The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century Read online

  Paul hung in empty space that was truly empty, only a faint halo around the blackness at the center of the vast black emptiness revealing its existence, and that center began to shrink and become blacker and blacker. It became smaller and smaller and smaller until it seemed no larger than a distant mustard seed. For a hundred-millionth of a second it seemed to vanish, and then it exploded outward, spewing out fire and gas into all the emptiness.

  Paul felt the warmth, the searing heat, heard the thunderclap and continuous roar of the explosion, as the universe again came into being. Gas clouds congealed into stars, which burst into flames, huge and small, the expansion fully underway again. Stars burned a thousand different colors, and many exploded, spewing out into space huge masses of matter, which themselves clotted together to form planets. The planets spun through space until captured by the gravity of a star, then began their busy circling dance. Atmospheres formed, rains fell, green spread across the landmasses. And soon everything was as it had been when Paul first found himself thrust into space.

  “What does this mean?” he said in a hushed voice, awed by what he had just witnessed.

  The woman’s voice said, “If a man die, shall he live again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Before him formed the translucent image of a woman he recognized from an old photograph as his great grandmother. She was now a young woman in an old family bedroom, and gave birth to a girl he realized was his grandmother. He watched in horror and fascination as his great-grandmother grew old and died and was put into a wooden box and lowered into the ground. And, as if the soil was transparent, he saw the box rot and her body decompose, becoming one with the soil. The nutrients that had been her body rippled through the soil and were carried by the water into fields of wheat and vegetables. The scene changed to his mother as a young girl, eating the vegetables nourished by the body of his great-grandmother and, he realized, millions of other humans before her. He saw the faint echoing of the lives of Europeans in America in the soil, nineteenth century dress, then eighteenth century, then seventeenth, then Native Americans, nourishing the soil with the bodies of their dead elders, feeding the fruits of the nourished soil to their children. He realized al humans breathed air that had been breathed a million million times before, drank water that had run through other’s kidneys a million million times since the beginning of life on Earth.

  The image faded, and the woman returned. She said, “Yes,” and her voice came from every particle of creation.

  “Do you mean that we shall all live again?”

  “Yes. And more.”

  “More?” Paul said.

  “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, ‘See, this is new?’ It hath been already of old time, which was before us.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that time goes in cycles, rather than in a straight line? That there is no beginning and no end?”

  “World without end, amen,” she sang.

  Paul took the pad and pen out of his shirt pocket and jotted down, Time goes in cycles, rather than in a straight line; there is no beginning and no end. “Do you have more to teach me? Noah said I would have three teachers in the Wisdom School, and I think you’re the third. Or was that the Secret?”

  She smiled and began a soft hum, which echoed off the distant stars; everything seemed to vibrate, like a guitar string resonating to another instrument.

  The hum became words, which said, “She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.”

  “Kindness?”

  Before him the woman vanished and a three-dimensional image again appeared in empty space, although this time he saw streams of people running from burning buildings. As he looked closer, he realized he was seeing refugees fleeing a burning city; men and women, children, the elderly, all carrying whatever they could of their possessions, some pictures and letters and papers, others gold and jewelry, others bags of food or water. Bombs fell from the sky, soldiers fired weapons on the fleeing people, tanks spit fire and bodies exploded with blood, buildings burst into flames.

  The image shifted to an ornate room, decorated in gold, white enamel, and oak. A white-haired man sat on a gold-gilt and red velvet chair large enough to be a throne. Around him were clustered other men in their forties, fifties, and sixties. Most were in military uniform, gold and silver leaves and bars and emblems. The man on the throne spoke something in a guttural language and waved his hand. In the visual echo of the hand-wave, Paul saw the refugees, the bombs, the soldiers, and he realized that this man was ordering the war; he was responsible for the pain and death Paul had seen. The man pounded his fist on the arm of his chair, and the image shook: the world trembled. The power of evil, Paul thought.

  As if in answer to his thought, Wisdom said, “Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil. when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand.”

  The scene shifted to a field hospital in the war zone. A young woman dressed in jeans and a white blouse, with a Red Cross emblem on a band of cloth tied around her upper arm, was dressing the wounds of an unconscious old woman. With each movement of her hands, each change of expression on her earnest, tragic face, the world shivered and shook as if an artillery shell had gone off. The scene shifted to a hillside street in a small European town. It was the first light of morning, and an old man dressed in a brown tweed suit walked up a deserted, rain-slicked street, hunched over as if he were intent on the pavement. With quick, efficient motions he reached down and picked up an earthworm, ran to the side of the street, and placed it on the grass. “There you are, my friend,” he said. “You are the least of the least, and therefore I love you.” The scene shook and trembled with each syllable; Paul could feel the intensity of it like a shock wave through his entire body. Another worm, another comforting sentence, another shock. The scene dissolved.

  “The power of good,” Paul said, realizing the shocks, the power, had been so much greater than that of the evil man with his army and bombs.

  “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” The voice was soft and nurturing. “Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.”

  “Are you saying that good is more powerful than evil?”

  “Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: He is gracious, and full of compassion and righteous.”

  “Is that one of the Wisdom School teachings? That compassion is the greatest good, and good is more powerful than evil?”

  “Yes,” the voice said.

  “Is it the Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century?”

  There was silence, and Paul felt intuitively that the woman named Wisdom had left. He took out his notebook and wrote, Compassion is the greatest good, and good is more powerful than evil. As he finished writing, another image began to form from mist. His heart raced as he recognized Joshua standing in front of him.

  “Joshua?” Paul said. “Is that you?”

  Joshua was wearing the same army pants, frayed white shirt, and threadbare cardigan V-necked sweater he had been wearing when Paul met him under the street the day before. “Yes, it is I.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to give you the Secret. You will write it down, carry it out to the world, tell people in a way that will transform them, and thus begin the process of saving the world and all life.”

  “I am ready,” Paul said, straightening his spine. “But why here?”

  “This is my creation, and yours.”

  “You created this?”

  “Yes. As did you.”

  “Me?”

  Joshua’s lips moved, but a deeper and more ancient voice came from his mouth. “And the Lord God, the Word, the Name, said, ‘Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil.”

  “One of Us?” Paul said. “Is that from the Bible?”

  “Genesis,” Joshua said simply, speaking now in his own voice again. “
Do you understand now?”

  Paul looked up, down, left, right, and at the distant stars ahead of him. The universe extended into infinity. He’d heard the word many times in his life-infinity-but had never understood what it really meant. “Is that the Secret?”

  “In a way. Do you now understand how it all began, how it all ends, how it all begins again?”

  “I understand that it does. I’m not sure I know how.”

  Joshua smiled, stepped forward through the emptiness, reached out and touched Paul’s arm in a gesture of reassurance. At the touch, Paul again felt his heart flood with love. Tears welled in his eyes. “To know how,” Joshua said, “you would have to touch the Mind of the Creator of the Universe. That is for another time. First, you must know the Secret, and live its truth. You must take the drivenness–the ambition and drive and enthusiasm that you were born with and that you have wasted in the world of commerce-and transform it to a higher work. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, of course!” Paul said. He’d always wanted to be a reporter, but now he knew who and what he really was. Every moment of his life up to this had been a preparation for his true life’s work. “I am ready.”

  “When you know the Secret, you will fold that all things are possible unto you, and that the future of the planet, of all life, is in your hands and the hands of those you share it with.”

  “And the Secret is?”

  “All sprang from the One. All returns to the One. You and I are of the One, and will all dissolve back into the One.” He paused and brushed his hand across Paul’s face. “Come close.”

  Paul stepped forward and Joshua breathed on him, his mouth opened in an O. Paul smelled jasmine and frankincense and sandalwood.

  Then Joshua said, “My son, the Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century, of every Century, is ‘We Are All One.’”

  For a long moment there was stillness through all creation, then Joshua slowly dissolved into the emptiness.

  Paul searched the stars, the depths of empty space, wondering what was next. He felt himself supported, as if he were sitting in an easy chair with his feet up on a footstool. As the sensation became stronger, he noticed his body assuming a reclining posture, and then, in a blink, he was in the tunnel under New York, around the fire, with Joshua and the others. The air was cool, and in the distance he heard a cat meow. He felt through the ground beneath his recliner chair the far distant rumble of a subway train. The distant tunnels, which during the day had shown cracks of light from above, now were a black emptiness.

  Juan was stirring a pot of stew again, although this food smelled of sage, basil, green onions, and thyme, instead of curry. This wasn’t a memory: it was now, Paul thought.

  He blinked and looked around. Everybody was looking at him, as if he’d just appeared in the old velour recliner, which he assumed he had. “What time is it?” he said.

  “Around three in the morning,” Salome said. “May be a little after.”

  “You’re all up and awake?” Paul said.

  “Joshua said you’d be visiting,” Jim said.

  Joshua smiled at Paul, as if they shared a secret.

  “Was he gone?” Paul said to Jim, pointing at Joshua.

  “No, he’s been here all day,” Jim said, matter-of-factly. “You’re the one who just appeared.” He smiled broadly.

  Joshua leaned forward in his white plastic lawn-chair and said, “I imagine you have a question? Maybe something you’re not quite sure of?”

  Paul said, “That’s the understatement of the century.” He sat up a bit straighter and stretched his back and legs, organizing his thoughts. “I get it that ‘We are all one’ makes sense in the world of physics or metaphysics, but what does it mean in the practical world of everyday life? How can a person live this?”

  “How would you live it?” Joshua said.

  “Well,” Paul said, “first of all, in my everyday life, I guess it would mean that I couldn’t continue to just get along and go along, to feed the machine of the multinational corporations and the kings and despots of the world, to be a wage slave. I’d want to find a way to make a living that wasn’t toxic to the Earth, to other humans, to all life.”

  “That’s one possible ‘doing’ part,” Joshua said, his tone implying there was more.

  “Should I join a movement like Greenpeace or something?”

  Joshua smiled. “That is the greatest challenge, Paul, for every awakened human. What to do? The answer is that there isn’t one answer: there are six billion answers, the number of humans on Earth today. Each person must search her or his life, looking for those moments when she was most passionate about something, when he heard clearly the message of oneness-perhaps in another context, said another way-and totally understood it, if even only for a moment. In that memory, that place, you will find what you must do. For some people it may mean joining a cause, like you mentioned. For others it will mean they continue to do exactly what they’re doing now, only do it with an awakened consciousness so that their work and their contacts with others become infused with oneness. For others it will mean stepping into a world of outreach or perhaps even stepping back from the world for a while to recharge themselves spiritually and thus raise the vibration of all humans and all life.”

  “So my way…”

  “Is your way,” Joshua said. “Only you know that, and it may take you a minute to realize it, or maybe days or weeks or months. But you will know, and when you know you will step forward into a new life with a power and love and meaning greater than any you have ever known before.”

  “Should I join you? Come live in the tunnel?”

  Joshua shrugged. “Examine your life, al the way back to your childhood, and look and listen for the times when you knew what to do. There you will find the clues as to what you must do next, whether it is to join us for a while and chronicle our message, or go back to the newspapers, or to do something else altogether.”

  “Okay,” Paul said. “I get it that if enough people took right action then governments could change, corporations could be transformed, neighborhoods revitalized, families healed, the world saved. But how does that come from knowing that ‘we are all one’? I’m still not sure of the connection.”

  Joshua nodded and looked at Salome, as if asking her to answer the question. She leaned forward in the other recliner chair in the circle, dropping her feet to the ground as the back of the chair creaked forward.

  “First I gotta tell you,” she said, “it don’t mean everybody in the world lives the same way, or there’s some one perfect religion or lifestyle or anything like that. You understand? No one world or one way.”

  “Yeah,” said Paul, realizing that she was the perfect person to know the truth of that.

  “I mean, diversity is crucial,” she said. “Like in any ecosystem, it’s the same with humans. We’ve gotta protect diversity. This notion that America is a great melting pot, for example, and that everything would be great if only the rest of the world would live just like American middle-class white folks is wrong. It’s the velvet glove over the iron fist of a dominating culture. It profits the multinational corporations if everybody has the same values and consuming habits, if everybody likes the same soft drink and jeans and TV shows, but it’s not good for humanity or the world.”

  “I understand,” Paul said. “But if it’s important that we have different and diverse tribes and clans and cultures and religions, then how are we ‘all one’?”

  She smiled. “You know, when Jesus was talking with his friends—who included a couple of women…”

  “Mary Magdalene and Salome?” Paul said, realizing that every person around the circle carried the modern version of a Biblical name. Coincidence? he wondered.

  “Yeah,” Salome said. “And Mary, and Joanne, and others. Although somehow they usually get overlooked or ignored.” Her lips drew together as if she’d tasted something bitter, then relaxed. She continued, “But there was a story. Maybe you remember it, a parable, th
at Jesus laid on his friends. He talked about how a bunch of folks came to a king and said they wanted to hang out with him. You remember?”

  “I’m not sure,” Paul said.

  She glanced over at Jim. “You know the story, Jim?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You want me to tell it?”

  “Please,” Salome said.

  “Well,” Jim said to Paul, “in the story, this divine king—the Son of Man—invited some folks to hang out with him in heaven. He told them they were invited because when he was hungry they’d fed him, when he was thirsty they’d given him something to drink, when he was a stranger they’d taken him in and helped him out, when he was naked they gave him clothes, when he was sick they visited him, and when he was in prison they came to see how he was doing.”

  Jim looked at the 1-beams dancing in the flickering light from the fire for a moment, as if checking to see that he had the list right.

  Paul said, “I think I remember this. It’s about doing unto others, right?”

  “More like, ‘there’s no such thing as others,™ Jim said. “We really are all one! The way you treat me, you treat the whole world, and vice-versa. High and low, king and servant, man and God, even, I think, human and all other life. It’s why I pick up worms on the sidewalk and put them back in the grass. ’Cuz they’re part of me, too, if I’m part of all life.”

  “The story, Jim?” Salome said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “So in that story, these folks told this king they didn’t recall having done any of that stuff-in fact they hadn’t even known he’d been hungry, or homeless, or in prison, or any of it. They’d helped out other folks, for sure, but not him. Heck, they hadn’t even seen him around. So how, they asked him, could they be the ones who’d helped him out when he’d been in trouble that they didn’t even know about?”