2. The Book of Knowledge. 4. 1. City of the Dead

The BOOK of KNOWLEDGE,
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series

PART 2. ANOTHER REALITY

Day No. 4

CHAPTER 4.1. The CITY of the DEAD

We woke up very early in the morning. We didn’t go to the mountains because of the upcoming trip to the Desert. To the City of the Dead.

I went down for breakfast. The seminarians had already gathered and joyfully enjoying by both cheeks everything that was spinning in the plates on the rotating table. I sat down at the table, reached out for the nearest plate. I looked at the food and … to my horror, I realized that I couldn’t look at it. I glanced around at the people. No, they were fine. Then why was I so bad? We had had dinner at 19:00, eaten the same thing. What was wrong with me? I got up from the table and went to find RAM.

It was about three and a half hours to the City of the Dead. It was hellish hot there, about 50 Celsius in the shade, as they said. Therefore, we were to leave early in the morning in order to arrive not to the hell. We were to spend a few hours in the city doing certain work. Then we planned to go to the Dead Lake, then somewhere else, and only late in the evening to return back to the hotel.

I bumped into RAM in the hallway and said so bluntly, “I’m dying.”

RAM looked me up and down. She understood what I meant, whether I should go to the Desert. To 50C. In the shadow. For all day.

“Alice, imagine that I’m not here,” she answered in a calm voice.

I understood what RAM meant: I had to pull myself out of dying without any help.

“Okay,” I said with a sigh, and obediently trudged off to get ready for the road.

We left the room. Svetlana was excitedly anticipating. Either the Desert. Or 50C. In the shadow. Or the City of the Dead. Or Dead Lake. Rather, everything at once. I could barely move in space.

On the bus, I prudently let Svetlana go to the window.

“Listen, Alice, why didn’t you have breakfast today?”

“Please, don’t talk to me about food.”

Svetlana thought for a moment, paused and asked, “And what about?”

“Better about nothing at all. I’ll pray. Silently.”

All the way, including a technical stop in the desert mountains, due to which about three and a half smoothly flowed into four with a long tail, I prayed incessantly. To the Higher Forces. Light Forces. Everyone at once. And periodically I turned to my body with a request to live at least until the City of the Dead. I wasn’t myself at all. Rather, I was even very far away from myself. Therefore, as it turned out later, RAM told a lot of interesting things along the way, but I heard nothing. Sometimes I looked at the seminarians. All of them, including Svetlana, were, on the contrary, definitely themselves. And even very active.

We finally reached the Desert. And 50C. In the shadow.

I came out of my trance getting off the bus. We stopped at the entrance to the City of the Dead, where a huge map of the ruined city was placed on the remains of the fortress wall. As soon as I looked at it, I immediately wanted to go back into trance and get on the bus: it would take you at least a day to get around the City of the Dead…

The heat was unbearable. 50C or not 50, I didn’t specify. When you die, you are more interested in the shade than in the degrees. I found a piece of the longed-for shade cast by the stone map and slowly slithered down onto the dusty road. RAM told what had happened there many, many, many years ago. Again, I heard almost nothing, being somewhere far away. The only thing I remembered, all the inhabitants of the City had died at night, when suddenly the earth had opened up and some fumes instantly had poisoned all living beings within a radius of some kilometers. So the Desert appeared there. Sand and stones…

We entered the City and headed off into the distance along one of the streets. Dilapidated houses and buildings, caves, temples were visible on the sides. In the bizarre outlines of stone blocks, one could see the frozen faces of people.

My body sluggishly followed the group, as if my Spirit was pulling the Silver Thread from above and controlled it like a puppet. What would I do without the Spirit? From time to time I looked at RAM and saw around her an amazing huge glow.

Svetlana kept asking to be photographed. In front of that cave. In front of another cave. With that stone face, with another one. I suddenly thought: in order to be photographed with a stone face, it wasn’t at all necessary to travel so far, to the City of the Dead. Go out into the street in any City of the Alive ones and take pictures of yourself with everyone, if not the first, then with the second on your way.

“Let me take a picture of you, too,” Svetlana offered.

“Better not.”

“Why not?”

“It won’t be me on the picture.”

Several times along the way we stopped and worked.

RAM showed us the place where the earth had opened up. The outlines of the abyss resembled the shape of a fish. There was a valley below with some trees growing. Green trees. I wanted to get there. Down. To the trees. They had a shade. For sure. 100%. Maybe it was not even 50C. In that very shade. But I still couldn’t figure out how to get down there with such sheer walls.

We continued on our way. Soon a cube-shaped building surrounded by a dilapidated stone wall appeared in the distance. We went inside and saw several buildings and separate blocks of various stones.

“Local Saints were buried here,” RAM said softly, pointing to the Cube. “Now we’ll go around it several times, following each other. Spin the field. But first you should recite a prayer. It’s very necessary for those who are out There. We often turn to the deceased for help. But they need our help too. So, we pronounce one syllable on the inhale, the second on the exhale.”

One of the magical syllables was “HA” in Sanskrit, often used in sacred formulas. It represented the power of Akasha-Shakti, a kind of energy. It produced the action with its sound, being pronounced in a percussive position on the exhale. Let the second syllable remain a mystery.

While the seminarians were reciting the prayer, I slid down the wall closest to them. On the sand. Into a piece of the shade. Then, together with the others, I went around the Cube, trace to trace, three times. And slipped in the shade again. Why did I feel so bad? Maybe I should remain there? Forever? In the City of the Dead? My astral body was hanging by the Silver Thread.

RAM said loudly, “If someone cannot go further, stay here. We have to walk very long and very far. There is no shade at all there. We have important work to do. But if you can’t go, you’d better stay. We’ll pick you up on the way back.”

I thought she was addressing me, but I noticed two more seminarians moving away from those who were going somewhere very far and for a long time. I curled up like a snake in a piece of the shade. Sasha came up to me and said in a full voice, “Daphne, I’ll leave you my backpack, so don’t leave for Another Reality so that it doesn’t leave for somewhere as well.”

I forced myself to nod in agreement, even though I was sure neither in myself, nor in his backpack. Sasha looked at me curled there with sympathy.

“So hard, right? Okay, stay right here. We’ll be back soon.”

Everybody walked away, except the three of us left among the dilapidated walls. Near the Cube, where the local Saints had been buried.

“It feels like I’m about to die,” said one of us.

“Me too. Just as we got off the bus, I instantly felt sick,” the second dying woman admitted.

I didn’t even have the strength to say anything. I was very thirsty. As it turned out, they were thirsty too. One of them had a half-empty small bottle of H2O. We quickly divided it for three. They took a piece of the shade in a corner of the dilapidated wall. I lay down in a pentagram on the sand next to the remains of an old and empty well by a ridiculously protruding stone block.

I looked up to the sky. It was completely blue. A strange ribbon-shaped cloud cut it in half. Suddenly I saw a rainbow on the ribbon. I thought, “Where did it come from?” I felt like calling out to the two dying women whether they could see the rainbow in the perfectly blue sky. But I realized that I had no strength to speak. I closed my eyes and opened them again. The rainbow was still there. For some reason it wasn’t scary for me to die. To die in the City of the Dead. Next to the Cube, where the local Saints had been buried. There was even something special in that, wasn’t it?

I closed my eyes. I no longer had the strength to keep them open. Pictures of my life were scrolling on the inner screen. I saw Brother. Through the fog. He came up to my table, on which there was a small prayer drum that I had just brought from Tibet. He looked at it thoughtfully.

“What’s it, Alice?” his voice sounded like all voices in a dream.

“A magical thing that you have to twist, and everything will be fine,” I answered smiling, and my voice sounded as his.

Brother smiled me back. He carefully touched the drum with his finger, as if being afraid of getting burned, and then started spinning it.

“Clockwise, Bro!” I laughed.

He looked at it with interest, thoughtfully spinning clockwise and said, “Everything will be fine, Alice! I promise you!”

Then I saw Ray. We were sitting in his car. As always, he drove me to the subway.

“Have you read my book about Another Reality?”

He smiled stroking my palm.

“Yes, Alice. Reading the first line, I knew already the second. As well as the third… I scanned it through. You’ll write more. You didn’t tell them everything. I mean those people.”

“What else do you see, Ray?”

He pulled me to him, hugged and kissed me on the cheek, gently stroking my hair and absolutely calm, without any emotions, said thoughtfully, “They will write a script and make a movie, based on your book.”

I burst into laughing, “Ray, don’t lie to me!”

“Yes, yes, someday. Later. After…”

“I’d like to play the main role in it… And that you, too… I want you to play Ray.” “No, I’ll be a Ghost coming to you from Another Reality.”

“I want you to be here with me.”

“Everything will be fine, Alice. I promise you.”

I tried to get back to the Earth opening my eyes. I found the same rainbow in the sky. I was thirsty. I looked at the rainbow and remembered other Dead Cities I had been to. Baalbek came to mind first.

Have you ever been to Baalbek? If not, don’t rush. Each Dead City has its own energy. In Baalbek, it’s quite dark. There are many legends about it. Baalbek was built of huge blocks of stones, and some of them you can see scattered around it. Do you know how much each one weighs? From 400 up to 2,000 tons. Judging by the ornaments and signs, that catch your eye, in the city of high temples dedicated to Jupiter and Venus, some Mysteries were held. Separate stones are engraved with the six-pointed star (two equilateral triangles in a circle), the Flower of Life, figures from Plato’s Sacred Geometry. But there are also wrong signs, or rather, distorted ones. There is also a swastika everywhere, spinning a whirlwind counterclockwise.

So, having entered Baalbek, I wanted to get out of it immediately. Dead Cities differ.

They returned in an hour. Sasha grabbed the backpack in one hand, and me in the other.

“Well, Daphne, what’s new?”

“A rainbow,” I quietly squeezed out of myself and pointed at the sky.

He looked up, but saw no rainbow. However, I didn’t see it either. It had left safely for where it had come from. Sasha shook his head and said reproachfully,

“Daphne, I’ve told you a hundred times, watch your step! And you keep looking in the sky! You are like a rainbow yourself! Why are you looking for it in the sky?”

We set off on our way back. Svetlana was cheerful and happy. She was eager to share her enthusiastic impressions, “Alice, do you know, do you know where we have been!”

I nodded silently, which meant, “Tell me.”

“There are forty-eight stupas there! And one, in the center, is the biggest one. And around, there are small ones. A lot of them! I took pictures of them, a lot of pictures, I’ll show you later! Amazing! In the middle of the desert, there is suddenly such a temple complex! You were always talking about stupas, but I have never seen them. And here it is, finally! We broke up into groups and walked around them all! RAM was lying in the center, it’s her Place of Power. She was collecting her phantoms!”

The stupa is not only Baba Yaga’s vehicle. According to legend, it’s a construction, built in the image given to people by Shambhala, and the unusual eyes drawn on the stupas, as a rule, look exactly in the direction where Shambala is located. Perhaps this is such a hint for those who are looking for it.

The stupa is the most sacred house in Buddhism. It’s a vertical Model of the Universe, just like a mandala is a horizontal model. The stupa is a sign of the place where cosmic energies intersect. It harmonizes the surrounding space. Each stupa consists of several parts, the five elements that make up the Universe. On the stupa one can see the steps leading up, these are the levels of knowledge or the same Stairway to Heaven, along which we all are walking. The stupa also symbolizes the chakras and the body of the Buddha. Stupas began to be installed after his death in places that were associated with him or his teachings. Many stupas contain the ashes of Gurus or ascetics of Buddhism, in particular, Lamas and Saints. There are eight canonical types of stupas in Tibet. Many stupas can be found in Nepal and Thailand. When you find yourself close to that structure, stop for a while, try to feel…

I remember we walked back to the gates of the City for a long time. Then we entered a small souvenir shop, where I found a fan blowing hot air back and forth. I immediately crawled under it. I had neither the strength nor the desire to look at even one of the many souvenirs with their magical effect on everyone else, except for two more dying ones.

Then we were again on the bus going to some kind of museum. Of some wells. Or Water. I didn’t understand where we were. The main thing was not to lose consciousness completely. I kept praying constantly. Suddenly my cheerful Svetlana said, frozen in mid-sentence, “Alice, I am… sick…” It seemed strange already.

However, we were still walking, though not all cheerfully, to the entrance to the museum. Either of wells or water. At the entrance we had to wait a bit for tickets. True, for the alive ones it was not much, but for people like me, time flew differently, so it was equated almost to Eternity. I placed my physical body on the bench next to RAM. She looked at me carefully and asked, “How are you?”

In response, I just closed my eyes and shook my head negatively. It meant, “very not very”.

“Well done for coming, Alice. Everything goes in a correct way,” she said with a smile.

I couldn’t think well. I would understand the meaning of her words later. In the evening, having returned to the hotel.

A step into the museum. Either of wells or water. At first we walked in the open air. On both sides, there were something like artificial people. Probably wax figures. Then we went down. Into some cellars. Apparently, to those wells … But if you want to find out what was still interesting there, in the museum, you’d better go there yourself. However, I don’t know where it is and what it’s called. All the time that we spent there, I was somewhere out of myself.

I remember our long drive to the Dead Lake with salt water, which, according to RAM, was similar to the Dead Sea. Then I remember us already in the pool with Dead Water. And there, in the water, I began to … come to life!

The seminarians were sharing their impressions about the City of the Dead. Having left the pool, I was already quite myself, but afraid to bury the body in salt so that only my nose and two out of three eyes remained on the surface.

Actually, I’m a coward. A true coward. I’m afraid of a lot of things. It’s even scary for me to think about these things, to list them all here and now. I try not to think about them at all. When you think about these things, they are immediately attracted to you like a magnet. This is such a harsh law that says: what you think about more, it happens. That’s why I try to think about everything except these things. For some reason, people think I’m brave. When I tell them the truth, they don’t believe me. They think it’s my way to flirt with them or run up a compliment. So I don’t say much to anyone anymore. I am mostly silent, letting them think what they want. People like to believe in all sorts of nonsense, to believe in what doesn’t exist. For example, into the reality of the Earthly Reality. They don’t believe that Another Reality exist, moreover, they consider it to be complete nonsense. While Another Reality looks at them smiling. Silently. True, at first it tried to tell people something, but then, apparently, it came to the conclusion that silence is gold.

I left the locker room into the hall, saw Larisa, helplessly sprawled on the couch, and asked her, “How are you?”

“Alice, I’m so bad, like I’m dying,” Larisa whispered.

I thought about it. We were all mown one by one suddenly by an invisible Force and for no apparent reason. The way the lights are abruptly switched off. I became the first victim, but at that moment I was back to myself, as if I had died in the City of the Dead and had been reborn. I tried to find a clue, but nothing clever came to my mind.

On the way back to the hotel, already half of the seminarians were in a dying state. Having gone down for the dinner, already so long-awaited by my stomach, I froze, since there was almost no one at the table. A couple of seminarians, however, came in, but, without even sitting down, they immediately disappeared. I looked at RAM with a silent question in my eyes.

“Which day is it today?” she asked those still present, but we looked at each other, not understanding her. “Which day of class is it today?”

Suddenly I instantly realized, it was the fourth day of the seminar, and it was Thursday! Those present looked at each other with their eyes wide open at the realization of what was happening.

“Yes,” RAM said with a smile. “Today, one by one, all of you were forced to die as your Past Self in order to be reborn for your Bright Future. Those who have not died yet, don’t worry, by tomorrow morning you will definitely go through this mystery. The time of death depends solely on your sensitivity. Tomorrow morning at half past five we’ll meet in the mountains at the fork near the Earth mountain. Don’t forget to visit the places you are drawn to along the way. And remember: every place we have been to, you should visit on your own at least twice. Tomorrow we have to climb the Renaissance Pyramid. I won’t bother anyone with gym classes tonight. Anyhow, it’s too late already. Good night, children!”