Chapter 41 Dharma Talk

– Taking dharma into the world

Friday 13th August

Sam visualised her awareness as residing in the air, a few centimetres from her left shoulder. This separation of her awareness from her physical body provided strong evidence that consciousness was not an emergent property of complex brain matter. Instead, it was something very different. The exercise of dissociation isolated a self which was quite distinct from the concept of self that most people assumed.

Her ability to easily achieve dissociation of her awareness had occurred after her enlightenment – a term which Sam simply defined as a profound realisation that the true self was neither body nor mind. Enlightenment had enormously clarified Sam’s view of reality but had not been, in itself, a dramatic experience.

Dissociation was the phenomenon required for remote viewing, although enlightenment was not a necessary precursor. Many effective RVs at Fort Meade had shown a highly secular perspective with no religious or spiritual leanings. For those people, however, control of a dissociative experience had been very inconsistent. They could not reliably undertake remote viewing at will, and sometimes their accounts of what they had seen were simply confabulations.

The events of the past fortnight and her phone call with Ben following his visit to the Smiths had now confirmed that highly controlled dissociations had been achieved at the Bodhiisha Rehabilitation Unit with people who had not previously engaged in spiritual practice. The quality of any remote viewing thus achieved, however, remained unknown.

Sam’s consciousness noted in very specific detail the experiences within her body – a body that she could perceive a short distance away from her seat of awareness. The mind was functioning autonomously, but it was mildly disoriented. There was a sense of rudderlessness. Continuing with a nautical analogy, her brain processes had lost their anchor point. This was the same experience, Sam guessed, that John Henson had attempted to express to her when she had encountered him in the underground laboratory. It was probably the same experience that Al Smith had tried to articulate to Ben.

Sam could see the world through the eyes in her head, but she could also perceive her surroundings from the chosen location of her awareness. This was an unfamiliar experience for her. She had briefly experimented with dissociation after her enlightenment but at that time had considered the ability to be a curiosity and had not fully explored it. In particular, she had always been alone when dissociating and had thus never been alerted to functional invisibility.

Sam smiled to herself. Now seemed a good time to conduct a long-overdue test.

While continuing to visualise the seat of her awareness at a few centimetres from her left shoulder, Sam walked into the meditation hall at the Bodhiisha Temple. No one acknowledged her arrival – not even Shingetsu, who was just a metre away from her as she quietly walked past him.

Her body stepped onto the raised platform, walked to her customary chair, and sat down. It was nearing the time for her final dharma address to the retreat participants, and the room was full. Nevertheless, no one acknowledged Sam’s presence. Several people at whom she glanced gazed back in her direction but seemed to look straight through her.

Sam took a breath and refocussed the seat of her awareness to within her head.

At that instant, several people who were sitting or standing nearby gasped, and the hall began to fall silent. Further gasps could be heard.

‘Oh hello, Sam,’ called Shingetsu. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you come in.’

A murmur rippled around the hall, and Sam was able to discern that most, if not all of those present had failed to note her arrival.

It was a strange moment. Sam almost felt as if she was a stage hypnotist and should now, at the very least, conjure up a tiger for her finale.

She glanced at Shingetsu. She noted surprise on his face for a few moments and then sudden comprehension. He walked over to her and whispered: ‘That was impressive. If you show me later how to pull it off, I’ll not need to buy a season ticket for Norwich City next season.’

Shingetsu smiled at Sam and then walked to the side of the hall. He sat down on the floor. Those who were not already sitting did so too, and the hall fell silent.

‘This is the last dharma talk before most of you leave.’ Sam began her final address. ‘You’ve just had breakfast, you’re all packed, and you’re as ready as you’re going to be to re-enter the world of the everyday – whatever that means for each of you. I hope you’ve found benefit here during this week of retreat. Now, however, you are left with the matter of what you will take away from your experience here – both for yourselves and for the wider world.

‘Some of you may be planning to take away a determination to regularly meditate. That may be a good idea or it might not be. It’s very easy for any spiritual practice to become ritualized through repetition. Some people undertake the same meditative practice for years without recognising that they’re simply engaged in a habit. Looking for spiritual insights is like looking for buried treasure. You get no credit for how much time you spend digging holes in the wrong places, and a new arrival might dig in the right place on their first attempt.

‘So what spiritual practices can you undertake in the coming days, weeks and months that can take you forward on your spiritual paths? Remember what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to exist in the present moment and then examine the layers of reality which are only visible in the present.

‘You might enjoy sport. Playing any sport requires a level of focus in the here and now, and tends to shut down the default mode network in the brain that generates random thoughts and feelings. A friend of mine is a rock climber and tells me that nothing focuses his mind on the present like free climbing, fifty metres up a rock face.’

There was a murmur of laughter in the room.

‘Maybe, for you, a regular daily period of meditation is not the way forward. It may, as I say, become just a ritual. If your awareness can watch your sense perceptions, your thoughts and your emotions, then every moment of your life can be a meditation. Sitting around trying to look like a statue of the Buddha and meditating on the fact that your legs ache is all very well. As an alternative, when that driver cuts in front of you on the road, you have the opportunity to recognise the revenge fantasy in which that motorist is Lee Van Cleef and you’re Clint Eastwood in the final scene of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. That’s when you can seriously examine the ego.

‘Maybe someone will ask you to do something that you don’t feel like doing. You can examine your reaction and where it comes from, and then decide how to proceed.

‘Life may be the best meditation for you if you don’t become distracted by the continuous flow of information, and you don’t allow the ego to totally take over.

‘Whilst I have spoken about the risks of becoming bogged down within the rituals and dogmas of a specific religion or spiritual tradition, there is much wisdom that can be found in the teachings of established faiths. You could look into the insights from an unfamiliar faith and see if some of these resonate with you. Maybe some new expression of a concept from an unfamiliar culture might lead you to a lightbulb moment.

‘Be kind to other people. The attitude of mind needed to have empathy with others is a requirement of going deeper into the nature of reality. Unkindness only emerges from the ego, and a strong ego will impede your progress. Also, be kind to yourselves. If you find yourself trying too hard to achieve understanding or find yourself feeling guilty about not trying hard enough, that’s your ego speaking too. There is nothing to do, so practice doing nothing.

‘In summary, what I am suggesting to you is to not just follow the tram lines that someone else has put down. Focus on your objective, not on any particular method, and try to think outside the box because outside the box is where you’ll find Ultimate Reality.

‘Thank you, and I wish you all well.’

Chapter 42 Last chances

Saturday 14th August

‘Why did you administer Teterodat to yourself, John, after the unit was closed?’ Peter Rogers sat with John Henson in the front room of John’s brother’s home in Southampton. It was a warm summer morning and sunlight streamed through the bay windows.

‘It was stupid, I know. I realised all the lab equipment was being collected on the Tuesday, and I knew I wouldn’t be involved in the project after Ben Clarke had completed his evaluation. I thought it was my last chance.’

‘Last chance for what?’

‘You know that I was planning to retire after the project. I didn’t have any plans. I got to thinking there was nothing in my life to move on to. Then I got to thinking of Alexandra and her children.’

‘Your daughter and grandchildren in the States.’

‘They live in Oregon, on the outskirts of Salem. I haven’t been in touch with them for thirty years. My ex, when she moved to America, wouldn’t let Alexandra contact me. By the time Alexandra was old enough to make her own decisions, she’d accepted all the lies Lucy’d told her and didn’t want to get in touch.’

‘You were hoping to use Teterodat to dissociate and view them remotely.’

‘I know it was stupid. I was just upset and depressed. I hadn’t planned it. I had a drink on the Monday evening, and it just happened.’

‘Did it work?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think my soul’s returned. I still have that feeling the Diss subjects reported about part of themselves being missing. I guess it’s that part which would know if it saw Alexandra and the children. I’ve currently got no access to it.’

Peter thought for a moment. ‘You said you took the Teterodat on the Monday. You weren’t admitted to hospital until Thursday the twenty-ninth of July.’

‘I didn’t feel right after the experiment, as I’ve just said. I had some Teterodat left – I’d only risked half a syringe – and I thought it might be possible to reverse the effect in the way that was possible for some of the subjects. You remember that another session with Teterodat sometimes brought back the part of them they felt they’d lost.

‘I injected the other half syringe on Thursday evening, even though the hardware had been removed from the lab by then. That’s the final thing I remember until last weekend.’

‘I see, John. Don’t worry, by the way. There’s no need for this to be taken any further. You need to look forward to your retirement.’

‘Thanks, Peter.’

‘That’s OK. I wondered if you could help me with one thing though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’d obviously kept one dose of Teterodat after phase one. Have you got any others?’

‘I’m sorry, Peter, I didn’t deliberately keep back the one I used. I was just checking the lab on Monday before it was emptied and came across a syringe that had been discarded due to the needle getting bent. It had somehow avoided the sharps box. I transferred the Teterodat into a new syringe. There is no more. Is there a problem with your supply?’

‘We thought there were three boxes delivered originally. It appears there were only two. There was one box remaining in Mexico from where we sourced the others. That was due to be flown here, but the consignment got hijacked on the way to the airport. It’s probably in Colombia by now.’

‘So Starchild phase two is on hold?’

‘We’ve our own manufacturing underway, but it takes at least five years to produce the drug from scratch – we’ve got two years to go.

‘As things stand at the moment, we’re not going to be ready for a while.’

Chapter 43 International involvement

Saturday 14th August

‘So, what happened, Zang Wei?’

‘The security van was driven to an agreed location, Li Colonel, for the planned liaison with our agent. While the transfer was taking place, the agent and the driver of the security van were shot dead and then the consignment was taken.’

‘Do we know who might have stolen it?’

‘Yes, Li Colonel, and we know where it is.’

‘How so?’

‘Hijacking of drug shipments in Mexico has become almost routine. Security vans are no match for the drug gangs. That’s why a tracking device is routinely concealed in shipments. Our agent was cautious and arranged for the van driver to place a second tracker within the consignment before leaving Tlalpan. The first was disabled, but the second contained more sophisticated technology and remained unnoticed.’

‘Where was the consignment taken?’

‘If you’ll allow me, Li Colonel.’ Zang Wei moved to a consul on the desk of Li Xiu Ying and pressed some buttons. A panel in the far wall of the room lowered to reveal a large screen. Zang Wei pressed further buttons, and a map of the world appeared on the screen.

There was a red flashing dot on the map indicating the location of the tracking device.

‘So, the tracking device is still in Mexico City.’

‘Yes, Li Colonel.’ The map on the screen zoomed in on Mexico City and then focussed at street level to the exact location of the dot. ‘It’s in that building.’

‘Which is?’

‘The Russian Embassy.’

‘They’re clearly not aware of the second tracker, and I imagine it hasn’t occurred to them to electronically check the consignment since the first tracker was removed. Let’s hope this state of affairs continues until we can reclaim the package. Is that in hand, Zang Wei?’

‘We will act without delay. The Russians don’t have the current ability to use Teterodat in the way that we and the Western alliance can. They simply wish to prevent other powers from getting it.’

‘They could achieve that by destroying the consignment.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Do you think that might already have happened?’

‘I think that would have disabled the tracking device. They could make that decision at any moment, however. There is no time to lose. Action to recover the Teterodat is already underway.’

Chapter 44 An unexpected journey

Saturday 14th August

Sam had arranged to call upon John and his brother at noon. Her satnav had estimated three and a quarter hours for her journey, so she had left Diss at eight in the morning to allow for uncertain traffic.

As it happened, there were no traffic delays, and as she approached the outskirts of Southampton, she was an hour early. She reflected that the intuitions she frequently experienced about people and events did not extend to predicting traffic conditions. Neither could she forecast the weather nor lottery results. In fact, she knew of no spiritual master who had engaged in a national lottery – much less won – and it was conceivable that an enlightened soul might wish for a fortune to help others in some way. This was further evidence that no one could see a predetermined future. Most likely, Sam could sense forces bearing upon a current event, or one that was shortly to happen, and it was this ability that underpinned her intuition. She was not seeing the future but was making a very well informed prediction.

Whilst forthcoming traffic conditions had eluded her, Sam had sensed something as she had been driving. As with all intuitions, it was a feeling rather than an image. She tended to work with such feelings by imagining what might be relevant scenarios. The nature of the feeling would change in a familiar way if the possibility she was envisaging was getting close to the reality that often followed.

Using this process – as if trying to fit pieces into a jigsaw – she had not yet drawn any conclusions, but she sensed there was something highly significant about her journey to Southampton that went beyond any information she might gain from talking to John Henson.

As she entered the City, Sam pondered on what to do with her spare hour and decided to start by parking near the home of Stephen Henson. By doing that, she would have found the house and a place to park. She could then either meditate in the car or find a local park in which to walk or sit.

Stephen Henson lived on a road with cars closely parked along both sides. There was a space, however, on the other side of the road, a few houses away from his, in which she parked with no problem.

Sam switched off the engine and looked at the property. Her attention was taken by a Mercedes-Benz C class that was parked directly outside. The car was unremarkable, but Sam had a strong sense that it related to her building intuition. For a reason that she could not explain, her mind suddenly focussed on her time with the Stargate Project in Fort Meade, Maryland, twenty-six years previously.

That familiar feeling confirmed to her that this was the correct piece of the jigsaw. She suddenly knew with certainty that Peter Rogers was with John Henson.

Sam considered her situation and then rang Sahadeva. They spoke for several minutes.

‘I know you pulled it off at Bodhiisha last night,’ said Sahadeva, ‘but this is taking that particular conjuring trick to a whole new level.’

‘If I can’t sustain it, and he sees me, what have I got to lose? It’s not a bad introduction to a conversation about what the hell he thinks he’s doing.’

‘Let me track the location of your phone, then keep it on. I’ll call Ben, pick him up, and we’ll try to get to wherever you end up.’

There was a brief pause while Sahadeva checked that he could see Sam’s location on his mobile. ‘Good luck,’ he concluded.

Sam closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She then visualised the seat of her consciousness at just above her left shoulder as she had done at Bodhiisha on the previous morning.

Sam got out of the car and locked it. She glanced sideways and noticed two men walking along the pavement towards her. She turned and walked directly towards them and then stuck her tongue out at the men.

More than ignoring Sam, they looked straight through her and would have walked directly into her had she not stepped aside at the very last moment. Her mind drifted to the story of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and his invisibility cloak. She smiled, then carefully crossed the road towards the car of Peter Rogers.

When she reached the far pavement, she walked a few doors away from the house of Stephen Henson, got out her mobile and wrote a text to his mobile number:

Hello Stephen and John, I’m terribly sorry, I’ve had a problem with the car. I’m not going to make it today. I’ll call you later and hope to make a new time. Best regards, Sam Martin.

She did not press send but set the phone to silent.

Sam turned and looked back towards Stephen Henson’s house at the exact moment the front door opened.

Peter Rogers had not aged as much as Sam might have expected. He was a short man with angular features and now greying hair – in contrast to the thick black hair of his younger days. He had remained as trim as she recalled from Maryland.

Sam walked back along the pavement to where John Henson was now standing with Peter next to the black Mercedes. In proximity to John, she experienced once again the lack of any sense of his presence – just as had been the case during their previous two encounters.

‘Thank you for coming, Peter. I’m sorry I couldn’t be as much help as you were hoping.’

‘Don’t worry, John. It’s been good to see you.’

Rogers opened the driver’s door of his car. He then turned towards John. ‘Do get in contact if you need anything.’

Sam used those few moments to climb into the car and squeeze between the front seats into the back of the vehicle. Rogers’ attention was on John for several seconds, and he did not notice the indentations in the car seats caused by Sam – movements that she guessed might arouse sufficient curiosity in an observer to cause her presence to become apparent.

Sam sat silently in the back of the car as Rogers got inside. She sent her text to Stephen Henson at the instant that Rogers pulled the car door shut. She then remained as quiet as possible as the car pulled away.

Chapter 45 On track

Saturday 14th August

Ben climbed into the passenger seat of Sahadeva’s car. He closed the door and put on his seat belt.

‘Take my mobile, Ben, and keep an eye on Sam’s position.’

‘OK.’ Ben took the phone and looked at the dot on the map which showed Sam’s location. ‘She’s on the A3 at the moment, just north of Portsmouth and travelling north at about seventy miles an hour.’

‘At least they’re coming in our direction. That’ll make it easier. We’ll get to junction twenty-seven in a bit over an hour.’

‘What Sam’s attempting here is pretty risky.’

Sahadeva checked his mirror, signalled and pulled away. ‘I told her that, myself, Ben, but following Rogers could provide an opportunity to find out a lot more about what’s going on. If Starchild’s ready to deploy and they’ve moved all the equipment from Diss, it must be based somewhere else now. Maybe Sam can get a lead on that. Even if Rogers just goes home, at least we’ll know where he lives. Maybe he’ll make some phone calls in the car on the way, and that might also tell us something new.’

Nothing more was said for a few minutes while Ben watched Sam’s progress on Sahadeva’s phone. Ben then relaxed back in his seat. He suddenly realised this was the first time he had been in a position to speak to Sahadeva alone. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Sahadeva?’

‘Please do.’

‘Would you describe yourself as awake or enlightened?’

Sahadeva thought for a few moments. ‘That’s an interesting question. People seldom use those words about themselves because it’s very hard to convey an accurate answer to someone who isn’t already at least at the same point on his or her path. Why do you ask?’

‘I can see what Sam means about recognising my underlying awareness as it watches my thoughts, feelings and sense perceptions. I understand that I’m that awareness and not some other entity that might be imagined from the contents of what Sam described as the ego cardboard box. I feel clearer in knowing that, but not a lot else has changed.’

‘Some people would call where you’re at enlightenment. There are levels of enlightenment, and what you just described is a critical one. I experience myself as awareness too, but I can also experience other things such as the diversity of objects in the material world existing within my consciousness.’

‘I don’t follow that.’

‘You probably won’t until you see it yourself. I had several other direct experiential insights after I first became aware of awareness. As I say, there are levels.’ Sahadeva paused. ‘Sometimes, you may not recognise the understandings you already have – understandings you take for granted that others still need to attain. You’re very good with people, Ben. That empathy is a large step along the road to recognising that we’re all one consciousness.’

‘I never thought of it that way. I guess you would say that Sam is enlightened to a high level.’

‘Since I met up with Sam again, less than a fortnight ago, I’ve come to think that she’s reached levels of experiential understanding beyond mine. Sam could recall previous lives from when she was a young child. That gave her a head start in realising there was something wrong with the prevailing Western paradigm, and it inspired her to think about it.’

‘Who’d she been in those previous incarnations?’

‘You’ll have to ask her that.’

‘It sounds like it’s really hard to tell how aware anyone is.’

‘It is.’ Sahadeva glanced at Ben and smiled. ‘Guru spotting is mostly based on how people behave.’

Ben briefly pondered on Sahadeva’s words and then activated the phone screen again. ‘Talking of Sam, I’d better check where she is.’