A bloody stump was all that remained of a left leg and a largish hunk seemed to have been chopped right out of his mid-rift.  One orderly brought what looked like whisky up to the soldiers lips: he slurped it back and groaned.  The wounds must have been cauterized earlier as there was only a little blood trickling out and it didn’t make near the mess you thought it would.  He was laid on the operating table and given a large injection.  He looked at the syringe and seemed to pass out.  The thought appeared in my mind that he was an Israeli blown up by a Palestinian mine, someone who had lain shattered on a city street for a few minutes before dying.  That’s right, said Eric, he doesn’t quite know he’s dead.  Then the surgeons did a strange thing.  They held the palms of their hands over the wounds and seemed to regrow the missing parts.  In about maybe two minutes the soldier was complete again.  Gauze bandages were carefully wrapped about his left shoulder and torso and he was awakened with another hand gesture.  He opened his eyes and looked about: the surgeons smiled.  Words were exchanged.  An orderly appeared with a cane, helped him to stand and then lead him out a door.

What happened next would always be a puzzle, no matter how I tried to perforate its mysterious skin with enquiring spotlights,  so I’ll dish you the details on the same dreamy platter they were served up to me.  A flurried transit, or a transit through a flurry of dim lights and strange shapes. Eric said later a trip through the manifesting conscience of anima mundi, if that’s any help. Months later Clea sat me down to watch the movie Contact, thinking the opening sequence of all that stuff drifting about the planet would help, but it was more abstract than that, and really so short in duration that it hardly matters now.  Eric didn’t recall it himself, but he was right there with me when we arrived, and I got the distinct feeling he was leading the expedition.  We stood in what seemed to be the floodlights of a baseball diamond at night, except there was no diamond no players and no discernible bleachers.  I was so stunned it took me a few moments to notice that my eyes did not actually hurt, that the brilliance of illumination was quite without the belligerence of something that has a source and desires to penetrate, ie not of this world, and I only slowly settled into the immanence of its welcome.  I finally looked at my companion, a presence with all the appendages I had come to know as Eric, but so perfected in form I was tempted to project the paranoia of hologram, and wonder just how elaborate the backstage trickery was.

The thought calm yourself appeared in, well, my brain, I guess, and this perfect thing that was Eric smiled.  Ever the good friend he slipped his hand in mine.  For some reason, I though uh-oh we’re getting shit for something; but no, it was not to be.  Another thought, pay attention, made a quick debut.  I felt called to do my utmost.  I stared uncomprehendingly into the brilliant yet diffuse light and saw nothing but brilliant and diffuse light.  No shapes, no shadows, no discernible textures.  I gradually came to feel calm and thrilled simultaneously.  Seconds or maybe hours passed : my feet didn’t seem to be getting sore.  An Eric thought seemed to appear; it said ask any question.

I blurted Why are we here? Instantly, as the sound of my words faded, came the answer To learn.  I just knew it wasn’t an Eric reply.  Too loud for one thing.  To learn what I asked, emboldened and nearly shouting.   Everything, everything there is to know.  Know about what?  Geez, I sounded like some drunken angry teenager.  This planet and all the life forms on it.  Since no condemnation was forthcoming, I continued to rant.  So it’s all about science after all?  Again the answer roared out before my question lost its echo.  Life forms include sentience and sentience includes emotions: all these you must know and absorb. I got cocky: evil and all that shit too?  Yes, evil and all that shit too, for love has its children who hide in the shadows. 

Well, you couldn’t dispute the poetry of that.  Am I talking to God, I shouted.  There’s no need to shout, came the reply, I’m right here and I always have been.  I laughed, thinking perfect, this guy’s a winner, I love it.  Then, I not only love it, I am it.  In fact, there is no I and there is no it.  I couldn’t figure an argument for that.  In my lapse, Eric said Is this how the prophets got started?  I thought it would’ve been funnier if he’d said got their start, but since I was the newbie here I kept my thought shut.  Yes, they all came close to merging with the light, but being human they never went farther than asking questions or waiting in awe for the revelation.  Eric continued And then started up their religion. Them and their followers, doing doing doing.  You don’t have to do god, you just have to be god.  Eric chuckled Well you’d be the one to know.