Moving On

Moving On

         Jim sat at home, relaxing after a long day's work.  He'd been feeling a little "off" all day, and knew something was going on.  His work at Motorola kept him very busy learning new technologies.  But along with that, came the chance to travel to new places, teaching classes on the radio products that Motorola manufactured.  And that was something he loved most about his job, traveling.  He also worked as a server at a local seafood restaurant.  As a result, he frequently ‘burned the candle on both ends’, and needed time to replenish his energy.  Such was the case tonight.

         It was a Tuesday, and he didn’t have to work at the restaurant, so he sat at his computer writing, and playing his usual games on Pogo as he listened/watched the usual poor offering of shows the networks give us in today’s world.  He sat back to relax, and he felt himself getting tired.  Since it was still early, he decided to lie down for a 'short nap', not realizing what was about to happen.  He felt a small pain in his chest, but that was all.  There was no pain emanating down his arm, no sharp pain at all, nothing that made him fearful; it was almost like heartburn.  He slowly drifted off to sleep, not realizing that his fatigue was due to lower blood flow than normal to his brain.  Nor was he aware that he was suffering a very mild heart attack.  He never felt the sudden sharp stab of pain as his heart completely stopped in mid-beat, seizing like an overheated ball bearing in a race.

         He awoke, and realized immediately that everything was different.  His body was not the same, in fact, he couldn't feel a thing. He tried to take a deep breath as he usually did in the morning, but nothing happened.  He raised a hand, and discovered that there was no hand to raise.  He looked around, and realized he was seeing, but then again, he wasn't seeing as he did before.  He was nowhere, and everywhere.  He thought of his job, the things he had to get done that day, and found himself in the office area he knew so well.  He had no idea how he'd gotten there, and wondered what the hell was going on, since the whole complex was still dark.  Perplexed, he thought he would go home and get back to sleep; suddenly he was home, but not at his home in Chicago , but his wife's house in Decatur .  Everything looked normal; the house was quiet, his family sleeping peacefully.  As his mind wandered, he found himself drifting, almost as if a tie that kept him earthbound had been severed.

         "Am I dead?"  He asked himself.  "I can't be, I never saw angels, or devils like in that movie 'Ghost', and I'm not at the pearly gates that churches tell you about.  In fact, nothing is like what I've been told death would be, I never felt pain, nothing."  As he thought this, he found that he hadn't spoken.  He couldn't say a word, nor do anything at all, other than move almost instantaneously from place to place by thinking about it.

         Panicking for a few minutes, his mind wandered rapidly from one thought to another;  as he did, he ‘moved’ to that place on earth, (if it was an earthly place he thought of).  One thing he did see was his dear friend and lover Kathy, sleeping peacefully on her right side, and wondered at her beauty.  They had often dreamed about being together, now he knew that would probably never happen.

         Fighting against his panic, he finally stopped his movements and found himself floating.  The problem was, he couldn’t figure out where he was.  But it was peaceful, very peaceful, and he felt a great sense of calm overtaking him.  He slowly realized he wasn’t alone; there were others like him nearby.  While not ignoring him, they weren’t trying to approach him either.  He looked at one, wanting to ask a question, when he felt a thought enter his head, and a foreign voice spoke in his mind.

         “You are fine, and yes, it is as you first thought a while ago.  In human terms, you are no longer alive.  But you are, for aren’t you here?  You have so many questions, and one day they may be answered, but for now, know that you have left that world behind, and gone back to the one you left so long ago.  We are one; we are many.  We are whole; we are separate.  We exist as individuals, but we’re one entity. What I know, you know, what another knows, we both know.  Relax, and let the knowledge come to you, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

         This was crazy!  How could all this be?  And yet, it seemed to be true, for he found he now knew what it was like to bear a child in a womb.  He knew how atoms interact at what humans call "the atomic level"; he could see how to travel as far as he wished instantaneously, he knew how to stop illnesses that had plagued mankind on earth since time began.  Most of all; he felt at peace.  Yet he couldn’t help seeing war, hatred, passion, complacency, energy, lethargy, and most of all, LOVE back on the earthly plane.  Furthermore, he saw how to cure all these problems, knew there was a simple way, a simple path that no one on earth had ever seen or thought of.

         Another thought.  “I see it in you, see it in your presence, you want to go back.  This happens to a very few at first arrival.  You can’t go back, you have moved on in existence.  There is nothing that can be done, those still back where you just came from do not matter now, we matter, we are you and you are us.
         Looking around, he saw "others".  He couldn’t describe what he was seeing, but knew they were like him; they were him, as he was them.  But he couldn’t stop thinking how the ills that affected mankind back on Earth could be so easily cured. 

         “No, you cannot go back there again, you are fully here now, we are not allowed there in our current form.”

         “But I was there just a little bit ago!”  He was beginning to like this instantaneous method of communication.

         “Anyone of us can go back right after the changeover, but it’s too late now; you’ve been here too long.”

         He couldn’t figure this out quite yet.  He wasn't sure if he was talking with someone (or something), or if this was all knowledge being sent to him by the others he’d noticed nearby on his new awakening.

         “But I have to go there, they depend on me, need me.”

         “Too much time has passed.  What seems like mere minutes to you here is months there.  They have already adapted their lives to living without you.  True, you are missed by some, always will be, but it’s impossible for you to go back.”

         “But I’m going, I will not be stopped.”

         He could feel a sense of humor from the others near him, and couldn’t understand why.  He thought of his family, his children, but his essence did not move; he remained where he was.  He saw a loathsome looking craft come by, and realized with a start that he remembered it as the International Space Station, and how beautiful he thought it was when he’d been a man.  Now he saw all its imperfections.  If only man had thought to build it in "this fashion", it would have been not just bigger, but more stable, and able to survive in space almost on its own.  Seeing the space station caused him to think of man’s first landing on the moon, and he found himself at the moon’s surface, an American flag nearby.

         “Okay, how come I can come here all I want, yet I can’t go see my family?”

         The unseen "voice" answered again, “You can’t go back to the earth you knew, the earth you lived in.  But you can go anywhere else you can envision.”

         “But there’s so much that we could do to help them!  We could make the earth such a wonderful place to live for mankind!”

         “That’s exactly the reason we can’t go there.  Mankind has to learn this, not be taught it.  If mankind is taught or shown all this before they are ready for the knowledge, they will become extinct due to a war that would be worse than every war combined since civilization began.”

         Now he began to see the problems that faced the universe.  As he relaxed a little more, he began to understand the planes of existence, where mankind was, where he was now; and where he would be in his next "life".  He also saw that he could become the same man he had been, and realized with a start that he was asleep, dreaming.

         “Wake up!  Jim, c’mon, get up!!”

         Jim’s roommate shook him gently to wake him.

         Normally a light sleeper, it took Jim a few minutes to realize where he was.  Looking around he thought to himself, “I need to call someone; I know how we can increase our wheat production without any increase in costs.  We’ll be able to feed the entire world if we work it right.”

         He sat back and rubbed his eyes, then said, “I’ve got to get to bed earlier, I have the strangest dreams when I go to sleep after two.”

         “Now where in the hell are my shoes?  I have to get going.  Wait a minute, where was I going to go?  And what was I going to do once I got there?”

         Like all dreams, his faded quickly once his conscious mind took over, submerging the new found knowledge he had gained on how to save mankind while sleeping.

Jim Dorrell
7/26/10