MOMENTS IN ETERNITY

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10 Jan 2024

Photo credit: Andrei Pobiedzinski
Maat followed the tall old man through the desert. The man wore a lengthy white robe, has a long blanched hair and his blue tainted eyes radiated torrents of white light. Maat felt uneasy about the old man’s fixed gaze. The old man turned away, his back facing Maat and said to him
“it is the merit and not the intention of a man that fulfills his earthly purpose”; his voice was soft but firm.
The old man has perfect musical voice, Maat thought. He avoided the blazing eyes of the slightly bent adept. Yes, he looked like one, Maat observed. The old man was young by the suppleness and glow of his olive-pinkish skin. Maat was amazed by this remarkable contrast: a bent, slow-walking man probably in his 90s with the skin of a baby.
“Old age is an illusion for the soul just like birth. The Soul is never born and can never die”, he tutored Maat with a calm poise.
The old man walked faster than a snail. The journey to the pyramids of Cheops was slower than the normal pace. Maat wished the old man walked faster because his feet were burning under the hot sands. The old man came to his habitual halt; a sandalwood staff in hand supported his posture and grounded his energies.
“A man of spiritual inclination must make patience his supreme asset”, he told Maat, wiping off sweat from Maat’s forehead with a circular wave of his right hand and he continued with his oration “The whole of this physical universe took a hundred millions of years to form”.
Maat was edgy. He noted that the old man was also a mind reader.
“A chela before his guru is like an object before the mirror. The constant and steady emission of light from his teacher reflects his churning emotions, his virtues and inadequacies”. The old man chirped without restriction.
Maat hesitated but he summoned the courage to speak.
“Do I need to express myself even if a guru could read my thoughts?”
“Yes. The true adept never intrude in the personal space of his pupil. What you reserved as secret cannot be exposed except you disclose it to others knowingly or unwittingly. This makes it important to guide and guard our feelings and thoughts”
“But it is often said nothing is a secret under the heavens”
“You are right. Every registered emotion or thought entertained by an individual is subtly stored in the divine archives and the worthy ones can examined it from there. This is because the mind of man, the universes and the creator are intricately linked. The adepts can decode this intricacy when it becomes a necessity and even then, not without permission”
A brown eagle circled high in the sky. Maat raised his eyes up to it. With its wings stretched and relaxed, it was soaring with and in the air currents. The old man was bare-footed yet he was extremely calm and Maat wondered if he had shielded off the heat from under his feet with a strange power. The old man smiled for the first time and pierced him with a profound gaze. Maat sensed a sudden coolness under his own feet and then an utter serenity; the heat has disappeared. He was still enjoying this blissful state when the old man tapped his shoulder.
“Why are you lost in thoughts? I just asked you a question”, he reminded Maat
“Master, what was your question”, for the first time he addressed the old man as master.
“What do you think of the Eagle?”
“It’s a strong bird”
“Is it just that?”
“It gets what it wants”
“I need more answers?”
“It loves the sky”
“Go on, dear”
“It …Ehm…it ehm…” Maat tried to find more reasons without success.
The old man smiled profusely and nodded in satisfaction and then resumed his normal serene attitude. “You have a good analytical mind. Reasoning is one of the numerous abilities of the mind but it is limited like its mentor, the mind. The power of the mind is a million times greater than the greatest force that can cause an earthquake but the power of soul is a hundred billion times greater than the mind. Soul has the immense power to transcend infinite space instantaneously”
Both began to chat as they trudge along the harmless desert sands.
“Does this explanation have any link with the eagle?”
“Yes. It is the mind that produces scores of questions in man. Without it, there wouldn’t be questions. Furthermore, the Eagle so much loves the sky, gliding through the clouds without boredom. It has built its home there and ever relaxed and satisfied with soaring ever high. The Soul is like that eagle and doesn’t belong to the earth it loves so much.”
Maat looked at the Eagle in the sky. This time it was actually gliding with wings streamlined. The old man observed the scenario with him. “Learn to work with the matrix of creation and all your agitations and distractions will drift away. Life is not about confrontations; it is about harmony, oneness with the spirit of life, the matrix of creation.”
The great pyramids towered in sight. The old man began to move with fast steps. Soon he was racing like a space craft. Maat did not even try to catch up with him; it would be an impossible feat even if he were a champion athlete. After about ten minutes of walking without the old man, he noticed him sitting on the tapering end of a pyramid, his white robe dazzling under the sun beams like a mirror in the sun.
Maat shielded his eyes with both palms. In a jiffy, the old man descended the pyramid and raced back towards him. Maat was puzzled that the old man was faster than any known jet. He was now standing erect but his skin had assumed the form of a wrinkled sheet, wrinkles more prominent on the forehead.
“What about a wrinkled old man racing like a jet?” he asked Maat with a smile. Maat was speechless, dazed from perplexity. The old man held Maat’s right shoulder and resumed his unending homily.
“We as souls give attributes and animations to life’s wonderful pictures. It is the will of man that accepts or declines the truths of life; soul can assume the role of an old man or a child but its true role is immortality. Its other roles are modified by the flesh and mind.”
White rocks of the desert lie immobile and indifferent to the presence of the molten air around them. Both the master and pupil got closer to their destination. The sphinxes, with their eternal gaze keeping vigil over the pyramids, loomed in sight. Maat wondered why the ancients decided to build a stone depicting a human face and lion’s body.
The old man, aware of his thought, told him that the virtues of patience, courage and serenity were enshrined in the sphinx which is symbolic of man’s journey to eternity. Maat had read about the ancient Egypt and the pyramids before him looked exactly as books described them.
“Is this truly the valley of the kings?” he asked the old man.
“Yes, it is. The Valley of the Kings is not only burial places of the pharaohs and their queens. The pyramids are also sacred places where initiation into the mysteries of life are held outside the profane eyes of the uninitiated”
“Master, but why are initiations conducted in the tombs?”
“Our people knew death was not the end to life; it is a portal onto the great hall of unlimited life and the beginning of immortality. Like the gnats of India, the pyramids enable the presence of the dead which saddles us with responsibility to virtuous lives. The student of life contemplates on this mystery in order to attain the greater illumination, merging of the lower and higher selves and then union with the divine spirit.”
The old man cracked two pieces of rock together, muttered a strange intonation and the gigantic stone gate of the pyramid opened slowly. They moved silently in what looked like a dark tunnel but it was actually a long portal with solid stairs that spirally ascends into inner chambers, the last which correspond to the zenith of the pyramid. Both of them sat on a saffron pedestal, feet tucked in lotus composure.
“We will be back here at some point in the future. This space travel is enough in order to keep the integrity of your material atoms”, the old man told Maat. He smeared Maat’s nasal bridge with his right thumb and both of them began to speed off in a whirlwind. After few seconds, the duo dematerialized via a roof and rematerialized onto Maat’s bedroom in light bodies.
Maat shivered; his body temperature was exceedingly high. When he opened his eyes, the same old man was seated on a lotus feet with his penetrating gaze fixed on Maat’s nasal bridge. Maat was very scared because he did not know how the old man got into his bedroom with every entrance closed. Few moments ago, he was meditating on space travel without the slightest insight that an actual space flight could take place.
The old man interlaced the fingers of his right hand on a specific spot below Maat’s Medulla oblongata and Maat felt an instant normal temperature. He walked towards the secured door and he waved Maat a flash of smile.
“I will come back for you but not until I reunite you with Rana, an old master of yours. We, the masters of outer space, have our various specialties”
“Please wait. What is your name and why was I called Maat during the space travel?” I asked for clarification
“My name is Manu Hanu and I live in a beautiful city located in the sun. I teach space travel and exploration. Maat means ‘Truth and that is your password to unlock the borders and doors in the spatial countries”
Manu Hanu flashed a radiant smile and raised his right palm to me in blessing and then walked through my closed door.
It’s 2am of March 21, 2004.