The Journey to Eternity · A serialized book by Nurit Rozenblat

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Chapter Six — The Secret That Was Not Created

I stood at the foot of the Tree of Eternity, and the golden fruit still hung on the low branch — and then I saw, between the roots, an opening that had not been there when I arrived.

From it came a faint light.

I was sure the opening had not been there. And still, it looked ancient, as if the roots had grown around it for thousands of years.

The melody I had heard earlier had already vanished, but something of it remained inside me: every so often I thought I heard a single sound, and when I stopped to listen — the silence returned.

I bent down and peered inside. Beyond the opening I saw wide stairs descending into darkness.

I hesitated. I had already met entities I had never imagined existed, I had learned about time, about memory, and about love, and in every encounter I discovered how little I knew.

But now, facing the stairs, it was not only curiosity. There was in me a feeling that I was about to enter a place I might not want to know.

I placed a hand on one of the roots.

"Can I come back from here?" I asked.

There was no answer.

I waited — and descended the first stair.

The light behind me weakened, but the stairs themselves began to glow beneath my feet: every time I set down my foot, a gentle glow appeared in the stone, and when I moved on, the light faded.

I descended slowly. The air grew cooler, a smell of wet earth filled the passage, and in the distance I heard drops of water falling at a steady pace.

I did not know how much time had passed until I reached the bottom.

Before me spread a vast hall. Its ceiling was so high that I could not see where it ended. Its walls were smooth and dark, and across them moved tiny points of light, like stars in a night sky.

In the center of the hall stood a door.

It had no frame, and I saw no wall separating it from the rest of the space. It simply stood there, made of a white material, almost transparent.

I came closer. On the door appeared signs I did not know. They changed as I watched them, as if trying to find a language I could understand.

And then one word appeared.

Possibility.

I reached a hand toward the door. Even before I touched it, it opened.

Beyond it there was no room. There was a wide field, covered with silver grass that moved in the wind. Above it spread dark skies, and in them three moons of different sizes.

At the edge of the field stood a small house. From its windows came light.

I approached it. Something about the house stirred a familiar feeling in me. I did not recognize it, but I knew that if I opened the door, I would find inside something important to me.

When I reached the first window, I looked inside.

I saw a woman sitting at a wooden table. She was much older than me. Her hair was white, and deep wrinkles showed on her face.

Opposite her sat a small girl. The woman was telling her a story. I did not hear the words, but I saw the movements of her hands, the smile, and the way the girl leaned closer to her to listen.

And then the woman raised her head and looked straight at me.

I felt my breath stop.

It was me.

Not a figure that resembled me. Me.

The eyes were the same eyes. The way I tilted my head slightly was also familiar to me. But I had never lived that moment.

I stepped back from the window. The woman rose and came closer to the glass.

I placed my hand over my mouth.

"How is this possible?" I whispered.

She did not reply. Instead, she placed her palm on the window, exactly opposite my hand.

I wanted to touch the glass, but I was afraid.

And then the house vanished.

I found myself again in the silver field. The skies changed: the moons disappeared, and in their place appeared a large sun the color of copper.

Before me stood a man. He was tall, dressed in a simple, dark garment. His face was neither old nor young. His hair was black, but within it were seen white strands.

He looked at me quietly.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"One you have not met."

I looked at him with suspicion.

"That explains nothing."

"True."

He smiled slightly.

"But you are used to everyone you meet having to be someone. With a name, a past, a role."

"And you have none?"

"I have many possibilities, but none of them became a life."

I did not understand.

He came closer.

"You are in the place where the things that did not happen are kept."

"How can a thing that did not happen be kept?"

"As you can imagine a road you did not choose to walk."

He raised his hand, and the silver field changed.

I saw a large city, full of tall buildings and busy streets. People moved through it quickly, vehicles I did not know passed above the ground, and between the buildings grew immense trees.

"Is that the future?" I asked.

"One of the possible futures."

The picture changed. The city vanished. In its place I saw a wide forest, clear rivers, and creatures I did not know.

"And this?"

"Another possibility."

"So you are the entity of the future?"

He shook his head.

"No. The future can still happen. I belong to what did not happen, though it could have happened."

"You mean all the things we could have done and did not do?"

"That too."

He sat down on a stone that suddenly appeared beside him.

"Every choice opens one road and leaves others behind. You know the road you walked. But you cannot truly know who you would have become had you chosen differently."

I thought about my life: about small decisions and large ones, about places I had chosen to live, about people I had met, about opportunities I had given up. How many times had I asked myself what would have happened had I chosen differently?

"But sometimes I can guess," I said.

"Guess, yes. Know, no."

"And that is one of the reasons human beings torment themselves over roads they did not choose. They compare their real lives to imagined lives in which they choose to see mainly what could have been better."

"But sometimes we really do make mistakes."

"Certainly. Not every regret is an illusion. There are decisions we would want to change because we understand the harm they caused. But even then, you do not know everything that would have happened on the other road."

He rose.

"Come. I want to show you something."

I followed him. The field opened into a long path, and on both its sides appeared doors. Hundreds of doors. Perhaps thousands. They were all different from one another: some were made of wood, others of stone, glass, or light.

From behind every door came sounds. Laughter, weeping, music, conversations.

I stopped beside a blue door. From within it came a familiar voice. My voice.

"What is in there?"

"A life you could have lived."

I felt an urge to open it. I placed my hand on the handle.

"If I enter, will I be able to see what would have happened had I chosen differently?"

"You will see one possibility. Not the only answer."

I hesitated — and then I opened it.

I saw myself in a house I did not know, surrounded by strangers. I was younger, and I laughed out loud. There was something in that woman's life that seemed easy and free.

For a moment I felt envy. She looked happy.

But then the picture changed. I saw her sitting alone in a dark room, her face tired. She held a letter in her hand, and read it again and again. I did not know what was written in it. She covered her face with her hands.

I closed the door. I breathed deeply.

"I thought that life was better," I said.

"Because you saw one moment of it."

We kept walking.

I stopped beside a small door made of light wood. From behind it I heard a child's voice. He was calling me.

I felt my heart contract.

"Who is in there?"

The entity did not reply.

The voice sounded again.

"Mother!"

I reached a hand toward the door — but before I touched it, a thought appeared in my consciousness: What if behind it was a child who was never born? A child I could have brought into the world had my life developed differently?

I felt tears in my eyes.

"I do not want to open it," I whispered.

"Why?"

"Because if I see him, I may feel that I lost someone I never knew."

He nodded.

"You are beginning to understand."

I moved away from the door, in a strange sadness — not over a person I had lost, over a possibility that never came to be.

"But if all these possibilities exist here," I said, "are they real?"

"They are not lives that happened. They are roads that can be imagined from the conditions that were."

"So why do they seem so real?"

"Because your consciousness is able to feel also things that do not actually happen. You can fear something that has not yet happened, long for something that never was, or be moved by a story you are not part of."

How many of our feelings are created not from reality itself, but from the possibilities we imagine — fear of something that never happened, disappointment that life did not look the way we expected?

He came closer to me.

"But the ability to imagine possibilities is also one of the greatest gifts of consciousness. Without it you would find it hard to plan, to create, to hope, or to understand what does not yet exist."

I looked at the doors.

"So imagination is both a source of pain and a source of creation."

"Yes."

He stopped.

"And now we have come to the question for which you were brought here."

"What question?"

The entity raised its hand. All the doors vanished.

We found ourselves inside a white, empty space — with no ground, no sky, no light that seemed to come from a particular source. I stood on something I could not see.

"What is missing here?"

I looked around me.

"Everything."

"Are you sure?"

"There is nothing here."

"But you are here."

"And so are you."

"True."

"Now imagine a place where all the possibilities have already happened. Every thought has already been thought, every road already chosen, every answer already given."

"What will remain for a creature living in such a place? If there is no longer a possibility of discovering something new, does curiosity still have meaning? And if every outcome is known in advance, is choice still experienced as choice?"

"Perhaps the choice exists, but something in the experience of it changes."

He nodded.

"Exactly."

"You think of eternity as time that has no end. But what will happen if you go on living until you know every place, meet every creature, and learn everything that can be learned? What will make you continue wanting to exist?"

I felt a slight fear. The question I had asked myself after I met the Entity of Time returned now — with a new meaning.

"Perhaps the ability to create new things," I said.

"And what if you have already created everything you could imagine, and met every creature you could meet?"

"You are trying to reach a state in which I will have nothing left to do."

"No. I am trying to show you that you seek the meaning of existence mainly in what you have not yet attained."

I fell silent. He was right. But if my meaning always depends on the next thing, what will happen at the moment when there is nothing more?

The entity came closer to me.

"There is one thing you cannot create by means of power, knowledge, or time."

I felt my heart beat faster.

"What is it?"

"The free choice of another to love."

I was silent.

"You can create a beautiful world, give a creature everything it needs, protect it, teach it, even allow it to live forever. But you cannot force it to love without changing the very meaning of love itself."

I thought of the Entities of Light, of our conversation about a love that does not seek to hold.

"Because forced love is not love," I said.

"In the sense we are speaking of, yes."

He raised his hand. The white space filled with small lights. Each light moved in a different direction. Some drew closer, others moved away.

"If creation stems from love, as you have begun to think, perhaps one of the deepest things in it is the possibility that creatures will recognize the worth of others out of themselves."

"But if God created everything, surely He knew what would happen."

"Perhaps. But knowledge is not the same as coercion. And here too, you must be careful not to project the way you know things onto the Creator's way of knowing."

"So what is the secret that was not created?" I asked.

The entity looked at me for a long time.

"Not everything that exists as a capacity must become an act."

He pointed to the lights.

"The possibility of loving can be given. But the free love of a particular creature is not something that can be placed inside it as one places a stone in the ground. It is realized in the way it turns toward what is outside itself."

"So the secret is the choice to love?"

"Perhaps the secret is that there is no way to make it guaranteed without changing its nature."

I felt a shiver.

My whole journey had begun from the desire to understand how it is possible to live forever. And now I stood before the possibility that the most important thing in existence is not something that can be promised, even if life itself does not end.

Life can be lengthened, knowledge expanded, a form of existence changed — but love, wisdom, and meaning cannot be guaranteed. They require of the living creature not only capacity, choice too.

And then something happened that I did not expect.

One of the lights drew closer to me. It was small and weak. When it reached the height of my face, I saw a picture inside it.

My home. The people I love.

I felt a sharp longing.

The light came closer still — and then I heard a familiar voice.

"Are you coming back?"

I felt my breath stop. I did not know who had spoken the words. The voice was composed of many voices I knew, as if all the people I loved were asking me together.

I reached my hand toward the light.

"Yes," I whispered.

But then I stopped. Did I truly know that I was coming back? After all, I had not yet chosen.

The light began to move away.

"Wait!" I called.

It stopped.

The entity came closer to me.

"You can choose to continue the journey," he said. "But you cannot choose in their place how they will feel in your absence."

I felt pain in my chest.

"I do not want to hurt them."

"Then you must include them, too, within your choice. Not because they own your life, but because your choices also have meaning in their lives."

For the first time I understood that the question of whether I would live forever is not only a question about what will happen to me. It is also a question about the bonds I am part of, about the things I would leave behind, and about my responsibility toward those who did not choose this journey.

The light vanished. The white space began to dissolve.

I found myself again in the hall beneath the Tree of Eternity. The transparent door stood open. The entity stood before me.

"Will you stay here?" I asked.

"This place will remain open as long as there are possibilities that were not chosen."

"And you?"

He smiled.

"I belong to what could have been. I do not need to stay in one place."

"Do you have a name?"

He was silent for a moment.

"You may call me the Possibility That Was Not Realized."

I thought of all the doors I had seen, of the lives I could have lived, of the people I could have met — and of the child who had called me from behind the door I did not open.

"There is one thing I want to know," I said. "If all the possibilities I did not choose continue to exist here, do I really lose something when I choose?"

He came closer to me.

"You lose the possibility of living all the roads as if they were one road. But choice is also what allows your life to take a particular shape."

A life in which we give up no possibility is not necessarily a fuller life. Sometimes it is precisely the decision to choose one road that allows us to deepen in it.

"And if I choose eternity?"

"Even then you will not be able to live all the possibilities at once."

He paused.

"Endless time does not grant you endless versions of yourself."

Even if I live forever, I will still have to choose, and every choice will leave other possibilities behind. Eternity will not free me from the need to decide who I want to be — it will only give me more time to bear the consequences of my choices.

The entity turned toward the door.

"Now you can return to the tree."

I looked at the stairs leading upward.

"And if I decide not to eat of the fruit?"

He smiled.

"That too will be a choice."

I began to climb. The stairs glowed beneath my feet, exactly as they had glowed when I descended. But this time I felt they were leading me to a different place — not because the tree had changed, because I had changed.

When I reached the opening, the daylight blinded me for a moment. I stepped out into the forest.

The Tree of Eternity stood above me, immense and silent. The golden fruit still hung on the low branch.

I approached it. I could see the light moving beneath its peel. I reached out my hand.

This time I did not stop out of fear. I stopped because I understood something I had not known before.

Life receives meaning not only from the possibilities standing before us, but also from our willingness to choose one of them and give up the others.

And perhaps that is why eternity cannot grant us everything we ask of it. Because there is something that even time without end cannot do in our place.

To choose how we will live.

I stood before the fruit, and suddenly a thought arose in me that troubled me more than everything I had seen in the Hall of Possibilities.

If God created a world in which creatures can choose, and if their choice is not something that can be replaced by another's decision without taking away their freedom, will I too, if I pass into an eternal form of existence, have to learn to love creation without trying to control it?

I looked at the branches of the tree. The melody began to be heard again, very faintly. But this time I heard something new within it.

Not only sounds. Spaces of silence too.

And suddenly I understood that perhaps it is precisely those spaces that allow the melody to exist.

I breathed deeply.

I still did not know if I would choose eternity.

But I knew the question was no longer only whether I am ready to live without end.

The question is whether I am ready to go on choosing, even when there is no longer an end that will choose in my place.

End of Chapter Six

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