Prologue

London, November 2004

He hadn’t slept for the past three nights. Something within him, something beyond his control, kept him from finding rest. It had nothing to do with his everyday problems. It wasn’t his wife or son or occupation that kept him awake; it was his soul. It was his awareness that there was something greater than mortal existence available to humanity, and that “something” wanted to use him as its outlet. Again.

He moved his comfortable wingchair to a spot close to the leaded windows and sat down. He studied the pale moon that sent its dim light through the fog and put a silvery glow to the tall sycamores in his private garden. He was privileged and blessed, and he was insecure and fearful. He was reluctant to let go of what the world thought of as reality. Would he be forever lost to those he loved if he succeeded? Should he even try to break the physical bonds of the material world and enter the spiritual dimension? He was terrified that this next step in his mystical journey would be another deadly ordeal.

For many years he had not told anyone about the first time he had experienced the immortal, not even his best friend, David. Gazing at the November moon brought the incident to mind. He was eighteen, surfing his first big waves in Hawaii. He felt the same way then as he felt now, frightened yet excited. His first ride fulfilled his dreams; his second ride nearly killed him.

He had been caught in the impact zone. The breaking wave had ripped his board from his hand and had driven him into the coral and sand bottom. He panicked, but after a moment the same knowledge that was pushing him now, his greater self, had taken away the fear and brought peace. Very soon he had no more breath. He had no more strength. His body automatically began to inhale, and that meant that his lungs would fill with water and he’d die. But his lungs miraculously filled with air. He was breathing underwater and then he heard the words, “You are not yet finished here.”

Jason St. John got up from the chair, shook himself as if he were still wet. He questioned the timing of the memory. Did it come to reassure him that he was safe, that he would be protected in this new exploration into the nature of reality? Or, was it a warning? His earlier initiations came through his desire for adventure. He no longer wanted that. More than ever he needed the peace that came in meditation.

He sat back down and looked at his hands resting on the arms of the chair. As he relaxed, he contemplated what Einstein called the fabric of time and space, the fourth dimension of reality. He could not yet put into perspective what he had seen and felt these past few weeks. He never did understand the significance of his trials until they were over. All he could do was push ahead and pray that he still had something to give.

He closed his pale green eyes to shut out the garden and the fog and the moon. He consciously stopped the river of thoughts and images concerning his daily life from entering his mind. He rested into the stillness that he had known since he was a boy. It was a silence that filled him with peace. In that state of being, the beliefs that defined him materially and dictated how he should live dissolved. In the womb of silence, which was how he thought of the darkness, he became “one” with the invisible fabric of creation. He found himself integrated with every molecule of life, an experience in which he was at once himself and at the same time “one” with all that existed.

And then came new images, esoteric images of a world in which the colors barely held together, and solid objects burst into stardust the moment they were touched. Everything pulsed and vibrated to harmonic chords that were so beautiful they made him weep with joy. He knew deep down in his soul that he was glimpsing the unseen reality behind what the five physical senses describe as real.

In this dimension he felt a power that could only be called divine, though he refused to use religious terminology to define it. The power he felt was beyond his comprehension, yet it was the essence of who he was. It was not a cosmic force, but the substance of all that existed.