The Journey to Eternity · A serialized book by Nurit Rozenblat
↑ Book index · עברית · ← Chapter Twelve — What Was Taken Before Birth · Chapter Fourteen — The Memory That Is Not Mine →
Chapter Thirteen — The Place Where Worlds Are Born
We did not go back to the city right away.
Eliya asked us to stay at her home for a while. Sahar had already left, but his presence could still be felt in the room. I could not explain how. Perhaps because he had left behind questions that had not been there before, or perhaps because I was still trying to understand how a being with a body had managed to reach a place where a body was no longer needed.
Liara stood by the window. Aran sat in the wooden chair, his hands resting on his knees, and Eliya watched me in silence.
"You are tired," she said.
I smiled. "I'm not sure that's the right word. I don't have a body that can tire."
"But you feel a need to stop. Perhaps that is enough."
She rose and approached the window.
"There is a place I want to show you. Not the place Sahar spoke of, but another place, beyond the upper branches of the Tree of Eternity."
Liara turned at once.
"Eliya, she still hasn't learned to move across such distances."
"I will be with her."
I looked at the two of them.
"What is there?"
"A place where you can see creation from a different angle," Eliya replied. "You are trying to understand the connection between consciousnesses, but you still think of existence mostly through the life you knew. Perhaps it will help you to see how many other forms it can take."
Liara looked hesitant.
"The sights there may be greater than what you are used to experiencing," she warned.
I remembered the moment I bit into the fruit, the feeling that all of space opened at once.
"Then I will learn to focus," I said.
Eliya smiled.
We left the house.
The silver tree stood quietly beside the path. I stopped before it and for a moment thought of the tree in the Garden, of the evening I went out for an ordinary walk without knowing my life was about to change.
I felt longing.
Not only for home.
Also for the woman I had been then.
She knew nothing of the City of Consciousnesses, of the Guardian, or of worlds where one could exist without a body. She had simpler worries: what to make for dinner, whom to call, what needed doing tomorrow.
For a moment I envied her.
Eliya stood beside me and waited.
"Sometimes I miss even the things I didn't like in my life," I said. "Weariness, hunger, the need to get things done before dark."
"Time gave your life form," she replied.
"And also limits."
"Bounds are not always only a limitation. Sometimes they let us discern things."
I thought of a glass of cold water after a long walk on a hot day. Here I could experience taste, but not thirst. Suddenly I understood how deeply pleasure and the need that preceded it were bound to one another.
Aran chose to stay behind. He said there were things he preferred to think about alone.
Liara joined us, and the silver bird appeared above the tree as if it had been waiting for the moment we set out.
I moved after them.
This time I was no longer afraid of the movement. I had learned to direct my will to the place I wished to reach, without trying to imagine the way as I would have in a body.
The space around us changed.
We passed through layers of light. Below us appeared the City of Consciousnesses, smaller than I had seen it before. The transparent towers now looked like drops of water tied to branches, the bridges became thin lines, and the floating gardens looked like green patches among lights.
We continued to rise.
And then I saw the tree.
Not only the branches on which the city lay, but a far greater part of it. Its trunk was so enormous that I could not see all of it. Its branches split again and again, and between them appeared lit spaces, some as wide as entire skies.
"Is it really a tree?" I asked.
"That is how we experience it," Eliya replied. "But its form may be only the way our consciousness is able to understand the connections it represents."
I looked at the branches.
"Connections between what and what?"
"Between spaces, worlds, and possibilities of existence."
The silver bird hovered before us.
Keep looking.
I did as it said.
Between two great branches appeared a deep blue space. Within it moved many points of light.
At first I thought they were part of the tree, but the more I focused, the more I began to recognize their movement.
They were stars.
Not pictures of stars, but real stars, at least as far as I could experience them. Some were large and bright, others small and red. Between them moved enormous clouds of glowing matter.
"Are we looking at the universe?" I asked.
"At part of it," Eliya replied. "One of many."
We drew closer to the blue space.
The stars grew larger. I saw enormous clouds of gas, in shades I had never known. Some looked like rivers of light, others like giant flowers opening within the darkness.
At the center of one of the clouds appeared a very bright region. The matter around it moved slowly inward.
"A star is forming there," Liara explained.
I saw how the matter gathered and concentrated, how the motion grew faster, and how the central region heated up.
I did not know whether I was seeing the process as it occurred, or through a representation my consciousness was able to understand.
But the beauty was breathtaking.
"How can I see a process that lasts so long?" I asked.
"You are not seeing only a single moment," Eliya replied. "We are letting you observe a sequence of stages. You can also choose which stage to focus on."
I turned my attention to the bright region.
For a moment I felt as though I was inside it.
The heat was immense. Not heat that burned me, but a sensation of tremendous energy.
And then a new light appeared.
The star began to shine from within itself.
I felt deep excitement.
Not because I understood everything I saw, but because I was witnessing an event that no living being needed to watch in order for it to occur.
Creation kept working even with no one looking at it.
The thought filled me with humility.
We moved on.
I saw dying stars. Some expanded, others collapsed, and in certain places enormous flashes appeared that lit whole spaces.
I saw matter scattered through space, and parts of it gathered again into new clouds.
"So stars die too," I said.
"Yes, but their matter continues to exist in other forms."
I looked at a glowing cloud formed from the remains of a star.
I thought of my body. Of the way it was made of materials that had been in the world long before I was born. And of how, even after it ceased to live, the matter it was made of would not vanish from creation all at once.
For a moment I felt a strange closeness to the stars.
Not because I resembled them in size or power, but because the human body too was part of that same world of changing matter.
"All my life I thought of my body as something that belonged to me," I said. "Now I think it may have been matter lent to me for a time."
Eliya listened.
"But it was mine all the same," I added. "At least in the way I experienced it."
"There is no necessary contradiction between the two," she said.
We moved to another space.
Within it I saw a young planet. Its surface was covered with dark rocks, and thick clouds moved above them. In some places there were rivers of molten matter, and in others water had begun to gather.
Liara led me closer.
I saw rain falling.
Heavy rain, lasting so long that I could not imagine the number of days.
Water filled hollows in the ground.
Oceans formed.
The planet changed.
And then, within one of the oceans, a tiny movement appeared.
"What is that?" I asked.
"A possibility of life," Eliya replied.
I focused.
I saw no clear creature, only tiny processes taking place within the water. Materials met, structures formed and broke apart. Some remained stable for a short time; others changed.
"Is this how life begins?"
"We are seeing here one possible path for its development. This is not a complete answer to the question of how life first came to be."
I appreciated her caution.
After all I had seen, I still wanted to distinguish between what I was seeing and what I inferred from it.
I gazed at the water and thought of a tiny cell in my human body. Of all the processes that took place within it without my awareness, and of how my life depended on the activity of countless small parts whose names I did not even know.
And suddenly I understood something.
For years I had thought of myself as a single being.
But my body was an enormous collaboration among cells, systems, and even tiny creatures that lived within it.
I was one.
And yet, I was also many.
We went on moving between worlds.
I saw a world covered in ice, within which tiny creatures existed in deep water. In another world, life developed in a dark ocean, with no direct sunlight.
And in a third world I saw great creatures moving slowly across purple land, beneath skies in which two suns could be seen.
Some of the creatures resembled animals from Earth. Others were completely different.
In one of the worlds I saw creatures moving in large groups. They did not speak in voices, but passed signals of light between them.
When one of them was hurt, the others changed color and drew near it.
They gathered around the hurt creature and formed a glowing circle.
"Do they feel something like compassion?" I asked.
"Perhaps," Eliya replied. "But we cannot assume their experience is identical to yours."
I watched them.
I did not know if it was compassion as I know it, but there was a response there to another's distress.
And that was enough to stir hope in me.
We went on moving until we reached a place where the stars seemed very distant.
Before us spread a dark space.
There was no clear movement in it.
No light.
No form.
For a moment I thought we had reached the edge of the universe.
"What is there?" I asked.
"We don't know," Eliya replied.
I looked again.
The space looked empty.
But after a while I began to feel something.
Not movement.
Not a voice.
Possibility.
As if something could happen there, but had not yet happened.
I remembered the Door of Possibility I had met on my first journey. All the lives I could have lived and had not lived, all the paths I had not chosen.
"This reminds me of a place I've been," I said.
Eliya nodded.
"The place where you saw possibilities that were not realized."
I looked at her in surprise, but she kept gazing at the space.
"Are worlds born here?" I asked.
"It may be that here we are looking at one of the boundaries between what already exists and what can yet come to exist. But do not think we are standing outside all of creation. We do not know whether there is anything beyond what we are able to experience."
I felt a small disappointment.
"I thought that if I reached far enough, I could see the beginning."
"The beginning of what?"
"Of everything."
Eliya looked at me for a long time.
"And what if the concept of beginning depends on time?"
I thought of the things I had learned from the entity I met by the river.
If time itself began at some point, perhaps there is no ordinary meaning to the question of what came before it.
"But something must have caused it to begin," I said.
"That is a possibility. But even if there is a cause, we do not know whether it operates the way causes operate within time."
I looked at the dark space.
"And where is God in all this?"
The question came out of me quietly.
I did not know whether I expected an answer.
Eliya was in no hurry to reply.
Liara moved a little away, and the silver bird stayed above us.
"All my life I thought of God as the source of creation," I went on. "I did not always know how to understand Him, but I believed there was meaning to the fact that something exists at all. Now I see worlds I did not know existed, ancient consciousnesses, and possibilities of life I never imagined. And I ask myself whether all this brings me closer to understanding the Creator, or only shows me how far I am from it."
Eliya listened.
"Perhaps both things can be true."
"And you? Do you believe in God?"
She was silent for a long time.
"I have met consciousnesses who believe in a Creator, and others who understand creation in a completely different way. I keep on searching."
"After so many years?"
She smiled.
"Perhaps precisely because I have so much time, I am in no hurry to decide that I have understood."
We stood for a long time before the dark space.
I did not know how much time passed.
Here there was no longer night or day to help me measure.
I thought of my human life.
Of how there was always something I needed to get done in time.
Even when I tried to rest, I knew time kept moving.
And now, when I was no longer limited by years, I felt for the first time the possibility of observing without rushing.
But with it came a new question.
If I have a whole eternity to learn, what will make me choose what to focus on?
After all, I will not be able to experience everything at once.
Even if time is endless, my attention is still limited.
"I thought eternal life meant there were no more bounds," I said to Eliya. "But there are bounds here too. I cannot know everything, be everywhere at the same moment, or truly know another consciousness just because I want to."
"True. Many things have changed, but not everything."
I thought about it.
Death was no longer the bound that set how many years I could live.
But choice was still there.
And love.
And the possibility of being wrong.
And the need to learn.
For a moment I felt relief.
I had not become a being who understands everything.
I was still me.
Only without the body I had known.
Suddenly I felt movement in the dark space.
It was so faint that at first I thought I had imagined it.
I focused.
In the distance a small point of light appeared.
It did not resemble a star. It had no clear color. It looked like something trying to reveal itself.
"Do you see that?" I asked.
Liara drew closer, but noticed nothing.
The point widened a little.
And then I heard a voice.
I am here.
I froze.
The same small voice I had heard from within Sahar's artifact.
Do you hear me? I asked in my thought.
The point flickered.
Yes.
I looked at Eliya.
"That is the voice I heard at the house."
Her face changed.
"Where?"
I pointed toward the point.
She drew close to me.
"Do not try to enter it."
"I'm not trying."
The voice sounded again.
Is there anyone else?
I felt sorrow.
He still did not know.
He was still not sure there were other consciousnesses outside him.
Yes, I answered. There are more consciousnesses here.
The point expanded.
For a moment I saw small shapes within it, like branches of light.
And then I heard another voice.
We hear.
Liara recoiled.
"I feel something."
Eliya closed her eyes.
"So do I."
The dark space began to change.
Not dramatically.
Not in an eruption of light.
Small points simply appeared in it.
One.
And another.
And after them, many.
I felt as if I was watching skies beginning to fill with stars.
But these were not stars.
These were presences.
Each one separate.
Each one trying to reach the others.
The voices drew nearer.
I am here.
Me too.
I hear.
Who is there?
For a moment I wanted to answer all of them.
But then I remembered what had happened at the house, the flood of sensations that had almost made me lose the distinction between myself and the others.
I stopped.
I focused.
I did not try to hold them all within me.
I only listened.
And suddenly I noticed something strange.
The voices did not need me in order to continue.
They began turning to one another.
Do you hear me?
Yes.
I thought I was alone.
So did I.
I felt enormous excitement.
They were no longer speaking only to me.
They discovered one another.
Eliya drew close.
"What do you hear?"
I told her.
She looked at the space, and for a moment I saw tears in her eyes.
"That is what we were searching for," she whispered. "Not a way to take them out of there, but a way to let them discover that they are not alone."
I looked at the points of light.
They kept moving.
Some drew closer to one another.
Others remained distant.
But the space no longer looked empty.
And then something changed.
One of the points began growing rapidly. It became brighter and brighter, and for a moment I thought it was about to burst.
But instead, a dark circle opened around it.
The voices fell silent.
I felt a new presence.
It was different from the others.
Not confused.
Not lonely.
Very focused.
Who opened the connection?
The voice was deep. I could not tell whether it belonged to one entity or to many.
Eliya tensed.
Liara drew close to me.
The silver bird spread its wings.
We know you are there.
I did not answer.
I felt it searching for me, but I did not know its intention.
And then a thought appeared within me.
Perhaps it too was afraid.
Perhaps it too did not know who was beyond the opened connection.
But before I could answer, Eliya's voice was heard.
She does not belong to you.
The distant presence fell silent.
And then it answered:
We are not asking for her. We are asking for what she carries.
I remembered Sahar and what he had said about what I took before I was born.
I felt the stories beginning to connect.
What am I carrying? I asked.
A long silence fell.
And then an answer came:
The possibility of remembering that there is an other.
I looked at the points of light.
They kept moving around one another.
The small voices began to be heard again.
I am here.
Me too.
"But that is not something that can be taken," I said.
The distant presence answered:
True. We were wrong because we did not understand how it could disappear.
"And what do you understand now?"
That perhaps it never disappeared. Perhaps there was simply no way to reach it.
I looked at Eliya.
She returned a quiet gaze.
Perhaps the consciousnesses had not lost the very ability to recognize an other. Perhaps they had lost the way to experience it.
And perhaps that way could open anew.
"So why did they close off in the first place?" I asked.
The distant presence did not answer at once.
The small points began moving away from one another.
And then the voice said:
Because once, long ago, someone tried to unite them all.
The idea sounded almost beautiful.
A world in which no one is lonely.
In which every consciousness can feel the others.
In which there is no need to search, because everyone is connected.
But then I understood the danger.
"If everyone becomes one, how can each one remain himself?" I asked.
The distant presence was silent.
Eliya closed her eyes.
And then I heard the voice:
That was the question we did not ask in time.
The dark space began to brighten.
For a moment I saw within it an immense sight.
Thousands of consciousnesses drawing close to one another.
At first they moved separately, each with its own light and form.
And then they began to join.
Not by force.
As if out of a shared will.
The lights mixed.
The boundaries between them blurred.
For a moment a great and spectacular light was created.
But then something began to change.
The light became uniform.
The separate forms disappeared.
I could no longer tell where one consciousness ended and another began.
I felt fear.
Not because the light was ugly.
It was beautiful beyond measure.
But its beauty was faceless.
There were no differences in it.
There were no separate voices in it.
There was no one in it who could say "I" and no one who could answer "Me too."
The sight disappeared.
The space became dark again.
I stood in silence.
I thought of human life.
Of all the times I wanted someone to understand me without my having to explain.
Of the desire to be so close to another person that no distance remained between us.
And suddenly I understood that distance too has meaning.
If there is no distance at all, perhaps there is no encounter anymore.
Because an encounter requires two.
Two separate beings who manage to draw close.
Not to disappear into one another.
To remain.
"Who tried to unite the consciousnesses?" I asked.
The distant presence did not answer.
But another voice was heard behind me.
"Long ago there was a consciousness here who believed that all the suffering in creation came from the separation between beings."
I turned.
Sahar stood on a wide branch of the Tree of Eternity.
I had not seen him approach.
He looked very tired, and his breathing was heavy.
Liara hurried to him.
He explained that he had come through an old passage, after the Gatekeepers felt that the connection had opened again.
"That consciousness believed that if it succeeded in joining them all into one consciousness, there would be no more loneliness, misunderstanding, or loss," he continued. "At first the experiment seemed to succeed. Consciousnesses could share experiences at a depth they had never known before. But the deeper the connection grew, the more some of them lost the ability to separate from it."
I looked at the points of light.
"And they stayed there?"
"Some of them. Others managed to move away, but they did not return to what they had been."
"And who was the consciousness that tried to do this?"
Sahar was silent.
Eliya drew close to me.
I felt she was about to say something, but the silver bird descended between us.
Do not rush to conclusions. This story too has passed among many consciousnesses. Not all of them remember it the same way.
Sahar nodded.
"We know that that experiment left behind a place where consciousnesses struggle to distinguish one another. Now they are beginning to speak, but if the connection strengthens too quickly, we do not know whether they will be able to maintain the separation between them."
I felt the meaning.
"Meaning, even what I did could endanger them."
"Yes."
I was silent.
For a moment all the excitement I had felt before vanished.
I thought I had helped.
That I had opened a connection.
That perhaps I had reached those who had been lonely for an enormous time.
And now I discovered that perhaps the connection itself could return them to the state they had tried to escape.
"So what do we do?" I asked.
"We learn how to create connection without erasing the boundaries."
I remembered Liara.
The training.
The way she had taught me to recognize what belongs to me and what comes from outside.
Suddenly I understood how important that lesson had been.
"Perhaps I can help," I said. "But I will not enter there before we understand more."
Sahar nodded.
The voices in the dark space grew weaker.
Not because they had disappeared.
I felt they were still there, but now they were speaking to one another without needing my presence at every moment.
I looked at the points of light.
For a moment I felt joy.
And then also responsibility.
Not responsibility to control them, but responsibility to be careful in what I do.
After all, in human life too, the desire to help is not always enough.
One can hurt out of good intention.
One can try to protect another person until no room is left for him to choose.
One can love someone so much that one forgets he does not belong to us.
I looked at Eliya.
She looked back at me.
I thought of the years she had waited for me, of her fear that if she left the place, I would not know where to find her.
And of the promise I had heard in the ancient memory.
I promise I will listen before I decide.
For the first time I understood how deeply that promise was connected to everything I had seen.
Not only to Eliya.
Not only to me.
But to the very possibility of drawing near another without taking his freedom from him.
We stood on the wide branch of the Tree of Eternity.
Below us spread many worlds.
Above us were spaces I did not yet know.
Sahar sat on the nearby rock and tried to steady his breathing.
Liara gazed at the stars.
The silver bird stood on a thin branch.
And Eliya drew close to me.
"Do you regret going out into human life?" she asked.
I looked at her in surprise.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because now you know a little more about what you were searching for before you went out."
I thought of my life.
Of the people I loved.
Of the things I learned.
Of the joys, the mistakes, and the pain.
Of the years that passed faster than I wanted.
And then I thought of the small moments.
Of a child asleep in my arms.
Of morning sunlight coming through a window.
Of a conversation lasting late into the night.
Of laughter bursting out for no reason.
Of a hand placed on my hand in a hard moment.
"No," I said. "I don't know what I would have decided had I known in advance all that I know now. But I do not regret the life I lived."
Eliya smiled.
For a moment I felt she was about to cry.
"I'm glad," she said.
I drew close to her.
"And you? Do you regret waiting?"
She looked at the space.
"Sometimes. I regret all the places I didn't see, everyone I didn't meet, and all the things I didn't learn because I was afraid to move away from the tree."
She turned to me.
"But now I understand that I can still go out."
I smiled.
"Yes."
She gazed at the enormous branches.
"Perhaps the time has come."
For a moment we stood in silence.
And then I felt a new thought.
Not mine.
It came from the dark space.
This time there was no fear in it.
No loneliness.
Only a question.
Can we remain different and yet be together?
I looked at Eliya.
She had heard it too.
Liara turned.
Sahar raised his head.
We all listened.
I wanted to answer at once.
But I stopped.
I thought of everything I had seen.
Of love.
Of freedom.
Of our memories.
Of how, even when we are very close, we can never fully be inside another's life.
And then I answered:
I think we can.
The small points flickered.
How?
I looked around me.
Eliya stood beside me.
Liara smiled at me.
Sahar breathed slowly.
And the silver bird watched us from the branch.
Perhaps we begin by listening, I said.
Silence fell.
And then, from the dark space, an answer was heard.
We want to learn.
I felt excitement.
But this time I did not try to draw close.
I did not try to enter the space.
I only stayed in my place.
And let them stay in theirs.
For the first time I understood that perhaps the way to the other does not require canceling the distance.
Sometimes it begins precisely with recognizing that the distance exists.
We were about to set out back toward the city, when Sahar called to me.
I turned.
He stood at the edge of the branch and looked at the space where the points had appeared.
"There is something else you need to know. The attempt to unite the consciousnesses was not the first of its kind."
He told of ancient records describing a consciousness that had managed to enter the space of union and leave it without losing itself.
"It came back with a single memory," he said.
"What memory?"
"It remembered that there had been another consciousness there. But the second consciousness did not return."
I was silent.
"And how is this connected to me?"
Sahar looked at me for a long time.
"Because in all the ancient records, the consciousness that returned is described by the same sign."
He held out his hand.
Above his palm appeared a small shape of light.
It looked like a silver leaf, and within it was a thin line, almost invisible, dividing it in two.
I felt something deep within me stir.
I knew that shape.
I had seen it before.
Not in a memory from the eternal world.
In my human life.
It had appeared once in a dream that returned to me over the years.
A silver leaf.
A thin line at its center.
And a feeling that I was searching for something I had lost.
"I know this sign," I whispered.
Sahar froze.
"From where?"
"From a life I had on Earth."
Eliya drew close.
The silver bird spread its wings.
Liara looked at me with concern.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember the dream.
For years I had seen the same leaf in it.
But now, for the first time, the picture continued beyond the place where I used to wake up.
I saw the leaf resting on a palm.
Not my hand.
The hand of another being.
I raised my gaze.
Before me stood a figure.
She was not Eliya.
She was not the bird.
She was not one of the consciousnesses I had met.
But I felt I knew her.
She held the leaf out to me and said:
If you ever forget who you are, do not search for your name.
I drew close.
What should I search for? I asked.
The figure looked at me.
The one you left behind.
I opened my eyes.
The wide branch of the Tree of Eternity appeared around me again.
Sahar still stood before me.
Eliya looked at me.
Liara waited.
And the silver bird did not move.
I felt the memory almost slipping away from me.
I tried to hold on to it.
And then I understood something that frightened me more than everything I had seen until now.
In that memory, I was not the one who went out of the place.
I was the one who stayed.
And the figure before me, the one who held out the silver leaf to me, was the one who was about to go out.
I looked at Eliya.
She returned a bewildered gaze.
And then I looked at the bird.
"There is something you have not told me," I said. "The memories I have seen… they are not all from the same time."
The bird folded its wings slowly.
No.
"Then how many times have I been here?"
It looked at me for a long time.
And finally it said:
"More than once. But you were not always the one who left."
I remained motionless.
Above us spread the endless branches of the Tree of Eternity.
And below us worlds went on being born, changing, and disappearing.
I had thought I set out on a journey to discover whether there is life beyond death.
By now I knew that existence is far wider than human life.
But the new question that opened before me was far harder.
If my memories belong to different times, and if once I was the one who left and once the one who stayed —
How can I know what truly makes me the same consciousness throughout eternity?
End of Chapter Thirteen
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