1
The lone Australian pelican, Pelecanus conspicillatus, soared high above the Tweed rivermouth. He was in a shallow bank carving lazy circles in a rare, blue, coastal thermal.
He wasn’t hungry and he wasn’t in migration, he loved the Tweed, he was just up there for fun, for the pure joy of soaring flight. With his head comfortably resting on his back, for aerodynamic efficiency, he delighted in the crystal clarity of the spring day. He was not aware of the time chip implanted in his neck, nor of the fact that it had already done its job, which was why all the houses and jetties were now gone. It had also been some time since he scored a free feed from a fisherman. For quite a while he’d had to catch his own meals. He sensed that there was something different but his brain was too small to figure out what it was.
After many circles, he had soared from a starting altitude of two hundred feet to a not too shabby three thousand. He had not flapped his wings for over half an hour. He slowly drifted with the thermal, from his favourite bend in the river, about a mile inland, towards the coast. He had done this before, on occasion, and just like before he found that the lift petered out fairly much above the beach at the edge of the ‘great water’.
On one turn he looked down the coast and spotted a sailing boat about a mile out to sea. The most striking thing about it, other than the fact that it was the only thing anywhere, was the blood-red colour of its sails. Even to his simple sense of the aesthetic, the contrast against the azure of the water was delightfully prepossessing. He noticed that the boat was sailing up the coast towards him. He wondered if maybe they had a fish for him.
He, as a rule, never flew out over the ocean. There was never any reason. He was a peculiar bird, though, who happened to like human contact. He liked to be close to them and he liked to watch them and occasionally have a fish thrown his way. Lately, this pleasure of human contact had mysteriously eluded him and he missed it. He focussed on the boat more intently and associated it with the special pleasure that human contact brought him.
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His brain might have been tiny but it knew how to dead reckon glide angles. He worked out in a fraction of a second that he could glide out to the boat from his altitude with a thousand feet to spare.
Under normal circumstances he would never have considered it, however, even though his little brain couldn’t figure anything out, it decided to bank out of the dying thermal and glide, as efficiently as a pelican’s rotund shape allowed, towards the pleasure of human contact.
2
It was early afternoon on Saturday, October 9, 2123. Mecca cut cleanly through the smooth water. The southerly change came and went without raising much of a swell.
Within two days the westerly wind returned bringing with it optimum sailing conditions.
Early that morning, Lloyd decided to revert to what he termed as ‘real sailing’. He raised and set Mecca’s blood-red sails causing her to heel over and power northward much to everyone’s delight. After all, Lloyd was a sailor in the most traditional sense and nothing, not even gravity thrust, could compare to a long beam reach, close to the coast, in a perfect offshore breeze.
‘We are about to become Queenslanders,’ he announced relaxing at the tiller. ‘That up ahead,’ he said pointing, ‘is the Tweed River.’
They considered a stop in the Tweed but decided to keep going due to the pristine conditions.
The four of them had been on the boat for over two weeks. The constant exposure to the elements was making them all quite tanned. As well, the men’s hair was getting longer and scragglier and they hadn’t bothered to shave in all that time. They were also beginning to lose a few kilos and their eyes seemed to shine a little brighter than before.
The girls’ skin was showing signs of weathering and their hair had lost some of its sheen.
They were losing one type of beauty, but gaining another, one more natural and athletic.
Many times, during the day, they stopped the boat to go for a swim in the ocean, sometimes to cool down, sometimes for a wash.
3
Sophia was first to notice the metallic glint in the sky. She had been sitting on the bow with her feet dangling over the side being sprayed by the bow wave. They all watched intently as the shiny, silver-metallic disc circled the boat about 200 feet above the water. It finally slowed down alongside Mecca, on the windward, port, side, matching
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its velocity. A panel opened on the upper hull of the space ship and a head popped out.
They recognised Ben’s face. Immediately after, Adam’s face appeared. Both were grinning like Cheshire cats. In fact, everyone’s face beamed with the joy of meeting one another again.
‘Permission to come aboard, Cap’n,’ Ben called out.
‘Permission granted,’ Lloyd replied cheerfully.
Ben wore his skin while Adam wore his lev-pack. Like two supermen, they floated out from the hatch and landed on the boat, Ben on the port side of the foredeck and his father on the port side of the mast, grabbing onto it for support. Alex assisted Adam to remove his lev-pack and scramble into the cockpit. Ben just levitated into the cockpit when they made a space for him.
There was plenty of shaking of hands and patting on the back, and the girls both got a kiss on the cheek. Lloyd set the autopilot to run comfortably off the coast. Mecca was heeling over about twenty degrees, slicing cleanly northward in the smooth conditions.
The sun was blazing and the day was warm, and Albatross by Fleetwood Mac was playing on the iPod. The girls made coffee for everyone.
Ben’s spaceship followed Mecca as if it was a balloon tethered by an invisible string.
‘I see you put your sails up,’ said Adam.
‘Well,’ responded Lloyd, ‘who could resist these conditions.’
‘I am not surprised at all,’ said Ben. ‘On Rama, the sailing folk all have access to gravity sails, but they all choose to sail the traditional way for the pure romance of it.’
‘You are about to cross the border into Queensland,’ said Adam. ‘I recognised the Tweed River as we were coming in.’
‘Yes, we were just noting that before you arrived,’ Lloyd replied.
‘This may not mean much to any of you,’ Adam continued, ‘but I noticed from the air that the Superbank is gone and that the old points are back. I remember surfing Greenmount Point in my youth before they started dredging the river. It was one of my favourite waves and they completely destroyed it. And now it’s back.’
‘Dad, as soon as things settle down, I promise that we will go and surf Greenmount Point again. And this time we’ll get it to ourselves.’
Adam looked at his son and replied,
‘You don’t know how good that sounds, Benny boy.’
Ben turned to Lloyd and said,
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‘You are not so far from your destination now, Lloyd.’
‘On the chart about 130 miles as the crow flies, give or take,’ said Lloyd. ‘A couple of days of good sailing and we’ll be there.’
‘You may rest assured that we will guide you in over the bar,’ said Ben. ‘I have checked and there is an adequately deep channel, however you will still need to make the crossing in the last hour of the rising tide. Once in the river you will have no problems.
Also, currently there is virtually no swell either.’
‘That is quite typical for this time of year, Ben,’ Lloyd replied.
‘By the way, what is your draft?’
‘It is four feet three inches, Ben. There should be sufficient tide to make it over the bar, I think.’
‘I think so too, Lloyd. You know, the whole Noosa community cannot wait to welcome you all.’
All four of the Mecca crew smiled and thanked Ben for all his help.
‘We have saved a few bottles of Grange for our arrival,’ said Sophia, ‘although I can barely cope with two glasses myself.’
‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘she’s quite a cheap drunk you know.’
‘All the more for the rest of us,’ said Lloyd.
Everyone chuckled.
4
As they sat around the cockpit, sipping their coffees, the conversation randomly turned to telepathy. Lloyd had an enduring interest in the activity since his student days.
He asked Ben, who was a full telepath, if he could give the group any kind of insight into the process. Ben, as a rule, avoided discussing anything to do with the mind plane with non-telepaths. It just seemed pointless. To Ben it was analogous to an Earth human trying to explain calculus to his pet Labrador. However, despite his better judgement, he made a brief attempt at describing the general, overall concept. He began, slowly and concisely.
‘I guess the main thing to know is that telepathic communication is many-faceted.
In fact, there are no real limits to how many ways telepathic beings may engage with one another. Non-telepaths mostly imagine that telepathy is a thought transfer of words, however it is far more than that. It is an immersion in exchanged realities.’ Ben looked at them all and asked, ‘Am I freaking you out yet? Please let me know when I start freaking you out.’
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Lloyd chuckled, ‘Far from it, Ben.’ He shook his head, ‘Exchanged realities, how absolutely fabulous. Please continue.’
‘OK. When I say realities, I don’t mean pictures, or even movies, although it can be those things, I mean the whole 3D thing, with sound and smell and feel … all five senses, and these realities can be real or they can be imagined, er, conjured up.’
Everyone, except Adam, listened open-mouthed amazed. Ben elaborated,
‘Say, for example, I wanted to get in touch with my mother who is in Noosa right now, although she could be anywhere, I could literally bring her into this reality here, in the mind plane, and place myself in it, and I could speak to her face to face. And the whole reality that she would experience would have been created by me, for her, in the mind plane, and transferred via our mind thread connection. Is any of this making any sense? I am trying to keep the explanation as simple as possible.’
‘Don’t mind us,’ said Lloyd, ‘just please continue.’
‘OK, this creating and holding together of a reality in the mind, and then transmitting it, this is called creative telepathy and it is a learned skill taught to our children by their teachers.’
What followed really amazed Ben. It was the choice of question that came as a result of his brief description of telepathy. In fact, Ben’s whole judgement of the group was going to be based on the first question. Lloyd was the one who asked it.
‘These realities, Ben, are they full of light? And, if so, where does this light come from?’
Ben looked at Lloyd, astonished. The whole Mecca crew observed his eyes brighten with light intensity. Lloyd had asked the singularly most relevant question, which attested to his incredible intelligence. Ben commenced with his explanation.
‘Your question, Lloyd, touches on the fundamentals of existence, on the very nature of consciousness, and life, related to our universe. I shall try to explain it to you in a similar fashion as was explained to me by my teacher.’ Ben thought for a moment, then speculated, ‘The end of this will leave you either confused, disbelieving, or permanently altered. Yet, it is the truth.’
They were all quietly amazed at how wise Ben sounded for such a young man. He continued,
‘The light, where does the light come from? The light of the Sun in the day,’ he pointed at the Sun, ‘and the Moon and the stars in the night, what light is it that shines in
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these? In fact, where does the light of all reality, our whole universe, come from? What about the light in our dreams? We all experience them. And what about the light of our visions and transcendental and psychedelic experiences? Where does all that light emanate from? I will tell you this, a truth most profound and secret, this light from all these things in truth comes from us, each one of us individually, for us. We are the light of our individual suns, moons and stars, and everything else in existence. Ours is the only light and everything is but a kruptos cipher.’
‘Like in the movie, The Matrix?’ Eva asked matter-of-factly.
Ben looked at her even more surprised and his eyes iridesced even more intensely.
‘How smart these people are,’ he thought to himself.
‘Kind of,’ he replied. ‘You see, our experience of our physical universe, and I include our human body in that, merely comes to our awareness through the five senses. The light that stimulates our optic nerve is, at the same time, actual light and not actual light. It reaches our brain as a coded, electronic signal. I will attempt to give you an analogy.’ Ben looked at them all. ‘By the way, how are you all coping?’
‘You are starting to lose me,’ said Sophia.
‘You need to throw in the odd titbit about shoes or jewellery, Ben, to keep Sophia’s interest up,’ said Alex in jest. Everyone chuckled. Ben continued,
‘Perhaps my analogy might help. Now imagine this; Sophia and Eva are sitting in adjoining rooms. These rooms have no windows and the doors are closed. It is completely dark in these rooms. There is a television in each room and it is turned on. Sophia and Eva both proceed to watch a sunrise on these TV sets. They are both watching exactly the same thing. The signal coming into each television is the same, but Sophia is watching her sunrise and Eva is watching hers. My question is this; where is the light of the two suns coming from?’
‘Aaah,’ said Lloyd in a tone of realisation, ‘the light of the two sunrises is coming from the television sets. I see.’
‘And the signal,’ Ben elaborated further, ‘isn’t light and there is no way of knowing if it is coming in live or if it is pre-recorded. There is no point-of-time reference for Sophia and Eva to know within their isolated dark rooms. So, their whole reality may be nothing more than a replay of a pre-recorded signal, or even weirder, the signal might be a completely artificially synthesised reality, which is indistinguishable from a real reality, this then being played through a coded signal sent down the coaxial cable into the TV.’
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He paused for a moment and thought about whether he should digress a tad. He decided to do so.
‘There is a perfect example of the existence of such an artificially synthesized reality in your own collective memories,’ he continued. ‘Apollo 11, the moon landing by the Americans, was 100% pre-recorded, in all its complexity, and then played back in real time. If you think about it, everything you know of what happened with Apollo 11 is what you were fed via your television sets. Even the NASA technicians, gawking into their monitors, were unaware that they were looking at a simple playback of a multifaceted, synthesized reality. Apollo 11 never ventured beyond Earth orbit. You all watched a playback of pre-recorded fiction presenting itself as live transmission. And, to all our amazement, everyone on Earth bought it.’ Ben looked around at them all. ‘Er, I guess that I have strayed somewhat from the subject. How are you all coping?’
‘I must say, Ben, this is all starting to get pretty trippy,’ said Alex.
‘It gets worse,’ Ben replied. He went on. ‘Now, as a separate thing, the light in the TV, as well we know, is powered by the electricity which comes in through a wire. So, there are two things that come into the TV, the signal via the coax and the power via the wire. And so it is with us. The signal comes in through the senses and the power comes in through the spirit, which is what we really are. And the spherical screen on which we experience our 3D reality may be thought of as our event horizon of the mind, and this is in fact a singularity. And this singularity is in fact what each one of us are, and the power that powers us, and makes us shine, comes directly from The One. And being one with The One we attain the realisation that the source of all this power is love because it is given to us with love. My teacher taught me; Love is Light is Life. This is the most profound truth in all existence.’
‘So, what you are saying, Ben,’ said Lloyd amazed, ‘is that all the light we see is in fact our own light? Even the light of the sun is us … shining?’
‘And our light,’ Ben added, ‘is God’s light, the light of The One, the source of all life, the source of all.’
‘Wow,’ exclaimed Lloyd.
‘Wow indeed!’ ‘Holy cow!’ ‘May God be praised,’ uttered the other three.
Ben continued,
‘And the mystery of all mysteries is the eternal being and not being of everything.
For example, your archaeologists have worked out that the universe is 4.5 billion years
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old, give or take, and it is generally accepted that we all live in one infinite universe. This truth may be and not be at the same time. When it is not being, it is being something else.
This something else is this. Each of us lives in his own, private universe, completely separate from everyone else’s. It is similar to other peoples’ private universes, but it is never the same. These universes may merge when we meet however. Say we meet, Lloyd, and say that I am non-telepathic, my best experience of your private universe, which is infinite like mine, is your physical body, you see? My experience may become deeper if we become friends and I gain a deeper insight into you. If I am telepathic, however, my experience expands into your experience of your own private universe, beyond the shell of your physical form. I can see beyond the physical.
‘The other thing about our private universe is that it is the mortal one, not us. It dies, not we, because we are eternal spirit, and our universe, which at its core is the body we inhabit, it ages and finally dies. But we do not. We go on and give birth to a new universe, which can be anything that The One may will. So, in a nutshell, our universe is only as old as our bodies, and all the history, archaeology and cosmology are all baked in, all programmed in the matrix if you like. And our private universe that I just described is the one that in actuality exists for each and every one of us, and it is the consensus universe that is illusory, it does not exist, except as a very elaborate hypothesis.’
‘So was Stephen Hawking wrong with his Bing Bang theory?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Actually, he was completely right, except he calculated the mathematics of his private universe, which was real, not the consensus one, which was the grand deception.
He calculated that the universe, all space and time, was born out of a singularity in a big bang, for want of a better idiom. Well, he was so right. Mathematics doesn’t lie. What Stephen Hawking failed to realise, right to his terminal breath, was that the singularity his calculations revealed was actually him. He calculated the birth and death of his own private universe, not the illusory, common one, which is neither born nor dies because it doesn’t exist, except as an idea. He calculated the mathematics of his own being, the poor wretch, however his mathematics couldn’t reveal the illusion for him. As an example, imagine trying to decipher the act of surfing a wave, or sailing an ocean, from a bunch of numbers and formulae on a blackboard. It is patently impossible.
‘So, in summary, the consensus universe is a non-reality made up of lies, theories, ideas and imaginings. It functions like a mental prison, however none of it is real. Think about it.’
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There was a pause in the conversation. Everyone had a sip of coffee and glanced out at the horizon and then up at the Sun, the blazing light, and they all entered a momentary trance and a thought passed through each of them.
‘That is my Sun and this is my infinite universe, separate and unique from all the others, and all the light is my light, and all my light is God’s light. And I am eternal, immortal, destined to live forever, while my infinite universe, the inner core of which is my physical body, is mortal, destined to die.’
In the end it was Sophia that broke the trance.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘a pelican. We should throw it a fish.’
…….
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