sometimes several at once. However, I always feel the point of no return, the moment when, out of the possible roads, only one is left, thus, there is no choice in the given period of time. At the age of four at our cottage on Sunday, I felt my father’s death. Dad was getting ready to go home to the city, and I began to sob heart-rending for no apparent reason, repeating, ‘He won’t come back’. Nothing foreshadowed his sudden death a few days later, but at that moment there was no other option. It’s always like that in life. There are many options at first, then their number decreases, the space narrows until all options collapse into the single possible. Usually, each step (choice) you take leads to another choice from several subsequent steps, as if a peacock tail is opening. Sometimes, when I need to know something, I pick up cards. Cards themselves are a kid’s game of fortune-telling. I receive answers and see what interests me not through cards, candles and similar attributes such as a pendulum ring, a bowl of water, coffee grounds. Knowledge comes by itself. But sometimes, I still take out the cards, light the candles, take the pendulum ring, make myself some coffee, because I want to feel like a little girl again and play.”

“Alice, have you ever practiced Black Magic?”

“This is what Black Magicians do.”

“So are you a White Magician?”

“I told you, I don’t know who I am. Anyhow, I can tell you about People of Light. It’s very difficult to accurately divide them into groups, because, as a rule, everyone who carries the Light within oneself can already do everything, but one needs to recall that. Some people need several lives for recalling, some need just one, and some even don’t need, since they come already awaken and able to do everything from birth. Some people are better at one thing, others at another. Someone succeeds in everything, but does only the necessary in each particular case.

My grandfather was a White Magician, emanating a warm Light. Possessing a strong but calm energy, he was mostly silent. I always felt his thoughts, and he felt mine. My grandfather reminded me of a mountain hermit. He loved nature and taught me to love it. Every summer, in addition to the cottage, we went for a week to visit his brother in the village, where I was taught to make hay and milk cows. I rode horses, and once spent a whole day tending a flock of sheep from all over the village. My grandfather never took any medicine, but he collected herbs, although I don’t remember him getting sick. I was born on his birthday, and we used to celebrate the holiday together. He told me the date of his death about a year before, while still healthy. A month before leaving, he dreamt his dead relatives calling him to Heavens. My grandfather died in my arms, with his arms around my neck when no one was around. He remained nearby for some time. I felt his presence. I wanted to leave the dark flat, where everyone had died and stuck after death, since the flat became a Portal to the World of the Dead, but I was afraid that my grandfather would condemn me. Then he came in a dream and let me leave.