Notes & sc. 7, 8, 9 of ch. 5

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Scene 7

Ten miles upstream from the bridge's construction the Shaman Panagiotakis sits cross-legged under a tree which is on the wooded edge some two hundred yards west of the River Styx as the other three, Mother, Mario and Aeneas are beginning their conversation.

Takis, as he likes to be called, has eyes for all of his natural-like surroundings in Elysium. The greatest of human virtues in his moral eyes is Prudence not Justice. He governs and disciplines himself by reason and sometimes Reason with a capital. That is his perspective.

Good Judgment and Circumspection surround this sense of Prudence like the great circles of stones surround the great tree at Mother’s. He is the stone and the wood that reflects the reality of wherever he finds himself.

He is a chameleon, a Master shape-shifter of mind. Takis was as a ghost when alive. Now Dead for over 170 thousand years, he has a mind that has danced far beyond Merlyn’s and his Druid clans.

Takis waits in Silence as Patience is another virtue. Waiting is easier when Dead. Besides, Takis has been to the other side of the Styx. Takis knows what others do not. He understands some of what he knows. This is what makes him a dangerous man even among the Dead.

Takis sits drifting over the surface of the River Styx in the distance. He thinks. ‘Vertical this river appears to Mother. A wall. Mother’s elite are constructing a bridge to walk across the Styx when they should be building a ladder for the climbing. When they arrive for my advice I will tell them of the necessity of the ladder.’

Foreign Dead. A strange term. No one is foreign Here just as no foreigners exist among the Living. Consciousness finds its own kettle for cooking. Up, down, left, right – these mean nothing by themselves. Intensity flowers and seeds then flowers again. Corners tackle the mind, corners pointed in or out comes nowhere closer to the truth than the River Styx.

Thoughts end in tangles as reason bends into itself. The elements the Dead miss. Take away gravity and grave and where is Life’s purpose? Illusion is more important than the reality that creates it, just as Consciousness is more important than the reality it creates.

When we leave this Place our Elysium will surely fade like childhood, and become another footstep left for heartsoulmind to puddle into.

Unclouded, Takis’s mind lucidly dreamed in symbols as nearly always.

Aa Bb Cc Dd

Ee Ff Gg

Hh Ii Jj Kk

Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp

Qq Rr Ss Tt

Uu Vv

Ww Xx Yy Zz

The storied Letters run to and fro,

Where they land is where I go.

A Cracker-Pop runs the Intangibles above and I see two young ones, Aeneas and Mario, a-walking this way from Mother’s to discover an untold mystery Here at Elysium, these Elysian Fields, these Islands of the Blessed. Where are the others? This is a question a long time coming.

I ran the symbols above through three books and the beginning of a fourth told by Merlyn to one younger. Dimensions are two-fold in a symbolic language that roots Indo-European in reading but the dimensions are greater than four to the approaching mind. Strange they kept the Roman letters, children of the Greek and Egyptian pictograph in formation.

The Styx, a one way current near the top and an opposite current near its bottom. Modern quantum electrodynamics theory coupled with the slanted and ancient view of these Elysian Fields and another vision may be seen where we Dead view a river, a branch reality. What use is such modern physics here as there is no light. We Dead have no eyes but memory.

Strangely, few remember this. Fewer still act upon it.

I am Here because I enter at this place in the six books. I enter in another Here in the beginning of Grandma’s Story in book one. A good place to be from, the Beginning of Expanding Consciousness as seen and felt in a symbolic reasoning that fellow human beings can understand. One’s person is named in such letters as my own. Takis.

Even the fourth letter of my name, Takis, the, I, such as you the reader are an, I, to yourselves, as well the, I, with Mario's name in its fourth letter. My second letter, A, is the first in this modern alpha-beta. Every T, and, A, and, K, and, I, and, S, is a part of my own human nature and yours too in translation to these books. This is what I will tell young Mario and Aeneas. From this they are on their own. The Dead are on their own Islands as Earth is an island of their once Living and memory.

Now I wait for questions as they wait for answers. It is not an easy task to deconstruct to something less than a Dead consciousness, but it is possible, and even probable in such a place where even light is a construction of mind alone. Heart is another place altogether. If one desires real physics one begins with the beginning which is soul without it one is not touched.

Scene 8

            Early afternoon. Mario and Aeneas are on the north cliff looking back and down to the bridge construction in progress. “The temple gate appears done from here,” said Aeneas, “and there is progress on the first section of the bridge.”

            “It will take a while but the path is the optimum way to find Panagiotakis,” replied Mario a few minutes later. “We ought to be there by dusk.”

            Walking the river’s edge was comfortable and somewhat relaxing, and Aeneas wondered why he didn’t take it more often just to escape the ordinary urban environs. Aeneas was also the first to notice a disheveled looking stranger walking towards them. Upon the observation the stranger waved in a familiar and friendly fashion.

“Hello!” shouted Takis with an energetic smile. “I hear you two boys are looking for me.” He said nothing more until they met with a greeting ritual of a slight bow of the head and an extension of the right hands in a short clipped clasp at the same moment. The hands are let go as the nod of the heads rises. Surprisingly to Mario, Takis took Aeneas’s hand first but he greeted both of Mother’s boys warmly.

            Mario broke the ice first as they sat cross-legged a few feet from the Styx and observed the man carefully. Bedraggled and loosely woven clothing, olive skinned, wide thick eyebrows, a large nose and ruddy cheeks, a red rumpled and somewhat torn towel-wrapped turban on his head. The old man grinned at him with worn and yellowed teeth, the front one gapped enough to squirt a strong line of spit through. His dark eyes mirrored the young man’s puzzled gaze as he heard Mario speak,  “You are one of the exceptions.”

            “I am.” And, you are not, said Takis to himself.

            Mario added, “You are Mother’s grandfather.” And, I am one of her much later children, thought Mario.

            Takis sat with his right hand and index finger raised skyward. “I knew I was being dreamed by Merlyn in the beginning of Book One.” Takis paused then continued, “He was wrong, you know.”

            “We were not in Merlyn’s dream. We have not read the dream.” said Aeneas. “Who is Merlyn?”

            Merlyn dreamed I was eighteen thousand years ago, but now in the present it was one hundred and eighty thousand years ago.”

            “We are dead,” responded Aeneas, “we are not in the present. We are in Elysium.”

            Old Takis winked at Mario and said, “Aeneas, if the Dead are not in the Present, then they are in the Past or the Future.”

            “Wait,” said Mario in a quick defense, “On Earth we are in the Past. Here is our eternal Present.”

            “If this were so, young Mario, then you could not be building a wall into the Future.”

            “You do not make sense, old man,” rebuked Aeneas.

            Old Takis, with wide eyed grin, pointed above his head and replied, “Sense is not made, boy. Sense is.”

            “The Future is already walled. How can we be building one?” asked Mario.

            “The bridge is a wall,” stated Takis calmly.

            This is a trick, thought Aeneas, “Takis, you are old and wise. No Dead is older Here. We want to know if it is possible to visit the Dead of tribes other than Greece?”

            “I am not of Greece, nor is Mother.”

            “How are you here in Elysium?”

            “I am no more here than you are,” said Takis as he studied Aeneas’s eyes. He turned to Mario, “Does young Aeneas here have eyes?”

            “Yes, of course. We all have eyes,” said Mario.

            Takis feigned a deep sigh and with finger still pointed upward asked, “Where is the light?” Noting the sudden silence, Takis added, “Where is the matter?”

            Just as suddenly being Dead took on an added meaning of emptiness in black. Just as surprising to Mario and Aeneas, the three still sat cross-legged on and within Nothing. Intensity held them to the clear foreign mind of the old, once disheveled one, whose name is Panagiotakis and not Panagiotakis both at once.

Scene 9

            The three stood near the west bank of what seemed to be a smaller River Styx. Looking further west they saw a large temple which appeared to Panagiotakis be a built to the sun-god Amun-Re.

            Takis said, “This temple is a replication of the area of Luxor and Karnak near the Nile River. He pointed, "The Valley of the Pharaohs is further west.” He first thought, I do not know which is the replication,  the one Here, in this Land of the Dead, or the one on Earth.

            Mario asked, “How is the Styx so narrow here?”

            “The major Styx is on the other side of that rise a few miles," responded Takis. "This is the minor Styx. No life within. No rain. Same blue sky with a trace of clouds. Same stars. Same moon, or so it appears.”

            “I don’t understand,” said Mario.

            “They created the island to the east so they would have a Nile.”

            “Like we are attempting to build a bridge. I am amazed,” Mario replied. We know we could go out into the river but no one ever thought to build an island out there.

            “The lush foliage is different from our Elysium,” noted Aeneas wondering how that can be as the Styx does not support life.

            With a hardy laugh, old Takis replied, “It is easy to see an illusion that is not your own.”

            “Where are the Dead?” asked Mario.

            “They don’t see us. A shaman will appear soon enough. We might as well sit.”

            They returned to the comfortable cross-legged sitting positions, saying little but glancing about from time to time hoping to see someone.
            Amenhotep stood at the base of a thirty two foot column one of many huge columns which make up the Hypostyle Hall in Amun-Re. He stared out towards the Nile and saw three cross-legged men shining as if they had armor breast plates reflecting direct sunlight.

‘A crossing,’ he ruminated. He encouraged himself into the nonexistent air and drifted, light breeze-like to their sides, dampened himself into resolved dew and lay sprinkled like ear drops on grass blades within an arm of discovery by the shaman, Takis.
           
           

“No one is aware of our presence,” said Mario.

            Takis disagreed, stating, “Mario it is you who are not aware of these Egyptian Dead who are walking about unperturbed by your non-being.”

            “I feel a presence,” disclosed Aeneas, “like the time Apollo protected me from Achilles after I was wounded by Diomedes during the great Trojan War.”

            “I doubt Apollo protected you, Aeneas,” suggested Takis kindly. “I think you weren’t as wounded as you thought you were. Your wits were being machined from the inner shadow of yourself, and you and fortune saved your life that day in battle.”

            “Are you saying the presence I am feeling is my own machinery of mind?”

            “May be, boy. I am not a fan of the Parthenon.”

            “Odd, you say that,” mentioned Mario. “Mother is not a fan of the gods either.”

            Takis smiled but said nothing. Reverting into a trio of silent beholders of Egyptian cultural metaphysics – willfully constructed materials that do not exist, rather than the immaterial heartsansoulsanminds that do. That is, until Takis made a quiet observation of the dewy mist that shimmered and reflected sky light.

            “My dear Amenhotep,” he asserted, “these two Greeks have come across a mystery and rather than explain, I decided in this case it was better to show.”

           
            Aeneas, turned slightly and saw the dark browned skin of a hairless man of light framework wearing only a translucent-like leopard-skinned, linen loincloth. He was not even carrying sandals. “Who are you?” blurted Aeneas.

            Looking solely at Takis instead, Amenhotep asked, “Why are you here?”

            Ignoring Aeneas, he responded, “Mother says it is time.”

            Amenhotep stood far from surprise and declared, “We must gather at the River.” With that the four evaporated into soul alone and were transported back to the bank of the River Styx where they began their short journey inwardly.

***

         Earlier today you ran errands and thought about chapter six. You still have work to do on chapter six as Doug sent you a note:

Dick, Thanks for your notes on the event. Found your notes very interesting. I like the idea of the shell. How many shells do you think we listen to as we go through life and do not even know that we are listening to a shell?

You asked me about string theory and quantum mechanics in one of your recent emails and if they may help explain some events. I think that Bell's theorem about the connected whole may offer a clue. Bell's theorem says everything is connected no matter the distance and knows instantaneously when something changes and will respond to that change. No speed of light speed limit. If everything is connected then quantum mechanics and string theory if it is true still must obey this connectedness.

If we are all connected what does this imply about our thoughts? Are they connected?

Doug.

You responded, and I will get to that tomorrow. Post. – Amorella.