“Stop saying this,” I said. “It’s a ghastly idea. You think I haven’t heard such ideas before?”
I was afraid. I was shocked and afraid. My intellect rebelled at every word he’d spoken but I was shaken. A cold terror might get the upper hand in me at any moment.
“The terms you’re using, they aren’t new to me,” I said. “You don’t think I’ve read theories of multiple dimensions, stories of souls who travel out of body, who find earthbound spirits trapped in realities they need to escape?”
“Well, if you’ve read these things, for the love of yourself and all you hold dear, question these awful beings who are manipulating you!” he insisted. “Break free of them. You can get out of this grotesque trap, this elaborate bubble in time and space, simply by willing it.”
“By what!” I scoffed. “Clicking my heels and saying ‘There’s no place like home’? Look, I don’t know who you are but I know what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to prevent me from getting back to Vitale, for doing what I’ve come here to do. And your urgency, my friend, does more to undercut your anemic theories than my logic can do.”
He seemed heartbroken.
“You’re right,” he confessed, his eyes gleaming, “I am trying to deter you, to turn you back to your own growth and your own capacity to seek the truth. Toby, don’t you want the truth? You know the things this so-called angel told you were nothing but lies. There is no Supreme Being listening to anyone’s prayers. There are no winged angels sent to implement His will.” His mouth lengthened in a sneer. But then his face formed the expression of utter compassion again.
“Why in the world should I believe you?” I asked. “Yours is an empty universe, an implausible universe, and I rejected it a long time ago. I rejected it when my hands were bloody and my soul black. I rejected it because it made no sense to me, and it makes no sense to me now. Why is this belief system of yours more plausible than mine?”
“Believe, believe, believe, I ask that you use your reason,” he pleaded. “Listen, your spirit bullies may be back at any moment to collect you. Please, I beg you, trust in what I have to say. You are a powerful spiritual being, Toby, and you don’t need a jealous god who demands worship, or his angel henchmen sending you to answer prayers!”
“And for whom did you come here, and with so much passion, and so much effort?”
“I told you. I’m one of many discarnate entities sent to help you in your journey. Toby, this is the lowest and most draining sort of belief system, this miserable religion of yours. You must get beyond this if you are ever to evolve.”
“You were sent, sent by whom?”
“How can I make you understand?” He seemed genuinely sad. “You’ve lived many lives, but always with one soul.”
“I’ve heard that one a million times.”
“Toby, look into my eyes. I’m the personality of a life you once lived long ago.”
“You make me laugh,” I said.
His eyes filled with tears. “Toby, I am the man you were in this time, don’t you see, and I’ve come to awaken you to what the universe truly is. It has nothing to do with Heaven or Hell. There are no gods demanding worship. There is no good or evil. These are constructs. You’ve fallen into a trap that makes spiritual growth impossible. Challenge these beings. Refuse to obey.”
“No,” I said. Something changed in me. The fear was gone, and the anger I’d felt was gone. A calm came over me, and once again I was conscious of the music, of that same lovely melody playing that I had heard when I first came. There was something so eloquent of justice and beauty in the music, so expressive of a virtue that it could break one’s heart.
I turned and looked at the assemblage. People were dancing, men and women in circles, holding hands, one circle revolving one way, the outer circle another.
His voice came right by my ear. “You are beginning to think about it, aren’t you?”
“I’ve thought about it, the ideas you’re offering. As I told you, I’ve heard them before.” I turned and looked at him. “But I don’t see anything convincing in your argument. As I said, you are describing a belief system of your own. What proof have you that there are other dimensions, or that there is no God?”
“I don’t have to have proof of what is not,” he said. He appeared distraught. “I appeal to your common sense. You’ve lived many times, Toby,” he said, “and many times spirits like me have come to help you, and sometimes you’ve taken that help, and sometimes not. You come back into the flesh over and over again with a plan to learn certain things, and your learning cannot progress if you don’t realize that this is so.”
“No, it’s a belief system all right, everything you’re saying, and like all belief systems it presents a certain coherence and a certain beauty, but I rejected it long ago. I told you, I find it empty and I do.”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Do you really want to know? Do you really truly want to know?”
“I love you. I am you. I’m here to help you move on.”
“I know because deep in my soul, I know there is a God. There is someone I love whom I call God. That someone has emotions. That someone is Love. And I sense the presence of this God in the very fabric of the world in which I live. I know with a deep conviction that this God exists. That He would send angels to His children has an elegance to it that I can’t deny. I’ve studied your ideas, your system, as it were, and I find it barren and finally unconvincing, and cold. Finally it’s dreadfully cold. It’s without the personality of God and it’s cold.”
“No,” he protested, shaking his head. “It’s not cold. I’m pleading with you. You’re wrong. You’re putting a god at the center of your system that never existed. Only the child in you insists on this god. That child must yield to the man.”
I got up from the table, bringing the lute with me. I stopped, unbuckled the sword and let it drop to the floor. I let go of the cloak he’d given me when we met.
Suddenly my head began to spin.
“Don’t go, Toby,” he said.
He was standing next to me. No. We were walking together through the milling crowd. I was dizzy. Someone pushed a goblet of wine at me, and I waved it away.
He threw his arms around me and tried to stop me.