After that sharply tumble into the plastic spiral packaging, Bogdan had few moments in which he saw nothing: the complete tearing of the movie of his life. He only felt himself, more exactly, he had the conscience of his own existence, but it wasn’t an empty conscience, without any content: he thought only that he thinks without having any support for his thoughts, excepting the thoughts themselves!
It seemed to be another philosophical application taken from Descartes and extrapolated to the reality. Probably he had died and just then he took into account this variant on a higher level of probability. Maybe all that happened to him in the last time and had seemed to be so strange had been just some events experienced by the ghost of a freshly dead individual. Concreteness of all strange, extremely strange events, which occured in his life in the last time, or, maybe, that would be more accurate said, concreteness belonging to the events which he has witnessed, who went through the front of the retina of his mind making impression of physical reality, as I said, this consistency of these events led him in the field of mistakes, had cheated him and only now, when he had came back in yet his former body, he had understood what happened in reality with him.
He had understood the truth for the simple reason that his own body became just a carcass and it was no more able to send to him information through senses. In which regards the notorious light from the end of the tunnel, he must confess that nothing like that it was showed to him, anyway, it passed enough time that this moment of after-life grace, this supposed moment of Godhood, which is next to the time of death, to be lost for good. The mind, thoughts or spirit, or what would be in fact this mental software which it was used by him for putting these questions and which helped him for relating with the world days after days until this moment and beyond it, this persistent mechanism, maybe due to inertia, maybe due to the nature of things, it was all that remained to him. And with it he was free to contemplate the darkness, the deepest psycho-sensorial darkness that he ever met in his life until now… or until then, when he felt that horrific pain, hits and blood, the warmth of veins flowing outward and spreads on the soil together with pieces of meat and bones. Pain, oh, pain, but what happened then to him? Only now, when he had come back in what could be called now his former house, he remembered about these things. He has haunted the bewildered through the city where he lived until then and he doesn’t thought, not even for a second, to all these things which, in fact, were imprinted with bloody letters, his whole body being a necrotic stigma of those events.
Probably that just for this reason he doesn’t remember what happened with his body, with his being. It seems that it was a terrible shock, and in front of such a suffering, so dreadful and complete in its hellish nature, the pure light itself had denied to be shown for him. Or, at least, he doesn’t have enough strenght or time to see it. Through the mental darkness of his mind from now he thought/perceived the darkness where he was drowned. A mental darkness, so strange to the mind, but stranger to be body which was no more. While his body doesn’t belong to him anymore, losing any link with it, the darkness which stretched everywhere around him, and which was the only possible landscape for him in that moment, couldn’t be nothing else than a mental darkness, the darkness of perception from another dimension of space-time. And he doesn’t see nothing alike with poetical twilight from Bardo, astral realm, about spoke buddhist sutras or writings, but just a total darkness, showed to the mind and which seemed to contain even the mind itself, the only spark of light from this hellish environment.
He tried to think no more to the terrible pain which caused the early and violent separation between his mind and his young body. He had understood that he died and this thing it was enough for the moment. At least he learned, eventually, how situation stands. He was brutally murdered, having though enough time to endure a good part from the torments of Hell: hot drips of sweat going down on his shattering skin, a carcass made from meat which became bloody and sweated and which doesn’t succeed to dry its secretions and wounds because it was struck again and again… and again. A hit wiped the testimony of violence stigmatized through another one making a testimony for a heavier deed, and so on, until reaching the decomposition of the body which still was alive.Then.
Impression was so powerful that it was enough to impose to himself not to think about these events that the river of memories to be cutted imediately. How strange! Psychology talks about existence of the unconscious where were repressed, like some sediments, our undesirable mental contents, but this distinction, arbitrary, pedagogical and operative, between conscience and unconscious, could have valability beyond life? Taking account in our inference to the fact that conscience itself is defined and understood as being a function of the body, therefore, that he belongs to the matter. Or as an epi-phenomenon, physical, of course, as all phenomenona. How could be explained, in these aforementioned conditions, the action of ceasure through repression, which had been made by mind, as long as him, Bogdan Ermes, it was nothing more than mind or something alike? How it was possible that a pure mind or a pure reason, disembodied, to function as mind-body aggregate? It was a thinking subject which could be labeled that being metaphysical using a capital letter, a true seminar of applied metaphysics, even one of self-referential metaphysics, where the subject and the object of metaphysical reflection are the same, but Bogdan no longer had his usual opening for this kind of subject. Not then and there. Not outside of the universitary frame, not outside to all space-time frames.
Maybe that certain things mustn’t be thought or said, even less to be done. He felt now more still, being again in the front of his darkness. A silent and without features darkness, but that seemed to him to be a true Paradise in comparison with those flash-backs of his mind dating from few seconds ago. The carnage of his own body was the most terrible movie-show whom kinetic of his mind has watched until now. Thus, he chose to hide into the deep and motionless darkness where he had found himself after that tumble in the carcase of his former body.
If he was the captive of this no-man’s-land, of this non-space or non-chamber, how would had spoke Frank Herbert- but he placed these words, though, in a total different environment, one reserved for still living people- then at least here, in this bridge beyond physical realm, well, here at least he could be safe. Besides, the non-space where he was doesn’t seem to threat him, and if could come a danger from somewhere, then that one couldn’t originate than in himself, in his own mind, the only drop of reality from this ocean of nothingness.
He tried to think at something pleasant, at something which could be able to distract him as long as possible from that ludicrous inner movie which it was developed between his metaphysical neurons just a few minutes ago. What strange it was the fact that, despite being dead and placed outside of the physical space, but also, extremely probable, outside of the time, he doesn’t cease to counter every piece of event using the notion of time! Because he knew that that apocalyptic landscape will come back in his mind, sooner or later, but he wanted to postpone as long as possible the inevitable. As if he would be guilty somehow because of his violent death, and now, that he knew what happened to him, the pay-back time was coming, requesting payment for his knowledge or, maybe, for the contents of this knowledge, not for the knowledge itself, but for the fiery memories of his former existence. He had succeeded to think at something pleasant and he remembered when he passed beside that undertaker shop from Pache Protopopescu Boulevard, and he saw that girl, about 25 years old. Or maybe that it was rude from his part to appreciate her age thus, so exactly, and, though, so approximative! She had looked to him, the young woman went quickly in the opposite direction and doesn’t seem to notice the sweet eyes threw by Bogdan to her. Of course that he doesn’t succeed to express his delight while he had been so busy looking to that girl, which seemed detached from a super-realistic frame. As soon as that the girl has dissapeared from his view Bogdan begun to feel very bad, becoming dizzy, despite the fact that he continued to go ahead, as an automat. Thoughts and perceptions became unclear and misty in his mind, losing the contact with his own body, with going silhouette of that girl, with sidewalk, with noises of the street. He even doesn’t know when and how he had come in front of the flat in which he lived. Barely then he woke up. But this happened until Bogdan realized that he had died. It was the time, the most recently period from his life-non-life, when had started to take place all kind of strange things, things that led him here and there, to the morgue of IMM Mina Minovici, where he would plunge in himself, in his forgotten earthly carcass, thus achieving conscience of… death. Probably that while when he haunted on the streets of Bucharest, going to the psychoterapy sessions kept by Lavinia, celebrating his birthday with Stefan, walking through Cismigiu Park or he had taken, from the front of Mihai Viteazu highschool, the cab which would lead him again to the IMM, well, in all these moments, he, Bogdan Hermes, it was nothing more or less than a simple ghost or something like that. Quoting on Margueritte Yourcenar, all that remains from us, humans, could be defined as being a waste of experience reaching for eternal snows of Himalaya, a snow flake, unrepeatable, always another one, but keeping its immutable essence, which would melt in our hands if we would try to retain it, flake which came from Alaya, the tank which contains all deeds made in Univers, and which was preset to go back there, but just for coming back again, and so on, into apparent eternal space-time spiral. He realized, though quite hard, his new ontic condition.
And now he stands suspended or blocked somewhere, in no-man’s-land, or, how would be said Immanuel Kant, he stands in the world of noumens, the world of the things-in-themselves, meta-cosmic and meta-temporal dimension of the things-in-themselves, how they really are in fact, behind and beyond of any sensible feature, either a sensible one, either one belonging to the frame of understanding in space and time. He remembered about the supposed testimonies and assumptions made by mediums concerning after-life conditions of a suicide or of the individuals which had made immoral deeds, of the individuals which had removed the divine truth from their souls through their unhuman actions. Some people had said that noetic wastes, or spirit, or their principle of conscience lies suspended for an undefined period of time into a non-space essentially customed, a secured berth of expiation, where they don’t and couldn’t do anything else than think about their anti and pseudo-divine deed, deed which destroyed something which wasn’t made by them and neither was theirs, gesture which is this one: to destroy a divine property, that means to send to death a human body. Also, in the movie Twin Peaks he had met a metaphor of this non-space, a true niche of transcendence with valves in existence, where, for those blocked there, it was reserved a wailing subsistence for an undefined period of time. A place where the laws of space aren’t respected and the time itself flows in a different manner, in every direction and more quickly, but enough slowly to soak with pain every pore of your soul. Maybe even the pain of the deeds you didn’t do, but which were assumed by you and for which you had been put to pay. Or maybe that you had made a mistake daring to open that gate of Hell, in the same way in which had done the goodman Dale Cooper, for example, that one for which the angel kept praying.
But him, Bogdan Hermes, what guilt could have him, what sins could had made that to be constrained to live in such reign of existence? He knew that nothing from which happens in the world isn’t a non-sense, and he also knew that nothing from which he had done while it was alive, while it was human, wasn't unforgivable. At least, he doesn’t make any mistake enough seriously that to deserve an eternal suffering, concept which seems to be taken from Inferno of Dante Alighieri. But what mistakes had done Beatrice to be sealed in the deepest circle of Avernus? Though, that one it was just literature, and even one by the best quality, one which makes reference to the main qualities of human being, one which exposes you, as reader, to the caudine forks of mimesis and catharsis. He thinks again at that moment, which even now seems to him as being so strange, the episode of meeting that girl on boulevard, in the heart of the day, in a neighborhood full of meanings, meanings belonging both to his personal history, and to the history of the country where, for a while, he lived. He has never seen her until then, but he knew that, somehow, would have been possible to meet each other, even they ought to be together. As an astral signature or karmic bond kept them together. Bogdan felt that this girl it was close to him in a spiritual way, and that this girl is more alike with him than most of the people whom he had knew in his short life, so close to him that common memories, mutual knowing under the temporary pretext of life, all these became useless. And, though, would have been better if he had known her. With the eyes of mind he saw again that place from the boulevard, buildings and suspended cables, shops and phone booths, but nothing from what he perceived wasn’t identical with that he had perceived then, on his birthday. His first birthday…. enjoyed outside of the usual space and time. Outside of the conventional space and time. He understood that that it was showed to his senses in present is the picture from now, constantly moving, of that piece belonging to the space-time puzzle. A metamorphose in pictures, having the gift to express the dynamic nature of the world. He just knew it. He felt in the depth of his being that he see that place in the way in which it is now. How? This neither him wasn’t able to answer for himself. Through the power of the disembodied mind, due to the good-will of Divinity, anyway, the answer was less important. He had a profound regret, and, if he would had tear glands, probably that he would started to cry. He felt sorry because of his own death. He it was aware- now it was even sure- that there is life after life, an extra-reason for hoping that he will escape from that dead end of nature, place where he was incarcerated for the moment, but, even if he would had the guarantee of the Paradise expecting for him, he wouldn’t succeed to master the deep regret that has appeared in his mind. He cried with ecto-plasma tears, or maybe that he cried with neutrino tears. But it was a state more profound that the most noisy crying from life time that he ever experienced. It wasn’t a crying or a wailing able to wash the retina of his eyes, to clean his sinuses, to burn the ballast of negative feelings, but it was a catharctic crying, which cleaned even his spirit, which gutted and purified the lotus flowers belonging to the deepest self of Bogdan. Belonging to a self which was non-self, and that wasn’t his anymore. He even doesn’t know how much it was metaphor and how much it was experience from that he felt. It was a crying which made him lighter, although light he was anyway, a neutrino flake without any physical reference. He felt that if he would succeed to discover the true meaning of his terrible sadness then he would overcome his state, then he would escape from that cell of non-space and to go where we would have to go immediately after the bounds of his young body were wild cutted. The undertaker shop was gone, the whole neighborhood looked changed, but it was obvious that that it was the place wherefrom everything begun. He understood that after the last and the most atrocious of hits his body died. Then he had died. The film of earthly memories was broken also, and thereafter he doesn’t feel or think anything. The complete darkness covered his eyes until he was projected there, in middle of the street, pushed by an unknown force. But why just there, and precisely on September 22, on his birthday and his death day, also? It passed enough time between the moment of his death and his reemergence that the last one, I mean, his reemergence, has became meaningless. “Maybe this would have been my destiny, and, while I died early, I didn’t succeeded to fulfill it, maybe even in its essential parts!” thinks Bogdan. “Love is the most important thing, Bogdan!” doesn’t bother to tell him, Lavinia, the psychoterapist, during their sessions. “This is another reason for which are accepted and practiced so many types or forms of psychoterapy, including terapy through faith, which doesn’t belong to us, psychoterapists, but which, after all, is a terapy as any other, being also named fido-terapy. How otherwise could you explain so called cases of demonic possession, you, as modern and cosmopolitan citizen of this century? Do you beleave that those individuals really are mastered by psychic forces from outside of their bodies and whom they can not control? No way, they have a deficiency in area of love, Bogdane! Our suffering, our pain, including the Buddhist sense of the word, if you want, is caused by love, by his lack, more exactly! We have, all of us, a fundamental affective and emotional deficiency. You didn’t love yet, in the true meaning of the concept, or, at least, you did not love at the proper vibration, and because of that you will not succeed to be truly happy, whatever would be your destiny since now, here or anywhere else.
Certainly that Lavinia doesn’t make a mistake regarding thins thing, whom, otherwise, she guessed from the first place, before she discovered oriental metaphysics, even from the time when she was only a child. But only now she succeed to feel and understand this fundamental truth. In his life Bogdan needed love, as anyone else, after all, but magnetic power of destiny drew him here, working as a spring. Even now he knew that ought to happen. What ought to take place during his life time. If love is the main power from Univers, which can heal everything, then, without any question, love was that which drew him here, even after death, to show him what ought to happen in his life, how his life ought to look, in a fulfilled form. Thinking at this subject he felt how really become lighter, more lighter, as something would be emptied him of his content, this, of course, just in case in which disembodied souls could be considered as being owners of any content, even an immaterial one. Only now he understood the meaning of the power of love, so praised by religions of humankind, so appreciated by the biggest writers, some of them being from the same country with Bogdan. The power of love which makes things and aspects, the Love with capital letters, liberating and creative power.
While feeling of relief had grew, urban picture became darker, the shapes and colors had become evanescent, becoming at the first moment more fluid, more intertwined, as in a super-natural kaleidoscope, what was it in fact, and, in final, those shapes and colors merged together making an amorphous mass of opaque substance which would be lost in the dark. When he thought that the movie it was broken again, at this time forever, a circular hole was opened within that fabric of darkness. A beam of light made visible the space from behind of that eye and thus, watching after the fissure, he had seen a flower shop windows. The flower shop, he knew this, so how knew, when he was projected by the power of his own thoughts in the place where he met or he ought to met on that girl, having no more than 25 years old, that that one it was the place where his after life would continue, so how knew, how it was said, that the flower shop took the place of undertaker shop. He saw bouquets of flowers, including magnificent China roses, which were so loved by him, flowers near flowers, bouquets over other bouquets, multicolor, white, yellow or red, orange or violet, shades and main colors, wrapped in plastic or kept in vases filled with water. There were also crowns, were even flowers for weddings or baptism, imperial lilies and roses with rainbow shades, flowers extremely different and beautiful, in the same time, each of them being unique, maybe, in their species, as some angels of vegetal reign. He almost was able to touch them, he almost felt their smell, he almost succeeded to enjoy for the miracle of the fact that them exists. Quoting a philosopher, neither him doesn’t knew which of them it was, ‘You can not cease to wonder for the fact that the world exist, even more because would have been possible not to be!’ Thereafter, shades and colors became more and more unclear, shapes joined together composing geometrical structures more complex, and Bogdan knew that the magical moment came to end. The epiphany was finished, but he had the feeling that something more important and more touching will happens. The vortex re-created in space-time will be reabsorbed, willing, maybe, to desecrate magical gate which was opened until now. To desecrate it closing it. Or maybe that, in fact, special nature of these places and memories is precisely the necessity that they to remain untouched or, even if they are tasted, to be tasted only for a very short moment of time, letting them preserve their freshness and avoiding in this way their early withering and dieing. But, what means few seconds for somebody who is placed within a non-space behind or beyond of world? Maybe that is the counterpart for few hours, for some days, or maybe, for entire years! Anyway, the events happened with a super-natural speed. Therefore, as I said, and this last bond of him with ordinary space and time it was erased by the jagged pen belonging to the scribe of fates. Immediately what the gate it was closed, a powerful light, irresistible, wrapped him in his whole being, coming from inside, from himself, as it was always there, just waiting for the proper moment to be discovered and used. Bogdan became one with the light and begin to float in an enchanting décor, antipodal from that in which he lingered until then. Then he had another understanding, another feeling, behind of the physical mind, behind feelings, behind intuition. Then he knew that another chance it was gave to him: he will be born again and he will find his happiness this time, because the essence of his being told him that.