The Journey to Eternity — Chapter Eighteen: The Life I Left Behind

Chapter Eighteen of my book, The Journey to Eternity, shared here chapter by chapter as I write it. Earlier chapters: Chapter One · Chapter Two · Chapter Three · Chapter Four · Chapter Five · Chapter Six · Chapter Seven · Chapter Eight · Chapter Nine · Chapter Ten · Chapter Eleven · Chapter Twelve · Chapter Thirteen · Chapter Fourteen · Chapter Fifteen · Chapter Sixteen · Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen: The Life I Left Behind

The door opened, but none of us hurried to leave.

The woman sat by the table, her hands resting on her knees. Adara stood facing the wall on which the red point had appeared earlier. I stayed near the window, watching the branches that did not move.

Something in the room had changed.

It was not the light, and it was not the quiet. It was the knowledge that someone had watched us, and that that someone could reach an ancient system that even Adara did not control.

"Do you know the voice?" I asked.

Adara did not turn around.

"Not for certain."

"But you have a guess."

"I have several. And I fear each of them will make you see what happens from now on in a different way."

"Then maybe you should tell us."

She looked at me.

"After the attempt at the Great Unification, not all consciousnesses agreed that it had been a failure. There were those who thought the only failure was that we did not complete it."

I remembered the voice we had heard.

Let us see if you can stay separate even when everyone wants to be one.

"Do you think one of them has returned?"

"Perhaps she never left."

The woman rose from the chair.

"I understand this is important, but I cannot stay here and wait while you discover who is speaking out of the walls."

She looked exhausted. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes wrinkled, and her face — my face — had lost some of the color it had when she woke.

"I want to go home," she said.

I looked at her.

Throughout all the time that had passed since we separated, her wish had remained clear. She had not asked to discover the origin of creation or to understand the structure of consciousness. She wanted to see her children.

And only then did I understand how far I myself had drifted from that wish.

I missed them too. But every time the longing stirred, I found another question, another world, another secret.

Perhaps because I knew that if I returned and discovered they had gone on living without me, I would no longer be able to pretend that time was waiting for me.

"We will go back," I said.

Adara looked at us both.

"There is a way to reach the human world. But before you cross, I want to show you how time moves between the two places."

She approached the wall.

This time, when she touched it, no ancient signs appeared.

A clock appeared.

It had two hands.

One moved slowly.

The other moved at a speed I could not follow.

Adara explained that the clock did not measure hours as I knew them, but the relation between the time streams of the two spaces.

"Time does not move in the same way everywhere," she said. "In some places it almost matches human time. In others, generations can pass while a single consciousness experiences only a short period."

I looked at the fast hand.

"How much time has passed on Earth since I left?"

Adara passed her hand over the wall.

The hands stopped.

A date appeared.

I did not need to strain to recognize it.

It was a date from the same year in which I had left my home.

The woman approached the wall.

"How many days?"

Adara checked again.

"A little more than three days."

The woman leaned on the table.

I saw the relief wash over her.

Three days.

Not years.

Not generations.

Only three days.

I felt relief too, but it was mixed with another feeling.

In three human days I had experienced things that could have filled entire lifetimes.

I had met ancient beings, seen worlds I had never heard of, and parted from the body in which I had lived for decades.

And in the world I came from, my children might only just have begun to worry.

"We need to leave now," the woman said.

Adara nodded.

"Sahar can lead the body through a suitable passage."

"And me?" I asked.

"You can move to the human world even without a physical passage. But I suggest you stay close to her until you arrive. We do not yet know how stable the connection between you is outside the system."

I looked at the woman.

She was already standing by the door.

For the first time since we met, there was no disagreement between us about the direction.

Sahar was waiting for us on the other side of the passage.

When he saw the woman come out, he looked at her for a long moment, as if he wanted to make sure she was still carrying her body.

"Are you feeling well?" he asked.

"I am tired, hungry, and I want a shower," she replied.

He smiled.

"Those are good signs."

She did not smile back.

"They will be better when I am home."

Sahar led us to a narrow passage that opened beneath one of the roots. He explained that the way would lead to the place closest to the point where I first entered the island.

Liara joined us.

"I want to make sure you arrive safely," she said.

I looked at her with gratitude.

Adara remained by the opening.

Before we parted she came close to me.

"There is something I did not tell you," she said.

"What?"

"When the system identified the connection between you, it also opened part of the records about your human life."

I felt uneasy.

"Why?"

"Because that life was the place where the ancient boundary was preserved without your knowing."

She paused.

"I do not know if it was done deliberately. But it may be that your ability to listen to others without giving up yourself is not only a result of your human experience. It may also be part of what we tried to preserve long ago."

I thought about that.

I wanted to believe that this trait belonged to me because I had cultivated it throughout my life.

Not because someone had planted it in me.

But perhaps there was no contradiction between the two.

Even if we are born with a certain inclination, we still have to choose, again and again, how to use it.

"I prefer to think my life taught me something," I said.

Adara smiled.

"I hope you are right."

The passage was narrower than I expected.

Sahar went first, the woman after him, and Liara and I moved behind them.

As we advanced, I heard familiar sounds.

At first it was a faint rustling.

Then the sound of water.

And then birds.

Real birds, the kind that have wings, bones and feathers.

The smell came after that.

Damp earth.

Leaves.

Salty air.

The woman stopped.

"Do you smell that?" she asked.

"I remember the smell."

She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.

"I smell it."

There was no boasting in that.

Only simple joy.

I looked at her and understood that the smallest things, the ones I had barely thought about in my human life, had now become the great difference between us.

We came out of the passage at the edge of a familiar grove.

It was the place where everything had begun.

The path.

The trees.

The earth.

Even the stone on which I had stopped to speak with the silver bird was still there.

The sky was bright. The sun stood high, and the air was warm.

The woman lifted her face to the light.

She closed her eyes.

I saw the muscles in her face relax.

"I forgot how pleasant this is," she said.

I had not forgotten.

But the memory was not like what I saw on her face.

Sahar checked the passage behind us.

"It will stay open for a limited time. After that it will need to be opened again from the other side."

The woman did not seem worried.

"I do not intend to return."

He looked at her but did not try to persuade her.

Liara came close to me.

"You can go with her."

I looked at the path that led out of the grove.

"And if someone sees me?"

"Most human beings will not be able to notice you. They may sense your presence, but they will not see you the way we see one another."

I looked at the woman.

She stood a few steps away, gazing at the sky.

"Will she be able to see me at home too?"

"Probably, yes. The connection between you is deeper."

I felt fear.

Not of the possibility that they would not see me.

But of the possibility that I would be there, so close, and unable to take part in the life I had known.

When we reached the road, everything looked painfully ordinary.

Cars passed.

A cyclist rode by us.

A woman walked a small dog that stopped to sniff a bush.

None of them knew anything about the Tree of Eternity.

None of them knew that at a distance that cannot be measured with human instruments there existed a city of consciousnesses thousands of years old.

They were busy with their lives.

At that moment I envied them.

Not because their lives were simpler.

But because they could live them without knowing how wide reality is beyond what it seems to them.

Sahar stopped by the road.

"From here you will have to continue by human ways."

The woman looked at him.

"I have no phone. I have no money."

For a moment I almost laughed.

After all the conversations about the nature of consciousness, we stood before such a simple problem.

How does one get home without a phone and without a wallet?

Sahar took a small object out of his pocket and placed it in her hand.

"This will help you reach the place you remember."

The object looked like a smooth stone.

The woman looked at it.

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Hold it and think of the place you want to reach. It will show you the way, but it will not move you there."

She smiled for the first time.

"At least something here takes into account that I have legs."

The way home was longer than I expected.

The woman had to walk.

I could move at the speed of thought, but I chose to stay beside her.

She stopped several times to rest.

At one of the stops we sat on a bench in the shade of a tree.

A car passed on the road, and music came from it.

The woman raised her head.

"I know this song."

I knew it too.

For a moment we both listened.

She began to hum.

I remembered the words, but I had no voice that could join hers in the human world.

"Do you miss this?" she asked.

"Miss what?"

"Singing."

I looked at her.

"Yes."

She smiled.

"Then perhaps you should not hurry to decide that eternal life is better."

I did not answer.

She was not trying to prove I had been wrong.

She simply reminded me that there are things I did not know I would lose until I could no longer do them.

When we reached the street where our house stood, the woman stopped.

I saw the excitement on her face.

She looked at the houses, the trees, the parked cars.

Everything was familiar.

But I noticed other things.

The plant pot that had been moved by the entrance.

The package left by the door.

The light on in a window at an hour when it usually was not on.

Small signs that life had continued even in my absence.

The woman approached the door.

She reached her hand toward the handle.

And then she stopped.

"What if they think I am dead?"

I looked at her.

"Only three days have passed."

"Three days in which I disappeared."

She breathed deeply.

"What will I tell them?"

It was a question I had not thought about.

How do you explain to a family that you disappeared for three days and returned with memories of a journey that cannot exist in the world they know?

How do you tell children that their mother has come back, but part of her remained in another place?

"Tell them you are here," I said.

She looked at me.

"Will that be enough?"

"For a beginning."

She nodded.

And then she opened the door.

The house was quiet.

The woman entered carefully.

I moved in behind her.

The smell struck me through memory.

The smell of home.

Of clean laundry, wood, food cooked not long ago.

I knew this place better than any other place in the world.

And still I felt like a guest.

On the living room table lay a few objects I did not remember leaving there.

An empty coffee cup.

A phone charger.

A page of paper on which phone numbers had been written.

The woman touched the page.

I saw her hand trembling.

From the upper floor came footsteps.

And then a voice.

"Mom?"

The woman froze.

So did I.

The voice was familiar to me to the point of pain.

Quick footsteps sounded on the stairs.

One of my children appeared in the doorway.

For a moment he stood motionless.

And then he ran to her.

"Mom!"

She bent slightly and embraced him.

He clung to her with all his strength.

I saw her body recoil slightly at the force of the hug, and then soften.

She closed her eyes.

Tears ran down her cheeks.

I stood a few steps away.

I reached out my hand.

I could not touch him.

I felt the longing rise in me with a force that almost shook the boundaries I had learned to keep.

I wanted to enter the embrace.

I wanted to feel the weight of his body.

The warmth of his skin.

The arms that had wrapped around my neck for so many years.

But I stayed in my place.

He was embracing her.

Not me.

And yet I remembered every hug that had come before that moment.

More voices were heard in the house.

A door opened.

Footsteps.

Questions.

Crying.

The woman was surrounded by arms, by words and by looks that could not decide whether to rejoice or to be angry.

"Where were you?"

"We were so worried!"

"Are you okay?"

She tried to answer.

I saw that it was hard for her.

She glanced for a moment in my direction.

Only she could see me.

I stood by the wall.

She looked back at the family.

"I'm here," she said.

Her voice broke.

"I'm home."

They embraced her again.

I watched them.

There was joy in me.

Real joy.

But beneath it a pain began to stir that I did not know how to contain.

Because I understood that she would be able to stay.

She would be able to sit with them at dinner.

To listen to their stories.

To touch them.

To grow old beside them.

And I would not.

Later, when the house had calmed a little, the woman went into the bedroom.

She closed the door and leaned against it.

I saw that she was exhausted.

She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her shoes.

The movement was so familiar that for a moment I felt I was the one doing it.

She looked at me.

"Are you all right?"

The question surprised me.

"Yes."

She smiled sadly.

"You do not have to lie to me."

I moved closer to the window.

Outside it was beginning to get dark.

"I am glad you came back."

"I know."

We were silent.

She looked at her hands.

"They do not know about you."

"I know."

"I do not know if I will be able to tell them."

I turned to her.

"You do not have to now."

She breathed deeply.

"I do not want them to think I have gone mad."

"I would not know how to explain it either."

She smiled faintly.

And then she asked:

"Do you regret it?"

I looked at her.

"Regret what?"

"The fruit. Your choice."

I did not know what to answer.

I thought of everything I had seen.

Of Liara.

Of Eliya.

Of Adara.

Of the stars that were born.

Of the possibility of understanding something of creation.

And then I thought of the embrace I had seen a short while ago.

"I do not know," I said at last.

She nodded.

"That is all right."

I watched her.

"And you?"

"I do not regret waking up."

She laid her hand on the bed.

"But I am afraid of what will happen when I have to explain to myself who I am."

At night, when the house fell asleep, I stayed by the window.

The woman slept in the bed.

I listened to her breathing.

Outside, distant cars were heard.

A light wind moved the trees.

Now and then the sound of an animal was heard.

Everything was ordinary.

And that was perhaps the strangest experience since I left my body.

The human world had not changed.

It had not become less important because I had discovered other worlds.

On the contrary.

Now I saw how precious every moment is in which someone can touch someone else.

I thought of my children.

Of the way time changes them.

Of how even if I could visit here again and again, I could not bring myself back into the life I had.

Not because the door had closed.

But because that life had already continued on a different path.

The woman in the bed moved in her sleep.

She murmured something I could not understand.

I came closer.

For a moment it seemed to me that she was calling my name.

But then I heard another voice.

Not from the room.

Not from the street.

A voice that came from the place where the connection between the three consciousnesses was created.

She came home.

I felt Adara's presence.

"Yes," I answered in thought.

And you?

I looked at the sleeping woman.

"I still do not know where my home is now."

Silence fell.

And then Adara's voice was heard.

There is something you need to see before you decide where to continue.

"What?"

The records of the Great Unification have been opened.

I felt tension.

"Who opened them?"

The same voice you heard. But this time it left a name.

I waited.

Adara hesitated.

The name belongs to the consciousness that was the first to propose the full unification.

"Who is she?"

Adara's voice grew quiet.

She was not one of the three of us.

"Then who?"

An ancient consciousness who saw in loneliness the source of all suffering. She believed that if there were no longer a difference between self and other, no one could harm anyone.

I looked at the room.

"And what is her name?"

Adara answered.

ECHADA.

The name echoed within me.

It sounded simple.

Almost beautiful.

But something in it stirred fear in me.

"Does she still exist?"

Yes.

"Where?"

This time Adara did not answer at once.

And then she said:

She is not in one place.

I felt the meaning become clear, slowly.

She exists in every consciousness that agreed to give up part of its boundaries in order to belong to her.

I looked at the sleeping woman.

I thought of the words we had heard.

Let us see if you can stay separate even when everyone wants to be one.

And suddenly I understood that the threat would not necessarily come as a foreign force trying to impose its will.

It might come as a promise.

A promise that we would no longer be alone.

That we would not have to explain ourselves.

That we would no longer feel the distance between us and those we love.

A promise so tempting that it would be hard to understand why anyone would want to refuse it.

I stood by the bed.

The woman slept peacefully.

For a moment I wanted to wake her.

To tell her about Echada.

About the records that had been opened.

About the danger that might be approaching.

But I stopped.

She had come home.

She needed sleep.

And I had no right to turn her life into a journey again just because my journey was not yet over.

I moved away from the bed.

I went to the door.

Before I left, I turned and looked at her.

She looked exactly as I had looked when I slept in my human life.

The same body.

The same face.

But I no longer thought of her as myself.

I thought of her as a woman I know well.

A woman to whom I owe something.

Perhaps more than I could ever repay.

"Watch over them," I whispered.

She did not wake.

But for a moment it seemed to me that a faint smile crossed her face.

I left the room.

In the corridor I stopped by the doors of the children's rooms.

Behind each one were entire lives.

Dreams.

Fears.

Thoughts I knew nothing about.

For the first time I understood that even when I was their mother in a body, I could never know everything about them.

They were always separate from me.

I loved them not because I could feel everything they felt, but because I recognized that they had an inner world of their own.

I thought of Echada.

Of the desire to abolish the distance between consciousnesses.

And suddenly I saw the deep mistake in her dream.

Distance is not only a source of pain.

It is also what allows another person to surprise us.

To teach us.

To choose us.

If there is no longer a difference between self and other, there is no longer anyone who can extend a hand.

There is only one great feeling, which has no one to receive anything from.

I stood for a long time in the corridor.

And then I understood what I had to do.

I could not save all consciousnesses from loneliness.

But perhaps I could help them see that connection does not require giving up themselves.

I did not know how.

I did not know if I would succeed.

But I knew that this time I would not act out of a desire to discover another secret.

I would act out of a desire to preserve the possibility of loving.

When I left the house, the night was quiet.

I stood in the yard and looked at the lit windows.

I wanted to remember this sight.

Not as a memory that must be kept against forgetting.

But as something that would accompany me even if I kept changing.

At that moment Liara appeared beside me.

I did not hear her approach.

She stood quietly, looking at the house.

"Did you see them?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Yes."

"And how was it?"

I looked at the bedroom window.

"Harder than I thought."

Liara did not try to comfort me.

We stood together.

After a while I said:

"I think I understand now why people are so afraid of death."

She looked at me.

"Why?"

"Not only because they do not want to stop existing. But because they do not want to stop taking part in the lives of those they love."

Liara was silent.

"And eternity does not solve that," I added.

"Not always."

I looked at her.

"I want to go back to the city."

She nodded.

"There is something we need to do first."

"What?"

"Adara asked that we meet Sahar. He found a passage leading to one of the places where Echada is still active."

I felt tension.

"Do you think she knows about us?"

Liara looked at me.

"I think she waited for us to open the connection."

I looked one last time at the house.

And then I turned to her.

"Then the time has come for us to understand why."

As we moved away, I felt something change within me.

I did not know if it was longing, a decision, or the beginning of a new fear.

But for the first time since I ate of the fruit of the Tree of Eternity, I did not ask myself how far I could reach.

I asked myself what I was willing to preserve even if I reached so far that I could no longer see the place I came from.

And the answer was simple.

I did not want to preserve only my memories.

I wanted to preserve the possibility that there would be in the world other consciousnesses, different from me, free of me, whom I could love without turning them into part of me.

Above the house the stars twinkled.

I knew now that between some of them there are distances that light needs millions of years to cross.

And yet, from the small yard where I stood, I could see them together.

There was no need to draw them closer to one another.

There was no need to erase the distance.

They were far.

And their light arrived.

I thought of that as I left the human world once more.

I did not know if I would return soon.

But I knew that when I returned, I would no longer look for the life I left behind as if it were waiting for me unchanged.

I would look for the people who live it now.

And try to learn how to keep loving them, even from the place where I am.

At that moment, a moment before the space around me changed, I heard a faint voice.

Not Liara's voice.

Not Adara's voice.

A child's voice.

It came from one of the rooms in the house.

"Mom?"

I stopped.

I turned around.

The window was dark.

I did not know if the child had woken from a dream, if he was calling the woman sleeping in the next room, or if he had sensed my presence for a moment.

I wanted to go back.

I wanted to answer.

But then I heard footsteps inside the house.

The woman had woken.

She walked to the room.

The light went on.

I saw her shadow bend over the bed.

She was there.

In the place where someone needed to be.

I stood one moment more.

And then I continued on my way.

Not out of giving up my love.

But because I understood that love is not always staying.

Sometimes it is also knowing that someone else is there, and letting them be.

And only when the house disappeared from my sight did I understand how hard that choice can be — even for one who has an entire eternity before her.

End of Chapter Eighteen

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