The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (18 page)

“Sharon, is that you?”

She managed a smile, and I glanced back at the door, concerned that the knife-bearing commander might have found a way inside.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You can stay here with us. You’ll be safe in this room. Nothing can hurt you.”

I walked a step closer and as gently as possible said, “I don’t want to stay. All this is an illusion.”

As I said that, three or four people turned and looked at me angrily.

“Please, Sharon,” I whispered. “Just come with me.”

Two of the closest stood up and walked over beside Sharon. “Get out of here,” one told me. “Leave her alone.”

“Don’t listen to him,” the other said to Sharon. “He’s crazy. We need each other.”

I stooped slightly so I could look directly into Sharon’s eyes. “Sharon, none of this is real. You’re dead. We have to find
a way out of here.”

“Shut up!” another person screamed. Four or five more people walked toward me, hate in their eyes. “Leave us alone.”

I began to back toward the door; the crowd moved toward me. Through the bodies I could see Sharon turning back to her hookah
hose. I turned and ran through the door, only to realize that I wasn’t outside. I was in an office of some kind, surrounded
by computers, filing cabinets, a conference table—modern, twentieth-century furniture and equipment.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here,” someone said. I turned around to see a middle-aged man looking at me over his reading
glasses. “Where’s my secretary? I don’t have time for this. What do you want?”

“Someone’s chasing me. I was trying to hide.”

“Good God, man! Then don’t come in here. I said I don’t have time for this. You haven’t the slightest idea what I have to
do today. Look at these case files. Who do you think will process them if I don’t?” I thought I saw a look of terror on his
face.

I shook my head and looked for another door. “Don’t you know you’re dead?” I asked. “This is all imagined.”

He paused, the look of terror shifting to anger, then asked, “How did you get in here? Are you a criminal?”

I found a door that led outside and ran out. The streets were now completely empty except for one carriage. It pulled ‘up
to the hotel across from me, and a beautiful woman, dressed in
evening attire, got out and glanced over toward me, then smiled. There was something warm and caring about her demeanor. I
dashed across the street toward her, and she paused to watch me approach, her smile coy and inviting.

“You’re alone,” she said. “Why don’t you join me?”

“Where are you going?” I asked tentatively.

“To a party.”

“Who’s going to be there?”

“I have no idea.”

She opened the door to the hotel and motioned for me to come with her. I followed aimlessly, trying to think of what to do.
We walked into the elevator and she pushed the button for the fourth floor. As we rode up, the sensation of warmth and caring
increased with each floor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her staring at my hands. When I looked, she smiled again and
pretended to have been caught.

The elevator opened and she led me down the hall to a particular door and knocked twice. After a moment the door was unlocked
and a man opened it. His face lit up at the sight of the woman.

“Come in!” he said. “Come in!”

She invited me to enter ahead of her, and as I walked in, a young woman reached over and took my arm. She was dressed in a
strapless gown and was barefooted.

“Oh, you’re lost,” she said. “Poor thing. You’ll be safe in here with us.”

Past the door I could see a man without a shirt. “Look at those thighs,” he commented, staring at me.

“He has perfect hands,” another said.

In a state of shock I realized the room was crowded with people in various stages of nudity and lovemaking.

“No, wait,” I said. “I can’t stay.”

The woman on my arm said, “You would go back out there? It takes forever to find a group like this. Feel the energy in here.
Not like the fear of being alone, huh?” She moved her hand across my chest.

Suddenly there was the sound of a scuffle on the other side of the room.

“No, leave me alone!” someone shouted. “I don’t want to be here.”

A young man no older than eighteen pushed several people away and ran out the door. I used the distraction to run out behind
him. Not waiting for the elevator, he bounded down the adjacent stairs and I followed. When I reached the street, he was already
on the other side.

I was about to shout for him to stop when I saw him freeze in terror. Ahead on the sidewalk was the commander, still holding
the knife, but this time facing the group of men who had watched me earlier. They were all talking at the same time, posturing
angrily. Abruptly one of the group pulled a gun, and the commander rushed toward him with the knife. Shots rang out, and the
commander’s hat and knife flew backward as the bullet pierced his forehead. He dropped to the ground with a thud, and as he
did, the other men stopped in midmotion and began to fade away until they disappeared completely. Just as quickly the man
on the ground also disappeared.

Across from me, the young man sat wearily down on the curb and put his head in his hands. I rushed up to him, my knees shaking.

“It’s okay,” I said. “They’re gone.”

“No, they’re not,” he said in frustration. “Look over there.”

I turned and saw the four men who had disappeared standing
across the street in front of the hotel. Unbelievably they were in the exact position they had been in when I had first seen
them. One puffed his cigar and the other checked his watch.

My heart skipped a beat as I also spotted the commander, standing across from them again, staring menacingly.

“This keeps happening over and over,” the young man said. “I can’t stand this anymore. Someone’s got to help me.”

Before I could say anything, two forms materialized to his right, but remained obscured, out of focus.

The young man stared at the forms for a long time, then, with a look of excitement on his face, said, “Roy, is that you?”

As I watched, the two forms moved toward him until he was completely hidden by their weaving shapes. After several minutes
he had completely disappeared, along with the two souls.

I stared at the empty curb where he had been sitting, feeling remnants of a higher vibration. In my mind’s eye I saw my soul
group again and felt their deep caring and love. Concentrating on the feeling, I was able to shake off the blanketing anxiety
and to amplify my energy in increments until finally I began to open up inside. Immediately the environment shifted to lighter
shades of gray and the town disappeared. As my energy increased, I was able to image Wil’s face, and instantly he was beside
me.

“Are you okay?” he asked, turning to embrace me. His expression showed immense relief. “Those illusions were strong, and you
willed yourself right into them.”

“I know. I couldn’t think, couldn’t remember what to do.”

“You were gone a long time; all we could do was send you energy.”

“Who do you mean by we?”

“All these souls.” Wil’s hand gestured outwardly.

When I looked fully, I could see hundreds of souls stretching
as far as I could see. Some were looking directly at us, but most appeared to be focused in another direction. I looked to
see where they were staring, following their gaze to several large swirls of energy far in the distance. When I concentrated
my focus, I realized that one of the swirls was in fact the town from which I had just escaped.

“What are those places?” I asked Wil.

“Mental constructions,” he replied, “set up by souls who in life lived very restrictive control dramas and could not wake
up after death. Many thousands of them exist out there.”

“Were you able to see what was happening when I was in the construction?”

“Most of it. When I focused on the souls nearby, I could pick up on their view of what was happening to you. This ring of
souls is constantly beaming energy into the illusions, hoping someone will respond.”

“Did you see the teenage boy? He was able to wake up. But the others didn’t seem to pay attention to anything.”

Wil turned to face me. “Do you remember what we saw during Williams’ Life Review? At first he couldn’t accept what was happening,
and he began to repress his death to the extent that he created a mental construction of his office.”

“Yes, I thought of that when I was down there.”

“Well, that’s how it works for everyone. If we die and we have been so immersed in our control drama and routine as a way
to repress the mystery and insecurity of life, to such a degree that we can’t even wake up after death, then we create these
illusions or trances so we can continue the same way of feeling safe, even after we enter the Afterlife. If Williams’ soul
group had not reached him, he would have entered one of the hellish places where you were. It’s all a reaction to Fear. The
people there
would be paralyzed with Fear if they didn’t find some way to ward it off, to repress it below consciousness. What they’re
doing is repeating the same dramas, the same coping devices, they practiced in life, and they can’t stop.”

“So these illusional realities are just severe control dramas?”

“Yes, they all fall within the general styles of the control dramas, except that they are more intense and nonreflective.
For example, the man with the knife, the commander, was no doubt an intimidator in the way he stole energy from others. And
he rationalized this behavior by assuming that the world was out to get him, and of course, in his life on Earth these expectations
drew just those kinds of people into his life, so his mental vision was fulfilled. Here he just created imaginary people to
be after him so he could reproduce the same situation.

“If he were to run out of people to intimidate and his energy were to fall, anxiety would begin to seep into consciousness
again. So he has to keep up the intimidator role constantly. He has to keep this particular kind of action going, the action
he learned long ago, the only action he knows that will preoccupy his mind sufficiently to kill the Fear. It is the action
itself—the compulsive, dramatic, high-adrenaline nature of the action—that pushes the anxiety so far into the background that
he can forget about it, repress it, and feel half at ease in his existence, at least for a little while.”

“What about the drug users?” I asked.

“In this case, they were taking passivity, the ‘poor me,’ to the extreme of projecting nothing but despair and cruelty on
the entire world, rationalizing a need to escape. Obsessively pursuing drugs still serves the function of preoccupying the
mind and repressing anxiety, even in the Afterlife.

“In the physical dimension drugs often produce a euphoria
quite like the euphoria that comes from love. The problem with this false euphoria, however, is that the body resists the
chemicals and counteracts them, which means that, as the drug is repeatedly used, it takes an increasingly larger dose to
reach the same effect, which eventually destroys the body.”

I thought of the commander again. “Something really strange happened down there. The man who was chasing me was killed, and
then he seemed to come back to life and start the drama all over again.”

“That’s how it works in this self-imposed Hell. All these illusions always play out and blow up in the end. If you had been
with someone who had repressed the mystery of life by eating great amounts of fat, a heart attack might have ended it. The
drug users eventually destroy their own bodies, the commander dies over and over, and so on.

“And it works the same way in the physical dimension: a compulsive control drama always fails, sooner or later. Usually it.
happens during the trials and challenges of life; routines break down and the anxiety rushes in. It is what’s called hitting
bottom. This is the time to wake up and handle the Fear in another way; but if a person can’t, then he or she goes right back
into the trance. And if one doesn’t wake up in the physical dimension, one might have difficulty waking up in the other as
well.

“These compulsive trances account for all horrible behavior in the physical dimension. This is the psychology of all truly
evil acts, the motivation behind the inconceivable behavior of child molesters, sadists, and serial monsters of all kinds.
They’re simply repeating the only behavior they know that will numb the mind and keep away the anxiety that comes from the
lostness they feel.”

“So you’re saying,” I interjected, “that there is no organized,
conspiratorial evil in the world, no satanic plot to which we fall prey?”

“None. There is only human fear and the bizarre ways that humans try to ward it off.”

“What about the many references in sacred texts and scriptures to Satan?”

“This idea is a metaphor, a symbolic way of warning people to look to the divine for security, not to their sometimes tragic
ego urges and habits. Blaming an outside force for everything bad was perhaps important at a certain stage in human development.
But now it obscures the truth, because blaming our behavior on forces outside ourselves is a way of avoiding responsibility.
And we tend to use the idea of Satan to project that some people are inherently evil so we can dehumanize the ones we disagree
with and write them off. It is time now to understand the true nature of human evil in a more sophisticated way and then to
deal with it.”

“If there is no satanic plot,” I said, “then ‘possession’ doesn’t exist.”

“That’s not so,” Wil said emphatically. “Psychological ‘possession’ does exist. But it is not the result of a conspiracy of
evil; it is just energy dynamics. Fearful people want to control others. That’s why certain groups try to pull you in and
convince you to follow them, and ask you to submit to their authority, or fight you if you try to leave.”

“When I was first drawn into that illusory town, I thought I had been possessed by some demonic force.”

“No, you were drawn in because you made the same mistake you made earlier: you didn’t just open up and listen to those souls;
you gave yourself over to them, as if they automatically had all the answers, without checking to see if they were con
nected and motivated by love. And unlike the souls who are divinely connected, they didn’t back away from you. They just pulled
you into their world, the same way some crazy group or cult might do in the physical dimension if you don’t discriminate.”