I walked out to the Jeep, feeling incredibly good. The air was cool and the mountains in every direction still seemed luminous. We got in the vehicle, and Yin pulled away.
“Do you know where to go now?” I asked.
“I know that we must head toward northwest Tibet. According to the legends, that is the closest gateway to us. But, as Lama Rigden said, we will have to be shown.”
Yin paused and glanced at me. “It is time that I told you about my dream.”
“The dream that Lama Rigden mentioned?” I asked. “The one you had of me?”
“Yes, in this dream we are together journeying across Tibet, looking for the gateway. And we could not find it. We journeyed very far and traveled in circles, lost. But at the moment of our greatest despair, we met someone who knew where we should go.”
“What happened after that?”
“The dream ended.”
“Who was the person? Was it Wil?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What do you think the dream means?”
“It means we must be very alert.”
We rode in silence for a few moments and then I asked, “Are there many soldiers stationed in northwest Tibet?”
“Not usually,” he replied. “Except on the border or at the military bases. The problem is getting through the next three or four hundred miles, past Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar. There are several military checkpoints.”
For four hours we rode without incident, traveling for a while on graded gravel roads and then turning onto various dirt tracts for a time. We reached Saga without any difficulty and hit what Yin told me was the southern route into western Tibet. We passed mostly large transport trucks or local Tibetans in older cars or in carts. A few foreign hitchhikers could be seen around the truck stops.
After another hour Yin pulled the Jeep off the main road and onto what amounted to only a horse path. The Jeep bounced over deep gullies.
“There is usually a Chinese checkpoint up ahead on the main road,” Yin said. “We must go around.”
We were traveling up a steep slope, and when we got to the crest of the hill, Yin stopped the Jeep and led me to the edge of a cliff. Below us, several hundred feet away we could see two large military trucks with Chinese insignia. Perhaps a dozen soldiers were standing by the road.
“This is not good,” Yin said. “There are usually only a few soldiers at this crossroads. They may still be looking for us.”
I tried to shake off a rush of anxiety and keep my energy high. I thought I saw several of the soldiers looking up the hill toward us, so I ducked down.
“Something is happening,” Yin whispered.
When I looked back at the crossroads, the soldiers were searching a van that had driven into the checkpoint. A middle-aged blond man was standing on the side of the road being interrogated. Someone else was still in the van. We could just barely hear a European language being spoken, sounding very much like Dutch.
“Why are they being detained?” I asked Yin.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They may not have the correct permits, or perhaps they asked the wrong questions.”
I lingered, wishing I could help.
“Please,” Yin said. “We must go.”
We got in the Jeep, and Yin drove slowly around the rest of the hill and down the slope on the other side. At the bottom we hit another narrow track that turned to the right, away from the crossroads, still heading northwest. We traveled on this road for about five more miles, before it merged back into the main road and into Zhongba, a small town with several hotels and a few shops. Here there were people walking, leading yaks and other livestock, and several land cruisers drove by.
“We are now just one of the pilgrims heading to Mount Kailash,” Yin said. “We will be less noticeable.”
I wasn’t convinced. In fact, half a mile farther a Chinese military truck pulled onto the road directly behind us, and another surge of fear ran through me. Yin turned onto a side street and the truck moved past us and out of sight.
“You must stay strong,” Yin said. “It is time for you to learn the Second Extension.”
He went on to guide me through the First Extension again until I could visualize and feel my energy flowing out in front of us and into the distance.
“Now that you have your energy moving out, you must set this field of energy to have a certain effect.”
His comment fascinated me. “Set my field?”
“Yes. We can direct our prayer-field to act on the world in various ways. We do this by using our expectations. You have already done this once, remember? Hanh taught you to expect that the energy would keep flowing through you. Now you must set your field with other expectations and do so with true discipline. Otherwise, all your energy can quickly collapse in fear and anger.”
He looked at me with a sad expression I had never seen before.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“When I was young, I watched a Chinese soldier kill my father. I hate and fear them intensely. And I must confess something: I myself am part Chinese. This is the worst part. It is this memory and guilt that erodes my energy, so that I tend to anticipate the worst. You will learn that at these higher levels of energy, our fields of prayer act very quickly to bring to us exactly what we expect. If we fear, it brings to us what we fear. If we hate, it brings us more of what we hate.
“Thankfully when we go into these negative expectations, our prayer-fields collapse rather quickly because we lose our connection with the divine and are no longer outflowing love. But a fear expectation can still be powerful. That is why you must monitor your expectations carefully and set your field consciously.”
He smiled at me and added, “Because you don’t hate the Chinese military the way I do, you have an advantage. But you still have much fear, and you seem to be capable of great anger… just like me. Perhaps that is why we are together.”
I was looking ahead at the road as we drove, thinking about what Yin was saying, not believing that our thoughts could be that powerful. My reverie was interrupted when Yin slowed the Jeep and parked in front of a line of dusty frame buildings.
“Why are you stopping?” I asked. “Won’t we draw more attention to ourselves this way?”
“Yes,” he said. “But we must risk it. The soldiers have spies everywhere, but we have no choice. It is not safe to go into the western areas of Tibet with only one vehicle. There are no places to make repairs. We must find someone to go with us.”
“What if they turn us in?”
Yin looked at me in horror. “That won’t happen if we get the right people. Watch your thoughts. I told you we have to set the right field around us. It is important.”
He started to get out of the car but hesitated. “You must do better than me in this regard or we have no chance. Focus on setting your field for rten brel.”
I was silent for a moment. “Rten brel? What’s that?”
“It is the Tibetan word for synchronicity. You must set your field to stay in the synchronistic process, to bring the intuitions, the coincidences, to help us.”
Yin glanced at the building and got out of the Jeep, indicating with his hand that he wanted me to stay.
For almost an hour I waited, watching the Tibetan people walk by. Occasionally I would see someone who looked Indian or European. At one point I even thought I saw the Dutchman we had seen at the checkpoint pass on a distant street. I strained to see, but I couldn’t be sure.
Where was Yin? I wondered. The last thing I needed was to be separated again. I imagined myself driving through this town all alone, lost, having no idea where to go. What would I do?
Finally I saw Yin leave the building. For a moment he hesitated, looking both ways carefully before walking to the Jeep.
“I found two people I know,” he said as he climbed behind the wheel. “I think they will do.” He was trying to be convincing, but his tone of voice betrayed his doubt.
He started up the car and we drove on. Five minutes later we passed a small restaurant made entirely from corrugated tin. Yin parked the Jeep about two hundred feet from the restaurant, hiding it behind some oil storage tanks. We were on the outskirts of town now and almost no one was on the street. Inside the building, we found one room with six rickety tables. A narrow, whitewashed bar separated us from the kitchen, where several women worked. One of the women saw us sit down and came over to us.
Yin spoke briefly to her in Tibetan, and I caught the word for soup. The woman nodded and looked at me.
“The same,” I said to Yin, taking off my coat and draping it behind me on the chair. “And water.” Yin translated and the woman smiled and walked away.
Yin turned serious. “Did you understand what I said earlier? You must now set a field that brings more synchronicity.”
I nodded. “How do I set that field?”
“The first thing you must do is make sure you build on the First Extension. Be certain the energy is flowing into you and out into the world. Feel the measures. Set your expectation for this energy to be constant. Now you must expect that your prayer-field will act to bring forth just the thoughts and events necessary for your best destiny to unfold. In order to set this field around you, you must keep yourself in a state of conscious alertness.”
“Alert for what?”
“For synchronicity. You must keep yourself in a state where you are constantly looking for the next mysterious bit of information that helps you toward your destiny. Some synchronicity will come to you no matter what you do, but you can increase the occurrence if you set a constant field by always expecting it.”
I reached into my back pants pocket for my notebook. Although I hadn’t used it before, I had an intuition to make note of what Yin was saying. Then I remembered that I had left the notebook in the Jeep.
“It’s locked,” he said, handing me the keys with a nod of his head. “Don’t go anywhere else.”
I went straight to the Jeep and retrieved the notebook and was about to head back when the sound of vehicles pulling up to the restaurant startled me. I moved back behind the tanks and looked out at the scene. In front of the restaurant were two gray, Chinese-built trucks. Five or six men in plain clothes got out of the trucks and went into the restaurant. From where I was, I could see inside through the windows. The men lined everyone up against the walls and began to search them. I tried to locate Yin but couldn’t see him anywhere. Did he escape?
A new land cruiser pulled up outside, and a tall, lanky Chinese official in a military uniform got out and walked toward the door. He was clearly the man in charge. At the door he looked inside briefly, then stopped and turned around, looking up both sides of the street, as though sensing something. He turned my way and I ducked behind the bins again, my heart racing.
After a moment I risked a glance toward the restaurant. The Chinese were bringing out the people and loading them into the trucks. Yin wasn’t among them. One of the cars drove away as the officer in charge spoke to the remaining men. He seemed to be directing them to search the street.
I ducked around the tanks and took a large breath. I knew if I stayed there, it would be only a matter of time before they found me. Looking for options, I noticed a narrow dirt alleyway that ran from the tanks through to the next street. I jumped into the Jeep, put it into neutral, and used the small incline of the street to roll through the alley, turning right on the next corner. I started the vehicle but had no idea where I was going. All I wanted to do was put some distance between me and the soldiers.
After a few blocks, I took a left onto a narrow lane which took me into an area that had few buildings. A hundred more yards and I seemed to be completely out of town. A mile later I pulled off the road and parked behind a cluster of high rocky mounds each the size of a house.
Now what? I thought. I was completely lost, with absolutely no idea where to go. A flash of anger and frustration raced through me. Yin should have prepared me for this possibility. Probably someone he knew in town could help me, but I had no way to find anyone now.
A flock of crows landed on the mound to my right, then flew up over the Jeep and circled, cawing loudly. I looked out the windows in both directions, certain that someone was disturbing the birds, but I saw no one. After a few minutes most of the crows flew toward the west, still cawing. But one stayed at the top of the mound, silently looking in my direction. That’s good, I thought. He can be a sentry. I could stay put until I decided what to do.
In the back of the Jeep, I found some dried fruit and nuts, along with some crackers. I ate them unconsciously, taking occasional nervous drinks from the canteen of water. I knew I had to devise a plan. It came to me to head further up the road to the west, but I decided against it. A great fear was overwhelming me now, and I wanted only what I had desired all along: to forget about this trek and get back to Lhasa and then to the airport. I knew I could remember some of the turns, but the others I would have to guess at. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t tried to call someone at Lama Rigden’s monastery or later at Hanh’s, to set up an escape plan.
As I thought about what to do, my heart froze. I could hear the first rumblings of a vehicle coming down the road in my direction. I thought about starting the Jeep and pulling away but realized the vehicle was closing too fast. Instead I grabbed the canteen and a sack of food, ran behind the farthest mound, and hid in a place where I was out of sight but could still see what was happening.
The vehicle slowed down. As it pulled up even with me, I realized it was the van we had seen earlier at the roadblock. The driver was the blond man whom the Chinese soldiers had been interrogating, and in the passenger seat was a woman.
As I watched, they slowed the van to a complete stop and began to talk. I thought about going out and talking to them but immediately felt a flash of fear. What if the soldiers had alerted them about us, insisting that they be notified if we were seen? Would they turn me in?
The woman opened her door slightly as though to get out, still talking with the man. Had they spotted the Jeep? My mind was running wild. I decided that if she got out and came over, I would just start running. That way, they would only get the Jeep, and I could put some distance between myself and this place before the officials came.
With that thought in mind, I looked back at the van. The two were gazing toward the mounds, an expression of concern on their faces. They looked at each other one more time before the woman slammed her door shut, and they sped away toward the west. I watched the van crest the small hill to my left and disappear.
Somewhere inside me I felt disappointed. Maybe they could have helped me, I thought. I considered running to the Jeep and overtaking them, but I dismissed the idea. Better not to tempt fate, I concluded. It was more prudent to go back to my original plan and attempt to find my way back to Lhasa and home.
After about a half hour I returned to the Jeep and started the engine. The crow to my left squawked and flew down the road in the direction the Dutch van had gone. I turned the other way and headed back toward Zhongba, taking a series of small roadways, hoping to bypass the main streets and the restaurant. I made it several more miles before I reached the top of a hill. I slowed the Jeep as I crested the peak so that I could survey the long expanse of highway in the distance.
When I got into a position to see, I was shocked. Not only was there a new roadblock set up half a mile down the mountain with dozens of soldiers, but I could count four big trucks and two Jeeps filled with troops heading my way, closing fast.
I quickly turned the Jeep around and raced back in the direction I’d come, hoping they wouldn’t see me. I knew I would be lucky to outpace them. I reasoned that I should travel farther west as fast as I could, then bear south and east. Perhaps there were enough small roads that I could get back to Lhasa that way.
I darted across the main street and into a series of side roads, again heading south. I turned a curve and realized I was going the wrong way. I had inadvertently returned to the main road again. Before I could stop, I was less than one hundred feet from another Chinese checkpoint. There were soldiers everywhere. I pulled over to the side of the road and put on the brake, then slid way down in the seat.
Now what? I thought. Prison? What would they do to me? Would they think me a spy?
After a few moments I noticed that the Chinese seemed oblivious to my presence, even though I was parked in plain sight. Old cars and carts and even pedestrians on bikes kept passing me, and the soldiers would stop them all and ask for identification, checking their papers and sometimes searching them. Yet they paid me no attention at all.
I glanced to the right and realized that I was parked just short of a driveway that led up to a small, stone house, several hundred feet away. To the left of the house was a small lawn of uncut grass, and beyond the grass, I could see another street.
Just at that moment a large truck drove past and stopped right in front of me, blocking my view of the checkpoint. Moments later a blue Toyota Land Cruiser driven by another blond man came up and pulled around the truck. Next I heard loud talking and shouts in Chinese. The vehicle seemed to be backing up as if to try to turn around, but the soldiers swarmed it. Although my line of sight was blocked, I could hear angry shouts in Chinese interspersed by fearful pleas in English that carried a Dutch accent.
“No, please,” the voice said. “I’m sorry. I’m a tourist. Look, I have a special license to drive on the road.”
Another car pulled up. My heart leaped in my chest. It was the same Chinese official I’d seen at the restaurant earlier. I slipped farther down in my seat, trying to hide as he walked right past me.
“Give me your papers!” he asked the Hollander in perfect English.
As I listened, I noticed something move to my right and peered through the passenger window to see what it was. The driveway down toward the house appeared to be bathed in a warm luminous glow, the exact same glow I had witnessed when Yin and I had escaped just outside Lhasa. The dakini.
The Jeep was idling, so all I had to do was pull slowly to the right and down the drive. I was barely breathing as I passed the house and drove through the grass to the next street and turned left. A mile farther I turned left again, heading north out of town on the side street I had taken earlier. Ten minutes later I was back at the mounds, pondering what to do. Down the road to the west, I heard another crow caw. Instantly I decided to head in that direction, the way I could have been traveling all along.
The road led up a steep rise, crested, and then settled into a long straight-away along a rocky plain. I drove for several hours as the afternoon light began to fade. There were no cars or people to be seen anywhere and almost no houses. Half an hour later it was completely dark, and I was thinking about finding a place to pull over for the night when I noticed a narrow gravel drive heading off to my right. I slowed the Jeep and looked more closely. There was something just to the side of the driveway. It looked like an item of clothing.
I stopped the Jeep and shined a flashlight out through the window. It was a parka. My parka. The one I had left in the restaurant just before the Chinese had come.
Smiling, I switched off the light. Yin must have placed my jacket here. I got out of the Jeep, picked it up, and drove up the narrow road with the headlights off.
The drive led about half a mile up a gradual incline to a small house and barn. I drove cautiously. Several goats looked at me from across a fence. On the porch of the house, I noticed a man sitting on a stool. I stopped the Jeep and he stood up. I knew that silhouette. It was Yin.
I got out of the Jeep and ran up to him. He met me in a stiff embrace, smiling.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said. “You see, I said you were being helped.”
“I was almost caught,” I replied. “How did you get away?”
A nervousness returned to his face. “The women at the restaurant are very cunning. They saw the Chinese officers and hid me in the oven. No one ever looked in there.”
“What do you think will happen to the women?” I asked.
He met my eyes but said nothing for a long moment.
“I do not know,” he replied. “Many people are paying a high price for helping us.”
He looked away and pointed to the Jeep. “Help me bring in some food and we’ll make something to eat.”
As Yin made a fire, he explained that after the police had left, he had gone back to his friends’ house and they had suggested this old house as a place for him to stay while they looked around for another vehicle.
“I knew that you might become overwhelmed by fear and try to get back to Lhasa,” Yin added. “But I also knew that if you decided to continue on this journey, you would eventually try to head northwest again. This was the only road, so I placed your jacket there hoping it would be you who saw it and not the soldiers.”
“That was quite a risk,” I said.
He nodded as he put the vegetables in a heavy boiler filled with several inches of water and hung it on the metal hook over the fire to steam. Yak dung flames lapped at the bottom of the pan.
Seeing Yin again seemed to take much of my fear away, and as we sat down in old dusty chairs by the fire, I said, “I have to admit that I did try to get away. I thought it was my only chance to survive.”
I went on to tell him everything that had happened—everything, that is, except the experience of the light around the house. When I got to the part where I was in the mounds and the van came by, he sat up in his chair.
“You are sure it was the same van we saw at the roadblock?” he asked pointedly.
“Yes, it was them,” I replied.
He looked totally exasperated. “You saw the people we had seen before and you didn’t speak with them?” His face had an edge of anger. “Don’t you remember me telling you about my dream, about us meeting someone who could help us find the gateway?”
“I didn’t want to take a chance that they would report me,” I protested.
“What?” He stared at me, then leaned over and held his face in his hands for a moment.
“I was petrified,” I said. “I can’t believe I’ve gotten myself in this situation. I wanted out. I wanted to survive.”
“Listen to me closely,” Yin said. “The chances of your getting out of Tibet now by fleeing are very slim. Your only chance of surviving is to go forward, and to do that, you have to use the synchronicity.”
I looked away, knowing he was probably right.
“Tell me what happened when the van approached,” Yin said. “Every thought. Every detail.”
I told him the van had stopped, and when it did, I immediately grew afraid. I described how the woman acted as if she wanted to get out, but changed her mind and they left.
He shook his head again. “You killed the synchronicity with a misuse of your prayer-field. You set your field with fearful expectations and it stopped everything.”
I looked away.
“Think about what was happening,” Yin continued, “when you heard the van approaching. You had two choices: You could have thought about that occurrence as a threat or as a potential aid. Certainly you have to consider both. But once you recognized the van, that should have told you something. The fact that it was the same van that we had seen earlier at the crossroads is meaningful, especially since these same people created the diversion that allowed us to go by without being seen. From that point of view, they had already helped you and now were there to possibly help you again.”
I nodded. He was right. Clearly I had blown it.
Yin looked away, distracted by his own thoughts, then said, “You completely lost your energy and positive expectation. Remember what I told you at the restaurant? Setting a field for synchronicity is a matter of putting yourself in a particular state of mind. It is easy to think about synchronicity intellectually, but unless you enter the state of mind where your prayer-field will help, all you will do is glimpse the coincidences every once in a while. In some situations that is enough and you will be led forward for a time, but eventually you will lose your direction. The only way to establish a constant flow of synchronicity is to stay in a state where your prayer field keeps this flow moving toward you—a state of conscious alertness.”
“I’m still not sure how to get into this state of mind.”
“One must stop and remind oneself to assume an attitude of alertness every moment. One must visualize that one’s energy is going out and bringing just the right hunches to you, the right events. You have to expect them to occur at any moment. We set our fields to bring us synchronicity by being ever vigilant, always expecting the next encounter. Every time you forget to keep yourself in this state of expectation, you must catch yourself and remember.
“The more you stay in this state of mind, the more the synchronicity will increase. And, eventually, if you keep your energy high, this posture of conscious alertness will become your prevailing attitude toward life. The legends say the prayer extensions will eventually be second nature to us. We will set them in the morning as routinely as getting dressed. That is the place you must reach, the state of mind where you have this expectation constantly.”
He paused and looked at me for a moment.
“When you heard the vehicle coming toward you, you immediately went into fear. From the sounds of it, they were intuiting that they should stop at the mounds, although they probably had no idea why. But when you went into fear, thinking that they were possibly the bad guys, your field actually went out and had an effect on them, entering their fields and probably making them feel something was amiss, that they were doing something wrong, so they took off.”
What he was telling me was fantastic, but it felt true to me.
“Tell me more about how our fields affect people,” I said.
He shook his head. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. The effect of our fields on other people is the Third Extension. For now just concentrate on setting a field for synchronicity, and not going into fearful thoughts. You have a tendency to expect the worst. Remember when we were on our way to Lama Rigden’s and I left you alone, you saw a group of refugees and they would have led you right to the Lama’s monastery if you had only talked to them. But instead you figured they were going to turn you in and you missed the synchronicity. This negative thinking is a pattern with you.”
I just looked at him, feeling tired. He smiled and didn’t mention any of my mistakes again. We talked casually about Tibet for most of the evening, going outside at one point to look up at the stars. The sky was clear and the temperature barely freezing. Above us were the brightest stars I had ever seen and I commented to Yin about it.
“Of course they look big,” he said. “You are standing on the rooftop of the world.”
The next morning I slept late and went through a series of tai chi movements with Yin. We waited for as long as we could for Yin’s friends, but they never showed up. We realized we’d have to risk going with only one vehicle, after all, and loaded up the Jeep, pulling out right at noon.
“Something must have happened,” Yin said, looking over at me. He was trying to be strong, but I could tell he was worried.
We were heading up the main road again through a thick, sand-blown haze that had covered most of the landscape and obscured our view of the mountains.
“It will be hard for the Chinese to see us in this,” Yin remarked.
“That’s good,” I said.
I had been wondering how the Chinese knew we had been at the restaurant in Zhongba, so I asked Yin what he thought.
“I’m sure it was my fault,” he said. “I told you how much anger and fear I felt toward them. I’m sure my prayer-field was bringing me what I was asking for.”
I looked hard at him. This was too much.
“Are you telling me,” I asked, “that because you were fearful, your energy went out and somehow brought the Chinese to us?”
“No, not merely the fear. We all get a general kind of fear. That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about letting my mind go into fearful visions of what might happen, what the Chinese might do. I’ve seen them operate in Tibet for so long, I know their methods. I know how they oppress individuals through intimidation. I allowed myself to see them coming for us in my mind, as a little vision, and I wasn’t doing anything to counteract that image.
“I should have caught myself and envisioned in my mind that they would no longer be so antagonistic toward us, and then held that expectation. My fear in general was not what brought them. I went unconscious and held a specific image, a specific expectation that they would come in on us. That was the problem. If you hold a negative image too long, it can eventually come true.”
I was still awed by the whole idea. Could this be correct? For a long time I had observed that people who feared a particular event—a burglary at their house, for instance, or getting a particular disease or losing a lover—often experienced just that occurrence in their lives. Was this the effect Yin was describing?
I remembered the fearful image I’d had earlier in Zhongba, when Yin had left to find someone to go with us. I had imagined being alone in the Jeep, driving around lost, which is exactly what had ended up happening. A chill went through me. I had been making the same mistake as Yin.
“Are you saying that everything that happens to us that’s negative is the result of our own thoughts?” I asked.
He frowned. “Of course not. Many things merely happen in the natural course of living with other human beings. Their expectations and actions play a part too. But we do have some creative influence, whether we want to believe it or not. We have to wake up and understand that in terms of our prayer-energy, an expectation is an expectation, whether it is based on fear or faith. In this case, I wasn’t monitoring myself closely enough. I told you my hatred of the Chinese was a problem.”
He turned and our eyes met.
“Also, remember what I told you,” he added, “that at these higher levels of energy, the effect of our prayer-field is very quick. Out there in the ordinary world, individuals still have a mix of fear images and success images, so they tend to cancel each other out and keep the effect low. But at these levels, we can affect what happens very quickly, even though a fear image will eventually collapse the strength of our field.
“The key is to make sure your mind is focused on the positive path of your life, not on some fearful expectation. That’s why the Second Extension is so important. If we make sure we stay in a state of conscious alertness for the next synchronicity, our minds stay on the positive and off our fear and doubt. Do you see what I mean?”
I nodded but said nothing.
Yin focused again on the road. “We have to use this power right now. Stay as alert as you can. We could pass the van very easily in this haze and we don’t want to miss them. You’re sure they were heading in this direction?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then if they stopped to spend the night, the way we did, they couldn’t be that far ahead.”
All morning we traveled, still heading northwest. As much as I tried to keep it up, I couldn’t stay in the state of conscious alertness Yin was describing. Something wasn’t right. Yin noticed and kept looking over at me.
Finally he turned and said, “Are you sure you’re expecting the full synchronistic process?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I think so.”
He frowned slightly and continued to glance over at me.
I knew what he was getting at. Both in Peru and later in the Appalachians with the Tenth Insight, I’d experienced a process to synchronicity. Each of us at any one point has a primary question about our lives, something we are inquiring into, given our particular life situation. In our case, the question was how we might find the Dutch van, and then Wil and the gateway.
Ideally, once we recognize the central question in our lives, we will have a guiding thought or an intuition about how to answer it. We find ourselves with a mental image that would suggest going somewhere, taking some action, saying something to a stranger. Again, ideally, if we follow that intuition, coincidences will occur to give us information pertaining to our question. This synchronicity leads us further down our life path… and, in turn, to a new question.
“What do the legends say about this?” I asked.
“They say,” Yin replied, “that humans will eventually learn that their prayer power can greatly influence the flow of their lives. By using the force of our expectations, we can bring forth the process of synchronicity more frequently. But we have to stay alert for the whole process, beginning with the next intuition. Are you consciously expecting an intuition?”
“I haven’t gotten anything yet,” I said.
“But are you expecting one?” he pressed.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about intuitions.”
He nodded. “You must remember that this is part of setting your field of prayer for synchronicity. You must stay alert and expect the whole process to come forth: the question, getting an intuition and following it, and looking for the coincidences. Remind yourself to expect it all, be alert for it all, and if you do, your energy will go out ahead of you and help bring the flow.”
He shot me a smile meant to uplift my spirits.
I took in a few breaths, feeling my energy begin to return. Yin’s mood was contagious. My alertness sharpened.
I smiled back at him. I was for the first time appreciative of who Yin was. At times he was as fearful as me, and often he was too blunt, but his heart was into this journey and he wanted more than anything to succeed. As I thought about this, I slipped into a daydream of Yin and me walking through rocky sand dunes at night, somewhere near a river. There was a glow in the distance, a campfire, that we wanted to reach. Yin was leading and I was glad to follow.
I looked over at him again. He was staring hard at me.
I realized what had happened.
“I think I just got something,” I said. “I had the thought of us walking toward a campfire. Do you think that means anything?”
“Only you would know,” he said.
“But I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
“If your thought was a guiding intuition, it would have something to do with us looking for the van. Who was at the campfire? What was the feeling?”
“I don’t know who was there. But we wanted to reach the campfire very badly. Is there a sandy area nearby?”
Yin pulled the Jeep off the road and stopped. The haze was beginning to lift.
“This landscape is all rocky sand for another hundred miles,” Yin said.
I shrugged my shoulders. “What about a river? Is there a river somewhere close?”
Yin’s eyes lit up. “Yes, just past the next town, Paryang, about a hundred and fifty miles up ahead.”
He paused for a moment, smiling broadly. “We must stay very alert,” he said. “It is our only lead.”
We made good time, reaching Paryang by sunset. We drove straight through town and then on for another fifteen miles, where Yin turned off to the right on a track road. It was almost completely dark, but we could see the river half a mile ahead.
“There is a checkpoint up ahead,” he explained. “We have to go around it.”
As we approached the river, the road narrowed and became extremely rutted.
“What’s that?” Yin asked, stopping the Jeep and backing up.
Off in a rocky clearing to our right, barely visible, was a vehicle. I rolled down the side window so we could see more clearly.
“It’s not a van,” Yin said. “It’s a blue Land Cruiser.”
I strained to see.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “That’s the vehicle I saw at the roadblock when we were separated.”
Yin shut off our headlights, and the darkness seemed to engulf us.
“Let’s go on a little farther,” he said, pulling the Jeep forward through the deep ruts for several hundred more feet.
“Look!” I said, pointing. To our left was the van, parked between large rocks. No one was around.
I was about to get out when Yin lurched the Jeep forward and parked it out of sight several hundred yards to the east.
“Better to hide our vehicle,” he commented, locking it up as we got out.
We returned to the van and looked around.
“The footprints go in this direction,” Yin said, gesturing toward the south. “Come on.”
I walked behind him as we made our way through the large rocks and sand. A three-quarter moon lit our way. After about ten minutes he looked at me and sniffed. I could smell it too: the smoke of a fire.
We walked another fifty yards in the darkness until we saw a campfire. A man and a woman were huddled around it. It was the Dutch couple I had seen in the van. The river was just beyond.
“What do we do?” I whispered.
“We’ll have to announce ourselves,” he said. “You had better do it so they will be less afraid.”
“We don’t know who they are,” I said, resisting.
“Go ahead, tell them we are here.”
I looked at them more closely. They were dressed in fatigues and thick cotton shirts. They looked like mere tourists, trekking in Tibet.
“Hello,” I said in a loud voice. “We’re glad to see you.”
Yin looked at me askance.
The two people jumped up and stared closely as I emerged from the darkness. Smiling broadly, I said, “We need your help.”
Yin followed, bowing slightly, and said, “We’re sorry to disturb you, but we’re looking for our friend Wilson James. We were hoping you could help us.”
They were both in shock, not believing we had walked into their camp this way. But slowly the woman seemed to realize we were harmless and offered us a place to sit beside the fire.
“We do not know Wilson James,” she said. “But the man we are here to meet tonight does know him. I’ve heard him mention the name.”
Her companion nodded, looking very nervous. “I hope Jacob can find us. He is hours late.”
I was about to tell them that we had seen the Land Cruiser parked not too far away when the expression on the man’s face changed. He looked petrified. His eyes were glued to something behind me. I jerked around. Back in the direction of the vehicles, the terrain had come alive with other vehicles and headlights and dozens of voices speaking in Chinese, all moving in our direction.
The man leaped to his feet and extinguished the fire. He grabbed several packs and ran out of the camp with the woman.
“Come on,” Yin said, trying to catch up to them. Within several minutes they had disappeared in the darkness. Finally Yin gave up. Behind us, the lights were getting closer, and we huddled by the river.
“I think I can make my way around to our Jeep,” Yin said. “If we are lucky they haven’t found it yet. You head north, upstream, for about a mile, and try to outdistance them. You’ll find another road there that comes down to the river’s edge. Listen for me and I’ll pick you up.”
“Why can’t I go with you?” I asked.
“Because it is too dangerous. One man might get through, but two would be seen.”
Reluctantly I agreed, and began to make my way through the rocks and gravel mounds in the moonlight, using my flashlight only when absolutely necessary. I knew Yin’s plan was crazy, but it seemed to be our only chance. I wondered what would have been learned if we had talked longer to the Dutch couple or met the other man. After about ten minutes I stopped to rest. I was cold and tired.
I heard a rustling ahead of me. I strained to hear. Someone was definitely walking. It must be the Dutch couple, I thought. Slowly I made my way forward until I caught up with the sound. Twenty feet away, I could see the silhouette of only one person, a man. I knew I had to say something or risk losing him.
“Are you Dutch?” I stammered, thinking that this might be the man the couple was waiting to meet.
He froze and said nothing, so I repeated the question. It sounded silly, but I thought perhaps I would get some kind of response.
“Who is it?” came a reply.
“I’m an American,” I said. “I’ve seen your friends.”
He turned and looked at me as I struggled through the rocks to reach him. He was young, perhaps twenty-five, and looked terrified.
“Where did you see my friends?” he asked, his voice shaking.
As he focused on me, I could feel how afraid he was. A wave of fear swept through my body, too, and I struggled to keep up my energy.
“Back downstream,” I replied. “They told us they were waiting for you.”
“Were the Chinese there?” he asked.
“Yes, but I think your friends got away.”
He looked even more panicked.
“They told us,” I said quickly, “that you know a man I’m looking for, Wilson James.”
He was backing up. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said, turning to leave.
“I’ve seen you before,” I said. “You were detained at a checkpoint in Zhongba.”
“Yes,” he said. “You were there?”
“I was behind you in the traffic. You were being questioned by a Chinese official.”
“That’s right,” he replied, nervously looking in all directions.
“What about Wil?” I asked, struggling to stay calm. “Wilson James. Do you know him? Did he tell you anything about a gateway?”
The young man didn’t say anything. His eyes were glazed over with fear. He just turned and ran back through the rocks, heading farther upstream. I chased him for a while but he soon disappeared into the darkness. Finally I stopped and looked back toward where the van and our Jeep were parked. I could still see lights and hear muffled voices.
I turned and headed north again, realizing full well that I had blown my chance. I had gotten no information from him. I tried to shrug off the failure. More important was finding Yin and trying to get away myself. Eventually I found the old road, and minutes later I heard the faint sound of a Jeep.