Light Bathby Eric Francis
and Part One (An Open Letter to the Space Brothers) From aboard the Mothership Dawn, April 2005 THE LIGHT HYDROGEN POND. One level up, and third door on the left. I collected my leather bag, thinking nothing of leaving my carry-on and laptop case behind. Fourth and sixth densities. Space critters with Holiday Inn pencils monitoring activity on Earth back to the days of Atlantis, which they called Numenor, which I had even heard of. Some old astrology files I could go over in their library. It was all seeming perfectly normal. I walked out of the conference room, finding myself in an immense corridor that I hadn't quite noticed the scale of when arriving with the entourage some time before. The corridor was long, like a highway, and seemed to vanish into the distance. Right in front of me was the entrance to something that was obviously an elevator. I don't know why I say obviously, but it was. There was one button, glowing dimly yellow; I pushed it; it was a heat sensor and didn't move. The door opened, splitting apart into five segments and retracting into the walls around it, then closing again after I stepped in. Inside, there was one large blue button, so I touched that with my elbow. The door opened instantly, and I was looking out at a different place. I walked out, turned left and started to count three doors on the left side, which were separated by about 100 meters each -- a long walk between them. The third door was marked by an H, and with a little drawing of a hydrogen molecule. It opened. I was standing in front of an ocean. Okay, a very large lake, which, like the corridor downstairs, seemed to disappear into the distance. High above me, the sky was artificial, but the light had depth to it, and no one source. I would estimate that the ceiling was about 30 or 50 meters up, but it was impossible to tell. There seemed to be a slight curve, but I could not tell if it was an optical illusion. Studying the color, it looked like blue-green, but when I stared at it, it had an orange hue. This seemed impossible, since green and orange are opposite colors, but I could clearly resolve both. As I looked up into this mix, I got the image of an isosceles triangle: blue to green, and then orange extending out slightly in my direction. First the image of the triangle seemed to be mixed with the colors; then it seemed to be behind me; then, it was clearly in my mind. With that recognition, a feeling flushed through my body, and I had the sense that I understood something profound about myself -- but I did not know what. Whatever it was, I was in awe of an inner awareness that seemed to reach perfect focus, intuitively and emotionally. I stood there, aware only of my breathing and the sense of balance associated with the colors and the shape. Then, three words came to me, feeling like the solution to a puzzle: Aquarius - Pisces - Leo. It occurred to me to ask Voool about this, but that thought disappeared, because I already understood. Still, filled with this sense of understanding, I looked around the space. Like the sky, the surface of the pond had a strange ambiguity. The liquid that filled it was denser than air, but seemed lighter than water. Where it met the air was not a clean, reflective line, like when normal water meets regular air. Rather, there was a space where the two seemed to blend gradually. I had always imagined that where the surface of water met air, there was an infinitely small region where there was a perfect mix of air and water molecules, and how strange it must be right there. Here, the relationship between the two elements happened in a wider space. It was almost like a heavy mist hung over the surface of the pond, which dissolved to water in one direction and into air in the other. It was very inviting. Next to me, there was a kind of dressing area: a large white table with white benches, which looked like they were made of marble. In fact, the whole space had the feeling of ancient Greece, or ancient someplace, but idealized to an extreme, soaked in soft light, like a Maxfield Parrish painting. That I was totally alone having this experience added to the art-like quality. Then something occurred to me: I had not emailed the horoscope. But as fast as the thought arose, it disappeared. It seemed like I could not worry about anything for long here, like fear was lighter and had less gravity, or less density. Yes, that was exactly what it was: clearing through fear felt more like moving strands of cotton than like moving rock. And it seemed to leave no emotional residue. With this recognition, I was also aware that I was feeling fear at the time I was doing so. To my right, about 100 meters or more around the surface, was a platform. I assumed it was for diving. I walked toward it, thinking I would climb up there and get a better view. So, I walked, aware of how my heavy hiking boots seemed to track against the surface of the shore with perfection. The platform was higher than it looked in the distance, and I climbed up the stairs. Thinking back, I must have ascended about 15 meters, the height of a three-story building, to a deck wide enough for several people to stand on comfortably. Without thinking, I took off my bag and set it down, sat down and undid my boots, and started to peel off my clothing. I forgot that I am not the type to dive from high places; not the type to go into water I don't know. I do not like to swim in lakes, and I don't like to swim in pools (the chemicals are disgusting), but I will, occasionally, reluctantly. On Earth, I only really like to swim in the ocean, which is the only water I trust. None of this occurred to me. I stood there by the edge, naked, looking not down but out, positioned myself, and remembered to push with some extra thrust as I went over the edge. Descending, I had long enough on the way for just one thought: Hmmm. What have you just done? Right about then, I mixed with the surface. I say mixed because that's what it felt like. I didn't really pierce the surface; it more felt like I became this lighter substance, and plunged in. I was aware of a couple of things. One is that I was moving with what felt like incredible velocity. The diving platform was high, but my speed plunging through this fluid seemed to be out of proportion to the height. My buoyancy was about neutral. I must have been a little heavier than whatever this stuff was, because I seemed to be sinking with no effort, and as I curved my back, I seemed to level off. I was in liquid, but the quality of it seemed more aerodynamic than water. The second thing I was aware of was the immediate, stunning sense of not being alone. I opened my eyes. There seemed to be thousands of specks of light in the distance, each of which had a distinct presence, and which grew brighter as I became aware of them, and their colors grew more intense. Their strength, their signal, grew stronger with my awareness. A moment later, I felt an incredibly gentle presence right behind me, like a fish brushing up against my back, but strong and deliberate and confident. She was deeply feminine, with softness and strength. I seemed to feel a long bulk of hair flowing freely. I turned to look and caught a glimpse before she disappeared again. Visually, I could not resolve the shape of her body, but her feeling emanated warmth, and had a dark purple emotional hue. I exhaled suddenly and then panicked for a moment. She telepathed to me one word: -- Breathe. Breathe? Water? I knew she heard my thoughts. -- It's not water. I did not have a choice. I was about to turn blue. I still tried to hold my breath. Then she did it again, but louder, commanding, yet still friendly. -- BREATHE! Then she laughed as I let out a burst of air and inhaled this strange fluid, fearing at once I would drown that instant and knowing no matter what happened, I would experience something totally new. My mouth flooded and, against every instinct, I inhaled. It somehow felt perfectly normal, thicker than air, filling my lungs with a satisfying sense of weight. I could really feel the breath. It was rich in oxygen that seemed to light up my awareness with the feeling of lights coming on in a dark stadium. But I was fully aware what was lighting up was my mind. Simultaneously, everything around me illuminated. My emotions were more vivid. I exhaled very deliberately, and drew in another breath. The feeling of awareness doubled. I tried to look for this being, who seemed to stay behind me wherever I turned. I could feel her presence like a heat source, or a light source, or a focus of energy. The fact that she was behind me compelled me to use a psychic sense that I've always had, and which was suddenly radiant. I exhaled and breathed again: my third breath in this element. I wondered when I would lose count. I took another breath, in some disbelief, but overwhelmed with curiosity about this being with me. My own body felt lighter as I turned, and, surfacing a little, rotated. Still, she was behind me. As I became aware of the surface of her body, I was aware that the surface of my own body was less defined, kind of like how the liquid I was in met the surface of the air. At once, everything was more focused and more ambiguous. Everything had a color vibration. Her deep purple became stronger and more luminous. Then, suddenly, it was distinctly familiar, prompted by the projection of an image into my mind: the solar eclipse conjunct Venus. Voool! What happened next happened very fast. In the moment I recognized her, another entity swam past us, creating a strong, sudden current that caught both of us in its wake. We seemed to spin together, hopelessly caught in the movement of energy with no sense of up, down or sideways, spinning. I exhaled and breathed a fifth time, but now I was breathing in the deep purple essence of Voool and the liquid air, and spinning wildly. She telepathed to me again, even as we spun: -- Let yourself go. Before the words even reached me, the idea did, I let go totally, and to say the feeling was orgasmic was a kind of joke: orgasm just quickly touches with one finger this place in which we were fully immersed. Suddenly I had no body, I was pure energy. She was pure energy. The sense of spinning seemed to increase, with no dizziness at all, and the sense of mixing with her became evident. Now she was in front of me. I was dimly aware the physical form of my body again, and of hers, and the surfaces of our bodies seemed to blend. I was aware of myself and aware of her as individuals, and also aware of a third space where we blended completely. For the first time I was aware of my own color: bright yellow. Hot. Luminescent. Distinctly, completely my own, the color of my awareness. I could not believe how good it felt to spin like this, to mix with her, to vibrate my own consciousness. Where the two of our colors mixed was white light with resplendent vibration of both my yellow and her dark purple. Each time I exhaled, I could see a swirl of yellow go into her light body and then dissolve away. At the same time, she seemed to penetrate my entire being as we spun, I took another breath, and then everything was still. Her presence was right there, but further away. I felt how relaxed she was, and knew to emulate her feeling. I opened up what felt like the light pores of my body. My physical form seemed stronger than a moment ago, more vivid, yet no less yellow. Voool was laughing purple. I was too stunned to know what to think. Then one thing occurred to me: this is what sex is supposed to feel like. Total energetic lightness. -- Follow me. I followed, with one gentle kick of both my legs propelling me in her direction. I was breathing gently now, normally, and I had lost count. She seemed to pull me with her, rubbing her body light on mine as she had at first, in the front and from behind and then in a spiral around me. Suddenly we were moving fast -- very fast, dangerously fast. I could not tell our direction of movement. I entirely lost track of the direction of the surface. Since I was not exhaling air, I could not follow the bubbles like you're taught to do when scuba diving. I looked ahead, past her, and we were approaching what seemed like a surface. It seemed to gradually descend into a funnel shape. The speed was terrifying and the fear gave way to a sense of exuberance. -- Yes. I let go, and as I did, we broke the surface with our arms lightly around one another, looking into one another's faces. Her familiar eyes and voice were laughing. Above the surface she looked somewhat like the being I knew before; beneath the surface, I could see the purple aquatic form of her body, this creature I was spinning with a moment ago. There seemed to be no contradiction to her two states of being. She lifted me effortlessly. We were standing on the bank, naked, wet, but the water or whatever it was evaporated fast in a visible mist. I could see where we just emerged. It looked like a small Jacuzzi filled with that strange liquid. I was no longer bright yellow, but I could feel that quality, and I could feel a light sprinkling of her purple energy mixed with my own. I could feel that I was drawing strength directly from this sense of mixing, of shared awareness. I could feel her with every sense, particularly the rich, intimately comforting sensations of smell and taste. I was soaked with her. She offered a long gaze into my eyes, scanning to see if I was okay. I felt her enter, look out at herself through my third eye, and look inward with recognition. I was fine, feeling the pleasure of slight disorientation. Looking at her nude was the strangest thing. She bore some resemblance to a human female, but the sense of her was overwhelmingly so, and that sense seemed to take precedence over the purely physical. I remembered something that one of my astrology teachers back on Earth had mentioned: that when we see someone we love, we are looking with our etheric vision, not just our physical vision. In fact, he said, most of our vision is etheric rather than physical; we literally see energy when we look with our eyes, and if we are open, which just means loving, we see the more subtle frequencies of that energy. This is why someone has that special look when we are in love with them. -- But of course. Did she know Dave? Oh, just of course. -- Call him soon. She paused, her eyes looking at me with a slight longing and what I can only describe as deep friendship. -- Eric, I would love to stay with you, but you have to be back on the surface for the eclipse so you can get its full benefit. Here, have these. She handed me a box, about 10 centimeters square, and a cloth bag filled with what felt like lightweight rocks. -- You'll dream how to use these. Then she reached out, took my right wrist, and strapped something that looked like a watch onto me. I did not look at it -- only at her. -- Where do you want to go? The pendulum, I thought back to her. But we seemed to have agreed upon this in advance. -- Okay. Leave by six. Go out any exit. Leave and keep walking a block or so. The alarms are disabled. She paused. I felt a pulse of sadness from her, and then deep joy as her eyes embraced mine more fully than ever. -- You're fun. Then I was sitting under a huge dome. There was absolute silence and penetrating darkness, but the green exit lights in the great hall of the Pantheon provided enough light to see the basics. I noticed the interplay between dark and light, and how dramatic and appealing it seemed. I was dressed, and my clothes and body felt fresh and clean. Beside me were my bags, and in my lap were her gifts. I looked at my new watch. It was a hologram watch, with a digital face that seemed projected into light. It said three. I remembered what she said: leave by six. Then I raised my head and saw the pendulum swing momentously toward me, exactly at the three o'clock mark. It paused instantaneously, and swung back gracefully. I watched as it approached again, following it with my eyes. The second time it approached, I saw clearly the shift of position. Foucault's pendulum, set in the vast hall of the Pantheon, a few blocks from my apartment in Paris. -- That's the Earth turning. Feel it. I was startled to hear her psychic voice down here. But it was clear and present as it had been a moment ago, yet now it felt like an intuitive presence that I could hear and feel with unusual clarity. I watched the pendulum swing a few more times, so carefully that I could hear the great weight cut through the air. I watched until I started to give into the feeling that the thing was swinging in exactly the same place, and that the table beneath it, the building, and the entire Earth beneath that, were what was rotating. It suddenly made perfect sense. -- Yes, the Earth is spinning, and just about everyone is dizzy beyond comprehension. That's the sense of disorientation, of the distortion of reality. It’s also the sense of time moving, and it’s deeply fearful to most. People slip on their fear, and all they can think of is death. But death takes so many forms they don't see it, and the fear is exploited by others who do. It's a game. Don't fall for it. She paused. Remember... Then for a moment, I was overwhelmed with the memory of our light bodies intertwined, spinning wildly in the light bath. For a moment I was there, swirling with her, mixed with her. -- That's what life feels like. It takes a lot of forms. But if anything feels particularly different, it's fear, and in your case, most probably someone else's fear. You're so open that it's easy for you to take on their feelings. Just let them pass through you. She paused. -- You don't have to help. Fear is a choice and you're the one who has to choose differently for yourself. Remember, you don't have to help. As she spoke, I watched the pendulum swing, and felt the world rotate slightly, shocked that I could not feel this sense of the Earth moving beneath my feet before. -- Have fun. I'll look for you. You have a date with those old astrology files, remember. They’re pretty interesting. I would not forget that offer. I closed my eyes and my inner space was flooded with the feeling of yellow. Without saying the words, I felt a wave of gratitude and love pulse through my mind and emotions, acknowledged by her presence. Finally, I stood up. I could clearly feel that I was alone. I knew intuitively there were no guards in the building at this hour. I roamed around a little, but felt that my learning there was done, for the moment. I put her gifts in my laptop backpack, slung on my leather bag, picked up my little carry-on case, and saw a green exit sign. I walked toward it. The door bore a red sticker: Alarm! Ignoring this, I pushed the metal break-bar with a satisfying thud, felt the door release under my hands, and I plunged into the night air. No alarm sounded. I pushed the door closed behind me and slipped down a side street, which saw was Rue des Carnes. It was a warm morning, and the air had a light quality to it. Paris felt more like home, more deeply familiar and part of my life, than it ever had. Then as I walked, I felt in my vest pocket. There was something strange in there. I stopped and took it out. It was a folded piece of paper, but paper with a strange texture, super thin, but very strong. I unfolded it. It was a simple architectural sketch of some kind, with a few basic instructions, and dimensions. On top, it said: Light Bath. But it was so simple looking, really, just a few lines. I had no idea what it was, or what it was for, and I decided to look later. I folded it and put it back in my pocket and forgot about it. My watch face glowed 5:30, but this time it was analog, not digital. Then I felt a craving in my body. Ah, yes. Food. I knew a brasserie that was open at this hour fairly close to my apartment, and headed in that direction, playing with a pen in my pocket in anticipation of writing down some of what had just experienced. I knew it was Friday morning, the morning of the hybrid solar eclipse. The world was indeed turning, the Moon was about to cross the disk of the Sun, and a lot was about to happen. ++ |
