Chapter 8 – Pleiades

  Altair climbed the grey stairs to his family home and pushed the double white doors into all the noise. They opened onto the dining room and lounge. The air was hot and filled with the noise of celebrations, welcoming him home from the Deep South. The room had a big oval oak table around which a number of his friends were sitting. On the right was the family library piled with books and on the left were all the family photograph albums and pictures his mother Mary loved to display. Something made his skin get goosebumps and his heart race. He knew his best friend FiBee loved to matchmake and she had warned him she might bring someone special. FiBee was also from the Deep South, a pixie creature who loved to sniff lavender with Altair and his other best friend Max the Tibetan Monk and together they would all go crazy in the shopping centers having races with the supermarket trolleys. So as he stood there, knowing the magic FiBee could bring to any occasion, his eyes turned to the far corner of the room by the wedding photograph of his parents and he saw her. Their eyes met and they both smiled and he was smitten instantly. She was watching him, and returned to playing a harmonica. He walked over to her amidst the smiles and choruses of ‘Welcome Home’.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m Altair.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m Priya.”

  “Do you play harmonica?”

  “No, just learning.” And she smiled at FiBee like they knew a secret.

  “Oh? You’re pretty good! You’re not a musician then?”

  “No, I love to dance,” said Priya.

  And that was it. Like two peas in a pod Altair and Priya sat and talked the whole evening as if no one else in the entire world existed and he knew that this was the Sign he’d been looking for. The Dancer the Sanyasi had told him about, his first wife from his life as a Raj. He knew it with all his heart and all his soul. And just now they had found a way into each other’s world.

  Priya was small and slight, almost elfin, with the determination of a tiger and the mystique of the Sphinx. She had a keen sharp intelligence like a knife and could cut away Altair’s concerns like butter. Her eyes were hazel and her hair curly and tawny brown and she smelled like sweet honey. Love, especially deep true love, has a way of working magic with the stars.

  And so it did.

  “Priya,” said Altair one day, many moons into their relationship, after a dream where they both dreamed of flying the same crystal airplane. Altair dreamt he was flying Priya and she was in the back. Priya dreamed Altair was flying her and he was in the front. “Tell me about where you want to fly to. Where is your bridge across forever? What other worlds does it lead to?”

  Priya looked deep into Altair’s eyes. “I want to explore the stars with you. That’s why we fell in love. You can help me go beyond what is here. To find out what lies beyond.”

  “What did that Steve guy say about other worlds?”

Priya and Altair had just attended a seminar on extraterrestrials and other worlds with Steve, a US expert on extraterrestrial contact and had decided to sign up together for a weekend workshop with him. It had been FiBee, their divine connector and fountain of everything spiritual who had told them about it. FiBee seemed to have her pulse on every esoteric heartbeat in town and could weave magical relationships where before there were none. Priya adored her like a goddess.

“He said something about this Venus and Jupiter energy in the spine. That we were like universal connectors or cosmic radio stations for the universe and life out there.”

“I want to find out how it works.”

“Why do you want to find out about life out there so much? What about life here? I mean I want to know but there is so much everyone needs here on earth.”

“I know, I can’t explain all of it but I’ve wanted to explore the stars and other worlds since I was a child.”

“You’ve got an alien inside you,” laughed Priya. “That should be enough.”

“Well I figure we are all like that.  We just don’t know it. We all come from the stars.”

“That guy Steve is just like you, Altair. Weird. When you look into his eyes he looks like he comes from another planet.”

“I thought so too. He seems like he has some answers to all this.”

Steve certainly did have answers. He had been a professional rugby league international totally disinterested in UFOs and that sort of thing when one weekend, when he was on holiday at Bethells Beach, he had been struck down by a blue light which came from the stars and the beings he connected with downloaded him with information from an extraterrestrial civilization that was in direct contact with earth. It had changed his life overnight. And it was about to change Altair and Priya’s.

  The workshop was a massive energy shift. Altair and Priya felt like they were surfing a wave. It started with all the participants, which included FiBee and her friend Penelope, cleansing the chakras by replacing the crystals that composed the petals of those chakras. They worked on the third eye or ajna chakra which had two petals for most of the time. Then they worked on telepathy with partners. Altair’s partner was Penelope and using simple energy breathing techniques in the spine they were able to reach out and touch each other’s essence. When Altair tried it with Penelope he got an enormous shock. As he entered her consciousness Penelope shape-shifted and formed a ferocious tiger which sprang out at him claws and all. It was a stunning, confronting demonstration of power in its rawest form. Penelope confirmed that was exactly what she had manifested and she seemed impressed that Altair had picked up so exactly on it.

  “I’m not comfortable with men,” she said quite candidly. “You’re the first man I’ve allowed to get anywhere near me on that psychic level. My mum has always protected me from unwanted forces. She taught me how to deal with it. Like this.”

  “I want to find a way through,” said Altair. “A bridge. Into your world. Into your being.”

  “I’m not ready for that,” said Penelope. “I prefer to live within my walls. I know I’m safe that way.”

  “Powerful walls!” said Altair.

  That night both Altair and Priya were exhausted but they couldn’t sleep.

  “What did you discover?” said Altair.

  “Amazing energies,” said Priya. “All over my body. Like a zinging up and down my spine. As if everything electrical in my body has been suddenly activated.”

  “Me too,” said Altair.

  They lay awake a long time thinking of the stars and the magic that lay beyond them on the bridge across forever.

  Steve was a hard taskmaster. Priya and Altair signed up for a number of weekend workshops after that initial one. One Saturday night Steve said in front of the group,

  “I’d like to give you all feedback about your progress. Tough stuff to help you.”

  He went around the group praising some and advising others how to fine tune their energies.

  To Priya he said, “You have a pristine energy, very pure and awake, like a new birth.”

  Priya smiled her delicious warm smile that Altair loved so much.

  Finally he turned to Altair.

  “You,” he said, “pretend to be the most spiritual of all, but you have the most to learn, because you are the least spiritually developed.”

  Altair sat a long while after the circle sharing in shock and silence.

  When they got home he asked Priya, “Do you really think I am that immature?”

  She laughed. “You take yourself too seriously. Steve said that to wake you up.”

  Altair worried about the aftereffects of this all weekend. He mulled and stewed over it all week.

  The next weekend was the last workshop where they would all go to Bethells Beach to call craft in from the stars. There was a part of Altair, a sulking part, that didn’t believe this would happen to him right now. Maybe for the others but not to him.

  They all sat high on a hillside above the beach as a group and called the craft in using the Venus Jupiter techniques in the spine that Steve had taught them. Blue lights appeared in the sky and on the horizon and flew at them from all angles.

  It was Contact, but not as Altair wanted it.

Perhaps it was something in the look he had that night, perhaps it was a hunch, or perhaps it was what Steve had said to Altair that shifted things so much, because as time passed Altair began to question whether he would ever have true Contact. He had seen and he believed but he hadn’t felt. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what he wanted from the stars and magic but he knew he wanted more.

He was appointed Director of an educational institution in the Deep South and Priya and he started a family together. There were no more joyful moments than the birth of a son and then a daughter, both of them treasures in his heart that he knew would be there always.

“I’m never apart from you,” he would whisper to them when they were alone. “I’m a part of you and you’re a part of me. We’re part of each other. Every day of my life you will be in my heart and even beyond this life too.”

  Altair wrote birth songs for both of his children. They lived all together beside a beautiful beach. He travelled the world marketing for education. Priya and Altair went through the joys and struggles of all couples. And still he wondered.

  One day Steve returned to the Deep South, invited by Altair to give a seminar on extraterrestrial Contact.

That evening, on a Saturday, after the talk, Altair and Steve were sitting eating pizza together. Priya was at home with the children.

  “What did you think of the seminar?” said Steve sipping a beer.

  “People get very excited by extraterrestrials. Why don’t they reveal themselves?”

  “It’s a simple matter of energy and consciousness. You’ve seen it for yourself. When you raise the energy levels in your system you attract wherever your attention is focused. Like a radio beacon, you tune into the right frequency. You tune into them with the right energy and they will tune into you. And find you.”

   Altair paused.

  “Do you want to see a star craft?”

   Altair couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Right here? Now?”

   They were eating at a beach front restaurant near his house.

   “Sure, right here. Let’s go for a walk.”

  They took a stroll along the beach past a number of people who were also out late. It was just going on 1am. There was a woman with a dog, a man out fishing in a boat, a couple walking on the beach. Most people’s lights were out. It was a beautiful evening and the sky was very clear and littered with stars.

  “Let’s stop here,” said Steve.

  They stopped not far from Altair’s beach front house.

  “You remember the Venus Jupiter exercises?”

  “Sure.”

  “So simply visualize building the energy within the spine as you connect to the emerald green of Venus on the left. Then connect to the craft through the ruby red energy of Jupiter on the right and extend the energy out through the third eye to make contact.”

  Altair and Steve did the exercises together for about five minutes. They were both adept at it and the consciousness flowed easily and smoothly. They gazed up at the heavens together.

  A few minutes passed and a satellite appeared around about the center of the Pleiades constellation and started to move across the sky as they watched.

  It reached the center of the sky and stopped.

  Stopped.

  “It…it stopped!” said Altair, scarcely believing his eyes. “Satellites don’t stop!”

  “Right,” said Steve.

  As Altair watched in disbelief the satellite began to lower, vertically, from its position high up in the stars, and descend towards them. As it grew closer and larger, Altair began to make out details.

  A star craft was right above them, transparent so they could see the stars through it, with three lights at each of the nose and the two wing tips, and an enormous booster engine at the rear. It was gigantic, about the size of two jumbo jets and it descended over Altair’s house. All activity on the beach had stopped and those witnessing just stood there stunned. The craft manoeuvred over Altair’s house before flashing three times in a sign to Altair and then a whooshing sound could be heard as the craft sped off and disappeared at a rate faster than anything Altair has seen move to this day. He stood there, rooted to the spot.

  “Did…” was all he could say.

  “Yes,” said Steve. “Now go home to Priya. She will be missing you. Watch what happens carefully these next few days. And do not report what happened or how you called the craft to the authorities. They will be all over you and you will be tracked forever. Just like the X-Files. Keep it safely between your friends.”

  Altair nodded. He was still rocked by the energies, by the possibilities for humanity, by the knowledge that we could make Contact if we wished, if we raised our energies, if we knew how.

  And he knew how.

  The following days were filled with the news of the ‘alien contact’. In newspapers and television, stories of the craft from eyewitnesses appeared and the United States Air Force flew two jets in to the beach resort with scientists in white coats who posted rewards around the town of $500 for information leading to or pertaining to the extraterrestrial craft. Four young boys who had been sleeping out on the roof of their house had been ‘visited’ by the starship and described exactly the same craft as Altair had seen, the whooshing noise and the incredible speed with which it left their location after it hovered above them. Friends and family who knew of Altair’s experience all wanted to know more. And everyone who laid claim to an alien contact or alien DNA came out of the woodwork.

  Two weeks later Altair was walking along another beach on the same coast a little further north with five of his friends. They were joking with him about his Contact.

  “So you can cross worlds,” said Tanya.

  “And call extraterrestrial craft,” said Mark.

  “Go on, show us,” they all cajoled him.

  “You can do it,” whispered Tanya. “Go on, I know you can do anything.”

  Tanya had been good friends with Altair for such a long time. She was convinced that she walked the same path and they often shared their mystical experiences.

  “Now?” said Altair. “In the middle of the day? The craft came at 1am. From the stars. The Pleiades. If I call it now you might never see it. What would be just as good a test?”

  “The dolphins,” said Tanya. “Call the dolphins.”

  “The dolphins,” they all cried. There was lots of laughter and a good feeling about this suggestion. If anyone could do it Altair could.

  “How do you do it?” said Mark. “Is there an actual bridge or what?”

  “Just an intention,” said Altair. “Then an activation of the current in your body through the Venus and Jupiter exercises. They are very similar to Yogananda’s Kriya Yoga. Then surrender. And wait. That’s it basically. A call of the heart. If my heart is in tune with theirs they will come.”

  “Show me,” said Tanya.

  “All right,” said Altair. “I’ll show you.” And he sat down on the beach and closed his eyes.

  For a moment all he heard was the tumble and falling of the waves, swish, swish. Everything else was quiet.

  He focused on the dolphins, bringing them to his mind’s eye. Then he made an intention to become the ocean and began to breathe and draw the Venus and Jupiter energies up through the left and right sides of his body. It only took a few minutes.       Then something happened.

  As he relaxed his mind into the shape of the ocean waves a new consciousness began to sweep around his body and powers he had hitherto been unexposed to rose to the surface.

  He felt for all the world like a dolphin, leaping and diving in and out of the ocean sprays.

  He felt safe and filled with joy under the water.

  He could breathe!

  “Look, look!” came the cry. Altair opened his eyes.

  The five friends were pointing out to sea. There, swimming along the beach, was a pod of dolphins. Three of them turned and swam into the beach at just the point Altair was sitting.

  Altair rose to his feet, feeling at one with the dolphins. He could hear them, feel them calling to him.

  “C’mon!” he shouted.

  But his friends were too shocked by the sudden appearance of the dolphins to move. They stood there with open mouths, gaping as Altair took off his clothes and dived into the surf. The dolphins waited, playing close to the shore and when Altair joined them they swam with him out to sea, circling and frolicking, jumping and greeting him with clicks and whistles. Altair could understand all that passed between them that day. He could see the worlds they came from, the joy they brought to this world, the sadness they felt at the atrocities committed to their brethren and the damage done to the ocean. They were such peace loving light filled beings. He felt more at home with them here than he did in many other places on this planet. He knew they were his Dolphin Light Family come to acknowledge him.

  Where Priya was smart and elfin, Tanya was passionate and mysterious. She had large dark eyes and black curly hair and she and Altair had an uncanny connection. His meeting with his Star Family, which is how he referred to the extraterrestrials and his Light Family, the dolphins, had opened a way from this world into others. Telepathy with Tanya became as easy and natural as breathing, even without trying. Altair would suddenly find himself in her dreams, so he would call her and she would confirm…

  “Yes, I was wearing a white dress with a necklace of pearls,” or they could be in separate rooms and shown an object or given something to touch and they would both have an identical experience. Tanya could hold a pack of cards, secretly draw a sequence and Altair could tell her what they were.

  They had discovered this by accident one night when they were all in a meditation group. It was shortly after a trip to India and the Himalayas that Altair had made to see Swami Shyam. When Altair came back he was literally glowing. Everyone noticed it. Altair discovered on his return that by raising the energies up his spine while holding an intention he could trigger a similar energy in anyone that looked into his eyes. He knew this was the Naga energies working through him. So one night as they were going around the circle and people were asking Altair to activate this energy or that intention, when he reached Tanya he suddenly felt himself raised up and leaving his body and an instant later found himself in her body. It was most uncanny and incredibly unnerving and greatly upset Priya and Tanya’s husband Mark. They wanted Altair and Tanya to stop immediately which they did but the natural consequences of this unexpected skill was the desire to experiment. So consciously and unconsciously in dreams the telepathy between the two of them unfolded and it led to a great rift between Altair and Priya. 

  Tanya had a friend called Kathleen. Kathleen had a friend called Nigel. Nigel and his wife Pauline ran a small school that Priya and Altair’s children went to. Nigel was the cause of the second great rift between Altair and Priya. Priya was sexually abused by her father. In fact her father had sexually abused all his daughters. Priya and her sisters suffered a great deal in their early years, vulnerable young years when a soul is still gaining knowledge about what is right and wrong or light and dark. Without proper guidance it was easy to fall into addiction to food or alcohol or sex as a way of trying to find answers to the Love that was missing. When Priya was feeling lonely she turned to Nigel. Nigel was a Tibetan Buddhist with a number of consorts or partners and he was looking to extend that harem to include Priya. Priya’s insecurities about Tanya’s relationship with Altair led her to confide in Nigel, who then took advantage of her vulnerability and her past and entered into a sexual relationship with her at the same time as he was in a relationship with both Kathleen and Pauline. 

  One night Altair was talking to Priya while she was taking a bath. The children were fast asleep. He looked into her eyes and he knew. They had been too close and the love that sparkles can also burn. 

  “Are you having a relationship with him?”

  Priya paused a long time. 

  “Are you having a sexual relationship with him?”

  Tears filled Altair’s eyes and then Priya knew that he knew. 

  “Yes,” she said simply with typical elfin defiance. 

  Altair’s spirit was crushed in that instant and his heart broke in two. An anger, a fierce burning smouldering anger emerged from the ashes of his broken heart. 

  “I’ll kill him. I’m going to take my sword and kill him.”

  Priya was horrified. 

  “No,” she said as she rose out of the bath. “No!”

  Altair had no intention of killing anyone but he recognized the past life of a Samurai soldier where he and Greg had faced off over love before. 

  Altair stormed out of the house, ran down the road and emitted the most horrendous flood of expletives over the phone to his poor mother. When he had calmed down he wept uncontrollably. His mother was silent a long while. 

  “Why don’t you come home for a while.”

  Altair thought about this for a long time. 

  “No, I need to sort this out with her. For the children’s sake.”

  Altair was trembling badly when he returned. His nervous system had taken such a shock. It might have been the delayed reaction to Priya’s confession or it might have been finding himself in a totally new reality from the one he had thought he was in just an hour or two ago. He knew this was part of his journey across the bridge between worlds because wherever there was light there was also darkness. And both had to be understood in the path of love and wisdom. Knowing that did not make things any easier however.

  “I want to see other men. I want to have freedom to explore,” said Priya a few days later.

  Altair felt helpless. His childhood, so filled with hope and trust and beautiful nurturing was now crashing down all around him and he was alone.

  “I’ll move out,” said Altair.

  “I’m not asking you to do that,” said Priya. “The children want to see you.”

  “I’ll move into the cave.”

  “Up to you.”

  The cave was the garden shed. In order to be near to the children Altair decided on an impulse to convert the shed in their back yard, which usually held gardening tools and which he had nicknamed the cave as it was so dark, into a meditation cave. He pulled out the tools and hung Thangka of the Buddha and the scroll of Saraswati and made an altar with the Masters of Krishna and Babaji’s line. And he always carried a little statue of Mary and baby Jesus which reminded him that no matter how much suffering he was going through, someone was going through more.

  Tanya helped him a great deal in that terrible time. They both decided to drop all connections of a mystical and telepathic nature which included meditation group gatherings to give Altair a chance to heal.

  “So what do you want to do?” asked Tanya one Sunday afternoon.

  “I feel so broken,” said Altair. “I need to heal. The only thing I can think of is helping others.”

  “I’m manager for all the intellectually disabled groups here in the Deep South,” said Tanya. “If there is anything you can think of that could help them, then I can arrange it.”

  “You know me well,” said Altair managing a small smile. “If there is any way you could use my yoga and meditation experience or performing arts…”

  “Didn’t you do an OT job once?” said Tanya.

  It was true. Some years before Altair went out with a doctor, Maggie. She was in charge of a large hospital wing and their OT, occupational therapist, had a sudden family emergency and took three months off. As Altair was there and he had a counseling degree they employed him to fill in, doing everything from art to yoga to tai chi and meditation. Altair had lots of close run ins with patients as he worked in the psychiatric ward. One day a patient named Bill knocked the orderly clean out. He then stalked other doctors and nurses who were all too afraid of him to go near. Altair had just arrived, didn’t know this had all just happened and came around the corner to be picked up by Bill, who was a mammoth of a man.

  “I’m gonna kill ya!” said Bill.

  Altair wasn’t frightened but he also couldn’t breathe, caught in a behemoth’s bear hug.

  “Scared?”

  Because he couldn’t speak or resist and was feeling like his ribs were going to crack the only thing Altair could do was relax. He let all the life go out of his body and hung limp.

  Suddenly Bill dropped him.

  “Fooled ya!”

  He picked Altair up from a heap on the floor.

  “I wouldn’t ‘ave killed ya. I like ya.”

  And Bill turned around and walked away into the arms of the security guards who had arrived.

  Altair’s memories returned to Tanya.

  “I guess I could do that,” he said. “Set me up with a date and I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  So he relied on his OT experience and built a program with Tanya where he taught the residents of the houses under her direction everything from yoga to tai chi, massage to meditation, art and music. It was just as much therapy for him as for the residents.

  Altair remembered a profound moment in those six months where something began to switch back on for him.

  He was doing a meditation exercise with one of the groups and all was very silent. There was a deep still presence and everything was in harmony. Suddenly Colin, one of the residents opened his eyes wide in awareness and alarm.

  “Here!” he said, pointing to his head again and again. “Listen! I can hear my brain clicking!”

  

  The cave was a difficult place. Every night after Altair went home he would play with the children, kiss them good night and head out to the cave. If Priya went out he would stay in the house, only to disappear into the cave when he heard her car pull into the garage.

  “What’s it like,” asked Tanya one day at one of the resident’s houses, “living in a cave?”

  “For the first few months it was terrible,” confessed Altair. “I had this image from a wee boy of Horton the elephant sitting on Maisie’s egg, and I figured if I could sit long enough with the pain, that one day it would hatch into something different, like a rebirth. Nice idea, but life isn’t always like that.

  In those months I would go into the cave, and I’d try to sit and I’d sit, in desperate hope like Horton, but most of the time my heart would hammer and I couldn’t breathe and I’d have to get up and walk around in the garden and look at the stars until the feelings subsided. It was such a dark time!”

  “You should have told me. You could have gone out or done something with Mark and me.”

  “I was too low, too ashamed to show my head in public. I felt people were silently laughing at me and my situation. I’d lost my marriage, my kids, my job…”

  Altair hung his head.

  “Your job? I didn’t know that.”

  “Yep. The Board of Directors decided I was too vulnerable down here so they transferred me up North. Brought a new director in. Didn’t give me an option of staying. So I resigned.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’m thinking of starting another company with some friends. When I heal. Not until then.”

  Altair had been putting on a brave face by not letting Tanya see just how low he’d  been, how much fear he’d had to face. He’d always talked about mastering fear and being in love, and here he was unable to simply be and forgive and nurture himself.

  He decided to let his guard down a little more.

  “Sometimes I have the most crazy thoughts,” he told her. “I just want to go and cut his head off. I guess it’s a habit I have from those 16th century Raj days.” He let out a small smile. “It kind of feels good to have those thoughts, to know I’m not going to act on them, but to let out a little wickedness, a little of my wild side.”

  “How do you deal with it?” asked Tanya. “All those pent up feelings. It can’t be good for you to lock them all away.”

  “You’re right,” said Altair. “The main thing is not to do harm to any other human being, no matter how strongly you feel or how angry you are at them.  So when I feel like that I take myself away, high up into the mountains and forests for a day or two. Into the wilderness by myself. The first time I did it I felt such madness overtake me that I found a huge log and pounded enormous rocks for hours until I was exhausted. Then I cried and cried for just as long a time until I was all spent. It was perhaps the most healing thing I have done for myself. Self-compassion. Taking the time to be alone and get in touch with where my heart was truly at. To be totally present with those feelings, no matter how awful I thought they were.”

  Tears filled Altair’s eyes. 

  “And slowly they changed, and I made friends with them, this terrible rage, this crippling anger, this enormous pain that I had carried around like a weight.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “They were my own personal demons, they were the parts of me I feared the most.”

  Tanya gave him a hug.

  “It’s much better when you share.”

  “You’re right, that’s exactly what my Mum says.”

  And both of their eyes filled with tears at the same time.