The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century (7 page)

“Right.”

“Similarly, we can detect certain frequencies with our senses. We can see visible light, we can feel heat, and we can hear vibrations in the air from about 40 to about 17,000 vibrations per second, which we call sound. Any others you know of?”

Paul thought for a moment, and said, “Taste and smell?”

“Actually, in those cases you're analyzing the molecular structure of matter. Your taste buds and nose are little chemical detectors.”

“So what else is there? That's sight, sound, and touch. We only have five senses.”

“There's one more sense that any doctor can tell you about, but most people overlook. It's in your inner ear, called the cochlea, and is a gravimeter. It measures a form of energy called gravity.”

“Our sense of balance?”

“Right. It's what allows you to sit up straight now
without falling over. Assuming you haven't had too much wine.” Noah smiled at his own joke.

“And I haven't,” Paul said, thinking that he rather liked this guy. Noah had saved his life and shown him the past, and was now trying to teach him something that seemed very odd but must be critically important if it was the information that could save the world.

“So you can tune into a few channels. Let's say, for convenience sake, four. Light, heat, sound, and gravity. Everybody knows about those, and everybody agrees on them. So it's like you have a TV with only four channels on its selector knob, even though the cable company has two hundred channels available.”

The picture of a coyote telling him these things popped into Paul's mind for a moment, and he shook it out before he started laughing. “Ok, go on,” he said.

Noah tilted his head to one side. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I'm with you.”

“Okay,” Noah said, waving the remote control at the TV like it was a magic wand. “So there are only a few channels you can receive, but there are many out there, because we know that the spectrum of energy is vast and seamless. So you only know a tiny bit of reality. Did you know, by the way, that dogs actually see smells?”

“No,” said Paul, hoping Noah wasn't going to pop into being a coyote again.

“Seriously,” Noah said. “When it happens in humans, it's called synesthesia, and considered a brain disease. People who see sound or taste colors. But with dogs, much of the visual part of the brain is used to process information from the nose. Dogs actually see smells. They create smell maps in their minds, and a blind dog can function almost as well as a sighted dog as long as there's a scent trail for him to follow.”

“Another channel?”

“More or less. Pardon the digression. I rather like dogs.”

“I can understand why.”

Noah nodded as if it was a perfectly normal conversation, to talk about being a dog and the nature of reality, and said, “Ok, so we have these two facts in summary. One is that everything in creation is made out of energy. Everything originated from a single energy, the subtlest energy, and as that energy became more and more coarse, it diversified and came into being as X-rays and light and gravity and sound and the whole thing. Then it congealed into matter and the physical universe banged into existence. This is the creation story as told by both physics and Genesis and John. First there was God, then God made light. Or, ‘In the beginning was the Word.' You understand?”

“I think so,” Paul said. “First there was the most subtle energy, the finest energy, and it slowed down and be
came coarser and coarser, making all the energies we can detect, and then some of it slowed down even more-the way slowed-down or cooled-down liquid water becomes solid ice. Thus it became matter, and the energy and matter together are what we call the physical universe.”

“Right,” said Noah. “Exactly right. And so this then raises two questions: one, what
was
that First Energy that everything else was made from; and, two, is it possible that we can detect that First Energy with our nervous systems? Is it one of the ‘channels' we can receive?” He hit the power button on the remote control, and the screen of the TV turned black. He pointed the remote control at Paul, as if it could bring the answer from him.

Paul looked at the remote control pointed at him, and felt his mind go fuzzy. What was the first energy? X-rays? Gamma rays? They're all things that are easily detected by machines: they couldn't be the most subtle, most original energy in the universe…

“Here's a clue,” Noah said. “If you could detect that First Energy, you'd discover that at that level, the entire physical universe is solid. It's
all
made of that stuff, even the apparently empty spaces between things, because the empty space is part of the Creation, too.”

Paul nearly jumped off his chair. “It's God!”

“Right!” Noah said. “Or, more correctly, it's The Creator of the Universe. You folks have so badly munged
up the word ‘God' with your televangelists and all. It's important to differentiate between Everything That Is and some old man with a beard and a big stick who goes after people who join the wrong church or don't send in enough money.”

“But what about those people who see God as an old man on a throne? Is He real?”

“Of course He is, if they believe,” Noah said. “And there can be great power in such total belief, although if it's lived without a larger understanding it can lead to problems like religious wars. You'll learn more about that from your next teacher.”

“Wow,” Paul said, feeling a sudden breathlessness, the same he'd felt years ago as a child when he'd gone to Midnight Mass with a friend and heard Handel's
Messiah.
He looked around the room for a moment, thinking
everything I'm looking at is made of and by God!

“Do you think you can detect this most subtle energy with your human—or even a mammalian—nervous system?”

“I don't know,” said Paul, but as he spoke the words he had an intuition that he
could
detect the presence of God. He'd done it, and he knew it. That Midnight Mass. Looking out an airplane window on his first trip in a jet. When he'd fallen in love with Wendy when he was sixteen…“Love!” he said, interrupting his own train of thought.

“Wonderful!” Noah said, tossing the remote control onto the couch where he'd been sitting. “Even the teachings which will help you understand the Secret are not secrets, as you now see, hear, and feel. People mouth them all the time, yet they fail to
know
them, to live them. You'll find this, for example, verbatim in the Bible at the end of one John four. You'll find it again in a hundred other places, including Deuteronomy six, at the beginning of the Gospel of John, and in the sacred writings of virtually every religion of the world.” He pointed his finger at Paul. “You have begun a work, the work of saving the world, from which you can never turn back.”

“I know that, now,” Paul said.

“So it's time for me to go, as you have other lessons to learn from other teachers and I have other work to do at this critical time on the Earth.”

“Not yet…”

“I must,” Noah said with a broad, loving smile. “But don't think it hasn't been fun.”

And Noah vanished.

Paul jumped up, ready for another apparition, or a coyote to run from the kitchen, or a voice to begin talking from the ceiling, but nothing happened. The room was empty. He knew, somehow, that Noah had left and he was alone.

“Hello?” he said, but the only answer was the sound of a siren down on Eighth Avenue. “Noah?” There was no reply.

He stood up and walked through the apartment; the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, but it was empty. He opened the door into the hallway, but there was nothing but light-blue linoleum and off-yellow walls lit by a fluorescent bulb in the ceiling.

Paul closed the door and walked over to the bookshelf, which he scanned for a moment with a growing feeling of excitement and anticipation. He'd had the book his entire life, the wisdom in his hand, and never understood it.

He pulled his mother's Bible off the top shelf, thinking about love. Turning it to the Book of Deuteronomy, where the Ten Commandments were given, he read:
And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

He flipped the pages to the Gospel of john, and read:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. AU things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Could it be? Paul wondered. Right in front of me all the time? That the universe was created by an energy that humans have since called God? That everything, from the stars to the taxis to the dog on the street is made of that same stuff? And we've need that energy, just as we named 2000 cycles-per-second “sound,” or a few trillion cycles-per-second “light.” But the name we've
given that energy, the presence of our Creator, when we feel it in the normal course of life is “love,” and built into our nervous systems is the ability to detect it, to know it?

With trembling hands, he turned to the
fourth chapter
of First john, and read:
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

He read it again and whispered softly, “So it is true. They've been trying to tell me for two thousand years.” Slowly Paul put the Bible back, walked to the sofa, and sat down. He leaned forward, put his face in his hands, feeling an incredible loss for all the wasted, frightened years. “We all had it wrong all along,” he said aloud. He knew it was a breakthrough, a total change in his life, a completely new understanding.

He took out his notepad and wrote,
The energy we call love is the most pure and delicate and powerful way our nervous systems, our minds, can touch the mind of God. It's how we know God, for God is love.
He'd have to share it with others. It could change the world!

And he knew it was only the beginning of his schooling in the Mysteries.

Chapter Six

Eggs and Tabasco

Paul Abler awoke the next morning from a wild kaleidoscope of dreams. Most were of visits to ancient times and places; to Sumeria and Palestine, to Nippur and Jerusalem, to the priests of Enlil, and to Jesus wandering with a small band of men and women across the remote deserts of the Galilee. In each place Paul had been given some great Truth, a great knowledge, which he had to take to the people of the twenty-first century, lest all die in a massive, self-created disaster. Yet, awakening, he couldn't remember the details of any of the Truths, except what he'd learned the afternoon before from Noah and written in his notepad.

Wan morning light filled his bedroom, illuminating the pile of books he'd brought home the night before. They were the result of his spending hours in four different bookstores, finding and buying the sacred texts and
commentaries of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, as well as everything he could find on shapeshifters, angels, and Noah. He'd fallen asleep, around two in the morning, with
The Practice of the Presence of God
, by the seventeenth century Carmelite monk and dishwasher Brother Lawrence, on his chest. Only total fatigue and exhaustion tore him from it and threw him into the world of sleep.

The clock beside him said it was twenty-five minutes after six, and the rapidly brightening sunlight told him the cold gray clouds of the day before had dispersed and this would be a sunny February morning. He climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom, wearing only his Jockey shorts, when the phone rang.

He detoured to the kitchen and picked up the wireless phone from its cradle on the wall. “Hello?”

“Paul, what the hell are you two trying to do to me?!” shrieked a familiar-sounding voice.

“What?” Paul said. “Who…”

“This is Rich! It's happened three times now! Twice last night when I was alone in elevators, and then this morning in my bathroom. Call him off or I'll have both your butts in jail this afternoon!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The devil!”

“What?”

“You know!” Rich screamed over the phone. “Red
coat, red skin, goatee, horns, pitchfork, smells like sulfur. You know what I'm talking about!”

“You saw the devil?”

“Saw?
Saw?
He keeps asking if I'm ready to sign the contract!”

“What contract?”

“Don't give me that. This has gone too far. The first time, maybe, that was funny. But this is too much. You call him off, or, so help me, Paul, I'll turn your life into a hell you can't imagine. You'll never get another job, you'll never get credit, and you'll never find a landlord east of China who'll rent you an apartment! Do you hear me?”

“Rich, calm down…”

“Whadaya mean, calm down! You got some weird guy doing parlor tricks in your apartment, and he makes some idiotic remark to me, and now he's following me around throwing holograms or some kind of illusion at me.” He paused for a moment, as if a thought had occurred to him, then continued, “Or he gave me some kind of a drug. I'll bet that's it. I'll bet it was in that business card, in the paper, and when it burned up I smelled the smoke and that's how it got into me, or it was on the paper and went through my skin and he burned the paper to destroy the evidence. He had to know what kind of drug it was, because he implied what kind of hallucination I'd have. I tell you, pal, this is one trip I'm never gonna forget, and neither are you!”

“Rich, I really don't have any idea what you're talking about…”

“Bull!” Rich snorted. “You probably think this is funny; old Rich, a big-shot lawyer, squirming and freaked out. Maybe you're even gonna write it up, it'll be your big story to sell to some paper. Make you the famous reporter again. Well, I'll show you squirming and freaked out, buddy! I'm on the board of directors of this building, and you're out of here. Do you understand? Out of here!”

There was the abrupt sound of Rich's phone being slammed down, and then Paul heard only the dial tone. “Twice in two days,” he said to himself as he pushed the button to hang up the phone, walking toward the bathroom and shower that he hoped would make him feel like today was a fresh start. As he walked by the living room, he glanced at the sofa where Noah had sat, and wondered who or what the next angel-he much preferred the word to “ghost”—would be, do, and say. If another angel came at all.

Seven-thirty, an hour later, Paul walked into the Fashion Coffee Shop at the comer of Eighth Avenue and 27
^th
Street. The restaurant was standard New York issue, with Formica-topped tables, metal and plastic chairs, good food, and a kitchen staff who worked with the cheerfulness and speed that their heavily accented English proved was immigrant-working-to-make-it-in-the-big-city.

Mary was waiting on tables and Paul was pleased to see her familiar face. A twenty-one year old psychology student at Hunter College on Manhattan's East Side, she usually worked the breakfast/lunch shift that coincided with the once-a-week breakfasts Paul had treated himself to over the past six months.

In little bits and pieces he'd leaned that she had a small apartment a few blocks off Central Park, paid for by her parents, and she worked to cover al her other non-tuition and non-rent expenses. She didn't have a current boyfriend both because of her notions about chastity—not shared by most of the men who'd expressed an interest in dating her—and her desire to get through college before making “any permanent plans.” The top of her head came up to Paul's eyes, and she had a pleasant figure that skirted the edge of tomboy. Long chestnut hair cascaded down her back, gathered into a ponytail by a pink Scrunche, and her blue-gray eyes often seemed to be looking into some deep place within Paul when she listened to him talk about himself or his goals as a reporter.

They'd been friendly and flirtatious with each other for the past few months, although Paul had been keeping his reserve, as he'd felt there had been some sort of a commitment in his relationship with Susan.

“How ya doin', Paul?” Mary said as he headed for the table he liked by the front window.

“Fine,” he said. “How're you, Mary?”

She walked past him, close enough he could smell her perfume, a faint flowery musk, and she said, “I'm great. But I'll get better.” She winked, grinned, and continued on over to the coffee maker.

As he sat down, feeling pleasantly warmed by her presence, she put a cup of black coffee in front of him and said, “Lessee. I'll bet you'd like a Greek omelet, whole wheat toast, home fries with onions, and Tabasco?”

He smiled at her, noticing the twinkle in her blue-gray eyes, and said, “Exactly.”

“Even though you had the same thing yesterday?” She scrunched up her face as if she'd just noticed something important. “This is the first time in six months you've been in here twice in a week. Normally it's every Thursday morning, just like clockwork, but here you are on Friday morning, too.”

“I decided to treat myself twice,” Paul said. “Couldn't stay away from your smile.”

She beamed, spun around with an exaggerated gesture as if she were a ballerina, and headed back toward the kitchen, humming along with the music the cooks were listening to on the radio.

Paul opened the first of the two newspapers he'd brought with him, and flipped the pages to the want ads. Sipping his coffee, he scanned the columns of four
different pages and found ads for copywriters, book editors, and newsletter writers, but nothing in the field of journalism that seemed close to a real reporter's job. He put aside that paper and opened the second, hoping for better luck. It was
The New York Daily Tribune
, and he winced at the irony of looking for a new job in the publication of his old employer.

Mary came over to his table with silverware wrapped in a paper napkin and a plate with his toast. She was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt that had
Gardening Cultivates The Soul
printed over an impressionistic drawing of colorful flowers. Paul lifted the newspaper and she put them on the table. She put her right hand on her hip, canted it slightly, and said, “Reading the want ads?” as if it were a joke.

Paul felt his ears grow hot and knew they were flushing. “Yeah. Got laid off yesterday.”

“You're kidding!” Her tone changed to one of concern. “You're a reporter. They don't lay off reporters.”

“They can lay off anybody.”

She smiled and lifted her chin in a mock gesture of pride. “Not the waitresses. The lower you are on the food chain, the more essential you become.”

He laughed. “You learn that in psychology class? Or are you a business major, too?”

“I learned that in the school of hard knocks,” she said with a mock upper-class sniff as she walked away.

She went back to the kitchen and brought out his omelet, putting it on the table in front of him along with the Tabasco. He moved the newspapers to the side so he could read while he ate.

“Bon appetit,” she said, using the French pronunciation. Before he could reply she was off in the direction of two elderly women who'd just walked into the restaurant.

Paul opened the Tabasco and poured it over his omelet, took a bite and savored the vinegary hot taste mingled with the feta, onions, and tomatoes of the omelet. With his free left hand, he turned the paper to the comics' section, and then looked down at the far left corner to see what was happening with Doonesbury. It was the continuation of a story theme he'd been reading for the past week, and as he read the panels he didn't notice the man walking by until he sat down in the chair opposite Paul.

“How ya doin'?” the man said, his voice sounding like there was coarse sand in his throat. Paul guessed he was in his fifties, and probably homeless. He had the broad, lined face of Irish ancestry and years of alcohol, broken veins spidering across his nose and cheeks, his fingers cracked and dirty like antique leather that's been left out in the rain for years, his fingernails yellowed and striated. He wore two hooded pullover sweatshirts, the inner one red and the outermost gray, a black stocking
cap that barely held in wild strands of greasy gray hair, and as he had sat down, Paul noticed his pants were army camouflage fatigues. The smells of body odor, urine, and wood smoke surrounded him like an invisible mist.

“I'm fine,” Paul said, wondering what was going on. After Noah, he was ready for anything.

“Good eggs?” the man said. “I see you like the hot sauce.”

“Yeah, they are,” Paul said. “You want some?”

“Nah,” the man said. “I had my breakfast a few hours ago. Cooked up some grits with cheese, and put a couple of poached eggs on 'em. They're good with hot sauce, too, but you want to get something with a little more character than just that Tabasco. I'm partial to JoB's Chilipaya, although Odin's Feast makes a great hot garlic sauce, too.”

Paul nodded, trying to take in the idea of a homeless gourmet. “Coffee?”

“That's a good idea,” the man said, reaching into his pants pocked and rummaging around. He brought out four one-dollar bills, carefully unfolded them, and put one on the table. “I pay my own way. Can collecting was good last night.”

Paul nodded and waved at Mary, pointing at his coffee cup and then the man sitting opposite him, and she nodded and headed for the coffeepot.

“My name's Jim,” the man said, reaching out his hand.

Paul shook it, surprised at how cold and firm it was, and said, “Paul.”

Mary put the coffee cup, a napkin, and a spoon in front of Jim with an undisguised look of disapproval. “Is everything okay?” she said to Paul, not giving Jim any eye contact.

“Anything else for you, Jim?” Paul ignored her implied question. He knew a part of her job that she disliked–but her continued employment depended on-was preventing homeless people from reaching the restrooms. By staking Jim to himself, Paul gave him a bit of respectability, saving her the unpleasant task of throwing him out.

Jim shook his head. “Coffee's fine, ma'am,” he said, even though Mary kept her head and eyes pointed at Paul. She looked at Paul and raised an eyebrow, as if to say,
Do you really want to get into this?
so Paul added, “Mine is, too, Mary.”

“I'm glad,” she said in a neutral tone, giving Jim no encouragement in case there was a next time, and left.

Jim watched her backside for a moment as she walked off with a rigid step, and said, “I don't believe I'll leave her much of a tip. Whatever happened to human civility? I served my country in Vietnam; I paid my taxes for better than twenty years; and I was born in this
country, which is more than half the people in this city can say. You know, the poor get no respect.”

“Maybe she's having a bad day,” Paul said, not wanting to make the situation worse for Mary.

Jim leaned forward as if imparting a secret. “Fact is, Paul, she's afraid. Her deepest fear is that she'll end up, someday, just like me. And the truth is, she's closer to it than she could ever imagine.” He picked up his coffee cup and looked at the white steam misting on its surface. “Everybody is, in fact.”

“Are you an angel?” Paul said, figuring he may as well just get right to the issue. If it turned out to be a foolish question, at least it wasn't like he'd asked it during a job interview or of a neighbor.

Jim pulled two sugar packets out of the cup on the table, tore them both open, and drained them into his cup. As he stirred the coffee, he looked up at Paul and said, “No, I'm just a human being, just like you.”

“How come you sat down here?”

Jim tapped the spoon on the edge of the thick white porcelain mug and carefully placed it on the napkin. He picked up the cup and blew across its top. “You looked like you could use some company.”

“Seriously?” Paul took a bite of his eggs. The feta cheese and onions overpowered the smell from Jim's clothes.