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

In the morning I found Lera’s page on the Internet and read her spells written after our meeting. One of them was clearly not in her spirit.

“What have you done!” Lera said, laughing into the phone. “Yesterday I returned from you and went headlong into the Flow!”

“Were you hanging out in my sector, by any chance?” I asked laughing, and, without waiting for an answer, reassured, “Come on, relax, there are enough spells for everyone. If you got them from my sector, I don’t mind. Welcome again. If you meet me, we can chat right there. You know, the other day I had a long, long spell flowing down all night, sounded like the ‘Black Man’ by Yesenin, as if I was talking to my mother. I still remember some lines. Anyhow, I forced myself not to write it down. It was so painful that I purposefully left the Flow.”

“I need to pass you the Holy Water, Alice! Let’s meet in the city, the city is a distraction.”

I lived at the end station. An empty train arrived. The doors opened, people rushed to take their seats, but I crossed the threshold of the carriage with difficulty because I smelled Death. I knew its smell since childhood, a smell that you feel not with your nose, but with knowledge. A girl was lying on the seat between the doors in an unnatural position; long blond hair completely covered her face, and her bag was missing. Everyone thought that she was drunk and asleep, so they bypassed her and took places further away. I knew she was dead.

The doors closed, the train entered the tunnel. I wanted to go to the small gray box with a red button to inform the driver about the girl, but I realized that I wouldn’t be able to contact him. When the train arrived at the next station, a woman approached the box, tried in vain to press the button and shouted, “The girl is sick here! Do you hear?” But no one heard her, since the connection didn’t work. I began to think about why and how the girl had died, but… what difference did it really make, why one was no longer alive? The main thing was that one no longer existed.

We met in the city center. As Lera was handing me the water, the bottle slipped out of our hands.

“Yes!” Lera exclaimed joyfully to the surprise of those around. “Yesterday I saw it falling! So I have poured it into a plastic bottle today! Water is a crystal. It’s all glowing. You’ll realize it while drinking. There is a source with an enormous glow there.”

Lera often went on weekends to her Teacher the Hermit, in another country, from where she brought water. I immediately saw him as soon as Lera began her story, and my picture completely coincided with her description of the Hermit.

“Alice, have you ever noticed in the metro, that no one seems to notice you? Well… as if you are in your own reality, and people are in another?”

“The metro is one of the flows. You can work miracles in it, play with time and space, while remaining invisible to others.”

“I agree! You know, the last time I visited the Hermit, I recalled myself coming down Here. Like in your picture with the snake, back and forth, remember? The Earth was a small ball, I was getting closer and closer. It was spirally, and the spiral twisted clockwise. Then I began to distinguish continents, mountains, forests and saw a city. I was not alone. A lot of people just like me were flying nearby… Exactly as you painted.”

I smiled, remembering Nonna’s words, “You must recall everything! Become aware of a dream called life. As soon as you become aware, you will recall what is There you came from. I remember you, we talked There. I read your poems in the Library of the Universe. There is your sector there, you have already written them all, and now you are reading them. And you don’t remember me! You don’t remember almost anything at all, my green one!”

…I got out of the elevator and headed towards my flat, when… I was abruptly stopped by a familiar smell. Death had been there, not long before.

In fact, Death is always nearby. People don’t want to think about it, but if they don’t think, it doesn’t mean at all that Death is somewhere far away. Death is the best adviser; facing it, we realize what is really important in life and what is nothing.

Last winter, I went out in the corridor with elevators at night and suddenly heard a Voice, neither female nor male, Voice of Death. It said something quickly in an unfamiliar language. Instantly a picture appeared before my eyes – a coffin near the flat on the left. Some minutes later, Tanya, the daughter of my neighbors from that flat, came out of the elevator. I looked at her with a silent question, and she said that her mother was dying. Later, Tanya stood at the door of their flat being afraid to enter it.

“Is she there?” I asked, nodding towards the door.

“No, but I’m still scared… First dad, then mom. Mom had suffered from cancer for four years, and when something had happened to my dad’s spine, he couldn’t stand it and cut his veins. I still talk to him, he didn’t leave, he says they don’t allow. And now… mom.”

“Let your mom go. I didn’t let go mine for a long time. She suffered.”

“Well, what to do with dad?”

When I came to the Temple, I used to stand at the icon, the name of which I didn’t know, but I felt it was mine. From the age of thirteen, when I first found myself in the Void by the window, I was drawn to it like a magnet. Ten years later, I found out its name, and ten years more later, in a book by a clergyman, I found a mention of the icon in the chapter “Advice for relatives of suicides”. It turned out that one could pray for those who had left on their own. So all my life, or rather the last two thirds, I had been praying not to leave like them. I told Tanya the name of the icon.

That day Death visited the flat on the right, of Maria and her old mother, both doctors. Not so long before, the old lady had come to look at the Girl and the Moon Cat and asked me for a book with my spells. I was afraid of being judged for my frankness, but, surprisingly, returning the book, the old woman sadly said, “You are unearthly, Alice. It’s so hard for you to live among us!” Later Maria would say, “Mom came to say goodbye on the eve of her 40th day. Do you know what she looked like? An exact copy of your Moon Girl on the dark blue background of Eternity. Her ghostly outline with my mother’s face. I will never forget that.”

At night, I received a message from Lera, “You won’t believe it! Just now during meditation I saw your painting! The one with the Pyramid!”

“It’s interesting,” I thought. “People look at my paintings recalling each their own. Did I paint to make it easier for them to recall?”

…We still met, me and the Man Who Was Not. He had made me the appointment a day before in a specific way, reminding me of Ray, “Tomorrow. At lunch. Downtown. There is some kind of a haunted place there. Not far from a gourmet restaurant. I don’t remember the name. But it’s somehow very reminiscent of something…” Try to make an appointment with someone, preferably in a city with a population of some millions, by copying and sending the above text.

We were sitting opposite. He ate, as always. As always, I couldn’t eat anything. I gave Him my Blue Book dedicated to Him. He took it in hands and politely leafed through it. As usual, he was looking at, I was looking through, meanwhile we talked about Magic and spells. Everything seemed to be the same as always, but something was wrong. I couldn’t understand what exactly.

“You’re a witch,” He stated calmly.

“What kind of witch am I? What a witch out of me?” I asked without being offended at all.

“You are wandering along some Flows, playing Another Reality and hiding your true essence, periodically working in some offices on the outskirts of the city… It’s all written on your face. When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror?”

I realized that it was a compliment.

He fell silent, lowered his head, closed his eyes for a moment and then silently looked at me again, and I was frozen by what I saw. His eyes became huge and changed color to black, his pupils disappeared. A horrible Creature, who had moved into Him or awakened in Him, looked at me from His eyes, which no longer seemed to be His eyes. A whiff of cold. He remained silent. Of course, I urgently needed to put a virtual mirror between us so that the Creature would admire itself and not harm me. However, it looked at me with genuine interest and curiosity, the way one looked at something one saw for the first time. Suddenly, the Creature burst out of His eyes into many snakes and approached my face with some caution, without touching me. We studied each other until the Creature finally went away. The MWWN closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. Everything changed for usual, it was Him again.

The MWWN asked if I kept copies of my spells somewhere besides the computer. A strange question as a sign from Heavens. I felt the urgent need to copy them somewhere else. Just in case.

We said goodbye. I wanted to stop the world, stop Time.

Nonna says that I feel Time differently. People think that I am moving by leaps and bounds, accomplishing in a year what they cannot achieve in several years. However, I seem to be always late, that’s why I rush even more to get everything done before leaving the Earth. Nonna thinks that I still have not been able to adapt to the local Time from the Time of There, which flows differently. Once, I was struck by the sound of an alarm clock, since I suddenly realized what Salvador Dali had painted. His liquid clocks, for example. Dali had been There, surely, so he tried to explain to us through the picture that Time was different.

Anyhow, Time didn’t stop. The MWWN, as always, kissed me on the cheek. As always, I left without looking back. Who was He? Who sent Him to me and why? Why was everything going that way and not another? What kind of Creature was that? What did the sign mean? What else should I understand or recall? Why did I come on the Earth? The pictures were painted. The spells were published. What was I doing there?

11. TURN ON the LIGHT!

I was drinking tea in a cafe with my friend and ex-classmate Alexey, who sometimes played with the speed.

“Alice, can you really tell from photos whether a person is alive or not?”

“Photos are no longer needed,” I said thoughtfully.

“Could you help me?”

“Tell me what.”

“Ten days ago, six fishermen went to the lake. Three people per boat. One boat returned, the others did not. The lake is large, in some places it reaches even 100 kilometers by 100 kilometers, and its shores are invisible. They are looking for people, walking around villages.”

I saw the night, a boat. As if I was nearby standing on the water to the left. A big wave hit the bow of the boat, as well as on the left side, coming exactly to the middle. One man was sitting at the bow, the second one at the back, and, for some reason, the third one was standing at full height on the right side of the boat, closer to the second one. The boat capsized to the right.

“Dead,” I said.

“Why? What happened?”

“Are there waves there? Isn’t it a lake?”

“There are. Rarely, but they do happen. Nobody knows where they come from. Suddenly, a strong wind and waves arise. Big ones.”

“No need to look for them. They’re dead. Do you have a map to look at the lake?”

“I’ll send it to you tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look again at home at night… Do you happen to know whether post-impregnates are used in short-cycle presses? And what does Anima Mundi need to gain as a result of this earthly cycle?”

Alexey looked at me meaningfully and laughed.

I returned home, lit candles, closed my eyes and tried to imagine the lake again. There was something at the bottom, they got caught on something sunken. Perhaps they would find one, maximum two, but definitely not three of them. I imagined a map in the shape of a rectangle, divided it with a vertical line in the center, they were to be looked for on the right. Then I made two horizontal lines to get three equal parts. They were in the middle part, to the right of the center. “Okay, I’ll look at the real map tomorrow to double check!” I thought and went to bed.

The first thing I did in the morning in the office was checking my email. I saw the letter with a map attached. As I opened the letter, the mail froze. Then everything collapsed. I tried to open it again, it didn’t open for an error. I restarted the computer. It repeated 5 times in a row. The system administrator would be there in the evening. I sat down to work at an empty computer nearby and wrote to Alexey, “Call me”. He called back, I told him about what had happened to the computer and what I had seen without a map.

“Years ago, many villages were flooded there. In some places the domes of churches still stick out. Christmas trees at the bottom, flooded, are growing. But it can’t be as you say, Alice. Do you know why? One boat has been found now below, on the left side.”

“Sorry,” I smiled and even rejoiced, however, not for long – two hours later I received a message, “One was found. Dead. In the place you had told me.”

In the evening, I received a letter from an emigrant spell-caster. She felt my bad mood and offered to count me. No longer surprised by anything, I sent the required dates. According to the miscalculations made a year before by my godmother, almost a fairy, I accidentally ended up on the Earth, my roots were lost somewhere in the Universe, and I really missed my real home. According to the midnight miscalculation of the emigrant, I had extrasensory abilities of bio energetic healing, magic, magnetism, influencing the world through Love and Creativity, and carrying vibrations of the Higher Spheres. I clenched my head in my hands, “What should I do here? Why did I come down anyway? Who am I?” My Future was still closed. I always saw something ahead before and walked into the distance. At that time, nothing but the Void, which in its essence was Death.

That day I was informed that RAM came in our city again. Six months passed since the previous seminar, and after the film shown on the 1st TV Channel, there were twice as many people wishing to get to the Teacher as the hall could actually accommodate.

I entered the hall where about two hundred people had gathered. Sea of flowers. TV team. I walked up to RAM and silently handed her the books. She smiled, “Is that YOU?! Are these your books?!” Millions of people passed before her eyes, but she recalled me. The hall fell silent. The TV cameras turned on. At first, RAM, as usual, spoke about herself, about the capabilities of everyone. People came to her from all over the world, expecting a miracle, but for a miracle to happen, we must create it ourselves.

I was looking at the golden glow around her head when RAM introduced me to the seminarians. I came out with books, said that after the seminar they had published my spells written two-thirds of my life for the table drawer, I had been officially recognized as a spell-caster, awarded a medal, and I had painted a series of meditation pictures about the Girl with the Moon Cat. At that moment the audience burst into applauses – I seemed to be the happiest woman in the world.

Then the mantras came again. I didn’t feel my body. The body was petrified and empty. I knew, when I returned, it would be difficult to assemble it, and for a minute or two it would be still alien. The same meadow, the same mountains, ordinary and other. 108 springs, the abyss, a thin thread to the monastery on the hill. My Monk, that time all in white. He emanated such a strong dazzling radiance that his face was invisible. Radiance, similar in shape to a huge luminous egg. I walked to the monastery. The same monks. In orange, as usual. I wanted to enter the temple. If I had no right, they would stop me. So I stepped inside. There was a statue of Buddha in front of me. I held in my hand the cross bought in Tibet in reality, similar to the Orthodox one, but made of metal wire tied with threads of rainbow colors, with a multi-colored tassel of the same threads at the bottom. I stopped at the Buddha statue and asked to help me understand who I was. I entered the room to the left, the book depository. There were a lot of old books there and almost no light. Very quiet. The racks were located at a distance of a meter from the floor to the ceiling, along all walls. There was a niche under the shelves. I bent down and passed under the books when a monk appeared in the room. I didn’t know him yet. I was afraid he would say I must not be there, but he smiled, and a book flew off the shelf into his hand. He opened it and showed to me. I saw entries in Sanskrit. I said mentally, “I don’t understand”, and smiled. The monk pointed with his eyes at the third room, located to the left, the entrance to which was hung with a thick black cloth. I was scared, but the monk silently waited for me to enter it, and I did. The secret room was small. Blue walls were in a foggy haze. Exactly in the middle, a silver light was pouring straight from the sky. I stood under it, and it poured into my astral body, filling it with energy. Monks appeared in the room and recited mantras, walking around me in a circle with ancient books in their hands.

A small monastery garden. An old well. Monks took up silver-colored holy water with wooden buckets. Each of them came up to me in turn and poured the water on me. I rejoiced and smiled at them, and they at me. It was getting dark. The monks began to dance around the fire or a vat of incense. I used to dance next to them, but that time with each of them in turn, and then they walked around me, dancing inside the circle. I tried to count them, but I kept getting confused, due to the misty haze of incense (or fire?) I could hardly see their faces, and they were constantly moving, probably twelve of them in total. I felt the time for me to leave. The monks came up to me in turns, and as a farewell, passed their second and third fingers, without touching, exactly in the center of my forehead in the area of the Third Eye, blessing me. I left for the fire-colored Sky and felt good floating in it. I was not even a ghost. I had no contours anymore. I had nothing else. My Self didn’t exist anymore. I threw away the superfluous and became everything. I was Sky.

During the break, I was lying on my rug with my eyes closed, when I suddenly heard RAM’s voice.

“Alice, wake up! You know, I’ve read what you wrote about Another Reality.”

“Who am I?”

“You are the same as me. You can everything. The Universe database is open to you. You can take any information from there. There is nothing strange or bad about this. It’s just given to you.”

“I am in the Void.”

“I realized it, but you did the right thing to give people what you created and carried in yourself all these years! Just think of what a heavy burden you have just got rid of!”

“I don’t see my Future. I cannot understand what I’m doing here. Why did I come down? If it’s all about those books…”

“No, not those. It will be a completely different and higher stage than the previous one. First, publish your ‘Another Reality’ as a must and as soon as possible. After all, everything you wrote is true. It’s not a game. People are playing on the Earth, we are not. You are real. Publishing your book will make you freed. Something new will be revealed to you, not seen yet.”

“I’m so lonely.”

“Yes, I know, but the Higher Forces gave you much more. Imagine how strong you are in Spirit and what your Man Who Was Not should be like! Such people are rare! He will come, but the path is very long. I said to you six months ago that I saw the Light. You must wait instead of screaming into the Sky, thus blocking your Path.”

“What else should I do, besides the book?”

“Find the key to your Door. Make an important decision. In fact, step over yourself. The only thing you feel yourself unable to do today. I don’t know what. You need to understand yourself. If you do so, you will move to a new level, the next round of the spiral will begin.”

“I know what I have to do, but I can’t. I want to, but I can’t, because if I do it now, I’ll die.”

“You must die. As everything old. As your Past. To be born again. This is the only way you can save yourself. For the Light.”

…I entered the Temple of the Soul. Everything was the same, but… not the same. Where was the Light? Darkness. As if all the invisible light bulbs had burned out. Dazzling white walls looked gray. I needed to turn on the light. I tried to find the switch, but it was missing. No switch. I went to the niche where I had met the Patriarch the previous time. The table and chair were in place. No Patriarch. Very dark.

“Turn on the light!” I shouted into the Void, going up to the upper floor, where my dead relatives had gathered waiting for me the previous time.

Dead Darkness! I needed to find the switch. The Light must be on there! I was scanning all the walls as I moved. In vain. I opened the door to that room. No those of mine. The room looked different. The same rectangular wooden table, chairs, but the window was covered with thick black fabric. White plasterboard partitions, usually built at exhibitions to separate the stands of neighboring companies, divided the room into several compartments. There was something hanging on the walls. I saw everything bad for a foggy haze. It looked like a museum, but a dead one, because no one visited it.

Suddenly, the Patriarch appeared from behind the right partition. The previous time he had been wearing something green, embroidered with gold, without a headdress. That time he was in black. White headdress. White-green-red ribbons. The Patriarch sat down at the table opposite. I looked at him and mentally asked, “Mine won’t come, right?”

“Right, you let them go.”

“Where are we? What is this? A museum?”

The Patriarch nodded in agreement.

“But it’s dead. Nobody comes here, right? And why? Is it possible?”

The Patriarch didn’t look at me as the previous time, he was dissatisfied with me.

“Look carefully. What is it?”

I entered the first compartment on the right and saw… my photos on the walls, my childhood photos. Black and white. One of them was enlarged. I was four years old. Summer. I rode my bike waving to my dad. There were my spells under glass next to the photos.

“Is this MY museum?” I asked in surprise.

The Patriarch nodded silently. My whole life was there, from birth to…

“This museum is exactly half full,” said the Patriarch and repeated slowly and distinctly, “Exactly half.”

And indeed, the right side was filled and ready, the left was absolutely empty. The museum was dead, because I was still alive!

We went down to the ground floor into a niche. The Patriarch stopped and looked at me, expecting the question with which I came to the Temple of the Soul, but for some reason I remained silent. It was so dark. The Light must be on there! I needed to find the switch…

Suddenly, fiery letters began to appear in the air to the right of the Patriarch. They were lit up with a foxy-red flame. The first letter, then a dot. The second letter, a dot. I already knew what would be next, the surname, in full, the surname of the Man Who Was Not.

“He was not there! He doesn’t exist! I invented him!”

The Patriarch silently held out a photo. Standing somewhere to the left behind, someone had taken a photo of the MWWN. I saw a part of His face, but not the eyes.

“He doesn’t exist! Do you hear me? Phantoms, ghosts and mental images don’t appear in photos! He doesn’t exist!”

I started weeping. The Patriarch was silent. The letters continued to burn, and the photo was hanging in the air right in front of me.

“WHAT SHOULD I DO?”

A giant church candle appeared in the Patriarch’s hand, and he held it to me. I took the candle with my right hand and mentally lit it.

“What should I do? Pray? For him? For myself? Or burn it?”

The Patriarch kept silent.

“Okay. I’ll think about it later. Show me what will happen.”

The Patriarch turned and quickly walked to the right. We hadn’t walked along that corridor the previous time. I followed him, or rather, we seemed to be flying. The corridor was very narrow. There was a shabby burgundy carpet on the floor, like in the old flat of my grandma the witch. On the ceiling at the end of the corridor, a switched on light bulb in a rusty metal cap that looked like a plate, was creaking, swaying in the wind, although there was no wind there. I realized, that was the last Ray of Light in my Temple… The light bulb was very dim, it clearly wouldn’t last long. It blinked, then suddenly went out, then shone again, but very, very weakly. As we moved, the doors on the right spontaneously swung wide open, and I looked inside the rooms.