BOOK of KNOWLEDGE,
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series
PART 1. PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY, or the WAY to the LIGHT
Chapter 10. SIGNS
I lay home looking at the ceiling. Spells were sent to the collection of dedications to Sergey Yesenin, portraits in silver frames were transferred to the central office. The doorbell rang. I reluctantly got out of bed and saw Lera on the threshold. We had got acquainted a month before in literary circles.
«You are all dark. You won’t last that long. I felt you and decided to stop by,» she said and added with a smile, «Don’t be scared, I see through too, and like attracts like.»
We sat in the kitchen. She talked about herself. Lera was my age and, like me, had been a successful businesswoman, the owner of five salons that had to be closed instantly. Lera went through the same breaking period, as me, although the immersion into Another Reality happened to her not so long before. I suggested experimenting «on cats», holding out two photos, of Ray and Brother, which I had shown to Nonna. Lera told the truth, as well as Nonna, but looking at the same photos, they didn’t say the same thing, each of them saw their own fragment of the picture.
«Sorry, I didn’t come to you at the Passage Court. I saw that everything would be dark there, and you as well,» then Lera spoke without photos about people she had no prior information, and I watched the flow of information coming upon her, in numbers and images, which Lera tried to interpret.
I placed my left palm opposite her right. Almost immediately, an energy wave appeared between the palms, and, beating into the palms in turn, it couldn’t dissolve or disappear in one of them. My left hand was the «receiving» one, like Lera’s right hand. Lera tried to read information from my palm, and I tried to read it from hers. Thus, we pushed the wave back and forth, but due to the equality of forces, no one could drag the blanket over oneself. It was funny to me, but I was waiting for Lera to feel the same. At some point, she gave up and laughed,
«Well, what are you doing? You are taking it away from me!»
I gave her my right palm. Lera closed her eyes and started,
«You are walking on the edge of an abyss. The abyss is on the left. You are on the right. There are mountains everywhere around. You are going to the highest one. And you’ll definitely get there if you don’t look into the abyss. You’ll gain secret knowledge. The Book of Knowledge is there. Usually, there is a Guardian Angel, or spirits, or someone else nearby, but you are alone. It’s the first time I see such thing. You probably came from the Higher Spheres. It seems, before you were born, although you decided to be born yourself, and not because it was necessary, you told them There, „Don’t touch me! I want to do all by myself!“ Now they are looking at you from There and have no right to help, since it was your decision. Do you understand?»
«I have a picture, painted after meditation. You’ve just described it. It was in Tibet, but in some other Tibet, I didn’t see it when I was there in reality. Imagine, some of the mountains are real, while others are different, ordinary people cannot see them. I don’t know what kind of place this is, but everything merges there, visible and invisible.»
«Shambhala!» Lera breathed out deeply. «You have been to Shambhala!»
We exchanged some mystical life stories, enjoying communication, because it was rare to meet a person who, like you, knew how easily it was to transfer Consciousness from the physical body to the astral one and back.
«Imagine, Lera, I went into a monastery shop on the Solovetsky Islands, realizing that I needed to find icons that could be purchased only there. It’s a waste of time to look at the contents of the shelves with my weak earthly vision. There was no one in the shop except me and two saleswomen. I asked permission to come closer, explaining the reason, but they refused, saying, «Tell us which one you need, and we will show you.»
«Great test for the Third Eye!» Lera laughed. «Once again, you felt like a guinea pig in the hands of the Higher Powers, didn’t you?»
«Well, I closed my eyes and asked for a monastery in the sky, but the result didn’t impress the Higher Forces, the saleswomen got lost in thoughts, and I had to clarify without thinking, „The 3rd from the left on the second shelf from the top.“»
«So did the monastery in the sky turn out to be on the third icon from the left on the second shelf from the top?»
«Yes, I wouldn’t have believed it myself, it was the icon with the founding elders seeing their future monastery. The same way I got the Stove icon, found behind the stove in which monastery bread was baked in the 16th century, and the Solovetsky image of the Virgin with a handkerchief in Her hand.»
«I finally understood to whom I brought Holy Water from the Caves!» Lera exclaimed joyfully. «To you! They forced me to take it, but I didn’t understand for whom, however, I took it!»
«It happened to me too. I went far away to the Thirtieth Kingdom to admire a huge temple complex. For some reason, I wanted to take three of my books with me. On the plane named after a famous Spell-caster, I decided to re-read my book to pass the time. The stewardess hovered over me several times, and then asked for a book as a gift, as it turned out, she was fond of spells.»
«Aerobatics! Who was the second one for?»
«I was supposed to stay for a week in a transit Kingdom, traveling to its different cities. In the last of them, our guide had made her dissertation on comparative religion analysis, as I had done in my time. We started talking. It turned out that she liked spells, moreover, that day was her birthday.»
«Great! And the third one?»
«The third one was still languishing in my rucksack when a local driver from the Thirtieth Kingdom came to take me to the airport. I was already nervous. He knew no languages, except the local dialect, so we drove to the airport in silence, said goodbye with smiles, and I was already approaching the door, when suddenly he caught up with me and exclaimed in English, «Book!» I looked at him with a silent question. Helplessly apologizing, he pointed his finger at my rucksack saying several times, «Irina… Travel agency… Book… Irina… You… book…»
«Of course, you didn’t know any Irina!»
«As anyone else in that Thirtieth Kingdom, indeed. I took out the third book and happily got rid of it!»
«Amazing!» Lera laughed. «Tomorrow I’ll bring you water. You know, I see your Sun on a black background. You should re-paint the background. And the number „37“ comes. Be careful at that age, okay?»
I nodded obediently, Nonna mentioned the same number.
…When you don’t drive a car for a long time, it has a habit of not starting, being offended that you forgot about it. As people say, the battery discharged. I came to the abandoned Fox. It apparently sympathized with me and therefore, in spite of everything, started up. I had to take it for a walk. I went to the cemetery. I don’t like cemeteries. The Lower Essences, feeding on the energy of people grieving for their dead, live there. Usually, I come to the cemetery only in the spring and on my father’s birthday, in the fall, to check if everything is safe and sound, and not at all in order to communicate with those who are not at the cemetery. I silently looked at the photos of my parents. My father was killed, and my mother died so that I could live. I had to live for some reason, but there was no life in the Void, but existence only. It started to rain and I went home. On the way, I stopped at the newly opened gift shop. On a shelf, right at eye level, I noticed… the Girl with the Moon Cat, the same ones I had painted! I froze, not believing my eyes. I stood looking at the statuette for a long time, without touching it for fear that it would disappear. There was no price tag, but the inscription, «Enigma. Girl with the Cat.» A blond-haired Girl in a purple-blue, sleeveless, toe-length dress, straight out of my paintings, walked somewhere into the distance, holding a smoky Cat in her hands. Finally, I took them in my hands, afraid to drop the statuette. It was in a single copy.
I showed the find to my son at home.
«Where did you find it? This is a sign, mom!!!»
Nonna called me at midnight. She talked about herself. I told her about the Girl with the Moon Cat. Nonna agreed, a sign.
«Just which one?» I asked thoughtfully.
«A sign that you are on the right Path, Alice. This year has become a year of creativity for you. Remember, my dear, how many books of spells from your table drawer have been published! How many pictures have been painted about what you see There? Am I wrong?»
I agreed, but what was the sense, if the man I asked for human communication had written, «Go away!» Was it so difficult to give another person the possibility to talk to you? For some reason, I took the phone and wrote to the MWWN that it seemed like I had gone through everything on Earth and it was time to leave. He replied, «Don’t die. The World of Magic will go out». Very funny. I offered to meet to gift him my Blue Book, finally published and dedicated to Him, and He disappeared again.
Signs are sent to people all the time, but for some reason people don’t see them or don’t want to, continuing to search and even find them where there are no signs at all. It’s advisable, in addition to obvious signs, to learn to feel the Wind of Change. I like to receive signs of displacement in the Space of Options, getting into a transit zone. A transit zone is an intermediate state between two lines of life, like changing those of the subway. You are clearly no longer where you were yesterday, but not yet where you will be tomorrow. Everything seems to be the same, but something, barely perceptible at first, looks different. For example, you go to the same cafe every morning for many years, and the waitress knows that you drink coffee with two sugars. But for some reason, today she brings you… tea… without sugar. You leave the cafe, approach the car, but it won’t start, although yesterday you parted on a friendly note, and there is no reason for its whims. Then you take the subway, glance at the book the girl sitting next to you is reading, and snatch out, «Never say never». Then, as in a chain, you get exactly what you always and absolutely sincerely believed would never happen to you.
One day, after leaving work early, I wandered along the main street of the city in search of a gift. It was very hot and stuffy. To get to the other side of the street and continue the search, I went down into the underground passage, where there were many small shops with various things, and stopped at one of them, looking at the display window. Suddenly I got so terrible headache that I decided to go down into the saving coolness of the metro and go home. While waiting for the train, out of habit, I glanced at the clock above the tunnel. As soon as I entered the train, my headache instantly went away. In the evening, it turned out that I had got a headache two minutes before the explosion in that very underground passage.
A few years later, I was going abroad for the New Year holidays. The travel agency said that I was late, since the airplane tickets had run out, but they offered me another place five days earlier, I agreed. On the eve of departure, some tourists returned their tickets, and I was glad to come back to the initial option of my trip. The next morning, I was woken up by a phone call from Brother, who didn’t know that I had changed tickets. «Where are you?» Not understanding his anxiety, I answered in surprise, «At home». He sighed with relief and offered to turn on the TV, which performed a decorative function in my flat, since I hadn’t watched TV for many, many years. That morning I betrayed my principles and was horrified by huge waves, a tsunami, everything was in the water.
Water is known to cleanse. True, not all and not always. For some reason, the word «geese» immediately came to mind. You can do a lot of interesting things with water. For example, you can write on it with a pitchfork. You can charge it and spell to it. Or you can silently look into the water and see. Since birth, I was terribly afraid of water, though not just any, but a selected one in such natural places as rivers, lakes, ponds, seas, oceans. Mom didn’t understand why, and tried to teach me to swim in the river near our cottage. I resisted in every possible way, scratching and even biting. At the same time, I was not at all afraid of water in bathrooms and swimming pools, no matter how deep they were, so as a result, I was sent to learn swimming in the pool. As I grew up, I learned to overcome my fear and even swam behind buoys in the sea. However, subconsciously… any waves, including small ones evoke in me (and, probably, will do it forever) a persistent desire to run away as quickly as possible.
That night I got the very same strange dream, shown to me periodically in various variations throughout my life. The City. A different one, not like all the cities on Earth. There are completely different houses and no cars, in general everything is different. And then a huge wave appears. So big that it’s difficult to imagine in reality. Everything dies in this wave. I’m trying to run away, hide somewhere, but there is so much water that I’m drowning. The whole city is sinking. Everything is drowning. There is no one left. No one at all. At all.
In the morning I found Lera’s page on the Internet and read her spells written after our meeting. One of them was clearly not in her spirit.
«What have you done!» Lera said, laughing into the phone. «Yesterday I returned from you and went headlong into the Flow!»
«Were you hanging out in my sector, by any chance?» I asked laughing, and, without waiting for an answer, reassured, «Come on, relax, there are enough spells for everyone. If you got them from my sector, I don’t mind. Welcome again. If you meet me, we can chat right there. You know, the other day I had a long, long spell flowing down all night, sounded like the „Black Man“ by Yesenin, as if I was talking to my mother. I still remember some lines. Anyhow, I forced myself not to write it down. It was so painful that I purposefully left the Flow.»
«I need to pass you the Holy Water, Alice! Let’s meet in the city, the city is a distraction.»
I lived at the end station. An empty train arrived. The doors opened, people rushed to take their seats, but I crossed the threshold of the carriage with difficulty because I smelled Death. I knew its smell since childhood, a smell that you feel not with your nose, but with knowledge. A girl was lying on the seat between the doors in an unnatural position; long blond hair completely covered her face, and her bag was missing. Everyone thought that she was drunk and asleep, so they bypassed her and took places further away. I knew she was dead.
The doors closed, the train entered the tunnel. I wanted to go to the small gray box with a red button to inform the driver about the girl, but I realized that I wouldn’t be able to contact him. When the train arrived at the next station, a woman approached the box, tried in vain to press the button and shouted, «The girl is sick here! Do you hear?» But no one heard her, since the connection didn’t work. I began to think about why and how the girl had died, but… what difference did it really make, why one was no longer alive? The main thing was that one no longer existed.
We met in the city center. As Lera was handing me the water, the bottle slipped out of our hands.
«Yes!» Lera exclaimed joyfully to the surprise of those around. «Yesterday I saw it falling! So I poured it into a plastic bottle today! Water is a crystal. It’s all glowing. You’ll understand it while drinking. There is a source with an enormous glow there.»
Lera often went on weekends to her Teacher the Hermit, in another country, from where she brought water. I immediately saw him as soon as Lera began her story, and my picture completely coincided with her description of the Hermit.
«Alice, have you ever noticed going in the metro, that no one seems to notice you? Well… as if you are in your own reality, and people are in another?»
«The metro is one of the flows. You can work miracles in it, play with time and space, while remaining invisible to others.»
«I agree! You know, the last time I visited the Hermit, I recalled myself coming down Here. Like in your picture with the snake, back and forth, remember? The Earth was a small ball, I was getting closer and closer. It was spirally, and the spiral twisted clockwise. Then I began to distinguish continents, mountains, forests and saw a city. I was not alone. A lot of people just like me were flying nearby… Exactly as you painted.»
I smiled, remembering Nonna’s words, «You must recall everything! Become aware of a dream called life. As soon as you become aware, you will recall what is There you came from. I remember you, we talked There. I read your poems in the Library of the Universe. There is your sector there, you have already written them all, and now you are reading them. And you don’t remember me! You don’t remember almost anything at all, my green one!»
…I got out of the elevator and headed towards my flat, when… I was abruptly stopped by a familiar Smell. Death had been there, not long before.
In fact, Death is always nearby. People don’t want to think about it, but if they don’t think, it doesn’t mean at all that Death is somewhere far away. Death is the best adviser; facing it, we realize what is really important in life and what is nothing.
Last winter I went out in the corridor with elevators at night and suddenly heard a Voice, neither female nor male, Voice of Death. It said something quickly in an unfamiliar language. Instantly a picture appeared before my eyes — a coffin near the flat on the left. Some minutes later, Tanya, the daughter of my neighbors from that flat, came out of the elevator. I looked at her with a silent question, and she said that her mother was dying. Later, Tanya stood at the door of their flat being afraid to enter it.
«Is she there?» I asked, nodding towards the door.
«No, but I’m still scared… First dad, then mom. Mom had suffered from cancer for four years, and when something had happened to my dad’s spine, he couldn’t stand it and cut his veins. I still talk to him, he didn’t leave, he says they don’t allow. And now… mom.»
«Let your mom go. I didn’t let go mine for a long time. She suffered.»
«Well, what to do with dad?»
When I came to the Temple, I used to stand at the icon, the name of which I didn’t know, but I felt it was mine. From the age of thirteen, when I first found myself in the Void by the window, I was drawn to it like a magnet. Ten years later, I found out its name, and ten years more later, in a book by a clergyman, I found a mention of the icon in the chapter «Advice for relatives of suicides». It turned out that one could pray for those who had left on their own. So all my life, or rather the last two thirds, I had been praying not to leave like them. I told Tanya the name of the icon.
That day Death visited the flat on the right, of Maria and her old mother, both doctors. Not so long before, the old lady had come to look at the Girl and the Moon Cat and asked me for a book with my spells. I was afraid of being judged for my frankness, but, surprisingly, returning the book, the old woman sadly said, «You are unearthly, Alice. It’s so hard for you to live among us!» Later Maria would say, «Mom came to say goodbye on the eve of her fortieth day. Do you know what she looked like? An exact copy of your Moon Girl on the dark blue background of Eternity. Her ghostly outline with my mother’s face. I will never forget that.»
At night I received a message from Lera, «You won’t believe it! Just now during meditation I saw your painting! The one with the Pyramid!»
«It’s interesting,» I thought. «People look at my paintings recalling each their own. Did I paint to make it easier for them to recall?»
…We still met, me and the Man Who Was Not. He had made me the appointment a day before in a specific way, reminding me of Ray, «Tomorrow. At lunch. Downtown. There is some kind of a haunted place there. Not far from a gourmet restaurant. I don’t remember the name. But it’s somehow very reminiscent of something…» Try to make an appointment with someone, preferably in a city with a population of some millions, by copying and sending the above text.
We were sitting opposite. He ate, as always. As always, I couldn’t eat anything. I gave Him my Blue Book dedicated to Him. He took it in hands and politely leafed through it. As usual, he was looking at, I was looking through, meanwhile we talked about Magic and spells. Everything seemed to be the same as always, but something was wrong. I couldn’t understand what exactly.
«You’re a witch,» He stated calmly.
«What kind of witch am I? What a witch out of me?» I asked without being offended at all.
«You are wandering through some Flows, playing Another Reality and hiding your true essence, periodically working in some offices on the outskirts of the city… It’s all written on your face. When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror?»
I realized that it was a compliment.
He fell silent, lowered his head, closed his eyes for a moment and then silently looked at me again, and I was frozen by what I saw. His eyes became huge and changed color to black, his pupils disappeared. A horrible Creature, who had moved into Him or awakened in Him, looked at me from His eyes, which no longer seemed to be His eyes. A whiff of cold. He remained silent. Of course, I urgently needed to put a virtual mirror between us so that the Creature would admire itself and not harm me. However, it looked at me with genuine interest and curiosity, the way one looked at something one saw for the first time. Suddenly, the Creature burst out of His eyes into many snakes and approached my face with some caution, without touching me. We studied each other until the Creature finally went away. The MWWN closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. Everything changed for usual, it was Him again.
The MWWN asked if I kept copies of my spells somewhere besides the computer. A strange question as a sign from Heavens. I felt the urgent need to copy them somewhere else. Just in case.
We said goodbye. I wanted to stop the world, stop Time.
Nonna says that I feel Time differently. People think that I am moving by leaps and bounds, accomplishing in a year what they cannot achieve in several years. However, I seem to be always late, that’s why I rush even more to get everything done before leaving Earth. Nonna thinks that I still have not been able to adapt to the local Time from the Time of There, which flows differently. Once, I was struck by the sound of an alarm clock, since I suddenly realized what Salvador Dali had painted. His liquid clocks, for example. Dali had been There, surely, so he tried to explain to us through the picture that Time was different.
Anyhow, Time didn’t stop. The MWWN, as always, kissed me on the cheek. As always, I left without looking back. Who was He? Who sent Him to me and why? Why was everything going that way and not another? What kind of Creature was that? What did the sign mean? What else should I understand or recall? Why did I come on Earth? The pictures were painted. The spells were published. What was I doing there?