Scaling a mountain can be a tedious task for a lone climber in treacherous terrain. The action can be particularly hazardous if an individual’s primary motivation is not based on mountain climbing. And yet, I am here, north of Karakoram, along the border of China and India, seeking a cave, in a place where the great Takla Makan desert touches upon the steppes of a mountain range in the Kun-Lun-Shan.
In this cave, two men sitting in meditation await my arrival. Occasionally I sense their subtle guidance as an experience of mind, assisting me whenever fear trickles into my mental posture of concentrated calm.
My journey began some time ago in another place.
For the past four years I have been working with the Ocean Systems Communications Group. After acquiring sufficient funds, and the necessary diplomatic sanctions, we were able to set up a research station on the northeastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. I headed a project team concerned with unraveling the mystery of communication chains among schools of fish. Four months into the work, while gathering information for a computer data base, we decided to invite a guest speaker to the Institute. The topic was left relatively open, with a stipulation that the theme should cover some aspect of “communication,” or “understanding.”
Someone from another team heard about our search for a speaker, and suggested that we listen to a spiritual master on the subject. At first, I experienced some constraint concerning listening to a mystic, since my concepts on scientific methodology were not linked to anything mystical. That was how I felt at the time. Nevertheless, the idea sounded intriguing, though not scientific.
After some preliminary research, we invited two men. One was an Afghan adept, a world renowned Sufi master whose brilliant efforts had already enhanced many areas of human endeavor. The other, a Sufi in his way, was a Swami, a monk, who had been raised by, and trained with, the Himalayan masters of the cave monasteries in India.
Both men were well known in the West as well as the East, and highly respected, thought not completely understood. They had not known each other before in any worldly conventional sense. Yet, on the day they met and spoke at the Institute, the audience knew that these were two extraordinary beings, at a level of consciousness we had not yet begun to experience.
One of many interesting aspects of their visit was related to apparel. They did not appear in the usual garb most people erroneously expect to see Eastern sages dressed in. Both men wore superbly cut business suits of lightweight material, suited for the tropics. One was clean shaven with a modishly long haircut, while the other sported a neatly clipped beard and moustache.
They were highly conversant in sciences, and other worldly affairs. They had studied at several universities around the world, aside from having been trained by people with the highest evolved consciousness on this planet.
We learned, as I suspected, that religions in general, and most of the ritualistic activity associated with them, were an offshoot, a degeneration, or a kind of low-level but well-intentioned derivative of what has been called the Way, or the Path, by all fully realized mystics across the centuries. Teachers of the Way have always existed on Earth, adapting the Teaching to the times and cultures in which they operated, continuously assisting humanity in terms of evolution of being.
The Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Plato, Jesus, Muhammad, Rumi, and other supreme masters of the Path, each to his own way, and capacity, had left a legacy for contemplation, while the chain of transmission of the Teaching was always passed on. This is so, regardless of a large segment of humanity’s relative ignorance, and lack of true understanding in these matters.
Each of our guest speakers spoke briefly on his particular approach to spiritual enlightenment and extra dimensional perception. Methodologies varied slightly, though they were both esoteric from our point of view, but the goal was the same: A plane of conscious existence wherein the distinction between humans and the Ultimate Source of Truth vanishes. A Completed Human, ‘The Perfect Man.’ What was astonishing to me was the premise: At that level of being, communication was across boundaries, instantaneous and correct. The results of species interchange at any other level was only incidental to Truth.
The speakers, in their deep wisdom, clarified a point crucial to the success of our project. If we were to understand how the life path of ocean species was affected by their communication, we would have to question rigorously the fundamental basis of our assumptions.
A case in point was solidified nicely when Christie Lambert, a beautiful young lady and oceanographer, challenged the Sufi master with an assertion; “Sir,” she said, “being a scientist, I’m trained in an experimental tradition. I’m not prone to accepting anything without proof. How de we know that your spiritual approach, with contemplation, meditation, concentration and such mystical practices I’ve heard about, will enhance our understanding of nature?”
The Sufi smiled and said to her, “Suppose I asked my friend, the Swami, to disappear before your eyes, and he did so, would you accept such an act as ‘proof’ of his spiritual prowess or powers?”
“Any good magician can disappear,” Christie retorted. “Exactly so, young lady,” the Swami said, chuckling as he spoke, “then,” he continued, “if any good magician can pull off such a trick….”
“What would you accept as ‘proof ’?” The Sufi finished the Swami’s thought, or so it seemed. He, too, was smiling. It appeared as if both men knew exactly what the other had in mind. The lecture area was silent save for an atmosphere charged with expectant mental illumination. I experienced what at best, I could describe as an intuitive tingling, a sort of group telepathic communion that everyone in the room shared by way of the two masters, who served as an anchor for a chain of consciousness.
Christie was surprised by their response. She told me later that she had been expecting an elaborate pseudo-scientific explanation on the suggested vanishing act. Instead, the burden of proof had been dropped in her lap, and rightly so.
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