The Journey to Eternity — Chapter One: The Encounter

This is the first chapter of my book, The Journey to Eternity, which I am sharing here chapter by chapter, as I write it — a journey that begins with a conversation I never expected, in an orchard I thought I knew.

Chapter One: The Encounter

The sun had already set when I noticed the bird.

She stood on a low branch of an orange tree, a few steps away from me, and looked at me.

I was on my way back home from an evening walk, one of those walks on which I sought to distance myself a little from everything that fills the day. The orchard was quiet. The scent of oranges mingled with the scent of earth, and between the trees remained the last stripes of light.

I approached the bird.

I did not know her species. Her feathers were pale, almost silver, and her eyes dark and large in proportion to her head. She did not shrink from me, even when I stood directly beneath the branch.

"Aren't you afraid?" I asked.

"What should I fear?"

I froze in place. I looked around me, convinced someone was standing among the trees.

"Anyone who can harm you," I answered at last, though I was not sure why I was answering a voice.

"And does everyone who can harm you indeed wish to do so?"

I raised my gaze again. The bird did not move.

"You talk?"

"You hear."

I was not afraid, as might perhaps have been expected of me. I was surprised, of course, but more than anything I wanted to understand what was happening.

"I assume there is an explanation for this," I said.

"Everything has an explanation. The question is whether you are ready to accept an explanation you do not yet understand."

I gazed at her for a long while. "Not knowing something does not mean it is impossible," I said. "But not everything I do not understand is necessarily true, either."

"Then how do you decide what to believe?"

"I try not to believe too quickly. I prefer to ask, to check, sometimes even to be wrong."

"And have you never believed in something you could not see?"

"Of course I have. In love, for example. I cannot see it, but I can see what it does to people."

"And in God?"

I had not expected that question.

"I believe there is far more in creation than we are able to understand."

"That is not an answer to my question."

"Perhaps because I do not yet have a complete answer."

The bird lowered her head slightly, as if examining my words.

"Do you think God created man so that he would understand creation?"

"I don't know. Sometimes it seems to me that we are so busy surviving that we never stop to ask what life was given to us for in the first place."

"And what do you think?"

"That if we were given the ability to ask, it probably has meaning. Otherwise, why create a creature aware of itself, of the world around it, and even of the fact that one day it will cease to exist?"

The bird was silent. I was silent too.

A light wind passed through the trees. A ripe orange fell to the ground not far from us.

"Do you know what has always occupied me?" I asked at last.

"Tell me."

"Why are we given life only to lose it? We are born knowing nothing, spend years learning, gather experience, understand a little more about ourselves and about the world, and just when we begin to see things clearly, the time left to us grows shorter."

"And if death is not the loss of life?"

"Then what is it?"

"Perhaps it is only the end of the way in which you learned to live it."

"You mean that life continues without the body?"

"I am asking whether you believe the body is all that you are."

I looked at my hands.

For years this body had carried me from place to place, had changed, aged, sometimes hurt, and healed. I had learned to listen to it and to understand its limits.

But my thoughts, my memories, the love I feel — are all of those only the body?

"I don't know," I admitted. "But if I lost my body, how would I know that I am still me?"

"That is a good question."

"And do you have an answer?"

"I have a way in which you can discover it."

For the first time since the conversation began, the bird spread her wings. The last light touched her feathers, and they glinted for a moment in a shade I could not identify.

"To where?" I asked.

"To a place where you can learn what life is, before you decide what it means to live forever."

"And why are you telling me all this?"

"Because you asked."

"Many people ask such questions."

"True. But not everyone is ready to keep searching for the answer when it changes everything they knew before."

The bird rose from the branch and landed on a tree a little farther away. "Come," she said.

I looked at the path that led back to my home. In the windows of the houses beyond the orchard the first lights came on; the world I knew went on as usual, as if an impossible conversation had not just taken place here.

"And if I decide to stay?" I asked.

"You may stay."

"And if I follow you?"

"You will see things you will not be able to forget."

I stood in place another moment. For years I had asked myself questions about life, about creation, and about what awaits us beyond them. I never thought the answers might arrive at such an hour, in the middle of an ordinary walk in the orchard.

I began to walk behind the bird — not because I believed everything she said, but because I wanted to know.

The orchard was well known to me. For years I had walked its paths and known the places where the earth stays damp even on hot days. But as we advanced, I noticed the path was changing.

The trees grew denser, and the ground was covered with leaves I had not seen before. The scent of oranges also faded, and in its place came another scent, delicate and sweet, that I could not identify.

"How far are we going?" I asked.

"Far enough for you to see what was always close to you."

"You speak in riddles."

"Perhaps because some things are hard to explain before they are seen."

I kept walking, and after a few minutes I noticed the orchard was unusually quiet: no cars, no voices of people, not even the crickets that always accompanied me at these hours.

"Where did all the sounds go?"

"They still exist."

"Then why don't I hear them?"

"Because you are listening to another place."

"I am still here, in the orchard."

"Are you sure?"

I bent down and picked up a small stone from the ground. It was cool and rough. I rubbed it between my fingers.

"I feel the stone. I see the trees. I smell the earth. What more do I need to know where I am?"

"And what if your senses show you only a small part of what exists?"

I knew there are sounds the human ear cannot hear, colors our eyes cannot see, and movements that take place around us without our noticing them.

"That is true," I said. "But the fact that I cannot sense something does not mean I am somewhere else."

"True," the bird replied. "And so I will not ask you to believe. I will ask you to observe."

Before me a narrow path opened between two large trees, which I did not remember ever seeing, though I had walked here many times.

I entered it. A few steps later I reached a small clearing.

At its center stood a tree unlike the orchard trees. Its trunk was wide, its bark pale, and its branches spread to the sides in an almost symmetrical form.

It bore no fruit. Only small leaves, silvered on their underside, moving in a light breeze.

The bird landed on one of its branches. "Come closer."

I approached the tree. Fine signs were carved into the trunk. Some resembled letters; others, geometric shapes I did not know.

I passed my hand over one of the signs. The tree was warm.

I removed my hand and placed it again. I had not been mistaken.

"How can a tree be so warm after sunset?"

"Have you ever thought about why you call one thing alive and another inanimate?" the bird asked.

"Because there is a difference between them. A tree grows, feeds, responds to its surroundings. A stone does none of those things."

"And if the stone changes over thousands of years, does it not take part in the life of the world?"

"It takes part in the processes of nature. That does not necessarily mean it is alive."

"Perhaps not," said the bird. "But is a thing that is not alive, as you define life, without meaning?"

I looked at the stone I still held in my palm. "No. Certainly not."

"If so, perhaps the important question is not only who is alive, but what place each thing holds in creation."

I set the stone down beside the tree's roots. I thought about how we assign importance to things by the use they bring us. But creation holds countless creatures and materials whose role we have no idea of, and perhaps never will.

"Are you saying everything has a purpose?" I asked.

"I am saying everything has an effect. Whether effect and purpose are the same thing is another question."

I sat down on a wide root protruding from the earth. "If so, what is the purpose of man?"

"What do you think?"

I smiled faintly. "I am beginning to understand that you prefer I find the answers myself."

"An answer received from another can widen knowledge. An answer reached through understanding can change a life."

For years I had thought the purpose of life was tied to love, to learning, to giving, to the ability to leave something good behind us. But every such answer raised more questions.

If a person lives a quiet life and no one remembers him after his death, were his days any less meaningful?

And if a small creature exists for only one day, is the value of its life measured by its length?

"I do not think the purpose of life can be the same for everyone," I said at last. "But perhaps there is something shared by us all. The very possibility of experiencing existence, of affecting it and being affected by it."

The bird did not answer at once. "That is a good beginning," she said.

"A beginning of what?"

"Of the understanding you are seeking."

A light wind passed through the branches, the silver leaves rustled, and between them a faint light appeared — not a reflection of the moon, but light from within the tree itself.

It spread along the branches, descended to the trunk, and lit the signs carved in it.

I rose from my place. The signs began to change. Lines that had been separate joined, shapes opened and closed, and at last a circle formed on the trunk, and within it an outstretched wing.

I placed my hand on the symbol. For a moment I felt a gentle pulse beneath my palm. I removed it. The pulse continued.

"What is this?" I whispered.

"An opening."

"To where?"

"To the place from which you can begin to see creation in a different way."

"Is it another world?"

"Yes."

"And it exists alongside our world?"

"It is not as far as you think."

"Then why don't we see it?"

"Because not every boundary is a distance."

"And if I cross over, what will happen to my body?" I asked.

"For now, nothing. You still need it."

"For now?"

"There are different ways to exist. You know only one of them."

My body was an inseparable part of me: through it I had embraced my children, tasted, walked, wept and laughed. It was hard for me to imagine myself without it.

"I am not sure I would want to give it up," I said.

"No one is asking you to do so now."

"But one day will I have to choose?"

"If you reach the place where that choice is possible."

For the first time I felt the true weight of the invitation: the journey might demand of me far more than curiosity.

"I have a life," I said quietly. "People I love. Things I am responsible for. I cannot simply disappear."

"And you do not need to."

"Then I can return?"

"Yes. As long as you have not chosen otherwise."

"And what does choosing otherwise mean?"

"That you will understand in time."

"I do not want to reach a place where I must choose without knowing what I am giving up."

"That is why the way is long."

The answer calmed me somewhat: the journey was not asking me to believe or to surrender, but to learn before I decided.

The light on the tree trunk grew stronger. Within the circle, the stone — or what I had until then thought was bark — began to become transparent.

Through it I saw movement. Water.

I stepped forward. Beyond the trunk appeared a wide shore, a blue sea, and tall trees growing down to the waterline.

The wind blowing from the opening carried the scent of salt.

I stretched out my hand carefully. My fingers passed through the light, and on the other side I felt warm air. I pulled them back.

"Is it real?"

"You can check for yourself."

Above the distant forest towered an immense tree, whose branches cast shade over a large part of the island.

I could not make out its details, but something in it drew my attention.

"What is that tree?" I asked.

"It is one of the reasons you came here."

"What is special about it?"

"It holds something human beings have sought ever since they began to understand that the time given to them is limited."

"Eternal life?"

She did not answer at once. "Before you ask how to live forever, you must understand what life is."

And yet a question rose in me that I could not ignore.

If God created us mortal, is the wish to live forever an attempt to resist His creation, or was that possibility part of it from the beginning?

I said nothing. I kept the question to myself, until I understood better what stood before me.

The bird descended from the branch and landed near the opening. "It is time."

"And you are coming with me?"

"I can accompany you until you know the way. After that you will have to learn to walk it yourself."

Between the trees I could still see the path back to my home, to my ordinary life, to the people who would wait for me. And then I looked at the opening again.

I did not know if I would find answers there; perhaps some of my questions were not the right questions at all.

But the possibility of seeing something I had never seen, of understanding something I had not known could be understood, was stronger than the fear.

"I am ready," I said.

The bird spread her wings and passed through the light. I approached the trunk.

Before I crossed, I placed my hand on the tree once more. "Just one more thing," I said.

The bird turned toward me from the other side.

"If I find the answers I am looking for, will I be able to share them with others?"

"You will be able to share what you understand. But you will not be able to understand in their place."

I passed through the opening.

For a moment I felt a warmth envelop my body, like entering water at a pleasant temperature. Then I heard the murmur of the waves.

My feet touched sand. I stood at the edge of the sea.

Behind me came a soft rustle. I turned: the trunk of the tree through which I had passed was whole. No opening remained in it, and no sign of the place I had come from.

The bird stood on a low branch and looked at me. "Welcome," she said.

"Where have I arrived?"

She turned her head toward the immense tree towering over the forest. "To the place where you will begin to discover how little you know about life."

I looked at the tree. Among its branches I noticed large fruits of a golden color. The sunlight touched them, and for a moment they seemed to glow from within.

"And what is its name?" I asked.

"The Tree of Eternity."

I stayed, looking at it.

Until that evening I had thought of eternity as time without end.

But now, standing before the tree, the possibility rose in me for the first time that perhaps eternity has nothing to do with the length of time at all.

Perhaps it has to do with the way we exist within it.

End of Chapter One

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